Gojira, Mea Culpa

Gojira, Mea Culpa (Ah! Ça ira!)

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

Adventure Calendar 11: Skiing And Sledging And Snowboarding

Adventure Calendar

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.

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 10: Snowmen

Adventure Calendar

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.

They can be friends or foes, sometimes both in the same story, and there are some horror examples as well as fantasy - inevitable note that I had ice sculpture monsters in my Doctor Who game before the show did it.

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