Hello, Flames Rising readers! On Saturday, January 7th, I’ll be teaching a new class called Emotional Self-Care for Creatives. Also in January, I’ve got an essay about the witch hysteria in Apex Magazine along with a new project I’ll announce via BooksOfM on Patreon. This year, I taught a lot of gaming-related classes through the […]

WarGameVault, a part of DriveThruRPG’s network of online shops that focuses on war gaming, miniatures, and related content just launched their annual Winter Offensive Sale. There are more than 12,000 digital titles 25% Off for a limited time.

While many of those are focused on military skirmish style play, such as WWII and Civil War battle scenarios, there are also a number of excellent Horror and Dark Fantasy games. We’ve made a short list of a few of our favorites here at Flames Rising!

With the recent release of Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen the Dragonlance campaign setting was unlocked for community content creators over at DMsGuild.com. Community content creators have already launched some really great supplements helping D&D fans around the world explore Krynn and all of its mysteries.

Gabriel Hatcher, author of Astinus’ Ledger of Unknowns, stopped by to tell us a bit about what it is like writing a new Dragonlance supplement and bit about the thought process that went into this new project.

One Night in the Catacombs is a party game for three or more Guests (or players). The game begins with your invitation to a fancy party that takes place in Naples, Italy. You and your friends are influencers invited to explore a newly-discovered section of the Catacombe di San Gennaro at midnight. You are all […]

The year is 1976. A novel debuts: Interview With a Vampire by Anne Rice. A book written about a man named Louis from New Orleans who became a vampire–thanks to Lestat, a complicated antihero who both loathes and revels in his own vampirism and place within vampire society. Challenging social norms in any era is […]

With Dancing with Tombstones, Michael Aronovitz, the author of Alice Walks and The Sculptor takes us deep inside the haunt of our most secret repressions. Today, Michael stopped by to talk to us about using horror to fill the empty spaces in genre fiction and how this new collection of tales was created during a […]

Women are Werewolves is a card-based story game where players take on the roles of nonbinary characters who belong to a family that believes only women transform into werewolves. Throughout the game, characters explore their relationships to gendered spaces and family traditions. They also explore their relationships with their queer and non-queer family members. The game asks you to navigate the various gendered traditions your family engages in and deal with the awkward questions, misguided assumptions, and occasional microaggressions that come with it. At its heart, Women are Werewolves is a game about discovering your boundaries and whether you can find, or make, a space for your authentic self within a family that might not understand you.

Mind’s Eye Theatre Vampire: The Masquerade – War of Ages is a Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition (“V5”) live-action setting book from By Night Studios and is on Kickstarter now. This new live-action supplement features game designer Juhana Pettersson of the award-nominated Vampire: The Masquerade Nordic-style Larp End of the Line, as well as the Vampire: The Masquerade Anarch V5 book.

Juhana stopped by for a bit to tell us about working on this project and give us an insight into that process.

In the opening section of Eyes of Spiragos, my new Scarred Lands adventure for the Slarecian Vault, I explained that: “Eyes of Spiragos is an adventure for optimized 3rd level characters as a follow-up to Gauntlet of Spiragos. The events in Eyes of Spiragos are designed to occur before the second adventure in this series, […]

When I was first approached about writing a story for an anthology covering the Changing Breeds, I was intrigued by the possibilities. Changing Breeds refers to White Wolf’s Werewolf: the Apocalypse game: more specifically, Changing Breeds are all the other were-creatures besides wolves: tigers, foxes, panthers, crows, bears, and many more. Werewolves are by far the most numerous of the werecreatures in White Wolf’s World of Darkness, but the others still exist, and most are still fighting the good fight against the Wyrm’s agents.

Earlier this month, author Monica Valentinelli announced she’s drawing on her anxiety and personal fears to write poetry every day in February. In her #28DaysofPoetry challenge, she’ll post a poem each day for her patrons on Patreon. Patrons can back this project, dubbed Into Shadow: An Exploration of Personal Fears, for $2. They’ll get exclusive […]

Frances Stewart writes and edits across various mediums, including for several games. Most recently, she contributed to Onyx Path’s Dead Man’s Rust, a mega-adventure that’s on Kickstarter right now! In this article, she talks about writing when you’re trying to clean up and maintain a complex continuity, while still being original and also modern and also entertaining.

Lysa Penrose is known as a writer and story creator for Wizards of the Coast, community manager of all things Dungeons & Dragons, and even a witch slinging tarot tutorial videos. In this post, Lysa shares how she combined these experiences and more into an upcoming narrative roleplaying game, Mundane Magic.

My first experience with tabletop roleplaying games happened by accident. I was between jobs, a leap-of-faith career change, my ex-corporate life funding a year off to soul search like a millennial stereotype. In a depressive fog of YouTube binging and self-doubt – hey, major change is scary! – I stumbled across the first episode of Critical Role. Curiosity got the better of me when faced with this odd 4-hour video. My mind and imagination had discovered Dungeons & Dragons, and I tipped over the precipice and into the rabbit hole….

In December 2000, Fiery Dragon Productions released NeMoren’s Vault, one of the earliest adventures for Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition put out using their Open Game License. Part of the first wave of the D20 boom, Fiery Dragon went on to release another 70 products over a decade, before semi-retiring the brand in 2010.

Twenty years later, the original Fiery Dragon trio expanded a bit and rebranded as Platinum Dragon. They’ve just released NeMoren’s Vault 20th Anniversary Edition on DriveThruRPG via the same Open Game License, this time updated for the 5E ruleset. James Bell, the original author of NeMoren’s Vault in 2000, reflects on this anniversary edition and some of the design decisions that went into the initial adventure.

Did you know the elements of campaign planning are rooted in narrative design? In this workshop, gaming veteran Monica Valentinelli introduces her “Spiderweb Method” for campaign planning and walks you through how to use it for longer story arcs. Also included is a list of tips and tricks to help manage your players to avoid […]

Want to put more spook at your table? Take a fun class with games veteran Monica Valentinelli! Class: Horror in Games Next class date: Saturday, October 24, 2020, 9:30-11:30 AM Pacific Time. In gaming, the answer to “Is horror a mood or a genre?” is “YES!” In this workshop, gaming veteran Monica Valentinelli addresses how […]

Hi, my name’s Kelly Pawlik and I’m one of the contributors to Kobold Press’s Empire of the Ghouls, the Underworld Player’s Guide, and Underworld Lairs. I was very kindly asked if I wanted to share some experiences and highlights of working on the project, so I’ll get started! How to Run a Marathon in Two […]

Death is not the end. You learned that firsthand when you died. In that darkness, you made a deal that brought you back — with something else. Now, bound inextricably to a geist — a shade, a monster, a tragic, broken soul — you stand between the world of the living and the world of […]

The Devil’s City: Horror Fiction & 5e Gaming Conjoined is An illustrated, collectible novella & companion 5e RPG setting exploring the growing darkness in Chicago of late 1800s. Currently funding on Kickstarter.com with only a few days left. This project is led by by Sara Tantlinger, Matt Corley and M.T. Black. This morning Matt Corley stopped by to tell us a bit more about what inspired the project.

Hiya, do you love playing games? Ever want to write your own or for someone else? In this class, join industry veteran Monica Valentinelli for insight on how to write your own game or for your favorite type of game. Monica has worked on mobile games, IF games, card games, tabletop games, and more! Questions […]