Thirty Days Hath November...

Coming soon to a blog near you, something very like this...

In the meantime, happy Halloween!

The War Of The Worlds

Via Shawn: Tonight marks the 75th anniversary of the Orson Welles radio adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The War Of The Worlds, a hoax news broadcast that some listeners, missing the start, took to be real. Check it out at Mercury Theater (and quite a few more, including Dracula, Sherlock Holmes and A Christmas Carol) to see how it worked, and how well it worked.

Also tomorrow is the 21st anniversary of the one and only showing of Ghostwatch on BBC One, for the same reason.

And see a brief history of Midnight Ghost Shows for added period context. May have to set an adventure around one of those...

How to use hoaxes in games? The characters discovering one would be straightforward. Although that might end up a bit Scooby-Doo it would be one way to introduce out-of-context plot points into a game for one night only, like a haunted house in Cyberpunk for example. More trickily, the hoax could be aimed at the players - but bear in mind that, unlike Orson Welles, you are within range of having things thrown at you...

Trick Or Treat

DriveThruRPG and its affiliates have their annual Trick Or Treat treasure hunt up now. Excuse me while I go try and find the right pumpkins for free PDFs of Promethean, Streets Of Bedlam and Profane Miracles. :)

The Jane Austen MMO

Via io9, Ever Jane concerns the building and increasing of a reputation in Regency society, with gossip as the weapon of choice. The graphics aren’t up to much but it’s certainly trying something different.

And as I load the page I get an explosion-tastic ad for Battlefield 4 playing on the side. I think this says something about gaming...

Things are getting strange, I'm starting to worry...

These could be a case for Mulder and Scully. Or your own group of paranormal investigators, monster hunters, innocent people unfortunate enough to live in a World Of Darkness. And so could these.

“Cops Stumble Upon Exorcism” is the episode I most want to see happen.

The Northampton Clown, not so much. I suspect in that case most groups of PCs would shoot first and consider asking questions later.

Need a terrifying future special forces unit?

Taiwan has just the thing. Although they really should have revealed them last month for Friday the 13th.

Perhaps not quite as insane as the Judge Dredd cosplayers in the Peruvian riot police but still...

The Watch House season one

Give or take a week, it's the tenth anniversary of The Watch House, that Buffy game some of us didn't shut up about for six and a half years. So... Season One credits.

And Season One itself.

Maaaan I feel old.

The BRAIIINS Of The Operation

First World Of The Dead Problems

Intelligent infectious zombies are rare because they can dilute the horror of the shambling mindless mass, being a lot like vampires with a solid diet and no problem with the sun.

That said, intelligent zombies keenly aware of what they’re doing can still be pretty horrific. I still vividly remember an All Flesh Must Be Eaten thread on RPGnet where the zombies would beg forgiveness and explain that they couldn’t stop themselves...

AFMBE also had a setting idea for intelligent and playable zombies, rare among the classic shamblers. Watching the world of the living fall, maybe trying to change things.

I AM ZOMBIE is based on this as well, with the nagging fear of becoming a shambling Skag always there...

It's aliiiiive!

Steam-powered Frankenstein creature by effects wizard Rick Baker is, as one might expect, pretty darn cool. The militaria makes me think of Dark Harvest in particular.

Templars: the conspiracy theory that keeps on giving

On the subject of history going a bit WOD, Osprey launches the Dark Osprey line with The Knights Templar, a secret history by WFRP co-creator Graeme Davis. And coming soon, The Nazi Occult by Kenneth Hite.

Gamers vs Hellfire

I had never actually heard of Rapture, an SF game about the titular Biblical event happening on Earth after humanity colonises space, but the Gamers vs Hellfire bundle is $50 of stuff for it for $10, going to support the victims and fire-fighters of the Australian bushfires. I know people who had to evacuate their house because of the fires, so I bought this bundle sight-unseen. Rapture looks interesting, which is a bonus.

History at its most World Of Darkness

Pope Innocent VIII, who had the Malleus Maleficarum written and gave Tomas de Torquemada his job running the Spanish Inquisition, was the subject of a medical experiment on his death bed that had him drink human blood. Where all that blood came from is lost to history.

It's a small World of Darkness after all

LARPers run the MET Vampire: The Masquerade preview in Croatia. It looks... pretty much like a Vampire LARP. I find that oddly kinda touching.

"The curse is real..."

Via Marquez Horne on t'RPGnet:

I get back from a game session including showing a couple of friends my new copy of Mummy: The Curse to find that a mummy and two skeletons were unearthed in China and promptly vanished overnight...

Good games, good cause

Red Cross Colorado flood relief bundle on RPGnow includes Mutants & Masterminds, Icons, Broken Shield, Achtung! Cthulhu...

An empty bed still waits for him...

Crow’s Bones, by Becky Unthank among other people, is an evening of supernatural folk songs, new and old. One of them has surfaced in its entirety on Vimeo (with a video featuring roadkill...) and it’s... well, it’s an old story that World Of Darkness people might want to listen to. Sadly the recording isn’t the clearest for catching the lyrics.

Gamebooks for ebooks

Interactive fiction app thingy discussed on the front page of the Guardian.

Fhtagn!

Via Cat: Waterstones Oxford Street versus Cthulhu.

Read and feed

The DriveThruFiction Feeding America Bundle. $178 of fiction PDFs for $20 for a good cause. Includes the first Vampire: The Requiem novel by Greg Stolze, a Paranoia novel by Gar Hanrahan, short stories by Eddy Webb...

Dark Harvest: Legacy Of Frankenstein

Free on PDF for a limited period. On ye go, then!

Primeval Companion

Oh yes.

More characters, more creatures, more conspiracies, more campaign designs, more adventures.

I wonder if the inclusion of Message In An Anomaly will get me a playtest credit. :D

I love that he specifies the edition.

From Tom Gauld, inspired by a letter responding to an article on the new Bond.

There's genre savvy, and then there's genre savvy.

No, this game has no “called shot to the head” rule... why do you ask?

K3LOID pitch/trailer/SF/nightmare

Mecha. Robots. Creepy mannequins. You can spare three minutes for that combination, right?

Need a heroic fantasy score the players won't know?

Apparently Graeme Revell composed part of a score for The 13th Warrior before Jerry Goldsmith got the job.

3D printing for wargame armies is becoming A Thing. Which is nice.

Crunch and Fluff. Grrr.

This is wargaming slang that has moved over to RPGs in the last couple years - and it bugs me every time I see it.

Crunch basically means “rules” and fluff means “setting info”. In a wargame, “fluff” is really not important, hence the dismissive nickname. In an RPG, the “fluff” is the whole point of many books.

Grrr.

/rant