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…

Life Imitates LARP

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.

Vampire: The Masquerade exploded into hobby games in 1991 and inspired a generation of fans of which the game industry had never seen before or since. The cultural significance Vampire left on not just the gaming world but on modern vampire-related pop culture can be seen and felt at virtually every turn and in every medium today. Vampire: The Masquerade – 20th Anniversary Edition brings the entire World of Darkness experience full circle and will serve as the perfect anniversary milestone to celebrate two decades of gaming after dark. This is the original Masquerade in all its glory, and our way of saying thank you and welcome home.

The Vampire: 20th Anniversary Edition eBook is available now at the Flames Rising RPGNow Shop!

Shelter in Place is about survival, teamwork and fun. Designed for ten to twenty five players, the game captures the frenetic pace of a zombie movie in an action packed game. Players can take on the roles of Humans or Zombies in a desperate conflict to survive. Humans must use their wits to survive, making sacrifices in order to live through the night. The Zombies must use their brute, unrelenting strength and teamwork to overpower the humans and eat some delicious brains.

Shelter in Place blends all the fun of a good old-fashioned game of tag, with the camp and action of a zombie horror film. The system was created to be easy to read and understand for new gamers, but still a fun challenge to more experienced players. Shelter in Place comes with the option to add special “twist” characters who can change the game – from adding a cyborg to a vampire, these twist characters can make every game a surprise!

As the Wiki sez, Steampunk “is a sub-genre of science fiction, fantasy, alternative history, and speculative fiction that involves a setting where steam power is still widely used—usually Victorian era Britain—that incorporates elements of either science fiction or fantasy, and often features anachronistic technology or futuristic innovations as Victorians may have envisioned them.”

Steampunk is wild and funky; it is innovative and adventurous; it offers us with a glimpse of a world that never was but could have been. These days there is no shortage of steampunk novels and stories; Anti-Ice by Stephen Baxter was my first real exposure to it, but one can go all the way back to 1967 and Queen Victoria’s Bomb by Ronald W. Clark to get your fix. And, yes, I know Agatha Heterodyne is part of a “gaslight fantasy”, but she’s too cute to omit.

Brass & Steel is a hybrid live action/tabletop roleplaying game, with rules equally suited to both. It is an alternate 1905, where the mystically-fueled industrial revolution has produced amazing feats of technology and the sun never sets on the mighty British Empire. Clockwork marvels face off against against ancient sorcery. Airships cruise the skies. Lucid dreamers explore the mysteries of the subconscious and pluck secrets from the shadows of others’ imaginations. Mighty elixirs heal shattered bodies. Steam-powered prosthetics return crippled soldiers to the front lines wielding bizarre new weapons and equipment.

Brass & Steel: A Game of Steampunk Adventure is available at the Flames Rising Shop.

CELEBRATE GMs! ANNUAL RPGNOW SALE!

Buy your favorite games or try new ones from Postmortem Studios, Cubicle 7, Galileo Games, Pelgrane Press, Pinnacle Entertainment, Adamant Entertainment, White Wolf Publishing, Evil Hat Productions, Green Ronin, Malhavoc Press and even Flames Rising Press, including the best-selling title The Queen of Crows.

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

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

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

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

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

It’s been too long since I took part in Live Action Role-Playing. It was the mid-nineties at Egyptian Campaign in Carbondale, Illinois. The Southern Illinois University’s Student Center was the perfect setting for a session of the Masquerade. There were outdoor and indoor sets.

Hectic Narrators bounced all around in attempt to keep the action controlled. It was a great night, but I’m reasonably sure there wasn’t a story to speak of. Yeah, I recall a handful of werewolves being found dead outside the building. There was also something about the Prince being mad. To be honest, the game was an excuse for the largest number of gamers at the convention to cut loose and have fun. After reading City in the Sand, I have to wonder how much better that night would have been with a story underlying everything. I guess I should say a “good story that people were interested in” underlying everything. City in the Sand takes an interesting bit of cinema’s history and applies a little Vampire bite to it.

Witchfinder, an adventure for Cthulhu Live 3rd Edition, is designed for a large group to explore some Nazi evil-doings. Stay with me as this is my first true LARP review, so my format may be a little different. This adventure is written for roughly thirty players; however, the writers do make concessions for larger or smaller groups. The PDF comes in several formats. For the purposes of this review, I worked from the grayscale option.

Witchfinder’s layout is really cool, even when toned down. Each page looks burnt and aged around the edges. For the pages of props (Morse Code transcripts), this style will look nice for players. The character sheet handouts also have this border, but are also inset with key information required for the game. The characters’ histories can be folded back or cut off after the information is gleaned. Also, icons for the various (there are quite a few) factions in the game highlight each character insert.

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

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

White Wolf Publishing is well known for their Horror and Dark Fantasy RPGs. From the World of Darkness to games like Exalted: Abyssals, White Wolf creates great tabletop RPGs that define and shape gaming. In addition to their core game lines, White Wolf Alternative Publishing products include a wide selection of horror board games that range from World of Darkness games to fun board games for kids.

Flames Rising has been fortunate to receive support from White Wolf over the years; they’ve provided us with review copies, contest prizes and give-a-ways. When we mentioned we wanted to check out their recent selection of board games, Kelley Barnes-Herrmann (White Wolf Marketing Director and all-around awesome individual) agreed and sent us a box of games to dig into. The box arrived a day or two ago and we’ve only had the chance to crack them open a bit. So, what follows are our initial impressions after messing around with the contents and skimming the rules. More complete reviews will be on the way after we’ve had the chance to play the games.

Arcanum Imperii is a Cthulhu Live 3rd Edition script set in ancient Rome designed for a dozen or more players that includes introduction, timeline, prop, and costume information and character stats and bios for more than 30 characters. This download comes with three different variants of the game script — color, black-and-white, and background-free — and each of these comes in low-resolution screen-friendly and high-resolution printer-friendly versions.

Arcanum Imperii is available at the Flames Rising RPGNow Shop.

It is a good time to be a Cthulhu Gamer. Lots of very cool new stuff has hit the shelves in the last couple of weeks. I did a review of the new Cthulhu Rising board game from Twilight Creations last week.

The fun does not stop there, the Great Old One has been spotted all over the gaming world recently…

Everyone knows I’m a big fan of Skirmisher Publishing’s Cthulhu Live series and we have a handful of reviews on the site including The Old Man of Damascus and the 3rd Edition Core Book.

Well they just came out with a new script called Sight Unseen, which looks very, very cool.

Plenty of new cards, bad jokes and all, are included in this expansion for the Munchkin Bites card game from Steve Jackson Games. The set we got did not have any additional rules for the game and we did not run into any problems with the new cards (after all the information on the cards usually explains everything you need to know).

Expanding on the jokes in the core box, Pants Macabre has plenty of puns from horror films and horror RPGs (and LARPing). Most of the jokes are fairly predictable, but worth a good laugh if the player manages to add a little style to the delivery.

Our new addition to the Halloween Horror series is brought to use by game designer Eddy Webb (Mind’s Eye Theatre: The Awakening).

Eddy brings us a tale of desperation and horror, just what is a Quisivore? Is it coming for you next?

The Quisivore

Created by Eddy Webb

Eyewitness Transcript: January 24. Cincinnati, Ohio.
“The name ‘quisivore’ is something I made up, just a name to give it. I’m not even sure if the creature has a proper name, or if he’s part of a species. The one I met called himself Claude.”

“Claude looks human enough on the surface. He’s got a long, diamond-shaped scar on his face, but since I saw him over the rim of a burning oil drum late at night, I couldn’t get a really good look at him. As we talked, I started to realize that the scar wasn’t the only unusual thing about him. Everything he said was a statement. Everything. He never once asked a question, not even a rhetorical one. He didn’t ask me my name. He said ‘I don’t know your name,’ and let me fill in the gaps.

Paris at the end of the 19th century: a city of lights, music, excitement at the approach of the new century and aflame with the creative spirit of the Bohemian revolution. But for months the city has been locked in a state of fear as the brutal murderer known as the Raptor stalks the steep streets and narrow alleyways of the north-end hill neighborhood of Montmartre. Many refuse to leave their homes by night. Others frequent establishments such as “The Green Fairy,” an absinthe bar and popular meeting place for artists, actors, whores, criminals, and the well-to-do seeking to taste the thrills and pleasures of Montmartre. This evening, the patrons of “The Green Fairy” will be joined by a visitor beyond their darkest nightmares.

The Green Fairy is available at the Flames Rising RPGNow Shop for $6.99.

There was a lot of cool stuff going on this year for Free RPG Day. I managed to pick up a couple of different items when Noble Knight Games did their sale for the promotion. I got the Hunter: the Vigil Quickstart from White Wolf Publishing, the Trail of Cthulhu adventure from Pelgrane Press and the Murder at Miskatonic scenario from Skirmisher Publishing.

Not everyone was so lucky…either they did not have a local store that was participating in the event or they missed out on one or more of the items up for grabs. Well, the folks at Skirmisher have posted a new version of Murder at Miskatonic at RPGNow.

Gaming Extravaganza Brings Crowds to Indy for the Annual Convention

It’s that time of year again when gamers are gearing up for Gen Con Indy, the original, longest running and best-attended gaming show in North America. With an estimated 27,000 unique attendees converging on the Indianapolis Convention Center, visitors to Gen Con will immerse themselves in the 6,000+ gaming events and more than 250 exhibits over the four day extravaganza that has become the world’s premier game convention. Starting Thursday morning and running round-the-clock attendees can play their hearts out with fellow enthusiasts and by joining in card games, board games, video games, table top and live-action role-playing games, seminars, films, workshops and so much more. Activities range from interactive game play and computer gaming to big money hobby-related tournaments sponsored by industry leaders Upper Deck Entertainment and Wizards of the Coast. The event will be held August 14-17, 2008 at the Indiana Convention Center in Indianapolis.