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Solo Tabletop RPG Actual Play – Kids on Bikes Solo Part Five

You can purchase the Plot Unfolding Machine here.

(For this session, I will use the Powered Character rules for Waldo to reflect the change. The Powered Character gets 7 Power Tokens that can be spent to roll 1d6 each to add to a check roll. They only replenish with rest.)

(Powers for Waldo are

Heals others with a touch
Controls the elements – fire)

Scene 16 – Falling 1 of 3 – The Old Sykes House

Modified proposal: increase the intensity and tension
Action: Looking for some answers

Waldo’s eyelids flicker. Something has changed as he takes a breath. He can hear noise in the room. The ground beneath him is damp and dirt. Rita Hyde’s voice. Then Sally Gilliam’s, but weaker. The Mayor is there, too.

Movie Review – The Adventures of Baron Munchausen

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988)
Written by Charles McKeown and Terry Gilliam
Directed by Terry Gilliam

I was obsessed with Terry Gilliam’s Brazil as a college undergrad. It was the first time I saw it, and right away, I found the imagery to be spellbinding. I’ve cooled immensely since that time on Gilliam’s work. I find most of it to be incredibly inventive yet frustratingly messy. Some comments he’s made have also caused me to see him as a filmmaker I’m not too keen on following. The first film of his I saw was Time Bandits when I was a kid, and it left an indelible mark on me. I remember seeing commercials for The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and desperately wanting to see it. However, it was never an option when renting movies at the video rental store. Finally seeing the film, reminded me that, like all of Gilliam’s work, there is tremendous artistry here, but it is hindered by a lack of consistency.

Solo Tabletop Actual Play – Kids on Bikes Solo Part Four

You can purchase Kids on Bikes here.

You can purchase the Plot Unfolding Machine here.

Read about our previous session here

Scene 10 – Rising Action 6 of 8 – Westgrove PD
Modified proposal: Make the location less favorable
Danger: Risk honor or reputation
Who: A political or reasonable person

Waldo is awakened in the early morning hours by Clem shouting at him. Reid is there too and also, Mayor Sartain. The Mayor looks irritated and starts screaming at Waldo.

“Where are the kids, Holman? Tell us, you fucking freak!” the Mayor rages. Reid steps between the Mayor and the bars of the cell.

Patron Pick – Shanghai Noon

This special reward is available to Patreon patrons who pledge at the $10 or $20 monthly levels. Each month, those patrons will pick a film for me to review. If they choose, they also get to include some of their thoughts about the movie. This Pick comes from Bekah Lindstrom.

Shanghai Noon (2000)
Written by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar
Directed by Tom Dey

“The feeling of belatedness, of living after the gold rush, is as omnipresent as it is disavowed. Compare the fallow terrain of the current moment with the fecundity of previous periods and you will quickly be accused of ‘nostalgia’. But the reliance of current artists on styles that were established long ago suggests that the current moment is in the grip of a formal nostalgia.” – Mark Fisher

If you were raised in the US or live there, you are in a period of artistic decline. The big movie studios, always focused on the dollar, have genuinely given up on any pretense of their output having long-lasting cultural meaning. In the golden era of the studio, some executives and presidents understood they had to make crowd pleasers but always tried to push the medium forward. They would give money to some smaller pictures that ended up being the ones remembered all these decades ago.

TV Review – Northern Exposure Season Three

Northern Exposure Season Three (1991-92)
Written by Martin Sage, Sybill Adelman, Ellen Herman, Robin Green, Stuart Stevens, Henry Bromell, Dennis Koenig, Jordan Budde, Craig Volk, Diane Frolov, Andrew Schneider, Jeff Melvoin, David Assael, Mitchell Burgess, Kate Boutilier, Jeffrey Vlaming
Directed by Nick Marck, Bill D’Elia, Miles Watkins, Jim Hayman, David Carson, Sandy Smolan, Michael Katleman, Jack Bender, Michael Fresco, Lee Shallat, Dean Parisot, Rob Thompson, Matthew Nodella, Steve Robman, Tom Moore

This was the season where the awards started coming in for Northern Exposure. It was also the first season to have a complete order, twenty-two episodes. The budget has been increased, and the amount of care put into many of these episodes approaches cinematic levels. I had to check what year these episodes came out, 1991-92, but they feel more complex than something you would expect from CBS then. It’s become clear to me how this show was one of the experimental US programs of the 1990s that paved the way for the prestige TV of the cable era.

Solo Tabletop Actual Play – Kids on Bikes Solo Part Three

You can purchase Kids on Bikes here.

You can purchase the Plot Unfolding Machine here.

Read our previous session here

Scene 4 – Rising Action 1 of 8 – Waldo’s House

Modified proposal: Add some trouble or bad news
Oracle question: Is this trouble a person? No, not yet.
Danger: Expose one weakness

Waldo and Bopper pull into the driveway. Waldo immediately notices his front door is open.

Movie Review – Ernest in the Army

Ernest in the Army (1998)
Written by John Cherry, Jeffrey Pillars, and Joseph Dattorre
Directed by John Cherry

Just less than two years after Ernest in the Army’s release direct-to-video, Jim Varney passed away from lung cancer at his home in White House, Tennessee. He recorded dialogue for Disney’s Atlantis: The Lost Empire and played a small role in a Billy Bob Thornton film. His career as Ernest ended in a downturn. Varney consistently adhered to the transparency that they made these movies because they made money. There was never a faux sense of artistry. Varney also seemed to understand how important characters like Ernest were for kids. That makes the previous film, Ernest Goes to Africa, and this disappointment feels so out of place in the franchise.

Movie Review – Ernest Goes to Africa

Ernest Goes to Africa (1997)
Written and directed by John Cherry

The Ernest franchise felt like it was running on fumes at this point. It had been ten years since Ernest Goes to Camp. Touchstone/Disney were out of the picture. The films were no longer being released theatrical, going straight to video. Budgets were meager. The ideas were also drying up. When this film came out, I was sixteen, and I don’t have any vivid memory of watching it. Our family likely rented it for the younger siblings, and I was probably present, but I remembered very little of it. John Cherry was writing & directing solo now. Film production had gone from Tennessee to Vancouver and South Africa for these final two pictures.

Movie Review – Slam Dunk Ernest

Slam Dunk Ernest (1995)
Written by John Cherry and Daniel Butler
Directed by John Cherry

The final three Ernest films were direct-to-video releases, making it very clear that the salad days of Disney financing were long gone. It wasn’t a terrible move. As we can see today, theatrical release is hardly the primary way people engage with media. What would Ernest have been like in the streaming age? He’d likely end up on some platform like Pureflix, especially looking at these final three. If, in watching these movies, you think they resemble television far more, you wouldn’t be wrong. I can easily see these being cut way down and being episodes of a low-budget streaming series.

Solo Tabletop RPG Review & Actual Play – Kids on Bikes Solo Part Two

You can purchase Kids on Bikes here.

You can purchase the Plot Unfolding Machine here.

Read our previous session setting up our game here.

Before jumping into our story, I want to talk about the tool I will use to make Kids on Bikes solo. I have chosen to go with Jeansen Vars’s Plot Unfolding Machine. I genuinely love the structures and tools Mythic GM Emulator and Mythic Magazine provide. However, they are more about creating frameworks but don’t prompt the story beyond a general direction. The Plot Unfolding Machine delivers a bit more guidance, and for the purposes of this game, I thought that would be a fun change of pace.