Have a good Transgender Day Of Visibility, all.

D&D and Pathfinder new official plastic miniatures

New unpainted plastic miniatures from WizKids for D&D and Pathfinder, with generic scenery planned as well, and quite cheap too, including transparent and translucent ones. This video review was how I discovered them when it was posted on Lead Adventure.

I kinda want the clear Hell Hounds, after the time I used ice sculpture wolves as a Doctor Who monster...

KONG

Kong: Skull Island is alright. It was a bit long due to having one too many scattered group of survivors, though not compared to the Peter Jackson King Kong, and I liked the widescreen-ness and switching out who died when from various obvious setups. (Also, giant spider, which I liked rather less.)

The Apocalypse Now style “ragged end of the Vietnam war with added Heart Of Darkness references” setting for a monster adventure reminded me of The Fall Of Delta Green, once a setting detail which I got to play in and soon to be its own standalone game, more than previous King Kong films being more Adventure!-y.

Slayer

A new series of YA books about a newly called Vampire Slayer post-Chosen, by Kiersten White, who I have never previously heard of but she wrote a trilogy called Paranormalcy so I’m prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt just for that.

A new slayer is a solid call for a first spinoff series - I’ve certainly run enough games about them.

Will it be set immediately post-Chosen or nowish? Will it reference the comic seasons, break from their setup or studiously avoid the subject?

(I would guess that it it’ll go for the classic “pulled out of a normal life so the audience can relate” style of the early TV series, and won’t make the new slayer part of the army from Season Eight which also avoids retelling an existing story. Paranormalcy features a teenage girl in a monster-hunting agency and wishing she could be normal, so I would expect her to avoid sticking the new slayer in a big organisation as a result.)

Will it be funny? Signs are good, based on Ms. White’s blog subtitle and the reveal on her Twitter.

We’ll see in a few months.

Fighting Fantasy Returns!

A new launch with a new publisher for the 35th anniversary of Fighting Fantasy! With a new book by Ian Livingstone, The Port Of Peril, as well as reissues in the first run.

Pass on some of what you have learned

Happy Mother’s Day, or Mothering Sunday for returning to one’s mother church as applicable, to mothers, mother figures and other mentors.

Ultron, we would have words!

Mothers Day, and as Avengers: Infinity War prepares to film around Edinburgh, I realise my mother hasn’t seen Age Of Ultron. So...

"DIE, SPACESHIP!"

Oh, Guardians Of The Galaxy. Never change.

Earth Hour

In an hour, for an hour.

Happy birthday Cat, co-owner of Pelgrane Press, author, game designer, and star of TWH.

Need a space empire?

Various reasons why one might happen and what it might do.

Purge them as in The House Of The Dying Sun!

Prince's Gambit

The new deception and intrigue card game set in the world of Vampire: The Masquerade is now on Kickstarter and funded in three hours. Even if I never play it, the cards could be used for characetr portraits and the like.

In other news, cyberpunk

Sheriff Full of Blessings Part 2 by Baltic Fleet started playing as I was discussing Ghost In The Shell while travelling in a car at around midnight. This was at the end of the album so the previous track might have put me in the mood already, but not to such an extent. (Hello Chris!)

The Avengers are coming here!

Or something to do with them anyway. Waverley Station lit for drone and crane filming inside and outside, fake signage and coffee shop, and a fake kebab shop around the corner on Cockburn Street with a local phone number...

Looks like Edinburgh will be playing the role of Edinburgh!

As a geek I’m rather excited. If I lived in the MCU I’d be very worried.

Bernie Wrightson

Bernie Wrightson, co-creator of Swamp Thing among many other works in comics and illustration, has died.

Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter

Hammer have announced a new comic series for Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter, from Dan Abnett and Tom Mandrake.

He’s kind of like a monosyllabic 19th Century Blade with a cavalry sabre instead of a jian, created by Brian Clemens, who made The Avengers (the TV series) what it was.

St. Patrick's Day

Happy St. Patrick’s Day to Irish and Irish-descent friends. Your conventions are the envy of the world.

Small, isolated, threatening locations

Unsound, a horror comics series set around a psychiatric hospital, has me thinking about how locations like that could work for ongoing rather than short-term stories. Some expansion of the location itself would probably be required, giving the characters somewhere else to go in either normal or supernatural terms.

The big moments are gonna come...

Looks like we’re on our way to another big vote. Ever had a broad sweeping change in national governance in game? With the PCs involved, or in the background?

Changeling: The Lost Bundle Of Holding

Basically all of Changeling: The Lost first edition, in aid of a charity for missing and exploited children.

Evil Dead II

Another anniversary, thirty years of Evil Dead II! It casts a long shadow over horror and particularly horror comedy, and for me personally seeing it a few years before I was legally supposed to was a wake-up all for my tastes in the genre.

A rural superhero

An RPGnet Other Media thread and a Tabletop Open spinoff about rural superheroes, both small town and open country.

I cited Buffy and Wynonna Earp as the threads are mostly US-based, but I imagine a UK country hero would be different again, maybe steeped in old magical traditions or a highwayman or smuggler type like Doctor Syn.

Atomic Blonde

Charlize Theron is a superspy with one of the directors of John Wick choreographing the beatdowns. You have my attention.

Kinda NSFW trailer, which doesn’t give away that it’s adapted from a comic series (The Coldest City by Antony Johnston and Sam Hart) or its late Cold War setting. So still plenty to discover...

Buffy at 20

Joss Whedon looks back on Buffy at 20 at Empire.

Not counting the film. Or that it started on terrestrial TV here at the end of 1998. ;)

This is, as you may know, kind of a big thing for me. She saved the world a lot. And made mine a better place.

There are so many ways to get in trouble nowadays

Uncharted-style modern adventure hooks.

For my “Torn From The Headlines” example I cited the not-actually-Templar underground grotto discovery because it’s a fun story. There are, sadly, plenty of news stories which would invite games as revenge fantasies.

StarTrekker 40,000

Ideas for how to mix and match two wildly disparate space opera settings. The poster doesn’t really want to deal with Chaos, which rules out my first idea of the Federation representing the positive aspects of Tzeentch, god of change including hope and creativity.

Riding into the sunset

Logan is not the end of the X-Men film universe, there’s a TV series on the way as well as the maybe-connected spin-off Legion, but it is a last hurrah for Wolverine as played by Hugh Jackman, a story set a decade ahead of the last near-future time we saw him and possibly in a parallel universe just in case.

It’s the Unforgiven for his Man With No Name, a story about age in a genre where heroes usually just get replaced by younger actors.

Will Eisner

Today is Will Eisner’s centenary. He is best known for The Spirit, a pulp action comic series with a cover pages on a par with film noir poster art. The influence of his design can be seen in comics from the 1940s onwards. (Among various exaggerated heroes and villains, The Spirit also features Ebony White, a racially caricatured character who can be seen in some of the example pages. Eisner introduced less caricatured characters as the series continued.)

He went on to write and draw experimental graphic novels such as A Contract With God and Last Day In Vietnam, and the Eisner Awards that bear his name are among the most prestigious in comics.

Expanding a one-shot

John Wick Chapter 2 (still not about the game designer) is a decent example of expanding a one-shot adventure into a campaign. It introduces new enemies and allies, new complications in the setting and John’s backstory, and new spins on some popular beats from the original.

It all makes sense because John has a sketched-in past that’s easy to add more villainous types to, but I’d say it’s a decent example rather than a good one because the way it works is pretty obvious. It also sets up Chapter 3, which looks like it might put John in a less familiar situation, which could help a lot.

(It also runs with the gold coins from the original to suggest various props for Vampire-style boons and debts. Assassins don’t worry about the Masquerade quite as much. And it also takes the setting’s Weird Level just a bit too high for me with one detail of the hitman network it shows, but hey.)

The New York Times Wants Buffy Fanfic

Yes, really, as Whedonesque puts it.

Happy GM's Day!

March Fo(u)rth, apparently!

How to run play-by-post games

Words On The Screen, a new column at RPG.net.

Loud As Hell Volume Two

Wednesday evening Buffy game is back on. Currently with three players - the Slayer, the Frankenstein monster, and the piano player.

The mediaeval world was complicated

A reminder.