The Watch House

19 - Why has your favourite game stayed with you?

I basically answered this for Buffy The Vampire Slayer on Day 16: a much loved origin, a pretty simple system with some good encouragements for genre-friendly play, and a wide-open setting that can roll with a wide variety of adventures across its Weird Level.

So for Vampire: The Masquerade... okay, I’ve answered this already as well. My kind of dark setting focused on an interest since I was a gloomy kid, a system I could grasp, and an emphasis on character plots rather than missions while still having room for them.

Both have systems I can deal with as a GM and include features that support their genres, settings with a clash of the mundane and fantastical, and excuses to compile mood-friendly playlists.

Thursday, 18 August 2022

Bloodhunt Soundtrack

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodhunt soundtrack now available to stream and buy physical copies too. Interview with composerr Atanas Valkov.

One D&D

One D&D is a revamp of fifth edition but not a new edition despite having all three core rulebooks revised, coming in 2024 and starting playtesting today at DNDBeyond.

Like the X-Box I guess?

(Not that fans of Vampire: The Masquerade 1, 2, R, 20th, 5 can talk.)

The digital bundling and VTT shown in the annoucement video looks nice. And Planescape is coming back, which fans are cautiously hopeful about.

Maskwitches of Forgotten Doggerland

Maskwitches of Forgotten Doggerland from Jon Hodgson, a story game of mesolithic magic illustrated by Midjourney.

#RPGaDay2022 18 - Where is your favourite place to play?

18 - Where is your favourite place to play?

Teviot Row House at the University Of Edinburgh, the oldest purpose built student union in the world. It has nice rooms, nice chairs, several bars, a basement mini-nightclub which has come in handy for Vampire LARPs, its own library (now with a bar added which makes it look much less like a Watchers Council meeting hall, sadly) and at least one window with no apparent corresponding room.

As the most frequent home of uni RPG society GEAS and its annual convention Conpulsion, this is where The Watch House began, and the décor helped set the mood. (Although individual sessions that overran often ended at a nearby pub.)

Not a castle. But probably defensible in a siege.

And if you can get the Middle Reading Room, with its one big table, all to yourself, do so.

This room. Give it to me. Now.

She-Hulk 1.01: A Normal Amount Of Rage

Marvel’s She-Hulk: Attorney at Law

1.01: A Normal Amount Of Rage

When I was a kid, She-Hulk was one of the features in the black and white weekly Hulk reprint comics, and back then she was the Savage She-Hulk though she could still speak and reason better than He-Hulk. The switch to the comedy-centric Sensational She-Hulk was a few years later, and the move to mixing superheroing with a lawyer focus is the most recent setup.

The CG look works well, showing it off with front and centte comparison with Bruce. This week is mostly origin, as Jen tells us up front. “It’s true, I am a Hulk. And I’m guessing you’re not gonna be able to focus on this fun lawyer show until you know all about that.” The fourth wall breaking comes from the Sensational era.

Little bit I loved, the restroom solidarity.

“To a good time during a hard time.”

Story structure note, it was at one point going to be about one trial.

Mid-credits joke! (Watch the credits anyway, it’s nice and they’re fun.)

Wednesday, 17 August 2022

Onyx Path announcement at 10

Ten years ago today we announced ourselves at Gen Con! Thank you for joining us for these Ten Years, Many Worlds, One Path!

Onyx Path on Twitter

#RPGaDay2022 17 - When is your favourite game set?

17 - Past, Present, or Future? When is your favourite game set?

It didn’t take long for me to gravitate towards modern-ish games, starting with superheroes.

I haven’t run a traditional medieval-style game in a long time, and it’s been a while since anything futuristic either. Occasional Star Wars.

I’d go for a 20s-30s pulp Adventure! game with player interest, or “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away”...

But the Vampire family of games and Buffy both juxtapose the supernatural with a world that looks a lot like ours, and adding a different setting era can take away from that, as well as preventing Buffy’s mangling of pop culture references and the like.

My favourite picture from d20 Modern, by Ryan Sook.
See resulting Buffy adventure hook.

And for variety, I have another blog for a setting where the answer would be “Yes”.

Tuesday, 16 August 2022

Universal Halloween Horror Nights 2022

Gizmodo looks at the full roster of Universal Halloween Horror Nights in Florida alongside The Weeknd Nightmare and some of the events not based on movies sound like they’d make good movies, or indeed RPG one-shots. They certainly have more backstory than a three-minute walkthrough with people in masks jumping out at you needs: several have actual short stories attached.

(edit: And there are different stories at Hollywood.)

#RPGaDay2022 16 - your perfect game?

16 - What would be your perfect game?

A fun setting with a lot you can do, possibly based on a favourite media thing, coupled with a not too crunchy system that still supports the tone. Okay, it’s basically Buffy.

In every generation there is a Chosen One.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer isn’t 100% perfect for me as a system - I prefer the 2D6 distribution of the Vortex system, some of the damage multiplying is fiddly, Life Points don’t do much compared to classic Unisystem, and Sorcery models Willow’s rapid rise so well it’s game-breaky - but it gets the job done very well for me. And it led to my near as any to perfect series.

The Watch House was the ideal mix of subject and players bouncing off each other. The kitchen sink setting of the Buffyverse definitely helped, letting us throw in bizarre episode ideas and everybody running with them, as well as the jokey asides that would often be derailing out of character comments in most games being at home in dialogue in character, but this one went big mostly down to the mix of players willing to jump in to the drama and humour, which isn’t something you can generally plan.

A slayer slays, a Watcher...
Watches?

I’ve run games since that had moments like it, and I’d love to play something that got that involving.

Short of the Holodeck becoming readily available, something like that.

Monday, 15 August 2022

#RPGaDay2022 15 - Who would you like to GM for you?

15 - Who would you like to Gamemaster for you?

There are the obvious celebrity GM choices. Having sat with Jason Carl at World Of Darkness Berlin where he discussed V5 setting elements and presented the attendees with a plot hook, I’d take more.

If we can go through history, Sir Terry Pratchett.

More personally, there are some folks I know that I missed chances to play with. I got to play one session of Steve Dee’s Night Watch, the Buffy game I lifted the TWH premise from. And I would like to play something like Morgue’s Providence Summer, for example.

And if I could get more of the current generation of players GM that would be good too. Bring on the future of RPGs!

Runeslinger and week 3 on video, with guest host Lily the puppy

Sunday, 14 August 2022

Demons Demons Demons

In tonight’s Buffy session we discover JP’s a part time demon.

JP: Thanks guys. Sorry I freaked you out.

Willis: Only a lot.

#RPGaDay2022 14 - Suggestion Sunday

14 - Suggestion Sunday: Roll 1d8+1, and tag that many friends and suggest a new RPG to try.

I’m not really one for tagging people, but if anyone wants to volunteer, leave a Like on Twitter.

Our hosts both recommend one RPG rather than one RPG per tagged person which is what I was thinking. In that case, Dread for a highly thematic and easy system, depending on player skill. (Also tricky to do online and not possible for some players.)

Saturday, 13 August 2022

#RPGaDay2022 13 - change the way you started?

13 - How would you change the way you started RPGing?

I wish I hadn’t started with a near TPK, and I still regret running from the monster. Though it taught me not to inflict mass death on brand new players.

And getting a second session as a player before taking over as GM would have been nice too. But again I learned from that.

So one thing I would really change is that after that first summer with five girls in the game, I wish my high school group had had any. I could have done more to make a mixed group happen, but I doubt it would have gone far.

Red Rose

BBC Three, back on TV, returns to its occasional role providing horror and other genre shows with Red Rose, starting Monday, described by its creators as like Scream or The Ring but set in Bolton.

“At first, the app seems like a peculiarly helpful mindfulness assistant, but before long it is controlling Rochelle’s life, an omniscient force able to help her out or terrify her with threatening visions, via the phone’s camera.”

Nope

Jordan Peele’s third film, Nope, is the most comedic and least grim by quite some way. The most gore is in the first five minutes, and the metaphorical effect is much less central.

Fun is had.

I could tell you more but it’s a big old spoiler.

And we get Michael Wincott...

#RPGaDay2022 12 - Why did you start RPGing?

12 - Why did you start RPGing?

I was that kind of kid.

And I was the right age for the peak of the gamebook boom.

If I hadn’t been directly introduced to gamebooks I might have found them through 2000 A.D. advertising, or later through their Sláine gamebook story or spinoff magazine Dice Man or the official Judge Dredd RPG or...

But I was already in by then.

After starting high school, I had a couple of ~~poor suckers~~ friends drawn in too. They can blame me.

And I stuck with it because of the interactivity, and the immediate feedback of the group, as well as the genres that most of the games played into. Remember that this was a time where if you got an episode of Doctor Who and a sci-fi cartoon on TV that was a good week. This was something that could be mine.

Thursday, 11 August 2022

#RPGaDay2022 11 - living in a setting

11 - If you could live in a game setting, where would it be?

Obvious bias here, but the Trinity Continuum setting is an upbeat science fiction spin on our world, with smart, brave, well-meaning people dedicated to making it a better place and making real progress doing so, with a little luck on their side as it’s a real thing in the metaphysics of the setting.

The Neptune Foundation, illustration by Leif Jones

Sure, it has villainous groups, strange phenomena, creepy aliens messing with our psionic potential and in a few years it’ll have superhuman celebrities who nearly destroy the world, but you can’t have everything.

And I could help without being called upon to save the world myself on a regular basis.

Hanging at the Bronze or the Succubus Club would be cool, but the life of a PC there would be stressful and as an NPC I’d be killed by a haunted photograph at the gallery or something.

I would also be tempted to live in some cosy games like Chuubo’s Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine but that seems like cheating as I’ve never run them.