Boundary of the Darkness playtest

Pelgrane calling for playtesters for Boundary of the Darkness, the Trail of Cthulhu sourcebook of dread investigation during the Age of Enlightenment.

Buffy on ITVx

Buffy The Vampire Slayer returns to free-with-ads streaming in the UK, despite not having been shown on an ITV station AFAIK.

The Streaming Voyage Of The Demeter

The Last Voyage Of The Demeter is now on Prime if, unlike me, you didn’t buy it on disc the day it came out (seven weeks ago...) after waiting a year and a half for it to get a UK release of some kind.

Bring Her Back trailer

Bring Her Back from the creators of Talk To Me.

A circle of salt around a person is one thing. A circle of salt around an entire house...

John Wick 5

Releasing film news at CinemaCon, yes, that makes sense. On April 1st, risky.

Especially when the John Wick news includes an animated prequel.

I do hope 5 will reverse the 4 sidetrack and get back to building towards John destroying the entire international crime league over the killing of his puppy.

And doesn’t have anybody in a fat suit, but that should go without saying.

April

Happy April Fools’ Day am I doing this right

Conpulsion games

Conpulsion 2025 scheduled game list.

V5 Empire 2.07

Tonight in Vampire: The Masquerade - Empire, the PCs found that the vampire working with hunters was doing it for moral reasons, which undercut their arguments somewhat.

Conpulsion update

Two weeks to Conpulsion and I have most of the quiz but not a write-in round.

Summer?

British Summer Time my ass, you ain’t barely spring and you sure ain’t seven months long.

IMHO

Quantum Leap 2022

Quantum Leap (2022) is now on Channel 5’s catchup service here in the UK. Both seasons. It’s a fun wee show.

No PCs means no need to be normal

Idly considering having a clan with no PCs be deeply weird in my next Vampire game.

Delta Green bundle

Delta Green bundle in aid of defence and aid in Ukraine.

Project Ghostlight: The Top Shelf

Alexander Ward and Joey Rassool launch the Ghostlight podcast with their history with Vampire: The Masquerade.

It does make me want to do a Big Team superhero game again...

Hrm

Oh, so no Marvels. :(

Well, it probably isn’t everybody, right...?

Avengers: Doomsday

The Avengers: Doomsday cast reveal video is strange enough that it’s probably good I haven’t found a convenient meme blank for the actor chairs.

“They’re bringing back Runaways?”

“Didn’t they recast her? Twice?”

“Cary Grant?”

“... Oswald the Lucky Rabbit?”

Faith Erin Hicks's The Mummy

Writer and artist Faith Erin Hicks has adapted The Mummy for Universal, issue one out now! Interview and preview here. And we see more gore in one panel than the original film!

Daredevil: Born Again 1.05-06

Strange to find myself thinking an episode of Daredevil was delightful, but here we are.

A classic setup, clever use of powers, and a surprising and fun guest star. (In an episode with some violence and language they would never be near in their home stories.)

So I suppose it being so standalone explains the double bill with a heavy arc episode.

It's gone. It's done.

On 25 March of the 3019th year of the Third Age, the Ruling Ring was dissolved in the flames of the Crack of Doom, and Sauron was defeated.

Private Nightmares 1.02

“There’s a common idea amongst humans that the night is a different world...”

Also the anniversary of Disney+ launching in the UK. The last year has had some great Marvel, some fun Star Wars, OMITB and a few other things.

Happy birthday Cat!

V5 Empire 2.06

Tonight in Vampire: The Masquerade - Empire there was a frank exchange of views, and not punches or bullets.

Can’t have everything.

Dreamed of a gang of vampire children trying to get into a hunter compound.

Five years again

Five years since lockdown measures came in, with another three days to ignore them.

V5 Empire update

Have now reached the not inevitable but quite common phase in Vampire: The Masquerade chronicle planning where Johnny Cash goes on the playlist.

Bloodlines 2 update

A merry Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 announcement anniversary to all who celebrate! It has just been rated Mature by ESRB, indicating there is enough to show the ratings board.

The Bourne Identity

The Bourne Identity and following series could be due another adaptation from another studio (per Empire).

For those about to rage about reboots, the Matt Damon films started with the second adaptation of Identity, just fourteen years after the first.

Tom Breihan retrospective as part of A History Of Violence

PCs with amnesia is one of the classic one-shot RPG setups, and the Damon series built up a world of agency brainwashing and the need to break out to become a better person. This factored somewhat into Vampire for me, as scary outsiders with secrets will.

The fast, brutal style of the action did a lot to update spy movies and spread into action overall, before shakycam became too choppy in other hands.

Damon did a lot to ground it, with Bourne taking smart shortcuts as well as scared fight-or-flight reactions, and I remember my sympathetic reaction to his panic, not yet thirty myself and thinking “he’s just a kid...” as so many people sent into war are.

This future sucks

Delighted (not delighted) to discover I am in LibGen due to the Trinity Continuum core rulebook.

Spring Equinox

Spring Equinox. Doesn’t feel like it.

Sigil

D&D VTT Sigil has been cancelled, likely staying as a D&D Beyond accessory but getting no further development, with most staff fired.

Knutepunkt 2025

Knutepunkt Nordic LARP conference 2025 has publiched its annual essay book and linked to its panel video, with individual videos to follow.

The Star Wars Galactic Starcruiser essay comparing it to blockbuster LARPs is a lot more positive than some, partially reflecting a late visit with a lot of the technical issues ironed out.

Other features and games played at the event include pieces written in response to current events including the attacks on Gaza and news censorship in Russia.

A GMing first

I have had sessions summarised by GIFs before, but never a cartoon reenactment on TikTok.

Final Destination at 25

Final Destination premiered on this day in 2000. Cowriter and director James Wong talks to Bloody Disgusting about twenty-five years on borrowed time.

I talk about this series now and then, including the time I ran a play-by-post game where the second death was by runaway gravestone.

St. Patrick's Day

Happy St. Patrick’s Day as applicable!

V5 Empire 2.05

Tonight in Vampire: The Masquerade, a divisive moral question led to, shall we say, heated disagreement.

Beauty And The Beast (1987)

Rewatching Terminator 2 led to finding Beauty And The Beast streaming and rewatching it for the first time since it was on.

The first third of season one are mostly solid versions of obvious ideas based on the premise, with at least one “kiss him, you fool!” moment each.

KISS HIM YOU FOOL!

Pilot which sets up the high concept premise in the first half and the District Attorney procedural part in the second, Vincent as urban legend and frightening to Catherine, Vincent gets Catherine’s help with a surface problem / Catherine dates someone else, Vincent trapped in the world above, Halloween dance when Vincent can show his face in public, someone from the World Below is now unwelcome, someone captures Vincent, Father’s backstory.

The most obvious hook not touched is Vincent’s origin, which the show keeps back and never answers directly.

I could have lost the Irish politics from the Halloween dance episode, and the overly stylised gang from the “Vincent trapped in the world above” episode, and from later in the first season the Voodoo episode, and the Chinatown episode is now a fascinating artefact of something hopefully extinct, with a lot of cast in common with Big Trouble In Little China who helped stomp it. But the Poor Children Forced To Steal By Modern Fagin Episode is better than the Batman: The Animated Series one.

The secret tunnel community might have influenced the Nosferatu warrens in Vampire: The Masquerade, secret entrances and all, though maybe not as directly as the Morlocks in X-Men. (Did they influence this? Quite possibly.)

Amused by how Vincent has to live in secret based on how people react to his appearance with alarm and then... mostly immediately get over it.

The Hearth Magazine

The Hearth Magazine issue one is out now, bi-monthly RPG articles and minigames. Ko-fi link to get a PDF.

Lockdown

Five years after lockdown. I went out to shop and I still feel wary about doing that.

V5: City Of Angels study beats

Soundtrack for typing up Tuesday’s Vampire session based on what was happening in each scene:

Cosy restaurant ambience and soft music

Terminator 2 soundtrack

Los Angeles nighttime ambience

1960s cocktail music

ALT BLK ERA

It's what my character would do

And sometimes that is okay.

Fear Itself - Shattered Veil Edition

Fear Itself - Shattered Veil Edition - a new expanded full-colour hardback version of Fear Itself, with the addition of a expansion, The Ocean Game, also available separately as part of the campaign.

Mind how you go.

Mind how you go.

Sir Terry Pratchett, 1948-2015

Shortly before he died, Terry Pratchett assured me that, if there is an afterlife, he would give me a ring and let me know. That was ten years ago - and still no call. 

 

From which, incidentally, I draw no firm conclusions. What if there was an afterlife, but with no phone signal? 

 

But of course there is one place where Terry indisputably lives on: in the pages of his books and in the minds of the millions of readers around the world who turn those pages and continue to find them funny and true. 

 

For, while his words live on, so does Terry, and that will be the case, no question, not just for this one decade so quickly gone, but for many further decades to come. 

 

So let me join Lyn and Rhianna in raising a glass today to the magical persistence of books and to Sir Terry; gone but still so very firmly with us.

 

Rob Wilkins

V5: City Of Angels 1.30

Tonight’s Vampire session means I’ll have to think about how to avoid playing depressed next time. That’s entirely in keeping but not enjoyable, something that comes up sometimes when playing a monster trying to stay human, and can be dramatic in small doses but a bleed-through downer at length.

Lockdown

Five years to the day since my last face-to-face game before lockdown, and my last meal from my favourite restaurant, just a few days before it became enforced, which was a good three weeks later than it should have been.

I was lucky not to lose anyone close, and lucky to have somewhere to withdraw to and ride it out until the vaccines became available, but the fear and the anger will never leave me.

Happy Buffyversary

We were first welcomed to the Hellmouth on March 10th 1997.

V5 Empire 2.04

Tonight in Vampire: The Masquerade - Empire, one of the PCs having a Touchstone who might be working with a vampire hunter could prove to be a divisive issue.

Absolute DC

Always interested in the whys and wherefores of a new take on a setting.

Absolute DC seems a bit looser from the start than Ultimate Marvel, hence why Batman and Wonder Woman have giant melee weapons. But not everybody?

(Compare the New 52 thirteen years ago.)

Apparently it’s Darkseid’s fault that it’s more fighty overall.

I appreciate their use of “AU” to refer to it.

Now waiting for Malibu to do Complete And Utter Ultraverse.

V5 Private Nightmares

Vampire: The Masquerade - Private Nightmares from Project Ghostlight (episode one) - NY By Night troupe members as Thin-bloods in LA with Alexander Ward as a prowling Storyteller.

IWD

Have a good International Women’s Day.

New pictures from the Moon

Well done Blue Ghost lunar lander team.

World Book Day

Read a book!

Daredevil: Born Again

Daredevil: Born Again starts here on Ash Wednesday, with an hour-long episode called Heaven’s Half Hour.

So far it leaves me feeling bummed out.

Tradition!

Thanks to Mum, Pancake Day tradition of only day for pancakes upheld!

Pancake mix and lemon

Pancake one of about nine

Cold City Hot War

Cold City Hot War Second Edition Kickstarter Campaign.

And funded in six minutes.

Oh where are you coming from, soldier, fine soldier?

GM's Day

GM Appreciation Day is upon us once more. Time to put a rules lawyer in the wicker d20.

60s Fantasy Film Club

Tyler Dean introduces 80s Fantasy Fi;m Club at Reactor, with Dragonslayer.

I got to make the first comment, and shared my anecdote about missing the first five minutes and not knowing someone was meant to be in disguise.

Or other niche superhero team

Just read, watched and listened to a podcast about niche superhero teams sufficiently close together to start getting niche superhero team TTRPG thoughts.

After being reminded of the time Thunderbolts was about a whole new team and it wasn’t the characters on the covers for some reason.

X-Books

The X-Men are doing a back to basics story returning them to the relatively normal Marvel Universe after a long run of isolated transhumanist SF, and just gearing up to a crossover with their teams working together or not.

And two largely new teams as well.

(We also have the demon-possessed son of Wolverine with a Ghost Rider style flaming head, but never mind.)

This lets them look more like the other media X-Men like the revived cartoon and presumably movies bringing them into the MCU.

But anyway, what’s your X-team like?

V5 Empire 2.03

Tonight in Vampire: The Masquerade - Empire, the players narrowed down which lead to follow.

Sessions can’t all produce amusing pithy descriptions.

Skype

Microsoft is shutting down Skype and boosting Teams. Skype was the free video call thing we used for gaming before lockdown but which gave way to Discord and the like, and one feels sort of sorry for it as a result.

March

A perfectly cromulent month as months go.

Buttons and dials

EU vehicle safety to require buttons and dials over touchscreens for best safety ratings. Controls you don’t have to look at, a good move, and also a vital part of making Star Trek technology make sense.

Once More With Feeling

Watching Once More With Feeling again, and one of its appeals is that it’s a rare episode where Dawn is in a good mood most of the time.

Michelle Trachtenberg

Michelle Trachtenberg has died, age 39. Obituary at Empire. 39 is no kind of age.

Character Creation Jam

A fan of the Character Creation Challenge is doing it again at itch for March. That is too quick for my batteries to replenish, but maybe someone here is missing it?

V5: City Of Angels 1.29

Tonight in Vampire: The Masquerade - City Of Angels, my PC actually did the thing she’s good at! Which is events promotion so it doesn’t make for an exciting scene but hey.

(She also tried to explain Instagram to an elder. This is her unlife now.)

Consider Phlebas: The Series?

Consider Phlebas, the opening salvo of the Culture, with Charles Yu (Interior Chinatown) writing and producing for Amazon MGM. Fingers crossed. News at Reactor.

Eggs-port

Massive import of eggs from Turkey to the US.

(jazzy baseline underneath)

“The score will be moving in refrigerated 20 foot storage containers on the Liberian flagged freighter, it’ll be too far from aid three days past the Straights of Gibraltar, that’s when we jam the cells and hit it.”

“We blow the locks on the containers?”

“Wellll...”

John Rogers

Twin Peaks Day

A damn fine Twin Peaks Day to all who celebrate.

Please enjoy my Character Creation Challenge contribution of Quieter Weirdness responsibly.

Andor season two trailer

The second season of Andor (trailer and talk at Empire) covers his time in the Alliance up to Rogue One.

I stand with Ukraine.

Wimdy level heckin

Cancelled this evening’s session due to horrible weather. My “the show must go on” ethic is unhappy, but my “don’t go out in 40mph winds” sense is probably right.

The Power Fantasy issue 1 free

The Power Fantasy by Kieron Gillen and Caspar Wijngaard, issue 1 free, online at Image.

There are six beings with superpowers on Earth. The worlds continued existence relies on them never coming into conflict.

Primer for the series

Star Trek toys update

Master Replicas prototyping and pre-ordering figures for the modern Star Trek series, aiming to get core crews out, in the 4.5” scale of long-running line by Playmates though not in their top-heavy style. Although the figures still look a bit top-heavy due to skinny legs. The Lower Decks ones look really nice, however.

Not sure why we have Raylan from Justified as Riker though...

(Another company is making high-end Star Wars scale Kelvin figures, and another company is prepping a 6” line of mostly frankly baffling characters like Jellico and Tuvix. Don’t look at me, I had some of the Megos.)

Also looking to be making prop toys like phasers and tricorders for the first time at toy prices since 2009. Which would be nice.

Edward Gorey

Edward Gorey was born on this day in 1925.

If I could get a time machine and a video camera I would record the production of Dracula he designed in the 70s.

Companion

Sophie Thatcher continues a run of entertaining horror films. Jack Quaid continues a run of playing surface-likeable assholes. I could say more, but come back later.

What would my take on James Bond be like?

Given how fast and loose a lot of the adaptations are, you could go back and do much closer versions. Cold War setting and all. Lose some of the not-okay-then-let-alone-now opinions. Have a black and white version streaming along with the colour one.

Maybe start with Moonraker, where the film kept the villain’s name and that a flying machine of some kind was involved.

Want new stories? Look at the new novels, comics and so on.

Or buy another spy series and use them, like the Die Hard sequels use unconnected screenplays and in one case an article about computer security threats.

Include a really cool stunt in the first scene. I remember the audience reaction to the jump in GoldenEye, and we’d already seen the start in the trailer.

Personally I’d follow the Daniel Craig films making him a miserable bastard. Everybody else at MI6 has a better work-life balance. The villains are having a great time. He’s held together with vodka and painkillers. But he keeps going because someone has to do this. Not because he enjoys it.

(Which would be cool for a prestige-y streaming take, a movie might need him to be more fun to watch even if not a fun person to be around.)

No nodding towards James Bond being a codename or a Time Lord or anything like that. Until the first actor leaves anyway.

Bond And Buy

The longtime executive producers of the James Bond films have moved on, ceding creative control to Amazon MGM. Until the books go into the public domain... possibly as soon as 2035.

I look forward to a wonky prequel series or something. And lots of product placement. Personal rather than political enemies, or vague made-up terrorist groups. And - I’m being handed a note

Heart Eyes

Heart Eyes from director Josh Ruben (Werewolves Within) and writers Phillip Murphy, Christopher Landon (Happy Death Day, Freaky) and Michael Kennedy (Freaky) works as both a postmodern romcom and a postmodern slasher, probably better for fans of the latter than the former as the kills are on the gnarly side. The overall light tone means there’s not much suspense but there is one great bit. Olivia Holt (Cloak & Dagger) and Mason Gooding (Scream 2022 and VI) are suitably funny and charming as the meet-cute not-a-couple in principal jeopardy, and it did some fun things with the genres at play.

Fighting Fantasy reprints

Some of the early classic Fighting Fantasy books to be reprinted in a Kickatarter from Steve Jackson Games particularly for the US market.

(That’s Steve Jackson US of course, not FF cocreator Steve Jackson UK, as we were confused by in our youth, especially when he wrote an FF book.)

Some or all have been reprinted here, but these are mostly going back to the original art (with a new cover for Warlock Of Firetop Mountain, which got a new cover at least once in the original run) and the first five will not be the actual first five, but 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6, Deathtrap Dungeon being more traditional than Starship Traveller.

A larger reprint of City Of Thieves is tempting by itself, but it looks like you can only get Warlock separately.

Batman: The Fun Halloween

Bruce Wayne’s first attempt to do Halloween after returning to Gotham doesn’t go well, he’s not used to dealing with kids, Alfred does most of the heavy lifting and he goes to brood on a rooftop.

Having thought about it because he always gets better with a plan, his second Halloween goes great. The trick or treat station by the gatehouse means kids not having to hike up to the front door.

His third is a bit weird for him because of all the kids in Batman costumes, but he deals. He does get to see the Gotham-version-of-Greenwich-Village parade go off without a costumed maniac attack for the first time, which helps.

(A small example of someone making a difference and getting to see it.)

Clark Kent gets that Metropolis doesn’t do the corn maze thing but still misses it so goes to Smallville at least once while it’s on.

Diana doesn’t really get to enjoy Halloween because she’s busy fighting ghosts escaping the underworld.

Concept, Aim, Tone, Subject

And also Stars and Wishes, and other same page talkthrough systems.

Warhammer: The Old World: The New RPG

Warhammer: The Old World, with a new system with d10 dice pools, set a couple hundred years before Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.

V5 Empire 2.02

Tonight in Vampire: The Masquerade, the PCs questioned the surviving human servant of a dead vampire and didn’t answer his questions about what happens to him now, as dozens of other vampires know what he looks like and that he knows too much.

They also realised that they might not be the only vampires in the city with a common first level power...

Uncharted (2022 film)

Uncharted is nice enough to include an Indiana Jones joke.

Captain America: Brave New World

Captain America: Brave New World is a pretty fun sequel to The Incredible Hulk (2008) that also gains heavily from having watched the more obviously relevant The Falcon And The Winter Soldier, once I stopped cringing at the fictional presidential message of togetherness.

The first appearance heavily shown in trailers and on the main poster takes a long time to arrive.

Another character was reworked pretty heavily from the comics version, likely for other real-life political reasons, and possibly adjusted during filming based on one appearance in a costume we never see without a coat covering it.

Nice work making the new Falcon a likable goof in-character instead of just a comic relief.

The phrase “even more indestructible.” Ouch.

Underwhelming end credits tease. But I also liked the kids in the audience rocking out to Kendrick Lamar over the end credits - he’s having a good 2025 so far.

Valentine's Day

The 21st anniversary of our first 24 hour charity RPG marathon.

The World Well (And Friends)

Three decidedly different zine sized games from Tin Star, now on Kickstarter and already funded.

The Last Voyage Of The Demeter

The Last Voyage Of The Demeter arrives at port on disc a year and a half after it was due to sail into cinemas but was lost in a storm of financial woes.

A pretty good expansion of a notable chapter of Dracula, well made, darkly but mostly clearly lit, and brutal (the dog dies) though I think let down by how much the Dracula actor in makeup is replaced by CG and some wobbly continuity.

Glad to have finally gotten to see it, and appreciate that the disc has proper extras like deleted scenes, a commentary and some behind-the-scenes bits.

Terraforming Mars: The RPG

Terraforming Mars getting an RPG, written by Kenneth Hite and Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan. My interest level is now greater than zero.

Super Bowl trailer and ad highlights

At Empire. Unusually some of the ads actually showed here, Doritos spending an extra fifty quid to get theirs on ITV at one in the morning.

Kendrick Lamar's halftime show

Also Uncle Samuel L. Jackson and forty acres and a mule.

Thunderbolts* Big Game Trailer

With a look at the main threat and all.

Important news

World Pizza Day on Super Bowl Sunday. Hmm. Time to get... something. Popcorn maybe?

Plotting And Scheming

Met one of my current V5 players today...

Conpulsion seeks GMs!

Game submission form up now!

Magic: The Gathering movie(s)?

Hasbro and Legendary spinning up Magic: The Gathering for a cinematic universe with movies and possibly TV. News at Empire.

What does that have to do with the price of eggs?

100,000 organic eggs worth $40,000 stolen in Maryland.

National Werewolf Day

National Werewolf Day, as I discovered last year due to Film4 dedicating their showing of Werewolves Within. Marked since 2016, but I am not clear which nation is supposed to be celebrating.

Play? Time?

Really shouldn’t offer a new game for the five people asking at GEAS right now. As they may not all be together, may not all be interested, and I already have nine players on Sunday evening in the event everybody actually came.

The Fantastic 4: First Steps

First Steps trailer and talk at Empire. Retro 60s scifi world!

A Buffy revival pilot?

A Buffy The Vampire Slayer revival pilot possibly moving with script from Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Poker Face co-executive producers Nora and Lilla Zuckerman, with Chloé Zhao (Eternals) to direct, and I say revival because Sarah Michelle Gellar is in! Probably as the Giles to a new slayer. We shall see. Hopefully.

Final Destination: Bloodlines trailer

Final Destination is BACK baby! Discussion at Empire. More of a clip than a trailer, starring Richard Harmon, Murphy from The 100, as a similarly unfortunate type. On the red band side.

V5 Empire 1.13

Note to self: look up how this Vampire: The Masquerade canon character died officially now that I’ve killed him in my game.

February

Made it. Feels weird.

Character Creation Challenge 2025 Roundup

Character Creation Challenge 2025

Roundup

Starting a day late and going with an idea that means using one system I can do stats for in four seconds, I hope I still made for entertaining reading.

It’s given me several ideas I’m tempted to run, a blues versus Cthulhu idea I want to make as a TV series or something, and some lovely reactions on RPGnet and elsewhere:

Rich Stokes, creator of Umläut

Seeing this made my day!

Seeing people occasionally still having fun with Umläut 15 years later is wonderful.

Thanks for enjoying it!

Xeni Giardiniera of Velvet Generation

Statting Velvet Generation as a band/character from Ümlaüt is my favorite kind of deranged.

Also managed to only reuse one artist when providing a song every day. (And failed to include Garbage. Hmm. Could edit something...)

Thanks to TardisCaptain for the challenge and everybody who took part or cheered us on.

Character Creation Challenge 2025 Collection

Character Creation Challenge 2025

TardisCaptain introduction and after action report

RPGnet thread

BEHOLD!

Umläut: Game Of Metal

0: Ideas, aka why I started late

1: Buffy The Vampire Slayer

2: Vampire: The Masquerade

3: Dungeons & Dragons & Such

4: Call Of Cthulhu and family

5: Cyberpunk / Cybergeneration

6: Trinity Continuum

7: Adventure! Tales Of The Aeon Society

8: Aberrant

9: Aeon

10: Superheroes

11: Masks: A New Generation

12: Monsterhearts

13: Horror One-Shots

14: Starchildren: Velvet Generation

15: Doctor Who

16: Star Wars

17: Star Trek

18: Kids On Bikes

19: Meddling Kids

20: Action Comedy

21: Westerns

22: Ancient Settings

23: Surrealist Drama and 23a: Quieter Weirdness

24: WAR

25: TOON

26: Storybook Story Games

27: Spies And Cons And Capers

28: Underworld City Games

29: Post-Apocalypse

30: Big Bands

31: Umläut: Game Of Metal

Encore

Roundup

Character Creation Challenge 2025 Encore

Character Creation Challenge 2025

Encore: Adventures And Series About Bands

And now, finally, a thought on RPGs and other stories about bands.

There are two extremes, one where it’s all about the story of the band, and one where a band is an excuse for the characters to be together and for some music in the show. In the middle are a lot of series which mix stories about the music with the old “you’re on the way to a show when the adventure happens” setup.

Umläut models the first kind, designed for one-shots that generate the history of a band, the kind of story that gets told in Behind The Music.

I’ve mostly aimed for the middle this month, wanting the band setup to bring at least some adventure hooks and drama for a spin on a setting.

The other extreme would be something like The Monkees, a post A Hard Day’s Night sitcom that happens to star a prefab band and their day job rarely mattered to plots like the first example I saw of a will requiring would-be inheritors to spend the night in a haunted house.

Josie And The Pussycats is also a helpful demonstration here, with the movie being a satire about the band making it big and the effect it has on them with a mystery to solve, the cartoon being a Scooby-Doo thing with added songs, and the comics often being a mix of comedy, light band drama and “on the way to a show when..." stories.

Band stories in comics often go this way, from Scott Pilgrim via various Pussycats runs through Band Vs. Band. Exaggerations of the ups and downs of bands’ lives, often involving action scenes.

(Not always of course, see Love And Rockets.)

Josie And The Pussycats

JOIN THE ARMY

“I’m a punk rock prom queen”

Concept

A small time band with big time dreams and a way of getting in trouble everywhere they go.

Members

Josie, vocals and guitar, really wants this to be a thing

Val, bass, here to support her friends

Melody, drums, what were we talking about

Statistics

Hope 1

Ego 1

Fanbase 1

Cash 0

Performance Traits

Technique 2

Power 4

Stagecraft 1

They can turn their hands to anything so they never Showboat, how dare you

Character Creation Challenge 2025 31: Umläut: Game Of Metal

Character Creation Challenge 2025

31: Umläut: Game Of Metal

YES.

And finally... (Except that of course there’s an encore.)

Umläut has a random band naming system. Draw two cards, first is band type by suit (Classic, Thrash, Glam, Death) and first word by value, second is second word by value.

Spades is Thrash, 3 of Spades is Agony and then a Queen is Kingdom:

Agony Kingdom

“I love rock ‘n roll!”

Concept

Thrash Metal classicists, although unusually their logo is legible

Members

Doug, lead vocals and rhythm guitar, not his natural hair colour (or anyone’s)

Josh, lead guitar, can also play keyboards

Mike, bass, most likely to wear a hat

Carl, drums, also van driving

Statistics

Hope 1

Ego 1

Fanbase 1

Cash 0

Performance Traits

Technique 3

Power 3

Stagecraft 1

Dare they try a Face Melter?

The Galactic Starcruiser lands

Star Wars Galactic Starcruiser, the theme park hotel LARP faux-cruise, is now to be converted to office space for Disney park imagineers, so they can be surrounded by reminders of a massive failure.

Wolf Man

Wolf Man (2025), co-writer and director Leigh Whannell’s follow-up to The Invisible Man (2020) and another Universal monster modernisation, has some great suspense sequences (a couple reminiscent of the first two Jurassic Park films) and good practical effects although the look says Orc more than Wolf Man, one really wince-inducing moment, an interesting take on superhuman senses, and some bits where it will be too dark to see outside of cinemas.

It leans into the doomed aspect of werewolf stories and doesn’t bring much fun along the way, or a twist as good as The Invisible Man had. Worth it for some of the suspense, but it’s grim stuff. I can imagine the abandoned Daaaark Universe version would have been more amusing.

The really wince-inducing moment, behind the More.

Character Creation Challenge 2025 30: Big Bands

Character Creation Challenge 2025

30: Big Bands

And now a kind of game that’s about a band rather than a band in a kind of game.

A standard band is the same kind of size as a PC party. For a big band or an orchestra, or a festival with multiple acts playing, you might have to megagame or LARP it.

Live (Action Roleplay) for one night only

Games with large players base, like LARPs or megagames or chats, often cope with this by splitting them into factions. In a festival that’s various bands, but in something like an orchestra it could be sections like brass and woodwind, who should be able to play together but fiction about them often has backstabbing second chair musicians and the like. They’re all trying to push their own agendas, in a one-shot possibly rated for points. And somebody has to play the organisers, promoters, conductors and the like trying to get everybody playing the same tune.

In a smaller group, every player could control a band as in Umläut or a section of an orchestra.

(This game idea in no way influenced by my experience of working arts events.)

Throw in a murder mystery if you really want to get everybody talking.

The Miskatonic University Orchestra

“It’s not over tonight”

Concept

An orchestra with a mix of dedicated musicians, hopeful amateurs and absolute weirdoes

Character Creation Challenge 2025 29: Post-Apocalypse

Character Creation Challenge 2025

29: Post-Apocalypse

Post-apocalypse settings are often more like Westerns than anything else, sometimes war stories if the PCs have enough gear and there are clear enough sides.

The aftermath of a realistic nuclear war would be rather less adventurous, but nowadays we have other ways to destroy civilisation with a few more survivors. (Yay...)

Looking like GWAR do already is optional.

And then there’s Gamma World which due to its cartoony mutations would let you play the Bremen Town Musicians again.

WITNESS

Witness Coma the Doof Warrior

Minimum Safe Distance

“Born into the Age of Panic”

Content warning for violent news and documentary imagery

Concept

Possibly the last band in the world. Nice boys really.

V5: City Of Angels 1.28

Second 2025 TTRPG session as player and no new moral quandaries but did get to be horrified in-character learning something I’ve known about the setting for thirty years.

(For those wondering, it was about ghouls - blood addicted mortal victims - having children and possibly passing on the condition, and the vampire we had to work with studying this for practical applications.)

Paris has realised that the few years she existed as a vampire before the chronicle started were unusually stable and low on dread and revulsion.

Sinners trailer 2

“There are legends of people with the gift of making music so true, it can conjure spirits from the past, and the future.”

Not sure how far it gets but it gives away a fair bit more.

Character Creation Challenge 2025 28: Underworld City Games

Character Creation Challenge 2025

28: Underworld City Games

Gangsters hiding Tommy guns in violin cases has some basis in fact.

That got me thinking about games like Gangbusters and stories such as Peaky Blinders. Misadventures in the Big City as distinct from on the road. They don’t all have to be hardboiled noir stories - Some Like It Hot plays musicians on the run from the Mob for farce.

This would fit Victorian London in a way that the Western ideas wouldn’t despite the time overlap, and in the 1920s and 30s it would feel different than my traveling Adventure! and Call Of Cthulhu ideas. And this kind of trouble can still be a thing nowadays, for the likes of Haven: City Of Violence as well as the Darkness family of games.

The Albany Quartet

“Hey folks, here’s a story ‘bout Minnie the Moocher”

Concept

A band trying to make it big in the Prohibition era, where just about any gig is an adventure in itself.

No not like that

Annoyed enough about Section 31 to want to run a Star Trek game. Note that this is not generally a good way to start planning a game.

Character Creation Challenge 2025 27: Spies And Cons And Capers

Character Creation Challenge 2025

27: Spies And Cons And Capers

(Capers as in the genre, not Capers as in the 1920s proto-superhero game.)

Bands can work as glamorous adventurers like superspies and dashing thieves, getting in trouble in fancy international locations.

The Beatles’ second film Help! is a take-off of pulp adventures and the spy-fi of the era, complete with unnecessary international travel and some plot points that haven’t aged as well as the songs.

See also the Bond story The Living Daylights about a sniper travelling undercover as a cellist, like the classic gangster hiding a Tommy gun in a violin case.

And in the film somehow led to this.

And the Leverage episode The Studio Job about song theft, as well as the times they take over movie and TV productions and magic acts.

And Hustle does the movie con too, and there’s also the time Emma pretends to be Kylie to steal an appearance fee for a millionaire’s private party.

And if Now You See Me can get two movies out of using magic shows to rob places, you could probably do this as more than one adventure.

Thick As Thieves

“Whatever you do, don’t tell anyone”

Concept

A group of con artists posing as a band, having created hype artificially, to get performer access to a super-rich party.

V5 Empire 1.12

First 2025 session as GM, Vampire: The Masquerade, mostly catching back up after six weeks away with some mild horror, but also introducing a new PC with an ongoing occult mystery and throwing the city’s political situation into turmoil.

Character Creation Challenge 2025 26: Storybook Story Games

Character Creation Challenge 2025

26: Storybook Story Games

Games like Wanderhome feature talking animals in a more storybook than Looney Tunes style, part of a genre of cosy games where things largely go alright.

So for a band of non-cartoony smart animals:

Bremen Town Band
Statue by Gerhard Marcks
Photo by Adrian Pingstone

The Town Musicians of Bremen

“Movin’ right along in search of good times and good news

With good friends you can’t lose”

Concept

Four farm animals looking for a better life in the city and hoping to learn to play by the time they get there

The Box Of Delights

The Box Of Delights (BBC TV 1984) repeated for its fortieth anniversary - and when it was first on it was nearly fifty years after the book came out. Which I didn’t know was the second of two, though it does explain some character connections, specifically why the villain discounts the hero.

Title sequence with eerie strings theme and assorted faces that would feel Whovian even without Patrick Troughton, end title cheerful symphonic version

(Compare the crowdfunding video for the official RPG I just discovered.)

The mix of video filming, computer animation like chromakey and traditional animation feels bumpy at times. Likewise the weather, where deep snow is a plot point and represented by effects but there was actual deep snow for some of the filming (which stopped a lot of it) and then it was maybe late autumn an episode later.

I’m more interested in the tonal oddness. Everybody rolling with it after very little alarm when discovering magic. The villains first presented as wolves in human form and then being regular criminals apart from their leader. And the resulting idea of a pretty regular gang of crooks working for an evil wizard. Not really getting what the villain’s plan was for disrupting a Christmas service. The way Kay can casually question adults and only the police inspector seems to remember he’s a child, even more so than the usual teen sleuth types. The pause to go boating while one of the sidekick family has been kidnapped. The reveal of the box’s rightful owner. A Brazen Head and assorted demons. A guy-in-a-costume talking mouse who appears as casually as an old friend.

My favourite part, the idea that one of the villains had to put on a Punch And Judy show.

A lot of this is the kind of thing I glossed over when I was ten, but not all of it. So when it pulls the “it was all a dream - or was it?” ending it seems to fit.

Character Creation Challenge 2025 25: TOON

Character Creation Challenge 2025

25: TOON

TOON was made for cartoon shorts and other hyper-slapstick comedy like that. I wouldn’t use TOON for a Meddling Kids cartoon (or live) band, but I might use it for the Electric Mayhem from The Muppet Show.

Cartoon stars often perform music or form bands, sometimes fronting orchestras for maximum sublime-ridiculous juxtaposition, and some of the classic shorts were called Silly Symphonies by Disney and Looney Tunes or Merrie Melodies by Warner Bros. See also recent things like Sing which has spinoff shorts in a full-on TOON style, and oddities like The Beatles cartoon and Gorillaz.

Bugs Bunny in Long-Haired Hare

The Big Noise

“STICK!”

(IDLES cover)

Concept

The house band for the perennially-near-bankrupt Moulin Bleu theatre, prone to getting mixed up in antics involving the shows’ guest stars

The benefits of a cool-sounding name

House Ipsissimus is the Anarch grouping for Tremere in Vampire: The Masquerade V5, but has never caught on because (a) House Carna has cool witches and (b) it sounds like you’re trying to get a cat to come over to you.

And as far as I can tell having a cooler name is also why Star Trek just called its superspy movie Section 31 instead of something with Starfleet Intelligence.

California Wildfire Relief Bundle

California Wildfire Relief Bundle: Savage Worlds, Capers and more, $400 worth of PDFs for $25.

Character Creation Challenge 2025 24: WAR

Character Creation Challenge 2025

24: WAR

What is it good for?

Since I mentioned Warhammer in medieval-ish fantasy, and now ancients, ways that musicians can find themselves in war. Regimental bands have mostly stopped playing music as they march into battle due to more modern ways of communicating, which is the kind of historical-fantasy-ish war I’m considering.

(They’re still around ceremonially, though. Here in Edinburgh, military and other bands from around the world play at the Military Tattoo at the Castle every year, showcasing a mix of traditional and modern instruments. With the right application and audition process you could be lead electric guitar for the Royal Marines.)

Bands in wartime will get into some of the same dangers as other soldiers, though they might be able to get out of some things, playing for parties for the brass instead of the big push.

Equally, civilian musicians and other entertainers could end up performing to troops on goodwill tours.

It’s a good gig for inserting secret agents too...

Players of the Delberz Irregulars

“War! A war! A war on the far side, on the other side of the planet”

Concept

The adventures of one of those musician command groups in Warhammer Fantasy Battles.

Character Creation Challenge 2025 23a: Quieter Weirdness

Character Creation Challenge 2025

23a: Quieter Weirdness

For a more Twin Peaks setting that’s slightly odd on the surface with just one or two bizarre dark secrets, maybe something like Chronicles Of Darkness or Fear Itself, with advice and possibly characters from Station Duty in The Esoterrorists second edition.

Julee Cruise at the Roadhouse

The house band in a town saloon, or students at a music conservatory. Drama, mysteries, and room for something like a singer who sometimes channels voices from beyond.

Wild At Heart

“Yet something is different

Are we falling in love?”

Concept

They’ll be heading to college or other futures come the fall, but tonight they’re playing, making the kinds of mistake kids their age should be making... maybe finding someone made a worse one.

Character Creation Challenge 2025 23: Surrealist Drama

Character Creation Challenge 2025

23: Surrealist Drama

Over The Edge is the biggest RPG for the surrealist drama genre. It packs a lot of hooks and other stuff into its city seting so there are ghosts and aliens and talking animals and a threat from the future moving back in time to make itself real, so it feels more like William S. Burroughs’s Interzone or indeed 2000 A.D.’s Mega-City One than something only slightly odd on the surface with a small number of deep weird secrets like Twin Peaks.

Unknown Armies is more under the surface, but the PCs are usually at least partially in the know and active participants in the weird conflicts.

So for a band that would fit Al Amarja, crank up the Weird Level:

Long Live

“Trying to find a clue, trying to find a way to get out!”

Concept

A group of musicians who supposedly died under mysterious circumstances or were reportedly seen after their deaths. Are they resurrected, ghosts, lookalikes, clones? And more importantly, can they agree on a setlist?

Character Creation Challenge 2025 22: Ancient Settings

Character Creation Challenge 2025

22: Ancient Settings

As distinct from general mediaeval-style fantasy, RuneQuest and other ancient-style settings will still have groups of musicians for armies and temples and rich people sitting on divans eating grapes and that kind of thing.

The ancient Greeks had guilds for musicians as well as actors, Rome had court composers and the like at various points in its many gameable eras, Egypt had gods of music likewise, and bard is a Gaelic word coming from the Celts.

What kinds of sounds can you get out of a Carnyx?

The Sun Square players

“Oh bylar, bylar”

Concept

As long as there has been art there will have been people singing for their supper. So maybe that ancient walled city had a ragtag group of buskers who played the market square, who also paid attention for secrets to sell, and dreamed of a better life.

Character Creation Challenge 2025 21: Westerns

Character Creation Challenge 2025

21: Westerns

“Western” is both a genre of stories and the back half a genre of music. Both often involve drifters in cowboy hats, towns at the edge, and heroic or tragic gunfights.

Bands as we’d think of them were around by then, though “Country and Western” didn’t become the standard term until 1949, replacing “Hillbilly music”.

And there are some Western stories starring musicians, as in the Singing Cowboy subgenre of serial, which I mentioned in Adventure! because the best known example also involves robots attacking from an underground city. Unsurprisingly the most popular Western RPGs add monsters as well.

I also mentioned folk song collectors, and see also modern and space Westerns, and the post-apocalypse adventure has them too. The legend of the stranger arriving in town with a guitar on his back appeals to many a gigging musician.

The Langdon Four

“Ain’t no grave can hold my body down”

Concept

They aim to come to town, play a set and move on. Somehow this seems to lead to trouble.

GEAS 2024-25 part 25

With no rooms to be had on Wednesdays, midweek GEAS is moving to online or Thursday. And as a whole new day, a chance for me to make people play Buffy!

Since it will probably be one semester tops, nothing complicated. Maybe, hey, a band! Or something.

Vampire V5 planned to continue on Sunday evenings.

Character Creation Challenge 2025 20: Action Comedy

Character Creation Challenge 2025

20: Action Comedy

While a lot of RPGs focus on action and many sessions tend towards comedy, RPGs built for action comedy aren’t all that common. Characters aren’t quite TOON level resilient, but not far off it. There’s The Troubleshooters, and the widening of the Ghostbusters system in Awfully Cheerful, and I can’t think of many more.

But anyway I wanted to highlight this option as related to bands because of The Blues Brothers.

Of course what a game based on the movie would really need is a demolition derby car chase system.

Miniatures optional.
Suspiciously similar Lledo Days Gone bank robbers I modified by adding sunglasses.

BB

“Well my temperature’s rising and my feet left the floor

Crazy people knocking cause they’re wanting some more”

Concept

“We’re on a mission from God.” A band getting back together after various good reasons to part, for one show for a good cause. If they get there.

Martin Luther King Day

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”

Strength to Love, 1963

Character Creation Challenge 2025 19: Meddling Kids

Character Creation Challenge 2025

19: Meddling Kids

Modelling Scooby-Doo if the kids in the band have a possibly-intelligent animal companion and have to solve a groovy mystery in particular.

Being in a band was added in the Josie And The Pussycats cartoon. We’ll get back to them later.

See also Jinkies!, The Mystery Business and doubtless some others, as well as Cartoon Action Hour, and one of the Monster Of The Week playbooks lets you reveal the monster is a guy in a mask.

Could also be They Came From Beyond The Grave! or Bubblegumshoe for a more Veronica Mars take on it.

Scaredy Cat

“Oh the ghost is here and it’s always a fake

The ghost is here, there’s no reason to stake

The ghost is here, aw, give us a break

It’s fake”

Concept

The main question is whether the supernatural is real, or if it reinforces the original Scooby-Doo lesson that the real monsters are old white guys trying to commit fraud.

Happy birthday Buffy!

The canonical one she shares with Dolly Parton, not the other two shown on screen.

Character Creation Challenge 2025 18: Kids On Bikes

Character Creation Challenge 2025

18: Kids On Bikes

And the general tween to teen adventure subgenre. This may or may not involve alien visitors or psychic runaways or Wizard School. Stranger Things has different levels of plot armour for kids, teens and adults. But overall they’re not in as much danger as straight-up horror teens. Usually.

The Breakers

“I wanna hold her, wanna hold her tight

Get teenage kicks right through the night”

Concept

Someday they’ll play somewhere outside Franklin’s family’s garage.

Character Creation Challenge 2025 17: Star Trek

Character Creation Challenge 2025

17: Star Trek

Inevitably after Star Wars and Doctor Who, and with the 17th of January being 17/01:

One of the appealing aspects of the Star Trek future is how much time Starfleet crews have for hobbies. In between adventures they’re painting, putting on plays, LARPing on the Holodeck, and playing music.

And there would also be career creatives in the Federation. What kind of adventures could they get up to?

I’d expect a post-scarcity utopia to have really good support for arts and humanities, so the five kids’ space van wouldn’t be a beat-up clunker. See Aeon for another setting working to get there, so that’s a possible model, a group travelling with a cultural outreach program.

Klingon Opera companies would be easier here as they’d get up to the same kinds of adventures as D&D parties and backstabbing Vampire courts.

Star Trek Adventures needs some work to support PCs who aren’t highly capable starship crew, to the extent that the skill list is the Starfleet departments, so maybe use a different system.

(Hmm, a system for bands where the stats are things like Lead and Bass with the instruments’ personality stereotypes you roll Bass to keep your cool in trouble...)

Star Trek Gibson Flying V guitars. Nerds.

Drift

“Maybe together we can make a mark

In the stars

We embark

And keep us together as the lights go dark”

A travelling band collecting songs and stories from planets isolated after a quadrant-wide war or some other disaster.

I think this would be an interesting hook for a lot of settings, like Ashen Stars or various Traveller eras, and the American folk song collectors during the 1920s and 30s might fit something like Firefly as well as Call Of Cthulhu.

David Lynch

“Believe it or not, Eraserhead is my most spiritual film.”

“Why, ah, elaborate on that?”

“No, I won’t.”

David Lynch’s Weirdness Cannot Be Separated From His Empathy

Reactor retrospective 2024

Character Creation Challenge 2025 16: Star Wars

Character Creation Challenge 2025

16: Star Wars

We see a band in Star Wars before we meet Han Solo.

I imagine Tatooine is one of those towns planets where all the venues are owned by or giving kickbacks to the Hutts so if you want to play you have to deal with that.

But the Cantina is just going for some smooth jazz for the afternoon crowd so it’s probably a steady gig. Not as lucrative as Jabba’s Palace, but you’re less likely to get fed to a Rancor.

And Jabba letting a band play is the only episode of Visions season one that isn’t about a lightsaber fight.

Anyway, there’s room for bands in Star Wars.

Kids on dead-end planets with junk instruments to megastars on interstellar tours, court musicians for space royalty, punky underground renegades attacking the Empire with their art...

You could also go all in like Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas’s Michael Jackson Disney park ride film Captain EO with “a ragtag band” with Droid members-slash-instruments and music as the hero’s Force-style power. Skeleton Crew threw in a reference with the butterfly gopher KB releases from captivity.

Freddie Mercury riding on Darth Vader’s shoulders is not canon, however.

Parsec

“There’s a star in the night sky, the kind of star we would be hoping for”

(For Ash I could also have gone with Lose Control opening their album 1977 with the TIE Fighter roar, or Clones as featured in the Republic Commando trailer, or indeed their version of the cantina band tune.)

Concept

A small time band with big time dreams, playing dives on the Outer Rim, shuttling around in a beat-up freighter.

Star Trek: Voyager at 30

Star Trek: Voyager premiered thirty years ago tonight, as I looked back five years ago along with the start of the Reactor rewatch, and was the launch of a new network, explaining its reliable back-to-basics structure.

And now, the secret lyrics for the opening theme.

Voyager

It’s Star Trek: Voyager

Voyager is a Star Trek TV series

The voyages of Voyager

Voyaging for home

Kate Mulgrew stars as Captain Kathryn Janeway

Robert Beltran as Chakotay, XO

RoxannBiggsDawsonJenniferLienRobertDuncanMcNeillEthanPhillips

Tim Russ, Garrett Wang

and ROBERT PICARDO!

Based 'pon Star Trek createdbyGeneRoddenBERRY

Rick Berman, Michael Piller, Jeri Taylor

(cre-a-ted-by)

It’s Star Trek: Voyager

Character Creation Challenge 2025 15: Doctor Who

Character Creation Challenge 2025

15: Doctor Who

In case Velvet Generation wasn’t David Bowie enough, I’ve been taking Bowie’s song titles for Doctor Who episode ideas since Blackstar, with a Stranger who is at least sometimes based on him.

But going the other way, a band as characters in the Whoniverse:

John Smith And The Common Men

“Who are you?”

Concept

A bandwagon-jumper starting to enjoy playing, in this case a flagrant attempt to get into the Merseybeat movement despite being from Chichester. Briefly considered disguises and full anonymity to avoid alien surveillance or help with the gimmick before realising they could get on Ready Steady Go! but by then the name scheme had stuck.

And given the setting they live in, likely to get mixed up in stories involving aliens invading Swinging London, falling into a parallel universe where the Beatles never recorded anything (ahem) or records that drive people mad if played backwards, and the time travelling PCs have to work with them to save the day.

Time travellers in a phone box having to save a band? Hmm.

Not going to try and fit in the audio play backstory as it gets even more Starchildren.

Star Wars: Skeleton Crew

Star Wars: Skeleton Crew ends with a morally unambiguous turn for our morally ambiguous pirate.

“Everywhere we went, even the worst places, there were good people willing to help us.”

First session of the year (V5: City Of Angels)

First RPG session of the new year, back playing Vampire: The Masquerade 5, and yes my PC has a new moral quandary to fret about. Yay!

How do you tell somebody that a vampire’s planning to turn them?

Character Creation Challenge 2025 14: Starchildren

Character Creation Challenge 2025

14: Starchildren: Velvet Generation

A game that’s actually about bands.

Bands of aliens, but anyway.

Relaunched as Velvet Generation, both versions concern aliens who first experienced music in rock radio broadcasts from Earth, and arrived a century later to find the world dystopian and disappointing, ruled by censors cracking down on artistic expression.

Space Oddity

“There’s a starman waiting in the sky

He’d like to come and meet us but he thinks he'd blow our minds”

David Bowie by Helen Green, from Time May Change Me

Concept

Strange visitors from another planet, saved by Rock and here to return the favour.

Alien: Genresis

Alien is a great horror film, Aliens is a great action film. They should have kept doing this instead of rehashing Alien and Aliens. Alien full-on war film. Alien political thriller. Alien heist movie. Alien buddy cop okay maybe not

Yes of course the comics have done all of those.

Character Creation Challenge 2025 13: Horror One-Shots

Character Creation Challenge 2025

13: Horror One-Shots

Chronicles Of Darkness, Dead Of Night, Dread, Fear Itself, FiveEvil, World Of Darkness, and so on.

As noted while considering music and horror, there’s a whole subgenre of stories about rock and especially metal bands messing with the occult and possibly selling their souls, in some cases most or all unknowingly so there’s a chance they can escape at the end. The metaphor for music business legal trickery is transparent, and the imagery goes along with a lot of the scene.

There’s a subset of occult-tinged rock bands getting into deals collectively, often with some of the band not knowing it: see American Satan and its sequel series Paradise City, This Damned Band by Paul Cornell and Tony Parker, We Sold Our Souls by Grady Hendrix, and my early exposure through the Dark Forces book The Bargain by Rex Sparger.

So having brought up the crossroads legend for the Blues already, here we are.

Lucky 13

“You’re one microscopic cog in his catastrophic plan

Designed and directed by his red right hand”

Concept

They’d all heard the stories, bands literally selling their souls to get ahead in the business, but when “Mr. D.” offered them some useful connections in exchange for a show of willingness, what harm could it do? Sure, they’ve been having trouble sleeping lately, but...

Character Creation Challenge 2025 12: Monsterhearts

Character Creation Challenge 2025

12: Monsterhearts

A second PBTA game, and also one about teen drama. Urban fantasy supernatural teen drama, very much not for kids. In Monsterhearts they could be full supernatural or full metaphorical or somewhere in between.

I already covered a band of vampires, this is a band of assorted different kinds of monster.

See also multi-monster settings like Curseborne, which could have less adolescent and chaotic monster bands as well.

And in comics there’s Scare Tactics, a group of runaway young monsters pretending to be a band pretending to be monsters.

Broken

“You bring out the monster in me”

Concept

A band as a cover for some other activity, like in this case being monsters.