It all started in November of 2015, when I (Ross Leiser) decided to try my hand at a cool thing I had just learned of called homebrewing - the creation of character options and adventures for tabletop role-playing games by players, for players. I'd noticed that Intelligence didn't get much love in D&D 5e, but loved the idea of the Eldritch Knight and Arcane Trickster and how they were basically "thirdcasters". I was also the DM of a campaign at that time that had a multiclassed Barbarian-Bard PC, so thought it would be awesome if there were a barbarian option that wouldn't have to multiclass to be able to cast spells. So, I wrote Path of the Furymage. It was, looking back, pretty awful (and got the obliteration it deserved), but it ignited a fire in me for TTRPG creation.In December of 2015, I told a friend I had started homebrewing, and he excitedly asked for my help in creating a Samurai class, a martial character class that combined elements of fighter and monk thematically but played totally differently, leading to a stance-taking mechanic and the utilization of a balance point resource. This embedded within me a love of crafting completely new mechanics.It started as simple fun, creating for my own campaigns and delighting in my players using them, tweaking the options as I saw how they played and what they needed to succeed without outshining the official options. One day, though, I was introduced to the Sterling Vermin Adventuring Company when I stumbled on their phenomenal Pugilist class over on the DMsGuild (links below) and I realized that it could be possible to make a career out of doing this thing that I had come to love so deeply.So, I found a phenomenal graphic designer in the form of Nathanaël "Nate" "Barkles" Roux ( https://twitter.com/freeners ) who also just so happens to work with Sterling Vermin, and he formatted my text into my first ever DMsGuild product: The Sculptor ( https://www.dmsguild.com/product/207218/OAP-The-Sc... )!A few months and a couple new classes later (including the Samurai class: https://www.dmsguild.com/product/211579/OAP-The-Sa... ), I founded Outlandish Adventure Productions (OAP), a company with the goal of creating character options for 5e that are weird, wonky, fun, and balanced. Now with another designer (Edward "Ted" Bowman) and Nate, our small company's motto is to "give you what you want, in a way you never knew you wanted it." We do this by experimenting with strange and difficult mechanics and lore, working our butts off until we get it to work in a way that's both fun and non-game-breaking.To this day, we've published 8 full classes, 1 original race, 5 supplemental materials for our existing products, and 2 massive collaborative works - one with Sterling Vermin (which includes the spiritual descendant of Path of the Furymage), and another with David Adams ( https://twitter.com/level2npc ) - with even more awesome content on the way.You can check out all of our work over on the DMsGuild: https://www.dmsguild.com/browse.php/?author=Ross%2... Now that OAP's been in operation for more than a year and a half, we're ready to start growing the business, trying new programs and seeing what we can accomplish. As a person who works an additional 40 hours per week full time to keep the bills paid while I work on OAP design projects, I'm also hoping to make OAP a sustainable full-time employment avenue for myself and my team-members.We hope you'll join us on this wonderful, outlandish adventure.Sterling Vermin: https://www.patreon.com/sterlingvermin/posts

Pugilist: https://www.dmsguild.com/product/184921/the-Pugili...