2015, comedy, manga adaptation, 12 episodes: AniDB.
Continuation of the high school harem comedy. Hero is a yakuza heir, who to stop a gang fight has to pretend to be going out with tsundere heroine #1 (rival yakuza heiress), but really wants to be involved with kind sweet ordinary heroine #2.
Jon, one of the organisers of Wycombe Warband, lives locally, and I had a couple of games against him. With images; cc-by-sa on everything.
2015 science fiction. At a regional American SF convention, things are going with the usual level of chaos… until the entire con hotel gets kidnapped by time-travelling androids.
This Dungeon Fantasy supplement deals not just with guilds but with organisations that interact with adventurers: the congregation, the cabal, organised crime, nobles, and the like.
When we had the gazebo roof reconstructed, I cut down the old LED light strings as they were starting to fail and there wasn't really room for them in the new configuration. Now I have a new lighting arrangement.
This long-running games convention started off as a Diplomacy gathering. These days it's a blend of board-gaming and roleplaying. With images; cc-by-sa on everything.
2013 young adult science fiction, sequel to Earth Girl. Jarra is Handicapped, unable to leave Earth for any of the colony worlds where most of society now happens, but after a daring rescue she's a hero. Now her archaeological and historical skills will be tested in an entirely new field.
2015, 13 episodes. Horror comedy by Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk and Ian Brennan: a masked killer is murdering members of the Kappa Kappa Tau sorority house.
For the last few years I've been making predictions of the Academy Award winners. Last year I called six winners out of twenty predictions; this year it was eight out of twenty-three.
1980 historical mystery. In 1327, Friar William of Baskerville and his novice Adso of Melk try to solve a series of murders at a monastery in northern Italy.
More from the Science Museum last Boxing Day Bank Holiday. Images follow: cc-by-sa on everything.
2009 mystery, the tenth book in Lovesey's Peter Diamond series. After a Civil War battle re-enactment on Lansdown Hill near Bath, one of the soldiers disappears. Later the police find a headless skeleton in the same area. Later still, a homeless man is found dead with a major head wound. Are the cases connected? DI Peter Diamond is determined that they are.
Melee, by Rikki Tahta, is the third of the games I was showing off at Essen 2015; it's an area-control wargame for 2-4 players.
2015 vaguely steampunk science fiction. In Rapid City on the Pacific Northwest coast, Karen Memery is one of the "seamstresses" at Hôtel Mon Cherie (sic). It's not a bad life, but she's about to get in the way of a powerful man on his way up even higher.
It used to be traditional on a personal blog to rant about the horrible service one had received from a big company. (These days it does no good unless it's on Twitter or Facebook.) But there doesn't seem to be enough of the other side.
2015 fantasy novella in the World of the Five Gods (formerly known as Chalion). Lord Penric, an impoverished nobleman, is on his way to his betrothal when he comes upon a riding accident. Before he knows what's happened, he's inherited a demon, and everyone's looking at him as though he might explode at any moment.
Mini-TringCons are all-day house gaming events run by the organiser of TringCon, in Deepest Buckinghamshire. Images follow: cc-by-sa on everything.
2006 alternate-history mystery, first in the "Small Change" trilogy. In 1949, Britain is at peace with the Reich, which is still fighting in Russia. At Farthing, a country house in Hampshire, one of the architects of that peace is murdered. Jews and Bolshevists are immediately blamed, but Inspector Carmichael thinks it's more complicated than that.
This supplement updates and expands the Sparrial race, from the original GURPS Aliens, to fourth edition.
2015 military fantasy. As the war between Lascanne and Denland drags on, the gentlewoman Emily Marshwic finds herself fighting on the front.
As always, spoilers abound. See Wikipedia for production details
The Doctor - Sylvester McCoy Ace - Sophie Aldred
The show stayed on Wednesday evenings against Coronation Street, and the first episode of this series got the lowest ratings of any Who episode ever.
1991 mystery, second of Douglas's novels about Irene Adler. Bored in Paris, Irene takes on the mystery of a series of tattooed suicides. (Retitled The Adventuress in recent reissue.)
On 9 January 2014 I made my first post to this blog.
On Boxing Day because we felt like it, one long game and two shorter ones. Images follow: cc-by-sa on everything.
2015 fantasy/SF. Wasp is an Archivist, hunting, studying and binding ghosts for the goddess Catchkeep and Her priest in a world that has suffered some great catastrophe in the distant past.
2015, 10 episodes. Elliot Anderson suffers from crippling depression, paranoia and social anxiety, but still manages to hold down a cybersecurity job. Except now he's being recruited by an activist cracking group.
2004 military SF, second of the Kris Longknife books. Thanks to deft political manoeuvres, Kris is now a princess as well as a naval lieutenant. But when a friend goes missing while they're both on leave, she can't really do anything else but go and look for him.
2013-2015 science fiction, manga adaptation, 4 or 10 episodes: AniDB and here.
In a world of cyborgs and poor data security, Major Motoko Kusanagi tries to catch the bad guys. A prequel of sorts to Ghost in the Shell.
2015 science fiction. The people of a small English town cling on to life after an economic collapse, under the protection of the Process, an ultimate allocating algorithm. But the Process seems to be spending scarce resources on recreating a battlefield of the First World War…
No Christmas party this year, but a good session in the back room of the Castle Tap. Images follow: cc-by-sa on everything.
Some trailers I've seen recently, and my thoughts on them. (Links are to youtube.)