Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Dungeons and Dragons: Honor among thieves.

This is why I said I distrust trailers, they are marketing tools designed to hype and create interest. Trailers aren't always accurate representations of the films that they are supposed to be about, and I've been interested in a film by the content of its trailer, only to later watch the film and realise that the tone and story were nothing like what was advertised.

Who says I stick to fan-fiction? I enjoy LOTS of non-fan-fiction.

True. But in the case of the film D&D : Honor Among Thieves, there's a good chance that the MCU-vibe that many people is getting is likely going to be found in the film, not just a trailer.

Indeed, one of the producers (Jeremy Latcham) has produced a number of MCU films, including Guardians Of The Galaxy. Meanwhile, the directors-writers (Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley) were also writers for Spider-Man : Homecoming. So Hasbro/Paramount is not just adopting the MCU style, they have hired some Marvel people.

That doesn't mean everything, but I won't be surprised if the film indeed leaves me with a Guardians Of The Galaxy vibe after I've watched it.

Chris Pine is a decent actor and can probably give us a somewhat likeable protag, but will the writing be up to snuff? I really don't have much faith in these writers anymore. Just too much trash coming out nowadays.

So with that in mind, as much as I would love to see something more serious along the lines of Dragonlance or the Dark Elf Trilogy, they would almost assuredly screw those up. A schlocky action comedy, though? Maybe they can pull something like that off.

Also...since this seems to be a common trope nowadays...there's probably be a pretty good chance that Michelle Rodriguez's barbarian character will turn out smarter than the bard and outwit him at every opportunity. Just a hunch.

That way, you control the horizontal. You control the vertical. You can change the focus to a soft blur or sharpen it to crystal clarity.

(Basically, you get exactly what you want from your setting-of-choice when you are the impetus behind the pen.)

If I had to guess I would say it'll end up being a boiler-plate cavalcade of D&D tropes, some old ones, but mostly the ones that the Wizards of the Coast era of the game has capitalized on, i.e. D&D as spectator sport.

It'll be light, fun but most of all, it'll set up the next movie. Which is the most MCU thing of all.

Didn't have time to watch the trailer before, but now that I have watched it, I'm not really sure. I mean, it looks not bad (really like the tiefling lady turning into an owlbear and back) but it feels like a Marvel movie and I'm so done with Disney Marvel mostly. The one thing, I still like are teh Guardians of teh Galaxy. But I don't need the Guardians in a D&D setting. So I really hope, they just made the trailer liek that to appease the Disney crowd and the movie is better than this.
From the group, I think I might like the tiefling lady (although I'm not sure, what class she is - I don't think a druid would turn into an owlbear of all thing? Maybe I have to watch the traielr again for clues) and the barbarian (I like Michelle Rodriguez, despite her mostly playing in movies, I don't watch).
I really don't like the music - totally immersion breaking. And I would have liked to see one of the smalelr races - halfling, gnome or dwarf. I mean it looked to me, as if most main characters are humans (not sure about the wizard though), which is boring. If they have enough money to pay actors like Pine and Rodriguez, they should have enough money for some cgi to make an actor look smaller, or even something like a dragonborn (I mean, from what I saw, the CGI is not bad).


GMforHim: I don't think, using a pc rpg like Baldurs Gate 1 or 2 would be a good idea. I'm still mad that they made Revan a white male in SWTOR, when my Revan weas a female asian (and totally light side btw, not a dark side nutjob like in SWTOR) and I really don't want to see any other potential character of mine butchered like that. I could see them using a campaign as a film or series script - maybe Descent to AVernus or the ever talked about Curse of Strahd (which would also please the vampire crowd, I guess).

Pretty sure the tiefling is a Druid, and not a low level one either, although that is assuming they stick to any kind of consistent power background. 5e Druids can't turn into Owlbears, because they aren't beasts, but they are probably hand-waving this and having her turn into an owlbear instead of a regular bear so they can pack in more iconic monsters. Monstrous shape was totally something you could do with a high-level Druid in older editions (not going to lie, I do wish they would bring back a lesser form of it for high-level druids in 5e. Monstrous shape and dragon shape were great, maybe they will if we ever get an epic level handbook for 5e).

I did also notice that pretty much everyone seemed to be human, and our tief has almost no infernal features, which I don't hate on principal, as I'm not a fan of 4e/5e's homogenisation of tieflings, but it seems like it may have been done so they didn't have to spend as much time and money on prosthetics and make-up. And that's a bit sad. I'll have to console myself by going and appreciating the good costumes and makeup from Deerstalker pictures.

Yeah, Deerstalker is pretty funny, even though this is the typical murderhobo group.

I just saw an interview with teh cast and it indeed looks like the tiefling is a druid.
And yes, I hate, taht nearly everyone in the cast is human. Why make a D&D movie, when you stick to the most boring and basic race. It''s like teh Star Wars movies: You have this universe filled with inetresting alien races, but every single main character, apart from Chewbaca, is a human - and not only that, a Skywalker (exaggerating a bit, but only a bit). CGI has com so far, it shouldn't be too hard to at least make one character smaller. And I don't think, that a pair of elf ears would ruin production costs.

Edit: I actually like this breakdown of the movie trailer, which gives some very plausible theories about who those red figures (and especially their main dude) are - probably not that big a revelation for us DnD nerds, but the internet was full of 'Oh wow - Vecna' (thanks Stranger Things), that I found this refreshing.

I for one thought the trailer looked awesome and I am now actually looking forward to watching the actual movie. And you know, I think the trailer promised a fair representation of D&D...because D&D can be and is a lot of things. I'm not that big into D&D but I know many people who are, and from what I've gathered, it's not like Call of Cthulu or Bluebeard's bride or World of Darkness, where there's a tone that it's geared for right down to it's roots. It's flexible, and that flexibility is part of why people like it. My friends will tell me about harrowing emotional moments just as readily as they'll talk about when their characters did something wholly ridiculous that got everyone at the table laughing. And since somone mentioned Critical Role, I remember in this current campaign, that it started off with them fighting living furniture, and one of their party member's is a therapy robot. And I remember the episode where one of the party was murdered alone in an alley, and how utterly sincerely they played the moment and the fallout for their characters afterwards, to the point where they named their group after the fallen member. And then that player came back with an elderly gnome werewolf rogue. Maybe it wasn't always like that, but that's what D&D is now, and I think as a game, that's the better way forward.

Personally I think the trailer captured something that's vitally important in nearly all fantasy; wonder. I watched the trailer and saw the druid turn into an owlbear and back, saw the mimic attack, saw the dragon and the casting wizard and the paladin, and I just felt like, "wow, I want to see more of this world." Which is more than any other bit of D&D that I've experienced, including BG3, has managed to do for me.

Fishmalks are the reason ...
In WoD setting there is clan of Vampires (Malkavains) that are all crazy ... and you can play it any way you want ...

There is usualy one group of people who actualy know something about vertain mental illness witch their character express ...
And then there is other group of people who thinks that corectly played Malkavian is just like cartoon Harley Quin ... where nothing they do makes sense and they are often chaotic just for the purpose of being chaotic.

First group hates the second one ... and since people tend to often tell people "how are they suppose to play" ... this was source of many argues.
In the time people started using therm Fishmalks for theese chaotic players.

---

In my experience many people are therefore affraid to do something funny or crazy, just bcs they dont wish to upset others and they dont know what amount of silliness would be apropriate.
So they choose none ... wich is boring, but safe.

Then there are people like Taika Waititi ... who dont give a shit about this and just spam their screenplay with caddence of 1000 jokes per minute.
And it easily can become disruptive, unorganic and quite honestly anoying. :-/

I belong to the first group of Malks, having personal experience myself, but I don't hate the second group. I don't hate people, that play D&D as a comedy eitehr - whatever works with a group. As long as all players are on board, do what you want.

I clearly should have ben more exact, but i naively thought that there is no reason to say that there are exceptions in any group you describe, since we all are aware of that.

There are even people who concider Taika to be brilliant and inovative director ...
I find his work to be often childish, his humor to be disruptive, often forced and in situations where it is quite inapropriate ... so im quite affraid of his Star Wars movie. :-/

But that was my point ... there are people who dislike that way of playing.
And while there are people who politely suffer in silence ... there are also those, who will spam every single social media they have acess to with their opinions.

Not gettind too deep in this ...
In short many people who play extremely serious characters just decided to "rather play safe" and keep their silines down ... wich (lets be honest for a seond) in some cases actualy is the best approach they can choose ...
Since its often quite hard to play silly character in a way that is not anoying ... wich is (just by the way) source of my universal hatred to Bards.

//Edit:
Also this ...
Let me quote one wise Elven Druid: "Chaos is good, in small doses it help keep the ballance."

Fishmalk (at least as i use that word) is not about "small doses" here and there ...
Fishmalk is constant, permanent and undending borbandment of bullshit and disturbting any play (i wanted to write plan, but i made a typo ... and it seemed to fit even better ) you even try to make, or execute ... no matter how hard you try to explain to that person that they should slow down a little.
Fishmalk ... is > this <.

And that is the point.
Occasional silly joke here and there dont offend anyone, as it was said, even serious stuff as GoT had jokes ...
Problem starts when you overstepp that amount ...
Or if you are unsure wich amount would be apropriate ...
Or, and that is in my honest opinion the most common case, if you have different idea of "apropriate amount" than others.

Yeah. If you notice, I took it back. I suddenly had an image of Jack Nicholson as Irenicus, or the Rock as Minsc...

Cringe... No. Just no.

I agree about Revan, too. They ruined the KOTOR story.

Just watched She Hulk trailer. Yep. Both trailers seemed to roughly have the same tone.

I don't expect relations to BG3. If there were some, I wouldn't care at all.

I will probably watch the movie in cinema, it looks impressive from the visuals and I'm curious about the details. I don't expect well done characters or a good story. Take Lord of the Rings as an exemple, there is only one mildly interesting figure (Gollum) the rest is stereotype or worse, the story is quite boring, the combat is borderline silly, plus the late medieval look is a betrayal of the books, nevertheless the movies were quite entertaining and well made. And I watched every movie in the cinema, something I would never do for the terrible X-men or other Marvel superhero universe stuff (I watch some of them, in free TV only, partly even with pleasure, like the first GotG movie).

My biggest, very professional, criticism of the movie after watching the trailer, there is much too few naked skin to see.

Sorry, I must have overlooked that. And yeah, Revan is so annoying. I headcanon, that the guy in SWTOR is an imposter, but I'm still mad.
Tbh most trailers nowadays look the same - I still have hope, that the endproduct might be better. At least they tried with the spells and creatures and stuff, so maybe there will be enough for a D&D fan to appreciate.

The sorcerer character in the movie is supposedly half-elf.

What happened with Revan was a true shame. Remember the reddit AMA where it was basically outright stated that they made Revan lightside Caucasian male because just to appeal to the lowest common denominator of the playerbase....and made the exile a woman because revan was a man so they could afford to make the less popular/less important protagonist one.

Same story always repeating itself with rpgs that pride themselves on player choice and defining your own character. Abdel Adrian, Vault Dweller, Nerevarine etc. Seemingly can't leave well enough alone and let players enjoy the game the way they played it.

I'm still hoping that Larian gives us a bit of wiggle room to define our Bhaalspawn. The in-game material at least uses gender-neutral pronouns to describe them, which is a step in the right direction.

As for the movie, Pine is not an actor that I particularly enjoy. I don't mind hijinks emerging in games I play or DM, but that seems very much like WoTC wants to market D&D (and the Realms) on the emergent pop/meme culture perception of D&D where this is sort of the default state. Doesn't quite appeal to me-I'd much more prefer something that took the settings a bit more seriously ala the LoTR movies (which doesn't mean there shouldn't be humor or lightheartedness, which the trilogy definitely had as well). Doesn't mean the movie will be bad (D&D movies have a poor track record, admittedly) but I don't see myself going to see it, the whole 'Guardians of the Galaxy' style of marvel movies that got really popular burned me out on that sort of thing very quickly, and it's just not a theme I would have looked out for or really needed/wanted to see in D&D/Forgotten Realms to begin with.

Glad to see, I'm not the only one being mad about Revan. As much as I love SWTOR (and I play it for ten years now), this was a dumb decision by Bioware.

And yes, I'm not the biggest fan of Pine either.

All same here. KOTOR was my all time favorite game. Then 2 came out and pissed me off to no end. It wasn't polished and left me upset because I wanted to know what happened to Revan and the whole hole in the Force thing didn't sit well with me. But I was willing to forgive because I was hoping for number 3.

Then The Old Republic. Don't get me wrong. Like you, I LOVED that game too. I was really into the original story, though. The DLCs started to lose me - ESPECIALLY when I got to the Revan arc. I was eating the whole story up until I learned what happened and such. Then I was like, "Really? What did you do to my Revan? He was my all-time favorite Star Wars character - and that's saying something because I have a LOT of favorites (like Thrawn)."

Anyway, I know this is off topic a bit, but it is nice to chat with some people who feel the same about it. And now, to bring it back to the topic: Pine is also not one of my favorites. I thought he played Kirk well, but that's about it. I didn't like him at all in Wonder Woman... or pretty much anything else that I've seen him in. We'll see if he's good in this one.