Wir sind die Roboter indeed. Excellent cardboard xylophone work, that one kid.

We played a six-player game and whilst it was fun, I found it really easy - I didn't feel like we had any chance of failing to identify the murderer. Maybe we just knew how to interpret the ghost's clues too well.

Yes well, big news today is that Paradox Interactive has bought White Wolf! I don't think anyone saw it coming. The position of Onyx Path is unclear right now, but I think they'll probably carry on making pen and paper editions. PI probably have CRPGs in mind, and they're a fantastic developer of their core series so…

You need to give them each an action figure to represent their character, mint condition boxed, then inflict injuries directly to these effective voodoo dolls. First hit removes the box, and hits beyond that can be dealt according to the roleplay. Fall in a vat of acid? Dunk your figure in Mountain Dew. Hit by a…

The Ancient Ones in the original were quite weak in combat - you could basically skip closing gates, gear up and fight. Expansions made the combats more difficult, with players having to save up rare items such as gate trophies to be able to fight for more than one round. Plus there's a battle deck that means…

Call of Cthulhu is my go-to for horror, and invesigative games in general. It sits happily between the two. A standard adventure consists of players sifting through clues, trying to figure out what on earth (or Yuggoth) is going on, and then confronting it in a terrific action sequence where it's perfectly acceptable…

I love me some Arkham Horror. Just one or two friends, maybe a couple of investigators each, every possible expansion so that the game takes an hour just to sort the card decks, and then a high probability of everyone losing. For some reason everything Lovecraftian is most fun when you die or go insane.

Sadly I've no time to play much this weekend. I promised a certain person I'd have an article written, and I intend to get it finished before Monday.

THIRD ENDING:

Christ, don't writers here listen to the Labyrinth soundtrack every day?

When they combine it with the powers of a Roomba, I'll be excited.

Yes, I find most T-shirts that combine two pop culture properties utterly awful. Similarly for those that try to be funny with a reference thrown in. If you like something, and you want to show that, just try to be a little bit classy with your sartorial choices.

I'll just say thanks to everyone who contributed classical culture mashups, though I still feel there's some distinction between what we have now versus what happened back then. There's a sort of laziness to cameos and combinations these days, probably because the majority of people think something is cool before…

I used to be an adventurer until patrolling the mojave made me wish for a nuclear winter in the knee.

Truly, if Gilbert and Sullivan were alive today would they not be composing video games?

So how about that story about a dog, John?

Oh, more pop-culture crossovers, how drole. Seriously, is it simply the over-saturation of creative properties or something else that is now causing everything to be mashed-up with everything? Did this use to happen in eras past? I've no idea if anyone tried to shoehorn Gilgamesh directly into The Iliad or such.

I'd suggest Tales of Symponia - which already has a strong operatic feeling to it, with each character having their own theme. The focus would be on Lloyd and Colette, with Genus and Raine as principle supporting cast, as they journey to try to save the world, on the way discovering the fate of Lloyd's mother,…

That was some superb enthusiasm! He forgot to mention the ending number for the musical would, of course, be the entire cast performing the Adam Jensen Safety Dance ;)

Next week is Essen Spiel, so I'm doing some last-minute training for the usual competition and some research on what I'm going to seek out whilst I'm there. Reviews to come!