Aniventure Forum Opened

Yes indeed, there is now a forum for the discussion of Aniventure.

I’m taking a much more community open approach to the release of Aniventure EX, so this is good first step towards that. Over time, I will be posting up previews of features that are being worked on so that the community can comment and make suggestions, or outright shoot down my ideas and postulate their own homebrew. Post cool ideas and you will probably get mentioned in the next edition if your idea makes the cut!

It should, with luck, also increase community awareness of my books. I’ve got a fairly solid crowd of supporters already with Aniventure, but more can never hurt, eh?

Also, its a good place for me to directly answer people’s questions about the game and answer errata and rule questions for GM’s and players alike.

Finally, its a place where anime and gaming geeks can congregate and just have a good natter, and run online forum roleplaying games if they so choose.

So, if you’re an Aniventure player, or are just interested in anime and/or roleplaying and are looking for a new hangout, give it a shot. The full address is the fairly easy to remember: http://www.aniventure.boards.net/

Check it out, and cya there.

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The Drayke of Draskalmory

Well, I started a new full-time job recently, so apologies for any lateness of my posts; chances are I’m not going to get around to a full 2-week summary for this season (besides, its already 5 weeks in now, ain’t it?). I’ll just say that you should be watching Attack on Titan, Gargantia, Devil Survivor, Hataraku Maou-sama, Railgun II and Nyaruko II at the least. There’s actually alot of quality out there this season, its all good.

A friend also pointed out to me that I’d foolishly forgotten to add Shimaihen character sheets despite promising to do so on the Aniventure page. This is now fixed. They’ll be on that page, and also HERE, for your Aniventure usage. It’s a vastly upgraded version of the original sheet incorporating alot of the things I’ve learnt and had suggested to me to improve the layout, so even if you don’t use Shimaihen but do use the original, you should still upgrade your sheets to these ones.

Anyway, as for the rest, here’s another artwork for you:

It’s Susie Drayke, the Princess of Draskalmory. Susie was an NPC in my second Retoria Dungeons and Dragons campaign; and one who was universally reviled and hated by my players. A massive ojou-sama type; arrogant and self-important, you know, the classic princess. Moreover, she was after another NPC (who was also the love interest of one of PCs), Prince Darien Silverscale.

In a moment where they went back in time, they accidently altered the timeline so that she did in fact marry him and then spent several sessions figuring out a way to fix this; which founded one of my favourite mini-arcs. Nevertheless, her attitude was very fun for me to roleplay; and I felt she needed a re-drawing (an earlier version of her was found in the 2011 calendar, if you care).

Amusingly enough, I recently re-introduced her granddaughter, Arasia (or ‘Sia’) Drayke in the third campaign; I think she’s generally found more acceptance so far, probably due to her better personality (tsundere combat nut!).

Anyway, here’s the wall version:

That’s about it for today, but stay tuned.

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The Stormdaughter

Ho there. Been a bit of awhile again, eh? Honestly, though there’s not been much for me to report and I did take a bit of a break after releasing Shimaihen. However; over the last fortnight I’ve now started to compile some thoughts together for Aniventure EX, experimenting with a few new layout options and considering what could be upgraded for the joint book since just slapping the two together with some new artwork seems a bit of a cop-out option when I’m still hardly lacking in new and interesting ideas to throw in, and things (especially layout-wise) to improve.

If you’re an Aniventure player, please don’t hesitate to leave comments and ideas! I’m always looking for ways to improve the system and add things I may have otherwise missed.

In other news, here’s another new huge sketch for you, of Eryss Boltatt:

She’s from a short-lived mini-campaign of Aniventure I ran in January this year as a means to do a final test of the Racial/Mutational aspects ready for Shimaihen’s release. Sadly I had some grand ideas for the setting which kinda fell flat on their face and didn’t really work with my party that well, but alas. She’s the daughter of the Mayor of the township of Metamo, and the great-grandaughter of one of the five heroes of Zuway, Ririyanha the Stormborn. Blessed by the god Watson, she has powers over electricity.

Anyway, this is the first sketch I’ve tried scanning in from my A3 pad. Which honestly is a bit of nightmare!! She’s stitched together from 4 seperate scans! Not sure about how she turned out, actually. Someone observed her head somehow feels squashed and I guess that’s true. Nevertheless, I did enjoy adding in all the extra details and besides that I think it turned it pretty decent.

Here’s the wallpaper version:

This one was given a paintbrush filter after running a few processing passes in teh ‘shop. Looks kinda pretty.

Anyway, enjoy, and tune in again soon!

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Shimaihen is released!

Almost precisely two weeks to sort it out from the gold stage this time. I guess that wasn’t too bad. It’s a Valentine’s present, haha!

Anyway, the hardback book is out, and can be obtained here.

The PDF electronic version can be obtained here.

The webpage for Aniventure in general will also be updated shortly to reflect this release.

So, what’s next for the system? Well, the plan is to eventually combine the original and the supplement into a monster volume including both; and also getting one of my friends (who’s a better artist than I am) to provide illustrations for this combo version.

Of course, this is quite a way off. I’m taking a break from it for at least a couple of months; and the amount of formatting and re-formatting I’ll need to perform to get the two books to play together nicely will be actually quite staggering, especially since I seem to have lost the font I originally used for the first book, so its all horribly out of proportion in its source file now. On top of that, since I can’t exactly afford to pay my friend any commision for his art (he’s currently throwing things out for it since he really likes the system), I’m definately not in a position to impose any sort of time-limit on his work.

As a result, I can say with easy certainty that your shouldn’t expect “Aniventure EX” to be out this year. Nine to twelve months is a barely plausible timeframe.

Anyway, to decorate this post a bit, I’m also posting a wall-paperized version of the latest Mondaiji End card featuring Shiroyasha:

This, as you can imagine, has been my desktop for a few days. Still a darn decent show even if it’s protagonists are hilariously overpowered. In the end, considering I’m still following Tempest, Magi, Sakurasou, Robotics;Notes and Shin Sekai Yori from last season, I could only manage to keep watching Mondaiji, Sasami and Maouyu this season and that’s already quite alot to keep track of.

Well, in any case, hope you enjoy Shimaihen, and stay tuned!

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Happy New Year 2013!

Or just !Happy Tuesday! Have a celebratory extra-hi-rez Alice-chan Wallpaper:
In other news, the Holiday Sale is now over. Thankyou to everyone who purchased a copy of Aniventure during this time! Due to the staggering success of this little initiative; I’ve decided that I shall keep the prices much lower than before for the pdf. It is now set at £1.25/$2 permanently, all thanks to you. Congratulations!

Additionally, the Paperback will continue to keep its 20% discount since the poor thing never sells otherwise (its always Hardbacks and Electronic copies, lol), and there is now 10% off my Calendar since its now January.

That’s all for now, but stay tuned.

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Sugoi Syrium Syrup Seems Scrumptious Savvy Solution, Sucker!

Tongue-twisters aside, just another quick post today for showcasing another sketch, this time of Fyuria from Agarest: Generations of War:

She seems to be suffering from a permanent Wardrobe Malfunction in the game, though Lavinia is worse in my opinion. In actual fact, I’ve given her slightly more clothing than her official art suggests; as in that she has a black band thing rather than panties. Go figure.

Nevertheless, despite being rather low in my initial estimations, her character grew on me through the first generation when I was playing and eventually ended up my choice; probably because Elaine and Luana felt rather undeveloped, and I also have a weakness to tsunderes.

What am I on about? Well, the wiki explains better, but Agarest is a rather large RPG on PS3. It has 5 generations to it; and in each you must choose a heroine for your main character to settle down with: and this determines your next hero character’s appearance, stats, weapons, and a bunch of other things when theres a timeskip to the kid continuing the cause to battle against the unleashed evil.

Anyway, here’s the wallpaper version, thrown through the usual filters and resized:

I really liked how sharp the wall turned out, actually, looks pretty sexy. As always, click images for full size.

I am working on the preview for the next season, but awaiting for some more info to be released on some things. At the very least, I’m excited about the Anime adaptation of “Be Mine, Hero! [I refuse!]”, as the manga of this is good, though the promo-art for it initially looked catastrophically bad, the PV looked ok, so I guess we’ll see. Still, it doesn’t look to be as triumphant a season as the last/most current one has been. Anyway, tune in again soon.

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