new hobby unlocked: I've gotten into VTT map-making!!!

Hellloooo my dears!! Just a little blog post to pop in and say that

• 1) I ran my first ever DnD game on Friday and GOOD GODS IT WAS SO MUCH FUN and

• 2) I downloaded a program called Dungeondraft and have gotten really into map-making over the past 2 days :')

I had found some beautiful maps to use for my one-shot, and then I started looking for maps for The Frozen Sick, which I'm going to run for Ares and some pals. I found some pretty maps, but they didn't have the ~flavor~ I was after, so I decided to take matters into my own hands >:) But these are the two maps that I used for my lil one shot!!

The first one is from Czepeku, who make far and away my fave maps I've come across, and the second one I found on some random subreddit post! And from there, I found out what software the maker used, as well as where they got their assets from, and fell down a very interesting and beautiful rabbit hole heh.

My fave assets artist I've found so far is 2 Minute Tabletop -- his style has that certain ~je nais se quois~ that I really really dig, and he has this amazing Everything Pack which is just a huge bundle of all of his stuff he's made to date, so I'm saving up for that as a post-shop-updates treat for myself hehe :o) The artist, Ross, also has a lot of great process blog posts that I am just eating up. I don't need yet ANOTHER artistic venture, but it is really cool to see his approach to creating these top-down battle maps and assets traditionally!!

I wasn't expecting to have so much fun DM'ing, and I was really pleasantly surprised by how readily I handled it!! And also my friends had a really fun time, which is far and away the most important part. Again, Dungeons and Dragons is such a beautiful intersection of my artistic and actor sensibilities, and being the Dungeon Master really lets me do all my silly little character voices and paint so many fun and beautiful word pictures :D I'm now bothering all my friends to see who will let me run short little adventures for them hehe (I'm having a lot of fun flipping through Candlekeep Mysteries, which is just chockful of whimsical little 4-5 session adventures, which is perfect for me rn)

I also know I don't really stream on Twitch anymore (for the time being), but I've been toying with doing extremely casual little Patreon streams when I get into doing these random little artistic projects -- they'd be mic-only, no camera, but it could be fun to share the process with you all as I learn this new software. And maybe....one day....when I learn to make my own assets....what do you think?

Sending all my love!!! HAPPY MONDAY GANBARE YOU GOT THIS