RPGaDay2023 23) COOLEST looking RPG product / book

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23) COOLEST looking RPG product / book

2014 answer: Nobilis second edition. That’s still a high bar.

And the Shadowrun action figure game.

And knowing that we almost got Werewolf: The Apocalypse figures after the much less toy-friendly Vampire: The Masquerade ones, I remain deep sad.

Related 2022 question for favourite cover, showing Nobilis again as well as Vampire, Traveller and Pendragon.

And recently I like the Tricorder box set for Star Trek Adventures.

One word prompt

23) COOLEST

How much does the rule of cool apply in your games? For me it varies but tends to fairly high. I love getting enthusiastic about a moment or move and having it work.

Dave Chapman

Runeslinger

Star Wars: Ahsoka

Star Wars: Ahsoka begins with two episodes, starting on Tuesday evening in the US and therefore 2 a.m. here.

You’re not required to know everybody from The Clone Wars and Rebels (as well as Ahsoka’s live-action appearances) but it sure helps.

(Some specific Rebels nostalgia in amongst the general yay-Star-Wars. The Lothal Pointless Highway returns!(

I’m glad Sabine’s around because this is skewing towards Serious People With Lightsabres.

Clancy Brown gets to reprise his Rebels role, which is nice.

The new non-Sith are interesting.

E-Wings!

And the E-Wing astromech is based on the original R2-D2 toy that doesn’t look like R2-D2!

Thanks to Brawndo on RPGnet for the picture

The first episode could, I think, have survived being cut to forty-five minutes. The second rattled along a bit better for me. Maybe a bit too quickly in one plot point!

Being set in the New Republic era, which is now doomed not to be the well-deserved happy ending of the original trilogy by the sequels setting up the First Order, there’s a clash of expectations with the post-Imperial corruption and the Republic having been restored by the heroes of the Rebellion. Which is addressed here by having a couple of said heroes questioning some cynical practicality and immediately finding a nest of Imperial loyalists to fight. Which is funny, but kind of highlights my concern.

The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde

The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (2023) is a film built from recording a 2022 play which had some film elements in place already. It’s a pretty good and pretty close adaptation, mostly adjusting the central character of Utterson as Hyde intrudes on his life.

Hyde himself is mostly a nightmare figure of silhouettes, close-ups and reverb.

(They pronounce it Jek-ill despite moving the setting to Edinburgh, but never mind.)

RPGaDay2023 22) Best SECONDHAND RPG purchase

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22) Best SECONDHAND RPG purchase

2014 answer: an auction purchase, the Dark Harvest art collection.

2023 answer: a non-auction regular second-hand purchase, getting that copy of Marvel SAGA off my wishlist.

One word prompt

22) SECONDHAND

You get the weirdest stuff in second-hand stores. Monkeys’ paws, Mogwai, raspberry berets... These days, try eBay.

Less so charity shops. They generally avoid cursed items.

Friday The 13th: The Series makes it the basis of a case-of-the-week urban fantasy show, and a perfectly workable game concept - you just need a decent-sized list of cursed antiques.

Don't touch anything.

In one notable example in a Buffy play-by-post game, a werewolf accidentally sold her curse, which would have been fine if there hadn’t been an eager buyer waiting...

Dave Chapman

Runeslinger

BLADE at 25

BLADE at 25 at Empire.

What to do

Ideas for next year vague. Not at the weekend, because I have actual at-table groups.

RPGaDay2023 21) Favourite LICENSED RPG

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21) Favourite LICENSED RPG

2014 and possibly forever answer:

In every generation there is a chosen one. She alone will stand against the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness. She is the Slayer.

To the likely surprise of absolutely no-one, Buffy The Vampire Slayer.

It’s a simple system with some nice tricks like Drama Points and encouragement to play something Buffy-ish which is a good fit for my gaming preferences.

Actively getting new stuff in 2023 answer: Star Trek Adventures.

One word prompt

21) LICENSED

Player characters with a licence to kill, or other recognised authority to do Player Character things. Starfleet officers, Green Lanterns, anything with a badge of office. Which raises questions about the use of that power.

The Witcher, for example, brings a specific group marked out to be adventurers and monster fighters in a classic fantasy world. Everybody knows who they are, and everybody has opinions about them as a result.

Dave Chapman

Runeslinger

Another year online

Looks like GEAS will be online only again this year due to a lack of union space at Teviot is redeveloped.

V5 Last Dance 2.04

Tonight in Vampire: The Masquerade - Last Dance, the Keeper of Elysium looked at the band’s setlist for the midwinter gala and made a pertinent suggestion for an encore.

Shiny Toy Guns, Mercy

Only the night will take you home

Only More In The Building?

When asked if there could be more seasons of Only Murders In The Building, co-creator John Hoffman says “As many as they’ll have us for! I really mean it.”

At Screen Rant.

RPGaDay2023 20) Will still play in TWENTY years' time

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20) Will still play in TWENTY years' time

2014 answer: Vampires and superheroes.

And nine years on looking good. At least my skull isn’t decorating a post-apocalypse marauder’s dirtbike yet. Looked pretty likely for a while there in 2020...

One word prompt

20) TWENTY

Twenty is around the “coming of age” rite of passage birthdays like being able to drink at eighteen or twenty-one depending. What rituals does your setting’s culture have for that?

An RPGnet thread mentioned this in relation to adventuring, with a video game called Sable about someone leaving her village to see the world and find her place in it. The thread mentions D&D and Runequest examples, and in reality I know of the Amish and related tradition of Rumspringa.

Dave Chapman

Runeslinger

RPGaDay2023 19) Favourite PUBLISHED adventure

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19) Favourite PUBLISHED adventure

2014 answers: A good list overall, I think.

2023 update: If it’s by Gar Hanrahan it’s worth a look.

One word prompt

19) PUBLISHED

Bookish PC types like wizards, Cthulhu investigators, Watchers and the like might get their names in print. How backstabby is academia in your setting?

Dave Chapman

Runeslinger

RPGaDay2023 18) Favourite game SYSTEM

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18) Favourite game SYSTEM

2014 answers: Storyteller/ing as an overall system, and initiative in Doctor Who as a specific bit.

I remain cool with these answers.

For variety, I can add that I now have a favourite statblock! The Haunted House by Dixie Cochran for They Came From Beyond The Grave!

It's so beautiful.

One word prompt

18) SYSTEM

As I put this on the internet to be found by hashtags, the prompt System suggests hacking. In the big cyberpunk games it’s usually a one-player minigame. I prefer the Leverage approach, with communication back and forth with the team, sometimes needing physical access, and the like.

Dave Chapman

Runeslinger

Chuck Wendig, Black River Orchard

Chuck Wendig, Black River Orchard excerpt, a new horror novel in which a small town is transformed when seven strange trees begin bearing magical apples.

Back when Twitter was a thing, Mr. Wendig would talk about heirloom apples fairly often...

RPGaDay2023 17) FUNNIEST game you've played

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17) FUNNIEST game you've played

2014 answer: The Watch House, the Buffy The Vampire Slayer game my blog is named after. Still true. A group dedicated to amusing each other and a system and setting that let us go wild.

Funnier than the logo suggests

One word prompt

17) FUNNIEST

Funniest take on a serious RPG genre: I don’t know if anybody involved with What We Do In The Shadows has had direct contact with Vampire games, especially LARPs, but I would be shocked if nobody had.

Dave Chapman

Runeslinger

Scott Pilgrim Takes Off Trailer

Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, the animated series with the movie cast doing the voices, looks quite like the comics and sounds quite like the movie. This is not a complaint.

RPGaDay2023 16) Game you WISH you owned

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16) Game you WISH you owned

2014 answer: Marvel SAGA

And thanks be to a large convention bring and buy, my wish has been granted!

So now... hmm. There are various fancy limited editions I know I’ll never do anything with.

One word prompt

16) WISH

In a setting where a wish could work and do anything, it has the power to change lives, wreck campaigns, make GMs twist it so it doesn’t and annoy everybody involved. Something to discuss out of character before dropping into a game. And consider a regular wish-granter among the characters. What restrictions do they have in place?

Perfect for a single episode if it gets undone (with possible loose ends) at the end though.

Dave Chapman

Runeslinger

RPGaDay2023 15) Favourite Con MODULE / ONE-SHOT

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15) Favourite Con MODULE / ONE-SHOT

2014 answer to Favourite Convention Game

Supervillains inevitably turning on each other and ghosts sharing a haunted house.

When I talked about this then, it had already been more than a decade since that Wraith game and over twenty years since the Secret Society of Supervillains. That’s staying power. I was talking about the SSoS game with the director of Conpulsion one year and realised it was probably before he was born.

For GMing, I’m pretty much always happy to go to the Nationals and run Buffy. Or something else I guess.

Three word prompt

15) MODULE / ONE-SHOT

(I’ve always been puzzled by the term ‘module’ for adventures.)

So what makes a good one-shot? That depends what it’s for. A night off for a regular group, a demonstration for strangers at a convention, a taster ahead of pitching campaigns, a special occasion like Hallowe’en or Christmas...

But if I have one piece of advice, it’s better to get to a proper ending a bit early than run out of time. Include a scene or fight you can skip if you have to.

Dave Chapman

Runeslinger

RPGaDay2023 14) Favourite CONVENTION purchase

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14) Favourite CONVENTION purchase

2014 answer and still happy with my very heavily signed Grand Masquerade 2011 copy of Vampire: The Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition.

One word prompt

14) CONVENTION

Have you ever run an adventure set at a game convention? Or another event like Comic-Con or a music festival or a sporting championship?

(I remember White Wolf’s World Of Darkness official moderated chat game New Bremen had an in-character convention showcasing their in-universe doppelgangers Black Dog games. There was at least one murder.)

Dave Chapman

Runeslinger

RPGaDay2023 13) Most memorable character DEMISE

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13) Most memorable character DEMISE

2014 answer to Most Memorable Character Death is still the case, really. As noted in the earlier link in that earlier blog link about whether to include death in a given game, one of the things you can do with the narrative currency Drama Points in Buffy The Vampire Slayer is come back from the dead, and if you don’t have enough you can even ‘borrow’ future DPs.

So character deaths entirely by player choice for narrative reasons or in their last session on leaving the game became a thing in The Watch House.

One word prompt

13) DEMISE

There was once a gloomy metal band called Demise. Because of course there was.

Dave Chapman

Runeslinger