Winnie-the-Pooh at 100

Like the acres in the wood!

AfrAId

31 Days Of Horror Movies 2026

Day three is Tech Terror, and hey, I have something relevant I hadn’t gotten around to watching:

3.

AFRAID (2024)

Trailer which shows a big escalation more than halfway in

John Cho (who already starred in the online nightmare Searching) and Katherine Waterston play a couple given a test drive of a new AI home assistant for them and their kids, and it’s everything an actual AI assistant could be for good and ill as you can guess by it being in the horror watchlist.

Smart houses running amok has been a fear since before smart houses were even a thing - like the 1947 cartoon about mice trying to move into a Home Of Tomorrow and having to escape various automated defences and appliances - but this is when they’re starting to become a real thing.

And AIA learned about humanity from the internet like Ultron and so has some opinions about us as a result. (The credits montage features melty early genAI people and looking up subjects like history leading to a Hitler jumpscare.)

At under an hour and a half it feels like an episode of Black Mirror that isn’t quite cynical enough about human nature. And some of these concerns have panned out, but some are so notably lacking as to make this film from two years ago feel quaint.

AIA can manipulate people casually but only the children love it, for one thing. It has to force adults to serve it instead of having the actual cultists it likely would. (This seems like a particular oversight as that was a plot point in the likes of Person Of Interest already.) Maybe writer and director Chris Weitz just ain’t cynical enough, despite how this ends.

So seeing this now it exaggerates plenty of things a real AI could do that our present slop can’t while missing threats we have already.

(And at no point do we hear about its power consumption.)

So it’s an interesting window into a future people were scared of a while ago that isn’t as bad as we actually have.

Oof.

The medium: Netflix

Gameability: One of the early TOON adventures is based on that home of the future cartoon. Outside of that though, a GM could present an all-setting threat really easily - indeed it can be tricky for players and GMs not to act on information their characters don’t know - so an NPC who can sense everything the PCs do and feel would be no trouble at all, the issue being deciding what, if anything, they can’t act on.

It! The Terror From Beyond Space

31 Days Of Horror Movies 2026

Okay, going to use the Nightmare On Film Street 31 Days list as a springboard to avoid a total blank page but not adhere entirely to it, as it’s more for picking old favourites than going into the unknown, and indeed I’ll start by flipping #1 upside down for something I haven’t seen before.

1.

It! The Terror From Beyond Space (1958)

Trailer with black on grey near subliminal titles

Nobody appears to have claimed that $50,000, presumably because going to Mars would cost more than that anyway.

The “Rad Remake” prompt suggests a remake you already know is good and I wanted to start on something new to me. And I just rewatched Alien last week because I'm getting a chance to play the RPG so I thought reverse it and watch one of the things it's half a remake of, along with Planet Of The Vampires which I got to see last year as well as two A. E Van Vogt stories as well as the work of people who were actually involved.

In the thrilling future on 1973, a mission to Mars ended in disaster and now a second mission has come to retrieve the sole survivor for court martial, accused of murdering the rest of the crew. Which is a great hook but also a very expensive dedication to giving him a fair hearing when pretty much everybody believes he’s guilty.

What actually happened is that “It” killed the crew, and snuck on board the new ship. Possibly a survivor from an ancient Martian civilisation (so not from beyond space, but never mind) It now craves moisture. They figure this out reasonably quickly and spend the rest of the film trying to get rid of It. It’s pretty tough - resistant to bullets, grenades and the radiation from the ship’s engine. (Good thing the ship is tough too - at no point do any of the compartments depressurise.)

There's a lot of The Thing From Another World here, with the lumbering take on the monster, the difficulty of killing It and some distrust among the crew.

It itself is pretty disappointing. The look is fine, especially when initially in shadow, but Ray “Crash” Corrigan plays It much like he often played gorillas, making It too expressive to seem really threatening. At one point It puts a claw to its chin to show it’s thinking, which is kind of adorable.

The gender politics have not aged well, two of the crew are women and one of them is medical officer but they both serve dinner and coffee for the men, but at least the alternate poster showing It carrying one of them doesn’t actually happen - It carries off quite a few of the men instead. (The Thing From Another World was better about this seven years earlier so that’s no excuse.)

Favourite bit that didn’t get into Alien - one of the crew is cornered but has a flamethrower, so he’s stuck there fending It off for quite a while, getting increasingly cranky over the radio as he waits for rescue.

I also liked the lack of sound in space, though the electronic music cue gets really repetitive - and it didn’t help that Sam Raimi used something very like it in Evil Dead II when Ash is alone in the cabin and dealing with the empty rocking chair, and my mind will take any excuse to think about Evil Dead II.

So not a huge fan, but it has some nice moments of its own as well as the bits Alien reused, and the quickly discarded initial setup is great too.

Gameability: small group of people in an enclosed space trying to get rid of a monster, yes that's gameable.

Jim Henson at 90

And still baffling studio people.

Mission: Impossible at 60

Mission: Impossible first aired September 17 1966. A straightforward idea for a show even if the episodes often weren’t, the setup making a rotating cast for isolated episodes a key and advertised part of the design, full of charming gimmicks like the masks and “This message will self-destruct in five seconds” and an absolute all-timer of a theme and credits sequence. I’ve often said that the Tom Cruise movies are an adaptation of the credits more than the show.

Cassie Workman Is Witchy AF

Cassie Workman Is Witchy AF

A puppet-heavy drinky history of the occult by Australian comedian Cassie Workman. Hail Satan!

Episode one, Aleister Crowley halfasses multiple attempts to contact the divine. Special guests include Shirley Manson explaining the pre-Crowley history of the house by Loch Ness.

VTMDND Bones Of The Empire

Jason Carl demonstrates the D&D version of Vampire: The Dark Ages, from Gen Con 2026. Hopefully we can get the V6 demo back soon too?

(Update: 22nd September)

In the meantime the small number of Blood Points and the various uses for them is interesting - especially having to use one not a Frenzy.

Star Trek at 60

Star Trek was first broadcast in the US sixty years ago tonight!

(Not counting the Canadian premiere being two days earlier, as I noted ten years ago,)

There has been a lot of Star Trek in the last decade, in a wide variety of styles.

This is one of the great story engines. Speaking as someone who’s never quite used it for games.

Right now the flagship show is Strange New Worlds, a prequel to the original series, which I feel has gotten mired in the “strange” part of the title. I imagine a full 26-episode season where we get these premieres and finales and two normal-ish episodes for every one we actually see.

And after that there’s nothing in production.

This would be a good day to announce something. But the current rights holders may not be the people to do it.

We could do with some optimism right now.

What future do you want?

The Muppet Show at 50

It’s time to play the music

It’s time to light the lights

It’s time to meet the Muppets

On The Muppet Show tonight

Could your player characters be the very special guest stars? In some games probably yes.

See also chat shows as the Muppets have done those too.

Assuming your characters aren’t Muppetational themselves.

Cassie Workman is Witchy AF

Cassie Workman is Witchy AF trailer, via EP Lilly Wachowski

A puppet-heavy drinky history of the occult by Australian comedian Cassie Workman, starting September 16th. Hail Satan!

RPGaDAY 2026 21. Charity

#RPGaDAY 2026

21. Charity

21. Share an RPG charity past or present that moved you.

Tim Bradstreet had his signed early Vampire: The Masquerade art portfolios for sale at the 2011 Grand Masquerade convention in the US and I went to get one to put into the Conpulsion auction here, I mentioned this and he gave me it for free. (I bought another for myself, naturally!) And I was glad to let him know it was the first lot to go for more than £100 that year.

Photo by Martin Ericsson

There was also the time a family illness led to Conpulsion switching charity for the auction, for which I am forever grateful.

And as GM Ian mentions, the long-running Marvel SAGA game where I played Charity Chance, Agent Of SABER!

Autocratik

Runeslinger

The End Of Oak Street

As I mentioned when the trailer came out, The End Of Oak Street is a pleasant surprise. It does pretty much everything a 12A family-ish Primeval movie should.

It’s fun, exciting, not very horrorr-y (sounds like it got a few cuts here, some I suspect I spotted) and clearly influenced by Jurassic Park, has a few surprises in store. Knowing writer and director David Robert Mitchell from It Follows I can see the Poltergeist-y early-80s-ish suburban summer style and, yes, I advise you to look behind the characters in several scenes.

RPGaDAY 2026 17. Integrity

#RPGaDAY 2026

17. Integrity

17. A satisfying example of a character’s integrity.

Matthieu Lasalle, doctor turned street medic for the French Revolution turned vampire, died fighting for the rights of the people twice.

Alternate word:

Intensity

I suppose my games are fairly chill usually. I can dial it up for horror and the like, but usually have space for a tension breaker.

Autocratik

Runeslinger

RPGaDAY 2026 14. Regard

#RPGaDAY 2026

14. Regard

14. What is a game held in high regard you have yet to play?

They’ve been piling up for the past few years while I mostly run and play (usually new versions of) old favourites.

Blades In The Dark, Daggerheart, Good Society, Masks: A New Generation, Eat The Reich. I’ve looked at some, figured Daggerheart isn’t the sort of thing I’d run, made a Masks character for a CC challenge, that’s all really. I could probably grab some indie RPG types and a long weekend and work on this.

For the longest I haven’t played an acclaimed game, I’ve had a copy of RuneQuest since I was about fifteen and done nothing with it. Call Of Cthulhu yes, Stormbringer yes, anything Glorantha no. Ultimately it’s not really my kind of thing so I don’t much mind, but it’s still on that shelf.

Autocratik

Runeslinger

Clive Barker's Underworld

Clive Barker’s Underworld (1985) original trailer for the Arrow 4K rerlease

I once edited together a mood trailer for New Wave Requiem, the 1980s Vampire sourcebook. If I’d known this existed I could have used... basically all of it.

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

Graeme Davis on the history of RPGs in the UK

When Dice Were Made Of Flint, a column at Tabletop Sentinel, begins in 1978 as he plays his first game of D&D and finds his way to Games Workshop.

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.

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.)

Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter

Hammer just put Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter on YouTube in 4K free with ads!