Beltane

Have a good one, take care up on that hill.

Keep your powder dry

Not me buying a new toy flintlock pistol, nope.

Sinners and songs

Leah Schnelbach at Reactor provides a deep dive into Remmick’s music choices in Sinners, including links to various performances as well as interviews with Ryan Coogler, Ludwig Göransson and Buddy Guy.

“The vampire wants to use it as a foundation for a new family - but what kind of a family is this, where he controls what’s supposed to be a collective?”

Zeo Genesis

Zeo Genesis is an SF squad skirmish wargame with power armour and mecha, playtest rules and background including comics on the main site, and now crowdfunding. Bias note, I know one of the team.

A new setting, with two rival powers in an interstellar future disagreeing over centralised governance through the method of stompy robot suits. The background info adds mercenaries, smugglers, hackers and gladiatorial combat, so things to do.

Weapons trailer

Weapons trailer, a multi-strand “horror epic” from the director of Barbarian, starting with a mass child disappearance. Reactions at Reactor. See also the in-character website.

Content warnings for all kinds of stuff, not limited to someone stabbing herself in the face with a fork.

I have no idea where this goes after that start, but that start is a great setup for a one-shot.

Been the kind of week where I checked it was only a week since the last session of my fortnightly game.

Terry Pratchett Day

A very happy Terry Pratchett Day. Mind how you go.

Sumer is a-cumen in

GEAS summer pitches are aways after exams so I guess I don’t need to make any decisions just yet. Not that I know when the exams are.

ALIEN DAY

ALIEN DAY was a cute choice to drop a Doctor Who episode about space troopers going to a colony gone silent in which someone literally suggests nuking the site from orbit.

All important Vive logo making

What I really want is a version of the Vampire: The Masquerade 5 logo lit from below but adding shadow top down will have to do. Might go back and do it more heavily.

Photo screencapped from Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette.

Drop

Drop (2025) (trailer)

Horror-adjacent as a suspense film with some violent elements, from Christopher Landon (Happy Death Day and 2U, Freaky) and harking back to his earlier Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones in its use of surveillance technology. Nothing supernatural involved and funny in places but mostly his first “serious” movie.

A single mother on a first date receives threatening anonymous messages on her phone, escalating to a command to kill her date and home camera footage showing an armed and masked man in her house. The messages are off-brand Airdrop, meaning they can only be coming from fifty feet away at most, so they’re being sent by someone in the restaurant.

Mostly staying in one place in the style of Wes Craven’s Red Eye (with which it shares a structural issue but never mind) largely laser focused on Meghann Fahy as Violet, and sometimes playing with stylised lighting to add to the play-like feel, it’s a lot of fun.

Content warning for portrayals of domestic abuse. (Odd fit for the overall tone.)

Dracula in your Vampire game

Thinking back to portrayals of the big-name vampire in settings, how Vampire: The Requiem had an option for every clan, while Vampire: The Masquerade built a clan around him despite a couple obvious options already being there.

Now imagining if they had an every clan option for Dracula in Masquerade. Gangrel Dracula? Fine. Ventrue Dracula? Fine. Salubri Dracula? Coming to a domain, making all the elders feel guilty for what they’ve done, and laughing as they turn on each other from moral outrage.

St. George

Take that, dragons!

Avengers: Age Of Ultron at ten

Avengers: Age Of Ultron came out ten years ago tonight.

It’s pretty fun. Could lose the Thor vision quest bit.

Conclave LARP

Conclave LARPs have been going on for years. Thanks to Adrian Hon for the link.

Earth Day

Recycle something. Maybe a polluter.

To arms, citizens!

Vampire: The Masquerade - Vive la Vitae media list so far

TV and films:

La Révolution (trailer) terrible but nicely shot French historical urban fantasy that says the Revolution was due to the aristocracy planning to become vampires in a very 90s sourcebook kind of way

Les Misérables, which has overtaken A Tale of Two Cities as the most famous story about a French revolution but not that one

Marie Antoinette (the current series) for the backstabbing court intrigue side (which means I’ve seen Gaia Weiss as a hero of La Révolution and a scheming courtier here)

Chevalier for a bit of earlier grounding (with some of the same people on different sides of who we should like)

Podcast:

Revolutions by Mike Duncan

Songs:

La Marseillaise (here performed by Axelle Saint-Cirel for the 2024 Olympics) composed in 1792 and adopted as the national anthem in 1795

Gojira, Mea Culpa (Ah! Ça ira!), riffing on a Revolutionary song about hanging aristocrats

Les Misérables, One Day More and Do You Hear The People Sing? and probably On My Own for extra sads

Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Heads Will Roll

Grabyourface, Guillotine

Other games:

Assassin’s Creed Unity which takes the bold but weird choice of having some of the Templars backing the Revolution after the trailers all had Assassins leading it, as it uses the Revolution as a backdrop for a cross-faction romance or something, which interesting but maybe choose a time other than one where autocracy and anarchy clash most directly especially as you seem to be doing a swashbuckling hero better suited to the Three Musketeers time

RPG sourcebooks:

Chronicles Of Darkness: Dark Eras - The Reign of Terror

Call of Cthulhu: Reign Of Terror

GURPS Scarlet Pimpernel to show that not all Revolution RPG books are called Reign of Terror, just the horror ones

Storm the barricades

Considering a couple different characters for the French Revolution Vampire: The Masquerade game depending on how actively revolutionary we’ll be. I plan to behead aristos either way, but is it my main focus?

Pope Francis

Pope Francis has died. As a world leader in that role, I think he did better than many.

Easter eggs

 Cadbury first sold Easter eggs in 1875.

Easter

Easter is a distant second to Christmas in the big Christian holidays’ crossover appeal partially because it moves around the calendar, but also because it celebrates spring in the northern hemisphere and spring is a natural up point anyway while Christmas is a nice thing just after midwinter. But an excuse to celebrate spring is a nice thing too. Also chocolate. And bunnies. Enjoy!

Lightyear

Lightyear is an odd choice for Saturday before Easter, though not for lead-in to Doctor Who.

Though it does feature someone heroically sacrificing his happiness to atone for a (minor) error and returning to his people again and again after a long time away.

I think one reason it wasn’t a hit (besides CHUDs screaming) is that for an animated space adventure about one of the goofier heroes in Toy Story it’s kind of a bummer.

Ah! Ça ira!

Have officially typed up been given a shot at playing French Revolution Vampire: The Masquerade.

Half an hour later, have made a beheading pun. Going great.

Paul Revere's ride

250 years ago tonight Paul Revere rode, not shouting that the British were coming as it was actually a secret mission.

Sinners

If you don’t mind the very heavily spoiled vampire violence, Sinners is a roaring good time at the movies. Brutal, thrilling, funny and at times uplifting.

Michael B. Jordan playing twins works, backed up by some great effects - the first time we see them they share a smoke.

The vampires are very Flanagan, as horrible but not monstrous-looking vampires are currently. Not a complaint.

They take their time to arrive, but it would be a good time without them.

Tombstone

Nothing like watching Tombstone again to make me want to run a Western.

Embassy as game base

Diplomatic Mission as PC Party, a thought from someone I know (hello!)

Cymera 2025

Cymera 2025 programme, the local SFFH literary festival running June 6-8.

Daredevil: Born Again 1.09

Ouch.

Conpulsion 2025 Quiz Answers

The winning team got 51 out of 61. (And we had a team of one who got 20.) How did you do?

Conpulsion 2025 Quiz

If you dare!

Answers in a day or so.

Marathon

Marathon from the makers of Halo and Destiny, an extraction shooter with a sound reason for respawning (you’re piloting robots) and a cyberpunky Mork Borg dayglo aesthetic.

The title comes from the pre-Halo action adventure game about fighting through a colony ship taken over by a rogue A.I.

And at the end of the cinematic introduction, a question.

Nationals 2025

Looks like it was fun.

But if you win the Nationals that often you should be made to run it even if you have to build an arena for it. You know who you are, Stirling.

Only joking.

OR AM I

Next year Cardiff, and my immediate reaction is that feels like a long way...

Conpulsion 2025 Day 2

Talks! Quiz! Banquo Award for Andy Hepworth!

Conpulsion 2025 Day 1

Talks! Auction! Saying hello to people!

Pride & Prejudice

The new adaptation of Pride & Prejudice will be backwards compatible with Pride & Prejudice 2005 but will still produce a new core set and Monster Manual.

The Librarians: The Next Chapter

The Librarians: The Next Chapter finds a new channel in the US, with trailer and all. With its flappy-coated British out-of-time hero it looks slightly less Ghostbusters and even more Doctor Who than last time.

Garbage - There's No Future In Optimism

“The city’s on fire and the sirens are screaming”

Daredevil Born Again 1.08

Loved Fisk’s “damn it I can’t kill him now” look at the end.

V5: City Of Angels 1.31

Having had time to consider ways to play a depressed character after the previous session, I went with seeking and glad to be given some support.

How healthy is the support? Could be worse actually.

Predator: Killer Of Killers

Predator: Badlands follows Prey this summer, but on June 6th we’re also getting Predator: Killer Of Killers, an animated anthology setting them against vikings, ninja and WWII fighter pilots. YEAH

2025 Hugo Award nominations

Here.

Delighted by Best Related Work including The Spectacular Failure of the Star Wars Hotel.

Vote splitting could mean the two analyses of the failings of the 2023 Hugos cancel each other out?

Doctor Who and Lower Decks likewise both gets two Short Dramatic nods, which could mean Agatha All Along or Fallout get it.

A finale

There are a lot of different ways that could have gone, but me dropping that particular hammer felt right.

V5 Empire 2.08

Tonight in Vampire: The Masquerade - Empire, a finale:

“It’s not really a Vampire game without some betrayal, is it?”

“Not always, but I’m proud of you all.”

A me problem

I don’t have a good substitute visual for the hunter antagonist in my current Vampire: The Masquerade game to replace the person I’ve used as a reference for the inspirational monster-hunting PC before and I don’t want to have the current PCs kill her off or vice versa, even at this remove.

This is very much a me problem.

First Contact Day

For First Contact Day we played Star Trek Adventures. Which we were going to do anyway as we didn’t realise, and there wasn’t any first contact in the episode, but still.

Reminder: no music rounds

Our team won the GEAS quiz, despite me putting in the wrong answer for which ride of the Rohirrim the musical cue in that music round came from.

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