Pelgrane Press has two new products for Trail of Cthulhu, the Lovecraftian horror investigation game using the Gumshoe system. Arkham Detective Tales is a collection of four scenarios set in New York City. And Rough Magicks is a guide to using magic, with warnings about the resulting costs.

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Though Crafty Games already issued Fantasy Craft under the Open Game License, they’re now adding an additional license that will allow other companies to freely publish and sell products for the Fantasy Craft game without further approval. The Powered by Fantasy Craft license has been signed by 93 Games Studio, Battlefield Press Inc., Fat Dragon Games, Heroic Journey Publishing, Natural Twenty Games, Reality Blurs, Ravensworth Press, Revenant Games, and Vigilance Press. A similar license is also beeing made available for Spyraft.

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Hasbro has started its biggest marketing blitz for some time.

In addition to the already covered new Monopoly City, Monopoly City Streets, deal with Marvel, planned Hasbro TV, XBLA Channel, line of clothing, and their blitz of Hasbro property-themed movies in the works …

Hasbro is teaming up with furniture retailers to create in-store game night promotions from Jan 18 to Mar 12. (source)

Hasbro convinced Taylor Swift, Jonas Brothers, Hugh Jackman, Heidi Klum, Ellen DeGeneres & Portia De Rossi to sign onto Project Zambi, selling stuffed elephants to raise money to help poor kids in Zambia. (source)

In other marketing blitz news:

Mattel is creating special Make-a-Wish dolls. (source)

At the upcoming Chicago Toy and Game Fair, Jay Tummelson of Rio Grande Games is committed to publish at least one game pitched to him at the event. (source)

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The NY Times gives Monopoly City Edition (the new board game, not the online Google game) their usual dry once-over. (source)

The Street analyzes the major US toy retailers. (source)

The Moscow-Pullman Daily News pimps the Palouse Board Gamers and German games, including The Settlers of Catan, Ticket to Ride, and Munchkin Quest. (source)

CBC Radio One Edmonton is pimping games in its Radio Active show with John Engels, including Catch Phrase, Wacky Stacky, Tumblin Dice, Blokus, Eat My Trivia, Formula D, Boomtown, and Citadels. (programs)

The UK’s Daily Mail pimps the other side of games – investment – with an article on older, more valuable board games. (source)

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Where There Is Discord is by Dan Hodges, with beautiful graphics by Mark Mahaffey, from sggc Fifth Column Games. The game is a solo-only simulation of the Falklands War.

It comes with a boatload of 1-inch pieces, an over-sized board, cards, and rules. Unfortunately, it’s not only a pricey game at 35 GBP, shipping is also pricey: an additional 20 GBP to ship to the US, for instance.

On the other hand, they’re donating ALL of their profits to the British Legion and the Argentinian Veteranos de Guerra.

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Pass The Popcorn from Wiggles 3D is a movie trivia game with simple rules: Read a card with a cast list, or plot, or quote, and players try to be the first to guess the movie. Has all the usual benefits and drawbacks of a straightforward trivia game. More information cannot be found on the official site.

Wiggle also makes Don’t Quote Me, Villa Paletti, Eye Know, and Yikerz.

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Word Bomb from sggc Learn Laughing is an attempt at a simple, educational card game for recognizing a few words in English.

The deck has a bunch of words and a bunch of special cards. Drawn some of them and drop them on the table. Then, in turn, pick a card, and if you can pronounce the word on it (“after”, “done”, …) you keep the card. Otherwise, you throw it back.

That COULD have resulted in rewarding the player who does best with a win. However, the “special cards” not only cause you to lose your turn, they also require you to lose all of your cards, or have each player pass all of his or her cards to the player on the left or right, and so on. Which means that the winner is nearly entirely random.

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Restaurant Row is a board game by Greg Lam from Pair-of-Dice Games, a venture attempting to both design, publish, and distribute games all at once.

I’ve had the pleasure of playing one of their previous games, Knockabout, which was quite good, and I hear that Restaurant Row is also quite good. So no complaints in the game play department.

As to components … Restaurant Row is their most complex game, yet, and it comes in what appears to be a corrugated cardboard box. The game “board” is sheets of paper put into a plastic restaurant menu cover. Add to that some dice and poker chips, and it’s hard to see how the game could reasonably be worth the $35 they’re asking for it.

I’ve made game prototypes, so I know that the quality you get for making only a few games is not as good, and more expensive, but you don’t then sell prototypes as finished items. You send them to publishers and get them to publish professional looking games.

I admit that the restaurant menu idea is cute for a restaurant themed game, and you can easily write and erase on it, as is needed during the game. I look forward to playing it, hopefully in a nicer version.

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