Codex Duello was one of those things that came out of a “I wonder if I could…” after a conversation that started in Pyramid Write Club and degenerated into a off-list email conversation with +Douglas Cole. Doug thought that Control Points from GURPS Martial Arts: Technical Grappling might be more broadly applicable elsewhere. I just happened to agree with him and went looking for ways to implement it. In my urban fantasy campaign – The Chronicles of Ceteri – one of the methods that ritual path magic mages settle scores is via “mage duels.” This pretty much became the seed idea for Codex Duello.
Unfortunately, Codex Duello was one of those articles that everything made it in in the final draft – even the super badass vignette which was inspired by one of the PCs from my Ceteri campaign. And yeah, she totally used the “When the clock strikes midnight, we dance, you murdering bastard.” line. I have awesome players and Annie’s player (my other half, L.A.) just has some of the best character dialogue around. But enough digression, too the statistics!
It took me about 21.75 hours to write, 49 hours to edit, 2 hours worth of research (mostly in old dueling codes and traditions from around the world), and 60 hours of revision (took me forever to get it where I wanted it).
Congrats on the publish! It would be cool to be published in Pyramid one day, but I'm no where near that creative. I don't run a game where wizards feature, but I might have to pick this one up (if just to see what Tech Support is about).