Mark Rein•Hagen brought dragons out of the dungeon and into the coffeehouse 20 years ago with a relevant and achingly literary spin on the undead, then vanished. Now he’s back with a new game for a planet crawling back from economic disaster.

Award-winning game designer and TV producer Mark Rein•Hagen knows what scares us, so now that he’s back with I AM ZOMBIE, his first all-new role-playing system in nearly two decades, we might all want to check our neuroses at the door.

The good news is that the co-founder of White Wolf Publishing (now owned by Icelandic MMORPG game developer CCP) isn’t shy about making sure not to serve loyal fans or new gamers any stale nightmares about the walking dead.

Imagine being both dead and deathless at the same time. Imagine being cradled in the arms of death for years, sometimes decades on end, but all the while knowing that you will eventually not only arise again, but awaken to an unfamiliar world that mostly fears and hates you. Now imagine that your purpose, your entire existence, is bound within this cycle — that you are chained to it for all eternity. You sleep, you wake, your serve your Judge’s will in the lands of the living, and you return to the death-sleep once more. The ancient culture that empowered you is gone, lost to the sands of time… yet you endure.

In Mummy: The Curse, a Storytelling game set in the World of Darkness, you play one of these beings. Those who know they exist, from the cultists who serve them to the dark forces arrayed against them, call them the Deathless.

February’s progress report kicked off this new series, so this month’s introduction talks a bit about a dry, boring subject: the internet. I do want to point out a couple of things in case you didn’t know already. First, be sure to check the front page of mlvwrites.com; I updated that with a few new books.

Read more to find news about my games, stories, clients — and comic!

It’s too late! The living dead have already taken over the world. Your brains have been devoured. Nothing is left but spasms of ravenous need—an obscene hunger for even more zombie fiction. Forget the metaphors and the mildly scary. You want shock, you want grue, you want disturbing, gut-wrenching, skull-crunching zombie stories that take you over the edge and go splat. You want the bloody best of the ultimate undead. You have no choice. . . you. . . must. . . have. . . Extreme Zombies!

Extreme Zombies is edited by Paula Guran and published by Prime Books. To celebrate this release, FlamesRising.com is hosting a give-a-way for two signed copies in the U.S. from one of the authors, Monica Valentinelli!

Comment in this post! Say something witty about zombies for your chance to win a physical copy of this collection! This contest will end in a week, so hurry up and zombify us already!

I announced recently that I’m the new Brand Manager and one of the writers for the Firefly roleplaying game line. Recently, I published my first update about what we’re up to on the Margaret Weis Productions website.

For more information, read: Ain’t No Better Place In The ‘Verse. I plan to write these bi-monthly and will keep you posted about new titles and some cool ways you can get involved.

Trust no one. The very nature of Aegis’ work means that the organization has to work in secret, away from public scrutiny and hidden from the keen surveillance of their enemies. The National Defense Directorate manipulates and schemes in secret bases around the country, plotting and moving pawns in a deadly chess game of deception. A conspiracy against another conspiracy.

The Conspiracies Sourcebook is a supplement for the Conspiracy X Second Edition roleplaying game.

A collaborative full color illustrated children’s book style adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft’s The Call of Cthulhu.

We are writing and illustrating a full color, illustrated children’s book of The Call of Cthulhu as part of a series of Littlest Lovecraft books. Our book will have front to back full color illustrations and is approximately 57 pages long!

We want to share Lovecraft’s works with a broader, younger audience that may have a hard time getting into the original text. It is our hope that our generation of Lovecraft enthusiasts will find our books useful in sharing their love with young Lovecraftians in the making!

The Flames of Shadam Khoreh is the concluding volume in The Lays of Anuskaya trilogy. It brings the story full circle from where it began in The Winds of Khalakovo. In that first novel, Nikandr Khalakovo, a prince of the Grand Duchy of Anuskaya, learns of Nasim, an autistic savant with wondrous powers. Through Nasim, Nikandr learns of the Al-Aqim, three wizards who long ago tore rifts between the material and elemental worlds. Those rifts have been growing, and things are coming to a head at last. The story expands in the second book, The Straits of Galahesh, moving from the archipelagos where Nasim was discovered to the island of Galahesh. It is there that a plot by Al-Aqim is revealed. And in The Flames of Shadam Khoreh, the rifts have spread to places that once thought themselves safe. It falls to the heroes to close the rifts before the entire world suffers the consequences.

Mechanical Dream is a world unlike anything you’ve ever experienced. On a huge planet, Naakinis, 10 races vie for survival under conditions no humans could ever hope to survive in one immense continent, encircled by impassable darkness: Kainas.

Mechanical Dream is now available in PDF format at DriveThruRPG.com!

Nearly two years after the harrowing events of The Straits of Galahesh, Atiana and Nikandr continue their long search for Nasim. The clues they find lead them to the desert wastes of the Gaji, where the fabled valley of Shadam Khoreh lies.

But all is not well. War has moved from the islands to the mainland, and the Grand Duchy knows its time may be limited if Yrstanla rallies its forces. Worse, the wasting disease and the rifts grow ever wider, threatening places that once thought themselves safe. The Dukes believe that their only hope may be to treat with the Haelish warriors to the west of Yrstanla, but Nikandr knows that the key is to find Nasim and a lost artifact known as the Atalayina.

Will Nikandr succeed and close the rifts once and for all? The answer lies deep within the Flames of Shadam Khoreh.

From Bradley P. Beaulieu, author of the critically acclaimed debut novel, The Winds of Khalakovo, comes the concluding volume in the Lays of Anuskaya trilogy, The Flames of Shadam Khoreh.

When the New 52 launched I, Vampire was one of those titles I was recommending to everyone. Written by Joshua Hale Fialkov (Echoes) and penciled by Andrea Sorrentino (X-Files/30 Days of Night crossover) there was so much packed into the first issue I just knew this comic was going to be a big hit. And it was a big hit until issue #2 hit the shelves and nothing really happened. Then nothing really happened in issue #3, 4 or 5. Then something really bad happened in issue #6 but it was okay because I didn’t really care about the characters. I, Vampire Vol. 1: Tainted Love collects the first six issues of this disappointing series.

Have you honored your GM or Storyteller yet today?

Today is March Fourth, an annual holiday that begs all players to remember the master of their evening’s entertainment — the GM. In honor of this auspicious day of days, DriveThruRPG.com is running a huge GM’s Day Sale all week on a massive list of downloadable games, supplements, and accessories.

Since there are over 13,000 titles discounted, including a few from FR Press, I’ve put together a list of my picks for game lines I haven’t worked on thus far. Read on for my fabulous selections!