machai-umno

Xesa Magus, by Maciej (Matt) Janaszek The xesa are hybrid race of plant-like humanoids. They are genderless and reproduce by splitting down the middle of their body when they reach the Time of Division. I would play a xesa if I wanted: To possess the high Intelligence necessary for Alchemist, Magus, Witch or Witch. To be immune to paralysis, poison and polymorph  To play a druid with a plant companion named Chomp-Chomp To heal damage thanks to the life giving light of the sun. To live in harmony with the natural world. To not be tracked by dinosaurs sniffing around the jungles of Californ To never grow old. I would not want to play a xesa if I wanted: To charge into battle with a big axe as a fighter. To explore the Frozen North and hunt down otherworldly invaders. Worship one of the Gods of Porphra Swing from chandeliers with rapier or pistol in hand (mostly because it would look silly). Undertake the physical and spiritual conditioning to be a monk

Death Vulture by Brian Brinlee Purple Duck Games is proud to present... Heroic Moments 2: The Informant Danny “The Hammer” Scarborough, the notorious mob enforcer, has had a change of heart. Two weeks ago, after the birth of his son, Scarborough realized he didn’t want the boy raised in the dangerous, violent world that produced him. So he’s decided to testify before a grand jury about the city’s organized crime syndicate. Scarborough has told the District Attorney he will make a full confession at police headquarters. Unfortunately, Scarborough is in jail for attempted murder. Most of the prison guards are on the mob’s payroll and alerted the crime families to Scarborough’s turn. In order to make sure “The Hammer” never arrives at police HQ, the mob has hired their newest hit man, Death Vulture, to take out Scarborough. The plan is to attack the prisoner transfer when it is on the highway. Heroic Moments is the series of single scenes (or heroic moments) for four-color superheroic gam...

Introduction I played through the first episode of The Walking Dead recently and few stuff popped up that I thought was worth discussing. For those of you who do not know what The Walking Dead is, it is a horror adventure game based upon a comic book (which is now also tv-series) featuring Heavy Rain inspired gameplay. It is developed by Tell Tale (makers of the Sam and Max reboot, etc) and is released on an episodic basis. I was unsure if Tell Tale could deliver a game with this kind of atmosphere, but having played I have to say that it is quite successful. The first episode is not a master piece by any means, but contain a few things worth bringing up. Graphics The comic-book inspired art direction combined with so-so animations does not look all that inviting and immersive. But when you play the game, it works very well and does the job. This even though the drama of the game is mostly about close-up dialog and relationships. I think this is a very important lesson about not havin...

Fehr's Ehtnology: Dragonblood  profiles the dragonblood race for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. Dragonbloods are humanoids of mostly elven or human stock that have manifested a dominant taint of their ancestor dragon’s blood. Less than a half-dragon, and far more able to blend in with typical society, the dragonblood are a race unto themselves, surfacing an unknown number of generations after the original mating of dragon and two-legger. The resurgence of draconic power in these beings gives them power and abilities beyond those of their stock race, or at least different, and takes them in directions definitely divergent from the society around them. It is possible that some of the magnetic figures in history were secretly dragonbloods, and that some of the great personages that were so bold to claim the blood of great wyrms actually did possess powers granted by a draconic ancestor. This release incl...

This weekend instead of our regularly scheduled Kingmaker or Skull and Shackles game, we played through part of Purple Mountain - Level 3. Things went reasonable well, for the bad guys, our characters were plagued by bad rolls, poor decisions and just gross incompetence so all in all, a pretty normal game. Additionally, we sent our first DCC adventure locale out to three groups to playtest and their notes have started to trickle in. So hopefully, we can finalize and release this product before the end of the month. Oh, and Gods of Porphyra received a 5 star review at Rpgnow . You can pick it up at Paizo, Rpgnow and our Gumroad link to the right of this post.

Introduction I just a finished Lone Survivor and because there is so much interesting stuff going on in it, I thought it was worth to write a blog post about it. At first glance Lone Survivor might look like some kind of 2D Silent Hill ripoff*, but there is a lot more to it than what is perceived at first sight. In summary, Lone Survivor is basically about surviving in a world where most people been turned into monsters. You play as a guy that have been holed up alone in an apartment for quite some time and who is no longer sure what is real and what is not. It is viewed from a 2D side-scrolling perspective with pixel the size of fists, forcing you to imagine what most objects really look like. The story and atmosphere is very Lynchian in tone and filled all kinds of wonderful strangeness. Most of the gameplay is about conserving various resources, exploring the environment (with a map straight out of Silent Hill) and shooting / avoiding bad guys. I thought the firs...

The dhosari by Gary Dupuis.  This week, Perry is running us through the third level of Purple Mountain that he wrote. Recently, Perry wrote up a race called the dhosari that was based on this art for the Fehr's Ethnology series. Most of the races developed for this series have come from existing art pieces that I commissioned for other products, re-imagined as playable races. Perry worked to make this quadribrachial (his made up word, not mine) into a reasonable, although strange race. Here is what he did. +2 Strength, +2 Charisma, -4 Wisdom Large (reach 5 ft.; must use undersized weapons) Speed 30 ft.  Quadribrachial - +4 vs. trip, +2 Climb, can fight with four arms but suffers -1 penalty to such attacks. +2 one Perform skill +1 to attack a creature that target's you charge (because they are normally a slave race) Now that the Advanced Race Builder's Guide is out, we have an opportunity to see how the dhosari would fit into those rules. 0 RP - Humanoid (albeit stra...

I've sent this off for approval. Hopefully, we will get the go ahead on it before too long and then I can settle up with the writer. This will be our first release for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game  if it is approved. On the Pathfinder front, we are playtest level 3 of Purple Mountain. I will be running a 3rd level dhosari paladin of Thoma Thule for the game and I'll post his stats here. Lands of Porphyra is in full swing, you can see some of the countries in draft form here: http://grandwiki.wikidot.com/working-doc . Other than that we have a lot of stuff happening in the background and I'm expecting another Fehr's Ethnology early next week, Legendary Races: Harpy and maybe another Heroic Moment .

Saren - The Tusked God, The Untamed, The Great Warden by Sean O'Connor. Art by Tamas Baranya Many publishers have released roleplaying game products with great pantheons, which I have enjoyed as a gamer. As a publisher, I was always less enthused because invariably the gods, their histories and motivations were designated as closed content meaning that I could not use their gods in my products. For a while, Purple Duck Games just went with a generic plan as so many companies do and refer to other gods obliquely such as the God of the Hunt and Community or the Goddess of Valor even though we all secretly know those titles are being used to refer to someone else’s work. In April of this year, I launched a search for writers to contribute to an open pantheon. This tome is the result of the hard work of over a dozen writers who stepped up to help us create a twenty-seven god pantheon that can be used as open game content in our products and the products of any other publisher that wish...

Hidden in Plain Sight sales, with some notable bumps pointed out.    The Joystiq.com Indie Pitch article The reddit.com user review The rllmukform.com discussion thread Period Statistics -- 11/18/2011 - 6/6/2012 Trials:  4982 Purchases:  1883 Purchase/Trial Ratio:  37.80 %

Continuing on the series I began last month. Here are my sales numbers for the Month of May 2012. Rpgnow               Paizo     Gumroad Product Rpgnow Paizo Gumroad 80 Awesome Feats ... and 2 Crappy Ones 2 2 A Score of Trapped Chests 5 9 Encounter Pages 0 4 Fehr’s Ethnology: Subscription (10 parts) 3 -- -- Fehr’s Ethnology: Dhosari 7 9 Fehr’s Ethnology: Erkunae 21 7 Fehr’s Ethnology: Hhundi 1 6 Fehr’s Ethnology: Ith’n Ya’roo 0 4 Forgotten Encounters: Forests 1 3 Forgotten Encounters: Underground 1 1 Forgotten Encounters: Urban 2 4 Heroic Moments #1: My Favorite Charity 4 0 Heroic Moments #2: Unregistered Mutant 4 0 Heroic Moments #3: St. Patrick’s Day Parade 4 ...