Witchcraft is a tabletop role-playing game set in our modern era. The Armageddon has yet to happen. Before it does, your players will create characters that are attempting to guide humanity to their preferred Armageddon. You can play psychics, witches, sorcerers, Mundanes (humans with no magical abilities), Bast (cats with the ability to perform magics and change into human guise), supernatural hunters, secret society members, and MORE!

“The Revenge of the Kine” would also be an adequate name for Dark Ages: Inquisitor, where ordinary mortals are called by God himself to serve their fellow man in the vocation of the secret Holy Inquisition. Hold onto your souls kids, we’re entering a medieval world tormented by the get of Satan — from demons to heretics to blood drinking witches, and we are all that stands between man, and his corruption by evil incarnate. We are the men in black. And white. And red. And the rest.

It was a good theory anyway. The horrors perpetrated in the name of God were little better than the Get of Satan is capable of. Torture, murder and mob violence are the staples of the Inquisition, which at its most extreme will stop at nothing to root out the minions of the Adversary. How could a good Christian stand by and let Satan’s minions run freely around God’s Earth? All sin may be absolved, and what is the odd transgression when you are in the practice of saving souls? What choice do you have when the legions of Hell are here, now and stealing the souls of Innocents? Trust in God, and in his Forgiveness.

Available at RPGNow.com Written by Guy Davis, Andrew Bates, Jackie Cassada, Ken Cliffe, Richard Dansky, Robert Hatch, Michael Lee, Nicky Rea, Sion Rodriguez y Gibson, Ethan Skemp, Cynthia Summers and Fred Yelk, Additional Material by Phil Brucato, White Wolf Publishing (WW2804), April 1997, 189 pgs, US$20.00 It seemed inevitable that White Wolf would eventually release […]

Written by Mark Bruno and Brett M. Bernstein, Unbidden interweaves the supernatural with modern-day life. It forces its players to create characters that are as real as your neighbor next door. Your character, whether it be a member of your local clergy or an average executive, is then transformed as their awareness of the world around them increases. Seeing with new eyes, your character will play in a world dominated by the quintessential fight between good and evil. While the war between the forces of light and darkness is not new to gaming, the idea that you, as a gamer, are forced to play an everyday citizen without the trappings of magic, powers, and other items is refreshing. As you play “Unbidden,” you will find that your character will soon become an extension of yourself.

The Thousand Hells is a supplement for White Wolf’s World of Darkness Kindred of the East (KOTE) role playing game of horror set in modern East Asia. KOTE is a companion to the more familiar Vampire: the Masquerade (VtM) line of games and products. This supplement provides details of the many hells that exist within the mythology underpinning the KOTE setting and includes some details on what it is like to visit or be condemned to some of those hells, denizens that might be found there, methods of entrapping players in adventures in which their characters must visit hell and a variety of additional ideas, including new powers and abilities for vampires and their inevitable assailants. As the name suggests, the supplement is not sufficient to play the game in itself and players will need the KOTE book in order to play, as well as the usual variety of stationery and polyhedral dice.

It seems such a long time ago now, 1992, that so many of us were so naïve we thought vampires could be dissuaded from eating us by garlic or that they would recoil from their appearance (or lack of it) in a mirror. Worse, we believed in our ignorance that vampires were pretty much all of a piece. Since then, we have been educated to understand that there are endless machinations among the numerous tribes and clans of the vampire world that is kept secret from we mere humans – the kine on which the powerful but shadowy kindred feed.

Vampire the Masquerade is made up of a variety of elements that are integrated through both gaming skills and storytelling. A player oftentimes becomes strictly focused on the fighting or “battle” aspect of a game and neglects to take advantage of the other elements of the game. I’m not denying the fact that it’s fun to defeat a challenge using brute force, but I feel the more creatively I can defeat an opponent, the more gratification I receive. If you’re planning on taking a different route from simply ripping your enemies head off, you may consider corrupting his/her small corporation with your influence, or even bankrupting all of his/her bank account. In that case, Gilded Cage is the sourcebook for you.

Ghost Stories: Horror Mystery Adventures is a slim volume (36 pages) that aims to provide an entire horror gaming system for players and referee to use with the minimum of delay. The system is necessarily very light in terms of details and examples and there will be some who consider the lack of artwork as a problem. A straightforward trait and die roll system is provided to resolve tasks of various sorts. Players can play such character types as occultists, demon stalkers, clergymen, archaeologists and similar staples of popular ghost stories. Additional sections briefly cover sorcery, combat, skills and backgrounds.

The first supplement available for Witchcraft, Mystery Codex provides all the information needed to keep your Witchcraft tabletop role-playing game fresh.

First off, time is taken to update anyone still using an older version of Witchcraft to the current version, as published in Eden Studio’s CJ Carella’s Witchcraft. With this information, you DO NOT need to buy the latest version of the main book if you own the previous version of Witchcraft published by Myrmidon Press.

The combination of Horror and Westerns does take a little getting used to. The Foreword to this volume, written by Joe Lansdale, explains the appeal of both genres and how they might work when mixed together. Deadlands explores these themes, mixing elements from TV shows, movies and comic books in a bizarre, but workable, adventure. The fiction in this volume explores the living and the dead, good and evil, drama and humor.

Faith and Fire also brings to the reader a sense of character through its writing. MET’s writers did a tremendous job clearly expressing how to play in the Dark Ages by using a second person voice. You will feel drawn into the medieval world as a player, before you have the chance to pick up your character sheet. While the Clan text was extremely intriguing and well-written, you will find yourself distracted by the artwork. However, the writing is straightforward, and definitely worthy of a careful read. Overall, Faith and Fire’s text was edited well, and intriguing throughout.

The Seventh Seal: Roleplaying Game of Prophetic Revelations is a modern day conspiracy/horror game. In it the player characters take on the role of the Chosen Elect, men and women who have been contacted by an Archangel and charged with the task of defending humanity from the forces of darkness. Unlike other games dealing with this subject matter, this one takes place before open war breaks out between the Heavenly Host and the Rebel Angels. The players must survive in a familiar world, while investigating, hunting and hiding from the Infernal Enemy.

I recently ran across The Seventh Seal: Roleplaying Game of Prophetic Revelations at a local game convention. With all the other games about the end of the world out, or coming out, I wanted to know what made this game stand apart. Initially it appeared that the setting was the major difference. This game did not take place after the apocalypse, or even during the final epic battle between good and evil. Instead this game takes place during the events that lead up to that war. The result is a game that has more in common with our own world, and, therefore, places it firmly in the Modern Horror genre.

InSpectres is described as a “fast, simple and fun game that mixes horror and comedy” and it lives up to that description throughout the entire book. The author has blended the mystery of X-Files and the humor of Ghostbusters and Men in Black. It features an easy system to learn that doesn’t get in the way of a fun night of gaming. No one should expect InSpectres to replace more serious investigation/hunter games like Call of Cthulhu or Orpheus, because that really isn’t the point of this game. InSpectres is about fun, it is full of jokes, one-liners and offers everyone a chance to cut loose for an evening of entertainment.

There are 232 pages. There are six chapters, a section of Archetypes, a Forward, an Appendix, and an Index. The first chapter explains to you what you’ll find in the book. The second chapter describes character generation. A list of well-thought out Archetypes are given – with good artwork to go with them. The third chapter goes over game mechanics. Equipment is discussed in chapter four. The fifth chapter explains zombies, how to create them, and how to use them. Chapter six discusses different Deadworlds that you can use for your settings.

Cthulhu Live is set in the universe of eldritch horror created by Howard Phillips Lovecraft. Cthulhu Live is a theater-gaming experience of horror, action and suspense. The participants are both actors and audience. The game is a full evening’s worth of fun every time it is played.

LARP (Live Action Role Playing) offers players a chance to get into costume, test their acting skills and interact with many more characters than the standard tabletop game usually entails. Several different LARP games are available; Cthulhu Live remains one of the most widely played in several countries.

How did you get into gaming? I’ll restrict “gaming” to mean role-playing in my case, because other activities under that label have meant very little to me. I like board games and card games as well as anyone who’s not a gamer likes them, and I regard wargaming with a kind of bemused shock. In […]

How did you get into gaming? The Dungeons and Dragons Marvel Comics ads are what hooked me. I was intrigued, and ordered my first D&D books through the Sears catalog (this is about 1983 or so). I grew up in a small coal-mining town, so game stores weren’t something that existed (in fact, the nearest […]

Available at Amazon.com Directed by Tim Sullivan Starring Robert Englund Review by Brian LeTendre The South will rise again! “2001 Maniacs” is a remake of goremeister Herschell Gordon Lewis’ 1964 film “Two Thousand Maniacs”. Robert Englund plays the mayor of a southern town that was destroyed during the Civil War, where the residents come back […]

How did you get into gaming? My brother dragged me into it, actually. He tried to get me to play a couple different games but it was Starchilde’s second edition of “Justifiers” that finally lured me in. That was in ’92, ’93. My first actual group was made up of some friends of mine. Occasionally […]