Shane MacGowan, 1957-2023

I wrote about Fairytale of New York for the Adventure Calendar last year. I didn’t know Shane was born on Christmas Day.

The Pogues were such a raucous band that they could have easily been adventurers themselves.

St Andrew's Day

SCOTLAAAAAAAND

Snow

+1 to audible stealth, +2 to tracking by footprints.

The Sandman at 35

The Sandman issue 1 came out on this day in 1988. And the Netflix series returns to production.

Quite a day for Justified in genre TV

Timothy Olyphant in Alien and Walton Goggins (minus nose) in Fallout.

The Haunting at 60

Brian Keiper at Bloody Disguting looks at Robert Wise’s 1963 adaptation of The Haunting, looking back to his work wih Val Lewton and Orson Welles.

The Dark Shadows Technique for adjusting series timelines

TheMouse describes how Dark Shadows sometimes resets its timeline by magical spooky time travel, and applying this to RPGs so the players can take a break from ongoing plots and adjust them if they wish.

Last Dance 2.10

Tonight in Vampire: The Masquerade - Last Dance, the PCs survived New Year’s Eve, but due to minimised but not entirely avoided emotional fallout left the party alone and regretful.

Like most New Year’s parties, but for somewhat better reasons.

I want your midnights

But I’ll be cleaning up bottles with you on New Year’s Day

Taylor Swift, New Year’s Day.

TAGS Fest

Tabletop And Graphic Storytelling Fest, Edinburgh Fruitmarket Gallery, December 2nd, 10-5, described as “a new market event dedicated to spotlighting Scotland’s small press talent - collaborative and visual storytelling in its many forms, such as comics, roleplaying games, board games, and zines.”

Thanks to Martin for the news.

Happy birthday Faye!

Big comebacks

Ever returned to a specific game after an ending and a long gap?

Conpulsion tickets and GM forms

Conpulsion tickets are on sale, and the GM submission form is up. Blueshirts are also required.

Black Friday

One thing I miss from the slow murder of Twitter is Chuck Wendig and friends Tales From Black Friday, microfiction of the capitalist nightmare given form. Of course it was 2020 that really ended it, but still.

Happy Thanksgiving where applicable!

Dave Filoni is your master now.

V5: City Of Angels 1.06

Paris was excited to meet some Camarilla neighbours. Excited in the sense of scared and angry.

Nosferatu - 1922, 1979, 2024 hopefully

A first photo from Robert Eggers’s remake of Nosferatu, at Empire for their 2024 preview.

Not a first look at Bill Skarsgård as Orlok, but at Lily-Rose Depp as Ellen. And the shadow of Orlok’s hand.

Doctors Without Borders RPG bundle

A $9.99 bundle of RPG PDFs in aid of Doctors Without Borders (MSF) on DriveThruRPG, as noted by James Wallis whose included RPG Alas Vegas is more than that normally and Morgan Davie whose Paranormal Wllington is a bit less but not much.

Auld Sanguine

I am running the bones of a published Vampire: The Masquerade adventure for the first time since first edition. Granted I’ve changed the motivation of the enemy, but it’s actually pretty darn close. And will end in fireworks...

I also got to introduce the local Circulatory System, who are at best a necessary evil and in the current circumstances happily playing that up.

Alan Moore at 70

Many happy returns!