The naming of characters

Making starting Vampire: The Masquerade characters for a one-shot: under ten minutes.

Choosing one Conviction each: um.

Naming them: why hast thou forsaken me

International Women's Day

A safe and happy International Women’s Day.

World Book Day

Happy World Book Day!

RPGnet update

A couple days in and it’s certainly nice not having ads on RPGnet for T3MU.

FiveEvil is coming

FiveEvil from Handiwork Games and by Morgue Davie, coming soon to crowdfunding, inverts 5E for King-style horror with ordinary people in trouble. No Armour Class but a box for Suffering.

RPGnet merging with RPGMatch

RPGnet merging with RPGMatch, a startup for looking-for-group and other online RPG aids, a side project for the owner.

To Boldly Go

Keith R.A. DeCandido looks back at his pre-streaming Star Trek rewatches at Tor and Reactor.

The Lost Universe, an adventure from NASA

The Lost Universe, a free D&D adventure in search of the disappeared Hubble telescope, published by NASA.

Ludonarrative Dissidents season 3

Ludonarrative Dissidents season 3 Kickstarter for the system-fu with adventures and sourcebooks too.

Dracula's Daughter

A retro review of Dracula's Daughter. I had known about it being a mess behind the scenes with MGM holding rights for a payoff and unused and possible unusable scripts - it explains why the comic relief characters appear in two scenes at the start and never again and why a central character’s motivation is revealed six minutes before the end - but didn’t know about the Laemmle family being ousted from Universal four days after it came out, so am now leaning even more into running an adventure about vampires messing with it.

GM's Day

Appreciate us. APPRECIATE US!

I really should do knights in shining armour again sometime.

Vampire population explosions

I see a lot of Vampire: The Masquerade games start with failed Sabbat mass Embraces to explain a table full of new clueless vampires showing up at once. (It’s a subset of the brewing conflict introduction where newly turned PCs are part of a rising problem, which I go for sometimes myself.)

I used a failed mass Embrace with just NPCs a while ago, the PCs helping unearth them and seeing if they could be brought back from the brink of madness.

And I just suggested adding NPCs to one example. It gives a relatable possible enemy, and if you want to lean into the personal horror maybe it includes people the PCs know. An equally fresh bunch of undead causing trouble feels different if they’re led by your sister.

Lisa Frankenstein

Lisa Frankenstein (2024)

Jennifer’s Body creator Diablo Cody returns to this general field with a sweet little romantic comedy apart from the occasional murder and dismemberment.

Kathryn Newton (Freaky, Abigail) is hilariously surly and moody teen Lisa who accidentally resurrects a 19th century musician (Cole Sprouse) and tries to get him fully alive without anyone noticing, with... mixed success.

moth

Curseborne

The Onyx Pathcast 300, in which we’re cursed.

Starting in medias res.

Supernatural and mundane.

Kinds seem to be families. Lykan and Bathorite elders talk, and young ones will fight like Montagues and Capulets.

Both families led by a mother. Perhaps with a capital M, they seem to have siblings and cousins they don’t really know.

Lykans and Bathorites are much as expected.

Characters have Edges, one example is Quick Read. And Spells.

Lineage Torments.

Places of deferment. The example here is an all night café called Neutral Grounds.

Curse Dice. Limited usage - cannot buy off Complications. Bad to run out of them though.

Cursebind.

Momentum and Complications and other features of Storypath Ultra.

Nationals T minus six weeks

Nationals is in six weeks, and the organisers want character sheets and the like for vetting in ten days’ time. Which should be fine... if I have anything done by then.

Yes I’m still swithering over this.

Normally I’d be well on the way, but I was assigned to GM Vampire: The Masquerade. This isn’t my first time assigned a not-first-choice category or even a Darkness category but it is my first time assigned to a one game category. And one that isn’t great for one-shots.

And I don’t know how well any of the players know the game in general or the current edition in particular, or their expectations or preferences.

And this is always the case but with less narrow categories I expect total newb-ness. Here I don’t have that.

I can absolutely do a standard mystery with a fight at the end, but, y’know.

(Small update: I now know what the other ST is aiming at, which definitely helps.)

Update: briefing example

Paramore, Thick Skull

I am a magnet for broken pieces

I am attracted to broken people

The Chocolate Experience

Fiasco of the week Willy’s Chocolate Experience in Glasgow looks slightly worse than the Christmas village scams reported somewhere most years but the use of algorithm-generated pictures and text in the advertising and the script pushes it over the bar. The work of someone who also publishes algorithm-generated conspiracy theory books, it’s a glaring example of how much that sucks impacting on the world outside the net.

It fails as the scam it looks like as well as the event it was meant to be. I’m sorry for everyone else involved - a number of the actors have spoken up about it as well as some of the audience.

It also seems like something that a more appropriate venue and a decent-sized student theatre or LARP group could put on properly and still turn a modest profit.

That said, expect to see an evil chocolate maker called The Unknown showing up in other things as people swipe that.

Dialogue

“Surrender or die! ... I don’t have a strong preference so it’s your call.”

March

At the end of the month, Conpulsion. Largely ready for the quiz except the Books and Comics round, which is always the most effort.