CCP Games and BBC Studios have joined forces for EVE Online x Doctor Who, an original crossover event between the beloved action-adventure series Doctor Who and the free-to-play deep space-faring MMO EVE Online. Universes will collide as Capsuleers and Whovians face the Daleks together in massive space battles in EVE Online x Doctor Who starting 13 January until 1 February.

EVE Online is a free-to-play, community-driven spaceship MMO game where players can choose their own path among the stars from countless options, developed by CCP Games in Reykjavik. The game first launched in 2003 and has since gained recognition for its scale, complexity, and the world record-breaking exploits of its online community. EVE Online is one of the most critically acclaimed MMORPG intellectual properties (IPs) in time and space, and one of the most extensive works of science fiction in the world.

Free League Publishing has just released two new expansions for the popular ALIEN RPG offering a new adventure as well as a way to jump into the game with a basic introduction rule set! ALIEN RPG Starter Set The job was routine, the money fair. Then the damn company diverted you to answer a distress […]

The Altered Carbon RPG is the official game based on the hit neo-noir cyberpunk Netflix series and the award-winning novel penned by Richard Morgan. The core edition of Altered Carbon: The Role Playing Game takes place on Sol (Earth) in the year 2384. With the help of a gamemaster (GM), you and your friends can create your own stories and Sleeves in Bay City, the futuristic Californian metropolis that serves as the main setting of the first book and Season 1 of the Netflix series.

FlamesRising.com took a peek at a preview of the upcoming game to see what was under the hood. Developed and designed by Christopher J. De La Rosa, the Altered Carbon RPG crystallizes the setting by presenting a timeline of events and key setting details necessary to roleplay in a futuristic San Francisco where bodies are meat and your soul is reduced to data. The system is “in house” and has been customized for the Altered Carbon RPG.

Long out of print, the Blood of Kerensky Trilogy by Michael A. Stackpole is finally available in eBook formats thanks to Catalyst Game Labs!

The Clan invaders have chosen their next objective – Luthien, capital of the Draconis Combine. House Kurita must now fight for survival on its homeworld.

Nothing we have can stop them.

Hanse Davion is presented with a situation undreamt of … final defeat of the Dragon – House Kurita. Should he attack his distracted foe and destroy the enemy his family has battled for over 300 years? Or should he reinforce a fellow House of the Inner Sphere against a force that Davion and the Federated Commonwealth might not otherwise defeat when the time comes?

The Clans.

I love to be the game master. There is nothing quite like the feeling of presenting a challenge that the players will fear, loathe, complain about and eventually, climactically overcome. I don’t mind being the bad guy. I know that I’m the catalyst for great gaming and great storytelling. Of course, all of this sounds like roleplaying but really it applies to game design as well. A game designer has to have a certain sense that he is setting these fascinating objects in motion and the players bring them to life and create the unexpected interactions that make the game worth playing. Semi-coop games such as Battlestations or Descent invite the boardgame referee to be more than just a rules arbiter and I think part of the fun for everybody is to dial up the drama and go for it.

Go beyond the boundaries of the fantastic, award-winning Numenera setting.

Monte Cook Games is currently running an exciting Kickstarter campaign that will expand the Numenera RPG into new vistas, giving characters a chance to explore further than they ever dreamed. The campaign reached the origianl funding goal almost immediately after launching and now new stretch goals are offering backers expanded content, fiction, maps, and more.

Flames Rising is pleased to have award winning author and game designer Monte Cook drop by to tell us a little about some of the design goals of these new supplements and content being offered in this Kickstarter project.

I don’t do research for any of my novels or stories.

A part of me, as I typed the above, felt a sense of guilt. It’s the received wisdom these days – and, for all I know, always has been – that a fiction writers must assiduously research the background to their works in order to present a credible ‘world’ to their readers. After all, if you’re writing about a World War II fighter pilot, isn’t it wise to have read up on what it’s like to be a fighter pilot? And that goes for any other specialist profession or area of expertise, of course. To lend greater fidelity to one’s visions, research is essential.

Dredd: Uprise #1

In the neglected sector of Mega-City One known as The Spit, tensions are reaching boiling point amongst the citizens as the shiny new mega-block Oemling Tower is being constructed for those that can afford to live in it.

As the Judges face running battles with rioters, the underground movement known as Uprise stokes the flames of dissent…

Does your Crew have what it takes to fly the Good Shepherd’s Run?

SMUGGLER’S GUIDE TO THE RIM is a supplement for the FIREFLY RPG that is designed for both players and GMs. The third supplement in the line, the SMUGGLER’S GUIDE TO THE RIM introduces Reputation rules for Crewmembers, 12 new archetypes, the Good Shepherd’s Run, more Chinese translations, more rules, new in game aids, a pair of Episodes, and more!

Tears of a Machine is a tabletop story game (or RPG) of giant robots and teenage pilots inspired by the mecha anime shows that I love: Neon Genesis Evangelion, Fafner: Dead Aggressor, Gunparade March and others. Playing the character of a young pilot, you’ll be connected to the brain of a SAInt, a robot crusader with a dangerous will of its own, and sent to fight the alien raiders and their monstrous war machines.

A game of Tears of a Machine is about the characters first. The rules and situations of the game are tuned to create stories about the pilot’s hopes, dreams, and fears. A pilot’s ego can turn failure into success or mire a pilot in depression. What happens in the classroom or at the diner is just as important for a pilot as what happens on the battlefield.

Mindjammer returns! Mindjammer Press, a new roleplaying and fiction imprint, has announced its plans to publish the Mindjammer roleplaying game, the far future transhuman space opera setting, and fiction lines.

“This is a very exciting opportunity,” said Sarah Newton, owner of Mindjammer Press and author of the ENnie Award-winning setting and fiction line. “We’ve taken the decision to bring all the Mindjammer fiction and RPG projects under a single umbrella, to allow us to concentrate on producing the new second edition and its supplements, as well as future novels in the Mindjammer series. We’re looking forwards to a regular release of products to support the Mindjammer setting and community, beginning this week with a re-launch of ‘Mindjammer’, the first novel in the series.”

The design essay series here at Flames Rising continues with the first part of a series by game designer Mischa L Thomas. Mischa tells us about the forthcoming Cold & Dark RPG.

Living with Cold & Dark: Part 1

Hi, my name is Mischa L Thomas and I’m the lead designer at Wicked World Games 1.1, a small RPG design company based in Gothenburg Sweden. In a couple of months we’re going to release the gritty space horror science fiction pen and paper RPG Cold & Dark in partnership with Chronicle City. I thought I’d talk a little bit about the inspirational sources and conceptualization method behind the design process which led up to the finished game document. But first a little bit of background.

Fantastic Stories of the Imagination is Warren Lapine’s new anthology, taking an SF magazine sensibility into the anthology market. He brings 14 very diverse stories by a wide range of authors from great masters such as Mike Resnick and Harlan Elision to more recent discoveries (at least to me) Fans of the Liaden universe will be glad to see a Sharon Lee and Steve Miller story.

The tales go from pure science fiction through to urban fantasy. There is no theme to the anthology though many of the stories deal with the intersection between man and machine and the question of where one leaves off. Most of the stories deal with ethical and moral issues characters face, about when to intervene in someone else’s life or situation. Love is encountered, succeeds, disappoints, fails and rises from the ashes as we learn to cope, to hold and to release.

John Carter hit theaters this weekend and we’ve got plenty of Mars products for you explore at DriveThruRPG!

Adamant Entertainment’s entire line of MARS: The Roleplaying Game of Planetary Romance ebooks are 50% off for the rest of the month!

Be sure to check out Heliograph’s Space: 1889 line for even more Mars adventures!

Also available is Skirmisher’s Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Mars: Shadows of a Dying World for OGL and Pinnacle’s Space 1889: Red Sands for Savage Worlds!

Before he secured his place in the annals of international pop culture with the Tarzan stories, Edgar Rice Burroughs offered up the initial adventure in the far more interesting and inventive Barsoom series. “Under the Moons of Mars,” later to be retitled A Princess of Mars for book publication, first saw print in the Munsey pulp The All-Story, from February through July of 1912. The six-part serial chronicles the adventures of Confederate veteran Captain John Carter, who stumbles across a cave in Arizona through which he is transported via psychic projection to Mars, or as the locals call it, Barsoom.

Once deposited on Barsoom, Carter treks across the dying planet and encounters an imaginative assortment of races and creatures, from the four-armed warrior Tharks to the super-speedy dog-lizard things called calots (one of which, naturally, becomes the hero’s faithful companion), to the humanlike red Martians.

Solaris is delighted to announce that sales of the critically-acclaimed, New York Times bestselling Pantheon series by James Lovegrove have now topped 100,000.

In a remarkable coup for a military-SF series, the killer blend of high-octane action and worlds dominated by ancient religions, including New York Times bestseller Age of Odin, has been a massive hit. The series is now set to continue with three new titles.

The series focuses on the central question of ‘what if the Gods of Mythology were not only real but played a direct role in mankind’s lives?’ Created as alternative histories that can be read as stand-alone novels or enjoyed as a collective, Lovegrove revitalises deities of old with hard-nosed military science fiction and fascinating re-imaginings of our world.

The design essay series continue here at Flames Rising with a new entry from author Edward McKeown telling about his novel Was Once a Hero.

Reluctant privateer Robert Fenaday searches the stars for his lost love, Lisa, a naval intelligence officer whose ship disappeared near the end of the Conchirri War . He’s joined by the genetically engineered assassin, Shasti Rainhell, whose cold perfection masks her dark past. Both are blackmailed by government spymaster, Mandela, into a suicidal mission to the doomed planet Enshar. Leading a team of scientists and soldiers, they must unravel the mystery of that planet’s death before an ancient force reaches out to claim their lives.

In an exciting team-up certain to rock the cosmos, Toy Vault, Inc. and legendary game designer Richard Borg (Memoir’44, Battle Cry) have joined forces to take you on a new action-packed adventure through the cold depths of space in ABADDON!

It’s the distant future and mankind has taken a galactic leap forward through space, time, and technology. Life as we know it struggles to endure on the ABADDON. Once the home of a mysterious, non-human civilization, the planet is now a desolate wasteland bearing one immensely precious resource: Feronium power crystals. The unimaginable energy contained within the crystals is coveted by two groups of humans: the Satellite City-States and the Commonwealth Alliance. Using giant bio-mech suits called Links, made from modified military vehicles and alien technology; the warring factions fight a weary battle for territorial control of the ABADDON.

Diving straight in, the work opens with a brief note about how it provides a ready-made, populated location for gamemasters to use, or useful background for players whose characters are scumborn or belong to a scum faction… and just in case you are not sure what that means, it then launches into an introduction to the whole concept. Briefly, a scum swarm is a space-faring community with a very democratic – even anarchic – approach to everything: collective decision-making, consensus… and little regard for rules or reverence to what more settled societies may find important.

From such generalities, the narrative turns to a specific group, the Stars swarm. Born out of industrial unrest in turbulent times, the swarm began with workers in lunar orbital facilities taking control of the resources around them… just when the situation back at headquarters took a turn for the worse, and so nobody was in a position to object as the collective upgraded propulsion systems and took off, gathering many other refugees as they departed. Rather more ordered than some swarms, they now follow a set route around the system, trading as they go but still adhering to their original libertarian collectivist lifestyle.

The Iron Empires: eight weary nations, spanning three million light years of the Milky Way Galaxy. They are the withering remains of a human civilization once immeasurably vast. Their dying has not been quiet.

The Vaylen Terror has ravaged humanity down the ages, seizing a thousand worlds in a bloody rush, then pausing for decades of consolidation. During these intervals of calm, the empires rebuild, rearm…and wage war on their neighbors. they almost believe the Vaylen will never return.

Both Iron Empires graphic novels are available for the first time in eBook format exclusively at DriveThruComics.com!