The first draft of the Field Guide was begun about fifteen years ago, when I was attending courses at UNLV as a “student at large”, while my good friend Darren Miguez — now a young adult librarian in New York state — was pursuing a degree in Fine Art. Darren and I had been tinkering with a diceless superhero game, but I much prefer system implementation to system design, and I started thinking about superhero archetypes as a character creation tool, espcially for players that were perhaps too conditioned to think in terms like “brick” “energy projector” and “martial artist”. It was, and remains, my opinion that many players tend to focus a bit too much on what powers a character has instead of on that character’s story role. This is especially true for players who come to superheroes from another genre, which is the norm rather than the exception. Far more people play League of Legends than read any given comic, even a huge hit like Watchmen, and this leads to players who don’t really know how to make a superhero, and instead run home to mom, resulting in a lot of PCs who are elves, demons, vampires, or otherwise imports from other genres.

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Will wonders never cease? Steve Perrin’s Homefront Villains is now available on CreateSpace and RPGNow!

STAY VIGILANT!! The enemies of Freedom are at your back door!

While our soldiers fight the enemy on the Front Lines of this Great War, our Homefront is under attack by Saboteurs, Gangsters, and Super-powered Criminals of all types! Who will stand up to these Homefront Villains!?

Jump into the action and defend America’s Homefront during World War II! These villains and villainous archetypes will help Gamemasters create challenges for the heroes in their games without sending them to the vanguard of the army. Fully-realized stat blocks are presented beside full-color artwork, as well as detailed entries for 10 powerful archetypes and minions to back up their sinister masterminds.

With artwork by Jon Gibbons, Homefront Villains is written by legendary RPG Author Steve Perrin for your ICONS Roleplaying game! Don your mask, and prepare to fight for Freedom!

…and above all, never lower your guard! The Enemies of Freedom lurk everywhere!

Now available for Print on Demand and PDF, find us on RPGNow here! Combo deal saves you 5.00 if you buy both at RPGNow!

For the CreateSpace Print on Demand store, Follow this link!

The amazing first issue of Due Vigilance: The Oktobermen with Smoke and Mirrors (For Mutants and Masterminds 3E) is now available from CreateSpace! I’ll update this post in a few days when the inventory finds its way over to the Amazon.com and Amazon.eu database! For now, you can get it directly from CreateSpace at this link!

The Oktobermen is now listed in the Amazon Database here! You should be able to place an order via Amazon in a day or two… but you can order right now from the CreateSpace link above!

Join us for another 3 hour tour of Beacon City… which seems to have problems with prisoner breakouts these days. The Lamplighter returns, joined by new arrivals Timeslip and Traxx the Traveler! Thanks to our players: Jason Tondro, Alex Williamson, and Tolly Gipson! (Character pictured is Captain Archon, USAF)

The Podcast is live here at our podbean blog!

Rolling out slightly ahead of schedule, the Field Guide to Superheroes Volume 4 is now available as a Print on Demand item from Createspace!

Click the picture of the cover or this link to open a window to the store! The Field Guide will shortly be made available on RPGNow and Amazon.com! Stay tuned for more updates as they come in!

Field Guide for Superheroes volume 4 is by Jason Tondro with artwork by Dan Houser, and is our first Field Guide volume to be available for Print on Demand!

Also now available as a PDF from RPGNow!

Check out our latest issue of the Vigilance Press Podcast!

Tolly Gipson from Infrno.net’s team of Moderators joins us to talk about getting together online, using the virtual tabletop, and networking with other players from around the world! Alex Williamson talks more about his artwork, both for Vigilance Press and Battletech. Tell us what you think! Keep tuned to this webzone for more info on the upcoming Beacon City Campaign podcast.

Tolly Gipson’s sample DC Adventures table at Infrno.net.

Alex Williamson’s art on the Atomic Think Tank!

The new Beacon City Challengers preview art on the Vigilance Press website!

Our latest Podcast episode is up!

Six Gun author Rick Jones and superhero artist Alex Williamson join me for a discussion on some upcoming products from Vigilance Press! Along the way, Rick Jones talks about doing a “full-on Chris McGlothlin”, Alex discusses the finer points of putting Squid parts on a monster, and James Dawsey hosts! Topics covered also include the upcoming METAs project’s progress and some other bits and bobs. Thanks for tuning in!

Check out Alex Williamson’s Brass Falcon here!

Check out Rick Jones’s Gaming Blog here!

       So, after almost a year of false starts, we finally have the METAs project underway!

I’ve posted a gallery where you can watch the rough pencils as they roll in, and customers can email me with feedback on their character art. After we get the inks back from Alex, Dan Houser will   color them up nice and purty, and the final illustrations will be posted shortly after that… and then it’ll go to layout! I’m so excited! Check the Gallery out here!

Once we get all 30 of the original character submissions published, I hope to make even bigger announcements in this series, but we’ll have to see how things progress for the first batch. 🙂

Thanks again to everyone for their patience, and I hope you’re all as excited as I am to see the final product!

-Stay Vigilant!

-James

The Lamplighter!

In preparation for our upcoming Episode 2 podcast session, I decided to finish sketching up images for the hero team.

The Lamplighter, played by Jason Tondro, is our final member of the core members of the team. Here’s the art! You can check out the full gallery of images in our “Beacon City Campaign” images gallery. I’ll be adding and tweaking the art as we go forward, and most of them are just sketches by myself (James Dawsey). Nero the Newshound is by Hannah Friedrichs!

Breaking news!

Welcome to our new website! Pardon our dust as we get things settled in, but feel free to look around!

I’m going to spend this weekend tweaking and updating things like the art galleries, the shopping links, and more! I’m also allowing people to comment on posts here, so please feel free to give us a shout and tell me what you think of the site!

Nero the News Hound will see you all again soon in our next Beacon City Podcast adventure! 🙂

-James

PS: I’ll be posting again soon when I have the galleries lined up, but feel free to go poking around while I work!