- Do you ever just wake up and think, "Today I would like to be a completely feral little gray gnome"? We're all embodying our
D&D characters at the table whenever we play. We try to think the way they'd think, and we might even put on a
voice or use physical mannerisms to try and bring them to life, but do you ever wanna take
that a little further? Well, taking an idea way further
than it needs to be taken is kind of my M.O., so naturally I decided to
cosplay my D&D character. (soft music) Hey friends, Ginny Di here, and as a person who is
both small and angry, it was only a matter of time before I created a
really little barbarian. For about a year now, I've
been playing Penelope, the deep gnome barbarian
in an ongoing campaign. It seemed like high time that I bring her to life with a costume, and of course, share her with you guys. Editing Ginny, would you be so
kind as to give me a swoosh? Step one, of course, was the design. Back when I first
started playing Penelope, I commissioned an artist
named Frida Bergholtz to design her clothing. I knew I wanted her to
have slate gray skin and a gap between her teeth and silvery white hair in pigtail braids, but her clothes were more
of a blank spot for me. Since she's a barbarian,
she doesn't wear armor, but the conventional leather
loincloth and furs type look just didn't seem right for her, so we dug into her backstory
to figure out what she'd wear. Penelope exists in my DM
Jesse's homebrew world, and she's from an underground
agricultural hamlet called Bar i-Nenn. It's a rural farming town, where the inhabitants cultivate
various fungi as crops, so in short, she's a farm girl. This meant functional
layers and a homespun look. After a little back and forth, we came up with this
simple dress and apron. There were a few specific details we had to make sure to include. For example, I wanted her to have a hood to protect her from the bright
sunlight on the surface, I knew she carried a pouch with
dried mushrooms to snack on, and early on in the campaign, a firbolg NPC gave her a ring, which she wears as a bracelet. This art would be my
guide for the costume, so all I had to do was make it. But instead of talking
about my fabric choices and which patterns I used, I thought instead I would let Penelope tell you her own story while we work. Editing Ginny, another
whoosh, if you will. - [Interviewer] Let's
do a quick sound check. Just talk, tell me what
you had for breakfast. - [Penelope] Um, I had a little bread, and some kinda soft cheese- - [Interviewer] Get a
little closer to the mic. - [Penelope] Like this? Great. I had found some mushrooms
along the trail the day before, so I threw those on, too. They were good and spicy, which means I couldn't give any to Ronin even though he loves mushrooms. The spicy ones are poisonous
for a lot of people, turns out. - [Interviewer] Thanks, that's enough. Why don't you introduce yourself? - [Penelope] I'm Penelope
Mushruckus Blisterblood Murkspore. I know it's a bit of a mouthful, you can just call me Penelope, but not Penny, please, that's just for my mom. - [Interviewer] You wanna
talk about your parents? - [Penelope] Sure, my
mom's name is Whitkin, they call her Bluebobbin, she's a tailor. My dad's name was Finch
Ramblegig Murkspore, he was a merchant, so he traveled a lot. - [Interviewer] You're
using the past tense. - [Penelope] Oh yeah, he's not dead, I mean, I guess he could be, he left when I was pretty young. My mom got lonely, when
he was traveling so much. Folks say that while my dad was gone, she started spending
a little too much time with the mail carrier, Chug
Taletoter Nickleplenty. I guess my dad just wasn't
sure if I was really his. He left when I was only a few months old. He was just taking a
fungus harvest to the city, but he never came back. - [Interviewer] What do
you mean, fungus harvest? - [Penelope] Have you heard of Bar i-Nenn? It's a farming town,
underground, where I'm from. We grow all kinds of
fungus in the stonefields, and then merchants take
it through the tunnels to sell it elsewhere. I was usually tilling or weeding
with my trusty hoe Agnes, they didn't really let
me harvest the mushrooms, because I could be a little careless. That's where I got my nickname. Redfreckle used to say, "Mushruckus, your bucket of
enthusiasm is overflowing, but your bucket of careful wants filling!" - [Interviewer] Who's Redfreckle? - [Penelope] He's a myconid. A few of them lived and farmed with us. Redfreckle's one of my best friends, or he was, before. - [Interviewer] Before what? - [Penelope] One day, Redfreckle and I were working in the stonefields, and the first thing we
heard was the screams, or, the echoes of screams. It was hard to tell where
they were coming from. Then out of nowhere, this huge monster jumped onto Redfreckle. It was a black blur, it
threw him across the field. - [Interviewer] What was it? - [Penelope] It looked like a huge cat, but with too many legs,
and these awful tentacles. I learned later it's
called a displacer beast. I think something had already hurt it because it was limping. At first I was frozen, I was so scared, but Redfreckle wasn't moving, and it was coming towards
him to finish the job. Something inside of me bent or snapped. Next thing I knew, I was on it. It was so much bigger than me. I was tangled up in all
of its legs, thrashing. It kept trying to kick me
off, but I hung on somehow. Then I remembered Agnes,
strapped to my back. I grabbed her, and I swung. I hit it as hard as I
could, over and over. Agnes was pretty dull from
the rocks and the dirt, but they don't call me
Mushruckus for nothing. I went berserk. I don't know if it took seconds or hours. They told me later that they had trouble separating me from its body. Apparently my arms were
stuck in its ribcage up to the shoulders. Eugh, I was covered in blood. I don't like to talk about it. - [Interviewer] Was Redfreckle okay? - [Penelope] Yeah, well, kind of. He's alive, but he'll never
work in the stonefields again. And he, well, he started
looking at me different. They all did. - [Interviewer] Different how? - [Penelope] They were
grateful, of course. Who knows how many would've
died if nobody had stopped it? But they were a little
scared of me after that. And also I developed a temper. That didn't help, little things
just started setting me off. That's when people started
calling me Blisterblood, but never to my face. One time I got into a
disagreement with another farmer about how to box up a
harvest of Hanging Blueveils and I just lost control. It felt like somebody else took over, like my body wasn't my own. Something happened to my
hands, they went black, they had claws. I struck him, and oh,
I knew I had to leave. What if it happened again? What if I hurt Redfreckle? Or my mom? - [Interviewer] What did you do? - [Penelope] What else could I do? I packed my things. I waited until my mom
was asleep, and I left. - [Interviewer] Kind of like your dad did. - What? No, nothing like that. Because, because I'm coming back. Once I've fixed this, once I'm safe. - I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "How does Francis make
all these amazing maps of far-off places when she's too chicken to leave her shop and go into the wild?" Well, first of all, that's really rude. I'm not scared, it's
just dangerous out there. Maybe you're scared of
being safe, and reasonable. Anyway, it's not hard with this book. It's called "The Creator's
Guide to Epic Locations." This is the first
volume, the nature guide. It covers more than 20
different natural landscapes, from swamps, where you could sink into
a mud hole and suffocate, to deserts, where you can die of dehydration, or get lost in a sandstorm, or get bitten by a venomous snake. Ugh, nature! Anyway, part one goes over all the different types of locations and how to create and
use them in your games. Part two teaches you to prep and improvise your own original locations
with that information, and part three shows you
how to apply all this to design and create beautiful maps of these terrible, treacherous places, so that idiots can come buy your maps and then go get themselves killed. It's written by Guy Sclanders, from the "How To Be a
Great GM" YouTube channel, and Till Lammer, the creator and CEO of the online map making
tool, Dungeon Fog. And it's on Kickstarter now. If you're the kind of person
who never leaves the house, hey, don't look so offended, you called me a chicken first thing. Anyway, this will give
you all the tools you need to run great games, tell epic stories, and make great maps set in nature, without having to actually go outside. Ugh, outside. - [Interviewer] And now you're, what? - An adventurer, I guess? I traveled around a little, just trying to find somebody or something that could help me understand
what was happening to me, and that's when I met the others, Vanya, Juniper, Ronin, and Bremash. - [Interviewer] Are those your friends? - Yeah, but also, we're an organization. We're called the Town Council. I think that can sometimes
be confusing for people. We're all looking for something, and it's a little safer to look together. To be honest, I'm not
sure why they let me in, all the rest of them can do magic, which is pretty amazing. - [Interviewer] A transformation seems pretty magical, though. - I guess, it doesn't
really feel that way to me. I'm getting a little
better at harnessing it, but I still have to be careful when something makes me upset. And I think, I think it
might be getting worse. - [Interviewer] What makes you think that? - Well, for example, my eyes change color. Not forever, just when I'm in a rage. A few weeks ago, after we fought this awful
thing in the mountains, they turned bright blue,
according to Bremash, and then more recently, I
think my arms got longer. Can we not talk about that? - [Interviewer] Of course, no problem. Anything else you wanna
say before we wrap up? - Can I do a shout out? - [Interviewer] Sure. - Next time you're in Gladmoore, make sure to stop by the Beer Garden, it's the best vegan tavern around. Also, my friend Olie runs
it, and he's the best. Hey Olie, if you're
watching, I'm being safe. Well, not really, but
don't worry about me. Okay, that's all. - You know, if you can't make a cute, cheerful little gnome girl with a super overdramatic
edgy violent backstory that traumatized her for
life and gave her cool scars, then what is even the point of D&D, right? In a session a few weeks ago, we were attacked by some manticores that really reminded Penelope of the way that displacer
beast was acting, and at one point she caught a glimpse of a pair of eyes in the
mouth of the manticore, like somebody was inside, looking out. I have no idea what that means, but I am very excited to find out. Jesse Jerdak, Penelope's DM, is an internet man himself, so make sure to check him out on Twitter, he streams on Twitch, he has a YouTube channel. I'll put all those links
in the description. I enjoyed making this costume a lot, because all of it was
really straightforward, which meant I just got to
focus on doing a good job and really getting all those details down. There's something super therapeutic about decorative hand-stitching, honestly. If you wanna learn more about Penelope, tell me in the comments. What do you want, stories from her game? A deep-dive into her character sheet? Penelope responding to my
point of view roleplay videos? Something else? Let me know. Also, many of you have been asking, and you are correct,
calendar season approaches. Penelope will be featured in my annual D&D inspired calendar. We have tentatively assigned
her to the month of December. For those of you who are new around here, I make a calendar every year, they go up for pre-order on November 1. In the past I've made these sort of campy, 50s-inspired pin-up calendars, but this year we're taking
it a different direction and making a super
cinematic fine-art calendar that I'm hoping will bring some inspiring fantasy
visuals into your year, so stay tuned for that.
