I’m eager to get to Chapter 3 so this strip has a lot of dialogue crammed into it. My main point was to show that Mother Goose and Dr. Muffet are aware of everything that has gone on and it raises a lot of concerns in the back of their minds, but the heroes must continue on anyway.

Hats off to very fine role playing from everybody ESPECIALLY to the player playing Muffett (who happened to be the most inexperienced role-player at the table). She took Muffett’s personality and made it her own: believable, authentic, and unpredictable. Her actions forced hearty role-playing, and the interactions between her and Dorothy forced very interesting interactions between ALL players. The depth of character development this session was astounding. Characters involved were Cinderella, Jack, Dorothy, Alice, and Miss Muffett.

The more time I invest in this system, the more I see its appeal and flaws. The most basic parts of the system are done, but all the powers I’ve created have been on the fly, no concrete system to the powers’ damage and effects. Making a customizable power system is by far the most challenging creative aspect I’ve ever encountered in my 23 years of being a Game Master.

I still don’t even know if I’m up to the arduous task of attempting to seek funding and publishing a system like this. Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition is on the horizon, I’m curious to see how they incoroporate the desires of the current player base with the need to gain new consumers.

But the role-playing isn’t the only thing that’s coming along in our lives. Jade and I sat down and had a long discussion about Shards and its current progression. There are many stories that have occurred so far. Some of them are far too adult to ever post as one of our standard webcomic stories. In addition, we want you guys to meet some of the more constant characters in our universe. Two of which will be showing up in the next chapter. You’ve met all of our heroes. We want to introduce you to our antagonists and foils. Which means skipping many stories and glossing over what happened very briefly in a strip or two.

Jade and I have considered making a full comic book for sale of some of the stories that we are skipping over. We’ll keep you guys posted on it :).

Mothers ARE magic! And, boy, did I find out the hard way that drawing ponies on my wacom is much harder than free hand! Anyway, my daughter has been watching MLP: FiM, so that is partly what inspired the holiday post. That, and MLP: FiM has been popular since last year as far as garnering a lot of renewed interest. I will still be working longer hours this coming week for the aftermath of Mother’s Day but, never fear, a strip shall appear this Thursday to continue with our story. In the meantime, enjoy the intermission piece:)

Welcome to the intermission! This intermission comes at a point in the story where I wanted to put some space between the previous strip and the next, just to give you all a little breather before continuing into some deeper stuff. Also… Mother’s Day week at a flower shop… Yeah. Second-busiest holiday. Between that and feeding my family and tucking in kids, not much else happens with the little time left when I get home. However, I do try to at least sketch. Here is a concept sketch for a cute little pin-up I have in mind:) Coppertone Dorothy! I don’t consider the slight bum shot nudity because the coppertone girl is on stuff sold publicly and this is an exact copy of that picture; just with Dorothy and Toto;) Not sure if Monday will have a Mother’s Day pin-up or a finished color version of this sketch but after that, the normal strips resume. Tally-ho!… And enjoy.

If you want to know what the Library is actually saying, I selected excerpts from two random websites:
here and here. Velvy may seem smarter in this strip but it was hard getting the point across without using bigger words. He isn’t too wordy, our lovable disease-ridden lepus, but he’s not stupid so it was a toss-up deciding how to word his translation.

Not as skillfully conniving as a “jackanape” ;)

The title refers to Toto and not Dorothy.

Another sketch day. Sorry:( I’ve been mobbed by people who require my website expertise. Monday it shall be finished. Apologies! Please enjoy the Shards News brief on the new fan art from DSHigsby!