The first Hot War Preview was the smallest of teasers, introducing readers to the overall concepts of the new game and debuting a couple of images by some very talented folks.

This time we are going to take a closer look at the Special Situations Group. The SSG is made up of military, police and civilian personnel and have the unenviable task of hunting down monsters, those who created monsters, power crazed madmen, terrorists, traitors, infiltrators and all sorts of nests of enemies. Player Characters in Hot War are members of the SSG.

It is not a bad idea to yoke together two distinct genres in order to create a media product which occupies a distinctive niche. Of course, the approach does not guarantee that the result will be coherent in terms of meaning or internal logic but, given enough attempts, it should be possible to find a combination that more or less works. Justin Bow, for Green Fairy Games, has joined together the concepts of, as the name suggests, ‘Fae’ and ‘noir.’

Together, then, these two concepts could work. Fae creatures enter an otherwise predominantly human society in which bad things tend to happen to everyone. It is possible to argue that the Sergei Lukyanenko novels, for example, fit this pattern, although RPG players are perhaps more likely to reference the film Sin City and the comics that gave rise to it.

Review by John Walsh

We now have a Preview Page on Flames Rising. A spot to check out all of the sneak peeks and product previews we have been posting on the site. The latest addition is an early look at the new Hot War RPG coming up from Contested Ground Studios: Hot War Preview Coming up in the […]

Contested Ground Studios, the folks who brought us a|state and Cold City, have a new RPG hitting the shelves in 2008.

In October of 1962, the Cold War went hot. But the war was not just a nuclear apocalypse. Other technologies that had been hidden from the public gaze, technologies developed in Germany during the World War Two and hidden away by Britain, France, the USA and the USSR. These technologies were twisted and esoteric, fusing science, madness and the occult together. They ripped holes in reality, created horrific monsters, drove men and women beyond sanity and laid waste to continents.

Hot War is a game about the aftermath of this horror, about survivors, factions, hidden agendas, trust and betrayal. All of this takes place in the city of London, England in the freezing winter of 1963, one year after the war. Life has been altered forever. The population is massively reduced, essential services are virtually non-existent, food and other products are subject to draconian rationing measures and both inside and outside the borders of the city, horrible things still happen.

The first victim was found, mutilated beyond recognition, inside a bathroom. The door was locked from the inside. The second victim was torn to pieces, and the damage was so severe that the body was initially thought to belong to two victims. The coroner’s report indicated that cause of death was suicide. It’s going to be another one of those days…

Neoplastic Press is pleased to announce the release of Pent: The First Gospel of Pandemonium.

Dread: The First Book of Pandemonium has a new cover illustration, courtesy of Tariq Raheem (concept artist on TV shows like Farscape and video games like Heavenly Sword). This new artwork depicts a pair of Disciples about to come under attack from a group of demons led by a Pelogris.

I recently posted some great news about a long-awaited a|state supplement called Avenues & Alleyways. The folks at Contested Ground Studios expanded The City with new locations, villains and more. Now, the original a|state core book is available in eBook format at RPGNow.com. 252 pages of gothic horror and twisted beauty for $15.00. You can […]

A new scenario for the Dread: The First Book of Pandemonium RPG has been released by the folks at Neoplastic Press: Art Imitates Death PDF The most disturbing piece of evidence you’ve ever seen is a painting. Originally, it was a lawyer. When the cops found him, he was stretched across the canvas. Not pretty. […]

a|state introduced us the The City.

Welcome to The City. You will never forget The City. But The City will forget you.

Lostfinders Guide to Mire End took us on a tour into the sodden, degraded burgh of Mire End and introduced us to some of the more interesting personalities unfortunate enough to call the place home.

Now…Contested Ground Studios presents Avenues & Alleyways.

Rafael Chandler has announced the a new book in the Dread line-up: Pent: The First Gospel of Pandemonium Pent: The First Gospel of Pandemonium is a sourcebook for Dread that includes five ready-to-run scenarios and a dozen one-page adventure hooks. The scenarios include thoroughly fleshed-out locations, characters, setting information, and maps. Pent will be available […]

Welcome to the second installment of the Flash Fire Mini-Reviews series on Flames Rising!

This week we’re talking about ghosts, werewolves, alien slugs and fantasy kingdoms in a mix of books, games and even a movie. Some of these are brand-new releases and others are items that caught my eye for one reason or another this week.

Dread is a violent horror game from Neoplastic Press about hunting demons and it is presented in a chaotic punk wave throughout the book. This review is of the revised and updated edition of the game. The revised edition cleans up some of the rules, expands the magic and adds a few new demons for the characters to deal with.

Myriad is described a universal role-playing system and is released under a Creative Commons License which permits readers to make such use of its material as they may wish in their own games and books, so long as various fair use provisions are followed. It would be wrong to describe it as a complete game, as the author declares in the foreword, “Myriad is not a complete RPG in its own right; some assembly is required.

It is not often that a role playing game makes you think. It is also a rare occurrence when a role playing game tackles a controversial subject, with grace and understanding. Upon reading Little Fears I was happy to have my first impressions of the game shattered. At first glance Little Fears is a game simply about childhood fears, which it is, but it is also about much more.

There does seem to be a terrific appetite for new systems for governing role-playing games, despite there being more already in existence than it would be possible to play even in a very extended lifetime. If anyone really needs a new mechanism for a generic setting with a GM willing more or less to improvise action, this would be a good candidate and, being a few download, the price must be right. I would hope that the author will feel encouraged enough to put some thought into how the basic system could be used in a more fleshed out background world.

There is a lot to like about The Creep Chronicle — indeed, in many ways, it’s the PG-rated successor of Little Fears that several people were hungering for back in 2001. If you’re looking for a “kid friendly” horror RPG that still has some teeth, you need look no further than The Creep Chronicle.

Ultimately, the Dog Town system seems as though it could be very simple, unfortunately the explanation is confused and overly wordy (perhaps even purposefully intellectualized) to the point that it obfuscates, rather than elucidates, the mechanical components of the game. The rule explanations in Dog Town need a serious overhaul — less jargon, less “behind the scenes” exposition, and more black and white explanation. Dog Town needs to keep it simple, trimming some serious fat.

My Life with Master is a self-contained role playing game of personal horror by Paul Czege of Half Meme Press. It contains innovative ideas and a workable game, albeit one which would work best with creative and probably experienced players willing to enter into a setting and help to create it themselves. The interaction between GM and players is essential both in creating the setting and in forming the style and nature of the game. As the description below will suggest, gameplay can easily veer between a type of romantic desperation with which Vampire lovers will be familiar, to Grand Guignol to something rather less serious and bizarre. Since it can be difficult to maintain an intense style over an extended period of time and because of the very structure of the game, My Life with Master is best run as a single session game or, at most, a small number of sessions building up to a well-defined ending and epilogue

Agon takes place in a mythical Greece, drawing heavily from the Iliad and the Odyssey as inspiration (along with other sources like the films Clash of the Titans and Troy). Characters take on the role of heroes serving the gods on quests throughout the land, seeking glory and fame so their names may live on throughout the ages…

Schism both builds on this game and subverts it almost completely. In Schism, there are no demons – instead, characters receive extraordinary psychic abilities that are, partly as a result of the accelerating pace of global change and its effect on the tortured human psyche, suddenly prevalent in society. Indeed, the title page uses the term ‘virulent setting.’ However, the virus of psychic abilities does not come without a price and in Schism that price tends to be psychic disorders and physical deformation. Anyone who has played (or perhaps tried to play) the Nephilim game will be familiar with at least this physical aspect. Characters in Schism progressively become more and more removed from basic humanity but have the advantage of being able to bring about powerful effects to further their own ends and those of the cabal (a kind of more or less secret organization) that they wish.