Aliens Part 5

Love what Jon did with this one. Action movies are actually kind of hard to keep interesting, because they can be so dice intensive, keeping action interesting and varied is a very different skill than doing scenes with characters, or running exploration or adventure. Action scenes can easily bog down, and the strategic process of grinding out a fight is a lot more fun for the player than for a listener, so there's a lot of care and energy that goes into keeping those types of scenes engaging. I think Jon absolutely knocked it out of the park with this finale.

We also end up in a bit of a human v human scenario, which I adored. I won't talk in depth about it because I don't want to spoil it, but it plays on something I've noticed which is that many of my players think of influence skills as roughly interchangeable, where they really are all unique. Diplomacy for instance, is limited in its persuasive ability, it doesn't really let you make people do things that they don't want to do, it's more about bridging gaps, and letting people see things your way. But the upside of diplomacy is that failures don't really tend to have bad consequences. Intimidation is quite the opposite. A success can allow you to make an NPC do almost anything (dependent on degree of success), but a failed intimidation can have really bad effects. That person you tried to intimidate hates you now!

Anyway, enough about the actual episode. It stands on its own two feet. Let's talk about Tulkon, April 29-May1 in Tulsa Oklahoma, which will be our first convention. There's a lot of fun stuff that we're going to do, we're very much in the planning stages. But the one thing I know we're going to do is a Live Reroll. Something we've talked about doing for ages but have never done. There's a lot I want to do with the live experience; special rules that involve the audience. But before I do that I need to choose a movie. That's the trick. It needs to be fun and well-known. It needs to be self-contained enough that we can complete it (or at least get a satisfying conclusion of some kind) in 90 minutes. It probably can't be too action heavy, because too many dice rolls and math will slow down play. I have a few notions, but haven't decided anything. What movie do you think I should run?

That's it for us today. Back in two weeks with Time Bandits (Part 4). And after that . . . The Mighty Ducks.