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Slipspace wrote:

 Easy E wrote:
I believe there is a Dragonlance animated movie for Dragon's of Autumn Twilight out there somewhere?

There is. It sucks.

It's got a decent cast - Kiefer Sutherland and Lucy Lawless are hardly bad actors, and Sutherland's performance as Raistlin is actually pretty good. The animation is shockingly bad and the runtime is far too short to do justice to the story. It feels like one of those ideas that's probably done much more harm than good, as it's now much less likely we'll see any Dragonlance movies in the near future.

I don't think I watched beyond the first scene - the heroes meeting at the inn in Solace. I remember Caramon watching Tika's heaving chest for what felt like hours, to the point where even a dirty old man like me felt uncomfortable about it...

Voss wrote:
Sadly, yeah. I don't know why they drew so much from the first attempts at D&D movies, but I had some bad flashbacks.
In fact, didn't they do this exact plot? Questionable heroes fetch artifact for 'secret' bad guy?

At least it's accurate to many many games played over the decades....

Missed out on a golden opportunity for all the actors to dress up as their characters at a gaming table.

Uninspired.

A lot like the trailers for this movie XD

Wow... that dragon right before the mimic (1:23 in the link above) looks really really rough as CGI... like 2003 rough. Wow.

Is this still planned as a theatrical release?

 warboss wrote:
Wow... that dragon right before the mimic (1:23 in the link above) looks really really rough as CGI... like 2003 rough. Wow.

Is this still planned as a theatrical release?

didn't seem that bad to me - besides I think it's an animated statue - I believe you can see it motionless as the party make their way through a city square.

MarkNorfolk wrote:

 warboss wrote:
Wow... that dragon right before the mimic (1:23 in the link above) looks really really rough as CGI... like 2003 rough. Wow.

Is this still planned as a theatrical release?

didn't seem that bad to me - besides I think it's an animated statue - I believe you can see it motionless as the party make their way through a city square.

I hope you're right. I'd be ok with it as some kitschy in universe statue/decoration.

Also noted the following on Wikipedia:

Sophia Lillis will portray Doric, a tiefling druid, in the upcoming 2023 film Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. Doric will also be the main character in two upcoming prequel novels – The Druid’s Call (2023) by E.K. Johnston and The Road to Neverwinter (2023) by Jaleigh Johnson.

So the film definitely takes place in the Forgotten Realms and not just some generic D&D setting. Hopefully it does good enough to see an FRCU (Forgotten Realms Cinematic Universe) established...

 Ghaz wrote:
Also noted the following on Wikipedia:

Sophia Lillis will portray Doric, a tiefling druid, in the upcoming 2023 film Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. Doric will also be the main character in two upcoming prequel novels – The Druid’s Call (2023) by E.K. Johnston and The Road to Neverwinter (2023) by Jaleigh Johnson.

So the film definitely takes place in the Forgotten Realms and not just some generic D&D setting. Hopefully it does good enough to see an FRCU (Forgotten Realms Cinematic Universe) established...

Forgotten Realms is so boring, Where is an Eberron movie? I want a Warforged and Goblin noir detective duo on an elemental airship solving who done its.

Eberron would be way better for a movie.

 LordofHats wrote:
Eberron would be way better for a movie.

Eberron would be better suited for a streaming series with good production values. Movies tend to focus more on big set piece action, where a running show would let you spend time on the world building and details.

You want armies clashing and dragon raids/heists? Movie. But the kind of stories I want to see out of Eberron are going to be slow burn ones, were you get a feel of the place and the people and politics. I think if they did a movie there it would just be generic high fantasy, but with robots. Squander the potential.

Unfortunately, when the non-players think of Dungeons and Dragons it is settings like the Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk that they think of. It's those non-players that they need to make this movie a success. Heaven knows I would love to see a Spelljammer movie (1st edition crystal spheres and explosive phlogiston only please!).

Yeah, but playing to those boring expectations is almost aiming for failure.

It's not like dnd movies in the past have been a success.

Making an Eberron movie with a warforged paladin and a chain smoking goblin in a trenchcoat might be the interesting stuff that actually pulls them in.

Honestly even a down to Earth adventure would be better.

I kind of cringe at the 'save the world' aspect of this. It seels like it plays too much into the cliches of DnD, edgelords, and the 'Main Character syndrome' of bad players, and not the richness of the game in full. Honestly if I were adapting DnD into a movie I'd have done a port of Mines of Phandelver or Dragonheist, both of which already play out like movies.

This is a case where I think lower stakes and a simple adventuring narrative would actually be a much better fit than 'Guardians of the Galaxy Not in Space.'

I think the best case scenario is that it'll turn out to be Fantasy Guardians of the Galaxy. I fear that it'll end up a name brand version of Your Highness.

FR (and Greyhawk) can be down to earth (especially in their early days), it just depends on the writers being sane and not kitchen-sinking the project (which it looks like these did- here's a yuan ti in cage, a kuo-toa in a net, a bugbear behind that door, an aarakoa behind this one, all in very cameo-like meaningless flashes).

'Save the world' is definitely overplayed though. A mid level Red Wizard of Thay (which is what we seem to have here) can be a perfectly fine regional problem or personal antagonist to one or more of the party.

I think the biggest problem is it looks like its setting up basically the previous movie failures with a cast of comedic dopes (plus a straight man) in over their heads with a world ending plot, rather than easing in with competent protagonists and a grounded antagonist (or group).

If only we could get Tony Gilroy to make a D&D movie/tv series….

You don't start out saving the world it is something you do accidentally after trying to kill all the rats in the tavern's basement. You gotta build up to that kind of thing.

 Lance845 wrote:

It's not like dnd movies in the past have been a success.

I'm going to go out on a limb & say that's because [spoiler] they were just really badly made movies.

Voss wrote:... easing in with competent protagonists and a grounded antagonist (or group).

That does not sound like a game of D&D.

 DarkBlack wrote:

Voss wrote:... easing in with competent protagonists and a grounded antagonist (or group).

That does not sound like a game of D&D.

Does to me, but I started in 1e (well, and Basic, but I jumped to AD&D pretty quick, though there were some good adventures to pillage). Competence was required or TPKs happened. And many of the modules and adventures of the time were MUCH more location focused, with threats to the nearby town or even just a village. Four modules into a series and there might be a demon lord or something, but my go-to starting adventure was L1: The Secret of Bone Hill, which was so low-key that the sequel (Assassin's Knot) was required to get a threat against the local baron's family. (The third one, which I never ran, jumped full on to a demon-invaded dwarf hold) . But when I think of D&D adventures, I think of that, Baltron's Beacon, Against the Cult of the Reptile God, Keep on the Borderlands, Isle of Dread and adventures like that. Even Temple of Elemental Evil took a while to ramp up to full crazy.

Voss wrote:

I think the biggest problem is it looks like its setting up basically the previous movie failures with a cast of comedic dopes (plus a straight man) in over their heads with a world ending plot, rather than easing in with competent protagonists and a grounded antagonist (or group).

Sounds game accurate to me.

See above.

I know that's a lot of the popular live play style of game, but its never been part of what I've actually experienced at the table (nor do I want to, really).

 Easy E wrote:

Voss wrote:

I think the biggest problem is it looks like its setting up basically the previous movie failures with a cast of comedic dopes (plus a straight man) in over their heads with a world ending plot, rather than easing in with competent protagonists and a grounded antagonist (or group).

Sounds game accurate to me.

Yeah, I don't get the hate. Every game I have ever played was more like Guardians of the Galaxy, than Star Trek. Once a guy tried to cause a distraction by scareing a horse with cunningly shot arrow, and ended up killing the horse with his most lethal rolls of that game. I mean, it was still a distraction?

Voss wrote:
See above.

I know that's a lot of the popular live play style of game, but its never been part of what I've actually experienced at the table (nor do I want to, really).

You're not alone.

I once had a GM who told us "You can carry whatever you want so long as you use it."

He didn't want to bother tracking weight and encumbrance and stuff.

Paladin: "Can I have a door?"

GM: "As long as you use it."

In the first dungeon/cave they came upon a door.

Paladin: "I put my door in front of the door."

Gm: "Okay..."

Paladin: "I knock on the door."

GM: "Okay... you can hear the door behind your door open."

Paladin: "I kick down the door."

They got a surprise round on the very confused goblins who opened their door to find a door that got kicked down onto them.

For the rest of the game that Paladin had a door in his inventory because he "used it".

I had one GM who adopted Blade in the Dark rules. We didn't have to track every item. We had gold and as long as the item was magic, we were allowed to 'reveal' that we had an item by spending the gold.

It did save a lot of wasted shopping time in towns and stuff looking for mundane and uninteresting items.

I don't know if anyone mentioned this yet but, I read somewhere that Hasbro is trying to sell the Studio. That is not a good look when you have an upcoming movie due out in a few months.

 Genoside07 wrote:
I don't know if anyone mentioned this yet but, I read somewhere that Hasbro is trying to sell the Studio. That is not a good look when you have an upcoming movie due out in a few months.

You're confusing the studio making the film with One Entertainment who are listed in this films credits but reportedly haven't actually done anything to work on it.

Which is why they're being gutted and solid off. They're a production studio Hasbro bought but that isn't actually producing anything. They're a casualty of Hasbro's whiplash efforts to try and spin itself into a Disney-esque media empire. A few years back they tried to establish/acquire a range of in-house studios to do that, but then realized that was stupid expensive and questionable when they can just license with Paramount. eOne has basically been sitting with nothing to do for as much as a year because Hasbro has no intention of keeping it.

I doubt the sale will have any impact on future films. Paramount supposedly did all the real work and will still be interested if the movie sells (which is what Hasbro reportedly wants anyway). I'd first question how much money this movie will make cause it looks kinda lame if you ask me and I have to assume I'm in the target audience :/

We tracked our weight of belongings in Starfinder, but it has a system where many items are deemed near weightless, and it takes ten of those to equal one pound. Many of them are still quite useful, and I would dig thru all the books and buy up useful tools. Surprised them on several occasions pulling out a grappling hook and a fire extinguisher and a poison filtering straw and my pocket full of zip ties. Sad the campaign fell apart before I had a chance to reveal my full emergency survival kit that included a climate controlled tent, cots, an emergency transponder, and more that I kept in a little pocket dimension. Had a whole little deck box of item cards with dividers to keep track of where everything was stored.