JANUSSENPRE'S PROFILE

Hah, thanks. A sore hand isn't too much to sweat about... but my back on the other hand...

Sometimes I have to wear a back brace when I draw because of the height of my chair and the way I'm hunched over my tablet. I'm usually reminded of how much time has passed when (A). The sun comes up, or (B). I suddenly feel a massive stabbing pain in my lower back/side, or (C). My vision starts getting blurry. Hah, its amazing that I still have perfect vision.

Anyhoo, I digress... I've got lots of stuff I'm working on... but I have this bad habit of splitting my time over quite a few different pieces at once. Some days I'll work only on portraits, while other days might be spent solely on maps.

I'll post something *sorta* cool by Monday. :)

I was making quite a bit of progress with the game art this past week... until yesterday. Twelve/thirteen hours a day slumped over my drawing tablet has kind of messed up my hand. I'm going to have to give it a rest for a day or two, hah.

The last time this happened, my right hand was out of commission for close to two weeks... Although that was from grinding rare items in Castlevania: Harmony of Despair...

I love your mapping skills. Everything looks superb. If you weren't already working on your own game, I'd try to recruit you for the one I'm working on. ;)

I'll definitely be keeping tabs on this.

*floods the database*

Having been a Dungeon Master for my friends for well over ten years, I personally think that a strong story isn't entirely necessary. As long as the role playing is fun (and the fun factor really depends on the level of immersion as written in my previous post), the story doesn't necessarily have to be completely planned out, scripted to perfection or be all encompassing for the journey to be enjoyable.

I remember planning out a sizable quest for my friends where they had to journey to some dungeon from a nearby town. Rather than depart for the dungeon right after supplying, they decided to pool their money, buy up an empty building and open up their own item store and undercut the local vendors because they were miffed at how they were "exploiting" the local adventuring populace with inflated merchandise. Three hours of what would have been hacking kobolds to death turned into a retail merchandising war between the players and the local merchant coalition. Eventually, the party saw some action when I had one of the hotshot town merchants send a hit squad to trash the player's store during open hours. By the end of the night, half the town was in flames.

Case in point, the story was not well crafted and was primarily of the player's own design but they had a blast. Regardless of how things turned out, everything that happened was a direct/indirect result of everyone's role playing. Can this kind of table top role playing style carry over to video game rpgs? I think it can... or at least make progress in that direction.

In my opinion, the more organic and nebulous an rpg is, the more enjoyable it will be.