First off I’d like to state that all previous leaks about GTA 6 is a hoax. All of the leaks regarding GTA 6 taking place in any other area than Vice City, is a hoax.
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Grand Theft Auto VI is designed to be the most developed video game in history, and redefine open sand box games, letting the player fully immerse in the world and storyline.
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In Grand Theft Auto 6 the game will take place in Vice City, but the previous storyline leaks etc, is all fake. The plot is completely different,. The game will host 3 protagonists, one being a middle aged white man named Johnathon Brooks, but is often referred to as John. John is going thru a mid-life crisis, and lives on the returning area called Starfish Island. John essentially is a life long career criminal, and exposes the player to a new crime element, fraud. John was born in Carcer City, and moved to Vice City at age 17, after running away from his foster parents, not much is known about his previous life before then, except he was in a very poor family.
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John got into the fraud game in the early 2000’s, and he is 38 in game. he earned his money thru many fraudulent activities like credit card fraud, bank fraud, and did a few small bank jobs, and laundered his money with his own car wash business. He lives in a $1.8m mansion that he bought with his illicit gains, and the FIB are on to him. He borrows money from the local gang in Little Haiti, where fraud is very prevalent, and he starts getting back into his older habits to pay off the gang. The FIB notices this, and he ends up doing dirty work for the FIB, in order to keep his freedom.
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The second character is Samuel “Shotta” Stevens, who is a member of the Haitian gang. He is a black, Haitian based character with more character development, than Franklin from GTA 5. He is 26 in game. The game also focuses more on crime, and the gang element. The player will experience the brutal reality of the gang life in Vice City, in the slums of Little Haiti, from loan sharking and repossessing the unreliable clients, to brokering the sales, that being kilos of cocaine, for the South American Cartel. Samuel lives in a Section 8 apartment, in the Little Haiti Neighborhood with his grandmother, Amy.
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Samuel just wants to move out of the hood, but loves the gang lifestyle, and this gets him caughtup in the FIB drama with John. The FIB cuts him a deal also, if he can snitch out his gang, which the player can choose to cooperate, or refuse. This will change the storyline of Samuel dramatically.
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The Third Character is a man named Xavier Gonzalez. Xavier is a latino man born in Vice City, he is 40 years old, and a cocaine kingpin. He lives in Downtown Vice City in his lavish $1.5m penthouse. Xavier is friends with John from the beginning of the story. Xavier is apart of the story no matter what option you choose, providing cocaine to John to sell, OR, Providing cocaine to both John AND Samuel, to sell together, and to strengthen the gangs funds. The gang system is similar to Red Dead Redemption 2’s system, and also has elements of GTA San Andreas. Xavier is also tied in directly to the nightclub business as well, having stakes in the returning Malibu Club, now run by the Jimenez Family, a latino Mafia, who has ties directly to the South American Cartel.
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Each Character has a different personality and lifestyle, and will be a exceptional experience for the player. Former characters from past GTA’s will be making appearances. Luis WILL be returning, being a manager of the Malibu Club, Stranger and Freaks missions are returning with a more in depth story for every one of them
The map of GTA VI, will be bigger than GTA V and RDR2 combined, having several counties, having Vice City, based on Miami, the Vice Keys, based on the Florida Keys, The Everglades, based on the swampy Everglades in Florida. The game will also feature Orlando, which is named Corlado, and Tampa, named as Gulf Shore City, but downsized a bit. The game will feature sprawling countryside outside of Vice City and Corlado, with countryside towns, named Canisville, Centura, and Sentinel Point, along with towns along the Vice Keys. There is an Air Force Base, based of off Eglin Air Force Base, named Fort Sentinel. The Ocean is the Atlantic Ocean, with more shipwrecks to discover, plants and animals, and more. The game itself has as many animals as RDR2, and the player can hunt if they choose, although this is just a more of a minigame. Vigilante Missions will be back, along with Taxi Missions.
Character Customization will be better, from the belt on your waist, to the socks on your feet. Choose to your liking of luxury watches, rings, chains, earrings, featuring plain jane, to diamonds and rubies, emeralds, and more. Belts can be worn along with hightops, to lowtops and boots, and dress shoes. Pantlegs can be tucked into the footwear you choose, if the option is available. Tattoos will be back, along with hair customization. John is white so he can tan, or be sunburned, and the core system from RDR 2 is back aswell.
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Tattoos will feature opacity and can also fade over time. You will be able to adjust the size of the tattoo. It will be able to be placed on over 10 different area of the body depending the size.
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Since the core system is back, you will have to also bathe, to stay clean, otherwise you may notice changes in your cores.
You will have to eat to replenish cores, so you can cook in your safehouse, or go eat out in a restaurant, whether it be fast food or upscale. All characters can have relationships with women, similar to GTA 4 and GTA San Andreas. You will be able to buy extra safehouses around the map, and the amount of vehicles will be the same amount that are in GTA Online, and more. Every vehicle will be returning, and first person mode will be more enhanced, with more realistic vehicle interiors to immerse the player into every aspect of the game. South America will not be apart of the game, only Vice City and surrounding Areas.
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Skills from GTA V is also being integrated back, along with exercising, to boost strength. Agility is a new added skill, and Strength will affect how hard you punch, kick, or melee in general.
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Special Abilities so far, will not be coming back. This may be tweaked before release, but if they return, it will not be a major part of the game.
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Car Customization is more advanced, different leather trims can be changed colors, along with wood trims and marble trims. You can add satellite radio, which lets you listen to radio stations in Los Santos, and Liberty City, but so far there is only two stations from each of those cities. You can also listen to all the radio stations across the counties. Neon is back, new spoilers and liveries as well, Along with different colors of tint. Subwoofers will be a standard upgrade as well.
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Los Santos Customs is gone, and Pay and Spray is back, along with Viceland Kustomz, and Sentinel Bike Shop. You can also modify certain parts at the car dealerships.
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The drug dealing system from GTA: China Town Wars is also returning, but a bit revamped. This is where the post office system comes in, from RDR2. Pounds of Marijuana sourced from Los Santos delivered by mail, to a post office near you. From weed to tabs of LSD, all the way to meth, heroin, and cocaine, you can reap major profits.
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Casinos will be returning as well, one being a resort, others being small-time casinos. You will be able to rent a room in the casino and resort. The casino is named as the Malibu Casino and Resort.
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Gunplay is improved with new realistic sounds. Interiors are just as detailed as GTA V or RDR2, if not more, I’d say. The insurance system from GTA Online will be integrated into GTA VI’s story mode, so losing a vehicle will not happen.
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There is an abundance of new and old activities, that being over 50 strangers and freaks missions, drug supplying, or drug running, similar to GTA TBOGT’s drug missions. You can hunt, as stated before, but is more of a minigame than a money maker. You can fish as well, as fishing is a very popular sport, in modern day Florida.
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There will be four strip clubs scattered around the map, one of them named Vanilla Unicorn South East, which is owned by Trevor Phillips, who is planned to make a cameo, only to be featured in a cutscene so far.

Video games are great. They’re a ton of fun to play and can be a cheap way to occupy your free time. They help people stay in touch with friends or even make new friends. Games are a far more interactive form of entertainment than just watching TV or movies. They keep your brain engaged and usually do a great job of rewarding players for their success. With all these benefits, it’s no surprise then that some people might get addicted. You could probably even make a good argument that all well designed games should be addicting in some way. For this article I want to look at the different ways that games make themselves addicting, decide if this constitutes good or bad gameplay, and finally make a decision on whether companies should make games like this.

Two types of addicting games

From a design perspective, there are two different categories of addicting games. The first category is games that have addictive gameplay. What this means is different from person to person. Some people love the “one more turn” types of games like the Civilization series. Others enjoy the “one more match” multiplayer games that can range from shooters, to MOBAs, to sports games. There’s another group of people that fall in love with MMORPGs and what they have to offer.
The second category of addicting games are the games which employ addicting behavior. In these games, it is not the gameplay itself which is addicting but the way you play the game. These games might include addicting gameplay, but more importantly, they encourage forming habits. For this article, I want to focus on this second category of games and the gacha genre specifically. To be clear, many different types of games use these strategies but the gacha genre seems to rely on these heavily. The recent release of Genshin Impact for PCs got me thinking more about this, and I would like to use it as sort of a case study. In the next sections I’m going to break down all the things that I’ve seen gacha games do to encourage player addiction. I have not played Genshin Impact and know almost nothing about it other than some gameplay videos I’ve seen. I am curious to know how many of these things the game does or will do.

Lowest possible barrier to entry

It’s very important if you want to get new players addicted to your game, you have to get them to try the game first. In the world of video games, the easiest way to accomplish this is to make your game free. What harm could there be in trying out a free game? You see equivalents like this in the real world too. Have you ever heard of a casino where you have to pay to park? What about a casino with a parking lot that is too small? Many casinos will even offer free shuttle services. The most important thing is to get them in and get them started.
It doesn’t stop there, though. Most gacha games will also start you off with one of the strongest characters. This accomplishes three things. First, it helps ensure you will have success immediately when you start playing. Most of the starting content for gacha games is laughably easy. It would almost be impossible to fail. They want to get those success endorphins kicking in as soon as possible. The second reason is that it immediately shows the player the power difference between lower tier characters and higher tier characters. Think of it like a company giving out free samples. First one is on them, but you’re going to have to pay if you want more (either with money or your time). The final reason for doing this, is to help players get over a time gap. For gacha games that have been out for a while, you will often see them enticing new players or returning players with offers for a free highest tier character if you start playing now. People who play gacha games know these characters can be very time consuming to acquire so it helps them feel like they won’t be starting so far behind other players.

Multiplayer content

Speaking of other players, including interactions with other humans is a must for this genre. The most common form of this is PvP matches. The higher your rank, the better your reward. PvP matches allow players who have been playing for a long time or spent a lot of money to feel like they are stronger or better than other players. These types of PvP matches are not set on even ground like most multiplayer focused games. Players don’t start with equal stats and have to rely on their game knowledge or experience. Instead, players with stronger or higher-level characters can straight up beat lower level players every time. It’s their reward for being committed to the game. PvP matches are also a great way to endlessly extend game time.
Multiplayer doesn’t have to mean PvP, however. This might be co-operative content where you join a guild to help chip away at strong bosses or maybe just visit other players’ bases to see what they have and compare. This results in content that you can’t access unless you join a guild or maybe currency that you can’t acquire if you don’t have in game friends. These games are essentially forcing players to join and stay with a community. You are far more likely to stick with a game when you feel like you’re part of the group. Gacha games make sure it is easy to join guilds or fill up your friends list for this reason.

Consistent and repetitive game time required

Here’s a great article about forming new habits. To sum it up, the article states new habits can be formed using a cycle of three things:

1. Reminder (the trigger that initiates the behavior)
2. Routine (the actual behavior you perform)
3. Reward (the benefit from doing the behavior)

Does this sound familiar? What if I list it like this:

1. Send phone notification that your energy is full or that special productive time is happening right now
2. Get players to log in at least once daily
3. Make sure daily quest rewards are the most productive way (if not the only way) to make progress

These games are trying everything in their power to get you to form a habit of playing. They don’t want you to play for 40 hours straight and be done with the game. They might start off with the ability to play a lot, but that doesn’t last. After a while, players end up logging in to do the same few things every day. Gacha games know this gets repetitive and maybe a little boring so they will usually include a way for the game to “auto-play” itself through these daily tasks. At this point, it’s the habit that is important. You’re actually playing the game a lot less now and just logging in to make sure you get your daily reward. It’s not uncommon for gacha games to even include a monthly reward for players who log in every day of the month. You should be skeptical of any game that gives you a reward for simply logging in daily. Chances are good they’re trying to form a habit.
If you’ve been playing one of these games daily for over two months, it’s likely that you have already formed a habit. Does the thought of not playing for a single day make you uneasy? Try it yourself. An even bigger test is to turn off alerts and stop playing for a week. Do you still have a desire to play after one week of not logging in? I find that I usually don’t.

Time limited events

Next up on the checklist are the time limited events or sales. It’s very common in these games to have events that last for maybe two weeks every other month or so. During these events, it is especially important for players to log in daily and do the limited time event quests. These events are often how new characters are introduced and added to the game. Players know that if they want these characters, their best chance of getting them is during this event only.
These types of events are the game design equivalent of the well established limited-time offer. Check out this article on ways to maximize your limited-time offer. How many of these have you seen in gacha games?

• Promote Your Limited-Time Sale
  • Popups as soon as you log into the game informing about the current events
• Convert Abandoning Shoppers with a Timely Popup
  • Popup before you exit the game stating how much energy you have left or unspent action points
• Leverage the Holiday Season
  • Most gacha games include events that coincide with the major holidays
• Offer Free Delivery for a Limited Time
  • This is the equivalent of giving bonus currency during a flash sale. You don’t want to make people regret their past currency purchases by putting it on discount, but you can reward them for buying more currency right now.
• Create Urgency-Driven Popups
  • Sales that you get access to only once for a short time such as new player promotions available for the first 24 hours after starting a game and then gone forever.
• Drive Urgency with an Email Countdown Timer
  • The games usually make sure to let you know there’s only “one week left” or “24 hours left” until the end of the event. Almost never do they just list dates and rely on you to be aware of when the event is ending.
• Recommend Products in Your Emails
  • Make sure players know exactly what cool costumes or characters they can only unlock during this event
• Tease Upcoming Limited-Time Sales
  • A calendar showing the schedule for upcoming events

Gacha games want you to think that these are just fun, limited time pieces of content to enjoy, but they are also thoroughly designed to persuade you to spend money. By having constant limited time events, players are encouraged to continue playing the game for fear of missing out on new characters. It’s also par for the course that newly released characters or gear are exceedingly strong. This is just one more way to incentivize players to always want the newest characters. They are pretty much guaranteed to be stronger than existing characters. They might eventually get tuned back down but they always start out overly strong especially in games that have PvP content.

Are these games actually fun

I am not ashamed to admit that I love gacha games. To me, it is really fun collecting new heroes and the risk/reward nature of rolling for new characters can be quite satisfying. These types of games often have gameplay that I personally find quite enjoyable too. They can range anywhere from turn based strategy, to tower defense, to action games. It’s almost unfair to call them a genre since it is more like a common mechanic included in a game of some other genre.
“Almost unfair” is important wording here. Inevitably these games all seem to follow the same formula. The game will start on a very high note. There is almost no repetitive gameplay and players are constantly unlocking new features, characters, or areas to explore. Eventually though, you will hit a content gate. It’s impossible for any company to produce new content at a rate faster than players can consume it. Gacha games need you to keep playing forever, however, so they have devised a way to extend content almost indefinitely: the difficulty grind. Figured out how to beat a boss for the first time? Next up is beating it with 200% more health. The only way to do that is to make your characters stronger. The only way to do that is to log in every day and do your daily quests. Welcome to the end game gacha grind. The further in a gacha game you get, the longer and longer it takes to increase your characters’ power.
Some people find this type of grinding to be right up their alley. As much as I enjoy playing these games, they all lead to this same destination and this is usually when I end up moving on to the next game. I’m still waiting for the gacha game which does not try to last forever. Dragging the game on indefinitely doesn’t have to be part of a gacha game, it just fits the business model that gacha games currently use.

Is it wrong to make addicting games

I spent a lot of time thinking about this. I generally tend towards the idea that people are responsible for their own actions. I want to say there is nothing wrong with making an addicting game where people can spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars on a game. After all, who am I to decide what they should do with their time or how they should spend their money? How is it any different than letting someone spend thousands of dollars on shoes, or a purse, or cookie jars, or a car? Something about that, however, just doesn’t sit right with me. After thinking about it more, I realized it’s not an equivalent comparison. For all those other items, there is nothing inherently addictive about the product. Someone might be addicted to collecting shoes, but the shoe itself has no addictive properties.
I’m willing to go one step further. It’s OK to design an addictive game if the results of that addiction are not an immediate and direct benefit to the company. For example, I have heard from many fans of the Civilization games (myself included) that they have on occasion played until the sun unexpectedly starts rising the next morning. To me, that definitely sounds like addictive gameplay and the impact to the player could be considered harmful. Firaxis, however, did not benefit in any direct way from me staying up all night playing the game. Maybe I’m more likely to buy an expansion or the next version of the game, but while in the middle of this activity, there were no direct or immediate steps I could take that would benefit the company. The gameplay being addictive wasn’t designed to lead to anything other than the person playing the game more. If you are a satisfied customer, the company doesn’t care if you played for 10 hours, 50 hours, or 200 hours. If there was a game out there which used every one of the addicting tactics I listed above, I would have no issue with that if there was no way to spend additional money on the game. I’ve not heard of a game like this, but it’s possible one exists.
The gacha games I know of, however, most certainly do benefit directly and immediately from players being addicted. By allowing players to spend endless amounts of money, it is in their best interest for you the player to get addicted and play the game for as long as possible spending as much money as possible along the way. It’s hard to argue they think otherwise when these types of games include pricing models that are so far outside the previously established pricing norms for video games. A fully priced AAA game typically sells for $60. Maybe there is a collector’s edition which could sell for up to $150 dollars. In that case, you know exactly what extra you are buying with your money. It is guaranteed to arrive with the product. Gacha games, however, will let you spend hundreds of dollars every single day with no guarantee of acquiring what you hope to get. Again, in theory, there is nothing wrong with a game allowing players to spend as much money as they want on the game. But how can I interpret a game designed to be behaviorally addicting while also allowing unlimited spending as anything other than malicious? It is the combination of these two things which leaves such a bad taste in my mouth.
In the end, I do think companies have a moral obligation to not take advantage of their customers. Making games like this does tell me what you think of me as a customer. You view me as a target to extract as much wealth from as possible. If the industry keeps going this direction, it will only be a matter of time before regulations are put in place to protect consumers, much like a legal drinking, smoking, or gambling age. Here’s one company that was willing to openly talk about the issue and I think they should be applauded for it. Companies don’t have to use this design and business model to make a profit, it just allows them to make a bigger profit. Ultimately, the choice is yours to play games of this nature. I know many people who’ve played games like this for years and never spent a dime. You should just know what you’re getting into. It’s the equivalent of putting health warnings on cigarette boxes. For anyone that’s played Genshin Impact, how did I do? Does the game break the mold, or does it follow the tried and proven path?
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https://hexanephgames.com/2020/10/23/designing-addicting-games/

||Audentis Fortuna uivat, baby. ||

General
Name: Shu Ming Leung (No, Ming is not their middle name.)
Gender: Non-Binary; they/them
Sexuality: Asexual
Birthday (in case anyone wants to get them a present): 23 July, 2018
Birthplace: Thackerville, Oklahoma
Languages: Greek, Latin, English, Cantonese,
Alignment: chaotic neutral
Hobbies: Making bets with whoever's feeling lucky , sleeping, vaping, and researching about whatever they are currently hyperfixated on
Ailments
Disabilities and disorders: Dyslexia, ADD, addiction, moderate depression
Family
Mommy dearest: Goddess Tyche; Lady of chance, providence, and fate
Father: Li Jun Leung
Appearance
Height: 5'5", but slouches until they are 5'3.5"
Eyes: Dark brown, sometimes mildly bloodshot, but no one can ever determine if it's from weed or crying
Hair: Thick, wavy cinnamon brown hair, kept short and loose
Skin tone: Warm ivory
Style: Shu dresses very casually most of the time; in loose hoodies, jeans, and a worn out pair of vans. They do enjoy spicing up their plain clothes with accessories they find in various places. Seldom seen without their vape pen. At CHB, they wear the standard T-shirt with a loose pair of joggers, opting for more practical running shoes.
Personality
Reckless and willing to do anything if someone prefaces it with "I dare you..." or "I bet you..." , rarely ever takes anything seriously with the 'rarely' put there for curtesy, sociable, and rather charming.
Shu tries not to be predictable, leading them to to be friendly one day and colder the next. Aside from this, they do have moments of introversion during depressive episodes.
Powers
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Ability	Description
Extreme luck. (passive)	Allows for a higher ability to dodge hits and more general opportunities; not death defying
Ability to see others' luck. (active)	Must yield complete attention to the target; appears as faded numbers above the target's head
Ability to boost the likelihood of specific outcome. (active)	Takes an immense amount of energy and concentration; does not guarantee results
Ability to change someone else's luck. (active)	A very draining ability that can increase or decrease someone's luck; a temporary measure

Backstory
"See, my dad met... Her, at a casino. Call it luck, a curse, whatever you want, but it was the only time he stayed away from those places. Too bad She left me alone down here. How unlucky for me."
Born to a single father with an appalling gambling addiction, Shu spent their early life neglected and left to be, essentially, raised by their wonderful neighbour and mother figure, Ms. Stephanie Davis. As they grew older, they started acting out to gain their father's attention. Despite having a child, Li Jun continued to spend his time outside of work at their local casino. His luck got worse as Shu grew up, but nothing could stop his problem.
They begun to do reckless things, hoping one of these incidents will get their father to spend more than an hour at a time with them. They tried drugs, shoplifting, property damage, and vandalism; unfortunately, Shu's impeccable luck kept them away from serious consequences. The only time anyone ever called Li Jun was when they skipped school for more than two weeks.
Shu was considered a very problematic children and student due to their reckless behaviour and learning disabilities, but even that did not waver their father's attention. They are smart, at least, that is what Ms. Davis and school guidance counsellor says, they just needs to apply themselves. They are lucky, which is more accurate, so says the police. They can never seem to catch Shu or gather enough evidence to take them in for questioning.
Their calling was rather late compared to their peers but, sure enough, Ms. Davis sat Shu down one evening, while Li Jun was at the Palladium.
"My dear... Do you ever miss your mother?"
"I mean, it's not like I ever met her. Dad doesn't even have any pictures of her." Shu slumps further down in their seat. "Just stories."
Ms. Davis stood up suddenly, a look of determination crossing her face, and took off her long skirt. Underneath her stood a pair of elegant goat legs. In shock, Shu continued to sit still and simply stare. Ms. Davis trots over to her guest room with three bags.
"I took the liberty to pack up your things." Ms. Davis smiled as if nothing strange is happening. "It's getting a bit hard to mask your scent."
Where are they now?
Shu stares at towering arch, the true start to their new life, with their expression twisted with doubt.
"You know, I used to think summer camp is for kids with rich parents, but I guess it's for ones with deadbeat ones, huh?", Shu says. "Sorry. I'm kind of nervous I guess..."
They take their first step into Camp Half-Blood.

In a previous article I looked into the practicality of building a Mage Tower for yourself. That was received fairly well, so I think I'll move onto my favorite class, the Artificer. Now, an Artificer doesn't necessarily need a tower as a base of operations, and given the somewhat more limited spell selection and 1/2 Caster nature, thought I'd focus more on the innate ability of an Artificer to be a small business owner by merits of Tool Proficiencies! Mundane and Magical Item are simple to make with all the Tool Proficiencies you are able to acquire at a relatively low level.
This guide could also be quite beneficial to Forge Clerics or any Wizard, Bard or Caster that knows Fabricate.
I recommend several resources to look up or familiarize yourself with before you take on this enterprising business opportunity.
1) Chapter 6 of the DMG features the Downtime Activity of Running a Business. It breaks down to 1d100+X, X being a number of downtime days that you spend running your business. If you can get above a 60 on the roll, congrats, your business makes a profit for that month.
2) Eberron: Rising from the Last War. You'll need this book if you want to play an Artificer.
3) Exploring Eberron presents two new Artificer Subclasses as well as a few new infusions I reference here, namely Healing Salve and Quiver of Energy.
4) Acquisition Incorporated is a great source for new rules to allow a business to be run while you continue to adventure, allowing a constant background stream of income to help fund future adventuring opportunities. You can use as many or as few options as you'd like, but the Hireling options to run the business in your absence are a nice touch.
5) If you don't want to use traditional Hirelings, but a more customizable NPC, you could use the Sidekick Options from the Essentials Kit and the upcoming Tasha's Cauldron of Everything. I will be recommending Sidekicks for each of the business models in the examples below.
6) Waterdeep: Dragon Heist gives basic operating costs for running a tavern and One-time and Recurring fees for Guild Memberships. Given the prominence of Guilds in Eberron and other settings, it is a good standard to use for other settings.
7) Xanathar's Guide to Everything has a fantastic breakdown of Artisan Tool uses and Skill Checks that will be immensely useful to Artificers or businessmen looking to practice a trade.
The following examples will be based on the following assumptions:
1) You will be running this business on your own.
2) You have options to get hirelings or other PC help should you want/need it.
3) You are level 6. This is the first level where a lot of this becomes feasible because you gain your Tool Expertise class feature and are now the best on the block at using Artisan Tools. You also gain a nice expansion to your Infusions that you can learn and I would think that knowing the Enhanced Weapon Infusion would count as having a schematic allowing you to enchant a basic +1 weapon.
4) We can use the upcoming Tasha's Rules for Character Creation on the Sidekicks so that you can swap out one Skill Proficiency for a Tool Proficiency. Wouldn't make sense to hire someone to run a weapon smithing shop who couldn't use Blacksmith Tools.
Feel free to submit your own business models using the following format:

• Business Focus
  
• Artificer Subclass or Subclasses best suited.
  
• Tool Proficiencies needed.
  
• Helpful Infusions. I include these here because I believe that having a relevant infusion should count as the required schematics necessary to create a magic item. I also think that they should definitely look different than the standard fare that traditional enchanters sell.
  
• Business location.
  
• Primary focus of business. What you will be selling or offering to customers.
  
• Common or Uncommon Magic Items to supplement mundane sales when you hit level 10 and can make them in 1/4 the normal time and 1/2 the price of anyone else.
  
• Sidekicks you could use in the business.
  
• Other Party members who could help you besides the Forge Cleric, Bards, Rogues or any Spellcaster that knows *Fabricate*. You can Assume that the above classes are inferred good business partners for any of the jobs listed below. This guide will be focusing on those with Tool Proficiencies from Class, as anyone could grab a Guild Member background and be helpful as well.
  

Businesses

Wandsmith/Arcane Focus Maker

• Artillerist. This subclass lends itself well to a Wandslinger and the level 5 class features give a lot of attention to the Wand.
  
• Armor of Tools, Woodcarver's Tools, Jeweler's Kit, Glassblower's Kit. Woodcarving for Wands, Rods and Staves. Jeweler's for Wands, and Crystals. Glassblower's for Orbs.
  
• Enhanced Arcane Focus, Replicate Magic Items (any common wands or staves, Wand of Magic Detection, Wand of Secrets), Homunculus Servant, Replicate Magic Item (Wand Sheath). The Enhanced Arcane Focus should lend you to easily make decent wands and even Infused Wands. Replicating Magic Items for schematics for easy to make Common Magic items to upsell to customers. Homunculus Servant for extra help around the shop.
  
• Cart, Wagon, Boat, Shop. You could have 2-3 wands on hand in a cart, a covered wagon with carving tools set up or even a section of a ship dedicated to making and selling your wares. If applicable, you could even buy a permanent location to sell your wares, this will be your best bet for glassblowing, as your toolkit still requires you to find a suitable heat source to form liquid glass. Work your way up to being your own Gilmore's Glorious Goods, Invulnerable Vagrant, or Fantasy Costco.
  
• At this location, Wands, Rods, Staves, Crystals and Orbs will be your meat and potatoes. Basic Spellcasting Foci for any aspiring Wizard, Sorcerer or Warlock. You could even branch out into Holy Symbols, and Druidic Foci if the demand is there. While a basic Spellcasting Focus only needs to be between 5gp and 20gp. These are easily made in a single day of downtime crafting. You could even customize more expensive version of them for Nobles or highly opinionated casters to distinguish yourself from other magic shops.
  
• Common and Uncommon Wands and Staves. Mostly Imbued Wands or Orbs of Resistance. Wands of Magic Missile, Burning Hands, Ice Knife, Catapult would all fall under these categories. Could even make a Common Wand that requires attunement, and grants the attuned the ability to cast a single Cantrip (always at Level 1) as a Novice Wandslinging item. Scrolls could be re-flavored as single use wands.
  
• For Sidekicks, an Expert would be great to help you churn out mundane items, while a Spellcaster would help you keep a steady stream of lower end Magic Items available.
  
• Eldritch Knights and Tome Warlocks would make great business partners. Eldritch Knights would probably push you to sell Rubies of War Mages also, bringing in a new area of clientele and the ability to advertise through Weaponsmiths for when they have some adventurers come through.
  

PainteSculptoGeneral Artisan

• Any Artificer
  
• Armor of Tools, Painter's Kits, Calligrapher's Kit, Glassblowers Kit, Woodcarver's Kit, Mason's Tools. These cover the gambit of common medium to work with.
  
• Homunculus Servant. Most other Infusions are combat based, but a Homunculus is a nice extra set of hands(tentacles or claws?) to help pass you the right tool and to clean off your brushes.
  
• Can work from Cart, Wagon, Boat or Shop. You might want a combo of Wagon and Shop, with a mobile studio to get different landscapes and to collect different material and a shop for a gallery from which to sell things.
  
• Paintings, Sculptures, Wood Carvings, Reliefs and finer doo-dads will be your main stock. From carvings of monsters that you've fought, self-portraits of people you've met, landscapes of other planes, or just finely made custom Dragonchess sets with pieces that look like real people. You could even specialize in ship figureheads or shop signs for taverns or other businesses. If you can find a way to make a permanent Magical Tinkering effect of the static visual image, that's a nice storefront display right there.
  
• Illusion enchanted paintings for a Harry Potter style feel would be good magical items, or even Dragonchess sets that can move themselves.
  
• Experts will probably get more mileage for the tool proficiencies than the Spellcaster unless your Enchanted portraits become a real hot commodity.
  
• Kensei Monks and Battlemaster Fighters each get proficiency in a set of Artisan's Tools as a Class Feature. Monks get Calligrapher's kit, but Battlemasters get to pick their choice, so could easily be Painter's or Woodcarver's.
  

Crossbow Manufacturer

• Battlesmith, Artillerist
  
• Armor of Tools, Woodcarver's Tools, Tinker's Tools, Smithing Tools, Carpenter's Tools. You will be mostly working with Wood and steel. Woodcarver's Tools lets you make 20 arrows as part of a Long Rest per Xanathar's.
  
• Repeating Shot, Quiver of Energy, Enhanced Weapon, Homunculus Servant. Enhanced Weapon for a reason to be able to make +1 crossbows. Quiver of Energy might be useful for some arrows that add a bit of elemental damage to a shot, even if only +1 fire or lightning.
  
• You can run a smaller shop out of a cart or wagon and be mostly custom orders, or you can have a fixed shot with dozens of different styles ready for sale and enchantment services on request.
  
• Hand, Light and Heavy crossbows as well as arrows and bolts will be your primary trade. You can also Silver arrows and bolts and filigree the crap out of some crossbows if people are interested in flaunting their status that way. Pretty straight forward with these mundane items.
  
• Walloping Ammunition, Unbreakable Arrows, Elemental Burst Arrows and Quivers of Ehlonna will be easy sources of magical flare in your shop.
  
• Experts will be your main shopkeepers and re-stockers. Warriors if you want someone to do demonstrations.
  
• Rangers, Arcane Archer Fighters, Kensei Monks will make excellent business partners. The Ranger especially brings a host of appropriate spells for later game enchanting. The Kensei will probably focus on more "traditional" Bows, which can help expand your clientele.
  

Potion Brewer

• Alchemist
  
• Brewer's Kit, Alchemist Supplies, Herbalism Kit, Poisoner's Kit. It is called out in Xanathar's Guide that an Herbalism Kit is required to make Healing Potions. So that's something you're definitely invest in. Also, in Xanathar's for .5lbs and 25gp of material, you can make one Alchemist Fire as part of a Long Rest with an Alchemist Supply Kit. That's not even counting what you can make during the day as Downtime. Stock up before you leave the city and you can make yourself one firebomb a night!
  
• Healing Salve and Homunculus Servant. Healing Salve is basically a 4 use touch range Healing Word you can make. This would be a great basis for Keoghtom's Ointment. I also feel like at this point I don't need to explain why Homunculus Servant keeps appearing on these lists.
  
• You could run this out of a cart or wagon, but i'd be worried about all those Alchemist Fire supplies rattling around. Same with a boat, unless you're just a Riverboat. A physical Shop would be best for what you need, although a cart/wagon for traveling with already made merchandise is a nice way to spread the brand name and to gather exotic or non-local supplies.
  
• Healing Potions! You are the local healer. You will also probably have on hand a good number of natural remedies for people who can't afford a constant stream of Healing Potions and instead use the Medicine Skill Proficiency to treat wounds. You can also make a single item of either Alchemist Fire, Acid, Antitoxin, perfume or soap as part of a Long Rest with an Alchemist's kit, so you can have a varied catalogue. makes sense to me that Sunrods (fantasy glow sticks) would be something you'd make with Alchemist's Supplies. You could even dip into Poison's, that wouldn't be advertised of course, but would include a bit of a premium on their sale for those in the need of such a thing.
  
• As you level up you can more easily make Potions of: Greater Healing, Fire Breath, Hill Giant Strength, Resistance and Water Breathing. You can also easily make an Alchemy Jug, which can make you day to day operations even cheaper as you can simply have the jug produce some of the more mundane liquids you may sell. The Decanter of Endless Water is also a must have item and too easy of a sale to anyone adventuring near or into a desert. Keoghtom's Ointment is also a nice Emergency Medicine that you could sell to a local Hospital or Militia.
  
• Expert's are your best bet at brewing basic potions for you and keeping the mundane supplies stocked. A Spellcaster would be able to expand your inventory with Climbing Potions, Beads of Nourishment, Beads of Refreshment, Candle's of the Deep, Perfume of Bewitching and Tankard's of Sobriety.
  
• Druids, Eldritch Knights, Monks and Rangers would be good partners as they can easily get Nature and Medicine proficiencies for a good number of the items that you make.
  

Tavern Owner

• Any Artificer, but strong lean to Alchemist due to class flavor.
  
• Brewer's Kit, Carpenter's Kit, Cook's Utensils, Alchemist Supplies, Herbalism Kit, Glassblowing Kit. The Brewer's Supplies should be obvious, but outside of the business, you can Purify1 gallon of Water over a Short Rest and 6 Gallons over a Long rest, a handy skill to have if you aren't near someplace with Fresh Water, like the open ocean. The Cook's Utensils are also a given with a Tavern, but outside of combat they allow a creature to regain 1 extra HP per Hit Dice they spend on a Short Rest. That may not sound like much, but it effectively makes each Hit Dice one higher on average (1d6+1 has the same average as 1d8). The Carpenter's Tools are so that you can fix all the furniture that will break during the inevitable bar fights. The Alchemist Supplies are actually for embalming creatures you encounter so you can have that Mindflayer Taxidermized as a display item in your bar! That's a feature I don't think any other local bar will have. Herbalism Kit is for working with hops, or branching into a bit of Potion Making if you want. Glassblowing is for you to make your own signature glassware that you can serve with the expensive drinks and offer as souvenirs.
  
• Homunculous Servant, Replicate Magic Item (Tankard of Sobriety). Tankard's of Sobriety seem like the perfect item for a bartender or bar owner. You can drink as much as you want but still stay sober. Might not be as much fun as regular drinking, but good for keeping your head about you and one hell of an advantage in a drinking contest.
  
• You could run this out of a Cart or Wagon as a kind of portable bar for just drinks. If you got a decent sized ship you could even expand it to a casino boat. However, a physical shop is the best choice here, specially if you plan to expand it to housing several rooms. Location is also key here, so make sure you spend some downtime doing some Investigation, Insight and History checks to learn all you can about potential locations you might set up.
  
• Beers, Wines, and Spirits of all kinds, with tasty food to boot! This is the stereotypical D&D Player business. There's an entire chapter of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist dedicated to setting up and running a tavern if you want inspiration. Feel free to include specials following your adventures of meat from creatures you've slain! Hydra-Burgers should be tasty.
  
• Mostly Wands of Prestidigitation and Decanter's of Endless Water for cleaning the bar and Alchemy Jugs for an easier way to produce cheap beer and wine with basically no overhead costs. Dust of Dryness might be nice to have on hand for cleaning up spills as well. Oh, and don't forget to keep a Wand of Magic Missiles behind the bar for those rowdy patrons.
  
• Spellcasters might make the best brewmasters of the sidekicks due to their increased Mental Stats. They can also help out with cleaning, and if they get to a point where they can Detect Poison and Disease, that would be a huge help come Health Inspection time. Experts will make good Brewers and can step up behind the bar to help out with their wide range of proficiencies. Warriors are good Bouncers and a way to take care of those pesky Dire Rats in the cellar.
  
• Way of the Drunken Fist Monks will either be a godsend or a curse for you as a business partner. Other Monks and Rangers would make a good partner as their naturally high Wisdom scores would help with Insight and Perception to keep an eye on patrons and employees. And no one is better in a bare knuckle brawl than a Monk, you could even put a fighting pit in your tavern if you want that kind of atmosphere, but I'd be sure to have a place to check weapons at the door so fights don't escalate too much outside of the fighting pit. Barbarians and Fighters have the CON to put down the drinks for Taste Testing and still being able to be a Bouncer. Beastmaster's can use their companion as a novelty server or even tavern mascot. And while I said I wouldn't include them on the list, I just have to say that any Bard would go here wonderfully.
  

Weaponsmith

• Battlesmith (It's in the name)
  
• Smithing Kit, Alchemist Supplies, Leather Working, Jeweler's Kit, Woodcarving Kit. The Smithing Kit and Woodcarving kit should be obvious as 95% of the weapons are made from metal or wood. The Leather Working Kit is for grips and wraps on the handles of weapons. Jeweler's Kit is for making fancy versions of weapons. Alchemist Supplies is for Silvering Weapons or using chemicals to stain the metal other colors.
  
• Homunculus Servant, Armor of Tools, Enhanced Weapon, Returning Weapon, Radiant Weapon, Replicate Magic Item (Moon-Touched Sword), Replicate Magic Item (Armblade). I think both the Radiant Weapon and Moon-Touched Sword Infusions would be good enough to count for the schematics to make Moon-Touched Swords for you. Enhanced Weapon for a basic +1 weapon.
  
• You need a forge for these, and that means that Carts and Wagons are only good for transporting completed merchandise to sell. The sheer weight needed for your forge makes a boat out of the question. Like the tavern, a physical location is the best bet for you.
  
• Anything that isn't a strictly ranged weapon is your stock and trade here. The most expensive mundane melee weapon is the Greatsword at 50gp. That means it will take you a full day (25gp) to make a single one. All other weapons can be made in a few hours. You'll also want to have some farming supplies and tools on hand in order to maximize your customer base. Hoes, pick axes, crowbars, buckets, barrels, Caltrops, Ball Bearings, metal religious symbols etc. Silvering Weapons and adding gold/silveelectrum/gemstone decorations to mundane items are a great way to offer wares to richer customers. Yes, Lord Grantham ir'Lupiloo has a fine rapier, but he doesn't have a rapier made of Bulette-scale Damascus steel, with a hydra skin wrapped pommel and his name engraved in gold embossed Draconic along the crossguard. That's how you make a name for yourself, because Lord Brendit ir'Flaglap is going to HAVE to have a nicer Longsword than that cur for next week's gala.
  
• Moon-Touched Blades, Weapons of Warning, +1 Weapons and a weapon with a single minor property from the table on page 143 in the DMG will be the easiest and fastest for you to replicate.
  
• The Expert and Warrior will be best for if you want mundane items being churned out of your forge. The Spellcaster would be a better hire if you want to focus on enchanted items. The difference in what you will be able to do will be based on your location. Rural areas will focus on mundane most likely, while cities will have more demand and client base for fancy mundane and enchanted.
  
• Fighters, Barbarians, Monks, Paladins and Blade Pact Warlocks would do great here as partners.
  

ClothieArmorer

• Armorer, Battlesmith
  
• Smithing Kit, Leatherworking, Weaver's Tools, Cobbler's Tools, Alchemist Supplies. SMithing and Leatherworking are straightforward. Weavers is for non-armor clothing if you want to instead open up a clothing boutique. Cobbler's tools for if you want to make shoes. Fun fact, with Cobbler's Tools you can spend a Long Rest to add in a 3" by 1" hidden compartment into a pair of shoes or boots.
  
• Homunculus Servant, Enhanced Armor, Reflecting Shield, Boots of the Winding Path, Armor of Absorption, Armor of Tools.
  
• You could do a clothing store, shoe repair and custom designing, make and sell leather armor, custom tailoring or a dry-cleaning business (Prestidigitation + Mending) out of a cart, wagon or boat, but for the same reasons as with a weaponsmith you need a physical location if you want to make metal armor. Make it work, people!
  
• Congratulations, you are now you party Rogue's favorite person and source of disguises. You'll have to decide the breadth and scope of just what kind of business you want to run first. Focus on just mundane clothing for commoners to nobles, or do a combination of common clothing and simple armors. Metal armors and shields will require a forge. If you are able to build yourself up, you could eventually do everything out of a large building with a little bit of everything like your own fantasy Macy's. One storefront for expensive dresses, gowns and suits. Next door is more common or work wear, and out back is the forge with protective armors, leathers and shields. This would be a nice way to ensure that all your armor pieces match, because nothing is worse than finding a great piece of new armor that just completely clashes with your personal aesthetic. This also to me just seems like a great way to play a Garrak like character. (If you don't know who that is, please see yourself over to Netflix or CBS All Access and watch all of Deep Space 9 as soon as possible.)
  
• Cloaks of Defense, Cloaks of Many Fashions, Cloaks of Billowing, Cloaks of Elvenkind, Cloaks of the Manta Ray, Sentinel Shields, Robes of Useful Items, Brooches of Shielding, Cast off Armor, Boots of Elvenkind, Gleaming Armor, Boots of the Winterlands, Winged Boots....there are so many thematic Common and Uncommon Magic Items for you to make here.
  
• Experts will be your go to for mundane sewing, forging and cobbling. Spellcasters if your enchanting business takes off and can run the Dry-cleaning aspect while you're gone.
  
• Rangers, Monks and Arcane Archers will do well here are they tend to favor DEX and WIS. Also, if you do end up going into a clothing business with a rogue and you don't name it "Cloak and Dagger" then I think you actually lose a Character Level.
  

Shipwright

• Any, but Battlesmiths and Armorers might do best as they would tend to have higher STR.
  
• Armor of Tools, Carpenter's Tools, Woodworking Tools, Smithing Tools, Navigation Tools. You're mostly going to be working with wood here, and a bit of metal also. Navigation Tools just seems like a good choice, unless you want the RP of being a master of building ships, and then being completely unable to use or navigate in them.
  
• Homunculus Servant, Replicate Magic Items (Cap of Water Breathing, Ring of Water Walking, Cloak of the Manta Ray). The Magic Items that you can replicate allow you to fully inspect or repair any ship while it is in the water.
  
• You're going to want a shop. Located next to a large body of water. And depending on the size of the ships you intend to build, it should also be connected to an ocean eventually. You could theoretically have this business from a boat, if you make a large enough ship that you could pull alongside other ships to repair them, but I think you're best off with a permanent location.
  
• As a Shipwright, you make ships! Boats, galleys, rowboats and everything in between. You'll want to start off with smaller boats first to build up your money until you can invest in making a large ship. According to the DMG, a Rowboat costs 50gp to make, a Keelboat costs 3,000gp a Sailing Ship or Longship costs 10,000gp and a Galley costs 30,000gp. Other than Rowboats, which you can make in a single day, these are going to be very long projects. From 120 days for a Keelboat to about 3.3 years for a Galley if you are working by yourself without any magical aid. Even if you do hire multiple sidekicks or just general hirelings, you aren't going to get paid until the entire job is done, but they will all need to be paid while they work on the ship. Instead of making brand new ships, you could also repair existing ones, and as an Artificer, you almost certainly have the Mending cantrip which can help you.
  
• Candle's of the Deep, Heward's Handy Spice Pouch, Orbs of Direction, Ropes of Mending, Alchemy Jugs, Caps of Water Breathing, Decanters of Endless (fresh)water, Eyes of the Eagle, Gloves of Swimming and Climbing and Wind Fans are all magic items that you could sell to shipowners and crews to help them in their travels. Ghosts of Saltmarsh also has a number of Ship Upgrades that you could offer.
  
• Experts are going to help you the most here as they can get the most amount of kit proficiencies to help across a variety of problems. Spellcasters can help if you decide for focus more on maritime magical goods.
  
• If you plan on building ships from scratch, then you are going to need every Forge Cleric and Fabricate Spell you can get your hands on. But be careful, if you are able to start churning out ships in a week for half the cost of the competition, then that is a LOT of people that you are putting out of business and there is sure to be repercussions. For a non-magical approach, just about every party has something that they can contribute to this project. Martial classes will DO WORK on cutting down lumber and getting that ship together. Partial Casters can help speed up certain aspects of building and augment others through buffs.
  

Updated for multiple spelling, grammar and formatting errors

Please Feel Free to Submit your own Business Ideas! I'll add them if they fit the stated format. Punny Shop names encouraged!

from Duke, 1980
Listen to it here!
It’s common knowledge by now among Genesis fans (and certainly among Hindsight readers), but Duke was intended at the outset to be an album where one side consisted of two solo songs from each member of the band. A kind of musical appetizer of sorts. Or I suppose the after-dinner mints, if the solo stuff ended up being the albums’s Side 2 instead. Either way, the real meat of the album was this side-long, group-composed behemoth with the working title of “Duke”, from which the album itself eventually took its name.

Phil: At one point I think we thought that we could revisit the idea of doing a long side...like “Supper’s Ready”. You know, something that was like a body of work. And I think we kind of...I mean, that’s why there’s “Duke’s Travels”, “Duke’s End”, because we still liked those titles...that’s what’s left of that idea, really. ¹
Tony: They would’ve gone “Behind the Lines”, “Duchess”, “Guide Vocal”, “Turn It On Again”, “Duke’s Travels”, “Duke’s End”. Which is actually how it was performed live; we tried it. One reason we didn’t do it [on the album] is we didn’t want the comparison with “Supper’s Ready”, and felt maybe it wasn’t the moment to do a totally combined thing like that. As it is, there is quite a lot of linkage between those tracks anyhow; the first three are linked. ¹

Tony may not have wanted the comparisons to “Supper’s Ready”, but now that he’s come out and said that, how could I do anything else? I’ll have more to say about “Supper’s Ready” later on, but for now let’s just take an overly-simplified look at its structure. At a very high level it looks like this: Intro, Powerful Section, Gentle Section, Rock Section, Epic Instrumental Section, Reprise of Intro, Reprise of Strong Section.
Now let’s look at the big “Duke” piece as originally conceptualized, through that same lens. It goes something like this: Intro, Powerful Section, Gentle Section, Rock Section, Epic Instrumental Section, Reprise of Gentle Section, Reprise of Intro.
Again, that’s heavily oversimplified and doesn’t account for the wide range of nuances, like how wildly different “Lover’s Leap” and “Behind the Lines” are as intro sections, or how the Gentle Section of “Supper’s Ready” comprises multiple movements and a lot of time while “Guide Vocal” is pretty brief by comparison. But in a very loose way, the skeleton of each of these things is the same. It’s not because Genesis sat there attempting to rewrite “Supper’s Ready”; it’s just that their songwriting sensibilities led them down a similar path of how to flow from quiet to loud, what and when to reprise something to tie the whole package together, and so forth.
So within that framework you have “Duke’s Travels” acting as a kind of analogue of “Apocalypse in 9/8” from “Supper’s Ready”, a segment that interestingly enough was written primarily by the combination of Tony, Mike, and Phil. That “Duke’s Travels” would carry a similar amount of water for its own musical suite therefore shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. If anything, Phil was even more involved this time around.

Phil: My commitment to Genesis is much greater than it ever was before. I would fight for it more now than I would have done before because it’s more me. That’s what it comes down to. There’s more of me in it. I’ve come a long way since And Then There Were Three, I really have...Duke for me isn’t just another Genesis album. It’s a whole period of growing up. A musical maturity if you like. ²

It’s fitting for the song to be called “Travels”, because this one’s a ride. It opens with these warm cymbal waves, echoing guitar chords, and an almost tentative keyboard line. This all fades into nothing as Phil’s drums take over with heavy intensity, followed by a more melodic and driving keyboard bit on top. Switch from the rapid hollow drums to some cymbals and back again. Then you get this big bit that sounds like an alternate soundtrack to Casino Night Zone; it’s Sonic the Hedgehog eleven years in advance. There are melodies, countermelodies, textures, with a masterclass in drumming underpinning the whole shebang.

Phil: There’s definitely a side to us coming out which wasn’t on the last album: the playing side. ³

Uhhh, yeah. Yeah, I’d say so. And now a pounding straight rhythm with some guitakeyboard interplay, creating a whole lot of tension. Again, this is like the build in “Apocalypse in 9/8” all over again, just with a somewhat different flavor. It’s bigger, and bigger, and bigger, and then oh my goodness what IS that heavenly sound on top of these goosebump-laden chords?

Tony: The Arpeggiator was one of the things which I used on “Duke’s Travels”, and what a marvelous effect that was! And it had a bass pedal on it and you had the polyphonic synthesizer on it so I could do all those other things as well. I have got two of them and there were only about a dozen of them [made], and I think the other ten only sold because I was using it! The company went bust after that or got taken over. It was a fun instrument. ⁴

The Arpeggiator sounds like the name of a supervillain, or at least a nickname a group of friends would bestow on one of their drinking buddies for reasons too wrapped up in a certain time and place for anyone outside the group to possibly understand. Here though? Here it’s the hero of “Duke’s Travels”, putting that sparkly shimmer in the sky above the song’s most triumphant moment, making the whole thing dazzle in radiance while Mike’s guitar finally soars out of the background and across the illuminated heavens. And to then have “Guide Vocal” come back in the midst of it all? My my my. That’s the “666 is no longer alone” shiver-down-the-spine moment of “Duke’s Travels”, no question about it.

Tony: There’s a strong emotional moment when it gets to the repeat of “Guide Vocal” done within “Duke’s Travels”, which is a very intense piece of singing. To me that’s one of the strongest...one of the very strong moments in Genesis music. ¹

And then the song gradually bleeds energy over the rest of the “Guide Vocal” repeat, the emotion spent and the travels making their way home. A brief respite, a striking synth flute bit reminiscent of “The Court of the Crimson King”, and then the whole thing careens back into the Intro Reprise known as “Duke’s End”. I see a lot of people say things like “If ‘Apocalypse in 9/8’ were its own song, it would still be one of my favorite Genesis tunes.” And I find that all those people also really love “Duke’s Travels” because it is, essentially, “Apocalypse in 9/8” carved out as its own track. The context of the larger piece makes it that much stronger, but it’s perfectly capable of standing up under its own power as well.
The 2007 Turn It On Again Tour really brought this to light, I think. Selecting it for inclusion in the set was a bold move, replacing “The Colony of Slippermen” and “In That Quiet Earth” as the middle leg of the big “In the Cage Afterglow Medley”. Those are big shoes to fill, and it wasn’t easy for anyone involved.

Tony: Before we did the last tour I spent quite a few months getting all the sounds together, whatever I thought I could, including some of the processes from the older ones like the Synclavier sounds and a few others, and tried to get everything as close as I could to being right. Even so, when we got out there I had to change quite a bit. I was pretty well prepared actually. Mike was well prepared. Daryl is ALWAYS well prepared! Phil was completely unprepared, so it took him about two weeks of just trying to get to play how he used to, which was tough. Especially on a piece like “Duke’s Travels”, which was always a tough one. ⁴

And what about the audience? How would they react?

Tony: I think the set is more demanding as it combines so many instrumental bits from various eras, like the…“Duke’s Travels” bits...It’s also demanding for the audience. Some of them you will lose during the instrumental bits as they don’t know them…The other thing is, we don’t have anything to prove; we’re just doing it. We’re playing to fans who know they like us. We’re not trying to convert them. Perhaps in the past we did that. ⁵

I love this attitude. “We’re going to play what moves us, and you’ll either check out or come with us.” That attitude, that music...it’s why in my opinion the 2007 version of the medley is the best one they did. Something about that epic moment in “Duke’s Travels” just resonates, even when the arrangement changes so that the big vocal entrance is just an extension of Daryl Stuermer’s guitar solo. You can totally see what Tony was talking about here: the crowd cheers wildly for the end of the “Cinema Show” segment and even more wildly for the start of “Afterglow” but generally stand around puzzled during “Duke’s Travels”. “Wait, what’s this one? I don’t recognize this one. Do you recognize this one?” And yet it’s still the song that guides them home.
I wish we could see it again on the upcoming tour, but I don’t think that’s likely:

Tony: It’ll be kind of different. Phil used to have some very dramatic moments on stage with Genesis. He’d never have the same kind of dramatic moments or intensity we used to have...sitting on a chair. Obviously, the effects can help things out a bit. So, you just say, “He’s not going to do those the same way.” We’d just do the songs. We’ve got plenty of good songs to do and it wouldn’t be a problem. But I don’t think we could have the extended keyboard solo we did on the last tour in 2007 which had a bit of everything in it. There wouldn’t be much point, because the point of it was Mike, Phil, and I playing together, like we did on things such as “Duke’s Travels”. There would be a different intensity and a different kind of set list. ⁶

That’s a real shame, because “Duke’s Travels” is a downright treat, especially in live form. I suppose we should be thankful we got what we did from it along the way.
But hey, speaking of live performances and context, what’s the deal with these pieces anyway? The lyrics to the various songs in the “Duke” piece don’t have any immediately apparent connection, even when they’re linked together like “Behind the Lines”, “Duchess”, and “Guide Vocal”. Is there some kind of meta-narrative happening here? Something where some duke of something or other is also a singer but betrayed and then something about a TV? I’m really confused.
Thankfully, we have Phil Collins in concert during the Duke Tour to sort it all out for us.

Phil: The story of a mate of ours whose name was Albert. Albert was a born loser. Nothing he did went right; he was one of life’s failures. Written off, just like that. I’ll give an example: Albert once fell in love with a lady. ⁷

Hmm, I guess “Behind the Lines” could be about falling in love with a character in print, couldn’t it? Reading the pages, feeling closer to someone, whether that be a fictional character or a celebrity in the news? Seems our old Albert was developing an infatuation!

Phil: Beautiful lady she was, beautiful lady...a duchess. And the duchess was a very domineering lady. She was into S&M. Ah, but poor old Albert didn’t speak Spanish or Mexican, so she kicked him out! And he went home that night, and was very disappointed and dejected. ⁷

Ah, duchess like the title of the second track! I’m following this now, I think. Albert falls in love with this celebrity singer, who he doesn’t really know except through print media. He encounters her in real life, but doesn’t speak her native language, and his advances are rebuffed on that basis (and also because he’s kind of a creep). So Albert gets upset and writes the whole thing off in a sulky bit called “Guide Vocal” - dual meaning there, since a guide vocal is what you call the rough vocal track to line up the instrumentation before the real vocal is laid down. Albert thinks he’s the reason the Duchess succeeded! This is getting good, now.

Phil: So he sat down on the chair, and he turned on the television, and suddenly his whole life changed because he was back in love again! He fell in love! He fell in love with his television set. It was a really beautiful looking television set, square with sort of a glass bit in the middle. And it was a good conversational piece for his friends, but it was a bit of a one-sided affair for Albert. And in two days he was in hospital having the glass removed from his private parts. ⁷

Ouch! But yes yes, we’re seeing it now. “All I need is a TV show...down on my luck again…” This is Albert coping with the loss by finding a new medium for his romantic fantasies! I just hope that bit with the hospital is merely a joke...

Phil: So he went on a convalescing holiday abroad over there, where tragedy struck again. Because Albert fell in love. Again. This time, with his walking stick. We’re not too sure about Albert; seems a bit of a weirdo. And I think you’ve guessed it: in two or three days time he was back in hospital having the walking stick removed from his private parts. So he came back from his convalescing holiday abroad over there, to England over here where we live, where he entered a home for unsuccessful young louts, called Duke's. But I can see you’re getting very upset, but I don’t want you to, because every cloud has a silver lining, and every silver lining has a cloud. Every bin has a liner. And it was in this bin that Albert wrote some fantastically boring books. He wrote such literary classics as Romeo & Albert and A Midsummer Night’s Albert. Albert: A Space Odyssey. Albert Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. A horror film called Albert: Prince of Darkness. The Return of Albert. The Return of the Brides of Evil of Albert. And so it goes on. And the big change for him came when he started writing sex books. We have a very, very big one called Danish Albert on the Job; a big hit for him! ⁷

Wow, so “Duke’s Travels” is something literal! After some journeying around the world he entered a home called Duke's, so they were literally the Travels to Duke's! And saaaaay! That “Guide Vocal” reprise with all its intensity is just Albert writing his books with an “I’ll show you!” kind of attitude! This also explains the reprise of “Behind the Lines”, come to think of it! He’s gone from “It’s written in the book” to writing books himself by “Duke’s End”. It’s a strange story, yes, but I think we’ve done it! I think we’ve cracked the code of this whole thing!

Phil: And now, to the music! Which has got nothing to do with Albert; I was deliberately wasting your time. This is some music from our album called Duke, and we call it - pretty cleverly - “Music From Our Album Called Duke”. OK! ⁷

Well s---.
Let’s hear it from the band!

Phil: The group compositions are the strongest. A lot of that is down to the rhythms...But the group compositions are definitely breaking new ground...I wanted to do a long song with some substance...So basically we put a lot of things together between us…“Duke’s Travels” and “Duke’s End” were riffs that we wrote as we went along. We intended it to be one 25 minute piece but when we came to the practicalities of the album, the solo songs on the second side wouldn’t have run so well, so we had to split it all up. ²
Tony: This album, I have to be honest...this is my favorite Genesis album really. It has such a sort of positive quality about it. I love the way it starts; I love “Duchess”, I think it works fantastically; and I love all the instrumental stuff towards the end, too, although I think [the album’s conclusion] starts a little weak. But it just gets really good. ¹

^1. 2007 Box Set
^2. Sounds, 1980
^3. Sounds, 1979
^4. The Waiting Room, 2015
^5. Genesis-News.com, 2007
^6. Innerviews, 2019
^7. Duke Tour footage, 1980

I noticed this case has never been discussed on this forum (at least according to the search I ran), and thought it deserved some attention. I recently covered this case on my podcast - yes, shameless plug - and found it to be a fascinating case. Here's a brief summary of what I learned.
Liston was born poor in Arkansas. No, poorer than that. So poor that shoes were a luxury. He wasn't able to go to school so he could try to help support his huge family (he was the 24th of 25 kids). Being black, uneducated, illiterate, and dressed in rags meant he had no legitimate job options. So he turned to crime.
He eventually was sent to prison for five years after being convicted of armed robbery. In a very real way, this was a blessing for Liston. It was the first time in his life he didn't have to worry about food or clothes. He actually had free time. He used that time to box, and the prison gym's sponsor, Father Stevens, noticed the kid had talent. No one could beat him in the prison. So Father Stevens began training Liston to become a professional boxer.
When Liston was released, he immediately turned to boxing. But he had a tough time finding opponents. Why? He was too scary looking. No one wanted to be in the ring with him. He needed a professional manager to make a career of this sport and soon found one - in the mob. With the mob's backing, Liston quickly developed a reputation as a fearsome, almost unstoppable warrior. Besides, the mob controlled boxing during this era (1950s-late 1960s) There is also some evidence he may have provided a few non-boxing services for the mob too.
Liston eventually becomes the heavyweight champ, and then loses his title to Muhammad Ali. In their rematch, Ali won by KO that many people believe to this day was a dive ordered by the mob. Liston apparently understood that by taking a dive, the theory goes, he would earn a percentage of all of Ali's future purses. But this loss essentially ended Liston's career.
He ended up moving to Las Vegas and immediately fell in with a bad element to make some extra cash. Shocking, the mob took advantage of this uneducated man and managed to skim every dollar they could from him. Liston was known to serve as hired muscle and deal cocaine in Vegas to supplement his legit income, which was appearing at casinos and shaking hands at conventions.
Liston became bitter and started making enemies. First, he turned on the mob for not taking care of him and may have threatened to expose some information the mob didn't want public. He also was talking too much about Ali allegedly screwing him out of his cut of Ali's earnings, which upset the Nation of Islam. Further, Liston was involved in an incident where he was at a known drug den that was raided and all went to jail but for Liston, leaving the head of the operation (Earl Cage) with a need for revenge on the only obvious snitch. Towards the end of Liston's life, those in the know in Las Vegas knew it was only a matter of when someone would take out Liston.
He died at the very end of 1970. His wife found him dead upon returning from a trip to visit her mother for Christmas. Police quickly developed the theory Liston had OD'ed on heroin based on needle marks in his arm and a balloon of the junk in the kitchen. But there were no needles present at the crime scene. The interim coroner, who had very little experience, ruled the death one of natural causes. No one buys either theory.
Journalist Shaun Assael was gifted a police file from an anonymous source that indicated former LVPD officer Larry Gandy was hired to kill Liston. Gandy was no angel and committed plenty of crimes, both in uniform and out, but when interviewed by Assael denied being involved in Liston's death. He pointed the finger at Cage and his desire for revenge, though it is slightly odd Cage would wait two years to enjoy his dessert. Plenty of people also believe the mob did it since Liston was quickly turning from an asset to a liability.
Even though everyone believes Liston was murdered, there was no evidence of a potential homicide other than the needle marks. Interestingly, forced overdoses were a popular form of execution employed by the mob during this time as it did not draw as much attention from police as a traditional gang-land style shooting. Yet because Liston's death was ruled one of natural causes, no homicide investigation was ever conducted.
As prominent figures from that time period are dying off, it's entirely possible the truth will never be uncovered. And this is a story with rabbit trails one could research for years. Why did the Las Vegas Sun report that Liston met with an undercover narcotics officer the day before his death? Why did Liston's wife wait so long to call the police after finding her husband dead? What was the story with Assael being slipped records from an unknown source? Why does the state of Nevada have no records concerning Liston's death?
It's a crazy tale. One involving a very popular American athlete with so many crazy twists. It's sad to know that we will likely never know what truly happened to Sonny Liston.
SOURCES:
https://medium.com/@brightonboy1901/the-mysterious-death-of-sonny-liston-a-boxing-conspiracy-4138ac4e2202
https://www.bbc.com/sport/boxing/48974341
https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/general/others/boxing-sonny-liston-was-murdered-by-mob-claims-hitmans-son-8803558.html
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mvk7jn/who-killed-former-heavyweight-champion-sonny-liston
https://www.wbur.org/onlyagame/2017/02/03/sonny-liston-shaun-asasel-book-boxing

Video games are great. They’re a ton of fun to play and can be a cheap way to occupy your free time. They help people stay in touch with friends or even make new friends. Games are a far more interactive form of entertainment than just watching TV or movies. They keep your brain engaged and usually do a great job of rewarding players for their success. With all these benefits, it’s no surprise then that some people might get addicted. You could probably even make a good argument that all well designed games should be addicting in some way. For this article I want to look at the different ways that games make themselves addicting, decide if this constitutes good or bad gameplay, and finally make a decision on whether companies should make games like this.

Two types of addicting games

From a design perspective, there are two different categories of addicting games. The first category is games that have addictive gameplay. What this means is different from person to person. Some people love the “one more turn” types of games like the Civilization series. Others enjoy the “one more match” multiplayer games that can range from shooters, to MOBAs, to sports games. There’s another group of people that fall in love with MMORPGs and what they have to offer.
The second category of addicting games are the games which employ addicting behavior. In these games, it is not the gameplay itself which is addicting but the way you play the game. These games might include addicting gameplay, but more importantly, they encourage forming habits. For this article, I want to focus on this second category of games and the gacha genre specifically. To be clear, many different types of games use these strategies but the gacha genre seems to rely on these heavily. The recent release of Genshin Impact for PCs got me thinking more about this, and I would like to use it as sort of a case study. In the next sections I’m going to break down all the things that I’ve seen gacha games do to encourage player addiction. I have not played Genshin Impact and know almost nothing about it other than some gameplay videos I’ve seen. I am curious to know how many of these things the game does or will do.

Lowest possible barrier to entry

It’s very important if you want to get new players addicted to your game, you have to get them to try the game first. In the world of video games, the easiest way to accomplish this is to make your game free. What harm could there be in trying out a free game? You see equivalents like this in the real world too. Have you ever heard of a casino where you have to pay to park? What about a casino with a parking lot that is too small? Many casinos will even offer free shuttle services. The most important thing is to get them in and get them started.
It doesn’t stop there, though. Most gacha games will also start you off with one of the strongest characters. This accomplishes three things. First, it helps ensure you will have success immediately when you start playing. Most of the starting content for gacha games is laughably easy. It would almost be impossible to fail. They want to get those success endorphins kicking in as soon as possible. The second reason is that it immediately shows the player the power difference between lower tier characters and higher tier characters. Think of it like a company giving out free samples. First one is on them, but you’re going to have to pay if you want more (either with money or your time). The final reason for doing this, is to help players get over a time gap. For gacha games that have been out for a while, you will often see them enticing new players or returning players with offers for a free highest tier character if you start playing now. People who play gacha games know these characters can be very time consuming to acquire so it helps them feel like they won’t be starting so far behind other players.

Multiplayer content

Speaking of other players, including interactions with other humans is a must for this genre. The most common form of this is PvP matches. The higher your rank, the better your reward. PvP matches allow players who have been playing for a long time or spent a lot of money to feel like they are stronger or better than other players. These types of PvP matches are not set on even ground like most multiplayer focused games. Players don’t start with equal stats and have to rely on their game knowledge or experience. Instead, players with stronger or higher-level characters can straight up beat lower level players every time. It’s their reward for being committed to the game. PvP matches are also a great way to endlessly extend game time.
Multiplayer doesn’t have to mean PvP, however. This might be co-operative content where you join a guild to help chip away at strong bosses or maybe just visit other players’ bases to see what they have and compare. This results in content that you can’t access unless you join a guild or maybe currency that you can’t acquire if you don’t have in game friends. These games are essentially forcing players to join and stay with a community. You are far more likely to stick with a game when you feel like you’re part of the group. Gacha games make sure it is easy to join guilds or fill up your friends list for this reason.

Consistent and repetitive game time required

Here’s a great article about forming new habits. To sum it up, the article states new habits can be formed using a cycle of three things:

1. Reminder (the trigger that initiates the behavior)
2. Routine (the actual behavior you perform)
3. Reward (the benefit from doing the behavior)

Does this sound familiar? What if I list it like this:

1. Send phone notification that your energy is full or that special productive time is happening right now
2. Get players to log in at least once daily
3. Make sure daily quest rewards are the most productive way (if not the only way) to make progress

These games are trying everything in their power to get you to form a habit of playing. They don’t want you to play for 40 hours straight and be done with the game. They might start off with the ability to play a lot, but that doesn’t last. After a while, players end up logging in to do the same few things every day. Gacha games know this gets repetitive and maybe a little boring so they will usually include a way for the game to “auto-play” itself through these daily tasks. At this point, it’s the habit that is important. You’re actually playing the game a lot less now and just logging in to make sure you get your daily reward. It’s not uncommon for gacha games to even include a monthly reward for players who log in every day of the month. You should be skeptical of any game that gives you a reward for simply logging in daily. Chances are good they’re trying to form a habit.
If you’ve been playing one of these games daily for over two months, it’s likely that you have already formed a habit. Does the thought of not playing for a single day make you uneasy? Try it yourself. An even bigger test is to turn off alerts and stop playing for a week. Do you still have a desire to play after one week of not logging in? I find that I usually don’t.

Time limited events

Next up on the checklist are the time limited events or sales. It’s very common in these games to have events that last for maybe two weeks every other month or so. During these events, it is especially important for players to log in daily and do the limited time event quests. These events are often how new characters are introduced and added to the game. Players know that if they want these characters, their best chance of getting them is during this event only.
These types of events are the game design equivalent of the well established limited-time offer. Check out this article on ways to maximize your limited-time offer. How many of these have you seen in gacha games?

• Promote Your Limited-Time Sale
  • Popups as soon as you log into the game informing about the current events
• Convert Abandoning Shoppers with a Timely Popup
  • Popup before you exit the game stating how much energy you have left or unspent action points
• Leverage the Holiday Season
  • Most gacha games include events that coincide with the major holidays
• Offer Free Delivery for a Limited Time
  • This is the equivalent of giving bonus currency during a flash sale. You don’t want to make people regret their past currency purchases by putting it on discount, but you can reward them for buying more currency right now.
• Create Urgency-Driven Popups
  • Sales that you get access to only once for a short time such as new player promotions available for the first 24 hours after starting a game and then gone forever.
• Drive Urgency with an Email Countdown Timer
  • The games usually make sure to let you know there’s only “one week left” or “24 hours left” until the end of the event. Almost never do they just list dates and rely on you to be aware of when the event is ending.
• Recommend Products in Your Emails
  • Make sure players know exactly what cool costumes or characters they can only unlock during this event
• Tease Upcoming Limited-Time Sales
  • A calendar showing the schedule for upcoming events

Gacha games want you to think that these are just fun, limited time pieces of content to enjoy, but they are also thoroughly designed to persuade you to spend money. By having constant limited time events, players are encouraged to continue playing the game for fear of missing out on new characters. It’s also par for the course that newly released characters or gear are exceedingly strong. This is just one more way to incentivize players to always want the newest characters. They are pretty much guaranteed to be stronger than existing characters. They might eventually get tuned back down but they always start out overly strong especially in games that have PvP content.

Are these games actually fun

I am not ashamed to admit that I love gacha games. To me, it is really fun collecting new heroes and the risk/reward nature of rolling for new characters can be quite satisfying. These types of games often have gameplay that I personally find quite enjoyable too. They can range anywhere from turn based strategy, to tower defense, to action games. It’s almost unfair to call them a genre since it is more like a common mechanic included in a game of some other genre.
“Almost unfair” is important wording here. Inevitably these games all seem to follow the same formula. The game will start on a very high note. There is almost no repetitive gameplay and players are constantly unlocking new features, characters, or areas to explore. Eventually though, you will hit a content gate. It’s impossible for any company to produce new content at a rate faster than players can consume it. Gacha games need you to keep playing forever, however, so they have devised a way to extend content almost indefinitely: the difficulty grind. Figured out how to beat a boss for the first time? Next up is beating it with 200% more health. The only way to do that is to make your characters stronger. The only way to do that is to log in every day and do your daily quests. Welcome to the end game gacha grind. The further in a gacha game you get, the longer and longer it takes to increase your characters’ power.
Some people find this type of grinding to be right up their alley. As much as I enjoy playing these games, they all lead to this same destination and this is usually when I end up moving on to the next game. I’m still waiting for the gacha game which does not try to last forever. Dragging the game on indefinitely doesn’t have to be part of a gacha game, it just fits the business model that gacha games currently use.

Is it wrong to make addicting games

I spent a lot of time thinking about this. I generally tend towards the idea that people are responsible for their own actions. I want to say there is nothing wrong with making an addicting game where people can spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars on a game. After all, who am I to decide what they should do with their time or how they should spend their money? How is it any different than letting someone spend thousands of dollars on shoes, or a purse, or cookie jars, or a car? Something about that, however, just doesn’t sit right with me. After thinking about it more, I realized it’s not an equivalent comparison. For all those other items, there is nothing inherently addictive about the product. Someone might be addicted to collecting shoes, but the shoe itself has no addictive properties.
I’m willing to go one step further. It’s OK to design an addictive game if the results of that addiction are not an immediate and direct benefit to the company. For example, I have heard from many fans of the Civilization games (myself included) that they have on occasion played until the sun unexpectedly starts rising the next morning. To me, that definitely sounds like addictive gameplay and the impact to the player could be considered harmful. Firaxis, however, did not benefit in any direct way from me staying up all night playing the game. Maybe I’m more likely to buy an expansion or the next version of the game, but while in the middle of this activity, there were no direct or immediate steps I could take that would benefit the company. The gameplay being addictive wasn’t designed to lead to anything other than the person playing the game more. If you are a satisfied customer, the company doesn’t care if you played for 10 hours, 50 hours, or 200 hours. If there was a game out there which used every one of the addicting tactics I listed above, I would have no issue with that if there was no way to spend additional money on the game. I’ve not heard of a game like this, but it’s possible one exists.
The gacha games I know of, however, most certainly do benefit directly and immediately from players being addicted. By allowing players to spend endless amounts of money, it is in their best interest for you the player to get addicted and play the game for as long as possible spending as much money as possible along the way. It’s hard to argue they think otherwise when these types of games include pricing models that are so far outside the previously established pricing norms for video games. A fully priced AAA game typically sells for $60. Maybe there is a collector’s edition which could sell for up to $150 dollars. In that case, you know exactly what extra you are buying with your money. It is guaranteed to arrive with the product. Gacha games, however, will let you spend hundreds of dollars every single day with no guarantee of acquiring what you hope to get. Again, in theory, there is nothing wrong with a game allowing players to spend as much money as they want on the game. But how can I interpret a game designed to be behaviorally addicting while also allowing unlimited spending as anything other than malicious? It is the combination of these two things which leaves such a bad taste in my mouth.
In the end, I do think companies have a moral obligation to not take advantage of their customers. Making games like this does tell me what you think of me as a customer. You view me as a target to extract as much wealth from as possible. If the industry keeps going this direction, it will only be a matter of time before regulations are put in place to protect consumers, much like a legal drinking, smoking, or gambling age. Here’s one company that was willing to openly talk about the issue and I think they should be applauded for it. Companies don’t have to use this design and business model to make a profit, it just allows them to make a bigger profit. Ultimately, the choice is yours to play games of this nature. I know many people who’ve played games like this for years and never spent a dime. You should just know what you’re getting into. It’s the equivalent of putting health warnings on cigarette boxes. For anyone that’s played Genshin Impact, how did I do? Does the game break the mold, or does it follow the tried and proven path?
​
https://hexanephgames.com/2020/10/23/designing-addicting-games/

Thursday - October 1st, 2020

• 12:00am (Drama) Up the Down Staircase [1967]
• 2:15am (Comedy) Our Miss Brooks [1956]
• 4:00am (Drama) The Corn is Green [1945]
• 6:00am (Comedy) The Girl He Left Behind [1956]
• 8:00am (War) Lafayette Escadrille [1958]
• 9:45am (Comedy) Dondi [1961]
• 11:30am (Epic) The Shoes of the Fisherman [1968]
• 2:15pm (Crime) Ring of Fire [1961]
• 4:00pm (Suspense/Mystery) Twenty Plus Two [1961]
• 5:45pm (SciFi) Marooned [1969]

TCM Spotlight: Celebrating 30 Years of the Film Foundation

• 8:00pm (Drama) La Strada [1954]
• 10:00pm (Romance) Two for the Road [1967]
• 12:00am (Romance) Dodsworth [1936]
• 2:00am (Western) Destry Rides Again [1939]
• 3:45am (Drama) Black Girl [1966]
• 5:00am (Documentary) Robert Osborne’s 20th Anniversary Tribute [2015]

Friday – October 2nd, 2020

• 6:00am (Comedy) Go West [1940]
• 7:45am (Comedy) The Big Store [1941]
• 9:30am (Comedy) Double Dynamite [1951]
• 11:00am (Comedy) A Girl in Every Port [1952]
• 12:30pm (Comedy) A Day at the Races [1937]
• 2:30pm (Comedy) At the Circus [1939]
• 4:15pm (Comedy) A Night at the Opera [1935]
• 6:00pm (Epic) The Story of Mankind [1957]

FRIGHT FAVORITES

• 8:00pm (Horror) Dracula [1931]
• 9:30pm (Suspense/Mystery) Cat People [1942]
• 11:00pm (Horror) House on Haunted Hill [1958]
• 12:30am (Horror) The Haunting [1963]
• 2:30am (TCM Presents) The Queen [1968]
• 3:45am (TCM Presents) Wigstock: The Movie [1995]
• 5:15am (Shorts) The Relaxed Wife [1957]
• 5:30am (Shorts) Time Out for Trouble [1961]

Saturday – October 3rd, 2020

• 6:00am (Comedy) Million Dollar Baby [1941]
• 8:00am (TCM Presents) The Peachy Cobbler [1950]
• 8:08am (Shorts) Double Dynamite [1951]
• 8:17am (Shorts) Phonies Beware! [1956]
• 8:27am (TCM Presents) Arctic Fury [1949]
• 9:30am (TCM Presents) Wild West Days: The Redskins’ Revenge [1937]
• 10:00am (TCM Presents) Popeye: Baby Wants a Bottleship [1942]
• 10:08am (Adventure) Safari Drums [1953]
• 11:30am (Documentary) Alaska Lifeboat [1956]
• 12:00pm (Drama) The Prince and the Pauper [1937]
• 2:15pm (Crime) Key Largo [1948]
• 4:15pm (Drama) The Defiant Ones [1958]
• 6:00pm (Romance) The Thomas Crown Affair [1968]

The ESSENTIALS

• 8:00pm (Epic) Lawrence of Arabia [1962]
• 12:00am (Crime) Where the Sidewalk Ends [1950]
• 2:00am (Western) Across the Wide Missouri [1951]
• 3:30am (Romance) On an Island With You [1948]
• 5:30am (Drama) Inflation [1942]

Sunday – October 4th, 2020

• 6:00am (Romance) The Last of Mrs. Cheyney [1937]
• 7:45am (Romance) Humoresque [1946]
• 10:00am (Crime) Where the Sidewalk Ends [1950]
• 12:00pm (Comedy) Mr. Belvedere Goes to College [1949]
• 1:30pm (Comedy) The Women [1939]
• 4:00pm (Musical) Bye Bye Birdie [1963]
• 6:00pm (TCM Presents) The Great Buster: A Celebration [2018]

TCM Birthday Tribute: BUSTER KEATON

• 8:00pm (Silent) Sherlock Jr. [1924]
• 9:00pm (Silent) The General [1927]
• 10:30pm (Silent) Steamboat Bill Jr. [1928]
• 12:00am (Silent) Seven Chances [1925]
• 2:00am (Drama) Viridiana [1961]
• 3:45am (Drama) The Exterminating Angel [1962]
• 5:30am (Documentary) MGM Parade Show #5 [1955]

Monday – October 5th, 2020

• 6:00am (Musical) Roberta [1935]
• 8:00am (Musical) Fashions of 1934 [1934]
• 9:30am (Drama) Stolen Holiday [1937]
• 11:00am (Comedy) Designing Woman [1957]
• 1:00pm (Comedy) Made in Paris [1966]
• 2:45pm (Romance) A Place for Lovers [1969]
• 4:30pm (Horror) Blood and Black Lace [1964]
• 6:00pm (Suspense/Mystery) Lured [1947]

Star of the Month: PETER CUSHING

• 8:00pm (Crime) Cash on Demand [1961]
• 9:30pm (Romance) The End of the Affair [1955]
• 11:30pm (Crime) Time Without Pity [1957]
• 1:15am (Adventure) John Paul Jones [1959]
• 3:30am (Drama) Hamlet [1948]

Tuesday – October 6th, 2020

• 6:15am (Comedy) A Chump at Oxford [1940]
• 7:30am (Drama) Vigil in the Night [1940]
• 9:15am (Comedy) The Gay Bride [1934]
• 10:45am (Musical) Swing High, Swing Low [1937]
• 12:15pm (Comedy) Love Before Breakfast [1936]
• 1:30pm (Comedy) Nothing Sacred [1937]
• 3:00pm (Comedy) Mr. and Mrs. Smith [1941]
• 4:45pm (Comedy) To Be or Not to Be [1942]
• 6:30pm (Documentary) Golden Age of Comedy [1957]
• 8:00pm (TCM Presents) Women Make Film: A New Road Movie Through Cinema – Ep6 [2019]
• 9:15pm (Drama) The Ascent [1977]
• 11:15pm (TCM Presents) Women Make Film: A New Road Movie Through Cinema – Ep6 [2019]
• 12:30am (TCM Presents) Meek’s Cutoff [2010]
• 2:30am (TCM Presents) Cameraperson [2016]
• 4:30am (Comedy) Daisies [1966]

Wednesday – October 7th, 2020

• 6:00am (Shorts) Meshes of the Afternoon [1944]
• 6:30am (TCM Presents) Angry Inuk [2016]
• 8:00am (TCM Presents) The Erl King [1931]
• 9:15am (Drama) The Journey [1959]
• 11:30am (Drama) The Squall [1929]
• 1:30pm (Shorts) Beautiful Budapest [1938]
• 1:45pm (Documentary) Rural Hungary [1939]
• 2:00pm (Drama) Fight For Your Lady [1938]
• 3:15pm (Drama) Storm at Daybreak [1933]
• 4:45pm (Romance) The Shop Around the Corner [1940]
• 6:30pm (Musical) One Heavenly Night [1930]

ANDY GRIFFITH

• 8:00pm (Comedy) No Time For Sergeants [1958]
• 10:15pm (Drama) A Face in the Crowd [1957]
• 12:30am (Western) Hearts of the West [1975]
• 2:30am (Comedy) Onionhead [1958]
• 4:30am (Comedy) Thunder Afloat [1938]

Thursday – October 8th, 2020

• 6:15am (Crime) The Public Enemy [1931]
• 8:15am (Romance) Red-Headed Woman [1932]
• 9:45am (Comedy) Dinner at Eight [1933]
• 11:45am (Comedy) Saratoga [1937]
• 1:30pm (Romance) Hold Your Man [1933]
• 3:15pm (Romance) Red Dust [1932]
• 4:45pm (Comedy) Personal Property [1937]
• 6:15pm (Comedy) Bombshell [1933]

TCM Spotlight: Celebrating 30 Years of the Film Foundation

• 8:00pm (Comedy) The Front Page [1931]
• 7:45am (Suspense/Mystery) Detour [1945]
• 9:30am (Drama) The Man With the Golden Arm [1956]
• 1:45am (Comedy) Love Affair [1939]
• 3:30am (Crime) A Brighter Summer Day [1991]

Friday – October 8th, 2020

• 7:00am (Shorts) Alice in Movieland [1940]
• 7:45am (Drama) Nora Prentiss [1947]
• 9:45am (Crime) Born to Kill [1947]
• 11:30am (Drama) Dark Passage [1947]
• 1:30pm (Suspense/Mystery) Out of the Past [1947]
• 3:15pm (Crime) Race Street [1948]
• 4:45pm (Suspense/Mystery) Impact [1948]
• 6:45pm (Suspense/Mystery) The Woman on Pier 13 [1950]

FRIGHT FAVORITES

• 8:00pm (Horror) The Ghoul [1933]
• 9:30pm (Horror) The Black Sleep [1956]
• 11:00pm (Horror) Mark of the Vampire [1935]
• 12:15am (Horror) Night of the Living Dead [1968]
• 2:00am (Adventure) White Lightning [1973]
• 3:45am (Drama) Gator [1976]
• 5:45am (Shorts) The Corvair in Action! [1960]

Saturday – October 9th, 2020

• 6:00am (Musical) The Opposite Sex [1956]
• 8:00am (TCM Presents) MGM Cartoons: Red Hot Riding Hood [1943]
• 8:09am (Shorts) Fortune Seekers [1956]
• 8:18am (Documentary) Historic Maryland [1941]
• 8:27am (Drama) Men of the North [1930]
• 9:30am (TCM Presents) Wild West Days: The Brink of Doom [1937]
• 10:00am (TCM Presents) Popeye: Alona the Sarong Seas [1942]
• 10:08am (Adventure) The Golden Idol [1954]
• 11:30am (Comedy) King of the Islands [1935]
• 12:00pm (Adventure) Tarzan the Ape Man [1932]
• 2:00pm (Musical) Lili [1953]
• 3:30pm (Comedy) Casino Royale [1967]
• 6:00pm (Musical) Top Hat [1935]

The ESSENTIALS: Three of a Kind

• 8:00pm (Adventure) Gunga Din [1939]
• 10:15pm (Adventure) The Three Musketeers [1948]
• 12:30am (Crime) The Racket [1951]
• 2:30am (Comedy) Bananas [1971]
• 4:00am (Comedy) Hannah and Her Sisters [1986]

Sunday – October 11th, 2020

• 6:00am (Comedy) A Midsummer Night’s Dream [1935]
• 8:30am (Drama) Journey For Margaret [1942]
• 10:00am (Crime) The Racket [1951]
• 12:00pm (Drama) Sounder [1972]
• 2:00pm (Drama) The Secret Garden [1949]
• 3:45pm (Drama) The Catered Affair [1956]
• 5:30pm (Musical) Flower Drum Song [1961]

LEMMON & MATTHAU

• 8:00pm (Comedy) The Front Page [1974]
• 10:00pm (Comedy) The Odd Couple [1968]
• 12:00am (Comedy) Sidewalk Stories [1989]
• 2:00am (Comedy) *The Fireman’s Ball * [1967]
• 3:30am (TCM Presents) All My Good Countrymen [1968]

Monday – October 12th, 2020

• 6:00am (Horror) The Reptile [1966]
• 7:45am (Horror) The Killer Shrews [1959]
• 9:00am (Adventure) King Kong [1933]
• 11:00am (SciFi) The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms [1953]
• 12:30pm (Horror) Godzilla [1954]
• 2:00pm (Horror) Creature from the Black Lagoon [1954]
• 3:30pm (Horror) Creature from the Haunted Sea [1961]
• 4:45pm (Horror) The Green Slime [1969]
• 6:30pm (Horror) Night of the Lepus [1972]

Star of the Month: PETER CUSHING

• 8:00pm (Adventure) Sword of Sherwood Forest [1960]
• 9:30pm (SciFi) Dr. Who and the Daleks [1965]
• 11:00pm (SciFi) Daleks – Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. [1966]
• 12:30am (Adventure) She [1965]
• 2:30am (Crime) Violent Playground [1958]
• 4:30am (Horror) Corruption [1967]

Tuesday – October 13th, 2020

• 6:00am (Drama) Devotion [1931]
• 7:30am (Comedy) The Runaway Bus [1954]
• 9:00am (Crime) The Solitaire Man [1933]
• 10:30am (Suspense/Mystery) Blind Adventure [1933]
• 11:45am (Musical) Double Trouble [1967]
• 1:30pm (Romance) A Warm December [1972]
• 3:30pm (Drama) The V.I.P.S [1963]
• 5:45pm (Comedy) The Prince and the Showgirl [1957]
• 8:00pm (TCM Presents) Women Make Film: A New Road Movie Through Cinema – Ep7 [2019]
• 9:15pm (TCM Presents) Dogfight [1991]
• 11:00pm (TCM Presents) Women Make Film: A New Road Movie Through Cinema – Ep7 [2019]
• 12:15am (TCM Presents) Rafiki [2018]
• 2:00am (Documentary) The House is Black [1963]
• 2:30am (Romance) First Love [1977]
• 4:15am (TCM Presents) The Night Porter [1974]

Wednesday – October 14th, 2020

• 6:30am (Drama) Le Bonheur [1965]
• 8:15am (TCM Presents) Danzon [1991]
• 10:15am (Silent) The Unholy Three [1925]
• 12:00pm (Silent) The Unknown [1927]
• 1:00pm (Silent) The Blackbird [1926]
• 2:30pm (Horror) The Thirteenth Chair [1929]
• 4:00pm (Horror) Freaks [1932]
• 5:15pm (Horror) Mark of the Vampire [1935]
• 6:30pm (Horror) The Devil-Doll [1936]

PRESIDENTIAL BIOPICS

• 8:00pm (Drama) Abe Lincoln in Illinois [1940]
• 10:00pm (Drama) Sunrise at Campobello [1960]
• 12:45am (War) PT 109 [1963]
• 3:15am (Musical) 1776 [1972]

Thursday – October 15th, 2020

• 6:00am (Comedy) Three Men on a Horse [1936]
• 7:30am (Crime) Unholy Partners [1941]
• 9:15am (Musical) Sweet Adeline [1935]
• 11:00am (Comedy) Happiness Ahead [1934]
• 12:30pm (Drama) Big City Blues [1932]
• 1:45pm (Suspense/Mystery) The Bad Seed [1956]
• 4:00pm (Drama) They Won’t Forget [1937]
• 5:45pm (Romance) Random Harvest [1942]

TCM Spotlight: Celebrating 30 Years of the Film Foundation

• 8:00pm (War) Tunes of Glory [1960]
• 10:00pm (War) The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp [1943]
• 1:00am (War) The Seventh Cross [1944]
• 3:00am (Drama) The Diary of Anne Frank [1959]

Friday – October 16th, 2020

• 6:15am (Documentary) Trances [1981]
• 8:00am (Comedy) Little Shop of Horrors [1960]
• 9:15am (Horror) Village of the Damned [1960]
• 10:45am (Horror) The Brain That Wouldn’t Die [1962]
• 12:15pm (Horror) Carnival of Souls [1962]
• 1:45pm (Horror) Dementia 13 [1963]
• 3:15pm (Horror) The Raven [1963]
• 4:45pm (Horror) Spider Baby [1964]
• 6:15pm (Horror) The Nanny [1965]

FRIGHT FAVORITES

• 8:00pm (Horror) Dead of Night [1945]
• 10:00pm (Horror) Twice-Told Tales [1963]
• 12:15am (Horror) Black Sabbath [1963]
• 2:00am (TCM Presents) Enter the Ninja [1981]
• 3:45am (TCM Presents) Revenge of the Ninja [1983]
• 5:30am (Shorts) Shake Hands with Danger [1970]

Saturday – October 17th, 2020

• 6:00am (War) The Password Is Courage [1962]
• 8:00am (TCM Presents) MGM Cartoons: Sheep Wrecked [1958]
• 8:08am (Documentary) Cave Explorers [1957]
• 8:17am (Shorts) The Capital City Washington, D.C. [1940]
• 8:27am (Drama) She Loved a Fireman [1937]
• 9:30am (TCM Presents) Wild West Days: The Indians Are Coming [1937]
• 10:00am (TCM Presents) Popeye: A Hull of a Mess [1942]
• 10:08am (Adventure) Lord of the Jungle [1955]
• 11:30am (Shorts) Kissing Time [1933]
• 12:00pm (Western) Angel and the Badman [1947]
• 1:45pm (Adventure) Captain Horatio Hornblower [1951]
• 4:00pm (Comedy) Support Your Local Sheriff! [1969]
• 5:45pm (SciFi) Rollerball [1975]

The ESSENTIALS: Gene Kelly

• 8:00pm (Musical) Singin’ in the Rain [1952]
• 10:00pm (Musical) Summer Stock [1950]
• 12:00am (Crime) Destination Murder [1950]
• 1:45am (Horror) The Fearless Vampire Killers [1966]
• 3:45am (Horror) House of Dark Shadows [1970]
• 5:30am (Shorts) Return to Glennascaul [1953]

Sunday – October 18th, 2020

• 6:00am (Drama) The Life of Emile Zola [1937]
• 8:15am (Comedy) His Girl Friday [1940]
• 10:00am (Crime) Destination Murder [1950]
• 11:45am (Epic) The Good Earth [1937]
• 2:15pm (Drama) Written on the Wind [1957]
• 4:00pm (Romance) Dear Heart [1964]
• 6:00pm (Romance) Peggy Sue Got Married [1986]

ALMOST LOST

• 8:00pm (TCM Presents) Cane River [1982]
• 10:00pm (Comedy) Losing Ground [1982]
• 12:00am (Silent) Exit Smiling [1926]
• 2:00am (TCM Presents) I Am Waiting [1957]
• 3:45am (TCM Presents) A Colt Is My Passport [1967]
• 5:30am (Documentary) MGM Parade Show #5 [1955]

Monday – October 19th, 2020

• 6:00pm (Comedy) I Married a Witch [1942]
• 7:30am (Comedy) Mr. and Mrs. Smith [1941]
• 9:15am (Crime) Touch of Evil [1958]
• 11:30am (Adventure) Mogambo [1953]
• 1:45pm (Suspense/Mystery) North by Northwest [1959]
• 4:15pm (Drama) In a Lonely Place [1950]
• 6:00pm (War) Any Number Can Play [1949]

Star of the Month: PETER CUSHING

• 8:00pm (Suspense/Mystery) The Hound of the Baskervilles [1959]
• 9:30pm (Horror) Horror of Dracula [1958]
• 11:15pm (Horror) The Mummy [1959]
• 1:00am (Horror) The Curse of Frankenstein [1957]
• 2:45am (Horror) Frankenstein Created Woman [1967]
• 4:30am (Horror) Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed! [1970]

Tuesday – October 20th, 2020

• 6:15am (Comedy) Front Page Woman [1935]
• 7:45am (Romance) Wife Vs. Secretary [1936]
• 9:30am (Suspense/Mystery) Mr. and Mrs. North [1941]
• 10:45am (Comedy) Theodora Goes Wild [1936]
• 12:30pm (Comedy) Breakfast for Two [1937]
• 1:45pm (Comedy) Four’s a Crowd [1939]
• 3:30pm (Comedy) It’s a Wonderful World [1939]
• 5:00pm (Comedy) Fools for Scandal [1938]
• 6:30pm (Romance) Love on the Run [1936]
• 8:00pm (TCM Presents) Women Make Film: A New Road Movie Through Cinema – Ep8 [2019]
• 9:15pm (TCM Presents) Tomka and His Friends [1977]
• 10:45pm (TCM Presents) Women Make Film: A New Road Movie Through Cinema – Ep8 [2019]
• 12:00am (TCM Presents) Stop-Loss [2008]
• 2:00am (TCM Presents) The Third Miracle [1999]
• 4:15am (TCM Presents) Madeinusa [2006]

Wednesday – October 21st, 2020

• 6:00am (TCM Presents) Corpo Celeste [2011]
• 7:45am (Shorts) The Birth, the Life and the Death of Christ [1906]
• 8:30am (Documentary) Araya [1959]
• 10:00am (Drama) Children of a Lesser God [1986]
• 12:15pm (Drama) Young Dr. Kildare [1938]
• 1:45pm (Drama) Calling Dr. Kildare [1939]
• 3:30pm (Drama) The Secret of Dr. Kildare [1939]
• 5:00pm (Drama) Dr. Kildare Goes Home [1940]
• 6:30pm (Drama) Dr. Kildare’s Crisis [1940]

SCOUNDRELS & SPITBALLERS

• 8:00pm (Comedy) Hard to Handle [1933]
• 9:30pm (Crime) The Beast of the City [1932]
• 11:15pm (Drama) One Way Passage [1932]
• 12:45am (Crime) They Live by Night [1948]
• 2:30am (Adventure) The Prisoner of Zenda [1952]
• 4:15am (Adventure) Green Fire [1955]

Thursday – October 22nd, 2020

• 6:00am (Adventure) Three Faces East [1930]
• 7:30am (Drama) Born to Love [1932]
• 9:00am (Drama) The Common Law [1932]
• 10:30am (Drama) Rockabye [1932]
• 11:45am (Drama) Bed of Roses [1933]
• 1:00pm (Drama) Our Betters [1933]
• 2:30pm (Comedy) Topper [1937]
• 4:15pm (Comedy) Topper Takes a Trip [1939]
• 5:45pm (Comedy) Merrily We Live [1938]
• 7:00pm (Documentary) MGM Parade Show #5 [1955]

TCM Spotlight: Celebrating 30 Years of the Film Foundation

• 8:00pm (Crime) The Killers [1964]
• 9:45pm (Drama) Breaking Point [1950]
• 11:30am (Horror) The Mystery of the Wax Museum [1933]
• 1:00am (Horror) Night of the Living Dead [1968]
• 3:00am (Drama) A River Called Titas [1973]

Friday – October 23rd, 2020

• 6:00am (Drama) Inside Straight [1951]
• 7:30am (Crime) Absolute Quiet [1936]
• 8:45am (Drama) Chain Lightning [1950]
• 10:30am (Adventure) Tycoon [1947]
• 12:45pm (Drama) No Marriage Ties [1933]
• 2:00pm (Drama) Death of a Scoundrel [1956]
• 4:15pm (Crime) Assignment to Kill [1968]
• 6:00pm (Suspense/Mystery) The Drowning Pool [1975]

FRIGHT FAVORITES

• 8:00pm (Horror) Creature from the Black Lagoon [1954]
• 9:30pm (Horror) The Blob [1958]
• 11:15am (Horror) The Tingler [1959]
• 12:45am (Horror) The Thing From Another World [1951]
• 2:30am (TCM Presents) Ninja III: The Domination [1984]
• 4:15am (Drama) Heavenly Bodies [1985]

Saturday – October 24th, 2020

• 6:00am (Comedy) Please Don’t Eat the Daisies [1960]
• 8:00am (TCM Presents) MGM Cartoons: One Cab’s Family [1938]
• 8:09am (Documentary) Black Cats and Broomsticks [1955]
• 8:18am (Shorts) Wandering Here and There [1944]
• 8:28am (Romance) King of the Lumberjacks [1940]
• 9:30am (TCM Presents) Wild West Days: The Leap for Life [1937]
• 10:00am (TCM Presents) Popeye: Cartoons Ain’t Human [1943]
• 10:09am (Adventure) Tarzan and the Amazons [1945]
• 11:30am (Shorts) The Flame Song [1934]
• 12:00pm (Suspense/Mystery) Harper [1966]
• 2:15pm (Horror) Brainstorm [1983]
• 4:15pm (War) Men of the Fighting Lady [1954]
• 5:45pm (Drama) Citizen Kane [1941]

The ESSENTIALS: Jan Sterling

• 8:00pm (Drama) Ace in the Hole [1951]
• 10:15pm (TCM Presents) Flesh and Fury [1952]
• 12:00am (Adventure) Macao [1952]
• 1:45am (Horror) The Werewolf [1956]
• 3:15am (TCM Presents) The Howling [1981]
• 5:00am (Horror) The Mummy [1932]

Sunday – October 25th, 2020

• 6:15am (Suspense/Mystery) Murder on the Blackboard [1934]
• 7:30am (Romance) All This, and Heaven Too [1940]
• 10:00am (Adventure) Macao [1952]
• 12:00pm (Romance) The White Cliffs of Dover [1944]
• 2:15pm (Epic) Around the World in 80 Days [1956]
• 5:30pm (Horror) What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? [1962]

VAN HEFLIN

• 8:00pm (Western) 3:10 to Yuma [1957]
• 10:00pm (Western) Gunman’s Walk [1958]
• 12:00am (Silent) Haxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages [1922]
• 2:00am (Suspense/Mystery) Diabolique [1955]
• 4:15am (Horror) Eyes Without a Face [1959]

Monday – October 26th, 2020

• 6:00am (Suspense/Mystery) The Beast With Five Fingers [1946]
• 7:45am (Adventure) Mara Maru [1952]
• 9:30am (Drama) They Won’t Believe Me [1947]
• 11:15am (Suspense/Mystery) Where Danger Lives [1950]
• 1:00pm (Suspense/Mystery) Fingers at the Window [1942]
• 2:30pm (Suspense/Mystery) Footsteps in the Dark [1941]
• 4:15pm (Suspense/Mystery) Kill or Cure [1962]
• 6:00pm (Comedy) The Gazebo [1960]

Star of the Month: PETER CUSHING

• 8:00pm (Horror) Nothing But the Night [1972]
• 9:45pm (Horror) Madhouse [1974]
• 11:30pm (Horror) From Beyond the Grave [1973]
• 1:30am (Horror) Scream and Scream Again [1970]
• 3:15am (TCM Presents) The Satanic Rites of Dracula [1973]
• 4:45am (Horror) Dracula A.D., 1972 [1972]

Tuesday – October 27th, 2020

• 6:30am (Western) Somewhere in Sonora [1933]
• 7:45am (Western) Along the Rio Grande [1941]
• 9:00am (Western) Valley of the Sun [1942]
• 10:30am (Western) Sagebrush Trail [1933]
• 11:30am (Western) Devil’s Canyon [1953]
• 1:15pm (Western) The Hired Gun [1957]
• 2:30pm (TCM Presents) Black Patch [1957]
• 4:00pm (Western) Virginia City [1940]
• 6:15pm (Western) Escape from Fort Bravo [1953]
• 8:00pm (TCM Presents) Women Make Film: A New Road Movie Through Cinema – Ep9 [2019]
• 9:15pm (TCM Presents) Fools in the Mountains [1957]
• 11:00pm (TCM Presents) Women Make Film: A New Road Movie Through Cinema – Ep9 [2019]
• 12:15am (Comedy) Girlfriends [1978]
• 2:00am (Drama) The Connection [1962]
• 4:00m (Comedy) Lost in Yonkers [1993]

Wednesday – October 28th, 2020

• 6:00am (TCM Presents) Party Girl [1994]
• 7:45am (TCM Presents) Mabel’s Strange Predicament [1914]
• 8:15am (TCM Presents) Foreign Letters [2012]
• 10:00am (Drama) Winter Meeting [1948]
• 12:00pm (Romance) I Know Where I’m Going [1945]
• 1:45pm (Romance) The Enchanted Cottage [1945]
• 3:30pm (Romance) Random Harvest [1942]
• 6:00pm (Romance) Desire Me [1947]

ELECTION STORIES

• 8:00pm (Drama) The Best Man [1964]
• 10:00pm (Drama) The Last Hurrah [1958]
• 12:15am (Comedy) The Great McGinty [1940]
• 2:00am (Drama) The Candidate [1972]
• 4:00am (Drama) All the King’s Men [1949]

Thursday – October 29th, 2020

• 6:00am (Western) Haunted Gold [1932]
• 7:00am (Western) The Devil-Doll [1936]
• 8:30am (Suspense/Mystery) Before Dawn [1933]
• 9:45am (Comedy) Man Alive [1946]
• 11:00am (Horror) Tormented [1960]
• 12:30pm (Adventure) Angel on My Shoulder [1946]
• 2:15pm (Horror) Night of Dark Shadows [1971]
• 4:00pm (Horror) Indestructible Man [1956]
• 5:15pm (Horror) From Hell It Came [1957]
• 6:30pm (Horror) Death Curse of Tartu [1966]

TCM Spotlight: Celebrating 30 Years of the Film Foundation

• 8:00pm (Western) Winchester ‘73 [1950]
• 10:00pm (Western) She Wore a Yellow Ribbon [1949]
• 12:00am (Documentary) Primary [1960]
• 1:15am (Documentary) Crisis [1963]
• 2:15am (TCM Presents) Dos Monjes [1934]
• 4:00am (Drama) Of Mice and Men [1939]

Friday – October 30th, 2020

• 6:00am (Documentary) MGM Parade Show #5 [1955]
• 6:30am (Horror) Doctor X [1932]
• 8:00am (Horror) The Mask of Fu Manchu [1932]
• 9:30am (Horror) The Most Dangerous Game [1932]
• 10:45am (Horror) Island of lost Souls [1932]
• 12:00pm (Horror) White Zombie [1932]
• 1:30pm (Horror) The Vampire Bat [1933]
• 2:45pm (Horror) The Mystery of the Wax Museum [1933]
• 4:15pm (Horror) Mad Love [1935]
• 5:30pm (Horror) The Walking Dead [1936]
• 6:45pm (Horror) The Return of Doctor X [1939]

FRIGHT FAVORITES

• 8:00pm (Horror) The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake [1959]
• 9:15pm (Horror) Eye of the Devil [1966]
• 11:00pm (Horror) The Devil Rides Out [1968]
• 12:45am (Horror) The Wicker Man [1974]
• 2:30am (TCM Presents) Fleshpot on 42nd Street [1972]
• 4:00am (TCM Presents) Guru the Mad Monk [1970]
• 5:15am (TCM Presents) Movie Trailer [1950]
• 5:30am (Shorts) Distant Drummer: The Flowers of Darkness [1972]

Saturday – October 31st, 2020 [HALLOWEN]

• 6:00am (Horror) Freaks [1932]
• 7:15am (Horror) Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde [1932]
• 9:00am (Horror) House of Wax [1953]
• 10:45am (Horror) Children of the Damned [1964]
• 12:30pm (Suspense/Mystery) The Bad Seed [1956]
• 2:45pm (Drama) The Picture of Dorian Gray [1945]
• 4:45pm (Horror) The Wolf Man [1941]
• 6:00pm (Horror) The Haunting [1963]

The ESSENTIALS: Nuclear Nightmare

• 8:00pm (Comedy) Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb [1964]
• 10:00pm (Horror) Them! [1954]
• 12:00am (Horror) The Seventh Victim [1943]
• 1:30am (Horror) I Walked with a Zombie [1943]
• 3:00am (Horror) The Body Snatcher [1945]
• 4:30am (Suspense/Mystery) The Leopard Man [1943]

Card counting is by far the most popular blackjack strategy. Random number generators essentially made card counting in online blackjack impossible. Event though it is frowned upon by most casinos, online live dealer blackjack and its eight-deck shoes bring card counting back into play. However, a 50 percent cut card penetration does make things tough. Players can give themselves an edge using any one of a number of blackjack cheat sheets available online. 스포츠토토베트맨 These will help you play perfect blackjack strategy and ensure you’re making the best odds plays and avoiding costly mistakes. Traditional blackjack betting systems could also be employed in live dealer games online. The Martingale System is a negative progression system that involves increasing bets with every loss. The parlay system is a positive progression system that involves increasing bets with every win. Success using either system often includes setting strict win and loss limits and sticking to them.

First Time Post, I like to just get this off my Chest and would love some support or outside opinions, Sorry if it’s a bit of a rant
Context: 20 Year old Male, 2 Year University
Essentially I have been gambling consistently on Sports gambling and BlackJack/Casino games for the past 2 months. I’ve been gambling prior to this also but the past 2 Months are where it’s been getting worse. This past weekend was by far the worse relapse I had, Deposited a total of 4000 in a combo of sports betting and Blackjack, Gone over the course of two days. Was constantly stuck to my screen over and over again watching games and doing hands of BJ, I feel terribly sick thinking about it right now. I was very lucky to be able to stop myself with 2500 left in my bank account, and have than Just installed GamBan on my phone and laptop for extra help. But it’s been a very ruff 24 hours, Been criying non stop and feeling very depressed. I’m very grateful to have a loving family that I was able to open to and explain what I did.
Gambling has stopped my focus away from school (University student) and has stopped me from focusing on my workouts which is important for me as I also play for a university football team. My main issue is now is coming to terms with accepting the losses; I’ve been up to 11k in my bank account, To now 2500 (Bought a few things too but a 50 percent lost to gambling)
I also want to note that I am a chronic smoker (Every day, 2-3 times a day) of weed (Legal in Canada). I’m very curious to know if anyone has any ideas on the linkage between Smoking weed and gambling as majority of time I was high when gambling. I’m also doing my best to take 1 Week off from smoking completely to try and re asses how it makes me feel
The money I’ve gained was from previous gambling as I have not been working very consistent hours with my construction Joh. However I’m hoping to start and try and work 3-4 times a week to appreciate the value of money because I’ve really stopped appreciating money: Doing 100 dollar BJ hands on 3 seats makes me realize how sick that is and how much it truly is.
I do not currently have any debt nor do I even bother owning a credit card. I have a few Nice shoes I’m going to sell to recoup a bit of money and put me at about 4000 in my bank. My main question for you guys is what are the best ways to stop thinking about looses ? I was thinking of giving 3000 to my parents and keeping 1000 in my own bank for personal use. I was wondering any other ideas people have had or just methods of triying to not be in a loop of depression? I try to be positive tell myself that my life has not Truly changed and that I’ve only lost money which can be earned back, but it’s hard to to just hate myself for what I just put myself through. I currently live with my parents (Online school) and don’t have any immediate Bills to pay. I understand my situation is far less worse than some but it has been very mentally draining on me and would love some other opinions and stories of similar people.
Thank you, Here’s to day one of being gamble free, Hoping to keep it going forever 🙏🏽

Card counting is by far the most popular blackjack strategy. Random number generators essentially made card counting in online blackjack impossible. Event though it is frowned upon by most casinos, online live dealer blackjack and its eight-deck shoes bring card counting back into play. However, a 50 percent cut card penetration does make things tough. Players can give themselves an edge using any one of a number of blackjack cheat sheets available online.토토 These will help you play perfect blackjack strategy and ensure you’re making the best odds plays and avoiding costly mistakes. Traditional blackjack betting systems could also be employed in live dealer games online. The Martingale System is a negative progression system that involves increasing bets with every loss. The parlay system is a positive progression system that involves increasing bets with every win. Success using either system often includes setting strict win and loss limits and sticking to them.

I have been doing SwagBucks for about two years now, and I have become a bit of an expert. As a 15-Year-Old, I can utilise my lockdown time effectively, and make some money in the process. Being 15, I don't have a job or any other form of income, so it's cool that I can make some money that I can use on what I want. I use SwagBucks for 1-2 hours a day, and my outcome can vary, with it being 100SB on days I get disqualified often, and 400SB on an effective day. In this post I will share my tips and tricks on how to maximise your earnings.
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• Make yourself a planner. It can get confusing to manage your earnings and you can find it difficult to track recent activity. It doesn't have to be anything particularly fancy, just a memo that shows you what you have done, and which activities reward most often.
• Don't be picky with activities. If you can learn to bite your tongue and complete more tedious tasks, you'll find that you'll be rewarded much more frequently. Be sure to also visit SwagBucks' many partners, including AdGem, OfferToro, Peanut Labs, and RevU. Obviously if you see a survey that offers 5SB for an hour of your time, don't do it. It's always about picking your battles, and seeing them through.
• Participate in SB Live. It's essentially a Trivia Show that pays out fairly often. Each show takes about 15-20 Minutes, and if win, you can earn anywhere between 25-200SB. If you are worried about getting a question wrong, there are a number of communities that team up to share answers and help each other win.
• Use SB on multiple devices. Different activities specialise being on a specific device, such as shopping and the SwagButton being available on a computer, whereas Surveys are (in my opinion) easier to do on a mobile. If you can find the right balance of devices, you can earn much more frequently.
• Adhere to the Surveys. I'm not saying lie necessarily, but try to answer in a way that the Survey wants you to answer. The most annoying thing is getting disqualified from a Survey because, and I quote, "You did not meet the desired demographic for this survey." This trick has to have saved me at least 3000SB over my SwagBucks career.
• Doing your shopping through SwagBucks. Not to mention that downloading the SwagButton alone grants you 50SB, but it can also give some pretty neat deals at top retailers. Just consider next time when you go to buy new shoes or some groceries, "Does the SwagButton cover this website?" Your average fortnightly shop can give you somewhere between 50-250SB!
• Invite and Refer friends. SwagBucks gives you 10 Referral codes that you can use to invite your friends. Not only do you earn both 300SB if your invite downloads the SwagButton and 300SB alongside your friend, but you also earn 10% bonus of anything they earn forever. This is a brilliant bonus, especially if your invite is an active SwagBucks participant.
• Attempt some of the "Discover" offers. Many of these offers are mobile games that offer massive payouts for completing an objective in a mobile game. these offers vary, anywhere between 500-5000SB. I personally try to stay away from these offers as I never see them through, although some of these games are really enjoyable and are definitely worth your time. One tip for these offers is to make sure you finish them. To my knowledge, if you begin an offer and don't finish it, you cannot reinstall it and the offer is null and void, so always make sure you are definitely prepared to complete these offers. I have found a good offer to begin with is "POP! Slots Casino", as their Facebook page offers free chips very often, and this can speed up the process considerably. It's a good 1500SB for about 2 Hours worth of playing a genuinely enjoyable game.

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I hope that these tips and tricks help you as much as they have helped me, and that you can maximise your SwagBucks profits effectively. As I said, this is a good way to make some surefire money on the side, regardless if you have a job or not. It can help you make ends meet, or if you just want to feel accomplished that you made a few pounds for some of your time. Try using some of the time we have in lockdown to give SwagBucks a go, because I know I have. Good Hunting!

This is actually from a few years ago, but I just remembered it and it made me laugh, so I wanted to share.
I worked for a few years part-time in Reservations for a large casino and resort. We were frequently short-staffed on any given day, leaving us deep in queue and some pissed off customers once we got to them. It was very draining, and we had LOTS of turnover.
3-4 supervisors were present during each shift, in the middle of the room, while the workers surrounded the edges. During the day we'd make trips up to their mid-floor open "office" to hand in forms, sign things, etc. They almost never jumped on the lines to help with the queue, though. Somehow too busy to help.
One day, we are about 25 deep in queue, and I go up to have them sign something. The supervisor does not see me approach, and I notice she is online shopping for shoes or something. She attempts to quickly change the window but it was too late.
Keep in mind, the supervisors could use the internet freely, but we workers were not allowed to use the internet at all, even during slow times. I decide that it's some bull- to avoid helping with the queue, to online shop on the company clock, and all the time, to do something that workers were not even allowed to do. So I figured out how to keep them all busy, permanently.
We had these things called "Profile Merge" slips. Basically, when a customer would call in to make a reservation, you should check our customer database to see if they've stayed before. By name, by Player's number, etc., but many would not do this (or would not do it correctly). Therefore, you'd end up having half a dozen profiles for the same actual customer.
When we encountered these during our normal duties, we were supposed to fill out Profile Merge slips, with the person's name, Players#, and the various Profile #s they had, and highlighting what you believed to be the correct Profile# (if you thought that there was one).
These were turned into the supervisors, for them to correct within the database in their spare time, as we workers did not have the ability/authority to actually make these edits/corrections within the database. You might normally turn one, two of these Profile Merge slips in each week.
I decided to do these with every spare second I had, since we couldn't do much else. I systematically began going through the entire customer database (at least 20,000 profiles), beginning with last names with the letter "A". I easily made dozens of these Profile Merge slips each shift. My record was 104 in one shift. Each of these Profile Merges probably took 20 minutes each for the supervisor to review and implement the changes.
Sometimes they'd come back to me with "not sufficient info for Merge"; I didn't care, I knew this and I'd submit them anyways. Not my job (nor did I have the database authority) to figure out which one was actually correct, if any. As you might guess, this cut into their spare time free-for-all.
So I do this for about three months, and they are so backed up now. Each day, I'm getting the approved and denied Profile Merge slips in my inbox, for ones that I had submitted several weeks ago. As time passes, they get more and more behind. Here's the best part -- we suddenly are given a policy change. We can now all use the internet on our spare time! Great!
I know this was purposefully directed towards how I was using my spare time, as it was never even a sincere thought before this to allow us unfettered internet access. Basically, they'd finally be allowing us the same rights they had, in an attempt to give me something preferable to do with my time instead of Profile Merge slips.
Nope. I still kept at it, though I did poke around Reddit here and there :) I never stopped submitting those bad boys every chance I got. By the time I put my two weeks resignation in, they were 3 months behind in Profile Merge slips. It took months just to get through one letter of the alphabet. I had only gotten to the letter "H."
I left that place so happy, knowing that workers finally got to use the internet, because the bosses didn't like doing extra work, and instead, they essentially lost their own ability to use their spare time on the web. Shouldn't have been online shopping while we were in the queue...
Edit: Not every supervisor was a jerk. There were many days when I actually liked all the supervisors on my shift and who were coming into the next shift, so I wouldn't turn my Profile Merge slips in that day. I think everyone breathed a collective sigh of relief when I didn't turn anything in.
But there was one in particular boss, Lipstick on a Pig, who was just a straight b-. Previously, as a worker, she would routinely hit the "skip" button on her phone to avoid taking her turn for a call, and it would pass on to the next poor soul. We were almost never supposed to skip calls, but not only did she do it routinely and openly, she got a promotion to supervisor.
You can then imagine what she was like with an ounce of authority. So, I'd save up my Profile Merge slips for a few days, and as soon as Lipstick on a Pig came in for a shift that I worked, I'd personally hand her my amassed 100-200 Profile Merge slips, with my best smile.
"Here ya go! Made some more today! Forgot to turn them in yesterday, too. Oops!" That was the BEST PART.