To add in a little more detail about making the list, I’m saying that these games are best with two players, so two player games still do count. But I’m talking about games that could play up to a high number, but for some reason, time between turns, randomness of the game, I think that they work best with two players and would recommend trying them there first or that they’ll be most enjoyable at that player count.

Let’s see the list…

10 – Sword & Sorcery
This dungeon crawl game I’ve only played at two players, but I can’t really see playing it with more. Now, even at two players we’re controlling more characters, two each, but that hasn’t caused the game to bog down. I feel like, with more players, we’d end up spending more time in discussion for this cooperative game and planning to then have fairly random results on the dice. The game needs to be snappier with how you get through it, and with only two people at the table, even though I might not be taking my turn, I can always be the one rolling for monsters, and if there aren’t monsters, turns go incredibly fast. With more people, there’s just be more downtime for players, even if playing with the same number of characters. Sword & Sorcery, though, is a very fun ameritrash style dungeon crawl game where you’re chucking dice and leveling up to get through a fairly generic fantasy story with a few choices in it.

9 – Star Wars: Imperial Assault
I’ve done with solo and two players, and I prefer two players in this game, for the reason that, using the app, you need to do house keeping, and that house keeping can be a bit of a bear, but, if you are splitting the duties between two people it makes it easier. Plus, the minimum number of characters you can play with is two, so even solo you’re controlling two characters. This is the Star Wars dungeon crawl game taking place as Vader is chasing the rebels from their first base eventually leading to Hoth and beyond. You are not playing the main characters, Vader shows up as a side character whom you can’t beat, but that’s fine, the game is a lot of fun, and it feels a bit like a Rogue One type of game, but, for me, more enjoyable.

8 – Five Tribes
Now, I enjoy Five Tribes at all player counts, two through four, but I think it works best at two for one main reason. When determining play order for each round, it is done by bidding. Normally, each person has one play order marker, but in two players, each player has two. That means that you can set it up where you go twice in a row. Five Tribes is really a point salad type of game where everything you do is going to give you points, with an Mancala mechanism thrown in there where you’re moving meeples and then get to keep the matching colors of meeples to do something. So if you can see two really good moves, playing two players, allows you to bid for them and set up two good turns for yourself. Otherwise, you’ll probably only get one of them, which might mess up strategy.

7 – Skulk Hollow
First of the two player only games, Skulk Hollow is a ton of a fun as one player plays the foxen kingdom and the other an old guardian that has awoken on the lands. Each side has their own goal, the foxen trying to take down the guardian, but the guardian might have other things to consider like killing the foxen leader or maybe killing a certain number of the foxen kingdom, placing out a number of tentacles, or something along those lines, it varies as to which guardian you play. This gives the game a lot of replayability, because not only do you have the different guardians, but different leaders for the foxen kingdom. So playing the two sides gives a different game feel and playing the different leaders or guardians against each other can change things up as well. The card play is very slick in the game, and the whole thing just works well and looks really cool on the table.

6 – Hats
This was one of the first games when I thought of the list. Hats is a game that plays more than two, but definitely one that I think works better at two. At four, it’s just more random, and I’m not sure that I’ve played it at the three player count. In this game you have a hand of cards that you are playing down onto a table at the Madd Hatter’s tea party. Where you play a card gets you the previous card that was there, and you’re trying to set it up for getting the most points. At four players, the scoring is just more random. You can card count so potentially set up a scoring to help you, but with that exception of one scoring, you’ll just need luck on your side. But at two players, there’s more strategy to the play. You can go digging for cards and try and set-up what looks like poor scoring for yourself to only swap it at the end of the game to get even better scoring. It becomes much more of a strategic experience at the two player count and is a more interesting game that way.

5 – Star Wars Rebellion
Technically it can be a four player game, but Star Wars Rebellion is really a two player game where one side plays the Empire and the other the Rebels. At four players, you just split the two sides up and it’s still just two people playing the Empire and then two playing the Rebels. Keep the decision making more focused and Star Wars Rebellion is great. It’s a good cat and mouse game as the Empire tries to hunt down the Rebel’s secret base and the Rebels are trying to do missions and survive long enough to turn the tide against the Empire. You can have Darth Vader face off against Obi-Wan as in the movies, but maybe Darth Vader will run across Chewbacca or Han Solo or Wedge Antilles, you never know. There’s good strategic play, but then also a lot of fun space battles and land battles on planets surfaces that you can partake in as well which are good dice chucking.

4 – The Dresden Files Cooperative Card Game
I’ve played The Dresden Files with, I believe, all of it’s player counts, and I think that I like two players the best. Mainly because it’s a faster back and forth turn taking game instead of waiting for things to get passed around between more people. You do have the interesting thing of playing two characters with their decks shuffled together, which can create some interesting situations, but overall, I feel like it works pretty well. In this game you’re playing through the Dresden Files books, and you’re trying to defeat villains and solve cases. But you have limited resources to do that, so you’re balancing keeping those resources up by discarding cards, but also knowing that you won’t likely draw any or at least many more cards, so what you have in your starting hand you’ll have for the game. The game play is smart, and I like that you’re playing through a book at a time. A very enjoyable game for fans of the series, and an interesting puzzle for those who haven’t read them.

3 – Dice Throne
Dice Throne can technically be played as teams or King of the Hill style where you go after the person who has the most life, but I like it best at two players. There are a couple of reasons for this dice chucking combat game that make it work better at that count. First, there is less downtime. Either it’s my turn and I’m playing cards and rolling dice, or it’s my opponents turn and I’m likely rolling my dice on defense. With higher player counts, it’s going to potentially put you in a situation where you don’t roll anything for a couple of turns. The other thing is that the game is just faster overall. With the higher player counts, again more turns, but to go with that, more health to get through, so you could, theoretically, have someone eliminated and then sit there watching for a bit. But at two players, once you get the other person’s health down to zero, game over and you can reset and play again.

2 – Hanamikoji
Two player only game where you are trying to win the favor of Geisha. It’s a unique theme as you are playing down cards to give them gifts, but what makes it most interesting in the card play in the game. Each player, per round, is given four actions that they can do once in a round, you can play a card secretly or discard two cards secretly, and those a fairly normal sorts of actions. But the other two are very interesting. You can play down three cards face up, your opponent gets to pick one of those gifts and put it on their side to win a Geisha’s favor and you get the other two, and then the last action is that you can put down two sets of two cards in front of you where your opponent again picks which one they want and you get the others. It offers some really brain burning decisions, and often times you need to force your opponent to decide your strategy by the cards you put down when they are choosing from them. Rounds are very fast, and the game is just a lot of fun.

1 – Marvel Champions
Now, I can’t say that I’ve played this at higher player counts than two, but I have played it at one player. From what I’ve heard with four players, the game can be a little bit slow between turns as you’re waiting for everyone else to go. But at one and two players this game is a lot of fun. In two, you can think about strategy more so, and develop interesting combos or strategies that work well together as compared to solo game play. Now, both I enjoy a lot, but teaming Captain America up with Thor taking down the Green Goblin was a blast, or you can do She Hulk and Spider-Man versus Ultron. You have a ton of different options and playing at two players it allows you to do a team up that maybe you wouldn’t normally see in the comics or maybe one that you really love from the comics that you can now play in game. Marvel Champions is just a really good card game that lets you feel like a super hero.

This list, I was worried, was going to be hard, but there are some games that are just two players that I really love and others that I really do think work much better at two players. Maybe later this week or the start of next week I’ll do a six plus player list for when things start to normalize again and we can do board game nights. I know that I have one of the big two player games missing from my list, it’s on my shelf, but I haven’t done 7 Wonders Duel yet. I’ll need to get it to the table, and there are a lot of other games that are enjoyable to very good at two players, but I just prefer them with more.

What are some of your favorite two player games? Are there some games with higher player counts that are just better at two players for you?

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10 – Dead of Winter
The zombies have taken over and you need to find a cure, get enough fuel to move, or one of several more scenarios, but can you trust everyone in your midst? Probably not, and should they fully trust you, probably not. In this game you play as survivors of the zombie apocalypse who are just trying to survive against the horde of zombies in the town, but there might be a traitor in your midst. There’s a sense of adventure in this game as you feel like you’re playing through The Walking Dead or other zombie time story where it is more focused on the survivors and if you can really trust them. Plus, the crossroads cards offer you a lot of tough decisions to make as well, maybe you can save someone and add them to your team, but will there be enough food to feed them? You’ll end up having to make choices like that throughout the game, and often times with no easy answers or right choices for the colony.

9 – Star Wars: Rebellion
A massive around three hours long game, Star Wars: Rebellion pits the rebels against the Empire in a battle for the fate of the galaxy. Taking from the original trilogy, you feel like you’re playing through it but shaping it your own way. Can you crush the rebel fleets and find where there base in hidden? Or will they be able to sow enough descent around the galaxy that the Empire crumbles away. And you get to send major characters out on missions to places, maybe Han Solo will get captured by the Emperor or Darth Vader will lead troops into battle against Admiral Ackbar on Tatooine. You can rewrite the original trilogy in this adventure and you won’t know how the story will end up until you’ve played.

8 – Dresden Files Cooperative Card Game
I was debating about this one on the list, is it really an adventure because it’s fairly abstracted away with trying to solve cases and fight bad guys just by putting tokens on them. But I feel like the puzzly nature of how you have to do that, and the fact it brings me back to the books and series, there is that sense of adventure for me as I get a chance to relive and play through those books myself. And there’s always a struggle to win in this game. Sometimes you can just win without getting into the final confrontation, but that’s extremely rare. Instead, so often you are hoping for a lucky last roll to take out the bad guy, which is thematic to the books, because through sheer stubbornness and sometimes force of will, Harry can prevail, and that’s how it works in the game as well. Less of a grand epic adventure than some, but still a fun one, especially for fans of the series.

7 – The Lost Expedition
Now, this is probably not a game that a lot of people would have thought of when they were thinking of an adventure game. It’s a small game, it’s only cards and very few tokens, and all you’re doing is going on a hike each morning and evening trying to make it to the Lost City of Z. However, there’s a sense of adventure to it as you are all cooperatively trying to play down cards in a way that makes sense without being able to communicate. But then, once the cards are down and your path is ready, you can all discuss as how to best go through it. It always feels like a close game and you have to decide when it’s worth it to sacrifice a guide in order to move ahead or to keep another guide alive. This game isn’t going to give you a big adventure, but it’s a fast adventure in a little package that won’t break the bank.

6 – Arkham Horror: The Card Game
The first of a couple of Fantasy Flights Arkham Chronicles games, this one has a very interesting adventure feel from what I’ve played, which admittedly isn’t a ton of it yet, but you get the sense of exploring, just from the first scenario in the first box, a house that is being twisted and warped around you. Then in the second one, you get a chance to run around the town and look for cultists who might just be hiding in the shadows. And all of this builds, so depending on what you do, scenarios or perks you’ve gotten will change, so it feels like a big unfolding adventure. And I like that it doesn’t come in a massive box, it’s just cards with a few tokens and you can have an epic adventure.

5 – T.I.M.E. Stories
This one is interesting because there’s a smaller level of adventure in the game since each scenario is it’s own mystery or puzzle to solve, but it always feels like something new as you unpack what’s going on. You could be in a mental hospital at the start where a time incursion is about to happen or maybe a town that has been quarantined for some reason or in ancient Egypt. While you might know where your adventure is going to take you, you don’t know how it’s going to unfold or what body you’re going to be put into. I really enjoy this as an escape room type of engine where you have to figure out the puzzle in the box, but it’s not as straight forward as a lot of the Unlock and Exit style games are, because why they might be fairly consistent in what they do, T.I.M.E. Stories is not.

4 – Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon
I need to play more of this adventure, but what I’ve played thus far has been great. There is just so much story happening, and it gives you a different sense of adventure because it adds in such a strong survival element as well. So not only are you going out into the land of Avalon and searching for ways to keep the land from falling into the Wyrdness, you have to figure out when to fight, when to run away, what path you want to go, the fact that there’s a branching story in a game that is so long and so big is pretty amazing. It’s also a really good solo experience. When a game offers you so many choices as to where to go, what to explore there, what you might run into, who you can help and side mysteries that you might want to check out as well, it’s very much an adventure game, and it’s one of the best I’ve come across.

3 – Betrayal At House on the Hill
Now, I know this game isn’t for everyone, but I love it. And for me it’s a great adventure game because I get to see what horror film I’m in. Am I going to be the final one standing in the end or the person who betrays everyone else. Will I have to play chess with death or maybe it’ll be the Rocky Horror Picture Show. I never know. Plus, I get to explore the house and have it unfold before me, and I never know in what room the haunt might happen, so I can basically always play a new scenario. I have Betrayal Legacy waiting for me at some point in time coming up here when we can start to get together in groups again, because I want to have the adventure of playing through a house year after year and watch the house change and unfold a new adventure. Now, I know that this game isn’t for some because it’s not always the most balanced, but I like that aspect as it works well in a horror setting because some horror movie monsters are just better than the college students.

2 – Mansions of Madness 2nd Edition
Adventure games don’t have to be on a super grand globe trotting scale, they can be in a small town or even in a mansion that is full of madness. But you’re unfolding a story and a mystery that gives me a sense of adventure because playing a scenario once, I don’t know what is going to happen and where cultists might show up or what my main goal is even sometimes. As the game unfolds that and explains it to you and as you unravel the mysteries, it just makes a great gaming adventure experience. And even if you play a scenario once, because of the app, you can go back and play it again and things might end the same, but the house will be set-up differently and there will be still be some adventure to the game. Mansions of Madness just really gives you that immersive experience of exploring and solving a puzzle/mystery unlike so many other games.

1 – Gloomhaven
I believe that this was left off someone’s list on the Dice Tower top 10, because it didn’t have enough exploring, though, I feel like Forgotten Circles expansion definitely has more of that feel. But I would argue that there is a sense of exploring through the story as you complete the various dungeons and you unlock more story and more places to go. Plus, even though you’re a mercenary team who keeps retiring, you still feel the progression of story and adventure that I’m looking for and love in a game. It has that RPG-lite feel to it with leveling up your characters and getting better at what you can do, so the whole thing feels like you’re taking those characters on epic adventures. While the mechanics for combat can be a bit crunchy as you figure out what tops and bottoms of cards to use and what order to play them in, the whole thing just works really well for me.

Now, I could have gone with more as well, Sword & Sorcery just missed the list. The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle Earth or Lord of the Rings board game would work as well. Even something like Pandemic Legacy I considered for the list, but that one doesn’t give me as much sense of adventure. And I have more adventure games waiting for me to play, Apocrypha, Folklore: The Affliction, Aeon’s End Legacy and more are waiting for me to give into, plus more coming in the mail at some point in time like Oathsworn, Dice Throne Adventure (it says it in it’s name) or Frosthaven next year. So clearly I love these big epic sort of games.

How about you, what are some of your favorite adventure games? Are there any on the list that I should checkout?

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9 – Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith
This part of the list is hard, I know that for some people, this is the best of the prequel trilogy, but for me, it just feels like such a waste. We get a story that is told where characters who have to die off die off, where characters who have to become bad, they become bad. It doesn’t tell me anything interesting, it’s just what I expect it to be, and then there’s the whole Padme dying off because she just can’t possibly go on knowing that Anakin is becoming evil, this movie is just a waste of time and space in my opinion. It doesn’t have amazing action, it doesn’t have compelling duels, it just kind of falls flat at the end of telling a story that wasn’t needed.

8 – Star Wars: The Last Jedi
This is hard to put this low, because there are some parts that I really do think are interesting. About 65-75% of the stuff that we get with Luke, Rey and Kylo is pretty interesting and works well. I think that the moment where Luke projects himself and taunts Kylo into fighting him is just brilliantly done, and the development of the relationship between Rey and Kylo works well. However, then there is the rest of the story focused around Finn, Poe, and Rose, and that’s just hot garbage. It takes characters who were developing in an interesting direction, makes them stupid, changes up the characters completely, and then sends them on a stupid mission that makes no sense. Such a waste of time and space and such a waste of Snoke as well.

7 – Star Wars: Attack of the Clones
This is probably considered by most people to be the worst, but I think it tells more of an interesting story, when we’re not getting Hayden Christenson trying to act romantically. We get Clones, we get Geonsians and the starting constructions of the Death Star. Count Dooku is out there. It just tells a more of an interesting story in a space where there is still room to tell a story. We’re not in the endgame of Anakin becoming Darth Vader and while we still have to have some characters end surviving of dying, it doesn’t feel like it’s as forced. Now, the romance in this is just awful and creepy and should be stricken from the records, but we get to see a group of Jedi in action and see what they can do that we really don’t get to see in any other film. These bottom three were hard to put in order, as I consider all of them pretty bad, this just best the best or at least the least disappointing.

6 – Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker
What, this movie is garbage, how could I like it? No, you’re wrong, this movie is great, it had everything Star Wars in it, it must be the best. That’s what I feel like I hear about this movie, but I wrote a longer review of it, so I’ll only recap it here. I feel like it brings back, Finn and Poe to characters that we got in The Force Awakens, which I prefer to what they were in The Last Jedi. Plus, we got more awesome force stuff with Rey and Kylo and a good conclusion to that story with a redemption arc that feels more fully developed. Plus, it wrapped up the whole saga nicely, and I think, that’s what the movie set out to do, finish up the stories of Luke, Leia, and Han, as well as the new characters, but to bring this part of the world of Star Wars to a close. I think that it succeeds at that, and for that reason, I like it quite well, yes, it is rushed, especially early, but it tells a story that works and brings things to a fitting end.

5 – Star Wars: The Phantom Menace
What, you might say, this movie this high, but Anakin is a whiny little boy and Jar Jar Binks. Yes, Jar Jar is in there for no good reason except to be dumb comedy. But I do enjoy this movie. I think that it blends the balance of the senate with a plot that makes some sense and has enough action that the movie doesn’t bog down. It also isn’t a movie about Anakin becoming Darth Vader, like the previous two, so it tells a more interesting story because of that, when it’s just progressing us to where we know it’s going to go, it’s a bit more dull. Plus, it tells a complete story. If they hadn’t made Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, this movie still stands alone telling a complete story.

4 – Star Wars: The Force Awakens
JJ Abrams might not be everyone’s favorite Star Wars director, but I really enjoyed this film. I thought that the characters were created in such a way that they had good depth, and interesting plot lines that could be run with. In particular I liked Finn, this person with no real identity because he was supposed to be a mindless soldier like a Clone Trooper before, but then finding out that he was more and thinking more about that. Also, Kylo was an enjoyable villain, I liked that they didn’t just make another Darth Vader, but made someone who wanted to be Darth Vader but didn’t understand what that truly meant and couldn’t ever live up to what he thought it was for himself.

3 – Star Wars: Return of the Jedi
Ewoks are the best, aren’t they? I think this movie has one of the better space battles and one of the better lightsaber battles, and the whole bit with Luke and the Emperor trying to tempt look to turn to the dark side is just well done. But then there are Ewoks and the battle on the moon of Endor. It just drops the level down to more of a kids level than either of the other two original trilogy films. With that said, I do think it does a solid job of taking the original trilogy to a satisfying conclusion and more satisfying than any of the other trilogies in the Skywalker Saga.

2 – Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back
More original trilogy love, but Empire Strikes Back just works as a film. We get Yoda in the film, and there’s just a nice level of action, betrayal, double crossing and more that goes on. I know for a lot of people, this is their favorite, but for me, there’s one that beats it out. Empire Strikes Back doesn’t have an ending, which drops it a little bit, yes, that’s because there’s a film after it, and yes, it has a bit of an ending to it, but I want an ending to my films, which is why this is a bit lower. I think that this is also one of the most serious ones in terms of the story that it tells, but that is a good thing, because it tells it well.

1 – Star Wars: A New Hope
Yes, this is my favorite, I think that there’s just something about the almost stand alone nature and the way that we’re introduced to characters that works really well. We get a good arc for Han as a character where he kind of becomes a better guy, but overall isn’t a great guy. It just works for me, I also like that it’s a bit more of a lighter space story in how everything is done, and that’s probably because it’s more stand alone in the nature of the story. So, for me, there’s just something about the original that makes it the best, maybe because it is the first, and you don’t know what you’re getting into if you watch it first. It just kicks off such a big world that is interesting to explore.

What is your order? I’m not going to ask why I’m wrong, it’s like my opinion, man. But what is your order and what draws you to some of the movies more than others?

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So, without any spoilers, the Rise of Skywalker is the 9th Star Wars film. George Lucas had originally planned on doing nine films in the 1980’s and had it plotted out, but due to the stress of making the original trilogy and the following that he had, he held off for a long time, until he made The Phantom Menace and then Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, which were not that well received. He then later sold the rights to Star Wars to Disney who with JJ Abram at the helm for the first film, The Force Awakens, started a new trilogy.

Now that we have a proper spoiler buffer, let’s talk about Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker. This, like I said, is the ninth film in the Skywalker Saga, and the end of the Skywalker Saga (theoretically). After The Last Jedi, which was half of a good film and some other characters being taken in a direction that they weren’t set-up for in The Force Awakens, JJ Abrams came back in to wrap up the story that he had laid out for Rian Johnson, which had then been promptly thrown away. Abrams then had to try and cut down and cram what he had laid out previously into a single film. That might sound like a bad thing, but I think that it worked for this film.

In the Rise of Skywalker, we start out by getting a pretty heavy information dump about how the Emperor has been broadcasting his return from somewhere deep in space. Kylo Ren, with the First Order, has been trying to track down this signal, but they need an old Sith map to be able to do so. Finding one, he goes to the Emperor. In the mean time, Finn, Poe, and Chewbacca chasing down leads to the First Orders plans and what is happening with their search for the Emperor and plans for domination. Rey is back with the resistance training to become a Jedi. She leaves her training when they get wind that Kylo has found the Emperor, and they go searching for a map of their own. This leads them into a handful of adventures where they run across someone who Poe used to run with and run spice with and they end up wiping out C3PO’s memory in order to translate where the map is hidden. Rey, during this time, becomes more and more obsessed with finding and defeating the Emperor. This leads to her going to a moon of Endor where they come across more Stormtroopers who have rebelled against the First Order. Meanwhile, Kylo is able to track down Rey and they fight on the destroyed Death Star with Kylo getting the upper hand on Rey, but then Leia, feeling the anger and disturbance from her son, used the last of her energy to stop Kylo. In a fit of rage, Rey strikes Kylo who has lowered all defenses and dropped his lightsaber, realizing, though that her anger has taken over, she uses the force to heal him. She runs away, in Kylo’s ship, to the planet where Luke had hid away, and there, meeting the force ghost of Luke, he convinces her that she needs to go and confront her grandfather, Palpatine. The rest of the resistance tracks her flying through a gravitational field, which is why the map was needed and goes to aid her. However, things look bleak until Lando Calrissian manages to gather up the support of people who are willing to stand up to the First Order and they join the fight. During this time, Kylo (Ben), sees a vision of Han Solo who talks to him and gets him to give up his lightsaber, returning back to being Ben Solo. He flies to the Emperor and joins Rey as they stand against the Emperor’s plan to return. The Emperor again gets the upper hand, but what Rey wasn’t able to do in her training earlier in the film, connect with the spirit of the Jedi, she was able to do in that moment and with the power of them behind her, she is able to get back up and defeat the Emperor. There is much celebrating, and Rey goes and leaves both Luke and Leia’s lightsabers back at the moisture farm (what’s left of it) where Luke grew up.

There’s just a little bit of story there, and I normally wouldn’t write out the whole thing, but this is a spoiler episode and I wanted to demonstrate how much was packed into this movie. Now, do I think that it probably would have been better split into two movies and we just lose The Last Jedi? Probably, but does that make Rise of Skywalker a bad movie? I don’t think so. I really enjoyed it in the theater and I thought that it did a good job of wrapping up the Skywalker Saga. Before going to see the movie, my hope was that it was going to wrap up the Skywalker Saga and then we wouldn’t have any more movies with Rey, Finn, Poe or Kylo. And I feel like it did that, now if Disney decides it was popular enough with those characters, they might bring them back again, but I personally don’t want it. With have a massive world, and with the great work that the Mandalorian has been doing, there is clearly room for stories that aren’t focused only around the Empire and the Skywalkers.

For me, one of the things that this film does impressively is wrap up the storylines for the original trilogy characters. We get more of a send off for Han Solo and he gets to deliver a famous line in a meaningful way. We get another send off for Luke. And we get, kind of, a send off for Leia. I feel like hers was the most lacking, which makes sense with Carrie Fishers passing. Her passing in the film is really the start of a turning point for both Kylo and Rey, and then Han and Luke, respectively, finish bringing both of the characters back around.

What might bother some people about this film, and I hinted at it in the paragraph above, with Han delivering a famous line, but there is a feeling to this film that it’s kind of a Star Wars greatest hits. We get lines, we get callbacks, Chewie finally gets his medal. This will definitely be an issue for some people who don’t know what they want, probably just to watch the original trilogy and repeat, but for me, it was what I was looking for when wrapping up the Skywalker Saga. It gave the main characters a send off that they needed and it kind of showed that the story has always been about them, even with the new cast of characters, it was still about Luke, Leia, Han, and the Emperor. For some people, that’s not going to be enjoyable, but it wrapped up the saga.

I think, it’s also fair, as this wrapped up the last trilogy in the saga, to look at this as part of the whole trilogy. I think that you’d be able to watch The Force Awakens and The Rise of Skywalker without watching The Last Jedi and have a pretty complete film. And if someone were to create a cut of The Last Jedi that dropped out the whole gambling planet and Finn and Poe becoming whiny for no reason, you could then add back in the Luke, Rey, and Kylo story. But, I feel like Rise of Skywalker did a good job of recapping some of that information in a meaningful way. Now, yes, you would miss a little bit by skipping The Last Jedi, but less than you’d think. So as a trilogy, that’s definitely a downside for it. I don’t think that Rian Johnson set out to change it so much, but it felt like he didn’t have a full understanding of the characters. I hope that he gets a Star Wars film with his own characters, because I felt like it was interesting in concept, but overall it wasn’t set-up like it should be to continue to tell a cohesive story. But this is a considerably better trilogy than the Phantom Menace trilogy.

Overall, this was a really fun film. I think that it wrapped up stories really well, I think it was decently well acted, and I feel like the saga was completed. Now, don’t ever show me any of these characters as main characters on the big screen again, maybe in the background 10 years down the line would be fine, but even that’s questionable. Or maybe a plaque with Rey’s face on it. I’m ready for more new Star Wars, but I’m also glad to see this finish the way that it did. I hope that Disney and Kathleen Kennedy can get a better, more clear, direction for Star Wars and really be able to build off some of what Marvel has done for Disney but also to then create a more developed universe. I will also wrap this up by saying that I’m not someone who knows the extended universe stuff, but I know there were a lot of references to the stuff that I only vaguely knew about.

So, what were your thoughts on Rise of Skywalker. But, as much as that, stepping back and looking at this as the Skywalker Saga, what are your thoughts on the nine movies put together as a whole?

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This is the far flung future after humanity has blown itself up and screwed up the world. There are mobile houses that people travel around in where they can mine, and make a living. There are also bigger predator cities that chew up these smaller buildings for fuel. We meet our main character, Hester Shaw as the small vehicles that is getting chased down by a predator city. On the city we have Tom who is a researcher who has noticed that things on the city are going missing, things that could be used for a weapon.

In some way the story just sounds too predictable YA Dystopia. And I think that is some of the issue. The story leans into tropes, but leans into them too much, you want the familiar, but you also don’t want it to feel like it hits upon every trope. The movie packs in too many tropes this way and also because it tries to hit on so many things, you end up with a very disjointed story. You get a predictable bad guy with an anticlimactic end. We get a few other deaths that are supposed to feel like they mean something to the audience, but we’re not connected with the characters. It feels rushed, but also feels like it doesn’t have the action that it should. And when it does have action sequences, they aren’t anything all that interesting, and the main character who is fighting is just a poorly done character.

The characters are also an issue in this movie. Hester has an interesting backstory, and I think that Hera Hilmar does a solid job, but she isn’t given much to work with. We really don’t get to see her shine as a character either, and there is some with her look if you think about it doesn’t make a ton of sense. With Tom, played by Robert Sheehan, he’s a pretty flat character, where he was great as Klaus in Umbrella Academy and playing an eccentric character, here he is a pretty thin character. Then you have Anna Fang. Talk about a great looking character but a very disappointing character. Kristen put it this way, she’s kind of supposed to be a Han Solo type character, but they don’t give her great lines to work with, and she does less than anything with them. She looks cool, maybe a little bit out of place, but that could be set-up with some better character development and story development, but that wasn’t there, and Jihae does nothing with it.

Now, not all the characters are bad. Hugo Weaving as the villain is amazing. His motivations aren’t fully developed, nor is his character, but he does a very good job with what he’s given. The real shame with his character is it’s death. It’s a cheap and not impactful death. I think you could argue that the point of it is to keep blood off of the main characters hands, but we already know that really isn’t something she’s worried about. So it feels weak and more like they hoped they could do another movie, but didn’t think that they’d be able to get Hugo Weaving again. Leila George has a smaller role in the film, but her part was interesting and she portrayed it well. I wish that we’d see more of her Katherine Valentine and Ronan Raftery who plays Bevis Pod with her. They were interesting characters that have the distinction of being the secondary characters who are more interesting than the main characters, which is too common is YA.

I’ve bashed this movie pretty hard. I think even with the characters who have some good development or are better acted, they aren’t given what they should have to work with in this film. I do want to knock one more thing, and that’s the weapon that is used in the movie. There are certain angles where that thing feels like a horrible mid 90’s green screen effect, not nearly as cool and polished as the rest of the world. That’s all I’m going to say about it, because I do want to jump into the visuals of the rest of the world which are amazing. The different vehicles all make sense as something that would be in the world. And while the Shanara Chronicles also do the future earth after something has happened, I think that the world of Mortal Engines is a whole lot cooler. The flying ships, the wall, and the general aesthetic of the world are cool, but the predator city is amazing, and the smaller vehicles are all slightly unique and you can see how they fit into the world. There’s are a level of dinginess in the world as well that works really well, and while you do get some Hunger Games vibes in the movie, they don’t lean into it too much.

There’s so much to explore visually and storywise in this world if someone were to do a good job of creating something cool, that it’s a shame this is the movie we got. And the movie did poorly in theaters, so we’re not going to get another one. Maybe fifteen years from now if the books have done well for Mortal Engines, we’ll get another crack at a move which will do better. There’s so much potential of the world that I want to see more of it. I don’t care that it seems to borrow from Shanara Chronicles, Hunger Games, Gurren Lagann, and Howl’s Moving Castle, and a lot more. There’s a chance for it to be unique, and I’d even read the books after having seen the movie in hopes that they are better and that I’ll get the story that I really want.

Overall Grade: C-
Critical Grade: B+ (Visuals), D (Story)
Fan Grade: C

Have you seen Mortal Engines, if so, what are your thoughts on it? Is it a movie you want to see if you haven’t seen it?

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The criminal background is one that in a game where you want to be the heroes, needs to be worked with carefully. There’s a thin line between being a hero and being a villain. In the Curse of Strahd game that I’m running, they were in a shop, the rogue character (don’t even think with criminal background) steals something, gets caught because they rolled a bad stealth check. Happened again when the rogue tried to flirt their way into getting a free drink from the married bartender who’s wife then promptly kicked that character out again.

When thinking about playing someone whose background is criminal, think about how you can play into the trope in some ways, but also it might be more interesting to play against type. In the case of the rogue in Curse of Strahd, hopefully she’ll start playing against type so that her character then realizes that they kind of suck as a criminal and reform their ways. Think about a criminal as someone who has come from a past of crime and is now an adventurer. What changed for them, are they still indebted to anyone, are they still an active criminal? There are a lot of ways that you can go beyond, I just like the looks of shiny things so I take them.

Now, I’ve just given the example of the thief criminal, but that might not be your thing. Maybe you don’t ever steal anything, but you’ve been a smuggler for a little while and you get caught up having to rescue a princess from a man in a black suit who then turns out to be her father. I might have heard that one from somewhere else. You can also a be a blackmailer or an enforcer for the local thieves guild. These probably set-up more interesting stories a lot of the time than the standard burglar who steals rings off of rich women in town because the rings are shiny.

I love nature and I knew that when I grew up, I wanted to protect nature. However, that wasn’t making a lot of money for me. People don’t pay you money when you save the rabbit caught in a snare from certain death, and they think that you’re driving off the goblins in the woods so that they are safe (still won’t pay you), not so that there are fewer creatures trying to kill the deer. One day, there was a band of brigands who came into the woods. They injured an owlbear and placed it into a cage. I could see it was gravely wounded and I went to release it and help it. I’m not that sneaky, however, and they caught me, but not until I had bandaged up the owlbears wound.  They kept  me around to keep the owlbear alive for the collector whom they had captured it for. They saw the work I had done and offered me a choice, keep helping them smuggle animals and keep them alive or they’d kill me. I knew that they wouldn’t stop smuggling animals if I was dead, so I agreed to help. It wasn’t until they got in over their head fighting a roc that I was able to make my escape, and that was a decade later. Now I’m going to get revenge on that collector and release his collection back into the wild where they belong, but I need some help doing that.

Class: Druid
Alignment: Neutral Good

It’s a silly life, but it pays way better than you’d think. That’s what I told my friends when they wondered how I lived so well, while I was a hairdresser. I have the gift of gab, and the court ladies love to have their friends over and talk, and I talk with them, but mainly I listen and I remember. I’m just the hairdresser, why would they be worried about little old me. You wouldn’t believe the gossip and rumors and scandals that you hear about as a hairdresser, but  I’ve found that it’s good to believe and remember them. When you know something really juicy, you can get a lot of money. The wife whose husbands position will be ruined if the king found out that he was fixing horse races, including the one at the royal tournament. They won good money from that, and I got good money from them. They tell you to quit when you’re ahead, but this seemed like the perfect con. An anonymous source threatened to ruin them, they paid that anonymous source money, and I kept cutting their hair. Then, whoops, my gift of gab got me in trouble with a duchess, accidentally spilled a detail that she really didn’t need to know. Now, it’s off with my head, if they can catch me.

Class: Bard
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral/Evil
This maybe should be an alignment that’s chaotic evil. It’s a little bit Loki like in just being someone who is out for a good time and doesn’t really care about others. However, if you run this as the characters only scam/criminal activity and they are doing it because it fell into their laps, it could be chaotic neutral.

I’m the wheel man. When there’s something shady going down in town and they need a fast and effective getaway, they call me. My rules are simple, no kidnappings, no killing, no stealing from those in need. If you meet those requirements, I’ll deal with you. I guarantee that you will get away, if not, it’s going to be my head on the block too. One night, I’m doing my job, waiting along a side hill, just out of sight from the mayors house. I hear some screaming up at the house, guess that someone caught them and they would be booking it back to me. Sure enough, five minutes later, the two toughs who hired me came crashing through the woods, though, I knew this was different than normal. In my torch light, I could see that one had their sword drawn, and there was blood on it and on them. I didn’t bother waiting for them, that’s my rule, no killing. I road down the one guy who was injured and shouted a warning what I would do to the other if he told on me. Turns out, he was more scared of his boss than he was of me, if I’d known who his boss had been from the start, I wouldn’t have taken the job. I heard within hours, he squealed to the cops and not only that, but a crime boss from the big city was coming out to our little town. I booked it and now I’m on the run. I hope with my mask that I’ll have remained an unknown and harder to stop, especially traveling with these goody two shoes

Class: Fighter (they commonly get access to steeds that would make them a solid option)
Alignment: Lawful Evil
I’ve said that I try and avoid the evil alignments because if you’re running a campaign with a bunch of heroes and one person is evil, it can make it tough. However, I think this offers an interesting role playing option for someone who is p laying this background. This character is clearly evil and clearly has well defined rules, if you’re up for it as a player, make this your characters redemption story. Slowly change them from evil into a lawful neutral so that instead of just being worried about their own skin, that now they are worried about more and have put their past behind them. It could offer some really awesome role playing moments if you get into it.

As a kid, my parents and everyone in my town was afraid of me. That was fine with me, I liked being on my own. I was playing in the woods one day by myself, creeping along following some of the hunters who were in the woods when I realized I’d picked up my own tail. There were some bad men following the hunters and I decided to get the drop on them. It was easier than I thought to kill a man, but that made people in town even more afraid of me. They sent me off to the temples, hoping that one of them would be able to fix me. Then I found the temple of the Raven Queen. Her priestesses told me of how there were those who had lived past their time and who needed to die. They were bad people who had made unholy deals to stay alive, and they needed someone on their payroll to take out these men. I became their hired killer and I was good at it, until I ran across the one who they only called the ancient one. None of their other hired killers had managed to get the ancient one, and I thought I could do it. I quickly realized that I couldn’t and I ran away, now I’m trying to find those who can help me take care of the ancient one before I return to the temple of the Raven Queen.

Class: Paladin
Alignment: Lawful Neutral
Just a little bit of information, the Raven Queen is the Goddess of death, and sees death as a natural thing. She really frowns upon it when those who should be dead aren’t dead because of some nefarious means in this example, and because of that, she’d be sending out someone who isn’t evil to do this work.

Have you played someone with a criminal background before? What are some interesting twists on the criminal background to make a more fully developed character than someone who is just greedy and wants to steal shiny things?

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Peder and I first learned about the Star Wars RPGs through Campaign, a podcast run by One Shot. Campaign is just one of the many great podcasts One Shot runs, but it’s the one I’m most familiar with, and was a great (and hilarious) way to get introduced to the Star Wars RPGs. Through listening to Campaign, I learned a bit about how the game is played — and a LOT about how absurd and fun it can be when your RPG story regularly goes off the rails…but I digress.

There are currently three different modules of the Star Wars RPG — Edge of the Empire, Age of Rebellion, and Force and Destiny. But even though the one Peder and I were most familiar with prior to playing AoR is the Edge of the Empire module, since that’s the one the Campaign group used, this knowledge still served us well. As I mentioned, gameplay is very similar for all three modules; there are just some different options and basic storylines/timelines within each.

AoR is, to my understanding, meant to be set at about the time that the Rebel Alliance was at its peak (so, close to when Luke, Leia, and Han were entering the picture — or at least, that’s how I choose to imagine it). In our session, we and the other players played as the motley crew of a Corellian YT-1300f freighter — the same type of ship as the Millenium Falcon. Together, we had to work together to stop the evil Director Lucas from releasing edited versions of a certain trilogy of beloved films to suit his “great vision.” We had to destroy the master copies of the edited (read: degraded) films before they were released across the galaxy — and before the original versions were destroyed forever! Much quoting and some George Lucas impressions (even one from me…) ensued.

This storyline was a really fun one, and struck the perfect balance between casual fun and high-stakes action that you want for a one shot session. Some of us played as human characters, and some as aliens (I was a young human woman, Peder was a Bothan); this let us get a feel for the spectrum of different characters you can play within the Star Wars RPG universe. And even in that short time, we were able to pack in a fair amount of character development. I kept on rolling horribly throughout the game, so I used that to style my character as absurdly clumsy and absentminded. And during our first combat encounter, Peder had his character use his knife — he then took this moment and ran with it to make his character super sneaky, sly, and obsessed with stabbing people, and used that element to hilarious effect several times.

Though the Star Wars RPGs have character sheets and skill mechanics that are similar in some ways to what you’d see in a few other RPGs, what’s really interesting and unique about these games is the dice system. This is because these RPGs use their own special set of dice — instead of using the usual many-sided numbered dice like in most other RPGs, the Star Wars games have different colored dice printed with symbols, which correspond to different aspects of the game. There are green dice, which determine how successful a given action is, yellow dice, which determine how successfully a skill is used, purple dice, which influence an action’s difficulty, and red dice, which are added in for especially difficult actions. There are also blue dice, or boost dice, that can be used to make a skill more effective, and black dice that add in extra threats. The white die you see in the image is a Force die; however, we didn’t use this much, and it’s one that never really seems to get used often, so for our purposes, I won’t go into it for now.

There are a couple of elements involved in how the type and number of dice to be rolled is determined. Beside each skill on the character sheet, there are symbols showing which dice should be rolled when using that skill. In addition to this, the GM will let the character know how many dice to roll for the difficulty level when the character performs an action.

For a quick example–let’s say I’m dressed up in a stormtrooper uniform, trying to bluff my way past a superior officer. I’d likely use my deception skill to do this. We’ll say I’m really good at BS’ing, and that there are three green symbols and a yellow beside my Deception skill. The GM decides this is a reasonably difficult maneuver, so he’ll tell me to add in two purple dice. So I’ll roll a total of six dice (getting to roll huge handfuls of dice is another great feature of this game, incidentally) to get my result. Successes (on the green and yellow die) and failures (on the purple and red die) cancel each other out, as do advantages and threats. So we’ll say that, all told, I’ve rolled well and gotten two successes, one advantage, and one threat. I would then need to describe just how I succeeded, what my advantage was (maybe I’m so good at bluffing that I strike up a friendship with the officer), and what the threat turned out to be (maybe I don’t know the answer to a key question the officer asks and I have to make up something on the fly).

If it sounds complicated, well…it is, a bit. And this isn’t even touching on some of the other elements of the game (which I’ll avoid going into for now for the sake of keeping this simple as I can). Getting used to the way the dice interact with each other can take a little time to figure out, and I was glad that I already knew at least a little about the dice mechanic from listening to Campaign. However, once you get going, it starts to feel pretty natural, and the GM can likely help out if there’s a dice roll with a particularly confusing result.

In any case, I really like this mechanic overall. Due to the way the advantages and threats affect the successes and failures, players have to be more creative and detailed when they explain what’s happening, and this adds a lot of flavor and depth to the story overall, in a way that feels more baked-in than with other systems. As I tend to favor the narrative side of RPG play over the combat element, this is my favorite thing about the Star Wars games, and getting to experience it firsthand was as fun as I imagined. Beyond the compelling story element, we had a great GM and a player group that gelled well, making for a truly enjoyable session as first-time AoR players!

So, have you played AoR or any of the other Star Wars RPGs? How do you feel about the unique mechanics of this game? If you haven’t played it, is it on your list of systems to try?

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Disney and Lucasfilm are inching closer to finding their young Han Solo for the upcoming untitled “Star Wars” spinoff.

Sources tell Variety that after seeing thousands of actors, execs have cut the list down to about a dozen actors with Miles Teller, Ansel Elgort, Dave Franco,Jack Reynor, Scott Eastwood, Logan Lerman, “Brooklyn” star Emory Cohen and “Everybody Wants Some” actor Blake Jenner among the names making the cut.

http://www.imdb.com/news/ni59369632/?ref=tsm_1_fb_s_IMDb_Marketing&linkId=20271614

Who do you think would be the best person to play a young Han Solo?

Disney and Lucasfilm are inching closer to finding their young Han Solo for the upcoming untitled “Star Wars” spinoff.

Sources tell Variety that after seeing thousands of actors, execs have cut the list down to about a dozen actors with Miles Teller, Ansel Elgort, Dave Franco,Jack Reynor, Scott Eastwood, Logan Lerman, “Brooklyn” star Emory Cohen and “Everybody Wants Some” actor Blake Jenner among the names making the cut.

http://www.imdb.com/news/ni59369632/?ref=tsm_1_fb_s_IMDb_Marketing&linkId=20271614

Who do you think would be the best person to play a young Han Solo?

Mostly, I’m just admiring them, but the more I browse, the more I’m feeling the desire to nerdify our overall decorating scheme a bit. Thankfully, there are tons of possibilities!

There’s the ever-popular DIY:

The awesome fandom stuff:

And the downright silly:

As you can see, the options for creating A Very Nerdy Christmas are many and wondrous. So go forth and spread the nerdy holiday cheer!

And remember, if anyone tells you to tone it down, just take a page from our good friend Wilf’s book:

And now, please excuse me while I go make myself some Game of Thrones paper snowflakes and hang them haphazardly around the house. Huzzah!

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