Character Creation: Breaking the Ice

I was thinking about romance and love in RPGs today, and honestly I don't have anything profound to say on the subject that folks smarter than haven't already said.

I will say, though, that I came at RPGs from kind of a weird place; my first players (well, not first, but what I would consider my first real players) were theater kids, not gamers. Also a lot of them were women, and so they approached gaming by thinking about character and motivation and relationships rather than (or in addition to) powerz (remember too that I started with Marvel Superheroes, not D&D).

What that means is that I had years of gaming where relationships weren't a joke before I played D&D with dudebros, and the "wench" lines started to come out. And even then, mostly I was into horror games, and that led me to World of Darkness, and my first WoD game was Wraith, which of course is all about relationships (well, it's about a lot of things).

All of this to say: One of my favorite moments in gaming ever was playing in a mixed WoD game with lots of homebrew craziness, wherein a player (male) got down on one knee to propose, in character, to his character's girlfriend, played by the Storyteller (also male). It was a really beautiful moment, one of the best I've ever seen, and there was nothing violent or even conflicted about it, and it was only possible because of the level of trust and work that this group had.

Games that are about romance and love and so on, specifically about that, are hard to play for a lot of folks because it's not what they're used to, and because they require a level of trust that other in-game activities don't, and because they require men, specifically, to access a lot of shit that we're socialized not to express. But man, you get the people together and it makes for such a fantastic time.

With all of that in mind:

The Game: Breaking the Ice
The Publisher: Black & Green Games
Degree of Familiarity: Haven't played it, just read it. It's short.
Books Required: Just the one.

 

 

Making a character for this game solo is going to be hard, because everything - chargen included - is built around two people making characters together. I'm going to be taking some liberties with the game, as such, but I'll try and stick as close to the process as I can.

The first step would be establishing a romance genre and a rating. Because it's just me and therefore this character won't actually get played, I'll opt for the steamier end of things and take inspiration from erotic/sexual romances like Original Sin, 9 1/2 Weeks and (yeah, fuck it) 50 Shades of Grey. Sure, there are problematic elements of all of those, but there are problematic elements in pretty much any genre of romance you can name, so we'd just have to work through them. Let's assume the rating we're working with here is an R - sex can happen onscreen, but the more graphic elements don't get shown.

OK, so then we do a thing called the Switch. That's where each player takes on (for purposes of the character) an element of the other player. Since I don't have another player, this is all very hypothetical. The obvious one is gender (that is, I would play as the gender of my other player, if it's different than mine), but again, I don't have another player, so let's assume I'm staying male.

Since sex and the exploration thereof is a part of the genre, let's assume that the Switch I'm making is that the character I'm playing is submissive (the S bit of BDSM).

Next thing is a Word Web. I'm to choose my character's favorite color. I'll pick green, why not. At this point, I'd write "green" on a sheet of paper, circle it, and then I and the other player would take turns writing words branching off the color or off those words until we have 12. However, since, again, it's just me, I'll do these 12 m'self. Scuse me a minute.

OK, so that gives me:

Green --> forest --> hike --> lost
New --> fear --> excited --> anxiety
Life --> growing --> plants --> garden --> food

Not bad. I use these words to build Traits. Traits are divided into Self, Work, and Play, and they're inspired by the words I've used in my Web.

Well, looking at this, I get the feeling that my character is either young or sheltered in some other way. He's either outdoorsy or wants to be, and potentially works in a capacity that lets him grow things or does so as a hobby.

Let's say he grew up on a farming commune, with a group of people who were isolationist, but not creepy or violent about it. He learned how to farm, grow things, and prepare food, but living in a city (even a fairly small one; as an aside, my mother used to teach at Defiance College and it was amusing to hear her students refer to Toledo as "the big city") would be new and scary to him. But he's doing it now - why? I think I'll hang onto that question for now.

So for my Self traits, I'll put down Sheltered, Grew Up on a Farming Commune, Bad Sense of Direction. For Work, I'll put down Works for a Restaurant, Grower/Gardener, and Poor (what he does doesn't pay well, but in romances even people with low-paying jobs can afford apartments). For Play, I'll put down Hikes in Parks (it's too hard to get a real forest) and Likes to Watch People Eat (like, eat together).

Neat! So now I need a Conflict; this is something that will cause an issue on our first date. I have money issues, but in the genre we're dealing with, that would cause a power imbalance that frankly I don't find all that sexy or fun. I think, instead, we'll say that his family is looking for him. That implies that he left the commune under less-than-ideal circumstances, lets us play in a kind of "fish out of water" sort of arena, and sets up some interesting conflict down the line. Given the genre, there's potentially enough of an edge that it could be dire or scary, but it could just as easily be silly or farcical.

That's really it for chargen; we'd decide on a setting at this point, but "medium-sized city" sounds about right. I'd want the "movie" to start in late spring when everything's blooming.

Oh, I do need a name, though. Let's call this guy...I kinda want a hippie name, something plausible but weird. Oh, wait, I got it. His name is Patroclus (Achilles' lover). He goes by "Pat" in his new life, but I like the reference to classical Greek. This movie might well have a larger "battle of Troy" theme going on, with a talented screenwriter. I also think his mother, still back on the commune and played by Sharon Stone or Diane Lane or someone like that, might wind up being a kind quasi-antagonist.

That's me done, then!

Character Creation: Mage: The Ascension 20th Etc.

It's late, but I'm feeling restless, and Toasty's been asking me to do this game.

The Game: Mage: The Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition
The Publisher: Onyx Path Publishing
Degree of Familiarity: Quite a bit with the previous editions of the game. I haven't played or run this edition, though looking at it, it all looks pretty familiar (which of course is appropriate).
Books Required: Just the one, I hope, good grief, it's 700 freaking pages. 

I played a lot of Mage back in the day. It's actually the most recent OWoD game I've played (not run, that was Changeling and then Demon before that), in a group that I was in right after I moved back from Atlanta (less said the better). The last Ascension game I ran kinda-sorta wound up forming the basis for the Mage: The Awakening starter chronicle (which you can find here; it's listed as an Ennie nominee but it actually won the silver Ennie that year, thanks very much). Anyway, my point is that I love Mage and I'm getting kinda nostalgic thinking about it.

So, I haven't done a character with a theme song in a while, but as I was thinking about this game, this song came into my head:

To me, the song is about staying positive, or at least active, in the face of the inexorable march of time. That works thematically for Changeling, but also for Mage, which also has themes of clinging to one's beliefs and passions in the wake of "progress." As I'm getting older, I reflect on how angrily, brazenly passionate I was in my youth, and on the one hand, I wish I'd been just a bit smarter and a whole lot kinder. At the same time, though, I miss being ready to jump into the fire if that's what passion demanded.

With all of that in mind, Step One is character concept, as usual. There's a list of concepts, and "night owl" sticks with me. I want to play a character who's pretty much nocturnal by choice (unlike my Vampire characters, who are pretty much stuck that way). He's a busboy, waiter, sometime line cook at a greasy spoon in [wherever this game is set]. He was a college student, but dropped out when he talked to his older sister and realized that a degree just doesn't mean what it used to - if he was going to be stuck working shitty jobs, at least he could be without quite so much debt. So he shares a studio with a couple of other guys, but doesn't really see them because they work days, which is when he sleeps. His name is Zachery Sibress.

Next thing is Affiliation. I know I don't want to be a Technocrat. Tradition or Disparate, then? Oh, hey, Traditions get to choose from several affinity Spheres nowadays. And what's this "Data" thing? Guess some things did change. Anyway, I don't see this guy as being a big Tradition person; I think Zachary is more a fan of the DIY aesthetic of the Disparates. I don't want to be an Orphan, though, I want some structure. Let's go Hollow Ones.

And then Nature and Demeanor. I think I like Prophet as Nature. Zachary speaks truth to power in a Cassandra kind of way; Troy's going to fall and no one wants to hear it, but he's gonna say it anyway. I'll put Loner as Demeanor even though it makes me cringe (it's hard to play loners in an RPG without being insufferable). I think Zachary's Essence is pretty obviously Questing.

Step Two is Attributes. 7/5/3, party like it's 1995.

Well, I think Zachary probably needs Social as primary, Mental secondary, Physical tertiary. Let's put two dots into all of the Social Attributes and then the last one into Charisma. Zachary makes an impression. I'll specialize it in Trustworthy.

For Mental, I'll put one in each, and then the other two into Perception (I have literally never regretted giving a character a high Perception score. In fact, I once played a Vampire character with Perception 5 and Intelligence 1; he could see 2+2 all day, but could not make 4. But I digress). I need a specialty, but nothing comes to mind, so I'll sit on that for a while.

Physical, just 1 into each sounds good. Might raise Stamina later.

Step Three is Abilities, with this janky-ass OWoD distribution. 13/9/5, you say. Oh, and Mage has Secondary Abilities, which I think is a bad idea because there's already too much granularity, but whatevs, I don't have to buy them.

Well, given Zachary's kinda gritty life, Talents as primary would seem wise. I think Knowledges can be secondary, and Skills tertiary. Hokay then.

Talents: Three in Streetwise, two in Empathy, three in Alertness (again, never regretted being perceptive). Let's take one in Art, I guess? Wait, I'm gonna shave one off Alertness to put it in Athletics, and I'll put one in Brawl, and one in Subterfuge. Two in Awareness, and that's good.

Skills: One each in Drive, Mediation, Research, Stealth and Survival.

Knowledges: One in Academics, Computer, and Science (all from his year in college) and two in Enigmas, Occult, and Politics (from his time with the Hollow Ones).

Step Four: Advantages. Which pretty much means Backgrounds. I get 7 dots, and there are a bunch. Let's check it out.

Well, I'm sure I'll want Arcane and Avatar, because those are fun, but I kinda want Contacts. I see Zachary as the kind of guy that folks talk to at 3AM over really shitty food. As such, he's hooked into the night-owl community; folks who work 3rd shift, folks with insomnia, folks carrying out the orders of their undead masters (wait, what?), and so on. I'll throw three dots into Contacts and one each into Arcane and Avatar, but I might come back to this with freebies later.

The other part of Step Four is to think about paradigm and focus, which have changed a bit in this edition. Basically I need to think about Zachary's type of magic, and I think he's very caught up in nightlife. Like, sure, there's the music scene and the drug scene and those things happen after dark, but there's a stillness to the city once you crest 2AM and the bars close. The diner he works at is open, sure. Gas stations. And there are some folks that just don't sleep. But in that stillness, he can hear the truth as the city whispers (and if he ever goes into the country, he'll learn that the rural areas have their own voices).

Zachary's magick, therefore, is very bound up in listening to voices that the hustle and bustle of the daytime world drowns out. His foci, then, include silence, meditation, chants, music (but music with repetitive beats and a lot of bass), salt (pour a pile of salt and blow on it, and watch the patterns), dice, and food and cooking (you share a meal with someone and you learn about them quickly).

Step Five is finishing touches, starting with Spheres. I get 6 dots, starting with my Affinity, but Hollow Ones can take whatever they want. OK, now I have to look at these rules a bit. They don't look too different, actually. I'm gonna take one in Correspondence, one in Entropy, two in Spirit, and two in Time.

I get 5 in Willpower, 1 in Arete, nothing in Paradox. I get 1 in Quintessence so far, but I might raise Avatar with freebies.

Speaking of which, next up is 15 freebies. Unless I wish to take Flaws. Just a moment. Oh, wait, never mind. The Merits & Flaws section is seriously truncated and I don't much like how it's done. Gonna skip it.

OK, so I have to raise Arete to two because it can't be lower than my highest Sphere (argh, this is not something I missed; I always said that mages basically start with Arete 3 and 7 freebies, since they effectively have to spend 8 to raise Arete to be useful, but since I'm not gonna play this guy I guess I'll leave it at 2). I'll burn two to raise Avatar, which means I've spent 6. I'll spend 5 to raise Stamina to 3, and with the last one I'll raise...let's say Willpower.

That's the end of chargen; the rest of it gets into beliefs and history and so on, but I've kinda done that already. I think that Zachary's path would involve learning to use Prime, Matter, Forces, or Life and figuring how those things fit into his paradigm. To him, magick is very ephemeral and...sleepy, I guess. I think his paradigm separates magick into "daytime" and "nighttime" Spheres, and he's very much on the "nighttime" side of things.

I gotta say, although I have my usual quibbles with the OWoD system, Mage remains a really compelling game.

Character Creation: Alas for the Awful Sea

Here we go!

The Game: Alas for the Awful Sea
The Publisher: Storybrewers Roleplaying
Degree of Familiarity: None yet, though this game is on my list for 2018.
Books Required: Just the one.

 

 

Alas for the Awful Sea is a low-fantasy PbtA game set in the remote British Isles around the turn of the century (19th to 20th, that is). It's meant to explore why people hate and what they're afraid of, conflict between tradition and progress, poverty, starvation, fishing, myth and legend, that kind of thing. I'm looking forward to running it, though I suspect that played well it's going to be very sad. I like sad RPGs, though.

Anyway, like most PbtA games, my first order of business is to choose a playbook and print it. Also like most PbtA games, this is going to be quick because the real meat of chargen happens with a group, and it's just me for this project.

So, for my playbook, I'll choose...hmm. I don't think I want the Captain. I know I don't want the Boatswain because I played something very much like that in a Savage Worlds game some time ago. Likewise, I don't want the Cook; I've played cooks (or at least made them for this project). Scholar's out for the same reason. Merchant, Strider, Old Sea Dog. Hmm.

I kinda like Strider, especially if I spun it more towards navigation and reading the stars. Yeah, I think I'll go with that.

Going in the order laid out in the book, I'll start with a name. I don't much like the name options here, so I'll name my Strider Diarmid Craig. For appearance, I'll circle man for gender, faraway for eyes, honest for face, reedy for body, and versatile oilskin coat for dress.

I think Bonds is the next thing, but that requires a group so I'll skip it. Stats, then. Unlike the other playbooks, the Strider gets to allocate all of the stats (the others have a +2) already in place. I get a +2, two +1s, a 0, and a -1 to place.

Well, I know I want the +2 in Beyond so I can do the otherworldly shit well. That also plays into my special move (Innate Compass), as it happens. I'll put +1s in Brains and Balance, the 0 in Brawn, and the -1 in Beauty. I tend to make things worse when I try to convince or bargain.

Right, what's next? A Descriptor! These, coupled with the playbooks, create a unique axis for each character. I could be a Creature, for instance, and be overtly supernatural, or I could a Lover and my arc is more about my relationship with whomever. Let's take a look.

Well, the Kinsman and the Lover rely too much on other PCs, so I'm not using them. The Believer doesn't really do it for me, to no one's great surprise. The Confidant sounds pretty cool, but let's check the others. Ooh, Outcast or Creature. Hrm. I like them both.

You know, my impulse to leave Creature for "someone else," but there is no one else, so I'm gonna grab it. OK, cool. So my first thing is define my True Form. I need to decide what I am. I could go digging around in Scottish myth for a while, but I'm gonna say I'm a crow. A stormcrow. That sounds good.

I'm from the sky, obviously. When I assume my true form, I'm very small (crow-sized), and I have wings. I think Diarmid looks more or less like a real crow in that form, but his eyes remain blue and keep that faraway quality to them. I can call upon my True Form to do cool things, and I can call other stormcrows in a pinch. Neat.

I think it'd be fun to play this character out and figure out why Diarmid took human form. Being "from the sky" it's easy to say he fell, angel-style, but I also like the notion that he fell in love with the sky so much that only by being on the ground could he gaze upwards. There's some tragic poetry there.

And that's me done.

Character Creation: Vampire Hunter$

I have to assume you pronounce that "vampire hunterCHA-CHING." Kinda unwieldy.

The Game: Vampire Hunter$
The Publisher: Nightshift Games, at least this edition. Googling the game's title brings up my game index on the first page, so that kinda indicates to me that not much is going on with this game lately.
Degree of Familiarity: None.
Books Required: Just the one.

So, the back of the book says that Nightshift Game is "a tiny little division of Crunchy Frog Games," but that doesn't tell me much more. Reading through the book, it's pretty damn basic. Like, modern day, except monsters are real, and you're working for a company that hunts them. That's an interesting premise if you dig into it a little (are they incorporated? What do they officially do, since the world at large doesn't acknowledge that monsters exist?), but the game doesn't seem to (though I admit I'm skimming). It feels very 90s as I'm reading it, though the system seems pretty simple, which is good. Let's dig into chargen.

OK, characters are made of Talents, Knacks, and Faults. Cool, very few numbers. I get 10 dice in Talents, but no more than 3 in any one, so I have to have at least four. Neato. Guess maybe I should think about concept, eh?

Well, the usual "vampires killed my family" thing would work, but eh. What about someone more like Winston Zeddmore from Ghostbusters? Someone who's not necessarily personally invested in the job, but needs the paycheck.

Wait, hang on. This is weird. John Carpenter's movie Vampires was based on a novel by John Steakley called Vampire$, wherein the characters work for a company called Vampire$, Inc. The game lists copyrights in 1995 and 1999, the novel came out in 1990. I can't believe that's a coincidence, but I don't know what conclusion to draw.

Anyway, I still like my "working guy" idea for a character. I think that he fell into the job after his family-owned exterminator business went out of business. He went from cleaning out rat colonies to shoot werewolves. It's a living.

So, Talents, then. I'll take Authority 2, Bureaucracy 2, Computer Programming 1, Investigation 2, and Science (Chemistry) 3. There are far too many of these.

OK, Knacks, then. Umm...Knacks are just Talents that give you a static +1 die. What boring-ass game design. I get 5 of these. I'll take Stealth, Memory, Non-Descript, Mechanic, and Electronics.

There are only 4 lines for Knacks on the sheet. Geez.

And, finally, Faults. I get one by default (lol), and if my GM agrees I could take more and get more Talent dice, but eh. Let's look through them and see if anything looks appropriate. I think I'll take Out of Shape; my guy isn't much of an athlete and has no military training. He's a bit on the heavy side and spent a lot of time in his truck or at his desk. Probably he should do some carido at some point; he'll get around to it.

Well, that's the last of the numbers (I should figure out Hits, but there's nowhere on the sheet to put it). So, just some more background stuff, then.

Nicholas "Nick" Balladino is the most recent owner of 'Dino Brothers Extermination Services (they got in trouble in the 60s for putting Dino from The Flintstones on their van, but that was Nick's uncle who did that). Nick inherited the business from his father, and then the economy tanked and he went under. His extended family still hasn't forgiven him, and he figures that if builds up a few grand, he can get it going again - he's already talked to the bank about a loan. This new outfit paid well, but he'd never heard of them, so he figured his experience as an exterminator would be useful.

He was right, but holy shit.

Nick had never encountered the supernatural before, and now he's trying to work silver nitrate into everything. He's good with chemicals but he's used to killing bugs, not bloodsuckers. On some level, though, he's gotta admit this is exciting shit. Like, you can only get so jazzed clearing out wasps' nests, but ghouls' nests? That's something else again.

Nick is in his 40s, black hair, full beard with some grey, kinda pudgy 'round the middle. Favors button-down shirts (you want to be able to get a shirt off quickly if a bunch of spiders crawl into it), work boots, jeans.

And that's me done! This game...there really ain't much to it, is there? Even when it was new, I think my response might have been "yeah, and?"

Board Game: Shear Panic

Xmas Day, a traditional time for board games about sheep.

The Game: Shear Panic
The Publisher: Fragor Games
Time: 20-30 minutes
Players: Me, +Michelle, Kai, Cael

Discombobulated Sheep

Game Play: Shear Panic goes in four stages (fields, if you will). In the first, you try and get your two sheep (see how they're colored?) next to each other. In the second, you try to get them in the front row, near Roger the Ram. In the third, you try to get them next to the black sheep. In the last, you try to get them far away from the Shearer Sheep, whom I must assume is some kind of traitor to sheep-kind.

Lookit that bastard.

The sheep start out in a tight little square, but immediately get jostled around by a "lamb slam." That's not a shot in a charcuterie, it's just a nudge of one sheep or another that moves all the others in line, too. From there, on to the first field.

Play progresses using cards that give each player 12 different choices for moves, including a lamb slam, a line push (move sheep orthogonally), a diagonal push (duh), ewe-turn (get it?), which rotates all the sheep's facing 90 degrees, and so on. Once you've used a move, you put a counter on it and you can't use it again, so it pays to be attentive not only to what you can do, but what your opponents can do and how many turns remain in a given field.

See, each move nudges the flock marker a little way along, and when it moves out of a given field (if I were smart I'd have taken a picture of this), the scoring and strategy changes.

Kai and Cael ponder strategy. 

 Opinions: I like this game, but it definitely improves if you're playing with people who understand how to play it. The first time with players, it's pretty random as everyone's trying to remember what the various moves are and all.

The production values on this game are pretty baller, though. The sheep are made of ceramic, I think, and they're quite heavy and sturdy. They're fun to move around and manipulate, though I admit that might be genetic on my part.

McFarlands have long-standing traditions involving livestock. 

Keep? Yep.

Character Creation: Camp Myth

So, this is weird. In looking for a game for which to make a character, I saw Camp Myth. Figuring that might be a good choice (I haven't played the game but I've read the source material and I know the Pip system that a lot of Third Eye stuff uses), I went to find the character sheet I had printed...and discovered I didn't.

Generally I print off a character sheet as soon as I have a physical copy of the game and put it in my binder, but nope, not a sausage. And then I looked at my list, and realized the game wasn't on there.

I have no idea what all this means, but I blame Eloy somehow. Anyway.

The Game: Camp Myth
The Publisher: Third Eye Games, though I don't know the status of this particular game
Degree of Familiarity: As I said, none with this game specifically, but I've read the novel it's based on
Books Required: Just the one.

So, the history of Camp Myth is somewhat fraught. I backed the Kickstarter for the first novel waaaay back in 2012 or so, read the book to Kai (he was, what, about 8 at the time?), and he really liked it. I contacted the writer and asked about licensing the property to do an RPG, but was told that he'd already licensed it to Eloy. "Well, it's in good hands, anyway," I thought, and went on with life.

And then I backed the second novel he did, but then the author kinda fell off the face of the earth. I have no idea what happened, but that novel did become available for sale (because I bought a copy so that Kai could read it, off Amazon; the author refunded me the money I put in on Kickstarter). And then nothing in the Camp Myth-verse happened. Weird.

Anyway, the basic idea here is that various mythological creatures go to summer camp to learn how to avoid the problems of said creatures, use their powers, and do the things that humans do at summer camp (flirt awkwardly, eat s'mores, that kind of thing). The lead characters are a kitsune, a fae, and a nerdy cyclops. It's cute, and I won't go so far as to say it's a Percy Jackson ripoff, but it draws on some of the same inspiration, and that's fine.

So, step one is to Choose Mythic Race. Well, drawing on my own experiences at summer camp, I think I want to make a camper who's most at home in the woods, barefoot, out in nature. So I'll make a dryad. I get 5 Health, 6 Homesickness, and one free point in Arts & Crafts and Wilderness Training. I also get a racial ability and hindrance: I get an extra die to any roll in the forest, but I get annoyed if people harm trees or animals.

Step two is Skills. I get 10 points to split up amongst Skills, so let's check it out.

Well, Archery applies to literally using a bow and arrow, but also for javelins. I'll put two points there. I'll put one into Concealment and Discovery, and two into Friendship. 4 left. I'll put one into Mythic Knowledge, one into Sports, and the last two into Runes & Rituals. Looks good.

Step three is Comforts from Home, your basic Merits/Advantages/Edges type thing. I get a Myth Army Knife for free (I know), and then 5 more points. Let's see.

Oh, OK. I'm gonna spend 3 points and have a pet hodag. His name is Gene, and he's got an overbite and spikes around his head (but they're pretty blunt, because he's young). Normally I'd alter the stats of an adult creature given in the book, but Eloy didn't think to include the noble hodag (jeez, Eloy), so I'll just wing it. Let's assume 4 hits, because that's what it usually works out to, and then a special ability...let's pick Stone Drop (from Gargoyle), because Gene likes to drop on people from out of trees, and he's heavier than he looks.

That leaves me 2 points. I'll take one point of Armor (bark-like skin) and a Quirk: Flexible like the Willow (+1W to wriggle out of restraints or otherwise go with the flow).

OK, cool. So, my dryad's name is Jack Lumber (get it?). That's a self-applied name; he claims his real name is unpronounceable to folks who communicate via sound, but really it's just embarrassing). Jack likes to pretend to be all slow and ent-y, but only with non-dryads. Really, Ents are like the great-grandparents of the dryads and who wants to be like those old folks?

And that's me done!

Movie #437: Moulin Rouge!

Moulin Rouge! is a jukebox musical directed Baz Luhrman and starring Nicole Kidman, Ewan McGregor, John Leguizamo, Richard Roxburgh, Jim Broadbent, and Caroline O'Connor.

In 1900, we meet Christian (McGregor), wallowing in misery in the ruins of the Bohemian revolution in Paris. He flashes back to the previous year when he arrived in Paris to immerse himself in the culture and write about love, and is immediately recruited by Toulous-Latrec (Leguizamo) to write a musical called Spectacular Spectacular for the proprietor of the Moulin Rouge bordello/club. Christian, through a series of wacky misunderstandings and deceptions, winds up falling in love with the show's star, Satine (Kidman), and then helping her and the owner Zidler (Broadbent) into duping a rich Duke (Roxburgh) into bankrolling the show. The Duke's price is the deed to the theater, and ownership of Satine.

Christian and Satine continue their affair as rehearsals go on, but it's obvious that Satine is ill (she keeps coughing up blood), and Zidler pushes her to drive Christian away in order to save him from the Duke. In the end, though, love wins out and they drive the Duke away and affirm their love...right before Satine dies of consumption in his arms.

So, it's a tragedy, then, but it's a Luhrman tragedy, with bright lights and rock numbers (the first time I saw it, I thought "man, if they don't use "The Show Must Go On," that's a missed opportunity" and guess what they did). McGregor and Kidman are beautiful as the doomed couple, and both of them can sing. Broadbent is by turns selfish, clever, and kind as the opportunistic Zidler, and Roxburgh is a total slimeball as the Duke. The visuals are fantastic, the costume and production design are gorgeous. It's fun to listen to McGregor's accent slip sometimes, too.

My Grade: A
Rewatch value: Medium-high

Next up: Mr. & Mrs. Smith