The Paper Behind Paper Legends

How Paper Legends started off...

The idea of trying my hand at DMing was slowly brewing on the inside of me and the trigger; being able to get two friends of mine whom I had grown up with to play it. Since my return to the comics and games shop in adulthood a couple of years ago, it had always been one of those somewhat segregated things where these hobbies stayed at home and with the friends I had made from Warp 1. Most of my friends who knew about my interest in comics, gaming (board games, table top war games, card games) and anime were respective and supportive of it but it was never a topic that I would really talk about with them aside from if they saw a copy of _____(insert graphic novel, game expansion supplement book, etc) laying on the coffee table and they'd ask what it was. I'd give a six sentence description, they might flip through it to look at the pictures and give a "Oh that's pretty cool" type statement and back on the table it went and we carried on doing whatever we were doing.

Anyway, one day my friend Josh and I stopped by Warp 1. I wanted to say hi to some of the staff and it was a great way to get free parking while we walked Whyte Avenue to smoke cigars. While we were in there, the DM for the Eberron campaign that I'm playing in showed up and then we all went BSing about D&D, what stupid things we saw people do at work that week, etc. Josh and I left the store to go smoke cigars. While we were walking around enjoying our tobacco, he made a statement along the lines of "they're normal fun guys who happen to really like things with wizards and lasers". Yaddiyadda and he looked like he was interested. Later on I asked if he'd want to play Dungeons & Dragons if I was to start a campaign and he said yes. I called up Alex whom I had known since 5th grade and he was game too. This sealed the deal and it was set, I had to start up my own D&D campaign.

I've always enjoyed being able to do creative things. Through Paper Legends I'd be able to create a world and invite my friends over to play in it while beating the crap out of bad guys at the same time. What's not to love? But the story and game element wouldn't be enough for me. When I got into Eberron I had made gaming tiles. For this I'd really need something to give it that Mr. Kok stamp that would look different from other people's D&D group.

Whenever I think about RPG's in general outside of D&D, my brain generally defaults to anime looking guys from video game. Final Fantasy VII, IX, Shining Force, Tales of Symphonia, etc. I decided that I would make the character minis/markers in a chibi anime style. We'll go into a little more detail about the different drafts of art styles in a future post.