Someone over at The Acaeum (a D&D collecting forum) has posted pictures of a very impressive self-constructed gaming room.

Here’s what they say about it:

I have been working on and off for about 2 years building our “D&D ROOM” to hold most of our collection and give us a cool place to play. I did 99.9% of the work myself with just a bit of help in the attic from my brother Shawn. All lighting is controlled by the DM via a dimmer/control box mounted under the table. When you walk in the lights automatically come on via a contactor mounted in the closet. There is also hidden strobe and fog machine for effects. I also mounted speakers in the beams and have a sound system in the closet. Here are a few photos…

More pictures here!

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Have a question about something fantasy-related? Ask the Oracle! (Be sure to include your first name and the city, state, and/or country you are writing from.)

Q: The one thing everyone seems to agree upon is that the book version of Ella Enchanted is soooooo much better than the movie. Does it make me a bad person if I don’t agree? In fact, I think the movie ending is a thousand times better than the book, where she just sort of nonsensically “decides” to no longer be enchanted. — MAGPIE, Toronto, Canada

A: The Oracle completely agrees with you, at least on the ending. Look, the whole point of the movie was to make a relatively staid children’s book more accessible to teens. Not everything worked, but I thought they gave it the ol’ college try and took some interesting chances.

Speaking of which, there’s one scene that I think is extremely charming. It’s when Ella (who is enchanted to do whatever anyone tells her to do) is commanded to “sing!” by some giants and, mid-performance, is then further commanded to do increasingly ridiculous things:

Yes, the Oracle is in the tank for Anne Hathaway.

Going back to your point about the ending, one of my big pet peeves in fantasy is when a character who is cursed or charmed or under prophecy simply decides not to be. As I wrote two weeks ago about prophecies, once a curse or prophecy has been established as “real,” it’s a colossal plot-cheat to have the author resolve a story simply by having the character “decide” it doesn’t matter any more.

If pressed, the author usually says something like, “Well, she wasn’t able to make that decision until the end! She hadn’t grown enough!”

Of course, that’s ridiculous. Can a character “decide” he or she isn’t susceptible to the laws of gravity anymore either?

And yet, that is exactly the way Ella Enchanted (the book) ends. Ella simply decides, “Well, hey, I guess I won’t be enchanted any more!” Completely unsatisfying to me.

I’m all for having characters change and grow, but that needs to represented by his or her looking at the problem in a new, unexpected way, coming up with a clever, inevitable-in-retrospect, but-still-surprising way to solve the problem.

That’s what Ella Enchanted, the movie, did quite well. Since Ella is enchanted to do whatever anyone tells her to do, the story is resolved she looks at herself in the hall of mirrors and commands herself to no longer be enchanted, to no longer do what people tell her to do.

The perfect ending for this particular story — and one that is far better than the book.

Not Conan

Q: What is the DEAL with all these casting rumors for The Hobbit and Conan? People wrote that Tobey Maguire and Jared Padalecki were “done deals” — but they weren’t. — Jim, Rapid City, SD

A: The problem is the internet.

Look, I love new media and the internet — some of my best friends are the internet! But it’s definitely not perfect.

Here’s how I see the problem: since the internet pays for itself with ad revenue (which is derived from page-views and, increasingly, unique visitors), most websites do everything they can to drive search engine traffic to their site. The “easy” way to do this is to be the first to report something — or at least the first to rewrite the latest rumor from somewhere else. If you get your article up early enough, you’ll come in near the top in search results, and everyone else will link to you.

Sometimes the “news” really is a genuine rumor from someone who might know — now many more people are privy to the behind-the-scenes gossip that used to go on just between industry folks.

But gossip is also often wrong.

Anyway, the end result is many websites breathlessly report the slightest and most far-fetched rumor as “news.” Since many website operators have no training in traditional journalism — and because there’s so much pressure to be “first” — very few outlets ever call the source (or his or her representatives) directly and say, “Before I put my credibility on the line with this story, I just want to know: is it true?”

No, they just repeat what they read on some other site, and soon, another rumor is all the way around the world (not just halfway) before the truth even has its pants on.

Too often, the internet becomes one big echo chamber, with everyone repeating some rumor that just wasn’t all that important to begin with.

It’s not that website operators are evil or stupid (although some are). They behave this way because, as a result of how internet advertising is set up, they’re rewarded financially when they do.

I suspect this new media landscape is here to stay (at least until advertising models shift), so the solution is to either roll with it or learn which websites to ignore.

Q: Can you recommend a good D&D dice roller for the iPhone?

A: D20Touch works for me. Despite the semi-confusing name, it simulates all the D&D dice, not just D20.

Here’s how it works:

Have a question about something fantasy-related? Ask the Oracle! (Be sure to include your first name and the city, state, and/or country you are writing from.)

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• This is old news, but I suppose it must be said: Avatar is a massive hit, and its prospects are growing better by the hour. Even more interesting to me, surveys find that every single demographic gives the movie an “A”!

• Speaking of which, Stephen Spielberg liked Avatar a lot, saying it’s as revolutionary as Star Wars.

• The first issue of the returning Realms of Fantasy magazine is available for free download.

• The X-Men: First Class project means that the Magneto: Origins movie is now off the table — the Xavier/Magneto origin will now be part of the former film.

• A (dubiously sourced) rumor says that Taylor Swift will play Supergirl.

• 28 Star Wars mashups. Good Lord, some people have way too much time on their hands!

• Hasbro, which owns Wizards of the Coast (which makes Dungeons & Dragons) is suing Atari, which owns some digital rights to the game and recently sold them. Can I be honest? I didn’t even know Atari still existed.

• Tobey Maguire as Bilbo was a rumor with no basis in fact. Really? People on the internet are just making shit up? Who knew?!

• The decade’s most “profitable” actress was … Harry Potter’s Emma Watson. Which just kinda proves how stupid these kinds of surveys are.

• A great blog with all the news about HBO’s upcoming A Game of Thrones.

• A new website does for sci-fi/fantasy books what RottenTomatoes and Metacritic do for movies: it compiles and composites all reviews for particular books. Helpful!

• Liza Minnelli is not a fan of The Wizard of Oz – but only because she has a hard time watching what they do to her mother.

• Oh, and Happy Holidays!

Looking to buy any of the projects mentioned in this article (or any other media)? Support TheTorchOnline.com by purchasing it through this link.

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Back again for another highly opinionated — some might even say downright cranky — look at the week in fantasy. You’ve been warned!

SO HOW DID MY WEEKEND GO? THANKS FOR ASKING!

Last week, I told you how I was going away to play D&D with my buddies.

How did it go, you ask?

We had a really great time as usual. It’s funny how, the older we get — most of us are in our 40s now — the less we seem to take it all for granted. There was actually talk of our getting together more than our present four-weekends-a-year.

I was the DM, and I was pleased that I was able to find a “classic” mummy’s-tomb dungeon. But it was a little light, so I sort of improvised a few rooms on the fly.

In one, there are five statues of giant sleeping cats. One by one, they come alive and ask a riddle. If the players got it right, the cat resumed statue form. But if they got it wrong … well, it still resumed statue form, but one of the other cat statues came to life and attacked from behind (my brilliant players got all five riddles correct, which is saying something, since two of them were quite tough).

So I had to quickly improvise five riddles. Here’s one I used that I wrote several years ago for a (still unpublished) book. It was one of the easy ones:

The two of us share a home

I write the poems, he works the loam

He is free to move about

But I’m locked inside, I can’t get out

Though we are one in many ways

I pay the price when my brother strays

He loses love, I feel the pain

He makes a kill, I bear the stain

But I’ll have revenge when death taps the door

For I know a secret passage to something more

And while he must face the dirge and stay

I’ll be free to slip away

Think you know the answer? It’s at the end of this column!

DOES ANYONE REMEMBER COUNT CHOCULA?

So I was researching an article the other day, and I came upon a Wikipedia entry on “General Mills monster-themed breakfast cereals.”

This really stopped me in my tracks. If you weren’t alive/aware when these cereals were popular (back in the 70s and 80s), it’s hard to communicate just how popular they were. Maybe it’s because we were all watching the same three TV shows (with no cable or video or computers), so they were able to effectively bombard us with non-stop commercials, pretty much bludgeoning all kids submission (we’d then whine to our parents until we’d bludgeoned them into submission).

My memory is that, even with all those television commercials, Frankenberry (strawberry flavored) was still pretty much inedible, and Boo Berry (blueberry flavored) only slightly less so. In fact, I don’t remember any of my friends ever eating anything but Count Chocula.

But here’s something I didn’t know: there was a fourth “monster” flavor — Fruit Brute, which later became Fruity Yummy Mummy (”fruit” flavored?). How is it possible I’m unaware of this? God knows I watched enough commercials.

Something else I didn’t know: they still make these cereals (except for Fruity Yummy Mummy), although it sounds like Frankenberry and Boo Berry are mostly available only at Halloween.

(Good God, it’s criminal the crap we feed our kids. Why don’t we just serve them bowls of lead-paint chips while we’re at it?)

Anyway, here’s one of the commercial, and it’s scary how vividly I remember it. I don’t remember it being nearly this cheesy, however. And how pathetic are those “mini-monsters”?

THE TINDER BOX TAKES ON THE IDIOT BOX

Starting this week, The History Channel is rerunning the first season of their series, Clash of the Gods, a show that claims to look at “history” behind various mythical gods and monsters — but mostly seems like an excuse to geek out over really cool myths and low-budget-but-still-cool-looking graphics. The first episode is about “Thor,” and the second one is “Tolkien’s Monsters” (Monday, 10 PM, History Channel). Here’s a preview of the latter:

Speaking of TV, is anyone watching The Vampire Diaries? I confess, it didn’t much interest me (sick of both vampires and angsty teen dramas). But I hear reports that it’s actually quite good! True?

THE TINDER BOX AT THE BOX OFFICE

No new fantasy/sci-fi movies in theaters this week, but new movies out on DVD include Land of the Lost, the first complete season of Legend of the Seeker, and The Objective (the latest from the co-creators of The Blair Witch Project. (Support TheTorchOnline.com by buying any of these movies through our links!)

Well, this week’s flame has sputtered out, but join me again next week when I promise I won’t be nearly so cranky.

Oh, who am I kidding?!

The answer to the riddle: the human soul.

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Wizards of the Coast, the publishers of Dungeons & Dragons, are giving players a chance to ask questions about the current 4th edition rules (toll-free!).

From the press release:

If you have a question about running 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons, whether it’s a technical rules quandary, or would simply like to improve your DMing skills, here’s your chance to speak directly with the folks at Wizards of the Coast! Expert DMs—including R&D’s Mike Mearls and Rob Heinsoo—will be on hand to field your calls on the DM Hotline.

The DM Hotline takes place for just a few short days: October 8-11, between 2pm and 6pm PDT. If you’re looking to improve you game, we encourage you to take advantage of this opportunity to connect with Wizards of the Coast DMs! Simply call toll-free (800) 878-3326.

Please note that at this time, the DM Hotline is only available for calls originating within the US and Canada.

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Back again for another highly opinionated — some might even say downright cranky — look at the week in fantasy. You’ve been warned!

HAVE YOU READ THIS WEEK’S ENSORCELED?

No, seriously. You have to read it. It’s the web comic by our very own Tim O’Leary, and this week’s is really good. (But it leaves me desperately waiting for next week’s installment!)

Read it now!

I THINK I’M DONE WITH MOVIE THEATERS

I finally got around to watching Monsters Vs. Aliens last night (on DVD). I remember when it opened in theaters, and I really hemmed and hawed about going (as a general rule, Dreamworks Animation disappoints me).

Anyway, I made the right call in not seeing it in theaters, because it wasn’t very good. (Is anyone else getting as distracted as I am by the over-use of celebrity voices in animated movies? It used to be just the leads. Now it’s every character.)

But I watched it last night on my new 52″ high-definition television, sitting on my new incredibly plush theater-style chairs in my own “media room.” I know it’s a cliche, but I kept thinking, “Damn, I may never go to a movie theater again!”

No, really. I may never go again.

It’s not even the things everyone always says  — the $10 popcorn, the $25 for two tickets, the ugly cinderblock strip-mall cinemas, or the fact that the movies so often end up sucking.

It’s the fact that I’ve literally created a more comfortable movie theater in my own home.

Okay, the truth is, I still go to a lot of preview screenings (which are free, but you “pay” in the sense that they’re often really crowded, and you also have to go to movies you wouldn’t otherwise see that end up being terrible).

But increasingly, all this new technology is making me seriously reconsider so much of my life. Recently, I looked at my massive bookcases of books (which I’ve been lugging around with me at great effort and expense since college), and I thought, “Gosh, it would be nice if I could just ditch all these and store them all in a nice, compact Sony Reader….”

I’M GOING AWAY TO PLAY D&D THIS WEEKEND!

Even since I was 14 years old, I’ve been going away for the weekend with five buddies four times a year to play D&D. We have this condo on the beach, and while the game itself is an important part of the weekend, so is the chance to catch up with a group of friends I don’t see very often (we mostly live in different cities now).

It’s kind of mind-boggling to think that we’ve been doing this for more than 30 years now. We’ve got all these little rituals — Steve always brings pretzels and lemon drops, for example, and Tim brings Jack Daniels — but we’ve been doing them for so long that they don’t even seem like rituals.

When I was a teenager and I was the DM (which was unfairly often, but that’s a whole other topic!), I would spend days beforehand writing out these complicated dungeons for my friends (we rarely used the pre-written modules — what would the point of that be?!).

All those dungeons I wrote as a kid are actually the reason I became a novelist later on.

Anyway, these days? Well, I quickly scan a pre-made module an hour before we play and then sort of wing it. (I wish I could still write my own dungeons — I still think those are more fun — but I have, well, novels to write and, uh, a website to run…)

Then again, we’ve been doing this for so long now that we’re kind of like a well-oiled machine.

I’ve written before how important Dungeons & Dragons has been to the making of me. But just as important is how Goddamn fun it is.

I’m not a religious person and put the chance that anything like “heaven” as we think of it actually exists at far less than one percent. But if heaven does exist, do you know what I think it will be?

Yup, it’ll be sitting around a table with my buds, eating Steve’s pretzels and drinking Tim’s Jack Daniels, taking out one more monster, because we’re in the middle of playing a game of Dungeons & Dragons for all eternity….

THE TINDER BOX TAKES ON THE IDIOT BOX

This week’s premieres include the second season of Star Wars: Clone Wars (I didn’t even know there was a first season!), (Cartoon Network, Friday, 8:30 PM); the two-hour series premiere of Stargate Universe (SyFy Channel, Friday, 9 PM); and the season premiere of Celebrity Ghost Stories (Bio, Saturday, 10 PM) with Joan Rivers, Scott Baio, and David Carradine.

Wait. David Carradine? Isn’t he already dead?

THE TINDER BOX AT THE BOX OFFICE

So the critics are loving Zombieland. I can’t say I’m surprised, and I stand by my prediction of over a month ago that it’s going to be a big hit. It seems to walk the narrow path of being about something very zeitgeist-y (zombies) and yet also gives that semi-tired genre a new, irreverent twist (making it a comedy). Oh, and it’s apparently a good movie! That helps.

New fantasy/sci-fi movies out on DVD this upcoming week include Imagine That, Eddie Murphy’s latest misfire (did anyone like this movie?); Besieged Fortress (about, yes, a colony of termites); the supernatural thriller 100 Feet (nice premise: it’s about a woman under house arrest…but there’s something evil in the house with her!);  and Year One (which I hated).

The biggest DVD news of all? The Jim Henson cult classic Labyrinth is out on Blu-Ray. Apparently, the high-def is so high that (unfortunately) you can see the strings and things on several of the puppets. (Support TheTorchOnline by buying it (or any other media) through this link.)

Well, this week’s flame has sputtered out, but join me again next week when I promise I won’t be nearly so cranky.

Oh, who am I kidding?!

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When I was a kid, the country went through a full-fledged Dungeons & Dragons hysteria, where the fantasy role-playing game was accused of everything from turning kids onto Satanism to encouraging them to kill themselves.

Decades later, we’ve now reached a point where D&D is seen as sort of a harmless, if incredibly geeky pastime.

But isn’t there a third option? Dungeons & Dragons isn’t a dangerous, evil force in the world, nor is it just harmless fun; it’s actually one of the most worthwhile activities ever created, and there is literally nothing better for turning a kid into a thoughtful, creative, passionate, open-minded adult.

Almost everything I know today I learned from Dungeons & Dragons. And almost everything I’m passionate about, I first discovered while playing the game.

I started playing Dungeons & Dragons at age twelve, when my friend Tim asked for, and received, a “starter” box set of the game for Christmas.

I immediately loved it. It gave a focus to all those lazy afternoons with my friends. It was something for us all to be passionate about, an endless countryside for us to discover and explore — endless because we made it up ourselves.

But it didn’t just focus those afternoons with my friends; it focused the rest of my life too.

Before the game, I’d had little interest in reading for pleasure. For me, books were something that were assigned in school — staid, musty tales that said nothing about the things I was interested in and had absolutely no relevance to my life.

But because I was so enamored with the world of D&D, I started reading fantasy books. For the first time in my life, I realized, “Hey, books aren’t necessarily boring! Sometimes they can even be really, really interesting!” It was a revelation. In months, I was devouring every fantasy book I could get my hands on — even long, complicated sagas that I wouldn’t have looked twice at before (Stephen R. Donaldson was, and still is, my favorite author).

In school, I’d always hated history. It had always been presented to me as nothing more than a long list of dates to be memorized.

But in the world of D&D, in the adventures we were concocting for each other, history came alive. And why wouldn’t it? We were literally living it! And like almost every virgin D&D player, I immediately embarked on my own extracurricular study of weaponry, of myths and fables, of medieval life — even castle-building.

Philosophy and ethics? At my Catholic grade school, that meant just another list to memorize, this time of picky little rules to follow.

It was while playing D&D that I discovered the notion of “alignment” — the idea that everyone has a point-of-view in life, and that few people think of themselves as “evil.” Instead, ethics necessarily follow from one’s perspective. This acknowledgment of the obviously relative nature of all things made my head feel like a balloon; I could almost feel it expanding on my shoulders.

Even better, by implicitly granting me the right to make my own ethical choices, and by having me role-play different choices and then forcing me to accept the consequences of my actions, I think the game made me a much more ethical person. It definitely made me a far more broad-minded one.

In school, I had absolutely no interest in debate or public presentations. My sixth grade presentation was on Bolivia, and I literally could not have cared less.

But because D&D involves such an elaborate set of rules, many of which are, uh, ambiguous, an essential part of Dungeons & Dragons means arguing a case, both to your fellow players and to the dungeon master.Year later, in college, professors would always say, “You did debate in high school, didn’t you?” I never knew what they were talking about — until it finally occurred to me that I had, in fact, spent every weekend of my high school years engaged in passionate debate with some of the most intelligent people I’ve ever met.

Before D&D, I’d never thought of myself as a storyteller, or a performer in any way. But when you’re the dungeon master, you’re required to be a performer, acting out the role of the narrator and dozens of other characters — and you’d better be an incredibly quick-thinking performer at that, since most of what you do is improvisation in response to something your players did that you didn’t expect.

If you write your dungeons yourself, as we usually did, you’re also forced to confront the notions of character motivation, the importance of a good antagonist, of theme, of rising tension and resolution.

In short, if he’s going to keep the attention of his players, a dungeon master must quickly intuit all the elements of dramatic structure.

Best of all, you tell your stories in direct engagement with your audience. If that doesn’t tell you exactly what does, and doesn’t, work when it comes to storytelling, nothing will.

Finally, there’s math. I didn’t like that either as a kid — more memorization, natch. Truthfully, I still hate it, but when you spend countless hours adding up dice-rolls in your head, you’re suddenly a whiz  — and when your character’s life is at stake, you pick up statistics pretty quickly too!

Dungeons & Dragons would have been worth playing even if it built no “character” whatsoever — if it did nothing but entertain. And maybe this essay will do nothing but make today’s generation of kids less likely to play it; that’s probably how I would have reacted.

But the truth is, the game does so much more than entertain, and it’s about time it got credit for it.

As an adult, I’ve done a number of things for a living: teach at the high school and college level, and write novels, plays, and screenplays. Now I edit this website.

If it weren’t for Dungeons & Dragons, I couldn’t have done any of these things well.

If I hadn’t found D&D, would I have discovered some other passion as a kid? Video games? Sports? Horticulture? It’s possible. But it’s almost impossible to imagine that any of these activities would have given me such a long and varied list of skills and interests.

As an adult, I occasionally run into parents who mention that their children have discovered Dungeons & Dragons. They usually roll their eyes and shrug, as if to say, “At least they’re not out robbing liquor stores.”

I always tell them they’re wrong to dismiss the game so casually; I try to tell them all the things I’ve written here.

They never listen to me. They always say something stupid like, “What kind of game is it if you can’t ever win?” The stereotypes run too deep. To them, D&D means being silly, dressing up like an elf and rooting around in sewers. They can’t dismiss it fast enough.

In a way, I’m sad — sad that they don’t appreciate and support the passionate, creative, intelligent, interesting kid they’re probably raising (no thanks to them).

But mostly I’m sad that they themselves have to go through life with such a narrow, limited perspective. That wouldn’t be the case if one of their friends had ever introduced them to D&D — but now, of course, it’s probably too late.

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Have a question about something fantasy-related? Ask the Oracle! (Be sure to include your first name and the city, state, and/or country you’re writing from.)

Q: So you recently mentioned that HBO had commissioned a pilot for a TV version of A Song of Fire and Ice. Any more progress? What are the odds it’ll actually make it on air? –Ross, Vancouver, BC, Canada

A: The initial report stated that HBO had commissioned ten shows to pilot, with a plan to pick up about six of those ten. But the premium network has since announced a few other pilots they’ve ordered, some of which have already been picked up for full seasons. Winter is Coming, a blog about the would-be Fire and Ice TV series, has a good run-down of the various shows, their odds of being picked up, and whether or not they’ll be competition for A Song of Fire and Ice.

What’s the good news? A poster at NeoGAF forums claimed to have spoken to the President of HBO Programming in early March, and this is what was reported:

I expressed my delight at them ordering a pilot, and we chatted for a bit.

He confirmed the Ireland filming location for later this year, and he said that the script Benioff wrote is absolutely amazing. He also said that it’s important for them to really focus on the characters and make sure their performance comes out because he said he doesn’t look at A Game of Thrones [the title of the first season] as a special effects event but rather as a really intense character story. He mentioned that after the script was passed around, everyone at the office went and picked up the books and they’re all hooked, so that bodes well. He said it’s a super expensive pilot, and it’s risky in the sense that if it doesn’t get made in the right way, it won’t be as good as potential allows it to be.

If this is true, the Oracle obviously thinks it’s pretty great news. That said, there’s many a slip between the cup and a TV pilot actually making it on air.

Q: So this guy who died like week, Dave Arneson, co-created Dungeons & Dragons? Why haven’t I heard of him before? I thought it was Gary Gygax who created D&D. — Milt, Shoebox, CA

A: The Oracle can reveal that in the early 1970s, Arneson and Gygax both independently created similar “role-playing” games: Arneson’s was called Blackmoor and Gygax’s was called Chainmail. Since they had impressed each other, they met in 1971, and began developing a game together, originally to be called The Fantasy Game, that combined elements from both their previous work. They couldn’t find a publisher until 1974, when they released what was now known as Dungeons & Dragons. Gygax founded TSR, Inc., a company to support the game, but Arneson left in 1976 to create his own games.

When an anti-D&D backlash arose in the media in the late 1970s, it was Gygax who personally defended it, which, along with his control of TSR until the mid-1980s, may be why most people associate Gygax, and not Arensen, with the game today.

Gygax and Arenson had a falling out in the late 1970s over royalties from the game, and Arenson sued Gygax five different times. In an out-of-court settlement in 1981, they agreed that they would both be credited as “co-creators” of the game from then forward, but the two reportedly had a tense relationship forever after.

Q: A new Clash of the Titans movie? I don’t want to be mean, but of all the Ray Harryhausen stop-motion animated movies, that’s probably the lamest. Why are they remaking that one? — Bill, Milwaukee, WI

A: Never underestimate the value of a hit, and Titans was the eleventh most successful movie of 1981. But the real impetus for the remake was another movie hit, 2006’s 300, also set in the time of ancient Greece. The surprising break-out success of the latter film so inspired Hollywood that two companies put Greek God-themed films into production: Clash at Warner Brothers and War of Gods, about the Greek soldier Theseus fighting titans, at Relativity Media. There was a race to see which movie would hit theaters first, though Clash, which is filming now, seems to have won that duel. Still, the plan is for both to be out in 2010.

The Oracle can also reveal what everyone surely wants to know: “Of course there will be the kraken!” says Clash director Louis Leterrior. “There will be much more. In the original film, there was no clash and no titans!”

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Two and a Half Torches (Out of Five)

I love a good, cheesy fantasy movie.  Bonus point if it’s animated. So I was looking forward to the new direct-to-DVD Dragonlance movie,  Dragons of Autumn Twilight, based on the first of the popular Dragonlance series written by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman (both of whom contributed to the screenplay by George Strayton).

Like the recent Wonder Woman direct-to-DVD release, the movie boasts a fairly impressive voice actor list, including Kiefer Sutherland, Xena: Warrior Princess’ Lucy Lawless, Smallville’s Michael Rosenbaum, and Buffy: The Vampire Slayers’ Michelle Trachtenberg.

Three hundred years after her defeat by the warrior god Paladine, the evil goddess Takhisis and her army of dragons are once again trying to take over the land of Krynn. Meanwhile, a group of long-separated warrior-friends meets at a tavern in Solace. During their reunion, the High Theocrat of the village happens to be thrown into the fireplace. One of the warriors uses her staff to heal him. Apparently the staff is not just any +5 staff of healing, but is the Blue Crystal Staff which Takhisis’ minions are searching for.

With the forces of Takhisis alerted, the group is forced to escape. They set out to protect the staff and to find the Disks of Mishakal, ancient disks that look like ye old CD spindle, containing the teaching of the True Gods. The group fights to keep the land free from Takhisis, finding many a dragon, not mention plot contrivance, along the way.

The lead characters are all well acted. Unfortunately, it appears that they blew their actor budget on the big names, as many of the secondary characters speak in a stilted monotone. The dialogue is average, at times over the top, melodramatic, and cheesy.

“Hey! She cast that spell without using those funny words! Why can’t you do that, all powerful mage?” Tasselhoff asks. Raistlin responds, “She’s channeling the power of a god, you dolt. I’m wresting arcane energies from the very fabric of the universe — it’s completely different.”

Seriously.

Flint, as the token dwarf, in particular seems to get stuck with the bad one-liners such as, “Only one thing I hate more than a gully dwarf, and that’s a goblin.”

The musical score is actually pretty well done and has several nice vocal pieces.

My biggest problem was with the strange combination of 2D and 3D animation. It was almost as if there were two different groups of animators, one in charge of the monsters and the other in charge of everything else.  The “monster” group decided to render their work in 3D-like computer animation while the “everything else” group stuck with 2D animation that looked like it came straight out of He-Man. Apparently, neither got the memo as to which direction they were going to take the movie and by the time they were done, it was too late.

Who thought this mixture was a good idea? While I loved how the 2D is sort of a throwback to 1980s Saturday morning cartoons, it does not blend well with computer-animated 3D dragons. The result is a horrific blend. The fights especially come off poorly.

Another problem I had was with the overall structure, and individual scenes not flowing into one another. They ended abruptly, fading to black before starting up again somewhere else, making the movie feel quite choppy.

I haven’t read the books, so I can’t vouch for the accuracy of the movie, but if you’re looking for a serious, gritty fantasy movie, keep away. It’s only worth a rental if you’re a fan of the series or you might enjoy watching a campy fantasy movie on a rainy Saturday afternoon.

Here’s the trailer for the film:

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Tim Duncan, Judi Dench, John McCain

• Mike Meyers claimed to play D&D on Inside the Actor’s Studio.

• Vin Diesel, a longtime player, wrote an introduction to the book Thirty Years of Adventure: Celebrating Dungeons and Dragons.

• Judy Dench was reportedly introduced to the game by Vin Diesel.

• Matthew Lillard has played (and apparently beat) kids for charity.

• Basketball player Tim Duncan is a long-time player.

• Robin Williams has played for charity, but admits to playing at home as well.

• Ben Affleck and Matt Damon were introduced to the game by Kevin Smith.

• Daryl Hannah supposedly plays (though I could find no corroborating evidence).

• Jesse McCarthy and Lauren Graham have at least touched a D&D box.


Jesse McCarthy, Lauren Graham

• Actor/Director Jon Favreau (Iron Man) credits D&D for much of his storytelling prowess.

• Joss Whedon played D&D in college.

• Stephen Colbert was a big player as a kid and still plays now.

• Ewan McGreggor reportedly plays.

• John McCain does not play, and his staff at least do not respect those who do.

• Will Wheaton reportedly played on the set of Star Trek: The Next Generation (stop the presses!).

• The Sarah Silverman Show’s Brian Posehn has played weekly for five years.

• Tom Hanks played a semi-deranged D&D character in an exploitative 1982 TV movie Mazes and Monsters, part of the anti-D&D hysteria in the 1980s, and I still haven’t quite forgiven him.

• Weezer front man Rivers Cuomo sings about his “Dungeon Master’s Guide” in his 1994 song “In the Garage.”

• Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance told Rolling Stone that he shopped for Dungeons & Dragons supplies rather than partying while on tour.

Matthew Lillard gets geeky

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Four and a Half Torches (Out of Five)

Books and movies are one thing, but for someone who wants a truly immersive fantasy experience, there is nothing like Dungeons and Dragons.

The original creators of this classic role-playing game, Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, were inspired by war simulation games. They came up with a complex system, since revised many times, that uses a combination of rules and random dice-throws to determine the outcome of almost any action.

Lots and lots of rules.

On June 6, 2008, Dungeons and Dragons, now owned and published by Wizards of the Coast, released its “4th Edition” rules.

Ironically, stiff competition from the many movies and computer games Dungeons and Dragons has forced the game to streamline its rules for the casual player. Gone are the realistic but arguably cumbersome war simulation-like rules, endless cross-referencing, and encyclopedic charts.

The new rules, many of which are carry-overs from the 3rd Edition and its revolutionary “d20 system,” are simplicity itself: roll a twenty-sided die, add a few pre-defined numbers, compare them to the same pre-defined numbers of the opponent, object, or task in question, and voila! You have your result.

Even better, every “class” now has combat and non-combat relevant abilities called “powers.”  No player ever has to sit on the sidelines because he or she can’t contribute to whatever situation the characters might find themselves in. Wizards no longer run out of magic, and fighters can now offer skills and knowledge out of combat.

Wizards of the Coast’s “4th Edition” Rules

In short, the game has become more interactive, encourages teamwork, and requires a lot less bookkeeping, which is very attractive the current post-Gen X computer gaming kids. The game is now easy to grasp even by casual players. And — this is worth emphasizing again — no one is left out.

As a Dungeon Master in a home-brewed gaming group, I’ve found the new system plays well after 6 months of experimentation. It’s been designed to be fully “plug and play”: I only need to come up with a plot. The monsters and obstacles can be cherry-picked from a variety of sources. Unlike other games, there’s very little need to play test-combats to ensure playability. The books are well laid out, have high productions values, and are easy to read.

The designers took on the monumental task of updating the game to suit today’s instant gaming environment and come up with a very fun product to give even CGI computer games a run for their money.

After 34 years, Dungeons and Dragons is still the premier role-playing experience — and a testiment to the power of the fantasy genre.

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