The Black List 2023

The 2023 Black List of screenplays not currently in production. The A.V. Club looks at some highlights including the one about the disastrous Spider-Man musical. 2023 in particular seems like it would be a good year to buy some of these.

Although one of them is already a classic episode of Leverage. And it’s probably a Mike Flanagan series late for a dark comedy version of The Masque Of The Red Death. One of them sounds a bit like Talk To Me and indeed Flatliners, but both of those worked so why not? And I have my suspicions about what the one called Blood Rush about a gang overlord who may not be human might be about. But I’d certainly go see Please Come Back, about a couple who raise the dead for a living.

Adventure Calendar 2023 12: Warhammer

Adventure Calendar 2023

12: Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay

I’ve done Warhammer midwinter and all already. But is mangling of history, myth and other fantasy stories means it wouldn’t be hard to do again.

A Mondstille Carol

A horrible old rich person claims that his house is haunted by spirits reminding him of his wrongdoing. What’s really going on? May involve regular spirits, a curse cast by surviving victims, Shallya trying to save a soul, Daemons of Law, business rivals Scooby-Dooing the whole thing, heroic con artists...

Adventure Calendar 2023 11: Monsters And Other Childish Things

Adventure Calendar 2023

11: Monsters And Other Childish Things

Monsters And Other Childish Things is about children with connections to terrible monsters, which may or may not be done lightly, by default closer to the spooky humour reboot of Stanley And His Monster than something serious like A Monster Calls, I think.

For Christmas, that suggests Gremlins maybe?

I’ve Got Krampus In My Basement

A kid-friendly horror comedy setup where a kid finds a monstrous thing in need of help around the festive season. May involve a rampage across town during a holiday parade.

Adventure Calendar 2023 10: Talislanta

Adventure Calendar 2023

10: Talislanta

The only thing I know about Talislanta is that it has no elves.

I presume from context that it’s therefore a fantasy RPG.

And that the pointy-eared humanoids on the covers of several editions must not be elves, I guess.

No Elves

Santa needs your help! All the elves are missing!

Adventure Calendar 2023 9: Mutants & Masterminds

Adventure Calendar 2023

9: Mutants & Masterminds

Having already mentioned the Mutants & Masterminds adventure Crisis On Christmas here both this year and in a general summary of superhero RPG holiday specials, it being one of the big generic superhero RPGs suggests using this slot for a look at the genre. Perhaps from the outside?

What about superhero type action breaking into other genres as part of the seasonal increase in strangeness? Toys and costumes and the like becoming real?

Or the reverse, getting pulled into a comic story? Possibly one about the PCs that gets some important details wrong, as happened to Batman.

Or down-to-earth modern adventurers dealing with someone acting like a Real life Superhero, with or without powers? I’ve jokingly threatened that in Buffy games a few times.

The Holiday Special

A new superhero series is really taking off, maybe a comic by a local creative team or a TV series shot in the city or just a big hit around these parts. And then a masked thief steals the original art / kidnaps the star / makes off with the big store’s shipment of toys for the character. Can real heroes find the real villain responsible?

Battlestar Galactica (2003) at 20

Battlestar Galactica (2003) was a radical reimagining of the then twenty-five-year-old Star Wars But Episodic More Like Star Trek TV series that became a much bigger success in its own right - a big dark drama interspersed with space battles instead of a family show. Polygon wonders if we could do this now in the time of legacy sequels.

Though I feel it fumbled the ending, it was a Hell of a ride along the way. Kind of want to fire up the opening miniseries again.

The Cylons were created by Man.

Or I could radically reimagine something...

Adventure Calendar 2023 8: Mouse Guard

Adventure Calendar 2023

8: Mouse Guard

Not having played Mouse Guard or read the comics, this is going by the impressions that it looks cuter than it reads, and if I were going to have wee mice having adventures, especially at Christmas, it would probably be cute.

So for a game with a suitable Weird Level, like a lot of not-so-dark urban fantasy:

Not A Creature Was Stirring

The characters receive a request for help in a quest from a family of not-quite-talking mice. Are they prepared to go with this?

(And researching this, I discovered that The Muppet Christmas Carol Mouse Family went on to star in a 1995 TV adaptation of Mr. Willowby’s Christmas Tree with Robert Downey Jr.)

Benjamin Zephaniah

Goodnight and thank you.

Adventure Calendar 2023 7: Over The Edge

Adventure Calendar 2023

7: Over The Edge

The surrealist-inspired urban fantasy RPG Over The Edge is set in an island where traditions are actively built and rebuilt, mythological beings might show up at the bar, so...

Wanted: The Second Coming

The Wanted posters all over Al Amarja are probably some kind of PR stunt or something, right? How would you actually put out a bounty on the Second Coming, and why?

Adventure Calendar 2023 6: Feng Shui

Adventure Calendar 2023

6: Feng Shui

There’s plenty of action set against the Christmas season as an ironic backdrop, but Hong Kong action fantasy adventure suggests Lunar New Year as a setting point instead, though I don’t know enough about that to be comfortable making authoritative suggestions.

Feng Shui also has a conflict affecting junctures in time to sway them towards various factions, but that would be another “changing what Christmas is” plot.

Maybe an ass-kicking take on A Christmas Carol instead, since ghosts are among the playable options.

Chains

A spirit sent to do good has been trapped by enemy forces who seek to prevent its mission of hope and redemption. Can you rescue it before midnight?

Mayfair Witches

The second Anne Rice Immortal Universe adaptation Mayfair Witches sneaks onto BBC Two. Like Interview With The Vampire it has a big pilot and then double bills. Unlike Interview With The Vampire I have no idea how it compares to the books and there’s no previous film either. (I believe they’re on the I Also Write Naughty Things side of Rice’s work.)

Adventure Calendar 2023 5: Call of Cthulhu

Adventure Calendar 2023

5: Call of Cthulhu

I could let Gar Hanrahan take this one for me.

I also remember a mythos story (in G.M. magazine, I think) about the overly humanoid Dreamlands god Nodens as Santa. And for Krampus we have Shub-Niggurath who is the worst of all pagan holdovers put together.

Do Not Open

A distant relative sends you a creepy old book around the festive season.

The Static Sea

The Static Sea, an immersive game involving a stay on a lighthouse island in the Bristol Channel. Sounds more like an escape room you can’t escape from for days than a LARP, but.

Adventure Calendar 2023 4: Unknown Armies

Adventure Calendar 2023

4: Unknown Armies

A game about forcing change by sheer will and through altering traditions...

We Wish You

Can the spirit of a season be redirected? Did the cola bottle version win out?

Adventure Calendar 2023 3: Pendragon

Adventure Calendar 2023

3: King Arthur Pendragon

I’ve done this one already because one of the biggest Arthurian stories kicks off at the Christmas court.

But Arthurian trappings can show up in other games in other times and places. I had someone taking a bullet for the sleeping Arthur in Hollow Earth Expedition and borrowed the Knights Of Pendragon idea to play a returned Sir Gawain in ICONS. See also Tim Powers planning a series about Arthur returning in various times of crisis.

In Time Of Greatest Need

A great threat to the nation, and a band of heroes rise from their slumber. And they have to deal with the festive shopping in order to prevent an apocalypse on Christmas morning.

Adventure Calendar 2023 2: Spirit...

Adventure Calendar 2023

2: Sp*r*t *f Th* C*nt*ry

I will spare you my views on this game. But anyway, the spirit of Christmas works as a plot again.

Midnight Of The Century

The darkest night in a hundred years, midwinter with the moon at its furthest, is the night for something terrible to rise.

Adventure Calendar 2023 1: Nobilis

Adventure Calendar 2023

1: Nobilis

I could do this one properly, as Nobilis abilities would suit something like The Spirit Of Christmas and it being threatened. The three ghosts could be Nobles, or a Noble. So could Ignorance and Want. See Hogfather for a suitable threat to the idea itself and the hope it represents, as well as the Mutants & Masterminds adventure Crisis On Christmas where it’s already gone and needs to be restored.

And there’s already a Nobilis / Glitch adventure for this.

Jolly Old Saint Nick

December begins and the Noble of the Returning Sun is missing. A changeable sort who has assumed and shed traditions for centuries, but the sun has to rise...

Adventure Calendar 2023

Adventure Calendar 2023

0: RPG Titles

Of all the Star Wars characters to make into Santa...

For my fifth time doing festive adventure ideas daily (click December 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 in my blog archive) and having done two years of looking at traditions, a year of hooks for specific games and a year based on song titles, this year...

To follow the often random theming of advent calendar illustrations I considered the National Toy Hall Of Fame, but since the default option for any category is 25 I went with Best RPG Core Rulebooks at the RPGnet Index.

Not necessarily agreeing with the RPGnet popular vote which was busiest a few years ago! (Most Rated provides a more realistic cross section of popular games but doesn’t throw out as many curveballs.) Just using this as a random source of titles to inspire ideas for any RPG, unless I actually have an idea for the game in question.

FURIOSA trailer

YES.

Empire says more, noting May 24th.

December

And among other things, World AIDS Day.