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Episode 1856: Engendered Enthusiasm

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A character sketch can be a great help in visualising your character, and helping other players to visualise your character. Some people draw their own more or less amateurish character art, while in recent years a small industry has sprung up of talented artists taking commissions to draw character art for game players. A quick Internet search will turn up many venues where artists offer their skills, with skill levels and concomitant prices ranging from barely passable to really good and highly professional.

If you're an artist this can be a good way to make a bit of money from your work, while if you're a player, it's a great chance to get some original artwork that reflects exactly how you see your character.

Commentary by Keybounce (who has not seen the movie)

Hold on - Pete paid someone to sketch a character?

That's... well, it's certainly heard of. Bit surprising, not really optimizing.

I find myself thinking of Dune, for some reason. (And yes, I remember that little bit from that old cast page). No one ever bothered with the sun's penalties here before. Hmm, wonder what has changed - something (still?) in the atmosphere after all these years?

Not sure how practical that "Drop into the mouth from above" really is. I normally make sure I have no leakage by having my mouth covering the container - allows me to regulate how much/how fast it goes into me. And, that position looks like it will hurt your neck.

Annie, who ran the Vampire campaign, isn't into lots of big guns. OK. So don't expect her to do anything with mecha or giant robots in the future.

Meanwhile, we have what appears to be the big names of this campaign - Kylo and Rey (well, if I heard of them, despite all my spoiler avoidance, even if I thought it was the same person, then that's a big name) being one female, one male, and then there's Phasma being female, a reasonably diverse cast of light, medium, and dark skin - I think they are trying to break the typical trope of casting, where white Americans play all the major parts, even foreign characters, when they could just as easily get a foreign actor.

Commentary by memnarch (who has not seen the movie)

Interestingly, I think this is the first instance of a character actually having a drink in the comic for something other than roleplaying. Though I was never quite sure whether the blue milk or the stew counted as having a related game mechanic attached to them or if it was just a cool way to roleplay making a new class choice.

I'm rather stunned that Pete actually commissioned someone to do a character sketch for his new character. Making or finding character art is traditional. He never struck me as the type to care a ton about appearance or backstory before, so to actually pay for a sketch says to me he might be changing away from solely trying to munchkin and min-max through games. Maybe the intersection of "roleplaying" and "min-maxing" has gotten Pete to reconsider following character progression spreadsheets.

Well probably not that far, but one can hope!

Hmmm, if Pete is trying to roleplay more now, putting in the effort to get a commissioned sketch would be another reason why Pete was unhappy about it suddenly being a party-versus-party style game. Most of the party-versus-party instances I've seen have ended up being on the "one party gets eliminated" side, which didn't lend themselves well to becoming attached to the characters.

Transcript

GM: You make your way out of the dim hulk of the crashed ship.
GM: The blazing Tatooine suns remind you how thirsty you are.
Rey: Hmm. Thirst is a Fatigue point per hour.
Rey: I remove my face protection and have a drink.
{Rey drinks water from a canteen}
Rey: Okay, here’s what I look like. I commissioned an artist to do a character sketch.
Poe: Cool! You’ve never played a female character before!
Kylo Ren: He played one in Corey’s campaign.
Finn: Really? Wow, now I’m sad I missed it.
BB-8: You weren’t sad before?
Finn: Lots of huge gun combats isn’t quite my thing.
Poe: I was sad!


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Published: Tuesday, 23 June, 2020; 03:11:19 PDT.
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