Hey! The guild's Archives are still under development, but we're working hard to get them launched soon! In the meantime, you can come hang out in the tavern via the guild's Discord server! You can also follow us on Bluesky to stay notified of any updates ♡ See you there!

• Discord
• Bluesky
• Tumblr
• Secret Santa
• Art Fight

Swap Rules

Secret Santa Swaps involve everyone being anonymously assigned to another participant, whom they then must create a gift for based on the "wishlist" the recipient has provided.

99.99% of the time, these pairings do not go both ways; instead of everyone being paired off and then each partner giving a gift to their counterpart, imagine it more like everyone sitting in a circle, and making a gift for the person on their right, and thus receiving a gift from the person on their left!

Both the person you are GIVING a gift to, as well as the person you are RECEIVING a gift from will be anonymous to you; you will learn the identities of your recipient as well as your Santa only when gifts are delivered and opened.Unless otherwise stated, you can expect for Secret Santa Swaps to consist of everyone making an "advantage" set, and everyone receiving an "advantage" set. An "advantage" set is one of every die type, plus an extra d20, totaling 8 dice altogether.

D2 coins (as well as extra goodies like stickers or candy) are optional to include if you wish, but is not required! The only hard requirement is the aforementioned dice set!

Registration

Registration Questions

Below are the questions you will be asked for the registration process, and everything you need to know about answering them!

0. What did you bring me?

If you have thoroughly read through these instructions, then bring me a 🐀!

1. What is your full addresss?

This is the address that YOUR gift will be mailed to. Your answer should include:

Example:The Daarka Arts
123 Internet St. Apt 4
Townsville, State USA 12345

If you have special instructions about a package you'll be receiving, such as needing it to be within certain dimensions, or requiring something specific done with customs, please include that here as well!

2. How would you like to match with a recipient?

3. Where are you willing to ship?

4. What restrictions would you like to specify?

No explanation needed; your answer will only be used for the purposes of keeping the swap comfortable for you! Many participants also use this to avoid being match with the same person from previous years!

5. Upload your moodboard!

You can use any editing program you choose to create your moodboard! However, to give everyone a tried-and-true guide should they need it, our strongest recommendation is that you use one of the established tools laid out here—which have tutorials included!Regardless of the program you use to make it, please only make your moodboard with the following specifications:

PLEASE NOTE:

Moodboards must be a single image of the above dimensions.
Please do NOT submit Pinterest boards or similar links.Moodboards should contain NO AI-GENERATED IMAGERY.

Text on Moodboards

You may have text on your moodboard, but it should be added to support the theme. Text should not contain details about design requests.

Identification on Moodboards

Nothing on the moodboard should identify its creator! We keep things anonymous here, so please do not use anything that would very clearly point to you specifically as the moodboard's creator.

Content Ratings of Moodboards

No sensitive imagery. If you are unsure if content you want to use is acceptable, you're welcome to ask! Please do not use images containing things such as (but not limited to):

Dice on Moodboards

Moodboards should convey VIBES. None of the images in your moodboard should be dice themselves; it should not be treated like a pinterest board of dice you like. You can, however, just use images of dice as a thematic element.

6. Provide your moodboard's written description.

Not everyone works best off of a purely visual medium! To make this style of swap as inclusive as possible, I ask that everyone accompany their moodboard with a written description to sum up the theme.

Vibes, Not Requests

Much like the inclusion of text on the moodboard itself, this writing should only describe the theme and help demonstrate the intended vibe; please do not use this as a place to just talk about what kind of dice you want.

Example Descriptions

You can see all the different ways people have done their descriptions in the #gallery channel! Specifically, starting at the 2022 Swap (check the pinned messages to jump there!) and continuing to the present (so scrolling down), which is when descriptions were implemented and included in those postings.

7. Specify any parameters you want to set.

Moodboards and descriptions should not contain explicit requests for specific design choices. Parameters, however, are where you can explicitly request not to receive certain design choices.

How do you define—?

For the sake of everyone being on the same page, we have this guide set up!

What Parameters Can Include

Can Parameters Be "None?"

Yes! If you are extremely open to receiving literally anything, you can instead state that you do not have any parameters to add. But since most folks have at least some things that would bum them out to receive, please don't hesitate to use this opportunity to be clear about that!

After You Register

Swap runners will have to manually log your registration and make sure there's nothing you submitted that needs to be revised, so this part won't happen instantaneously. But once your registration has been reviewed, you'll have a "Swap DMs Channel" opened for you.For any and all communication related to these swaps, please treat your Swap DM Channel like a direct DM with the swap runners! This allows us to keep our actual DMs not-insane, and have better control over understanding who is who in the context of the swap, which is desperately needed.

Matching

Once registration closes, we aim to get everyone matched with their recipient within the following week or sooner.

Selecting Your Own Recipient

If you chose that you want to select your own recipient during registration, here's how that will work!

Getting Randomly Matched with a Recipient

If you chose that you want to be randomly matched with a recipient during registration, here's how that will work!

Creating

You will have until the deadline on the Schedule page to finish and ship your gift to your recipient.

Reminders

The swap is run by artists who are, themselves, crippled with ADHD, so we’re here to accommodate others in those struggles as much as possible!

Setbacks

They happen! We totally get it, and even the swap runners themselves have fallen victim to them. The world won't end if you miss the due date--but we ask that you try earnestly to be timely. Even more importantly, though, we ask that you communicate any delays with us! Use your Swap DMs channel to let us know if you're expecting/experiencing significant delays so we can help keep your recipient in the loop.

Santa-Recipient Communication

If you have a question or message for your Santa/recipient, let us know in your Swap DMs channel! We’ll middle-man communication to preserve the secret of the other person's identity (and yours)!

You're super not bothering us to ask if we’ll pass along a message for you! It's what we’re here for!

Finishing

When you finish your recipient's gift, please ensure you go through this checklist before shipping!

Receiving

When YOUR gift is shipped, we will send you the tracking info via your Swap DMs. When it arrives, here are the last things we ask of you!

1. Say THANK YOU!

It's just good manners!! When a Santa sees the package has been delivered but doesn't hear from the recipient, it almost always causes anxiety to run amok, and no one wants that. Just contact them (privately or publicly) to let them know it arrived safely!

2. Share Your Gift! (Optional!)

If you're excited to show off what you got, feel free to enthuse about it in the #youve-got-mail channel!

3. Communicate Any Bummers!

If you find yourself bummed out with the dice you receive for reasons such as (but not limited to):

... Then please let us know! It's of the utmost importance to us that no one walks away from our swaps with bummers. Here's how we’ll handle it:

You may desire to kindly let your Santa know if the dice arrived still degassing or with a comparable hazard, but under no circumstances are you permitted to berate your Santa about what you think they did wrong with your gift.Everyone was learning once, and there is no excuse for aggression or hurt feelings over a custom gift you received for free; that kind of behavior can grievously, sometimes irreparably, damage any desire a budding making has in continuing the craft. We have zero tolerance for this kind of conduct, and you will not be welcome back in any future swaps.If your recipient treats you like this, please inform Daarka immediately.

Back-Up Santas

You can opt in or out of being a backup Santa at any time in the Channels & Roles section of the Discord server!

It is rare that a backup Santa is needed, but in cases where someone's original Santa could not deliver for unforeseen reasons, I will reach out to a backup Santa to make the recipient their set instead.

Want to get started on your moodboard?

There are two options we recommend, but you can use any program you're comfortable working in to create yours!

When making a moodboard for our swaps, please pay
attention to the requirements laid out in the Wishlist Guide!

Option One:

Recommended!

• Moodboarder Tool

Important: Thoroughly read the info next to the generator, and check out this page for more detailed instructions!
This is a browser-based app created by Exculis and self-hosted by me to ensure reliable access. It can also be downloaded as an .HTML file on your hard drive to allow for offline use! The images automatically populating the generator are public domain and free to use without attribution, but you can also upload your own images. Use the "Take Pic" button to save the finished board.

Option Two:

• Fotor.com

The websites I use in these tutorials are not owned or operated by myself, so it's possible that they may be updated in ways that invalidate parts or even all of this tutorial. If you notice that my tutorial does not match the software currently available in a way that makes the tutorial useless, please don't hesitate to reach out and let me know! (You can use the contact form here!)

This tutorial exists in written form below, but also as a video if you prefer that format instead!

Written Tutorial:

First off, you'll want to make an account--or generate one by linking a Google/etc account. Then you should end up on this page; if you don't, just head to www.fotor.com/design directly.

There's a few buttons on this page that say "Collage", but they don't all get you to the same place; Click "Simple Collage" on the SIDEBAR!From there, click "Photo Collage (Square)"; This will set you up for a square moodboard you don't have to edit the dimensions of!

You'll be taken to this page, where you'll be able to upload your photos. If you haven't already, pause here and go collect some! A good quantity to aim for is around 4-12 images. These images should, when put together, contribute to the vibe and--in most cases--color scheme you're aiming for. I'll be making a generic moodboard for this tutorial, based on themes of a misty fey forest.When you've gathered the images you want, you can upload them directly onto the collage. For my demonstration, I ended up with 8 images total; Fotor sorted them very plainly, like this:

Now we get to format things! It doesn't look very fancy right off the bat, but that's okay!
First, I'm going to scroll down through the layouts presented on the sidebar, and find one I want to start with. I chose one that felt the most dynamic as a starting point. I also reduced the "Spacing" and "Margins" slider to zero, which took away that white space between each image. You might like that, though! So it's up to your preference here.

Now let's tweak the layout to our liking! First, you can click and drag any image into the spot of another image, and Fotor will swap their places. You can also double click any image, and it'll show you the edges of that image, which you can then click and drag to resize how it appears. You can also then click and drag the center of the image to reposition it within the cell.

If you click an image, little white tabs appear, which you can also click and drag to resize the cell itself.

And if you decide you aren't feeling a certain image anymore, right click it, and select "Change Photo" to swap it out with something else.

When everything is where you want it, you might still be wanting to tweak the colors on everything so that it feels more uniform.Click on an image, and you'll see a toolbar above the moodboard appear, with options like "Filters", amongst others. Though most of the settings in the "Filters" menu are reserved for paid users, you can usually get the job done by clicking the button for sliders to the right of "Filters". Explore those options, play with those settings, and tweak things around until you're happy! And if you're someone who does any dabbling with digital art in any capacity, don't be afraid to take this moodboard to your usual image editing software when you're done here, and do whatever other touchups this website can't do!

When you've tweaked what you want to tweak, here are some other tips!You can go to "Background" on the far left sidebar, and change the color that appears between the images. This is most noticeable if you did not reduce your "Margins" and "Spacing" to zero earlier, but even if you did, you might notice tiny little white cracks that have persisted becoming far less visible if you change the background color to something that matches the colors of the images themselves. In the top right corner above all the background color options is a color palette button, which you can click to use a more specific color.

You're also more than welcome to explore the other features on Fotor, such as adding "Elements" (like stickers) or Text to give some additional flavor.

When you're all done, it's time to export it!Click "Download" in the top right corner. If you see this text at the bottom of the popup, it means you're using features in your moodboard that are premium-only. To finish for free, go find the details it's referring to and remove them, or switch to non-premium versions of it. For me, it turned out my text was using a gradient, so I switched it to a "Solid" color.

You'll know you successfully got rid of all the premium content if you click "Download" again, and that text at the bottom is gone! The blue button should also no longer prompt you to purchase premium, but should say "Download".The default settings for exporting from Fotor are perfect for our needs! 2,000 x 2,000 px is just right for the use of a moodboard. If you are completing a moodboard for one of the swaps I host, please do not change these settings! You will need to only submit a moodboard that is 2,000 x 2,000 px square.If you'd like to rename the file, you can do that here, as well. Otherwise, click "Download", and you're good to go!

If you need to save the moodboard before it's done to come back to it later, click this little cloud button at the top!

That's it! Most aspects of this are pretty self-explanatory, but hopefully this little walkthrough helps to bridge any gaps! Happy creating!

Coming Soon!

Stay tuned, it's almost ready!In the meantime, you can browse everything in the #gallery channel on the Discord server!

Design Definitions

This is no way meant to imply that these definitions are the industry standard!The purpose of this collection is solely for the sake of our swaps, to ensure that when one person uses a term, we are all referring to the same thing.Visual examples are given from a collection sourced from the community. The creators of these pieces are all credited in the captions. If your dice are shown here and you would like them taken down, please don't hesitate to let Daarka know!