The Watch House

8. Resolve

8. A moment when a character kept or broke their resolve?

How much of a character’s resolve is the player’s?

“My character would / wouldn’t do that!” is often a problem in RPGs where a player uses it as an excuse to reject the premise of an adventure or otherwise disrupt things, but sometimes it’s about an issue to be addressed out of character, and sometimes it’s a genuine in character response to something like a moral choice.

My French Revolutionary vampire Matthieu was marked for almost certain death as the Montagnards and their Kindred allies took over, and while the game didn’t progress that far in the timeline I decided in the epilogue that his sincere support of the people would indeed get him killed again like it had the first time. I could have had him run and survive but he was always built to be doomed by his humanity rather than his vampirism.

And in another game, not to get into details, I wish I’d said “My character wouldn’t do that!” a lot earlier than I did due to a mismatch of ideas about what the setting’s main group should be like ethically.

Friday, 7 August 2026

RPGaDAY 2026 7. Mercy

7. Mercy

7. A moment of mercy received or given?

One of the things I often include when running something like Vampire is a choice between the right thing and the expedient thing. Ideally with some nuances in there too so it’s not just obvious.

My 2024-5 Vampire: The Masquerade game ended with some of the PCs deciding that the young hunter cell taking out prominent Kindred in the city were in the right and trying to get them out safely.

And other PCs disagreeing because hunters are still a threat and warning the Camarilla, who sent a hit squad.

And playing in the French Revolution game, Matthieu’s last act was to rescue Charlotte Corday from prison awaiting execution - with the assistance of a vampire loyal to Marie Antoinette, who asked the coterie to save her children as well. From his perspective saving two kids was the expedient choice as well as humane, even though saving royals also felt unjust and a possible threat to the republic.

Thursday, 6 August 2026

Exalted at 25

Exalted, White Wolf’s epic superheroic fantasy and very quickly not the prehistory of World Of Darkness, first came out on this day in 2001. Not my kind of thing but I admired the big swing, and the stepping back from that suggested connection.

John Wick: With The Animals

A video essay on the John Wick series with various asides but mostly about how assassin society works and how it could stop working. Sharing my biggest problem with IV while also having good things to say about some of its featured ideas, And a great point about markers and coins being overridden by the connections and relationships they abstract.

Clive Barker's Underworld

Clive Barker’s Underworld (1985) original trailer for the Arrow 4K rerlease

I once edited together a mood trailer for New Wave Requiem, the 1980s Vampire sourcebook. If I’d known this existed I could have used... basically all of it.

RPGaDAY 2026 6. Reach

6. Reach

6. Who would you like to be able to share RPGs with?

Some people, maybe not a lot but some, would probably be interested in RPGs in their preferred genres outside of the usual SF/F/H which we call genre because we’re in it. Of course I’m saying this as a genre kid, and I know SF/F/H makes the improv with action rules nature of RPGs easier to keep going - it’s much easier to improvise a locked room mystery if you can say “a wizard did it” when you get stuck - but the hobby has definitely grown and expanded when taking in genre edge cases.

Horror and mystery with Call Of Cthulhu - straight mystery largely stayed with prepared one-shots like Murder Mystery Party for the above hard to improvise reasons. Horror with heavy drama and romance with Vampire: The Masquerade, leading to more fully emotionally focused games like MonsterHearts - which still has monsters.

(Though Avery Alder is working on a new no-monsters game based on sports drama like Friday Night Lights.)

Not full-on mundane reality, but genre-ish asides. There aren’t many straight cop games but there are plenty of action movie and TV games where cops taking on somewhat or very heightened criminals works fine.

And in the general SF/F/H space there are a few subgenres that seem like they could be the basis for RPGs.

I’m still puzzled that we didn’t get a big obvious YA Dystopia RPG during the genre’s heyday.

And mentioning romance, there isn’t a big romantasy game yet either. (Blue Rose for its forerunners?) And how come we got an RPG for Battlestar Galactica but not for Outlander? I say this as a non-fan but a romance-focused game with sword fights and time travel seems like it would work.

Wednesday, 5 August 2026

Lore and unreliable narrators

Jesse Heinig on untrustworthy lore in settings, with Vampire: The Masquerade as a prime example.

One of the great joys of running a Vampire chronicle for people who have never played Vampire before is tossing them into a stew of contradictory conspiracies. Vampires love to present themselves as erudite and sophisticated, but they have very little evidence about their own supernatural world.

So far my group has heard...

* Three different creation myths about vampires

* Two different theoretical ways out of the curse

* About the existence of bloodlines, but not specifics

* About the existence of the Sabbat, with some (useless) history

* About werewolves and ghosts

They also heard about wizards ("they died out in the Middle Ages") shortly before meeting a mage, and about unaligned clans ("mostly weirdos who have very limited power") before running afoul of a Follower of Set/Ministry vampire.

They met a vampire who can survive sunlight at dawn

They met a mortal who can just see through Obfuscate. No idea why

They ran away from mortal hunters wearing FBI jackets, who were obviously not real agents

They have failed several gambits to get blood, and are coming to grips with the fact that they will have to do some questionable things

They discovered that animal blood is not very satisfying, then met a Kindred who feeds on animals exclusively

They heard that the Prince is Malkavian, then met her and the coterie's Malkavian immediately clocked that she is not

The Malkavian learned to aura read and has no idea how to interpret it

Everyone seems to be having a great time. It's a World of Darkness where there is lore, there is history, there are societies, but a rule is only a rule until it's broken. Supernatural things work the way they do because of magic, and symbols, and metaphors, not because of science.

Soon they'll get introduced to Gehenna, the End Times, Gehenna cults, and the mythology of the turning of the age. Probably hand-in-hand with crossing paths with actual Sabbat, an Anarch Revolt in their city, and thin-bloods looking for a place to survive.

The huge, sprawling metaplot of the World of Darkness causes some players to pursue setting mastery, to have full fundamental knowledge of the "truth" of the world, so I've made it pretty clear through events that "truth" is highly subjective and context-driven.

Everyone's got goals and agendas, but at the end of the night, it really comes down to, what will you do to survive? How are you going to make it happen? Where are you going to get blood? And who's going to pay the price for your sins?

RPGaDAY 2026 5. Burden

5. Burden

5. What burden is a character willing to carry until the end?

With great power comes great responsibility.

With that phrase of that idea, Stan Lee defined Spider-Man, why superheroes are heroes and not just super, and a valuable life lesson.

Player characters are often marked out by their power or the opportunity to act when no-one else can. They may not be the only group in the setting doing PC-ish things, but they are the ones that get the focus. Who else is going to save the day?

Some of my more serious character moments are about taking on a burden alone, and why this may not be a good call.

Of course if you really went to get to me emotionally, have someone pitch in to help.

“I can’t carry it for you. But I can carry you!”

Sam in one of the bits that makes me cry in Return Of The King

See also the first episode of Superman: The Animated Series, where Kal-El’s family help to make sure he gets away from Krypton even if they don’t as a result. It’s the only version of the story that gets to me.

Cthulhu Lives!

Cthulhu Lives! and the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society. A history by Thomas Manuel at Rascal.

I knew this tale from The Unspeakable Oath magazine’s history of the game and group, with a lot of the same photos in black and white instead of here in sometimes alarming colour, but it’s such a ride it’s always worth another look, and the bit with the helicopter is new to me.

The HPLHS went on to make printable and mail order props, audio plays, Christmas albums, and films including the silent black and white version of The Call Of Cthulhu (trailer).

And reading back it’s both a tempting thing to try and A Health And Safety Nightmare.

Tuesday, 4 August 2026

RPGaDAY 2026 4. Charm

4. Charm

4. An enjoyable moment of charm gone right or wrong?

There’s nothing like a Fancy Party Episode or other large social event to get people more dressed up than usual and being noticed in unexpected ways.

I have them occasionally in a lot of my games. Sometimes it brings the drama as relationships shift, and often it brings the funny as there’s a misunderstanding or somebody gets flustered.

“Do we get dressed up?”

“Of course.”

“I’m in.”

Angel 3.13 Waiting In The Wings

Which is a Fancy Party Episode which does indeed shift several cast relationships

Of course they’re a sometimes food. Pride And Prejudice has people writing letters and visiting each other’s houses as well as some fancy party chapters. ;) (Comics creator Trung Le Nguyen provides helpful and often hilarious commentary over one of the biggest Bluesky threads I’ve ever seen, collected here in 135 pages.)

Big social events are also good for changing the status quo, introducing new characters, having enemies meet in a situation where they shouldn’t start a fight, and more.

(Lots of NPCs can get hard to track. In some games use a map and tokens for scenes like this more than for combat.)

William and Charlotte got together in The Watch House in the middle of some other adventure when she pointed out they were while he hadn’t quite gotten around to asking her out. That can happen too.

There Will Come Soft Rains

Today is August 4, 2026.

There Will Come Soft Rains by Ray Bradbury is set today.

PDF for study

Reading by Leonard Nimoy

Russian animated film

Monday, 3 August 2026

Graeme Davis on the history of RPGs in the UK

When Dice Were Made Of Flint, a column at Tabletop Sentinel, begins in 1978 as he plays his first game of D&D and finds his way to Games Workshop.

RPGaDAY 2026 3. Poise

>#RPGaDAY 2026

3. Poise

3. How does one character present themselves?

Of my current PCs this leans towards:

Paris, the Toreador events promoter in Vampire: The Masquerade - City Of Angels. High Charisma and Presence, different outfits for different occasions, active code switching. And the literal poise power of Cat’s Grace which gives her perfect balance, mostly used for running in high heels.

Olivia Holt
Not my original visual reference but Paris went more girlish than expected

And so naturally I talk about all my current PCs - and my first ever - to show variety.

Michael Sorensen, Tremere occult investigator, wears black. He wore black tie to Elysium, saying he’d go full white tie for a special occasion like a formal dance or being sentenced to Final Death.

Matthieu Lasalle, French Revolution Brujah, was scruffily handsome but his main note of poise was his tendency to start an attack on an enemy of the people by kicking a door open, making a proclamation about justice, and either firing his flintlock or otherwise drawing attacks to him.

Elsewhere, Cara Lawson in Mage: The Ascension is mostly practical but will dress up nice if she thinks it won’t stop her fighting. She has to rely on her high Dexterity for running in high heels.

She is currently in the 1880s and hoping that having to dress like a lady doesn’t get her or anyone else killed.

A screenshot from Assassin's Creed Syndicate with the alert
"EVIE's movements are RESTRICTED by her dress"

Captain Diana Carter in current Star Trek Adventures is kind of a Pike, diplomatic but direct, friendly until not. Her main tic is a wry smile when threatened.

A certain amount of looking cool when player charactering goes all the way back to my first session, where despite no rules for elves or archers in Fighting Fantasy I used an elven archer miniature. With an eyepatch, no less.

Oreon, leader of a Regiments Of Renown army set
Painted and photographed by The Stuff Of Legends.
I went more olive drab IIRC

As a GM, I often have a social episode here and there. My Vampire: The Masquerade band game Last Dance was all about that side of the setting, with just a few fights and chases.

Some day I’d like to go full Good Society and run a full high society game... with or without vampires.

Sunday, 2 August 2026

Commonwealth 2026 closing ceremony

No TARDIS.

Weird uplifting choir and jam version of Loaded by Primal Scream.

Good choice for fair play award.

The Vampire Lestat

The Vampire Lestat comes to UK TV and the BBC iPlayer in its entirety, where you can also find both seasons of Interview With The Vampire.

It continues to play fun and often darkly comic twists on Anne Rice’s original material, notably keeping Lestat a highly entertaining character but doesn’t put you on his side like Rice tended to later - he’s a casual murderer and a prick.

I’ll admit I prefer the nu metal in Queen Of The Damned but the glam pastiche here fits.

Also cool that the series promotion included an actual in-character concert.

Vampire V6 playtest AP

Vampire: The Masquerade V6 playtest as run by Alexander Ward

It didn’t hit most of my concerns. I don’t especially like the target taking off dice so we lose big pools and the clatter of may D10s. Glad to be shown Overqualified, the equivalent of taking half, still exists for players.

Drama seems like a minor thing here, which is a concern as one of the bg things being flagged up in the playtest.

X is the thief of Y

Comparison is the thief of joy, they told me, and I said, I’m putting together a team for a heist.

Gareth Hanrahan

This is the best Nobilis pitch I’ve ever read.

The Pod Universe phase two

Slate reveal featuring space horror, space murder, superhero musicals, and an animated family adventure which is a prequel to the space horror.

RPGaDAY 2026 2. Stature

2. Stature

2. What does one character’s stature in their community mean to them?

If my character is someone people will listen to they’ll use that for their ends. A firebrand revolutionary rallying the people, a figure of authority offering to negotiate before a battle starts.

Not for self-indulgent reasons. Usually.

Quite a few are outcasts trying to help without it.

For Stature in general, I have played some notably big characters and some small ones, but no giants offhand.

Saturday, 1 August 2026

RPGaDAY 2026 1. Discipline

#RPGaDAY2026

1. Discipline

1. Share a character or fellow player who is a strong example of discipline.

I can talk about disciplined characters with ease. Starfleet officers, Mages who gained power through study and practice, superheroes who will jump in the path of a bullet or laser beam or thrown bus.

I met a disciplined player once. You could rely on them to be about twenty minutes late every session.