Rule of Rose tells the eerie and disturbing story of Jennifer, an apprehensive protagonist who must face the fantastic evil of a child’s imagination. Set in an English orphanage of the 1930’s, the game is a story of social outcasts, cruel violence, strained relationships and prepubescent sexuality. Since the cast of the game are almost entirely children, Sony was hesitant to release the game in America. Atlus, a company with a history of importing niche titles, stepped up and took the risk of bringing a game of challenging issues to the market.

In this interview we talk to Joseph about the haunting music of Nox Arcana, the production of the Gothic Tarot, Tales from the Dark Tower and other creative endeavors.

My Life with Master is a self-contained role playing game of personal horror by Paul Czege of Half Meme Press. It contains innovative ideas and a workable game, albeit one which would work best with creative and probably experienced players willing to enter into a setting and help to create it themselves. The interaction between GM and players is essential both in creating the setting and in forming the style and nature of the game. As the description below will suggest, gameplay can easily veer between a type of romantic desperation with which Vampire lovers will be familiar, to Grand Guignol to something rather less serious and bizarre. Since it can be difficult to maintain an intense style over an extended period of time and because of the very structure of the game, My Life with Master is best run as a single session game or, at most, a small number of sessions building up to a well-defined ending and epilogue

Agon takes place in a mythical Greece, drawing heavily from the Iliad and the Odyssey as inspiration (along with other sources like the films Clash of the Titans and Troy). Characters take on the role of heroes serving the gods on quests throughout the land, seeking glory and fame so their names may live on throughout the ages…

For many GenCon Indy veterans, this year’s convention had several noticeable changes. The winds of change were blowing through the vendor booths and demo areas, as evident by a stronger focus to video, card, and board games than in previous years.

Schism both builds on this game and subverts it almost completely. In Schism, there are no demons – instead, characters receive extraordinary psychic abilities that are, partly as a result of the accelerating pace of global change and its effect on the tortured human psyche, suddenly prevalent in society. Indeed, the title page uses the term ‘virulent setting.’ However, the virus of psychic abilities does not come without a price and in Schism that price tends to be psychic disorders and physical deformation. Anyone who has played (or perhaps tried to play) the Nephilim game will be familiar with at least this physical aspect. Characters in Schism progressively become more and more removed from basic humanity but have the advantage of being able to bring about powerful effects to further their own ends and those of the cabal (a kind of more or less secret organization) that they wish.