There was a recent article in the Guardian about how playing Dungeons and Dragons had helped siblings bond and cope with the death of their father. It got me thinking about the role that role-playing has played (now there's a phrase) in my own life.
For me role-playing began ...

Dungeons & Dragons as therapy
Gunwallace at 12:00AM, March 20, 2025FAFO Reveal
Tantz_Aerine at 12:00AM, March 8, 2025
So you might have a character that's generally very calm or stoic. They may appear weak, or just not intimidating. They may be the right gender, class, age, or any other parameter for their peers to assume they are easy pickings and thus a great target for harassment. Initially ...
Quackcast 729 - The Feather report
Ozoneocean at 12:00AM, March 4, 2025 LISTEN on our player!
Or Amazon Music - https://music.amazon.com.au/podcasts/24f85853-5d63-44ac-885f-da23db0a53ad/the-quackcast
The 3rd in our technical art-making series, we're talking hair, feathers, and fur today. How do you draw those highly complicated, textured things? Well the complicated, difficult way is to draw every single strand ...
Quackcast 728 - Skinship
Ozoneocean at 12:00AM, Feb. 25, 2025 LISTEN on our player!
Or Amazon Music - https://music.amazon.com.au/podcasts/24f85853-5d63-44ac-885f-da23db0a53ad/the-quackcast
Today we're going into another aspect of creating artwork for webcomics! This time it's painting skin, a topic that Tantz suggested. How do you render skin? It's a super common thing in ...
Diamonds Are Forever?
Gunwallace at 12:00AM, Feb. 20, 2025
Diamond Comic Distributors has gone bankrupt. As someone who once worked in a comic book shop, back in the 80s and 90s, it was something of a shock. I came over all nostalgic for their blue logo. I still have a number of cardboard boxes crammed with comics that have ...
Creator Interviews Are Coming Back!
Tantz_Aerine at 12:00AM, Jan. 25, 2025
So I slacked a lot in getting interviews prepared for our awesome webcomic artists here on the Duck, but that is going to be remedied!
I'm trying to find a way to establish regularity for all the features for showcasing DDers and their webcomics that I've been handling ...
Preventable Deaths
Tantz_Aerine at 12:00AM, Jan. 18, 2025
There's nothing more frustrating when a character dies from a situation that had no reason occuring except perhaps that the writers wanted to be edgy and make the story have more gravitas with a random death that's forced into the plot.
I've talked often over the years ...
The Break Into 3
Banes at 12:00AM, Jan. 16, 2025
Last Week we looked at the “Break Into 2”, the transition between the beginning of a story: The “Before” picture of the Protagonist and their world, and the “Upside Down World” of Act 2.
So, a little later in your average story will come the “Break Into 3”. This leaves ...
Quackcast 722 - Main characters with main character syndrome
Ozoneocean at 12:00AM, Jan. 14, 2025 LISTEN on our player!
Or TuneinRadio - https://tunein.com/podcasts/Books–Literature/Drunkduck-Quackcast-p1150194/
Main characters with main character syndrome? What is main character syndrome? Well the way we're dealing with it here it's normally a snide criticism you level and someone who seems to think the world revolves ...
The Break Into 2
Banes at 12:00AM, Jan. 9, 2025
always someone breakinnn' into twooooo…
AN important part of a story is the good old “Break into Act 2”.
It's not the easiest story structure moment to recognize, but it's one of the early ones I thought about and tried to notice in movies I watched.
Many people ...