Elminster Returns!

Elminster Must Die is the debut 4th edition appearance of one of the Forgotten Realms world’s most iconic characters, written by the creator of the original Forgotten Realms campaign setting. An instant classic, and a must-read for every Realms fan.

When the goddess of magic was murdered, Elminster’s world shattered. Once the most powerful wizard in the world, immortal, beloved of the goddess of magic, and the bane of villainy, he is now a tired old man. He is powerful but mortal, and with all the enemies a man who makes a habit of saving the world tends to accumulate. To make matters worse, Elminster has needs—feeding powerful magic items to the Simbul, his lover, is the only thing that keeps her sane—but their increasingly risky collection leads his enemies right to him.

Flames Rising is pleased to present a new interview with Elminster Must Die author Ed Greenwood.

FlamesRising.com is pleased to present you with an inside look at an event called “The Grand Masquerade.” This annual event, hosted by White Wolf Publishing, is held for fans of the World of Darkness. This interview was conducted by FlamesRising.com’s editor-in-chief Matt M McElroy, who is also a long-time fan, Storyteller and promoter of White Wolf.

I had the chance recently to sit down with Shane DeFreest, World of Darkness Community Developer for CCP/White Wolf, and ask him about the upcoming gathering called The Grand Masquerade. The Grand Masquerade is a World of Darkness Convention being held on September 23-26, 2010 at the Roosevelt Waldorf Astoria Hotel located in the New Orleans French Quarter.

I have been posting short updates and industry news that I’ve come across over on my LiveJournal for the past few months. Someone suggested that Flames Rising readers might like to hear some of the rattling that goes on in my head so…we’re going to give it shot. These posts will indeed be a bit of a random mix of links and commentary and most likely won’t follow any kind of set pattern. Feedback and comments are welcome.

Last week I was in Atlanta on business for the “day job” (aka DriveThruRPG.com). I’m still trying to catch up on my e-mail, so if I owe you something give me a few extra days. That or it got lost in the shuffle so feel free to ping me with a reminder…

FlamesRising.com is pleased to present you with an exclusive preview for a new supplement for SCION, published by White Wolf Publishing. Entitled Yazata: The Persian Gods, this supplement takes an in-depth look at the gods of ancient Persia. What’s in store for fans of SCION? New Boons, Knacks, Birthrights and Purviews, including a new general Purview called “Stars” which we have an exclusive sneak peek of right here at Flames Rising.

Yazata Developer Eddy Webb tells us “This is what’s great about fan-proposed products. Siavash sent in a proposal, and instantly we saw the potential of it. It took a while to find the right place for it in our schedule, but I think the work that he and Dean put into it is worth the wait.”

Fallout is the third volume in the Vampire Apocalypse series written by Derek Gunn. This story picks up almost immediately after the previous book, Descent into Chaos, wraps up. Now, the free humans are still recovering from the events of the previous novel, and have new challenges to face. Burdened by a huge influx of rescued people to their hidden community, the main characters have a lot of challenges weaning them off a deadly serum and integrating them into their new lives as survivors and freedom fighters.

I’ll say from the start that this review will be difficult to write without spoiling something in the story. There is a lot of action in this volume and plenty of twists and turns to the ongoing narrative. So, I’ll attempt to spoil as little as possible in the review, but a few minor bits might slip through in the process…

Castle Panic is a cooperative board game where players work together to protect their castle from an invading horde of Orcs, Trolls and their little Goblin minions. These monsters are bent on destroying what the humans have built and have a few nasty tricks up their sleeves to help them batter down the defenses of the castle.

My favorite element of Castle Panic is the teamwork to defend the castle from the attacking monster army. With a little strategy, plenty of communication and often…a little luck, the Heroes can defeat the Monsters with most of the castle intact at the end of the day.

Dancers in the Dusk and Swords at Dawn are bonus content books for Changeling: the Lost. Not part of the original planned publishing schedule these books were the result of excellent sales, fan support and the very creative folks at White Wolf stepping into the Hedge once more for another look around.

This book is an excellent mixture of art and writing, much like the rest of the Lost books. However, for reasons difficult to pinpoint exactly this book was a great read. There are tons of great story ideas and plots twists a Storyteller can introduce into a chronicle or even just make use of as inspiration for new ideas and threats to keep the tension going throughout the game.

As ICC 2009 rolled into its second day of events I had the chance to attend a retrospective panel that featured developers of both Mage and Werewolf games (past and present). On the panel were Ethan Skemp, Bill Bridges, Eddy Webb and Jess Heinig. The panel offered a good look back at some of the design choices and core themes of both games and gave fans a chance to ask some questions about the differences, from the developers point of view what the biggest differences were between the previous World of Darkness editions of the games and the new World of Darkness versions.

I’m attending International Camarilla Convention 2009 and for the first time, ICC is taking place in Atlanta…White Wolf’s stomping ground.

This year’s ICC has a ton of great looking events going on. Ranging from Requiem, Forsaken, Awakening and Lost LARP games that are part of the current global storyline, to a oWoD Sabbat LARP that is also a charity event raising funds for Get Well Gamers. In addition to the various LARP events there are some interesting panel discussions on the schedule that include several White Wolf staffers and other guests.

The recent headline from the NYTimes reads:

Bloggers Must Disclose Payments for Reviews

The Federal Trade Commission on Monday took steps to make product information and online reviews more accurate for consumers, regulating blogging for the first time and mandating that testimonials reflect typical results.

The FTC will require that writers on the Web clearly disclose any freebies or payments they get from companies for reviewing their products. The commission also said advertisers featuring testimonials that claim dramatic results cannot hide behind disclaimers that the results aren’t typical.

Cinemacomics brings us a new modern horror comic series called OF EVIL AND DARKNESS. To highlight their new horror comic, they put together a trailer that offers a sneak peek at the artwork and story designed by Jay Carvajal. OF EVIL AND DARKNESS is a mature-rated horror comic that deals with the paranormal.

Folks have been talking a bit here and there about the rumored, then confirmed efforts of DriveThruRPG.com to enter the Print-on-Demand field of retail for some time. Already the largest retailer of eBook versions of our favorite games (a some fiction, comics and magazines), with tons of great publishers big and small on board, DriveThruRPG offers a ton of new current titles and plenty of old out-of-print options for gamers to scoop up.

Not everyone is as big a fan of eBooks as I am, and some of the “collector market” prices on long out-of-print games are way, way too high. So, a lot of people have been looking forward to some information on the potential PoD efforts of DriveThruRPG. Well today we got some interesting news from Sean Patrick Fannon, Publisher Services Manager of DriveThruRPG:

When I first heard that Permuted Press was going to release a “robot” anthology I was a little skeptical. The folks at Permuted had done well sticking to the zombie/post-apocalyptic genre and I wondered what was up with the branch of into sci-fi. Nothing wrong with with it really, just me wondering what was up.

Anyway, I got the book a little while ago and had only manged to read the first couple of stories before getting really busy with conventions. I finally manged to get back into the collection just this week. Like most anthologies Robots Beyond has a mix of great fiction and not-so-great stories. With this many different authors and concepts in one collection there is bound to be a few tales that stand out among the set as awesome reads and fun adventures. Also, not everyone is going to enjoy the same stories. Different writing styles and characters will appeal to different readers. Stories that I like may not work for someone else, the opposite holds true as well.

GenCon Indy has wrapped up for another year and I’m making an attempt to get back into the work groove this week, which honestly isn’t easy this time around. I had a a great time at the convention, even though I over scheduled myself more than once. Several productive meetings and some good conversations later I’m already looking forward to next year.

Enough about that. A few highlights from the show. One of my first stops was the Pelgrane Press booth to check out the new Gumshoe books. The Esoterror Fact Book and Arkham Detective Tales are the only two I’ve managed to dig into at all so far, but Arcane Majicks and Hard Helix both look very cool as well.

Wizards of the Coast has just posted the new Fan Site Kit Policy for those interested in putting together a fansite for D&D 4th Edition (and it apparently covers Magic: the Gathering as well). Reactions have been…rather mixed so far:

The Seven-Sided Die has a good post called Wizards’ Fan Site Kit is not a fan site policy that is worth reading.

Geek Related tells us Wizards Fan Site Policy – What It’s Good For.

City in the Sand is a new Mind’s Eye Theatre product from White Wolf using the Storytelling Adventure System. This is the first MET product using the SAS format and I was immediately curious about how the format would work in a live-action environment. Let’s just say I was impressed with the overall quality of City in the Sand and at the amount of cool stuff that was included in this product.

I contacted the folks at White Wolf and had the chance to talk to the authors (Eddy Webb, Kelley Barnes and Jess Hartley) about the design of the product and a bit about Mind’s Eye Theatre in general.

We recently started a new game of Vampire: the Requiem set in Chicago. Interestingly the players decided early on that they would all be members of the same Covenant in the setting, allowing for some common interests and history for the group at the start of play.

As the Storyteller for the game I’ve been reading and making use of the published material in World of Darkness: Chicago and the Invictus Covenant book.

Of course, I will be adding a few twists and turns to keep things interesting and more fitting to our personal style of play. I’ve built up a list of interesting NPCs and ongoing plot threads throughout the city. The player characters’ goals are the main stage of this story, but nothing happens in a vacuum either. The other Covenants have plots going on in Chicago (not to forget about other members of the Invictus as well).

Voting for the 2009 ENnie Awards is about to begin. Lots of excellent titles this year so choosing among them is going to be very difficult in some categories. Let’s take a look at the Nominees one more time…wow, what a list.

You can click the “details” link on each one for more information about the particular products. I’m going to go through and pick one (or two) from each list that I think deserves a little extra attention. A lot of these categories have several titles I enjoy so this certainly is not going to be an easy task…

Everyone that knows me knows how much I love a good ghost story. When the living meet the dead things get all kinds of interesting. What does a ghost want? Why are they haunting this place (or person)? There are tons of possibilities to explore…

Geist, the latest addition to the World of Darkness, gives us a chance to answer those questions. I’ve been waiting, rather impatiently, for a new ghost game from White Wolf for some time. World of Darkness: Ghost Stories was an excellent book that I’ve made good use out of already. Yet, it wasn’t quite enough and did not offer the chance to play a character connected to the world of the dead. Geist certainly offers that and more.

So, White Wolf has been releasing a series of “Ready-Made Player Characters” for each game line in the World of Darkness. Todd Cash already reviewed the Vampire: the Requiem set called Slaughterhouse Five here at Flames Rising and had some interesting things to say about why he likes the concept.

I’m going to do a little more of that, especially now that I’ve had the chance to check out a few more of them. It seems that some folks are wondering why anyone would buy such a thing. I’ve seen a couple of posts on the White Wolf Forums to this effect and had at least one IM conversation about it. To me the idea seems like an excellent one. Not all gaming groups have lots of free time to devote just to character creation. Some groups only get together once in a while and would much rather dive into playing the game, rather than working up a backstory and stating out individual characters. These products are exactly what they say, “Ready-Made” and are good to go out of the box (so to speak).