Character: Joanna Donnelley, blues-playin' Baptist psychometer

Joanna's the character I'm currently playing in my FTF gaming group's campaign, The Country of the Blind. We all have mild psychic abilities, and we're agents of a secret government conspiracy to study paranormal stuff. In the course of this, we came to the conclusion that the end of the world was about a year and a half away, and we started trying to do something about this... That pretty much brings the plot from 2002 to the present.

Ari's off scoring at a dance club
Madeline: "How come Ari gets to do all the fun stuff?"
Mike: "Because I designed Ari to be a reckless partier."
Madeline: "Whereas I just designed Joanna to not be suicidal. Arright, that makes sense."

That actually was the main idea I started with. My previous two campaign characters with that group ended their games suicidal, and it was time for a change. So I gave Joanna every advantage...

Most of all, I made her solidly Christian, one of those good decent Christian types, in creed a Southern Baptist. (This was also because I like to explore envelope areas with characters. And I'm so smug—I used Jack Chick tracts to research a RPG character! Ha-ha! [I had to make sure being a practicing psychic was ok. Apparently, yes; so long as you don't consort with spirits, you're good to go.])

( More about character design and how she's turned out (eh) )

Surrealist Gallery Online

I've always loved the art of René Magritte and M.C. Escher; I suppose the style is known as "surrealist", though I'm not sure. Art crit classes were among the few I didn't try out in college. Both Magritte and Escher do art that's vaguely odd or creepy but not completely insane (a la Dali), and well enough done technically (I'm afraid I'm not always absolutely thrilled with the proportions of Magritte's living creatures, but his ideas make up for it).

I was down in Monterey a few weeks back, and I stopped by an art gallery that had prints by an artist of that same style. His name is Rafal Olbinski, and he's still alive... And my mind turns to art speculation, actually perhaps owning an original bit of really nice art.

Looking around today, I found a gallery with a whole passel of good living surrealists, among them Olbinski: Art Bank. There's a score of worthwhile artists on that page with handfuls of images each, and more artists and images elsewhere on the site...

I remember I was just vastly impressed when I came to San Francisco five years ago or so, and there was a gallery that actually had a real Escher print, for sale, that I could have bought, that I could touch even without buying, just hanging there on the wall...

Hm. I wonder about the artists that decorated the Edgefield, home of ACNW, source of my chipper frog icon...