Winter Olympics 2026

The Winter Olympics is here, and doing that weird thing where they have some stuff before the Opening Ceremony tonight.

A more low-key opening ceremony than the big but bitty (but masked torchbearer and Gojira) Paris summer 2024, the main tricky bit being the two city location for the athlete parade so there was regular cutting and probably some delays for teams coming in, but not huge ones. The now standard floating Olympic rings. An Italian astronaut. Nessun Dorma. A bit that had a slop sheen followed by Prisencolinensinainciusol making it better.

And many calls for peace and harmony and nice things like that, with the Ukraine team getting a big cheer. Strange to think it’s been four years.

Questions

And yes, once again, maybe for the last time... the Conpulsion Quiz.

Resident Evil Requiem live trailer

Resident Evil Requiem live trailer starring Maika Monroe. If I could get Maika Monroe to star in a three minute live-action film to advertise my horror game I would too.

It's The Muppet Show with our very special guest stars...

I wouldn’t put every PC group in The Muppet Show, but certainly some.

TOON, yes. Puppetland, no.

But as the token live-action people.

Buffy is too obvious. After all, they had episodes where demon hunters get turned into puppets in Buffy’s first season and Angel’s last.

If this game does this it's worth cover price

I know saying “kill the players” when you mean the player characters is an easy slip (that happens to make you sound like a sociopath) but still worth checking. I just saw an ad for a game about playing in the afterlife with the tagline:

A TTRPG (system redacted) to play after all the players have died

V5: Stolen 2.01

Vampire: The Masquerade

Stolen

2.01

Signs And Wonders

Beck

Robin

Vince

Beck manages to return safely as the pursuers turn on each other. He recognises Darvell, the Sheriff, at the back of the Camarilla group.

As they drive back to his haven, the girl introduces herself as Alice, and he can hear her heart pounding in fear. She’s alive.

“You’re a Thin-blood?”

“My father was.”

“You mean your sire?”

“No.”

Groundhog Day 2026

Considering the weather the US has had this week you’d think they’d have tried harder to stop the groundhog seeing its shadow.

The Thunder Perfect Mind

The Thunder Perfect Mind, an occult action thriller RPG from Tanya Floaker, now on Kickstarter and funded.

Return from the dead. Roll lots of d10s. Possible splatbooks.

February

We have a Friday the 13th this month and as it’s not a leap year there’s another one next month.

Character Creation Challenge 2026 Roundup

Character Creation Challenge 2026

Roundup

I came up with the idea to create parties for different systems than I’d default to at about 10:30 pm on New Year’s Day, a bit of a spin on previous years generating groups but different enough to run with, after drawing a blank for quite a while. ICONS and d6 Star Wars are the only games I used that I’ve actually played or run, so I still tried something new.

The characters I chose to build do mean that only the Elegy PCs are actually my creations, being adapted from an RPG rather than outside media. Maybe I should have done more there. Or less! But familiarity meant readers could get an idea of the system from how the characters were interpreted.

As noted when introducing the Fellowship I considered a couple other options, maybe for all nine, before the size of the epilogue in Stranger Things 5 reminded me of the film of The Return Of The King.

I also thought about using something like ALIEN or Mothership for Star Trek because if I ever ran Trek it would probably end up like that if not the zappy action side.

I considered Sinners with either a horror one-shot game or Hunter: The Reckoning.

And I came pretty close to doing the MCU Avengers with Angel to flip the Buffy with supers system but that felt too easy.

It was really good to have something to focus on daily this January.

Thanks to TardisCaptain for the challenge and everybody who took part or cheered us on.

Dedicated to SteveD

Character Creation Challenge 2026 Collection

Character Creation Challenge 2026

TardisCaptain introduction and after action report

RPGnet thread

0: PC groups for games I would do with different systems

Buffy The Vampire Slayer with ICONS Assembled Edition

1a: Buffy Summers

2a: Rupert Giles, Watcher

3a: Willow Rosenberg, witch

4a: Xander Harris, Scooby

5a: Cordelia Chase, Mean Girl

6a: Daniel “Oz” Osbourne, werewolf

7a: Angel, vampire with a soul

Leverage with The Score

8b: Leverage Inc.

Vampire: The Masquerade with Elegy

9c: Matthieu Lasalle

10c: Adamas lineage - Armistead

11c: Cassandra linage: Colette

12c: Deimos lineage: Piotr

13c: Kerberois lineage - Walker

14c: Narcissus lineage - Paris

Star Wars with Black Star

15d: Rey

16d: Finn

17d: Poe

18d: Rose

19d: BB-8

20d: Chewbacca

John Wick with Hell 4 Leather

21e: John Wick et al.

The Lord Of The Rings with Kids On Bikes first edition

22f: Frodo

23f: Sam

24f: Merry

25f: Pippin

26f: Gandalf

Star Trek 2009 with Star Wars 1987

27g: Kirk

28g: Spock

29g: McCoy

30g: Uhura

31g: Scotty

Roundup

Character Creation Challenge 2026 31g: Star Trek 2009 with Star Wars 1987 - Scotty

Character Creation Challenge 2026

PC groups for games I would do with different systems

31g: Star Trek 2009 with Star Wars 1987 - Scotty

And ending with a national treasure.

Actually using one of the templates as is. Though I could fiddle with the numbers, as Scotty is more socially adept than the default here. 

Montgomery Scott

Tongue-Tied Engineer

Character Creation Challenge 2026 30g: Star Trek 2009 with Star Wars 1987 - Uhura

Character Creation Challenge 2026

PC groups for games I would do with different systems

30g: Star Trek 2009 with Star Wars 1987 - Uhura

The Kelvin timeline version of Uhura emphasises her linguistic expertise and confidence in alien contact, so the closest template is Young Senatorial. And like McCoy giving her more of a boost to her core skill than a starting character should have.

Nyota Uhura

Young Senatorial, switching Strength and Technical

Character Creation Challenge 2026 29g: Star Trek 2009 with Star Wars 1987 - McCoy

Character Creation Challenge 2026

PC groups for games I would do with different systems

29g: Star Trek 2009 with Star Wars 1987 - McCoy

As with science there isn’t a medic type in the d6 Star Wars templates, so based on his being the older grumpier member of the team, as long as he has a good Technical score for the Medicine skill.

Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy

Retired Republic Captain, switch Mechanical and Technical. And give him slightly more Medicine than he should have

Wonder Man

Wonder Man is quite a trip. Spoiler warning for Midnight Cowboy, which is an odd choice. Some of the actor overthinking and director eccentricity stuff is a bit much, the wince-inducing initial example could have been shorter than about eight minutes for one. And the meta includes a riff on not seeing the costume until right at the end which is funny but also fits the complaint  But on the whole a charming piece on trying hard and having to mask who you are in various ways.

Character Creation Challenge 2026 28g: Star Trek 2009 with Star Wars 1987 - Spock

Character Creation Challenge 2026

PC groups for games I would do with different systems

28g: Star Trek 2009 with Star Wars 1987 - Spock

D6 Star Wars templates don’t include something like science or medical officers, as the game assumes a handful of PCs in a little ship rather than the more organised fleet types. But give Spock a decent Knowledge score and we’re most of the way there. And as the only (half) alien in the core crew he also gets a few psychic powers.

Mr. Spock

Minor Jedi, with a small boost to Knowledge and Strength in exchange for Perception and Technical and a different power. If this system had disadvantages I’d add occasional berserker rage.

V5: City Of Angels 37

Vampire: The Masquerade - City Of Angels session 37

Paris reacted to a similar accusation with an angry pout.

And would have liked to react to a flame attack like Erika in Underworld but actually more like Marion in Raiders.

Character Creation Challenge 2026 27g: Star Trek 2009 with Star Wars 1987 - Kirk

Character Creation Challenge 2026

PC groups for games I would do with different systems

27g: Star Trek 2009 with Star Wars 1987

 

The 2009 Star Trek is a big fast sci-fi action movie and the director would go on to make Star Wars so, while Star Trek Adventures would do the job just fine...

Star Wars D6 characters distribute 18 dice among 6 statistics, with 3D being average. Then 7 between their skills, maximum +2D at start but I might give someone a +3D for a key specialty. They can split a die into 3 pips as well. We’ll get to Force powers when I make Spock.

27g: Star Trek 2009 with Star Wars 1987 - Kirk

James T. Kirk

Brash Pilot, but switch Perception and Mechanical. Knowledge and Technical. So different enough that Sulu might be a Brash Pilot too.

Television (demonstration) at 100

On January 26 1926, John Logie Baird “demonstrated the transmission of images of real human faces for 40 distinguished scientists of the Royal Institution. This is widely regarded as being the world's first public television demonstration.” Per Wikipedia

Character Creation Challenge 2026 26f: The Lord Of The Rings with Kids On Bikes - Gandalf

Character Creation Challenge 2026

PC groups for games I would do with different systems

26f: The Lord Of The Rings with Kids On Bikes - Gandalf

Powered characters in Kids On Bikes are based on shared creation and narrative control by the group, reflecting characters like E.T. and Eleven in the first season of Stranger Things. The GM comes up with a starting concept and the d20 and d4 stats, sets Psychic Energy (default 7) for how often they can use their powers, and the players create or choose Aspects (default 2) which they then control when they come up. This means a character can be wildly powerful or weird without overshadowing the normal PCs. Like a wizard with great knowledge and some showy powers but a tendency to disappear for chapters at a time.

Gandalf The Grey

Powered character