ANOTHER NEW BASE CLASS
Yes, another new base class! The development of the Vagabond class opened some interesting design doors to us, specifically with regard to “stances” from old 3.5 classes like the Warblade and Swordsage. Those classes used a system of passive battle stances to complement their suites of maneuvers. Though maneuvers have survived in the Battle Master and i...
2023-05-01 05:05:01 +0000 UTC View PostNEW BASE CLASS!
My cowriter Ben and I have been hammering design meetings for the last month and a half to conjure up a brand new base class for you. Because the Book of Extinction has the artists pretty locked down, I hope you'll understand that we didn't have time to get art for this class done for this first release.
Some background: The Captain class, as well as the Gre...
2023-04-01 05:05:01 +0000 UTC View PostThe Book of Extinction is now live!
You’ve surely seen huge chunks of the Book of Extinction through our regular updates, so I’m thrilled to announce that the...
2023-03-21 14:00:12 +0000 UTC View PostIt's been another very busy month! In addition to the Complete Martyr expansion, I've got various Book of Extinction chunks to show you. Remember, the Book of Extinction comes to Kickstarter March 21st! First things first: let's talk about what else we were up to this month.
We're starting a new initiative called the Mage Hand Monthly...
2023-03-02 03:59:55 +0000 UTC View PostIf life's a joke, dying's a punchline. And everyone's a comedian.
We're back to the complete classes for one final push with the Complete Martyr! We've got six new subclasses, including the Burden of Fame, which makes you a divinely-appointed celebrity, and the Burden of Ascension, which tasks you with completing labors to ascend to demigodhood!
If you haven't seen it befor...
2023-03-01 22:00:05 +0000 UTC View PostSuper quick note here that I'll be 24 hours late on this month's posts. Can't wait to show things off, but I need a few more hours to knock out the PDFs.
2023-03-01 04:36:21 +0000 UTC View PostWe’re finally out of January, so I thought I’d give you a quick post letting you know what we’ve been up to.
The month started off with leaks about the Open Gaming License and a general vibe of impending doom. If you weren’t plugged into the news, Wizards of the Coast mocked up a new license that would have ostensibly destroyed all VTTs and most of the...
2023-02-02 02:12:00 +0000 UTC View Post
Quick aside: I made a CARD GAME!
In Witchy Cakes you compete to build the tallest cake by matching colors and throwing cards at your friends. It’s adorable,...
2023-01-16 16:58:27 +0000 UTC View PostI was supposed to take December off, but instead, I got another Hyperdrive Fleet collab post together! It's a bit late since I've been under the weather, but I'm pretty happy with it.
If you've been playing Dark Matter, but wish you had stats for ships that have actual battlemaps, this one's for you!
In other news, I may or may not have a substantial post for February 1st. ...
2023-01-03 03:22:33 +0000 UTC View PostThis time we've got a doozy for you! With another 38 pages (or 34, depending on how you count it), the Book of Extinction is getting really, really heavy. Here's a breakdown of what we've added this time:
If you haven't heard the tale of Lonesome George, the last Pinta Island Gi...
2022-12-01 06:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostThis month, we're continuing our ongoing collaboration with CzePeku's Hyperdrive Fleet by bringing you an adventure for 4th- and 5th-level characters. As always, I hope you enjoy the stellar (heh heh) maps and a punchy one-off adventure for your Dark Matter escapades!
In Oni's Catch, ...
2022-11-01 05:32:00 +0000 UTC View PostThe dead rise, the dead walk. The dead reckon, the dead talk.
Embrace the dark side of magic with the Complete Necromancer! This class brings compelling (and balanced) minionmancy to your table and places the power of an undead horde at your fingertips.
The Complete Necromancer introduces six never-before-seen subclasses to the necromancer class, bringing the total...
2022-11-01 05:31:01 +0000 UTC View PostThe coffee has flowed freely over here for the last several weeks as I've careened toward this day. Perhaps through serendipity, several huge deadlines have landed right on top of one another, leading to one of the biggest releases we've done in a while!
1. New Mage Hand Press site!
I planned to have this up today, but we're waiting patiently for the dom...
2022-11-01 05:31:00 +0000 UTC View PostThis is one of the most exciting collaborations we've ever done! Our friends Czepeku run a Patreon called Hyperdrive Fleet that exclusively makes battlemaps for starships and other sci-fi vessels. We're super thrilled to be working with them to make some Dark Matter content for their maps.
If you're at al...
2022-10-01 05:30:59 +0000 UTC View PostIt has been a nonstop month over here, but I've also put up record numbers for words written per month. A weird part of the way we build books now is that there's sometimes a lag of a month or two before I have art for things I've been making, but we've finally got some cool releases!
This release contains six of the twelve subclasses that we've made for ...
2022-10-01 05:30:59 +0000 UTC View PostThis month's post is a little shorter than I anticipated, but it's still meaty as heck: 20 new pages in the Book of Extinction with nearly as many new monsters! If you're counting, that's 86 pages of dead monsters.
This month brings you some of the coolest stories and statblocks yet as we tackle the Atlas Lion and Bear, a transparent snail, and a whole mess of insects. (If you ch...
2022-09-01 05:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostLast month, we ran a poll on Kickstarter to decide if it was worth it to redesign some of our races in the spirit of being future-proofed. There are pros and cons -- on one hand, sticking to newer standards of released D&D content strays a little from the SRD, but on the other, I actually agree with a lot of the changes that races are getting. They seem to make things easier to learn and mo...
2022-08-01 05:31:00 +0000 UTC View PostTwo blades, one banner.
Didn't we just expand the captain with new banners and improved class features? We did! But our work on Cakewalk familiars, the improvements made in recent official books to monster spellcasting, and a bunch of playtesting had gotten us thinking: do we need to fix the cohorts?
After some spreadsheets, we realized the answer was yes. The cohorts...
2022-08-01 05:31:00 +0000 UTC View PostThis month I've got the lion's share of the Cakewalk Familiar's chapter for you! Somehow, the familiars have grown to outsize complexity in this book of weird food races, which is A-OK, because they're extremely cool at this stage.
First, this chapter kicks off with a setting-agnostic way to flexibly upgrade your familiars with a feat and an in-depth upgrade table. It costs a feat a...
2022-07-01 05:30:00 +0000 UTC View PostWith this update to The Book of Extinction, we've doubled the page count, completely reworked the graphic design, added Prehistoric Megafauna and Prehistoric Lycanthropes (yes, you can play a saber-toothed weretiger), and added more core monster entries. My favorite new entry is probably the Pyrenean Ibex, the only animal that has gone extinct twice. Not only is it a cool stor...
2022-06-01 04:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostWe've been working like crazy on Cakewalk and have a lot of cool stuff to show off very soon -- a raft of subclasses and magic items probably next month. For now, I have a relatively modest 30-page update featuring the book's new graphic design and tons of new art. Some of these monsters, like the Bedeviled Eggs and the Breadnought, were buried in previously released adventures, but now they ha...
2022-06-01 04:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostJust remember: if your best friend is a captain, that makes you the cohort, and therefore expendable.
Wine tasting with an alchemist is like bloodletting near a shark.
The Complete Alchemist is the definitive version of our Alchemist class. Since practically every subclass and feature made the cut for Valda's Spire of Secrets, we decided that this standalone version needed to be expanded by just a hair. So in addition to migrating all the changes from Valda's (big and sm...
2022-05-01 06:52:16 +0000 UTC View PostAs a bonus this month, I thought I'd offer the fully completed version of our two most recent adventures, Strange Owlchemy and Hollynock Hijinks. The former is a smooth and darkly comedic introduction to any campaign, taking characters from 1st to 3rd level, and the latter is a brisk (pun intended) Christmas-y adventure centered on the fictional holiday Hollynock and the misch...
2022-04-01 04:56:10 +0000 UTC View PostGame of Scones is an adventure for characters of 1st and 2nd level that introduces players to the Cakewalk campaign setting. With this adventure, For a Few Gumballs More, and Murder on the Gourmet Express, we've got a 1st-4th level campaign! This adventure took much more work than I initially expected (it's the longest so far), but I'm pretty happy with how it came ou...
2022-04-01 04:56:07 +0000 UTC View PostIt feels like every year the 1st of March sneaks up behind me and hits me with a blackjack. This year, I've spent most of February moving, so I have like three things for Patreon that are 80% done, but none of it ready to show off. I intend to get one of those projects prepped and out the door by the first week of March, however, so stay tuned!
2022-03-01 04:12:32 +0000 UTC View PostI bring you the final stretch goal for our Valda’s Spire of Secrets campaign: a collection of ready-to-play NPCs called Valda’s Illustrious Guestbook. The Kickstarter backers will get this tomorrow -- you’re my guinea pigs.
In other Valda’s news: we’ve got the 1.1 version completed and we’ll be sending the PDF to Kickstarter backers AND select patrons tomorrow as well...
2022-02-01 13:44:58 +0000 UTC View PostBehold, I’m back! The time has come to shrug off the winter hibernation and get back into releases, starting with more Cakewalk content. This time, we have an Agatha Christie-inspired murder mystery called Murder on the Gourmet Express. If you thought the last one had too many puns, you haven’t seen anything yet!
I held off on this one until after the holidays because our rel...
2022-02-01 13:44:51 +0000 UTC View Post‘Twas the first eve of Hollynock and all through the night,
The toymaker’s workshop was flooded with light.
The dolls he’s created like you’ve never seen—
The stuffies and puppets, so lifelike and keen!
But all is not well in this festival village,
Where toys become minions to purloin and pillage.
At midnight come whispers of sinister powers,
Of bl...
Following the sort of impromptu poll in last month's post, it seems that most folks would like to see more weird, experimental stuff. A near second was seeing Kickstarter books brought to Patreon when they're good and finished, which we'll also be doing, but Valda's will probably be next month (as there's some small changes I want to implement before locking it down for printing).
S...
2021-12-01 16:39:15 +0000 UTC View Post