Diana Jones 2022 finalists

The Diana Jones Award 2022 finalists:

Across RPGSEA, a website and newsletter promoting Southeast Asian games

Ajit George, an activist advocating for a more representative hobby games industry

Haunted West, an epic weird west RPG with a focus on marginalized people

Mothership, a stunning space horror RPG fueled by its community of contributors

Glass Onion

The new Knives Out mystery has a title, Glass Onion - a reference to a Beatles song written to mess with fans who read too much into the lyrics.

Also announced yesterday, Paddington In Peru.

Saturnalia character selection

The Vampire: The Masquerade 5 Nordic LARP Saturnalia now has a preview level of its character selection system online.

Developing ideas used in Enlightenment In Blood, it builds by character type, major allegiance, specific faction, character idea within that group and goals. It’s a good example of a system for one-shot character creation for LARPs and the like.

It’s also a big pile of NPC and faction ideas.

Full coteries of half a dozen vampires with agendas and specific roles, Hunter cells and wild card werewolves too. Add some names and other details and you’ve got the makings of a city.

For example, I swiped the clashing Anarch factions from Enlightenment for later tabletop games, including one of the coterie concepts, as well as the first look at the Church of Caine.

I’m already tempted to use the vampire Krewe in a New Orleans based game.

Starfield

Starfield, the new space opera video game from the company behind Skyrim and Fallout, gets a longish preview ahead of its 2023 release.

The ships and bases mostly look sort of grottily industrial in an Alien or Firefly way with some shinier Alliance areas, with lots of shooting at alien creatures and pirates on the ground and space dogfights, while sounding more optimistic and Star Trek with hopeful music and a cooperative group looking at a plot involving Mysterious Alien Artefacts.

The standout visual moment for me was the Constellation group HQ being a library with wood paneling, comfy armchairs and portraits on the walls, a charming retro aesthetic for an explorers’ society compared to the shiny Starfleet areas elsewhere in the city. This says something about me as well as them, as someone who likes the Library at Teviot.

I’m very tempted to steal that for the Aeon Trinity.

Onyx Path Convention news

Trinity Continuum: Aegis, Infernal Exalted, helping the Bodhana Group with a game called Branch Riders, and a new Storypath fantasy game called The World Below.

Summer

I didn’t get zero players for summer, so that’s nice. Thanks Erich!

The only ones more than half full had reserved spaces.

there is a light at the end of the world

io9 talks to momatoes about a two-player game, rebuilding lighthouses and the Diana Jones Emerging Designer Award.

GEAS Summer pitches

Six games at current count (now seven), one mine, none D&D. No WoD either - I could help with that but I don’t really want to run two games a week and I need a break from it.

You may also notice my pitch has no premise. I have options.

Onyx Path Convention

Onyx Path Convention begins tonight. (Times Eastern, so add 5)

Ken And Robin Talk About Stuff 500

Ken And Robin Talk About Stuff for the 500th time.

The science of sleep

New mattress. Decent night’s sleep. Bloody enormous thing, though. No metal springs. Arrived in a roll.

In every generation there is a Chosen One...

Guess what I just offered to GM over the summer.

Zola Jesus, Into The Wild

How can love be misguided when your heart learns to beat?

The last bit starting around 2.53 is bluesier than I was expecting.

Unused JJ Abrams idea available

Demimonde, announced in 2018, is now officially not happening as a TV series. So if yuo want to do portal SF or fantasy with an awkward family dynamic, have at it.

Royal Witches Flying Corps

Royal Witches Flying Corps, a webcomic by Will Quinn of Daily Bunny fame, puts witches on broomsticks into a WWI-ish air war. Influenced by Ghibli style animation and with a YA cast. (And a special guest bunny.) Today it reaches the end of the prologue and the start of the main story.

Hunter: The Reckoning

Hunter: The Reckoning for World Of Darkness 5 is now available in PDF, free for hardback preorder buyers. Looking forward to hearing how it is.

6000 posts!

6000 posts here at TWH, and what do we have?

RPGs at 1058. Vampire at 1029. Events, a catchall for news and other stuff, at 1005. Films and TV nearly there are 984 and 964. Star Wars at 424, exactly double Star Trek at 212. This, perhaps aptly, putting The Watch House at 300.

Ms. Marvel 1.01: Generation Why

Ms. Marvel

1.01: Generation Why

That was adorable.

Very Scott Pilgrim-y and also fairly Turning Red.

Mid-credits scene!

Closest in tone to the MCU Spider-Man movies, complete with doodling on the credits but here it gets into the show as well.

Meet the Khans in this early early clip.

Bonus review from Malala Yousafzal

And an observation at the end of the episode...

Obi-Wan Kenobi Part IV

Obi-Wan Kenobi Part IV was exciting, weird, at one point ghoulish and at another hilarious.

World Oceans Day

World Ocean Day, 8th of June. Sign a petition!