Arcanum De Profundis Prop Book

The talented Mr. Able of The Able Workshop has produced an amazing prop tome: The Arcanum De Profundis.



What an incredible piece of work. The tome itself is impressive, but I'm equally in love with the excellent craftsmanship and weathering on the storage box. Wander around his site and you'll find other projects of interest, including a hand-bound copy of the "Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows".

Anchors Aweigh

I'm currently working on a period copy of the shipping articles, the contract between a sailor and a boat's owners. I scanned in a copy of the original, but no matter what I do I can't get a decent OCR read off the text. That means I have to type a lot of it manually. Hopefully I'll have it finished in time to post on Friday, or possibly Saturday.

I'm expending so much effort into finishing it because it's the kind of prop document that would be particularly useful in a "Call of Cthulhu" game. Lovecraft country has a rich seafaring culture, and copies of the shipping articles archived in towns like Arkham and Innsmouth could be a valuable source of information to investigators.

Da Starz R Rite

Frankly, I'm ashamed of myself. I've always hated "cute" mythos memorabilia, but something came over me last night. After over a year of cranking out serious, reality-based stuff I finally succumbed to the siren call of the dark side.




The sad thing is I'll probably sell more of these things on Zazzle than my Miskatonic Expedition stuff.

Prop Luggage Labels

Considering how much I love ephemera from the 20's and 30's I'm surprised it's taken me this long to discover Dover's Old-Fashioned Luggage Labels (Stickers), a collection of reproduction stickers based on the advertising labels slapped on luggage during the golden age of travel. The book features four full-color plates filled with 53 vintage travel stickers from the 20's to the 50's, but with a few exceptions (like TWA and Intourist Leningrad) they're all appropriate for use during the "Call of Cthulhu" era.



There are a few airline and cruise ship logos scattered throughout, but most of the stickers feature hotels. Among the more notable ones are:

The Grand Hotel, Rome
Victoria Hotel, Amsterdam
Hotel Luna, Venice
Hotel Wildenmann, Lucern
Tarbet Hotel, Loch Lomond
Hotel Lido, Bucharest
The Continental Savoy, Cairo
Palace Hotel, Brussels
Grosvenor House, London
Hotel Mamounia, Marrakesh
Continental Palace, Saigon
Semiramis Hotel, Cairo
Hotel Fast, Jerusalem
Hotel Schwarzer Bock, Wiesbaden

The print quality is excellent, capturing the details of the masterful design work that went into all these images. The only thing I didn't like is that the stickers aren't reproduced full-size. Period stickers were 3" across or larger and most of these look like they were scaled down 80% or more. Since this book is aimed at scrapbooking enthusiasts it makes sense to shrink them so they don't overpower a page, but I wish the description on Amazon had been more forthright about the actual dimensions.

That said, I'm still happy with the book. For just $5.95 it's a great resource that features some wonderfully evocative artwork, particularly if you're running a globe-spanning campaign like "Masks of Nyarlathotep".

(Purchasing from the Amazon link above throws a couple of dimes in my account and helps support my book-buying addiction. I got a monkey on my back, bro.)

One For The Shippers

No, not the kind of shippers that imagine romantic relationships between the characters in their favorite shows (although I find the thought of John Connor hooking up with Cameron the smokin' hot Terminator strangely intriguing), but the ones involved in the package trade. Cephalopod Productions has posted a very cool period shipping receipt.

It Must Be My Clean Living

I'm not sure why, but my site traffic has blown through the roof over the last few weeks. In terms of visitors, this month has already topped February and is well on it's way to surpassing last month's figures. The increase in page views is even more dramatic.

Mind you, the numbers are still pretty small in comparison to most sites. If I'm lucky I'll hit just over 2000 unique visitors this month, which is equal to less than one second's worth of traffic at a major website. Still, I think that's a respectable number for a blog that services a niche (people interested in propmaking) of a niche (Call of Cthulhu players) of a niche (roleplaying and live action gamers).

Whatever the reason, thanks. I'm glad that at least a few hundred people find my stuff interesting enough to visit on a regular basis.

Update: Ironically enough, today's traffic has already broken my previous record of 114 visitors in a single day. Yeah, I know that in the big picture that isn't much, what with blogs that concentrate on Paris Hilton's vagina generating a thousand times as much traffic, but to me it means a lot.

Free Custom Fonts

One of the problems encountered by propmakers trying to create arcane tomes and scrolls is finding appropriate fonts. There are hundreds of exotic fonts floating around the net, ranging from ancient writing systems to custom alphabets created by conlang enthusiasts, but it can be difficult to overcome the issue of familiarity. Sure, the average person wouldn't recognize a stylized handwritten version of Tolkien's Tengwar, but there's a pretty good chance that the average gamer would. Heck, he might even be able to read it.

One way to get around that limitation is to create your own font using unique glyph designs. Up until now that required either some expertise in using graphic programs or a chunk of cash to pay someone else to do the work for you. Luckily, you can avoid either option by using the free Font Generator. Just download the form, write or draw your font characters, scan the sheet in and then submit it to the website and they'll spit out a brand new, custom font to your specifications.

That, my friends, is an amazing bit of technology. And I imagine some of you are already thinking up ways to use it.