Two Images from our Have Not Game

This is one of the pictures that will be going in the Archetypes Book. It's a (incredibly cool!) group shot of the characters from our running 2-year Have-Not game. I'm the gunslinger.

By Carlos Cara

Here's an image FROM the game we played. It was used as the map for a "psychic battle" where the PCs got to bring in things / concepts they cared about versus a centuries-old malevolent media super-star.

Every word on there has specific meaning in the game

Ordering Artwork

While the book itself is not "done"--it is not type-set. It has not been proofed. There are a few things we need to add / change (but very, very few, really) we are at the stage where we can start asking about artwork. This is one of the most exciting times for me since it is a very positive (if somewhat difficult to navigate) experience.

I really like seeing elements of the game illustrated and when that piece of artwork comes out that just NAILS it--that hits it not only exactly right but takes what I sort of had in mind and improves on it? That's solid gold.

Our "Round 1" has just completed with several artists being given several pieces. With any luck we will be able to fund a "Round 2" and get the "ideal" one piece of art per 3 pages (which is what we think is sort of the sweet spot--but entails over 100 pieces of art in this case).

We also need to figure out the cover. Expensive ... And whether or not there will be a border piece / page background ...

"Not THAT Done"

I remember -- back in high school, I think--we were getting ready to play and one of the players said "I'm done with my character." The GM looks up: "What's his name?" The player: "I'm not THAT done, dude."

JR Archetypes is not "that" done. But it's pretty done.

I absolutely do plan to post a full PDF to the site and a link here for the blog readers. It will be fully armed and operational." I hope to have it out within a week or so.

What am I waiting for?

1. I have to re-do the front chapter. It's out of date and needs to be tightened up. I simply cannot give new readers a ~350 page book with an intro-chapter that doesn't adequately explain how to use it.

2. We have a "cover" we are working on. Since none of us are artists and have not purchased artwork yet how can this be? I'll put a draft of it up as soon as it's near ready. Prepare to be surprised. Some of you may even be impressed.

So that's that. There will also be a table of contents.

I'm ... I'm ... Oh, Crap ...

There's been a dearth of posting here because--I'll be frank--I wasn't exactly sure what to post. It should've been the day-by-day stuff I was doing. I couldn't really bring myself to do it. It's not that I wasn't making progress--it's that I was.

I. AM. DONE.

JAGS Revised Archetypes v2.0 Beta is COMPLETE.

I mean. I mean ... I finished off Astral Travel and Psionics. I did the Back-of-the-Book chapter. Domain Control ... is complete.

What's missing?

1. I need to re-do the opening chapter now that I've written the final one. I can tighten it up significantly.
2. The whole thing needs to be proofed and edited.
3. Technology Control needs some decisions about how I'm going to handle Rating for hacking into and controlling systems ...

...

:: thinks ::

The back-of-the-book chapter needs some revision and re-examination. I mean, it's all (mostly?) there but it's not fully playtested or proofed or anything.

But it's done.

I have to say I figured that wasn't really ever going to happen. I'd kind of, emotionally, given up.

What the hell do I do now? Keep revising it? Start ordering art? Historically we've jumped the gun on proofing and had a proofed version returned before "the book was done" which has led to all kinds of errors. I'd rather not repeat that. But ...

DONE!