Welcome to another collection of Mini-Reviews here on Flames Rising!

This week we are going to focus on some of the cool products published by some of the sponsors of the “Favorite Horror Game Contest” and the creative games they have released. Next week will be a few more of sponsors’ products. Including amazing art and funny cards.

So sit back and enjoy this collection of zombies, cannibals, strange creatures and nightmare cities…

We’re proud to announce the first Flames Rising Fan Appreciation contest. Some of you may remember that Flames Rising hasn’t always been a horror and dark fantasy webzine; it started out as a Live Action Role-Playing Site devoted to those dark and brooding vampire clans from White Wolf’s Mind’s Eye Theatre system. Through a love for gaming and other things that go bump in the night, Flames has evolved to its current incarnation, a horror webzine that shines the spotlight on up-and-coming authors, horror artists, game designers, and more!

To celebrate the new site launch, we want to show our appreciation to the fans who make Flames Rising possible by returning to our dice pool and pencils. Prizes include a variety of products from Abstract Nova, Apophis Consortium, Bob Goat Press, Cubicle 7 Entertainment, Eden Studios, Evil Hat Productions, Monolith Graphics, Neoplastic Press, Rogue Games, Snarling Badger Games, Talisman Studios and 12 to Midnight.

When Wizards first announced it’s new Open Game License (OGL) for publishers, a flurry of forum activity like this thread on RPGnet covered concerns from fans, contributors and publishers. Wizard of the Coast’s new OGL license for 4th Edition Rules hardly resembles the previous, free-flowing version, and while you may (or may not) agree with the way that Wizards has handled this aspect of their business, I still feel that it’s important to point out that this change could affect freelancers workflow and payment schedules.

Horror-genre lovers (like you and me) can’t resist sharing our love of the macabre. If we tell our friends about a dog of a film, they probably won’t go to see it. How then do we write a film review that finds the happy medium between gushing over the latest hit and bashing that worthless dud?

While the day may seem just like any other day, several people are hoping you’ll remember June 6, 2006, the so-called “number of the beast,” by doing something a little hellish, and maybe picking up an item or two along the way.

Not only did she play Tara on the Buffy: the Vampire Slayer series, she has also directed, written and created a variety of other products that range from comic books to role-playing games.

These days almost everyone with a home computer at some point or another wants to be a writer. As a consequence the fiction market has been flooded with new authors: some good, some bad. But what makes a piece of fiction “bad”? How does the average reader know what’s worthwhile to read and what isn’t?

The purpose of a review is to provide readers with enough information to decide whether they would like to spend their time or money on reading the book, watching the film or, in our case, playing the game. Whether or not the reviewer enjoys or is enthused by the game is of less importance. The reader must come first.

Plenty of articles deal with setting the mood for a horror RPG. As a result, I’m not going to tackle that topic. Instead, I’d like to talk about plot devices that, when in operation at a level of generality above specific mood elements, set the stage for creating a truly horrific RPG.

Have you ever noticed how some types of characters seem to lend themselves naturally to stereotype? In Vampire you can easily find multiple-personality Malkavians, limp-wristed über-goth Toreador, street-punk Brujah, and so on; in Changeling (which I play the most often) there’s big, dumb trolls and horny satyrs, and so on. Every clan or kith or tradition or group has a stereotype.