This is the second in a series of three reviews looking at the core books for Hellfrost, a setting by Triple Ace Games for the Savage Worlds system. In this review, I will examine the Bestiary, the second of these three books.

The book, not surprisingly, contains a plethora of monsters, archetypes and animals that not only help you populate your Hellfrost campaign with relevant beasties, but also offer some good fodder for any other campaign run using the Savage Worlds rules. For anyone using Hellfrost with a different set of rules, this book won’t be as useful as the other two core HF books, but it will give you some idea of the types of critters out there in Rassilon for you to convert to whatever game system you’re using. In general, the book is great for Hellfrost using SW rules, and ok for anyone using either a different system for HF, or a different setting with SW.

When Evy Stone wakes up in a morgue in a different body than the one she remembers, with no memory of the few previous days, she knows she’s in for a hell of a time. What she does remember is this: her teammates from her bounty hunting career were murdered, the were-people with whom she took asylum were slaughtered by her former bosses, and the only person she thought she could trust was her handler. She has to make contact, convince him that she’s still Evy (despite the new body), and avoid being entangled in the life of the girl who used to live in this frame. Not to mention, as she discovers more about the reasons she ended up in a new body, saving the world. All in a three day time frame. But hey, she’s been through worse. Probably.

“Lenore might only be small, but her talent for mischief — and occasional wanton destruction — is anything but. Witness the mayhem that ensues when Lenore and friends are attacked by a gaggle of vicious militant mice, and cower in the face of an assault by undead German soldiers from Hell! Never has the term ‘something for everyone’ seemed more sinister and bizarre.”

While I can honestly say that this style may not appeal to everyone, it sure does appeal to me. In my teens I recall watching cartoons like Invader Zim, Agh Real Monsters and even today catching an episode of Courage the Cowardly Dog. So a book like this just comes off to me as looking great.

This is the first in a series of three reviews looking at the core books for Hellfrost, a setting by Triple Ace Games for the Savage Worlds system. In this review, I will examine the Player’s Guide, the first of these three books.

The book introduces the setting of Hellfrost and covers various interpretations of the Core Savage Worlds rules, offers new rules, and governs character creation in the world of Rassilon, as well as providing a very brief introduction to the world. The book is laid out in 11 chapters, with a good choice of art – just about every picture depicts something that is being mentioned on that page, from a woman buying a sword in the gear section, to a mage casting a Zephyr spell on the appropriate page of the magic section. The art is also of a decent standard, and in my opinion, better that that of the SW Explorer’s Edition book.

Anton Strout brings us more madcap mayhem in book two of the Jane chronicles (otherwise known as the Simon Canderous series, but his girlfriend, the ex-evil cultist Jane, totally steals the show). Now a member of the Department of Extraordinary Affairs after leaving her cultist ways behind, Jane is working in the Black Stacks (the scariest library in urban fantasy) and discovering that she has a talent for technomancy. In fact, she’s so good with magic and machines, she rescues her boyfriend Simon from an attempt on his life in his Oubliette test over his cell phone. Her new gig working for the ambiguously moralled Thaddeus Wesker, Director of Greater and Lesser Arcana at the DEA is going swimmingly — except for the tension it creates between her and Simon, who doesn’t like her boss.

The place of the pastiche in fiction is mixed at best: August Derleth’s Solar Pons is but a pale shadow of Sherlock Holmes, and the less said about Derleth’s “posthumous collaborations” with Lovecraft, the better. But in his collection of linked novelettes, Trail of Cthulhu, Derleth had the happy inspiration to combine the Cthulhu Mythos with Fu Manchu, and the result is a propulsive series of tales considerably above his usual mark. In Doc Wilde and the Frogs of Doom, Tim Byrd goes Derleth one better; he combines Lester Dent’s Doc Savage (as clearly as the laws of copyright will allow) and the Cthulhu Mythos – in the form of a young adult adventure mystery.

Fallen is Babylon is part of White Wolf’s Storytelling Adventure System, a series of well-tailored games that can be picked up for one-shots or slipped (most of the time) into a campaign. This particular setting makes no specific claim to line. It instead provides a town with a curse of sorts. The appearance is that the supernatural isn’t welcome. Vampires cannot sire here, Will-Workers find their abilities bleeding away the longer they stay, and, well, you get the idea. Of course, a mystery like this needs to be investigated.

Enter the players.

The Legends of Anglerre RPG (LoA) by Sarah Newton and Chris Birch takes the Starblazer Adventures iteration of the FATE 3.0 system and adapts it for the fantasy genre. This game strives to cover multiple subgenres in the fantasy milieu, with the focus on the Moorcockian swords and sorcery setting of Anglerre, and the high fantasy Hither Kingdoms. The source material for this game is drawn from a series of British comics that appeared in the Starblazer Adventures comic books. References are made to various characters and events from the comics and can at times leave the reader a bit in the dark.

The physical book itself is an impressive tome at just over 380 pages. The cover is full color and depicts three adventurers posing dramatically in a ruined building. The interior of the book is predominantly black and white with the sidebars offset in parchment colored boxed. The artwork is predominantly drawn from the LoA comics.

I’ve come to realize, somewhat unwittingly in more recent years, that Maberry scares me for reasons that go beyond the mere horrific. When I made my first serious foray into researching the occult, I didn’t realize until after the fact that my first fact finder’s guide just happened to have been written by the one who wrote this pithy little gem. But then, there’s always something about a writer whose writing not only gives you something you already know, but can serve to inspire other avenues of horror you were certain should have occurred to others by now – only didn’t.

Patient Zero is the first in a series of Joe Ledger novels (not to be confused with the Marvel character), revolving around a former Baltimore detective who is pulled into the shady world of the equally shady Church.

In a comics universe like the one in Top Cow’s Witchblade continuum, characters occasionally crop up who end up needing their own series. Those cross-series first appearances of the Magdalena, the church’s servant for wiping out evil using strength of arms and the ultimate guilt trip: the ability to make a person see all of the evil he’s ever done, are collected in Magdalena: Origins.

Near the beginning of the Darkness series, Jackie Estacado is dealing with plenty of issues (including, apparently, not being able to perform in bed), and he doesn’t really have time to deal with another hero-of-the-week trying to take him down. But, of course, that’s his lot in life now that he’s the incarnation of the Darkness. A Magdalena is dispatched by the church to challenge him and, ideally, destroy him.

Beware of beautiful ladies approaching you in inns… or at least, expect spectacular adventure to follow! This lady seeks help in retrieving her inheritance, secured by her late husband in a dungeon under their house, the secrets of which he took to his grave. Needless to say, all is not precisely what it seems, and characters who take up this challenge will have to contend with two rival gangs of thieves as well as the perils of the dungeon itself.

The adventure provides characters with challenges both mental and physical, as before dealing with the contents of the dungeon they need to figure out how to get in! Interaction with various people, most of whom are not quite what they claim to be, provides scope for role-playing as well.

This is a fun little book (52 pages/no ads). I can see why it’s holding at number one at Flames Rising RPGNow Shop since its release. It’s a useful little bastard that gives canon material to what gamers have been doing since Masquerade’s end and Requiem’s release. I guessed it would be a book about translating the old system to the new, but it doesn’t play favorites. It goes both ways.

The first three pages detail the similarities and differences between the two lines. For example, the original line ran with the “we’re the Childer of Caine” speech where untrustworthy memories make any origin story suspect in Requiem.

Before I go off on how wonderful I thought the season finale of AMC’s The Walking Dead was, how the series has changed television, how it may or may not be one of the most relevant social commentaries of the 21st century in media right now, I want to thank all of you who have read and shared these reviews. You make typing these little posts something to look forward to.

Now that, that is out of the way, let’s begin.

So, here we are, we’ve come to the end, that was it, for now. I hope you paid attention. because if you didn’t then this is going to be a little confusing. I want to talk about the “reality” that is portrayed in the series, especially in the the season finale. It’s a sticky subject, reality that is, as everyone produces to a certain extent their own version of it. Not in the way that they can interact with the physical world on a scientific level, you couldn’t interpret the laws of physics in your own way. Say with a suspension in the belief of Gravity, and live to tell about it. No matter how many happy thoughts you think, you’re going to plummet off the top of a building if you jump, you simply can not get around that reality.

I didn’t know what to expect with this book right off the bat, ha I said bat. I wasn’t sure if it was going to be just another vampire book or going off how I interpreted the item description, an update on the classic story. I read this book as more of the later, and I was not let down. Actually I never read the Bram Stoker version, just seen the movie, but this came across in the same kind of vain. However it was updated to the 1930’s.

The artwork was just fantastic. It has a nice dark and gloomy look to it, that really sets the visual tone for the story very well. The pages actually come off to me as these great digital paintings. Lets just say that I like the look of this book.

Enter a world rich and strange – even the cover art suggests this even before you read a word! But it’s stranger – and scarier – that you might imagine. The opening piece of fiction sets the scene: a heady mix of warfare, implacable enemies, fighting machines… and yet at the core human beings, maybe a bit different but still real people who care, who love, who hate… and have nightmares afterwards.

Then Chapter 1 bids us Welcome. Welcome to a near-future alternate world in which giant mecha, magic, technology and unspeakable horror are melded together mixing That Which Should Not Be with hopes, harbored by all who go to war, that better times are just around the corner. It begins by explaining unfamiliar terms, both those of role-playing and those specifically for this setting. Now obscure references in the opening fiction become clear – not, alas, the sidebar text, small black text on a strident and messy dark pink background is not conducive to clarity: rather a shock in a work where excellent design is otherwise evident. Many of the references are familiar if you happen to read Lovecraft – Cthulhu himself, and many of the cults and dark gods that lurk around – and others if you care for anime and mecha in general.

Sirenia Digest is a monthly subscription PDF-zine released by author Caitlín R. Kiernan. The stories are solidly weird fiction, with healthy infusions of erotica and Lovecraftian horror. (The adult-only warning on the website stems from both the themes of the works and their illustrations.)

I’ve been a subscriber for two months, now. My first readings were hurried, so I took advantage of the holiday downtime over Thanksgiving break to do a second reading of two recent Sirenia Digest issues (#58 and #59), to give each story my full, undivided attention. This time, I read them alone in a silent, darkened room in the wee hours of the night, with a giant picture window behind me, and silhouettes of writhing tree branches splayed across the floor.

What would you do if you found out you had been killed? Further, what if the new you had to track down the old you’s killer?

This is the odd dilemma facing Ronan Dooley, Secret Service Agent and Amortal. The Amortals Project is a program that keeps people alive long past their normal lifespan, and is a sort of insurance policy against anything lethal happening to the rich and powerful. Ronan has been granted Amortal status because of his usefulness in protecting other Amortals – including the President of the United States. So when Dooley ends up murdered, his first assignment – once his new body is up and running – is to track down the ones responsible; they may pose a threat to other Amortals, and besides, killing Dooley in such a high profile manner – broadcasting his death scene – gives the Project a black eye and unwanted bad publicity.

Signs of the Moon takes a look at one of the few aspects (pun intended) I love about the Werewolf (both of them) lines. The Auspices appeal to me because it always seemed realistic, as realistic as a game about shapeshifters can be. People are pulled by the moon in ways we barely understand. Just as sure as a hot August day can statistically cause a homicide rate to rise, the moon too plays a role in our little dramas. Why not write a book about it? This is a hefty 227 pages of new gifts, rules, filler and more.

The artwork to the book keeps to the feel of the line. It’s a visceral, tribal style that is so much stronger than what the original line offered. My personal fave is on page 207. I usually shy away from talking about layout in a White Wolf book because, well, they set the standard for high quality.

After the other reviews, I don’t really have much to say concerning this episode of AMC’s, The Walking Dead. In fact, I don’t know how much more I can say, which brings me at a place that I never thought I could really be. A place where zombies, walkers, shamblers, runners, etc, etc have sufficiently taken their toll on my psyche.

I know, I know-you’re thinking, “Surely Eric, you jest.”

I can assure you that I don’t, and to prove my point, well, OK, not so much to prove my point but more to keep these posts going, I will explain why. Also I may have signed a contract while drugged, you never know about such things, as they are (contracts and random druggings) arcane in nature.

“Survival horror” is everywhere, if you don’t believe me then just go to the horror section and take a look around. I guarantee you’ll see at least, if the bookstore happens to be Borders, 25-30 titles from small and large publishing companies alike that have something to do with survival horror.

Guaranteed.

And the majority of these titles will invariably have the words, dead; plague, zone, strain, Armageddon and/or zombie on the front cover or even interjected into the title of the book in some way, shape or form. Now for someone who really loves this sort of stuff, as I do, a fact which I make plainly and painfully clear every chance that is given to me, then this is something of a golden age for the “survival horror” fan.