machai-umno

A1. The Entrance (EL 1-2; 540) Light trickles into this rectangular cave from the entrance to the south. The floor of the entranceway is covered with pieces of broken glass and pottery.  Four small reptilian humanoids covered with scaled skin stand guard in this room. Two of the reptilian humanoids stand guarding the west door and two guarding the north door. Upon your arrival the two of the creatures tighten their grip on they pick axes, bare their tiny teeth, and begin to move forward, while the other two move to open the doors to escape or perhaps warn others. The four reptilian creatures are kobolds and the player characters have stumbled into their lair. These kobold guards (CR 1/3) have the unfortunate duty of guarding the entrance. Entrance duty is something that is reserved for the kobold who have most disappointed their nestmates and Mekmep the Blue. In combat two of the guards move to intercept the player characters allowing the other two to escape to room 4 (pool room) ...

Decapus are always early to meals. On Thursday I managed to finish up the layout on Forbidden Encounters: Underground. This 14 page product is a spin-off of our Encounter Pages line and follows on the work that Stefen and I did on Forgotten Foes for Tricky Owlbear Publishing. There are five encounters in this release each focusing on one of the underground creatures we converted in Forgotten Foes. A Cry for Help  is a CR 3 encounter featuring the crafty decapus pictured to the left and his plans for snapping up a quick meal. Echoes in the Dark  is a CR 8 encounter that has the player characters facing off against a pair of destrachan in a stalactite and stalagmite filled cavern. Hunting Party  is a CR 7 encounter with the player characters rushing to the aid of a dwarven defender who holds a bridge against a horde of grimlocks. The Empty Throneroom is a CR 4 encounter that has player characters come in contact with a dwarven crypt thing and perhaps uncover a legendary wea...

Purple Duck Games would just like to remind people that the OneBookShelf stores and their associated publishers are raising money for the Red Cross's relief effort in New Zealand. If you want to pick up a $20 bundle that contains over $320 in electronic product (including our Encounter Pages ) or simply donate $5 directly you can click on the appropriate link to help support this effort. $20 bundle $5 donation

Jon over at Khurasan just released the kit conversion for the 15mm scale  Siler tank ... This conversion updates the Siler and adds some Vroom Vroom speed to the massive vehicle. The model is 96mm long and 60mm wide. Priced at $15.99 for the tank with treads and $3.99 for the upgrade kit its quite a deal! Now go support the Indi manufacturer and pick up the platoon of three. Check out the release on TMP

I just updated a few areas of the DreamForge-Games website. This update centered around the game system, factions, history and tech. Start your tour here and use the menu bars at the top center of the page to view the new content. Enjoy! and please let me know what you think about it.

Phase Spider Cloak To the left is an image of a phase spider cloak for our upcoming Legendary Items book. Marc Raddle did all of the art for this book so it will have a consistent look and feel throughout it. The writing is now 70% done on the items we just need to finish up a few more. Also in development, Stefen is putting a final pass on Forgotten Encounters: Underground and I'm working on redoing the layout and design of Legendary II: Legendary Weapons . It has been a very productive couple of days so far.

This weekend I discovered the "Dragon Speech" by Chris Crawford and found it really great. He brings up a lot of good stuff, and touches on many subjects that I have ranted about. You can watch it here: Part 1 "The Dream Well" Part 2 "Interactivity" Part 3 "Genesis of Art" Part 4 "Characters" Part 5 "Charge!" I am actually a bit embarrassed that I never seen this talk before. I have heard about it, but never thought much about it and thinking it was not worth any attention. Now that I have seen it, I can say that is definitely not the case and it is one of the best things I've heard/seen on games. Which brings me to another point: This talk is almost twenty years old and yet not much have changed. The points he bring up on focus on "fun" and serving a hardcore market are all still very valid. Also, characters in games have evolved very little, in fact, apart from a few IF games like Galatea , not much has happe...

The Leviathan Mortis and Crusader are at the casters right now! Molds are being made of all components, including, add-on armor, left and right Mauler Claw arms, left and right Vulkan Cannons, Executioners Sword and Reaper Scythe. If you remember my earlier statement about not accepting pre-orders, you will be happy to know that I am going to break my rule on this. I would not do so if I did not have full confidence in my contract caster. He runs a full time shop with eight employees doing nothing but this kind of service and utilizing expensive equipment, resin injection machines and HUGE pressure tanks. When I receive the first article (cast) and fingers crossed there are no issues, I will post pics of the actual casing from this supplier and open pre-orders for the Leviathan Crusader and Mortis. Available options will be additional weapons and armor upgrade (armor seen in pic of Crusader below). We are sitting about three to four weeks out from when I open up pre-orders, so...

By now most of you have probably seen the teaser trailer for Dead Island. If not, you can check it out here: http://www.gametrailers.com/video/cinematic-trailer-dead-island/710652 This trailer has been getting tons of attention over the Internet and many seem to think that it is one of the best game trailers ever. I find that this is quite interesting, since just about everything that makes the trailer good are things that modern video games lack. I would even go as far as to say that a video game made using modern gameplay-centric design could never create something that gives the same experience. This is why I think so: Non-coherent narrative The video does not have follow the normal rules of making a narrative (where time flows coherently through plot events), but instead provide a disjointed one. Past and present are not explicitly stated, but is something that the viewers must figure out themselves. Game with a focus on story just do not work like this and instead go through plot ...

I have been pulling together models for what will be my 28mm and 15mm minis. I first build a mesh in Rhino, and then export as an OBJ to Zbrush to flesh out details on fabric and leather items. Nothing beats Rhino for hard surface items such as armor and helmets but Zbrush is ideal for the soft items. You can see here the base mesh for the Protectorate Trooper.   Here you can see the Zbrush detailing to the boots and pants. The folds are symmetrical now but will be corrected when the model is posed. Here are a couple of shots of the Eisenkern WIP. The feet, hands, and some details have been oversized. When you shrink it down to its 28mm scale it looks more appropriate to the scale of the figure.

This weekend was a little light on Purple Duck Games production for myself. I worked up two encounters for the Forgotten Encounters: Underground  product that will be released in early March. Legendary Items is coming along as well as I am currently on the Carpet of Worlds entry. On the Grand OGL Wiki, I've been remodeling monsters section of the site and organizing it by a number of tags. To the left is a drawing I did today of a tattoo mage. It would be great to know how to draw or have a talent for it.

Introduction So I just finished Dead Space 2 and wanted to discuss it a bit. Mainly because it is a perfect example of some trends in game design that I find are really harmful. I also find that it has some moments that could have been brilliant if just slightly changed, making it extra interesting to discuss. Before going into the actual critique I want to say that the game did have some enjoyable parts, especially the at times absolutely amazing scenery. Dead Space 2 just radiates production value and it is a very well-put together game. I quite liked a lot of it and it is one of the few games in recent memory that I played until the end. The game has very nice atmosphere in places and even attempts at a sort of meaningful theme(more on that later). At the same time, it is very clear that Dead Space does not aim for any real sophistication. For instance, you need to stomp on dead mutant children to get hold of goodies and gore is quite excessive. In many ways, the game is much close...

One of my players, Thomas Boxall is working on a Pathfinder compatible campaign setting. One aspect that Thomas felt was necessary for his campaign work is the inclusion of firearms, particularly early firearms. Thomas is not a diehard OGL player, he is very much a diehard Shadowrun player so at times he has a different worldview that the rest of our group. On Tuesday, I'll be putting up a Playtest: Firearms document for download at Rpgnow. Please if you have the time download it and let us know what you think. I believe Thomas wants to go for a more primitive style of firearms than the types we are seeing in the Gunslinger preview or the Pathfinder Campaign Setting.

Saturday has been a pretty productive day for me here at the north Purple Duck Games offices. First I received come commissioned art to replace the existing art in Legendary Weapons II. Stargazer Although we released Legendary Weapons II was released at the end of December I wasn't quite happy with the look of the project. Over time the art started to grate on me and I decided to commission Tamas Baranya to illustrate the 14 weapons I need for that product. The designs he made fit the weapons very well and before the end of the month I'll relayout the whole project and update the files. Besides gushing over art I work on a Forgotten Encounter entry involving destrachans and wrote up a number of legendary items for the Legendary Items book due out early in March. Then I revived the Purple Duck Game forums over on the Grand OGL Wiki , and worked some more on the Grand OGL Wiki site. That is my day. I don't get many days to spend just working on Purple Duck Games material. I...

Here is the helm based on the concept art posted last week... You can see I'm a better modeler than digital painter. I like the way it came together, now I just need to find time to make the rest ;)