Beltane

Or, halfway to Hallowe’en.

Garbage, Witness To Your Love

New Garbage songs alert! Witness To Your Love EP, including a cover of Cities In Dust (already a Vampire game end of session song before we got a Garbage version) as well as new songs Adam And Eve and Blue Betty.

Out In The Dark

Leaning more and more towards a dark science fiction game next. And it can’t all be because of Alien Day. I haven’t done something like that in over a decade.

(The Stars On Fire, using first edition Trinity rules for convenience with a DIY setting about hostile first contact for a divided humanity, about as disorganised as Battlestar Galactica 2004. I borrowed spacesuits from Halo, ships from EVE Online, and the aliens from Primeval.)

And there have been quite a few games like that released in the last few years, not least Alien itself. (Which I would consider running face-to-face, after avoiding doing it online.)

Boxy grey spaceships, colony planets with constant bad weather, political and corporate star systems, projectile weapons...

Terry Pratchett Day

Personal isn’t the same as important.

Sir Terry Pratchett, Men At Arms

Happy 75th birthday, sir. Mind how you go.

Bloodhunt first anniversary

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodhunt launched a year ago today.

Celebrations include new outfits and an in-game treasure hunt hosted by alarming Nosferatu Primogen Omnis. It also comes just a few nights after the first Tremere archetype.

And no, I still haven’t won a match.

Bat-Family

Having saved Caped Crusader from the HBO Maxxacre, Amazon is also making another animated Batman series, with Damian Wayne getting a rather less edgy depiction.

When to jump genre

The trailer for A Haunting In Venice, the retitled adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Hallowe’en Party, looks like it’s taking Kenneth Branagh’s rather broad take on Hercule Poirot into a post-Ring horror movie.

Magic: The Menacing

I’m kind of impressed that Wizards has managed a worse PR move than the OGL plans this year. The Pinkertons, on the other hand, retain very consistent branding.

But what?

I can always do more Buffy, if I can find two or more regular players.

Or for a bigger change of pace, it being nearly Alien Day, something with spaceships and spooky.

Summer games?

Starting to consider a summer game. GEAS has no rooms booked for the rest of the academic year so might need space for more Last Dance, but also would be nice to offer to players preferring to stay home. (Last Dance physically was in part to get back to that for GEAS, in part for the added focus of travel, and in part for a player who prefers face-to-face. It’s a balance.)

Probably a break from Vampire, like last summer.

Earth Day

Today is Earth Day.

Do some good. Now and every day.

Scream: The Game

Five days after I have a Conpulsion quiz question note that there aren’t any Scream tabletop games, Funko announces one.

Looks pretty light based on the twenty minute aimed time.

I want to know how big the Ghostface miniature is.

Night's Edge

Night’s Edge, coming to the apparently still existing Freeform, sounds like Let The Right One In with a twist removed, but good creative team.

Not to be confused with the third party sourcebook for vampires in Cyberpunk 2020.

CYMERA 2023

CYMERA 2023, Edinburgh’s genre lit festival, in person and online June 2nd-4th.

The Conpulsion 2023 Quiz Answers

Answers! In red, except where another colour amuses me.

Zeppelin V Pterodactyls

An RPGnet request for B-movie titles reminded me of Hammer trying to raise funds to make various films that never got past a title, script or promotional poster... including Zeppelin V Pterodactyls.

Yes, you read that right.

The Mandalorian 3.08

Star Wars: The Mandalorian

Chapter 24: The Return

Justice for R5-D4!

The best part of The Mandalorian season three for me is that I’ve had a figure of my favourite new character for forty-five years.

(Why was the likeness so much better than R2-D2’s?)

Reminder: really big gigs are weird.

Although a little bit of lovable chaotic messiness helps.

(Also still not a fan of clapping for the planned encore, but I do appreciate making it obvious that there will be one by, for example, not playing the title song and lead single of the new album during the main set.)

Thank you person who was much closer.

Superman at 85

Happy 85th anniversary to Superman, and not quite the superhero comic but the superhero comic book.

Werewolf: The Apocalypse fifth edition

Werewolf: The Apocalypse fifth edition is now in preorders with a ten page preview on the page.

The subtitle and date announcement does unfortunately read like this:

“When will you rage?”

“August 31st.”

“That’s pretty specific.”