So, the other month I was pressed into DMing a few hours before our weekly session due to that sessions DM not being able to make it. Time being of the essence, I recycled and adapted an older adventure I’d made a while back – the party is tasked with delivering a magic tome to another city while a trickster being named Gentleman Jim attempts to steal it from them. In the course of their journey, Jim tries many underhanded schemes to get the tome. One of my players plays a Tabaxi Wizard who has a favorite item – a clockwork mouse named Hubert which she left back at the guild house before the adventure. So before the session, I slipped into Walmart and picked up a squeeky mouse toy, and one night when her character was on watch, I had Jim show up and attempt to hold “Hubert” ransom in exchange for the tome.

The ransom attempt failed, and Jim left with Hubert in his possession. Eventually the party succeeded in delivering the tome and my interim Gming stint concluded. But rather than letting the story end there, I decided to continue it out-of-session in some fun analogous to the “stolen garden gnome” prank – this is where a person has a garden gnome stolen out of their yard and in the following weeks receives postcards from the stolen gnome as it apparently travels across the country. But time was of the essence – I myself was going on a trip to Japan in a month and a half and needed everything to be concluded before I left.

Step 1: Find an artist.

So the very night after our session, I took to Deviant Art and put out a call for an artist to assist me. I am a creative so-and-so, but have the art skills of a first grader.

Seventy-five dollars was what I was budgeting for, and with a time frame of 2 weeks for 5 postcards, I wanted to keep my standards reasonable. The response was rather overwhelming, and I had many, many artists willing to take my commission. I browsed their portfolios and found one artist, Jennifer S. Lange, who was probably way too good for what I needed.

Jennifer S. Lange

She felt she could get the project done within my constraints, so I asked her to get the first sketch done and we’d work from there. Here’s what she came up with:

Sufficed to say, I could not have been happier. I resized it to 6:4 postcard size and printed it on 100lb card stock. For the back, I used a postcard template from another artist on DeviantArt:

Bnspyrd

I printed out a message from Hubert (adding a last name and middle initial THAT IS NOW CANON), addressed to my player’s character, Madam Meow, and popped it off into the post:

This was going to work out PERFECTLY! I mailed out the postcards on Thursday and they arrived on Monday – the day of our next session. The last postcard would arrive on our last session before I departed for Tokyo. So I detailed the scenes of Jim and Hubert for the remaining cards to Jennifer and she did an amazing job. So amazing, that I commissioned one final postcard for later…

I’ll give you the scenes as I envisioned them and the finished result that Jennifer came up with.

Week 2

Scene 2 – Jim and Hubert are at a fancy dress party. Hubert is on Jim‘s shoulders watching his actions curiously. Jim is holding a glass of champagne and talking to someone to the left, standing back to back with an older, rich man (military, large bushy beard, monocle) and picking his pocket from behind as the man is regaling someone to the right with a story. The people they are talking to may possibly be off-card.

Week 3

Scene 4 – Jim, in his official position of Liar of the Gods(he lies on behalf of the gods who due to their nature cannot lie), is calmly explaining/lying to an angry god(tall, white-bearded perhaps? artists choice) trying to defuse a potentially explosive situation with genial smarm. Perhaps they are watching events unfold over a scrying pool – the god could be ranting while Jim responds soothingly. Jim is the very model of calm and self-assurance. Hubert watches the two converse or perhaps is watching the events in the scrying pool.

(This is also my ABSOLUTE favorite Hubert of all the sketches)

(This references some in-game content from the previous weeks session)

Week 4

Scene 3 – Jim and Death play chess, sitting hunched over a table at an exotic location(the moon?). Hubert watches from Jim‘s shoulder. Death(black cloak, scythe) is clearly frustrated (it is implied that Jim plays Death yearly for his soul and wins every year…most likely by cheating).

Week 5

(This references my player’s drink of choice.)

Week 6

The cards were going over very well with my group, so about halfway through, I commissioned one final card. So…each week, the card would be addressed to “Madam Meow” at my player’s address and was clearly from Hubert. The final card would be from me, addressed to my player, and be postmarked from Tokyo:

Scene: Jim and Hubert getting VERY lost and looking quizzically at a map with Tokyo clearly in the background behind them. I am there and trying to help the two make sense of the map. Jim is probably picking my pocket as I look at the map with him.

Who am I?

Man, I am pretty.

And here is what we came up with:

(The names have been removed to protect the guilty. There are no innocent people in our group.)

All-in-all, I am very happy and proud how this turned out.