Heavy Lore 2.0: The Modern Chapter (Patreon)

Hey everyone!

I'm really proud to share this one with you. Heavy Lore has grown quite a bit since 1.6, and this feels like the right moment to give it a new chapter: Heavy Lore 2.0. The big addition is a whole collection of modern objects, bringing that same love for little physical details to games with computers, phones, field equipment and contemporary notebooks. If your campaign lives beyond castles and candlelight, I hope you'll find a lot to play with here.

Let's start with the paper. There are new styles for composition books, daily planners, weekly organizers, case notebooks, clinical journals and field notes, with page layouts to match. You can prepare a detective's leads, a doctor's observations or an ordinary person's very suspicious appointment book. Covers, bindings, paper, printed labels and interior details can all help make it feel like something that belongs to that character.

The Commonplace notebook gives you a freer way to put a page together. Writing, photographs and movable text blocks can share the same space, with captions, instant prints, photo corners and washi tape. Move things around, resize them, turn them a little, and let the writing flow around your pictures. There are also folded notes, envelopes, cards and pockets for those small things someone thought were worth keeping. This is a lovely place for a character journal, a scrapbook or a trail of clues that slowly starts to make sense.

Then there is the CRT terminal. You can power it on, browse folders, search files, use its command line, inspect images and recover damaged records. The hum, keyboard sounds and startup sequence give the machine its own presence at the table. A forgotten workstation can hold an entire little archive for your players to explore!

Laptops and tablets come with their own worlds inside: emails, saved conversations, drafts, searchable notes, photos and a fictional browser filled with pages you write for the story. There are clean contemporary designs and battered field versions, plus a very bold militar like OS for that old equipment out in the wilderness feeling. You can choose the software separately from the casing. Laptops also have proper opening, closing and power sequences, because apparently I couldn't let a hinge just be a hinge.

Recovered phones bring those clues into something much more personal. A lock-screen notification, an unfinished message, a photograph with a caption, a note someone saved for later. You author what is inside, and your players explore it through the handset. Casing colors, wallpapers, cracked glass and screen damage help tell the rest of its story. Sometimes a small conversation left on a phone can say an awful lot about the person who carried it.

All of this comes with dedicated editors and live previews, so you can shape both the object and the story inside it. Change the hardware, colors, wallpaper, wear and available apps, OS, choose a different notebook style, or strip back the decoration for something plain. Changing a look preserves the content you've already written. Digital devices can also optionally follow Foundry's world time, which is a nice little touch when the clock itself matters to the scene.

I also spent time on the everyday editing experience. Pictures now start upright, with a precise rotation control and a reset button. Margin notes can be edited after placement, including their handwriting and ink color. There are fixes for scrolling through larger collections, placing and moving stamps, image-size controls, undo and redo, and the way classic book covers open. Thank you to everyone who took the time to explain what was getting in the way. Those reports really help.

A lot of care went into this update, and I'm excited to see what you make with it. Give the new objects a try, bring them into your games, and tell me what you think. I'd love to hear what feels good, what still feels awkward, and what kinds of stories you're putting inside them. You can leave a comment here or come find me on Discord. Thank you for supporting Wand & Widgets and giving these little creations a place at your table.

Gabú