Our game design essay series continues today with some notes from Monica Valentinelli, author of Falling Scales Chapter Two, a World of Darkness SAS from White Wolf.

Falling Scales Chapter Two is the final, and second installment, for Falling Scales Part I. I started working on this project last Fall under the assumption that this would be a more atmospheric piece to further introduce a global conspiracy. While there were elements I was able to draw upon, the plot was directed, and there were some liberties I was not allowed to take.

For centuries, terrors have existed just outside our understanding. The public may know or even suspect creatures of the night exist, but millions have managed to go on with their lives, focusing on the mundane, the safe. We’ve passed off the truth as a child’s fairy tale or the ramblings of crazed lunatics. We’ve ignored the reality in order to survive.

Thanks to the actions of the passionate few, we can no longer pretend the supernatural does not exist.

Now, perfectly ordinary people question what they see, what they hear, what they feel. They’re confused, lost, and lonely. They’ve turned toward their leaders to help them find a way out of the darkness, but they need a shepherd, a guide who is not afraid. They’ve found one: a powerful politician who believes society should open their eyes to the truth, that the supernatural takes many forms and the only way to defend society is to wage all-out war.

Falling Scales Chapter Two is written by Flames Rising Project Manager Monica Valentinelli.

Get Falling Scales Chapter Two in PDF and Print formats at RPGNow.com!

White Wolf is having a one day super sale on the Storytelling Adventure System line of products at the Flames Rising RPGNow Shop!

White Wolf’s Storytelling Adventure System (SAS for short) is a series of stories in PDF format for the various Storytelling game lines (World of Darkness, Scion, Exalted, etc). The basic parts that make up most SAS stories are simple: Storyteller characters, scenes and some advice on how you can put them together. Each of them can be used in different ways to keep the story building towards its climactic end.

This sale includes all of the SAS eBooks currently available on RPGNow.com and has them all priced at $2.29 for one day only!

Players can try something different with the newest SAS from White Wolf. In “Into the Void,” ($6.99 at RPGNow.com), players kick off an adventure with killing the Prince of their city. The Prince, in all truth, is a secret hording problem that a good Final Death solves.

Or does it?

This is one of the better SAS releases that I’ve read. While certain NPCs are named, there is no reason why the Prince can’t become the Prince of established characters’ city along with the key movers and shakers detailed.

Preludes. Some of my best memories of Storyteller games circle around Preludes. I could sequester away a player for perhaps an evening and, for a session, really get into that particular character’s head. Dice rarely hit the table. It was about motivations and character. I mention this because this eBook flirts with being a look at preludes. Let me clear that it isn’t, but even the author allows that some Storytellers will use it for exactly that purpose.

The PDF’s artwork is mostly good. In fact, there are some pieces within the file that are damned good (no pun intended. Really.). I personally liked Shane Coppage’s art the best (the cover belongs to this artist). The artwork proved a little distracting in that some pieces look like Hollywood was tapped for character inspiration.

Fallen is Babylon is part of White Wolf’s Storytelling Adventure System, a series of well-tailored games that can be picked up for one-shots or slipped (most of the time) into a campaign. This particular setting makes no specific claim to line. It instead provides a town with a curse of sorts. The appearance is that the supernatural isn’t welcome. Vampires cannot sire here, Will-Workers find their abilities bleeding away the longer they stay, and, well, you get the idea. Of course, a mystery like this needs to be investigated.

Enter the players.

FlamesRising.com is pleased to present you with an inside look at the design process for Scenes of the Embrace, a brand new toolkit released from White Wolf Publishing to be used with its Vampire: the Requiem role-playing game.

This exclusive article is broken up into two parts. First, we give you an overview of the design process for this product, which was inspired by Will Hindmarch’s design from Scenes of Frenzy. After you read Eddy Webb and Monica Valentinelli’s exchange, stick around for an exclusive preview from this new e-book.

Scenes of the Embrace is available now at the Flames Rising RPGNow Shop.

It’s really only a matter of time, he thinks, twirling his gun around his index finger. The girl’s moves are obvious, rote. She’s a teenager; she doesn’t know any better. She’ll reach out for the only type of protection she’s ever really known.

Which means they’ll be coming.

But that’s just fine, the man thinks as his badge glistening in the moonlight. Police car lights flashing just long enough for him to take an illegal U-turn. It’s fine because they don’t know the game, which means he’ll be able to set one enemy against another and buy himself some time.

He can use them all for pawns.

Yazata is a new Pantheon for Scion done in the style of the Companion Pantheon sections for the Tuatha De Dannan, Celestial Bureaucracy, and Devas in the Scion Companion. It offers a look at a new Pantheon, their history, virtues, and PSP, some Birthrights, sample characters, and an examination of their Overworld, Underworld, and a Titan to menace them. Yazatas also offers a new All Purpose Purview, Stars, and an Adventure, The God, The Bad and the Ugly.

My familiarity with Persian mythology is mediocre. I am more familiar with it than the typical fellow on the street, but I would not say I have a professional’s grasp of it. Take my comments therefore with the appropriate grain of salt. On the other hand, I have run Scion heavily for over three years and have a good idea of how it works. As this is going up on a horror site, I’ll note like the other Scion books Yazata is not a horror game; if you’re looking for something to give a good scare at the table, you will want to give this a pass.

A demon is nothing but sin given will and power

A man who makes a deal with a demon is inviting that sin into him. It does more than consume him – it defines him. It wears him. It rots away at the core of his being. Demons can do it to places, too – whole cities, given the chance. They can alter the supernatural landscape.

Here, then, is the result of sin, hubris and impatience, and here is a chance to banish a demon back to Hell and right a great wrong – or to seize power. Which will the characters choose?

Fallen is Babylon is available now at the Flames Rising RPGNow Shop.

Living With The Vigil

For many hunters carrying the Vigil, the hunt is only one part of their lives. Many belong to hunter organizations-the more localized compacts, or the globe-spanning conspiracies.

Joining such a group comes with varying advantages-safety in numbers, a paycheck, access to unique weapons and critical information, and camaraderie. But it also comes replete with new problems: competition, cover-ups, and a rigorous set of rules to which one must adhere or face the always-unpleasant consequences.

Compacts and Conspiracies is available now at the Flames Rising RPGNow Shop.

FlamesRising.com is pleased to present you with an exclusive preview for a new supplement for SCION, published by White Wolf Publishing. Entitled Yazata: The Persian Gods, this supplement takes an in-depth look at the gods of ancient Persia. What’s in store for fans of SCION? New Boons, Knacks, Birthrights and Purviews, including a new general Purview called “Stars” which we have an exclusive sneak peek of right here at Flames Rising.

Yazata Developer Eddy Webb tells us “This is what’s great about fan-proposed products. Siavash sent in a proposal, and instantly we saw the potential of it. It took a while to find the right place for it in our schedule, but I think the work that he and Dean put into it is worth the wait.”

A story in the Storytelling Adventure System for Requiem for Rome (using Vampire: The Requiem)

Paterfamilias contains a collection of scenes, Storyteller character records, a number of hyperlinks to various portions of the text as well as bookmarks, so you can always jump right to what you need with just a click. There’s also a new hunter group provided, as well as errata for Requiem for Rome and Fall of the Camarilla.

Paterfamilias is available at the Flames Rising RPGNow Shop.

I’m still six feet under only I’m under snow and it’s actually closer to six inches. What’s a little bit of exaggeration between friends? After all, you’re the one reading a RPG review, so it stands to reason that you like either telling or hearing stories. For those of you who missed my review of Book of the Dead, which you can read here (don’t worry I’ll wait), I’m in the midst of a look at White Wolf’s view of the Underworld. Today, we’re going to visit the Ebon Gate, a SAS adventure intended for Geist: the Sin-Eaters.

This adventure is 38 pages, although the first and second pages are full color and black and white versions of the cover. The layout follows the Geist format, which means subtle blues for color, more keys than you’ll find on a school custodian’s key ring, and big whopping numbered pages.

Sin-Eaters know that their strange existence is a complicated one. They stand at the crossroads between life and death and endure all the complications of both. But there are others, desperate for something to believe in, who believe that a Sin-Eater’s bond with her geist is a blessed state of unification and a triumph over the limitations of the human form.

These souls make up the brethren of the Glorious Church of the Unified Spirit. They have been told that their path lies not in life or death, but in a divine state somewhere in between. Those who have only experienced one life cannot achieve true enlightenment. The sacred symbiosis of spirit and flesh must be achieved to take the next step. Sin-Eaters are their saints, their bodhisattvas. The brethren are told that they must step through the black gate to reach their potential. They are told that this is humanity’s next step – humanity’s destiny.

They are misled.

A story in the Storytelling Adventure System for Geist: The Sin-Eaters.

Through the Ebon Gate is available at the Flames Rising RPGNow Shop.

Being a wage slave at a retailer forces me to think a great deal about Black Friday, the holiest of Capitalism’s holy days. Since I’m trapped into pondering it non-stop, I thought I’d pass along the blessings to you all. I’d like to believe, however, that you’ll actually find these shopping guidelines more useful than a 600 count of pink bed sheets (no offense to those of you needed said pink bed sheets). I going to revisit some games I’ve reviewed over the past year (and some I didn’t) for the sole purpose of finding the best of the best. The holidays are afoot, so some of you will have free time over the next month to game. It’s also Winter, the best season for gaming (inmyhumbleopinion).

Being that you’re reading this on a horror-themed site, I’ll try to focus a bit on the Black Evil Darkness that is Black Friday rather than the post-Thanksgiving hooha.

In Unknown Armies, something called the Swap Meet exists. It was one of those mystical places where you buy the memory of the date you never had in exchange for the memory of watching your first child being born. While Goblin Markets doesn’t come across quite as harshly as the former example, the theme of the book is caveat emptor. The reason why I’m bringing up both games is to illustrate how wickedly cool and troublesome such a place can become. These places are hard to get into and so much more difficult to escape. Oh, you may leave the market easily enough. It’s just the choices made while midst the vendors that will haunt you. These places allow for once-in-a-lifetime meetings between characters, a look at what the characters really want, and enough subplots to seed an entire campaign.

As the player characters plan for All Hallows Eve, they suddenly find themselves embroiled into a deadly fight with a pyrokinetic named Gabriella who has lost control of her ability. Several buildings around the city are on fire; this offers the player characters plenty of options to find and determine the best way of dealing with an “innocent” teenage pyrokinetic.

Description
Normally you’d ignore the vandals creating havoc on Devil’s Night, because you have better things to do. Only this time, they’re not just jumping on cars or bullying kids out of their Halloween candy. This time, they’re trying to burn the entire city to the ground – and they don’t care who gets caught in the flames. That old place on Seventieth Street. A grocery store. Some hospital. You follow the trail of burning flesh and glowing embers straight to a single girl who’s looking right at you with a confused look in her eye.

Halloween is our favorite holiday here at Flames Rising headquarters. We wound up with an orange and a black cat, our house is often decorated in September, and we enjoy coming up with new concoctions year after year. Although we really enjoy the holiday, it wouldn’t be as much fun without all of you.

Last year Flames Rising celebrated Halloween with you by offering 31 days of Monster Madness. For this year, we started with the horror plot generator to help you get those creative juices flowing. Since we offered flash fiction (in the form of mini-monsters) last year, we decided to take a more gaming-related approach for Halloween.

It’s been too long since I took part in Live Action Role-Playing. It was the mid-nineties at Egyptian Campaign in Carbondale, Illinois. The Southern Illinois University’s Student Center was the perfect setting for a session of the Masquerade. There were outdoor and indoor sets.

Hectic Narrators bounced all around in attempt to keep the action controlled. It was a great night, but I’m reasonably sure there wasn’t a story to speak of. Yeah, I recall a handful of werewolves being found dead outside the building. There was also something about the Prince being mad. To be honest, the game was an excuse for the largest number of gamers at the convention to cut loose and have fun. After reading City in the Sand, I have to wonder how much better that night would have been with a story underlying everything. I guess I should say a “good story that people were interested in” underlying everything. City in the Sand takes an interesting bit of cinema’s history and applies a little Vampire bite to it.