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.

At Gen Con last year, I purchased the Final Girl core box along with the feature film box, Camp Happy Trails. Both games are published by Van Ryder Games. What interested me about the games is that they are solo games. This means that you play them by yourself with no other players. It’s funny, you think that if this were a game I would play myself, I would have played it a lot sooner. I didn’t get a chance to open this until a few weeks ago. Final Girl was a fun and narrative-driven adventure with numerous replayability options.

Final Girl is a game in which you play as both the Final Girl and the slasher at the same time. The goal of the game is to either kill the slasher or kill the Final Girl. In the Camp Happy Trails box, there are two final girls: Reiko and Laurie. Both Final Girls possess distinct abilities that can be utilized in the game. There’s a bit of a deck-building component, as there are cards that the Final Girl can play to move around the board, search for items, and attack the killer. Some cards are free, while other cards are purchased with time, as in the time it takes to perform actions. There can be a lot to keep track of, but once I played a few rounds, it was easy to pick up.

I loved the dice rolling aspect of the game. For the Final Girl’s actions to work, you would need to roll the dice. Fives or sixes counted as successes, while anything four or lower did not. Depending on the successes rolled, it would impact how well things went. For example, I could play a Sprint card, which allowed the Final Girl to sprint around the board. If I rolled one success, they could go a certain number of spaces, but if I rolled two successes, I could move more. If I fail the roll, it could end my turn, or I could lose time, which meant I couldn’t spend as much to buy new cards. I like this component of the game. In my first game, I was rolling hot, but in my second game, I wasn’t rolling well at all. It completely changed the tone of the game.

One thing I don’t pay as much attention to is how the game is designed. In the Camp Happy Trails box, each side of the box pops off, and it’s the killer’s health and the game board. To put it back together, you slide it back into the box, and it seems like it’s magnetically held in place. It makes for easy storage and is easy to put the game away. This isn’t something I normally care about, but I felt it was worth mentioning.

In each game, I successfully killed the killer with both Reiko and Laurie. Once this happens, there’s a card in an envelope that you can open only when you kill the killer. It unlocks special items for both Reiko and Laurie, which can be used in other feature film boxes. I think this is neat. It allows for more replayability with both Reiko and Laurie, and the items are connected to them as Final Girls. I could see this being fun to include Reiko in another feature film box with her special item and trying the harder version of the game. Speaking of which, there are two modes to the game. I played the easier difficulty because I didn’t know what I was doing, but I would be open to trying the higher difficulty with each Final Girl to see how it varies.

I liked playing Final Girl a lot. I could see myself buying the other feature film boxes in the future. If I find myself at Gen Con again, I’ll definitely wander towards Van Ryder’s booth.

Last week at Gamescom, it was announced that Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines 2 was going to release on October 21st, 2025. In addition to this, there were pre-order bonuses for those who pre-ordered and for those who pre-ordered beyond the base game. It was revealed that two vampire clans, Toreador and Lasombra, were locked behind a DLC. For those who aren’t gamers, this means that the base game doesn’t include Toreador and Lasombra, and to get them, you would have to buy them as additional content. Internet reaction has been swift, and there are a ton of angry fans upset by this. I have talked about Bloodlines 2 before, so of course, it shouldn’t be a surprise that I address this.

Let’s talk about the clans locked behind a paywall. To try and explain this, imagine if Baldur’s Gate 3 locked the Wizard and the Barbarian in additional paid content. For a game that’s based on a TTRPG, I find it odd that the base game wouldn’t include all the clans. If anything, I’d understand if clans like Lasombra, Banu Haquim, or Salubri would be additional content since they weren’t pushed into the fifth edition of the game, but Toreador? Toreador is a hugely popular clan, and the fact that it’s not included in the base game is irritating. Let’s be clear, Bloodlines 2 isn’t the first game or franchise to not include everything in the base game. However, this feels like a major misstep to me.

Another critique I have been reading is the fact that you can’t create your own character. In Bloodlines 2, players play as Phyre, and while you can choose your clan, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of customization beyond that. This isn’t a deal breaker for me, I don’t mind playing as a pre-made vampire, as long as I get access to the clans that I want to play. With that said, I would prefer to at least be able to customize my appearance and hairstyle. It’s an RPG, and with most RPGs, character customization is a part of the game. I’d also add that I enjoyed the Vampire: The Masquerade visual novels on Steam, and I didn’t get to customize anything about the character.

Will I be pre-ordering this game? Nope. With that said, I rarely pre-order games. The last game I pre-ordered was Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, and that’s because I knew the game would be good, and it was. Will I play this game? I want to, but I don’t want to waste my money either. If I had to guess, I would lean towards playing it because I want to see if I like the story at least. No matter what, this game is disappointing and had the potential to be so much more than what it is.

Several weeks ago, Badwolf Adventure Studios hosted a Daggerheart one-shot utilizing one of the campaign frames from the rulebook. I played Daggerheart once last year before the game’s release. I haven’t played it since the beta and was curious if there were any substantial differences. I was also watching Age of Umbra, which is Critical Role’s shorter series taking place in another campaign frame from the book. In the past, I expressed skepticism about the gameplay, specifically with the lack of initiative order and how rolling with d12s would work. I’m happy to say that I am impressed with Daggerheart as a system and I’d join a campaign if I had the opportunity to do so.

In our one shot, we had seven players. It was nice to see a full table of other players who were curious to see how Daggerheart would run. I ended up playing a Faun Ranger with the Beastbound subclass. This let me choose an animal companion. As a side note, you will never catch me having an animal companion in Dungeons & Dragons. Why? I would be emotionally destroyed if my animal companion were to die in combat. In Daggerheart, when the animal companion loses its health, it doesn’t die. Instead, it becomes stressed, either running away in combat entirely, hiding, or taking another action. At rest, the player can choose to clear stress, and if so, the animal companion comes back. This is perfect. It lets the Ranger class shine, but also allows players to have the comfort of knowing that the animal they choose will never die.

The Ranger in Dungeons & Dragons is notorious for not being as powerful as the other classes. I think it’s a shame, really. In Daggerheart, the Ranger has vastly improved. There are abilities that the Ranger can initiate, which include the animal companion. In our group, I had a robotic tiger named Petunia, and she could benefit from some of my Ranger abilities. I think that’s rad. There’s nothing more fun than sending a robotic tiger in to do some work. After our session, one of the players also commented on how much fun the Ranger was and how they would consider playing the class next.

In Daggerheart, there were two things I was skeptical about. The first being a lack of initiative order. During combat, players decide who goes first, and once a player rolls with fear, the GM goes next. Our group did a great job at asking other players who haven’t gone for a bit that they should take their turn next. Our group had seven players, so it’s easy for one person to accidentally dominate the game. With that said, our GM was great, and he queued players up as well, so they could take their turns. The overall gameplay experience was seamless.

The other thing I was skeptical about was rolling two d12s, one representing hope and the other fear. Our group, for whatever reason, always seemed to roll higher in fear. The GM could have wrecked our group, but chose not to. With this being a one-shot, I don’t think it was the GM’s goal to kill our characters. For Daggerheart campaigns, I think it’s important to settle on a difficulty level. Do players want an easier game or a tougher campaign? I think this would dictate how the GM spends fear based on what the players want. This was something I was nervous about, but in the two times that I have played Daggerheart, it was a non-issue.

Daggerheart has been a fun game to play. I’m curious to see what else is developed alongside the system. I wanted to give a special shout-out to Jordan from Sortilege, who was our GM for the game. He did a great job at keeping all seven of us on track. If Badwolf Adventure Studios decides to do more Daggerheart one-shots in the future, I will definitely be there.

For the first time in my life, I am not actively looking for a TTRPG group. I never thought I would say that, but here we are. I have spent a majority of my time searching for groups, so it’s kind of shocking that I finally have reached a point where I’m at my max of what campaigns I can make time for. I am in three campaigns right now, including the new Vampire: The Masquerade campaign I joined. This group is the same group I played Candela Obscura with, but instead, we switched to Vampire. The concept of this campaign is fascinating and I wanted to share more about it.

This campaign takes place in the Twin Cities in the 1920s. Most of my Vampire playing experiences are stories that take place in the current day. The fact that this takes place in the 1920s will be neat. I did a lot of research to create my characters and what would be realistic during this time period. This campaign will be interesting because we will be creating two characters. The first character would be the sire, an older vampire. The second character would be the vampire our first character created. This concept is fascinating to me. There’s a lot of back story that needs to be created. Why would our vampire choose this person to turn? What motivates them? What are the differences between this older vampire who is less attached to humanity versus the vampire who was just turned and still wants to keep their humanity? These questions were at the forefront of my mind when writing everything out.

There is still a lot of finalizing I need to do, so I won’t share much more than that. The only thing that I will share is the clan and I chose Tremere. Tremere is the clan of Blood Sorcery and notably considered blood witches. I have only played Tremere in various one-shots, so this is my first time playing a Tremere in a longer form campaign. I like paging through the sourcebook and learning what blood rituals I can learn. There’s one ritual that I’m working my way up to and it is NASTY. It’s a good offensive ritual to severly injure someone and I can’t wait to level up enough to unlock it.

I am curious to see how our sessions develop! Once I know more about my characters and their back stories, I will be the first to share it here. I can’t believe I’m in two Vampire: The Masquerade campaigns simultaneously after I went so many years without playing the game once.

During Darkness Emergent Los Angeles, it was announced that World of Darkness is being rebranded to White Wolf and will be the official publisher for World of Darkness properties. This includes: Vampire: The Masquerade, Werewolf: The Apocalypse, and Hunter: The Reckoning. For those new to World of Darkness, the original role-playing books were published under White Wolf Publishing, which is now defunct and has been merged with a gaming company, subsequently acquired by another gaming company. If that sounds messy, it’s because it is. This announcement comes full circle, meaning World of Darkness products are going back to the White Wolf name. Is this purely a corporate stunt? Or will this improve upon the World of Darkness brand?

Let’s start at the very beginning. White Wolf and Vampire: The Masquerade were created in the 90s by Mark Rein-Hagen. After Vampire’s release, there were Werewolf: The Apocalypse, Mage: The Ascension, Wraith: The Oblivion, and Changeling: The Dreaming. In the 1990s, numerous editions and revisions were made to the games to enhance their quality. With the business downturn and Mark Rein-Hagen leaving, White Wolf was acquired by CCP Games in 2006. In 2015, Paradox Interactive acquired White Wolf Publishing from CCP Games. World of Darkness partnered with Renegade Game Studios to sell World of Darkness licensed products. I’m skimming over quite a bit of history, but to simplify this as much as possible, that’s where we are.

It took me more time than I care to admit to research and cite all this information. Going back to the announcement, what does this actually mean? In the announcement, it says, “As White Wolf enters its next chapter, it brings World of Darkness’ IP closer to fans and empowers a new generation of storytellers to explore and expand its rich universe.” My thought is that White Wolf and World of Darkness would move away from Paradox and Renegade and own everything. I don’t see this as a bad thing. This history is convoluted, and when you introduce new players to the brand, it would be easier if White Wolf owned everything. Given White Wolf’s history, I think there is skepticism with the announcement. I’m curious to see how this plays out in the next six months to a year from now.

My first thought when I heard this announcement was, are we getting a current Wraith: The Oblivion book? I came into World of Darkness later, so I’d be curious if some of these older games will get a rebrand. Wraith: The Oblivion is on Drivethru RPG, and reading the description of this game, this is absolutely something I’d love to play. Based on the description, players play as ghosts who recently died and are now trying to survive in this gothic underworld. How cool is that? There’s a lot of opportunity with this rebrand; it depends on how White Wolf approaches it.

It’s too early to say more than this, but I’m hoping for an update on some of the other World of Darkness properties. The World of Darkness property has so much potential, and I’d love to see these games become more popular in the TTRPG space. The last thing I will say, I’m not an expert in World of Darkness; I’m simply a fan who loves the game. If I mis-summarized anything or if something needs to be updated, let me know in the comments below.