FLD= Friday Link Dump.

Let’s see, what exciting things can I share with you today?

First up, Red Moon Rising has been really good lately.  If you haven’t been reading it you should start now.  Plus, Rose finally added a Cast page, so you can remember who people are.  For the last month or so I’d been mentally referring to the characters as “Cool Old Guy”, “Main Character Chick”, “Aristocrat From That Other Country Lady”, “Bitchy Lady From That Other Country”, etc.  Which, you know, made it easy to lose sight of some of the subtle nuances of the characters.

Get your very own Steampunk office that folds up in to a giant trunk.

It’s not new, but it’s entirely possible some of you haven’t seen The Mysterious Explorations of Jasper Morello, which is one of the greatest steampunk anythings ever.  It’s a 26 minute long animated short film, and is moody and evocative and gorgeous and awesome.  I first saw it a year or two back, and was shocked.  I felt like my brain had been tapped in to, as if someone had made an animated short exactly from my subconscious.  Great stuff.  If you’re enjoying Clockworks and haven’t seen TMEJM, you must go watch it.

In gamer geek news, I picked up some of the Malifaux minis that I’ve been raving about here.  They are indeed super awesome in person.  I don’t have time to get in to another minis game, so I’m just buying a few for Clockworks: the Game, but from what I hear the game is pretty rocking.

In other minis news, for Clockworks: the Game, I’ve been a huge fan of Reaper’s newish Chronoscope line.  The selection is a bit random, but if you’re running a game that’s not set in a generic D&D medieval fantasy land, and you like to use minis, they’re pretty freaking awesome.

And finally, in vaguely related news, we have the Best Scientists Ever.  A: I totally want monkey music mp3s.  B: I love that their human music selections were NIN’s The Fragile, Berber’s Adagio For Strings, Tool, and Metallica.  Best. Scientists. Ever.

That about covers it for today.  Any topics you guys want to see me write about for next week’s worldbuilding blog post?

I

I’m printing up a very small number of Clockworks logo shirts.  I’ll have them at Archon, and if there are any left I’ll let you guys know here.  There will eventually be more shirts.

II

If you have any requests for stuff you’d like to see available in prints, please leave a comment.  I’m already planning on a largish version of the Teenage Ophelia & The Rookery Miscreants panel from 0021, as well as a print of Is Your Neighbor A Danger To Your Children?, and a few other secret things.  If there are any panels or comic pages you’d like to own a print of, please let me know.  I will also be drawing up some special new stuff soon.  Shockingly, this stuff will be for sale first at Archon.

III

If you’re a fan of Clockworks on Facebook, you got to see a special sneak peak for something that will show up in the comic eventually.  More I can not say.

IV

You are by now sick of hearing about the I <3 Steampunk shirt?  Too bad, one last time.  I may be wrong, but I believe preorders close today.

V

In completely unrelated news: if you’re in St. Louis, come out to Urban tonight or Conspiracy at the Atomic Cowboy on Saturday night.  I will be DJing at both events, and both events are free (and 21+).  Also, keep your eyes peeled for a steampunk related DJ announcement in the not too distant future…

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That’s it for today!  See you on Tuesday for the next part of our thrilling adventure, Wednesday for the next part of the ongoing series of Character Creation, Thursday for even more excitement, and maybe even Monday or Friday for another thrilling blog post.

First up, looking back at Tuesday’s comic, I was inspired to create this.

My apologies.

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True Fact:  I use CSI: Miami as my baseline for what is acceptable in the comic.

I had to decide early on what sort of “rating” to give to the comic, and how I was going to write and draw it.  Over the next few years, Clockworks should unfold in to a pulpy steampunk action/adventure fantasy epic, full of lots of two fisted action and high flying excitement.  Sin City level violence and sex really wouldn’t fit, but then neither would say GI Joe the cartoon level sex and violence.

Somewhere along strip #4 or so, I settled on the idea that CSI: Miami would be my baseline.  It’s a popular show, beloved by millions, that runs on a broadcast tv station as opposed to HBO or whatever.  So clearly, the level of violence and sex on CSI: Miami is acceptable to most Americans.  (No idea what the ratings are in other countries.  And I should note CSI: Miami is a horrible, horrible show, only watchable because it’s So Bad It’s Good.)

So this means cleavage is to be expected, sexualized nudity not so much.  Violence tends to be somewhat hollywoodized, but blood and guts are also present.  Language tends to remain fairly PG, aside from on my Twitter feed.

The Rule of CSI: Miami also gives me a decent baseline for realism.  As long as the BS spouted out sounds decent, actual physics and biology and all of that can be ignored whole heartedly.  The Rule of Cool is very much in effect in Clockworks.  (Oh no! Three TV Tropes links in one blog post!  Your day is ruined!)

And now you know.

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Let’s see, Steampunk links and news:

She’s linked on the blogroll, but I don’t think I’ve mentioned here that Winona Cookie’s collages are my new favorite anything ever.  Seriously, I need about 5 of those in my place.

Lex Machina is a photographer, and all around cool guy awesome chick.  Throughout the day she collects random bits of awesomeness and posts them to Tumblr as Random Inspiration.  They’re sometimes NSFW, but always really, really cool.  Go, bookmark it or follow her on Twitter or Tumblr to see the updates throughout the day.

The US is building an airship to spy on Afghanistan! I don’t care what you think about politics or wars or whatever, but we can all agree that more airships is a good thing.  Sadly, this looks more like a UFO than something from Final Fantasy, but it’s a step in the right direction.

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In gamer geek news, the all new all Savage Worlds podcast premiered this week:

Smilin’ Jack’s Bar and Grill.

Go. Listen.

In other gamer geek news, D&D Online is free to play now.  DDO was an attempt to tap in to that huge tabletop gamer market to be the next WoW.  It failed miserably.  I never played it when it was a subscription based game, but I’ve spent a few hours the last few days now that it’s free, and it’s a surprisingly decent game.  My only real complaint is that I have a long, deep rooted aversion to WASD (I know! Sacrilige!) and DDO doesn’t really support my standard mode from WoW which was to use the mouse to move, and bind my entire keyboard to different actions.

It occurs to me that this is really the catch 22 of any MMO. I want a game that is different enough from WoW that I have some reason to play it instead of WoW, but I want a game that allows me to use the exact same highly personalized control scheme I’d gotten in the habit of using in my time on WoW.

That said, DDO is pretty damned good.  You can set all of the dungeons to Solo difficulty, so Terrala the elven barbarian has been running around slaughtering Sauhagin, giant spiders, and undead without me having to find a group. The Free to Play, Spend Money To Buy Cool Upgrades And Higher Level Content is a business plan I’m a fan of, especially because I’m a cheap bastard.

Anyway, go check it out.

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Only one week until Archon.  If you’re within driving distance of St. Louis, you should totally go.  I will be there, with a table featuring cool art stuffs for sale, as well as I <3 Steampunk shirts and a (very) limited number of Clockworks shirts.

I’ll also be talking in panels for the first time, which should be fun.  Saturday I’m yapping about webcomics, and Sunday I’ll be talking about steampunk.  There’s also a steampunk tea party/fashion show thing that I will be attending but likely not actually dressing up for.

AND! I will be running a pick up game of Clockworks: the Body at some point in the weekend, most likely Sunday afternoon.

It should be a rocking time, and if you can make it out, please do so.  This will be my first convention as a Professional Artist Guy as opposed to Random Gamer Nerd, so if you can come out and help make it awesome, you would in fact be awesome.

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I posted a new sneak peak to the Facebook page.  Those of you who are not fans on Facebook will just have to wait a month or two for these characters to show up in the comic.

Whole bunch of stuff I’ve been meaning to write about, but now finally have the time to do so.  Enjoy!

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I

Based on a random bit of joking during the Livestream last week, the lovely and talented Larry Wentzel created a series of Steampunk Rap Artist character sketches.

See more on his Deviant Art page.

You know, I doubt rap music actually exists in the Great Republic (the kids of today are rocking out to the steam guitar, much to the annoyance of their elders), I might have these guys show up in the background next time I do a crowd shot.

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II

The Clockworks Avatar Gallery is now live.  They’re the perfect size for Wordpress or Livejournal or most forums.  You’ll need to crop them down a bit for Twitter.

Be sure to point anyone to the comic when they ask where your awesome user icon came from.

If you’re going to use one of the avatars for your Wordpress Gravatar, please check that none of the regular commenters here are using the same picture, to avoid confusion.

(The other images on the Downloads page are temporarily off line.  They’ll be back soon.)

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III

After the minor reveal in yesterday’s comic and blurb about Clorencia  City in the comments, I figured I’d post something here, so someone can go update the Wiki.

Clorencia (City)

Clorencia City is the capital of the Great Republic of Roumion, and the greatest metropolis in the world.  Clorencia has a population of 15.7 million people, with 1.6 million more living in the surrounding area.

Clorencia City is unique among all of the cities of Vheld in that it is made up of 11 levels.  In 174 NDE construction on the second level began, allowing the royal family and government to move up from Old Clorencia.  Soon, other wealthy citizens of the Clorencia Empire followed suit, and in time the second level completely covered the first.  The third level was built in 33 NDE.  The fourth level was built soon after the New Dawn Revolution; and with the advent of ether technology, especially electromagnetic negativity, the city has reached ever upward.

Today, the 11 levels of the city reach from the mines and ruins of the first level, up through working class areas such as the 5th level, to the modern and wealthy heights of the 11th level.   It is the city’s unique construction and shape that have earned it the nickname “the Black Mountain”

The Great Machine is at the center of Clorencia City, stretching up from through all 11 levels.  Actually tens of thousands of devices, the Great Machine supplies power, plumbing, and communications throughout the city.

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III

Character Creation (finally!) Continues!

Background Edges

Arcane Background (Elemental Magic)
Prerequisites: Spirit d6
Arcane Skill: Each element uses it’s own skill. Characters begin with either Air, Earth, Fire, or Water.  All elmental magic skills are based off Spirit.
The magic of Laun is based on manipulating and controlling the four elements. Elemental Mages begin the game with a d4 skill in their chosen element, which may be raised normally.  New elements can only be learned once a Rank, and even then it is not easy.

Elemental Mages do not pick a limited number of spells they can cast, instead characters with this edge can cast any spell allowed by their element and rank.

(Full details on magic coming eventually.  If you’ve got 50 Fathoms, feel free to use that spell list.)

Arcane Background (Weird Science)
Prerequisites: Smarts d6
Arcane Skill: Weird Science (Smarts)
Weird Science covers the creation and use of strange and powerful devices. The time of Clockworks is one of discovery and invention, and strange new devices are being built every day. Characters with Weird Science are masters at steam powered, clockwork and Etheric devices, often retooling them or creating strange new inventions.

A character need not be a mad scientist himself to take Weird Science.  Characters with this edge could easily be using experimental devices created by another ether technician or cutting edge inventor.

Combat Edges

Dirty Fighter
Requirements: Seasoned
There is no honor among thieves, and Vheld has more than its fair share of unscrupulous bastards. Those with this Edge will do anything to win a fight. This character is particularly deceitful in combat and good at tricks. He adds +2 to all Trick maneuver rolls.

Improved Dirty Fighter
Requirements: Seasoned, Dirty Fighter

This character is extremely skilled in tactical deceit. By describing the trick and spending a benny, he may automatically get the Drop on any single opponent.

Guardian
Requirements: Novice, Agility d8, Fighting d6, Notice d6+
This character might be a professional bodyguard or just intensely devoted, but in either case he can jump in front of attacks intended for another. A character with this Edge must declare whom he is guarding at the beginning of any combat. As long as the guardian stays within 1” of the chosen person, any attack aimed at that person is automatically rolled against the guardian instead. A guardian can switch charges during a battle, but doing so requires an action as the guardian re–focuses his attention.

The character receives a benny each time he takes a wound (not Shaken) while defending another character (Extra or Wild Card.).

Monster Hunter
Prerequisites: Fighting or Shooting d8, Guts d6, Knowledge (creature lore) d6, Tracking d6
Many strange creatures haunt the wilds of Vheld, and a few brave men and women make a living hunting these monsters. Some monster hunters travel the world as big game hunters, always in search of the biggest kill. Others are more localized, defending a certain area or town from insurgent monstrosities.

Monster Hunters gain +2 to hit any creature they’ve previously fought or studied in the field, as well as +2 to any Guts, Tracking, or Knowledge (creature lore) rolls vs. creatures they’ve previously fought.

Peasant Lore
Requirements: Novice, Outsider or Knowledge (Folklore d8+)
This hero has studied the local folklore and superstitions of the country folk of Irone, the Vori Islands, or elsewhere.

When fighting a supernatural creature, the hero can recall a tale about the beast. With a successful Smarts roll (–2), the hero remembers one Special Ability of that monster.

Whack!
Requirements: Seasoned, Engineer
The character can attempt to make an instant Repair roll at -2, by kicking a malfunctioning device or hitting it on the side etc. If the roll fails, the object must be repaired normally.

Improved Whack!
Requirements: Veteran, Whack!, Throwing d6+
The character can attempt to throw a wrench or other object to knock a malfunctioning device back into shape. This works as Whack! but the character can attempt the repair from up to 12″ away. In addition to the repair roll, the character must make a Throwing roll, with the standard penalties for range.

(Clockworks:the Game uses many, many more edges taken from other Savage Settings, but I figured I’d only paste here the ones that are new or our heroes have.)

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See you on Thursday, for another new comic!

I.

Voting for the Top Webcomics rankings reset on the 1st, and I’ve added a brand new voting incentive to encourage you to go vote.  There’s a shiny new map of the Great Republic and surrounding countries waiting for you just a couple of clicks away.

You can vote every 24 hours, and if you guys would hit the little link in the upper left every time you’re here, that would be awesome.

Thanks to the magic of Facebook and getting an early start in over the weekend, Clockworks is currently in the top 100.  I have no idea if it will stay there, but it would be pretty awesome if it did.

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II.

Shirts!

I’m still finalizing the design for the first shirt.  I want to do something cool and interesting.  I don’t just want to slap the logo on some shirts (although I might do a run of those later), but I don’t want to make something too obscure.  Expect a pre order announcement in the next week or so.

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III.

The Peacock King is a free online serial novel.  The latest update was a 4 part halloween zombie outbreak tale Hall of the Dead, featuring a cameo by yours truly.  (Well, named after yours truly, and inspired by Toby.)

Go read it!

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IV.

Today’s Questionable Content features the return of Jimbo (yay!) and a pretty amusing steampunk joke.

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V.

So far the response to the Gentleman Caller has been pretty positive.  The PDF was viewed/downloaded about 200 times, which is pretty trivial compared to how many hits the comic gets, but is pretty exciting to think about for an adventure I thought up.

I don’t know if anyone had a chance to run it over the weekend.  If you do, I’d love to hear an actual play report, or just a few comments.   Expect the updated version with fancy art and layout and any needed corrections in the next couple of weeks.  (Hopefully.)

Once the final version is up, I’ll be pimping it out to the peginc forums, savage heroes, etc.

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That’s about it for today.  Livestream either in the AM or late at night for Tuesday’s comic.

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Edit to add: The first episode of Riese came out today, on the internets.  It’s a 10 minute steampunkish adventure, the first of 5 episodes and maybe more.  All in all, it’s not bad.  I’d have liked to have seen some dialogue and character in this first episode, but I know all too well how tricky it can be to introduce a story.  So far all we know is there’s a heroine, she has a wolf, she kicks butt, and some dudes in awesome coats are chasing her.  There’s a bit more than that, but that recap really doesn’t spoil anything.

I will rant about my one pet peeve, in hopes that if they do a second series they’ll change it:  the bad guy has a bunch of gears glued to his armor, to show that he’s “steampunk”.  For the love of all that’s holy don’t do this people.  Take the time to at least make it look like your steampunk costume/armor/widget could theoretically do something, and isn’t just a bunch of gears hotglued to something else.

Other than that one nitpick (and the horribleness of the closing credits song – which sounds like a desperately poor man’s Pop Will Eat Itself), it’s a pretty impressive showing.  For a self produced independant show, it’s amazing in the fact that it exists at all.  The fact that it’s of comparable quality to something like Legend of the Seeker is pretty damned astounding.

Anyway, go, check it out.

I:

A brief rundown of last weekend’s trek to Seattle for SteamCon:

I ran two tabletop Clockworks games.  My plan was to run the same scenario twice, but after Friday’s game, a couple of the players had so much fun they wanted to play again on Sunday, so I made up a direct sequel for the same characters.  This is one advantage of having a system as easy to make stuff up for as Savage Worlds and knowing the setting backwards and forwards.

I ran a Clockworks LARP Friday night, which was fairly small and low key but still fun.   Set in the Free Islands, it featured lots of politics and some intrigue and hidden agendas.

Met Shane Hensley again, played in a great Space:1889 game.  Also briefly met Phil and Kaja Foglio.

Spoke on the Webcomics panel with David Malki.  Sadly, it was Friday evening and people were still filling in to the con, so we spoke to like 10 people.  Still, those 10 people seemed to enjoy it.

Spoke on the Everyday Steampunk panel with Michelle Black and Anthony Hicks, to a completely full room.  Tons of great questions and suggestions from the audience, and people even laughed at my dumb jokes.

I didn’t take any pictures, but fortunately Flickr has  you covered.  SteamCon was seriously the best looking con I’ve ever attended.

A handful of Clockworks fans came up to me over the weekend, and you guys were all incredibly cool and polite and awesome.

I got to meet some great people that I’ve only known online, like the incredibly talented Lex Machina and Dimitri from Twisted Artifacts.

I got to meet some incredibly talented and cool people I’ve never met or heard of before, like the Gypsy Nomads and the folks who make Rise of Aester.

All in all, I’d say it was a triumph.  Huge success.  I mentioned it to the organizers, but SteamCon was easily the best run Con I’ve ever attended, as a fancy pants guest or a regular attendee.  They really went above and beyond to treat us panelists/GMs/whatever incredibly well.  If you create any sort of Steampunkery and get the chance to go and yap to people, I highly suggest doing so.

Finances willing and if they’ll have me, I’ll be back next year.  I already have some ideas.

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The other big news this week: I’m opening up Clockworks with a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.  What’s this mean to you?

It means you can share or alter the comic in any way you see fit, so long as you allow others to do the same with whatever you’ve created and you’re not making any money off of it.  If you’d like to translate Clockworks in to Vietnamese or German, you can do so without seeking my permission.  If you’d like to download the entire archive and distribute it as a bitTorrent, you totally can.  If you’d like to take all of the comics and rewrite them so the dialog is nothing but dick and fart jokes and references to Jane Austen, you totally can.  If you want to write Clockworks slash fiction starring Toby, Agent Thorn, and a new character who looks mysteriously like you and everyone loves, you totally can.

As mentioned above, the only restrictions are as such: you have to note that I created Clockworks and your thing is based on my stuff, you can’t make any money off whatever you want, and you have to share your creations with this same license.

If you’d like to sell Toby t-shirts or compile your Swedish Clockworks translation in to a book for sale, you’ll still need my express permission.  Also note that this license does not extend to the Savage Worlds rules.  Fortunately, SW has a pretty open Fan License, so if you want to post stats for your new SuperMegaGiantClockbot, you’ll be fine so long as you follow their guidelines.

I’ll update the site to reflect the new license this week, and add a page explaining everything to the top menu nav.

If anyone’s curious as to why I’m adding the CC license, I’ll be happy to ramble in the comments.