Cheering from afar

A long night ended in good news from the USA.

Dialogue thought via Lord Of Illusions

Half opens door to unwelcome visitor: “I can’t let you in.”

Unwelcome visitor barges past: “That’s okay, I’m not a vampire.”

Misreading Lord Of Illusions

At one point I thought there was an enemy that can appear in mirrors and arrack by reflection. That seemed doable in the setting. So, yoinked.

Lord Of Illusions

Lord Of Illusions (1995)

Trailer

Clive Barker’s expansion of a short story into a film as writer and director, rewat5ching for the first time in decades after seeing Book Of Hungry Names author Kyle Marquis mentioned it in a late Halloween film thread as the kind of thing worth remaking.

Imagine if two factions on a NIN message board were able to wage magikal war on each other.

Jessica Ritchey

It has some great stuff like a a really horrible cult a drive away from LA and a heroic treacherous apprentice, some interesting but odd stuff like someone doing real magic on stage and because of the big expansion of the initial story this not really being a big deal, a classic villain error, some CGI that works fine and some that looked like screensavers then.

And above all it has some really interesting casting against type. Of the main four, only Famke Janssen is playing her usual kind of thing. Scott Bakula plays shabby hard-bitten occult detective Harry D’Amour in a gap between spending years as warm trustworthy genre heroes. Kevin J. O’Connor is a bit weird and creepy but in a tragically heroic way rather than his usual weaselly comic relief.

Most of all, Daniel von Bargen does not have any standard Evil Wizard vibes - I could see him playing a cult leader well but downhome prepper nut cult. He normally played cops and military and had that look, here added with ratty robes and stubble so he looked like a squatter. Heavy magic people being out of society is an interesting idea, and contrasts with Swann’s success, but makes him seem unlikely as an apocalyptic threat. If this had been the third in a series or so this would have been a nice reversal of a norm that had already been established in the setting as well as in the genre overall, as is it’s a really odd choice, interesting but undercuts his villain style. Something to keep in mind for a Big Bad who isn’t the first the PCs face. (I suppose I’m thinking of the Mayor from Buffy.)

I recently reread the novella (The Last Illusion), which is solid, but the movie's basic premise of a dirtbag wizard war is so much more interesting than the demons in the original story. The novella is good--shades of Viy, Faust--but the movie is elevated by its creep-sleaze vibes.

Kyle Marquis

Mage 20th: Cara Lawson 3rd

Mage: The Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition

Cara Lawson

Chronicle: A Door Out Of August

NYC Village Halloween Parade

Video from the NYC Village Halloween Parade, featuring the annuak mass Thriller dance and half an hur in the Queer Marching Band doing Pink Pony Club, and it being New York ending with a flotilla of Ectomobiles.

Nationals 2027 update

Urban Fantasy preliminary

Of course Angel is more naturally Noir than Buffy, but we can have a pool hall informant like Red.

Mage: The Ascension character ideas 2026

A bit vague, the setting being here and now with Paradox being strange.

That suggests an occult researcher, which suggests a Hermetic. But this may suggest that to the other players too!

Cara Lawson the Akashayana started with a group needing a fighter, becoming a Big Damn Hero because of a group needing a leader, and stylewise being because I don’t get to play enough Buffy.

I actually have a few fighter ideas. One of my ways to avoid spending too much time prodding at the freeform magic system too much.

Jim Lloyd the Orphan comedian was a result of nudging the premise lighter than other World Of Darkness games, for better or worse. Being able to fast-talk reality seemed to kinda work.

Lisa B the Ecstatic rap star was very much of the time and place.

Also last night there was a group on the bus in assorted costumes including a redhead in a leather jacket and combat trousers. That would be the costume for Cara so I took that as a sign to play her again. ;)

Warhammer 40

Warhammer Fantasy Role-play was released November 1986.

The longest I’ve ever run a standard-ish elfgame, due to running it as The Enemy Within was coming out.

November

Or Noirvember as the Filmhouse calls it. Not going to try to watch a film noir every day... tempting though...

Hallowe'en 2026 review

Lot of pirates this year.

Lazy group costume option seems to be small teddy bear ears.

Someone got my reference! (The band T-shirt for Hangman’s Joke from The Crow. It was not the guy dressed as Eric.)

A Count Binface!

--

Via Mum’s neighbour kids:

“What did the cannibal get when he was late for dinner?”

It's Over 9000!

So this happened round about my Halloween post.

Happy Halloween!

It’s dark now so I can say it properly.

The Nightmare Before Christmas soundtrack

The Nightmare Before Christmas soundtrack with narration by Sir Patrick Stewart

Sir Patrick Stewart

Having played many roles of scientific intellect I do have an empathy for that world. It's been hard on me because flying the Enterprise for seven years in Star Trek and sitting in Cerebro in X-Men has led people to believe that I know what I'm talking about. But I'm still trying to work out how to operate the air conditioning unit on my car.

Sir Patrick Stewart

Hellraiser RPG

An official Hellraiser RPG has been announced (along with a board game and a dice game and more) following the launch of the computer game Revival, with Francesco Nepitello of The One Ring as design lead.

The setting can expand in various intriguing directions - the Epic Comics anthology hinted at a variety of ideas in short form before introducing recurring Player Character types like the Harrowers, and the later films were largely Pinhead-isations of unconnected supernatural horror scripts - but like Interview With The Vampire I wonder what it will do that the unlicensed lookalike doesn’t, in this case Kult.

If the dice aren’t gold etched black d6s they’re missing a trick.

David F, Chapman

Caveat and Hokum

31 Days Of Horror Movies 2026

I watched Damian Mc Carthy’s Oddity when it started streaming two years ago, and this year his new film Hokum hit Prime this week so I went back and watched his first film Caveat on Shudder as well. These would be a fair shout for challenge day ? Big Old House.

28.

Caveat (2020)

Trailer

Hokum (2026)

Trailer

But maybe watching them back to back was a mistake because while all three have clear connections - isolated houses, strange little artefacts, glimpsed maybe-undead and the like - these two have even more overlap in plot and some details. Oddity doesn’t have anybody getting shot with a crossbow, for example.

Caveat sees a man with amnesia hired by an alleged friend to keep an eye on a troubled niece, the title referring to the things the alleged friend doesn’t mention, the creepy house being on an island and the man being required to wear a sleepwalking harness.

Hokum sees a writer visit the seemingly haunted hotel where his late parents had their honeymoon, being saved from hanging himself and on release from hospital finding that the staffer who saved his life is missing.

All three involve murder plots as well. And the connections run deeper than that, especially with these two.

The weird guy on TV is new to Hokum, though. Although it again shows that Mc Carthy likes googly eyes.

Both have good atmosphere and jumps, but Oddity has the best scare of the three for me. Hokum has the advantage here for being funny quite often.

The medium: Shudder for Caveat, Prime for Hokum - which meant it had ad breaks which didn’t help

Gameability: Magical items helping with an investigation in a big creepy building. Yes.

Interview With The Vampire starter set

Interview With The Vampire starter set now on Backerkit to be followed by core rules and settings drawn from the other Anne Rice novel based TV series.

Vampire: Empire 2026 4

Vampire: The Masquerade fifth edition

Empire

4. Disposal

Daisy, Toreador jazz singer and club owner

Echo, Malkavian fortune teller

Emmet, Hecata researcher

Jesse, Tremere phlebotomist and Circulatory System supplier

Silas, Ventrue enforcer

The group meet with Hellene, and bank their boons for the time being.

Jesse contacts Ella, who says that she’s been busy making sure the blood supply isnt contaminated - and that she didn’t want to have to explain this in front of the whole court.

Wanting to see for herself, Daisy suggests a meeting in a public place.

Ella notes the increased suspicion but doesn’t object.

Her supplier of out-of-date blood for disposal at one of the city’s public hospitals, Simon Mackenzie, has been missing since the night before Hellene’s request for help. She asks Jesse if he can find him as he has the credentials to get in.

The group accompany him to the hospital blood bank, where Echo recognises the scent of Release from the biological waste bin. The assistant temporarily covering Mack’s shift doesn’t know much, so Silas compels him to leave so Jesse can look over the computer records.

Finding Mack’s address, a run-down apartment a not-bad commute away, no answer on the buzzer. Silas climbs the fire escape and breaks in, letting the others up. The place has been empty for a couple of days. Silas finds a burner phone, with a message on an anonymous chat app from three nights ago, the night of the attack, to meet in the park just before Mack would leave for his shift. They consider this, and Daisy suggests replying to see if anyone answers.

Nobody does.

They search the small nearby park, and Emmet finds Mack’s faint scent - and that it stops at the car park.

Mack did not own a car.

And heading back, Silas notices someone watching in a parked car. It drives off as he starts towards it.

He signals for Daisy to call her driver, and they move to pursue.

Someone in the passenger seat starts firing at them.

They fire back as Daisy’s driver tries not to get hit, but the shooter up ahead goes for the engine block.

They manage to get the car’s licence plate.

A call to Qadir, the court’s Sheriff, confirms that the plate is copied, the car stolen.

Jesse confirms that the contaminated blood was spiked with Release from the same lab, using Julie’s blood as the catalyst. At least that means that was the central supply... for now, anyway.

--

OOC

My Vampire games are more likely to have gunfights if I’m tired.

Idly considering Doctor Who again.

One-Shot No Shot

In the event, too run down. Feels bad for my The Show Must Go On instinct but didn’t sleep.

Hallowe'en One-Shot Plan 2026

As I had no clever ideas, Vampire party.

Wildwood

Wildwood (2026) is in cinemas here now, the new film from stop motion studio Laika and director Travis Knight (Kubo And The Two Strings, Bumblebee, Masters Of The Universe) based on the book by Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis.

Trailer

It’s one of the biggest and most ambitious stop-motion films ever made (with CG assistance for things like compositing, smoke and fire effects) and would be huge and ambitious in any medium, a modern fairytale with some epic vistas and huge fantasy battles, chases with the camera moving with the action, and a lightly stylised largely-human cast carrying the story.

It’s fantastic. Beautifully made, by turns funny and scary - a PG-13 rating, 12A in the UK, feels right, despite being an animated film about kids in a magical land the battles are intense and not everybody gets to the end, indeed the opening scene is as dark as it gets.

As someone who saw Masters Of The Universe as well I can see similarities in style and also plot emphasis, a character going to the fantastic world for personal reasons and the like. Beast-Man there is like a mirror of the coyotes here.

A little deconstruction, not much though.

There’s a smallish plot point I didn’t like, a secret that would have been very helpful to reveal earlier, but I get it.

If you can see it on a big screen, I think it’s absolutely worth it.

Mass Effect: Universe trailer

This may be all we ever get of Mass Effect: Universe. Of course there’s a change.org petition.

Bodycam (2025)

31 Days Of Horror Movies 2026

21 is “new-to-me found footage” and here’s one new on Shudder from Brandon Christensen, maker of Night Of The Reaper for them last year.

21.

Bodycam (2025)

Trailer

Not to be confused with 2020’s Body Cam (trailer) which is about cops answering a routine call and stumbling into supernatural trouble, this is about cops answering a routine call and stumbling into supernatural trouble. But this one is Found Footage and largely from the titular perspective.

In this case we’re in a city but in a bad enough part of town to still feel isolated, which switches up the classic Found Footage mood, and the bodycam footage is shaky and frenetic enough to feel realistic in most cases.

I also liked the effects on the footage when things start to get strange.

But for me it escalates too much.

BioWare

I would consider throwing private equity people out to be self defence.

Skating Polly

Hell yeah

This Is Not A Test

31 Days Of Horror Movies 2026

19.

This Is Not A Test (2026)

Trailer

They still make regular zombie movies!

Starting with a content warning for suicidal thought and then much in the vein of the 2005 Dawn Of The Dead seeing the zombie apocalypse kick off, with running zombies and metal music invokes some tonal whiplash but music choice aside (which returns for the amusingly off end credits) the first scene is the main tonal setup.

This zombie survivor movie which mostly takes place in a high school, invoking The Breakfast Club in numbers rather than tone, is occasionally brutal but mostly just sad.

There’s a nice chilling scene where Sloane (Olivia Holt, repeatedly getting blood on her face again even more than in Heart Eyes) can’t sleep for the sound of the apocalypse outside and tries to find somewhere quieter, but also at one point to get a ten minute “what happened to X” effect we get a flashback in a flashback. Apart from that it’s well made barring some excessive shakycam, well acted, if you’re okay with a downer.

The medium: Shudder

Gameability: Zombies and survivors of course, but tonally more Quietus melabcholic horror.

My thoughts on the Vampires And Slayers miniatures

Crooked Dice, makers of the 7TV miniatures lines of absolutely not geek TV and film characters, having spent years in the 60s and especially the 70s and then advanced to the 80s with a couple of waves are now onto the late 90s after just one early 90s release. (I assume the 2000s will get one wave and the 2010s will be announced before they all come out.)

This new wave, Kickstarting soon, is Vampires And Slayers.

I was expecting something like this for a while now.

CD have a few designers with different styles. Some I really like, most of them leaning towards “true scale” with realistic proportions. (Like the official Buffy miniatures for the Unmatched skirmish game.) But others are in more traditional “heroic scale”, big heads and hands and dumpy bodies. These are “heroic scale”.

To the extent that they look like they're being viewed through a fisheye lens.

They probably look okay in actual barely an inch high size but, urgh, disappointed.

I wonder if you could edit the STL files to make them look more people-shaped.

Oh well. Saves me some money.

Vampire: Empire 2026 3

Vampire: The Masquerade fifth edition

Empire

3. Down Below

Daisy, Toreador jazz singer and club owner

Silas, Ventrue enforcer

(Jesse, Tremere phlebotomist and Circulatory System supplier)

Emmet, Hecata researcher

Echo, Malkavian fortune teller

The Professor’s guard draws a submachine gun. Silas attacks. The mortal addict they brought to test the drug screams and hides behind the chair. Daisy tries to free the girl.

Outside, Echo, Emmet and Jesse hear gunfire and move to enter. They see a car pull up to a side entrance, more armed men get out and head in, and the Professor leaves and goes for the car.

He doesn’t get far as someone inside kills the driver and then him.

The basement door opens and the armed men pile in.

Daisy locks eyes with one and he backs away in fear. Silas commands another to drop his gun and he hesitates long enough for him to steal it. He then bites the now unarmed guard.

The attacker follows Echo and Emmet inside as the guards flee.

He identifies himself as Dane.

A vampire who claims membership of no sect.

Daisy releases the girl. She struggles free and grabs the downed guard’s wrist, drinking until alarms sound and the group withdraw, Dane setting the lab on fire as they go.

He explains that he followed a lead from Frank, one of the System’s clients outside the Camarilla, and that the girl was betrayed by one of Frank’s coterie, Ryan.

Jesse finds Frank and he gives Ryan up with barely a thought.

Ryan tries to flee, but Laurence ambushes him. Colette saw enough to know to come there.

The group discuss what to do with the girl, Julie, a Thin-blood that Ryan Embraced without permission. Colette says that there may be a way for her to return to her old life... by killing her sire.

We don’t find out if this works.

Are there more labs, more suppliers? The Camarilla, Anarchs and outsides all have leads to follow.

How big was the plan? How much chaos did they want to cause for the Kindred - and the living?

Saint and Stirling are informed by calls, a message is left for Hellene to meet later.

Violetta post-game thought

Since the Hunter: The Reckoning game was a miniseries we all went fairly broad with the characters. Connecting the idea of a spooky medium to the Hecata from Vampire: The Masquerade and Wednesday, playing her super deadpan and way too in-the-know, was a lot of fun but for an ongoing character I’d either:

A) Play it straight, fewer connections and jokes

or

B) Lean in even more, going with the Giovanni family name and an unedited appearance for reference

Depends on the game.

Weapons (2025)

31 Days Of Horror Movies 2026

And now to stray from the path.

Prompt 18 is Least Favourite Franchise and I’m not doing that to myself. Then Favourite Franchise which wouldn’t give me something new, then New-to-me found footage which maybe, then four days about different social groups. I could do these but, eh, time for things that don’t fit just because I want to watch them. And so:

18.

Weapons (2025)

Trailer 1

Trailer 2

Content warning for kids in danger, both obvious from the premise and more severely in one chapter

The second film by writer and director Zach Cregger opens with seventeen children leaving their houses at the same time in the dead of night and disappearing into the dark.

The trailers and the accompanying media campaign including a now-down fake news website made the children disappearing look like the most ominous mystery, and it features with some assorted digressions, so much so that the supporting character that won Amy Madigan an Oscar is almost invisible in the publicity.

I was sort of expecting something like aliens as it felt like the cold open for an episode of The X Files.

The title (and one image in a dream) suggests the subtext of school shootings as well.

But the film itself plays it as the start of an odd little fairytale, accompanied by a sweetly soothing George Harrison song.

The first bit of proper horror comes after, with the kids’ parents and the rest of the town demanding answers from their home room teacher, their understandable fear and anger getting unfailry targeted.

Then it shifts perspective to one of the parents, and again to someone else, and again every twenty minutes or so, with chapter labels so it’s faster and more clearly noted than the sudden forty-five-minute swing in Barbarian.

And due to stylistic choices and humour throughout, when we find out what’s going on it’s chilling for one sympathetic character but overall darkly funny.

The medium: HBO Max

Gameability: When we get to the unlikely teamup to investigate it swings that way.

Hunter: The Reckoning Portlandia session two

A cornered ghoul tries to talk his way out saying we should let him walk away and he won’t tell his masters:

“I’m sorry, just to be clear, are you threatening us?”

Visual references for the us being threatened:

Jenna Ortega as Wednesday

 

Jeffrey Dean Morgan as John Winchester in Supernatural

--

Freeing the trapped spirits of vampire victims, cleaned up after session version:

“The chain is broken! Those who wish to depart in peace are free to do so. Those who wish to act... are free to do so.”

Imagine a bass drop on the ellipsis, like when Lestat calls Claudia a very, very naughty little girl.

Big week

Three for three on weekly RPG sessions this week, and two for two on less than weekly ones, including the alternate Tuesday game being moved to the other alternate Tuesday for one night only. Now a bit socialisinged out, but in a good way.

Witchboard (1986)

31 Days Of Horror Movies 2026

Prompt 17 is “death by board game” and:

17.

Witchboard (1986)

Trailer

Having seen the remake on day 2, I spotted the original was available and so here we are.

Tawny Kitaen, mostly known to my generation as The Woman In The Whitesnake Videos, stars as a woman with a boyfriend and ex who used to be friends and the ex is really into Ouija boards. Though not into them enough to remember to take his home after a housewarming party. So she tries it alone which is a bad idea and various sorta-poltergeist-y sorta-possession-y problems ensue.

Unusually heavy on daytime horror scenes. though this may have been to save on lighting, the leads are fine if underwritten and the guys’ quarrel feels more high school than postgrad adult (also, don’t quote Han Solo if you’re this much less cool than Han Solo) and the fun characters (Kathleen Wilhoite as a Cyndi Lauper styled medium and Burke Barnes as a detective who loves magic tricks as his Columbo shtick) only get a couple scenes each.

Seeing it after the remake explains a couple of the scenes there, but they largely worked in the remake as-is. The overheated shower works better here though!

I will give it credit for a great evil joke fakeout which I loved when Buffy The Vampire Slayer did it thirteen years later, and I’m sure someone there saw it here.

The medium: Shudder

Gameability: Investigating a weird occult thing, colourful side characters, fairly straightforward answer, yesh. Maybe don’t use an actual Ouija board as a prop for reasons of taste.

They Will Kill You (2026)

31 Days Of Horror Movies 2026

Prompt 16 is “rich people doing evil shit” and I have various options here due to how much evil shit rich people do. Ha ha.

But for something new, I already watched Ready or Not 2: Here I Come in the cinema but not this:

16.

They Will Kill You (2026)

Trailer (red band with blood and swears and stuff)

Someone is trapped in a secure location with a bunch of rich Satanic cultists not very successfully trying to catch her as a human sacrifice in a funnily over-the-top violent way. Comparisons to Ready Or Not are unavoidable, not helped by release timing meaning I saw the trailer ahead of Here I Come, but the setup and style are different enough to stand out. Here Zazie Beetz as Asia Reaves is a Big Damn Hero waiting to happen rather than having to become one, less like the bride from Ready Or Not and more like The Bride from Kill Bill.

And there’s a twist the trailer didn’t let on.

YouTube has rearranged its page layout, presumably to annoy me.

Getting there.

Carrie (2026)

31 Days Of Horror Movies 2026

Prompt 15 is “Telekinesis” and I feel like it might be there because one of the big streaming releases for spooky season 2026 is...

15.

Carrie (2026)

Trailer

First episode free on YouTube

“This episode contains scenes involving bullying and a school shooting drill. Viewer discretion is advised.”

Mike Flanagan moves to Prime and takes Stephen King’s number with him, modernising Carrie as a miniseries. One of the main texts for high school horror, this version plays up the added horrors of social media, school shooting drills and more, and updates the isolated religious weirdness of Carrie’s family as doomsday preppers.

It’s generally well done if the subject matter isn’t an immediate nope. Until...

Those Who Wish Me Dead

31 Days Of Horror Movies 2026

Prompt 14 is “Trashy Thriller” and this isn’t particularly trashy, and about as much action as thriller, but as noted before I didn’t want to go out of my way to find something bad:

14.

Those Who Wish Me Dead (2021)

Trailer with more Johnny Cash than the film (boo)

Put in a fire watch tower after a traumatising job gone wrong, the equivalent of a desk job for a smokejumper, Hannah (Angelina Jolie) is in the wrong place at the wrong time when...

... this run of personal connections seems unnecessarily complicated but here we go...

Her ex, Deputy Ethan’s (Jon Bernthal) brother-in-law tries to bring his son there for safety after his job puts them in danger from a criminal conspiracy.

Okay, that bit is kinda trashy.

The conspiracy sends a pair of assassins (Aidan Gillen and Nicholas Hoult) after them, following a related assassination far enough away that he gets to hear about it. The assassins not unfairly observe that the conspiracy should have sent two teams for strikes at the same time, which isn’t enough to put me on their side as they casually kill innocent people but is an example of them being entertaining villains to follow. As this is somewhat like Die Hard In A Forest Fire that goes a long way.

And the connections beyond physical proximity and an existing level of trust that could have been fellow emergency response workers don’t really matter as, after the killers take out the father, the son flees into the woods and Hannah just happens to find him.

So now we have several sympathetic characters in different degrees of immediate danger as the killers try to find the boy through his uncle as well as tracking him. And start a forest fire to distract emergency services. Which gets real big real fast.

There are various smart moves and observations in among some over-the-top threats and twists - the assassins spotting a warning phrase right away, Bernthal getting a great “go on and kill me” type rant knowing he’s seen too much and trying to goad them into taking him out - in among some much sillier stuff like at one point somebody gets struck by lightning and that seems like the kind of thing that should matter in a story.

It’s all a bit off topic for spooky month, but does have some brutal violence, enough sympathetic characters that we’re not sure everybody will make it, a shortish very tense sequence involving a particularly sympathetic character in particularly high danger, and a huge natural threat building throughout.

The medium: Prime

Gameability: Survival horror/thrills out in the woods, being hunted and in various kinds of danger due to the environment. And as an aside, smokejumpers have that International Rescue swagger of modern heroes going into danger to help others.

A L I E N - RUN RABBIT RUN 1,02

Dean made her first Panic roll of the game on finding an animal testing subject in the vents.

VisionQuest

VisionQuest opens with a flashback explanation and then a massive location caption saying EDINBURGH.

So off to a good start.

Winnie-the-Pooh at 100

Like the acres in the wood!

Hell House LLC II and III (and Origins)

31 Days Of Horror Movies 2026

13 is “hotel horror” and Shudder has the Hell House LLC series, of which I previously saw the first but Evan at Rocklin Graves says the fourth is good, so... kind of trudged through the second and third parts to get there.

13.

Hell House LLC II: The Abaddon Hotel (2018)

Trailer

Hell House LLC III: Lake Of Fire (2019)

Trailer

Hell House LLC (2015) is a pretty basic found footage horror with the format twist that the poor fools going into the scary place are there to use it as the location for a haunted attraction. So is the creepy stuff we glimpse really creepy or pretend creepy in-setting?

And the opening moment, news reports and a customer YouTube video showing the crowd going through turning into a stampede to get out works really well.

Apparently the director’s cut adds more trilogy-related context but the original cut is less on the nose so I rewatched it. And then II and III are pretty damn on the nose.

II would have been enough to get me to stop without the promise of a better future instalment. A much more normal “go and look at the place we know is meant to be scary” found footage, that ends with a big theatrical villain monologue which explains lore best left vague. It also shows just how much the found footage format relies on acting as a couple of the performances let it down badly.

III swings back to the “use scary place for haunted attraction” setup of the original, with an immersive theatre show instead of a straight haunt, run by an eccentric genius who is also apparently one of the richest people in the world (this does not reflect my experience of the finances of immersive theatre companies) and carries along until an ending that certainly surprised me. It mostly struck me as funny and left me with some questions, both mythological and practical (does it apply to the victims in II who don’t get much of a mention?) but points for trying.

Will I watch the fourth after all this? Later, I guess.

The medium: Shudder

Gameability: Like a lot of found footage filming, haunted attractions and especially immersive theatre, this could easily become a LARP, and at times really feels like watching a recording of one.

Edit 27/10:

Hell House LLC Origins: The Carmichael Manor (2023)

Trailer

Although the first has the best opening it’s my favourite of the four I’ve seen - a small likeable cast of not-all-on-board investigators in a less visually confusing location - but I’d still call it okay. And it would have worked better without the connections. Seriously, Immobile The Clown is NOT THAT SCARY. Even if you then break the rule like the Weeping Angels and have him move. And neither are a couple guys in robes.

There’s a fifth. I’m good.

Ten Thirteen

Happy 65th birthday to Fox Mulder, and happy series order announcement for the new take on The X Files from Ryan Coogler.

Vampire: Empire 2026 2

Vampire: The Masquerade fifth edition

Empire

2. Release

Daisy, Toreador jazz singer and club owner

Silas, Ventrue enforcer

Jesse, Tremere phlebotomist and Circulatory System supplier

Emmet, Hecata researcher

Echo, Malkavian fortune teller

Jesse manages to extract some blood from Marcel, the vampire in frenzy since he ingested the drug through a victim. Echo is able to get a scent of the chemicals involved, and would be able to sniff out users.

Jesse brings the blood to his lab, analysis will take some time.

They confirm Echo can scent users with a visit to the Rooftop, the club on the Rack where Marcel hunted. They’re able to find a dealer, and Daisy charms him into arranging a meeting with his source, “the Professor”, the following evening.

Jesse compares the blood sample to the drug - it’s designed to excite and agitate human users... and one of its ingredients is a trace of Kindred vitae.

Meeting the Professor at one of the coffee shops in Grand Central Station the following evening, they talk their way into seeing the factory.

Daisy and Silas meet the Professor’s bodyguard at a long-closed video store. Echo, Emmet and Jesse observe outside, close enough for a signal.

Colette calls Silas’s phone as they approach to warn Daisy that this is where she meets Dane, and that they have to help “the woman in the chair”.

The Professor leads them in, and down to a basement.

Inside, strapped to something like a dentist’s chair, is what looks like a young woman totally drained of blood - but still moving.

“You wanted to know our secret ingredient.” The Professor locks them in.

The old edition is dying, and the new edition struggles to be born: now is the time of grognards.

Undertone

31 Days Of Horror Movies 2026

11 is “previously on the podcast” and I rarely listen to the podcast but there’s an obvious recent choice:

11.

Undertone (2026)

Trailer

Fake website with nice episode descriptions rather than audio but does have a creepy interactive Can You Hear Me bit

A creepy mystery podcaster listens to something she shouldn’t. In fact, nobody should.

Undertone started as an audio drama, and the emphasis on sound makes this clear, with the camera lingering and hints that you might see something off to one side being the main visuals. Since it’s mostly one actor (Nina Kiri) moving around her mother’s house (actually writer and director Ian Tuason’s childhood home) and talking to voices off it would also work as a play. As a film it’s a strong atmospheric buildup to an ending which is aiming for ambiguous but for me hits anticlimactic.

The medium: HBO Max

Gameability: The basic setup would work for a modern horror RPG, the occultist podcast could be a series premise. A few games have audio handouts, and games by video call can be voice only. But do you provide audio for the players to examine? And do you mess with it as they replay it...? Something like Alice Is Missing, where the players are around the table but communicate by text?

Resident Evil (2026)

31 Days Of Horror 2026

?

Resident Evil (2026)

Red band teaser

from co-writer and director Zach Cregger (Barbarian, Weapons) gives us as regular-person a view of a zombie apocalypse as Shaun Of The Dead, as medical courier and mostly good person Bryan (Austin Abrams) tries to get something important to a city being taken over by a mutagenic virus. He notably lacks the not-SWAT training of the original game heroes or the super-soldier-y of the previous film series hero Alice, so he makes mostly understandable decisions, humane as well as sensible ones, and gets into all sorts of the trouble as a result.

It escalates rather than taking swings with twists like Cregger’s previous films, stays close to Bryan’s perspective and sometimes his direct POV, and the first zombie is a great reminder of just how scary one zombie can be, especially when you don’t have the relevant context.

It mostly lifts monsters from the game rather than gameplay, though there is a (quite reasonable) search for ammo and a recurring gag about padlocks.

Heavy on the splatstick and other humour, I had a lot of fun with it, and I can see why people are saying Cregger would make a good non-serious Evil Dead movie, even without the bit where Bryan’s in a rustic cabin and the camera swings around for a closeup of a shotgun.

Only two really horrific moments, involving children, and those both land on a gag as well.

And I can include this in 31 Days Of Horror, somewhere.

The medium: The cinema!

Gameability: Yes.

Send Help (2026)

31 Days Of Horror Movies 2026

Prompt 10 is “Trouble In Paradise” which could be about relationship difficulties but is a bit much three days after Bloody Bride, or considering horror could also be about a war in Heaven. Or, hey, bad things happening (and interpersonal issues) on a remote tropical island:

10.

Send Help (2026)

Trailer

Brilliant but slovenly company cog Linda is passed up for a promised promotion by the former CEO by his son and heir, he reluctantly brings her on a business trip because she’s actually useful unlike the frat brother he gave her job to, and then the plane crashes...

Sam Raimi comes home to horror and yes we get some running POV shots, some Extreme Close-ups, some eye-gouging and quite a bit of unpleasant stuff getting flung in various character’s faces. But this is mostly about two characters getting along very badly. Sympathies shift along the way - if you want someone to really root for this not your show. But I laughed quite a bit, including a genuine roar at one point.

The medium: Disney+

Gameability: Generally this strong a PC v PC agenda base is reserved for one-shots.

Mage: The Ascension - Sunrise City

We concluded the Victorian Age time travel miniseries and normal service may resume shortly.

It was touch and go but Cara managed to avoid having to become Queen of California.

The New Mutants

31 Days Of Horror Movies 2026

Film 7 but entry 9, “PG-13” - wow, I have a lot of recent options, but have seen most of them. Mostly 15s here, some 12s.

(I will get to 7 and 8 with streaming trials.)

9.

The New Mutants (2018-20)

Trailer

An X-Men movie-verse spinoff with no recurring characters, mixing its superheroic zapping with a horror-tinged story taken from the comic.

Some newly-empowered mutants who all have tragic backstories are being trained / imprisoned in a dingy old hospital, and now having mostly backstory-related nightmares that start to affect them physically. In the meantime they have some understandable YA issues, do some The Breakfast Club stuff unsurprisingly, and make existing fans wonder why Illyana has Kitty Pryde’s sidekick dragon as a hand puppet and is being so racist.

An outright horror with superhuman characters in danger is an interesting take, but does the tone mix work? Not really, no.

Not helped by some choices like the TV showing Buffy, where this does work, including an episode which draws immediate comparison to a much less scary monster design used here.

The medium: Disney+

Gameability: The trick would be balancing the horror stuff and the heroic stuff so it takes a while to get to the big zappy final battle.

Jac Schaeffer's Stargate?

Amazon looking at Stargate again, this time with an outside group headed by Jac Schaffer of WandaVision and Agatha All Along. Which I like a great deal, as you may know. And she can certainly do a small cast going through portals to unfamiliar places and having adventures and snarking at each other.

Star Wars D&D and a campaign book

From New York Comic-Con, news of a Star Wars D&D rulebook and the preview of the campaign book Tyro Squadron Adventures

Yes you’re playing Rebels.

First thought: Darth Vader’s right there. Ever seen an RPG cover with a bunch of characters doing heroic poses and thought “They’re all gonna die next round” because of who they’re up against?

Oh well, at least it isn’t the FFG system.

Possession (1981)

31 Days Of Horror Movies 2026

Prompt 8 is Sam Neill. He was in a lot of genre stuff through his career. And I’ve seen almost all of them! But this is one that always sounded like not my kind of thing. So here goes.

8.

Possession (1981)

Trailer which shows the big reveal but with a lack of context

Neill plays Mark, who has been away from his Berlin-based family a bit too long for work, an assignment of some kind of espionage - this isn’t important until it becomes so again at the end. His wife Anna (Isabelle Adjani) has been seeing someone else while he was away. Mark spirals, considers cutting all ties with Anna and their son Bob, then sees she’s neglecting Bob and tries to sort things out, meets the supposed lover, Heinrich (Heinz Bennent) and learns that she moved on from him. He has a detective follow her, and finds she has another apartment. And inside is...

Cyberpunk 2077 film coming?

News via Empire

Frag you Shadowrun

Companion (2025)

31 Days Of Horror 2026

Prompt 7 is “Bloody Bride” and, well, nearly. Not a bride but a... companion.

7.

Companion (2025)

Trailer 1 which focuses on the most horrific moment and doesn’t give away the central early twist

Trailer 2 which does

So I went in knowing that central early twist, which drops just before the 25 minute mark and is then thoroughly explained, so I was noting the clues and waiting. I wonder what it would be like thinking it was what it appeared to be until then.

But there are more twists as it goes along, so it wasn’t just the result of that one.

ALIEN GEAS 1.01

I managed to use a Joseph Conrad reference for the ship that’s already been used by a computer game and the latest RPG set. Doy.

Bit of Method play, ate microwave pasta on the way over.

Malignant

31 Days Of Horror Movies 2026

“Not so imaginary friend” and someone else checking the list on Bluesky reminded me of this:

6.

Malignant (2021)

Trailer

First ten minutes

James Wan broke out with Saw but is best known for mostly grounded gloomy-house jumpscare-y horrors like The Conjuring (boo) and Insidious, and with its ominous (but in this case actually relevant!) single-word title this seemed like it might be more of the same. But after some Fast & Furiousees and between the Aquaman films he felt like something a little different. Did it work?

That opening scene is a clear indicator of the tone he’s going for - the hospital that looks like the one from House On Haunted Hill 1999, the melodramatic straight-to-camera delivery of “It’s time to cut out the cancer!” He’s trying for something more Sam Raimi or Joe Dante. But then the second scene introducing our hero Madison (Annabelle Wallis, again demonstrating she would have been a great lynchpin of the Dark Universe if it had gotten past The Mummy 2017) establishes a familiar gloomy old house and a grimly realistic starting setup for her. So are we in for a fun ride or not?

And the film pretty much stays like this. The villain Gabriel is purposely absurd but when he’s not in action things stop being heightened enough to fit, and the result is just... odd.

The medium: Prime

Gameability: The setup of someone seeing murders as they happen and trying to deal with that is a great hook. Just choose a tone.

D&D MTG Union

The D&D and Magic teams join United Wizards Of The Coast.

Sign the petition to have Wizards recognise the union.

Beast (2022)

31 Days Of Horror Movies 2026

Feline Fright

Okay, doing this prompt straight up.

Having already had a killer magic kitty on day two, I go more mundane - and bigger.

5.

Beast (2022)

Trailer

The one where Idris Elba fights a lion.

A recently widowed father brings his kids on a family bonding photo safari with an old friend and it goes wrong because there’s a rogue lion on the loose. First they find he’s wiped out a village, the group get separated, having to use the butt of a tranq rifle when the rogue gets too close breaks it, there are poachers, only short-range walkie-talkies work...

A lot of it is done in big long tracking shots, some edited together expertly from smaller pieces, to give the sense of movement and that the rogue could be anywhere. And it mixes the wide open landscape with being stuck in the ATV from an inside POV.

And we get a normal lion pride to contrast the rogue with, which is a nice touch.

It’s generally really well done, with one major issue - the lion looks fake a lot of the time. Which kinda kills it.

The medium: Prime

Gameability: A one-shot with an unprepared group up against just one monster?

Vampire LARP one-shot systems

A request for help with a first Vampire LARP reminded me that, as an observer from a safe distance beyond one-shots, I actually know a bit. Published LARPs, variant systems and the like. Might as well put my links here.

By Night Studios have resources (enough to run a V20-era LARP with a tablet) as well as a quickstart and Storyteller advice.

Published adventures, not many but mostly available on DriveThruRPG

Some free unofficial ones, among other genres

The really really system as used in End Of The Line and Enlightenment In Blood, nice and simple.

Vampire: Empire 2026 1

Vampire: The Masquerade fifth edition

Empire

1. In The Blood

Daisy, Toreador jazz singer and club owner

Silas, Ventrue enforcer

Jesse, Tremere phlebotomist and Circulatory System supplier

Emmet, Hecata researcher

(Echo, Malkavian fortune teller)

New York City.

The equinox, the end of summer, and Kindred in good standing are invited to the ballroom of the Delancey Hotel for an open court with the Prince.

Daisy and Silas hunt in or near her club - Daisy so impresses her victim that he might be a problem later.

Jesse and Emmet deliver blood to a non-Camarilla vampire called Franklin. He seems on edge, but then that’s normal for the trade... right?

The court is busy, maybe thirty vampires and various in-the-know mortals. One notable absence is Ella, head of the System.

The Prince has a warning, and a request for assistance with a hint of a possible favour in return. A new drug has hit the club scene, and Kindred who drink from its users find themselves agitated, tense - reportedly some are overcome by their violent instincts.

Daisy offers to help and... shall we say encourages the others.

Saint, Host of the Rack, confirms there was an incident in one of its clubs, and Thea, host of Paradise Lost, advises them to check with the Anarchs.

Before they can leave, the Malkavian Harpy Colette approaches, clearly shaken by a premonition that Daisy might be another victim soon, three nights from now. Something involving a vampire called Dane that none of them know, and someone else that she can’t see.

Jesse knows the best place to contact Anarch leader Stirling. He arrives soon after being contacted, like he was expecting someone to visit, and takes the group to a lockup nearby.

In a locker bolted to the floor, a vampire lost in a berserker rage...

The Tell-Tale Heart (2008)

31 Days Of Horror Movies 2026

The fourth prompt is “A-lister’s early horror role” and yes I’m going to slightly cheat again, going for an early short from a writer and director who is still in the fold.

4.

The Tell-Tale Heart (2008)

Official site

A short film by Robert Eggers, seven years before The VVitch, and he’s already very recognisably himself. An adaptation of an Edgar Allan Poe story, almost a silent film most of the way through, some scenes warmed by candle and firelight but otherwise nearly black and white. The most early-work-is-different is the old man being a puppet, which doesn’t work for me at all but I do admire the can-do spirit.

Also not the strangest adaptation of The Tell-Tale Heart I’ve seen thanks to the sorta-animated short narrated by James Mason.

The medium: Vimeo

Gameability: low.

Hunter: The Reckoning Portlandia session one

During a matter-of-fact discussion of vampires:

Mark, college student trying to understand monsters rationally:

“I’m sorry, I must have missed the ghosts and goblins class at school.”

Violetta, spirit medium from a family connected to a clan of vampires:

“You must not have gone to Catholic school.”

Tales Of The Lost Shepherd

The space opera part of the Pod Universe moves from imaginary movie to imaginary TV series. And due to the request for predictions, fame at last!

AfrAId

31 Days Of Horror Movies 2026

Day three is Tech Terror, and hey, I have something relevant I hadn’t gotten around to watching:

3.

AFRAID (2024)

Trailer which shows a big escalation more than halfway in

John Cho (who already starred in the online nightmare Searching) and Katherine Waterston play a couple given a test drive of a new AI home assistant for them and their kids, and it’s everything an actual AI assistant could be for good and ill as you can guess by it being in the horror watchlist.

Smart houses running amok has been a fear since before smart houses were even a thing - like the 1947 cartoon about mice trying to move into a Home Of Tomorrow and having to escape various automated defences and appliances - but this is when they’re starting to become a real thing.

And AIA learned about humanity from the internet like Ultron and so has some opinions about us as a result. (The credits montage features melty early genAI people and looking up subjects like history leading to a Hitler jumpscare.)

At under an hour and a half it feels like an episode of Black Mirror that isn’t quite cynical enough about human nature. And some of these concerns have panned out, but some are so notably lacking as to make this film from two years ago feel quaint.

AIA can manipulate people casually but only the children love it, for one thing. It has to force adults to serve it instead of having the actual cultists it likely would. (This seems like a particular oversight as that was a plot point in the likes of Person Of Interest already.) Maybe writer and director Chris Weitz just ain’t cynical enough, despite how this ends.

So seeing this now it exaggerates plenty of things a real AI could do that our present slop can’t while missing threats we have already.

(And at no point do we hear about its power consumption.)

So it’s an interesting window into a future people were scared of a while ago that isn’t as bad as we actually have.

Oof.

The medium: Netflix

Gameability: One of the early TOON adventures is based on that home of the future cartoon. Outside of that though, a GM could present an all-setting threat really easily - indeed it can be tricky for players and GMs not to act on information their characters don’t know - so an NPC who can sense everything the PCs do and feel would be no trouble at all, the issue being deciding what, if anything, they can’t act on.

V5 Empire references

Some from New York By Night and other official sources, some old friends

Camarilla

Outsiders

The living

Strangers

Small tweak, use Rebecca Ferguson as Hellene

Hail to the Prince

Witchboard (2024)

31 Days Of Horror Movies 2026

Day two is Bad Remake. And I’m not planning to watch a bad remake on purpose. So I noticed this is free on YouTube and heard the originals aren’t great (with a reminder on the RPGnet thread) and remembered the trailer looked like goofy fun so...

2.

Witchboard (2024)

Trailer

Film

Is it a good remake? Couldn’t tell you. Is it good on its own merits? No. Is it fun? At times very much so.

Director and co-writer Chuck Russell previously made the 1988 remake of The Blob, which is really good but eclipsed by the classic original, and which worked because it was focused. This is... not.

A pendulum board (not a Ouija board - the film spends some time establishing that this is Serious Business and Ouija boards aren’t, after the original was about a Ouija board but they now have their own official movies) made by a 17th century witch is stolen from a New Orleans museum on the orders of an occultist wannabe supervillain, gets lost and finds its way to our heroine after she follows a cat in the woods. After her boyfriend’s fortunately well-informed ex explains it, she tries it at the pre-opening party for the boyfriend’s restaurant and it’s interrupted by a burning crow coming down the chimney.

This is not enough to put her off testing it, and the next thing it does kills one of their friends. The cat returns and steals his severed hand. This cat is horrible, he’s great, no notes.

Various other bad things happen, starting as low-rent Final Destination ish coincidences and segueing into nightmares and the like. And then our heroine starts being sorta evil herself, which at least leads to the cat killing her former drug dealer. (Seriously, love this cat.)

So the ex suggests consulting an occult expert and oops it’s the supervillain. This goes badly, in a way that’s normally the final twist of a movie but here hits an hour in, which I really liked.

It avoids my pet hate of having witch hunts be justified by actual evil superpowered witches by making the witch take a turn to superpowered evil after being hunted and persecuted, then later has the ex assure the boyfriend that Wicca is cool and the supervillain’s friends are good witches, which the audiience already know they’re not. The fact that his minions look like a Vampire LARP could qualify as a hint.

So the board does a whole slew of supernatural bad stuff without picking a lane, Madison Iseman as the heroine (who should know better than to mess with magic boardgames after the Jumanji sequels) and Antonia Desplat as the villainess both get to show acting range and Jamie Campbell Bower as the villain gets to show off his lack of same.

The effects people are very busy, this would make a good film to put on the background of a Halloween party except that guests would sometimes pause to go “what the fuck” at some of the images. At one point a hallucination looks like the Pitch Meeting video essay thumbnails, which makes me wonder if this was an attempt to get one made. And there’s a related moment which is a reminder that Russell also directed The Mask.

It’s an absolute mess full of half-baked ideas that could have worked. Recommended if you feel like being perplexed and occasionally amused, sometimes deliberately.

The medium: YouTube

Gameability: This already feels like a horror game that went totally off the rails. I could grab several of its barely-used setups for something World Of Darkness and some get accidentally Buffy-ish.

I also liked the villain’s backup plan for dealing with the heroine’s boyfriend:

It! The Terror From Beyond Space

31 Days Of Horror Movies 2026

Okay, going to use the Nightmare On Film Street 31 Days list as a springboard to avoid a total blank page but not adhere entirely to it, as it’s more for picking old favourites than going into the unknown, and indeed I’ll start by flipping #1 upside down for something I haven’t seen before.

1.

It! The Terror From Beyond Space (1958)

Trailer with black on grey near subliminal titles

Nobody appears to have claimed that $50,000, presumably because going to Mars would cost more than that anyway.

The “Rad Remake” prompt suggests a remake you already know is good and I wanted to start on something new to me. And I just rewatched Alien last week because I'm getting a chance to play the RPG so I thought reverse it and watch one of the things it's half a remake of, along with Planet Of The Vampires which I got to see last year as well as two A. E Van Vogt stories as well as the work of people who were actually involved.

In the thrilling future on 1973, a mission to Mars ended in disaster and now a second mission has come to retrieve the sole survivor for court martial, accused of murdering the rest of the crew. Which is a great hook but also a very expensive dedication to giving him a fair hearing when pretty much everybody believes he’s guilty.

What actually happened is that “It” killed the crew, and snuck on board the new ship. Possibly a survivor from an ancient Martian civilisation (so not from beyond space, but never mind) It now craves moisture. They figure this out reasonably quickly and spend the rest of the film trying to get rid of It. It’s pretty tough - resistant to bullets, grenades and the radiation from the ship’s engine. (Good thing the ship is tough too - at no point do any of the compartments depressurise.)

There's a lot of The Thing From Another World here, with the lumbering take on the monster, the difficulty of killing It and some distrust among the crew.

It itself is pretty disappointing. The look is fine, especially when initially in shadow, but Ray “Crash” Corrigan plays It much like he often played gorillas, making It too expressive to seem really threatening. At one point It puts a claw to its chin to show it’s thinking, which is kind of adorable.

The gender politics have not aged well, two of the crew are women and one of them is medical officer but they both serve dinner and coffee for the men, but at least the alternate poster showing It carrying one of them doesn’t actually happen - It carries off quite a few of the men instead. (The Thing From Another World was better about this seven years earlier so that’s no excuse.)

Favourite bit that didn’t get into Alien - one of the crew is cornered but has a flamethrower, so he’s stuck there fending It off for quite a while, getting increasingly cranky over the radio as he waits for rescue.

I also liked the lack of sound in space, though the electronic music cue gets really repetitive - and it didn’t help that Sam Raimi used something very like it in Evil Dead II when Ash is alone in the cabin and dealing with the empty rocking chair, and my mind will take any excuse to think about Evil Dead II.

So not a huge fan, but it has some nice moments of its own as well as the bits Alien reused, and the quickly discarded initial setup is great too.

Gameability: small group of people in an enclosed space trying to get rid of a monster, yes that's gameable.

31 Days Of Horror 2026

Here and on RPGnet for more discussion

So far I have no plan beyond catching up with some 2026 releases.

Maybe stealing this will help...

Thanks to Aaron de Orive for putting it up.

RED LIGHT

Parks newly updated with bat-friendly red lights. I approve of course, but the effect is... I don’t want to say “hellish” but...

At first glance it seems like maybe it's a fault.

But no.

RED

You're one microscopic cog
in his catastrophic plan
designed and directed
by his red right hand

ALIEN PLAYER CHARACTER

Player character number 1 anyway

Dean

Officer

Attributes

Strength 2

Agility 3

Wits 4

Empathy 5

Skills

Heavy Machinery, Stamina, Close Combat

Mobility 1, Ranged Combat 1, Piloting 1

Observation 1, Comtech 1, Survival

Command 3, Manipulation 2, Medical Aid

Talents

Frontline Leader

You get +2 dice to COMMAND rolls to rally a broken character

Equipment

IIC Flight Officer Licence

IRC MK.50 compression suit

Seegson P-DAT

(Assigned: Service pistol)

Personal Agenda

Bring the crew back safe. No mistakes.

Her second mission in charge of a crew beyond an atmospheric run... worrying this might be why they sent her.

Sophie Thatcher in The Boogeyman

Sophie Thatcher in Prospect

A L I E N W A T C H L I S T

Okay, have now rewatched Alien and Aliens, Outland, the cutscene movie of Alien Isolation, watched the cutscene movie of Alien: Rogue Incursion and videos about how ALIEN Evolved Edition plays, reread Dark Horse Aliens v1 and 2. That’s probably enough homework to play.

The Tyrant Philosophers RPG playtest

The Tyrant Philosophers RPG playtest signups are now open for the Handiwork Games adaptation of the novels by Adrian Tchaikovsky.

Mage: The Ascension mic drop

Sunrise City

Snooty member of the Akashayana, Cara’s Mage Tradition of martial artists from 1883: “Let us see what our Tradition learns in the next century. That they let someone like you claim their name.”

Cara: “Well, I don’t wanna brag. So I’ll just kick your ass and you can draw your own conclusions.”

Hell yes proud of that one.

Didi’s player: My sister, my captain, my queen.

Star Wars Episode X

Director Jon Watts directed Skeleton Crew, writer Simon Kinberg co-created Rebels. Which are the most useful good credits.

Vampire: The Masquerade - Empire 2026

Vampire: The Masquerade fifth edition

Empire

When I am through with you
There won't be anything left

We have...

A Toreador jazz singer turned club owner looking for the soul in music

A Ventrue former labourer looking to move up in the world

A Malkavian seer looking to make a buck with their gift

A Tremere phlebotomist looking for independence from the blood trade

A Hecata scientist looking to challenge death itself

I’ll have to be sure to connect the first three and last two so this doesn’t feel like two games at one table. (Still better than five one-player games!)

Looking to be a less scruffy bottom rung of the ladder game than usual. I’m sure there will be plenty of ways to get them in trouble though, just starting in nicer scenery.

(Stopping myself putting the previous post to the tune of Leaving On A Jet Plane.)

T minus 24 hours

The character sheets are printed, the rulebook and dice are in the bag.

Now we wait.

Idea still nebulous, as “I’ll run this because nobody else is” ideas always are.

After last year, might go more episodic in case of player churn.

Very aware that I could readily do like three other games. But, eh, only one Sunday slot this year.

Stanislav Petrov Day

Because one person doing due diligence can save the world.

There's A Monster At The End Of This Video!

There’s A Monster At The End Of This Video! from Sesame Street on YouTube

Thanks to Derek for the link: Reinventing the classics for new media

Jim Henson at 90

And still baffling studio people.

Playing ALIEN

A chance to play ALIEN at GEAS on Wednesdays, so stood by the GM first to make sure they had a player before some others came over. Could have also gone for Cosmic Dark but looked like it had enough. (And there were also games with wizards and stuff.)

Looks like no major changes to character creation in the Evolved Edition, and it only takes a couple minutes even without the helpful creator. I’m sure this has nothing to do with a potential high bodycount.

So far I’ve made an Officer, two Roughnecks, a Marine, a Marshal and an Entertainer, so I can start with a hero, a useful support type, a flawed civilian with a key skill, a fighter, a different protag, or someone all but useless that I can inflict on the group later on, mwa ha ha.

No androids... or are there?

And the most difficult part - coming up with a name that people can shout in an action scene. A good ALIEN-y name should have one or two syllables and a hard consonant.

Autumn

The equinox is upon us! At like 1.08 this morning.

Happy birthday Mark!

CHVRCHES, Roses

Fill a glass with delusions of the good days of blood and wine, of pearls for swine

Kinda gothy guitars, kinda crashy drums, opening  Portisheady thrum, spoken word bit, this is the stuff

The brain is actually two organs

The new research finding shows that the human brain consists of two ancient nervous systems cleverly packaged together - a more primitive part that regulates our hearts’ beating, our breathing and other functions, and another that makes us distinctly human, capable of poetry, mathematics and wondering about our own origins.

How long before a zombie movie addresses this?

GEAS one-shot AAR

Judging by tonight’s one-shot I should have put Drive on the cut down skill list, as there were three attempts to run enemies over in the final fight.

Emma Ruth Rundle, Enough

Emma Ruth Rundle, Enough

More Gothy and also more Nirvana-y than expected

Via Stereogum, via A Very Special Episode

Adapting a property that may not adapt

The Pod Universe and the creators’ predecessor Are You Afraid Of The Dark Universe? look at cinematic universes, constructing settings for lots of stories, so the same kinda thing as an RPG setting and series / campaign planning.

And as we know some settings make better big settings than others.

Have you ever considered a setting and decided it really wasn’t viable?

Have you ever decided to go all in on that?

This week, a guest pitch for the Eraserhead Cinematic Universe.

Labelled The Worst Idea We Could Come Up With

With a chapter heading Why Eraserhead? Dear God, why?

“We are gonna try and do our best job with this terrible idea.”

Kinda makes me wanna...

CHVRCHES V

The new CHVRCHES album preview starts at the same time as my fortnightly Vampire: The Masquerade session. This seems like a trick by a cruel god.

I mean

Come ON

Talk Like A Pirate Day vs. BIPOC Vampire Day

This is a busy weekend.

Also International Red Panda Day!

Games Workshop announce Necromunda RPG

Necromunda Roleplay

A box set with miniatures for four intro characters and five enemies, blank character sheets and a screen as well as a rulebook.

I remember when Games Workshop got out of the RPG business, so strange to see them getting back in.

Mission: Impossible at 60

Mission: Impossible first aired September 17 1966. A straightforward idea for a show even if the episodes often weren’t, the setup making a rotating cast for isolated episodes a key and advertised part of the design, full of charming gimmicks like the masks and “This message will self-destruct in five seconds” and an absolute all-timer of a theme and credits sequence. I’ve often said that the Tom Cruise movies are an adaptation of the credits more than the show.

Cassie Workman Is Witchy AF

Cassie Workman Is Witchy AF

A puppet-heavy drinky history of the occult by Australian comedian Cassie Workman. Hail Satan!

Episode one, Aleister Crowley halfasses multiple attempts to contact the divine. Special guests include Shirley Manson explaining the pre-Crowley history of the house by Loch Ness.

Vampire: The Masquerade - Nocturne 2026-7

Reused placeholder chronicle title subject to change depending on emergent theme

Vampires hunt for blood in a world that looks like ours. They have their own societies, their own laws, their own conflicts, but they also walk among us, trying to hold onto their humanity - to some extent, at least.

Vampire: The Masquerade is a modern horror game where you are the monster. Knowledge of the system and setting are not required, the system is straightforward and the setting is full of mysteries.

CW: Horror and action violence, political and occult themes, metaphorical addiction, uneven power relationships, and blood.

V5 one-shot autumn 2026 edition

Vampires hunt for blood in a world that looks like ours. They have their own societies, their own laws, their own conflicts, but they also walk among us. Tonight, some of them just want to hear a singer's set and have a night out. But things are rarely that easy.

Vampire: The Masquerade is a modern horror game where you are the monster. Knowledge of the system and setting are not required, the system is straightforward and the setting is full of mysteries.

CW: Horror and action violence, occult themes, addiction with possible alcohol and drug use, and blood

Complaining about having to do a Vampire one-shot again

The age-old issue (ca. 1991) of preparing one-shots for an RPG with a complicated secretive background, for players who might never have played it or any other RPG either.

Setup for people I expect to know the game can go wild.

Setup for people I expect to know RPGs in general suggests a classic like a heist to show how differently vampires approach it.

Setup for possibly total newbies and... um...

Yes I could run a one-shot for something else, but I’m planning to run Vampire and I don’t like showing something I’m not planning to continue.

Buffy news this week

Sarah and David at the Emmys..

Sarah shared a photo from Scooby-Doo: Origins wrapping, showing McKenna Grace who plays Daphne in a Buffy T-shirt.

McKenna Grace (Daphne) and Maxwell Jenkins (Fred)
But what does his shirt mean?

Most photos suggest more traditional costumes but if the shirt appears in the show it causes a delightful reference paradox.

Raiders Of The Lost Ark 4K

Raiders Of The Lost Ark was great in the new restoration on the big screen.

Of course it was also great the time I saw a thirty-year-old original print that had gone kinda sepia-toned. It fit really.