Craig Oxbrow
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craigoxbrow.bsky.social
Craig Oxbrow
@craigoxbrow.bsky.social
500 followers 260 following 2.2K posts
RPG GM/player/writer. Big geek in general. Pronounced 'ow', not 'oh'. He/Him https://thewatchhouserpg.blogspot.com
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Reposted by Craig Oxbrow
Guillermo del Toro on wealth: "a wealthy man is a man who has enough, not a man that needs more. If you have enough to invite someone for a beer? You're rich. If you have a yacht, planes, islands, and you still need more? You're not rich."
(one of, drat it, not if. Ah well...)
Ran a Vampire: The Masquerade one-shot for Halloween and went with one if the most reliable ways to make PCs hate NPCs - make their evil plan petty. (Here, attacking a band and hospitalising club security to ruin a rival's business for the night.)
Guillermo del Toro has of course also made a version of Pinocchio!
Maybe the Bride of Frankenstein was the real friend we made along the way
Reposted by Craig Oxbrow
Sometimes RPGs are like board games would be if you had a significant number of players who said “I just can’t see the point of a game where you’re not trying to checkmate a king”
Reposted by Craig Oxbrow
Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in D minor (Ode to Joy) in Die Hard
Reposted by Craig Oxbrow
I'm available for all your worldbuilding, IP development, and narrative needs.
Why should you care?
WARHAMMER FANTASY
WARHAMMER 40,000
VAMPIRE: THE MASQUERADE and THE WORLD OF DARKNESS
SOLASTA- award-winning, 5e-based CRPG.
Check out my LinkedIn profile for more: www.linkedin.com/in/graemedav...
Reposted by Craig Oxbrow
Vampire: The Masquerade® - Bloodlines™ 2 (2025)
The medium: Cinema! Then Netflix in two weeks.

Gameability: Frankenstein is pretty gameable, and this version has a demonstration and a less secret process altogether so someone could follow Victor's experiments.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=x--N...
Frankenstein | Guillermo del Toro | Official Teaser | Netflix
YouTube video by Netflix
www.youtube.com
Also fun to see Edinburgh as 19th century Edinburgh rather than 19th century London or Vienna or Prague etc.

Also also surprising adorable mice.
Full of beautiful shots, it's on Netflix in two weeks but I was very glad to see it on the biggest screen I could.

Dark but humane, with some great ideas fitting in neatly. I particularly like the addition to the frame story.

Some on-the-nose moments, but sometimes you have to.
Very very Guillermo del Toro while being a closer adaptation than most, though Victor and the Creature both have sympathetic and monstrous moments. Lots of little and big references - I spotted the Bernie Wrightson influence and was glad to see a credit as well as thanks.
#31DaysOfHorror

24: Frankenstein (2025)

Guillermo del Toro was always going to adapt Frankenstein.

And it's great.
Beautifully done stop-motion, I'd love a chance to see it in the cinema.

The medium: Netflix

Gameability: A fantastical creation and a quest that follows, and this one also lets you embarrass the people ruling Italy in the 30s and 40s.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Od2N...
GUILLERMO DEL TORO'S PINOCCHIO | Official Trailer | Netflix
YouTube video by Netflix
www.youtube.com
The main chill here is human, as it starts with the Great War in a prologue rivalling Up for sadness and then moves forward to Italy in the 30s and 40s. The lead representative of the authority of the time gets a humanising element and rejects it.
Comparisons to the Disney version are inevitable: The songs are pleasant but none of them are When You Wish Upon A Star or I've Got No Strings. And despite the lightning-lit frenzied creation and a couple of visits to Death, it doesn't try for a WTF horror moment like the bit with the donkeys.
Both are adaptations of stories about men creating artificial sons and how the world treats them. It has some cast and creatives in common too.

It's charming, funny, sweet, at times sad or wistful.
#31DaysOfHorror

23: Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio (2022)

Okay, this is a stretch, but as the film Guillermo del Toro co-directed before Frankenstein a relevant one.
Reposted by Craig Oxbrow
In my own critical toolbox "Doing a Zhukov" is knowing you have an important character you have to enter late into the plot, so you have to make them walk in and shrug their enormous coat off so everyone knows it and falls instantly in love.
Reposted by Craig Oxbrow
Reminder that Spike eating Nazis is canon.
(Warning for survivors of watching Torchwood: does have a bit of Burn Gorman at the hanging scene)
Also fun to see Edinburgh as 19th century Edinburgh rather than 19th century London or Vienna or Prague etc.
Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein is great. Very VERY Guillermo del Toro, full of beautiful shots, dark but humane, with some great ideas fitting in neatly.

It's on Netflix in two weeks but I was very glad to see it on the biggest screen I could.