Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Best-selling titles in August

Here's a list of the best-selling NUELOW Games titles for the month of August.

1. Names in the Black Book by Robert E. Howard (horror fiction anthology)

2. From Dark Corners Vo1. 1 by Various (horror fiction anthology)

3. Rolf!: Santa vs. Santos vs. Jesus by Steve Miller and L.L. Hundal (game supplement)

4. The Deadly Sword of Cormac by Robert E. Howard (historical fiction anthology)

5. Rolf!: The Rollplaying Game of Big Dumb Fighters by L.L. Hundal and Steve Miller (core rule book)

Although I was disappointed that the John Kendrick Bangs books from July didn't do better than they did, because I love his stuff dearly, I am happy with the level of sales we've been getting from our Robert E. Howard collections. We've got a few more coming, and we'll see if Howard keeps being popular with you folks out there.

Meanwhile, if you've purchases and downloaded any of our releases, we'd love to hear from you, either here on the blog or through comments on the listings where you downloaded your purchase. What did you like? What didn't you like? Let us know, so we can improve!

Monday, August 29, 2011

Two new releases from NUELOW Games!

We remain in the grip of Robert E. Howard mania at NUELOW Games, and this past weekend we released a new fiction anthology with Howard fiction, and a ROLF! supplement inspired by same.

The anthology, titled "Names in the Black Book," features three horror-tinged detective stories featuring Steve Harrison, the cop character Howard wrote the most stories about. Click here for more details, or do buy a copy for a mere $1.75.

The Howard-inspired ROLF! supplement is "Hammerin' Tongs," which features three new boxing themed Combat Maneuvers, as the three included interlinked Combat Scenarios are keyed to pre-generated characters (also included) based on Howard's Steve Harrison, his boxing sailor Steve Costigan, Tong opponents wanting to beat them up (and visa versa). Like most other ROLF! supplements, it costs a mere $0.50 at RPGNow.com.


   



Check 'em out... come join NUELOW Games in our love of Robert E. Howard's non-Conan creations! (And if you have a moment, let us know what you think of the releases!)

Saturday, August 27, 2011

We can't get higher praise than this!


When we designed ROLF!: The Rollplaying Game for Big Dumb Fighters, we never thought people wold play it for more than 15-20 minutes... it was just a little game to be used to pass the time before or after the Main Event.

Well, there are few things more satisfying for an RPG creator to learn that not only are people playing your game, but they are having more fun with it than you ever imagined... because they are actually playing it, even playing out the scenarios to their end!

Herb Severson, a player with an infectious enthusiasm for ROLF!, posted the following comments on FACEBOOK regarding his experience with "Herbert West vs. the Zombies":

Had a great game with some friends using the new ROLF RPG set from Steve Miller & NUELOW Games. Great Gothic Zombie Horror set. Herbert West was run by myself with the players playing the Zombie Hoard.

The players prevailed :(

I lasted a mere 1 1/2 hrs of play time. Every time I pick up a set from NUELOW Games I haven't been disappointed. Great gaming to all, enjoy.

Thank you, Herb, for posting about ROLF!, but thank you even more for playing. The same "thank you for playing" goes out to the rest of you as well... but we'd REALLY love to be able to thank you for letting us know about your experiences with the game!

Hopefully, we'll continue to keep Herb and the rest of you happy with our efforts! Please let us know how we're doing, either with FACEBOOK posts, visits to our blog or FACEBOOK page, or by posting comments on the product listings at RPGNow. We won't know what's working unless you tell us.

Thursday, August 25, 2011

The cover for NUELOW's "Names in the Black Book"

A host of computer problems this week has caused us to fall a little behind schedule here at NUELOW Central. The hope was to have our latest Robert E. Howard anthology available for download yesterday, but instead it will be sometime today. The ROLF! supplement will appear Saturday or Sunday, instead of Friday, as we had planned.

The good news is it gave me time to rethink the title of the Steve Harrison anthology... while he may be a detective in the River Street Precinct, only one story in the book actually takes place anywhere near River Street. So, that title simply didn't work!

But here's the cover for "Names in the Black Book," a small anthology featuring a trio of Robert E. Howard stories about Detective Steve Harrison and some particularly bone-chilling cases.




An interesting bit of trivia about the story from which the book draws its name: It's actually a sequel to a story that didn't see print during Howard's short career and lifetime.

The editors of "Strange Detective Stories" apparently rejected the first Steve Harrison adventure, "Lord of the Dead," but bought this sequel and two other Harrison tales--"The People of the Serpent" [which they published as "Fangs of Gold"] and "The Secret of the Tomb." The latter tale, they revised so it starred "Brock Rollins" instead of Steve Harrison.

That said, "Names in the Book of the Dead" works perfectly fine on its own. The tales here shows that Howard could write detective fiction as well as he wrote horror and fantasy... even if the detective adventures presented here overlap quite a bit with the horror genre.

By the way, these are some of the stories that critics point to when they say Howard's writing is racist. While I certainly agree that his tendency toward casual racism is in full force in all three stories--even more clearly as they all involve ethnic communities of one kind or another. I would like readers to notice that the hero, Officer Harrison, is not a racist. The same can't be said of the villains in "Graveyard Rats."


Monday, August 22, 2011

Coming this week from NUELOW Games...

Two releases! Wow!

First up, there's another anthology of Robert E. Howard fiction along the lines of "The Deadly Sword of Cormac" titled "Terror on River Street: Three Strange Cases for Steve Harrison".

Then, there's another supplement for "ROLF!: The Rollplaying Game of Big Dumb Fighters" titled "Hammerin' Tongs," with a fight against nefarious Chinese gangsters that starts with brawling sailor Steve Costigan whupping tail on the waterfront of Hong Kong and ends with hard-bitten detective Steve Harrison mowing down bad guys in the dark shadows of the River Street District halfway around the world. (As last week's release was inspired by H.P. Lovecraft, so was this week's product inspired by Robert E. Howard. We're on a pulp fiction kick here at NUELOW Central!)

Prices and download links will be provided when the PDFs are finalized.


Saturday, August 20, 2011

Happy birthday, H.P. Lovecraft

Today, August 20, is the birthday of H.P. Lovecraft, groundbreaking horror writer and the first guy to write about fresh-ripping, gore-spreading zombies. If you haven't read his "Herbert West, Re-Animator" stories, you should do so now. Click here to read them for free at Steve Miller's Fiction Archive... or wait until October when they will be featured in a horror anthology we're putting together in celebration of Halloween (when you can read them a whole slew of other cool horror stories--including ones from this decade).

Aside from reading the Lovecraft stories, we here at NUELOW Games is celebrating his birthday by giving you a gift! For Saturday, the latest ROLF! supplement--a Lovecraft-inspired effort titled "Herbert West vs. the Zombies"--can be had free of charge by clicking here. (A copy of "ROLF!: The Rollplaying Game of Big Dumb Fighters" is required for full enjoyment of the product, however.)

Also, here's Jeff Preston & Karl M.'s portrait of Herbert West, as found in the product..
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Friday, August 19, 2011

Discount price on "The Deadly Sword of Cormac" extended!

Cover art from "The Deadly Sword of Cormac," by Larry Elmore & Karl M.
It was a slow week for NUELOW Games at DriveThruRPG.com (what with the site being FUBAR for much of it) but our second fiction anthology did well enough to knock "ROLF!" from its long-held #1 spot on our top-sellers list.

Robert E. Howard completed two Cormac FitzGeoffrey stories, and this budget-priced e-book collects both in once place. Get your copy for 33% off and bring more sword-swinging action from the creator of Conan into your life!

If you're a big fan of Howard--like everyone here at NUELOW Central is--you also don't miss our first anthology, "From Dark Corners," which features three of his chilling horror stories. Click here to read more, and perhaps even get a copy of your own.