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All I need are three sequences from Tyler Perry’s “Madea Goes to Jail” to explain fully why his cinematic universe is god awful.

The first: Madea being pursued by the police

It is only by the grace of Madea’s invulnerable plot armour that she hasn’t been locked up for 10 years in this campaign. Between driving cars through buildings and carrying firearms that don’t belong to her… she’s not what you might call a model citizen.

But this time they’ve got her. A red hot police chase has her cornered and arrested. This jig is up, you might think. But you forget about the plot armour Madea has. Wear this and you’ll gain:

+20 Strength

+20 Defense

+20 Intelligence

+20 Charisma

+20 Wisdom

+20 Luck

It’s god armour if you ask me, but Tyler Perry allows it. And that +20 luck stat really comes in handy, allowing her to evade the law since she wasn’t read her Miranda rights.

Just in case you don’t know, this doesn’t work in real life. The only thing that will happen is that the prosecution can’t use anything you say as evidence in court. You’d still get arrested for whatever you’ve done and assaulting a police officer. But Madea’s charisma stat is so high that they don’t even mention that she attacked one of them.

Second: Madea commits more crimes in public

Even with all of the intelligence and wisdom one person can obtain via plot armour, Madea still does foolish things. She gets her parking spot stolen by an implausibly  rude woman. But it all makes sense when you see her get out the car. Her race is not unlike a high elf, or put simply, white. Her class: possibly a bard or druid, but it’s not made clear. What is made clear are some of her specific stats, which include:

+8 Intelligence

-10 Charisma

-20 Luck

And we know all who share her race have these stats applied to them:

-10 Strength

-10 Defense

-5 Charisma

-5 Wisdom

+10 Luck

Not the greatest stats if you ask me. But it doesn’t matter, since they don’t actually engage in combat. Madea decides to use her other maxed out stats to take care of the situation. With her impossibly high charisma, luck, and strength, she manages to hijack some sort of forklift from the construction  workers. Her charisma is so high in fact, that they can’t even be seen trying to get it back from her. And her great intelligence allows her to actually be able to used the machine properly without any training. Astounding.

Needless to say, Madea pushed the boundaries so much that not even her maxed luck stat could save her from jail. But her charisma stat allowed her once again not to be charged for assaulting an officer.

Third: The prison fight

Madea confronts a rude inmate who is very obviously a high level monk, a class which specialises in empty handed fighting. Madea’s base stats are as follows:

10 Strength

5 Defense

5 Intelligence

0 Charisma

10 Wisdom

5 Luck

And the base stats of the monk are:

20 Strength

20 Defense

10 Intelligence

0 Charisma

5 Wisdom

10 Luck

Looking at this it’s pretty obvious who would win. Except you’re forgetting that this is Tyler Perry’s D&D universe, and different races have stat bonuses applied to them. So the actually stats look like this:

Madea

20 Strength

15 Defense

20 Intelligence

10 Charisma

10 Wisdom

10 Luck

(and +20 to all stats because of the plot armour)

Monk

10 Strength

10 Defense

10 Intelligence

-5 Charisma

0 Wisdom

20 Luck

The monk suddenly because severely outmatched and it easily dispatched by Madea. And Madea’s charisma stat is so insanely high that the monk likes her after beating defeated. Talk about game breaking.

 

Conclusion

Tyler Perry wishes to make the best D&D campaign that he can, but to do so I think he realised that he needs to stack the stats in favour of those who are black by way of inherent stat increases for them and stat decreases for whites. He should have stopped there. But he realised that these base stats weren’t enough for his main character who would seek to do the impossible. Who would be a criminal but also the wisest in the land. Who would be advanced in age and yet advanced in strength. Who would do what nobody else could possibly do.

And thus: the plot armour was created and given to the main character for free at the beginning of the campaign. With infinite durability, they would never need to worry about leveling up, building a good reputation, or completing side quests.

But this is where Tyler Perry fails as a dungeon master. The armour he has introduced in order to make the story more interesting has only made the campaign less fun and less interesting. There are no high stakes, no surprises, just a predictable story where the main character does what she wants, because she can. And no dice roll will ever defeat her.