It’s the end of February — where has the month gone? I don’t know about you but February has absolutely whizzed by. Let’s get things started with one of my absolute favourite images that AI has ever created for me.
When I was a kid there was this crazy, amazing cartoon that came on every so often to some incredible music by Rondo Veneziano. In this video a spaceman comes down to rescue artefacts from a sinking Venice. It was called Venice in Peril — that wasn’t actually the name of the piece of music, but it had these amazing concepts of a robotic orchestra playing in the sinking city. They’d been switched on and they were just going to carry on playing — they don’t care whether the city is sinking underwater, they were created to make music. I was able to take a frame from the video, feed it through an AI, and it generated the cello player. I was just blown away.
To have this retro image from your childhood exploded into chrome robot reality is something of which I had never dreamed. To use AI to take a frame from the video and make it real is just amazing. It took a good long time to get the image in the title just right – the cellist in the red is from the video, the guitarist on the right also from the video. The violinist was tricky to recreate as well. Without getting into the politics of it, making AI images that are specifically what you want is still very difficult to get just right. As I say, I love this image and I wanted you to know all about it. Let’s get on with the blog after this musical break…
Productions & Editing
This month we recorded for the Miskatonic Playhouse! It’s an adventure called “The Overhead Encounter” which was an adventure submitted way back in 2023 and I’ve been wanting to run it ever since. I’m so busy that when I’m not busy there is not space and when there is space I’m busy on another edit but the start were right! What a great time it was! No spoilers here, but essentially some disparate folks come to a disparate location and have a little unplanned encounter – go watch the show when it comes out to find out more! I think I managed to say how fun it was to run but It’s hard to say everything you want to when you’re in the middle, running the game, producing and recording it – there’s a lot going on. If you prepare something beforehand and just read from a script it sounds terrible, so I just spout on and hope I say something good. Now it’s recorded I have the post-production challenges of syncing the files from players dotted all over the world!
For Roll4Sanity. I’ve been chipping away at the 80s Japanese Pastimes video to go with the Yumi investigator video, and that should be coming out in the next couple of weeks. Good to get that one finished.
Adventures Played
On to Adventures Played! It’s all coming to a close. We reached the seemingly final episode of Horror on the Orient Express, only for things to go awry and discover there is an extra part. No spoilers here but if you know the Orient Express, we try an alternative route to the destination and find out that things are very much up against us. The Keeper tells us it is a deadly conclusion so I’m not entirely sure my doctor is going to make it through.
The Berlin campaign concluded with quite frankly an assassination! These characters are supposed to be normal people — not soldiers, not anything like that. But when faced with endless tormented dreams and apocalyptic visions they get it into their heads that they have to save the world. After all the taunting and insanity brought upon us by this Priestess of Cthulhu, we finally decided we had to take her out.
We had this grand plan of pushing an obstacle out into the road to stop the car, attacking it with machine gun fire, fire bombs, and sniper fire — and the rolls were not with us! I did get a couple of good shots though, taking the driver out in a single shot and stopping the car, before having to come in for some up close and personal combat. Sadly, my character was arrested along with the character I was trying to help escape. Fortunately, with a 70 Credit Rating, I was able to hire the best lawyers and was deported from the country – a very good outcome for poor Walter. All he wanted to do was open a bar in Germany and put on big, glitzy, glamorous shows. But that’s not a very Lovecraftian outcome – there are no happy endings for those touched by Cthulhu.
Forever GM – Masks: Peru
Next is out new section that I’m calling Forever GM! Masks of Nyarlathotep got off to a wonderful beginning! I’ve really gone to town with my players on the character creation process as the Masks campaign can last years. Players could be with their characters for a long time, particularly if you are playing Pulp Cthulhu, which allows real continuity for the players.
And it’s wonderful to be able to share this with friends with which I been gaming for a long time. I was especially pleased with one particular reaction we had in our first session. When you go into the Masks campaign there is a particular introduction which is a seminal moment in game and I actually got a gasp out of one of my players when they met this character. To be the Keeper that gives that moment to a player – something they will remember and recount to others – is very special to me. I’m very lucky to have got to know Sweet, Yeti and Socke and become good friends. We’ll share all the highs, lows, and turmoil of Masks and come through it together. That is quintessentially what roleplaying is about: a group of friends sitting around telling stories about strange things that only happen in our imagination.
That was the brief month of February – I think that’s covered everything! Let’s turn the page to see what kind of image we have on the calendar for March – a singer in a very modern-looking speakeasy. I’ll tell you more about that next time! Thanks for reading and we’ll Roll4Sanity again soon.
