Wednesday, 31 December 2025
Things of the year 2025
Film of the year: Sinners
TV of the year (new): Daredevil Born Again
TV of the year (returning or new to me anyway): Star Trek: Prodigy
Album of the year: Hayley Williams, Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party
Song of the year: Florence + The Machine, Everybody Scream
Gig of the year: Chappell Roan
RPG of the year: I didn’t actually try new RPGs this year :/
Monday, 29 December 2025
Sunday, 28 December 2025
Science!
Today in cyberpunk, a man wearing a remote control suit for a walking robot manages to kick himself in the balls with it.
Saturday, 27 December 2025
20 Buffy plots from Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party
Happy birthday to Hayley Williams!
Her new album Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party (content note: swears) contains several tracks that I would fit into a Buffy The Vampire Slayer soundtrack, and the traditional title idea jam:
Friday, 26 December 2025
Action Santas
Due to TV, in one case weirdly quickly presumably because of some media synergy, I watched Violent Night (2022) and Red One (2024) on terrestrial TV.
Violent Night is pleasingly willing to say its obvious massive influences out loud. Santa not knowing how his Christmas magic works himself takes away some of the stakes, though. It has me wondering if it started as a straight Die Hard With A Guy In A Santa Suit script that got smushed in with an Actual Santa Action Movie idea. I also feel one or both of the henchpersons who discover it’s Actual Santa should take it as a sign to get out of there.
Red One never has stakes, as obviously the plan isn’t going to work like it maybe could at least in part in Violent Night. And I guess the reveal of Santa being Actual Santa couldn’t be hidden for more than five minutes, which undercuts the mundane antihero’s reaction to the setup. Also the North Pole has delivery drones and stuff. I can see why people singled out the visually fun Krampus castle sequence though.
Thursday, 25 December 2025
Adventure Calendar 2025: Fairytales
The complete collection of adventure ideas and plot hooks and a few items based on folk and fairytales
0: Fairytales
2: Cinderella
4: Jack Tales
7: Snow White
9: Peter Pan
10: Sleeping Beauty
21: Midwinter
23: The Frog Prince
Addendum: The Emperor’s New Clothes
24: The Nutcracker
Season’s greetings!
Wednesday, 24 December 2025
The Room In The Tower
A Ghost Story For Christmas: The Room In The Tower by E. F. Benson is by far the closest adaptation Mark Gatiss and crew have produced. Especially if you turn it off when the frame story takes a hit.
Adventure Calendar 2025 24: The Nutcracker
Adventure Calendar 2025
24: The Nutcracker
I decided to end on The Nutcracker as I started on The Snow Queen, a story very familiar from ballet - in this case the ballet is the best known version, particularly in the US as a standard holiday show for many companies.
The eponymous Christmas gift, a soldier-shaped toy with a practical function, leads gingerbread men and assorted toys in the defence of a family home from an invading army of mice (often later changed to rats to seem less adorable) with the aid of the girl who got the present. So we have toys come to life, intelligent animals, and an epilogue about the Land of Sweets. It’s Toy Story versus Tom and Jerry with a stopoff in Candyland.
Plenty of settings have a suitable Weird Level for magic toymakers and dolls sword fighting with giant mice, so no trouble coming up with an adventure hook there.
The Nutcracker
The PCs are drafted in to help a toy reunite with its owner. This may also involve a mouse king.
But also...
The Show Must Go On
The PCs have to help with, protect, or otherwise ensure a high-profile artistic event takes place. During the Cold War, ballet was one of the cultural forms still used for international outreach and there are examples with defections and espionage, so this would be suited to a spy game too.
Adventure Calendar 2025 Addendum: The Emperor's New Clothes
Adventure Calendar 2025
Addendum: The Emperor’s New Clothes
The basis for the only other fairytale Disney animated feature, which is not getting its own entry here as it barely uses it because yeah, there’s not enough material to cover very much. Ha ha.
Tuesday, 23 December 2025
I see you
A regular joe joins a very Native American coded tribal society of nine-foot animal-senses people with an empowering bond with their environment and fights a human megacorp looking to exploit and despoil it.
Avatar is a Werewolf: The Apocalypse game.
(Note that I don’t think this is actually how it developed, unlike my genuine feeling that the creators of John Wick are at least familiar with Vampire: The Masquerade. It’s just one way genre stuff does pop culture Native American environmentalism, probably with things like Dances With Wolves influencing both.)
Adventure Calendar 2025 23: The Frog Prince
Adventure Calendar 2025
23: The Frog Prince
Boy gets cursed to be a frog, persuades girl to kiss him and change him back. Kind of like Beauty And The Beast but he’s pitiful instead of terrifying. Being turned into a small unimpressive animals also brings in threats from nature and the human world, like being miniaturised. How would the PCs cope with suddenly being the size of their figures?
Honey I Shrunk The Party
The PCs have to be miniaturised to sneak in somewhere and retrieve or plant something. Maybe to deliver a Christmas present? And... who had the de-mniaturising gadget?
Final Destination Holiday Special
Final Destination Holiday Special
Has someone electrocuted by a faulty Christmas light and someone crushed by the falling tree in the pre-credits to keep you guessing how our leads might die on their way home for the holidays.
Musical guest Halsey debuts a downtempo cover of Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer.
Is it bad that I want to do this one-shot now?
Sir John Tavener, The Lamb, by VOCES8
Sir John Tavener created beautiful, often melancholic and sometimes eerie sacred music, and choral octet VOCES8 bring that all to The Lamb.
I can imagine this as the local Tremere chantry’s contribution to a vampire court’s midwinter celebration. Does this make me a bad person?
Monday, 22 December 2025
Adventure Calendar 2025 22: The Town Musicians Of Bremen
Adventure Calendar 2025
22: The Town Musicians Of Bremen
It so happens I write about the Town Musicians Of Bremen in January, but here we are anyway.
(For comparison, a story game called Last Train To Bremen released since uses the motif for a crossroads story.)
But Are They Any Good?
The local town band is made up of escaped farm animals. How the PCs react to this probably depends on the overall Weird Level of the setting. Question is, can you help them organise a tour?
Sunday, 21 December 2025
Adventure Calendar 2025 21: Midwinter
Adventure Calendar 2025
21: Midwinter
Today is the winter solstice here, the point of midwinter at 3.03 this afternoon. We mark it with stories, as well as buildings aligning with solstice sunrises like the Newgrange passage tomb in Ireland.
Our local winter folklore has the Cailleach spreading her white plaid over the hills bringing the season. A young hero falls for her daughter and brings the promise of spring.
Compare the Snow Queen, though the Cailleach isn’t an invading threat.
(I referred to her in Relics as well. If angels are made of fire, what is a creature made of cold?)
At The Court Of The Winter Queen
The PCs have to speak with the Cailleach outside of her season. She is goddess of storms and permafrost as well as winter, so a few places are hers all year or can be used at times. Nowadays you could try invoking her in a walk-in freezer, but she might be offended so only in a real emergency.
Saturday, 20 December 2025
Adventure Calendar 2025 20: Rapunzel
Adventure Calendar 2025
20: Rapunzel
Rapunzel is the simple story of a captive girl with magic hair so long and strong you can climb a three storey tower with it, a wicked stepmother, a guy who gets blinded... That’s the Brothers Grimm for you. No wonder the Disney version goes really light and jokey.
The Maiden In The Tower
So who is putting these princesses in towers anyway? And what for? They can’t all be bait for unwary princes, can they? Maybe they can - somebody keeps setting up weird tests like this for Arthur’s knights. But if the towers don’t magically disappear afterwards, does anybody ever move in? Anyone who isn’t another captive princess?
Friday, 19 December 2025
The Shopping Is Done
THE SHOPPING IS DONE
Although I may have wrecked that for someone else
THE SHOPPING IS DONE
Adventure Calendar 2025 19: The Little Mermaid
Adventure Calendar 2025
19: The Little Mermaid
The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen, first published in 1837, and adapted to start the Disney animated film renaissance, has a mermaid falling in love with a dry land boy, wishing for legs and losing her voice - and in the original version everything - for love. The animated version goes hard on moving to a pre-heavenly happy ending.
One of the most literal fish out of water stories, we don’t get much of the undersea world but enough to inform adventures in such settings.
One note is that the titular mermaid is little as she has older sisters who have all been to see the surface world as a coming of age. and none of them were all that impressed.
The Kerfuffle Between The Land And The Sea
A port, dam, sea conflict or other large project impinging on the sea earns the ire of the people living under it
See For Yourself
Young characters from a close community come of age and go to see the outside world. How many ways can this go wrong?
Thursday, 18 December 2025
TOON Second Edition
TOON second edition now on Backerkit with previews. Hardcover as well as paperback (and PDF, naturally) available.
Adventure Calendar 2025 18: Sinbad
Adventure Calendar 2025
18: Sinbad
One more tale from the Thousand And One Nights, Sinbad is an archetypal PC type, a rogue who gets by with his wits and his sword in a world of magic and monsters. Ray Harryhausen made three films about him.
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| The first of them featuring the debut of one of his biggest stars |
Beyond The Horizon
The PCs hire on to an expedition to explore a chain of mysterious islands under the command of a dashing captain. It will not be quiet, or safe, or calm, but it will be the trip of a lifetime!
Wednesday, 17 December 2025
Exodus
Exodus, the space opera CRPG with proper RPG sourcebooks already launched by Wizards and novels by Peter F. Hamilton, got a trailer at the (video) game awards ahead of launching in 2027.
Scrappy human heroes! Chunky spacesuits! Ethereal ancient aliens! Mystical-ish zappy powers!
The big standout point from other sprawling space opera settings is that time dilation is a major feature. This makes returning to the same planet a few adventures later feel different than in most settings.
The other standout is uplifted animals. You never see a bear in a spacesuit in Mass Effect or even Destiny.
Live From The Succubus Club
Hey, they made a sourcebook about the Vampire: The Masquerade game I ran a couple years ago!
Not literally. Be nice though.
As is often the case with V5, a mix of a couple of somewhat connected subjects - mortal-facing games and entertainment.
Also including a European tour adventure series, with... more lore than expected.
Adventure Calendar 2025 17: Ali Baba
Adventure Calendar 2025
17: Ali Baba And The Forty Thieves
The main things the story of Ali Baba gave us are magic doors opened with a specific phrase, and thieves’ guilds. Both of which are cool things to have.
Open Sesame
The PCs have the code phrase for a magic door. Now how to get there? And who else wants it?
Buck Rogers In The 25th Century
Buck Rogers In The 25th Century starring Gil Gerrard revived the 1930s comic hero for the Star Wars generation, complete with Ralph McQuarrie fighters and funny wee robot and snooty computer friends, as well as Buck reintroducing disco to humanity, and then the Star Trek generation more in the second season as the characters went exploring planets of the week in a big spaceship.
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| The Thunderfighter by Ralph McQuarrie |
An unconnected RPG version came along a decade later, an attempt to do a grounded version which always felt like a strange idea.
Tuesday, 16 December 2025
Oof!
Remember the start of Buffy season three where she’s walked away and waiting tables and a customer swats her on the rear and she stops herself kicking his ass and you wish she would SO MUCH?
What I wished for, 34-40 seconds in.
The waitress judo dropping the drunk customer attacking staff is going in the reference collection if I play Cara the Akashic Mage again.
Disclosure Day
Disclosure Day - trailer - a new film from Steven Spielberg, also creator of the story, coming this summer.
People have a right to know the truth.
Adventure Calendar 2025 16: Aladdin
Adventure Calendar 2025
16: Aladdin
A genie story rather than a fairy story, but still a pantomime favourite with Disney versions as well. Aladdin runs a bit like Jack And The Beanstalk as a poor lad tried to make his fortune when he comes into possession of a magic item.
Its main addition to culture is the lamp of three wishes, and the often capricious nature of being careful what you wish for.
The genie here is pretty on side rather than showing malicious compliance, but many PCs have learned to be wary of freely offered wishes. Characters having to consider this appear throughout SFF - see Faust, The Monkey’s Paw, Wishmaster, Vengeance Demons in Buffy, the time Mulder gets three wishes in The X Files, a few Q episodes in Star Trek and many more.
As You Wish
How would the PCs react to a wish freely and properly granted with no loopholes or catches?
Monday, 15 December 2025
Adventure Calendar 2025 15: The Princess Bride
Adventure Calendar 2025
15: The Princess Bride
The Princess Bride takes its genre and gives it a shake to see what happens questioning expectations along the way, while also adding to it. All of its heroes have stories - Buttercup is a lot less passive than the damsel in distress role, for one. Its villains are monstrous in many ways. The sword fights are all-timers. And in the film, directed by Rob Reiner, the critique of fairytales moves from the narration to the story being told from one generation to another.
“Grandpa? Maybe you could come over and read it again to me tomorrow.”
“As you wish.”
The Fire Swamp
How to get across a legendarily dangerous land? You can probably assume one of the three dangers doesn’t exist.
Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.
That PC with a revenge backstory finally gets their chance. In the middle of another adventure.
The Good Parts Version
The PCs discover someone is telling their story. And leaving some important stuff out.
Rob Reiner and Michele Singer
Grandpa, maybe you could come over and read it again to me tomorrow?
As you wish.
Sunday, 14 December 2025
Adventure Calendar 2025 14: Goldilocks And The Three Bears
Adventure Calendar 2025
14: Goldilocks And The Three Bears
And sometimes the three big carnivores in the woods just want you to stop eating their porridge.
Goldilocks is a possibly orphaned and desperate girl who breaks into a cosy cottage, try three beds and three bowls of porridge by the comedy rule of threes, and then discover that the residents are bears. An example of folk story bears being nice, certainly compared to wolves, they don’t eat her. Still, not something you should rely on in this situation.
The three beds and bowls led to the term Goldilocks zone for a narrow band of a solar system where a planet could sustain life. Which isn’t really anything to do with the story but there we are.
The Third Was Just Right
A family of bears need help finding a friend who was supposed to be staying with them. None of the locals think it strange that they have porridge-eating bears for neighbours.
Saturday, 13 December 2025
Adventure Calendar 2025 13: The Three Little Pigs
Adventure Calendar 2025
13: The Three Little Pigs
And sometimes the wolf doesn’t bother to hide his intentions at all.
Three brothers build houses out of different materials. A wolf comes along to eat them, but first has to huff and puff and blow their houses in. So the one who built a house that can withstand being breathed on defeats him.
Most PCs would probably go straight for the sensible building option.
The 1933 Disney version gave us the term Big Bad Wolf, which is used afterwards as a nickname for the character type across several stories. Disney used it as the title for his second appearance in a version of Little Red Riding Hood in 1934.
Big Bad is used as shorthand for the seasonal villain in Buffy, in passing by Buffy in season three, and by Spike trying to make himself sound tough starting in season four.
A House Of Straw
The PCs have to defend a supposedly fortified location that proves to have been built by the lowest bidder. And then it happens again. Surely it can’t happen three times?
Friday, 12 December 2025
Chronicles of Darkness at ten
Chronicles of Darkness came out on this day in 2015.
So if you’re still calling it nWoD we can kill and eat you.
Fate Of The Old Republic
Star Wars: Fate Of The Old Republic announced with a trailer hinting at HK-47 and declaring Casey Hudson heading it up. And single player!
One of several games revealed during the (video) Game Of The Year awards, including a Star Wars racer, a new Tomb Raider and a Control sequel where you play a less cool guy this time, and a new Divinity from the makers of BG3, which like BG3 leads the announcements for a high fantasy adventure with body horror, which I don’t get at all.
Adventure Calendar 2025 12: Little Red Riding Hood
Adventure Calendar 2025
12: Little Red Riding Hood
And sometimes the beast you meet in the forest that talks like a person just wants to eat you.
A basic tale about not talking to strangers or telling them were you’re going in particular, Little Red Riding Hood has a girl who isn’t very focused enough on the task at hand, a smooth-talking wolf, an unconvincing disguise and a pretty high body count.
One of a number of anti-wolf stories and the basis for the likes of The Company Of Wolves that links it to retellings of werewolf stories as well as explorations of adolescent attraction and how that might not end great, it has the wolf as a trickster but more directly malign than something like a fox.
The red cloak is sometimes connected to vanity or used for victim-blaming. As a visual it shows up particularly well against snow, here and in the 2011 YA version Red Riding Hood which also does werewolves.
Sometimes Red Riding Hood escapes due to her wits, or her ability to see through a wolf wearing a bedcap as a disguise, or the timely intervention of a woodsman with an axe. And sometimes not.
We also have adaptations where she becomes an expert (were)wolf hunter.
Also, she also always seems to be walking, not riding. What up with that?
The Wolf
A rogue, powerful, seemingly intelligent wolf prowls the dark forest. Can the PCs find it? This may, ironically, involve disguising themselves as better targets. Possibly in red cloaks.
Thursday, 11 December 2025
Adventure Calendar 2025 11: Beauty And The Beast
Adventure Calendar 2025
11: Beauty And The Beast
Someone enters a mysterious isolated palace under some kind of curse due to a breaking of the rules of hospitality, and only true love can break it. But since the cursed royal is a guy he’s an active participant in the story, but at least the female lead gets some things to do as well.
Still, as a fairytale romance it has that advantage that both of the characters involved are active.
Beauty And The Beast has a seemingly monstrous kidnapper turn out not to be so bad after all and win the heart of his victim, which is not as good a message as the one about looking past appearances to judge people.
The story dates back to 1740, a novella by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve, though of course characters cursed to be monsters and possible ways out go back further - the Greek gods do this to people who vaguely bother them all the time. It includes Beauty being a secret princess and dreaming of the prince in human form, which is usually dropped in later versions starting just a few years later.
The soulful monster and the one person who understand them is a classic motif. it often works visually by having the Beast be dashing in his own way so he audience can root for the couple.
I’ve written about the loose adaptation for series TV before where Vincent isn’t cursed but just mysteriously beastly, and saves Catherine rather than forcing her to stay at his palace, putting them in a better starting position for them to become close. The secret community under New York provides more episode sources than Vincent, but he stays the defining image of the show even after Catherine leaves.
 |
| KISS HIM YOU FOOL! |
The Disney version (released just over a year after the end of the show, so I think of them together) establishes the curse at the start, in a new version also tied to the rules of hospitality, in a super harsh way. It also adds an outside villain so the Beast has someone to fight like fellow X-Man Wolverine.
Of course there are also monsters you can love without them changing into regular dull humans. Guillermo del Toro has a few.
Romance story games cover this ground most directly. Borrowing some GMing advice of old, you can tell a romantic story without any of the PCs being in love if they help it along - getting the young couple out of danger, that kind of thing.
Would that work here? Maybe if the PCs are animated crockery.
Aside from those of course we have curses and misunderstood monsters and the like all over fantasy.
Fantasy and horror PCs could certainly find themselves in a mysterious palace with a strange host. Could they resist taking something more than is freely offered?
In a game with a suitable Weird Level, one or more of the PCs could be transformed and the others have to break the curse by recognising them.
Maybe slightly too late, as when Buffy only recognises Giles after stabbing him in A New Man.
Love And Monsters
Can the PCs help a couple escape the disapproving family of one member, and the angry mob chasing the other?
Wednesday, 10 December 2025
Adventure Calendar 2025 10: Sleeping Beauty
Adventure Calendar 2025
10: Sleeping Beauty
Sleeping Beauty - a princess, a curse, good fairies, bad fairies, a prince who actually gets to do something.
Stick to the rules of hospitality. Especially when the fair folk are involved or they’ll spite you. Then hope the pure evil members don’t want to come to the party anyway.
As classic fairytale princesses go Sleeping Beauty is the most helpless damsel, spending most of the story in magical suspended animation, more a McGuffin than a character, which is an issue for an aspirational figure as well as a viewpoint title character. Since somebody needs to end up in a cursed coma for the story to happen there’s only so much you can do in this case.
(When heroes are revived like this it’s a call to action and the start of a story instead.)
As a result the often dull romantic foil hero prince guy gets more to do in the later parts of the story than usual. In the Disney version he even gets to fight a dragon.
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| Hell Yes |
This also names the wicked fairy Maleficent and makes her a full-on demonic villain, Mistress Of All Evil.
Leading to a live-action deconstruction where she’s... not.
The cursed castle sitting silent for somewhere between a few days and a hundred years depending on retelling makes this more like a later fantasy quest than most fairytales, with a clear villain and dungeon-bashy obstacles. Other adventurers have tried their luck against it in versions where the curse lasted longer.
The Silent Palace
They say the palace is under a curse. No-one has left it for twenty years or more. Many have braved the way in but few have returned and none have broken the spell...
Tuesday, 9 December 2025
Yes this is a reference
Storm Bram will disappoint if it doesn’t leave a ghost ship wrecked off Whitby.
Adventure Calendar 2025 9: Peter Pan
Adventure Calendar 2025
9: Peter Pan
Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie was created as a stage play in 1904 with a book following in 1911, so it takes a more modern look at various fairytale motifs. Peter Pan himself is mercurial and possibly dangerous, needing some sense talked into him, while opposed by the clearly rotten Captain Hook. A group of children are taken to Neverland and they have decidedly different views about this situation. Flying is clearly fun, but that needs some help from fairies who function on belief and audience participation.
In 1929, Barrie gave the copyright to Great Ormond Street Hospital for children, so Peter Pan is actually doing good for kids to this day.
Neverland is developed enough to have maps, as well as a spinoff series set there as well as various sequels to the original story. And if a fantasy land has a map, you can probably run a game there.
The name comes from Pan pipes, connecting him to Pan, the Greek god of nature and shepherding and folk music, and Greek gods are generally trouble.
Green men and satyrs often appear with pipes and flutes. One of the most famous M. R. James stories is about blowing an old whistle. The Wind In The Willows features The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, a Pan figure who recently got someone asked to take off a shirt showing him in Westminster Abbey so this is still a thing. (Much to the delight of the Hellebore sales team who made it.)
And he also connects to the idea of fairy abduction, changelings and the like. Compare the Pied Piper, a story where some versions end where this begins.
Also, pirates.
The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn
The sun has not risen. The PCs have to find out why.
Monday, 8 December 2025
Adventure Calendar 2025 8: The Pied Piper
Adventure Calendar 2025
8: The Pied Piper Of Hamelin
Dick Whittington made his fortune catching rats and that reminded me of another story about a highly successful rat catcher who had more trouble getting paid: The Pied Piper Of Hamelin.
A town has a serious rat problem, and a guy in a strange costume comes and says he can make all the rats leave, the town elders agree to pay him if he can, and he plays a magic pipe and the rats line up and follow him out of town. And now the town elders go back on the deal. So the piper switches to a different tune that night and leads all the town’s children away, and they are never seen again.
The lesson here is pay your freelancers.
We’re entering the Scarred For Life part of the fairytale collection here, aren’t we?
Sure, there are versions where the town elders pay up and the kids return, or the piper takes them to a nicer place where people pay their bills, but those are adjustments. There are also versions where he leads the rats to the river to drown and you are left to draw your own conclusions about what happens to the kids.
We had a picture book of this when I was little, and the piper was colorful, elfin and a little bit sinister.
Disney actually made this as a short in 1933, with one of the nice endings, but see also this classic creepy stop motion animated film by Jiřà Barta (trailer) and the not much less creepy version from Cosgrove Hall. Compare the version with Donovan for a less devilish take.
There’s also a DC villain turned hero in The Flash rogues’ gallery and the time a Dire Wraith does it in ROM: Spaceknight.
Rat Catchers are of course the archetypal not-really-heroes of Warhammer Fantasy Role-play, but come with a Small But Vicious Dog rather than magical pipe. Skaven seem to prefer drums and bells, which feels like a missed opportunity.
For magical rodent problems that definitely aren’t panto fare, see the story of Bishop Hatto.
And pipes in general are a bit sketchy in fairytales...
Catch A Rat Today
Ah, the most basic MMO mission, get ten rats out of a basement. But where are they all coming from? Is there a Rat king or other guiding intelligence behind this? Is it targeting specific victims? Maybe a nightclub attacked using Animalism in Vampire...
Sunday, 7 December 2025
Adventure Calendar 2025 7: Snow White
Adventure Calendar 2025
7: Snow White
Seven. See what I did there?
Founding Disney Princess, Snow White has the rightful heir to a throne cast down by her stepmother, threatened due to vanity and forced to escape, taking refuge with Dwarfs (not Dwarves) and saved from apparent death by true love’s kiss.
This story has had plenty of deconstructions and reconstructions, including Snow White And The Huntsman taking direct influence from Warhammer Fantasy as well as Snow White: A Tale Of Terror, several central roles in Once Upon A Time, and the recent live-action-ish Disney remake.
(There’s always been some horror in the mix, the Disney version models the Queen’s transformation on Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde.)
How much agency Snow has varies from version to version - the Disney version is actually pretty active, though she doesn’t get into any sword fights.
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| But you can still get miniatures for them. (This set is from the 40s or 50s.) |
Also there’s a kinda evil or just unhelpful magic mirror. I’m all about that.
Who Is The Fairest
A vain monarch takes against one of the PCs or someone close because they just happen to be better at something the monarch takes pride in. Reason to drive them out, and possibly a self-perpetuating problem...
Saturday, 6 December 2025
Where DO you get your ideas?
So a joke about Caine from Vampire: The Masquerade could win a fight with some cartoon guy led to the suggestion - what if he was trying to find a worthy enough sacrifice. And that’s a great motivation in this setting.
Adventure Calendar 2025 6: Puss In Boots
Adventure Calendar 2025
6: Puss In Boots
Puss In Boots is yer basic helpful magical animal. Get him a pair of boots and he’ll help you pretend to be the Marquis de Carabas and bluff your way into high society.
Now the star of his own series of Shrek spinoffs, where he’s a swashbuckling rogue who also happens to be a cat and which don’t have much to do with the original story but are a lot of fun. I’d play him in the right kind of game.
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| Fear me, if you dare! |
Talking animals are a mainstay of some genres but less so in others. I’ve never gotten to actually pull out the Buffy Christmas special with talking mice needing the PCs’ help. Maybe someday.
I Hear The King Has A New Adviser
Who is this mysterious nobleman making such a splash at court? Who is his unseen adviser? Why does he give so generously to the local animal shelter?
Friday, 5 December 2025
Adventure Calendar 2025 5: Dick Whittington
Adventure Calendar 2025
5: Dick Whittington And His Cat
Dick Whittington And His Cat is and odd one because Richard Whittington was a real person, a merchant who became Lord Mayor of London. But it wasn’t a rags to riches story and didn’t involve using his cat to solve a rat problem and make a fortune as a result.
The story starts our far less fantastical than the likes of Jack And The Beanstalk, but it gets mixed with Puss In Boots at some point too.
The Streets Are Paved With Gold
The adventurers hear of a city where they could really strike it rich. A gold rush boom town or the like. (Cue The Simpsons joke.) What will they actually find when they get there? And will they help any other poor souls drawn in by the same stories?
Thursday, 4 December 2025
Starfleet Academy
Starfleet Academy, January 15, very teen drama character intros, as is only right and proper.
Ash, Santa Claus Is Coming To Town
Ash, Santa Claus Is Coming To Town
Sixteen years late for a The Watch House Christmas special but oh well
Adventure Calendar 2025 4: Jack Tales
Adventure Calendar 2025
4: Jack Tales
Jack is an archetypal tricky everyman found in the UK and also in Appalachian folklore. An underdog getting into and out of trouble with his wits and trickery, having run-ins with authority and the supernatural.
He’s basically a player character.
Jack And The Beanstalk has a young naïve example, so feels like a separate thing.
Fables had Jack being the same guy (as it did with the romantic foil Prince IIRC) getting a spinoff series where he actively spread stories to empower himself, with inevitably mixed results.
There’s also a Samurai Jack episode called Jack Tales as a reference but he isn’t the same storied Jack, it’s just a nickname and his usual method of solving problems is more direct in an equally player character way.
Jack And The Keep On The Borderlands
How do PCs deal with an archetypal PC? A band of adventurers follow rumours to a dungeon and find it’s already been cleaned out. Someone already rescued that dragon from that princess. They start to hear tell of a legendary hero going around doing the kind of stuff they should be doing. When they finally meet this guy, whether he’s a thief blessed with some wits and a lot of luck or a literally archetypal adventurer and the exemplar of the role they play in the world, will they ally with him or try to get him out of their way?
Wednesday, 3 December 2025
Adventure Calendar 2025 3: Jack And The Beanstalk
Adventure Calendar 2025
3: Jack And The Beanstalk
Chosen because it’s the local big panto this year, Jack And The Beanstalk is the one where a poor boy is talked into selling the family’s cow for some magic beans, but they’re real magic beans so that’s okay, and they grow a giant beanstalk that could provide enough beans to be the basis of a revived farming business but instead he climbs it all the way to a castle above the clouds where he robs the giant owner, escapes back down and cuts the beanstalk down so the giant falls and he can keep the loot, including a talking harp.
It sounds really weird when laid out like that..
It’s adjacent to the various Jack stories about an underdog trickster type, this Jack does win with a bit of trickery but a lot of luck.
Castles in the sky are a classic fantasy motif, and magic items like fast-growing vines and animated musical instruments as well.
What I most wonder is who just sold him a perfectly good magic bean?
The Magic Merchants
Disguised godlike types giving gifts to the kind and punishments to the guilty? Or just getting by on the barter economy?
Ready Or Not 2: Here I Come
Ready Or Not 2: Here I Come trailer
Talk and stills at People, via Bloody Disgusting
How to follow such a sharp and self-contained ending? Expanding the threat to Samara Weaving’s Grace, bringing in some genre royalty - David Cronenberg, Elijah Wood and Sarah Michelle Gellar as a Big Bad! - and Kathryn Newton as a sidekick with Final Girl cred of her own. Will going big work? Looks fun!
Tuesday, 2 December 2025
V5: Stolen 1.07
Vampire: The Masquerade
Stolen
1.07
Lessons
Beck
Maebh
Reverend Beck finds Maebh a few nights later, directed by Antha, to inquire about other possible suppliers of antiquarian books and other artefacts. She agrees to ask around in return for a favour owed, and meet him at his church after a service.
That night’s service is private for Kindred and guests, from the Book of Nod itself. He speaks on Lilith’s offer of knowledge and power, the warning that “I do not know what the Awakening will do for you, for you are truly Cursed by your Father. You could die. You could be forever changed.” And that Caine took that step bravely. And next that he entered a city and mortals came to him seeking power in turn, showing themselves more corrupt than he. And that he returned to solitude and sorrow, reason to gather.
Adventure Calendar 2025 2: Cinderella
Adventure Calendar 2025
2: Cinderella
The lead Disney Princess, the story of Cinderella is also popular for pantomimes as it has a beautiful and somewhat feisty heroine, a villainous stepmother and ugly stepsisters, a fancy dress transformation suitable for a costume design showoff moment. No fight at the end but you can’t have everything.
The motif of finding the heroine through a lost shoe goes back as far as a Greek story told around the BCE/CE turnover, but Cinderella mostly codified in France with Charles Perrault in 1697, after an Italian version in 1634.
She generally only has so much agency and ends up needing a lot of help, though some versions give her a more active part. See Sapsorrow, the version dramatised in The Storyteller, where she escapes a terrible fate and makes a new one for herself with a magical disguise and some dress theft.
 |
| And a happily ever after |
The lack of a fight at the end makes this less immediately adaptable to standard RPG shape, but the mix of magic, fancy royal events and attempts to subvert it lends itself to toying with it as the PCs are the ones trying to help or hinder something like this. See Witches Abroad for an example.
I’ve actually addressed Cinderella for Relics, with the Fairy Godmother’s Needle as a quietly powerful item that can remake clothing and allow someone creative to spin up beautiful fashions and flawless disguises. I also found that there’s no standard origin or name for the Fairy Godmother so I made her Aglaea of the Three Graces.
You Shall Go To The Ball
The PCs get a chance to attend the fanciest formal event of the season - whether they want to or not - and perhaps get mixed up in romances and schemes, and maybe see someone there who needs some PC shenanigans style help.
Monday, 1 December 2025
Adventure Calendar 2025 1: The Snow Queen
Adventure Calendar 2025
1: The Snow Queen
The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen
As the example I cited in the intro post this seems as good a place to start as any. Scottish Ballet is doing it this year and The Ice Tower is currently in cinemas about an actress playing the queen and a fan getting caught up in the world.
It was also the starting point for Frozen though the result is pretty different - see early designs here that are more like a blue Cruella before making Elsa a beloved superhero.
The Snow Queen isn’t a traditional story, it was published in 1844 in a book literally called New Fairy Tales, but it’s familiar enough now.
It starts with the Devil creating a mirror that shows only the worst in everything and breaking it in an attempt to invade Heaven and that’s just the prologue. One of the splinters goes into a boy named Kai’s eye and this makes him a target for the Snow Queen, so his friend Gerda sets off to rescue him. On the way she has various side adventures and is helped and hindered by royalty, talking animals and the like.
It’s very much the kind of story you might get from playing Once Upon A Time. So for RPGs it would be an easy adaptation to kitchen-sinky fantasy, while the motley assortment of heroes trying to rescue someone from a sinister powerful type’s fortress is one of the most basic story outlines we could take.
The Devil’s mirror could be a plot hook all on its own - I could drop it into Relics or some World Of Darkness games with ease.
Cold-tinted glasses
A pair of antique spectacles made with glass from the Devil’s mirror, allowing a user to see the flaws in everything. Useful for engineering and proofreading and the like, but likely to leave you with a negative view of the world.
Adventure Calendar 2025: Fairytales
Adventure Calendar 2025
0: Fairytales
For my seventh year doing festive adventure ideas daily (click December 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024 in my blog archive) and this year a number of stories sorta kinda related to Christmas - fairytales.
 |
| The Princess Bride poster |
Has it got any sports in it?
Are you kidding? Fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles...
Doesn’t sound too bad. I’ll try to stay awake.
Oh, well, thank you very much, very nice of you. Your vote of confidence is overwhelming.
The Princess Bride
Here in the UK theatres put on pantomimes for families around this time, a uniquely British mix of classic fairytales, vaudeville humour, audience participation and crossdressing. A lot of the stories will also be familiar from the Disney canon. Ballet companies bring out the likes of The Snow Queen as well for the Christmas season, so those are fair game too. Now to find a list with enough of them...
If I run out I will borrow from The Storyteller, not least as it included a story about running out of stories.
Sunday, 30 November 2025
St. Andrew's Day
Currently in a game set here, which among other things led to discovering (thanks to a fellow player, hi G) that there’s now a commemorative tartan for witches.
Star Trek: TWH
Having found myself abruptly in a different Star Trek game, and getting the last two seasons of Lower Decks to watch, once again thinking about what I would do with Star Trek. I’d go full Technicolor. Possibly with Klingons in Saxon helmets.
Saturday, 29 November 2025
Star Trek: Ariel 1.01
Star Trek: Ariel
1.01
The Valiant having been TPKed by adventure plot, now being a captain 111 years later. Got to do some inspiring speechifying. Hey, if I’m going to get switched into a different campaign I’m going to try to have fun with it. No “Make it so” catchphrase, but that’s mostly a Picard thing anyway.
Friday, 28 November 2025
Tales From Black Friday 2025
Tales From Black Friday
It is here once again. Nothing can be done to stop it now.
The clock strikes midnight, the klaxons sound, and the battle begins.
The prices are announced, the doorbusters and flash deals, tempting you with desires never felt before. Can YOU do without this?
TVs each bigger than the last. Such sizes, such... why is this one measured in cubic milliliters?
The new phone that does that thing. You know. That thing the phone does. You don’t understand it, but the people in the print ads seem so happy. And their room is so colour coordinated. Is that what the phone does?
Stop to buy and eat a tub of chocolates the size of a capybara.
Physical media is BACK, baby! Shiny discs! Actually own the films and shows you want! Now with more K than ever! So many K!
The must-have toy! And we promise we’ve fixed that issue.
Cresting the hill of the food court, seeing the carnage below. What bargain could be worth this? Oh, three for two?!
Finally stumbling away, bloodied and exhausted, knowing you get a great deal on... what was it again? Weren’t you just here to get a pair of sneakers...?
Thursday, 27 November 2025
Thank you
Happy Thanksgiving to those who celevrate! Happy Stranger Things day to those who celebrate that. Will they finally correct the glaring historical inaccuracy and admit that 1980s kids should be playing ADVANCED Dungeons & Dragons?
Wednesday, 26 November 2025
Wake Up Dead Man
Wake Up Dead Man is by far the most serious of the Benoit Blanc mysteries, with just a few expert gags here and there around questions of faith and the positive and negative effects of religion. This swings away from the broader sillier Glass Onion and past Knives Out in tone. It still has funny-accent-detective fun but the standout scene for me is a serious dramatic one that Blanc is off to one side of.
And I halfway figured it out pretty quickly, but only halfway. I think it plays fair with showing some clues without emphasising them as well.
Tuesday, 25 November 2025
The burden of expectations
Bloodlines 2 was Bloodlines-y enough for me, but what do I know? And sure, a different name would have been less weighted, but here we are.
Monday, 24 November 2025
RPGs with music in the mechanics
I bring up music in my RPG thinking pretty often, mostly to set mood but also lyrics providing ideas and bands as PC groups, but some RPGs use music as part of the system.
This RPGnet thread looking for examples brought up some I didn’t know. I myself mentioned VOID 1680 AM, a solo journalling game where you play a late night DJ and compile a playlist, and on the other end of the interactivity level LARPs based on musicals that can include performing, which sounds like one of the rooms in my personal Hell but I have friends who’ve played and run them.
Sunday, 23 November 2025
The Running Man (2025)
The Running Man (2025) is a much more accurate adaptation of the 1982 Stephen King (as Richard Bachman) novel than the 1987 version with Arnold Schwarzenegger, with some changes that were bound to happen as well as some others that weren’t.
I had fun.
Edgar Wright doesn’t go as wild with the camera as he often has before, appropriate as the comedy side falls away about the end of act two, though he does get some odd POV shots in there.
Typically nice soundtrack including some pointed track choices. (I was kind of surprised not to get Temple Of Dreams by Messiah but always happy to hear The Truth from Handsome Boy Modeling School.)
The original was the most 1987 film ever made - compare Predator where the macho posturing and a hand-animated electricity effect are the only things that date it - but this one looks back to other 80s dystopias, with Max Headroom for the omnipresent and untrustworthy media and “twenty minutes into the future” mix of retro and futuristic tech - doubly apt as the 1982 novel is set in 2025 - as well as RoboCop levels of advertising satire and occasional carnage.
And for all that it’s surprisingly hopeful.
Friday, 21 November 2025
Time and tide
As historical inaccuracies go, I’m quite impressed by that video game advert getting how people held mobile phones in 2018 wrong.
Thursday, 20 November 2025
Blackstar
Blackstar by David Bowie, the single released ten years ago today. Among other things, the video is an all-time classic episode of Doctor Who.
In Darkness Let Me Dwell
In Darkness Let Me Dwell by John Dowland (1562-1626) performed by Brandon Acker on lute and singer Jonathon Adams. For when you really want to show your Old Goth cred.
Wednesday, 19 November 2025
Stargate opening again
Stargate SG-1 is getting a new series, a follow-up to the existing TV continuity, on Prime.
Since the TV continuity includes Atlantis being in the San Francisco zip code this could require some explaining, but hey.
I always figured Stargate would come back, as one of the best ST-setting-of-the-week setups out there - a main cast style group based on modern Earth goes through a swirly thing to other planets.
Hence there having been two official RPGs and one before that nearly got published if not for licence issues. And I’ve run and played official and unofficial systems for it.
It might well be less planet of the week this time because of how TV works nowadays but it would be weird not to use that, though it might swing towards the original film style of a long stay and a single Big Bad. Doctor Who still had a few standalones in its recent single-figure-episode seasons.
Curseborne
Curseborne core rulebook is out now on DriveThruRPG. Having been out to backers for some time, it already has adventures, fiction, Tasty Bits and the like in place, and a Players Guide on the way.
Tuesday, 18 November 2025
Operation: CRIMSON GIFT
A bundle of Night’s Black Agents and Dracula Dossier PDFs declassified by Pelgrane for eyes only.
V5 starting points
Josh of Bloodlines 2 community outreach and Storyteller of Leech has a variety of Vampire: The Masquerade advice videos, with these two on ST advice and other single-product but advice-related ones like this one on Let The Streets Run Red in a separate playlist.
Monday, 17 November 2025
V5: Stolen 1.06
Vampire: The Masquerade
Stolen
1.06
False Faces
Beck
Maebh
Maisie
Halloween, and a guildhall in the city hired out for a private party.
Some attending before going on to other events, to XX, to attend personal business.
The first event like this for Maisie Bishop, medical student turned Hecata vampire.
She only knows a handful of the dozens of Kindred here, and their mortal and mostly mortal guests.
Sunday, 16 November 2025
Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines
Happy anniversary to Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, 21 tonight!
So it’s now old enough to drink in Los Angeles!
Saturday, 15 November 2025
Friday, 14 November 2025
A new Star Trek film, fingers crossed
With the Kelvin timeline shelved, a new unconnected Star Trek film is on the way to be written and directed by the writers of Spider-Man: Homecoming and writer-directors of Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves.
I think this feeling is... hope?
The Cold War history of RPGs featuring Twilight: 2000
When You Say, “Thermonuclear War,” I Think You Mean “the Call to Adventure”! The Twilight: 2000 Tabletop Role-Playing Game and the Postapocalyptic World’s Imaginary Spaces, by Malcolm Craig for Cambridge’s Journal of American Studies.
Thursday, 13 November 2025
Memory
Reminded of a hand painted sign here years ago, which I can find no photos of. Cornucopia in Morningside, I think it was a fruit and veg place, and the sign was meant to be the eponymous horn of plenty but looked more like a sandworm from Dune throwing up. I’d totally shop there now.
Wednesday, 12 November 2025
Aliens: Earths
They really are making a second season of Alien: Earth. Do they have any idea what to do? I guess we’ll find out!
Tuesday, 11 November 2025
No Time To Un-die
I find it doubly amusing that the writer complaining about a new Bond film after No Time To Die worked on series three of Robin Of Sherwood in which a new guy had to take on the guise of Robin Hood in setting. (And was played by Sean Connery’s son!)
Yes it is tricky to do a reboot after a version with a definitive ending, how do you top it, but given the Daniel Craig Bond films were already a reboot, I think audiences can cope with that part.
Need a movies-or-later Star Trek theme?
Jerry Goldsmith, The Edge end credits
Bonus: Ahead of the Klingon theme in The Motion Picture he worked with the same sections of the orchestra on Capricorn One.
Kelvin and after? Michael Giacchino, Black. A 2006 video game.
Star Trek Adventures: Captain Diana Carter
Star Trek Adventures 1e
Captain Diana Carter
U.S.S. Ariel
Captain Carter is the daughter of a Starfleet senior designer at Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards on Mars so she grew up around starships, seeing how they come together and how it takes a crew to make them fly. Young for command, even of a relatively small ship, but she’s proven herself time and again.
“When you tell me something’s impossible, just remember that I’m from Mars.”
 |
| Lena Headey |
Found Footage Games
And now wondering if anybody’s done a LARP with cameras used that extensively...
Monday, 10 November 2025
Found Footage Episodes
Just wondering which genre series have done Found Footage episodes. (Noting that a couple of found footage series exist!)
The X Files got one in early in February 2000, and Doctor Who did one IN SPAAAAACE which I felt lost the immediacy of the idea. Star Trek hasn’t, not even doubke distant in Lower Decks, though I did find a brief fan film.
Buffy and Angel didn’t - could have with the Trio. I didn’t do it in The Watch House either as it’s an odd genre to try in RPGs.
(Still waiting on that FMV computer game from the makers of Host.)
Though the genre broke out with The Blair Witch Project being essentially a filmed LARP, and online sessions can go that way too, see on-screen LARPs like Viewscream too. I remember a Delta Green format comment that The Blair Witch Project or something like it could also be a great player handout. Which would be interesting, if a lot to organise. (I actually saw it done with the first LARP I ever attended.) And would also fit with the series having a mystery-solving evidence box game as well as video games. And an escape experience.
Sunday, 9 November 2025
News Story
I am available to take over the BBC.
I might make it so BBC One and Two both have Doctor Who shows.
Which probably puts me out of the running even more than my insufficient Tory bias.
Saturday, 8 November 2025
STA Valiant 9
So I knew the Star Trek Adventures Shackleton Expanse campaign had linked TOS and TNG adventures and a possible time jump. I did not know the specifics.
Friday, 7 November 2025
Predator: Badlands
Predator: Badlands is fun in the way the better Predator movies that aren’t the great Predator or Prey generally are, good action, fun additions, some good jokes, too much going on overall compared to a simple elegant idea.
To be fair the basic idea here, Predator protagonist. would be hard to sustain for a couple of hours, and has kind of been done (not as well) in those crossover movies as well as outside media going to the original Alien Vs. Predator comic series they sprang from.
Also nice to see a killer planet movie.
IMAX didn’t really help with some of the CGI fights in the dark, so boo to that.
And like Prey and especially Killer Of Killers -
The King Of Crows
Sleeping badly led to remembering the moment from a dream where I saw a crow standing on the backs of a close group of crows hovering on an air current. (After a previous moment seeing three different birds of prey having a meeting.)
Thursday, 6 November 2025
No.
Just saw an advert promising huge savings this Black Friday season.
Black Friday SEASON.
Fuck very far off.
It's about time
Suddenly tempted to run Doctor Who again. Some time in the next year and a half maybe.
Wednesday, 5 November 2025
Paranoia miniatures game
Paranoia: Five Clones From Alpha Complex preview at Beasts of War as Modiphius launches it.
Very nice, though I think they’re showing too much personality.
Wishes
From The Pod Universe guest episode on wannabe influencer Ghostbusters, guest Brandon Reese on ways to deal with leprechauns and genies.
Remember, Remember
Overthrow an intolerant ruler today. We have several options.
Update: Well done New York and some other parts of the US for getting on it.
Tuesday, 4 November 2025
The Mummy Re-Returns?
Radio Silence looking to make a sequel to the 1999 The Mummy and follow-up The Mummy Returns (but probably not the third one) with Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz looking at the script.
This may well be why it was announced a couple days ago that “Lee Cronin’s The Mummy” due out next year is now called The Resurrected.
V5: Stolen 1.05
Vampire: The Masquerade
Stolen
1.05
Contraband
Cherie
Isabella
Maebh
Cherie looks online and finds Astor’s specialist import company, and meets with Maebh on the way there, with Isabella also called in case they can negotiate. Antha confirms that he usually uses a mostly-legit shipping company and checks at the docks.
Maebh has her magpie scout around the store for a way in, and finds a way through in rat form.
Monday, 3 November 2025
The Louvre security camera password was Louvre
The Liuvre raid suggests that every heist adventure in RPG history is unrealistically difficult.
Sunday, 2 November 2025
Topical observation
One thing about Halloween on Friday is seeing which businesses don’t have anyone come in the take down decorations for a couple of days. Which leads to odd things like a not-remotely-Halloween-y company’s video billboards still having dancing witches tonight. Cheering to Halloween-y people, and also good tips for burglars!
Saturday, 1 November 2025
Friday, 31 October 2025
31 Days Of Horror 2025
31 Days of Horror 2025
All new! All different! Except the last day! And I had seen some of another one!
1: Nosferatu: A Symphony Of Horror (2023)
2: Before I Wake (2016)
4: Pay The Ghost (2015)
5: The Exorcist: Believer (2023)
6: Time Cut (2024)
7: The Blackening (2023)
8: Fear Street: Prom Queen (2024)
9: Barbarian (2022)
10: Under The Shadow (2016)
11: The Room (2019)
12: The Cellar (2022)
13: Never Hike Alone (2017)
14: Lord Of Misrule (2023)
15: The Revenant (2009)
16: Dead Heat (1988)
17: In The Shadow Of The Moon (2019)
18: Berberian Sound Studio (2012)
19: The Menu (2022)
20: Till Death (2021)
21: The Invitation (2022)
22: We’re All Going To The World’s Fair (2021)
23: Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (2022)
24: Frankenstein (2025)
25: Night Of The Reaper (2025)
26: Rosemary’s Baby (2014)
27: Hostile Dimensions (2024)
28: The Hand That Rocks The Cradle (2025)
29: Lake Mungo (2008)
30: Cocaine Bear (2022)
31: Nightmare Cinema (2018)
31 again: Nosferatu (1922) with S!NK
Out Come The Wolves
The Puppetman
Belzebuth
Another month with no real plan beyond the two Guillermo del Toro films. One of these years I might actually have an idea here...
GdT’s Frankenstein is amazing. In The Shadow Of The Moon was a pleasant surprise. Under The Shadow and The Menu did what I expected well.
The Cellar was a biiiiiig letdown - watch The Ten Steps.
Not a great year for my annual-ish month of Shudder all round.
Happy to take suggestions from RPGnet as well, and liked Night Of The Reaper and thought Hostile Dimensions was fine.
Nosferatu with S!NK
31 Days Of Horror
Also 31: Nosferatu (1922) with live soundtrack by S!NK
Ending as I started, with the timeless classic silent adaptation of Dracula, here with a local music group adding a lot of jittery strings.
Nightmare Cinema
31 Days Of Horror
31: Nightmare Cinema (2018)
An anthology from Mick Garris, the showrunner of Masters Of Horror and Fear Itself, very much giving the impression that he’d like to start another series but all of these were a bit too short.
The frame story with Mickey Rourke as the Projectionist is intriguing but underdeveloped, and two of the five stories are nightmare focused and none actually about the cinema while three are hospital based.
The Thing In The Woods is like the last ten minutes of a not-so-serious slasher movie.
Mirari directed by Joe Dante is pretty much going back to a Twilight Zone hook, and a guessable one.
Mashit might be the standout for strangeness as it takes Catholic authorities versus possessed kids in a direction I hadn’t seen before. I laughed. I'm a monster.
This Way To Egress was the only really creepy one but didn’t quite stick the landing.
Dead by Garris is a solid take on a classic idea apart from two strange choices that derailed it for me.
Content note for surgery, suicide and self-harm, none treated in depth. And bugs.
The medium: Shudder
Gameability: I can see the frame working as a setup - what would you do if you saw your name on the marquee of a closed cinema? And Dead explores its setup in enough detail to work as a starting point too.
Thursday, 30 October 2025
31 Days Of Horror addendum
31 Days Of Horror
Addendum
Addendum
Since I counted a TV episode and radio drama, a fan film, and a children’s film, three more horror films I also watched to make up the numbers which I have nothing much to say about.
Out Come The Wolves (2024) (trailer)
Possible relationship tension for the first half, then did one of the guys leave the other to die in the woods?
The Puppetman (2023) (trailer)
The previous film from the maker of Night Of The Reaper, with a rationale that didn’t work for me all, though I did appreciate one moment which reminded me of a joke by Evan Dorkin about the only good Psychic Hotline being one that calls you. Content note for self-harm.
Belzebuth (2020) (trailer)
More violent than average demon-hunting. Grounded and grim then suddenly OTT. It might work as a Kult game. Content warning for child endangerment. A lot.
Cocaine Bear
31 Days Of Horror
Something lighter after Lake Mungo, like... almost anything. (Though from this month’s selection not Under The Shadow.)
30: Cocaine Bear (2023)
Based on a much less funny true story, Cocaine Bear posits that if you mix one of the most dangerous animals in the wild when it’s in the mood with a mood-altering substance things will go badly.
A splatstick gore comedy with a strong cast not playing it straight at all, a charmingly unconvincing CG bear and some golf-clap ironic music choices, it’s a good time if you enjoy comical character being brutally shredded.
The medium: Prime
Gameability: A monster on the loose and a bunch of idiots looking for treasure. So, yes. And this specific example feels like a Fiasco playset.
Wednesday, 29 October 2025
Lake Mungo
31 Days Of Horror
29: Lake Mungo (2008)
A mockumentary about a family being haunted, perhaps literally, by the death of a young member.
Much discussed, with a retrospective documentary on the way, after the filmmaker came back with Late Night With The Devil.
(One of the talking heads in that is Mike Flanagan, who also talked about this last year, and I can see it might have inspired some of his The Haunting Of Hill House, especially one of the key episodes.)
I haven’t gotten around to this before but had heard it was terrifying and bleak and, well, it is bleak.
Very well done, if overreliant on squinting at the back of the frame and music stings when it zooms in. Which means apart from a couple of big moments it feels like a real ghost documentary with its inconclusive evidence.
I can appreciate it but I guess I’m not the audience for it.
The medium: Shudder
Gameability: A character seeing something like Alice sees could be the start of a dark adventure. And the examination of evidence feels like a handout-heavy game.
Tuesday, 28 October 2025
Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 thoughts
Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 thoughts after the fact
Pretty linear, with some small and some biggish choices that affect which ending you get. That’s fine, I was expecting it.
Remember how Bloodlines lets you run off to the Anarchs if you don’t want to do the Prince’s dirty work and they immediately send you back to do the Prince’s dirty work?
(The reveal of the Hardsuit Labs version was a Spooky House level.)
Missing a cemetery level as well.
I appreciated the note that, yes, BL2 starts where BL1 ends with the unwise opening of a box.
Could definitely have done with more enemies if we’re spending that much time thumping them. Also more killing move animations for the same reason.
And a button to skip the Fabien speedwalking.
Little bits of sewer in various levels just to make returning players flinch.
Lots of entertaining NPCs along the way. I can see why Lou and Tolly got plushies.
Great city atmosphere and score.
A lack of Muppet dancing and sourced music makes the clubs less fun.
And I absolutely would have put a Lacuna Coil song on the end credits.
Ignite the fire in your heart
Close to impossible
Stand up and overcome the invisible
Proper spoilers:
The Hand That Rocks The Cradle (2025)
31 Days Of Horror
28: The Hand That Rocks The Cradle (2025)
Trailer with some of the third act and some misleading ADR
Disney+ and grownup bit Hulu aren’t doing much for Halloween this year besides finally adding Something Wicked This Way Comes, but did just give us this, a remake of the 1992 thriller about a nanny threatening a family, of interest as a battle of the Final Girls with Maika Monroe as the nanny and Mary Elizabeth Winstead as the mother. (Here with lightened hair making them look more alike than usual so I wondered if it was a plot point.) Beyond that it’s like the original with a few twists in motive and method, a movie-of-the-week with extra blood and F-bombs elevated by its central performances - both leads trade audience sympathies and suspicions well throughout.
I also really liked the minimal electronic and choral soundtrack by frequent Black Mirror composer Ariel Marx.
Opening track, Fire.
Content note for child endangerment and references to abuse, self-harm
The medium: Disney+ (Hulu tab)
Gameability: How much can you learn with a mail order DNA test?
Anna Calvi - I See A Darkness
Anna Calvi - I See A Darkness (feat. Perfume Genius)
So now I have two very different covers of this song on my Vampire playlist.
Monday, 27 October 2025
Hostile Dimensions
31 Days Of Horror
27: Hostile Dimensions (2024)
A largely found footage style scifi horror comedy from Glasgow, which starts with an eerie idea and a solid scare before going off in various surprisingly comedic and strange ideas.
I think it’s a better found footage Doctor Who than the tine the show actually did one, but it’s much more high concept comedy than horror.
It looks to have been made by some friends with some nice use of convenient locations, and gets by on the central idea and the characters being fun to hang out with for an hour and a bit. It’s okay in a shabby improv way.
The medium: Prime
Gameability: I ran a whole Doctor Who game about a TARDIS appearing to be a door, so, yeah.
Sunday, 26 October 2025
Rosemary's Baby (2014)
31 Days Of Horror
26: Rosemary’s Baby (2014)
A surprise discovery on TV last night, a three hour edit of a miniseries version of Rosemary’s Baby that I hadn’t heard about a decade ago.
A pretty close adaptation, though moving to Paris to increase Rosemary’s isolation. So you can now watch a version of this story that isn’t directed by Roman Polanski. It doesn’t add much otherwise, despite referencing Ira Leven’s sequel to the novel in the adaptation credits, and taking a longer time to get there.
Zoe Saldana stars, making Rosemary less fragile than Mia Farrow’s version as she plays against type, so her increasing vulnerability and desperation play differently.
It also shifts the villain dynamic with Jason Isaacs as Roman Castevet while the original focused on the Oscar-winning villainy of Ruth Gordon as Minnie, and the Castevets are less creepy overall.
The medium: TV
Gameability: Moving a character to an unfamiliar location, with a possible language barrier, is a reliable way to add to isolation.
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