Time Bandits Part 6

Time Bandits has really become a delight for me over time. The movie is so open-ended and we're so far off the path of the movie that I really can just have fun and world-build and let my players explore. But the other thing that I'm enjoying about Time Bandits is that it's gimmick of coming and going whenever it pleases makes it less likely to overstay its welcome. It really takes away the pressure of trying to drive towards an ending and lets me just follow the impulses of our party and do something purely open-ended. In a weird way it's become a campaign that's divorced from the normal challenges of making this show. Of course, it really has its own challenges. Playing characters that are so devoid of a discernible internal logic can be difficult, because as a performer it doesn't give you that much to latch on to. What does this character really want? The movie doesn't give us very many answers, and my players have gamely supplied them, deciding that above all things, the bandits want hats.

The other interesting thing to talk about with this episode is that Kevin died. And I kind of had to decide what to do with that, as he is sort of the main character of the movie. A bit of world-building I did when I first was conceiving of this campaign was the decision that what is actually happening in the movie is that the Supreme Being is looking to retire and is testing replacements. Once I made this decision, the whole movie made a ton more sense to me. It's not a movie that's really trying that hard to make sense, but it's my job to make it make sense, and the Supreme Being literally says that it was all a test (but doesn't elaborate) and then sends Kevin home at the end. Kevin failed the test. Honestly watch the movie again with that interpretation in mind and I think it really works. But so that's why I did all that dreaming stuff and Kevin having the ability to rewrite reality. This is his Godhood awakening.

But now I had to confront the notion of Kevin dying. And honestly, I really didn't want to find a way to keep him alive. He was falling to his death and then crit failed, he should be dead. So I decided that dying was another way that he could fail the test, and so now we have this little bit of a framing device, and it let me reveal my hand about the whole God test thing. It's a weird device, but honestly, this is a weird campaign.

Anyway, hope you like this one. We've been dropping monthly lately because everyone's been hyper busy and it's been a struggle to schedule episodes, but we're trying to get back to twice a month going forward. Next episode: Cabin in the Woods.