Visionary Comics, a production studio and digital publisher, is marking 10 years in the creative industry by announcing the hiring of two well-known industry execs and a retooled website as the first phase of a major expansion that will extend into 2016. Company leaders are calling the initiative “Visionary 2.0.”

“We’ve been working hard the last few months to move Visionary to the forefront of the industry and wanted to announce our first exciting changes at Tucson Comic Con,” says C. Edward Sellner, the company’s Chief Creative Officer. The eighth annual event kicked off at the Tucson Convention Center in Tucson, AZ, on November 6, and wraps its three day run Sunday. Visionary execs made the exclusive announcements today at a panel during the popular show.

Presenting an epic improvised campaign for Night’s Black Agents Roleplaying Game. Do your Agents have what it takes to face the Lord of the Undead himself?

The Dracula Dossier follows in the fully improvisational path of the award-winning The Armitage Files campaign. Players follow up leads in the margins of Dracula Unredacted, a rare edition of Bram Stoker’s masterpiece that reveals the terrifying truth behind the fiction. They’ll chase down the real characters from Stoker’s novel, their descendants in the present, and the British agents caught in the backblast.

WELCOME TO THE SWORD COAST—a region of Faerûn that comprises shining paragons of civilization and culture, perilous locales fraught with dread and evil, and encompassing them all, a wilderness that offers every explorer vast opportunity and simultaneously promises great danger.

While the Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide is a valuable resource for Dungeon Masters, it was crafted with players and their characters foremost in mind. There is a plethora of new character options to intrigue and inspire every member of the adventuring party.

Popcorn Press is a small press publisher that has been producing Halloween-themed books of haikus, poems, and short fiction for the past few years. Each year the publisher picks a theme, like vampires, zombies, or Cthulhu, and collects a tightly-focused collection filled with poems written by dozens of writers ranging from Elaine Cunningham to Matt […]

We’re all mages, we Awakened Ones. Tradition wizards and Technocrats, Mad Ones and Fallen Ones and all the “ones” in between who refuse to choose a side in our demented little War. We’re ALL mages. Many refuse that title, or deny it to others, but that’s what we are: priest-kings holding the keys to reality.

Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition is available now in PDF and Hardcover editions at the Flames Rising RPGNow Shop!

The pall that had descended over the North is gone, and a new day has dawned on a victorious Mithral Hall, but no matter how bright things seem on the surface, Drizzt and his companions know that what lurks just under their feet remains steeped in evil and charged with unimaginable power.

The dark elves of Menzoberranzan, including the powerful Archmage Gromph, aren’t done with Drizzt yet. And consumed by their own power struggles, feeling backed into a corner, the drow may just be desperate enough to call on demonic forces from the deepest reaches of the Abyss, and unleash a disaster even the Underdark could never have prepared for.

H. P. Lovecraft was born August 20, 1890 and the DriveThru sites (RPG, Comics, Fiction) are celebrating with a huge sale on hundreds of Cthulhu Mythos eBooks, audiobooks and other goodies.

We’ve gathered a list of some our favorite titles from each site here on Flames Rising…

Go beyond the boundaries of the fantastic, award-winning Numenera setting.

Monte Cook Games is currently running an exciting Kickstarter campaign that will expand the Numenera RPG into new vistas, giving characters a chance to explore further than they ever dreamed. The campaign reached the origianl funding goal almost immediately after launching and now new stretch goals are offering backers expanded content, fiction, maps, and more.

Flames Rising is pleased to have award winning author and game designer Monte Cook drop by to tell us a little about some of the design goals of these new supplements and content being offered in this Kickstarter project.

The magic of bestiaries, or dictionaries of mythological creatures, has been captivating the human imagination since ancient times.

Now, Stone Skin Press brings a fresh take on these compendiums of the fantastic with its latest anthology—Gods, Memes and Monsters. Featuring over sixty authors, this stunning international volume offers entries and short stories that range from the horrific to the humorous. The bestiary shed lights on familiar beasts that are coping in our modern era, including gorgons, minotaurs, and mantichores. It also introduces newly discovered creatures such as meme mosquitoes, trashsquatches, and urbantelopes that are thriving in the cyber age.

Know, O Prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the Sons of Aryas, there was an age of swords and sorcery. An age of war. An age of blood and thunder.

An age of…monsters!

Conan: Rise of Monsters is an epic fantasy miniature wargame with pre-painted plastic figures. It was created and designed by four veteran designers of the table-top industry, and lavishly illustrated by some of the industry’s top artists such as Victor Moreno and Adrian Smith.

Conan: Rise of Monsters draws on Robert E Howard’s original Conan stories as well as the Marvel and Dark Horse Comics adaptations to tell a brand new story at the zenith of King Conan’s reign.

A FAMILY AFFAIR!

When Judge Dredd comes face -to-face with one of his clones he knows that the rookie may well be his replacement one day. Old Stoney Face isn’t getting any younger and as he shows the new recruit around the streets of Mega-City One he reminisces about his dead clone brother Rico.

Out of respect for Dredd, the clone decides to take on Rico’s name but will he also share Rico’s fate?

Brothers of The Blood is another modern classic from writer John Wagner.

It’s 1242. The Mongol army crushed Baghdad, then Russia under its heel, then moved on to devastate Poland and Hungary. The Holy Roman Empire stood to war with the Papacy. The second Lombard League wielded the word of the Pope and fought off Frederick II.

The War of Princes rages. Patricide looms. Young powers look up the ladder to the next rungs, and see stagnation and hypocrisy. They see targets. When they look down, they see humanity. They see a power that could change everything. They see mortals organizing into universities and empires.

In the mortal world of 1242, power shifted at the rate an army marched. For the undead, power shifts faster than a fire overtakes a haven. To the Damned, power flows as fast as blood from an ancient heart.

Part sword and sorcery, part extreme horror, King of the Bastards is wild adventure across seas, beaches, and mountains full of horrifying monstrosities, dark magic, and demonic entities.

Rogan has been many things in his life as an adventurer — a barbarian, a thief, a buccaneer, a rogue, a lover, a reaver, and most recently, a king.

Now, this prehistoric bane of wizards and tyrants finds himself without a kingdom, lost in a terrifying new world, and fighting for his life against pirates, zombies, and the demonic entity known as Meeble. And even if he defeats his foes, Rogan must still find a way to return home, regain his throne, save his loved ones, and remind everyone why he’s the KING OF THE BASTARDS.

New class options, character backgrounds, and deity descriptions from the Forgotten Realms.

Get everything you need to adventure in the Forgotten Realms on the exciting Sword Coast, home to the cities of Baldur’s Gate, Waterdeep, and Neverwinter! A collaboration between Green Ronin Publishing and the Dungeons & Dragons team at Wizards of the Coast, the Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide provides D&D fans with a wealth of detail on the places, cultures, and deities of northwestern Faerûn.

The Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide is also a great way to catch up on recent events in the Forgotten Realms, to get background on locations featured in the Rage of Demons storyline coming in September, and to learn the lore behind video games like Neverwinter and Sword Coast Legends.

Savannah is under siege.

For 20 years the minions of the Wyrm have threatened the Coastal Empire, checked only by the courage and cunning of the Shadow Lords. Every year, the septs of the Southern Protectorate send young warriors to aid in the defense and to prove their mettle in the pressure cooker of the port city.

It’s not enough.

Every night, the Wyrm grows stronger, its forces more bold. Now, young cubs are dead and a hidden foe reaches out its claws to exact revenge against Savannah’s Garou.

Ingrid Stormwalker, war chief of the Coastal Empire, must defy her sept’s law, her family, and her pack to uncover the root of the rotten vine that chokes her beloved caern.

Time is running out for the historic city — and the entire Southern Protectorate.

I don’t do research for any of my novels or stories.

A part of me, as I typed the above, felt a sense of guilt. It’s the received wisdom these days – and, for all I know, always has been – that a fiction writers must assiduously research the background to their works in order to present a credible ‘world’ to their readers. After all, if you’re writing about a World War II fighter pilot, isn’t it wise to have read up on what it’s like to be a fighter pilot? And that goes for any other specialist profession or area of expertise, of course. To lend greater fidelity to one’s visions, research is essential.

“The Americans were passing Intel to the Israelis, hoping that they’d act fast to grab the artefacts as a cultural priority, mainly to snub the Russians. They didn’t know about the Stasi mole funnelling everything back to Moscow, or that their Damascus network was wide open. We had some agents in place throughout, but I didn’t for a minute think we weren’t compromised in some way or another. And my code N sources were feeding back whispers from the cultists that they’d got a solid lead on the origins of the pieces and were getting ready to move. The whole thing was a murky mess, and I needed to clean it up. The only thing I knew for sure was that we needed to neutralise half a dozen people in the next 24 hours… but who?”

World War Cthulhu: Cold War throws you into one of the most paranoid and chaotic conflicts of the 20th century. The tangled webs of the spymasters tear and rejoin, double and triple agents make their moves and counter-moves, and it’s hard to be sure which side you’re really working for. Nuclear destruction hangs over everyone, and a few people at the heart of western intelligence continue their personal battle against the insidious influence of a much older enemy…

There are some threats that transcend a local Prince’s domain and become enemies of every Kindred in the Camarilla. These Anathema become targets of a global Blood Hunt for their crimes. Not just political enemies, the monsters on the Red List have been named enemies of the entire Camarilla by the Justicars.

Dread Names, Red List explores the Camarilla’s “Most Wanted” List, naming those deemed most dangerous by the Justicars and their chosen deputies, the Alastors. Included are details on the Anathema that occupy the Red List, as well as details on those who hunt them. Storytellers are also given a toolkit for running Alastor-focused chronicles.

Sixth Gun RPG Kickstarter Ends 10pm EDT Thursday, June 25, 2015

Fans of The Sixth Gun and Deadlands settings were excited to learn a crossover adventure was planned as a stretch goal for The Sixth Gun RPG Kickstarter.

“This needs to happen…….no really…it does.” commented backer Brandon Janosco of Garden Grove, California, on the Kickstarter page.

“Chocolate meet my peanut butter!” commented Facebook user Richard Mark Borges of Jamestown, Rhode Island.

“Oh, snap! Deadlands + The Sixth Gun crossover?!” posted the Savage Bloggers Network on Google+.

The Old Ones ruled the earth aeons before the rise of man. Traces of their cyclopean cities can still be found on remote islands, buried amid the shifting desert sands, and in the frozen wastes of the polar extremes. Originally they came to this world from the stars. They sleep now, some deep within the earth or beneath the sea. When the stars are right they shall again walk the earth.

Call of Cthulhu is a tabletop roleplaying game based upon the worlds of H. P. Lovecraft. It is a game of secrets, mysteries, and horror. Playing the role of steadfast investigators, you travel to strange and dangerous places, uncover foul plots, and stand against the terrors of the Cthulhu Mythos. You encounter sanity-blasting entities, monsters, and insane cultists. Within strange and forgotten tomes of lore you discover revelations that man was not meant to know. You and your companions may very well decide the fate of the world.