One Day 6:: Hunt in the Dark just released

 Hi Blog followers,

We just released a 15 page one day dig for The Mutant Epoch RPG. This one was written by an Italian author named Giulio Iannarella. You can follow him on twitter at https://twitter.com/azure_admiral
This is a lively little ruin crawl that could easily be expanded upon. Right now it moved from the 19th top seller at rpgnow to the 9th spot. That's pretty good  for a Pay What You Want product.  Check it out and feel free to throw a few coins in the tip jar!
WM

Dirty Rotten Rats!

Weary and thirsty, your dig team arrives in the tiny village of Rust Haven just in time to save the day! Beasts have attacked the village and while the militia chases them off, Black Scavenger, an ambitious bipedal rat mercenary, has escaped from the jail. He and with his thugs fled into the ruins beneath the community! With Rust Haven’s best fighters out in the wastes, the people of the settlement need you to go into the ancient depths and bring the villain, Black Scavenger, to justice, dead or alive.

            What horrors, curiosities and artifacts your team will find below the earth are unknown, but this is what you live for. You are excavators and post-apocalyptic heroes.

Hunt in the Dark is our 6^th One Day Dig for The Mutant Epoch RPG and was written by Giulio Iannarella. Why not show your support to this new RPG author by throwing a few coins in the tip jar?  In this 15 page Pay What You Want product is 1 full page player handout and 1 map, 25 illustrations, a mutant sub-species and two new relics.

  Get it here: http://www.rpgnow.com/product/164480/One-Day-Digs-6-Hunt-in-the-Dark

Also see previous Pay What You Want PDFs:

Wasteland Treasure Tables 1 http://www.rpgnow.com/product/133002/Wasteland-Treasures-1

ODDS 1 & 2 http://www.rpgnow.com/product/132273/One-Day-Digs-1-and-2-Double-Feature

ODDs 3 & 4 http://www.rpgnow.com/product/143928/One-Day-Digs-3-and-4-Double-Feature

ODD 5 Lilac Towers http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/155557/One-Day-Digs-5


And some of the art from this short adventure....

Hello Epochians,

We've been attempting to create and upload book overviews for each Mutant Epoch title. Here are the first four....








Best Regards,
Will

RPG Book Review: The Flesh Weavers

Lilac Towers and new Creature of the Apocalypse 13: Talontessa

 Come Experience Lilac Towers, it’s to die for….

Exposed by a recent landslide, the 11^th floor entrance into the once luxurious Lilac Towers is now visible. The PC adventurers find the pathway up to the mysterious ruins while tracking hostile skullock and moaners.

            Why would two mutant species who normally hate each other work together? Who rules them? What horrors, and loot, will be found in the buried hotel? Only a closer inspection will reveal the truth.

Lilac Towers is our 5^th One Day Dig and was written by Danny Seedhouse. These short, single session adventures are crafted to showcase a bit of The Mutant Epoch setting and flavor, introduce some creatures and relics, as well as offer an example of how the Outland System game mechanic works. While previous ODDs were designed for first rank characters, this one’s a bit more challenging and PCs should at least be of 2^nd rank.

            This is a Pay What You Want product. Broke? No worries, grab it for free, or check it out first and pay later, or if you like what you see now, please feel free to throw a buck or two in the tip jar, and leave a review someplace. Danny and I sure would appreciate it!

Contained in this 15 page pay what you want product are 8 maps, 14 illustrations and two creature variants including Moaner Immortals and Tuskers.

 

More One Day Digs are in the works, and don’t forget to check out our free PDF line of Creatures of the Apocalypse http://www.outlandarts.com/TME-cota.htm

Also see previous Pay What You Want PDFs:

Wasteland Treasure Tables 1 http://www.rpgnow.com/product/133002/Wasteland-Treasures-1

ODDS 1 & 2 http://www.rpgnow.com/product/132273/One-Day-Digs-1-and-2-Double-Feature

ODDs 3 & 4 http://www.rpgnow.com/product/143928/One-Day-Digs-3-and-4-Double-Feature

Also released recently, and not with out some controversy, ahem, was the Talontessa, a new free creature....

The cruel, beautiful and vain race of talontessa… a deadly, feminine touch to the post-apocalyptic wastes

Depending on the region, these all-female creatures are known by different names, including Junk Jezebels, Sickle-Sues, Hook Hussies, Blood Brides, Hook Girrrls and Claw Maidens. 

            They are the mortal enemies of skullocks, ruthless to slavers, prone to robbing travelers and always on the look out for a handsome man to either seduce or ensnare. Tribal, petty and obsessed with their looks and social status in their sisterhood, the talontessa are unpredictable and should only be approached with caution. Yet, regardless of their odd ways, passions, use of poison, traps and moody natures, they can make for great allies and are as likely to help excavators as hinder them.  Unlike any other Creature of the Apocalypse in this line, loners of this race can also be utilized as player characters and this PDF comes with rules for generating such lithe, multi-limbed adventurers.

            This is the 13^th, and temporarily the final, free creature of the apocalypse. This special addition is 11 pages long and includes a d20 mutation list, disposition towards travelers table, d100 loot table, as well as rules for creating player character talontessa and a player handout art only sheet. We have more COTA creatures in the works but they will be part of a ‘for purchase’ sourcebook which includes all the previous beasts plus 6 never before seen mutant freaks. Stay tuned for that!

Although crafted for The Mutant Epoch role-playing game, using the Outland System Game Mechanic, a GM can easily modify the stats for the talontessa and use these feisty, velociraptor clawed hunters with another post-apocalyptic game system. 

Drivethrurpg.com http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/154744/Talontessa-Creatures-of-the-Apocalypse-13?src=newest_free_titles

RPGnow link http://www.rpgnow.com/product/154744/Talontessa-Creatures-of-the-Apocalypse-13?src=newest_free_titles

Gumroad link  https://gumroad.com/l/hSMxd

Chest Heads approaching!

Can your Dig Team Drive them off?

Standing nearly three meters tall, the brutal, barbaric Chest Head is a carnivorous tribal humanoid. Gathering in small warbands, these mutants appear in both extra mutated and standard forms, with their bright reddish flesh, hideous, lumpy bodies and two heads.  When they arrive near a hapless human community, the resident’s panic and turn to whatever visiting excavator’s they can find, coaxing them to go forth and deal with the dreaded, man-eating Chest Heads.

The Chest Head is our 12th Free Creature of the Apocalypse for The Mutant Epoch RPG and was written by Brandon Goeringer and illustrated by William McAusland. 

            Coming in a week or two is the all female mutant humanoid race of Talontessa, so too, a Pay What You Want short adventure called Lilac Towers… our 5th One Day Dig and written by Danny Seedhouse.

Here is the link to the Chest Head free PDF: 

https://gumroad.com/l/cIEkB

 or at http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/153687/Chest-Head-Creatures-of-the-Apocalypse-12?manufacturers_id=762

Happy Gaming,

            Will McAusland

                        Creator of The Mutant Epoch RPG 

And here is the cover art without text...

The Flesh Weavers released... and creative update

Well, you've probably already heard that we released The Flesh Weavers. Most of you are already following my twitter feed, are on The Mutant Epoch Forum or mailing list. For those of you who aren't, here is the blurb:

The survival of Pitford rests in your hands!

A sandstorm batters the enclosed fort, forcing the characters to lay low. Unable to loot the nearby Great Ruins their money is running out fast, and they're getting thirsty as the last two food and water convoys from the city never made it.

            Worse, the storm is tearing gaps in the walls and roof of the scrap-built fortress. These portals have not gone unnoticed. Something unspeakable approaches in the biting sandstorm, gathering in numbers and taking advantage of the blinded defenders... an insidious peril that hungers for more than the flesh and fluids of Pitford's citizens.

            This horror themed module takes place in and around the Quest Path Apartments where the characters rent a humble bunk room. Here, the characters are thrown into the middle of a nightmarish ordeal, where their survival is in question, where their failure could lead to a region wide catastrophe.

            The Flesh Weavers is a heart pounding adventure for between five and eight 2nd to 4th rank characters. It includes a massive supplemental basement add-on, as well as a random escape tunnel generator, terrible new creature and dozens of its ghastly variants. Not designed for the squeamish or those offended by strong language. This is the third multi-path adventure for The Mutant Epoch RPG and offers players and game masters both multiple choices and random options to different encounter areas and circumstances. This adventure can be played dozens of times and never be quite the same. Players must choose carefully at every turn, weigh their options, and decide whether to be heroes, or bug out. Facing the flesh weavers is only for the brave, the resourceful and the mighty, after all. Pitford's survival depends on it.

104 pages

1 new creature with assorted variants

8 pre generated 3rd rank player characters

71 illustrations

6 illustrated Player handouts

13 Game Master maps plus 2 Pitford reprint maps

print version $14.99 pdf  $6.99

http://www.outlandarts.com/fleshweavers.htm

So this one was a few months overdue. Aren't they all? TME blog readers will know that my wife and I had some stressful times with regards to a medical emergency with one of our girls. It wasn't that we spent all the time sleeping on a mattress on the floor of BC Children's Hospital... although there was much of that. It was all the care at home and doctors and hospital visits after that. It's been well over a month of worry and recovery. I finally feel like I am getting back to a creative frame of mind, perhaps getting over the shock of the weird sinus infection that traveled up onto my girl's brain. How the f**k does that even happen? What an unlucky fluke. Apparently its damn rare and doesn't reoccur in the patient. Guess I can relax... a bit.

            As I write this (June 30 2015) we have another doctor visit in the morning but hopefully all is well and that's the end of that for awhile. As great as everybody at every level of care has been, I am done with hospitals and doctors for now. My sympathy for other parents of sick kids, or anyone with a health issue, has been greatly magnified.

            As for The Flesh Weavers... it has been part of my daily creative life all 2015 to this point, and I am so eager to share it and send it out the door. I am keen to get onto the next thing for Outland Arts and The Mutant Epoch. We have a ton of work handed in by our writers and will soon be releasing some new free Creatures of the Apocalypse as well as Danny Seedhouse's new One Day Dig called Lilac Towers. For me, the next big thing is getting back to work on the Mutant Epoch Expansion Rules. I am biting at the bit to fully test play the new character types, especially parasites, plantoids and abominations.

            In other news, and as I've mentioned before on various social media... the Mutant Epoch started as a novel series. They are coming.  I am getting back to the re-write of the first three or four books in the series, which takes place in the Shallow Sea Region to the North of the Crossroads Region. Few things consume my every second thought quite as much as working on these novels.  Thing is, writing fiction is all consuming and all demanding, at least for me. I need total isolation to write, at least at the current point in the first book. With summer holidays here I often have at least one of my kids in the studio during the day so maintaining a train of thought is impossible during those times. When I have a studio companion, then, that is when I do art, layout, maps, test playing and other TME tasks. I hope to spend the evenings, however, writing fiction until the wee hours.

            The plan is to release the first three novels one after the other in an assortment of formats including PDF, Kobo, iBook, Kindle and print.  I even have a small team of volunteer first readers and an editor. If you'd like to be one of the first readers or join the Mutant Epoch novel street team, drop me a line by email at info@outlandarts dot com.

 Okay, there is much to do.

Best regards from a Starbucks in Kamloops, British Columbia, 

Will McAusland

Update on Daughter's Medical Situation and The Flesh Weavers release

Update June 16 2015

We now know the final page count and price for The Flesh Weavers:
104 pages and retail for $14.99 for the print version and $6.99 for the PDF. Not yet sure what the double barrel print+PDF price will be. We may need to add some shipping costs so as to earn some coin after all this.

The rest of the week involves finishing the final edit and inserting those changes, completing the back cover text, creating banner ads and the other promotional online items for the site, and working on making the PDF version 's table of contents and page numbers all clickable links within the document (a big chore).

I had hoped to get his book out in mid May but as many of you know we had a bit of a medical emergency with my youngest daughter. It involved two air ambulance flights, a week long stay in BC children's Hospital and then a week back in the Kamloops hospital and many weeks of home and weekly Hospital IV treatments. She is recovering well after a Abscess that grew out of a sinus infection that got up between her brain and skull and had to have quite a serious surgery that left large stitches on her head. She's only 7 so this has been quite a trial.

Anyhow, they seem to have rid her of the rare infection and she is mending well. As you can guess, working during all this has been tough, partially because I was simply not in the studio. At any rate, I am able to focus more on The Mutant Epoch again and working hard at trying to catch up. My apologies if I haven't answered back some of your tweets and emails, updated the blog,  nor released a newsletter in awhile or kept up on the forums here.

New Creatures of the Apocalypse and a One Day Dig by Danny Seedhouse (Lilac Towers) are all in the works and coming shortly after the release of The Flesh Weavers.
 Thanks for your patience.
Will McAusland

Sneak peek of upcoming cover for The Flesh Weavers

Hi Epochians,

Just had to share this layout and cover rough for the upcoming book. The Flesh Weavers... set in Pitford, this is a hundred pages of post-apocalyptic nasty business.  Not for beginning characters or squeamish players!

The book should be coming out in early June. Stay tuned!

WM

Tyrannosapien Alert

  Okay TME blog followers, we just released yet another free creature of the Apocalypse for you. This is a big fella so maybe don't dump it on  new characters... unless they're players aren't paying attention. Let me introduce to you the Tyrannospaien, a creature that's been eating at me for months and I've been dying to get it completed and out to the community! 
ENJOY  
WM

When running away is the smartest thing to do….
Link to free PDF here 

There is no dishonor in fleeing from this howling, dinosaur-like humanoid. Problem is, it’s faster than most of your post-apocalyptic heroes. Ravenous, solitary, smart and swift, the dreaded Tyrannosapien can appear as a normally deadly variant or with one or more nasty mutations. It is an almost perfect hunter, and in an age of nightmarish monsters, this enormous horror has few equals.

This giant of the apocalypse is our 11th free creature and designed to challenge mid rank characters, especially those of naughty players who've been checking their smart phones during game sessions. This is a big PDF for a big creature, being 10 pages long and including a d20 random mutation list and a d100 treasure table for discoveries at one of the beast’s feeding sites. NEW to this addition to the Mutant Epoch’s Creatures of the Apocalypse line are three separate crit tables covering bite, claw and trample attack modes, all to enhance the tragedies that befall characters who cross paths with this lumbering menace.

Although crafted for The Mutant Epoch role-playing game, using the Outland System Game Mechanic, a GM can easily modify the stats for the Tyrannosapien and use the brute with another post-apocalyptic game system. 

Want more? Sign up for our highly entertaining, media rich ‘Outland Arts Insider’ newsletter for notifications, or, stay tuned to this site for more great RPG PDFs.


Again, grab your coy right here 
http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/148234/Tyrannosapien-Creatures-of-the-Apocalypse-11

The Wailing Jhonny is here

When you hear their shriek, you know you’re being hunted….

Using echolocation, the enormous, bear sized Wailing Jhonny haunts the twisted woodlands and tangled wastes of the new era. People forced to live near these creatures know well enough to stay the hell out of the woods at night, and lock up their families and livestock. Prowling alone or in packs, these mutated bat-like creatures are voracious omnivores which appear in both a standard and wildly mutated variety.

The Wailing Jhonny was written and illustrated by industry newcomer Camille Robertson. This is our 10^th FREE creature of the Apocalypse PDF. It’s a 7 pager and comes with a full page player handout of the cover art. 

Here's the link:

http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/146693/Wailing-Jhonny-Creatures-of-the-Apocalypse-10

Okay, so for a change, I didn't do the art or writing for this supplement. It was all crafted by Camille Robertson, an artist I've know for well over a half decade now but until this point haven't had a chance to collaborate with on anything.  You can find her website here: http://realdealcamille.com/

All NEW Mutant Epoch Mail Order Bundles

Hi all, 

I spent much of last week doing photography and a ton of Photoshop work, web design and other tasks relating to getting these mail order bundles ready for the fans. Now, to clean up. The garage is full of lights, props and screens... and the studio doesn't have a single flat surface not covered in boxes or shipping material. Got to get the firearms back to my hunter friends, too.

 WM

So, here we go...

 The long awaited updated Mutant Epoch Mail order bundles are here! www.outlandarts.com/TME-bundles-zone.htm

Here's the list:

The Backup Bundle for those of you who already bought the old megaton mail order bundle

The Lean & Mean Bundle is just the current 7 books in softcover

The Overwatch Bundle is the deluxe package, with lots of loot including a camo dice bag and the hardcover version of the TME hub Rules.

Here are the pictures of each:

Beneath The Spire and Tunnels & Skulls released tonight!

One Day Digs 3 & 4 are here! Written by Brandon Goeringer and illustrated by yours  truly, this wicked, 18 page double feature is perfect for a one shot game, demo at a convention or store, or starting point for a home campaign.

 Here's the cover to the double feature..

And here is the accompanying text...

Back for more adventure?

Return to a world of post-apocalyptic gonzo adventure with One Day Digs Double Feature 3 & 4! This evening’s first flick is irresistible, especially to those cyborgs in your team! Beneath the Spire will electrify your PCs, then, after a short intermission, dim the lights for Tunnels & Skulls, a post-apocalyptic random sewer generator!

Designed for introductory games at conventions, game stores, and private home tables, One Day Digs are the brain child of author Brandon Goeringer and illustrated by Will McAusland. They are crafted to showcase a bit of The Mutant Epoch setting and flavor, introduce some creatures and relics, as well as offer an example of how the Outland System game mechanic works. For the most part, these adventures are for 4 to 6 new PCs of first rank. Not using the Mutant Epoch rules? No sweat, GM’s can easily convert the stats found in these mini-adventures to some other mechanic. 

Beneath the Spire is best suited to character parties with one or two cyborgs, and involves the investigation of a mysterious tower in the wastes, as well as the soothing promises to those of flesh and chrome, bone and steel. This adventure includes a full page map and new robotic nightmare to challenge your players.  

Tunnels & Skulls involves an assortment of adventure hooks, a random sewer tunnel generator, two gird sheets for your own sewer network maps, a random encounter table, d100 treasure table plus an all new creature (pictured on the cover).
The price for these fast paced missions fits your budget, too! You can pay whatever you want, including nothing at all. But if you like what you see, please throw a buck or two in the tip jar, and leave a review someplace. Brandon and I sure would appreciate it! 

Although a small product, they both have a full color cover image. I must say, after doing all the grayscale paintings for the bestiary, it was so much fun to do some color work again. Had a blast on these two very different scenes.