D&D Cartoon

[Celebrim]

[MENTION=6681948]N'raac[/MENTION]:

"To your own comments, it seems like you would like your game to emulate the cartoon, more than you feel the cartoon is an accurate emulation of the game."

I wish to run and be in games that have a certain thoughtfulness to them. I confess I've rarely achieved it. Mostly, what goes on in a session - even when fun - doesn't translate to a story worth watching. In that sense, I think a good D&D movie... wouldn't feel like D&D. It could however be inspired by it. For example, I think most people would agree that a faithful adaptation of Chronicles of the Dragonlance, would 'feel like D&D'. In contrast, a faithful adaptation of 'Against the Giants' would be D&D, but wouldn't be a good movie.

As for the cartoon I've wanted to write since the original was canceled, I agree that it couldn't be a 'Saturday morning cartoon', but I think I could make it 'children's entertainment' in the sense C.S. Lewis observed, "A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slightest." I don't think you need be any darker or even as dark as say Harry Potter to cover the basic themes well yet tastefully.

 

[N'raac]

One difficult aspect is that good fiction needs plot, setting and characters. A D&D game provides bits of setting. A module or specific game world provides more. Older modules tended to provide less plot than newer ones.

Your Dragonlance example brings that home. To me, a Dragonlance movie would adapt the novels, which is a criticism often levied at the Dragonlance modules.

Could a decent movie be made of Against the Giants? Probably. But the plot would have to be clarified/fleshed out, we'd probably need a character, or a few, to focus on as antagonists rather than "generic giants" (much like was done in the Hobbit movies, giving us a single Orc leader to focus on). We'd have to design the characters, as each game group brought their own PC's to the scenario. We'd have to set the tone, as gaming groups vary widely from serious to silly. Having done all that, we might match the feel of some D&D games, but not all.

If you want the best D&D adventures to film, you could do worse than to start with a forum search for "railroad". The railroad adventures have plots, and in some cases characters, already.

As I think on this, there's some logic to using modern world people thrust into a D&D world. The players seldom know everything about the world to the same extent the DM does. And having to have it explained to them means it's also explained to the audience through them. That's not my D&D feel, but it has a good justification to transition the game to the screen.