Nationals 2020

This is the second weekend where the 2020 Nationals was scheduled. Back next year. I will probably go. I will probably run Buffy.

Maintaining The Masquerade

Attempting to explain what Vampire LARP is...

Star Trek Adventures Humble Bundle

A lot of Star Trek Adventures PDFs for a little money.

Harsh...

Batman: A Death In The Family animated film... lets you choose if Robin lives.

Late is late until it arrives...

Film Kickstarter / Indiegogo / etc. makes RPG and even boardgame backing seem like a breeze. A documentary about the making of Ghostbusters just arrived three years and ten months late. And is not the slowest.

The care and feeding of Vampire SPCs

A Vampire-specific suggestion - hunting and feeding will lose its novelty in time. VTM5 introduces complications like Resonances to keep specific hunts interesting, like VTR2 has details like Protean needing you to kill an animal to take its form.

My best trick for keeping vampires’ need for blood in focus even if it isn’t played out in detail is to remind myself to have the SPC vampires address it too. It’s very easy to handwave that, and well-established Kindred will have Herds and other reliable methods so they don’t need to hunt in the streets, but I try to avoid making it feel like the PCs are the only vampires who need to worry about this.

I include the occasional reminder in another scene, like a contact arriving late with a little blood on her lips, seeing another vampire pursuing someone in a Rack club, and even some plot hooks like a recent example of a Gangrel poaching on another’s domain at the city zoo for the blood resonance of large predators.

L.A. By Night has the coterie’s first meeting with the Nosferatu elder Gary being a dinner party with live rats as the main course, to the dismay of the Ventrue and Toreador members.

The forthcoming VTM computer game Swansong looks like it will have control of the blood supply as a major plot strand, with the Prince of Boston looking to consolidate and possibly monopolise it throughout the area.

The Pirates! In an adventure with flag design

A snarky critique of pirate flags from Sin Vega

Thanks to Matthew Dawkins for retweeting

(Motherland) Fort Salem

Mortherland: Fort Salem, the AU fantasy series about witches, has appeared here (as Fort Salem, presumably to avoid the clear danger of confusion with the sitcom about young mothers) on the BBC iPlayer.

Wizard School by way of Military SF makes for an interesting setup.

The title sequence showing the witch heroes of American history makes me want to see that show, but...

Thanks to Tim Knight for the news, it being the only news I’ve seen about this!

Also note, NSFW, bit of language, bit of violence.

And the witch hunting organisation name is hilarious...

Red Right Hand 1.07

I used a map. I feel weird. (A map of a house they were searching. Because otherwise I would have had to use the tour scene from Panic Room.)

Sounds Like Hell 1.07

Our heroes play a frat party.

“How about you tell me what’s going on, then maybe we can fight to the death?”

Cortex Prime: Hammerheads

Hammerheads, the first setting for Cortex Prime, about heroic disaster response:

Hammerheads is a love letter to Thunderbirds...

As the writer of a Trinity Continuum Allegiance which also does this, I am happy to see more in this area.

Via Mike McMullan.

William Faulkner’s unmade vampire film

Thanks to Bruce Baugh for this “is this real life...?” moment:

William Faulkner adapted a vampire novel called Dreadful Hollow for Howard Hawks and Warner Bros. passed on it.

That, right there, is a moment where horror film history could have taken a different turn. Hawks pretty much stayed out of SF/F/H apart from making The Thing From Another World, and Faulkner once had a ghost of sorts in A Fable but that was about it, and the WB didn’t have much of a go at horror during the Universal Monster era either...

Free RPG Day 2020

Free RPG Day is on!

Buffy Unmatched miniatures duelling game

Buffy The Vampire Slayer Unmatched, a miniatures duelling game from Mondo Games and Restoration Games. Buffy, Willow, Angel and Spike.

Just announced, only box art so far. Obviously I want to see the figures before deciding whether to knock people out of the way in my rush to get it... Previous Unmatched minis look nice (and are around 28mm scale) so I have hopes here. Such hopes.

And in related news, Restoration has launched an Unmatched set design contest.

Taylor Swift, folklore

folklore, the 2020 album from Taylor Swift.

In isolation my imagination has run wild and this album is the result. I’ve told these stories to the best of my ability with all the love, wonder, and whimsy they deserve. Now it’s up to you to pass them down.
Taylor Swift on Twitter

if this is not Changeling, WHAT IS
Outstar on Twitter

Compare Look What You Made Me Do.

They Came From Beyond The Newsagent!

I seem to have started writing an essay on 1970s and 80s British horror comics as inspirations for They Came From Beyond The Grave!

Misty started in the late 70s and Scream! in the balmy summer of 1984 but were more 60s and 70s style horror than what was happening with the genre at the time - the kind of horror movies kids would know from late-night TV and cultural osmosis. (Dracula had been the subject of a Wall’s ice lolly in 1981, as well as previous and later variations...)

Disguise

Evidence in favour of the Clark Kent disguise:

Finding the photo I used for a stereotypical punk Brujah in my current Vampire: The Masquerade game comes from a modelling shoot, now pondering having pictures of the same model, Frida Gustavsson, from other shoots as members of two or three other clans and seeing if anyone notices.

San Diego Comic-Con at home

SDCC is going to be a bit different this year...

io9 coverage

They Came From Beyond The Grave!

They Came From Beyond The Grave! Now on Kickstarter!

“New Scottish games that even the Scots don’t want to play!”
A BOLD CLAIM

While I can see most Onyx Path games working as movies, the They Came From games are the ones I can see them making themselves. Possibly over a long weekend.

Christmas Trinity July

Christmas In July at DriveThruRPG includes all but the very latest Trinity Continuum PDFs.

LIGHTHOUSE, a horror LARP on your screen

LIGHTHOUSE from Riveting LARP

A community of paranormal investigators meet up online and find... something.

Via Steve Ellis and Elin Nilsen.

LARPs using screens were a thing even before screens became such a common way to game (like Artemis, the Star Trek inspired Spaceship Bridge Simulator) - and an online conference is a natural fit for the moment. It starts in August, running up to an ending in December expected to be... cataclysmic.

Apollo 11 at 51

Not as marked as 50 naturally, but a reminder of what we can achieve.

Red Right Hand 1.06

I have just OOC confirmed to the two players in Red Right Hand that know what the Beckoning is that the instigating plot would have been the Beckoning if they’d been the majority, as the other players would have no idea what I was on about.

Modernisations

Clueless came out 25 years ago today, a modern high school adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma, sparking a small run of similar ideas, and the notion still works. Shakespeare is done in modern clothes about half the time.

John Lewis

“Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Be hopeful, be optimistic. Our struggle is not the struggle of a day, a week, a month, or a year, it is the struggle of a lifetime. Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.”

Need some scary beautiful people?

An action thriller about an immortal trying to out run the two grim reaper bounty hunters tasked with finally laying them rest. Cue close calls much in the style of Final Destination.

Here they come.
SON M. on Twitter

Adding Sora Choi and Adrian Patterson as visual references to forthcoming games. Possibly more than one.

The big moments are gonna come...

“So that’s everything, huh? No weapons, no friends... no hope. Take all that away, and what’s left?”
“Me.”

Buffy on E4 just reached Becoming Part II.

I’m fine.

Dialogue note

“Okay, on a scale of one to ten, how big a hug do you need right now?”

Project Power

What if you could have a superpower for five minutes?

Oh, and since the power is unpredictable it might kill you.

Project Power, a new film starring Jamie Foxx, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Dominique Fishback, looks at how much trouble it could cause.

The setup reminds me of Hourman, and Strikeforce: Morituri with a much shorter time limit and a rather less noble group of users, and the plot could work for the artificial superhuman drug Mite in Aberrant as well as Venom as used by Bane in Batman.

So it’s already a gameable concept, with just how temporary the boost can be possibly adding a bit of planning to a supers setup.

Update having seen it a month later:

It mostly uses the setup to hang occasional superhuman rampages on what is otherwise a pretty straightforward fun action movie, with a little bit of a message about human experimentation and not much about who has power and who can use it.

Best bit: a fight around a power containment cell shown from the inside.

4444

The Fantastic 4 are fun.

The Green Knight

The Green Knight from A24 has its own RPG! Pendragon is referenced in the io9 interview with designer Timm Woods.

Robin Of Sherwood

“In the days of the Lion spawned of the Devil’s Brood, the Hooded Man shall come to the forest. There he will meet Herne the Hunter, Lord of the Trees, and be his son and do his bidding. The Powers of Light and Darkness shall be strong within him. And the guilty shall tremble.”

Robin Of Sherwood is being repeated on one of the ITVs, a reminder of that weird period when they put drama series money into a Saturday teatime adventure with added paganism while the BBC were doing Doctor Who in half-hour serials on video, and how much Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves studied some of its specific ideas, notably the addition of a Saracen hero and having the Sheriff and other villains not just corrupt officials of a tyranny but in league with supernatural evil.

I also have one of the two gamebooks. The King’s Demon, by MERP writer and White Dwarf regular and writer of a Robin Hood adventure for it Graham Staplehurst and illustrated by Warlock Of Firetop Mountain’s Russ Nicholson.

Night Road beta testers

Want to play Vampire: The Masquerade - Night Road early? You have a chance!

The Search Of The Glow

The Search Of The Glow, installation art that looks like the first contact vessel of kind aliens.

Shared by Star Trek (among many others) artist Doug Drexler

Ghost

Ghost was released in the US thirty years ago today (Friday the 13th of July 1990) and is still being referenced in relation to ghosts, mediums and possession - it came up on Sunday during our game session.

A kinder and gentler take on the afterlife than many examples I know, it still has judgment by light and dark figures, as well as ghosts going mad (or possibly already mad at the moment of death) as well as star-making turns and the notorious pottery scene.

Star Wars: The Bad Batch

Coming to Disney+ next year, The Bad Batch spin off from The Clone Wars into a new animated series, working as mercenaries looking for a purpose after the war they were born for ends.

More ideas from one music video

Varyar inquires who the driver is in the video for Desert Rose.

Want to help save the Antarctic?

Worth a try.

Red Right Hand 1.05

That escalated quickly.

Tabletop Scotland 2021

Tabletop Scotland 2021, August 20-22nd.

Your urban fantasy nightclub is not too much

Your urban fantasy nightclub is not too much, part something of number unknown (part one)

The Chicago Castle, previously the Excalibur and Vision, two clubs in one building, specifically the former Chicago Historical Society which was previously a makeshift morgue in 1913 and reported to be haunted ever since, and was the location for a weekly magic performance called Supernatural Chicago.

Sounds Like Hell 1.06

“I have an idea which could be hilarious. And also maybe highly dangerous.”

This is the Way.

Ludwig Göransson, Scoring The Mandalorian

What to run next

I know it’s a couple months away, but with the whole online GMing thing it’s best to plan early.

Two games one evening after another, probably a bit much.

Even though Buffy is hardly any prep at all.

V5 got a decent amount of uptake, though almost entirely new and unfamiliar with the game. Which is good, shows interest. So more of that is good for all concerned. And I can recycle most of the anarch side of this chronicle.

And of course I’d like to use those Trinity Continuum books.

Be The Change bundle

A digital book collection focused on expressions about and by people of color, over $1200 for $1.

ENnies 2020 voting

Voting is now open for the ENnies awards 2020.

As I don’t go to ENWorld I’m not surprised about how many nominated products I haven’t heard of.

GEAS Online

For the first semester of 2020-21 at least, GEAS will be online. My summer online GMing practice is going to come in handy.

Star Trek Adventures: The Klingon Empire core rulebook

Star Trek Adventures: The Klingon Empire is not a sourcebook but a full-on core rulebook, with a revised edition of the STA rules as well as Klingon-specific stuff. Interesting move. It was likely to be a big book as just a sourcebook.

Ennio Morricone

Ennio Morricone, the sound of the Sergio Leone film among so much more, has died, aged 91.

World Of Darkness Discord

Among other things, the World Of Darkness Discord has a Share Your OC channel for telling people about your characters.

This has lead to me drawing the Nosferatu I came up with before the first edition of Vampire: The Masquerade even came out and have never actually played...

But one day, maybe, I will actually play Piotr, the six-foot-eight hulk with the shock of white hair, no memory of a life before becoming a vampire, the soul of a poet and maybe a slight influence from Vincent in the 1980s Beauty And The Beast TV series...

Red Right Hand 1.04

An SPC involved in the plot shows up on time, and somebody takes care to prevent a breach of the Masquerade. Weird.

I could have turned the light on at the end of the session but it seemed more apt not to.

On streaming

I could probably stream one of my RPGs, as long as the stream started about half an hour into the session... and nobody told me it had.

Sounds Like Hell 1.05

“Yeah, traditionally vampires and werewolves don’t get on. Like in... uh... Underworld! Underworld, that’s what I was thinking!”

Happy birthday, USA. May you have a better one next year.

Shadowed Alleys

Matthew Knighton presents Shadowed Alleys, low-key urban fantasy PBTA.

Movies From Parallel Paramount

Paramount Unproduced Properties 1983-1997, working through a gigantic file of scripts and ideas Paramount Studios didn’t make in that time, title by title. A view into otherspace showing some potentially great movies we lost, as well as some less so. The Terence Malick project I just went by would probably have been worth checking out, for example. The David Mamet remake of Ace In The Hole too...

There was a Continental Op screenplay in the late 80s. And Congo made it to script in 1980!

Tracing them by date would probably reveal a lot as well, as I spot attempt to cash in on trends year on year. I suspect that the adaptation of The Black Arrow written the same year as Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves came out might not be a coincidence.

There are quite a few former X teaches kids to do X and win championship screenplays, from band to cheerleading to... parachute jumping.

Most of them I can kind of see. But an explanation for Bardo would be nice.

Thanks to RPGnet user Lenin for the link.

Hashtag The Omen

The “your apocalypse fighters are celebrities you share a birthday with” thing gets me a twofer of Nick Offerman and Aubrey Plaza. Cthulhu’s in trouble.

Mentioning this led to someone finding they share a birthday with Kendall Jenner, which naturally made me think of her as the cause of the apocalypse, so now I have “Antichrist as influencer” in my ideas pile.

She Kills Monsters: Virtual Realms

An online adaptation of She Kills Monsters.

Adventure Presents

Adventure Presents, a series of standalone RPGs in magazine format from 2000 A.D. publishers Rebellion.

Can we try singing at the waterfall?

Playing Beyond The Wall.

Jason Carl makes several notes

Jason Carl talks to Bea Caicoya at Comic Book Resources about the World Of Darkness, Bloodlines 2...

And to quote Bea: “Jason discusses metaplot, recurring characters, the End of Days, what the poor technophobic Lasombra are up to and more.”

“Does everybody has the potential to become a monster?”
“Yes, but also to learn from that experience as well.”

Part two features storytelling, history, fanart and what kind of monster various superheroes would be.