The magazine comes in a robust 60 pages. That is not as big as their major competitor, but it is very, very, full. The initial editorial lays out all of the article types that the magazine plans to pursue in the coming quarters and every one seems interesting and with a constant mind toward having something for all players. There was always an eye toward having both solid fluff (flavor) and rules (crunch) in each article. More over, a focus on making sure the flavor and crunch aligned. Readers will notice if there is a disconnect and will be turned off by a product that does a bad job of aligning these two very important aspects of game design. That is not the case here.

The articles are similar to classic articles we, as a gaming generation, have all grown up with. There are articles that detail new weapons and talk about the fighters that use them, articles that introduce a new god, his followers and other important doctrines of the faith.

Flames Rising has been offered the chance to bring you a preview of Alex Bledsoe’s new vampire novel Blood Groove.

When centuries-old vampire Baron Rudolfo Zginski was staked in Wales in 1915, the last thing he expected was to reawaken in Memphis, Tennessee, sixty years later. Reborn into a new world of simmering racial tensions, the cunning nosferatu realizes he must adapt quickly if he is to survive.

Forming an uneasy alliance with the young vampires, Zginski begins to teach them the truth about their powers. They must learn quickly, for there’s a new drug on the street—a drug created to specifically target and destroy vampires. As Zginski and his allies track the drug to its source, they may unwittingly be stepping into a fifty-year-old trap that can destroy them all . . .

Adamant Entertainment is pleased to announce that it has signed an agreement with Chaosium Inc. to produce supplements and adventures for the CALL OF CTHULHU roleplaying game.

“Call of Cthulhu has long been a touchstone in my personal gaming history,” said Gareth-Michael Skarka, owner and director of Adamant Entertainment. “It was one of the first games that I played, and I continue to come back to it through the years, so I’m incredibly excited to be able to add Adamant’s voice to the Call.”

Adamant will be releasing two new settings for the game: THIS SCEPTER’D ISLE, which brings the horrors of the Mythos to Elizabethan England; and SHADOWS OF THE RED HAND, a full treatment of 1920s gangland Chicago. Award-winning game designer and mythos author Ken Hite will be developing Adamant’s line of CALL OF CTHULHU products, which should be released in late 2009 and early 2010.

Abstract Nova products are now available at RPGNow.com.

The long-awaited Tales of the Seven Dogs Society fiction book is also available in pdf format for only $3.95.

Tales of the Seven Dogs Society is a collection of three self-contained novellas based on the Aletheia role-playing game. Monica Valentinelli, Jim Johnson and Matt McElroy present three separate mysteries, each featuring a different interpretation of the Society. Together, they paint a picture of a world filled with the unexplained… a world the Seven Dogs Society seeks to comprehend. Buy the book at DriveThruHorror.com or RPGNow.com.

Faith in the Future is a story told in one issue.

The scenes are pretty well illustrated. Darkzel’s penciling is well done, and he is able to combine his characters with the world they live in.

When I read through the issue, my first thoughts were how the symbolism is very on the nose. Depictions of a ‘pest messiah” crucified on a cross combined with a hunched over capering exterminator leave little to the imagination. The framework of the story deals with absolute images and While the author’s narration helped explain what I had missed, the artwork captures a lot of raw emotion and even without text James Desborough and Darkzel told a very clear story.

Review by John Kennedy

This week we’re releasing the following kits in the Collection of Horrors: Mother of All Wrong Turns, Caveat Emptor, Body of Evidence, Good for the Soul and Serpent’s Tooth. Mother of All Wrong Turns is already up!

Just learning about the Collection? The Collection of Horrors is an anthology of Storyteller tools inspired by the Horror Recognition Guide that you can either use in conjunction with the Guide or as part of your existing Hunter: The Vigil chronicle.

Check out all of the Hunter: the Vigil products at the Flames Rising RPGNow Shop.

Flashpoints in the Fog

In a society made up of liars and murderers afflicted by a slowly eroding grasp of their own existences to date, who can trust the concept of history? Understand, then, that there is a scale upon which all Kindred are precariously balanced. As personal power weighs more heavily, the ability to rely on that monster’s memory of the past is lightened. How do the Kindred navigate this Mystery of Ages?

Ancient Mysteries is available at the Flames Rising RPGNow Shop.

White Wolf takes us back to the Eighties in New Wave Requiem (WW25320). The decision to turn back the clock nearly twenty five years seems to be a brilliant one (Yes, I did say TWENTY FIVE years). Sob. Vampire: the Masquerade hit bookshelves in 1991, so readers never really got a feel for the Reagan Era of gaming. This appears to be their attempt at remedying that issue. This slim supplement weighs in at eighty-one pages; however, it wastes no space with ads (an oddity considering the waste the 1980s created). There are a few pages devoted solely to pieces of art, but these terrific characterizations demand forgiveness as they summon images of The Warriors and an evil Susanna Hoffs.

Review by Todd Cash

Author M. Joseph Young has joined our ongoing Horror Design Project here at Flames Rising and tells us a bit about writing horror elements for his Multiverser RPG.

Multiverser Horror

Some people think that horror is easy: dial up the kill rate, and soon every character is terrified.

What, though, if the characters are immortal?

This was the fundamental question we had to face in writing horror scenarios for Multiverser. Player characters are “versers”. Death is the doorway to take you to the next world, and the next world is where the next adventure awaits. Dial up the death rate, and for the verser it becomes a game of choosing how to die, how to end the horror and get somewhere nicer. Thus if we were going to create horror scenarios, we were going to have to figure out how to frighten someone who is completely unafraid of death. That meant understanding fear, and its more fundamental causes. Here are a few of the things we learned. Each has value.

Looking for ideas for your Hunter game? The Collection of Horrors is an anthology of Storyteller tools inspired by the Horror Recognition Guide that you can either use in conjunction with the Guide or as part of your existing Hunter: The Vigil chronicle.

Each story kit in the Collection of Horrors (which you can buy individually, as a bundle or as a subscription) contains variety of appropriate tools; usually an SAS scene, a character with a character sheet, and props ranging from maps and reports to print out and hand to your players, to short imbedded audio files that you can play at your gaming table. These kits represent a collection of evocative story tools that you can write a story around, drop into an existing SAS or even string together. They aren’t stories in their own right, but rather pieces that you can snap together into whatever shape you want. Using the Guide can add even more props and ideas to this anthology, but it’s not required to use the various story kits in the Collection of Horrors.

A modern take on the classic “apocalyptic” novel, Hater is similar in tone to the seminal works of H.G. Wells, and also the recent films 28 Days Later and I Am Legend. Hater tells the story of Danny McCoyne, an everyman forced to contend with a world gone mad, as vast numbers of the human population suddenly become irrationally violent, killing all who cross their path.

Flames Rising is pleased to bring you the first chapter of David Moody’s Hater, which is currently available at Amazon.com.

Renowned RPG Publisher Offering Free and Discounted Downloads to Reward Fan Loyalty

In light of recent announcements, some fans have expressed concern over the future of electronic (PDF) format book sales in the RPG industry. White Wolf Publishing today has announced that it currently has no plans to discontinue its existing PDF products.

“Quite the opposite,” says Eddy Webb, the Alternative Publishing Developer for White Wolf. “I believe this is a growing market with potential we haven’t yet had a chance to fully explore, both as publishers and as fans of role-playing games.” Eddy remarked that he has dozens of upcoming PDF-exclusive products on his schedule in addition to continuing to provide PDF versions of upcoming products, and that White Wolf is still actively looking into returning to the print-on-demand arena.

I normally tackle one product at a time; however, Sean Boyle’s line of HDL games is so entwined with one another that it’s simply easier to treat them as one massive project. The exact products I’m including are the HDL Basic Rules, Perfect Horizon, Demongate High, the HDL cards, and Lucid: Dreamscape Reality. I’ll try to separate these books for clarity’s sake, but I suspect I’ll have to trip back and forth between them on occasion.

The first book in the HDL line is strictly the nuts and bolts of Boyle’s system. It’s a modest read at eighty-seven pages. Like most, my first impression of the book came through a skimming. The artwork, derived from a stable of six illustrators, seems to enjoy the fact that it rests inside a generic system’s corebook.

Review by Todd Cash

After killing her former mentor-turned-vampire, U.S. Marshal Jameson Arkeley, Caxton was nearly left for dead. Taken to prison for assaulting a convict, she now faces her most harrowing hours yet. Locked up in a Pennsylvania correctional facility that holds the state’s death-row inmates, not to mention countless murderers and drug dealers whom Caxton herself has put away, she is an easy target.

But it gets worse. The oldest living vampire, Justinia Malvern is still on the loose and manages to infiltrate the prison. There she uses the inmates as livestock—taking daily donations of blood at will and slaughtering any who don’t cooperate. But it’s Caxton’s blood she’s most hungry for, and when Caxton’s girlfriend, Clara, comes to visit but ends up trapped there, Justinia will use her as a pawn to get to her most sought-after prey. . . .

Pre-Order 23 Hours: A Vengeful Vampire Tale at Amazon.com.

Pulp meets mutants. Can you picture it? Robin D Laws can, and did well.

The opening fiction caught my attention immediately. In two illustrated pages, it manages to cover most pulp detective crime scene tropes, and set the stage for a slightly tongue-in-cheek mutant x-factor (sorry, I had to.) Then the stage is set with a description of the game’s setting. Arbitrarily ten years in the future, the world has undergone the biggest ten years worth of change possible; due to an odd illness, people began exhibiting superpowers. Simple enough statement, but the quality comes from the explanation of how these mutants have changed sports, entertainment, law enforcement, et cetera. It’s serious, while still being able to put a gratifying smile on the reader’s face.

Review By David A Hill Jr

“I see you. You go about your life like nothing ever happened. You think you’re safe now that it’s done, like a problem that you’ve solved once and for all. You’re wrong. I remember what you did. You might have killed me, but I’m not gone. I stayed behind… and I won’t go until you’ve paid.”

This week White Wolf is offering a special bundle at RPGNow that is focused on ghosts and mortal interactions in the World of Darkness. The bundle includes Ghost Stories and Chicago Workings, Regularly 32.98, now $17.99 (savings of 55%).

The Ghost Tales bundle is available at the Flames Rising RPGNow Shop.

Contagion. Plague. Survival.

Out in the Scavenger Lands life is difficult, and compassion can seem like a dangerously unaffordable luxury. But despite the propaganda you might hear in the Realm about the savagery of those beyond the Threshold, most of the folk who call the Confederation of Rivers their home consider themselves good people. But what happens when the imperative to survive challenges one’s moral commitment to one’s fellows? Sacrifices have to be made, but when do the needs of the many justify the losses of a few?

A story in the Storytelling Adventure System for Exalted.

Disease of an Evil Conscience is available at the Flames Rising RPGNow Shop.

What It Is
Apocalypse Prevention, Inc (or API,) is an action-horror RPG set in a future plagued by monsters, magic, destruction, all the average faire of a post-apocalyptic fantasy setting. The namesake is the corporation who holds back all the above-mentioned things. Characters are agents, working to fight back the destruction of the planet. Pretty simple?

The game advertises itself as “action horror, with a twist of humor.”

Review by David A Hill Jr

Argentum is the first book for an urban fantasy series called the “Violet War.” Told in an online serial format by writer Monica Valentinelli, installments are readable online through www.violetwar.com.

Imagine being free. Free from everything that defines you, that makes you easily recognizable as who you are. Welcome to a place where bleak noir cityscapes share a Technicolor sky with combat fighters, where you can find gunslingers from the Old West and a lost chapter from a literary classic, all with something in common: Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. This is a place where the Crawling Chaos has to solve his own murder and the Old Ones come up against the Gods of Las Vegas, a place where the new player in London’s underground isn’t human and masked heroes go toe-to-tentacle with eldritch horrors. This is a Mythos collection unlike any other. This is Lovecraft in many colors, many guises. This is Cthulhu–Unbound!

Pre-Order your copy of Cthulhu Unbound today at Amazon.com.