Rick Priestley interview

Rick Priestley, father of 40K, talks to Beasts of War.

Avengers: Endgame Gag Reel

The Avengers: Endgame gag reel might make you cry, according to The Mary Sue.

Adventure! is coming

Trinity Continuum: Adventure! work has begun.

The Nevers central characters

A look at the cast breakdown for the main characters in The Nevers.

Aberrant Kickstarter last day

Go!

A fire station

Having just watched a programme on the history of London Road fire station - and heard from my mother about her fire training - before there were any female firefighters, so she had to bring her own wellies and tie a uniform coat with string, and this was after dealing with fires in the lab where she worked - thinking about such a setting.

Rescue groups, like Neptune in The Trinity Continuum, or of course Thunderbirds, but with the social focus as well as the rescue adventures.

Body-hopping

Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. just delivered a really vicious body-hopping possession sequence.

Next game?

“How were you guys planning on beating that?”
“Together.”

The Prime Creative Fellowship

An introduction to the showrunners, producers, writers and designers spearheading The Lord Of The Rings prequel series on Prime. Some very good credits here... and the last to be introduced is John Howe, one of the most reassuring possible choices.

How big is Bag End?

A senior concept artist at Weta tries to answer this with a cross-section of the cinematic Lord Of The Rings version of the Baggins family home.

Casting The Runes

Coming soon, Casting The Runes.. Gumshoe a la M.R. James.

Sir Walter Scott, almost RPG creator

Via Graeme Davis: Sir Walter Scott almost invented RPGs. (And then the Brontës totally did.)

Zootopia

Zootopia (Zootropolis in the UK and other territories) looks like Toon but feels more like Gumshoe. The action is cartoony but not “fall down for three minutes” cartoony, and the plot gets noirish and the style even less sunny as it goes along.

Apollo 11 splashdown

Fifty years ago, now. We went to the Moon, and came home.

The Onyx Path on Twitch

The Onyx Path Twitch channel launches with streaming games, interviews and Pathcast Live.

Starting tonight with session zero of Aberrant: Collateral Damage, about a Nova insurance damage control team. Later today, a V5 Q&A.

Update: also on catch-up, and on YouTube.

SDCC roundup

All the news from Comic-Con at io9 in one list of links.

One-shot advice

Some good suggestions for one-shots from Darker Days Radio at OnTabletop. I particularly like the establishing shot.

(See also their V5 oneshots Ascension Night and Make Blood Boil.)

Seven weeks to new games?

I could continue From The Dust until Gehenna, but I also appreciate that it would be hard for someone new to jump on to and that there may be new games of interest to the players. Also, I do like some variety in my GMing.

MCU Phase 4

Marvel Cinematic Universe phase four looks to be... quite a ride.

Black Widow

The Eternals

Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings

Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness (!)

Thor: Love And Thunder, starring Natalie Portman as Jane Foster... as Thor!

More news on the TV series!

And announcing Mahershala Ali as... B L A D E

Marvel can now basically do whatever they want in live action, just like in the comics. And they are.

One small step.

Apollo 11

Tonight at 3.56 a.m. local time it will be fifty years since human beings walked on the Moon.

Google talked to Mike Collins for their front page animation. Even in this brief interview I learned something - the “barbecue roll” to control the temperature of the vessel as it was in constant sunlight through the voyage.

Media coverage included a BBC Stargazing special talking about what NASA plans to do next, including a test drive of a prototype Mars rover.

Also today, three travellers arrived at the International Space Station.

Look back, look forward, and look up.

Grimjack coming to cinemas?!

The Russo brothers are looking to produce a Grimjack film!

For those wondering, Grimjack is the John Ostrander comic series about a hard-bitten mercenary in a city where every reality meets. Like a private eye he can go anywhere in his setting - and his setting can be anywhere!

As well as the city of Cynosure influencing genre mash-ups like Shadowrun as well as Nexus The Infinite City, John Gaunt and his friends and enemies would be compelling without that wild plot hook.

As a big old fan, I feel that the mix of fantastical setting and noirish action could really take off. Fingers crossed.

Comic-Con 50

Video: io9 at the 50th San Diego Comic-Con looking at the booths on the preview night.

I’m not jealous. Why would I be jealous?

Slayer RPG statistics

To celebrate the preview and cover reveal of Chosen, Buffy The Vampire Slayer RPG revised edition statistics for six characters from the first novel Slayer who could easily be played in a spinoff game.

The numbers may not quite add up as I haven’t specified some things like Adversary. The Watchers all have access to a big Occult Library, and a similarly big Secret, and are mostly Teenagers.

Smallish spoilers for the first book, notably Doug. Statting up other characters would be bigger spoilers... ;)

--

Chosen preview

The cover and intro for Chosen, the sequel to Kiersten White’s Slayer. A recap of the first book and therefore very very spoilers.

Avengers: Endgame spoiler

A special feature from the home release talks to Scarlett Johansson about the Black Widow in such a way that the link headline is a spoiler.

Some things never change

Watching Jim Caviezel in The Count Of Monte Cristo, a man presumed dead nonchalantly ruining the lives of assorted villains. All that’s missing is getting advice through the phone and shooting people in the leg.

(See also Revenge for most of the rest of the story with phones and slightly less stabbing.)

Ever shift a character element like that into another setting or genre?

Alan Turing, noted

Alan Turing to appear on the £50 note. An expensive keepsake, but he deserves it.

From The Dust 36

Visits from family.

The Nevers begins filming

Joss Whedon’s new series The Nevers, about superhuman women in Victorian England, has begun filming, as seen in these location shots taken in Kent.

There’s a lot of self-important, childish BULLSHIT in this industry. But today we started principal photography on “THE NEVERS”, despite all of mine.

Joss Whedon on Twitter.

StoryPath Nexus

StyoryPath Nexus, community content for the StoryPath games, is now live, starting with Scion. Now thinking what to do for Trinity Continuum when it launches.

Cities Of Remembered Tomorrow

Future cityscapes going back over a century. Like all future fiction, it can tell you a lot about its own time.

Picard Poster

Picard poster!

And his dog is called Number One?

V5 announcements

Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition is getting an Organised Play campaign. I wonder how this will work. It mostly sounds like demos rather than full-on transferable-characters living world Organised Play, but we’ll see.

The Players Guide will include all the clans.

July rolls up...

... getting towards new game thinking time.

I could get used to this...

In an RPGnet thread on naming an adventuring explorer society, after I made a suggestion, someone else suggested the GCI from Trinity Continuum.

Jon Pertwee

Jon Pertwee was born a hundred years ago today.

The Edinburgh Seven

The Edinburgh Seven, the first women to study medicine in Britain, were today awarded degrees denied them a hundred and fifty years ago.

AKIRA

Katsuhiro Otomo to make a new, complete AKIRA series, announced at the same panel as the 4K rerelease of the original film and a teaser for his new film Orbital Era.

I may E.X.P.L.O.D.E. with excitement.

Casual Dracula

A first look at Claes Bang in-character for the new Dracula from Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss. Hmm. The bloodshot-from-the-centre eyes are very Christopher Lee. The waistcoat and shirtsleeves are... a bit All Creatures Great And Small?

4th of July

Happy 4th of July, US and US-connected friends. Remember to leave milk and cookies for Captain America.

ENnie Nominations 2019

The ENnie nominations are up.

The Lewis Chessmen

Have just checked and no, there are no Lewis chessmen in any of the drawers in the house. Drat.

Shadowline

Must not spend entire day looking at Iain McCaig book.

Thank you to Andy Hepworth giving books away!

Spider-Man: Far From Home

Spider-Man: Far From Home

Huge fun.

Some wobbly-bordered 3D in some of the real-stuff shots, crowd scenes and the like, while the web-spinning and flipping was all spot-on.

Spoilers in this edit and behind this cut.

ABERRANT

TRINITY CONTINUUM: ABERRANT. ON KICKSTARTER. NOW.

And yes, as of the first preview... things have changed.

Steve Kenson reveals some new developments, and behind-the-scenes info, on Twitter here.

I love you 3000

That climactic battle moment in Avengers: Endgame got cheers and applause in tonight’s encore screening.

And... how much did Nebula know about Vormir before sending Natasha and Clint there?

Happy Canada Day!

A demonstration of the variety of Canadian and Canada-related characters in comics, from Siskoid.

And a reminder from Superhero Girl. Yes, again.