Men and Monsters

Too often, the races which populate fantasy worlds are pulled whole-cloth from a Tolkienesque template, leaving little room for interpretation. Elves are intelligent and long-lived, but otherwise look like humans with pointy ears, dwarves are stoic and industrious, but otherwise look like squat, bearded humans. Halflings are lethargic and friendly, but otherwise look like very short humans. In absence of other works, these character archetypes are truly inspired, but with the march of fiction, they’ve simply become tired staples of the genre. 

But by their definition, fantastic worlds can play host to a much broader family of races, which provoke the reader’s (or in this case, the player’s) imagination, bringing them deeper into the world through its astonishing residents. This book, Men and Monsters, seeks to provide some new races to populate fantasy worlds, each of which defies conventional fantasy tropes in some way. 

Inside, you'll find 11 new races (though you might recognize a few from Dark Matter), and a metric ton of feats. Moreover, this book is filled with some of the most gorgeous art Martin Kirby has ever done for us -- we hope you enjoy!

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On the subject of Dark Matter, the first draft of the lore chapter is finished and we've started subsequently picking it apart. It's much longer than we anticipated, and will include a bunch of backgrounds as well. In fact, it might end up being two or three chapters when all is said and done. 

In order to fill these pages with interesting things to look at, we're going to commission a few more sketches from Kirby, which is unfortunately going to push the final product a little further down the line. Because of our schedule (since, after all, I plan to release the Complete Witch on time), I don't think Dark Matter will be completed until at least late August or early September.

I'm sorry about the delay, and I'm bummed that it's taking so long, but I think that the final product will be worth it, and I'm excited to show everyone what we have cooking. Thank you all for your patience and your support.

Changelog:

• 9/7/17: Meta: Bookmarks added
• 9/22/17: Small formatting change
• 9/28/17: Typos fixed
• 9/18/17: Vect thermal vision changed to thermalsight, no longer takes a bonus action
• 1/14/19: New art!