GEAS Sundays

Sunday afternoon (online only) two games, one D&D, Sunday evening nine, with three D&D (one of which sounds nothing like D&D) and a Star Wars conversion.

Storypath Ultra Explained in 10 Minutes

Storypath Ultra Explained in 10 Minutes by Matthew Dawkins in the build-up to The World Below.

Possible title: The Crowded Streets

It’s a reference to Dracula talking about London, not the Dave Matthews Band.

I long to go through the crowded streets of your mighty London, to be in the midst of the whirl and rush of humanity, to share its life, its change, its death, and all that makes it what it is.

Bram Stoker, Dracula

Full table maybe?

And might now be up to six, with two players more familiar with the World Of Darkness.

Vampire: The Masquerade - title to be determined

Four new players, all at least Vampire game adjacent (one has a sibling who’s played it, one has played one of the novel games, one has watched some L.A. By Night and one knows Bloodlines though hasn’t played it) and we managed to more or less do character creation in two and a half hours, thanks to the Make A Vampire cheat sheet and getting Erich to print some for me.

Two very new PCs and two rather old but out of the loop PCs.

Going with London as a setting (homebrew version probably with a couple of references to canon) as two of the players are American and I didn’t catch where from so would doubtless have accidentally hit somewhere they knew better than me if I’d gone for a US city.

A Banu Haqim observer, a Gangrel autarkis, a Malkavian occult scholar, a Ministry newly-Embraced nursing student. We’ll figure out how they cross paths next time, I hope.

Facebook informs me that this time three years ago I was starting Nobody’s Home and two years ago I just started Nocturne, so I am at least consistent in some ways.

Relics: The Collection - Heist

Behold! The Relics item collection continues. The Holy Grails are my fault.

Google at 25

Google had already been around for nearly a year when I got the internet at home. I managed to remember the name on the first night and that helped immensely.

Flattered

Quite odd to meet one of your NPCs when playing. :)

(A Hecata seer with spooky whited out eyes, all in black and prone to semi-helpful visions.)

(Also, visiting a Hecata meeting would make a fun little LARP like The Willows, which is how I imagined the house.)

Ready for Wednesday

Nine games offered at GEAS for Wednesdays starting tomorrow.

Vampire: The Masquerade

Vampires exist in a world that looks like ours, hunting for blood and fighting for power in the night. A game of personal horror as your new nature clashes with your humanity, about what it takes to survive and stay at least a little human in a society of monsters. Knowledge of the system and setting is not required, the system is straightforward and characters can be new to the night.

The Scooby-Doo game using Call Of Cthulhu is a choice.

WGA strong

Marvelous 3 IV

If We’re On Fire (Let It Burn) from the first Marvelous 3 album since I heard of them.

Hmm.

Should I go fairly serious or not particularly serious?

Autumn

Today is the Autumn Equinox, and the heating came on last night so yeah.

Happy birthday Mark!

V5 Laws Of The Night

Vampire: The Masquerade fifth edition based LARP rules launch with a preview of the pocket edition free to backers and scroll down a bit for a free quickstart.

Looks like it should work. Also looks very close to V5 tabletop, despite still being rock-paper-scissors.

(And built for Chronicles. Compare the Nordic style book War Of Ages which was mostly a how-to book but included the Really, Really system as used in End Of The Line, Enlightenment In Blood and beyond.)

The effects of Hunger are de-emphasised (as well as having no dice involved) which is a shame but makes sense for a game that tends to have thirty to fifty vampire PCs in a scene instead of three to five.

Some systems you could lift for a suitable tabletop game like keeping the expanded Influence categories.

And a new version of a LARP-specific Presence power called Monologue that stops anyone attacking you while you make a speech. :D

I could add Star Trek Adventures to my option list.

Firefly at 21

Keep flyin'.

CHVRCHES, The Bones Of What You Believe at ten

CHVRCHES talk to Stereogum about the story behind each track.

And debut a concert film from one of their first gigs after launch.

In the Grip of Terror by Amicus Productions

In The Grip Of Terror on Kickstarter and the rather modest first goal for the Amicus horror film anthology revival is nearly funded in an afternoon funded in about ten hours. Director Lawrie Brewster (Lord Of Tears, Automata) and actor/director Megan Tremethick (The Haunter Of The Dark) are fronting the campaign with the Subotsky family, and the film will adapt stories from Ambrose Bierce, H. P. Lovecraft and E. F. Benson.

Talk Like A Pirate Day

Hoist the colours!

It was a good day to watch the Strange New Worlds pirate episode. Captain Pike talks like a pirate!

GEAS 2023

Making a shortlist of RPGs I could run at GEAS on Wednesday evenings, working on the assumption that they’ll fizzle before the first repitch so nothing very involved. Maybe not the ideal approach in terms of optimism, but borne out by previous Wednesday games.

Anyway, Vampire, Buffy, Star Wars, nothing shockingly new and different.

V5 Last Dance 2.05

Tonight in Vampire: The Masquerade - Last Dance, the session after the last happens before in-character as Last Dance play the Camarilla Midwinter Gala, to an audience almost half judgmental dead people. Daisy meets her grandsire, Preston avoids talking to his sire, Mo keeps her head down and Vincent goes to bed early.

Research this week confirms that there are bands called Whippoorwill and Nightjar out there.

GEAS one-shots

GEAS one-shots, fifteen and only six are D&D!

Interview With The Vampire season one

Reports indicate that Interview With The Vampire season one has been picked up by the BBC so we may get to see it here sometime soon.

Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer

Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer, a partwork with eighty planned weekly issues (starting at £1.99, issue 2 £4.99 and the jumping to £8.99, total I believe £708.20) to teach D&D and give you a lot of stuff, starting with a set of dice in a nice box, now in UK newsagents.

I’ve never seen a partowrk all the way through but have a few cheap Issue Ones, including a couple from Games Workshop with miniatures and paints, so this might join them if I see it.

A more general (and bigger, and cheaper) RPG magazine would of course be welcome, but so it goes.

99 more sleeps

100 days to Christmas. Activate the Mariah Carey early warning system.

Totally Killer

Totally Killer is a time travel comedy with a twist, with a moody modern teen sent back to when her parents were her age... to stop a masked slasher killing her mother’s friends.

It’s apparently not by the same writer as Happy Death Day and Freaky but you can see why I checked.

Slayers: A Buffyverse Story

An Audible full cast audio drama, Slayers features Spike, Giles, Clem and parallel universe versions of Cordelia and others, and a new slayer played by Laya DeLeon Hayes, the star of The Angry Black Girl And Her Monster. Co-written by Amber Benson and Christopher Golden. Nine show-length-ish episodes starting October 12th.

Reopening the Filmhouse

A whip round to refurbish and reopen the Filnhosue here in Edinburgh.

Ahsoka 1.05

I would watch a series with Ariana Greenblatt (young Gamora and the angry girl from Barbie) as Classic Ahsoka.

De-aged Anakin worked much better when not underlit in blue, so basically after the first shot last week.

Another bit of Star Wars Unused Idea Recycling, Anakin appearing as a ghost and sometimes shifting to Vader was an idea for The Force Awakens. And I liked that it wasn’t overdone, just a few moments - the shot of him changing in the distance as the mist rolls past in particular.

Gratuitous Captain Rex!

Carson on being told this is Jedi stuff: “... Okay.”

And then later stalling the New Republic by just explaining the plan honestly. Carson is a delight.

RPGnet Spotlight: Star Trek

The RPGnet forum mods trying something new, a spotlight for a genre, setting or game. Starting with Star Trek soon after Star Trek Day, and an AMA with Jin Johnson, aka Ineti, heading up Star Trek Adventures at Modiphius.

All the best, US-based friends.

Tonight in timing

No session tonight due to 40% LARPing down south. Next week, GEAS one-shots has been moved to Sunday evening. I’ll have something ready in case no session, but plan on session.

The X Files at 30

The X Files (yes, I know, hyphen not in logo) premiered on September 10th 1992.

Empire collection of interviews with cast and crew.

Fangoria talks to Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz about the anniversary on video.

The mixture of creepy close encounters, some very dark MOTW episodes, and people in coats being charmingly deadpan made for a surprising breakout hit as it felt made for people like me.

And one of its best scares was changing the title sequence.

It never got an official RPG, perhaps because its metaplot was made up as it went along, but between various horror RPGS and the very obvious Conspiracy X (which actually put the PCs in the know, to the extent that the main UFOlogy-based alien species were described on their side of the original screen) and Delta Green there were and are plenty of ways to play it. (And Stalking The Night Fantastic predates the series.)

How to reflect the subject matter but not get the tone.

I ran a DG adventure for it, making it a bit less fatal as a possible recurring thing. And I could have done more. I made this.

Gladys Ingle

If I get to run Adventure! again, aerobat Gladys Ingle and the 13 Flying Black Cats will take the spot of the fictional Air Circus.

Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. tenth anniversary

Marvel’s Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. began here ten years ago, with an odd start due to its connection to the Marvel Cinematic Universe meaning S.H.I.E.L.D. was about to stop being the consistent superspy agency, and that would be dramatised late in season one after some slow buildup in among its cases of the week. After that it cut loose a bit more, so it ended in a parallel universe. Along the way it had a space adventure season, a time travel season, a three-mini-seasons season with robot doubles and a HYDRA win and Ghost Rider, and a lot of other fun along the way.

“It matters who you are.”

A year since the Queen died, and those strange days that followed seem stranger stil with distance.

Star Trek Day

A very merry Star Trek Day to all who celebrate! (Though it should be on the 6th in Canada.) This year featuring new Very Short Treks celebrating the animated series that began in 1973.

The Sandman season one physical media!

The Sandman season one gets something Netflix series rarely do - DVDs and Blu-Rays as well as digital off-streaming sales!

It’s like a... well, you know.

RPG design talk at the National Library

Designing role-playing games with Call Of Cthulhu Creative Director Mike Mason, at the National Library of Scotland on November 7th, organised by the University of Edinburgh History & Games Lab.

Trail Of Cthulhu second edition

Trail of Cthulhu second edition is on its way, via Kickstarter aiming for November.

Unacceptable Place Names

Don’t blame me if the residents of Wraith Terrace in Sunderland have any “unusual” problems.

Borg ideas for Star Trek that made me go Yikes

I just revived an RPGnet thread about reimagining the Borg with the two ideas I had today that made me go “yikes” as I considered them.

Instead of the progression from taking things to abducting and assimilating Picard specifically to trying to assimilate everybody, they stay at the second point. They move on a ship or a colony and abduct a small number of people for strategic purposes, genetic traits or seemingly at random for some reason that investigations can maybe determine later. These people might reappear as Borg, or never be seen again, leaving crews with vital gaps and families bereft.

Or part of the follow-on “yikes” idea:

When they’re done with some people they send them back. Where they were taken from, or some remote corner of the same or another galactic culture that they happen to be passing, or just straight out into space. With no memories of the months or years that passed, locked-off input plugs in their spines, and leftover abilities like speaking a dozen more languages.

(That last one sprang from a never-run Doctor Who adventure idea about how space-based humanity deals with former Cybermen after they collapse, but just letting people go when they're no longer useful fits the Borg better.)

(And it was still yikes after I ruled out returning people missing bits that had been removed for replacements.)

Assassin's Creed RPG quickstart

Animus Training Program - the Assassin’s Creed RPG quickstart. Players are (in this intro at least) the modern genetic-memory types flashing back to past selves.

Via Francesco Nepitello.

GEAS one-shots

Thursday the 14th.

Hmm.

Bloodlines 2 announcement trailer

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 announcement trailer. Official site. Screen Rant interview.

Now aiming for Autumn 2024, from a new developer, and now playing an Elder instead of a brand new Thin-Blood.

Also revealed this week at PAX East, a new mobile phone card game (Clans Of London) and DLC characters for Dying Light 2.

A mini RPGaDay2023 Buffy season

A Buffy The Vampire Slayer season and a half based on the RPGaDay2023 one (or few) word prompts.

Slayer, Scoobies, Watcher, etc.

Here in daily add a line format!

September

We have now reached the -ber months. But we can already get Christmas mince pies. To be eaten by mid October. Overlapping with the last of the Scottish strawberries. Ho ho ho.