Today, FlamesRising.com is pleased to present you with a preview from Mask of the Other, a Lovecraft-inspired novel written by Greg Stolze. If you like this excerpt, you can also read a chapter preview on Greg’s website, or you can support the author by picking up a copy at DriveThruFiction.com. Excerpt from Mask of the […]

Today, FlamesRising.com is pleased to present you with a preview of Punch the Maker-Killer, a monster from Arc Dream Publishing’s Puppetland by John Scott Tynes. The PDF is on sale now, and the hardcover edition will be available in October.

Puppetland is a storytelling game. You play a valiant puppet who speaks aloud every word you say. You speak for your puppet and the Puppetmaster says the rest. You surprise each other at every turn, collaborating moment by inspired moment to unlock your own creativity and find the puppet within. This lavishly illustrated edition of Puppetland has been significantly revised and expanded. It includes a grim storybook fable of the Maker’s foul murder; the true story of the creator’s life in Puppetland; and new Tales ready to be played, written by a brilliant collection of authors.

Jyhad.

–Beckett

When the dead return, hungry for brains, smart folk know that the only way to stay alive is to stick together.

This Cortex Plus ACTION ROLEPLAYING hack focuses on the Player Characters as a team of survivors, thrown together by circumstance and working together to make it in a world overrun by zombies of many different varieties. There are only three things they have to do: (1) scrounge for resources, (2) avoid antagonistic survivors that want to steal their stuff, and (3) when they inevitably run into a horde of zombies…go for a HEAD SHOT!

HEAD SHOT! is not a standalone game! It uses the ACTION ROLEPLAYING flavor of Cortex Plus, found on pages 116-154 of the Cortex Plus Hacker’s Guide.

By Blood It Is Done

Bound by their masters’ blood, ghouls serve the undead and fight their battles in the shadows. Dragged, seduced, or forced into the night, ghouls live at the whims of their masters–for better or for worse.

By Blood It Is Made Anew

Revenants are twisted and unique. They have vampiric powers and extended life, as well as a form of the Beast all their own. Crafted by blending ghouls with dark magic, Revenants have become something else altogether.

From the Patriots’ raid on the necromancer Joseph Curwen to the Special Forces’ assault on Leng in 2007, this unique document reveals the secret and terrible struggle between the United States and the supernatural forces of Cthulhu.

In this war, immortal cultists worship other-dimensional entities and plot to raise an army of the dead. Incomprehensible undersea intelligences infiltrate and colonize American seaports, and alien races lurk beneath the ice of Antarctica and high in the mountains of Afghanistan. It is only through constant vigilance and violence that the earth has surived.

Also included are threat reports describing the indescribable – humanity’s deadliest foes serving Cthulhu and the other Great Old Ones. Strange times are upon us, the world is changing, and even death may die – but, until then, the war continues.

Trail of Cthulhu: The Many Deaths of Edward Bigsby

The flamboyant artist Edward Bigsby pays a call to the Investigators on the recommendation of a mutual friend, but dies horrifically before he can tell them what he needs. Soon afterward, the police question the PCs – another corpse matching Bisgby’s description has been found, with their address in his coat pocket. It does not end there; dead Bigsbys are being found all over London.

Follow the trail of Bigsbys through the bohemian streets of crime-filled 1930s Soho, dodging Chinese triads, Dope Kings, and the Metropolitan Police force to find out once and for all who Edward Bigsby is, and why he keeps dying.

The wolf must hunt, but it cannot hunt alone. Your hunts need the talents and instincts of other werewolves to slaughter the most dangerous prey. Your hunting grounds and families need the watching eyes of those with the blood of the Wolf of the spirit of the Moon. Your pack needs grounding in the world, humans who provide their contacts, expertise, and support. A pack is not a pack without a totem, a warden in the world of Spirit that watches over the entire pack.

A pack is family and gang and club and cult, but some werewolves go further. Tragedy drives werewolves apart, leaving the Wolf-Blooded to hold the pack together and herd the surviving Uratha in service to the Siskur-Dah. A pack cannot hunt without knowledge of the broader
supernatural world, so accepts a mystic into their ranks. Packs form protectorates & fragile alliances, cemented in rituals of honor or arranged marriage. A packmate joins a Lodge, a
mystery-cult that teaches dangerous secrets that empower their whole pack on the hunt.

This is the tale of a forgotten age before the seas were bent, when the world was flat and floated atop a sea of chaos. This is the tale of a decadent empire raised up on the bones of the fallen Golden Age, whose splendor it faintly echoed but could not match. This is a tale of primal frontiers, of the restless dead, of jeweled cities ruled openly by spirits in defiance of Heaven’s law. This is a tale of glorious heroes blessed by the gods, and of their passions and the wars they waged in the final era of legends.

This is your tale. This is Exalted. What legends will they tell of your deeds?

Exalted 3rd Edition depicts both a revitalized and expanded Creation, and the triumphant return of the Solar Exalted—but whether their rebirth will herald the salvation or destruction of the world, none can say. The system redesign takes the best parts of the previous editions and streamlines the mechanics for maximum playability.

Margaret Weis Productions has announced a partnership with DriveThruRPG to launch the Cortex Plus Creator Studio this Spring. This will give Cortex Plus fans the opportunity to create and sell Cortex Plus RPG supplements through DriveThruRPG.com. Similar to Wizards of the Coast’s DMsGuild.com (also managed by DriveThruRPG) and Monte Cook Games’ just announced Cypher System Creator program, Margaret Weis Productions will allow publishers and fans to offer Cortex Plus RPG supplements for sale on DriveThruRPG.com.

When the DMsGuild website launched the Adventurer’s League Storyline was set in the Forgotten Realms and that was the only official D&D setting creators could explore with their PDF releases. Admittedly, DMG creators could also upload setting neutral 5e content and many did.

With the release of the new Curse of Strahd hardcover and a new season of Adventurer’s League game play to go along with it…Ravenloft has become the first setting expansion for DMG creators.

Wizards of the Coast has created a free Themes and Moods document to help creators dive into the Mists.

Be a Good Dog. Protect Your Home. Be Loyal To Those Who Are True.

These are the words of the Code of Man. Dogs have inherited the world, building the kingdom of Pugmire thousands of years after the Ages of Man. These dogs have been changed to use tools and language, and they (along with other races of uplifted animals) seek to rediscover the world they’ve inherited. Some dogs use the leftover technology of humanity, but they believe it all to be magic handed to them by their dead gods. Others seek to create an ideal civilization, using a Code of Man compiled from ancient, fragmentary lore. The world is dangerous and mysterious, but courageous and loyal dogs will persevere.

Pugmire is a light-hearted and family-friendly fantasy world. It’s one of the first of Onyx Path Publishing’s creator-owned games, produced in a partnership with Eddy Webb and Pugsteady.

The Kickstarter has already blown past the original funding goal and is well on its way to achieving a number of exciting stretch goals that not only enhance the game itself, but add new media options for fans of the setting. Eddy Webb sat down with Flames Rising to talk a bit about the Pugmire setting and what is going with the Kickstarter project.

Dungeons & Dragons is all about creativity. For more than 40 years, the folks who spent the bulk of their time creating amazing adventures, those noble Dungeon Masters, did not have a convenient outlet to share them with the gamers who weren’t sitting at their table. You either had to raise money to publish a physical book or zine on your own, or convince a publisher you had the chops.

Now, the Dungeon Master’s Guild puts the power to share that creativity firmly in the hands of the DM.

Lore of the Clans

My sire always told me, “There’s no instruction manual for being dead, strákur.” I believed her, because she was older and smarter than me, and we value knowledge if nothing else. Many sires spill a lot of poison into the ears of their childer, telling them the One True Way to be a vampire. Some vampires don’t even bother, kicking their errant progeny to the streets and letting them figure it out for themselves. A few smother their instruction in religious imperatives, philosophical tenets, or mystical confluences. But not one of them has a pamphlet with clear, easy instructions once you’ve become Damned.

Of course they lie. All vampires lie. But the best lies are those that are told between two truths, yes? Here are thirteen such truths, childe. They may line up with other things you know, or they might not. Sometimes the narrators present tantalizing rumors and conspiracies, while others digress into areas not often considered by many. Some of what they say have no facts to back them up, but not everything is a lie, either.

Let us find instruction from amidst the lies, together.

From the ashes, hope rises

The Final Empire was built on the backs of the skaa — the downtrodden descendants of those who opposed the Lord Ruler’s ascension a thousand years ago. They are the faceless masses of Scadrial, tasked with plowing the barren fields, sweeping the ash-covered streets, tending the opulent nobility, and serving at the whims of their “betters.” But a few skaa cast off the chains of their destiny to be something more. They are thieves, Allomancers, firebrands, and rebels. They fight the system of oppression and brutality to give their people something they lost long ago — hope.

Skaa: Tin & Ash is an essential supplement for the Mistborn Adventure Game, designed for players, Narrators, and fans of the Mistborn novels. Developed in cooperation with Brandon Sanderson, this guide expands the canon of the novels, providing new insights into skaa throughout the Final Empire. Inside you’ll find detailed information on the history and beliefs of the skaa; the lives of city, canal, and plantation skaa; the skaa criminal and political underground; and famous skaa such as the Citizen, Mare, and the Survivor of the Flames.

Keep walking.

Don’t look back.

In the shadows and between the cracks of our everyday lives hide the Chronicles of Darkness. Here lurk creatures of ancient myth and urban legend. Here lie the graves of angels and the bunkers of secret government programs. Here every malformed horror you’ve ever seen out of the corner of your eye has a home. And they’ve seen you.

Don’t look back!

Judge us not by our seemings for we are never what we appear.
Come hither, changelings and join the dream-dance,
lest the winter come and the Dreaming pass into memory.

Recall your heritage! Let the games begin!

Twenty years ago, White Wolf published Changeling: the Dreaming, the fifth of their promised five game-lines that together comprised the World of Darkness. Seen by some as a lighter, more fantasy-based setting in the modern-day, and by others as the darkest game White Wolf had yet created, players had to face the question of what happens once creativity and magic fades from their world.

Visionary Comics, a production studio and digital publisher, is marking 10 years in the creative industry by announcing the hiring of two well-known industry execs and a retooled website as the first phase of a major expansion that will extend into 2016. Company leaders are calling the initiative “Visionary 2.0.”

“We’ve been working hard the last few months to move Visionary to the forefront of the industry and wanted to announce our first exciting changes at Tucson Comic Con,” says C. Edward Sellner, the company’s Chief Creative Officer. The eighth annual event kicked off at the Tucson Convention Center in Tucson, AZ, on November 6, and wraps its three day run Sunday. Visionary execs made the exclusive announcements today at a panel during the popular show.

Presenting an epic improvised campaign for Night’s Black Agents Roleplaying Game. Do your Agents have what it takes to face the Lord of the Undead himself?

The Dracula Dossier follows in the fully improvisational path of the award-winning The Armitage Files campaign. Players follow up leads in the margins of Dracula Unredacted, a rare edition of Bram Stoker’s masterpiece that reveals the terrifying truth behind the fiction. They’ll chase down the real characters from Stoker’s novel, their descendants in the present, and the British agents caught in the backblast.

WELCOME TO THE SWORD COAST—a region of Faerûn that comprises shining paragons of civilization and culture, perilous locales fraught with dread and evil, and encompassing them all, a wilderness that offers every explorer vast opportunity and simultaneously promises great danger.

While the Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide is a valuable resource for Dungeon Masters, it was crafted with players and their characters foremost in mind. There is a plethora of new character options to intrigue and inspire every member of the adventuring party.