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CatspawDTP

Dave Bryant
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On the list of stock magic items in D&D fifth edition, wondrous items, as a category, outnumber all other types put together! That’s . . . bad organizational practice, very like “other” or “miscellaneous” being more than half of a pie chart.


As a possible remedy, I split up wondrous items into new, more useful and manageable, types a DM can use, added them to the list, and generated a new document. Necessarily, of course, this required a fair amount of reformatting and abbreviating, but I believe all the truncations should be obvious in context. (If not, please let me know.)


Other folks may disagree with my choices, and may want to lump and split items differently—in which case I encourage them to draw up their own novel item types. However, I do recommend following the apparent precedent established by the extant types, categorizing items by what they normally appear to be.


By the numbers


There are 378 total items on the stock list. Of these, 196 or 52% are wondrous items, and the remaining 182 fall into eight types: armor (28 or 7%), potion (33 or 9%), ring (25 or 7%), rod (11 or 3%), scroll (11 or 3%), staff (16 or 4%), wand (19 or 4%), and weapon (39 or 10%).


For my additional categories, though I wasn’t successful in every case, I tried to stay within the bounds established by the above, with no fewer than 11 and no more than 39 items in a single category. I ended up adding nine firm categories: book (9 or 2%), container (19 or 5%), figurine (11 or 3%), fluid (11 or 3%), garment (49 or 13%), instrument (17 or 4%), jewelry (16 or 4%), solid (12 or 3%), and stone (22 or 6%). If desired, garments can be split into bodywear (7 or 2%), footwear (9 or 2%), handwear (5 or 1%, which includes forearm wear for simplicity), headwear (11 or 3%), and outerwear (17 or 4%).


The residue of wondrous items (30 or 8%) consists of categories too small to be worthwhile in their own right: cloth (2 or 1%), deck (2 or 1%), equestrian (3 or 1%), fan (1 or <1%), feather (1 or <1%), household (2 or 1%), light (3 or 1%), mirror (1 or <1%), pole (2 or 1%), prosthesis (3 or 1%), rope (3 or 1%), security (3 or 1%), and spectacles (4 or 1%).

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What next?

1 min read

So what other quick-reference game aids would folks like to see for D&D fifth edition? Might as well continue the streak!

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The other day I got a most unusual e-mail message from a French collector of video games. He’s looking for information about box-cover artists of various games from the early 1990s, and pinged me because I was art director of Computer Gaming World magazine . . . thirty years ago!

I told him I didn’t have any information of that sort, but he was welcome to send the box images he mentioned, and I would see what I could dig up. He did, and I looked them over. Some looked familiar, some didn’t, but as I expected I had nothing.

And so I thought I’d reach out to see what I could turn up. Rather than bombard people with image files, however, I compiled a text list of the fifteen games, which follows.

  • Battle Bugs (Sierra)

  • Captain Blood (Infogrames/Mindscape Inc)

  • Cruise for a Corpse (US Gold)

  • Flashback: The Quest for Identity (SSI)

  • Incredible Machine, The (Sierra)

  • Incredible Machine 2, The (Sierra)

  • Jungle Strike (Electronic Arts)

  • King’s Quest VII (Sierra)

  • Mechwarrior (Activision)

  • MegaRace (The Software Toolworks)

  • MicroMachines 2 (Codemasters)

  • Might and Magic III (New World Computing)

  • Sid Meier’s Pirates! (Microprose)

  • Space Quest 6 (Sierra)

  • Syndicate (Bullfrog Productions Ltd)

If anyone can provide names of box artists for any of those games, or even information leading to them, please let me know!

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. . . Because I am an architecture nerd.


While reconstructing Sunset’s idiosyncratic living space, I realized it actually is laid out quite poorly. In no way, however, should that be considered a negative criticism of the art and animation staff! I have seen equally or more awkward arrangements in the real world, especially in older constructions.


So far as I know, no background information has been provided on its history other than Ms. Hadley’s response to my oblique inquiry on Twitter. My best guess is it was built a century or more ago as a workshop of some sort—note the brick walls with retrofitted electrical conduits and switchboxes bracketed to them—but was converted into a studio apartment in more recent decades, with the loft platform and staircase added at that time.


Whoever installed the platform and stairs missed a bet. As it stands, the lower flight intrudes on the main room enough to create difficulties for efficient use of space, but is not long enough or best placed to function as a room divider. Shortening the upper flight by a step or two would make the lower flight that much longer and pull it closer to the “front” of the room (as defined by the location of the main entry door). That in turn would divide the latter more evenly and more emphatically into two separate spaces of moderate size.


Had I the job, though, I would have done the opposite, lengthening the upper flight by three stairs. That would reduce the lower flight commensurately, minimizing its intrusion into the main room, and push the landing closer to the bathroom door. The ideal, of course, would be to avoid entirely a landing and separate flights, but the monumental work that would entail in rearranging the bathroom, even to filling in the old doorway and cutting a new one through the (probably load-bearing) brick wall, would have made that a non-starter.


Likewise, Sunset could have furnished the place more efficiently than she did—though it’s obvious everything came from piecemeal Dumpster-diving and thrift-shopping, so she clearly had to take what she could get. Moreover, at sixteen she probably was not exactly a genius at interior design and likely never re-examined her choices since. Even so, she could have placed the television and associated electronics against the middle of the “back” wall, with the couch facing it and the added benefit of a reduction in glare from the main window. The guitar amp would have to move, but there’s plenty of room available for it to go against a wall, which would be better anyway.


On the other hand, as a streamer she also has to consider the best backdrop she has available for the reaction-and-hosting camera angle. Showing the whole length of the room, and her living arrangement, might not be ideal. She could back the television set up against the wall next to the bathroom door, but light leakage from the main window might blow out the exposure. As it is, she just has to remember to shut the bathroom door, and she has a background that is intriguingly eccentric without being too obtrusive or exposing too much of her living area.


The other possibility would be to swap the “living” and “working” areas, but again the presence of the gigantic main window, and the glare it generates, is a factor. Too, once Sunset picks up her interest in art, she might decide she prefers the natural light for her work area, even if it isn’t placed ideally.


Last but not least, when I first saw the whole of the place I realized instantly Sunset has no kitchen. The closest she gets is the bar refrigerator and microwave oven by the front door, which is . . . not great. The easiest thing to do would be to place a European-style set of kitchenette fittings against the wall beside the bathroom door—dry if necessary, plumbed if possible—but almost certainly that would be well beyond the means of a high-school student getting by on a shoestring! Maybe whoever moves in after she moves out will do that.

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For once I have something vaguely approaching a budget, so I’m exploring the possibility of commissioning artwork related to Twin Canterlots. Following is a list of specific items I have in mind.


Primary interest: turnaround sheets

Each of these would include multiple full-body views—generally front, back, and side, optionally with an additional figure in an alternate outfit—along with a bust and the usual ancillary material, such as colors and cutie mark if any. I am open to the possibility of combining multiple list entries into a single sheet, if that is feasible (for example, a show-style sheet of a character in both human and pony forms). In addition, I would want to secure permission to incorporate elements of the sheet(s) in frontispiece or “cover” art for existing and new stories on Fimfiction (and cross-posted here on Deviantart), including due credit for the artist. In priority order:

  1. Sheet for Cookie Pusher in show style

  2. Sheet for Rose Brass in show style

  3. Sheet for Cookie Pusher in realistic style

  4. Sheet for Rose Brass in realistic style

  5. Sheet for Cookie Pusher as unicorn in show style

  6. Sheet for Rose Brass as pegasus in show style

  7. Sheet for Cookie Pusher as unicorn in realistic style

  8. Sheet for Rose Brass as pegasus in realistic style

  9. Sheet for Grimoire Lectern in show style

  10. Sheet for Grimoire Lectern in realistic style


Secondary interest: frontispiece story art

To date I’ve relied mostly on screen shots for story art. This works adequately, but I don’t consider it entirely suitable for a number of reasons—among them, using artwork without explicit permission and not being representations specifically of the stories themselves.

   In general I’ve tried to use faces or busts of the most important characters in a story, to promote reader engagement and to limit visual clutter for legibility even at the smallest icon size. For obvious reasons, to date that’s been limited to canon characters, and is why on the list above show style is given priority over realistic style. However, I am open to custom compositions, and realistic styles, so long as they satisfy the aforementioned criteria and can fit the overall design language I’ve developed for my story cards. (I am a professional graphic designer by trade.)

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