Danny Elfman

Knowing Danny Elfman’s work mostly through film, his violin concerto Eleven Eleven had me thinking of scenes in various places, as well as the second part of the concert being from his film work - Eleven Eleven solo violinist Sandy Cameron appears here as she did tonight in the Edward Scissorhands suite.

(Oh, and the encore was the extended theme from The Simpsons.)

Patron Saints

Happy St. Andrew’s Day!

As well as patron saint of Scotland, St. Andrew is patron saint of (among other things) Greece, Russia, singers, fishmongers, women seeking to have children, and sore throats. That’s quite a varied portfolio, and might be hard to design a Scion character around. Many saints have a lot less going on.

Does your setting have saints, household gods, or other patron beings for narrow fields like this?

Tales From Black Friday 2019

It can’t be bargained with. Have a safe one!

Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving, if applicable, US readers!

(Note to self: Thanksgiving episode in a US-based game.)

The road goes ever on

Cubicle 7 is to cease publishing Middle-earth games after a licence contract issue and The Lord Of The Rings second edition of The One Ring will not be published. This is a real shame after an excellent run, and the well-received Adventures In Middle-earth spinoff game, but so it is with licences. (Now would be a good time to grab PDFs during the Black Friday sale.)

Faith Erin Hicks on Anakin Skywalker

Faith Erin Hicks is rewatching Star Wars and has some thoughts on Anakin’s origin. The Jedi do not come off very well.

The sound of The Mandalorian

Ludwig Göransson on scoring the series as well as the influence of Star Wars, including his own introduction to classical music through John Williams.

Hmm.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer is a roleplaying game written by CJ Carella and published by Eden Studios. I believe it was based on a TV show.
The Onyx Path at Twitch after a mention of Willow in relationship to hubris.

How to avoid a filler episode

Might have hit the build-up to the Sounds Like Hell season finale a week early. Which is better than a week late, but still. Hmm.

Advice so far includes more twists and Christmas episodes.

And a note from Morgue:

Desert Island Discworld

Al Kennedy of House To Astonish presents Desert Island Discworld, a new podcast where a guest talks about a Discworld novel and an assortment of related matters.

My next Star Wars game

Why am I thinking about my next Star Wars game? No reason...

Well away from any modern canon (Old Republic or a future era maybe) with the PCs as the characters who get the biggest space on the poster. Big space things exploding. Maybe a bit of Force. Some straightforward high-stakes action, and some personal issues in there too.

Precursor artefacts

Weird Old Things In SPAAAAACE. Of course I threw in a psychic beacon that might be important long-lost data or might be a love story or a recipe.

Great Monsters Of Buffy

A list of great monster moments from the Buffyverse, by Slayer author Kiersten White:

Yes yes I know I forgot the Halloween fear demon but otherwise please enjoy this top-ish ten list of Buffy’s Monsters of the Week

Note: ends with The Body.

Frozen II

Return to the world of Frozen, where the question of where Elsa’s power comes from will be answered... or will it?

Either way, it’s an unusual setup, with a possibly magical superpower front and centre in a world with magic otherwise at the edges, a superhero with no villains on her level...

Mandalorian toy rumours

While you have no doubt been spoiled about a specific character who appears in The Mandalorian, I won’t name names of who you might be able to get a toy of for Christmas, months before we’re supposed to be able to watch the show. Ah well.

What Renfield Does In The Shadows

Universal continues making monster movies... and plans a Renfield comedy in a... shadowy sort of style.

The Watch casting news

Anna Chancellor as the Patrician, James Fleet as Ridcully and Ruth Madeley as Dibbler, among other announcements.

Iannucci... In.... Space!

Avenue 5, a space cruise comedy from Armando Iannucci, with Hugh Laurie as the captain.

Sometimes player and GM ideas fit together just right.

In this case, I had some of the reveals planned, but not the method. Or the emotional fallout...

And it really helps to have plot ideas in your back pocket on a night like this.

Alien Invasions

I just watched Independence Day for the first time since seeing the sequel, and the new BBC War Of The Worlds starts tomorrow. So now I want to run an alien invasion game again.

Probably not a long one. Start it in the present, minimal twists.

My last game along these lines was The Stars On Fire where the invasion targeted a future human civilisation, so the setting was unfamiliar too. Not counting invasions in superhero games and the like, where they aren't the focus.