Normally design diaries are limited to the Adventurer and Legend tiers but since the Patreon (and me, by extension) have been quite quiet the past few months I wanted to make this available to everyone.
To state the obvious, I'm behind on monthly exclusives. I'm hoping to rectify this situation in March clearing out the backlog of existing voted on exclusives (a Lovecraft inspired Thaumaturge and a Lycanthrope prestige class). I'm also planning to release the Baabaa race on the site store but giving it to patrons at all tiers for free. The last few months have been a brutal combination of challenges in my personal life and over-commitment to contract work, both situations I expect to alleviate within the next 6 weeks.
Looking ahead at projects in the pipeline, I expect to return to work on the Anointed class and Abracadaberrant Buster Corps in March. Rumors are swirling about exclusive contracts for working on D&D 6e (or whatever Wizards ends up branding it as) but in the meantime I plan to keep creating content for 5e with the intention of updating it to 6e if that's viable. I will also be continuing to develop my own original games, the first of which will be ABC but there are many more I have in various phases of development.
If you're a fan of mine but haven't checked out my podcast yet, you should also check out Dispel Magic. We are planning to begin releasing new episodes as part of our fourth season in March so now's the perfect time to catch up. This season we are covering some really exciting topics like the sorcerer class, the invisibility spell, and kuo-toa. If podcasts aren't your thing, you can always listen to us on our YouTube channel.
Thanks to everyone for your ongoing support, especially during this hiccup in my output. I can't overstate how much your enthusiasm means to me on a personal level or fuels me on a professional level.
Linked here is the first playtest for Abracadaberrant Buster Corps. This game has been in development for a few months now (off and on) and it's starting to get into the shape where I need more eyes on it. I'm also hoping to recruit some of you as playtesters but more on that soon!
Abracadaberrant Buster Corps is wizards meets Ghostbusters meets Bee and Puppycat. It's a game of mage-librarians tracking down spells that have coagulated into monstrous forms and are spreading arcane pollution across the otherwise serene countryside. And it's Forged in the Dark!
As you'll see in the folder, for the time being the playtest materials are all player facing. In the coming week or two I will include a few sample adventures if you wish to play ABC with your own personal group. While many additional playtests of the game are planned, I may also hotfix components of these documents if they are broadly regarded as unclear or not working.
Finally, in the coming weeks I will be opening up a few virtual one shots of the game run by me for patrons at the Seasoned Adventurer and Legends of the Guild tier. I really hope we can get a few games set up and have a lot of fun in the world of ABC.
For now, if you have feedback please take it to the Abracadaberrant Buster Corps channel on the discord. This is an extremely early draft of the game so there are lots of mechanics to clarify and refine, as well as defining the overall tone of the game in a variety of ways.
I'm in the game design kitchen every night cooking up the final kinetic movements for the zephyr class. In the meantime, I keep getting art back on the ones that have already been completed and I'm excited to share it with all of you! Depicted here are the Spell Weaver and Dragoon subclasses. I was excited to finally commission a Sarchos Saurian (the Dragoon)!
As I'm busy tightening the screws on the final version of the zephyr and its public subclasses (as well as designing four new ones for you all to test prior to release), I wanted to share some of the artwork coming in for the class. Included here is the Martial Artist and Lashing Scourge art, both illustrated by Mick Cortes. I already have him booked for the cover and working on the Dragoon and Weave Dancer art.
For February, I prompted Adventurers and Legends to pitch new heritages. If you aren’t familiar with the concept, heritages are the Sterling Vermin Adventuring Company’s evolution of the concept of race in 5e (species in 6e). I created heritages because I was dissatisfied with the implications of how race and species were handled in their respective editions and wanted to create an alternative that allowed each table to decide what components of their lineage were biological, cultural, or some combination. This approach has the added benefit of allowing multiple players to come from a similar background without having identical traits.
The winner of the poll was the concept of "living lightning" that had broken off from a sentient storm and now inhabited bodies of metal. I landed on the name catatumbo for those. In addition to the winner, I also wrote up rules for playing yeti because someone submitted the idea and it had actually already been something on my mind for awhile now!
Finally, this is your last reminder that as of March the Patreon is changing. Please check the pinned post on the Patreon to see how the tier you are pledging is going to be affected and make a change if you like. A reminder that starting in March, the Friend of the Co. tier will no longer receive any benefits from pledging so please upgrade to Recruit, Adventurer, or Legend if you want to keep getting monthly exclusives (and more!).
This here is my first ever design diary, a new benefit for those pledging at the Adventurer tier ($5) and up. Since the new tiers are official as of March 1st, this is both a reminder to all of you to update your pledge level according to the new structure AND a bit of a taste test for those wondering if the Adventurer or Legendtier might be for them.
Great news first, the OGL 1.0a is saved and, in the event Wizards of the Coast ever threatens it again, many of the core rules have been released under Creative Commons. I'm not sure which license I will use for finished products moving forward but the headline here is that I will continue to create third party products for 5e. My goal at the end of last year was to ramp up production on new classes so I am optimistic this year will see the release of the Anointed and the Zephyr. I'd also like to get out a book that replaces the races of 5e (species *shudder* of 6e) with my heritage system. I also kind of like the idea of spearheading a DMsGuild book that would include the magus, pugilist, scholar, and spiritualist + 8 classes originally created by other DMsGuild designers. I'm a bit gunshy on that one because such a book would easily be in production for over a year and I'm wondering what the appetite for 5e will even look like at that time. So that's a maybe.
As I said on the discord and in previous Patreon posts, I'm also looking to diversify by designing for other systems or creating my own. Currently the non-5e project I've put the most time and attention into is Blades Against Extinction. If you haven't seen me talk about that yet, let me repeat the elevator pitch here:
Blades Against Extinction is a Forged in the Dark game of paleolithic fantasy, a war against an empire of dinosaurfolk, and the appearance of the Red Star that heralds the End of Everything. Rise up against the Saurians, rise up against Chicxulub, rise up against Extinction.
I've gotten probably 20 to 25 pages of notes and rules written for this concept so far. I've taken a run at other Forged in the Dark hacks before and always get stalled out trying to develop the actions / resistances (similar to the role of skills and ability scores in D&D) so this time I decided to start with playbooks (the equivalent of classes) first. That's proven much more productive. So far I have a reasonably functional set of three (Hunter, Slayer, Speaker) and a partially functional fourth (Spiritist/Shaman). That fourth one kind of relies on me building out the whole spirit channeling component of the game so I may take a break from playbooks soon to sort that out. I've got some very fun ideas percolating already. I'm hoping to have a BAE playtest available for Adventurers and Legends sometime within the next few months, so please keep an eye out for that. If you check out the new channel on the SVAC discord you'll find I've shared a bit about the exciting Downtime / Crew Sheet-equivalent as well.
Finally, if you're into deep cuts, Dane and I have started recording for season 3 of Dispel Magic. If you're not familiar, Dispel Magic is a podcast I do with a friend of mine and each episode we focus on one discrete component of magic in D&D and how its existence would logically play out in settings. Spoiler alert, basically no D&D setting that's written makes any amount of sense if you take the existence of various spells into consideration. In this third season we are doing something new and sprinkling in guest episodes. I'm kind of a control freak about creative projects so that's something I'm trying to just breathe through but, so far, I'm excited about sharing the guests we've recorded.
I think that'll do it for this DD but feel free to ask questions in here or the discord's Guildhall if you want to know any details about these projects or want to pick my brain about something completely unrelated. Happy February, ya'll!
For January we celebrated the release of the Thaumaturge class by voting on a new mystic custom for the January Exclusive. There was a tie at the time the poll closed so I gave both a long thought and Floriography’s Spellcraft feature solidified in my mind first so I went with that. You’ll also see this month I made good on the final submission for December, a revised and expanded set of Feats of Pugilism.
I'd also like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that pledge tiers will change as of March 1st so please review the new tiers and pick the one that's right for you.
I hope your 2023 is off to a good start! It's been very busy for me with life generally, the OGL rollercoaster specifically, and launching a new chapter of the Sterling Vermin Adventuring Company with the site store. It's been a mix of good and bad so far but I'm feeling very optimistic about the future.
Speaking of, let's talk about the future. Without getting into all the details here, 3rd party publishers have always worked under the assumption that the OGL 1.0a (the one that has allowed me to produce D&D content up to this point) was an always and forever thing. Not only is that suddenly not the case, but it seems Wizards of the Coast may be intent on ensuring that they can update whatever license they eventually replace 1.0a with. What that means for third party publishers like myself is that at any time Wizards could decide to make a change to the license that prevents me from continuing to publish. Sounds bad, right? It is!
So here's what I'm doing. Assuming the new license is even remotely fair, I'll be continuing to use this Patreon to produce regular D&D 5e content. If possible, that may extend into One D&D as well. Simultaneously I will also be developing my own original games. These original games will receive Patreon exclusive previews, although full playtests will likely be more open to the public. I'll have more to say on my first original game in the coming months.
Finally, and most importantly for all of you, as the Sterling Vermin Adventuring Company has grown, so has its needs. In order to best meet those needs, I will be updating the pledge tiers starting in March. The new tiers are:
Recruit ($3/month). At this tier, you get access to a monthly Patreon exclusive, access to the Guildhall channel on our discord, and a discord role showing your pledge tier.
Adventurer ($5/month). At this tier, you get everything from Recruit. You also get to vote on the monthly exclusives, early access to original game playtests, and monthly Design Diary updates from me.
Legend ($10/month). At this tier, you get everything from Recruit and Adventurer. In addition, you can submit monthly exclusives for Adventurers and Legends to vote on and you'll get PDFs of new site store content as it releases. Plus I'll be super grateful!
Please review these options and adjust your pledge (or not!) based on what looks most appealing to you. Those currently at the Friend tier will need to select a new tier prior to March to continue receiving Patreon exclusives. I have unpublished the tier preemptively to prevent confusion but this tier will still get the benefits through February.
As always, I appreciate the immense amount of support you all have shown me over the years. I'm very excited about the future of Sterling Vermin Adventuring Company and I hope you are too.
I got behind last month so I present, only 23 days late, your December exclusive. Last month I committed to creating everything submitted since it was a low submission month but there was one remaining submission that I'll instead be tacking onto January's update.
Included in this update is the Probabilist (for artificer) and the Infernalist (for thaumaturge). I had a lot of fun creating these and hope they're exciting to all of you as well! The Infernalist in particular opened my eyes to new implementations of Spellcraft features that I'm looking forward to iterating on in the future.
I've been putting off this update hoping that Wizards of the Coast would provide clarity but they are, apparently, not in any hurry to provide us with that. Incase you haven't heard, Wizards of the Coast is pulling the Open Gaming License which allows 3rd party publishers (like Sterling Vermin) to exist. In its place, they are offering a new license with several onerous or exploitive clauses. This has caused a number of major 3rd parties to already announce their own game systems in lieu of continuing to support D&D.
According to the leaked documents, this change was meant to go into effect on the 13th. Yes, this 13th. As in Friday. I suppose Wizards of the Coast either didn't care about the chaos this would cause or thought 3rd party publishers would roll over and sign their awful contract to keep things flowing.
I'm sharing all this because it means I'm not really sure what will be possible with Sterling Vermin Adventuring Company not even in the years or months ahead, but in the days ahead. I'm not even sure by the end of this month I'll be able to legally publish a D&D compatible Patreon exclusive. That's how serious this is.
I want you all to know that I take your ongoing support seriously. I don't want anyone to feel like they aren't getting what they're promised but, as of right now, my ability to promise anything is compromised by Wizards of the Coast. What you can do now, the only thing we really can do, is leave a comment here or stop into the discord and share your thoughts about a post-D&D Sterling Vermin Adventuring Company.
Please be totally honest. I understand that some of you are not in a position to continue following me if I change games and I completely understand, no hard feelings. For those of you up for adventure though...what should come next? Tell me about your favorite games that offer 3rd party licenses or let me know if you'd like to see me develop a game of my own. Or both! I've got a lot of ideas brewing but before I make my first step, I'd love to get your input.
As you all may know, I've been building up to this moment for over a year now and it's finally here: I've published my first work under the OGL and it's now available for purchase directly from my site store. As a patron, you've directly contributed to my ability to take this leap and I can't overstate how grateful I am for your ongoing support. Thank you!
The thaumaturge class's full release is next week but I wanted to soft launch the store by letting you all know now. You're welcome to tell your friends but I'd ask you to hold off on broadcasting the store's existence on social media for the time being.
When you pick up the thaumaturge class, please sign up for the newsletter linked on the credits page of the document. After doing so you'll immediately get an email containing a printer friendly version of the doc and you'll be signed up to receive news, updates, and more specifically related to the thaumaturge. For example, when the class becomes available for print on demand (PoD) later this year on DriveThruRPG you'll receive a discount code to buy the print copy at cost.
If you have any questions, or want to talk about the thaumaturge class with other patrons and players, I highly recommend you join us in the discord to do so. Again, I appreciate your ongoing support. The Sterling Vermin website now feels "complete" and a long time dream of mine has been realized.
For November, your Recruits, Adventurers, and Legends selected a defense oriented magus subclass for the exclusive. I've gotten a lot of requests to do a paladin-esque subclass for the magus and this seemed like the perfect prompt to lean into that! Two subthemes that came up in development were mounts (appearing in this subclass via spells) and a focus on wall spells (which seems odd in retrospect I haven't heard of many other subclasses that are wall spell focused). I hope you enjoy the Heaven's Guard!
Happy spooky season! I hope you've all enjoyed the early fall, I know I'm loving it as the heat of summer slowly cools and I get to spend more time drinking hot tea. This month, your fellow patrons submitted monster-inspired player options and voted to get a new barbarian subclass inspired by the rust monster, something I've called the Path of the Rust Eater. It uses some new experimental mechanics I think are kinda fun. I hope you think so too!
For September’s exclusive I once again failed to revise the form to prompt themed submissions. Which, again, works out great for all of you because I decided to do the top two instead of just the most popular! This month we have the College of Doodling for the bard class, a subclass all about its modular animated and illustrated companion, and the Arcane Arm for the pugilist class, a brawler that channels arcane magic through the versatile medium of their own fists.
This month we had a tie for monthly Patreon exclusive. Normally I grant myself tie-breaking powers in such a case but, this month, I decided I’d enjoy taking a crack at both of them—so I did! Please read on for a series of feats that alter / enhance the find familiar spell as well as an all new meteor themed fight club for the pugilist, Meteor Might.
This month your recruits, adventurers, and legends voted for an Abyssal, maybe gish player option for the sorcerer. I'm actually painfully clueless about a lot of D&D lore because I've been making my own campaign settings for every edition since the mid-90s and didn't know what Abyssal meant in this context. I did a bit of research and was very inspired when I saw mention of Demonwing, an entire layer of the Abyss that's been crafted into a ship that sails the river, Styx. I thought demonic pirate sounded like a pretty amazing concept to go with and now you have it, the Abyssal Farer!
This month's exclusive prompt was a new race and the winning concept was a plant-human hybrid. I toyed with a few different implementations here, including whether to use the old race rules, the new lineage rules, or my own heritage rules, and decided to go with the latter. I'm hopeful that in the coming months I will continue to refine the heritage system and add in a lot more options for it. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the mandragora!
I'm so pleased to release the 4th playtest of the Thaumaturge class into the wild! This playtest marks the transition from open playtest (where I made the class publicly available) to closed playtest (now it's only available to patrons). This transition means that I'm happy enough with the class that I expect to make only very minor refinements from here on out, apart from the new content which will come in the final playtests (there will be either one more or two more, probably two).
There's a big link on the first page of the document where you can provide feedback but please also feel free to leave your initial impressions here or on the discord. I look forward to hearing all of your thoughts!
For this month's exclusive, the theme was a monster or NPC. We got great submissions but the option that won out was a book themed dragon—hence the libragon! I had a lot of fun writing this monster and I think the lore kind of immediately gives you some ideas about how you might include this creature in an adventure as an enemy or potential ally. If you're familiar with my book wyrm player race, I also think the libragon is a nice inversion of those folks. The stage is really set for conflict if those two meet!
Thanks as always for your ongoing support, Benjamin
Presented here is the Dervish class, the (honestly this time) last part of the April Surprise. The Dervish class is a highly mobile harrier class that gains extra reactions and additional ways to use them. This idea didn't even occur to me til about mid March but there were so many neat ideas to go with I got the whole thing out in just a few days.
I really hope you enjoyed the new classes today and, in case I haven't made it crystal clear, I appreciate your ongoing support. I'm looking forward to hearing all your thoughts on the classes!
Did you think that's all you were going to get for my birthday? Think again! I love my patrons too much to give them only one class so check out the Reforged, a fantasy take on cyborgs and the daring inventors who incorporate experimental augmentations into their own body. Linked in this and the vampyr class is a form where you can give feedback on each class after you've had the chance to digest them. I'll be using the feedback to improve the classes, of course, but also to decide which one or ones to proceed with.
Today's my birthday which means it's time for me to give you gifts! I'm so happy to finally be able to reveal the April surprise: the Vampyr! Several months back I thought it would be fun to surprise you all with a new class that, unlike others, would go through most of its development entirely as a Patreon exclusive. I had a lot of ideas (as you know if you hang out in the discord) but eventually decided I wanted to iterate on this idea I had for non-undead blood magic using Blue Mage-alike and thus the Vampyr was born. If enough patrons like it, I may continue to develop this into a full 20 level class!
This month we started a new format where the monthly exclusive submissions had to match a theme of my choosing. For April I selected "a themed set of spells" and your fellow patrons selected "Insectoid Transformations" as the theme! I had a lot of fun with this one and was fairly pleased to bring a 3.x spell back, modify a spell I developed for the Thaumaturge, plus create 6 totally original spells all on the theme.
Thanks as always for your ongoing support and, don't forget, tomorrow is the April Surprise!
For March’s Patreon exclusive, there was a tie between a dunamancy inspired pugilist fight clube or more magic items for the pugilist class. As the official tiebreaker, I went with the latter since two (TWO!) of the former will be featured in my upcoming book, The Ultimate Adventurer’s Handbook. That said, I did create a few weapons along the lines of dunamancy for pugilists and I hope you all like them! You might notice some of the other magic items are references to requested pugilist changes on the discord. If you’re not on the discord, come by and check it out sometime!
I also wanted to let everyone know, the topic of introducing more variety to the monthly exclusives has come up on the discord and an idea I really like was proposed: monthly themes for the submission polls. Starting next month I'll name a theme for each month's exclusive. Everything else will work like it always has, but hopefully this small change ensures that we get a wider variety of material for the monthly exclusive.
For February's exclusive, a familiar entry won—a "weapon master" archetype for the pugilist class. Long time patrons may remember that I wrote based on a similar prompt quite awhile ago but that the results, Lethal Weapon, weren't up to the standard set by other Fight Clubs. Maybe it was the best option, maybe it was my own pride, but I decided to use this opportunity to revisit that concept and make it (a lot) better. I hope you all enjoy Lethal Weapon Reloaded, the improvised weapon master!
I wanted to share a preview with you of a new fight club I am working on specifically for my character in an ongoing The Wild Beyond the Witchlight campaign I'm playing in. I'm considering making myself available for commissions for subclasses and races and, if I do, this would be used as part of advertising that service. If you have any thoughts or feedback, sound off in the comments here or over on the discord!
For the very first patron exclusive of 2022, the recruits, adventurers, and legends chose a new scholar field of study: the Zoologist! As you might gather from the name, zoologists are scholars who specialize in identifying (and allying with) wild beasts. You'll notice this is a pet subclass with an absolutely bonkers pet feature, Beastly Menagerie. I'm going for a Dr. Dolittle-travels-with-his-own-small-zoo vibe but it will be interesting to see how challenging this is to track in play. If you get the chance to give the zoologist a run, let us know how you like it in the guildhall channel on the discord!
Happy December! I hope you're ending 2021 on the upswing and have enjoyed being a patron this year. For December's exclusive, your Recruits, Adventurers, and Legends voted for a multiple mage hand (as in the cantrip) themed archetype. I originally started with a Doc Ock inspired Artificer Specialist but when I hit a wall I pivoted back to the old standby, the Pugilist, and everything came together pretty quickly. I hope you like the archetype and have a happy new year!
For November’s patreon exclusive, your Recruits, Adventurers, and Legends voted for magical damage type equivalents to the Crusher/Piercer/Slasher feat set introduced in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything. Combining those feats and the ones presented here, there are damage enhancing feats for every damage type in the game apart from force. I left that last damage type untouched so you could experiment with this format of feat in your own games. I hope if you do develop one, you’ll share it on twitter (and tag me!) or the discord.
This month's exclusive is the Jock, a new Field of Study for the Scholar class.
"But wait!" some of you might ask, "Didn't the archetype using superiority dice win the vote"?
It did! And as I was thinking about how to do that, I thought the idea of a bunch of sports related maneuvers (named gambits here) would be the perfect vehicle for such an idea. I think the Athlete may be a bit overtuned with respect to the Scholar class but I'm really happy with how the theme translated into mechanics and I hope you are too.
If I don't get the chance to say it before then, happy Halloween everyone!
