Character Creation: Hero Kids

THE TWELFTH GAME OF XMAS, TWENTY-TWENTY-TWO, IS HERO KIDS,
WITCH GIRL ADVENTURES,
YARR!,
ROCKOPOLIS,
THEN BROKEN EARTH,
GOOD SOCIETY,
THEN MOONPUNK,
VISIGOTHS VS. MALL GOTHS,
PIRATES OF PUGMIRE,
THE TROUBLESHOOTERS,
THEN STAR-CROSSED,
AND THE FIRST GAME WAS THE ONE RING 2ND ED!

(Flourish!)

The Game: Hero Kids
The Publisher: Hero Forge
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one

The "twelfth" slot in the song is usually "lords a-leaping," and so I wanted a light, basic fantasy game. Doesn't get a heck of a lot lighter! 

Hero Kids usually gets recommended when people ask for a game they can play with younger children. It's by no means the only such game, but it's definitely got production values and space in the market, that's for sure. (I don't see people recommend FirstFable often, but y'know a) it was never really promoted like it was supposed to be and b) the author is reportedly problematic.)

Reading it...I dunno. It looks perfectly playable. It's a simple roll d6s vs. d6s, highest single die wins, ties go to the attack, but that right there is my first niggle - everything is presented in terms of combat. And I don't know, is that a stereotype or a trope that should continue in RPGs? Does the foundation of the game have to revolve around fighting? 

(I mean, it doesn't, obviously, but here it does, and in a lot of RPGs across the spectrum of genre, age, and complexity, it does.)

Well, anyway, making a character is pretty darned straightforward, so I'm gonna try to make a lord what leaps. Chargen starts by asking me to consider what sort of hero? Well, if I want to lean into the "lord" thing, then I'm probably a princeling or a bored noble sneaking out of a gilded cage (figuratively speaking) to go on adventures. As such, my character has probably been trained to fight in a stilted kind of way, but might not have a lot of practical chops. 

I get four dice to split up into Ranged, Melee, Magic, and Armor, but the first die I put into Ranged or Magic costs two. As such, I'm gonna leave Magic at 0...hmm. So I can either have Melee 2, Armor 2; or I can have Ranged 1, Melee or Armor 2; or Ranged 2 and Melee or Armor 2. 

Well, let's be risky and assume my character can't exactly sneak out of the palace (or whatever) wearing armor, so I'll leave Armor at 0. That lets me put two into Melee and one into Ranged.

And now I get two "normal attacks", one for Melee and one for Ranged. I'll say my Ranged is Arrow Shot, and my Melee one is Daring Riposte. 

Special Action...hrm. The ones on the example characters are just variations on "attack more people." How about Defensive Stance: Shift a die from Melee to Armor for one turn?

Bonus Ability! This is a passive ability, and I know what I want here. Normally characters can move past allies in combat, but not enemies. Because I am a Leaper, I can, uh, do both.

Equipment and skills...this is pretty much just "what's logical to have." I don't think any special inventory stuff, other than my bow and my rapier. For skills, though, I think he should have Knowledge and Acrobatics. 

That's all but the details. My character's name is Bertram, but when he's sneaking out to go adventure with the common folk, he goes by Martreb (he thinks that's very clever). Lean, well-fed, clean (when he leaves the palace), probably an embarrassing haircut that he hides under a hood.

And that's pretty much it. Happy New Year!

Character Creation: Witch Girls Adventures

The tinsel falls from the trees, the snows have melted, and now the year 2022 slouches towards its deathbed. However.

THE ELEVENTH GAME OF XMAS, TWENTY-TWENTY-TWO,
IS WITCH GIRL ADVENTURES,
YARR!,
THEN ROCKOPOLIS,
GOOD SOCIETY,
THEN MOONPUNK,
VISIGOTHS VS. MALL GOTHS,
PIRATES OF PUGMIRE,
THE TROUBLESHOOTERS,
THEN STAR-CROSSED,
AND THE FIRST GAME WAS THE ONE RING 2ND ED!

The Game: Witch Girls Adventures
The Publisher: Relentless Fiction
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one

I picked this game for the 11 slot ("eleven ladies dancing") because, well, it's about the only game I had on the list that is about ladies in any sense. I don't think I have any about dancing. 

I got this game in a bundle, and reading it now, I'm lukewarm. It looks...fine, I guess? Urban fantasy-ish sort of game in which (lol) you're playing young witches, perhaps at some kind of witchy academy. It's based on a comic strip, but the URL doesn't seem to work anymore and I ain't going fishing. 

As for the RPG, there was a second edition on Kickstarter some years ago, but it appears to have shat the bed, going by the number of comments saying things like "I never got the PDF or the book." But that's as may be, cause I didn't back it, so on we go!

Irritatingly, the PDF isn't searchable, and it's not bookmarked properly, so finding anything in particular in the book is difficult. For instance, it seems like a game that, at first blush, wants all of the PCs to be girls should at least address the idea of male PCs, but if it does I can't find it. So let's just assume that characters for this game are supposed to be girls, make a character accordingly, and go play Phoenix Point some more.

Oh, wait, there's one line that I just found that says "All witches are female." OK, then.

SCs (Star Characters, I think) are assumed to start at age 12. First thing we choose is our splat, here called "clique." Let's see.

Hmm. I just watched Sleepy Hollow again, and there's that scene close the beginning where Christina Ricci's character is playing some game called "Pickety Witch." It's clearly a party game for younger folks ("Who's got a kiss for the Pickety Witch?"), but the undercurrent of witchcraft is present just like it is for most of the movie. Also, I like the idea of working in dance somehow, just to keep with the song's lyric (and because RPGs are about stepping outside oneself, and if there's one thing that I'd need to experience through a character, it's dancing). 

So I think I'll go with Rustic:

This gives me a d8 in Magic. I split up d4, d6, d6, d8, d8 amongst my other Attributes. Well, I want her to be outdoorsy, graceful, and spirited, so I think a d8 in Body. I'll put my d4 in Mind, since it apparently deals more with education than actual intellect; she's had a much more practical and physical upbringing. I'll put a d6 into Social and Senses, and my other d8 into Will. 

I get 8 points in Mundane Skills and 8 in Magic Skills (plus a free point in either Divination or Elementalism). Ugh, there are far too many of these. Well, I'll put 3 into Dancing, 1 into Fighting, 1 into Garden, 1 into Hiding, 1 in Plucky, 1 in Track.

Magic skills! I'll put 2 into Broom-Riding, 3 into Casting 1 into Focus, and 1 into Magical Etiquette. I see this character as coming from a society where most people know a witch or two, and so the basics of Magical Etiquette are pretty second nature. She would have trouble at a fancy ball, though.

Traits! I get two Talents and a Heritage. For Talents, I'll take Friendly (I can inspire someone if I talk them up in a scene) and Rural (I get a bonus to doing outdoorsy stuff). For Heritage, I'll take Hex-Breaker. Her village had a rash of curses and hexes some years back - before she was born - and her mother, also a witch, got really good at de-hexing people. That gives me the Spell-Breaker Skill at +2 for free, but it means I get one fewer point of magic ranks.

And that's the next step, in fact. I get a free point in Elementalism or Divination, and I think I'll take the former - Divination feels a little too contemplative for this character. I'll put three points out of my 7 in there, too, for the maximum score I can start with. 

Four more points. I think I want some Curse (not that she's real fond of cursing people, but y'know, easier to break them if you know what you're dealing with). I'll put 2 there, and then the other two into Protection. 

Neat. I get a signature spell, something that I use a lot and that I can cast more easily. It has to be from Elementalism. I think I'll say that Sunny Day is her preferred spell. It just makes the weather perfect (and she's been known to use a similar spell to make autumn days crisp and winter days snowy). 

I'm gonna skip equipment, I think, and go straight on to the last step, which is fleshing everything out. 

So! My witch's name is Penny Pickett ("Penny" is short for "Penelope," but she literally can't remember the last time anyone called her that). She's what you might call "gangly" - tall, thin, her hair has a tendency to friz a bit, and her eyes are bright blue and lively. 

Penny is from a magical family - her mother and sisters are all witches, as is her aunt. Her brothers (Penny is the youngest of six) are mostly OK with it, though she suspects her brother Gerald is getting a little too jealous. She isn't sure what to do about it, though, and honestly she thinks it is kind of unfair that there aren't any boy witches. She keeps meaning to ask her mom about it.

Penny is a little naive. She's not a bumpkin, exactly, but the social contract where she's from is very different than in a more cosmopolitan area and that causes some conflict. In particular, it's frowned upon to settle differences via a quick wrestling match in this new witchy school. 

That'll do it, I think!

Movie #707: Sleepy Hollow

Sleepy Hollow is an action/horror movie directed by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp, Christina Ricci, Christopher Walken, Miranda Richarson, Ray Park, Jeffery Jones, Michael Gambon, Marc Pickering, Richard Griffiths, Casper Van Dien, Michael Gambon, and Michael Gough. 

Ichabod Crane (Depp) is a constable in New York City sent to the small town of Sleepy Hollow to investigate a series of beheadings. Crane is an anomaly amongst his profession in that he actually cares about silly things like "evidence" and "arresting the right person", and so he approaches the case with a scientific mind. Of course, he immediately finds himself in the midst of small-town drama, smitten with Katrina (Ricci), the daughter of the town's chief citizen Baltus (Gambon), in a rivalry with a local tough named Brom (Van Dien), and in well over his head.

The citizenry tells him that the killer is the Headless Horseman, the ghost of a Hessian mercenary who was killed some 20 years ago and haunts the area (Walken plays the Hessian when his head is attached, while Park portrays the Headless Horseman). Crane, a man of science, does eventually come to realize that the Horseman is real, but it's being directed to kill specific people, and he suspects Baltus and Katrina before finally deducing that it was Baltus' wife, Katrina's stepmother Mary (Richardson). She had her reasons.

Sleepy Hollow is a love letter to Hammer films, and to gothic horror, and while it's not exactly a faithful retelling of Washington Irving's story, I think it works well for what it is. Burton can't get through a movie without showing us his daddy issues (Crane's mother, played by Lisa Marie, was a witch and his father, played by Peter Guinness, was a religious whackadoodle who killed his wife - my question is how they wound up married), but the meat of the story is the conspiracy amongst the town elders and the implacable terror of the Horseman. Crane's relationship with Katrina could have stood a little more fleshing out, although part of the issue I have is that Christina Ricci was 11 in Addams Family (1991), meaning she was 19 here, but they're both "90s movies" and she still reads as very young. Also Depp is 17 years older, and even though they don't read as that different in age in the movie, it's still feels like they're on very different levels, maturity wise. 

As long as I'm complaining, I've never liked that the Horseman kills the little boy (Sean Stephens) when he goes after the midwife (Claire Skinner). You don't see the kill, but it's obvious what happens and it always felt unnecessary. 

With all of that said, though, I do enjoy the movie. Like a lot of Burton films, the atmosphere is amazing, the supporting cast is made up of professionals who all know what they're doing, and Depp anchors the movie nicely. I kind of feel like Burton does best when he's got a studio to keep him from going too far off the deep end, but I haven't actually done the research on that. 

My Grade: B+
Rewatch Value: High

Next up: Sleuth

Cairn: The Rapture in Brandybuck Junction

Cairn today! Last RPG of the year, in all probability. Here's last time.

The Stormwind Circus travels north, eventually reaching its final stop before heading back towards Cairn: The village of Brandybuck Junction. The Junction is mostly hedgehogs, weasels, hares, and mice, and they're interesting in that they don't have a mayor or a leader. Instead, they vote on everything. 

The circus travels near the area where the inspiration for "Yeet the Noodle" happened, and Ratatosk Longberry waves to the Rock Circle druids (safe to say they can't hear him). He gets the brilliant idea to combine the performance of the song with some percussive fireworks and maybe a choreographed version of that battle, and scampers off to talk to Sumna Stormwind about it. She tells him to talk with Fosted Startail, the acrobat, about working up the act.

The circus arrives in town and starts getting set up. Rumdiggle Sunsong heads out of town near Dulcimer Lake, and communes with the animals a bit. She sees a wading bird with long spindly legs that she hasn't seen before, and sits quietly, taking in the scenery.

Russelet Leatherwind fashions some arrows, while Ratatosk goes zipping around talking to the folks that he needs to in order to get his act set up. He finds Rummy by the lake and pitches the idea to her, and then zips off back toward the circus. Rummy feels a cold chill go down her back, but isn't sure why.

Snootabur Shadowbough goes into town to meet some of the locals and get a feel for the place. She hears someone call her name, and a bat glides down and lands in front of her. He introduces himself as Coleru Waxwing, and is a big fan of the Traveling Knights and of Rummy in particular. He's a minstrel himself, you see, and has become enamored of the Knights' exploits and the stories thereof (which bemuses Snootabur a little - what stories?). He invites the Knights to his house after the show for a glass of dandelion wine, and Snootabur agrees and says she'll talk to the others.

The circus performs, and Coleru is sitting front and center and cheers loudly for everyone. When the show is over, the Knights visit him in his home, and he is delighted to meet them. It turns out he's an alchemist as well, and he and Ratatosk compare notes and formulae. He tells the Knights that songs have traveled about their adventures - he knows about the battle with the Bloodwalkers, and their tragic loss of Professor Puddleleaf. He even gets his lute down and sings them that ballad.

He gets them all a glass of dandelion wine and toasts them, their adventures, and their willingness to help others. They stay a bit and finish their drinks, and then head back to their beds - it's been a long day and night.

Rummy wakes up to Oof, the daggertusk in the circus' animal act, nudging her. She senses confusion, fear, and loneliness in him, and shakes herself awake. Rummy generally sleeps among the roustabouts, and they're all gone. Their bedrolls are still there, but every single pika and other Favored has vanished. No signs of struggle, and no trace.

More than a little concerned, Rummy goes to find Snootabur, and then the two of them go and wake up Russelet. He flies around the area and realizes that everyone in the circus, and everyone in the village, is gone. They find Ratatosk in his lab working on fireworks, but he hasn't seen anyone this morning. As far as the Knights know, everyone must have vanished after they went to sleep last night.

Ratatosk climbs a tree and talks with a bird. The bird says that the people here were taken against their will, but it isn't sure by what. Something that didn't have a scent, and didn't cast a shadow.

The Knights check through the circus and confirm that everyone's gone, and then Rummy calls upon the powers of the ripper to help her track some scents. She smells the people, but not anything else, so they were grabbed by something with no scent. They follow the scent through the village, and they stop at Coleru's house to look about. 

Ratatosk looks into his kitchen/laboratory, and finds the five glasses he served the wine in last night. But only four of the glasses have the scent of wine! Ratatosk grabs the glasses and rushes them back to his lab for testing, and discovers that the fifth glass - presumably Coleru's - only had water in it. But the other four have traces of a liquid that, according to the tests, is water, but has the scent of wine and is clearly magical. Curiouser and curiouser. 

They search Coleru's place a little more carefully, and Russelet finds perches in the upper level of the house, labeled "Coleru," "Plum," "Mella," and "Wish." Coleru has a family - but where were they last night? Ratatosk quaffs a Truesight potion and looks around the place, and sees Coleru's lute shimmer. He hands it off to Snootabur and goes rummaging around in the lab again.

Snoot finds a piece of paper in the lute, folded and sealed with wax. Snoot frets over opening it, but Russ takes it and breaks the seal, revealing...a blank page. Ratatosk, still under the Truesight's effects, can read it:

I, Coleru Waxwing, husband to Plum, father to Mella and Wish, do commit my soul to the care of the Bright Ones. Should I die, I hope I am remembered in song at the Lakewater Tavern. 

Ratatosk also finds three jars in a lock box in a locked cabinet. Testing it, he discovers that two of them are spider venom and the third is some toxin that he's never seen before. All of this looks bad, and yet, still so many questions. 

They keep following the scent, through town, and reach the Lakewater Tavern on the northwest end of the village. They look around and see a harp set up on the stage, and the table nearest it has a formula written under it. Ratatosk copies it down and guesses it might be an antidote or antivenin of some kind. 

They keep following the scent out of town, and eventually come to a Titan ruin. It's a circular tower, but it's long since collapsed and been overgrown with moss. Nearby, a fountain, bubbling up with clear, clean water. But the water smells like dandelion wine, and there are handprints set into the stone all around the fountain. They're different species, and placing their hands on the handprints elicits a shudder, but no other response. One of the handprints, obviously that of a bat, has a bloodstain, but there's no trail.

Russelet hears rushing wind, very briefly and very faintly, while looking into the tower. Ratatosk peers in with his Truesight, and sees, for just a second, a hole leading deep into the earth. Favored are tied up and stuck to the ceiling, weakly struggling to get free. The very sight of this puts Ratatosk into Discord, and he backs away from the sight. 

Rummy sings "Yeet the Noodle" to raise everyone's spirits, but then they hear something approaching. Russelet tries to take to the air, and a weaver (very large spider) leaps on him! Two more of the creatures approach, but Ratatosk casts a spell and tangles them in the weeds. Rummy collapses (possum, it's an impulse) but manages to shake herself awake in a moment and calls upon her power as a shifter. She charges at a spider and bites it, while Ratatosk maintains the spell and Russelet and Snootabur fire arrows at the creatures. It's a hard battle, but eventually the weavers are dead and the Knights are victorious, if exhausted.

Snootabur builds a fire, Rummy plays music and Russelet retrieves arrows from the corpses. Something terrible is happening, and the Knights need to figure it out.

Character Creation: Yarr!

THE TENTH GAME OF XMAS, TWENTY-TWENTY-TWO,
IS YARR!*
ROCKOPOLIS,
THEN BROKEN EARTH
GOOD SOCIETY
THEN MOONPUNK,
VISIGOTHS VS. MALL GOTHS,
PIRATES OF PUGMIRE,
THE TROUBLESHOOTERS,
THEN STAR-CROSSED,
AND THE FIRST GAME WAS THE ONE RING 2ND ED!

*This game title only works in the cadence of the song if you really stretch it out. 

The Game: Yarr! The Rules Light Pirate RPG
The Publisher: BD Games
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one

After the overwritten mess that was Rockopolis, it's refreshing to have a nice, simple, palate cleanser of a game. Yarr! is an RPG about pirates meant for kids. And like, it's not the best kid-focused RPG I've ever seen. It's just watered down D&D with a nautical theme, very focused on combat, but you know what? Fine. There are a lot of approaches to writing RPGs for kids, and as I've said before, "kid" covers such a vast swath of time that it's not like there's one right answer (to say nothing of the fact that children of different ages can be at very different developmental levels as far as language, cognition, and experience with games go). 

So let's make a pirate! Yarr, indeed! Oh, and I picked this for the "ten" slot in the song because in some variations, it's "ten ships a-sailing."

No ability scores in this game, we just choose a class to start with. The classes are pretty loose - we've got Atlantean (that is, merfolk), Cap'n (which isn't really a captain, more of a fighter/paladin type, I think?), Marine, Rascal (rogue), and Sailor. 

Well, the last pirate-y character I made (who was a bird) was gunsmith, so I think I'll lean away from that and make a sailor. I often find playing rank-and-file characters who rise above that station and become Important to be a lot of fun. My Sailor's name is Horst. Sometime the other sailors call him "Red Horst" because he burns in the sun so easily (you get used to it). 

I can leap, run, and climb in the rigging without a roll, and I can find secret doors and treasure on a 1-4 on a d6 because I'm a greedy sort. I get a weapon (roll 1d3...club), a cup for grog, and sack for fillin' with treasure. 

Hit points 9, AC 16, and that's it, ladies n' gents. Not really much to it. Yarr! 

Character Creation: Rockopolis

THE NINTH GAME OF XMAS, TWENTY-TWENTY-TWO,
IS ROCKOPOLIS
THEN BROKEN EARTH,
GOOD SOCIETY,
THEN MOONPUNK,
VISIGOTHS VS. MALL GOTHS,
PIRATES OF PUGMIRE,
THE TROUBLESHOOTERS,
THEN STAR-CROSSED,
AND THE FIRST GAME WAS THE ONE RING 2ND ED!

Just keeps goin'. Also, merr crimas to all who celebrate.

The Game: Rockopolis
The Publisher: Minos Games
Degree of Familiarity: None, and it's gonna stay that way
Books Required: Just the one

The "nine" slot in the song is "drummers drumming," so I wanted a game about music. I'd already done Rockalypse, unfortunately, but I did have Rockopolis on my shelf. I hadn't had a chance to read through before yesterday, but aside from having a kind of low-rent layout, which I can forgive, it looked like a kind of urban fantasy game wherein you play rock musicians, okey-day. 

Well...this game has some issues. First and foremost, it's translated from Italian but the translation is pretty poor. It reads like just a literal, verbatim translation and, um, that's not how you translate books. As such, there are a lot of phrases that just flat-out don't make sense, and a bunch that do if you read them a few times. Either way it's a chore to read.

But I was trying to look past that, because that by itself is not an indictment of the game. And past the translation issues, it's just kind of a crap game. For one thing, it's pretentious as all get-out. The foreword to the game talks about rock n' roll and pirate radio stations and that's actually pretty cool, but then the tone of the rest of the game writing is just smarmy. Check it.

There's more, but you get the idea.

Like, what is this crap in aid of? Yes, we all know what the "Name" slot on the sheet is for. You could just say "pretty self-explanatory" and move the fuck along. And the writing is like this all through the book. 

A playful, familiar, or even, dare I say it, humorous tone is fine in an RPG, but you have to know how to write like that and also convey the information you need to, without losing your reader. Rockopolis is just tedious and cringey. 

But never mind that, what about the game itself? Well...it's pretty thin, particularly for a 224-page book. You're playing members of a rock band, and the main struggle appears to be with your own "Muse." But your Muse isn't really a muse, it's a vice with a "clever" name, so if you like to gamble your Muse is "Las Vegas," if you like drugs it's Stormbringer (???), and so on. Some of the names make sense, some don't. The tone of all this is very much "your Muse is a demon that can overtake you," and like, cool, the idea of grappling with an addiction that also creatively fires you up has some potential, but the execution and the writing is such a mess that it's hard to know if that's what they're really going for.

Also, this game has the worst example of play I've ever seen. It reads like they recorded, translated, and transcribed a section of the game at the table, but with all the unnecessary chatter and minutia that a group gets into left in. 

IT'S 2.5 SOLID PAGES OF THIS.

So anyway, I'm gonna make a character, and it pains me that this is my Xmas day character, but y'know. Let's head to Chapter Four: Character's Creation [sic].

whee

So, first off I'm meant to choose a real name and a stage name. You know, like the dudes in Marilyn Manson's band all took the names of killers and models or actresses, I guess. Since I don't have a group, I'm making any band-related decisions myself, so let's lean into Glam and say that our band is Bond Girls. That's not to say all of the members are female, but they all play with gender expression and presentation, and take stage names based on (as the name implies) Bond Girls. My character's name is Christmas Jones. (Crappy Bond movie for a crappy game.) His name name is Andrew Barton; his friends used to call him Bart. "Christmas" is an upgrade. 

Now we do "Souls," which are basically just attributes. Metal (physical force), Punk (dexterity), Blues (intellect), and Glam (social shit). Why are they called "Souls," especially when "soul" is also a form of music and this is hella confusing? Good question. Moving on. 

I get 7 points to split up, min 1, max 3. I know I want to be a drummer (since today is nine drummers drumming), so feels like Punk should be higher? Also, there's a stereotype about drummers that they're...well, not bright (I don't know if that's true; I have met a lot of drummers who talk loudly because of low-grade hearing loss, though). But I don't think I want to have 1 in multiple Souls. Let's do 2 in Glam, Metal, and Punk and the remaining 1 in Blues.

Three points in Relationships, which are either Love or Hate, and I have to have at least two. Let's say my character Hates the Christmas Season (1), but Loves his little brother Joey (2). (If I were playing this character, I might like a character arc that lets him change that Hate into Love. Then again, if I were playing this game I might question my life choices.)

Feats! These are...hell, I don't know. They're a little like skills or professions, but Skills are actually a separate thing. Anyway I get five points and I have to split them between at least two, one of which has to be an Artistic Feat to cement my place in the Band. So Tireless Drummer, obviously. I'll stick 2 points there. I'll put two into Fashion Master and one into Solo, boom.

Muses! As I mention, these are addictions, I guess? Inspirations? I get three points, and I can dump all three into one Muse, though the book advises against this. I don't think Christmas is that deep into any particular vice yet, so I'll just do one point in three different Muses. 

Let's take one in Kama Sutra (sex; I mean I'm named after a Bond Girl, sounds appropriate); Malaphar (I think this is about stealing stuff or just having stuff, but OMG the Muse sections are terribly written); and Bacchus (booze). 

And that's actually it. I get 1 in Inspiration, 0 in Experience, and $1000 in my pocket to buy shit, but if you think I'm going shopping for this game you're very much mistaken. 

Christmas Jones typically wears red, green, bells, lights, and sometimes ugly sweaters onstage, but in keeping with the band's genderfluid aesthetic. He keeps his hair short but wears a variety of wigs, and he spends his time in the band van drawing up costume ideas. He's not a fan of the actual Xmas season (corporate greed gussied up with a big dollop of bullshit religion, no thanks) but his little brother Joey loves it and still believes in Santa, and thinks that having a big brother who is not only in a rock band but keeps Christmas alive all year round is just the coolest thing, and Christmas doesn't have the heart to pop his bubble. 

Movie #706: Sleeping Beauty

Sleeping Beauty is a classic (1959) Disney animated movie based on the fairy tale of the same name, and starring Mary Costa, Bill Shirley, Eleanor Audley, Verna Felton, Barbara Jo Allen, Barbara Luddy, Taylor Holmes, and Bill Thompson.

The story is probably familiar: After the long-awaited birth of their first child, King Stefan (Holmes) and Queen Leah (Felton) hold a big "everyone kowtow to your benevolent overlords" party. In addition to Stefan's bestie Horace (Thompson) showing up with his young son Phillip and cemented that this infant and this child are totally gonna get it on some years down the road (at least Phillip has the good sense to be a little grossed out by this), three magical fairies flit down!

Flora (Felton again), Fauna (Allen), and Merryweather (Luddy) are all set to bestow magical gifts on the princess. Of course, rather than give her something dope like wings or magic powers or whatever, they give her beauty and song (I guess the song does let her enchant woodland creatures, which is cool). But then Maleficent (Audley) shows up and is all salty because she wasn't invited (thank god Merryweather's there to keep it real - "you weren't wanted"), and curses the princess to die at 16. Fortunately Merryweather hasn't given her gift yet, so alters the curse to just cause magical sleep rather than death. 

But rather than chance it, King Daddy has all of the spinning wheels in the kingdom burned (which...I dunno, seems a little shortsighted, you've got sixteen years, and don't you need those to...spin things?) and Princess Aurora goes to live with the fairies in the woods. Eventually she pricks her finger on a spinning wheel anyway, everyone goes to sleep, and grownup Prince Phillip (Shirley) has to fight Maleficent in dragon-form to get to Aurora, wake her up, and give her a happy ending.

So, I'd seen this before, obviously, though it had been a while. But what I didn't remember was that the fairies are really the main characters. Like, the movie is called Sleeping Beauty and ostensibly about Aurora, but she's a prop or a side character at best. The rest thrust of the movie is the fairies hiding her, then casting spells to help Phillip do his hero thing. There is no plot (that is, character arc) for anyone. The closest anyone gets is Horace, who comes around to the idea that his son might marry a peasant girl, but whew that turns out not to matter because it was totally Aurora all along. 

As with a lot of earlier Disney movies, this is just a brief fairy tale stretched out to movie length. The animation and art is impressive, the voice acting is fine, there are a couple of good laughs (mostly involving Merryweather). It's a lot more watchable than, say, Bambi, but it doesn't hold a candle to the more modern movies with their "character motivations" and "actual storylines."

Although I do kinda want to watch Maleficent now.

My Grade: B
Rewatch Value: Low

Next up: Sleepy Hollow

Character Creation: Broken Earth

THE EIGHTH GAME OF XMAS, TWENTY-TWENTY-TWO,
IS BROKEN EARTH,
GOOD SOCIETY,
THEN MOONPUNK,
VISIGOTHS VS. MALL GOTHS,
PIRATES OF PUGMIRE,
THE TROUBLESHOOTERS,
THEN STAR-CROSSED,
AND THE FIRST ONE WAS THE ONE RING 2ND ED!

Greetings from the surface of fucking Pluto.

The Game: Broken Earth
The Publisher: Sneak Attack Press
Degree of Familiarity: Haven't played this, but it's Savage Worlds
Books Required: Broken Earth and some version of the SW rules

So, Broken Earth is a post-apocalyptic RPG in the vein of The Last of Us or Horizon: Zero Dawn (inasmuch as there's a lot of attention paid to humanity developing based on loss of pre-war knowledge, not so much the robot dinosaurs). There was a nuclear war, big-badda-boom, and the action all takes place in the upper Midwest - what was once Minnesota and some of southern Canada. There are three main communities that starting characters are asked to come from: the Axe-Tribe (a bunch of folks who worshipping spirits and mythological figures, including Paul Bunyan, whom they call "Palbun"); the Iron Shelter (folks who created a society in an iron mine and waited out the last century, so they know a lot about the pre-war world but almost nothing about what's happening now); and the Wright Company (a town formed by the enterprising and almost mafia-like Wright family). 

Honestly, it's all pretty baller. I read the book (and once again may I say that one of the things I love about most Savage Worlds properties is that they don't waste words - lots of setting packed into two chapters) in one sitting, and it's a rich and evocative world. It's got a tight focus but there's clearly a wider world out there. Definitely going on my "run me" list. 

For now, however, I picked this game for the "maids a-milking" slot because it takes people back to a pre-industrial society, so I figure milking cows would be a more common activity. 

Let's see, what kind of character would I like to make. Honestly there's a lot of cool possibilities; some people have psionic powers, there are "freaks" (a human offshoot species that's resistant to radition), and evolved chimpanzees called simians, all of which have potential. I think I want my character to be a former herder, someone who was trying to compete with the Wright Company in this one very small area, and who paid the price. 

Manis Hulder wound up taking over some farmland outside of Wright Town when the owner died, and quite by accident ended up with some milkable cows. In a year or two, he'd bought a couple more and hired on some folks to help care for them, and he was doing pretty well. And then one day, Jed Wright invited him to Wright Town to talk about maybe contracting with the Wright Company to get his milk better distributed. 

Jed didn't actually meet with him; he wound up talking with Jack Wright (Jed's brother) and having dinner, getting a little drunk, and getting sent home the next day with some vague promises and a bunch of Wright Fun-Bucks (the Wrights have their own currency, only good, of course, for their stuff). When he got home, he discovered that all of his cows were dead or gone, his staff was dead, and his home had been burned. Raiders, what are you gonna do? Never mind that the "raiders" didn't hit anyone else in the area. Never mind that no one saw anything, other than "raiders." Never mind that the Wright Company's milk production jumped in the weeks following. 

Manis gathered what he could and headed to Wright Town. Sure, ultimately he'd like to burn Jed Wright in his own bed, but for now it's about survival and staying under the radar, so Manis takes what work he can and bides his time. 

Cool, good start. So Manis is obviously human. As for attributes, let's do a d6 in Agility, Vigor, and Spirit, keep Smarts at d4, and bump Strength to d8. 

Skills! Now, Broken Earth is pre-SWADE, but that's fine, I can still use SWADE skill rules. That means I get a d4 in Athletics, Common Knowledge, Notice, Persuasion, and Stealth, and then I get 12 more points. 

Well, SWADE doesn't have a Farming skill (thank god), so I don't have to worry about that. I think I'd better take a d6 in Shooting and a d4 in Fighting. I'll bump Athletics to d8 (which eats 3 points). I'll put Persuasion up to d6, and buy a d4 of Repair. Riding is actually relevant here! I'll put a d6 there. Last two points for a d4 of Survival and a d4 in Thievery. 

Hindrances! I'll take Mild Mannered, for sure. I thought there was a Gullible Hindrance, but I guess not. I'll take Pacifist (minor), too. That'd be something that Manis would lose in play, I think, but he's a gentle soul. 

Oh, actually, instead of being gullible, let's say that he went too far the other way and take Suspicious as a Major Hindrance. People get a penalty to help me, which is a neat way to express that.

Four "points" to spend, ooh, plus I get a free Edge, forgot about that. I'll take Brawny, I think. Makes Manis a little bigger than I was thinking, but that's fine. And then I'll buy up Vigor to d8, and use the other two points to buy up Survival to d6 (because it's tied to Smarts). 

Gear, yawn. I get 500 "trade", so I'll blow 350 on a crossbow and the other 150 on a survival knife. Done and done.

Pace 6, Parry 4, Toughness 7 (because of Brawny), and that's all the derived stuff. 

Manis looks like he's from Minnesota. He's tall, blond, and seems like he should be more muscular than he is (food's scare, y'know). He's taught himself to question everyone, even - especially - if they're being nice, but the truth is Manis is a genuinely kind soul himself and doesn't really have it in him to be a total misanthrope (you'll notice he doesn't have Vengeful or Vow). This is probably why he's still alive - the Wright Company knew they could get away with what they did, and ironically that might be what pushes Manis over the edge someday. 

That'll do it! Back to hoping the power doesn't go out!

Movie #705: The Slammin' Salmon

The Slammin' Salmon is a comedy by Broken Lizard (same guys behind Beerfest and Super Troopers), starring Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme, Eric Stolhanske, Paul Soter, Jay Chandrasekhar, Cobie Smulders, Michael Clarke Duncan, April Bowlby, and Will Forte. 

The titular Slammin' Salmon is a very expensive seafood restaurant in Miami, owned by former heavyweight boxing champ Cleon Salmon (Duncan) and staffed by our lovable group of scamps: Connor (Lemme) got on a TV show but was killed off after two episodes and had to come back to work here; Mia (Bowlby) is training in professional ballet; Tara (Smulders) is in med school; Guy (Stolhanske) is...well, a dick; Nuts (Chandrasekhar) is straight-laced and a little square until he misses a single dose of his meds, and then he earns the nickname; Donnie (Soter) is the screwup twin brother of the head chef (also Soter) hired as a busboy on his first night; and Rich (Heffernan) is the meek and put-upon manager and brother-in-law of the Champ. 

The situation driving the plot is that the Champ is into the Japanese mob for $20K, and demands that Rich make it tonight. Rich pushes the staff to upsell by dangling various treats for them, but nothing really makes things nasty until the Champ promises ten grand in cash to the top seller...and a "broken rib sandwich" to the loser. (The fact that they now have to make $30K doesn't really occur to the Champ, and you can't really tell him anything because at best he'll yell "WHATEVER MOTHERFUCKER" at you.)

Into the mix, we have all kinds of subplots: Rich accidentally eats the engagement ring of a movie star (Sendhil Ramamurthy) trying to propose to his girl (Olivia Munn); Connor winds up waiting on the TV producer that shitcanned him (Lance Henriksen); Mia, clearly in the lead because she's a hot blonde and not afraid to weaponize it, gets burned with soup and then with, um, fire; and Donnie is forced to take a shot of blue curacao every time he breaks something, meaning he gets drunk and blue-lipped very quickly; and a mysterious lone customer (Forte) just...sits there all night, reading War & Peace, taking up a four-top.

This is basically a season of a workplace comedy made into a single night, and it works because Broken Lizard has such fabulous chemistry. But because they're only five guys, the supporting cast needs to hold up, too, and they absolutely do. Cobie Smulders and April Bowlby are both equals in the cast and the waitstaff, and by the end of the movie you get a real sense of the team's history and interactions. Michael Clarke Duncan, likewise, had fantastic comedy chops, and he's menacing and a little sad as the Champ (sad inasmuch as sometimes he just doesn't understand what's happening, but knows he doesn't, and that upsets him - it's more layered than this movie probably deserves, actually). 

There are a couple of bits that don't really land. Will Forte's character turns out to be dying and leaves his waiter (originally Guy, then passed to Donnie so that Guy can reduce Donne's total, then passed to Tara because Donnie wants her to win) a $1000 tip. That's fine...but upon leaving the restaurant he's immediately run down by the Champ's horse and killed. Champ's interactions with his Japanese candy investor (Koji Kataoka) and his translator (Smith Cho) are pretty cringey, too. Tara kisses Donnie after finding out what he did for her, but then the kiss turns to aggressively tonguing and groping and it turns out it was Dave, which, like, twin shenanigans, OK, but that was pretty much open-air sexual assault (this movie was released in 2009, don't think that'd fly today).

For the most part, though, I think it's pretty underrated and while it's not as funny or quotable as Super Troopers, it's definitely worth a watch.

My Grade: B+
Rewatch Value: Medium-high

Next up: Sleeping Beauty

Wicked Ones: Monsters vs. Bowl Cut Gang

And here we are with our very first plotted raid in Wicked Ones! Last time here.

Our...heroes, I guess...are staking out the route from Charter Hollow to the site of the Confraternity of the Three encampment. They're lurking along the road at night, hiding behind whatever cover they can find, and Queequaz the Querulous has summoned up a bit of fog to hide them. 

Their target: a wagon of paper and other sundries that the Confraternity is taking back to their base. A driver rides the wagon, while two armored men ride resplendent chargers flanking it. Baldruf sneaks up under cover the fog to cut the horses loose...and just as he's starting to cut, one of the men on horseback raises a holy symbol and burns away the fog. 

Baldruf, rather caught with his breeches down, stabs wildly at the driver, and fires his crossbow at the knight on horseback. The bolt hits the dude's helmet and doesn't really harm him, but dazes him some. Thudd hurls his hammer at the head of the other knight, knocking him from his horse, while Fnort charges in at the horses drawing the wagon and kicks them over. Unfortunately, they collapse on top of him. 

Queequaz and his acolytes are, characteristically, some distance away. They call up dark magics to amplify the pain of the crossbow bolt in the first knight, and it works, but the knight sees them and charges at them, scattering the goblins in panic. Queequaz changes them all into creeping bugs and bats, and they slither off and away from the now very confused knight.

The driver of the wagon rallies the horses and they stand up (and get off Fnort). Baldruf stabs at the dude, but then slinks away and climbs in the back of the wagon, And there he gets another surprise - there's a fourth man riding the back, dressed in leather armor and carrying a flail! He forces Baldruf out and strikes him with the whip, chastising him in Light Tongue. 

Fnort closes in on the knight that Thudd was dealing with, swinging his sock of rocks. Thudd takes advantage of the distraction and stabs the dude in the leg, and Fnort leaps up and tries to brain him, but misjudges how tall he is, bounces off his chest, and lands flat on his back. Baldruf climbs up on the wagon, past the inquisitor, and gets the horses moving, and yells to the others that the wagon is heading back to the Sepulcher! 

Thudd manages to get on the wagon, while Fnort winds up under it. He struggles his way in, though, just as the two knights come galloping up (leaving the driver and the inquisitor behind). Queequaz is trying to get onto the wagon and Baldruf throws him a rope, and he manages to climb on board with Fnort's help...but throws Fnort out in the process of getting in. 

Fnort lands with a thump, and sees the other two enemies still on foot, running after the wagon. He charges at them, screaming and waving his deadly sock, and they run. Fnort grumbles something unkind about Queezquaz and starts heading home on foot.

The wagon isn't doing especially well, though. Thudd throws a bear trap out the back, but forgets to open it. Queequaz calls on help from his deity and not only opens the trap, but multiplies it, and it fells one of the horses and riders. The other one rides up alongside the wagon and tries to calm the horses, and Baldruf fires a bolt into the horse's flank. The rider braces like he's going to jump to the wagon, and Baldruf, vengeful at the best of times, leaps onto the horse with him!

Now no one is steering the wagon. Queequaz is in the back, but he's far too craven to try. Thudd crawls up to the driver's seat and hurls a concoction he came up with earlier at the knight on the horse. It shatters, drugging the knight, Baldruf, and the horse. Baldruf takes advantage of the situation and slits the knight's throat, while Thudd manages to grab the reins and head for the Sepulcher.

The Wicked Ones aren't safe yet, though. Barely have their gotten back when they realize that the Confraternity has followed them! Three adventurers - the inquisitor from before, a heavily armored knight, and a cleric of the Three - arrive at their door. But of course, now these adventurers have the dungeon to deal with...

They bypass the spiked pit trap easily, and push into the main hall. They approach the cabinet full of undead rats, and the horrible little beasties burst forth, but the cleric disrupts their magic and the rats fall dead. The adventurers press on into the ossuary, wherein the two gnoll cutthroats that report to Baldruf are lurking. Unfortunately, they're also hung over and a little dinged up from the last dungeon invasion. 

The knight charges forward and slashes at them. They roll and attack, trying to press whatever advantage they can, but the knight strikes out with his sword, felling them both. 

The adventurers, finding nothing else here, return to the main hall. They try to enter the hallway at the southwestern end, but the bone puzzle lock thwarts them. They find another door at the end of the hall, however...but this one leads down the corridor enchanted with a fear spell!

The knight and the cleric fall prey to it, but the inquisitor cannot be swayed from his mission. They all three press on into the hall, and are confronted with the goblin acolytes. These little creeps call up dire magics against the adventurers, but they stand strong, and the goblins melt themselves into ooze and flee. The adventurers continue unimpeded into the Scriptorium. 

There, they find the crafter imps busily engaged in cleaning the room (including scrubbing the books). The inquisitor charges forth and chastises them. They activate a "sprinkler" that douses the room in slime, temporarily blinding the adventurers, but the cleric calls up a glowing golden dome that forces the imps back. They try to hide, but they're leaving little slimy footprints, so instead they fall back into the guard post. 

The knight follows zealously, and runs straight into the kobold pack. The kobolds leap on him, stabbing at him with their little knives, and peel the armor from his body before laying him low. They turn their attention to the other two, with the imps taunting and throwing rocks, but the inquisitor and the cleric manage to beat them off with their weapons and return to the scriptorium.

They loot the room, and the cleric heals his companion a bit, and then they descend to the Sanctum itself! (Boss music.)

They catch the Wicked Ones unawares, licking their wounds, and the inquisitor berates them in Light Tongue. Fnort screams at them, backing them down, but they advance cautiously. Baldruf charges forward in an uncharacteristic show of direct force, and gets his knife smacked out of his hand for his trouble. He backs up and puts a crossbow bolt in the inquisitor's chest, and Queequaz calls on Crevis once again to blind the inquisitor.

The God of Cowardice does, but blinds Queequaz, too. The goblin zealot praises his master, and Thudd flanks the inquisitor and hurls his hammer into the intruder's head, killing him. 

Fnort tries to tie up the cleric with his newly-acquired rope and grappling hook, but all he manages to do is wrap the rope around some of the pillars. Baldruf takes advantage, though - he runs in, bounces off the ropes and drives his elbow into the cleric's head. The cleric falls to the ground, unconscious, and Baldruf stands victorious! 

Next time, we'll see what this cleric can be persuaded to tell them!

Character Creation: Good Society

THE SEVENTH GAME OF XMAS, TWENTY-TWENTY-TWO,
IS GOOD SOCIETY,
THEN MOONPUNK,
VISIGOTHS VS. MALL GOTHS,
PIRATES OF PUGMIRE,
THE TROUBLESHOOTERS,
THEN STAR-CROSSED,
AND THE FIRST GAME WAS THE ONE RING 2ND ED!

Pinkies up, motherfuckers.

The Game: Good Society
The Publisher: Storybrewers Roleplaying
Degree of Familiarity: Never played it, and my experience with Austen is limited
Books Required: Just the one

I haven't read a lot of Austen, honestly, and I find some of the social mores of the Regency pretty...stifling (as I'm sure did the people living during the period). That said, there are certainly authors of the period that I really love, including Byron, Blake, Shelley. Maybe I just haven't read the right novel yet. 

In any case, Good Society seeks to emulate Austen's style, and it winds up structurally somewhat similar to A Tragedy in Five Acts, at least as far as it focuses on the narrative role that certain characters play. There's a lot of attention paid to reputation, and there's a whole section of play called "epistolary" where players narrate the letters their characters are writing. Nary a ghost nor an orc to be found.

Suffice to say, not an RPG that would be a good fit for all tables, but with that said, I've had tables composed entirely of over-educated folks who love (or at least have strong opinions about) Austen, and I think they'd really get into it. Would the game be as interesting to someone without that background, someone who just read (or pretended to read) Pride & Prejudice in high school or in freshman comp in college? Probably not, but who cares? They've got lots of other games available. 

Oh, I picked this game for the "seven swans a-swimming" slot in the song because swans swimmin' around in your pond would be a status symbol, particularly given as a gift, and it felt very Austen-y to me. No idea if that's period, and I don't much care. 

Character creation is, perhaps unsurprisingly, meant to be a group activity, but I'm pretty sure I can fudge things where necessary. 

Set up the playset doesn't actually involve a lot of setup; it's just picking one of the playsets in the book. Playsets are collections of desires and relationships and roles around a given theme or tone. Using them "in full" means using all of it, while using one "in part" means just taking the desire/relationship combos and letting players pick their own roles and backgrounds, which is what I'm gonna do so that I actually have a few choices to make. I think I'll pick the farce playset,

Choose desires. Looking through the desires, I think this one is the one that sounds the most fun:
 

The other ones are either about parent/child relationships or money, and I'm not feelin' it. The corresponding relationship card is...

And my next step is form relationships. Possible, then, that I'd want to make myself the newlywed, but I wouldn't actually decide that until the end of the first novel section. But either way, someone else would take this relationship card and I would take someone else's. Since it's just me, I'll keep this nebulous unless I need to define it more.

Now, since I'm using this playset in part, the next step (choose roles and backgrounds) isn't determined by the playset. Looking at the roles, what would be an interesting mixture of "wants to see people married," "has an old flame," and farce?

I think I'll go with the Heir; I want someone who's kind of above a lot of the issues, but still vulnerable to getting cut off if things go sideways. For Background, I'll take New Money. One of the Regency-set properties I love very much is Blackadder The Third, and I'm getting Amy Hardwood vibes here.

And finally, we flesh out the major character. There's actually some steps to this, of course. 

Complete the character role sheet. Well, I would, except you didn't make it fillable and my printer's being stupid. 

Choose starting reputation tags. That would be these:

I think I want clever and outsider as mine. 

Consider the character's personality, past, and position. I think my character is the middle son of an industrialist family, someone who's made a lot of money with their Raveling Nancy or whatever. Meaning he grew up with money, but without a lot of the snoot that comes with growing up rich and titled. His older brother has gone full snoot, while dad still hews to a more working-class mindset, which is probably good because it means my guy is more likely to inherit. My character, Arthur, is not exactly a clothes horse (what a weird expression) and isn't as fashionable as big bro, but that means he gets overlooked more easily, which makes for good eavesdropping. Plus he's better educated than a lot of people think.

Determine the meaning of your relationship. Again, no other players, but my relationship was old flames. Let's say that Arthur spent a season in London with his big brother and moved amongst the upper crust a little, and wound up growing very fond of a young woman there. They're not likely to ever really get together, given their positions, but Arthur still carries a torch. I picture them having a sparring-match kind of relationship. 

Share public knowledge, doesn't apply, perform any additional instructions on the desire card, doesn't apply, confirm character's pronouns, he/him. 

Arthur Northfield is plain - plain of dress, plain of face, plain of voice - until you see him in action. He's a skilled sportsman, and he really comes alive while doing something. He also finds it amusing that the rich plan and arrange and are so meticulous about everything. Can't be that hard to arrange a marriage. Watch!

I think Henry Cavill might play Arthur in the movie, but that may be because I just rewatched The Man from UNCLE the other day. 

I'll put a sheet up later if I can get my damn printer working.

Movie #704: Sky High

Sky High is a superhero comedy starring Kurt Russell, Kelly Preston, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Michael Angarano, Danielle Panabaker (whom it took me the whole movie to recognize from Flash), and Kevin Heffernan. 

Will Stronghold (Angarano) is the son of Commander (Russell) and Jetstream (Preston), the world's premier superheroes. Oh, let me back up.

IN A WORLD of four-color, silly superhero antics (that's not a criticism, merely a statement of genre), superpowered teens attend Sky High. Will Stronghold etc etc. So Will is now a freshman at the titular Sky High, but his powers haven't descended yet, so he winds up on the "sidekick track" with a Legion of Substitute Heroes (look it up): his best friend Zach (Nicholas Braun), who glows; little Ethan (Dee Jay Daniels), who melts into a puddle; Magenta (Kelly Vitz), who can turn into a guinea pig; and Layla (Panabaker), a plant-omancer who's quite powerful enough to be on the hero track but refuses to participate in a fascist sorting system. 

Will eventually winds up coming into his powers; first his father's super-strength, then later his mother's power of flight, and when he does he's taken off the sidekick track and shunted onto the hero track, and then this becomes the old trope of "suddenly popular kid leaving his old friends behind for the shallow new pretty people", culminating in the even tropier "popular kids were using younger kid for [reason]."

So obviously this ends in a super-hero fight, in which popular girl Gwen Grayson (Winstead) turns out to be the supervillain Royal Pain, presumed destroyed 18 years ago in battle with Commander and Jetstream. 

This movie is fun. It's hella derivative, of course: in addition to be Stock Teen Plot #4, it's heavily reliant on Harry Potter, especially in the first third. But with that said, there's a lot I do like about the movie. I like that Will grew up around superheroes and so people having powers doesn't really throw him, but some of the details about Sky High (like the flying bus) do. I like the sprinkling of cameos and supporting roles; Bruce Campbell's immense douchebag of a gym teacher is always fun. Dave Foley's aging sidekick, All-American Boy (but he goes by "Mr. Boy" now), is just kind of sad, and Kevin McDonald's mad science teacher reminds me pleasantly of the old Galaxy High cartoons. Kevin Heffernan, on loan from Broken Lizard, gives us our "squib," a child of superheroes with no powers.

And this is all very cartoony. It's interesting now, though, that superhero movies are so thick on the ground and yet bright, colorful, four-color movies are so rare, to see something with mostly practical effects. It has the air of a Disney TV show more than a big-budget movie, but it's a nice time-killer.

My Grade: B
Rewatch Value: Medium

Next up: The Slammin' Salmon

Slipstream: Zeenia & The Bad Hat

When we last left our space-heroes, they were on the fragment of Amazonia! 

BIG RATS THERE. ME CRUSH WITH CLUB.

The characters go a-trekking through the jungle. Hwoot, Craw, and Gruff accompany them. They follow the map that Allos gave them, and along the way they make exciting discoveries. Zeenia discovers that her helmet attracts bugs, and it has to be squeegeed. Iris learns that just because a plant looks like an edible plant that she's familiar with, doesn't mean it'll have the same effect (in a related matter, she spends some time barfing and tripping balls). Abbas finds out that certain species of snakes are delicious. 

Their journey takes a couple of days, but eventually they arrive at a huge stone stepped pyramid. Something glows bright blue at the top, so the three fliers (that'd be Hwoot, Iris, and Craw) take wing to check it out. But just then, a horde of short, squat, hairy humanoids armed with clubs and spears bursts from the brush and attacks!

One of them hurls a spear at Craw and drops him, and another runs up and knocks him out with a club. Gruff jumps in front of Zeenia to protect her, and she scoffs, oozes right around him, and flails with her deadly tentacles. Iris draws her laser sword and flies into the fray, making quick work of these creatures, while Abbas climbs the pyramid to go after the ones hurling spears. One of them creeps around in the brush and spears Hwoot in the back, and he plummets to the ground, dead.

But lo! Gruff has one of the Lazarus Injectors that the group obtained back here! He yanks out the spear and shoots Hwoot up with one, saving his life! By now, Zeenia and Iris have carved a bloody swathe through the surviving creatures, and Abbas zaps the last one with his plasma rifle. The threat is over - now what?

Gruff watches over the injured Bird-Men while the others climb the pyramid. At the top, they find a flat, translucent surface with a bright blue light shining out of it. No apparent ingress, though. Iris does a lap around the pyramid and finds a metal door on the other side, and Zeenia goes to check it out while Iris and Abbas go back down to search the bodies. They don't find anything interesting on the corpses, but Zeenia discovers a depression on the door in the shape of a human hand. The characters lop off the hand of one of the creatures and press it into the print, and the door shloops into the floor. 

The three of them enter a corridor, and immediately the door shloops up again and gas starts to fill the room. They find a similar depression on an inner door, however, and open it before they're overcome. They have time to see a pedestal with a bright blue light before a Raptor-Man in an oversized, techie-looking helmet steps in front of them holding a laser pistol. This, then, must be Tricer, Allos' mentor.

He's clearly deranged, and growls something about "lies" and "my race." The heroes try to talk him down,  revealing that they killed the creatures outside, and he chuckles, saying he can always get more slaves. The characters toy with the notion of leaving and telling Allos that Tricer is here, but then they can all see his helmet is sparking. Zeenia tries to sneak around him to knock it off. Tricer notices, however, and activates the helmet, taking over Zeenia's mind. 

Zeenia advances on her friends, tentacles blades ready, but Abbas pounces on Tricer and knocks off the helmet and Zeenia comes to her senses (Tricer passes out). The heroes grab the helmet and put it in a sack, and then Iris sees the source of the blue light - a stone sitting on the pedestal. She grabs it to take it along, and a voice addresses all of them. It reveals that the Cavor - the humanoid creatures that the characters fought outside - were the dominant species on the planet from which Amazonia fragmented. The Raptor-Men were a slave race that they created, but then a comet struck their world and killed off their civilization. None of the heroes are too familiar with the situation on this rock, but they all know that this is a pretty big revelation - that might be what drove Tricer nuts. The voice also says that all of the race's tech and knowledge is contained in the stone, so they take it with them.

Tricer wakes up a few hours later and they get a bit more of the story (through his broken Streamer). He calls the stone "lies" and demands the characters take it off the fragment. The characters arrive back in the town and Allos and Tricer reunite, and the heroes give the stone and the helmet to Genko. He recognizes the helmet as a "slave controller" - he's seen similar tech before. It's useful to keep slaves in line, but this one is damaged. He says that he'll fiddle with it, and the stone, and hopefully come up with some useful info. 

Chirrp has fixed the ship and scoured it for more sabotage devices, but found none. The heroes get back on board the Darkwing and head for Avia. Genko requests that they stop by Dracos, his home fragment, at some point - he has a workshop there that would allow him to work on the helmet and stone more effectively. Avia is on the way, though, so they decide to drop by there first. Also, Abbas wants to have a little confab about the saboteur...

They wind up getting caught in the Graviton Wave and carried along for a few hours, but eventually break out and arrive back on King Boolar's fragment. 

King Boolar receives them and listens to their updates about the alliance. He agrees to send some Antidote to Nivek, as requested, and tells the characters that finding more help (and more to the point, more ships) has been slow going. The technologically advanced fragments tend to be firmly under the Queen's heel, and she's been particularly ruthless in rooting out and destroying any races with psychic abilities. No one is sure why. 

Zeenia notes that the slave controller helmet they found might hold the key to repelling mental attacks, though she's not comfortable actually using it as a weapon. They also note that the blue stone might contain technological advantages that Anathraxa might not see coming - any advantage is a good one. Boolar goes to consult with his diplomats about whether there is any particular fragment that might benefit from a direct visit from the heroes, and Abbas notes to the others that it's possible someone in their crew planted the bomb.

The heroes consider the crew - they don't really suspect Gruff or Hwoot, and they don't want to suspect the other Bird-Men, but the Queen does have a habit of getting into people's heads. They decide to have Iris and Gruff search the ship carefully, looking for any evidence they can find of who the saboteur might be. Abbas suspects Genko...and everyone hopes he's wrong, because they just handed him a mind-control helmet.

Character Creation: Moonpunk

THE SIXTH GAME OF XMAS, TWENTY-TWENTY-TWO,
IS MOONPUNK,
VISIGOTHS VS. MALL GOTHS,
PIRATES OF PUGMIRE,
THE TROUBLESHOOTERS,
THEN STAR-CROSSED,
AND THE FIRST GAME WAS THE ONE RING 2ND ED!

Lacking games about geese, I instead took inspiration from what a lot of us think of when we think of the big honkin' bird in question: 

As such, I was looking for a game with some fight-the-establishment kind of vibes, and came up with...

The Game: Moonpunk
The Publisher: Wannabe Games
Degree of Familiarity: None with this game, quite a bit with PbtA in general
Books Required: Just the one

Moonpunk feels very much like Misspent Youth in a lot of ways; you're playing characters who are, by dint of their circumstance, under the thumb of the Authority (which is even what the GM is called). It doesn't focus on teenagers, of course, and there's a specific setting. We're on the moon (but are not whalers), and are under the thumb of the powers-that-be. There's a lot of discussion about what exactly being "punk" is, which I appreciate, since a lot of times the suffix -punk gets appended to something to mean...we're making an RPG about it, I guess? 

Anyway! Let's make a whaler moon-punk. (Yes, that song does get stuck in my head every time I think about this game.)

As is often the case for PbtA games, I must first pick a playbook, and there are quite a lot of them. Going with my theme of chaos and persistent mischief as inspired by Untitled Goose Game, I think Mutant works (they have a move that lets them rile people up). 

So! I have already picked my playbook, so now I pick my moves. I get three specialty moves: mutation, support structure, and rise from hardship. The only decision I have to make here is the specifics of my mutation, and I think I'll lean in to my goose-ness and say that my guy's upper and lower mandibles have protruded out, and that he doesn't have front teeth, so it looks like he has a beak. That fucks with his articulation sometime fierce (and if I were going to play this character, I'd take the time to do a deep dive into which sounds would be affected and how), but for now, we'll just say he has the tag unnerving. 

As for playbook moves, I get two. I already know I want poke the pig, which lets me piss people off to manipulate them. I will also take Hey, Fuck You!, which gives me +1 forward when I directly stand up to oppression in public. 

Although it's not listed in the steps of chargen (boo), I need to pick a stat line. I think we'll go with the bottom on: +1 Presence, -1 Cool, +1 Smarts, and +2 Bones. 

I'm not gonna worry about Links because I don't have a group, but I do need to consider ethos. Ethos, of course, is my punk's moral and philosophical framework. So let's think about his experiences. 

He is disturbing to look at, and to hear. His voice has a sibilant, hissing kind of quality and he has trouble making any sound that requires lip closure (or even involvement; I can't imagine his /f/ or /v/ sounds are very clear). I'm sure that's given him a chip on his shoulder, and couple that with the implied and literal violence that the Authority is willing to employ, and his ethos is best summed up as "peace was never an option." 

I don't start with any gear, which is fine. I'll steal what I need. My guy's name is Sil (it's actually William, and his folks tried to call him "Bill", but a) he's incapable of making a /b/ sound and b) it's an unfortunate name when you think about his face). 

Sil keeps his head and face shaved, to draw attention to his mouth. He wants people to look, because not only is this him, but also it's what the Authority does to him and all mutants. He's capable of keeping his mouth shut but not really capable of playing nice with the Authority or representatives thereof, because he knows that they will never do the right thing without a gun to their head. 

I suspect Sil is either going to burn out or sell out, and either would be a fun ride to play.

Movie #703: Pearl

Pearl is a horror movie with sprinkles of drama and comedy starring Mia Goth, David Corenswet, Tandi Wright, Matthew Sutherland, Alistair Sewell, and Emma Jenkins-Purro. It's a prequel to X, but we'll get to the Xs eventually. 

In 1918, rural Texas, the Spanish flu pandemic is raging and Pearl (Goth) lives on her family's farm with her mother Ruth (Wright) and her father (Sutherland). Her father has been rendered invalid by the flu, and can no longer move or speak, and since speech therapy didn't exist back then he doesn't have a way to communicate. Ruth is German, and therefore is justifiably paranoid about accepting help or even contact from anyone else, and then there's poor Pearl...

Actually, hang on. Pearl is fixated on getting off the farm and becoming a star, and sometimes she randomly kills the animals with a pitchfork and feeds them to the alligator that lives in the nearby lake, so um. 

Pearl gets to go into town to get her father's morphine sometimes, and sneaks off to see movies. On one such trip she meets the Projectionist (Corenswet), a well-meaning bohemian fellow who introduces her to stag films. Her sister-in-law Mitzi (Jenkins-Purro) tells her about an upcoming dance audition, and Pearl becomes obsessed, seeing it as the only way off the farm and out of her current life.

Now, I'd seen X, so I know what becomes of Pearl later in life, but I didn't know what to expect from this movie, and the beginning of the movie kind of made it seem like we were gearing up for a rise-and-fall kind of thing; Pearl gets to dance, maybe through crooked means, she goes on tour, and winds up back on the farm with her husband Howard (Sewell) eventually so that she's there to get her head crushed by a van in 1979 (spoilers for X). But no, not in the slightest. Pearl isn't particularly talented, and she can barely remain socially functional for a full conversation. She breaks down under pressure and starts crying and screaming, and she discovers that she doesn't have the slightest problem killing people as well as animals. Eventually, she realizes that she isn't meant for stardom, and resolves to stay on the farm and devote herself to Howard. 

All of that is very sweet, of course (except for the "killing people" bit), but Mia Goth acts the hell out of this role. A lot of times in our pop culture, psychopaths (in the cinematic rather than clinical sense) are depicted as geniuses or at least extremely cunning; Pearl isn't, and she's almost more terrifying because of it. Likewise, it's very easy to take an "evil" protagonist and then go too far making them sympathetic, and we do feel some sympathy for Pearl when her mother tries to cut her off from the outside world and refuses help from their in-laws out of pride...but then, we also feel for Ruth because we know what she's lost and, more importantly, that she knows exactly what Pearl is and her enforced isolation is keeping the world safe from Pearl as much as anything.

I rather suspect Pearl won't get any Academy attention because it's too gory and skating too close to the line of exploitation film, but that's a real shame, because both Goth and Wright turn in performances that are worthy of Oscar nods. Goth's monologue near the end as she works through her feelings towards Howard and the farm has gotten a lot of attention, but Wright's scene leading up the fight with Pearl is just as intense and impressive. 

I was also interested in whether Pearl stands on its own or if you need to have seen X, and my conclusion is that it greatly enhances the experience if you have, but it's an impressive bit of cinema either way. I was amused to note that Pearl's line in X, "you know I don't like blondes," had a pretty specific reason here. I also wonder if Howard ever learned what happened to his sister.

My Grade: A
Rewatch Value: Medium

Next up: Sky High

Character Creation: Visigoths vs. Mall Goths

THE FIFTH GAME OF XMAS, TWENTY-TWENTY-TWO,
IS VISIGOTHS VS. MALL GOTHS!
PIRATES OF PUGMIRE,
THE TROUBLESHOOTERS,
THEN STAR-CROSSED,
AND THE FIRST GAME WAS THE ONE RING 2ND ED!

The Game: Visigoths vs. Mall Goths
The Publisher: Lucian Kahn
Degree of Familiarity: I mean, I went to the mall a lot in the 90s
Books Required: Just the one

This is one of those hyper-specific games that's really far in execution and concept from the RPGs I grew up playing. That's not a bad thing, of course - I'm on record as not being fond of the fact that a lot (I'd even say "most"?) RPGs have a disproportionate emphasis on combat, even when it's not appropriate or beneficial, and here's this game where you're either playing a time-displaced Visigoth or a Mall Goth and the two camps are in a constant sitcom-esque state of rivalry. The game is unabashedly queer and silly, and embraces the Mall Goth aesthetic of the mid-90s. 

I was never really a goth, but that was more because of my family and my school (I went to a Catholic high school and if I'd gone fully into the aesthetic the way my older son has, I'd never have heard the end of it from my mother). I was almost out of college when this game is set (1996), and like, I lived in Toledo, which had more of a goth/queer scene than you'd think but it still wasn't LA. But with all of that said, I have warm nostalgia feels for wandering around malls with friends when I was younger, and going to the movies at the life-support remains of Great Northern Mall nowadays just kinda makes me sad.

Well, moving on, let's make a goth of some flavor. First thing is to choose whether I'm a Visigoth or a Mall Goth. I think I'll be a Visigoth, if for no other reason than I used to wear a t-shirt that said "If You're Really a Goth Where Were You When We Sacked Rome?" There are three options: Conqueror, Charlatan, and Runecaster. I'm going with Conqueror because their special power is that once per day you can convince people that a modern invention was originally created by the Visigoths and I feel like that'd be fun to play. 

Choose a name or come up with my own. Well, there's only one name on the list, and I don't love it, so I guess I'm coming up with my own! I feel like my young Visigoth decided a new name was needed for this new world. The first thing he heard when he appeared in 1996 was a radio playing "Ridiculous Thoughts" (yes, No Need to Argue came out in 1994, but the Cranberries album that came out in 1996 was To the Faithful Departed and I'm not as fond of that one), and so took on the name "Twister." (It just occurred to me that the movie Twister came out in 1996, so I'm sure that would figure in to any game that this character would be involved in.) He/him pronouns, just to keep things simple.

Are you still glowing from the time travel? Choices are yes, no, and maybe a little, which is what I'll go with.

Goth style! I want a bone & sinew hoodie, thanks very much. 

Religion: Heretical Christian, I guess. It'd be fun to occasionally take that way too seriously. Like getting mad at the Easter Bunny and starting a war for the eggs.

I get a +2 to Spears, Theft, and Control Animals, but I up one of those to +3. I think I'll lean in to my Conqueror nature and make it Spears.

Last thing is an Embarrassing Trait. Normally another player would give me one and I could either accept it or reject it and pick two of my own, but since it's just me I shall roll for one and if I don't like that, I'll pick two.

The roll gives me "follows a modern-day religion." Uh, sure, I can roll with that. Let's see. Oh, wait, perfect - Dragonheart came out in 1996! My guy follows the Old Code. In times of stress he's prone to reciting it, a la Dennis Quaid. 

Movie trivia follows me, man. I picture this guy standing up in the food court after fighting off some Metalhead yelling "HIS WRATH UNDOES THE WICKED!" He's got his bone and sinew hoodie, leather britches, boots, and his lucky spear. He used to have a helmet but he doesn't wear it much anymore; it does weird things to his hair.