Flash Fire Mini-Reviews! (Hunters & Slayers)
By Matt-M-McElroy | May 9, 2008
Since we’ve started posting some teasers for the Hunter: the Vigil RPG this week I figured I would keep up with the theme and post about a few of the other monster hunter items that have caught my eye recently…
Comics, games supplements and fiction make up the mix this week…
Topics: Flash Fire Mini-Reviews | No Comments »
Hunter: The Vigil Logo Revealed
By Matt-M-McElroy | April 22, 2008
The folks at White Wolf may be at GTS (GAMA Trade Show) but they still have a few surprises in store for the fans this week…
The first one is the new logo for Hunter: The Vigil. Check it out -here-. While the logo is certainly interesting it was the flavor text that got me thinking…
As long as monsters have prowled the darkness, brave and desperate mortals have walked out of the protective ring of firelight to pursue those shadows.
Some die. Many go mad.
But someone else always picks up the candle and steps into the dark…
Sounds like hunting monsters is not only lethal to mortals, but they have a good chance of going crazy while they are at it. I’m guessing they have something along the lines of Clarity from Changeling: the Lost which measures how well these Hunters balance their “normal” lives with their “hunter” lives.
What do you think?
Topics: Horror News | No Comments »
Monte Cook’s The Volcanic Shrine
By Flames | April 19, 2008
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.
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Tome of Horrors Revised Review
By Flames | April 16, 2008
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
Topics: Roleplaying Game Reviews | No Comments »
Eat the Dark Fiction Review
By Flames | April 15, 2008
I had high hopes for this book. The author is a pal of one of my favorites, Mr Mark Henry. And he’s an MRI tech. That latter factor particularly perked me because I love medical thrillers, and people with medical qualifications are smart, and I like to associate with those more intelligent than I. I was thinking Mr Schreiber would be my kind of writer, a male Tess Gerritsen - and it certainly helped that the aforementioned Ms Gerritsen had a blurb right on the front cover.
Review by Tez Miller
Topics: Fiction Reviews | No Comments »
Book of Bones: Blighted Bestiary
By Flames | April 12, 2008
Let them know obedience. Let them know desolation. But, most of all, let them know pain… - Salena Valanas, instructing the Shapers Guild
Written by Hal Maclean and Mathew Kaiser, the Blighted Bestiary presents a host of new monsters and minions designed to help the blight elves carry out their crusade of visiting misery to every corner of the world. Though designed as a companion volume to Blight Elves: Architects of Despair, a Narrator could easily adapt the creatures, templates and even stat blocks of different creatures found within this book to fit other situations. Every world needs villains, the more dastardly the better, and the blight elves, devoted servants to the goddess of suicide, bring an entirely new dimension to villainy.
Topics: Horror News | 1 Comment »
Halfway to the Grave Fiction Review
By Flames | April 4, 2008
Cat Crawfield would love to kill her father. Literally. After raping her mother, he took off, leaving Cat as a reminder of the evening. Oh, and he’s a vampire, making Cat a weird sort of hybrid: living with but a vampire’s strength and speed. So as a way to get even, she starts hunting vamps, picking them up at clubs and staking them for all they’re worth. Every time she does it, there’s one less monster in the world. But then she meets Bones, a vampire far stronger than any she’s met before. When he threatens to kill her unless she studies under him, she challenges him to a duel of sorts–as the loser, she is forced to train with him, learning to be a better, more effective vampire hunter, ready to take on some of the big marks.
Review by Alana Abbott
Topics: Fiction Reviews | 2 Comments »
Heroes of Horror (D&D) RPG Review
By Flames | March 31, 2008
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
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Element Encyclopedia of Magical Creatures Review
By Monica Valentinelli | February 16, 2008
Great for writers and game designers, I’ve never come across a more thorough and massive work detailing creatures so rare you may not recognize them. There are two, other books in the series entitled, The Element Encyclopedia of 5000 Spells and The Element Encyclopedia of Witchcraft. If either of those two books are as down-to-earth and fact-filled as this one, I wouldn’t hesitate to buy either one to add substance to my fantasy stories.
Topics: Nonfiction Reviews, Reviews | 1 Comment »
Interview with Ralan Conley, creator of Ralan.com
By Flames | February 7, 2008
Whether you have tried to publish one piece of fiction or 100, chances are you visited Ralan.com’s SpecFic and Humor Webstravaganza for better listings of publishers than the Writer’s Market has to offer. In this interview, we hear from Ralan himself about his work and the thoughts behind offering free information for all writers to access.
If you’re not familiar with the site, Ralan does offer this invaluable information for free and survives off of donations and the kindness of others. This massive source of publishers, webzines and contests features everything from Weird Tales to Ralan’s Flash Fiction Contest. So sit back and hear from the man behind Ralan.com about his fiction, freelancing and other projects.
Topics: Interviews | 1 Comment »
Dread: The First Book of Pandemonium Review
By Matt-M-McElroy | January 29, 2008
Dread is a violent horror game from Neoplastic Press about hunting demons and it is presented in a chaotic punk wave throughout the book. This review is of the revised and updated edition of the game. The revised edition cleans up some of the rules, expands the magic and adds a few new demons for the characters to deal with.
Topics: Roleplaying Game Reviews | 4 Comments »
Cloverfield Movie Review
By Flames | January 27, 2008
Review by: Jason Thorson
Sometimes the most innovative ideas are so simple, it’s amazing they haven’t already been done. Such is the case with Cloverfield - a giant monster movie shot entirely from the perspective of a character’s camcorder. Produced by J.J. Abrams, written by Drew Goddard, and directed by Matt Reeves, all of whom are television vets having been responsible for episodes of Lost, Buffy, Angel, Alias, and others, Cloverfield is more than merely Godzilla meets The Blair Witch Project. It’s unique in that it attempts to give us fully developed characters to inhabit it’s high concept scenario and entirely besieged Manhattan setting.
Topics: TV Series and Movie Reviews | 3 Comments »
SAW Movies and Creepy Dolls
By Matt-M-McElroy | January 26, 2008
The Saw movies have been pretty popular with horror fans for the last several years. Popular enough for a fourth movie to hit the shelves recently (and don’t forget the special edition of the first three movies that came out in October).
There are plenty of tie-products as well, including hats and t-shirts of course. I think my favorite though is the SAW Plush Doll from Sideshow Collectibles.
Topics: Resources | No Comments »
Cloverfield…monsters and movies.
By Matt-M-McElroy | January 24, 2008
Derek C. F. Pegritz really enjoyed the new Cloverfield movie from J. J. Abrams. The movie has done really well in theaters and is getting some pretty good feedback on various forums. Instead of writing up a review, Derek gives us:
Modern Monsters and Modern Humanity
This is a great look at monster movies over the years and Derek tells us his thoughts on why Cloverfield is so much fun. Whether you enjoyed the movie or not, Derek’s essay is worth reading.
Topics: Resources | No Comments »
Blood Games II Review
By Flames | December 9, 2007
Borrowing snippets from the back cover of the book, Blood Games II is an occult-horror role-playing game about courage, self-sacrifice and desperate heroism with no hope of reward. I think of it along the lines of “John Constantine meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer”. There are a lot of great ideas in the book and there is an underlying sinister tone that helps separate this game of occult horror from lighter traditional urban fantasy.
Topics: Roleplaying Game Reviews | No Comments »
Gumshoe - Esoterrorists/Fear Itself/Unremitting Horror RPG Review
By Flames | September 11, 2007
I got to talking with Sasha of Pelgrane at Gencon UK and ended up picking up Fear Itself and the Gumshoe version of The Book of Unremitting Horror and then, later, picking up a copy of The Esoterrorists on PDF. While most of the interest during the convention seemed to be fixed upon the Gumshoe version of Cthulu - Trail of Cthulu - its a shame that this hoary old classic, revamped and timeless as it is, seems to be overshadowing the work already done by Robin Laws (on the system) and Dave Allsop (on the modern horrific vision) of this trio.
Topics: Roleplaying Game Reviews | 1 Comment »
Halloween Movie Review
By Flames | September 5, 2007
Hands down, the worst trend in the relatively recent horror movie resurgence is the incessant green lighting of unnecessary and bad remakes. It’s indicative of a larger financial problem plaguing the entire industry and while remakes may guarantee a built-in audience for the short term, they will erode the genre over time. So needless to say, I was none too pleased when Dimension Films first announced that the next classic in line for a rebuild would be John Carpenter’s seminal slasher flick, Halloween (1978). But a funny thing happened upon my learning about Rob Zombie’s involvement – not only did my steadfast opposition to the remake disappear, but I became down right excited to see the movie being made by a film maker who takes his horror very seriously.
Topics: TV Series and Movie Reviews | No Comments »
Hitcher Movie Review
By Flames | June 9, 2007
Well, I’ll just start off by saying that the movie has a really good grabber with the two main characters going on vacation, but from there it only gets worse. Grace and Jim (the main characters) plan to go to Mexico on their spring break trip. But sadly, the first night they get stuck in a rainstorm, and then they see a guy on the road and almost hit him.
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Cemetary Gates Movie Review
By Flames | June 9, 2007
Well, this movie has a bunch of scientist chasing a big getaway animal, and who doesn’t like a creature flick? Jaws, Cujo and other such movies showed us that creature movies can be good as long as they have a good plot and a good creature.
Topics: TV Series and Movie Reviews | No Comments »
Rule of Rose Review
By Flames | September 18, 2006
Rule of Rose tells the eerie and disturbing story of Jennifer, an apprehensive protagonist who must face the fantastic evil of a child’s imagination. Set in an English orphanage of the 1930’s, the game is a story of social outcasts, cruel violence, strained relationships and prepubescent sexuality. Since the cast of the game are almost entirely children, Sony was hesitant to release the game in America. Atlus, a company with a history of importing niche titles, stepped up and took the risk of bringing a game of challenging issues to the market.
Topics: Video Game Reviews | No Comments »