Where we are at with the Mage Forge
about 2 years ago – Mon, Mar 21, 2022 at 04:29:50 PM

All 250 magic items are written up and ready to go. In a lot of ways this is the easy part. We have about a third of the art already and currently have five artists working on illustrations for the project. The art is the most time consuming as well as most expensive part of the project.

We’ve sent out the backer surveys to collect shipping and addresses. We are also accepting late pledges for those who missed the Kickstarter but still want to get in on the project. With each piece of art coming in we get more excited for the product and can’t wait to use it in our own games.

Here are some of the art pieces that have come in:

You did it! You have forged the Mage Forge
over 2 years ago – Sun, Feb 06, 2022 at 12:19:51 PM

First and foremost thank you for making this Kickstarter a success. Without you the backers we wouldn't have been able to bring Mage Forge to life. Your support means the world to us.

State of Mage Forge

Our next step is setting up the Backerkit and getting it out to all the backers. This is our first time using Backerkit so we'll be taking our time to set it up properly. Please bear with us during this time. We'll work to get it set up over the weekend and want to get it back to you as soon as possible. We'll be using Backerkit to collect shipping costs and to make sure we have everyone's address so you get your rewards.

Item creation and text is complete. Of course we’ll be crawling over the text to make sure there isn't anything our scribes have missed. Nearly every item had art going into the project, but truth be told the quality wasn’t where we wanted it so we’ve been commissioning new pieces to give backers the quality we feel you deserve.

The PDF will be distributed to the backers once the art is all received and it’s laid out. As it gets closer to completion we’ll keep you updated.

We currently have three artists going.

Another artist!

We’re adding a fourth illustrator to the mix. This is an artist we’ve worked with a lot in the past who has been a joy to work with and helped us bring Out of the Box to life.

Kim Van Deun

Kim is a Belgian full-time freelance digital painter specializing in fantasy art for games and RPGs. Nerdarchy has had a relationship with Kim since Nerdarchists Dave and Ted were a part of the Save or Dice YouTube collaboration. Kim’s work for Nerdarchy can be seen all throughout Out of the Box encounters.

You can find more of Kim’s terrific work here.

Get your freebies!

We have a companion encounter to the Mage Forge you can download for FREE. Spirit of the Forge is a standalone encounter introducing the Mage Forge itself as a sentient artifact along with a new monster for 5E — Forge Geists. Grab it here.

Going forward

If you’ve come late to the party and missed your chance to back Mage Forge fret not. We’ll be opening up preorders very shortly. Check back to the main page periodically and the preorder button will appear soon at the top of the campaign page.

FREE Encounter — Spirit of the Forge
over 2 years ago – Wed, Feb 02, 2022 at 11:27:21 AM

During one of our weekly live chats when the topic was Mage Forge one of the folks watching asked if the titular apparatus was itself a magic item or incorporated into one of our tried and true Out of the Box style encounters. We’d been toying with this idea internally already and the enthusiasm from the chat audience stoked the flames under our butts.

We brainstormed a few ideas live off the cuff and followed up by further exploring the concept in our weekly newsletter. Since we publish the editorial content from our newsletters over at Nerdarchy.com you can check out this material here.

We came up with the Spirit of the Mage Forge encounter to pull together those ideas and build on them while adding some fresh takes and more dynamic elements for better player engagement and story potential.

Because the inspiration for this encounter comes directly from the Deluxe Box Set of 250 Tarot Sized Magic Item Cards we want to make the collection even more impactful and useful for gamers too. Let’s face it — 250 magic items is a lot and even if you frequently play Monty Haul adventures with tons of treasure you still may not discover all of these during your journey.

Beyond offering an intriguing scenario to drop into your 5E games this Spirit of the Mage Forge encounter gives characters multiple ways to interact and facilitate further adventures and stories.

Plus there’s a lot characters can do with the plethora of magic items they’ll accumulate since their totally awesome Game Master got themselves a Mage Forge Box Set and can’t wait to show them off to the adventuring party.

You can get Spirit of the Mage Forge for FREE through Nerdarchy.com right here.

Digital Resources for your Deluxe Magic Item Set!
over 2 years ago – Fri, Jan 28, 2022 at 12:43:31 AM

Cleaving to our mantra for this Kickstarter — keep it simple — we want to share an update and reveal some additional details about the Mage Forge project.

One special aspect many of the magic items contained in the set share is their origin from our own games. This includes the ones curated from our modules too, since we run these scenarios for our Patreon supporters each month as well as for the friends in our own gaming groups. Because of our personal connection with these items they often accumulate their own quirks and lore and even tarot sized cards can’t hold it all.

Rather than leave all this juicy material out we’re collecting it all inside a digital booklet (PDF and Deluxe Box Set plus PDF Tiers)! Every Mage Forge Box PDF backer will receive a digital resource revealing much more about the magic items in the set.

The entries for the magic items in the digital book might include plot hooks, bits of lore from the item’s history, skill based challenges to uncover secrets and details about the item and more. Some of these items even contain hidden powers so cloaked in mystery they can only be safely revealed to Game Masters…

We’re also including a variety of tables and charts in the PDF to help you make the best use of these magic items in your games. Along with a master list of all the items they’ll be sorted by rarity, type and other ways.

Finally, since several magic items make reference to additional 5E content we’ve designed we’re including those things as well. For example there’s a few items granting adventurers access to the power of Beardomancy, a new school of magic we developed, so we’re putting all those spells into this PDF version and also the physical booklet that comes with the Deluxe Box Set for you.

Since we’ve been working all along on putting this project together we’re avoiding crunch and creating flexibility for ourselves too, so if there’s organizational or other features you’d like to see incorporated into the PDF version let us know in the comments!

As an extra we’re also developing a Mage Forge Encounter, which we talked about in a recent live chat and explored further in our newsletter. Since we publish the editorial content from our newsletter at Nerdarchy.com you can find out more about the concept here. Similar to how we shared our Seizing the Means encounter for free to promote our Out of the Box book we’ll offer this digital module on our website too before the Kickstarter ends.

Seeds of Decay

One of the fantastic creators who helped us bring Out of the Box to life has a wonderful project of his own going on right now. Darryl Jones from Splattered Ink partnered with the great folks at Hit Point Press to present Seeds of Decay.

This 5E content expands on the Dobbers world created by Darryl, which is a super fun setting. Seeds of Decay is a dark fantasy campaign set in this amazing world and includes a whole bunch of awesome material to make the experience really special.

Like any great campaign setting it includes cool new character options from spells, classes, subclasses and feats. There’s also a modular system for inventions, contraptions and foraging. There’s a terrific system for creating your own playable forest animal species too.

Seeds of Decay looks like a terrific partnership and an awesome project. Word is Nerdarchy might even get an opportunity to hop in on the fun of this project too. Check out Seeds of Decay and discover the best pledge level for you and your gaming group here.

Sneak Peek
over 2 years ago – Tue, Jan 25, 2022 at 09:03:56 PM

Here is an art drop for some the pieces in their raw form.

From Brendan Lancaster:

From Thuan: