A letter came across my feeds today written to film critic extraordinaire, Roger Ebert. In this letter to the editor, the writer states that:

Ever ask yourself what gave birth to the horror genre in the first place?

A: You’re a horny teenage boy and girls terrify you — which you find exciting: the combination of fear and the erotic. Almost every horror film taps into it and that’s why it’s a genre watched mostly by males.– A Reader’s Letter to Roger Ebert

On September 27th, Monte Cook took over for Mike Mearls as a columnist on the Wizards of the Coast website. Penning “Legends and Lore,” the series dives deep into the core of Dungeons and Dragons to explore the essence of this game. I recently had the chance to pore through these articles and he brings up some great points that I hadn’t thought of. What I feel this column does, is open the door to community-focused discussion and feedback from all gamers, not just players who prefer a particular edition of Dungeons and Dragons.

I really liked some of the subjects Monte addressed when he talked about Magic and Lore in Dungeons and Dragons. In the article, he posed these questions: “What if the game assumed no magic items? What if magic items really were just hard-fought-for treasure that made characters better?”

Remember my Neverwinter Nights on Facebook review? Dungeons and Dragons: Heroes of Neverwinter is a huge step up. It has music! And awesome graphics!

Okay, here’s a run through:

I create a new character. Choices are arranged by height: Fighter, Wizard, Cleric, Rogue and Custom. Curious, I click on “Custom.” Although I can create my own character and stats, I opt to go with an Eladrin Wizard.

One of the cool things about “new” media is a company’s ability to bridge the gap between paper and pencils with technology. Neverwinter Nights on Facebook is a social game you can play.

The first thing you do is roll stats. There’s no character class, but this min/maxer (That’s right.. Me…) rolled a few times until I got… Well… Some decent stats. The game didn’t work on Chrome so off to Firefox I go… That’s where I found out that punctuation doesn’t work in the character name field. I have an elf name I often use (Lazy, I know, I know…) but the apostrophe didn’t take.

Warhammer 40,000: SpaceMarine is a game that debuted for the PS3 (and other platforms). While I’m familiar with Games Workshop, I am new to to the Warhammer universe. I feel that’s important to keep in mind when you’re reading my review.

Part of the reason why I’ve never played Warhammer or read the fiction was because my impression was that I wasn’t really the target market for this setting. It has always felt very male-dominated and macho to me. Even though I felt that way, I always gave the property a healthy amount of respect. I consider the Warhammer SpaceMarine to be the original. Period.

SHADOW FALL is the third book in the Shadowchasers series by Seressia Glass. You can read my review of SHADOW CHASE, the second book in the series, here at Flames Rising.

An exhibit at an Egyptian museum and a dark mystery is the focal point for Kira Solomon and the other characters in SHADOW FALL. The events that happen in this book dive into Kira’s murky background and the reactions of all those around her — which aren’t always positive.

Speak Out with your Geek Out began with a single drop of creativity. Today, from where I sit, I’m floating happily along in an ocean of laughter, smiles and friendship. For that? I thank you muchly. (See: the answer to why is a raven like a writing desk.) The majority of the responses have been [...]

NIGHT VEIL is the second book in the Indigo Court series by NYT best-selling author Yasmine Galenorn. It follows the story of Cicely Waters who found herself inexplicably drawn to Grieve, a Fae Prince, then torn from his side. This story is the second in the series and may not be as powerful if you haven’t read the first book, so please keep that in mind when you’re reading this review and you’re worried about spoilers. My review of NIGHT MYST was published during our Vampire Week, and we do have a NIGHT VEIL excerpt you can read at your leisure.

One of the reasons why I like this series, is because Galenorn presents the darker side of magic, vampires, Fae and other creatures. This is not the happy-go-lucky world where everyone winds up together.

Today’s post is to give you some ideas to blog about. If you want to help, please share your ideas for blog post ideas in the comments below or contact me to do a guest post. Before I do, I want to share with you one of the debut posts encouraging people to sign on. [...]

We surpassed 500 committed bloggers for Speak Out with your Geek Out this weekend. If this keeps up? We’ll hit 1,000 by Thursday. For today’s post, the logo is revealed, a few questions are answered, and the Tumblr is unveiled. You are encouraged to share the logo and spread the word!

The other day, an article went viral around the internet. The writer decided to write about her dating experience in a very negative way to illustrate her point that people stereotype. The guy in question? A world champion Magic: the Gathering player. Unfortunately, the article was extremely mean and, as I later found out, the [...]

I just had the chance to watch The Last Lovecraft: The Relic of Cthulhu and I was impressed! For an independent film (one that has also won a couple of awards, I might add) this is an awesome film. What’s it about you ask?

Well, there is a story to be told here and quite honestly, the reason why this is a mini-review is because I really don’t want to spoil it for you. I feel this is the type of film you have to discover… laugh out loud… groan… And realize the costuming is just that much better than Mighty Morphin Power Rangers or The Keep.

Part of what makes this movie strong is the characterization and the nerdly discussions, but there are some other surprises hidden between the script’s pages.

To celebrate Lovecraft’s birthday this year, we went over to a friend’s house and popped open our shiny, new copy of Cthulhu Gloom from Atlas Games. Dubbed “the game of unspeakable incidents and squamous consequences,” our group consisted of five players — two of which weren’t as familiar with the Lovecraft mythos as we were.

So before we began, we attempted to channel Kenneth Hite and explain who Lovecraft and Cthulhu were. It was interested to see their reactions when they learned that one man inspired so many popular horror authors like Stephen King, Brian Lumley, etc. That, for me, was the best part about the game because then the cards mean something beyond their pretty pictures.

And pretty they are indeed. Instead of families, you play investigators ranging from those who work at Miskatonic University to the Village of Innsmouth. Since we played with five players, we each paired down our investigative group by one and gave that character to the fifth player.

GenCon: Indy 2011 has come and gone…already? The first DriveThruRPG partnership with White Wolf Publishing and select games from Malhavoc Press, Open Design, Nocturnal, Eden Studios and Abstract Nova was a lot of hard work but very rewarding.

The booth was located at the back of a very large and very huge hall, but that didn’t stop new and old fans of these games from driving on back to DriveThruRPG. The quality of the new books is really awesome; people were literally saying… “That’s POD?” when pointing to the Exalted Comic and Ptolus.

Hot off the presses, Ghost Story is the 13th installment in the Dresden Files series by Jim Butcher. At this point in the series, I would like to point out that if you haven’t read Changes or some of the earlier books, then this review will likely contain ***spoilers***. Be kind to the reviewer, folks.

First things first: due to the way characters are interwoven throughout the fabric of the plot, I would recommend that new readers do not pick up “this” book as the first one. While Butcher does a fine job of trying to facilitate the back story to remind readers who some of the existing characters are, the emotional gut-wrenching reaction that you may have as a reader will fizzle and pop like a dud firecracker.

As the title suggests, this is a Ghost Story.

The Magician King is a novel penned by author Lev Grossman that follows after the events of The Magicians. Before I go any further, I want to point out two things: first, you may want to read my The Magicians review or our preview of The Magicians to help you recall the plot. Second? If you haven’t read the first book, I’m not certain you’ll enjoy this one as much, for reasons which I’ll get into shortly.

As I mentioned above, The Magician King takes place after the events of The Magicians. Because of that, fair warning: I feel there is no possible way I can write this review without spoiling something for someone… So be kind to the reviewer. Please.

Some girls prefer diamonds and roses, but I get more out of things that I can either use or collect. Enter the Dice Goblin dice bags from an independent artist. Handmade and sturdy, I often get compliments on mine.

Available in the U.S. and internationally, the Dice Goblin dice bags are twenty-percent off through Saturday, July 30th.

Well, it’s been a little while since I’ve dropped in to talk about what I’ve been up to, so I thought I’d write about some of the exciting things that are happening behind-the-scenes. In this update, I talk about Geek’s Dream Girl, John Kovalic, The Creepy Cottontail and my helping out at the DriveThruRPG/ White Wolf booth at GenCon: Indy.

In July, my first article geared toward freelancers debuted on a site called Geek’s Dream Girl. My new column is written to help new writers move from commoner to freelancer and offers some “mechanics” to help you do that. Dubbed Calling all Freelancers: Adventure to Dice Castle, it’ll provide a different take on the topic and will appear once-a-month.

Shadow Chase is an urban fantasy novel written by Seressia Glass. While this book follows the events of Shadow Blade in the author’s series, I felt the story — which dives deep into Egyptian mythology — stands on its own.

Glass writes believable characters that we can all relate to by focusing on their internal struggles. I really liked reading about the emotional impact of the “things gone wrong.” When someone dies? We feel it. When Kira, the main character, makes a mistake? We experience her guilt. By focusing on what makes these characters human, in spite of their supernatural powers, I feel the author takes some risks because we don’t always see the “cost” of magic in our world. However, these risks are what makes the story and its characters more believable, because those emotions help us identify with them — regardless of their ethnic or cultural background.

Kira Solomon is a Shadowchaser. Although she’s human, she serves the Light and dispatches the Fallen. Although a lot of the worldbuilding was inspired by Egyptian mythology, the battle between good and evil takes center stage.

Hellboy: Oddest Jobs is an anthology edited by Christopher Golden and illustrated by Mike Mignola. The collection isn’t like other anthologies, for this one steers toward the category of “collectible.” You want this anthology to sit on your self to show-off to your friends.

As a collector of all things Hellboy myself, I picked up this anthology for two reasons: one, it was Hellboy and two, I knew that Christopher Golden’s involvement would ensure that the stories would have a certain quality to them.

I wasn’t disappointed. Although I didn’t like each and every story in the collection, there’s a broad range of tales and storytelling styles from authors I’ve read and authors I haven’t. Each plot stands on its own, however, and offers something new for fans of this franchise. I really appreciated A Room of One’s Own by China Mieville and Jiving with Shadows and Dragons and Long, Black Trains by Joe R. Lansdale.