Atlas of Earth-Prime: The Caribbean

Atlas of Earth-Prime: The Caribbean (PDF)Maybe your heroes need an island holiday? Too bad, since they’ll find plenty to do as the Atlas of Earth-Prime takes us to the Caribbean! It is the center for a secret spiritual war between the Loa, the powerful spirits of Voodoo, and stronghold of Siren’s arch-foe Baron Samedi. Go up against the Jamaican posse run by the Snowman or help local heroes Coral and Hurican fight criminals and natural disasters. Explore the mysteries deep in the heart of the Bermuda Triangle, and visit the fantastic Utopia Isle and its inhabitants. Much more than just a "day at the beach"!

Atlas of Earth-Prime: The Caribbean (PDF)

Ronin Round Table: New Game Store!

I live in Renton, Washington. Renton (and the Seattle area in general) is a hotbed of the game industry. Green Ronin, Paizo, Monte Cook Games, Privateer Press, Cheapass Games, Wizards of the Coast, and many more tabletop and computer game companies are in the area. One thing Renton in particular is missing is a game store that does more than run card game tournaments and stock a few board games. Strange, considering how many gamers live in the area.

So, you can imagine my excitement when a new game store, Heroic Knight Games, opened in the next town over (Issaquah, WA), just a short 15-minute drive from my house! I heard about it via someone’s Facebook post, looked them up, and drove over to visit one night a couple of weeks ago.

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AGE Bestiary: Draugar (PDF)

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

The latest AGE Bestiary has arrived! Writer Byron Molix and Developer Jack Norris take to the frozen barrows and icy waters of the North to bring you the menace of the draugar. Restless murderous undead returned to torment the living, the draugar are a great resource for any GM looking to add some new threats to their campaign. In addition to several examples of various draugar, this product includes a template for creating your own undead monsters and customization options for the included monsters.

AGE Bestiary: Draugar (PDF)

Ronin Round Table: Back Issues

The Freedom City sourcebook for the second edition of Mutants & Masterminds was published in 2006. In the eight years since, Green Ronin has published numerous books and files expanding upon the world we’ve come to call Earth-Prime, and that process is ongoing, with the creation of Freedom’s "sister city," Emerald City, on the West Coast, and the publication of the Atlas of Earth-Prime, detailing the regions and nations outside the borders of the two great super-cities. Joining these two products (since the Atlas will eventually be collected into a single book) is the forthcoming new edition of Freedom City. Together, the three will form the main source material for the Earth-Prime setting, with some additional information on space, aliens, and places beyond Earth in the Cosmic Handbook.

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Super Deals on Superhero Games

Now in our Green Ronin Online Store, you can get great deals on DC Adventures and ICONS Superpowered Roleplaying!

ICONS Superpowered RoleplayingThis summer we’ll be releasing ICONS Assembled Edition in collaboration with Steve Kenson’s company Ad Infinitum Adventures. In the meantime, you can now buy the print versions of ICONS Superpowered Roleplaying and The Villainomicon! for just $15 and $10, respectively, or purchase them both in a bundle for just $20.


DC AdventuresRPGNow is also celebrating superheroes, with great deals on DC Adventures right now. We have followed suit, putting all four DC Adventures books on sale in PDF and print! Get the PDFs for just $4.95 each, or pick up the print versions of DC Adventures Hero’s Handbook, DC Adventures Heroes & Villains Volume 1 and Volume 2, and DC Adventures: Universe, for great prices as well.

 

Atlas of Earth-Prime: Mexico (PDF)

Chris and Nicole are flying back to Seattle from a well-deserved break on the beach in Puerto Vallarta, so let’s welcome them home with a new Atlas of Earth Prime PDF: Mexico!

Atlas of Earth-Prime: Mexico (PDF)Go South of the Border with the Atlas of Earth-Prime to the land of the Snake and the Eagle, where the mysterious mastermind known as Ghostwalker has been shaping mystical forces for generations, powers that are now coming to fruition. The Weeping Woman La Llorona haunts the guilty souls of Ciudad Juarez, the high-tech #Hashtag fights crime (and blogs about it) in western Mexico, while Viento Negro is the dark-clad hero of Monterrey. Who is the dread undead crime-lord Tepalcatli and what are his schemes for the Silent Zone and the Mask of Aztlan?

Note: One piece of art is delayed, but if you pick it up now we’ll let you know when you can re-download with the final art.

Atlas of Earth-Prime: Mexico

Gadget Guides PDF: Get it While it’s Hot!

Gadget GuidesIf you haven’t got the Gadget Guides PDF yet, you might want to set the alarm in your battle-suit or utility belt. Today is the last day to get it for just $10–tonight it will go back up to $16. If you want to pre-order the print version, you’ll still be able to do that and add the PDF to your order for just $5, up until the book gets back from the printer.

Gadget Guides: Pre-Order and PDF

We are pleased to announce that Gadget Guides for Mutants & Masterminds is now available to pre-order in our Green Ronin Online Store. Furthermore, when you pre-order the printed book, we’ll offer you a chance to get the PDF right away for just $5 more!

Pre-Order Gadget Guides today!

Or get just the PDF for $16 $10.

Ronin Round Table: The Importance of Play

By Chris Pramas

"It must be great to get paid to play games all day."

If you work in gaming, you’ve probably heard this line before. Industry folks are quick to point that working on games is, in fact, work. And that’s true. What I want to talk about today though is the importance of keeping your inner gamer alive through play.

It is very easy, particularly when you own your own business, to just work all the time. It’s doubly dangerous when you work at home. There is then no physical difference between being at work and being at home. Weekends cease to have meaning. They are simply additional days you can work into your schedule.

When you work any job too much, your hobbies suffer. For those of us in the industry, the hobby is where we started. We were gamers first and foremost, and it was that love that made us turn our hobby into our career. It is a bitter irony then when you start working so much in gaming that you don’t have time to game for fun anymore (there’s always playtesting, but that’s just a different sort of work). When deadlines loom, it’s easy to make the case. Maybe after that next book ships, you’ll get back to your campaign.

I have been there. About 5 years ago I was doing little regular gaming. My Monday night group was meeting but more often than not we were just having dinner and bullshitting. We had several campaigns start and fizzle quickly. In the summer months, when many of us were traveling a lot on the convention circuit, it was even worse.

At a certain point I made a conscious choice to reverse the trend. I felt I was getting disconnected from the hobby that put me on this path in the first place. My love of gaming came first, and if I lost that, what was the point of designing games and running a game company? Certainly not the money. I could do nearly anything and make a better living.

So I made an effort to play more games for fun. I made time for it because I felt it was important. Certainly professionally, it’s good to try to keep up with what other companies are doing. More than that though, it was good for me personally to keep my inner hobbyist alive, to feel the excitement of great games with friends, and to be reminded of the magic that captured my imagination when I was 10 years old.

Now I keep a robust schedule of regular gaming. Monday night is RPGs at my place. Wednesdays I usually play a miniatures game with my friend Rick. Thursdays it’s RPGs again at M&M developer Jon Leitheusser’s place. Sundays I get together with friends to paint miniatures, and sometimes we get in a game after. It’s a lot of gaming when it all goes off, though it’s actually a rare week when it does so. Life and deadlines still happen, so most weeks I ended up gaming twice. And that’s a good average!

So yes, working in the game industry is work, but you need to make time for play too. It’s good for you and it’ll make you a better designer in the long run too.

PDF Preview: Gadget Guides

Gadget Guides CoverNext week Gadget Guides for Mutants & Masterminds goes up for pre-order and PDF sale. Gadget Guides compiles the entirety of last year’s series of short PDFs and adds new material to round out the book. We’ve put together a preview so you can check out what Gadget Guides has to offer. You can look over the table of contents, and read samples of the Inventing and Rituals appendices (both new for this book). Come back next week when the pre-order goes live!