AW: Fury Road!
Ok, lets do this! Which characters are which playbooks, and why? Spoilers to be expected!
Furiosa: This is a tough one, but I’m going with the Touchstone – she’s got a vision of how things could be better and she’s working tirelessly towards it, bringing the others along with her.
Max: I’m going Gunlugger. He’s tough, he’s the baddest ass. He’s concerned with one thing only: survival. He’s “mad” because he’s opened his mind to the psychic maelstrom a few too many times, and now he can’t close it… hence the visions of those who’ve died.
Nux: The Driver – fairly obvious. He’s an expert driver, that’s what he does.
Immortan Joe – At first I thought Hardholder… but actually I think he’s a Hocus with an incredibly large cult. Look at the whole belief structure he’s embedded in the War Boys, and the way he presents himself as the people’s saviour. Total Hocus.
Capable: Skinner – I feel like when she has time and intimacy with Nux, she’s using Hypnotize to bring him on board with helping them escape
What do you folks think? 😀
Furiosa is a Battlebabe – she goes agro on cool and she brings the whole damn world down on herself.
Max is a Gunlugger with Driver moves – he knows where all the guns are, but he loves his car more than any person (Edited: I want him to be a Driver, but he’s just not. It’s weird.)
Nux is probably a Savvyhead. Gotta check that out a bit.
Imorten Joe – Hmm, maybe.
Angharad is a Skinner – check the moment she reveals herself and no one can do anything.
Capable is an Angel – the moment she uses Healing Touch on Nux is really cool.
Battlebabe was my second choice for Furiosa :)
Totally agree on Angharad!
My other pick for Touchstone was the character (whose name I don’t know) with the seeds in her bag. It’s her token of hope.
A touchstone has to irrevocably change the world. I don’t think Keeper of the Seeds (we can call her Keeper for short) qualifies, as the seeds just go with The Dag back to the Citadel.
Valkyrie could be a Chopper, i think, and the Vulvalini are her gang, but only if Valkyrie is a PC, which is highly questionable.
And I don’t think Imorten Joe is a PC, so it’s more interesting to me what threat-type he is. It’s sure tempting to make them all PCs, but that’s not even a reasonable game, and you have to look at who the characters with PC agency are. Those are clearly Furiosa, Max, Nux, and Splendid Angharad, possibly also Capable.
I was looking at it purely as playbooks if you wanted to play that character, but you’re absolutely right, some of them clearly aren’t PCs. I’d have to reread the threat types to have a go at what Joe really is within the film.
Immortan Joe is a slaver warlord.
The Vuvalini are family brutes. So are the brides.
The War Boys are cult brutes to Max, then hunting pack brutes thereafter.
The Bullet Farmer is a dictator warlord.
The People Eater is a cannibal grotesque, I bet.
The storm is a furnace landscape.
The canyon is a maze landscape.
The former green place is a prison landscape, as is the Citadel. Not a fortress! Look how much trouble people have getting out of the Citadel compared to getting back into it later.
The mountain bikers and the hedgehog people are brutes take your pick.
Joe’s two kids are both mutant grotesques.
Putting a pin in this discussion until after I see the movie!
I didn’t really feel that any of the Wives had enough agency/screentime to really count as PCs. I feel like this is a 3 protagonist movie- Max (Gunlugger), Furiosa (Battlebabe), and Nux (Driver)
Furiosa is definitely a Battlebabe, but she’s got a custom rig so maybe she used to be a Savvyhead or has a Workspace somewhere
Max could have been a Driver (there were 3 movies before this sequel/reboot) who has switched playbooks to Gunlugger, maybe he’s switched playbooks more than once but whatever the case he becomes a Gunlugger the moment he collects all of the war rig’s guns.
Immorten Joe is definitely a Hocus, but was he a Hardholder who switched to a Hocus or vice versa? He commands two settlements outside of his Citadel (the Bullet Farm and Gastown) so he clearly has been built up as a huge Threat or is a PC nearing the end of his career. Perhaps he was once a PC but the player retired their character as a threat rather than “to safety” – always a more interesting option for me when I’m a player
I kept thinking of Nux as a Tribal – not an official playbook, but it fits perfectly
Vincent Baker, they’re not ‘hedgehog people’, they are Echidna Folk! 🙂
I like the idea that Nux is a Driver that has taken ‘things speak’ from the Savvyhead playbook.
The never-ending Salt Flats are a (landscape) Furnace that reveal something to Max.
Joe’s familial grotesquerie is an Affliction (condition) that he is trying to remedy via seizing someone for leverage (over the affliction).
I can see Joe as a threat, but bear with me for a minute. Suppose he is a PC, hocus who’s acquired a holding seems appropriate. If he’s a PC then this is clearly the pinnacle of a major plot arc, possibly the end of the campaign so PvP is definitely appropriate. If that’s the case, then the setup with Furiosa taking the women away is clearly the result of the MC making a hard move against Joe.
I disagree that Max is the gun lugger, and if we’re just taking this movie into context (admittedly I’m doing this just because it’s been too long since I’ve watched the other 3) he’s definitely not a driver either. Why do I say this? Because then the MC would have been breaking the cardinal rule that you don’t take away the central part of what makes the character cool. Max loses his car right at the beginning and never gets it back. While he acquires guns later, it’s Furiosa’s arsenal and he even defers to her to use the big gun’s last shot. I’d say there’s a much stronger case for Furiosa being the gun lugger as even when he takes the guns away she’s still armed, that screams gun lugger to me.
Now, let’s go a little weird for a moment. Suppose for the start of the film Max is a faceless. Now maybe it’s just the face mask making me think that, but a lot of the moves totally fit for how he acts and what he’s able to do. The only thing that doesn’t fit is what happens after the mask comes off, because he certainly doesn’t lose any of his capabilities. So I’d say that’s when he’s taken the advance to change to another playbook, I’d argue battle babe for the reasons above.
I like the Faceless to Battlebabe arc!
That’s a very astute analysis Andrew Dacey, I like it!
Max lives in Charlize’s shadow in the movie, which is ironic since he’s the title character. I bet this movie is a setup for a new “Furiosa” franchise.
Yeah, I don’t buy that line. They are equals with mad skills and they find a way to work together. That she gives him the code to the kill-switches on her truck and trusts him with her life and her cargo, or that he backs her up in making the shot he can’t make with her big gun – those just make them co-badasses.
Furiosa is the Driver: My Other Car Is A War Rig.
If Max isn’t a Battlebabe, then he’s certainly taken the Visions of Death move and keeps rolling ‘6 or under’ through most of the movie.
Max certainly rolls Weird a lot.
I make Furiosa as a Chopper who has to Make an Example of her whole gang, then continues to assemble a new set: including the emancipated women, the survivors from the green place, and Max and Knux for a little while. The trust she inspires says Touchstone to me, too.
I’m with Max as a Gunlugger or Battlebabe.
I think Max just opens his brain whenever he wants an answer. His vision of the psychic maelstrom is just shown to us as audience is all.
Yeah. Touchstone can take another playbook move, right off the bat. Pack Alpha fits, so too does Dangerous and Sexy.
I guess this being the internet, and in the light of the recent controversy around Joe not being a PC, I should clarify that I absolutely agree Joe is hideous and I certainly wouldn’t want to be playing him… Like most roleplayers I just like fitting elements of movies I like to games I like. I went Hocus with Joe initially, not because I think playing a rapey slaver is totes cool, but because I was fascinated with what we see of his cult and the belief system implied by the film. I immediately connected cult = hocus without much reflection on the fact that that implies I think he’s an ok character to play as a PC. I don’t. Clearly he’s a threat not a PC. Please don’t hate me, internet friends.
Y’all are good by me Drew Harpunea
Hey Drew, I think Joe could totes be a Hardholder/Hocus…
I just think he doesn’t get enough screen time to keep his player happy! In the fiction he is peripheral, and the MC definitely makes Warlord Hard moves through him, an at the end looks at him through crosshairs.
I just watched the movie again tonight and I like the idea that Max is a Touchstone because everything he does changes those around him. Furiosa is a Battlebabe. Nux is a Driver. Immorten Joe is a Hocus/Hardholder, but is being played by a distracted player whose maybe not present during every session… or a player who has grown accustomed to letting their followers do everything for them.
I wouldn’t relegate Joe too much to NPC status because I’ve brought horrible psychopaths and compulsively murderous characters to the table before. It can be fun to play a villain now and again, that’s why so many actors love getting those roles.
Love Max as a Touchstone. Meg pretty much nails why Immorten fits better as a Front than as an NPC: (https://plus.google.com/u/0/111023399555426942490/posts/WD17UrzTJ6t). I see him as possibly a PC that has been through several transformations (Faceless, to Chopper, to Hardholder, to Hocus), and who has now been retired and is part of the ravening Apocalyptica that the others rebel against.
I agree that there’s no reason to dismiss Joe as a PC because he’s a horrible monster. Sometimes playing a horrible monster is exactly what you want with a character. One of the options that roleplaying gives us is the opportunity to explore dark subjects, distasteful characters, and play out things that you’d never do in real life. That doesn’t make you a bad person, sometimes it’s just what makes sense narratively or makes for an exciting conflict. Other times it’s simply the fact that roleplaying allows you to explore dark subject matter in a safe environment with friends. Assuming that you’re not crossing any lines or veils that the other players have then it’s harmless.
In a Sagas one shot I played a complete bastard. He was a total shit who used women and was grasping to power. Part of what made him fun to play was that one of the other players really enjoyed exploring issues with gender and was playing the Woman playbook as my character’s betrothed, and eventual wife. I knew that I could push her buttons by being a bastard misogynistic husband as the foil to her really pushing herself to be the dutiful wife. By playing the bastard we both got an incredible game experience and we trusted each other enough to push buttons and come right up to each other’s boundaries because we knew that either of us could call a line or veil and stop it.
I like to think that’s not the sort of person that I am in real life. But, playing that character was extremely enjoyable because he was narratively interesting. Part of this is the nature of a one shot and knowing that you should go for broke in every scene and push as hard as you can because there’s no time for a slow burn. But it also gave me a tremendously important place in the narrative. I was definitely the antagonist in the storyline. By the end of the session we narrated epilogues for our characters and I had everyone else at the table screaming “please tell me somebody is going to kill him” with huge smiles on their faces.
While I agree that Joe fits extremely well as a threat, I also do see that he could potentially be a PC and this is his character’s swan song. As I stated in an earlier post, losing his women can so easily be interpreted as being an MC hard move to create the setup. I do agree that in the film though he doesn’t have a lot of agency and also doesn’t seem all that involved. So from that angle a threat makes more sense, or you just accept that maybe he was content to be a little more removed as his agents acted for him and he watched how his whole empire crumbled.