If-Then-Else

Person Of Interest 4.11 If-Then-Else shows that some thought can sneak a genre classic into a show where the setup doesn’t really work for it.

We could be heroes

A superhero universe where heroes, villains, teams and events share names with songs.

I made a load of David Bowie references, and a few for the Beatles and Ash.

Puny God.

Reminder: The Avengers is awesome.

Resurrection

For Easter... ever had a character resurrected?

Since my games are fairly low on death as previously noted, they tend to be lower still on coming back from it.

The Librarians

The Librarians is a fun show.

(Though the UK DVD shows the episodes out of order while listing them in order on the menu, which did not help. At least they managed to get the opening two-parter and the season finale in the right place, just not the other seven episodes...)

It’s kind of a home team game for us, being a modern fantasy adventure show adapted by John Rogers and, as he has admitted, describing the characters with FATE Aspects and borrowing some structure from Cortex+ relationship maps in the writers’ room. It does at times feel like watching an Actual Play.

It cranks up the Weird Level from the original The Librarian TV movies, where the incidental weird (which included a giant TARDIS-y library and Excalibur as a recurring character) was generally light relief in fairly straight pulp adventure stories with a mystical artefact or two, but never to the point of Santa being a guest star.

On the subject of traditions diverging...

Let me show you the chocolate Easter Bilby in Australia, as enjoyed by my nieces and nephew soon.

I sometimes think that the best way to replicate how traditions develop would be a random tradition drift table...

A question for Good Friday...

Ever had a character executed as an example to others? Bonus point if it wasn’t in a Vampire LARP or chat game with a large player base and PVP elements.

Can you trust what your GM is telling you?

Of course you can’t!

Unreliable narration and distorted perception in RPGs, by Gar Hanrahan at the Pelgrane Press homepage. (Happy birthday Cat!)

Buffy The Writing Example

10 Vital Storytelling Lessons I Learned from Buffy The Vampire Slayer, by Charlie Jane Anders, author and io9 editor.

Why I don't use miniatures

If I used miniatures, I would want every action scene to look like this Star Wars skirmish game and that is not really practical.

Why are there so many songs about vampires?

And what is on The Other Side?

I believe with full faith and perfect trust that these songs are about vampires.

If someone tells you these songs are not about vampires, they do not have your best interests at heart.

Facts courtesy of Rose Bailey.

We're probably not gonna need a bigger airship

Airlander, a fixed wing - helicopter - airship hybrid bigger than an airliner.

Humanity! To the sky!

Street-level superhero hook jam

Potentially loads of superhero adventure hooks, not least due to links to other loads of superhero adventure hooks.

1914

My post count here just hit 1914...

Compared to the second World War, the Great War has provided relatively little gaming fodder. The comparatively undramatic enemies may well be a factor - there are few stories compared to the rush of superheroes of the Golden Age and beyond. Wraith: The Great War is one example, emphasising the bloody mess it was.

My Little Pony: RPG is Magic

Coming soon from River Horse. Probably less hefty than their miniatures games. I would hope it’s entry level and kid friendly...

When Wizards of The Coast suggested a My Little Pony RPG as an April Fool announcement ten years ago, quite a few of us thought it was a good idea, and the new series Friendship Is Magic has really boosted that. So this is a completely different company striking a couple years after the iron was hot, but hey.

(And apparently The Hunger Games is getting a board game from them too.)

I want to suck your blood... it may take a while.

Leicester students reckon it would take over six minutes to take a safe 15% of human blood from a small arterial bite. However, they note that actively sucking the blood could speed this up. So, er, bear that in mind, time conscious vampires.

West End's Star Wars style guide

After the previous look at the West End Games Star Wars style guide, a more in-depth look at io9.

Gaming for charity, charity in gaming

Today is Sport Relief, the spinoff from Comic Relief whose title isn’t even a pun. It’s all for good causes, anyway.

There are lots of charity events involving gaming (I’ve helped run one) - do you see many in-game? The last time I featured one it was organised by the Giovanni in Vampire: The Masquerade... Charity events can introduce contacts and patrons, honest or otherwise, costumed parades and dances are perfect places for secret action, and PCs usually love to rob from the rich and give to the poor...

National holidays

Happy St. Patrick’s Day to Irish and Irish-descent friends. Not so much to people using is an excuse to get drunk while wearing a green hat.

Here in Scotland, St. Andrew’s Day hasn’t been co-opted as much, perhaps because Americans who might do so are still recovering from Thanksgiving a few days earlier. This doesn’t stop the Scottish government trying with Tartan Week...

Have you featured a holiday that has wandered that far from its roots in a setting?

"No signal"

Some ideas about how to shut down modern communications, followed by ideas on how to roll with it.

The “no signal” setup is a groaner trope in modern horror - one thing I haven’t seen anywhere is the simple idea of checking again later in the movie! But then of course they’d have to address it like they dropped it in the first place. And there are plenty of ways to not make it that helpful, as this thread shows.