This episode is even more rules-light than others, but it does have some interesting mechanics to it. Most interesting, perhaps, is the fact that Paulo mapped out a whole labyrinth full of puzzles and riddles, depending on how Joz turned! Paulo has a habit of prepping really fabulous worlds with great detail… Maybe we can post his schema for this movie so you can play your own versions. What do you think, Paulo?
Here’s Sarah’s character sheet:
I like that she’s got Magic Resistance 4 – it suits the power of her jaded teenage demeanor. Versatile is a great advantage for Sarah, +1 for any task that requires imagination (which could be most of this movie, depending on how you ran it), but I don’t think I ever hear Joz noting the bonus… I do think Paulo gives Joz her points worth in Common Sense GM advice, though!
The combat with the worms in the quicksand is interesting. She’s auto-grappled when she enters the quicksand, and can’t defend – I read this as more the quicksand grappling her automatically (an environmental Binding effect), and she then defends against the worms at a stiff penalty when they grapple (though we don’t hear her get to defend). When she rakes the first worm with her nails, she rolls DX – I don’t hear a defense roll from the worm, or a damage roll. I don’t think it’s important here, though, since she’s not going to kill all the worms with her bare hands – it’s not that kind of movie (though that would be a hilarious reboot of Labyrinth – a grizzled teenage Sarah straps up and lays waste to the Goblin Kingdom, ending in a John Woo-style showdown in the aerie of the Goblin King’s Castle). The quick contest between the worms (rolling something) vs Sarah (rolling DX) is also interesting. Technical Grappling introduces a lot more detail into the RAW treatment of grappling and pulling a target around and how to defend and break free from these techniques, but it’s far too many numbers for Pitr, se we’ll never use it on the show. Instead, Paulo opts for a simple Quick Contest – with the worms presumably rolling whatever their grappling skill is (I’d’ve given them Wrestling), and Sarah rolling DX because she doesn’t have any grappling skills. It keeps the action moving, but it seems to me that it’s a forgone conclusion that once she fell into the quicksand, she was headed to the Bog – three chances for the worms to win…
I assume Paulo rolls a Reaction Roll in the background to determine that Sarah has a really easy time with Sir Didymus (sp?), but we don’t really hear about it (here’s a place for Beautiful to give her something!). I might have wanted Sarah to roll Leadership, or something… I’d probably have given her a point in it, though, considering she does a pretty god job in the movie leading a whole merry band. Call me old-fashioned, but getting yourself a new NPC follower ought to require at least one roll. Grumble.
Sarah’s got Detect Lies, which she uses to great advantage on Hoggle, but she spends a lot of time interrogating him, without the benefit of any points spent in the skill (or any Influence skills at all, in fact). I wasn’t at the filming, so I don’t actually know how Paulo was running this on the show, but I might have been tempted to make Sarah use Interrogation at default: at IQ-5, Intimidation-3, or Psychology-4. For Sarah, this ends up being a 6… not very helpful. By RAW each question takes 5 minutes of questioning to get to an answer, but you can get +2 for a lengthy interrogation of over 2 hours, and up to +6 for torture (!). Assuming she doesn’t want to spend her limited time with hot pokers (though it is Joz… so, you never know), that’s rough. I think Detect Lies is a good complementary skill, but even so she’d be hard-pressed to get anywhere with that strategy. Instead, Paulo and Joz mostly get through these scenes with RP, which is good for the podcast, but doesn’t leave a lot of mechanical details to talk through.
Hope you liked Labyrinth, let us know what you think about the mechanics Paulo and Joz use!
Jon Miller
