Beltane

Or, halfway to Hallowe’en.

Garbage, Witness To Your Love

New Garbage songs alert! Witness To Your Love EP, including a cover of Cities In Dust (already a Vampire game end of session song before we got a Garbage version) as well as new songs Adam And Eve and Blue Betty.

Out In The Dark

Leaning more and more towards a dark science fiction game next. And it can’t all be because of Alien Day. I haven’t done something like that in over a decade.

(The Stars On Fire, using first edition Trinity rules for convenience with a DIY setting about hostile first contact for a divided humanity, about as disorganised as Battlestar Galactica 2004. I borrowed spacesuits from Halo, ships from EVE Online, and the aliens from Primeval.)

And there have been quite a few games like that released in the last few years, not least Alien itself. (Which I would consider running face-to-face, after avoiding doing it online.)

Boxy grey spaceships, colony planets with constant bad weather, political and corporate star systems, projectile weapons...

Terry Pratchett Day

Personal isn’t the same as important.

Sir Terry Pratchett, Men At Arms

Happy 75th birthday, sir. Mind how you go.

Bloodhunt first anniversary

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodhunt launched a year ago today.

Celebrations include new outfits and an in-game treasure hunt hosted by alarming Nosferatu Primogen Omnis. It also comes just a few nights after the first Tremere archetype.

And no, I still haven’t won a match.

Bat-Family

Having saved Caped Crusader from the HBO Maxxacre, Amazon is also making another animated Batman series, with Damian Wayne getting a rather less edgy depiction.

When to jump genre

The trailer for A Haunting In Venice, the retitled adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Hallowe’en Party, looks like it’s taking Kenneth Branagh’s rather broad take on Hercule Poirot into a post-Ring horror movie.

Magic: The Menacing

I’m kind of impressed that Wizards has managed a worse PR move than the OGL plans this year. The Pinkertons, on the other hand, retain very consistent branding.

But what?

I can always do more Buffy, if I can find two or more regular players.

Or for a bigger change of pace, it being nearly Alien Day, something with spaceships and spooky.

Summer games?

Starting to consider a summer game. GEAS has no rooms booked for the rest of the academic year so might need space for more Last Dance, but also would be nice to offer to players preferring to stay home. (Last Dance physically was in part to get back to that for GEAS, in part for the added focus of travel, and in part for a player who prefers face-to-face. It’s a balance.)

Probably a break from Vampire, like last summer.

Earth Day

Today is Earth Day.

Do some good. Now and every day.

Scream: The Game

Five days after I have a Conpulsion quiz question note that there aren’t any Scream tabletop games, Funko announces one.

Looks pretty light based on the twenty minute aimed time.

I want to know how big the Ghostface miniature is.

Night's Edge

Night’s Edge, coming to the apparently still existing Freeform, sounds like Let The Right One In with a twist removed, but good creative team.

Not to be confused with the third party sourcebook for vampires in Cyberpunk 2020.

CYMERA 2023

CYMERA 2023, Edinburgh’s genre lit festival, in person and online June 2nd-4th.

The Conpulsion 2023 Quiz Answers

Answers! In red, except where another colour amuses me.

Zeppelin V Pterodactyls

An RPGnet request for B-movie titles reminded me of Hammer trying to raise funds to make various films that never got past a title, script or promotional poster... including Zeppelin V Pterodactyls.

Yes, you read that right.

The Mandalorian 3.08

Star Wars: The Mandalorian

Chapter 24: The Return

Justice for R5-D4!

The best part of The Mandalorian season three for me is that I’ve had a figure of my favourite new character for forty-five years.

(Why was the likeness so much better than R2-D2’s?)

Reminder: really big gigs are weird.

Although a little bit of lovable chaotic messiness helps.

(Also still not a fan of clapping for the planned encore, but I do appreciate making it obvious that there will be one by, for example, not playing the title song and lead single of the new album during the main set.)

Thank you person who was much closer.

Superman at 85

Happy 85th anniversary to Superman, and not quite the superhero comic but the superhero comic book.

Werewolf: The Apocalypse fifth edition

Werewolf: The Apocalypse fifth edition is now in preorders with a ten page preview on the page.

The subtitle and date announcement does unfortunately read like this:

“When will you rage?”

“August 31st.”

“That’s pretty specific.”

The Conpulsion 2023 Quiz Questions

Questions!

Answers to follow... I dunno, Wednesday maybe.

Kudos to the winning team getting 58.5 out of 69, and the deliberate losing team overthinking and getting 1.

Conpulsion Day 3

£3375 was raised for Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre, a very worthy cause.

And I played in a game too.

Conpulsion Day 2

The charity auction raised around £2500 on top of rerolls and donations, final total to follow.

Renfield

Renfield is out now.

A goodly amount of laughs, most of which come from (a) Nicolas Cage playing Dracula as a total bastard who’s having some fun with it, while also being creepy in unexpected ways, and (b) absurd amounts of gore. There’s more story involving Awkwafina’s one-good-cop than the trailers let on so I didn’t know 100% of what was going to happen. No post-credits scene, but the credits run over shots including some deleted scenes which suggest the DVD extras are going to be fun too.

Conpulsion Day 1

Said hello, confirmed nothing was on fire right at the time.

The Last Voyage Of The Demeter

The Last Voyage Of The Demeter trailer and poster. Coming in August, from André Øvredal​, director of Troll Hunter, interviewed here.

You wait years for Universal to make a movie about a small part of Dracula and two come along at once...

While this script was in development Hell, this chapter has already been the basis for the second film-length episode in the BBC series of 2020, as well as a location-based LARP. The isolated setting and the disposable characters explain the multiple spins on it.

And there’s a moment in the trailer with really strong The Descent vibes.

The Mandalorian 3.07

Star Wars: The Mandalorian

Chapter 23: The Spies

IG-11 being used as a walker is kind of creepy, but Baby hitting the “Yes!” button repeatedly was a perfect “kid with a new toy that makes noise” moment, and Din’s reaction was much the same as my dad’s when I was like that.

Conpulsion Quiz update

Conpulsion Quiz draft sent. Includes RPGs, other tabletop games, movies and TV, books and comics, at least one myth, a Buffy question and a horrible pun which I didn’t create so don’t blame me.

The Marvels trailer

The Marvels trailer, article at Empire.

Kamala isn’t the first character to get their MCU debut on Disney+ and then jump to the big screen but she’s the first headliner to do so.

Carol getting some Buster Keaton reactions.

SABER. Huh.

Intergalactic, planetaryyyy

Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny trailer

Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny trailer ant talk at Tor.

Star Wars Celebration

Star Wars Celebration is this weekend in London. Ahsoka trailer, glimpses of Skeleton Crew and Andor and announcements of a new Rey movie, a very early Jedi movie and Dave Filoni directing basically the Avengers of the Filoni-verse, which with a theatrical release would mean Baby Yoda in cinemas.

Visions is back with international studios including Aardman, and hopefully a lower percentage of Serious People With Lightsabres.

The Bad Batch is to have a trilogy of seasons.

Nationals 2023 outcome

Clear winners: Knights of Trinity, an Aberdeen based non-student games club who can’t host as the pub would have space issues.

Second and willing to host, GUGS in Glasgow.

Possible theme already: Gothic.

So that Battlefleet Gothic in wargames, World Of Darkness as the only RPG category... okay, probably not.

Not hard to incorporate into Buffy: Drusilla visits.

If we get a good gallery of photos, and of the lovely Lemmings category banners, they’ll go here.

Nationals 2023 Day 2

Julie: “You disrespected my coat? You’re the most evil monster I’ve ever met!”

Vampire: “Thank you.”

Tess, looking for the stolen artefact Julie just broke: “What happened to the staff? ... What happened to the staff?”

Best running gag: using animal facts to distract Julie from various sources of outrage and horror.

Nationals 2023 Day 1

Five players, one student new to the Nationals. (Who also has never seen Buffy, but may now start.) All he/hims, so took out Livia instead of most lifts-right-out Hollis.

Julie: “We can’t cancel the show, we have to reschedule!”

Tess: “I don’t think we can reschedule the moon!”

Ryan “Police tape, it’s like the velvet rope, you can’t cross it.”

Julie: “You can’t?”

Ryan: “Well I can’t.”

Best running gag: using The Best Movie Ever as the alert, and everybody picking different movies and questioning every other choice.

Nationals 2023 Day 0

Knew I’d forgotten something.

The rulebook.

Sure, I don’t need it in play and have the PDF (still available via DriveThru) but it’s nice to hold up and let players look through.

Realised on the way to the GM meeting, seven hours after reaching Dundee.

While having also remembered to bring another book from the same stack.

Post 6666!

Nationals 2023 packing

I have character sheets, briefings and place settings, and pictures of some monsters. I also have notes of plot points, set list, regular person NPC type names, and specific line references from the first big Buffy video game. And a link to the title sequence. I hope that’s enough.

Opening ceremony in a day and a half.

The Mandalorian 3.06

Star Wars: The Mandalorian

Chapter 22: Guns For Hire

An odd little episode all round. Visiting Planet EPCOT our heroes get a side quest from Lizzo and Jack Black involving Christopher Lloyd. Fun, but definitely odd.

First Contact Day

A very happy -40th First Contact Day to all who celebrate.

Conpulsion Quiz update

Conpulsion quiz preliminary answer sheets delivered. Now to finish coming up with questions.

Artemis II

NASA and the CSA (Canadian Space Agency) announce the crew for Artmis II set to orbit the Moon in November 2024, our next step back, and then with what we learn on to Mars.

Secret Invasion trailer

Nick Fury. Disney+. June 21.

And this might result in an Olivia Colman action figure.

V5 Last Dance 1.11

Closure of a sort, and Stain checks.

April Fool's

Maybe people are being lazier with April Fool’s this year, it being Saturday. Still, early yet. We shall see.