Introducing a new section on this blog called "Settings-Post-Mortem"; a look at various TTRPG games I have created, ran, or conceptualized beyond the beginning stages. While this will look at the ideas and inspirations behind these settings (as best I can remember them after the better part of a decade) it will also focus a lot on why they died or I lost interest in them over time. Naturally people change their tastes, but I've never really introspectively looked at why specific settings die off in interest for me where as some seem so much longer lasting. Naturally, this series will be a bit masturbatory but hopefully you can learn from these mistakes, enjoy the journey, or garner some ideas from the better bits.
For the first installment, let's take a look at my very own baby's first heartbreaker overly-ambitious shitbrew; Tyrants of Thaumaturgy!
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| LOTHOS (Leader of the House of Swine) Art @Anonymous |
The basic concept behind ToT was to figure out and combine my favorite aspect of each TTRPG I greedily devoured during this time period; the magic systems. Having spent an entire weekend entranced by Unknown Armies, reading the entire core rulebook pdf front to back, I was heavily inspired by its mechanics and decided to use these as my baseline. During this time I was also very invested in the new undercurrent of the TTRPG space; the mudcore, more edgy and realistic type of worldbuilding. This stood directly against the common fantasy paradigm of D&D and 5e; of the pauldroncore and whacky made up races. Instead, I would make my settings humans only with magic users not balanced with other roles; but superior and above them. I think back to this somewhat embarrassed; and I believe my current automatic reaction of eye-rolling towards humans-only worldbuilding projects with an emphasis on low fantasy and low-magic-realism and the like stems directly from second hand embarrassment over my superiority complex over my first setting & game.
The setting was distinctly medieval Europe with a magical twist. Magic users were more powerful then normal people, the "mundanes", and ruled over them and fought amongst themselves for power and influence. I even had an explanation of where the magic came from (and a planned meta-plot, just like UA) and it was divided into the three categories of Mind, Body, and Soul which loosely stemmed from an expanded Unknown Armies cosmology. The main gimmick was that everything followed the Unknown Armies magical paradigm of magic strength; Minor, Significant, and Major (which I may have renamed to "Grand" so it used a different letter for shortening purposes and sounded more epic). This also included your characters. Balance wasn't really a concern here, moreso setting immersion and intrigue in the various systems. For example, a standard "Wizard" would be of "Significant" magical potency. This meant they could learn as many spells as they wanted, and command a few magical foci, but would learn slowly and would have a hard time inventing their own spells. Where as a "Wizard" category magic-user of "Minor" potency, would more be like a savant; capable of only learning one spell of normal strength or several spells but permanently unable to grow their abilities. Not just characters but items or NPCs too, and if I ever got to encounter or dungeon design I'd probably keep the formula for those as well. This concept stretched over the whole game and was one of the more interesting aspects to the game as it meant the single ruleset could be used for street level campaigns to the highest cosmic level adventures. It also had the advantage of making certain interactions between very disparate effects or conflicts go a little easier by having a "tiebreaker". Like if you cast a magic spell that pushes someone back versus a person wearing armor that cannot be moved; what happens? Well, if one effect is Significant and the other is Minor, the Significant one wins.
Part of the setting's concept was the "magic supremacy" baked into its core, hence the name, but I specifically remember really enjoying the idea of being able to gain (or lose) magic in one way or another. It wasn't like you had to be born with magic or else you're a shitty serf; it was possible to gain magical power but it was rare and difficult. Exposure to magical artifacts, interacting with magical creatures, or perhaps being blessed by a higher level magician could grant you magic. I liked the idea of you being able to do so through hard work, perhaps as a sort of juvenile "safety net" for imagining myself in this setting so I wouldn't be stuck as a mundane if I ended up there somehow. This was before Isekai was widely known or popularized so good on me for being proactive.
The most interesting part of the system in my opinion was the magic system and how it sought to combine all the magic systems that I knew about at the time into one overarching system; which I think it actually succeeded at doing. Basically, it brought every magic system into set categories based on the mystic foundation of their power source, while combining the fluff and mechanics of my many favorite magic systems into distinct classes. It was imagined that every PC in this game would be a Wizard (unless you intentionally wanted to play a mundane, which you could if you wanted similar to Ars Magica's Companions), so your biggest choice at character creation is what kind of magic user you wanted to be.
Loosely, these magic users were grouped by what part of them their magic came from. Possessors for example have magic coming directly from their body, where as Adepts have their magic come from a combination of their Mind & Spirit; thoughts and emotion. It should also be noted that each category of magic-user has zero relation to what kind of magical effects or spells they can actually cast; this is what overarching flavor you want your magic to be like; not what it actually does.
Wizards are the stereotypical D&D style Wizard. However, I also wanted to include a few elements of Harry Potter; and as such I cleverly combined the two archetypes together. The result is the Wizard; arcane spellcasters who memorize magic spells and incantations to cast spells. However, they can only cast spells through Foci; wands, staves, orbs, amulets, etc. which influenced how strong your spells were and how flexible you could be casting them. Spells were less vancian and more Harry Potter, but memory and forgetting spells on fumbled rolls was a mechanic. On top of this; Wizards also had to worry about the raw magical energy in an area, since they had no "source" of it (they're pure mind with no spiritual access to magic AND it doesn't come from their body!) so out of all the classes they felt the most restrictive and limited. I kind of liked this though since their ability to spam spells without any real limitation set them apart. I envisioned these being similar to Merlin from Sword in the Stone or your average Harry Potter wizard; waving a wand with lots of small but helpful spells.
Minor Wizards were savants, able to cast one or two spells or a larger number of spells at a weaker power level. They had less control over their foci. Significant Wizards were standard casters. Major/Grand Wizards had a great deal of intelligence and could combine formulae of magic inside their head; able to modify spells on the fly which is normally impossible. They could also cast spells at maximum power but forget them right after ala a Vancian caster and could draw out the most of their Foci.
Magi meanwhile are directly ripped from the Magical mechanics of Ars Magica. I really liked their position on the diagram as their magic was the combination of Mind + Body, meaning they had no "spiritual" aspect. Because of this, it made sense to keep the drawbacks of the "gift" in Ars Magica, meaning they had an aura that made other people and animals uncomfortable around them unless used to it or specially trained. Their magic was also directly taken from Ars Magica's hermetic system of Arts & Forms. Because of how fundamental and flexible their magic was, this felt like a fair trade off. Advancement as this form of magic-user required gaining individual skill in the arts and forms, so mechanically you had to specialize a bit to be any good at anything, but the flexibility was its main benefit.
Minor Magi were hedge mages or just called lesser magi. I liked the idea of them being limited to either one form but all the arts; like a nature-focused hedge mage who could use heal animals, perceive animal emotions, transform animals, sicken or destroy animals or command animals; but couldn't do anything to the either elements under this system. OR they could manipulate all the forms but only have one art, like a Creo-focused mage who could conjure/heal/restore any element but couldn't do any divination or Perdo spells. The aura around their "gift" was weakest and could mostly interact and live with mundanes. Standard Magi were Mages and belonged to the mystic Order (of Hermes?), and could use all the Arts & Forms but had to practice to get good with them. Finally, Grand Magi were the peak of this magical tradition and were simply more powerful but used the same system. I don't remember if I had the idea at the time to give them additional arts/forms (such as letting them manipulate Space & Time as with using the MAGE spheres) to expand their possibilities but it sounds interesting while writing this. The taint of Grand Magi was also much stronger, meaning they pretty much always had to live alone in a castle or tower very separated from civilization.
Possessors are probably the least obvious by name. This type of magic user is just someone who "possessed" a magic power innately stemming from their body; essentially a way to superpowers in the setting. This was based loosely on the Wild Talents RPG but was a useful catch-all to people who just had "weird" magic powers like free teleportation at all times, animorph style touching creatures to turning into copies of them whenever you want, and Devil-Fruit like powers from One Piece. I remember thinking Devil Fruits were a really interesting way to explain this category of magic user. The main gimmick is that these magic users had the freest and most powerful abilities; they could be used infinitely as instead of using mana it may just tire out the user; but with the restriction that these abilities can never be changed or new ones can't be learned. You just have "one" power, but it was highly flexible and could be trained to become stronger.
The Possessor categories of Minor, Significant, and Grand were less categorical and purely based on the power you had. I liked the idea of someone with a bunch of different small powers still being Significant, since collectively it added up to a Significant level of power even if it was a grab-bag of smaller abilities like "immune to poison" and "can breathe underwater". Minor Possessors would be street level supers or those sort of "useless" superpowers you sometimes see in comedies, Significant would be regular Superheros like a Spiderman or Nightcrawler, and Grand Possessors would be omega-level mutants or the Flash or otherwise overpowered superheros. I also had the concept that more flexible powers would be of a higher power level; since naturally it meant more flexible and broad powers would be stronger.
Adepts existed at the cross between Mind + Spirits, which meant their magic was intensely personal to them as a combination of their mind and personal obsession. Naturally, these are directly stolen from Unknown Armies. As part of that UA lore, Adepts were unique in that they were the only type of magic user on this list who could actually generate their own magical charges; which similar to Unknown Armies could be used for rituals or magical crafting. They had some of the flexibility of a Wizard; being able to invent their own spells; but had to work within a narrow framework of their obsession and paradox. (If you don't know what an Adept is; imaging a crazy person who believes that rats are God's chosen and most divine animal. They can learn a bunch of rat based spells and gain "charges" by feeding rats (minor) or living as a rat for weeks at a time (Significant), usually with a Major/Grand charge being something very rare or impossible, like finding a living rat king and serving it in this example. But every Adept has a taboo; so in this case killing a rat or treating a smaller being callously or something like that; and when you violate your taboo you lose all charges.) Similar to UA, these Adepts were "balanced" by their taboo and simply being weird and obsessive with something normal people may not care about, that felt like enough of a drawback for this type of magic.
Adept power levels were very simple as it was the maximum cap of charges you could accomplish. Minor Adepts essentially belonged to a minor magical school; only capable of generating minor charges. Significant Adepts were standard Adept casters, capable of generating Minor & Significant charges. This is where the lore broke a bit for me, because I liked the idea of Significant Adepts still being able to create a Major charge if they worked hard enough; so maybe Major Adepts were simply adepts with an especially strong school OR were immune to taboo in some way; making them formidable opponents.
Sorcerers were one of the magic user types I was most proud of. Essentially, it was a combination of both D&D's Sorcerer lore of being people born with magic (which is a huge nitpick I have with it but w/e) BUT also with the combination of the powers from Don't Rest Your Head. This combination may sound strange at first but ended up being one of my favorites along the list. Essentially, you had magic as part of your innate being, but your Soul but also your Body, which meant your mind was the most sacrificed/least important part of your magic. To fit with this, this magic user was unique in that they could basically cast as powerful spells as they wanted even as a novice, but with intense consequences. I remember reading Last Gasp Grimoire at the time and thinking how cool the spell cataclysm/spellburn system was; you can cast a number of spells per day safely, but any more then that and you have to start rolling on spell failure tables with negative effects that could harm you, summon aggressive monsters, cause mutations, or other random effects (usually bad). Underneath ToT's system, Sorcerers had the greatest strength from day one of having their magic; but most of their training and rolls would be to avoid the consequences. As part of their lore, most Sorcerers had a magical bloodline and like DRYH they would kinda turn into whatever their bloodline was as their magic took over, meaning a Sorcerer with a dragon ancestor would gain dragon-like mutations if they pushed their powers too far, or create wild and uncontrolled dragon fire everywhere after failing to control a spell, and so on. The eventual fate for Sorcerers who can't control their magic is to become a monster; fusing with their nightmare/bloodline creature and becoming an NPC hunted by other mages for their valuable body parts or to stop their rampage. I remember being unsure on what the actual purview of their magic should be; probably just related to their bloodline form (unicorn ancestor; has healing and purifying magic but if you fail a roll you'll grow a big ass horn?) and/or the nightmare concepts found in DRYH.
Minor Sorcerers had only a trace of their ancestry, and as such could only conjure minor effects but usually only had a slight "tell" of their inhuman ancestry and would only rarely mutate. Significant Sorcerers had a strong power level but also high risk if they cast unsafely. Grand Sorcerers were by far the most dangerous; having access to the most power but also highest risk of transforming immediately if they pushed it. If this pattern isn't obvious by now; most Grand/Major level casters were just the normal ones but juiced up, but sometimes they instead got to ignore the drawbacks of their magic where as other times they exemplified them. I wasn't sure on this and it wasn't consistent; I just picked whatever sounded good at the time.
Vessels are a magic type encompassing pure Spirit or Soul. Essentially, these are a combination of UA's Avatars (people who embody archetypes from the collective unconscious of humanity and gain abilities by fulfilling their roles), along with D&D Clerics and Warlocks. Their name stems from the fact that they are merely a vessel for greater magical forces; in this case archetypes or supernatural powers beyond themselves. Similar to Avatars; these magic users usually had more passive or specific abilities tied to their archetypes, and had less control over them, but moreso just had them all the time as they embodied the supernatural or spiritual force, acting like passive benefits or an unseen hand. Out of all the magic users on this list, I had the least in mind for mechanics on how they'd actually work, probably a combination of Possessor-like powers but with Adept-like restrictions on behavior, with a bit more flexibility. I remember thinking they would be by far the most social out of all the magic types; able to live among and command mundanes the best, probably due to their purely spiritual source of power and having no Mind or Body magic to separate them from the masses. Since you were tapping directly into the symbols of the average person, your magic equipment and "spells" were simpler, just requiring a change into costume. One issue I had when designing the avatars in this game was that the setting was not based on the real world; so I specifically remember not knowing exactly what kind of cultural icons you'd be able to embody in this fictional world. Of course now that I'm older Avatars are more based on Jungian archetypes and other ideas from psychology; less based on concrete figures in your worldbuilding.
Minor Vessels could only access a portion of their avatar essence, but embodied it less. Significant Vessels had a full range of Avatar powers, and Major/Grand Vessels were filled with the essence innately, requiring the least symbols or specific behavior to channel it. I wasn't sure how I was going to combine D&D style patrons or clerical powers into this concept as well, but I never got that far in design.
The final center of the graph was named Works and was special. Essentially, this embodied all of the skills, knowledge, and general magical crafting that anyone could learn. Even mundanes could do it! I distinctly remember not just wanting a generalist overview for this as well; but I was going to include everything. Alchemy, Artifice, Divination, Ritual Magick, Summoning (which I wanted to include as a distinct skill I think), Magic Tattoos, Gemcraft, Magic Glyphs/Wards/Symbology, Meditation/Body Control and so on. Because this type of magic existed outside of the normal spectrum (or a combination of all three) the magical energy wasn't coming from the user but instead from the materials, actions, or relationships when these acts of magic were taking place. I did remember thinking for balance reasons that if you had a magical school, like you were also a Wizard or Adept, you would be restricted to a power level lower then your own; so a Significant level Wizard would only be able to do Minor level Alchemy (to prevent one person from trying to learn everything) But if you specialized in this type of magic you could have a normal amount of power level; so a Major/Grand level Ritual Magick user was essentially a force to be reckoned with even if they didn't exist on the normal power scale. Those who had a Significant or higher level in this field of magic were considered another type of spellcaster or magic-user, just focused on the crafting element.
As with the other types of magic user; Works power levels mostly focus on what kind of effects are possible, and would be different for every crafting system. Minor Alchemists could make basic oils and medicines, Significant could make healing potions and transforming potions, and Grand Alchemists could make permanent effects in potions or new true forms of life through manipulation of sacred Azoth, etc.
Mechanics & Lore
Mechanically, ToT was a an
Unknown Armies clone in the same way your average fantasy heartbreaker
is just D&D with a few of the serial numbers filed off. In my case,
it was even more mechanically derivative. The stats and mechanics were
the same; roll under d100 percentile rolls with stats and skills. Skills
were categorized under stats and were limited by them. I used the same
stats of Body, Agility, Mind, and Soul with a lot of internal debate if I
was going to have a "Luck" stat. At the time, I didn't know how D&D
worked even at a basic level, so my introduction to the hobby set this
expectation for me moreso then D&D did. Even now I think I prefer
roping Strength + Constitution into one stat, just for the sake of
realism and simulation and the like, but I could easily see an alternate
universe where this game just had the D&D stats.
Additionally, I really liked the "Cherries" system from UA, in which you get a special bonus or effect if you roll successful doubles (ie; roll a 66 under your skill of 70); which was relegated to your Obsession skill. Flip-Flops (ie; turning a 71 into a 17) were also a feature of Obsession skills in UA, which my game kept. Similarly to UA, your "obsession" skill could be anything but was usually your magick skill, but only Adepts were forced to keep it as their Obsession given the in-universe lore source for their power came from their obsession with their Adept School.
Because of the many different magic classes; skills were all slightly different. I think this was one of the least well-thought out parts of the game. I think I made it so Wizards had every magic spell they learned as a separate skill, Mages could have their Arts & Forms as skills, but Adept schools would just have one skill related to their magic, possessors probably just had one as well, or it was instead stemming from their specific ability score. I think this likely would have been one of the biggest problems going forward given the extreme difference in rates of progression or point-buy limitations of this kind of system. Even though balance wasn't a concern; I did have some mechanics to help support this. Like you got +1% to any skill any time you failed it, but Wizards in particular got +1% to skills for succeeding them and +3% for failure up to a certain amount; this made learning spells really easy for them but since spells were very specific and limited I didn't see it as being an issue. The Wizard spell list included a mix of D&D spells from the SRD sourced online, adapted Harry Potter spells, and some original ones. My favorite original spell was called "Etheomo" and was described as a curse that drew your body heat to your skin; causing burns all over your body and hypothermia internally, making it very hard to treat since trying to cool you your skin with cold water would just freeze you more, but trying to warm you up wouldn't help your burns, etc. One of my friends at the time thought it was a very brutal and scary curse and thought it was like a magical war crime, which made me remember this fondly.
Despite not being present in the rules; I very much wanted the game to be balanced at least conceptually. Like each magic using class was meant to be equally present in the world, and equally strong in different ways. Like Wizards had the most specific and narrowed focus of spells, and could only memorize and use a certain number at a time compared to the more free-form nature of the other classes, but they could actually make up new ones and basically do anything, where as other more powerful or spontaneous magic users were limited to their specific field. Weirdly I remember being hung up on the idea of wanting all magic users to be equal in number, maybe even with a rule in the game to limit the party to one magic user per type, but I don't know why.
The cosmology was also interesting. It was taken directly from Unknown Armies, but naturally built upon an expanded to adopt this new magic-rich setting. I even had the idea of a metaplot that this world was the "new world" created by the invisible clergy of our own world/timeline. One of my absolute favorite parts of UA was the kind of reverse cosmic horror it had going for it; all of reality, magic, and meaning came from humans. There is nothing beyond humans, so all the horrible shit in the world and all its problems are caused and imagined by humans.
On top of the more mundane medieval-fantasy backdrop, there was an otherworld of many other dimensions and places. This was a combination of my own ideas, UA concepts, WoD concepts, and internet fiction stuff all mixed together to create a very complex cosmology. (For being a setting where humans matter everywhere there sure are a lot of unnatural realms!) I also roughly mapped the cosmology map to the three main domains of Mind/Body/Soul as the magic using classes, which I was quite proud of. The image even had some minor gameplay/mechanics implied within it; realms with thicker outlines were harder to get out of or move into.
I think most of these realms are self-explanatory. However I'll give special mention to a few; the Supernal Realm was just taken directly from MAGE (I don't remember which edition had that lore), and we also had Arcadia and the Hedge taken from Changeling, Gauntlet from Wraith, and Umbra/spirit realm from werewolf. I do not at all remember what the "Shadow Lands" was about. Giant Country was a unique one; essentially it was the idea of a kind of supernatural realm where everything is big. It's where giants and dragons and tall-tales come from; a bit like a more physical version of a fae-realm but focused specifically on things "big". The Awakened Masters were not a Jojo reference (though several people did reference that when they saw it at the time) and it was moreso the idea of a realm where Kung-Fu style Immortal superpeople went; either as a final reward for ascension or as a way to keep them from living among and controlling regular humanity. It was kind of meant to be like the "Level 20 Ascension Super-Afterlife" you get to go to for physical/power characters as opposed to the Stratosphere (where ascended Avatars go and live among the collective unconscious of humanity) and the Supernal Realms being sort of like the ascension super-afterlife for the most powerful mages, wizards, and other mind-focused spellcasters who keep the universe running in its barest levels. I also very specifically kept the UA lore of demons being dead people obsessed with something so much they couldn't pass on beyond the veil, but yet also had a "Daemonic Realm" so I'm not sure how that works. I also remember not wanting to say what happens beyond the veil because I thought it was too "arrogant" to confirm the destination of people's souls in a fictional world. I guess my real world beliefs at the time seeped into this work, which is surprising given I feel like I really haven't changed at all in 10 years. Guess this is a reminder that your own memory isn't as good as you want it to be.
Now to completely pivot; what mechanics did I really like? My absolute favorite at the time and now again looking back was the magical foci creation rules for Wizards. They were (needlessly) complex but basically allowed you to design any kind of wand you wanted with rules for basically any kind of wood, metal, stone, glass, or other material, as well as rules for its magical core and topper on the end. Going off of Harry Potter wandlore; these were all meant to customize and modify your Wizard's magical implement, as every type of material or magic essence would change how the wand functioned. For example, Ash wands were better for dark magic, giving +10% to your roles with damaging hexes or spells, but would give a -10% to healing or protective magic.
It was very transferable as well; so for example if you wanted to make a magic orb as a focus you would just pick the material and core, with those influencing the spellcraft. I remember being proud of how many foci I added, since it wasn't just wands and staves but included magic orbs, amulets/talismans, rings, spellbooks, cloaks/clothing, and possibly more I'm forgetting. Each one also had a role; Orbs were the best at casting long-term and sustained spells over time but were bad at targeting and had slower spellcasting. Rings were great for protective spells and illusions on yourself but you could only cast spells on things you can touch. Staves were like wands but with less finesse and precision, instead, more raw power. The really nice thing about it was you could just imagine or generate any kind of wizard focus you want, or even look at some from popular fictional characters and cross-reference the list of ingredients and materials to see exactly what kind of stats they would have. Iron dueling wands topped with rubies would be incredible for fire magic used in war, but a silver talisman with an amber gem with a unicorn horn magical core inside would function totally differently and could be an incredibly powerful magical defense and counter-spelling focus.
I intentionally made wands the best and most convenient though on purpose to cement their place in the fiction as the most common and useful Wizard tool. I wanted to create a system where a Wizard player might carry multiple wands/foci with them for different situations, which felt very immersive and fitting with the worldbuilding, and these powerful benefits these Foci had were supposed to also make up for the fact Wizard characters had to "make up" for all the skill points they had to spend to learn individual skills where as other magic classes could just spend skillpoints on their overall magic power or adept school and so on. Once again, it wasn't really mathematically balanced on a spreadsheet or anything like that, but it felt about right.
Testing & Actual Play
For ToT I ran two one shots with two different small playgroups, and a solo session with one player while experimenting with the rules. Because of the improv nature of the game system (as it never anywhere near finished), this was more to get the "vibes" of the rules and setting down and simply to "have fun", especially given at the time I had a surplus of free time and nearby friends possible to play in person. Both of these things seem to become more and more scarce as time goes on...
Both session were ran more like a mystery investigation game then a high fantasy wizard simulator. The first featured an old man who spoke very slowly and guarded a bridge, claiming to be an evil bridge troll who would eat anyone who tried to cross without paying his toll. Actually, the man was once a troll but had his mind swapped with an evil wizard who wanted to posses the trolls huge strong body for himself. This was also meant to hint at the nature of magic; as the wizard would be fully capable of still casting spells in the trolls body since it was his mind, and not his body or spirit, that supplied his magic. Meanwhile, the players who picked an Adept and Mage I believe, were more grounded to their forms. I couldn't think of a way to explain why an Adept wouldn't be able to get away with this trick, especially since it would depend on their school, in the same way a Wizard would but we never got the reveal. The other session I remember was the solo session where the player ended up getting trapped in a mansion with a little boy who kept making the doors he entered lead back into the building no matter where he went; the little boy being a young sorcerer with kitsune blood who could teach the character something about bloodline magic. The player seemed to enjoy this solo session a lot more then the group session, but this was more due to the horror/psychological focus of it over the shitty mystery with no combat or interesting roleplay.
Why it Died
Out
of all the games & worldbuilding projects I've created, this one
has the most obvious and immediate cause of death. During its creation I
spent several months working on it in between school and home life, I
wasn't working at the time and had little else to do, and so I
frantically produced probably 400 total pages in two documents on my laptop. The idea of creating seven total playbooks, one for each of the magic types in addition to core rules, was daunting but my ambition was such that I could accomplish it if I put my mind to it. This was actually true at first, as I completed the core rules, the entire Wizard book, as well as most of the Mage book and wasn't quite burnt out yet, though my production slowed. Soon after though, my laptop's hard-drive died and of course I had made no backups. I don't remember if I F'd the disk of the laptop to get it working again which cleared the files or it simply was thrown into the trash but the books were lost to time. This killed all momentum on the project and I had no interest in starting over, so I simply moved on to different things.
What lesson was learned here? I think this one is obvious. Don't go out as your first project trying to make something huge and ambitious without playtesting or having a group interested! I didn't learn that lesson, but I do backup files now at the very least.
