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?