D&D General Dungeons & Dragons-Inspired Musical Announced For This Summer

[Audiomancer]

(From comicbook.com)

Dungeons & Dragons-Inspired Musical Announced for This Summer

A musical about a group of Dungeons & Dragons players is set to launch Off-Broadway this summer. Here There Be Dragons – A New Musical Quest is a new musical featuring book and lyrics by Chase O’Neill, music by Theo Teris, orchestrations by Scott Wasserman (Hamilton, Dear Evan Hansen), and...

comicbook.com

The creators appear to be actual D&D players and fans. The synopsis is similar to the stage play, “She Kills Monsters.”

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

It will be not about D&D, but about a group of TTRPG players in the last days of hight school.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

It will be not about D&D, but about a group of TTRPG players in the last days of hight school.

See to me that's what makes it about D&D, whereas if it was something like, say, a film set in the Forgotten Realms without involving a TTRPG group then I would consider it a Forgotten Realms movie, but not really a D&D movie.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I would change "Here There Be Dragons is the first D&D-themed musical" to "Here There Be Dragons is the first D&D-themed Broadway musical." There is the Russian work, The Last Trial, based on Dragonlance:

 

[Thunderfoot]

Anyone remember when it was uncool to play? lol

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Anyone remember when it was uncool to play? lol

Did you just imply musical theatre was cool? Because that seems like a bold statement.

But it is wild living in a largely-unexpected Golden Age of D&D popularity. I mean, when I was a young teenage kid I told my parents, you'll see, D&D will be seen as normal when my generation grow up (I could already tell even in the early '90s it was very different and didn't make you a "hard nerd" like it did in the '80s, we had cool kids playing for example, and when I told people at uni later they were more intrigued than appalled), and that did happen, but we're way beyond that now!

 

[John R Davis]

Anyone remember when it was uncool to play? lol

It will be there again in a short term when it's too popular

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Definitely. Up until the late 90s, you could never be sure of how it would be received to say "we're playing AD&D this weekend." I remember being told not to mention it to a dear friend because they absolutely would mock and deride me if I did.

If I had to mark when the tide began to shift, I'd say that it started with the release of the Fellowship of the Ring. That's when the needle started to budge. Game of Thrones swung it further and when 5e hit alongside stuff like Critical Role and Death Saves, that's when suddenly it was a cool to game.

Anyone remember when it was uncool to play? lol

 

[Thunderfoot]

Did you just imply musical theatre was cool? Because that seems like a bold statement <SNIP>

LMAO No, but it is socially acceptable. And that is my point, we are no longer pimply faced, Coke bottle bottom glasses wearing, Satan worshipping, virgins. I mean sure, there are some of those, but there are actually....GIRLS that play D&D. lol.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

If I had to mark when the tide began to shift, I'd say that it started with the release of the Fellowship of the Ring. That's when the needle started to budge. Game of Thrones swung it further and when 5e hit alongside stuff like Critical Role and Death Saves, that's when suddenly it was a cool to game.

I think that's pretty much spot-on. Harry Potter contributed too, because frankly it was impossible to pretend to be "cool" and to like Harry Potter (unlike, say, Anne Rice's vampire stuff, which was big in the earlier '90s and a lot of people who wouldn't be seen dead with a d20 were keen on). If you're an adult reading a children's novel about a boy wizard playing magic sports with golden flying balls you're just admitting you no longer get to pull the "too cool" card lol.