I Tell You. You Decide If You Care.

So, this is sort of a follow-up to my earlier post on Fantasy RPG Armor for women . This is about Martina at  Nerdforge , and all the awesome shit she makes. Specifically, here are her videos where she makes her own armor and then she makes a shield. She also has videos where she makes tomes, wizard staffs, and all kinds of awesome shit. Frankly, I get a kick out of trying to picture her workshop. She's got some serious and expensive power tools :-) Here are more links about them We're the Nerdforge couple Martina & Hansi! instagram & twitter: @thenerdforge discord: discord.io/nerdforge https://www.patreon.com/nerdforge

 I've got two diff RocketBooks , one is paper (the "microwave to erase") and the other is the Matrix ("wipe with moist cloth"). I love both of them. They make writing, capturing, and erasing super easy. The "Wave" is a paper notebook, and is less likely to smudge, works really well with color ink, and has a nice feel. It has durability problems, though, and the front and back covers are both tearing off. I actually glued them to the first and last writing pages to reinforce the binding, and that's working fine. The ink "shadow" tends to build up over time, and not fully erase, even with vigorous rubbing with the pen eraser or excessive microwaving. Also, it's paper - pressure lines accrue over time, also. Still, it's an awesome book. The "Matrix" is a lot more durable, since it's basically plastic. One weird thing I've noticed is that rubbing it with an eraser seems to damage the surface, and it's building up...

HeroForge has amazing tools for creating custom figures for tabletop gaming.  Basically, you can build your own 1" figure for your D&D games... ...or Savage Rifts ... ...or, fuck it, just lose your damn mind and have fun... These screenshots were chosen to show off some of the tool features available in HeroForge "Cat Angel" there was created by a 7-year-old girl, who was just having fun one day playing around with her dad's account.  That's how easy and fun the interface is. And different potential - like D&D , or Rifts, or Supers (I got introduced to Mighty Protectors , which is multi-genre a toolkit game like GURPS   or Hero System ). All of these were created by a friend of mine. He's been using HeroForge for years, and backed a few of the KickStarters , so has free access to some of the advanced tools.  (He was showing me the tools, so I asked if I could grab some screenshots for my blog.) Note, that my friend hasn't actually bought  any o...

Women in armor .  Well, realistic medieval type of armor, anyway, as opposed to modern body armor, but you can find those, too Model unknown. Image source on Pinterest.

Some vids detailing historical use of slings.  Again, in most version of D&D, this is a Simple Weapon that anyone can use. Halflings usually get some nice bonuses with slings, and some editions of D&D go absolutely bonkers with halfling-only sling feats that produce some damage potential to easily compete with longbows and crossbows.  (I can't find the character sheet, but I had a 4e halfling ranger/rogue who, in natural terrain, take  5 foot step at the start of her turn, then use her sling to cause 5d6+4 damage. That was awesome.)

Here is a pretty cool treatise on longbow arrows. I like his style. Very calm, very well-stated. Useful information and perspective, without a lot of hype, and just a touch of snark. Now, I mean, this is most useful to people who like history, or who play a lot of Dungeons & Dragons .  Or Warhammer FRP , or Talislanta , or want to play Hawkeye in your favorite SHRPG, like, say Mighty Protectors .  :-) Personally, I always loved archers.  I was never particularly enamored of the crossbow in 3e, except maybe as the occassional ranged utility weapon for my low-level clerics.  Then came 5e, when I started monkeying with it. The slow reload rate was always a buzzkill, but the Crossbow Expert Feat provided some definite advantages over the Longbow, so I built a Fighter around the Heavy Crossbow, and actually had a lot of fun.

Lex is a genius. I've talked about her before . I am professional cynic. Humanity is a cesspit, and I have blogs calling people out for being dirt and how they can and should be better . Lex has risen above human nature to bitch and whine. Lex is a rare gem, and I'm crying because she is the "make the world a better place" genius I aspire to be. Bless her heart, bless her genius, I love watching her save the world one generous action at a time :-) #ShowSomeCharacterProject

Oh, I had such a hard time picking which sample images from Haynes to showcase the "Are you serious?!" collection of space  books they put together . These are hardcover books.  They have some real world ones, like a lot of the NASA space program craft, but as you can see, they also turned their engineers and writers loose on fictional space craft - like the frickin' Death Star! ( source ) I am so putting all of these on my Christmas wishlist, and going to carve out some space on my bookcase for them. ( source ) ( source ) "That's no moon. It's a space station." ( source ) ( source ) ( source )

Okay, let's do this over again, properly this time. Well, "more properly," anyway. I'll sort out the formatting eventually. So, the point is, drop a link to your blog in the comments section, and I'll update this OP as I get around to it.  "The hardest part for every artist is being found by her audience." - Icarus Anne Riley DURANDUS VON MEISSEN Malcolm's Observations RPG Knights Cross Planes

ewwww, that's gotta hurt. Oh, unless the humanoid part is merely a lure for prey; then this is seriously eeeeevil! :-) Lolth is a fictional  god from  DnD , and the queen of the Drow Elves. She's also a serious sociopath, psychopath, and pretty much the definition of cruelty and Evil.  She is too calculating to be considered randomly chaotic, but she is definitely a psycho-hosebeast of the highest caliber. ( source ) According to the fine print, the artist is Igor Crechanyi, https://www.artstation.com/igorgrechanyi and he does some  really gorgeous work!

Elisa Mac aka Cap Anneke Jackson , cosplayer and Freelance Graphic Designer from Rome, Italy. ( source )

There are a lot of great artists on social media. One is Karl Stjernberg Karl does a lot of RPG  art.  Mostly maps, but also some character sheets.  This one is apparently a Level 1 Kobold Thief. I love the "mind map" free form creativity Karl shows. ( source ) And, Pink! of course :-) (Helllooooo, I'm a girl.  Yes, it turns out that pink is hardwired into us.  We grow out of it... eventually.  Haha.) ( source ) ( source )

I've covered cosplayers before , because it's cool, and these people are some really stunning artists.  You've probably seen pictures of Riki "Riddle" LeCotey, even if you never knew who she was. This page is, by the way (and despite the title), not  any kind of "history of Riddle," which you can find all kinds of places.  This page is just a "Hey, now you know!" (Yes, old schoolers, that was deliberate.) Ms LeCotey has been cosplaying since before it was cool - like way back to at least 2008.  (Which is, by the way even longer than   Reigning Queen of Cosplay Jessica Nigri .) ( source: Wikipedia ) And in case your like "Yeah, but if she's that old, is she still relevant? ( source: Facebook ) So, yeah, she is relevant to the cosplay world. She's getting paid requests to appear at places, so there you go. "Okay, fine," you say, "she gets paid to appear at cons. That's still no...

Liquidating Robotech ®  products – everything must go by  March 31, 2018 Palladium’s Robotech® license has expired and we must liquidate all remaining stock of  Robotech® RPG books  and  Robotech® RPG Tactics™ (RRT)  products by the end of March. Please spread the word. Thank you. Original Robotech ®  RPG  &  Sourcebook PDFs  – on sale now – available only until  March 31  – DriveThruRPG.com PDF books of the original  Robotech® Role-Playing Game  and  sourcebooks  from the 1980s and 1990s are on sale on  DriveThruRPG.com  till  March 31, 2018 . After that, they will no longer be available. Likewise, we believe Palladium Books will be required to remove even the FREE  Robotech® RPG Tactics ™ material from DriveThruRPG as we will no longer hold the license. Please get all the items you desire for your personal library before  March 31, 2018 .  After  March 31, 2018...

It's like watching Galactus  eat a planet.  Source article here . Except it's just one of those things that, apparently, started out as an "experiment to see how many matches it would take to make a perfect sphere." And there you go. Oh, and here's a picture of Galactus, the World Eater. ( image source )

So, a while ago, I randomly ran across Wintergatan's Marble Machine on YouTube.  Well, it's a fun vid, and epic nerdiness.  Turns out, once you watch one "amazing marble" machine vid, YouTube suggests (no surprise) many more.  It's really wild the creativity and engineering that goes into these things, which means the hundreds of hours of time.  It's engineering and art, all bundled together. As far as I'm concerned, any instrument using marbles is madness ... Some people use of the shelf kits to create crazy "tumbling domino" like runs... ...and some people just do completely custom work... ... and in any case, it's all crazy impressive.

Did you know the Boeing B-52 Bomber, first introduced in the 1950s - that's like older than your grandparents, kids - ARE STILL FLYING ? Seriously. That's all kinds of impressive. Boeing keeps building them, and offering upgrades to the old workhorses, and they keep flying. A B-52 can carry even more bombs than those pieces of junk in The Last Jedi (seriously, what dumbass agreed to fly those things so close together?). (image poached from Wikipedia ) Whatever about "star bombers," this is a good vid

You might have noticed I've been playing about with the Mighty Protectors  RPG , written by Jeff Dee and Jack Herman, and published under their Monkey House Games imprint. Well, there's this guy, BK Adams , who - rumor has it - may actually be a bigger guru about MP  even than Jeff Dee.  I don't know if this is true, but it's a fun rumor to spread (because, you know, gossip draws attention, and every indie publisher needs all the attention they can get) :-) Meanwhile, BK Adams has been making YouTube tutorials on some of the finer points of Mighty Protectors . I think this is kind of cool in general, and I like his style.  At first I thought "Why are you reading it to me, when I can read it myself?"  But, you know, his style makes sense, and he brings a bunch of fiddly bits together, so the game makes more sense, and character creation - and resulting play - is more fun. So, there you go.  Buy the game , watch the vids , have fun saving the worl...

Text copied from The Decolonial Atlas Seeing the Earth from space is one of the most humbling reminders of the smallness and fragility of our planet, and of the insignificance of humanity. In the words of Carl Sagan, “The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner.” The following images are not actual photographs from space, though  many people  on the internet have mistaken them for real photos from NASA. They were actually created by graphic artist  Anton Balazh  (Антон Балаж) from St. Petersburg, Russia. The images achieve their beautiful realism by compounding and altering real satellite images from NASA’s Visible Earth catalog...

model is Genevieve , who was just at the Seattle Steamposium  (and I've just made a note on my calendar for next year, so i don't miss it again... grrrr ) Her FB page, Alternate History Designs & Photography And I made a Mighty Protectors character, using this image, which is how I found out about her, and so now you know about: My character ; Mighty Protectors ; Seattle Steamposium Genevieve at Seattle Steamposium Alternate History Designs & Photography