If you’ve checked out our submission guidelines, you may have noticed that we mentioned our Flames Rising Reviewer Rewards program. As our site continues to grow, our reviewers and content providers are a vital part of Flames Rising. We’d like to light a match and shed some light on what this program actually entails.

Flames Rising Reviewer Rewards Program

Once our reviewers show a commitment to the site by submitting a minimum of (5) reviews, we will then provide the review material for them. From indie films to pre-released copies of fiction novels and new games, we receive tons of review material we’re more than happy to provide free-of-charge to our reviewers. (We’ll even cover the postage.) What’s more, our reviewers can keep the material as a “thank you” for spending the time to contribute to the site.

Matt Forbeck writes about superheroes. And mutants. And parodic, homicidal American football players in his Blood Bowl novels. He does some Weird West, too.

In fact, there’s more than a little cowboy thrown into every thing he does. Check out the Lost Mark Trilogy for an idea of how seamlessly the Wild West and heroic fantasy can meld into something much bigger than the sum of both genres.

For the last twenty years, most of Forbeck’s work—game design, fiction, non-fiction—has in some way or another been connected to a shared world or licensed setting. He has worked with many settings from just about every possible angle—writer, editor, and developer.

A while back, Forbeck and I talked about writing in general and shared world writing in particular.

Interview by Jeremy Jones

Three new Shadowrun titles are now available at RPGNow!

Unwired

HACK THE PLANET!

Unwired is the advanced Matrix rulebook for Shadowrun, Fourth Edition. For everyday users, it explains how the Matrix works in easy-to-understand terms, and provides new software, qualities, and gear. For hackers and technomancers, it introduces new hacking tricks, malware, echoes, and sprites. It also covers system security and new Matrix phenomenon, from AIs to the resonance realms.Unwired contains everything players and gamemasters need for exploring the Matrix in Shadowrun.

Noumenon is a role-playing game of mystery and abstraction. Players assume the roles of the Sarcophagi, strange insect-like creatures trapped within the Silhouette Rouge. During their adventures, players will encounter bizarre entities and explore strange locations. The Silhouette Rouge, Noumenon’s setting, is detailed enough to spark the imagination yet open enough to allow customization. In Noumenon, player cooperation is key. Noumenon uses a domino-based task resolution system that enables players to build upon each other’s successes.

We have a small selection of books left over from GenCon and this is your chance to scoop them up while they last. Each book will be autographed by Monica Valentinelli, contributing author.

Annual Award “For Excellence in Gaming” Locked in Second-Ever Tie

The 2008 Diana Jones Award for Excellence in Gaming has been given to two winners: Grey Ranks (a roleplaying game by Jason Morningstar, published by Bully Pulpit Games) and Wolfgang Baur and his Open Design business model. This is the second time the awards committee has locked into a tie over the winners in its eight years. The winners were announced at a ceremony packed with games industry professionals, from designers to publishers and distributors, held at Jillian’s in Indianapolis at 9 PM on Wednesday 13th August, the day before the opening of the games convention Gen Con Indianapolis.

Greg Stolze (REIGN, A Hunger Like Fire) has recently released a new game called A Dirty World.

The black and white images conceal a world of baffling gray moral complexities. Noir is about secrets, deception, betrayal and hidden vice. “A Dirty World” rebuilds the One Roll Engine from the ground up to support those themes. Action has consequences, but it’s the only way to make progress. But be careful: Your character’s effectiveness hinges on the choices he makes. It doesn’t matter how nice you say he is: If he acts like a rat, soon a rat is all he’ll be able to be.

Today, Greg takes part in our ongoing design project and tells us how A Dirty World came together and what his goals where while writing the game.

Tales of the Seven Dogs Society is a collection of stories inspired by the Aletheia role-playing game published by Abstract Nova Entertainment. Each of these stories is a possible continuation of the events described in that book.

Tales of the Seven Dogs Society was written by Jim Johnson, Monica Valentinelli and Matt M McElroy. A special limited printing of the book was available at the Abstract Nova booth (#2115) at GenCon in August.

Stop by the Flames Rising RPGNow Shop to order your copy of Tales of the Seven Dogs Society today!

He has exposed The Cainite Heresy, and dug up the Secrets of the Ruined Temple. He has broadcast the Suppressed Transmissions, and ventured through Infinite Worlds. Now, horror heresiarch Kenneth Hite, the author of GURPS Horror 3rd Edition and Nightmares of Mine, assembles the Dubious Shards of the Cthulhu Mythos!

Look for Dubious Shards at the Flames Rising RPGNow Shop.

H.P. Lovecraft is known as the father of modern horror. His short fiction has inspired well-known writers like Stephen King to game designers like Pagan Publishing and Chaosium. In the spirit of Cthulhu and the Necronomicon, we’d like to provide you with a few, haunting places to visit and learn more about the writer who […]

Over the past five years, we at Flames Rising have fed our fires, bringing you news, reviews and interviews for the horror, dark fantasy and dark sci fi genres. We started with gaming and (as our flames got bigger) we quickly expanded into music, TV/film, comics and books. As our content shifted, so did our […]

Novelist Z. A. Recht, the author of Morningstar Strain: Plague of the Dead and Morningstar Strain: Thunder and Ashes, likes playing god in a world of shamblers (slow moving zombies), sprinters (fast-moving ones), and rotting, stinking corpses (unmoving).

“No, really,” said Recht of playing god. “If the Morningstar Strain universe actually existed, I would be the Great Spirit of it, and that’s the beauty of writing. It allows you to create and destroy entire worlds on a whim.”

“This is not just idle banter, either,” he added. “I actually mean create and destroy whole worlds.”

It doesn’t take much to get hooked by one of Recht’s novels, just a few short paragraphs or pages. His zombies, the viral by-product of the dread Morningstar Strain, are hungry for flesh and his humans are survivors with enough character and enough ammunition to live another day. Except, of course, when they get killed, eaten, or infected.

Recht and I spoke in mid-July, while he was hard at work on Survivor, his third Morningstar Strain novel due out from Permuted Press sometime in 2009.

Interview by Jeremy Jones

Super Genius Games (SGG) is proud to announce that Murder of Crows will be available for purchase as a PDF beginning Wednesday, August 13.

“This is the first Call of Cthulhu product published under our license with Chaosium, Inc.,” said Hyrum Savage, President of SGG, “and we couldn’t be happier or more excited. We’ve been working on this and other Call of Cthulhu products for months, and it’s great to see them start to reach the audience at large.”

A Candle in the Darkness The scales have fallen from your eyes. A fire is lit: is it a lamp perched over the inscription upon an ancient blade? Or a roaring conflagration consuming the house in which the howling fiends wait? Things will never be the same after this. You’ve set forth on a damning […]

Writer and editor Jess Hartley had just finished the novel Exalted: In Northern Twilight when she got the call from White Wolf to help write what would become the game supplement Predators.

Hartley will tell you that she got the gaming gig because she knew werewolves from the as of yet-unpublished novel she’d been hired to write. But, certainly, it had as much to do with her clear, straightforward prose, her professionalism, and her eye for evil.

Since White Wolf’s invitation, Hartley’s continued to diversify, writing fiction, developing and editing games, and doing magazine work.

Interview by Jeremy Jones

Solomon Kane: Traveler’s Tales

An adventure book for the Savage World of Solomon Kane RPG. Beware traveler, for many roads lead to Hell! Evil cloaked in many forms holds sway across the world. Facing it is a small group of stout-hearted men and women, wanderers all, called by a powerful shaman to follow the Path of Kane.

Traveler’s Tales comprises three short adventures for the Savage World of Solomon Kane RPG. Each tale of horror is standalone, allowing it be easily inserted into any campaign.

Abandon Interactive Entertainment invites families, gamers and Gen Con Indy attendees to catch a sneak peek of their upcoming family-friendly, cross-platform MMO video game Freaky Creatures at the Indiana Convention Center – from Thursday, August 14th to Sunday, August 17th in Indianapolis, IN. Attendees will have the unique opportunity to play the new online game and battle each other with fully customizable creatures prior to the game’s release this fall. Freaky Creatures representatives will be on-hand to demonstrate the game and guide players through its various features.

It is the year 1867, and it is a time of revolution.

The new science has done more than bring incredible technologies into the homes of everyday people. It has brought with it a new way of looking at the world. A way based on observation and logic that threatens the ancient dogma of Aluminat church teachings.

New political ideas are sweeping across Europe. Bismark ‘The Iron Chancellor’ is uniting the might of Prussia and the social order of Europe is threatened by talk of Communism and Bolshevism. The industrial revolution seems unstoppable. New technology appears at terrifying speed. Machines are being crafted that seem capable of impossible feats. Many worry that mankind is becoming enslaved to the vast industrial machines that belch smoke into the streets of London.

Can You Prevent Another Great Fire?

Something disturbs the slumber of a quiet, rural town. Sixty years ago, this monster scarred the town in a terrible inferno. Now nearly rebuilt, the sightings have returned. The monster, known locally as Moth, was considered nothing more than a boogeyman to scare children. But those older folk who lived through his first visit know better. They know that Moth brings trouble.

To the Flame is available at the Flames Rising RPGNow Shop.

The Dictionary of Mu, a pulp setting for The Sorceror RPG, was published in 2006 and became and instant hit among the indie games community for its blending of pulp, horror, low-fantasy and science fiction.

I recently contacted author and game designer Judd Karlman about the Dictionary, and he graciously agreed to answer my questions about this unique and imaginative book.

-Interview by Michael Erb

Screenwriter Rick Loverd weaves a tale of superheroes, Norse mythology and bone-crushing action.

Top Cow Productions Inc. announced at San Diego Comic-Con they will partner with Milo Ventimiglia and Russ Cundiff of DiVide Pictures to publish Berserker, a new comic book series created by Rick Loverd.

“Berserker is about people discovering they have superhuman ancient Norse powers as they’re pulled into an underground war that’s been raging for a thousand years,” explained Loverd. But the writer pointed out there are bigger themes. “It’s about people dealing with all the curves the world throws, accepting yourself,” he said. “It’s about not feeling helpless in the face of new challenges and, when someone builds a wall in front of you, smashing right through it with your bare hands. And, of course, it’s about bone-popping bloodlust, spine-crushing action, and saving the world from total destruction!”