Shane MacGowan, 1957-2023

I wrote about Fairytale of New York for the Adventure Calendar last year. I didn’t know Shane was born on Christmas Day.

The Pogues were such a raucous band that they could have easily been adventurers themselves.

St Andrew's Day

SCOTLAAAAAAAND

Snow

+1 to audible stealth, +2 to tracking by footprints.

The Sandman at 35

The Sandman issue 1 came out on this day in 1988. And the Netflix series returns to production.

Quite a day for Justified in genre TV

Timothy Olyphant in Alien and Walton Goggins (minus nose) in Fallout.

The Haunting at 60

Brian Keiper at Bloody Disguting looks at Robert Wise’s 1963 adaptation of The Haunting, looking back to his work wih Val Lewton and Orson Welles.

The Dark Shadows Technique for adjusting series timelines

TheMouse describes how Dark Shadows sometimes resets its timeline by magical spooky time travel, and applying this to RPGs so the players can take a break from ongoing plots and adjust them if they wish.

Last Dance 2.10

Tonight in Vampire: The Masquerade - Last Dance, the PCs survived New Year’s Eve, but due to minimised but not entirely avoided emotional fallout left the party alone and regretful.

Like most New Year’s parties, but for somewhat better reasons.

I want your midnights

But I’ll be cleaning up bottles with you on New Year’s Day

Taylor Swift, New Year’s Day.

TAGS Fest

Tabletop And Graphic Storytelling Fest, Edinburgh Fruitmarket Gallery, December 2nd, 10-5, described as “a new market event dedicated to spotlighting Scotland’s small press talent - collaborative and visual storytelling in its many forms, such as comics, roleplaying games, board games, and zines.”

Thanks to Martin for the news.

Happy birthday Faye!

Big comebacks

Ever returned to a specific game after an ending and a long gap?

Conpulsion tickets and GM forms

Conpulsion tickets are on sale, and the GM submission form is up. Blueshirts are also required.

Black Friday

One thing I miss from the slow murder of Twitter is Chuck Wendig and friends Tales From Black Friday, microfiction of the capitalist nightmare given form. Of course it was 2020 that really ended it, but still.

Happy Thanksgiving where applicable!

Dave Filoni is your master now.

V5: City Of Angels 1.06

Paris was excited to meet some Camarilla neighbours. Excited in the sense of scared and angry.

Nosferatu - 1922, 1979, 2024 hopefully

A first photo from Robert Eggers’s remake of Nosferatu, at Empire for their 2024 preview.

Not a first look at Bill Skarsgård as Orlok, but at Lily-Rose Depp as Ellen. And the shadow of Orlok’s hand.

Doctors Without Borders RPG bundle

A $9.99 bundle of RPG PDFs in aid of Doctors Without Borders (MSF) on DriveThruRPG, as noted by James Wallis whose included RPG Alas Vegas is more than that normally and Morgan Davie whose Paranormal Wllington is a bit less but not much.

Auld Sanguine

I am running the bones of a published Vampire: The Masquerade adventure for the first time since first edition. Granted I’ve changed the motivation of the enemy, but it’s actually pretty darn close. And will end in fireworks...

I also got to introduce the local Circulatory System, who are at best a necessary evil and in the current circumstances happily playing that up.

Alan Moore at 70

Many happy returns!

Every saga has a beginning...

The first trailer for Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace came out on this day in 1998, going wide two days later. I remember getting up early to record it on breakfast TV, and bringing the VHS tape to parties up to New Year. The biggest reaction was always Darth Maul’s double blade lightsaber. Should they have kept that back for the film itself? (Hard to do with toys, of course.)

Scott Pilgrim Takes Off

IT. IS. HERE.

The Last Dinner Party, My Lady Of Mercy

The Last Dinner Party go a bit T-Rex.

What If...? Season 2...? Trailer...?

What If...? season two came out daily over Christmas to New Year? And included a Christmas special with Darcy and Happy that probably could have happened in the regular universe? Trailer and theories at Empire.

No zombies in the trailer at least.

Madame Web trailer

Madame Web trailer and talk at Empire.

Unlike the Venoms, Morbius and Kraven, this Sony Spider-Man Without Spider-Man movie looks like a lot of fun.

Precognition as do-over

Precog versus Precog

Adult in heroic profession getting a superpower

Plainclothes hero versus costumed villain

A Hawkeye vibe of a grownup hero having to look after kids

Bury A Friend by Billie Eilish on the trailer soundtrack (which would suit a horror trailer better but never mind)

... It also doesn’t seem to have a lot to do with Madame Web as I understood her from the 1990s Spider-Man animated series which is the only thing I’ve ever seen her in, where she was very much a questgiver rather than a protagonist.

So I might go and see this despite the supposed subject matter.

D&D TV

The dedicated D&D channel on Amazon Freevee has now launched, with streaming RPG shows and... also cooking.

Happy birthday Dave!

V5: The Crowded Streets actual play?

Possibly coming soon when I get a gap around Christmas.

Do Not Adjust Your Set

Do Not Adjust Your Set, a collection of system-neutral modern horror RPG adventures drawn from urban legends, now Kicking.

I try not to get into party politics here but what the actual

Netflix geeks out

Netflix is very happy to drop some Geeked Weekend promotional stuff after the actors’ strike ended, so here are trailers for Damsel starring Millie Bobby Brown as a princess discovering shes dragon bait, and a TV series of Sandman comic spinoff comic Dead Boy Detectives which may or may not be a Sandman TV series spinoff TV series.

Also announced, streaming Star Trek: Prodigy starting Christmas Day.

And an anime series of The Terminator. So it will be hard to tell the Terminators because everyone will be equally artificial, I guess?

Coyote Vs. Acme

A whole film shelved for a tax writeoff again.

“The people working at Warner Bros are anti-art and I hope multiple anvils drop on their heads.”

Screenwriter Brian Duffield

Update 13th November: apparently someone has realised they could make more money by allowing someone to release it after all.

Peace, now, please.

The Marvels

The Marvels is huge fun.

It has plenty of Carol Danvers Beats Up Everyone, one of my favourite things in Marvel, and she does other things as well, Kamala and the Khans get a lot to do, Monica gets to carry some of the heart of the story too.

I also loved the training montage including the jump-rope game.

For those who haven’t seen Ms. Marvel and WandaVision, there’s a heads-up for Kamala and basically a “just go with it” for explaining her and Monica’s powers.

And at one point I laughed so hard I started coughing.

Loki 2.06: Glorious Purpose

Loki

2.06: Glorious Purpose

This series really ramped up feeling like Doctor Who not just in terms of subject matter and stakes but also the classic series sometimes having three and a half episodes’ worth of story in six. But it ended well, if taking a while to get to a fairly obvious conclusion.

SAG-AFTRA strong.

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire trailer

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire trailer and talk at Empire. For the first time since Ghostbusters II an attempt to make a regular sequel where a familiar team tackle a new threat. In another universe we could have loads of these as films instead of TV, games and comics.

Borrowing from the library

The History Games Lab talk with Call Of Cthulhu developer Mike Mason was very nice, fun and informative. Video to follow if video should follow.

Among other things, what was up with this ghost story in the Edinburgh press in 1827?

Stranger Things Day

Today marks the 40th anniversary of the day Will Byers disappeared.

Shouldn’t we celebrate the day he got back instead? That poor family went through a lot.

Last Dance 2.08

I didn’t plan to do the New Year’s Eve episode of our Sunday game for the night with all the fireworks, but it seemed to work out.

Remember

Remember.

An RPG ballet

Designer Sam Leigh’s game The World We Left Behind was created in collaboration with BalletCollective’s choreographer and composer.

The first edition of the game itself, for two players exploring an unknown world and based on a deck of cards, is available free here.

Echo trailer

Echo, coming to the grownup bit of Disney+ in January with its first TV-MA rating for a Disney Marvel series, and the trailer definitely shows why.

Poltergeist

Redoing Poltergeist on TV is an interesting choice. They make Psycho brand shower curtains and Jaws themed beach holidays too, right?

November

Take care out there.