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Dungeons & Dragons Movie
Nimey writes "IGN has an
interview about the Dungeons & Dragons movie, due out later this year." Damn. I was hoping they'd take a storyline from the animated D&D show from the eighties. I'll see it anyway.
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They are things that are better of as a book!
News of this has been around for a while. And even back then, the status of it was "everything has been filmed, we're now in post production". I guess that's necessary for some of the things they talk about, like 70+ red and gold dragons. But I remeber how ridiculously lame dragonheart and godzilla were. It's like half the movie was pure CG and it was absolute crap! But the pictures they have of the live action shots look really good! And the fact that the producer was so into making this movie for himself and for the loyal d&d fans out there instead of designing a movie for a focus group. I'm impressed with everything I've read about this movie so far, though.
I love fantasy. Ever since Weiss and Hickman, the Dragons have captured my imagination. Anybody remember that game where you rode on the back of dragons into battle? A dragon Flight Simulator - one of the first truly original ideas (well, not truly original, but the execution was brilliant). The Red Dragons, Black Dragons, Ice Dragons ...
... woooh. I'm getting goosebumps already ....
I'm not disappointed that it's not about the cartoon - though that holds a fond memory. Hopefully there'll be loads of dragons (DragonFear!)
.my 2p
I think it was "DragonStike" by SSI apart of their DragonLance series of games (It wasn't apart of the gold-box trilogy, but was a dragonlance game nonethless).
The first thing that I thought of when I saw this
post was the made-for-TV-movie starring Tom Hanks of (at the time) 'Bosom Buddies' fame.
Let's hope that they keep the raging paranoia
about satan worship, cults and the like out of
this show as well. That's the last thing we need after all that 'Hellmouth' backlash...
This seems like a 90's take on D&D...I mean, Elwood? Is he one of the Blues Brothers or something? And Marlon Wayans? Anyway, I just hope they make this more of a Braveheart than a Dragonheart. They shouldn't forget the true essence of D&D.
--MistaCool Home Fried Chicken--Best in the West http://hfc.blurzero.com
Do we all get to take our d20's and d4's to the cinema and get to roll our own endings?
"Get a Life? Where do I FTP one from?"
I guess a movie like this would cost a ton in special effects seeing as they got to have special monsters, magic etc. Now fantasy movies normally do very well in cartoon film, but I dont see very many REAL fantasy films around that made the cinemas. So, as far as I know, they would have a hard time finding people/companies that would want to invest money in this kind of movie.
If they would release a movie of course i would go and see it =)
"We will give her back her....OLD NOSE!!!" - spaceballs
Since most of D&D comes straight out of Tolkien, I'll wait until the Lord of the Rings movies start coming out (when is that, summer 2001?).
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Amazing...I wonder if TSR is getting a cut. Anyway, why don't they just stick to making "fantasy" movies, instead of taking a lousy trademark and branding the film with it, in hope that the geeks will come running to see it...=)
I dont see very many REAL fantasy films around that made the cinemas
Not many, but there have been some. Princess Bride and DragonHeart spring to mind.
Remember, a few years ago there were virtually no fantasy television series apart from a few childrens shows, with low production values. Now we have Xena, Hercules, and a vast number of other series with regular monster special effects. Computer graphics, as well as the efforts of television companies, has brought the cost of doing this right down.
<SNIP>We gave up some of the blood and gore that you might have in Braveheart for the rating.</SNIP>
... Hmmm ... It's a good thing they did. I knew so many good games that started with noble intentions only to finish in a hack&slash monster killing frenzy due to bad players or bad DMs. ;-)
/ME is looking back at his good ol' AD&D characters.
More seriously, I wonder how it will compare to the Anime Record of Lodoss War and to the Ring trilogy's first movie.
Mike
Maybe we're lucky its not the animated series.
I really hated that poni/unicorn/whatever.
What I would REALLY like to see, though, is
a Dragon Lance movie! that would be great..
though something tells me we can count on them
that they will ruin the movie.
Its just one of those feelings.
Feeling old...
I do hope it has all of the retarded hysteria of the D&D made for TV movie of the late 70's. For you younger surfers, D&D had the "evil" reputation of "doom" and other computer games today.
The stupid made-for-tv movie pretended to have something to do with a real life D&D player that committed suicide and, of course, the game was blamed.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
You of course realize that the next step is DVD Choose your own adventures... Expensive to produce every single possible trail, but I'd pay the money just to spend hours following all of them.
And great for a party, everyone votes on the course of action for the party and then you tell the DVD what the pick is and the DVD player knows which scene to play next.
- Persnickity
I wonder how important the CGI is in that movie. It's easy to see how the producers could deem necessary to have half the movie made out of cheesy CGI of huge dragons and magic... But I do not think that it is necessary at all for the movie to look good. Unfortunately, from what that article says, they have sold their souls to cheesy, low budget CGI (anybody saw B5: Crusade ? Doesn't cheap CGI just want to make you puke ?).
Probably some of you have seen the anime Record of Lodoss War, which is the closest thing to a D&D movie (even though it's animated). Making a live action version of that would require some CGI, but by carefully selecting the scenes, you don't need that much of it to make it look great. And then there is the anime Heroic Legend of Arslan. You would need so little CGI to make a live action version of that one.
I think that a D&D type movie could be done with only a few minutes of CGI. After all, D&D is all about the story, not the special effects. The roleplaying has never needed any special effects, and never will. Then, why must a movie be full of them ? Have we come to a point where a movie needs to be full of cheesy effect in order to be successful ?
Why do movie producers seem to sell their soul to the effects firms more and more often these days. I hate that. When you have a perfectly good movie with a lot of effects shot that add absolutely nothing to the story.
If they only have 30 million of funding, wouldn't they have been better off spending that on magnificent battle scenes. Ah well. I guess my stupid rant isn't even making sense anymore. Most unfortunate.
I wonder how that movie will turn out. And I also wonder how the Final Fantasy movie will turn out. Has a full length feature movie featuring human lead characters entirely in CGI ever been attempted ? From what we saw in toy story 2, they still don't master the animation of humans. And that was Pixar, who had a ton of budget. The FF movie might very well look like shit... Still, I'd like to see that one... 100% CGI might be a style of movie that takes off. Perhaps it'll replace traditional animation... hopefully it won't inherit the "animation is for kiddies" stigma that Disney has unfortunately propagated. Will it win over people over 25... Or they'll just shun it as being cheesy animation, for kiddies... eh. Time will tell.
RoLW was interesting, except for all the times Deedlit yelled 'Parn!' (about every minute or two :) ), and the fact that 95% of the dragon time really isn't animated. I bought the DVD set then sold it because I thought the dragons were so mediocre that animating a kite would have more action. For the 'record', most of the other animation looks fantastic.
For the most part, RoLW dragons are a single frame slid across the background. On the first and last episode, the dragons were decently animated, but it looks like the dragon animator was sleeping on the job so his coworkers found his old paintings and moved the cels by hand. A dragon flying across the background looks stiffer than a glider, no wings flapping, no head or tail motion, just slide the cell across the background.
Damn. I was hoping they'd take a storyline from the animated D&D show from the eighties. I'll see it anyway.
You're kidding right? The D & D cartoon is very, very far away from AD&D my friends and I played and enjoyed. This cartoon is as disconnected from D & D that captured the hearts of geeks everywhere as the goofy looking PG-13 Spawn movie is disconnected from the emmy award winning, R rated Spawn cartoon or comic book.
The cartoon sucked and was a poor mirror of the game that kept my friends and I engrossed for hours on end (ThAC0, hit dice, bastard swords...it brings a tear to my eye remembering those times), if the movie is anything like the animated series then it should be avoided like the plague. On the other hand if it is actually a realistic depiction of D & D (e.g. the game Baldur's Gate) then it should become a geek treasure (sorta like the Matrix) watched the evoke memories of simpler times when an 18 on a 20d was all that saved you from a harsh, horrifying end.
Did the creators of this movie go through the same pains? What would be funny is if some of us x-gamers got some good inside jokes ;-)
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Don't make me have to get my level 13 mage to cast a fireball at you....I'll do it, too.
I'm too transient to get a character too high...
Ahh, adnd....I love this stuff. Of course, it has been news for a while....I'm just waiting till it actually comes out and praying that it'll actually show here (i'm stuck in a small town.)
I dunno, the animated series had a certain charm.
But, I'd rather have a good generic fantasy like The Books of Magic or The Fellowship of the Ring than a D&D movie anyhow.
After all, how likely is it that a D&D movie will be designed for anything other than merchandising. At least if you take a novel (like Lord of the Rings) or a graphic novel (like The Books of Magic) and turn it into a movie, you already know what worked. In some cases directors and screenwriters ignore that, but you have a place to start from.
It could be brilliant, but I'm not holding my breath. They'll probably wait until the end of the year and try to capitalize on the LotR hype. Sigh.
You mean, Wizards of the Coast? They bought out TSR a while back. Which just goes to show the lack of imagination in today's gaming populace. I remember when D&D, which was fueled by imagination, was king. Now M:TG, fueled by a rigid, non-imaginative system, and greed, was so much more successful that a young Wizards of the Coast was able to buy out TSR within a couple of years. It's a real sign of the times.
You mean Hasbro? They bought out WoTC who bought out TSR awhile back. Speaking of signs of the times...
Is it me, or is Hasbro getting a little out of hand here? First Avalon Hill, then Microprose, now Wizards of the Coast, what's next, Atari? Oh yeah....
Whitewolf: Werewolves and hunters band together to stop an insane vampire from conquering the world, but all the werewolves are slaughtered in two minutes due to a possessed Sons of Ether mage with that g--d----d straw to gold talent and a pistol.
Rifts: A small group of friends are sitting at a bar but get pulled through a wormhole to mythical Greece. They then proceed to slaughter a Spartan army who are wandering around the countryside for no apparent reason, save the princess's female lover from the Dark King and expose a conspiracy to stop the invention of the printing press, but they then are transported to the center of the universe and they accidentally erase Earth from history.
Any other ideas?
I wouldn't say that Dragonheart was crap! The acting and the story line sucked, but the CGI fro Draco was absolutely phenominal! There were many sequences in that movie where I caught myself falling for the illusion completely, and I *never* do that with CGI.
I'd like to see a movie based on Marc Miller's Traveller RPG, 'specially during the rebellion period. The special effects would cull out the sheep from their homes and all the sci-fi junkies too.
(for those who don't know, Traveller was probably the first ever sci-fi RPG...)
Ungh
I'd say that's really too bad, and that we'll miss your wonderfully creative wit, but you won't be back to read this comment -- I'm somewhat sure that Roblimo's still around. ;)
meisenst
Green's Law of Debate: Anything is possible if you don't know what you're talking about.
If you don't know any of that, I guess you didn't read the article very carefully. Most, if not all of those things, were covered in the article.
And, I don't know how many movies you've gone to lately, but The Matrix was definitely a movie for "nerds", and I didn't hear about many so-called "nerds" getting the beats for wanting to watch it. Did you?
meisenst
Green's Law of Debate: Anything is possible if you don't know what you're talking about.
How many GOOD movies have been made that are set in a 'fantasy' world? Precious few. Its just too hard to pull off, and from what I've heard/seen about the D&D movie, it's not gonna work.
To me, the sign that the makers of it have the wrong idea was when I read about how they intended to "stick to the rules of D&D' as much as possible". Uhhh...isn't a film supposed to tell a story? Shouldn't that be the first priority?
It'll suck, prepare yourself.
I'm very new to d&d, I play it with my friends.
Most of all I love music...
this movie sounds like it could really be awesome.. but one aspect I haven't read anything about is the music. The music is an element just as important as effects, as visuals, as plot...
there are plenty of fine composers and musicians out there, hopefully some can be found with a natural passion for D&D!
what do you think?
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
As much as I'd like to see the movie - Aren't there a few coincidences?
Evil Archmage = Evil Senator
Empress with odd clothing = Queen with odd clothing
The article also said that the majority of Birch's scenes are with Irons... So, would it be safe to assume she is *influenced* by him...?
Only difference being, I'd guess that the archmage is found out and summarily dispatched, as opposed to being subtle. But - Magic Missiles rarely are.
70+ red and gold dragons though? Yipe. Are there that many?
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I'd kill for a Nobel Peace Prize.
A realistic approach to the white wolf idea. We follow the first changing and following happenings of a young werewolf. Then, (s)he and the pack take on a huge manifestion of the Wyrm. I think the visual presentation of the story would bring in alot of people. If some of last year's movie made money and filled seats, this horror-adventure would.
Of course, solitary, scary loners who were really into this sort of thing (not me of course... I just heard about it. Really, I don't have whole box full of such solitare modules...) knew enough to buy the Tunnels and Trolls games in which solitare modules were a speciality. Ah! Sorcerer's Solitare, Sea of Mystery what fun... the best part was when you cheated and read a "cheater's paragraph" in which a Troll bashes in your head for reading out of turn... Ah! Those were the days...
Of course, the couldn't compare to Zork or Enchanter but you could play them on family camping trips out in the woods...
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
While D&D is the hot topic -- I might point out that Gary Gygax, author of D&D, has a new game out. Pick up a copy and give feedback to help it develop into a good game!
o/~ Join us now and share the software
Then of course people decided nudity was sexist or evil (depending on ideology) and everthing got cleaned up... but oh for the innocence of my youth in the 70's...
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
The '80s cartoon, while it had potential, was incredibly lame in a lot of ways. Its plot was Yet Another Gilligan's Island Retread, it bore only an orthagonal resemblance to the game, because it had to be sanitized of all those "nasty nonChristian elements" like, say, clerics...and by giving each character a "magic gadget," it seriously detracted from believing in the characters' own innate skills. To say nothing of breaking the fourth wall by having the characters interact with a "Dungeonmaster". (Hey, guys! Free clue...the Dungeonmaster is the one who's controlling everything! Of course he could send you home if he wanted...)
This movie, on the other hand, is one of the things I've been looking forward to for the longest time...there's been so little good D&Dish stuff available.
(By the way, for any who like the same sort of fantasy as D&D in books, look into Elizabeth Moon's Deed of Paksenarrion trilogy, and P.C. Hodgell's Godstalk and Dark of the Moon.)
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
It's been awhile since I watched Xena but it seems it runs about 3 to 1. They will have two or three bad to average episodes then have one kick ass one.
A good one that spings to mind is where Xena and her bitch where surrounded by some hord with Xena and some Athens soilders trap in a fort. I though that was a nice episode.
One thing I hated about Xena was Gabby. What a wuss. Reminded me of that prick in Highlander. I watched one of the new ones the other day. I think she got with the program. Bash it until it stops moving then reason with it.
"Remember, fireball first..." - me
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
The great thing about this D&D movie is that it's directed by Peter Jackson. He has made some great movies and is a master of the cheezy horror genere. If you want to see some of this director's finest (In my oppinion) work, go check out Dead Alive, or Meet the Feebles. They are fun, hilarious, and not for the feighnt(sp) of heart. RVWinkle (too lazy to look up my pass)
"Kindred: The Embraced" was another attempt to translate a rich role-playing universe (Vampire the Masquerade) into a live-action story. It failed hideously, mostly because the average Joe couldn't get into it and the hardcore gamers were too busy criticizing it for not being "their vision" of that particular world. Viewership dwindled, and the Kindred TV series died after only a few episodes.
:)
I feel that the DnD movie will more than likely suffer a similar fate. The mainstream audience will see it as just another fantasy film, and unless it has something incredible going for it in the creativity department then it will be largely ignored. To add insult to injury, the gamers will probably sit there and nitpick the movie to death...saying how this isn't right and this should be better. In general, it's going to have a hard time living up to everybody's expectations.
If I were doing the movie, I would have went for a Dragonlance or Forgotten Realms. Use something more focused than trying to sum up the WHOLE game in one movie. Everyone has their own vision of AD&D, and I find it very hard to believe that this one 2-hour movie will satisfy. Of course, I'll be pleasantly surprised if it does
Electronic Frontier Foundation for online civil rights information
It is also quite common for mouth movements to not follow speech exactly.
I admit I'm a bit hard on RoLW, but the lip matching thing is usually the fault of American or Canadian dubbing teams, and it takes a lot of work to adjust the words to the video and video to the words. The lips usually synch very well in the original Japanese, but that means reading subtitles, some don't like that either.
Neither animation style is "better" than the other
To a large extent you are right. Animation takes a lot of work, but I still like Japanese animation style versus American movie for movie, TV show to TV show, and there is no comparison between Japan's direct-to-video (OVAs) and American counterparts (Return of Jafar?! Simba's Pride?), and there are no direct-to-video series made here that I know. Compared to what else is on American TV, anime appears to me to be more skillfully drawn. I love Simpsons, but it is rare to find an anime TV show that is that crudely drawn, based on its age, and that's about what many Saturday morning shows are like.
You are right. American companies STILL assume that 1) kids are too dumb to understand any complexity and 2) only kids watch animation - what about the parents?. Thankfully, FOX has broken that mold with Simpsons, Futurama and Family Guy. WB's Animaniacs was extremely good at appealing to a wide audience. South Park etc are pretty much adult-only, which unfortunately there is quite a bit of anime that is like that, and anime is even stereotyped as porn too.
A PG rating? But of course. There is an excellent reason for it, and the reason is merchandising. Most of this post is a capsule history of AD&D over the last ten years, to illustrate my final point, so if you just want to skip to the end, scroll down to The Present.
Simply stated, T$R has a long, illustrious history of circling the proverbial bowl. When one of its founders (Gary Gygax) was divorced, his ex-wife (known in some circles as "The Bitch") won a controlling share of the company. Almost immediately, the entire product line was retooled into AD&D Second Edition: gone were the piles of rulebooks that had accrued over years of rules amendments and neat ideas; gone were the (very) occasional pieces of naughty artwork; and gone was everything that could be perceived as "evil" or "controversial" (the Assassin class, demons, and devils, to name a few). Granted, some of the things that were removed were unbalancing (the Cavalier and Barbarian classes, for example). Second Edition was supposed to be a fresh start, a distillation of the best of First Edition and (major selling point) compatible with the original rules. Of course, things broke down quickly.
The 2ndEd product line started off fairly well, with monster packs, books detailing new rules for the four basic character types, and retoolings of older game worlds that had presumably become stale. This wasn't making enough money. Sourcebooks of dubious worth were published, new settings of interest only to very particular types of players were introduced, and campaign settings suffered terrible Dubious Cataclysms That Changed Everything (TM) in order to invalidate old sourcebooks and campaign sets. The bean-counters and lawyers took over, uttering threats (and sometimes making good on them) to buy or sue anyone who so much as looked at them strangely (including anyone who published home-grown rules or campaign information on the Web). The Ty-D-Bol Man beckoned. Luckily for them, Wizards of the Coast scooped them up before it was too late.
During the takeover, WOTC played up their historical connections with AD&D, T$R, etc., proclaiming that their name was originally from an AD&D campaign that the company's founders were involved in. That tidbit was apparently supposed to convince gamers of two things: one, that WOTC was on "their side"; and, two, that since they were gamers once, too, the WOTC brass had innate knowledge of how to make T$R the titan it used to be. This was, of course, bulls**t. WOTC bought T$R because of their excellent distribution network, their pre-existing product lines, and because they were desperately seeking a safety net for when Magic: The Gathering finally lost its popularity: WOTC's homegrown RPG, Everway, died a quick death, and M:tG has always been in danger of losing its popularity in the same sort of shocking surge that it became popular with in the first place. WOTC then discovered one of T$R's biggest problems: its writers were old-school AD&D players, and naturally had a difficult time relating to the current generation of Vampire: the Masquerade players. Worse, M:tG's popularity was beginning to hurt: each new expansion strangled sales of WOTC's other products, leaving them in increasing amounts of debt. The Pokemon card game was just as dangerous to them as Magic, for the same reasons. One flurry of bad product and Magic: The RPG rumours later, Hasbro took over.
Hasbro was nervous. Sales of traditional toys were down, in favour of multimedia and interactive games. Their rival, Mattel, was making inroads into the interactive entertainment market, leaving them in the dust. In response, Hasbro purchased MicroProse. Having their own computer game company was all well and good, and Hasbro Interactive produced a lot of simple, mass-market computer games and crossover products (like the execrable Star Wars Monopoly). The only problem was, they didn't have any "traditional" computer game licenses. Enter WOTC, stage left, wearing a "buy me!" sign.
Hasbro's buyout was beneficial for both companies (or their execs, at least). The owners of WOTC made a killing, and were no longer waking from nightmares of being crushed by unsold boxes of Magic cards. Hasbro was especially happy: They gained a monopoly on domestic Pokemon merchandise, a half-decent novel publishing arm (TSR Books), and control of the AD&D computer game license (to go with their own computer game production house; it is highly unlikely that Hasbro will license another company to produce AD&D computer games after the current batch have finished production). Then, the fun began.
WOTC recently announced the production of a third edition of AD&D (now referred to as D&D, since the original "Basic" D&D was no longer in print). This edition was intended to appeal to the current generation of gamers, and was disturbing both in that the game mechanics had been altered enough that an expensive "conversion book" had become necessary to bring Second Edition characters into line with the new rules, and that WOTC decided to publish the Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide in such volume that they could sell them at a cut rate. From this, one could be led to believe that WOTC has a lot riding on the success of Third Edition D&D. One would be correct.
The Present:
The D&D movie is rated PG because WOTC desperately wants young people to see the movie, and then buy the (relatively) cheap 3rd Edition core rulebooks shortly thereafter (I would be willing to wager that they will be available for sale at kiosks in most large theater lobbies, along with "What is D&D?" programmes). The movie is both a test of the feasibility of (gods forbid) more D&D movies, and a massive advertisement for 3rd Edition. They are going to such an outrageous length to promote the 3rd Edition rules because if they aren't massively popular to begin with, D&D will probably go out of print (and incidentally, a lot of writers will be canned). This is hardly a surprise: the product line has been tanking for years, and Hasbro could care less about keeping it around for the sake of "tradition". Hasbro already has what it wants out of WOTC: Pokemon; a perennially strong computer game license; and a group of captive RPG writers to pen the next Star Wars RPG.
Five tons of flax.
Die Infidel!!!!! Uni was the single coolest thing about that show. She was cute and helpful and one of the only charecters capable of doing something useful with Presto's hat. But, hey, YMMV. .... Infidel.
What I would REALLY like to see, though, is a Dragon Lance movie!
I'd like to see DragonLance come out well after the Lord of the Rings series and the D&D movie so it could deconstruct them both. See, I read Dragon Lance as a subtle deconstruction of the Tolkien and traditional D&D GOODtm versus EVILtm worldview. The elves are so good that they can't be bothered to listen to the "lesser races" and were practically the bad guys for half the series. The knights (sort of palidins) were simlarly so caught up in their own "goodness" that they couldn't do what was right. Doing well or badly, right or wrong and good or evil were more seperate things than in many more traditional fantasy stories.
On the other hand, the writers didn't feel the need to make deconstruction the entire goal and left a pretty clear choice of who you should be rooting for, which puts it well ahead of some stuff I've read where the traditional story was deconstructed to the point where everything sucks at the end and you feel you're expected to be greatful to the author for broadening your mind. (when you're really thinking about writing a few simple literary suggestions on a lead pipe and attempting reverse/phernology. (sp?) )
...will work for Chick tracts...
This will lead to two possible responses:
1. Well, My kids won't be watching Pokemon any more then...
Or 2. Hmm, I guess your right...
Lodoss 2 is coming soon according to the latest Animenation catalog, cool... I hope Karla is in it...
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
Check out NUON (um, huge amounts of Flash in the Website, not my fault though.) an idea that may have taken too long to develop (considering that the Playstation 2 will also play DVDs). It was an interesting idea though, I wonder how Dragon's Lair would've worked with it.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
acting and the story line sucked...
What other part of the movie is there that matters? That's like saying that you have a really cool car with custom rims, bass cannon and a bitchin' paint job...if only you had an engine...
"Nobody owns the fucking words man." - James Dean
This will lead to two possible responses:
1. Well, My kids won't be watching Pokemon any more then...
Or 2. Hmm, I guess your right...
Well, as far an acceptance of anime, this is little better. It implies that anime is either (1) still for kids [Pokemon] or (2) for perverted freaks [Urotsukidouji]. There needs to be something from the middle ground aimed at adults that is not kiddie fodder, but not pr0n or ultra-violence. Princess Mononoke is a good start (still playing in some US theaters). Perfect Blue, may do more harm than good, as far as public perception goes. Ghost in the Shell did pretty well, considering. The other things that hurts anime in the US is some of the *awful* english dubs over perfectly wonderful anime that lead people to think it's crap [the AnimEigo dub of Vampire Princess Miyu]. Face it, voice actors in the US are treated like pond scum. Low pay, no respect, actors unfamiliar or uncaring of the anime they're dubbing, the credits never even link the individual actors to the specific characters they play... is it any wonder that most dubs suck, or are at best tolerable, compared to the original Japanese version? But then, most movie goers will not go to see a subtitled file, so it's sort of a catch-22. A subbed Macross Plus in US movie theaters might be an interesting experiment.
Is it possible that this release, coming almost out of the blue as it seems, is an attempt to capitalize on a possible Lord of The Rings feeding frenzy? LOTR is shaping up to be a very strongly anticipated release. Maybe the studios are sniffing a fantasy feeding frenzy? D&D could be the "Buck Rogers" movie of the 2000's. :)
BTW, LOTR movie info can be found at www.theonering.net.
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I'll bet / with my Net / I can get / those things yet.
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I'll bet / with my Net / I can get / those things yet.
--Dr. Seuss
I think that a few good things have come out of WoTC, notably the Dragon Magazine archive which seems to contain the issues intact and with no censorship (i.e. Ed Greenwoods The Nine Hells is intact, the "naughty" art hasn't been altered.) So maybe the pessimism isn't warranted. If they decide AD&D is commercially worthless, maybe a group of fans could pool their resources, buy it, and open source it... or am I a hopeless dreamer?
Uh-oh... the rights won't be commercially worthless as long as the computer games are making money, darn it...
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
The more crucial elements come from Conan and Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser. I find that most people who overestimate the importance of Tolkien to D&D simply haven't read much early fantasy.
Us SR players don't even have a computer game out yet! Those bastards at MS bought FASA Interactive and killed the one SR game they had in production. And you know there ain't a chance in hell we're ever gonna get a movie made for our game of choice. I guess I'm just gonna have to see the Neuromancer movie and pretend that the Finn is an ork.
Can D&D reach a mainstream audience? Certain people were very successful at libeling the game as evil, satan inspired suicide-causing material. Shouldn't they just make the best movie they can and forget the mainstream?
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
(Score -1: Picking Nits)
:)
Instead he based the world of Izmer and Sumdall, where the movie takes place, from one of TSR's older, obscurer campaign worlds, Mystara.
It may be older, but I don't neccissarily buy obscurer. I have dozens of suppliments that describe that world, including Alphatia, in a box at home somewhere. I guess I should dig them out
I sure hope they do a good job on the movie - hopefully it will bring back some good memories.
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
Anime, for adults, children, young adults is getting more acceptable in the US anyway... stuff like Pokemon is just the most visible example. Its a far cry from when a consortium of American animators got together to suppress the Miyazaki Lupin movies because they feared the competition...
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
I did not mean to imply all anime was either for kids or hentai, I was referring to perception. For prime time on HBO, I meant something like Irresponsible Captain Tylor (I know people will disagree with that choice, so insert your favorite here).
Ahem, I read that Wizards of the Coast rereleased the Tomb of Horrors I think it would be cool if Jeremy Irons became a demi-lich in one of the movie sequels... (back on topic ^_-)...
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
I don't know much about the language
imbedded in dvds for menus, jumpscenes,
white rabbits - but it seems you could
make a nonlinear title like you are suggesting.
Even if there is no rand() function, there
may well be some kludge that provides random
enoughness.
garyr
-- your Web browser is Ronald Reagan
What other part of the movie is there that matters? That's like saying that you have a really cool car with custom rims, bass cannon and a bitchin' paint job...if only you had an engine...
And if you want to do a music video with a buncha guys working on an old car ala "greased lightning" you've got a really cool car for it, don't ya? ;-)
Totally aside from the fact that I enjoyed the plot and acting in "DragonHeart", you go to different movies for different things. I went and saw "Blade" expecting some great fight scenes set to techno music and some lovely eye-candy in the form of a beautifully built man in tight black leather. I was not disapointed in the slightest. If the previous poster went to "DragonHeart" looking for some heartstopping graphics, there was no reason to be disapointed, even if the plot and acting weren't up to standard.
Best effect in the movie I thought was the scene where draco is swimming under the water. just lovely.
...will work for Chick tracts...
The whole sordid story is worse than you could imagine... I just read the Gary Gygax Faq. It's a sad but interesting tale of good and evil... in which evil wins, unfortunately.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
Of course we shouldn't take it lying down. The problem is, our effectiveness is extremely limited. A boycott will probably either have no effect or kill the product line, but that isn't going to cause all of our extant D&D stuff to burst into flames, is it? There's a fair amount of good stuff out there right now, and if it comes down to it, there's any number of home-grown campaigns that could be disseminated through any number of channels.
As for the actual rules... There's not much we can do about that, short of stockpiling extra copies of the 2nd Edition rules (and perhaps the Core Rules CD-ROM) to share with the local gaming group. I can't advocate photocopying the text (because that would be illegal), but I have to wonder if some sort of D&D oral tradition could be devised-- no, wait, that's far too silly.
As for an open-source RPG... FUDGE is the closest thing that I can think of.
I think that a few good things have come out of WoTC, notably the Dragon Magazine archive which seems to contain the issues intact and with no censorship (i.e. Ed Greenwoods The Nine Hells is intact, the "naughty" art hasn't been altered.) So maybe the pessimism isn't warranted. If they decide AD&D is commercially worthless, maybe a group of fans could pool their resources, buy it, and open source it... or am I a hopeless dreamer?
I'll agree with you on the Dragon Magazine Archive; I snagged a copy of that the first time I saw it. I'm inclined to believe that they didn't censor it mostly for legal reasons (ownership of art and ads), and because it would have been too much effort-- I get the distinct feeling that they sat a couple of interns down with a stack of mags, a scanner, and a copy of Acrobat Distiller. If I was in that situation, I wouldn't go out of my way to glue a strip of black cardboard across someone's bits and pieces.
Open source D&D would be pretty cool, but I don't think it's going to happen, regardless of its financial viability.
Five tons of flax.
> I admit I'm a bit hard on RoLW, but the lip matching thing is usually the fault of American or Canadian dubbing teams
I own a handful of dubs, and have a bookshelf full of subs... for the most part, I watch anime with the original Japanese voices. The mouths don't match the japanese either. It's because in American style animation (Disney, Bluth and Bakshi) they record the voices first, and then animate to the vocals. Often, they will even use live models - Fire and Ice is a good example. In Anime, they animate first, and then record the vocals. I'm sure that there are several pros and cons to both -- I'm not an animator, just a fan.
Hey, lookit here! An on-topic comment!
By the way, the whole reason Anime got dragged into this story was that Record of Lodoss War is a animated Japanese series based on the author's Dungeon and Dragons campaign. So, to a certain extent, it's another D&D series.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Though more strategy than action, and not really a flight sim - more side-scroller - don't forget the old C-64 favorite - Dragonriders of Pern celebrating the McCaffery series.
I think people who think D&D is just a Tolkien rip-off just don't understand it. The original AD&D seemed to me to be, "That's cool lets put it in." Some Tolkien, some Clark Ashton Smith, some of various other authors and a lot of original imaginative material all mixed together. I mean, how can it just disappear from the world because Hasbro gobbled it up? Sigh... AD&D is just important... hmm, maybe we could convince one of the companies making computer-RPG clones of AD&D like Origin or Square (well, the early Final Fantasy games were) to create pen and paper versions of their games... I mean, it'd be a little late for Hasbro to sue them now, wouldn't it?
I mean, heck, I'd have to go searching but I know I've seen a few computer or console RPGs that lifted tons of stuff from AD&D without having any relationship with TSR. Isn't there some kind of law that if you ignore a copyright for a certain number of years and let other people use copyrighted material without complaining that the copyright disappears?
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
sure the story is of paramount importance, but to acheive commercial success it needs both that and nice visual effects and some action.
i played some d&d in the late 70s/early 80s. frankly it bored me. there was simply too much accounting/paperwork, long periods of painstakingly crawling some dungeon opening empty chests and following dead end 'narrow tunnel with a rivulet of dank water flowing in the middle of it'.
yawn.
i liked the themes and atmosphere of d&d but found playing the game tedious.
in the early 80s d&d style computer games were very popular and i enjoyed playing those. i remember ultima II, and ultima III was simply mindblowing, and ultima IV was an opus. Wizardry was nice, but not nearly as fun or easy to play as ultima. then bard's tale came along and blew the doors off everything else. (sort of like how, a decade later, wolfenstein came along and blew the doors off the shooter genre)
then in the late 80s TSR realized that computer gaming was where it was at, and started licensing their properties. I remember the original trio of "gold box" AD&D computer games from SSI (starting with Pools of Radiance, a classic).
and with massively persistent online rpgs, we get back the social aspects (although i and my friends would play games like bard's tale together, taking turns at the keyboard, so i personally never felt like i lost the social aspects)
the key to computer based role-playing is that the computer not only took care of the tedious accounting and die-rolling, but it also lent a hand in visualizing the game. who can forget the first time they saw a beholder float up and whack them in ultima? in the same way, a live-action movie will give us a visual representation of role-playing that paper and dice never could. for those of us that grew up to be something other than accountants or screenwriters, seeing the game brought to life is actually an exciting and enjoyable thing.
(all of which is imho and just my $.02)
>>Shouldn't they just make the best movie they can and forget the mainstream?
Sure, if they care about art and don't care about making as much money as possible. And how often does that happen? When's the last time there was a Science Fiction or Fantasy movie that had any literary integrity to it? OK, I think Contact counts, but it was an anomaly.
I really hope the movie turns out to be good, but I'm not holding my breath for it to be anything other than a loosely strung together series of CG shots.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
I hope Hasbro surprises me, I really do. I'd love to be a chicken little in this case and find out the sky isn't falling!
I mean heck didn't Milton Bradley make Dark Tower and wasn't that cool as Hell? Sometimes these companies will surprise you... but usually not.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
This is a troll if I ever saw it.
Almost every person I ever knew who would qualify as a nerd had a serious interest in most or all of the following: comic books, role-playing games, science fiction _and_ MST3K (not to mention progressive music). I know I do. I don't know what your definition of nerd is, but it's certainly the not the same as the rest of the world!
I personally like forays into other topics. There's more to life than computers. And to repeat an old cliche: If you aren't interested, don't read it.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
or "Choose Your Own Adventure" ? i bet i read 50 of those things. i really sucked though. it's like playing dragon's Lair: you die and die and die until you FINALLY figure out the correct sequence.
-l
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"Coming soon"? If you're talking about Lodoss War: Tales of the Heroic Knight (or something like that), I've already got 6 volumes of it. This one is either a longer series than the original RoLW or there's a second season, though, since it's still going after 6 tapes.
I hope Karla is in it...
Not as much as in the first series, but (s)he shows up a couple times. And, of course, all the fun bad guys who died in the first series have come back as well. (Let's just say that the continuity between the two series isn't very consistent...)
So they strike back and forth with no apparent effect until somebody runs out of hit points and falls over? Funny, that sounds exactly like the official *D&D rules to me.
Anything involving blood and dismemberment in *D&D is house rules or DM embellishment; with the exception of a couple very rare magical items (Vorpal Blade, anyone?) that sort of thing was never an offical part of *D&D. Gygax even wrote a number of articles which were published in Dragon saying that house rules adding critical hits or anything else that would alter combat to be more 'realistic' should be avoided.
Well, I think the CG for godzilla was much more elaborate and expensive and took longer to produce, and I don't see anyone defending that :) I was actually very pleased by the CG in the movie, but I'm a little disgruntled because I skipped school, waited in a long line, and paid way too much money to see that piece of crap in a huge theatre full of annoying people.
God, all these schmucks screwing it up.
The whole point of D&D and Lord of the Rings is to use your *imagination*. There is no way that any film can come close to the games I've played.
Having said that, the D&D cartoon was shit, and the base system is completely screwed. What else could the film be.
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Wow, how geeky did that sound?
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Films of books *ALWAYS* suck. I can't imagine a file of sucky game not sucking.
RuneQuest is a much better system. Glorantha a much better world.
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What're the chances?
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My site has a discussion board on this movie, it is at http://www.adnd.com and then there is http://www.adndmovie.com We've been talking about this for months :)
"Knowing others is wisdom, knowing your self is Enlightenment." -- L
There are a number of open content: Freely distributable RPG systems listed in the Open Content database.
The problem I think is source material. A decent system is easy to create.
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And lets not forget that violence in the plot does not neccesitate gore on the screen. The most violent scene in Braveheart was the torture at the end which you saw no blood in. The disimboweling was(as I recal) totally "under the camera angle" and was a much better scene (IMHO) with shots of his face and the general movement than if they had gone for the gross-out. Or how about Mulan? Sure, its disney, but without losing a G rating they had some scenes of chilling violence.
If you need nudity or spatters of gore to make a film seem "adult", I don't think you have a very adult film to begin with.
...will work for Chick tracts...
That, if done right, could seriously reach epic status.
Other books that would make great movies (or maybe I just thought they would):
-Bodyguard by William C. Dietz
-The Chung Kwo (sp?) series... forget the author.
They're both futuristic type worlds... no trollocs or anything tho...
First, it's PG-13, not PG.
Now, as for the cutting down on the violence. I do object to their reason: pandering to the ratings board. However, none of the D&D games are about violence. Only bad DM's ever have to resort to a real hack-and-slash campaign to keep the players entertained, and such campaigns miss the point entirely.
Personally, I'm interested in seeing how this one turns out. It's been a very long time indeed since I played any of the D&D games, and I can feel the nostalgia already.
This is ridiculous! The best thing about AD&D is that it's MY GAME!!! Everyone looks the way I want, sounds the way I want, and since it's a *roleplaying* game, happens how I want! Besides, if they wanted to make an RPG movie, AD&D is a bad choice. It's fun for running around, killing, and stealing treasure, but drama? Thought provoking? No way! If I want a good story, I pick up Analog at Chapters.
Quid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
Anything said in Latin, sounds profound.
There were also the Sorcery! books from Steve Jackson and the Tolkien Quest Games based on I.C.E.'s MERP rules. I didn't think much of the Tolkien Quest series. They had an interesting idea though. They used a hexagonal map to tell the player what paragraph to read rather than just rely on pointers in the text. The Sorcery! books were a little more like Choose Your Own Adventure but as brilliant as they were lame. I remember hearing once that they were based on an earlier project by Steve Jackson. If anyone can remember what they were titled they will be really really cool in my book :)
Adaere was always doing that. Hey, when you're a mage (with their sorry THAC0) you have to have a 20 to hit something with a good AC. When I was out of useful spells, it was usually up to me to save the party with my staff-wielding abilities.
I've got to find that d20...
Posted using Mozilla Milestone Build M12, BTW
On the internet, no one knows you're a frog.
The chronicles series. Just the first three books, now that would have been cool. I would love to see Raistlin in a feature movie, and watch his transformation from red to black. Ohh man, I'm gonna read chronilces again.
Munky_v2
Jay
Sarcasm is a horrible way to tell others your opinion. In a global net, it is likely to not be recognized as sarcasm by a very large number of people. Lastly, when you do use sarcasm, make it good and make it funny.
About 100000 XP points
More if you stop being a moron!!!
"The way she used to say Rimmer as if it rhymed with scum" Red Dwarf
I believe the first such book by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone was "The Warlock of Firetop Mountain". This was then expanded into the Fighting Fantasy series, and was followed by (in order) "Citadel of Chaos", "Forest of Doom", "Starship Traveller", "City of Thieves", "Deathtrap Dungeon" (which was released a couple of years ago as a PC game), and "Island of the Lizard King", which was the last one I bought. My favorites were the original "TWoFM", "CoC" and "FoD". The series started to go downhill from "IotLK", and the books that were published after that were pretty weak (around 60 in all, I believe), mainly because Jackson and Livingstone weren't writing them anymore. Towards the end (around 1995 or so, I think), they were putting out crap like "Revenge of the Vampire", and were pretty much on the level of the "Choose your Own Adventure" books.
I am always amazed at the level of progression from one movie to another in terms of special effects. However, there are simply some things that are better handled in an animated as opposed to live action movie.
I know the reason why Hollywood does not do this. Nobody in the "normal" public takes animated movies seriously. The Japanese have the right idea. Certain movie themes especially fantasy themes are rarely done well on film. I cannot think of one since the original Conan and I barely include that since it was sword than sorcery.
The Record of Lodoss War was ten times better than a zillion annoying Willow style movies. It is sad to think that one of the best books of the 20th century like Lord of the Rings (or was the Hobbit coming up?) will be reduced to a special effects showcase for some hollywood hack. Why they want to mess up D&D as well is beyond me. Hire a good animation company and do this right.
ACK
I almost insist upon subtitles now for the anime I rent (and certainly any that I buy). If you've seen the bad Lodoss English job, and the even worse Akira dubbing and compared them to the originals, there's really no comparison. };( Check out the Anti-Robotech Page for why most anime dubs are bad. (Note the author dislikes Robotech but is a Macross fan -- you can be, you know. :))
1. At the start of the movie, all of the characters should buy 500 feet of rope.
2. For the first half hour, all of the characters should be concerned with how much weight they are carrying, and how bulky things are. Later, they will get tired of keeping track, and start shoving everything they come across into a bag, including pole-arms and silver statues.
3. Every time one of the characters swings his weapon, he has a 5% chance of dropping his weapon or falling on his ass. Make sure the fight choreographer knows this.
4. The first scene has to open in a tavern, with all the characters sitting at a bar. Suddenly, a mysterious, well-dressed stranger walks into the room and asks if there are any adventurers looking to make a little money.
5. Speaking of money, all half-human monsters carry it.
6. Whenever the actors enter a room, they should declare loudly what order they go in.
7. If the characters fight a monster, make sure that even when the monster is severely wounded, it is not slowed or weakened in the least. To be completely accurate, it should fight effectively up until the moment it drops dead. Also, the final blow should usually cleave off the monster's head.
8. Alas! 75% of sea voyages in the movie should be cut short by pirate raids.
9. For the sake of convenience, all characters should sleep in their platemail. Also, wearing the platemail should make it easier for the character to dodge arrows.
10. The actors need to have the unusual talent of being able to count coins in excess of 10,000 instantaneously.
11. All characters will have two weeks worth of iron rations, that will last the entire length of the movie.
My hands are smacked well and truly. -15 hp to me I think.
You do make a very good point. Did not know that about Wizard's of the Coast. Should have cropped up in the conversation when they where staying at a friends of mine whilst downunder for a convention......
Of course most roleplaying games are based on movies, books, history, I am not talking about the playing environment rather about the actual system engine used to do things such as combat, movement, spells etc.......
"The way she used to say Rimmer as if it rhymed with scum" Red Dwarf