A Land Where Legends Walk

Drawing enthusiastically on Greek mythology, the revised and re-imagined Scarred Lands nonetheless retains its place as a modern fantasy RPG setting. This is a world shaped by gods and monsters, and only the greatest of heroes can expect to be counted among them. The most populous continent of Scarn, Ghelspad, plays host to vast unexplored regions, hides unsolved riddles from ancient cultures, and taunts adventures with the promise of undiscovered riches hidden among the ruins of older civilizations.

Yet the myths of the Scarred Lands are relatively recent events. The effects of the Titanswar still ripple through the world, and the heroines and villains of many of these stories are part of living memory, if not still living.

The following continues the recap of the Scarred Lands campaign, Fire in Rahoch. It follows the adventures of Stromm, Manuc, Rostum, and Lliese as they navigate the politics of Calastia while at the same time trying to appease the secret societies that they are each a part of.

Drawing enthusiastically on Greek mythology, the revised and re-imagined Scarred Lands nonetheless retains its place as a modern fantasy RPG setting. This is a world shaped by gods and monsters, and only the greatest of heroes can expect to be counted among them. The most populous continent of Scarn, Ghelspad, plays host to vast unexplored regions, hides unsolved riddles from ancient cultures, and taunts adventures with the promise of undiscovered riches hidden among the ruins of older civilizations.

Yet the myths of the Scarred Lands are relatively recent events. The effects of the Titanswar still ripple through the world, and the heroines and villains of many of these stories are part of living memory, if not still living.

The following is a recap of the Scarred Lands campaign, Fire in Rahoch. It follows the adventures of Stromm, Manuc, Rostum, and Lliese as they navigate the politics of Calastia while at the same time trying to appease the secret societies that they are each a part of.

DriveThruRPG has launched their annual Halloween sale, and as usual, it’s a doozy; thousands of items — more than ten thousand items on Drive Thru RPG alone — are marked at 25% off. As usual, the suite of Drive Thru sites — DriveThruRPG, DriveThruFiction, DriveThruCards, DMsGuild, and Storytellers Vault — are each offering this sale on a huge selection of items. I thought I’d take a moment to highlight several items I’m particularly fond of to illustrate the depth and breadth of what’s available now through October 31. Most (but not all) follow the Halloween theme of horror and the supernatural.

The annual Halloween Sale is on at DriveThruRPG! With 25% Off these titles, it is the perfect time to try something new and spooky to truly terrify your players!  1. Little Fears Nightmare Edition In this game you assume the role of children being haunted and hunted by monsters that the adults do not believe […]

When I started out running a D&D-based game for friends a few months ago, I was thinking about converting the adventure into something I could publish on the Slarecian Vault, Onyx Path’s community content site for the Scarred Lands. I talked about that game back in March, in this blog post over on my website.

After my game wrapped, I put the finishing touches on the write-up, and turned it over to the person who was managing the project: Travis Legge. Travis and I first met at Madison, Wisconsin-based GameholeCon last year (I think – maybe we’d met before and I just forgot) and talked about a project wherein multiple people would each contribute a chapter to an extended D&D campaign using the Scarred Lands setting. I was intrigued, but also had concerns. Collaborative work takes a lot of communication to pull off successfully, and a solid guiding hand to keep things moving and make sure all the strings line up, or at least connect, to keep the storyline flowing.

The Christmas in July at DriveThruFiction sale continues! Last time, I offered ten recommendations of non-fiction books that are great for writers and narrative designers. Now, I’ve got ten new books for you to check out–some fabulous stories! Listing these reads in no specific order, I’ve picked out some cool novels and anthologies for you […]

Available now at DriveThruRPG.com I’ve recently finished my third community content project, and it went live today, Tuesday July 23, 2019. It’s an adventure for D&D 5E in the Scarred Lands setting, and it’s called Desert of Lost Relics. Desert of Lost Relics is suitable for 4-6 characters of levels 4-6. I wrote this adventure […]

The annual Xmas in July sale is on at DriveThruRPG

This is a perfect time to try out some new game systems without breaking the bank. Here is a list of ten new systems to try for X-Mas in July.

The Scarred Lands Spell Cards for 5e were just released on DriveThruRPG. I had the pleasure of working on these cards as the developer as well as performing layout duties. The process of crafting these cards presented a number of unique challenges, which required a wide array of skills.

There is a massive sale running at the Storytellers Vault, offering 75% off of the 20th Anniversary Edition core rulebooks for each World of Darkness line. In addition to these savings, the sale offers a 25% discount off of all sourcebooks and most of the community content for these lines. While this presents a prime opportunity to catch up on any of the official 20th Anniversary Edition materials you may have missed, I would like to take a moment to call your attention to some of the community content included in the sale. These titles are organized by game line, not listed by any sort of ranking. All twenty of these sourcebooks are very well done and worth every penny. Get them at a discount while you can!

The World of Darkness has been a part of many of our lives for a very long time. The 20th Anniversary editions of the games have been some of the most expansive and innovative additions to the game line in years, giving a new breath of life to a classic. DriveThruRPG and Storytellers Vault is holding a sale currently on the 20th Anniversary game lines and supplements. There are many hidden gems in this sale, so I am going to give you my top picks and why you should add them to your collection. I have these in no particular order.

Hi all, my name is Liz and I’m the owner of Angry Hamster Publishing. In May 2019 our newest game Afterlife: Wandering Souls launches on Kickstarter and the Flames Rising blog was kind enough to let me write a guest post about the game and what horror could mean to player characters.

The premise of Afterlife: Wandering Souls (AWS) is: You die, but you don’t end up where you are meant to go – Heaven, Hell, reincarnation, a great nothingness. Instead, you are transported to the Tenebris – a giant scorching desert reaching into eternity. You travel the Tenebris entering into different Limbos (worlds) in search of memories from your past life and struggling to come to terms with who you were and what you lost.

Flames Rising contributor Monica Valentinelli, best known for her many contributors in the tabletop gaming industry, has teamed up with comics professional Mark Stegbauer to bring you a fun, fiery creative challenge.

In #febrrrary, pick a daily prompt to stat up an antagonist for your favorite game, write a 250-word story, or warm up your creative muscles with a fun sketch! Monica has mentioned on Twitter she plans on using the prompts for a quick, morning warm-up. What about you? Are you planning to draw, write, or stat up characters? Sounds like creating new Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition monsters could be a fun way to deal with freezing cold temps.

We’re Elizabeth Chaipraditkul and Steffie de Vaan, and we wanted to tell you about our newly launched RPG Patreon. We’ve been active in the RPG industry for some years now. Liz was the lead developer for the Crescent Empire book for 7th Sea, author of the Book of Lore for Bluebeard’s Bride, and owns her own Indie company Angry Hamster Publishing which published Witch: Fated Souls. Steffie wrote for the Changeling the Lost 2nd Edition Corebook, Beckett’s Jyhad Diary (Vampire: the Masquerade), and is the developer for Promethean: The Created and the upcoming Legendlore RPG. So you’d think we have lots of creative outlets. And we do. They’re just… still not enough. Hence our Patreon, to finally release our bottled ideas into the world.

Hi all, Matt’s letting me take over the blog today to tell you about my newly released Choice of Games novel 7th Sea: A Pirate’s Pact. I’m Danielle Lauzon, a long-time freelance writer and developer for Onyx Path and a one-time line developer for 7th Sea Second Edition.

If you aren’t familiar with 7th Sea, it’s a game set in an alternate world 17th Century Europe (and the rest of the world as well). It’s a game about romance, high adventure, and sorcery in the vein of Errol Flynn movies, Alexandre Dumas books, The Princess Bride, One Thousand and One Nights…I could go on, but I think you get it. And in all this we feature not quite but just reminiscent characters and situation from a recognizable history in a fantastical world. Magic is real, myths are real, and you play Heroes fighting against evil and corruption.

Hi everyone! I am pleased to announce two exciting things today! I will be at Special Guest at GameHole Con from Thursday, November 8th to Sunday, November 11th. During the show, I’ll be running a playtest of a Ravenloft campaign I’m working on for DMsGuild.com, putting in some booth time for Onyx Path Publishing, attending panels, and playing games.

To help sick kids, I will be playing a Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition game that’ll be live-streamed during the show. The fundraiser is called Extra Life, and it allows me to customize rewards for your pledges.

I’m not sure where to start this post, because it was inspired by an interview question. On the surface, the interviewer’s question sounds simple: What would I change in gaming? Well, after several minutes I realized the volume of what I’d want to change would not fit in a paragraph. Instead, I’m writing this post […]

Inspired by Justin Achilli’s Act Charitably, Win V20 I’ve decided to do my own. I have an extra copy of the Grand Masquerade limited edition V20 core book that was released in 2011. I’m seeing these sell for $400 or more on eBay and similar sites. Like Justin, I’d like to give it away to someone looking for something cool. Unfortunately, it is a little late to give this as a X-Mas gift, but maybe someone will kick off the new year with a rare book…

Available from Storytellers Vault

When I was approached about writing up the city I live in as a stretch goal for the Vampire: the Masquerade book Anarchs Unbound, I was thrilled. It was my first chance to contribute — in a meaningful, but small way — to the World of Darkness setting. My write-up was a side-bar, really — only about a thousand words — but the offer was made to me with a very short deadline in mind — less than a week, in fact — from accepting the job to turning over my completed draft. Once completed, I knew that there was more to this story, and I wanted the chance to expand on that very basic summary.

The Pip System is a roleplaying system published by Third Eye Games and used in games such as Mermaid Adventures, Infestation: An RPG of Bugs and Heroes, and Camp Myth.

It was just recently released on Kickstarter, and I cannot be more excited. I had the opportunity to be on the writing staff for the book, and it was my first opportunity to work in a group writing format. I wanted to share with you some of the highlights for the Pip System and talk about my experiences with this amazing writing staff.