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dorktower_feed) wrote2025-07-14 05:00 am
With thanks to my pal Dan Taylor for the inspiration!
This or any DORK TOWER strip is now available as a signed, high-quality print, from just $25! CLICK HERE to find out more!
HEY! Want to help keep DORK TOWER going? Then consider joining the DORK TOWER Patreon and ENLIST IN THE ARMY OF DORKNESS TODAY! (We have COOKIES!) (And SWAG!) (And GRATITUDE!)
darths_and_droids_feed) wrote2025-07-17 09:12 am
If your characters get captured, one way to move things along is to be so annoying that the captors just want to be rid of you. If you do this in a game, you have the added opportunity of making your GM so annoyed that they decide to have the captors let you go.
aurilee writes:
Well, what good is a Wookiee elocution trick if you can't use it? Interesting that they've got a neck chain on Chewie already. That's either standard issue for capturing beings, which is disturbing, or it's something that was already prepped for capturing the heroes, which means the knights somehow knew where they were. Neither of those bode well for the success of escape in the dilapidated spaceship, which will likely be by the skin of Threepio's teeth.
So will Rey get back to the ship in time to try and escape? Or will she end up getting captured as well to try to keep the party from being split too much. I could see either as something Pete could go for, but for the movie, this feels more like a loss of a friend and a plot device. That will lead to the next part of the movie where getting Chewie and the keyblade back is the short-term goal. Just heading off to Kimchi and hoping for the best would make no sense at all, even from a "we don't know where the plot is going" point of view. But there was the whole Willy Wonka tunnel trip with the hyperjump, so...... no guarantees that won't happen.
darths_and_droids_feed) wrote2025-07-15 09:11 am
Sometimes players get into discussing minutiae that is unimportant or irrelevant to the game situation. Particularly if they start trying to apply real world knowledge or thinking to situations where their characters wouldn't know or do such things.
A trick you can use in such cases is to change the situation so that their discussion becomes irrelevant. After all, enemies aren't stopping to listen to the heroes discuss probability or quantum mechanics or whatever. They're just going to keep attacking, or closing to combat range, or blowing up the hospital, or whatever their plan is. So have that happen and just keep describing events getting progressively worse until your players pay attention and start doing something.
aurilee writes:
*Squint*
*Zoom-in*
Wow, there really is a dot there. I wonder if that's actually this starfighter; that's extremely zoomed in if so. Rey's practically got Legolas eyes to see that far away. Though if the Force vibe gets stronger as the dot comes around the mountain, she wouldn't need to care what kind of ship it is to know that's the bad news.
Either way, if it is Kylo's starfighter, I wonder why he's coming in so early. Only Chewie's been captured so far; everyone else can still fight back!
basicinstructions_feed) wrote2025-07-14 07:00 am
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darths_and_droids_feed) wrote2025-07-13 09:11 am
Cry "Havoc!", and let slip the dogs of yore.
Characters in games can have pets too.
Or they could be pets. Imagine a game where everyone is playing a domestic cat or dog. Or perhaps a bird. Something's going on in the neighbourhood and the humans are blissfully unaware, so it's up to the pets to go out and fix things up.
aurilee writes:
I guess Dagger Bar is a franchise. Or is a fixation of Jim's. Or maybe both at this point!
Time for Chewie and Rey to get captured then? It seems odd that it would only be Chewbacca that gets noticed and captured as he's not Force Sensitive at all. And if the Knights of Ren are actively looking for everyone, why wouldn't they have spotted Rey as well?
Hopefully the whole group doesn't get captured. That'd cause a big mess of the plot from what I can see, and we've hardly gone anywhere as it is!
dorktower_feed) wrote2025-07-11 05:00 am
With thanks to my pal Dan Taylor for the inspiration!
This or any DORK TOWER strip is now available as a signed, high-quality print, from just $25! CLICK HERE to find out more!
HEY! Want to help keep DORK TOWER going? Then consider joining the DORK TOWER Patreon and ENLIST IN THE ARMY OF DORKNESS TODAY! (We have COOKIES!) (And SWAG!) (And GRATITUDE!)
darths_and_droids_feed) wrote2025-07-10 09:11 am
If you want an interesting dilemma for a party, have one of them notice something incredibly interesting while they're in a rush to get away from danger. If it works right, they might even want to split the party.
aurilee writes:
Yeah, the party might as well use Ochi's ship. It's not like he's going to miss it, after all. That said, I wonder if it still works. Star Wars's theme is "used and worn" outside of Imperial/First Order things, but this thing looks really heavily sanded. Maybe they'll use it to crash land near the Falcon?
Interesting though, if Kylo only just showed up now, that means those troopers were already nearby the planet. I wonder how they got the info that the party was in the area. Did Poe actually raise enough of a ruckus that the troopers came to check the place out? Or were the troopers already hunting for Lando and the party drew suspicion off of him as part of a deal?
Buuuuuuut speaking of feeling personally attacked, I should probably clean some things up. Don't want to get to the point where I'm a joke like this as well!
dorktower_feed) wrote2025-07-09 05:00 am
With thanks to my pal Dan Taylor for the inspiration!
This or any DORK TOWER strip is now available as a signed, high-quality print, from just $25! CLICK HERE to find out more!
HEY! Want to help keep DORK TOWER going? Then consider joining the DORK TOWER Patreon and ENLIST IN THE ARMY OF DORKNESS TODAY! (We have COOKIES!) (And SWAG!) (And GRATITUDE!)
darths_and_droids_feed) wrote2025-07-08 09:11 am
Pulling something like a backwards conversation off in actual play is an insane challenge. Which just means that maybe you should try it!
You need to anticipate different things that the players might say in response to various things, and also try to push them towards saying certain things. You'll probably need a detailed branching script, with different lines in response to different possible things that the players say in between. And make lines sort of vague, so they can be interpreted in different ways post-hoc, so they have a greater chance of making sense in the dynamic context that develops.
Another trick relies on the fact that most groups don't record their sessions. You can do a flashback and slightly tweak the conversation in your recount to make it flow more smoothy and logically. Hopefully nobody will notice around the aura of your awesomeness.
aurilee writes:
...... Huh????
Wow, that is an extremely masterful stroke by the GM. Pulling off a backwards conversation like this would definitely be one of those moments that the players talk about for a long time after the session. I wonder just how long the GM has been waiting for this kind of opportunity to show up; this definitely takes some careful planning and writing.
This whole scene is definitely a lot more interesting than Rey just deciding to repeat Androcles and the Lion for some reason. Helping a spooky injured snake thing that definitely eats beings would be tricky to write well enough that the audience enjoys the scene, especially given the new Force power. Perhaps that's just me though. It's one thing to have a Force power suddenly shown that causes a problem, and another thing to have a suddenly shown one that solves a problem. Having this Force Transference power pop up as part of the training run probably would have helped here.
Well, I did say that the movie writers seem to not know what was going on, didn't I?
basicinstructions_feed) wrote2025-07-07 07:00 am
As always, thanks for using my Amazon Affiliate links (US, UK, Canada), and for considering joining my Patreon
As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
dorktower_feed) wrote2025-07-07 05:00 am
This or any DORK TOWER strip is now available as a signed, high-quality print, from just $25! CLICK HERE to find out more!
HEY! Want to help keep DORK TOWER going? Then consider joining the DORK TOWER Patreon and ENLIST IN THE ARMY OF DORKNESS TODAY! (We have COOKIES!) (And SWAG!) (And GRATITUDE!)
darths_and_droids_feed) wrote2025-07-06 09:12 am
Not all encounters are combat encounters. People can be talked with, sometimes even monsters. In fact, it's more fun when monsters can talk. Even if the PCs end up killing them anyway, now they need to deal with the fact that they killed something that talked to them.
aurilee writes:
The grue appears! .... But I guess the little lantern and lightsaber are good enough light sources, so the group doesn't get eaten. For now anyway. .... And it's already got stomach troubles, so another point against that.
Is Pete metagaming here? Definitely. But it also seems that the GM is counting on that as the snake thing's just talking a lot and mentioning Rey and the sword. Which honestly probably makes more sense than the movie does; this critter kinda has wampa vibes with the teeth and the "personalized" cave it's living in. Why wouldn't the main characters try and immediately slice or shoot it, especially with how Poe's already pointing a blaster at it? It's not like there's an obvious exit to run away through. The really weird thing is that Rey really does appear to hand over the lightsaber to Finn.
Oh, and this thing definitely doesn't talk in the movie. It's too non-human looking to speak English Galactic Basic, and with a mouth full of teeth like that, I'd honestly be extremely surprised if it makes any sounds other than hisses or movie-rancor growls.