Elkram is a tightly focused PDF supplement for 4E D&D. It offers a new race and all the requisite information needed as a player or DM to integrate this race into your game world. The creatures in question here are “Elk-Rams,” or bi-pedal elks with large sharp horns. The supplement offers a complete overview of this race, their place in the world, rules for players and feats as well as a paragon path.
Elkram is an interesting concept for a 4E supplement. The 4E platform is very modular, which is to say it is easy to design a single piece separate from the rest of the game and then drop that into an existing game world. There is no end to the possibilities of what could be designed in this fashion (e.g. single races, classes, paragon paths, epic destinies, small collections of magic items or rituals, etc). It is a shame that the first such supplement I have seen use this insightful creation method leaves a great deal to be desired in the area of design.

Review by Vincent Venturella

Adamant Entertainment’s d20 MasterKit line, which includes such acclaimed products as CORSAIR, HOT PURSUIT and others, will be discontinued and removed from our inventory as of Friday January 1st, 2009.
We currently have the entire product line on sale for $1 each, from now until the products are taken down for good.
It’s your last chance — [...]

TWO DOLLAR SALE! Goodman Games 3.5 d20 products are only $2.00 until December 31, when they go off sale forever. Buy now while you still can!
This sale includes:
DragonMech
Complete Guide Series
Xcrawl
…and many more d20 titles.
Get ‘em before they disappear forever, these titles are available at RPGNow.com.

Green Ronin Publishing announced today that it would keep its classic d20 System titles available under its new 3rd Era brand name. The process began this week with the re-release of six books in PDF format and will continue on a regular basis until all the titles are updated.

“The status of the old d20 logo is now unclear,” said Green Ronin President Chris Pramas, “so we created a new logo to replace it. This will keep PDFs of our back catalog available. We’re also going to offer Print on Demand editions through Lulu, so gamers who want hard copies of difficult to find products like the Book of Fiends will be able to get them.”

Lunar rains cascade down upon the blasted landscape of Highpoint. Lunar demons raze the ruins of once-great civilizations and assault the under-realms harboring the last of dying races. Across the surface of this once-great world, only the giant City Mechs hold sway, lumbering across charred and corrupted lands, seeking truth, beauty and a new beginning.

The world of “DragonMech” by Goodman Games is a post-apocalyptic fantasy setting where humans, dwarves, elves and other races have turned to technology to protect them in their final days.

Review by Michael Erb

The first Shadowrealm Preview was posted back in May here on Flames Rising. We also have an interview with Paul S. Kemp that tells us a bit about the novel. Shadowrealm is book three of the Twilight War and is available for pre-order at Amazon.com.

Today we have another snippet from the upcoming novel for fans to enjoy. The scene features the fallen paladin, Abelar Corrinthal.

I am a sucker for the undead. In the history of my D&D experience I have always gravitated toward playing necromancers. There was something awe-inspiring about those who used their magic to alter the rules of death. One thing all of my necromancers have in common is that none of them were evil. The idea of the black-cloaked cackling lunatic, raising shambling hordes was so cliche as to be completely uninteresting to me. A good or neutral wizard who used the walking dead to battle the true evils of the world: that was a concept I could get behind.

This book had me at Lawful Good Lich.

Review by Vincent Venturella

Over on the ENWorld Forums “MongooseMatt” has offered up a huge amount of the Mongoose Publishing d20 catalog for a free wiki project…

We produced a great deal of OGC under D20. Most of these books are now out of print, with just PDF copies available - by the end of the year these will disappear too, as it is not realistic for us to remove D20 licensing off every product we produced over the years. Just too many!

However, it seems a shame to have all this material simply disappear, so. . .

If there is any interest, we would be prepared to make the vast majority of our D20-based content available freely. In the past, there has been talk about an OGC Wiki of sorts, and I think we can kick such a project off in a sizeable way.

We’ve had our review of the 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons posted for a few days already. The review seems to be pretty popular as well. We also reported that Wizards of the Coast will be a Co-Sponsor at GenCon recently.

Flames Rising is primarily a Horror & Dark Fantasy website, but we really can’t ignore a new edition of D&D. Other sites with a bit more focus on the game have plenty of interesting discussion going on, the RPGNet D&D Forum, EN World and Story Games, just to name a few.

Initial reports have been pretty positive, some retailers are mentioning decent sales and online offers from Amazon.com and Noble Knight Games also seem to be in high demand.

The past will come back to haunt them…

A group of warriors from Rashemen escorts an exiled wizard to a ruined citadel in the City of Weeping Ghosts. Once there, the wizard discovers a barbarian tribe is trying to unlock the secrets of the citadel and the weapon that destroyed it two thousand years ago.

A series that centers on the citadels - castles, keeps, fortreeses, and watchtowers - of the Forgotten Realms world, each book in The Citadels series is a self-contained fantasy adventure.

The Shield of Weeping Ghosts is available at Amazon.com

Reading through the books 4th Edition feels, to me, very much like an introductory game in a way that 3rd Edition wasn’t. The look, the feel, the language all seem, to me, to be angled towards bringing in new players. This is a really good thing, obviously, but I think that the targetting of the MMO market - which seems to be the aim - is a miscalculation. TTRPGs can’t beat MMOs at their own game, D&D aping MMORPGs is a bit like having your dad go through a midlife crisis, dying his hair, driving a porsche and trying to pass himself off as ‘Emo’. It’s a little embarrassing and not what he’s really good at. I think it may have been more productive to go after the areas where TTRPGs still excel over CRPGs and MMORPGs but hey, nobody listens to me.

Review by James ‘Grim’ Desborough

12 to Midnight publishes modern horror roleplaying games and accessories.

In this interview Ed Wetterman and Preston DuBose take us on a tour of Pinebox and then they explain a little bit about the design process that went into the new Steamworks d20 fantasy book.

We also get to hear about why 12 to Midnight likes the Savage Worlds system and get some details on the first ever Midnight Charity Project.

This is a tightly presented 165 page PDF in two column format in a fair imitation of much of Wizard’s own presentation, it cover PC and NPC character clases, prestige classes, mechanical devices and effects, the interaction of magic and technology, automations, skills, feats and everything else. Basically this is one entire plug-in to bring technology and its users into the game, along with brief discussions on the affect technological change might have on a society and the means by which it might be introduced. To my mind there wasn’t enough material on this side of things, doubtless to make room for all the mechanical crunch.

Review by James ‘Grim’ Desborough

Key Encounters: The Volcanic Shrine combines the writing and imagination of fan favorite Monte Cook with SkeletonKey Games‘ best selling miniatures-scale tiles to bring a detailed encounter to your table top. The Volcanic Shrine is a major encounter for fantasy d20 games that can be built with the 20 brand-new, custom designed miniatures-scale tiles included in the product. The encounter details the link between a massive lake of lava deep underground and the Elemental Plane of Fire itself. This encounter could be used as the center point of an entire adventure involving creatures of flame and the evil plot of a dark elemental creature known as Kaliastrix.

The Revised Tome of Horrors is a massive play on nostalgia. A book hoping that you miss the strange, often inexplicable and forgettable monsters from 1st edition. The problem becomes, that if you do not know what the hell these monsters are and you have no attachment to a pech or a tentamort, you will think this is simply a massive collection of strange and unremarkable creatures.

The book is single minded in its approach; proudly presenting you with over 300 monsters from the “good old days” of D&D. It clocks in at a massive 451 pages and is only available in PDF format. The reason for this decision is explained at the opening of the book. Ultimately it boils down to the cost involved with a reprint of a book this size.

Review by Vincent Venturella

Now available from 12 to Midnight!

Ever wish you could just toss a grenade into a room full of orcs? Or wish you had an automaton to scout out a booby trapped hallway? Or that you could let your fantasy characters explore the ruins of an ancient, technologically advanced civilization? If you’ve ever wanted to introduce a little bit of steampunk into your fantasy campaign, then you want Steamworks!

The game of Dungeons & Dragons is, at its core, a game of epic fantasy. The characters we choose and role-play more closely resemble the mythological heroes of ancient times or modern fantasy literature. The nature of an epic fantasy adventure is that the hero(es) will face a great threat which will endanger the lives of innocents/family/the world. There will be a great struggle, but the outcome is never in question. Epic fantasy stories end with our protagonist overcoming the long odds and great trials to become a truly legendary hero. But this begs an interesting question.

What if the hero can not succeed?

Review by Vincent Venturella

Brainwashed is a d20 Modern, horror adventure by 12 to Midnight, written by the impressively named Preston P. DuBose and illustrated by Nicole Cardiff (cover) and Steve Bentley (interior). It follows the misadventures of a group of investigators as they probe the mysterious and sudden popularity of the Harmony Farm commune/cult and get to the bottom of a strange and otherworldly secret. The blurb professes an ambition for a Lovecraftian feel to the game, good to aim high, and it references 12 to Midnight’s horror supplemental rules effort Fear Effects, which - unfortunately - I haven’t read, so I can’t comment on the adventure in that respect. I also now, ahead of time and with full understanding of my own hypocrisy here, having written published adventures before, admit that I just generally don’t like pre-written adventures as they don’t suit my free-wheeling style of GMing.

Review by James ‘Grim’ Desborough

E. Gary Gygax has passed away. Gary was one of the creators of Dungeons & Dragons, in addition to many other games and novels over the years.
I had the chance to game with him a couple of times at various conventions over the years. I’m planning on GMing a little old-school “Dungeon Crawl” tonight, I [...]

I should probably note before I commence that I am not much of a fan of the original Ravenloft, or of the world as a whole. Of the alternative game settings offered in the last gasps of TSR Ravenloft is much weaker - in my opinion - than Dark Sun or Planescape. To me it just all seemed a little too cheesy, a little too Bela Lugosi and we all know how unscary the old 40s and 50s horror films seem these days. Some of that ‘cheese’ always seemed to taint my encounters with Ravenloft from fortune telling gypsies to vampire lords and, so, I’ve never been that enamoured of it. I know people love it though, so I’ll try to rate this d20 remake gazetteer based on its individual content rather than the world it describes.