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The Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design (AAGAD) and the Game Manufacturers Association (GAMA) proudly announce the nominees in all categories for the 34th Origins Awards.
Game retailer attendees at last week’s GAMA Trade Show in Las Vegas reviewed the list and selected the finalists in each award category. From those finalists, attendees at the Origins Game Fair and members of the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design will select the ultimate winners of the 34th Origins Awards.
This year’s winners will be announced during the Origins Awards ceremony at the Origins Game Fair in Columbus, Ohio, on Saturday, June 28, at 8:00 p.m.
The Inquisitor’s Handbook is a hodge-podge of bits and pieces scattering all around the game system and the background. It’s a goody-bag of weapons, skills interpretations, new background options and new ‘fluff’ which may or many not suit a particular player group. To me it didn’t feel like it had quite the same character as a player’s guide for other systems – ones which generally limit themselves to player advice and increasing player options – but it felt like an expansion of the corebook material overall, for both players and Games Masters. I felt, reading through it, as though some of the content here should have been in the corebook and vice versa, particularly the background information and the Calixis sector particulars. It would have made more sense, to me, to have increased the player and character creation options in the main book and then had the Calixis specifics in a sourcebook, or collected in this volume with the specific data appropriate to it. The ‘imposition’ of the Calixis sector as the group’s playground is just another aspect of the ‘hemming in’ that has been a criticism of Dark Heresy.
Aletheia – Written by Werner Hager, Lee Foster, Monica Valentinelli
Alien abductions. Crop circles. Spontaneous Human Combustion. The Seven Dogs Society investigates the weirdness at the fringes of reality.
Noumenon Written by Darwin Leary, Lee Foster, Monica Valentinelli
Noumenon is a role-playing game of mystery and abstraction. Players control the Sarcophagi, strange insect-like creatures trapped within an otherworldly landscape called the Silhouette Rouge.
Where does inspiration come from? What secrets lie at the heart of an author’s stories and novels? What is written on the invisible ink between the lines of dialogue and description? Most writers will never tell you, will leave you to guess at the connections between their fiction and their lives.
Jack Ketchum gives a rare and intimate look into his world and into some of the people who have influenced his life in this collection of essays. Idols and friends, lovers and strangers are revealed, examined, adored and lamented as only Jack Ketchum can.
You’ve seen it before: authors blurbing other books, claiming ‘I wish I’d written this’. Seems kind of hyperbolic, I know. But then I experienced it. This 300-something-page tome shouldn’t have taken me as long as it did to read. This is my fault because as I started reading, mood-killers kicked in: jealousy, envy and that dreadful thing that’s summed up as ’emo’. I did not want to feel this way, so for the first half of the book I read only in short sessions. For the uninitiated, I’m only an occasional fiction writer. Still, Mark Henry’s writing is so all-encompassingly engaging that I started hating my work and myself, lalala (emo).
Thanks to you our valued customers we have outgrown our current facility and will be moving to a better location here in Janesville when our lease is up in a couple of months. Its been almost 2 years since our last sale and with our warehouse move coming up in a couple of months, it?s a great excuse to move out some good, but older, stuff at super low pricing! To put it plainly, we have lowered the prices on literally THOUSANDS of older items and for the next 10 days (or so) you can take an additional 10% off these already lowered prices and ALL items including clearance items, rare items, new releases, etc!!!
Retailers at the GAMA Trade Show will select finalists this week
The Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design (AAGAD) and the Game Manufacturers Association (GAMA) proudly announce the semi-finalists in all categories for the 34th Origins Awards.
“It was a good year for the Origins awards,” said Phil Lacefield Jr., chairman of the AAGAD. “We had plenty of contenders across the board. The jury members did a great job.”
“The Origins Awards give our industry a chance to reward excellence in all facets of gaming,” said Anthony Gallela, GAMA’s executive director. “The award categories recognize games of all types, as well as fiction, non-fiction, magazines, comics, and more.”
This is a tightly presented 165 page PDF in two column format in a fair imitation of much of Wizard’s own presentation, it cover PC and NPC character clases, prestige classes, mechanical devices and effects, the interaction of magic and technology, automations, skills, feats and everything else. Basically this is one entire plug-in to bring technology and its users into the game, along with brief discussions on the affect technological change might have on a society and the means by which it might be introduced. To my mind there wasn’t enough material on this side of things, doubtless to make room for all the mechanical crunch.
EcoBrain is an online digital download store, dedicated to educating people about environmental living options while affording them the opportunity to purchase materials digitally in an effort to radically reduce the impact on the environment. Because eBooks are paper-free, easily storable and transferable electronic files, they give book readers the option of reading on the computer screen, a hand-held device, or printing off only the pages they deem necessary (preferably on recycled paper.) Additionally, because EcoBrain eBooks are delivered and produced electronically, very little energy is used in their creation and no fuel is used in their delivery.
The crippled U.S. government is giving up in its fight against an undead plague. Military forces and aid have been withdrawn from the last coastal cities, leaving those who choose to stay in the “badlands” defenseless against hordes of zombified humans and animals.
“A macabre masterpiece of post-apocalyptic zombie goodness. If you have waited until the end of the world for a wonderfully told, well written, and exciting as hell novel … your world has just ended. EMPIRE is that novel.”
Swarm Press is proud to announce its first official acquisition: a modern tale of superheroes by Matthew Wayne Selznick titled Brave Men Run: A Novel of the Sovereign Era.
Brave Men Run is the story of Nate Charters. Born different, unsure of his origins, he’s an outcast at Abbeque Valley High School, a self-proclaimed “boy freak” with few friends and low self-esteem. When the a flying man announces the existence of superpowered individuals and the Sovereign Era dramatically dawns, Nate finds himself in a quest to discover the truth: is he more than he seems, a misfit in a miraculous and powerful new minority… or something else entirely?
The obvious comparison with White Wolf’s vampire has to be made when reading VDG, while there are some independent and different concepts the overall one – breeds of vampire fighting it out for control – remains the same and the authors are clearly fans of the earlier version of Vampire and the style and methodology of White Wolf, at least as White Wolf used to be at any rate. This is fine by me, I like the old stuff though I have my pet hates of certain White Wolf ways of going about things too, and I much prefer the old World of Darkness to the new World of Darkness, VDG presents a game that is very much like what a post-Gehenna old World of Darkness campaign setting might have looked like and this is a good thing as far as I’m concerned. Some would consider this a rip-off of White Wolf, I prefer to see it as an homage to White Wolf at the height of their creative capabilities and see the relationship as being more akin to a Nightlife/Vampire relationship than something more negative.
Key Encounters: The Volcanic Shrine combines the writing and imagination of fan favorite Monte Cook with SkeletonKey Games‘ best selling miniatures-scale tiles to bring a detailed encounter to your table top. The Volcanic Shrine is a major encounter for fantasy d20 games that can be built with the 20 brand-new, custom designed miniatures-scale tiles included in the product. The encounter details the link between a massive lake of lava deep underground and the Elemental Plane of Fire itself. This encounter could be used as the center point of an entire adventure involving creatures of flame and the evil plot of a dark elemental creature known as Kaliastrix.
I love the world-building. Atlanta has two stages in time – tech (when life is as we know it) and magic. But the transitions between the two are getting faster, and Celtic mythology comes to life. (That sounds vague, I know, but I didn’t really understand it.)
Kate Daniels (whose father is supposedly Russian, but you wouldn’t know it from her surname) still has her almighty saber Slayer, but also has a new companion: teenager Julie, whose wannabe witch mother is missing.
Bestial: Werewolf Apocalypse by William D. Carl pre-order at Horror Mall.
Beneath the dim light of a full moon, the population of Cincinnati mutates into huge, snarling monsters that devour everyone they see, acting upon their most base and bestial desires. Planes fall from the sky. Highways are clogged with abandoned cars, and buildings explode and topple.
In the future, telepathy is no longer a fantasy; it’s a job.
Gina- just Gina- is a woman with no future, trying to make her living along the Street of Eyes, where people go to hire the desperate and the suicidal for their unique services. She is one of the sellers, the new underclass, who use “third eye” or “Spice”- a powerful drug that gives them the ability to read minds- as their way of making ends meet. The drug has only one downside- it drives the user insane.
Street: Empathy is the first volume of the acclaimed online series by Ryan A. Span. Buy it now from Amazon.com.
Gifted by the Deathlords with the corrupted Essences of Solar Exalts, the Abyssal Exalted are perhaps the greatest extant threat to Creation and its Exalted defenders. Frozen at the brink of death and offered immense power in exchange for servitude to the Neverborn, these so called knights of death ride forth with one shared mission, to drag the world and all that lives into the Void at their masters’ behest. Will the Abyssals succeed at their abhorrent task, or will the faint echo of their lost lot as heroes drive them to redeem themselves and, just maybe, rejoin the ranks of the Sun’s Chosen?
The Revised Tome of Horrors is a massive play on nostalgia. A book hoping that you miss the strange, often inexplicable and forgettable monsters from 1st edition. The problem becomes, that if you do not know what the hell these monsters are and you have no attachment to a pech or a tentamort, you will think this is simply a massive collection of strange and unremarkable creatures.
The book is single minded in its approach; proudly presenting you with over 300 monsters from the “good old days” of D&D. It clocks in at a massive 451 pages and is only available in PDF format. The reason for this decision is explained at the opening of the book. Ultimately it boils down to the cost involved with a reprint of a book this size.
Shadowmoor is the first set in a new block, a 301-card expansion with randomly inserted premium cards. It will be available in booster packs, tournament packs, theme decks and fat packs.
The Aurora has plunged Lorwyn into eternal night, transforming the once-idyllic plane into the eerie world of Shadowmoor. The gloom has transformed its denizens, too — creatures of fable have become monsters from dark fairytales. Races and characters introduced in Lorwyn are back, but with twisted allegiances and new powers.
Flames Rising is pleased to present two new Shadowmoor cards for Magic: the Gathering fans to preview!
I had high hopes for this book. The author is a pal of one of my favorites, Mr Mark Henry. And he’s an MRI tech. That latter factor particularly perked me because I love medical thrillers, and people with medical qualifications are smart, and I like to associate with those more intelligent than I. I was thinking Mr Schreiber would be my kind of writer, a male Tess Gerritsen – and it certainly helped that the aforementioned Ms Gerritsen had a blurb right on the front cover.
