Monarch Comics’ ongoing comic book series, Witch Hunter, is debuting the title’s letters column in Witch Hunter #9 (“The Scarlet Circle Network”), releasing in print format on April 30th (Monarchcomicslair.com and select stores) and shortly thereafter in digital format on DriveThruComics.com To get the magic word out about the column and generate letters for it, Monarch Comics has announced an ongoing letter-writing contest for Witch Hunter.

“Based on the Troma film! Chillers, the classic film from Troma Studios that captured the Silver Scroll Award, returns with all new tales in an original graphic novel. Writer and director Daniel Boyd is joined by some of the best in horror to present more terror and chills. Troma Films is supporting the release of the graphic novel with a re-release of the film on DVD and the Buddy Black Band is releasing a tribute album, Witchfinder, to also coordinate with the graphic novel. Evil travels in many forms, even by bus. But this bus takes its riders to a journey that they can never return from!”

I have had a long, sordid relationship with the Final Fantasy franchise. While I haven’t played every game, I have played most of them. When you play Final Fantasy, there are certain elements that you come to expect: cactaurs, chocobos, moogles, summoning, and BIG GIANT SWORDS. Final Fantasy XII began to stray from the iconic characters found in the property with its attention to new mechanics and a more realistic art style heavily inspired by the steampunk genre.

Final Fantasy XIII further deviated from the heart of the franchise. Though it did offer eidolons (one per character) this far-flung futuristic story jarred a lot of fans who hadn’t seen Square Enix dive that heavily into science fiction since the days of Cloud and Sephiroth in Final Fantasy VII.

Star of The Walking Dead To Participate in Q & A with Fans; Followed by 3-Hour Signing!

Noted actor Steven Yeun, currently starring in the role of Glenn in AMC’s hit original series The Walking Dead, will appear at this year’s Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo (C2E2). In addition to his starring role in The Walking Dead, Mr. Yeun has also recently starred in an episode of the television series Law & Order: Los Angeles and an episode of Warehouse 13. Steven Yeun, who lived in Chicago where he performed with the Second City Theatre, will appear at C2E2 on Saturday, April 14 where he will conduct a Q & A with fans followed by a free 3-hour signing.

“This is the first issue in the five-issue story arc, “ODYSSEY”. The mission for Z-Girl and the 4 Tigers was straightforward: battle gun-toting apes at the temple of Angkor Wat in Cambodia, prevent the emergence of the wrathful god, Shiva, and save a pregnant hostage. But the ancient scroll they find means this is just the beginning of something greater, a journey of discovery of who Z-Girl is and what part she is to play in the prophesied zombie apocalypse.”

The crew of the delivery ship Haldis is en route to drop off a high-ranking politician on a remote world, but something isn’t right. Someone is sowing mistrust among the crew. The ship has been sabotaged. When Xax, the ship’s young medical intern, disappears, it’s clear the situation is serious. Can Marrl, the security chief with serious anger management issues, and Cass Leary, the cool cyborg captain, get to the bottom of this before it’s too late? Is Xax even still alive? Who’s behind all this, and what do they stand to gain?

This is a novella about conspiracy and paranoia in the space-lanes by Flames Rising‘s own Monica Valentinelli set in the shared science-fiction universe of Bulldogs!

The eBook (including PDF and ePub editions) of Redwing’s Gambit is available now at DriveThruFiction.com!

No fantasy world is complete without monsters to pit your wits – and sword-arms – against, and despite the rich heritage already in place for the Arcanis campaign world, a completely new ruleset requires new monsters to be written to accommodate it.

The nice thing is, this book is as much a ‘how-to’ build your own monsters (or adapt existing ones from other games) as it is a selection of beasties with which to threaten your players. Whilst this is in part necessity: it’s plain not possible to provide the wealth of monsters that most gamers have become accustomed to, it also provides for the creativity of the average gamer to be supported… and enables individual gamers to ‘convert’ their favourite beasties which cannot be presented under this ruleset for copyright reasons!

Mind’s Eye Theatre gives you everything players and Storytellers need to play a live-action game set in the World of Darkness. From setting material and rules for playing mortal characters to Storytelling advice and an innovative challenge resolution system, this book is the cornerstone of a totally new live-action experience. Enter the theatre of the mind and learn the secrets of the night.

For a limited time White Wolf has marked down all of the Mind’s Eye Theatre eBooks, for both Classic and New World of Darkness at the Flames Rising RPGNow Shop!

Investigator Weapons for Call of Cthulhu in the Classic era is a comprehensive collection of weapons available to stalwart investigators of the Cthulhu Mythos and their crazed cultist opponents.

Investigator Weapons covers handguns, rifles, shotguns, submachine guns, machine guns, flamethrowers, melee weapons, explosives, and special ammunition; and gathers together all the spot rules for injury, environmental conditions, and firearms combat in one place, as well as introducing many optional rules for enhanced play.

Investigator Weapons – the essential weapons book for Keepers and players of all editions of Call of Cthulhu.

Investigator Weapons is available now at the Flames Rising RPGNow Shop.

Moonstone Books, the publishers of the Vampire: the Masquerade and Werewolf: the Apocalypse comic series, are having a fun sale on two of their horror fiction anthologies…

Kelly McCullough, author of the WebMage series, dives into the fantasy noir genre with the debut of Broken Blade. Dubbed the Fallen Blade series, this first book introduces Aral Kingslayer, a former assassin for the now-dead Goddess of Justice named Namara.

I feel McCullough’s strength has always been building worlds that the characters are immersed in. Broken Blade explores a different side of dark fantasy than the typical European/medieval fare. The world is a blend of East meets West where remnants of martial arts and Asian mythology merge with European politics and the rights granted by proper lineage.

Written as a fantasy noir, there are plenty of mysteries to explore in this book. Kingslayer is the anti-hero; he’s the drunk who sits in the corner of a bar who’s depressed and feeling sorry for himself — for good reason. His ever-present familiar, Triss, lives in his shadow as Aral simply tries to get through the day.

Welcome back to Golarion–the world of Krunzle the Quick, Isiem the wizard, and Alaeron the seeker of forbidden knowledge. Here you’ll find lands such as Cheliax, Numeria, Druma, and Nidel where greed, secrecy, and savagery await heroes and readers alike.

Below, the authors of three forthcoming Pathfinder Tales novels discuss how they came to the world of Golarion and what stories they found there.

Behold, Matthew Hughes (www.archonate.com) who writes science fiction, crime, and media-tie novels as Matthew Hughes, Matt Hughes, and Hugh Matthews. He is best known for his Archonate tales, including Template in the Planet Stories line, and his recent Hell and Black trilogy. His Pathfinder Tales novel Song of the Serpent is due out in 2012.

Pagan Publishing is a small but award-winning publisher of role-playing games, specializing in books and supplements for the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game.

We have completed work on a new collection of five game scenarios entitled “Bumps in the Night.” This collection was written by John H. Crowe III and is set in the classic Call of Cthulhu era in the early part of the 20th Century. All five scenarios use the Call of Cthulhu Basic Role Playing mechanics, but none of them are based on the Cthulhu Mythos. Instead the players will have to face obscure horrors from the world of myth and folklore. At 120 pages, “Bumps in the Night” is beautifully illustrated by Rick Sardinha, Heather Hudson, Samuel Araya and Rhonda Libby. It will be produced as a 8.5″ x 11″ softcover, with glossy color exteriors and grisly grayscale interior artwork.

So you have this gorilla who wants to rule the world with his army of sentient ape-men, right? Plus, there’s a portal open to another time, and dinosaurs are coming through it – nobody’s sure who’s controlling them, but they aren’t acting purely on instinct. Then there’s the fact that many of the members of the Century Club – a group of two-fisted do-gooders who fight for truth and justice – with Chapter Houses all over the world – have disappeared, and you have the makings of a fantastic romp through pulp action in the classic tradition.

Like many people, I’ve enjoyed adventuring in the world of Arcanis as presented for the Dungeons and Dragons 3e ruleset for a good ten years now. It’s good to see innovative alternate realities survive the game mechanics that they were originally written for, but whilst many survive version changes it is less common for an entirely new game to be created just so that alternate reality will continue to thrive. This mighty tome has set out to provide a comprehensive system rooted in the Arcanis we already know and love, whilst introducing that world clearly to those who have not ventured there before.

The work is made up of four sections, and begins with the Codex of Arcanis, thus getting you all excited (for the first time or anew) to go visit, with subsequent sections explaining the mechanics of doing so. A sweeping overview of history catches you up, event piling upon event to lay the groundwork for the current situation, underpinning the traditions and customs prevalent today.

Zpocalypse is a survival board game set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Two to four players start in a basement/fallout shelter which can lead out to several base locations or even through the tunnels to sewer grates throughout the transformable board. Their survivors are trying to make it day to day in a world torn apart from the walking dead.

As in any survival game one needs food, guns, ammo, and more. Players go out into the wasteland and scavenge for supplies, or perhaps to find a new gun or melee weapon to fend off the next zombie attack.

In addition to gathering supplies, each player forms and controls their own squad. Each squad works to fortify the base(s). However your walls and barbed wire won’t hold the dead for long, and they’re getting hungry.

From the depths of R’lyeh come twenty-one brand-new, utterly terrifying, and thoroughly entertaining short stories of horror and the macabre!

Taking their inspiration from works by Lovecraft himself, prominent writers such as Caitlin R. Kiernan, Brian Stableford, Ramsey Campbell, Michael Shea, Darrell Schweitzer, Donald R. Burleson, and David J. Schow delve deep into the psyche, expanding on concepts H.P. Lovecraft created and taking them in new directions.

The result is stories that are wholly original, some even featuring Lovecraft himself as a character. Black Wings editor S.T. Joshi is the recognized authority on all things Lovecraftian, and is famous for his restorations of Lovecraft’s original works. He has assembled a star-studded line-up in a book that is essential for every horror library.

Flames Rising is pleased to present and exclusive excerpt from this new collection of Mythos tales which is published by Titan Books. Below is Usurped by William Browning Spencer.

The Vampire Retrospective Project continues today with an essay from Crystal Mazur. Crystal is an active member of One World by Night and tells us how Vampire was her introduction to RPGs.

Vampire the Masquerade has been a part of my life for about 13 years now. It was my introduction to roleplaying games, and no game has yet to bring what VtM has to offer. VtM has a lot of aspects that games tend to shy away from and themes even the most grotesque horror novelists would find deplorable.

So why has this game become such a sub-cultural icon? To me, it has to do with several factors. The first being the Theme of the game. VtM is all about personal horror. Yes there are monsters under the bed, but over time you become that monster.

Anne Rice, the legendary author who has defined vampires for a generation of readers and writers, is the latest addition to the star-studded line up of authors and other guests and talent at Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo (C2E2). Ms. Rice became an international phenomenon in 1976 with the publication of Interview with the Vampire which has become one of the best-selling novels of all time. She has written 31 books including The Vampire Chronicles, Lives of the Mayfair Witches, and The Songs of the Seraphim, among many others. Ms. Rice will be appearing at C2E2 to discuss and sign copies of her new book, The Wolf Gift, on Sunday, April 15. A daring new departure, The Wolf Gift offers a whole new world – modern, sleek, high tech – and at its center, a story as old and compelling as history: the making of a werewolf, reimagined and reinvented as only Anne Rice could create.

The Worldwound weeps. The living tower looms overhead. The demon Yath and his minions spread throughout the southern kingdoms. Trying times call for unlikely heroes. In The Worldwound Gambit by Robin D. Laws, the charismatic con-man Gad pulls together a band of roguish adventurers— caustic Jerisa, gentle Tiberio, haunted Calliard, pragmatic Vitta, and the mad fire magician Hendregan–to head north to face Yath and make the world safe for thieves and miscreants once again.

Heroic fantasy, mystery, horror, comedy, and dashes of swashbuckling romance… Laws wraps it all around a heist. Yes, dear reader, The Worldwound Gambit is a heist novel and it is glorious!