– Jon Favreau, director of Iron Manoffice furniture in Bulgaria

So there you go.

One day, there’s a letter.

“Hey, kids. Long time no see. You guys ought to drop by Dubai; the moonlight is thrilling. Bring the ambulance driver.”

Orlando Trash 2020: Dubai Trash.

Kirby, who spoke Cantonese, split off to talk to the roommate and keep the housemaster busy (”you’ll want to sit in, of course”) while we shook down the missing kid’s room. We did Kirby’s mini-scene first. It played out exactly like any NPC interaction does, with the exception that no rolls were required to get him to say the right things. He talked, Kirby pushed a bit, he talked more. At one point, Jere said “and you can do a Flattery point spend or an Interrogation point spend to get some more info about that.” Kirby did the Flattery point spend, and the roommate opened up a bit more, giving us the name of Brandon’s quasi-mentor and telling us that Brandon had been on drugs Tuesday night. He also mentioned that Brandon had written something on his window in soap and wiped it off afterwards.

We’d have gotten the name out of a later scene in any case, and we were about to find out that Brandon was doing drugs, but the point spend gave us more context. So it wasn’t a case of having to spend points to progress; it just gave us the opportunity to understand the existing clues better.

Meanwhile, the rest of us hit Brandon’s room. Jess, playing a Sotheby’s investigator, identified the painting in the postcard on Brandon’s desk — Jere had a copy printed out along with the Wikipedia article on the artist, and handed it over. This clue was available on sight.

While searching, we noticed a bunch of beetles scurrying around. Jere: “Jeff, you know those are carrion beetles from South America; given their current state of development, they hatched on Friday. The eggs can remain dormant for up to a century, though.” Jeff had the right skill, so he just got the information up front. Very clean, very smooth.

We proactively tracked the beetles back to the closet, in which we found a Mesoamerican vase of some value. We also found a Guatemalan bag full of yage, which I identified immediately, somewhat to the distress of my compatriots. “I sniff it, rub a little on my gums, use my lighter to set a bit on fire and sniff the fumes.” Tom: “… I’m pretty sure I ought to arrest you for that.”

Tom had points in Data Retrieval, so he worked over the computer, getting a bunch of names from Brandon’s email. Most of the emails were oddly encrypted, so we saved those off for later perusal. The email patterns were plenty enough to give us an idea of who Brandon’s closest friends were, though. We also found a bunch of photos of a South American archeological dig, including photos of pots much like the one we’d just found. None of this took a point spend, although Tom did specifically say he was looking at the computer. Jess realized, since she had Archeology, that the pictures were clearly an illegal, unauthorized dig.

Finally, we found Brandon’s diary, which was coded in much the same way as the emails.

Much discussion about the clues, their meaning, and so forth ensued, cut somewhat short when we realized that Kirby would run out of distractions at some point. Jeff paused at the end and asked if he could make a Chemistry spend to notice the traces of soap on the window and do something to figure out what the designs had been; Jere said sure and described a weird mathematical sequence partially based on the Fibonacci series. We headed off to the next scene, pretty satisfied.

That was probably our busiest scene, which makes sense given that everything has to branch off the first scene. We had clues that Jere just handed to the appropriate person; we had clues that were easy to get once we roleplayed looking in an appropriate place; we had point spends prompted by Jere; and we had self-prompted point spends. I’d been concerned that the system would just dump clues on us automatically as we entered scenes, but it’s clearly way more flexible than that.

A strict reading of the rules might mean you didn’t have the clues available with appropriate roleplay, but I think that’d be too limiting. The sample scenario includes that sort of thing. I don’t think you’re blocking investigation by expecting PCs to, say, look inside a closet or open up computer files. The blockage would be if we’d had to make Computer Skill rolls once we decided to look at the computer.

That middle range of clue gathering also prevents any sense of railroading. Clearly our choices did matter, even if they were relatively easy choices. By waiting for us to seek out clues, we were firmly situated as protagonists rather than onlookers. Leaving some point spends for us to request further cemented that.

At the same time, I never felt like we were having communication failures. As Jeff noted the other night, one peril of an investigatory game is that the GM and the players will differ on what’s important, and one or the other will get frustrated. In our play, the GM’s take on important clues was very much up front. It was not at all difficult to understand what Jere felt was important, because the important stuff was all clues, and he was free to say “you notice this, this, and this.”

I found this to be tremendously liberating from the immersive roleplay point of view. Transparent mechanics, n’est pas? But more on that if/when I write again.

Does everyone know I put spoilers in my reviews? OK, good.

I think it’s the best acting we’ve ever seen in a superhero movie. Downey’s fussy and scared and pissed off in appropriate measure. In a way, yeah, he’s playing himself in that Tony Stark has addiction problems and a lot of money. On the other hand, Downey isn’t living a life overshadowed by the achievements of his father, with a mentor who he looks to for paternal wisdom. So there’s that.

Likewise, Jeff Bridges is good. It’s tricky to make the big fight scenes work, what with the masks and all. Bridges does this nice slow patient simmer throughout the movie, which means it’s easy to believe that the big giant suit of armor is letting out all that tension through the thrill of physical violence. You know it’s Bridges inside there not because he takes his hat off at the end, but because Bridges portrayed a character who’d get off on acting the way the suit acts.

Also good: Paltrow! Not expected. I’ve seen her turn in good performances, but it’s usually in the chilly socially superior roles, so I wasn’t expecting her to do a good job as Pepper Potts. Possibly it’s that she needs a character with a lot of reserve and a lot of pride? Either way, yep, that worked. And Terrence Howard is great as Stark’s other pal. I’ve literally never seen him before — no, I lie, I’ve seen Dead Presidents. But I don’t remember it. Anyway, he’s got kind of a thankless role, but I liked him holding down the acting fort while Tony’s jetting around with a mask on in foreign airspace.

OK, so great acting. Allow me to summarize the CGI with this: “Yep, the CGI isn’t getting in the way of the movie any more, good times.”

The script, well, I liked the dialogue. Unfortunately, I think the plot reveals that Favreau falls prey to one of the comic book movie traps; he doesn’t give the story enough weight. You kind of want to do something, even just a throwaway, to establish why Stark is willing to use the same battery for both his pacemaker and his powered armor. And it’s helpful to explain why modern surgery is unable to get shrapnel fragments out of someone, given that an electromagnet can hold ‘em back from penetrating the heart. Maybe turning up the power on the magnet would help?

I think it bugs me a little in retrospect — and it didn’t bug me during the movie at all — because you can maybe work around that stuff. Tony’s obviously too busy to get surgery, and he’s a stubborn bastard, so throw that line in there. The scene with Pepper swapping out fusion generators is a great scene, but it means that Tony clearly can build multiples of the thing, so there’s no reason not to put one (or two) in each suit of armor. I’m not a screenwriter, so I won’t come up with a glib fix. It’s just a plot hole of minor importance.

None of this kept me from thinking it’s in the top echelon of superhero movies. Again: best acting. And a good script, mostly, just with those few casual flaws.

Two of the fight scenes are excellent, and the rest are pretty good.

I mean, you’re not seeing it for the plot, which is light. You’re seeing it because it’s the first time Jet Li and Jackie Chan have been in a movie together, and despite the fact that you’re nervous about Rob Minkoff’s directing (I mean, The Lion King?), Woo-ping Yuen is a great action choreographer.

It works out pretty well. Michael Angarano is not a completely embarassing martial arts actor; in particular, during his one extended fight scene, he does a decent job of being outclassed by the Witch of the Wolves. Everyone else is solid, of course. The Jackie Chan/Jet Li fight scene is superb and just about as good as you’d have wanted it to be, even with both of them aging.

And as far as I can tell, all the Westerners involved have a fondness for Hong Kong martial arts flicks. Nobody’s trying to dress this up or make it deep — it’s just another kung fu movie with a big premise and some time travel. Exposition is for art movies. If you don’t know who the Eight Immortals are, you can either find out on your own or live without understanding some of the references.

So I liked it, even though the South Boston accents were abysmal.

Since childhood, Raz has lived behind the walls of a 3,400-year-old monastery, a sanctuary for scientists, philosophers, and mathematicians — sealed off from the illiterate, irrational, unpredictable “saecular” world that is plagued by recurring cycles of booms and busts, world wars and climate change. Until the day that a higher power, driven by fear, decides that only these cloistered scholars have the abilities to avert an impending catastrophe. And, one by one, Raz and his cohorts are summoned forth without warning into the Unknown.

Sad news.