Many of today's most commercially successful videogames, from Call of Duty to Company of Heroes, are war-themed titles that play out in what are framed as authentic real-world settings inspired by recent news headlines or drawn from history. While such games are marketed as authentic representations of war, they often provide a selective form of realism that eschews problematic, yet salient aspects of war. In addition, changes in the way Western states wage and frame actual wars makes contemporary conflicts increasingly resemble videogames when perceived from the vantage point of Western audiences. This interdisciplinary volume brings together scholars from games studies, media and cultural studies, politics and international relations, and related fields to examine the complex relationships between military-themed videogames and real-world conflict, and to consider how videogames might deal with history, memory, and conflict in alternative ways. It asks: What is the role of videogames in the formation and negotiation of cultural memory of past wars? How do game narratives and designs position the gaming subject in relation to history, war and militarism? And how far do critical, anti-war/peace games offer an alternative or challenge to mainstream commercial titles?

A new edition of a classic game, perfect for couples and families. Take on the role of a mythical raven in a race around the world, using your cards to speed your journey or play tricks upon your opponent! Every morning Odin sends his ravens, Huginn and Muninn, across the world to bring back news of what life is like on Earth. Naturally, after thousands of years, they've gotten a little competitive... Race through the landscape in opposite directions to be the first to return to Odin. Focus on speed, or enlist the help of the trickster god Loki to create shortcuts and hinder your opponent. Can you be certain Loki's changes won't help your opponent instead? There's only one way to find out! This revised edition of Thorsten Gimmler's award-winning game has been completely redesigned, with new rules and a beautiful new art style inspired by Norse mythology. 2 Players Playing Time: 20-30 minutes Ages 8+

When it was commissioned, Imperial Research Station 37 was home to nearly 10,000 scientists and researchers working on a vast array of biological and chemical projects. Then, six months before the outbreak of the war, Station 37 went dark. No escape pods were launched and all attempts at communication went unanswered. Only a solitary, repeating broadcast filled the silence: "This station is under quarantine - do not approach". When the war came, the station was forgotten, left to drift lifelessly in its empty system. Now, in the aftermath of the Last War, Station 37 has been rediscovered and its broadcast heard once more... Quarantine 37 is a supplement for Stargrave in which players lead their crews into an abandoned space station, hunting for lost technology, unique research, and forgotten experiments. Compete with your opponents for these valuable resources across two competitive mini-campaigns, or venture into the vast maze of corridors and laboratories alone in the first Stargrave solo campaign. Also included are six new soldier types, new backgrounds and powers, terrifying additions to the bestiary, and a new advanced technology table packed with loot to help you in your adventures in the ravaged galaxy.

In The Queer Games Avant-Garde, Bonnie Ruberg presents twenty interviews with twenty-two queer video game developers whose radical, experimental, vibrant, and deeply queer work is driving a momentous shift in the medium of video games. Speaking with insight and candor about their creative practices as well as their politics and passions, these influential and innovative game makers tell stories about their lives and inspirations, the challenges they face, and the ways they understand their places within the wider terrain of video game culture. Their insights go beyond typical conversations about LGBTQ representation in video games or how to improve "diversity" in digital media. Instead, they explore queer game-making practices, the politics of queer independent video games, how queerness can be expressed as an aesthetic practice, the influence of feminist art on their work, and the future of queer video games and technology. These engaging conversations offer a portrait of an influential community that is subverting and redefining the medium of video games by placing queerness front and center. Interviewees: Ryan Rose Aceae, Avery Alder, Jimmy Andrews, Santo Aveiro-Ojeda, Aevee Bee, Tonia B******, Mattie Brice, Nicky Case, Naomi Clark, Mo Cohen, Heather Flowers, Nina Freeman, Jerome Hagen, Kat Jones, Jess Marcotte, Andi McClure, Llaura McGee, Seanna Musgrave, Liz Ryerson, Elizabeth Sampat, Loren Schmidt, Sarah Schoemann, Dietrich Squinkifer, Kara Stone, Emilia Yang, Robert Yang

In the days of ancient Felstad, vampires kept to the shadows, their small numbers no match for the power of the city's wizards. But when the cataclysm struck, the wizards were destroyed, while the deathless vampires went into a frozen hibernation. Now, as the city thaws, so too do its undead inhabitants. The masters of the night are rising again: reoccupying their hidden strongholds, reforming their old cabals, and finding new victims to serve as their thralls. The destruction of the old city has brought one other boon to the vampires - giant's blood. While giants used to live out of reach to the far north, in the intervening millennium, they have descended on the city in large numbers. Their blood is like an elixir to the vampires, filling them with strength and magical power. A new war is forming between these two ancient races, and once again, the wizards of Frostgrave are caught in the middle. This supplement for Frostgrave: Fantasy Wargames in the Frozen City presents greatly expanded information about the vampires and the giants that occupy the frozen ruins, including rules for vampiric magic and a breakdown of the different tribes of giants. Also included are rules for a new type of soldier, the giant-blooded. These huge men and women have the blood of giants running through their veins, granting them great strength unseen in normal men. Finally, the book contains a section on playing Frostgrave with high-level wizards and includes two mini-campaigns to challenge these experienced spellcasters.

Even as the popularity of videogames has skyrocketed, a dark cloud continues to hang over them. Many people who play games feel embarrassed to admit as much, and many who don't worry about the long-term effects of a medium often portrayed as dangerous and corruptive. Drawing on years of experience working directly with people who play games, clinical psychologist Alexander Kriss steers the discourse away from extreme and factually inaccurate claims around the role of games in addiction, violence and mental illness, instead focusing on the importance of understanding the unique relationship that forms between a game and its player. Through vivid psychotherapy case illustrations, autobiographical memoir, and a wide range of psychological theory and research, The Gaming Mind lays out an honest and humanistic vision of games, their potentials and risks, and how they can teach us more about who we are and who we could be.

Presented for the first time ever, the 3 volume set of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Library enclosed in a deluxe slipcase. For the first time, the collected texts from the critically and commercially acclaimed fantasy video game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim are bound together in three exciting volumes. Lavishly illustrated and produced, these titles are straight out of the world of Skyrim - and a must for any wandering adventurer. Delve deeper into the lore behind one of the most successful and critically acclaimed fantasy games of all time, Skyrim. Featuring in-game texts on factions, landscapes, creatures, heroes, and dragons.

The barrier between worlds has shattered. Now, the Dark Judges have returned to exact judgement on Mega-City One. The city is guilty. The crime is life. The sentence is death. The Dark Judges can be played as a team in any game of Helter Skelter, or one player can face off against them in a solo game. Requires a copy of Judge Dredd: Helter Skelter to play. Number of players: 1-4 Ages: 14+ Playing time: 30-60 minutes Components: 4 miniatures, 5 oversized cards, 39 playing cards, tokens

Time is the bane of all kings. Always does it march forward, bringing change and challenges, wars and disasters, invaders and internal rebellion. This supplement for Oathmark: Battles of the Lost Age, focuses on the passage of time and its effect on a players kingdom. While wars and battle still determine their ultimate fate, many other events can affect the armies of a kingdom. Plagues and blights can reduce access to soldiers from specific territories. Attempted coups can cost a king some of his best generals. On the other hand, unexpected alliances might give a kingdom access to unusual troops, or the birth of a new heir might bring wondrous presents. Along with the rules for the passing of years, this book also presents the option to train your units to fight in special formations, such as phalanxes, shield walls, and skirmish lines. These will allow players to use their existing armies to try out new strategies and tactics to swing their battle in their favour. This book also includes several new military expeditions, including numerous scenarios, to once again challenge a player's generalship.

Players: 2-4
Ages: 14+
Playing Time: 30-60 minutes
Contents: Double-Sided Playing Board

Travel into the further reaches of the Wildlands with this new set of maps. Introduce further wrinkles to your game via magical portals which help you rush around the map, or fissures which will slow your progress. Players will have to adapt to their new surroundings if they ever hope to get ahead.

This map expansion for Wildlands adds a new double-sided board to the game, featuring new opportunities and obstacles, and can be used in conjunction with the faction expansions.

This map pack requires a copy of Wildlands to play.

Ramp up your role-playing game (RPG) and make your character your own with this fun, interactive workbook-an essential addition to any player's gaming kit. You've chosen your class, bought your weapons, and rolled for your stats, and you're now the proud owner of your own RPG (role-playing game) avatar. But before you begin your adventure, there's so much more you can do with your character to make him or her your own! Just how evil is she? What does his dating profile look like? Where did she get that scar? What does he want for his birthday? With fill-in-the blank narratives, prompts, and fun activities to help you customize your character at the start of the game, or build out your backstory as you play, The Ultimate RPG Character Backstory Book will help you fully imagine your character and bring them to life for the ultimate gaming experience!

Chronicle every step of your RPG and record details about your characters, party, quest, and more with this customizable gaming journal for all your adventures. The Ultimate RPG Quest Keeper is an essential tool for all tabletop RPG players to record their characters and adventures, with easy-to-use templates for keeping track of all vital details. From your characters' personality traits and history to important clues and characters for ongoing quests, this comprehensive journal will keep you organized no matter what the adventure. Featuring space to record character information, including their background and abilities, party details, notable NPCs, money and resources, loot and belongings, useful gear, spells, weapons, skills and proficiencies, quests and mysteries, and more, this journal is the only RPG notebook you'll ever need. Now you can spend more time playing the games you love!

A distress beacon from a desolate section of tundra sends the heroes on a rescue mission in the biting cold. They find a lone vesk survivor in the wreckage of a starship prowled by a menacing insectile stowaway: a component of the dreaded Swarm! The heroes trace the creature's origin to a frozen gas giant in the same system, where a mutated Swarm colony has begun to awaken from a strange hibernation. Will the heroes brave the floating organic lair to stop the Swarm from contacting the greater hive mind? "Icebound" is a Starfinder Roleplaying Game adventure for four 7th-level characters by Jason Tondro. This adventure continues the Horizons of the Vast Adventure Path, a six-part, bimonthly campaign in which the heroes are at the forefront of exploring and charting a newly discovered world filled with mystery. This volume also includes a dossier on the Veskarium spy agency known as Directive-9, technology repurposed from the Swarm, and a selection of deadly alien threats. Each bi-monthly full-color softcover Starfinder Adventure Path volume contains a new installment of a series of interconnected science-fantasy quests that together create a fully developed plot of sweeping scale and epic challenges. Each 64-page volume of the Starfinder Adventure Path also contains in-depth articles that detail and expand the Starfinder campaign setting and provide new rules, a host of exciting new monsters and alien races, a new planet to explore and starship to pilot, and more!

Defend yourself and protect your assets in a lair that feels as real and alive as your monsters with advice from Keith Ammann, author of The Monsters Know What They're Doing: Combat Tactics for Dungeon Masters. The world is a dangerous place-especially when you're up to no good. Whether you're a rampaging monster, a calculating mastermind, or the current possessor of the Golden MacGuffin, someone's going to come at you. Probably more than one someone. You can't know when, but you can choose where. You need to be ready. You need a lair. In How to Defend Your Lair, gamemaster Keith Ammann pulls back the curtain on an underrated but crucial part of any tabletop roleplaying game: the theater of battle. Say goodbye to encounters in randomly generated dungeons and hello to a game in which where the fight takes place is just as important as who is doing the fighting. This book teaches you how to use real-world principles of building security and area defense to create strongholds infused with flavor, informed by narrative, and complex enough to force your players to think strategically. You'll look at the strengths and weaknesses of both defenders and potential attackers, creating spaces that are strong enough to keep out ordinary intruders...and to provide thrilling challenges to extraordinary ones. Including more than a dozen fleshed-out sample strongholds, How to Defend Your Lair is a crucial resource for any RPG gamemaster who wants to push players to think about how to solve problems before running at them head-on.

As the Allies advance towards Germany, they face dogged resistance from the hard-pressed German forces. Take command of the Allies in their final push to end the war in Europe, or hold fast as the German defenders as the fight is brought to your door. This new Campaign Book for Bolt Action offers new linked scenarios, rules, troop types and Theatre Selectors, and provides plenty of options for novice and veteran players alike.

Market Garden was a bold plan, designed to capture the Rhine crossings along the Dutch-German border and establish a foothold for an advance into Germany. A massive combined arms operation involving airborne landings and an armoured thrust, it was one of the most dramatic and controversial operations of the war. This new Campaign Book for Bolt Action allows players to command the forces facing each other across the Rhine, fighting key battles and attempting to change the course of history. New, linked scenarios, rules, troop types and Theatre Selectors provide plenty of options for novice and veteran players alike.

The Ghost Archipelago has returned. A vast island chain, covered in the ruins of ancient civilizations, the Archipelago appears every few centuries, far out in the southern ocean. At such times, pirates, adventurers, wizards, and legendary heroes all descend upon the islands in the hopes of finding lost treasures and powerful artefacts. A few, drawn by the blood of their ancestors, search for the fabled Crystal Pool, whose waters grant abilities far beyond those of normal men. It is only the bravest, however, who venture into the islands, for they are filled with numerous deadly threats. Cannibal tribes, sorcerous snake-men, and poisonous water-beasts all inhabit the island ruins, guarding their treasure hordes and setting traps for the unwary. In this new wargame, set in the world of Frostgrave, players take on the role of Heritors, mighty warriors whose ancestors drank from the Crystal Pool. These Heritors lead their small, handpicked teams of spellcasters, rogues, and treasure hunters into the ever-shifting labyrinth of the Ghost Archipelago. Using the same rules system as Frostgrave, this standalone wargame focuses on heroes who draw on the power in their blood to perform nigh-impossible feats of strength and agility. This game also includes 30 spells drawn from five schools of magic, a host of soldier types, challenging scenarios, treasure tables, and a full bestiary of the most common creatures that inhabit the Lost Isles.

Beauty is in the eye of the Beholder with this officially licensed miniature figurine. * FIGURINE WITH LIGHT: A one-of-a-kind 3-inch figurine of the popular monster: the Beholder with a glowing eye * BOOK INCLUDED: Learn more about this iconic monster in this fully illustrated 32-page miniature book * PERFECT GIFT FOR D&D FANS: Display on a shelf, desk, or bookcase and show off your love of Dungeons & Dragons * OFFICIALLY LICENSED: Authentic Dungeons & Dragons collectible

This book describes the creation of a wargames' army and provides essential guidance for someone starting out in wargaming through to the more experienced gamer. With over 290 colour photographs, it describes how the armies of the main nations - France, Britain, Russia, Prussia and Austria - were organized. It illustrates the uniforms and battle formations using computer-aided plans. Practical modelling techniques are demonstrated from basic to more advanced. It provides detailed painting guides with accompanying step-by-step photographs, and finally, there is a chapter on the flags carried by these five armies during the wars.

The Men Who Would Be Kings is a set of rules designed for fighting historical or Hollywood colonial battles in the mid to late 19th Century, from the Indian Mutiny to the Boxer Rebellion. Large scale colonial clashes tended to be one-sided affairs, but there are countless reports of brief, frantic skirmishes in every colonial war, where either side could be victorious, and these are the battles that The Men Who Would Be Kings seeks to recreate. Although focusing on the British colonial wars against the Zulus, Maoris and others, these rules will also permit players to explore the empires of France, Germany, and other nations, as well as allowing for battles between rival native factions. Gameplay is very simple, and is driven by the quality of the officers leading your units, in the true spirit of Victorian derring-do and adventure, where larger than life characters such as the (real) Fred Burnaby and the (fictional) Harry Flashman led their troops to glory and medals or a horrible end at the point of a spear tip.

With this new supplement for Frostgrave, players can lead their warbands into the vast network of catacombs, sewers, and dungeons that run underneath the Frozen City. It was in these dark confines that the ancient wizards known as Beastcrafters experimented on living creatures, creating strange hybrids and deadly monsters, many of which still roam the forgotten passageways. Along with a host of new scenarios, treasures, soldiers, and creatures, the book also contains rules for the traps and secret passages that are often found in the dungeons. With wonderful and rare magical treasures to be discovered, will players risk taking their warbands down into the Breeding Pits?

A Billion Suns is a wargame of interstellar combat that puts you in command of fleets of powerful starships, from squadrons of agile, but fragile, fighters, to hulking and powerful capital ships. Choose your vessels from pre-existing classes then customise them to create your own sub-classes, each with their own strengths, weaknesses, and armament, from accurate torpedoes to devastating macro-cannon. Using simple dice pool mechanics, you must carefully manage your resources and seize the opportunities that come your way in order to lead your fleet to victory and assert your dominance over the stars.

Last Days: Zombie Apocalypse is a skirmish-scale miniatures game of survival horror. It pits players against each other in a nightmarish near-future where the dead have returned to life and are feasting on the living.

Players build their own factions, representing desperate civilians, military personnel, or hardened survivors, and must explore, scavenge, and fight in order to survive another day. Rival gangs are only one of the dangers they face - mindless zombies wander the streets, driven by insatiable hunger and drawn by the sound of combat!

A gang's ability to scavenge is as vital as their combat ability, and players must ensure that they have the resources to survive in this hostile world. Scenarios and campaigns allow you to develop your gang, gain experience and recruit new henchmen to build up your strength or replace the inevitable casualties of the zombie apocalypse.

You are one of the thirty Knights Templar who awoke on Friday, 13 October 1307, only to find themselves wanted criminals and branded heretics by the King of France. Abandoned by the Vatican and sent away early in the morning, you must leave Paris on a day of reckoning and try to find your way across a dark, mythic Europe to a mystical utopia where you can rebuild! Heirs to Heresy starts as a historical-fantasy roleplaying game, but is heavily influenced by Gnosticism, European Folklore, esotericism, and the myths and legends that surround the Templars. The game will ask you to craft the secrets of the Templar treasure, the enemies, and mysteries they will face, as your Knights undertake a mystical journey to the center of themselves along the road to Avallonis. The mechanics are a blend of narrative, storytelling rules, and classic adventure-gaming inspired roleplaying rules that work to create rich aspect-driven characters. As Templar Knights, your skill at arms is unquestionable, but it is the potential access to gnostic spells, unique powers, or intensely powerful faith sets you apart from your comrades. Can you tap into your potential, guarding the mysterious Templar treasure on this last quest you will take for the order and find the answer to the burning question: are the Templars Heirs to Heresy?