Pelgrane Week continues with a new design essay by The Big Hoodoo author by Bill White. Bill discusses writing an adventure in 1950s California and other details for Trail of Cthulhu.

I’ve written two adventures for Trail of Cthulhu, a game of Lovecraftian investigation written by Kenneth Hite using Robin Laws’ GUMSHOE system. Both are unusual in that they are set in the 1950s, rather than TOC’s usual 1930s setting (itself one of the features that distinguishes Trail of Cthulhu from its more venerable cousin, Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu, which takes the 1920s as its canonical milieu). The first, called Castle Bravo, is set aboard an aircraft carrier in the South Pacific during nuclear bomb testing at Bikini Atoll. Its appeal is, I think, straightforward: an atomic bomb goes off and the PCs, as the naval and scientific personnel involved, must deal with monstrous emergences in its aftermath.

Pelgrane Week continues here at Flames Rising with a new design essay by Matthew Sanderson. Matthew tells us about writing the forthcoming The Love of Money scenario for the Esoterrorists RPG.

Looking back now, I think that best describes how the creative process began for me with The Love of Money. It all started with the hunt for an initial concept, a small seed, which then germinated and continued to expand into the final work. That hunt began with me asking myself one question: what would make this an Esoterrorist game? I’ve been playing roleplaying games now for about eleven years and in this time I’ve played in a great many games where I’ve thought it could work really well in another game’s setting. However, when I set about writing an adventure myself, I generally ask myself the question “why this game?” I like to feel that the story has a meaning, that it’s not a square peg trying to fit into a round hole.

FlamesRising.com is pleased to present an essay from author Paul Jessup, who wrote a novella entitled Open Your Eyes, published by Apex Book Company. In this surrealist space opera tale that takes place on a ship with a mind of its own, Jessup explores the unusual, the weird and the bizarre. Today he’ll discuss what space opera means to him and his motivation behind Open Your Eyes.

Open Your Eyes

I’m a huge fan of Space Opera, wait, no, scratch that– I’m a huge fan of what I was told was Space Opera when I was a kid. Which was primarily one thing- Star Wars. Which was more like the monomyth in Space, with Samurais, but I digress for a bit. If you’re a kid from the 80’s, you know the score. This kind of Space Opera was everywhere, not just in Star Wars, but in cartoons, on the back of cereal boxes, in toys (and knock off toys), in books, all that fun stuff.

Explore the world of writing horror from a Bram Stoker and International Horror Guild award-winning author’s point of view. Gary Braunbeck uses film, fiction and life experience to elucidate the finer points of storytelling, both in and out of genre. This part-autobiographical, always analytical book looks at how stories develop and what makes them work-or not work-when they’re told.

Be warned: reality is as brutal as fiction. Rob Zombie, police shootings, William Goldman and human misery are all teachers to the horror neophyte, and Braunbeck uses their lessons to make To Each Their Darkness a whirlwind of horror and hope for the aspiring writer.

Flames Rising is pleased to present the introduction to this book by Gary Braunbeck.

Paths of Storytelling, offered as a free download today on RPGNow.com, is the latest product for the Vampire: the Masquerade line. According to this White Wolf announcement, it’s a long-forgotten manuscript that was rejected — and with good reason. Sure, on the heels of the Vampire: the Masquerade twentieth anniversary announcement we can understand why they’d want to keep up the buzz, but we all know not all V:tM fiction has been good fiction. Which is part of the reason why we were hoping they’d post a little more crunch. A new Giovanni adventure? Yet another awesome Bloodline?

White Wolf is making a 20th Anniversary Edition of Vampire: The Masquerade and we want your help!

Why are we? Vampire: The Masquerade changed everything! Exploding into hobby games in 1991, it evoked and inspired a generation of fans of which the game industry had never seen before or since. The gothic and punk subcultures from which it drew, previously unseen in the gaming world, created an unparalleled worldwide phenomenon that spanned novels, TCG’s, LARPs, video games, and television. But it all started with one RPG. The cultural significance Vampire left on not just the gaming world but on modern vampire-related pop culture can be seen and felt at virtually every turn and in every medium today. This combined with the unwavering sheer dedication of an unparalleled fan base is the reason this book is being published. Vampire: The Masquerade – 20th Anniversary Edition brings the entire World of Darkness experience full circle and will serve as the perfect anniversary milestone to celebrate two decades of gaming after dark.

Here are the young men, with weights on their shoulders or what it’s like to be a typist.

I was half way through with it, my first real attempt at writing a novel, I was so close.

I had typed, roughly, 40,000 words. Real words mind you, not these contrived little things that you see on the screen in front of you currently, but real actual words that were going to tell a real actual story. And then I had to stop, give up and start all over again. Because they weren’t the words I needed to say, or write, or put on the paper. They were the words that I was trying to say, or write or put on the paper. And it just wasn’t F-ing happening.

Titan Books presents Angel of Vengeance, the original never-before-released novel that inspired the vampire TV series “Moonlight.”

Written by Trevor Munson, the co-creator, writer and producer of “Moonlight” (the CBS series which attracted 7 million viewers and still retains a loyal, devoted fan base and cult following), Angel of Vengeance offers a new twist on the classic Dracula vampire tale and blends it with Raymond Chandler’s hardboiled P.I. detective fiction.

Angel of Vengeance: L.A.-based P.I. and vampire Mick Angel has been hired by a beautiful red-headed burlesque dancer to find her missing sister. The apparently simple case of a teenage runaway is soon complicated by drug dealers, persistent cops, murder, and Mick’s own past. Mick must learn the hard way what every vampire should know – nothing stays buried forever, especially not the past.

Flames Rising is pleased to present an exclusive design essay from author Trveor Munson. Trevor tells us about the creative process as well as the challenges of in redefining vampire lore for this book.

FlamesRising.com is pleased to present you with an inside look at the design process for Scenes of the Embrace, a brand new toolkit released from White Wolf Publishing to be used with its Vampire: the Requiem role-playing game.

This exclusive article is broken up into two parts. First, we give you an overview of the design process for this product, which was inspired by Will Hindmarch’s design from Scenes of Frenzy. After you read Eddy Webb and Monica Valentinelli’s exchange, stick around for an exclusive preview from this new e-book.

Scenes of the Embrace is available now at the Flames Rising RPGNow Shop.

Our author design essay continues with Patrick D’Orazio telling us about his new novel Comes The Dark, which is published by Library of the Living Dead Press.

Six weeks have passed since the virus ravaged the world’s population and in that time most of humanity has passed into shadow, turning into corrupt, rotting flesh eaters that known only pain and hunger as they attempt to destroy the remaining members of the human race.

Comes The Dark, which is my first published novel, is my humble entry into the zombie genre. I wasn’t necessarily interested in recreating or morphing the zombie into something new or different with my book, but wanted to focus on the dynamics between human beings thrust into a horrible situation, being forced to do things they would otherwise be unwilling to do and deciding if surviving is even the right choice when all they have ever known and loved has been annihilated.

Zombie Week continues here at Flames Rising with a new essay from Nick Tapalansky, creator of the Awakening series published by Archaia Entertainment. In this essay Nick tells us about his love of the zombie genre, his frustration with the zombie fad and the challenges of writing a comic series in a genre he admits is already packed.

Genesis of the Living Dead

I like zombies. I also like being understated. Those two statements may be related. Take a journey with me.

It’s early in 2004 and the genre is experiencing something of a renaissance. 28 Days Later had landed over the summer of ’03 and set a brand new ball rolling. The Walking Dead was hitting its stride as a comic (don’t forget kids, it was a funny book long before it was a TV series), and the Dawn of the Dead remake shambled, ran, and lunged at our collective throats. Shaun of the Dead was coming, ready to take us to the Winchester until the whole thing blew over.

Novelist Ashley J. Barnard has a new novel called Shadow Fox from Champagne Books. In this design essay she tells us about that initial fear of releasing her work to friends and family.

How a Nice, Shy Girl Passes Off Dark Fantasy to Her Family

One of my older sisters recently compared me to Giselle from the movie Enchanted. It’s a fair comparison; I sing when I clean the house, I love animals, I’m a hopeless romantic and I have a bright and sunny disposition. I want everyone to love me so it’s shocking to me when I annoy someone. The biggest difference between Giselle and me is that Giselle doesn’t write dark contemporary fantasy with heroin use, violence, occasional S&M and a liberal sprinkling of the F-bomb throughout. And if she did write it, she’d probably use a pen name and would die before letting anyone read it.

Kevin Lucia is the author of Hiram Grange and the Chosen One, book four of the popular series. He is also an editor and reviewer for Shroud Publishing. In this guest post he talks about what sparked his interest in the horror genre.

I remember when I first became interested in horror. The summer of 1996, I spent lots of time with my friends bumming around Otsego Lake, NY. My best friend’s grandmother owned a cabin there, so we spent all our weekends riding the boat, eating and napping on the dock.

One weekend we got bored. Which country boys tend to do. This usually means trouble. We were lying around on the dock when my friend Joel remarked, “We should take Kevin to the Devil House.”

Dusk is a supernatural action/drama story done in a dynamic blending of the sequential art styles of American Comics and Japanese Manga. David Doub tells us about the series in this new design essay.

When I first had the idea for Dusk, I was doing comics just a form of creative expression. I wasn’t worried about making money or rewards, I just wanted people to enjoy my comics. Since I was keeping it fairly low key, I figured the internet would be the best place to cheaply get the comics out to potential readers. I was so new at everything, I even tried drawing one of my own stories. Since I lacked skills in sequential art I did that particular story in a story book style. One page was art and the other side was prose.

Special guest post by The Dead Path author Stephen M. Irwin

When I began writing The Dead Path – in fact, sometime before I began the penning process – I grappled for a long while with the concept of ghosts. I had decided to write a novel, and knew I wanted it to be a ghost story and that it would be set it in my hometown of Brisbane. But writing a ghost story is a bit like putting on wings and a beak on the first day of duck season – unless you look different to the rest of the flock, you run the risk of being shot down quite quickly (I imagine it is at present a risk even more onerous for authors considering writing tales concerning vampires). Ghost stories are as old as human storytelling; they exist in every culture and predate our major religions. And ghosts rank among the most famous of literary characters and religious figures – Hamlet’s ghost, Jacob Marley’s ghost, the Holy Ghost …

We have a new design essay to start the week. Film-maker Lisa Stock tells us about the world building that went into her project Titania.

People are always curious about where I shoot my films. But when I tell them it was a state park, local beach, or neighbor’s backyard they seem disappointed that I haven’t said Oz, Gotham, or at least New Zealand. I’m thrilled though – because for me, that means I’ve effectively created a world they believe exists somewhere further than a few blocks from home.

World building is as important in fantasy film as character building. It not only holds and surrounds the action of your plot – but influences it. An actress said to me once, “I have terrible fears about the forest, nightmares since I was a child of being left alone in a forest.” Luckily, the film we’re working on together takes place entirely in a forest and I need for her to be frightened.

Just in time for Halloween, FlamesRising.com is pleased to present you with advice on terrifying your players from veteran game designer John Wick. Games that John has designed recently include the Lovecraft-inspired CURSE OF THE YELLOW SIGN and HOUSES OF THE BLOODED. For more about John, visit his website located at John Wick Presents

Play Dirty: Happy Halloween

Every Halloween, I run Call of Cthulhu.

It’s a tradition. Something I’ve rarely broken. Every year, I dress up in my “Man in Black” outfit (black pants, black shirt, black vest, black jacket, black tie, black hat and Yellow Sign pin) and I tell a story of man’s futile attempts to understand the universe.

Foreshadows: The Ghosts of Zero is a 19-story anthology of dark science fiction intertwined with a 19-track album of songs and soundtrack music, created collaboratively by a veritable shadow gallery of speculative fiction authors and musicians, under the banner of the Very Us Artists, to be published by Blindsided Books.

In this essay, editor and author Jeff LaSala tells us what sort of stories are contained therein…

Halloween is right around the corner, and many people read tarot cards to celebrate the holiday. In this three-part series of articles, FlamesRising.com turned to tarot card expert Paula Dempsey to talk about the history of the tarot. In the last article of this series, Paula discusses tarot and how we use and think about it in our modern day.

The History of Tarot: Modern Day

Finally, this whistlestop tour of the tarot brings us to the twenty first century. My question for modern times is: Is the tarot still truly occult? There are hundreds, possibly thousands of modern tarot packs, many of which are easily obtained from bookstores or online retailers. Books on how to read the cards may be borrowed from public libraries and tarot courses are offered in most cities. For those uncomfortable with the occult connotations, there is even a Jesus Deck.

The broken-hearted or inquisitive amongst us can phone or text a tarot hotline at any time of the day or night and instantly get an answer to “Does she love me?” or “Will I get that great new job?”

Halloween is right around the corner, and many people read tarot cards to celebrate the holiday. In this three-part series of articles, FlamesRising.com turned to tarot card expert Paula Dempsey to talk about the history of the tarot. In this first article, she discussed its mysterious origins. Today, she talks about the occult revival.

The History of Tarot: Occult Revival

The late 18th century saw Western society immersed in the Age of Enlightenment and on the verge of the Industrial Revolution. Paradoxically, this era of scientific rationalism also saw a rebirth of magical traditions. Druidry was reinvented in Great Britain by William Stukely and others. The end of the Witch-craze in Europe and the USA meant that those claiming to practice magic could do so without fearing a noose around their necks and to many, magic had an undeniable romance to it.