Flute(owar)

Go on then. One more.

The inspiration should be obvious, but in case it's not. That said, I first saw the image in a different context.

#bards #KelvinDrawsThings

Hold On to Your Potatoes

This is your semi-regular reminder that Temple of Doom is the best one.

#TempleOfDoomIsTheBestOne

Drums (Little Bit of)

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Bagpipes (of DOOM)

Self-explanatory.

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Triangle

An attempt to do a picture in the style of Amos Orion Sterns, who did all the class pictures in the LotFP rulebook. Partially successful. Ish.

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I Like Second-Stage-Randomness

There's probably a proper name for this family of mechanics but what I mean by second-stage-randomness is taking a base mechanic that is stable and knowable, and then spicing it up with a layer of random generation. Some examples:

Characters: Everyone knows what a Fighter is, how they work, and what sort of things they can do. But then we modify the Fighter by allowing some randomness in, so then two Fighters may look and act in different ways. Dragon Age and Shadowdark both do this with dice rolls to determine what abilities characters get, from class-specific tables, and I've tinkered with a similar idea myself.

Monsters: The room contains 1d12 orcish Morris dancers! But what if we can roll 1d8 to determine exactly what sort of orcish Morris dancers they are? 13th Age does something like this with its dragons, and there's a similar sort of idea here at I Cast Light! You don't want anything too complicated gumming up play at the table, just a simple modification to the standard monster to stop them becoming too predictable.

(If you're playing a Warhammer-style setting with true Chaos at work you could really lean into this with expanded tables for Chaotic creatures. Maybe even a d1000 table...)

Locations: I've been watching -- but not playing, I don't have the reflexes or time for that -- quite a bit of Nightreign the new Elden Ring spinoff. The game randomly generates some of its content, such as monster placement and type, so that while experienced players will get to know the general shape of the game, there is still some potential for surprises; you may know that it's one of six bosses over in that grove of trees, but which of the six you won't know until you get there. One other thing the game does is reshape the map with a special location that's randomly drawn from a pool; it could be a mysterious city, a snowy mountain, or a volcanic chasm. Players don't know which it will be -- if any; I think there's also a chance of none appearing and the map being "normal" -- until they arrive on the island.

It feels like there should be a way to do something similar in a tabletop role-playing game, although I haven't worked out how yet. You don't necessarily want randomly changing locations on your world map, unless you're using some sort of "chaos zone".

What I like about this sort of mechanic is that while randomly rolling everything can make a game feel arbitrary and meaningless, this gives a stable base but also accommodates an exciting layer of unpredictability. For me it's the best of both worlds, and you can even further adjust it by using bell curve probabilities to make things a bit more predictable.

But not too predictable, eh?

Recorder

Is the recorder the basic instrument taught in schools around the world, or is that just the UK?

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Cymbals

KTANG!

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Buy My Stuff! If You Want!

If you want to support my "creative" endeavours you can do so here!

ART AND WRITING COMMISSIONS | ROLE-PLAYING GAMES | MERCH

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Art and Writing Commissions:

A full page piece of art like this will cost £50 (GBP):

Larger or more complicated pictures, or with extra processing such as colouring or lettering, will likely cost more. Smaller or simpler pieces will of course cost less. Contact me for details.

(I do sometimes offer the original art for sale. Again the price will vary depending on the status of the original piece, so contact me for specifics.)

You can see (many) more examples of my art here.

I also write (see below)! I don't have a specific page or word rate for writing, but I'm always happy to discuss projects and can give you a quote based on the scope of the work. Let me know!

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Role-Playing Games:

Adventure Anthology: Blood: I didn't write this compilation of classic Lamentations of the Flame Princess adventures, but I did draw over 250 new pictures for it! [pdf] [dead tree - Europe] [dead tree - North America]

BEE-WARE!: Non-hostile werewolves just want to be left alone to run their brewing business, except they are werebees. Possibly the highest/worst pun density of all of my books. For Lamentations of the Flame Princess and similar old-school role-playing games. [pdf] [dead tree - Europe] [dead tree - North America]

The Curious Conundrum of the Conflagrated Condottiero: My attempt to emulate a trashy 80's slasher film in the role-playing game format. For Lamentations of the Flame Princess and similar old-school role-playing games. [pdf] [dead tree - Europe] [dead tree - North America]

The Expiration of Barrington Peake: A (sort of) one page (sort of) dungeon. Pay what you want! [pdf] [dead tree - Europe] [dead tree - North America]

Fish F**kers: Fish people and the awful humans that exploit them. Doing my bit to undo Lovecraft's icky legacy. For Lamentations of the Flame Princess and similar old-school role-playing games. [pdf] [dead tree - Europe] [dead tree - North America]

Green Messiah: The Colour Out of Space, except it's also Superman's origin, plus a bit of Swamp Thing and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. For Lamentations of the Flame Princess and similar old-school role-playing games. [pdf] [dead tree - Europe] [dead tree - North America]

Magic Eater: I tried to write an adventure about taking on a mundane gang of bandits, except I added a weird cult and a superpowered glutton. For Lamentations of the Flame Princess and similar old-school role-playing games. [pdf] [dead tree - Europe] [dead tree - North America]

Midvinter: It's, um, mid winter in seventeenth century Sweden, and the players are invited to a special celebration. Vaguely inspired by the film Midsommar, but not a lot like it, because I hadn't seen it at the time. For Lamentations of the Flame Princess and similar old-school role-playing games. [pdf] [dead tree - Europe] [dead tree - North America]

More Than Meets the Eye: The players stumble into a conflict between rival factions of mimics. A very short adventure for Lamentations of the Flame Princess and similar old-school role-playing games. [pdf] [dead tree - Europe] [dead tree - North America]

The Seed: Psychic Doomsday Cultists Semi-Accidentally Summoned an Alien Machine That Is Eating the World and Shitting Out a New One! As "featured" in The New Yorker, my contribution to the Manifestus Omnivorous project. More or less systemless, but easy enough to run with the role-playing game of your choice. [pdf]

Strict Time Records Must Be Kept: The player-characters are poisoned and dropped into a house full of tricks and traps to try and find the antidote before they die a messy death. Zero attempt at realism, maximum effort at fun. For Lamentations of the Flame Princess and similar old-school role-playing games. [pdf] [dead tree - Europe] [dead tree - North America]

Terror in the Streets: You can't do murder mystery adventures in D&D, apparently! Well, no one told me. Children are going missing in Paris in 1630; can your players solve the mystery against a backdrop of political and religious unrest, and the machinations of Cardinal Richelieu? For Lamentations of the Flame Princess and similar old-school role-playing games. [pdf] [dead tree - Europe] [dead tree - North America]

BIG Terror in the Streets: As above, but in a big cardboard box with a map, handouts, paper miniatures, a special d6, and a supplementary book of adventures, Huguenauts and Other Distractions. For Lamentations of the Flame Princess and similar old-school role-playing games. [pdf - Huguenauts] [box - Europe] [box - North America]

Winnie-the-Shit: A blatant cash-in on the source material's entry into the public domain, mashed up with Animal Farm -- not that one -- and The Island of Doctor Moreau for a mini wilderness crawl. For Lamentations of the Flame Princess and similar old-school role-playing games. [pdf] [dead tree - Europe] [dead tree - North America]

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Merch:

I have a selection of clothes, stickers, and the like for sale at both RedBubble and Threadless. I think I get a tiny bit more of the proceeds from the Threadless stuff, but there is a wider variety of items at RedBubble. The choice is yours!

Trombone

Doot!

#bards #KelvinDrawsThings

Alphorn

I drew another bard!

I feel like I'm getting closer to what I see in my mind's eye with this one. Not quite, but getting there. #bards #KelvinDrawsThings

Lute

I drew a bard!

I'm still (re)finding my feet, and there are some old bad habits in there, but I'm enjoying drawing again. #bards #KelvinDrawsThings

4000ad

I've been looking through my 2000ad collection* and I thought I'd highlight this one: Prog 2000, released in December 1999 as a double celebration; a big end-of-year special, and a semi-surprised "Crikey!" that 2000ad lasted up to, well, 2000AD, when pretty much every other British comic -- aside from stuff like The Beano or Commando that will likely survive the heat death of the universe -- had folded years before.

This is more properly Prog 1173.5 -- the "real" Prog 2000 would come in 2016 -- but given the date of publication, I can understand why they would jump the gun. This started** a tradition of big end-of-year specials that were numbered by year until 2016 when they switched to the weekly numbering, so there were also two 2001s, two 2002s, and so on.

Still with me?

I don't get many of the weekly issues these days but I always pick up the big end-of-year specials, and I think this first one is one of the best. As a look back at the glory days of the comic, they managed to bring back some big name artists who had long before departed for the US comics industry. There's a cover from Brian Bolland -- who apparently "enthusiastically agreed" -- Dave Gibbons coming back to draw a Rogue Trooper -- sort of -- story, Kevin O'Neill returning for the final episode of the batshit insane Nemesis the Warlock, and Mike McMahon and Cam Kennedy on the two Judge Dredd stories.

Aside from the "old" superstars, you've got incredible detailed black and white art from Kev Walker on ABC Warriors, the underrated Simon Fraser on Nikolai Dante, the genius Carlos Ezquerra on Strontium Dog, glorious painting from Greg Staples on Sláine and Simon Davis on Sinister Dexter, and Mark Harrison's impossible*** paint/digital hybrid art on Glimmer Rats.

Not every story is good, as such, but it all looks amazing, and is probably the most consistently good-looking of the specials.

Here, have a look:

Mike McMahon:

Dave Gibbons:

Kev Walker. Good gosh, look at it:

Simon Fraser. Most of this story is a sex scene, and I try to keep this blog relatively family friendly, so you get crying in the rain instead:

Carlos Ezquerra, experimenting with some slightly dodgy 1999 computer effects:

Greg Staples. This is a weekly comic, remember:

Simon Davis, ditto:

Kevin O'Neill, the only person to have his entire art style banned by DC Comics. Their loss:

Mark Harrison, the same one who drew "The Travellers" in White Dwarf, engaging in some sort of sorcery:

Cam Kennedy:

Not bad for £3.95 Earth money!

*(It's not much of a collection; a few issues from when I was reading the weekly comic, and every end-of-year special since 2000.)

**(There had been the traditional British Christmas annuals -- different to US comic annuals -- but those stopped in the 1990s... except they did an annual in 2025, in addition to the special, just to confuse matters.)

***(I can't work out how he did it in 1999, anyway.)

Most Wanted

If anyone out there has unwanted copies of any of these books, I am willing to pay a fair -- as in, not absurdly inflated collector numbers -- price for them. Let me know!

The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill and... Well That's It, Actually

I walked up a hill yesterday.

#MayThe4thBeWithYou

Happy Star Wars Day everyone!

#MayThe4thBeWithYou

Ed Balls

Ed Balls

#EdBallsDay

Who Lives In a House Like This?

Does new Doctor Who companion Belinda Chandra live in old Doctor Who companion Donna Noble's house? It certainly looks like it!

This is Donna's house from 2023's "The Star Beast":

This is Belinda's house from 2025's "The Robot Revolution":

So no, it's not the same house. I've seen some fans speculating that it's the same set, redressed, which is possible.

It does have a very similar layout though, right down to the same "alien back door".