Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Hello Mutant Epoch Blog followers,

So, as this blog is supposed to be more of a game designer's journal, I thought I'd share a bit of the behind the scenes look at the release of a new free creature. This one was designed and written by Danny Seedhouse and was published about an hour ago. Here's the cover and blurb and then scroll down where I'll talk a bit about the process....
WM


A nightmare weapon from the old wars has returned!

From the ancient conflicts that caused the final collapse of human civilization, these bear sized military bio-weapons continue to wreak havoc into the new era. Encountered as wild predators or armored sentinels for high tech enclaves, Spikers are murderous foes and a serious challenge to any excavation team.

Designed and written by Danny Seedhouse, the Spiker is our 9th free Creature of the Apocalypse. This brute comes in both a wild and armored variant with the wild specimen often exhibiting extra mutations, while the armored version comes equipped with a rich assortment of randomly determined back-mounted relic firepower.
            Crafted to confront mid to high rank characters, these freaky, unpredictable monsters bring some serious firepower to the table, and can dish out the sort of ranged attack abilities that normally only player characters enjoy.

This is a 6 page PDF and includes a full page image of cover art for use as a player handout. 


 spiker sheets

...Okay, so the spiker started off as just the wild version and was called a 'dart runner'. It was first crafted back in 2013 and Mr. Seedhouse wrote it up, adding the more dangerous, but controlled armored version. 
 With the Crossroads Region book, the Handcrafted Dungeon sets and Mutant Bestiary One on the go, the spikers languished on the shelves for long time. 
          Here's the pencil sketch of the wild spiker:

The pencil drawing was scanned at 300dpi and painted in photoshop,  within a scene that included the armored spiker. I made sure to keep the spikers on separate layers so I could easily pull them out of the image to use as stand alone graphics as follows:
       Between the painting and final edits, and layout, it took about 6 days to craft the free PDF. The Pencil art and Danny's text were complete over a year ago. 
        There is something sweet about getting out a gaming supplement in a couple of weeks instead of a couple of years. After the extra six months it took to do all the art for the bestiary, working on small, bite sized projects is a step down as far as stress goes. Still, we released the spiker soon after the Mutant Bestiary One book came out to take advantage of the marketing surrounding that book, and push attention to the 148 page manual of mutant monsters. If you grab the new spiker PDF, you'll see that page 7 is a full ad for the bestiary. We couldn't resit and will report back if we see any sort of spike in sales.
Enjoy
WM

Saturday, December 6, 2014

Mutant Bestiary One is here!




What the hell is that?

Mutant Bestiary One is finally here! This much anticipated release is the 7th book for the Mutant Epoch RPG. This collection of freaks will challenge excavators of all ranks, from the blood mole to the earth shaking mobilamortus tree. Included are PC playable races, such as krenth cat-folk, devilkins, dog-boys, anthro-tortoises, bipedal raccoons and pale skinned underfoot.

In this book:

- 173 creatures, from animals like sheep and deer ­- that often exhibit mutations – to predatory plants, bio-weapons, and evolving nightmare freaks.
- Many have their own mutation lists, so making up unique foes is a cinch!
- Encounter tables are divided by terrain and difficulty ratings for low, mid and high rank PCs.
- 167 illustrations
- For SOE members only. The art comes as PDF sheets when you need to declare “This is what you see!”
- Mutant beasts in this collection:
● 16 humanoids
● 68 Animals with off-shoots
● 5 Plants
● 3 Whales
● 11 Insects
● 12 Slugs, snails and mollusks
● 8 Crustaceans
● 7 Cats
● 6 dogs
● 4 Ape variants
● 30 Assorted monsters


Available in both PDF and print or as a ‘Double Barrel‘ Deal whereby if you go direct from us via paypal, you buy the print book and we send you the PDF for free as soon as possible.



PDF 9.99 or print book $22.99

Learn more here: http://www.outlandarts.com/mutantbestiary1.htm

Some art samples from the book