The Draw #15: Randy Wolfmeyer

A running series for the TAPAS blog. I wrote down names on little slips of paper, the names of everyone currently in the TAPAS Facebook group and Discord server, 41 people altogether, and will be drawing one name every so often to write about them and their history with the group.

Let's see... like a few others, I think the first time I met Randy Wolfmeyer was on Is He Dead?, having become acquainted with his wife Gretchen in the previous production I was in, She Loves Me.

From there, I think the time he properly joined TAPAS was in discussion of the construction of the TAPAS roleplaying game, thoughts catalogued in the many blog posts you can find in the latter half of 2020, trying to piece together the world and system. I wasn't interested at first in using his system, figuring ta the time that it would use the 5th Edition Open Game License, but I eventually changed my mind and wanted to do something new.

Randy's system is derived from Mistrunner, a system he assisted in creating some time ago, and from there we've shared thoughts on its basic design intent, which led me to name the system, or at least the multiverse of fantasy stories I've been working on, AE:GIS - an "adaptive engine" for "gaming, interactivity, and simulation". One of the pillars was storytelling, not interactivity, but, you know, this way it spells something. There are other indie RPGs called Aegis, more than one, hence the stylization.

Somewhere amid the RPG talk, Randy played Uncle Gary in Better Yet? and afterward became the voice of Lambert in Irregular Fantasy! - he certainly knows the gaming material IRF is based on, and apparently he even read Irregular Webcomic! back in the day.

All the while, he's hard at work in the local theatre community, providing not only performances - like Lefou in Beauty and the Beast - but doing a lot of effects work, from the magical rose in that show, to Smaug in The Hobbit, building and operating an amazing massive puppet. Per my own request, I got to operate the mouth while I performed the dialogue; I figured that'd make for the best performance all around, if I was doing the voice and the mouth, and indeed Randy got a lot of compliments that whoever was operating the mouth in time to the dialogue knew what they were doing. It was me! And after the show, he kept the puppet intact a little while longer to use as a Halloween decoration.

In conclusion... I'm really unsure about TAPAS's future, but I do hope there's more Lambert and more gaming/world development.

The Draw #14: Jessie Crockett

A running series for the TAPAS blog. I wrote down names on little slips of paper, the names of everyone currently in the TAPAS Facebook group and Discord server, 41 people altogether, and will be drawing one name every so often to write about them and their history with the group.

Jessie Crockett's entry into the group is a favorite story. It was early to mid 2020 when I opened up auditions for the main characters of Keys & Kingdoms: The Choices. That was a dark time, of course, and I didn't get many auditions. But at the last possible minute, Jessie submitted an audition for Cristela, the character whose vibe had been the hardest to nail down, and, well, completely nailed it!

And, oh, about two years later we finally assembled the whole cast to record the pilot. Got the job done! And Jessie did it while taking care of her kids and their school functions and dealing with her own health - very much has my respect and admiration.

I hate to cut to my own angst at the end of each of these, but I do regret not having really achieved these projects yet. I've pondered giving up a lot over the past year or so. But I'm going to make them happen.

The Draw #13: Aaron Joseph Schmitt

A running series for the TAPAS blog. I wrote down names on little slips of paper, the names of everyone currently in the TAPAS Facebook group and Discord server, 41 people altogether, and will be drawing one name every so often to write about them and their history with the group.

Agh, okay, I'm really, really trying to make these more regular. It's another big one here, AJ Schmitt.

We met in 2018, in a production of Mark Twain's Is He Dead? - I auditioned for that show very last-minute, having found myself without anything else to do. We both had fun in the audition doing all the funny accents the show required; eventually he was cast as the German guy, and me as the Chicagoan guy.

It was fortuitous that we happened to be there and meet, because it was Aaron who enabled the creation of the first TAPAS project, recording sound sets of the Irregular Webcomic! characters. Not only did he have a little homemade sound booth in his place, but he had just the right personality to play Dwalin, one character I hadn't figured out how to cast.

We recorded those characters, got a few guests into his booth, and I had to leave Quincy before the project was entirely finished, but I worked to come back, eventually doing so in late 2020, having by this point been inspired to create an entire Irregular Webcomic! adaptation. After creating Better Yet?, we got Aaron into the studio to be Dwalin again.

And... I don't remember how it happened, but at some point me and Aaron and Mason became an inseparable trio, meeting up multiple times every week, usually to talk about TAPAS stuff but sometimes just to hang out and be supportive. Kind of all we've been doing for a few years now. Ahh... I'm determined to do a few more of these but I fear it may just depress me. I feel like TAPAS has died and I'm letting all these people down.

Due by Feb

I had a realization last month while sort of zoning out at work that, if the pace could keep going, a whole bunch of TAPAS stuff we're working on would all converge in February. So I prepared myself to have eight things finished by then! Then I realized, hm, nope, don't have the funding to just do all of those things at once, that plan needed revising. I thought I ought to blog about both versions of that plan just for the record.

Here are the original eight plans, told in a bit more detail than how I discussed them with insiders in our Facebook and Discord group.

1) Commissioning artwork of the main Keys & Kingdoms peoples. That's been going on and can be seen in the previous blog post: two of each species with some simple profiles on each. I'm currently moving on to the next stage of that, producing 4-6 more samples of each species and putting together videos on them, including talking about how I'd adapt their traits to D&D rules. One or two of those videos every month... by February I'll at least have most of them, so that's still going on mostly as originally planned.

2) Rehauling the character design system. Stacy is moving on to other things, and I think with that in mind, with the singular style of character design and how well we had adapted to it... that can't be replicated. I need a new artist and an entirely new, much simpler, character design system, with less focus on perfection. But I think I'm going to save that for a little bit later... say, after the K&K pilot. Seems like a natural thing to use the current designs for the pilot and update them later. I want to find a local artist who's easy to communicate with, and I'm already working on flyers I can hang up in places.

3) Consolidating and organizing all my story data so I can get the team together to plan things out. That's going pretty well, making strides every week... I was actually kind of nervous, but now I remember, yeah, not due until February. I think I can easily finish all of that consolidation by February. And we'll start writing then then, starting by planning out every season into the proper amount of episodes with proper storylines, and then from there writing every episode. In true fanfic style, we'll post chapters as soon as they're written. Guess that'll start in February!

4) The boys and I are out to make some voice-acting demos so we can pick up some freelance work! We just need another reliable local studio/engineer... for that and all future projects. Let's see... yup, that's coming right up on our revised schedule. We'll get to that very soon.

5) The first Keys & Kingdoms teaser. I think we can finish it by February, but I'm not out to release it yet by that point, because from the moment it releases we must begin running the fundraiser and working on the pilot! So, when it's done... that's when we'll prep the fundraiser. This one I've prioritized strongly, because we held a fundraiser for the teaser some time ago. It's about time we actually use that money.

6) Storyboards. Those to be completed by February: the Halfling Trailer, so we can start really working on it afterward. And both pilots, both Irregular Fantasy and Keys & Kingdoms. Having them all boarded so we can proceed from there. I'm making this priority number two in the revised version, number one being the teaser. Doing it now-ish will mean we have lots of foundation set by February -- hopefully we can get our production managers back to work out what happens next.

7) Mason is hard at work on writing I'm Telling Mom!, his next stage project. He's certain to have a workable draft well before February... he's determined to have it done as a staged reading, but I'm of the opinion that that's not a real project and he should do it as an audio play the same as Better Yet?, but, it's not up to me.

8) Playing some D&D... this proved quite impossible. I don't have time to prepare sessions, and I'm completely incapable of improvisation. But I still hope to gather some people together once a month or so to prepare "chapters" of this story, which has come to be called Keys & Kingdoms: Tales within Tales. Just something new set in this world; a nice and easy side project.

So... actually, yeah, there's no need to explain my revised version, it's... well, seemingly all of it except for #2 is still being done right now to be concluded around February! Very nice. I've divided all tasks into four segments: the stuff I do on my own during the week, stuff I do with the online team, stuff with the local team, and stuff on my own during the weekend. It's going okay.

Peoples of Keys & Kingdoms

Posting these everywhere -- Where is everywhere, you ask? Well, take a look at this: https://linktr.ee/tapasandstuff

Check the Linktree, if there's anyplace there where you have a profile but do not yet follow TAPAS, be sure to give us a follow.

So, might as well feature this here on the blog as well: I've commissioned these examples of all ten core races of the Keys & Kingdoms setting; a single pair of each, then we'll see more of them as I continue commissioning! I'll be making videos on their more specific stats as I go.

Art by Maria (@mariavyasene)

If we were rolling up a game of Keys & Kingdoms, what would you pick? ;)

Cast of Characters: Irregular Fantasy! Part 13

The conclusion of this series; we'll be introducing all of the currently-planned characters in TAPAS's upcoming series Irregular Fantasy!, based on David Morgan-Mar's webcomic Irregular Webcomic! In short, it's a typical RPG adventure set in a typical fantasy world, taking the silly atmosphere of the comic and making it our own.

Spoiler warning: While this presentation will try to avoid any details about backgrounds, plotlines, or relationships in order to focus entirely on the characters and not give away the story, some details that might be considered spoilers will inevitably leak through now and then.

It's our final chapter of this series, where we meet characters encountered in a later-ish story arc taking place in elven lands. And then... miscellaneous.

These character concepts were drawn by me and therefore aren't very good. Linework and color by Naty Jenfjord.

Click on the images to zoom in and read the descriptions.

And that's it for this Irregular Fantasy! series. As of this posting, we've put out the pilot in literary prologue form, and from there we're working on more of that to get the story out of our system while we continue the slow process of creating the motion comic.

The Draw #12: Jack Stegman

A running series for the TAPAS blog. I wrote down names on little slips of paper, the names of everyone currently in the TAPAS Facebook group and Discord server, 41 people altogether, and will be drawing one name every so often to write about them and their history with the group.

Today we're going with one of the OG members of the TAPAS team, Jack Stegman.

One of my oldest friends, I met Jack at Red Rocks Community College. My icebreaker was that I was putting together a fandub of The Order of the Stick - that really never panned out, but I think I might look into TAPAS doing that once the whole series is over... it's still going, it's a 20-year-old D&D stick figure comic at this point, but it's definitely in its final story arc.

Jack was eventually invited into the chat room where I met all my DeviantArt buddies who eventually became Team Salmon, the core crew of TAPAS and Stuff Productions. From there she was a big part of Whirlwind, our D&D campaign - I intend now to make the setting of that campaign the base setting of the AE:GIS game system, and for all the players to take part in retelling the story. Just as a story, we don't have time to campaign it, but we will be playing some semi-canon games to help us build the settings, starting soon in the Keys & Kingdoms universe...

Like Ziya in the previous entry, Jack's had a prominent place in some of my Jackbox Party Pack videos - oh, and a reaction to Killer Bean Forever that we filmed four years ago that I never got around to editing, I really ought to do that sometime...

In short, Jack's not a creative type as much as most of my people, but she is... forever one of my people.

The Draw #11: Ziya Herman

A running series for the TAPAS blog. I wrote down names on little slips of paper, the names of everyone currently in the TAPAS Facebook group and Discord server, 41 people altogether, and will be drawing one name every so often to write about them and their history with the group.

Ugh, I've fallen behind on this. I fall behind on everything... it's really irritating. Anyway, today we're looking into Ziya, my oldest sister and a very quiet member of the TAPAS Discord group. I was almost 10 when Ziya was born, so this is someone I've spent a lot of time being a caretaker for, and then every year getting more and more equal, and now we're both adults. Which is weird to think about. Not that she's in her 20s now, it suits her, it's weird that I'm in my 30s. That doesn't suit me at all.

From what I've heard about her college experience, these days Ziya is into horticulture and Japanese studies. For TAPAS, I asked her to provide some concept art, and she did complete a piece for a background elf character but felt that it wasn't good enough... I thought it was perfectly fine, but respected her wishes and had Naty re-do the concept.

Honorable mention to our little sister Aramie, who's not on the official list of names to draw, but has participated in the group to a roughly equal extent as Ziya - Aramie finished her concept art piece, though, neither had time to do more. School stuff. And the concept art stage is all wrapped for now.

And of course they're both prominent voices in Keys & Kingdoms - we recorded the voices for the pilot, er, quite some time ago, a time measurable in years rather than months. Recently finished these character poses so I could finally put out this particular promo! Agh, this can be frustrating sometimes. I like making progress, but it's hard feeling like, if I had any ability to concentrate, the pilot would have been finished in 2020 and we'd be deep into the series by now. But that's probably not true. I'm probably doing the very best I can with the resources I have. We're getting there.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Ziya's contribution to my channel's Jackbox Party Pack gaming videos, always an MVP there, most memorably one particular Joke Boat punchline in our third anniversary special that left everyone else rolling on the floor. I'll always relish the sound of the collective crackup. We haven't done any such videos in quite some time, perhaps we'll jump back in someday.

All right, back in with these; I'll once again try to start doing them on a very regular basis.

Cast of Characters: Irregular Fantasy! Part 12

A continuation of this series; we'll be introducing all of the currently-planned characters in TAPAS's upcoming series Irregular Fantasy!, based on David Morgan-Mar's webcomic Irregular Webcomic! In short, it's a typical RPG adventure set in a typical fantasy world, taking the silly atmosphere of the comic and making it our own.

Spoiler warning: While this presentation will try to avoid any details about backgrounds, plotlines, or relationships in order to focus entirely on the characters and not give away the story, some details that might be considered spoilers will inevitably leak through now and then.

Doing something a little different here, we're tackling characters from another universe, for the Irregular Fantasy canon will indeed contain a multiverse, and as far as elements of that which will come into play in a plot-relevant fashion, none will be more important than those from the Cliffhangers universe.

These character concepts were drawn by me and therefore aren't very good. Linework and color by Naty Jenfjord.

Click on the images to zoom in and read the descriptions.

The Draw #10: Sidney Shackleton

A less-new series for the TAPAS blog at this point... I wrote down names on little slips of paper, the names of everyone currently in the TAPAS Facebook group and Discord server, 41 people altogether, and will be drawing one name every so often to write about them and their history with the group.

Sidney Shackleton is yet another team member I met on Spamalot -- he played the roles originated by Christian Borle, the various "seventh Python" roles: the historian, the minstrel, the dead body that claims it isn't, and the effeminate Prince Herbert. He really brought on the charm for the whole thing.

A few years later, we reunited on Is He Dead?, playing two of the protagonist's three quirky apprentices.

This is an image I've shared on the blog before... made the front page!

From there, the story's about the same as that of his wife Jen. He was Mordekai in the Icewind Dale soundsets, TAPAS's first project, but unlike Jen, I haven't really seen him since he had to drop out of that role.

I hope to get Sidney and Jen in for cameos in the Mordekai short -- shouldn't be too long that we're finishing up the song for that, but still no leads on a new place to record -- and bigger characters later on.

Cast of Characters: Irregular Fantasy! part 11

A continuation of this series; we'll be introducing all of the currently-planned characters in TAPAS's upcoming series Irregular Fantasy!, based on David Morgan-Mar's webcomic Irregular Webcomic! In short, it's a typical RPG adventure set in a typical fantasy world, taking the silly atmosphere of the comic and making it our own.

Spoiler warning: While this presentation will try to avoid any details about backgrounds, plotlines, or relationships in order to focus entirely on the characters and not give away the story, some details that might be considered spoilers will inevitably leak through now and then.

Here we meet a very special cast of characters encountered at a school of wizardry, followed by miscellaneous characters planned to also be encountered during the post-Ardaxar story arc.

These character concepts were drawn by me and therefore aren't very good. Linework and color by Naty Jenfjord.

Click on the images to zoom in and read the descriptions.

Cast of Characters: Irregular Fantasy! part 10

A continuation of this series; we'll be introducing all of the currently-planned characters in TAPAS's upcoming series Irregular Fantasy!, based on David Morgan-Mar's webcomic Irregular Webcomic! In short, it's a typical RPG adventure set in a typical fantasy world, taking the silly atmosphere of the comic and making it our own.

Spoiler warning: While this presentation will try to avoid any details about backgrounds, plotlines, or relationships in order to focus entirely on the characters and not give away the story, some details that might be considered spoilers will inevitably leak through now and then.

Here we meet a few other seafaring characters, first some island colony aristocracy, then the intrepid crew of the mercenary ship Legacy.

These character concepts were drawn by me and therefore aren't very good. Linework and color by Naty Jenfjord.

Click on the images to zoom in and read the descriptions.

The Draw #9: Brian LaGuardia

A new series for the TAPAS blog. I wrote down names on little slips of paper, the names of everyone currently in the TAPAS Facebook group and Discord server, 41 people altogether, and will be drawing one name every day to write about them and their history with the group.

Today we have Brian LaGuardia, I composer I recruited into TAPAS early in the team's life, in late 2018. Having gone through two composers for my Drizzt musical who met with me but then swiftly flaked out, I sought another and approached Silver Letomi, a musician I met at a party once back in Colorado, who did a lot of World of Warcraft-themed parody songs at the time and, merely weeks ago, did an epic cover of a Baldur's Gate III song. Letomi didn't think composing a musical was in her wheelhouse and has never been a member of TAPAS to date, but I hope to get her to sing something one day; at that time, she introduced me to Brian.

By early 2019, Brian had whipped up something for "We Got This", the first of the half of the songs in the show for which I had lyrics but no melody ideas. I was so delighted to finally have something composed that I never even considered telling a single soul, especially not Brian himself, that it wasn't at all what I was looking for, which is a huge flaw of mine as a director, early on I could hardly bear to tell anyone that they had made a mistake, and I've gotten a lot better at it over time, but sometimes I still get socially drained enough that I accept things that still aren't right, so, my directing still has some growth to do.

That was the end of his involvement with the Drizzt musical. He just didn't seem to have time to dive into the project a second time, and by the middle of that year, I was starting to prioritize a newer project, Keys & Kingdoms: The Choices, and by a huge stroke of luck, he had the time to give us the songs "Get It Done" and "Stacky's Ballad", and so with completed songs, we managed to storyboard that pilot. No complaints about those compositions, just my own lyric-writing. I've managed to fix the more awkward lyrical moments, and we have had the cast recordings of the songs for some time.

In 2020, I consulted Brian about whipping up songs for the Irregular Fantasy! trailers, something I was taking from the very top as I didn't even have lyric ideas yet. There, Brian had to call it and admit he simply didn't have time for TAPAS, he was deep in some real professional composing jobs and had to prioritize. I thanked him for his time and said I was sorry it wasn't working out, and he told me to quit being so nice about it; he saw the previous two years as a pretty big failure of professionalism on his part and was down on himself about it. It was sad to see.

So, he brought in a friend -- Robert Mullis, who we'll talk more about when his name comes out of my little bowl, initially intending to split duties with Robert, each of them assigned to three of the six songs, but that didn't last long and Brian had to duck out entirely. Now we're working just with Robert and whatever assistants he has at a given moment, and that's working out really well.

Robert remarked to me once, at a later date, that songwriting was never Brian's forte either, his deal is composing score, usually for video games. I have an appreciation for video game score, as a guy with a wandering mind who needs help concentrating. Video game background music has a rather steady quality, as it has to be designed to play in uninterrupted loops for as long as it needs to, not ending until you, the player, have moved on to the next scene. That makes it great for studying.

Naty and I were once gushing over the work of Jeremy Soule, pretty excited at the realization that one guy had scored all our favorite video games, but Brian quickly cut in and explained that Jeremy Soule is a well-documented asshole, so... typical, really. That was a bit deflating. But only for our desire to work with the guy, we'd still like to compose like him. Without his business practices, and while hoping he doesn't work again. That's how I handle good artists who are jerks.

Brian's main project that I'm aware of is Shujinkou; as I understand it, it's something of an action RPG that also teaches you Japanese. Brian showed us the Kickstarter some years ago, which updated last month, looks like they're beta-testing after five years of coding. And Brian is the composer! I'm excited to see what comes of the game's future.

So, yeah, big shout-out to the first TAPAS composer who actually did anything, who eventually introduced us to the first one who does anything regularly... I love music and want my projects to be heavy with it and I wish I had the capability of contributing some myself, because Robert was pretty flabbergasted to discover that his workflow was delightfully productive by our standards. As with the first entry with Chris, I'm trying not to be bitter and crap on the composers -- I'm not upset to have worked with composers who just had the ill luck to have taken on more than they could handle. I think in the end it's all worked out perfectly.

Cast of Characters: Irregular Fantasy! part 9

A continuation of this series; we'll be introducing all of the currently-planned characters in TAPAS's upcoming series Irregular Fantasy!, based on David Morgan-Mar's webcomic Irregular Webcomic! In short, it's a typical RPG adventure set in a typical fantasy world, taking the silly atmosphere of the comic and making it our own.

Spoiler warning: While this presentation will try to avoid any details about backgrounds, plotlines, or relationships in order to focus entirely on the characters and not give away the story, some details that might be considered spoilers will inevitably leak through now and then.

We start here with a few characters appearing in Ardaxar's country, and from there, we'll look into all of the Great Old Ones we intend to appear in the story.

These character concepts were drawn by me and therefore aren't very good. Linework and color by Naty Jenfjord.

Click on the images to zoom in and read the descriptions.