The Year 2000

Twenty-five years ago, the Y2K problem didn’t shut the modern world down. Because people worked the problem.

Things Of The Year 2024

Things Of The Year 2024

Film: Abigail

TV series (new): Agatha All Along

TV series (returning): Doctor Who

Album: The Cure, Songs Of A Lost World

Happy birthday Mum!

What If...?

What If... Marvel’s What If...?, a series that could mess with variants forever, could sustain three seasons?

Jimmy Carter

Jimmy Carter saw a century, and had a hand in making it better.

Terry Robinson

Terry Robinson, co-host of Mage: The Podcast and prolific Storytellers Vault writer, has died.

10 Buffy hooks from the Paramore Eras setlist

Happy birthday Hayley Williams!

Paramore have been supporting Taylor Swift’s Eras tour, so ten adventures from their Edinburgh Sunday setlist, using some titles again but trying not to do the same idea.

Hard Times

The Slayer finds herself yoinked back to the worst day of her life. Can she make it better? And if she changes it, what will that do?

Heart Of Glass

Magically immortal and not a great person. But not so bad he can just have his heart torn out Adam style...?

Burning Down The House

A supposedly haunted house at the edge of town. A big party breaking in. A demonstration that it ain’t just supposedly. Can the gang get everybody out, including themselves?

Still Into You

A Scooby’s ex shows up... the ghost of a tragically died kind of ex.

Forgiveness

A friend of the Slayer or a Scooby’s relative who freaked about the whole magic-is-real thing now wants to apologise... and maybe get something magical working for them.

Brick By Boring Brick

Killing a Slayer is good in the short term but another will pop up somewhere, even if not locally. Putting a Slayer in a secret prison for a long life...

The Only Exception

The Slayer falls in love, for realsies this time. Can she tell this one person?

Misery Business

Demons bottling negative emotions have come to this more-than-averagely-suffering town to get the ingredients they need. Of course if they can make her types feel crappy as well that’s premium grade sorrow. Now how to do that...?

Ain’t It Fun

Monster hunters from out of town who think this is a good time. And for them it is, and for some of the gang this free and easy life might appeal.

This Is Why

After a hard fight, maybe a painful loss, a reminder of why this has to be done, and someone actually appreciating it.

Well, the Chocolate Orange is gone.

Christmas 2024

Hellos online and on the phone, Doctor Who 2024 and Furiosa on shiny discs, the last of the first three Star Wars: The High Republic books, The Ones, the Scream game, Abigail and Lisa Frankenstein also on shiny disc, a very loud toy Tricorder, soup and air fryer success, a pen in a cracker alongside a thing we can’t work out.

Joy To The World and Vengeance Most Fowl (quite weird hearing somebody you’ve met in a major role in Wallace & Gromit) and the fairly loosely adapted Ghost Story and an opportunity to watch Raiders Of The Lost Ark which of course I’ve been able to watch whenever I want since we got a video recorder but it’s the principle of the thing.

Happy Holidays!

So here it is, Merry Christmas...

Adventure Calendar 2024 24: SLEIGH WARS

Adventure Calendar 2024

24: SLEIGH WARS

SLEIGH WARS: a boardgame from issue 72 of White Dwarf volume 1 about four very different Santas fighting to deliver gifts.

“Mummy, if there really is a Santa Claus, and he always brings people the presents they want most, how come I get landed with schlock like this every Christmas?”

Ever wondered why? Well, the answer is that it became obvious long ago that there was no way that Santa could cope with the increasing volume of deliveries, and so the powers that be advertised for additional franchise holders, with the result that there are now four Santas rather than one.

Santa Claus, Anti-Claus, General Nicholas B. Claus III Jr. and The Ongoing Spirit Of Christmas Where It’s At At This Moment In Time

The trouble is, they all have very different ideas of what the job involves, and of the right presents for people...

What else could it possibly be? A formative RPG magazine issue and the basis of a Ghostbusters adventure...

Several Santas racing to deliver gifts has more recently been done by Ravensburger in the rather more wholesome Santa’s Rooftop Scramble but they’re all multiples of the regular Santa and they don’t have Xmas Pudding Mines..

Multiple Santas and newbies like Jack Skellington who might not have the right idea, heavy backup and other explanations for how Santa can deliver so many presents are common in Christmas media, and you could base a holiday one-shot on the likes of Prep & Landing, but most of them aren’t quite so vicious. Or such a clear warning about the dangers of careless subcontracting.

I hope Santa is good to you this year!

Adventure Calendar 2024 23: 13 Beavers

Adventure Calendar 2024

23: 13 Beavers

13 Beavers: Advance from your dam to Beaver Paradise through guessing higher or lower on cards, banking progress, and dealing with the addition of Danger cards.

A new game I had never heard of until I looked at a few family board game roundup articles for this very purpose.

It sounds like a mix of Play Your Cards Right, Snakes And Ladders, a fishing minigame and the Bank bit from The Weakest Link. But with beavers!

Not to be confused with the live-action Looney Tunes film Hundreds of Beavers. And yes I will be asking which is which in the Conpulsion quiz.

Determined workers dealing with various setbacks as they try to build a megastructure could be pretty gameable in any way from the Doozers in Fraggle Rock to The Wages Of Fear, and if you make them small animals it works in a TOON-y or cosy style.

What If...? Season 3

What If...? the animated series has largely avoided the comics’ frequent fallbacks of everything returning to the sacred timeline or everybody dying, but the short time does result in the other issue of huge changes out of too little change. Mech Avengers versus Kaiju Hulk Offshoot feels more like a whole variant setting.

On the other hand, I did F YEAH at the end of the trailer.

I thought Hollywood Agatha got too much Eternals in my Agatha All Along, but did appreciate having the Hollywoodland sign and then not destroying the “land” part in the supers battle.

And then the first dramatic episode has the Celestial emergence break the world... and then goes to Ironheart versus Mysterio. (Did like the relentless slow silent Vision.)

And then that F YEAH trailer moment is... not the basis of an episode.

Adventure Calendar 2024 22: Codenames

Adventure Calendar 2024

22: Codenames

Codenames: Two teams compete by each having a “spymaster” give one-word clues that can point to multiple words on the board. The other players on the team attempt to guess their team’s words while avoiding the words of the other team.

A recent addition to geeky friend and family gatherings, and hunting spies is pretty gameable.

Being nice and fast, the method of working out codes could work as a puzzle albeit again with player skill rather than character skill.

Adventure Calendar 2024 21: Carcassone Winter Edition

Adventure Calendar 2024

21: Carcassone Winter Edition

Carcassone Winter Edition: Place tiles, build features and put down Meeple followers to build medieval towns. But in winter. With a few other tweaks to the summery base game.

Gingerbread Men optional.

The simplest wintry idea - how does your regular setting get through the cold times?

This could be anything from a chance to get festive or the mild inconvenience of the cold adding to a regular adventure, up to a setting-defining issue. Ever run a game all about winter?

Midwinter

Low the tide, low the light

Comes the sun again

Thea Gilmore, Sol Invictus

Adventure Calendar 2024 20: Apples To Apples

Adventure Calendar 2024

20: Apples To Apples

Apples To Apples: Everyone starts with a handful of red noun or descriptor cards like “apple pie”, “caffeine” or “Humphrey Bogart”. One player per round draws a green card with an adjective to compare to, like “American”, “bold” or “cranky”. Everyone else plays one of their descriptor cards and typically argues for why it’s the best comparison, and the green card player judges the winner. (While it can be played without table talk, entertaining arguments for bad matches can win out over actually good matches.) Judging goes around the table until someone hits the required score, a timer runs out, or everyone has had a few turns.

If you can try "as American as Saturn" you'll go far.

The fourth common family board game that should go here is probably Trivial Pursuit but I don’t have nostalgia or an idea for it and while I’ve only played A2A with friends I do like it and it’s celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary so here we are.

Could this work as a game mechanic? Insert joke about arguing for the relevance of FATE Aspects here.

How would this work in an adventure? Maybe a spell needs a sympathetic magic component, or a fairytale king demands a suitable tribute or, hey, Christmas present and the PCs have to bullshit their way around it like The Emperor’s New Clothes, or that time Bugs Bunny was the main ingredient in a royal banquet.

Adventure Calendar 2024 19: Cluedo

Adventure Calendar 2024

19: Cluedo

Cluedo: A classic country house murder mystery where players have to identify who killed the victim, where, and with which weapon. Motive is left vague.

You can probably figure out how a gamified version of the country house murder mystery could be the basis of an RPG adventure. Hence the spinoff gams with the same case, the film, TV series both game shows and fully narrative, books and plays.

As well as versions for a wide variety of licences including D&D and Critical Role (but weirdly still not Scream).

See also murder mystery parties and related sorta-LARPs.

And RPGs just for this, like A Weekend In The Country.

Cluedo is a pun on Clue and Ludo. Known in the US simply as Clue, but I always think of Clue as the film, a classic dark comedy with a rising body count and three solutions that (I think) all work.

I hated her SO MUCH it - it - the - it - Flames - Flames -
FLAMES... on the side of my face...

Getting the PCs to investigate while they’re also suspects might be the tricky part. You could follow the example of some of the licenced games where they change the central mystery as the characters involved wouldn’t go around murdering each other.

Or follow the example of the 2019 D&D version where one of the PCs is a doppelganger, but secret-monster RPG sessions often get a bit more like The Thing in their solution.

Adventure Calendar 2024 18: Scrabble

Adventure Calendar 2024

18: Scrabble

Scrabble: Place letter tiles from a random selection on a board (with spaces that increase point values) to make words, including letters already laid down as the game proceeds.

One we’ve actually played around here. May lead to some arguing about proper word use (assuming nobody learned the official dictionary... possibly for languages they don’t actually speak) but has a nice clear end point probably within the hour, can be a bit strategic, and can be educational too. Now has a cooperative version, which might result in less arguing... or more.

And you can play it IC.

Spelling words is a classic puzzle but can mix up player and character skill - Indiana Jones is established as knowing Latin and Greek, but does his player? And as Ash Williams knows mispronouncing a spell is going to cause problems too.

Dialogue note

“Thanks for coming.”

“Don’t mention it. So, what’s the favour? Nothing...”

“Nothing I’d need one of my colleagues for. I hardly ever see them outside of briefings anyway.”

“Not even the office Christmas party?”

“They make us do those in shifts too, don’t want us all drunk at the same time in case some billionaire decides to raise a private army and take over the country he gets his cocaine from.”

“Real life example?”

“Boating accident last month. Tragic.”

For spies or something

Adventure Calendar 2024 17: M*n*p*ly

Adventure Calendar 2024

17: M*n*p*ly

And for the third set of eight days, board games you might play with not-so-gamer family and friends.

After this one.

M*n*p*ly: A ripoff of The Landlord’s Game that removes the anti-monopolist version and the clear endgame.

The Landlord's Game, 1906

DO NOT PLAY M*N*P*LY. Even if it wasn’t theft it’s a bad copy and the result is a bad game. If you must, read the rules rather than play as generally misremembered. Or play one of the non-standard variants that has an endgame. This will lessen the chances of falling out over a game and discouraging people playing tabletop games at all.

Anyway.

A land race and fight over influence isn’t very festive either, and landlords are on the Scrooge side, so spin this in a different direction...

The PCs somehow end up in charge of running, opening or restoring a business like a hotel.

There are of course games for this.

An inn would be the classic choice for ye olde fantasy RPG. Tiny Taverns does that, for one.

(I actually did something similar for Vampire in the Last Dance chronicle hook series, but it’s largely Vampire-specific. This is kind of ironic because fighting over control of limited resources like business influence is a classic setup for Vampire LARPs.)

(Add fighting monsters and we get something like my pizza delivery Buffy game Graveyard Shift, or Jiangshi: Blood In The Banquet Hall.)

Possibly a ski resort, to reconnect with the ideas about outdoor winter activities.

PCs are probably better suited to a scrappy underdog business rather than a luxury brand or a global franchise. Add a grasping competitor and various random-ish ups and downs in the style of Chance cards.

Maybe go full Damn The Man, Save The Music! for maximum anti-monopolist irony.

Alternatively, the PCs are a top hat, a dog, a car...

What Did We Do In The Shadows

What We Do In The Shadows aired its finale tonight, now all on D+ (while the BBC is yet to show S5). We may never see its like again, except when our Vampire games go that way.

The AV Club talks to Kayvan Novak and Kristen Schaal about the series. Spoilers for the final series.

Fry the air!

Mum has bought an air fryer, noting that the seller said the world seems to be divided into people who always use them and people who can’t be bothered and leave them in the cupboard.

Which way will we go? Christmas depends on it!

That'll be the Daewoo 3L Compact.

I think it looks like BB-Hate from The Last Jedi. That endears me to it.

Adventure Calendar 2024 16: Tree Lighting

Adventure Calendar 2024

16: Tree Lighting

One last outdoor activity before heading inside to get warm.

Tree Lighting Ceremony: (New York example) In a city or town big enough to have an official tree in a public square or a large enough commercial space, a bit of a show as somebody presses the button. Usually in early December, so it’s lit up for about a month until New Year or Twelfth Night.

Trees may be donated by local forests or even from other countries - ours have traditionally come from Norway since 1947.

Christmas tree decorating history

If there’s a Christmas market for holiday shopping, ice skating and the like, it will be probably be nearby.

Celebrity PCs could be asked to take part.

This is a public occasion, and so prone to supervillain attack as demonstrated twice in Batman Returns. The Rockefeller Center tree and ice rink was also the site of the final battle in Hawkeye though this was around Christmas itself so well after the lighting, which also featured the MCU version of the time an owl nested in it.

It’s also the kind of thing where a whole Christmas-centric small town gathers together so characters can meet in Hallmark/Lifetime Christmas movies. And there are story games for that subgenre as well.

V5 Empire 1.11

dot

Manhattan's Keeper of Elysium meeting the coterie on Broadway in my last session:

“How are you enjoying the show?”

“You won’t understand the true depths of our damnation until you sit through the fourth revival of a show you didn’t like that much when you were alive.”

How I Ran Trinity In 2002

And from the same now defunct site my 2002 Trinity (Æon) article:

How I Ran Adventure! In 2002

Because I was reminded of a 2002 article about running Adventure! Tales Of The Æon Society, here it is. I still stand by most of this, at least.

Adventure Calendar 2024 15: Snow Angels

Adventure Calendar 2024

15: Snow Angels

Snow Angels: Lie on fresh snow and move your arms and legs to make the outline of a traditional (rather than Biblically accurate) angel.

One of the simplest activities on the list, though can be complicated by things like a world record attempt for the most in one place. And the note that seals and pheasants can do it as well.

Actual angels might find this rather puzzling. And in Doctor Who this may or may not allow Weeping Angels to manifest.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Hush

I don’t give every episode anniversary a post, but Hush at 25, here we are. Please enjoy my A Buffy Season analysis of The Horror Episode.

And an oral history from Slayerfest featuring Amber Benson, James Marsters, Doug Petrie, Wayne Sable, Don Lewis, Charlie Brumbly, Jane Espenson, David Greenwalt, Sophia Crawford, Jeff Pruitt, and Doug Jones.

Adventure Calendar 2024 14: Snow Forts

Adventure Calendar 2024

14: Snow Forts

Snow Forts: Build a structure you can get into out of snow and/or ice. (Or a smaller equivalent like a sandcastle.)

Igloos are the traditional shelter made from blocks, while making a hollow in a pile of snow is called a quinzhee.

Crude, but effective.

Actually needing shelter is a clear reason why PCs might do this.

And sometimes you have no option because you’re on Hoth.

A playset where polystyrene packing would really help.

(I never saw the Micro Collection minis scale sets and remain annoyed about this.)

Some might also do it for a particularly long-lasting snowball fight.

Making castles out of ice and snow is a cold-powered antagonist classic.

Even Elsa chooses to build with the mountain providing shelter from the sun.

A lot of Bond villains have lairs in the cold, hence Inception playing with it, though using an ice hotel as a base in a Die Another Day thing.

Assaulting a snow fort or ice castle presents various tactical options and challenges. You can break through ice more easily than stone, but that also means structural hazards...

Adventure Calendar 2024 13: Ice Hockey

Adventure Calendar 2024

13: Ice Hockey

Ice Hockey: Add ice skating to a sport where two teams try to hit something into a net with sticks but can also crash into each other.

It’s Friday The 13th, and no winter activity is more Friday The 13th than ice hockey.

(Though it seems Jason Voorhees has never killed somebody with a hockey stick. Nearly in the 2009 film.)

(Friday The 13th: The Series had a cursed snow globe that drew people into their fantasies.)

Even without that infamous use of a goalie mask, the sport itself is plenty yikes. Enforcers, players put on the ice specifically to fight, appear in the likes of Goon and a Leverage episode about how this is not a great thing to do in the long term.

Hence the Ogre in d20 Modern
Art by (I think/hope) Darrell Riche

Considering the speed and violence involved, I’m surprised Games Workshop never did an official ice hockey version of Blood Bowl. There are some miniatures along those lines from other manufacturers, as well as realistic human types too.

How could player characters end up doing this, aside from getting put in at school or running a sports RPG like Contenders? Leverage put Eliot undercover, and the almost legendary Die Hard knockoff Sudden Death led Jean-Claude Van Damme to have to take part in disguise, at the Stanley Cup no less.

Adventure Calendar 2024 12: Ice Skating

Adventure Calendar 2024

12: Ice Skating

Ice Skating: Going fast on flat ice by strapping blades to your feet. Can also be a surface for beautiful athletic dance moves with extra danger.

We have apparently been doing this for four thousand years, and sharpening blades for about six hundred. The first organised skating club was the Edinburgh Skating Club, dating back to least 1740 and possibly a century before.

Reverend Robert Walker (1755 - 1808) Skating on Duddingston Loch
c. 1795 by Henry Raeburn

Winter Olympic sport most likely to be full of vampires: figure skating. Ironic as Buffy was into it.

Characters are amusingly likely to be terrible at it to start with.

May also result in the ice breaking and a character falling in, risking drowning with the added visual of the clear solid ice making it harder to get out and easier to helplessly watch it happen.

So ice skating can introduce speed, slapstick, and danger into a day out in cold weather.

Gojira, Mea Culpa

Gojira, Mea Culpa (Ah! Ça ira!)

Official video of that moment from the Paris Olympic opening ceremony.

Adventure Calendar 2024 11: Skiing And Sledging And Snowboarding

Adventure Calendar 2024

11: Skiing And Sledging And Snowboarding

Skiing and Sledging and nowadays Snowboarding: Snow presents the opportunity to go downhill very quickly by sliding on something, if you can control it well enough.

I’ve done this myself with a plastic sledge with equally plastic controls when I was a kid. Given how generally risk-averse I was in my youth, the novelty of sledging must have had a significant effect.

I never really got good enough at staying upright while trying to ski. (My mother was good enough to go on Alpine ski trips in her teens.)

Nowadays these make up a lot of the winter sports you’ll see in events like the Winter Olympics.

You can also go on the flat with cross country skiing or wth dog sledding for added complications.

In the event of getting involved in a land war in winter (which is rarely a good idea) you might end up needing troops on skis. This in turn led to the Biathlon, the most Player Character of winter sports. Skiing also comes up quite a lot in James Bond for the same reason.

Unless you’re running a game set around a winter resort - possibly involving snowboarding kids working there trying to save it from an evil development firm - or a winter sport superhero team, downhilling on snow is unlikely to come up regularly. Cross-country skiing is more common in isolated arctic region adventures.

It’s a good setup for a chase scene in a session of an adventure game set somewhere cold, a literal change of scene and pace.

Sounds Like Hell disc two

My Buffy PBP at RPGnet has reached 5000 posts so needed a new thread. Very aware that we’re still in episode six.

Adventure Calendar 2024 10: Snowmen

Adventure Calendar 2024

10: Snowmen

Snowmen: You may not need an explanation here but the History section adds some interest: “Michelangelo was commissioned by Piero de’ Medici to make a snowman in 1494.”

Really a winter thing rather than a Christmas thing, but due to the overlap in the northern hemisphere here we are.

Do you want to build a snowman?

Snowmen, and indeed snow sculptures, come to life in the likes of Frosty The Snowman by magic hat, The Snowman by mysterious magic, and Frozen by a cold-controlling elementalist.

An archetypal fantasy told just right.

They can be friends or foes, sometimes both in the same story, and there are some horror examples as well as fantasy.

Cue inevitable note that I had ice sculpture monsters in my Doctor Who game before the show did it.

White Fang by Junichi Nakamura, Shinichi Sawamura, Fukumi Furukawa, Takao Waki.

An idea that comes up most winters, I admit.

Regular non-animated snowmen can also factor in as art, or as a way to make it look like you have more troops than you really do, although this can be an issue if anyone looks too closely...

Adventure Calendar 2024 9: Snowball Fights

Adventure Calendar 2024

9: Snowball Fights

With twenety-four days in the traditional advent calendar I’ve decided to write three groups of eight, and the second group is outdoor games and pastimes.

Snowball Fights: Fight with snowballs. Possibly in teams with rules, possibly not.

“I’ve never actually been in a snowball fight.”

“Really?”

“I don’t even know the rules. Is there like a point system or is it... to the death?”

Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs

Snowballs are the classic improvised ranged weapon in a winter scene. Generally suggesting a lighthearted conflict, so no hard packing ice or anything like that. If someone actually hurts somebody, This Just Got Serious.

Although as this Lumiere film from 1897 shows,
if you come by on a bicycle all bets are off.

Snowballs are also a good choice for fighting fire elementals. See how good your chance is in Hell.

Adventure Calendar 2024 8: Snap-dragon

Adventure Calendar 2024

8: Snap-dragon

Snap-dragon: A variant on bobbing for apples where you have to snatch a raisin or other piece of fruit floating in a bowl full of brandy. Also the brandy is on fire.

I haven’t played all of these games myself, and I haven’t played this one for reasons I’m sure are obvious.

Brandy doesn’t burn all that hot, but still.

It’s a great example of changing mores and how the past is another country...

The Gorge

The Gorge (AV Club trailer talk) from director Scott Derickson (Doctor Strange, The Black Phone) due Valentine’s Day. Two world-class snipers (Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy) are positioned on observation towers guarding what may or may not be the door to Hell. And they break rules about not distracting each other. And then...

Just a thought, and this might be addressed during the film:

When recruiting people to constantly watch over a vitally important defensive position and avoid distracting each other, maybe don’t choose such pretty people?

Adventure Calendar 2024 7: Loo Roll Snowman

Adventure Calendar 2024

7: Loo Roll Snowman

Loo Roll Snowman: By this I mean a game, not the craft activity of making a little decoration out of the roll. A festive version of the loo roll mummy (as demonstrated in reverse in Ain’t It Fun by Paramore) where you wrap a team member completely in paper, with the addition of details like black dot eyes and a scarf and hat. Fastest team wins.

This kind of thing would work as a disguise in a game like TOON, less so in others.

But how quickly can you improvise a disguise? And a game set around the festive season might involve suitable disguises, see Leverage’s The Ho Ho Ho Job with heisting Santas and a heist-stopping Santa Eliot.

Unmasking The Masquerade

An upload saving a short student documentary on Vampire LARPs twenty years on. This.. this is history.

Black Doves

Black Doves, starring Keira Knightley and Ben Whishaw as members of a mercensary spy company who go even more rogue in one chaotic darkly funny Christmas season. It runs with a couple of coincidences but is light enough to get away with most of  them. Now on Netflix, so if you like it binge it.

(Now if the Filmhouse would hurry up and reopen so I can be triple-booked with Dead By Dawn...)

Conpulsion 2025, 12-13th April

Now with a form for what people might like to see.

Adventure Calendar 2024 6: Who Am I?

Adventure Calendar 2024

6: Who Am I?

Who Am I?: One of the names (hence no Wikipedia link) for that game where you write a person’s name on a sticky note and put it on someone’s forehead and they have to guess who it is. A variant of Twenty Questions with a less specific number of questions and a more specific variety of answers as well as the added amusement for the audience of somebody having a Post-It stuck to their face.

Ever had a PC start with amnesia to explain a blank slate for backstory?

The reverse where one person knows who they are and everybody else has to guess might be better for a group like the typical PC party. It’s dramatised SF-ishly by It’s What’s Inside, and that goes as well as you might expect. I have in fact seen it done with name tags in a comedy horror LARP where getting possessed was a regular occurrence.

Jentry Chau Vs. The Underworld

Jentry Chau Vs. The Underworld, the animated adventures of a high school chosen one, is out today on Netflix (trailer) so better watch it within a week if you like it to lessen the chances of it being cancelled in a month.

At least it doesn’t end on a cliffhanger - though it looks like it might but then carries on.

It’s a lot more serialised than I was expecting, and also drops the secret and gets over a running gag surprisingly quickly.

It’s usually bright and cheery visually, so when it plays with shadow and some horrific designs they stick out.

The humour is mostly contained in one main character and a couple of minor ones. Favourites are definitely the rubbish guard dogs.

Adventure Calendar 2024 5: Hunt The Thimble

Adventure Calendar 2024

5: Hunt The Thimble

Hunt The Thimble: One player hides a small object somewhere in the party area and whoever finds it wins. Saying “hot” or “cold” as players get closer or further away optional.

Other clues could be provided, at which point it gets a bit escape room.

This can end up as pixel hunting in an RPG, or some other puzzle likely to use player skill rather than character. Adding hot or cold might make these less frustrating.

So to turn it around -

Why might the PCs be after a thimble in particular? Maybe some tailoring magic is involved. One of the angel-powered items I created for Relics was the Fairy Godmother’s Needle which could create any kind of garment from any material, very useful for disguises...

Star Wars: Skeleton Crew

Star Wars: Skeleton Crew cuts down on the Star Wars Meets 1980s Kid SF/F Movie Influenced By Star Wars when it goes into space, but.

80s Suburb Planet is as much a using one bit of Earth to represent another planet as shooting in Tunisia or arctic Norway, but it’s also where a lot more of the audience comes from.

Till You Drop

I am done with the non-food physical stuff Christmas shopping.

I’m impressed too. If anyone wants a signed photo let me know.

Trinity Continuum fifth anniversary

The Trinity Continuum core rulebook and Aeon setting came out five years ago today.

Adventure Calendar 2024 4: Musical Chairs

Adventure Calendar 2024

4: Musical Chairs

Musical Chairs: Dance in a circle around a number of chairs, lower than the number of players. When the music stops everybody tries to get a seat, If you fail you’re out. Remove a chair every round so the game has an ending.

Since I mentioned it in relation to Pass The Parcel this is a more active game and sometimes involves wrestling over a chair or trying to hip-check someone else off. Best played with people you know will take that with good grace.

Can also be played without chairs as Statues, where having to avoid falling over is what gets you out. Which could in theory be used against Weeping Angels.

According to sketch show Big Train it can also be used to make people speak in group therapy sessions. Maybe don’t do that. :D

But it could be used to put players on the spot when you want them to introduce their characters or something. Hmm... not serious...or am I?

Okay, in character ideas...

With a dwindling space and fighting over who gets to stay, a more intellectual version would be the lifeboat or hot air balloon thought experiment. Entire settings like Our Brilliant Ruin are about dealing with resources and even land running out. And on a smaller scale lots of groups could end up in lifeboats, on icebergs breaking up and so on. PCs being PCs someone will probably offer to stay behind in a heroic sacrifice.

Okay, less grim version, only so many people can get into the Important Room in the adventure. Assuming the PCs arent being totally selfish they’ll have to work together to decide who gets in.

V5: City Of Angels 1.26

We got to the vampire restaurant!

We did not burn it down.

Some of us might be considering it.

Adventure Calendar 2024 3: Blind Man's Buff

Adventure Calendar 2024

3: Blind Man’s Buff

Blind Man’s Buff: A variation or tig / tag where the one doing the tagging is blindfold.

It goes back centuries, so characters in ancient or medieval style settings could play it.

Having to sneak around a sleeping or blind monster is one of the classic stealth sequences. Probably good for extended stealth rules where one failure by the noisiest party member doesn’t ruin the whole attempt. Check out Black Seven, a small RPG all about sneaking around enemy bases and not making it just a couple of rolls.

See A Quiet Place for an entire post-apocalypse setting about this. And this game would be a way to LARP it!

In a location without trip hazards anyway.

If the PCs are “it”, chasing something they can’t see is another issue again. An invisible enemy, say? Limiting how many chances they get to work out its position do can raise the tension considerably. Of course then you’re playing Battleship more than Blind Man’s Buff. Maybe a time limit to keep things frantic?

Adventure Calendar 2024 2: Charades

Adventure Calendar 2024

2: Charades

Charades: You get a word or phrase and have to mime it out. There are some specific gestures like category and number of words or syllables. Formalised in France and the UK in the 19th century, based on a previous version about writing tricky descriptions. It has since developed into Pictionary for drawing.

I am actually pretty good at charades, thanks to years of Give Us A Clue running on TV at lunchtimes in my youth.

But anyway.

Obviously the PCs being rendered unable to speak like the classic Buffy episode Hush forces this. Could be hard to sustain in a vocal medium like RPGs though...

GRABYOURCHRISTMASTREE

GRABYOURCHRISTMASTREE, a charity Goth and such Christmas cover and new album.

Featuring an eerie take on The Power Of Love (Frankie, not Huey) by Witch Of The Vale.

V5 Empire 1.10

Due to a player focusing on the Vampire: The Masquerade V5 “oracle” take on the Malkavian clan and establishing the character being from a brood like that, I’ve leaned into it with all the NPC clan members they’ve met as well. Any resemblance to the Mekhet from Vampire: The Requiem is - hey look over there!

So tonight they met a photographer who had seen an omen while taking pictures, a descendant of a cult leader obsessed with the Red Star who was a broodmate of the PC’s sire, as well as another of the leader’s childer trying to pursue his studies.

Adventure Calendar 2024 1: Pass The Parcel

Adventure Calendar 2024

1: Pass The Parcel

Pass The Parcel: Pass a parcel between you, a gift wrapped in several layers of wrapping paper, as music plays. When it stops the holder unwraps a layer, and then the music restarts. Continue until unwrapping the final layer means you win the prize inside.

(Apparently British, with some Canadian play as well, hence the description. It’s kind of like Musical Chairs but less active - you can play a whole game sitting down, which you usually can’t with Musical Chairs.)

In most RPGs and other adventure-ish media this is just asking to be a bomb.

This was also the climactic problem in The Dark Knight Rises and that's not a coincidence.

To be doubly festive, you could also borrow from Casting The Runes by M. R. James, a curse that has to be passed on before it comes due...

Adventure Calendar 2024

Adventure Calendar 2024

0: Party Games

This is real. Some friends have it. I may have to help with a daily riddle when I visir.

For my sixth time doing festive adventure ideas daily (click December 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 in my blog archive) and as one thing people do at Christmas that they might not do much the rest of the year...

GAMES.

Particularly party games.

And how they might end up in RPG adventures...

December

December, and World AIDS Day.

Low the light, low the tide

Comes the sun again

--Thea Gilmore, Sol Invictus

Deck the halls and snowflakes fall but I’m not feeling glad at all

-- Charly Bliss, It’s Christmas And I Fucking Miss You

St. Andrew's Day

Happy St. Andrew’s Day! SCOTLAND!

Notre Dame

Notre Dame Cathedral reopening after five and a half years of restoration work. The central hall is bright and airy.

Tales From Black Friday 2024

It's the first of these here, so if we must have Black Friday we shall have #TalesFromBlackFriday also!

Our forces amassed at the edge of the customer parking lot, waiting for the signal.

This time. This time it would be different. We would not let them pass.

Thousands of them this time. Each the product of fell science with a single thought. No mere PS5 or Apple Watch would placate them. No. These things would be satisfied only with one of those air fryers with the grill underneath.

Some might say let them fry their air. But do you truly believe they would stop at that? Never! They would never rest until all air fried, and us along with it!

Already we could hear their death chant - "Grill! Grill! Grill! Grill!" - and see their ragged banners flutter in the chill breeze, promising them thirty - nay, forty, some even sixty percent reductions! A terrible need that could ne'er be sated!

The clock tower of the all-night ASDA struck the fatal hour.

It was upon us.

We thought we were prepared for this. That our walls were strong, that our prices were fair, that we could ride out this storm of insatiable greed. Were we wrong? Soon we would find out.

A gasp of dread runs through our ranks as they unveil their great siege engine, their largest Door Buster yet.

They charge, ready to tear down everything we hold dear - Small Business Saturday, Giving Tuesday, these mean nothing to them!

But we stand.

We stand!

Price shall be halved, credit score be shattered,

A sword-day, a Black Friday, ere the sun rises!

-- With apologies to J. R. R. Tolkien

Hammer House Of Podcast

Hammer House Of Podcast has now completed its run of Hammer horror films - until we get another one! And now Paul Cornell and Lizbeth Myles are gearing up for a new series starting in January looking at UK genre TV in Telefantasy Time Jump.

Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate.

Nationals 2025 plan

Getting it down now while it’s in the unlikely.

Cyberpunk is the theme, so if I were to get Urban Fantasy then no, not Shadowrun. And not a future Buffy or anything like that.

But an evil corporation to fight against is an easy fit. And with the Sounds Like Hell cast, a Buffy show about an indie band, well..

Josie And The Pussycats
is
The Best Movie Ever
JOIN THE ARMY

Which led to me getting the complete 2016-17 run of the comic, involving a ig break, a world tour, assorted rivalries, a couple of kidnapping attempts and resulting bike chases. Some of that could get in too.

Would Julie be tempted by the evil scheme to rebrand her as a solo act? Maybe.

Would Tess have to fight a killer VJ? Yes.

Nationals 2025, 11th-13th of April

Which is also the proposed date for Conpulsion 2025. Ah well.

(I mean I could hand the quiz to our presenter and a scorer but it’s hardy ideal.)

The Hearth Magazine

The Hearth Magazine, aiming for a bimonthly launch in 2025, with a mission “to provide an actively inclusive and accessible monthly magazine of TTRPG advice, views, and reviews, for and from members of the TTRPG community.”

Buffy returns to free UK streaming

Buffy returns to free UK streaming, on ITVX, probably in the New Year.

It's A Wonderful Knife

It’s A Wonderful Knife (2023) comes from the co-writer of Freaky and then writer of Time Cut (that’s the one that isn’t Totally Killer) and you can probably work most of it out from context.

Watched a month prior to Christmas because my semi-traditional month of Shudder was ending.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Eat Your Young actual play

An AP video series from Queen's Court Games.

Residents of a small New Jersey beach town take on a group of vampiric villains known as The Family who have been terrorizing the East Coast. Can our heroes put an end to the threat?

Listed here for future observing.

Worldbuilding, so easy to mess up.

Imagine how fucked California noir would be if Los Angeles was called anything else: 'They call Los Caballos the City of Horses. Neither here nor there when it comes to the sex and murder stuff I guess. Anyway...'

Peli Grietzer on Bluesky

And yes I sent this to the City of Horses Angels group chat. Hey, I did it too in an LA game in the 90s.

Now no snow.

Snow

A week after the first frost. Just a little here, but apparently enough in town that tha buses are off and the Castle is closed.

Buffy comics

BOOM! Studios are stopping Buffy, Angel and Firefly comics after almost six years, citing a business decision, but pretty abruptly as this includes cancelling a Firefly series about Zoe when it was supposed to start.

What comes next? I hope somebody picks (or has picked) up the licences.

I never jived with their approach of a modern reboot rearranging characters and connections, particularly some of the decisions they made, though I enjoy a giant talking bat. I basically got out of getting monthly comics in 2020 anyway for obvious unrelated reasons, and let them slide as part of that. I have picked up some one-shots and minis set in the regular Buffyverse, although I didn’t feel like keeping up with the multiple assorted what-if spinoffs after the first run.

I did like the reveal that the comic parallel universe was the world without shrimp. No notes.

FiveEvil

FiveEvil is alive! ... evil. With some stretch goal adventures on the way.

Bloodlines 2 soundtrack

A nice big dev diary with audio and video for the Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 soundtrack. Featuring noir-but-maybe-a-bit-Western theme, crunchy guitars, sad cello, and shovels, from the new team and the return of BL1 composer Rik Schaffer.

New tablet

Who this?

No snow here. Yet.

Women Of Action

Caroline Siede has a new column at the AV Club, about women-led action movies, starting with Sarah Connor in The Terminator 1 and 2 and featuring the likes of take-the-power-back Enough and Wonder Woman striding into No Man’s Land in WWI and on screen a century later.

Robin Of Sherwood - nothing's forgotten

Producer Esta Charkham and Marian Judy Trott look back at one of my formative fantasy-ish media.

V5 Empire 1.08

As is traditional for the Vampire: The Masquerade session closest to the Bloodlines anniversary I took inspiration for a plot from one of its features.

And I couldn’t fairly do the haunted hotel with the ghost expert PC not there for the session, or the creepy hospital without the two PCs that work in a hospital.

So that’s why the PCs are on their way to the isolated lair of a supposedly dead Malkavian apocalypse cult leader.

Heh heh heh.

The first frost

It was the first frost, so we can play some winter songs. And Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) is an always.

V5: The Windy City

First chance to play Vampire: The Masquerade V5 around an actual table!

Many character options, so due to relatively inexperienced group otherwise going with a fairly basic idea who can be a ‘grown-up’ if necessary.

Rejigging Paris, maybe closer to the original possible leader than she ended up in City of Angels due to other players there being more confident.

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines came out twenty years ago tonight. Delayed but also rushed, it arrived after the original World Of Darkness ended and the new later Chronicles version came out, and also needed a day one patch to get out of one level.

But fans still love its mood and feel (at least until Chinatown) and its variety of options (until the endgame) - and especially highlights like the discomfort it creates around your accidental ghoul and the single location ghost story of the Ocean House Hotel.

Predator: Badlands

The Predator and especially That Crossover We Do Not Mention movies have been heading towards the Predator as protagonist for a while now, but if anybody can actually make that work the Prey team can.

Bluesky

I was on Bluesky already, so nyer.

The Onion won the war against info, on its behalf.

FiveEvil: Wakefield House

Morgan Davie runs a short demo version of one of the FiveEvil adventures.

Star Trek modelmaker Bill Krause

Star Trek 3D starship designer and modelmaker Bill Krause (Picard, the Ships Of The Line art books) now on Bluesky, posted his recreation of the FASA Baker class.

And this is a little model for him with no lights

Thanks to TardisCaptain for reposting his work.

Star Trek: Lower Decks

I started on Star Trek: Lower Decks as the first two seasons are on Prime after an STA session and after seeing Strange New Worlds: Those Old Scientists. It helped finally getting past that opening scene of Mariner drunkenly maiming Boimler with a Klingon bat’leth, to meet the more immediately likeable Tendi and Rutherford. Mariner remains a lot throughout the first two seasons. As each season is about four hours, progress is quite fast.

I laughed a fair bit, could have done without some other stuff. I also appreciated that the command staff foils are mostly heroic Trek types with some foibles.

Favourite episode so far, We’ll Always Have Tom Paris, which rolls with the kinds of problems Trek tech and people woudn’t really have but we would have with that level of technology which still requires human(oid) oversight.

Favourite little side joke, the Andorian called Jennifer.

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning trailer and talk at Empire. Previously Dead Reckoning part two...

V5 Empire 1.07

Picked up and used some SPCs Jason Carl was kind enough to leave in the toybox.

The Malkavian fortune teller is working on seducing the leader of the anarch thugs, which I was not expecting.

Tony Todd

I got to meet Tony Todd at our local horror festival Dead By Dawn, where he was presenting a short film he was proud of working on and a feature that, as he put it, we should have fun with. At one point I was alone at the bar and he came in, and due to my smile at this that I should be laughing nervously to be alone with Candyman we got to talking about Goodfellas and gangster movies, so I got to see him enthuse about one of his favourite genres.

Terminator Zero

Terminator Zero might not have been the best relaxing watch. Kind of interesting but ohhh so much philosophising.

Star Wars Episode ?!

Simon Kinberg (writer of X-Men: Dark Phoenix, but also some of Rebels) is developing a new Star Wars trilogy. Well, so am I, and mine is more likely to happen.

Mass Effect Prime

Prime planning Mass Effect series. As they routinely throw money at things like The Rings Of Power and Citadel I can imagine them actually going through with it.

Happy N7 Day!

One For Sorrow

One For Sorrow by Jamie McKelvie issue 1, introducing the Magpie hunting wrongdoers in 1900 London and a cast about to get caught up in the chase. The big format shows off the art very nicely. I guessed something like one of the reveals but not the specifics.

Unasked for advice

Unasked for advice

You’re in shock right now. Like an unexpected death or betrayal. 

Eat what you need to. No guilt about that today. 

However you feel is the right way to feel. Anyone who tells you you’re exaggerating or being overly dramatic you walk away from. 

If you can meditate, do so for 10 min.  Lots of youtube videos from Headspace and other places for that. They help to self regulate. 

Limit your time online, it’s not helping right now, it will in the future. 

Nothing can be fixed today so just take care of yourself and those you love. 

If you can play a video game or watch an old movie or tv series do so. With a new one you’ll probably lose track of the plot as your mind wanders so old ones from the past are better.

With a video game you’ll have a dopamine release for winning small victories and when you beat what seems like an impossible boss.  

Write down how you feel. Write it all down. By hand if possible. Then fold it and put it somewhere. 

Look at nature if you can for a while.  

Know that even though there’s hate in the world, you’re loved. You really are. 

Let’s get through this day after a terrible night.

Ian Boothby

Haunt Season

Haunt Season (2024) (trailer) wuld have been a nice late entry in 31 Days if I’d spotted it sooner. A horror comedy about a haunted house attraction - from the POV of the “theatre kids who never grew up” who work it. Yes, there’s a slasher involved, but until that gets going it looks pretty fun, and when it does get going everybody acts pretty sensibly after a moment of shocked disbelief.

Be surprised. Be very surprised.

I was not expecting another film following David Cronenberg’s The Fly, let alone one a decade longer after it than it was after the original.

V5 Empire 1.06

They checked on the possible victim, who is fine, but as a result might be slightly at war with the alleged killer because they questioned her intentions.

Playing a game together or just sharing a table?

The Lost Boys looks like two movies with a small crossover when the brothers are in the same scene.

Action!

After a month of horror movies, a change of pace with an action movie about...

checks notes

... organ thieves.

The Cure, Songs of A Lost World

The Cure, Songs of A Lost World album launch concert

November

Halloween Boxing Day seems like an odd day for The Cure to release a new album, but here we are.

FiveEvil

FiveEvil is live! Evil. On Kickstarter.

Heretic

Heretic (2024)

Trailer

A pair of young Mormon women go to visit someone who claims to be curious to learn more, but the avuncular Mr. Reed actually wants to teach them something.

Heretic got Halloween “previews” before a regular Friday release, so much so that the adverts on the side of buses say PREVIEWS OCT 31 with a cartoon jack o’ lantern for the O, so I saw it in the afternoon with enough of a crowd to share chuckles at the jokes. Said adverts focus entirely on Hugh Grant smirking evilly. He’s having fun in his villain era as he did in Paddington 2 and Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves, while Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East have the less showy roles in what is largely a three-hander. They get to be smart enough to hold their own against Mr. Reed’s arguments as it moves from the living room to the also much advertised basement.

Also the first film I’ve seen to include a note that no generative AI was used in the production, which gets it a bonus point from me too.

The medium: The cinema!

Gameability: A sinister host presenting a game and a puzzle in a purpose-built “dungeon”... And at one point Mr. Reed calls someone an NPC!

Agatha All Along

Agatha All Along stuck the landing.

(It also confirmed that Buffy The Vampire Slayer exists as a show in the MCU, which of course starts up a paradox as Marvel Comics exist in the Buffyverse.)

Annihilation

Annihilation (2018)

Trailer

Due to its extremely limited cinema release, Annihilation became a rare thing, a Netflix movie that has staying power. Based on a novel by Jeff VanderMeer, adapted and directed by Alex Garland, it stars Natalie Portman as a biologist joining a team heading into a zone affected by an unknown source of change. It’s more SF than horror, but has some gruesome moments as well as an overall grim tone. It has some striking visuals as well, although the abstract look of the climax does end up looking like an update of 1980s-90s “look what CGI can do!” animation demonstrations.

The medium: Netflix

Gameability: A small team goes in to investigate strange phenomena, though in this case the modern team dealing with a threat plays more Call of Cthulhu than Stargate.

Halloween

Halloween, Halloween, Halloween, Halloween

Halsey, Lonely Is The Muse

And when you're done, you can discard me

Like the others always do

And I will nurse my wounds until

Another artist needs me new

Halsey, Lonely Is The Muse

Marvel D+ 2024-5

A lot of release dates in under two minutes!

What If for Christmas. Daredevil this spring! Ironheart in the summer. Wonder Man next Christmas. The Spider-Man and Wakanda animated series as well.

Google Halloween 2024

Google Halloween Kitty Drawing Game returns, this time IN SPAAAAACE

Late Night With The Devil

31 days popout

Late Night With The Devil (2024)

Trailer

I skipped this at the cinema after learning it used Plagiarism Algorithm for station ident drawings, something it could easily edit out, but oh well.

But it’s really better suited to TV anyway, as it presents itself as a 1970s talk show. It’s not as good as Ghostwatch inevitably, but the period mix of sideburns and Satanic Panic works well. I wish the Randi-esque token sceptic hadn’t been such a dick though.

Gameability: Like the original plan for Ghostwatch as a regular drama with the live broadcast being the finale, how would modern protagonists deal with a TV crew getting in the way of a monster hunt or wanting to interview them afterwards?

Oddity

31 Days popout

Oddity (2024)

Trailer

After a creepy played-straight introduction that cuts before the key murder, the victim’s sister seeks answers, using her power of psychometry and an array of cursed items, including the heavily featured lifesize articulated wooden carving of a screaming man, which is mostly there to be weird and disturbing in a sort of funny way. And the whole film pretty much feels like that, which worked once I got on its wavelength.

(At another scare point I realised I’d seen writer and director Damian Mc Carthy’s work before, as he revisits early short Hungry Hickory that screened here at Dead By Dawn.)

With a less prominent example in Black As Night, it made an unintentional double bill featuring an uncommon development -

V5 Empire 1.05

Tonight in Vampire: The Masquerade, the PCs may or may not have sent a runaway victim back to a killer vampire because the possible killer’s enemy annoyed them more.

Azrael (2024)

31 Days popout

24: Azrael (2024)

Trailer

Did you know Azrael is out on Shudder after a limited US cinema run last month? I only found out by seeing it mentioned in an io9 list as Shudder itself didn’t want to tell me. Indeed, when I checked Wikipedia after confirming it was there its still listed as streaming on Shudder “at a later date”. But it’s there, honest! (At least in the U.K.)

Azrael stars Samara Weaving as a post-Rapture survivor who like many has had her vocal cords seared, including a local cult out collecting sacrifices to feed and placate the “burned people”, vampiric things living in the woods. This sets off a roaring rampage of revenge which is great fun and might have been even more fun played purely as grisly action without the possible supernatural side.

Contains at least one full helping of F YEAH.

The medium: Shudder, despite its attempts to hide it

Gameability: A story where hardly any of the characters can speak would be tricky to play in a vocal medium like RPGs, but the switch from description to lack of dialogue would stand out.

Halloween One-Shot: Sinking

An ocean research submersible descends to investigate an anomalous reading. What will the crew find, and will they get to report it?

Using the World of Darkness 5 system of escalating threat dice for a submarine in trouble, drawing on Grace Under Pressure and Grave And Watery and that genre.

Update: I got players! Four of a possible six, so I only really mauled the NPC aboard, though I ended with worrying uncertainty. They liked the rising threat dice mechanic, which I thought would work well for something like this. (Should have given them less Willpower for rerolls!)

Predator: Badlands and something more

Thanks to Dan Trachtenberg, director of Prey, two new Predator movies come along at once, one we knew and a whole other one.

Important Agatha update

“We are not cool, Teenager!”

“Damn, using his full name.”

Open letter against Plagiarism Engines

The AI training statement, open for signing.

No dinner but a show

As is traditional, we once again didn’t get to the dinner party in City of Angels. Maybe next time?

The Blair Witch Project

October 21st marks the thirtieth anniversary of the last day anyone saw film students Heather Donahue, Mike Williams or Joshua Leonard alive.

V5 Empire 1.04

The players gathered on a dark and stormy night, a week early for Halloween special...

Bram Stoker's Gibbet Hill

A Bram Stoker ghost story found and to be reprinted for charity after 134 years.

Prince Charming

Disney making a Prince Charming origin film, with Paddington 1 and 2 (and Wonka) director Paul King involved.

As someone who couldn’t find a name or origin for the Fairy Godmother and so unilaterally made her Aglaea of the Three Graces for Relics, I can hardly talk.

Besides, ridicule is nothing to be scared of.

View-Master: The Motion Picture

I can imagine how a View-Master movie could work... as a jokey horror movie...

Only Murders update

I figured out the latest development largely by checking how many episodes we have left.

Trail Of Cthulhu 2nd edition

Trail Of Cthulhu 2nd edition, now live on Backerkit.

Language Barriers

Inspired by Watcher (31 Days Of Horror 2024 Day 13), where a couple move to a country where only one speaks the language and it adds to the other’s isolation as she starts to worry she’s being watched, how would a language barrier complicate an adventure?

V5 Empire 1.03

Tied up the missing sire plot in three sessions rather than, say, twelve.

Not today

Half-hour-plus update for Windows 10 proved to be Copilot. To be fair, it has an easy right-click Uninstall.

Jurassic World: Dominion

31 Days Of Horror Adjacent In This Case

12: Jurassic World: Dominion (2022)

Battle At Big Rock short film set between Fallen Kingdom and Dominion, which gets to the scary part right away

The Jurassic Park and World trilogies have always been on the horror-adjacent adventure end of “monster” movies, more so than Jaws, Steven Spielberg’s adventure-adjacent horror with a big carnivore. How much horror gets in varies from film to film, but there’s always at least one “stalked by a dinosaur” scene.

And since I also watched a couple of full-fledged horror films this weekend that had nothing I felt like writing about, here we are.

That introductory short very much plays up how scary these things could be, but this particular film doesn’t, instead playing a sub Indiana Jones international adventure romp with added dinosaurs in the black market sale and roguish pilot until it inevitably gets to the enclosed area full of dinosaurs. And those bits are fine, but after the first World was a retread of Park like its own sequels I like that the World follow-ups mix in different genres.

This has the legacy sequel crossover problem of too many characters which the first two World films avoided and this one jumps straight into, but balances them... okay. The ending didn't entirely convince, after nearly six films of people being worried about dinosaurs getting out it's not really that big of a deal?

The medium: Netflix, also home to the YA animated series in case there aren’t enough kids in danger normally.

Gameability: There are RPGs and setting subsections about avoiding being eaten by dinosaurs through cloning, time travel and the like. This opens a setting so that could be a regular issue.

Salem's Lot (2022)

31 Days Of Horror

Salem’s Lot (2022)

Trailer

Apparently director Gary Dauberman handed in a three hour version, released at just over two it’s by far the shortest adaptation and loses a lot of the flavour of the town slowly falling, but the streamlining is largely fine, remixing the 1979 version in particular. Someone coming in unfamiliar with the book or the previous adaptation would get it, though might wonder why it was named after the town. I largely nodded along, and thought a couple of bits didn’t hit, but I really liked the play on the sunset race at the end.

It escaped its streaming doom here, and seeing it in the cinema probably helped with some of the little details seen only in the dark.

Gameability: Small group of regular people (in this very quickly) discovering and facing horrors in a small town. So, yes. Although Mark’s clearly playing a different game system to everyone else. (RPG fan bonus, a Vampire: The Masquerade Actual Play regular baring fangs on the big screen.)

The Thing

Kali Wallace on John Carpenter’s The Thing for Reactor’s Science Fiction Film Club. I knew the dog was creepy but this really lays out why. Also that the original review were bad, but oof.

Jentry Chau Vs. The Underworld

Guess they finally made that animated Buffy show after all. Trailer.

Crushing

Got a tub of “spooky” sweets as it appeared to contain Skull Crushers, the skull-shaped white chocolate shells with red fondant filling from my morbid childhood, but no, these were just solid white chocolate with a dash of red colouring.

Skulls not crushed. Only I was crushed.

(Skull Crushers are still made and available by mail order but this seems a bit of an extravagance even for me.)

It's What's Inside

31 Days of Horror more or less

It’s What’s Inside (2024)

Trailer that reveals the premise that I’m spoiler-blurring and comes up quite early but it has only been out for four days

Spoilerfiic writer-director interview

Getting its own entry as it’s new to Netflix as of this weekend. Horror-adjacent as a dark comedy with an SF/F premise.

A group of more-or-less friends meet up years after their college closeness, including a tech genius who brings a game of sorts...

Halloween one-shots

I know that GEAS one-shots after Welcome Week are hit and miss, but Halloween is my hour, so.

Nothing Darkness-y for simplicity.

Not Dread as I doubt we would have a room to ourselves so crashing Jenga tower would bother other tables.

Dead Of Night for something basic? Slasher deconstruction, haunted house, zombie apocalypse, that kind of thing. Maybe the crime gone very wrong subgenre? Paranormal investigators on camera and see if it ends up as Found Footage?

(Could also use Cthulhu, EPOCH, Fear Itself, FiveEvil, mortal WoD...)

ALIEN? Eh.

Ghostbusters? Back in public consciousness, though through movies I don’t rate.

V5 Empire 1.02

Vampire: The Masquerade - Empire

1.02

Trying not to overcomplicate why a PC was abandoned by the vampire that turned them, as I often do.

Angel at 25

Cue the cello.

Star Wars Rebels

Star Wars Rebels premiered ten years ago today. A space adventure in the lead-up to A New Hope, with a lot of fun, the occasional hefty moral question, slightly too much Force mysticism for me at times, and showed its WEG RPG influence so much that one episode adapts one of the adventures.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

Well, that was thirty-six years in development and felt like two first drafts held together with unabsorbed studio notes.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, among other things, has the worst case of sequel villain bloat I’ve ever seen and I’m pretty sure it was by accident, replaces the musical stylings of Harry Belafonte with those of Richard Harris, goes to great trouble to include Charles without featuring the original actor except in stills and also writes out the Maitlands in a way so lazy it’s almost ballsy in its audacity.

I also kind of admire their commitment to the Mario Bava and Soul Train references, though would have more if they’d been in any way funny and/or a good two minutes shorter each.

Although Delia gets more to do, which is nice.

The medium: well, the cinema seat was comfy.

Gameability: About as much as the first, though I’d include a “people can find those they care about in the afterlife very conveniently” power.

Escape From New York

Science Fiction Film Club at Reactor gets to John Carpenter’s Escape From New York and as writer Kali Wallace provides context for the films here sets the dystopian cyberpunk mood with “some fun facts that are not remotely fun” about America’s actual crime rate and the national mood of the times.