Monday, 28 February 2022
First contact as philosophy, horror and mystery
Leah Schnelbach at Tor looks at the 50th anniversary of the film of Solaris, the remake, and as an aside Event Horizon, three films looking at a similar question posed by the original novel and coming up with different answers.
Bunnies, bunnies, it must be bunnies!
Daily bunny no.1560 has no stake in this battle
Will Quinn, Halloween 2021
Among the most relevant of a long series of adorable bunny pictures. Thanks to Bully for retweeting a library card.
Sunday, 27 February 2022
Nocturne 1.17
Vampire: The Masquerade - Nocturne
1.17
It would be about all the weird stuff the overseer of the Rack has seen to explain how jaded he is.
So just the one example:
“It’s nothing compared to the time I negotiated a visit by a Ravnos travelling medicine show.”
(An actual running gag would tonally better fit something like a Watcher in Buffy. Like the one in the legendary PBP Mysterious Albion who once tried to cheer up a slayer by saying she wasn’t as bad as the one who destroyed the world.)
“Sure, it’s a decent-sized massacre, but I helped clean up after a Conclave in the 70s.”
“Torn apart by wild dogs? Yes, awful. I mean, not as awful as being torn apart slowly by one wild dog, but...”
“Horrible. Absolutely. But then, I had to shop on Christmas Eve last year.”
We Will Be Monsters
We Will Be Monsters, the complete Unreal Engine CGI young adult modern Universal Monsters short that apparently has something to do with Fortnite. As previewed at Halloween. Apparently the Void is a bad thing making the world go black and white. Having loved the Bride of Frankenstein and not been so keen on manbun Dracula, I like the Wolfman and the Mummy, less so the Creature.
Saturday, 26 February 2022
Friday, 25 February 2022
When Romance Met Comedy
When Romance Met Comedy by Caroline Siede ran for four years as a fortnightly column at the A. V. Club (alternating with more related to this blog columns by Tom Breihan about the most influential action and superhero films as well as overall box office winners year by year) and pinging back and forth in genre history. It closed out today having looked at vintage and modern classics, new arrivals, Shakespeare and Austen updates, edge cases with animated heroes and superhumans and more, an entertaining reminder that a genre I don’t really follow can contain more than I might guess.
I’ve talked about the tricky prospect of romance in RPGs before, and while it’s featured mostly due to player interest it’s never been the central genre to play to for a series, while comedy has. As Cyberpunk 2020 noted romantic plots not directly involving the PCs are much easier.
Would I try a romance-centric game? Maybe with a very select group. But I could swipe a number of stories from this list, and not just the cross-genre edge cases.
Thursday, 24 February 2022
Charity RPG bundles for Texas trans youth
RPG charity bundles sales coming soon to itch, previewed and profiled at io9.
Dark Empire
Star Wars has always been a visual medium, so when the EU started going all-in in the early 90s, I was keener on Dark Empire and the launch of the Dark Horse Comics run than the Thrawn trilogy of novels. It got pretty wacky pretty fast, and Cam Kennedy’s moody painterly art was always an odd choice to pair with Tom Veitch’s story, but at least it mattered how Palpatine returned.
Wednesday, 23 February 2022
When Gravity Fails
A call for a When Gravity Fails TV series from Sam Reader at Tor.
The novel, a cyberpunk noir set somewhere in the Middle East where learning and personality chips are commonplace alongside body modification including gender affirmation, is perhaps more familiar to gamers than average, having been the subject of a Cyberpunk 2020 sourcebook as well as a PC adventure game. Writer George Alec Effinger also wrote the opening fiction for Trinity first edition.
Might have to use one of the other titles in the series as it now sounds a bit like a cartoon.
Tuesday, 22 February 2022
GMing is not for everyone
What I Learned From Breaking Up With D&D by Cole Rush at Tor.
I still get GMing stage fright after decades, and I’ve dropped some games to avoid burnout. I also have friends who have been players about as long who tried GMing and didn’t take to it.
Monday, 21 February 2022
Urban Legend Urban Fantasy
For Glendower’s birthday on RPGnet, folklore and urban legend based plot hooks.
Clowning Around
The mystery clown sightings from a few years back? They were monster hunters covering their tracks by disguising themselves in ways that nobody would take reports of them seriously as they took on an incursion by Unseelie things that thrived on being talked about.
Filtered
A specific new phone camera filter supposedly shows people’s auras. And... it works.
I Went Down To The Crossroad, Ask Me How!
A musician comes out with a new single with a revolutionary new sound, and claims that he went to a crossroad to strike a deal with the Devil for an upgrade to his ability to play. And he includes the specific location and a detailed rundown of everything necessary to do it.
Sunday, 20 February 2022
My Nationals history
The cancellation of the Nationals three times in a row and the offer to host it elsewhere got some thinking about it which led to me looking at previous Nationals, brochures, and the like, seeing the categories expand and narrow as the event got bigger pretty quickly, from 15 or so in 2003 (the first year I could find a category list for) to over 30 in the big 2016 show.
And I also looked over my own history before I started GMing by default and blogging about it here.
So, to quote my LiveJournal, what did I play?
... which Nationals games would I have gone into based on game-specific blurbs a la Conpulsion rather than going in blind due to the choosing categories?
No Nationals 2022
Confirmation tonight that the 2022 Student Nationals have been cancelled, and put up for bids to host in 2023 after Sheffield decided not to offer again.
Nocturne 1.16
Vampire: The Masquerade - Nocturne
1.16
Unexpected line of the game tonight: “Seduce the Prince!”
Given that the defining quality of the city’s Prince is that he’s scary, I was not expecting this.
Winter Olympics 2022 closing ceremony
And a nice little closing ceremony as well. By Olympic standards anyway.
I wasn’t expecting Auld Lang Syne. Or to have gotten this invested in the Winter Olympics really. I know it’s a geopolitical mess, but it can still affect me.
Saturday, 19 February 2022
2000 A.D. at 45
2000 A.D. Prog 1 was published 45 years ago. And not, as one might think, 22.
I started with it probably a bit too young judging by my reaction to a cliffhanger involving the Dark Judges and not getting another issue again for months, but many of its series stand out.
The adverts for Lone Wolf also nudged me towards that gamebook series, and the early GW Judge Dredd RPG may have informed a bit of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. (And indirectly there’s a lot of Nemesis The Warlock among others in early 40K.)
Dredd has been the big star since Prog 2, with a spinoff magazine running for decades and two movies of varying quality among other things, including games. Having run all that time has led to a kitchen sink setting with a lot of options, though games naturally tend to focus on Judges. Other series and universes like Strontium Dog, Rogue Trooper and Sláine have received some gaming attention over the years as well - the latter has a new miniatures game on the way.
Friday, 18 February 2022
A related Winter Olympic thought of a different genre
A massive of the world’s top ice dancers, including 10 of the 23 Olympic teams this year, train in the same facility in Montreal. Which seems like the perfect setup for a comedy drama or romcom.
Winter Olympic Superheroes
The Winter Olympics inevitably got me thinking about superheroes.
The various sports and varieties of skiing, snowboarding, skating and more could be good power sets or skilled normal abilities.
I wouldn’t make the whole team Scandinavian despite their winter sport success and Norway’s in particular, but they could certainly be based up there. There’s little Scandinavian representation in the US-based superhero universes, and I want to avoid stereotypes while including archetypes.
The most wintry mainstream team is probably Canada’s Alpha Flight, with winter weather controller Snowbird, a furry Hulk type in Sasquatch, as well as hockey pun strong guy Puck. (They were initially led by an armoured hero and included a shaman, an amphibious swimmer and two speedsters named Northstsr and Aurora for less immediately relevant members.) They infamously had a major fight scene in a whiteout represented by seven pages of sound effects and speech bubbles over white panels. (See also Superhero Girl Versus Canadian-ness.)
So an international team based on dealing with cold weather issues.
Skiing, with a suitably radical snowboarding sidekick?
And/or ski jump?
Speed skating speedster.
Figure skating suggests a martial artist and/or superspy type.
Ice hockey obviously suggests a melee fighter role.
Biathlon is already James Bond Norwegian army training.
The sled sports? Armoured sub-team?
Curling (the one discipline I can imagine myself surviving) might be the guy-in-the-chair role.
Thursday, 17 February 2022
A new Vampire playlist
A new Vampire: The Masquerade background playlist, already rather Bloodlines-y.
Figgy Skating Pop
The women’s Figure Skating final ended horribly. But reflecting on how weird it is that the silver medallist’s Cruella medley meant a bit of it was performed to I Wanna Be Your Dog by Iggy Pop.
(And congratulations to the GB Curling teams, for local interest.)
Wednesday, 16 February 2022
Big Bad, a parallel Buffyverse novel
A new Buffy novel, Big Bad by Lily Anderson, sees Mayor Wilkins blot out the sun and take over formerly-Sunnydale. It sounds like a bigger take on The Wish, with Buffy arriving too late to stop the Hellmouth opening.
Tuesday, 15 February 2022
Fun for the players if not the characters
Vampire the Masquerade: where the suffering is supposed to be for the characters, not for the ST and players.
Monday, 14 February 2022
Ivan Reitman
Ivan Reitman, director of Ghostbusters, Dave and more as well as a producer for the likes of David Cronenberg, has died.
More Super Bowl trailers
Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness, The Rings Of Power, Nope, Moon Knight, nd a selection of the ads, at Empire.
Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness
Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness trailer from the Super Bowl... a placing I’m sure Steve Ditko would not have expected.
Super Bowl adverts
Our annual peek into a parallel advertising universe. Some funny or baffling, some for online scams, and one for the robots that will hunt us after Judgment Day.
Sunday, 13 February 2022
Nocturne 1.15
Vampire: The Masquerade - Nocturne
1.15Tonight we had two non-hunting dice rolls, one to sing at the Prince’s New Year party and one not to laugh at a diss.
Saturday, 12 February 2022
Moon Knight
Moon Knight cover story at Empire preview. (Plus variant cover by Bill Sienkiewicz!)
The feature also confirms...
Friday, 11 February 2022
The end of the MCU Netflix
Daredevil and the rest of the Defenders are leaving Netflix on March 1st, shortly after a first appearance in the main MCU. And oh yes, none of the series ever came out completely on disc.
Thursday, 10 February 2022
Nathan Chen of the USS Olympic
As a break from figure skating vampires, gold medal winner Nathan Chen went with a classic Star Trek look (designed by Vera Wang) to perform to an Elton John medley centred on Rocket Man.
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| One to beam up! |
Obi-Wan Kenobi
May the 25th be with you. The 45th anniversary of Star Wars premiering seems like a good day for it.
“The story begins 10 years after the dramatic events of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith...”
Wednesday, 9 February 2022
The Book Of Boba Fett 1.07
The Book Of Boba Fett
1.07: In The Name Of Honor
The series has been kind of a mess, but an often fun kind of a mess, and the finale tied things together well, I think.
Paying off most of the side character business! Answering the question from last episode! Knee rockets! Smashing lots of things! Cad Bane being willing to start a war to get a slight advantage in a possible gunfight!
I did think that after last week introducing Cad Bane entirely by “he’s a bad gunslinger” style cues for people who haven’t watched the animated series, they still should have established he and Fett had history. But, smallish quibble.
I believe the mid-credits mini-scene shows...
Indie RPG Prompt Generator
Via David Prokopetz, a generator for concepts for settings and systems. RPGnet thread trying it out. Each table could also be a good prompt source for adventure ideas. Combining them is the tricky part...
Tuesday, 8 February 2022
Larp Design
Larp Design, the Knudepunkt 2019 book, is now freely available in PDF, as reported here. Thanks to US_LRPer for the heads up.
John Williams at 90
John Williams celebrates his 90th birthday today. Nine pieces as examples, not including his themes for NBC News and the Olympic Games. Star Wars composers celebrate. The sound of my childhood and beyond.
Monsters On Ice
Winter Olympic sport most likely to be full of vampires: figure skating. Ironic as Buffy was into it.
Winter Olympic sport most likely to be full of other undead: Skeleton.
Must not start writing fanfic.
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| Damn it, d20 Modern! |
Bat wins New Zealand Bird of the Year 2021
The Long-Tailed Bat is a fine bat, and has the attitude of an award winner, as Bird of the Year 2021.
Monday, 7 February 2022
Skiing
Watching Winter Olympics morning coverage, mum got to talking about skiing. She learned in Norway with a Norwegian instructor who was a ski jumper. Learned when she was 13 or 14 - “of course to be really good you have to start when you’re about four, about when you start to walk. He had a son who was so high (about three feet) and he’d wait till we were down and then come down and go between us, his dad yelling at him, giggling away! We got used to it by the end of the week and just stopped to let him. I preferred the Norwegian way, going on trails on hills and in the woods, to the Swiss downhill, though I’m sure that’s partially how I learned. The Swiss had great cakes though, we’d go to the patisserie in the next village and get boxes of them...”
My own skiing experience was at the Hillend track here, at about 11, and stopped pretty quickly - before it got to the point of there being actual snow - which I kind of regret but I never really got to the point of staying upright.
Sunday, 6 February 2022
Exile, the game that never was
Ian A. A. Watson created a mockup for an original Aeon style cover for Exile, the cancelled game it replaced. It’s an inetresting setup, but on the whole I’m glad we got the much more optimistic Trinity.
Saturday, 5 February 2022
Men In Black
I take it the Men In Black never recruit anyone with a name starting with U or I.
Men In Black International does a decent job of franchise expanding the setting by moving to a new group in a new office.
See also the Ghostbusters RPG. Not a coincidental thought as the D6 system got a Men In Black RPG.
It shifts the secret alien-fighting dynamic with different workplace comedy archetypes, replacing the original laser-gun take on The Rookie with a keen new arrival propping up a burnout coasting on charm. That’s the part that works best, I think.
The actual story is fine, the mystery not very mysterious, the big finale done in the middle of Tomorrowland: A World Beyond, and the biggest surprise for me was the reveal about the alien gangster H was with being a different one than the one he’s with at the start, which sort of fits his crap James Bond shtick but seems like either one character too many or one too few for the comedy rule of threes. (Warning: also contains P**rs M*rg*n as the latest haha obvious alien.)
The D6 game came in 1997, nice and quick for a tie-in but late in West End Games’ classic run and was supported with exactly one sourcebook, Aliens Recognition Guide: Volume 1. That’s a shame because as the animated series also demonstrates, a lighthearted workaday alien cover-up setup can be a lot of fun, especially playing up the office side as well as the missions. Plenty of Ghostbusters-adjacent games could underscore that better than the various straight-ish UFO conspiracy RPGs.
Friday, 4 February 2022
Winter Olympics 2022
The Winter Olympics are here, six months after the summer ones last year due to the delay. Normally it would be a year and a half, then two and a half years to next summer. So if they’d moved the winter games to next year it would have been a year and a half on each side. Not great for the competitors but the most even spread for the audience.
I overthink things sometimes.
The Winter Olympics has the skiing and shooting Biathlon being the most James Bond contest (though not the most Player Character) as well as all the fun of isolated ski resorts suitable for snowbound murder mysteries. (Personal note: The first adventure I ever pitched and had turned down, when I was probably eleven, was a mystery set at a fantasy Olympics. So I still kind of want to do something with it.)
Add international politics, odd heroic moments like the Jamaican bobsled team and Eddie the Eagle (famous for being a bad ski jumper but he got down that slope and walked away every time) and both seasonal Olympics have room for all kinds of trouble for PCs to get into.
A nice low-key Opening Ceremony, mostly relying on the floor screen and cute kids.
Obvious pulp adventurer background of the games is Nathan Crumpton, author and photographer representing American Samoa as he did in the summer games last year and going out shirtless for the flag parade.
And we had hail here after the ceremony, so, seasonal.
I remain puzzled by DC live action TV
CW Offices:
“No, sorry, you still can’t have a live-action Batman show. It might confuse the brand, unlike the new Batman film, the unconnected Joker origin sequel, and the Flash film with two other Batmen.”
“Fine, we’ll do a show where Batman’s dead!”
“Sure, we’ll greenlight that.”
“... Uh, really? Oh, uh... okay...”
Thursday, 3 February 2022
Cat Burglar
Cat Burglar is the forthcoming cartoon from Netflix, a proper old-fashioned Looney Tunes kind of setup with a very modern twist - it’s a trivia game where the viewer answers questions to decide whether Rowdy Cat succeeds or gets splatted. From Charlie Brooker and the creators of Black Mirror: Bandersnatch along with writers from Bojack Horseman and Tuca & Bertie.
And I would have gotten away with it...
The Masked Singer, a bizarre TV franchise at the best of times, has always had a bit of Scooby-Doo in its unmasking of various monsters following often unhelpful clues, hence it appearing in a promo for the msot recent movie version, but tonight it went all-in.
Wednesday, 2 February 2022
Work an idea backwards
It’s Groundhog Day - again - and in a note from Den Of Geek via Cracked that the time loop story idea started to take shape with screenwriter Danny Rubin thinking of a different way to approach immortality while reading Anne Rice’s The Vampire Lestat, notably one that wouldn’t involve historical costumes and locations.
Renegade Con 2022, March 4-5
Renegade Con for online panels, demos and reveals for Renegade Game Studios, including World Of Darkness.
(Also G. I. Joe miniatures... that tempts me.)
The PDF schedule being called Schedule VeryFinal (1) delights me.
Ulysses at 100
Ulysses by James Joyce was published 100 years ago today. I must confess I don’t get it.
Neskowin Beach Ghost Forest
Today’s Free The Ocean trivia question was which is not a major scuba site and (spoiler) it’s the one I’d never heard of. Neskowin Beach. And looking it up, I want to use it as a space opera or fantasy location.
My second guess would have been the Maldives, because mal dives.
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| Via Visit The Oregon Coast |
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| Outdoor Project |
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| Our Big Little Adventures |
Sorry.
Our brand is in crisis
If it were up to me I would have kept “Washington Football Team” and gone all-in on being nondescript. Grey uniforms. Mascot the Mascot.
Angel RPG ideas
An RPGnet thread requesting Angel ideas instead of Buffy ones. I might have helped... with mostly Buffy ones. :/
Tuesday, 1 February 2022
Around The World In 80 Days
Around The World In 80 Days with David Tennant as Phileas Fogg, Ibrahim Koma as Passepartout and Leonie Benesch as Abigail Fix was a lot of fun, except the serious bits making it kind of uneven. Would still like more. No Michael Palin cameo.
D&D TV news
Red Notice writer and director Rawson Marshall Thurber to produce and direct the pilot for a Dungeons & Dragons TV series... possibly the first of more than one. Previous game-related experience includes directing Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story.
Of course this comes four days after The Legend Of Vox Machina premiered, separated from official D&D, officially.
There are a lot of official books, other games, comics, and characters providing stories that could be adapted. Meanwhile the latest movie has wrapped filming and... I think it’s set in the Forgotten Realms but have no idea who the characters are.
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