Friday, July 24, 2015

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: 

Happy Gaming,
            Will McAusland

                        Creator of The Mutant Epoch RPG 

And here is the cover art without text...


Monday, July 6, 2015

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

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