Assembled: The Making Of The Falcon And The Winter Soldier

Assembled: The Making Of The Falcon And The Winter Soldier is up.

It shows how much real footage there was in the opening wingsuit fight, how much CGI was used to get Sam’s Cap cowl to fit snugly, and how much care was given to talking about race, Isaiah Bradley’s role and Sam taking on the title of Captain America.

And while this may not be hugely significant, series director Kari Skogland talks about the truck fight as episode “1.02”, not episode 2.

Go West, Young Superman

What would you expect in a Western flashback story in a superhero setting?

I'd expect to see some or all of these, depending on what kind of superhero series the Western adventure happens in.

Historical figures from the era, and possibly folklore characters as well.

Western heroes from the comics (who often emulate Western heroes from other media when they were created) who are usually skilled normals because active superhumans are presented as rare before the Golden Age in-character as well as in print.

Masked vigilante heroes (like the Lone Ranger and Zorro, Marvel’s Phantom (formerly Ghost) Rider and DC’s original Vigilante) who are either skilled normals or mildly superpowered.

Human Western villains (outlaws, corrupt authority figures who rule isolated towns) or maybe slightly superhuman ones.

Steampunk and/or other super-for-the-time technology.

Monsters, possibly drawn from local mythology or from 19th century literature like vampires, or a Western horror crossover like a ghost town with actual ghosts.

Cameos by superhumanly long-lived characters (such as Wolverine or Vandal Savage), time travellers, or someone else the PCs might have ‘previously’ met in the future, if the PCs don’t qualify for this themselves. If the PCs are time travellers they might meet a legendary hero or villain they've heard stories about, or a long-lived character they know from their present, while long-lived PCs having flashback episodes might meet time travellers instead.

Prior and ‘reverse’ legacy characters, if a PC is established as part of an ongoing group they might meet either established or previously unmentioned earlier members (like the modern Ghost Rider meeting a Wild West Ghost Rider, unlike the aforementioned Phantom Rider), including regular non-powered ancestors (like Superman looking into his adoptive family’s history and discovering the time a Kent ancestor fought opposite Jonah Hex).

Escape From The Enemy: Jackdaw

Jackdaw, son of Red Swan

Also in Hero Forge:

"It was always going to end here..."

Howard David Ingham runs his optionally-OTT folk hrror RPG The Shivering Circle for Manchester Game Studies for your listening pleasure. I particularly like the casually established geography.

Terry Pratchett Day

Terry Pratchett Day! Also National Superhero Day. And Ed Balls Day. 

Coincidence? 

... Yes.

Kindred: The Embraced

Okay, so, the obvious thing to mention after the World Of Darkness film and TV development deal is the time it happened before, in 1996 with Kindred: The Embraced.

I saw it. I was there. I do not like it.

It’s a product of its time, of course, but it went on immediately after The X Files, so it could have been darker than it was, both visually and in terms of content.

They didn’t aim for a grand epic take on the level of the 1994 film version of Interview With The Vampire, but working on a lower level they could have gone gritty, and tried to before largely dropping the original viewpoint character, in part because a show about a secret society of vampires is always going to be more invested in the vampires than the humans.

(And yes, when discussing genre TV history I’m going to mention Buffy The Vampire Slayer here, which came to TV in 1997 and it and Angel have three of the nine Kindred regulars among their guest cast, as well as Brian Thompson as the second vampire to have a speaking role. And while its vampires aren’t much like the Kindred there’s at least one direct reference in the use of the term Sire. It made a series about vampires among other monsters with human viewpoint characters work, with one sympathetic vampire to begin with and a few more along the way while largely keeping them monsters.)

Executive producer Aaron Spelling is widely blamed, not least by Vampire: The Masquerade creator Mark Rein-Hagen, for bringing the glossy evening soap style from his other hits, and that certainly didn’t help. (The series creator credit goes to John Leekley, who also wrote and created a series bible for one of the unmade US versions of Doctor Who a couple of years earlier.) The gloss turned off some horror fans, and vice versa.

It still just about works as a Vampire series setup.

A lot of the changes to the source material are understandable TV decisions. Five clans in the local Camarilla is a reasonable streamlining - Vampire: The Requiem did that. The Brujah being suited mobsters and the Gangrel being sneery bikers is an odd choice but what the heck, those can be a thing. The only female Primogen member being the Toreador is a cliché, as is her running a nightclub, but hardly unusual. The Ventrue businesslike Prince as protagonist rankles this old anarch, but works as a central figure. Everybody being able to use Gangrel-specific powers works to make them seem inhuman and dangerous. The insufficiently creepy Nosferatu are the only change that really bothers me as a horror geek, and even there one of the episodes addresses it directly. Requiem and V5 have not necessarily monstrous Nosferatu as well. But I still wanted the main representative to look a lot rougher though, especially as people act like he does.

Going out in daylight - also possible for less powerful vampires in Requiem as well as Thin-Bloods in Masquerade - is easier than constant night shooting, though the idea of immunity to sunlight depending on how much blood a vampire has in their system is interesting but only really comes up once. And to be fair, it also helps with the original idea to show the Kindred from the outside as a mysterious threat where anybody could be one, something the games also sometimes play up.

“We’re all around you...”

Julian Luna, in the show credits

“They’re all around us...”

Narration for the World Of Darkness MMO trailer

I also wonder if it and some of the other choices made were to differentiate the series from Forever Knight (1992-6), the other network TV show about a vampire at the time - it ended a week after Kindred. It went a bit grittier with the protagonist as a detective mixed up in human and vampire crimes. The series had vampires that burn in sunlight and show their fangs a lot, and played up the central characters’ age with a lot of Highlander style flashbacks. (It also gets some clear shoutouts in Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines.) Even then, Forever Knight has a vampire femme fatale running a club called the Raven and Kindred: The Embraced has a vampire femme fatale running a club called the Haven...

The eight episodes made all feature perfectly cromulent Vampire plot hooks - a vampire falling in love and risking the Masquerade, clans feuding, a young Toreador resenting being unable to stay famous, and a Nosferatu angry about being ostracised for looking like a monster.

So if you can deal with the style, which I’d entirely understand not, you might get something from it, particularly for a chronicle about vampires in charge of a city.

My World Of Darkness show

What would I want a World Of Darkness show to look like?

This.

(Albeit with more consistent aspect ratios. And probably some identifiable characters, I suppose.)

Music by Bear McCreary, shots from various places. 

The Goth club shots come from Sangre Eterna, which was very self-referential of me as it’s a film about a totally not Vampire GM discovering real vampires in the local Goth scene.

World Of Darkness Development Deal

Writers and producers Eric Heisserer and Christine Boylan are actively looking to develop World Of Darkness film and TV. Heisserer wrote the screenplays for Arrival and Bird Box and is showrunner on Shadow And Bone and Boylan has worked on Leverage, Castle and The Punisher, and written Marvel and DC Comics, as well as the clearly relevant Cloak And Dagger and Constantine. They’re working with Hivemind, a production company involved in The Witcher and The Expanse. This is not an Aaron Spelling situation.

Development doesn’t necessarily lead to production, but fingers crossed.

Like a lot of Leverage people, Boylan appears in the show’s commentary tracks, starting with her first produced episode of television The Miracle Job, which is straight into Catholic symbolism and guilt, and following episodes feature family strife, organised crime conflicts, corporations covering up product dangers, royal lineages and antiquities theft, so, yes.

Thoughts on ALIENS

This year ALIEN Day is showcasing the 35th anniversary of Aliens.

I was sure I’d written about Aliens here...

About how great Ripley is, and how while so many kid additions to action films are a drag Newt is awesome - I love the bit where she’s screaming and retreating, then stops and traps the facehugger creeping up behind her.

About how its USP of “LET’S ROCK!” comes in at exactly an hour.

And the reversal of Bishop, and how much Burke deserves what he gets. And how Hicks is quietly great and Hudson is quietly terrible.

And how well it fits together so we have Gorman and Vasquez dying and the explosion is what makes Newt fall...

It is, as noted, a separate thing from ALIEN to the extent that there’s a new Aliens video game coming out soon, and the old Aliens RPG was heavily tactical while the new ALIEN RPG’s defining mechanic is Stress. So see who wants which when considering a game in either style.

Oscar games 2021

This year’s Best Picture nominees...

The Father

Quick, name a PC with a happy home life.

Judas And The Black Messiah

A traitor in the midst of a revolution. Which side are the PCs on, and can the be sure it’s the right one? This could go all the way up to game like Winterhorn where this is the main plot.

Mank

Trying to make a Great Film, or even a good film, or really a film at all, is a struggle in many ways. The old Hollywood setting can add a lot too.

Minari

How would the characters deal with being displaced, a minority in their new home?

Nomadland

A lot of PCs are like this anyway, hence the term Murderhobo, rootless and travelling to support themselves. Less so in modern settings which tend more to focus on a single city and if not to go globetrotting. TV has a good share of drifter main characters like The Fugitive and genre shows like The Incredible Hulk and Supernatural. Modern Nomads are among the Roles in Cyberpunk, too, where this lifestyle has become common in the western world.

Promising Young Woman

Revenge, vengeance and vigilantism in the kind of over the top way RPGs sometimes go.

Sound Of Metal

How would you deal with the unstoppable loss of your greatest asset, skill or power?

The Trial Of The Chicago 7

Stopping a miscarriage of justice, or being on the receiving end of it.

A L I E N DAY

Happy 42nd of June!

A big preview of the ALIEN: Fate Of The Nostromo board game coming this summer, with an interview with designer Scott Rogers and huge pictures of the board, miniatures, character cards and some of the other cards. The interview notes that it’s fully cooperative so Ash is a second procedural enemy you can add as a hard mode option, and that Jones the cat will lead to false positives in the motion trackers.

(No word on the scale of the minis yet.)

V5: Nobody's Home 1.22

How did this session go?

INVADERS MUST DIE

Avengers: Endgame

It’s been two years. It feels like so many more.

Star Trek: Legends returns to the Nexus

Star Trek: Legends is a new video game allowing crossovers between different eras, a popular choice for Trek games, and for this one the creative team looked to the Nexus from Star Trek: Generations as the way in, looking at how it works in depth, after considering some other options from the setting.

Is it just a natural phenomenon? What is the reason for its destructive rifts? Why does every person who enters it find themselves in their own heaven? The effect of the Nexus – this utopic world it creates for you – seemed like a good place to start our deep-dive into the nature of this realm. It seemed to us like a phenomenon created by design.

The USS Artemis is not as on-the-nose as the Orpheus would have been, so points for that.

Sounds fun, I say as someone who has none of the platforms it’s on, but I appreciate the behind-the-scenes look at the worldbuilding involved.

The Millennium Thrillogy

Watching The Girl In The Spider’s Web reminded me that until I read The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo I imagined the “Millennium Trilogy” were weighty serious works using crime stories to discuss life at the end of the century and not pulp nonsense where Millennium is the name of a magazine. And the very serious real-world issue they do repeatedly invoke, as in the original title of the first book, is dealt with about as carefully as Batman addresses being a childhood survivor of violent crime on a bad day.

In keeping with my policy of not just being negative here, I thought the David Fincher film had a nice soundtrack.

Okay, a bit more. An antihero who rejected her family of supervillains from childhood is pretty interesting.

The Falcon And The Winter Soldier 6: One World, One People

The Falcon And The Winter Soldier

6: One World, One People

Another Winter Soldier callback, the Mission: Impossible holo-mask.

Tiny long shots of Sam to keep the reveal back for another minute...

“Who are you?”

“I’m Captain America.”

“I thought Captain America was on the Moon.”

Earth Day

Earth Day

Be a hero. Save the world.

Greatergood

FreeTheOcean Trash TV one-minute video donation.

A one-shot introducing a big setting

How do you introduce a big setting in a one-shot? You clearly can’t fit it all in, so what are the core features to include? This came from a Vampire: The Masquerade question so I answered it in Vampire terms.

I’ve always struggled with this. Introducing players to the World Of Darkness is straightforward enough with mortals, but there’s a lot to learn with Vampire and the other supernatural types.

One approach is to start with uninformed abandoned neonates. (The first edition quickstart Alien Hunger does this, as does the first edition Vampire: The Requiem introductory chronicle.) It’s a good introduction, but being clueless and threatened isn’t necessarily fun.

Another plan I’ve used has a coterie with a strong premise following another kind of story while showing the powers and drawbacks vampires have. For example I’ve run an introductory one-shot with a gang made up of young vampires robbing an elder’s front company, a pretty standard heist story except for what the characters could do. They could defeat a lot of the mortals on the premises easily, sneak past security guards with Obfuscate, shrug off bullets when shot at and the like, so they got a taste of the characters’ power, and got to see what it was like on the other side when the elder came for them at the end.

That’s a very long way of saying to work out what you want to showcase.

I also linked to this advice from Darker Days.

Jim Steinman

Jim Steinman, songwriter, composer and producer, “father of the power ballad”, has died, aged 73. Responsible for some of the most grandiose songs in the canon of pop and rock, including many of Meat Loaf’s hits, as well as Total Eclipse Of The Heart, originally written for a Nosferatu musical - “Your love is like a shadow on me all of the time” - and the music for Streets Of Fire, including writing the big final hit Tonight Is What It Means To Be Young in two days after the production failed to gets rights to a Springsteen song, and as producer for The Sisters Of Mercy he worked on their breakthrough hit This Corrosion and follow-up Dominion, as well as More later.

"Could electric tattoos be the next step in body art?"

Today in cyberpunk...

New CHVRCHES Day

He Said She Said is very synthy in a Death Stranding kind of way and a bit angry.

A helicopter took off from Mars

A helicopter took off from Mars. Our first ever powered flight on another planet.

Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings teaser trailer

Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings brings the Master Of Kung Fu to the MCU, tying back all the way to Iron Man setting up the Mandarin and Ten Rings and that being undercut in Iron Man 3.

Original comics Shang-Chi is the son of Fu Manchu, so his MCU parentage looks to have changed for copyright reasons.

The teaser shows a mix of modern cities for action, ancient castles for big fantasy sequences, beautiful forests for wuxia battles and the like, several martial arts styles all at play. No sign of any hinted MCU crossovers so far.

5000 Posts on The Watch House!

This is the 5000th post on The Watch House!

Behold my multitudes! 

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!

None of my tags have hit 1000 yet, with the extremely basic RPGs tag being the biggest at 919 and the catch-all of news and other stuff Events close at 910. The Vampire family of games gets the biggest game-specific-ish tag at 792.

V5: Nobody's Home 1.21

Baby please come home!

Looks like summer games starting around late May or early June...

Escape From The Enemy draft logo

Escape From The Enemy draft logo and cover, taken from Destruction Of Tyre by John Martin.

The Falcon And The Winter Soldier 5: Truth

The Falcon And The Winter Soldier

5: Truth

Oof.

My next player character: Jackdaw

Escape From The Enemy

Jackdaw, a Sea Elf cutter pilot, possibly with some magical control over water.

OneDice Fantasy, a group choice for simplicity, for a custom setting where some variations on classic fantasy character cultures flee in a Battlestar Galactica style ragtag fleet from a human empire ruled by gods gone mad.

Art

World Art Day

World Art Day is news to me but f yeah.

Hugo Award 2021 Finalists

Hugo Award 2021 Finalists.

The novel nominations contain good stuff with no real surprises, two Kieron Gillen series could split the comics vote for him, I kind of hope Birds Of Prey wins in a weak Long Dramatic Presentation field, the end of The Good Place might be in with a shout in a stronger Short Dramatic Presentation spread especially with The Mandalorian likewise in twice, and I think Related Work should probably go to the books or documentary or something but the inclusion of a blog post ranting about the last Hugo Awards ceremony is both right and delightful.

Now let's tell a Vampire story

Justin Achilli’s Vampire: The Masquerade fifth edition developer blog looks at introductions, morality plays, political and romantic plots, and weird outliers, as well as some small hints about the Sabbat.

And part two, on conflict.

Black Is Magic

Teacher Mike Lawson talks to Kotaku about the effect of representation in games, notably Magic: The Gathering with its diverse characters and its Black History Month card set.

The Nevers

The Nevers will always be an oddity, however it goes on after the first batch of episodes, with new showrunners, with writers who knew the original plan and likely changes in direction.

Dialogue note

“What is your name?”

“Tell it to the ferryman, he will forego his price.”

Conpulsion 2021 Quiz Answers

In red...

Conpulsion 2021 Quiz

For now, hosting the picture round in case we need to figure out how to send it to people.

Edit: And now questions!

Excalibur

John Boorman’s Excalibur premiered forty years ago today.

It covers a lot of the Matter of Britain in just over two hours, includes a good-sized Grail Quest, uses big chunks of Wagner both Arthurian and not, and has some great ideas and some baffling ones - it seriously overdoes the green light and uses the same font style for its opening title card as The Goodies. And Nicol Williamson’s wildly comic Merlin is a dream... to some. A nightmare to others!

Excalibur earns the title role. The film begins with seeking the sword to unite the land, addresses the Sword in the Stone not being Excalibur by having it broken in a powerful moment and then (very quickly) repaired and returned from the waters, and finally switches the weapons in the final battle to give Arthur a last heroic moment and make the sword vital at the beginning and the end.

Pendragon addresses its choices in discussing which media it uses, and RPGnet’s In Genre talks about it in the Arthurian Romance article.

Boorman planned to make an Arthurian film before he and Rospo Pallenberg wrote a script for The Lord Of The Rings in the early 70s - starring the Beatles - and wrestled with how to condense an epic into a single film, even a long one. Having a legend cycle where you can switch bits in and out rather than a single story to adapt definitely helped. Making Zardoz in the interim probably taught him a thing or two as well, which is easily the best thing I can say for it.

Ghosts, from Host

Ghosts, a new FMV video game(!) from the cast and crew of Host(!) which only works at 10pm local time(!) is Kickstarting now(!)

Conpulsion Grimoire

Conpulsion Grimoire is on. With a quiz by me this evening.

Reactions to events

Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, has died. He was 99. 

The news has taken over BBC One, and BBC Four has shut down with a note to go to BBC One for a major news story, rather than just saying what it is. Naturally it filled up with speculation about the funeral, how big it can be safely, who will be there. I would hate to have a private moment like that given such public scrutiny.

Does your comedy plot work as a plot?

Zoolander 2 was on TV last night. It’s a pisstake of The Da Vinci Code where the original swiped the plot of The Manchurian Candidate, which is one of the reasons it didn’t work as well for me as its structure has always been goofy.

Of course, neither is up to Josie And The Pussycats, now celebrating its 20th anniversary, where among other things the comic conspiracy plot relates directly to the industry it’s about.

But then

so I know it’s not a fair comparison.

Partners

Partners is now on Kickstarter.

The Falcon And The Winter Soldier 4: The Whole World Is Watching

The Falcon And The Winter Soldier

4: The Whole World Is Watching

Which really refers to that final scene.

RPG DNA

From Jim Zub, via Tim Knight:

In the spirit of #comicsDNA, tabletop roleplayers, which games have influenced you the most, creatively? What's your #RPGDNA?

Four or so, due to Twitter allowing four pictures on one tweet. Mine, as may surprise few of you here...

Fighting Fantasy from the start.

MERP I bounced off and formed Strong Opinions about how system should fit setting and tone.

Toon confirmed the above by working.

Vampire: The Masquerade got jaded teen me back to caring.

Bonus: Buffy The Vampire Slayer, my biggest game.

Conpulsion Grimoire

The Conpulsion Grimoire programme is now online, and the quiz is tomorrow. I had better write some questions.

In Every Generation

In Every Generation, a forthcoming Buffyverse YA trilogy from author Kendare Blake:

In a world with many Slayers, in a New Sunnydale rebuilt on top of the Old Sunnydale, one girl (and a werewolf, and a demon) must stop the Hellmouth from reopening and defeat the forces of evil bent on destroying everything and everyone she loves - including her Aunt Buffy. The first book is set for winter 2022.

I AM WRITING BUFFY BOOKS AND YES THEY WILL BE IN ALL CAPS

Kendare Blake on Twitter

Ways to improve game communities

Some advice on improving our communities from Laura Wood via Knutepunkt for NordicLARP but mostly relevant to tabletop and more.

Loki trailer

Another, bigger look at Marvel’s next Disney+ series Loki.

Star Trek First Contact Day

First Contact Day is tomorrow, an online Star Trek convention with panels and watchalongs to mark 25 years of the best TNG film.

Edit: the panels included a Picard S2 trailer, Discovery 4 trailer, Lower Decks 2 teaser, and finally a Prodigy panel revealing where it’s set.

Mummies a-drive

Egypt now has a new purpose built museum for its Pharaohs’ mummies, and put on a big show of moving them out of the old main museum, which is all online of course. 

The sarcophatrucks are kind of charming.

Specific Star Wars nostalgia

Star Wars: The Clone Wars seasons six and seven are kind of bumpy until the end, including a develpment I really dislike late in season six and giving a third of the final season to a backdoor pilot, and I had to stop for a day after Anakin gained a lot of polygons between seasons while Count Dooku continued to look like the prow of a ship.

But I do appreciate having background guest appearances by the Cantina aliens in their original inaccurate action figure outfits. Orange Lifejacket Walrus Man and my old pal Blue Leotard Hammerhead finally make their screen debuts!

(I saw Blue Tracksuit Snaggletooth too, but I had Maroon Tracksuit Snaggletooth. In my ideal version he would have been sharing Hammerhead’s cell..)

None of which explains Ahsoka’s Bionic Woman denim jumpsuit with flares.

Rube Waddell, sporting legend

Thanks to Chris Hewitt and Halen O’Hara from Empire for sharing this on Twitter. 

Baseball hall-of-famer Rube Waddell lived life with a very “try to explain everything that happened to the hero in a year of comics” energy.

In Adventure! I might stat him as a Daredevil, or maybe a Stalwart based on his off-season gig wrestling alligators and the time he prevented a fallen portable stove starting a fire by picking it up and carrying it out. 

Characters for pulpy heroic games could have a few such “wait, what?” moments in their biographies.

The Falcon And The Winter Soldier 3: Power Broker

The Falcon And The Winter Soldier

3: Power Broker

The GRC commercial was a nice hollow laugh moment.

April 1st

Not today, Santa.