Lord of the Forge

Slagovir returns to our pages with another idol for the gods of old.  This time it's Svarog, the Slavic deity of fire and blacksmithing.  

Handout Help

Check out this video from the appropriately named Eldritch Tabletop.  On the surface, it's a look at his system for creating "Call of Cthulhu" tabletop handouts using Canva, ChatGPT, and AI generated art.  The rundown of how to use the template system in Canva for creating documents from faux newspaper articles to letters is worth a look by itself, but he also touches on some of the issues with AI use.

Personally, I think generated text and art is an incredibly valuable tool for individuals.  I've previously raved about the imagery from Midjourney.  With the proper prompts you can quickly generate some impressive artwork for all sorts of handouts.  What I'm definitely not crazy about is the massive proliferation of AI generated slop.  There was a time, and it wasn't that long ago, that you could ask a search engine for "cthulhu idol" images and see the latest sculpts posted to the internet.  Now?  Those works are buried under a tidal wave of AI images.

It's an issue that hits close to home for me, since it's become increasingly difficult to find work I want to feature here on Propnomicon.  Things were just about perfect right before COVID hit.  Now the rising tide of visual noise and the intentional de-optimization of Google makes actually discovering new things an order of magnitude more difficult. 

Unicorn Horn

I love fantasy specimens, and this unicorn horn from Burned Raven Tales is right up my ally.  The subtle pearlescent finish is perfect.

 

Celtic LARP Spear

Sander Propworx returns to our pages with another one of their amazing foam LARP weapons.  This time it's a full-sized Celtic-themed spear.

 

 

A Light Shining in Darkness

Fallout: New Vegas is the greatest video game of all time thanks, in no small part, to the incredible worldbuilding.  That includes the detailed backstory for Joshua Graham, a one-time monster seeking redemption for his evil deeds.  His character arc is deeply dependent on being Mormon.  That extends to his signature weapon "A Light Shining in Darkness".  

"l1b3rtypr1m3" brings us his recreation of the gun, a custom .45 M1911 featuring snakeskin grips and engraved with the biblical passage John 1:5 ("The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it") in Greek.

 

 

Little Devil

Spooky Jack returns to our pages with this creepy little horned fetal skull.

 

Waterdeep Receipt

Stormageadon's girlfriend tasked him with creating handouts for her Dungeons and Dragons campaign.

It’s difficult to figure out what exactly the visual style of a city like Waterdeep would be. I know fantasy tends to live in the 16th century or so, but I figure mass printing is already out and about so I based most of my work off of 19th century invoices. Please let me know if you think this fits the vibe of Waterdeep or how I can improve the next handouts. 

The longest part of the project was just getting fonts to look right. Next up is a few leaflets for some kind of opera and some posters for a sea maiden’s festival. 

It was about five hours of meticulous work on Photoshop, and then printing it in high fidelity on handmade paper. 

He's on-target with his design process.  Faerun, and Waterdeep in particular, has canonically had printing press technology since the setting was first published.   At the same time, you can still find professional scribes copying tomes by hand.  That's the legacy of a world shaped by the need to give gamemasters a place where they could set any kind of adventure.

The only thing I'm not crazy about is the deckled edge.  That's the hallmark of hand-laid, uncut paper, an artisan product.  Good for correspondence, but not the best fit for a pre-printed receipt.