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!