Dark Matter Starter Set: Science Fiction for DnD 5E

Dark Matter Mega Box: Live on Kickstarter!
4 months ago – Tue, Feb 03, 2026 at 07:02:13 AM

Gather your crew, build a starship, and face down alien horrors with the Dark Matter Mega Box! The definitive science fiction handbook for 5E is back and better than ever in a three-hardcover Mega Box full of adventures ready made for your table. Live on Kickstarter now!

Grax's Club: Free Update

If you picked up the print-and-play Grax's Club campaign, you'll get a free update to the brand new book! It's got full-color illustrations and maps throughout, and a bunch of the adventures have been streamline and improved. Expect the finished version in late March or early April.

Unlock Humbledark with us!

This crossover Humblewood setting for 5E launches the entire tree city of Alderheart into Dark Matter, where forest critters and animal adventurers must learn to navigate and survive a sprawling and unfamiliar universe. Help us unlock this $100K stretch goal!

Try Before You Buy

Check out the free sample PDF for 32 pages of sci-fi species, subclasses, weapons, ships, and mecha combat. We think you’re going to love this new version of the book!

Free Quality of Life update
4 months ago – Mon, Feb 02, 2026 at 10:31:49 AM

Dark Matter has always been your essential sci-fi companion for 5th Edition, designed with close parity to the 5E Player’s Handbook in every respect possible. However, 5th Edition has grown and expanded with the release of later expansion books and, more recently, the 2024 re-publishing of the Player’s Handbook.

Now Dark Matter gets to grow alongside 5th Edition! If you shift over to the new 2024 Player’s Handbook, we’re republishing Dark Matterwith over 140 new pages, revised mechanics, and streamlined presentation.

If you’d like to stick with the legacy release of Dark Matter, this free Quality of Life update brings the book in line with releases such as Xanathar’s Guide to Everything and Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything. The update expands some of the book’s lore, softens some of its mechanical restrictions, and provides more flexibility to character options.

Getting the Quality of Life Update

If you have Dark Matter on BackerKit, you can find the Quality of Life Update there! If you picked it up from MageHandPress.com, the update has already been added to your account for free. Just go to the My Account page and download it.

If you can’t access the Quality of Life Update for any reason, please let us know on our Support Page and we’ll be happy to send it to you.

Dark Matter Mega Box

Dark Matter: Sci-Fi 5E adds much-requested features, such as the ability to build and customize your very own ship or Battleframe from the ground up. Check it out today in the Dark Matter Mega Box, which comes with two hardcover campaigns, Grax’s Club and Contractor Corps, compatible with the legacy release of Dark Matter! 

Postmortem of One Hundred to Oni
4 months ago – Mon, Feb 02, 2026 at 10:31:38 AM

I’d like to break down the problems we encountered developing the One Hundred to Oni campaign, what we’re doing about it, and how we plan to make it right. Here’s the TL;DR:

• We’re giving our new campaign Contractor Corps for free to everyone who picked up One Hundred to Oni as an apology. The print-and-play will be delivered in March. 
• If you bought Oni and want a refund, drop by our Support Page and we’ll give it to you, no questions asked. You still get Contractor Corps.
• We’re still going to finish One Hundred to Oni, re-releasedchapter-by-chapter until it’s done.

Obstacles and Solutions

First, I want to outline the issues we encountered, then talk about the steps we’ve taken to ensure we never encounter them again.

Problem: Broken Pipeline.Ever since 2016, our pipeline for developing content has been effectively the same. We release content for free to our blog, then bundle chunks of content on Patreon, and finally release finished products to Kickstarter and our store. This helps ensure products get lots of playtesting and development attention before going on sale. One Hundred to Oni completely bypassed this pipeline. 

Because our backers had already paid for Oni, we felt we couldn’t release the campaign on Patreon or elsewhere. However, the monthly release schedule on Patreon forced us to constantly drop Oni development for more pressing deadlines. The start-stop workflow also made it hard to talk about progress. This isn’t the sole reason for lack of communication – that’s entirely on me – but it’s how communication and the project itself went on the back-burner.

Solution: Piecemeal Releases.The best path forward is to release Oni like any other product: start editing from the beginning and deliver each chapter monthly, both on Patreon and to you directly. The cadence of deadlines will ensure we’re making forward progress and communicating regularly. 

Problem: Scope and Contractors. One Hundred to Oni was entirely too ambitious, and we even knew that at the time. We brought in a talented designer to oversee the project, who in turn hired freelancers to help fill out the book. 

This caused two really massive problems: the freelancers had wildly different writing styles, and the quality was extremely inconsistent. We encountered entire quests that needed to be scrapped and redesigned, setting back the release for months each time. These problems were hard to spot until we were fairly deep in the editing process. 

Moreover, the key designer needed to leave the project before finishing the final chapter and all monster statblocks. This is something we could have handled… if we had given ourselves the time. (See the Broken Pipeline.)

Solution: Always In-House. We’ve written a lot of adventures since One Hundred to Oni, and have done so with tight scope control and doing everything in-house. The Last Owlbear isn’t a sprawling campaign, and it didn’t require much editing because we wrote it to a high standard. Similarly, Grax’s Club and Contractor Corps were a breeze (and both will be getting hardcovers versions soon.)

In order to bring the scope back in line, it’s entirely possible that we’ll axe the bulk of the unfinished adventure after level 6, and wrap up the campaign in level 7. This gives us a clear trajectory and an outline to follow.

Starting to Make It Right

I’m sorry we didn’t deliver what One Hundred to Oni promised in 2022. We’re very proud of the three chapters released in 2024, but writing off the rest of this campaign for so long was unacceptable. 

Here’s the three steps we’re taking to make it up to you:

1. If you backed One Hundred to Oni, you’re getting a free Dark Matter campaign, Contractor Corps. Expect print-and-play delivery in March, with a full-color PDF release later in the year.

2. If you want a refund on One Hundred to Oni, you got it. Reach out to our Support Page with the email address you used on BackerKit and we’ll get you taken care of.

3. We’re making a commitment to finish One Hundred to Oni and aim to release chapters monthly. We’ll be updating it to our new campaign standards, meaning we’ll have inline statblocks and thorough editing. 

Dark Matter returns in one week!
4 months ago – Tue, Jan 27, 2026 at 09:21:52 AM

Dark Matter has been updated and revised from top to bottom after the release of the 5th Edition 2024 ruleset, and we’re thrilled to bring it back to Kickstarter with a three-hardcover Mega Box!

And the day before launch (Feb 2nd), everyone who owns Dark Matter 2014 will be getting a free Quality of Life update PDF! The Kickstarter supports both the 2014 and 2024 versions of the book.

Here's what's new in Dark Matter:

Expanded and Revised. We’ve revisited the entire book, from blasters to monsters, to make your sci-fi characters and campaigns better than ever. Dark Matter now has over 130 pages of new content!

2024 and Beyond. Everything in Dark Matter now supports the 2024 ruleset and the entire slate of classes from Valda’s Spire of Secrets!

Two New Hardcover Campaigns. Explore an anthology of wacky space adventures with Grax’s Club! Or stay one step ahead of your ruthless AI overseer as technically-legal contractors for a shadowy criminal organization in Contractor Corps.

Build Your Own Ship! With an overhauled ship combat system and expanded customization, you can build your own ship and explore the far corners of the ‘Verse!

Mecha Rules. Pilot a custom mecha Battleframe with the new and revised ship combat chapter.

A Wilder Universe. Join new factions, play as new subclasses, and battle new monsters! Ever wanted a near-human Clown species or a psionic Wrothian dragon?

Top-of-the-line Battlemaps. Elevate your experience with 50 Sci-Fi Battlemaps by Czepeku!

Pre-Pledge Today

For a $1 pre-pledge, you can become a badge-carrying member of Grax’s Guys for Cheap, the most affordable mercenary company in the 'Verse! You'll also get early access to the Dark Matter Demo PDF so you can start playing immediately.

This pre-pledge offer only lasts until the Kickstarter launches on Feb. 3, so don't wait!

One Hundred to Oni - Chapters 1-3
about 4 years ago – Mon, Apr 18, 2022 at 05:45:33 AM

We've finally wrapped up the PDF for the first three chapters of One Hundred to Oni, a print-and-play mecha campaign that ended up being way more ambitious than we expected. It's Mass Effect, the Expanse, and Gundam rolled into one. If you purchased it, you should be able to download it via BackerKit!

Here's what's in this release:

Chapter 1 shows off how to run the campaign and explains our new innovations: NPC companions, which give you special abilities to use in combat, and abbreviated statblocks, which make every monster and NPC a breeze for the GM.

Chapter 2 fleshes out Lakshay and the Warzone into their own full-on setting. There are factions, NPCs, planets, intrigue, and more!

Chapter 3 begins the campaign in earnest, introducing the characters as battleframe pilots in training at Kade Academy, undergoing their final weeks of classes before they take the deadly final exam: the L.A.N.C.E. This section of the campaign acts as a standalone 2-level campaign that amounts to Mecha-Hogwarts, so if you want to dip into a short, low-level campaign, this is a great fit.

I'm hard at work editing and formatting the remaining chapters! Stay tuned. 

Also, now that the distribution of hardcovers is over, I've taken down the preorder store. So if you didn't grab One Hundred to Oni already, you'll have a bit to wait before you can take a look at it. I'll set up a place to download this campaign, as well as other Dark Matter products, on the Mage Hand Press store soon.