Brian Clemens

The co-creator of The Avengers UK TV series and Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter has died, aged 83. He was still working, and his son Samuel reports, the last thing he did was watch an episode of his classic show. “His last words were: I did quite a good job.” Would that we could all be so accomplished, and so modest.

Who The - Is My D&D Character?

Well? Note: many swears.

CHECK THIS OUT, I'M GOING TO BE A
MOTIVATED HUMAN DRUID FROM A HAUNTED CASTLE WHO GREW UP IN A GRAVEYARD
I'VE ALREADY ROLEPLAYED THAT ONE

That one kind of works.

INSENSITIVE HALF-ORC BARD FROM A TINY VILLAGE WHO CAN'T SILENCE THE VOICES

RESTLESS DRAGONBORN ROGUE FROM A LOCAL BREWERY WHO WANTS TO SMASH THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM

This has led to (a) RPGnet responding, (b) Chuck Wendig making a flash fiction challenge and (c) a Shadowrun version which is more immediately useful. (Poison, she's a pessimistic Dwarf Rigger from Russia who is constantly humming off-key pop songs.)

HeroQuest could probably run on this. And it might well already, but the boardgame stops me finding out via Google.

Idly thinking of a Vampire one...

Rise Of The Robo Rats

Researchers have developed a thin, electrode-embedded ribbon which, when implanted along the spinal cord, lets paralyzed rats move again. Researchers are hoping to advance to clinical trials in humans soon.

Background ambience

Tabletop Audio, ten-minute ambient (and sometimes musical) tracks for various settings, playable on the site or downloadable as MP3s. Medieval towns, future cities, spaceships, haunted houses, empty warehouses, epic battles, superhero themes, plenty of options.

Need a new Sith design with a crazy lightsaber?

Of course you do!

This one is crazier than average, but I can also see it working.

Concept artist Steve Wang also does space fighters, Battlemechs, mediaeval villages, things to worry Indiana Jones, and pandas on speeder bikes.

Person Of Interest, S3 and on

Since my initial observations two and a half years ago, some of my suspicions about Person Of Interest have proven accurate. The number-of-the-week format still works, but there is a lot more going on, and it’s now modern-dress cyberpunk as well as plain-clothes Batman.

The Machine, the system which initially just seemed to be the McGuffin to spit out those numbers of the week, is an A.I.

Beyond that, thoughts on playing something like it still apply. Some other PC types have joined in. Finch would be playable rather than just an NPC boss because he gets pulled into doing field work himself and often has to hack systems live - the hacking connecting to where Reese (or other PC type) is means it doesn’t become a closed-off subgame like hacking often was in Cyberpunk or Shadowrun. And the scale and SF-ish Weird Level have gone up a bit, while still having room for Reese to demolish wannabe gangsters with a slight smile.

Trailers

Even when not actually making trailers with video editing, I will often think up what I’d put in a trailer for a new game, or a new run of a returning game. I generally keep it short, vague and simple. Images that I can drop into a game easily enough. Just enough to get players hopefully curious without giving too much away, or including anything they would stop for their own characters.

Like so, for Graveyard Shift season two...

A setting built to change

The 100 is back on TV. YA books turned into YA TV almost as soon as possible, post The Hunger Games dystopian future grit, it is also an interesting example of a series with a premise designed to be unstable, to reveal more and change as it goes on.

Set a few centuries in the future, humanity abandoned the dangerously radioactive Earth to live in a space station called the Ark, but supplies are running low and a policy of birth restrictions has not really worked, so a hundred troublesome young adults are shoved into a shuttle and dropped to Earth to see if they can survive. Which they largely can, apart from internal fighting, the odd mutant animal, strange weather, and...

More genre movies than there are weeks in the year

Which is nice.

Starts about now, goes to Star Wars Episode VII and a week later with another Mission: Impossible, and includes some already released here, two new Pixar movies, Guillermo Del Toro doing Victorian Gothic romance, and I heard not previously heard of a Vonda McIntyre adaptation about a first contact situation in the late 17th century.

So I may be at the cinema a few times this year...

The road goes ever on

Finally saw the end of The Hobbit. (Little bit too much side business.) Got me to thinking back to when the films started with Fellowship Of The Ring, seeing the first trilogy with mum (who I took) and dad (now moved away and remarried) and my brother (now married with kids and on the other side of the planet) and that it doesn’t seem so long... but it is. Nearly a third of my life. And being read the books as a child, among my earliest memories. (And MERP. Let us never speak of it.) It’s one of my founding myths, long down my life.

New Year, New Game

PDF-y sale. The bundles are especially good value - The One Ring and two supplements for a quarter of their regular price, in particular, Scion or Ashen Stars at just over a third, or Firefly at less than half.

A New Year, A New World

Do I get in on this RPG Carnival? Maybe.

Need some aliens?

Various ways to flesh them out including some from me.

A new version of your classic

Watching The Musketeers has me wondering... have you ever gone back and done a new version of a campaign from the start, with new players?

I never have, because I always have more campaign ideas than groups as it is, but I have brought some unused ideas back, and borrowed hooks from other GMs.

If I did, what would I do? Modernise some things, of course, maybe change to a system that has come out since the original game... throw in some in-jokes for any returning players...

Forging Your Own Destiny

As mentioned at reveal and launch, Destiny is a vast sweeping space opera setting where the story is made a big thing of at the start and then given little play, almost everyone and everything important has a Significant Title rather than a name, I might buy the art book before the game itself as I have only actually played on borrowed consoles, and the grand heroic music makes me want to do Star Trek when it isn’t playing Led Zeppelin.

I still kind of want to play the game it looks like more than the game it is.

Which is where RPGs come in...

A vast sweeping space opera, colonised planets isolated for centuries and now accessible again, a mix of alien empires and alliances to fight against or possibly negotiate with, the option to play AI or aliens or posthumans or modern humans or 21st century people resurrected to bring back lost knowledge, cool gear, mind powers, flying bikes, killer robots, ancient lore, deeper mysteries... sounds like it could be fun.

New Year, renewal

Silence fell over the mountain at the stroke of midnight. The thunder of the battle echoed and faded to nothing.

“The old year is slain! The winter will end!”

The queen pulled her white cloak tighter around her, remembering what it felt to be warm. Knowing that it would come again. And knowing that it would leave. The cycle would continue, and the people would need to be hardy, determined, and most of all inventive.

New Year, last chance

The clock ticked down to midnight. She knew at that moment the Black Calendar would activate the bomb. She only had minutes to get to Central Square and defuse it!

New Year, new world

Governor Linh hadn’t planned to make New Year’s a big deal. After all, the colony had only been running a hundred and twenty-two days. She was saving the last bottle of old Earth champagne for the first anniversary. But enough of the travellers wanted to celebrate it, and they were prepared to trust Murray’s still to provide something slightly alcoholic that wouldn’t strike them blind.

“Midnight” was kind of academic on a planet with two stars close enough you could read by them at any time of the twenty-seven-and-change hourly cycle, so they went with midnight at launch point.

Someone started up Auld Lang Syne, even getting the words right. Near enough, anyway.

They shared transmissions from home, sent before Christmas to make it all the way out.

The governor looked at the staging platforms. By the end of year one the first ship would be on its way to the next step. Who would still be here come another New Year?

So much could happen in a year...

New Year, same old monsters

Eric looked out at the party wearily, spun the glass in his hand and took another sip. They had managed to keep the world spinning for another year, and it had only cost three of them their lives. He raised the glass to Mike, Douglas and Kelly, and was about to finish it...

... when he saw the vampires strutting through the crowd. A couple, all smiles. Acting like they owned the place, like they usually do.

He set the glass down unfinished and went to look through his bag. This wouldn’t be an easy kill - none of them were - but the noise from the band and all the people around would keep them from using their senses to their full extent.

Phones were down, so no way to call the others. He’d have to do this himself. Wait for them to find someone, hope they didn’t separate in hopes of getting an easy meal each.

Looked like they were. Damn it. Okay, make sure to pick one so the other would see and come running. If they had any loyalty.

He heard the countdown start as he followed the male into the alley.

Perfect. Just in time for screams and fireworks.

Happy New Year!

To begin with, productivity. Some quick scenes set around midnight.

Urban fantasy, SF, superheroes, highish fantasy.

To continue - something here (just about) every day.