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Episode 2149: Message in a Battle

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Modern games have many potential distractions that didn't exist in the early days of roleplaying games in the 1970s and '80s. It's now very easy for people to do things on electronic devices when they might otherwise be concentrating on the game.

This can be so distracting and disruptive to a game that some groups find it a good idea to have a policy of no non-emergency use at the gaming table. If you're running a game, it's a good idea to at least think about and discuss such a policy with your players.

Commentary by memnarch (who has not seen the movie)

Maybe they're from a boy instead! What would you think of that, Sally? A new significant other would definitely be distracting, and BB-8 feels a bit left out on the side recently anyway. There's not even a calculation thing that BB-8 could be doing for the fight to pull Corey's focus back to the game.

Or perhaps it's not good news at all and something bad has happened at University for Corey. Learning he's failed a class or two or that he needs an extra class for graduation would be plenty distracting on their own. I don't think any family members have died though; that feels like something that would be a "sorry everyone, I need to go" kind of event.

Anyway, are we really really having a repeat of Episode IV here without the Y-wings? Is Kylo Ren going to hop in a special fighter and start shooting down the Resistance fighters as well? Without a stated end goal beyond "somehow blow the place up" for Team Good Guy, this is starting to feel way too messy to get a tidy ending of some kind for the fight. The comic had a stated goal in Episode IV close to the original movie that was shared around the same time as that movie, so I'm getting the idea now that this movie might have had a similar problem in its plot presentation. Tabletop games have RNG that makes a conclusive ending not a sure thing at least, plus players that can suddenly figure something out in between sessions.

Transcript

GM: BB-8 spots incoming PIE fighters.
GM: Corey?
BB-8: What? Sorry.
GM: You spot incoming PIEs.
BB-8: Uh, hey guys. Incoming fighters.
Allan: We got a lot of company!
GM: Are you playing games on your phone?
BB-8: No, sorry, just... got some messages.
[SFX]: pow!
Kylo Ren: Are they from a girl??
BB-8: Definitely not.
Kylo Ren: Aww. I was going to say you should bring her to the game.
Rey: Yeah, how else are we supposed to embarrass you?
[SFX]: pow! pow! pow! pow! pow! pow! pow!
[SFX]: pow! pow! pow! pow! pow!


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Published: Sunday, 08 May, 2022; 02:11:07 PDT.
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