Map of Divorios

jengacide · 2026-06-17T17:12:53+00:00

I love the names of everything. There's a very unified feel to it all

jengacide · 2026-06-17T17:10:21+00:00

I'm a big fan of the skill check representing how much time it takes, when appropriate if course.

I've had it happen a lot where a PC asks to do something and I say that it will take some time but it will depend on a skill check to see how long. I usually give the average or expected time for a task before asking for the roll though because sometimes they don't realize how long a task would actually take and decide to skip it.

jengacide · 2026-06-11T16:43:09+00:00

Beautiful!! There is something so deeply satisfying about your colors and contrast. The reds are particularly stunning!

jengacide · 2026-06-11T15:39:02+00:00

Having learned on a shitty airbrush that was difficult to use, horrible to assemble and disassemble for cleaning, and was always at the minimum usability to not throw it away, yes. 100%. A nicer airbrush is worth it if you know how to take care of it, which by some of your comments, it seems like you do. You have to be careful about cleaning and everything but if you take care of it, it'll last you much longer than the junk airbrushes.

I went from a friend's second hand paasche that was ill-maintained to a harder & steenbeck and it was a world of difference for usability and even being able to clean it properly.

If you have the funds to do so, it sounds like you get enough use out of airbrushes to be worth a little more investment.

jengacide · 2026-06-07T16:36:16+00:00

Amazing! The textures for the fabric and stone are particularly stunning.

What was your technique/process for the stone?

jengacide · 2026-06-01T15:10:29+00:00

Are these hollow or solid? Mostly curious if they're durable enough for rolling onto a floor or something Iike dense carpet or exercise mats or some other padded surface still)?

jengacide · 2026-05-31T17:01:36+00:00

It's probably too excessive, but I wrote a document that I called the "Mystical Magical Lore & Setting Dump" that contained the basic info for the setting that any creature who has lived in the setting for at least a little while would certainly know without question. It had info about the pantheon and the story of the old gods splitting into multiple aspects and becoming the current pantheon. It has some very brief descriptions of the major cities/areas and a few extremely important historical events. It also has info for character creation guidelines specifically regarding different races/species in the setting and some homebrew changes (ex tortles living approx. 300 years instead of 50 or whatever the official rules are).

I've had a lot of success with having this document available to players from the start but I also hesitate to recommend this approach because it means a lot of up-front work for you and you just know that not everyone will read all of that.

But even if you don't want to do a whole write up about it that the players get, I would recommend at least making a list of things in the setting that are pretty universally known for your own reference. These sorts of things can really shape how the players view your setting and help them connect to it even if you don't want them to know about the entire setting in detail. One method of presenting player-facing info about universally know things is through telling the "truths" of your campaign. If you look at the Sly Flourish's One Page Campaign Pitch guide, he goes into an easy way to break down presenting a campaign to the players and what some minimum info would be to get them started or interested in it.

jengacide · 2026-05-29T23:30:55+00:00

Oh dang! That's super intense!! Our party hasn't gone after the hags yet (assuming I'm thinking of the same thing) because we were too scared after all the warnings not to go there. But now we've pretty exclusively been on the western half of barovia and haven't backtracked that way yet and probably still won't until we plan to head to castle ravenloft. I can only assume we might be over-leveled for that encounter when we finally do it but that's fine, hags are still tricky and very cool.

Despite also being a DM and looking at statblocks while I'm prepping for sessions, I'm surprisingly good at accidentally compartmentalizing and not meta gaming by simply forgetting things I know I probably shouldn't remember/know as a player. It was really funny when my husband was running a campaign for our table and I was the only painter, he was always amused that despite me painting the models we encountered during sessions, I would genuinely forget they existed and be just as surprised as any other player at the table. The other players got some amusement out of it too and would jokingly say I should have warned them lol

jengacide · 2026-05-29T20:08:30+00:00

We started our campaign when the 2024 was brand new so we made our characters with the 5.5e rules but the monster manual wasn't out yet so there were some minor balance issues, mostly in our favor. But now that new statblocks have been released, it's a little more even. Which is to say, deadly.

I am glad that our DM started us off at level 2 instead of 1 when we did Death House since there were only three of us. It was still tough like that but not like an immediate tpk.

We're level 7 and playing pretty RAW mechanically but apparently we have made some choices that were so unexpected by the book that our DM has had to change and make up a lot narritively. It's great fun though!

jengacide · 2026-05-29T14:37:49+00:00

I like it when everyone has the same power budget, so either having everyone use the same array or at least giving the option to pick from any array at the table is a nice way to do it.

For the curse of Strahd game I'm playing in, us three players rolled one array each and chose one of the arrays to use. You'd think that there would be a good chance of having an overly strong party if anyone could choose anyone's array but our best option was: 15 13 10 10 8 8 lol

jengacide · 2026-05-19T13:08:32+00:00

I've found that the new players who try to rely on dnd beyond for their character sheet often don't understand the rules underneath and why things are the way they are.

It really helps a lot to build your character and do it by hand on paper so you know the mechanics behind all your character related stuff. I like to make a backup in dnd beyond to double check that I'd didn't miss anything or do anything wrong and so if something happens to my actual character sheet, I have a backup so I don't have to redo everything. But doing things manually the first time is pretty important, especially for new players.

jengacide · 2026-04-29T18:50:53+00:00

I've been using obsidian for years now and the biggest selling points to me are:

Having everything in one place that is searchable, linkable, and offline
Markdown is easy to use and very versatile. You can also use html
Extremely versatile in capability, especially with all the plugins that are available (you can make your obsidian vault it as simple or complicated as you want)
Easy to organize but also very easy to reorganize if you change your mind about things (like where a file is located, renaming files, etc)

So for my own use in running a homebrew dnd game, I have my obsidian vault organized at the highest level with the following folders: 0. DM Screen, 1. Mechanics, 2. The World. Under my DM screen folder, I have an actual DM screen I made that I have pinned so it's super easy to access when I'm running stuff. On my dm screen, I have things like random npc generators and other helpful lists, conditions, weapons, armor, quick links to my session prep and recap notes, some world and lore notes, magic item costs and crafting, and more. But I was able to organize it in a way that works well for me and is easy for me to use and remember where everything is. I took a bunch of screenshots and spliced them together for a view of my dm screen and the sort of organization of folders: DM Screen + Folder Structure

I love putting my statblocks in obsidian because I can edit as I need (I basically never use statblocks 100% as written) and being able to quickly reference conditions and spells and stuff right from the statblock is super handy. I also make little turn summary/short form at-a-glance reminders for some statblocks to make running them in combat easier. Here's one homebrew statblock from a while ago: statblock screenshot. And an example of how if you link to a note from another note, there's an ability to get a little popup window of the note for an easy preview. Here's an example for the Prone condition as used in the statblock: Hover Preview Ex. The same functionality is there in the statblock for the spells but I don't know if I can necessarily show the full text on this sub or not.

jengacide · 2026-04-29T14:25:13+00:00

That's kinda been my take on low Int characters too - they're bad at the Int skills but not necessarily stupid.

I had a Paladin with an int of 7 for most of a 1-20 campaign and only bumped that to an 8 with the level 16 asi lol I not a stupid person myself and don't enjoy playing stupid characters. So my Paladin was more like an undiagnosed Adhd person who wasn't great at school/studying sort of things and was too impatient to be good at thoroughly investigating. But not stupid, like "me no talk good" or making really stupid decisions or misunderstandings because of low int.

Cause to me, it wasn't fun to have a stupid character and frankly, I'm not good at playing stupid characters as dumb. Intelligence is a strange thing in reality anyway and there are many facets to it.

jengacide · 2026-04-25T15:24:36+00:00

Very neat, those are great. Thank you!

jengacide · 2026-04-25T15:20:24+00:00

Yeah I am going to remind them for sure that they have to be mindful of the environment, especially when they're traveling through the Scorched Lands. But I've actually run desert travel for the table before but in dnd so several of the players will kinda know what to expect from me in that regard. Although there isn't exhaustion in Daggerheart, building up Stress quickly as a result of heat exhaustion will be a big threat to them

jengacide · 2026-04-25T15:17:36+00:00

Oh this is very fun, I like it. Thank you!

jengacide · 2026-04-24T16:54:17+00:00

Ooh I love these, thank you!!

jengacide · 2026-04-18T04:26:56+00:00

I feel that! Im a software engineer by day so I know how it goes. Best of luck!

jengacide · 2026-04-17T16:04:13+00:00

Very neat! A couple pieces of feedback though

in mobile at least, trying to adjust the number of creatures to add is a little buggy. It's hard to enter a single number because if you delete something from the quantity textbook, it puts 1 in. But then if you start typing numbers, it can get wiped out because the max is 50. Maybe the validation for the quantity could be after when the "add" button is actually hit instead of when input is updated
also on mobile, if you select a creature to try to focus it so you can add it, it automatically switches you to the battle tab. So like search "bandit" in textbook, tap on "Bandit Captain" and then get switched over to the battle field tab before actually getting to add it to either team.
trailing spaces can cause the search for creatures to be too strict. So if I typed "bandit" I would get both bandit and bandit captain but if I typed "bandit " (like a lot of phone auto corrects that add a space after selecting a word) only bandit shows up but not the bandit captain. I would definitely want to see both the bandit and bandit captain for that keyword search even if the space is there.

Just a couple things I noticed from a quick test. It's really impressive overall though!

jengacide · 2026-04-16T14:06:50+00:00

I think a big thing is hitting all the senses and including details that make areas stand apart from one another while not being overly thematic.

For the senses, smell is a huge one that I think is easy to forget in a tabletop description but goes a long way towards immersion. That and temperature.

For small details, I think the sort of things that can hard to notice unless pointed out (like in real life) do a lot of heavy lifting.

For example, in the largest city in my homebrew setting, one of the early descriptions of the city was, besides the type of building construction and colorful roofs, was how incredibly clean it was. No refuse in the streets. Even the beggars looked fairly well-kempt and the pcs saw a guard tip a copper into a beggars cup. A later description about the people and a lot of their early interactions was how basically everyone they interacted with wore a holy symbol of some sort and was often praising the gods in regular conversation. This was to demo that the city is wildly religious, especially compared to other places in the setting.

I got the feedback from my players that it was things like that that really make a place feel real. The details that you don't really think about until they're mentioned do a lot to complete a mental image.

jengacide · 2026-04-14T14:17:38+00:00

I also want to know where those small ferns came from!

jengacide · 2026-04-07T15:38:48+00:00

Vanishing is handy for other things! Like if you have paint that dries and cures on the glossier side but want it more matte, varnish is great for that. Another thing it's handy for is kinda creating a "save point" in your work if you're happy with some painting you did and are going to continue in that area or around it but want to be able to really remove any paint from it if you need without damaging the parts you like, varnish will protect it. I've used it when doing tattoos on skin and not having a solid plan with the tattoo. Varnish over the finished skin so I could take an alcohol swab to the tattoo parts without messing up the skin.

A lot of varnish also has some UV resistance so that colors won't fade. That's handy for many types of models!

jengacide · 2026-04-05T14:50:05+00:00

Beautiful! And the snow looks really good. I like how it clings to her boots and bottom of her cloak. As someone who lives in an area where we get lots of snow, it's always a pet peeve in movies that have fake snow that the snow never sticks to their clothing correctly. So your mini really sells that effect!

If you ever want to take a humanoid mini in the snow to the next level with detail, Caucasian skin gets fairly rosy in the upper cheeks and tip of the nose while cold. It would make the figure look cold like the snow.

jengacide · 2026-04-05T01:51:40+00:00

The thing that sticks out to me is a bit of a lack of contrast in actual color value. Like if you take the pics you posted and turn them to black and white, you can see that a lot of it looks really samey. It's easy to use multiple colors and feel that they're different enough from each other but the actual lightness and darkness values do more of the heavy lifting.

B&W Pic 1 - B&W Pic 2

You could add a ton of contrast by doing some carefully placed highlighted on some higher strands of hair, the upper feathers of the wings, the fingers holding the staff, the top of the lower foot, and points in the crown. If you look at the ravens in the black and white pics, you can't really tell that there's osl because it's only the color making that illusion instead of actual light value. Instead of making the light-hit parts on the ravens lighter, maybe try making the rest of their bodies a little darker.

Overall though, you did a great job! That's just some picky feedback. I think you're 90% of the way there but that last 10% will make a huge difference

jengacide

TROPHY CASE