Skirmisher Publishing would like to wish all of our friends and readers a Merry Christmas, Super Saturnalia, Happy Yule, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Festive Kwanza, Terrific Zarathosht Diso, Belated Bodhi Day, Bountiful Boxing Day, Cheery Needfest, Idyllic Eid al-Adha, Warm Advent, Cool Childermas, Hangover-Free Gantan-Sai, and Happy Holidays overall, as well as Happy New Year and wonderful 2007! Happy Birthday, Mithra! Party on, Bacchites, pass the vino! Woohoo Sekhmet, you go girl! Sol Invictus! Best wishes to followers of Isis, Mithra, Nodens, Hermes, Baldur, Apollo, Rama, Telchur, the various "New World" deities, and assorted other cults and groupings. And we're pretty sure that star has something to do with the Yellow Sign ...

Apologies to any others that have been overlooked; feel free to let us know if there is a favorite sect you would like mentioned here.

Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtagn!

Skirmisher Publishing LLC is proud to announce the release of House of Pain, an official script for the Cthulhu Live 3rd Edition live-action horror roleplaying game ($4.99, ISBN 0-9777211-5-9, SKPE0704). It is currently available for download from DriveThruRPG.com, RPGNow.com, and YourGamesNow.com.

Welcome to the New World Order! It is the autumn of 1991, and the world is not what it used to be. Saddam Hussein's army lies in smoldering ruins. The Soviet Union is suffering its death throes. Germany has been reunified. Africa is aflame with small bush wars. Across the world, the balance of power is shifting. Old powers are dying out and the playing field of the future will be a chaos of warlords and rogue states.

In this full-length adventure for Cthulhu Live 3rd Edition, the players are power-brokers who have been invited to a private summit to help form the geopolitical landscape of the next century. But while they plot their moves and hide their secrets, they may find that they themselves are pawns in a much larger, more ancient game.

This scenario includes:

* Suggestions for props, costumes, and atmospheric effects.
* World-spanning conspiracies.
* 42 Pre-generated characters, so you can jump straight into the game.
* Two versions of the adventure: one optimized for reading on-screen, and one optimized for printing.

To comment on this story or discuss House of Pain, go to the section devoted to it on the Skirmisher Forum.

Skirmisher Publishing LLC is proud to announce the release of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Mars: Shadows of a Dying World, a 62-page d20 sourcebook available in PDF format ($11.99, ISBN 0-9777211-9-1, SKPE 0707). It is currently available for download from Your Games Now, DriveThruRPG.com, RPGNow.com, and Paizo, and on CD-ROM from Amazon.com.

Set on the red planet not as it exists, but as people at the turn of the 20th century thought it might be, Shadows of a Dying World is drawn from the Mars series of Edgar Rice Burroughs and presents creatures from his world in game terms. Its contents are compatible with any games that use the d20/OGL system and can be inserted into them in whole or in part.

On this Mars, elegant city-states rise along the banks of world-spanning canals, luxurious airships ply the thin atmosphere, feisty princesses and feckless nobles are menaced by killers of the drear dried-up sea-beds, and skilled swordsmen defend dynasties that have ruled for aeons. Despite both wondrous technology and mysterious mental abilities developed beyond the comprehension of Earthlings, however, the most farsighted of the Martians know that the history of their world is drawing toward its end, and that its life-giving atmosphere and waterways are already sustained only by vast efforts of engineering.

Shadows of a Dying World presents the unique wonders and dangers posed by the weirdly sentient denizens of Burroughs' Mars. Creatures covered in Shadows of a Dying World include the Apt, Banth, Calot, Corphal, Great White Ape, Green Martian, Kaldane, Rykor, Plant Man, Silian, Sith, Thoat, Ulsio, and Zitidar.

Other features of this book include guidelines for using Burroughs' creatures in both Mars and non-Mars campaign settings, Martian random encounter tables, new Feats, the Class Defense Bonus combat option, and original illustrations by artists Brendan Cass, Dragan Ciric, Sharon Daugherty, William Hazzard II, and Geoff Weber. This book also comes with Combined Creature Creation, a 52-page bonus document compiled and used during the creation of this book and provided as a useful tool for game masters.

The material in this book is compatible with the 3rd edition of the d20 system and is a preview of a complete roleplaying game based on Edgar Rice Burroughs' Mars currently under development by Skirmisher Publishing LLC. It will be compatible with the upcoming new edition of the d20 system, will provide core rules adapted to Burroughs’ unique milieu, and will include classes, skills, feats, technological devices, psionic powers, and campaign setting information.

For more information about Shadows of a Dying World or the Edgar Rice Burroughs' Mars campaign setting, contact Skirmisher Publishing LLC at d20@skirmisher.com.

To comment on this story or to discuss the release it is about, go the appropriate section on the Skirmisher Forum.

COMMERCE, Texas -- Computer games are among the hottest forms of entertainment with the average American spending more time and money on these than on movies. So many people are playing -- at least one in every hundred -- that gaming has attracted the attention of psychologists.

Role-players themselves also often wonder if their virtual opponents are as tough as they seem, or if they really are just precocious twelve-year-olds or loving grandparents.

It turns out that, if your opponent is shrewd, then it is very likely that person has those same traits in real life, too, according to a new study recently published in Imagination, Cognition and Personality.

Texas A&M University-Commerce's Anna Park and Dr. Tracy Henley, head of the psychology department, studied the relationship between personality and character preferences in fantasy computer role-playing games. They discovered that people choose characters that are reflections of their own personalities.

Park was intrigued by the relationship between personality, and the things people actually do in their everyday life. She wondered if very different types of people would choose very different types of roles as a function of their personalities. With the help of Henley, Park devised a lengthy survey that simulated the process of creating a character for a fantasy computer game.

About 250 participants volunteered to complete the study, which explored the relationships between the participants' personalities and their choice of fantasy game characters.

"I was surprised that people weren't choosing something different from what they were in the real world," says Park. "I thought compliant people might choose an evil character as a way to release aggression, but they didn't. It seems that people want some form of themselves in the fantasy so that they can see themselves
perform in that environment."

Henley adds, "It is difficult for most people to keep up a facade and to be consistent in that guise across diverse situations over a long period of time. Sooner or later you revert to who you actually are."

Overall, the study found males are more likely to prefer more deviant and assertive characters than females, who tended to favor characters from gentler species - such as elves -- or associated with helping professions -- such as cleric or ranger.

Interestingly, about 28 percent of women preferred to play a male character, whereas 100 percent of men wanted a male character.

Additionally, most (54 percent) of people wanted their character to be morally good, with 38 percent wanting their character to be neutral, and 6 percent wanting their character to be evil. "Those are the folks you want to avoid when playing World of Warcraft, and in dark alleyways," Henley observed.

"Even if fantasy gaming," says Park, "people seem to mimic life."