A massive earthquake hit the Pacific Ocean nearby Northeastern Japan on March 11 causing damage with blackouts, fire and tsunami. The large earthquake triggered a tsunami warning for countries all around the Pacific ocean.

RPGNow is helping raise funds to help those affected by this disaster. Please help with a $5 donation at RPGNow.com.

When I first read Dragon Age: The Calling, I hadn’t played any of the Dragon Age video games (although I did start playing Dragon Age: Origins for my PS3). My experiences with the Dragon Age setting was from playing a few sessions of the Dragon Age RPG that is published by Green Ronin and reading a few of the IDW Comics. The setting was what hooked me enough to pick up this novel and dive into the world.

Lord of the Rings RPG Headlines an Industry-Leading Lineup

Cubicle 7, one of the RPG industry’s leading publishers, today took the wraps off a 2011 schedule that also makes it the most prolific. With four major RPG core games being released, and over 100 products on the 2011 schedule, Cubicle 7 is the biggest supplier of new titles in the RPG industry.

The One Ring: Adventures over the Edge of the Wild launches a new line based on the grandfather property of fantasy: J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy. The Lord of the Rings hasn’t been represented in gaming for several years, and Cubicle 7, in partnership with Sophisticated Games, promises a new approach that will invigorate fans of this highly-developed and much-loved universe—as well as pull in a whole new generation of gamers.

Fantastic from page 1 to page 32. This is a fun looking issue that I wouldn’t mind if it were done for adult readers, but since it is for kids I can say it rocks! Every artist brings a unique look that is inviting and yet scary enough for the genre. I knew I was in for a treat when I saw the pumpkin grow eyes in the first story. I also want to add that black and white was the right way to go here.

There were 6 short stories in this issue and every single one of them I enjoyed. Sometimes you can really get things played down to the target audience but I can happily say that I enjoyed this and I think the age range should go from 6 – 200.

Since releasing one of the first enhanced e-books entitled The Queen of Crows, I’ve been pursuing publication of short stories and other works over the past year. I’d like to share some exciting news with you here. In honor of Read an e-book Week, links will primarily point to the digital version.

Hope you take the time to read the post and check out my new short stories and games.

If you are a looking for a deep and philosophical game to explore the intricacies of your mind, then this is not the game for you. However, if you are looking for a light-hearted and whimsical romp in between long running campaigns then this game can easily fill that need. Early on the game touts itself as a ‘Beer and Crisps’ game (or a Beer and Pretzels game in the States), and it adheres to this easygoing philosophy.

One takes on the role of a Jerkian Warrior, a clone of the great leader whose purpose in life is to entertain the Exalted Emperor and feed the Exalted Emperor. It’s not an easy life being among the lowest ranks, and a gruesome (though entertaining) death is almost a certainty. One of the few ways to ensure your own survival is through treachery and betrayal of your fellow Jerkian Warriors; rank hath many privileges — one of the most obvious being fewer missions in which death is likely.

A long while ago, Matt asked me if there was anything in the DriveThruComics.com store that I’d like to review, and I spotted a new (meaning new to me) superhero series called Freshmen. The first six issues were up and available, so I requested them and wanted to give them a go. (I found out after reading all six issues that the series is co-created by Seth Green of Robot Chicken and sundry other projects, which makes *perfect* sense.)

Here’s the short of it: due to dorm overflow, fifteen college freshmen are shipped over to live in the science building, which has been modified to create living space. When a lab experiment explodes, their cells evolve — granting them powers related to whatever they happened to be thinking at the moment.

What is more mysterious than an Oracle? It is the turn of the Oracle character class to come under the microscope: no mere list of feats but a detailed look at the potentials and options available to players who fancy being an Oracle.

We begin with an overview of the class as a whole, discussing the salient points of an Oracle. It’s an interesting class, a spontaneous caster but divine rather than arcane (the answer to those of us who mutter that surely our deities would never let us choose the wrong spells for the day…), with many opportunities for the role-player as they tend to be good socially as well as with that air of mystery! Speaking of mysteries, your choice here sets the flavor of the whole character, affecting him in terms of game mechanics as well as laying the seeds for role-playing and characterization. As they are so important, there’s a thumb-nail sketch of each one, to aid your choice based on just what kind of oracle you would like to play. Oracles are well set up for defense, if offensive capability is desired crafty choices of mystery (Battle is good, or an elemental one) can prove an advantage. Oracles will tend to specialize in something, but that thing they can generally do very well indeed.

Imagine sitting down at a diner and breaking out…CTHULHU! Well, to play this game that’s exactly what we did. Produced by Steve Jackson Games, Cthulhu Dice is a rapid descent into madness. You can literally lose your mind during this game or, as our waiter put it: your lunch.

We played with three people. To set up, each player gets three tokens which are included with the dice. Those beads represent your sanity. Then, the owner of the game (Moi, in fact) gets to choose who casts the first curse. Player A rolls to curse Player B and gets a tentacle. Player B loses one point of sanity to Player A and gets to roll a response. Player B rolls a Cthulhu. Now everyone loses a point of sanity. The turn has thus ended and the next player gets to go.

CELEBRATE GMs! ANNUAL RPGNOW SALE!

Buy your favorite games or try new ones from Postmortem Studios, Cubicle 7, Galileo Games, Pelgrane Press, Pinnacle Entertainment, Adamant Entertainment, White Wolf Publishing, Evil Hat Productions, Green Ronin, Malhavoc Press and even Flames Rising Press, including the best-selling title The Queen of Crows.

The year is nineteen-sixty-something, and after endless millennia of watery sleep, the stars are finally right. Old R’lyeh rises out of the Pacific, ready to cast its damned shadow over the primitive human world. The first to see its peaks: an alcoholic, paranoid, and frightened Jack Kerouac, who had been drinking off a nervous breakdown up in Big Sur. Now Jack must get back on the road to find Neal Cassady, the holy fool whose rambling letters hint of a world brought to its knees in worship of the Elder God Cthulhu. Together with pistol-packin’ junkie William S. Burroughs, Jack and Neal make their way across the continent to face down the murderous Lovecraftian cult that has spread its darkness to the heart of the American Dream. But is Neal along for the ride to help save the world, or does he want to destroy it just so that he’ll have an ending for his book?

Flames Rising is pleased to present you with the first chapter from Move Under Ground, a Lovecraft-inspired novel by author Nick Mamatas. Set in the 1960s, Move Under Ground is Mamatas’s debut novel about a character named Jack Kerouac who receives strange, rambling letters from Neal Cassaday. Will Jack successfully rescue Neal? Will they escape the Cult of Utter Normalcy? Or will they face Cthulhu himself? Dubbed an “ambitious” novel, read Chapter One and enjoy a fresh voice inspired by H.P. Lovecraft.

Move Under Ground is available now at Amazon.com.

Region Guide 1: Sacred Places is the first proper title in a series of small pdfs for the Savage Worlds Hellfrost setting by Triple Ace Games. The guide is only 12 pages long, but is cheap, and adds more setting information to the game. The region guide series are not material that was cut from the Hellfrost Gazetteer, but additional material for the GM. In conversation with Wiggy, the author of Hellfrost and these region guides, he stressed that this was not an attempt to gouge fans, but to create additional material for certain areas of the game in addition to that found in the core books. When you look at the region guide series as a whole, you’ll find there are well over 400 pages of extra material in total, dwarfing the size of the gazetteer. Nor is any of the information in the gazetteer repeated here; this is all new material. As a personal note, I’d also like to add that Wiggy has made many pdfs freely available on the TAG website which also add to the Hellfrost milieu – hardly the action of someone wanting to gouge customers. So, why not just create a Gazetter 2 (and 3, and 4…) book instead of all these pdfs? The advantages of the region guide series are twofold; firstly, these pdfs can be released quite quickly; if Wiggy had wanted to wait until he had finished all of them before releasing them as a book, then there would be a much longer downtime before they saw print. Secondly, the GM can buy whichever pdfs he wants, depending on which areas he finds interesting or where his players want their characters to go.. No-one is making you buy all of the series.

For those of you who have played Dragon Age, you’re probably hungry for more. I just finished Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age: Awakenings and am anxiously awaiting Dragon Age 2. In addition to the novels and the Dragon Age RPG, a new web series will be debuting this summer starring Felicia Day. According to Doug Jones, (Yes, people. This is the guy who played Abe Sapien from Hellboy among other roles…) he said: “In Dragon Age: Redemption, Felicia Day stars as Tallis, an Elven assassin hired by the Qunari to capture a rogue mage intent on wreaking havoc throughout the world.”

To read more about this upcoming web series, be sure to visit Felicia Day’s blog where she links to several interviews, including one with Jimmy Fallon. Check out the trailer below!

Kelly Meding, I have a bone to pick with you. After introducing a seriously awesome minor character in Three Days To Dead, you neglected to include even one scene with Smedge the Bridge Troll in the sequel. Sure, you gave us a seriously hot shape-shifting osprey who can go into angel mode with Phin. You introduced us to a sweet-yet-strong kestrel shifter, who alternates between protected and protector in Aurora. You brought in the mysterious shifter lawyer with a talent for vague clues with Michael Jenner. So, one could say that the new awesome outweighs the old awesome.

But I miss Smedge. I just want that out there.