Vampire Jam

The World of Darkness itch.io Vampire Jam has completed, with dozens of games produced in a month.

St. Andrew's Day

Happy St. Andrew’s Day!

As our national day happening in winter at the end of a -ber month, it feels like it should involve a fire festival and/or sweeties.

Marvel Multiverse RPG - More

Marvel Multiverse RPG news revealing alternate covers for the playtest suggesting some more characters included, and a hint that rolling three D6 and getting 6,1,6 is the best possible result, which suggests something more math-y than just adding them together or counting successes.

Roger Corman's Poe Cycle

Brian Keiper at Bloody Disgusting on Roger Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe cycle.

Nocturne 1.07

There’s an alternative club in Baltimore (which is as old as Vampire: The Masquerade) called Club Orpheus. So yes it became a location tonight and got a Goth vampire who hangs out at it.

And yes the drinks menu is decorated with bats and contains a cocktail called Vampire Kiss.

Update: A friend informs me that it has in the past hosted a Vampire LARP. Of course it has.

Snow!

Okay you can start getting ready for Christmas now I GUESS.

Happy Hanukkah to my friends who celebrate.

Google has decided it is the festive season

Well, it is the first Sunday of Advent...

NZTV GMing

Morgue talks to Dallas Barnett, the Dungeon Master for the D&D section of New Zealand TV competition Survive The 80s! about RPGs at the time.

A chilling challenge

Okay, not very chilling. Or challenging.

The Guardian Kids Word Search seeks words related to haunted houses. (Not sure why they didn’t do this one four weeks ago but never mind.)

Dare you seek the answers, and possibly a list of things to include in a mildly spooky adventure?

Stephen Sondheim

Stephen Sondheim in his own words

Wise Women

Wise Women by Aleksandra Brokman, an RPG about witches at the edge of village society based on Plish mythology and history.

Vampire go-to ideas

A group was asked for Vampire: The Masquerade plot hooks. You will have seen some of these before, here or at the table with me Storytelling.

Ten of my go-to plot hooks for single sessions or multi-session stories in chronicles I’ve run:

A murder threatens the status quo or the Masquerade. (I don’t start every chronicle with a murder... just most of them. And my last one started with the newly embraced PC of a new-to-the-game player as the not-fully-dead victim.)

It’s coming up on Halloween, Midwinter or New Year’s Eve, one of the biggest party nights of the year as well as a very long night. The elders want to make sure the neonates are occupied. And someone sets out to sabotage some major planned celebrations, be it a gala at Elysium or a major event at a Kindred-backed nightclub.

Refugees arrive from a nearby city claiming sanctuary, saying that the city’s ruler vanished one night and the court descended into civil war. (Bonus point if the court was of a different sect for added suspicion and hostility.)

A connection to a (probably youngish) PC’s mortal life, like an old friend or estranged relative.

A broodmate or other NPC ally of one of the PCs gets into the kind of trouble PCs usually do, like being blamed for a Masquerade breach or getting into a fight with the Sheriff’s lackeys, just to show it isn’t only the PCs this happens to.

Someone is hunting Thin-Bloods in an attempt to learn how to go out in sunlight. This will obviously be of particular concern to any Thin-Blood PCs.

A vampire old enough to challenge the Prince rises from torpor. (When I did this he was also the progenitor of a major clan in the city, including one of the PCs, for added conflict.)

The most prominent member of a clan that isn’t a major power in the city goes missing. (To get weirder still, the entire clan goes missing, if there’s a suitable clan containing no PCs.)

Rumours of a Kindred artefact like a page from the Book of Nod get everybody interested looking for it. (See the Ankharan Sarcophagus in Bloodlines, or The Maltese Falcon for an example of how many factions could come looking for it.)

A mortal political event (a protest march that the police try to shut down, for example) stirs up trouble unexpectedly during the night, and now the city centre’s cordoned off. And some faction takes this as a cue to attack another.

Tales From Black Friday 2021

Tales From Black Friday 2021

It's been a nice, peaceful Black Friday Eve, putting up the receipt chains, gathering around the busted door, singing traditional sale jingles.

Seems like Black Friday starts earlier every year, doesn't it?

But even though it's been going on all November, I can tell the kids are ready for the main event. They hung up their coupon wallets and laid out the gingerbread, Raisinettes and Red Bull for Flash Discount.

They're sure that if they stay up till midnight (Eastern Standard) they'll hear the hum of his electric delivery cart and the zap of his quick-draw pricing gun as he slides in through the inbox.

It brings back fond memories of the Black Fridays of my childhood, when our folks would tell us stories about Flash Discount and his friends at the Great Depot, take us to Flash's Checkout at the mall to itemize our wishlists, watch the old specials like Crafty the Salesman, the whole nine yards.

And I've tried to keep some of that magic for my kids. After all, if you plan wisely, hurry while stocks last, and pass on your extra reduction alerts to your neighbors instead of directing them to the other side of the store for a Bose sound system you know has already sold out or elbowing them in the face over the last plush Lokigator, jolly ol' Flash Discount really could extend your credit.

That's what it's all about, isn't it? The Black Friday spirit.

In fact, I think I can hear ol' Flash Discount now. "A merry Black Friday to all, and no interest for the first six months!"

How to adapt a player character

James Whitbrook at io9 looks at the Amazon plans for a Mass Effect series and argues that Commander Shepard is so player-defined that making an official TV version will lose lots of fans. They’re a cypher, unlike for example Geralt in The Witcher who has a first name, a default appearance and a fair amount of defined personality coming from the books before the games add options to customise powers and make decisions for him. But while the setting has more stories, starting with Andromeda, casual viewers will probably most interested in the big story...

Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving if applicable! This year marks the 400th anniversary of the event being commemorated.

I’ve always been slightly jealous of the US getting an extra “do nothing but eat a load of food” holiday between Halloween and Christmas, though not of the amount of travel involved.

Robin Robin

Robin Robin from Aardman, on Netflix today in time for Thanksgiving never mind Christmas, is lovely.

Hawkeye

Hawkeye 1.01 was a bit too coincidence-y to get all the pieces in place but now that’s done fun is being had.

It’s very, very the Matt Fraction / David Aja / Annie Wu comics run in content and tone, up to and including the title sequence, with Fraction getting an executive producer nod, while retrofitting to the married-with-kids Clint Barton rather than the single schlub version from the run.

Conpulsion Homecoming

After a year off and a year online, Compulsion 2022 aims to be in-person, in April, with a theme of Homecoming.

Hit-Monkey

I have no frame of reference for Hit-Monkey.

Nocturne 1.06

The question of how to mark the Bloodlines anniversary in our Vampire: The Masquerade game was answered by two of the three present PCs going to the local anarch hangout.

The Brujah with no Politics skill had to be told later why their hosts’ visitor Jack was famous.

An in person session

It felt quite familiar when a D6 went off the table and had to be retrieved.

There are times when it is hard to imagine goodness. That is when we must.

Trinity Continuum: Anima

Trinity Continuum: Anima now Kickstarting. It’s 2084. Do you know where your reality is?

Eternals

I spent the first of my Relics: Treasures On Earth pay on Marvel’s Eternals, which seemed apt as it’s about superhuman celestial beings living among us being thrown into a crisis after centuries of relative peace. Of course I wanted to see the film suggested by the end credits (which we get a couple of flashbacks of) with the characters being represented in art across human civilisation...

The film felt like a bit of a superhero movie throwback in some ways, notably its almost complete disconnection from the wider MCU apart from being kicked off by Thanos and addressing why the Eternals didn’t get involved before. One other Marvel Comics character makes a debut appearance as basically an Easter egg given how little they get to do.

(We get DC superhero references instead! One of the Eternals has a valet explained as like Alfred and another is called Superman as... a square-jawed flying brick who shoots lasers out of his eyes. No-one comments on the Grecian-style warrior queen with the armour tiara. Or to a lesser extent the speedster wearing red.)

I also goes rather Ancient Astronauts, which I hate, but not as deep with it as the comics.

I have little familiarity with the characters, having read the 2006 miniseries by Neil Gaiman and John Romita Jr. and seen Sersi on a Marvel SAGA card. But of course I know them from the myths they come from, presented as distorted and inaccurate down to spellings of their names.

And they’re not unfamiliar from the Lee and Kirby run of superhuman and/or godlike pantheons and royal families, as already shown in Thor, Inhumans and to an extent Black Panther...

Spider-Man: No Way Home trailer

Okay, the new trailer shows what we knew and sets up in interesting conflict.

Getting back on my hobby horse

I’d like to run some Buffy or something come the new year. A bit of Weird Level leaking into my current Vampire chronicle.

Bloodlines night

Happy 17th anniversary to Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines. Now, having done a tribute session to Ocean House a couple years back and a guest spot by Smiling Jack since, how to mark it in the next session of my current game...?

Carved In Stone

Carved In Stone is a historical and educational RPG sourcebook about the Picts from Dungeons on a Dime and the Societies of Antiquaries of Scotland. BBC News story.

Characters I could almost play

Some of the SPCs in my current Vampire: The Masquerade chronicle Nocturne could work as PCs in the right series, like Alice the Thin-blood runaway, Mae the gunslinger Sheriff and Stohler the nervy Seneschal, but I have quite a few who wouldn’t really work in a night-to-night game, and I’ve deliberately pressed it in this case.

Ligeia the blind medium is a fun NPC to portray but her blindness would bring in a lot of difficulties for the kinds of things PCs do regularly. Colette the harpy is, I think, a good example of a just-about playable Malkavian (an extreme rarity for me) but would be difficult in a night-to-night game as is because her powers take a heavy toll on her. Mason the Nosferatu spymaster can’t really pass for human, unlike more readily playable versions of the same archetype I’ve featured in previous games. (He connects to the first batch of Vampire characters I imagined playing and the giant Nosferatu being the one I never actually have.)

They’re all fun in small doses but would need adjustment to put on centre stage and take part in a majority of the conflicts the game’s PCs get into.

Making any of them PCs would require working out which regular PC type activities they can and can’t do. When creating Vampire PCs I feel that they should be able to do at least half of having interesting hunting scenes, interacting with Touchstones and other aspects of human society, going to Elysium, hanging out in clubs, solving mysteries and getting in fights.

Ligeia procures blood through safe and reliable methods which would make for boring hunting scenes, wouldn’t be much help in a fight and doesn’t seem like she’d be big on clubbing - she can solve mysteries but really requires ghosts to be a feature of the chronicle to work as intended, so that mostly leaves going to Elysium, which would make her a viable character in a lot of LARPs but not for me personally. Mason gets more ticks on the list, but some things are right out. Colette comes closer, but would probably have to be reworked to be briefly badly debilitated by her visions like Doyle in Angel instead of being laid up for a couple of nights by them.

Some of this is me leaning in deliberately, creating characters who could exist in the setting but be hard to fit in a PC group, but having fun playing Ligeia and Colette, and describing Mason rather than playing him as such, made me think about it. Which NPCs of yours could you almost play?

50 years of Terry Pratchett books

Today is the 50th anniversary of the publication of The Carpet People by Sir Terry Pratchett and the start of a year of celebratory events.

Dear Valued Customers

Dear Valued Customers:

Chicken Wings

& Cheesy Crust

Are Currently Out of Stock

Due to a Recent Cyberattack

Which Has Affected Imports

We Apologize

For The Inconvenience

Photo shared on Twitter by Graham Cluley, thanks to Gar Hanrahan for linking.

Turn the premise of a story into a Planet of the Week

Turn the premise of a Sci-Fi story into a Planet of the Week on RPG.net, including me referring back to Rose Bailey doing this to RPG adventures and settings.

Into The West

Lay down

Your sweet and weary head

Night is falling

You have come to journey’s end

Sleep now

And dream of the ones who came before

They are calling

From across the distant shore

Why do you weep?

What are these tears upon your face?

Soon you will see

All of your fears will pass away

Safe in my arms

You’re only sleeping

What can you see

On the horizon?

Why do the white gulls call?

Across the sea

A pale moon rises

The ships have come to carry you home

And all will turn

To silver glass

A light on the water

All souls pass

Hope fades

Into the world of night

Through shadows falling

Out of memory and time

Don’t say we have come now to the end

White shores are calling

You and I will meet again

And you’ll be here in my arms

Just sleeping

What can you see

On the horizon?

Why do the white gulls call?

Across the sea

A pale moon rises

The ships have come to carry you home

And all will turn

To silver glass

A light on the water

Grey ships pass

Into the West

Horror Affirmation

Remember, you're not a superstitious villager if the castle on the hill really has a Dracula in it.

Robin D. Laws

The Secret World

The Secret World RPG is going to be D&D based, with a possible Savage Worlds version if the Kickstarter goes well. Oh well.

Call Of Cthulhu 40th anniversary

Call Of Cthulhu is 40 tonight. The first dedicated horror RPG, the longest-running licenced game partially due to the licence falling away, but also how much it helped popularise the setting to begin with, and the game that a lot of later games in the genre react to.

I heard the call through Games Workshop licencing it and giving it regular space in White Dwarf in the mid 80s - my first issue had an article on ghosts - and that pointed me to look for H. P. Lovecraft books in turn. The longest I’ve actually run it is two weeks in a row, but I have a lot for it, not least the 90s conspiracy spinoff Delta Green.

Disney+ Day Marvel

Disney+ Day Marvel reel, details at Tor, with new stuff after seven and a half minutes showing the series already screened, including a new Hawkeye scene with a big oner inside a car at the start of a chase, first footage of Moon Knight, She-Hulk and Ms. Marvel, the logos for Agatha: House Of Harkness and Echo, and announcements for animated series reviving the 90s X-Men, Marvel Zombies, and a new Spider-Man: Freshman Year series set in the MCU and taking art cues from the 60s comics.

Disney+ Day

Despite Disney+ starting here last March, we still get Disney+ Day! This year brings several movies in IMAX ratios, included streaming of Shang-Chi and Jungle Cruise, new series for D+ and Star, more of The World According To Jeff Goldblum including Magic and Monsters though not more LARPing, a 22 minute documentary about Boba Fett (I agree with Joe Johnston that much of his popularity comes from how little we knew, and yes, the send-away figure gets its due!) and Homer Simpson meeting Goofy.

And a cast reveal for Willow, announcements for Nautilus and The Spiderwick Chronicles...

The Champions

This just in from the I was Not Expecting This Remake department: Ben Stiller to direct and co-star with Cate Blanchett in The Champions, based on the 1968 superhuman spy series about UN agents receiving superpowers after a plane crash in the Himalayas leads to them being saved by the wise people of secret Not Shangri-La. Expect the title to confuse fans of the superhero RPG spinoff comics and the L. A. based Marvel team. Also a fifty-fifty chance Stiller will play the American hero... Craig.

Hide by Kiersten White

Hide is the first adult novel by Kiersten White, author of Slayer and Chosen. This excerpt at io9 introduces the premise and the cast. Hide for up to a week in an abandoned amusement park, with the winner(s) receiving a massive payout... and then contestants start disappearing.

Important period detail

Based on two unconnected adverts I just saw in the same break, we now say “baubles” as a Christmassy fake swear. Update your records accordingly.

Nostalgic for your earlier days of gaming

From a Twitter chain:

Post a picture of something TTRPG related that makes you nostalgic for your earlier days of gaming.

Mine:

The Ghost Die from Ghostbusters.

Murder Island

Murder Island is (a) a rather glum murder mystery set in a small community with a lot of little secrets and a few big ones, with dramatic bits the audience got and the players didn’t and some characters more broadly drawn than others, and (b) a game. The game is the angle I’ll talk about most here.

After four episodes talking to various witnesses slash suspects, with a few ‘cut scenes’ where they’d time conversations in earshot or otherwise reveal clues, the clue the case actually revolves around arrived in episode five when there were only two teams left to find the key item. Their different approaches led to one team finding it and going on to the final murder-solving challenge. So like a lot of adventures it had a third act reveal that you couldn’t finish it without. Before that the players found enough to rule out some suspects at least in part, and still had to get past a wall of “no comment” interviews and the like - the actors playing the suspects had to choose when to talk.

Foo Fighters: Studio 666

Foo Fighters have secretly filmed and in February release Studio 666, a horror comedy about trying to record an album in a haunted house. As you can probably imagine I am interested.

Update: Alex Ward is in it!

Enterprise rewatch

Having made it home with Star Trek: Voyager, Keith R.A. DeCandido at Tor is taking a long road, getting from there to here.

This ghost will follow

Drat, threw away the perfect Nocturne session needle drop already.

Once More, With Feeling at 20

Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Once More, With Feeling premiered in the US twenty years ago tonight. 

(Horror Queers podcast celebration)

Following the silent episode Hush as a special episode with also progressed the overall plot, it’s seen a soundtrack release, singalong screenings and live performances, and a sidebar on how to do something like it in the RPG.

(I was expressly asked not to try it in The Watch House, though I did have a couple of songs picked out.)

It could be witches! Some evil witches! Which is ridiculous cos witches they were persecuted Wicca good and love the Earth and women power andI’llbeoverhere...

My party piece

While it wasn’t the first all-original-songs musical episode of a not-normally musical show (Xena: Warrior Princess led the way) it was big enough that non-show musical fans know it.

Give me something to sing about

Please

Give me something!

Remember

Guy Fawkes, an unusual example of a character much less cool than his most famous cosplayer.

Lionel Blair was among other achievements one of the greats of Give Us A Clue, source of my own ability with charades.

The Internet That Was

What can you tell a techno-cultist of the Internet-That-Was? Do you fight with Jiff or Giff?

Who would you cast Matt Smith as?

Matt Smith is currently in cinemas in Last Night In Soho, appeared in (one shot of) the new Morbius trailer yesterday, and just talked about nearly being in The Rise Of Skywalker without saying who as. (I also saw him last week in His House but that’s totally down to me waiting a year to watch it.)

What We Do In The Shadows season 3

What We Do In The Shadows season 3 just ended in the US and just started here, two days after Halloween :( but with every episode on the BBC iPlayer :) and features that inevitable Vampire LARP event of some of the PCs ending up in the Primogen.

A.V. Club interviews for the first two episodes, revealing that Kayvan Novak did impressions in The Cloak Of Duplication. Which also features the original vampire called The Sire and a renegade vampire clan...

Morbius trailer 2

The new Morbius trailer shares an entrance with Stoker’s Dracula, a song with The Lost Boys and an attack reminiscent of Dracula Untold, sadly the swarm of bats does not become hand-shaped but you can't have everything.

Oh, and some Spider-Man references.

(And Matt Smith! In one shot. Not enough to balance the Jared Leto of it but it’s something.)

NaGaDeMon

Not sure why such a thing is national, except for the NaNoWriMo reference and the Naga Demon reference.

The Book Of Boba Fett opens on December 29th

Trailer setting up its Godfather plot with added forcefield shields and green and red Lucasfilm logo.

The Book Shop

The Book Shop is a kid-friendly introductory RPG by Adrian Barber, about an enchanted bookshop where things can escape from one book into another, created for Scottish Book Week. An RPG is an odd thing for them to be doing, part of a move to bring in people including an 8-bit computer game and a murder mystery last year, certainly an odd thing I support. There will also be a video Actual Play with some Book Week guests in mid November.

The ass-kicking CG Bride of Frankenstein

I missed this pre-Halloween: A teaser for photoreal-cutscene quality young adult action hero Bride of Frankenstein saving Dracula from swordsmen in a short film which you can officially watch in Fortnite, because why not?

It’s a very impressive tech demo, but... why is Van Helsing in black and white?

November

It’s November! Release the, um...

... St. Andrew’s Day related things?

Haggises, maybe?

what even is this month