Title: Never Stop Blowing Up
GM: Brennan Lee Mulligan
Players: Ally Beardsley (they/them) as Russell Feeld (he/him) / Jennifer Drips (she/her). Ify Nwadiwe (he/him) as Wendell Morris (he/him) / Vic Ethanol (he/him). Isabella ‘Izzy’ Roland (she/her) as Paula Donvalson (nee Buocadifuoco) (she/her) / Jack Manhattan (he/him). Rekha Shankar (she/her) as Usha Rao (she/her) / G13 (he/him). Alex Song-Xiao (they/them) as Liv Skyler (she/her) / Kingston (he/him). Jacob Wysocki (he/him) as Andy ‘Dang’ Litefoot (he/him) / Greg Stocks (he/him).
Streaming Service: Dropout

If you missed it, catch our review for the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth episodes.

Overwhelmed from abandoning his friends and making a run for it in the last episode, Dang enters the local radio tower as he wrestles with his turbulent emotions. Following the cables, he meets Wolfman Ann. She sees right through his Greg Stocks shell, recognizing he’s from the real world as Barsimmeon dragged her into the action flick back in ’94. However, she also reveals that part of the reason she stayed was a fatal diagnosis.

Dang uses Wolfman Ann’s radio station, normally used to traffic weapons, to call out all listeners to join him in an attack on the FBI.

Meanwhile, at the FBI headquarters, Agent Haldwell interrogates G13, who offers him nothing. When the hacker, who has completely taken over Usha, refuses to help, Hardwell sticks him in a straitjacket. Kingskin is just as unhelpful. Frustrated by the two, Agent Hardwell throws them in the same cell, leaving them to stew in hopes one will talk.

The rest of the group break into the FBI. Dang’s radio callout helps, drawing a crowd of punks. Explosions abound. Some bad rolls nearly derail the crew. Luckily, they manage to turn it around as the rioters distract the FBI agents.

After a heart-to-heart, Dang climbs the radio tower, leaping out and squirrel-suiting back to his friends. Breaking through the glass into the FBI headquarters, Dang comes to his uncle’s rescue, distracting the agents. Whatever spy gadget we might’ve believed he’d pull out, nobody watcher or at that table ever expected him to succeed in a roll to have a knockout fart.

As the uncle and nephew unite, Liv and G13 break out. The immediate difference personality between G13 and Usha raises Liv’s suspicions. Unfortunately, no roll occurs.

Agent Haldwell meets his end in his own piss, skyrocketing to the top of the grossest Dimensions 20 deaths, but that’s a listicle for another day. With that, our awesome action heroes reunite, leaving an immeasurable scar on the psyches of everyone they encountered along the way. More importantly, Russell sussed out G13, forcing the hacker to reveal himself. When attempts fail to free Usha, Paula knocks G13 out.

Brennan, who normally serves as a voice of reason, continues his payback tour, rolling a Nat20 to force Alex to act on a suggestion that Kingskin try to crush G13’s head just enough to force-hack his brain and give Usha control again. After what happened with K2 in Fantasy High: Junior Year, Brennan deserves a bit of mayhem.

With 13 tokens sacrificed by our players, Liv brings back Usha.

Highlights

Throughout the show, the connection between characters and their action alteregos remained pivotal, but Liv’s ties to Kingskin made little sense. She stole in her introduction; however, that doesn’t make her equivalent to a mob boss. Agent Haldwell clarifies things, revealing Steven ‘Kingskin’ Skin was a prodigious student like Liv with numerous opportunities. Kingskin tossed his opportunities aside. Despite Agent Haldwell insisting Kingskin threw his life away, Liv realizes her action alter ego is happy with his choices.

From the moment Rekha revealed G13’s hacking of Usha, we all waited for the fallout. If G13 had managed to hide longer, the building tension could’ve been incredible, but as amazing as Ally rolled to have Russell outwit the hacker, the fallout was lackluster. Rekha is a master of comedic dialogue, yet she fell a bit flat, possibly as she wasn’t prepared or expecting her mind-blowing plot twist to be so quickly discovered. Alternatively, the ridiculousness of the preceding scenes could have the hard switch to action thriller harder to manage. Either way, an animation would’ve helped.

Rekha recovered quickly. Her decision to lean into comedy by emphasizing the incel side of G13 smoothed the reveal a bit. Still, it was underwhelming.

On the plus side, between Ally’s incredible rolling streak sending them up to a D20 for wit and Izzy’s streak from a D4 to a D10 on brawl, G13’s reveal helped level up our players.

Final Score (4 out of 5 Stars)

In the last Adventuring Party, our players purchased a suite of abilities to turn ones from critical failures into possible success, and they needed it. The back-to-back ones rolled by Ally were absolutely painful, and while they shifted a few to work for them, it didn’t exactly go to plan as they burned through those abilities in the first half of the episode.

Absolute anarchy tore through this whole episode. Jacob Wysocki is right at the head of it, inspiring a riot and then asking to sedate a number of agents via flatulence. From drowning an FBI agent in piss to a literal gas attack, we’re gone a bit off the deep end this week.

In a single episode, we lost one of the main villains and a huge plot twist. However, the Bustin’ Make Me Feel Good collection will ramp up the insanity, allowing Nat20s to be rewarded with advantages, raising the floor and exploding everyone’s lowest die, and even 60 seconds as DM.

There’s no way to tell what’s next. If you have any predictions, tropes or parody cameos, let us know in the comments below or go over to our Discord channel to join the conversation.

Featured Image: Dimension 20

The Boss Rush Podcast: The Flagship Podcast of Boss Rush Media and the Boss Rush Network

The Boss Rush Podcast – The Boss Rush Podcast is the flagship podcast of Boss Rush Media and the Boss Rush Network. Each week, Corey, Stephanie, LeRon, and their friends from around the internet come together with other creators, developers, and industry veterans to talk about games they’ve been playing, discuss video game and entertainment based topics, and answer questions solicited on social media and the community Discord. 

New episodes of The Boss Rush Podcast release every Monday morning on YouTube and all major podcast applications like Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Patreon supporters gain one week early access. 

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