Once Upon a Really Awful Time...

Even it it’s difficult to imagine a young Old Dam, slightly smaller Wellington-Smythe Twins, or Elias E. Gorr in the days when he only dug graves for goldfish, it’s not hard to imagine them all listening to fairy tales as children.

Fairy tales, after all, are kind of terrible. Young women stealing porridge, giants falling from the sky, and jealous, evil queens? What’s more perfectly suited for the world of Gloom?

Not much! That’s why the delightful but ultimately troubling stories from your childhood are the subject of the newest stand-alone edition of Gloom. It’s not like it was a stretch to borrow material from the Brothers Grimm — those guys put wolves in everything.

In Fairy Tale Gloom, the fairy tales won't stay familiar for long. But all your friends will be there: Jack, Pinocchio, Hansel, Gretel, Puss in Boots, and Little Red (remember all those wolves?) Riding Hood.

Whether you’ve always insisted that Hansel and Gretel got lost because they were Tweeting instead of paying attention, or known that Goldilocks should get busted for what was clearly breaking and entering, the magic beans are in your hands now. Are all those women called “Grandma” actually the same person? Are you finally going to cut Cinderella a break already because her origin story is such a bummer? Probably not, on both counts. But no one can know how hot or cold the porridge really is until you dig in.

Stay tuned for more information, and clear your schedule for Fairy Tale Gloom, coming May 2015.

The Building Blocks of Despair

If you drop in on our Twitter feed very often, you’re probably familiar with the mysterious Dave Kaleta — aka @KakaLeta. Dave's been on a wicked tear in recent weeks, creating LEGO versions of Gloom characters.

In hopes of un-mysterious-ing Dave just a bit, we sent him an email…

Who are you?

I'm Dave from Chicago, I teach kindergarten.

The Blackwater Family

What inspired your majestic Gloom creations?

Every year a group of LEGO builders that I collaborate with do a secret Santa exchange. This year I drew my friend Stacy, who is a board game geek and Edward Gorey aficionado — I knew exactly what to create for her! My intention was to build the Castle Slogar family for her and be done. But once I started to see these characters that I loved torturing (to death) realized in LEGO from, I couldn't stop!

These builds were done over the course of a few days, with each character taking about an hour. Turning two-dimensional black-and-white portraits into full color figures was both challenging and fun. I may have to make another set of Slogar family figures for myself so that I can play Gloom with the characters on the table!

Do you have a favorite card in the game?

My favorite card, by far, is "Was Pursued by Poodles." Some of the best stories come from imagining why this might happen to a character.

Do you have a favorite family to play?

I love playing as the Hemlock Hall family because they seem to have the most complex and twisted family history.

The Hemlock Clan

If you could have three Gloom characters over for dinner, which ones would you pick?

As dinner guests, it would probably be best to have Lord Slogar, Grogar, and Balthazar over, as they probably wouldn't complain much about my cooking.

See more of Dave’s epic LEGO creations at his Flickr site, and make sure to Tweet @KakaLeta to tell him about the time you yourself were pursued by poodles!

Two New Ars Magica Books in PDF

We're pleased to announce that two more books in the Ars Magica 5th Edition line are now available in PDF: The Contested Isle and Transforming Mythic Europe.  Hop on over to Warehouse 23 to pick up your copies today!

+5 to Game Knowledge with the Newest Bundle of Holding

You may be used to the Bundle of Holding as the ideal place to fill out your RPG library so that your cup of adventure may ever runneth over, but this week’s the Bundle is a different kind of awesome. Frequent Atlas collaborator extraordinaire Robin Law’s book 40 Years of GenCon is included as part of this week’s Gaming History–themed package, Designers, Dragons and More. Enhance your game play and your domination of all things game trivia with a collection that tells the creation stories of your favorite games.

Other titles in the Bundle include:

The Four Volume Designers and Dragons set of roleplaying histories from Evil Hat
Each volume covers a decade of RPG history, highlighting the important names, facts, and stories about how gaming became what it is.

Games: The 100 Best from Green Ronin
Field experts, including writers, designers and notable game lovers share essays on the  cream of the gaming crop over the last 50 years.


New to the Bundle of Holding? You’ll get DRM-free PDFs of the week’s excellent offerings for a fraction of the price of the physical books. And 10% of each Bundle’s proceeds are always donated to charities. This Bundle's charity organization is Reading is Fundamental

This Bundle will be available until January 30th, 2015.


   

Welcome Kyla McT to the Atlas Games team!

Kyla McCorkle Tonding is Atlas’ newest hire and Game Producer.

That means she does a little bit of everything, like project management, graphic design, and copyediting. Variety is the spice of work! She prefers working for small businesses, and has worked everywhere from a museum to a mobile app developer, doing everything from accounting to social media, even playing a theremin. Poorly.

She was born in North Minneapolis and bought a house there last year. Having a kitchen, a basement, and a backyard allowed her to finally realize her dreams of hosting dinner parties, having space for neatly-organized craft supplies, and welcoming a puppy to the family.

Her parents met at debate camp, so gaming was (and still is!) second only to arguing as a family pastime. She was raised to believe that games and arguments bring people together. After a brief stint as a political science major in college, Kyla realized that arguing for a living sounds terrible, so she’s delighted to be working in the gaming industry.