Danny Elfman

Knowing Danny Elfman’s work mostly through film, his violin concerto Eleven Eleven had me thinking of scenes in various places, as well as the second part of the concert being from his film work - Eleven Eleven solo violinist Sandy Cameron appears here as she did tonight in the Edward Scissorhands suite.

(Oh, and the encore was the extended theme from The Simpsons.)

Patron Saints

Happy St. Andrew’s Day!

As well as patron saint of Scotland, St. Andrew is patron saint of (among other things) Greece, Russia, singers, fishmongers, women seeking to have children, and sore throats. That’s quite a varied portfolio, and might be hard to design a Scion character around. Many saints have a lot less going on.

Does your setting have saints, household gods, or other patron beings for narrow fields like this?

Tales From Black Friday 2019

It can’t be bargained with. Have a safe one!

Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving, if applicable, US readers!

(Note to self: Thanksgiving episode in a US-based game.)

The road goes ever on

Cubicle 7 is to cease publishing Middle-earth games after a licence contract issue and The Lord Of The Rings second edition of The One Ring will not be published. This is a real shame after an excellent run, and the well-received Adventures In Middle-earth spinoff game, but so it is with licences. (Now would be a good time to grab PDFs during the Black Friday sale.)

Faith Erin Hicks on Anakin Skywalker

Faith Erin Hicks is rewatching Star Wars and has some thoughts on Anakin’s origin. The Jedi do not come off very well.

The sound of The Mandalorian

Ludwig Göransson on scoring the series as well as the influence of Star Wars, including his own introduction to classical music through John Williams.

Hmm.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer is a roleplaying game written by CJ Carella and published by Eden Studios. I believe it was based on a TV show.
The Onyx Path at Twitch after a mention of Willow in relationship to hubris.

How to avoid a filler episode

Might have hit the build-up to the Sounds Like Hell season finale a week early. Which is better than a week late, but still. Hmm.

Advice so far includes more twists and Christmas episodes.

And a note from Morgue:

Desert Island Discworld

Al Kennedy of House To Astonish presents Desert Island Discworld, a new podcast where a guest talks about a Discworld novel and an assortment of related matters.

My next Star Wars game

Why am I thinking about my next Star Wars game? No reason...

Well away from any modern canon (Old Republic or a future era maybe) with the PCs as the characters who get the biggest space on the poster. Big space things exploding. Maybe a bit of Force. Some straightforward high-stakes action, and some personal issues in there too.

Precursor artefacts

Weird Old Things In SPAAAAACE. Of course I threw in a psychic beacon that might be important long-lost data or might be a love story or a recipe.

Great Monsters Of Buffy

A list of great monster moments from the Buffyverse, by Slayer author Kiersten White:

Yes yes I know I forgot the Halloween fear demon but otherwise please enjoy this top-ish ten list of Buffy’s Monsters of the Week

Note: ends with The Body.

Frozen II

Return to the world of Frozen, where the question of where Elsa’s power comes from will be answered... or will it?

Either way, it’s an unusual setup, with a possibly magical superpower front and centre in a world with magic otherwise at the edges, a superhero with no villains on her level...

Mandalorian toy rumours

While you have no doubt been spoiled about a specific character who appears in The Mandalorian, I won’t name names of who you might be able to get a toy of for Christmas, months before we’re supposed to be able to watch the show. Ah well.

What Renfield Does In The Shadows

Universal continues making monster movies... and plans a Renfield comedy in a... shadowy sort of style.

The Watch casting news

Anna Chancellor as the Patrician, James Fleet as Ridcully and Ruth Madeley as Dibbler, among other announcements.

Iannucci... In.... Space!

Avenue 5, a space cruise comedy from Armando Iannucci, with Hugh Laurie as the captain.

Sometimes player and GM ideas fit together just right.

In this case, I had some of the reveals planned, but not the method. Or the emotional fallout...

And it really helps to have plot ideas in your back pocket on a night like this.

Alien Invasions

I just watched Independence Day for the first time since seeing the sequel, and the new BBC War Of The Worlds starts tomorrow. So now I want to run an alien invasion game again.

Probably not a long one. Start it in the present, minimal twists.

My last game along these lines was The Stars On Fire where the invasion targeted a future human civilisation, so the setting was unfamiliar too. Not counting invasions in superhero games and the like, where they aren't the focus.

A whole lot of Trail Of Cthulhu on Bundle Of Holding

Starting here, also including sourcebooks and adventures in a second bundle for what Cat calls an embarrasingly low price.

Happy Vampire: Bloodlines Night!

To celebrate the fifteenth anniversary of the original Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines GOG has it at 45% discount.

Thanks to the unofficial Bloodlines Twitter run by... someone I may know...

Anthem to get a second verse

Anthem, BioWare’s Destiny-ish multiplayer mecha shooter, looks set to get a major revision. Having gone through several before it started, what will this one entail?

Star Trek gets animated again

Star Trek returns to animation, this time in Short Treks.

I’ve always thought a modern CG animated Trek series or film would work, especially since seeing WALL-E, but these are far from typical Trek stories.

The Mandalorian sounds like...

Pedro Pascal, but not where I was going.

The theme for The Mandalorian and score for Chapter One by Ludwig Göransson are already listenable online. Some very Ennio Morricone wind instruments, and naturally some very John Williams brass (sounding quite like a passage in Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom specifically).

Great severed hands in cinema

Important research at the Guardian. Via The AV Club, which spoils the winner.

Magic: The Gathering inducted into the Toy Hall Of Fame

News here from the Hall of Fame, via io9.

Disney+

... This space reserved for March 31st 2020.

While we wait, apparently Han shoots first again but now Greedo cusses him out.

Also, it amuses me that Iron Man director Jon Favreau wrote The Mandalorian and it has so much armour being hammered into shape.

Interview With The Vampire

The film of Interview With The Vampire opened in the USA twenty-five years ago. It worked incredibly well, elegantly adapting and distilling the book.

November 11th

The Veterans Site. (For helping US veterans. Other Greatergood sites are all over the world.)

A Trinity book-holding photo I'm happy with!

Thanks to Toby in my current game!

Science and trickery for good

Scientists making fake rhino horn to break the poaching market. This is a great idea, and something we could have included in the Trinity Continuum introductory articles section.

Sesame Street at 50

Sesame Street has been delighting and educating for fifty years.

Scion: The Musical?

Chorus, an interactive urban fantasy musical about an up-and-coming singer accidentally becoming the vessel of Calliope and therefore getting in trouble with the Greek Gods, just crowdfunded.

The mechanics of gaining musical flow like a combo reminds me of Morgue’s post on how to gamify the Riff-Off in Pitch Perfect, as well as the dialogue-option inspirational speech in Mass Effect. Great ideas that would require prep rather than relying on pure improv in our usual kind of game.

We can be heroes, just for one day...

The Berlin Wall

Tonight in 1989, the Berlin Wall started to come down. I remember it well, such a wonderful night.

Having been to Berlin, the city is united by public transport but divided in many other ways - pedestrian crossings of different designs and street lights of different colours, as well as the ghost of the wall marked with a line of poles, built up close on the east side of the line but still with open space on the west.

Trinity Continuum

My copy of Trinity Continuum, Aeon and screens arrived today!

Photos to follow with daylight tomorrow.

Edit: Photos in daylight! Less terrible photos to come soon.

Disney+ UK March 31 2020

Disney+ launches here on March 31st.

It should have all of The Mandalorian season one and other weekly series from the overall launch, at least.

Santa!

Klaus, a secret origin of Santa, produced in old-school 2D animation. Trailer here. It looks really pretty and might be fun.

(Not to be confused with any other origin of Santa called Klaus. There are only so many Santa-related titles that work, after all.)

I have talked about Christmas specials before, here and more on ye Who blog, but hey... Santa.

Name our lion cubs!

Name the Asiatic Lion cubs born this summer at Edinburgh Zoo. There is no Liony McLionface option.

Bondi Slayer

An Australian satirical vampire-stabbing webseries! Note: swears. Thanks to Morgue for the news.

Color Out Of Space trailer

Color Out Of Space - Richard Stanley directing Nicolas Cage adapting H.P. Lovecraft.

And hey, a No Flesh Shall Be Spared collage.

Mummy: The Curse Second Edition

Mummy: The Curse Second Edition, now live on Kickstarter. (Edit: and funded!)

Vox Machina

Amazon has licenced Critical Role: The Legend Of Vox Machina for two seasons, with Kickstarter backers to see it first.

Remember, remember

And in the US, remember to vote if your state has elections.

The Venice flood

On this day in 1966, the Venice flood threatened the city that had stood for centuries like never before. A unique city, a notorious trade empire and famous cultural hub, built on marshes and lined with canals. There were plans to convert more of them to roads, but they went with flood defences instead.

His Dark Materials

Planning to tackle the whole trilogy and some ancillary material, with the weight of the BBC and HBO behind it, His Dark Materials should succeed where the film of The Northern Lights, The Golden Compass failed to produce sequels.

AV Club Horrors Week 2019

A roundup of features including Tom Savini, ominous birds, new songs, zom-coms...

Vampire all day

V5 24 hour marathon for charity at Grange Live for blood cancer research.

Nationals Oneshot, over a year away...

I will be missing the Nationals in 2020, as (for the second time IIRC) they clash with Dead By Dawn and I can’t really commute from Edinburgh to Sheffield...

Blade Runner

Well... shit.