Dungeons and Dragons

 I recently restarted a long-running Dungeons and Dragons game that I started as Dungeon Master back in the days of lockdown during the Covid-19 crisis. We started it on Zoom and I've kept it that way as it allows the far flung family and some pals to join in. It's a great way to spend an evening every month catching up and creating a story together.

Being online, I've come up with a few ways to try and compensate for the lack of the full tabletop experience. One of the tricks is to create token graphics for the characters and place them on a map in a graphics program. You need a lightweight but capable program to run alongside Zoom while you share your screen and I've found that Affinity Designer works pretty well. However the upgrade deal to the new version is not very good. So I might try something opensource instead. A vector program works well because you can mask out parts of the map that have not yet been visited and then reveal them as you go. You need the layers to do this.

So here are some screenshots and graphics that I've used. I create unique characters with DAZ Studio and scan the monsters in from D&D monster cards. The next stage will be graphics to establish the scenes and I already have Zoom backgrounds to set the story.

Now all we need to do is see if we can all get along to the new Chris Pine Dungeons and Dragons movie. 😊

January

 I thought I'd better post these photos from January before February is out. As usual there are more on my lomography site.

This last one features a story on a mug from Shoreline of Infinity.

Winter Photography Catchup

I've finally got round to developing and having developed a few films that I shot over the Christmas holidays. I was putting some Agent Shadow from Kosmofoto through its paces, push processed to 1600 ISO, and some Santacolor 100 from Santa 1000, an ideal colour film for the Christmas period. I picked up both of these from the crowdfunders that got them started.

The Agent Shadow pushes to some great speeds for flash-free photography in the Scottish winter and these shots were take with a Minolta Dynax 404si.

The Santacolor needs a bit more light but this aerial survey film picks out great colours in the Christmas lights. This time I loaded a Minolta Dynax 4 with the film.