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Episode 2482: Holdo-ing Out For a Hero

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Killing someone can be a very messy affair, with the blood and the screaming and so on. If you want to sanitise your games a bit, but keep the impact of character deaths, you can have them happen semi-off-screen, like here. We see the shuttle pilot's ship being blown up, and his hologram fades out, so there's a very clear implication that the poor fellow is kaput. But we are spared any gory bits or blood-curdling shrieks of agony.

In a game you can use similar tricks to keep the gore level down to an acceptable level. Generally speaking most people simply don't describe any of the blood and guts stuff, and talk mostly about "damage" and "hit points" in abstract terms. Some people like to get a bit more graphic, which is fine if everyone at the table is on board. But you can also go the other way and move any violence further off-screen, which could be good for younger players, or anyone turned off by it.

Commentary by memnarch (who has not seen the movie)

The GM really should have thought this through if this is why the hyperdrive warm-up is taking so long. Or maybe there should have been a few more people left onboard so that they could boost the charge or something.

Hmmm. In the movie, I bet this is just to continue ratcheting up the tension in spite of us seeing the modulator in action before, assuming it's real. Otherwise, there'd be no reason not to immediately crash the Raddus as soon as all the shuttles had exited.

In the comic though? Maybe there's something wrong with how Holdo has set the hyperdrive. Like, the reason it's taking "forever" is because there's no possible solution. If the destination parameters are set incorrectly, then the modulator would never find a clear path! That is to say; if the destination is the Supremacy, then the Supremacy will always be in the way and it won't work. But if it's 20 light years beyond that, well, there's gotta be a time at which there was empty space to that point then, right?

Transcript

GM: The Supremacy opens fire.
[SFX]: Pow!
[SFX]: Ka... Boom!
GM: A shuttle explodes! The shock wave rattles the one containing Poe and Leia.
Leia: Some last stand this will be if we die before we get there.
Poe: Heroic, but not heroic enough.
Shuttle Pilot: Admiral! We’re taking heavy fire! Do we turn around?!
[SFX]: Boom! {another shuttle blows up}
Admiral Holdo: No! I’ll take care of it. Stay on course to Crait!
[SFX]: Ka-boom! {and another; the pilot’s hologram fades}
GM: The pilot you were reassuring is gone.
Admiral Holdo: How long until the hyperdrive is ready?!
GM: Events are dilating the usual warm-up time. It seems to be taking... forever.
Rey: He’s using this to give himself thinking time about what’s going to happen when you press that button.
General Hux: A botched plot never uncoils.


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Published: Sunday, 23 June, 2024; 02:11:01 PDT.
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