And we can see the back of the fireworks from upstairs.
Saturday, 31 December 2022
Happy Hogmanay!
And looking at the TV schedules, with Scottish-specific stuff that only does outside broadcasts for the fireworks here and otherwise does a mix of fiddle folk and local pop stars, and British general stuff that is mostly chat shows and music shows. The US has big live things in New York and/or New Orleans, making more of an effort than they seem to for Christmas.
2022
2022 was not, on the whole, a great year for me. Not as bad as 2020 or particularly 2021, but still. Here’s to something better.
Character Creation Challenge idea
Having been looking at a blank document for weeks, probably more groups of characters. Though I’ve already done most of the games I could run without much thought this year. So maybe Angel to start. Totally different from Buffy. Ahem.
Thursday, 29 December 2022
Dungeon23
Dungeon23 - create a megadungeon (or other large RPG setting, physically or with lots of other details) one piece at a time for a year.
For when the 31 Day Character Creation Challenge and RPGaDay and Vamptober are too short.
(Although the entries can be shorter than generating a full character. Just, hey, for a year.)
Reporting, not even considering for a moment.
Wednesday, 28 December 2022
Stan Lee centenary
Stan Lee, co-creator of many of the foundations of the Marvel Universe, was born 100 years ago today. The A. V. Club looks at some of his Marvel cameos. He was a great promoter for Marvel and for himself, but beyond that he used the power his platform gave him responsibly.
Happy birthday! ’Nuff said.
Tuesday, 27 December 2022
Ghost Stories For Christmas
A very nice BFI set of the first three 1970s Ghost Story For Christmas M. R. James adaptations, the Omnibus Whistle And I’ll Come To You with the 2010 version as an add-on, two of the Christopher Lee readings of the same stories on that disc, interviews and commentaries and things like that.
James has of course inspired me before, someone made a Gumshoe system game for him, and he was the reason The Watch House was set at that particular Cambridge college.
Looking at the different adaptations and readings could be instructive too.
Monday, 26 December 2022
Ready Or Not
Looking at the game potential of some gifts... Ready Or Not is already about games! Board games and party games. And the Hide And Seek to the death plot makes a great one-shot.
And you could mess with the premise of whether the family really has a guardian demon who demands tribute. This is the kind of thing that happens in the Buffyverse on the regular.
Sunday, 25 December 2022
Christmas 2022
After a couple of naturally subdued Christmases, this one had felt big in public and buildup, which was kinda nice.
Thea Gilmore, That’ll Be Christmas
Haul!
I got 2021 MCU DVDs, the Doctor Who annual, The Art Of The Mandalorian and the first Star Wars: The High Republic novel, Skyward by Brandon Sanderson, Ghost Stories For Christmas volume II, Ready Or Not, chocolate including a pack of Double Deckers and a yard of Jaffa Cakes...
Telly!
The Shaun The Sheep movie Farmageddon gets away with being a massive E.T. riff with E.T. jokes among others. The Canterville Ghost with Anthony Head has a lot of Canterville and not enough ghost. A Christmas Carol stage film by Mark Gatiss is good with clever staging, though amusingly the same added twist as his take on Count Magnus for A Ghost Story At Christmas.
But a sword
Miss Universe Ukraine, Viktoria Apanasenko, went with an interesting national costume choice - Warrior of Light, an angel with a sword.
Adventure Calendar 2022 25: Merry Christmas Everybody
Adventure Calendar 2022
25: Merry Christmas Everybody
Slade, Merry Christmas Everybody
Performed by The Cure
It’s a bit late for a Christmas adventure idea now!
Maybe the PCs gather to celebrate something, as a change of pace.
Happy holidays!
Saturday, 24 December 2022
The Guardians Of The Galaxy Holiday Special
The Guardians Of The Galaxy Holiday Special leans into the tradition the Star Wars one was a late example of (including being released for Thanksgiving) with songs and an animated bit and indeed a similar plot, but holds together better. I laughed several times.
It also provides a good example of the “SF/F characters not understanding Christmas” subgenre.
Adventure Calendar 2022 24: Last Christmas
Adventure Calendar 2022
24: Last Christmas
Wham!, Last Christmas
Performed by Rita Ora
Last Christmas as a story hook has the issue that one literalised version has already been done in the film of the song.
Friday, 23 December 2022
Adventure Calendar 2022 23: All I Want For Christmas Is You
Adventure Calendar 2022
23: All I Want For Christmas Is You
Mariah Carey, All I Want For Christmas Is You
Performed by My Chemical Romance
Can you do a Christmas romcom session? Do you dare?
And if you do, there’s a mini RPG for it. Possibly more than one.
Thursday, 22 December 2022
Adventure Calendar 2022 22: Sol Invictus
Adventure Calendar 2022
22: Sol Invictus
And even on the longest, coldest, darkest night, the light still has power. A song for heroes persisting.
Wednesday, 21 December 2022
Adventure Calendar 2022 21: In The Bleak Midwinter
Adventure Calendar 2022
21: In The Bleak Midwinter
Today is the winter solstice.
Someone has to go into the dark place and make sure the sun rises on Midwinter. Might as well be the PCs.
In a setting with a high enough Weird Level this can be literal. But even in a setting as weird as Discworld it doesn’t have to be.
THE SUN WOULD NOT HAVE RISEN.
“Really? Then what would have happened, pray?”
A MERE BALL OF FLAMING GAS WOULD HAVE ILLUMINATED THE WORLD.
They walked in silence for a moment.
Terry Pratchett, Hogfather
Tuesday, 20 December 2022
Adventure Calendar 2022 20: Joy To The World
Adventure Calendar 2022
20: Joy To The World
Performed by Celtic Women
The Nativity is about the birth of a saviour. And in most games that’s something that would involve the PCs. Is one of them the Chosen One?
And how would they deal with a world-changing prophetic event that isn’t about them?
It could easily become an escort mission, and those are rightly unpopular...
Monday, 19 December 2022
Adventure Calendar 2022 19: Scrooge
Adventure Calendar 2022
19: Scrooge
A cheat to get an excuse to suggest a riff on A Christmas Carol on the anniversary of its publication.
Sunday, 18 December 2022
Adventure Calendar 2022 18: It Feels Like Christmas
Adventure Calendar 2022
18: It Feels Like Christmas
The opening theme and central song of The Muppet Christmas Carol is about the feeling Christmas should evoke, all the places you find love, and how it can appear in unexpected ways.
And now I want to play someone with Christmas superpowers.
Saturday, 17 December 2022
Our Flag Means Death is coming
Christmas and New Year Radio Times reveals Our Flag Means Death starting on BBC Two, January 4th.
Adventure Calendar 2022 17: Wintersong
Adventure Calendar 2022
17: Wintersong
For lonely winters and Christmases, a counterpoint to the season’s supposed feeling and a nostalgia for it.
Friday, 16 December 2022
Warhammer TV
Warhammer coming to TV via Amazon, and possibly films as well. 40K, at least to begin with. Henry Cavill starring and executive producing. I wonder who as...
Adventure Calendar 2022 16: It's Christmas And I F---ing Miss You
Adventure Calendar 2022
16: It’s Christmas And I Fucking Miss You
Which sums things up really.
(And barring the swears it would, like much of their work, be Buffy-appropriate.)
Christmas can often be a lonely time, and in the past couple of years it has been for many.
As the absence is physical rather than amotional this time, then for gaming I guess something with people a long way away, like travellers.
Thursday, 15 December 2022
The English
The English felt very much like an RPG in its mismatched Big Damn Heroes having various unconnected adventures of the week before the GM realised it was the last session and rushed through a lot of plot, including killing off a side character offscreen to drop a subplot.
A player's first time GMing
“Why can’t anyone make a decision?” - My first time as a D&D Dungeon Master
Keith Stuart at the Guardian
Thanks to D-503 at RPGnet for the link.
Adventure Calendar 2022 15: Kidnap The Sandy Claws
Adventure Calendar 2022
15: Kidnap The Sandy Claws
Because I wanted to include a song for a “Santa needs the PCs’ help!” plot hook.
Witch of the Vale
Witch of the Vale, support act at the Fields Of The Nephilim concert, are new, local-ish, eerie and sad on stage and lovely and friendly off stage. Expect something like them to appear in Last Dance in 2023.
Wednesday, 14 December 2022
Adventure Calendar 2022 14: What's This?
Adventure Calendar 2022
14: What’s This?
Someone who has absolutely no idea what they’re looking at stumbles across an event as involved and frankly off as Christmas. Jack Skellington manages to grasp the surface (and tries to take it over and “improve it too!”) but he does at least also get the core appeal of it being a nice thing.
How would your PCs deal with an alien cultural tradition, or an alien PC deal with something we’re used to?
Tuesday, 13 December 2022
Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse trailer
Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse trailer, though I will be waiting to see the movie knowing as little as possible.
The Nevers cancelled
The Nevers has been cancelled, the back half of the season unshown and the available episodes taken off HBO Max as the streaming service’s new owners continue to kill it. At least Fox dumped Firefly without waiting months to do it.
Adventure Calendar 2022 13: I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day
Adventure Calendar 2022
13: I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day
Performed by Kylie Minogue
I get where they were going with this, the festivities and presents and the spirit of good will and all... but I always imagine how much work that would be, and how repetitive.
How do you do all the prep?
And if it’s always December, rather than just always being a festive day all year, wouldn’t you miss the other seasons?
To invert C. S. Lewis: “Always Christmas, never winter.”
Or, with a wish, is it a time loop? An even more wintry Groundhog Day? Woken up by the same Christmas carol on the alarm clock radio, seeing the same relatives arriving, ducking the same snowball? There are several movies like this about learning The True Meaning Of Christmas. And Krampus.
Okay, that’s probably enough ideas about Christmas being an invading force from outside time that must be stopped.
Monday, 12 December 2022
Last Exit For The Lost
Listening to The Nephilim ahead of seeing Fields Of The Nephilim play it on Wednesday remidns me that I have never done a ghostly Western RPG.
Adventure Calendar 2022 12: It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas
Adventure Calendar 2022
12: It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas
Performed by Johnny Mathis
A follow-on thought from yesterday about an unseasonal Christmas season.
Signs of a seasonal festival start showing up at the wrong time of year. Not just how Christmas preparation starts earlier and earlier in stores (and Black Friday now apparently extends from All Saints’ Day to Christmas Eve) but people decorating overnight despite it being, say, March. What is happening? Is time going screwy?
Time slips are common sorta-scientific explanations for ghostly apparitions and a way to do one time travel story without it becoming a feature of a series format, but one time spilling out into another is less common. (I borrowed a Dead Of Night moment for The Watch House with the 1880s leaking out of a haunted mirror, and took it a lot further as it could spread and overwrite the present.)
Sunday, 11 December 2022
Back to the Moon
Human beings last walked on the Moon fifty years ago today. Today, the Orion unmanned mission capsule returned safely in preparation for our return.
Adventure Calendar 2022 11: White Wine In The Sun
Adventure Calendar 2022
11: White Wine In The Sun
As well as his conflicted feelings about Christmas as an atheist who still loves some aspects of the holiday, the title refers to the experience of these winter-themed festivities in Australia’s high summer. I know from my brother’s family Christmas photos that Santa’s grottos still have snow instead of sand.
So how do holidays like this, and other traditions, feel so far from their point of origin?
(And of course the Nativity was in modern Palestine, where snow isn’t all that common either.)
Saturday, 10 December 2022
Adventure Calendar 2022 10: Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer
Adventure Calendar 2022
10: Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer
Performed by Burl Ives for the animated special
Remember this - the moral of the story of Rudolph the red-nosed Reindeer is;
“Deviation from the norm will not be tolerated, unless it can be exploited to serve your masters.”
Posthuman music
Er, anyway...
A message must get through despite the weather, and the PCs have the ability to deliver it.
Friday, 9 December 2022
Adventure Calendar 2022 9: Silent Night
Adventure Calendar 2022
9: Silent Night
Performed by Sinead O’Connor, for The Ghosts Of Oxford Street TV special
Not going for that excuse to be spooky.
Despite the temptation of the pun, not doing Hush. Tabletop RPGs are a verbal medium, so this would be tricky at least.
It’s about a calm and peaceful night as a result of the miracle birth.
Christmas as a time of peace, with the Christmas truce in the Great War being the most famous example.
Considering how often many games’ PCs find their lives in danger, how would they react to a night where nothing bad happens?
Thursday, 8 December 2022
Paramore, The News
Paramore, The News
Every second our collective heart breaks
All together every single head shakes
Shut your eyes but it won’t go away
Turn on, turn off, the news
After This Is Why, The News sounds much more emo pre After Laughter “classic Paramore angst” as Hayley Williams puts it.
“The 24-hr news cycle is just impossible to comprehend. And I feel a pang of guilt when I unplug to protect my headspace. The common reaction, or non-reaction, seems to be dissociation. Not one of us is innocent of that and who could blame us?”
Adventure Calendar 2022 8: Jingle Bells
Adventure Calendar 2022
8: Jingle Bells
Performed by Bellowhead and guests
One of the classic Christmas songs that’s about winter rather than Christmas, even before considering the playground filk version about how Batman smells. Jingle Bells makes riding in a sleigh sound (a) fun and (b) dangerous.
Obvious adventure idea, put a chase scene on snow.
This happens a lot with James Bond with skis and various motorised snow vehicles, less so in other settings - the original Willow has a bit involving a shield as a sledge, for one.
Wednesday, 7 December 2022
Star Wars: The Bad Batch season two trailer
The Bad Batch is back in the new year, delayed from September.
Voices raise against the Empire.
Also featuring the return of another Clone Wars character, the wee Wookiee Jedi.
Adventure Calendar 2022 7: Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!
Adventure Calendar 2022
7: Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!
Okay. End of the first week.
Time to do Die Hard.
Die Hard, mentioned more than once in previous Adventure Calendars, is the classic snark answer for favourite Christmas movie, but unlike many action films set around the season it really does qualify as a Christmas movie as it centres on someone travelling to be with his family, and there’s also a gift that’s important to the plot...
 |
| And now it has an advent calendar too. Kind of. |
Die Hard On An X (TV Tropes) is one of the easy action adventure plot hooks. In RPGs it’s up there with The Seven Samurai which has a group of PCs built in. There are versions in Buffy, Alias, more than one of the 90s Star Trek series complete with captains in vests, and the Crew doing it on purpose in Leverage.
Where might your PCs get missed during the roundup in an invasion?
I’ve also referenced how the weather outside is frightful when talking about snow and other conditions in games and indeed in real life.
Tuesday, 6 December 2022
Adventure Calendar 2022 6: Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town
Adventure Calendar 2022
6: Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town
For Saint Nicholas’s Day:
Performed by The Crystals
With the song’s history could also have gone with earlier versions dating back to the Great Depression, or Bruce Springsteen, The Supremes, Chris Isaak...
As the main character of the second big Christmas mythology, I could probably give Santa his own label here.
How does he fit into a real-world adjacent setting like superheroes or urban fantasy? It depends on town, but go back far enough and I highlight a suggestion for a little light in a World Of Darkness.
And do other worlds have gift-giving culture heroes?
The song is about getting ready, being good, and the Depression era versions in particular emphasised charity, giving as well as receiving.
Be a bit of a Santa yourself.
Monday, 5 December 2022
The Three Musketeers 2023 trailer
A new duology from director Martin Bourboulon, in French.
Looks both swashbuckling and a bit grimy. With some scenes involving muskets! And Eva Green as Milady.
Adventure Calendar 2022 5: Fairytale Of New York
Adventure Calendar 2022
5: Fairytale Of New York
The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl, Fairytale Of New York (haggard version)
A reflection on good times in a bad relationship, this would be a good subplot for a series with relationships as a feature.
The lyrics don’t actually frame this as a fairytale, except in the way immigrant stories of the America can be. But of course New York is a city more imagined than seen for most people in the world, me included. And many settings have a city like that where anything seems possible. Small town characters coming to the city at the heart of it all, to live and work or make it there, or just to visit, perhaps for the holidays. What kind of trouble can they get into?
Sunday, 4 December 2022
Adventure Calendar 2022 4: Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)
Adventure Calendar 2022
4: Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)
How to have a festive singalong which is also heartbreaking.
Separation, either enforced or a painfully timed breakup. Missing someone desperately, the flip side of trying to get home. An aching counterpoint to the festivities all around.
Being or supporting the affected character is probably a good fit for a subplot in something like Buffy.
Saturday, 3 December 2022
Adventure Calendar 2022 3: We Three Kings
Adventure Calendar 2022
3: We Three Kings
Some characters this time...
Performed by Hugh Jackman, David Hobson and Peter Cousen
The three wise men, sometimes called kings and sometimes magi.
(Ars Magica fans take note.)
Astrologers and seers determine the meaning of the star and follow it to the manger, bringing suitably symbolic gifts.
They’re some of the most puzzling minor characters in the story, symbolic of the wise recognising the saviour and the powerful helping the meek, but I always felt they could be more help.
But that gets into questions like why the Watchers don’t give Buffy a salary. Anyway...
What do the PCs in a setting with portents and the like do when someone shows up and tells them they’re the subject of a quest?
And optionally gives them a box of myrrh, which is used in consecration and sometimes funerary rites?
Drew Goddard goes into The Trenches
Drew Goddard, Buffy and Angel writer, co-writer and director of Cabin in The Woods, series co-creator for Daredevil and pilot director for The Good Place, has a new animated pilot ordered by FX for The Trenches, about a family of monster hunters.
You can see why I might be interested.
Fingers crossed!
Friday, 2 December 2022
Adventure Calendar 2022 2: 2000 Miles
Adventure Calendar 2022
2: 2000 Miles
Finding another numerical Christmas song, here the Pretenders’ wistful hope that someone will be back at Christmas time, written for a late member and friend.
Having already done the big journey to get home in a comedic way, could the long trek through the cold work in something more serious? Weather causing threats and concealing enemies.
(Bear costume optional.)
Thursday, 1 December 2022
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny trailer
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny trailer.
After years not revealing the title, here we are. Sounds like a dice replacement spinner from a kids’ boardgame, but never mind. Empire takes a look, with links to their big cover feature.
The de-aging effects look fine in the couple of seconds we see, though it’s only ever worked for me properly with Samuel L. Jackson in Captain Marvel, when he was not being de-aged as much and also had very different hair and no eyepatch.
The Muppet Christmas Carol
Empire talks to some of the creators of The Muppet Christmas Carol for its 30th anniversary, with a rerelease returning the cut song When Love Is Gone.
Strange World
Disney’s Strange World came out in time for Thanksgiving... here as well as in the USA. Presumably because they expect Avatar: The Way Of Water to be the CGI alien ecosystem people want to see around Christmas. A shame as it’s a fun family adventure with some laughs and something of a message. It’s not as Indiana Jones as the logo and the explorer dad makes it look, being more of a Hollow Earth thing.
Also, Alan Tudyk voices the narrator and a radio host.
Adventure Calendar 2022 1: The First Noel
Adventure Calendar 2022
1: The First Noel
Performed by King’s College Chapel choir
I’ve looked at the Nativity as a source of adventure ideas before, noting the vulnerable people it focuses on as well as the possibly miraculous birth, but this Christmas carol focuses on spreading the message.
In a suitable milieu, say a fantasy world in need of help, how would the PCs react to a mission from above to spread the word? The news came to shepherds as well as wise men, which feels like a wide call to adventure.
And PCs being PCs, are they actively rebelling against the occupying force?
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