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.

Vampire Weekends

Getting ready to run Vampire: The Masquerade tomorrow afternoon.

At least I know what a dozen NPCs are called and the name of a Goth club.

And to play a short series in the evening. Going back to a character idea from ahead of first edition.

One day I’ll get to the last one! Maybe.

Google at 27

Celebrating twenty-five years as an essential of the internet and two years as a stupid lying engine.

Black Knight

An animation test for a film Genndy Tartakovsky wants to make and I want to see.

Stanislav Petrov Day

On this day in 1983, Stanislav Petrov saved the world.

Vitally important Dominion decision

The role of the Prince of London may be visually referenced by Rebecca Ferguson.

And not just for the Met Gala dress decorated with ravens.

Or her having played a vampire in Doctor Sleep. Who was not very Prince-y.

Eject the warp core!

Via Star Trek: Lower Decks creator Mike McMahan, an EV that shoots out its battery in the event of thermal runaway. Which is a solid block about five feet long. That it shoots out sideways. At force.

This is (a) absurdly dangerous and (b) hilarious.

Alien: Earth

I overall liked episodes one, two and five.

I thought the abstracted recaps were great. But on the other end, I feel that if you play a different real-world song over the end credits of every episode then the lyrics should be relevant to the episode - here they just seem to want to end on rocking out.

(Apparently this last one did have a relevant lyric.)

Only one of the new monsters really added anything. And mainly added humour.

Second year in a row where I was considering running an ALIEN game in advance of a new live-action spinoff and wasn’t by the end.

I did like: “Don’t say ‘It’s complicated’ - that’s what powerless people say to make doing nothing okay.”

I’d like to see something advance the timeline again like the Dark Horse Comics, taken up by the RPG, where the Alien is somewhat known but still scary. Here it wasn’t even scary.

But at least nobody quoted a famous line that hasn’t happened yet.

Dominion taking shape

An academic, an occult researcher, an alchemist newly risen from Torpor, a courier and two thieves. Sounds like this will be about antiquity theft?

The Rapture

People are making Rapture jokes like there’s no tomorrow

Ian/Sine

From Third World War, issue one of 1990s 2000 A.D. spinoff Crisis
Art by Carlos Ezquerra

How would your setting change if one of the factions just disappeared one day? 

Happy birthday Mark!

The Mandalorian And Grogu Trailer

Trailer! Discussion At Empire!

Grogu And The Mandalorian

Funny baby! Laconic asskicking! Surprise guest star! Puppety monsters! Explosions! Theme tune! Catchphrase! 22nd May! Hope Disney have caved over censorship by then! (Update: yes they did six hours later!)

It is very much a teaser for a big screen adventure for known characters rather than an invitation for the unfamiliar.

Autumn

At least when autumn officially arrives it’s only a few weeks into autumn, not halfway.

Vampire: The Masquerade - Dominion

Six players, three totally new to the setting, so a modern city.

London because I have a version ready to go.

I know how to make a poster like this, okay?

Photo by Photo by Jordan Eyskamp on Unsplash

GEAS 2025

Sixteen games across two slots, seven and nine. The D&D 5s are more Wednesday than Sunday. I think only one of the D&Ds is 2024.

My next Vampire as a player

A Vampire: The Masquerade short series, modern Britain, occult focused:

Going back to one of my ideas from before first edition, once played twenty years ago:

Michael Andrew Sorensen

Tremere historian turned occult investigator

12th Generation?

(Visual reference: I’m not above using Tom Sturridge)

V5 at GEAS 2025-6

Vampire: The Masquerade (title TBD)

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

Knowledge of the system and setting are not required, the system is straightforward and the setting looks like our world on the surface and you can discover it along with your characters.

Vive Chapter Fourteen

Matthieu Lasalle made it to the epilogue. But no further. Sorry old chap. At least you didn’t have to see the monarchy restored. And your grandchildren might help overthrow it again.

Along the way we did get to play the game Assassin’s Creed Unity advertised but didn’t deliver.

BIPOC Vamp Day 2025

BIPOC Vampire Day returns, with art, charity drives, and several streamed Actual Play games.

Talk Like A Pirate Day 2025

If there were ever a need for Talk Like A Pirate Day it be this day!

The Last City, Called Gehenna

The Vampire: The Masquerade future mentioned in the Book of Nod, a nightmarish ruined post-apocalypse, everything dusty and overcast. Never got past the highly specific vibe, something like Tarkovsky’s Stalker. Or the formative influence of this McEwan’s lager advert.

Bloodlines 2 update

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 Toreador and Lasombra added to the main game, which might lose some money but definitely appreciated, probably wiser to just do it initially. DLC next year in the form of side stories controlling NPCs, which looks fun and more plots is of more interest to me for one.

Plans of a sort

One Sunday slot, I guess I can run Vampire in the afternoon.

GEAS 2025

Lack of space continues to be an issue, we only have room bookings for two slots so as to get rooms consistently this semester. Wednesday evening and Sunday afternoon, losing my go-to Sunday evening place.

Pod People

The Pod Universe begins with the first half of Pod People. The start of a fictional cinematic universe in actual scriptment reading form. Some twists on the pod people format, who is really who? And I greatly appreciate one of our heroes going straight to sinister doppelgangers as a theory.

The Haunting Of The Watch House

What would my take on Mike Flanagan’s The Haunting Of Hill House family setup be like, an already connected group of people with maybe some sensitivity to ghosts dealing with a deeply haunted place?

As noted here, Shirley Jackson’s original setup of would-be psychical researchers and test subjects, kept for the 1963 film, is more readily game-friendly as close family connections are harder for players to take up than strangers with a share adventure-ish purpose.

(The 1999 version with a blind study pretending to be about sleep disorders adds a twist and sense of betrayal for the characters, but the audience or in our case players would be signed on already so just waiting for such a reveal. A game that appears to be about a possibly spooky sleep study before confirming just how spooky it is could work though. Though then as a player I would expect dream hauntings rather than regular hauntings.)

I would hesitate to play at putting kids in danger and a lot of players would decline, but we could use it as a flashback setup, playing bits and pieces but not as much. Playing the previous generation, maybe?

I’d want to be clear about how the haunting works, and whether the characters can affect it.

Haunted Hotel

The first nine minutes of Haunted Hotel, a new Netflix animated comedy created by Matt Roller of Rick & Morty. Not unlike Ghosts, the setup being The Shining But Comedy, and I guess the next step past the family stuck together in an extremely haunted building of Mike Flanagan’s version of The Haunting Of Hill House.

Ken And Robin Hail Satan

Ken And Robin Talk About Stuff 666. Of course these are the kinds of people who know it should be 616.

Salt Circle

A scruffy poorly budgeted occult investigation unit.

The Middleman

The Middleman creator Javier Grillo-Marxuach points out that you can watch it on the Internet Archive.

Our Brilliant Ruin starter set

Our Brilliant Ruin starter set, now on Kickstarter.

Only Murders In The Building season 5

Only Murders In The Building is back, and doesn’t keep us waiting for one of its classic bits.

Star Trek Day

Happy Star Trek Day! Third of three Star Trek days now on the calendar and the only one timed for a real event, the US premiere of the original series.

This year the start of a year-long runup to its sixtieth anniversary, Lego, a CG cartoon for kids, and the launch of the audio drama KHAN - Naveen Andrews talks to Vanessa Armstrong at Reactor.

Vive Chapter Thirteen

Meeting Marie Antoinette:

Pascal: Your Majesty.

Matthieu: Citizen.

He was much more stoked to meet Charlotte Corday.

But seeing a human being ready to stay behind to save her children is the kind of thing that pushes you to reconsider who the monsters are.

The Pod Universe

The Pod Universe, a new cinematic universe in podcast scriptment and talk form, the follow-up to Are You Afraid of The Dark Universe?, launches here with the initial slate, SF this time and opening with Pod People, before pivoting to space opera, SF conspiracy thriller, possession and post-apocalypse comedy before a crossover War Of The Worlds.

A two-part scriptment every month, along with guest shows and bonus-only talk shows in between. So that’s a pretty big setting right away, with some guardrails though not as big as last time. Not as precisely My Thing as much of AYAOTDU, but certainly a thing I’ll be listening to.

The Phantom Of The Opera

Universal’s The Phantom Of The Opera starring Lon Chaney premiered 100 years ago on this very night.

Brian Kelper at Bloody Disgusting looks at the first Universal Monster film and its impact. The article is topped with a photo of Chaney’s Phantom makeup, which was famously hidden in publicity.

Life Is Strange: the TV series

Life Is Strange coming to Amazon TV from the main writer of The End Of The F***ing World. We’ll see.

A little detail makes all the difference

Rewatching Interview With The Vampire 1994 with friends on a bigger screen and I’d never noticed Lestat stroking the dead rat he just bled out into a glass.

Halsey, I Walk The Line

Halsey, I Walk The Line

“I keep a close watch on this heart of mine” is a very I see why Halsey covered this lyric.

Alien: Earth - In Space, No One...

Alien: Earth 1.05 gets its own post, because I mostly like it, as a largely separate prologue (not set on Earth for one thing) that elicits sympathy for someone we hate now and ends reminding us why, and particularly as it does something I want more from Alien spinoffs, an Alien story in a different genre.

Rogue.site

Rogue, computer and video games by the makers of Rascal and writers from Polygon.

Same trope, different level

Supernatural was mostly “Angel but two brothers in a car like The Dukes Of Hazzard or something” but when they took on ghost H!tler it became for one shining moment “Angel but two brothers in a car like The Blues Brothers”.

September 1st, hit in the face by a falling leaf. Checks out.

The Edge Case, a parlour game by Steve D

Of all my parlour games, I think this one is the best

Steve at Tin Star Games on Bluesky

September

A month with R in it, could be winter.