D&D General What *is* D&D? (mild movie spoilers)

[Paul Farquhar]

The Hobbit is a little more complicated.

The Hobbit is interesting, I happen to be rereading it at the moment. It has a lot of moral complexity for something so self-consciously written for children. But it's overall moral is "greed is bad" (and those dwarves aren't really "good guys").

But it follows the same trajectory as HAT, many D&D parties, and even some Conan stories: the protagonists set out in search of personal gain (or just thrill-seeking in Bilbo's case) but end up doing something heroic.

Of course, in Unfinished Tales Tolkien makes it clear that Gandalf was motivated all along by a desire to dispose of the dragon.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Not everyone in the world always wants to branch out and try new things.

That's just sad. What's life for if not for learning new things?

 

[Hussar]

/ snip

Sorry. Nothing to see here.

 

[Minato]

When all of them are, sort of... When all those things become so common they can be used in gladitorial combat, they cease to be magical IMO. It is the reason why Romans continued to find more and more exotic animals for their combats, because what was once new becomes old.

In my D&D, I very rarely use most of those monsters. They are things of nightmares, not things of amusement. Non-adventurers will rarely encounter them, and if one happens to, they likely died in that encounter. Fortunately, PCs have better odds... usually.

The gladiatorial combat you refer to was disavowed because all participants did die the last time they held them many years ago. It is only brought back as part of the evil villains plot with zero expectation by the organiser that any of the participants will survive this time around. The movie does pretty much exactly what you are advocating.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

It's like we didn't even watch the same movie. The characters, out of nowhere, decided to send themselves on a sidequest to get a thing to let them negate a spell that was stopping them from getting through a door to steal the treasure to pay enough to make it worthwhile for Simon to help them get in contact with Kira and convince her to come home with Holga and Edgin, and hopefully to steal back the Tablet of Reawakening too.

That's almost entirely on the hypothetical players. All the DM has done are to say, "Kira doesn't want to come with you," and "the door is locked with a spell." The DM even made sure that getting past the door wasn't even necessary to get back Kira AND the treasure! Everything else is the DM improvising in response to player actions and intentions. "Is there any way for us to break the spell on the vault without gaining 300,000 XP first? Oh, okay, where would we find such an artifact? Can we at least find someone who might give us a clue?" Saying yes to players' attempts to think outside the box is the opposite of railroading.

At no point did the hypothetical DM block attempts to "get off the railroad." He even let both Infiltration plans succeed, and Plan B (the non-helmet plan) was the more successful one because it found the real treasure, not the decoy. Not a railroad.

Honor Amongst Murder Hobos: Party kills Forge and sticks Kira in a sack.

Honor Amongst Boy Scouts: Party collects evidence of vote rigging and takes it to the Lords Alliance.

 

[DND_Reborn]

That's just sad. What's life for if not for learning new things?

That's sort of insulting, do you realize that?

It's fine if you feel that way, of course, but to call how someone else chooses to live their life "sad" is not cool. Life is for doing the things you like to do and enjoying those things. Learning new things is very different from trying something you believe in your own estimation is not worth your time. Life is too short to waste on such things.

The movie does pretty much exactly what you are advocating.

I'm not advocating anything. I don't care why they did it in the movie because I am not going to see it. That was just one small part of many reasons why I don't care for this "style" of D&D.

---

It's good that you (plural) enjoy the movie, and not surprising that so many people are trying to change my mind about a movie and style of D&D I don't care for, but this discussion is futile. After all, I'm not trying to convince you not to like it... Enjoy your movie.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

in your own estimation

This is the issue. If you haven't tried something, you are not in a position to make a valid estimation of it's value. I've tried things I didn't think I would like. And sometimes I've been right. But I've still benefited from the experience. Life is too short NOT to try new things.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

But it follows the same trajectory as HAT, many D&D parties, and even some Conan stories: the protagonists set out in search of personal gain (or just thrill-seeking in Bilbo's case) but end up doing something heroic.

Absolutely. And it's not an uncommon trajectory in cinema/TV generally either - there are movies from the 1950s and 1960s featuring the same "reluctant heroes" tropes.

Simon's highest-level spell is Telekinesis.

It isn't though. He cast some kind of globe-shaped shielding spell that OUTRIGHT BLOCKS a meteor from Meteor Swarm. It doesn't like "reduce the damage" as they have in the statblock in DDB, it just stops it dead. It's not a Wild Surge either (unless the Surge just uplevels it), it's the spell he meant to cast. My guess would be that is Globe of Invulnerability, but it'd need to be cast at 10th level (!!!) to block a Meteor Swarm. Either way that puts him at at least 11th.

 

[ad_hoc]

I just realized that none of the party in the movie are the staple classes.

Fighter, cleric, wizard, rogue.

We get bard, barbarian, sorcerer, druid, paladin.

Since those older classes have been copied so much in video games and the like, maybe they are too common to read as distinctly D&D.

Or maybe the story just called for the classes they have. Certainly Bard makes the most sense to base a movie around. That is essentially what Starlord was too.

And it is good to avoid ranger due to LotR.

Simon had the feel of a wizard so a little strange they went sorcerer for him.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

This thread is such interesting culture shock to me, I haven't gotten out to see the movie yet but my impression of high magic is radically different because it involves magic that infuses literally everything at all time in showy ways, martials that move like anime characters, rapidfire spellcasting combinations, casual use of magic for social amenities like running water, caster PCs are relatively unremarkable as adventurers go, and outside of adventurers plenty of people have less combat oriented examples of the same level of magic, magic item shops are at least a few to a city if not more, and the campaign will probably end with the players fighting god if they get high enough level.