Showing posts sorted by relevance for query santa. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query santa. Sort by date Show all posts

Sunday, 15 December 2013

Santa Claus - The Session

Following on from this bit about Santa Claus (or the lack thereof) in The World Of Darkness, I found this Comics Alliance article about his DC and Marvel guest appearances. And inevitably this came together to get me thinking about having Santa at the gaming table...

I have yammered on at frankly unnecessary length about Christmas specials for Doctor Who already. Seriously - 1 2 3 4 5 - but not really about Santa. (“Or as I call him, Jeff.”) Probably because the show’s done so much else with various bits of Christmas imagery, and the TARDIS solving the all-the-presents-in-one-night question is too obvious. Anyway, some is Who-ish but the first at least is probably of general use for those considering a Christmas adventure. Although, as noted, no Jeff. Santa.

Here are Santa’s official D&D stats in PDF. They may not be edition-current.

Santa’s Buffy stats by SteveD seem to have fallen off the net. Anyway, like any self-referential superhero universe there’s room for charming tributes and twisted adaptations, as is generally the case for holiday episodes. One example I remember had Buffy and gang rescuing Santa from corporate demons who had kept him captive for years, and Christmas-hating grinch Spike getting the toy train he should have received as a boy. If your game can go cheesily heartwarming, now is probably the time.

I once had Santa clash with the rival Santas from the free White Dwarf boardgame Sleigh Wars in the skies above my Ghostbusters game franchise HQ. I’m not proud.

Well, maybe a little.

Ultimately, will this push the game too wacky? Or just wacky enough?

Tuesday, 24 December 2024

Adventure Calendar 2024 24: SLEIGH WARS

Adventure Calendar 2024
24: SLEIGH WARS


SLEIGH WARS: a boardgame from issue 72 of White Dwarf volume 1 about four very different Santas fighting to deliver gifts.
“Mummy, if there really is a Santa Claus, and he always brings people the presents they want most, how come I get landed with schlock like this every Christmas?”

Ever wondered why? Well, the answer is that it became obvious long ago that there was no way that Santa could cope with the increasing volume of deliveries, and so the powers that be advertised for additional franchise holders, with the result that there are now four Santas rather than one.

Santa Claus, Anti-Claus, General Nicholas B. Claus III Jr. and The Ongoing Spirit Of Christmas Where It’s At At This Moment In Time

The trouble is, they all have very different ideas of what the job involves, and of the right presents for people...

What else could it possibly be? A formative RPG magazine issue and the basis of a Ghostbusters adventure...

Several Santas racing to deliver gifts has more recently been done by Ravensburger in the rather more wholesome Santa’s Rooftop Scramble but they’re all multiples of the regular Santa and they don’t have Xmas Pudding Mines..

Multiple Santas and newbies like Jack Skellington who might not have the right idea, heavy backup and other explanations for how Santa can deliver so many presents are common in Christmas media, and you could base a holiday one-shot on the likes of Prep & Landing, but most of them aren’t quite so vicious. Or such a clear warning about the dangers of careless subcontracting.

I hope Santa is good to you this year!

Wednesday, 25 January 2023

Character Creation Challenge 2023 25: Santa Claus

Character Creation Challenge 2023

31 Buffy The Vampire Slayer characters

25: Santa Claus

It’s the 25th. So...

Mythological figures can and do show up in the Buffyverse from time to time, can help or hinder, and could conceivably make fun guest stars.

Santa Claus is real and also evil in the Buffyverse, at least according to Anya. But there are plenty of evil Santas, Krampus variants and the like out there in horror and urban fantasy, so let’s follow superhero universes and have a nice one.

Obviously best suited to an occasional guest star.

I’ve run some Christmas episodes of The Watch House and other Buffy games but I’ve never done this one. The PCs in a Ghostbusters game I ran did get to team up with him though...

Some other mythological festive figure like the Christmas Ghosts, the Lord of Misrule, Grandfather Frost or a mysterious midwinter elf might not be quite so weird as a full-on red-suited teleport-down-the-chimney Santa, but might as well go all-out to start with and scale it back if we bring him to the table.

And rather than going full Badass Santa, let’s make him mostly magical. Enchanter rather than Sorcerer seems to fit.

With officially too many Drawbacks needed he would, like the angel and multiverse Buffy, probably be a good use for the even bigger Experienced Hero points spread, which is not generally to be used with the regular two. (Steve D once statted him up at full power.)

Santa Claus
Type: Hero

Tyler Labine

Description: Santa. Claus.
Example quote: “I like to keep busy for the rest of the year.”

Friday, 26 December 2025

Action Santas

Due to TV, in one case weirdly quickly presumably because of some media synergy, I watched Violent Night (2022) and Red One (2024) on terrestrial TV.

Violent Night is pleasingly willing to say its obvious massive influences out loud. Santa not knowing how his Christmas magic works himself takes away some of the stakes, though. It has me wondering if it started as a straight Die Hard With A Guy In A Santa Suit script that got smushed in with an Actual Santa Action Movie idea. I also feel one or both of the henchpersons who discover it’s Actual Santa should take it as a sign to get out of there.

Red One never has stakes, as obviously the plan isn’t going to work like it maybe could at least in part in Violent Night. And I guess the reveal of Santa being Actual Santa couldn’t be hidden for more than five minutes, which undercuts the mundane antihero’s reaction to the setup. Also the North Pole has delivery drones and stuff. I can see why people singled out the visually fun Krampus castle sequence though.

Thursday, 10 December 2020

Adventure Calendar 2020 10: Santa's Little Helpers

Adventure Calendar 2020
10: Santa’s Little Helpers

“Have you ever wondered how it all gets done? How Santa gets in and out of millions of homes all in one night? Let’s just say he has a little help...”
Prep & Landing

Among the various side characters in the complicated Santa Claus Mythos are the Elves who make the toys. In modern and often ironic versions like Elf, Arthur Christmas and Prep & Landing they do a lot of other jobs for the big delivery as well. As a workforce that is also magical, they make good alternative protagonists for Santa-based adventures. They can help a regular or replacement Santa or have adventures of their own as part of the runup to Christmas Eve.

Tuesday, 6 December 2022

Adventure Calendar 2022 6: Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town

Adventure Calendar 2022
6: Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town

For Saint Nicholas’s Day:

Performed by The Crystals

With the song’s history could also have gone with earlier versions dating back to the Great Depression, or Bruce Springsteen, The Supremes, Chris Isaak...

As the main character of the second big Christmas mythology, I could probably give Santa his own label here.

How does he fit into a real-world adjacent setting like superheroes or urban fantasy? It depends on town, but go back far enough and I highlight a suggestion for a little light in a World Of Darkness.

And do other worlds have gift-giving culture heroes?

The song is about getting ready, being good, and the Depression era versions in particular emphasised charity, giving as well as receiving.

Be a bit of a Santa yourself.

Thursday, 7 November 2019

Santa!

Klaus, a secret origin of Santa, produced in old-school 2D animation. Trailer here. It looks really pretty and might be fun.

(Not to be confused with any other origin of Santa called Klaus. There are only so many Santa-related titles that work, after all.)

I have talked about Christmas specials before, here and more on ye Who blog, but hey... Santa.

Tuesday, 14 December 2021

Adventure Calendar 2021 14: Ghostbusters

Adventure Calendar 2021
14: Ghostbusters

A spooky but not so scary end to spooky week.

Ghostbusters II is about the emotional charge of New Year’s. The Real Ghostbusters cartoon had the team accidentally trap the ghosts from A Christmas Carol and have to reset the timeline after Scrooge took over the holiday season.


Ghostbusters was I think the first game I ran a Christmas special for. I based my Christmas adventure on Sleigh Wars, the White Dwarf boardgame about four very different Santas fighting to deliver gifts. (Ravensburger recently released a similar game, Santa’s Rooftop Scramble, though the Santas are all classic Santa instead of evil, militaristic or worried about being up to date.)

Our heroes had to team up with classic Santa to defeat Anti-Claus (the Krampus wasn’t well known at the time) and prevent Arkham’s worst Christmas ever.

And there’s plenty of room for satirising the stranger and creepier bits of Christmas culture, and blasting them with proton packs. Many would also work with the likes of Buffy, but the direct approach that Ghostbusters can take should make it feel quite different.

Elves On Shelves

A small figurine said to be watching on behalf of Santa to see who’s naughty or nice.

But who are these things really spying for?

And how many of them can a fully-grown Ghostbuster fight off if they go on the attack?

Pitch the action somewhere around Small Soldiers and stand well back.

Saturday, 5 December 2020

Adventure Calendar 2020 5: Saving Christmas

Adventure Calendar 2020
5: Saving Christmas

“Christmas is cancelled.”
“Thank you!”
“No, I mean Christmas is cancelled for the whole world and soon after the whole world will be cancelled because Santa Claus has disappeared.”
The Librarians And Santa’s Midnight Run

Santa needs your help!

Heroes often find themselves Saving Christmas (TVTropes Alert) at this time of year.

They might end up directly Subbing For Santa (TVTropes Alert 2) in a setting with a suitably high Weird Level, but a more grounded setting can evoke it with a vital delivery, particularly in inclement weather. (The Nome Serum Run started in January 1925 but it was necessitated by snow.)

Friday, 17 December 2021

Adventure Calendar 2021 17: Superheroes

Adventure Calendar 2021
17: Superheroes

Superheroes covers a wide range from Shazam to the Punisher, so a lot of the plots above can work like the Buffy, Trinity and spy ideas.

Batman Returns, Iron Man 3 and Hawkeye mostly use the season as ironic counterpoints, but include plot details like a high society party for Bruce Wayne to attend and Clint Barton wanting to get back to his family as a ticking clock.

Do your heroes take part in the city’s Thanksgiving parade or New Year’s Eve party broadcast, have dinner with the mayor, help make sure Toys For Tots runs smoothly, or spend the holidays saving the day like any other?

From the Batman Adventures Holiday Special (1994)

The first time I remember seeing suggestions for Christmas session ideas was an article by Alison Brooks in Fantazia magazine for superhero games, which talked about low-key sessions about holiday preparations and celebrations, Nativity and Santa based adventures, a Christmas truce, ideas based on pantomimes, fairy tales and ghost stories, and other options based on how weird the series normally goes and optionally raising the Weird Level a click or two for the season. Other holiday celebrations could provide ideas as well.


He’s appeared in the big superhero universes and could be called on in a Crisis.

Superman's Christmas Adventure (1940)

Our heroes might also face other festive issues. Want to kick Krampus back to the Pole?

Mutants & Masterminds has Crisis On Christmas, a free short where the idea of Christmas itself is in danger.


Winter Wonder

Christmas Eve, night falls, and snow starts to fall with it. Weather reports indicate this wasn’t expected... and it seems to only be falling on the city. Who’s behind this? Do the team have a cold-powered enemy - or ally? Has the Snow Queen come to town?

Sunday, 24 December 2017

Also starring Santa

A classic Comics Alliance moment, where Chris Sims discusses why Santa Claus doesn’t turn up in DC Universe megacrossovers. Sure, the universe has ended multiple times, but it’s never been so bad that it needs Santa’s help... until now.

Saturday, 7 December 2019

December 7: Santa Claus

One week in, time for one of the stars of the show...

7: Santa Claus!
“Ho-ho-ho!”

As noted yesterday, Santa Claus is pretty strange. A conglomeration of St. Nicholas, the Ghost of Christmas Present, and the Lord of Misrule, the pagan overlord of a Christian festival.

Various interpretations and non-Nicholas origins have been presented since he rose to prominence - there’s a new one on Netflix this season, and a new chapter of the Grant Morrison and Dan Mora comic version of the same name - and he has official D&D stats, is available in miniature form from various companies, made a notable surprise guest appearance in The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe, was the narrator of a series of letter by J.R.R. Tolkien to his children, and Comics Alliance used to adapt odd St. Nicholas stories and discuss his importance in various superhero universes and other settings.

How you might use him in a game depends very much on the game, its general tone, its overall Weird Level and the seasonal adjustability thereof...

Sunday, 31 December 2023

Adventure Calendar 2023 31: The Dresden Files

Adventure Calendar 2023
31: The Dresden Files

The Dresden Files, huh? I could skip over it to Smallville or Star Wars, but no, the point is a challenge.

Although not much of a challenge as it’s an urban fantasy detective, basically Angel but with a wizard.

I know enough to know it has mostly sinister magic users. And more organised groups of vampires. And a talking skull. And did the animated dinosaur skeleton thing before the film of Night At The Museum though way after the book, and after Doctor Mordrid too, which is where I stole it for The Watch House.

And apparently its own Christmas story did the Santa as Odin thing.

But anyway, Dresden being a wizard detective who actually advertises being a wizard in the phone book is unusual in largely Earthly settings, unlike something like Grimjack in a more fantasitcal world. So...

The Claus Files

Most kids send letters to Santa ahead of Christmas asking for toys and promising to leave out mince pies. But sometimes a letter comes through off season, asking for a much more important request, aid with a supernatural danger. And that’s when Santa steps in to do battle with the Naughty.

Thursday, 23 December 2021

Adventure Calendar 2021 23: TOON

Adventure Calendar 2021
23: TOON

A Steve Jackson Games production for day 23, and I wanted to do a straight-up Santa plot too, so here we are.

Something along the lines of Prep & Landing fits here, although they’re more basically competent than the TOON standard. (There’s a dedicated game for this subgenre, Santa’s Soldiers, which I haven’t read.)

Jingle Get Away

Santa is missing! Who will deliver all these presents?

You lot?

Really?

Thursday, 30 December 2021

Adventure Calendar Bonus 30: Aberrant

Adventure Calendar

It’s part of the Trinity Continuum, and also supers though a Santa crossover wouldn’t quite fit, but Aberrant is also social science fiction about the effect that superhumans might have on the world and a skewed look at celebrity culture.

What would you do for Christmas with the power of a god?

The N! Network Holiday Spectacular

As active public superhumans, a group of Novas get to experience being the holiday season’s must-have toy, appear in parades and the like. The more eloquent are asked to give holiday messages to camera, and they might all be asked about the implications of their miraculous rebirth as well as whether they know Santa Claus personally.

Meanwhile, anti-Nova fringe religious groups like the Church of Michael Archangel want to put a stop to this kind of idolatry...

Thursday, 16 December 2021

Adventure Calendar 2021 16: Leverage

Adventure Calendar 2021
16: Leverage

Shorthand for the con and heist genre, as the best dedicated game I know for it.

(Trinity Continuum works with Les Fantômes and the Dramatic Editing flashback rules also featured in Assassins, but I trust you know that.)

And also because Leverage is about using cons and heists for good, fighting injustice through trickery.

The show has some Christmas-adjacent episodes involving saving a church and stopping an evil toymaker as well as full-on Christmas episodes in season three (where they go all-in on A Christmas Carol and Santa) and five, and Leverage: Redemption season one. (And the original series finale premiered on Christmas Day, a week after the S5 Christmas episode, while very much not being festive at all.)

There’s also the option to go all the way and apply heist story rules to Christmas with the Santa break-in subgenre, as seen with the Prep & Landing animated specials where elves scout houses to deliver presents to in the style of Mission: Impossible.

Delivering a present without being seen seems sort of apt, so might happen as an aside.

I also considered a “winter wonderland” park scam, but that wrote up as kind of a downer. (The crew could arrange an event as the scammers promised, but it would have to be for a smallish target audience to get everybody affected.)

But anyway, we’re here for heroic thieves. And since it’s Christmas, keeping things light and relatively low stakes. Relatively.

The Three Wise Men Job

The manager of a small town’s Christmas club investments thought this was on the up-and-up, it wasn’t a suspiciously large payout. But now a couple dozen families are going to have nothing for the season and a financier has made off with the money. He’d been doing some sketchy things throughout his career but decided this was the year to cash in. And the crew find five more towns he did this to. This distinct lack of holiday spirit must be addressed.

“Let’s go steal a Christmas village.”

Friday, 6 December 2019

December 6: Christmas Traditions

Or, a story all about Christmas and its various accrued traditions, and how weird they can be...

6: Christmas Traditions
“What’s this? What’s this? There’s colour everywhere! What’s this? There’s white things in the air!”

Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas is all about someone having his first experience of Christmas, and while he likes it he really doesn’t get it. And then in attempting to get it, he tries to appropriate it.

And Santa Claus has to explain what he does, without really explaining why. Really, what is it with kissing under mistletoe? Or Santa’s sleigh being pulled by flying reindeer? Or...

Tuesday, 24 December 2019

December 24: Making Christmas

It’s Christmas Eve. Hopefully by now you’ve done your shopping and any seasonal gaming. And spare a thought for those working over the holidays...

24: Making Christmas
“Making Christmas, making Christmas...”

Given the number of stories with Santa and crew as main characters, that could be playable. A one-shot or even a series about the creators and deliverers of a magical event.

The Prep & Landing series of shorts would gamify very easily for example, playing with heist and spy setups for the elves making Santa’s job a little easier.

Various versions of the Claus family like Arthur Christmas and Noelle could work too, with a series maybe looking at what happens around the rest of the year.

And of course there’s the Tolkien version which is somewhat relevant to gamers.

Monday, 8 April 2019

Santa Monica By Night

Santa Monica By Night, a short point and click homage to Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines from Outstar and MemoriesIn8Bit, as part of a developer Vampire Jam celebrating the announcement of Bloodlines 2.