Apocalypse World 2

One of the most influential RPGs of the last decade, Apocalypse World is kicking a second edition. Do I love everything about it? No. Do I think Playbooks are nice way to deal with character classes and pregens? Sure.

Wargame design, by the author of Designing Board Wargames

Author and designer Professor George Phillies presents a series of lectures on how (board) wargames work, passing other games including RPGs as they come up, notably talking about adventures in part two.

Thanks to VictorVonDoom for the link.

The voices of Batman and the Joker are back!

A new Justice League animated series, eleven-minute episodes focusing on action, with Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill as is only right.

The first event for the new Vampire: The Masquerade

End Of The Line is a Nordic-style LARP, with a new light system and no required familiarty with the World Of Darkness, part of a convention in Helsinki:

You know you have made it if you are on the guest list for the 'The Line'. Elusive. Illegal. The club is the place to be in the Helsinki nightlife. These are the parties you only hear rumours about. The rich and the poor mix with the criminal and the insane. Here are more drugs, weirder sex, cooler dance moves and better music than most can handle. The club moves from location to location to elude the police. This time it will be held at a closed insane asylum in the centre of the city. 

The Line has two simple rules: If you want to do something, do it! If you hold back, you will not be invited again! So you better make sure you give everything this night.

You know The Line is a dangerous place. It looks like a squat. All guests might not leave the party alive. But that does not matter. The only thing that matters is that you are on the list! You cannot wait. This will be the most exciting night of your life.

Sixty players, twenty playing vampires. Plenty of room for players not familiar with the setting, and also a reason to keep the Masquerade up even in such suroundings.

As the first official event for the new White Wolf, I wonder if it counts as a statement of intent. Vampires and mortal mixing socially in an environment where the vampires can play a bit fast and loose with the Masquerade - a social-focused game not unlike the first edition intro adventure Baptism By Fire. Mark Rein-Hagen wrote about that recently, incidentally: “I figured almost no one would know how to run a non-adventure or non-detective based Chronicle (this is back in 91 remember) unless I explained how to it.”

We’ll see what happens later on, as it’s also a prologue to the event happening at The Grand Masquerade this autumn, the biggest dedicated WoD and Vampire LARP event in the world. This is also mentioned in this interview where Martin and Tobias discuss some of their plans and ideas.

What do you do with "what do you do?"

Justin Achilli on opportunities for action and how to get and gauge responses from players.

Pugmire

Pugmire launches on Kickstarter. Help get it to gamers - and to bookstores!

Gladiator

Arena Rex 35mm gladiator miniatures game. Three to six fighters per side - an army I could actually finish painting! Of course, gladiatorial combat simulation games aren’t new.

As I have mentioned before, heroes forced into the arena to fight and/or die is one of the classic bits of genre fiction. Gladiators are the biggest and flashiest example in our history, up to Spartacus nearly bringing the whole empire down.

It happens to Conan and John Carter, Han Solo and Chewbacca very early in the original Marvel comics and then Luke, Obi-Wan, Anakin and Padme on screen... It’s a popular side plot for prison adventures too.

RPGs have featured these in adventures, and Eternal Contenders is all about gladiators and their managers - following the boxing-based Contenders, as stories of fighting sports use a lot of the same tropes throughout. There’s a Hillfolk series pitch for it as well.

Ever sent your PCs into the arena? If not, why not? (I never did in TWH because Angel did that one already.)

Captain Eo

Thanks to a rather thorough article in the new issue of Empire that took longer to read than the film did to watch, I was pointed to the chance to see Captain Eo, the collaboration between George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola, Disney parks and Michael Jackson.

Some observations:

No singing for ten minutes. Then all the singing. The robots turn into musical instruments - which is actually a nice idea for a sci-fi band. The crew being all aliens and robots except Jackson is pretty cool. The designs are fun too, as is his costume, as discussed by toy designer Troy McKie.

WHOA the Borg are totally out of this. Seriously.

The trench scene is pure look-this-is-a-3D-movie as well as totally Star Wars.

Rick Baker made the butterfly gopher thing. (He had previously worked with Jackson on the Thriller video.)

Jupiter Ascending

Last mentioned here about a year ago about the concept art, I finally got around to watching Jupiter Ascending, with managed expectations, and... yeah.

Like The Matrix it has a secret culture running the world we live in, influencing it and its legends, just in this case a beautiful baroque space opera empire instead of creepy spider-y robots.

It also has these villains harvesting people... though unlike The Matrix sequels it remembers to address this at the end. So one point to it there!

Like Neo, and Harry Potter, and Luke Skywalker, and so on, Jupiter finds that her sucky normal life is not the only life she could have - it’s been pointed out that it’s a take on the secret princess narrative in particular because she’s offered wealth and power and parties and a big wedding because of her genetics rather than a battle.

Would have liked more of the undercover cyberpunky types and stealth aliens on Earth because I like that kind of thing.

Would have also liked more of the Space Opera NOW happening around Jupiter because I like that kind of thing too.

Would have really liked it if Jupiter had at some point in that super-cool chase flying around Chicago said to get away from Chicago as lots of the near-miss blaster shots were blowing up buildings and cars and probably killing people. I admit to being much more aware of this since Marvel started making rescuing and defending bystanders such a prominent feature. In this case it would have given her something to do besides hang on. Something she needs a lot more of.

Also, Draconians. And less impressively, gimps.

Finally, a spoiler block. While everything else was either spoiled or predictable, very few reviews mentioned my favourite bit - which feels glaringly out of place in amongst everything else.

As if by Magic...

$75,000 worth of Magic: The Gathering cards stolen from games store. Proooobably someone who knew what they were going for. Police investigating include a Magic player who is normally assigned to domestic burglary cases.

The Walking Dead miniatures game

Coming soon from Mantic via Kickstarter, and based on the comics.

So if you want non-comic-style miniatures of the survivors from the TV series there are... oh, nine or ten companies making them unofficially, not least Zombicide, Hasslefree and Studio.

And Macfarlane Toys making them officially but in a weird two-inch scale in limited playsets. And Gentle Giant in army men scale.

Update: Kickstarter is up, revealing various panicking humans.

Heroines in sensible shoes

A Kickstarter for seven female dungeoneer miniatures in practical clothing. Nice that they exist, sad that they should be newsworthy.

The Eight Faces Of Tutankhuman

“King Tutankhamun: 8 Face Charges in Connection With Restoration of Pharaoh’s Mask, Officials Say”

What’s a Face Charge and why does his mask have eight of them?

... Oh, wait. Never mind.

Besides being a demonstration of how not to use capitalisation in a sentence, it got me thinking about masks having mystical powers. The golden mask of a king gives an aura of command while the mask of an animal grants its perceptions, that kind of thing. A blank mask makes you anonymous beyond simply disguising you, no-one can recognise your voice or gait either. There’s a lot of this in various mystical traditions, but the only time I recall seeing it in gaming was in a Fighting Fantasy book. Hmm. Could be a good hook for a superhero or villain?

For Whovians, see The Six Faces Of Delusion, now most famous as a Doctor Who Magazine quiz joke.

Snow, again

A year on from Snowmageddon, another blizzard is messing up the US east coast. It’s six years since we had the Big Freeze here, and my reaction to snow is still to restock my kitchen.

I’ve discussed weather as a dramatic device and game effect before, and weird weather in particular, and yes, both these articles have the same title. So how about a long period of particularly harsh conditions? Being stuck at the Arctic or Antarctic, or the equator, on Hoth or Tatooine? Developing standard responses to the extremes, but getting in trouble when they fail...

The Tenth, er, Ninth Planet

This may be a thing. A whole new planet hiding out at the edge of the solar system.

Pluto being reclassified means we shouldn’t call it Planet X. And that alone is surely reason enough to reclaim Pluto!

"His face... is the best."

Undercover Boss Kylo Ren outtakes.

Insider claims Rey was deliberately excluded from Star Wars merchandising. Not cool.

Romeo And/Or Juliet

A Shakespearean gamebook, a follow-up to To Be Or Not To Be, coming this summer. May contain slightly more robots than the folio text.

Always in motion is the future...

Star Wars Episode VIII aims for Christmas 2017, not May.

Had to go complete the set of viewing options and see The Force Awakens in IMAX to deal. HAD TO.

And meanwhile, a new fan film. Jakku?

Happy birthday Buffy!

Today is Buffy The Vampire Slayer’s in-character 35th birthday, going by the date most often referenced of the three she has on-screen thanks to I Robot, You Jane messing up some displays.

Celebrate with killer severed arms, strength-sapping poison murder tests, Fyarl demon curses... maybe just a card.