Robin Hood in art

Andrew Wyeth’s father N.C. Wyeth illustrated a version of Robin Hood in 1917.

You could put that on to cover of an RPG book today and it would sell it. (The same holds true for his King Arthur illustrations that would work for Pendragon.)

He was a student of Howard Pyle, who wrote and illustrated The Merry Adventures Of Robin Hood, published in 1883 and still in print, a key “adaptation distillation” of the character that codified several tropes along with the likes of Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe, ahead of the films of Douglas Fairbanks and Errol Flynn.

And this could fit into a WFRP book...

I learned about Wyeth’s work through a French documentary on Sky Arts this morning, and now I am telling you.

Tonight is a year since my last face to face session. (And also since I last had my favourite food.) Tiny things compared to many, I know.

Minds Eye Vampire: The Masquerade SRD

MET VTM LARP SRD for short. Enough information to play the current Minds Eye Theatre Vampire: The Masquerade free online. Things I like include varying flaw levels for things like clan weakness severity. 

This also includes rules and developments from the recent update nudging it partialy towards V5, where characters still have Blood Points but now follow V5 in skill and Discipline assignment, and the Tremere weakness models it.

THX 1138 at 50

Before Star Wars, before American Graffiti, George Lucas’s first feature film as director was THX 1138, released on March 11th 1971. It followed an earlier version he made at film school, Electronic Labyrinth.

It’s a chilly dystopian science fiction film - with love at its core.

The blank settings, constant surveillance including confessionals, and characters with ID codes for names and actively repressed sexuality owe a lot to the likes of 1984 and Brave New World.

As well as THX being the name for Lucas’s cinema sound company and 1138 and other references being scattered around the Star Wars films, the Geonosis factory birthplace of the Clone Troopers is a particularly clear callback to this antiseptic clean room of a world.

And a lot of its defining ideas (among others) are played for laughs in Paranoia, so Greg Costikyan and West End Games made an unofficial parody RPG for it before Star Wars. As far as I know they never made an American Graffiti RPG though...

Tales Of The Æon Society!

Tales Of The Æon Society! Audio Archive

The complete audio Adventture! for your listening pleasure.

Your go to adventure formula

What is your go to adventure formula?

Mine:

Someone or something has committed a genre-appropriate crime. There are, let’s say, three useful witnesses, and an opportunity to use powers of detection. The PCs have to investigate rather than go to the authorities because (they are the authorities, there are no authorities, the authorities suspect them, etc.) and they have to keep it quiet in case the culprit tries to (escape, attack, do something else) and the authorities if any take interest.

It has room for sneaking around the scene to look for clues, being threatened by someone who doesn’t want the crime solved, and a chase or fight at the end. Can work with elegant country houses, inner city mean streets, dingy space stations...

Buffy at 24

And I watched Once More With Feeling on Star.

Player Character Conditional

An observation from Gar Hanrahan on Twitter:

Roleplaying games need a special tense, the player character conditional. 

"The kingdom is doomed to fall into ruin" vs "the kingdom is doomed to fall into ruin (unless the player characters do something about it)".

Happy International Women's Day

Coming soon, the video of the GEAS workshop on and with women GMs, much of it about gender in TTRPG groups.

Highlander

Highlander premiered 35 years ago, showing immortals among us fighting for the Prize.

It spawned sequels (one of which we do not speak of) and TV series, and still gets games and toys now, despite its very one-and-done ending, as well as making Katanas & Trenchcoats an urban fantasy aesthetic.

(Also check out Incarnate. I am partially responsible.)

And it mostly still stands up, thanks to some performances happy to throw everything in, not being too rooted in the 80s, and the weirdness of its international casting having been weird from the very beginning.

The immortal feeling lost in the modern world and trying not to get involved, the handful of friends he can never really be close to, the flashbacks to the pain of leaving his mortal life behind, it all comes together nicely.

And the sketched-in background with no good answers to why this is happening gave just enough to work, while making people want more. It was inevitably followed by several different answers and none of them good, but that doesn’t mean more stories in a world like this couldn’t work.

V5 Nobody's Home 1.16 needle drop

When you have a nightclub where Iggy Pop once played, and add a ghost...

Although I am horribly proud of also using Dancing On My Own by Robyn.

I’m in the corner, watching you kiss her

I’m right over here, why can’t you see me?

The Barbarian And The Troll

The Barbarian and the Troll Is the Kid-Friendly Red Sonja With Puppets You Didn’t Know You Needed

A warrior hero and her annoying bard sidekick... but puppets, via Nickelodeon.

WandaVision: The Series Finale

No really, it’s called The Series Finale.

Watch the credits. And keep watching.

GM's Day

March Fourth! Celebrate GMs! Take advantage of the sale at DriveThru! Roll a Notice check!

The Sequelisers

Having not checked in for a while, The Sequelisers took on The Crow: City Of Angels and therefore assorted Crow sequels and a lot of fantasy casting, Prometheus and Alien prequels, and it really took them until season seven to do Queen Of The Damned, without doing the tag team multiple sequel versions from the early years.

Dialogue save, probably for Vampire

This life wants to make you a monster. Will you let it?

World Of Darkness Stories

What is World Of Darkness Stories? I can make some guesses.

Edit: And I was nearly right.

It’s an ongoing collection of short stories and hooks, on social media starting with Facebook and Instagram. And for no-account types, Tumblr.

Also, a developer blog from Justin Achilli on the Vampire clans.

ALIENS: Fireteam

Another demonstration that ALIEN and ALIENS play differently, a new ALIENS game! ALIENS: Fireteam is a co-op shooter with marines invading a hive decades after ALIENS.

International Wheelchair Day

Today is International Wheelchair Day, and Hero Forge chose a good day to introduce wheelchairs, with three customisable options. ANVL was ahead there as well as having regular chair options which HF still doesn’t. Still, this is good.

St. David's Day

A very dashing dragon for the St. David’s Day Google Doodle.