If I haven’t had time to blog as much this month, it’s because my work as the Creative Director of Story & Setting at Asmodee has kept me busy! March saw the release of the first Legend of the Five Rings video game, the launch of a brand-new Arkham Horror website, as well as my guest appearance on a livestream of the newly released Arkham Horror Lovecraft Letter!

Another quick update rounding up some of the cool stuff I’ve been working on in my role as “loremaster” (not my official title) on the Asmodee Franchise Development team, this time focusing on Legend of the Five Rings!

At Gen Con this year, I spent four days working at the Legend of the Five Rings booth helping Palindrome Interactive show off the combat demo of the first-ever L5R video game, Shadowveil. You can watch the reveal trailer and learn more on the game’s Steam page, and if you weren’t able to try it out in person you can get a basic walkthrough of the demo at LegendoftheFiveRings.com. Over on Facebook, I interviewed game director Filip Andersson about the title’s design and development so far, and I also asked some fans about what they thought of the demo. I’m really proud of the work the Palindrome team has put into the game so far, both in terms of making something that’s great fun to play as well as capturing the essence of Legend of the Five Rings and the Crab Clan specifically. I hope you’ll check it out!

Also at Gen Con, Office Dog showed off the very first L5R Eurogame, River of Gold. Having played it several times, I think it’s a fun, lightweight, quick-and-easy play that will appeal to fans of euros more generally, not just Legend of the Five Rings fans. I also had the opportunity to talk to the game’s designer, Keith Piggott, about his work on the game and some of its design inspirations and goals. To help promote the game in the weeks leading up to its launch, I worked closely alongside Aconyte Books and author Robert Denton III as they created a series of short stories that brings the ports and markets along the River of Gold to life and introduces readers to four of the clan patrons included in the game. The short story series also included the first online story choice offered to L5R players since 2021. You can check out part one of the series here and either read or listen to it—Heather Jinmaku did a fabulous job narrating these stories and bringing the characters to life.

Over at L5R.com, we also shared updates on the upcoming Clan Wars novels and comics, roleplaying game supplements, board games, and more!

It’s been some time since I posted an update about the projects I’ve been working on as an Asmodee Franchise Development team member, so I wanted share some of the recent and upcoming releases set in the world of Arkham Horror!

This spring, Aconyte Books released what I consider to be the first true Arkham Horror setting guide, Welcome to Arkham: An Illustrated Guide for Visitors. I’m so incredibly proud of the work put in by the team on this full-color hardcover book, as it turned out beautifully and is absolutely stuffed with amazing artwork, pieces of ephemera, and detailed lore from the Arkham Horror series of games.

Back when Arkham Horror Third Edition was released, circa 2018, I worked as the editor on the lore sections of the Deluxe Rulebook, a limited-edition pre-order bonus which detailed the various neighborhoods and locations featured in that game. However, the base game covered only parts of the legend-haunted city. For Welcome to Arkham, we brought back my dear friend A.P. Klosky to flesh out the remaining locations from the Arkham Horror games, including the classic Lovecraftian locales of Dunwich, Innsmouth, and Kingsport, as well as some brand-new locations that have never appeared in the IP before! The 176-page book also includes excerpts from “The Book of Living Myths,” the in-world bestiary of Mythos monsters put together by Kōhaku Narukami, one of the new investigators from The Feast of Hemlock Vale expansions for Arkham Horror: The Card Game. Horror author David Annandale also contributed an eerie tale told across letters, postcards, and other pieces of ephemera scattered throughout the book.

I view Welcome to Arkham as the setting gazetteer companion to Dark Horse’s The Art of Arkham Horror, a traditional coffee-table art book, and Fantasy Flight Games’ The Investigators of Arkham Horror, a short story anthology I edited in 2017. To celebrate the release of Welcome to Arkham, Aconyte Books also released a digital updated edition of The Investigators of Arkham Horror, which you can purchase from DriveThruFiction or your preferred ebook retailer. The updated edition includes the two stories of Calvin Wright and Daniela Reyes from the Arkham Horror Third Edition Deluxe Rulebook, as well as a brand-new tale featuring Alessandra Zorzi. The Countess originally debuted in Josh Reynolds’s Arkham Horror novels but made her way into the card game as a playable investigator this spring in The Feast of Hemlock Vale.

Looking ahead to this summer, Edge Studio is releasing their starter set product for Arkham Horror: The Roleplaying Game, Hungering Abyss, just in time for Gen Con! Based on the “Night of the Zealot” scenario from the Arkham Horror LCG, it’s meant as an introduction to roleplaying, the setting, as well as Edge’s new Dice Pool System (DPS). If you’ll be at Gen Con this year and want to check out the game, get yourself a ticket for the Comets of Kingsport scenario or drop by the Grand Central Ballroom (rooms A – D) in the Crowne Plaza Hotel with some generics in case a seat opens up.

Finally, in Arkham Horror comic book news, take a look at this awesome cover featuring Jenny Barnes for The Terror at the End of Time from Dark Horse Comics! The issue comes out August 7, so be sure to stop by your friendly local comic book shop to get the first installment of the limited series.

Image Source: Aconyte Books

In January, I kicked off a new roleplaying game campaign using Night’s Black Agents. The premise of this GUMSHOE-based RPG is basically “what if a couple of Jason Bournes were hunting vampires?” Intrigued, I ran the NBA one-shot “The Van Helsing Letter” from Free RPG Day 2016, and the group liked the system and concept well enough that we decided to dive in with our own characters and story. Who’s behind Unternehmen Braun, and what do they want? Is Operation Edom friend, or foe? And what else besides vampires might stalk the night?

To facilitate character creation at today’s session zero, I quickly worked up this Agent Creation Cheat Sheet to help guide the group through the process. Along with printed out character sheets and a copy of the core rulebook, the session ran as smoothly as I could hope for. Download the PDF for free here.

Earlier this month, Aconyte Books came out with Rokugan: The Art of Legend of the Five Rings, a celebration of the fantasy illustration from the franchise whose fictions, novellas, and RPGs I’ve had a large hand in over the last five years. Working alongside Visual Creative Director Andy Christensen, I was able to contribute to this fantastic art book by helping to curate the art as well as writing the lore in the final chapter, “Empire in Turmoil,” which showcases some of the storyline events from the Living Card Game era of L5R. Overall, I think Editor Matt Keefe did a fantastic job putting this art book together and laying out the gorgeous spreads, and I’m going to proudly display it on my shelves alongside other art books from my favorite fandoms.

You can check out several samples of the book, including this overview and excerpts from the Imperial Court and Shadowlands chapters of the book. If you’re looking to add this to your collection, head on over to the Aconyte Books website, where you can find links to purchase the book from your preferred retailer.