From The Dust 25

Is this a face you can trust? (Content warning, blooooood)

The Matrix at 20

Happy 20th anniversary to The Matrix. And Trans Day of Visibility.

The Clone War(game)s

Star Wars Legion going to the Clone Wars

"Hello there!"

So, hey, maybe something for the sequel trilogy sometime around Episode IX...? Please?

Batman at 80

Today is the 80th anniversary of the debut of Batman in Detective Comics, which on Wednesday brought out issue 1000. I sometimes talk about Batman here.

Bury A Friend

So, Billie Eilish is terrifying.

The video could be a World Of Darkness or other horror one-shot. The staff of a secure hospital trying to study the victim of demonic possession... and possibly weaponise it.

(Content note for the video: syringes. Many syringes.)

“What do you want from me? Why don’t you run from me?”

The 100 have a new world to ruin!

The 100 season six trailer

Looks like this one might fight back, though.

Cymera 2019 programme

Cymera 2019 programme for the inaugural Edinburgh SF/F literary festival.

L.A. By Night season two

The first episode of season two is now on Youtube.

The Contagion Chronicle

The Contagion Chronicle, a crossover for Chronicles Of Darkness, now on Kickstarter.

I wonder if the blood-based Contagion in Edinburgh relates to local efforts to make viable artificial blood.

A preview of the other Contagion threat in town.

... Those Museum Late events are getting out of hand.

Edit: I did not guess right.

I love the snooty Sin-Eaters of the Royal College Of Surgeons.

Avengers: Endgame - 26th April

So close now. Avenge the fallen.

Us

Jordan Peele’s Us was quite a thing.

It certainly works as a lead-in for his Twilight Zone revival. (He references an episode, Mirror Image.)

And a source of Halloween costumes!

A L I E N - H I G H S C H O O L P L A Y

Okay, seriously, behold the high school play of ALIEN.

Happy N-Day!

Trinity Continuum: Aberrant: Year One. Jennifer Landers, aka Slider, looks back at the day everything changed. The first time.

We are millions.

Supernatural

Supernatural is to end after fifteen seasons.

Which feels like a lot... although the entire run was between Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 1 and 2.

For me, its most notable aspect is how many of the same format-breaking episode ideas we riffed on from the same sources. We borrowed the Eerie Indiana series finale for TWH years earlier!

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2: A city run on blood...

PC Gamer preview article
Kotaku preview article - in the comments, writer Heather Alexandra mentions that the demo switches from first to third person at points
VG 247 article - the character creator will be very flexible
IGN preview with Brian Mitsoda

Seattle, pretty much a blank slate in World Of Darkness canon - it’s home to a Nosferatu called Pusfinger who helped make grunge fashion a thing, and that’s literally all I could find apart from five VTES cards including two different Princes.

Starting as a Thin-Blood... with some of the interviewed team noting the option to trade up to a clan later on.

One of a mass Embrace...

Story packs and season passes. (And an Ankharan sarcophagus and Stop sign with one pre-order.)

“Here, no-one’s hands stay clean.”

Wondering if we’ll have a phone or tablet in-game. The Camarilla frowns on that kind of thing. (Ironic, as Tender was all about online manipulation... and then some older vampires ate the CEO at the launch party.)

Brian Mitsoda, one of the writers on B1, is back and in charge of narrative development.

And during the keynote, senior writer Cara Ellison confirmed it would be “bigger, longer sewers, just sewers, only sewers.” Then laughed.

Starting Seattle Vampire playlist:

Nirvana, Drain You
Mudhoney, Suck You Dry
Alice In Chains, Would?

John Wick 3: Parabellum

The Camarilla has declared John Wick to be Anathema.

The Red Heroine

Quite tempted to go and see The Red Heroine at the Bo'Ness Silent Film Festival... a female-led Chinese martial arts fantasy from 1929.

Slayer thoughts, read the whole book now edition

This could get spoilery. But not very, I promise.

Slayer (Book One) by Kiersten White

I finally got to sit down and read the last third, a month after getting it, almost two years after the original announcement and nine months after the first big preview.

I am currently away from home and my Buffy RPG books. Character sheets to follow.

And possibly a credit sequence if I can pick a theme and decide who to fancast.

Dungeons & Dragons: A Darkened Wish

A new comics series with a new party of adventurers, created by Undisputed Baron Of The Valley B. Dave Walters.

Farscape

Tonight marks the twentieth anniversary of the U.S. and Australian premiere of Farscape, one of the madder space operas ever to reach TV, a comical and emotional take on the Flash Gordon setup. Its style can be seen in various shabby spaceships out there now - James Gunn homages it all over Guardians Of The Galaxy, for example.

And as the note about Crichton’s references starting in the writers’ room adds, like Buffy it’s very like being at a gaming table. (AEG published the official RPG in 2002.)

Relics interview

Rolling Boxcars talks to Steve Dee about Relics, its influences and play style and more.

The Infinity Saga

The first run of the MCU, ending with Avengers: Endgame, now has an overall title: The Infinity Saga. Kevin Feige mentions it in the big blowout Endgame issue of Empire.

From The Dust 22

Vampires aren’t much better at forward planning than mortals. “That’s a problem for Future Me!” doesn’t stop being a thing even though Future Me might live forever. This is one reason that there are so few really old vampires around - they don’t consider it very well, and neither do their opponents.

The future is not evenly distributed

RPGs partially via online streaming (one player is currently in India) is quite odd. I get slightly more self-conscious when I can see myself picture-in-picture.

Larry DiTillio

Larry DiTillio, co-author of Masks of Nyarlathothep, one of the best RPG campaigns ever written, has passed. In addition to his role-playing work, Larry was also the author of the story bible for He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, and the executive story editor for Babylon 5.
RPG.net announcement

Do some good today

A Climate Strike, Red Nose Day... just two ways to do good today.

Alien: Six Different Subtitles

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of Alien, 20th Century Fox is to release six short films in the setting.

Alone
Containment
Harvest
Night Shift
Ore
Specimen

Given how spotty the record of full-length Alien films has been, going for the iconic moments might not be a bad idea. The Dark Horse Comics line quickly went from movie-style ongoing miniseries to focus more on shorter series and one-shots.

Cue musings on long-form horror, one-shots and the like: see also The Walking Dead versus most other Romero zombie media.

Update: Here they are. A mixed bag.

Avengers Endgame final trailer

Whatever it takes.

Spoilers for two pretty obvious developments and hints of time passing. The poster gives away just about as much.

Critical Role began four years ago tonight

Happy anniversary!

Buffy The Vampire Slayer, BOOM! 3

Just two weeks after issue 2... after five weeks between 1 and 2... and apparently three weeks to issue 4.

WWW at 30

Happy 30th anniversary to the World Wide Web, which I am on as I type this.

New Normal Incoming

New buses. Terribly exciting. Had I not been warned by a Bus Tracker sign I would have been slightly puzzled.

It reminds me of the early 80s 2000 A.D. Future Shock where the narrator starts stumbling between realities, trying to find his way home, and after a year he makes it... but doesn’t realise it because someone gives him a pound coin to make a phone call.

From The Dust 21

In which we discover the history of Bloody Island.

My second Slayer observation

For Slay Day 2019. It’s Happy Birthday Buffy!

Post 3500!

And current thought...

I’ve never run a cosmic supers game.

Captain Marvel

I came out and bought the first Kelly Sue DeConnick written collection Higher, Further, Faster, More.

I would buy the soundtrack, but I already own most of it. ;)

The Marvel intro will get you in the feels.

Happy International Women's Day!

Off to see Captain Marvel.

Arrow

Arrow is to end this year with a short eighth season, handing the torch to Batwoman while The Flash, Supergirl, Legends Of Tomorrow and assorted crossover Crises continue. Arrow was the low-key straightman of the CWDCTVU, where fighting a telepathic gorilla or being resurrected by an ancient chemical formula was considered unusual.

Happy World Book Day!

Dziobak

Dziobak LARP Studios is closing down, cancelling their forthcoming Gangs Of Birmingham, with plans for College Of Wizardry and Convention Of Thorns, among others, being negotiated. As the leader in blockbuster destination LARPs, they really changed the scene over the past few years.

Edit 11/03, Company P has stepped in to take over College Of Wizardry, looking to fund the 2019 events through IndieGogo.

Critical Role: The Legend Of Vox Machina

The first Critical Role animated special is as of this writing 367% funded on Kickstarter, stretch goals boosting it from the original 22 minutes to 66 and counting.

A day later: Make that 88, as they haven’t updated their stretch goals past three million, and they really need to.

Starting to wonder if they can get to more episodes than a season of the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon. Starting to think they can...

Luke Perry

"Do I want to perpetuate my image and keep the money coming in and keep famous? I'd rather be a good actor who works."
Luke Perry, interviewed by Movieline on set for Buffy The Vampire Slayer

The first time I met Luke Perry we talked about what kind of movie we wanted “Buffy” to be. I asked if he’d ever seen “Near Dark” and he gave me a look of HOW DARE YOU SIR and I knew we’d get along. Funny, committed, and always gracious. He shouldn’t be gone.
Joss Whedon on Twitter

Keith Flint

You’re the Firestarter.

GMs' Day

Appreciate us. Go on.

From The Dust 20

The sounding board NPC is scared. This is never good.

Getting GMs to talk is easy...

GM talky thing went alright, I think. Rain probably didn’t help numbers-wise.

Miracle, by CHVRCHES and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra

Okay, found the end credits theme. Now to decide what it’s the end credits theme for.

(Probably Relics or Demon: The Fallen.)

Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge preview

I WANT TO GO TO THERE.