Tony Vornskyr is another wonderful creation from the Campaign podcast. Vornskyr are wolf-like creatures that have long tails with a poison stinger. Here’s my origami tribute:
And the diagrams:
No Thank You Evil – Origami Style
Reading No Thank You Evil made me feel like a kid again, and for good reason. It’s a tabletop RPG designed specifically to be kid friendly. It immediately put me in mind of using origami models as avatars for the player characters. Not necessarily in the sense of using maps and miniatures, but just to have something in front of them to see and touch.
That ended up being the precursor to many of the thoughts that have led up to beginning work on Paper Talisman, which I’ll cover later.
For now, it got me thinking about how to use origami models as props at the table. Traditional origami models (crane, frog, fish, etc) could all easily become characters in a world made of paper. Think Gumbo or Kubo (which is my JAM), only everything is made of paper. I started a write-up on a setting for a one shot game.
No Thank You Evil uses a pool of resources for your stats, and there are four of them, so what better way to represent that than an inverted cootie catcher / fortune teller? (Bonus points for the Castles and Crusades sourcebook I got at the raffle at AcadeCon in November!)
Since your players characters are traditional origami models, what sort of challenges would they face? That got the wheels turning in the usual punny directions…
- (Navy) SEALs
- An Emperor penguin
- A polar bear who tells awful jokes (wocka wocka)
- A trio of walruses named Coo, Kooka, and Choo
- An orca name Bill who says nothing in life is free
- etc
But the big idea I had for the villains was that the most terrifying thing a character might face in a world made of paper would be abominations… pieced together from the cut apart bodies of their friends. Dark, yeah?
So that’s where we get to the evil Lord Scissors, and his lieutenant, a Tape Sorcerer. And they’re the only humans anyone has ever heard of. They’re creating Frankenstein’s monster-esque chimeras using tape! I’ll admit that part of me is uncomfortable with how much this reinforces stereotypes about “real” origami being one uncut square sheet, but this was a first draft.
Anyway, I commissioned the awesome Quinn Wilson to draw up the two big bads, and here they are without further ado:
Ettin
Made a cute little two-headed giant for Ettin News, an advice column podcast run by an ettin!
Diagrams:
Origami Swallow
Listening to the Swallows of the South podcast got me in the mood to fold a bird. The challenge with a swallow is the forked tail, but I think it turned out rather nicely.
And the diagrams:
Pumpkin Jay
This is a little fan art for the All My Fantasy Children podcast, where they create bizarre, hilarious characters to populate your RPG settings based on listener prompts every week.
Pumpkin Jay is a sentient pumpkin… pretty spooky stuff!
Origami Wagon
It’s a wagon! Or a cart! Or… a squarish thing with some octagonal wheels!
This was a fun little experiment to see if I could do a wagon or cart that would fit in with a horse or fantasy miniatures or some such. In the end, I think I’d probably just go with a papercraft wagon (cutting and tape and whatnot) or a plastic toy wagon, but it was an interesting challenge.
Bariaur Ranger
This model was inspired by the Bariaur ranger Angela Craft played in the D&D 2nd Edition Planescape game run by Darcy L. Ross at AcadeCon 2016. She and my character got to go shopping for antifreeze together.
Diagrams:
Dent! Maybe my favorite character ever.
What do you get on the last night of AcadeCon when you combine an amazing group of players and Darcy L Ross at the helm? A fantastic game, that’s what. Dent is a little modron warrior who prefers to avoid using violence unless necessary. You see, he’s a bit depressed. If only he didn’t have a huge dent on one corner of his drab cube.
Z-95 Headhunter
When I got into a play-by-post game and one of the characters mentioned he had origami skills, I knew I had a source of new inspiration for origami models. I designed this Z-95 headhunter after they mentioned flying one. It turned out to be more difficult than I was anticipating. An X-wing is relatively simple with a frog base, but with the Z-95 you end up with extra paper that you have to use.
Doctor Who (Matt Smith Edition)
While Matt Smith is not in fact my favorite actor to play the doctor, sometimes these things happen and I couldn’t resist trying to fold the fez and the bow tie.
The notes below are VERY rough, but I’m hoping to come back to them and create real diagrams.
UPDATE 7/16/2017: The thirteenth doctor being announced gave me the final push I needed to refold and diagram the steps for this. Maybe I’ll revisit the theme and do a Jodie Whitaker version once we get a signature look.
The model:
The diagrams:
Notes:
