2023 recap (only 2 months late edition)

I made a lot of things in 2023 and I now it’s 2024 so I have to remember back all the way to the beginning of 2023 which is at least 100 years ago but I’m gonna try:

I got to make some merchandise for my favorite hamburger spot! The folks that run this place are the absolute best and drawing a burger might be my new favorite thing. I should do more food illustration.

Brian! The Cataclysmic Engine- Okay technically this happened in 2022 but I didn’t PHYSICALLY HOLD a copy of it until 2023 so I’m counting it there. I love this album so much and it feels extremely cool to make art for an album that you love so much. I listened to it the whole time I was drawing the art for it and I still enjoy both looking at and listening to it. You should go buy a copy for yourself or at least stream them because it rules.

Freelancers: A Crossroads Game- So this was in production since 2022 but was actually finished in 2023 and released! This is my first board game project that has been produced on a large scale and it’s extremely cool and I really like playing it. I’ve played 2 of the many available campaigns and I really enjoy it’s sense of humor and laid back nature. It’s a great time for folks who have some familiarity with TTRPGs but also I think accessible enough to play if you don’t. This project was probably the largest I’ve worked on yet- here’s some of my favorite pieces from it:

2023 also had me guesting on Between Two Cairns! After listening to a few episodes I got in touch with them to offer my services as a sticker designer and now I am somehow an occasional guest for talking about old RPG modules. These things just happen. I ended up making a zine about Steading of the Hill Giant Chieftain after we talked about it, here’s a few images from that-

Here’s the sticker (you’ll get one if you subscribe to their patreon)-

Barkeep on the Borderlands won an Ennie! It was very kind of W.F Smith to send all the contributors medals for it, I can officially brag about being an Ennie winner now (I know everyone says they don’t care about the Ennies but as someone who has a medal I now care about them a lot, funny how that works)

I finished my first comic! It was a project that sprung out of the NSFW end of my Patreon (my patreon is currently paused because busy but I’m working on making the rest of the content there into something easier to buy) It’s a steamy story about a couple going on vacation for some much needed relaxation called Island Vacation. I’m currently laying out chapter two, and I’m pretty excited to do more.

I’m trying to expand my print library and the pieces I managed to turn into risographs came out really great I think. I’m already working on more in fact. I’m finally going to continue the b/x character class series that I started a few years ago with the Thief print. Next up is the Cleric!

I managed to actually play some D&D in 2023 as well. Nick over at Underworld Adventurer has been running an amazing megadungeon campaign since 2020 and one of the things I love about it is how many artists play in it and make all sorts of great work about the setting and their characters. Here are a few of my contributions to that-

I have enough work from this now that I think I might try and compile it all into a zine- I want to start putting more things together as one of purchases or downloads, I think its cooler that way and relies less on getting people to subscribe to something or get a new social media app in order to see work that I make. I think having stuff like this bundled together and available to just download might be the way to go (print also but that takes a bit more time and money)

I’m running out of steam because this post became enormous, but I’ll leave you with a few more things I worked on. I’ve been doing a lot of work that I think of as sort of just “worldbuilding” that I use for my home games and like to post on instagram. I think it would be cool to put it all together eventually for a kind of Lore/Setting book, because ultimately that’s the thing I like about the hobby the most. Thanks for looking! Enjoy-

Gaining XXXP

I wrote an erotic fantasy romance comic and I don’t care who knows it.

For real the first issue is finally done. This was my first ever comic that I approached like a comic with a script and an outline and everything and it was a wild and fun undertaking.

Buy it HERE

Some thoughts on the process and a preview:

I found a really good rhythm while working on this. Once I had the pages sketched out super roughly it was a page a week for about 4 months? Looking back that is a massive amount of time and it was honestly really enjoyable. I plan on doing more, but without a doubt moving forward it will be in B&W. I think the color looks amazing but hot damn does it add to the draw time. I think if I’m going to keep up with a story I have to work smarter not harder.

I’m happy that I made that mistake though because now I have a FULL COLOR first issue of a 16 page comic to show for it. I really appreciate the Patrons piling on for this, that little boost I get at the end of the month from Patreon always seems to get me out of a financial pickle and I’m really glad that it’s there.

Plan is to make physical copies of this, so stay tuned for that. It’s just really easy to release things digitally and much harder to print them so that generally takes longer :)

If you’re hesitant to pick up and read an 18+ comic let me just say that I made it to be romantic, sweet and funny first. It has sex in it, and it’s very much porn, but I wanted it to be about people that they audience could care about, and not just bodies on a page. Anyway that’s my pitch for the puritans.

Here’s the first 3 pages and if you like it why not toss me a couple of bucks on itch.io to read the rest. If you really want to help out you can go over to Patreon.com/better_legends and sign up for the DUNGEONXDUNGEON tier where I release pages when I finish them, credit my patrons in the books I release and also post lots of other erotic work ALONG WITH all of the benefits you get from being a Better Legends patron, which is where all of my regular fantasy work goes.

Enjoy!

PS. the blog post title credit goes to Gabe Soria.

Time Travel and the BRAND NEW exciting world of EMAIL

So this post is going to function as part signal flare and part canary. If you’re getting this message it means that you gave me your email address so that I can bother you with updates about my artwork, game design and merchandise.

If you don’t want to get these emails I imagine there is a button that you can click to fix that. I am sorry I don’t know exactly where it is but you’re really smart so I bet you can figure it out.

So how about some cool updates about what I’m working on?

My new risograph print THE DRAGONSLAYER is available on my webstore, I made it to help counter act the high prices of diabetic supplies that my wife experiences, and it features her slaying the large dragon of for-profit medical supply companies.

I’m currently in the layout phase for my next game supplement-

Better Legends FRIENDS & FOES issue: 1

things are still in process but you get the general idea

Each of the characters in these issues will come with a ready to print front/back miniature of themselves, so you can really immerse yourself in scissors and glue style session prep.

I’m planning on doing a number of these as digital releases in the coming months- This project is a combination of some old things and some new things, I started drawing these characters back in 2017 as a way of giving myself prompts for drawing on stream. Over time they all started to occupy space in a shared world that is slowly turning into it’s own game! Here’s the tiniest little preview of that, which I post now against my better judgement.

The game as it stands is an old school style (ish) dungeon crawler that is meant to be very visually oriented. I’m not really trying to reinvent the wheel, but rather reinvent the process in which the instruction manual for the wheel is read.

I wanted to make a game that satisfied my own needs when trying to parse game text (I am bad at that without lots of pictures). It will be a fairly rules lite game, but with lots of lore on the back end. I want to spent the majority of my time crafting a world that folks can have a good time in, and in my mind that means lots of unique monsters, spells and treasure that lie scattered across a story rich world. I love rules lite games, but I find a lot of time they tend to communicate a vibe and then leave the nuts and bolts of the world building to the reader- which is great! I just want to try a different approach, with lots and lots and lots of lore rich, ready to play content.

I’m also working on the next installment in the Adventure Journal Series. For those of you familiar with An Ecological Study of Fortles you might be pleased to find that Salvador Moss & Skullboy (what an annoying little man I am, breaking myself into multiple people to work on a book alone) are back to shine a light on the ever growing hobby of DUNGEON CRAWLING. They’re going to be following around a group of these strange hobbyists and learning about the ins and outs of THE CRAWL

Expect somethings similarly gaming-adjacent as Fortles was.

Over on Patreon I’ve been releasing weekly pages of my erotic-fantasy-romanace comic

ISLAND VACATION

Sorry kids, this one is only for the grownups.

and as with all of my Patreon projects it will be available for sale on my itch.io page after it’s finished (as a free download for the patrons that helped make it possible and as a paid product for everyone else) but right now it’s only for patrons- who get the exclusive page drops and the occasional extra content in between. If you’re interested in that, consider subscribing! It puts me closer every day to only working on my own projects, and having to spend less time on the high seas of freelancing!

Thanks for reading, I’ll have a new dungeon23 spread tomorrow probably, if I can manage to draw the map page that I’ve been procrastinating with!