Aquabot

Spent much of today working on Hellion Cross, the new Troika! book. Here's the Aquabot background.

Aquabot

You were a simple mining bot crawling the ocean floors of Oceora until that weird coral started to grow in your head. Ever since then you've had dreams of... fun. Playing cards, driving fast ships, getting into fights. Not the sorts of things a respectable water bot should want to do. Yet here you are in this criminal dive, ready and willing to throw down.

Possessions:

-Deck of Sea Life Cards

-Fusil

-Robot Body (armour 2)

-Can of Oil

Advanced Skills:

1 Rifle

1 Swimming

1 Interface with Tech

2 Mining

2 Gambling

Special: You function underwater as easily as in the air, or in space, or in most other weird environments. You only need to power down and recharge once per week. If presented with a risky proposition, you must spend a Luck point to say no.

The Aquabot

One of the many patrons of the various Hellion Cross seedy dives. For the upcoming Troika! book, Hellion Cross.

Hellion Cross

I might be hitting the critical mass or event horizon on a new Troika! romp kit. Working title is "Hellion Cross", third in the Cozmos series that includes such ancient classics as Supercalla and Cozmic Metal Heads.

For this one I'm presenting a seedy little backroads location called Hellion Cross and the 36 scoundrels, wanderers, barbarians, and wayward robots who might be there. This one is a little less laser-focused on a theme or setting as the Hellion Cross location is only loosely sketched in. Mostly this is about the 36 backgrounds and will include some random tables for running romps through the Coz along the old Supercalla Highway.

I'm working from existing backgrounds that I had on the cutting room floor plus new ones inspired by various pieces of art. The art is mostly coming from existing sketches and little drawings I had lying around that were unused in a publication. Like... if I have a cool looking robot sketch then I'm finishing it up and turning it into a background. Because this shit is fun and honestly I need to make a book because I'm having withdrawal.

Priest of the Upper Ocular Cavity

Priest of the Upper Ocular Cavity

Two middle fingers up and you are favored by the Cavity. But if the devil horns are brought to bear then woe to you and yours, for the Cavity's Eye will be upon you until your dying days.

Possessions:

-Coif of the Mind (blocks mental probings)

-The Ocular Habit (hard, course, armour 1)

-Cavity Staff

-Sack of Vitreous Fluid

Skills:

2 Upper Eye Sees You

1 Spell (Cavity Staff): Know Intentions

2 Spell (Cavity Staff): Obscure Vision

1 Spell (Random)

1 Spell (Random)

1 Spell (Random)

1 Staff

Special:

Alcohol, tea, and the juices of fruits and tubers are prohibited, as are most pleasures of the flesh. Life is hard. Cavity staff spells can only be cast with the cavity staff, naturally.

Dodecker

Lightning Monk

Petty Thief

State of the Union: RPGs

That post title makes it seem like this is going to be a whopper. But honestly I'm just gonna tell you what I'm up to and what I'm thinking about in RPGs.

It's been a mixed bag for a while. My interests have wandered. I'm like the dude in the boyfriend meme. By my side is RPGs, but my neck is craning and I'm totes checking out the curves on comics. Of course there's no reason my two great loves can't be slammed together.

I have noodled several new RPG concepts. Of course I've been working on GOZR for months, off and on. That will eventually come to light but it's such a visual experiment and the details change as I develop the game I just don't feel comfortable sharing too much right now. I think I have about 18 pages "completed". They are hand-lettered and loaded with art and I think it will be at least a very interesting RPG artifact for the discerning collector. And, hopefully, a fun game to play!

Mask Ragers is another idea that's been on my mind. You might have seen me posting a bunch of masked cartoon characters on Insta or FB or wherever fine posts are posted. Not sure what this project will end up being. I conceived it as a quick and dirty RPG that could be done in 24 pages. We'll see.

Suddenly and without warning I think I have my third Troika! book in the works. I did not plan it, I did not even realize it was happening. But Bombemoth - a swamp setting - has been conceived and I already have about 13 of 36 backgrounds written up for the thing. It is definitely part of the Supercalla Cozmos lineage, so it will fit in snuggly with Supercalla and Cozmic Metal Heads.

Clicketh here to hear my thoughts on Troika!.

CMH Cover Art: Sketch, Ink, Color

Three stages of a drawing. I often sketch in black. Sometimes blue or sepia. It actually doesn't matter much to me since I'm drawing digitally. If I was drawing this on paper, I'd sketch lightly in pencil.

Here's a side by side of Supercalla and Cozmic Metal Heads. Now I gotta make this a trilogy, right?

CHM Cover Art

Cover finished... edits and playtesting happening. The threat is real.

Cozmic Metal Heads Cover Inks

Inks are done. I tried to keep it more or less in the style of the Supercalla cover art, since it's technically part of that series.

Let's see... 99% of the writing is finished. I'm going to try to wrap it up today and send it off to Andy for some edits. Then I'll put it in Matt's hands and hopefully we'll see a new book real soon.

Excited!

Cozmic Metal Heads Cover Sketch

The book is almost finished. Here's the cover sketch...

Spider Bot

The new robot Troika! book is coming along slowly but surely. While at first I was just drawing robots because I wanted to, now I'm drawing some robots because I need them for the book. That's a bit of a shift, but since I'm still enjoying the process I don't think it will be a problem.

I'm about 75% through the first draft of the book, then I'll go through again and savagely edit and change stuff. Then I'll give it to Andy to edit properly, then Matt will do some funky layout magic, then we'll have a book to show. Nice.

Cozmic Metal Heads

After much pondering and noodling and doodling, I finally decided that my robot game idea is really multiple ideas and one of them is a Troika! based romp kit about robots. And that's what I decided to focus on right now.

So, Cozmic Metal Heads will be a 48 page follow-up to Supercalla, set in the same universe and referencing some of the material in that book. This is in alignment with my original idea to create a series of these things all set in a universe known only as the Cozmos, or the Coz for short. I've been working on it pretty relentlessly these past few days and making excellent progress. Right now I'm neck-deep in writing the d66 Robot Models (Backgrounds). And, of course, finishing the robot art.

The deeper ideas I had for this are obviously going to make it into some other project later. I have ideas about how being a robot character means you can truly transform yourself over the course of a campaign. How would adding a shoulder canon alter the very nature of a robot designed to be a diplomat? I think that's fucking interesting.

I am not sure I'll dive into any of that in the Troika! book. Keeping to 48 pages with 36 robot models will be tight enough.

More later.