Flashback Weekend 2008 By Day – Flashback Weekend features Chicago’s most complete Horror/Movie Memorabilia convention featuring Celebrities, a stunning dealer’s room, costume contest, special events, and… By Night- Horror Party Central featuring Charles Band, the New Millennium Theatre Company, the First Annual Flashback Weekend Zombie Pinup Beauty Pageant, and much more! www.flashbackweekend.com

We’ve been waiting a really, really, really long time for a Warhammer 40,000 RPG. I remember buying Rogue Trader – and still have it somewhere in a folder, it having fallen apart with use – and the promise in that was of a full-on Warhammer 40,000 RPG arriving at some point in the near future. That was 1987, it is now 2008 and, finally we get our Warhammer 40,000 RPG. It has a lot to live up Dark Heresy, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay was pretty much a masterpiece and gave D&D a run for its money in UK popularity, the wargames have ensnared generations of kids in their clutches and the 2nd Edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, despite being a supplement treadmill and despite getting zero support from Games Workshop, was a success as well. Then, just as Dark Heresy does come out, and sells out pretty much immediately, we learn that GW/Black Industries are dropping ALL their roleplay etc lines, triumph and tragedy in one fell swoop.

Review by James ‘Grim’ Desborough

Forgotten Realms author Paul S. Kemp has posted a free preview chapter of his upcoming novel Shadowrealm. Paul has several free downloads on his website, including some chapters from other Forgotten Realms titles. Check out his Free Stuff page for more information. You can pre-order Shadowrealm at Amazon. Paul’s other books include Shadow’s Witness, Resurrection […]

Another round of the Flash Fire Mini-Reviews is here!

This week we are talking about one of the most well-known characters in horror. Dracula has made appearances in fiction, movies, comics and games. He has been re-imagined numerous times and always comes back for more. New concepts about the character are always being invented and new fans discover the character every year.

What follows are just a few of the many, many Dracula influenced products available today. The original novel with a twist, some games and a couple of movies make up this set of mini-reviews…

Dragon of the Mangroves takes place during the Second World War and traces the fate of two Japanese soldiers during the retreat of the Imperial Army from Burma under assault by British forces including the Gurkhas and Indian Army. Second Lieutent Yoshihisi Suma is in charge of a group of ‘tankettes’ about to be committed to a suicidal defence when he gets a sudden reprieve, a special mission to head a rescue mission to retrieve retreating soldiers from a defeat on an island/peninsula surrounded by mangrove swamp. Meanwhile private Minoru Kasuga, a machine gunner, is part of that retreat, forced back by the ferocious British attack the situation for him and the troops around him gets more and more desperate and as they try to escape the troops become prey to a terrible predatory creature of the mangrove swamps, the salt water crocodile.

Review by James ‘Grim’ Desborough

With record sales and interest, OBS has extended the GM’s Day Sale at RPGNow. This is the day we celebrate the single most important person in any gaming group – the Game Master. On this day, we celebrate by BUYING GAME STUFF, and you can do that here FOR 25% OR MORE OFF on all […]

EMPIRE by David Dunwoody

The outbreak began in 2007. It’s now 2112.

The crippled U.S. government is giving up its fight against an undead plague. Military forces and aid have been withdrawn from the last coastal cities, leaving those who choose to stay in the “badlands” defenseless against hordes of zombified humans and animals.

It’s been a hopeless battle from the beginning. The undead, born of an otherworldly energy fused with a deadly virus, have no natural enemies.

But they do have one supernatural enemy… Death himself.

Skin and Bones is the second installment in Permuted Press‘ series of zombie anthologies, The Undead. It’s very much a case of what you see is what you get–which, of course, isn’t necessarily a bad thing, providing you like zombies.

The anthology opens with one of the strongest tales, David Wellington’s Cyclopean. The over-used ‘zombies working 9 to 5, no one even realizes they’re zombies’ theme is employed, but only lightly. Cyclopean is a fast-paced, entertaining and original zombie tale with Lovecraftian overtones.

Review by Leah Clarke

E. Gary Gygax has passed away. Gary was one of the creators of Dungeons & Dragons, in addition to many other games and novels over the years. I had the chance to game with him a couple of times at various conventions over the years. I’m planning on GMing a little old-school “Dungeon Crawl” tonight, […]

Some of the great products on sale include: The Harvesters (World of Darkness) – White Wolf Publishing People Disappear All The Time. Will You Be One Of Them? A story in the Storytelling Adventure System for the World of Darkness, inspired by Midnight Roads. 100 Horror Adventure Seeds – Postmortem Studios 100 Horror Adventure Seeds […]

For Free RPG Day, Impressions Advertising & Marketing works with hobby game retailers and RPG publishers to bring NEW RPG Quickstart Rules and Adventure Modules into the hands of gamers. Consumers will be able to grab brand new material for a variety of RPGs — no overstock, retail-priced or dead product here. The goal of […]

I’m a Gibson fan. I came up through the whole Cyberpunk thing – part of the reason I embraced the internet so readily – and followed onwards through the rest of his books as he became a publicly acceptable ‘important author’ rather than ‘just’ a science fiction author. Aside from a few short stories and things here and there I’ve read everything he’s put out from Burning Chrome to this, Spook Country.

Spook Country follows several different threads of stories and picks up on and carries along with a few bits and pieces from his previous novel, Pattern Recognition, which I loved and which suggests this may be part of a loose ‘trilogy’ much like his Cyberpunk trilogy (Neuromancer/Count Zero/Mona Lisa Overdrive) and his near-future trilogy (Virtual Light/Idoru/All Tomorrow’s Parties). This would seem to follow several patterns you can see in Gibson’s work…

Review by James ‘Grim’ Desborough

As zombies invade a barricaded apartment building, the vampire inhabitants must protect their human livestock. Shade, the vampire monarch, defends her late father’s kingdom, but Frost, Shade’s general, convinces his brethren to migrate to an island, where they can breed and hunt humans. In their path stands a legion of corpses, just now evolving into something far more lethal, something with tentacles–and that’s just the beginning.

The folks over at Horror Literature Quarterly have just released a new issue with fiction from Christopher Golden and Lavie Tidhar. Issue 4/Winter 2008 Horror Literature Quarterly can be read in two different formats; on the website and via PDF. Horror Literature Quarterly will release the PDF version of each issue first and will place […]

Spartans Unleashed has created several free Cursed Empire items available for download at RPGNow.com The Cursed Empire Fantasy RPG provides a dark, comprehensive medieval fantasy game system with subtle undertones of the heroic age of Ancient Greece. This game offers Players and GM’s detailed and flexible rules to suit their gaming style for combat, movement, […]

Drop by the Austin Chronicle’s website for an interesting discussion between Spencer Parsons and Diary of the Dead director George Romero: George Romero’s latest state of the union via flesh-eating legions of the undead I just can’t resist that stuff, man. I grew up on EC comic books, and it’s all gags and puns. I […]