Shane Black is spearheading a revival of the Steed and Peel Avengers, set in 60s Britain as the original show was... sort of. Depends on casting and other writing and so on, of course, as the basic premise is “spy show with a rather high Weird Level” and they might not get to keep the name.
Back in the day I thought ITV should bring it back to go up against Doctor Who. (And I would have called Colin Firth about playing Steed, pre The King’s Speech when he became too big and very pre Kingsman when he basically did that.)
Sunday, 14 January 2018
Saturday, 13 January 2018
How to get a city you've never visited right
The A. V. Club looks at The Chi and other TV series set in Chicago, nominally or otherwise.
My own experience of Chicago can be summed up by adding “By Night” to the city’s name - and based on later reading, the classic Vampire: The Masquerade setting isn’t a very accurate representation either, though it does have nice historical touches like the Brujah being representatives of generations of radicals. You could lift a lot of it out and put it in another city like New York pretty easily - use CBGB’s for the Succubus Club and a lot of it fits.
My own experience of Chicago can be summed up by adding “By Night” to the city’s name - and based on later reading, the classic Vampire: The Masquerade setting isn’t a very accurate representation either, though it does have nice historical touches like the Brujah being representatives of generations of radicals. You could lift a lot of it out and put it in another city like New York pretty easily - use CBGB’s for the Succubus Club and a lot of it fits.
That time Snoopy joined the Apollo mission
Charles Schulz allowed NASA to use Snoopy as their safety program mascot, which resulted in silver Snoopy pins going into space and being given to flight safety staff for exceptional service.
I find this befuddling but lovely.
I find this befuddling but lovely.
Friday, 12 January 2018
Dystopia Rising: Evolution
The next Storypath game, to be developed by Eddy Webb, Dystopia Rising: Evolution brings the post-apocalypse horror LARP setting to the tabletop.
Thursday, 11 January 2018
Shall we play a game, Captain?
Modiphius have published official Star Trek Adventures stats for the original series and Next Generation crews and their Enterprises, and it looks like they’re in the starting character range. This is nice, for reasons I have ranted about before. Especially because starting STA characters feel pretty competent.
Wednesday, 10 January 2018
Giles gets a spinoff comic
CBR talks to Joss Whedon and co-writer Erika Alexander about the forthcoming Giles miniseries, which factors into the various things that have happened to the OG Watcher in the comic seasons.
(Short version: he died, and got better, but a bit wrong.)
“When we’re out of that phase we think we remember it, but the physical and mental taffy-stretching-machine of adolescence is something you have to be feeling to truly understand. We make it an origin story after the fact: how I came to be me. During... well, it is an origin story, but it’s the falling-in-a-vat-of-radioactive-acid kind.”
And the interview ends with the perennial ache of a Ripper TV miniseries mention.
(Short version: he died, and got better, but a bit wrong.)
“When we’re out of that phase we think we remember it, but the physical and mental taffy-stretching-machine of adolescence is something you have to be feeling to truly understand. We make it an origin story after the fact: how I came to be me. During... well, it is an origin story, but it’s the falling-in-a-vat-of-radioactive-acid kind.”
And the interview ends with the perennial ache of a Ripper TV miniseries mention.
Tuesday, 9 January 2018
New Gamemaster Month!
New Gamemaster Month
Granted, if you’re reading this blog you’re probably not a potential new GM... but you might know someone who could be interested!
Even if not, the suggested games - Trail Of Cthulhu, Unknown Armies and Numenera - may be new to you, and have some interesting tricks for the best way to run them.
Granted, if you’re reading this blog you’re probably not a potential new GM... but you might know someone who could be interested!
Even if not, the suggested games - Trail Of Cthulhu, Unknown Armies and Numenera - may be new to you, and have some interesting tricks for the best way to run them.
Monday, 8 January 2018
We Could Be Heroes (What do you say?)
Cycling back to superheroes, and idly including Ziggy Stardust in the list of previous heroes in a setting, running with this idea again as well as the Bowieverse running with something similar...
Many have speculated on the identity of the trickster hero Ziggy Stardust. Some claim he was lost British astronaut Major Tom, transformed by some cosmic power when he found life on Mars. No-one knows for sure, as the musician and master of disguise vanished after two of the five years he often spoke about.
Aladdin Sane looked very much like him, but claimed to be a different person entirely and evidenced different powers as a finder of lost things. In time he, too, vanished.
Some say that The Thin White Duke was another recipient of the same power, the “emotionless superman” using it to build a criminal empire before his ultimate defeat by Glass Spider.
Stardust’s legacy was taken up by heroes like the Scary Monsters, Tin Machine, Spaceboy and Earthling. And some say he returned as the wise but unpredictable Blackstar, last seen trying to save the prisoners of a cult in the villa of Orman...
Many have speculated on the identity of the trickster hero Ziggy Stardust. Some claim he was lost British astronaut Major Tom, transformed by some cosmic power when he found life on Mars. No-one knows for sure, as the musician and master of disguise vanished after two of the five years he often spoke about.
Aladdin Sane looked very much like him, but claimed to be a different person entirely and evidenced different powers as a finder of lost things. In time he, too, vanished.
Some say that The Thin White Duke was another recipient of the same power, the “emotionless superman” using it to build a criminal empire before his ultimate defeat by Glass Spider.
Stardust’s legacy was taken up by heroes like the Scary Monsters, Tin Machine, Spaceboy and Earthling. And some say he returned as the wise but unpredictable Blackstar, last seen trying to save the prisoners of a cult in the villa of Orman...
Long-term (superhero) campaign advice
15 points based on 150 sessions of a superhero game. Featuring two systems, pitch resets, genre conventions, vanishing plot threads, and Doom Squid.
I recognise some of these lessons from The Watch House, like point 3 about personal screentime and group numbers - it very much depended on how entertaining the rest of the group found the shenanigans, and fortunately the group generally had a lot of time for it.
I recognise some of these lessons from The Watch House, like point 3 about personal screentime and group numbers - it very much depended on how entertaining the rest of the group found the shenanigans, and fortunately the group generally had a lot of time for it.
Sunday, 7 January 2018
New Agenda Publishing
New Agenda Publishing: coming soon from some of the best names in RPGs.
Make your monsters scarier than your traps
A belated idea for a line when threatening a D&D boss monster after a dungeon of easy fights and near-deadly traps:
“We’ve been right through your temple and the only things that gave us any trouble were the doors. And you don’t look like a door.”
“We’ve been right through your temple and the only things that gave us any trouble were the doors. And you don’t look like a door.”
Saturday, 6 January 2018
What was Blackbeard reading?
Or at least stuffing pages of into his cannons? Seagoing travelogues, apparently. Makes sense.
Friday, 5 January 2018
Routine
Burritos return. All is well.
What routines do your characters have? Favourite foods, places they like to hang out even when not picking up adventure hooks?
Thursday, 4 January 2018
"I only make eyes..."
A genetic cure for blindness, at just... $425,000 per eye.
I’m sure organleggers can compete with that.
I’m sure organleggers can compete with that.
Wednesday, 3 January 2018
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine began twenty-five years ago today, a new series for a new year.
The third live-action Trek show, and the first to come on while another was running, DS9 also moved away from the planet-of-the-week, literally, with the titular station sitting in orbit of one planet - while having a handy wormhole nearby to make it a waystation for aliens to come and go. This helped to mainstream heavily serialised genre TV, alongside the even-more-serialised other space station show Babylon 5.
It also went pretty dark pretty quickly, certainly by Trek standards and sometimes by regular TV standards. This started as early as Duet in season one, but really got going with the Dominion war and key episodes like In The Pale Moonlight. But it also delivered Far Beyond The Stars, about the power of hope for the future.
The third live-action Trek show, and the first to come on while another was running, DS9 also moved away from the planet-of-the-week, literally, with the titular station sitting in orbit of one planet - while having a handy wormhole nearby to make it a waystation for aliens to come and go. This helped to mainstream heavily serialised genre TV, alongside the even-more-serialised other space station show Babylon 5.
It also went pretty dark pretty quickly, certainly by Trek standards and sometimes by regular TV standards. This started as early as Duet in season one, but really got going with the Dominion war and key episodes like In The Pale Moonlight. But it also delivered Far Beyond The Stars, about the power of hope for the future.
Tuesday, 2 January 2018
Please Stand By
My new Australian calendar notes that this is a New Zealand holiday called... Day After New Year’s Day. That about sums it up really.
Monday, 1 January 2018
The Bicentenary Of Frankenstein
Frankenstein was first published two hundred years ago today.
(Among other things, this demonstrates that the Christmas book market wasn’t up and running yet. Jane Austen’s final novel Persuasion got its first limited print run out by December 17th 1817.)
The metaphorical weight of Frankenstein gave a catchy name to Mad Science, Science Gone Wrong, Messing With The Natural Order and a bunch of other ideas like it - though also failing to take responsibility for one’s mistakes, which is the real sin.
The last century of its fame was helped in no small part by Boris Karloff in James Whale’s film, but by that point it was already over a century old.
And it’s still running. The Dark Universe might not be getting a new version of The Bride Of Frankenstein next year, but in the last decade we’ve seen The Frankenstein Chronicles, Second Chance aka The Frankenstein Code,I, Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein, Frankenstein’s Army, Frankenweenie, The National Theatre’s adaptation directed by Danny Boyle, Dark Harvest: Legacy Of Frankenstein, and the second edition of Promethean: The Created...
(Among other things, this demonstrates that the Christmas book market wasn’t up and running yet. Jane Austen’s final novel Persuasion got its first limited print run out by December 17th 1817.)
The metaphorical weight of Frankenstein gave a catchy name to Mad Science, Science Gone Wrong, Messing With The Natural Order and a bunch of other ideas like it - though also failing to take responsibility for one’s mistakes, which is the real sin.
The last century of its fame was helped in no small part by Boris Karloff in James Whale’s film, but by that point it was already over a century old.
And it’s still running. The Dark Universe might not be getting a new version of The Bride Of Frankenstein next year, but in the last decade we’ve seen The Frankenstein Chronicles, Second Chance aka The Frankenstein Code,I, Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein, Frankenstein’s Army, Frankenweenie, The National Theatre’s adaptation directed by Danny Boyle, Dark Harvest: Legacy Of Frankenstein, and the second edition of Promethean: The Created...
Happy New Year
Toast the new year
Bid farewell to the old
And we go on. Take care out there.
Bid farewell to the old
And we go on. Take care out there.
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