The Marshmallow Ranch Gazette (Patreon)

Howdy Patrons!

It feels strange to be beginning the second half of the year already, but here we are! The hesitant warmth of spring has given way to the full-throated heat of summer, which means barbecues, wearing shorts as often as possible, and room fans -- at least here in California! If you're one of those folks blessed with central air and heating, consider yourself lucky. Though Silicon Valley has its charms, that particular innovation is as rare as a full-sized kitchen out here.

This week we'll see part 15 of "The Cult of Maximus" on Friday, July 8th; I don't want to spoil too much for those of you who haven't read previous parts yet, but we'll be learning a bit more about Tom's newest acquaintances as well as whether or not Tom will really accept their invitation to join the group. Very exciting times, I'm sure!

One of the challenges that I've taken on for myself with "The Cult of Maximus" is trying to describe size and proportions of characters without necessarily relying on numbers. I know that this can be a bit of a divisive issues with macro writers, but I prefer having exact measurements -- it really enhances the visualization for me. I've spent many moments looking at bridges, or the height restrictions in parking garages and drive-thru windows, so I have a fairly good idea of what 8 or 15 feet is in real life. Imagining someone about that tall, having to duck under bridges, is one of my favorite pastimes.

But at the same time, describing a character by their height or weight doesn't really give most people a good idea of just how big or heavy that is. So a lot of the descriptive work has to go into how these characters affect an environment they're oversized and overpowered for -- and that's actually been pretty fun to think up in its own way. I'm not sure how well or consistently I'm putting across the size of these characters, but it's something I'll definitely be working on in future installments.

Do you folks prefer specific measurements as part of the description for your giants, or would you rather have everything be...nebulous and/or relational? Let me know!

Elsewhere at the Ranch, I'm working on the Pathfinder game I'm running. This particular chronicle has been on hiatus for quite some time now, mostly because I had written myself into a corner mechanics-wise and needed to figure out what to do about that. I've checked in with my players, and I'm in the process of revamping the PCs and buttoning down the over-arching plot of the game; the PCs are around level 10 now, so it's about time to start building things up for the end-game. I'm hoping that if I get enough work done now, it'll make things fall into place that much more easily later on. But we'll see!

That's all for this edition of the Gazette; see you buckaroos on Friday!