That movie was perfectly written for its target audience. Every D&D player knew what was happening, knew how it happened, and could easily imagine the DM's exasperated facial expressions as they dragged these lunatics feet first into a good story.
That movie was the shit. It had no right to be as good as it was until you realize that it was a movie made with love by true D&D nerds, designed to feel like the cinematic retelling of an actual campaign, crit rolls, weird player personalities, DM nudging, and all.
The DMPC character who just walked off into the horizon in a perfectly straight line when his job was done is my favorite minor detail of the movie.
Xenk was great - that walking off bit was apparently because they hadn’t called “cut” yet and he just kept walking. So they let him, then turned it into a gag.
I think he was supposedly crafted as a replacement for a planned inclusion of Drizzt as a character, but I like my headcanon that he’s basically the DMPC sent to deus ex machina them out of their worst fuckups.
I'm annoyed that I expect Hollywood executive, as always, will take the wrong lesson from it. They'll see it underperformed and think people don't want a D&D movie, rather than that they shouldn't have released it between John Wick and Mario.
I don’t know enough to say whether that’s what did it in or not, but it was still a phenomenal movie that was liked by critics and audiences. It’s definitely a marketing problem.
I introduced a "small one story structure, its walls no wider than the span of a single door" next to the farmhouse my players were investigating. They didn't believe the owners who told them what it was for, and went to check it out for themselves, hackles up and weapons drawn.
It's an outhouse.
Just an outhouse.
Just once in my life I'd love to play DnD with the most unsmilingly pompous tryhards in the world so we could all be severe and straight-up Tolkien characters talking like books.
Then I'd publish the session recording so that everyone could see that it's not a dream worth having and we could all move on to feeling fine with our regular silly bullshit.
I got my entire party arrested for trying to bribe a bartender who was an undercover cop. When I rolled a 1 trying to escape (I was a wind elf) I accidentally set loose a tornado killing all of us instantly.
A streamer I watch mentioned how they played D&D and it wasn't all super horny like all the D&D memes he finds and I just had to wonder what weird D&D group he played with that there wasn't at least 1 person playing a Bard whose entire schtick was fucking their way out of every problem?
My theory is that having a horny bard in the party is pretty common, but it depends on how frequently and how (ahem) enthusiastically those scenes get roleplayed. :P
...there's a comic i read somewhere illustrating how sombre, dramatic campaign settings ultimately devolve into slapstick hijinks and silly, slapstick campaign settings ultimately evolve into dramatic epics...
