There has over the last couple of years been a resurgence of various “Old School” games to hit the market. We have companies dedicated to giving us the feel of the first time we have gamed with newer rulesets, companies that give us updates on old rulesets, and companies again that publish supplements for older games. The fact that these companies can co-exist in this market must mean there is at least enough financial interest to give this resurgence some credibility.

Review by Timothy Brannan

This is a supplement to the role playing game created by Evil Hat called Don’t Rest Your Head. It is a game that has more than a few horror aspects to it. If you are unfamiliar with the game you can read a review of it -here-.

WARNING! This is an adult game and this supplement is a VERY adult book. If you decide to check it out someday you should know that. Adult language and adult themes are prevalent in this book. If you are easily offended or squeamish, it may not be the right one for you. Just felt like I should warn you.

We now return to your regularly scheduled broadcast.

Review by Stacey Chancellor

MDC owners of the RPG Host Network are upgrading their entire network (200k monthly users) and consolidating many of its resources and features into one mega RPG social site called:

RPG Life (www.rpglife.com)

Now, today is your lucky day as we have more FREE PDFs for you all!

New Mage Bundle available at RPGNow!

After the Fall of Atlantis, mages wandered as exiles in the wilderness, forced to eke a living without the protection of their grand city. With new eyes, they explored the world they had so long ignored, unhindered by Atlantean creed. They discovered that magic was not born in Atlantis — it had always existed, hidden in the land itself.

These materials normally retail for $53.98, but in PDF form for the next seven days, you can acquire both Mage supplements for $20.99 (USD).

Earlier this summer we posted two previews of the new Don’t Rest Your Head supplement called Don’t Lose Your Mind, the first one was A is for Ants and we followed that with J is for Jungle, if that doesn’t get you hooked on this book I don’t know what will… Well, I got the […]

Super Genius Games (SGG) is proud to announce that Murder of Crows will be available for purchase as a PDF beginning Wednesday, August 13.

“This is the first Call of Cthulhu product published under our license with Chaosium, Inc.,” said Hyrum Savage, President of SGG, “and we couldn’t be happier or more excited. We’ve been working on this and other Call of Cthulhu products for months, and it’s great to see them start to reach the audience at large.”

As you know, Flames Rising burned the midnight oil to ensure that the site redesign was more user-friendly for you. We’ve been proud to feature several options of Flames Rising RSS feeds to work with your preferences. After dozens of requests, Flames Rising is happy to announce that we are now recommending an easy way […]

Santa’s been drinking too many pina coladas again (as, apparently, have our copywriters), so it’s time once more to get yourselves some really fabulous savings on great game products! For the next couple of days (maybe four, if you’re particularly nice and don’t cry or pout), you can get 25% off selected products all over […]

The Hunt

The Special Cases Unit of the Philadelphia PD was used to handling strange cases, but when a flesh-eating ghoul killed one of their own, they’re thrown into a new world where literal monsters roam the night. Now they’re working for an organization known as Task Force: Valkyrie, or they will be after they finish this hunt….

This quickstart for Hunter: The Vigil contains everything you need to play through a scenario (except for some 10-sided dice). This story is set chronologically before our other quickstart, One Year Later, but no knowledge of Hunter is needed to play this stand-alone product.

The Hunt is available for free at the Flames Rising RPGNow Shop.

Over on the ENWorld Forums “MongooseMatt” has offered up a huge amount of the Mongoose Publishing d20 catalog for a free wiki project…

We produced a great deal of OGC under D20. Most of these books are now out of print, with just PDF copies available – by the end of the year these will disappear too, as it is not realistic for us to remove D20 licensing off every product we produced over the years. Just too many!

However, it seems a shame to have all this material simply disappear, so. . .

If there is any interest, we would be prepared to make the vast majority of our D20-based content available freely. In the past, there has been talk about an OGC Wiki of sorts, and I think we can kick such a project off in a sizeable way.

It is no secret that I’ve been a fan of many of the products White Wolf has released over the years. This site started out as a resource for a Live Action Vampire: the Masquerade game I was running in the Milwaukee area. Eventually it expanded to include other Horror games like Cthulhu Live, Obsidian: the Age of Judgement and All Flesh Must Be Eaten.

Over time it evolved into the current set-up featuring just about anything Horror & Dark Fantasy you can imagine. Still, we continue to play, review and generally enjoy many of the current and classic White Wolf games and fiction. We’ve even added new Previews of upcoming products recently.

Back when I interviewed Eddy Webb there technically was not an “Alternative Product Developer” at the company. He had been working on developing and writing Mind’s Eye Theatre: The Awakening which became the first product to be released in both eBook and Print on Demand formats.

Individual PDFs from Bloodlines: The Hidden available at RPGNow.com Alternative Publishing Developer, Eddy Webb, has worked with our friends at RPGNow.com to offer something new for our Vampire: The Requiem fans. Available now, for $1.99 each, you can purchase the individual bloodline descriptions originally published in Bloodlines: The Hidden. Khabit, Bohagade, Oberlochs and others are […]

Electronic Coupon for 20% off the following PDF products at RPGNow.com

For one day only – this Friday, the 13th of June, White Wolf is offering a discount on the following, appropriately thematic supplements from the World of Darkness. Naturally, this is a special day in our offices and we thought, why not share with our fans?

Second Sight – Not every entity with supernatural powers is one of a species of creatures that prowl the night. Solitary psychics, crazed sorcerers and doomsaying cultists all share the World of Darkness. This book explores their unique abilities. A character and setting book for all World of Darkness Games

This second edition of Blood! updates an original game from 1990, although quite why the author wishes to do this rather than create a completely new game which just rips off (adapts) some of the original concepts is not clear. As author Desborough points out, this makes the game a little unusual in the current environment in that games now tend to be rules-light and high-concept, while Blood! is a comparatively rules-heavy game. There are, for example, something like 400 weapons which can be used, including a fishing rod and a knitting needle. There are also extensive critical hit tables describing what might happen to the human body when it is variously bitten, stabbed, crashed into by a moving vehicle, shot, electrocuted and so forth. These are generally quite graphic in nature and this underlines the principal approach to the game, which is that of the gorefest.

Review by John Walsh

Horror Roleplaying in the Worlds of H. P. Lovecraft

The Great Old Ones ruled the earth aeons before the rise of humankind. Originally they came from the gulfs of space and were cast down by even greater beings. Remains of their cyclopean cities and forbidden knowledge can still be found on remote islands in the Pacific, buried amid the shifting sands of vast deserts, and in the frigid recesses of the polar extremes. Now they sleep — some deep within the enveloping earth and others beneath the eternal sea, in the drowned city of R’lyeh, preserved in the waters by the spells of mighty Cthulhu. When the stars are right they will rise, and once again walk this Earth.

Way back in September of last year I wrote a review of the print version of Cthulhu Live 3rd Edition.

Cthulhu Live 3rd Edition is a great book that is an easy-to-read manual with straightforward information and lots of options to enhance or run your LARP. There are plenty of photos of players in costume, as well as props and monsters, to give you a visual feel for how the game could be played. These photos help set the mood of the game, and give ideas for “how-to-build” your own stories. If you are a fan of H.P. Lovecraft or Live Action Role Playing, it would be worth it to buy this book, get together with some friends, and create some tales of your own.

This is a great book and a great improvement on previous editions. For the last several months you could only get the book in print for $20 or so, say on Amazon.com.

Well, finally available is the eBook edition of the Cthulhu Live 3rd Edition core book. You can get it at the Flames Rising RPGNow Shop for only $10.

Postmortem Studios is proud to present the latest in the ‘100’ series of generic sourcebooks, ‘100 Dark Places‘.

Following on from 100 Planets, 100 Dark Places details a hundred different horror locations, the terrible things that dwell within each one of them and a handful of adventure seeds to get the Gamesmaster’s mind ticking over. Just what you need to kickstart your imagination or to come up with an adventure or campaign for modern horror on short notice.

Abstract Nova Entertainment produces unique and imaginative role-playing games.

You can now find these great titles at Indie Press Revolution.

Aletheia – Written by Werner Hager, Lee Foster, Monica Valentinelli

Alien abductions. Crop circles. Spontaneous Human Combustion. The Seven Dogs Society investigates the weirdness at the fringes of reality.

Noumenon Written by Darwin Leary, Lee Foster, Monica Valentinelli

Noumenon is a role-playing game of mystery and abstraction. Players control the Sarcophagi, strange insect-like creatures trapped within an otherworldly landscape called the Silhouette Rouge.

EcoBrain is an online digital download store, dedicated to educating people about environmental living options while affording them the opportunity to purchase materials digitally in an effort to radically reduce the impact on the environment. Because eBooks are paper-free, easily storable and transferable electronic files, they give book readers the option of reading on the computer screen, a hand-held device, or printing off only the pages they deem necessary (preferably on recycled paper.) Additionally, because EcoBrain eBooks are delivered and produced electronically, very little energy is used in their creation and no fuel is used in their delivery.

Swarm Press is proud to announce its first official acquisition: a modern tale of superheroes by Matthew Wayne Selznick titled Brave Men Run: A Novel of the Sovereign Era.

Brave Men Run is the story of Nate Charters. Born different, unsure of his origins, he’s an outcast at Abbeque Valley High School, a self-proclaimed “boy freak” with few friends and low self-esteem. When the a flying man announces the existence of superpowered individuals and the Sovereign Era dramatically dawns, Nate finds himself in a quest to discover the truth: is he more than he seems, a misfit in a miraculous and powerful new minority… or something else entirely?