When in China...

While I may not have been impressed with the movie as a whole, I did really enjoy the character of the China Girl. One of my disappointments with the movie was that we didn't get enough of her.

Now, if you own Adventures in Oz: Fantasy Roleplaying Beyond the Yellow Brick Road, you might be thinking of making a character like China Girl in your own campaign. Unfortunately, AiO doesn't make it easy for you. It's not impossible at all, but it would require juggling things around a little bit. You could use the Crafted Person template, then reduce Size down to 1 and use those 2 points to buy Basic Skills and Traits. Or start with the Small Animal template and spend 1 of your points to buy off No Hands.

Or you can use this shiny new template to create China People or a number of other curious Oz inhabitants.

Toy

Size: 1

Athletics: 2
Awareness::3
Brains: 1
Presence: 3
Sneaking: 2
Wits: 1

Traits: Crafted

Customization Notes: Some toys are made of materials that have a hard time standing up to the rigors of adventuring, so consider taking a Weakness to represent that. China People would have a Weakness to Blunt Injury (Common, Damaging). A pastry citizen of Bunbury might have a Weakness to Getting Soggy (Common, Damaging). High Presence Skill and Presence Specialties are common among toy characters, whether it's the "lovely appearance" of a China Princess or a living toy bear who is "soft and cuddly." Sneaking skill and specialties can also be used when a character is likely to be mistaken for a mundane, non-living item.

Sample Character:
Name: China Girl
Template: Toy
Size: 1

Basic Skills

Athletics: 3
Awareness: 3
Brains: 2
Presence: 4 (cute little girl)
Sneaking: 3
Wits: 3

Traits: Crafted, Weakness: Blunt Injury (Damaging, Common)

Friends List: Oscar Diggs

Bonus question: What do you think of the Toy template? Should I have thought of this years ago and put it in the book?

My review of Oz the Great and Powerful

Well, I finally got around to watching Oz the Great and Powerful. It was visually stunning, I'll grant that. But I can't really say I liked it.

The opening black & white sequence is supposed to introduce us to Oscar Diggs back home in Kansas, a con man and philanderer. We are also introduced to the actors who will be portraying CG characters later. Zach Braff is in there a lot, while Joey King only gets a brief moment. She could have used more development, as her one line as a human seemed kind of random to me.

I don't know if this makes James Franco a good actor or a bad actor, but I found it hard to dislike him. He struck me less as a conniving con artist than as a politician who believes everything he says, at least for the moment he says it.

Once he arrives in Oz, his adventures mirror Dorothy's fairly closely. The first person he meets is a good witch then he goes to the Emerald City but can only get what he wants once he kills a Wicked Witch. Even the Dark Forest scene is reminiscent of the forbidding domain of the Wicked Witch of the West from the classic movie.

Then we get to the first big plot twist. This Wicked Witch is revealed to be a hot blonde named Glinda. And partly because she's hot and partly because we in the audience all know who it is, she survives the encounter and the plot then becomes one of the fairly standard Hollywood plots: Unlikely hero must learn to face his destiny.

One of the big conceits of the film is that the Wizard's prestidigitation wins out over real magic. And looking at how the magic is presented, it's not that hard. Because most of the magic that the witches use in the film is either zapping something with some kind of energy and flying. Which means that the Wizard's illusions automatically win because they cannot be blasted or flown at.

A couple of characters and their abilities were presented inconsistently in the film. Just about everyone who has seen the movie noticed that Glinda and the Wicked Witch of the West will sometimes fly with a prop (bubble or broom) and sometimes without, with no real reason given. But also we have a very touching scene with the Wizard helping the China Girl get ready for bed (implying that she does sleep) while a later scene has her walking around the Poppy Field with no effect at all.

Finley and the China Girl (who gets no name beyond that) were overall fun characters, but were not really part of the story. Finley seemed mostly there to provide Oscar Diggs with someone to explain things to. China Girl is there to be cute and fragile.

I was really disappointed with the Wicked Witch of the West once she finally appeared. They used a lot of prosthetics to change the shape of the actress' face and the end result only really worked from a couple of angles. While we do see her vulnerability to water, it's never explained. Is it a general witch thing, or just her? Because it's definitely not part of the Wicked Witch transformation.

It's a good mindless fun, but make sure you turn your brain off for the whole movie.

Adventures in Oz the Great and Powerful

So Oz the Great and Powerful is coming out in a little under 2 weeks. A new big-screen Oz adventure. Top Hollywood talent both in front of and behind the cameras.

Unlike Disney's previous attempt at an Oz movie (Anyone remember Return to Oz?), this one is trying to emulate MGM's Wizard of Oz. As a fan of the novels, I really liked Return to Oz since it was an adaptation of the next two books in the Oz series. But fans of the classic movie were disappointed that it didn't maintain the same tone as the previous film. Apparently, Disney has learned its lesson by aiming for MGM fans this time around.

Though the tricky thing is that they can't get too close. The movie's copyrights are held by Warner Brothers and they're not too friendly with Disney at the moment. In fact, I'm inclined to think that my copyright fight with Zazzle was part of the backdraft from these media giants sparring.

So Disney has tried to lean on public domain sources for inspiration. But just inspiration, it seems. While I was pleased to note that at least one movie trailer showed the Dark Forest and the China Country. I recognized them instantly from the novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz as places that Dorothy encountered on her way to Glinda's Palace in the Quadling Country. (Fun fact: The Cowardly Lion went on to rule the Dark Forest as King of Beasts as a result of that adventure.) But when I saw this map of Oz put out to promote the new movie, I found out that they had been moved to the Munchkin Country, which was somehow on the left side of the map.

While I'm disappointed that they didn't go for something more faithful to the original novels, I do understand why they did it. By having their own version of Oz, they have stronger intellectual property protections than if they had used public domain sources or Warner Brothers copyrights. Just like Ruby Slippers are distinct to the MGM movie, China Munchkins are clearly Disney.

Though I'm sure you didn't come here just to read my tedious explanations of copyrights. So here are some Great and Powerful Oz goodies for you.

If you want to see what a humbug Wizard might look like in the AiO rules, I already did that and you can find it here.

And a special magic item in honor of the movie:

Glinda's Travel Bubble

Power: Summon/Travel (3)
Scope: Self/person/object (0)
Ritual: Simple (0)
Item: Single Use (-2)
Effect Power: 1

The subject of this spell is transported via bubble to a destination determined by the caster/creator.

Notes: For some reason, every time I write up one of Glinda's spells, it comes out as a magic item. But then, she is the Good Witch of the South, so between her magical resources and healthy supply of Oz Points, she can throw around a lot of oomph fairly readily.