Art Underway

It's been a hot second since there were any updates here, and that's primarily because of one thing: the focus has, for the time being, shifted to the art. I'm working with a talented artist to create the art for the handbook, starting with a cast of 17 characters for the book's cover and, if things go well and we reach further agreements, the interior graphics as well. This is very exciting news, and a huge step forward.

As exciting as the character art is, though, this is just the beginning on a long road. The characters for the cover are one thing, but all those little embellishments for the interior are going to add up. Little accents for the page numbers, section indicators for the page edges, section headers for the main chunks of the book, little scenes demonstrating various mechanics and situations, all of that and more. And then on another side of things I'll soon be looking for artists/designers to bring the character sheet and murder application to life - and if I'm lucky it'll be functional both as a pen and paper situation and have a fillable form online for ease of access.

I've also begun work on the early stages of a series of modules - complete adventures that GMs can run in their entirety or use as a jumping off point for their own murder mysteries. They'll each detail a different location and core plot, have unique masterminds and mascots, and have everything from written descriptions of rooms to fully detailed maps. Most will use the core rules, but some will bend and twist the concepts a little bit to show how far the system can be stretched and hopefully inspire GMs to experiment to bring their own ideas to fruition.

And then of course I've also been chipping away at the handbook itself and revising/tweaking elements. Those have been a little bit less monumental currently, though I have pages and pages of notes for changes and revisions and all that jazz. The handbook will be going through some major structural changes once the art situation is a bit more stable - while most of the mechanics are staying the same, written definitions will be changing across the board, particularly in the examples. Instead of having a haphazard assortment of examples, I'll be rewriting them to feature only the characters on the cover to make it easier to follow and give examples that follow the general flow of a game with known characters growing closer (or further apart) and interacting and such. It should really boost the readability of the whole thing. As much as I want to pay tribute to everyone who's played the game and helped make this a reality, that's just not good for coherent reading. So aside from a few cases, most of the tribute and thanks will be in the Thank You section of the book.

But yeah, point is, there's plenty of changes and fun stuff coming down the line, even if not a lot of that is visible right now.