Melior Via is proud to announce the release of a crossover adventure, enabling characters to travel between the worlds of Shaintar and Morden. With permission and support from Evil Beagle Games, we've released Darkest Tides, an adventure and sourcebook about both settings.

Over the month of January, many different organizations did 2014 year end reviews and awards. Since Accursed hit print distribution in 2014, many such groups gave it some consideration. We're honored to say that we earned recognition from several different groups. In particular, Tommy Brownell honored us with a pick in Tommy's Top Six, Topless Robot included us in their Top 21 of 2014, and Diehard GameFAN gave The Banshee of Loch Finnere 3rd place for Adventure of the year. We're in the company of some amazing publications with these awards, and it's an absolute honor.

The Guns of Dagerov by Sean Patrick Fannon is now for sale on DriveThruRPG. The adventure came out to 24 pages, and we're very excited to have worked with Sean on this, creating a fun chance for PCs to confront the banes of Baba Yaga.

Marching through Steppengrad in the winter is the kind of thing only fools and Accursed would even dare. Nonetheless, the battle for the soul of the world continues, and to fight the endless monsters of the Grand Coven, man-made monsters capable of belching destruction and death are just what the Order of the Penitent requires if the tide is ever to turn. The town of Dagerov is in possession of a batch of cannons that could be just the resource the order needs. Unfortunately, the town also needs those cannons—the Accursed must try to recover them, without dooming Dagerov. !--more-->

The Guns of Dagerov is a full length adventure for a band of Witchmarked heroes in the Accursed game setting. The adventure may be played as a standalone, or it may be used with the Plot Point Campaign included in Accursed. The adventure follows a three act structure, while also providing details on Dagerov and its peoples in Steppengrad. It includes necessary game mechanics and opportunity for tasks that can be resolved in a variety of ways.

Here's a quick look at some of the artwork:

The Guns of Dagerov is just $6.00 in PDF from DriveThruRPG.

We've just put Sand and Stone by Chris Avellone and George Ziets up for sale on DriveThruRPG. The book came out to 30 pages, and we're excited to have this opportunity to expand the information available about the game setting.

Since the colonization of Morden, Hebron and Hyphrates shared an enmity. In part, this was because of their nearness and competition for many resources. Their cultural differences, however, served to intensify the division as well. Hebronites are generally far more devoted to family, while Hyphratians tend to embrace personal goals. These differences often triggered misunderstandings and hostilities between the two cultures, leading to an endless series of conflicts. Much of this was swept aside in the face of the Grand Coven, when all the nations of Morden cooperated under the banner of the Armies of Light.

Colin McComb's 1-sheet adventure, Half-Light, is now available on DriveThruRPG. With 2 pages of content, this one is a more traditional length 1-sheet adventure than our last one. Here's the brief description:

A bloody assault on a mountainside church in the Highlands near the border of Blackroot Wode has horrified the valley! Distant clan-cousins paid a visit on the small sept who made their home in Whitetarn Village on the shores of the Cloven Loch in western Cairn Kainen, and discovered instead a scene of horror. The village has been sacked and the villagers slaughtered.

Preview artwork after the break.

We're proud to announce that we've just released Rich Baker's adventure, The Banshee of Loch Finnere for sale on DriveThruRPG. This is a brand new release for Accursed. The brief description and cover image are below the jump:

Mel Odom's novella Patchwork is now available. This is the second novella funded by Kickstarter that uses the Accursed setting. We're thrilled to be able to release it! It's now available for sale on DriveThruRPG for just $4.99 in both .ePub and .mobi (Kindle) format.

Patchwork opens when Martin van Schattierung awakens within a mass grave, as grave robbers disturb his rest. The flesh golem is confused by his existence as an Accursed and shocked to learn that the Bane War ended fifty years ago. He must work to uncover his past at the same time as he attempts to find his way in a world so different from the one he remembers.

Mel Odom is an author of well over a hundred novels in a broad range of genres. This includes works based upon the Shadowrun, Forgotten Realms, and Top Secret role-playing game settings, as well as licensed fiction in the worlds of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Diablo, and NCIS. In addition to writing, he teaches at the University of Oklahoma.

The alternative suits poker deck is now available. There are a gallery of images visible on the DriveThru page, and at higher resolution on the AccursedRPG facebook page.

We offer both a PDF version suited for use with Avery Business Cards as well as a print on demand version. The PDF is $4.99, the print + PDF is $9.99 (plus shipping).

Witches have ruled the land since the last battles of conquest, but their Grand Coven has been sundered, leaving behind remnants of a once-mighty army. The survivors of the horde include captured citizens of the conquered nations that fought as the Witches’ shock troops.

These are the Accursed—the Witchmarks burned into their flesh and souls transformed these men and women into monsters. Now, unable to return to their former lives, the Accursed wander the land, giving aid to those in need in an attempt to atone for past sins.

Light has failed, darkness is ascendant. Only those bearing the forms of monsters can stand against the tide of the Witches’ evil. The Accursed are this world’s only hope—they must learn to embrace their curse or to fight against it, and find some way to free themselves forever of their Witchmark.

The PDFs of the Accursed Setting and the Player's Guide (an abridged version) are both now available for purchase at DriveThruRPG. Here's a direct link:

Accursed at DriveThru $20.00

Accursed Player's Guide at DriveThru $10.00

We're currently working on the final stages of completing the Accursed core book. We're just waiting on a few last pieces so that we can assemble everything into the game book that we hope will exceed everyone's expectations. Until that's complete, here's something that might pique your interest.

The introductory fiction from Andy Chambers (Kickstarter Stretch Goal #2) had been received and recently approved. We took a little bit of time today to convert that into an ebook format. We've now got it in both .epub and .mobi (Kindle) formats.

Then we went ahead and uploaded it to DriveThruRPG. Because the introductory fiction is part of the setting book, its development costs were already covered. With that in mind, we've listed the book as Pay What You Want, with a default price of $0.00. So, just click the link below to get to the book. Then add it to your cart, entering whatever value you think is fair (if you're seriously considering buying the game book, we don't expect compensation for this). You can then complete check out and download the two different versions of the file.

Link to the Fiction

If you don't have an ereader (or an ereader app for your smartphone), there are a number of different browser plug-ins that can open up the file. (I use epubreader.) A quick google search on "epub reader" should provide you with some options. If you've got a great one to recommend, please mention it in the comments.

We hope you enjoy the short story!

Yesterday afternoon, the Accursed Kickstarter concluded. The campaign was far more successful than we'd dared to hope it could be. Thank you so much for your enthusiastic support. It was a bit of an emotional rollercoaster at times, and there were certainly moments where we had to scramble to make some hard decisions. In the end, it's very clear to us that our hard work was certainly well spent. We've achieved the funding we sought to make what we believe should be a fantastic book. We're thrilled to know that so many of our readers believe in our vision and in our ability to complete it.

The Accursed Kickstarter ends in just hours after this posting! To keep the great content coming for the Accursed blog, we need to get some more likes for our facebook page--we'd love to get to 500 by the end of the Kickstarter, but we can only do that with your help.

Today, we're going to look at some of the inspirations for Accursed's unique artwork.

We're into the last few days of the Accursed Kickstarter. If you're enjoying our series of adventure hooks, the only way to keep them going is to help us garner more likes for the AccursedRPG page on facebook. We still need more than 100 before 1 PM EDT on Sunday. Can you help us get there?

Since Friday's blog post, we've already picked up quite a few "likes" on facebook, but time is limited. There's less than a week left until the Kickstarter closes. If we're going to commit to a full year's worth of adventure hooks on the Accursed blog, we need to gather quite a few more likes. Please give us a like and spread the word about the challenge.

Every veteran Game Master has seen it before. You find a new RPG setting, which looks brilliant, and you decide that this is the new one that you absolutely have to run for your group. You devour the materials and then work hard to convince your players that they need to participate in this one. Character generation goes great, everyone comes up with fantastic ideas for new characters that explore completely different parts of the setting. As the Gamemaster, you're pumped up about finding places for these characters to go and worlds for them to explore.

Today’s a huge day for me and a huge day for Accursed. Today is Friday the 13th, the date most often associated with being cursed. So, of course, it was the perfect date to launch a Kickstarter about a setting named Accursed—because if you’re going to say your game is cursed, you might as well go all the way!

With few exceptions, the posts to this blog have focused entirely upon the world setting for Accursed. Ross, Jason, and I have been thrilled to watch the setting develop, and we're very excited to share it with anyone willing to listen or read the details. Today, we wanted to take a moment to step back and discuss the things from a different perspective. Instead of talking about the setting, we wanted to make sure we remembered to talk about the game.

I tell you, the mountains are alive.
You know they say that nothing lives there? It's a lie. There are things that live in the mountains; terrible things... nightmare things. Twenty years ago, my troopers and I chased a band of mercenaries led by a handful of filthy Vargr into the mountains north of Steppengrad. Not five miles into those mountains we were hopelessly lost. Us! Seasoned cavalrymen mounted on the smartest, most knowing steeds in all of Morden, lost like children in the Darkwall with night approaching. Why did we not turn around you ask? We did! The path we had taken was gone.

Morden is a land that is caught between contradictions of technology. On the one hand, some things have not changed in centuries—carts still wend their way across roads that are, in many places, little more than dirt tracks. Farmers till the land with horse and plow as they have for generations, and the sword is still the most common weapon wielded by a fighting man.

Alchemy is a tradition that combines philosophy and a study of both natural and supernatural materials. Most often, alchemists are learned men and women who use their knowledge to create unusual effects by combining exotic materials. The trade produces rare and exceptional elixirs, potions, and salves, but some scholars have refined their craft for use in the engineering fields like masonry and metallurgy. According to Enochian historians, the practice of alchemy in Morden was originally systematized over three hundred years ago. The earliest records of alchemists practicing their trade began among the palaces of the Pharoahs in Hyphrates and slowly spread throughout the other realms.