Tuesday, January 28, 2020

Genius Hour 2.3

Dungeons and Dragons: *spoiler-free for Allie and Hannah

Greetings fellow adventurers! This week I will be giving a brief recap of the events of our party's first session of Dungeons and Dragons. I had originally planned to do a podcast of sorts for every time we play, so that the audience could feel more immersed in the game. However, this plan did not exactly work out due to some technical difficulties with the voice recorder and audio editing software. I am attempting to learn how to use either Audacity or Ocenaudio to edit down our sessions into a highlights reel rather than just posting two hours of footage. Hopefully by next session I will have resolved these issues.

Most of the events and worldbuilding that I wanted to happen went off without much issue. All of my players had very positive feedback for me on how I ran my first game. In hindsight, I realized a few elements of combat that I messed up on, but I did not teach any of my players false information instead I just left out a few elements. For my character's first roleplaying and world interactions, I introduced these basic mechanics in the Sour Pig adventurer's tavern, were the players received their first adventure.

I was terrified of accidentally making the combat encounters too difficult and accidentally killing my players' characters, but everything worked out fine. On a whim I made the first encounter a lone wolf attacking the camp, which the players defeated with no issue. Eventually the group reached the Clear View Point Outpost and cleared out all the bandits and got some cool loot. I also introduced some luck mechanics at this point, with Xanaphia rolling really high and finding a rare dagger and Nyssaadi rolling low and only finding junk.

The adventurers then made their way to the final destination of the session and I let the players free to do whatever they pleased for the evening. Notably, Snargog managed to trade his talents as a drag queen for free lodging in a tavern.

And that's all for this session. Feel free to ask me any questions about game mechanics and I'm planning some exciting adventures for the future!

Thursday, January 23, 2020

Genius Hour 2.2

Dungeons and Dragons: * spoilers, Allie and Hannah do not read

Greetings fellow adventurers! This week I'll be planning my introductory session and a pre-quest of sorts to introduce my players to the basic mechanics of Dungeons and Dragons. At first glance, the premise of this Genius Hour may seem a bit silly, but this project more about teaching myself how to teach others effectively. Due to this, my first session will include most of the main tenants of the game and I'll see what my players enjoy the most. From this input I'll be able to better tailor the world and story to my players' wants.

Now for the story:

All of the players will be running into each other in the town of Port Swordbreak, each having a different reason for being in town. Nyssaadi is in town looking for one of her father's old military friends, Muhrren. Muhrren is the owner of an adventurer's tavern, The Sour Pig, where individuals of the surrounding community put of job contracts for wandering adventurers. A job with a vague description but a large reward requiring a group of three adventurers at the least catches Nyssaadi's eye. Nyssaadi can either ask Muhrren for advice of who to recruit at this point, or can find the other players herself.

Xanaphia happens to be in the tavern at the time, and due to her Folk Hero status among the town folk, whispers of her reputation eventually will reach Nyssaadi's attention. As for Snargog, even though he has only been in town for a few days, he has also made a reputation for himself as being a powerful wizard that's always up for an adventure.

Muhrren will then reveal that he put out the vague quest, and insist that the group of adventurers do a small task for him to prove that they can work well together as a party. He offers a seemingly simple quest for the adventurers to escort a caravan of his through a dangerous mountain pass to the town of Graycott. He also says that he will provide his son, Ivan Shermov, as a guide through the mountains.

Up to this point, what I have planned is relatively simple worldbuilding and practice with interacting in towns with NPCs. After this, the story could take many directions as the adventurers travel on their four day journey through the Clear View Point pass. This will be where I introduce combat mechanics to my players, and what they will fight will be determined by their perception skills.

Between all the wild encounters, Ivan will have time to do some exposition. The players will at first expect there to be a fort at the halfway point of the pass to rest at, but Ivan will reveal that this area has been overtaken by bandits. The players will the decide if they want to fight the bandits and clear the fort, or if they want to take any other course of action. It's probably most likely that they will want to attempt to clear out the fort, and in that case I have a map of the fort, bandit locations, and potential loot already set up.

As I really do not want my players to die on their first session, I made Ivan a fairly powerful ranger that I will be controlling alongside the bandits. If things start looking too rough for any of my players, Ivan will be able to step in. However, I won't be doing this unless it's absolutely necessary.

The adventurers will eventually reach Graycott, where Ivan will give them part of their reward and a bonus as an apology for Muhrren's lie by exclusion about the nature of the quest. The players will have a little bit of downtime to shop around for upgrades before heading back to Port Swordbreak.

Normally, campaigns are not this structured and more is left up to the players. However, most resources I looked at said that first-time players need more structure so they know what all they can do in the game. As I continue on I will most likely be giving the players more liberty to shape the adventure as they please. Although, that is not to say that it's impossible for players to do the unexpected in this session. If the players want to take some creative approaches to problems, I'm all for it. I'll just need to work on thinking quick to fit their actions into the greater narrative of the campaign. 


Wednesday, January 15, 2020

Genius Hour 2.1

Dungeons and Dragons: *spoiler-free for Allie and Hannah

Greetings fellow adventurers! This Genius Hour I will be teaching myself the ins and outs of Dungeons and Dragons, and teaching my players how the game works. I'll be functioning as the game's Dungeon Master, which is quite a demanding role considering the intricacies of the game. I will be in charge of creating an entire fantasy world for my players to explore. The world will be filled with lore and potential adventures, and I will be guiding my players through whatever decisions they make.

As for my players, the first thing I needed to do was find a group of nerds such as myself that were curious about the game. I then sat down with each player and we created a character for them to role play throughout the campaign. I used this as a tool to gauge what the players want from the game. The character creation process is somewhat complicated, so I won't be detailing the full process in this blog post. The basic premise is you create a creature, choose their adventuring class, make a backstory, and roll for their basic stats.

The Characters:

Snargog, played by Hannah, is a rock gnome and a wizard. His specialty of magic is necromancy, although is is weak right now because all characters are level 1. He is from the city of Larkbog, which was mostly comprised of other gnomes and small creatures, and has a pet mastiff named Blarkog. He has a mysterious and haunted past that motivates him to hunt monsters to find redemption.

Nyssaddi Immek, played by Allie, is a dragonborn fighter. Her military background and upraising in the military outpost of Blackridge leads her to be a warrior of legends and a local hero. However, she has grown tired of military life and is on leave to wander the nation in search of her next battle.

Xanaphia Amastacia, played by Rachel Bell, is an elven druid. She spends most of her time in seclusion in the woods between the town of Port Swordbreak and the Baldare Mountains. She spends most of her time communing with nature, but has been known to step in and protect the town from hostile mountain monsters. This has giver her the nickname "The Watcher" in Port Swordbreak and has left her somewhat of a town legend.

For locations and the world as a whole, I decided to start pretty small and simple for beginning. My descriptions of the world may seem a little much to those unfamiliar with the game, but they are nothing compared to some resources I've looked at.

The nation the adventure will be taking place in is the Wayrand Empire in the world of Calterra. The Empire has only been around for about 100 years and was created after a successful uprising against the previous Amakiir Dynasty. Aesir Wayrand, commander of the rebels, pushed the oppressive and elitist previous Dynasty north to the unforgiving lands of Wintervale. Even in current times, there is an ongoing border war between the old Dynasty and the Empire.

Besides the northern border and the Fey Wilds, the rest of the country is fairly safe and at peace. The Empire is run by a human monarchy, with local elected officials that report to the crown. Being a fairly new nation, there is still some Royal Guard presence in some towns with possible old Dynasty sympathizers. The nation has active industry fueling the northern war efforts, some sea ports for trading, and the capitol city of Venzor holds an illustrious magic academy.

Magic in this world is fairly common and is known to be the remnants from when the old gods lived on this plane. Magic users are esteemed in more rural areas, but not so much in cities, Most of the nation has a favorable view of the government, being a much needed reprieve from the restrictive old Dynasty. The elite of the old Dynasty, dark elves, moon elves, and silver dragonborn, are regarded with suspicion in most areas.

And that's all I have for world building this week. Next week I will be preparing for our first session of gameplay, which will be released Genius Hour 2.3. If you want to learn more about D&D, some of the resources I used were dndbeyond.com, a character building website and forum, The Adventure Zone, a D&D podcast I used to familiarize myself with playing, the official D&D rulebook set, and Critical Role, a Youtube channel of a bunch of professional voice actors and D&D players with very advanced and complicated campaigns.

Thursday, November 21, 2019

Genius Hour 1.8

Horror Movie Special Effects Makeup:

For my final project, I decided to attempt a full face Freddy Krueger special effect on myself. This was set up to be particularly challenging and to use multiple techniques that I have practiced over the course of this project. I had never done a full face special effect on myself, but I was optimistic.

1.  If you look at a picture of Freddy, you will see that he does not have eyebrows. As I was not keen on shaving my eyebrows for a Genius Hour, I had to learn how to cover them with makeup. The disappearing eyebrows trick was something that I thought I would never have to use. I learned how to do this while watching drag queens do their makeup. The process starts with coating the eyebrow with several layers of disappearing purple Elmer's glue stick. After the eyebrow was smoothed back out, I then covered it in skin tone powder and concealer.  I looked like a crackhead, but suffering is necessary for makeup sometimes.

2. I traced the burn wounds out on my face using red cream makeup, then covered all of the empty space in liquid latex and some with Kleenex to give a more wrinkled, aged look. In all of the following pictures my expression does not change, and that's because I literally could not move my face under all the latex.

3. I finally had to finish off the look with a lot of painting and shading work, which is the thing that I feel the least confident in. 


I was not particularly happy with how this turned out, but I know where I made mistakes and how to fix them if I attempt this again. However, that likely will not happen as removing all the latex from my face was incredibly painful and I would not like to repeat that again.

Monday, November 11, 2019

Genius Hour 1.7

Horror Movie Special Effects Makeup:

Earlier in the year, I was a bit worried about where I would take my Genius Hour after Haunted House was complete. However, I found another opportunity to practice special effects makeup in my "How to Read Literature Like a Professor" video. Our chapter topic is blindness, so we had Hannah playing Oedipus in part of the video. In the story of Oedipus, he blinds himself so I had to replicate this with makeup. My challenge was that Hannah is allergic to liquid latex, the only molding material I have ever used. I decided to try tissues covered in liquid Elmer's glue as an alternative.

1. The special effects makeup needed to cover Hannah's eye, so I used a cotton pad to shield her eye from getting any glue or tissue stuck in it. I covered the thin layers of tissue with glue using my fingers. Any sort of applicator would get stuck in the delicate tissue otherwise. The glue and tissue did not end up being transparent, so I had to add a step that I did not expect in the beginning. The tissue was also impossible to maneuver or smooth, making the wound appear really raised, bumpy, and unnatural.

2. I then used foundation with a hint of red face paint to cover the tissue. By this time it was relatively dry, so I felt confident enough to apply the foundation and paint mixture with a paint brush.


3. I then painted the gash through the tissue and over the eye using cream paints and a paintbrI ush. I based the wound in brown, blending out towards red. At this stage, the tissue hardened and it was incredibly difficult to blend, but I made my best attempt.

4. Finally, I did my trademark dripping of fake blood. The blood did dissolve the tissue, so I had to be sparing in my application.

The effect turned out decently at the end, but it's nothing that I'm super proud of. Working with the tissue and glue was generally not a very good time and I will not be using it again unless it's absolutely necessary for me to do so.

Wednesday, November 6, 2019

Genius Hour 1.6

Horror Movie Special Effects Makeup:

This week's Genius Hour was the thing that I have been building up to this entire time, the Key Club Haunted House. This year I was put in charge of the special effects makeup for all actors and actresses. All of the makeup that I used was donated from Walmart to the Haunted House, so there were some products that were unfamiliar to me.  Another challenge that I had to overcome was time constraints. It was simply not possible for me to do intricate makeup on every actor, but the last night I had some extra time on my hands. I decided to do a little more complex of a look for McKenzie Hirsch, as she showed up early. Her character was a deranged doctor in the Nosocomephobia (fear of hospitals) room.

1. The first thing I did was to layer on white face paint to give my model a sickly pallor. This paint was incredibly difficult to blend, so I eventually called it good enough. As the actors are in low light most of the time, having super neat makeup is less important than having really dramatic makeup.

2. Next I created a base for a gash on the forehead with tissue covered in liquid latex. I've found through trial and error that only using latex does not make a super puffy wound. Because of the low light, I wanted a really dramatic wound with a large base.

3. I then added some brown and red to the wound to imitate the flesh. Because I was not using my own supplies, I had to use eyeshadow to create a fake bruise. I did not have a suitable maroon to add to the bruise, so I only used brown and purple. This was fine for my purpose, because I did not need a hyper-realistic bruise.

4. I then used more of the brown and purple to create bags under the eyes. To create the illusion that my model had been violently operating on patients, I splattered fake blood on her face. To create a more realistic spatter, I poured the blood onto my hand and flicked it onto her face. This made it look more natural than if I had painted it on.

Thursday, October 31, 2019

Genius Hour 1.5

Horror Movie Special Effects Makeup:

This Genius Hour is the sad, sad story of how I failed at time management. My plan for this Genius Hour was to complete my slashed eye look for my "How to Read Lit Like a Professor" video and film that scene. My model was meant to be Hannah, but I did not realize that haunted house and quarter thesis papers would take up so much of my group's time. The delay extended until when Hannah left for National FFA, so my plan for this Genius Hour and my entire action plan as a whole pretty much fell apart.

This was completely my fault for not realizing time frames would conflict. To combat this and end my Genius Hour on a strong note, I decided to restructure the rest of my action plan for the entire project. For Genius Hour 1.5, I took another week to watch tutorials and get ideas and gather motivation for the rest of my project. Genius Hour 1.6, I'll record all of the makeup I'm completing for the haunted house. Genius Hour 1.7, I'll finally complete my slashed eye look, Finally for Genius Hour 1.8, I'll do a full face horror movie character which will be decided by a poll later on.

I spent the rest of my time watching tutorials to prepare for my final, full face look. My character options that I'm still debating between are Pennywise, Freddy Kreuger, or Valak the Nun. These are the tutorials that I'm referencing for the possible looks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjtGJL8BDR0 (Pennywise)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXBY2wEFb_g (Freddy Kreuger)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Fj91MoaSGA (Valak the Nun)