I have never been to New Orleans myself, so I can’t say how accurate it is to the region. It seems well researched, though. The guide includes information about New Orleans, Baton Rouge, LA, and Biloxi, MS. It features various locations, regional history, specific NPCs, and more. I’m only twenty-seven pages in as of typing this out, so I still have more than 100 pages to read before I’m done. The fact that this is free to access is incredible, because there’s no doubt that I would pay for guidebooks for Vampire: The Masquerade in different states or countries.
If you’re interested in checking this out, I have linked both the original Reddit post and the link to the Google doc.
Last week, I went to my first Dragons, Dungeons & Drinks game. Dragons, Dungeons & Drinksis an organization that runs monthly Dungeons & Dragons one-shots at various breweries in the area. There are some events at Brühaven, a brewery in Minneapolis. Some events are hosted at Bad Weather Brewing Company, a brewery in Saint Paul. Dragons, Dungeons & Drinkshas even expanded to Duluth, which is two hours north of the Twin Cities. I have been on their Discord for some time and was able to go to their November one-shot titled “Rise of the Queen”. Without knowing what to expect, I had such a fun time.
I loved how organized everything was. I arrived at Bad Weather around twenty minutes early. There was a small registration area where you checked in and were offered a name tag. After I checked in, I saw that on the desk were a ton of free dice for those who didn’t have any. I didn’t take any because I brought my own, but I liked how Dragons, Dungeons & Drinkshad that available. Once I put on my name tag, I was shown to my table. Our table was supposed to have five players, but only four showed up. I have no problem playing with people I don’t know, and this table was a hoot. For not knowing each other, I felt we all got along well. There wasn’t anyone interrupting or overstepping, and we all worked together to complete the mission. It’s nice to know more people who love TTRPGs as much as I do.
As far as the characters, there were several pre-made characters to choose from. I have no preference as to what I play, so I chose last based on what everyone else wanted to play. I picked Urla, the Witch of the Circle of the Stars. She was the Elf Druid. I like how each character has their own character art. Each character has their history, so you can understand a little about them. As someone who invests a lot into the roleplay element of the game, I liked this a lot. Urla is not very charismatic, so I chose to play that out throughout the session. Each character sheet is laminated, and each DM has a whiteboard erasable marker. I found myself using it to cross off any Wild Shape or spells that I cast.
The one-shot took about four hours. Our table was one of the last to finish as our combat went long. I say that it went long, but it definitely didn’t feel that way. I was engaged from start to finish. Normally, I’m the note taker in most of my groups, so it was nice to be able to put my journal away and pay attention to what everyone else was doing. Each Dragons, Dungeons, and Drinks one-shot is said to be standalone, meaning you don’t have to play the other adventures to follow along with this one. I would say that’s true. I didn’t feel lost or that I was missing anything by not playing in the other games.
This is a ticketed event, meaning there is a cost to play. There are several cost tiers. There’s the early-bird ticket, meaning you save five dollars if you buy ahead of time. This is $30. The standard ticket is $35. There’s the Hero-Tier, which grants admission while also donating to the Dragons, Dungeons, and Drinks community initiatives. This is $40. Finally, there’s another option called the Player Ticket Reduced Rate. This is for those who may need an extra hand. I purchased at the Hero-Tier because I like the idea of pitching in for someone else or for pitching into the organization. There’s also an option to donate to the dice goblin collection, which is how Dragons, Dungeons, and Drinks can offer free dice at each one-shot. I like the flexibility in tickets, and if I’m able to, I plan to purchase a Hero-Tier ticket every time.
I decided to buy Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2. I was on the fence about the game, but once they rolled back the paywall for clans, I wanted to buy it to form my own opinions. While watching gameplay online, the game didn’t seem bad. The biggest catch about buying a game on release is whether it’s going to be buggy. I have played a few hours so far, and I haven’t had any issues with the game freezing or being glitchy. I haven’t finished the story yet, but once I do, I will write a full review. I wanted to share a few first impressions of the game.
I mentioned the atmosphere of the game, but I am enjoying Seattle as the setting. As I walk around with Phyre, it feels like this is what Seattle would be like if it were the backdrop of a World of Darkness game. Speaking of Phyre, she has grown on me as a character. When it was first announced that the main character’s name was Phyre, I thought it was a little ridiculous. I actually prefer Phyre’s Elder name of “The Nomad”. In between playing as Phyre, another character in this story is Fabien, the vampire who talks to Phyre in her head. Fabien was embraced in the 1920s and was investigating a serial killer. I’m curious to see how the story is going to play out and how Phyre and Fabien’s story relates to each other.
One portion of the game that I feel has a learning curve is combat. In my first playthrough, I decided to play as a Ventrue. Ventrue isn’t necessarily known as being a combative clan, but since I’m playing a Ventrue in my Vampire game every other Friday, it felt fitting to play as a Ventrue in Bloodlines 2. When I first started playing, I was dying a lot. As an elder vampire, I felt I could handle a few Anarch ghouls. I couldn’t have been more wrong. One thing that has helped me with combat is dodging attacks. This sounds silly because this should be obvious, but I wasn’t doing that as much. On a successful dodge, Phyre will do a counterattack with a kick. Another thing that helped me is to approach combat encounters as stealthily as possible. There was one mission where Phyre had to rescue some kidnapped ghouls. Once I took them out silently, I took on the bigger ghoul alone, and that made combat a lot easier. For reference, I’m playing on Normal difficulty. The final thing I would add that helped me in combat was using vampiric abilities. One of my favorites as a Ventrue is Terminal Decree. Terminal Decree allows you to command a mortal to kill themselves. Although if you use this on bigger enemies that carry machine guns, they get confused and drop their weapons and forget to pick them up again. This was clutch. I read this tip online, and it worked like a charm. Combat can be difficult, but once I have learned what works, it’s been easier to play through the story.
There are other minor things that I haven’t been loving about the game, but I think I will save that for my review. When I think about my thoughts on the game thus far, I feel Bloodlines 2 was worth the money. The disappointment comes in for me is that this game could have been so much more than what we got. This is something I will touch on more in a later post.
I was pleasantly surprised to learn that there would be a new update to Animal Crossing! On top of that, this update isn’t exclusive to the Switch 2, so those who haven’t upgraded yet will still be included. While the update includes better graphics, I’m personally excited for the batch crafting feature. Normally, in Animal Crossing, you can only craft one thing at a time, but this update will allow gamers to craft multiple tools or items at once.
I don’t have anything else to say except that I’m excited! The update is set to release in January of next year.
I was having a conversation with my husband last week, and he mentioned how several retailers are pulling Xbox from their stores. This was news to me, and when I asked him why, he said it was because Xboxs aren’t selling like they used to. After a brief search, Microsoft denied that retailers were pulling Xbox consoles from shelves, but Costco apparently has. I may be out of touch with console gaming in general, but I find it shocking that Xbox isn’t selling well. Will Xbox remain competitive as a console? Or will Xbox become a thing of the past?
Xbox will always have a special place in my heart as my first console was the Xbox 360. I received it as a Christmas present in 2007, and I wouldn’t be the gamer that I am today without Halo 3, Gears of War, and Bioshock. Back in the day, Xbox had exclusive games, meaning games that could only be played on the Xbox. Halo is the most obvious, and I believe Bioshock was an Xbox exclusive at first. Exclusive games help sell consoles. There’s a reason why PlayStation has sold consoles since they have Uncharted, Marvel’s Spider-Man, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, and Last of Us. Last of Us technically isn’t a PlayStation exclusive, since it can be played on PC, but it can’t be played on Xbox, so I consider it an exclusive game in that way. If there aren’t any games that are specifically tied to Xbox, why would gamers buy an Xbox when they can play that game on PlayStation, amongst the other exclusive games?
The other thing Xbox had going for it was Xbox Game Pass. Xbox Game Pass is a subscription that allows gamers to download games from the game library. I used Xbox Game Pass quite a bit myself. Xbox Game Pass recently increased the price from $19.99 to $29.99 a month. You might say to yourself, It’s only a $10 price increase, who cares? However, it’s a 50% price increase, which feels like a lot even if the dollar amount isn’t. Gamers were cancelling their subscriptions as a result. Listen, I’m more than happy to pay for subscriptions or services that I feel are worth the money. If something undergoes a price increase without anything to justify it, consumers have every right to cancel. I believe PlayStation might have its own version of Game Pass, but I have never used it, so I can’t speak to it. As someone who has barely played Xbox, I will be cancelling my Game Pass subscription, but not because of the price increase.
I’m wondering what will happen from here? Will Xbox cease to exist? Or come back with new rebranding? It would be the end of an era, that’s for sure.
I started Nancy Drew: Warnings at Waverly Academy several years ago. I never finished it and ended up uninstalling it because so much time had passed since I last played. When I finished Nancy Drew: The Haunting of Castle Malloy, I decided to install and revisit this game. Nancy Drew: Warnings at Waverly Academy is one of my favorite Nancy Drew games I have played.
Nancy is sent undercover to the Waverly Academy for Girls, as some of the girls have been receiving threatening notes from “The Black Cat”. One of the students was hospitalized after someone had slipped something she was allergic to in her food. Her family is threatening to sue the school, so they need Nancy to figure out what’s going on. Who is threatening the students and why?
One of the reasons I liked this game was the number of suspects. At the core of all Nancy Drew games is a mystery. In some games, there are only two or three suspects, so it’s not at all mysterious when one of them is revealed to be responsible. In this game, there are several students that Nancy meets who all seem to have a motive for being The Black Cat. It kept the game intriguing for me because I wanted to find out who was actually behind it all.
Out of all the Nancy Drew games I played, I find Warnings at Waverly Academy to be one of the most straightforward games. There are times when, if you don’t talk to this NPC at this time, you can’t advance in the story. Instead, Nancy has her side quests, and each side quest would unlock the next thing Nancy needs to complete. There was never a time when I felt lost as to what I had to do next, and I have felt that in other Nancy Drew games. I’d add this to a list of Nancy Drew games that would be best for beginners.
I can’t talk about this game without talking about the mini-games. It’s Nancy’s turn at the snack counter, where she makes snacks for the other residents. One of the students wants Nancy to play a game of Air Hockey with her, along with darts. The games were a nice change of pace from the tougher puzzles of the other Nancy Drew games. There’s a memory game on a computer in the library where I ended up getting the high score on. This unlocked an achievement for me at the end of the game.
Speaking of, I like how the newer Nancy Drew games have achievements on Steam. It makes me more likely to replay this game in the future to collect them all. In my first play-through, I unlocked three out of fifteen, so there’s much more that I need to do to complete them all. It’s a nice touch and adds more replayability for me that the older Nancy Drew games don’t have.
Nancy Drew: Warnings at Waverly Academy is a favorite of mine. This would be a game I’d recommend anyone new to the Nancy Drew games to play first. As far as what’s next, I have two games left on my Steam backlog. Once I finish those, I will buy more Nancy Drew games so I can hopefully get closer to saying I have played them all.
The last time I played a Nancy Drew game was last March. It’s been a minute! Last Saturday, I had no plans, which is pretty rare for me. It was the perfect time to get cuddled up under a heated blanket and play a Nancy Drew game. I had two to choose from, so I picked Nancy Drew: The Haunting of Castle Malloy since it seemed like a spookier game. I liked this game a lot! While the mystery itself was a little campy and slightly ridiculous, I found I had fun playing it, which is what matters.
Spoilers for Nancy Drew: The Haunting of Castle Malloy below
Nancy is the maid of honor for one of her good friends. She flies to Ireland and drives to the castle where her friend is getting married. On her way, she sees what looks like a ghost floating on the road. This scares Nancy, and she crashes her car. When she walks to the castle, her friend tells her that her fiancé has gone missing! Nancy decides to investigate, especially because she wants to get to the bottom of what she saw earlier.
This Nancy Drew game had a notebook where you checked off completed tasks. This is so useful. Sometimes these games can be complex, especially when there are puzzles and things to complete, so being able to sort what’s left is needed. In this game, I liked being able to explore the castle grounds. In some Nancy Drew games, Nancy is isolated in one spot. I prefer the Nancy Drew games where I can explore an area. I think it’s more fun and challenging, since there’s more to do.
In this game, I didn’t find a mini-game that I disliked. My favorites were making the drinks in the Irish pub, playing the drums in the Irish pub, and the ring sorting game. I also liked the horse puzzle, which involved sliding the pieces into their corresponding places. I laugh at the playing the drums mini-game because it reminded me of Guitar Hero, or a better analogy would be Rock Band. There would be notes that would glide across the screen, and you would have to hit them at the appropriate time.
I know I just said that there wasn’t a mini-game I disliked, but we have to talk about the Chemicals game. In the latter half of the game, Nancy discovers an underground bunker, and to escape, she needs to set off a rocket. To do so, she needs the rocket key, which is hidden in a chemical fume hood. To get the key, chemicals need to be moved into their appropriate places. What makes this mini-game frustrating is how sensitive it is. If you so much as flick the chemical with the pliers, it causes an explosion that kills Nancy. I wish I could look up the actual stats because I think I killed Nancy at least twenty times. If I’m honest, it’s probably closer to thirty. Once I understood how to play, I was able to move through it quickly. It’s not that I disliked this; I think if there were more instructions on how to play the game, I could have figured it out faster. I’d be curious if this game were to be remastered; that’s one of the first things I’d recommend adding.
The last thing I’ll add is the campy story. It’s revealed that the person haunting the mansion is not a fictional person or a projection. It’s an actual woman who has secretly lived on the property. If that’s the case, how is she flying around? She uses a jetpack. You read that right, this older woman is wearing a jet pack and flying around the property. I can’t help but laugh. There wasn’t really a mystery to solve; the groom ended up finding a secret underground bunker through a passage in the castle and got trapped down there, but no one was really up to anything nefarious. The mystery was unsatisfying, but you know what, it was kind of entertaining, so I’ll give this game that.
Nancy Drew: The Haunting of Castle Malloy was entertaining and one of the more enjoyable Nancy Drew games I have played. The next Nancy Drew game I plan to play is Nancy Drew: Warnings at Waverly Academy. After that, I’ll have to buy a few more Nancy Drew games to keep me busy. I think I’m over halfway through playing through them all, but I have a few more to go.
The gameplay trailer for Marvel’s Wolverine dropped, and I could not be more thrilled. Marvel’s Wolverine is being developed by Insomniac Games, the same studio that made the Marvel’s Spider-Man games that I have loved. I had no doubts that Insomniac could pull this off, and the trailer did not disappoint. This is the Wolverine game that we have all been waiting for.
I won’t share too much about the trailer as I really think you should watch it for yourself. I will say this: I’m glad that this game is going to be rated M for mature. It would be a disservice to fans if this game were toned down on the gore. Wolverine’s story is bloody, and while some superhero content is for kids, Wolverine and Deadpool are for adults. The trailer was so good, it felt like I was watching a movie.
I have had this game on my radar, and I can’t wait to play it next year.
Last month, I wrote about Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines 2 hiding two of the clans behind a paywall. I mentioned in that post that this is equivalent to Baldur’s Gate 3 hiding the Wizard and the Barbarian in extra DLC. I was annoyed, and I felt the decision didn’t make sense. Since then, there was an update posted on the World of Darkness Discord where it was announced that they were listening to fans and would have an update for this on September 17th. Sure enough, the update mentioned that they were moving those clans away from DLC and would be made available for the game upon release. I am happy with this decision because I felt it was the right one to make.
I won’t reiterate my previous complaints here. Instead, I wanted to say that I’m glad the fans were heard. Most companies wouldn’t care and would release the game as previously stated. I’m curious about how this impacted pre-sales. Were there mass cancellations of pre-orders, and did they have no choice but to do this? I’m leaning towards feeling that this was the case. I want Bloodlines 2 to do well. As a fan of Vampire and World of Darkness games, I’d like to see more players within the TTRPG and LARP spaces.
While this update was made, there are some gamers who have no interest in playing the game. That’s completely valid. For those who have played the first Bloodlines game, they feel that this game isn’t a direct sequel because of how different Bloodlines 2 is. I can’t speak to this because I haven’t played Bloodlines. There’s one creator I follow who wasn’t planning on covering the game, and he received death threats. I can’t believe I have to say this, but could we not?? It’s never okay to send death threats to someone you personally disagree with in fandom spaces. If someone doesn’t like something or doesn’t want to play something, that doesn’t take away enjoyment for you if you decide to play the game. I can’t believe that this is something that needs to be said, but here we are.
Will I pre-order the game? I am much more interested in playing Bloodlines 2, that’s for sure. However, do I trust this game to be released without any bugs? That’s the big thing. However, I want to show support for the change in the clans being moved to the base game. I don’t have any other big video game releases that I plan on playing, which means I will have plenty of time to play Bloodlines 2 if I choose to do so.
Last month, Vesper’s story came to a close as our campaign had its last session. I have been playing as Vesper for two years, starting in July 2023 and ending in August of 2025. I am getting emotional writing this and for those who have never played a table-top roleplaying game, you might find this to be silly. When you play as one character for so long, you become attached to their story. I included some of my own personal struggles into Vesper’s story and as such, I became attached to her. This post serves as a goodbye to Vesper, but also being incredibly thankful that I got to be a player in this campaign.
For our last session, Vesper finally got to face her ex-husband, Garrick. In Vesper’s back story, prior to the events of our campaign, Vesper was married to Garrick, an evil vampire. Vesper left her marriage and trained at a magical academy with the ultimate focus of going back to defeat Garrick. Garrick, in turn, became obsessed with Vesper and wanted to be reunited with her. Vesper felt that in order for her to move on with her life, she would have to face him, even though she was scared to do so.
In this last session, I rolled seven natural 20s. This means I rolled a 20, seven times on a twenty sided die. This was unreal. Some might say that I’m lying or making this up, but I swear I am not. The other players looked at the 20 in my dice tray and could vouch for me if I needed them to. When I say the dice tell the story, I mean it. In Vesper’s story, I rolled many natural 1s which serve as critical failures. These had dire consequences for Vesper, so to see myself rolling so many natural 20s meant the world to me as a player. I have taken the two dice sets out of my dice pool, those belong to Vesper now. They sit on my TTRPG shelf along with my Vesper character miniatures.
While it’s easy to focus on Vesper, I think when it comes down to it, I’m so thankful that I found my group. Throughout these two years, I have become close with the players in our group. We exchange gifts with each other and we get together outside of our campaign to hang out. I find myself messaging the other players on Discord and chatting about all types of topics. I never thought that when I joined this group, I would meet new friends. I figured this would be a game and that’s it. In our epilogue session, one of the players bought us Coca Cola bottles with our character’s names enscribed on them. How cute is that?? On top of that, our GM gave me a d100 and told me if I made it through the campaign, I could keep it. There’s significance here as I rolled a natural 1 on a d100. It almost killed Vesper’s now husband Cam, but he survived. The d100 is now sitting on my shelf and serves as a souvenir for Vesper’s story and what it means to both her and me.
I can’t write this post without shouting out Badwolf Adventure Studios. Badwolf is where I play every week and they created my character art which I have shared multiple times and will continue to do so. Badwolf helped to create Vesper and gave her story life which is something I am grateful for.
With all that said, I’m excited to say that our new campaign will begin soon, so while Vesper’s story is complete, my time with Badwolf will continue. Here’s to Vesper; the character who taught me so much and who’s story will continue to stay with me for many years to come.
Bizarre Brunette 