Flames Rising is an online resource for fans of Horror and Dark Fantasy entertainment. This horror fanzine offers reviews of Games, Fiction, Movies and more ranging from Top-Selling authors to the coolest Small Press and “indie” publishers. The popular Interviews at Flames Rising include Horror authors, artists and other creators of dark entertainment. Stay tuned to the Flames Rising news feed for the latest news on upcoming products, genre conventions and industry developments.
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The year is 1242. The Mongol army crushed Baghdad and then Russia under its heel, and 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 vampire 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.
Vampire 20th Anniversary: The Dark Ages is a storytelling game of horrific power.
War is everywhere. Not only among the firefights, in the sweat dripping from heavy armor and the clenching grip on your weapon, but also wedging itself deep into families, infiltrating our love letters, hovering in the air above our heads. It’s in our dreams and our text messages. At times it roars with adrenaline, while at others it slips in silently so it can sit beside you until you forget it’s there.
In the 1980s, a moral panic swept the United States. Rumors swirled of a vast underground network of devil worshippers, and claims of Satanic Ritual Abuse flooded the airwaves. Role-playing games were gateways to black magic, and backwards messages, hidden in heavy metal music, spurred teenagers to Satanism or suicide. The devil was everywhere and something needed to be done. In response to growing public fears, the FBI assembled a taskforce to investigate occult activity.
Seattle is a fractured city, split between history and modernity.
The Unchained can stumble through rifts in time and space and wind up decades in the past. Why Some failed experiment of the God-Machine? A side effect of human ingenuity? Or are the splinter timelines in the City of Flowers a deliberate design, leading up to something greater still?
Splintered City: Seattle includes more detail on the alternate timelines described in Demon: The Descent, as well as a host of story hooks and characters for use in your chronicles. Also presented are brief suggestions on what Seattle might hold for the other denizens of the World of Darkness.
“It is an early American horror story…And that’s why people know it. Because it’s got the kind of symbolism that good fairy tales or horror stories have.” —Tim Burton
Perhaps the marker of a true mythos is when the stories themselves overshadow their creator. Originally published under a pseudonym as The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories gave America its own haunted mythology. This new collection of larger-than-life tales contains Washington Irving’s best-known literary inventions—Ichabod Crane, the Headless Horseman, and Rip Van Winkle—that continue to capture our imaginations today, and features an introduction and notes by Elizabeth L. Bradley, author of Knickerbocker: The Myth Behind New York and literary consultant to Historic Hudson Valley, the caretakers of Irving’s Tarrytown, New York home.
Award-winning author and game designer Matt Forbeck is partnering with Outland Entertainment to produce a tabletop roleplaying game based upon his fantasy noir Shotguns & Sorcery novels, as well as enhanced ebook editions of those popular books. Fans of the series will have the opportunity to immerse themselves in the world, meet the characters from the books, create their own heroes, and play though brand-new adventures developed exclusively for the game.
“I’d long thought about trying to publish a Shotguns & Sorcery game myself,” Forbeck says, “but I could never manage to find the time. Then Jeremy Mohler came to me with so much love for both games and these books—and he’s such a talented artist to boot. I couldn’t ask for more dedicated publishing partners than Outland.”
Privateer Press has recently begun uploading a number of eBook novels and anthologies based on their Iron Kingdoms and Warmachine games to DriveThruFiction.com. Previously Privateer Press had made the PDFs of the Iron Kingdoms Full Metal Fantasy RPG and select supplements available at DriveThruRPG.com.
This represents Privateer Press’ first foray into selling their Skull Island Expeditions imprint’s fiction titles on the DriveThru sites.
Today at PAX Prime in Seattle Wizards of the Coast provided a glimpse of what Dungeons & Dragons will offer in 2015, with new digital offerings set in the Forgotten Realms from partners including Backflip Studios, Beamdog and Cryptic Studios with Perfect World Entertainment.
Throughout 2014, D&D has ignited excitement in the game industry with a celebration of the brand’s 40th anniversary, the launch of new rules for the tabletop RPG, and the exciting and engaging Tyranny of Dragons storyline.
Digital plans for next year were revealed at PAX Prime today during the “2015 Videogames in the Forgotten Realms” panel hosted by Wizards of the Coast and partners.
London-based Modiphius Entertainment has signed script writer Dirk Vandereyken and director Raine McCormack to work on a film adaptation of its award-winning tabletop gaming universe Achtung! Cthulhu.
A scant week after hauling in a prestigious Silver ENnie for best writing and another one for best artwork, the Achtung! Cthulhu gaming line will now be expanded upon with a feature-length movie that will bring many of the characters presented in the roleplaying game and board game to life.
The biggest and most exciting year for Dungeons & Dragons hits a pivotal moment today as the Tyranny of Dragons storyline kicks-off. This rich new narrative challenges players around the world to rise up against hoards of evil dragons, including Tiamat, the most fearsome dragon in D&D’s history! With a full suite of entertainment offerings already starting to roll-out, and many more exciting launches slated for later this year, Tyranny of Dragons offers action-packed play experiences for digital and tabletop RPG players alike.
ECHOES OF WAR: THRILLIN’ HEROICS combines the first four stand-alone adventures in the Echoes of War line released on DriveThruRPG with the SERENITY CREW release into one, easy-to-reference PDF. These Episodes were written by Margaret Weis, Andrew Peregrine, Monica Valentinelli, and Nicole Wakelin. Featured artists include Ben Mund, Beth Sobel, Jennifer Rodgers, Kurt Komoda, and Melissa Gay!
The more you discover, the more the Mythos infects your mind. Your friends cannot be trusted, your knowledge means nothing, and everything you hold dear turns to dust.
The Final Revelation collects for the first time the four sanity-destroying Purist adventures for Trail of Cthulhu written by award winning RPG writer Graham Walmsley. With a framing scenario by Scott Dorward, The Final Revelation gives your Investigators the opportunity to play through a Purist campaign set in the United Kingdom of the 1930s where there is no escape, no comfort and no salvation when faced with the Mythos. Your Investigators are powerless and insignificant; your only choices death, insanity or a quiet life with a shattered mind.
The 13th Age Bestiary introduces all-new creatures for the 13th Age roleplaying game, plus surprising takes on some of your favorite monsters. It includes the fun and flexible mechanics you expect from 13th Age – and it makes every monster an adventure in its own right, with story hooks, icon relationships, customisable campaign elements and more advice on building exciting battles.
Because we made it so easy to create your own monsters in 13th Age, we had to make the creatures in this book truly amazing; so we designed cool and unexpected mechanics for each creature that bring something truly new to the game, and story options that can serve as the starting point for a single adventure or an entire campaign.
Designers & Dragons is a four volume book series of RPG industry awesomeness, meticulously researched and prettily packaged. Author Shannon Appelcline guides you company by company through the history of tabletop starting in the 1970s all the way up to present day. This series is chock full of fascinating insider tidbits, company profiles, and yes—enough drama to fuel a hundred campaigns.
Evil Hat Productions is incredibly proud to produce this updated edition of Designers & Dragons. You may remember the first edition that came out from the lovely people at Mongoose Publishing—we’d wanted to publish it then, but missed the chance! So we leapt at the opportunity to take it on once their one-volume version went out of print.
It’s a pseudo-nonfiction, ‘how-to’ military handbook for aliens intending to conquer the Earth. It both looks at how all the elements are handled in SF, and satirizes them, and then brings real-world science, history, and military sciences to show how it should be done.
It goes without saying that any military campaign must be planned in ways depending upon some basic factors: The logistics of where your enemy is in relation to your own forces, environmental factors, and, most importantly, ‘why’ you’re fighting this campaign. This book intends to take these basic factors, and apply them to the purpose of conquering the planet known to the natives as Earth.
A full-length, 10-adventure campaign for BETTER ANGELS, the tabletop RPG of demon-possessed supervillainy.
Better Angels is a tabletop roleplaying game where you play a supervillain who got powers from being possessed by a demon — and you play the demon who’s possessing the supervillain of the player to your right.
As a supervillain, you use your superpowers to do … well, whatever you want. You’re a supervillain. As the other player’s demon, you tempt that supervillain with more power in exchange for greater and greater acts of evil. But beware! If you’re TOO evil, your demon can drag you kicking and screaming right to Hell. It’s sort of like the Legion of Doom crossed with the Lucifer-centric parts of Sandman. (And maybe The Exorcist if you’re not careful.)
Better Angels was published in 2013 after a great Kickstarter campaign. A standalone adventure is available, too, plus a ton of free online resources.
For the first time, the Gen Con Writer’s Symposium is offering free professional-level workshops for game and publishing industry professionals. These invite-only workshops will cover building a publicity strategy, running successful Kickstarters, migrating a brand into a new genre/market, and similar topics important to your business. We will not cover the basics, but instead focus […]
As revealed exclusively at the Hollywood Reporter, New York-based comic book publisher Valiant Entertainment today announced that they are adapting their award-winning comic book series, ARCHER & ARMSTRONG, into a feature film. Valiant has partnered with the Sean Daniel Company (THE MUMMY, BEST MAN HOLIDAY, MGM’s upcoming BEN-HUR) for the production and has funded a script from writer BenDavid Grabinski. The film will be produced by Sean Daniel, Jason Brown, and Dinesh Shamdasani.
ARCHER & ARMSTRONG is an action-adventure/buddy comedy colliding a drunk, delinquent immortal who has given up on saving the world and the idealistic young man who needs him for a globetrotting quest to stop history’s oldest conspiracy from toppling modern civilization.
Improvisation is key to running any roleplaying game. It’s an essential skill for every game master and player, and can mean the difference between a good gaming session and a great one. Until now, there hasn’t been a system-neutral book that covers improvisation for game masters from every angle.
Unframed: The Art of Improvisation for Game Masters is that book. An anthology of 23 essays by a diverse group of award-winning authors, designers, and experienced game masters, Unframed gives you the tools and inspiration to improvise better, “wing it” without hesitation, and get killer results.
The year is 1242. The Mongol army crushed Baghdad and then Russia under its heel, and 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.
