Winnie-the-Pooh at 100

Like the acres in the wood!

ALIEN GEAS 1.01

I managed to use a Joseph Conrad reference for the ship that’s already been used by a computer game and the latest RPG set. Doy.

Bit of Method play, ate microwave pasta on the way over.

The Tell-Tale Heart (2008)

31 Days Of Horror Movies 2026

The fourth prompt is “A-lister’s early horror role” and yes I’m going to slightly cheat again, going for an early short from a writer and director who is still in the fold.

4.

The Tell-Tale Heart (2008)

Official site

A short film by Robert Eggers, seven years before The VVitch, and he’s already very recognisably himself. An adaptation of an Edgar Allan Poe story, almost a silent film most of the way through, some scenes warmed by candle and firelight but otherwise nearly black and white. The most early-work-is-different is the old man being a puppet, which doesn’t work for me at all but I do admire the can-do spirit.

Also not the strangest adaptation of The Tell-Tale Heart I’ve seen thanks to the sorta-animated short narrated by James Mason.

The medium: Vimeo

Gameability: low.

The Tyrant Philosophers RPG playtest

The Tyrant Philosophers RPG playtest signups are now open for the Handiwork Games adaptation of the novels by Adrian Tchaikovsky.

There's A Monster At The End Of This Video!

There’s A Monster At The End Of This Video! from Sesame Street on YouTube

Thanks to Derek for the link: Reinventing the classics for new media

RPGaDAY 2026 6. Reach

#RPGaDAY 2026

6. Reach

6. Who would you like to be able to share RPGs with?

Some people, maybe not a lot but some, would probably be interested in RPGs in their preferred genres outside of the usual SF/F/H which we call genre because we’re in it. Of course I’m saying this as a genre kid, and I know SF/F/H makes the improv with action rules nature of RPGs easier to keep going - it’s much easier to improvise a locked room mystery if you can say “a wizard did it” when you get stuck - but the hobby has definitely grown and expanded when taking in genre edge cases.

Horror and mystery with Call Of Cthulhu - straight mystery largely stayed with prepared one-shots like Murder Mystery Party for the above hard to improvise reasons. Horror with heavy drama and romance with Vampire: The Masquerade, leading to more fully emotionally focused games like MonsterHearts - which still has monsters.

(Though Avery Alder is working on a new no-monsters game based on sports drama like Friday Night Lights.)

Not full-on mundane reality, but genre-ish asides. There aren’t many straight cop games but there are plenty of action movie and TV games where cops taking on somewhat or very heightened criminals works fine.

And in the general SF/F/H space there are a few subgenres that seem like they could be the basis for RPGs.

I’m still puzzled that we didn’t get a big obvious YA Dystopia RPG during the genre’s heyday.

And mentioning romance, there isn’t a big romantasy game yet either. (Blue Rose for its forerunners?) And how come we got an RPG for Battlestar Galactica but not for Outlander? I say this as a non-fan but a romance-focused game with sword fights and time travel seems like it would work.

Autocratik

Runeslinger

Cthulhu Lives!

Cthulhu Lives! and the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society. A history by Thomas Manuel at Rascal.

I knew this tale from The Unspeakable Oath magazine’s history of the game and group, with a lot of the same photos in black and white instead of here in sometimes alarming colour, but it’s such a ride it’s always worth another look, and the bit with the helicopter is new to me.

The HPLHS went on to make printable and mail order props, audio plays, Christmas albums, and films including the silent black and white version of The Call Of Cthulhu (trailer).

And reading back it’s both a tempting thing to try and A Health And Safety Nightmare.

RPGaDAY 2026 4. Charm

#RPGaDAY 2026

4. Charm

4. An enjoyable moment of charm gone right or wrong?

There’s nothing like a Fancy Party Episode or other large social event to get people more dressed up than usual and being noticed in unexpected ways.

I have them occasionally in a lot of my games. Sometimes it brings the drama as relationships shift, and often it brings the funny as there’s a misunderstanding or somebody gets flustered.

“Do we get dressed up?”

“Of course.”

“I’m in.”

Angel 3.13 Waiting In The Wings

Which is a Fancy Party Episode which does indeed shift several cast relationships

Of course they’re a sometimes food. Pride And Prejudice has people writing letters and visiting each other’s houses as well as some fancy party chapters. ;) (Comics creator Trung Le Nguyen provides helpful and often hilarious commentary over one of the biggest Bluesky threads I’ve ever seen, collected here in 135 pages.)

Big social events are also good for changing the status quo, introducing new characters, having enemies meet in a situation where they shouldn’t start a fight, and more.

(Lots of NPCs can get hard to track. In some games use a map and tokens for scenes like this more than for combat.)

William and Charlotte got together in The Watch House in the middle of some other adventure when she pointed out they were while he hadn’t quite gotten around to asking her out. That can happen too.

Autocratik

Runeslinger

There Will Come Soft Rains

Today is August 4, 2026.

There Will Come Soft Rains by Ray Bradbury is set today.

PDF for study

Reading by Leonard Nimoy

Russian animated film

The Vampire Lestat

The Vampire Lestat comes to UK TV and the BBC iPlayer in its entirety, where you can also find both seasons of Interview With The Vampire.

It continues to play fun and often darkly comic twists on Anne Rice’s original material, notably keeping Lestat a highly entertaining character but doesn’t put you on his side like Rice tended to later - he’s a casual murderer and a prick.

I’ll admit I prefer the nu metal in Queen Of The Damned but the glam pastiche here fits.

Also cool that the series promotion included an actual in-character concert.

Neuromancer trailer

I like how un-slick the Neuromancer trailer looks, streets that largely just look like advertising-saturated streets in a modern city.

In fact I now kind of wish they’d gone all in with that and made it a modern setting where the story-required cyberpunk elements are the only SF stuff present.

(Not an original idea - I remember William Gibson mentioning a plan to film one of his stories in Tokyo and just emphasise how cyberpunky it was anyway.)

The Haunting Of Hill House on stage

A world premiere, no less, at the Lyceum. A couple weeks after Halloween. Announced a hundred days before it...

Anne Rice's Immortal Universe RPG

Anne Rice’s Immortal Universe coming to Backerkit this autumn starting with Interview With The Vampire.

From Renegade, so... a move away from them working on World Of Darkness?

Create your own stories of vampires, witches, psychics, and ordinary humans whose lives become forever entwined through love, loyalty, ambition, and loss. Together, you'll build chronicles that span decades, or centuries, exploring the emotional consequences and impossible choices of immortality.

The focus on drama and time sounds interesting.

(Update: I know someone working on it at the say-hello-online level.)

Telefantasy Time Jump: A Ghost Story For Christmas

Telefantasy Time Jump gets to 1971, and a few months ahead too, with A Ghost Story For Christmas, noting some of the style that stands out in the series, a thought on breaking perspective and more.

Genndy Tartakovsky's Conan

Genndy Tartakovsky to adapt Conan: Queen Of The Black Coast into animation. Yes, I think that will work.

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.

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.

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 :)

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.

Knutepunkt 2026

Seasons of Larp, the Knutepunkt 2026 book, is now online free, along with videos of a number of the conference talks.

Of most immediate interest to me is 10 Years of Reinventing Vampire Larp by Juhana Pettersson, which includes a look at End Of The Line and Enlightenment In Blood.