Adventure Calendar 2025 6: Puss In Boots

Adventure Calendar 2025

6: Puss In Boots

Puss In Boots is yer basic helpful magical animal. Get him a pair of boots and he’ll help you pretend to be the Marquis de Carabas and bluff your way into high society.

Now the star of his own series of Shrek spinoffs, where he’s a swashbuckling rogue who also happens to be a cat and which don’t have much to do with the original story but are a lot of fun. I’d play him in the right kind of game.

Fear me, if you dare!

Talking animals are a mainstay of some genres but less so in others. I’ve never gotten to actually pull out the Buffy Christmas special with talking mice needing the PCs’ help. Maybe someday.

I Hear The King Has A New Adviser

Who is this mysterious nobleman making such a splash at court? Who is his unseen adviser? Why does he give so generously to the local animal shelter?

The Conpulsion 2024 Quiz answers

And here... we... go.

The Conpulsion 2024 Quiz

Five read-out rounds plus picture and write-in. 64 points. Somewhat themed for it being Easter. Answers... maybe tomorrow?

Roleplaying Games

1. Dungeons & Dragons: Adventures In The Multiverse revives which AD&D setting?

2. Which World Of Darkness game came out between the Fifth Editions of Vampire: The Masquerade and Werewolf: The Apocalypse?

3. Which is not a Call Of Cthulhu solo adventure? Alone Against The Clock, Alone Against The Flames, Alone Against The Static?

4. Solo Ops is the One-2-One book for which Gumshoe game?

5. Hot War is the sequel to which alternate-history RPG?

6. The Big Five manufacturers including General Massive Systems and HORUS build the mechs in which game?

7. Cubicle 7’s new game Imperium Maledictum is based on which wargame setting?

8. The “They Came From” game about spy movies is They Came From WHAT?

9. Who publishes the Fallout and Homeworld Revelations RPGs?

10. Which word already mentioned in this round is the subtitle of the new Marvel superhero RPG?

Other Tabletop Games

1. The Kingdom of Bretonnia and Tomb Kings of Khemri are the launch armies for which Warhammer game?

2. Doctor Who, Fallout and Lord Of The Rings feature in which Magic: The Gathering variant?

3. Name the cooperative boardgame about stopping climate change co-created by the creator of Pandemic?

4. Osprey’s wargame of Napoleonic soldiers fighting supernatural threats is The WHAT Bayonet?

5. The card game The Crew is subtitled The Quest For Planet WHAT?

6. Cthulhoid betrayal by sea boardgame Unfathomable is a new setting update of which classic licensed game from 2008?

7. Which of these is an expansion for 7 Wonders? Gods, Heroes, Leaders?

8. Shatterpoint is the latest skirmish miniatures wargame for which setting?

9. Name the dragon-centric game based on Wingspan?

10. Which of these settings does not (yet) have a licensed version of Risk? Black Sails, Peaky Blinders, Vikings?

Film and TV

1. Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves put Hugh Grant in charge of which Forgotten Realms city?

2. What did Doctor Who get to the Christmas top twenty singles with?

3. The Marvels quantum entangles Carol Danvers, Monica Rambeau and who?

4. Subspace Rhapsody is the musical episode of which Star Trek series?

5. In Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny, which Easter-related artefact is revealed to be a fake in the prologue?

6. In Star Wars: The Bad Batch, which of the heroes is not voiced by Dee Bradley Baker? Echo, Hunter, Omega, or Wrecker?

7. In 2022’s The Batman, which of these characters is played by the same actor who previously voiced them in The Lego Batman Movie? A: Alfred, B: Batman, C: Catwoman, R: The Riddler?

8. What did Nadja call her nightclub in season four of What We Do In The Shadows?

9. Painting the set for Barbie caused a global shortage of which colour?

10. Which story adapted in the live-action series of The Sandman isn’t adapted in live-action?

Books and Comics

1. Sir Terry Pratchett’s biography by Rob Wilkins is subtitled A Life With WHAT?

2. Name R. F. Kuang’s .novel subtitled “or the Necessity of Violence”?

3. This year, A Better World tackled a change to policing in which long-running comic strip?

4. The titular thing in Gareth Brown’s novel has the power to make “any door every door”. What is it?

5. The Fifth Season RPG is based on which trilogy by N.K. Jemisin?

6. In Marvel Comics since 2020 we’ve seen the Dawn, Reign, Destiny and now Fall of WHAT?

7. Name Kiersten White’s novel about a deadly game with one rule – don’t be found?

8. Gareth Hanrahan introduces Alf and Spellbreaker in The WHAT Defiant?

9. Which Ghostmaker came first: the DC comics antihero, the horror film, or the Warhammer 40,000 novel?

10. In which city will this year’s WorldCon, the world science fiction convention, be held this August?

Resurrection

1. Who does Jesus raise from the dead in the Book of John?

2. Who tried to bring Eurydice back from the Underworld in Greek myth?

3. The Cailleach returns every year in Gaelic mythology to usher in which season?

4. The Drawing Of The Dark by Tim Powers is based on which legendary hero returning in our time of greatest need - more than once?

5. Name the author of recently filmed Frankenstein riff Poor Things?

6. What is DC hero Mitch Shelley, who comes back from the dead with a different superpower every time, known as?

7. In Only Murders In The Building, who plays actor and dirtbag Ben Glenroy, who is fatally poisoned at the end of season two, then in season three successfully resuscitated and then killed again by pushing him down an elevator shaft?

8. The third edition of which World Of Darkness supernatural character book has the subtitle The Resurrection?

9. Is the starting date for ALIEN RPG source material before or after Alien Resurrection on the setting timeline?

10. In Dungeons & Dragons 5e, a diamond used for the Resurrection spell has to be worth at least how many Gold Pieces?

Picture Round

Bunnies, Bunnies, It Must Be Bunnies!

Name these RPGs about or featuring rabbit player characters

Write In Round

“Somehow, Conpulsion Returned”

Match these characters from film, TV, books and comics to how they were brought back from the dead (or at least mostly dead).

1. BUFFY SUMMERS (the second time)

2. ERIC DRAVEN

3. DR. HENRY JONES, SENIOR

4. JEAN GREY

5. THE MARQUIS DE CARABAS

6. MR. SPOCK

7. RA’S AL GHUL

8. SCOTT PILGRIM

9. SNOW WHITE

10. WESTLEY

1-UP, THE CROW, THE GENESIS PLANET, THE HOLY GRAIL, THE LAZARUS PIT, LIFE KEPT IN A SILVER BOX, A MIRACLE PILL, THE PHOENIX FORCE, TRUE LOVE’S KISS, THE URN OF OSIRIS

... Well?

Christmas 2023

A very physical media Christmas:

Ten discs - Strange New Worlds S2 (four discs), Ghostwatch anniversary edition, Quantumania, Prey, M:I - DR1, Spider-Verse 2 extra and D&D HAT.

And two books - a Buffy novel and Doctor Who annual.

Thanks!

On TV:

Mog’s Christmas - lovely though the song was a bit much for its length.

Lot 249 - A very nice tribute to The Mummy and something else as well.

Toy Story 4 - that’s certainly a way to leave off after a perfectly good trilogy ending.

Doctor Who - see Whoblog.

The Hound Of The Baskervilles - how delightfully BBC Four.

Ghosts - I’m fine.

And also on a screen, Whatsapp appears to work. Hello Australia!

Adventure Calendar 2023 17: Buffy The Vampire Slayer

Adventure Calendar 2023

17: Buffy The Vampire Slayer

And now the one I’ve done. And written up ideas for. More than once. As well as statting up Santa Claus.

Having come up with quite a few ideas about the mythologies around Christmas, to go a different way:

Secret Santa Identity

The slayer or other character living at home and keeping their monster-fighting activities secret discovers that some extended family are coming to visit for the holidays, which will put a crimp on their going out and slaying. You can go full-on door-slamming farce with the attempts to hide the superheroics. Worse still, none of them turn out to be monsters so you can’t just kill them like Inca Mummy Girl.

Adventure Calendar 2023 15: Angel

Adventure Calendar 2023

15: Angel

This may be a little more my speed...

Angel was the focus of the one Christmas episode of Buffy, and I doubt I could top that. But helping the helpless and hunting demons on lonely streets means he’s also saved a few potential saviours and been the father of a Miracle Child of his own, as well as being in position to help on long winter nights.

If The Fates Allow

Our band of heroes barely notice the nights getting longer except for the increased in vampire attacks, until one night they find themselves alone in a frozen world. Who or what has cast a spell on the city, trapping it in Christmas Eve? The emphasis on isolation should also give them pause...

Adventure Calendar 2023 9: Mutants & Masterminds

Adventure Calendar 2023

9: Mutants & Masterminds

Having already mentioned the Mutants & Masterminds adventure Crisis On Christmas here both this year and in a general summary of superhero RPG holiday specials, it being one of the big generic superhero RPGs suggests using this slot for a look at the genre. Perhaps from the outside?

What about superhero type action breaking into other genres as part of the seasonal increase in strangeness? Toys and costumes and the like becoming real?

Or the reverse, getting pulled into a comic story? Possibly one about the PCs that gets some important details wrong, as happened to Batman.

Or down-to-earth modern adventurers dealing with someone acting like a Real life Superhero, with or without powers? I’ve jokingly threatened that in Buffy games a few times.

The Holiday Special

A new superhero series is really taking off, maybe a comic by a local creative team or a TV series shot in the city or just a big hit around these parts. And then a masked thief steals the original art / kidnaps the star / makes off with the big store’s shipment of toys for the character. Can real heroes find the real villain responsible?

The Watch House at twenty

The first session of my longest ever RPG series The Watch House was this evening in 2003.

Title sequence, season three edit, set to Evil Eye by Ash

Based on the then recently ended Buffy The Vampire Slayer which I cam to a new society looking to run the game of with one player guaranteed, and swiping its premise from a game called The Night Watch by Steve Dee, it was about trainee Watchers and other young people they had to keep an eye on studying at Cambridge - as opposed to Steve’s use of Oxford, so I got a few M. R. James jokes instead of Tolkien jokes.

I wasn’t expecting it to go much past a semester, as my games usually did, so I was a bit surprised when we got to season seven after five and a half years. I’d set the game starting in 1998 because the Watcher power structure got hit by the plot in Buffy season seven so I didn’t want to run it in the aftermath and I joked that we’d have to deal with that when we got there... and then we did. Of course the main effect of the period setting was knowing which songs we could reference when the characters were listening to music.

It ran so long because we had an enthusiastic group of players, the Buffy system didn’t get in the way, the setting let us do all kinds of weird ideas, and the series’ sense of humour meant that we could often have the kind of geeky referencing and undercutting of villains common to RPGs become in-character dialogue.

The college setting and children of Watchers expected to take up the family obligation and inheritors of other obligations too meant it developed an actual theme too, the freedom of student life versus the responsibilities and expectations of home.

And since I was running at uni and we were generally in our twenties when we started it also got a bit autobiographical at times for a lot of us. I apologise again to everybody who sustained my personal in-my-twenties as a result.

There are things in-game I’d do differently too – if I’d know he’d be playing the same character five and a half years later I would have let David make his own, Jamie’s character was revealed as a werewolf early because another player couldn’t let it lie out of character, and we really could have dialled down the attempt to recreate Buffy season two when Derek’s character became a vampire. But all things considered, not a lot.

The show’s season structure definitely helped for that long run, letting different characters take up more or less of the spotlight as they faced a variety of Big Bads. The session more-or-less as episode format gave us some focus as well. It sometimes led to long sessions that ended in the pub after we got shooed out of the student union, and sometimes to walking home and chatting through the night as we did. And to ‘plotting and scheming’ meetups between sessions, which for a while turned into taking the piss out of that week’s episode of Torchwood while sharing a bottle of wine.

And it let us get experimental and weird with the format at times too. We spent weeks planning the “behind the scenes” episode where most of the characters were revealed to be actors playing them on TV, with John and David playing the unaffected characters given only a small clue this might be an odd session. This is the kind of thing you can only do if you know the players will have fun with it, and Cat prepared a get-out in case it didn’t work.

And I got surprised as well - I dropped one of my possible plots because Stu had his character’s envy fuel a magic spell that meant we could no longer take the possible villain seriously. Wanting the crush to see the handsome confident guy making moves on her as he did while grumbling about how handsome and confident he was led to her instead seeing him as a superhero called “Captain Rugged - the man with the face!”

Which also led to one of several examples of using actors as visual references for player and non-player characters for the “show” that was either prescient or skill in typecasting - Captain Rugged! was “cast” with Henry Cavill after his first shot at playing Superman but years before he got the role.

(And don’t get me started on how many weird one-shot episodes Supernatural did after us. Okay, sure, we in turn swiped them from comics and other TV shows and realistically that’s where they stole them from, but still...)

It led to me making my first video edit for a game, a laborious but thrifty Christmas present for the group, as well as customising action figures which was laborious but also not thrifty, and miniatures for the final session in the spring of 2009.

Milli by Storn Cook

I also typed up Actual Play reports, back when you had to type that kind of thing, which led to us having fans!

Something else I’d do differently if I’d known we’d go so long, I would have recorded the sessions... though typing does mean you don’t get to hear how often I’d say “uh...”

Of course its biggest legacy is that it’s how Lucy and Doug met, so it’s the only game I’ve run that helped lead to a marriage and children.

RPGaDay2023 15) Favourite Con MODULE / ONE-SHOT

#RPGaDay2023

15) Favourite Con MODULE / ONE-SHOT

2014 answer to Favourite Convention Game

Supervillains inevitably turning on each other and ghosts sharing a haunted house.

When I talked about this then, it had already been more than a decade since that Wraith game and over twenty years since the Secret Society of Supervillains. That’s staying power. I was talking about the SSoS game with the director of Conpulsion one year and realised it was probably before he was born.

For GMing, I’m pretty much always happy to go to the Nationals and run Buffy. Or something else I guess.

Three word prompt

15) MODULE / ONE-SHOT

(I’ve always been puzzled by the term ‘module’ for adventures.)

So what makes a good one-shot? That depends what it’s for. A night off for a regular group, a demonstration for strangers at a convention, a taster ahead of pitching campaigns, a special occasion like Hallowe’en or Christmas...

But if I have one piece of advice, it’s better to get to a proper ending a bit early than run out of time. Include a scene or fight you can skip if you have to.

Dave Chapman

Runeslinger

Character Creation Challenge 2023 25: Santa Claus

Character Creation Challenge 2023

31 Buffy The Vampire Slayer characters

25: Santa Claus

It’s the 25th. So...

Mythological figures can and do show up in the Buffyverse from time to time, can help or hinder, and could conceivably make fun guest stars.

Santa Claus is real and also evil in the Buffyverse, at least according to Anya. But there are plenty of evil Santas, Krampus variants and the like out there in horror and urban fantasy, so let’s follow superhero universes and have a nice one.

Obviously best suited to an occasional guest star.

I’ve run some Christmas episodes of The Watch House and other Buffy games but I’ve never done this one. The PCs in a Ghostbusters game I ran did get to team up with him though...

Some other mythological festive figure like the Christmas Ghosts, the Lord of Misrule, Grandfather Frost or a mysterious midwinter elf might not be quite so weird as a full-on red-suited teleport-down-the-chimney Santa, but might as well go all-out to start with and scale it back if we bring him to the table.

And rather than going full Badass Santa, let’s make him mostly magical. Enchanter rather than Sorcerer seems to fit.

With officially too many Drawbacks needed he would, like the angel and multiverse Buffy, probably be a good use for the even bigger Experienced Hero points spread, which is not generally to be used with the regular two. (Steve D once statted him up at full power.)

Santa Claus

Type: Hero

Tyler Labine

Description: Santa. Claus.

Example quote: “I like to keep busy for the rest of the year.”

Adventure Calendar 2022 16: It's Christmas And I F---ing Miss You

Adventure Calendar 2022

16: It’s Christmas And I Fucking Miss You

Charly Bliss featuring PUP, It’s Christmas And I Fucking Miss You

Which sums things up really.

(And barring the swears it would, like much of their work, be Buffy-appropriate.)

Christmas can often be a lonely time, and in the past couple of years it has been for many.

As the absence is physical rather than amotional this time, then for gaming I guess something with people a long way away, like travellers.

Adventure Calendar 2022 7: Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!

Adventure Calendar 2022

7: Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!

Vaughn Monroe, Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!

Okay. End of the first week.

Time to do Die Hard.

Die Hard, mentioned more than once in previous Adventure Calendars, is the classic snark answer for favourite Christmas movie, but unlike many action films set around the season it really does qualify as a Christmas movie as it centres on someone travelling to be with his family, and there’s also a gift that’s important to the plot...

And now it has an advent calendar too. Kind of.

Die Hard On An X (TV Tropes) is one of the easy action adventure plot hooks. In RPGs it’s up there with The Seven Samurai which has a group of PCs built in. There are versions in Buffy, Alias, more than one of the 90s Star Trek series complete with captains in vests, and the Crew doing it on purpose in Leverage.

Where might your PCs get missed during the roundup in an invasion?

I’ve also referenced how the weather outside is frightful when talking about snow and other conditions in games and indeed in real life.

Adventure Calendar 2022 4: Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)

Adventure Calendar 2022

4: Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)

Darlene Love, Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)

How to have a festive singalong which is also heartbreaking.

Separation, either enforced or a painfully timed breakup. Missing someone desperately, the flip side of trying to get home. An aching counterpoint to the festivities all around.

Being or supporting the affected character is probably a good fit for a subplot in something like Buffy.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer at 25

Buffy The Vampire Slayer, the series, premiered in the USA twenty-five years ago tonight.

It started for me with the BBC Two premiere, December 30th 1998, having been alerted that this show was better than expected by genre magazines. So it’s been with me half my life.

I talk about it quite a lot. Like so on RPGnet.

The TV logo caught up with the merchandising after season two.

It surprised a lot of people by being funny, dramatic, exciting, surprising and moving - often in the same scene.

I love this show.

Ian from SlayerFest 98 has a retrospective on the retrospective at GQ, talking about what it means to him and how it belongs to the world and not just its creator.

Going to tune into the Buffering The Vampire Slayer watch party tomorrow. Sadly not actually at Torrance High!

“So that’s everything, huh? No weapons, no friends... No hope. Take all that away, and what’s left?”

“Me.”

I rewatch the series on the regular and specific episodes when they line up with dates or events - I have three options for Halloween but there are also birthdays, Valentine’s Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, and any time I get a cold. And when I need a laugh, or a good cry, or comfort, or strength.

Rewatches at the A. V. Club, Tor dot com, and Morgue for the high school years.

Some other elements haven’t aged well (the Roma magic thing for one) but I think in the main it holds up.

Having been running on E4 and 4Music nightly for about two years, the whole show and Angel are all on Disney+ now.

And stuff keeps coming out. There was a spinoff novel starting a series in January and another on the way, and the alternate-universe comics from Boom! Studios has an anniversary special and launched a spinoff post-apocalypse miniseries yesterday.

And in the gaming realm there are official miniatures for Buffy, Angel, Willow and Spike with the Unmatched minis duelling game, Jasco have a board game and expansion on shelves now, and the published Buffy and Angel RPG books are still available in PDFs (demo) - and a Bundle Of Holding is currently running for the anniversary.

Not much word on the planned reboot in a while. But one never knows.

A comics page I did, oh, a while ago. 15 years is a while. right?

This story saved my world a lot.

And of course I got very into Buffy RPGs...

Nocturne 1.17

Vampire: The Masquerade - Nocturne

1.17

Must not start a running gag in my Vampire: The Masquerade game.

It would be about all the weird stuff the overseer of the Rack has seen to explain how jaded he is.

So just the one example:

“It’s nothing compared to the time I negotiated a visit by a Ravnos travelling medicine show.”

(An actual running gag would tonally better fit something like a Watcher in Buffy. Like the one in the legendary PBP Mysterious Albion who once tried to cheer up a slayer by saying she wasn’t as bad as the one who destroyed the world.)

“Sure, it’s a decent-sized massacre, but I helped clean up after a Conclave in the 70s.”

“Torn apart by wild dogs? Yes, awful. I mean, not as awful as being torn apart slowly by one wild dog, but...”

“Horrible. Absolutely. But then, I had to shop on Christmas Eve last year.”

Adventure Calendar 2021 25: The Watch House

Adventure Calendar 2021

25: The Watch House

Post 5,555 give or take!

We started this calendar with Buffy, and we return home for the big chocolate behind the window for Christmas.

I kept The Watch House Christmas episodes pretty low-key, with more real celebrations around the time, including making custom action figures over a couple years and editing the first title sequence video for another.

From Cat, Christmas 2004

I also didn’t want to compete with Amends for heartache and resisting the temptation to go full Santa or Scrooge. I put them up against killer snowmen in a short story one year, as you do.

Separate from the magic weather attack that got an actually played episode. And the one riffing on The Wicker Man for an equinox... which we played on Valentine’s Day, now I think about missed seasonal references. And the season finale where Matthew tried to stop the others interfering with his rise to magical power by giving them everything they ever wanted.

And as noted, a bunch of other ideas I’ve mentioned could fit as well, including supers, monster hunters, and the M. R. James homage.

So something character-specific.

One suggestion from a player was A Christmas Carol with Travers as the spirit of Watcher past, Giles as Watcher present and one of the PCs as Watcher future.

The Closing Of The Year

The Watchers have a number of duties they have to fulfil regularly or there will be Dire Consequences, and this year one of the things that must be done every Christmas has fallen to the Cambridge Prentices after the Watchers that were supposed to do it got food poisoning at a pub lunch on the way.

“Nothing complicated, just have to make sure the King of the Winter Court doesn’t forget that his reign isn’t all year round.”

“That sounds complicated.”

“Oh, nothing to worry about. Deliver some mulled wine, bit of ritual combat with a frost giant. You’ll be back in time to pull crackers, if you survive.”

“Sorry, did you just say - ”

“Best of luck! Best wishes to the family!”

“...”

Adventure Calendar 2021 17: Superheroes

Adventure Calendar 2021

17: Superheroes

Superheroes covers a wide range from Shazam to the Punisher, so a lot of the plots above can work like the Buffy, Trinity and spy ideas.

Batman Returns, Iron Man 3 and Hawkeye mostly use the season as ironic counterpoints, but include plot details like a high society party for Bruce Wayne to attend and Clint Barton wanting to get back to his family as a ticking clock.

Do your heroes take part in the city’s Thanksgiving parade or New Year’s Eve party broadcast, have dinner with the mayor, help make sure Toys For Tots runs smoothly, or spend the holidays saving the day like any other?

From the Batman Adventures Holiday Special (1994)

The first time I remember seeing suggestions for Christmas session ideas was an article by Alison Brooks in Fantazia magazine for superhero games, which talked about low-key sessions about holiday preparations and celebrations, Nativity and Santa based adventures, a Christmas truce, ideas based on pantomimes, fairy tales and ghost stories, and other options based on how weird the series normally goes and optionally raising the Weird Level a click or two for the season. Other holiday celebrations could provide ideas as well.

Santa is superhuman and heroic, therefore...

He’s appeared in the big superhero universes and could be called on in a Crisis.

Superman's Christmas Adventure (1940)

Our heroes might also face other festive issues. Want to kick Krampus back to the Pole?

Mutants & Masterminds has Crisis On Christmas, a free short where the idea of Christmas itself is in danger.

ICONS has a Santa adventure and one about a holiday-themed heist ready to go too.

Winter Wonder

Christmas Eve, night falls, and snow starts to fall with it. Weather reports indicate this wasn’t expected... and it seems to only be falling on the city. Who’s behind this? Do the team have a cold-powered enemy - or ally? Has the Snow Queen come to town?

Adventure Calendar 2021 14: Ghostbusters

Adventure Calendar 2021

14: Ghostbusters

A spooky but not so scary end to spooky week.

Ghostbusters II is about the emotional charge of New Year’s. The Real Ghostbusters cartoon had the team accidentally trap the ghosts from A Christmas Carol and have to reset the timeline after Scrooge took over the holiday season.

Cartoon Action Hour has a similar adventure, free!

Ghostbusters was I think the first game I ran a Christmas special for. I based my Christmas adventure on Sleigh Wars, the White Dwarf boardgame about four very different Santas fighting to deliver gifts. (Ravensburger recently released a similar game, Santa’s Rooftop Scramble, though the Santas are all classic Santa instead of evil, militaristic or worried about being up to date.)

Our heroes had to team up with classic Santa to defeat Anti-Claus (the Krampus wasn’t well known at the time) and prevent Arkham’s worst Christmas ever.

And there’s plenty of room for satirising the stranger and creepier bits of Christmas culture, and blasting them with proton packs. Many would also work with the likes of Buffy, but the direct approach that Ghostbusters can take should make it feel quite different.

Elves On Shelves

A small figurine said to be watching on behalf of Santa to see who’s naughty or nice.

But who are these things really spying for?

And how many of them can a fully-grown Ghostbuster fight off if they go on the attack?

Pitch the action somewhere around Small Soldiers and stand well back.

Adventure Calendar 2021 8: Chronicles Of Darkness

Adventure Calendar 2021

8: Chronicles Of Darkness

Second week, spooky week.

A Christmas Carol is a seasonal story about as big as the nativity, and the tradition of ghost stories championed by M. R. James and the BBC adapting his work goes back at least as far as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

Having already done Buffy where the supernatural is there for thumping, and Vampire where the PCs are the spooky things themselves although my most notable example involved outside supernatural issues, something more investigative.

Starting with Chronicles Of Darkness as it connects to various gamelines and supernatural types but the toolkit approach means that players shouldn’t have strong expectations of what’s behind the door. This would also work with DIY-mythos games like Fear Itself or Dead Of Night. World Of Darkness could also work, particularly with mortal groups like Hunters Hunted or Ghost Hunters, but players familiar with the other game lines might be expecting something Vampire-specific or Wraithlike.

So no God Machine this time. Or is there?

Do Not Open

The characters are all connected to a specific building (student housing, university campus, business) which will be totally or largely closed for the holiday season, and which they’re staying at (maybe vacationing in a Cabin In The Woods) or coming in to check on the place, switch the lights on and off, and so on.

So they’re alone in a normally busy location.

But it turns out they’re not alone.

Being snowed in optional. Being isolated some way definitely recommended.

Adventure Calendar 2021 1: Buffy

December! Time once more for my gift to you of festive adventure ideas. Having done this two years running (2019, 2020) I’ve gone through most of the obvious ideas for seasonal plot hooks, and some pretty odd ones as well. So this year, maybe... hooks for specific games and settings.

1: Buffy The Vampire Slayer

Well, obviously.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer has a single perfect Christmas special in season 3’s Amends, a ghost story full of heartbreak and a seasonal miracle, so going with something else entirely. I’ve done some “the PCs have a relatively quiet holiday” episodes of The Watch House near the end of actual term, as well as a killer snowman short story. And the Buffyverse can easily fit rescuing Santa from Krampus, Ethan Rayne creating a toy craze as seen in the comics, talking animals, or a ton of other Funny Magic Episode ideas. And Angel season three was about the birth of a Miracle Child. So we have options...

Deck The Halls

The holidays are on their way and the gang aren’t really feeling it. One of them has been dumped and the gift they already got the dumper is sitting on top of their pile of unwrapped presents.

And then they stop a gang of goblins attacking a man in green, who says they have to fetch a sprig of holly from a tree in the depths of the forest or the sun won’t rise. Because, sure, okay?

So we have a weird forest, a mysterious elf guy, goblins, emotional fallout, and an optional snowball fight.