So This Happened Sunday...

Recaps of our most recent sessions coming soon.

Action Movie World: "Holiday in Vietnam"

Do we get to win this time?

It's time for another ACTION MOVIE WORLD recap! This week, we christened the War Movie script with "Holiday in Vietnam." It was Jerry's first time at bat as Director. He did research and had a slideshow prepared and everything. It was glorious. For a moment, I thought we might do a Vietnam movie in the style of a real action movie. And it was... if the writers did a mountain of cocaine and peyote first.

Here's the cast list:

• Geofrrey St. James as Cassius Freeman (Greg / Smartass)
• Yola Chogo as "Maggie" Code Name Magpie (Gina / Pugilist / Lead)
• Berkeley Blower as Sgt. Crockett Buoy (Bill / Yeller)
• Jason Jackson as Lt. Bob Bixley (Frank / Gunfighter) 
• Randall Guy as Pvt. Junior McQueen (Me / Gunfighter) 

Two Gunfighters in the same group! Can the "plot" handle it? (Spoiler: yes.)

Before the game began, we were instructed to watch this video to prepare us for the central hook. Take a look, and I think you'll see where this is going right away.

The story begins with our characters getting up to individual shenanigans while on holiday leave in Ho Chi Minh city, and then being brought in for a secret mission. The commanding officer (played by R. Lee Ermey) tells us that the Vietnamese officer known only as "The Butcher" plans to disrupt the supply lines, which could cost the Americans the war in Vietnam. Only we can help keep the supplies flowing to our allies, by dropping behind enemy lines and making a dangerous supply run. The United States lose the war on Vietnam? Not on our watch! (Sound of magazines being slammed into automatic weapons.)

In this movie, "Maggie" was the undercover agent, who valiantly tried to keep the rest of us from acting like depraved lunatics throughout the mission. It didn't really pan out. Frank and I decided our characters had a relationship of "friendly rivalry," meaning we numbered our combat kills and got competitive about the body count like Gimli and Legolas at the Battle of Helm's Deep. I highly recommend this as a "relationship" tag in any action movie -- it really inspires you to bring the mayhem.

Not pictured: The PCs

So anyway, we parachute behind enemy lines and inexplicably run into some jungle cats, which, in accordance with the orders of our secret covert mission, we gun down on full auto while screaming like banshees (okay, that was mostly me). Somehow we are not compromised and move on to find our contact, Abramowitz (Bruce Spence), who is trying to hold the line in his remote mountain fortress.

The bad news is, "The Butcher" already has the supplies in hand. The good news is, we're here to get it back! To make our way down the mountain and infiltrate the Butcher's base, we're given -- you guessed it -- bicycles. We're going to ride down the mountain on bikes! It's like some kind of beautiful dream!

I immediately ask for a montage in which Junior McQueen welds his M-16 to the basket on his bike. Wish granted. Bixley has made friends with a young Vietnamese boy, who rides tandem on his bike and probably plummeted to a terrifying death or was incinerated somewhere in the confusion -- I don't know because we sort of forgot he existed not long after the next scene.

LOST POWER!

Our squad is biking down the mountain at high speed. Suddenly we ride past a group of Viet Cong soldiers who are themselves on bikes. Only their bikes have little engines. Gasoline engines. For the next dozen die rolls, the unrestrained mayhem writes itself.

McQueen leads the charge with a sweet BMX-style side flip while shooting his M-16. Crockett, armed with a rocket launcher, flips his bike upside down, fires the rocket into pursuers while upside down, and is righted by the blowback from his rocket. Bixley drops a grenade into a group of enemies, essentially rocket-jumping his bike over them as they explode. Maggie does some sweet Zorro moves, somehow managing to wheel-kick Viet Cong while flying down the mountainside at full tilt. Freeman is in the back, working some back-end Smartass dice exploit to get the gang's Camaraderie back after he tanks it all to get us free XP.

So many bicycle gas tanks shot. So very many. Anyway, we won that fight, putting Bixley just ahead of McQueen in the competitive bad-guy-killin'.

We move on to the next scene, where the enemy is occupying a bridge we have to get across. There are a couple of towers and some soldiers on the ground. Freeman snipes one opponent from the trees, while Crockett fires his rocket into the other, and Bixley uses his Demolitions move to settle up with the rest. McQueen, who has been hanging back the entire time, now rides calmly across the bridge as debris rains down, popping his gum and ringing the bell on his bicycle.

Suddenly, the Director says, a barricade drops, revealing a fortified machine gun nest. It was an ambush! I do what I've been hoping to do since I started playing this game: I volunteer to die!

Riddled with bullets, McQueen (played by Reb Brown, you remember) does the Reb Brown scream as he drops a handful of live grenades into the basket of his bike and plows into the machine gun nest, exploding in a fiery ball and getting me 2 XP. "We're even," Bixley says, recounting the body-count rivalry. "You son of a bitch, now we're even." Vengeance move unlocked!

I have to say, this was one of my favorite PC deaths of all time, partially because it was mine, partially because all the other players took his death to heart. Crockett took the bell off McQueen's charred bike, while Bixley took his gun (which also somehow survived). During the rest of the session, they talked about "what McQueen would have wanted" and made constant references to his death. I was so grateful and happy! Dying was the best move in the game. Meanwhile, I became Director of Photography and added ridiculous Brian de Palma split screen and slow-mo to subsequent scenes.

The crew moved on to the Butcher's compound, where they freed a group of prisoners and broke out in a fresh hail of carnage. Things were happening so fast and furious by this point that I don't remember a ton of details, but here are a few key scenes: Cassius Freeman speeding down a zip line with his sniper rifle (possibly popping off enemies as he went). Bixley discovering a tank and using it to loud, destructive effect before it was unfortunately blown up in a "Lose Your Stuff" director move. Crockett flew through the air on his bike and rocket-bombed a helicopter in slow-mo to the tail end of The Chambers Brothers' "Time Has Come Today," which I think we can all agree is amazing.

Maggie, as the Lead and undercover agent, tried to keep the gang organized, mostly to no avail. The Butcher arrived in the final reel, driving up in a jeep and shooting Cassius Freeman dead (Freeman, no!). Maggie leaped into the back of the jeep, hit and kicked the Butcher approximately a hundred times a la Fist of the North Star, and bailed just before the Butcher's vehicle smashed into a tree and exploded. Now there's an Eighties villain death if ever I saw one.

This session was amazing. We had a ludicrous action scene in the middle act, I got to die a valiant screaming death, and thanks to Spotify, we had a terrific soundtrack to power the narrative. Let me tell you, any Vietnam battle sequence can only be enhanced by the Commodores' "Machine Gun."

Tonight, we play our first unaltered Sci-Fi script! I'm excited!