Artists I Like: Evlyn Moreau

Another entry in this spectacular series.

I love a lot of artists. More than I can even count. But some of them have ambiance and beauty that can't be forgotten or lost in a sea of other creators. Canadian artist Evlyn Moreau is one of those.

The first time I can remember seeing her work was this delicious drawing she did for an old school character class called the Goblin Enchantress, written by Benjamin Baugh. A delightful, delicate drawing featuring her signature linework and textures. Evlyn's drawings are what I would call "stamp like". Meaning, they resemble designs as much as drawings. They are generally composed of simple figures drawn without any extreme concern for realism, embellished heavily with wonderful textures and patterns. Lovely to behold.

I love her work so much I got my hands on some of it for Black Pudding #6. Follow her Patreon, it's chock full of wondrous art! Also, I think if you spend more than 5 minutes browsing indie, small press, and OSR role-playing games, you will be unable to avoid running across her work. She's always in demand!

 

Dangerous Idolatry

I enjoy discovering new artists and being amazed by what they can do. The internet has been a magnificent blessing for the arts as more and more folks are practicing and sharing their work. In the old days, you'd find new artists by reading comics and browsing the bookshelves and magazines. Today you can find ten new ones a day and get bored before you run out.

Sean Aaberg amazes me.

The ones that impress me the most often have copious amounts of work, including a seemingly endless series of sketchbooks in addition to their finished works. And I'm always blown away by that because that ain't me. I'm the artist over here with just a handful of sketchbooks, most of which are not full.

Erol Otus mesmerizes me.

Part of this is because I don't believe I'm obsessed with drawing. I love to draw, and I think about drawing nearly all the time. But I don't actually do it as much as I would like. Another part of the reason is that between 2009 and 2023, with maybe a year offset somewhere in the middle, I drew almost exclusively digitally. So I don't have physical drawings lying around from that period. I have thousands of PSD and TIF files*.

Raven Perez blows my mind.

But that's an aside, really. The point of this post is to talk about why envy is a potentially toxic shitty thing to do to yourself.

Brian Baugh makes me happy.

To be clear: it is good to look at the art of others, marvel at it, love it, and even express the very human "man, I wish I could do that!". This is not the problem, as long as you don't let it become one. That feeling turns dark when you look at their work and compare it to your work, looking for all the ways in which you are not as good as them.

Don't do this.

Evlyn Moreau enchants me.

It isn't helpful to anyone, most of all to yourself. You are not them. The strokes you make are yours. The drawings you draw are yours. You can never do what they do because you are not them.

Bud Root gives me funny feelings.

Also, they are not a representation of perfection. I don't care if their art is the most beautiful you've ever seen and it makes you cry and they have thousands of beautiful pieces and other thousands of pages of sketches. They are not you, you are not them. And you can only be you.

Joe Vaux kickstarts my imagination.

It sounds stupid to say it. Like a "duh" kind of moment. But you gotta realize how urgently true it is. You are an embodied individual tied inextricably to your own personal history and your own personal future, which has yet to be written. Focus on what you do. Look at their work, enjoy it, learn from, take from it what you feel will help you grow and feel more robust. But never do the math on who is better. That way leads only to dread and self-loathing.

Matthew Allison makes me want to get better.

*Honestly, to satisfy my lust for printed material, I am considering doing a "digital sketchbook series" where I collect tons of those drawings into a few print books. I think that could be super fun. 

Vaughn Bodé sings to my spirit.

I Married My RPG Folder But it Ain't Working Out

God damn, I haven't done a non-review since last October!

Let's look at some PDFs I have lying around cluttering up my desk and gathering dusk. I'll just reach out blindly and grab one or two...

So You Want to Be an Adventurer? is a wee little PDF of a mere 19 pages (including a solid black page) by Jared Sinclair with wonderful art by Evlyn Moreau. I cheated a little on this one because I picked it up today, so it wasn't gathering dust on my digital desk.

Usually in these non-reviews I don't read the game ahead of time. Usually I'm just looking at them for the first or second time and giving my off-the-cuff thoughts as I go. But this is a swift read. It's really just a conflict resolution mechanic, some simple rules for making a character, and a bunch of pages of cool pictures with TONS of blank white space to write in.

Character creation is writing down a certain number of things about your character (not an arbitrary number of things, but certain things). No stats or numbers are involved, it's all imagination.

The mechanic is to roll 2d6 and try to get 8 or better.

If you have a thing that benefits you, add 1 to the roll. If you have a thing that hinders you, subtract 1. Stack these up appropriately. For example: I have the high ground and a badass axe so I get +2 on my roll to fucking kill you. Or... I have a janky leg from a fall so I have -1 to jump that ravine. Etc.

Um... that's it. That's the game.

This is definitely a minimalist game. And there isn't much to say about it as a "system". Of course this game will work. You'd be hard-pressed to find a more heavily playtested mechanic than roll 2d6 and beat a target. The target of 8 means you effectively have a 50% chance of doing anything (not exactly, it's actually slightly less but who cares?). So the real meat of play probably comes from really using those advantages and disadvantages, narratively. Which is very cool.

There are a million games like this you can find at any moment. And of course that's to be expected. This type of system is kind of bedrock to the entire hobby. This is just a "here's a way to resolve things, now GO" sort of project. With most of the space left over for you to write new rules and ideas. I believe there are people who might pick this up and go "What the actual FUCK did I just pay for?" because let's face it... you can slap this together on your own in a hot 15 minutes and do your thing (but it won't be as awesome without Evlyn's art). There is nothing new here, nor is it claiming otherwise. But some folks will feel a little cheated, I fear.

Maybe this just appeals to some other types of folks (myself being one of them to a large degree)... this is a book that invites you to come and play and be creative. It wants you to make shit up. It wants you to enter the imagination zone. This is a "game" that reminds me of what I invented as a 14 year old who had only experienced RPGs one time and didn't own any. I made shit up. It was magic.

As a lover of ideas and tools for making shit up, I approve.

Wastoid: An RPG by Jason Tocci.

34 pages, based on Knave by Ben Milton, and inspired by Fallout. With very cool art. The layout is clean and simple and certain headers and stuff do remind me of the Fallout game aesthetic (though I never played it, my kid played the shit out of it).

In an interesting twist, character creation doesn't come until halfway through the book. Bold move, Tocci.

I like the use of "game moderator" instead of "game master". You get to keep the GM term that is so ubiquitous but you ditch the "master" part that seems to bother some folks. Very nice. But I'll still use Judge nonetheless.

There's a nod to Jim Wampler's Scientific Barbarian zine. Very nice.

On the "playing the game" page, there are three important aspects of game play described. One is to set boundaries, such as "let's not have rape, ok?". I have no idea why this type of suggestion triggers some folks. The very idea of DISCUSSING things ahead of play is somehow alien? Like... I get it... when I was gaming back as a teen we didn't discuss jack or shit before playing. And we had some monumentally FUCKED UP experiences that probably would have been smoother and more fun if we'd just... y'know... talked about it.

Another one is to telegraph intent, as a player. So instead of saying "what's in this room?" you say "I stand in the doorway and casually scan the room. What are some things I can see?" This is very nice because it shares some of the labor more equally. So often in games, the players really do shove everything off on the GM.

I'm not super familiar with Knave, so I don't know how closely this game cleaves to it. I can see that it is largely OSR-friendly with d20 rolls, 2d6 reactions, and so forth. Seems straightforward.

The initiative system is the same as what I used in GOZR, which is the same as Mörk Borg, which is the same as Knave, and I have no idea where that method originated. But it works and I like it.

Cool stuff about junk. You gather junk (because in the post-apoc hellscape everything is junk) and you can "spend" it to repair weapons and armor. Very cool. And probably a nod to the computer games? I dunno. But I like. Roll 1d6. On 1-3, enemies go first.

Yeah, this is sweet. You got stunts, rads, and mutations. If you are into post-apoc, you'll probably dig it.

Ten Foot Pole Review of Underground Down Below

Bryce Lynch over at tenfootpole.org reviews Underground Down Below, the short adventure location from Black Pudding #6 based on the map by Evlyn Moreau.

Overall I'd call this a fair review. The primary criticism they deploy is that the adventure lacks purpose. Why are the PCs fucking with the stoic dwarves? I didn't include that sort of detail, as I normally do not do so in other adventures in the zine. They are almost always setting-based adventures - maps with images and descriptions of what is to be found therein. I drop little bits here and there to connect things, but not much. Mostly it is stuff I fire off on-the-fly. Underground Down Below, for example, was composed on Photoshop canvases point-by-point with connections being made only if the idea struck me and I had room to include it.

I suppose this is because I fell pretty hard into the minimalist adventure design camp when I stumbled into the OSR communities. I always hated modules that had too many words. You're god damned right you heard me. Too many fuckin' words. I wanted to know names, places, contents, stats. Random tables were a plus. Backgrounds, histories, plots? Baggage. Rubbish.

Ok. So I am exaggerating a little bit. I'm not actually endorsing that way of thinking. At least not totally. I accept the criticism of Underground Down Below in Bryce's review as both constructive and useful. Thanks, Bryce.

Underground Down Below

The biggest feature of the new Black Pudding is the 8-page adventure based on Evlyn Moreau's stunning little map shown below. In the same way I created Vault of the Whisperer in Black Pudding #2 based on a map by Karl Stjernberg, I created Underground Down Below based on Evlyn's map. I hope someone gets to play it and have a good time.

Drawing an Adventure for Black Pudding

I'm working on issue #6 of Black Pudding. In this issue, I'm doing an adventure based on a totally badass map created by Evlyn Moreau. Like the one I did in issue #2 from a map by Karl Stjernberg, I'm slamming this together on-the-fly. I like working this way. I like just shoving things around my canvas and seeing what fits. I can compose both visually and thematically and technically all at once. I can then go back and refine, moving things as needed, linking up adventure elements in ways that feel organic. It's such a creative and fun process. I'm thankful to have such good material to work from as Evlyn has provided!

Here's a WIP of the adventure, which is tentatively titled "Underground Down Below". You can see the gray border that lets me know the safe area where stuff should go so it doesn't get cut off in print. I have an overlay of lines to help align things, as needed. I'm still toying with certain elements, such as whether or not to include the key numbers next to the description since they are buried in some of the map snippets. Also, those random tables are just screenshots from the spreadsheet I have open where I'm creating them. Once I decide on the tables' contents I'll export them to a high res PDF, then import that into Photoshop and paste the 300 ppi tables into the adventure itself. I'm like a kid with toys!