The Public Enemy is a 1931 crime drama starring James Cagney, Edward Woods, Donald Cook, Leslie Fenton, Beryl Mercer, Robert O'Connor, Jean Harlow, Murray Kinnell, Frankie Darro, and Frank Coghlan Jr.
We begin with the early life of Tom Powers (Coghlan Jr.) and his best buddy Matt Doyle (Darro) as Tom sneaks beer, steals things, hurts people for no reason, and gets beat with a belt by his father (hey, I think I might have spotted some of the problem!). And then he grows up into James Cagney (and Doyle into Edwards Woods), his older brother Mike (Cook) stayed in school and is a good, honorable fella who enlists in the Army just in time for the Great War, and Tom and Matt have started running with local small-time hood Putty Nose (Kinnell).
Putty Nose cuts and runs after Tom and Matt kill a cop (there are literally no consequences for this for them, ever), but fortunately Prohibition hits, and Paddy Ryan (O'Connor) is there to pick up the slack with his charming and kinda scary boss, Nails Nathan (Fenton). Tom and Matt live high on the hog, meet girls, Matt marries, Tom kicks his girlfriend Kitty (Mae Clarke) to the curb when he meets Gwen (Harlow), Nails dies in an accident and the whole thing erupts into a gang war that leaves Matt dead. Tom goes to singlehandedly kill the entire Schemer Burns mob, and predictably gets shot. He winds up in hospital until they kidnap him, kill him, and dump his dumb ass at home for his brother to find.
I'm being a little flip, but this is actually a really good movie. Cagney shows us a character that we would now call a psychopath, utterly without remorse, impulsive, violent, and so forth. In what is perhaps the most telling moment of the movie, after Nails dies Tom and Matt go to the stable, buy the horse that threw him, and fucking shoot it.
The plot would later be reused multiple times, often by Martin Scorcese. You can see the influence - guy rises in a criminal enterprise, gets too big for his britches or sticks around past when the getting is good, winds up dead. Except the vibe here is very much "hey, society creates people like Tom Powers and we're going to have to deal with that shit at some point." I was expecting this movie to be a lot more moralistic than it was; aside from the end plates it just kind of presents Tom as the monster he is but doesn't waggle its finger or shy away from showing how much fun he's having.
The Public Enemy is one of those movies that you feel like you've seen even if you haven't seen it, and I always love watching those because it's fun to see where tropes come from.
My Grade: A- Rewatch Value: Medium-low, I think?
Next Up: Alvin & The Chipmunks: Road Chip. At least it's the last one
Ooga-booga. Zug-zug. Swobu. No, wait, that's orcs from Warcraft.
The Game: Stone Punk The Publisher:Planet Nine Publishing Degree of Familiarity: None, but it's pretty simple Books Required: Just the one
I mean, it's...fine, I guess? It's an RPG where you play cavemen. Lots of attention paid to resource gathering, which is fine, but then there are tribes with weirdly sophisticated societies (even a currency, kind of), and it winds up feeling more like a fantasy RPG than anything else.
Like, there's dinosaurs running around with the cavemen, and that seems like such a deliberate choice but it's never addressed. Even if you were to say "we know this is off by tens of millions of years, but dammit, dinosaurs are cool" or "we took inspiration from the 1982 cinematic masterpiece Caveman and dammit, there were dinosaurs there" but nothin'.
And, not to harp on this again, but I have no idea why the -punk suffix is there. There's no establishment to fight against, there's no punk aesthetic. I dunno. I think there are cool directions this could have gone in and instead it looks like someone went "you know what would be cool? Cavemen" and then wrote a D&D setting. I don't mean to say this game is terrible - the artwork is cool, the mechanics seem well-explained and simple, and there are a bunch of scenarios. I just wish it was about something.
And the fucking PDF isn't bookmarked. Blargh.
Well, let's make a caveman. We start by picking a species: I can be a Sapiens, a Neandrathal, or a Denisovan. Think I'll be one of those. They're equally luck as they are adaptable, whatever the hell that means. Anyway, it sets my Health 22, my Speed at 10, and my Luck at 4.
Now we pick a Class. Brute, Hunter, or Shaman. Um, let's be a Hunter.
And now we pick a tribe! This basically cooks down to what biome we live in. Heh, there's a Beach Tribe.
I'm reminded of a bit that Trevor Noah does about how the reason white people tried to conquer the world is because the climate where they lived was awful. As evidence, he presents the idea of two guys on a beach in the Caribbean saying "we should make boats and go force everyone to do the Calypso." Anyway, I'll be Beach Tribe.
And...I guess that's it? Wow, there's really no customization here at all, huh? How boring. Well, I'll name my guy Monda. Monda hunts fish with a spear, and has learned many lessons over the years, such as "if you throw your spear too far you'll lose it" and "if you see a fish that's bigger that you, it's time to go back to the beach." He doesn't trust those newfangled "boat" things some of his tribe-mates are talking about. You try standing on water, you'll fall on your ass, that's just math.
The Game: Under Hollow Hills The Publisher:Night Sky Games or lumpley games or Lumpley & Co. or all of the above Degree of Familiarity: Never played it, but it's PbtA Books Required: Just the one
It's a pretty easy one to explain, actually. You're a troupe of fairies (and perhaps humans) in a traveling circus going through Fairie and the Mortal World. Go to a new place, sniff the wind, set up your show. The vibe is very fairytale-esque, in the old "blood, sex, and death" meaning of the word. It looks really cool and reminds me of some of the more interesting parts of The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus.
As is often the case with PbtA games, we must first choose a playbook. Most of them are for faerie creatures, and while my inclination is to pick the Lantern Jack, I think I shall go a different direction and choose the Chieftain Mouse. The Chieftain Mouse is a kind of small warrior; I suppose Sir Didymus might fit into this archetype, though of course Labyrinth isn't quite the right tone.
I'm meant to start with a mousey name, but a name suitable for a mouse of distinction. I think we'll name my mouse Mushka the Proud (just rewatched Coraline not long ago).
Now we pick aspects of summer and winter; we start full summer, but things can happen in play to make us step toward winter.
For summer, Mushka gets: Apples, sober little face, rufus red, fancy clothing, and charming. For winter, these become wind in tall grass, bright eyes, smoke grey, worked mail, mannish. I think Mushka's pronouns are he/him regardless, though.
And now we assign numbers to plays. Plays are basically what most PbtA games would call "moves," but unlike most other such games, we don't have stats that they attach to. Instead, each play gets a modifier, but as we step toward winter (or summer), these numbers can shift, which I think is pretty cool.
So I get +2 (x3), +1 (x5), 0 (x2) and -1 (x2) to put into the obvious plays (that everyone can do) and the four Chieftain Mouse plays. Let's start at the bottom: What is Mushka not so good at?
I think open up to them and sniff the wind are his weak point. Mushka is a mouse of action, and his long service in the Mouse Army (not the Mouse Guard has made him more a solider than a talker).
For the 0s, I'll put them into sit counsel with them (I'm loathe to put low scores into my Chieftain Mouse moves, but it seems to make sense) and size them up.
Jumping to the other end, we'll put our +2s into summon the Mousey Clans, waylay them, and confront them. That means everything else gets a +1. Mushka is pretty good at the aggressive, even violent stuff, but I think as he moves toward winter he falls into a more decadent, social, and fun-loving aspect.
And that's it, folks, because everything else would require a group. Mushka is a little red mouse (I debated whether he was actually mouse-sized, but I think it works better if he is). He's got a very smart waistcoat and pantaloons, a mouse-sized sword that stings disproportionately to its size, and a cart drawn by a very small pony (that he refers to as a warhorse).
Alvin & The Chipmunks: Chipwrecked is the third movie in the Chipmunks quadrilogy and stars, once again, Justin Long, Matthew Gray Gubler, Jesse McCartney, Christina Applegate, Amy Poehler, Anna Faris, Jason Lee, and David Cross, and adds Jenny Slate and Alan Tudyk to the mix.
The Chipmunks and the Chipettes are going on vacation! Dave (Lee) brings them on board a Carnival Cruise (yay product placement), whereupon everyone tries to have fun except Alvin (Long) insists on being a complete asshole and gets everyone in trouble. Simon (Gubler) continually tries to keep him in line so that his insistence on being a dick doesn't splash back on the others, but is of course unable to do so. And then due to a series of wacky cartoony mishaps, the little CGI abominations get sucked out to sea on a hang glider and crash onto an island. Dave grabs a people-sized hang glider to go after them, but his old nemesis Ian Hawke (Cross), now working as a pelican mascot for the cruise line and intent on ruining Dave's life, wrestles him for it and they both wind up on the island!
Neither side aware of the other, the Chipmunks try to survive. They run across Zoe (Slate), a FedEx pilot who crash landed here multiple years ago (but still has access to hair care and makeup and soap, because she looks perfectly clean) and has been surviving as a Castaway parody ever since. A spider bites Simon and turns him into Simone (Tudyk), a French adventurer, making him fun and adventurous and pushing Alvin and his Chipette counterpart Brittany (Applegate) into the responsible ones. Theodore (McCartney), Jeanette (Faris), and Eleanor (Poehler) don't have much to do. Theodore obsesses over a horror movie he saw, I guess, and Eleanor breaks her foot. Whatever.
So, turns out Zoe is here for treasure and tries to force Jeanette to retrieve it, Rescuers-style, because there is literally nothing original about this movie. Ian and Dave spar over Ian being a selfish, terrible person, but then he kind of has a redemption arc because there's nothing else to do with him at this point, eventually they make it back to civilization in time to do a concert!
I mean, it's more of the same. I found this one a little (a little) more watchable just because it reminded me more of the 1983 cartoon, but like, it's still a bunch of CGI creatures singing pop songs in unintelligible squeaky voices, David Cross and Jason Lee shilling for a paycheck, and now Jenny Slate acting silly. The only time in the movie I laughed was a bit where Ian and Dave are bedding down for the night and Ian, still dressed as a pelican, has built a nest. That's the best joke in the movie.
Last night we played some D&D, consisting mostly of the discussions that happen when someone has access to a wish. On we go!
Our heroes, recall, are outside of the capital city of Cian. Having slain an evil ogre-creature who was preparing to steal and eat some kids, bed down for the night, and in the morning take breakfast in the caravan before rolling into the city. They talk with Aindriú first, and he tells them that when he's in Cian he stays at the Sapphire, a big house in the nicer section of the city. He co-owns it with several other folks, they "share" the "time", if you will.
The caravan rolls into town, and Aindriú's lieutenant pays the staff. They promptly scatter into town. The adventurers first go to the wizard's college to ask about the box and the wish-granting creature therein. Their contact there, Luch, is dead, of course, but they ask for someone who knows about creatures from the Elemental Plane of Earth and are shown to the offices of Séarlas (he gestures at a stone wall and it slurps open, revealing his library and chambers).
The heroes explain the creature, and Séarlas consults a book and shows them a picture - the creature they saw is called a "dao", a specific type of a powerful elemental spirit called a "genie." Almost all genies are evil, he says, petty, greedy, jealous, arrogant. Dao in particular covet the riches of the earth, so a human being wishing to have those riches and then just giving them away would enrage it. Séarlas warns them that genies almost inevitably try to twist wishes to benefit themselves, and says that the box containing the dao should probably be brought here to be locked up.
From there, at Aisling's insistence, they go to the bathhouse and plump for the extra expensive treatment, and show up that afternoon at the Sapphire, cleaned and scented. They are met by a halfling in a smart-looking suit. He introduces himself as Téodóir, and points them to an armory where they can leave their weapons and armor (should they so choose). He shows them to their rooms - they each get their own, except that Zook and Keenan share a room, as do Aisling and Fearg. They discover robes in the closets (Zook, Keenan, and Aisling immediately put them on), and the beds are stuffed with something very soft.
Fearg tells Aisling not to be surprised if he winds up sleeping on the floor (Aisling understands, but no way is she not using this bed). The characters meet up in a common room and talk about their situation. They're concerned that freeing the genie might be dangerous, and Zook pulls out his keek-stane and casts divination, looking at what might happen if they do. He sees the glass of the keek-stane crack and blood starts seeping out, and he feels something smash against the glass in rage. Keenan grabs his shoulder and snaps him out of it ("You look like you've seen a ghost!"). Zook tells the others that freeing the genie outright is a bad idea, but he might be able to learn a spell to banish it home.
They decide they need to learn exactly how this works, so they summon Téodóir and have him bring Aindriú down. He arrives (also wearing a Sapphire robe) and listens to their concerns, and then fetches the box. Aisling plays a song and casts identify, staring at the box, and learns how the box works.
The dao is bound into the box, and is incapable of harming anyone (unless someone wishes it to). Whenever someone opens the box, it appears and must grant that person three wishes. It can only serve one master at once, and a given master remains so until they make their third wish, willingly renounce any further wishes, or dies. The dao is unable to lie but is not compelled to provide information without a wish. If the box is damaged in any way, the dao is freed.
But beyond all of this, Aisling senses something from the box itself. It has magic, yes, but it also has...something else. She can't explain, can't put her finger on it, but the box terrifies her in a "thing that should not be" kind of way. She backs away from it and Fearg notes that she looks pale. Aisling shakes herself and explains what she's learned.
The heroes advise Aindriú to make sure that box is secure, and he wraps it in a cloth, summons Téodóir and asks him to put it in the vault. They discuss their options and Aindriú's thoughts on the matter - Dara advises him to make his final wish, but Aindriú is hesitant. Eventually they have dinner, a few drinks, and Aindriú goes to bed, saying he'll sleep on it.
The adventurers note that they have options - if Aindriú makes his final wish, one of them could become the dao's new master and wish it back to its home on the Elemental Plane (and even specify that it can't come back). There's some talk about bringing it to the wizard's college, so Zook grabs his keek-stane and casts divination to ask about this course of action. He sees humanoid figures fighting over the box, grabbing at it and pushing each other.
Fearg opines that having wishes is a curse, not a blessing. People aren't able to resist that kind of temptation, and he notes that he has a lot of respect for Aindriú not only for holding on to his last wish, but for making a wish to be worthy of love rather than to be loved. He does say, though, that in his opinion it's better to get rid of this thing. "It's the comforts that make us feel numb," he says to Zook.
In the end, they decide that they aren't going to take this to the wizard college, there's just too much that can go wrong. As they're preparing to go to bed, they hear a bell start to ring from downstairs.
They go to look, and Aisling sees Téodóir stumble out from a back room, clutching his stomach. She calls a healing word at him and he falls, showing a bloodied hand (but the main wound healing). "The vault," he gasps.
Priest is an action...horror? I guess movie starring Paul Bettany, Karl Urban, Cam Gigandet, Lily Collins, Maggie Q, and utterly wasting the talents of Christopher Plummer and Brad Dourif.
In a world (IN A WORLD) where vampires are these gloopy, pale, eyeless monsters, the Church employs Priests - some kind of super-warriors with jumpy-flippy powers and cool weapons - to beat them back. This works too well, they win the war, and the priests are assimilated into society, which would be easier if they didn't have fucking crosses tattooed on their faces. One such Priest (Bettany) has retired to a life of brooding when vampires kill his sister-in-law (Mädchen Amick), mortally wound his brother (Stephen Moyer), and kidnap his niece Lucy (Collins).
Priest asks the Church Council to be reinstated, but the lordy high monsignor guy (Plummer) tells him to piss off, we won the war, no more vampires, these are just raiders out in the wastelands. Obviously Priest can't let that go, so he follows Sheriff Hicks (Gigandet), the local law and also Lucy's boyfriend, out into the wastelands where he kills a bunch of familiars (pale humans with weird eyes) and vampires, until he discovers that this is all being orchestrated by a former priest-turned-vampire (Urban)!
This is based on a graphic novel, and it very much feels like it. It's also inspired by Blood, the old first-person shooter video game, which I've never played. It's a little sad in some ways, because it's got a great cast, Bettany is doing his best and he's actually pretty good as an action hero, and the premise has some schlocky gothic potential. But it just kinda...ploops out?
Like, these things are "vampires," which is fine, they're night-stalking creatures that drink blood. But what are they? It's a big screaming deal that Black Hat (Urban's character) is a "human vampire", but that's never discussed until close to the end. Familiars can handle sunlight, and that's apparently what happens when people get bitten, but people can be "infected" - does that mean they grow into the gross hanging blob-cocoons that Priest finds in the vampire train? The logistics are never explained, and that's only a problem because these are "vampires" and that word has a lot of baggage that I don't think we really needed.
Also, making the movie PG-13 was a bad choice. This was in 2011, when everything had to be PG-13 (we were in the early stages of the MCU and the studios were realizing how much money there was in adapting comics and bringing in the 13-20 demographic, but they apparently missed that you have to adapt them well), so here we have a movie about brutal vampires that had to animate part of its sequence so it could show blood and dismemberment (the animated sequence is pretty cool, granted).
It's not a bad watch, it's fun to watch Bettany nibble scenery and Urban and Dourif chew it, but it's dark and dour and it could have been more interesting.
My Grade: D+ Rewatch Value: Low
Next up: Public Enemy, technically, though I suspect I'm going to get another crappy movie from Toasty today
The Game: Coven & Crucible The Publisher:13th Moon Games Degree of Familiarity: Many things about it seem familiar, but no, haven't played it Books Required: Just the one
I don't know if I'd actually run this game; the system seems deceptively simple (roll 2d12, try to roll under a difficulty) but the more I read the book the more confused I became. Like, there's "degrees" and "formula" and "level of success" and "math", and it's all very janky. The system reminds me of OWoD, not so much in the specifics (as that's a dice pool system and this really isn't), but just in some of the ways it's presented.
Also, as long as I'm bitching, we could have used an editor for clarity. Lots of passive voice and some funny typos (the GM in this game is the "Storyteller," further cementing the OWoD connection, but there's one place where they're called the "DM" and I thought, "whoops, I know where you started!").
But there's also a lot I like about this game. I like the setting - in very brief, it's the modern world but magic is real and an accepted part of society. There are witch hunters, but they're crazy terrorists because hating "magic" is like hating "cooking." Magic is depicted as a skill that anyone can do, if they're willing to put the time in, and most people who want to use it will pay someone else to do it for them.
There's also a lot of John Wick in here (that's actually one of the stated inspirations) - witches have their own currency called "Pentacles" that don't have a fixed value so much as carrying more or less weight depending on who's spending them. There's a chain of witch-only hotels called the Continental Crucible where violence is prohibited. If you wanted to sum the game up as "what if John Wick but find/replace 'assassin' with 'witch'" you'd be in the right ball park.
The game was created by a married couple and their daughter - the wife did the setting/world building, the husband did the mechanics, and the daughter did the art (which I have to say is really dope, so hats off to Art Goblin Charlotte. They did a revised version recently and I didn't back it (I rarely back new editions of games I haven't played), but actually I think I might have to grab a copy at some point, especially if I can find more info about the mechanics.
My point here is that the inspiration and setting foundation of the game are solid, and, in reading it, I can see how to run it. That's actually a big deal, because I read so many RPGs, and a lot of them I read and think "eh" or "I could make this fun for the right group, but it would be a lot of work." This actually pokes at my brain a little more, and not just because I'm an ex-Wiccan myself. So let's make a witch!
I don't have a concept handy, so let's find a theme song. Just a moment. And the randomness gods have given me..."Killing Boys" by Halsey!
I really like this song, for multiple reasons. First, it samples Jennifer's Body, so like, good start. It's a song about revenge, but unlike similar songs ("Before He Cheats," f'rex), it seems to refer to the old adage that someone seeking revenge should dig two graves. So I don't think I want to make a character who is after revenge, how about someone who got their revenge and now gets to live with it?
So, my character is Devin Dowling (not a superhero, despite the alliteration). His little sister Denise was killed by a drunk driver when he was 17 (she was 13), and the guy got out after doing 3 years (so Devin was 20). Devin wound up at the same coffee house as the guy one winter evening - this was after Devin had already done quite a bit of therapy and tried to let go of the anger he was facing. The guy (let's call him Ben) was chatting with some friends, and one of them asked the terms of his parole. And Ben said, "oh, I'm not allowed to drink."
It was the way he said "drink." It wasn't "I'm not allowed to drink, because I killed someone while drunk and that's understandable" or "I'm not allowed to drink and that sucks because I miss it", the tone was more "I'm not allowed to drink and that is an imposition." And Devin lost any progress he'd made, and went after revenge.
He tried to hire a witch to hex the fucker, and he couldn't find one who would. Hexing people is ethically shaky at the best of times, and there are laws about it in any case. So Devin started studying magic to do it himself. He did, got his revenge (I'll get more specific after I figure out what exactly Devin can accomplish, magically speaking), and now he's got that hanging over his head. And he's still angry.
Whew, that's bleak. Now for Attributes! I start with 3 in each of them (Will, Body, Agility, Magic, or "WBAM" for short. "Wa-Bam," maybe?) and then I get 7 points to split up. I think Devin has put a lot of time into learning magic, so let's max it out (the max is 7, so that's 4 of my points). And then I'll put two points into Body and one into Will, leaving Agility at 3.
Skills! There are nine Skills, I start with 4 points in each one and I can split up 13 points betwixt them. The maximum is 13, so if I want to be really specialized I could pump 9 freaking points into one Skill (but I do not think I wish to do that).
Let's just take these one at a time. Academics, I'm inclined to leave at 4, but I might put a point or two into it. Magical (there's an Attribute called "Magic" and a Skill called "Magical", no way that gets confusing at the table) should get some points, so how about we put 3 into it for now? Strategic includes sub-skills (that's next) involving planning and executive function, and actually that's something Devin should have some ability for, so let's put 3 points there, too (6 spent, 7 remaining).
Artistic and Martial can start at 4. Technical might be something Devin is good at...Athletics I'd normally raise, but I see Devin as not the most physical of guys. I'll put 2 into Technical for now.
That leaves Social and Underworld with 5 points remaining. I'll put them all into Underworld; Devin has spent a lot of time learning to do shady shit.
And now, sub-skills. Each Skill has seven of these, meaning that there's 63 of the fuckers. Fortunately, they're all pretty intuitive, although that's a lot, it's not nearly the most ridiculously granular I've seen. I get 63 points to throw around, but I don't start with any points in anything. I also don't seem to be capped by the controlling Skill, so that's nice. My max here is 7, so if I wanted to be really shit-hot at 9 sub-skills, I could.
Right, well, let's just list the ones I think Devin should have some ability in:
*There seems to be considerable overlap between these sub-skills.
** These too.
Well, I could put 3 into each of those and have 15 points remaining. Do I wish to do that? Sure, let's do that. Using my remaining 15 points, I shall bump Hexing to 7 (11 remaining), Stealth to 5 (9 remaining), Occult to 5 (7 remaining), Awareness to 6 (3 remaining), Lock-Picking to 4 (2 remaining) and Investigation to 5.
Traits! These are basically Merits & Flaws without the Flaws; there's some mention of some of these applying negative modifiers but it all seems to be in service to the player. So I get 7 points' worth. Let's see.
Definitely not Common Sense (I note, with some amusement, that it's basically the same as the Merit of the same name in OWoD, which we always used to joke was underpriced at 1 point). Let's take Criminal Mind at 2 points, Devin has spent the last few years thinking about how to crime at someone. Similarly, I think Contacts makes sense - Devin has been looking to find someone to hex this guy for a while and I'm sure would have talked to some people. Each instance of the Contacts trait gives me a bonus to rolls with a given group (meaning I could level 2 with Vampires but level 3 with one of the witch Houses). Let's take level 1 with House Strega, and level 1 with Vampires. That leaves me 3 points.
Let's just put the last 3 into Single-Minded (which gives me a bonus on almost any action as long as it's focused, but makes me shit at multi-tasking).
Derived stats!
Health is 13 + (Body x 2), or 23 for me. Base Initiative is Will + Agility (7). Potion Tolerance is 7 (I can drink 7 potions in an hour before suffering "negative effects"). Alcoholic Beverage Tolerance (no, seriously, it's a thing, though I'm not sure why)...I can have 5 strong drinks in an hour before negative effects.
Speed is (Body + Agility + Athletics)2, or 22. Sprint is Body + Endurance, so 5. Magic Resistance is Magic + Magical (see?) + Endurance, or 14. I get 2d12 Pentacles (roll...14). And that's it! (I ain't filling out the back of the sheet, it's a bunch of stuff that would be useful in play but not for chargen.)
Devin is just shy of 6' tall, very skinny, maybe a touch of asthma. He's got his sister's name and dates (birthdate - death date) tattooed on his right arm in red ink. He's got blond hair and green eyes, and he never stops moving his hands when he's talking.
The big question - did he kill Ben? I think he didn't, I think he made him drunk by hexing him and had him arrested for parole violation. And again, it didn't help.
