Big Dumb Animal

Game Design, Music, & Photography

[bigdumbanimal]

Over the last few days, I have printed out, cut up, gone through, and sorted out all of the skills from the original version of AEGIS. I labeled where each one comes from and put the doubles in a discard pile.

Some are doubles, some things like dodging and countering are built into the dice rolls.

The thing is, I now have 25 small piles of varying size with abilities to build up, break down, and list for character creation.

The whole point of the original AEGIS was ease of use. I had people who never touched a TTRPG create a full character in 5 minutes. For all of the things that will be changing, I want to keep that ease for people to just pick up and play.

For me to continue battle simulations, I need to have characters created in this system to do so. It's 1 step at a time after growing an additional 9 legs and trying to figure it out as you go.

Still, I'm committed to the bit to the last!

[bigdumbanimal]

Okay so it's been a while.

Again.

So what's up? What's been going on? A cavalcade of illness, injury, and death along with nothing really great coming from my film photography. Like, seriously, there's nothing to write home about and given this blog was originally to just share my photos with my parents, I mean that quite literally. Film photography is expensive, and I've decided to back the RewindPix Kickstarter because of the limitations and film recipe options. I'll give a review when I have time to use it.

I've spent the last couple of years working on a project called The Friendly Sex Shop Worker, giving layman's descriptions and safety info for the stuff you'll find in shops like the one where I'm working. This project included a series of videos and a book which is now waiting on an ISBN before digital release. So that's exciting!

Since 2009, I've been a freelance graphic designer. At the beginning of February in the face of world instability, especially given that 95% of my clients were American, I closed my freelance practice. I've decided to pivot to tabletop game design. Given my thesis project for my Bachelor of Design was developing a tabletop RPG system based in Universal Design, this pivot is about as surprising as water pouring from a faucet. I have three games currently in the works:

Seeing What Sticks: an adult party game where the players come up with the next big sex toy.

Thralls: Reminiscent of Triple Triad or Tetra Master but expanded and with a literal twist on the mechanics.

AEGIS Reforged: revisiting this system with better knowledge, while still trying to make it easy to understand for players.

Seeing What Sticks has a ready to play prototype and i have played a couple of 2 person games. I'm currently trying to arrange a larger, party sized group to play it before I do more editing.

Thralls has a mini prototype, I've played solo games with 2 and 4 "players" and differentiating it from its direct influences is rather hard. As much as I'd love this to be a Trading Card Game, it'll probably be more of a Print and Play for nothing other than legal reasons.

AEGIS Reforged... I've been sitting on this for 8 years and the nail is really uncomfortable. I tried to redo this back a couple of years ago but I got caught up in a bunch of other projects. Sitting down with the original book, I saw places that needed a lot of improvement, and places where the book should have been split into separate books entirely. I spent more time on class and Job lists than I did on deeper character creation, monster making, world building, or a coherent battle system.

A couple of nights ago, I bought a Dice app and started running head to head tests, first with melee fighters, then a melee fighter versus a ranged fighter. These are tests I should have run years ago, but I was too focused on finishing the book. The dice rules are different depending on the type of attack.

As AEGIS is a rule playing game system, I'm starting with the Role part, focusing on the basic battle mechanics, followed by character creation, npc creation, and monster making. After that, I will expand on world creation and building.

AEGIS has some good bones, but too many bones to be functional, and some in the wrong place. Anyone fancy a game of Operation?

In the meantime, I'm also still a musician. I made this album last fall.

[bigdumbanimal]

I forgot I had these! These were from Lomo Turquoise on the Lomo Apparat.

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And finally the rock garden where done of my best work has been taken... And the Chinese Garden Waterfall. All in all, this is a gorgeous area for this film! Lomo Purple is love!

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Part 2 of 3! Because I shot 3 very different rolls of film that day, I did a lot of backtracking.

Not that I mind. These were from the Japanese and Chinese gardens specifically.

[bigdumbanimal]

So As much as I've enjoyed using Lomo Purple, I've never actually used it in the good camera. While I was at Les Jardins Botaniques, I threw in the roll I'd been saving for spring and am incredibly happy with the results! This is part one!

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Amber D400 really feels a lot like Cinestill 800T in daylight. These were taken at les Jardins Botaniques a few weeks ago and I am very happy with how they've turned out!

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So I've been sitting on the Babylon 12ISO black and white film from Lomography for a few months now. These were taken at les Jardins Botaniques de Montréal with the Nikon N2000.

[bigdumbanimal]

Wandering Chinatown and downtown with some expired Cinestill 800T.

I got this roll back a few weeks ago. Regular posting is a habit I can't keep! Also I haven't gotten out to do a lot of photography lately due to work and cost, but I do have some nice things coming up!

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I love my little day to day camera but the sound of winding it sickens me to the core of my soul.

That said, here are some nice photos it can take on Ilford HP5.

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Magnolia and cherry blossoms in Westmont taken on Flic Film 100ISO with the Nikon N2000.

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Last week, I picked up an expired roll of Ilford Ortho 80ISO film. I spent a good chunk of it over at the Casino on the island. These were taken on the Nikon N2000.

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It is no stretch to call the Lomo Apparat, aka Captain Crunch (one day I will record the stomach churning noise that is winding this damn thing) my day to day camera. It's light, compact, and the wide angle lends a fun perspective! Since i was in a hurry to see the results of the long exposure experiment, I wanted the plateau taking photos of anything that caught my eye.

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While most of the Delta 3200 went to the ice storm, I did start the roll in the Nikon N2000 with these beforehand.

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Here are more shots from the Pentax MZ-10 with Lomo 400.

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On Thursday, after getting a lot of post ice storm photos, I had a bit of time and it was foggy so I went up the Oratory of St Joseph and took these really moody shots. Most of them were on Lomo 400 with the Nikon N2000 but the last wide angled one was with the Lomo Apparat, also loaded with Lomo 400.

[bigdumbanimal]

The day was shit, I was in a bad mood, it was raining, and I had just dropped off a bunch of film. I still had my day to day camera with the Lomo Metropolis so I decided to throw on some loud music and walk from the plateau to the old port and then to the bus terminal. These were taken on the Lomo Apparat.