Wednesday Review

I finished Season 2 of the Netflix series Wednesday, based on the Addams Family character, then realized I never reviewed the first season. So here we go.

Wednesday

Rating: OK
Standouts:

good performances
story is a bit incoherent
not really very Addams Family-ish

Season 2 of Wednesday came out three years after Season 1 concluded. I only remember two things about Season 1:

1. It’s’ “Addams Family, but really Harry Potter”
2. That one dance

It’s not a bad show, but obviously it’s something you enjoy for a little while, then (literally) forget about. But why?

It’s not the performances. I liked most of the actor performances. Many stood out: Jenna Ortega is good as Wednesday Addams, Catherine Zeta-Jones is good as her mother Morticia. I liked Luis Guzman’s Gomez Addams less, but still liked him. Fred Armisen is deranged as Uncle Fester; I like it. Isaac Ordonez as Pugsley was the break-out character of Season 2. Of the other teen actors, Emma Myers as Wednesday’s roommate Enid stood out, and Evie Templeton’s Agnes was very creepy, but the rest did a decent job, too. I just didn’t care about their characters.

As for what’s wrong: well, it’s a tad long, feeling more like a really long movie instead of a TV show, but that’s typical of TV shows made for streaming services, and it’s not as bad as other examples. But the story feels a bit incoherent. Too many things that don’t seem to have anything to do with the story. I think this is why I couldn’t remember much about the first season; I just couldn’t keep the story in my head.

Another issue that might be a problem for some: it doesn’t really feel entirely like the Addams Family. For one, in the '60s TV series and the '90s movies (mostly,) the family always felt like they really liked each other. Sure, the kids torture each other, but then they like torture, so it’s a sign of love. In Wednesday, however, Wednesday is at odds with her parents, especially her mother. Morticia’s at odds with her own mother. Everyone treats Thing as a slave.

The other reason it doesn’t feel like the Addams Family is because of the Harry Potter influence. They wanted magical kids at a magical kid school. But… the joke of the Addams Family has always been that the family thinks of themselves and their lifestyle as “normal”, while their neighbors and other people they encounter are weirded out.

That’s the opposite of the Harry Potter series, where the students all think “weird” is normal and only Harry is baffled because he grew up isolated from the wizarding world.

Wednesday can’t decide which way to go, so it oscillates back and forth. Wednesday’s schoolmates sometimes act like she’s weird, even though they are gorgons, werewolves, vampires, and the like. And then, suddenly, they all think Wednesday’s perfectly normal. Meanwhile, there’s a “normie” town nearby. You’d think that the townies would be the ones baffled by Wednesday and the students of Nevermore, but no… they are hostile towards Outcasts, but know all the lore.

So I can’t recommend Wednesday to the general public (in other words, it’s not Great, it’s OK.) But I also can’t necessarily recommend it to Addams Family fans. If you just want a goth girl mystery-comedy, or a replacement for Harry Potter because of the politics of the author, this might fit your needs.

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Non-Human PC Races

Previously, I wrote about non-human fantasy races, although my main point there was that many, if not most, of the fantasy races we think of as “non-human” are really just variant humans in disguise.

Bur whether they are really non-human or human variants, the question to ask is: When should a fantasy race become a player character race? When should a fantasy race remain exclusively for NPCs?

I have some thoughts.

Races Relevant to the Story

Let’s ignore the trivial case of unique monsters or NPCs that aren’t “races” at all (for now) and focus instead on the obvious cases where a fantasy race should not be available to players.

• Mystery Races: Unknown or nearly unknown races that players can choose to investigate. The Pnume from Jack Vance’s Planet of Adventure series would be one example.
• Villain Races: Mystery races that are secretly behind multiple evil schemes. The Drow, Dero, and Mind Flayers were probably all originally used this way.
• Secret Ally Races: Mystery races that are either currently helping the PCs secretly or could be asked for help. The Arisians from Doc Smith’s Lensman series and the priest-kings from the Gor series would count here.

The common theme here is that these races are somehow tied to the goal of a potential adventure. They have information, artifacts, or raw power that the players want. Naturally, if a player were allowed to begin the game as one of these races, it would short circuit the mystery.

Mentors or MacGuffins

That trivial case I mentioned where a monster or NPC is unique, perhaps the last (or first) of its kind, or the sole current visitor from an inaccessible world or dimension, is pretty much disqualified for the same reasons. You as GM may have notes on an NPC’s innate talents or skills, knowledge, and technology available to their race, but the race itself technically does not exist. These unique beings typically exist as story or plot elements, in much the same way as the mystery villain/ally races.

If the PCs contact the last known Atlantean, who becomes their mentor, they may gain a significant advantage. But the GM may want to supply information or assistance when needed, rather than grant them unlimited access. It’s hard to justify why a PC Atlantean wouldn’t have access to the same secrets as their mentor, so it may be better to simply not allow Atlanteans as a PC race.

Overpowered Fantasy Races

Related to the villain and ally fantasy races mentioned above are high-powered fantasy races in general. It’s not completely out of the question for a player to have an angel character, or a djinn, or a godling of some sort, depending on the intended beginning power level of the game. But if other players have all created standard human warriors, dwarves, and elves, one player demanding that they be allowed to play Q from Star Trek is generally considered to be a warning sign. There shouldn’t be an enormous disparity between character power levels.

A PC that begins as a member of a standard race who is later polymorphed into a member of another race, even one not normally allowed as a beginning PC race, is not subject to the same restrictions, for two reasons:

1. Polymorph spells don’t alter the PC’s skills or cultural knowledge. It’s basically just a really good disguise.
2. The PC may not be able to use that race’s innate abilities at first, especially abilities the player has not yet seen used. The PC may have to train for a while before achieving the full power of that race.

Surprise! It’s a Fantasy Race!

Other fantasy races may be added as minor mysteries to solve. Not full-blown plot devices, but more like little surprises to keep exploration exciting. Such a fantasy race would be unavailable as PC races at first, but once they have been encountered and their culture or other unique features have been discovered, there’s no harm in allowing players to make new characters from that race.

A slightly similar idea is a reasonably-balanced fantasy race made up by a player, or borrowed from a fantasy novel the GM has no intention to adapt in full. I feel that this kind of custom fantasy race fits in with that well-known section on “Other Character Types” in the original booklets:

There is no reason that players cannot be allowed to play as virtually anything, provided they begin relatively weak and work up to the top, i.e., a player wishing to be a Dragon would have to begin as let us say, a “young” one and progress upwards in the usual manner, steps being predetermined by the campaign referee.

OD&D VOL. I (Men & Magic), p. 8

If the race is player-created, especially if the race’s culture and history are being improvised during play, that player should have the same kind of control over whether other players are allowed to play characters from that race.

In Summary

I think all of the above could be boiled down to just a few rules:

1. Keep fantasy races NPC-only if finding out more about the race is the whole point.
2. Unique monsters or NPCs are “races” in name only.
3. Otherwise, if there’s no longer any surprise factor and the race is reasonably balanced compared to other beginning PC race, go for it. There’s no real harm.

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No Mapping, Just Map Rolls

Back in my post about why players might map and why they should be allowed to choose not to map, I teased “there may be ways to maintain that element of player choice without requiring an actual map.”

I have an idea.

Map Skill vs. Minimalist Maps

Chaosium’s Stormbringer, unless I’m remembering incorrectly, had a Map skill. The GM would roll percentile dice vs. Map skill to see if players make it to their destination. We could use the Int ability score in a similar way. It still feels too bland to me, so I would repurpose the reaction roll (again!) and break the trip to any destination into stages.

Players could (should?) still make simple maps, but only to show which areas of a dungeon are connected. Each area would be represented by one box each, regardless of how many rooms are in each area and where they are in relation to other rooms. The areas are labeled “outer gates”, “crypts”, “treasure vaults”, “prison”, “library”, “caves”, “fungus farms”, or whatever the function or theme of that area is. Each pair of boxes is either connected (draw one line connecting them) or not connected (no line.) No individual tunnels are marked.

If the players have a map and are looking for the exit, they would follow the lines from box to box, with the GM making a reaction roll for each transition to the next area: treasure vaults to crypts, crypts to outer gates, and outer gates to exit would require three rolls.

Map Use Result Table

If the map roll is less than or equal to the Int of the character using the map, use the “Map Success” column for the result. If the roll is higher than Int, use the “Map Failure” column. Halve the Int score if the map is damaged or otherwise incomplete, or if the character is drunk, befuddled, or otherwise inconvenienced.

2d6 Roll	Map Success	Map Failure
2	3x time to reach next area	lost in new (unmapped) area
3-5	1.5x time to reach next area	lost in random area
6-8	normal time to reach next area	lost in previous area
9-11	half time to reach next area	stuck in same area
12+	half time, no wandering monster rolls	5x time to reach next area

Maps Made by Other People

The steps above assume the character reading the map also created the map. If not, the GM needs to know both the Int of the map maker (or assign it randomly) and the Int of the character using the map. Roll against the lower of the two scores when using the map.

The character using the map can substitute their Wisdom if it is higher than their Int, but only when using a map they didn’t make themselves. If the map has a lower Int rating than either, however, it’s not going to help.

When buying a map, make a reaction roll to check if the map is a lie (odd rolls below a certain threshold.) These maps automatically are treated as half Int.

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Non-Human Races in Fantasy Lit

We all know that Tolkien invented the idea of non-human races in fantasy fiction, which in turn influenced D&D and other RPGs by bringing us the standard fantasy races of elf, dwarf, halfling, and orc/goblin. Before Tolkien, fantasy writers either focused on human characters only, especially in swords & sorcery, or they only used non-humans as monsters, fantastic beasts, mentors, or supernatural messengers.

But … do we really know that?

Someone’s question about swords & sorcery RPGs got me thinking about this.

For the Kiddies

Let’s start with the idea of human characters as the focus, with non-humans only appearing as mentors, messengers, or monsters. Or, to put it in RPG terms, humans are the only “PC race”, with things like goblins as “NPC only”. This seems to be mostly true of European fantasy written for children… except that there’s a lot of cases of talking animals, goblins and other “cute” monsters, or children transformed into dragons or other creatures that become companions or allies to human beings.

The best-known example, though not the oldest, is C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia. In the very first book, we have the fauns (Tumnus,) the talking beavers, and the centaurs. In later Narnia books, the Marsh-wiggles and the Dufflepuds show up as “original” fantasy races, although we could argue that Dufflepuds are just a variant of dwarves, which also show up in Narnia.

Some of the characters in Baum’s Oz books are unique rather than belonging to a “race” (Tin Woodsman, Scarecrow,) but we have loads of talking animal characters and odd races like the Quadlings.

Lewis Carroll’s books are definitely swarming with creatures that are treated no differently than human characters. I actually used to have a write-up for “Cheshire cat” as a playable race (although really, it was the Cheshire cat crossed with Puss in Boots.)

Weird Sorcery

In contrast, weird tales and swords & sorcery do in fact tend to focus on human characters only. Non-human “races” do exist, but are usually treated as antagonists or monsters. They are the challenge for a specific story, or the surprise at the end. They rarely reappear. We do have serpent-folk showing up in Clark Ashton Smith’s “The Seven Geases” or Robert E. Howard’s King Kull stories, hairy humanoids like Smith’s Voormis, or Lovecraft’s fish people (frog people?) in “The Doom That Came to Sarnath”.

Since all of these writers are pre-Tolkien and therefor could not be influenced by Tolkien, this might seem to support the theory that pulp fantasy, at least, did not have anything that could be considered a “playable race” when translated into an RPG. But while none of these authors read Tolkien, they did read Arthurian legend. We do see something similar to the Fae or elves in some weird fiction. Earliest I can think of is A. Merritt’s “The Women of the Wood”, where the fae-like people of the wood act more like the “surprise” mentioned earlier. Much later, though, Roger Zelazny’s Dilvish the Damned describes Dilvish as having a little elf-blood, and Dilvish has memories of a visit to his distant elven relatives.

But the more famous example of elves in swords & sorcery would be the Melnibonéans from Michael Moorcock’s Elric saga. Melnibonéans are basically evil elves, and in some of the stories where Elric is transported to other worlds, he’s called an elf by other characters.

Back to the Worms

In addition to Arthurian legend, though, the old pulp fantasy writers and even Tolkien had another influence: E. R. Eddison. His classic novel The Worm Ouroboros has demons, witches, goblins, and pixies as main characters. The demons have small horns, the “races” don’t have any recognizable features that I recall, although I believe Lord Gro (the goblin) is said to be shorter than the others, so maybe that’s a racial feature.

You could argue, then, that these “races” aren’t fantastic non-humans or even variant humans, but just people living in various countries. This could, in fact, be one reason why swords & sorcery has a lot of human races, but seemingly no non-human races except in opposition to humanity as menaces. But both C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien read The Worm Ouroboros, too. Which leads to my big question…

Are Tolkien’s Races Non-Human?

Post-Tolkien fantasy and fantasy RPGs, including D&D, consider elves, dwarves, halflings, and orcs to be non-human. Most people would probably say that’s because they are non-human in the source material. But are they?

The gimmick in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings is that Tolkien made languages and a detailed history of Middle Earth, describing the interactions of the elves, dwarves, and orcs with the human nations. It’s as if they were simply other civilizations living nearby, engaged in trade and conflict with each other. This is not how the fae are presented in folk tales, where they are inherently magical and operate on their own logic, difficult for human beings to understand. Tolkien’s elves are described as magical by other characters, especially the hobbits, but not in the same way. It’s more like they are incredibly good at a lot of mundane skills, plus some of them know an occasional spell. They are basically just fancy people.

This fits in with trends that predate Tolkien. His mentor, George MacDonald, described goblins in The Princess and the Goblin as originally being human beings who moved underground. This is because in the 19th and early 20th century, myths and legends were assumed to have forgotten mundane explanations. This is also the working assumption of the pulp fantasy writers. Now, neither they nor Tolkien were above tossing in something truly fantastic, like serpent-folk or ents or barrow-wights. But Tolkien had such an impact on fantasy precisely because he created so much mundane detail about his elves, dwarves, hobbits, and orcs in order to make them feel real.

Maybe in a future post, I’ll tackle the problem of how to decide when to adapt a fantasy race as a PC race and when to leave it as NPC only, or even keep it as a one-off. But I think this post is long enough for now.

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Star Trek Reviews: Picard

A couple weeks ago, I finished watching Star Trek: Picard. I put off watching Seasons 2 and 3 for a couple years, but since I was planning to cancel Paramount+ during this summer’s “streaming service massacrefest”, I thought I should at least get some value out of the account. And since I also rewatched Season 1 not too long ago, I want to revise my opinion of the series.

Reconsidering Season 1

Refreshing my memory of what I said in my original Picard review, I’m shocked that I said that Star Trek: Picard was better than TNG. Maybe I was comparing the worst episode of Picard Season 1 to the worst episodes of TNG? It’s certainly better than some first and second season TNG episodes. And I said I liked it better than Voyager? Maybe some episodes of Voyager. And maybe the overall objective quality is better, as objective as you could be about such things.

But I didn’t enjoy Picard Season 1 all that much on rewatch. I think on first watch, I was impressed that there were several interesting moments and some enjoyable ones. But my original opinion hasn’t aged well.

The main warning sign that I longer felt the same way was that none of the scenes really stuck with me between the original viewing and the rewatch. I had forgotten almost everything except the basic three-or-four sentence summary of the Season 1 plot. Being forgettable has become a strong sign for me that a show or movie is just OK, maybe with stand-out good or bad elements.

I stand by my statement that Star Trek: Picard is better than any of the TNG movies, though. Really, none of the Trek movies are as good as any live-action Trek shows I’ve seen.

Season 2 Thoughts

I was kind of looking forward to Season 2, though, even though I put it off for so long. I knew Q would be in it, and I always liked Q, although there’s maybe one or two Q episodes I didn’t like. Would Picard Season 2 keep the old magic?

A bit. But there were problems.

Let me interrupt this review to make a general statement about Star Trek in general. The three recurring Trek concepts or story lines that I hate the most are, in order of decreasing hate:

1. The Mirror Universe
2. Section 31
3. The Borg

The original series episode “Mirror, Mirror” was OK, but I did not enjoy any other mirror universe episodes except the two-parter from Star Trek: Enterprise, probably because it’s treated like a one-off that doesn’t affect the rest of the series. Similarly, one or two Section 31 episodes where Section 31 is the villain are OK, but I hate that the franchise now tries to sell us the idea that Section 31 is cool. I feel the same way about the Borg. Trek keeps going back to the Borg whenever the number of views drops, but that rarely works.

So you can imagine how thrilled I was to see that Picard Season 2 brings back the Borg again. And really, it’s too soon. Technically, Season 1 included the Borg, although more as a background detail instead of an important plot element. But Season 2? The Borg Queen is back. How many times has she died, now?

The Borg storyline isn’t too bad, but I do have to count it against the series. The alternate timeline feels sort of mirror universe-ish, but we’re only there briefly, so I won’t count it as a flaw. And I actually like the wrap-up of Q’s story a bit, so I enjoyed this season more than Season 1, although I’m disappointed in what they did with the callbacks to the Gary Seven episode of TOS. I don’t think they handled that well at all.

Season Three Thoughts

Picard Season 3 started out OK, but felt a little flat. We’re seeing some of the same things again: Picard goes rogue, there’s a heist, lots of nostalgia callbacks. The return of the Dominion changelings isn’t too bad, although I did not like the performance of the main changeling.

Oh, look. Section 31 is back again! And they’re trying to make them cool again! Not evil!

Oh, look. The Borg are back. They are the secret real villain. This means that every season of Picard is about the Borg in some way.

Oh, look. Data is back. Even though he died in Season 1. And in one of the movies.

Oh, look. Q is back, even though he died, too. We had a good ending for Q last season, but let’s undo it at the end of this one.

Doesn’t that seem like the franchise is out of ideas and they’re just trying to keep pumping out content?

Summary

I have to rate Star Trek: Picard as just OK, with several flaws. If you just want something to watch to kill time and anything will do the job, but you happen to like Star Trek in some form, watching Picard will do the trick as well as anything else. But I can’t recommend Picard for any Trek fan who is looking for more from Trek than just filler, and certainly can’t recommend it for anyone not currently a Trek fan. It’s on the low end of the OK range.

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No Dungeon Mapping Required!

Recently, someone in a forum was curious how many GMs make (require) the players to map the dungeon, and I replied that I don’t require players to map, but they are taking a risk if they don’t.

That response may seem a bit flippant, but really I try to balance clear descriptions of the environment with dungeon features designed to be deliberately confusing. Sure, you could skip mapping and just try to remember which way you came. For the most part, the dungeon isn’t going to change configuration – although it might – so you could get away with it. But mapping makes it easier.

But why map at all?

The Reasons for Mapping

To me, the reason why I make it possible for players to map my dungeons, and why I like to map dungeons when I’m a player, is the immersion. I want to get a feel for what my environment looks like and what my character is doing. I assume at least some players out there are going to enjoy it as well.

Some GMs fill every space on their dungeon maps with rooms, so players mapping as they explore may notice suspicious areas that could contain secret rooms. I used to make my own dungeon maps that way, and I’ll admit there can be a certain joy to finding a secret room that way. But how often does that work? Seems like too much effort that rarely pays off.

But even without that kind of cramped dungeon design, players looking for a hidden shrine or other location they’ve heard exists in the dungeon might notice large unmapped quadrants on a map. This might give a clue which areas they need to search more thoroughly for secret doors into the supposedly empty area. Or they could even try mining their way into it.

Avoiding Mapping

Still, some players just don’t enjoy making maps and won’t do it. Even if you suggest not making a map to scale, just using lines and boxes to make a crude flow chart version of the dungeon. I believe players should be allowed to take that risk, but if they were to ask me to just handwave the return to the surface, I wouldn’t go along with that. The game is about players making decisions and accepting the consequences of those decisions. Just as I wouldn’t spring a surprise TPK on players without giving them enough information to decide not to take that risk, I wouldn’t choose the players’ route back to the surface for them, especially when one route might be more dangerous than the other.

Still, there may be ways to maintain that element of player choice without requiring an actual map. I’m mulling over an idea, which I will return to in a future post.

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Last-Minute GM: Too Many Tables!

The Problem

In Reddit’s /r/osr subreddit, someone posted a thread about having too many tables when generating adventures on the fly.

[…] I’ve found/made some random tables resources that are great, but I’m getting to the point where I have 14-17 pages of random tables. […] Is there such a thing as too many roll tables?

The Real Problem

The easy answer would be “if you are having problems with your current number of tables, that’s too many.” But if we dive into the problem in more detail, I think there’s actually two different kinds of tables:

1. Tables you use on the fly; and,
2. Tables you use between sessions to prep adventures.

Most of your tables will fall into the second category. These are things like contents of treasure troves, qualities of magic swords, random names for taverns, ships, or NPCs, and so on.

The first category, however, should be a very small number of tables. Your current wandering monster tables geared for the adventure area, for example. Area event tables. The standard attack, save, and reaction tables. Maybe a couple generic multipurpose tables to help you improvise when things go off script, like a table of random letters to create initials to suggest NPC names or other names.

But how do you use Category 2 tables if you want to go full improv?

Lists to the Rescue!

The trick is to prep lists rather than dungeon keys. Remember the TSR Monster and Treasure Assortments? Or the NPC rosters? Those were randomly-generated monsters, treasures, NPCs, and occasionally other things. You could roll or pick from these lists, instead of rolling multiple times on multiple tables. But we don’t really need 100+ entries on a list. We can shorten things a bit.

Between sessions, use those random tables to create a list of 6 to 8 ships, or pirate captains, or taverns, or unique named monsters with personalities, or whatever else you know you will need for the areas the PCs will be exploring. You may need several pages of lists for your entire session, but at any given time, you will only need a few of those lists: the ships and pirate captains lists when down by the pirate docks, or the tavern list when wandering the streets.

Rather than treating a list as a table, use this generic table to pick entries from the list:

2d6	Result
2-3	Use second item on list
4-7	Use first item on list
8-10	Use last item on list
11+	Use second to last item on list

Put a checkmark next to an item when it’s used. The second time you use the list, skip items that have been used. Between sessions, restock your lists. You will probably never need more than 6 to 8 entries for any given session.

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XP Ability Bonuses Redux

The Problem

In a thread on Reddit’s /r/osr subreddit, someone asked about ways to award XP for disarming or otherwise dealing with traps. I replied with this comment:

Just take the easy route and award XP based on the ability score used multiplied by some factor, perhaps based on the difficulty of the trap. EXAMPLE: PC uses Intelligence to disarm a trap that does 2 dice damage, so multiply Int by 2.

Now, this is based on a blog post I wrote ages ago about the more general topic of using ability scores for XP awards. This was originally meant to be an alternative to XP bonuses based on prime requisite, for example Fighters with Strength 18 earning +10% experience for monsters slain. I later broadened the idea to XP for actions other than combat or treasure, which would include dealing with traps. But how large should this reward be?

Scaling by Difficulty

I and some other people playing OD&D use 100 xp per HD and 1 xp per gp for treasure, which means prime requisite bonuses would be +5 or +10 xp per HD or per 100 gp of treasure.

I bring this up because I would set the difficulty of non-combat, non-treasure tasks as either an HD equivalent or a treasure value equivalent. For traps, their “Hit Dice” could be set equal to the damage they do, as in the example from my Reddit comment.

Or, if the trap has a non-damaging effect, the GM can find a spell that more or less duplicates that effect and use the spell’s level as its “Hit Dice”. For example, a trap that drops victims safely into a small cell to keep them from leaving could be treated as Hold Person (Level 3.)

Multiplying an ability score by HD or spell level would thus give an xp bonus in the range of +3 to +18 xp per HD. Higher than -20 to + 10 xp under the traditional system, but not far off.

The Conclusion

My original suggestion was to multiply that score bonus by 10, because I was thinking “average ability score of 10 times 10 equals 100 xp, same as for a 1 HD monster.” But I think I’d prefer one of these two alternatives:

• Add 100 to the ability score and multiply by HD, no other factor. This gives xp awards that are only a tiny bit off from the original.
• Don’t add anything, just multiply scores by 5. This seems low, but if you award xp for non-combat actions and allow ability score combos (Strength + Dexterity for fighters using agile maneuvers to deliver the mightiest blows,) the extra xp awards compensate.

I think I prefer the second option, since it’s easier: just halve the ability score and add a zero to the end as an extra digit (the easy way to multiply by 5.) But I may have more to say about this in a future post.

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Media Reviews and Star Wars Update

Back before my hiatus, I did several media reviews, mostly superhero, fantasy, science fiction, and horror. This also included my attempt to watch the Star Wars movie series and review them from a non-fan perspective. I had stalled out in this process after watching and reviewing The Phantom Menace, but I’m done now. I should give everyone an update.

New Review Guidelines

But first, I changed my review guidelines and should explain how they work. My previous review guidelines used a letter-grade system similar to the common primary and secondary school grading system used here in the US, with C being average.

I always have a hard time ranking things, even when using a semi-subjective grading system instead of pure subjective ratings. So I’ve simplified this even further for what I call The BOG Standard Rating System. BOG stands for Bad, OK, Great, which are the new ratings.

• An OK piece of media is just that: average. It’s competently made. This doesn’t mean I don’t like it. OK media can be fun, expecially if I like the genre, the director, an actor, tropes used, or some other feature, like a clever structure.
• OK media bumps up to Great if it’s exceptionally well-made or historically important. My criteria is: do I think someone would enjoy a piece of media despite their personal tastes? Would someone who hates horror movies like this horror movie?
• In contrast, Bad media is seriously flawed. At least two-thirds of the media is tedious, dull, confused, or incoherent. I would actively discourage someone from wasting their time tracking it down even if it’s a genre they normally enjoy.

In addition to this base rating, there’s what I call stand-outs. This is anything worth noting about that media: an actor’s performance or a specific scene that is better or worse than the rest of a movie.

My Star Wars Experience

I described my Star Wars plans in a How to Watch Star Wars post and a follow-up post. I will mention again, though, that originally I had only seen either five or six of the movies. My goal was to watch all the Star Wars movies as a non-fan, review them from a non-fan’s perspective, and give them a chance to win me over. I also planned to watch The Mandalorian, which I think was the only TV series available when I began this adventure.

So I rewatched IV, V, and VI as well as Rogue One, and watched Solo and The Phantom Menace for the first time… then I petered out. But during the two years of my absence, I rewatched all the movies and made it all the way through to the end. So, it’s time to update my review and give my final thoughts on Star Wars.

The ten live-action movies that came out after A New Hope are all OK. As a non-fan, I didn’t hate any of the movies as much as some fans do. They all have their downsides and some have their good points, but none of them were bad for at least two-thirds of their runtime.

The worst of them was the last one, The Rise of Skywalker. It feels incoherent in several places, and it’s dull for about 50% of the movie. You can tell that by that point, many of the people making the movie didn’t really care; they were just phoning it in. The worst part is the whole “somehow, Palpatine has returned” bit.

The best of the Star Wars movies is A New Hope. It goes along at a good pace and is never dull. There are things I don’t like about it, but I can still enjoy it. I think I would rate it as Great because of its historical importance. It rewrote the rules for how many movies are made, especially science fiction movies. I think even people who don’t like space opera could appreciate it.

The other movies are OK because I can’t see recommending any of them to someone who isn’t a Star Wars fan. That’s the real flaw of all the sequels, including The Empire Strikes Back. It’s hard to care about what’s happening unless you are a fan, steeped in Star Wars culture. The goal of the sequels is not really to tell a story with broad human appeal, but to expand the franchise universe.

Conclusion

I rewatched all of those movies as part of my “job”, educating my friends’ kid on famous movies and TV shows. When we made it to the end of the last movie, I said “We never have to watch Star Wars again.” And I really felt it. I doubt I will ever watch The Mandalorian, or the latest series Andor, despite hearing that they are really good, because I really do feel done with Star Wars. If I walked into someone’s house and a Star Wars movie was on their TV, I wouldn’t mind it and might even watch a bit, but I have no plans to ever seek it out on my own.

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