There are tables full of roleplayers eager to cast fireball; it is possibly the most iconic Dungeons & Dragons spell, a rite of passage in gaming. [Role] playing with fire gives narrative impetus to act out the destructive impulse to burn it all down. In exploring that urge, some games might take inspiration from Stephen King’s Firestarter, the 1980 novel, Firestarter, the 1984 movie with Drew Barrymore, Firestarter: Rekindled, the 2002 Sci Fi Channel miniseries, and/or the 2022 remake, Firestarter. Specifically, the protagonist of each incarnation of King’s tale, Charlie McGee, the pyrokinetic eight year old who inspired aspects of Eleven from Stranger Things. GMs can delve into the darker aspects of a world where the protagonist’s thoughts and emotions explode into flames. Against powered children, Storytellers can exploit a doppelganger of the series antagonists, The Shop, those bent on controlling the firestarter to program her as their weapon. Children amid a flame war has the potential to be a white hot concept for your gaming table. What is the right RPG engine to fuel that conflict? Enter Onyx Path Publishing’s Deviant: The Renegades. In this three-part series, we’ll look at inspiration and engine, how to game Firestarter. So, let’s light’em up and talk about how Firestarter would work for tabletop.
NO OFFICIAL FIRESTARTER RPG
To be crystal clear, there is not an official Firstarter RPG. This article discusses how you could bring the concept to a tabletop game such as Deviant: The Renegades, but that doesn’t mean there is an official product for that system or any at the time of this writing.
STEPHEN KING’S FIRESTARTER: THE CONCEPT
At its core, Stephen King’s story is about an eight year old girl with psychic powers being hunted, hurt, and manipulated by adults until she realizes the power that they want is hers and hers alone. The heat of her power makes them regret attempting to control her. Stories of powerful children fighting dark forces can be seen in Stephen King’s IT, Stranger Things, Harry Potter, Shazam, and the entire Kids on Bikes subgenre.
Wronged by adults, these powerful children fight back. The concept is fertile ground for storytelling. Everyone was a child and most children rebel against authority. Tabletop offers a battleground from which players and the GM might explore the concept of powered children fighting against a dark cabal. As a Storyteller, the GM merely needs to make that authority evil in order to give the players an enemy to righteously smite. Using Firestarter as inspiration, your campaign comes with a ready made concept (psychic powered children born of the parents injected with Lot Six), origin (the experimental drug, Lot Six, created by Doctor Joseph Wanless, Doctor of Psychology for The Shop), antagonist (The Shop), and motivation (The Shop seeing their experiment through to completion).
FIRESTARTER (2022)
***SPOILERS***
Firestarter (2022) generated a number of pithy headlines lambasting the latest adaptation of Stephen King’s novel.
“Firestarter, barely a flicker to start, burns out quickly” – AV Club
“Weekend Box Office: Firestarter Flames Out With $4 Million” – Forbes
“Firestarter Review: A Horror Remake With No Spark” – The New York Times
“Firestarter Isn’t a Stephen King Movie. It’s a Four-Alarm Disaster” – Rolling Stone
“Firestarter Is a Sign That Zac Efron Needs to Call His Agent. Immediately.” – The Daily Beast
“Stephen King’s Firestarter Burns Out With Dismal Opening Weekend Box Office” – MovieWeb
“Firestarter Undercooks Stephen King’s Scorcher [The Losers’ Club Podcast]” – Bloody Disgusting
Are these reviews right? Yes, and no. The film is a mixed bag of dull, not bad dull, but not memorable, either. John Carpenter’s soundtrack is excellent, a transformative callback to the classic era of Stephen King. The camera work is engaging, telling the story visually. The performances are strong. In fact, Ryan Kiera Armstrong as an eleven year old Charlie McGee was a fantastic choice. Her prior work in the tenth season of American Horror Story: Double Feature as Alma Gardner stole that season. Here, she’s put against veterans and proves to be a talented terror. Zac Efron and Sydney Lemmon look right as Charlie’s young, hip parents. Kurtwood Smith’s brief scene as Dr. Joseph Wanless suggested his character might be part of a hoped for but unlikely sequel. Finally, casting Rainbird as a First Nation actor after two turns of the character played by Caucasians is, well, at least an Indigenous Canadian got the paycheck, for once. Throughout the versions of Rainbird’s character, he’s not a positive portrayal of Native Americans, but this version is less problematic as Michael Greyeyes delivers an outstanding performance making the most of his screen time.
The production values range from great to confusing. The family is on the run living off of the cash ($100 a session in which he “pushes” the customer to be a better person) Zac Efron’s Andy earns. Yet they live in a multi-room house that is nicely furnished and wallpapered in framed family photos. The set looks good, but it doesn’t convey the story behind these characters, it doesn’t speak to flight and sacrifice, all for Charlie. The final fight is in a building made of poured concrete. It suggests a set built for epic pyrotechnics in the closing scenes. Yet, not so much. That’s because in a movie titled Firestarter, fire is rare. The movie commits a crime against the spectacle that cinema should be, this violation born of being a Blumhouse production. The studio is known for their tight budgets and you will see this in every scene where nothing is on fire. For the story of a pyrokinetic child, fire was too expensive for this film, making it as rare on camera as an adult with good intentions is in this tale. The few times you see flames, with one notable exception, they’re in a tight shot, almost zeroed in on the actor’s face. It can be assumed that wide shots of flame and destruction would cost too much, so they were avoided. As a spectacle released to theaters, this movie suffered for want of a spark, fire, flames, and explosions.
Storywise, its greatest misdemeanors involve the third act. The plot deviated from the novel and prior movies leading to a difficult to accept ending. That ending robs Charlie of her agency and diverges from the story in a big way. Worse still, the story closes on an illogical final shot that left me – Let’s do it – cold.
Despite these problems, the actors brought solid work. The camera has a position in this movie and tells a story. The character’s actions suggest that there is a wider world of powered children and adults that could have fueled a cinematic universe.
That said, the problems could be distilled down to: a lack of fire and poor character motivations at the conclusion. The rest of the movie stretched from cookie cutter to fine. If you watch Firestarter (2022), I doubt you’ll hate it, I didn’t. It has missteps, but it’s not quite the trash other reviews make it out to be. It’s just there. It’s the type of movie you’ll barely remember in a few months. It feels like a well shot, well acted TV movie instead of a theatrical release. That said, if you catch in on Peacock or another streaming service, you’re not going to regret watching it.
FLAME ON
In the next installment, it’s time to talk about the system I’d recommend for roleplaying Firestarter: Onyx Path Publishing’s Deviant: The Renegade. I’ll talk about how the game works and how it adapts powers like Charlie’s while generating antagonists like The Shop.
Egg Embry participates in the OneBookShelf Affiliate Program, Noble Knight Games’ Affiliate Program, and is an Amazon Associate. These programs provide advertising fees by linking to DriveThruRPG, Noble Knight Games, and Amazon.
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