Aura Perception

Aura Perception from Vampire: The Masquerade 1-20 was basically “ST looks up what colour an emotion is, then player looks up what emotion a colour is” and so I don’t miss it. But I did manage to get a good jolt out of it a couple of times. Once when one of the PCs realised she was talking to an angel, and in another game when one of the PCs saw that a tree hated everything.

Electrician and Adventurer

Waiting on electrical workers, and so naturally pondering a game about this kind of job getting called in to fix things in houses and what you see as a result.

This could be played for humour, horror, or more. Ghostbusters is the closest I’ve done, and there you’re expecting weirdness when you answer the call. Also to a lesser extent Graveyard Shift, Buffy at a pizza place.

See also Bill Towner, Electrician and Adventurer from House II: The Second Story.

Or a serious take like Session 9.

Vampire: The Miniatures at Darkness Emergent

Josh at Strange Adventures was at the V6 (now listed as such in the Gen Con playtests) panel and also the mentioned in passing miniatures panel - which is about a forthcoming Dark Ages skirmish game. Video, timestamp to see concept video and art.

Christof?! Yes, it could be a different crusader but...
The creepy nun coukd be Serena too.
Though she seems to have a horde of severed hands.

So that looks interesting.

Marcia Lucas

Marcia Lucas has died. Former wife of George and editor of American Graffiti and Star Wars, who gave us the Death Star approaching ending out of edits and ADR, as well as Taxi Driver and New York, New York.

UK Games Expo was already too big for my comfort years ago. I wish it well.

The Maltese Falcon

Proof that remakes can be improvements even after just a few years.

A title can tell you a lot

Victorian Psycho (trailer and talk at Empire) indicates a very different vibe than calling it something like say The Governess.

Surprising Paddington 4 news

Armando Iannucci co-writing a Paddington film may seem strange if you consider what the likes of The Thick Of It and The Death Of Stalin are about, but makes perfect sense if you consider how they’re about it.

Jason Isaacs as Field Marshal Zhukov in The Death Of Stalin
making an entrance by shrugging off his coat in slow motion
to reveal enough medals on his jacket to count as mail armour

And Iannucci and Paddington both know Peter Capaldi.

The Tyrant Philosophers RPG

Coming this autumn from Handiwork Games, using the new a|State system, based on a fantasy novel series by Adrian Tchaikovsky.

hahahayikes

Nothing like having someone come to check a broken electrical thing, say “that’s the worst I’ve seen” and call for backup for safely ground it.

World Dracula Day

Just as Star Wars opemed three wees after May the fourth, the publication anniversary of Dracula doesn’t quite line up with the May third opening.

Hammer announcing a 4K restoration of their classic version with restored cut footage to celebrate.

Spring?

Warm weather? Springwatch? Its my birthday in a month? Feels more like March.

Star Wars at 49

A merry Orthodox Star Wars Day to all who celebrate.

V? playtests planned

Vampire: The Masquerade new version playtests outside of con spaces are planned, not sure how yet.

V5 had an adventure anyone could run and report feedback on. Interesting as a historical document for how it featured specific Resonance victims in multiple scenes. (And how it was pretty much guaranteed to end with the PCs dying and encouraged the players to feel they deserved it.)

So probably a new or newish Vampire: The Masquerade core

The future of Vampire: The Masquerade

Panel 1

Panel 2

Thanks to Leticinios

Panel 2 on YouTube, with some wobbly camera but easier to jump in time. That last question from Leticinios here.

Pre-alpha mechanics, ahead of public playtests, stating theyre not sure if would be 5.5. or 6.

V5 wasn’t a surprise as a new company doing a heavy refresh, but was a surprise in being the biggest mechanical change between editions.

No idea where it goes from here.

Not panicking personally yet. (Plenty are.) Guess we’ll see.

Last time this happened I got an edition I liked more than the previous ones overall, so that can also happen.

I was on the whole happy with V5. Hunger issues can come up too often if you roll a lot but I like the constant thought of it. The greater variety of ways to keep to Humanity. Discipline power variety.

The core book itself could certainly use a refresh, even if it’s not a major change by comparison.

I haven’t considered running or felt like playing a previous edition since. But then I’ve always done that. I have plenty of other games where I’ve stuck with an edition after bouncing off a new one.

Guess we’ll see.

Elysium style

Vampire: The Masquerade Reddit question

What does your character wear to Elysium?

The three I’ve gotten to play rather than ST in the current edition all reflect their attitude to large formal vampire gatherings:

Paris, Toreador events promoter: look nice, blend in, dark dress, hair up, shoes she can run in just in case.

Michael Sorensen, Tremere occult investigator: black tie formal, saving full white tie for a special occasion like the winter solstice or being the target of a Blood Hunt.

Matthieu Lasalle, Brujah firebrand of the French Revolution: never went to Elysium but would have accessorised with a cavalry sword and an angry mob.

Vampire: The Masquerade - ?

Observing the wild mass guessing about the new Vampire: The Masquerade project to be announced at Gen Con, Thursday 30th July.

It has playtests during the con, as well as an Actual Play show at the end on the Sunday.

The new project is our love letter to the 30+ years of vampires that have led us here. We’re celebrating the connection between lore and mechanics, rules and storytelling. The design is focused on player agency, collaboration, and making the experience feel personal. The art direction is built around illustration, with a strong commitment to human-made work.

We’re also looking at how we want to work with the metaplot in future books. The sense that history is moving and your chronicle exists inside something larger matters to people. It matters to us too.

The AP show description:

Be there as we share a glimpse into the future of the World of Darkness. This is a live, in-progress TTRPG Actual Playtest where you’ll see brand-new ideas, evolving mechanics, and bold experiments play out in real time. It’s raw. It’s unpolished. It will change. That’s the point. What you’re watching isn’t the final product; it’s the game becoming what it’s meant to be.

So many people guessing other World Of Darkness gamelines which is one of the things it’s stated as not.

V6 seems unlikely at this point, but you never know.

V5 Revised is a popular guess, as a cleaned-up rulebook would be worth having. That feels big enough for an announcement about an announcement.

Dark Ages is known to be coming, which is at least in the ballpark.

My thinking based on the mentions of metaplot and feedback and reactions would be a toolkit like a Storytellers Handbook.

And the metaplot has me thinking something like Time Of Thin Blood, a “this is the new normal” book which throws in some big changes while keeping them optional? That seems likely-ish as a secondary release if this is a mechanical update?

A few words on the metaplot from the Darkness Emergent announcement video, thanks to Josh at Strange Adventures (warning for video motion)

Full panel thanks to Leticinios (audio pretty quiet)

New ankh. Even pointier.

UPDATE 9pmish after getting the full panel video and a second: too early to say as the plans are pre-alpha but it could be 5.5 or 6 depending how it goes. (!)

The Mandalorian And Grogu

The Mandalorian And Grogu is basically a great big episode of The Mandalorian. And I for one am cool with that!

Star Wars hasn’t had a life-changing movie for me since The Empire Strikes Back, so a largely fun movie is plenty.

Kinda bitty here and there, like including things like a space dogfight because it’s the first Star Wars movie this decade, but still a fun space dogfight.

While also having big damn hero action scenes like the opening give it a different feel.

And lots of bits gave me a big silly grin, like realising why the fighting match was named that, the gearing up montages, and the way a couple of the robots moved.

People who haven’t kept up with the show but know who Baby Yoda and More Likeable Boba Fett are will probably have enough information from the mini opening crawl.

No end credits scene but there is something fun if you stay to the end.

World Goth Day 2026

“What’s today?”

“Pardon?”

“What’s today, my fine fellow?”

“Today? Why, today is World Goth Day!”

“It’s World Goth Day? I haven’t missed it! The spirits did it all in one night! They can do anything they like! Of course they can. Of course they can!”

“Uh... of course they can...”

Choose Your Own Adventure Movie?

Via Deadline:

Radio Silence will direct a feature film adaptation of the classic Choose Your Own Adventure books for 20th Century Studios.

The classic books take an interactive approach to storytelling, allowing readers to make decisions that shape the story.

A film and not, say, an interactive streaming show? Hm.

One film for a series of books with no consistent setting? Hm.

(See also the Until Dawn film, which adapted the games multiple paths into a setting element by having the characters stuck in a time loop.)

I would guess something like Jumanji with more reading aloud.

And a bit where someone dies and the others flips back to the previous paragraph to undo it :)

The Mummy by genre

I probably wont need to explains Nationals genre categories to anyone, but I want to get this down as I gave it too much thought. I can give an example of different versions of a media property fitting different categories by emphasis...

Okay, I could give a lot, but this is the one I thought about a month ago when a new film came out...

The Mummy.

The Mummy (1932) is definitely Horror, and would also fit in Call of Cthulhu with ease, Cthulhu has plenty of Egyptian adventures and the film starts with an investigator failing his Sanity check.

Boris Karloff’s performance informed fantasy mummies as well, if you meet one in Dungeons & Dragons or Open Fantasy in general it might be a take on him, or the shuffling bandaged type that followed in this series which get increasingly Action And Adventure until finally Abbot and Costello bring it into Humour.

He also influenced the Mummy PCs in World Of Darkness and Chronicles Of Darkness.

The Mummy (1959) - same deal. Now period Horror, could be Cthulhu-ish.

And then...

The Mummy (1999) is Action And Adventure. (As I’ve seen said before the American party is playing Call Of Cthulhu and the heroes are playing Adventure!) Higher Weird Level than the Indiana Jones movies but the setting still keeps it out of Open Fantasy for me, it has two scenes that would count as Horror, and the PCs are still heroic normals until the second film when they get retconned magic and it becomes Supers or maybe Myths And Legends.

The Mummy (2017) I would put in Urban Fantasy due to its modern setting and hefty worldbuilding. Could reasonably be Action And Adventure but Nick has some superpowers, and as such if the Dark Universe had happened it would also fit into Supers.

Lee Cronin’s The Mummy (2026) isn’t an adaptation of the same story dating back to 1932, with a different origin and motivation for the mummy curse. But it’s still called The Mummy and it’s what got me thinking here. Anyway it’s definitely Horror.

So across five films and their follow-ups we have Horror and/or Cthulhu, Action And Adventure, Urban Fantasy and Horror again, with arguments to be made for half a dozen more options and motifs appearing in several game-specific categories as well.

My favourite RPG classes

My favourite TTRPG classes:

N*zi-Puncher

Vampire Slayer

Moral Centre

Bodyguard

College Band Member

One-shots - how in theme and how weird?

Nothing like a quiet day soon after the Nationals announcement and someone I told about the Discord opening reupping the offer to GM (hello!) to encourage more thoughts.

Depending on how categories shake out, happy to be not very Noir at all in Buffy but would be very Noir in other options.

And as that offer would be for Vampire: The Masquerade and that was the last thing I did run I have OPINIONS on that too.

And category breadth and Weird Level in general.

I feel that at least one of the two days should be fairly normal for the category and/or the theme. Category ahead of theme because that’s what players choose, and some categories apply better to some themes than others, hence theme-specific categories.

Ideally GMs can coordinate across the category so there isn’t too much overlap and players don’t get two weird adventures in a row. Because yes, weird adventures are easy and fun to prep, but I want at least one day that’s in the ballpark of the category.

There are four kinds of RPG category and this applies in different ways to all of them.

Individual RPGs like D&D obviously have system expectations as well as their own culture, even if they can be quote broad - if you get Planescape one day and Dark Sun the next and no classic dungeoneering you might be miffed.

Specific settings like Star Wars that have some RPGs attached but could also go with unofficial games should still feel Star Wars.

Genre categories like Urban Fantasy free up system requirements but still have some expected feel. And I think should also exclude RPG and setting categories that fit, so I wouldn’t want Cthulhu games in generic Horror for example.

Finally system type categories which are mostly Homebrew, Indie (which is surely everything except D&D) and Systemless (and LARP) are grab-bags where anything goes except obvious examples of the previous categories.

Since the first year I attended that had a theme - 2001, where it was Monoliths - I’ve seen it ignored, give lip service, played with or played up across categories. IIRC in 2007 we didn’t have one.

(In 2001 I played Star Wars, one day we didn’t have a reference and the other it was the central MacGuffin and in Star Wars a shiny black rectangular thing is clearly of the Dark Side. So that set my expectations for themes early on.)

Chosen at 23

Buffy The Vampire Slayer consluded on this day in 2003.

Ghost Of The Robot, Civilized Man

Ghost Of The Robot, Civilized Man video, featuring lead signer James Marsters in full Spike style.

Nationals 2027: Noir

The Nationals 2027 theme is Noir.

(Themes are optional, some categories fit some themes better than others, so no need to. And in 2024 they went with Gothic and added Vampire: The Masquerade as a separate category from World Of Darkness and I ended up running that. With the PCs as members and hangers-on at a Goth band, as the other game was about a haunted space. So I feel like I’ve paid my dues there.)

Can I do that, at least a bit?

Probably, depending on category...

Can I do Noir in Urban Fantasy? Sure. City Of Mist for one. Bloodshadows but don’t be silly.

Can I do Noir in Buffy? Yes but don’t wanna.

Angel yes, Buffy no.

Let other GMs do the heavy lifting, maybe throw in a reference of some kind. A statuette of a bird.

Or a time warp back to the 40s.

But if I was going to do a time warp to the mid 20th century in Buffy it would be to a 50s high school monster movie.

Hmm...

--

World Of Darkness? Sure. Period or modern noir, could absolutely do neo-noir Vampire. Or a Memoriam sequence for both.

--

Action & Adventure? Ehh. Pulp and Noir both often have 30s-40s settings but they’re not the same. Maybe see what a full tilt Pulp Maltese Falcon looks like, with Templar s still around and all.

--

Horror? Val Lewton.

Nationals 2027

Nationals 2027 will be hosted by HUSSARS in Stirling.

Which is a surprise as they’ve often done well and passed on hosting due to lack of a good venue. Sounds like they have some plans in place though!

Dates TBC

Theme is Noir.

Can I do Noir in Urban Fantasy? Sure.

Can I do Noir in Buffy? Yes but don’t wanna.

Hope (2026 film)

Hope trailer and talk at Empire. An animlastic alien attack from Na Hong-jin, director of The Wailing.

Vampire: Stolen, for realsies

Since the art and antiquities theft setup for Dominion / Stolen became an orphaned idea, a Vampire chronicle about thieves and smugglers and black marketeers. Possibly set in a free port.

Yes I’m thinking Les Fantômes. But more horrible.

City Of Angels observation

Craig (Paris) — 4:13 PM

Also am I reading too much into lots of Kindred not remembering the Pack's names until we remind them?

Cameron (Storyteller) — 4:14 PM

(No ;) )

Craig (Paris) — 4:15 PM

Yay for observation! Yikes for implications!

Eurovision 2026

Nah.

Might watch Lordi doing Save All Your Kisses For Me in the voting break later.

V5: Stolen 2.07

Vampire: The Masquerade

Stolen

2.07

The Last Hope

Beck

Robin

Vince

Robin takes the driver to the hospital and leaves him to be found, sneaking away unnoticed. He calls Beck.

“What?”

“Did you get the scroll?”

“Yes, it’s safe. I, ah, may need some more help tonight.”

“What about Vince?”

“Not his help.”

“... What do I get out of it?”

“We can discuss that in person. My superiors can offer more than I can.”

--

Beck looks around the church, pausing at Alice, pressed against the wall so she can see the door.

Mother Melise lays the scroll out on the altar, presses a finger into a fang to draw blood and places it to a faded red mark in one corner. Blank areas on the scroll start to fill with writing in blood.

--

Happy birthday to George Lucas, who has probably been sick of May The Fourteenth jokes since 1978.

Erin LeCount

I have not missed going through to Glasgow for gigs. Oh well.

Live footage if someone posts. In the meantime, an official live video of I Believe from a previous show.

Morecambe and Wise

Eric Morecambe (John Eric Bartholomew) was born 100 years ago today. With Ernie Wise he brought a big dash of surreal non sequiturs to light entertainment.

Osprey Games board and card division up for sale

Osprey Games have just announced that their owners, Bloomsbury Publishing, has made the decision to sell the card and board game division.

Link via Angus Abranson, ‪Iain McAllister‬ and James Wallis.

RPGs and Wargames are not affected, they’re staying with Osprey Games. It’s only the board/card division.

Angus

Witch of the Vale, Lovesongs For The Damned

Witch of the Vale, Lovesongs For The Damned on Bandcamp. Three new songs, four alternate versions, their cover of Hurt.

(Fake) Happy After Laughter Day

All that I want is to wake up fine

Another idea?

Might do a Star War.

The Crows

I was playing The Crow soundtrack and wearing my Hangman’s Joke T-shirt while idly thinking of a summer game when someone on the World Of Darkness Discord server asked what Eric would equate to.

I know a sign when I see one.

I have naturally considered this before.

Of course I’d use another system, better for action and unstoppable-until-not characters. Hell 4 Leather for a one-shot, what for a miniseries...?

Also do I have it star Sophie Thatcher?

Victorian Age Vampire

Could totally do Victorian Age Vampire though.

It still loses the juxtaposition of the seemingly mundane world with the monsters and all, of course.

Victorian urchin monster hunters

Not running a game about poor kids in 19th Century London having to fight monsters.

Not doing this. No having plot ideas.

No plot about Spring Heeled Jack. Or about having to blag their way into a fancy party with fake accents and stolen clothes to fight a rich cult. Or about having to hop a train to get out into the country to stop something evil rising in a stone circle. Or...

In the Buffyverse the Watchers would probably be able to find a slayer in London and hopefully at least offer room and board in exchange for pressing her into service, so I’d need a way to avoid that undercutting the whole setup.

Looping back towards The Nevers.

Still not doing this.

One day since finishing a game...

Summer TTRPG ideas.

Absolutely should not be thinking of a Buffy or somesuch RPG in Artful Dodger style scruffy Victorian London. No. Stop.

(I blame time travel in the Mage game. And we haven’t even done Victorian times. Yet.)

Keep Banging On Your Drum

Keep banging on your drum and your day will come.

A reminder from Craig Ferguson.

V5: Stolen 2.07

After a delay, closure achieved. And a moral quandary which split the group, as they will.

Sir David Attenborough at 100

Many happy returns, Sir David!

Jelani Rose

Jelani Rose on Spotify, as suggested when I was looking at Vampire: The Masquerade on Bluesky and a string of posts mentioned having found someone who sounds like that through videos of him sitting on TikTok as an example of not needing slop marketing.

Voting Time

Voting time

Time for you to go out to the places you cast your votes

Our hero

Cara the Akashayana Vampire Slayer monster hunter as photomanipped by one of the other players in our current online not-too-serious-for-it Mage: The Ascension game.

She is beauty, she is grace
She will stab you in the face

As well as by me.

Attending the Tradition Halloween formal.
Of course she could fight in this.

And the results making me want to look for a head for a figure custom. Darn the lack of Teen Wolf series toys.

PR0GR3SS!1

A couple of the buttons on the new TV’s remote control didn’t last as long as its first set of batteries.

Cool cool cool.

Sure, it’s the remote control equivalent of “return/enter” and a couple next to it, but that’s why keyboards have two of those.

V5: City Of Angels 39

Vampire: The Masquerade - City Of Angels session 39

Debts are repaid, suspicions are raised.

And Eve’s player waited till I came back from a break to make sure I’d heard about Eve planning to do something behind Paris’s back. Which was nice.

Interview With The Vampire at 50

Interview With The Vampire was first published fifty years ago, per Anne Rice’s diary. A seismic change for that monster as metaphor.

The Sheer, Unbridled Joy Of Star Wars

The Sheer, Unbridled Joy Of Star Wars by Emmet Asher-Perrin at Reactor.

“Star Wars: A New Hope is pure mythology, distilled down to some of its simplest forms. Good and evil. Life and death. Triumph and defeat. Light and dark.”

There’s a reason we still go back to it almost fifty years on.

Star Wars Day

And lo, Baby Yoda Day is upon us this very month!

Down By The Water

V5 Till Death has involved more diving than I was expecting.

Star Trek: Ariel 1.04a

Star Trek: Ariel

1.04a

We certainly annoyed the miners. But we got them off the planet that started to self-destruct after we looked at something, so hey.

It's a Banksy

Banksy steps up from wall art to install a statue in central London overnight.

A suited figure strides forward holding a flag which has blown around to cover his face,
about to walk right off the plinth.
Photo: ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect

Which feels like full on V For Vendetta shit.

May

The sun has risen. Which was what, three to two odds tops this year?

May

Update pending the sun rising.