Adventure Calendar 2025 5: Dick Whittington

Adventure Calendar 2025

5: Dick Whittington And His Cat

Dick Whittington And His Cat is and odd one because Richard Whittington was a real person, a merchant who became Lord Mayor of London. But it wasn’t a rags to riches story and didn’t involve using his cat to solve a rat problem and make a fortune as a result.

The story starts our far less fantastical than the likes of Jack And The Beanstalk, but it gets mixed with Puss In Boots at some point too.

The Streets Are Paved With Gold

The adventurers hear of a city where they could really strike it rich. A gold rush boom town or the like. (Cue The Simpsons joke.) What will they actually find when they get there? And will they help any other poor souls drawn in by the same stories?

Starfleet Academy

Starfleet Academy, January 15, very teen drama character intros, as is only right and proper.

Ash, Santa Claus Is Coming To Town

Ash, Santa Claus Is Coming To Town

Sixteen years late for a The Watch House Christmas special but oh well

Adventure Calendar 2025 4: Jack Tales

Adventure Calendar 2025

4: Jack Tales

Jack is an archetypal tricky everyman found in the UK and also in Appalachian folklore. An underdog getting into and out of trouble with his wits and trickery, having run-ins with authority and the supernatural.

He’s basically a player character.

Jack And The Beanstalk has a young naïve example, so feels like a separate thing.

Fables had Jack being the same guy (as it did with the romantic foil Prince IIRC) getting a spinoff series where he actively spread stories to empower himself, with inevitably mixed results.

There’s also a Samurai Jack episode called Jack Tales as a reference but he isn’t the same storied Jack, it’s just a nickname and his usual method of solving problems is more direct in an equally player character way.

Jack And The Keep On The Borderlands

How do PCs deal with an archetypal PC? A band of adventurers follow rumours to a dungeon and find it’s already been cleaned out. Someone already rescued that dragon from that princess. They start to hear tell of a legendary hero going around doing the kind of stuff they should be doing. When they finally meet this guy, whether he’s a thief blessed with some wits and a lot of luck or a literally archetypal adventurer and the exemplar of the role they play in the world, will they ally with him or try to get him out of their way?

Adventure Calendar 2025 3: Jack And The Beanstalk

Adventure Calendar 2025

3: Jack And The Beanstalk

Chosen because it’s the local big panto this year, Jack And The Beanstalk is the one where a poor boy is talked into selling the family’s cow for some magic beans, but they’re real magic beans so that’s okay, and they grow a giant beanstalk that could provide enough beans to be the basis of a revived farming business but instead he climbs it all the way to a castle above the clouds where he robs the giant owner, escapes back down and cuts the beanstalk down so the giant falls and he can keep the loot, including a talking harp.

It sounds really weird when laid out like that..

It’s adjacent to the various Jack stories about an underdog trickster type, this Jack does win with a bit of trickery but a lot of luck.

Castles in the sky are a classic fantasy motif, and magic items like fast-growing vines and animated musical instruments as well.

What I most wonder is who just sold him a perfectly good magic bean?

The Magic Merchants

Disguised godlike types giving gifts to the kind and punishments to the guilty? Or just getting by on the barter economy?

Ready Or Not 2: Here I Come

Ready Or Not 2: Here I Come trailer

Talk and stills at People, via Bloody Disgusting

How to follow such a sharp and self-contained ending? Expanding the threat to Samara Weaving’s Grace, bringing in some genre royalty - David Cronenberg, Elijah Wood and Sarah Michelle Gellar as a Big Bad! - and Kathryn Newton as a sidekick with Final Girl cred of her own. Will going big work? Looks fun!

Forks Out

Forks Out, a Beignet Blanc Mystery on Sesame Street

V5: Stolen 1.07

Vampire: The Masquerade

Stolen

1.07

Lessons

Beck

Maebh

Reverend Beck finds Maebh a few nights later, directed by Antha, to inquire about other possible suppliers of antiquarian books and other artefacts. She agrees to ask around in return for a favour owed, and meet him at his church after a service.

That night’s service is private for Kindred and guests, from the Book of Nod itself. He speaks on Lilith’s offer of knowledge and power, the warning that “I do not know what the Awakening will do for you, for you are truly Cursed by your Father. You could die. You could be forever changed.” And that Caine took that step bravely. And next that he entered a city and mortals came to him seeking power in turn, showing themselves more corrupt than he. And that he returned to solitude and sorrow, reason to gather.

Adventure Calendar 2025 2: Cinderella

Adventure Calendar 2025

2: Cinderella

The lead Disney Princess, the story of Cinderella is also popular for pantomimes as it has a beautiful and somewhat feisty heroine, a villainous stepmother and ugly stepsisters, a fancy dress transformation suitable for a costume design showoff moment. No fight at the end but you can’t have everything.

The motif of finding the heroine through a lost shoe goes back as far as a Greek story told around the BCE/CE turnover, but Cinderella mostly codified in France with Charles Perrault in 1697, after an Italian version in 1634.

She generally only has so much agency and ends up needing a lot of help, though some versions give her a more active part. See Sapsorrow, the version dramatised in The Storyteller, where she escapes a terrible fate and makes a new one for herself with a magical disguise and some dress theft.

And a happily ever after

The lack of a fight at the end makes this less immediately adaptable to standard RPG shape, but the mix of magic, fancy royal events and attempts to subvert it lends itself to toying with it as the PCs are the ones trying to help or hinder something like this. See Witches Abroad for an example.

I’ve actually addressed Cinderella for Relics, with the Fairy Godmother’s Needle as a quietly powerful item that can remake clothing and allow someone creative to spin up beautiful fashions and flawless disguises. I also found that there’s no standard origin or name for the Fairy Godmother so I made her Aglaea of the Three Graces.

You Shall Go To The Ball

The PCs get a chance to attend the fanciest formal event of the season - whether they want to or not - and perhaps get mixed up in romances and schemes, and maybe see someone there who needs some PC shenanigans style help.

Adventure Calendar 2025 1: The Snow Queen

Adventure Calendar 2025

1: The Snow Queen

The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen

As the example I cited in the intro post this seems as good a place to start as any. Scottish Ballet is doing it this year and The Ice Tower is currently in cinemas about an actress playing the queen and a fan getting caught up in the world.

It was also the starting point for Frozen though the result is pretty different - see early designs here that are more like a blue Cruella before making Elsa a beloved superhero.

The Snow Queen isn’t a traditional story, it was published in 1844 in a book literally called New Fairy Tales, but it’s familiar enough now.

It starts with the Devil creating a mirror that shows only the worst in everything and breaking it in an attempt to invade Heaven and that’s just the prologue. One of the splinters goes into a boy named Kai’s eye and this makes him a target for the Snow Queen, so his friend Gerda sets off to rescue him. On the way she has various side adventures and is helped and hindered by royalty, talking animals and the like.

It’s very much the kind of story you might get from playing Once Upon A Time. So for RPGs it would be an easy adaptation to kitchen-sinky fantasy, while the motley assortment of heroes trying to rescue someone from a sinister powerful type’s fortress is one of the most basic story outlines we could take.

The Devil’s mirror could be a plot hook all on its own - I could drop it into Relics or some World Of Darkness games with ease.

Cold-tinted glasses

A pair of antique spectacles made with glass from the Devil’s mirror, allowing a user to see the flaws in everything. Useful for engineering and proofreading and the like, but likely to leave you with a negative view of the world.

Adventure Calendar 2025: Fairytales

Adventure Calendar 2025

0: Fairytales

For my seventh year doing festive adventure ideas daily (click December 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024 in my blog archive) and this year a number of stories sorta kinda related to Christmas - fairytales.

The Princess Bride poster

Has it got any sports in it?

Are you kidding? Fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles...

Doesn’t sound too bad. I’ll try to stay awake.

Oh, well, thank you very much, very nice of you. Your vote of confidence is overwhelming.

The Princess Bride

Here in the UK theatres put on pantomimes for families around this time, a uniquely British mix of classic fairytales, vaudeville humour, audience participation and crossdressing. A lot of the stories will also be familiar from the Disney canon. Ballet companies bring out the likes of The Snow Queen as well for the Christmas season, so those are fair game too. Now to find a list with enough of them...

If I run out I will borrow from The Storyteller, not least as it included a story about running out of stories.

December

Low the tide, low the light

Comes the sun again

Thea Gilmore, Sol Invictus

St. Andrew's Day

Currently in a game set here, which among other things led to discovering (thanks to a fellow player, hi G) that there’s now a commemorative tartan for witches.

Star Trek: TWH

Having found myself abruptly in a different Star Trek game, and getting the last two seasons of Lower Decks to watch, once again thinking about what I would do with Star Trek. I’d go full Technicolor. Possibly with Klingons in Saxon helmets.

Star Trek: Ariel 1.01

Star Trek: Ariel

1.01

The Valiant having been TPKed by adventure plot, now being a captain 111 years later. Got to do some inspiring speechifying. Hey, if I’m going to get switched into a different campaign I’m going to try to have fun with it. No “Make it so” catchphrase, but that’s mostly a Picard thing anyway.

Tales From Small Business Saturday

We can have it in next week if it helps!

Tales From Black Friday 2025

Tales From Black Friday

It is here once again. Nothing can be done to stop it now.

The clock strikes midnight, the klaxons sound, and the battle begins.

The prices are announced, the doorbusters and flash deals, tempting you with desires never felt before. Can YOU do without this?

TVs each bigger than the last. Such sizes, such... why is this one measured in cubic milliliters?

The new phone that does that thing. You know. That thing the phone does. You don’t understand it, but the people in the print ads seem so happy. And their room is so colour coordinated. Is that what the phone does?

Stop to buy and eat a tub of chocolates the size of a capybara.

Physical media is BACK, baby! Shiny discs! Actually own the films and shows you want! Now with more K than ever! So many K!

The must-have toy! And we promise we’ve fixed that issue.

Cresting the hill of the food court, seeing the carnage below. What bargain could be worth this? Oh, three for two?!

Finally stumbling away, bloodied and exhausted, knowing you get a great deal on... what was it again? Weren’t you just here to get a pair of sneakers...?

Thank you

Happy Thanksgiving to those who celevrate! Happy Stranger Things day to those who celebrate that. Will they finally correct the glaring historical inaccuracy and admit that 1980s kids should be playing ADVANCED Dungeons & Dragons?

Wake Up Dead Man

Wake Up Dead Man is by far the most serious of the Benoit Blanc mysteries, with just a few expert gags here and there around questions of faith and the positive and negative effects of religion. This swings away from the broader sillier Glass Onion and past Knives Out in tone. It still has funny-accent-detective fun but the standout scene for me is a serious dramatic one that Blanc is off to one side of.

And I halfway figured it out pretty quickly, but only halfway. I think it plays fair with showing some clues without emphasising them as well.

The burden of expectations

Bloodlines 2 was Bloodlines-y enough for me, but what do I know? And sure, a different name would have been less weighted, but here we are.

RPGs with music in the mechanics

I bring up music in my RPG thinking pretty often, mostly to set mood but also lyrics providing ideas and bands as PC groups, but some RPGs use music as part of the system.

This RPGnet thread looking for examples brought up some I didn’t know. I myself mentioned VOID 1680 AM, a solo journalling game where you play a late night DJ and compile a playlist, and on the other end of the interactivity level LARPs based on musicals that can include performing, which sounds like one of the rooms in my personal Hell but I have friends who’ve played and run them.

The Running Man (2025)

The Running Man (2025) is a much more accurate adaptation of the 1982 Stephen King (as Richard Bachman) novel than the 1987 version with Arnold Schwarzenegger, with some changes that were bound to happen as well as some others that weren’t.

I had fun.

Edgar Wright doesn’t go as wild with the camera as he often has before, appropriate as the comedy side falls away about the end of act two, though he does get some odd POV shots in there.

Typically nice soundtrack including some pointed track choices. (I was kind of surprised not to get Temple Of Dreams by Messiah but always happy to hear The Truth from Handsome Boy Modeling School.)

The original was the most 1987 film ever made - compare Predator where the macho posturing and a hand-animated electricity effect are the only things that date it - but this one looks back to other 80s dystopias, with Max Headroom for the omnipresent and untrustworthy media and “twenty minutes into the future” mix of retro and futuristic tech - doubly apt as the 1982 novel is set in 2025 - as well as RoboCop levels of advertising satire and occasional carnage.

And for all that it’s surprisingly hopeful.

Pope Rave

POPE RAVE

At a Catholic youth day

Time and tide

As historical inaccuracies go, I’m quite impressed by that video game advert getting how people held mobile phones in 2018 wrong.

A song from Sinners

My Preaching performed by Delroy Lindo, cut from Sinners as he discusses here.

Blackstar

Blackstar by David Bowie, the single released ten years ago today. Among other things, the video is an all-time classic episode of Doctor Who.

In Darkness Let Me Dwell

In Darkness Let Me Dwell by John Dowland (1562-1626) performed by Brandon Acker on lute and singer Jonathon Adams. For when you really want to show your Old Goth cred.

Stargate opening again

Stargate SG-1 is getting a new series, a follow-up to the existing TV continuity, on Prime.

Since the TV continuity includes Atlantis being in the San Francisco zip code this could require some explaining, but hey.

I always figured Stargate would come back, as one of the best ST-setting-of-the-week setups out there - a main cast style group based on modern Earth goes through a swirly thing to other planets.

Hence there having been two official RPGs and one before that nearly got published if not for licence issues. And I’ve run and played official and unofficial systems for it.

It might well be less planet of the week this time because of how TV works nowadays but it would be weird not to use that, though it might swing towards the original film style of a long stay and a single Big Bad. Doctor Who still had a few standalones in its recent single-figure-episode seasons.

Curseborne

Curseborne core rulebook is out now on DriveThruRPG. Having been out to backers for some time, it already has adventures, fiction, Tasty Bits and the like in place, and a Players Guide on the way.

Operation: CRIMSON GIFT

A bundle of Night’s Black Agents and Dracula Dossier PDFs declassified by Pelgrane for eyes only.

V5 starting points

Josh of Bloodlines 2 community outreach and Storyteller of Leech has a variety of Vampire: The Masquerade advice videos, with these two on ST advice and other single-product but advice-related ones like this one on Let The Streets Run Red in a separate playlist.

Gig report

The Last Dinner Party seem like a Vampire-y hooks-inspired-by-song-titles kind of band.

V5: Stolen 1.06

Vampire: The Masquerade

Stolen

1.06

False Faces

Beck

Maebh

Maisie

Halloween, and a guildhall in the city hired out for a private party.

Some attending before going on to other events, to XX, to attend personal business.

The first event like this for Maisie Bishop, medical student turned Hecata vampire.

She only knows a handful of the dozens of Kindred here, and their mortal and mostly mortal guests.

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines

Happy anniversary to Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, 21 tonight!

So it’s now old enough to drink in Los Angeles!

Subsubsubtitles

Metroid Prime 4 Beyond has very ReleaseDraftVeryFinal(1) energy.

A new Star Trek film, fingers crossed

With the Kelvin timeline shelved, a new unconnected Star Trek film is on the way to be written and directed by the writers of Spider-Man: Homecoming and writer-directors of Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves.

I think this feeling is... hope?

The Cold War history of RPGs featuring Twilight: 2000

When You Say, “Thermonuclear War,” I Think You Mean “the Call to Adventure”! The Twilight: 2000 Tabletop Role-Playing Game and the Postapocalyptic World’s Imaginary Spaces, by Malcolm Craig for Cambridge’s Journal of American Studies.

Memory

Reminded of a hand painted sign here years ago, which I can find no photos of. Cornucopia in Morningside, I think it was a fruit and veg place, and the sign was meant to be the eponymous horn of plenty but looked more like a sandworm from Dune throwing up. I’d totally shop there now.

Aliens: Earths

They really are making a second season of Alien: Earth. Do they have any idea what to do? I guess we’ll find out!

No Time To Un-die

I find it doubly amusing that the writer complaining about a new Bond film after No Time To Die worked on series three of Robin Of Sherwood in which a new guy had to take on the guise of Robin Hood in setting. (And was played by Sean Connery’s son!)

Yes it is tricky to do a reboot after a version with a definitive ending, how do you top it, but given the Daniel Craig Bond films were already a reboot, I think audiences can cope with that part.

Need a movies-or-later Star Trek theme?

Jerry Goldsmith, The Edge end credits

Bonus: Ahead of the Klingon theme in The Motion Picture he worked with the same sections of the orchestra on Capricorn One.

Star Trek Adventures: Captain Diana Carter

Star Trek Adventures 1e

Captain Diana Carter

U.S.S. Ariel

Captain Carter is the daughter of a Starfleet senior designer at Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards on Mars so she grew up around starships, seeing how they come together and how it takes a crew to make them fly. Young for command, even of a relatively small ship, but she’s proven herself time and again.

“When you tell me something’s impossible, just remember that I’m from Mars.”

Lena Headey

Found Footage Games

And now wondering if anybody’s done a LARP with cameras used that extensively...

Found Footage Episodes

Just wondering which genre series have done Found Footage episodes. (Noting that a couple of found footage series exist!)

The X Files got one in early in February 2000, and Doctor Who did one IN SPAAAAACE which I felt lost the immediacy of the idea. Star Trek hasn’t, not even doubke distant in Lower Decks, though I did find a brief fan film.

Buffy and Angel didn’t - could have with the Trio. I didn’t do it in The Watch House either as it’s an odd genre to try in RPGs.

(Still waiting on that FMV computer game from the makers of Host.)

Though the genre broke out with The Blair Witch Project being essentially a filmed LARP, and online sessions can go that way too, see on-screen LARPs like Viewscream too. I remember a Delta Green format comment that The Blair Witch Project or something like it could also be a great player handout. Which would be interesting, if a lot to organise. (I actually saw it done with the first LARP I ever attended.) And would also fit with the series having a mystery-solving evidence box game as well as video games. And an escape experience.

News Story

I am available to take over the BBC.

I might make it so BBC One and Two both have Doctor Who shows.

Which probably puts me out of the running even more than my insufficient Tory bias.

STA Valiant 9

So I knew the Star Trek Adventures Shackleton Expanse campaign had linked TOS and TNG adventures and a possible time jump. I did not know the specifics.

Wonder Woman

The pilot for the Lynda Carter Wonder Woman aired on this day in 1975.

Predator: Badlands

Predator: Badlands is fun in the way the better Predator movies that aren’t the great Predator or Prey generally are, good action, fun additions, some good jokes, too much going on overall compared to a simple elegant idea.

To be fair the basic idea here, Predator protagonist. would be hard to sustain for a couple of hours, and has kind of been done (not as well) in those crossover movies as well as outside media going to the original Alien Vs. Predator comic series they sprang from.

Also nice to see a killer planet movie.

IMAX didn’t really help with some of the CGI fights in the dark, so boo to that.

And like Prey and especially Killer Of Killers -

The King Of Crows

Sleeping badly led to remembering the moment from a dream where I saw a crow standing on the backs of a close group of crows hovering on an air current. (After a previous moment seeing three different birds of prey having a meeting.)

No.

Just saw an advert promising huge savings this Black Friday season.

Black Friday SEASON.

Fuck very far off.

It's about time

Suddenly tempted to run Doctor Who again. Some time in the next year and a half maybe.

Paranoia miniatures game

Paranoia: Five Clones From Alpha Complex preview at Beasts of War as Modiphius launches it.

Very nice, though I think they’re showing too much personality.

Wishes

From The Pod Universe guest episode on wannabe influencer Ghostbusters, guest Brandon Reese on ways to deal with leprechauns and genies.

Remember, Remember

Overthrow an intolerant ruler today. We have several options.

Update: Well done New York and some other parts of the US for getting on it.

The Watch House broadcast anniversary

Yes, these laurels are comfy.

The Mummy Re-Returns?

Radio Silence looking to make a sequel to the 1999 The Mummy and follow-up The Mummy Returns (but probably not the third one) with Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz looking at the script.

This may well be why it was announced a couple days ago that “Lee Cronin’s The Mummy” due out next year is now called The Resurrected.

V5: Stolen 1.05

Vampire: The Masquerade

Stolen

1.05

Contraband

Cherie

Isabella

Maebh

Cherie looks online and finds Astor’s specialist import company, and meets with Maebh on the way there, with Isabella also called in case they can negotiate. Antha confirms that he usually uses a mostly-legit shipping company and checks at the docks.

Maebh has her magpie scout around the store for a way in, and finds a way through in rat form.

The Louvre security camera password was Louvre

The Liuvre raid suggests that every heist adventure in RPG history is unrealistically difficult.

Topical observation

One thing about Halloween on Friday is seeing which businesses don’t have anyone come in the take down decorations for a couple of days. Which leads to odd things like a not-remotely-Halloween-y company’s video billboards still having dancing witches tonight. Cheering to Halloween-y people, and also good tips for burglars!

International Games Month

November is International Games Month. Which is nice!

November

Now what the heck do I do?

31 Days Of Horror 2025

31 Days of Horror 2025

All new! All different! Except the last day! And I had seen some of another one!

1: Nosferatu: A Symphony Of Horror (2023)

2: Before I Wake (2016)

3: Nigel Kneale double bill

4: Pay The Ghost (2015)

5: The Exorcist: Believer (2023)

6: Time Cut (2024)

7: The Blackening (2023)

8: Fear Street: Prom Queen (2024)

9: Barbarian (2022)

10: Under The Shadow (2016)

11: The Room (2019)

12: The Cellar (2022)

13: Never Hike Alone (2017)

14: Lord Of Misrule (2023)

15: The Revenant (2009)

16: Dead Heat (1988)

17: In The Shadow Of The Moon (2019)

18: Berberian Sound Studio (2012)

19: The Menu (2022)

20: Till Death (2021)

21: The Invitation (2022)

22: We’re All Going To The World’s Fair (2021)

23: Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (2022)

24: Frankenstein (2025)

25: Night Of The Reaper (2025)

26: Rosemary’s Baby (2014)

27: Hostile Dimensions (2024)

28: The Hand That Rocks The Cradle (2025)

29: Lake Mungo (2008)

30: Cocaine Bear (2022)

31: Nightmare Cinema (2018)

31 again: Nosferatu (1922) with S!NK

Addendum

Out Come The Wolves

The Puppetman

Belzebuth

Another month with no real plan beyond the two Guillermo del Toro films. One of these years I might actually have an idea here...

GdT’s Frankenstein is amazing. In The Shadow Of The Moon was a pleasant surprise. Under The Shadow and The Menu did what I expected well.

The Cellar was a biiiiiig letdown - watch The Ten Steps.

Not a great year for my annual-ish month of Shudder all round.

Happy to take suggestions from RPGnet as well, and liked Night Of The Reaper and thought Hostile Dimensions was fine.

Happy All Hallows!

Nosferatu with S!NK

31 Days Of Horror

Also 31: Nosferatu (1922) with live soundtrack by S!NK

Ending as I started, with the timeless classic silent adaptation of Dracula, here with a local music group adding a lot of jittery strings.

Nightmare Cinema

31 Days Of Horror

31: Nightmare Cinema (2018)

Trailer

An anthology from Mick Garris, the showrunner of Masters Of Horror and Fear Itself, very much giving the impression that he’d like to start another series but all of these were a bit too short.

The frame story with Mickey Rourke as the Projectionist is intriguing but underdeveloped, and two of the five stories are nightmare focused and none actually about the cinema while three are hospital based.

The Thing In The Woods is like the last ten minutes of a not-so-serious slasher movie.

Mirari directed by Joe Dante is pretty much going back to a Twilight Zone hook, and a guessable one.

Mashit might be the standout for strangeness as it takes Catholic authorities versus possessed kids in a direction I hadn’t seen before. I laughed. I'm a monster.

This Way To Egress was the only really creepy one but didn’t quite stick the landing.

Dead by Garris is a solid take on a classic idea apart from two strange choices that derailed it for me.

Content note for surgery, suicide and self-harm, none treated in depth. And bugs.

The medium: Shudder

Gameability: I can see the frame working as a setup - what would you do if you saw your name on the marquee of a closed cinema? And Dead explores its setup in enough detail to work as a starting point too.

Out Of The Woods

A suitably seasonal one page game from Tin Star.

Happy Halloween!

Have a good one!

31 Days Of Horror addendum

31 Days Of Horror

Addendum

Since I counted a TV episode and radio drama, a fan film, and a children’s film, three more horror films I also watched to make up the numbers which I have nothing much to say about.

Out Come The Wolves (2024) (trailer)

Possible relationship tension for the first half, then did one of the guys leave the other to die in the woods?

The Puppetman (2023) (trailer)

The previous film from the maker of Night Of The Reaper, with a rationale that didn’t work for me all, though I did appreciate one moment which reminded me of a joke by Evan Dorkin about the only good Psychic Hotline being one that calls you. Content note for self-harm.

Belzebuth (2020) (trailer)

More violent than average demon-hunting. Grounded and grim then suddenly OTT. It might work as a Kult game. Content warning for child endangerment. A lot.

Cocaine Bear

31 Days Of Horror

Something lighter after Lake Mungo, like... almost anything. (Though from this month’s selection not Under The Shadow.)

30: Cocaine Bear (2023)

Trailer

Based on a much less funny true story, Cocaine Bear posits that if you mix one of the most dangerous animals in the wild when it’s in the mood with a mood-altering substance things will go badly.

A splatstick gore comedy with a strong cast not playing it straight at all, a charmingly unconvincing CG bear and some golf-clap ironic music choices, it’s a good time if you enjoy comical character being brutally shredded.

The medium: Prime

Gameability: A monster on the loose and a bunch of idiots looking for treasure. So, yes. And this specific example feels like a Fiasco playset.

Lake Mungo

31 Days Of Horror

29: Lake Mungo (2008)

Trailer

A mockumentary about a family being haunted, perhaps literally, by the death of a young member.

Much discussed, with a retrospective documentary on the way, after the filmmaker came back with Late Night With The Devil.

(One of the talking heads in that is Mike Flanagan, who also talked about this last year, and I can see it might have inspired some of his The Haunting Of Hill House, especially one of the key episodes.)

I haven’t gotten around to this before but had heard it was terrifying and bleak and, well, it is bleak.

Very well done, if overreliant on squinting at the back of the frame and music stings when it zooms in. Which means apart from a couple of big moments it feels like a real ghost documentary with its inconclusive evidence.

I can appreciate it but I guess I’m not the audience for it.

The medium: Shudder

Gameability: A character seeing something like Alice sees could be the start of a dark adventure. And the examination of evidence feels like a handout-heavy game.

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 thoughts

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 thoughts after the fact

Initial thoughts

Pretty linear, with some small and some biggish choices that affect which ending you get. That’s fine, I was expecting it.

Remember how Bloodlines lets you run off to the Anarchs if you don’t want to do the Prince’s dirty work and they immediately send you back to do the Prince’s dirty work?

No Spooky House level. Boo.

(The reveal of the Hardsuit Labs version was a Spooky House level.)

Missing a cemetery level as well.

I appreciated the note that, yes, BL2 starts where BL1 ends with the unwise opening of a box.

Could definitely have done with more enemies if we’re spending that much time thumping them. Also more killing move animations for the same reason.

And a button to skip the Fabien speedwalking.

Little bits of sewer in various levels just to make returning players flinch.

Lots of entertaining NPCs along the way. I can see why Lou and Tolly got plushies.

Great city atmosphere and score.

A lack of Muppet dancing and sourced music makes the clubs less fun.

And I absolutely would have put a Lacuna Coil song on the end credits.

Ignite the fire in your heart

Close to impossible

Stand up and overcome the invisible

Lacuna Coil, Never Dawn

Proper spoilers:

The Hand That Rocks The Cradle (2025)

31 Days Of Horror

28: The Hand That Rocks The Cradle (2025)

Trailer with some of the third act and some misleading ADR

Disney+ and grownup bit Hulu aren’t doing much for Halloween this year besides finally adding Something Wicked This Way Comes, but did just give us this, a remake of the 1992 thriller about a nanny threatening a family, of interest as a battle of the Final Girls with Maika Monroe as the nanny and Mary Elizabeth Winstead as the mother. (Here with lightened hair making them look more alike than usual so I wondered if it was a plot point.) Beyond that it’s like the original with a few twists in motive and method, a movie-of-the-week with extra blood and F-bombs elevated by its central performances - both leads trade audience sympathies and suspicions well throughout.

I also really liked the minimal electronic and choral soundtrack by frequent Black Mirror composer Ariel Marx.

Opening track, Fire.

Content note for child endangerment and references to abuse, self-harm

The medium: Disney+ (Hulu tab)

Gameability: How much can you learn with a mail order DNA test?

Anna Calvi - I See A Darkness

Anna Calvi - I See A Darkness (feat. Perfume Genius)

So now I have two very different covers of this song on my Vampire playlist.

A new chapter

Daily bunny no.3121 begins a new chapter

By Will Quinn

Hostile Dimensions

31 Days Of Horror

27: Hostile Dimensions (2024)

Trailer

A largely found footage style scifi horror comedy from Glasgow, which starts with an eerie idea and a solid scare before going off in various surprisingly comedic and strange ideas.

I think it’s a better found footage Doctor Who than the tine the show actually did one, but it’s much more high concept comedy than horror.

It looks to have been made by some friends with some nice use of convenient locations, and gets by on the central idea and the characters being fun to hang out with for an hour and a bit. It’s okay in a shabby improv way.

The medium: Prime

Gameability: I ran a whole Doctor Who game about a TARDIS appearing to be a door, so, yeah.

Rosemary's Baby (2014)

31 Days Of Horror

26: Rosemary’s Baby (2014)

Trailer

A surprise discovery on TV last night, a three hour edit of a miniseries version of Rosemary’s Baby that I hadn’t heard about a decade ago.

A pretty close adaptation, though moving to Paris to increase Rosemary’s isolation. So you can now watch a version of this story that isn’t directed by Roman Polanski. It doesn’t add much otherwise, despite referencing Ira Leven’s sequel to the novel in the adaptation credits, and taking a longer time to get there.

Zoe Saldana stars, making Rosemary less fragile than Mia Farrow’s version as she plays against type, so her increasing vulnerability and desperation play differently.

It also shifts the villain dynamic with Jason Isaacs as Roman Castevet while the original focused on the Oscar-winning villainy of Ruth Gordon as Minnie, and the Castevets are less creepy overall.

The medium: TV

Gameability: Moving a character to an unfamiliar location, with a possible language barrier, is a reliable way to add to isolation.

One way to make players hate NPCs

I ran a Vampire: The Masquerade one-shot for Halloween and went with one of the most reliable ways to make players hate NPCs:

Make their evil plan petty.

(Here, trying to attack a band and hospitalising nightclub security to ruin its business for the night.)

Night Of The Reaper

31 Days Of Horror

25: Night Of The Reaper (2025)

Trailer

After a girl gets stalked while babysitting on a chilly October night, another girl is persuaded to cover for a friend’s babysitting job. Meanwhile the town sheriff who is sure there’s a killer on the loose receives some confirming evidence.

A Shudder presentation from a director who’s already made two films for them, Night Of The Reaper is a 1980s throwback slasher which is so painstakingly of that style because it’s setting up a decent-sized twist.

A lot of the scares rely on the soundtrack providing LOUD NOISES, but there’s also some fun use of strange camera moves.

The 1980s setting is mostly low-key dingy, used for the killer providing grainy VHS footage, not the isolation of lack of mobile phones - the main characters spend a lot of their time on the phone and some using walkie-talkies, nearly on the Stranger Things level of it being obvious the creators grew up with mobile phones.

Content note: harm to animals and threats to children, mostly off screen. It cuts away from some of the most potentially grim material.

The medium: Shudder

Gameability: Classic horror one-shot but maybe use a system where the players can get a power-up?

Halloweekend One-Shots

One-shot prepped, bar printing. I wonder how many we’ll get. Reminded of the 2019 event where I could have been the thirteenth GM.

Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein

31 Days Of Horror

24: Frankenstein (2025)

Teaser

Guillermo del Toro was always going to adapt Frankenstein.

(In their reaction video the creators of Are You Afraid Of The Dark Universe? note that he already has a couple of times.)

And it’s great.

Very very Guillermo del Toro while being a closer adaptation than most, though Victor and the Creature both have sympathetic and monstrous moments. Lots of little and big references - I spotted the Bernie Wrightson influence and was glad to see a credit as well as thanks.

Full of beautiful shots, it’s on Netflix in two weeks but I was very glad to see it on the biggest screen I could.

Dark but humane, with some great ideas fitting in neatly. I particularly like the addition to the frame story.

Some on-the-nose moments, but sometimes you have to.

Warning to Torchwood survivors, Burn Gorman pops up in the hanging scene.

More adorable wee mice than expected.

Also fun to see Edinburgh as 19th century Edinburgh rather than 19th century London or Vienna or Prague etc.

The medium: Cinema! Then Netflix in two weeks.

Gameability: Frankenstein is pretty gameable, and this version has a demonstration and a less secret process altogether so someone could follow Victor’s experiments.

Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio

31 Days Of Horror

23: Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (2022)

Trailer

Okay, this is a stretch, but as the film Guillermo del Toro co-directed before Frankenstein a relevant one. Both are adaptations of stories about men creating artificial sons and how the world treats them. It has some cast and creatives in common too.

It’s charming, funny, sweet, at times sad or wistful.

Comparisons to the Disney version are inevitable: The songs are pleasant but none of them are When You Wish Upon A Star or I’ve Got No Strings. And despite the lightning-lit frenzied creation and a couple of visits to Death, it doesn’t try for a WTF horror moment like the bit with the donkeys.

The main chill here is human, as it starts with the Great War in a prologue rivalling Up for sadness and then moves forward to Italy in the 30s and 40s. The lead representative of the authority of the time gets a humanising element and rejects it.

Beautifully done stop-motion, I’d love a chance to see it in the cinema.

The medium: Netflix

Gameability: A fantastical creation and a quest that follows, and this one also lets you embarrass the people ruling Italy in the 30s and 40s.

We're All Going To The World's Fair

31 Days Of Horror

22: We’re All Going To The World’s Fair (2021)

Trailer

I’ve been to the World’s Fair and it wasn’t like this.

Before I Saw The TV Glow, writer and director Jane Schoenbrun took a previous look at lonely teens spending too much time looking at screens in this mostly found footage piece about a girl getting too deep in an ARG (not an MMORPG as it claims, but anyway) - or is she? Others posting videos about the challenge seem to be affected physically but at least some are obviously fake in-setting, and her responses seem emotional. And whatever else is real, someone is definitely watching.

More unease - and concern - than any scares, no jumps or the like. But the biggest wince of the week early on as she jabs her finger with a pin badge.

The medium: Film4, also on Prime and MUBI

Gameability: An RPG adventure about someone falling into another kind of RPG might be a bit meta.

Bloodlines 2 update

I am now getting the set. Not that I can play the game for months.

Update update as of Friday: I can honestly say I got to play in the first week! Thanks to Erich letting me press a button.

The Invitation

31 Days Of Horror

21: The Invitation (2022)

Trailer which drops all the twists

A young American woman discovers she’s related to a moneyed British family and invited to a family wedding. Only to discover she’s the bride. Which would be enough of an issue without it also...

Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play 5

WFRP 5 announced.

Oh. I haven’t done anything with 4 yet beyond generating a character for the January challenge.

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2

And here we are!

Feels strange, I’ll admit.

After some preview reactions got through the tutorial:

First thought - missed the deluxe physicals for PC on Amazon unless they’re restocking and only PS5 are being eBayed.

Second - the original probably would have been a more direct Bloodlines successor with a lead writer and starting as a put-upon newbie again and a confirmed haunted building level, but it’s a largely first person game set around a modern US city, with a Rik Schaffer heavy soundtrack, several cool clubs, nicely drawn characters making up for a bit too much combat that you can’t always work around through other approaches, delayed but also rushed in places... sounds like Bloodlines to me! And hey, you don’t need a day one patch!

Third - Bloodlines ends with opening a coffin-shaped box being a bad idea and Bloodlines 2 starts the same way.

Fourth - let me get back to you.

Till Death (2021)

31 Days Of Horror

20: Till Death (2021)

A clip as the trailer is almost all from the third act

An uncomfortable anniversary for a cheating wife and a controlling husband. He prepares a surprise getaway which is a bigger surprise than usual. More behind the tag.

V5: Stolen 1.04

Vampire: The Masquerade

Stolen

1.04

Territory

Cherie

Mark

Cherie goes to meet with an expert, Mark, a detective in life turned Gangrel after being killed by a Ventrue for getting too close.

Dark street clothes, and a hat he can pull down to hide his features.

“What do you need from an old dog like me?”

The Menu (2022)

31 Days Of Horror

19: The Menu (2022)

Teaser

An evening at one of the world’s most exclusive restaurants, where a young foodie brings a backup date and she doesn’t have a good dining experience.

A dark comedy about food as art and experience, the business of that, and the us versus them of the service industry.

And no, the secret ingredient is not cannibalism! Food culture and other high culture experiences can be weird and creepy enough without human flesh as an option. Indeed, a whole lot of other weird and creepy things happen along the way.

The humour is very dark, undercut with some goofier jokes mostly provided by just how clueless one of our guests is. It’s a fun time if you’re like me.

Ralph Fiennes’s purposely mid-Atlantic accent helps conceal that Anya Taylor-Joy and Nicholas Hoult are both doing different American accents.

With its mostly single room setting and small cast I could see this working as a play.

And yes, it left me wanting to try one of the dishes. Just the one though.

The medium: Channel 4’s Saturday night premiere, also available here on Disney+ as part of Fox

Gameability: For the same reasons it could work as a play it could also work as a LARP or other one-shot. And the style could inform games about joining or infiltrating elitist events like con and heist games even if they don’t go this sideways.

Who robs the Louvre and doesn't take the Holy Grail?

Who robs the Louvre and doesn’t take the Holy Grail? Amateurs.

Berberian Sound Studio

31 Days Of Horror

18: Berberian Sound Studio (2012)

Trailer

My friends, we have reached the point where we get a fair number of horror films on TV for a couple of weeks!

A mild-mannered English sound engineer arrives in Italy and discovers the film he’s been hired to mix is an Argento-style giallo. (Not a horror film as the director insists, but all the sounds we hear and descriptions we get sure feel like one. Notably we never see any of it, except the title sequence.) And as he proceeds he starts to lose his grip on reality.

Anchored by Toby Jones’s performance, take out the surreal touches and it still works as a story of someone stuck in a position he wants to break out of.

The medium: Film4, who helped make it.

Gameability: A scenario about attempting to make a work of art under taxing conditions, maybe?

Oh that's what those are for

Feel like I should run a Vampire West Marches as players come and go.

Idle series thoughts

With Stolen being a largely standard Vampire: The Masquerade game of oppressed young Kindred in a Camarilla city, for a new group, and the games since with the Empire group being a bit more varied...

Something other than Vampire?!

Like Buffy or supers or Star Wars or -

Or Vampire but something other than oppressed Camarilla, anyway, as it started as a Vampire group albeit with some folks I knew in place already. Which is how Last Dance happened for one.

Vive went deep into a historical era and Anarch factional conflict, and a doomed attempt to do better. I could do one where it isn’t doomed...

In The Shadow Of The Moon

31 Days Of Horror

17: In The Shadow Of The Moon (2019)

Trailer which I didn’t see until now and reveals quite a lot

(Not the documentary about the Apollo mission.)

Four people die in a strange and gruesome way one night, a cop kills the perpetrator... and nine years later it happens again.

I remember the publicity and reviews for this, which emphasised the violence of the attacks and the impact on the people involved, but apart from that it’s not really horror, it’s an SF mystery.

It’s the best thing I’ve seen for the month, just much more horror-adjacent than I was thinking.

I knew enough to be ahead of the characters, partially thanks to the prologue and the publicity, but it still had some surprises for me so I won’t say much more.

Minor historical quibble, 1988 is a bit early for the word “hoodie”.

The medium: Netflix

Gameability: behind a spoiler block

Dead Heat

31 Days Of Horror

16: Dead Heat (1988)

Trailer with about half of it from the last twenty minutes

Watching The Revenant reminded me I’d never seen Dead Heat, a 1980s SF action comedy take on the undead avenger, and found it free with ads on YouTube.

Detective Roger Mortis (yes...) and his partner Doug Bigelow (if this is also a pun I’m not getting it) investigate a spate of daylight robberies by guys who appear to be even more bullet-resistant than the average 80s action movie character. Finally managing to kill two of them after they gun down dozens of cops - which I feel the police captain should have been more bothered about - they hear from the coroner and Roger’s on-off girlfriend one of the bodies has a Y incision. Following a clue to a pharma company and getting the brushoff from PR flack Randi James (I must assume that’s also deliberate) Doug sneaks into just the right room and finds a machine that brings back the dead. And then Roger dies. And twenty-four minutes into an hour and twenty-three, he’s back, for a self-confessed remake of D.O.A. where the hero is literally dead as he tries to find who killed him.

With ten to twelve hours before final death, Roger visibly deteriorates over the film, to a final form that I’d seen in the film’s original publicity which also involves some Lethal Weapon hair. (Shane Black cameos in that scene and his brother Terry wrote the screenplay so I don’t think it’s a coincidence!)

Along the way there are some gross Reanimator moments, an impressively horrible how-did-they-do-that death scene, and some fun gag casting with Darren McGavin being sceptical and Vincent Price cameoing for exposition. Also a mutant kind of guy who doesn’t fit the theme at all.

It hasn’t aged as well as some of its contemporaries, with a case of fridging, some of the language and a Chinatown scene which weren’t particularly okay then let alone now, so approach with that in mind.

The medium: YouTube free with ads

Gameability: Reanimation technology as an in-setting excuse for 80s action movie hard-to-kill characters and a ticking clock for the adventure.

The Revenant (2009)

31 Days Of Horror

15: The Revenant (2009)

Trailer

Not the Western with Leonardo DiCaprio and the bear, this is about a literal revenant.

Or a vampire. Or a zombie.

Nobody is sure in-character.

But let’s say vampire. He drinks blood and reverts to a deathlike state during the day.

Anyway. A morally good but practically bad call following a foolish attempt to make a moral point results in a US soldier dying in Iraq, and then for no reason anyone here knows rising from the dead after his funeral back home. Going to a friend for help, they attempt to deal with this as best they can. and considering his options he decides to try and use his powers for good. That’s about all I knew going in, so I didn’t know that this plan goes about as badly as I’ve ever seen.

An indie dark comedy with a small central cast making a variety of bad decisions, a parody of the modern vigilante genre with criminals easy to find all over.

And it expands from there in ways I wasn’t expecting. It shows a mean sense of humour, but I appreciated that.

Content note for some nudity and a lot of the language.

The medium: Tubi

Gameability: Is this Vampire (Requiem more than Masquerade for the low-key action and lack of lore) or Fiasco? Could be both. I could absolutely rip off the scene where he tries to steal blood at the hospital.

Lord Of Misrule

31 Days Of Horror

14: Lord Of Misrule

Trailer

A young family (in this case Tuppence Middleton as a vicar with her husband and daughter) in a quaint English village discover the harvest festival is a bit old school.

Yes it’s a Folk Horror starter set.

Good cast including a casting gag with Ralph Ineson from The VVitch as the anti-Christian cultist this time, nicely shot, but.

Not helped by also being my second “child goes missing at autumnal festival and parent must go to eerie place to get them back” movie so far this month.

The medium: Shudder

Gameability: Sometimes you want a predictable one-shot.

Never Hike Alone

31 Days Of Horror

13: Never Hike Alone (2017)

Trailer

Film

It being the 13th I figured something Friday The 13th relevant, the first in a series of fairly high profile fan films. (So a fan film for something I’m not a fan of.) Unlike fan films I usually see for things like Star Wars and Star Trek this has a similar low budget to the real thing - I was expecting it to stay out in the woods but it went to a pretty good recreation of the camp. It’s a pretty basic slasher, so again true to the source, while reflecting some developments like a found footage element though not going with it all the way through. Acted fine by its one lead, and it only gives in to total fan service at the end.

Note for female nudity due to an old Playboy in one shot.

The medium: YouTube

Gameability: Roughly equal to the originals, though lacks extra PCs to get killed early in the one-shot.

(And there’s a moment where the hiker hears coyotes on the hunt. Would coyotes keep an undead monster out of their territory? Could a story or game about wild animals fending off a monster work? Like Werewolf: The Apocalypse without the Were- part? Or am I overthinking due to Good Boy?)

Rob Wieland

Rob Wieland wrote across multiple game lines, played a big part in helping RPG coverage into the mainstream with regular pieces in places like Forbes, shared ideas on the regular online, ran a Leverage game where the writeup made me want to run it, created the Today In Cyberpunk hashtag, and more.

V5: Stolen 1.03

Vampire: The Masquerade

Stolen

1.03

New Fears

Antha

Isabellla

Maebh

“In we go.” Antha lets the group into Martin’s flat with casual ease. Isabella looks over his notes. Cherie points out the space where a laptop should probably sit. Maebh gets a good sense of Martin’s scent.

The Cellar (2022)

31 Days Of Horror 2025

12: The Cellar (2022)

Trailer

The Ten Steps (2004)

The Ten Steps is a classic little creepy story told in a short film, just ten minutes long. I’ve recommended it here before, including when The Cellar was announced.

Writer and director Brendan Muldowney returned to the idea eighteen years later to make a feature.

And some ideas make perfect shorts.

The counting (which was the parents’ idea, over the phone) is now part of a magic equation. A monster shows up, looking pretty good for his brief cameo but still. The ending seems to be a hope spot for no reason, it barely registers.

The main positive thing I have to say about it is that, like the short, it gets to the original point quickly. But still not as quickly.

I still highly recommend The Ten Steps but this let me down hard.

No more films named after parts of houses for me this year.

The medium: Shudder

The Room (2019)

31 Days Of Horror 2025

11: The Room (2019)

Trailer which gives away just about everything

Yes, really, somebody made a film called The Room again.

Content warning for glimpsed sexual violence

Having basically exhausted Netflix for the year, turning to the regular month of Shudder. After last year having three pretty big recent cinema releases and a few other interesting new things after I missed a year, this year... maybe I should make this every two years.

So looking through its originals and exclusives, we have this.

A couple move into a not-immediately-creepy old house and discover a secret room which a sub-Hellraiser-y door and lock design... which grants wishes.

With the snag that the wished for items quickly age or rot once outside the house. But that’s no big deal when they stay in and enjoy assorted luxuries for one montage having fun.

Until, because they’ve already failed to have a child twice, one of them uses The Room to make one. So from then on the film’s about that, with a couple of interesting twists, one visually striking moment, and a bit that requires a content warning.

It’s an idea used to relatively little effect.

The medium: Shudder

Gameability: What would your PCs do with a limited wish? Hard to destroy the world with that restriction but I’m sure they could find a way...

STA Valiant 1.08

Returning to a game after six months can take a bit of warmup time.

Under The Shadow

31 Days Of Horror 2025

10: Under The Shadow (2016)

Trailer

The heaviest subject matter thus far this month, something I needed to psych myself up for, Under The Shadow is melancholic horror from Iranian-born writer and director Babak Anvari, set in Iran at the height of the war with Iraq in the 1970s and 80s, with an already understandably stressed and worn out protagonist before creepy things start happening around her home that she deals with badly on top of bombs falling on it.

It uses supernatural horror to heighten the down-to-earth terrors of the situation, and vice versa - I could easily see a purely realistic drama version working, and there’s a moment where she runs from the building and is arrested for not wearing a headscarf which made my blood boil.

From the title and marketing I was imagining spending more time with that missile literally overhead, but the cracks in the ceiling it leaves behind add to the overall menace.

The medium: Netflix

Gameability: Playing a noncombatant in a war zone could add to overall threat, if treated sensitively and sympathetically as it is here.

Don't mind me.

From a discussion of insults in Vampire: The Masquerade -

Hardestadt The Large Adult Son

Barbarian

31 Days Of Horror 2025

9: Barbarian (2022)

Trailer which reveals one twist but not the biggest

Title possibly chosen as it contains the same letters as Airbnb. (With AAR left over, for After Action Report?)

Content warning for briefly heard but not shown sexual violence

The solo directorial debut from comedian Zach Cregger who has since made Weapons, I went into it knowing it’s partially comedy and has a couple of wild twists and an unlikeable protagonist. I didn’t know that one of the twists is...

Prepping for the weekend, regular sessions rather than the possible event.

Fear Street: Prom Queen

31 Days Of Horror 2025

8: Fear Street: Prom Queen (2025)

Trailer

Following the Fear Street trilogy which I watched and discussed in the 2021 thread (1, 2, 3), another loose adaptation of a YA horror but this time not using the ‘unified theory of supernatural slashers’ that bugged me then. And riffing on prom slashers as well as general high school mean girl and pushy parent stories from fiction and reality. After half an hour of setup and a starting kill, it’s almost all set in and around the prom. Those background artists must have been dancing for days.

It pushes the protagonists to be as immediately sympathetic as possible short of making them puppies - our hero is basically Cinderella and her best friend loves horror movies - contrasted with a more unusual mix of slasher villains and regular life villains.

It plays the gore way up for laughs, see below.

(Checking back, I see that Time Cut has a 15 rating here and this has an 18. I can see that. Time Cut is so mild on gore it could probably get a 12 if they asked nicely.)

Some good laughs outside of the murders as well.

I don’t think dance offs work that way.

Also a deliberate mix of cheesy and cool 80s music, but was Never Gonna Give You Up actually a hit in the US in the 80s, or is it just here for the retro humour?

(Edit: Yes! It got to number one in March 1988. Sorry America. Thank you NoOneImportant.)

The medium: Netflix

Gameability: Competition that’s supposed to be “fun” gets crossed with some murderous antics, it could work pretty directly as a one-shot where some of the PCs stay competitive even as the bodies start piling up.

Gore spoiler:

The Blackening

31 Days Of Horror 2025

7: The Blackening (2023)

Trailer

Having just watched a slasher where, yes, The Black Guy Dies First, this followed as a recommendation, and remembering its tagline “They can’t all die first.”

A group of college friends reunite a decade later to celebrate Juneteenth, renting A Cabin In The Woods, and discover an absurdly creepy board game in one of the rooms. I do wonder what the killer’s plan was if they’d taken one look at it and left it alone.

Mostly naturally arising comedy as snarky people banter and deal with a scary-but-goofy situation badly, it also breaks that a few times including what seemed to be a throwaway stylistic trick but became a key plot point.

It looks at some serious points about racism and how people see themselves as well as each other, but keeps things mostly fun.

It got a few laughs, and a sympathetic wince at one point too.

The medium: Netflix

Gameability: Former friends stuck in a remote location with somebody messing with them through a game, yeah, that could work.

Ghost In The Shell RPG

Ghost In The Shell RPG, specifically Arise, based on Forged In The Dark, KSing soon.

Answering the obvious question of what this brings that regular cyberpunk games don’t, the quickstart shows off some of the rules for memory hacking. Which is the kind of material that puts some people off games when it comes up, but it’s certainly a major feature of this specific property.

Fifteen years ago I returned from my trip around the world.

Time Cut

31 Days Of Horror 2026

6: Time Cut (2024)

Trailer

When I watched Totally Killer in 2023 I checked to confirm that it wasn't from the writers of “high-concept fantasy comedy meets slasher” series Happy Death Day, Freaky, It's A Wonderful Knife and all, because it was “Back To The Future meets slasher”.

And then a year later, we get “Back To The Future meets slasher” from one of the writers of Freaky.

Actually made earlier but released later, it’s a victim of poor timing (ha ha) because it’s a light take with some serious points following an outright comedy version. It doesn’t help that jumping back to 2003 is just much less different (and funny) than 1987, no matter how much they make 2003 look like a Benetton and Apple ad. It briefly toys with a serious point about how much you could change the future but makes the decision pretty simple. I full-on laughed at one joke. There’s some dialogue that looks suspiciously like it was changed with ADR. And Totally Killer also has more and grosser kills, which feels like a fair complaint for this subgenre.

I don’t know how I’d feel if I hadn’t seen Totally Killer, but I think I’d still be bothered by the weak time travel humour, wobbly time rules and lack of slashing. As is it’s fine but a poor second.

The medium: Netflix.

Gameability: As I said last time, “science project time machine is a pretty Buffy The Vampire Slayer kind of plot hook.” But this one has a prominent Buffy poster, so well done on that count at least.

The Exorcist: Believer

31 Days Of Horror 2025

5: The Exorcist: Believer (2023)

Trailer

Netflix doesn’t seem to be bringing out anything really big for Hallowe’en this year, with Mike Flanagan working elsewhere and Stranger Things coming for Thanksgiving to New Year, the biggest launch is Haunted Hotel.

But they did advertise getting this, two years after it came out in cinemas. From the creators of the Halloween “requel” trilogy and intended to launch a trilogy of its own, its box office performance was such that Universal cancelled already announced sequel Deceiver and any plans for the third which was probably going to be Redeemer but Golden Retriever would fit the rhyme better.

Well, it’s better than Exorcist II. None of its ideas are big or wild enough to be really absurd and it only made me laugh unintentionally a couple of times.

But apart from some specific tricks and a recurring character it’s no more connected than the many knockoffs the original has had and continues to have.

For the first half hour after a prologue it’s mostly a drama about parents dealing with their daughters suddenly going missing, and that part’s actually solid. But then they come back and it becomes an Exorcist movie.

I did like its use of that recurring character. And there’s some good shellshocked acting from those involved in the conflict. And there could be a whole other movie in the moment where Angela screams about wanting her mother - who died when she was born.

But it doesn’t try to match the original’s matter-of-fact style and instead looks like a regular horror film complete with dark dingy house setting and creepy things appearing in quick cuts. And the multi-faith exorcism feels very much chosen for mass appeal rather than the original's sincere Catholic approach. It doesn’t really add to the Exorcist kinda-sorta-series, and it being an official brand name Exorcist movie doesn’t add much to it in turn.

The medium: Captain Howdy. I mean Netflix.

Gameability: How much can your random group of characters mess up an exorcism?

V5: Stolen poster

Vampire: The Masquerade

Stolen

Photo by Kouji Tsuru on Unsplash

V5: Stolen 1.02

Vampire: The Masquerade

Stolen

1.02

Missing

Antha, Ravnos hustler

Cherie aka Carmilla, Nosferatu VTuber

Frank, Hecata homicide detective

Isabella, Malkavian academic and seer

Linda, Lasombra newly Embraced divorced store manager

Maebh, Gangrel courier

The Room In The Tower

A Ghost Story For Christmas 2025 is The Room In The Tower by E. F. Benson. Foreboding built by repetition can work in text and in TV. Tricky to game though.

Pay The Ghost

31 Days Of Horror 2025

I wasn’t particularly planning on a Nicolas Cage hit, but here we are.

4: Pay The Ghost (2015)

Trailer that spoils the most effective moment which is ten minutes from the end.

Watching this because it’s based on a short story by Tim Lebbon, one of the writers I met at a talk a few days back. I want to read it to see how close it is.

Cage, playing a grounded character operating about 20% full Cage capacity, plays a man whose son disappears without a trace on Hallowe’en, but unfortunately for the monster responsible he’s a professor teaching horror and mythology!

Some nice spooky imagery, in a very Insidious way, often signposted by LOUD NOISES in the soundtrack.

Also good on the shock and grief something like this would cause realistically, though that does feel a bit too grounded for the rest of the film.

Content note for child endangerment, as well as self harm.

The medium: YouTube, free with ads

Gameability: A modern take on going into the underworld to bring someone back.

Spoilers:

The Life Of A Showgirl

The Life Of A Showgirl is mostly not about the effect of fame.

Nigel Kneale double bill

31 Days Of Horror, well, not movies today, 2025

Not a movie but a TV and radio play, because I couldn’t refuse.

At an author talk and signing (which I’ll get back to later!) one of the writers mentioned an early horror influence being Baby, an episode of Beasts by Nigel Kneale, the writer best known for creating Quatermass. And that day I also found a link to a new production of his lost 1952 radio play You Must Listen. So...

Beasts: Baby (1976)

Jo and her husband Peter have moved to the country for his work, and she feels uncomfortable even before renovations of the house reveal a large pottery jar with something inside. It doesn’t help that Peter is quick-tempered and dismissive of her concerns, or that the local workmen tell stories about something like witches’ familiars...

You Must Listen (2023, from a 1952 script)

A new business moves into a renovated office and a telephone line is installed but there seems to be a fault, a crossed line that the technicians can’t explain. And the more they listen, the more it reveals a dark secret.

Both involve renovations discovering something, though in very different ways.

Baby is the chillier of the two, with the ability to show some horrible things as well as the story isolating Jo, while You Must Listen has a good-natured group cooperating to solve the mystery contrasted with the disembodied voices of telephones playing with the format of the radio play. Kneale would explore the idea more thoroughly in The Stone Tape in 1972, and with a more isolating story around the protagonist again, so it was interesting to hear an early take.

Gameability: Both are modernisations of something being unearthed, You Must Listen in particular uses the technology of the day, and how little it’s understood by anyone outside of the field. I could definitely see a horror adventure about trying to trace a voice on the phone working today.

Before I Wake (2016)

31 Days Of Horror Movies 2025

2. Before I Wake (2016)

Trailer

A while after the accidental death of their son, a couple take in a fostered boy with some strange things in his history, and soon discover that his dreams can influence reality - and so can his nightmares.

The Netflix specific trailer plugs this heavily as being from Mike Flanagan (here director, co-writer and editor) when he was producing miniseries for them, and it feels like an early look at some of the themes in his version of The Haunting Of Hill House a couple years later in particular, with a family dealing with a put-upon child with a supernatural gift, things appearing in the background of scenes, longish group therapy scenes, and an ending letting the side down after a good buildup.

The medium: Netflix

Gameability: It’s an interesting power, and not a threat you can stop easily.

Month Of Darkness 2025

Month Of Darkness 2025 and creative prompts that I may or may not get to:

Nosferatu (2023)

31 Days Of Horror Movies 2025

Starting with something I paid for a decade ago and never expected to see...

1: Nosferatu: A Symphony Of Horror (2023)

Trailer

Not a typo!

Following a 2014 Kickstarter which I backed for a small amount, a few months of filming and eight years of postproduction, a remake of Nosferatu using mostly virtual sets taken from the 1922 original finally reached streaming. Besides the novelty value, there are a few interesting character touches and some puzzling ones too, but the main draw here is Doug Jones doing a fun full-on Max Schreck impression.

The medium: Prime, among other places.

Gameability: It’s a take on a take on Dracula, and players sometimes get a kick out of messing with a classic.

31 Days Of Horror Film 2025

Here and on socials and RPGnet for most discussion.

You Must Listen

You Must Listen by Nigel Kneale, a lost radio play from 1952 rerecorded for the centenary of BBC Radio. An attempt to deal with the uncanny through science...

Thanks to Evan Dorkin for the link.

Curseborne Player's Guide

Curseborne Player’s Guide, now Kickstarting.

October

OCTOBER

YES

Halloween Rain

Christopher Golden, co-author of the first original Buffy novel, thankfully amused to sign it.

Photo thanks to Iain Lowson

V5: Stolen 1.01

Vampire: The Masquerade

Stolen

1.01

Unknown

Antha, Ravnos hustler

Isabella, Malkavian academic and seer

Linda, Lasombra newly Embraced divorced store manager

Maebh, Gangrel courier

Cold City / Hot War

Cold City / Hot War PDF out to backers, general sale a-coming.

V5 Dominion? 1.01

May be renamed if I can come up with something pithy to do with theft.

Three of the four PCs I have can be easily if in most cases loosely connected to the fusty Tremere who claims domain over London’s universities and colleges. The fourth is more of a stretch, so he knows her sire.

And between sessions I stopped for a drink at the Filmhouse Bar and they played, I kid you not, I Still Believe from The Lost Boys.