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From the Excavator Monthly Compendium's
Introduction text
Why a compendium? At Outland
Arts we get it that many players of The Mutant
Epoch will have already purchased Excavator
Monthly Magazine in either PDF or Print formats,
perhaps both, and have no need to get all that
content again. For others, buying this book will
simplify the acquisition of all 6 issues of the
magazine, plus make it easier to bring along and
use the content at the game table. This hefty
tome is divided into sections and includes areas
for game master only articles, topics of
interest from a player’s perspective, alternate
character generation methods and PC types, a few
new skills, non-player characters, foul
creatures and wondrous relics, as well as always
helpful treasure tables. The entire book closes
with an art gallery of all six covers, as well
as a robust and highly useful index. For PDF
buyers, the index, table of content and numerous
locations within the book are hyperlinked
allowing users to quickly flip between pages and
whole sections of the book.
At the time of publishing this
compendium, we have no plans to go back to a
monthly format and instead plan to go with a
larger periodical called Excavator Quarterly. We
had a great time working on these six issues of
Excavator Monthly, and are proud to present them
in a single book form. However, each issue took
more than a solid month of full time work to put
together, making it impossible for us at Outland
Arts to get onto the larger sourcebooks and
adventures which TME game masters and players
were clamoring for.
Whereas Excavator Monthly was
about 40 pages, the quarterly will be over 80
pages and allow our writers and game designers
to include in-depth coverage of topics, as well
as complete adventures, gripping fiction, full
page art, and much more. Going with a longer
page count magazine also makes economic sense to
buyers of print copies since so much of the cost
of getting their hands on a magazine is the
physical cover of the periodical, as well as the
shipping; two prices which vary little based on
the page count.
Putting together this hefty
tome was a challenge, but well worth it I think.
I know for myself, as a TME game master, having
all six print issues of the monthly in one book
will really speed things up at our table, since
even I could not always recall what relic,
creature or character generation method was in
which magazine! With these topics divided into
their own sections, and all at my fingertips,
this book is going to get a lot of use.
Happy gaming
William McAusland
Creator
The Mutant Epoch |
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