#foramen lore

[vatrpg]

Dark greetings. I yet live! My last update was basically just saying I figured out how to do a hexcrawl to a satisfactory degree within Vat. This remains true! Here’s the teaser:

I love ASCII art I love ASCII lettering.

Here’s another teaser:

Anyways. It’s… maybe like a third done. Nearing 2/3rds completion with the lore and background for the module that is establishing the setting. The rest is actual gameplay stuff. I’m having fun! It’s awesome researching hexcrawls. There’s so many resources available.

Otherwise… I finally developed a ‘sona? That’s notable. Not like game dev notable but still notable. Behold- me! It’s literally just how I look IRL but slightly different.

Ok that’s been this update. I really should update this blog more often but I’m not social media brained in such a way.

[vatrpg]

Dark Greetings... the holiday season is (mostly) over. There's still New Years, but that's sort of different I think. I got back home last Sunday (not yesterday as this is Monday, I mean the other Sunday) from spending a solid exact week at my parents. You want to know what happens the second I get back? Befouled with ailments. It's because I was away from my neuro-pod for too long, I bet. Sickness and also just not being able to work on shit due to not being home means that I have comparatively little... is what I would say if I wasn't the strongest man alive. I've started work on my custom hexcrawl tileset after a few false starts as I really tried to figure out the Look. I also finished a drawing.

Here's what, as of now, the basic water tile looks like. We'll see if it's too eye-searing and if the pattern is too dense when I put it on the actual map, but it's going to be some shade of green no matter what. Because of the setting, you see.

Here's the drawing. A Crater City (or more like Crater Town, it turned out a bit too small of scale to be a city...) of the Cities of Quod. In the foreground, a tower topped by an image of a Questing Beast, loyal servants of the Giant. Dogs aren't real, silly. They're folkloric figures. I told y'all I'd have beautiful images ready and I didn't lie. Until next time...

[vatrpg]

So, another doodle! This time I went in with the express purpose of drawing something in particular, instead of drawing something straight from my mind then assigning it something afterwards.

Behold, a Psychic Janissary! Iffy on the helmet, had a different image in mind so that’s probably subject to change in later drawings of one. Shoulderpads could be a bit less… long… as well. But all-in-all, I’m happy with this guy!

Also, I’m back on bluesky! Look up “Claviger” and you just might stumble upon me.

Right now I’m on the back-end of things finagling NPC equipment, which is the main hurdle right now before I can actually do playtesting sessions. Everything else is pretty much ready for it.

That’s all for now!

[vatrpg]

I just went through recent posts and didn't realize how many of them were vatposting... so here's a Normal Post! With the pivot in module writing, playtesting is coming much sooner than I thought! I have made a fairly basic enemy grouping, the Wormrot Warriors, and they are statted out and ready for stress testing in combat. All I REALLY need to do now is set up a basic Battle Law arena in Tabletop Sim and port everything over, and that will legitimately be all! Just need to get a group of players ready and with their teams rolled up, and then we'll be golden! The Wormrot Warriors are right now really simple, only having items equipped that are directly used for combat. I don't think that's going to be the norm for actual campaign play, I want NPCs to also have more rp-focused items equipped just like players, but right now for combat playtesting that's not strictly needed. Last but certainly not least, another pivot regarding the world at large. It's not anything major, more taking the foundation I've been building and extrapolating that to it's logical extreme. The giant corpse that forms the world? Actually just a giant curled up corpse in form. Gravity and oceans and whatnot will basically be shrink wrapped to the form. It's also the only fucked up planet in the system, the rest are normal. This brings plenty of opportunities for things to Get Even Weirder, which is great. I've already had a lot of fucked up biomes planned out like mold fields and meat forests so.

[vatrpg]

BOR MAP V2: GIANT’S CORPSE BOOGALOO

This one was easier than the realistic one, lol. Still need to add rivers and place the nations back on but here we go!

[vatrpg]

Exiting my closed door cultivation (doing so much anatomy practice without really showing anybody outside of discord or close friends) to show the fruits of my labor. I feel so much better about my shit now. Though I’ll also definitely have to learn how to use colored pencils properly and not… this…

A scene from Bor! Nowhere special depicting nobody in particular. Just a fellow on his travels, encountering a bit of a conundrum.

[vatrpg]

The pivot in style and fundamental goal I've undertaken for writing modules has already paid off SIGNIFICANTLY. It's so much easier and fun for me. Very excited to get into playtesting for this, though that'll be in the far future at my rate. BATTLE LAW will hopefully be a wonderful introduction to the world of Vat, while also being very good for playtesting my systems i've made. With that being said, I'm getting back into the groove of drawing! I haven't been doing much creative work whatsoever over the past month or so as I've been doing holiday stuff with my family, but I'm finally getting back into it. The below picture is the first thing I've done recently, a Battle Lawyer of the YYY - AKA - a subject of the module I'm working on. It has also been one of the first few things I've done working off of references, and man those things really do wonders, huh? I have a folder of like 700 of the things, why haven't I been using them?

[vatrpg]

So, I have been doing some doodles to help solidify the Vat Vibe. Most often these are done during college lectures as idle doodling helps me remember what we’re talking about, lol. Thus it’s on shitty lined paper. But! That’s besides the point.

I haven’t really supplied a visual element to Vat and the world of Foramen yet on this blog, so I thought to post these here. I’ve described elements, and hopefully I’ve certainly gotten across vibes, but it’s time to reinforce that with visuals.

BEHOLD! AMATEUR ART!

All of these take place on Bor, or at least could feasibly do so. Hope y’all enjoy!