Jon Brazer Enterprises

Traveller: Rosy Artwork

Coming later this summer is The Rose of Death, our first adventure in the Prelude to War adventure path. Earlier this week, we got in some of the artwork for this adventure and I wanted to show it off to you.

Each of these four characters play an important part in the adventure. Exactly what that part is, you will have to wait and find out. *evil grin*

This adventure is a good introduction of what life is like beyond the safety of the Imperium. The characters get to see first hand how things can quickly go from a normal average day to a terrible day when there is no massive over-government keeping major criminals in check and and the law enforcement (mostly) honest.

Beyond the adventure itself, we give you an indepth look into the planet Cornath. This is really helpful when the characters want to go sightseeing on a different continent. Alternatively, if you want to have your character originally from here, this will help you see what life you can expect on this superearth, letting you talk in game like you really are from the planet.

Illustrations by Brian Brinlee.

5e: Unleash the Forbidden Monsters Upon Your Game

Book of Beasts: Monsters of the Forbidden Woods (5e)

Danger and Death Await in the Forbidden Woods

Deep in the heart of the Forbidden Woods lies a group of monsters that is too terrifying for most adventurers to face. Animals of enormous size, creatures part spider and bear, terrifying crocodile beavers—and things much, much worse. Only the bravest heroes dare to stand up to these foul abominations of murderous intent and save the people from a fate far worse than death.

Monsters of the Forbidden Woods is an exciting new supplement of monsters in Jon Brazer Enterprises’ best-selling Book of Beasts series, and is for use with the World’s Oldest Fantasy Roleplaying Game. These monsters are designed to frighten characters and leave your players recounting their tales of heroism time and again. Inside this volume, you’ll find:

18 new monsters, ranging from challenge 1/4 to 7
Items found in the monsters’ lairs, giving you ready ideas for a treasure hoard
In-game descriptions of each monster, ranging from random NPC quotes to other names given to the monster
Adventure hooks for using these monsters in unique and exciting ways
Battle suggestions, with advice on how to build an encounter using each monster

Face What Goes Bump in the Night.

Download Book of Beasts: Monsters of the Forbidden Woods today from DriveThruRPG/RPGNow, Paizo and the OpenGamingStore.

Traveller: Astrogation Check

I grew up spending considerable time in airports and on commercial passenger jets as a kid and even today I probably fly a little more time in the air than most people (but not much). This weekend, however, I had my first piloting lesson. In the US, you need a minimum of 40 hours with instructors before you can get a private pilot’s license. Well, 1 down. 🙂

Since then (and frankly long before as well, but I have a different prospective now), I have been thinking about what it would be like to pilot a ship out “in the black” as Firefly put it. I mean, sure, in the 58th Century when Traveller takes place in, it is probably mostly a simple operation of: entering your destination and telling the computer to alert you if anything enter a certain distance or if someone times to communicate with you. But what about much earlier days of space travel. You know, well after ships to the Earth and the Moon are common occurrences and Mars has several colonies. I’m talking a time frame when a cargo pilot is flying a shipment of refined fuel from Titan to Ganymede. When you take a family vacation to the Venus Cloud City Amusement Park. When mining the asteroid belt is seen as less a “risky venture” and more as a “normal job.” What would being a space pilot be like?

Here’s my thoughts. For the most part, it’ll be really uneventful. It’ll be really pretty staring into the blackness of space and gazing at the stars, but it is hardly going to be action-packed every minute of the day. When I was flying, the instructor explained enough of the instruments to me, but he also told me to simply pick a point on the horizon and fly toward that. Doing that I maintained a steady heading the entire flight, which is exactly what you want. I had to frequently correct since winds were blowing us off course but I didn’t need to constantly re-figure out my direction since I had a destination in mind. Something similar would happen in space, except there is less wind to throw you off course. If you are flying from Titan to Ganymede, for example, you can’t just fly towards Jupiter, since it is constantly orbiting the sun and you will have to make constant course corrections. The navigational computer will tell you which way Jupiter will be when you want to intercept it. Once on your heading, you are going to want to pick a star in your field of vision and use that as your guide. As long as that star is where it should be from your pilot chair, you won’t need to pay close attention to the computer for most of the trip.

Also you’ll have other duties as well, checking the ship’s radar for any incoming ships or meteoroids, listen to/reading the expected solar weather to make sure you don’t have to turn off all the ship’s electronics and go into Faraday Mode until the remnants of the flare passes, letting various rely stations know that you are passing through their space, just to name a few.

I just though that you would appreciate my take on piloting space.

Order or download your copy of the D66 Compendium 2 today at DriveThruRPG/RPGNow.

Starfinder: The Evil League of Evil

I wasn’t planning on writing another Starfinder post at this point, but honestly, the news lately have been … rather eventful … and not all that great. So I figured I’d give everyone a bit of a break for a few moments while you read about about a group of bad guys your character can thwart.

So if I wrote a Starfinder setting, what kind of setting would I write. I talked previously about how there will be an evil undead faction that helped defeat the good the various good planet nations. Today, I am going to share with you another faction that the good planets. But if the last group are your dalek’s that want to exterminate all life, how is this group different. The best way to reference them is with Joss Whedon’s Dr Horrible Sing-Along-Blog: The Evil League of Evil. While obviously this will not be their final name, its flavor is something you will undoubtedly recognize in some theoretical future version. These are everything from leaders of street gangs to CEOs to interstellar corporations that own people’s souls (literally) to evil repressive tyrants. So yes, these are your space nazis, those that make deals with demons, baby eaters and so forth that you can kill without feeling bad about.

This group has no single racial identity. They range from humans, elves, dwarves, androids, orcs, hobgoblins, seedlings, to all the alien races, a sentient horse, and many kinds of intelligent monsters. Their soul unifying desire is power. Whether that power is used to make them a ungodly amounts of money, satisfy their demonic patron, to create their army of automata that follow their every whim, or just have lots of people to whom they can cause pain without repercussions. This group is by far the least unified and frequently succumbs to its own infighting, since one warlord want something a rival CEO has and will stop its war effort just to claim the object of that desire.

This works great in a game because unlike the never-ending tide of undead, these can be small groups of bad guys that you fight that can have little to no effect on your resistance efforts. So if you take out Evil Mike of Mike’s ArcanoSpaceRaiders (for example), Glenstar Corp, who’s territory border’s Evil Mike’s, won’t retaliate right away since you solved a problem for them. Or even better for them, if you do not liberate the whole of his territory right away, Glenstar can capture it, increasing their stature. You may have just made an ally. A very evil ally, but an ally nonetheless.

Scientific Postulate: A Moon is a Necessary Part in Producing a Magnetosphere

As a citizen scientist, I would like to postulate the following idea:

A Sizable Moon is a Necessary Part in Producing a Planet’s Magnetosphere and Ultimately Able to Support Life.

I am not simply talking about our Moon keeping the planet’s axis tilt at an angle that makes our seasons predictable. Nor am I talking about tidal forces on our oceans. I am talking specifically about how a moon helps a planet in producing its magnetic field or magnetosphere.

A magnetosphere is the magnetic field produced by a planet that repels a certain amount of the sun’s solar radiation, allowing us to keep a breathable atmosphere as well as keeping us from being bombarded by high levels of cancer-causing radiation. Ours is caused by the molten iron core of the planet. For comparison, Venus has only an induced magnetic sphere, created by the way the solar radiation interacts with its atmosphere. Mars has a magnetosphere approximately 1/40’s the strength of our own. It is believed that Venus’ core has solidified keeping the iron core from producing a magnetic field and that at least part of Mars’ core is liquid, but less than earth’s. This less-liquid core would not produce as strong of a magnetic field as our own planet.

The questions is, “Why is Earth’s core liquid, the core of Venus solid, and Mars has a semi-liquid core?” Here’s where my theory comes in: the directional gravimetric pull of our Moon is what keeps our core liquid. Specifically, it is the fact that the Earth is pulled unevenly by our Moon one way and the Sun from another that has kept our core from solidifying.

Contrast that with Venus and Mars. Venus has no moon and thus its has only one significant source of gravity being exerted on its core: the sun. Now that its day is slightly longer than its orbit, the directional gravimetric pull on its core is a near constant, generating no friction, no heat and thus no magnetic field. Mars’ moons’ lack of size (and thus lack of a significant gravimetric pull on the planet) can best be summed by Andy Weir in his book, The Martian when he was talking about how much light the moons reflect back to the surface at night, “Phobos gives me some moonlight, but not enough to work with. Deimos is a little piece of crap that’s no good to anyone.” These small celestial bodies are so small they provide some pull on the planet’s core, but not nearly as much as our Moon does for our homeworld. This means that the smaller gravimetic pull on the core does not produce as much heat and friction, meaning the core has somewhat solidified.

Contrast that with Pluto. We do not yet know if the far away rocky dwarf world has a magnetic field or not. However, we recently learned that it probably has an ocean of liquid water beneath its surface. This is obviously caused by the pull of its moons on the planet. Combine that with the fact that it is described as a “real world with diverse and active geology,” could be an indication that the gravimetic pull from the moons could affect the planet’s core, generating a magnetic field. If that is the case, it would be Charon pulling in one direction and its other moons (Nix, Hydra, Styx, and Kerberos) providing additional gravimetric pulls that keeps Pluto’s core molten. Should this be true, a base could someday be established on Pluto, one that requires keeping the base warm and breathable but does not require solar radiation shielding.

Ultimately, what does this mean and how does this help us? If this theory should be accurate, it might be worth an investment to redirect a sizable asteroid from the asteroid belt and place it in orbit around Mars. Over the course of a century or more, the planet’s core would remelt and increase the strength of Mars’ magnetic field, allowing for widespread terraforming of the planet, and letting humans and plants to eventually to live on the planet without special gear protecting us from the sun’s harmful radiation.

Traveller: D66 Compendium 2 Now In Print!

I don’t know about anyone else, but the larger my books get, the more I want the book in print. So it is with great pleasure that I announce the D66 Compendium 2 is now in print. This 88 page book is now available as a soft cover, full color print book. You can have it in your hands the way it was meant to be seen and used.

With lists of names from ships to government bureaucracies and idea lists like contact main use places a criminal would hide out, the D66 Compendium 2 helps your game be the best it can be. About 100 lists for your Traveller game. This book is the game master’s best friend and now you can have the whole book in your fingers instead of on a laptop or tablet.

Order your copy of the D66 Compendium 2 today at DriveThruRPG/RPGNow.

5e: Forbidden Monsters Coming Your Way

I consider myself a monster designer more than anything else. I mean, if you look over everything I created for Pathfinder, my monster books is where I throw of passion into creating. So when I started working on Fifth Edition material, this is where I started.

Book of Beasts: Monsters of the Forbidden Woods is our first pure monster book. Sure we always feature a new monster or two in our adventures, like the draugr in Rescue from Tyrkaven or the huldra in Doom of the Sky Sword. But we enjoy making monsters to inspire you to make your own adventures. And that is what these monsters are for: to inspire you game masters at home that like to create your own adventures.

Inside Monsters of the Forbidden Woods, you get 18 monsters for your games. These monsters focus on lower level games, starting off at Challenge 1/4 and topping out at 7. This is perfect for GMs that like to throw mass numbers of goblins and add in a cave troll, just to shake things up. Only now, instead of a goblins and a cave troll, you can use spiders and a spiderbear, or kobolds that keep a dangerous bloodboar to gore their enemies with its tusks.

Book of Beasts: Monsters of the Forbidden Woods comes out soon from Jon Brazer Enterprises.

5e: Choose Your Beginning

No matter how you want to begin your 5e campaign, Jon Brazer Enterprises has you covered. We have two first level adventures and a second level adventure published. No matter how you want to start your campaign, you are in good hands here.

Whether you are looking for an adventure where you go up against a bunch of nightmareish giant spiders, rescuing people from murderous hobgoblins and ancient undead, or stopping a curse delivered on a sword falling from the sky, our adventures are flavorful, enjoyable and will enrich your games. Each of these adventures were written by those that love this stuff and want to give you the best material for your games.

Find all of Jon Brazer Enterprises’ releases for 5th edition at DriveThruRPG/RPGNow, the OpenGamingStore and Paizo.com

Traveller: So What is An Adventure Path?

While adventure paths are not new, they have not been done before in Traveller. So I thought I would take a few moments to explain exactly what an adventure path is, giving you an idea of what to expect.

First and foremost, an adventure path is a series of linked adventures. How linked are they and how dependent on the previous adventure are they? That is the important question; this is what really separates an adventure path from a campaign broken into multiple parts. Each adventure in the adventure path is a fully independent, stand-alone adventure. If you only ran one adventure in an adventure path, it would make sense all by itself. It has its own beginning at the start and its own ending. You don’t need to buy the next adventure to reach a climax of the story. The next adventure continues the story from the previous adventure, but it is also a stand-alone adventure.

Think of it as episodes of Babylon 5 or Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Each episode had a problem that the characters resolved by the end of the episode (or in this case, adventure). Each of those episodes flowed from one to the next, forming a greater story that culminated in a major climax at the end of the season (or here, the adventure path). But through it all, each episode was a stand-alone episode (except for the two-parters, but still, you get the idea).

Behind each adventure, we have some supplemental material. This supplemental material varies from issue-to-issue, but it always provides you with timely help for your game. For example, Prelude to War: The Rose of Death adventure sends some of its time on the planet Cornath. So if the characters do something that gets them into trouble (innocent look) and they need a place to hide, you can tell them that one of their contacts has a farm only 300 km from their current position. You can show the players the map and provide some details about the area. Some issues may have ships native the area. Others may have vehicles, allies, enemies, ideas for what to do between adventures, creatures, descriptions of organizations, and more.

In short the additional material in each adventure path helps you to run the adventure on the fly when (no if) your players decide to do something the adventure didn’t think of.

Get a jump on the area covered in Prelude to War: The Rose of Death. Download Foreven Worlds: Fessor Subsector at DriveThruRPG/RPGNow.com.

Starfinder: If I Made A Setting …

Before I begin, let me just say that I am not saying that JBE is definitely going to be supporting Starfinder. We are thinking about it very hard. If nothing else, I am thinking about it because I am personally excited about it and I am thinking about what kind of setting I would like to create for my own home game. Having said that, should we decide to support Starfinder, the thoughts I post about it will be incorporated into any product I release in the future. And if we do not support the game, these posts will be entertaining and will help you think on what you want in your Starfinder game.

So far, I have posted two little thought blurbs about the setting to various places. I’m just copying and pasting them here so they are all in one place, and so those that missed them can read them as well.

Our setting is not going to be “able to be worked into Paizo’s setting,” like we did with Shadowsfall. It is going to be a distinct setting that is its own thing. We’d have a backdrop of a recently-ended major war (50-ish years ago, short enough ago that you’ll encounter those that fought in the war, long enough ago that your character didn’t fight in the war and those that did are too old to help with what you are doing now). The world humans and the other core book races originated from isn’t gone; the world has been captured by some major monstrous race that has their own empire. With the exception of a few worlds far from … not-Earth (I’ll call it for the moment), humans have no home to call their own. They exist in other star empires as a beaten and conquered race, but not a broken race. Definitely some hints of Shadowsfall in there as far as theme goes.

We’d develop the setting at first only just enough to make adventures. That would be our initial focus: adventures. This was actually why we have been putting so much effort into doing Deadly Delves, so that we can eventually make a setting with a focus on adventures first.

The setting needs an alliance of major enemy races that only lasted for so long and then fell apart, which is why the conquest of humans and other core races was not complete. They devolved to their own infighting and were unable to finish the job.

Anyone that knows me knows I love undead as a bad guy. They area always fun to kill and you seldom have a moral quandary about it. So one of my Axis of Evil races should be undead. How do you do undead in a science fantasy game? Well you make them cybernetic. They are animated through a combination of magic and technology. Some are more magical in nature. Some are more technological. So an undead cyborg. Cybernetic Necromancy. Combining the two, we have Cycroms (TM).

Download the Book of Heroic Races: Advanced Androids for Pathfinder at DriveThruRPG/RPGNow, Paizo.com, and the OpenGamingStore.