Dungeon Juice

The misadventures of Mort continue! I have finally polished off my huge sketchbook. That thing has lasted me years! I already want a new one exactly like it, but I am going to be sensible and use up the other sketchbooks I already own.

Mort's latest:
https://crockpotcauldron.tumblr.com/post/682806052602986496/mort-has-made-it-to-firetop-mountain-its-going
https://crockpotcauldron.tumblr.com/post/682935912810905600/mort-tripped-over-a-rock-and-accidentally-threw

He's had a wild time! The barrel of dungeon juice turned out to be rum, which gave him 6 HP. He only had time to look at one thing in that room, so he lost out on looting a corpse which had a silver cross, a lot of gold, and the most enchanted sword in the game. But he got to drink that sweet, sweet mysterious dungeon liquid.

I have been steadily improving, and I think it's time to put some time into leveling up specific skills. Some expression studies, learning bones and muscles, hands, perspective, inking, shading. You know, everything. A bit daunting, but I have really been enjoying drawing lately.

Who's the Warlock Now?

One last batch of Mort comics for the road:

https://crockpotcauldron.tumblr.com/post/682973878187933696/eating-rations-restores-stamina-points-and

I'm going to have to track down more books. Choose your own adventure books are one of the genres really best suited to paper copies, but guess it's going to be ebooks from here on. If anybody has any suggestions, please let me know! I love a good dungeon crawl.

Mort's stats are 10/16/11, by the way. Irrelevant to anyone but me, but he's got middling Skill (attack strength), lousy Stamina (hit points), and good Luck. The minimum score is 7/14/7, the max is 12/24/12. He got through the dungeon, but there were a couple close calls with the minotaur and the cyclops. I rolled fresh scores for the second book (because the stats are, charmingly, based on how well you trained and worked out before each dungeon) but it just didn't feel the same, so I went back to his starting stats.

One interesting artifact of the choose your own adventure book format is the lack of backtracking. Outside of the maze and a couple dead ends, you can't choose to retrace your steps and go back south. The book locks you out in a way computer games don't. But then again, there's far more potential for cheating with a book. I mapped out the whole dungeon and inspected the decisions I didn't make - but I wouldn't actually recommend it for the initial playthrough. Part of the thrill is really the immediacy of making decisions and suffering the consequences. The alternate paths I explored didn't feel as real and high stakes to me. I didn't cheat in the fights at all, by the way. Won by the skin of my teeth sometimes, and though it's all just dice, it felt satisfying.