Talkin' 'Bout My Generation

[athelind]

A writer and teacher gives tribute to D&D.

Our influence is now everywhere. My generation of gamers -- whose youths were spent holed up in paneled wood basements crafting identities, mythologies, and geographies with a few lead figurines -- are the filmmakers, computer programmers, writers, DJs, and musicians of today. I think, for the producers, the movie version of "The Lord of the Rings" was less about getting the trilogy off the page and onto the screen than it was a vicarious thrill, a gift to the millions of us who wished we could have dressed up as orcs and ventured into catacombs and castle keeps ourselves. Only a generation of imaginations roused by role playing could have made those movies possible.

Comments

[hedgegoth.livejournal.com]

Hrm, ok, but how about the D&D Movie?

[athelind.livejournal.com]

...I got nothin'.

[hedgegoth.livejournal.com]

that's got to be on my top 5 list of horrible movies that I've watched.

I liked Richard O'Brien though.

[stalbon.livejournal.com]

I tried, I really tried, to like that movie...but no, I realized how much it sucked soon after I left the theatre.

[grevydude.livejournal.com]

yeah baby! (swings his elven blade around) I remember being young and scared, huddled under my blanket at night, reading the "Dead Marshes" section of the trilogy by flashlight, wondering what horrible feinds lay waiting in the shadow filled corridors of my house. Wondering if I should dare take on the dangerous quest to the hidden fortress of the sacred keep of the bathroom.

Good memories!

[jirris-midvale.livejournal.com]

And I thank the pioneers that traveled the path before me.

Roleplaying was one of those things that got me, the antisocial kid who wore black, to stop being so antisocial. It taught me that sometimes you have to take chances, that sometimes you need to stand up even if you are just a third level fighter and your opponent is an army of orcs. It taught me that you need to rely and help those around you. It taught me that despite all the fancy treasure in the end, getting there was it's own reward.

Gaming was something that changed me a lot. I feel that it really was for the better.

[r-caton.livejournal.com]

NAH! R O'B's OK but Tom Baker steals every scene. Dragons were good though.
Jeremy Irons positively out hammed Todd Slaughter!

Don't expect LOTR and the D&D movies OK enough. You know the D&D cartoons are out on DVD again?

[ssthisto.livejournal.com]

Hmmmm. I wasn't actually best pleased by the dragons. They looked very... unfinished and unlively. Kind of like they'd gotten some decent Poser models, maybe adjusted them a little bit, then didn't bother adding decent textures to them. They just didn't look as spectacular as I've come to expect things like that to look from Dragonheart and the Jurassic Park series. Even the dragons in Reign of Fire looked more realistically 'alive'. I want to see the dirt on the scales, the slaver on the tongues and the sparkle of a lifelike eye.

Never mind the whole 'wand of dragon control' thing... I mean, Gold and Red D&D dragons are the smartest, most powerful of the lot according to every single sourcebook *I* ever saw. Don't you think they wouldn't let the wands continue to exist once they were made aware of them? I would have believed 'Wand of White/Black Dragon control' or 'Wand of Copper/Brass Dragon control' ... but they just stretched the suspension of disbelief too far based on what I know of the D&D dragons in sourcebooks and the Dragonlance novels ... and why, oh why, didn't they set it in Krynn if they wanted it to be about dragons?

[r-caton.livejournal.com]

Ah but is that pre- or post-Cataclysm?
Before or after the Dragonlance wars ?
The War of Souls?

I'd like to see a movie about Kang and his draconian engineers....

[ssthisto.livejournal.com]

Still doesn't change my essential gripe about the plastic-toy-like dragons.... they could have done so much better, they could have actually _looked at the Monstrous Manuals_ and made the Red dragon distinct from the Gold dragon...

And the movie was clearly stated NOT to have taken place on Krynn at all. Nor Ravenloft. Nor Faerun.

Whee, brand new setting, brand new rules, let's make it a one-off cartoon with live actors.

I'd have preferred it if the directors had actually sat down with a gaming group and watched them play a campaign, then made the movie from THAT. Or taken the plot of one of the novels or short stories that have been published. At least then it would 'feel' like Dungeons and Dragons.

[r-caton.livejournal.com]

Wasn't that the way the original Dragonlance trilogy was produced? ie novelisation of a campaign?

[athelind.livejournal.com]

Personally, I never was that big a fan of the published settings. Krynn is such a PRODUCT. To old-school grognards like me, D&D is all about creating your OWN fantasy worlds. To me, this felt much more like a look into an actual game that someone PLAYED than something based on the Product Lines would have.

Personally, I found the movie setting, with its social stratification and class struggle, far more interesting than the watered-down Casper's Magic Forest pseudo-feudalism of the typical D&D world.

Whatever his flaws, the director was a hard-core gamer geek, not a marketroid.

What he said.

[athelind.livejournal.com]

Gaming was really the first social activity I really enjoyed (aside from attending SF conventions) -- and that's still true today. Sports? Clubbing? What do "normal" people do for fun, anyway?

Re: What he said.

[hitchkitty.livejournal.com]

With apologies to certain musicals:

They sit around and wonder what geekish folk would do...and that's what normal folk do.