Der PigDog's PigBlog

Untitled Vampire Game with Martin. Martin played a refugee and orphan from a civil war between rival ethnic groups in a small east African country. I played a charismatic older boy assembling a gang of child soldiers among the refugee. Despite the oppressive subject matter, play was in a sense relaxed; we didn't drive towards any climax or conflicts, we simply narrated events as they struck us. In the end, the boy survived the gang, but his overall odds look grim, and I doubt he'll live much longer. I have complicated feelings about the ending of the game. It worked, as in, it felt right, that the boy should escape the gang by jumping off a bridge, and in the process breaking his leg. But I don't want things to be up whim like this in general; the chance of wimping out and pulling punches is too high. I want a resolution method with teeth. My current thought is that the Vampire should add a die whenever they take steps to feed on the Victim, and the Victim sh...

A game of Monsterhearts! Misha, Lani, and Divya. Lani has played a good deal of 5e. Misha has played my vampire game and some OSR. Divya completely new. I explained the concept of the game -- play out the messy lives of queer teen paranormal romance and horror, like in Vampire Diaries, Twilight, and similar. Turned out we had very view Twihards in attendance (actually I was the only one) and the most common reference point was Riverdale. I also explained the medium of roleplay, conversation. You say what happens for things under your authority. In this case, just one character, for whom you advocate, their thoughts and actions. I say everything about the other people and world, though I'll often ask the others to say things instead. We read aloud the principles for the game. We read aloud the skins and everybody picked one. Lani chose werewolf, Misha vampire, and Divya infernal. This got the group buzzing. The skins are such fun! I talked about the dangerous topics we ...

A new cut of Dracula (1931) by some internet guy from FanEdit.org . The pacing just better in this version; I prefer it to the original. Dracula is a very good movie, and if you haven't seen it, I recommend it! I've also seen Nosferatu (1922), Dracula (1958), Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979), Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), and Shadow of the Vampire (2000). Of those, Nosferatu the Vampyre is head and shoulders above the rest, followed by Shadow of the Vampire. Maybe Nosferatu is good if you listen to it with a good score and the right color grading, I don't know. Renfield is on a carriage in the middle of Europe. Everybody around him is a superstitious peasant, and he just wants to get his business done. Renfield and the Romanian innkeeper Look at the differences in their clothes and manner. They're suffering from a little cross-cultural miscommunication. The innkeeper is jovial, laughing and smiling, because he is sure that Renfield is just misunderstanding him -- nobody...