The Elephant & Macaw Banner Roleplaying Game is available now on general sale, in physical and digital formats.
Check your local game store or order online from Indie Press Revolution: https://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/The-Elephant-and-Macaw-Banner-Roleplaying-Game-Print-PDF.html
Hong Kong, 10 January 2020 – Porcupine Publishing today announced that it will launch a Kickstarter campaign on 30 January 2020, to raise funds for a print run of The Elephant & Macaw Banner Roleplaying Game complete rulebook. The game is already an award-winner, with the Player’s Guide that contains the basic system and background having won a Judge’s Spotlight at the ENnie Awards in 2019.
The Elephant & Macaw Banner (EAMB) began as a series of fantasy stories set in colonial Brazil. The stories have received nominations for the Nebula Award and other international awards. The Elephant & Macaw Banner RPG was released in Brazil in late 2017 and was an instant success, selling out its initial print run in just three months.
The complete EAMB RPG rulebook contains the Player’s Guide content as well as expanded setting and system materials for a complete game experience, a fantastic bestiary drawn from Brazilian folklore, and an introductory adventure. Kickstarter backers will be able to obtain the book in digital format (PDF), as well as the physical book. In its physical format, The Elephant & Macaw Banner core rulebook is a 208-page, full-colour 11" x 8.5" softcover.
Book Contents
The Kickstarter project page can be found at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1690011586/the-elephant-and-macaw-banner-roleplaying-game
The Characters – 'So what do I actually do?'
To oversimplify, the player characters of The Elephant & Macaw Banner RPG – like Oludara and Gerard in Christopher Kastensmidt's original stories – travel from place to place exploring Brazil, meeting people of different cultures and helping them to fight off monsters from Brazilian folklore as well as human villains.
In the book you'll find everything you need to create adventurers from a dozen or so of the major cultures native to Brazil, as well as more recent arrivals from Europe and Africa.
The System
There are no character attributes in EAMB – only skills, which you can develop to three levels: Apprentice, Practitioner and Master. They range from general skills like horse-riding or swimming, to more specialized training in things like navigation, music, weapons, academia and languages. You gain learning points over the course of your adventures that you can spend on improving any skill.
When a player wants to use their character’s skill to resolve a challenging or risky situation, the outcome s not certain, and something serious is on the line, we call this a feat. You attempt a feat by rolling three six-sided dice, adding a bonus for your skill level (and sometimes equipment) and seeing if it meets the target number: typically 12 for an easy feat.
Some skills are very special indeed. They control the supernatural powers granted by Faith, Breath, and Ifá.
Faith is the product of divine blessings and devotion to the Christian church, tied to the use of divine graces to perform miracles.
Breath is the fundamental expertise of the pajé, the shaman and healer of the native peoples. The concept of spiritual breath is based on the importance of air, respiration, and the connection between these and the spirit world.
Ifá comes from the study of the teachings of Orunmila, brought to Brazil from Africa. Through this study, iyaláwos and babalawos learn how to prepare medicines and the techniques of divination to consult the orishas.
The Team
The Elephant & Macaw Banner Roleplaying Game is the work of a diverse team of talented people, based in the Americas and Asia.
Game Design – Christopher Kastensmidt
Christopher's writing and game design have netted him nominations for close to a dozen awards, including the Nebula and Brazilian SF prize,the Argos, as well as winning an ENnie in 2019. Some of his soon-to-be published projects include the video game The Path of Calydra and the feature-length film Edifício Bonfim.
English Translation & Project Management
Thomas McGrenery is an RPG writer and translator from Hong Kong. His published RPG credits include work on Feng Shui, Heavy Gear, the Infinity RPG, Mutant Chronicles, and Night's Black Agents/GUMSHOE. He is the co-host of the ENnie award-winning RPG podcast Fear of a Black Dragon.
Art
Cássio Yoshiyaki (Rockhead Games, Games Workshop, Outfit7)
Gabriel Rubio (IGG, VOLTA, Fantasy Flight Games, HEX Entertainment)
Marcela Medeiros (Grupo A, Hex Entertainment)
Rodrigo Camilo de Almeida (Romeu & Julieta, Spark Jumpers, Fantasy Flight Games)
Guilherme Da Cas (Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, Rovio)
Ernanda Souza (Paizo)
Ursula Dorada 'SulaMoon' (Riot Games, Hex TCG, Blizzard, DC Comics)
Quotes about The Elephant & Macaw Banner RPG:
“It’s got a great skill system, no attributes. It’s got a simple but deeply engrossing combat system. There’s very deep magic systems – and there are three of them, and they all intermingle pretty well. It’s got some snappy full-colour art … you definitely want to keep your eye out for what the team at Porcupine Games and Christopher Kastensmidt are putting together for us.”
- Brian Nowak, ENnie Awards judge
"In EAMB historical Brazil meets the fantastic Brazil, where national myths and legends come to life, unlikely heroes arise and the most exciting adventures come true. It is the idealization of a universe that takes pride in being Brazilian. "
- André Cruz, O Velhinho do RPG
"The Elephant & Macaw Banner RPG takes you to a spectacular colonial Brazil, where myths and legends are real and challenges await those with the imagination and the courage to face them."
- Marcelo Telles, RedeRPG
"The Elephant & Macaw Banner reminds us of a fantastic universe that should be known to all Brazilians, masterfully rescuing our rich mythology and folklore, taking players on a journey not only for great adventures, but also for their own cultural identity."
- Dmitri Gadelha, history professor, founder of Vila do RPG
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About Porcupine Publishing
Porcupine Publishing is a publisher based in Hong Kong. Founded in 2015, it specialises in roleplaying games and supplementary materials, creating both original works and licensed translations.
www.porcupinegames.com
About The Elephant & Macaw Banner
The Elephant and Macaw Banner is an internationally recognised Brazilian fantasy series. The stories tell of the adventures of the Dutchman Gerard van Oost and the Yoruba Oludara, a pair of heroes who first meet in Salvador, Bahia in the 16th century. In Brazil, the stories, comics and RPG system have been adopted by hundreds of schools. News, art and cultural references can be found on the website www.eamb.org
About Christopher Kastensmidt
Christopher is an American who has been based in Porto Alegre since 2001. Former director of Southlogic Studios and Ubisoft, he is the author of comics, games and books published around the world.
Media Contact:
Thomas McGrenery
Phone: +852 9449 5177
Email: publisher@porcupinegames.com
Other coves from the Elephant & Macaw Banner RPG game line
Want to know more about the EAMB roleplaying game?
Here's a short blog post with the basics on what kind of characters you play and what you do in the game!
Hong Kong, 24 March 2019 —
Porcupine Publishing is proud to announce the launch of the first English-language materials for The Elephant & Macaw Banner Roleplaying Game!
Containing the first 60 pages of The Elephant & Macaw Banner Roleplaying Game!
This PDF has everything you need to play your first sessions in this fantastical setting, exploring 16th-century Brazil and its monstrous and magical secrets. The complete EAMB RPG will be released later, and this pay-what-you-want preview gives you the entire first chapter of the full rulebook as a preview.
The Elephant & Macaw Banner is an award-winning fiction series that tells the adventures of the Dutchman Gerard van Oost and the Yoruba Oludara during their travels through a fantastic version of sixteenth-century Brazil. These stories, based on Brazilian history and folklore, have been enjoyed by readers around the world.
Now it’s time to immerse yourself in this world of Brazilian fantasy, a setting full of adventure, magic and monsters, in which you will find endless opportunity to invent new stories. Create your own heroes and have your own adventures in this magical world!
What you'll find in the Player's Guide:
The Elephant & Macaw Baner Roleplaying Game's basic system
Character creation
Skills, crafts and professions of 1576 Brazil
A surprisingly large collection of period musical instruments
Battle Resolution: an easy-to-use yet engrossing combat system
Magical & miraculous powers: three forms of superntural power, namely the Divine Graces given to devout followers of the Church; the Powers of Breath mastered by native shamans; the Powers of Ifá, used through techniques of divination and mysticism fro West Africa.
A lot of full-colour, breathtakingly beautiful artwork
Click here to get the PDF on DriveThruRPG.com.
An indigenous legend describes a sacred grotto, filled with gold, in the unexplored lands of the interior. Many have already disappeared in search of this treasure. The noble Dom Casimiro de Lucena, however, believes that this story is really a clue to the whereabouts of an object far more valuable than gold. When he also disappears, will your group of adventurers be able to follow in the footsteps of Dom Casimiro and unravel this centuries-old mystery?
The Legend of the Golden Condor is the first adventure for The Elephant & Macaw Banner Roleplaying Game. It's set in the jungles of Brazil in the year 1576, and you can play it in one or two sessions. It's full of fun material you can use in the EAMB setting or with any fantasy game with pre-modern tech levels, including:
A 7-point pointcrawl for the adventurers to explore from a derelict fortress outpost to a shaman's camp, to a mummy's tomb and a terrifying swamp
The pursuit of a villainous nobleman whom you need to bring back alive to claim your reward
Creatures and magic from the folklore of Brazil (and beyond!), such as the evil Corpo-Seco ('Dry-Body) tree monsters
5 pre-generated player characters with troubled pasts and adventure in their souls
The Legend of the Golden Condor is ideal for beginners but also offers a new and unfamiliar setting for experienced fantasy gamers.
Click here to purchase the PDF on DriveThruRPG.com.
Character sheets and printable paper miniatures are available online at porcupinegames.com/EAMB
For more information on these and other Porcupine Publishing titles, visit porcupinegames.com
Porcupine Publishing licenses worldwide rights in English
for the RPG of The Elephant and Macaw Banner
HONG KONG, 01 October 2018 - This week, the series The Elephant and Macaw Banner sealed its second major licensing deal in two months, this time with Porcupine Publishing, a publisher of RPG books based in Hong Kong. Porcupine has an affinity with products related to Brazil; in 2016, Porcupine published Malandros, a game set in 19th-century Rio de Janeiro that was shortlisted for the Indie Groundbreaker awards. In the same year, it published UED: You Are the Resistance, a game created by Brazilians Julio Matos and Fabiano Saccol.
The Elephant and Macaw Banner began as a series of fantasy stories set in colonial Brazil. The stories have received nominations for the Nebula Award and other international awards. The Elephant & Macaw Banner RPG was released in Brazil in late 2017 and was an instant success, selling out its initial print run in just three months.
Christopher Kastensmidt, author of the series, says: "It is an honour to be able to work with Porcupine, a company that, in a few years of existence, has already published a number of daring and important works in its field. They contacted me very enthusiastically to offer The Elephant & Macaw Banner system to the international market. Porcupine believes in the project, which for me makes this partnership very enjoyable. "
Thomas McGrenery, founder of Porcupine and winner of the Ennie Award for Best Podcast for "Fear of a Black Dragon", writes: "Making the English edition of The Elephant & Macaw Banner RPG is a very exciting project. Like the stories that inspired it, the roleplaying game offers adventure and wonder, exploring a vibrant natural environment, a unique meeting of historical cultures and a rich tapestry of folklore, all of which deserve to be better known in the English-speaking world. It’s a real privilege to present in English the outstanding work that created the original Brazilian edition. "
This contract follows only six weeks after the announcement of a partnership with Guardbridge Books to publish the novel that inspired the RPG in English. The series is also on sale in China (through Douban Read), Spain (through Sportula) and Brazil (through Devir Livraria). A digital game based on the series is being developed to be released in 2020.
Quotes about the The Elephant and the Macaw Banner RPG:
"A beautiful Brazilian RPG that is an instant classic."
- NerdDestilado
"In EAMB historical Brazil meets the fantastic Brazil, where national myths and legends come to life, unlikely heroes arise and the most exciting adventures come true. It is the idealization of a universe that takes pride in being Brazilian. "
- André Cruz, O Velhinho do RPG
"The Elephant and Macaw Banner RPG takes you to a spectacular colonial Brazil, where myths and legends are real and challenges await those with the imagination and the courage to face them."
- Marcelo Telles, RedeRPG
"The Elephant and Macaw Banner reminds us of a fantastic universe that should be known to all Brazilians, masterfully rescuing our rich mythology and folklore, taking players on a journey not only for great adventures, but also for their own cultural identity."
- Dmitri Gadelha, history professor, founder of Vila do RPG
Covers of the Brazilian edition of the RPG:
Porcupine Publishing covers:
About Porcupine Publishing
Porcupine Publishing is a publisher based in Hong Kong. Founded in 2015, it specialises in roleplaying games and supplementary materials, creating both original works and licensed translations.
www.porcupinegames.com publisher@porcupinegames.com
About The Elephant & Macaw Banner
The Elephant and Macaw Banner is an internationally recognised Brazilian fantasy series. The stories tell of the adventures of the Dutchman Gerard van Oost and the Yoruba Oludara, a pair of heroes who first meet in Salvador, Bahia in the 16th century. In Brazil, the stories, comics and RPG system have been adopted by schools in several states.
News, art and cultural references can be found on the website www.eamb.org.
About Christopher Kastensmidt
Christopher is an American who has been based in Porto Alegre since 2001. Former director of Southlogic Studios and Ubisoft, he is the author of comics, games and books published around the world.
The Spanish-language edition of Malandros is currently crowdfunding on Verkami, under the auspices of The Hills Press!
To see the campaign and support the project, go to https://www.verkami.com/projects/20622-malandros
The Verkami project runs for another 39 days, after which PDF delivery is expected in September, with print books following in October or November.
Jaye foster has released Poor Amongst the Stars – the first supplement for the game that someone volunteered to write without me having to ask them first! You can get it here on the Porcupine DriveThruRPG page: http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/223124/Poor-Amongst-the-Stars
Here's the product summary:
These corridors and decks are all you’ve known your entire life. It’s all your parents knew, it’s all your children will know. As the ship you’re in glides through the cold black vacuum of space you have to deal with the reality of being Poor Amongst the Stars.
Poor Amongst the Stars is a setting for Malandros that takes the players below decks on a generational starship. Where other games focus on the heroic deeds of the senior officers, Poor Amongst the Stars is about the powerless and unimportant characters aboard ship. Their struggles to improve conditions, gain respect or find romance are the core stories of the game. Malandros’ superb dramatic interaction system turns the conflicts within a community that lives in a confined space into a compelling narrative.
The book places the players in control of the stories and makes the creation of setting central to the game. Every ship and every game is different as the players decide what is important to their stories and what gives the character's lives meaning. Are they humanity's last hope or a bold first step into interstellar space? Is the spaceship a utopia of science and technology or an over-crowded slum where the bare necessities are an everyday struggle? Poor Amongst the Stars allows the players to explore the best and worst of humanity in a unique setting. The book adapts the classic People You Meet and Signature Moves of Malandros from the streets of Imperial Rio to the corridors of your personalised starship.
Trapped in the vast darkness of interstellar space, humanity must find a new way to live. What will you discover when you play Poor Amongst the Stars?
This title comes with a copy of the Malandros Free Edition PDF so that you have everything you need to play in one package.
The Malandros RPG has been nominated for the Best Setting category in the upcoming Indie Groundbreaker Awards! It's in some stellar company including Lovecraftesque, #Feminism and the Magischola LARP.
Winners will be announced at this year's GenCon.
You can find the announcement of all the nominees at: http://www.igdnonline.com/indie-groundbreakers-awards-2017-nominees/
To celebrate the festive season, I am making The Sydney Razor Gangs available free of charge.
It's a 26-page PDF supplement for Malandros (which itself has a free online version at porcupinegames.com/malandros ), containing setting material about Sydney's underworld in the 1920s and 30s, new rules, NPCs and six ready-to-run Player Characters: each and every one of them a real person involved in the "Razorhurst" underworld of the era.
Download your free copy of the Sydney Razor Gangs at https://payhip.com/b/MG7q
Now's a great time to get Malandros -- head to https://bundleofholding.com/presents/IndieTrove4,
where it's part of a collection of great indie games at an extraordinary price, along with the São Roque quickstart supplement.
Even if you already have it, here's what else you'll find in the Bundle...
For just US$4.95 you get all three games in the Starter Collection (retail value $32) as DRM-free .PDF ebooks:
ViewScream 2E
Riders
Western City
And if you pay more than the threshold price (currently at $13.20), you'll level up and also get the entire Bonus Collection of eight more titles (retail value $49):
Malandros (Includes the São Roque city setting)
Eternal Contenders
Nørwegian Style
Worlds Without Master issues 4-7 (inc 3 complete games)
The threshold price is based on the average amount paid, so the sooner you buy, the better the bargain!
Ten percent of your payment (after payment gateway fees) will be donated to this offer's designated charity, the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
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