Star Trek 2017 has... a logo!

As part of a decidedly vague teaser.

And that teaser will probably make anti-Abrams people freak out with its resemblance to the closing credits of his Star Trek films...

New crews, plural...

Star Wars: The Clone Wars

I have now watched all of The Clone Wars, all hundred-odd twenty-minute episodes. (As opposed to Clone Wars, all two hours.)

And I never did warm to the big wooden puppet head characters, but it worked well when moving away to them, to long shots, crowds and space battles.

Person Of Interest season four

Person Of Interest season four has how finished running here, just in time for season five to start in the US... with no sign of it showing here...

The setup of the show has changed... quite a bit.

The blood of patriots and tyrants

Turns out the Vampire PCs will trust the haunted tree over the local vampires...

Yes, admittedly, the local vampires are vampires...

Henry VI (Shakespeare version)

Or the Prequel Trilogy for Richard III.

Pretty much everybody wants to be the king, expect the king, who wants to be a hermit.

For the non-Shakespeare version, Henry VI was by all accounts someone whose temperament was better suited to the role of hermit than king. Unfortunately it was a mostly hereditary position with occasional usurpation (which is how his grandfather got there, replacing another king depicted as insufficiently murderous for the gig) so just about everyone around him was after it, and being nobles they were also massively entitled and quick to take slight.

Most of the characters who come out of the Shakespeare version looking good are trying to keep the peace and keep the country stable, and they’re usually stabbed for their troubles.

As a rule, player like to have their characters depose bad kings and maybe follow good ones if they can’t get the job themselves. How would they deal with multiple would-be bad kings?

Agent Carter

Well, damn. Agent Carter gets two seasons and done. (As well as being buried on some obscure Sky derivative over here, meaning I only saw season one by DVD, as Channel 4 did not pick it up along with Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. despite its enormous Britishness...)

And now... a pun.

Secret Intelligence Gathering, Monitoring And Research protects the Empire from the cult of Chaos. They are...

Agents of SIGMAR

... I’ll get my coat.

(Seriously, an espionage game like Night’s Black Agents about fighting Chaos cultists... okay, going...)

Warhammer Quest returns

The new version The Silver Tower features the Age of Sigmar stuff but also has something pretty cool, a non-white non-Germanic priest of Sigmar. (And the elf means we have a female character in the core box as well. Not that you can really tell from the picture, admittedly.)

I will not be at Gen Con...

... I can still admire the Gen Con event schedule from afar.

The Black Lion

For Black Lion Games head honcho Liam’s birthday on the 4th I custom painted... a Black Lion.

Upstart Crow

Tonight sees the first episode of Upstart Crow, a sitcom about Shakespeare and his family by Ben Elton and starring David Mitchell. The title comes from a diss aimed at the Bard by playwright Robert Greene. Even though he may be the first professional author in British history, when was the last time you saw a Robert Greene play?

Short of wanting to run an Elizabethan game away from courts and battlefields, it could be a good pointer for a historical or time travel game that the PCs meet a famous figure from history and nobody at the time seems all that impressed.

We have the technology

Greetings from my desktop. It has been over an hour now and the new power supply has not yet exploded.

Captain America: Civil War

Captain America: Civil War is now out in the US, so this spoiled European can talk about it more freely.

Overall, liked it, didn’t love it.

It is, quite naturally, very much Winter Soldier part two with a chunk of post-Sokovia Avengers fallout mixed in - a mix that mostly works, but the fairly grounded political thriller with bigger than average stunts doesn’t quite mesh with the craziest super action. Bucky’s story is a Bourne movie that Cap doesn’t quite fit into, let alone some of the others.

It balances most guest stories well, although Ant-Man is largely a fun cameo. Spider-Man (the most important) is the one who really feels tacked on, though, especially compared to how much is done with the other new arrival Black Panther. Still, can't win ’em all.

May the Sixth be with you

Alden Ehrenreich is the young Han Solo. As thankless tasks go, I wish him all the best.

Ever taken over a much-loved main character? Me neither.

Middle-Earth

The original map of Middle-Earth annotated by Tolkien, at the Bodleian and online.

The Force Awakens beginner box RPG

Apparently a beginner box set due this autumn from FFG, an introduction to the line rather than a new TFA book. New expansions for X-Wing too - no sign of an Imperial Assault style minis game though, sadly.

A key step in preparing a game

I have a new notebook.

Have now bought Icons Assembled...

The Top Tier

Considering a superhero game. Prooooobably influenced by The Avengers with the PCs as the premier heroes of the setting. (So a few more points in chargen...)

Happy May Day. Please enjoy your rights.