What happened to Izmir?

hopeless · Feb 12, 2007

Regarding Izmir and Dave Arneson

teitan said:
What does Blackmoor have to do with it?

I heard DA was placing Izmir in his blackmoor campaign world but never heard anything more about it.

Sir Brennen · Feb 12, 2007

Henry said:
The movie was made by two different directors and writers, hence the disconnect.

Just like two different DMs wont neccessarily have their players adventure in the same version of Greyhawk

Relique du Madde · Feb 12, 2007

I'm willing to bet that most of the people in Izmir either failed to purchase DnD3.5 or they started playing world of warcraft.

Klaus · Feb 12, 2007

hopeless said:
What happened to Izmir?

In the first dungeons and dragons movie, Izmir was a massive metropolis that resembled Sharn from Eberron to a small degree (in that Sharn would make Izmir look "small").

Then when they made the sequel movie set a century later Izmir had now shrunk to the size of maybe a small city... so what happened?

Is there another Izmer a metropolis abandoned for some reason, just waiting to be explored, or has the Blackmoor setting released something to clear this up?

Either a lot of Dispel Magic to eliminate all those Wall of Stone spells used to make those towers, or an Epic spell called "Budget Cut".

Hypersmurf · Feb 13, 2007

hopeless said:
In the first dungeons and dragons movie, Izmir was a massive metropolis that resembled Sharn from Eberron to a small degree (in that Sharn would make Izmir look "small").

Then when they made the sequel movie set a century later Izmir had now shrunk to the size of maybe a small city... so what happened?

Most of the food, the trade, the economy, and so on, was all enabled by the mages.

Then, at the end of the first movie, the Queen declared that mages and commoners were now equal.

A month later, the commoners went to the mages. "We're running out of food," they said. "Trade is drying up, the economy is tanking. Why aren't you doing anything?"

"You're our equals now," replied the mages with a shrug. "You fix it."

But they never did.

-Hyp.

The Grumpy Celt · Feb 13, 2007

I always thought (well, I thought little of the movies, however you wish to define the term) the city in the first one was the capital while the city in the second one was just some podunk village the king was visiting to make it easy on his enemies.

Knightfall · Feb 13, 2007

hopeless said:
I heard DA was placing Izmir in his blackmoor campaign world but never heard anything more about it.

Hw was considering it, but I don't think he was able to get permission. I had an e-mail conversation with him back in 2002 about Izmer. Here's the e-mail I sent him...

From: Robert Blezard
Sent: Friday, September 27, 2002 6:17 PM
To: darneson...
Cc: Arneson, David
Subject: From my Web Site

Hi Dave,

I have some questions for you regarding the Empire of Izmer and its characters. Mainly, I want to find out if the Empire was originally from Courtney's homebrew campaign world or if he just made it up for the movie. Does he have a website for his company or personally?

The reason I'm asking this is because I'm in the process of adapting Izmer to fit into my campaign world. I've got all the info and PDF downloads from WotC's site but I'm clamoring for more. I bought the novelization, as well as the movie.

Attached is a JPG map of what is going to be my Izmer with place named from the movie and novel. (Note: Izmer is only going to be a kingdom in my campaign that was once part of a larger empire.)

Were official maps of Izmer, Sumdall and/or Antius City ever done or can you even discuss that? I have a lot of burning questions but don't want to go into all of them unless your willing.

Cheers!

Robert Blezard
Edmonton, Alberta
Canada

And here's his reply...

From: Arneson, David
Sent: Wednesday, September 25, 2002 7:16 AM
To: Robert Blezard
Subject: RE: From my Web Site

Dear Robert,

Although at least partially based on Corey's world Izmer was pretty much made up for the movie. How much so I do not know for sure.

The characters in the movie were all done for the movie.

Corey has no websites.

WOTC downloads are fairly inaccurate. I should know since I was chosen by Corey to do the module after WOTC flubbed it.

Since I did all that work, and WOTC scrubbed movie support (Before the movie came out BTW) I added it to my campaign world.

In my case I placed the Empire beyond the Great Mountains to the West of the Afridi (i.e. REAL far away.) How viable an empire it is I have left open to question. After all just because the Mages think that they are so great does not make it so. And the Dragon Rods do not have unlimited range after all.

Izmer is pretty much done. Based on Prague, Czech. A wonderful old city that has survived intact. I really really like the place.

Antius is partially done but far from complete. The 'Tower' Castles are really a cool idea. Izmer it self is sketchy.

I hope to include all this as a supplement to the Blackmoor source book (out next year).

Last that I heard I can talk about the world and characters for the most part. A few things are 'Secret' but not much.

Respectfully,

Dave Arneson

trancejeremy · Feb 13, 2007

I think the real answer is that the original movies had a pretty big budget ($30-35 million), while the sequel was direct to video and had a budget of a couple million.

Cthulhudrew · Feb 13, 2007

Whizbang Dustyboots said:
I wish they'd just go ahead and release the setting book as a free PDF on their site, if they're never going to sell it.

There were several articles in Dragon magazine around the time the movie came out as well, most of which had character stats and/or magic items in them. About three or four articles in total, which (along with the interviews) would help to flesh out such a product.

Cthulhudrew · Feb 13, 2007

Some more info about the D&D movie and setting, from several threads on the Mystara boards:

Director Courtney Solomon discusses Izmer

Discussion of the character stats from Dragon articles

More discussion and links to Izmer stuff

What happened to Izmir?

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