Happy Hogmanay

Take care, keep warm. My message for the year: Are you ready to be strong?

Bumblebee

Bumblebee was fun, and I could tell the Transformers apart in the final battle. This is a hurdle the previous films did not meet. Thanks to new director Travis Knight. It also has a much smaller scale, which helps too, dialing back to and past the first film.

Black Lake series 2

Black Lake is back - a prequel to the original series with borderline villain Johan reappearing.

This time we’re in an island resort now used for group therapy, so instead of a group of friends falling apart we have strangers with a variety of problems above and beyond the secret of Room 5. It does more with the setup than the 2013 Evil Dead, with a character prone to hallucinations and everybody having secrets.

I am, inevitably, thinking it could make a good one-shot. Or a LARP?

You caught me catching up on an old favorite...

Finished rewatching Buffy and Angel (after a pause waiting for my hearing to recover before Once More With Feeling) with inevitable results.

Especially as we pass one low-key Buffy comics reboot and head towards a bigger one, and the first Slayer novel, and still wondering what up with the new TV series, and...

(This particular rewatch accompanied by Noel Murray at the AV Club.)

This year’s hindsighty observation: Note the music over the moment near the end of season two in I Only Have Eyes For You when Spike gets out of the wheelchair. It starts as a scary danger theme but quickly shifts into a Big Damn Hero theme.

How many bars does your game need?

A visitor’s guide to every saloon and bar in Red Dead Redemption 2 suggests a bar-hopping game would be possible. This lists nine - more than Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, for one example I was inevitably going to mention.

Black Mirror: Bandersnatch

Bandersnatch, the choose your own adventure episode of Black Mirror, is out now on Netflix.

It is, I should note, horrible. Not quite The National Anthem horrible, but that’s a high bar.

The title is apparently a reference to a never-released ZX Spectrum game from the 80s, as well as the Alice Through the Looking Glass monster.

And there’s a website for the 80s software company it features, including a game demo - only playable on ZX Spectrum emulators.

Morgan Davie on what it all means - in CYOA format!

And there’s already at least one guide for how to reach the five endings. How long till someone puts up a complete solution flowchart of the episode? Probably not long...

Edit: And here we go. Thanks to Tim Knight for the link.

Renaissance alien armour?

Warframe is now free to play on Discord. All I know about it is that the characters often look a bit more Gigeresque than in the kinda-similar full-face helms in Destiny, and some of them wear enormous trousers to put Henry VIII to shame.

Today I will go out.

Today I will go out. I will get some milk and some bread. Probably some chocolate. Lunch. I might go to the comics shop. But I will bust no doors.

This is US

The trailer for Us, from Jordan Peele...

Fetches?

(Not to be confused with This Is Us. I did that on purpose. I’m a monster.)

Happy day.

Take care.

What did you get?

A list of gifts received

Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse

Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse is ambitious in story as well as style, poignant as well as funny, and a great example of differentiating characters with overlapping power and skill sets.

And stay through the credits. Trust me on this.

If you think your heist plot is far-fetched...

If you think your heist plot is far-fetched, consider this list of real heists from Cracked, especially number 3, covered in more detail at Medium:

Venice’s most notorious art thief was recruited by a mob boss to steal a painting from the Doge’s palace, and then stole it back and returned it to his frenemy in the police (which involved having a copy made by a forger called The Professor and feeding tranquilised steaks to tigers) after finding that his robbery was not the one-off he’d been promised when the gang stole a saint’s jawbone.

Allegedly.

Midwinter

Low the tide, low the light
Comes the sun again

Hacking facial recognition with a fake face

Thomas Brewster at Forbes 3D printed a scan of his head and used it to open a variety of smartphones with facial recognition security. Which is a bit Mission: Impossible, innit?

Except you can do it at home. Dammit, Hardison!

Thanks to James Wallis, the Royal Institution and HackADay for the path to this news.

Aquaman

If the DCEU continues long enough, finding someone who can play Lobo half this well is going to be tough.

Other than that, Aquaman felt very comic-strip and rather pulpy. I presume at least some of the extraneous unused comes from the comics - an entire Atlantean kingdom which is described as lost, for example.

Thanks to the news for explaining how to disrupt an airport so effectively...

Hellboy trailer

The first trailer for Neil Marshal’s new Hellboy movie, starring David Harbour. Taking on the Wild Hunt, in a Billy Idol style... and based in the UK, it seems.

'Tis the season

Can you navigate the deadly political maze that is... the office Christmas party?

(Disclaimer: ours is generally pretty chill.)

They Came From Beneath The Sea!

Now on Kickstarter! Click it and believe it!

The Smell Advert Cinematic Universe

While adverts for bottled smells play year-round they become more prevalent in the run-up to Christmas, because a bottle of smell is presumably a luxury of some kind.

This year, for instance, we have various smell adverts offering the following superpowers:

Zoe Kravitz leading vampires to a nightclub (the latest in a series of vampire nightclub adverts for this brand)
Rooney Mara finding a different vampire nightclub, this one with a secret entrance in the subway
Karlie Kloss making things break by stamping her feet
A guy who hates press conferences where everything is blue collapses walls by disapproval
A couple who can make flying gold lions appear by snapping their fingers

Obviously the flying gold lions are the best superpower on the list, but being able to escape any room you want to leave by making the wall collapse could come in handy too, and being able to lure vampires to specific locations probably has its uses as well.

Jennifer Lawrence being able to keep her makeup flawless while swimming is more of a talent, I suppose.

Warhammer 24FPS

An official Warhammer 40000 animated series coming in 2019.

Harry Potter And The Availability Of Miniatures

The Harry Potter miniatures game that was supposed to go to stores, then Kickstarter, then manufacturer-store exclusive, is now in actual shops. Well done.

Who will find you?

Coming sometime soon, hopefully, at least some Actual Play writing for From The Dust.

I recognise your family crest from 200 years ago.

A thought inspired by GEAS Social pub talk with Matthew B. about how Elves view humans as ephemeral... and I thought about how I have trouble with names of temps at work.

Heraldry and tartan and similar systems are like name tags, so Elves think it’s great when humans use them because they meet so many and who can remember all those names?

Christmas adventures

Rose Bailey asks about Christmas-themed game plans, as well as launching 12 Days, a story game of the Magi.

The Good Place

DramaSystem?

Also... Michael Schur, huh?

Relics & Rarities

A new D&D series from Geek & Sundry, created and GMed by Deborah Ann Woll.

Relics & Rarities, established 1666... could it be an antique store with some magic in its collection?

The Mandalorian main cast

The principal cast for the new Star Wars TV series The Mandalorian has been announced and... if he isn’t voicing a CG alien or something, in a year or so we could have a Werner Herzog action figure.

And now of course I’m imagining a Lord of the Sith with monologues based on Herzog.

“I believe the common denominator of the Universe is not harmony, but chaos, hostility and murder.”

“Our civilization is like a thin layer of ice upon a deep ocean of chaos and darkness.”

“We had mutual respect for each other, even as we both planned each other’s murder.”

Children Of The Nameless

Cosmere creator Brandon Sanderson introduces his new Magic: The Gathering novella, Children of the Nameless, at io9.

The Christmas What Now?

Another Cameo Film Quiz Christmas special, another final round of guessing the titles of bizarre Christmas TV movies. The fact that the one about someone marrying Santa’s kid isn’t called Claus In-Laws is a travesty, quite frankly.

Also this year... The Christmas Dragon.

What the Hell.

Jon Hodgson's Handiwork Games

Jon Hodgson launches a new games company, Handiwork Games. Starting with Grecian high fantasy Hellenistika, and a one-on-one fantasy game based on Beowulf.

Shaun The Sheep: Farmageddon

Like the Doctor, the Avengers and Jeff Goldblum, another of our greatest heroes faces an alien invasion. Shaun The Sheep: Farmageddon. Coming in time for Halloween 2019.

Bite Me: Rose Bailey's guide to Vampire

Bite Me, a writing bible for Vampire: The Requiem, now at Storytellers Vault.

Our legend goes on

Jamie (Andy in TWH) just introduced me as the GM of that game. Given that it ended in 2009, I wonder what he’s been telling people...

Update: apparently it came up in conversation about TPO Milli.

Bruce Baugh with Trinity ideas

Beaming with pride at kind words from Bruce Baugh over the Trinity release.

And now a series hook, about acquirers of rare antiquities in the present and post-chaos seekers after lost things in the Aeon future.

And an RPG.net thread looking at the mechanics.

Rose Bailey at OPc

The Onyx Pathcast talks with Rose Bailey on Vampire: The Requiem, Never Let Go, Carmilla, Cavaliers Of Mars (with adventure hook), Patreon games and The Vicar Of Dibley in the Shire.

Trinity: Aeon

The Aeon book is now out to backers as well.

Trinity Incoming

The advance PDF of the Trinity Continuum rulebook is out to backers.

It is so weird to see my layout suggestions turned into actual layout.

But I could get used to it.

Avengers: End Game

The first trailer, and things look grim...

Trinity page spread previews

Now up for all to see, including the Neptune Foundation with text by, er, me.

They Came From Beneath The Sea

They Came From Beneath The Sea - to Kickstarter on the 18th.

So, uh, contempt of parliament is a thing? Huh.

Captain Marvel

It all begins with a hero.

Anna And The Apocalypse

The Scottish teen musical comedy versus zombie apocalypse cross Anna And The Apocalypse is fun but a mixed bag. Oddly considering that USP, the musical numbers are a bit of a weak point.

Shaking off a -1 Perception penalty

Not wanting to jinx anything, but I now have full-ish hearing in my right ear for the first time since maybe July.

Now And Then

I’ve never run a historical game for long... unless you count The Watch House, which was set five years before we ran it so it would be concurrent with Buffy and not have to address where the Watchers’ Council ended up. (Until it went over five years...)

Thinking about this because someone just suggested a historical Buffy game on the RPG.net Play By Post board, and I really think something like Buffy benefits from the immediacy of a present-ish setting, where you can talk about the same things and make the same jokes IC as OOC. and mangle current speech with Buffyspeak rather than trying to figure out Victorian slang and references.

I ran a 50s Buffy game (briefly) because the idea of the teenager as a distinct thing really started in the 50s, and partially because the slang is kinda funny. But mostly I run contemporary, ringing other changes on the setting like “it’s about trainee Watchers” or “you’re in a band” or “it’s your Doublemeat Palace style horrible first job” or “the main supernaturally-powered character is a medium instead of a slayer” or...

December

You can start playing Christmas music now, I guess.

Bonus if it’s heartbreaking.

(Really, supermarket chain, not a good choice for a festive ad campaign. Seriously, you used “If there was a way I’d hold back this tear”...)

Hey, I didn’t break out the Simon And Garfunkel version of Silent Night overlaid with the nightly news.

Buffy BOOM! and free streaming news

A first look at Dan Mora’s character designs for the new day-one-is-now Buffy comics series. If you’ve been avoiding the news, this is in the realm of spoilers, notably how certain characters are around earlier than expected.

It feels slightly odd to see the likenesses of such familiar faces in a modernised reboot, but then redesigning their looks would take a lot more effort and put old fans off.

Also, as of today you can get all of Buffy, Angel and Firefly free on Facebook. Apparently Facebook has a streaming thing.

St. Andrew's Day

Something something haggis something Bruce something referendum. Have a good one!

Suspiria (2018)

The new Suspiria will probably be known as “the new Suspiria” until someone makes a third one. Which is a shame because it’s different enough to be interesting. Unlike every Argento film I’ve seen that isn’t Suspiria.

(Still not beating Black Swan as my favourite ballet troupe horror film, though.)

It uses 1970s Berlin as a setting much more than the original, which was set and partially shot in Germany for funding reasons - the Berlin Wall is right outside the school, and there’s the questionably tasteful choice to have the Baader-Meinhof group featured in the news throughout and used as an excuse to cover a character disappearing.

It also uses dance itself much more extensively too, as a ritual and occult thing.

Of course, being an hour longer than the original helps with the whole “coherence” thing.

And it never has a line of exposition like “And she founded the Tam academy, at first a sort of school of dance and occult sciences.”

Things you people wouldn't believe...

In the last couple days, it has been announced that Netflix are planning a live-action Cowboy Bebop series, and the makers of Cowboy Bebop are planning a Blade Runner anime.

Is it too late to switch script folders?

Trinity approaching

The latest Trinity Continuum update on Kickstarter includes layout samples (including a bit that I wrote!) and character sheets!

The Windy City

Last two nights for Chicago By Night on Kickstarter.

Gail Simone's Call Of Cthulhu adventure

Gail Simone runs a brief Call of Cthulhu adventure on her Twitter. Which despite the jokes is really quite horrific by the end. :)

Cymera genre book festival

A literary festival for SF/F and horror, coming to Edinburgh in June. Announcement in the Herald (note that the website loves popups like something out of 2003)

The art of Battlefield V and Tomb Raider

Both of which will fit nicely into Trinity or Adventure! and in the former case that WWII supers game I’ve been thinking of running.

Battlefield V

Shadow Of The Tomb Raider - some of this is a spoiler.

Tales From Black Friday 2018

The iron gate opens with a shriek of rusted metal. The year has come full circle. Their time is upon us once more. The riders are abroad.

Once they were great captains of industry. If they still had faces, you would know them.

One of them turns a hollow hood towards you, giving you a glimpse of the nothingness within.

A voice that comes from no human lips echoes in your mind.

“Buyer... bargainsssssss...”

The figure unsheathes a pricing gun and advances, implacable as winter itself.

Your only hope, to defeat it with the truth of its own meaninglessness.

“The sales started a week ago!”

It stops and lets out a baleful shriek. You feel a year of your life drained away. And then it is gone, leaving only shreds of dark postage wrapping.

You are safe. For now. But you know the discounts will continue through the weekend.

And beyond.

Tales From Black Friday

Happy Thanksgiving, US-based friends.

WFRP 4 introductory adventure

Ubersreik Adventures: If Looks Could Kill, a free introductory adventure for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 4th edition.

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood Of Venice

A cooperative game with miniatures featuring Ezio, Leonardo da Vinci and his tank, Lucrezia Borgia and about a hundred more.

L.A. By Night on Youtube

L.A. By Night Chapter 1: Mortal Stakes is up now. The first of eight chapters in season one, a V5 game run by Jason Carl.

I’ve borrowed the introduction narrating what happened during the day while the vampires were dead to the world, which quickly emphasises how isolated they are.

Tonight in From The Dust...

... we were two out of six players down, and got moved at 7.30 and 9.20, so not much got done.

But I did attempt to describe Baby Chorus. Sooooort of like Faith No More circa The Real Thing when they were throwing everything at the wall to see what stuck. Maybe.

Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge theme by John Williams

A preview of the new theme for the park attractions at starwars.com. Hearing it, I imagine new adventures beginning.

3333 posts!

RPG.net forum links fixed... I think.

And now it looks like the old links update themselves. Which is good for finding links in the existing posts. And probably good I consolidated my links.

White Wolf news

A message from White Wolf.

Matthew Dawkins has said on Facebook that it will not affect the Chicago By Night book from Onyx Path, currently in Kickstarter funding.

Relinking APs

The RPG.net forums are back. It’s good to be home, even if home is now sort of blocky and defaults to 200 replies per page.

And all my Actual Play links are now edited, starting with TWH season one, and hopefully everything on my signature will work. I’ll tackle revising links in these blog posts tomorrow.

Have also remade the TWH icon in high-def, because I am me.

The art of Castlevania

Characters, animation roughs, and matte paintings for all your stealing to show players needs, from the two seasons so far of Castlevania on Netflix.

Stan Lee's legacy

Stan Lee did a lot to push superheroes back into the mainstream after the end of the Second World War, and to make them relevant to a much wider audience after years of being aimed straight at kids.

Chris Sims covered arguments over his creative claims and business well at Comics Alliance, though I would have mentioned the Atlas Seaboard fiasco as well. But all that aside, his writing and editing, along with collaborations with the likes of Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, made ongoing serial storytelling a much stronger part of the business as well as starting with stronger worldbuilding as part of the Marvel brand. See also this AC on DC’s reaction, as well as this on the teen hero. And Quarter Bin on the Marvel Silver Age model, and on Spider-Man in particular.

He also used Stan’s Soapbox for a lot of good through the years, as well as creating characters who championed courage, kindness, and resistance to intolerance.

Stan Lee

With great power comes great responsibility. ’Nuff said.

Nosferatu-ing it up

Everything assembled for next Storytellers Vault project, which I admit is slightly insane... making and photographing busts of a variety of Nosferatu characters, so that I and other STs can use the pictures as visual cues when using photos for everybody else.

Last piece of the puzzle: toothpicks for, ironically, teeth.

Armistice Day

The Great War officially ended a hundred years ago. Fighting stumbled on here and there as communication broke down, and then there were problems for many getting home.

The Classics

The Buffy episode Band Candy aired twenty years ago today, and the Angel episode Spin The Bottle sixteen years ago.

November 10th is Regress Adult Characters To Teenagers At The Worst Possible Time Day.

Mark your calendars.

Widows

Widows was really good. And pretty much entirely outside of the genres I discuss here, apart from the heist part. But as reasons to bring together a party go, “you all lost someone you love to the same thing, and now have to deal with the fallout together” is a pretty strong one.

An unfamiliar viewer on Serenity

“What’s a Reaver?” from the introduction.
“Aww, no!” at a certain plot point that those familiar with the film can likely guess.
“That was most enjoyable!” Which was a relief.

Daredevil Season 3

Daredevil Season 3 uses the length of the season better than a lot of the other Marvel Netflix series (not least Daredevil S2) with several slow burn plots which pretty much all dovetail together rather than having a side plot taking up a chunk of the middle. I could have lost the imaginary conversations, but hey. It also managed to come back from S2 and The Defenders and go from Magic Ninja Apocalypse back to a straight-up crime story with one weird power on each side. And there was a moment that made me gasp.

V5 Anarch and Camarilla

Congratulations to Roger de Camden on becoming Prince of Edinburgh! I’m sure the Toreador and Dunsirns are delighted.

Anarch addresses a lot of subjects mostly in-character, for a feel of the messy unlives of modern vampires all over the world.

Camarilla talks more out-of-character, and goes more into the structure and restructuring of the sect, as well as outside influences like the Church of Caine and a big section on the Second Inquisition. To me it feels like the more broadly useful of the two.

The Banu Haqim and the Ministry (nee Setites) don’t get entire unique Disciplines any more, though they do get special powers and styles. I am cool with this, it always bugged me that all the non-Camarilla clans got their own personal Disciplines.

(Edit: At the time of writing I hadn’t looked closely at the Chechnya section. I don’t think that was a good call.)

What do you do after evil is defeated but not destroyed? Keep at it.

Star Trek with Michael Chabon

The latest Short Treks one-shot (starring Aldis Hodge) is written by Michael Chabon, who is also in the writers’ room for the new Picard series, like the original series featured episodes by Harlan Ellison and Robert Bloch as well as more TV-based writers. More recently we’ve seen the likes of Neil Gaiman writing Doctor Who.

What means this... Camarilla?

The Anarch and Camarilla book PDFs for V5 are out to backers, and go on general sale on Wednesday. I will say more then.

And the award for spoiler of the year goes to...

And the award for spoiler of the year goes to... it would be a spoiler to say.

All Tomorrow's Parties

Went fairly low-key with the Elysium Halloween party in From The Dust.

The Watch House 15th Anniversary!

Tonight is the fifteenth anniversary of the first Actual Play post for The Watch House, which I put up not long after the first session.

This game changed my life, and not just mine.

This is why this here RPG blog has such a baffling name.

L.A. By More Nights

L.A. By Night will be back for season two in the new year, with one-on-one sessions starting at the end of this month.

And yes, it will be on Youtube as well. As a really good advertisement for Vampire and specifically V5, that seemed likely but confirmation is welcome.

V5 The Stareturns to a grand tradition

Geek & Sundry Alpha is following L.A. By Night with another V5 game on Starter Kit. Starter Kit games are designed for interested new observers to show off the rules a bit more - the launch this time includes character generation videos as well as the first episode, which I think is a great idea. They normally run for six episodes, each being about forty minutes each rather than a full three-hour or longer as-live session. This time out Jasmine Bhullar is Storyteller, with regular Starter Kit GM Jason Charles Miller as one of the players, the other four being new to the setting.

November

November... Bonfire Night, Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and of course midterms in the USA.

Happy Halloween!

A thing I did on Twitter. Thanks to everybody who took part!

And yes, I spotted the card typo. Curses!

That's the Chicago way.

The Kickstarter for Chicago By Night V5 is up, with much lovely preview art, including - yes! - somebody being thrown off the Sears Tower.

In the event that my chronicle heads that way, I have just the song. (NSFW)

Sometimes your name will lead you places

The New York Public Library presents a brief history of Halloween by Amanda Pagan.

Castlevania season two

Some of these secrets are certainly miserable.

Star Wars Rebels season 4

Star Wars Rebels ends with season 4, which builds on the previous seasons and adds some new wrinkles as well. It went a bit too high Weird Level for me in some ways, though it still delivered some big moments.

The Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina

The Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina is... quite a thing.

Woe is me

Looks like we’re getting a new player in From The Dust, so I’ll have to redraw my coterie relationships map and not make it a pentacle this time.

How To Make A (D&D) Monster

Wizards are looking for Photoshoppers to give a form to the Terror of the Undermountain, based on a selection of body parts provided by various D&D artists. Even if you don’t want to enter the $5000 contest, its a selection of Guess Who? monster bits you could put to other player-scaring uses. (Also, Jon Hodgson headline art in the article!)

Dialogue saving

“Where are you running to?”
“Away was more the point than to.”

Star Trek: Lower Decks

An animated comedy in the Star Trek setting, from Mike McMahan, the head writer of Rick & Morty and also the creator of the TNG Season 8 spoof Twitter feed and writer of the spinoff book Warped, in which he would team viable A stories with particularly goofy B stories:

Troi guides a dying ensign through his final, emotional journey. Data & Geordi are trapped on a conference room table by a scary dog.

The BloodList

Having mentioned the Blacklist for unmade scripts before, I have just discovered the existence of the BloodList specifically for genre films and pilots.

There seem to be a lot of witches this year...

Who ya gonna call?

Five ways horror stories deal with mobile phones.

No signal is the most shorthand - I’ve never seen a film where somebody tries to get a signal again.

(Mental note: write that short film.)

Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man's Reboots

The idea of a Pirates Of The Caribbean reboot seems... interesting, especially as the last film, Dead Men Tell No Tales, came out last summer, but it has been fifteen years since the original, and given that they’ve already tried a largely standalone sequel (inserting some of the cast into the Tim Powers novel On Stranger Tides) after ongoing trilogy-ising and swung back to serialisation after that, a clean slate might help, particularly if the plan is to move to a different main character.

I can imagine spinoffs from a clean slate working better as well, if they wanted to make something like a Marvel or Star Wars style annual event planned from the beginning, or something like animated or even live-action series.

Still be nice if we got an RPG, for that matter.

Gaming Shelf update

Lots of RPG stuff, including a Kickstarter roundup featuring Orun and Savage Worlds, at io9 this week.

WWII horror or WWII something else

One of the trailers before Bad Times At The El Royale was for Overlord, the Normandy invasion with added zombies but more expensive than Outpost thing, and Rick asked if I’ve ever considered a Second World War World/Chronicles Of Darkness game. I suggested Blitz Innocents for Dark Eras, and know somebody who ran Stalingrad Vampire, and the WWI-set Fiends Of The Eastern Front was a formative experience for me... but I’d like to do superheroes in the war first.

I still haven’t done Prohibition Vampire, for that matter...

From The Dust update

I failed to get the introductory half-semester plot finished. But everybody wants to keep going.

Bad Times At The El Royale

Bad Times At The El Royale was great, and it could make an interesting basis for a freeform LARP as just about everybody has a reason to want to stay in a hotel on the off season...

From The Dust session notes

Now to work out what to do for an actual Halloween session of Vampire: The Masquerade Fifth Edition.

After finishing the initial block, which has I will freely admit gone a bit Blade.

St. Louis has developed a bit of a theme as well, the Gateway to the West left behind by settlement all the way to the Pacific, and first rail and then road and air travel to get there, is still a waystation for vampires as they have good reasons not to trust planes or trains. It’s an evening’s drive from Chicago and a night’s from New Orleans, so as well as the Kindred that make their haven there others come and go. This picks up a bit from the revived Gallows Post in No Man’s Land, as there are refugees fleeing various bad situations. Safe passage is a valuable service, and the Lamplight starts to feel a little like Rick’s in Casablanca...

Done

It’s away! Link to follow. I hope.

Remind me to uninstall Acrobat before they start charging after the preview I put on so I could add my name in the Properties tab.

Alllllmost...

uPDaTe

wharrgarbl

Update

Formatting done... oh no it isn’t...

Mandy

I think Mandy might work as a Hell 4 Leather setup. Like, really easily.

A slightly less brief history of Halloween

Okay, gap in Halloween Night filled, including little bits of interest to Dark Ages and Victorian Age games.

Now to figure out how to format it.

Chuck Wendig

Today would be a good day to buy something by Chuck Wendig. Maybe some of his original fiction, writing advice, comics, or World or Chronicles Of Darkness material.

Greg Stafford, 1948-2018

Greg Stafford was one of the pioneers of RPGs, from RuneQuest to Pendragon to Ghostbusters and on, my condolences to his family and friends, and to my fellow fans.

The art of Timothy Truman

Searching for suggestions for a thread looking for art for a modern Western horror game reminded me that some day I want to run a game based on the art of Timothy Truman. Grimjack was a formative read for me, Tim Bradstreet worked with him, and look at, for example, this illustration for the Grateful Dead.

Cavaliers Of Mars

My Cavaliers Of Mars rulebook and screen have arrived!

Goya's Ghostly Vision

News to me: a painting by Goya, thought lost for ninety years, is now on display in the Museo of Zaragoza.

And like so much of Goya’s work, it’s pretty damn creepy.

Not his creepiest work, but still.

Thanks to Jess Nevins for the news, via Twitter.

Storytellers Vault Chronicles Of Darkness

Announced today, coming soon, with Vampire: The Requiem, Werewolf: The Forsaken and Mage: The Awakening to begin with, as well as the blue book and mortal characters, always a bigger option in Chronicles than World. I might have to come up with something for that...

Pugmire: Homeward Bound

Pugmire: Homeward Bound, coming soon to the Saving Throw Twitch channel, and hopefully soon after to on-demand.

Favourite touch: the NPC dogs are based on real, currently adoptable dogs.

Anyone who can raise a storyteller and loves a bad pun is good by me.

Sometimes bad guys make the best good guys

Oh, and I also hope to find a timeslot to run Leverage as well. Yay for answering questions about the games I’ve never had a chance to run!

Everyone hail to the pumpkin song

Halloween Night, hopefully coming soon to the Storytellers Vault!

Hopefully sharing soon...

We have art for From The Dust. Of two kinds already. Yay!

Finality

Finality, a murder mystery from Warren Ellis and Colleen Doran, free on Webtoons every Friday.

Ultimate Buffy

The creative team for the BOOM! Studios Buffy The Vampire Slayer comic has been announced, along with a cover reveal and a description of the premise.

It’s an Ultimate Marvel style reboot, with Buffy arriving at Sunnydale High in 2019 - “writer Jordie Bellaire (Redlands, and owner of a cat called Buffy) and artist Dan Mora (Klaus) are working with creator and story consultant Joss Whedon to reboot the entire Buffy concept from day one.”

(Well, day two really - the announcement shows it keeps versions of the TV setting and cast, making it more like the show than the show was like the movie.)

Unlike the new live-action series which is set in the original Buffyverse, it’s running with the name, and judging by the main cover and the Kevin Wada variant going with a likeness for Sarah Michelle Gellar when she was starting in the role. (Though who is that other apparent slayer represented on the Royal Dunlap variant cover?)

In RPG terms, it’s like someone picking up a classic sourcebook and doing a new version.

And hey, Ultimate Spider-Man was the basis for a few animated series. Just saying.

Black Lion at twenty

Congratulations to Liam and the crew at Black Lion Games for twenty years!

Hurricane relief

A Hurricane Florence relief bundle at RPGnow containing over $170 in RPG PDFs for $25.

Vampire: The Masquerade Humble Bundle

A lot of PDFs for not much, across the first three editions, in aid of UNHCR.

The Mandalorian

Jon Favreau has revealed the title and premise of the first live-action Star Wars TV series.

After the stories of Jango and Boba Fett, another warrior emerges in the Star Wars universe. The Mandalorian is set after the fall of the Empire and before the emergence of the First Order. We follow the travails of a lone gunfighter in the outer reaches of the galaxy far from the authority of the New Republic....

Update: a first photo (still anonymous) and news that the first episode will be directed by Rebels showrunner Dave Filoni, followed by directors including Taika Waititi, Bruce Dallas Howard, Rick Famuyiwa and Deborah Chow. So that’s... a good lineup of directors, certainly.

The Chronicles Of Narniagain

Netflix is planning films and series based on The Chronicles Of Narnia. What are the odds that they get past The Silver Chair this time?

Harry Potter And The Large Open Setting

Looks like we’re getting an open world Harry Potter computer game, about a Hogwarts student (naturally) having various adventures around the school and beyond.

Night Of The Living Dead

Night Of The Living Dead premiered fifty years ago tonight.

Black Mirror Goes Interactive

Black Mirror to return to Netflix... including taking advantage of its online location to include an interactive choose-your-own-misadventure episode.

Hopefully not involving choices on the level of The National Anthem. Ahem.

Carlos Ezquerra

Carlos Ezquerra, co-creator of Judge Dredd, Strontium Dog and so much more, has died.

V5: From The Dust

(provisional title)

The Lamppost diner already has a swear jar. And possibly a Masquerade Breach jar.

Doors Open

Doors Open Days, where buildings let the public look behind the scenes, can provide a lot of insight into the establishments that take part.

Possibly coming soon to a VTM game near you...

An evening of shared brainstorming is a delightful thing. (Hello Rick!)

Spoiler tag as I may use some of the results...

How epic is your scale?

Mice: A Small Story takes a look at The Lord Of The Rings, specifically the films imitating their dramatic slow-mo and closeups, as a story of a group of CG cartoon mice trying to get away with a ringpull.

Mediaeval doodle war rabbit miniatures

From the makers of the Triumph Of Death skeleton army comes a stranger art-based miniatures line still - the war rabbits of mediaeval manuscript side doodles!

The rabbit riding a giant snail is a stretch goal. Fingers crossed.

Judge Dredd And The Worlds Of 2000 A.D.

The new RPG for Dredd, with more settings to follow, is now up on Kickstarter and funded in nine minutes. It uses the WOIN system (What’s Old Is New) based on D6 dice pools. The launch includes an adventure book, The Robot Wars, by contributing writer Andrew Peregrine.

Having not actually run a Dredd game since the Games Workshop original that was a precursor to WFRP, I am cautiously interested.

Elsewhere University

That university troubled by Fair Folk comic has become a recurring thing in a text-centric way with at least one more comic.

Theme tune update

Frontrunner is Veka by Zola Jesus, because this here VTM game has a vampire charged with watching over Kindred sleeping away the centuries in torpor, another newly arisen from that, and one who was Embraced to preserve her in her prime.

“Who will find you when all you are, all you are is dust? Who will find you in centuries?”

Character sheets copied, dice bagged...

And now to try to get some sleep before game pitch day.

And maybe decide on a theme song.

Sunless Skies: Skyfarer

Skyfarer is a twenty-page tabletop RPG for Sunless Skies, a spin-off from the mordant comedy steampunk online game Fallen London.

Telltale

Telltale, makers of story-choice-centric video games, are on hiatus, cancelling titles and probably closing down. My thoughts are with those suddenly out of work.

Chronicles Of Darkness sale

75% off PDFs for Vampire: The Requiem, Werewolf: The Forsaken and Mage: The Awakening.

The Predator

I very much appreciate The Predator addressing the fact that the Predators are really sport hunters above all.

(Although since it wasn’t an Alien Vs. Predator film it didn’t address that they’re both aliens and that the Aliens show more predation than the Predators.)

Buffy at BOOM!

A day after The Reckoning, BOOM! Studios drops a first teaser for their new Buffy comics line, expected to start in 2019.

And it’s pretty old school. As in Sunnydale High.

After more than ten years of post-TV seasons at Dark Horse (following about as much stuff during and around the TV seasons, and DH doing a run of The High School Years one-shots in recent years) it makes sense to do something different, and going back to the classic era at launch is a sound choice. That might be the central monthly title, or one of a line, with separate graphic novels and miniseries planned as well.

That teaser image also gives Buffy a decidedly modern-looking phone. This could be artistic licence, a hint that we shouldn’t expect a late 90s period piece, or just a goof...

Ascension Night: a V5 intro adventure

Ascension Night, a free unofficial Vampire: The Masquerade Fifth Edition quickstart from Darker Days Radio.

So, what to do on Sunday...

Buffy The Vampire Slayer: The Reckoning

The fourth and final issue of The Reckoning, the final miniseries season of Buffy The Vampire Slayer at Dark Horse Comics, came out today.

I’m fine.

It’s been quite a ride since the first issue twenty years ago, and especially the post-TV canon seasons and related books like Tales Of The Slayers and particularly Fray which The Reckoning also serves as a sequel to. Season Eight went too comic-book-y for a lot of tastes, with the unlimited special effects budget overshadowing the human side of the story. Nine and Ten went somewhat smaller, Eleven a bit bigger again, and Twelve / The Reckoning went all-out but it’s a finale so it deserves to.

What’s next? Who knows? I’ll be there.

Phew

Okay, managed to get away with not GMing on Wednesdays so far.

Talk Like A Pirate Day

Has Talk Like A Pirate Day gotten too commercialised?

Captain Marvel teaser trailer

“I’m not what you think I am.”

Fury with two eyes and hair. Weird.

Your Unknown Armies idea is probably not too weird.

Spiders blamed after broken siren played creepy nursery rhymes randomly at night to UK townsfolk.

(Warning: report features spiders on CCTV cameras. And creepy nursery rhyme.)

Battlestar Galactica

Happy 40th anniversary to Battlestar Galactica.

It began as a blatant Star Wars ripoff - the pilot was called Saga Of A Star World and they got Ralph McQuarrie in to do concept art and design sketches and John Dykstra to head the model photography - with a twist borrowed from a classic episode of The Twilight Zone. But the nature of TV at the time had it veer more towards a Star Trek planet-of-the-week show almost immediately. (It also had female Viper pilots, putting it ahead of the original trilogy... though everybody involved seemed really reluctant about it.)

And then another creative team did something very different with the core concept in 2004. And they had a plan. Well, sort of. Originally intended to be fairly episodic as well, it became much more serialised, as well as much more grounded (with a few sometimes jarring exceptions) as a series focused on one consistent threat, and thematically about how people deal with life in a state of war.

Along the way, it’s inspired gaming directly and indirectly like an official RPG for the 2004 revival and a hit board game balancing resource management and guessing who’s really a Cylon, and a blockbuster LARP first played on an actual naval ship.

I binged it while planning my own military-SF-about-one-threat game The Stars On Fire, for example. I also stole bits of the percussive Bear McCreary soundtrack for the revival for game trailer videos, and if I ever do one for Vampire: The Dark Ages I’ll go for one of the mad bagpipes bits...

Sanguis Minibus

My biggest tag is RPGs and it just hit...

Nobody tell BADD.

Tabletop Scotland 2019 - August 24th and 25th

Just announced, Tabletop Scotland will be back in 2019. It’s moving up a bit to late August, which might let them take advantage of all the geeky Edinburgh Festival stuff next time. Hopefully I won’t be struck down with Book Festival con crud that weekend.

Wednesday and Sunday

At GEAS we have two organised game days, Wednesday evening and Sunday with afternoon and evening slots. Generally Sunday gets more non-student players and GMs, being more convenient. Sunday evening is when I usually offer to run something big - it was the home slot of The Watch House.

Apparently there’s quite a lot of interest in Wednesday evening games. My experience running Wednesday games has been... not good. So something straightforward that I can do for one half-term block and then look at options? D6 Star Wars, probably in the Rebellion era, or once again try Buffy, this time with a solid reason for the group to hang together?

For Sunday... I can source a physical copy of V5. Though I’d prefer to vet players for something like that, I can do a relatively low-impact version if the big push means new people are interested.

Red Panda Day

Happy International Red Panda Day! Help red pandas today!

Batman Day

Surely Batman should have a night and Superman have a day?

L.A. By Night

Vampire: The Masquerade fifth edition, starting tonight on Geek & Sundry. Non-live video link as available.

(Update: currently being replayed during spaces in the G&S schedule along with other series like Callisto 6, as well as on-demand at Alpha - hopefully it’ll be freely available after a while, like Shield Of Tomorrow which comes on Youtube about three months after the live play.)

(Update update: rebroadcast schedule PDF for the weekend, including Sunday evening and Monday morning here.)

BIG World Of Darkness PDF sale

Vampire: The Masquerade, Werewolf: The Apocalypse and Mage: The Ascension books at 75% off this week at DriveThruRPG. Also 25% off Storytellers Vault releases.

Magic and monsters in Oxbridge, you say?

The Radio Times has a preview of the first episode of A Discovery Of Witches before it starts on Sky tonight.

And yes, it has a cast member in common with The Watch House...

And yes, vampires use the term “sire”.

Take care

Take care through the run of hurricanes and other extreme weather.

Dialogue for later

(Riffing on a scene in True Blood season six.)

“Is that your blood or somebody else’s?... Or everybody else’s?”

Horror hook: haunting memorabilia

Between the open and grey market trade in serial killer memorabilia, and things like Haunted Collector, a horror setting could mix the two, with people tracking down and selling haunted or cursed items.

Cursed or magical items for sale have shown up in adventures for Call Of Cthulhu and an auction featured in an episode of Angel (so I’ve done it in TWH as well) and was sort of the premise for Friday The 13th: The Series, but who sources them?

I’m thinking about this after watching 8mm again recently, so imagining a dangerous underground trade where the supposedly cursed items aren’t the biggest risk to life and limb.

Doodling NPCs

I’ve started doodling NPCs for a Vampire game. Even though I plan to go and find photos rather than relying on my art, it’s nice to let my pen wander, and can help in making “casting” decisions. (First decision: borrowing the Nosferatu style vampire with the deeply split lips from Penny Dreadful.)

I tend to go with art in games that I feel fit an illustration style rather than imagining the “live-action” TV or film version, like superheroes or big fantasy. (Although equally I would seriously consider running a Vampire game where all my visuals come from Tim Bradstreet or less obviously Annie Wu...)

It's a sign

Okay, new academic year game prep is getting serious.

I’ve bought a notebook.

Player styles

Jason Carl and Juhana Pettersson talk to Hat Of Many Things about play styles, table social constructs, PVP and more. (And it turns out one of the hosts was at the Nationals this year.)

"Your pizza place is a gateway to Hell."

Chance the Rapper made a movie of one of my Buffy games. :D

(Trailer contains swears and blood.)

(Update: a day after this article wondering about the delay in releasing the film, it went up on streaming and The AV Club reviewed it here.)

25 Years Of The X Files

The X Files first broadcast 10th September 1993. Since then we’ve had classic episodes, variably successful films, a revival, a spinoff show, books, comics, games...

DIE, from Kieron Gillen

DIE - a new comic series written by Kieron Gillen, which looks to be about the old “RPG players pulled into the game” hook played dark. An interview confirms that the characters are a partial call-back to the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon...

Secret Castle Game Room

A board game found in a secret room in a mediaeval Russian castle. Possibly anyway, it looks like a Mill board.

Assassin's Creed History

A fan is fact-checking and annotating the Assassin’s Creed games, noting where history was altered to allow a meeting to happen or introduce a plot twist or in some cases an aesthetic choice like a more interesting fight location. This follows the addition of Discovery Mode to Assassin’s Creed Origins which showed the historical basis for various landmarks and characters.

Life is a great big gang-up

I would, on the whole, like to borrow a PS4 and be playing Spider-Man at the moment, mostly due to the little touches like the music reacting to how action-y your current activity is, the dialogue also changing whether Peter is at rest or swinging, Pride flags among the Easter eggs in the landscape...

Celebrity Skin

Celebrity Skin by Hole came out twenty years ago. Yeah, not making me feel old at all there.

Star Trek at 52

Star Trek is in a better place than it was for its fiftieth anniversary, I think. Discovery is up and running, and we can look forward to a new series focusing on Picard - and maybe more - and hopefully a fourth Kelvin timeline film as well. The Geek & Sundry Star Trek Adventures AP series Shield Of Tomorrow just wrapped, too, with Modiphius announcing a miniatures set for it as part of its busy production schedule.

Poppy

Thanks to Howard Ingham for the news of Poppy. I had seen her in passing before but have I been wiped again?

True Blood tenth anniversary

True Blood was always fairly odd, a sexy Southern Gothic comedy-horror murder mystery about a telepathic waitress in a small town that just got its first vampire after they “came out of the coffin” a couple years earlier.

And it cranked up the Weird Level very quickly. I remember watching season one on TV, then seeing season two on a long-haul flight when I was already a bit sleep-deprived and having to go back to it later to confirm that, yes, the big bad did actually turn into a vibrating minotaur.

Comfort food for the soul

I have a doctor’s appointment in the morning, which is thankfully rare for me. As is traditional when I have a cold, which is not rare for me, watching Buffy 2.18 Killed By Death, in which Buffy gets the flu and fights a monster preying on sick kids. Everyone is brave and resourceful and smart and funny, and it always makes me feel a little better.

(Update: Cysts. Not fun.)

Burt Reynolds

Burt Reynolds has died. Best known for Smokey And The Bandit, The Cannonball Run, and Deliverance, and for promoting and celebrating the craft of stunt performers.

22 Vampire: The Requiem plots from garbage Version 2.0

For the Version 2.0 twentieth anniversary and because garbage lyrics fit so readily into Vampire. Expect troubled relationships, broken hearts, unwise blood drinking and a small war.

Coming soon

12 Vampire: The Requiem adventure hooks based on song titles from Version 2.0 by garbage. (Or maybe 22 based on the anniversary edition.)

Protect our museums

Brazil’s national museum burned last night, and we don’t yet know how much has been lost.

Avengers: Infinity War

Out on disc today.

We Will Deep Fry Your Kebab.

Blood On The Thames

Blood On The Thames, a Vampire: The Masquerade Fifth Edition stream game on Twitch, features some interesting characters (a sensitive artistic Malkavian, a twitchy conspiratorial Nosferatu, a standoffish aloof Gangrel, an activist scientific Tremere - they could all shuffle into a different clan easily) and the beginnings of an intriguing setup as shown on the relationship map.

The recording of the first session was sabotaged by the Inquisition went wrong, so they provided an in-character recap. (Edit: the first recorded session is now on Youtube.)

Like a number of streaming AP games, there’s more performance involved than a lot of games at the table and some costuming as well, giving it a not-quite-LARP feel.

Tabletop Scotland

I hear Tabletop Scotland went well! (I had a cold. :( )

Art should be surprising, but...

... maybe not like these five examples from The Modern Rogue. The Hole In The Floor is in there, and I don’t even think it’s the worst.

(TMR is often a good source for weird crime stories, too.)

Frasiercards

A print and play card game to simulate the disastrous attempts to host dinner parties in Frasier. The first game I know to have Accidental Drive To Canada among the cards.

RPG a Day 2018 Roundup

0. RPG a Day 2018

1. What do you love about RPGs?
2. What is the first thing you look for in an RPG?
3. What gives a game “staying power”?
4. Most memorable NPC?
5. Favourite recurring NPC?
6. How can players make a world seem real?
7. How can a GM make the stakes important?
8. How can we get more people playing?
9. How has a game surprised you?
10. How has gaming changed you?
11. Wildest character name?
12. Wildest character concept?
13. Describe how your play has evolved.
14. Describe a failure that became amazing.
15. Describe a tricky RPG experience you enjoyed.
16. Describe your plans for your next game.
17. Describe the best compliment you’ve had gaming.
18. Art that inspires your game.
19. Music that enhances your game.
20. Which game mechanic inspires your play the most?
21: Which dice mechanic appeals to you?
22: Which non-dice system appeals to you?
23: Which game do you hope to play again?
24. Which RPG do you think deserves more recognition?
25. Game that had an impact on you in the last 12 months.
26. Gaming ambition for the next 12 months.
27. Share a great stream / actual play
28. Share whose inspiring gaming excellence you’re grateful for.
29. Share a friendship you have because of RPGs.
30. Share something you learned about playing your character.
31. Share why you take part in RPGaDAY.
31a. BONUS ROUND

RPG a Day 2017
RPG a Day 2016
RPG a Day 2015
RPG a Day 2014

RPG a Day 2018: BONUS ROUND

RPG a Day 2018

ALTERNATE PROMPTS FOR 2018

Most memorable character retirement.
Jake in The Watch House becoming a vampire and a ghost, attempting to put his soul back in his body and accidentally unleashing the evil ancestor who founded his family’s psychic lineage and the ghost helping Milli slay the vampire. And then getting rescued from Hell a couple seasons later.

Most ambitious campaign idea achieved.
Inevitably TWH again after years of running games for a term or two, where I set it before the Watchers got nearly wiped out in Buffy and joked that we’d have to worry about that if we played for six years... and then we did.

Most innovative game of the last 12 months.
Harlem Unbound, for its in-depth treatment of its subject.

Share playing a “temporary” character.
Michael Byrne somehow survived Enlightenment In Blood despite everything from accidentally helping rob the Church of Caine to bumping into a Camarilla warlord while getting away, mostly through not being the most obvious threat in the area.

Narrowest escape?
The time we got hit by a fuel-air explosive in enemy territory in Shadowrun and everybody got knocked out, except I had one health box left and could therefore call for an extraction.

How do you prepare for a one-shot?
Character sheets, character info (try to keep it to one page) and standees, pictures of NPCs and scene ideas, a bullet point plot.

How do you prepare for an extended campaign?
Blank character sheets, a notebook, some more NPC and scene art, a plot hook for the first session and notes for more.

What’s your favourite character “hook”?
I often end up playing the down-to-earth one in the group, though far from always.

What makes you want to GM?
I just wanted to entertain...

What appeals to you about GM-less games?
Some interesting premises and ways to make them work.

RPG a Day 2018: 31. why you take part in RPGaDAY

RPG a Day 2018

31. Share why you take part in RPGaDAY.

This one’s pretty simple. I ramble on here pretty much daily, and try to keep it positive, so this gives me prompts to do that for a month. It’s fun seeing how other writers respond to it as well.

How not to make your monsters scary

Discovered through history Twitter: The Wenhaston Doom, a church panel painting on Judgment Day, where the demons doing the judging have big surprised teddy bear eyes, floppy ears, and basically look like the monsters from The Muppet Show. It predates teddy bears and Muppets by about 400 years but I’m pretty sure big eyes and floppy ears have been considered cute rather than scary for longer than that.

RPG a Day 2018: 30. something you learned playing

RPG a Day 2018

30. Share something you learned about playing your character.

Something I learned about how I play?
I’ll often wait and see what other players make first, although there are a few times I leap at playing X if I haven’t had a chance before.

Something I learned about by playing a specific character?
Bits and pieces of history, language and the like. For example, there was the time I helped to organise a Goya exhibition in-character in the World Of Darkness New Bremen chat.

Star Wars Resistance cast

Star Wars Resistance featuring, among others, Bucket the Astromech who wears a pilot helmet.

Handbooker Helper

Handbooker Helper: brief introductory guides to specific D&D subjects, presented by the Critical Role crew. Episode one, Dice 101, is up now.

Wizards Artists detained

Three Magic: The Gathering artists flying from Europe to the US for a meeting were held at customs, detained overnight, and sent back.

io9's Gaming Shelf

Gaming Shelf, a roundup of tabletop gaming news at io9, this time including Dystopia Rising: Evolution.

RPG a Day 2018: 29. Share a friendship you have because of RPGs

RPG a Day 2018

29. Share a friendship you have because of RPGs.

It would be a lot faster sharing friendships I have that aren’t because of RPGs.

Seriously, it goes back to high school, and right around the world - literally, in my world trip I stayed with friends in Australia, New Zealand and the US, and at other times have stayed with friends from gaming in other parts of Scotland, England, Wales and Germany as well. I have online friends as well who I’ve never physically met who helped me through some rough and lonely times. There have been long rambling conversations, unwise dancing and hill climbing in the dark, and so much more.

Made it through the Festival(s) again

Saw Sirs Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson on Fighting Fantasy, and Alan Lee talking through his artistic process, and that was about it. Just spent the evening in town not getting flyers for anything and having a table to myself at my local.

RPG a Day 2018: 28. inspiring gaming

RPG a Day 2018

28. Share whose inspiring gaming excellence you’re grateful for.

Morgan Davie, first winner of the Banquo Award, founder of Taleturn and ORC (originally the Ottakar’s Roleplaying Club) and writer for Doctor Who, Icons, Mutants & Masterminds and more, and also runner of great games when he was here in Edinburgh, as well as before and after that, notably Providence Summer, a game about the year a group of kids had to grow up very fast.

Cyberpunk 2077 game demo

Cyberpunk 2077 48-minute game demo is now online.

It’s come a long way from three black-and-white books and a couple of dice.

Content note: blood, nudity, swears. Like proper swears, not made-up game swears.

The camera’s a little floaty, particularly on stairs, but they note it’s a demo.

Favourite touch, the monks in amongst the street scenes, very Blade Runner. (By which I mean plenty of things about it are very Blade Runner but the monks are a nice inclusion.)

RPG a Day 2018: 27. Share a great stream / actual play

RPG a Day 2018

27. Share a great stream / actual play

Never Let Go for Vampire: The Requiem.

And I guess I could mention my Buffy game, eh?

RPG a Day 2018: 26. Gaming ambition for the next 12 months

RPG a Day 2018

26. Gaming ambition for the next 12 months.

Run something. Have a good Conpulsion and Nationals. Put something on Storytellers Vault. Hold the Trinity Continuum rulebook in these mortal hands.

World Press Photo 2018

The World Press Photo award exhibition is, as ever, a mix of all things, from the most hopeful to the most horrific. My favourite this year is Earth Kiln by Li Huaifeng. (Content alert for the gallery as a whole, violence and nudity, right away if you click through past the page for this image.)

RPG a Day 2018: 25. impact in the last 12 months

RPG a Day 2018

25. Game that had an impact on you in the last 12 months.

Trinity Continuum got Kickstarted!

A chance to play Beautiful Anomalies and see how it works with players coming to it cold, liking the effects they could take from their selection of cards.

Storytellers Exalt

Storytellers Vault for Exalted, coming soon.

RPG a Day 2018: 24. Which RPG do you think deserves more recognition?

RPG a Day 2018

24. Which RPG do you think deserves more recognition?

Historically, Ghostbusters is the starting point for dice pools as a common mechanic, with Star Wars following a year later and Shadowrun introducing target numbers per die two years after that. It was also a really nice design all round, in a box packed with good material, as well as running with the setting concept rather like The Real Ghostbusters animated series, unlike Ghostbusters II which shut the company down for the years between films.

As someone involved with the OP and WW arenas, I have to say Vampire: The Requiem Second Edition as well, especially now that Masquerade Fifth is out and showing some clear influence.

RPG a Day 2018: 23. Game you hope to play again?

RPG a Day 2018

23. Which game do you hope to play again?

It tends to be games I run.

Vampire: The Requiem. It would be nice to get more than one session per edition as a player.

D6 Star Wars.

Doctor Who and/or Beautiful Anomalies.

And, yes, Buffy. I got to play an Angel game for a few weeks once.

I’d also like to do another big immersive LARP like Enlightenment In Blood sometime, though those very much depend on theme and practical availability.

Dystopia Rising: Evolution

Onyx Path’s Storypath RPG for the Dystopia Rising post-apocalypse game series is now Kickstarting.

RPG a Day 2018: 22. Non-dice systems?

RPG a Day 2018

22. Which non-dice system appeals to you?

Card systems, such as the SAGA system used for Marvel and Dragonlance Fifth Age where your hand of cards is effectively a certain number of “rolls” and you can decide which to use, with the addition of other features on the card such as suits where a match gives you a bonus, and text which can be brought in as well, and you take damage by losing cards of a value up to the number of the effect. New systems like Beautiful Anomalies use cards for other effects as well as their value too.

Happy anniversary Chronicles Of Darkness and Vampire: The Requiem!

First launched fourteen years ago tonight.

(And twentieth anniversary of the US opening of Blade. And thirty-seventh of An American Werewolf In London.)

Happy anniversary Adventure!

Happy seventeenth anniversary Adventure!

RPG a Day 2018: 21. dice mechanic?

RPG a Day 2018

21. Which dice mechanic appeals to you?

More than one die. I started with a 2D6 bell curve in Fighting Fantasy, and moved on to dice pools as soon as they became a common design feature. I’m a lot happier with D&D 5th Edition than previous versions because you can choose when to use Advantage to roll 2D20 and use the best (and the DM can reverse that with Disadvantage) in a nice simple not-relying-on-one-die system. If I were less lazy I’d probably switch Buffy to 2D6.

Nationals 2019

Glasgow, April 12th to 14th, theme of SCIENCE. A week after the provisional date for Conpulsion. (And a week before the backup provisional date.)

She-Ra & Tieflings

While starting work on the new She-Ra, showrunner Noelle Stevenson started playing a D&D game run by Star vs. The Forces Of Evil designer Molly Knox Ostertag, and her character inspired one of the new supporting cast.

RPG a Day 2018: 20. inspiring game mechanic

RPG a Day 2018

20. Which game mechanic inspires your play the most?

I generally tend to prefer rules that fade into the background, but I like them to have some interesting effects here and there. What those are vary from game to game, from the Drama Points in Buffy to the initiative ordered by who’s doing what (so Fighting is always last) in C7’s Doctor Who.

If I were to pick one thing I generally like, it’s an option to bump something up to a success before or after rolling when you really want to succeed. It shows what really matters to the players.

RPG a Day 2018: 19. Music that enhances your game

RPG a Day 2018

19. Music that enhances your game.

I mentioned music as a source of inspiration along with other artforms yesterday, notably lyrics more than tunes in the case of the Episodes Based On Song Titles posts - really a way of getting a list of short evocative phrases to take ideas from, with or without connections to the music or lyrics.

I hardly ever use music at the table, as I’m often running games in public and I’m too quiet already.

I will sometimes play one theme track, that’s about it. I may mention specific tracks, perhaps link to them in emails, so players can listen as and when they choose. Even when not playing in public I tend not to do more.

If I have time I’ll edit together a title sequence or teaser trailer cut to the theme tune. When I do they’re usually pretty short, both for ease of finding material and editing together and for playing them in-session without taking up much time.

More often I use music as inspiration or play it to myself when I’m preparing a game. My playlist for one game will be pretty different to that for another - soundtracks for Star Wars or Star Trek, punky uptempo and a few sad ballads for Buffy, thunderously gloomy for Vampire: The Masquerade and more wistful for Vampire: The Requiem...

(The soundtrack for The Watch House was only mostly Britpop.)

Scores that aren’t from anything I know well can help here, as they evoke a mood rather than a specific moment. Video games produce a lot - Excerpt From The Ecstasy from Destiny would make a great Star Trek theme. Likewise, there are companies dedicated to making trailer music - the 2009 Star Trek trailer featured one. And listening to the same composers can help too - the John Williams score for the 1979 Dracula provides a perfect Star Wars villain theme... called To Scarborough.

RPG a Day 2018: 18. Art that inspires your game

RPG a Day 2018

18. Art that inspires your game.

I look at a lot, from visual art in the games, “this is cool” art threads on general and game-specific forums and social media, official art books, comics, and the like. Sometimes I’ll get an idea for a scene or character from something in a gallery as well.

But also music, as demonstrated by the various Episodes Based On Song Titles threads on RPG.net, as well as more directly narrative inspirations like books, movies, TV, video games, streaming game sessions...

For some specific examples:

I’ve swiped a bunch of Buffy monsters from the SyFy Channel makeup challenge show Face Off, as well as sites for effects and mask companies like The Scream Team whose designs have a suitably Buffyish look. Others have ended up in Star Wars, Star Trek, Doctor Who and other games.

On the subject of Doctor Who, I once spun up an adventure about wolves made of ice after seeing an ice sculpture awards gallery, a few years before The Snowmen.

I’ve run superhero games based on grabbing character ideas from artists like Storn Cook and David Bednarski.

One of these days I’ll run a Warhammer game based on Bruegel’s The Triumph Of Death. (And I’m tempted to buy the miniatures army that a designer based on it!)

And a particularly odd one: I lifted the character from the I Am A Crisis Red Cross fundraising advert for my first V20 game. It wasn’t even about giving blood.

Star Wars Resistance

The first trailer and main character details for Star Wars Resistance, the new animated series about a pilot and spy in the run-up to The Force Awakens.

RPG a Day 2018: 17. the best compliment you’ve had gaming

RPG a Day 2018

17. Describe the best compliment you’ve had gaming.

Having new players brought to my table at the games society. That shows a lot of trust.

Meeting someone at a convention who knew my name from The Watch House was pretty cool too.

Happy 60th birthday, Madonna

First famous for Like A Virgin, she completed the triple as the Crone in the Chris Cunningham video for Frozen.

Aretha Franklin

RESPECT

Buffy at Dark Horse Comics, 1998-2018

Joss Whedon confirms that the four-issue mini-season The Reckoning is the final Buffy The Vampire Slayer comic from Dark Horse, with Fox taking it in-house after twenty years with DH. They also took Firefly to BOOM! Studios. This is also why he has a new Dr. Horrible miniseries at DH soon.

RPG a Day 2018: 16. plans for your next game.

RPG a Day 2018

16. Describe your plans for your next game.

We’re getting close to the start of the academic year, so probably time to get the notebooks in order.

Likely candidates:

Vampire: The Masquerade Fifth Edition. I’d like to try it, but it really depends if my Vampire-liking friends want to give it a go, and if the book arrives at my FLGS in time. Probably set in a major city that has been hit by the upheavals in the setting. (Probably not LA as I would be tempted to steal from the Geek & Sundry game run by Jason Carl, and there’s a danger I’d get players who also watched it. Maybe go back to my first non-canon city, St. Louis?)

Vampire: The Requiem Second Edition. Because No Man’s Land was hit by the common problems of trying to game over summer, give it another shot. If not, expect certain unused background elements to drift to V5...

Star Wars D6. Because there’s reliable demand. But which era? I dunno...

Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Because I am me. And with a new series in early development, there might be something different about the universe this time next year.

Icons. (Maybe.) For WWII superheroes. (Maybe.)

Language!

After all the times I made sure the language in the APs for The Watch House was PG-friendly, I started watching the first episode of a Buffy AP streaming game and the Slayer’s fourth word in character was an F-bomb. Which I was fine with in the Chronicles Of Darkness stream from the same people I watched first, but not in a Buffy game. Is that totally weird of me? The use of language, in and out of character, can really affect how a game feels.

The Return Of Un-Shirtless Conan

I just discovered that Oxford University Press adapted a second Conan story for their educational series Dominoes, The Jewels of Gwahlur, complete with an audio version!

RPG a Day 2018: 15. a tricky experience you enjoyed

RPG a Day 2018

15. Describe a tricky RPG experience you enjoyed.

Well, there was the time I ran a Buffy game at Conpulsion with the series cast as PCs, and the role of Giles, the Watcher, was taken by one of the guests, game writer Phil Masters, who I’ve been reading work by since I was eleven - and who literally wrote the book about Watchers for the game line. As you can perhaps imagine that gave me some stage fright, which he was very nice about.

RPG a Day 2018: 14. Describe a failure that became amazing

RPG a Day 2018

14. Describe a failure that became amazing.

A game I never got players for, that became the basis for a novel. (Which I should finish.)

RPG a Day 2018: 13. How your play has evolved

RPG a Day 2018

13. Describe how your play has evolved.

Hopefully it’s changed quite a bit in the previous decades... but I’ve always leaned towards genre emulation, and of late I’ve pushed that further in mechanical and meta ways.

I’ve also adjusted regular game features like the average amount of combat per session - notably the time I ran Buffy in the afternoon and V20 in the evening and threw pretty much all the combat into the Buffy game.

Having gone totally kitchen-sink with Buffy for six years, I now tend to alternate between games with similarly high Weird Levels and ones with much lower ones, like Buffy and V20 again. I often end up saving ideas that won’t fit one for the other - after a year running a military SF game about facing one alien culture, I had half a dozen ideas for adventures too weird for it that went into my plans for a Star Trek game.

Congratulations to David and Julie!

RPG a Day 2018: 12. Wildest character concept?

RPG a Day 2018

12. Wildest character concept?

Hmm. Most superhero games (and close enough like Buffy) encourage these, so from outside those...

A high-level Cyberpunk 2020 series about a corporate troubleshooting team. Two players loaded fairly normal characters with a lot of tech. One went with an artificially created psychic...

And I worked back from the limitations of skillsofts, biochips for plugging in recorded skills, which can only go so high because the sense memory doesn’t match your body’s - so I made a character who could slot in world-class skills because she was secretly one of a family of highly trained specialist clones. And sometimes she’d just send the most appropriate sister for a mission.

I went further with this idea in a Marvel game with a character who could uplink to various specialised bodies, but as noted, that’s superhero gaming for you.

You are being watched, Wally

The government has a secret system - a machine - that spies on Wally every hour of every day.

RPG a Day 2018: 11. Wildest character name?

RPG a Day 2018

11. Wildest character name?

Since I already mentioned Ronan Honigsman, Clenched Jaw Of The North, Sounder Of Mjolnir’s Thunder, Modi Of The Get Of Fenris And Warder Of The Sept Of Warriors’ Blood...

Another that stands out was Protocol Skull, a Cyberpunk 2020 Solo who more-or-less recovered from a fatal gunshot wound to the head but had some issues with her memory and vocabulary, taking her new name from the first words she remembered.

Ghostwatch

Ghostwatch and the real stories it drew from, by documentarian Adam Curtis.

Thanks to Stephen Collins for the link.

I was there that night, Hallowe’en 1992, and I’d read the Radio Times in advance and saw the Screen One ident so I knew what was up, and could only watch it purely as drama. I like to think I would have twigged before the end.

(I also borrowed some footage from it for one of my planned Doctor Who PBP episodes, based on the unmade Mark Gatiss script about the Doctor landing in a live haunting broadcast. Naturally I ended the trailer with an ominous Please Stand By card.)

RPG a Day 2018: 10. How has gaming changed you?

RPG a Day 2018

10. How has gaming changed you?

I’ve grown up and lived with gaming for roughly three-quarters of my life, from age about eleven to forty-four and counting, so... probably quite a lot, really.

It’s affected my social life, my professional life, likely helped with public speaking, and definitely boosted my vocabulary of obscure words.

RPG a Day 2018: 9. How has a game surprised you?

RPG a Day 2018

9. How has a game surprised you?

Usually it’s when a player grabs a session and pulls it in a totally new direction.

The classic example in The Watch House was, of course, the time I was about to reveal that Natalie’s too-good-to-be-true new potential boyfriend was a villain, but Matthew’s player had him jump way further with the too-good-to-be-true part and make him magically appear as CAPTAIN RUGGED.

More recently, a planned Vampire: The Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition session was paused for a week as Marcie the Malkavian was revealed to have diaberlised her sire - when her player had him take over her body...

And sometimes it’s when I haven’t quite figured out the rules, and oh, that monster just took over half a PC’s hit points in a single hit. But it’s been a while since that happened.

The 100 Season Five

After I was surprised The 100 came back last year, it’s already been confirmed it’ll be back next year, otherwise I’d be surprised again. It has quite a knack for smashing its setting. May we meet again.

Stealing the Death Star plans

Rebels nearly did it as well. Because of course it did.

RPG a Day 2018: 8. How can we get more people playing?

RPG a Day 2018

8. How can we get more people playing?

Plugging away at it. Appearing in geeky media like different games on Geek & Sundry helps, as does appearing in mainstream media. Being inclusive, and trying to be more inclusive. Showing the array of games available.

RPG a Day 2018: 7. How can a GM make the stakes important?

RPG a Day 2018

7. How can a GM make the stakes important?

I run a lot of games where death and serious harm are off the table, and action is an excuse for the players to show off. PC death isn’t generally very interesting to me.

But in those cases I may put in emotional stakes instead, going dramatic (or soapy) with it.

Bought and paid for NPCs like contacts will generally be reliable and safe, but other social and romantic connections might get strained more easily. (This comes through in the Buffy RPG reflecting the show, where combat Qualities and social Drawbacks mean a lot of characters are good in a fight and bad in a relationship.)

Emotional stakes are one example of personalising them as well. I’m not going to actually blow up the planet the game is set on, but I might blow up the PCs’ houses.

Every now and then I will run a game where death and other effects are on the table, but it doesn’t usually go that well. I’ll still tend to pull my punches.