Blackbirds is a dark fantasy tabletop role-playing game, Powered by ZWEIHÄNDER RPG. The gods failed us. The powerful betrayed us. Rise to meet your fate. Twelve years of war have ravaged the kingdoms of Erebos, where the great battle that would decide the fate of all has been waged. . .and lost. Now, the lights of civilization are going out. Swells of refugees have taken to the roads, desperate to find homes far from all the suffering. New constellations twinkle in the vault of the night, only to disappear if scrutinized for too long. Creatures of long-forgotten folklore once again stalk the countryside. It is a time of ill omens and unlikely heroes. BLACKBIRDS RPG is set in a dark fantasy world where a cabal of power-hungry Oligarchs has stolen godhood. Their horrific act rent the fabric of reality, allowing corrupt magic to undermine the world's natural order. And, soon, the Oligarchs themselves will return to the mortal plane and remake it as they desire.

FLAMES OF FREEDOM is an American Gothic horror tabletop role-playing game, based on the award-winning ZWEIHÄNDER RPG. It is the dawn of the American Revolutionary War of 1776. A tangled web of conspiracy spans North America. It does not matter what your creed, color, culture, faith or gender is—all stand together in the war for survival. Every Rebel patriot holds Thomas Paine’s Common Sense aloft as they take up arms against the British Empire. The city of Boston is occupied by the Red Coats, surrounded by Rebel militias. But as the revolution has begun, something far more mysterious stirs. Agents of the occult entreat both the Continental Army and British Empire. Freemasons conspire in the City of Brotherly Love. Maryland is in the throes of a witch hunt by the Knights Templar. Amid the chaos, other grim fairy tales have emerged. Ghouls have been tunneling beneath Boston. There are sightings of witches in the Great Dismal Swamp. Indigenous sachem speak of devils who walk among the living. The Leeds Devil haunts the Pine Barrens of New Jersey. And worse still, a shadowy collective called “The Mandoag” seeks to consume all, Loyalists and Rebels alike. In this game, most people have either chosen to deny the supernatural or rationalize it away. A rare few accept it for what it is to act. You are among those heroes and destined for greatness… or death. This alternative history game includes most of what you need to play: a player’s handbook, a game master’s guide, a bestiary, and an introductory adventure set in Boston. All that’s left are a few friends, pencils and a handful of dice. FLAMES OF FREEDOM is an American Gothic horror tabletop role-playing game, based on the award-winning ZWEIHÄNDER RPG.​

The study of online gaming is changing. It is no longer enough to analyse one type of online community in order to understand the plethora of players who take part in online worlds and the behaviours they exhibit. MacCallum-Stewart studies the different ways in which online games create social environments and how players choose to interpret these. These games vary from the immensely popular social networking games on Facebook such as Farmville to Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games to "Free to Play" online gaming and console communities such as players of Xbox Live and PS3 games. Each chapter deals with a different aspect of social gaming online, breaking down when games are social and what narrative devices make them so. This cross-disciplinary study will appeal to those interested in cyberculture, the evolution of gaming technology, and sociologies of media.

Veteran journalist Jay Morgan senses that the simmering conflict in Kosovo is about to take on a new dimension when he hears rumors that a mysterious bearded foreigner, bearing weapons and money and preaching Holy War, has appeared in the rebels' mountain camps. What is his mission? What new horror has he brought? Together Jay and his translator, the beautiful Alija, herself a victim of the war, race to find this prophet of jihad while Alija searches for her younger brother, a student gone missing and possibly caught up in the conflict. Each danger-fraught foray across the lines, each interview with rebel commander, Serb sniper, or American spook tasked to evaluate and maybe take out this new threat.

Featuring interviews with the creators of 31 popular video games--including Grand Theft Auto, Strider, Maximum Carnage and Pitfall--this book gives a behind-the-scenes look at the origins of some of the most enjoyable and iconic adventure games of all time. Interviewees recount the endless hours of painstaking development, the challenges of working with mega-publishers, the growth of the adventure genre, and reveal the creative processes that produced some of the industry's biggest hits, cult classics and indie successes.

The Tropics are home to the greatest biodiversity in the world, but tropical species are at risk due to anthropogenic activities, mainly land use change, habitat loss, invasive species, and pathogens. Over the past 20 years, the avian malaria and related parasites (Order: Haemosporida) systems have received increased attention in the tropical regions from a diverse array of research perspectives. However, to date no attempts have been made to synthesize the available information and to propose new lines of research. This book provides such a synthesis by not only focusing on the antagonistic interactions, but also by providing conceptual chapters on topics going from avian haemosporidians life cycles and study techniques, to chapters addressing current concepts on ecology and evolution. For example, a chapter synthesizing basic biogeography and ecological niche model concepts is presented, followed by one on the island biogeography of avian haemosporidians. Accordingly, researchers and professionals interested in these antagonistic interaction systems will find both an overview of the field with special emphasis on the tropics, and access to the necessary conceptual framework for various topics in ecology, evolution and systematics. Given its conceptual perspective, the book will appeal not only to readers interested in avian haemosporidians, but also to those more generally interested in the ecology, evolution and systematics of host-parasite interactions.

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