Seconds out, book 2

"This the book of black ash. With it I have summoned Demons and raised the Undead" Al Azherad

While I can't deny that making the first version of Cales' book, ready for the launch of the very excellent Spearhead LRP system wasn't fun, it certainly was a lot of work, most of which was research.

 

It's been on my list to re-do pretty much ever since I finished it and showed it to the guy who runs Spearhead. He looked at the cover and said "You didn't copy Harry Potter did you?". Deflated after my months of hard work retorted with a broadside of sarcasm which was probably misplaced: "No. It's a mix of Charmed and Buffy". He smiled faintly and handed it back without opening it. I think he believed me at the time although we laugh about it now.

 

To be fair and while this version has in the end, served me (Cale) well, there are quite a few things I'd like to change. Mostly it's presentation stuff, since I was trying to come up with a lot of written content and pictures to go in it all at the same time.

I've written a list of changes, which include

• The old Cthulhu rune system is out, replaced by the Wyrd rune system from Spearhead.
• The old handwriting is out - mostly - and I'm going to learn some sort of Caligraphy, dammit. This will also cut down on the amount of copy I need since the letters will be bigger
• The new spell verbals are in
• Old rune pictures (basically circles) are out, replaced by some kind of Tarot related stuff
• The old handmade paper is out and new handmade catridge paper is in. It opens up the option for different pens
• Passages from the Simon and Tyson are in, but heavily censored so they fit in the game world.
• Some kind of sensible order to find pages. I can't count the number of times I needed a certain set of words or pictures and been totally unable to find them.

Of course, it didn't help that with book one, I was sporting a rather fetching broken wrist at the time and knew next to nothing about the system supporting Cale's Wyrd (spell casting) abilities. Neither of which is (currently) true this time around.

You might almost say that the stars are now right for me to start over.

 

I think I'm 80% looking forward to it, 20% dreading it. Actually, maybe it's the other way around.