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The Doom from Below is a stand-alone (ish) Call of Cthulhu scenario from Super Genius Games. It can be, with minimum effort, tied directly to the events in their previous adventure Murder of Crows. The PDF weighs in at 38 pages (35 of these pages are pure meat) and seems quite generous for a one-shot adventure intended for four investigators.
First, a little blurb about the adventure itself. The Doom from Below takes investigators to the depths of a two-hundred foot chasm. The descent itself is semi-treacherous while The Things Not Meant To Be Seen at the bottom are even creepier.
Michael Reaves’ novel, Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter, really wants to be a good book, but it fails to achieve that goal for the exact same reason that many fans believe the film Star Wars Episode I – The Phantom Menace disappointed on so many levels…both were tragedies that had no idea that they were tragedies!
Be warned, the following contains numerous MAJOR SPOILERS and does so only because they are integral to telling why this book ultimately fails.
Book three of this series has Tavi being sent out of the way (both because of who he is, and to get training) to infiltrate a new legion being created. Since most lord’s have their own legion, a new one was being created to try to serve no political uses. But Tavi is supposed to see if anyone in the legion is in fact a spy. That is what he does since he is a Cursor (also a spy) for the First Lord.
Quickly, things escalate. Lord Kalare, whom has eyes on the First Lord’s throne, launches an attack and starts civil war in the realm. He also kidnaps other high ranking nobles, and holds them prisoner at his fortress.
“Vampires’ Quest” is a card game about competing vampires and is the first offering from Headless Games. In “Vampires’ Quest” players compete to match Bite cards with Victims, turning them into vampires and racing to create an army of the undead.
The game is played in rounds, scoring points based on the number of bitten victims claimed.
There are 15 different kinds of cards (including Bite and Victim cards) that can affect game play. Some allow you to steal claimed victims from other vampires, send claimed victims back to the deck or counter other players’ cards.
One of the challenges of any fantasy role-playing game is coming up with new, unpredictable and fearsome foes to tangle with your heroes.
“The Random Esoteric Creature Generator” by Goodman Games is sub-titled “For Classic Fantasy Games and their Modern Simulacra.” Simply put, it’s a monster-maker for d20 and similar fantasy
role-playing games.
The 31-page .PDF document is filled with random roll charts to help you design bizarre and unique creatures, giving you everything from size and body shape to special attacks and defenses.
An innocent human learns of the supernatural amongst us in Kelley Armstrong’s Living with the Dead.
Robyn Peltier’s client has been killed, and she’s being set up for murder. Still recovering from her husband’s death, the last thing she needs is her pal Hope Adams and her guy Karl Marsten parading their coupleness in her face, but they’re the only ones who have insight into who the murderer really is…and with whom she’s in cahoots.
But Robyn doesn’t know that Hope is a half-demon and Karl is a werewolf. And when she does find out, Hope and Karl are less than civil to her.
Howard Phillips Lovecraft is one of the few authors of the horror genre who has been dissected rather thoroughly (Edgar Allen Poe being another). Kenneth Hite, who’s made much of his living as both a critic and a Lovecraft enthusiast, has a few things to say on the subject, and they make for very interesting reading. Tour de Lovecraft — the Tales is an engaging breakdown of all 51 of Lovecraft’s mature prose fiction, from 1917’s The Tomb to Lovecraft’s last work, the Haunter of the Dark from late 1935.
This is not a book of literary criticism, as I first assumed, but rather criticism of literary criticism. Hite takes pains to offer quotes and examples of criticism from a number of noted Lovecraft scholars, and offers his own opinions that don’t always mesh with those notions. In effect, the book breaks Lovecraft’s work down into what might be considered Hite’s Top-10 list of Lovecraft’s work. Hite spends time analyzing Lovecraft’s most effective tales.
Pregnant with twins, Princess Meredith NicEssus embarks on her biggest battle yet in Laurell K. Hamilton’s Swallowing Darkness.
With impending motherhood, Merry knows the safest thing for her unborn children, her lovers/guards and she is to escape faerie to Los Angeles. After all, her cousin Prince Cel desperately wants her – and her nearest and dearest – dead. Or maybe just maimed.
But escaping safely to the Western Lands means working with humans, who may not be fully aware of the deadly task they face of protecting Merry and her posse. Old wounds will bleed again…
Our next contestant is Iron Wind Metals. Rising from the ashes of the fallen Ral Partha Miniatures, Iron Wind first began cranking out miniatures in 1999. Since then they’ve attempted to resurrect many of the figures for which they became famous in the 1980s and 90s, but have so far found little success getting their re-tooled fantasy lines into stores. Ordering online might be your only option to acquire these beauties, but check your favourite local game store first; they may be willing to special order Iron Wind Metals miniatures for you.
The miniatures we’ll be looking at come from several different product lines. As usual, I will list the miniatures by name, stock code, and by MSRP (Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price). I try to include the sculptor’s name whenever possible; credit where credit is due, after all.
I first came across Kay about three years ago when someone from out sci-fi/fantasy book club chose one of his books. Tigana. It was such a rich and beautiful book that I immediately went out and read the Fionavar Tapestry (a three book trilogy) and really liked it as well. So, I have been waiting for this to come in trade peperback for a while and finally bought it recently.
The story revolved around a fifteen year old boy named Ned. He is from Canada and the son of a famous photographer. They are in France, and on site at Aix-en-Provence’s Saint-Saveur Cathedral.
Hardboiled Cthulhu is billed as an anthology of “Two-Fisted Tales of Tentacled Terror”, and mostly it delivers. However, the quality is quite uneven, though in some cases pretty creative. For example, “Eldritch Fellas” by Tim Curran, a “Goodfellas” pastiche with the Great Old Ones as mobsters, while initially amusing, was far too long. It wasn’t really clever enough to justify its genre-bending inclusion here.
Likewise “Day of Iniquity” by Steven Shrewsbury is neither particularly hard-boiled nor terrifying.
Nearly all RPGs have a section devoted to the theory of how RPGs should be played. In fact, this is the part of a corebook I find myself rereading for inspiration. The skill of these chapters range from the banal to sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll goodness. If you want how-to theory that feels like Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club, then John Wick’s Play Dirty is the book for you. Making connections between the two proves simple. Heck, both books have a series of rules to follow. While we won’t talk about the rules of Fight Club, I will share Wick’s two rules:
Rule One: There are no rules.
Rule Two: Cheat anyway.
The one word that comes to mind when I talk about this novel is Revenge. It was with a capital R since it was such a strong part of this read. Almost every plot line could be brought back to this one basic principal. You mess with me or mine and you will pay. It may be tomorrow or even 20 years from now…but it will happen.
Locke is a fun character. I have to admit I love the smart ass characters that even in the face of danger, are still talking a serious amount of trash. It isn’t the smartest plan to say the least, but I do understand it being a smartass myself. But beyond that he is really a well written character. He is in charge of a group of thieves that he has known since he was a child called the Gentlemen Bastards.
“Crimson Orgy – Best New Thriller of ’08?” read the headline on Amazon.com’s forums. User C. Avery said, “For my money, this is the best new thriller of 2008 (so far, anyway),” and I, after reading Austin Williams’s debut novel, Crimson Orgy, immediately thought, “publisher plant?”
Dubbed as a thriller, and quite often described as a horror novel, Crimson Orgy follows the filming of a fictional exploitation film of the same name during the 1960s. The intro to the book sets the story up as potentially true (although we know it’s a work of fiction), explaining that the final print never saw the light of day.
The good folks at Precis Intermedia have kept their quality streak alive with the release of Steampunk Musha, a “Victoriental Adventures” setting for Iron Gauntlets. It’s nice to see such an excellent gaming system as IG getting plenty of love and support; despite its relatively small size, PIG is providing as much and more support material for Iron Gauntlets than some companies 3-4 times its size are doing for their lines. Steampunk Musha is a good indicator of the high quality of these releases.
My review copy was a pdf, some 122 pages in length. SM (as we will periodically refer to Steampunk Musha) was created by Rick Hershey, with Brett Bernstein and Alana Abbott, and the overall design of the book is one of clarity and ease of reading.
Patricia Briggs takes a break from the Mercy Thompson series and gives readers a more detailed look at the Marrok’s world in Cry Wolf: An Alpha and Omega Novel. In this novel, the lead female is Anna Latham, a former Chicagoan who, with the help of the Marrok’s pack, is able to escape an abusive upbringing and to redefine her life. The cover art by Daniel Dos Santos is a solid depiction of the character Briggs brings to life throughout the course of the novel.
I picked up this novel because of the Mercy Thompson series. I am not a huge fan of werewolf fiction; however, the urban fantasy environment Briggs created in the before mentioned Thompson series continues to develop interestingly as new facets of the reality are revealed. That said, I am a fan of this novel. The chief reason for my conversion rests in Brigg’s ability to write convincing characters.
This is a funny card game from Green Ronin with spoofs on various horror classics ranging from Frankenstein to Dracula with ghosts, beasts and other monsters mixed in to keep things interesting. The local townsfolk team up to destroy these monsters and deal with mayhem along the way.
There are three decks in this game, Townsfolk (representing the local “citizens” that are battling the monsters), Mob (including weapons, actions and other enhancements) and Monster (which also includes events that are often detrimental to the heroes).
Fans of “shared world” fiction will find many of their favorite authors in this collection, however they won’t find any characters from Forgotten Realms or Warhammer here. This collection is all “creator owned” and explores new worlds by these authors. Some of them have been expanded into other works such as RPGs (Demon Wars and Reign for example). These stories have appeared before in various magazines or anthologies over the years, but it is pretty cool to have them all collected together in one volume.
I read Jeremy Jones’ interview with James Lowder back in June and was immediately hooked on the concept of the book.
The stars are right and the time has come to summon Cthulhu from the watery depths…
A new fast play game from Twilight Creations feature the classic theme of cultists vs. investigators for two players. This particular game is quick to learn and plays pretty fast. The entire rules fit on a single sheet explaining different turns and victory conditions for each side.
The game board is simple with some fairly classic Lovecraft-inspired artwork.
I recently received a review copy of Races of the Shroud: The Apelord, the initial offering from One Bad Egg, and authored by Fred Hicks and Lee Hammock. This product, weighing in at 12 (electronic pdf) pages, currently retails for $1.99 at RPGNow. This is a 4e GSL (!) product which adds a new race to the D&D rulesets, complete with powers, feats, sample characters, and even a few sample adventure ideas.
First, despite the low price tag, The Apelord is really an aesthetically pleasing product. A clean, professional look, combined with some excellent art by fan favorite Storn Cook, really makes Apelord a pleasure to look over.
The Doom from Below is a stand-alone (ish) Call of Cthulhu scenario from Super Genius Games. It can be, with minimum effort, tied directly to the events in their previous adventure Murder of Crows. The PDF weighs in at 38 pages (35 of these pages are pure meat) and seems quite generous for a one-shot adventure intended for four investigators.
Nearly all RPGs have a section devoted to the theory of how RPGs should be played. In fact, this is the part of a corebook I find myself rereading for inspiration. The skill of these chapters range from the banal to sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll goodness. If you want how-to theory that feels like Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club, then John Wick’s Play Dirty is the book for you. Making connections between the two proves simple. Heck, both books have a series of rules to follow. While we won’t talk about the rules of Fight Club, I will share Wick’s two rules:
