April 2023 - Playful

I have to admit with admiration that there is more to the development of tabletops than originally assumed and that the moderators/players, who are often labeled as nerds, must have a lot of skills to come up with such stories and scenarios. Unfortunately, I don't understand enough about the genre, but I found it incredible what the many developers submitted.

My recap of the month

April on WE means developing articles about (inter)active adventures or short playable strategy games. Hmmh - in early April, my tabletop gaming experience was based on a single game I tried to play with friends on New Year's Eve 2019 and an episode of the TV series "iZombie" in which the protagonist joins a tabletop group to play a solve murder.

While I found the episode of iZombie really inspiring, the New Year's Eve game quickly nipped my interest back in the bud. Maybe it was because not a single player had any idea about this genre, the theme of the game was rather dystopian-futuristic or the game master had only recently been given the game and couldn't really explain it well enough. However -

"In early April I knew nothing about tabletops."

Badge won

Another problem I've struggled with since about mid-February was self-doubt. After getting to know the community, I had to ask myself if it was the right decision to write all the lyrics in my native language? Many thanks to all those who liked or still like my texts in German, but at the end of March I decided to offer my articles bilingually bit by bit. What is your experience? Please write me in the comments.

I also decided to give Elaqitan a little CSS makeover and gave the items a different color scheme depending on the element. Ok, now you could say:

"... too colourful, too obtrusive in some places, too playful or altogether too misleading."

and maybe you are right. But since I, and probably many other people, intuitively associate each element with a color, I think it will work well for my world.

In addition, at the end of an article, the reader still knows which continent he is on or whether it is an overarching topic.

I've also started adding a few AI images to the posts I wrote last year and switching to containers so it looks better on mobile too.

But decide for yourself:

My challenge participation(s):

For the Adventure April Challenge, I first had to learn a few basics about tabletops. But in the end you learn it best if you play such games regularly. Unfortunately, I live in RealLife in the middle of nowhere, so it's difficult to get to know players in close proximity to develop this hobby. So I wrote a little adventure story with different choices. Psst:

On May 4th, 2023, "The Artifact of Ur" was featured as a daily featured article as the first of all my published articles to date! Thank you so much.

But there was also the unofficial Artisan-Challenge, called for by Annie Stein, Catoblepon, Polina "Line" Arteev und Oaster2000, which again suited me more. Many thanks to the judges for the great idea. Here is my contribution with a few sketches of my own:

My favorite articles from the community:

Reading the articles for Adventure-April was difficult because as a non-player I have no idea about the shortcuts and the stat blocks are double Dutch to me. So I kept an eye out for OneShots suitable for beginners.

Ninodonlords "Sons of Catriona" is an absolute must for all those who have little or no experience with tabletops. It's easy to get caught up in the story as N. describes the setting and mood very well. In addition, there are only a few choices, which means that beginners are not too quickly deterred.

At the same time, in my opinion, his adventure also offers opportunities for advanced users. So, with the spoilers for stat blocks, you can craft your own and draw your own maps.

According to N., the article is not quite finished (as of May 3, 2023), so I am very excited to see the final result. But you can already play the adventure. Psst:

Did WE read my unpublished article ;-)? Congratulations on the daily featured article on May 05, 2023.

Outside of the Adventure Challenge, I found Jatub's detailed article on witchblight very interesting, as it not only describes the disease and the individual stages in detail, but also tells a lot about its history, spread and combating it. Unless you're looking for a contagious, zombie-mutating, deadly disease, then don't follow the link below.

In addition, there were two great articles about crystal magic in April, both of which are very different but really worth reading.

FJ Brodie wrote about the Erdékai, one of six crystals used to control the element of earth, found under an oak tree. I found it interesting how the crystals are related to each other and how the properties of one crystal affect another so as not to endanger the balance.

Emily Armstrong has written a detailed article about Iron Mountain dwarves in her new world "Reverium", which is absolutely convincing not only in terms of content but also graphically. Here, crystals ensure the technological progress of the dwarves, since they can be used to generate electrical energy and thus drive all sorts of inventions. Definitely read!