Just Leo and me out on the road. Of course, Leo don’t make good conversation, on account of bein’ a dog.
The Complete Vagabond is the definitive version of our Vagabond class, retooled and expanded to give you more compelling characters than ever. The quintessential vagabond is the mysterious figure at the back of the tavern: hood drawn and wayworn, they’ve been on the road for years, chasing some endless, wandering quest. No matter where they’re going or what they’re...
2024-04-01 05:40:01 +0000 UTC
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Insomnia is officially over 175 pages! This month, we’ve finished the base set of twelve monsters with:
The Seraph. The heavens burn with a hellish radiance. An angel arrives to proclaim that the end of all things is nigh.
The Cult. The kids are playing a dangerous new game. It involves dice, roleplaying, and magic. But why are there hooded figures around town, and why are they carrying daggers?
The Lamb.<...
2024-04-01 05:35:01 +0000 UTC
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Contractor Corps is back! Your mission, if you choose to accept it (and you really don’t have a choice) is to head over to Squengi’s Diner and rob the safe. Oh, and we’re sending a half-dozen other contractors as well. If you must kill a coworker, do so quietly.
This is perhaps the longest of these collab adventures yet, and one of the most inventive. I think you’ll really enjoy the sheer creativity and reactivity we’ve crammed into this one.
Dark Matter ...
2024-04-01 05:30:02 +0000 UTC
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The first of four subclasses for Insomnia, this one written for the modern setting Nowhere USA. Contemporary-style barbarians are fairly common in pop culture, especially in action movies. This one should evoke some of those Logan vibes to hammer the design home.
2024-03-29 16:00:00 +0000 UTC
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An Insomnia/Dark Matter crossover! The Blackpost setting in Insomnia is a cozy little horrific corner of the Dark Matter universe, all the way at the edge of space, where horrible monsters seep out of the black nothingness beyond the stars. This subclass for Monk has seen a little too much of one of the setting...
2024-03-22 16:00:00 +0000 UTC
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These resilient, luddite insectoids seem to instantly connect with Dark Matter players everywhere. It's a good joke, everyone knows how to tell it, and it's always funny!
“Gid’down!” I shouted and pulled Mor’rak, the new Skathári hire, behind a concrete barrier, just as a repulsor grenade cracked in a wave of force.
Suddenly, it was all a hail of blaster fire: Coalition troo...
2024-03-15 15:00:00 +0000 UTC
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Orcs are a staple of fantasy literature, for better or worse, so for the science-fantasy world of Dark Matter we wanted to provide a new take on the species. This version is polished to perfection from the one printed in the Dark Matter hardcover.
Once the rig was loaded on the lift, Dame’re could slide underneath and start loosening the bolts that held the hull together. And just like th...
2024-03-08 16:00:00 +0000 UTC
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Of course you can play Deckard! Blade Runner is one of those seminal influences that runs through Dark Matter’s veins, and we even have a perfect stand-in for the replicants in the book. Now, however, you get to roleplay your favorite dreams of electric sheep with a subclass for the Investigator!
2024-03-01 17:00:00 +0000 UTC
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Insomnia continues to creep toward its final form. Here’s the tl;dr of what it gains this month:
- Art for every single faction in all three settings
- The Herald, a nyarlathotep sort of eldritch being who presages the terrible Dread Leviathan. This is the fourth and final Eldritch monster!
- The Imp, a contract-striking fiend with a malevolent agenda. This is the first monster in the Daemonic set -- the last s...
2024-03-01 06:30:01 +0000 UTC
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Plenty of time to bargain later. You’re either in or you’re out. Make your choice.
In our tradition of rolling out these adventures in a completely random order, here’s the first adventure of Contractor Corps, in which you and your cellmates must stage a prison break from the Odobenus, a ship transporting you to the worst penitentiary in the ‘Verse. Thankfully, you have a mysterious benefactor -- an AI named Oversight -- who can give you a headstart.
2024-03-01 06:30:01 +0000 UTC
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If you’ve read Dune: Messiah, you should understand the shape of this particular Martyr's Burden—foresight, godhood, and sacrifice. For everyone else, this subclass is an attempt to meld the influence of Dune’s Paul Atreides and Star Wars’s Jedi Order into something cohesive that retains Paul’s messianic arc. Even if it fails in that respect, it should be rad as...
2024-02-23 05:00:00 +0000 UTC
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The nautilid is a stone-cold Dark Matter classic, and its design almost entirely holds up. However, a bulleted list for the Aqua Suit was a must! It should be 90% easier to digest your racial traits now.
“His heavy footfalls shook the deck as he stomped up from engineering—Titus Octavius didn’t like being called up to the bridge. When he arrived, the captains were shouting over one an...
2024-02-17 17:00:00 +0000 UTC
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As we revise races from their first printing in Dark Matter, we're avoiding skills and proficiencies that make your character’s traits seem totally inborn and biologically-determined. A dragonborn’s breath weapon is alright, but not all elves, for example, are born with weapon training. As a result, the avia-ra took quite a bit of reworking! I think the new version is quite a bit better in every respect.
2024-02-09 17:00:00 +0000 UTC
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A Starfox reference, you say? I plead the fifth. And the second. I mean, it COULD be a reference to Harlock or Cowboy Bebop, if you prefer.
Command squadrons of fighters with this subclass for the Captain built for the ship combat rules in Dark Matter!
2024-02-02 17:00:00 +0000 UTC
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Yes, we’re back with more Dark Matter! This adventure is yet another collaboration with CzePeku Sci-Fi, but this one’s a little different. Now that we’re done with the goodie-two-shoes Freelancer Corps, we’re signing a contract with the Firm and embarking on a crime spree of mini-adventures! Welcome to Contract Corps.
Your first contract, if you choose to accept it (and remember, you don’t have a choice) is to infiltrate the Robo-Rumble underground...
2024-02-01 06:30:01 +0000 UTC
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After playtesting our new custom character sheets for a few weeks, I’ve decided to push the idea even further! These single-page sheets contain everything the original sheets omitted: space for background details, a full column for personality traits, and every trait offered by your choice of race. Naturally, it’s form-fillable as well.
Edit: Originally went out without a file, due to bad upload. Should be fixed!
2024-02-01 06:30:01 +0000 UTC
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Welcome back to the ‘Verse! For the next few months, we’ll be digging back through some of Dark Matter in preparation of a new print run with a revised edition of the book. Don’t expect anything too drastic: just smoothed-out edges, better cohesion with our other products, and a dose of future-proofing. As is our custom, we’ll dig into races and subclasses first, before biting off new spells, feats, magi...
2024-01-26 22:00:00 +0000 UTC
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Comments from the Designer: The word “cyber lich” has been kicking around in our Dark Matter notes for as long as the setting has existed, but we haven’t had a cool way to implement it until now! Hack responsibly (both bodies and systems).
There’s more than one way to imbue a corpse with the semblance of life: while other necromancers leverage their magic ...
2024-01-12 17:00:00 +0000 UTC
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Happy new year!
The three settings of Insomnia are officially complete. This release includes a suite of drag-and-drop NPCs for Nowhere, Grismoor, and Blackpost, as well as new locations and factions throughout. I've also massively reworked and expanded the introduction to the monsters chapter, fleshing out how to run an incursion in Insomnia and how to adjust monsters for every level from 1st to 16th without too much of a headache. Lastly, the Starlight has joined the lineup of Eldritc...
2024-01-01 18:30:00 +0000 UTC
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It's hard for a freelancer to make ends meet. Just keep taking jobs and maybe you'll hit paydirt.
Here's Freelancer Corps, the first Dark Matter campaign built around ship maps from CzePeku. Feel free to take this as-is for a short excursion into the 'Verse or dabble these adventures into a larger campaign whenever you need a change of pace.
If you haven't noticed, each collaboration with CzePeku Sci-Fi has built on one another, now amounting to a mini Dark Matte...
2023-12-01 06:30:01 +0000 UTC
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This pack of custom character sheets gives you a nearly-instant character for any base class in Valda's Spire of Secrets. Just add some ability scores, pick a race, pop it into the microwave for sixty seconds, and voila! The pre-listed features, custom form-fillable trackers, and clean design means you can use these sheets at the table or online. Be the envy of your friends! Indoctrinate new players to Mage Hand Press classes! Never write a feature down again!
These character shee...
2023-12-01 06:30:01 +0000 UTC
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Surprise, surprise! This month's releases are the same as the last: even more Insomnia and another Dark Matter adventure.
This update to Insomnia adds four brand new subclasses to the remote galactic station, Blackpost, also usable in any Dark Matter game! You can embrace your Green Lantern fantasies as a hardlight wizard, dabble with synth-blasters as a bard, stretch your limbs as a monk, or join the mechademon horde as a paladin.
We've also included one new Eldritch monster, the...
2023-11-01 05:30:01 +0000 UTC
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Though far from advanced, these weapons and their panicked wielders seem sufficiently dangerous.
This Dark Matter adventure is sure to be an all-time classic. Cze-Peku Sci-Fi had a phenomenal flying saucer map that made perfect sense for our setting, since amoeboids fly their very own saucers and abduct livestock from low worlds. Your task: recover a crashed saucer from a remote desert on a low world. Little do you know that the saucer crashed some eighty miles outside the smal...
2023-11-01 05:30:01 +0000 UTC
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Bam! With this update, Insomnia is over a hundred pages long. The whole project is really coming together!
This month, we've fleshed out the modern setting rules with four subclasses and a bunch of necessary information on how to run each of the 5E base classes in Nowhere, USA. The warlock is ported over from Valda's, but the other three subclasses are brand new, and maybe some of our all-time best!
We've also added the first Eldritch monster: the Pain Elemental. This one has to d...
2023-10-01 05:30:00 +0000 UTC
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A downed hospital ship, a ticking clock, and worms. So many worms.
It's another Dark Matter one-shot adventure, in collaboration with Cze-Peku Sci-fi! This time, the party must explore a downed hospital ship, the Caladrius, and rescue anyone still alive on board. But a titanic number of psi-worms are threatening to crack and hull open at any moment! Can the party keep their cool under pressure and escape with the surviving patients?
2023-10-01 05:30:00 +0000 UTC
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A Hyperdrive Fleet by any other name would smell as sweet!
That's right, we're back with another Hyperdrive Fleet collaboration (even though they've since rebranded to the clearer CzePeku Sci-Fi label)! This month has been just cripplingly busy, so the rest of the cool Insomnia subclasses will have to wait until next month. In the meantime, we have a breezy Dark Matter adventure set aboard a derelict mining vessel -- I hope you love it!
We'd like to work up to...
2023-09-01 05:30:01 +0000 UTC
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I believe that last month I implied that we'd have a low-content month coming up, as we catch up on writing and art. Not yet, though! Because we basically worked nonstop all month, we've got a bumper crop of new subclasses and monsters ready to show off.
This month, we've expanded Insomnia to 88 pages, and we're ready to show off all the subclasses from the Book of Extinction!
For Insomnia, we've added our third and final setting, the medieval city of Grismoor, as well as four “...
2023-08-01 05:31:00 +0000 UTC
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There’s a massive update to the Book of Extinction coming today if you’re a backer, but we’re going to show off the subclasses chapter here today. It’s been a little while since we’ve had the chance to really flex our subclass skills, but this lineup really slaps: druids riding dinosaurs, proto-magic wizards, swarm warlocks, and much more!
Enjoy!
2023-08-01 05:30:01 +0000 UTC
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Boom! Thirty extra pages of Insomnia!
Blackpost
This month, we've got everything about Blackpost -- a terrifyingly distant corner of the Dark Matter universe, complete with blaster rules, factions, and so forth. Fleshing out just one little colony as its own setting has been a rewarding challenge, since everything gets to be zoomed in and more personal. For once, your Dark Matter game gets to be grounded on one planet, rather than jet-setting across the 'Verse!
M...
2023-07-01 05:30:01 +0000 UTC
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It’s time to dive into Insomnia!
Revisiting this project has been an absolute joy -- I hope that shows in the chunk I have for you today. Last time I approached this project, I had the same overall outline: create a horror conversion for D&D 5e in much the same way that Dark Matter represented a science fiction conversion. Instead of one elaborate setting, however, the book would include three mini-settings, each with just enough puzzle pieces to let you have a great time assembli...
2023-06-01 05:30:01 +0000 UTC
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