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ShortQuests -- individual adventure modules! An all-new collection of digest-sized D&D adventures designed to plug in to your game.

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wombat" data-source="post: 1552178" data-attributes="member: 8447">Braveheart, Gladiator, The Last Samurai, Master and Commerder: The Far Side of the World, Troy  -- hmmm, none of them fall into "Truly Greats" in my heart or mind.  Okay, I have to play fair; I haven't seen Troy yet.  All of these films fall short of the mark for me, however.Braveheart is a fun film, a good, solid film, but I studied the Middle Ages too long to take it seriously.  As a friend of mine said, "It's a good film as long as you assume it takes place in a parallel dimension, where therehappens to be a place called Scotland, happens to be a place called England, and happen to be people called William Wallace, Edward I, and Robert the Bruce.  Otherwise it has nothing to do with the history."  The film is a fantastic postcard of and love-affair with the Scottish landscape, and there is great cinematography, acting, and action, but as history it falls flat for me.  So I find it good (not great) as a film and absolutely horrible for a history -- evens out to so-so.Gladiator?  Again, I know too much about the period.  The opening Romans-vs.-Tribesmen-as-Vietnam, repelte with napalm strikes, still grates on me, as does "Roman Cavalry To The Rescue!" charging through the woods.  While it is a mildly entertaining film, I do not find it a great film.  Overall I found the movie forced and, at many times, rather silly, but I am in a distinct minority.  Anyway, I could go on.  None of these films really "do it" for me.  Odd plottings, plain awful history, and the like do them all in for me in one way or another.  They may be pretty to look at, but they leave a sour taste in my mouth.  I used to really love Zulu, until I read up on the period.  At that point the film became, "Good cinema, questionable history", though not as bad as some of the others.  Lawrence of Arabia fares better and is still a grand epic.  The Lion in Winter holds up very well, especially after I read a contemporary chronicler's account of the attempted crowning of Young Henry, which reads like a scene out of the film.  Amadeus is well-costumed, well-acted, but questionable in many of the details (esp. about Sallieri, but the original play was meant as an allegory, not a history).  I guess I expect too much out of historical films.OTOH, if anyone ever options the story of the Norman Conquest of England, they would have a great property on their hands without having to change a single bit of the history to make it interesting.  International Politics!  Three Massive Personalities!  Political And Religious Intrigue!  Two Invasions!  Death, Destruction, And Despair!  It is made for the big screen!  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /></blockquote>

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