2015-Dec-29, Tuesday

dorchadas: (Great Old Ones)
I didn't post about the last couple of sessions and this is a week late, but last session of [livejournal.com profile] mutantur's Horror on the Orient Express game is the first totally unfamiliar part for me. The new version includes several playable flashbacks triggered by reading various texts, and at one point before the group left London on their way to France, Professor Durand (my PC) found a journal kept by Professor Julius Smith about a trip he had taken about thirty years prior, also on the Orient Express. So prior to last session, [livejournal.com profile] mutantur passed out new characters and told us we'd be playing through the flashback ourselves.

I don't remember everyone's name, but we had a Turkish professor (the uncle of the Turkish bolshevik in the original timeline HotOE game), a young adventuress, an elderly professor, a young ruffian who may or may not be the illegitimate son of the aforementioned professor, and me, Captain Roderick Barrington, who served in Afghanistan and saw some strange things there. Summoned by Professor Smith, we went to a filthy Whitechapel tenement, fought a horrible fezmonster, did a bunch of research into the "Blood Red Fez," developed some racist paranoia about Turkish people, boarded the Orient Express, and became completely convinced that one "Hieronymus Menkaph" is the villain that we'll need to deal with while on the train. I mean, look at that name. Also, he dressed like a vaudeville stage magician while in the Orient Express dining car, which is a clear sign of moral pulchritude.

Additional thoughts in bullet point form:
  • I'm not really comfortable with the way that Horror on the Orient Express encourages you associate fezzes with villainy and the worship of hideous prehuman gods. I know that [REDACTED] is based in Constantinople and is primarily a Turkish organization, but it slots a bit too nearly into the sinister foreigner archetype. Which is a historically accurate mindset for our characters, but...
  • Does Professor Smith ever do anything in a calm, relaxed fashion? Based on our interaction with him in two time periods, I don't think so. I can just imagine him inviting someone to brunch:
    TEA AT THE CLUB STOP MEET AT EIGHT SHARP STOP FOR G-D'S SAKE COME QUICKLY
    And then after pleasantries he talks about the latest world-shattering threat he's dealing with. Maybe he's the real protagonist here and we're all the sidekicks?
  • I'm having a bit of a hard time getting into my characters. I think it's mostly because I run games so often and I'm not used to playing, though I suspect it'll be easier with Professor Durand as time goes on. It's always a bit difficult when you first start a character as your conception of them mixes with the dynamics of the table.
  • The fezmonster has a tall head and a long, flapping tongue, which reminds me a lot of something else. Not sayin', just sayin'.
Looking forward to more this Sunday!
dorchadas: (Do you speak Elvish)
Today, [personal profile] schoolpsychnerd, [livejournal.com profile] drydem, and [tumblr.com profile] damaskrosechicago sat down and watched the Tolkien Editor recut of the Hobbit movies into a single movie. I hadn't seen any of the Hobbit movies before now. I don't usually see movies for a variety of reasons, and while this has been on my computer for a while I haven't previously made the time to watch it, because it's four and a half hours long. But I have two weeks off over New Year's, so why not?

And it was good! A lot of the complaints I've heard about the Hobbit movies--that the action scenes go on for too long, that there are too many extraneous plot threads, that there are too many stupid plot threads--didn't really apply to this version. Though even here, I felt that some of the action scenes went on a little too long. I probably would have cut the last battle out almost entirely. Just fade to black when Bilbo gets knocked out and start again when he wakes up. You know, like the book. And I'd have cut out the reappearance of the goblin king and most of the escape from the mines, as well as the stone giants fighting each other. But those are minor quibbles, and probably just because I have a slight headache from watching four and a half hours of movie. It's a way better length than the nine hours the uncut version runs.

One thing [livejournal.com profile] drydem noticed is that the groups here are basically Warhammer factions in a classic case of the children influencing the parents. The dwarves fight well in groups, have Scottish accents for no adequately-explained reason (if we're going from the source material, they should have Eastern European accents), are incredibly stubborn, and bear grudges forever, though Tolkien did write, "No friend ever did a Dwarf a favor, and no enemy a wrong, without being repaid in full," so. The elves are condescending assholes to everyone, are inhumanly skilled ninjas who can shoot an orc in the eye from thirty paces away while backflipping between arm-thin tree branches (thankfully cut in this version), are always pretty and never get dirty, and are Better Than You. Humans are dirty, corruptable, greedy, and good with improvised weapons, but have individual members who can show striking courage and strength of spirit. And orcs wear skulls on their groins.

It's hard for me to offer too much criticism because I haven't seen the original, but I thought this was a good movie on its own merits. There were some minor bits of continuity that only make sense in the context of the original--for example, Kili's wound just gets healed because Tauriel has one line and a couple brief shots in the boat at Laketown, and Smaug burst out of Erebor with a mysterious coat of gold because the gold-surfing is cut--but it's much better than having to sit through the original scenes, which I thought were silly even in the brief shots I've seen of them on YouTube.

So yeah, I recommend it!