Character similarities

I'm thinking of a fictional character who is a pirate with a huge ego and a pretentious accent. He's vain, a womanizer, a smooth talker, and a scheming trickster. His allegiance shifts with the wind, and he has a penchant for saving his own skin while remorselessly leaving others high and dry. Who comes to mind?

When you first watched Pirates of the Caribbean and were introduced to Captain Jack Sparrow, did you say to yourself, "Where have I seen this character before?" I did, and now I've finally figured out why: he's an exact clone of Saemon Havarian from Baldur's Gate II. I was playing BG2 this week, and about midway through the game I encountered Saemon and thought, "man, this guy is a ripoff of Jack Sparrow." Then I remembered that BG2 was released in 2000. Pirates came out in 2003. Sparrow was a ripoff of Saemon Havarian. Mind blown.

 

Johnny Depp has previously told interviewers he had based his character on Keith Richards. If only he'd had the courage to tell the truth of his inspiration then maybe we'd have a decent Forgotten Realms movie in theaters someday. It's not like Hollywood types don't play AD&D.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36_-DauQi0s[/youtube]

If I could speak planely (lol) I'd like to say that I've always enjoyed parallel universes and time travel in fiction. Sliders, Back to the Future, 12 Monkeys, probably other stuff that has slipped my mind.

Anyway, I can't think of any particular director I'd want to see direct a Forgotten Realms movie... Most of the sci-fi fantasy movies made recently are fairly light on details and backstory for the purposes of introducing this campaign setting to theater audiences. If, for example, J.J. Abrams made a Forgotten Realms movie I think there might be portals and creatures flying around willy nilly with little to no explanation of their origins. If Guilermo Del Toro attempted it there might be too few elements of the setting, but explored in great detail. IDK. I don't even want to think about what would happen if Peter Jackson, or George Lucas got ahold of the rights. I'd cry. Same goes for Michael Bay, Jon Favreau, or anyone involved in the Harry Potter movies...

Maybe if Neil Gaiman wrote the script?

 

I'm not convinced that D&D lends itself to film particularly well. On the plus side it has a rich world of monsters and mythology to draw from, but on the minus side it doesn't have any real-world consistency to the way things work.

Logically, a beginner mage should be able to take out a roomful of experienced soldiers with a single fireball spell. There would be almost nothing the soldiers could do against it, since, you know, it's a massive ball of fire in an enclosed space. The game gets around this by giving fighter characters increased saving throws as they level up, so in game terms they can all stand around and ignore it. Of course, what the saving throw represents is the cunning and ability of each fighter. Each of those soldier characters gets a dice roll and the dungeon master says "He made his saving throw", and the game carries on. But in a film you would have to show each one miraculously finding a way to avoid the fire, by diving into a barrel of water (?) or ducking behind some wooden crates (??). This would quickly become silly, especially if the mage can cast another fireball a few seconds later.

So to make such a confrontation plausible you would have to give the soldiers magical protection against fire. But when you start thinking along these lines, you start to question why anyone would be a pure fighter in the first place - why doesn't everyone learn magic? Maybe not everyone can, but those who can't would just pray to one of the many deities instead and get basically the same powers. Ultimately, since magic of any kind is so devastating, armies would employ mages to create an endless supply of magical protection items, until they became mundane. Everyone in the country would carry around rings of Otiluke's Resilient Sphere. This would get even more silly.

In order to prevent all this, you'd have to change the way magic worked to such an extent that you wouldn't be using much of the Forgotten Realms setting at all, at which point you're better off building your own in the first place.

The Planescape setting might work though, since it's so outlandish that concerns about realism would be largely irrelevant.

 

I think that for any game setting to work in film, the rules that make the game work have to be ignored and their spirit maintained. When it comes to combat, look at who would likely win the fight in game, then make a believable scene in which that outcome occurs. To use your example Smuel, the mage in question would definitely lose the battle in game; thus, in film, maybe he gets hacked to pieces before uttering a single cantrip. Maybe his weak-ass "fireball" is nothing more than an eyebrow-singeing ball of hot air; result: hacked to pieces.

Also, Dark Elf is right; you would have to clear a lot of the clutter from Faerun before it would be a worthwhile movie setting. It has a lot of potential though, if you don't mind pissing off a few nerds.

 

Did anyone else see that dungeons and dragons movie years ago?

 

Re:

Indeed. An abysmal effort.

I've only just now realised that Zanza is a bot.

 

I told you that Zanza is a bot about two years ago.

 

So you did.

I miss Xyle. I wonder if he's come out yet.

 

I feel there is more balance in the rules and mechanics than this anecdote presents. Perhaps a mage could clear a small room of fighters with one fireball spell, but the spell uses will eventually run out. Given enough waves of soldiers, the mage will be overtaken in this specific circumstance.
This also brings to mind the Linear Warrior, Quadratic Wizard trend I stumbled upon in recent years. Essentially, mages are weak at introductory levels. Fighter classes can hold their own early on, but their advancement levels off so that they will never be as powerful as the over-powered spell casting classes at higher levels.

Given the setting of Arcanum, I am disappointed to note no suggestion of Eberron in the Arcanum message boards.

 

I realise that the rules are there to provide game balance, so that fighter characters are viable as player choices or enemy NPCs. My point was that this doesn't translate to a realistic setting, which a film would have to depict. Fundamentally, the whole notion of hit-points or saving throws is a ruse. A level five mage can cast a fireball 20 feet in diameter that inflicts 5D6 damage with a saving throw for half. This means that a roomful of level 1 fighters would all perish, while a roomful of level 10 fighters would laugh it off. This doesn't make any sense, because the fireball is the same in both cases, and human beings don't become less susceptible to fire the more they practice with a sword.

Sure, and then what do you do once you've learned all that stuff? Go out and walk around dungeons with two fighters, a rogue and a cleric so that you can kill monsters? No, you would start manufacturing magic items to sell, or be hired by the nearest rich nobleman to train or augment his army. Those things are far safer, and far more lucrative.

 

Re:

Yes I saw it

Did you see Ang Lee's Hulk film?

Sometimes a franchise deserves a second chance in hollywood.

I agree with Dark Elf's recent post, thought I think the necessary material is already present in the Forgotten Realms world. There are numerous summoning spells which can backfire on the caster, and also numerous mind altering spells. All manner of intrigue could be wrought from the premise of the various spells, just because they are typically implemented as projectile attacks in a video game doesn't mean they couldn't be repurposed to serve the plot of a movie.

Far off topic - Have any of you ever read any Piers Anthony? I was always a big fan of A Spell For Chameleon, and a few of the other Xanth novels. Quite a few interesting takes on the premise of magic in those.

 

I agree, but now you're doing exactly what I said would happen, which is moving away from the Forgotten Realms setting towards something more tailored to film.

I had a dream last night for which the inspiration was definitely this thread. I dreamt I was going to partake in a D&D duel with someone for the first time ever. I've only ever played computer versions of these games against AI mobs and bosses, never against another human, so it was quite daunting. We had to each create a level 6 character, and they had to be different. My opponent chose a rogue, so I suspected their attack plan would be to hide in the shadows and then try to sneak attack me. I decided that the best counter to this would be to create a mage. Then I would cast fire resistance on myself and plaster the area with fireballs. But my knowledge of protection spells available to level 6 mages was shaky, and I wasn't sure if there were any suitable protection from weapons type spells I could also use.

Then I woke up. Yeah, sorry, it was a dream. Ensuring that the story has a satisfying conclusion isn't part of the deal.

 

I guess I've been too familiar with the rules for too long to question them so critically. To me it makes perfect sense that if a mage launches a fireball into a 10-by-10 room that the fireball would completely fill, any low-level fighter is going to splat 100% of the time. A more experienced fighter in the same scenario would somehow find a way to roll away from the blast and suffer only have damage, the same way a high-level fighter could fall out of a boat without getting wet (provided he made his saving throw).

 

10x10 is a fairly small room as well. Depending on the detonation and angle of attack it could potentially create a backdraft and fry the mage as well. Assuming that it's an ignition of a gaseous concentration and not some spattering of napalm. If there was, let's say, a Sword Saint, or Monk, or some other Dexterity based Fighter you could easily assume they'd have the presence of mind to avoid flames from either of these sources. A heavy cloak, or curtain could provide protection from an initial blast, and a deep breath and nimble feet could extricate the character from a flaming room.

Alternatively I'd imagine chainmail or plate armor would be the worst possible shield against a fire of any kind. I wonder how the current D&D rules deal with this, or if any edition of D&D has every addressed this.

I think, in regards to playing D&D, the player should just role the dice and let the Dungeon Master explain miraculous escape from a burning room. It is in this same way that director's face so much responsibility and potential for praise or blame when adapting beloved material for film.

I don't think there is anything wrong with tailoring the rules of a game to better suit the movie. Can you imagine what the Silent Hill, or Resident Evil movies would have been like if the actors had to walk mimicking "tank" movement? Stifling artistic license is why these movies fail! Did you know there was a strip club scene that was cut from Super Mario Bros. The Movie? That movie would have been so much better with some lizard titties in it.

Seriously though, Resident Evil, and Silent Hill were masterful adaptations of their respective games. While Silent Hill took license with the source material they still managed to capture the tone and quality of fear that made the first game so incredibly terrifying. Resident Evil, on the other hand, is campy, action packed, and filled with senseless gore and violence. In the same way as the video games these movies transition from horror to action before you even wonder where the action went. While the plot of the games is largely absent from these movies, the constantly escalating violence, and scope of the plot are what make these movies worth watching - it's not about jump scares, it's about seeing where, and how far this crazy action is taking the outlandish story. Interestingly enough I'd compare this quality to the original Aeon Flux cartoon series, though the movie w/ Charlize Theron completely missed the point.

I think the example of Aeon Flux is an interesting parallel to the failed Dungeons and Dragons film from a decade ago - I think the director's looked at the subject matter and said "What is this? What are it's parts?"

On paper D&D is a game where 3-6 friends adventure through a fantasy world envisioned and guided by a DM, and Aeon Flux is a violent science fiction story about a high tech, super human military conflict in the distantly unrecognizable future.

The directors of these movies never asked, or looked into HOW these franchises worked, or what drives their cult popularity. People love Aeon Flux because it is an unsettlingly heartless parody of subtle themes of S&M and genocide perceived to be inherent to science fiction. (imagine if the camera had panned back a bit in the opening of Star Wars - A New Hope and you saw storm troopers burning the bodies of the rebels they had just slaughtered, or if Darth Vader had been wearing nipple clamps while he choked someone to death). This element of ridiculous satire was completely absent from the movie. Aeon Flux was meant to be Gravity's Rainbow, not Dune.

In the case of the D&D movie the director made the mistake of assuming people who play D&D do it because they think this is cool...


When in fact they want to see this...


Fantasy is not reality, and fantasy is fantasy because it is extremely removed from reality. I do not want to see a bunch of nerds starring in a D&D movie.