My final gift for the year

Random maps and encounters from Wizardawn. Happy Hogmanay!

Shuri's Strike Gauntlets

Nerf have already brought out Shuri’s Strike Gauntlets from Black Panther. The girl demonstrating them on the box looks so happy.

The King In Yellow Goes Wrong

And some days, RPG.net hands you the perfect one-shot adventure hook. Thank you, thenorm42.

Black Mirror season four

People have already watched and reviewed all of Black Mirror S4.

USS Callister is unsurprisingly getting the most geek attention, as the big feature-length (hour and a quarter) episode, labelled episode one, and about something that looks a lot like Star Trek.

Cyberpunk as f---

I say this regularly, but the first person to be murdered by a sex robot is already among us, blissfully unaware of the hand they will be dealt by history.
Tristin Hopper

I'm late on this joke, but...

The plums were in the freezer
They were put there by a geezer
Who planned to eat them later on

If I had my own way
I’d eat cold plums every day
But I know eating his was wrong

Star Trek Continues... on DVD!

Star Trek Continues has released its eleven-episode run on DVD-quality download, including the series finale the original series never got.

12 Buffy hooks from Paramore's After Laughter

(Real) happy birthday to Hayley Williams. I’ve been listening to Paramore’s new album After Laughter quiiiite a lot this year, with its mixture of bouncy 80s sounds and lyrics about loss and anxiety, so...

27th December

Rewatching The Last Jedi on IMAX 3D on the anniversary of Carrie Fisher’s death, it still hurts.

With the surprises no longer surprising, the way things work fits together more clearly.

The Miniaturist

In the BBC adaptation of The Miniaturist, Anya Taylor-Joy’s character gets pretty dresses and the taste of butter and still isn’t happy. I think there’s a lesson there. Never trust a talking goat.

Being only one episode of two, I’m wondering how it will balance the realistic concerns of secrets kept too long, old loves turned to resentment and repressed desires with the seemingly supernatural insights of the fleetingly-glimpsed title character. Is she simply an observant spy... who sometimes sneaks into the house to update her work?

Snow!

A white Christmas it’s not dawn yet it still counts shut up

Presents

I have received much, for which I am glad!

The special edition DVD of Spider-Man Homecoming comes with a proper bonus disc! Also GOTG 2, Wonder Woman and SPECTRE. A DWM comic collection, the first Warren Ellis James Bond story, a Star Wars story anthology, a horror story collection. Rebels S3, Primaris Marines - must find old-school beaky Space Marine heads for at least some. Also chocolate.

And the family has 25 hectares of Sumatran rainforest leased to be saved from development for 99 years!

I have given WildC.A.T.s and Han Solo, the recent Highlander graphic novel, the recent Black Canary, and a diary from the always-excellent Wildlife Photographer Of The Year exhibition. And chocolate. And mince pies.

And I have more to give in the coming days. Spoilers!

Also starring Santa

A classic Comics Alliance moment, where Chris Sims discusses why Santa Claus doesn’t turn up in DC Universe megacrossovers. Sure, the universe has ended multiple times, but it’s never been so bad that it needs Santa’s help... until now.

The reason TWH was set in that particular Cambridge college

Ooh, M.R. James ghost stories night on BBC Four. And all I got them for Christmas was a licence fee payment.

Star Crash

It is a trick that's easier to get away with in the first film than the ninth. If they'd made 8 sequels to Star Crash, they'd've probably had to (or at least been tempted to) explain what the everliving f*ck "Imperial Battleship! Halt the flow of time!" actually means.
Agamemnon2 on RPG.net about the worldbuilding in The Last Jedi. (asterisk mine)

I haven’t talked about Star Crash here. As the Pulp Librarian thread explains, it’s a legendary Star Wars knockoff that features Caroline Munro as the hero, Christopher Plummer stopping the flow of time, a gunslinger robot who talks like a Texan, and David Hasslehoff lightsaber fighting stop-motion robots, all to a John Barry score. It is not good, but it certainly has its moments.

Charity V20 raffle

Matt M McElroy will give a limited-edition Vampire: The Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition rulebook to someone who gives to charity this Christmas.

"YOU SHALL NOT PASS!"

The dramatic underlighting really sells the power of Catzilla as Santa goes out to confront it.

(Source unknown, via Cat Pictures on Twitter.)

Unexpected environmental factors

Stuck for almost fifty minutes on an already-late bus into town on the Friday before Christmas: +2 to Frenzy rolls.

Comes the sun again

This is the shortest day here. Tomorrow will be a little longer.

Thea Gilmore, Sol Invictus

Stargate: Origins

If adventure has a name, it must be Catherine Langford.

In.

Artemis Fowl on the way to the cinema

... via Kenneth Branagh, and bringing Dame Judi Dench as the commander of the fairy police with it.

In.

The Last Jedi spoiler post

You have been warned.

Wellington Paranormal

The cops from What We Do In The Shadows get their own spinoff series.

Which came first?

“For sale, baby shoes, never worn” or “Baby needs a new pair of shoes”?

Wesley Snipes and Sean Astin team up for a Starfinder setting

I am not making this up.

The article also mentions Larry Elmore and Starfinder co-creators Jason Bulmahn and Erik Mona being involved.

Thanks to Unseenlibrarian for this surprising news.

Where to draw the line with horror

I feel like we would have had a third The Woman In Black film by now if not for the whole “viciously murdering children” bit. That’s always seemed a bit much for a mainstream franchise.

And I say this as someone who has an idea for the next film - it’s the early 1970s and a rock star buys the house because of its reputation, like Jimmy Page with Aleister Crowley’s old digs. Hilarity does not ensue. Might work as a horror one-shot...

Another D&D movie... in 2021

Hasbro are apparently gearing up for another G.I. Joe movie, and one for Micronauts... and a Dungeons & Dragons film due summer 2021.

Okay, three and a half years out gives them time to put something decent together, right...?

I wonder if the Micronauts movie will keep the twist the Marvel comics added to make it not just a Star Wars knockoff with added centaurs, where the toys are actual size, in a Land Of The Giants riff when the visit Earth. Yeah, I’m more curious about the Micronauts movie...

GMing plans for next year

Looking in on GEAS again for the last session before Christmas, despite the game I was playing having ended last week and the game I was running in the evening having been taken out behind the shed and shot the week before...

Might offer something to gen pop. If so, something uncomplicated.

This is all getting a bit Newspeak

vulnerable
entitlement
diversity
transgender
fetus
evidence-based
science-based

Chronicles Of Darkness 2017 PDF Sale Bundles

Save yourselves!

Net Neutrality

This is not over.

Disney bought 20th Century Fox

The mouse ate the fox. That’s a big megacorp monopoly deal, swallowing one of the other five big studios. (It doesn’t include Fox News, so no cutting the head off that snake unfortunately.)

Look forward to Disney buying all of your hobbies and your actual childhood next.

From a geek perspective, this means they now own the X-Men and Fantastic Four parts of the Marvel universe so they can be dropped into the MCU, The Simpsons, Alien, Avatar, National Geographic... and possibly, due to assorted other rights issues, Buffy and Firefly.

A day too late to put the Fox fanfare back at the front of The Last Jedi, but I’d definitely expect that to happen.

The X-Men movies that are already on their way (Dark Phoenix, New Mutants and Deadpool 2) will presumably still happen, though some rebooting may occur - not that this series hasn’t been rebooted more than once already. Who knows what this means for Legion and The Gifted.

Wanda and Pietro’s MCU origins probably won’t be retconned (and nor will the mutant-style Inhuman plot from Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.) but they might include a line about how mutant powers are like Wanda’s but manifest naturally.

The Fantastic Four... well, I expect to see Doctor Doom turn up sooner rather than later. And they can play him straight and make a joke about how much he’s like Darth Vader.

Obviously I have high hopes for something Buffyverse.

The Last Jedi spoilers

Seriously now.

Star Wars: Episode VIII, The Last Jedi

Okay, same drill as before, serious spoilers redacted for a week...

The Star Wars trailer

As in The Star Wars, the early 70s working title. An animation and VFX school project brings Ralph McQuarrie’s concept paintings to life. Lovely.

A New Hope

This time tomorrow I will be watching The Last Jedi. (Or maybe the adverts before it.)

My hope is that I’ll like it.

My gaming hope is that it opens up the Resistance era to be something different and game-friendly. The Force Awakens introduced new characters but a familiar toy box, scruffy heroes in the Millennium Falcon and X-Wings fighting Stormtroopers and black-clad villains in TIE Fighters and Star Destroyers.

Miskatonic Repository

A DMs Guild for Call of Cthulhu. Which is nice, if surprising as Chaosium already had community content in the form of chapbooks.

Have fun storming the Death Star!

Rian Johnson on making sure Star Wars is funny. I concur, having seen a few too many Serious People With Lightsabers fan films in particular.

And sometimes your gear rolls a 1

Ah, nothing like a Windows update preventing me going online to brighten up an evening.

Whenever something like this happens I’m glad I’m not a cyborg. (Having just watched Chappie, which touches on this too.)

We now have two Star Trek TOS miniatures lines...

HeroClix is bringing one out too. Wait around ages and then two come along at once.

As is traditional with Clix, there are a number of nice sculpts hidden by paint, especially these days with the trend towards 3D modelling making very detailed and realistic miniatures. A few too many repeated bodies let the side down somewhat though.

I got their Kelvin Timeline set and they’re fine, likely softer sculpts than these. (Comparison shots in this review.)

And I think the first time we’ve gotten a figure for the unstoppable Lieutenant Leslie.

Yes, another update

Christmas shopping achieved. (Quite a lot of comics and books stuff, nothing directly RPG-related.)

Not to achieve Christmas writing and publishing.

Welcome to Night Vale TV?

Try not to look at the dog park.

Wondering how this will work. Do you follow the big plots in the style of the novels, or go monster-of-the-week and change it from local radio to local TV, going out and reporting on strange phenomena in that same matter-of-fact tone?

Star Trek Adventures black on white

Star Trek Adventures has a white-on-black design in the style of TNG-era information screens, but they’ve also made a black-on-white version available via DriveThruRPG for those who have trouble reading it as well as making the PDF a lot more printer-friendly. I approve.

USS Callister

Based on the brief trailer, I’ve got a theory about the Star Trek pastiche episode of Black Mirror...

Non-frontline superpowers

Thinking about superhero settings again, spurred by this RPG.net thread. I rather like the idea of including power types that none of the PCs have but making them less than ideal for “frontline” heroes and villains, like magic being ritual-based and slow.

Perilous Adventure!

WFRP 1 is baaaaaack. In corrected, cleaned up but basically unaltered PDF.

Tis the season

Christmas must be close. The Radio Times is coming out early.

Pelgrane Bundles

The Dracula Dossier, Dying Earth and Stone Skin fiction!

Update:

I have returned from That London. Most Christmas shopping achieved. (Also got Pugmire signed by Eddy Webb both for me and for Jamie Prentice.)

Dragonmeet 2017

Hello to people I saw and didn’t see. You may hear me among the audience in some podcasts of seminars.

Evidence that Dragonmeet is getting bigger: I missed two other seminars because they were full. More space next time maybe?

December!

And if I had my act together I would have Cold Dark Christmas up today. But I don’t. And I have to be on a train to Dragonmeet in nine and a half hours. Oh well. When I get back, and recover. Hopefully.

So here’s a small preview, the result of finding that December 25th is also a possible birthday for Osiris...

The Children of Osiris venerate their slumbering god in their traditional manner – with elaborate rituals, acts of kindness to other vampires seeking meaning in their existence, and of course killing Followers of Set.