This SAS compilation for Changeling: The Lost takes the players’ characters into the weirdly fantastic realm of the Hedge, where the terrors and wonders of the Fae lurk, and into the passion and courtly conflict of those who have escaped the Faerie lands and back into our world. Both adventures showcase different aspects of the world of the changelings, as well as providing a ready-made motley to jump right into the action.

Fear-Maker’s Promise Compendium is now available in both digital and print formats at RPGNow.com!

It has been years since I read the first three novels of this series, and since the series came out on HBO…I decided to re-read them and this was the first time I actually read the fourth book. One of the hardest things that Martin has been able to do was write from so many different perspectives. I think people underestimate how difficult
that can be. So when you pick up this book you are ready to see what has happened after the craziness of the ending of Storm of Swords.

Wow, if you are someone that needs continuity, you are in trouble here. Not only do you not get the characters you are normally used to reading, but you get characters you have never even heard of before. Mainly due to the fact that they are called “The Prophet” or “The Princess in the Tower”.

Right off that bat you don’t even who these people are. This wasn’t a horrible thing, it just was confusing to all of a sudden get perspectives that you have not gotten at all in the first three novels.

FlamesRising.com is pleased to present a behind-the-scenes look at the birth of the Pathfinder novel Plague of Shadows. This novel, which was written by Howard Andrew Jones, is about a race against time set against a backdrop of treachery, magic and nightmares. Jones dives into the process of writing a tie-in novel with both feet. In his own words, you can read how this talented author came to be a part of the popular Pathfinder setting.

Round about the time James Sutter was given the greenlight to start up the new Pathfinder line word got around that I’d signed a two book contract with St. Martin’s Thomas Dunne Books for some Arabian fantasy swashbucklers. The first one, The Desert of Souls, was on its way through editorial when James contacted me to see if he could look at some writing samples. He must have liked what he saw, for he then asked me to shoot some proposals his way.

Many top writers and creators will be joining Marvel Comics at New York Comic Con (NYCC) as the renowned comic books and media entertainment company reveals preliminary plans for the 2011 edition of the annual pop culture extravaganza which will take place at the Jacob K. Javits Center in New York City, October 13 – 16, 2011. Marvel will not only have a 3000 square foot booth on the show floor where attendees will have an opportunity to mingle with creators and staff, but the company will also be conducting numerous high profile panels throughout the weekend which will feature their top talent. Joe Quesada, Chief Creative Officer of Marvel Entertainment, and Axel Alonso, Marvel’s Editor-in-Chief, will be Guests of Honor at the show and will be joined by many other notable Marvel creators including Guests of Honor Jason Aaron, Matt Fraction, Kieron Gillen, and Stuart Immonen.

“The enthusiastic participation of premiere companies like Marvel is critical to our success,” notes Lance Fensterman, Group Vice President for ReedPOP and Show Manager for NYCC. “We are always eager to host Marvel at New York Comic Con and to provide their talent with a range of opportunity. Our show not only brings thousands of fans together with their favorite writers, artists and creators but we are a preeminent venue for launching and displaying new content and product. Marvel’s participation is a huge validation of our efforts and we are grateful to them for their energy and commitment. We look forward to making the 2011 edition of New York Comic Con one of the best ever!”

ANYA SOBCZEK (SUB-CHECK) is a snarling science major with an arm full of Darwin tattoos. Her brother OWEN is a sensitive young thing in a coven of teenage occultists. The Sobczek sibs have always been brutally competitive, but now that Owen’s blood has started BUBBLING with ancient tentacled abominations, their rivalry’s about to enter a vast new dimension of cosmic terror…

In 2010 Artists DREW RAUSCH and AARON ALEXOVICH hurled their infectious horror/comedy hybrid ELDRITCH! into blazing combat in DC Comics’ final Zuda webcomic competition. After several centuries it emerged, dazed and confused, with the word WINNER indelibly etched on its forehead.

Do you have an Amazon Kindle? Like horror and dark fantasy? FlamesRising.com is now available to read on your Kindle for a monthly subscription of $1.99. Our blog will be automatically delivered to your Kindle so you can read each post on your schedule. By subscribing to our content on a monthly basis, you’ll also […]

To celebrate the release of the upcoming video game, Top Cow Productions has drastically reduced prices on The Darkness comics at DriveThruComics.com. The sale ends on Friday, so if you’re interested in picking up either a single issue or a trade, you’ll want to take advantage of the sale. Prices on The Darkness comics normally range from $2.99 to $34.99, but in this sale you’ll be able to pick them up for almost half off the cover price.

Recently David Hill sent us a Design Essay about his latest World of Darkness product the Forsaken Chronicler’s Guide, which was released in serial format. Now the complete guide is out in eBook format.

You come with me, you’re on a journey. You leave this safe and boring world and strap into a wild ride. You won’t know where you’re going. That’s okay-because I don’t know where I’m taking you. All I know is that life is short, but my teeth and my claws are long. The night awaits us, and I am hungry. Aren’t you hungry, too?
– Anna Koren, Wild Child

FlamesRising.com is pleased to present you with a preview of The Crimson Pact Volume One. Twenty-six authors wrote stories in this demon-themed eBook anthology and samples of three of them are available for you to read below.

The Failed Crusade
Written by Patrick M. Tracy and Paul Genesse

News of our victory came not in the happy shouts of the freed multitudes, but in the groaning voices of the animate dead. Ours was a victory that none would confuse with triumph. The best half of us lay broken within the Rusted Vale, the rear guard left to puzzle out the events that had been no more than far-off echoes within the smoke and crashing iron. We knew only that we had finally won, that the Crimson Pact was redeemed, that we could all go home. Tired as we were, no man lifted a fist to celebrate. No Blessed Woman smiled. No church Catechist recounted the litany of our good fortunes. The cost had been too high, the wager of battle too awful. In that moment, winning didn’t seem to matter. It would not be long before we found that even the brief illusion of victory would tear away like fog before the wind.

FlamesRising.com is pleased to announce a fun comic caption contest for Skullkickers, an action fantasy comic drawn by Jim Zubkavich that debuted with image comics last fall. We will be giving away a signed copy of the first hardcover collected trade dubbed Skullkickers: 1000 Opas and a Dead Body with an introduction by Robin D. Laws. For those of you who follow Jim’s work, you may recall his artistic and writing style from the popular series of Exalted comics, which are availalbe from UDON.

Skullkickers follows the action adventures of two iconic heroes. One of them is an unruly dwarf with red hair named Shorty; the other a warrior with a little more common sense named Baldy. Up until Issue Number 7 that is…

White Wolf invites you to join them in celebrating a milestone in vampire mythology that changed modern vampire pop culture forever.

Since its 1991 debut, the cultural significance of Vampire: The Masquerade can be seen and felt at virtually every turn and in every medium today, not only on the gaming world but also on modern vampire mythos. The Vampire franchise has since grown into an unparalleled worldwide phenomenon that has inspired thousands of trading cards, hundreds of role playing game supplements, dozens of novels, two award-winning video games, and a cult television series.

FlamesRising.com is pleased to present you with a preview of The Zombie Feed Volume One. Several authors penned stories in this zombie anthology. Three of the stories you’ll find in this debut anthology from The Zombie Feed are available for you to read below.

Zombie fiction from many sub-genres are represented here: zombie apocalypse, zombie survival, zombies in human society, zombie hunters, and more. And the one thread interlocking these disparate groups-ZOMBIE MAYHEM! This action packed anthology takes a syringe full of contaminated adrenaline-laced undead and slams 1000 CCs directly into your chest cavity.

Wizards of the Coast today announced the forthcoming launch of its new, highly anticipated Dungeons & Dragons board game, Conquest of Nerath, set for retail release on June 21, 2011. The Conquest of Nerath board game provides exciting game play for strategy gamers interested in exploring the world of Dungeons & Dragons while offering current RPG players a whole new way to experience D&D. Conquest of Nerath is the third major D&D board game to be released following Castle of Ravenloft and Wrath of Ashardalon.

To celebrate the 114th anniversary of the publication of Dracula, we here at FlamesRising.com would like to recommend your day is filled with blood and fangs. Over the years, we’ve offered reviews, interviews and recommendations of several vampire-related stories, comics and games. Today, we’d like to share with you a couple of new recommendations as well as a few from our archives either directly inspired by or based upon Dracula himself.

For starters, Top Cow has a comics series called Impaler, which is a re-imagining of the vampire tale. If non-fiction is more your thing, we recommend checking out Actual Factual: Dracula, which is a great resource for anyone who needs a compendium of reference material on the topic.

The original standard for fantasy roleplaying is taking another step in its storied pop culture history as the Dalelands of the Forgotten Realms is brought to life for gamers and fantasy enthusiasts across the world. Atari, one of the world’s most recognized publishers and producers of interactive entertainment and Bedlam Games announced today the release of the highly anticipated Dungeons & Dragons: Daggerdale on Xbox LIVE Arcade for the Xbox 360 video game and entertainment system from Microsoft and Windows PC.

Dungeons & Dragons: Daggerdale, a hack and slash action role playing game set in the deep mythology of the Forgotten Realms, is the first Dungeons & Dragons video game for connected consoles. Players are summoned by a mysterious mage and given the duty of defending their homeland as Rezlus, an evil Zhentarim Cleric looks to bring the power of the Black Lord Bane to Daggerdale. Restore order to the Dalelands by unlocking the secrets of the Mines of Tethyamar, defeating the evil within the treacherous Tower of the Void, leading to the final confrontation with Rezlus himself.

Born of the U.S. government’s 1928 raid on the degenerate coastal town of Innsmouth, Massachusetts, the covert agency known as Delta Green spent four decades opposing the forces of darkness with honor, but without glory. Stripped of sanction after a disastrous 1969 operation in Cambodia, Delta Green’s leaders made a secret pact: to continue their work without authority, without support, and without fear. Delta Green agents slip through the system, manipulating the federal bureaucracy while pushing the darkness back for another day-but often at a shattering personal cost.

Ten years ago, everything changed. It’s time you found out how.

It’s January 2001. The Delta Green agents code-named Cyrus and Charlie get the call: A young boy dead and buried for years has reappeared, healthy and happy, as if no time at all had passed and the disease that killed him had never been. The family thinks it’s a miracle, but Delta Green has seen too many miracles turn to madness. Cyrus and Charlie must discover what horrors lurk behind this one. The mission brings them to the brink of apocalypse-to the edge of the revelation and destruction of Delta Green-to secrets and terrors at the heart of reality itself.

Delta Green: Through a Glass, Darkly is a new novel written by Delta Green co-creator Dennis Detwiller. The book is finished. It’s been reviewed, revised and edited. Now Arc Dream Publishing is holding a Kickstarter project to raise the funds to publish it.

Flames Rising posted an earlier excerpt from Delta Green: Through a Glass, Darkly on April 30, 2011.

Here’s another glimpse.

While at PAX East this year, I had the pleasure of sitting in on a panel on developing independent RPGs. Vincent Baker was among the panelists, and I was incredibly excited to see the man who had created the well-known and critically acclaimed Dogs in the Vineyard. Immediately after the panel I went to his booth and saw that he had another game for sale, Apocalypse World. Its cover, featuring a nude, ambiguous form in a gas mask, haunched over and lit from behind, intrigued me– I had just finished my thesis on Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and was on an apocalypse kick, so although I had gone to the booth expecting to pick up DitV, I came away with a game I hadn’t even heard of before.

With Apocalypse World I didn’t really know what to expect. I admit, I don’t have very many systems under my belt– I’ve read far more games than I’ve actually played, and I don’t like to pass judgment on a system without actually playing it. But just from the get-go, Apocalypse World had a lot going for it.

Do you have what it takes to be a Greek God or Goddess? If so, then Relativity Media – the studio behind the visually spectacular 3D action adventure Immortals – wants you to sign up right away! Exclusively offered via Facebook today, the Relativity-Archaia Immortals promotion sponsored by Fandango, the nation’s leading moviegoer destination, will crown the winners on July 1 with a king’s ransom-worth of prizes, including a grand prize where contest winners will be immortalized as graphic novel characters with the “reveal” taking place at the Archaia panel during Comic-Con in a special photo-op ceremony. Winners will also receive an all-expenses-paid trip to San Diego to attend the 2011 Comic-Con International. The package includes airfare, hotel accommodations, and exclusive access to special Immortals events throughout the convention.

RPGNow is having a huge contest going on now. Special judges include Fred Hicks, Eddy Ebb and John Wick!

You could win a ViewSonic gTablet, Gift Certificates to RPGNow and more!

Delta Green: Intelligences is a new short story by Dennis Detwiller in the award-winning Delta Green setting.

Dennis’ company Arc Dream Publishing is holding a fundraiser for a new Delta Green novel, Through a Glass, Darkly. As the fundraiser hits milestones towards its goal, Arc Dream will release all-new Delta Green short stories to go along with it — starting with "Intelligences."

Here’s an excerpt.