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Audacity can definitely be a good trait for a hero to have. Chutzpah, boldness, moxie, cockiness, sheer outrageous gall*. You can go anywhere if you look confident and like you belong there.
This does tend to work better in a game than in real life. Or it should, anyway, because it's definitely fun to play it that way. Except when it'd be more fun for it to go horribly wrong, of course!
* So much so that there are at least two roleplaying games that actually use one of these terms as a primary character stat. Toon uses Chutzpah as one of its four primary attributes, and it controls the skills of Fast-Talk, Pass/Detect Shoddy Goods, Sleight of Hand, and Sneak. Paranoia 1st, 2nd, and 5th editions** use not just Chutzpah but also Moxie as character attributes! It describes Moxie as the ability to comprehend new and unusual things or situations (which happen a lot in Paranoia) and Chutzpah as the quality of someone to kill both their parents and then plead for mercy based on being an orphan - basically bald-faced audacity.
These are both comedy games, but if it's good enough for them, these stats can find use in a more serious RPG. Rather than base skills such as fast talking and sleight of hand on intelligence or dexterity, you could easily base them on a new Audacity/Chutzpah stat. Believe us, there are plenty of situations where it would be useful for characters to have a Chutzpah stat to resolve how successful their ridiculously audacious acts are.
** They skipped the 3rd and 4th editions.
Commentary by Keybounce (who has not seen the movie)
Remember, you don't have to be faster than the creature, you just have to be faster than the other person trying to avoid the creature. Or, toss that person at the creature, works just as well.
Jim is fast talking the GM into having something useful for Jim at the next corner. This is a great example of... of... hmm, what is it an example of? If the GM wants to make things hard for the players, don't give them freebies like goons to toss at a pursuer. If the GM wants to make things easy for the players, don't question the player's actions.
What you have here - letting the player reason that there ought to be a guard, and then punching the guard before you even confirm that they are there? This is letting the players script the world, and the GM is just sitting back and watching the players. That's like campaign 1 with Sally (how many times and how many episodes have this description / can be linked? Tons.), or campaign 5 with Cloud City, or the clones, or...
Actually, this seems to be the consistent style of this GM. Let the players determine what's happening in the world, and then the GM tells the players what the NPCs do. The players then determine what happens next, and the GM reacts.
Who's running this clown house again?
Commentary by memnarch (who has not seen the movie)
Okay, so that wasn't just one Cthulhu-creature yelling about Xasha, that was just the boss of this Rathtar gang??? Seriously, was that single ship arriving a compartmentalized clown car or something? Showing off the large bank of cameras to have a single ship displayed on them and then allowing docking access to it would mean that there's controls in place to keep intruders out or at least alert when intrusions happen. So either this flying hangar spaceship is really new to Xasha and Chewbacca and they don't know how to properly work the ship yet, or the Kanjiklub gang and/or the Rathtars were already on the ship and they were the source of those noises.
I guess multiple rathtars explains why Chewbacca isn't shooting it dead with the laser crossbow. He'd get one of them, sure, but the attack action would leave himself open to be caught and surrounded (and probably eaten) by the remaining who-knows-how-many creatures. And unless it's a repeating laser crossbow, Chewbacca probably would also need to spend an action of some sort to reload. Even stepping from D&D-Star Wars back to movie-Star Wars, there's only so much that a single person can do with handheld weapons versus a squid-monster the size of an SUV while both are in a hallway.
Again though, wow. This feels so different than the previous six Star Wars movies with all of these sudden horror elements. I probably missed out on a number of stories that were similar to this as I've never read any of the Expanded Universe books, and have only seen some single page highlights or snips of drawn comic panels.
Transcript
GM: Another creature appears behind Tasu Leech! Kanjiklubbers and Guavians run towards you.
Tasu Leech: Aiiieee!!
Creature: RAAARRHH!! Flee the injurer!
Creature: I am Rathtar!
Chewbacca: I suggest discretion is not merely the better part of valour, but the sole prudent part.
Xasha: We vamoose down the intersecting corridor!
GM: Having scattered the gangs, one of the rathtars follows!
BB-8: We need a diversion!
Xasha: These gangs, they’re well organised, right?
GM: Naturally.
Rathtar (the Creature): RAAARRHH!!
Xasha: So they’d post a guard at the next intersection, in case we retreat this way.
GM: I suppose...
Xasha: I punch the guard’s face and toss him at the rathtar!
[SFX]: Sock!
GM: That—
Xasha: 18!
[SFX]: Grab!
GM: ... okay, sure!
[SFX]: Toss!
[SFX]: Crunch!
BB-8: Audacity is the better part of getting the hell out alive.