Happy Hogmanay

Take care, keep warm. My message for the year: Are you ready to be strong?

Bumblebee

Bumblebee was fun, and I could tell the Transformers apart in the final battle. This is a hurdle the previous films did not meet. Thanks to new director Travis Knight. It also has a much smaller scale, which helps too, dialing back to and past the first film.

Black Lake series 2

Black Lake is back - a prequel to the original series with borderline villain Johan reappearing.

This time we’re in an island resort now used for group therapy, so instead of a group of friends falling apart we have strangers with a variety of problems above and beyond the secret of Room 5. It does more with the setup than the 2013 Evil Dead, with a character prone to hallucinations and everybody having secrets.

I am, inevitably, thinking it could make a good one-shot. Or a LARP?

You caught me catching up on an old favorite...

Finished rewatching Buffy and Angel (after a pause waiting for my hearing to recover before Once More With Feeling) with inevitable results.

Especially as we pass one low-key Buffy comics reboot and head towards a bigger one, and the first Slayer novel, and still wondering what up with the new TV series, and...

(This particular rewatch accompanied by Noel Murray at the AV Club.)

This year’s hindsighty observation: Note the music over the moment near the end of season two in I Only Have Eyes For You when Spike gets out of the wheelchair. It starts as a scary danger theme but quickly shifts into a Big Damn Hero theme.

How many bars does your game need?

A visitor’s guide to every saloon and bar in Red Dead Redemption 2 suggests a bar-hopping game would be possible. This lists nine - more than Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, for one example I was inevitably going to mention.

Black Mirror: Bandersnatch

Bandersnatch, the choose your own adventure episode of Black Mirror, is out now on Netflix.

It is, I should note, horrible. Not quite The National Anthem horrible, but that’s a high bar.

The title is apparently a reference to a never-released ZX Spectrum game from the 80s, as well as the Alice Through the Looking Glass monster.

And there’s a website for the 80s software company it features, including a game demo - only playable on ZX Spectrum emulators.

Morgan Davie on what it all means - in CYOA format!

And there’s already at least one guide for how to reach the five endings. How long till someone puts up a complete solution flowchart of the episode? Probably not long...

Edit: And here we go. Thanks to Tim Knight for the link.

Renaissance alien armour?

Warframe is now free to play on Discord. All I know about it is that the characters often look a bit more Gigeresque than in the kinda-similar full-face helms in Destiny, and some of them wear enormous trousers to put Henry VIII to shame.

Today I will go out.

Today I will go out. I will get some milk and some bread. Probably some chocolate. Lunch. I might go to the comics shop. But I will bust no doors.

This is US

The trailer for Us, from Jordan Peele...

Fetches?

(Not to be confused with This Is Us. I did that on purpose. I’m a monster.)

Happy day.

Take care.

What did you get?

A list of gifts received

Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse

Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse is ambitious in story as well as style, poignant as well as funny, and a great example of differentiating characters with overlapping power and skill sets.

And stay through the credits. Trust me on this.

If you think your heist plot is far-fetched...

If you think your heist plot is far-fetched, consider this list of real heists from Cracked, especially number 3, covered in more detail at Medium:

Venice’s most notorious art thief was recruited by a mob boss to steal a painting from the Doge’s palace, and then stole it back and returned it to his frenemy in the police (which involved having a copy made by a forger called The Professor and feeding tranquilised steaks to tigers) after finding that his robbery was not the one-off he’d been promised when the gang stole a saint’s jawbone.

Allegedly.

Midwinter

Low the tide, low the light
Comes the sun again

Hacking facial recognition with a fake face

Thomas Brewster at Forbes 3D printed a scan of his head and used it to open a variety of smartphones with facial recognition security. Which is a bit Mission: Impossible, innit?

Except you can do it at home. Dammit, Hardison!

Thanks to James Wallis, the Royal Institution and HackADay for the path to this news.

Aquaman

If the DCEU continues long enough, finding someone who can play Lobo half this well is going to be tough.

Other than that, Aquaman felt very comic-strip and rather pulpy. I presume at least some of the extraneous unused comes from the comics - an entire Atlantean kingdom which is described as lost, for example.

Thanks to the news for explaining how to disrupt an airport so effectively...

Hellboy trailer

The first trailer for Neil Marshal’s new Hellboy movie, starring David Harbour. Taking on the Wild Hunt, in a Billy Idol style... and based in the UK, it seems.

'Tis the season

Can you navigate the deadly political maze that is... the office Christmas party?

(Disclaimer: ours is generally pretty chill.)

They Came From Beneath The Sea!

Now on Kickstarter! Click it and believe it!

The Smell Advert Cinematic Universe

While adverts for bottled smells play year-round they become more prevalent in the run-up to Christmas, because a bottle of smell is presumably a luxury of some kind.

This year, for instance, we have various smell adverts offering the following superpowers:

Zoe Kravitz leading vampires to a nightclub (the latest in a series of vampire nightclub adverts for this brand)
Rooney Mara finding a different vampire nightclub, this one with a secret entrance in the subway
Karlie Kloss making things break by stamping her feet
A guy who hates press conferences where everything is blue collapses walls by disapproval
A couple who can make flying gold lions appear by snapping their fingers

Obviously the flying gold lions are the best superpower on the list, but being able to escape any room you want to leave by making the wall collapse could come in handy too, and being able to lure vampires to specific locations probably has its uses as well.

Jennifer Lawrence being able to keep her makeup flawless while swimming is more of a talent, I suppose.

Warhammer 24FPS

An official Warhammer 40000 animated series coming in 2019.

Harry Potter And The Availability Of Miniatures

The Harry Potter miniatures game that was supposed to go to stores, then Kickstarter, then manufacturer-store exclusive, is now in actual shops. Well done.

Who will find you?

Coming sometime soon, hopefully, at least some Actual Play writing for From The Dust.

I recognise your family crest from 200 years ago.

A thought inspired by GEAS Social pub talk with Matthew B. about how Elves view humans as ephemeral... and I thought about how I have trouble with names of temps at work.

Heraldry and tartan and similar systems are like name tags, so Elves think it’s great when humans use them because they meet so many and who can remember all those names?

Christmas adventures

Rose Bailey asks about Christmas-themed game plans, as well as launching 12 Days, a story game of the Magi.

The Good Place

DramaSystem?

Also... Michael Schur, huh?

Relics & Rarities

A new D&D series from Geek & Sundry, created and GMed by Deborah Ann Woll.

Relics & Rarities, established 1666... could it be an antique store with some magic in its collection?

The Mandalorian main cast

The principal cast for the new Star Wars TV series The Mandalorian has been announced and... if he isn’t voicing a CG alien or something, in a year or so we could have a Werner Herzog action figure.

And now of course I’m imagining a Lord of the Sith with monologues based on Herzog.

“I believe the common denominator of the Universe is not harmony, but chaos, hostility and murder.”

“Our civilization is like a thin layer of ice upon a deep ocean of chaos and darkness.”

“We had mutual respect for each other, even as we both planned each other’s murder.”

Children Of The Nameless

Cosmere creator Brandon Sanderson introduces his new Magic: The Gathering novella, Children of the Nameless, at io9.

The Christmas What Now?

Another Cameo Film Quiz Christmas special, another final round of guessing the titles of bizarre Christmas TV movies. The fact that the one about someone marrying Santa’s kid isn’t called Claus In-Laws is a travesty, quite frankly.

Also this year... The Christmas Dragon.

What the Hell.

Jon Hodgson's Handiwork Games

Jon Hodgson launches a new games company, Handiwork Games. Starting with Grecian high fantasy Hellenistika, and a one-on-one fantasy game based on Beowulf.

Shaun The Sheep: Farmageddon

Like the Doctor, the Avengers and Jeff Goldblum, another of our greatest heroes faces an alien invasion. Shaun The Sheep: Farmageddon. Coming in time for Halloween 2019.

Bite Me: Rose Bailey's guide to Vampire

Bite Me, a writing bible for Vampire: The Requiem, now at Storytellers Vault.

Our legend goes on

Jamie (Andy in TWH) just introduced me as the GM of that game. Given that it ended in 2009, I wonder what he’s been telling people...

Update: apparently it came up in conversation about TPO Milli.

Bruce Baugh with Trinity ideas

Beaming with pride at kind words from Bruce Baugh over the Trinity release.

And now a series hook, about acquirers of rare antiquities in the present and post-chaos seekers after lost things in the Aeon future.

And an RPG.net thread looking at the mechanics.

Rose Bailey at OPc

The Onyx Pathcast talks with Rose Bailey on Vampire: The Requiem, Never Let Go, Carmilla, Cavaliers Of Mars (with adventure hook), Patreon games and The Vicar Of Dibley in the Shire.

Trinity: Aeon

The Aeon book is now out to backers as well.

Trinity Incoming

The advance PDF of the Trinity Continuum rulebook is out to backers.

It is so weird to see my layout suggestions turned into actual layout.

But I could get used to it.

Avengers: End Game

The first trailer, and things look grim...

Trinity page spread previews

Now up for all to see, including the Neptune Foundation with text by, er, me.

They Came From Beneath The Sea

They Came From Beneath The Sea - to Kickstarter on the 18th.

So, uh, contempt of parliament is a thing? Huh.

Captain Marvel

It all begins with a hero.

Anna And The Apocalypse

The Scottish teen musical comedy versus zombie apocalypse cross Anna And The Apocalypse is fun but a mixed bag. Oddly considering that USP, the musical numbers are a bit of a weak point.

Shaking off a -1 Perception penalty

Not wanting to jinx anything, but I now have full-ish hearing in my right ear for the first time since maybe July.

Now And Then

I’ve never run a historical game for long... unless you count The Watch House, which was set five years before we ran it so it would be concurrent with Buffy and not have to address where the Watchers’ Council ended up. (Until it went over five years...)

Thinking about this because someone just suggested a historical Buffy game on the RPG.net Play By Post board, and I really think something like Buffy benefits from the immediacy of a present-ish setting, where you can talk about the same things and make the same jokes IC as OOC. and mangle current speech with Buffyspeak rather than trying to figure out Victorian slang and references.

I ran a 50s Buffy game (briefly) because the idea of the teenager as a distinct thing really started in the 50s, and partially because the slang is kinda funny. But mostly I run contemporary, ringing other changes on the setting like “it’s about trainee Watchers” or “you’re in a band” or “it’s your Doublemeat Palace style horrible first job” or “the main supernaturally-powered character is a medium instead of a slayer” or...

December

You can start playing Christmas music now, I guess.

Bonus if it’s heartbreaking.

(Really, supermarket chain, not a good choice for a festive ad campaign. Seriously, you used “If there was a way I’d hold back this tear”...)

Hey, I didn’t break out the Simon And Garfunkel version of Silent Night overlaid with the nightly news.