Action Movie World: “Downtown Shogun”

It's not an Eighties movie without Al Leong. Thankfully, he showed up

At long last, the Ninja playbook is christened! This weekend, the gang got together for another impromptu session of Action Movie World. This was the “purest” AMW session in a while, since it used an unalloyed Ninja playbook that hadn’t been tinkered with or customized. This was one of our best sessions yet.

A Shogun, lost in New York hired to protect a ruthless martial arts master.  A benevolent master teaching the unfortunates of the city a better way to live. When they meet, the Bronx will rumble but only one will emerge to be the... Downtown Shogun!

Frank was the Director for this game. In the vein of so many Eighties ninja movies, Downtown Shogun was heavy on white guys (including one in the lead) and light on Asians who weren’t villains. So, what follows is probably insensitive at multiple points; that it's "ironically" insensitive may or may not be a saving grace for you personally. All I can say is our characters all lack nuance. I'm imitating Reb Brown for crying out loud.

Thankfully, we did have an Asian heroine in the mix, and she wasn’t played by Scarlett Johansson. She also completely ran away with the Star Power and was cooler than everyone else, so we had that going for us.

The cast:

• Randall Guy as “Lightning” Charlie Stokes, Vietnam vet, haunted mercenary and white ninja (Me! / Gunfighter / Lead)
• Javier Simpson as Doctor D.I. Why, professor of anthropology and ninja initiate (Jerry / Smartass)
• Yola Chogo as Angel Chung, schoolgirl, wheel-kicking dynamo and part-time ninja (Gina / Pugilist)
• Berkeley Blower as Sumo Fokuda, noodle cart vendor and sumo wrestler (Bill / Yeller)

Berkeley Blower: he's a ninja

This was a pretty terrible lineup for a Ninja movie, so we played it (successfully) for laughs. Charlie Stokes was a former soldier turned mercenary Trying to Escape His Past, who made money selling plundered cultural treasures to Doctor Why to pay for rent on his shitty apartment, like the imperialist pig-dog he is. Sumo Fokuda was of mixed Japanese-Portuguese heritage in the story, but in the meta-fiction his actor was played by Brian Blessed covered in bronzer a la Sean Connery at the end of You Only Live Twice. Movie, no! Stokes had stolen an ancient medallion that belonged to Fokuda’s family, and had kept it because it was supposed to have mystical power.

Both Stokes and Fokuda were clumsy oafs whose “ninja” moves presumably had to be done by stuntmen -- we even described a few clumsy cuts and camera tricks designed to cover our complete lack of grace and skill. Meanwhile, Gina’s character Angel Chung never rolled less than a 13 on a Violence roll and made us all look like jagoffs. As it should be!

There’s a prologue scene in ancient Japan, where a group of samurai charge a village but disappear in a mysterious flash of light. They appear in modern-day New York. Why? How? These questions never get answered, or even asked!

We cut to the Red Star Dojo, where members of the evil Black Koi Dojo (led by a sinister Al Leong) are shaking down Mr. Minamoto, the Red Star sensei. “Mister Jackson wants his money!” Angel Chung and Charlie Stokes show up moments later and begin whaling the tar out of everybody. The bad guys flee, and we learn that the mysterious Mr. Jackson is running a protection racket on the entire neighborhood. If we don’t stop these goons, the Red Star Dojo is history! Doctor Why trails behind, leaving garbage and one-liners in his wake.

Reb Brown attempts to emote

The gang meets at Rose’s Diner, the local greasy spoon, to discuss their plans to stop Jackson and his Black Koi goons. Not one to let a good planning scene go uninterrupted, Frank decides Black Koi thugs show up at the diner to shake down Rose herself. The heroes take this as an opportunity to launch into a terrifying array of pie- and silverware-based attacks. The goons are driven off, not before one gets interrogated and gives up the name “Shinyuki.”

During these scenes, I decided Charlie Stokes, as lead, would try to take the moral road and avoid conflict. As it does in every action movie, this process would inevitably break down and lead to horrifying bloodshed when I finally snap. So I led each conflict with an Emote, which always failed misery because my character’s Drama is for shit. My attempt at peacemaking failed, I would go on to deliver savage beatings like a man should. Angel Chung, meanwhile, had usually flattened half the room by this time.

Angel Chung: She Already Killed That Guy

Back to our tale. Returning to the Red Star, we ask Minamoto the meaning of “Shinyuki.” We learn he was a legendary lieutenant of a brutal shogun, Ashikura, who lived in the distant past and committed terrible atrocities. Was this the Shinyuki of legend, or just someone taking his name to inspire fear? We didn’t really look into it very far, but instead ventured into the sewers to infiltrate Mr. Jackson’s headquarters, tear apart his operation, and get evidence of his extortion scheme so we could save the kids’ baseball diamond or whatever.

We take a short trip through the cleanest sewers of all time until we run across a room full of samurai dressed in period-appropriate armor. Frank has adhered to the cardinal rule of the ninja movie -- a room full of enemies! A fight full of “-messy” results ensues as we carve our way through sixteen ninja mooks. Since I was playing the Gunfighter but thought it gauche to use guns, I decided to use a bow instead, firing two and three arrows at a time in an orgy of action excess.

We heard you were talking shit

Mechanical Notes: just before the fighting started, I took a risk and use Camaraderie to get everyone their bonus XP and “inspire” everyone, as well as turn the medallion of Fokuda into an awesome weapon. Thankfully, it worked, and our Camaraderie reset to 0. We did this by doing our Red Star Dojo "sign" (the index and middle fingers of both hands extended and crossed in an X). We got a lot of mileage out of the sign thing later in the game.

For the rest of the game, the Smartass would shore it up with a Killer One-Liner or two, and we would use it to heal just enough harm to keep people from getting killed in the huge battle. This was the most use we’ve ever gotten out of Camaraderie, and it was way more fun than letting it sit at +3 as an XP booster.

At the end of the carnage, Jackson himself shows up -- but before we can get to him, he summons another sixteen bad guys, resulting in a second huge and bloody battle. This was deeply satisfying and got everyone to the edge of five harm, despite our Camaraderie heals. The tension rises! I don't know if we can take on another baker's dozen, guys!

Jackson holds up the incriminating evidence we needed from his office. “Looking for this?” He hands the book off to Ashikura, who withdraws. We split up: Angel Chung and Stokes take on Jackson, while Why and Fokuda pursue Ashikura. Fun twist: we don’t know who the Villain is at this point, so it’s possible Why and Fokuda could be charging to their deaths.

The battle with Jackson is swift and decisive: he gets a couple hits in but Stokes and Chung take him apart. Meanwhile, Ashikura begins beating Fokuda and Why to a pulp. Stokes and Chung rush to their aid. During the battle, I take five harm and am “killed” by a sword stroke from Ashikura. All my Star Power is zeroed out (a first for our group). That’s trouble for everybody, because Ashikura is the Villain and I’m the Lead! Things look grim for our heroes!

Mr. Minamoto played by Pat Morita. Or maybe he wasn't. I just assumed

I roll against Camaraderie to see if the magical medallion will heal me in a magical deus ex machina. It does! (I realize I don’t need to do this to get back in the game as Lead, but it was fun anyway). I do a rad cartwheel flip and put an arrow through Ashikura’s heart. Red Star Dojo is saved! We return to Minamoto in victory and return the ancient medallion, which is suddenly significant somehow.

This game was a blast, and I really hope there’s a sequel. My only complaint is that none of the PCs died, which is 100% their choice, but a ninja movie without a Vengeance move feels like it’s missing something somehow. Maybe next time!

Satan's Game 4 & 5: Passing the Torch (and Burning it All Down)

IT'S HAPPENING AT LAST

It's time for another recap of our latest Action Movie World adventures! As I've said in previous installments, one of my aims with the ongoing "Satan's Game" series was to make a sort of meta-commentary on sequels in the same way AMW itself makes a commentary on action movies.

It should be obvious by now, if you've read any of the other entries in this series, that "Satan's Game" has heavy action-horror elements (or action-horror-comedy elements, if we're being honest). I grew up watching various horror franchises I enjoyed (Halloween, Hellraiser, Friday the 13th, etc.) take their good ideas  and either beat them to unrecognizable pulp or bleed them dry as dust over many sequels. I wanted to emulate that same terrible effect in gaming form (because I enjoy irony and cheap laughs, you see). Spiritually, I set out to make "films" that wanted to be Halloween but ended up being Hellraiser III. With cops.

This plan finally came to fruition with...

Satan's Game 4: Lord of the Maze (1990) 

The sequel nobody asked for! Our cast was mostly the same as the previous installment. Aside from Frank's characters, who die like dogs in every movie, we've stuck with the same crew for a bit now:

• Anna Citizen as Kelly Bishop, City Accountant turned. P.I. (Gina / Thespian)
• Berkeley Blower as Angus Bellows (Bill / Yeller / Lead)
• Garland McDonald as Pete "Muddy" O'Haran (Jerry / Musclehead.)
• James Oakley as Leon Graling, a former Wild West sharpshooter turned bounty hunter (Frank / Gunfighter). 

The face of pure evil

The movie opens on a couple making out in a car on a remote lover's lane, because I want the players to know right away: this movie is creatively bankrupt. Their impending teenage coitus is violently interrupted by an ominous figure in black. It's none other than the resurrected Dwight Meddles (Eddie Deezen), who cackles in a whining falsetto as he ends their lives. That's right, Eddie Deezen is now the villain! Standards have not fallen! This was a good choice! (But seriously, the players were very excited by the thought of fighting an evil Eddie Deezen.)

Once again, it falls to the "police" of Detroit to solve the mysterious murders. Angus Bellows, being the Lead, gets personally involved in the investigation. He, Kelly, Muddy, and Oakley go undercover at a local game shop, Merlin's Attic, to gather clues. Finally, after four movies, I get to fulfill my dream of PC cops fighting evil roleplayers!

Guest starring as one of the roleplayers is "Slade" from Razorfist: AD 1995, who starts an edition war that turns into a real war. Bloodshed ensues when the cops discover the game shop owners have some of the old Mazelord books with the psychoactive ink from the previous movie. Every gag gets re-used... that's the crappy sequel way! Slade uses "exotics" (which means he blocks with his face), but he and the other Evil Gamers are soon subdued by nightsticks, tasers to the crotch and falling shelves laden with deadly Avalon Hill games.

Oh no, it's getting pretty scary you guys

An interrogation of the devil-worshipping gamers leads the protagonists to the Corn Fun Fear Farm outside Detroit. (This is a real place, though I don't know if it existed in 1990.) There, Dwight Meddles (whose initials are DM, get it?) will prove himself to be the true master of Mazelord (because it's a corn maze, get it?) by literally summoning Satan on Halloween night. Dwight has kidnapped his own mother, Patsy, and tied her to a scarecrow pole. As the players arrive, lightning strikes the pole and the anti-Mazelord crusader messily expires. Patsy done got red-shirted.

A frantic battle ensues in which the "cops" (and bounty hunter and P.I.) battle a legion of pumpkin-headed misanthropes wielding chainsaws and pitchforks. Oakley botches a chase roll and plows his sports car into a power pole. Dwight Meddles fires Roman candles from his sleeves into the car (presumably while screaming "lightning bolt!") and Oakley is incinerated in the explosion. Vengeance move unlocked! Frank gets 2 XP and becomes a script consultant. He recommends Dwight literally become a demon at the end, proving magic and the Devil are real. I enthusiastically agree.

The climactic battle ends with Angus Bellows, the police commissioner, impaling the demonic Dwight Meddles on the charred pole that held Meddles' deceased mother. So, that's horrifying! But the threat is ended, and Satan's Game finally comes to an end... OR DOES IT, QUESTION MARK?

No, it doesn't.

Satan's Game 5: Evil's Conduit

And how can this be? For he is the Kwisatz Haderach Smooth Operator!

After the end of Satan's Game 4, the players were inexplicably eager for more. I said I would be happy to see more, but it was time for me to step aside and let someone else take over the franchise. I'd beaten it as far into the ground as I personally could. Frank volunteered, and the next week we continued with yet another sequel, doubtlessly cranked out in a white heat by the studio for a buck-fifty.

The cast included the usual suspects, plus:

• Chase Brody as Damian Grace, Smooth Operator (Greg /Smooth Operator / Lead)
• Randall David Guy as Raymond Zen (Me! / Gunfighter)

Let Me Tell You About My Character: I based Raymond Zen on Reb Brown, but not playing as a Yeller. I focused on the "crying" and "stiff acting" aspects of Reb Brown's style. I only occasionally descended into the Brownian "screaming like a banshee," but it never had any mechanical effect. My meta-story was that the actor did lines of coke between some takes and would seem inexplicably manic on screen. The best of all possible worlds! Raymond and Damian Grace were old Vietnam buddies, so naturally we had some Vietnam flashbacks and monologues about "the war" during the game.

So, on with the story! After the events of Satan's Game 4, the gang packed up and moved to the West Coast, where they formed G.L.O.R.I.A., the Government Led Occult Research and Investigation Agency. If you recall, Gloria was also the name of "Muddy" O'Haran's hammer, which is convenient because it pretty much sums up how we approach investigative problems.

Apparently, Dwight Meddles' attempt to summon the Devil at the Corn Fun Fear Farm in Detroit resulted in a "conduit" being opened between this world and the supernatural, meaning all sorts of inhuman baddies could come through, and it's up to us to stop them.

"So basically, we're Scooby Doo now," said Jerry, Muddy's player. No one could find it in their heart to disagree.

The face of pure evil

The story begins with some missing kids on Venice Beach. "I have never prepared less for a game," Frank says just after we start, and personally, I take that as a feature and not a bug. This is no longer a "cop" script, or really any of the scripts as written. I'm not sure what it is now, but we had a blast anyway.

Our protagonists interrogate beach-goers and find out there's a coven of vampires in Venice Beach. Raymond Zen gets coked up and rides his motorcycle all over the beach, unnecessarily spraying sand everywhere. I also take the opportunity to use the one-liner "you might be from another world, but I'm Ray Zen Hell," which made everyone want to die and was the whole reason I named the character the way I did.

Satan's Game 5: Evil's Conduit was simple and to the point. There were some vampires. They kidnapped Kelly Bishop (the trope still in effect five movies in!) The head vampire (played by Edward Hermann) gave a monologue explaining his plan. The rest of us laid assault to his lair (an office building) with automatic weapons and wooden stakes and put paid to the lot of them in a bloody conflagration. Venice Beach's vampire problem is solved!

Not appearing: oily Lost Boys saxophone guy

Mechanical Notes:

This was one of the few games where we used Camaraderie to get an awesome weapon (a Gatling gun that fired stakes), and personally, I'm a big fan. Bonus XP is nice. Insane weapons that create absolute mayehm are nicer.

At the end of the session, Frank explained that every character in the game was either named or based after a character from The Lost Boys, which was perfect. The soundtrack consisted mostly of The Go-Gos, which was also perfect somehow. I couldn't say what otherworldly terrors the members of G.L.O.R.I.A. will encounter next, but I'm eager to see where it goes... and kinda glad I'm not in charge.

Whatever AMW games I run in the future, I want them to be from fresh playbooks. We haven't even visited the Ninja, War or Sci-Fi playbooks yet at all. There's a lot of territory left to cover, and I'm eager to break out into new ground.

Action Movie World: "Satan's Game 3: Chaos Rising"

If Michael Ironside comes back from the dead, does anyone really notice?

I'm weeks behind on these play reports, but there's been a lot of Action Movie World happening! A few weeks back we played the third installment in our Satan's Game series of movies. As I may have said previously, Satan's Game is a series of cop movies (which have really become "cop" movies in scare quotes) about police fighting the true threats of the Eighties: drug dealers, Satanists, game shop owners, roleplayers, rock musicians, readers, and other nonconformists. The general idea is to make every installment more ridiculous and over-the-top than the previous installment, until the first Satan's Game looks like Oscar bait by comparison. 

The final scene of Satan's Game 2 ended with a gunshot and a black screen, with the audience uncertain if lead Kelly Bishop had survived. (The players, of course, knew she did -- she was the Lead!) Satan's Game 3: Chaos Rising opens a year later, with some new faces and a few familiar characters:

• Anna Citizen as Kelly Bishop, City Accountant turned. P.I. (Gina / Thespian)
• Berkeley Blower as Captain Angus Bellows (Bill / Yeller)
• Garland McDonald as Pete "Muddy" O'Haran (Jerry / Musclehead. Modeled after Richard Kiel, wields a huge hammer he's named Gloria. This will become hugely important later.)
• Jason Jaxon as Jack Cobb, brother of Jack Cobb (Frank / Pugilist. Modeled after Jason Statham. Like his brother, he dies; unlike his brother, he only dies once.)

"And you can count... on me joining the SWAT team and killing people with a hammer!" 

We also added a new player, Shane, who took to the game like a duck to water and grasped the vibe of the festivities right away.

• Chance Davis Jr. as Steve Bushman (Shane / Smartass / Lead. Modeled after Kurt Russell). Chance Davis Jr. is a closeted gay actor who is down with all the ladies on screen and has a fast car and / or motorcycle he drives everywhere. You may not know Shane (which is to your misfortune if true) but Smartass is the role he was born to play, and thankfully he knew this. 

As the movie begins, a group of mysterious hooded cultists lead unfortunate game shop owner Dwight Meddles (Eddie Deezen) into a remote graveyard, promising him an exclusive copy of the new Mazelord game. Instead, they offer him up in blood sacrifice to resurrect Damien Chaos, the henchman who died in a bloody conflagration in the first movie and who is now the new Villain. That's right, magic and resurrection is now real, this cop movie series is officially off the rails!

We cut to the hospital, where Kelly Bishop is in a coma after the events of the first film. She is stalked by one of the last Brides of Chaos, Eris (Rebecca DeMornay in a nurse's outfit because the classics never die), but Kelly comes out of her coma at a very convenient moment and snaps her neck. Adios, Eris, like so many AMW baddies you had one line and then you're dead.

Then there's opening scene where Jack Cobb (wielding a samurai sword) and Muddy O'Haran (wielding a giant hammer named Gloria) break into a drug house all by themselves and massacre and maim the criminals inside. I don't know what it is about re-enacting Eighties movies that brings out garish descriptions of violence in me, but this scene was horrifyingly violent. But I figure if we're doing a Cannon Films style cop movie set in Detroit, I don't know why we'd pull any punches. We would pull swords and hammers, apparently. The hapless drug lords give up some information under duress, implying that the super-drug "Lids" is once again back in town! Never let me be accused of non-lazy writing!

Mayor Henry Post: the terrifying Ned Flanders of the Satan's Game universe

Meanwhile, after being read the riot act by Mayor Henry Post (an extremely polite Harry Anderson), Angus Bellows (now police commissioner) sends the group to the Pony Keg, hoping they might uncover the mystery of the missing kids and the return of the "Lids" drug. Steve Bushman does what any undercover cop would do, which is to challenge the menacing duo "Pop and Lock" to an illegal street race. Naturally, he wins, and gets into the good graces of the villains, Creed Ruin (Brad Dourif) and Father Apocrypha (Robert Englund). What are Eighties movies without stupid villain names? Probably movies from some other decade!

After Angus Bellows is attacked in his home by the undead Chaos himself, it's clear terrible forces are afoot. Bushman is enlisted by Ruin to assassinate the enemies of Chaos; starting with Jack Cobb, who is in his dojo. A spectacular and ridiculous fight ensues. The group made a Camaraderie roll to get an awesome weapon: a minigun which they mounted in the back of Muddy's van. A gang of Chaos Rising punks on motorcycles attacked the dojo by driving through the windows and driving in circles inside the dojo (like ya do), and got cut to shreds by Jack and Kelly while Muddy, Steve and Angus gunned down the rest of them outside. Father Apocrypha was crushed by a car (I think), but Kelly was kidnapped by the bad guys via a Separate Them director move (by this time, quite the running joke, one the player in question loves).

Super scary priest guy who was in the movie for like ten seconds

Cut to, once again, the goddamn Universal Church of Holy Waters, where the final showdown happens for THE THIRD TIME IN AS MANY MOVIES. Damien Chaos, Creed Ruin, and the remainder of the thugs square off against our heroes, who drive through the stained glass windows to the tune of "White Wedding." Jack Cobb is once again gunned down in a hail of cultist bullets; his player collects 2 XP. The rest of the bad guy mooks are mowed down unceremoniously. (After this, I resolved to have that whole church paved over. We've re-used the set enough.)

Muddy, the Lead, swings at Damien Chaos but takes "succeed at a cost;" he loses his hammer Gloria, which slides under a pew. Angus Bellows tries to fight the Villain, but takes a boatload of Harm and is thrown through the air. Apparently mortally wounded, he gives a "go get 'em" speech to Muddy and hands him the hammer, which he has retrieved. I cue up Laura Branagan's "Gloria" on the soundtrack. Vengeance Move! Muddy rises up and smites Damien Chaos for the final time. He's super-double-dead for sure now and definitely will not come back when the popularity of this series begins to flag.

So that's another hysterical session down. Our new player definitely wants to come back for more. What does the future hold for Satan's Game? Some more crappy and ridiculous sequels! Stay tuned!