Chris Eaves
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cynyr.bsky.social
Chris Eaves
@cynyr.bsky.social
260 followers 180 following 150 posts
Creator! I wrote a TTRPG called a Tale of Snakes and Rats. I do 3D modeling, programming, play guitar. I like making stuff.

Hey look, a link to my game: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/502611/a-tale-of-snakes-and-rats
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cynyr.bsky.social
How does A Tale of Snakes and Rats handle spellcasting failures? Well, if you treat magic with respect and prepared your spells properly, the failsafes you included will ensure that nothing happens. BUT! You can cut corners to cast spells faster. And the more you do it, the more like things get Bad™
This is one of the spellcasting rule pages. Specifically regarding Cutting Corners, Component Spellcasting, and Spell Backfire Effects. Purple background with black text on white boxes. With purple text headers.
December 17, 2024 at 3:33 PM
cynyr.bsky.social
Who loves a retrospective? The content of my game was 80% complete like 6 years ago. I spent those last 6 years just experimenting with layout, art, and rewrites. Here are older versions of the first page of spells compared with the final version. I settled on the boxy layout during the lockdown.
This was the first version of the spells page. It contains the spells, Aircutter, Alternate Path, and Animate Stone. This layout was similar to D&D, but with blue header text. The original goal was classic fantasy parchment stuff. This was before I had settled on a visual aesthetic for the world, so it was more classic fantasy, thus the classic look. This page has the spells Burning Touch, Camouflage, Candleflame, and Cloaking. This version was when I was experimenting with red as the header text. I was also testing if I was alright with texting flowing to the next page. I was not. This version has Aircutter, Alternate Path, Animate Stone, And Annihilation, which flows to the next page. Here I had begun experimenting with bars of color on the header names as well as cutouts to pages behind. I had begun to figure out that I didn't want it to look like D&D and was moving away from it, but I was still in the realm of that type of design. In the end, I went a wildly different direction. This page has Aircutter, Alternate Path, Animate Stone, Annihilation, and Aura Scry. Rather than coloring the header text, I opted to have the back page be colored and nest all the text in boxes for contrast. Each section has different colored pages to easily tell them apart. The purple here is the same as the Loremage, though all spellcasters use these spells. The boxes were inspired in part by the Alien RPG. This specific box design came after I had figured out the in-world aesthetics and designed a layout as it would have come from their world.
December 15, 2024 at 1:47 AM
cynyr.bsky.social
Hi Vulpes. I seem to see your posts a lot...

I spent 8 years writing a #ttrpg. It's done. It's awesome. And I 3D modeled all the art inside. Well, not all. Some of it is just 2D. Anyway, the world is mostly low / magitek, but I couldn't resist finding a way to include some high tech fringe stuff.
The rules page for the Machine minor class traits. Red header text on black backgrounds, with white outlines. In the bottom right is a cyborg character. Her eyes have glowing red irises and the side of her face in shadow has hexagons showing through from underneath. The colorful hair is the redult of running the image through the glitch generating program I wrote.
December 13, 2024 at 6:46 AM
cynyr.bsky.social
It's only been a couple months so he looks the same lol
Adorable black dog sitting on the floor and looking at me. Kid's green spinning chair thing in the background. And my knee. Adorable black dog sitting on the couch and not looking at me. Kid's spinning chair thing in the background. And my leg.
December 12, 2024 at 10:25 PM
cynyr.bsky.social
I have the Bob's Burgers cookbook too 😂

Some pics of the D&D cookbook
D&D cookbook! Heroes Feast The recipe for Yawninv Portal pancakes
December 10, 2024 at 1:26 AM
cynyr.bsky.social
The Loremage class! Basically a wizard. They're dedicated spellcasters with access to the largest pool of spells, the coolest spells, and can learn more spells at a time. They can cast spells without rolling (sometimes), and even cast spells as defensive actions, which nobody else can do.
This character has a visor half mask rather than a full face mask. She also has her name tattooed under her left eye. The tropical island the game is set on makes fully enclosed clothing impractical or outright dangerous. She wears boots and a set of two piece strap on leggings. The top straps of the left legging set are unsecured and hanging down. The right legging is hidden behind the black belted on skirt thing. The Duelist has the same style of leggings, but actually strapped on properly. Also of note are the stacks of magical language behind her. The letters wouldn't be actually visible, but an Augur would be able see the aura of prepared spells floating around her.
December 8, 2024 at 11:08 PM
cynyr.bsky.social
Over the course of a couple months, while I was modeling, rendering, and editing the 3D models of character classes for art for my game book, I ran into stuff that made me laugh. 2 examples here. One when I was putting a mask on the Augur and scaled it too big. And the Conduit without his mask...
The Augur has a mask in his final picture. This is what it looked like before I fixed the material and edited the model to make it more suited to him. With the material missing, Blender turned it pink. The lips were a different material and stayed black. When I saw the giant mask I immediately thought of the giant head helmet things from the Shia Labouf music video, so I put his hands up the same way, holding the sides of his giant head (mask). In this image, you can also see the color and texture of his outfit better. Teal with stripes and a hint of dark blue. I had the Conduit's mask on while I was posing and lighting him and making the top of his face look just right. I didn't realize how creepily the face adjustments I was making would affect his expression. With the mask he looks like a vaguely creepy guy. Without it, he looks like he's holding a kitchen knife behind his back. This image was from after I did the final render that ran through the glitch generator (I think) so all the details are exactly as they are in his final image, except that I hid the mask to reveal his creepy smile.
December 7, 2024 at 5:31 PM
cynyr.bsky.social
In case anybody ever looks at my profile and wonders what the heck my profile pic is, here it is.

I cosplayed as Scarecrow for Wizard World Comic Con one year. It's an unphotoshopped photo I took in my apartment's bathroom. I put little LEDs inside the mask that lit up amazingly in the dark.
This was a test photo to see how the lights looked inside my mask. It was made from a paintball mask with tan canvas stitched onto it. I put yellow cellophane on the insides of the lenses. The filters were made from emptied out sterno campfire things. One had red goo and the other had blue. We kept the goo and later turned them into mana and health potions as wedding gifts for my sister. The glove is pex tubing, super glued and taped to clear tube things that I don't remember the origin of. hey were filled with yellow gatorade. The needles on the glove were sewing needles. This was a test photo to see how the lights looked inside my mask with the lights turned off. The yellow cellophane worked amazingly here to spread the light and make it look like they were glowing. In the light of the convention, they like dogshit though. This picture gave me some false confidence about how my mask's eyes looked when lit up. The costume was pretty much just made of super uncomfortable tan canvas fabric. The only thing missing from my final costume here was the boots I wore. The mask, being a paintball mask under the tan canvas was the the most comfortable part. But the lenses fogged up about 10 seconds after stepping into the con and never unfogged. So I was either blind or had to slip the mask up to see.
December 7, 2024 at 4:19 AM
cynyr.bsky.social
The Hellion! This class is analagous to a rogue. However it has a different purpose. Hellions avoid notice by blending in rather than hiding in darkness. They can't be tracked, even by magic if they have that ability. They also have useful social abilities which can provide distractions as cover.
December 7, 2024 at 1:02 AM
cynyr.bsky.social
Duelist glitched images! Some of these came out pretty darn cool. I'd also like to reiterate that my glitch generator runs in batches of 1000. I sit there and scroll through to find usable images and then edit bits and pieces into one to make one somewhat cohesive whole.
This image did a full color shift to red and then sliced off the top of the character and slid her to the right without distorting her and then shifted that color to teal. Simple but effective. This one did a very slight distortion around the middle and then did teal green outlines to the left of the distortion and orange to the right. On top of that, it appears to have done a thick outline, which was overlaid by the distorted area and essentially erased but for the very top and bottom. I didn't write any functions that do partial outlines, so it was a whole outline at one point. May have been an outline on a spawned shape that was overwritten too. And as usual, the circles spawned over the character instead of behind. I should probably have adjusted the logic to prevent that, but whatever. Also, if it wasn't obvious, the character underwent a full color shift to orange. Another full color shift. This time to teal ish. She also gained some angled boxes which, mercifully, spawned behind her.
December 6, 2024 at 1:05 AM
cynyr.bsky.social
Up next from my ttrpg is the Duelist. An extra fast melee class. They can have extra melee actions during their turns plus more from dual wielding. They have an ability where they can move so fast toward something that they phase right through it. Dobby can't stop them from getting on the platform.
December 4, 2024 at 10:35 PM
cynyr.bsky.social
Unused glitches of the Conduit class from my game! This particular image required a bit of consideration because he's holding a ball of fire. Both of these images, while cool, completely lost the ball of fire to the color shift. The hatching pattern on his legs is the result of his skirt material,
This image did a full color shift and turned the Conduit yellow. It also spawned a circle way off to the side and only the part overlapping his shoulder was retained. It also appears to have spawned a blue outline to the right of colored pixels on his thighs. Cool image, but ultimately not usable. This image did a full color shift to a pinkish red and then outlined him in a glowing white outline. It would appear that the white outline then went through a color shift glitch to green. I only wrote in a function that generates white outlines, so this one coming out green took me by surprise. Also did a pinkish circle over the top of everything. Again, cool but unusable.
December 3, 2024 at 11:37 PM
cynyr.bsky.social
"Why have you been marked away for 20 minutes?"

"I'm thinking."
December 3, 2024 at 10:00 PM
cynyr.bsky.social
My ttrpg is done. I'm not making another. Instead, today I begin the process of building a video game based on my ttrpg. I don't want to use Unreal because it has way too much baggage that I don't need. I'll be writing my own engine and integrating with OpenGL. But Python is too slow. Soooo... C++
This is a pic of a C++ programming book. My wife tells me I do everything the hardest possible way. I think she might be right.
December 2, 2024 at 10:06 PM
cynyr.bsky.social
The Conduit! This class is your classic warlock. However, I wanted to avoid the preexisting connotations associated with that term. These guys have an innate resistance to magical damage and can cast fire spells without rolling (sometimes). Plus an ability that lets them melt anything. And more.
This character has his patron's symbol tattooed on his forehead, plus a mask that filters out ash and hot embers. He doesn't want to get some kind of lung cancer after all. The glowing eyes are the result of his trait ability called Kindling. That ability lets you cast certain fire spells without a roll a certain number of times per day. The description of the ability actually says your irises somlder like embers, but I prefer the idea that different Conduits can experience that in different ways. In his case, his whole eye(s).
December 1, 2024 at 7:05 PM
cynyr.bsky.social
So, as stated before, I'm a programmer. To add on that last little polish to make my mediocre 3D modeled images look awesome, I wrote a python script that adds visual glitches to images. It generates 1000 images per run over the course of several hours. Most of them are... unusable crap...
This distorted image of the Brute class image had two stepped wave distortions applied in opposite directions, each of which had two different colors applied to each side as an outline. This image spawned a hollow circle and then used that circle to cut out a section from the layer below it, in this case the image of the Brute. Then that was layered on top of a rectangle. And THEN a straight shift was applied to the very top of the circle, slicing and shifting to the right. Or maybe the entire bottom was shifted to the left. I don't care enough to overlay the original image to figure out which it was. This one did a filled in circle spawn over the character's legs and another lower layer cutout using that circle. After that, the cut out layer went through the white glowing outline generator. Utterly useless image. This image drew green over every black pixel in the character image, then did a smooth shift to the right over his head. Then it did a stepped wave at his waist and added another thick color outline. The top underwent a full color shift after it was all waved. Might have even gotten hit with another wave shift. And to really top off the uselessness, it spawned a random rectangle on his hip.
November 30, 2024 at 11:09 PM
cynyr.bsky.social
Every artist needs a proper friend in their life and process.

Finish something. Ask wife: "That's cool!"

Ask other family: "That's cool."

Two weeks later realize: This thing sucks. Why did nobody tell me this sucks?

Anyway, on an entirely unrelated note, I've updated the cover of my game.
The original cover, minimalist, but lacking in any kind of character. It features 3 extremely detailed characters rendered down to monochrome, facing off against a bound ascendant being. This image was made after I realized just using the logo as the cover wasn't a great idea. I had a cool scene idea, but the execution was atrocious. In this version, the same three characters are present. In fact I used the same blend file to start with. Rather than a featureless black plane with some arcs, I decided to place the characters in an existing environment from the game, known as The Deepgrave. They're fighting some monsters, but the characters are the focus. Their detail has been retained this time. My glitch generator ended up losing most of the detail of the tomb, when it cut out that circle. However, it layered the character image on top after the cutout, which resulted in that cool "stepping out" look for the Soldier. So I did a good bit of editing to bring some monochromed detail back on the bottom and then cut out the ceiling to replace it with the logo. Darn cool I think. But if it's not, somebody had better tell me!
November 30, 2024 at 7:03 AM
cynyr.bsky.social
Lookit this big boi here. The Brute is a hard hitting monster of a close combat class. They can have extra melee attacks during their turn, steal opponents turns for more hitting, reset turn order starting with them / their team. Honestly a tad over powered. But you're gonna need it...
Brutes are tall, thickly muscled, bruisers. A Tale of Snakes and Rats makes no distinction between genders in terms of rules, so you can build your Brute however you like. This particular character has skull tattoos on his right bicep and a giant smashing hammer for smashing.
November 30, 2024 at 12:27 AM
cynyr.bsky.social
Another couple images from my TTRPG. The Augur again, this time with some nifty glitchies. The setting is a sort of eclectic merger of classic fantasy tropes and old timey tech. Swords and revolvers are equally viable weapon choices when magic is in play.
This glitch generated a rectangle behind the character, then overlaid him on top of it. The overlay image ignored all fully black pixels, so the back layers show through. It then did an angle shift right above his head. This glitch rendered a circle over the character then did multiple stepped wave shifts, along with color outlines on either side. It also appears that it threw a normal layer of the character on top of the super shifted corrupted one. Some vaporwave looking stuff here. The character image went through a full color shift to blue, then had outlines rendered on the bottom half. Plus another color shift on his chest, before the outline.
November 27, 2024 at 8:50 PM
cynyr.bsky.social
This here is an Augur. Another player class from my TTRPG. Augurs can see magical hazes and fields, spell energy, spirits of the dead, and parallel realities. They're spellcasters with access to spells involving portals and control of undead spirits.
The Augur character class is someone who was born with their abilities. They are an intrinsic spellcaster rather than spoken magic user. They have access to a rather unique ability that enables them to never fail a spellcasting roll, no matter how poorly they roll. They'll just cast a random spell instead of what they were aiming for. This character is wearing a nonstandard mask for the region he lives in, as it doesn't have his name on it. He also has a tattoo on his left arm that I painstakingly translated into their language and edited onto the character's skin image for the 3D model, and then posed in such a way that it's not even visible. Grade A planning there.
November 27, 2024 at 2:16 PM
cynyr.bsky.social
How does someone with no art skill (or money to hire an artist) make art for a TTRPG? Well if someone can 3D model (okayish) and program, they can model an okayish image and then write a program that generates visual glitches to make the images look cooler!
This image depicts a character class for my game called an Archeomage. I ran the base image through my glitch generator, which chooses from a random set of effects. This image also had a building in the background, which I ultimately did not use. This image depicts a character class for my game called an Archeomage. I ran the base image through my glitch generator, which chooses from a random set of effects. This image has a section of the original base image in the background with some glitches, while the top layer was fully color shifted to red. This image depicts a character class for my game called an Archeomage. I ran the base image through my glitch generator, which chooses from a random set of effects. This image retained most of the original image, but shifted part of it to the left and added some outlines. It also added a circle over the original image with was also shifted and outlined.
November 26, 2024 at 11:41 PM
cynyr.bsky.social
New Bluesky account! And we'll be starting with cool images from the TTRPG I made called A Tale of Snakes and Rats.

Archeomages are people who have formed bonds with magical devices. Anybody can use a magical device, but Archeomages can modify them and never experience backfires.
November 26, 2024 at 6:53 PM