It’s only eighteen pages. There is no artwork beyond some font variances. There are no graphs and no sidebars. You get no character sheet. There are some bullets, but that just seems sensible in a game about zombie survival (or is it Zombie survival?). Despite the utter lack of bells and whistles, it still costs five bucks (except mine was a free reviewer’s copy from Wicked Dead Brewing Company). You know what else?

It’s totally worth skipping out on a combo meal to snatch up this booklet.

Shotgun Diaries apparently started out as a birthday gift. As most things zombie-related, it got a bit out of hand.

Nearly all RPGs have a section devoted to the theory of how RPGs should be played. In fact, this is the part of a corebook I find myself rereading for inspiration. The skill of these chapters range from the banal to sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll goodness. If you want how-to theory that feels like Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club, then John Wick’s Play Dirty is the book for you. Making connections between the two proves simple. Heck, both books have a series of rules to follow. While we won’t talk about the rules of Fight Club, I will share Wick’s two rules:

Rule One: There are no rules.
Rule Two: Cheat anyway.

Review by Todd Cash

Today’s addition to the Halloween Horror series is not really a monster, but it is something of a nightmare and more than fitting for our collection. Brought to us by game designer and author, John Wick (Thirty, Necromonpoly), is a place of horror you don’t want to visit, Halloween or not.

How do you get in? How do you get out?

The Room

Created by John Wick

The Room remembers you. It keeps a little piece of you. Keeps it close to its heart.

They try to escape, but the Room keeps them close. Very close. In the Room, you can smell her hair and taste his cigar. Feel the cut of the broken bottle as it ripped her skin. Everyone who ever dreamed here left a little something of themselves behind. Memories and dreams caught in its teeth.

The new game by the Origins Award-winning author of Legend of the Five Rings and 7th Sea!

Ambition. Lust. Revenge. You cannot have one without the others.

Thousands of years ago, the ven ruled the world. They were a passionate people, obsessed with Romance and Revenge, opera and theater, and all the forbidden delights their decadent culture provided. In the end, that which made them beautiful was also the key to their own destruction. Houses of the Blooded is a game about tragic obsession. Set in the fantastic world of ven myth and legend, players take the roles of powerful characters bent on conquering their world, destroying their enemies and possessing all they desire.