This David Crennen GM’ed triumphant stumble through Star Wars parts the blast doors of reality with no regrets—heck, it might knock them off entirely. It is occasionally drunken, raucous, vulgar, absurd, and little screwed up in all the right ways. This is one of the earliest Fantasy Flight Star Wars actual plays and reveals the kind of zany storytelling enabled by the FFG narrative dice. Similar to Saving Throw‘s other long-running Actual Play, Crit Juice, you can support the players or GM through twitch and purchase rerolls and similar game benefits.
Multiple story-arcs have seen homicidal droids, ill-fated Alderaanian superlaser engineers, delusional Ewoks with Rancor pets, and numerous other beloved(?) characters wreak havoc across the galaxy. The player characters, almost all played by comedians, are well-embodied, highlighting their intentional personality quirks (defects?).
That being said, there is one reoccurring character who deserves explicit mention, and is a particular favorite of mine, and yet I hate the character with a passion, Gippy Bindoo. Gippy is a morbidly obese Mon Calamari diplomat from Dac. This character flowed through much of the series. A seemingly invincible, completely reprehensible, uncannily lucky, vile and morally bankrupt fish-man with more than 9 lives, who will either endear you to player Andrew W. Jones, or make you wonder what kind of twisted person invents such a character. The NPC’s are just as creative and bizarre, including a decidedly unpresidential Hutt, but as these writeups are meant to be spoiler-free, I’ll say no more.
The website for the game also has some resources if players would like to incorporate some of the elements from NTMTO, but most of it is from the early seasons. It also has some helpful guidance for new players to the system, including a bonus tutorial episode for new players.
This game, despite its comedic tone, is a great starting place to learn the Fantasy Flight narrative dice mechanics. You can fail with a triumph or succeed with a despair, and all the while the narrative evolves. Crennen, as his other GM’ing credits testify, is very talented at keeping the story going even with sponsored re-rolls and intoxication creating more chaos than just a surprise despair roll. GM’s who might be intimidated by the narrative dice system will find a great example of adaptive storytelling in NTMTO. What is truly amazing is that Crennen and crew make this Actual Play feel like Star Wars, and that is really the highest compliment I can offer.
Seasonal, on break. Roughly weekly release schedule when active.
3 hour recording length.
Explicit tag in iTunes, and it deserves it. Occasional overtalk and table noise.
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Active: 2014–present
Photo from the podcast feed for Never Tell Me the Odds and all rights reside with the original creator.