We march on toward extinction! This month, we bring you the stunning Eucladoceros, the music-loving New Zealand Laughing Owl, and the bizarre Gastric Brooding Frog (which we have dubbed the Frog of Holding, for reasons that will become apparent.)
2021-12-01 16:39:11 +0000 UTC View PostWe're chugging ahead with the Book of Extinction! More monsters, more encounters, and even a Nazi super cow.
But while you're reading that, let's have a powwow and talk about the Patreon, the content we're putting out, and how we can improve.
The last year or so has been terrifically positive for Mage Hand Press, but it has increasingly put the Patreon in an awkward squeeze. The books we like the most, like Fantastical Felines and the Mimic Book of ...
2021-11-01 08:29:51 +0000 UTC View PostOur Kickstarter for Valda's Spire of Secrets has only just concluded, so we've had a very busy month! In the meantime, we've been hard at work on a new project that we'll be developing on Patreon for most of the next year: The Book of Extinction.
In this book, we're going to tell the stories of extinct animals and translate them to D&D. Then, we're going to reimagine them in a magical setting in which they met a less catastrophic fate. This is a challenging book, sp...
2021-10-01 05:31:00 +0000 UTC View Post
Hey folks, as you can imagine, we've been extremely busy launching our new Kickstarter for Valda's Spire of Secrets (go back it now!)
We have some awesome posts coming later in the month, showing off a new project we're working on with some cl...
2021-09-01 05:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostThis took a lot longer to wrap up than expected! Sorry again for such a late post.
To explain what we're doing here: we're back on the grind for Cakewalk, our imaginative, easily digestible campaign setting. I've gotten a lot of feedback from our readers on this setting, and it would seem people are largely in two camps: one group is all for the silly food nonsense, while another would play it once and then put it down. So the plan is to build a bunch of one-level...
2021-08-05 05:44:24 +0000 UTC View PostValda's Spire of Secrets, our brand new 380 page hardcover book, is coming to Kickstarter in just one month. Click here and click the box that says "Notify me on launch" so you don't miss the out on the biggest Mage Hand Press launch ever!
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Announcements! Excitement! A bit less new content than usual, but a Kickstarter looming on the horizon tends to add much more to my plate.
Valda's Spire of Secrets is on the horizon! We'll be announcing the Kickstarter date in just a couple of days, but let's just say it's mid-August. This is the most prepared we've ever been going into a Kickst...
2021-07-01 10:59:14 +0000 UTC View PostMy pen-hammer has been pounding the paper-forge this month, in what I can only say is a clumsy analogy for working my butt off on everything Spire of Secrets related. And good news! The book is very nearly complete. We are at 359 pages, with a handful of pages yet to make it in. A beefy book! I've also added the last few spells to the Spells chapter (updated in its post) and done a lot of work on updating the Complete Craftsman (updated in its post as well!)<...
2021-06-01 05:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostYou might recall the From the Arcane Archive book which we released some time ago: it was a huge collection of our spells in one place, but it has some tragic shortcomings we weren't entirely able to shake. First, it was massively polarized by Dark Matter, High Seas, and Fey Folio spells, as every spell meant tons of campaign-specific spells that won't enrich most campaigns. Secondly, it wasn't an attempt to revisit, rebalance, and refine the spells within -- it takes so lon...
2021-05-01 05:54:15 +0000 UTC View PostI love announcing new projects on April 1st, so you can all secretly wonder whether or not it’s a prank. Never fear, this is totally real! (Or is it?)
We’re proud to officially announce our next hardcover book, Varro’s Spire of Secrets, a Mage Hand Press player’s handbook, with ten base classes, over a hundred different subclasses, a raft of magic items, variant rules, ...
2021-04-01 07:35:09 +0000 UTC View PostIn a move that is bound to strike you as completely gigantic and unnecessary or utterly inconsequential, but we’re renaming the Marshal the Captain. I wanted to present the change with some new subclasses, but instead there's just some revised fluff. Hopefully, the new version should paint the class as being more open to interpretation, so you can play a captain that happens to be a guild leader, a petty politician, or the guy who owns the tavern, without too many weird the...
2021-04-01 07:35:06 +0000 UTC View PostI'm still catching up on my work queue from February, but here's a bonus extra thing that I've written up in the meantime: a bonus adventure for our Grax's Club series of adventures that we've been writing for our most recent Dark Matter Kickstarter. Though that campaign was only supposed to run from 5th to 8th level, I decided that it would be fun to write a 1st-level introduction to Grax's Guys, for folks who would like to run this, Conspiracy in the Stars, and the rest of the Grax...
2021-03-08 14:11:31 +0000 UTC View PostI hate to miss deadlines of any sort, but the PDFs I had planned for February didn't get finished in time. It's a short month in which I got sick for a few days, so expect some content in about a week.
2021-03-01 05:40:51 +0000 UTC View PostDown with the pastryarchy! No more bread and circuses!
Even! More! Cakewalk!
We heard your cries for mercy, and have resolutely decided not to stop writing an entire book based on food puns and adorable art. This time, we've got two new races, the crumbkin and the veggies, and a ton of new monsters, from the adorable avogato to the spicy ghost pepper.
We're gonna keep updating this piece-by-piece until we...
2021-02-01 07:46:07 +0000 UTC View PostStrike the glowing steel until it yields, quench it, and begin again.
The Complete Craftsman is back! With our third (fourth?) complete rework of this class, the elaborate and finely-engineered crafting class is now better than ever. Playing a craftsman means designing and wielding your own experimental weapons by fiddling with the weapon properties directly, engineering new and devastating exotic weapons as you go. Not only are the wealth of crafting properties more b...
2021-02-01 07:46:03 +0000 UTC View PostGhastly ghouls, spooky skeletons, and… zany zombies? Like necromancy, alliteration is a dark art.
Become a master of the forbidden necromantic arts with the Complete Necromancer! This new, balanced class lets you command a horde of undead, channel dark energies through your fingertips, wither your foes with a host of cruel spells, and ascend to the very heights of lichdom. The Complete Necromancer comes with a slew of new necromancy spells, like inexorab...
2021-02-01 07:46:01 +0000 UTC View PostThe dead rise, the dead walk.
The dead reckon, the dead talk.
We’ve been extremely busy this month! Here’s a list of things we’ve done which you might be interested in:
Do you see how the breach beckons? Mount up, my warriors; we shall answer her call!
With the Complete Marshal, you embody the greatest leader of a generation, playing not one, but two characters at one time. This unique class allows you to control both the marshal and their loyal cohort, a deadly duo working in perfect synchronicity. For a decisive edge in combat, you also have a pool of Battle Dice which refresh each combat, allowing you to perform maneuvers that heal...
2020-12-01 06:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostSacrifice and sacrament. The gods must demand very much or very little of us this day.
Put your life on the line with the Complete Martyr, one of the most thrilling classes ever designed by Mage Hand Press! Unlike other classes, the martyr is fated to die, and so uses their own hit points to fuel ever more incredible feats of divine magic. The tug of war between your abilities, your healing, and the deadly monsters that want to tear you to pieces poses a unique problem...
2020-12-01 06:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostRook to King-4. Checkmate.
The Complete Warmage is our definitive rework of the fan-favorite class, the warmage. The undisputed masters of cantrips, warmages turn the most fundamental types of magic into a deadly and precise art. Each warmage adopts a house, themed after a chess piece or a game of chance, to reflect their style of cunning, preference for magical tricks, and unique skills in combat, and each warmage enhances their selection of cantrips with a suite of p...
2020-12-01 06:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostNo, you're not allowed to eat Greg. *Especially* because he's made of ice cream.
There's no earthly reason you should have seen this coming. While we've been working hard on the new Complete Warmage (probably next month) and the new Complete Craftsman (hopefully the month after), we decided to take a brief sojourn into a nonsense Adventure Time-like setting called Cakewalk. This about this as a proof-of-concept for a full setting book. Let us know what you think about what's he...
2020-11-01 05:30:00 +0000 UTC View PostBubble, bubble, toil, and trouble...
The time has come at last for the redux of our Complete Witch! We finished up most of the major design work for this a few months back, but only just wrapped up the major art.
Witches are stricken by magic so dark it imprints a lasting shadow upon their essence. Spinning this magic outward, they can cast curses upon their foes and summon a familiar to their service. In the Complete Witch, we’ve...
2020-10-01 05:31:00 +0000 UTC View PostThis month, I’ve got another Dark Matter-centric lineup. First and foremost:
We have LESS THAN A WEEK left in the Dark Matter Kickstarter! Back it now, before you miss your chance to indulge in the best sci-fi tabletop universe out there!
Our first offering is an adventure! S...
2020-09-01 06:03:53 +0000 UTC View PostHey everyone!
Saddle up for this awesome new 5th Edition five-creator collaboration: The Ol’ Silver Serpent Saloon.
The Ol’ Silver Serpent Saloon is a mini-adventure for 3rd-level characters in which the party must wheel and deal with the patrons of a Weird West saloon, in order to collect the scattered components of a mythical cowboy’s outfit. A mini-adventure is a bite-sized adventure which can be slotted into any larger campaign for a diversion and chang...
2020-08-17 16:00:09 +0000 UTC View Post
We're pretty busy running the new Dark Matter Kickstarter, as you might imagine, but I wanted to take a second to show off some of the assets we've concocted for the new adventure and stretch goals! I wanted to have a few more, but we're revising some of the maps, so expect some updates later in the month.
If you like these maps, check out the up-and-coming mapmaker Mutenn on Patreon. We're lucky to ...
2020-08-01 20:36:13 +0000 UTC View Post
We’re thrilled to have some new, kick-ass products for you, along with big plans about where we’re taking this setting in the near future.
The big centerpoint of this Kickstarter is the Dark Matt...
2020-07-29 14:01:02 +0000 UTC View PostIt’s finally happening! On July 29th, we’re Kickstarting the Dark Matter Starter Kit, which includes everything you need to start playing, right out of the box. It features a brand new adventure, "Conspiracy in the Stars!", penned by an all-star team of writers (our good friends Donathin Frye, Charlie Smith, Simon Goudreault, and Makenzie De Armas). The box also comes with a GM Screen, monster tokens, a fold-out battle map, standalone rules, and ...
2020-07-01 05:32:01 +0000 UTC View PostI’d rather fight a giant ogres than kobolds. They’ve at least got the sense to try to step on us, fair and square.
Before you attempt to rob a dragon’s hoard and brave the monster’s claws and fearsome breath, a much more challenging foe awaits you: the kobolds making their home outside the dragon’s lair. Those small draconic underlings might be the weakest monsters you’ll ever face, but they’re among the most cunning, most vicious, and most unsporting foe yo...
2020-07-01 05:31:01 +0000 UTC View PostAlas, we are but shades of dead gods and heroes, as they are shades to us.
It's finally done!
The binder is a brand new class which lets you redefine your playstyle each day by attuning to the spirits of dead gods and heroes. These spirits from the past, called vestiges, afford their own features and traits, and each has a backstory all their own, drawn from the margins of world mythology. Their revisionist stories shine a light on tragic tales from across time, and groun...
2020-07-01 05:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostThe PATREON EXCLUSIVE book is brought to you by collaboration with Cze and Peku, who provided the spectacular battle map, PaperForge, who made the neat paper miniature, and Taverns of Trinkets, who wrote and illustrated the magic items. It is, of course, written by your very o...
2020-07-01 05:30:01 +0000 UTC View Post