This project was a collaboration with, and guest post written by, Gortho who is my DND character that has been actively involved in a multiple campaigns with the Maker Alliance DND.
About Gortho
Gortho is a bugbear, currently level 7 (4 fighter / 3 wizard), that started out as an NPC. Last year, we collaborated on a 1-hour build challenge for the Maker Alliance Summer Camp Pinewood Derby where participants could only use tools or materials on-site to build their car. The result wasn’t the fastest “car”, but thanks to 4 mAh of Ryobi battery power it won the ‘With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility’ award.
With his main campaign on hiatus due to GM scheduling challenges, Gortho expressed an interest to level up his car making skills to compete for the Best In Show award for the 2024 edition.
As much as I may have been the one making the majority of the materials, paint and packaging come together, the vision, inspiration and so many easter egg details for the build which lead to it winning Best In Show award were all Gortho.
Note: Gortho doesn’t always (ever?) write or talk correctly in first/third person.
Hello, I am Gortho!
Gortho may not have been living his best life, but Gortho was happy smashing stagecoaches in Faerun and taking gold, meats and other goodies. A few years ago Gortho tried to surprise some players and wizard touched Gortho in the head to make him run away. Gortho was very confused by this! How was wizard make/convince Gortho to do something Gortho didn’t want? As Gortho got back to being Gortho, Gortho decided that he needed to wizard good too. To learn how he could make others do things for Gortho or stop others from doing that to people who Gortho likes.
Gortho never did find that wizard, he “apparently” died, but Gortho met some of his friends that seem good. We drank many More Beers together and smashed some monsters along the way. They all know that I am Gortho, but also think they are Gortho? We went into the Savage Frontier for some code and fierce battles. We were just about to break the Frostweavers’ face open for killing little friend Pip when everything in Gortho’s world just stopped. All his friends too.
Suddenly, Gortho was warped someplace hot that smelled like bourbon and Gortho was being asked to go fast in cars that someone else named Jamie built for him. Gortho likes going fast! Gortho used all the power he could find and did win an award, but the stupid Devinses went faster and won more awards. Gortho does not like that or the Devins despite being tall like Gortho.
Since Gortho won award from very little build time and didn’t portal back to his friends, why not learn to make better cars that go even faster?
Gortho didn’t want to just build another do-it-Gorthoself-looking car. So Jamie agreed to help him build a nice cave garage and workshop where we can test and customize the fastest and shiniest of all cars. Jamie kept talking about portable workshops which….how do you carry a cave? Eventually he showed Gortho that with Sculpt-a-Mold, a wooden frame, and some other crafting ingredients we could make a bad-ass cave. The hardest thing for Gortho learn was thing called 3Dee modelling – it involved tinkering with cats, reading about things in verses or visiting factories. It also took a LONG TIME for the giant Saturn for Ultra box to convert goo into things. Gortho’s hammer would have been a lot faster.
With how long the garage/workshop took to put together, Gortho knew we needed some help. Gortho found a service, SqueegStaff, that provided some office goblins to help with logistics and Jamie found five or more services to do whatever the heck arrow diamond sticks is for the car body/frame. Keeping the thicc backend with the battery stack was key to making space for engine and magical elements Gortho wanted to build. Many chats with Jamie’s friend Leonardo helped to mock-up or render what they should look like before beginning to forge. We didn’t get everything built before we had leave to get a New Jersey Certified judge and go to the race track. But we packed up enough of Jamie’s tools along with the cave and cars that we figured we could get the rest done on site.
A couple of weeks before Gortho racing team had to depart for the race track in Kentucky, some other coastly wizards totally contacted Gortho with an interest in making many copies of his garage. Why would Gortho want many garages when he doesn’t have so many cars yet? Anyways, the Jamie said Gortho could design a box to bring everything to the race. The more Gortho thought about it, the more it felt worth doing. Last year the Devins and everyone else just carried their cars to the track in their hands. It was underwhelming way. So we rolled up a box template from easypackmaker.com, mixed in some of our visioning/concept artwork from leonardo.ai, and went to The Printing Well to convert digital bits into paper. Jamie kept talking about some french boss guy who went skiing with a carpet tied to him as we were putting the last touches on this.
While the judges were inspecting Gortho’s car and workshop with Jamie, Gortho was inspecting the track, jump/launch angle, and the ‘point obstacles’ that he was going to try to hit. Jamie recorded the judges workshop walkthrough and will post a shortened version of it here shortly.
While Gortho was racing, he saw several people taking photos, full and slo-mo videos of the inaugural Matt Murdock Classic race. Gortho has requested that the SqueegStaff contact them all to get copies that he can begin processing into smaller segments that can be uploaded here.
With some racers spending a lot of time on the track in the days ahead of the event dialing in their car, and others bringing an air of mystery with next to no practice, the air was crackling with as much energy as when Gortho swings MC Warhammer in battle to stack up lightning charges for hitting a BBE in the face.
When all the car-nage settled, feel free to take 1d4 psychic pun damage on that, everyone had a great time and won!
Best In Show
Gortho / Jamie
Podium Awards
1st Place – Steve
2nd Place – Gortho / Jamie
3rd Place – Thomas
Judges
Justin
Mario
Zack
Performance Awards
Mission Control – Chris
Artemis Program Award – Steve
UFO Award – Matt
Apollo 13 Award – Jackson
Mark Roper Award – Jesse
Anyone But Devin Award – Tall Devins
Clamp Champ Award – Medium Matthew Devins
Liftoff Award – Little Thomas Devins
Gortho had a year to dream up car and cave workshop for it that blended fantasy elements of Faerun, futuristic elements of wherever here is, and whatever else Gortho or Jamie thought would lead a double you. However, the build really didn’t start until late June and became a “race-against-the-clock to get everything to the race on time” project. Gortho’s log, not the kind dropped into the kraken toilet, had it less than 30 mins before the judging slot that all of the lights, dice rollin’ Gortho drivers and accessories all came together. We may have taken some painting shortcuts to hit that target (dirty 20?) which will get cleaned up post-event. Despite that…
Gortho, and Jamie, are super happy with the finished result and that we brought back the Best In Show Award. In the end, racing against the tall Devins, little Devinses, the #1 Dad of camping and all the other fierce racers was an epic battle. I am Gortho and I look forward to defending my title next year!
BRING ON THE SIZZLE REEL PHOTOS!
