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Last year PingosHusband, after noodling around Exalted (2nd edition) and World of Darkness rulebooks (Vampire the Masquerade 2nd edition, Werewolf the Apocalypse, Mage the Ascension, etc.), announced that he'd like to run an Exalted game set in the World of Darkness. We, his friends and loved ones, said “What, are you crazy? Have we not long joked about how unplayable and internally inconsistent the World of Darkness is; how its timeline makes no sense and its rules and worldbuilding are buried and often mutually contradictory; how foolish and suicidally incurious the various groups are regarding each other; and how so many of its many tragic angsty world-destroying problems could be solved if only each isolated group got its head out of its backside and actually talked to one of the others?” He said, “Hear me out,” and since we have long experience of his keen ability to run entertaining campaigns, we heard him out. See, PingosHusband has a knack rather like Alan Moore's ability to take unpromising old third rate comic book series and turn them into fascinating multifaceted mythic dynamos, or Neil Gaiman's ability to mine world mythology to create astounding and consistent and multilayered worlds, or James Burke or Kenneth Hite’s ability to take fascinating historical and technological developments and spin them into stories of human interconnectivity or disturbingly deep illuminati conspiracies for game use, respectively. More than once PingosHusband has taken historical oddments, played “What happens if this is taken seriously and assumed to make sense somehow?” and produced some wonderful story or game setting or world. (One of them won awards.) So apparently he did this with Exalted and World of Darkness, getting under the hood, finding the core of what worked and what didn’t, seeing what could be connected to what else and what made sense, what was clearly absurd, what needed tweaking, what could be fun, what couldn’t be possible, why things happened, and who could have done them. He looked keenly at characters, places and situations, saw potential for fun in a campaign, wrote up background, and presented us with an introductory players’ handout. I’ll get to particulars later. The simple version is that the world looks basically like the World of Darkness, except that all of a sudden a tiny number of people have Exalted with memories of the world of Exalted (“Creation”) and powers derived from it. There are five to begin with (the PCs), although more will come soon enough. I have to say, this game has so far been tremendous fun. Our group has been playing together for over thirty years and I have rarely seen all of us this excited about a game. Our teenage / adult children are also involved and we have been having vivid family conversations over meals about history, strategy, and characters. I’ve (of course) been painting up miniatures for the game. I’m having a lot of fun with these too. I’ll put links to Show Off threads when I have them up.

Digging around in the mini zoo and unearthed this pack. Painted them a while back. I thought I did a pretty awesome paint job back in the day, but now I kind of want to repaint them. Must... Resist...Urge... To...Repaint... (Too many unpainted minis in the queue to go back and redo painted ones!)

These are Reaper's 02830: Wolf Pack, sculpted by Geoff Valley. They are mounted on one-inch fender washers. I painted them for versatility, which is why there is a variety of color and base types. Detailed WIP thread here.

There's a French wargame called "Alkemy" which has a faction of pseudo-Egyptian cat-people called the Khaliman Republic (or République Khalimane in the original). A few years back I snagged a starter set of 5 resin figures I found on clearance because, well, cat people. Currently I am involved in an elaborate and fascinating campaign combining White Wolf's World of Darkness (the one in Vampire the Masquerade second edition and Werewolf the Apocalypse) with its "Exalted" game, second edition (which was originally sold as the prehistory of the World of Darkness, although they backed away from that pretty fast). This character is a PC for that game. The person is a lycanthrope, or rather a feline therianthrope. He has a human form, but I painted up the cat man because it's more fun. This is the first small-scale non-terrain resin I've ever assembled or painted. It was a little fiddly and I was worried about its fragility. There are a few places with what is probably flash that I didn't have the courage to try to slice off. Comments welcome. WIP thread here.

This is another of the PCs for an enjoyable mashup of White Wolf's World of Darkness (Vampire the Masquerade, second edition, Werewolf the APocalypse etc.) and Exalted (second edition). This one is an androgynous, or perhaps genderfluid would be a better description, Alchemical, a sort of human-cyborg prototype Exalted made by Autochthon, architect of the world. The Adamant caste are sort of the policemen-secret agent-ninjas of the Alchemicals, making sure society runs smoothly in their mechanized cities. This one is sort of lost, as the Creation of Exalted has morphed into the World of Darkness and Autochthon is nowhere to be found, although things with his name which are not him, echoes perhaps, linger. Anyhow, that's all backstory. The figure is Patrick Keith's enigmatic Numemera Jack, Reaper 62102. There is a WIP thread here.

I speed-painted these over two afternoons to be a party of NPC adventurers for an eclectic mash-up of Exalted and the World of Darkness. They are 77322, Kassandra of the Blade (sculpted by Werner Klocke); 77405, Aeris, Female Elf Ranger (sculpted by Julie Guthrie); as-yet unnumbered Mythos figures based on 50032: Jake Ryan, Hero Explorer (sculpted by Bobby Jackson) and the Victorian Lord from the set 50326: Victorian Lord & Dame (sculpted by Bob Ridolfi); and 77409, Flara, Elf Heroine (sculpted by Werner Klocke). WIP thread here.

This started out as a series of posts in the Randomness thread as I was noodling about with ideas. But things in Randomness get lost fast, and people seemed interested. So here is how I developed a pen and ink drawing from a preliminary sketch to (hopefully - not quite there yet) a finished drawing. I'm currently involved in a game set in the World of Darkness combined with Exalted. My PC is a (former) vampire with a certain amount of mental baggage. This drawing started as a tiny doodle in my sketchbook about The Beast Within, a major leitmotif in White Wolf's vampire games, as seen in the character's House of Memory (a sort of mental structuring invented in the real world in classical times to help people remember awesome amounts of stuff). The original sketch was about 4 by 8 cm. The text (if anyone is interested) is "... I could see what of my character was now imposed. Alien ways --" "You weren't frightened?" "They are only memories -- Diagnoses, if you will, of the actual thoughts. They cannot harm me."

This is a figure from the Goth set from the game "Wild in the Streets" by Slow Death Games. Thanks to FishNJeeps for directing me to them when I needed miniatures of modern people in goth-punk wear for a World of Darkness game. I painted up the figure as a vampire. It didn't originally have any facial hair; that's all painted on. There isn't a WIP thread. So as a quick note, although I have seen people able to do wonderfully subtle and menacing vampires who still look like vampires, I find that unless I paint mine in stark black and white they look like regular people.

This figure is from a set of fun modern street fighters from the game "Wild in the Streets" by Slow Death Games. (Many thanks to FishNJeeps for pointing them out to me at Adepticon.) This figure is from the "Murder Cult Girls Gang" (I had to remove a large knife from her right hand). I'm currently involved with a campaign of "Exalted" (2nd edition) set in the World of Darkness ("Vampire the Masquerade" (2nd edition), "Werewolf the Apocalypse" etc. etc.). One of the PCs is (and I'm sure this will sound like glossolalia) a member of a South Korean girl pop group who Exalted as a Sidereal of the Maiden of Serenity (Venus). She dresses fashionably, mostly in the color blue (the five Maidens have planets and colors associated with them and I swear they are totally cribbed from "Sailor Moon"). Her hair is dyed bright pink; her eyes are preternaturally blue with white pupils; and she has a "caste mark" of the sign of Venus (a.k.a. the symbol for "female") in glowing blue on her forehead (I wasn't able to paint that clearly; there's just a little interference blue under her bangs). The character has a hand-sized green spider familiar named Jadie. Since she had a slightly blobby hand (from removing an unwanted knife from the figure), I painted it up to look like a spider. There is a WIP thread here.

This is another of the PCs for the "Exalted" campaign set in White Wolf's World of Darkness which I'm currently involved in. This character was a medieval Persian vampire who reverted to human when she Exalted as a Zenith caste Solar. Among other things, she has a sword which shines with the light of the Sun. The figure is from Hasslefree, HFA004 "Kat", sculpted by Kev White. There's a WIP thread here. The lighting effect changes a lot at different angles so I included lots of pictures.

This is another PC for the campaign of "Exalted" set in White Wolf's World of Darkness that I am involved in. The character is a Scottish mage from the Sons of Ether who is essentially a therapist for would-be reformed vampires and werewolves. At the beginning of the game he Exalted as a Twilight-caste Solar. (If this means nothing to you don't worry about it.) The figure is Julie Guthrie's delightful "Benedict Baker", a highly versatile gentleman. There's a WIP thread here.

This is a PC for a game of Exalted mashed up with the World of Darkness. The GM is pretty inventive and has found ways to make it work that have all the players pretty interested. For complex reasons (which I do think I will get into somewhere, because this is one fun game), in the modern world a trickle of old-style Exalts have been popping up, which are the PCs. This character is a Persian ex-vampire who reverted to human when the Exaltation hit her. She has a lot of issues. The figure is Hasslefree's HFA004, "Kat". She's dressed a little more wildly than the character, who was mostly a businesswoman and philanthropist, but the sword is about accurate. It's a manifestation of the sun itself. The mini requires some firm pinning of the arms and I added some chunks of pewter under her base to help keep her from toppling over. Here she is primed and washed with Burnt Umber (I left the umber off her sword so that it would have a more intense solar "glow" later on).

Don't know how much interest this one will stir up around here, but I LOVED the original game. Onyx Path, the spiritual successor to White Wolf and licensee of the White Wolf line of games is kickstarting a 20th anniversary edition of Wraith: the Oblivion. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/200664283/deluxe-wraith-the-oblivion-20th-anniversary-editio

Two Reaper Bones I painted recently for gaming. They're just tabletop jobs, but they were fun to paint! This one has an insert base for when the D&D character is enlarged.