I watched this film the other night. Mixed feelings don’t quite describe where I am at with this. I really liked Donnie Darko and wanted to really like this movie as well. It had a lot of the same narrative structures that DD had but failed on some of the pay offs and characterizations. What bothered me most I suppose is that the movie had potential, it just never seemed to get there.

And I wanted it to, I really did. It had an amazing cast, even The Rock pulled his weight. Does anyone aside from me feel like Johnson is an actor in search of the right roll? He keeps getting these swing and near misses and I’d like to see him in something where he hits because I feel like he could really do something cool.

We had a fun cthulhu game last night. Because of the number of players I abandoned my previous idea of some mysterious occult group and instead went with something larger, a TV crew for a new show on the Discovery channel called ‘Paranormal Pursuits’ (think ‘Sightings’). We had our talking head, the camera and sound guys, the driver, the producer/lawyer and the producer/researcher. It proved to be a suprisingly effective group. They wound up taking out the big bad, but destroyed a house and made some homeless squatters more homeless, but at least alive.

I like the TV team idea for a modern Call of Cthulhu game, obviously Delta Green hit it first, but I’d want to head in a different, slightly less grim direction if I ran it as a campaign. (But only slightly less grim) It didn’t hurt that the sound and camer guys actually worked for a TV station IRL and had a pretty keen grasp on the gear they would have and how things would work.

Next game night is Pirates!, possibly HorrorClix and maybe a board game or two (there was some Kill Doctor Lucky talk, that game is fun on a bun).

Just a sideline, but I was thinking of Hartford Foundation recruitment lines, they came along like;

‘So you are ready for the secret ruin of the world.’

‘Now you get to see the horrible magician behind the stage show.’

Tricky stuff these intro lines.

[  Mood: Happy ]
Me and the designated girlfriend decided to get the hell out of dodge yesterday and went to a near by college town to eat some wacky food and swill beer in hipster bars. In the process of doing this we also hung out and played both Fluxx and Zombie Fluxx. Both of which are tremendously fun. Fluxx is insanely easy to learn and very quick to play. I have to say I like the almost zen koan nature of the core game slightly more then Zombie but both are really fun. I really recommend this game to anyone who wants a card game that is quick, easy and fun to play on the fly.

So I am putting together a one shot Call of Cthulhu game set in the modern era. Instead of doing the Delta Green thing (which I normally would) I decided to go a different direction. I made up The Hartford Society. They are a group of people dedicated to fighting the occult tide of the end times. They have all the tropes: a deceased wealthy benefactor, offices in London and New York, a large library and stuffy, officious officers.

I will have premade characters and will probably run one of the adventures from one of the Chaosium books. I find it ironic that I have 100 pounds of these damn books and hardly, if ever actually run them. I almost always run things of my own design. Go figure.