Adventure Calendar 2024 15: Snow Angels

Adventure Calendar 2024

15: Snow Angels

Snow Angels: Lie on fresh snow and move your arms and legs to make the outline of a traditional (rather than Biblically accurate) angel.

One of the simplest activities on the list, though can be complicated by things like a world record attempt for the most in one place. And the note that seals and pheasants can do it as well.

Actual angels might find this rather puzzling. And in Doctor Who this may or may not allow Weeping Angels to manifest.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Hush

I don’t give every episode anniversary a post, but Hush at 25, here we are. Please enjoy my A Buffy Season analysis of The Horror Episode.

Adventure Calendar 2024 14: Snow Forts

Adventure Calendar 2024

14: Snow Forts

Snow Forts: Build a structure you can get into out of snow and/or ice. (Or a smaller equivalent like a sandcastle.)

Igloos are the traditional shelter made from blocks, while making a hollow in a pile of snow is called a quinzhee.

Crude, but effective.

Actually needing shelter is a clear reason why PCs might do this.

And sometimes you have no option because you’re on Hoth.

A playset where polystyrene packing would really help.

(I never saw the Micro Collection minis scale sets and remain annoyed about this.)

Some might also do it for a particularly long-lasting snowball fight.

Making castles out of ice and snow is a cold-powered antagonist classic.

Even Elsa chooses to build with the mountain providing shelter from the sun.

A lot of Bond villains have lairs in the cold, hence Inception playing with it, though using an ice hotel as a base in a Die Another Day thing.

Assaulting a snow fort or ice castle presents various tactical options and challenges. You can break through ice more easily than stone, but that also means structural hazards...

Adventure Calendar 2024 13: Ice Hockey

Adventure Calendar 2024

13: Ice Hockey

Ice Hockey: Add ice skating to a sport where two teams try to hit something into a net with sticks but can also crash into each other.

It’s Friday The 13th, and no winter activity is more Friday The 13th than ice hockey.

(Though it seems Jason Voorhees has never killed somebody with a hockey stick. Nearly in the 2009 film.)

(Friday The 13th: The Series had a cursed snow globe that drew people into their fantasies.)

Even without that infamous use of a goalie mask, the sport itself is plenty yikes. Enforcers, players put on the ice specifically to fight, appear in the likes of Goon and a Leverage episode about how this is not a great thing to do in the long term.

Hence the Ogre in d20 Modern
Art by (I think/hope) Darrell Riche

Considering the speed and violence involved, I’m surprised Games Workshop never did an official ice hockey version of Blood Bowl. There are some miniatures along those lines from other manufacturers, as well as realistic human types too.

How could player characters end up doing this, aside from getting put in at school or running a sports RPG like Contenders? Leverage put Eliot undercover, and the almost legendary Die Hard knockoff Sudden Death led Jean-Claude Van Damme to have to take part in disguise, at the Stanley Cup no less.

Adventure Calendar 2024 12: Ice Skating

Adventure Calendar 2024

12: Ice Skating

Ice Skating: Going fast on flat ice by strapping blades to your feet. Can also be a surface for beautiful athletic dance moves with extra danger.

We have apparently been doing this for four thousand years, and sharpening blades for about six hundred. The first organised skating club was the Edinburgh Skating Club, dating back to least 1740 and possibly a century before.

Reverend Robert Walker (1755 - 1808) Skating on Duddingston Loch
c. 1795 by Henry Raeburn

Winter Olympic sport most likely to be full of vampires: figure skating. Ironic as Buffy was into it.

Characters are amusingly likely to be terrible at it to start with.

May also result in the ice breaking and a character falling in, risking drowning with the added visual of the clear solid ice making it harder to get out and easier to helplessly watch it happen.

So ice skating can introduce speed, slapstick, and danger into a day out in cold weather.

Gojira, Mea Culpa

Gojira, Mea Culpa (Ah! Ça ira!)

Official video of that moment from the Paris Olympic opening ceremony.

Adventure Calendar 2024 11: Skiing And Sledging And Snowboarding

Adventure Calendar 2024

11: Skiing And Sledging And Snowboarding

Skiing and Sledging and nowadays Snowboarding: Snow presents the opportunity to go downhill very quickly by sliding on something, if you can control it well enough.

I’ve done this myself with a plastic sledge with equally plastic controls when I was a kid. Given how generally risk-averse I was in my youth, the novelty of sledging must have had a significant effect.

I never really got good enough at staying upright while trying to ski. (My mother was good enough to go on Alpine ski trips in her teens.)

Nowadays these make up a lot of the winter sports you’ll see in events like the Winter Olympics.

You can also go on the flat with cross country skiing or wth dog sledding for added complications.

In the event of getting involved in a land war in winter (which is rarely a good idea) you might end up needing troops on skis. This in turn led to the Biathlon, the most Player Character of winter sports. Skiing also comes up quite a lot in James Bond for the same reason.

Unless you’re running a game set around a winter resort - possibly involving snowboarding kids working there trying to save it from an evil development firm - or a winter sport superhero team, downhilling on snow is unlikely to come up regularly. Cross-country skiing is more common in isolated arctic region adventures.

It’s a good setup for a chase scene in a session of an adventure game set somewhere cold, a literal change of scene and pace.

Sounds Like Hell disc two

My Buffy PBP at RPGnet has reached 5000 posts so needed a new thread. Very aware that we’re still in episode six.

Adventure Calendar 2024 10: Snowmen

Adventure Calendar 2024

10: Snowmen

Snowmen: You may not need an explanation here but the History section adds some interest: “Michelangelo was commissioned by Piero de’ Medici to make a snowman in 1494.”

Really a winter thing rather than a Christmas thing, but due to the overlap in the northern hemisphere here we are.

Do you want to build a snowman?

Snowmen, and indeed snow sculptures, come to life in the likes of Frosty The Snowman by magic hat, The Snowman by mysterious magic, and Frozen by a cold-controlling elementalist.

An archetypal fantasy told just right.

They can be friends or foes, sometimes both in the same story, and there are some horror examples as well as fantasy.

Cue inevitable note that I had ice sculpture monsters in my Doctor Who game before the show did it.

White Fang by Junichi Nakamura, Shinichi Sawamura, Fukumi Furukawa, Takao Waki.

An idea that comes up most winters, I admit.

Regular non-animated snowmen can also factor in as art, or as a way to make it look like you have more troops than you really do, although this can be an issue if anyone looks too closely...

Adventure Calendar 2024 9: Snowball Fights

Adventure Calendar 2024

9: Snowball Fights

With twenety-four days in the traditional advent calendar I’ve decided to write three groups of eight, and the second group is outdoor games and pastimes.

Snowball Fights: Fight with snowballs. Possibly in teams with rules, possibly not.

“I’ve never actually been in a snowball fight.”

“Really?”

“I don’t even know the rules. Is there like a point system or is it... to the death?”

Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs

Snowballs are the classic improvised ranged weapon in a winter scene. Generally suggesting a lighthearted conflict, so no hard packing ice or anything like that. If someone actually hurts somebody, This Just Got Serious.

Although as this Lumiere film from 1897 shows,
if you come by on a bicycle all bets are off.

Snowballs are also a good choice for fighting fire elementals. See how good your chance is in Hell.

Adventure Calendar 2024 8: Snap-dragon

Adventure Calendar 2024

8: Snap-dragon

Snap-dragon: A variant on bobbing for apples where you have to snatch a raisin or other piece of fruit floating in a bowl full of brandy. Also the brandy is on fire.

I haven’t played all of these games myself, and I haven’t played this one for reasons I’m sure are obvious.

Brandy doesn’t burn all that hot, but still.

It’s a great example of changing mores and how the past is another country...

The Gorge

The Gorge (AV Club trailer talk) from director Scott Derickson (Doctor Strange, The Black Phone) due Valentine’s Day. Two world-class snipers (Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy) are positioned on observation towers guarding what may or may not be the door to Hell. And they break rules about not distracting each other. And then...

Just a thought, and this might be addressed during the film:

When recruiting people to constantly watch over a vitally important defensive position and avoid distracting each other, maybe don’t choose such pretty people?

Adventure Calendar 2024 7: Loo Roll Snowman

Adventure Calendar 2024

7: Loo Roll Snowman

Loo Roll Snowman: By this I mean a game, not the craft activity of making a little decoration out of the roll. A festive version of the loo roll mummy (as demonstrated in reverse in Ain’t It Fun by Paramore) where you wrap a team member completely in paper, with the addition of details like black dot eyes and a scarf and hat. Fastest team wins.

This kind of thing would work as a disguise in a game like TOON, less so in others.

But how quickly can you improvise a disguise? And a game set around the festive season might involve suitable disguises, see Leverage’s The Ho Ho Ho Job with heisting Santas and a heist-stopping Santa Eliot.

Unmasking The Masquerade

An upload saving a short student documentary on Vampire LARPs twenty years on. This.. this is history.

Black Doves

Black Doves, starring Keira Knightley and Ben Whishaw as members of a mercensary spy company who go even more rogue in one chaotic darkly funny Christmas season. It runs with a couple of coincidences but is light enough to get away with most of  them. Now on Netflix, so if you like it binge it.

(Now if the Filmhouse would hurry up and reopen so I can be triple-booked with Dead By Dawn...)

Conpulsion 2025, 12-13th April

Now with a form for what people might like to see.

Adventure Calendar 2024 6: Who Am I?

Adventure Calendar 2024

6: Who Am I?

Who Am I?: One of the names (hence no Wikipedia link) for that game where you write a person’s name on a sticky note and put it on someone’s forehead and they have to guess who it is. A variant of Twenty Questions with a less specific number of questions and a more specific variety of answers as well as the added amusement for the audience of somebody having a Post-It stuck to their face.

Ever had a PC start with amnesia to explain a blank slate for backstory?

The reverse where one person knows who they are and everybody else has to guess might be better for a group like the typical PC party. It’s dramatised SF-ishly by It’s What’s Inside, and that goes as well as you might expect. I have in fact seen it done with name tags in a comedy horror LARP where getting possessed was a regular occurrence.

Jentry Chau Vs. The Underworld

Jentry Chau Vs. The Underworld, the animated adventures of a high school chosen one, is out today on Netflix (trailer) so better watch it within a week if you like it to lessen the chances of it being cancelled in a month.

At least it doesn’t end on a cliffhanger - though it looks like it might but then carries on.

It’s a lot more serialised than I was expecting, and also drops the secret and gets over a running gag surprisingly quickly.

It’s usually bright and cheery visually, so when it plays with shadow and some horrific designs they stick out.

The humour is mostly contained in one main character and a couple of minor ones. Favourites are definitely the rubbish guard dogs.

Adventure Calendar 2024 5: Hunt The Thimble

Adventure Calendar 2024

5: Hunt The Thimble

Hunt The Thimble: One player hides a small object somewhere in the party area and whoever finds it wins. Saying “hot” or “cold” as players get closer or further away optional.

Other clues could be provided, at which point it gets a bit escape room.

This can end up as pixel hunting in an RPG, or some other puzzle likely to use player skill rather than character. Adding hot or cold might make these less frustrating.

So to turn it around -

Why might the PCs be after a thimble in particular? Maybe some tailoring magic is involved. One of the angel-powered items I created for Relics was the Fairy Godmother’s Needle which could create any kind of garment from any material, very useful for disguises...

Star Wars: Skeleton Crew

Star Wars: Skeleton Crew cuts down on the Star Wars Meets 1980s Kid SF/F Movie Influenced By Star Wars when it goes into space, but.

80s Suburb Planet is as much a using one bit of Earth to represent another planet as shooting in Tunisia or arctic Norway, but it’s also where a lot more of the audience comes from.

Till You Drop

I am done with the non-food physical stuff Christmas shopping.

I’m impressed too. If anyone wants a signed photo let me know.

Trinity Continuum fifth anniversary

The Trinity Continuum core rulebook and Aeon setting came out five years ago today.

Adventure Calendar 2024 4: Musical Chairs

Adventure Calendar 2024

4: Musical Chairs

Musical Chairs: Dance in a circle around a number of chairs, lower than the number of players. When the music stops everybody tries to get a seat, If you fail you’re out. Remove a chair every round so the game has an ending.

Since I mentioned it in relation to Pass The Parcel this is a more active game and sometimes involves wrestling over a chair or trying to hip-check someone else off. Best played with people you know will take that with good grace.

Can also be played without chairs as Statues, where having to avoid falling over is what gets you out. Which could in theory be used against Weeping Angels.

According to sketch show Big Train it can also be used to make people speak in group therapy sessions. Maybe don’t do that. :D

But it could be used to put players on the spot when you want them to introduce their characters or something. Hmm... not serious...or am I?

Okay, in character ideas...

With a dwindling space and fighting over who gets to stay, a more intellectual version would be the lifeboat or hot air balloon thought experiment. Entire settings like Our Brilliant Ruin are about dealing with resources and even land running out. And on a smaller scale lots of groups could end up in lifeboats, on icebergs breaking up and so on. PCs being PCs someone will probably offer to stay behind in a heroic sacrifice.

Okay, less grim version, only so many people can get into the Important Room in the adventure. Assuming the PCs arent being totally selfish they’ll have to work together to decide who gets in.

V5: City Of Angels 1.26

We got to the vampire restaurant!

We did not burn it down.

Some of us might be considering it.

Adventure Calendar 2024 3: Blind Man's Buff

Adventure Calendar 2024

3: Blind Man’s Buff

Blind Man’s Buff: A variation or tig / tag where the one doing the tagging is blindfold.

It goes back centuries, so characters in ancient or medieval style settings could play it.

Having to sneak around a sleeping or blind monster is one of the classic stealth sequences. Probably good for extended stealth rules where one failure by the noisiest party member doesn’t ruin the whole attempt. Check out Black Seven, a small RPG all about sneaking around enemy bases and not making it just a couple of rolls.

See A Quiet Place for an entire post-apocalypse setting about this. And this game would be a way to LARP it!

In a location without trip hazards anyway.

If the PCs are “it”, chasing something they can’t see is another issue again. An invisible enemy, say? Limiting how many chances they get to work out its position do can raise the tension considerably. Of course then you’re playing Battleship more than Blind Man’s Buff. Maybe a time limit to keep things frantic?

Adventure Calendar 2024 2: Charades

Adventure Calendar 2024

2: Charades

Charades: You get a word or phrase and have to mime it out. There are some specific gestures like category and number of words or syllables. Formalised in France and the UK in the 19th century, based on a previous version about writing tricky descriptions. It has since developed into Pictionary for drawing.

I am actually pretty good at charades, thanks to years of Give Us A Clue running on TV at lunchtimes in my youth.

But anyway.

Obviously the PCs being rendered unable to speak like the classic Buffy episode Hush forces this. Could be hard to sustain in a vocal medium like RPGs though...

GRABYOURCHRISTMASTREE

GRABYOURCHRISTMASTREE, a charity Goth and such Christmas cover and new album.

Featuring an eerie take on The Power Of Love (Frankie, not Huey) by Witch Of The Vale.

V5 Empire 1.10

Due to a player focusing on the Vampire: The Masquerade V5 “oracle” take on the Malkavian clan and establishing the character being from a brood like that, I’ve leaned into it with all the NPC clan members they’ve met as well. Any resemblance to the Mekhet from Vampire: The Requiem is - hey look over there!

So tonight they met a photographer who had seen an omen while taking pictures, a descendant of a cult leader obsessed with the Red Star who was a broodmate of the PC’s sire, as well as another of the leader’s childer trying to pursue his studies.

Adventure Calendar 2024 1: Pass The Parcel

Adventure Calendar 2024

1: Pass The Parcel

Pass The Parcel: Pass a parcel between you, a gift wrapped in several layers of wrapping paper, as music plays. When it stops the holder unwraps a layer, and then the music restarts. Continue until unwrapping the final layer means you win the prize inside.

(Apparently British, with some Canadian play as well, hence the description. It’s kind of like Musical Chairs but less active - you can play a whole game sitting down, which you usually can’t with Musical Chairs.)

In most RPGs and other adventure-ish media this is just asking to be a bomb.

This was also the climactic problem in The Dark Knight Rises and that's not a coincidence.

To be doubly festive, you could also borrow from Casting The Runes by M. R. James, a curse that has to be passed on before it comes due...

Adventure Calendar 2024

Adventure Calendar 2024

0: Party Games

This is real. Some friends have it. I may have to help with a daily riddle when I visir.

For my sixth time doing festive adventure ideas daily (click December 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 in my blog archive) and as one thing people do at Christmas that they might not do much the rest of the year...

GAMES.

Particularly party games.

And how they might end up in RPG adventures...

December

December, and World AIDS Day.

Low the light, low the tide

Comes the sun again

--Thea Gilmore, Sol Invictus

Deck the halls and snowflakes fall but I’m not feeling glad at all

-- Charly Bliss, It’s Christmas And I Fucking Miss You

St. Andrew's Day

Happy St. Andrew’s Day! SCOTLAND!

Notre Dame

Notre Dame Cathedral reopening after five and a half years of restoration work. The central hall is bright and airy.

Tales From Black Friday 2024

It's the first of these here, so if we must have Black Friday we shall have #TalesFromBlackFriday also!

Our forces amassed at the edge of the customer parking lot, waiting for the signal.

This time. This time it would be different. We would not let them pass.

Thousands of them this time. Each the product of fell science with a single thought. No mere PS5 or Apple Watch would placate them. No. These things would be satisfied only with one of those air fryers with the grill underneath.

Some might say let them fry their air. But do you truly believe they would stop at that? Never! They would never rest until all air fried, and us along with it!

Already we could hear their death chant - "Grill! Grill! Grill! Grill!" - and see their ragged banners flutter in the chill breeze, promising them thirty - nay, forty, some even sixty percent reductions! A terrible need that could ne'er be sated!

The clock tower of the all-night ASDA struck the fatal hour.

It was upon us.

We thought we were prepared for this. That our walls were strong, that our prices were fair, that we could ride out this storm of insatiable greed. Were we wrong? Soon we would find out.

A gasp of dread runs through our ranks as they unveil their great siege engine, their largest Door Buster yet.

They charge, ready to tear down everything we hold dear - Small Business Saturday, Giving Tuesday, these mean nothing to them!

But we stand.

We stand!

Price shall be halved, credit score be shattered,

A sword-day, a Black Friday, ere the sun rises!

-- With apologies to J. R. R. Tolkien

Hammer House Of Podcast

Hammer House Of Podcast has now completed its run of Hammer horror films - until we get another one! And now Paul Cornell and Lizbeth Myles are gearing up for a new series starting in January looking at UK genre TV in Telefantasy Time Jump.

Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate.

Nationals 2025 plan

Getting it down now while it’s in the unlikely.

Cyberpunk is the theme, so if I were to get Urban Fantasy then no, not Shadowrun. And not a future Buffy or anything like that.

But an evil corporation to fight against is an easy fit. And with the Sounds Like Hell cast, a Buffy show about an indie band, well..

Josie And The Pussycats
is
The Best Movie Ever
JOIN THE ARMY

Which led to me getting the complete 2016-17 run of the comic, involving a ig break, a world tour, assorted rivalries, a couple of kidnapping attempts and resulting bike chases. Some of that could get in too.

Would Julie be tempted by the evil scheme to rebrand her as a solo act? Maybe.

Would Tess have to fight a killer VJ? Yes.

Nationals 2025, 11th-13th of April

Which is also the proposed date for Conpulsion 2025. Ah well.

(I mean I could hand the quiz to our presenter and a scorer but it’s hardy ideal.)

The Hearth Magazine

The Hearth Magazine, aiming for a bimonthly launch in 2025, with a mission “to provide an actively inclusive and accessible monthly magazine of TTRPG advice, views, and reviews, for and from members of the TTRPG community.”

Buffy returns to free UK streaming

Buffy returns to free UK streaming, on ITVX, probably in the New Year.

It's A Wonderful Knife

It’s A Wonderful Knife (2023) comes from the co-writer of Freaky and then writer of Time Cut (that’s the one that isn’t Totally Killer) and you can probably work most of it out from context.

Watched a month prior to Christmas because my semi-traditional month of Shudder was ending.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Eat Your Young actual play

An AP video series from Queen's Court Games.

Residents of a small New Jersey beach town take on a group of vampiric villains known as The Family who have been terrorizing the East Coast. Can our heroes put an end to the threat?

Listed here for future observing.

Worldbuilding, so easy to mess up.

Imagine how fucked California noir would be if Los Angeles was called anything else: 'They call Los Caballos the City of Horses. Neither here nor there when it comes to the sex and murder stuff I guess. Anyway...'

Peli Grietzer on Bluesky

And yes I sent this to the City of Horses Angels group chat. Hey, I did it too in an LA game in the 90s.

Now no snow.

Snow

A week after the first frost. Just a little here, but apparently enough in town that tha buses are off and the Castle is closed.

Buffy comics

BOOM! Studios are stopping Buffy, Angel and Firefly comics after almost six years, citing a business decision, but pretty abruptly as this includes cancelling a Firefly series about Zoe when it was supposed to start.

What comes next? I hope somebody picks (or has picked) up the licences.

I never jived with their approach of a modern reboot rearranging characters and connections, particularly some of the decisions they made, though I enjoy a giant talking bat. I basically got out of getting monthly comics in 2020 anyway for obvious unrelated reasons, and let them slide as part of that. I have picked up some one-shots and minis set in the regular Buffyverse, although I didn’t feel like keeping up with the multiple assorted what-if spinoffs after the first run.

I did like the reveal that the comic parallel universe was the world without shrimp. No notes.

FiveEvil

FiveEvil is alive! ... evil. With some stretch goal adventures on the way.

Bloodlines 2 soundtrack

A nice big dev diary with audio and video for the Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 soundtrack. Featuring noir-but-maybe-a-bit-Western theme, crunchy guitars, sad cello, and shovels, from the new team and the return of BL1 composer Rik Schaffer.

New tablet

Who this?

No snow here. Yet.

Women Of Action

Caroline Siede has a new column at the AV Club, about women-led action movies, starting with Sarah Connor in The Terminator 1 and 2 and featuring the likes of take-the-power-back Enough and Wonder Woman striding into No Man’s Land in WWI and on screen a century later.

Robin Of Sherwood - nothing's forgotten

Producer Esta Charkham and Marian Judy Trott look back at one of my formative fantasy-ish media.

V5 Empire 1.08

As is traditional for the Vampire: The Masquerade session closest to the Bloodlines anniversary I took inspiration for a plot from one of its features.

And I couldn’t fairly do the haunted hotel with the ghost expert PC not there for the session, or the creepy hospital without the two PCs that work in a hospital.

So that’s why the PCs are on their way to the isolated lair of a supposedly dead Malkavian apocalypse cult leader.

Heh heh heh.

The first frost

It was the first frost, so we can play some winter songs. And Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) is an always.

V5: The Windy City

First chance to play Vampire: The Masquerade V5 around an actual table!

Many character options, so due to relatively inexperienced group otherwise going with a fairly basic idea who can be a ‘grown-up’ if necessary.

Rejigging Paris, maybe closer to the original possible leader than she ended up in City of Angels due to other players there being more confident.

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines came out twenty years ago tonight. Delayed but also rushed, it arrived after the original World Of Darkness ended and the new later Chronicles version came out, and also needed a day one patch to get out of one level.

But fans still love its mood and feel (at least until Chinatown) and its variety of options (until the endgame) - and especially highlights like the discomfort it creates around your accidental ghoul and the single location ghost story of the Ocean House Hotel.

Predator: Badlands

The Predator and especially That Crossover We Do Not Mention movies have been heading towards the Predator as protagonist for a while now, but if anybody can actually make that work the Prey team can.

Bluesky

I was on Bluesky already, so nyer.

The Onion won the war against info, on its behalf.

FiveEvil: Wakefield House

Morgan Davie runs a short demo version of one of the FiveEvil adventures.

Star Trek modelmaker Bill Krause

Star Trek 3D starship designer and modelmaker Bill Krause (Picard, the Ships Of The Line art books) now on Bluesky, posted his recreation of the FASA Baker class.

And this is a little model for him with no lights

Thanks to TardisCaptain for reposting his work.

Star Trek: Lower Decks

I started on Star Trek: Lower Decks as the first two seasons are on Prime after an STA session and after seeing Strange New Worlds: Those Old Scientists. It helped finally getting past that opening scene of Mariner drunkenly maiming Boimler with a Klingon bat’leth, to meet the more immediately likeable Tendi and Rutherford. Mariner remains a lot throughout the first two seasons. As each season is about four hours, progress is quite fast.

I laughed a fair bit, could have done without some other stuff. I also appreciated that the command staff foils are mostly heroic Trek types with some foibles.

Favourite episode so far, We’ll Always Have Tom Paris, which rolls with the kinds of problems Trek tech and people woudn’t really have but we would have with that level of technology which still requires human(oid) oversight.

Favourite little side joke, the Andorian called Jennifer.

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning trailer and talk at Empire. Previously Dead Reckoning part two...

V5 Empire 1.07

Picked up and used some SPCs Jason Carl was kind enough to leave in the toybox.

The Malkavian fortune teller is working on seducing the leader of the anarch thugs, which I was not expecting.

Tony Todd

I got to meet Tony Todd at our local horror festival Dead By Dawn, where he was presenting a short film he was proud of working on and a feature that, as he put it, we should have fun with. At one point I was alone at the bar and he came in, and due to my smile at this that I should be laughing nervously to be alone with Candyman we got to talking about Goodfellas and gangster movies, so I got to see him enthuse about one of his favourite genres.

Terminator Zero

Terminator Zero might not have been the best relaxing watch. Kind of interesting but ohhh so much philosophising.

Star Wars Episode ?!

Simon Kinberg (writer of X-Men: Dark Phoenix, but also some of Rebels) is developing a new Star Wars trilogy. Well, so am I, and mine is more likely to happen.

Mass Effect Prime

Prime planning Mass Effect series. As they routinely throw money at things like The Rings Of Power and Citadel I can imagine them actually going through with it.

Happy N7 Day!

One For Sorrow

One For Sorrow by Jamie McKelvie issue 1, introducing the Magpie hunting wrongdoers in 1900 London and a cast about to get caught up in the chase. The big format shows off the art very nicely. I guessed something like one of the reveals but not the specifics.

Unasked for advice

Unasked for advice

You’re in shock right now. Like an unexpected death or betrayal. 

Eat what you need to. No guilt about that today. 

However you feel is the right way to feel. Anyone who tells you you’re exaggerating or being overly dramatic you walk away from. 

If you can meditate, do so for 10 min.  Lots of youtube videos from Headspace and other places for that. They help to self regulate. 

Limit your time online, it’s not helping right now, it will in the future. 

Nothing can be fixed today so just take care of yourself and those you love. 

If you can play a video game or watch an old movie or tv series do so. With a new one you’ll probably lose track of the plot as your mind wanders so old ones from the past are better.

With a video game you’ll have a dopamine release for winning small victories and when you beat what seems like an impossible boss.  

Write down how you feel. Write it all down. By hand if possible. Then fold it and put it somewhere. 

Look at nature if you can for a while.  

Know that even though there’s hate in the world, you’re loved. You really are. 

Let’s get through this day after a terrible night.

Ian Boothby

Haunt Season

Haunt Season (2024) (trailer) wuld have been a nice late entry in 31 Days if I’d spotted it sooner. A horror comedy about a haunted house attraction - from the POV of the “theatre kids who never grew up” who work it. Yes, there’s a slasher involved, but until that gets going it looks pretty fun, and when it does get going everybody acts pretty sensibly after a moment of shocked disbelief.

Be surprised. Be very surprised.

I was not expecting another film fpllowing David Cronenberg’s The Fly, let alone one a decade longer after it than it was after the original.

V5 Empire 1.06

They checked on the possible victim, who is fine, but as a result might be slightly at war with the alleged killer because they questioned her intentions.

Playing a game together or just sharing a table?

The Lost Boys looks like two movies with a small crossover when the brothers are in the same scene.

Action!

After a month of horror movies, a change of pace with an action movie about...

checks notes

... organ thieves.

The Cure, Songs of A Lost World

The Cure, Songs of A Lost World album launch concert

November

Halloween Boxing Day seems like an odd day for The Cure to release a new album, but here we are.

FiveEvil

FiveEvil is live! Evil. On Kickstarter.

Heretic

Heretic (2024)

Trailer

A pair of young Mormon women go to visit someone who claims to be curious to learn more, but the avuncular Mr. Reed actually wants to teach them something.

Heretic got Halloween “previews” before a regular Friday release, so much so that the adverts on the side of buses say PREVIEWS OCT 31 with a cartoon jack o’ lantern for the O, so I saw it in the afternoon with enough of a crowd to share chuckles at the jokes. Said adverts focus entirely on Hugh Grant smirking evilly. He’s having fun in his villain era as he did in Paddington 2 and Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves, while Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East have the less showy roles in what is largely a three-hander. They get to be smart enough to hold their own against Mr. Reed’s arguments as it moves from the living room to the also much advertised basement.

Also the first film I’ve seen to include a note that no generative AI was used in the production, which gets it a bonus point from me too.

The medium: The cinema!

Gameability: A sinister host presenting a game and a puzzle in a purpose-built “dungeon”... And at one point Mr. Reed calls someone an NPC!

Agatha All Along

Agatha All Along stuck the landing.

(It also confirmed that Buffy The Vampire Slayer exists as a show in the MCU, which of course starts up a paradox as Marvel Comics exist in the Buffyverse.)

Annihilation

Annihilation (2018)

Trailer

Due to its extremely limited cinema release, Annihilation became a rare thing, a Netflix movie that has staying power. Based on a novel by Jeff VanderMeer, adapted and directed by Alex Garland, it stars Natalie Portman as a biologist joining a team heading into a zone affected by an unknown source of change. It’s more SF than horror, but has some gruesome moments as well as an overall grim tone. It has some striking visuals as well, although the abstract look of the climax does end up looking like an update of 1980s-90s “look what CGI can do!” animation demonstrations.

The medium: Netflix

Gameability: A small team goes in to investigate strange phenomena, though in this case the modern team dealing with a threat plays more Call of Cthulhu than Stargate.

Halloween

Halloween, Halloween, Halloween, Halloween

Halsey, Lonely Is The Muse

And when you're done, you can discard me

Like the others always do

And I will nurse my wounds until

Another artist needs me new

Halsey, Lonely Is The Muse

Marvel D+ 2024-5

A lot of release dates in under two minutes!

What If for Christmas. Daredevil this spring! Ironheart in the summer. Wonder Man next Christmas. The Spider-Man and Wakanda animated series as well.

Google Halloween 2024

Google Halloween Kitty Drawing Game returns, this time IN SPAAAAACE

Late Night With The Devil

31 days popout

Late Night With The Devil (2024)

Trailer

I skipped this at the cinema after learning it used Plagiarism Algorithm for station ident drawings, something it could easily edit out, but oh well.

But it’s really better suited to TV anyway, as it presents itself as a 1970s talk show. It’s not as good as Ghostwatch inevitably, but the period mix of sideburns and Satanic Panic works well. I wish the Randi-esque token sceptic hadn’t been such a dick though.

Gameability: Like the original plan for Ghostwatch as a regular drama with the live broadcast being the finale, how would modern protagonists deal with a TV crew getting in the way of a monster hunt or wanting to interview them afterwards?

Oddity

31 Days popout

Oddity (2024)

Trailer

After a creepy played-straight introduction that cuts before the key murder, the victim’s sister seeks answers, using her power of psychometry and an array of cursed items, including the heavily featured lifesize articulated wooden carving of a screaming man, which is mostly there to be weird and disturbing in a sort of funny way. And the whole film pretty much feels like that, which worked once I got on its wavelength.

(At another scare point I realised I’d seen writer and director Damian Mc Carthy’s work before, as he revisits early short Hungry Hickory that screened here at Dead By Dawn.)

With a less prominent example in Black As Night, it made an unintentional double bill featuring an uncommon development -

V5 Empire 1.05

Tonight in Vampire: The Masquerade, the PCs may or may not have sent a runaway victim back to a killer vampire because the possible killer’s enemy annoyed them more.

Azrael (2024)

31 Days popout

24: Azrael (2024)

Trailer

Did you know Azrael is out on Shudder after a limited US cinema run last month? I only found out by seeing it mentioned in an io9 list as Shudder itself didn’t want to tell me. Indeed, when I checked Wikipedia after confirming it was there its still listed as streaming on Shudder “at a later date”. But it’s there, honest! (At least in the U.K.)

Azrael stars Samara Weaving as a post-Rapture survivor who like many has had her vocal cords seared, including a local cult out collecting sacrifices to feed and placate the “burned people”, vampiric things living in the woods. This sets off a roaring rampage of revenge which is great fun and might have been even more fun played purely as grisly action without the possible supernatural side.

Contains at least one full helping of F YEAH.

The medium: Shudder, despite its attempts to hide it

Gameability: A story where hardly any of the characters can speak would be tricky to play in a vocal medium like RPGs, but the switch from description to lack of dialogue would stand out.

Halloween One-Shot: Sinking

An ocean research submersible descends to investigate an anomalous reading. What will the crew find, and will they get to report it?

Using the World of Darkness 5 system of escalating threat dice for a submarine in trouble, drawing on Grace Under Pressure and Grave And Watery and that genre.

Update: I got players! Four of a possible six, so I only really mauled the NPC aboard, though I ended with worrying uncertainty. They liked the rising threat dice mechanic, which I thought would work well for something like this. (Should have given them less Willpower for rerolls!)

Predator: Badlands and something more

Thanks to Dan Trachtenberg, director of Prey, two new Predator movies come along at once, one we knew and a whole other one.

Important Agatha update

“We are not cool, Teenager!”

“Damn, using his full name.”

Open letter against Plagiarism Engines

The AI training statement, open for signing.

No dinner but a show

As is traditional, we once again didn’t get to the dinner party in City of Angels. Maybe next time?

The Blair Witch Project

October 21st marks the thirtieth anniversary of the last day anyone saw film students Heather Donahue, Mike Williams or Joshua Leonard alive.

V5 Empire 1.04

The players gathered on a dark and stormy night, a week early for Halloween special...

Bram Stoker's Gibbet Hill

A Bram Stoker ghost story found and to be reprinted for charity after 134 years.

Prince Charming

Disney making a Prince Charming origin film, with Paddington 1 and 2 (and Wonka) director Paul King involved.

As someone who couldn’t find a name or origin for the Fairy Godmother and so unilaterally made her Aglaea of the Three Graces for Relics, I can hardly talk.

Besides, ridicule is nothing to be scared of.

View-Master: The Motion Picture

I can imagine how a View-Master movie could work... as a jokey horror movie...

Only Murders update

I figured out the latest development largely by checking how many episodes we have left.

Trail Of Cthulhu 2nd edition

Trail Of Cthulhu 2nd edition, now live on Backerkit.

Language Barriers

Inspired by Watcher (31 Days Of Horror 2024 Day 13), where a couple move to a country where only one speaks the language and it adds to the other’s isolation as she starts to worry she’s being watched, how would a language barrier complicate an adventure?

V5 Empire 1.03

Tied up the missing sire plot in three sessions rather than, say, twelve.

Not today

Half-hour-plus update for Windows 10 proved to be Copilot. To be fair, it has an easy right-click Uninstall.

Jurassic World: Dominion

31 Days Of Horror Adjacent In This Case

12: Jurassic World: Dominion (2022)

Battle At Big Rock short film set between Fallen Kingdom and Dominion, which gets to the scary part right away

The Jurassic Park and World trilogies have always been on the horror-adjacent adventure end of “monster” movies, more so than Jaws, Steven Spielberg’s adventure-adjacent horror with a big carnivore. How much horror gets in varies from film to film, but there’s always at least one “stalked by a dinosaur” scene.

And since I also watched a couple of full-fledged horror films this weekend that had nothing I felt like writing about, here we are.

That introductory short very much plays up how scary these things could be, but this particular film doesn’t, instead playing a sub Indiana Jones international adventure romp with added dinosaurs in the black market sale and roguish pilot until it inevitably gets to the enclosed area full of dinosaurs. And those bits are fine, but after the first World was a retread of Park like its own sequels I like that the World follow-ups mix in different genres.

This has the legacy sequel crossover problem of too many characters which the first two World films avoided and this one jumps straight into, but balances them... okay. The ending didn't entirely convince, after nearly six films of people being worried about dinosaurs getting out it's not really that big of a deal?

The medium: Netflix, also home to the YA animated series in case there aren’t enough kids in danger normally.

Gameability: There are RPGs and setting subsections about avoiding being eaten by dinosaurs through cloning, time travel and the like. This opens a setting so that could be a regular issue.

Salem's Lot (2022)

31 Days Of Horror

Salem’s Lot (2022)

Trailer

Apparently director Gary Dauberman handed in a three hour version, released at just over two it’s by far the shortest adaptation and loses a lot of the flavour of the town slowly falling, but the streamlining is largely fine, remixing the 1979 version in particular. Someone coming in unfamiliar with the book or the previous adaptation would get it, though might wonder why it was named after the town. I largely nodded along, and thought a couple of bits didn’t hit, but I really liked the play on the sunset race at the end.

It escaped its streaming doom here, and seeing it in the cinema probably helped with some of the little details seen only in the dark.

Gameability: Small group of regular people (in this very quickly) discovering and facing horrors in a small town. So, yes. Although Mark’s clearly playing a different game system to everyone else. (RPG fan bonus, a Vampire: The Masquerade Actual Play regular baring fangs on the big screen.)

The Thing

Kali Wallace on John Carpenter’s The Thing for Reactor’s Science Fiction Film Club. I knew the dog was creepy but this really lays out why. Also that the original review were bad, but oof.

Jentry Chau Vs. The Underworld

Guess they finally made that animated Buffy show after all. Trailer.

Crushing

Got a tub of “spooky” sweets as it appeared to contain Skull Crushers, the skull-shaped white chocolate shells with red fondant filling from my morbid childhood, but no, these were just solid white chocolate with a dash of red colouring.

Skulls not crushed. Only I was crushed.

(Skull Crushers are still made and available by mail order but this seems a bit of an extravagance even for me.)

It's What's Inside

31 Days of Horror more or less

It’s What’s Inside (2024)

Trailer that reveals the premise that I’m spoiler-blurring and comes up quite early but it has only been out for four days

Spoilerfiic writer-director interview

Getting its own entry as it’s new to Netflix as of this weekend. Horror-adjacent as a dark comedy with an SF/F premise.

A group of more-or-less friends meet up years after their college closeness, including a tech genius who brings a game of sorts...

Halloween one-shots

I know that GEAS one-shots after Welcome Week are hit and miss, but Halloween is my hour, so.

Nothing Darkness-y for simplicity.

Not Dread as I doubt we would have a room to ourselves so crashing Jenga tower would bother other tables.

Dead Of Night for something basic? Slasher deconstruction, haunted house, zombie apocalypse, that kind of thing. Maybe the crime gone very wrong subgenre? Paranormal investigators on camera and see if it ends up as Found Footage?

(Could also use Cthulhu, EPOCH, Fear Itself, FiveEvil, mortal WoD...)

ALIEN? Eh.

Ghostbusters? Back in public consciousness, though through movies I don’t rate.

V5 Empire 1.02

Vampire: The Masquerade - Empire

1.02

Trying not to overcomplicate why a PC was abandoned by the vampire that turned them, as I often do.

Angel at 25

Cue the cello.

Star Wars Rebels

Star Wars Rebels premiered ten years ago today. A space adventure in the lead-up to A New Hope, with a lot of fun, the occasional hefty moral question, maybe slightly too much Force mysticism, and showed its WEG RPG influence so much that one episode adapts one of the adventures.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

Well, that was thirty-six years in development and felt like two first drafts held together with unabsorbed studio notes.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, among other things, has the worst case of sequel villain bloat I’ve ever seen and I’m pretty sure it was by accident, replaces the musical stylings of Harry Belafonte with those of Richard Harris, goes to great trouble to include Charles without featuring the original actor except in stills and also writes out the Maitlands in a way so lazy it’s almost ballsy in its audacity.

I also kind of admire their commitment to the Mario Bava and Soul Train references, though would have more if they’d been in any way funny and/or a good two minutes shorter each.

Although Delia gets more to do, which is nice.

The medium: well, the cinema seat was comfy.

Gameability: About as much as the first, though I’d include a “people can find those they care about in the afterlife very conveniently” power.

Escape From New York

Science Fiction Film Club at Reactor gets to John Carpenter’s Escape From New York and as writer Kali Wallace provides context for the films here sets the dystopian cyberpunk mood with “some fun facts that are not remotely fun” about America’s actual crime rate and the national mood of the times.

31 Days Of Horror 2024

31 Days Of Horror XIV: Officially A Reimagining, Bur We Don’t Know Why

at RPGnet

Also at Bluesky

I will, as is traditional, also try to mention gameability of the films.

--

Curseborne Kickstarter

Curseborne is live on Kickstarter, and I believe my pledge put it over the halfway point after eight minutes. Fully funded in thirty-two.

OCTOBER

RELEASE THE BATS

Vampire: The Masquerade - Empire

Photo by Andre Benz on Unsplash.

Nosferatu 2024 trailer

I wish me a merry Christmas.

V5: Empire 1.01

Vampire: The Masquerade - Empire

The PCs managed to annoy the Circulatory System before the game started. This is fine.

Vampire: The Masquerade - Empire

Photo thanks to Bernd Dittrich on Unsplash.

Super Hero

Did you know the term Super Hero was trademarked by an alliance of Marvel and DC? Well, not any more.

This doesn’t mean that all superheroes are public domain or anything like that.

I try to be positive here but sometimes I am snippy

I see that the digital release of Alien Romulus will have “a guide to all the Easter eggs you probably missed.”

I assume these subtle references were hiding behind the massive number of crashingly obvious references.

Agatha All Along 1.03

I don’t know if that was a shot-specific Buffy reference (Restless) in this week’s Agatha All Along but that’s how I choose to interpret it.

The Escape Room vibe could go either way.

Some real creepy and some real silly. Favourite bit: Agatha almost helping pull Sharon out but not.

The Cure, Alone

Alone, from the new album by The Cure.

This is the end of every song that we sing

One For Sorrow

A sixteen page preview of One For Sorrow issue 1, Jamie McKelvie’s new comic series of supernatural crime in 1900 London, ahead of its November launch.

Oh, Louis...

I love Louis in all versions of Interview With The Vampire, soulful and long suffering and often hypocritical as he is, but also laughed long and hard in season two of the series when Santiago looked at his photographs and just said “Wanker.”

(And for context Santiago was out and about in full Dracula costume at the time.)

The BBC Sound Effects Library

The BBC Sound Effects Library, free to use non-commercially, and searchable.

And yes, the horror spot effects are here.

(By way of example, the wolf used in Doctor Who: The Meddling Monk and I think The Late Show.)

Or maybe Empire State, not just Empire.

Zola Jesus, solo piano tour

My soul.

Sinners trailer

Sinners trailer, Michael B. Jordan fighting 1920s vampires, directed by Ryan Coogler. Due March 7th, which seems cruelly long.

Thunderbolts*

Thunderbolts teaser, revealing that it has half Discord coding for italics.

GEAS 2024

24 pitches across the three slots:

Wednesday evening 10

Sunday afternoon 6

Sunday evening 8

I dnt know how many are going, but its definitely most of them.

11 D&D 5 (none using the new update) and the only other game with more than one pitch is Call Of Cthulhu. I do rather envy the D&D gamers getting to specialise earlier.

Vampire: The Masquerade - Empire

Vampire: The Masquerade V5 game for two familiar and otherwise all new players, so straightforward setup:

Anarchs in modern New York. 

Provisional title “Empire”, because I can never not go ominous.

Autumn

The autumn equinox is today, for one of our finer seasons. Also a good day to start a Vampire game.

The Klingon D7

I was today old when I learned (hi Dave!) that the classic Klingon D7 starship was the result of Star Trek designer Matt Jeffries knowing the owner of a model kit company who wanted something to market next to their Enterprise, so Jeffries designed it for him to make a film model. As arguments in favour of talking to the toy people go this is one of the better ones.

Vampire: The Masquerade - ?

While I will probably go with something fairly neutral, I have an assortment of chronicle titles that could nudge things in different ways. Largely stolen from music, sometimes prose and poetry

Destroy Everything You Touch

Dominion

Love Dares You

Midnights

This City Will Kill You

Vow

What Went Down

You Should Really Run Away

Vampire reference library 4: Strangers

4: Strangers

Vampire reference library 3: The Living

3: The Living

Vampire reference library 2: Outsiders

And more

2: Anarchs and independents

Vampire reference library 1: The Camarilla

And now to upload a whole lot of images:

1: The Camarilla

Vampire: The Masquerade - TBA

GEAS. Sunday evenings. Quite possibly the only WoD game, so likely to be core ideas (modern Camarilla city, etc.) and nothing nailed down yet.

Vampires hunt in the shadows of a world that looks like ours. They have their own societies, their own wars, and their own parties. What kind of monster will you be?

FiveEvil Splinters

FiveEvil Splinters, a step-by-step adventure introducing the horror turning-inside-out of D&D 5E.

Our Brilliant Ruin: Clawmoor Heights

Clawmoor Heights, an audio drama in Our Briliant Ruin.

Agatha All Along

Agatha All Along is so very my thing, from the gag in the episode 1 credits to some of the references in the lap-of-honour end credits to the use of the Salem Seven.

Agatha herself is a great example of a villain protagonist, horrible in an entertaining way and just sympathetic enough in her not-wanting-to-die-right-now motivation.

International Talk Like A Pirate Day

Hoist the colours!

GEAS Wednesdays

Looks like GEAS has roughly enough GMs for Wednesdays. I’ll keep a look on the request bit of the Discord just in case.

Going along also meant I have now met all the Nocturne players!

Aesthetic Alert

Puzzled by the variant D&D 5+ PHB cover that makes it look like Vaesen.

Welcome one-shots 2024

GEAS had twenty-odd GMs and pretty much every one ran. Lots of D&D 5 in various tones but also Vampire (yes that was me), Cthulhu, Deadlands, Thirsty Sword Lesbians and Lasers & Feelings.

I got largely familiar players so didn’t have to explain as much as I feared, including a player who had been running Vampire for seven years and never had a chance to play it so I got to feel good about that.

I did lean too much into in-the-know humans without establishing them being somewhat common. Last Dance had a human in the band, which definitely helped.

Some surprising content warning from the other GMs, including Americans for Deadlands, and a horror fantasy game where the upper limit for gore would be the chestburster in Alien.

Miami Vice

Miami Vice premiered forty years ago tonight. It started here in February, on right after the news so not so late I couldn’t watch it, not that I understood all of it at age ten, but I could tell it wasn’t like most cop shows.

By the time I was into gaming a couple years later it wasn’t my aesthetic, modern games tended to be more grimy New York style like The Equalizer, but looking back now, I could go for New Wave Requiem...

Nocturne 2024 6

Summer Vampire: The Masquerade game ended with substantially more betrayals than I would have expected in just six sessions.

The Banu Haqim thief abandoned by his sire managed to find him, and he told him he was recruited to steal from the Church of Caine as they’re getting too powerful. The Church priest Ventrue who’d been helping him until he went through with the robbery handed all of this off to his superiors and the Sheriff. The Nosferatu ally of the priest who had helped the thief rob the Church tried to avoid taking the fall.

And in the end, the thief did exactly what he feared his life would end like, and vanished without a trace.

YA Dystopia Resurgence

The AV Club looks at the YA Dystopia boom and bust and possible resurgence, as the Uglies series that predates The Hunger Games launches an adaptation. As I noted at the time I was surprised nobody made an RPG for the formulaic version before it fizzled. (Not counting Cybergeneration over a decade earlier.)

International Observe The Moon Night

NASA introduce Introduce Observe The Moon Night for the fifteenth time.

V5 1shot

Vampires hunt and hide in the shadows of a world that looks like ours. They have their own society, laws, culture and celebrations. Tonight bands prepare to play for the end of summer, but someone wants to make sure the show can’t go on.

Friday The 13th: The Day

First of the year, and the real terror begins...

'Salem's Lot (2022-4)

Trailer for the new version of ’Salem’s Lot, now going to streaming in the US sadly but sounds like in cinemas here.

They’re really leaning on the 1979 version’s vampires. Well, if it ain’t broke...

Frankenstein (2025)

Guillermo del Toro is currently directing Frankenstein here. There are blinds up around the sets, though the local newspapers got some nice shots yesterday, showing a period version.

A drab street market outside St. Giles Cathedral.

V5: City Of Angels 1.23

Tonight in Vampire: The Masquerade - City Of Angels, Paris is no longer concerned that one of her allies is going to murder several people on her behalf, but the backup plan makes her sad for different reasons.

Paris's immediate plans

James Earl Jones

James Earl Jones counts to ten on Sesame Street, as a small example of what such an actor can do.

Star Trek: Prodigy

Star Trek: Prodigy has been a lot of fun in a quick Star Wars Rebels -y way as, among other things, one Star series looking at another. More alien aliens, a sinister parent and a shiny dark robot secondary villain, scruffy space colonies, but also this small misfit crew figuring their way through some classic Trek situations. (Also Dee Bradley Baker in the main voice cast! As the happy little rainbow slug thing!)

One particular comparison point - making the communicator translation system hugely important to these various aliens who otherwise couldn’t understand each other, unlike Wars aliens who generally can while speaking alien languages with or without subtitles, which highlights the importance of being able to communicate.

Oddities include a very helpfully slowed down Borg threat to make them kids’-show-friendly followed some of by the most badass Romulans ever.

A smallish largely automated starship that can function with a crew of half a dozen follows Picard 1-2 in dodging the Trek number of expert crew ready to answer questions, and fits here better due to the lack of sorta-responsible adults.

Paralympic 2024 closing ceremony

The Marseillaise is the reason we have national anthems and none of the others are as good.

I was not 100% prepared for the sad version of the Paris 2024 theme as the flame went out.

Star Trek Day 2024

This year, the mission generator for local good causes including STEM education and equal rights.

“This Star Trek Day, we invite you to take the chair, make an impact and help us build a brighter future.”

Tabletop Scotland 2024

Tabletop Scotland 2024 was nicely busy. Hello people I saw! And people I didn’t!

Witch of the Vale, 100 Ways To Leave Vol. 1

Witch of the Vale, 100 Ways To Leave Vol. 1 at Bandcamp. Four new songs and two remixes.

“I don’t love you any less but I should have been someone else”

Zola Jesus, Plyve Kacha

Zola Jesus, Plyve Kacha (Пливе Кача)

A Ukrainian folk song, The Duckling Swims in the Tisza

'Tis the season

Sparks have their Halloween sweets in!

Sadly no Oozing Skulls.

This year they have chocolate shelled “Bursting Blisters” but they sound disgusting.

I mean, they have apple filling.

Star Trek: Picard

I have now seen season three of Star Trek: Picard. I skipped season two following reviews suggesting that as someone who largely liked season one for some particular reasons I had better not. Season three takes one character (after five minutes with another) and one major plot point from S1 and otherwise acts like a different show. Specifically, Star Trek: The Next Generation.

As someone who largely liked but didn’t love S1 I am a tad irked, and can imagine someone who really liked it being a tad more irked by S2 and then by S3 as well.

It doesn’t even keep the theme music - the theme from First Contact is lovely, but...

Storypath Ultra Core Manual

Storypath Ultra Core Manual funding on Backerkit and already funded in two hours.

Twisters

Twisters didn’t really need to be a sequel to Twister, although both of them do feature heroic scientists trying to learn more about tornadoes.

(So they’re Trinity Continuum stories, which is why I pitched a reference in the setting info.)

It’s not about academic versus corporate science this time, so less pointed while still having two competing groups of storm chasers with different motivations.

And it’s about weather being strange while not mentioning any possible cause. Big tsk.

But as a ride it’s fun.

Batman: Caped Crusader

Batman: Caped Crusader makes good use of the period setting, and the Year One dialing back, though it leans much more into Batman being cold and aloof, something the Animated Series version just pretended, which results in my not really liking him.

The definite highlight for me was the final two-parter. Less sold on Harley Quinn as Hugo Strange or the “yeah, not interested” take on Catwoman.

Lots of nice little details like the makeup effects artist in the fun Clayface episode being based on Universal monster makeup head Jack Pierce.

Vampire one-shots again, oh no

Two and a half weeks to GEAS returning and two weeks to one-shots, and as is traditional pondering Vampire and that is not good for new player one-shots.

Yes I did this at the Nationals but that was in the Vampire: The Masquerade category so some buy-in was a reasonable expectation. And while I did plan for some first time players I expected (and got) first time players who had some idea what the game is about. And we also had five hours plus rather than about three. So... hrm.

I have a few tricks I could use (heist but with vampire powers) but... hrm.

September

GEAS returning! Tabletop Scotland! Two months to Halloween!

#RPGaDay2024 Roundup

#RPGaDay2024

Roundup

I once again posted something for every day. A few haven’t directly applied to me, mostly about stuff like dice and gadgets, so needed a bit of thought. I was glad to have the alternative prompts on those days.

David Chapman and Runeslinger video retrospective

See y’all next time!

#RPGaDay2024 31a Alternative - Amazing anecdote

#RPGaDay2024

31a

Alternative - Amazing anecdote

Simon’s player joined TWH after coming to the society and being brought over by another GM. Which is how he met Natalie’s player, and they went on to marry and have kids. And this was all based on an okay nod from said other GM.

Alternative Alternative - Alternative

Present me with an opportunity to play something simpler than D&D and I’ll give it some thought.

#RPGaDay2024 31 - Game or gamer you miss

#RPGaDay2024

31 - Game or gamer you miss

Oh, they know.

31a - Miss

“You miss” is a fine response to failing a hit roll in some cases, but can feel disempowering. If I’m playing The World’s Greatest Martial Artist, I want to be actively dodged or blocked, at least in the narrative.

31b - Dragons

Being me, of course I had a dragon as the final monster in a season of The Watch House. Buffy and Angel each had dragons show up at the end of season five, but ours was in season six.

Thanks to Reign Of Fire.

David Chapman

Runeslinger

Deep Space Nine: Past Tense

It’s Bell Riots Day. Still better than reality in so many ways. Content warning for real recent history like the Grenfell fire.

Update thanks to Wil Wheaton, from writer Robert Hewett Wolfe:

This is just to say the Bell Riots don't take place on August 30th. That's the day Sisko, Dax, and Bashir will have been being arrived* in San Francisco. The Riots will be September 1-3, 2024.

That said, instead of rioting, today I honored Gabriel Bell's heroics with a donation to a couple of charities that help the unhoused and the hungry. I've donated to the Hollywood Food Coalition and the SF Marin Food Bank:

Hollywood Food Coalition Building Community since 1987 - Hollywood Food Coalition 

San Francisco-Martin Food - Every $1 Donated Provides 2

I made the donations "In Memory of Gabriel Bell." Please consider honoring Gabriel Bell with donations of your own to these or other organizations that helped the unhoused.

Thank you! Stay safe out there. Live long and prosper!

*Tense is tricky for time travel.

#RPGaDay2024 30 - Person you'd like to play with

#RPGaDay2024

30 - Person you’d like to play with

A Leverage game with series creator John Rogers would be tempting.

30a - Person

“You are being watched. The government has a secret system - a machine that spies on you every hour of every day. I know because... I built it.”

Person Of Interest is great apart from the lead. An Equalizer style procedural where the source of cases turns it into day-one cellphone cyberpunk about the birth of A.I.

It’s also much more like the opening narration of Knight Rider than Knight Rider ever was, being “a shadowy fight into the dangerous world of a man who does not exist...”

30b - Trap

Messing with the idea of trap-filled dungeons and who maintains them, as mentioned on day seven.

Some of the traps were still functional enough to be dangerous, the trap door had long since fallen in so needed to be avoided anyway, and the arrows slits became useful for the first time in centuries when the PCs had to fight a rival expedition.

Also, I think Admiral Ackbar would have been a beloved Star Wars day player even without an accidental catchphrase.

David Chapman

Runeslinger