Venture Beyond the Threshold of Madness…

Nox Arcana dares you to explore the shadows of a forsaken sanitarium that is haunted by the souls of the dead and plagued by the dark essence of evil. The hollow edifice of Blackthorn Asylum stands as a bleak monument to the horrors that once lurked within its desolate halls.

This sinister soundscape contains 21 tracks of ghostly melodies, pulse-pounding orchestrations and spine-chilling sound effects to set a dark, nightmarish mood.

Blackthorn Asylum is available now at Amazon.com.

Courage and Honour is the fifth book in the hugely successful Ultramarines series featuring the Courageous Captain Uriel Ventris and his Veteran Sergeant Pasanius.

This book is in many ways like coming full circle in the series. Uriel Ventris’ first mission as captain was to put down a rebellion on the Imperial world, Pavonis and this novel has the 4th company returning to the same troubled planet.

Following shortly after the events of The Killing Ground, we are shown flashback scenes of the testing of Ventris and Pasanius. Testing them both for purity: Mind and Body. After all, these two Astartes have been alone and fighting their way back from the Eye of Terror, a mission which should have most likely claimed his life (and possibly his soul).

Review by Jeff Preston

Rather a long time ago, when I had just taken the Queen’s Shilling and the new game was Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, I thought about applying classic squad tactics to adventuring parties on the tabletop. War, after all, happens at least as frequently in a fantasy realm as it does in the real world, and small groups are the norm in both role-playing and Special Forces. So it is with a measure of glee that I find a book which has taken this route with the combat-orientated 4th Edition of D&D; providing both a rich but war-torn setting and ideas for building a special forces unit using the full potential of fantasy adventurers.

The Introduction explains precisely what is intended. Although it has the normal trappings of a standard fantasy campaign setting (and indeed if that is what you want you can play a normal fantasy game here), the intention is that player-characters will be members of an elite ’special forces’ style group called Wraith Recon; and that rather than normal adventuring activities they will engage in classic special forces missions, acing often on their own but under direction of their commanders.

What do you get when you take one of the most popular comedy franchises ever, bring back the original writers and actors who made it so great, and have the original writers come up with a new script tying it all together?

You get Ghostbusters: the Video Game, of course.

Ghostbusters: TVG had been plagued from developmental issues from the start. Passing from publisher to publisher, the game faced cancellation several times despite promising trailers. Eventually managing to be released by Atari, this game features voice acting from the original cast. Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, and Ernie Hudson reprise their roles as the classic supernatural investigators and eliminators.

Review by John D. Kennedy

In a focused effort to give new readers an opportunity to discover Archaia’s unique library of titles, the publisher announced today a program to offer one new hardcover every quarter for the recession-friendly price of $9.95. Kicking off the venture will be the Vol. 1 hardcover collection of the acclaimed science-fiction thriller mini-series, The Engineer: Konstrukt, which will be available this August.

Keeping with Archaia’s tradition of publishing high-quality, high-concept titles, The Engineer: Konstrukt, co-created by Brian Churilla and Jeremy Shepherd, tells the story of a reluctant hero who frantically races to
defeat an ancient creature eating away at the very fabric of space and time. To do so, he must travel across dimensions and put together the scattered pieces of the Konstrukt, an old-world technology that allows the user to manipulate reality itself.

Game books devoted entirely to the Art of Death, Destruction, and Detective Lieutenant John McClane rarely win me over. It’s a personal taste because I fully know that a handful of the players in my gaming group deeply appreciates the details that good combat manuals can offer. I assumed when diving into this book that it would be an updated version of the Combat book White Wolf released with their original run in the World of Darkness. That book always struck me as too much comic book and too little horror. Even the front and back covers had artwork that never matched anything else in any of the other lines. I must admit there were some flinchingly horrific pieces of art in that book that I’ll call Things You Don’t Want to Happen to You. Even with those minor high points, I felt cheated by that book.

That was then . . .

Armory Reloaded gets away from White Wolf’s Street Fighter RPG rules and tries to remain attached to the grit and horror of the setting. In the introduction, readers are told that “Combat is Horror.” The writers of this book don’t want to make the same mistake the miserable Combat made. The development of this project backs the statement through both its writing and artwork.

Aye Dark Overlord! defies precise description. It is at once a board game, card game and has elements of a party game and role-playing games as well. The players take on roles of sniveling servants of the Dark Overlord, a vengeful chap whose patience with his inept followers grows thin…

Players begin by randomly drawing a hand of six cards – three hint and three action cards. One player is selected to play the role of Rigor Mortis; the Dark Overlord of the title. Once the players have their cards in hand, the Dark Overlord addresses one of them by saying something like “So my faithful minions; I ordered you to kidnap the princess. Has this task been accomplished?” The player indicated must then fabricate a brief story – using the elements illustrated on the cards in the player’s hand — explaining why the task was not completed, and in so doing shifting the blame for the failure to one of the other players.

The guide itself does a very nice job breaking up the different planes. It gives quick rundowns on all the species you would find there, some brief history as well as each plane wishes to see. It also gives a very good indication of the dangers of traveling to each plane. A traveler can get a good sense of how to understand the culture they find themselves in.

After an overview of all the planes it also gives a well rounded layout of planeswalkers that can be found on each plane. It includes their species, current residence, home, and magic specialties. There is only one plane that does not have a listed resident planeswalker and that is Grixis. It is very clearly stated that Grixis should be a place to travel to study only, and to not make your home their too long. Death and plague rule the land, so it makes sense nobody wishes to live amongst that.

Review by Crystal Mazur

Cubicle 7 Entertainment and Adamant Entertainment are pleased to announce they have formed a publishing partnership.

The deal sees Cubicle 7 handling production and marketing for Adamant’s print products, starting with Mars: Savage Worlds Edition in September. This fantastic Savage Worlds setting features sky-corsairs, ancient cities, warrior tribes and albino apes – the Mars of pulp fiction and Saturday morning serials.

Following in October is Thrilling Tales – a great blend of classic pulse-pounding excitement from the pulp magazines and cliffhanger serials of the 1930s and 40s, again using the award-winning Savage Worlds system.

“Adamant Entertainment are an Origins and Ennies Awards nominated company and Gareth-Michael Skarka is a visionary in the gaming field so we’re obviously delighted to have him, and his company, on board,” said Dominic McDowall-Thomas of Cubicle 7, “creating a partnership between the two companies has been something we’ve long spoken about and with the plans that Gareth has in place for the next few years I’m overjoyed that we can part of that process and dream.”

Blood Drive ($6.99 PDF) is the newest installment from White Wolf’s Storytelling Adventure System. This Hunter: the Vigil adventure offers an action-oriented romp for slightly seasoned characters (XP 25-29). This adventure plays on a personal favorite of mine. It’s the classic tale of the supposedly “easy job” that becomes something else altogether. At eleven scenes and forty-six pages (none of which are ads), this is a healthy night’s adventure or (more likely) multiple sessions of fun.

The direction of this adventure, like other White Wolf products I’ve recently reviewed, continues to impress me. The layout of the adventure offers both the detailed story, which the Storyteller will have to go over and a collection of Scene Cards to act as Storyteller cheat sheets.