C.T. Phipps's Blog, page 38
May 20, 2021
Deadlands: Blood Drive review
DEADLANDS: BLOOD DRIVE is a hardback edition assembling three adventures written for DEALANDS: RELOADED (Bad Times on the Goodnight, High Plains Drovers, and Guess Whose Coming to Donner). The adventure follows the player characters as they attempt to move 1,000 cattle across the territories of the Weird West in order to arrive at a plot of land that he's purchased to build a ranch. Deadlands has always been set in the Wild West but they have often avoided dealing with some of the m...
May 15, 2021
Deadlands: The Weird West (2021) review
I've always been a fan of DEADLANDS but I've also felt it was one of those games that cobbled together everything the writer thought was cool and shoved it in a blender before hitting frape. That's actually my jam as well but led to somewhat troublesome setting-building. Deadlands as it was, was kind of a post-apocalyptic 19th century United States (before they made an EVEN MORE post-apocalyptic United States with "Hell on Earth"). The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are roaming the Earth, m...
May 4, 2021
101 Street Crime and Personal Horror Scenarios
V5 Chronicle Tips
3. Ten Tips to Running the Anarchs in V5 4. Ten Tips to Running the Second Inquisition in V5 5. Ten Tips to Running the Sabbat in V5 6. Ten Chronicles for Sabbat PCs in V5 7. Ten Tips to Running the Camarilla in V5 8. Ten Tips to Running the Thin-Bloods in V5 9. Ten Tips to Running the Tremere in V5 10. Ten Real Life-Inspired Chronicles for V5 11. V5 NPC Update: Sullivan Dane 12....
May 2, 2021
Worldbuilding #4: The Rules of Vampires in my Books
Worldbuilding Posts
1. The Supervillainy Verse
2. The Lucifer's Star Universe
3. The United States of Monsters
4. The Rules of Vampires
So how do vampires work in The United States of Monsters and Supervillainy Saga verse? Probably not a question you have spent much interest in but something that I have spent a lot of time thinking about. There's hundreds of different kinds of vampires in fiction and getting the rules down for how they work is just the kind of thing I like to do. So, I figured you...
May 1, 2021
Fevre Dream by George R.R. Martin review
I became acquainted with Fevre Dream due to a very unusual story. The song "George R.R. Martin is not your [Expletive]", a letter by Neil Gaiman that was put to music by John Anealio. It's a message that fans should stop harassing the author into completing the series. One of the lyrics is recommending the reader try Fevre Dream, a one-shot vampire novel by George R.R. Martin completed in 1982. Being the addict of all things undead that I am, I couldn't help but pick it up. So, what di...
April 30, 2021
Blood Price (Vicki Nelson #1) by Tanya Huff review
BLOOD PRICE is the first of the Vicki Nelson (or Blood) series by Tanya Huff. Originally published in 1991, it's hard to believe that it has been thirty years since I remember this book first coming out. It helped establish my love of urban fantasy, a genre that hadn't been entirely defined yet, and also propelled me on my way to becoming an author of it myself.
The premise is that private detective Vicki Nelson is a former Toronto police officer who left a...
April 26, 2021
Mortal Kombat (2011) review
I am a huge MORTAL KOMBAT nerd. I played the first three arcade games in movie theaters and have kept abreast of the series in various formats across multiple consoles since. I can tell you who Nitara is and what elements of the original movie were incorporated in the greater canon. The fact I know there is a canon is something of a feat in itself but Mortal Kombat has always had more of a story than most fighting games. I even watched the cheesy television show but I'll be honest that was 9...
April 14, 2021
101 Mundane Details for Vampire: The Masquerade
V5 Chronicle Tips
75 Mundane Details for Vampire: The Masquerade
V5 Chronicle Tips
April 7, 2021
Vampire: The Masquerade: Children of the Blood review
CHILDREN OF THE BLOOD is a supplement to CULTS OF THE BLOOD GODS and a stretch goal for its Kickstarter. Basically, it is a book of NPCs (or SPCs as White Wolf is now styling its terminology) as well as some rules for running cults in the World of Darkness. It is a spiritual successor to CHILDREN OF THE INQUISITION, which was a book that provided some important power players like Dracula and Etrius during the early days of the line. It actually reminds me a bit more of CHILDREN OF THE REVOLU...
