What I've Done

After this Oppenheimer edit, which Linkin Park song best fits the end of The Odyssey? In The End seems obvious but Leave Out All The Rest maybe?

Seven-Part Pact

Seven-Part Pact is now Kickstarting.

Up to seven play mighty wizards and each is also in charge of part of running the game in what is described as a GM-full game. And each gets a character-specific board game as part of play.

From Jay Dragon (Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast, Wanderhome). Kieron Gillen and friends tried it and APed the results.

It’s about power, and hubris, and patriarchy/

As Gillen notes, big commitment RPGs are usually about time, long campaigns. This is intended for shortish games, with a on-shot design, but this is about committing in the time. He notes that his playtest group all GM games.

I’d be curious to see if this encourages more formalised GM duty sharing games.

Mayday trailer

Mayday, a Cold War action comedy from the writers and directors of Game Night and Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves, starring Ryan Reynolds and Kenneth Branagh.

Buffy's best Monsters of the Weeks

You can probably guess 1 and 2 of these 15 at Reactor but plenty of interesting notes on why the listed MOTWs work.

Telefantasy Time Jump: A Ghost Story For Christmas

Telefantasy Time Jump gets to 1971, and a few months ahead too, with A Ghost Story For Christmas, noting some of the style that stands out in the series, a thought on breaking perspective and more.

Caledonia By Night: Merchant City's Secret

A Vampire: The Masquerade V5 MET LARP group is starting in Glasgow. Interesting timing considering V5 might not be going much longer. Although the MET book only arrived in 2024, so a new official LARP could be a while coming. We’ll see.

Sam Neill

Sam Neill on dealing with rejection, depression and imposter syndrome.

Small celebrity encounter

I saw Alex Ward on the way to the gig. He was crossing the road going the other way so I did not intrude.

Garbage were amazing. I feel ten years younger. Except in my feet.

Kids today.

Netflix admit that TV channels are a good idea.

Making a literal cat in the Buffy RPG

Making a literal cat in Buffy The Vampire Slayer

Starting after four minutes of preamble.

"Yeah ours won't talk" as they noted when I mentioned having tried with Mittens.

They are new to the system, and one new to the show.

Bonnie Tyler

Total Eclipse Of The Heart, her most famous song, started as a test for a musical of Nosferatu.

The sacred texts

Just used the Wayback Machine to share some LARP advice from 25 years ago. Normal behaviour.

Which reminded me of this page, from a mere fourteen years back. Do’s and dont’s, convention one-shots and series, and the like.

Today's argument for physical media

ITV has put the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes series on YouTube free with ads. They’re a delight, as I’m sure most of you know.

But the ads do not sync up with the ad breaks.

It’s enough to make me go and get my DVD box set even though that would involve going all the way to the hall and using a second remote control. Can you imagine?

The Furious

The Furious delivers on its promises.

Very much a Furie, which is a localised Taken with a down-on-their-luck single parent.

Issue with the opening which sets up a badass who then disappears, but outweighed by outbursts of badassery from various characters, as well as lots of moments like (low end spoiler here) the bit where one of the mooks goes to kick Wang Wei and he tangles him mid-kick with his foot and makes him hop backwards forcing other mooks out of his way through bad guy keepy-uppy.

Player character exchange programme

Currently playing two Vampire: The Masquerade games and each of my PCs would probably be happier in the other one.

Paris the Toreador events promoter and true believer Anarch with one point of Occult skill would much rather be fighting a Camarilla cult with a decent chance of winning, and Sorensen the Tremere occult investigator would be quite well suited to hunting memories implanted by blood magic as an Anarch domain collapses in the background.

Okay, this week Sorensen had to crawl through a tunnel under a cemetery and defend the coterie against flying bone shards, but Paris has had worse there too.

GEAS 2026-7

Ten weeks to GEAS being back, depending what we do for Welcome Week. No need to make plans yet. So of course I am.

Vampire? Gotta show up. Though by then we’ll know more about the next... iteration, if not edition? And might even have someone else running it, so could even do something less 101.

Buffy? Somebody has to. (glares at that Hulu guy)

Doctor Who? Somebody has to. (stares at BBC)

Star Wars? Supers? Etc.?

The Pod Universe: War Of The Worlds

The Pod Universe reaches its phase one finale (part one, part two) with a big summer blockbuster cast reading audio drama.

Had Tex-Mex to mark the occasion. Got my hair cut, not to mark the occasion.

The United States Of America

July 4th 2026, 250th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, laying out promises and hopes for what a new nation could be.

The US has been so culturally dominant in my lifetime, and so welcoming when I’ve visited and lived there, that it feels normal to think of it as a place to go, and as a setting for modern games. And I’m sure it will be again.

The nation of Apollo 11, Hollywood and New York, superheroes and Westerns, the Blues and rock and roll and rap, Emily Dickinson and Edgar Allan Poe and Stephen King, and RPGs.

I hope to return there one day.