I'll Take the 5th!

5EP1000

5th Epoch Publishing is providing new, inexpensive ways to get into their Metal, Magic and Lore RPG!

Getting people to give a new RPG a go is often very trying for the independent publisher. As somebody who has had to help get both Ars Magica and Vampire: The Masquerade (predecessor to Vampire: The Requiem) off the ground, I can tell you that just getting prospective GMs to take a look is half the battle. Our friends over at 5th Epoch Publishing have been working with us to offer a bevy of new and inexpensive choices to get prospective GMs to check out their Metal, Magic and Lore RPG.

Metal, Magic and Lore is a fantasy roleplaying game where the details count, but do not get in the way of having fun. The entire game system is based on skills. There are no character classes to restrict what players and GMs might imagine—all tasks from the mundane to magic to melee are resolved with a single roll of percentile dice.

The playable races will be familiar to most, yet they are made more real by Lore, which describes the society, customs, economics and development of each people. Combat is fast-paced and can be quite deadly. Finally, the game's magic system is seamlessly integrated into the rules, and all of the schools of magic are as easy to put into play as any other skill. Wizardry, symbolism and the elements all come alive with effects that enhance the game’s storyline—not overwhelm it.

For those who want to dive into the rules, 5th Epoch is offering the Metal, Magic and Lore: Basic Player's Rulebook at $9.99 for the month of May! If you'd like to go a little deeper, the New GM PDF Bundle contains PDFs of the Basic Player's Rulebook, the GM's Starter Kit, Quick Reference Cheatsheets, and the Player's Quick Start Kit for a special bundle price of $14.99. Finally, for the veteran MML GM, the Seasoned GM PDF Bundle contains PDFs of the Basic Player's Rulebook, Bestiary II—Man Sized Bipeds, and the Deeping Vale Adventure Starter for a low price of $19.99. All of these offers only last until the end of the month!

So take a walk on the indie side and give Metal, Magic and Lore a look!

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Liberty's Edge

Skill based magic system? Someone elaborate on this please. I've been looking for a good RPG with a decent skill based magic system for awhile now.

Dark Archive

Sad to say I visited their website and wasn't impressed. It could really use a better layout with previews and examples beyond the general description and four thumbnails of art. I'm assuming, since it is percentile based, spells are cast against a target number determined by combining an ability score and skill ranks into a defense score that serves as a target number. Again that’s pure assumption since I don’t own it. The price of the PDF is a nice temptation as well as a good entry point but I’m still hesitant since there’s nothing that really tells me what the game is about or even what it’s like. Does it have its own setting or is it a general rule book? What races are playable? It says there are no classes and that it’s skill based, okay, do you instead choose professions as your focus? These are questions that should be answered on their website but aren’t, not to mention showing how the magic system works.

Visit their site here.


dm4hire wrote:

Sad to say I visited their website and wasn't impressed. It could really use a better layout with previews and examples beyond the general description and four thumbnails of art. I'm assuming, since it is percentile based, spells are cast against a target number determined by combining an ability score and skill ranks into a defense score that serves as a target number. Again that’s pure assumption since I don’t own it. The price of the PDF is a nice temptation as well as a good entry point but I’m still hesitant since there’s nothing that really tells me what the game is about or even what it’s like. Does it have its own setting or is it a general rule book? What races are playable? It says there are no classes and that it’s skill based, okay, do you instead choose professions as your focus? These are questions that should be answered on their website but aren’t, not to mention showing how the magic system works.

Visit their site here.

By way of introduction, I am Andrew Kozak, one of the co-authors of the game. I’m happy to chat with you folks in this forum and answer your questions about our products.

First off, thanks for your comments and interest in Metal Magic and Lore (MML). Your comments about our website are well taken and we are working on improving things with more information and the like. These changes will be implemented through the end of this spring and over the summer. More immediately, I’d like to begin addressing your questions.

Yes, MML is a percentile based system. MML is skills based and there are no character classes. There are six playable races which are familiar to most RPGers: Men, Gray Elves, Wood Elves, Dwarves, Gnomes and Hilfolk. We’ve developed the races based on our own world-specific lore, so I think that the more routine elements mix well with our own creativity and innovations. We have a single rulebook, which is one of the PDFs being offered in this promotion. This “Player’s Rulebook” contains the basics of our setting and there is addition information being released as this develops; some of this material is included in our “Deeping Vale” adventure starter, which is offered in one of the promotion’s product bundles.

The choices involved in character development are fairly open and are based on the type of campaign the GM would like to develop. There is a dedicated character generation section which guides GMs and players through a number of these choices. The number of skills and their relative effectiveness are based on the campaign type – the game is highly scalable so it works equally well with what we call our “Spartan”, “Adventurer” and “Heroic” campaigns.

I hope this begins to answer your questions…

Dark Archive

Thanks for the replay Andy. Sounds good from what you describe. Any more detail on the world you mention? General description or comparison (i.e. FR, Greyhawk, Golarion,etc)? I look forward to seeing the changes to your site and will definitely think more about getting the PDF at least.


You’re welcome, its my pleasure to get some more information about MML out there.

We built the MML world from the ground up with the idea of creating a richly detailed lore to serve as a backdrop to the game. This lore integrates a lot of different pieces in the game – everything from weapons and armor, through technology, magic, economics and even racial preferences for skills. At the current time we have a single continent mapped out – the area is something equivalent to continental Europe. Its an expansive area that includes a lot of different geographies. As we develop the MML product line, we are drilling down into the details of regions and countries as we go. An example would be the gazetteer-like information on the northern Middle Kingdoms we include in the Deeping Vale Adventure Starter.

I’m glad you’re considering MML. If you’ve got any other questions, fire away!

Liberty's Edge

Andy -
Thanks for stopping by. :)
Can you say more about the rules - specifically the rules for the magic system? Obviously you can't give away everything, but at least an idea of the core mechanic and such would go a long way towards better explaining the product.


Thanks for following up with your question. The basics of the MML magic system can be summarized as follows:

Section six of our Player’s Rulebook is dedicated to the subject of magic. The MML magic system is skills based. There are no magic classes or professions, nor are there any spell levels or the like.

Our magic system does have a number of unique features. There are three schools of magic included within the Player’s Rulebook: Symbols, Wizardry and Elementalism. One of the better features of the system is that all three schools could be employed simultaneously if the magician has the proper skills. All use of magic is tracked through a single number, that we call “evocation points”. This makes the use of multiple schools of magic during game play not only possible but easy. Another unique feature is our system of magic precedence which helps to sort out what happens when different types of magic come together and compete.

Spells are not forgotten when they are cast. As long as one knows the proper spell all that is required to put it in play is a successful skill check.

Since the MML game system was designed to be very scalable, the game works equally well if magic is common or extremely rare. In some settings the magical school of Symbols might be used on its own. In others all three schools can be commonly in use. The MML world presented with the rulebook is somewhat middle of the road – all three schools of magic are in play, but knowledge of them and their actual usage becomes rarer as time passes.


I was just stopping by - does anyone else have any questions on Metal, Magic and Lore?

We be happy to chat about any aspect of the game or our products that intrests folks.


Thank you to everyone who purchased the electronic version of MML over the past several weeks. Also, thanks to the folks here at Paizo for their gracious help in putting this promotion together.

We appreciate all of the inquiries on the messageboards, as well as the emails and visits to our website. And mentioning the website, we heard your comments regarding what everyone would like to see changed. We’re working now on some long overdue updates and upgrades – check back with us over the coming weeks this summer to see some of the changes we are going to implement.

Thanks again for all of the support. We’ve decided to extend this promotion another couple of weeks – so the PDF version of the rulebook will remain on sale here at Pazio until June 13th.


AndyMML wrote:

Thank you to everyone who purchased the electronic version of MML over the past several weeks. Also, thanks to the folks here at Paizo for their gracious help in putting this promotion together.

We appreciate all of the inquiries on the messageboards, as well as the emails and visits to our website. And mentioning the website, we heard your comments regarding what everyone would like to see changed. We’re working now on some long overdue updates and upgrades – check back with us over the coming weeks this summer to see some of the changes we are going to implement.

Thanks again for all of the support. We’ve decided to extend this promotion another couple of weeks – so the PDF version of the rulebook will remain on sale here at Pazio until June 13th.

Sorry for the confusion, the promotional sale of our PDF Player's Rulebook and electronic bundles will be extended to June 20th.


The sale on the PDF version of Metal Magic and Lore as well as the New and Seasoned GM Bundles ends tomorrow, June 20th.

We're in the process of a major update on our website. The first steps were to update our "Home" and "Latest Lore" pages and to expand our "About MML" page. We confident that these changes begin to address the requests for more information and descriptions of the game and its components. We'd love to have any feedback at all on our new modifications - if you have a moment to check it out, let us know what you think!


Does the magic make or break any encounter? If the players are running characters that are melee-focussed are they going to set themselves up for disaster against magic-users?

In other words, you say the system is scaleable...but is it balanced?


Gururamalamaswami wrote:

Does the magic make or break any encounter? If the players are running characters that are melee-focussed are they going to set themselves up for disaster against magic-users?

In other words, you say the system is scaleable...but is it balanced?

Thanks for the question.

The simple answer is yes, the system is balanced. Every component, whether it is melee combat or magic, is designed to work with the other parts of the system. As the basic game’s development concluded and just prior to it’s release we play tested MML extensively – I don’t recall the exact number of hours, but it was in the hundreds. This was to make sure the rules functioned well and that there were not any unintended glitches with the rules to produce the “disasters” you were enquiring about.

In the three years that the game has been released and in circulation the majority of the feedback we have received has been extremely positive. We haven’t had any reports of magic overwhelming opponents or unbalancing the game.

Because MML is based on attributes and skills it nearly impossible to create superhuman characters that will simply overwhelm their opponents. Also, for the most part, the magical effects are not on a grand scale. This means that the effects are more subtle and encourage planning, strategy and overall better game-play.

We hope this answers your question and appreciate your interest in Metal Magic and Lore.


So...is there fireball or does magic deal damage on par with your average axe-swinging barbarian?

I ask because I can't flip through your product before buying like I would a book at the FLGS. Said book-flipping strongly influenced my decision to pass on 4E.


Gururamalamaswami wrote:

So...is there fireball or does magic deal damage on par with your average axe-swinging barbarian?

I ask because I can't flip through your product before buying like I would a book at the FLGS. Said book-flipping strongly influenced my decision to pass on 4E.

The effects of magic can vary based on the campaign setting and the type of magic being employed. Most of the time magic is at least on par with melee combat. Your example with the axe swinging barbarian is likely accurate for most Adventurer’s type campaigns. In our Spartan level campaigns the effects would be a little more subtle and in our Heroic style campaigns magic might be a little more powerful. MML is very customizable and some of this is up to each individual GM.

You can look through both our printed books on Amazon.com using their “Search Inside” feature. We tell you this so you can see the products and get familiar with them. However, we’d humbly suggest/request that if you decide to purchase that you do so from the folks here at Paizo, since that’s where your search started.

If our response to your posts ever seems a little slow (as it was here, we do monitor a number of message boards) you can always prompt us using email at info@metalmagicandlore.com

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