Mage: The Ascension - Sunrise City

We concluded the Victorian Age time travel miniseries and normal service may resume shortly.

It was touch and go but Cara managed to avoid having to become Queen of California.

Witchboard (2024)

31 Days Of Horror Movies 2026

Day two is Bad Remake. And I’m not planning to watch a bad remake on purpose. So I noticed this is free on YouTube and heard the originals aren’t great (with a reminder on the RPGnet thread) and remembered the trailer looked like goofy fun so...

2.

Witchboard (2024)

Trailer

Film

Is it a good remake? Couldn’t tell you. Is it good on its own merits? No. Is it fun? At times very much so.

Director and co-writer Chuck Russell previously made the 1988 remake of The Blob, which is really good but eclipsed by the classic original, and which worked because it was focused. This is... not.

A pendulum board (not a Ouija board - the film spends some time establishing that this is Serious Business and Ouija boards aren’t, after the original was about a Ouija board but they now have their own official movies) made by a 17th century witch is stolen from a New Orleans museum on the orders of an occultist wannabe supervillain, gets lost and finds its way to our heroine after she follows a cat in the woods. After her boyfriend’s fortunately well-informed ex explains it, she tries it at the pre-opening party for the boyfriend’s restaurant and it’s interrupted by a burning crow coming down the chimney.

This is not enough to put her off testing it, and the next thing it does kills one of their friends. The cat returns and steals his severed hand. This cat is horrible, he’s great, no notes.

Various other bad things happen, starting as low-rent Final Destination ish coincidences and segueing into nightmares and the like. And then our heroine starts being sorta evil herself, which at least leads to the cat killing her former drug dealer. (Seriously, love this cat.)

So the ex suggests consulting an occult expert and oops it’s the supervillain. This goes badly, in a way that’s normally the final twist of a movie but here hits an hour in, which I really liked.

It avoids my pet hate of having witch hunts be justified by actual evil superpowered witches by making the witch take a turn to superpowered evil after being hunted and persecuted, then later has the ex assure the boyfriend that Wicca is cool and the supervillain’s friends are good witches, which the audiience already know they’re not. The fact that his minions look like a Vampire LARP could qualify as a hint.

So the board does a whole slew of supernatural bad stuff without picking a lane, Madison Iseman as the heroine (who should know better than to mess with magic boardgames after the Jumanji sequels) and Antonia Desplat as the villainess both get to show acting range and Jamie Campbell Bower as the villain gets to show off his lack of same.

The effects people are very busy, this would make a good film to put on the background of a Halloween party except that guests would sometimes pause to go “what the fuck” at some of the images. At one point a hallucination looks like the Pitch Meeting video essay thumbnails, which makes me wonder if this was an attempt to get one made. And there’s a related moment which is a reminder that Russell also directed The Mask.

It’s an absolute mess full of half-baked ideas that could have worked. Recommended if you feel like being perplexed and occasionally amused, sometimes deliberately.

The medium: YouTube

Gameability: This already feels like a horror game that went totally off the rails. I could grab several of its barely-used setups for something World Of Darkness and some get accidentally Buffy-ish.

I also liked the villain’s backup plan for dealing with the heroine’s boyfriend:

Adapting a property that may not adapt

The Pod Universe and the creators’ predecessor Are You Afraid Of The Dark Universe? look at cinematic universes, constructing settings for lots of stories, so the same kinda thing as an RPG setting and series / campaign planning.

And as we know some settings make better big settings than others.

Have you ever considered a setting and decided it really wasn’t viable?

Have you ever decided to go all in on that?

This week, a guest pitch for the Eraserhead Cinematic Universe.

Labelled The Worst Idea We Could Come Up With

With a chapter heading Why Eraserhead? Dear God, why?

“We are gonna try and do our best job with this terrible idea.”

Kinda makes me wanna...

Fun facts about Violetta Rossellini

Going a bit broad on Violetta for Hunter: The Reckoning, spent lunchtime coming up with weird backstory details to drop in casually.

(This is a favourite bit for suitable games, dropping the kind of thing that would be the subject of an adventure in backstory, dating back to a retired Watcher in a Buffy game assuring a new slayer she wasn’t doing as badly as the one who destroyed the world. See also the time I stopped myself doing it in Vampire.)

My family moved to Portland for work when I was five. I went St. Sophia’s Academy. As such I did not get a prom. But I have attended some formal dances and have an invitation to the city debutante ball in three months’ time.

I have at least been to a few slumber parties. And the other girls didn’t always ask me to perform a séance.

I do not currently have a boyfriend. My mother keeps introducing me to young men from good families who she reckons will be healthy. I suspect that this is because I manifested my sight younger than she did and she hopes a grandchild will be more powerful still.

I was raised Catholic, which made it a little awkward when I saw the afterlife. Turns out the ancient Egyptians were right. Just for their time and place, but still.

I believe that death should bring release from pain. I can do something about that, so I will.

As the saying goes, with great power comes great responsibility. (off looks) Apparently it comes from some Victorian politician before Spider-Man.

I have a fake ID, and also there’s one club where they never card me. (off looks) Yes it’s The Coffin.

So far as I know I have met five vampires. One of them is my great-grandfather.

There are a number of doctors in my family and I would like to follow their lead, but am more likely to end up in academia.

My favourite Taylor Swift song is Shake It Off. I know, people expect it to be Bad Blood or Look What You Made Me Do, but come on.

I once met the Devil. (She pauses and looks at one of the others.) So have you.

It was on a book tour.

Hunter: The Reckoning V5, summer 2026

A short summer game, a chance to play the V5 version of Hunter: The Reckoning, briefly considered a gun guy for the most basic option, a book-heavy researcher but we have one already, a thief due to the Underground Creed, recreate Cara but would need a lot of Edges and Perks, settled on an idea from Huntober 2022 for The Unusual Hunter and influenced by Ligeia:

Violetta Rossellini

“I hear the voices of the dead. Victims crying out for justice. Can you help them?”

RPGaDAY 2026 30. Pride

#RPGaDAY 2026

30. Pride

30. A game event that you are still proud of.

Some of the high concept episodes of The Watch House, notably the time two of the PCs found themselves behind the scenes of the TV series they were in the cast of, the time Natalie became a fairytale princess, the flashforward to a hellish possible future. You can trace where I swiped and adapted from, gotta know your classics. (And see how many Supernatural did after us.)

And some the players brought in that caught me by surprise as well, like the Milli and Ziggy bodyswap, Andy the werewolf getting split into human and superwerewolf with his player stepping up to play both, and Matthew’s player dropping the spell to make Natalie see her possible new boyfriend in a negative light going wrong as he grumbled jealously about how cool he was...

And some of the developments in season arcs as well, like a villain reveal, a starting Big Bad being written out, heel and face turns and more.

Autocratik

Runeslinger

V5: City Of Angels 41

Vampire: The Masquerade - City Of Angels session 41

Paris got to use her event planning skills for the third time this chronicle, to make it look like we weren’t just hiring a venue as a potential ambush spot.

And on meeting a Nosferatu spy: “Rat? What, were you at the end of the line for nicknames? Or the start?”

The Pod Universe expands on Insidious

Guest pitch by writer and artist Kendra Wells turns Insidious upside down, gives it a good shake, with makes for a great example of brainstorming a setting from a handful of disparate elements. It overlaps somewhat with the Dark Universe version of The Exorcist in the improvised expansions as a horror setting looks at a confirmed scary afterlife and how religions might deal with it, which is an idea worth another look. Maybe it fits here better than there?

John Wick: With The Animals

A video essay on the John Wick series with various asides but mostly about how assassin society works and how it could stop working. Sharing my biggest problem with IV while also having good things to say about some of its featured ideas, And a great point about markers and coins being overridden by the connections and relationships they abstract.

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.

Lore and unreliable narrators

Jesse Heinig on untrustworthy lore in settings, with Vampire: The Masquerade as a prime example.

One of the great joys of running a Vampire chronicle for people who have never played Vampire before is tossing them into a stew of contradictory conspiracies. Vampires love to present themselves as erudite and sophisticated, but they have very little evidence about their own supernatural world.

So far my group has heard...

* Three different creation myths about vampires

* Two different theoretical ways out of the curse

* About the existence of bloodlines, but not specifics

* About the existence of the Sabbat, with some (useless) history

* About werewolves and ghosts

They also heard about wizards ("they died out in the Middle Ages") shortly before meeting a mage, and about unaligned clans ("mostly weirdos who have very limited power") before running afoul of a Follower of Set/Ministry vampire.

They met a vampire who can survive sunlight at dawn

They met a mortal who can just see through Obfuscate. No idea why

They ran away from mortal hunters wearing FBI jackets, who were obviously not real agents

They have failed several gambits to get blood, and are coming to grips with the fact that they will have to do some questionable things

They discovered that animal blood is not very satisfying, then met a Kindred who feeds on animals exclusively

They heard that the Prince is Malkavian, then met her and the coterie's Malkavian immediately clocked that she is not

The Malkavian learned to aura read and has no idea how to interpret it

Everyone seems to be having a great time. It's a World of Darkness where there is lore, there is history, there are societies, but a rule is only a rule until it's broken. Supernatural things work the way they do because of magic, and symbols, and metaphors, not because of science.

Soon they'll get introduced to Gehenna, the End Times, Gehenna cults, and the mythology of the turning of the age. Probably hand-in-hand with crossing paths with actual Sabbat, an Anarch Revolt in their city, and thin-bloods looking for a place to survive.

The huge, sprawling metaplot of the World of Darkness causes some players to pursue setting mastery, to have full fundamental knowledge of the "truth" of the world, so I've made it pretty clear through events that "truth" is highly subjective and context-driven.

Everyone's got goals and agendas, but at the end of the night, it really comes down to, what will you do to survive? How are you going to make it happen? Where are you going to get blood? And who's going to pay the price for your sins?

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.

Mage: The Ascension - Sunrise City

So for a summer special the PCs have been thrown back to the 1880s. I did this in The Watch House once so I suppose I deserve it :D

AP by Tanith

An action figure of Cara like this would be tricky. Porcelain doll yes, figure no...

Cara action figure happening

Found the long-haired Black Widow head, looked at available bodies that might work, bought one - X-23 from Deadpool & Wolverine. Right sort of height, decent articulation, plain grey trousers, black T-shirt and combat boots. The head is a bit high on the neck, but probably fixable. Now to look out my bits box for a sword, and separate the fingers and thumb on the right ungloved hand to hold it. Might remove the vest and T-shirt decal and repaint the sleeves so the T-shirt matches. if I get really ambitious, might Milliput on cargo trouser side pockets.

I would like to get a leather jacket torso and arms for her signaure look, maybe keeping the legs I got here, but given the current Jessica Jones is (a) in a two-pack with Daredevil for 55 quid and (b) sold out, that might have to wait.

There’s a reason I mostly did this for The Watch House during the run of Buffy and Angel figures.

Update update: found a Buffy figure jacket. Will see if the joints are at all compatible.

Update update update: found upper torso, took off X-23’s, not a perfect fit for lower torso or neck so some work still to be done. After that might go all in and paint her face.

BLADE

How hard is it to make Blade? Come on!

Tacit acknowledgment that they just can’t find the current equivalent of that New Order Pump Panel remix.

Justin Achilli

I'd be curious to know what people remember from Blade that isn't Blade in black leather killing vampires

Kyle Marquis

Mage: Sunset City update

Stopped an ancient primordial nightmare putting humanity into an eternal troubled sleep.

Saving the world is always a nice feeling.

AP by T, playing Didi the Hollow One

Next, a miniseries of some kind.

Oh, and, I just realised I have an action figure head that would make a pretty good Cara. Hm.

Now looking for a body.

A deluxe Buffy, long OOP. The new Jessica Jones would work if not for the most ripped jeans knees ever. Might be too tall though. A plain clothes Yelena would be a better fit but they’d have to make one. X-23 but bare armed...

This hobby was easier back in the day.

Would need a gladius or similar shortsword too, obviously.

Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter

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

And this is why I keep running Buffy

I have a terrible idea for a Sounds Like Hell episode. It must happen. If the player involved approves.

Buffy's best Monsters of the Weeks

You can probably guess 1 and 2 of these 15 at Reactor but plenty of interesting notes on why the listed MOTWs work.

Another present

After the Photoshopped image of Cara and the resulting CGI toy pictures, a ’shop photo of the time she got sent into a Technicolor romance version of the 1950s as an attempt to get rid of her, and a CG figure pic too.