RangerWickett
Legend
News broke this morning that the Russo Brothers -- directors of Winter Soldier, Avengers: Infinity War, and Endgame, and fans of Magic: the Gathering -- will be making a cartoon based on the Magic intellectual property for Netflix. I’m excited. Magic has cool worldbuilding, a suite of well-received stories, some excellent character designs, and the potential for memorable visuals involving spellcasting and monsters. Plus the Russos so far are geese that lay golden eggs.
https://www.cnet.com/news/avengers-endgame-directors-are-making-magic-the-gathering-netflix-show/
A week ago an automobile ad aired in Brazil drawing upon the visuals of the 1980s Dungeons & Dragons cartoon, which while moderately popular in the US was wildly beloved in Brazil. The commercial was produced with the approval of Wizards of the Coast.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kC9-bfsNne8
One of the guys in my gaming group works as a producer at Adult Swim, and thirteen years ago we pitched a D&D cartoon to Wizards, but it was wishful thinking on our parts. They liked our idea reasonably well, but we didn’t have the funding on our side, and WotC wasn’t interested in bankrolling a pair of no-name nerds.
Since then I’ve published a couple adventure paths (War of the Burning Sky and ZEITGEIST: The Gears of Revolution) and run a trio of Kickstarters, and we’ve developed a business plan for us to bootstrap ourselves from script to teaser to pilot episode.
I think Pathfinder should have a cartoon.
Pathfinder’s world of Golarion has a deep well of setting, storylines, and history, and has enough familiar fantasy tropes that mainstream audiences would be comfortable with it. Moreover, while tabletop roleplaying has been entertaining geeks for 44 years, it feels a bit like comic books did in the 90s. There have been a few middling movies and shows based on them, but gamers haven’t yet had their Iron Man. There is a huge audience waiting to see a great representation of the thing they love, and I aim to be the one to give it to them.
I’ve been planning for a while, collaborating with my producer friend and a couple other writers to come up with a good pilot script and series storyline, and we were intending over the next few months to commission character designs and storyboards for a teaser scene. We’d then go to Kickstarter to seek ten thousand dollars or so to fully produce that, which we’d use as the highlight of a show bible.
If Paizo is not interested, we’ll go a different way with the story so as not to infringe on their IP. But we think we have a good story that people would enjoy. And with luck Paizo will love it and we can turn it into a complete series.
The news about the Russos’ show has come out before we were ready to launch our Kickstarter, but I think it’s a fair conversation starter. Would you watch fantasy cartoons – one based on Magic or one based on Pathfinder? What sorts of stories would you like to see in a show based in the Pathfinder setting? And if a story caught your interest, would you be up for pledging to a Kickstarter to help fund a full pitch to get it in front of the right eyes?
Oh yeah, and if you work for Paizo, has the company made plans of its own for a show?
In any case, I can’t wait to see how the Magic cartoon turns out.
https://www.cnet.com/news/avengers-endgame-directors-are-making-magic-the-gathering-netflix-show/
A week ago an automobile ad aired in Brazil drawing upon the visuals of the 1980s Dungeons & Dragons cartoon, which while moderately popular in the US was wildly beloved in Brazil. The commercial was produced with the approval of Wizards of the Coast.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kC9-bfsNne8
One of the guys in my gaming group works as a producer at Adult Swim, and thirteen years ago we pitched a D&D cartoon to Wizards, but it was wishful thinking on our parts. They liked our idea reasonably well, but we didn’t have the funding on our side, and WotC wasn’t interested in bankrolling a pair of no-name nerds.
Since then I’ve published a couple adventure paths (War of the Burning Sky and ZEITGEIST: The Gears of Revolution) and run a trio of Kickstarters, and we’ve developed a business plan for us to bootstrap ourselves from script to teaser to pilot episode.
I think Pathfinder should have a cartoon.
Pathfinder’s world of Golarion has a deep well of setting, storylines, and history, and has enough familiar fantasy tropes that mainstream audiences would be comfortable with it. Moreover, while tabletop roleplaying has been entertaining geeks for 44 years, it feels a bit like comic books did in the 90s. There have been a few middling movies and shows based on them, but gamers haven’t yet had their Iron Man. There is a huge audience waiting to see a great representation of the thing they love, and I aim to be the one to give it to them.
I’ve been planning for a while, collaborating with my producer friend and a couple other writers to come up with a good pilot script and series storyline, and we were intending over the next few months to commission character designs and storyboards for a teaser scene. We’d then go to Kickstarter to seek ten thousand dollars or so to fully produce that, which we’d use as the highlight of a show bible.
If Paizo is not interested, we’ll go a different way with the story so as not to infringe on their IP. But we think we have a good story that people would enjoy. And with luck Paizo will love it and we can turn it into a complete series.
The news about the Russos’ show has come out before we were ready to launch our Kickstarter, but I think it’s a fair conversation starter. Would you watch fantasy cartoons – one based on Magic or one based on Pathfinder? What sorts of stories would you like to see in a show based in the Pathfinder setting? And if a story caught your interest, would you be up for pledging to a Kickstarter to help fund a full pitch to get it in front of the right eyes?
Oh yeah, and if you work for Paizo, has the company made plans of its own for a show?
In any case, I can’t wait to see how the Magic cartoon turns out.