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A relic from The Chaosium archives...


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A relic from The Chaosium archives... Rick came across the original layout board for page 134 of 1990's 'Cthulhu Casebook'. The Star Elder Sign – which first appeared as the 'Arcane Symbol' in Call of Cthulhu 2nd edition (1983) – is literally cut and pasted in, with glue. Kids, that's how layout was done back in those days...

1312102579_ArcaneSymbol-layout.thumb.jpg.da5af50fb02e979774a60d0bd53729bd.jpg

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The Arcane Symbol (as it is referred to in the 2nd ed. rules) was drawn by the legendary Gene Day in 1982.

It's a subtle detail on the page, but I didn't notice that the word "Handouts" in the header next to the page number had been pasted over the previous header of "Insta-Plots". I had forgotten about this one page diagram which is on page 133. The Insta-Plots diagram allowed you to construct an adventure idea. Of course the irony for me is that when I constructed my first plot it read as "You found something weird which opens a gate to Detroit", and in an instant I was basically home again... 

instaplots.jpg

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Hope that Helps,
Rick Meints - Chaosium, Inc.

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22 hours ago, Bill the barbarian said:

The first time I did cut and paste I thought the Mac I was using was just the bee’s knees, daddio! But that is just ancient!

The Apple published programming manual (an actual physical book) contained lots of examples centred around writing a word processor. We all tried, turned out to be surprisingly difficult.

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10 minutes ago, EricW said:

The Apple published programming manual (an actual physical book) contained lots of examples centred around writing a word processor. We all tried, turned out to be surprisingly difficult.

Were you meaning a pre-Mac Apple Computer. Man, you might will have been using word star and that was not fun at all!

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... remember, with a TARDIS, one is never late for breakfast!

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10 minutes ago, Bill the barbarian said:

Were you meaning a pre-Mac Apple Computer. Man, you might will have been using word star and that was not fun at all!

Not quite that long ago 🙂. I had a Mac LCII. Owned a Mac II for a little while. Very different environment from today, everything was low level PASCAL and low level API calls, or Hypercard. No Swift or Objective C. It was actually a lot of fun - smaller, more compact environment, programmers from that era really have a sense of mastering the entire machine.

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11 minutes ago, EricW said:

It was actually a lot of fun - smaller, more compact environment, programmers from that era really have a sense of mastering the entire machine.

That is how I feel about DTP products. The ones that came out just slightly after the cut and paste methods demoed by Rick and MOB above! I am sure the same axiom would apply to both.styles however: know the older way even if you know the modern, The benefits are immense!

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... remember, with a TARDIS, one is never late for breakfast!

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