The first part of the highly anticipated Cthulhu Apocalypse series.

The Investigators are rendered unconscious by a train crash. When they wake they discover the world has died. White flowers cover the ground and they see, beneath the delicate petals, the faces of the dead. No other human is in sight, everyone is gone.

The struggle to survive the apocalypse takes the Investigators through Britain, across the sea to America and beyond the veils of reality.

The Dead White World contains the first three scenarios for Cthulhu Apocalypse by Graham Walmsley, author of The Purist Adventures.

Flames Rising is pleased to present an exclusive preview of this new Trail of Cthulhu product from Pelgrane Press.

At the end of April, FlamesRising.com will launch a brand new feature for our site. In addition to our news, reviews, interviews and other horror-related goodness, we are providing subscribers with additional content through our monthly newsletter.

You can sign up for this new feature by filling out the form in this post. Or, you can visit our FlamesRising.com sign-up form at our mailing list partner.

FlamesRising.com is pleased to present you with an in-depth look at Paths of Storytelling, White Wolf Publishing’s latest release for Vampire: the Masquerade.

Joining us today is the developer of this product, Eddy Webb, along with the trio of authors: Jess Hartley, Kelley Barnes and Monica Valentinelli.

FlamesRising.com is pleased to present you with the introduction from Whedonistas: A Celebration of the Worlds of Joss Whedon by the Women Who Love Them. This collection of essays was edited by Lynne M. Thomas and Deborah Stanish, and was recently published through Mad Norwegian Press.

Introduction

Lynne’s Story:

You may know me as a Chick Who Digs Time Lords, but I’m also an avowed Whedonista. Although Whedon fandom is not my primary active fandom (that belongs to the Doctor), the Whedonverse has been a part of my life for just about as long.

I mentioned in Chicks Dig Time Lords that watching Doctor Who got me through much of my pregnancy; Buffy the Vampire Slayer got me through oh, I dunno, my whole adult life.

Paths of Storytelling, offered as a free download today on RPGNow.com, is the latest product for the Vampire: the Masquerade line. According to this White Wolf announcement, it’s a long-forgotten manuscript that was rejected — and with good reason. Sure, on the heels of the Vampire: the Masquerade twentieth anniversary announcement we can understand why they’d want to keep up the buzz, but we all know not all V:tM fiction has been good fiction. Which is part of the reason why we were hoping they’d post a little more crunch. A new Giovanni adventure? Yet another awesome Bloodline?

Flames Rising is pleased to present an in-depth interview with author and game designer Robin Laws. An industry veteran, Laws has published role-playing games, supplements, novels and fiction for several companies. His works range from The Esoterroists, produced by Pelgrane Press, to his upcoming Pathfinder novel, which will be released through Paizo this spring.

Today, we sit down with Robin to discuss horror in role-playing games, his work on the GUMSHOE system, and his endeavors as an editor and novelist.

White Wolf is making a 20th Anniversary Edition of Vampire: The Masquerade and we want your help!

Why are we? Vampire: The Masquerade changed everything! Exploding into hobby games in 1991, it evoked and inspired a generation of fans of which the game industry had never seen before or since. The gothic and punk subcultures from which it drew, previously unseen in the gaming world, created an unparalleled worldwide phenomenon that spanned novels, TCG’s, LARPs, video games, and television. But it all started with one RPG. The cultural significance Vampire left on not just the gaming world but on modern vampire-related pop culture can be seen and felt at virtually every turn and in every medium today. This combined with the unwavering sheer dedication of an unparalleled fan base is the reason this book is being published. Vampire: The Masquerade – 20th Anniversary Edition brings the entire World of Darkness experience full circle and will serve as the perfect anniversary milestone to celebrate two decades of gaming after dark.

A massive earthquake hit the Pacific Ocean nearby Northeastern Japan on March 11 causing damage with blackouts, fire and tsunami. The large earthquake triggered a tsunami warning for countries all around the Pacific ocean.

RPGNow is helping raise funds to help those affected by this disaster. Please help with a $5 donation at RPGNow.com.

Lord of the Rings RPG Headlines an Industry-Leading Lineup

Cubicle 7, one of the RPG industry’s leading publishers, today took the wraps off a 2011 schedule that also makes it the most prolific. With four major RPG core games being released, and over 100 products on the 2011 schedule, Cubicle 7 is the biggest supplier of new titles in the RPG industry.

The One Ring: Adventures over the Edge of the Wild launches a new line based on the grandfather property of fantasy: J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy. The Lord of the Rings hasn’t been represented in gaming for several years, and Cubicle 7, in partnership with Sophisticated Games, promises a new approach that will invigorate fans of this highly-developed and much-loved universe—as well as pull in a whole new generation of gamers.

The year is nineteen-sixty-something, and after endless millennia of watery sleep, the stars are finally right. Old R’lyeh rises out of the Pacific, ready to cast its damned shadow over the primitive human world. The first to see its peaks: an alcoholic, paranoid, and frightened Jack Kerouac, who had been drinking off a nervous breakdown up in Big Sur. Now Jack must get back on the road to find Neal Cassady, the holy fool whose rambling letters hint of a world brought to its knees in worship of the Elder God Cthulhu. Together with pistol-packin’ junkie William S. Burroughs, Jack and Neal make their way across the continent to face down the murderous Lovecraftian cult that has spread its darkness to the heart of the American Dream. But is Neal along for the ride to help save the world, or does he want to destroy it just so that he’ll have an ending for his book?

Flames Rising is pleased to present you with the first chapter from Move Under Ground, a Lovecraft-inspired novel by author Nick Mamatas. Set in the 1960s, Move Under Ground is Mamatas’s debut novel about a character named Jack Kerouac who receives strange, rambling letters from Neal Cassaday. Will Jack successfully rescue Neal? Will they escape the Cult of Utter Normalcy? Or will they face Cthulhu himself? Dubbed an “ambitious” novel, read Chapter One and enjoy a fresh voice inspired by H.P. Lovecraft.

Move Under Ground is available now at Amazon.com.

Dance ‘Til Sunrise

The definitive companion to Vampire: The Requiem.

Flames Rising is pleased to present an exclusive excerpt from this new Vampire: the Requiem sourcebook from White Wolf. Danse Macabre is available at Amazon.com and RPGNow.com.

It is the 41st millennium, a future in which the vast Imperium of Man stretches light-years across the galaxy. The wildly popular Warhammer 40,000 universe is one of constant strife; for untold billions, merely to be born is to be condemned to a lifetime of cruel suffering under an unforgiving and draconian regime. Only a select few in positions of power possess limited freedom: the Inquisitors who hunt heretics, the Rogue Traders who gather wealth, and the Deathwatch Space Marines who combat the alien threat. Science and technology offer little promise of relief; too much has been lost since the Dark Age of Technology, and all that is left goes to fuel the Imperium’s mighty war machine. It is a universe of grim darkness.

Here are the young men, with weights on their shoulders or what it’s like to be a typist.

I was half way through with it, my first real attempt at writing a novel, I was so close.

I had typed, roughly, 40,000 words. Real words mind you, not these contrived little things that you see on the screen in front of you currently, but real actual words that were going to tell a real actual story. And then I had to stop, give up and start all over again. Because they weren’t the words I needed to say, or write, or put on the paper. They were the words that I was trying to say, or write or put on the paper. And it just wasn’t F-ing happening.

Titan Books presents Angel of Vengeance, the original never-before-released novel that inspired the vampire TV series “Moonlight.”

Written by Trevor Munson, the co-creator, writer and producer of “Moonlight” (the CBS series which attracted 7 million viewers and still retains a loyal, devoted fan base and cult following), Angel of Vengeance offers a new twist on the classic Dracula vampire tale and blends it with Raymond Chandler’s hardboiled P.I. detective fiction.

Angel of Vengeance: L.A.-based P.I. and vampire Mick Angel has been hired by a beautiful red-headed burlesque dancer to find her missing sister. The apparently simple case of a teenage runaway is soon complicated by drug dealers, persistent cops, murder, and Mick’s own past. Mick must learn the hard way what every vampire should know – nothing stays buried forever, especially not the past.

Flames Rising is pleased to present an exclusive design essay from author Trveor Munson. Trevor tells us about the creative process as well as the challenges of in redefining vampire lore for this book.

Fugitive Rachel Nolander is a newcomer to the city of Dogsland, where the rich throw parties and the poor just do whatever they can to scrape by. Supported by her brother Djoss, she hides out in their squalid apartment, living in fear that someday, someone will find out that she is the child of a demon. Corporal Jona Lord Joni is a demon’s child too, but instead of living in fear, he keeps his secret and goes about his life as a cocky, self-assured man of the law. The first book in the Dogsland Trilogy, Never Knew Another is the story of how these two outcasts meet.

Flames Rising is pleased to present this excerpt from Never Knew Another by J. M. McDermott. Never Knew Another is available now at Amazon.com.

The stories of rocketships and rayguns you read under cover of dark are coming to life before your eyes. Will you become a victim of Parsons’ ‘Big Hoodoo’?

The Big Hoodoo is Lovecraftian noir in 1950s California with a ripped-from-history plot centered on the explosive death of real-world rocket scientist, science fiction fan, and occultist Jack Parsons in a garage laboratory in 1952. The investigators are iconic figures active in the science fiction scene at the time of Parsons’ death, and their inquiries lead them from the mean streets of Pasadena to the edge of the Mojave Desert and the mountains of southern California as well as the beaches of Los Angeles.

Matt Forbeck has been a staple in the RPG industry for many years. With stints working for Games Workshop, Pinnacle Entertainment and Human Head Studios, and with design credits from Deadlands and Brave New World to Mutant Chronicles and the Leverage tabletop role-playing game, Matt has enough experience that the title “veteran” hardly seems adequate.

Matt and I sat down to hash out a few questions regarding his most recent novel, Amortals, from Angry Robot Books.

In the divine struggle between good and evil, humans are hardly noticeable to the mal’akhim, but when an ancient seal is broken on the grounds of a California college campus, beings from dimensions beyond the balance of holy and unholy erupt from the earth. A retired priest and an ailing magickian must trust the mysterious Walker Between the Worlds and his skin-eating demon familiar as they step through Heisenbergian passages of probability and battle forces that are so far beyond demon they cannot be fully seen in earthly dimensions. Amidst the earthquakes and interdimensional intruders, the students and staff of California Hills University step across the boundaries of their knowledge and faith, revealing their true natures as the night erupts in earth and blood.

Flames Rising is pleased to present this excerpt from An Agreement with Hell by Dru Pagliassotti. An Agreement with Hell is available now at DriveThruHorror.com.

First published in March 2010 on DriveThruHorror.com, we’ve expanded our digital offering to include a text-based version for your Amazon Kindle or your Nook from Barnes and Noble. Since this file format is primarily text-based, we went ahead and dropped the price to $2.99 on both the Kindle and the ePub edition. The ePub format, which is available at Barnes and Noble, is also compatible with several other devices including your Sony eReader and your iPhone. Both the Kindle and ePub format are also available through DriveThruHorror.com for your convenience.

FlamesRising.com is pleased to present you with an inside look at the design process for Scenes of the Embrace, a brand new toolkit released from White Wolf Publishing to be used with its Vampire: the Requiem role-playing game.

This exclusive article is broken up into two parts. First, we give you an overview of the design process for this product, which was inspired by Will Hindmarch’s design from Scenes of Frenzy. After you read Eddy Webb and Monica Valentinelli’s exchange, stick around for an exclusive preview from this new e-book.

Scenes of the Embrace is available now at the Flames Rising RPGNow Shop.