Hello outlaws,

My main topic today is art. Over at Copperhead County HQ, we've slowly been working our way through several full-page art pieces for the book—all of them created by official Copperhead County interior artist Adam Schwaninger.  Some of these have been posted already, but today I want to take a deep dive into a new one.

It's a simple image, but it might be my favorite one we've done so far. It came into existence because I was thrashing about for inspiration, feeling like a failure as an art director, and decided to look up some William Eggleston photos. I love William Eggleston; he is a great photographer and a native of Memphis, Tennessee, and if you don't know his work, look it up! Several years ago, I was very lucky to see his Election Eve series exhibited at the Portland Art Museum, and it's stuck with me ever since.

The cash-in-the-freezer image is inspired by one of Eggleston's best-known photos, an untitled portrait of a freezer overflowing with strange 1970s goods. We combined that concept with another famous Southern freezer: the case of Louisiana congressman William J. Jefferson, who was busted by the FBI with $90,000 in bribe money in his freezer. 

Since we needed a vertical image for the full-page, Adam's art became a beat-up refrigerator revealing a bounty of cold cash within. (As well as, in a nod to Eggleston, a box of Bavarian Beans & Spaetzle).

Isn't that fun? I think so.

==========================================

v10f Update

Tonight also brings a little update to the EA document. As I've said before, my Copperhead County development is very play-driven, and one reason things have been slower than I'd prefer recently is that my long-running campaign has had a hard time getting together, due to pandemic, natural disaster, and other woes. But we've managed a few games so far this year, and since their crew is now Tier 3 and entering the endgame, they've given me a chance to work on late-game play.

One thing that became clear to me was that, after the recent Schemes revamp, the crew sheet had way too many Schemes spaces. Our game has a Tier 3 crew with a ton of shit going on, and they didn't even fill them! To correct that, new crews now start with 2 spaces, and unlock 1 more every time they increase Tier. Especially ambitious crews can also purchase a new upgrade, Office, to unlock 1 more space per Tier (per upgrade). To balance the upgrades list, I finally killed Stash, a bit of legacy Blades in the Dark that we no longer needed.

Aside from that, a couple of special abilities were rewritten. This game also made it clear that, after the recent Downtime revamp, the Hellraisers special ability Reign in Hell was OP. I gave it a hefty nerf, then ended up deciding to rename it Free Bird, cut the existing Free Bird ability, and then write a very spicy new ability for Reign in Hell.

Speaking of that campaign, I want to give a shout-out to my players, including Copperhead County contributor Michael Crowley and Friend-of-Copperhead-County Calum Grace, for keeping it alive. A long-running TRPG campaign is one of the hardest things to keep going, but somehow we've managed it over the course of a couple of years. I've had a few shorter playtest campaigns, but the saga of Slayton Hospitality is the primary one to thank for Copperhead County being good.

That's all for now. More art is coming in the future, as well as more boring writing and editing by me. Stay tuned for further news!