[Parent's Basement Games] Murchad's Legacy Campaign Setting - new!

[BiggusGeekus]

Parent’s Basement Games springs into existence with our flagship product: Murchad’s Legacy, a d20 fantasy campaign setting that is designed with the roleplayer and powergamer in mind.

What makes this setting different from all the rest? We’re glad you asked!

• The campaign tracker helps the DM adjust the setting to the player’s actions. Characters are not passive observers in this world, they can control what nations prevail and what nations fall over the course of a campaign. This is one setting where the players really can win in an RPG!
• The countries in the setting have been designed with style of play in mind. Rather than have the players roll up a character to fit in a world, the world exists so the player can slide right on in.
• New background and cultural feats help develop what the character was doing before perusing a life of adventure.
• Map design by Dr. Kulander formerly of the US Geological Survey. This is a world that really could exist!
• A meta-plot that is controlled by players, not the DM.
• Dozens of new spells, new races, and prestige classes that are tied to the setting, no generic stuff here!
• All text is Open Game Content … have a ball folks!

They say it's good to be the king. Tell that to King Almagaid of Launhym. Tattooed orcs invading from the north, dwarves in the neighboring mountains lamenting their failed "gunpowder" weapons, a vast empire to the south, wealthy elitists taking control from the east, druids and clerics fighting internally, barons threatening to tear the country up, your wife of over twenty years may just well be having an affair, and all because some wizard named Murchad didn't get his way.

Murchad's Legacy is a campaign setting in the "knights and castles" tradition using the d20 ruleset where the story slowly advances with every level up and the players drive the plot.

Buy it now on PDF at RPGnow
Book available soon at RPGmall

Have more questions? Read our FAQ

Its time to save a kingdom!

 

[HalWhitewyrm]

You have an extra http:// on your Demo link, and the pdf map links on your webpage are broken (the files are missing).

After reading your PR, and your FAQ, I have to say it calls my attention; it's gone into my wish list.

Will there be a pdf/print offer (get the pdf and apply price towards print, or get the print and get pdf free)?

When you say it uses the d20 ruleset, what exactly do you mean? Straight SRD? SRD mixed with MSRD? SRD with mixed OGC? Could you perhaps post the section 15 to have an idea of what went into it?

Thanks, and good luck!

 

[BiggusGeekus]

You have an extra http:// on your Demo link, and the pdf map links on your webpage are broken (the files are missing).

... because at Parent's Basement Games, we're all about QUALITY!

Thanks for the tip. The links have been fixed and I'll check out what's going on with the maps as soon as I can. I suspect capitalization woes.

Edit: Maps are up. Modem users beware! The area map is about 6MB.

Will there be a pdf/print offer (get the pdf and apply price towards print, or get the print and get pdf free)?

The book comes with a CDROM that has the PDF on it. The maps will be on the CD as well as the flags used in the area. We did that to assist the DM with player hand outs.

The PDF/print offer is a good idea. I'll act on it.

When you say it uses the d20 ruleset, what exactly do you mean? Straight SRD? SRD mixed with MSRD? SRD with mixed OGC? Could you perhaps post the section 15 to have an idea of what went into it?

15. COPYRIGHT NOTICE
Open Game License v 1.0a Copyright 2000, Wizards
of the Coast, Inc.
System Rules Document Copyright 2000, Wizards of
the Coast, Inc.; Authors Jonathan Tweet, Monte
Cook, Skip Williams, based on original material by
E. Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson.

Murchad's Legacy Copyright 2005 Parent's
Basement Games. All rights reserved.

Materials offered Murchads Legacy derived
completely from the d20 System Reference
Document are deemed Open Game Content in
accordance with this license. Character names (other
than those owned byWizards of the Coast), histories,
location names, artwork, works of fiction, logos
(including the stylized representation of Murchads
Legacy) and the identifying name "Murchads
Legacy" are "Product Identity" and may not be
reproduced without the written consent of the
copyright holder

Hope that helps!

 

[HalWhitewyrm]

Sounds good! Let us know when you have the pdf/print thing sorted out. I'll probably want to get the pdf first, but I may want to get the print down the road as well for home reference. Congrats on the first release!

 

[jaerdaph]

... because at Parent's Basement Games

Best. Publisher. Company. Name. EVAR!

Congratulations, and best of luck!

 

[BiggusGeekus]

Regarding the sale price for PDF purchasers there is good news and bad news. Which is to say, good news for you and bad news for me.

We did not calculate a cupon discount into our book price of $29. Because the hosting services rightly need their own cut to maintain operations, if we were to give a $15 discount on the book we'd end up losing money on every sale. We could handle this many ways, we have chosen to lower the price of the PDF to $12 and give $12 discounts on the book. The $29 price will be maintained through this print run, when we print more, expect a modest increase. Pick 'em up now while you can folks!

When you purchase your Murchad's Legacy PDF (and are thinking fond thoughts of us), register an account at RPGmall, then send me an email asking for your discount off the book.

I was wondering why everyone thought we were crazy to charge $29 for a 256 page book with CD insert. Guess I found out why!

 

[Napftor]

How long has this been in the works, BG? I like to think that I'm up on the latest gossip, but this announcement was quite a surprise.

 

[BiggusGeekus]

How long has this been in the works, BG? I like to think that I'm up on the latest gossip, but this announcement was quite a surprise.

A very long story.

Short version: A long time. I just shut up about it until now. Thanks to ENWorld's artisit-at-large Allen Palmer for helping with this project and keepig mum for longer than he realistically should have.

Long version: Back in 1999-2000 I did a fansite for Planescape Torment that's archived here and has tons of ads now. On the message boards several people got to talking about fantasy timelines. If you've played Torment you know that the timeline spans thousands of years. That works for Torment but you see it all too often in a lot of fantasy settings: thousands of years go by with not much happening. That irritated me, so as a counter point I wrote up a possible fifty year history to show how people would be much more concerned with current events than the affairs of people long dead who were only now rising from the grave, etc., etc., etc.

People liked it and suggested I develop it. So I did. My first idea was to put up everything on a website. This was a very dumb idea because blogging software wasn't developed then and I was doing everything by HTML. I was constantly rearanging pages and maintaining the site was more effort than it was worth. I had about 30,000 words written and I was going to quit when who should have moved near me but an old college buddy with a PhD in GeoPhysics, by the name of Kulander, whom we shall call "Ku" for the remainder of this diatribe because that is how he is known.

Ku was working for the US Geological Survey and had about four months to master their software. He didn't want to experiment with the real USGS files so, guess what, he decided to map my world. Or at least a chunk of it. Ku has very developed ideas about game worlds that encompas entire planets. He preferred to do a solid map of one small (1000+ miles) area. That map now graces our website and takes up 6MB ... a file size that made our computers crash when we brought it up back then. So I couldn't edit my own map file!

We pushed the map issue to the side and began writing. I was still uploading to the site, which was stil a dumb idea and Ku was giving me his edits. Along the way we were joined by someone he knew, Eva, who did some of the elf stuff and she came up with the idea for the Stargazer PrC that depends so much on the constalations of the world. Incidentally, Eva has THE BEST movie review for the Dungeons & Dragons movie that I've seen. It's here if you are interested.

Then Ku went to law school, which took up a lot of his time. Eva wandered off and did Eva things (I've never actualy met her, she's a cyber-buddy). I fell in love, proposed, got the girl preggers, married her, moved into a house, had the baby, and then got threatened with termination at my job because my boss didn't understand what was taking up so much of my time.

Somewhere in there we got Larry Elmore's permission to use one of his works for the cover art and Victoria Jones to do some lovely grayscale pieces for us. Don't ask me how I pulled that off. I don't really remember.

So then I pulled everything together and realized ... realized ... realized ... that everyone else in the industry does their layout before buying over a thousand bucks worth of artwork. Important tip there, guys. So I shrunk everything down to 10pt font and used what I could, where I could. But I needed more.

This is where Allan Palmer and Rachel Blackburn saved my bacon. They kicked in some nice peices and I highly reccomend them for any future projects anyone here has. Allan posts on ENWorld and can be found in the artist's forum. Rachel's work is here.

So then it was about five years later. My computer could now pull up the Murchad's Legacy file without crashing. Then the folks over at RPGnow and RPGmall helped me out more than they should have and I got some good last minute advice from 93 Games Studio and ARP. Which brings us to today when I recently found out why most people charge a few extra dollars more than I do on their books.

My next project -- it is safe to say -- will be much smaller.

 

[Napftor]

Thanks for the low-down. Pretty interesting. I especially like your FAQ page.

 

[HalWhitewyrm]

Sounds great, Biggus. I'll be picking this up by next week.