What do a deep sea beast, a lizardman and a flying cat have in common? Well, if you say they are all monsters you’d be right!

Dubbed the “Monsters Magnetic Action Figures,” this set of over forty magnets and four background scenes is perfect for the monster lover in you. Illustrated by Justin Parpan, these Monsters magnets come in a decorated tin with two, reversible backgrounds. I really enjoy the artwork of these magnets because it’s a nice blend of traditional Halloween monsters with new, more imaginative beasties like the two-horned, one-eyed furry redhead. The technique used is pretty interesting because the Monsters body language is very cheery, but there’s just enough creepy to make it work without appearing overly “campy.”

Cyberpunk. The word can conjure images of nihilism, drug abuse, post-apocalyptic societies and a world gone wrong because someone, somewhere took advantage of technology. It’s often a classic look at the “haves” versus the “have nots” which, in this case, typically are those who understand, own and manipulate technology better than the end user. A sub-genre of science fiction, cyberpunk usually delves into heady themes that involve morality, Machiavellian politics, addiction and a breakdown of the social structure.

Empathy is the first novel in the series Street, written by Ryan A. Span. First offered online, this is a book that falls neatly within the cyberpunk genre. You might not think so by the cover; a painting of a woman with a “third eye” graces the cover of the book. While the painting was done well (thanks to the talented Jan Popisil), it does nothing to allude that the book is cyberpunk, and it truly is.

When reviewing this graphic novel, I have tried to be as impartial as I can be. But the problem is that I am just a Jim Butcher fan that it is very hard. I have read all of the books, I am play testing the RPG based on it. Yeah, I am a fan. But I did at least attempt to be as partial as I could.

It probably was not very successful.

Welcome to the Jungle was a 4 issue comic release revolving around Jim Butcher’s creation, Harry Dresden. For those of you familiar with the story, it takes place shortly after his first novel, Storm Front.

Review by Stacey Chancellor

Greetings! In the coming months I’ll be giving Flames Rising readers a look at some of the miniatures out there for horror-conscious consumers. For now I’ll be covering one company at a time, giving an overview of what they have to offer that falls within the category.

Our first contestant, by virtue of being the quickest to respond, is Reaper Miniatures. Reaper has been a mainstay in the gaming community since the early 1990s, really taking off with the closing of Ral Partha Miniatures only a few years later.

The miniatures we’ll be looking at come from several different product lines: Warlord, which supports Reaper’s fantasy miniatures rules; Chronoscope, giving Reaper greater license to explore historical and alternate historical periods; Reaper’s newest experiment – pre-painted plastic miniatures, and the Dark Heaven line, representing the jewel in Reaper’s crown.

Promethean is a ‘new’ property for White Wolf, rather than a rehash of an older proper as their other new World of Darkness titles have been. This, incidentally, means that they have now pretty much caught up, after over a decade, with Nightlife, another RPG that could really do with a reboot in my opinion.

Promethean, basically, covers the idea of ‘constructs’. The inspiration is most clearly from Frankenstein’s Monster but other ideas are mingled in with that inspiration from golems and homunculi to Egyptian myth, all held – loosely – together by a theme of alchemy and a hint of the old anti-technology vibe that the old World of Darkness often displayed, an underlying loathing of ‘the unnatural’.

Review by James ‘Grim’ Desborough

Vampires in space make for a bizarre but intriguing read in Anya Bast’s futuristic/paranormal/erotic romance mash-up.

Circa a thousand years from now, The Chosen Sin is mostly set on the desert planet, Darpong. Earth-born Daria Moran is an Allied Bureau of Investigation agent whose mission in life – both personal and professional – is to bring down Christopher Sante, who killed Daria’s best friend, and others, and may be guilty of other ghastly deeds.

But in order to infiltrate Sante’s vampire commune, Daria has to become Chosen – and Alejandro Martinez will Choose her.

Review by Tez Miller

Plenty of new cards, bad jokes and all, are included in this expansion for the Munchkin Bites card game from Steve Jackson Games. The set we got did not have any additional rules for the game and we did not run into any problems with the new cards (after all the information on the cards usually explains everything you need to know).

Expanding on the jokes in the core box, Pants Macabre has plenty of puns from horror films and horror RPGs (and LARPing). Most of the jokes are fairly predictable, but worth a good laugh if the player manages to add a little style to the delivery.

The Celestial Bureaucracy is the third offering for the Scion companion and a new pantheon – of sorts – delving into Chinese mythology which, to quote the great sage Egg Shen:

“Of course the Chinese mix everything up, look at what we have to work with. There’s Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoist alchemy and sorcery. We take what we want and leave the rest… Just like your salad bar.”

This makes the Celestial Bureaucracy a great hook for Scion, it fits the mould of the game perfectly, kung fu, magic and a huge ‘pantheon’ of sorts with plenty of room for all manner of characters. Indeed, in my opinion, this would have been a far better fit in the original book than the Japanese pantheon would have been.

Review by James ‘Grim’ Desborough

Our author begins his book by informing us that table-top RPGs are at a crossroads. They are at a point in time where they must make a choice between a new system, something revolutionary and different, and the power of nostalgia, classic systems and tradition on the other. This is an easy assumption to make, casting your eyes about to the RPG market and seeing the 4E update and change in D&D in what seems, especially to outsiders, as very dramatic ways. It is from this premise our author builds his book. I would claim this is his thesis statement; the foundation of the argument for the book. Unfortunately, it couldn’t be more wrong.

Review by Vincent Venturella

Religion is electrified in the snappy first book of Jeff Somers’ cyber-noir series featuring Avery Cates.

John Lennon might have imagined a world without religion, but this futuristic tale features a church gone mad, where to convert means sacrificing your brain to a cyborg’s body. And if you don’t want to convert…well, the Electric Monks want to kill you. (I think. I read a lot of this in front of the TV, and thus didn’t pay as much attention as I should have.)

If your mission is to kill the head of a legalised-yet-suspicious religion, where might they live? In England, apparently, in Westminster Abbey – only what Avery Cates finds there is mind-blowing. But before that he has to build up a team to help him take down Dennis Squalor – which is nice, but I got tetchy waiting for the assassination to begin.

Review by Tez Miller

The Rose-Bride’s Plight is a new adventure for Changeling: the Lost from White Wolf Publishing. Written by Jess Hartley and Developed by Eddy Webb.

This particular adventure can be run as a stand alone game or worked into an ongoing chronicle. There are tips and tricks provided for both types of games including suggestions for connecting existing characters to members of the local Courts and possible motivations for getting involved in local events.

This adventure contains some new materials that will be useful for Lost games beyond this particular story, including a new system element, Unwitting Pledges, as well as a new Goblin Fruit, The Myrsina.

It’s Halloween season and until this weekend the movie theatres had offered horror fans zero tricks or treats. On October 10th director John Erick Dowdle’s Quarantine became this season’s first theatrically released genre movie and by default it vaulted to the top of my must-see list.

Quarantine, the American remake of last year’s well-received Spanish genre offering, [REC], opens with TV reporter Angela Vidal (Jennifer Carpenter) and her cameraman Scott (Steve Harris) filming an episode of their soft news program in which they profile the firemen at a Los Angeles fire station.

Review by Jason Thorson

“I did two things on my seventy-fifth birthday. I visited my wife’s grave. Then I joined the army.”

Chances are, if you read a webzine such as this one, that you’ve been around the internets long enough to have heard of John Scalzi. Either you’ve viewed the ever-famous picture of his cat with bacon taped to it, or you’ve spotted his blog, “Whatever”. Spotting Scalzi isn’t hard: he writes, anything, a lot of it.

Ah, but have you read his fiction? No? Do so.

Review by Aly Condon

This is fairly hefty for a PDF, though it would make a slim book, 90 pages of rather dense rules information providing information for playing the aforementioned classes as well as a little supplementary information in the form of appropriate magical items and the idea of a post-cataclysm gaming in a fantasy world. The approach here differs from that hinted at in the Wizards’ books particularly in naming the source of Barbarian and Druidic power ‘Primal’ and that of Bards and Monks ‘Ancient’, rather than the ‘Nature’ spoken of in the official line.

Review by James ‘Grim’ Desborough

Welcome to the Gillian Key Admiration Society–that is, if you’re male, paranormal, and exquisitely handsome, as all the men in Talia Gryphon’s Key to Conflict seem to be. From ghosts to vampires to werewolves and dark elves, everyone wants to get retired marine and paramortal psychologist Gillian Key into their bed. Some of them succeed, to a greater or lesser degree (the ghost having to resort to sleeping with her in incredibly erotic dreams, so she won’t know she’s being screwed, if you can forgive the pun–and the forced-love aspect of the novel). While there’s also a plot, it doesn’t really pick up until page 227 of 325, when we meet Gillian’s old marine special ops unit, who gather to rescue a kidnapped vampire. The first 227 pages set up the world in a somewhat haphazard fashion: paramortals went public twenty years ago. Or they were creatures of legend up until the Human-Paramortal War a few years ago.

Review by Alana Abbott

Lovecraft Aficionados are well aware of the pulp author’s use of large and obscure words; it was practically his trademark, and has befuddled eager young readers ever since he first began publishing his work in the 1920s. How appropriate then that there should be a word game using many of his creations as a backdrop — Unspeakable Words is a card-driven word game that challenges players to spell without going mad, and believe me, it isn’t easy!

Created by the talented game design team of James Ernest and Mike Selinker and produced by Playroom Entertainment (www.playrooment.com), Unspeakable Words begins with each of the players receiving a hand of seven cards.

Review by Bill Bodden

The Apelord is the first effort of new company ‘One Bad Egg’ and one of the first ‘proper’ 4th Edition D&D products to grace the virtual bookshelves. The Apelord is a new character race, with all the attendant options, but is also comes packaged with some monster ideas, numerous special abilities and a few adventure ideas. In short, it’s like an extended Monster Manual entry, such as were starting to become the norm at the end of 3.5.

Review by James ‘Grim’ Desborough

You may remember that in my review of Shearin’s Magic Lost, Trouble Found, I expressed some confusion about reading a novel that felt like urban fantasy but was set in an elves-and-goblins style world. Armed and Magical follows the further adventures of Raine Benares as she tries to get rid of the Saghred, the evil stone that has claimed her as its link to the world, and has very much the same style as the first book. In reading the sequel, however, I finally made the connection that I missed in Raine’s first adventure: Raine is a seeker, which is roughly the equivalent of a private investigator for her world. What Shearin is writing isn’t a hybrid of urban fantasy and low fantasy–it’s hard boiled fantasy noir.

Review by Alana Abbott

When I first heard about the Battlestar Galactica boardgame, earlier this year, I was interested in the game but not really dying to buy a copy. Sure, the Shadows Over Camelot-like approach to the game sounded fun, and the theme interested me, but I wasn’t so excited that I kept a close eye on rumors and new about the game. And when presented with an opportunity to buy the game at GenCon, I let is slip through my fingers (unlike The Black Goat of the Woods, which I immediately snagged). It wasn’t until I started hearing about the gameplay that I directed serious attention at the game.

Review by Philip Reed

I’ve read a handful of Forgotten Realms fiction over the years, interviewed a few authors, played a few games even. I’ve not kept up quite as much with the more recent developments as I have a few other settings, but still, I thought I was doing pretty good for a while there. This book surprised me a bit with how much I don’t know about the setting. It was still an interesting read, it just took me a bit longer to get into the story than I thought it would.

It helped that Davis knows how to write some compelling action. The fight scenes were entertaining and the variety of challenges the characters faced while on their quest kept this from being just another goblin killing adventure.