Children of the Revolution tells the stories of noteworthy or notorious Kindred of the modern nights whose Embraces came intimes of unrest, rebellion, or open revolution. The circumstances of these revolutions might have been mortal or undead, martial or cultural. These Kindred joined the ranks of the Damned under tides of war or cultural upheaval, and their blood bears the mark of change from one paradigm into another. Sometimes they are the agents of change. For others, their revolution drags them in its wake.

The world of the Kindred is always fraught with blood and danger, and Embrace amid the fires of revolution only heightens that fact. Here are Kindred who have risen to guide the Black Hand, who have led the armies of Alexander, who have plumbed the mysteries of the Nictuku, and who have been reborn in the fires of the Arab Spring. Their histories have been forged, but their futures remain to be determined by your troupe.

The Project

The Children of the Revolution Kickstarter is designed to enable us to create a deluxe hardcover edition that matches the beautiful qualities of Vampire the Masquerade Twentieth Anniversary Edition and the V20 Companion: embossed black leatherette hardcover, with full color, silver-edged, interior pages and a red silk ribbon bookmark.

As with the successful KS for V20 Companion, we are posting this in order to give our backers the chance to have a say in the kind of package we’ll deliver and to further foster the community of vampire fans around the world. Some of the characters in Children of the Revolution were submitted by players during the Open Development Process on the V20 Blogs, and, because of their backing during our last KS, some of our backers’ likenesses will be appearing in the art for this book. We had a blast talking with the community during the V20 Companion KS and fully hope that every backer of this KS will enjoy commenting both on the Kickstarter page and on the White Wolf V20 Blogs.

White Wolf has a great community and they want to hear from more of you, so please comment away!

Visit the Children of the Revolution Kickstarter today.

Related posts:

1. V20 Companion Interview with Rich Thomas and Justin Achilli
2. What do you want to know about the V20 Companion?
3. Children of the Revolution Outline Posted

On Saturday, we headed to the Wisconsin Bat Festival where we not only learned about bats, why they are endangered, and why that’s bad for the environment — but we got to see a few live and in person as well. Here are some pictures of bats from the festival!

The Bat Festival featured live bat programs with bats from around the world, including Wisconsin’s backyard bats. Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources experts were on-hand with information about bat habitats, predators and white-nose syndrome.

Several authors were also at the event, including Brian Lies, author of the children’s books Bats at the Beach, Bats at the Library, and Bats at the Ballgame. Also speaking at the event was Rob Mies, T.V. personality and Director of the Organization for Bat Conservation. Mies is also the author of Stokes Beginner’s Guide to Bats.

Here are some photos we took at the festival:

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Ask Not What Your Country Could Do For you. Ask What It Could Do To You.

John Cruise — better known as the superpowered delta Patriot — only wanted to serve his country, which has suffered under martial law since the assassination of the First Lady back in 1963. For years, he did so as a member of Delta Prime, the federal paramilitary organization dedicated to keeping deltas and the rest of the population in line. Then, during the Bicentennial Battle, Chicago disappeared in a blinding flash of light, taking the world’s most powerful deltas with it, along with Patriot’s wife.

Today, in 1999, Patriot leads a group of rebel deltas known as the Defiance, all of whom are on the run from Delta Prime. He hopes to find a way to break scores of their imprisoned friends out of New Alcatraz, the only place on the planet strong enough to hold them all. But then, while rescuing college student Lisa Stanski from a pack of Primers, the unthinkable happens.

Patriot gets caught.

Now it’s up to the rest of the Defiance, including Lisa, to figure out how to break Patriot out of New Alcatraz before his old pal Ragnarok, now the leader of Delta Prime, has him executed without trial, under the direct orders of President John F. Kennedy himself.

Matt Forbeck’s Brave New World: Revolution is now available at DriveThruFiction.com!

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Available at RPGNow.com

Po’Kesteros, the Lostling.
This is one of the Faces of the Tarnished Souk series NPC’s for use with the Rite Publishing campaign setting/ adventure arc Coliseum Morpheuon. This is a setting of adventures and intrigues in the Plane of Dreams, where people can burn their dreams (Dreamburning) to influence fate and events. Not only can someone choose to burn a dream to control their circumstances but dreams can be stolen. On the Plane of Dreams, a dream is power. From what I can gather this high level setting, 16-20th levels, has roots in Planescape, with intrigue between factions, gladiator games, crazy occurrences, otherworldly landscapes and things unusual and odd to throw at your players.

Now on with the show. This review focuses on a character who wanders the Tarnished Souk, a fantastical marketplace in the Plane of Dreams.

The 16 page book features three versions of Po’Kesteros at levels 20, 15 and 7, with background and how to use him in the setting. The book also features his magic weapons, stat blocks and luckbringer abilities, a new class also created by Rite Publishing. Finally the book includes three templates that can be applied to Po’Kesteros or others to change and enhance an encounter.

First I will discuss the story and usage suggestions for Po’Kesteros, followed by discussion of his game abilities and finally general thoughts on the work as a whole.

Po’Kesteros is a half elf kidnapped by dark fey at birth, and left to run feral as a child. His wild upbringing has created an unlikely assassin who relies as much on his improbable luck as his enchanted knives. He is known for killing more foes by “freakish happenstance” than with his blades, even if something can’t go wrong with one of Po’Kesteros’ opponents, it likely will anyway. The book then goes on to describe how to use him, Po’Kesteros is the ultimate wildcard. His sheer improbability can make an easy explanation for utterly impossible events, or to sweep some GM handwavery under the rug. There are also suggestions to integrate him into several of the adventure sections of the Coliseum Morpheuon, and entangle him in feuds between factions that the PCs might have to deal with.

The majority of the book is devoted to the various stat blocks, magic items and special abilities possessed by Po’Kesteros. He is mostly the Luckbringer class created by Rite, with a few cherry picks for abilities that interact in interesting ways with the Luckbringer. The Luckbringer class is about using your power over probability to influence the world around you in exceptional and, you guessed it, improbable ways. There are also combat suggestions if you want to drop Po’Kesteros in as an opponent for your PCs, as stated earlier he is an assassin and I can see him doing some heavy damage to a PC with a price on her head in just a few rounds before escaping. His Luckbringer abilities, along with his alchemist and ninja cherry picked levels allow Po’Kesteros to ensure that one deadly hit, with enough punch to finish the job and improbably escape retribution. The book helpfully details the options from the Luckbringer class that he can use so you don’t have to have that separate supplement, a nice
touch.

The book also includes a few new to me templates, Adaptable, Preternatural and Trickster; as well as rules for creating fey creatures. The Adaptable template gives situational survivability to a creature. They can change damage types to bypass damage reduction; gain energy resistance to whatever energy type is around them and can gain immunity to unique attacks after being affected by them. The Preternatural template suffuses a creature with magic, giving spell like abilities, spell resistance, the ability to absorb magic and damage reduction negated only by natural weapons such as wood or a fist. A creature with the Trickster template gains spell like abilities to play tricks on opponents, such as turning a sword into a rubber snake or vanishing into thin air.

Overall this is an interesting character that could be fun to further develop what appears to be a rich and diverse campaign setting. However, it suffers from all high level encounters for many systems, especially those derived from OGL d20; pages and pages of stats and numbers and feats and abilities and spells and magic items. That is no fault of either Rite Publishing or Pathfinder, just a feature of the system. I don’t tend to play higher levels because I don’t want to keep track of all of that. But judging by this character and what I have read of Coliseum Morpheuon, Rite has created a very interesting and fleshed out campaign setting that might make me give higher level play a second look.

I would recommend this character to add some unpredictability and chaos to a Coliseum Morpheuon campaign and for those not playing in Rite’s world to give it a look.

Review by Bryce Pearcy
Bryce is gamer who has recently finished law school and hopes to keep playing wargames, boardgames and RPGs while holding down a job. He blogs about 40k and gaming at dissentingdice.blogspot.com. He can also
be found on twitter @bryce963

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We have a new game design essay from David A Hill Jr. David tells us about his new RPG, which is currently on Kickstarter, Farewell to Fear.

Our new game, Farewell to Fear, is a dark fantasy game about revolution and enlightenment taking people out of the darkness. Your players choose a thing about the world they want to change, and they set out to change it. As we design Farewell to Fear, I’ve tried to keep this at the front of every effort. I’m tackling this through three main avenues, game mechanics, setting writing, and art direction.

In the game mechanics, revolutions are at the forefront. Change needs to drive advancement. So, our entire system is based on building solutions to massive problems, and using thinking and preparation to tackle otherwise overwhelming problems. As the game progresses, characters grow and evolve through their engagements with change. If you make headway toward your revolution, you get better. If you get better, you’re better suited for approaching revolution. So it’s all about cyclical incentives.

As well as with our main rules, we’re also including Apocalypse World inspired rules, and Pathfinder RPG rules for Farewell to Fear. We want to welcome a different audience to our revolutions. But, we want to adapt these rules similarly. For instance, in our Pathfinder hack, we’ll be giving players bonus points to better accomplish the things tied to their revolutions, and we’ll cater the leveling mechanic to advancement along the path to change.

In the setting, we’re giving numerous changes to be made and problems to be tackled. Our goal here is to make these problems seem realistic and reasonable. We’re leaning away from moustache-twirling evil all-around. Almost everyone in Farewell to Fear thinks they’re doing the best thing for their situations. Just sometimes, these things clash with others. If we’re going to introduce a problem, we have to ask ourselves, “Why does this problem exist?” Our villains should be sympathetic. Not because we like villainy, but because we want the players questioning their revolutions. Are they helping? Are they causing more harm than good?

For example, our elves are extinct. Humans killed them off. The revisionist history tells the tale of elves unwilling to share resources and live on the same continent as the humans. The truth is far less black and white. Actually, the elves needed certain places (a river, in this case) to be untouched, in order to hold back some awful magic. They weren’t willing to compromise on this issue. The humans wanted to advance on the territory because they needed water for their growing population, so the conflict came to blows. Diplomacy could have solved everything, but hindsight’s 20/20.

Lastly, in our art direction, I wanted to tear down tropes and try things that are different for fantasy art. First off, we’re moving away from the traditional “cheesecake” fantasy art. A few publishers have been doing this lately, and I think it’s important, but I wanted to do our own take on it. Our women should be just as awesome and empowered as our men, and they don’t need to bend over to get there. We’re also normalizing racial minorities in our setting. We have people of all sizes and colors, and they interact as if it’s not an issue. If someone wants to deal with racism in their game, that’s fine. But it’s not the default in our art. Revolutions should be inclusive. We’re even trying to show some differently-abled people. Everyone should be able to make change, not able-bodied white males.

We’re releasing Farewell to Fear at Gen Con. We’re telling stories about revolution, and taking the dark out of the dark ages. For the rest of this week, we have a Kickstarter campaign for pre-orders, and to help us determine our production budget. We just hit the point where we’ll be including both Apocalypse World and Pathfinder rules for all backers. As well, all backers will be getting two supplements, one that’s a take on the traditional gaming “total war” setting (think 40k). The other is half-cookbook, half game supplement, with a character class based on a traveling chef. We’re close to a level where all backers will get over 25 classes. If we hit our next goal, all backers will get a whole new game, inspired by the aesthetics and thematics of Final Fantasy 6.

So we’d love to have you a part of our project! Visit Kickstarter.com for more information.

David A Hill Jr – 2012

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Available at RPGNow.com

Many of gaming’s long-lived members began as mash-ups of other media. Dungeons & Dragons grew out of a love of Lord of the Rings, The Grey Mouser and Conan. Shadowrun mixed Gibson’s cyberpunk with classic fantasy elements. World of Darkness grew out of Anne Rice and urban fantasy media. Legend of the Five Rings combined Asian fantasy elements like samurai, shugenja and oni with western mythology like Zeus that appeals to audiences that grew up on everything from Kurosawa films to Avatar: The Last Airbender. L5R, as it’s known by its fans, released a fourth edition of RPG rules to celebrate 15 years of blood, steel and honor.

L5R is unique in that it has a huge fanbase from two games featuring its name. It began as a CCG in 1995. The CCG’s most unique feature is the ongoing storyline. Tournaments don’t just offer prizes and bragging rights. The faction that wins a big tournaments will see that victory reflected in later sets. This inspires L5R fans to feature faction loyalty that rivals some major sports teams. These fans were jumping at the bit to play in this world the RPG was released in 1997. But the RPG also drew in fans for a setting that mixed the high fantasy and battles of D&D with the intrigues and scheming of Vampire.

The Emerald Empire, called Rokugan by its inhabitants, is an Empire run by an Emperor chosen by the gods called the kami. The Great Clans serve underneath the Emperor. Each is charged with a duty to the empire by the Emperor. Samurai are expected to do their duty while holding to the honorable code known as bushido. The clans don’t always get along, however, and the things a samurai must do for the good of his or her clan are often at odds with what bushido expects to be done. The clans themselves also have different ideas of what is honorable, offering plenty of great conflict points for roleplaying. For those who prefer monster slaying, the Shadowlands to the south offers plenty of terrible creatures as well as servants of Fu Leng, master of the Shadowlands, lurking within the empire itself. Rokugan is rife with opportunities for everything from courtly posturing to deadly one strike duels in a garden.

The 4th edition book is gorgeous. The company has 15+ years of card art to draw upon. Long time fans of the games will see a few old favorite pieces as well as see how far the art has come. Two page splashes separate each chapter break as well as evocative art inside each chapter. The full-color book also features sidebars and chapter breaks that offer an Asian feel without resorting to the same old tricks from older editions. Good art inspires players and lures in non-players more easily.

The rules are a simple dice pool system. Add a trait and a skill, roll that number of d10s, and then keep a number of d10s equal to the stat. Players can voluntarily raise target numbers to achieve better or more specialized results like called shots. The system is also level and class based. A characters level is based on insight rank which is a score derived from how many ranks in Rings and Skills the character has. Raising rings is a better deal for raising level, but higher skill ratings often unlock useful feat-like bonuses during play. Each character goes to a school that unlocks a new technique (or extra spells) upon a new rank. Each clan offers a variation on the three basic classes of bushi (warrior), shugenja (wizard) and courtier. The clans also offer a fourth school that is unique to their clan and its sensibilities, as well as paths and advanced schools which allow customization by swapping out techniques at different rank slots.

One of L5R’s greatest strengths – and weaknesses – is the 15+ years of metaplot. It makes the world feel more lived in and realistic, but it has built up a rivalry between some fans of the CCG and the RPG. Fourth Edition takes a much different tact than previous editions. The book is set up to play in whichever time period appeals the most to the play group. The 1e pre-Scorpion Clan Coup and the CCG fans turned RPG group looking to play in the most up-to-date setting will find useful ideas here. The game also has sidebars for those people who don’t care about adhering to the metaplot. Mechanical elements such as schools or clans created by the metaplot are presented in an alternate chapter with a brief explanation of where they fit in the official story.

The book is full of useful GM advice. In addition to sidebars throughout the book featuring things like how to adjust L5R’s notorious lethality up or down, a whole chapter is given to adjusting L5R to fit the play group. Suggestions for playing up elements are helpful to groups that want a more high-action wuxia or anime style. The book also suggests alternate ways to use mechanical elements in the book. Not everyone will want to have the recently-developed Spider Clan as part of their game,for example, but the book offers great ways for GMs to reskin and reuse elements of the Clan as Shadowlands tainted infiltrators.

Unfortunately, the area where this fresh approach suffers is in the organization of the book. The basic schools are in one place, but all the advanced school and paths are in a separate chapter. The index helps, especially on the hyperlinked PDF version, but figuring out where to start looking can be time consuming. The book seems to assume players are already familiar with a previous edition of the game. Even the character creation section is a bit scattered with guidelines hidden in the text rather than called out in an easy to use creation summary. Making L5R characters is not that difficult, but handing a new player the book and leaving them to figure it out will leave them frustrated.

The book also ends with an adventure. Adventures in core books feel wasteful. The motive behind the choice is noble – everything needed to get people started gaming in Rokugan in the same place. But with a world like Rokugan with so much to explore, once the adventure is used there’s a lot of space in the core that goes dark. This is compounded by the fact that there is already a free introductory adventure available on the web that was released as part of Free RPG Day (Legacy of Disaster) as well as one available as part of the GM screen bundle (Descent into Darkness). The adventure itself is okay, but it feels like a poor substitute for the Tournament of the Samurai adventure in the original corebook.

Review by Rob Wieland

Related posts:

1. Legend of the Five Rings: Strongholds of the Empire Available Now!

That notorious evening at Villa Diodati when Lord Byron challenged his contemporaries to write a ghost story, his summons brought forth a mad doctor intent on reanimation and a vampire drunk with bloodlust.

The night modern horror was born was notoriously dark and stormy, as were the lives of those who wrote the most fearsome–yet beloved–tales in literature, for those so gifted were also cursed.

Horrors, a graphic novel by Rocky Wood and Glenn Chadbourne, reveals in gruesome detail how Mary Wollstonecraft, Bram Stoker, Edgar Allan Poe and other masters of the genre were haunted by their monstrous creations.

Horrors: Great Stories of Fear and Their Creators is available now at DriveThruComics.com!

Also available now from McFarland Publishing:

Comics as a Nexus of Cultures: Essays on the Interplay of Media, Disciplines and International Perspectives

The 21st Century Superhero: Essays on Gender, Genre and Globalization in Film

Crossing Boundaries in Graphic Narrative: Essays on Forms, Series and Genres

Captain America and the Struggle of the Superhero: Critical Essays

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Edward R. Pressman, producer of such classic films as Wall Street, American Psycho, The Crow, Bad Lieutenant, and Das Boot, announced today that he has optioned the feature film rights for Archaia Entertainment’s acclaimed graphic novel Feeding Ground. Created by Swifty Lang, Michael Lapinski, and Chris Mangun, Feeding Ground was the first full-length graphic novel to be published in hardcover simultaneously in English and Spanish. Alfonso Gomez-Rejon is set to direct and screenwriter Carlos Coto will adapt for the screen.

Feeding Ground tells the story of a “coyote,” a trafficker of illegal immigrants, forced to smuggle his family into America by crossing the most forbidding part of the Arizona/Mexico border, a searing no-man’s-land known as “The Devil’s Highway.” Along the way, he and his family clash with U.S. Border Patrol agents, only to realize that the entire party is being hunted by the real monsters that roam the countryside—werewolves.

“Feeding Ground is an intense and terrifying thriller with a subtle but pointed commentary on immigration in modern America,” said Pressman. “The graphic novel is so cinematic in nature—as soon as I read it, I knew we could make a film that would resonate with a wide audience. Alfonso and Carlos are the perfect talents to bring this vision to the big screen.”

Born and raised in Laredo, Texas on the US/Mexico border, Alfonso began his career as personal assistant to Martin Scorsese, Nora Ephron, Robert De Niro and Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu. He became a sought-after 2nd Unit director (Babel, State of Play, The Eagle, Eat Pray Love, Argo) before directing critically acclaimed episodes of Glee (“Asian F”) and American Horror Story (“Birth”), as well as numerous national commercials. He also conceived and wrote Chanel’s worldwide “Bleu de Chanel” campaign directed by Scorsese. Carlos Coto is currently a writer and co-executive producer of Nikita. He has previously written and produced for 24, Heroes, Journeyman, The Dead Zone, NCIS, and was a consultant on the Emmy-winning HBO film, For Love or Country: The Arturo Sandoval Story.

Pressman is currently in development of a reinvention of the 1994 hit film The Crow to be written by Jesse Wigutow (The Osterman Weekend) and directed by Javier Gutiérrez (Before the Fall) with Relativity, a reinvention of the iconic action film Bloodsport written by Robert Kamen (Taken) and to be directed by Phillip Noyce (Salt), and The Monkey Wrench Gang to be written and directed by Henry Joost & Ariel Schulman (Catfish, Paranormal Activity 3). The latest feature from Pressman, The Moth Diaries, written and directed by Mary Harron (American Psycho) was recently released by IFC Films and is available in theaters and through VOD.

Pressman Film COO Jon Katz and Archaia’s Stephen Christy and PJ Bickett will serve as Executive Producers along with Jason Carpenter, a former Pressman staffer, who brought the property to Pressman. Stephen Cavaliero is a Co-Producer.

Katz negotiated the deals on behalf of Pressman Film. CAA and Aaron Baumel of Stone, Meyer, Genow, Smelkinson & Binder LLP represented Archaia. CAA and Corinne Farley of Morris, Yorn, Barnes, Levine, Krintzman, Rubenstein & Kohner represented Coto. WME and Christine S. Cuddy of Kleinberg, Lange, Cuddy & Klein LLP represented Gomez-Rejon.

Related posts:

1. Relativity, Archaia and Fandango Team Up For Immortals Promotion
2. Archaia To Launch Hardcover Immortals Graphic Novel In September
3. Feeding Ground 1 – 2 Comic Review

It is 2030. The Gilman-Hawking drive has given us access to the stars. But we are not alone.

They’re out there: aliens, gods and monsters. They’re also down here. The Miskatonic Antarctic Expedition found the elder ones’ city in 1931. The mi-go crashed in Roswell in 1947.

In 1958, as quietly as possible, not knowing what we were doing, we bent occult powers to our hands and took the step to Mars. The third time, the men who made that step could not step back. We fled back into our cave for a while.

But rocketry, and the Soviets, brought us back out soon enough. Competition took us to the moon. Uneasy teamwork saved the astronauts who would have died there among cyclopean, immemorial ruins.

In 1994, human scientists cracked alien technology and overcame the lightspeed barrier. They brought us the stars. They also brought us the madness that lies between them, the mind-twisting undarkness of hyperspace.

The future is here. Machine-made telepathy, augmentations, and unprecedented levels of automation have changed the face of Earth. But the science of sorcery, and our primitive understandings of what lies outside, have changed more than our minuscule planet. They’ve begun to let humanity out.

We walk amongst giants. Tread carefully.

Eldritch Skies is a complete role-playing game of Lovecraftian science fiction that uses the Cinematic Unisystem (Buffy, Ghosts of Albion. It contains all rules needed to play, and requires no additional material beyond your imagination and a few dice.

Eldritch Skies is available now in PDF at the Flames Rising RPGNow Shop!

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In the sands of Thuvia, the atheist Salim Ghadafar must find the stolen soul of a murdered merchant. His search for souls extends throughout the planes and tests his strength to the breaking point. Death’s Heretic by James L. Sutter is a grand tour of the Outer Planes… a tour that balances large-scale awe and wonder with intimate character development.

Indeed, Death’s Heretic is more than “a book about tracking down kidnapped souls and killing monsters.” It’s a novel shot through with mystery, mayhem, and romping good adventure, sure, but it also asks some weighty questions… while killing monsters.

“If we really understood immortality,” asks Sutter, “would we still want it?”

There’s more, of course. What are the power dynamics of faith? The true nature of honor? Of heroism? What lurks within the complexities of human ambivalence? The resulting novel blends intimate knowledge of the Pathfinder setting with compelling characters and a plot that packs the energy of a Byzantine naphtha bomb.

Sutter is an editor, writer, game designer, and vagabond musician. His creator-owned stories have appeared Escape Pod, Starship Sofa, Apex Magazine, and Black Gate. He edited the anthology Before They Were Giants for the Planet Stories line. Perhaps most pertinent our conversation below is the fact that Sutter worked on the team that created the Pathfinder Campaign Setting before becoming the Pathfinder Fiction Editor. In other words, he knows Golarion inside and out… which can be both a blessing and a curse.

Below, Sutter and I talk about writing, editing, and playing “symphonic European fantasy metal” in Golarion.

How did you come to write a Pathfinder Tales novel?

As one of the architects of the Pathfinder campaign setting, I’ve had a wonderful chance to help steer the world into its current form. Yet as Paizo’s Fiction Editor, I thought I’d never write a Pathfinder Tales novel–it felt too weird to assign myself a book. That changed one day when Paizo Publisher Erik Mona walked past with a short story we’d published in one of the Kingmaker Adventure Path volumes. There was no name on it, but he really enjoyed it and thought I should give the author a novel. I informed him that in fact I had written the story, and he said, “Okay, then you should write a novel.” When I raised my concerns about nepotism, he pointed out that he was my boss, and that he was in fact telling me to write a novel. At which point I saluted gratefully and got to work.

What’s the coolest thing about the Pathfinder world that isn’t in Death’s Heretic or one of your short stories?

Aw, geez. I know a lot of people give the “it’s like choosing children” answer, but I’ve been working on the Pathfinder campaign setting for as long as there’s been a Pathfinder campaign setting, so I really am pretty close to it. Sometimes too close. But as for a part that fascinates me and doesn’t show up anywhere in my fiction (yet), I’d have to go with the solar system surrounding Golarion (the planet that the setting focuses on).

I love science fiction just as much as fantasy, and multiple planets allow you a ton of flexibility for different levels of technology, interesting real-world astronomical phenomena, and strangeness on an even grander scale than you can achieve on a single planet. I’ve had the honor of setting most of the ground work for Golarion’s solar system, so it’s very near and dear to my heart.

Where does a novel usually start for you–image, plot, character, event, somewhere else altogether? Where’d Death’s Heretic start? And how’d you develop the novel from there?

Since Death’s Heretic is my first novel, I can really only speak to that one. For most of the short stories I write, they start with either a “what if?” idea–often with regards to the setting, as I’m a huge fan of world-building–or a single scene, which I then have to build a story to justify. For Death’s Heretic, it started as a collision of two things:

1) The realization that the Outer Planes (places like Heaven and Hell and the weirder portions of the afterlife) are the coolest part of our setting, and that I needed a reason to go there.

2) The question of how you deal with atheism in a fantasy world where the gods are objectively real.

Once those came together, I found Salim starting to take shape, along with the kernel of the plot that would drive the book.

What makes Salim tick?

Salim is a big ol’ cauldron of contradictions and self-loathing. He’s a staunch atheist–one who doesn’t deny the gods’ existence, but rather sees worship as a form of indentured servitude, and thus offensive to his independent sensibilities. At the same time, through a series of bad decisions, he’s wound up working for the goddess of death as a problem-solver, going into places where the formal church perhaps couldn’t and getting things done. He’s an honorable man, but a stiff one, and not too good at making friends. He’s also a total badass who specializes in killing undead things. He was very much inspired by folks like Spawn, Constantine, Batman, and Deckard from Blade Runner.

Strange as it may sound for a book about tracking down kidnapped souls and killing monsters, for me this book is primarily about Salim and his emotional development (or lack thereof). He’s a really conflicted character, and the slow revelation of why he is the way he is really feels like the heart of the story to me. So I can’t really talk too much about what he learns without spoilers.

One thing he did teach me, though, is how tricky it is to divorce your narrative voice from that of your character when you’re partially in his head. In Death’s Heretic, a powerful merchant purchases a magical immortality elixir, but is killed before he can drink it, and the killers steal his soul from the afterlife, offering to ransom it back in exchange for the elixir. Salim is brought in to recover the soul and sort things out, only to discover that he’s been saddled with the merchant’s stubborn and aristocratic daughter, who demands to come with him and help run the show. The conflict between Salim and the girl (Neila) is one of the primary driving forces of the book, but I don’t switch point of view–you only ever really hear Salim’s thoughts on the subject. Trying to balance his irritation at the girl (and disdain for wealthy nobles in general) with the fact that she might be more competent than he originally gives her credit for was a hard line to walk–it was Salim’s voice carrying the show, but I still needed to show Neila as more than just a collection of Salim’s own prejudices, especially if I wanted his opinion to change over the course of the novel. And let me tell you, Salim is not someone who changes his worldview lightly.

I cut you off earlier… Once Salim started taking shape in the writing process, then what?

Then, out of nowhere, I suddenly had the first line of the first chapter and the few last lines of the epilogue, which told me precisely where I wanted things to start and end. That was a true stroke of luck–those parts are always the hardest, and to get them first was a huge relief. After that it was just filling in the blanks.

For Death’s Heretic, I was very careful to go through exactly the steps I put other Pathfinder Tales authors through, and I’m glad I did so. I outlined the whole thing chapter-by-chapter, which gave me a road map that kept me constantly moving forward instead of running down blind alleys. It also gave me something to show to Paizo Publisher Erik Mona, who played my usual editor role during the process, and made sure that what I came up with was actually cool. Then it was just writing, writing, writing.

So Erik Mona edited your novel?

Erik took on a lot of line editing and most of the gatekeeper/Jiminy Cricket roles. (“Sutter, are you sure you want to do _____?”). He did a great job pointing out continuity traps and story issues. Christopher Paul Carey, one of Paizo’s other editors and a novelist himself, also did quite a bit of line editing, and had some really valuable advice. Several other folks around the office also offered tips on the outline and took proofing passes of the final version before it shipped.

Did the editor James L. Sutter ever get in the way of the writer James L. Sutter?

Not this time, but only because I’ve learned how to throttle him into submission. You can’t edit while you write–you just can’t. I know so many people that hamstring themselves by reading over what they’ve just written and tinkering in the moment. I used to be one of them, and I did all sorts of things to break the habit: I’d write with my eyes closed, write in the dark, or turn my chair 90 degrees from the keyboard so I couldn’t see the screen. (Why I didn’t think to just turn off the monitor, I’ll never know–it was hardly ergonomic.) There were a lot of typos in those days, but the words got out there. Now I’m used to writing enough that I can keep to my golden rule: unless you’ve been away for a long time, don’t read more than the last few paragraphs you wrote. There’ll be plenty of time to edit once the story’s done, but while you’re writing, write. Until your story has a full draft, complete with a beginning, middle, and end, it doesn’t matter how good it is. I think we all have too many half-finished stories in our drawers to waste time editing incomplete manuscripts.

Write while your blood’s still up. Edit when it’s cooled.

You mentioned earlier that you’re a “huge fan of world-building.” How much did you get to do in Death’s Heretic?

Quite a bit! That’s part luck and part strategy: the luck part is that I already work on Paizo’s design staff, so world-building for the Pathfinder campaign setting has been part of my day job for the past five years now. The strategy part is that I specifically sought out areas that hadn’t been detailed extensively, and thus needed a bit of filling in. The main city in which things take place, Lamasara, was more or less mine to build as I saw fit, as were several of the extraplanar locations–places like the fey realm called the First World. There were also a number of places that had been sketched out, but not really seen–getting to take locations I’ve always been interested in and then have my characters walk through them was extremely fun. And a little harrowing–after all, anything I didn’t invent was created by my immensely talented friends and coworkers. And if I screwed it up, they know where I live.

Were there ever times when your vast knowledge of the Pathfinder world got in the way of the writing?

Oh god, yes. Just coming up with an idea for a novel took forever. Living in the Pathfinder campaign setting as a profession, I found that I could easily list fifty things that are ripe for a story–but how do you choose? Fortunately, my love of the Outer Planes eventually decided that issue for me–I knew which planes I wanted to visit even before I knew what the mystery was going to be, or who was behind it. But once I got rolling, the knowledge of the setting was a tremendous asset. With tie-in fiction, readers want to see the world–it’s why they bought a tie-in book rather than an independent fantasy novel. The more a Pathfinder story can feel like it grew organically out of the setting, the better.

Where do you find the Pathfinder Tales writers?

All over the place! In dumpsters behind the 7-Eleven! Stuck between couch cushions!

Okay, that’s a bit of an overstatement, but I really do try to cast my nets wide. Even in just the handful of books and stories we’ve published so far, I’ve been able to bring in both game industry tie-in veterans like Dave Gross, Elaine Cunningham, and Robin D. Laws as well as folks from the greater science fiction and fantasy community like Liane Merciel (The River King’s Road), Howard Andrew Jones (Desert of Souls and Black Gate), and Hugo Award-winner Tim Pratt. I really believe that tie-in fiction has as much to offer as independent work, and that it’s important to make our books good standalone novels–the fact that they’re tied into the world should be a bonus, not a crutch. My favorite way to find authors (and this has happened several times) is to contact or be contacted by an excellent author who says “Hey, I’ve been running a Pathfinder game for my friends, and I really love your world!” When an author already knows and enjoys the material, everything flows so much easier–there’s less of a learning curve, and the collaboration’s more fun.

It’s like when you go to a show to see two bands you love, and they cover each other’s stuff or team up on a song for a grand finale. That sort of free-spirited collaboration, born out of mutual admiration, epitomizes shared world fiction at its best.

What do each of the Pathfinder novelists do well? Or, put differently, if the Pathfinder Tales’ novelist formed a band, what genre would they play and who would play which instrument?

I’ll try to keep this short, because they all have a ton of strengths: Dave Gross has an absolute mastery of the rakish hero and snappy detective-story dialogue–his Radovan is still my favorite Pathfinder Tales character. Elaine Cunningham has an excellent sense of place and heritage, drawing on real-world myths and fables. Howard Andrew Jones has speed and flow–his book is just as long as the others, but you’d never know because he whips you through so quickly with his old-fashioned, sword-swinging feats of derring-do. Robin Laws has the ability to paint a huge cast of characters in a few strokes and make them all interesting. Matt Hughes has a great eye for world-building, Liane Merciel innately understands the emotional tone of Pathfinder, and Tim Pratt can make you love even the bad-guy characters, and make you laugh without losing the dramatic tension.

And me? The book’s only been out a few months, but I’m looking forward to people’s responses so I can find out…

And to be literal for a moment–I’ve actually done a lot of gigging with various bands, in particular a hardcore metal band called Shadow at Morning, and I know several of the other PF Tales authors are musicians, so I’m gonna field this one straight on. I’d say we’d play symphonic European fantasy metal. Elaine’s classically trained, so she’d be the operatic singer. I believe Howard plays guitar, so he can take that. I’m not sure how much Dave knows about stringed instruments, so I’ll put him on bass. (Hey, I’m a bassist, too–there are many amazing bassist out there, but there are even more bands where the bassist is whichever guitarist is the least proficient.) Robin would be drums, because he’s rock-steady all the time, and all that veteran game designer math in his head probably makes him good with time signatures. And I’d be the screamer frontman, both because I’m probably the only one in the group who actually likes screaming music, and because I’m the editor for the line. And editors, much like screamers, aren’t really good for much without some seriously talented artists to give them something to work with.

Where do you plan to visit next in the world of Pathfinder?

The next thing of mine to hit the streets will be Distant Worlds in February, which is a Pathfinder campaign setting sourcebook which details the worlds of Golarion’s solar system. I’m a huge science fiction fan, and got the chance to lay most of the groundwork for the other planets in the setting several years ago, so it was a joy to get to take an in-depth look at all of them, including some of the weird cultures that live there and the way both magic and real-world science have shaped everything. I wrote a blog post for SF Signal recently that discussed using science to help design settings, and much of that same aesthetic is reflected in Golarion’s own solar system.

After that, I’ve written one of the adventures for the upcoming Shattered Star Adventure Path, set in the anarchic city of Kaer Maga (which I designed in the book City of Strangers), and after that… well, it seems right now like a Death’s Heretic sequel might be a possibility. If that pans out, I’d really love to take Salim to Heaven and the other good-aligned planes of our multiverse, and see how he gets along with the generally righteous zealots one might find there. And I won’t deny that there’s something delightful about the idea of taking him to Kaer Maga and letting him meet some familiar faces in that warren of thieves and outcasts… But such ideas are still only just formed, and anything could happen!

Any parting words of encouragement, caution, or mischief?

If you want to be a professional writer, you need to write things and try to sell them, and continue to do both until such point as someone takes notice. That can take days or decades, but if you ignore either aspect, you’ll never get there. I know a lot of folks with great ideas who spend forever trying to psych themselves up to write, or constantly tweaking their outlines or manuscripts, or making excuses for why they’re not ready yet. The truth is that, much like the old adage about parenting, no one is ever truly ready. You just do the best you can, and hope that nobody notices the fact that you’re faking it. If someone enjoys your stuff–congratulations! As far as that reader is concerned, you’re the real deal.

The other big thing is to not let yourself get overwhelmed. Don’t think about the 100,000 words you have left to write–outline those chapters, but when it’s time to write, just focus on the chapter or scene you’re in. Then move on to the next one. Write as much as you can, even when it’s a slog, but also forgive yourself if you need to reduce your output. (For instance, I know that I write less in the summer, when everyone wants to go play outside.) Whether you’re writing a lot or a little, the important thing is to never stop, to constantly keep chipping away at that boulder. Once you stop, it’s hard to start again. But as long as you’re moving forward, you’ll get there.

Interview by Jeremy L. C. Jones

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Across the Emerald Empire, the greatest servants of the Emperor make their homes in ancient castles, elaborate courts, impregnable fortresses, venerable dojo, and majestic palaces.

Some exist in the wilds of the Empire, while others mark the center of great, sprawling cities. Some are centers of trade and artistry, while others exist far from any other sign of civilization. And yet, despite their many differences, it is in the heart of each of these bold strongholds that the heart of the samurai dwells.

Strongholds of the Empire explores a handful of the many unique cities throughout Rokugan, seeking out those with particular interests for the different Great Clans. In addition to new mechanics for each of the clans as well as for each individual city, this book contains information on the following:

• The Crab’s economic powerhouse, Clear Water Village
• The extensive holdings of the Crane and Lion clans in the Imperial City, Toshi Ranbo
• The tradition of the Dragon Clan’s smiths in Water Hammer City
• The mainland Mantis port of Broken Wave City
• The diplomatic endeavors of the Phoenix centered in Nikesake
• The illicit interests of the Scorpion at Zakyo Toshi
• The Spider Clan’s sinister secrets in the ruined city of Otosan Uchi
• The dueling traditions of the Unicorn at Dark Edge Village
• And more!

Strongholds of the Empire is available in PDF and Print exclusively at DriveThruRPG.com!

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Available at Amazon.com

Issue: Alabaster: Wolves #1
Writer: Caitlín R. Kiernan
Artist: Steve Lieber
Publisher: Dark Horse
Release Date: April 2012
Price: $3.50

“For nearly as long as she can remember, Dancy Flammarion has fought monsters, cutting a bloody swath through the demons and dark things of the world, aimed like a weapon by forces beyond her control or questioning.”

Dying Breath: 4.5 out of 5
Phew! I have to admit that I originally feared this would be a book along the lines of Twilight, due to the popularity of such franchises being turned into comics. It is not though. What is presented within these pages is a story that is visually breathtaking, mentally stimulating and when combined they create one hell of a first issue. The artwork in this book did take me a little bit to adjust to, but after 5 pages I was on board. The character designs are great, and the consistency is seen from panel to panel.

The most GORE-Geous thing in this book though, was the werewolf transformation. Easily the visual highlight of the issue for me. The story itself was something I expect from a #1. It grabs you with what it presents, yet leaves enough mystery to have you come back for more. The dialogue was fun, sadly I was not able to solve any of the riddles (I stink, I know).

I love the concept so far and really can not wait to see how it plays out. This issue was more than I expected and now I expect so much more from this series. Check this one out!

Artwork: 4.5 out of 5
Story: 4.5 out of 5

If you would like to buy or know more about Alabaster: Wolves #1 you can find it at DarkHorse.com and Amazon.com.

Review by Dan Royer

Related posts:

1. Pathfinder Tales: Prince of Wolves Review

Available at ThunderStormBooks.com

“How I wish, how I wish you were here.

Wish you were here.”

- Pink Floyd, “Wish You Were Here”

Perspective is the most powerful force at work in the universe. The angle, pitch and yaw of how things are viewed, how things are not seen, and how things are interpereted by the human heart and mind’s eye forges reality for an individual. Often times this reality, perceived by the individual, exists inimical to equidistant realities nurtured and sustained by other individuals-at-large.

Driving Through the Desert presents such a singular and stalwart perspective. A universally hale perspective. The reality of Driving Through the Desert as engineered and presented by the novella’s author, Donna Lynch, is shared – for the most part – by two individuals; Kam and Henry.

Kam and Henry are on the run from one place to another place where they hope to get lost in the din and bustle of a city. They have no money to speak of. They have no resources. They have a stolen car, a set of blood-soaked clothing for each of them, and each other.

That is all.

The desperation and tension that Lynch is able to convey from the opening salvo of the story is relentless. Consternation dominates the vast majority of Kam and Henry’s story as they try to make sense of their situation and, in kind, survive their situation as it evolves around them through circumstances, memories of what led them to where they have come to travel, and coping with grief while each are in their respective states of individualized shock and awe.

To dive right in an tell a potential reader what Driving Through the Desert is about would spoil the whole of the story for the reader. What is more important, in my opinion, is the expression of what the novella is not about. There are no vampires. There are no zombies. There are no werewolves lurking in the desert crags under a full moon. There are no monsters other than sorrow, anger and regret persuing Kam and Henry across the desert. The horror presented to the reader is not necessarily abject. The horror is a bit more subtle and surreal. The horror of Driving Through the Desert is encompassed in the shallow breathing and rapid pulses of a young woman and man, filthy, stinking of road grime, sweat and someone else’s blood as they run from one reality and hope for a new one at the end of an exceptionally finite tank of gasoline.

Because even in hell, there is hope.

Lynch is a powerful author. She does not waste much time with character sketches and appearances. She has the ability to give very basic descriptions of her protagonists and allows the readers’ minds to build the characters in their heads for themselves. This technique almost forces the reader to use the tatters of clues afforded by Lynch to create Kam and Henry from head to toe, and in doing so, the reader starts to fall into a sense of caring and fear for the pair. However, Lynch’s true power is in her affinity with the immersion of the reader into a setting that, for lack of a better descriptor, is simply “wrong” on so many different levels at many different times for many different reasons. She is able to knit a world from the wasteland of the generic “desert” and turn it into something darkly mystical and instinctually foreboding. She takes dust and vultures and makes them ill omens. She takes a lonely, sand-weathered diner and makes it into an abbatoir. She takes two people who could be any of us or any of our friends and family and she tosses them into this world head-first by the scruff of their necks. Lynch’s ability to convey the sense of loss, the nearly sterile anger born of grief, and the confusion of complete and total unpreparedness for a given situation are expressed through her written word in the same manner that a barber runs a straight razor across a customer’s throat with a single, fluid motion, wipes the razor on his apron, and repeats the action. When Lynch’s blade has passed over the reader’s conciousness, the smooth flesh radiates with the empty coldness of separation from that which has become familiar.

It almost seems that while the author is fearless in her expression of her ideas, her protagonists are nothing even close. Terror and tension are all that Kam and Henry have to keep them company through their drive, and Lynch ensures that niether of them get much of a break from the former or the latter.

A mere 95 pages from introduction to d’enouement, Driving Through the Desert is so fast-paced, so jacked up to a nearly “Eraserhead” level of tension (ironic, given the author’s name), and so artfully painted with words that tend to pluck at the reader’s emotions like a cello, the book is almost like experiencing what the coyote felt every time he fell into a canyon and made a little mushroom cloud when he hit the bottom as the roadrunner “meep-meep!”‘ed at him.

It will knock the wind out of you, if nothing else.

Review by Shannon Hennessy

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In Nightmare’s pages, you will find all kinds of horror fiction, from zombie stories and haunted house tales, to visceral psychological horror. No subject is off-limits, and we will be encouraging our writers to take chances with their fiction and push the envelope.

Edited by bestselling anthologist John Joseph Adams, every month Nightmare will bring you a mix of originals and reprints, and featuring a variety of authors—from the bestsellers and award-winners you already know to the best new voices you haven’t heard of yet. When you read Nightmare, it is our hope that you’ll see where horror comes from, where it is now, and where it’s going.

Nightmare will also include nonfiction, fiction podcasts, and Q&As with our authors that go behind-the-scenes of their stories. Our planned publication schedule each month will include two pieces of original fiction and two fiction reprints, along with a feature interview and an artist gallery showcasing our cover artist. We will publish ebook issues on the first of every month, which will be available for sale in ePub format via our website and also available in other formats such as Kindle and Nook. We will also offer subscriptions to our ebook edition in a variety of formats. Each issue’s contents will be serialized on our website throughout the month, with new features publishing on the first four Wednesdays of every month.

Nightmare Magazine is a monthly magazine of horror and dark fantasy short fiction which will be published both online and in ebook format. This Kickstarter is intended to help fund the first issue and to get the magazine off the ground.

Not familiar with Kickstarter? Essentially, you pledge any amount to support a project, and then choose one of the rewards in the right column. You only get charged if the project reaches its fundraising goal. Here’s the FAQ page.

Find out more about the project and the 1st issue at Kickstarter.com!

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The design essay series here at Flames Rising continues with the first part of a series by game designer Mischa L Thomas. Mischa tells us about the forthcoming Cold & Dark RPG.

Living with Cold & Dark: Part 1

Hi, my name is Mischa L Thomas and I’m the lead designer at Wicked World Games 1.1, a small RPG design company based in Gothenburg Sweden. In a couple of months we’re going to release the gritty space horror science fiction pen and paper RPG Cold & Dark in partnership with Chronicle City. I thought I’d talk a little bit about the inspirational sources and conceptualization method behind the design process which led up to the finished game document. But first a little bit of background.

I started to write Cold & Dark back in 2009 as part of a school project. Back then I was studying game design and project management and we were given three months to present a playable game product and project plan. As it happened I’d just played through Dead Space, which I bought on a whim after someone told me it was a cool and scary game. It turned out it was. Here the idea for my game project Cold & Dark came into existence.

During the three project months I managed to create a simple first draft consisting of approximately a hundred pages of playable material. It passed muster with the examiner but for me the journey had just begun. I had one year left on my game design education, and still studying full time I plunged myself into the Cold & Dark project. Those first hundred pages would be all but scrapped, only serving as a reminder of how it all started. If I was going to design a game which would be released I really needed to be thorough. I had to sit down and wrap my head around exactly what it was I wanted to create as the scale of the project just had shifted.

And so it began…

I scoured my game and movie library as well as the net and local stores, looking for games and movies that might possess aspects I wanted in the design. Before the creature and character design got started I felt that I needed to envision the actual game world. How far off in the future would the stories take place, would Earth, our solar system or even our galaxy be of any importance in the game? There were a lot of questions and to find the answers I decided to “interrogate” some of the titles in my inspirational list. In many space age science fiction titles deep space mining is a very important part. But how would a society based upon this look like and what rules would govern it? Who decide if it’s legal to mine a planet in a far away solar system? Does anyone even have the right to own or regulate the use of an uninhabited planet? So basically, I asked myself a lot of questions in order to come up with answers that weren’t covered by the sources of my inspiration.

And then it came to the design of the horror and gritty aspects. In order to get going I started to move concepts around between the titles in the inspirational list. All in order to create a kind of primordial concept design ooze. And I eagerly watched the edge of the sludge to see what crawled out of it. Some concepts were keepers and others were catch and release. Some were quite recognizable from the original while others were far removed. In the end the process left me with a plethora of jigsaw pieces. And I and the game testers had a lot of fun putting them together, exploring the world to be.

“Standing on the shoulders of giants”

There are some themes within gritty science fiction and horror that have a propensity for a kind of memetic conceptual spread, and according to me they have become important pillars of the genre: The monstrosity, madness, internal bodily mutation and parasitic gestation, fear of the unknown, contagion and the dead rising.

These concepts have bounced around in different forms with different names. They’re the basis in many modern horror and science fiction lines.

Main List of Inspiration

Command and Conquer
Dead Space Franchise
Doom (movie)
Doom 3
Event Horizon
Firefly/Serenity
Mass Effect/Mass Effect 2
Pandorum
Pitch Black/ Chronicles of Riddick
Resident Evil Series
Screamers
StarCraft
Starship Troopers
The Alien series
The Thing (John Carpenter’s)

The Xenomorph in Alien combines the fear of the monstrosity with the fear of internal parasitic gestation (and it taps into a wide range of concepts which makes humans anxious) as does John Carpenters The Thing. Although, The Thing leans more toward the mutation spectrum and contagion, bordering on the dead rising as it seems that the creature is very hard to get rid of. The Resident Evil series is based on the dead rising concept and contagion in combination with mutation. There is a clear pattern to it all.

From The Thing and the Xenomorph to the Necromorphs of Dead Space. And I dare say that a lot of modern day horror concepts are inspired by the work of Lovecraft who really set the bar. And for that I’m eternally grateful. If it wasn’t for him and all those other great writers, directors and designers we would have missed out on a lot of wonderful fiction.

Overall it’s a smorgasbord of crossbred concepts and this had a great influence on the design of Cold & Dark. For example, the Ripper race in C&D is greatly inspired by the Xenomorph, Zergs and the Arachnids. However, the parasitic gestation of the Rippers has been given some extra body horror aspects as well as they can replenish their ranks by using our dead. And how the in-game society relates to them is akin to how society in the Starship Trooper movie relates to the “Bugs” as the existence of Rippers is widely known.

When it came to the theme of madness the phenomenon of VPS (Void Psychosis Syndrome) was implemented in the game. It’s an important part of the mythology and without writing a spoiler I can say that it’s more to it than a simple psychological ailment. When I designed VPS I was inspired by Event Horizon and Dead Space. Then I saw the movie Pandorum and it became even more evident that it is indeed a popular trope (and I of course mined that movie for more ideas). The madness trope always seem to find away to replicate itself and show up for another prime time appearance in the arena of gritty science fiction and horror. But there is something really scary about the idea of losing control, not being able to distinguish reality from fantasy, or having to deal with individuals who have trouble with that distinction. Combine this with being trapped on a ship in the middle of space and you’re in for a rough ride.

The science in the fiction: Harder than diamond or softer than sponge cake?

The definition of hard and soft science fiction is something that is often up for debate. This is a discussion I’ve had with my playtesters and fellow gamers. Of course, we have never been able to reach a consensus in this regard but we have been able to agree upon one thing: Softer science fiction does not have to preclude the very gritty.

According to me, every title in my inspirational list is softer than sponge cake when it comes to the science of it all. Well, technologically speaking (excluding the flying saucer) The Thing is very down to earth but the creature itself…not very plausible. But most titles in the list make use of artificial gravity without any form of explanation and (in my opinion) this is enough to make it soft.

In Cold & Dark I’ve used a lot of soft science fiction plot devices. Impossible alien creatures, new sources of fuel, FTL travel among other things (sponge cake land). But the grit has remained and there’s a consistency to the technology and the development of it within the context of the game.

Some technological “solutions” have been inspired by avenues of research that exists today. Artificial gravity without rotating sections is managed by the use of advanced diamagnetism. I thought that if they can levitate a small living frog with it in this day and age, and want to use it as a means to study the effect micro gravity has on living bone and muscle tissue, we might just be able to reverse the process and make it even more effective in six hundred years or so. For a layman like me it doesn’t seem impossible. But a physicist would in all likelihood smack me over the head for my scientific illiteracy.

Nanogenerators that feed off piezoelectricity systems, Ionic Polymer Metal Composites (IPMCs) that produce artificial muscle activity in suits and shape memory alloys are among other concepts that can be found in the game. These are concepts the scientific community are researching today. That being said, I think I would label the “hardness” level of the science in Cold & Dark as very gritty sponge cake. After all, we’re in Event Horizon and Alien country here…

Luckily I’m only designing a game and not submitting a research report to a science committee in hopes of receiving funds.

In the end

When the game text was finished I took a step back, in order to give the final document a long hard look. It had become something that stood on its own legs. The game world in combination with the inspiration had taken on a life of its own. From the conceptual ooze and jigsaw pieces a fully fledged and realized game had emerged.

It is my hope that I’ve been able to design a game that gamers who are fans of the gritty and dark science fiction genre will enjoy. The process of creating C&D has been a journey going on for nearly three years. It’s been a lot of fun but it has also been a test of mental fortitude at times but totally worth it.

And a big shutout goes out to all the playtesters, proofers, illustrators, business partners, friends and relatives without which this game would have been little else than the scrawling of a madman. Big thanks!

Mischa L Thomas – 2012

For more information on the Cold & Dark RPG visit: Wicked-World.se.

Related posts:

1. Cold Space Review

Available at RPGNow.com

Hmm… an Editorial on that contentious question: semi-naked female characters. Traditional game fare, perhaps, but provoking comment. Being of the female persuasion but pragmatic rather than sexist, my only complaint is that if I were participating in a fantasy adventure I’d want a decent layer of armour between me and the monsters – and that doesn’t mean hiding behind the nearest paladin! A few bare-chested blokes would be nice, to maintain balance, though.

The first article proper introduces a Shaman character class for Pathfinder. Opening with an evocative narration of a shaman performing a divination (not for the squeamish, she’s using rabbit entrails!), the class is described as very druid-like, recognising the spirit with all components of nature. They are shape-shifters and healers, whilst the most powerful can send their very essence forth from their mortal body on a spirit quest. Spell lists are limited, but unlike most divine casters a Shaman does not have to prepare but can cast any spell he knows, up to his limit, when he chooses. They have a bond with an animal spirit, which takes the form of the animal in question and acts pretty much like a companion. As they gain in levels, they learn Totem Secrets – such as the ability to use entrails for divinations (or a less messy alternative involving interpreting the flight of birds) – and gain other abilities. Quite a fun class, particularly in wilderness adventures or when there are lots of barbarians around, although I’m not sure just what benefits there are over choosing a druid. Probably more style, and the variety is always good…

Next comes Daughters of Lilith, an article about the ecology of the succubus. Written in academic style, ostensibly with research assistance by a wizard called Oziel, it looks at the possible origins of succubi and moves on to dicuss their appearance and behaviour… even their growth and development from childhood. The concept of succubi celebrating their birthdays is quite unusual, as is the startling fact that apparently very few are actually able to bear children themselves, despite their tendency to engage in fornication whenever they get the chance. There’s also a sidebar on the male equivalent, the incubus… overall, this is not an article for the prudish although it’s all in the best possible taste. You may want to consider your group carefully as you decide how much (or if at all) you will incorporate into your game. If you do decide they’ll be suitable, there are several neat plot ideas laid out, while the rest of the article is quite ripe for plundering for ideas. And there are a few new powers, feats, actions – and a quite scary curse spell – for those who enjoy adding variant game mechanics to their monsters.

Then comes a thought-provoking piece on mystery cults as a way to make the religions encountered in your game world more interesting. There’s plenty of historical precedent, and they don’t even have to be evil – just a group which prefers to hold worship rituals in private. Public worship may also happen in overt temples, and even participants in mystery cults may not be required to hide their membership – they just don’t talk about what happens in their ceremonies, and may have secret doctrine that is not shared with outsiders. The article then runs through the basics of designing such a cult, along with suggestions as to how to use it to effect in your game.

The next article is a look at Clerical Conflicts, by Tim and Eileen Connors. Within the alternate reality of your game world, the deities your cleric characters revere are real (whatever your views about religion in the real world might be), and they have the potential to make personal demands on their followers. Even if the deity doesn’t intervene directly, the church or other religious organisation may well give that cleric orders. These can lead to powerful opportunties for role-playing and character development, as well as being a potent way to introduce plot events… and the real fun begins when the organised church wants something different from the desires of the deity they ostensibly serve! Plenty of ideas are presented here, along with notes for the Pathfinder ruleset. The ideas will work whatever system you prefer, of course.

This is followed by an article asking a question that’s puzzled me over decades of gaming: Why No Monotheism? Real-world religions include several monotheistic faiths, most of those with a pantheon of gods are confined to ancient history. Yet fantasy games have pantheons of deities galore, or at least gods who do not insist that their followers never, ever worship anyone else. The author comes up with some compelling reasons for why things are the way they are in the heavens of your favourite games… and presents ideas for how you can, if you wish, have a monotheistic religion and still have a good game without offending your more religious players!

Next comes a whole bunch of Divine Archetypes. Why should clerics have all the religious adventures? Lay followers can be as devout, gain special abilities, and serve their god in far more active ways than attending temple on the relevant holy days. You might also use some of these to ensure that all members of the party feel fully involved in a campaign that centres on the divine… rangers specialising in hunting undead and incorporeal spirits, fighters with celestial companions on the battlefield – there’s even a fighting style for monks called the ‘angel fist’ to play with. I wish I’d had access to them a few years ago when running a campaign in which the characters formed a party of missionaries sent out on behalf of a deity to explore and convert unknown parts of the game world!

What else? There’s an enlightening interview with Bill Slavicsek, some intriguing backgrounds in magic for the AGE ruleset – alchemists, druids, illusionists, and seers – while Skip Williams muses on heavy armour and flat-footedness in his rules query column. Then we meet the Scriveners of Allain, a bunch of scribes for D&D 4e, who have formed a cult practicing secret rituals based around glyph magic… and noted for their talents at taking revenge on those who have wronged them! Treasures from the depths under Midgard, the saints associated with the worship of Mavros, and a really creepy wizard’s familiar which bonds to the wizard’s very flesh follow, with strange goings-on in the Pathfinder Society and amidst Zobeck’s bandits rounding out this issue… an issue well worth the reading, with masses of things to spark your imagination and make any campaign divine!

Review by Megan Robertson

Related posts:

1. Kobold Quarterly # 20 Review
2. The Kobold Guide to Board Game Design Review
3. Kobold Quarterly 16 Review

Available at RPGNow.com

Pinnacle Entertainment brings Deadlands’ fans a monster tome (337 pages/no ads) that focuses on fleshing out Native American characters. There is also a bit of metaplot going on with Raven and his schemes. Coupled with the apparent removal of a major threat, the book has a very “new” feel to it, similar to what Shadowrun captures with its constant updating calendar.

Despite its size, the book is truly a supplement, a gorgeous supplement loaded with all the bells and whistles one expects from a corebook.

The layout follows the Deadlands format by starting with fourteen pages of the Disputed Lands edition of the Tombstone Epitaph. Here in the fictionalized reporting, readers get a glimpse of where the setting has taken its twists and turns. From there, the players’ section takes up only 26 pages before the rest of the book (minus five pages for an index) is devoted to the Marshall. Again, this is a supplement and this off-kilter distribution of material proves it. I personally don’t care if players read the whole book (everybody at the table should have one in a healthy gaming society) , but I’m a big believer that it does take away a bit of the fun.

The “look” of the layout in terms of art is fantastic. The bulk of the book has a lush, yet subtle back splash. It depicts a canyon landscape at the bottom of each page that morphs into the open Western sky and then morphs again into some mapping layouts. The sidebars (and there are plenty) are well-placed throughout the read without making readers forget the entire purpose for the sidebar while they read it.

The artwork was mostly a win for me, but it did have enough misses for me to comment.

This book is a full-color bad boy, the kind I would recommend buying in its dead tree glory rather than cramming it into your portable library (Heck, do both!). I think the book’s color is where the artwork went wrong for me. Deadlands started out as a black and white line with an artwork akin to cowboys and comic books. I liked it in a very EC Comics sort of way. The artwork in this book should feel the same way, but doesn’t. Something about the coloring just jacked it all up for me. One exception is what I consider to be the oddest single page in this book (Pg. 31). It’s a black and white piece showing two bikers against a locomotive. Something about the piece just works, even though it really shouldn’t. I should mention that Deadlands: Reloaded’s artwork didn’t distract me as much as the artwork here.

What about the writing? Well, skipping directly to the “Makin’ Heroes” section will give readers a wealth of material to use for creating Native heroes. There is a solid list of available tribes and a blurb for each (the book points out that true research needs to go beyond a game book). There are new Edges like “Gallows Humor,” new Hindrances, and new Powers. Powers gets the most treatment as patron spirit powers are detailed.

Next is a section on gear. While this section starts out favoring the Last Sons’ side of things, it is when it kicks into the spy gear of the Agency that it becomes interesting. James Bond meets the Old West as players get access to exploding pocket watches, false playing cards, and Black Dusters.

At this point, the book is devoted to the Marshall’s Section, which is broken down into six meaty bits. First, the metaplot is updated as evil experiences a major setback. Then, as the realizations of what has happened sinks in, the section on setting rules becomes very effective.

For example, let’s use the seven deadly sins for a moment as an example without giving away anything from this portion of the book.

In Game X, the world’s worst enemies are scions of the Seven Deadly Sins. For the purposes of the story, Greed has gotten very powerful, so powerful there are minor rule changes to affect anything related to wealth. There are Charisma adjustments, morality rolls regarding money, and so forth. This is exactly what Last Sons offers in the second portion of the Marshall’s Section.

Strange Locales comes next and, with the changes to the landscape this supplement provides, there are some excellent strangeness to uncover. Some familiar towns no longer…behave the same way. Some character types will not be happy about the changes (a good reason not to let the players read this going into the campaign). Most of this section provides great examples of the writers mixing fact and fiction in interesting ways (Just ask a certain 16th President/Vampire Hunter).

The rest of the Marshall’s Section is devoted to one-shot adventure seeds and campaigns.

There are a wealth of stories to be told in this new setting and the writers saw fit to pen out a few for fans. There are 100+ pages devoted to various adventures, making it the biggest component to the book. I obviously ain’t gonna tell you anything about them expect that the campaign is deadly, deadly.

It’s more fun to play in these scenarios rather than just read ‘em.

As a long time fan of Deadlands, I enjoyed this book because it shook the living Hell out of the setting. Good games do that, which I guess means this is a good game. It’s a massive addition to the setting, one I think came later than expected. Maybe it was just being fashionable.

My scores for the game are:

Artwork: Four out of Five Dice (layout and cartography pull out a high score)
Writing: Five out of Five Dice (like the shake-up/like the rule amendments to said shake-up)
Overall: Five out of Five Dice (Great Supplment/Fun Read)

Review by Todd Cash

Related posts:

1. Deadlands board game to be released in 2009
2. For A Few Dead Guys More (Deadlands) Review

First Class on the Titanic is exciting in itself but when you are invited to a private viewing of one of the world’s great curiosities, you jump at the chance. The mummy of Hettunaway, Priestess of Amun-Ra, the Unlucky Mummy is being shipped to New York and donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art by its owner, Jefferson Shaw. Legend has it that those who look upon her face are doomed. Jefferson Shaw’s intentions are not as philanthropic as they seem. Strange rituals, a device to contact spirits and the awakening of something he cannot control.

The Titanic is on a collision course with an iceberg but will it be the icy water that kills you or the ancient force, finally unleashed?

The Millionaire’s Special is a short adventure for Trail of Cthulhu by Adam Gauntlett (Not So Quiet, Hell Fire). This is to celebrate the centenary year of the Titanic’s tragic sinking.

All proceeds from the sale of this adventure will go to the Heroes in the Dark charity.

Heroes in the Dark is a nonprofit organization with a clear and simple purpose: to create audio comics to be enjoyed by the blind and sight-impaired. Working with local businesses, comics industry professionals, and recording industry professionals, we are dedicated to creating a chronological history of comics, in audible form.

RMS Titanic: The Millionaire’s Special is available at the Flames Rising RPGNow Shop!

Related posts:

1. Trail of Cthulhu: The Repairer of Reputations
2. Trail of Cthulhu: The Big Hoodoo
3. The Watchers in the Sky a new adventure for Trail of Cthulhu

Zombie Dice, the brain-eating dice game produced by Steve Jackson Games, will appear in the third episode of Tabletop on Friday, May 4, 2012.

"I'm really hyped about the G&S channel, and especially Tabletop," said company founder Steve Jackson. "The Internet is the right way to deliver this, and it's fun food for geek brains. Braaaaaiiiinnnns."

Narrated by actor and author Wil Wheaton, Tabletop features guests playing dice, card, board, and pen-and-paper games. The show is available free online on the Geek and Sundry YouTube! channel. This episode shows viewers how to play this quick dice game.

Zombie Dice debuted in 2010 and is now in its third printing. Since then, the game has sold over 65,000 copies. Zombie Dice 2 – Double Feature, the game’s first expansion, shipped to stores in March. Zombie Dice is also available as a free downloadable app.

For more about Zombie Dice, visit ZombieDice.sjgames.com.

Braaaaaiiiiinnnnnsssss! 

Related posts:

1. Sneak Peek at Zombie Chibithulhu, Munchkin Axe Cop, Munchkin Conan and more!
2. SJGames Week: Zombie Dice Review
3. Zombie Week: Zombie Tramp Comic Review

Available at RPGNow.com

Introduction

The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, the main books that describe Tolkien’s ‘Middle Earth’ have been the subject or inspiration of a great many games down the years. Computer games, RPGs and others have all fed on his rich world-building and sense of epic adventure which, itself, comes inspired by Celtic and Nordic myths such as The Ring Cycle.

ICE defined the Lord of the Rings in roleplaying terms for many, many years and to many their work is still the defining work on The Lord of the Rings in the RPG hobby, though as a ‘slimmed down’ version of RoleMaster it wasn’t the most accessible and the rules sometimes didn’t make absolute sense.

The Decipher version tied in nicely with the movies but somehow never really managed to break out of that ‘licensed’ ghetto that some games fall into and never really managed to catch that many people’s attention.

I started out gaming with ICE’s Middle Earth Roleplaying and every fantasy game under the sun incorporates Tolkien-style elements and inspiration at some point or another. Any game trying to live up to Middle Earth has a lot standing in its way from comparisons to previous games and the attention of Tolkien fanatics and scholars to the fact that whatever the source material, it’s still ‘just another’ fantasy game.

Story

This book describes an adventuring world that takes place some years after the end of the events of The Hobbit. The dragon Smaug is defeated, the lands of his desolation are being reclaimed. The dwarves have a king under the mountain again and Mirkwood is beginning to be cleansed.

The characters come into this new and even hopeful situation, ready to become heroes. There are still orcs and spiders, ruins, bandits, tensions between the people who became allies at the battle of the five armies. Plenty of opportunities for heroism and adventure.

Rules

The rules of The One Ring are a bit of an odd mixture of old-school and indie design elements and there’s much that reminds one of board game design as well. One can see hints of influence from White Wolf, FATE, Warhammer 3rd Edition and even, perhaps, from the Lord of the Rings MMORPG. The game is neither a true narrative game nor a crunch-heavy traditional game but falls somewhere in the middle – which is something that suits me just fine as that’s where I fall.

The game uses a d12 for all rolls and this is accompanied by a variable number of six sided dice, depending on your capability, skill and so on. One irritant is that the game uses ‘novelty dice’ and while they’re not essential to play – you can make do with normal dice – they do make things a damn sight easier. Integral to the rolls are two special faces on the 12 sided dice (the eye and a gandalf rune) marking critical success and failure, and the way the numbers are marked on the six-sided die, half outline, half solid and the 6 marked with a tengwar rune.

Success or failure is denoted by the total that you roll and the degree of success by how many tengwar runes you roll. The d12 being a flat roll means a ‘crit’ occurs on a flat probability curve while numerical totals themselves are more upon an average curve, depending on the number of dice. This is a peculiar mix of probabilities and it’s hard to tell how that will play out on a mere read through. Such common critical successes and failures is good for heroic, luck-of-the-draw games but TOR is written as a much more low key game, perhaps more suited to the average results you get from multiple dice.

The rules do reflect the preoccupations of Tolkien’s work, the importance of race and heritage, the importance of morale, the spread of corruption and weakness in the hearts of men. It does manage to avoid the ‘ubermensch’ problems with Tolkien elves, though this might annoy some purists I think it’s a good way to keep them under control. That said, the emphasis on race and past can be something of a straitjacket and character customisation isn’t as broad as it could be. Given that it bucks the current trend of super-competent starting characters and gives you a genuine learning curve, that’s not so bad.

There are formal downtime rules, called the ‘Fellowship phase’ which are welcome and it’s nice to have these sorts of things codified. Something we’re seeing in more games besides TOR of late. Again, this can be a little restricting but a skilled GM (Or ‘Loremaster’) should be able to overcome all these strictures.

Combat feels quick and quite deadly, not something to be undertaken lightly, but if the Loremaster wants to avoid total party wipes there are several ‘outs’ he can employ, or he can play it hardcore.

Character death and retirement is softened in its impact by rules for passing on a legacy to the characters that come after you. With the various books that will make up the series moving the timeline on this is a wonderful idea (one I’ve been toying with myself for other games) but ‘missing’ are rules for founding a family or dynasty and playing your own character’s children – something I’d like to see appear in later supplements.

People who are dismissive of The Lord of the Rings often talk about it as a ‘long walk’ with a little action here and there but travel and the landscape is an important part of Tolkien’s work and the atmosphere of his books. There are extensive travel rules then, and they’re a good thing to have. Wandering and exploration being such strong hooks for adventurers. Given the lighter rules-touch elsewhere this can feel a little strange, but it’s welcome nonetheless.

The Loremaster’s rules are mostly just a reflection of the character rules. The bestiary is a little wanting but covers the basic orcs/goblins, trolls, wargs and wolves that turn up so readily in Tolkien’s work as well as the spiders of the Mirkwood. Tolkien didn’t really use a great many monsters in his epics and so it’s not all that surprising, what is surprising is the inclusion of vampires, a barely mentioned side-note in Tolkien’s work but here presented in the main bestiary.

Some of the rules feel a little too simplistic, but the building of traits, skills etc upon that basic foundation do allow for a greater degree of complexity than first appears. I think it may take 2-3 sessions of play for this to become apparent and for people to settle in to how their characters work, but that’s faster than many games.

Atmosphere

Rules, writing and art all conspire to create a good atmosphere and I would compare the look and feel most readily with Dragon Warriors, likely due to the artistic influence of Jon Hodgson. This is a green and somewhat grubby Middle Earth which makes me think of Exmoor, Stonehenge, The Scottish Highlands and trips to Danebury Ring. It is all very evocative and effective and everything dovetales nicely to convey the atmosphere they’re trying to get across and the mood of play which is respectful – perhaps to a fault – to the source.

Art

Jon Hodgson is, to a great extend, defining the look of British fantasy in the gaming scene for me and this shines through in his work on this book and the work of his compatriots. Despite the international authorship this is a British game through and through and has broken free of the trappings of the LOTR movies. This game has its own distinct look and stands up to the earlier MERP very nicely, even overtaking it thanks to modern full-colour printing. The parchment background reduces readability somewhat, there’s a lot of what can feel like ‘wasted space’ but in this case I believe it enhances the readability and helps make the text clearer.

Conclusion

It is disappointing that a ‘Dark Heresy/Dragon Age’ approach has been taken to the game in that it’s going to be split over several books but fans will, of course, come up with their own filler material for other peoples and places in the meantime. Characters can feel a little straitjacketed and could start to feel samey after a while, this fits the source material and how important heritage is though. It’s a beautiful book with an interesting system that’s well explained and graspable to novices as well as RPG experts.

The three things that hold it back from a perfect score are its limited scope in space and time within Middle Earth and its reliance on novelty dice. While they’re not needed, it would be aggravating to use normal dice.

The last thing is a problem that’s out of the author’s hands. Much as in playing a Star Wars RPG you cannot help but feel that anything your characters might do or get involved in is going to be overshadowed by the characters from the books. In Star Wars there’s, at least, a whole galaxy to play in, Middle Earth is much smaller than a galaxy and the setting of this first book is smaller still, not to mention the time frame slaps you right between the deeds of the heroes of The Hobbit and the coming deeds of The Fellowship.

On the plus side

Fabulous and evocative art.
Deep and respectful approach to Tolkien’s work.
Hybrid game system should satisfy hardcore gamers and story gamers alike.

On the minus side

Novelty dice.
Limited setting
Time/space limitation will make expansion difficult.

Score
Style: 5
Substance: 3
Overall: 4

James ‘Grim’ Desborough

No related posts.