Hi, intrepid heroes! 

We took an adventuring party to Dimension 20: Viva Más Vegas, a live tabletop role playing game (TTRPG) show from the world of A Starstruck Odyssey from Dropout.tv. This one-night-only one-off had us reuniting with The Gunner Channel, the absolute wurst of them all. Taking the stage for Viva Más Vegas were Emily Axford as Sundry Sidney, Ally Beardsley as Margaret Encino, Brian Murphy as Big Barry Syx, Zac Oyama as Norman "The Skipper" Takamori, Siobahn Thompson as Riva, and Lou Wilson as Gunthrie "Gunnie" Miggles-Rashbax, all under the watchful eye of Game Master Brennan Lee Mulligan. 

A Starstruck Odyssey utilizes Star Wars 5th edition and is a narrative gamified adaptation of the Starstuck comic series co-written by Elaine Lee, Game Master Brennan Lee Mulligan's mother. The only season we've gotten of A Starstruck Odyssey aired on Dropout in 2022, and since then we haven't gotten to catch up with The Gunner Channel. We got to meet up with the crew on the casino floor in Más Vegas, the desert oasis in the lava world of Lavada for the Viva Más Vegas live show and here's everything you missed. 

Our adventuring party, minus Rivas, are all on The Wurst when they're asked by Plug Strutt to represent Plug's Butt-Ugly Stuff Hut in the Más Vegas Battle of the Brands. The gang's almost all here. They just have to pick up Riva, who is currently serving as a senator to Aguatunisia. They're quick to accept the invitation to join them in the Battle of the Brands and declares it "Slippery Puppet 2: Electric Boogaloo." 

On board The Wurst, the adventuring party stocked up on some butt-ugly stuff like crystal cordyceps and the better battle bot, all allegedly op items for any upcoming battles (cough cough). Almost immediately upon landing, Margaret Encino declares she wants to go shopping for some skincare. Boss babes need some self care every now and again. 

Suddenly, The Gunner Channel runs into Bambi Leroux who is so happy they're here. She tells the group she's up about 500,000 credits from their three slot casino, which sends Margaret Encino into an absolute spiral. She  runs to grab their remaining money from an ATM to protect it from being drained.

Thankfully, Barry Syx has a fantastic idea to get their money back- they just need one big win. Barry decides they could double what they have left if they put it all on black. Sundry Sidney reaches out to Margaret to let her know they have a solution and everything's going to be okay. Margaret, meanwhile, has run across the casino to an ATM to pull all their money out. Unfortunately, Barry beat her to it and had withdrawn everything, plus some. Barry Syx overdrew the account and then tells Margaret to meet them at the roulette table. 
From here, we had a group perception check where Siobahn hit the first natural 20 of the game. With any rolled twenty, we were delighted with a live action Loose Duke played by Dimension 20 production designer extraordinaire, Rick Perry. Loose Duke responds to crits with a t-shirt cannon (obviously).

Since Siobahn rolled a 20, Riva sees Crunch Moon-Jones talking about a gladiator from Jib-Job, saying they're winning the Battle of the Brands. 

Back at the roulette table, Barry gets excited about seeing a third color on the wheel- green. Gunnie tells Barry to go all in on green and the entire MGM Garden Arena started chanting "green means go!" Funny enough, Brennan Lee Mulligan in real life did not know that there is green on a roulette table and thought Murph was messing with him. Barry Syx says that he really feels like everything is going to roll up from here and pushes all of their money forward, all on green. In real life, a win on green in most American casinos is a 35X multiplier (although, who's to say what happens in Lavada).

Brennan had Murph do this one in the Box of Doom, naturally. He set the difficulty level to be a 13 or higher with one D20 or two D20 with each die being 8 or higher. Murph took the single dice option, because as he said, "all I need is one." He pulled a green 20, threw, and it landed on 3. 

Margaret Encino finally catches up and makes it to the roulette table and finds out they lost every penny they had betting on green. She is in a full fugue state. Skip decides to pull some cash to ease Margaret's panic attack and gives her 210K credits he pulled from a debt machine that had a cartoon loan shark on it. Gunnie brings the energy up by saying they should bet the money on themselves for Battle of the Brands. However, they have good odds based on the last time so they need to do something to hedge their bets. 

The best idea they had was to start a rumor that their entire squad got terrible diarrhea and will be fighting awfully tonight. Sundry Sidney shoots Gunnie with shit on his butt to make it look like he shit his pants, delivering evidence for the rumor. She then tells casino security that all of The Gunner Channel have grumbly tummies and pays them to spread the word. Margaret is warmed by the camaraderie and gives the team a pep talk. Before the battle, Margaret gives them a pep talk (aka delivers the battle ability “sage advice”) as she says she believes in everyone. 

As the battle approaches, the event announcer reminds the venue that The Gunner Channel has terrible diarrhea and keeps shitting themselves. Margaret reminds everyone to make stomach ache noises around other people to really sell the shitting themselves story. 

They wander around the casino a bit and see Sadie Zed at the pool talking to some absolute gooners from the Pleasure Putty. Riva takes it upon herself to intervene and convinces Sadie Zed to get blackout drunk on bellinis. As she does, Sadie Zed stands, declares, "I'm getting a fucking bellini!" and runs to the bar. The Pleasure Putty gooner reveals that they're actually working with Zvoon, who is very proud to be their own boss. 

The Gunner Channel finds out that Jib-Job has a massive job listing for freelancers to fight in the Battle of the Brands, revealing they're hiring gig workers to fight to the death. The group decides they'll offer a unionization opportunity that includes pet insurance to lure the freelancers away from fighting. Margaret Encino scrambles to set up the benefits package and this process calls for the second Box of Doom roll. Brennan asked for three checks from Ally to implement the benefits package. Ally passed the first two checks and then we very dramatically hit an intermission.  

Something lovely we saw during intermission was a cosplay cam (in place of a kiss cam, or even worse, a Coldplay cam). We've got some highlights of the cosplay on our Youtube Shorts and Instagram so you can live vicariously through us. 

After a short rest, Ally had one last roll to lock in pet insurance and immediately buffed it by rolling a 2. Instead of sending an email outlining the benefits package, Margaret Encino tried to send an email that ends with the message "we die tomorrow, winky face" to every Jib-Job freelancer. Margaret gets a call from the casino's CEO stating that they monitored that message and she can't just send an email threatening people by saying they're going to die tomorrow. They tell Margaret her email is shut off and the message isn't going out. 

The Gunner Channel go to their bestie, Bambi, and ask about placing a bet on themselves. She agrees to place the 200,000 credit bet on The Gunner Channel to win, but warns them it's a lot easier to lose than to win. She does admit, though, that she heard they've been shitting themselves all day so their win seems like a real long shot. 

Riva and Sydney start getting the Kublacaine out and get really really ripped. Sydney has a bunch of Kublacaine and throws it in the air and then shoots it so it pours over them like confetti. 

The Battle of the Brands finally begins in the Kubla-Cola Gladiatorial Arena. The announcer welcomes their returning champions, The Gunner Channel. The intrepid heroes enter the battle arena and start yelling at their competition. Sydney yells at others to get stuffed. The Kublacaine begins to hit and everyone's energy rises just as they begin to roll for initiative. 

Sydney Sunday rolled a 23, Margaret Encino rolled a 21, Norman Takamori rolled a 7, Riva rolled a 15, Gunnie rolled a 10, and Barry got a 4 from a nat 1. He took that one pretty hard to the ego.

The Erotic Avenger, Zvoon, enters the arena on behalf of Pleasure Putty and is met with boos. They simply state that the crowd's boos mean nothing. 

On behalf of the Handi Andi corporation, several Welfare Whitneys enter the arena. 

When it's turn for Jib-Job's team to enter the arena, Crunch Moon-Jones deploys a live message to all Jib-Job users in the area. It offers them time and a quarter to fight in the gladiator arena now, and several freelancers stand to enter the fight. One freelancer in a cardigan figures he'll join the fight for the extra pay and just stand in the back. Barry Syx hates him and promises to kill him personally. He asks Bambi to set up a prop bet on him killing this one specific man, Frank Bevins. 

Sydney throws a stun grenade at the Whitneys, the Erotic Avenger, and the Jib-Job freelancers while telling them, "you should see our benefits package, it's stunning." She also deploys detonators throughout the battlefield and absolutely wrecks the enemy NPCs. All the Jib-Jobbers alone take 80 damage and Brennan jokingly walks off stage in defeat. 

Bambi is beside herself impressed with The Gunner Channel. 

Margaret Encino goes to a Whitney who's on the ground and tries to convince the android to jailbreak herself, but Ally rolled a one, so this situation is cooked. In response to a nat 1, Rick Perry's Loose Duke returned, handing out kitchen tools. It's here where Ally Beardsley called out Loose Duke for looking like a live action Crash Bandicoot, and we all collectively couldn't un-see it. 

With that nat 1, Margaret goes to the android and just lays down next to her and plays with her hair. 

The Skipper uses his turn to move closer to Zvoon while remaining hidden. On his hide throw, Zac rolled a nat 20 (prompting the t-shirt cannon from Loose Duke again), so he's able to hide perfectly. Zac took this to heart and hid under the desk while rolling to attack Zvoon for 24 damage. 

Zvoon goes after the gang and casts a spell, but Riva is able to use a counterspell to deflect the attack on the group. As Riva does this, they go into Zvoon's mind and say  "no one respects you." Riva attacks Zvoon and Barry ends up getting jumped by the freelancers. 

On Gunnie's turn, he uses his jetpack to set off an explosion to save Barry from the Jib-Jobbers. Gunnie yells "get off my friend!" as he tries to help. Margaret is attacked, but Barry stands in front of her and takes that damage on her behalf. All this damage causes Barry to rage on his turn, and he slides on his sunglasses to get in the zone. As Murph put on his glasses, every other hero also put on their in the zone glasses and in that moment, they were family.

With Big Barry Syx on the offensive, the arena roared in a collective chant of "Barry! Barry! Barry!" Barry shoots his blaster cannon and spreads out some damage, but also, specifically, absolutely eviscerates Frank Bevins. With that, the prop bet is fulfilled and they know at least one of their bets is paying out. Now that the ball is rolling up,  Aurora Nebbins gets a turn and takes out Zvoon. 
The turn cycle comes back to Sydney who tears ass across the battlefield. She ends up liberating the Whitneys by explaining that she's found, uh, compatibility with Big Barry Nyne and that compatibility makes her finish every night. This causes the Whitneys to jailbreak themselves and ask Sydney if this Barry Nyne guy has a brother.

Margaret Encino takes on the Jib-Jobbers to get them to stop fighting. In the box of doom, Ally rolls a 19 which lets the email with the union benefits package be released. The Jib-Jobbers read about how good the pet insurance package is and stop fighting. A loose spear is thrown through Crunch Moon-Jones, killing him. 

The Gunner Channel is declared the winners of the Battle of the Brands. Plug is so pleased but is also very annoyed they noticeably didn't use the crystal cordyceps and the better battle bot. He says that's fine though, because "they were mostly bad." Bambi catches up and is so happy to tell them that the Frank Bevins bet made 20,000,000 credits and kisses Barry Syx on the mouth (right in front of Plug!). 

And THAT is everything you missed at Viva Más Vegas. Were there any surprises from this Starstruck one-shot? Let us know in the comments!