Atlas of Earth-Prime: United States of America (PDF)

Wild Cards SCARE Sheet 20: Tom WeathersToday we kick off our next PDF series for Mutants & Masterminds with Atlas of Earth-Prime: United States of America. This 11-page, full-color PDF complete with Hero Lab files is available for sale in our Green Ronin Online Store for just $1.99!

Visit a world not our own, but strangely familiar, a world of heroes and villains, of wonders and dangers, and limitless adventure! The Atlas of Earth-Prime is a trip around the world of the Freedom City and Emerald City settings for the Mutants & Masterminds Superhero RPG, looking at different regions and their heroes, villains, features, and opportunities, giving you a whole world to explore for your game. All for less than the cost of a new comic book!

The Atlas begins close to “home” with the nation with the two largest centers of super-powered activity. But Freedom City and Emerald City are not the only places of note in the United States: visit the super-prison Lockdown in Buckner Ridge, TN, or the mystic bayous of Embouchere, LA. Learn about the heroes of New York, Chicago, or San Francisco, or go beyond the ordinary in Midvale, KS, Mystery, NH, or Red Rocks, AZ, located near Magic Mesa. Help clean up the mean streets of Ferroberg, PA, or the halls of power in Washington DC. (For Mutants & Masterminds Third Edition.)

Atlas of Earth-Prime: United States of America (PDF)

Ronin Round Table: Pathfinder Update

Hey folks! I’m Owen K.C. Stephens, the newest member of the Green Ronin Staff, and the Pathfinder Developer. I was brought on to (among other things) help see the Pathfinder books for Freeport: City of Adventure and the new Advanced Bestiary through the writing, editing, and development process. I wanted to talk for a bit about where things are and some of the decisions made along the way.

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Ronin Round Table: The Free & the Brave

By Steve Kenson

You’ve heard a lot about the forthcoming Atlas of Earth-Prime series in previous Ronin Round Tables. As we approach our launch date, let’s take a look at the premier issue of the series, which starts close to home in the nation of Freedom City and Emerald City: the United States of America.

We had two goals for the U.S.A. Atlas: First, talk about some of the places and geography beyond our two main "super" cities, shifting some of the "Beyond Freedom City" material out of the Freedom City book into its own space and, second, open up some opportunities for different types of Mutants & Masterminds adventures and series set in the United States other than "four-color urban superheroes." So, what kinds of new settings can you expect from the first Atlas?

  • Occult America: Two flavors of "occult mystery" settings, the Southern Gothic of Embouchere, Louisiana, with a simmering gumbo of bayous, Voodoo, criminal syndicates, and mysterious cults, and the Colonial Shadows of Mystery, New Hampshire, situated in the shadow of Mystery Mountain and its tall tales and legendary creatures, both good for use with the Supernatural Handbook.
  • Hard Justice: For two places where justice is far less black-and-white, we revisit Buckner Ridge, the home of the private super-prison Lockdown (and the secrets it contains) and Ferroburg, Pennsylvania, a rusting steel-town beset by crime and urban decay, but protected by a new breed of vigilante willing to do what it takes to save the city, whatever the cost. Great for Iron Age style games of low-powered heroes in the style of a superhero TV series.
  • Hidden Heartland: Midvale, Kansas, is much like any middle-American farming community, faced with the shift from family farms to "big agribusiness," but there’s also the nearby Crater Mound and Serpent’s Run. What secrets do those ancient earthworks conceal and how much super-powered weirdness lies just beneath the surface of an otherwise "normal" town?
  • Strange & Familiar: Short write-ups of real-world cities like Chicago, New York, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C., and a look at their super-defenders, including Gatekeeper (a new Master Mage?) and the new Raven.

That’s the U.S.A.—waiting in the wings we have La Liga de Metaluchadores in Mexico, ancient astronauts amongst the Mayan ruins, the ghost pirates of the Bermuda Triangle, a shapeshifting Jamaican drug-lord…and that’s just in North America! Stay tuned for a whole new world coming soon!

Dragon Age Dice Set: Pre-Order Today!

Dragon Age Dice SetThe Dragon Age Dice Set is winging (floating?) its way from Q Workshop to our warehouse, and that means you can now pre-order this incredibly cool set of Dragon Age-styled six-siders!

Within this box you’ll find six beautiful dice, emblazoned with iconography from the world of Thedas, setting for BioWare’s Dragon Age fantasy video game! Four of these high-quality, durable dice carry the symbols of the Circle of Magi and the Templars. The remaining two bear the Grey Warden Griffon and the iconic Blood Dragon. Manufactured by Q Workshop, and perfect for any fan of Dragon Age, these also serve as two sets of dice for Green Ronin’s Dragon Age RPG!

Pre-Order the Dragon Age Dice Set today!

Ronin Round Table: Around the World in 20 PDFs

By Jon Leitheusser

For the last three years (three!?) Green Ronin has released a weekly series of PDFs for the Mutants & Masterminds game. First were the Threat Reports, followed by the Power Profiles, then the Gadget Guides and Wild Cards SCARE Sheets. Each series has filled a particular niche and served a particular purpose.

We did the Threat Reports because M&M Third Edition was brand new and we wanted to provide Gamemasters with villains and story ideas, give players some bad guys to fight, and introduce people to the Emerald City setting. The series went over very well and convinced us to continue with the PDF series over the following years.

The Power Profiles were created to show players and GMs how to build powers, give examples of some unusual powers, and to make it easier for everyone to create the sorts of characters they wanted—whether they were player characters, NPCs, or villains. Because M&M is both an effects- and point-based system, it can be tricky to get new players up and running with a character they really like. Power Profiles was a way for us to make it easier for them to do just that.

The Gadget Guides series grew out of Power Profiles. People on the Atomic Think Tank asked for a gadgets Power Profile. Steve and I both thought what we really needed was a series of PDFs that covered a wide range of different sorts of gadgets, from swords and guns to traps and nanotech. This series will be collected a little later this year, and when it is it’ll create a veritable catalog of devices and equipment players can use as inspiration.

Alternating with the Gadget Guides were SCARE Sheets based on characters from the latest Wild Cards novels. We’ve had a long relationship with George R.R. Martin and when he told us the series had been picked up by SyFy and Universal to be the subject of their first film together, we were excited to have the chance to show off more Wild Cards characters. The PDFs in this series typically presented a character along with their history and powers. It was a great way to provide GMs with more characters for their game and re-introduce Wild Cards to M&M fans.

Now, in our fourth year, we’re pulling inspiration from the Atomic Think Tank once again! Last year someone (I wish I knew who) mentioned they wanted a "World of Freedom" book that fleshed out the rest of the world Freedom City and Emerald City are located in. It turns out we loved that idea and that the world has an actual name: Earth-Prime!

So, I’m very happy to announce The Atlas of Earth-Prime! It’s a 20-part, twice-monthly series of PDFs that covers every corner of Earth-Prime. Each PDF will be in the eight- to ten-page range and will introduce you to new characters, places, organization, businesses, and groups. Most importantly, the idea behind the series is to give you information to inspire stories and adventures that criss-cross the globe and take your heroes places you may not have considered in the past.

Just like our own world, Earth-Prime is filled with unique and unusual people and places. While the Atlas entries expand on previous material from older sourcebooks, it mostly includes all-new information in order to make the setting more vibrant and exciting. Now when your characters move beyond your home city or home country, there will be a world of things to do, see, and punch in the face.

One thing we decided early on, was that we would focus on the comic book aspects of the setting as opposed to real-world socio-political issues. We don’t ignore the bad things in the world, but instead we approach them in a way that will hopefully give you inspiration for super-heroic stories. So, super-powered people in other countries take on the roles of superheroes and supervillains, just like they do in America. Sure, there are paranormal mercenaries in South America and Africa, but they’re comic book mercenaries.

We also agreed that these PDFs wouldn’t include much hard data about the various countries. So you’re not going to find the population of Cuba in its listing, or the top three exports from Sri Lanka. If you want that sort of information, there are plenty of real world resources available to you.

Finally, and this may have been the most important thing we wanted to do with this series, we wanted to try and get writers from around the world to work on the entries for their region. So far we’ve done pretty well with that: Steve Kenson, an American, wrote the entry for the U.S.A; Scott Bennie, a Canadian, wrote the entry for Canada; Alex Melchor, who lives in Mexico City, wrote the entries for Mexico and Central America, and Fred Furtado, from Brazil, wrote the entry for South America. We may not be able to find writers from Africa or some other parts of the world, but we want to give this series a more global feel, and we didn’t think we could do that if all the entries were written by white guys from America. Plus, we didn’t want to end up with characters like Captain Shamrock, the hero of Ireland if we could help it. And we can.

Steve and I and the other writers on this series are very excited with the ideas we’ve come up with and we’re looking forward to getting the PDFs finalized and out the electronic door. You should see the first Atlas of Earth-Prime: The United States of America in a couple of weeks. We look forward to exploring the rest of Earth-Prime with you!

To celebrate the launch of the Atlas of Earth-Prime, we’re putting the Threat Report book and PDF, Power Profiles book and PDF, Gadget Guide individual PDFs, and the collected SCARE Sheets PDFs on sale for 25% off. Get to the Green Ronin Online store and stock up! The sale ends soon!

Age Bestiary: Chimeric Creatures (PDF)

AGE Bestiary: Chimeric Creatures (PDF)Today we present a new product for the AGE System (the rules that power the Dragon Age RPG): Chimeric Creatures.

A motley collection of animal parts brought together in one terrifying package, chimeric beasts are a mainstay of fantasy fiction, mythology, and roleplaying settings. From the noble half-lion half-eagle griffons to various abominations crafted from twisted occult science or sorcery, these creatures provide a serious challenge to even the hardiest adventurers.

Includes AGE system entries for the chimera, cockatrice, griffon, hawkbear, hippocamp, manticore, questing beast, and yali, along with rules for customizing or creating your own chimeric beasts.

AGE Bestiary: Chimeric Creatures