Flames Rising

Featured articles

Werewolf: the Forsaken 2nd Edition from Onyx Path Publishing! The need to hunt burns in your heart and in your soul. To chase down prey with your blood pumping fire through your body. Yesterday you didn’t know what that felt like, but today you’re sitting in a room with the bodies of your family and you need to hunt. You are a human, a wolf, a killer, a monster. The ultimate predator. You must hold the balance between the moon and the wolf. Between the flesh and the spirit. Between the pack and the prey. Your blood rises. The wolf must hunt. What are you going to do? Call of Cthulhu: The Curse of Nineveh available now! In ancient times, when Nineveh fell, so too was a terrible evil was banished. This evil, a god named Nabu with ambitions to rule humanity, was bound by the Children of Tranquillity into his former temple and buried beneath the sands. Two and a half thousand years later a group of archaeologists uncovered the Temple of Nabu and unleashed a terrible curse — the Curse of Nineveh! The Curse of Nineveh is a seven-part campaign for Call of Cthulhu set in London, in the summer of 1925. Firefly RPG: Smugglers Guide to the Rim available now! Does your Crew have what it takes to fly the Good Shepherd’s Run? SMUGGLER’S GUIDE TO THE RIM is a supplement for the FIREFLY RPG that is designed for both players and GMs. The third supplement in the line, the SMUGGLER’S GUIDE TO THE RIM introduces Reputation rules for Crewmembers, 12 new archetypes, the Good Shepherd’s Run, more Chinese translations, more rules, new in game aids, a pair of Episodes, and more! We Love Comic Creators Bundle supports the Hero Initiative! The Hero Initiative creates a financial safety net for comic creators who may need emergency medical aid, financial support for essentials of life, and an avenue back into paying work. Since inception, the Hero Initiative has been fortunate enough to benefit over 40 creators and their families with over $400,000 worth of much-needed aid, fueled by your contributions! It’s a chance for all of us to give back something to the people who have given us so much enjoyment. DriveThruComics.com has partnered with more than 40 publishers including Top Cow Productions, Aspen Comics, Renegade Arts Entertainment, Valiant Comics, 2000 AD, Devil’s Due Entertainment, and more to offer up an amazing bundle of digital comics for only $20, with proceeds benefiting the Hero Initiative! Don’t Turn Your Back a new board game from Evil Hat Welcome to the city of Nightmares. Now you’re Awake. Evil Hat brings great games to the table, and we have something truly great in store for you in this Kickstarter. We’re proud to introduce Don’t Turn Your Back, a game that brings together the best of everything Evil Hat can deliver. With a unique combination of deck building and worker placement elements, and a design that creator Eric B. Vogel has called one of his best yet, it offers a fresh and exciting gameplay experience.	Werewolf: the Forsaken 2nd Edition from Onyx Path Publishing!
	Call of Cthulhu: The Curse of Nineveh available now!
	Firefly RPG: Smugglers Guide to the Rim available now!
	We Love Comic Creators Bundle supports the Hero Initiative!
	Don’t Turn Your Back a new board game from Evil Hat

News

Midwinter Gaming Convention Board Game Library

The Best Games are Played in the Dead of Winter Midwinter Gaming Convention is a 4 day convention held each January in Milwaukee, WI. Started in January of 2000, this event was founded on a Classic World of Darkness Live Action Role Playing game (LARP), and over the years grew to become a full gami…

Announcing Upside Down: Inverted Tropes in Storytelling

Apex Publications is pleased to announce the addition of a new anthology to its 2015 release schedule. Upside Down: Inverted Tropes in Storytelling is an anthology of short stories and poems that will highlight the long-standing tradition of writers who identify tropes in science fiction, fantasy,…

Join the Dark Eras Twitter Chat at 8pm EST on Wed, Feb 4

On Wednesday, February 4th Onyx Path Publishing will be hosting a Twitter chat for fans to discuss the World of Darkness: Dark Eras supplement that is currently funding at Kickstarter.com. Starting at 8:00 p.m. EST, tune in to the #DarkEras hashtag and connect with the writers and developers who wo…

Brian Keene’s The Lost Level from Apex Book Company

Apex is proud to present the first book in Grand Master Award winner Brian Keene’s long-awaited new series, a loving ode to lost world classics like Burroughs’s PELLUCIDAR, Howard’s ALMURIC, and Lansdale’s THE DRIVE-IN, but with a thoroughly modern twist that only Brian Keen…

Blogs

My 2014 RPG Releases in Review!

I had one of those moments a few weeks back, the kind where you’re forced to stop and wonder what you’ve been up to for the past several months. We were driving through the redwoods, and we stopped at the base of a very large tree. I suppose that’s an understatement, given the fac…

A Letter to Humans Regarding Halloween

Dear Humans: As we understand it, you humans have now changed your Julian calendars to mark the tenth month in your year. Though it is apparent you eagerly anticipate the end of your annual cycle by buying gifts, flocking to mercantile centers, and hanging confusing decorations to acknowledge this …

Awaiting Universal’s DRACULA UNTOLD with Bated Breath

Slated for an October 10th release in the U.S., Universal’s DRACULA UNTOLD returns to Bram Stoker’s story in an action-filled, heart-wrenching way. For many reasons, I’m excited about this film on a personal level both as a writer and a fan of all things vampire. It’s no sec…

2013: Our Year in the Horror Mines

We’re Lillian Cohen-Moore and Ryan Macklin, a couple in Seattle who love to play with horror. You might know us from our work on the recent Mage: the Ascension books that focused on factions within the Technocratic Union. What you might not know, though, is that we met and bonded over playing…

Reviews

Whispers from the Abyss, H.P. Lovecraft inspired collection

On the subway, during lunch, or even under the fluorescent glow of your cubical there is no escape! Now your slow descent into madness can follow you through the day, as well as the night. The WHISPERS FROM THE ABYSS ANTHOLOGY is the first ever H.P. Lovecraft inspired collection created specificall…

Trail of Cthulhu Eternal Lies Review

Every so often I get something to review that I have no idea what I’m getting myself into. Getting a copy of Eternal Lies campaign book for the Trail of Cthuhlu RPG (from Pelgrane Press) to review was one of those times. I’ve played Trail of Cthulhu once or twice at gaming cons, I’m familiar …

Gygax Magazine #1 Review

From the moment I opened up the PDF on my laptop I knew Gygax, a quarterly adventure roleplaying aid, was going to tap into everything that has made gaming great since the beginning. The cover was “classic” in every way and it reminded me of the many old Dragon magazines I have flipped through …

Dept. of Monsterology: Issue 3 of 4 Review

Hey there fans of Flames Rising! I gotta tell you, I was pretty excited about diving into issue #3 of the Dept. of Monsterology. So far the issue has been well written, possesses some good, witty dialogue, and the artwork has been spot on in setting the feel and tone of this pulp-supernatural serie…

Interviews

Matt Forbeck: Monster Academy and His “12-For-12″ Campaign

Matt Forbeck has been a bit busy over the past year. He started a series of Kikcstarters to support and promote a crazy idea: that he could write and prepare for publication one novel a month for twelve months. I caught up with Matt recently to ask him about one of the most recent books in that ser…

Interview with “Tale of the Wisconsin Werewolf” author Edison T. Crux

Edison T. Crux is an author whose first novel, “Tale of the Wisconsin Werewolf” debuts on December 15. The author will be attending an event at Pegasus Games

Visionary Comics’ C. Edward Sellner Talks Shop

C. Edward Sellner is the Chief Creative Officer for Visionary Comics, having launched the studio in 2006. Having embraced the digital publishing revolution several years ago, Visionary is currently one of the largest digital publishing houses in the comics industry. We sat down with Mr. Sellner to …

Jeremy Penter tells us about the AfterEarth Kickstarter

Jeremy Penter is the lead developer of AfterEarth: The Fall, a RPG currently on Kickstarter. This RPG offers a mash-up of post-apocalyptic setting with dark fantasy elements. It also offers the chance for all backers to have a say in the development of the game. Flames Rising sat down to talk about…

Fiction

An excerpt from Greg Stolze’s Mask of the Other

In 1974, something came out of the sea during the invasion of Cyprus, killing Greeks and Turks indiscriminately until it was bombed into dormancy and entombed. In 1988 a rock band disappeared while filming on an abandoned island-town off the coast of Japan. In 1991, a squad of US infantry was attac…

Excerpts from The New Gothic by Stone Skin Press

Don’t embrace the darkness. Fear it. The Gothic is the most enduring literary tradition in history, but in recent years friendly ghosts and vegetarian vampires threaten its foundations. The New Gothic is a collection of short stories which revisits the core archetypes of the Gothic – th…

Chapter One of Night of the Hunter: Companions Codex, I by R.A. Salvatore

R.A. Salvatore’s New York Times best-selling saga continues as Drizzt Do’Urden and the Companions of the Hall join forces in an adventure filled with drow intrigue, the likes of which have not been seen in Salvatore’s work since the hugely successful the War of the Spider Queen se…

Chapter One of Into The Reach by Alana Abbott

In the land of Eranon, the Reach is a desolate place where people journey to forget who they are. Now, a menace rises from this wasteland, and he is hunting for someone. To keep the madman and his chaos behind the Reach, four adventurers with haunted pasts must rise to the challenge. But how can fa…