06-05-2018, 12:51 PM | #11 | |
Banned
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: 100 hurricane swamp
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Re: Mood or Tone of the 'Dungeon Fantasy' setting, world...
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So does Conan (2011), though it is a revenge piece, not a 'quest for loot'. |
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06-05-2018, 12:59 PM | #12 |
Join Date: Aug 2016
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Re: Mood or Tone of the 'Dungeon Fantasy' setting, world...
I was trying to think of movies that might fit the DF idea, and oddly the one that came up for me was Guardians of the Galaxy. I know, that's sci-fi, not fantasy - but the idea of mismatched characters who want loot or revenge coming together and finding they're caught up in a grand quest kinda fits, at least to my thinking.
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06-05-2018, 01:24 PM | #13 | |
Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: Saint Paul, MN
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Re: Mood or Tone of the 'Dungeon Fantasy' setting, world...
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06-05-2018, 05:30 PM | #14 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
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Re: Mood or Tone of the 'Dungeon Fantasy' setting, world...
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TSR: "Let's see.... and throw in medusas, sphinxes, rocs, nagas, ents, hobbits, orcs..."Or so I'm told. (Did D&D have to rework/rename balrogs?) Anyway, this thread directly hits a question I've been curious about. Should've thought to ask it here, to the perfect bunch of people: There are plenty of movies & TV shows with bits of dungeon-delving adventure: Conan's serpent temple sequence, LoTR's mines of Moria journey, and many more. But it seems to me these always involve characters making side trips into monster-filled dungeons/caverns for some one-time quest or goal, or to pass through on the way to the main adventure. Or they end up underground for some unplanned/unwanted reason, and want to get out as quickly as possible. Even in the D&D movie: from what little I recall of it, there's some sewer or dungeon action, but the characters aren't actual dungeon delvers. So, my question: Has there ever been a movie or TV show about true delvers, who regularly and intentionally gear up and go down to fight monsters and steal their loot, again and again, just as DF or D&D characters (typically) do for a living? I'm thinking there hasn't been (hence this thread...)
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06-05-2018, 05:42 PM | #15 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: Mood or Tone of the 'Dungeon Fantasy' setting, world...
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06-05-2018, 07:37 PM | #16 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: traveller
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Re: Mood or Tone of the 'Dungeon Fantasy' setting, world...
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The problem is that delving per se doesn't provide much of what is traditionally considered plot to build a property around. Even in an episodic TV show, how could it be structured so that (a) each episode has a story, but (b) that story is not just the Defeat the Monster of the Week and Take Its Stuff? This is why the examples you mention use the dungeon crawl as an element in a larger story. Add to that the expense of special effects (magic) and costumes (monsters), and you can see why most of the reasonably close matches are animated (starting with the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon) rather than live action. Finally, there is a subtle difference between fantasy and science fiction in visual media. Essentially, science fiction settings are distinguished by their assumptions, which result in very different and mostly incompatible imagery: Star Trek is not Star Wars is not Aliens. Since "show, don't tell" is the name of the game, this works out reasonably well in practice. Fantasy properties, on the other hand, implicitly share a remarkably unified visual language: you could drop Aragorn into Westeros and never know he was out of place to look at him. This means, however, that it is easy to get that visual language wrong, and disappoint the audience's expectations in large or in detail. This was one of the problems with the D&D movie, over and above bad acting and lame plot -- it just didn't look right, for a lot of idiosyncratic values of whatever that means. |
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06-05-2018, 10:43 PM | #17 | |
Banned
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: 100 hurricane swamp
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Re: Mood or Tone of the 'Dungeon Fantasy' setting, world...
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Dark Matter, Killjoys, Firefly, Farscape, etc. Sure there is a bigger background plot going on, but those shows all felt to me like someone's space c-punk games turned into tv shows. |
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06-06-2018, 07:05 AM | #18 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: traveller
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Re: Mood or Tone of the 'Dungeon Fantasy' setting, world...
Tales of the Gold Monkey is a pulp version, and there are modern counterparts as well. I'm fond of Jack of All Trades as a not-at-all serious early 19th century espionage-themed version of the same, but I realize most people will not have heard of it.
Consider how boring these shows would be, however, if the only crime they ever did was bank robbery. It's the variety of missions and situations that keeps the model interesting. It just occurs to me that we haven't mentioned the best live action TV depictions of a more general (than just delving) fantasy RPG campaign: Hercules and Xena. Would that work, Q? Edit to add: Speaking from experience (I wrote a chapter of the original Serenity RPG), Firefly is a textbook example of why "show, don't tell" is great for visual media, but extremely difficult to translate into a gameable setting. Last edited by thrash; 06-06-2018 at 07:12 AM. |
06-07-2018, 11:02 AM | #19 | |
Join Date: Nov 2005
Location: Midwest, USA
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Re: Mood or Tone of the 'Dungeon Fantasy' setting, world...
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Kromm has given his "Appendix N" for Dungeon Fantasy at some point on the forums, but I'm sorry to say I don't have a link. Probably should get Matt in on that action, too, since he's written most of the official scenarios and dungeons, as far as I know. Of course, there are a lot of other authors as well, all of whom have their own inspirations, I'm sure.
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06-07-2018, 11:57 AM | #20 |
Pike's Pique
Join Date: Oct 2005
Location: Cincinnati, Ohio U.S.A.
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Re: Mood or Tone of the 'Dungeon Fantasy' setting, world...
Video Games....
Note for all the people recommending 'video games' to me - I don't own any video games or video game systems. I've never had a video game system of any kind. I grew up with coin-op machines at an arcade in a mall. When you ran out of coins you had to stop playing. This also means I don't own any computer games either, and I've never played "World of Warcraft" or other online multiplayer games. Gaming for me has always been a table top thing and I am the GM 80 to 90% of the time. Like I said in the opening post I like to have DVDs or compact discs playing in the room as inspiration when I am preparing for a game session days or weeks in advance. Free RPG Day is June 16th - that is the day I am running the adventure "I Smell A Rat!" that was included in the DF boxed set. - Ed C.
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