Aside of Pesto #24 – I’m back! With ooze!
Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.
Who are you and why are you in my inbox?
I had plans for 2024. I consolidated storefronts (I’m now Itch-exclusive), moved domains (I finally snagged pestopublications.com), and had a long list of projects I wanted to write for the MCDM RPG.
And then I got laid off. And got COVID. January sucked.
Long story short, after a rough first half of the year, I’m now back on my feet and back to creating stuff. Huge thank you to MCDM, Jeff Stevens Games, Lone Colossus, somanyrobots, and T.A. Gray. The contract work I did for them kept me afloat after Florida’s shockingly inadequate unemployment support ran out.
The Oleumancer
The MCDM RPG has a name now, Draw Steel, and a creator license. I have several projects in the works, at least one of which does not involve kobolds.
The Oleumancer - an ooze wizard class - is out in early access today! It’s free on Itch (though donations are welcome and will go towards art and editing). This is very much still in development - I’ll continually revise it as I test it, as more levels are added to the creator license, and as Draw Steel’s design itself solidifies.
The Oleumancer is designed to be the ultimate controller, with abilities that destroy (and at higher levels, create) terrain, slow and speed movement, and disrupt enemies in a variety of ways. Levels 2 and 3 are already partially written (but aren’t under the license yet), and I can’t wait to show you the absurd things that it can do once the training wheels are off.
Other Draw Steel Stuff
I have a few other projects on my radar:
The Kobold Playable Ancestry - Exactly what it says in the tin. Through convergent evolution, it will look a bit like the official Dragon Knight ancestry, but… more organic and chaotic. It’ll probably be the second project I release.
Escape from the Acropolis of the Kobold Trapmaster - This is a 1st-level adventure, and the first part of a multi-adventure saga that pits the players against Cthrion Uroniziir, a legendary evil dragon, and her myriad of agents. I can’t release an early access version until kobold stat blocks become part of the creator license, but I’ve started writing it and can’t wait to show it off.
The Polymath - A half-psionic, half-martial class. It’s in the “I have a loose collection of notes in a steno” stage of development. Which is to say, it’s equally likely that I release it or that you never hear about it again.
Open Call for Testers
I’ll be testing a few projects over the next few months, including my Draw Steel products, a collection of 5e monsters by my friend Leon Barillaro, and just about everything in Songs of the Spellbound Sea, a nautical-themed 5e supplement. I’d love to have you at my table. If you’re keen, join my testing Discord.
Everything Else
The Wagadu Chronicles, an afrofantasy D&D 5e setting with lineages, subclasses, and a hexcrawl, released in April. At 770 pages, it’s the largest (by hours and pages) non-MCDM project I’ve lead testing on, and it’s absolutely gorgeous.
Speaking of gorgeous, Tales from Myriad, a new RPG “with a focus on exploration and killer wardrobes”, released in July. I lead testing on this project as well.
Weapons of Myth, the second collection of weapons by Jeff Stevens Games that grow as your character does (after Weapons of Legend), came out in July as well. I designed several of the weapons, including the axe on the cover.
That’s it for now. Thanks for reading!