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When I was approached about writing up the city I live in as a stretch goal for the Vampire: the Masquerade book Anarchs Unbound, I was thrilled. It was my first chance to contribute — in a meaningful, but small way — to the World of Darkness setting. My write-up was a side-bar, really — only about a thousand words — but the offer was made to me with a very short deadline in mind — less than a week, in fact — from accepting the job to turning over my completed draft. Once completed, I knew that there was more to this story, and I wanted the chance to expand on that very basic summary.

The Pip System is a roleplaying system published by Third Eye Games and used in games such as Mermaid Adventures, Infestation: An RPG of Bugs and Heroes, and Camp Myth.

It was just recently released on Kickstarter, and I cannot be more excited. I had the opportunity to be on the writing staff for the book, and it was my first opportunity to work in a group writing format. I wanted to share with you some of the highlights for the Pip System and talk about my experiences with this amazing writing staff.

The Midgard Campaign Setting for 5th Edition and Pathfinder RPG is a 300+ page volume describing the Midgard regions, from the Northlands to the Western Wastes, and from the Southlands to the Crossroads. With detailed locations, cities, rulers, heraldry, plots, and adventure hooks galore, plus full details of the various pantheons, masked gods, and dark gods, there’s enough here to fuel years of adventuring!

Five years have passed since the original release and now Kobold Press is updating the Midgard Campaign Setting, with even more magic, monsters, and expanded content! Wolfgang Baur is here today with a guest post about this ambitious project.

Hi all, Hannah here! 2016 was a big year for John Wick Presents. The biggest event of the year, and the one you’ve probably heard all about, was the Kickstarter campaign for 7th Sea: 2nd Edition.

A high-adventure game of swashbuckling and intrigue, 7th Sea has maintained a devoted fan base since its first release in 1999. When John decided it was time to bring 7th Sea back to the gaming table, the response surpassed everyone’s wildest expectations. The Kickstarter campaign ended with 11,483 backers from around the world and over $1.3 million dollars. Not only was it an amazing show of support from existing fans, but thousands of new gamers would be welcomed to the world of 7th Sea for the first time.

Born out of both my personal experiences and the knowledge that oppression tends to crush the artistic spirit on a cellular level, I have created a Make Art Not War 2017 Challenge for those who need it. This challenge, which came together from inspiration to draft guidelines, is designed to be flexible to work with […]

We’re wrapping up our 2016 Year in Review guest blog series with a last minute entry from Rachel Ventura and Jason Nelson from Legendary Games. Legendary has been extremely busy this past year and it doesn’t look like they have any plans to slow down for the new year…but let’s let them tell you all about it.

A Legendary 2016

This was an exciting year for the Legendary Games team, as we continued to broaden our reach and our product offerings. We published a total of 135 products, including 39 for 5th Edition and the remainder for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. Some of these products were short PDFs and free supplements, but we still created over 100 full-size supplements, offering most in print as well as PDF, with a growing selection of our products available on virtual tabletops like d20Pro and Fantasy Grounds as well as on HeroLab! Legendary Games has published a huge array of products in the past year, including adventures, bestiaries, magic items, class supplements, setting material, and more, from 3-page Mythic Minis to the 300+ page Trail of the Apprentice Adventure Saga for Pathfinder and 5E.

We’re continuing our series of 2016 in Review guest blog posts with one of Flames Rising’s oldest friends in the RPG business, Pelgrane Press! This year was quite busy for Pelgrane and Cat Tobin is here to tell us all about it. Not only that, they are running a special sale on every title they released in 2016, for a limited time you can save 16% on PDFs at the Flames Rising Shop!

2016 has been a tumultuous year all around the globe, and these giant waves of change have even reached the dizzying heights of the Pelgrane’s Nest.

Early in the year, our focus was on 13th Age, with new releases including the popular GM’s Screen and Resource Guide, the first of our collection of Battle Scenes (High Magic and Low Cunning: Battle Scenes for Five Icons, and accompanying Map Folio in its full-colour glory) and the second volume of the 13th Age Monthly subscription product. We also released some adventures for Trail of Cthulhu (The Many Deaths of Edward Bigsby), and Night’s Black Agents (The Dubai Reckoning).

2016: Downs and Ups and More of Both

2016? It was a year of ups and downs, with the ups very, very up but some of the downs pretty far down, as well. It was a year in which a lot of personal heroes passed on, including my older brother Michael. It was a year in which a turbulent election roiled a lot of uncomfortable currents around my country.

On the other hand, there were definite high points, worthy of celebration, and that’s what I’ll focus on here, in more-or-less chronological order.

Savage Worlds in ’16: the Year in Review

It’s safe to say 2016 has been a banner year for Pinnacle Entertainment Group. With more than 20 years under our belt going through cycles of highs (and lows) that’s not a statement we make lightly.

This year we continued the story of Weird Wars with Weird War I, brought new fans to our award-winning Savage Worlds system with our partnership to produce (and we’re shipping now!) Rifts® for Savage Worlds with Palladium Books, Inc., and we’ve celebrated the 20th year anniversary of Deadlands Classic and released the fourth and final Servitor campaign for Deadlands Reloaded: Good Intentions. We also shipped Kickstarter rewards for our campaigns Rippers Resurrected and Deadlands: The Cackler graphic novel. Another Deadlands novel released through Tor Books. And several companies licensing Savage Worlds released product in different languages and/or for settings of their own–frankly brilliant—creations.

The new season of Black Mirror hits Netflix soon. Have you seen it? The IMDB synopsis for the show is quaint and simple:

A television anthology series that shows the dark side of life and technology.

It’s the show that recently sort of predicted that a British Prime Minister would copulate with a porcine animal.

Like most children, I wanted to stay up late and watch the “grown up” television shows and movies that my parents would watch. I would beg, plea, and attempt to make a deal in the hopes of having one night of being able to be just like them; watching a late-night syndicated Star Trek marathon, the comedy of Saturday Night Live and SCTV, or the sultry stylings of Benny Hill.

One evening I was sent to bed and was allowed to read some comic books and other stories before sleeping. One of those comics was an issue of Godzilla from my Dad’s collection. It was the first time I ever heard of it and I read it from cover to cover ten times straight before falling asleep.

“Suffering of the Unchosen” is one of many stories found in the recently released anthology titled Tales of the Dark Eras. Set in and near Salem Village in the early 1690s, the story follows a grieving husband and father who, at first glance, is the victim of a terrible crime. His wife and step-child had […]

Court of Shadows is a brand new setting for Shadowrun 5th Edition that takes place on a metaplace filled with faeries, the Seelie Court, and rich details and characters. I co-designed the setting with Jason Hardy for this supplement, and contributed a huge chunk of the writing, too. I’m so excited to present this alternate setting, and hope fans’ll dig how I blended inspiration from previous sourcebooks into this unique metaplane.

Last week, I was horrified to learn that Steven D. Russell of Rite Publishing was killed in an car accident on July 5th, 2016. Steven was one of the first DriveThruRPG publishers I was able to build a friendship with that I had not already known from my previous experiences in the RPG industry. Having run Flames Rising for several years (and a little freelance writing here and there), I had naturally built up a number of friendships and working relationships before I started working for DriveThruRPG. But, those friendships represented only a fraction of the industry, and jumping into the publisher services role offered me a ton of opportunities to get to know even more people from companies big and small. Steven was one of them, and that friendship was built over time as his company (and DriveThruRPG) grew.

Recently, Monica Valentinelli and Jaym Gates launched a Kickstarter to fund an anthology titled Upside Down: Inverted Tropes in Storytelling. Today, in an exclusive update for FlamesRising.com, one of the collection’s contributors, Haralambi Markov, is here to share with you his insights into tropes and cliches. For more about the author, visit: haralambimarkov.com For more about the anthology, visit Upside Down: Inverted Tropes in Storytelling on Kickstarter–and be sure to read our updates!

Over the years, I’ve worked on (and have played) a lot of games with folks from every corner of the industry, but I’ve never had the opportunity to write for Dungeons and Dragons. Battle for the Undercity (5E) is a release that changed all that thanks to dmsguild.com. Today, I’d like to share with you my process for designing this adventure.

The first thing I did was review the adventure structure. Having played D&D 5E, I understood how important that was but, at the same time, I wanted to put my own twist on it. After I read the DMs Guild Creator Adventure Template and refreshed my memory by referencing Hoard of the Dragon Queen and Rise of Tiamat, I came up with a plan. I wanted to design a location and fitting monster variants that could be used in any Forgotten Realms campaign, in part because of my own experiences playing D&D. By tapping into the two elements every city tends to have which, in this case, was the undercity (sewers, worked tunnels, etc.) and a tavern, I felt DMs could use Battle for the Undercity as a break between campaigns or intense sessions.

As Atlantis falls, how will you use your fate? Where will you stand in the face of the coming wave? Chariot is a fantasy role-playing game set just before the final fall of an occult, theosophical Atlantis tempered by my boyhood imagination. It uses Tarot cards rather than dice, and has a heavily occult and […]

I love to be the game master. There is nothing quite like the feeling of presenting a challenge that the players will fear, loathe, complain about and eventually, climactically overcome. I don’t mind being the bad guy. I know that I’m the catalyst for great gaming and great storytelling. Of course, all of this sounds like roleplaying but really it applies to game design as well. A game designer has to have a certain sense that he is setting these fascinating objects in motion and the players bring them to life and create the unexpected interactions that make the game worth playing. Semi-coop games such as Battlestations or Descent invite the boardgame referee to be more than just a rules arbiter and I think part of the fun for everybody is to dial up the drama and go for it.

H. P. Lovecraft was born August 20, 1890 and the DriveThru sites (RPG, Comics, Fiction) are celebrating with a huge sale on hundreds of Cthulhu Mythos eBooks, audiobooks and other goodies.

We’ve gathered a list of some our favorite titles from each site here on Flames Rising…

I don’t do research for any of my novels or stories.

A part of me, as I typed the above, felt a sense of guilt. It’s the received wisdom these days – and, for all I know, always has been – that a fiction writers must assiduously research the background to their works in order to present a credible ‘world’ to their readers. After all, if you’re writing about a World War II fighter pilot, isn’t it wise to have read up on what it’s like to be a fighter pilot? And that goes for any other specialist profession or area of expertise, of course. To lend greater fidelity to one’s visions, research is essential.