Conan, the Destroyer of Dungeons and Dragons
Off topic, but who the hell cares… I’m not trying to make money at this anymore, right? Right. Good. Just so we’re clear. No money in D&D blogs, ‘cept for Dungeonmastering.com.
At any rate, I was thinking tonight about fantasy movies and how there have been great ones (LOTR, duh) and there have been duds (the Movie Which Must Not Be Named with That Wayans Brother). In between, there’s been all sorts of good and bad, mostly bad.
Here’s where I’m at, thought: Conan the Destroyer was, in my mind, a great D&D-type movie. You had a barbarian, a rogue, an acrobat and a wizard, all fighting against an evil cleric, her evil wizard friend, and a fighter. That’s fricking D&D, and it was damn cool. Oh, and there was hella cool monsters.
Still, it did poorly enough at the box office that the third Conan movie was scrapped in favor of Red Sonja. Red Frickin Sonja?!? How much of a load of crap was that movie?!?
And was Barbarian really that much better than destroyer? Yeah, it had James Earl Jones, but come on… “He cannot cry, so I cry for him?!?”
Although, I will give Barbaian props in one area:
I dunno. Any rate, here’s what it all has to do with D&D:
What movie, in your mind, typifies D&D? If you can, forego LOTR. It’s too obvious. Is there a movie that does it for you the way that Conan the Destroyer does it for me?
Review of 10,000 BC
Not D&D related, but I thought you might like to read my Review of 10,000 BC for a change of pace. Enjoy!
If a Monster Comes in Here, I’m Going To Kick His Ass.
I’m telling you, you want this chick playing the fighter in your group:
Happy Tuesday, y’all.
Missed it by *that* much
A potpourri of unrelated items for you today:
- The older I get, the further behind I seem to be on what’s hip. For example, I still use the word, “hip.” I mean, what is the deal with Napoleon Dynamite and Superbad? These were two movies that hit it big with the young crowd. I couldn’t get them. It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy them, or that I couldn’t follow the plot line, or that I didn’t get what the director was trying to do. I just didn’t get them, not in the way that other people seemed to get them.
- Speaking of missing it, how can it be that I’m this far behind on gaming geek stuff so as to have missed DM of the Rings completely until 5 months after it ends? Hell, I wasn’t even that far behind in discovering OOTS.
- Occasionally, I’m in the middle of the curve, if not ahead of the curve. Yax over at dungeonmastering.com has an article today about keeping players focused. This, only 4 days after my discussion of the question here (of course, that was a response to PhilGamer’s post two days prior. I might not have been first, but dammit, I’m not last.
- This all probably makes me in the minority when it comes to gamers who remember Don Adams as Maxwell Smart. While I like Steve Carell, I’m worried about the Don Adams legacy. For your enjoyment:
- Hell, I didn’t get into Heroes until season 2, CSI until season 6, 24 until season 5, and I’m still not watching Smallville.
Or are they unrelated?
<cue dramatic music>
I will tell you this: I think I’m going to be right about 4E. And I’ll be the first one, in my little circle of influence, to do so. I can feel it already; even the skeptics are starting to get a little bit excited. The guys that swore they’d never buy the books are interested; and my fence-sitting co-DM has become optimistic. And for good reason: the folks designing the game are the same designers we’ve been riding along with for the last several years in 3E. Monte Cook left before 3.5; if 3E relied solely on his genius, WotC would have shut the line down by now, because no one would have bought it.
Then again, I didn’t go 3E until early 2002.
Happy Tuesday, all.
Assets or liabilities?
So, I’ve noticed something as of late…
My single friends (and I’ve got quite a few) are all, as am I, gamer geeks. Get any two of us together for more than five minutes, and we’re going to be talking D&D, Gencon, or, maybe, Lord of the Rings. We eat, breathe, and live this stuff. It’s even more intense for us than it is for, let’s say, the football fan; there’s no season to what we do.
So, back to these friends. They’re single, right? They’re all about the Internet dating scene, too. I just had one of them leave here after working on his profile for a dating web site. But, without exception, these guys somehow leave off gaming when they list their hobbies and interests. Their profiles never show gaming. Yet, if they filled out an anonymous survey, I guarantee gaming would be at the top of the list. Why is that?
One of my friends tried to explain it to me. He said he didn’t want to scare anyone off. He said that, by including gaming on his dating profile, anyone who read that profile might think he was a gamer geek. Yet hunting and “conservative” political views aren’t going to turn anyone off of the profile?
The more I talk with the handful of non-gamers that I know, the more I realize: there isn’t widespread prejudice against gamers or gaming. Pat Pulling is dead, and no one picked up her mantle on the religious side of things; fantasy movies have hit it so big that it would be hard to say the genre isn’t mainstream, even if the Academy is slow to approve. Name a football movie that has done as well as LOTR?
My point is this: D&D isn’t anymore outside of the mainstream than, let’s say, karate. You’re a black belt, and you participate in a karate class twice a week? You’d put it in your profile, and anyone reading it wouldn’t think twice.
That is, of course, unless they’re actually into karate. Same goes for gaming. There are more gamers out there than we realize (over a million D&D players in the U.S.) and some of them are actually women. As for the millions who aren’t gamers, they see the interest in gaming the same way they might see an interest in woodworking: it’s not something they’re into, but it doesn’t mean they don’t like you.
Just $.02 from an old married gamer, who gave up giving a shit what people thought of gaming a decade ago.
I can has D&D?
I want you to look at something that’s not D&D related, but funny and geeky anyways.
I’ve said before, my humor is an acquired taste.
Anyways, if you get a minute, take a look at the redesigned D&D reviews site. I’m pretty happy with it so far. Only problem is I haven’t figured out a good way to link to older content yet.
Oh, and Planescape fans will appreciate this thread over at the WotC forums. There are a couple of interesting posts there from Michele Carter worth noticing!
Wait, What?
Spider-Man Splits With Mary Jane, Wife of 20 Years
Hell, I didn’t know they got married.
Actually, that’s not true. But I haven’t seriously followed Spider-Man (or any comic, really) since the early 1980s. When Pete and Mary Jane got marriedin 1987, I’d been out of the loop already for about four years.
It’s got me thinking, though. I really do enjoy comics, when I read them. I can’t budget to collect a bunch of titles monthly the way my good friend K-BOD does, but I wouldn’t mind following a couple of books. The big problem is that I get a bit anal about the condition of my comics, and my kids would want to read them. My problem isn’t that the kids would destroy them, but rather that I might not let them handle the comics.
Thinking about it, that doesn’t make sense, either. Right now they can’t read them because I don’t buy them. I guess maybe it’s worth a shot 
Now THAT’S what I’M talkin’ bout
Yet another reason to game here (as if we really needed a reason).
I’d like to see the next batch of studies include more than just video games, though. My guess is that female role-players are even more feisty than female video game players.
Now, the question is… Do men who play video games fap it more than those who do not? I think we all know the answer to that, Mr. Fappy McFapperpants.
Dude, I don’t think I’m doing this right
So, I went off yesterday on my other blog about the first amendment, it seems only fitting that I should look at the bill of rights here, too. Look at this.
So, I’ve been defending D&D for years against the well-intentioned but poorly-informed evangelical criticisms. Turns out I’ve been wrong. Dungeons and Dragons is an integral part of Wicca, apparently. I must not have been doing this D&D thing right…
Hello. My name is Mario Plumber. You killed my Father. Prepare to die.
OK, so, I’m Mario:
| What Video Game Character Are You? (With Pictures!) | |
  Mario You’re Mario! |
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| Take The Quiz Now! | Quizzes by myYearbook.com |
Who knew.
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