GODZILLA: A (brief ) REVIEW

Okay, I’m a self-admitted Godzillaholic. The king of all monsters means I lot to me, and so I was excited about the new reboot directed by Garth Edwards and I was not disappointed. The film starts out in the far flung year of 1999, where Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston) and his wife head a nuclear power plant in Jinjira, Japan. Then a seemingly unnatural earthquake cause an apparent meltdown, in which Miss Brody is killed, the area is supposedly commentated. 15 years later, Ford Brody, their son, now a bomb-disposal expert in the navy, is called to Japan as his father, having become a bit of a conspiracy loon, has been caught trying to sneak back into the quarantine zone. Turns out there is a conspiracy going on involving an organization called MONARCH and a trio of creatures that predate man’s arrival on this planet…

              

  The first part goes by quickly, or at least feels like it does, but I feel that has more to do with advertising empathizing the conspiracy aspect more than actual film does-which makes sense , because once the monsters start rampaging around cities, it becomes pointless to try  a deny their existence. The full appearance of the creatures is a “slow-burn” but this helps build the impact when we do see them in all their terrible glory. The human cast does a good job of giving us an anchor-point in all these epic events, giving us something familiar to launch onto with everything going to hell, without taking away from the events themselves .  The monsters, especially Godzilla, are awe-inspiring, and feel like really creatures that could possible walk this earth. Overall I recommend this film 4 out of 5.   

Pacific Rim Accelerated v2

 Inspired by "magical girls with Mecha" game Princess Drive I've decided to edit my Pacific Rim conversion for Fate Accelerated.

Now, things like the piloting the Jaeger (each ranger/PC rolls 2 fate dice each) and the Jaeger's Approaches (the Rangers/PC's Approaches are added together, and divided by 2, rounded up if needed) are still the same. BUT the Jaeger itself, instead of being a random collection of aspects and stunts, has a stress track,  can take consequences, and has a stunts/aspects the same way a Ranger does. A Ranger can choose to take stress/consequences in the Jaeger's place-but if he/she gets taken out, then the remaining PC only rolls 2 dice, to show how difficult it is to pilot a Jaeger solo (I'm thinking putting some other disadvantage to solo piloting, like you take 1 automatic stress at the end each turn, but I'm afraid that'll make it too difficult)

As for character advancement, a player can choose to advance/alter his Jaeger in the place of his Ranger (with the permission and agreement of his partner, of course), with the exception of the Jaeger's approaches, which are depended on the ranger's. Same thing during character creation-you want your Jaeger to have a  fourth stunt? You're going to have give up one of yours. No, you can't spend one of your free stunts on the Jaeger, or vice-versa. Free stunts can only be spent on the PC/Jaeger who had them originally    

I was also thinking of making Kaiju be defined by their category: A Cat-3 Kaiju would have +3 to all actions, have a 3-block stress track, take 3 consequences, etc.  This would be simpler to generate, but I'm worried that the GM will have to bust out the big kaijus way too early (depending on how close you want to stick to canon).    

I might create some sample Jaegers/Kaiju latter (by "Latter" I mean "Judgement Day") so stay tuned! (Unless you have something better to do. Hell, I'm not going anywhere)