Wizard Wednesday Recap, 2022-09-07

Cult members working with the Dreammaster Bot to generate wizard images, circa September 2022.

The Dreammaster Bot Appears

This week, Elf is back from his vacation to South Africa. At the start, Dotta shouted out TheOneWhoRings (Magus Wazir) for releasing a Stable Diffusion “Dreammaster” bot and Twitter account. You can enter prompts for your Wizard in the Discord bot and receive AI-generated results! The bot is also auto-generating visuals and posting them on the Twitter account.

After getting through community shout-outs (see below) Elf expanded on his thoughts on this. This bot not only automates the visual-creation aspect, but even the prompt aspect, and essentially allows you to see this bot’s dreams. It is another change in this era of AI-development, and Elf wonders and is excited to see how the remaining slivers of our humanity will be discovered and embraced.

Derivative Project Shoutouts

Elf has been getting back into the swing of things and getting caught up on both Magic Machine (MM) and community-led initiatives. He shouted out the Heroes of Cumberland, and called them “beautiful.” The mint for this collection is still open.

Dotta shouted out The Barren Court and its desert familiars. Elf next shouted out Crucifore's I David project, Pantheon Vitalis by Taro. Followed by FeralUntamed “Choose Your Own Adventure” Twitter games. And Snoopdoug's summer kid’s art contest. Several cult-members’ children (as well as Cult-members who are minors) have already entered.

Q&A Section

In September 2022, a 10KTF project "mission" required ownership of certain project tokens to participate. "Group 1" included Forgotten Runes Wizards and Souls.

Pony minting? Dotta plans to mint out the remaining un-minted Ponies, and within the next 2-3 months there will be some type of contest to distribute these roughly 100 Ponies.

How can a Cult member be most helpful for Magic Machine's short and long-term goals? Dotta said that the one thing to do is to continue to create in earnest, using whatever art form you wish to pursue. That doesn’t change during a bear market. Dotta also mentioned longer-form content - the need for some “main characters” that a wider casual audience can latch onto and follow on longer narratives.

Elf urged people to “world-build,” but acknowledged that this could mean so many things. Elf thought that alternate forms of content could be something to try. Illustrations and short stories are great, but he also gets excited by novel mediums that he has seen like clay sculptures, pixel animations, knitting, a Twitter game, etc.

Dotta mentioned songs as another great area of Cult Content. Bearsnake rehashed the idea of the Forgotten Runes franchise - having the community develop their characters, and having the cream of the crop rise to the top and get adopted in Magic Machine’s media franchises.

Elf in South Africa

Although the trend originated elsewhere, the Forgotten Runes social media team participated in the trend starting in early September 2022.

Elf said that one of his passions has always been animals - he used to live in Costa Rica with frequent visits to the rainforest, and this is his second trip to Africa. He visited Kruger Park, which is enormous. It contains a lot of the popular megafauna (elephants, lions, giraffes, etc.), but also countless birds, small mammals, and antelopes - you see something new every day. Elf saw so many species of antelope, all with different appearances and roles in the ecosystem, and these antelopes may even have generated some ideas for the Runiverse... It was very inspiring to spend time in this special location.

Elf mentioned that you can self-guide in the park, and that there are often elephant “encounters”, where they taunt and throw things at you - they are capable of crushing a car. A giraffe also kicked at the car at one point. Elf didn't want to use up the whole Wizard Wednesday telling travel stories, but he will have more time to recount his experiences in South Africa during a Twitter Spaces next week.

10KTF and "Renting" Wizards

10KTF has some missions that are gated to certain collections, including Forgotten Runes. Some 10KTF holders came over to the FRWC Discord and requested to “rent” people’s wizards for the quest. Madotsuki came up and explained a new service that allows you to “rent” your NFT by temporarily providing access to a “warm wallet” and its contents. Mado couldn’t see any risk involved after a first glance, but it’s still a very new phenomenon, and he personally wouldn’t delegate his Wizard to anyone just because it’s so new. He recommends being polite to the requesters, but don’t feel pressured to work with them. Be very careful about these requests, there could be phishers among the legitimate requesters. Ask in the FRWC security Discord channel if unsure about anything.

Additional Magic Machine Updates

• 

  A crocheted Kobold head by Tania del Rio, shared September 2022. Elf mentioned that he loves to see Cult Content like this, which explores new mediums, although he disputed some of the messaging about the Kobold's color.

  The Lock & Weapon forging event will be happening soon, but no specific date set yet. If you own a golden Lock and a Sacred Flame, you can use these to create a special weapon for your Warrior. Further details are available in last week’s recap.
• Swordtember: This is an art campaign that MM & community members have referenced. Madotsuki says it seems to be an artist campaign unrelated to FRWC in particular, but which the Cult can participate in. Bearsnake added that there will be a “Witchtober” next month.
• Frogeater: This is a new 3D artist hired by MM. He is a specialist that will assist Molly with the 3D wizard models. He may come onto a future WW to introduce himself.
• MM acknowledged again that they’re aware that the 3D models have taken a lot longer than originally expected. At one point, they had to decide whether to backtrack and take more time for a better model, or just continue with their current path, and chose the former.
• Regarding the Forgotten Soul walk-cycles, these have actually been implemented twice as well. There is an internal team working on these, and they should be ready within two months.

Cult Content Shout-outs

• Henry Boyd's weekly Tavern image promoting Wizard Wednesday on Twitter, which has been going out for months.
• A plate painted by Samikitty with a number of familiars on it.
• Tania del Rio ’s knitted kobold head, with the slogan #TeamGreen, which Elf disputed. He pointed out that kobolds are the same hue as the Yellow Hat wizards.
• Related to the above, Dotta shared an article in Discord explaining how some languages have more words for the yellow-green part of the color spectrum.
• Tabitha of the Marsh with a stained glass style visual for Swordtember.
• Emmaleigh with MTG cards incorporating wizards. The card text is realistic for the game, with good flavor text as well.
• Maui has been putting out a lot of wonderful illustrations.
• Retired Yield Farmer commissioned a new portrait of the seven-tailed Kitsune.
• The Baby Wizards orphanage location has been revealed between the Elysian Fields and Rabbit Lake.
• Lourdes Ariste was introduced to Forgotten Runes and made a goblin warrior illustration.
• Chuck K. with a new portrait of their wizard.
• Two Crows new hat - “Two Crows Ate My Duck”
• For more Cult content, see this collage.

• 

  Screenshot from Elf's TEDx talk, which he gave in May 2022. It was released in late August 2022.

  Fun fact: Dotta claimed that Bearsnake stopped a potential robbery at the local coffee shop. More details next week…

Airdrops are Coming This Fall

About Dotta’s "airdrop comment" in Discord. He had announced in Sales chat that there were airdrops planned. These will occur during next two months - one for September, and one for October. These will be broad airdrops, not requiring lore-writing. He thinks that people will have fun with them. There may even be another one in November. Bearsnake said he’s excited about collaboration with other communities. Continue to expect different mechanics for each one.

Elf's TEDx Talked is Released

Elf’s closing surprise; his TED talk has been released! Elf asked people to give it a like/comment, since it hasn’t received much attention up until now (it was actually released in late August). This is the first time that Elf has publicly doxxed his face online as well. He was proud to say that he finished the talk, which runs about 10 minutes, in one take.