Ep 18: Stand By Me (Part 1)

We play through Stand By Me! Jon talks about Spider-man! Paulo holds two coffee cups! Scott pukes for 15 seconds! Pitr rolls to keep it in his pants!

Jon Miller – Gordie Lachance

Paulo Quiros – Chris Chambers

Pitr Strait – Teddy Duchamp

Scott Aiello – Vern Tessio

Andy Hoover – DM

9 thoughts on “Ep 18: Stand By Me (Part 1)”

  1. Having someone who hasn’t seen the movie works really well, you guys should do that more often. When Jon thinks of something that Geordie didn’t think of in the movie, it’s not cheating it’s just Jon being smart.

  2. Again, I hadn’t seen STAND BY ME before listening to this. My wife decided this couldn’t stand, so she informed me that I wasn’t waiting until after Part 2 to watch it. So far, anyway, your version stands up to the original. Yes, you moved things around, and combined the “train dodge” with “Gordie’s danger”, but that worked just fine. And I really rather like bringing in Ace’s gang earlier. So far, so good.

    So, in fact, I know GURPS Third Edition pretty much cold. I don’t know as much about GURPS Fourth, but my wife and I own, like, MOST of the innumerable GURPS Third suppliments. And, in those millions of words of game rules, there are rules for jumping onto trains. So I figured I’d let you know, just in case you ever need to jump on trains in the future.

    From GURPS High Tech, Revised, page 72, sidebar (the sourcebook counts “high tech” as starting in 1450 and going until the 1990s, when the book was published, so it’s not really what we’d consider “high tech” these days…)
    ***

    JUMPING A TRAIN
    Boarding a moving train is dangerous at best, but it’s sometimes the only way to get a ride. There are five ways to get on: from in front, behind, above, below and from the side.
    Front and behind are usually too visible to the crew; boarding from the front has other obvious problems. If an attempt is made, it is a roll against Acrobatics (or DX-6) and is -1 for each mph that the train is moving.
    Boarding from below is a frequent choice; that’s what riding the rods means. It is not a very practical way of getting in a moving train. When the train is moving slowly, it is possible to get under it, or to lie and let it roll over. Then an attempt can be made to grab the undercarriage, and swing aboard. This requires a roll against Acrobatics, at -1 for each mph the train is moving.
    The top of the train is a good choice for both boarding and riding. The jump must be made from no more than half the jumper’s height below the top of the car. The roll is against Acrobatics. It is -1 for each 5 mph up to 25, and another -1 for each additional mph above 25 – plus a further -1 for each 5 feet down that the would-be rider dropped.
    The side is a good choice for boarding, but not much good for riding. Cars have a lot of projections that make good boarding handles; they have very few places to rest for a long ride. The usual technique is to board from the side, then get on top or inside. Climbing or moving along the side requires a roll against Acrobatics. Boarding from the side is a roll against Acrobatics, -1 for each 5 mph up to 15, -1 for each 2 mph up to 25, and -1 for each additional mph above 25.
    A critical failure on a boarding attempt, or any failure on an attempt from the front or underneath, is a fall under the wheels of the train. Roll randomly for damage location. Injury to the head or torso means the victim is cut in two; injury to any other location is an immediate neat amputation.

    ***
    So, unless any of the characters were gymnasts, they’d be starting at DX-6, and then getting massive penalties. There would be a lot of “succeed only on critical success” going on. Again, that’s back in GURPS 3rd Revised days — we used to kill a lot of characters when I was a kid.

    I just bring this up to mention how ridiculous GURPS 3rd was — we had actual written down rules for this stuff. And how ridiculous we GURPS players were — although I didn’t remember the exact numbers, I DID remember the rules and where they were.

    1. Wow, thanks Ian. That’s very interesting. I’ve never played GURPS 3, but 4th edition has a ton of specific rules like that and Jon’s memory for them is encyclopedic. I have no idea how hard Andy was planning on making it, but for myself I’ll only look outside of GURPS core if the movie needs more in depth rules for a particular subject. Complex stuff like jumping a train I will set the difficulty based on what kind of movie it is: Gritty and realistic I might set it at DX – 6, whereas in an action movie it’ll be more like DX – 3 (plus their characters will be better). And if the movie shows alot of untrained characters doing something, I’ll make it easy. It’s interesting, but a big way we are able to emulate the tone of a movie is in how we fiddle with GURPS defaults.

      1. I do really like this take on it for Film Reroll. After I learn GURPS 4, I’ll be making my movie scenarios for friends as well, and I agree that it should depend on setting and how important it is for a movie.

        For someone who’s goal is to make these films in GURPS for himself, do you have any tips?

        P.S. Please do Jumanji and Rush Hour.

  3. Pitr, lest you think your “are the protuberances fluted?” quip went unnoticed, such was not the case. Probably got the biggest laugh of the episode from me!

  4. Listening to this at my new job and trying furiously not to giggle. I’ve never seen the film but I know of it and I WISH this is what happened. Listening to that campfire talk was a JOY. One of my faves thanks guys 😀

    Christine – Nottingham, UK

  5. I know some stuff about sleep cycles, but like I didn’t have it whole semester, just as one part of a biological psychology lecture. So I’m not sure, if we just learned about the average human’s sleep cycle and it can vary greatly or wether almost all humans have pretty identical sleep cycles. Basically there are five stages to sleeping, four in Non-REM-sleep and one stage of REM(Rapid Eye Movement)-sleep, which is the dream stage. (Almost?) all dreams take place in REM-sleep. And you cycle through these five stages in: stage 1(light sleep)-stage 2- stage 3- stage 4(deep sleep)- REM – stage 4 – stage 3 – stage 2 – stage 1 order. The first whole cycle of this takes about 3 hours (again, don’t know how much variation there is). And after that the sleep cycle happens again and again, but gets shorter and shorter everytime. I’d assume you want him to wake up out of REM sleep during the first cycle, so assuming all parts of the cycle take equally long (I have no idea about that part), Gordie would wake after 1,5 hours.

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