KiwiRPG Week coverage

Sam Brooks at Aotearoa culture site The Spinoff covers KiwiRPG Week.

Beltane

Happy Beltane for those who celebrate. Here in Edinburgh we have a fire festival atop Calton Hill with hundreds of participants and thousands of spectators, not all of whom are there to see the nakie people.

Seconds

What would you do if you could go back and correct a mistake? And could you stop?

Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World creator Bryan Lee O'Malley's Seconds is hopefully on the way to cinemas, with the adaptation co-written by Pilgrim director Edgar Wright and to be directed by Blake Lively. It concerns time travel, specifically to change one decision at a time. And the temptation not to stop...

Neal Adams

Neal Adams, comics artist and writer who helped take Batman out of the Adam West era and worked on pivotal series like Green Arrow / Green Lantern, has died. He also helped reinstate creator credits for Superman, a step towards proper crediting of writers and artists.

The Northman

Just out of The Northman. My second film of the year! Would have been first but I was late with Spider-Man.

A look at how vengeance ruins lives which is also full of HELL YEAH fight scenes.

Having gone in with pretty much just the trailer and familiarity with director Robert Eggers’ work, I got to be surprised by some of it.

Terry Pratchett Day

Raise a glass.

“Goodness is about what you do. Not who you pray to.”

Snuff

Onyx Path Virtual Convention, June 10-12 2022

Onyx Path celebrates ten years with the return of the Virtual Convention, now looking for Storytellers, Storyguides and GMs.

Bloodhunt

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodhunt launches today, after early access, on PC and PS5.

It doesn’t reflect the kind of Vampire games I run, and I’m terrible at it, but I do enjoy the style. See the concept vision trailer and narrative launch trailer, which both make the conflict with the Second Inquisition more central, though the second does also show vampires whaling on each other, as well as the Battle Pass trailer which show off some of the looks available including some Katana And Trenchcoat action.

Moon Knight 1.05

Marvel’s Moon Knight

1.05: Asylum

Managing a satisfying ending with one episode to go will be an impressive feat. But that was certainly a satisfying episode, sprinkling light comedy in with particularly heavy drama. (Taweret’s cue cards and flappy ears!) Content warning for abusive parenting.

Objective-centric battles

Another thought about Avengers at ten: it contains a prime example of Joss Whedon’s preferred end-of-season final battle, a clear objective marker that the heroes have to either attack or defend.

It could get repetitive, but on the whole this is not a complaint, as I’ve done a whole lot of big battles like this too. A clear target for the PCs makes for a big fight that isn’t just about numbers. There are a few of the subset of needing to kill a specific enemy too.

(And obviously not unique to him - see the Death Star exhaust port or throwing the Ring into Mount Doom - but definitely a thing in his work.)

a|state pre|orders

Pre-order a|state second edition physical and get a free PDF. PDF also sold separately.

Avengers at ten

Marvel’s The Avengers came out here ten years ago.

Tom Breihan’s Age Of Heroes retrospective. Sophie Butcher at Empire.

My favourite detail is that every member of the team gets to smack Loki down in their own way.

Hill interrupts his escape, Steve joins the man ruining his BS speech, Thor shows his motivations are warped, Fury throws his threats back at him, Natasha tricks the god of lies, Coulson dismisses his chances while dying, Tony casually explains his plan is doomed over a drink, Clint blows him up mid gloat about catching his arrow, Selvig builds a failsafe despite mind control and Bruce...

... well, you know.

It’s one of the film’s many delights on its own merits, as well as a key part of the all-conquering Marvel Cinematic Universe. (This week is also the anniversary of Age Of Ultron, Infinity War and Endgame.)

I remember when we weren’t sure this would work.

By then Marvel and Jon Favreau had made Iron Man a surprise hit and a lot of fun, and made Captain America work by having The Rocketeer director Joe Johnston making another circa-WWII pulp superhero adventure, and Kenneth Branagh’s Thor was a fun fantasy romance and gave us a great villain into the mix, so the big three were set up, but there were still doubts, especially as Iron Man 2 and The Incredible Hulk hadn’t been as well received.

And we had an unknown to me new actor as the Hulk. Mark Ruffalo turned out to be great, him being pretty big normally is an interesting change too. And there’s a great chilling moment where, in a reverse of the TV series classic bit where Banner’s eyes go constricted and bright green as he starts to change, we see his eyes are still human as the change takes over. And then we get Hulk versus Black Widow and Natasha makes it pretty even.

Okay, I had a reasonable amount of confidence in Joss Whedon back then as a Buffy fan so I got to be a hipster about it, which was nice.

I love it. I just watched it again and I know a big chunk of it by heart. Give me an anniversary screening and I’ll be there.

Twitter had its moments.

Oh, the weather outside is frightful...

Judging by how much the boiler’s doing, Merry Fifth Christmas!

Happier Than Misery Business

Billie Eilish at Coachella featuring Hayley Williams. (And Hayley Williams as the Tenth Doctor.)

Nocturne 1.23

Vampire: The Masquerade - Nocturne

1.23

In general, the younger vampires in the city were less comfortable with the revelation of who killed the ghost and why than the elders. The nice Hecata was very uncomfortable but helped. And I got to needle drop Dead Can Dance.

St. George's Day

Slain any dragons lately?

V5 PBP setting outline

Further to my Vampire: The Masquerade play-by-post offer, when I asked about setting preferences the first player vote was for a fictional city, specifically a shadow of its former self, so...

The city of St. Charles sits on the wide Charles River, surrounded by misty hills and deep pine forests. Once financed by lumber, mining and manufacturing, the city has suffered in recent years, although some of the old warehouses now see use as spaces for tech companies and startups, event spaces, and in some cases squats.

Home to almost five million people and around fifty vampires, it sits close enough to Anarch domains that the Camarilla court watches the Rack and blood banks closely. The Princes of cities to the east pledge their support, but this has never been tested.

The Ventrue Prince, Michael Dean, was an importer before his Embrace, and took the throne forty years ago after his sire died fighting a rival.

Dean is supported by a Primogen containing a Ventrue Sheriff and Rack Host, Malkavian Seneschal, Toreador Keeper and Herald, Tremere Oracle and Nosferatu Eye, as well as other agents including couriers and a branch of the blood-supplying Circulatory System.

The Prince has recently moved to make the city more hospitable to neonates, encouraging loyalty to the Camarilla. He is also said to have agents in the Anarch domain of Lawrence two nights’ drive away. But the Lawrence Anarchs are also said to have agents in St. Charles...

And St. Charles is also the last stop before the domain of Spencer City a night’s drive to the north, recently abandoned and now an open frontier. So you have somewhere to run if this all breaks down...

(There’s a real St. Charles in Illinois. It’s pretty small.)

Earth Day 2022

Earth Day

GreaterGood

A Google Doodle showing receding once permanent ice and bleaching coral makes its point effectively.

I always remember the well-meaning terribleness of the Earth Day Special in 1990.

World Of Darkness Unbound

A community creator program for World Of Darkness computer games to be hosted on itch.io, following the Vampire Jam and the model of the Storytellers Vault.