The Dark Tower CD from Nox Arcana was developed solely by Joseph Vargo as a themed complement to The Dark Tower anthology series. The music composed for this particular collection seems to be more understated than their other offerings. There are two types of experiences I’ve had with Nox Arcana’s music. The first is evident through Blackthorn Asylum, The Necronomicon, Phantom of the High Seas, and the Theatre of Illusion.

After you hear the opening refrain, there’s typically a story threaded throughout the music so it’s often a bad idea to play the CD at random if you want the full experience. I found this was especially true for Grimm Tales, which is one of my favorite Nox Arcana CDs.

Whether you are looking for inspiration, want a few well-detailed NPCs to act as associates or rivals, or need a character (or whole party) in a hurry, this product will fill your purposes admirably.

Herein are eight fully-developed characters, set up as an integrated crew. Each one gets a couple of pages – one a filled-out character sheets with all the necessary game stats, and the other a write-up of the character’s background, including a brief history, notes on personality and motivations and even what he thinks about the other members of the group. There is also a sketch of the character to enable you to visualise him.

A fairly shady group they are, too. The leader is one Beck, a fixer – the sort of fellow who can get you whatever you want, no questions asked, provided you are willing to pay his price.

This remarkable journey through the Hammer vault includes props, annotated script pages, unused poster artwork, production designs, rare promotional material and private correspondence. Hundreds of rare and previously unseen stills help to create a rich souvenir of Hammer’s legacy, from the X certificate classics of the 1950s to the studio’s latest productions.

Written and compiled by the official Hammer Films historian Marcus Hearn, and featuring exclusive contributions from the actors and filmmakers associated with the company, this is the most lavish book ever published on the legendary House of Horror.

Ilona Andrews is probably best known for her Kate Daniels series, but she is also (along with husband and co-author Gordon) the author of a paranormal romance series about life on “the Edge,” a borderland between a world full of magic (the Weird) and our mundane reality (the Broken). (It should be noted that while I’m classifying the books as paranormal romance, due to the structure of each novel — the books each feature the love story of a couple who end up in a happily ever after at the conclusion — other reviewers have considered them “rustic fantasy” or “unclassifiable.” Thus, your mileage may vary.)

From US rock band The Dandy Warhols’ frontman Courtney Taylor-Taylor comes an original graphic novel illustrated by indie super star Jim Rugg. A work of historical fiction set in Germany in 1977, it follows four young men who were to become the voice of their generation. This is the epic journey of art noise band One Model Nation, the final dark days of the Baader-Meinhof Gang, and the band’s mysterious disappearance only months later. Features a host of bonus extras: sketches, director’s commentary, deleted scenes and more.

A teenage girl, Tory Brennan (related to the famous –or infamous—Temperance Brennan of BONES) becomes curious about a mysterious disappearance that happened well before her time. With several of her friends (Sheldon, Ben and Hi) they all begin to search for clues. To complicate matters, the kids hang out on an island that is home to numerous scientific experiments. Before long, they stumble upon more than they expect. Due to a series of events related and unrelated to their investigations, they become infected with an experimental virus that transforms them into werewolves – of a sort. Now, instead of being just friends they are a pack, bound to each other through good and bad. There’s a good mix of the scientific and the supernatural in this novel.

As we have come to expect, a wealth of resources for fantasy games – what with archers (and arrows for them) heading up the character-based resources for players, adventures for GMs to run and ideas to help them hone their skills. The focus is on Pathfinder, but there is material for other rulesets (and much can be translated with little effort, provided you are reasonably familiar with the game mechanics of the system of your choice).

The Editorial introduces the issue focus on archery, with an account of how fictional archers inspired the editor, Wolfgang Baur, not only to play archer characters but to learn how to use a bow himself.

Gwen Frost is back at Mythos Academy, and she’s got a new attitude. In Touch of Frost (reviewed here), Gwen was a poor little Gypsy girl, stuck out of place at an academy full of warrior kids and wishing for her old life. While Gwen is still no warrior — and still wishes that her mother’s death had never happened — she’s got a new mission: get awesome, fast, so she can live up to the expectations of Nike, her patron goddess. At the end of the first book, Gwen was chosen to be Nike’s champion, and she has no intentions of failing.

This is the England that ought to have been, rather than the history of the one in which I sit writing this review. This is the mediaeval England of legend, with Robin Hood scampering around Sherwood Forest, a Good King Richard off fighting the Infidel whilst Bad King John does his best to steal a kingdom, never mind everyone’s hard-earned gold… this is an England in which excitement and adventure are to be found, but where drains don’t smell and nobody worries about the Black Death!

The Introduction outlines this setting, the mediaeval England of stories, rooted firmly in the history of the 12th and 13th centuries but with an eye to the rise of the ideals of chivalry, to the world of ballad and folk-song, the sort of mediaeval England that you’d like to visit. Designed to be used in conjunction with Chaosium’s Basic Roleplaying (BRP) ruleset, there’s a handy list of what rules from that work will be of particular use when running this setting. Whilst there’s a whole section about running adventures and campaigns at the end of this product, it’s noted that Scenario Hooks are scattered throughout, to spawn ideas and help Game Masters come up with their own material, or players to develop their characters more fully.

After I received an advanced copy of Ty Schwamberger’s novella The Fields, I turned the first pages and immediately began reading kudos by notable authors and magazines such as Gary A. Braunbeck and Shroud Magazine. I never judge a book by its cover, but I do start judging books by their praise. And with an introduction by Jonathan Maberry (Rot and Ruin, Patient Zero), I was excited to start reading.

Jonathan Maberry starts off his introduction stating “The Fields is a morality tale. With Zombies.” Maberry then explains to the reader that zombie tales are more than cannibalistic and mindless corpses. These tales, if written with feelings and responsibility, remind the reader zombies are people and they have life and their own stories. This is what Ty Schwamberger accomplishes with The Fields. He, as many authors have tried but failed, brings out the emotion of the characters but not just the living, but the dead also with much success.

Review: A Tale of Two Savages
Agents of Oblivion and Peculiar Pentad

It’s no secret I’m a fan of horror RPGs and Savage Worlds, which makes these two entries especially appealing. Agents of Oblivion suggests a world where Jason Bourne gets put into a blender with HP Lovecraft and turns out rather interesting results. With the Savaged version of Peculiar Pentad, readers are given five entrepreneurs who have uncovered a troublesome niche market–those seeking items attached to the Cthulhu Mythos. I’m thinking a 401K isn’t a worthwhile investment.

Predators are competitors. They compete with other types of predators for food; they compete with others for territory. And they compete with others of their own kind for both food and territory as well. Sometimes, predators will form alliances with like-minded individuals to protect a larger area, making survival – even prosperity – more likely for all within the group. So it is with apex predators like vampires; they don’t care much to be around each other, but when faced with threats too big for one to handle, they band together to form protective groups. Those groups of like-minded vampires are called Covenants, and one of the most interesting of those is the Carthians. Based on the premise of greater equality and of emulating the institutions of their prey, Carthians hope to both blend in better – be less obviously a predator among the flock – and keep the stifling, unchanging nature of near immortality at bay.

Carthians begins with a fine piece of fiction by Greg Stolze to set the mood, then launches into a dissection of the Carthian Movement – its history, goals, and styles of governance.

The amount of source material produced for the World of Darkness role playing universe is truly impressive. Not all of it is useful to players – much of it being useful primarily to the game master for the purposes of fueling any individual group’s adventures – and some is of benefit to all players. Night Horrors: Immortal Sinners is a book that is fascinating to read for any aficionado of the setting, but is likely best left to the GMs (or “Storytellers” in White Wolf’s World of Darkness parlance) as it spends most of its 160 pages detailing powerful vampires that the players’ characters could bump into in-game.

This is a monumental work, a comprehensive and scholarly history of the role-playing industry from its inception in the early 1970s to the present day. The focus is interesting, concentrating on the individuals and companies that have made role-playing what it is today rather than looking at the games themselves.

Whilst detailed, the writing flows well, making it eminently readable and often entertaining, a fascinating survey of the companies and people who have shaped role-playing and are responsible for most of the books on my shelves (or, these days, lurking on the RPG hard drive) – and who have provided me with years of entertainment and passion. If your interest in role-playing goes anywhere beyond the next dungeon delve, if you like to know the background and history of the games you enjoy, you should find something here catches your attention… and once caught, be warned, it may be a while before you can tear yourself away!

Carl Kolchak, hard-bitten reporter of the supernatural from the TV series of the 1970s returns to action courtesy of an ongoing series of comic books and graphic novels from Moonstone Books. This time, Carl’s been fired by the owner of the newspaper that used to employ him, and he must find another way to make ends meet. He’s approached by a young couple, Otto and Mo Brerhahrer, who are ghost hunters in their spare time, and Kolchak can hardly say no, particularly when they offer to buy him lunch.

Through three related vignettes, the reader learns more about Kolchak, and why he has such a close connection to the supernatural. The first, titled “Fifteen Minutes,” find Kolchak at his wits end regarding where his next meal is coming from.

Mankind’s rise and fall in space begins here! Two thousand years from now, the Earth is nearly dead. A bold group of explorers led by philanthropist Thomm Coney pushes forward to take the first tentative steps out of Earth’s solar system. Their quest: new worlds to colonize, so that humanity may yet have a chance at survival. Facing impossible odds, political agendas, and a fanatical terrorist regime bent on their destruction, Coney and his crew brave the dangers of a potentially volatile star drive in order to preserve a civilization intent not only on killing itself, but also on taking down every other living thing around it. Will mankind set aside its greed long enough to see a future amongst the stars? Collects Critical Millennium: The Dark Frontier #1-4 and contains extra material, including data sheets, sketchbook pages, starship information sheets and more.

“The second SKULLKICKERS adventure is a wondrous tornado of action-adventure: a den of thieves, a city of danger, nobility, stupidity, plant monsters, dinner parties and bloodthirsty faerie folk.”

CRASH! ROLL! LAUGH! STAND UP! FALL AGAIN! LAUGH! APPLAUD! That about sums up what I think of this amazing second volume of Skullkickers from Image Comics (if you have read any issue you will get the opening line.) Vol. 2 takes the heroes and places them into even more fantastical trouble. As the story unfolded I was treated to so many laughs and even a scene that made me really uncomfortable to look at. Like past issues of the book, these pages are GORE-Geous. My jaw drops to the floor on practically every page from the line work to the colors there is not a single thing that does not shine. Trust me on this too, there are plenty of horror elements to be found. A huge highlight is the big bad boss reveal towards the end of the story. The layout of that page alone is worth 1,000 Opas. The story is what really gets me though.

“From acclaimed writer and artist team Robert Tinnell and Neil Vokes (THE BLACK FOREST, THE WICKED WEST) comes a sensuous horror epic in the spirit of European horror cinema of the 1960s and ’70s. The death of Carmilla, the seductive vampire, sets in motion events that lead to a monumental struggle between the forces of darkness and a brave band of mortals. Its members include a reluctant young Abraham Van Helsing and a mysterious monster hunter struggling to keep his own inner monster at bay. When Baron Frankenstein is recruited to add his scientific genius to the group’s arsenal, Dracula and his undead kingdom face the possibility of total annihilation.”

“Out in the Arctic Ocean, the research vessel Alesia manages to capture a mysterious Magnapinna squid, an animal never before captured by mankind. The researchers, led by Maria, decide to take the specimen back to port in Bergen, Norway. However, what they bring home isn’t just a scientific wonder but also a thing more horrific than Pandora’s Box. Soon, madness creeps into the crew of the Alesia and friends become monsters.”

Red Eye of Azathoth, published by Wolfgang Baur and the Open Design LLC, is an unusual adventure for Call of Cthulhu. This campaign pack has the investigators following an evil madman through centuries of effort to summon the Daemon Sultan Azathoth to earth, an event that would cause our planet’s near-total destruction.

In a unique twist, players take on the roles of different characters in each separate scenario – each time battling the same villain, who has possessed a different victim to further his diabolical ends.