Preparations

Pitches tomorrow and I am a wee bit more prepared. I’ve looked up half a dozen ominous Chronicle titles for one thing.

Slight advance on summer Vampire thoughts

Since it’s short, the city can be fairly small, possibly fictional. It can have a handful of oddball vampires (like I have ready to go) and one central conflict.

Maybe the Prince just vanished. That tends to start trouble.

But of course it depends what players latch on to. That’s how we got Last Dance.

Summer update

Have wimped out and offered to run Vampire. Decided to go for a reasonably known system, and final decision possibly influenced by Virtual Goth Night.

Vampire: The Masquerade is a game of horror and drama. Vampires hide in the shadows of our cities, hunting for blood and fighting over territory. Can you survive in the night and hold on to your humanity?

Knowledge of the setting and system is not required, the setting looks like our world on the surface and the system is straightforward.

What will it be about?

No idea.

Garbage, Let All That We Imagine Be The Light

Happy New Garbage Album Day to all who celebrate!

Deep Space Nine: What We Left Behind

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine retrospective documentary What We left Behind, now free to watch on YouTube. Contains more F-bombs than you might expect from a documentary about Star Trek. Look closely and you might spot my name in the backer credits.

FiveEvil

FiveEvil is out now in PDF.

Buffy time?

Like usual?

Summer Game Update

No I don’t have an answer and all I’m watching at the moment is Springwatch. So I guess I could run a game about foxes...

The question arises once more

Online pitches this weekend for summer games for GEAS, and... hmm. What to do, what to do, what to do...

Jason Carl on White Wolf

Jason Carl talks to Rob Wieland about the White Wolf news at Forbes. Some clarifications, including noting the demand for a collected V5 rule set.

Happy Dracula Day!

Peter David

Spider-Man 2099. Star Trek: New Frontier. X-Factor investigations. Fallen Angel. He leaves behind a great body of work, and some varied opinion pieces.

Walking With Dinosaurs

Walking With Dinosaurs is back, with the same mix of interesting palaeontology and totally made-up CGI dinosaur stories. This week repeatedly threatening to kill a cute baby Triceratops, so that was a thing.

Alan Yentob

Alan Yentob is the first person I specifically remember putting a stamp on what the BBC did.

Visiting the new Dark Universe

This World Goth Day also probably coincidentally saw the launch of Universal Orlando’s new Epic Universe theme park, with a variety of zones, some I would love to visit. One I would is the new take on Universal Monsters.

Night walkthrough of the Darkmoor hub

Photo heavy review with good looks at the props but comparisons to another zone I prefer not to mention

Victoria Frankenstein seeks to trap all the monsters to redeem her family name. The manor exhibit on the way to the main ride comes complete with murals that naturally reminded me of Dark Harvest - a mass of stitched-together people striving for a better future.

Would love to see the full monster capture videos.

The designs are generally slick takes on the classics, not using the versions seen in We Will Be Monsters and therefore Fortnite. Understandable. It does mean that Victoria and this comedy relief version of Ygor are the main new stars, though the Creature is canonically a rebuild of the Karloff style design, explaining his being so tall. (But then, the Invisible Man seems to be the same guy, is he immortal?)

Vampires seem pretty common but less powerful than Dracula, judging by the décor of the Stakehaus restaurant including lots of, yes, staked vampires.

So we have a universe where monsters are rare but known and not all that feared. What to do with this...

Happy birthday Chris! One of the round number ones.

White Wolf

The World of Darkness team is once again White Wolf, independent for licensing and brand.

Pulp, Got To Have Love

And now, new Pulp!

Also - do not believe the words in the video, you will break something.

Pulp, Common People

Today marks the thirtieth anniversary of Common People.

Where were you thirty years ago? And are you still there on some level?

World Goth Day 2025

A very happy, er, well, anyway, World Goth Day!

This year listening to everything in the Vampire: The Masquerade first edition Storytellers Handbook music article. Doing this a few years back was how I learned about the band Swans, and they did not disappoint.

Near Dark: the series?

News of A24 looking at adapting Near Dark as a TV/streaming series. I’m nervous, but it’s been a fair old while so I always at least try to say give a new take a chance.

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning, formerly known as Dead Reckoning Part Two (and possibly Three as it runs almost three hours) opens with a catchup, has another catchup later, brings back some deeeeeeeeep cuts some to basically no effect, and could easily have been trimmed by half an hour.

But it’s certainly good value for money in IMAX, and two of the three climactic conflicts worked for me, unfortunately just not the big one.

Daggerheart

Daggerheart is out now. Matt Mercer has announced a CR miniseries, Age of Umbra, in a dark fantasy tone and oddly some variant rules. Launch features include a customisable card program for homebrew and expansion powers.

A lot of PBTA and some FITD, while Duality Dice call to mind FFG Star Wars. I would be curious to see how it plays, but some influences are my style and some aren’t.

Wolf Warrior II

Having reread Tom Breihan’s AV Club series on action films and gotten a smart TV, I have now seen his recommendation for 2017, Wolf Warrior II, as well as its predecessor. A big flag-waving yay-for-our-country action movie with China replacing the USA as the international heroes.

The two make a very odd combo, as our hero spends the first movie proving himself worthy of China’s G.I. Joe and then leaves them to become a rootless adventurer in a flashback after the opening action scene in the second.

Which, as Breihan notes, has him jumping off a cargo ship being attacked by pirates, fighting a group of them underwater to steal their boat and shooting a guy about to fire a rocket launcher so the rocket hits the screen, all presented as a oner. This is what got me to watch both of them.

(And they’re not as odd a pairing as previous entrants Kill Zone and Kill Zone 2, which are both dark crime thrillers with a whole lot of MMA action but which have entirely different casts except a couple of actors playing different characters. Wu Jing plays a minor villain Donnie Yen kills in the first and then the hero in the second, before writing, directing and starring in Wolf Warrior.)

Revenge Of The Sith

This story happened a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. It is already over; nothing can be done to change it.

Matthew Stover, Revenge Of The Sith novelisation

A reminder that the bones of the story were good, if already well known.

Sesame Street

Sesame Street going to Netflix - and per the deal also broadcasting on PBS and its app. YES.

Vive La Vitae 2

We may have inadvertently helped some of the Camarilla. Ptui.

Eurovision 2025

A lack of Would Actually Vote For This songs for me this year. crownthewitch

Also just a couple of immediate No though, including Israel but also comedy polka.

Remember Monday are a band with some serious singing chops, but here feel like a sketch troupe doing a song at the end of an episode.

Well done JJ.

What plus What?

Fixing Book of Hungry Names bugs and chuckling at the scene where you can choose to roll into the hardest pool hall in Holyoke and chat up the locals as you play, with an exceptionally rare Dexterity + Streetwise check.

Kyle Marquis

In every generation there is a Chosen One

Ryan Kiera Armstrong, Fern from Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, is the Slayer.

Zoo!

Giraffes! Capybaras! Penguins! Other animals sheltering from the sun and so not as good photos!

Capybaras!

Star Wars: Andor season two

Andor continues to be an interesting resistance story while not my Star Wars. In fact the little Star Wars bits pull me out of the rough harsh resistance story.

The annual jumps don’t make it disjointed, but instead accelerating and not being sure when something will change.

You don’t have to intercut three non-action scenes like the end of Return Of The Jedi.

I do enjoy Kleya the Cold-Blooded Snarky Comms Officer Shop Assistant.

After Ryloth we now have a second French Resistance planet.

Super traditional wedding going all rave didn’t really work for me but never mind.

Final Destination: Dead In The Water

How much am I a Final Destination kind of person? This much.

Still sad this one-shot PBP fizzled while most of the PCs were still alive. We didn’t use the game system (Cinematic Unisystem for convenience) much after the opening when it determined who died when.

Glad I got to throw in some twists on the formula, like the saved second victim being So Pissed at the seer for not having another vision to save the first, the FBI getting involved with the theory of an untraceable serial killer and offering / threatening protective custody, someone approaching the seer after hearing about this somehow to ask her to read his sick daughter’s future...

And the second post-vision death was at the first victim’s funeral, where I coined the phrase “runaway gravestone”.

Still proud of that one.

If we’d finished I had a sequel plan involving a cult kidnapping the seer...

Final Destination: Bloodlines

Final Destination: Bloodlines is a fun night out for people who like this kind of thing, and I am one of those people. After the original run petered out with the last couple it’s easily the best since FD3 (the original still being the only one that really works as more than a series of fun “accidental” killing scenes) with the best opening slaughter since the much referenced high point of FD2, one setpiece so fun they used it as the first trailer and that persuaded me to come back, a great little funny secondary kill, and a touching bow by Tony Todd. I’m not sure we needed an origin for his character, especially in a series that’s never considered explaining the premonitions it hinges on, but having him write his parting lines was a lovely touch.

8000 posts

8000 posts and what do you see?

The biggest label is Films and not RPGs!

1413 just beats 1402 (a rhyme would be 1403)

I guess because seeing a film is something I can do when it’s just me

Okay I’ll stop now

Onyx Path Convention 2025

June 6th-8th, with closer looks at Curseborne, Trinity Continuum: Steam Wars and more.

Just a tad out of practice being a player

The V5 Experience cost table doesn’t even have the confusing current rating bit, it just says new. Excuse me while I un-buy two skills.

It's all fun and games until...

Shannon Applecline looks at classic D&D cover references in gaming history, notably the Eye-dol from the AD&D 1e Players Handbook.

Vive La Vitae chapter one

First face-to-face Vampire: The Masquerade V5 session as a player in just under eight years! (The last one being the playtest at the convention it was announced at.) So that was nice!

Dr. Matthieu Lasalle got tired of a fop talking too much and picked him up by the neck, and also helped a guard with a scalp cut and tasted his blood. He has mixed feelings about the night.

V5 Vive character: Matthieu Lasalle

Vampire: The Masquerade

Vive La Vitae

Matthieu Lasalle

Doctor turned Brujah, childe of Adrien of the Red Seal (Sceau Rouge)

Amir El Kacem in La Revolution

A L I E N

Just got a physical copy of ALIEN first edition through a bring and buy sale. I’ve done nothing with it since the PDF came out, but hey, it’s pretty.

Optimism, Captain!

Have to get my brain in a Star Trek space even though French Revolution Vampire is a day after and I’ve been hitting media for that on and off for two weeks.

Garbage, Get Out My Face AKA Bad Kitty

Get Out My Face AKA Bad Kitty, the second track from the new Garbage album Let All That We Imagine Be The Light.

If you can’t join ’em

YOU GOTTA BEAT ’EM

The new Pope seems to have annoyed mostly the right people.

VE Day

Today marks the eightieth anniversary of victory in Europe. My mother was old enough to remember and said she doesn’t remember any big parties or anything like. As she says there wasn’t much cause to celebrate personally, her uncle didn’t get home until about January and her father, my grandfather, until next summer. Millions of people had a long journey ahead of them, with erratic communication in between.

Conclave

The Papal conclave has started. One of the streaming services advertised getting the Robert Harris adaptation Conclave this week, which is kind of ghoulish but I admit we watched it. While hyper-dramatised in terms of the secrets revealed, its grounded in the practicalities like getting everyone there, putting them up nearby - do the apartments really look that much like a dark marble themed modern hotel? - and making sure the black smoke is black enough.

V5: City Of Angels 1.33

Vampire: The Masquerade - City Of Angels session 33 and I used a skill specialty for the first time!

The skill specialty is Music History so I have no-one to blame but myself.

Cymera games strand

Cymera SFFH horror con games strand, tickets on sale now

Reality doesn't have to make sense

Best name for a group in the French Revolution: Enragés, activists for undelivered promised rights for the poor.

Second best but most disappointing name for a group in the French Revolution: Bande Noire... property speculators who bought up aristocrat houses and castles to demolish to sell the stone.

VLV session zero

Vampire: The Masquerade - Vive La Vitae

Session Zero

Character sheet first draft sent, introducing a bunch of optional characters who want to kill him and including a note that I can switch out his already lost love for a potential doomed romance if preferred.

May the 4th be with you

And also with you.

Dracula Daily 2025

Dracula Daily begins again, bringing a reminder that we no longer have any paprika places in town.

Alarums & Excursions

Alarums & Excursions to end after fifty years.

National Space Day

First Friday in May. But why does only one nation have Space Day?

Thunderbolts*

Thunderbolts*

That was fun.

Which is impressive considering what it’s about.

Pretty Yelena centric, but it’s probably sensible to focus on one messed-up character reaching out.

Walker maybe needed more of an intro for cinema audiences.

Corridor fight!

As well as the trailer, IMAX promo and post-credits scene here for Fantastic Four, they’re really hyping that one.

Post Beltane update

The sun came up. Which is always a relief these days.

May

Another month, another chance.