Stupid Movie Made Me Cry

Godzilla Minus One (2023) Review

I'm a Godzilla fanboy. I love Godzilla. I read the Marvel comic Godzilla: King of the Monsters in the 70's. I watched the old movies. Those were my favorite. My Godzilla was a guy in a rubber suit. My Godzilla was feisty and cool. My Godzilla was a hero. I still think of Godzilla that way.

I really enjoyed the new series Monarch: Legacy of Monsters on Apple TV. It's wicked cool and highly recommended, but it's not really my Godzilla. Monarch is more Big Trouble In Little China meets Pacific Rim. I love it, but it's not the same. American made Godzilla isn't the same as Japanese made Godzilla, and modern Godzilla isn't the same as classic Godzilla.

That's okay. Things change. They evolve. The stuff that I loved from over 50 years ago were the products of their time. They can't exist today. I will enjoy them for the relics that they are, and bask in the nostalgic good feels that they give me. That's cool.

I will say that the films produced by American movie producers and those produced by Japanese movie producers feel very different. I have been very pleased with the last few Godzilla + Kong efforts. They have attempted to give my favorite monsters a bit of personality and I appreciate that. Those are awesome adventure movies. I haven't seen much from Japan. Maybe Godzilla Minus One is the first one in a long while? (I don't know. I'll have to do my research.)

Speaking of Godzilla Minus One, I just finished watching it. 

It could arguably be the best movie that I have ever seen with the word, "Godzilla" in its title. Godzilla isn't in the movie a lot, and Godzilla isn't a hero. This is a story about the people left in the wake of inconceivable destruction. As a metaphor for war or for our current political climate it works just the same.

That's how Godzilla started, as a metaphor. The first Godzilla film was a cry out in protest of the destruction of the atomic bomb. The original film contained actual footage of the devastation and casualties left by the bomb. The film showed the world the horrors of war that were too terrible to conceive and hid them inside the pretense of a monster movie.

  

  

Godzilla Minus One brings the Godzilla franchise back to its roots. This time the movie focuses even more on the tragedy of loss. Where the first film focused on the enormous scope of the tragedy, Minus One looks closer. This Godzilla movie is personal, intimate in its look at the tragic effects of the devastation created by the King of the Monsters. Godzilla is no hero here.

The view isn't one sided. Japan takes a look at itself, at how it treated human life during World War II and it shoulders some of the blame. The story is layered and intelligent, and it's heartbreaking. In this movie, I didn't love Godzilla, but I did love this movie.

It's the story of a Kamikaze Pilot after World War II who is labeled a coward because he didn't die in the war. He is one of the first people from Japan to see Godzilla. He sees Godzilla when he was "just a dinosaur" before radiation transforms the creature into the enormous Kaiju that we know. The pilot fails to fire on Godzilla then, and this clouds his life with regret.

He denies himself a family. Although he takes in a woman and an orphaned child, he keeps them forever and tragically at arms length. War has broken him, and at the heart of this is his encounter with Godzilla. It's sad. It's personal. It's very Japanese, but still very relatable.

As the film neared its end, I was thinking that I might never want to watch it again. This is not because the movie isn't excellent. It's because the movie is too real. Yes, a Godzilla movie that's too real. This is because Godzilla itself is just a catalyst for the human story. This is something that I think the Japanese cinema does very well, but that American cinema generally fails at doing.

Stupid movie made me cry.

I've changed my mind. I will watch it again. I loved Godzilla Minus One. It's an excellent movie. It might be the best in the franchise, but comparing it to other films in the franchise might be unfair. As an homage to the original film, Godzilla Minus One might be the truest, purest Godzilla film that's been made since the original. As a modern Godzilla vehicle, it's different. It stands apart.

I'm giving Godzilla Minus One a 10 out of 10 as a movie movie and a 7 out of 10 as a Godzilla vehicle. Maybe that's not fair. Godzilla Minus One is true to the original film, and Godzilla as a franchise has proven itself to be one of the most versatile storytelling mediums out there. This movie continues the tradition of allowing a Godzilla movie to be greater than its titular character.

If you don't like Godzilla, you may want to watch this movie all the same. It's damned good. If you are a Godzilla fan like me, this movie is a must see. Sure I knocked it a few points as a Godzilla franchise "vehicle" but that's largely based on my own biases. Godzilla has been science fiction, and fantasy, and espionage adventure, even comedy. Here Godzilla is perhaps at it's most intimate, and that took me by surprise. 

You have to watch this and decide for yourself where it lands. You won't regret it.

  

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Hughesville High TTRPG Review

Hughesville High is a TTRPG from Lakeside Games published in 2013 and written by Leonard Pimentel. 

The name "Hughesville" is a reference to film director John Hughes who created a barrage of teen friendly "coming of age" films in the 80's. Among them: Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Weird Science, Sixteen Candles, and the Breakfast Club. Hughesville High looks to capture the innocence and wonder of these madcap coming of age experiences in a tabletop RPG.

  

  

Characters are made up of "Mundane Roles" and a "Unique Role." All of the Mundane Roles are the same for all characters, but they will have different ranks. Your Unique Role is just that. It's special and unique to just your character. Players will also define the qualities: drive, baggage, flaw, style, and music for their characters.

Mundane Roles are the high school stereotypes common to the John Hughes films – and life: Brain, Delinquent, Jock, Nerd, and Royalty. (Not sure if these are pulled from the famous assignment read aloud at the end of the Breakfast Club, but they sound right.) All characters will have ranks in the different Mundane Roles. I would have scored high in Nerd and Delinquent, and low in Jock and Royalty.

Unique Role is special. It's something spectacular and supernatural. This pushes Hughesville High away from Breakfast Club territory and firmly into the Weird Science arena. That's okay with me. RPGs are fantasy escapism, and players need to have something to do aside from revisiting high school. A character's unique role gives them a way to do that.

Unique Roles are things like: alien, cyborg, ghost, dragon, and vampire. There are many to choose from. They are really out there, and they start at a high rank (5 out of 6) so players are encouraged to use them. This makes Hughesville High a mix between Ferris Bueller and Percy Jackson. I might have had a hard time selling players on a purely John Hughes "Sixteen Candles" experience. This fixes that.

But, the "high school" experience isn't to be ignored. It's at the core of everything. The supernatural stuff is just a bridge to hook your players and get them into the high school halls and locker rooms. All the other aspects that define a character: drive, baggage, flaw, style, and music are about leveraging the high school experience – specifically, the high school experience as seen in a John Hughes film.

Drive is the thing that motivates your character. When a character does something that connects directly with their drive it becomes a lot easier to do. The drives are: acceptance (from your peers), hormones (you're a teenager), independence (from your parents), romance (real love), and stuff (material possessions). Everyone is driven by these, but players choose which one motivates them the most.

Baggage is a negative thing that you can roleplay to earn plot points. Plot points are a meta currency that can be used to help your character later. The game lists the following forms of baggage: bully, burnout, crush, crushed, dweeb, experienced, frenemy, inexperienced, involved parents, one of them, one of us, practice, silver spoon, stress case, uninvolved parents, and wrong side of the tracks.

Flaws are like baggage and work to earn players plot points in the same way, but flaws must be directly connected to the character's unique role. For example: kryptonite would be a "reaction" flaw for Superman. The listed flaws are: aversion, compulsion, frenzy, hunted, light sensitive, need, nocturnal, oath bound, reaction, repair, uncontrolled transformation, and vulnerability.

Style is sort of your character's description, but it is more about the impression that they make than what they actually look like. Style can encompass how the character dresses as well as how they carry or present themselves (whether intentionally or not.) The listed styles are: broke, flashy, geeky, goth, plain, preppy, punk, sporty, surfer, tough, uniform, and western.

Music might be the kind of music that your character likes or just the kind of music that suits the character on the whole. It's what's playing in the background every time your character enters a scene. The game lists several types of music to choose from. Selecting a form of music completes character creation. (Although, I might ask my players to pick a personal "theme song" specifically from the 80's.)

Character creation does a lot to establish the nature of play that Hughesville High hopes to inspire. I believe it does a great job at focusing expectations and "building a world" through the eyes of its inhabitants. As I was writing this, I found myself imagining the kinds of characters that I might like to create and what their world would look like.

  

  

In the last few pages of character creation, the rules mention "Assets" which are special items or boons that provide a character with temporary unique roles. There's also a discussion of "Ordinary Kids" which provides guidelines on playing without unique roles and flaws. In case you really do want to just play out Sixteen Candles without any of the supernatural stuff.

Dramatic action is resolved through plot roles. Players will roll 3 dice. One die is a different color and is called the "critical die" – ignore it (unless you roll triples) and add the other 2 dice. Add the rank of one of your roles to the sum of those 2 dice to reach an outcome. Higher results are better and will give the player more narrative control. Lower results are not as good and give the GM more narrative control.

Rolling triples is great, as that results in a critical success that lets the player narrate something awesome. (Triples is the only reason you're rolling 3 dice, and when you roll triples the values on the dice don't matter. All triples are a critical success.) This dice system is clean and straightforward. It seems easy to implement and easy to explain.

Combat in Hughesville is true to the spirit of John Hughes films. This isn't Quentin Tarantino territory. The consequences of combat may result in unconsciousness or kidnapping, but never death. More likely these kinds of conflicts are "scraps" that end in torn clothing or messed hair that can negatively affect a character's royalty rank, or a minor injury that might affect their jock rank. Things like that.

Hughesville concludes with GM advice. This includes explanations about how Hughesville differs from other RPGs and how to make the most of the game's focus on narrative control. There's also a bunch of information to help GMs set the game in the world of the 1980's with all kinds of useful guidelines on capturing the look and feel of the period. There's even a random adventure generator.

I love Hughesville High. It's a great example of the "rules light, strong narrative" cross section of RPGs that really hit a sweet spot for me. I think character creation is clever and accessible and works to capture the intention of the game's theme. The resolution mechanic is clean and functional, and the whole thing screams, "Bring me to the table." Hopefully, I can make that happen. 

Give Hughesville High a look for yourself. It's well worth your time.

  

Dedicated to the memory of John Hughes who died at the age of 59 of a heart attack. RIP John.

    

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Food Vortex

Warning: self-indulgent whiney post incoming. 

Back in January, I slipped on our back porch in the snow and injured my left knee. The injury required surgery which was performed in early February. I have required the use of a walker since. 

The initial recovery estimate was 3 months. Given that I have cerebral palsy, it was understandable that my recovery might take as long as 6 months. So we bided our time and I doubled down on the physical therapy. 

After 7 months, we decided that something must be wrong and I had an MRI of the knee done. With much regret, the Doctor informed me of what he called, "worse case scenario." The MRI showed "slack" in the tendon that was indicative of another injury. 

Had I done something to re-injure myself, or were the tissues in my leg simply too weak to sustain the repair? The best (or indeed only) way forward was a second surgery identical to the first. Basically, back to square one. 

We scheduled the surgery for October 11th, and I've been in pretty low spirits. I'm tired of not being able to walk without the walker. The thought that I would have to go through this whole process a second time and endure it all again for the next three to six months was crushing to my spirit.

Then this Tuesday, September 24th, I had a heart attack. 100% of the primary artery to my heart was blocked. It's a heart attack called, "The Widow Maker" because few survive it. I was lucky, not only did I make it safely to the hospital, but also they were able to make a repair by inserting two stints into the arteries in my heart. 

I'm fine now. If fine means alive and functioning. I'm writing this from my hospital bed and trying to see the bright side. I'm alive. That's good. 

I'm on blood thinners, which means no knee surgery for at least a year. I need to change my lifestyle and my diet. So, the walker for at least another year, and the food … the food. 

Many years ago when I was in my twenties, my friends got me a t-shirt as a gift with the words, "Food Vortex" printed on it. It was intended lovingly, in fun. I was that guy who could and did eat everything. 

I loved food. It was not uncommon for me to make joyful "yummy" noises, that my friends affectionately dubbed, "food-gasms." 

Of course, these things change. At some point in my mid 30's my metabolism did a downshift. I gained weight. I got a belly. It happened fast. It happened so fast that I had stretch marks from gaining the weight. I still love food. I have slowed down in my eating. I don't make joyful noises quite so often now.

I realize that I will still be eating some food that I might enjoy, but my relationship to food has to seriously change. Just the other day I posted a picture of my favorite breakfast on Facebook. I can't have that anymore. All the foods that I love are bad for me. I am determined to stop eating them. 

I'm not the kind of person who can do something like this half way. I can't eat right most of the time and then allow myself a treat. I just can't. I'm going to have to change my relationship to food. I can't trick myself by eating healthy things that taste like the things that I like - veggie burgers will just make me want hamburgers. Good tasting healthy foods will just make me want good tasting unhealthy foods. 

I need to turn eating from a joyful experience to a survival experience. Today I had some plain oatmeal (no sugar or salt) and some scrambled egg-whites (no salt). It was bland and filling. That worked. It supplied what I needed, and that's what I need food to do. 

I know myself. The more I enjoy something, the more that I will want to enjoy something. It's why I collected comics. It's why we have 100's of board games. I have an addictive personality and eating is part of that addiction. 

I need to make eating something that I have to do, but don't look forward to. Only then can I change my bad eating habits. And I need to resign myself to the reality that I won't be walking anytime soon. These are the thoughts crowding my mind. They aren't cheerful ones. 

Ratings on DriveThruRPG Make Me Want To Cry

Take a look at the above image. Do you see at the bottom where it says, "As a publisher you cannot review non-publisher resources." That's me. I'm a publisher. Because of that I can't share my thoughts about games that I purchase on DriveThruRPG. I can't tell you how much that breaks my heart. I love this hobby and all I want to do is share that joy with others.

I even took down my publisher page in the hopes that this message might disappear. It hasn't. I could reach out to DriveThru to see if I could get my status changed, but lately I have been working on a new RPG. What if I want to sell Little Colony on DriveThru? So, I haven't pursued it further.

You want to know what's worse? Those ratings above? That average 2.5 out of 5 for 2 ratings? That's the rating listing for BIFF! BAM! KAPOW! It may be worth giving up any hope of ever selling a product on DriveThru just to give BIFF! BAM! KAPOW! a 5 star rating. 

BIFF! BAM! KAPOW! is so good!

A 1 star review? Really? Did this reviewer do their research to learn about the kinds of games that Spectrum Games publishes? Did they even read the product description before purchase? I get that someone probably bought this game expecting one thing while getting another.

But BIFF! BAM! KAPOW! is exactly what it claims to be, and like all of the publications by Spectrum Games the production quality is unequaled. This game should never get a 1 star review. (Gah! Now I'm sick to my stomach. Really. I'm so angry.)

BIFF! BAM! KAPOW! deserves more love.

If you read this, and you have a heart, buy BIFF! BAM! KAPOW! and give it a real review. Yes, I found a few typos. (When you make an item or power "low budget" it costs 1 budget token instead of 2. In at least 2 places in the rules it says "... costs 2 budget tokens instead of 2." Which yeah, it's a mistake and confusing, but I figured it out!) But, 1 Star?! Really??!

The art is beautiful, the layout is stellar, the design is inspired. BIFF! BAM! KAPOW! might be my favorite superhero RPG. This game deserves better than 2.5 stars! What's the matter with people?

DriveThru's Publisher Policy

I'd like to say that I disagree with DriveThru's policy regarding allowing publishers to write reviews. Publishers are also consumers. We are probably some of their biggest consumers. I'd like to think that this community is friendly and honest and that we would only review games fairly (and not review our own games at all.) But, then I see this pathetic 1 star review, and I realize that maybe I am giving our community too much credit.

This all just makes me want to cry.

It also hurts my heart that there are only 2 ratings for this game. Did only 2 people buy it? 

No. 

I bought it, but I can't leave a review. Is every person who buys games on DriveThru also a publisher? 

No. 

So, why only 2 ratings? And why is one of those ratings a 1?! Garrrgh!! 

  

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Creating the Super Friends for BIFF! BAM! KAPOW!

I am in love with BIFF! BAM! KAPOW! This might be the most excited that I have been to play a superhero RPG since the Supercrew!

Super Friends art by Arkan Theo

Character creation is simple. That's one of the things that really appeals to me. But, it doesn't help that actual super powers are an alternative rule. I understand why, but it means jumping around in the rules to figure out what to do. 

Aquaman art by JSenior from Deviantart.

I finally just wrote my own quick short hand version to guide me.

• The four core Attributes are: Action, Thought, Drama and Pluck. Players assign a total of 4 points to these. Values are from 0-2.
• Next are Facets. Players write down 4 skills, items or powers and label them appropriately. Resolution in BIFF! BAM! KAPOW! is narrative, not mechanical. So, there is no master list of powers and it's not needed. (There are plenty of examples.)
• Initial powers and items have a rank of 1. They can be improved in the Enhancement step.

Batman art by JSenior from Deviantart.

• Flaws are part of Facets, but they feel like a different thing. Players have the option of having from 0-2 Flaws. (Flaws grant a bonus in the Enhancement step and are helpful during game play.)
• The last step is Enhancements. You get to choose 3, plus 1 for each Flaw that you took (if you took any.) Enhancements are basically level ups. This gives you a chance to improve and tweak your design to make your perfect hero.

Robin art by JSenior from Deviantart.

Character creation is clean and easy. It's low math, high creativity. The game system focuses on "Intentions." Attribute values speak to Intentions not strengths. There are no bench marks for simulationists in BIFF! BAM! KAPOW! 

Superman art by JSenior from Deviantart.

Intentions aren't measures of physical and mental capability, they are tools for narrative control. It means that Superman can be as powerful as you want and that he can adventure right along side Batman as it was always meant to be.

In fact, to take BIFF! BAM! KAPOW! character creation for a test drive, I created the Super Friends! I used the alternative "powers" based character creation shown above, even for creating Batman and Robin. I am really happy with the results and I can't wait to try them out! 

Wonder Woman art by JSenior from Deviantart.

I designed a form-fillable version of the character sheet. Grab a copy and your own copy of BIF! BAM! KAPOW! and give character creation a try!

PS: I didn't write the "Quick Bios" for the characters. I pulled those directly from the splash pages of bronze age comics (late 70's) in my collection. Those and all characters are copyright DC Comics.

  

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