Here's what might have been published in the next few days:

UFO Spotted Over Norfolk Witnesses across Norfolk claimed last night to have seen an unidentified flying object. Mike Fallon, publican of the Horse and Crown at Upper Haddon, said: "I saw a set of lights flying across the night sky far faster than any plane I've ever seen or heard of; it made no noise, and turned on a six-pence to fly back across us. Ministry of Defence spokesman said that the lights were probably caused by the effect of moonlight shining through marsh gas. A representative at the near-by USAF Upper Haddon airbase said that they had picked no objects up on radar but that they could not release the radar data due to reasons of "operational security". Daily Mirror	Extra-Terrestrial Body Found In Norfolk The Society has received news from reliable sources that the security forces retrieved the body of an alien humanoid from a river in Norfolk, shortly after the sighting in the area of an unidentified flying object. The alien, possibly the pilot of the aforementioned UFO, was described as thin (to the point of being skeletal) with white skin and purple hair, and was apparently dressed in a form-fitting one-piece silver suit. MOD spokesman have declined to offer any comment to the Journal. The Journal of the Society of Hidden Truths
Glam Rock Bass Player Found Dead Confusion exists over the fate of Starshine bassist Zakk Zacheria Zackson the Zack (a.k.a. Geoffrey Fossington) who apparently disappeared last night shortly before a gig at a USAF airbase in Norfolk. His shocked and confused bandmates told Sound & Vibe that he: "nipped out for a smoke and never came back, we thought he'd had enough and walked off... then a bunch of police came into our room and said that he was dead!" The Norfolk police were not able to give any further information about the case except to confirm the fact of Fossington's death. They said that reports of his being shot multiple times were dangerous and uninformed speculation. In a comment to our reporter, his mother, Lady Sheila Fossington, said: "He was such a lovely boy... but he needed to eat more and get some sun. He was all skin and bones. I blame the drugs." Bandmates report that Fossington, famous for his purple-dyed hair, was wearing his trademark silver catsuit at the time he disappeared. Sound & Vibe Magazine	Trespassers Arrested In Wildwood Forest Local police have reported the arrest of a group of trespassers who were camping illegally in the nearby Wildwood Forest. The trespassers, who were staying in two VW Vans, and who were apparently dressed mostly in German Army army-surplus uniforms, were described by police as "peaceful hippies". Upper Haddon Police Constable Joe Phillips said, "They might talk a good fight, but when I turned up with a few of my boys they were as meek as lambs!" Phillips later added that he had received some assistance from the Elite River Unit. Upper Haddon Parish Gazatte

What Actually Happened?

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Tags: blockbuster, cop show, roleplaying

Thought I ought to explain something that I left unexplained in my previous entry.

The core mechanic of Cop Show is that you first - via the playing of cards - earn action points for doing cliched cop things (e.g. driving your car through a pile of boxes) and for coming up with cliched cop sayings (e.g. "We are the police you stupid bint!"). Then you spend the action points doing cool things, typically to defeat the bad guys.

Given that you start off with no action points, this then forces the game into the classic three-part one hour cop show (as explained in the game's Designer's Notes section).

First, the cop protagonists fail to stop the bad guys doing whatever it is they've done (a bank robbery say) because they have no action points.

Then, they charge around doing cliched cop things (being chewed out by "the chief", leaning on informers, beating up low-life scum etc.), thus earning action points, and hopefully finding out who/where the bad guys are.

Finally, they charge in and nab/stop the bad guys, and this time they succeed because they have the action points.

Once the episode's finished, you work out its "appreciation ratings" based on action points earned and action points spent, the basic gist of which is that you want to have spent more action points than were left unspent.

Why? Well if you earned loads of action points but then didn't get / need to spend them, then it means that the episode contained lots of cop cliches, but not much actual action. And if you get three episodes in a row with negative ratings, the series is cancelled.

In the case of BlockBuster... Well there's still two more episodes to turn things around!

Tags: blockbuster, cop show, roleplaying

Gene "Strange Gene" Le Strange (General T): I can't believe the Chief Constable didn't invite us to his daughter's wedding. I've known Mandy for ever!

Nathan Warrington (TAFKAC): The Chief Constable's... called Mandy?

Gene "Strange Gene" Le Strange (General T): What? No, his daughter's called Mandy!

...plus innumerable other great lines, now sadly lost like tears in the rain. While things were a bit rough - not least of which due to me still getting to grips with both a new system, and a new style of GMing - I'd like to think we had a seriously good laugh. And the guys were great, especially considering that I'd neglected to tell them that they had to wrap it all up in a single session.

Lastly a review, as it might have appeared in the papers:



Next week, I think perhaps a spot of international intrigue.

Tags: blockbuster, cop show, roleplaying

We started our Blockbuster campaign last night with character creation, which in Cop Show has a unique twist.

Each player describes four things that his character is good at. These can be as broad or as narrow as he likes, and with whatever degree of expertise he chooses. But...

...where his character is good at those four things, the character of the player sitting to his left is equally bad at those things.

So if you're sitting to my left, and I say: "I'm an excellent shot with all kinds of guns!" then you'll be a terrible shot with any kind of gun. Each player takes it in turn to pick a quality their character excels, starting - in our case - with the player who rolled highest on a dice roll, which was John.

Here are the three characters we produced.

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So, on to the first episode!

Tags: blockbuster, cop show, roleplaying

Having temporarily finished General Tangent's Star Trek game and with John not quite being ready to resume the Orient Express campaign, I thought I'd take the opportunity to run a game I've been wanting to run for some time, which is...

...jameswallis's as yet unpublished game, Cop Show.

Now the thing about Cop Show is that it's not a roleplaying game where you play real policemen (or women) in a police setting. Instead, it's a game where you play police characters in a 70's or 80's tv show about policemen (or women). Now I love this sort of thing, as can be seen by the two Dream Park articles (Dream Park on a Budget and The Storm Planet Rescue Game) that I wrote for the first issue of Critical Miss. And I've always felt, very strongly, that where you have a game where you have this concept of it being something within something, the outer something needs to be obvious and visible or else you'll just forget that's it there and miss the whole point.

Which means that Cop Show won't be half as much fun if you set it in a very good, realistic TV show with no obvious, jarring, "exactly the sort of stupid thing they put into TV shows", elements. Too good, and it will work so seamlessly that you might as well be playing cops in a cop game (as opposed to tv cops in a cop show).

What you need is a really bad idea for a TV show. Cheesy, over the top, and an obvious attempt to cash-in and rip-off a current big name film. Add a recent hit song gratuitously chosen as the theme for three reasons only - it's popular, it supplies a snappy (if irrelevant) title, and you won't have to pay a composer to write something original - and you've got a winner... or a loser? Look, you know what I mean.

Anyway, I think I've come up with something very, very bad.


We do character creation on Monday. And any of you who know anything about Cop Show will know that Cop Show character creation can be very fun and very twisted.

Tags: blockbuster, cop show, roleplaying