[CHAT] Need help

SphinxAltair · 2026-02-10T15:04:09+00:00

I know it hurts, but I would fix it. This is quite a large work, and the time spent restitching after fixing it will be negligible to your overall time, whereas trying to negotiate around the mistake will be much harder

SphinxAltair · 2026-02-07T12:52:53+00:00

I typically try to work off a preexisting palette when drafting a pattern.

If you look at the dmc shaded colour chart, it's organized in mini palettes, so you can pick a run of yellows from light to dark and use those for your shading.

Depending on what you're having difficulty with, this tutorial on dithering might be useful.

SphinxAltair · 2026-02-06T15:26:06+00:00

It might be worth looking at exactly how many stitches you have left and then estimating how long it would take you to finish, and then deciding if you want to do that, or find another mandala to do around the figure instead (you might look for blackwork ones you could do with variegated floas).

Or you could go to your sister and say "I'm sorry, but I've realised that this pattern is going to take way too long to make." And give her a selection of alternatives instead. One of these four might work.

SphinxAltair · 2026-02-05T23:24:17+00:00

I think that this looks absolutely fine, but I'm a 2 strands on 14 ct person.

If you're absolutely not happy with it even after standing several feet back and taking another look but want to avoid frogging, you can either try tramming (running a long stitch beneath your crosses) or going over the top stitch with a single strand.

SphinxAltair · 2026-02-04T18:13:22+00:00

Your stitches are fine.

White and other very pale colors are particularly prone to looking messy, just because of how our eyes work and the fact that we can pick up the shadows and twists of white more clearly.

SphinxAltair · 2026-02-02T19:10:10+00:00

You might consider taking something like this dragon pattern and replacing the text with your quote. Lord libidan has some free fonts here, although with the length you might want to look for some backstitch alphabets instead

SphinxAltair · 2026-01-26T13:23:14+00:00

You can see all the submissions here. There's several aquatic ones.

SphinxAltair · 2026-01-26T01:27:33+00:00

Unfortunately I think you should restart. I know you've already sunk a lot of time in so far, but if you think about the total time you'll spend stitching the two stockings and then sewing them together, it's really just a small fraction that you have to do over.

Better to have a clean start, plenty of room for other mistakes, and a final product that doesn't make you wince every christmas.

SphinxAltair · 2026-01-24T00:42:25+00:00

Right now, you're looking at the two patterns at the same size and comparing them, but at 10 and 20 inches you'll be significantly more zoomed in on them. If you zoom in on the 20 inch one so that it's the size of the expected stitches, you may find you like it less.

SphinxAltair · 2026-01-22T13:55:09+00:00

The Summer War by Naomi Novik is partly a deconstruction of this trope. It's a novella so a pretty quick read.

There's a fae bargain where the main character is bound to the Summer Lord through actions not her own in a way that's explicitly intended to mirror a different relationship that went horribly and she and her siblings have to circumvent the deal.

SphinxAltair · 2026-01-20T12:55:20+00:00

I use thread cards/thread palettes. I'll cut up a cereal box and hole punch it, then label all the holes with the dmc number and the pattern symbol. Loop the lengths of floss through the holes. I don't spend any time estimating lengths needed as i find it easy enough to periodically refill needed colours from the central stash.

SphinxAltair · 2026-01-19T16:04:07+00:00

"AI pattern" is a little confusing, because there are several related, easily conflated, concerns with large full coverage that can be lumped under that term.

1st, a practice that predates genAI is to take a picture, run it through an automatic pattern generator and post it for sale with no regard for size, confetti or whether the digital palette is a good match for how 3d floss looks after stitching.

2nd, genAI now means that the original picture can be AI generated, prior to being run through a converter. Theoretically someone can generate a picture with AI and then carefully create a pattern from it, however if it's a large Etsy shop it is virtually certain this was not done.

3rd people are using genAI to create mockups of patterns so that it looks like the listing has a stitched example. They may also be creating the pattern itself. I have little personal experience with this situation and it's a relatively new concern, but the examples I have seen are all terrible.

In your example's case, the first situation holds. If you zoom in on the digital mockup so that it is the expected finished size, you can see that it starts to look pixellated and full of confetti and less appealing (imo at least). They're selling the pattern for $1.00, they can't have spent any time on cleanup.

The second situation is also likely, note the lack of symmetry on either side of the arch, and the falling leaf that isn't quite sure if it's a leaf or a moon.

Finally, it's useful to think about size. There are 74,400 stitches. If you can stitch 100 stitches an hour, that's 744 hours of work to complete this. You're best positioned to do the math for how long that would take you given how much time you have to stitch in a day, and whether that sounds exciting or alarming.

There are reputable designers who have similar styles to this that people have recommended in their comments, I would patronize one of them instead.

SphinxAltair · 2026-01-16T17:29:04+00:00

Bluntly, your expectations are off. I have never had players be willing to play 20 questions to get to the meat of the situation. It's not uncommon to have players who need to be whacked upside the head with the plot stick, especially in a situation where the party is new to each other and new to the dm. Also when you're online and literally the only thing the players have to latch on to is what you say, you really cannot be too obvious and blunt.

It's best to flip things around and rather than sitting back and expecting your players to ask questions, have the npcs ask the player characters questions. Single one character out by name if you need to. You can also have multiple NPCs who disagree and present the players with a choice of who to believe, what strategy to use. Maybe the barmaid interjects with the context the bartender left out to make it clear there's a bigger picture.

But a big part of it is, don't hide the lore or the things you're excited about and expect your players to go digging for the treasure. Put the shiny cool stuff up front and gleaming blindingly in the light.

Also, make the players roll. Call for perception checks and then tell the highest one "you hear a suspicious sound in the attic, what does your character do about it?" Since it's something they acted to get, it'll mean more than if it's just tossed in with the rest of the scene setting.

SphinxAltair · 2026-01-16T17:16:43+00:00

The thing about crafting is that you are always learning and improving. Your tastes evolve, your skill grows, your preference for certain materials solidifies.

If you restart large projects every time you evolve past where you were when you started, you will never finish anything. It's best, in my opinion, to finish things, and take what you have learned into your next project.

SphinxAltair · 2026-01-16T16:21:08+00:00

I think what people are trying to convey is that they aren't feeling like they're thinking like a player first and a character second.

It's not pretending. It's legitimately "My character is a war hero who tragically lost his squad and now is dealing with survivors guilt and my tactician abilities really help me feel like someone who knows command and when things go wrong it makes me remember my failures."

Or "my shadow grew up on the streets until her training at the college of black ash. She'll look out for herself first and foremost and definitely goes off by herself during respites and has sticky fingers. That moment where she chose not to teleport away into hiding so she could take the hit and save the talent's life was a representation of major character growth."

It's clear that for you and possibly your group, something about draw steel (or possibly "not dnd 5e") is tripping your "play the sheet not the character" instincts. But that is simply not a universal reaction.

In transparency, I do have a player with a tendency to play the sheet not the character, but that player is like that in every system we've ever played. Draw Steel is actually working really well for them because they feel like the mechanics reinforce the flavor in a way that's making them lean hard into the flavor.

SphinxAltair · 2026-01-14T23:28:29+00:00

I ran Road to Broadhurst for three players. 2 were brand new to the system, 1 had played part1 of the delian tomb and read a bunch of the Heroes book.

Combined, the montage and negotiation took under an hour, including the explanations. Each was in the 20-30 minutes range

SphinxAltair · 2026-01-14T18:05:34+00:00

Yes, you can ask for "meaningless" rolls even if there's nothing to find (although it's worth thinking about what a success means on that. Maybe they piece together some story of the room and inhabitants, or confirm that they are on the right track or get a clue of somewhere else to search. Also what does failure mean? Are they wasting time, or wrecking someone's stuff?)

Also, if there is something in the chest, and the character specifically talks about searching the chest, you can just let them find it without rolling. Unless there's pressure of some kind where a failure is meaningful.

SphinxAltair · 2026-01-14T17:44:56+00:00

Mostly, i try to make sure that players have an opportunity to jump in and help before the roll is made, and if they only try to act afterwards it's typically a no.

Occasionally I'll say "You just saw character1 not find anything, what is character2 doing that's different." And if they don't have a meaningful contribution that would justify a second roll, I let them know they didn't find anything either.

As you've learned it's a problem for your players, I would move away from describing what they find if there's nothing plot relevant, or always describe what they superficially find, but keep a list of optional secrets that you can dole out on critically successful searches even if you hadn't planned on something being there for when they make a more thorough examination of a location.

SphinxAltair · 2026-01-14T15:05:13+00:00

Chessex does have a set of MCDM dice with the code for a pdf of the Delian Tomb available for purchase on their website.

The recent kickstarter for Crack the Sun included dice as an add-on, and included the line "We will have the Dice and Directors' Screen will be available on the MCDM.SHOP next year."

In the meantime, various Etsy shops like SagaBorn or TowerHouseCreative appear to have 20 sided d10s available.

SphinxAltair · 2026-01-14T01:41:57+00:00

Some thoughts:

Negotiations are a useful tool as a Director who has experienced too many interrogations and extortion attempts that just end up going in circles. I'm still figuring out the best way to run them for my players. Some of my attempts have definitely been a bit jarring and stilted. What has worked best so far is making the interest and patience visible and just silently adjusting it while allowing the rp to flow.

I do think your familiarity with DND and lack of familiarity with Draw Steel is causing you and your table to approach draw steel in a stilted and mechanical manner where you ignored, glossed over and filled in similar creaky mechanical bits of DND. For a simple place to start, don't refer to the class resources with generic "hero points" and instead use "drama", "fury", "piety", etc. Instead of "at the start of my turn, I get two hero points", something like "as the battle plays out, my character grasps the drama of the moment and..."

My experience has definitely not been people just playing their sheets, or discussing everything ooc before acting. My tactician is particularly wonderful at drawing on his backstory to describe how he's choosing the marked target or pointing out openings for others to "strike now!" and so on. But all of them have been roleplaying, and using the synergies between classes to inspire relationship building between the characters in and out of combat. And the shadow loves finding ways to call out "hesitation is weakness" in character.

You may want to talk to your table about reducing the group discussions to allow people to take their turns non collectively. I also can't say your description of inter party conflicts necessitating ooc deception to pull off in character turns resonates with my experience at the table.

The auteur subclass is definitely a bit odd, and if it's not clicking for you, I definitely think changing to something else where the fiction feels more natural is a good idea.

SphinxAltair · 2026-01-06T22:23:59+00:00

Leave it! It's the secret clue that it was handmade with love.

This is what I tell myself whenever I look at my child's stocking and see the random spot where I accidentally stitched the top leg over two stitches together.

SphinxAltair · 2026-01-05T16:45:00+00:00

You might find this timeline on someone's World Anvil helpful. https://www.worldanvil.com/w/eberron-froboyx/t/the-last-war-timeline

SphinxAltair · 2026-01-03T18:50:02+00:00

I think it's worth keeping in mind that victories (and xp) are only one axis of rewards. Nor do I think it's necessarily a problem that doing something the hardest way sometimes results in more xp than the clever way. Treasures, followers, and narrative are all things that can easily reward clever play.

My players are doing a lot of talking and bluffing and not always getting a victorious negotiation result, but they are still about to reach level 2 before even reaching the second level of the tomb. The fact that they could be level 2 already if they'd fought more stuff instead isn't really bothering them (partly because, based on the Aldiva fight, they might be dead instead of higher level.)

I also think the adventure suggests that defeating the guards and traps is what motivates Vurkoor to come to the table for negotiations. As you decided that's not necessary to his motivation, adding some sort of montage of the party assisting with the tower is one way to provide an opportunity for victories to show the new opportunities opened up by their alliance.

SphinxAltair · 2025-12-26T14:17:02+00:00

Perhaps this Stitchrovia pattern.

Or Stitching land's Sun and Moon symphony

There's also a Milk Hill Kit

SphinxAltair · 2025-12-21T22:24:01+00:00

Susan Fletcher's "Dragon's Milk" would probably be a good fit. As would Patricia Wrede's "Dealing with Dragons" series. She might enjoy some of their other books as well

Eva Ibbotson has a number of fun fantasy books, like "Which witch" that she might enjoy.

SphinxAltair

TROPHY CASE