The Dungeons and Dragons II: Wraith of the Dragon God spoiler filled thread.

[DaveMage]

And how can us old school gamers not love the reference to 1st ed modules. We just needed a reference to the Styeading of the Hill Giant Chief to make my day complete.

That's D&D 4.

D&D 3 being the Temple of Elemental Evil, of course.

 

[tecnowraith]

Okay, since this is a spoiler thread, I'll lay this out here.

At the time I didn't notice or care, but this morining looking back it hit me as odd.

They go into the goblin shaman's hut, which was a wood and thatch affair up on stilts. Searching around, the rogue finds a trap door in the floor, which drops down into a secret space deep enough to hold a small chest. Remember the hut is on stilts. How thick was that floor again?

They set off a trap, wherein several blades (apparently 3 or 4 feet long from the camera angle) shoot up out of the floor in the area around the secret compartment. The floor of the hut which is up on stilts.

Wouldn't all of this be obvious from ground level? Where the hell were those blade hiding?

That aside, the party acted as a party would: the mage casts Detect Magic while the rogue and the rest toss the place looking for loot. I missed what the wizard said when she found the ring, but was that where she found the Ring of the Ram?

The bed itself was risen, like a platform bed.

 

[tecnowraith]

Hey, just be glad that Damodar did not use Beholder guard-dogs this time around. Harpies and maybe imps was used.

Was not sure on the lich design though.
The Lizardfolk shaman was interesting plus the regeneration used on his arm.

 

[Sketchpad]

Saw it ... liked it In all honesty, I thought it was much better than the first and has potential for a sequel. I did let out a cry when I saw Solomon's name in the openning credits, but I think he made a better movie this time. In all honesty, I think I'd like to see a series or series of movies based around the iconic characters (Redgar, Lidda, etc) and have them hit the classic modules (Temple of Elemental Evil, Against the Giants, etc). Over all though, I liked it and will probably snag it on DVD

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

After watching the movie, here's my biggest complaint:

Is this Courtney Solomon's crappy homebrew city?

Originally it was entirely his crappy homebrew, but they obviously shifted Ishmir to Greyhawk. Maybe Ishmir is in greyhawk already, and -I- just didn't know that, but I can't recall it.

At any rate, in Ishmir, obviously D&D magic doesn't function like D&D magic. So we've still got a fundamental disconnect going on between "what happens in D&D" and "what happens in Courtneyland".

"Divine" magic is this rare and mysterious thing ... but we've got a cleric. Who doesn't seem to do any Divine healing, and conveniently gets toasted after casting ... wall of fire? (Obad-Hai, Fire domain). Which was established before that as an arcane spell. So when the party gets beat to heck we teleport them all to a temple, but follow one character out and ... oh, look, no divine healing on-screen again. Did everybody get stitches or did they get a round of Cure Serious Wounds?

The only time we see curative magic on screen is on the badguy's side, by some dude in a black robe.

It was just a jarring series of "very much not D&D", that they seemed to go out of their way to avoid divine magic. That was one of the reasons the 1st movie sucked so bad, beyond essential points of film-making, was that it wasn't even a "D&D Movie". Nothing worked like the game ... no identifiable monsters, no clerics, weird elves, unintelligent dragons, beholders as minor watch-creatures who HEAR, etc.

This time was better, but I'd very much like to see "Ishmir" left behind for any future films and everything just work in good ole stock Greyhawk. Maybe a cleric of Pelor. A few cure spells. Just one ... somebody gets stabbed, Bob of Pelor says: "Oh my, this looks serious ..." concentrates and the wound heals and we can all say: "That's why you don't let the cleric get eaten by a dragon in the first combat of the adventure." As opposed to setting up the cleric as Conan With A Maul.

--fje

 

[tecnowraith]

so they used Darkmantles in the dungeon before the mirror tap then?

 

[HalWhitewyrm]

I didn't see much of the first one (it hurt too much) but actually sat down to watch the movie last night.

It didn't suck as much as I thought it would, so it ended up being ok. The acting was horrible, but not painful (well, some Damodar parts were). Like everyone else, what I liked most was the D&D-isms that populated the movie. If I want a more general type of fantasy, I'll watch LotR, so I appreciated them making this a D&D movie.

The story was ok, on par with an average adventure (or is it that all our really cool adventures would look this mediocre if put to film?). My favorite thing to do during the movie (other than going all MST3K on it) was playing the part of the DM, citing rules as they appeared on screen (spells, magic items, monsters, PCs, the elf being the one who finds the secret door, etc - and I'll probably check it out again to see if I can spot feats and such being used as well) and calling out the house rules from time to time. And much like everyone else, I loved the references to the old mods. It only needed a bard, IMO.

Now, I was under the impression that WotC had nothing to do with this movie. If so, how did they get away with using so much of the D&D IP in the movie (all the old module names, the look of the various monsters, Obad-Hai, etc.)? Or am I just misinformed here?

I give it a 5.5 overall, and will probably see the DVD just to check out the extra scenes.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

(OOTS reference coming up...)

No WOTC IP needed. Everything in the movie was OGL.

 

[Richards]

A few unrelated conments about the characters:

Nim the Rogue is definitely the Frohicke (from "The X-Files" and "The Lone Gunmen") of the party.

Dorian the Cleric would have looked a whole lot better without those green racing stripes on his balding head.

Berrick's wife (forgot her name) looks like she could have been Jessica Alba's slightly-less-attractive sister.

Slapping a tattoo on Lux's forehead wasn't particularly a bad idea. Making the tattoo look like an "M" above an "H" kind of was. (I was distracted trying to figure out what that might stand for.)

Oberon bore an uncanny resemblence to Mr. Pith from "Seinfeld" (who once insisted that Elaine refrain from going on a weekend outing with her friends because he wanted her to buy him new socks). I know it wasn't him, but they look a lot alike.

I liked how when the bandits attacked the party in the forest, Berrick the fighter sends the two women out to deal with them, while he sticks around and watches Nim figure out the secret entrance to the dungeon. Very chivalrous, Berrick!

Overall, it was a much better movie than I expected, and I enjoyed playing "spot the actual D&D reference" while watching it.

Johnathan

 

[Borlon]

I thought Lux was eaten by that harpy? How is it she appears later on to threaten the BBEG? Or am I totally confused?