James Mathe

A tribute to James Mathe, founder of RPGNow, from Steve Wieck.

Avengers Resemble

The Avengers game trailer (with voice acting by Critical Role stars Travis Willingham and Laura Bailey among others) has me thinking about familiarity, as it’s not the MCU Avengers but it’s Cap, Tony, Thor, Natasha and Hulk and looking rather like them. And then revealing a very different story, showing why they went this way.

Should they have gone more comic-y, or with another more different look or lineup like the PS4 Spider-Man?

Bloodlines 2 gameplay

Extended gameplay trailer for Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2

The new trailer shows that Dale, the schlubby vampire, will have less hair in the game than in the original trailer. And that the Nosferatu type is a Thinblood. Which is harsh as we see an actual Nosferatu who looks less Nosferatu than he does.

Update: full mission demo. It shows that Slugg is a Nosferatu Thinblood. I expect that the final game will have more models for goons. Most importantly: BAD DANCING CONFIRMED.

Update again: more mission demos, including this one with commentary from RPS showing a different solution.

Cyberpunk 2077

Cyberpunk 2077... releasing in April 2020, the year the second edition was set... now with added Keanu Reeves.

I believe the appropriate response is... “Whoa.”

(Although I remember Johnny Silverhand looking more like Simon Le Bon...)

Agents Of S.T.O.N.E.D.

Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. goes even more full Guardians Of The Galaxy in its light space opera half of season six, as our heroes eat what looks like Space Tortelloni and end up space opera-ed out.

"Flick"

Favourite tiny in-joke in the in-joke storm of the What We Do In The Shadows Vampiric Council: they kept the True Blood flick sound as Evan bares her fangs.

Donald Duck

Happy 85th birthday to Donald Duck, the breakout star of European Disney licensed comics.

The Dust Settles

No session tonight, no session next week... tempted to have time pass in-game as well.

Anomaly Detected

Got to Cymera and got Gar Hanrahan to autograph my copy of The Gutter Prayer and... the Primeval rulebook.

How to make a game movie?

The Sequelisers takes a look at video game movies, and why video game movies rarely work. Basically, so many of the narrative-centric ones that get adapted are often like existing films and stories but interactive, and main characters are often purposefully vague.

They mention the original Tomb Raider movies but not the reboot, which I think works, because it’s based on a very story-centric reboot game. (And the Weird Level is a lot lower, too.)

By comparison, board game movies have a much higher hit rate, because there are like two, and while Battleship is decidedly meh, Clue is fantastic.

And of course then there’s the question of RPG movies. The big RPGs are often mashups of genres, and are even more lacking in central protagonists because that’s pretty much the point of RPGs.

Fringe 2019

The Edinburgh Fringe brochure is out, and the results are as follows:

Hamlet 1, Macbeth 3.

D-Day

D-Day was seventy-five years ago today. One of the defining battles of the Western Front. A story often retold, and always worth retelling.

Scion 2 is out in the World

Scion second edition, launch for the Storypath System, is now in POD and PDF. (Also with fiction by DIE creator Kieron Gillen.)

DIE RPG

An open beta of the RPG for DIE, the comic about getting pulled into an RPG, by creator Kieron Gillen.

Coteries Of New York

Vampire: The Masquerade - Coteries of New York is a newly announced computer game, which looks to be a CYOA style thing, due this autumn.

Magic: The Gathering Animated

Coming sometime soon, a Magic: The Gathering animated series, executive produced by the Russo brothers.

According to Polygon: “writers Henry Gilroy (Star Wars Rebels, Star Wars: The Clone Wars) and Jose Molina (The Tick, Jordan Peele’s Weird City) serving as showrunners. Yoriaki Mochizuki (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse) is on board as supervising director and co-executive producer.”

That’s a good roster.

What We Do In The Shadows

What We Do In The Shadows, the series, has reached the halfway point in its BBC 2 premiere, so I can now say...

BAT!

Holst's The Planets

We just watched Holst’s The Planets With Professor Brian Cox, recorded on the centenary of its first performance and shown tonight due to his big science series also called The Planets.

And wow, there is a lot of it in the Star Wars score. And a bit in Alien, and a moment of the end of Jupiter in Raiders Of The Lost Ark as the open the Well of Souls. And...

Need a creepy folk song?

Need a theme tune for a folk horror game or something? Via Warren Ellis, Watching You by Sproatly Smith.

June

Happy birth month to me. Happy Pride month! Happy Tabletop Day!