Tim Platt's Yuletide Kombat Family Holiday Special

A Christmas-themed game run by Tim Platt. It uses his own system that was not given to the players beforehand; they were simply asked to each choose two characters from various Christmas movies and stories and to assign them special moves. They are pitted againts each other in Christmas combat, mimicking games such as Super Smash Brothers and Marvel vs Capcom. The system and setting has become an annual tradition for the show.

## Summary

Tim narrates the story of the devil being kicked out of heaven. He smuggled several holy virtues with him, knowing they would be corrupted into sins, but chose to bring Christmas with him in its pure form. His wife Pandora releases it while in Hell, and it escapes while disguised as capitalistic greed. The fires of Hell burn it into its essence, and to this day, Christmas-themed combatants do battle in Yuletide Kombat. With some of the Christmas spirit in all of them, they hope to beat it out of each other enough to restore Christmas to its original form.

The first battle takes place during the scene from the Peanuts Christmas special. John Lenon on his last day alive and Arnold Swartzinegar from Jingle All The Way (played by Branson)  face off with Dominic the Donkey and the boy from The Christmas Shoes (Joe). Arnold performs a kamikaze attack off the stage with Dominic, but Dominic is saved by Snoopy flying his doghouse as the Christmas Shoes kid finishes off John Lenon. The screen reads “You Win!” before being replaced by “Yuletide.” Branson confesses that he has to go, winking at the camera as he hints that he is especially busy delivering presents this time of year (wink).

Ali and Carly face off in the next round. It pits Herbie the misfit elf and David, the prime minister from Love Actually played by Hugh Grant (Carly) vs Gizmo the mogwai and Lucy van Pelt, battling inside Santa’s sack. Gizmo's rules of the gremlins leave Herby struggling to keep up but David uses his political powers to declare war on the opposing team. Lucy’s manipulations cannot stop him in time and she’s quickly captured by the British army.

The final battle pits Jacob Marley from A Christmas Carol and the Hess Truck driven by Kevin McCalister (controlled by Christopher Hastings) against Harry the burglar from Home Alone and a fusion of cars made of Lexus December to Remember sales event (Taylor Moore), battling it out on the bridge where George Bailey from It’s A Wonderful Life and several other men are talked out of jumping by their guardian angels. The vehicular fighters slug it out until Taylor uses his power to transport them to a new arena: the party from the beginning of The Nutcracker. Harry uses his breaking and entering powers to appear inside the Hess truck and strangles Kevin, but Tim rules that no child is without a guardian in this setting. Joe is given The Nutcracker to leap to Kevin’s aid while Gizmo arrives to raise chaos of his own. The battle rages until a returning Marley summons the three spirits of Christmas to pummel Harry into submission and eliminate all the remaining combatants.

## Trivia

* Tim Platt ran the game for players at Gencon 2022 using premade characters. These included the Sugar Plum Fairy, Mrs. Cratchit, and The Leg Lamp. Their character sheets are posted on Tim's Twitter account.
* The following year, Tim ran a similar game of Yuletide Kombat Family: CHEF EDITION. This included a cooking element, where the survivors would compete in a cooking competition using items they gathered during their fights.

## Links

Episode: https://rudetalesofmagic.simplecast.com/episodes/yuletide-kombat-family-XNqKE\_yW