Meet Tim Cosing [ARG Behind the Scenes]

In the "Whose Tim Cosing?" thread, many thanks were called out to:

You, Adam, and everyone else involved in the puzzle

I must say, MAJOR PROPS go to our most recent new moderator: Peter. He's been working on this since last Fall! This is really his brainchild. The story and art and writing all come from Adam and I, but the puzzles are riddles and hints and clues are all from Peter's plan. He's the true Tim Cosing (and CornCakes, but you all figured that out RIGHT AWAY - we were all very impressed by that).

Just so you know, we have all been hanging on your every step through this journey. We have PAGES of discussion about your discussions. It's been a blast to watch you work.

Anyway, I just wanted to give credit where it's due. Pretty much everything in the ARG directly feeds into what's going on in the Multiverse and especially in Sentinels of the Multiverse: OblivAeon. But none of the puzzles or amazing forum engagement would have been possible without Peter's help and puzzle-mastery.

And, of course, none of it would have worked without you all getting so into it! Thank you all for playing along! In a lot of ways, Fanatic's recent feelings echo our own: "This is no game."

Excellent job, Peter! The whole thing was really well put together and super-fun. Thanks for what must have been a ton of hard work!

Ah, it was only 7 months of work. I had roughly estimated that it would take a month or two to solve, based on the last ARG I ran.

3 days later, y'all pretty soundly proved that I am bad at roughly estimating how long it takes to solve an ARG. 

It was such a joy to put together and watch everyone solve; I ended up taking the three days off work, and just madly refreshed the forum/helped assemble clues/rewrite them on the fly.

If anyone has any (non-story) questions about the whole shebang, feel free to ask! 

Well then, thank you very much Peter.

Congratulations on an ARG well done! It was really exciting to participate in as much as I could.

I'm most curious about the delay after the Morse code puzzle--what was going on behind the scenes there?

Seconding the curiosity behind the be patient page, also, was there any moment that stood out where we surprised you, either with our tangents or how we solved some of the steps?

Another thing: Are there things that we are still missing? (Or maybe you don't want to tell us!)

Did you by chance keep records of the different URLs that were attempted (either directly on the site, or things we said we mentioned trying in the thread)? If so, what are some of your favorites?

I WANT TO KNOW EVERYTHING! (But, then, what’s new?)

I was enthralled by this and would love to hear about the behind-the-scenes, both in the planning and during the solving.

Yes, lots of behind the scenes stuff would be awesome. What was the most fun/interesting puzzle for you to create? What was the most fun to watch us try to solve?

Amazing work Peter.

My most burning question would be, how did you create the puzzles? Did you start with words >G said needed to be the clues or did they lay out the story and you picked the most appropriate ones and worked from there? Or was it that you started out with a puzzle and ask/told the >G crew what you needed to make the puzzle work?

Great work Peter.  I just wish I'd had the time or knowledge to help more than I did.   

To be fair…many a hint was provided on Twitter, haha. And who KNOWS how long it would have taken anyone to realize about Tim Cosing showing up so many times in the rulebook…certainly people have had it for a few weeks and hadn't pointed that out yet…

Major props to you, Peter, that was one hell of a thing to put together and it can't have been easy keep up with where the investigation was going at all times! 

Thanks, Peter! You ruined my productivity for three days…in a good way!

Oh, now I want to see those…

So, is there a back for cleverest legacy, or is that just a vicious tease there?

Major kudos to you, Peter!  It was incredibly fun and engaging, a true gift to all of us.  :)

Good job, Peter. It was much fun to follow - and a pleasure to slowly discover the story, even if the puzzles made me feel completely useless

A great THANK YOU! to you, Adam, Christopher and every one involved in what was a great and fun experience.

Great job with the ARG. :) I say this only as a spectator, though.

Thanks, Peter!  That whole thing was awesome!

I honnestly noticed first night i played it but not being a puzzle guy did not seek more into it… The chase could have been started on canadian delivery but I missed my chance to contribute.

I'm most curious about the delay after the Morse code puzzle--what was going on behind the scenes there?

As I mentioned, I thought this would take a looooong time to solve, so for a lot of the first day, Adam and Christopher were frantically trying to keep ahead of you guys. On two or three separate occasions, you were literally solving the last clue that was drawn/written. (The puzzles had been put together awhile in advance, and Adam drew most of the covers back in August or September, but the in-between comics were basically being assembled as the puzzles were being solved).

Finally, after everyone solved the Morse Code puzzle(s) way faster than we expected, you overtook us. We put a "to be continued" post up, and didn't start the ARG up again until the rest of the puzzles were assembled.

was there any moment that stood out where we surprised you, either with our tangents or how we solved some of the steps?

I really thought that the semaphore/rail fence clue would take way longer to solve. Also, I genuinely have no idea how you found the (first) morse code video earlier. It was an unlisted video - it should not have been available without the link!

On the flip side, the Augustus clue took waaaaaaay longer than I was expecting. As soon as someone posted the number, I thought it'd be instantly recognized as an ISBN. (13 images/13 books in the image? Total coincidence.)

And I really, really, really thought that the presence of Tim Cosing 9 times in the rulebook would be spotted before anyone played 3 Mega Computers in Megalopolis. Why would you do that?? It makes no sense!

Are there things that we are still missing? (Or maybe you don't want to tell us!)

Nothing substantial, but by my count no one ever:

1. Worked out what the other sound clips were
2. Worked out what the coloring of "intervene" meant (hint: it's not an additional key - it was actually intended to point towards the eventual solution of that image)
3. Noticed the logic of which characters were included in http://greaterthangames.com/445566778
4. Spotted that the FT ADAMANT ascii art was exactly 128 characters on each line (thus the footnote in the comic)

Did you by chance keep records of the different URLs that were attempted (either directly on the site, or things we said we mentioned trying in the thread)? If so, what are some of your favorites?

I didn't keep records, but the one that made me laugh the most was when someone tried "http://sentinelsofthemultiverse.greaterthangames.com/adickmove"

I was enthralled by this and would love to hear about the behind-the-scenes, both in the planning and during the solving.

At some point (once I've caught up on work) I am thinking of doing some in-depth posts about this on my blog. It was so interesting to put together, and so much fun to watch the site explode with it.

What was the most fun/interesting puzzle for you to create? What was the most fun to watch us try to solve?

The one that I was proudest of - by far - was the Wager Master's riddle. I was just really happy with how it all came together - Adam was aware of how much I loved the riddle, so see if you can spot anything odd about Wager Master's face as he's spouting it...

The first puzzle that I came up with, back in July or September, was the Twisting Back Alleyways -> Combat Stance riddle. I thought that was really nifty, and alluding to the solution (#---) without giving it away was a fun challenge.

This is going to sound awful, but I really enjoyed the angry "How can anyone be expected to solve an 81-minute morse code video" posts...followed by the complete solution being posted (by several people) less than 2 hours later. Turns out that if you have a huge group of people working on something, it's not that hard to complete monotonous tasks!

My most burning question would be, how did you create the puzzles? Did you start with words >G said needed to be the clues or did they lay out the story and you picked the most appropriate ones and worked from there? Or was it that you started out with a puzzle and ask/told the >G crew what you needed to make the puzzle work?

This is a long story that I'll probably tell in detail in those blog posts, but basically: I approached GTG about running an ARG with them in February of last year. Christopher gave me a rough idea of Oblivaeon's story, so I could work out the best angle to write the puzzles from, and then in July/September I sat down with Christopher and Adam and pitched them a version of what ended up going ahead.

I made a big list of possible ways to hide clues (Morse code, card flavor text, the video game, the periodic table) and brought it to them. Some were vetoed, most of them were approved, and so I got to work putting it all together.

I really wanted the final solution (Oblivaeon) to be hidden in all the other clues, so it quickly became apparent that there would have to be 9 covers. We came up with a way of hiding each letter in a story-related word or phrase (Scion's Aid, Harbinger, Odd Allies).

Pretty quickly, the number 9 started to take over my life. You start to get really quick at counting when words/phrases have exactly 9 letters (although not with 100% accuracy...*COUGHflavortextCOUGH*) and so it didn't take me long to notice that Sentinels had 9 letters in it as well. What's more, weirdly enough, all of the places that the letters had been hidden (the "n" in Scion's Aid, the "b" in Oblivaeon) were in either the 4th or 5th position...

4 + 5 = 9.

But one of the strangest and most powerful moments of my life was when I noted down which words had the clue hidden in the 4th position and which had it hidden in the 5th position, and mapped it onto Sentinels...

SENTINELS

NINES

Christopher will confirm that I was literally speechless when I ran into his office to show him that. Blew my mind.

After that, I got obsessive about everything being 9 letters long. People noticed "morse code" was 9 letters long, but did you spot these?

• semaphore
• plus three
• comic book
• Augustus's (code) - bit of a stretch, but it was good enough for me
• Unity bots
• sound file

(That's obviously not all, but most of them I hid in the barcode or got Christopher to hide on the back of a comic.)

So most of the time I started with a puzzle and told them what I needed to make it work, but there was a lot more back-and-forth than that. Christopher and I spent a morning on it when he was in Australia for PAX, and I was regularly Skyping with both Adam and Christopher to get all the details right!

It was super, super fun. I got to learn a bunch about the Sentinels characters (past and future) and the thing that I was most excited about ("Puzzle Solvin' Legacy", as I called him) actually happened, and was way cooler than I had hoped for.

To be fair...many a hint was provided on Twitter, haha. And who KNOWS how long it would have taken anyone to realize about Tim Cosing showing up so many times in the rulebook...certainly people have had it for a few weeks and hadn't pointed that out yet...

I mostly gave hints when the clues weren't entirely fair. Atbash, for example - if you don't know much about puzzles, you're not going to go straight to that as a way of decrypting things. Barcodes that scanned fine on my computer stopped working when they were uploaded, and I hadn't even considered that DD Classes looks waaaaaay more like D&D Classes than it does Dewey Decimal Classes.

Despite that, man! Everything was figured out So. Fast.

Heck I read the forums a lot and I had trouble keeping pace with people unlocking puzzles.  I was glad to deduce that Corncakes was a fake account or at least directly linked to TimCosing

Awesome work, Peter! Thanks for all the work you did – it really is appreciated, as is everything everyone else did in creating and solving it!

So, is there a back for cleverest legacy, or is that just a vicious tease there?

 I wrote suggestions for an ability and incap powers (I was really excited by the idea of an ARG-only promo card) but Christopher's ability was far better than the ability that I came up with (which, uh, makes sense), so I don't really want to post what I had - Christopher almost certainly has better ideas for what he could have.

I probably shouldn't post too much of the behind-the-scenes discussions we had, but I can't resist sharing a few little snippets - attached!

(#1 - I was based in England when the first puzzles started getting solved, and so I found myself staying up until 2 or 3am each night, just because that's when the forums were most active.

#2 - You can see how dang excited I was by Puzzle-Solvin' Legacy. Originally his power was called "Puzzle Solver", but at my request Christopher renamed it.

So does this mean Christopher will have to kill us all per the third screenshot?

He already has. Villains shipped out radioactive. Even for those who are reading this and haven't received their copy yet, you won't be able to resist playing even though you doom yourself in the process.

The cards may contain explosive devices...

Radioactive boardgame expansion, huh? That sounds like an origin story in the making to me. 

Tom Cosing was in my country while this was going on and I didn't kidnap and ransom him for answers!?!

I am getting old.

Wager Master's blue hair are a nice match with his light-blue skin tone…!

Seriously, EXCELLENT work with this puzzle hunt/ARG. Truly a masterpiece. I honestly had dreams about it…!

Great job on the ARG Peter! Definitely very interesting to see it all unfold.

I place the blame on squarely MigrantP who programmed a random seed that gave Wraith nothing else to play in my game other than 3 Mega computers! (other cards were duplicates of Limited Equipment already in play).  And yeah I was playing in Megalopolis because I like the Megalopolis theme song.  So you can blame Jean-Marc for that!

Seriously, it was quite a shock to see that Intervene screen popup out of the blue with no idea why.

Edit: Follow-up question: was Intervene enabled in the Digital game since its last version release? (about 3-4 weeks prior with the introduction of the Weekly One-Shots?).  What if I played three Mega Computers back then?!?!

Wow, so much awesomeness here.

And here I was assuming that you had everything posted already, and had something clever to prevent us from skipping ahead (like when someone tried "endofdays" prematurely).

Here's one question: there was a number hidden in the comments of the "replaceme" page, which someone thought they had looked through earlier. Was that in fact added during the contest?

Wow, and I thought that was a really great clue!

This blog, right? Peter C. Hayward's Blog | Feminism. Board Games. Writing. Updated Sporadically.

I think it was a race there between the "crowd-sourcing" option and the computerized option.

Wow, that was so perfect. I assumed that you started there and worked backwards, but you're saying that it just fell out? Awesome.

One thing I learned from this contest is that there are a lot of really lousy encryption systems out there. But I'm not actually sure which puzzle/tweet you're referring to here.

I think the issue here was the resolution - the lines in a bar code are pretty closely spaced, and then you rotated them. If you had provided higher-resolution images (maybe through an extra click), it would have been fine.

there was a meta-joke we just had about this [i.e. the crossword behind Cleverest Legacy) that those [freedom, equality, etc.] aren't the right words, but he writes what he wants in crosswords

Oh wow, this had me in stitches!  You folks are the funniest!  Just imagining being the smartest puzzler from a family of puzzlers, yet being such a big fan of justice et al as to disregard the actual answers...   

I need Cleverest Legacy in my game.  If Christopher doesn't suggest incap powers, I am sure someone(s) in the community will come up with something.  Or I'll just make sure never to incap him...  It's an amazing power on the front, plus he just looks so cheerful.  :)

I mean, we could just take one incap power from each of the other 3 Legacy cards…

I feel like there should be at least one that squarely fits his theme. His base power is so perfect.

(But we shouldn't get specific about possibilities on this forum.)

Follow-up question: was Intervene enabled in the Digital game since its last version release? (about 3-4 weeks prior with the introduction of the Weekly One-Shots?). What if I played three Mega Computers back then?!?!

Here's one question: there was a number hidden in the comments of the "replaceme" page, which someone thought they had looked through earlier. Was that in fact added during the contest?

Although now that I look, the reason no one worked out the reasoning behind the XXX characters ( ) is, uh, because it didn’t upload properly. So now that should be extraordinarily solveable.

This blog, right? http://www.peterchayward.com/blog/

I’ll post a link when it goes live.

You're saying that the comment that I now see at http://greaterthangames.com/445566778 is new? That is quite an excellent addition.

It is! It got lost when the page was first created (and replaced by a paragraph break, for some reason)

Peter…what have you done?!

Guys I didn't want to be lonely in heaven

In defense of Christopher and Adam, Haka does not have tattoos.

I just wanted to say that I am impressed with all the hard work you PeterCHayward and GTG for the puzzles, and all the fans who solved them. At first I just thought the fans were insane, because they were seeing conspiracies, but then I confirmed it when they solved the mysteries so efficiently! I had fun reading the thread, and apologize I couldn't be of much use. This was so much fun to follow!

Congrats to you all.

THANK YOU!

I'm not sure if I just can't get the old page cleared from my cache, but there's nothing that jumps out at me as different. Still just nine names that I can count.

Look at the HTML source, and search for comments ("<!–").

OK, got that. The number of characters is right to be M'kk Dall'ton. That makes all the core set heroes.

Peter, are we missing anything there?

One more thing: the color from the comments in light blue, which by the page number code gives an apostrophe.

That's all it was! And, uh, it is unsurprising that no one got it. What with it not being there and all...

Also it falls between the N from Helena and the S from Vanessa so it becomes Scion'said with the apostraphe. So its clearer that its Scion's Aid rather than Scion Said.

Hey! So I've spoken to Christopher about it, and I can 100% confirm there are no plans to print America's Cleverest Legacy . It was designed to be a fun ARG-exclusive, but that's as far as it's going to go.

As such, there will never be an official back-of-card art/incap powers image for you to print. But! In lieu of such a thing, I thought I'd post the incap powers that I pitched to Christoper.

(Again, this - like America's Cleverest Legacy himself - is not canon, but if I were going to play with the promo, this is what I'd use as his incap powers.)

• One hero draws a card. 
• Discard the top card of the Villain deck. 
• Reveal the top 3 cards of the Villain deck. Put them back in the same order.

While it'll never happen, I always imagined the incap side being America's Cleverest Legacy staring (shocked and alarmed) at a broken pencil.

Also, in case you missed it, someone pretty quickly broke the card! His power should be errata'd to "play or destroy a non-character card", else he suddenly becomes very good against Omnitron, Citizen Dawn and Gloomweaver.

Have fun!

*crosses fingers that someone will have time to mock-up that card back*

Im not artist, but im printing this later for my own amusement (and because I am a completionist nutcase)


I did a quick sketch of broken glasses for the incap side. And I pick 2 of the same incap powers as Peter suggested. I can modify the back to match his list and post here this afternoon if anyone wants.

I'd certainly would be glad to see it.   

Almost to work (where I lose wifi) but I'll get it online at lunch.

Here's the errata front:

and the back:

Yeah, so, uh. Decided to take a really early lunch. heh. 

That's awesome

This was such a great event!  Thank you so much for creating it!  It was exciting to follow AND exciting to try and solve.

I would love to see the other alternate universe characters (Legacy like Setback?  Native American Chrono-Ranger lady?  SWEET!)

That's what I'll use when/if I can make an oversized version.  Thanks.

Glad I could help.

Nice to feel useful after floundering around during the ARG.  

Cleverest Legacy incap side reminds me of Mr. Fixer's incap side.

Shocked Cleverest Legacy looking at a broken pencil?  There's a stunned Legacy on "You Won't Believe Your Eyes!" that could be repurposed.

I love my life.

Aw, it's lovely that such a small edit could provoke such a positive response!  :)

I wish I had time to draw a full scene instead of reusing Adam's art.  It takes me weeks to produce anything decent; I've no natural talent, so I make tons of mistakes before I get the result I want.  If I did have the time, I'd draw Cleverest Legacy staring at a table, on which would be a broken pencil beside a crossword completely filled in with Baron Blade-related words.  I'd like the look of that.  Eventually!

Well now, that blows my crudely drawn broken glasses clean out of the Multiverse!  Great job!

Of course, now I have to print the card for a third time. But well worth it.

…or just the name "TIM COSING" over and over again!

Didn't see the ARG when it was going on (life has been a bit busy with Roller-Derby and work, so sorry it has been a while since speaking to you fine folks), but looking at the clues that were broken down, I was seriously amazed - both by the setting of the puzzle and by the things people observed and cracked. Well done everybody!

I'm going to be intrigued by the design blog - Some of the clues so sound obsucre where they are placed that there had to be some doubt as to how they'd even be found!

There turned out to be some redundancy–we found several ways to find the first page, for instance. There may be more that we are still missing. I'm also looking forward to the design blog!

Yeah, I’m still amazed at grysqrl’s coup de grace at the end. It boggles me that 1. they’d expect us to get all that, and 2. grysqrl did.

What you're not seeing reading through the threads are all the dead-ends that people went down. I'm sure grysqrl tried lots and lots of things before hitting on the solution.

I was actually having stress dreams shortly before that about all of the select-the-8th-letter puzzles that came up earlier in the ARG because those solutions never occurred to me and I felt bad about it. So, when the last clue came up, I was primed for selecting one letter from each word and then Estelindis posted the chart with all of the cover names and SENTINELS down the side and it clicked.

Alright, I'm a few weeks late to the America's Cleverest Legacy backs, but I decided to make one based on the art from the ARG. So, here ya go.

I changed the incapacitated powers a little bit to reflect a comment made in a different thread that every other Legacy has the draw a card and use a power options. Also threw in a copyright since it is Adam's art, just to be fair.

It's not Legacy getting stumped or damaged, but I kinda like the thought of him just saying "I'm too smart for this, I'm outta here..."

Given that I'm fairly confident that I couldn't have solved it myself, I'm delighted that something I did could help you solve it. 

Wow, why did none of the rest of us think to use the other art of him from Adam that we already had?  Great idea!  But it seriously reminds me of the ARG itself.  The puzzle answers would make sense after someone else showed them, but in most cases I'm sure I wouldn't have come up with it myself.  My biggest contribution was probably on the morse code, and all that required was a lot of grunt work.  Anyhoo, fair play!

Heh, no worries. My contribution to the ARG was to type “5 years in seconds” into google.

If I had a little more skill with Photoshop, I would’ve preferred to use the image of ACL from the first panel and make his face look frustrated. He’s already crumpling paper in his hand. (My other idea was to put Angry Wager Master into the shot I had…then you’d know it wouldn’t end well for Legacy… )

I thought people might  appreciate some detailed incap art, so I used some photoshop and some existing art pieces to make this. Also have the errata for the card updated for the front.

http://imgur.com/a/MOcM3

Ha!

Awesome!  Well done!

Quick point: players draw cards, not heroes.

But awesome work everyone!

Adam also draws cards.

I see what you did there.

Wakukee, as I said to you on Reddit (you're Tre2 there, yes?), I adore what you did with the incap side.  Combining art from the comic page with Iron Legacy's "reluctant victory" face from the video game was an amazing idea.  I love, love, love it.

I wanted to print it, but just one thing didn't suit my personal taste: the incap image was styled a bit differently from the front.  For example, it seems to me that the front image uses very little shading/airbrushing, whereas the Iron Legacy face from the video game uses a lot, so it looks like you harmonised the two by putting more shading on the body from the comic.  Also, it's darker than the front.  My taste would be the opposite: I wanted it to be bright and clean, matching the front image.  Also, I preferred not to reverse the image, as it reverses the lantern logo on Legacy's chest, and if one tries to mirror that back the chest lines interfere a bit with the lantern lines.  So I'm redoing the whole thing myself from scratch.  I don't mean any offence by redoing it, as I truly appreciate both your idea and the work you did.  Anyway, since I am redoing it, I thought I might as well ask others for opinions. 

It's still a work in progress.  I am posting now, before it's finished, because I'm not sure which way to have the crossword facing.  I need to decide that before I fill in the words.  (As I suggested earlier - and I was delighted to see you did this - the words will be related to Baron Blade).  Does anyone have an opinion on which direction of crossword looks better? 



Anyway, regardless of which direction people think looks better (as people may have differences of opinion about this), if anyone is interested in modifying it further, I can share my Gimp file which other people can use.  People could even make their own cards with different words in them, if they like.  It's layered so that it shouldn't be too hard to change the shape of the grid itself, if people want a different layout (the crossword part is three separate layers: paper, grid, and spaces).  I thought this would be a nice idea, in the spirit of the wonderful joke that the words Legacy puts into the crossword aren't the answers to the clues, just whatever he fills like putting in.  :D

I feel like he should be snapping the pencil.

I feel like he should be snapping it too!  Didn't want to make too many changes initially, but now that I see someone else has this view as well, I can try to modify it that way.  To keep the pose as it is (and I do want to keep that - I want to preseve as much of Adam's original pic as possible), he'll have to be snapping it in one fist rather than breaking it with one end in each hand.  If I move the pencil down a bit, so that the bottom is poking out of his fist, but at a different angle, that might work.  Thanks!

Great job by everyone who has generated an incap side for this.

I'm all in favor of snapping the pencil if it looks good, it seems right.

Also, has anyone noticed that Equality actually doesn't fit into the crossword on the front? The only word that would fit there if what is printed is right is inequality.

How about this?  Does the snap "sound effect" look too over-the-top or out of keeping with the style of the rest?  Any other suggestions and/or critiques are welcome.  :)

Thanks especially for your comment, Wakukee.  Yeah, I noticed that the relationship of the words to the shape of the crossword is tangential at best!  It must be because Legacy puts in whatever words he feels like, regardless of whether they take up the available space fully.  :D

We need a bigger thumbs up icon.  

I love this community. The evolution of this incap has been fantastic. Thanks to everyone who's contributed!

Only touch I'd recommend is to add "Tim Cosing" somewhere into it, but that's just nitpicky.

I like it, but I'm not sure about the explody effect. That might just be because of the more obvious pixelation to it. I realize that I am also just nitpickey now though, this all is amazing.

+1 on the awesome evolution of the incap side.  It's come a long (long, LONG) way from my crudely drawn broken-glasses incap.  Thanks everyone for helping to make this card as awesome as it deserves to be.

You're not being nitpicky at all!  Or, if you are, it's the kind of nitpicking that I like.  Feedback is helpful.  :)

I'll see if Tim Cosing can fit in the word grid.  I used an online crossword configuring utility a while back to try out various combinations of "Tim Cosing" and Baron Blade-related words and they didn't always play nicely together!  But if the words I put in are anything other than what you prefer, you'll be able to use the layered image I'll share in order to put in your own words.

The explody effect was definitely more pixelated than I wanted, but before working to smooth it out I thought I might as well ask if I was going down a rabbit-hole with having a visible sound effect at all.  I've lessened the pixelation now, and there's another colour option too.  The "fire" one was actually the first one I did, but I'm trying to convey a snap rather than actual fiery doom, so I think it makes less sense.  ;)  What do you think?  Either way, the snaps are optional layers in the image, so anyone can take them out if they like.


I prefer the image to focus on his angry face and the crossword, so de-emphasizing the pencil snap would be better.

The orange fits better for the pencil breaking.  It helps the image make more sense, IMO.

Here is a version without any visible snap effect.  With the snapped middle in his fist, to me it just looks like the pencil is bent or not drawn properly, which is why I felt the need to add some visible indication of that.  But maybe I'm alone in that?  Maybe I just feel that way because I'm not looking at it with fresh eyes.  What do you think?  No snap, one of the existing snaps (maybe the orange one if people agree with Donner on that), or a different snap altogether?

I might go for a much more subtle "snap" effect. Something more like the markers for the incap abilities.

I agree with dpt. It doesn't have to be huge since the crushed paper already shows his frustration.

Thanks, dpt, for suggesting a specific look to guide me.  Before, when I tried to achieve a snapping look with just black lines, I made them big and long, and they looked terrible.  But I think that a few small ones like the incap bullet points work perfectly!  What do you think?


That’s great!

Ha, love it!

Perfect! As long as we are looking at tiny things -- I know it is in the original comic art, but what is that blob of flesh on Legacy's are that is crushing the paper? Some oddly placed muscle? I removed it on mine since posting here, it just looked so odd once I first saw it.

I personally also think he should have no glass on the glasses to match the front, but I understand the choice to match the comic as well.

Thanks everyone!

Wakukee, I'm not really sure about the "blob of flesh."  It could be intended to be part of his arm (he has pretty big arms), but it does look slightly off.  It might be a mistake similar to the bit of skin colour that was to the right of his neck in the original.  Hard to say. 

Still not sure about the glasses myself!  :)

Anyway, for now I'm working on filling in the crossword.  I'll post again once I've done that.  And, in terms of which direction to have the crossword facing, that's been decided by having the small black marks to show the pencil breaking.  It doesn't show up well again black if I reverse the grid.

You folks are absolutely awesome!  Really looking forward to the final version.

I really love the short marks for the snap, and I think the glasses look perfect. Keep in mind it'll be printed on a smaller card, so it's not even going to be that detailed.

Any chance you'd be willing to do two: One with Peter's suggestion and one with the two that are always on Legacy incaps with the "Reveal..." as the third?  If not, no stress -- thought I'd at least ask! 

Why not make one when it’s done? Editing the text box only is super easy. If you can’t figure it out, I’d be happy to edit it on whatever version you want.

It would be so cool if they didn't even announce it but simply included a printed card of this in all the deliveries of Oblivaeon.

Here is the text that I've settled on!  There is a "Tim Cosing" in there, but it's mostly hidden by Legacy.  The other words are Baron, Blade, Nemesis… and, because I couldn't find anything else remotely connected that would fit into the grid, Ruin and Regime.  There's an "It's Coming" beginning in the bottom right, but I only had room for the "It's," and it's mostly blocked by Legacy and the text box anyway.    The image below is formatted with the correct border bleed for Printer Studio.

I may tweak it later to make the text cleaner, or fix little issues here and there (and if anyone does notice a problem, please say), but for now it's done.  Thanks to everyone for the encouragement and suggestions.  Thanks most of all to Adam for the art and Wakukee for the idea!

For anyone who wants to make changes, here is the graphic file I’ve been using to work on this.  It’s layered for (hopefully!) easy editing.  I made it in Gimp, but I exported it to the Photoshop format as well, for those who prefer that.  (That being said, I don’t typically use Photoshop, so I may not have exported it optimally.  I just opened it in CS2 to make sure that it did export.)

825×1154 232 KB

I'd complain that that's not how crosswords work (spaces around the words unfilled), but that's how it is on the front too :P.

Many thanks for this, folks! I ended up making time to create what I was looking for, so I figured I'd share in case anyone else wants this.

(I just copied the text block from bobbertoriley's earlier version.)

Go team! We solved the hardest puzzle of the ARG!

Well thanks alot everybody. Now I've to go and print myself a deck of cards. What else to print with Cleverest Legacy. That is the question.

Honestly, I was thinking of printing out a bunch of copies with a pending order. If I can get an ok from GTG on the topic, I'd totally coordinate a groupbuy either here or on BGG.

Well, this is the side of the card where he’s having trouble with the puzzle…

How did I miss this great further work on an incapacitated ACL????? The new art is great! Now I'm going to have to print it again!!!!

Certainly count me in if folks are going to go in on an approved print run!

BLM

Is this on the wiki?

bobbertoriley: @Gtgchristopher There's been some interest in a groupbuy for America's Cleverest Legacy with the fan incap side. Any objections to someone hosting one on the forums? Or having one on BGG?

GTGChristopher: @Bobbertoriley BGG is a fine place for that kind of thing.

Last I'll say here on the subject. Keep an eye out on BGG if you're interested!

Thanks, everyone, for the positive responses.  :)

Seeing as some group-buys for Printer Studio versions of this card are happening (and closing soon!), it seems like any changes I'm going to make should be now or never.  Accordingly, I'm trying to make this fit as perfectly as possible with the formatting and style of printed cards.  I notice a few things:

• Adam is credited as artist on the front of every printed card, not on the back.  The credit is taken as applying to the whole card.
• Some cards say "One player may draw 1 card now."  Others say "One player may draw a card now."  Not sure what the reasoning behind the different phrasing might be!
• Incap text on printed cards is a good bit larger than what's currently in the image (looks like font size 40 vs. 32).  I only just noticed the card images as they look physically have bigger text than in the video game.

Does anything else stand out as something that should be tweaked?  Anything that should be applied to both versions of the card (some people prefer different incap powers) will be applied. 

I don’t remember exactly which version I used of “One player may draw/play a card”, but I’m pretty sure the Fireside chat thread standardized the text for the video game, so I’d use that.

I think the font size difference is negligible, as long as both sides have relatively the same font.

Also, I ordered a couple of copies as proofs with a recent order. I’ll be able to tell you from that how well everything looks. If you want to make any major changes, just let me know.

I'd rather have the incap text be like the standard cards, i.e., larger on the incap side.

What's the right thing to do about the copyright notice? The art on the front is by Adam, but I'm not sure whether or not it's correct to say that the whole thing is copyright by Greater than Games LLC.

Thanks for the info, Bobbert!

Dpt, I believe the copyright notice should remain, since Legacy and Sentinel Comics are part of GtG's intellectual property.  That said, in the versions used for printing, I think it's enough to have copyright on the front of the card only, just like the artist credit.  That follows the format that GtG use in their printed cards.

I have made the incap power text bigger on the version that uses Peter's suggested power.  I will now do the same for the other suggested power.  Unless anyone has any further suggestions, I will just do a few little things to improve overall quality and leave it there.

I finally finished it!  I'm happy with this as the final version.  I made the size of the text and power box as close as I possibly could to standard printed cards.  Then I tweaked a few aspects of the art, especially the crossword, e.g. trying to make the handwriting look a bit more like the front side, and fitting in a few more Baron Blade-related words (though this mostly can't be seen behind Legacy).  As per my previous comments, I've removed artist credit and copyright, solely because printed cards don't have that on the back, and with full admiration for Adam's artistic talent and GtG's intellectual property.  There's a full album with both versions here, the regular powers suggested by Peter and the modified powers suggested by bobbertoriley.


This looks absolutely incredible.

You made it possible, Peter! Thank you.

Ha! Looking at the crossword without Legacy in front, I notice that "Timcosing" is in there...! Nice touch! :)

Had to fit that in there somewhere!  :D

!!!

How did you manage to get those considering it seems you've been doing some worldly traveling lately?

Hahaha, looks like Christopher got that thing I sent him.

Hooray!  :D

I really loved watching this all play out even tho i didnt have an account then. I -snapped- at the morse code thing, but I loved showing my friend (another SotM fan) a month after it was done. And I quote: "Aaagggghhh. This is soo haaard. I love it! Wait what about Obliv"-tiptaptiptap. Thanks Peter forcreating such an awesome ARG and for the look on my friend's face when he solved it. He hated himself for not thinking of it sooner. His face was a lot like Cleverest Legacy's as he yelled "Goddamnit!"

Also kudos for everyone who made incap sides.