Who willingly walks into a haunted house?

Our readers do!

Since we launched Haunted: 11 Tales of Ghostly Horror in October we’ve received some excellent reviews and recently we won an award for the anthology. Here is a quick recap of some of the comments we’ve had from readers:

Dave at Hellnotes.com says:

Ghost hunting isn’t something that most people think of as a career, but there are people out there who solicit these types of services legitimately. They’re not just the stuff of horror fiction and films any longer, as attested by ghost hunter Jaeson K. Jrakman in his introduction. Daniel Defoe even wrote a book on the subject called The Secrets of the Invisible World Disclos’d in 1735. Still, whether the stories are true or made up, they make for great entertainment, and Haunted: 11 Tales of Ghostly Horror is no exception.

Joe at Wickedlilpixie.com says:

With the sheer number of ghost hunting shows that are littering the television landscape these days, not to mention in the movies, its nearly impossible for this book not to exist. It was only a matter of time. That being said, there is no doubt a need for a book like this in the market. While not a die hard Ghostbuster myself, the genre is part of my chosen areas of speciality. Also, as it was produced by a local small publisher and had several of my favorite authors – several of which were local – the choice for me to pick it up was an easy one.

Hunter from Ravenousmonster.com writes:

I think ghost stories are the hardest kind of horror to write. I love body horror, but it’s easier; a disease that causes you to sprout hands in random places, a woman with shark heads instead of breasts. . . .Sure it’s creepy, but there’s something a little Mr. Potato Head about it: stick enough body parts where they don’t belong and you’ve got instant scariness. A really good ghost story requires patience, atmosphere, and most of all pacing. The best ghost stories infuse mundane imagery with terrifying implication. The mundane trappings have changed–EVP and Polaroids replaced spirit writing and séances–but the would-be ghost story writer still has to take an old house or graveyard or ship and a dead guy who won’t suck your blood or eat your brains and imbue them with netherworldly horror.

Brian posted his review on DriveThruFiction.com and says:

“Haunted”, the debut anthology of FR Press, delivers an excellently paced collection of mysterious and terrifying tales. The collection focuses on stories about hauntings and the ghost hunters that investigate them. All eleven stories in “Haunted” possess their own merits, and are distinct enough that the anthology avoids the pitfall of having eleven different stories trying to do the same thing.

Typically I am not a fan of anthologies. Usually when I set aside time to read I want to be able to delve into a novel and lose myself for a few hours. The constant shifting of gears and restarting that occurs as you move from story to story in an anthology always makes me feel tossed about. “Haunted” however, has avoided (or the very least minimized) this problem for me. The eleven stories in the collection are laid out in such a way that it feels like you are traveling through an entire pot arc, not just eleven short, disparate plots.

Gerard over at Goodreads.com has a review that says:

Given that I have spent the last two years gorging on post apocalyptic books I thought it was time for a break and so I chose to read Haunted: 11 tales, these tales all infer a connection to Ghost Hunting. Many of us have seen this on TV and normally revolve around a few guys with tattoos jumping at the sign of moth; I was interested to see what writers would do with the genre. I have to say I was very pleasantly surprised; this is a great anthology by a group of writers which were largely unknown to me before and I will certainly be buying books from some of the contributors. The whole anthology flows really well with no real repetition.

We also just found out that Haunted: 11 Tales of Ghostly Horror won the Best Anthology category in the Preditors & Editors Readers’ Poll. The P&E Readers’ Poll is an annual event hosted by the Critters Writers Workshop where readers and fans can vote on their favorite books, authors and publishers. Thanks to our readers we took the top spot in this year’s event and we’re honored that so many would vote for our little collection of horror.

Haunted: 11 Tales of Ghostly Horror is available in eBook (PDF, ePub and Mobi/Kindle) and Print formats at DriveThruFiction.com. It is also available at the B&N Nook Store.

Related posts:

1. Monica Valentinelli is Haunted…
2. Haunted: Black Friday Special Offer!
3. Announcing Haunted: 11 Tales of Ghostly Horror

When the Streets of Bedlam Kickstarter launched at the end of November, I had modest goals for it. I just wanted to cover the cost of illustrating and producing the first book. But now, thanks to your support, the Kickstarter blew past that goal and is on its way toward five figures!

As a last-minute push toward that number, I’ve decided to add a new milestone and with it a new incentive to back the project.

If the Streets of Bedlam Kickstarter reaches $10k, acclaimed composer and sound designer Ed Lima will create an original soundtrack for the game! Ed provided the amazing track featured on the p romo trailer that launched earlier this week (which you can click below) but his work goes well beyond that. As an audio guy in the video games industry, Ed has worked on such projects as Doom 3, Prey, Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway, Borderlands, and he is currently head sound man at Respawn Entertainment.
When I first met Ed years ago, I was blown away by the work he was doing, and he just keeps getting better. I really enjoyed the track he did for the trailer and really want to see more of it. I hope you do too.

As an added incentive, every backer who pledges $45+ will get a free digital copy of the soundtrack as an extra-special thank you. Click below to hear what Ed’s already done. If we reach $10k, we’ll all get a lot more of this.

Read more about the Streets of Bedlam RPG at Kickstarter.com and StreetsOfBedlam.com.

Related posts:

1. Streets of Bedlam Interview with Jason L Blair
2. Streets of Bedlam: A Savage World of Crime + Corruption Kickstarter

Wizards of the Coast has announced a new edition of the Dungeons & Dragons RPG:

Charting the Course for D&D: Your Voice, Your Game

Mike Mearls says:

As you may have read in the New York Times, it’s an exciting time for Dungeons & Dragons. We are happy to announce today that we are developing the next iteration of D&D, and will be looking to the legions of D&D fans to help shape the future of the game along with us.

Our mission is to ensure that D&D enters its next 40 years as a vibrant, growing, and exciting game. By listening to the needs of the D&D community, we can meet this goal. As part of our increased efforts to engage with the player-base, we launched a series of weekly articles in early 2011, including Rule of Three and Legends & Lore, to give you a voice in our work. We’ve listened to both praise and criticism from all D&D fans, regardless of their edition of choice, and we’ll continue to do so.

That is why we are excited to share with you that starting in Spring 2012, we will be taking this process one step further and conducting ongoing open playtests with the gaming community to gather feedback on the new iteration of the game as we develop it. With your feedback and involvement, we can make D&D better than ever. We seek to build a foundation for the long-term health and growth of D&D, one rooted in the vital traits that make D&D unique and special. We want a game that rises above differences of play styles, campaign settings, and editions, one that takes the fundamental essence of D&D and brings it to the forefront of the game. In short, we want a game that is as simple or complex as you please, its action focused on combat, intrigue, and exploration as you desire. We want a game that is unmistakably D&D, but one that can easily become your D&D, the game that you want to run and play.

Of special note is the “open playtesting” elements that are going to be included in this edition. Much like previous efforts from Paizo for Pathfinder and White Wolf with Vampire: the Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition, WotC will be actively engaging fans for feedback and playtesting of this new edition of D&D:

More from the announcement:

For that reason, we want your participation. The goals we have set for ourselves are by no means trivial or easy. By involving you in this process, we can build a set of D&D rules that incorporate the wants and desires of D&D gamers around the world. We want to create a flexible game, rich with options for players and DMs to embrace or reject as they see fit, a game that brings D&D fans together rather than serves as one more category to splinter us apart.

You can sign up now at the Dungeons & Dragons website to be notified when the playtesting begins. In the meantime, you can share your opinions, talk with other gamers and stay in touch with D&D game designers by joining the official group page at http://community.wizards.com/dndnext.

No related posts.

The Vampire Retrospective Project continues today with an essay from Frederick Bell. Frederick tells us about how much he initially did not like Vampire and walked away from it for some time. He then re-discovered the game through online play. He goes on to tell us how playing the game online was one of the most rewarding gaming experiences of his life.

One fall evening

At first, I absolutely hated the Vampire the Masquerade game.

I hated everything about it. The haughty audacity of the game concept, the glorification of monsters, the hipster arrogance of the players, the model-perfect character art, and even the overly ornate layout of the game-books just grated against my sensibilities. My first attempts at playing in a chronicle were clumsy, confused and brutal affairs that always descended into sociopathy and sadism.

My suspicions confirmed after countless sessions, I turned down further offers to play in the World of Darkness.

It took a switch of game-play medium, from tabletop to online chat, for the game to reintroduce itself to me. With that change, it grew to be one of the richest and most life-changing experiences in my life.

One fall evening, more than a decade ago, the last person left the roleplaying chat room I was playing in, leaving me alone in the room and bored. Clicking back to the lobby, I saw that the Vampire the Masquerade room had more than twenty people currently playing. I figured I would go in for a laugh and nothing more, imagining being amused at sad attempts at roleplaying these monsters. Instead, I witnessed incredible writing and characterization by the other players in the room. Suddenly, I found myself flitting through a folder of spare character sheets, trying to find something to join these players.

I found a half-filled-out starting neonate with only a three letter name given name and ‘Gangrel’ scrawled at the top for the clan. No background, no surname, not even a generation recorded. At a loss for a background, I resonated my time in the Midwest underground techno scene into this bare shadow of a character, shaping his personal sense of style. As I played that first night, the life of the character began to take shape: a man on the cusp of leaving his warehouse-party days behind and fresh out of police academy finds himself as a new recruit in the world’s oldest war.

Lucky for me, a few players noted my character and my play and encouraged me to take this character to another site. They explained that the chat site run by White Wolf would be reopening soon, and they only played here because those official rooms were down. I accepted their invite, and at that moment, I realized something: I was enjoying playing in this setting even more than the medieval chat game. Was this really the same game that always previously always produced stories of torture and senseless murder?

Joining the official site, set in a fictionalized version of Kansas City, I was playing in a living game with hundreds of players and hundreds of storylines, all happening simultaneously, at all hours of the day. After two weeks, I was completely taken in by the game. While I intended this Gangrel to be nothing more than a foil to the more common character tropes and the numerous Elder and Ancilla Kindred, other players then began telling me that they absolutely loved this completely ‘against-type’ character. I honestly thought they were just being nice, or were just amused by the storylines I produced, but soon players began creating characters just to interact with mine.

Then I started receiving art of my character. Drawings, sketches, and paintings were sent from fellow players and fans around the world. Along with the art, others filled my inbox with fan-fiction, featuring future incarnations of the young Gangrel, or stories of alternate paths that the character never took. It was hard not to feel encouraged by the great gamers I played alongside.

For five years, the chat game was a major feature of my life. My attitude completely changed about the Vampire game, and it now eclipsed what I thought was possible with a game. I tried to play tabletop once more, and even the LARP versions in those years; it never held more than a passing interest to the complexities that the chat game presented. The game raised the level of my other gaming. In some ways, when I started online, I was just beginning to understand the need for motivations, and how a character’s background forms their beliefs and the reasoning behind their actions. My friends who did not play Vampire noticed that my characters in other games took on a deeper level of complexity around that time as well.

Understandably, the online format introduced me to friends throughout the world. I regularly played with people from all six of the populated continents. It also introduced me to some players who lived locally, and even one who lived nearby in Canada. One of my frequent co-conspirators invited me out to visit, and I joined their demonstrative LARP near Toronto as a player, cast member, and even worked in creating the world book for their game.

Shortly before the metaplot ended the game, I finally found that my life did not have enough time to continue playing. A majority of friends I made in the game had moved on to other endeavors in the years before, and the last of the group that I played with were playing at times I could not make. I finally retired the character, shuffling character sheets, scenes and websites to the digital archives on my PC.

Still, the friendships and memories remained. It was no surprise to my friends that I married that same Canadian who invited me to play in her LARP years before.

Despite my retirement from the venue, the memories of the game still called me back after a handful of years away. I searched periodically for some other venue to play in, and found they were few and far between, or populated with former players that I wished to avoid. My friends and wife would all talk fondly about the game, and review old logs of scenes where we would laugh at our mistakes and marvel at the complexity of what we created together.

Once the 20th anniversary edition of the game was announced, our resistance melted, and we started plotting to find a way to play once more. We now play in a small private game with rebooted versions of our old chat characters. It is not as persistent or expansive as the game once was, but it matches our busier lives now.

Sometimes, it seems your first impressions are just wrong. The game I once absolutely hated now has returned, and I am loving it all over again.

Frederick Bell – 2011

If you are interested in submitting an essay for the Vampire Retrospective Project please review the Submission Guidelines and let us know if you have any questions.

Related posts:

1. Vampire Retrospective: Adrian Stagg
2. Vampire Retrospective: Jacob Bjørnø Klünder
3. Vampire Retrospective: Morgan A. Oviatt

Being a fledgling author, I had often pondered what it would be like to participate in a public reading of one’s own work. I recently had the chance to find out. I agreed to assist in the promotion of Haunted: 11 Tales Of Ghostly Horror (FR Press, 2011), particularly since, as a contributor to the anthology, I have a personal stake in how well the book sells. Knowing that readings could help us immensely by generating interest and word-of-mouth advertising, I cast about town looking for likely venues.

It turns out that bookstores are good choices for readings, as one might expect. Also good, and perhaps not as obvious a choice in our Internet-driven culture, are public library branches. Always looking for ways to generate foot traffic, libraries are a great venue for hosting readings. Coffee shops are another venue with potential, though this last is one avenue we haven’t had time to pursue yet.

A word about attendance: Most writers will tell you of the soul-crushing possibility that no one will show up for your reading/autographing. I discovered I had a decent chance of avoiding this unfortunate occurrence with some extra planning and due diligence. Using social networking – Facebook, Twitter and countless other sites – to help promote your event is essential. You’ll be reaching your friends and relatives this way, which is helpful to add a friendly face or two to your audience. Also important: press releases sent to local media. While television and radio stations may seem an unlikely fit for such announcements, occasionally snippets or summaries of those press releases will get read on the air during the obligatory “what’s going on around town?” segments. In that same vein, sending press releases to local newspapers helps spread the word too. It’s important not to rely too heavily on only one medium to get the word out.

Our readings worked out well. Our first event – held at a public library branch on the night of Halloween – drew more than 20 people to hear two local authors read their creepy stories. The second event – at local bookstore A Room Of One’s Own – drew fewer people. Because of a small snafu in the publishing process, we did not have books available to sell at the library reading – definitely a missed opportunity. On the other hand, sales at the bookstore were fairly robust, and nearly everyone in the audience at the store walked away with a copy in hand. My understanding is that not all libraries allow sales on-site; check beforehand to confirm. In our case it was not only kosher but encouraged.

L to R: Georgia Beaverson; Monica Valentinelli; Jason Blair; Alex Bledsoe; Bill Bodden.

In our situation, we have four of the eleven authors who are local to the area, as well as the editor and publisher. Even so, organizing such that everyone’s schedules mesh successfully is no mean feat. We had two of the local authors for the library reading; all four of the locals turned out for the reading at the bookstore. Future readings are likely; with luck we’ll be able to organize a brief road trip or two to spread the word farther.

Working with a micro press for publication often gives the writer a great deal more control over their work, but is not without it’s difficulties. For one thing, getting the book into stores means someone is going to have to do a lot of leg work contacting independent bookstores to make it happen. Forget about Barnes and Noble; without a major publishing house behind the effort, they just aren’t interested in taking any chances. Can you special order a book from them to force them to carry it? Possibly. That doesn’t mean they’ll actually have it on shelves, but if you want to pay them in advance for a small press book, I’m sure even a behemoth like B & N will cheerfully try to order a copy in for you.

Participating in a reading was an enjoyable, though sometimes nerve-wracking experience. I would guide anyone considering reading their own work in public to a post by friend and fellow Haunted contributor Alex Bledsoe with helpful tips on the subject. The advice he’s collected in this post is well worth your time to read, even if you don’t have any wish to read to an audience. But if you do, it can turn an ordinary reading into a memorable and successful one.

No related posts.

The Vampire Retrospective Project continues today with an essay from Adrian Stagg, a reviewer over at DriveThruRPG. Adrian tells us about discovering Vampire at age 15 and how the World of Darkness has influenced his games and more.

The Vampire in the background.

Since I was fifteen, there has been a vampire lurking in background. Green marble and red rose, the book was to change very much how I approached role-playing and really, certain aspects of my life. I had been playing D&D, WEG’s Star Wars, Shadowrun and a dash of Cthuhlu before I discovered Vampire: the Masquerade. Compared to the other games, it held a slightly different allure. It challenged my perceptions of what a character should be, what a character should want, and above all – what a Storyteller needed to do to make the play experience a memorable one. In previous games, I had seen myself progressing through a Games Master evolutionary stage from vengeful adversary to a verbose monologuer, but aware that there existed a hallowed ground for the Storyteller.

It wasn’t until I cracked open my copy of Second Edition that I had tools at hand which made sense. The
Storyteller, I was soon to discover, should be an invested part of the character creation process, someone who helps the player to find their own voice and set their own goals. In later years, I would suddenly realise that this is the fundamental building blocks of project or research work – gather your stakeholders together, find out what they want and then try to work out a way so that everyone wins.

There have been some days when the cut-throat nature of the Vampiric Jyhad and internal organisational politics has held a horrifying alignment. With this came the realisation that a role-playing group could be a team which took pride in their creation. The World of Darkness was a flawed, dark and twisted place – a fitting reflection of our own world and we came to appreciate that the characters we populated this world with needed to be the same. They could be essentially ‘good’, striving to make their own small mark on the world, but they were prone to pettiness, cliquishness, arrogance, vanity, rage, envy and weakness (something reinforced daily on a high school campus).

Moreso than a reflection of the world, the population became a reflection of our group. Like the denizens of the World of Darkness, we nurtured small dreams kindled by teenage enthusiasm and naiveté, and I would say that many of us have needed to reinvent that dream (sometimes several times over) in the almost two decades since we started playing. It was also at this time that I discovered another foundation of roleplaying games – community.

It sounds foolish now in a hyper-connected world of online forums, chat. Skype and online play, but in 1993 in a small, ultra-conservative town it was hard enough to find Dungeons & Dragons players, let alone anyone up for a hard-hitting game about Vampires and Humanity. After fruitless attempts to progress my game, I looked further afield and was rewarded with a group of players; the youngest of which was five years my senior.

I helped to craft a World of Darkness with them, and they poured their life experience into the game (and my mind). By the time I was ready to leave High School, the play group had not only given me a couple of years of extraordinary play, but had shown me the their own trials of balancing work, study and the bills. I almost felt as though a strange Masquerade was being performed by the greater world, especially as most of my peers looked dewy-eyed at the thought of university study, living by themselves and ‘moving to the next phase’ (whatever that was meant to convey).

The skills they taught me during these years are still with me. They taught me ‘how the world works’, certainly not something covered in classes.

As we explored the frailty in the World of Darkness, a valuable lesson came to the fore. Previously, we had created invincible characters which sprang, whole-cloth, from the ground. They feared nothing and approached danger with carelessness. There seemed to be an expectation that weakness was not part of the hero’s identity – but Masquerade challenged this. It was a damned imperfect world, so perfect characters were out-of-theme. Suddenly, it was okay for your character to have flaws (as opposed to Flaws). The dilemmas for me didn’t stop there. Vampire’s approach to alternative history, their unvarnished approach to portraying societal issues (religion, politics, sexuality, violence, poverty, culture) forced me to evaluate my sometimes narrow-minded and prejudicial views. It is perhaps an indictment that this intellectual stimulation came from an RPG, rather than my formal education.

The truism here is that the nature of the game leads to questioning and reflection, and this doesn’t suit everyone.

So whilst the Vampire has been lurking in the background all this time, I’ve revisited it upon occasion and always walked away with something new, or more often things which were forgotten. It has always brought a wry smile to my face that it was a game line about Sex, Blood and Rock ‘n’ Roll which actually taught me about my own values and built the skills I take into my professional career today.

Vampire, to me, has always lived to its tagline of ‘Personal Horror’, and often the dark corners which have been illuminated are not my characters’ but my own.

Adrian Stagg – 2011

If you are interested in submitting an essay for the Vampire Retrospective Project please review the Submission Guidelines and let us know if you have any questions.

Related posts:

1. Vampire Retrospective: Tyler Ray
2. Vampire Retrospective: Michelle Webb
3. Vampire Retrospective: Eddy Webb

The Vampire Retrospective Project continues today with an essay from Tyler Ray. Tyler tells us about discovering Vampire at a convention in Las Vegas and the artwork and mood of Vampire have changed how he plays RPGs even today.

Scream dark and feral desires

Vampire The Masquerade brings up so many thoughts and images since it was brought to my attentions at convention in Vegas. The first soft cover green book showed that 16 year old the first time it was more about the character than the action. Those pages bound inside the book talking about the fight between man and the beast, are you really in control of your fate, and can you live in the structure of society or rebel against it. Staring at those Timothy Bradstreet images seeming to scream dark and feral desires. I still feel that I only started to scratch the memories that White Wolf has brought up when I played Vampire.

Looking back at all the games I played and places we went with sessions that played out to the wee hours of the morning. The game expand so much on the hobby I cherished, the just combat sessions changed to exploring the reasons. My group try to tear down prince through violence to practically selling ones soul to keep his power. The highs and lows The Masquerade would take you on was those games your group would talk about even after the game. Many of the ideals about running a game still carries on to my other games to this day.

The artwork always drew you into the mood of the games, dark, violent, sensual, and disturbing. Flipping through the pages just seeing the art would even give ideas for whole stories or campaign. The flavor quotes and pictures never let you forget that this was a game that wanted the story, not just some action sequence.

I don’t want to bore the reader with my gushing feelings for this game and the joy it has brought to me. For those that still play and reminisce, about pulling one over the Prince or being forced to grovel before a elder, may your dice come up tens. I must say thanks to all those who help develop the game that has change so much of my hobby and the way I play. You all have brought many years of joy since and still more for a new generation.

Tyler Ray – 2011

If you are interested in submitting an essay for the Vampire Retrospective Project please review the Submission Guidelines and let us know if you have any questions.

Related posts:

1. Vampire Retrospective: Adrian Stagg
2. Vampire Retrospective: Eddy Webb
3. Vampire Retrospective: Jacob Bjørnø Klünder

One of the tasks I have as Publisher Relations Manager at DriveThruRPG.com is working with publishers to get their books into the Now in Print program.

One publisher that has embraced this program as part of their new publishing model is White Wolf. Not only are they releasing all of their new titles in both PDF and Print, they are working with us to add all of the out-of-print World of Darkness and Exalted titles back in print and available again. The process has certainly had some challenges and taken much longer to get rolling than everyone involved had hoped, but the books are great and the fans have (mostly) been excited about these developments.

Some of the challenges with a project of this size include formatting issues. Some of the books are rather old and access to the original production files is hit-or-miss, meaning some of the books will be built from high-quality scans rather than digital production. Other books have design issues. Our print partner does not do full-bleed on black & white books, which means some of the interiors need to be altered slightly to accommodate this. This has already come up with some titles, such as Mage Noir, which was originally a PDF-only product. It had full bleed on the PDF edition and the Now in Print edition does not. The solution agreed on by White Wolf and the DTRPG prep team was to add in a small white border on the pages of these titles. This seemed like a smart compromise to get these books into production without having to enter them in as “color” books (color books can have full-bleed, such as the Vampire Translation Guide) and thus raising the price quite a bit. Of course, this solution did not please everyone, no compromise ever will. Still the overall response has been quite positive and I’m happy to have had a small part in it.

The process continues with more books in various stages of development and testing of new ideas on how to make them even better. Many of the books are even being offered in previously unavailable formats. For example you can now get World of Darkness: Book of the Dead in both hardcover and softcover formats. I had the opportunity to activate a decent batch of titles for print this morning and that sparked the idea for this post. I’d also be happy to answer questions as much as I’m able to about the program and process of getting these books in print at DriveThruRPG. The recent batch of titles include:

New World of Darkness:

Hunter: the Vigil
Witchfinders
The Pure

Classic World of Darkness:

Chaining the Beast
New York by Night
Lair of the Hidden
Ventrue Chronicles
Archons and Templars
The Red Sign
Werewolf Storytellers Handbook Revised
Bygone Bestiary
Players Guide to Garou
Savage Attack: A Player’s Guide to Rage

Exalted 2nd Edition:

Manual of Exalted Power: Infernals
Compass of Celestial Directions: Malfeas

The Now in Print program is also bringing out new books that have never been in print before like Glimpses of the Unknown for World of Darkness, Forsaken Chronicler’s Guide for Werewolf: the Forsaken and Dust to Dust a new adventure for Vampire: the Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition.

You can follow the latest additions to the Now in Print program at DriveThruRPG, be sure to click the Follow Your Favorites! box on the left column of the site if you want e-mail updates of new books added to Print. Of course, White Wolf is only one of the publishers I’ve been working with to get their titles into the Now in print program on DriveThruRPG. There are currently over 460 titles in print and available now. My own FR Press has HAUNTED: 11 Tales of Ghostly Horror available in print and the Queen of Crows will be as soon as I’ve had the chance to look over the proof copy. Other publishers with books in print include Nocturnal (Pendragon RPG), Dork Storm Press (Dork Tower comics), Posthuman Studios (Eclipse Phase Quickstart) and Pinnacle Entertainment (Deadlands fiction), just to name a few.

The program will continue to grow and evolve over time. I’m sure there will be new challenges that crop up and it might not work right for every book (or publisher), but I think it is a very cool thing for both new titles and classics that were once hard to find.

Related posts:

1. White Wolf 2011-2012 New Release Schedule!
2. White Wolf Halloween Sale!
3. White Wolf Publishing To Continue PDF Products

The Vampire Retrospective Project continues today with an essay from Kelley Barnes, who has been onvolved with Vampire a number of different ways over the years ranging from Camarilla Club Director to White Wolf’s Marketing Director and contributing author on Paths of Storytelling: Vampire and so much more. Kelley tells us about her experiences with LARP, the Gehenna announcement and the 20th Anniversary Edition of Vampire.

I’ll tell you a story…

Anton knelt by the pit. It was easily four feet wide, and he was near – far too close – to the flames of a dying fire. My back was to him, as I stared out into the forest weeping and trembling at the same time.

I wiped the blood tears from my face, listening as Anton shoveled dirt over embers, until we were left alone in the black of a moonless night, our work done and our hearts broken.

The memory of this scene has stayed with me for over a decade. It was 3 AM on a Saturday night, in a hotel ballroom in Pittsburgh, July 2001. There were five people in the room: a storyteller, two observers and two players. This was five years after I first was exposed to Vampire: The Masquerade. I had been a table-top player, but this particular scene unfolded in a LARP setting, at a convention called Neglect, hosted by White Wolf’s official fan club, The Camarilla.

Portraying my Ravnos character, Lucia, for seven years in this ongoing World of Darkness global chronicle was like being a cast member one of those afternoon soaps I’d watch between classes in college with wild storylines like Days of Our Lives. Only this show was taking place at night and with much darker themes being explored along with the fact that if your character died here, it was permanent. You were written out but could always return in a new role/with a new character.

White Wolf gave the fans an immersive setting and big beats in the form of Metaplot that was revealed in each new supplement. I bought these religiously and loved the Metaplot. In fact, when I started buying game lines and supplements from other companies – I was confused when they did not include portions of an ongoing storyline or revelations of big gameline secrets. Since Vampire was my first ‘more-than-one-session’ exposure to traditional gaming, I just assumed it was standard practice to link everything together, even loosely.

Metaplot was a blessing to me as a novice storyteller. I learned from reading the Vampire clanbooks and “Year of” books how to think in big picture terms about story arcs and how to pace plotlines so that the mystery, danger and romance of Vampire would keep my players engaged and waiting eagerly for the next session.

A few years pass, I remain a devotee of Vampire and happen to be present in a large ballroom at Gencon 2003, working as a volunteer, when this video starts and Mike Tinney is telling the crowd that The World of Darkness was coming to an end. The announcement takes everyone by surprise – and I mean everyone. I heard gasps from the audience. Threads start that day on rpg.net and on the White Wolf forums.

As subsequent books are published, I read about the Red Sign, the Withering, thin blooded Daywalkers and devour the Metaplot write-up for Ravnos: the Week of Nightmares – where the clan’s Antediluvian wakes from Torpor and starts to devour his childer and descendants – the start of the Final Nights. My character, Lucia gets to experience this and survives it only by killing two other members of her clan. Oh, the horror and the angst!

When I held the final book – Gehenna, in my hands I was excited and sad. The writers did not disappoint. They provided four different scenarios suggesting now to bring an end to the Kindred, suggestions for customizing and tailoring the events to best fit your game. It took me six days to read and absorb it. They had figured out how to bring closure to a product line that started twelve years earlier and do so while respecting their fans. I couldn’t wait to play out the events of this book. But, at the same time I wondered what it would be like to play in a post Final Nights world as one of only a few Kindred who survive. (Never got around to exploring that concept in a game session. Shucks!) I didn’t want my favorite escape from reality to come to an end.

Opening that book to the credits page as I sit here writing this, there are names of people I am lucky enough to call friends and co-workers: Justin Achilli – Developer, Rich Thomas – Art Direction, Mike Chaney – Layout. About 18 months after Gehenna was released, I joined the company as White Wolf’s Marketing Director. I was too late to be part of the team when the Classic World of Darkness was live, but it meant when the decision to celebrate the 20th anniversary with a new book was finalized, I was one of the first people to know and for days was giddy with excitement. Waiting for the official announcement to go out was torture.

There is a lack of Metaplot in V20 but that can be forgiven, because White Wolf is releasing more books coming in the Classic Vampire setting and that’s good enough for me. I will be waiting like I did before – impatient to see what comes next. There are some things you never outgrow.

The Vampire I came to love lives again and there is comfort in that, akin to sipping a glass of tawny port while sitting before a crackling fire. I found those notes I had put aside about a kindred after the Final Nights. Take a seat beside me, have a drink and I’ll tell you a story…

Kelley Barnes – 2011

If you are interested in submitting an essay for the Vampire Retrospective Project please review the Submission Guidelines and let us know if you have any questions.

Related posts:

1. Vampire Retrospective: Tyler Ray
2. Vampire Retrospective: Brian Petkash
3. Vampire Retrospective: Eddy Webb

The Vampire Retrospective Project continues today with an essay from Joshua Alan Doetsch, author of the novel Strangeness in the Proportion for World of Darkness. Joshua tells us about discovering Vampire: the Masquerade in 1995, exploring the World of Darkness and how his novel is “my love letter to The Masquerade and all of its ghoulish siblings.”

A Beast I am…

“A Beast I am lest a Beast I become.”

I was eight or nine when the slashers came for us. They lurched in with their sharp-sharp things to take us from our beds, stab us, rip us, decorate the lawn with our insides, deglove our heads, and wear our faces. But they found us ready, with our own sharp-sharp things, and on a school night, amidst laughing screams, we decorated the lawn. We wore their faces.

Wait. Fast forward. 1995. High school. Sixteen. The day I met Vampire: the Masquerade (2nd ed.), I wore a white dress shirt and black tie, both splattered in oily popcorn gore. On my way home from work, I stopped at a tiny B. Dalton bookstore–these were the days before the larger outlets swallowed them and choked. I worked with a cool crew at the movie theater, and the most interesting individuals talked about Clans and Disciplines and used sexy words like “obfuscate”. The undead were not new to me–Dracula, Nosferatu, a much worn copy of The Vampire Encyclopedia checked and rechecked out from the library. I had to know what this was about. I wanted to impress the girl that said “obfuscate”.

A rose! Green marble!

“A Storytelling Game of Personal Horror”

This was different. This was a tome. I knew, then, that this was an important moment–heavy inertia on the hard cover. Some books are like opening a door.

Rewind. Grade school. My first roleplaying group (though I didn’t know words like “roleplay” or “LARP” then): Nick, my little brother by two years–Mike and Brian were brothers, and their ages staggered with ours so that we fit together like the interlocked fingers of a secret handshake–and there was Brad, my best friend.

Our backyards connected, joined by other friendly neighbors, side to side and back to front, making a giant play space. Except for Mr. Butts’s yard. That was no man’s land. The rest was ours, with no fences to cut off our Never-never-paradise.

The slashers crept in sneakier than September. I had not seen the movies–Brad had seen one–Brian too. My dad let me watch some horror films with him. I could watch aliens burst from chests, but my parents were wary of the masked men and their knives. Still, we knew the slashers, knew them like the medieval peasant knows the devils in the woods.

Brad and Brian shared what they’d seen. We added our own bits. When my Mom shopped, I studied the VHS movie rental boxes on the horror rack–that familiar, dusty wall of hieroglyphs to a forbidden mythology. The pictures. The story fragments. We stitched it all together with threads of urban legend, cautionary tales of Satanists who sacrificed cats and dogs by the river, and with the dripping-charcoal horror of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. We built an entire mythos. And we were terrified.

We did the only sensible thing. We armed ourselves. We played Slasher. All it took was a spooky old coat from the Deep closet, a plastic knife or axe, and a ski-mask or Halloween mask–and then off and away and latex rubber was the smell of cackling catharsis–ha-ha-ha! We’d take turns becoming the slasher, but never the iconic movie maniacs; we made up our own. The rest of us tried to survive, armed with our own plastic arsenal. We shot, hacked, and ran-ran-ran, diving behind bushes, dashing up the slide to the safety of the playground fort. Sometimes we got the slasher. Sometimes he got us.

It took gallons of imaginary blood, but we learned the rules of how a psychopath becomes an indestructible inevitability. Not hard-chiseled rules, but floating, intuitive patterns, like knowing Superman needs his cape to fly–knowing you can run on air if you don’t look down. There are rules as to why some rippers refuse to die: improper burial, desecrated grave, committing a heinous crime before death, making/receiving a curse while dying, an innocent meeting a bad end, toxic levels of humiliation, falling into a bog and brewing into a leather mummy. A thing can be too evil or mean to die, like Mr. Butts–who yelled at us kids, who did not hand out Halloween candy, and who killed hatchlings in his birdhouses, Childermas style, if they were the wrong species. The rules for slaying a slasher were unique to each one: staking to the ground, decapitation, fire, acid, laying a crucifix on the bullet-ridden body, blowing him up and burying the pieces in separate graves.

We conjured bucketfuls of macabre glee in our backyard sanctum, under autumn’s gift of early dark, that planetary loophole in the laws of bedtime. We had the night or at least a peace of it, on lone till spring.

Children have shaman wisdom. If something disturbs them, they have nightmares, and then they put that thing into their games. Children have masks. They can transform themselves into the monster and play until they understand how to beat it. Children know that it is alright to love the things they fear.

Adults have clumsy tools to deal with fear: self-help books, pills, and horrible questions like, “What does this say about me?” They lose their masks.

Fast forward. 2007. I found out I won a novel contest from the company that gave me that wonderful tome over a decade ago. Top of the world, ma!

Fast forward. Now. My first novel is about to be released. Strangeness in the Proportion may be set in the New World of Darkness, but it’s my love letter to The Masquerade and all of its ghoulish siblings. Vampire was as important an epoch in my creative development as discovering Ray Bradbury or Poe. It let me play so many games, dress up for so many LARPS, become so many characters, tell so many stories, and make so many friends. These days, I am blessed to be able to make a living with my gaming and storytelling. Maybe someday, I’ll find that girl who said “obfuscate” and impress the hell out of her.

Here’s to the monsters who gave me so much. I’m terrified of them. I love them.

I don’t know what became of my first roleplaying group. My brother and I lost touch with them after moving to another part of the neighborhood, before high school. I remember Brian and Mike moving away–family problems, a divorce, and their sister’s suicide attempt. The last I heard of Brad were sketchy rumors that he’d gotten some girl pregnant and had been arrested for bringing a gun to school. I don’t know if life devoured my friends–those things that creep in sneakier than September and cut us down. I don’t know if they still have their masks.

I still have mine.

I visited the old neighborhood over the summer. On a 2 A.M. walk, I took a look at that stretch of backyards that had been our playing grounds. All the yards were dismembered by awful fences, sectioned into little cells.

Right now, I’m looking at Vampire 2nd ed. I have my original copy, worn with loose pages, but I also have a spare I bought at a used bookstore. A note penned inside the cover says: “This tome belongs to Steve D—-.” Steve thought of it as a tome too. You don’t write a note like that in a book unless you loved it. Vampire is a tool that has helped people hold on to their masks in the transition from childhood to adulthood. A sentence printed on the very first page, just above Mark Rein·Hagen’s name, reads:

“By becoming a monster, one learns what it is to be human.”

Joshua Alan Doetsch – 2011

If you are interested in submitting an essay for the Vampire Retrospective Project please review the Submission Guidelines and let us know if you have any questions.

Related posts:

1. Vampire Retrospective: Tyler Ray
2. Vampire Retrospective: Michelle Webb
3. Vampire Retrospective: Eddy Webb

Perplexed about what to get, or ask for, this Holiday season? Well, if you or someone you know loves horror, here are a few suggestions:

+Horror Library+, Vol. 1 – 4: These anthologies would be a treat for any lover of the macabre. Packed full of stories by some of the best writers around. See my review of Vol. 3 for a taste.

Locke & Key by Joe Hill, with illustrations by Gabriel Rodriguez: One can only hope that the television series based on these comics will be gracing our screens soon (pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease!). In the meantime, delve into the story of keys that can do just about anything (how about sticking every book you can find into your head and being able to recall the information at a moment’s notice?), a wicked-cool house, and the residents therein fighting against an evil entity.

Anything by Jonathan Maberry: Okay, it would almost be pointless to list one or two things by Maberry. The man has work coming out of his ears! By the time this list is posted, he’ll probably have seven more novels published, ten new comics, and a couple of other side projects to boot. Let’s just say that anything you pick up by him will be great, and for those that love zombies he’s the way to go. Just take a look: jonathanmaberry.com.

The Stephen King Illustrated Companion, by Bev Vincent: This book is an inspiration. If you know (or are) a writer and/or Stephen King fan, then this is a book to get. A comprehensive look at the life of one of the greatest writers to ever live, it’s full of interesting bits and pieces, like the first query letter SK wrote, rejection letters and more. Some of these interesting slices of life are in folders within the book, and even though they’re copies they look like the originals.

It’s Okay to be a Zombie, by Danny Evarts: This book is so much fun! I’d say it appeals to the kid in all of us, and would also be great for the little ones just starting to cut their teeth on the horror genre. Of course, it’s a parental/guardian’s call, but even if you’re not sure if this is something your kid is ready for, definitely pick it up for yourself or an age-appropriate someone else.

This is just a starting point, of course! So while you’re doing your holiday shopping this year, head on over to your local independent bookstore or local mom-and-pop shop. Also, check online and get items directly from the publishers or the authors themselves. Happy shopping!

by Nancy O. Greene

Related posts:

1. Year in Horror Movies 2010
2. Dead Man Holiday Final Issue on Indy Comic Week
3. Horror Webcomics: Call for Suggestions to Review

Flames Rising game reviewer Todd Cash has some suggestions for those looks to buy RPGs as a gift (or even pick up a little something for themselves). Most of these are items he has reviewed this year, so we’re going to link back to those reviews so readers can find more in-depth information if they wish.

Buying for Your Favorite Gamer 2011

It’s that time of the year again. Everyone’s wish lists are being compiled while retail stores scramble to offer the same crap they did last year only without making it seem that way.

Maybe this year it’s time for a new tradition, one that involves sleeping in on Black Friday. One that involves shopping for everyone while remaining in your pajamas. One that involves buying that gamer friend something they actually want. Of course, buying for gamers isn’t as hard as it used to be. Once upon a time you had to figure out what the Hell Junior actually wanted and then figure out where the Hell to buy the weird thing Junior just asked for. I can’t tell you what Junior wants (mainly because he isn’t real), but I can tell you about the coolest games I’ve seen in 2011. With helpful search engines finding these games are tons easier!

Let’s get started!

We’ll start small, if you can count the whole of the multiverse small. John Wick’s Flux ($5.00 for PDF) is an amazing idea for knocking the dust off your gaming collection. Players make their initial character for X setting while Flux lurks beneath. At some point in the campaign, the characters flux into new (GM-created) characters that recall the previous character…and can sometimes tap into that previous character’s mojo in order to do some truly fantastic stunts. Who wouldn’t want to become a superhuman speedster during a High Noon gunfight?

This is a brief (16 page) gem that has so much potential for gaming mileage. Available in PDF. A collection that includes this and other short games is also available in print.

The folks at GnomeStew.com have two excellent releases for gamers who aren’t committed to a specific setting. Their two releases–Eureka and Masks–offer setting-neutral scenarios and characters to populate any fantasy, sci-fi, or horror games (most other genres too). Eureka is a book of short stories (about two per page on average) designed with themes (betrayal, honor) and genre (horror). It’s an excellent mix of ideas that work especially well for the thirty-something GM who just doesn’t have time to plan out on a one-shot or filler session on short notice. Masks does the same thing, but with the NPC side of things (you could use ‘em as PCs too). These books are just all kinds of fun. They come in PDF and print.

Agents of Oblivion meets my Savage Worlds fix this year by offering a sexy mix of espionage and horror. Written by Sean Preston and Ed Wetterman, two veteran writers for the SW line, Agents of Oblivion lets directors play from many sub-sections of the espionage genre. The Bourne Identity is just as feasible as Get Smart. Who doesn’t want to see what happens when James Bond happens upon a villain seeking to stir up Things That Should Be Left Alone? These writers have both written material for 12 to Midnight, my favorite of the Savage World extended families. Their games show love for the hobby and attention to detail (heck, the copyright on the book suggests it was started in 2004). Available in PDF.

Hoodoo Blues is one of my favorite games at the moment. It’s not for the beginning gamer. The system is challenging and the subject matter is quite mature. In dealing with the sometimes troubled history of the American South, the game sometimes (as respectfully as a textbook) shows images and uses phrases that are painful to some. This aside, the game uses the folklore of the American South as its backdrop and they couldn’t have picked a stronger one. Know your gamer before you buy this one. Available in PDF and print.

Finally, I’ll throw in the Dresden Files two-book collection because, well, they are the sexiest books I’ve seen this year. How do I phrase my admiration for Evil Hat’s product? I am not a fan of the FATE system. I didn’t like it with Spirit of the Century; I still don’t like it. While I felt cheated with Spirit’s light setting material, I knew the collaborator’s on this project would not let me down. So, knowing I would not like the system, I threw down my ninety bucks and LOVED both releases. In game heaven, where I will go when I die, these books are the new standard in how game books are supposed to look. They work both as great gaming material (Your Story) and also as source material for the successful Dresden Files novels (Our World). Available in PDF and print.

Yeah, so that’s me this year. Lots of great releases hit the bookshelves (digital or not) this year. White Wolf and Pelgrane Press had lots of great products. Tastes vary greatly in the hobby, so doubtlessly my suggestions won’t go far; however, I hope they offer you a stepping stone in the right direction.

Happy Holidays!

No related posts.

The Vampire Retrospective Project continues today with an essay from Michelle Webb, author of the recently launched Life Imitates LARP column here at Flames Rising. Michelle tells us about her joining a Vampire LARP, being a member of the Camarilla fan club and the friends she has met along the way…

It was a nerds wildest dream!

When I went with my friend Scott to play in a Vampire game he’d heard about at his (now wife’s) school, I had no idea my life would be forever changed. At the time I was in my first marriage and working at jobs I hated, making just enough scratch to keep my head above water. Little did I know when I showed up at Angsthaus that night that I’d be here writing this all these years later. I’m now happily married and living the nerd dream of working in the gaming industry and being able to be a part of the game that changed my life. That game was Vampire the Masquerade.

Vampire changed my life. There are no doubts in my mind that Vampire changed my life. Through the game I found a cadre of friends who I call brother. Because of Vampire, I found my husband, Eddy (I’m sure you noticed the last name by now). Playing this game helped me deal with the sudden death of my mother when I was 27. When my world came tumbling down in December of 1998, I was lost and alone. My mom and I had been very close our whole lives. She was only 19 when I was born so we grew up together. We’d had our conflict as normal parent and child do, but I never in a million years thought at 27, she’d be gone. I was completely gutted. Vampire and my cadre of tight and dear friends helped me get outside of myself for a few hours to cope with my loss. Being someone else for a while with someone else’s problems and concerns allowed me to get perspective on my own pain. I’d tried to talk to counselors but they provided me no solace. I’m honestly not sure how I would have gotten through that year had it not been for my little alter ego that I played in email a bit each day and once a week a game just to break free from my reality.

When the opportunity came years later for Eddy to come work on the game we both loved, it was a no-brainer. Of course we’d come. I got into school to finish my masters here in Atlanta and we settled into our new home and life. During all the intervening years I’d been a member of the Camarilla Fan Club and worked to tell stories and bring joy to members all over the world. It was through that organization that I found a way to give back for all the good things that the game had provided me when I most desperately needed it.

When I was about to graduate from college, the dream came for me. I got a call from Jim to interview me for a job at CCP. It was a nerds wildest dream! Since that day, I’ve been living the dream. All of these things happened because my friend Scott showed me a flyer one night.

I often wonder where I’d have been if I hadn’t gone that night and hadn’t become hooked. I wonder what my life would have been like if I’d never met this game. I’d probably still be counting down the days to retirement in a marriage I’d grown to hate. I think about that life and I smile, knowing that because of a book full of heartless, selfish monsters, I found the best things in life.

Michelle Webb – 2011

If you are interested in submitting an essay for the Vampire Retrospective Project please review the Submission Guidelines and let us know if you have any questions.

Related posts:

1. Vampire Retrospective: Adrian Stagg
2. Vampire Retrospective: Tyler Ray
3. Vampire Retrospective: Brian Petkash

The Vampire Retrospective Project continues today with an essay from Todd Cash, one of the more prolific RPG reviewers here at Flames Rising. Todd tells us about his first experiences with Vampire, moving on to other games and now looking to start up some old characters once more.

Just the vampires…

I wouldn’t be gaming today if Vampire the Masquerade failed to exist. It sounds more melodramatic than the situation really is. I started gaming in 1987 with TSR’s Marvel Super Heroes and Top Secret. I loved comics and horror movies, wanted to be the heroes I read about, and found that outlet through gaming. While there were great horror games on the market, my exposure to them was limited (they didn’t advertise in comic books and Waldenbooks didn’t carry them).

My love for the hobby waned as I waded through high school. I still had the itch to tell stories, but my medium changed. I found myself writing more and gaming less. Most of my friends at the time didn’t even notice. They were much more content driving around with me at night rather than huddling around a table (we were such fools!). My problem rested in the fact that my super hero games tended to focus more on the secret identities of the characters rather than their heroic identities. My best friend at the time knew how to handle his football player-turned-super hero in a brawl, but not so well at a wedding. There were hassles at work, kids to be raised, and, yes, great battles against villainy midst it all. I wanted to tell very personal stories, but my friends couldn’t get past the comic book coating.

My Junior year welcomed in a new home, new friends, and new vampires. My friend Scott and I spent our Spring Break in Nashville. During the trip, we wandered into a comic store that happened to sell role-playing games. I picked up the Vampire Player’s Guide. We hung out in our hotel room that night and I devoured the book. It soon became evident to me that I was needing another book, so I called the comic shop and asked if they had it in stock. They didn’t, so I ordered one promised to be in stock at the week’s end. I don’t recall much of that Spring Break beyond reverse engineering the Player’s Guide so Scott could create his character, a Gangrel hitchhiker on the run from his malevolent sire. Yes, in hindsight I was telling stories of television’s The Incredible Hulk where both David Banner and Jack McGee where both of them were monsters. It was okay.

I had my super heroes on tap again and, without the spandex and origin stories, they were cool again.

The game became an excellent outlet for our writings. Vampire did hold to the traditional GM and players dynamic; however, it truly opened up the idea that everyone at the table were contributing towards a story. Games before that did not do this well or, generally, at all. I kept a journal devoted solely to the game (my evil idea book, according to my friends), created fictional calendars (villains keep a timeline), and started setting scenes to music (I can still hear a song from an Australian rave and picture a parking complex’s rooftop battle perfectly). Scott aimed his love of photography at interesting places and faces to populate our World by Night.

As I entered college, my gaming group grew for the first time in four years. Leaving the corebook to this game out was a conversation piece more than an embarrassment. New friends liked flipping through its moody pages. It came at such a perfect moment. The Crow flew at the theaters while bands like Nine Inch Nails challenged everything the Grunge bands offered. Girlfriends first wanted to sit around and watch, then they wanted to play. Friends of friends just wanted to watch these games we wouldn’t shut up about. I recall nights at my friend Sean’s house where more people lingered around not playing. Few games warrant a cheering section where taunts like “bite his ass” or “you can’t trust him” fill the air! Vampire could capture this, not the werewolves or spell-slingers.

Just the vampires.

Scott and I used to talk about the lure of the game. He attributed it to the simplicity of the vampire. “Anyone can get behind the idea of a vampire,” he’d say. Werewolf, needlessly complicated, became Captain Planet with claws. Another game already had wizards . . .

I began attending game conventions, ran my own brick and mortar game store for a little while, and kept writing. All the while, a modest green game (now in a binder with sheet protectors) directed my hobby. Characters nearly a decade old marked friendships equally old. With these new introductions though, came exposure to a myriad of other wonderful games, games I’d harshly compare to Vampire. Most didn’t do so well, but sometimes a game about zombies or cowboys or investigators of That Which Will Get You Killed would come along and raise the bar a bit more.

By the time I put the game behind me, I was forever a gamer. I knew exactly what I liked in a system, how much setting I needed to make me want to explore it further, and what a quality game needed to be quality. While Vampire is a genius model for the hobby, even the best ideas eventually becomes the cornerstone of something better (one hopes). It was time to move onto the next great idea.

Of course, twenty years have passed and she’s suddenly back in my life. Friends I haven’t talked to in over five years suddenly want to hang out. Old characters, no doubt hidden away in folders somewhere, find their ways into conversations. I find myself itching to try her out once more. I’ve already got a few players whimpering like puppies for me to give her a go. I shouldn’t be surprised. Scott explained it so perfectly in our apartment more than fifteen years ago.

Anyone can get behind the idea of a vampire.

Todd Cash – 2011

If you are interested in submitting an essay for the Vampire Retrospective Project please review the Submission Guidelines and let us know if you have any questions.

Related posts:

1. Vampire Retrospective: Tyler Ray
2. Vampire Retrospective: Michelle Webb
3. Vampire Retrospective: Eddy Webb

The Vampire Retrospective Project continues with a new essay from Dave Martin. Dave is the leader of the Wrecking Crew demo team. The Wrecking Crew ran a number of Vampire tabletop games at this year’s Grand Masquerade in New Orleans.

I am a better therapist because of Vampire.

I know this sounds crazy but it’s true. I run specialty groups for men in prison and on probation – between two jobs I run twelve of these groups every week with each group consisting of six to twelve men. It is my job to confront or challenge them in order to help them grow and meet their own goals. At the same time, I have to compare all of my participants’ clinical histories, match them to theories of treatment, and determine how they can benefit the group as a whole all without limiting the ability of my clients to express themselves and the issues which are significant to them as individuals. In short, while I must tend to each member of the group as an individual, I also have to see them as something more than their individual needs and goals.

This is what I do when I run a Vampire game. On one side, I have my players with their own inclinations and their characters. For example, I have one player who is nearly impervious to fear, while another normally plays Machiavellian characters who manipulate their coterie mates (and his fellow players alike) – within four games he will usually have a “patsy” lined up to take the fall for whatever he has planned. In order to run the game smoothly, I have to find story elements which interest the players and their characters as well as elements which can cause players as disparate as the two above to work together. Just as in group, the point is to challenge everyone both as individuals and as a group.

I take these story elements and characters and then insert them into my city. I take the sand box approach to Storytelling. Generally speaking, that means there are four layers in a city:

1) The Surface – Every element of the story which is easily accessible to those who live in the city (e.g. Laurett is the new Prince and the Tremere have taken a huge hit from the Sabbat last month).

2) The Top Layer – Those elements of the story which are only revealed after a bit of digging. These usually take the form of questions (e.g. Why did the last Prince voluntarily step down? Why are the Ventrue taking a backseat right now?)

3) The Meat – These are the elements to the story which answer the questions from the second layer (e.g. the last Prince stepped down so that he could manipulate the new Prince; the Ventrue are partially responsible for the breach that allowed the Sabbat to assault the Tremere and are keeping a low profile because of it.)

4) Secrets – Elements of the story which most characters will never come across but influence the story nonetheless (e.g. the true identity of the Prince of D.C.).
Once the sandbox is developed and the characters have been dropped in, the name of the game is consequences. The players choose what they will do. If they choose to stop and participate in an event (or orchestrate one) then they have to deal with the consequences; conversely, if they allow an event to happen without their participation they have to deal with the consequences. This challenges the players to gauge the consequences of their actions (and inactions) before they act. When presented with consequences the characters are confronted by the results of their actions. By weaving all of these consequences together, I cause the players to consider their own goals and actions but also how they function as a group. Just like my therapy groups.

I am a better therapist because of Vampire.

Dave Martin – 2011

If you are interested in submitting an essay for the Vampire Retrospective Project please review the Submission Guidelines and let us know if you have any questions.

Related posts:

1. Vampire Retrospective: Brian Petkash
2. Vampire Retrospective: Jacob Bjørnø Klünder
3. Vampire Retrospective: Morgan A. Oviatt

The Vampire Retrospective Project continues with a new essay from Tiphanie Gammon. Tiphanie got her start with Vampire as part of an online forum game. Here she tells us about that experience and her recent return to the night.

Carpe Noctem

My story with the World of Darkness started back in 2005, when a friend asked me to join a forum role-play with him. I was in eighth grade at the time, with seemingly endless free time, so of course I joined. And that moment, that choice to join, changed my life.

I was never into traditional table top role-plays — a horrific experience the one time I ever tried to purchase dice in my teens left me scarred and unwilling to leave the comfort of Japanese RPGs and manga until college — but I gave London by Night a chance since Jon thought it was cool. Why not, right? So, I wrote up a quirky little character named Kasen, added her to the cast list, and away she went, a normal girl who is suddenly thrust into supernatural conspiracy because she fell out of a tree. The premise was an attack by the Sabbat forces Kindred, Garou, and Imbued to form an alliance in an attempt to free the city. We got over two years of role-play in London by Night, and even now, four years later, I can’t help but think fondly back at that time. I grew as a writer learning the Masquerade, and as a person as I made some great friends that I still cherish today.

When I found out that Vampire: the Masquerade was turning twenty this year, I was shocked. It’s hard for me to imagine that I am the same age as my favorite tabletop. I’m already planning on picking up the 20h Anniversary Edition when it becomes available for Pay-per-print (unfortunately The Grand Masquerade was just a bit too far away from home and too close to the start of my junior year of university to make the trip to pick my own copy up), but how else could I celebrate twenty years of awesome gaming? I was cleaning my room a few days before I left for California when I found some old notes I had taken during the London by Night years about Kasen — her backstory, notes about her appearance, that sort of thing… But I also found some ideas I had for what would happen after London by Night.

Hundreds of hours pouring over pdf copies of the original books purchased on DriveThruRPG, writing on sticky notes, and researching the annals of classical World of Darkness history later, I decided on something. This November, I am embarking on my seventh year participating in National Novel Writing Month – 50K in 30 days. My entry will be “Kasen no Monogatari”, or “The Story of Kasen”, in which I hope to chronicle Kasen’s return to her homeland and the eventual end of the World of Darkness as she knows it. It was encouragement I found on London by Night to start writing fiction more often, to even participating in NaNoWriMo, so it only seems fitting that I work on London By Night’s successor. White Wolf gets to celebrate twenty years with a grand party and a new book; I get to celebrate seven with cramped fingers, extra stress, no sleep, and, hopefully, another wonderful story into a world I wish I never left.

As Lee, the incredible Storyteller who created London by Night, would say “Carpe Noctem! Seize the Night!”

Tiphanie Gammon – 2011

If you are interested in submitting an essay for the Vampire Retrospective Project please review the Submission Guidelines and let us know if you have any questions.

Related posts:

1. Vampire Retrospective: Kelley Barnes
2. Vampire Retrospective: Michelle Webb
3. Vampire Retrospective: Todd Cash

The Vampire Retrospective Project continues today with an essay from Brian Petkash. Brian tells us about his short time working at White Wolf, which in part led to him working with the National Association to Protect Children and becoming a teacher.

Fate is a curious thing

One doesn’t know what is planned out ahead of time, of course—God or the three old ladies or the oracle or the Flying Spaghetti Monster isn’t that open—but with hindsight it’s easy to see the willful hand, or paw, as it is in this case, of the cause-and-effect chain of fate.

I had played roleplaying games in high school, but only D&D, and a game my friends and I created that was a bastardized version of D&D—we thought it was clever, but it likely wasn’t even close to clever. I wasn’t even aware other roleplaying game companies existed, much less one focused on horror.

Going to school for a marketing degree, my dream was to work for a comic book, or similarly creative, company. I instead got my first marketing job with a small flash card company. The creativity there was somewhat . . . lacking.

But that gig got me to Book Expo America. And BEA is where White Wolf and I broke bread. Really. That’s how I met two of the earlier White Wolf employees, Wes Harris and Stephe Pagel, eating lunch. Taking a break from the floor of trade show madness, I was sitting alone at a table for four in the maddeningly overcrowded food court; people even had to eat sitting on the floor. Not so these two. They came right up and asked if they could join me.

Great guys. We enjoyed a nice talk over the kind of nasty-tasting pizza and French fries one expects at a food court. We shared discussions about comic books and vampires and RPGs and Harlan Ellison and werewolves and Collectible Card Games. By this time, I was also working nights at my local comic shop and was vaguely aware of the CCG Rage. But I really didn’t know White Wolf from Cain.

A year later, that chance meeting led to my being hired by White Wolf to handle one arm of their sales and distribution.

And I learned about White Wolf. I learned about Vampire. I learned about Werewolf. I learned about the World of Darkness. And I was taken in by it all. Here I was, working with some of the most creative—and drunk, let’s not forget the drunk—minds I had ever met, and selling their incredibly artistic and wonderfully written books. It was terrific.

But it’s the people with whom I worked that stick with me and who, in one form or another, remain my friends even twelve years after I left. (My wife at the time was not fond of my “career path” and, partly at her urging, I left White Wolf after two-and-a-half years.)

Fred Yelk, Mike Krause, Dean Burnham, Greg Fountain, Chris McDonough, Justin Achilli, Steve Wieck, Stewart Wieck, Ken Cliffe, Brian Glass, Rich Thomas, Pauline Benney, Chad Brown, Sarah Timbrook, Josh Timbrook, Robert Hatch, Paul Lepree, Andrew Bates, Mark Rein-Hagen. It was a helluva group to work with (and I know I am likely forgetting more than a few). Good friends, all, though I know I do not keep in touch like I should.

White Wolf’s flexible hours, an innovative policy for any company in 1997, allowed me to get involved in working with kids through Georgia Council on Child Abuse. Working with kids would later become an increasingly important part of my life, but it was at White Wolf that it got its start.

As a sales guy, I got to interact a lot more with the “outside” world than most. That interaction led to my developing four of the best friends a guy could ever have: Jon Leitheusser, Lou Bank, Lys Fulda, Danny Procell. These four have taken care of me over the years, through a variety of personal and professional changes. And it is through two of them that I was able to fulfill two huge dreams: I did indeed get to work in comics and, more important, I get to help kids through my involvement with PROTECT, the National Association to Protect Children, which in no small way influenced my decision to become a teacher.

I learned a lot from my time at White Wolf. Yet, when you’re in the middle of a period in your life, it’s hard to recognize what it is you’re learning; Fate doesn’t provide back-of-book advertisements to let you know what’s coming your way later. It’s only when you get some distance and take a hard look back that you can see the subtle and not-so-subtle paw that guided you along.

One of the first selling points I learned was that Vampire was simply about telling stories. But ultimately what I learned was that the story of your own life is one only you can write.

Brian Petkash – 2011

If you are interested in submitting an essay for the Vampire Retrospective Project please review the Submission Guidelines and let us know if you have any questions.

Related posts:

1. Vampire Retrospective: Eddy Webb
2. Vampire Retrospective: Pauline Benney
3. Vampire Retrospective: Jacob Bjørnø Klünder

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

Okay, the “birth of horror” comment really got under my skin. Horror has always been around. Read up on the origin of fairytales or dive into mythology and religion. Vampires, for example, are one of the oldest myths and they are part of almost every culture. Stories that induced fear was often used to help keep societies in line as they continued to grow. The origin of the changeling myth is a good example of that.

Now, outside of supernatural creatures (because I’m assuming that’s what the writer meant) modern horror didn’t just evolve in the 70s. Lovecraft is considered the father of modern horror, but other authors also influenced film, television, literature, etc. I’m not going to regale with “what I know” about Lovecraft, because that honor would be left to Kenneth Hite. One of the themes, however, that we are destined to fail does resonate with some of these splatterpunk movies. It’s not just about who’s physically stronger or weaker. It’s about who will, at the end of the horror, survive.

Anyway, the writer’s belief that horror is a metaphor for sex just keeps going on and on and on in this letter. I’m sure, if you’ve read any of my work or know me as a person, you understand how much I strongly disagree with this tack on “the birth of horror” and that it’s all about sex and violence toward women. Earlier this week, I wrote a few ramblings about personal bias online.

This, quite frankly, is a prime example of that. The writer later states that she doesn’t like ninety percent of horror movies. I’m guessing that she hasn’t seen ninety percent of all horror movies or believes that you can be a feminist and write/enjoy/watch horror. Like any other genre? Horror has sub-genres. There are so many flavors of horror, to lump it all into this bucket is short-sighted and ridiculous. I don’t like or read sappy romance books or movies. Does that mean I treat everything in romance to be the same? Hardly. I know what I like, and I know what I don’t like. I can talk about trends and I can tell you about themes I prefer, but I am not qualified to explain everything there is to know about romance because my tastes run more Buffy/Angel than Gone With the Wind.

The other reason why I wanted to point this letter out, is because I have encountered a stigma when I mention I lurk in the dark or write more horror-related tales. I don’t like to write gore for the sake of writing gore. Splatterpunk is a sub-genre, but it’s not my cup of tea. However, I’m female. And if there’s one thing that the writer here says is somewhat true, is that there is a popular belief horror is more for a male, rather than female, audience. Traditionally, within a certain framework of movies, I suppose that’s the case because it’s taboo for women and violence to be associated. There are remnants all over the place; women who are aggressive are bitches. See: the 80s.

This, however, has changed over the years with the mainstream accessibility of horror and the crossover with other genres. Urban fantasy. Romance. Science Fiction. Hell, I saw costumes of little girls dressed up as zombies when I was out at Halloween.

I know that as the popularity of TV shows like The Walking Dead and True Blood continue to spread, ideas of what true horror is will evolve. It can’t happen soon enough for me.

Monica Valentinelli

Related posts:

1. Year in Horror Movies 2010
2. Why “13 Ghosts” is a Classic Horror Film. New at Crackle.com!
3. Have a Horror Movie Buff You Need to Buy For? Jason Recommends…

Speak Out With Your Geek Out week has come and gone. Created by Monica Valentinelli, it was an Internet-wide phenomenon, prompting hundreds of people from all over the world to submit their tales of wonderful geekdom. I missed contributing my own geek-out post, which is a shame because there are a lot of things I geek about. From horror movies of all kinds (zombie movies and 80s cult being among my favorites), to Buffy and Angel, comic books, genre fiction, Anime, and gory foreign films. The list goes on.

So I wanted to take a look back at the Geek Week because I think SOWYGO sparked a discussion that was needed. Geeks are sometimes made fun of in media, and often in classrooms and the workplace. It doesn’t just stop there. Being different means, to some in this world, being stomped down at any time. So it’s important for people to come together and tell the world that enough is enough. The fact of the matter is that being different – being a geek, a dork, a nerd or what have you – is cool. It always has been, always will be. Take a clue from The Breakfast Club.

Here are a couple of the SOWYGO posts that I really enjoyed:

• “Speak Out With Your Geek Out – Hands Off My Dice!” at Elf Steaks and Halfling Bacon: I’ve long been on the outskirts of the RPG field, fascinated by the stories but still being more of a video game player myself, and I find there’s much to admire about the dedication and imagination of those hardcore into pen-and-paper RPG and LARPing. In Hands Off My Dice, the reader gets a lesson in manners and productive obsession. I know now for any possible future encounters that just because I see shiny dice sitting on a table at an RPG session, I can not yell out, “Oooo, shiny!” and start tossing them in the air to my heart’s content. (And, no, I’ve never done that.)

• “Like a Robot Farting” at John Toon – A Cry For Help: In this post, the author gives a detailed timeline of the history of music used in Dr. Who, complete with his first introduction to music outside of the realm of Elton John. I’ve been trying, enthusiastically, to get more into Dr. Who for years now. But outside of liking a few episodes (the Agatha Christie and one with zombies, namely), I’ve found that I just haven’t been able to get past the filming style of the show and the storylines don’t interest me as much as other science fiction programs like Eureka or BSG. But being determined to see if that can change, I’ve already agreed to be a part of an upcoming Dr. Who club, where each week participants will watch episodes (starting with the very first ones that are still available) and discuss. Now, after reading this post, I’ll pay more attention to the music as well. Plus, from the way it’s described, the music sounds like just the kind I’ll like, whether I enjoy the series or not.

There were numerous blog posts to choose from, and the above is only a brief sampling. Overall, I think SOWYGO would make for a great annual event, or even seasonal. Because geeking-out isn’t just a once-in-a-year kind of thing.

By Nancy O. Greene

Related posts:

1. Need Your Help! Feedback on Speak out with your Geek Out
2. 25 Blog Post Ideas for Speak Out with your Geek Out

Flames Rising is happy to announce the launch of a new column! Michelle Webb is here to talk about Live Action Role Playing and she wants to hear from you! Life Imitates LARP will explore the hobby, offer up some advice to Storytellers and Players and generally discuss this hobby. Michelle brings years of experience in running large-scale and local games. So, take it away Michelle…

“LARP – Isn’t that a kind of fish?” – Edge (WWE)[1]

When people hear the acronym LARP (Live Action Role Play) a number of images come to mind. Possibly it involves dressing up in medieval clothes and beating up each other with foam swords. It could also involve something that looks like this. When I got into LARP, it all started when a fellow Rocky Horror cast member said, “Hey, there is this Vampire game flyer. Why don’t we go check it out?” What I experienced that first night was the best combination of Table Top and acting in which I had the pleasure of indulging.

I’ve been a tabletop gamer since I was 8. Dungeons and Dragons was a birthday present that I’d begged my parents for that year because my cousin David showed me how cool it was. If anyone asks whom to blame for my affliction, I always make sure to mention him. Incidentally, he’s an ESL teacher in Thailand and using tabletop games to help the children learn English, but I digress (a tale for another day). I found as time went on and I’d sat at more tables, that people played their characters around the screen between combats.

I found this element of the gaming experience immensely enjoyable. When I got older, Rocky Horror was my outlet for my inner actor. LARP became a marriage of my inner geeks in a way that I’ve never been able to shake. Sixteen years later, I’m still playing Live Action Vampire and storytelling my local game for others who are old timers or even those who never heard of LARP until just now.

Matt has kindly indulged me by allowing me to waffle on about my experiences with LARP over the years and discuss topics that you may want to learn more about. Between playing and being a storyteller for all these years, I’d be happy to cover topics that may interest you. It is my hope that these fireside chats become a monthly habit and between my own musings and discussing topics of interest to you, the reader, can become a habit for you as well. So before I pick a topic, please share what things you’d like me to discuss!

Michelle Webb
Vampire LARP’er and gamer at large

[1] True story – when we were volunteering at the Brian Pillman Memorial Wrestling show, we met the wrestler, Edge. We’d been told that he played Vampire LARP so we asked him about it. That was his response. Clearly, we’d been led astray, but it does make for a funny little story.

About Michelle Webb
Michelle Webb has been a gamer since the age of 8 when she asked for her D&D box set and has never looked back.  Coined the “Mick Foley of all things Nerdy” she has been a dog bather, radio show host, voice actor, anthropologist, Rocky Horror Picture Show cast member, smoking cessation coach, storyteller and currently works in the game industry.  Live Action has been a passion for her since she found Vampire in 1995 and her husband Eddy through LARP in 1999.  Michelle lives in Atlanta with her husband Eddy, her partner, David, her two pugs (Puck and Vinny) and a cantankerous feline named Greebo.

Related posts:

1. Book of LARP Review
2. Vampire by Gaslight LARP Review
3. Laws of the Resurrection LARP Review