Category Archives: News

Where have we been and where are we going

Ok so its been a while. I know those of you who have waited are wondering what happened? Well in short after a few failed attempts to produce new products we couldn’t maintain and needed to go dark. In different ways the last 3 years have been good and difficult. This is Mark talking and I cant speak for Chris but personally there were some trying times.

If people want to know I am happy to share but I would rather talk about the future. So here we are, we are back and after solidifying the I20 system used in Bounty Head Bebop, we have decided to embark on a very ambitious return. We are rebuilding the system to reflect some changes we want to make to allow for a more open and useful system. We love the fast paced nature of the Inverted 20 system.  The ability it has to be rules quick but maintaining crunch for those that enjoy that, we feel is a positive thing that needs to be rediscovered.

While much of the basics remain we are retooling how you advance in the game as well as adding on a better “Magic” system that we believe is friendlier to designers. We are also remaking the world. While we enjoy the influences the original game holds, we felt moving it from Far modern to a more near modern look and we will be sharing some of the reworked history bringing in much more cyberpunk feels to a game built around Bounty Hunting.

So stay tuned as we will be releasing more about the setting and mechanics over the next few months.

Erinbour updates

At this point, you’ve probably heard me talk about, Erinbour, Heroic Journey’s new massive fantasy setting. With this post, my hope is to lay out our plan and get you excited about what we believe will be a fun way to present the setting that also allows us to create the game we always wanted.

With that said, let’s look at Erinbour, the last free nation in a world that is rotting from within. The wild is encroaching and this nation holds the final light in the darkness.  Despite the rot, there’s also hope.  Many races have found a home here after being driven from their ancestral lands by the Otherkin.  These races, if they band together, can rally against decay and rebuild their world to its form glory.  Erinbour, then, is the story of exploring ones past to reclaim its future.

Our plan is to tell the story two ways simultaneously. 

First, we are planning a series of campaign books that follow a year-by-year explanation of each phase in the Erinbour myth cycle. This is similar in construction to the “Pendragon: Grand Campaign” in that it will allow GMs and players to interact with the world in a way that allows for their actions to mean something as well as include generational play.

All adventure and support material will be time stamped to fall within this structure. Much of this material will be self-contained, but each adventure will suggest ideas for how the PC’s actions can affect the structure of the narrative for the better or for ill. GMs can ignore this the metanarrative and run any and all adventures within Erinbour and make it their own fantasy setting.  That’s great, too.

Currently, our plan is to have Four Phases of narrative. Phase One is where we will begin. At the start of the Phase, Erinbour is still shuddering under the effects of the war against the Otherkin, though society has reached a level of social development roughly equal to World War I Europe, with magic-based technology somewhere between a standard fantasy campaign and a high-tech magic/steampunk world.

During Phase One, PCs will experience the exploration of the wilds of the “Lost Continent” as the nation of Erinbour discovers the Places of Power.  This will lead to the flames of an ancient war with the Ogres and Goblinkind which introduces us to Phase 2 and the return of the Lost King. Phase 3 will be more introspective as the quest to find the new god/goddess reborn will take center stage and, ultimately, lead to the reawakening of the Otherkin in Phase 4.

Each phase will consist of a Campaign Guide Book which outlines the year over year activities of important people and things happening and gives adventure seeds for things to do. In addition, we have planned several support books for cities and places of interest and several standalone adventures.

I know you are asking how we can support such a massive undertaking. Well we can’t without you. This is why we’ve decided to produce this setting and all ongoing support through Patreon. As long as we have a Patreon going, we will produce support for this setting.  The plan is to release to our patrons first and eventually release via Pay What You Want roughly two months later.

Even more exciting, we are planning on producing this using the 13th Age Archmage system and are in works of procuring the licenses to do that. We will be launching the Patreon as soon as we get the final authority to use the 13th age Archmage engine license.

Thoughts questions and feedback are always welcome. Do you like 13th Age?  What do you want to see from our massive fantasy world?

Mecha Core Print Error PG 140

OK so it came to my attention that there is a current print error on page 140 of Mecha: Core for this we apologize. The file corrupted and we are in the process of replacing it. For those who have purchased a print edition that want to know what it says…

 

esper training

The ADF high command is salivating over the chance to deploy large numbers of Intuitive Gunners into battle, but they just don’t have the pilots who are naturally psychically sensitive enough to pilot one. Thus, the creation of Project Farsight, a program which invites candidates who receive an 80 or greater on the Josef-Sanz Psychic Awareness Battery to join an elite unit.

Those that accept the invitation are taken to a weekend “resort.” There, they are fed memories of sandy beaches, too many drinks, and fun in the sun. In reality, they are held unconscious and subjected to repeated chemical treatments and psychological reconditioning which gives them the required 99 score on the Josef-Sanz and allows them to interface with an Intuitive.

Those who do not pass the conditioning die. The success rate is currently 60%, though ADF researchers believe this can be raised in the near future.

In game terms, for those who wish to follow the established canon of the setting, becoming an Esper is available to any ADF soldier should the Game Master allow it. (It can also be available to Separatist Guard soldiers with a bit of backstory or through a covert mission where the Separatists steal the technology.) Those wishing to break with the story points can determine when and how Espers become available.

It is up to the Game Master to determine how much game time the Esper conversion process takes. Some suggestions include having the process take place “off camera” in between episodes, it can be great inspiration for a Social scene, or it can even be the cause of the fight in an episode.

After the Esper conversion, the pilot may operate an Intuitive Gunner. Also, they must replace one of their Traits with a Trait that stemmed from their Esper conversion. Also, they replace one of their mecha and personal weapons with the weapon:

Psychic Howl (Psychic/3)

revenants

At some point in either story line, ADF scientists or Gwandanan mystics will find the secret of the energy coil. The energy coil is basically a multi-dimension entanglement device that siphons energy from the realm of the dead. Quite by accident, it will become

 

Again I am really sorry about this and it will be fixed really soon

Mecha Kaiju Kickstarter

MECHA: Kaiju

Project Scope:

Mecha Kaiju is a supplement to “Mecha” by Chris Perrin, the RPG about giant fighty robots. The book will give you all you need to create your own Kaiju or use one we made to add them to your current Mecha campaign. Play through the SRS (Setting Reference Schematic) we provide or enjoy Kaiju in anything from King of the Monsters to any creative Kaiju storyline you develop. The choice is yours to play as a Kaiju or as a Mecha pilot. Either way are you here to help or destroy humanity.

This project is to raise enough money to pay for the final bits of art and layout. As you can see the art is basically done we just need to make a final payment and pay the layout artist the funds to get the book done. We were origionally going to do a black and white version but would love to finish paying the needed amount to get the color versions of the art, plus a little extra to make a small print run of color softcovers beyond the backers to get them in some FLGS.

For those new to Mecha, it is a Role playing game where you take on the role of a mecha pilot. The game is played using a d6 dice pool roll under mechanic. The game rules are designed to help simulate the Mecha Anime that is out there. Less about the minutia of mecha construction like previous mecha games, Chris Perrin’s Mecha is designed to replicate the episode format of an Anime series.

A NOTE TO INTERNATIONAL BACKERS:
We are planning to bill you a more direct shipping price specific to you and we are going to use BackerKit to do that. The different dollar amounts is an attempt to separate by region to better handle shipping.

From the ocean, a giant lizard attacks a power station, causing an environmental catastrophe.

A world government trades freedom for luxury and hides the truth about the existence of huge creatures known as kaiju.

People all around the world dream that Taoitora is coming, bringing pain and death to us all.

And somewhere, Order and Chaos continue their eternal struggle.

This is Mecha: Kaiju

Thank you for stopping by Mecha Kaiju.

Information on additional books We are offering several rewards of our previous books in the Mecha line. The books are the core rulebook, Chris Perrin’s Mecha, our two supplements, Combiners and Mercenaries. Combiners is our love letter to Voltron and all combining mecha genre. Mercenaries is a gritty SRS that adds more nuance to your mecha builds. Also available will be Mekayana , a mythic India meets mecha SRS and Reign of the Descendents our love letter to Invid Invasion written specifically at the request of Dan Repperger of Fear the Boot.

Stretch goals:

$2,500 – Kaju 52 – a book of our Kaiju of the Week offering.

$6,000 – Super Sentai – this is our next Mecha project. The book is written we just need art. Super Sentai take your Mecha pilot outside his mecha and gives them additional abilities.

Updates & Stuff

Today I want to share three things. First where I’ve been the last few weeks, an Update on our Card Game and a few thoughts on BareBones Dynasty.

First, whats been happening personally. Well back in April I had the joy of my third child, and frankly feedings , lack of sleep, and a few other things have kept me busy so I haven’t had a chance tor eally update here, but I am back and working hard tohelp Chris, David and Wayne create cool games.

Secondly I wanted to share that I Heard from FutureDude about art and as of right now we are schedule to go to print with our Beta Test Decks through POD to have some high quality Beta Test Decks to showcase at Upcoming cons and playtesting events. If you are interested in participating we will announce where we will be soon. If you cant make it to an event or con and woul like to participate we will also have the beta decks available for downlaod to allow you to build your own to help playtest. Go ahead and drop us an email at heroicjourneyATgmail.com and let us know and we will add you to the list.

And Lastly…

BareBones Dynasty

So I have been thinking about Birthright and how to translate it into BareBones. I first started with organization. We have a Kingdom. A kingdom is made up by Regions, which are made up of Counties.

We will begin here with Counties as the smallest unit. A typical Region may have anywhere from 4-8 counties depending on size. Each county will be made up of 4 type of holdings.

Legal Holdings (so courthouses, sherrifs, Tax collectors, etc) These will support a County and Region in protecting and administering the land. Spiritual Holdings would be churches, shrines and other improvements devoted to the pantheon of gods and goddesses. Guild holdings will indicate markets, trade, warehousing, and business viability of a county. Natural holdings will indicate how undeveloped or how much magic influence a county has in the world.

The way I envision this is that a County will have a default statistical measure. So a Basic even county will Look like this

Middleberg
Legal – 25%
Guild – 25%
Spiritual – 25%
Natural – 25%

This means that when a Character has the ability to do an action during a DYnasty turn their base ability to influence the county begins at the holdings level. Improvements can be purchased to grant bonuses and sway influence for more control.

For instance Lets look at Talen a minor Lord who has Middleberg as one of the counties in his Holdings. Since he is a Nobleman his influence will primarily be in legal areas so his default influence on raising armies, tax collection etc is set at 25%. Building a courthouse and a tax collector improvement might raise that to a base of 35% + 5% for every Regency level they have. I will talk about Regency later.

Also I will talk about improvements and look at the other skills such as cpiritual leader, guildmaster and Source holder type skills to access the different type of actions that are done at the Dynasty level, such as Raise an army, collect taaxes/tithes/Profits, Cast ritual spells, build improvements, etc.

 

 

And now for our Secret Project

So I know its been a few weeks since our last update when we talked about Barebones Dynasty. That is still in the works for this year but one of our biggest projects we havent been able to talk about until now.

Our friends over at FutureDude comics have a cool new project called Parallel Man which is full of multiverse awesomeness. I strongly suggest you check their website out as it has some awesome art and artists working on the project.

I mention them and Parallel Man because our super secret project is we have been brought on board Myself and Chris Perrin specifically to create a Deck Building/LCG for Parallel Man. I cant go into much detail yet but we will be filling you in as this project has taken a ton of my and chris’ time over the past 4 months. We are in the process of ALpha testing it now and will be looking for interested people especially when we look to open Beta Testing later in May.

So this is the project that is holding us up from all the other cool things we want to work on but it has been such a fun ride and we get to work with some great artists and creative minds over at FutureDude we just couldnt pass it up.

As always please feel free to share, comment or ask us anything.

Mark

Bare Bones: Dynasty

Hey wanted to share a new project myself and Heroic Journey Publishing is working on.

We have permission and will be working with the Bare Bones Fantasy system to create
Bare Bones: Dynasty
.
Have you ever wanted to be king or maybe leader of a guild, or religion and build your powerbase to rule the world? Well you soon will be.

Bare Bones: Dynasty will allow you to take your characters into the polictical battelfield and make decisions on a Domain level moving policy and building holdings to further your influence in the world. In short Bare Bones Meets Birthright.

Thoughts and opinions are welcome more to come

And the HJP Family has Grown

I would like to formaly welcome and introduce the Newest Member of the HJP Team. David Moore.  David is best known for his work on the After Serenity project and podcasts and is an excellent writer and designer.

We are very lucky to have David joining our team here to help HJP grow in the right direction to bring fun and enjoyable RPGs to our fans.