{"id":45835,"date":"2019-03-03T06:00:54","date_gmt":"2019-03-03T11:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=45835"},"modified":"2019-03-02T22:51:30","modified_gmt":"2019-03-03T03:51:30","slug":"4-no-love-for-the-shorties","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=45835","title":{"rendered":"#4 No Love for the Shorties"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><!--more--><image src=\"images\/cb4.jpg\" max-width=\"100%\" style=\"margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;display:block\"\/><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"images\/cb_chuck.jpg\" class=\"bubblehead\"\/><\/p>\n<div class=\"bubble speech\">When you want to design a character, start by imagining what sort of inner drive motivates them to seek adventure. Visualize what sort of family life and cultural forces would make an individual risk death on a regular basis. Then decide how a person with this sort of makeup would view the world around them and how they would relate to others.<\/p>\n<p>If all of that sounds like a lot of work, then just roll a barbarian. This ain\u2019t no Writers\u2019 Workshop.<\/p><\/div>\n<p><br clear=\"all\"><\/p>\n<p><strong>Shamus Says:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Here where we get to the stuff that really clicked for me.  I love the reality-switching.  This is what made the comic fun to write.<\/p>\n<p>Super-pretentious art wanking: The in-game reality we see is an odd sort of meta-reality that only exists for the audience. When we see a fantasy shot, we see Ramgar as pictured by Chuck, Josh\u2019s character as pictured by Josh, and so on.  We\u2019re seeing this blend of what everyone is picturing.  That\u2019s a fun idea.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Shawn Says:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Yay!  The gnome paladin!  Love that guy.<\/p>\n<p>Artist Rambling #4, may be of interest to no one but me:<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m surprised at how much I like the really sketchy look for Ramgar and co.  As the comic went on, I moved to a much less sketchy, more iconic art style.  I think were I to go back in time and do the comic again, I\u2019d keep the in game scenes looking like Ramgar here does, and make the tabletop scenes look flatter and less detailed.  More scribbles on the Player Characters, less on the Players.<\/p>\n<div class=\"dmnotes\">EDIT 2019: I think Shawn brings it up elsewhere in this series, but the font we used for Josh is kind of unfortunate. We wanted fonts for each of the characters that would reflect their personality. That&#8217;s a good idea in theory, but I think we sacrificed too much readability in Josh&#8217;s case. It was easy enough to read when I already knew what it said because I&#8217;d written it recently, but coming back to it after a decade I find myself struggling to figure out what Josh is saying.<\/p>\n<p>If we were to do it today, I&#8217;d suggest using Comic Sans for Josh. The font has a reputation for being the typographical equivalent of a trollface, so it would suit him. And despite its reputation, Comic Sans is <strong>very<\/strong> readable.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45835"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45835\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46108,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45835\/revisions\/46108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}