Looks like the movie bombed at the box office. Does this mean people are getting sick of D&D or will the D&Dominance continue?
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Have you tried not watching DnD?
Looks like the movie bombed at the box office. Does this mean people are getting sick of D&D or will the D&Dominance continue?
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CRIME Shirt $21.68 |
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Finally, some good fricking news.
What it means is that Wizards is in more hot water than ever, as the movie they pushed so much to investors bombed.
Maybe they get sold off, maybe the higher ups get cut off, who knows. Good news for ttrpg players in any case.
It'd be hilarious if they got sold of, given that Hasbro recently(ish) made a whole song and dance about how WOTC is no longer a seperate company but just a division of hasbro
Though them getting sold off... uh... won't happen. Wizards is quite literally the only part of hasbro that's made any money for them in the past few years.
>hasbro that's made any money for them in the past few years.
Damn, I thought it was a myth that you can tell a moron by his posts alone, but this gay proved me wrong. Black person, Hasbro literally doesn't need WotC, since they are a barely noticeable dent in their profits
Hmm, let's see how true that is. Luckily, Hasbro is a publicly traded company, so all that info is just a quick google search away
Magic made them a full billion in 2022, a quarter billion in the last three moths of the year, for a solid improvement over 2021. Now let's see how the rest of the company did
Because people (to be fair, rightfully) don't like Wizards of the Coast they get angry when you mention that they actually do make enough money for Hasbro to want to keep them on board. A movie breaking even won't make them kill a chunk of their profits.
Case in point: This moron:
magic players are such cucks, lol
Pay 1000 for a pack of proxies!
>MTG is a billion dollar market
>Selling bits of cardboard you could print yourself
It boggles the mind.
Hasbro has 8 billion in revenues.
3 of those come from Wizards.
>less than half
>When their other intellectual properties are normie giants such as monopoly and clue, or children favourites like nerf and my little pony a getting 37% of your income from selling cardboard rectangles to autists is pretty impactful.
WotC has a smaller market, but a more individually consistent one. A normie might buy a boardgame once, lose it 20 years down the line and buy a new one to replace it while a MTG player might play booster draft once a week. Therefore, the individual WotC customer is more important for business.
>Wizards is quite literally the only part of hasbro that's made any money for them in the past few years.
Why open your mouth if you have no idea wtf you are talking about?
Most recent Haslab got funded in hours and is already 30% above goal with more than 2/3rds of the time left to fund it. Marvel Legends barely stay on the shelf (Unless it is an ethnic or woman character) and there is another new Transformers movie coming out.
Shareholders want WotC to be their own company again, and they have demanded that for at least two years
This. Normoids seeking profit destroy any kind of subculture or underground art, so it's pretty awesome that it flopped. Hopefully we can successfully strangle 6E in its cradle whenever that drops.
It means the movie didn't do well. Tabletop is already niche, and expecting D&D to work for brand name appeal is moronation on the same level as all those corpo's who tried establishing their own "cinematic universe" after Marvel raked in the cash. Speaking of Marvel, despite that name being a money printer in cinema American comics are still a niche market that fans of the movie franchise will openly deride as being for nerds. In short, popularity of a brand in cinema does not translate to another market.
not even nerds read marvel comics, they sabotaged themselves with woke politics and killed off all the classic characters people liked
Trump broke their fricking brains, it all went to shit with the Secret Wars crossover event.
That and they just didn't want to pay for competent artists.
>That and they just didn't want to pay for competent artists.
That's just American comics in general, with a few exceptions. Part of that is because of the drive for publication, but boy some of those comics are fugly. Kind of a weird vibe, though, how American comics are so full of out and out propaganda that they make Eurocomics with earnest left-wing themes feel almost neutral in comparison. To say nothing of the Eurocomics that touch on subjects that would be completely taboo in the US.
I honestly don't think that people are tired of political stories in general, just the tiresome political prostitution bred by social media optimization everywhere.
Nerds are gay morons or apologists thereof. The average nerd 'jaks over woke stuff.
The problem is that theyl new comics suck, because they're made by half-moronic mystery meat writers instead of the high-verbal IQ israelites with a track record of writing good and thoroughly left wing stories.
I think it might have worked if it had been five years ago and they hadn't also put off their core fanbase with some stupidly bad marketing and fan baiting (Which turned out not to even have been needed as by all accounts the movie wasn't bad, just nobody went to see it)
Playing dungeons and dragons is niche.but the brand has world Wide recognition. It would have worked if it had been done right
They should have looked at the first time this was tried and how terribly that went.
45M Budget 33M Boxoffice is how it went
They will try again, just not very next year, but in another 10 or 15 years.
too bad, it was a good movie.
I thought it was forgettable goyslop. Carefully curated generic fantasy designed not to offend anyone. Which is why they replaced drizzt with the black paladin.
>Looks like the movie bombed at the box office.
It wasn't a massive hit like they were hoping. But it did hit net profits so it may very well get a sequel.
They'll probably have to do their math like Nintendo did for Mario, and assume their biggest profits will come from DVD and product sales. In both cases, the movie was just a supermassive advertisement for a much broader property.
>Which is why they replaced drizzt with the black paladin.
Anon, let's pretend they actually had Drizzt in the movie. Which ethnic group matches the skin color of drow the closest?
I swear to frick you "wokist" culture warriors are moronic on either side of the line of battle. The shit that's come out this year is literally the most inoffensive goyslop media we've gotten for any political leaning, and you'd still rather stay distracted by whatever your mainstream media tells you to be offended by.
Wokies don't call things "goyslop," chud. Learn some reading comprehension.
It did not generate a net profit, it lost at least $40 million dollars and that's being conservative. They only earned 50% from the ticket sales, so the box office is only worth $130m, and then there's the marketing costs, likely in the neighborhood of $100m at the absolute minimum.
>It did not generate a net profit, it lost at least $40 million dollars and that's being conservative.
It did not generate the logarithmic profit that corporations expect, you mean.
Our definition of success today is literally tuned toward the presumption that any investment must gain multiplicative revenue. But this only makes sense in our debt-driven society. It's the reason our economy is so unstable.
No, it simply did not break even with the cost of production and marketing. It lost tens of millions of dollars.
>DVD sales
Anon...it's been a long time since DVD sales were relevant.
>Anon...it's been a long time since DVD sales were relevant.
Yeah yeah I'm old. Assume I meant an abstract category including both Blu-Ray and digital unit sales. Nintendo has a business model built around selling units. D&D does too. It's very likely that no matter the box office numbers both are going to make the majority of their money in copies sold to fans.
>Thinking it's only the "wokies" acting like massive homosexuals
You all should just have a suicide contest and aim for the highest scores possible. I'm begging you.
>Which ethnic group matches the skin color of drow the closest?
A caucasian with blue skin dye? Drizzt has caucasian features, making Drow "Black" would cause a shitfest
>Drizzt has caucasian features
Ah yes, caucasians. Famously pointy-eared, black-skinned, purple-eyed race of people.
The anon has a point, you're just being moronic.
Nah, he really doesn't, in part because "caucasian" is a made up concept nearly as fictional as drow are, but more importantly because we're talking about a fantasy world where the social construct of "race" exists on entirely different lines than the ones we've somewhat arbitrarily drawn in our world.
Remember, "Race" in our world is a social, not genetic, concept. We can easily understand this when we look at where to draw the line on people with diverse ancestries.
As far as whether drow have "white" features, we've never had any designation of their features beyond the color of their skin, the shape of their ears and color of their eyes, so whatever else we assign them is often just our own interpretation. Remember that culturally, the Drow exist in a unique and rather alien culture that takes pieces and parts from all over the world while also inventing a fair bit, so we can't really pin anything there because they're not some 1:1 explicit fantasy translation of a real-world race/culture.
>As far as whether drow have "white" features, we've never had any designation of their features beyond the color of their skin, the shape of their ears and color of their eyes, so whatever else we assign them is often just our own interpretation. Remember that culturally, the Drow exist in a unique and rather alien culture that takes pieces and parts from all over the world while also inventing a fair bit, so we can't really pin anything there because they're not some 1:1 explicit fantasy translation of a real-world race/culture.
Also their skin being darkened is a curse for Lloths betrayal of Corelion.
Which is probably the bigger issue people would have if they actually knew the lore and didn't just look at the skin color.
Several real life religious groups have said that black peoples skin is black because of some form of divine punishment.
But a fantasy game is a fantasy game, and people who can't tell the difference should probably not play them.
>Also their skin being darkened is a curse for Lloths betrayal of Corelion.
In all honesty, they could go ahead and drop that bit of lore. The Drow developing black skin after some time in the magical radiation of the Underdark is in my eyes preferable, especially because Drow that stop worshiping Lloth or otherwise have made peace with surface elves don't suddenly become lighter skinned.
Even the idea that Drow are cursed at all is kinda weird, considering "you'll be cursed to have black skin and white hair but otherwise still be pretty much exactly the same except oh yeah here's some darkvision" is a really fricking weird curse. If they were made to be ugly or something, maybe have some debilitation, sure we could call that a curse, but "Here, have some natural camouflage so you're harder to spot when you go on your surface raids" is a really weird curse.
In general, a good god cursing a race is a little weird, but something like "You can't go into the sun" might have been thematically appropriate. Even then though, Drow skin is not really sensitive to sunlight (but their eyes are) so the whole "skin color is a curse" thing still comes off as really weird.
I wish I could just go the route of "It's fantasy, who cares?", but when I read about Joseph Smith and the Curses of Cain and Ham, and how it's still a pretty big issue, I wouldn't mind if we didn't bother with something that echoed that. If there was a good cause for it I might be on board, but I see more arguments against it than for it. Even the Norse concept of Dark and Black elves doesn't have either of them being cursed or punished, so chalking it up as "Corellon cursed your eyes so you can't be in the sun, your years in the magical radiation of the underdark turned your skin black" may be the best way of handling it, especially because drow that make peace with the surface eventually adapt their eyes to not suffer in daylight.
It works, personally I don't care, the gods in most DND settings are objectively real and can be proven to exist, so it already is a great departure from our own.
So a god cursing a race makes sense, and on top of that it is a trope.
For me fantasy is fantasy, and no fantasy races are analogues for the real world.
I just find it funny that the actual bit that real world racists used is not the part most people complain about.
Curse a race, sure, but cursing a race to be sexy is hardly a curse.
I like vanilla elves, sure, but chocolate elves are pretty hard to beat.
There are instances where two different ascribed races might form a continuum, and thus be difficult to neatly categorize as separate races, but there are also instances where groups of homosexual sapiens have become separated for a sufficient time such that have developed into genetically distinct groups. In this case, race is not just social, but biological, so your smug "reminder" means nothing.
"Caucasian," aside from referring to the people living in the region of the Caucasus, can refer to West Eurasians, who constitute one such separate genetic lineage, despite further internal distinctions. Anon can also be meaning to say "European," which can also refer to a genetically related grouping. What he most likely means is "white," which can be impercise, but still sufficient. Despite some grey areas, there is a clear genetic difference between say, British people and Chinese or Congolese.
It's true that D&D Drow have not been thoroughly described down to the last detail, but that isn't necessary; Drow are like other D&D Elves, except with black skin (literally black, or sometimes depicted as a very dark turquoise-to-purple). The basis for D&D Elves comes from Tolkien's writings, wherein Elves were created in reference to northwestern Europeans (just as a fantasy race drawn from the folklore of the Congo might resemble black people). In terms of their physical appearance, D&D Elves look like idealized hu-wite people (plus pointed ears), so yes, Drow have physical features reminiscent of (idealized) white people, even though they aren't "people" themselves.
tldr: race isn't just about skin color, but a multitude of factors. Drow resemble pointy eared, exceptionally attractive white people with black skin.
>hurr durr Drow are black skinned white people
Is this the nerdy white dude version of WE WUZ KANGZ?!?!
They are not white people, but they *look like* white people, fricking moron.
Drow are in fact, Aryan Übermensch sent by Loth to exterminate the duergar
>instances where groups of homosexual sapiens have become separated for a sufficient time such that have developed into genetically distinct groups.
Nope. Those groupings are rather arbitrary and are a lot like dog breeds, in the sense that people like to put a huge amount of stock and importance in them but they're all incredibly volatile and rather arbitrary and entirely artificially constructed, and focusing too much on actually making them genetically distinct or perpetuating a particular breed only results in the collapse of the breed as the only surviving members become so inbred that most of the litters die before they can even breed.
"Caucasian" is a meaningless gay phrase from people who wanted an alternative for "White" but had very limited understanding of geography, genetics, social dynamics.. really anything. And, "White" is a fun phrase with so much loaded meaning that even people like the Italians, Irish, and Polish were not considered "White" in America until relatively recently.
Race is very much just a social distinction. Humans interbreed readily with any race, and have throughout the ages. There are no subspecies of humans, and despite what we likely consider a wide tapestry of genetic differences, that's largely thanks to our human-centric perception. Two nearly identical fruit flies of separate species will have dramatically different genetics, split possibly hundreds of millions of years ago, while we humans barely have had a million as homosexual Sapiens to have diverged with any great distance.
>Despite some grey areas, there is a clear genetic difference between say, British people and Chinese or Congolese.
Except there isn't. Sorry. Hell, those are nationalities, not even races. You can trace lineages, and argue that they're distinct and try to tie them to a region, but they overlap and crossover so readily that it's hardly scientific or exact and mostly just drawing lines based on social preconceptions.
Like, this is basic stuff.
There are some clear genetic mutations between different groups, for instance sickle cell is probably the most well known.
But Polynesians have a genetic defense against Kuru for another instance.
Now they are not distinct enough to develop into different sub species that you are absolutely right on.
So someone could get both these traits from their parents assuming both their parents had them, but these do still have distinct regions they came from and people they are associated with.
But seemingly every possible subspecies of our linage died off other then us, and we interconnected our world long before we could split into subspecies ourselves.
>There are some clear genetic mutations
That's not how genetic mutations work. People of different genetic lineages have higher or lower chances of having certain genetic traces passed down, but who has these traits vary within any race, and it's generally impossible to try and claim "X race has X genes" without finding an extraordinary amount of contradictions to your claim. It's why when dealing with humans we deal with a lot of funky percentages, likelihoods, and an unfortunate amount of unscientific and unhelpful terms and concepts that make things more difficult than they should be.
Race is kinda like... berries. We have a botanical definition, and that's moderately useful within the realm of botany, but it's also a technical definition that will confuse people who are unfamiliar with the topic. Like, a strawberry isn't actually a berry, but a banana is a berry. And, while it would be nice and simple to say anything that looks like a little edible fruit is a berry, that comes from a culinary definition rather than a scientific one, and is largely a "social" construct.
"Race" is like culinary definitions. It's what makes a tomato or cucumber a vegetable, while being botanically a fruit. It's people's perceptions, social constructions, prejudices and beliefs, and even the idea of separating "fruits from vegetables" isn't without its challengers.
It's not to say Race isn't "real", but it's important to remember it's something we invented and not something with any real scientific basis or with clear, workable definitions that can't be endlessly argued about. It's a cute idea, like grouping plants together based on whether you'd rather eat them as part of a main course or as part of a dessert, but it's only cute as long as no one's fighting each other about it.
>But seemingly every possible subspecies of our linage died off other then us
Not without a fair measure of interbreeding though.
>That's not how genetic mutations work. People of different genetic lineages have higher or lower chances of having certain genetic traces passed down, but who has these traits vary within any race,
That is exactly how mutation works.
The mutant Genes that work ideally get selected for causing that Gene to stay in the genetic pool.
Which is why you see sickle cell significantly among specific populations in a specific region.
Or you see the Kuru resistance among specific populations in a specific region.
Because there was genetic needs for those traits leading to them being selected for and effectively bred into those peoples by needs of evolution.
In the instance of Sickle Cell it was a selection for being able to survive Malaria, which if you look where it is primarily are places that often have Malaria problems, and for the Kuru resistance it was from rampant cannibalism, selecting for the people more resistant to the disease that will kill you from eating humans.
Now we as humans have thrown that out of wack by making ourselves a globe spanning and globe transitory species. So things that are selected for in one area are not needed in another removing the impetus to select for that gene which is why we will likely never evolve proper sub species since we comix too much for it to really develop.
Something would need to prevent that for such a thing to occur which is unlikely without us being killed off in the process.
Circa 80,000 BC, people migrate out of East Africa into Eurasia. Eurasians and Sub-Saharan Africans become isolated from one-another and diverge genetically. Long before this, East Africans had already diverged from other black Africans. Early on, a group of Eurasians branch off and migrate along the Indian Ocean, terminating in Australia. Not long after, the original branch of Eurasians divide into western and eastern halves. These groups also become genetically isolated from each other, and evolve along different paths. There are instances where groups re-integrate, but this is the exception, and the branches have mostly retained their original stock.
>Except there isn't. Sorry. Hell, those are nationalities, not even races.
No shit they're nationalities and not races, that's also besides the point. Two random British people are almost genetically identical to each other when compared with a Chinese or Congolese person as a third reference. No forensic test will mistake a British person for a Congolese or Chinese person, but they could mistake them for a Dutch or French person, because they are so similar. Because race is real.
Haplogroups exist. I would like to secure a future for my haplogroup. What's wrong with that?
>Haplogroups
To be specific, I'd like to secure a future for my R1b and R1a children.
Race does exist, but scientists renamed it 'haplogroup' so they could continue to study race without morons like you complaining about racism.
I hope you ended up getting some bullshit job like diversity consultant with your social constructionist degree. homosexual.
>dog breeds
>arbitrary
Ah, so you're a moronic social sciences homosexual who failed his Bio 101 course.
>Race is very much just a social distinction.
No, it's not. Genetic testing can reveal ethnicity. Different races have different bone structures and different predispositions to genetic maladies.
>dark hair
>pale face
>green eyes
>HE MIGHT'VE BEEN ASIAN OR BLACK THO
10/10, (you) got me.
>can reveal ethnicity
"Ethnicity" is a social construct though. Where you draw the line isn't genetically defined, and involves a fair amount of cultural components.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnicity
Like, basic stuff, man.
>The basis for D&D Elves comes from Tolkien's writings, wherein Elves were created in reference to northwestern Europeans
Tolkien famously said, and I'm quoting here,
>"I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history – true or feigned– with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.”
Elves are not Northwestern Europeans. They are Elves. They are not an allegory for Northwestern Europeans. They are Elves.
You are free to imagine them as Northwestern Europeans. Tolkien explicitly gives you that freedom as a reader. But, just as he does not deny you that freedom, you cannot deny that freedom from any other reader to imagine elves in any shape or fashion that does not contradict the text. And, since nothing in the text says anything about Northwestern Europe, the elves can have any features from any region whatsoever, real or imagined, as long as they are fair and beautiful and whatever else Tolkien outlined.
>And, since nothing in the text says anything about Northwestern Europe, the elves can have any features from any region whatsoever, real or imagined, as long as they are fair and beautiful and whatever else Tolkien outlined.
Nah.
>Elves are not Northwestern Europeans.
>responding to a non-existent claim
Fantasy Elves are not northwestern Europeans, but they were created *in reference to* NW Europeans (deriving from Germanic mythology), just as a fantasy race drawn from Chinese folklore might resemble Chinese people. I doubt you'd take any issue with someone saying they "look Asian," (not they ARE) so I have to wonder: why the double standard?
>they were created *in reference to* NW Europeans (deriving from Germanic mythology),
Deriving but departing. How far they depart is up to the reader's interpretation, as even Tolkien himself expressed.
C'mon now. They're not named Brunhilde or whatnot, they're given invented names from an invented language, and come from an invented land on an invented world. It's pretty clear they're invented creatures that are not 1:1 direct with any real world culture, and how much of the remaining is "Germanic" is left wide open to speculation.
>a fantasy race drawn from Chinese folklore might resemble Chinese people.
And they also could very well not. If they're specified as so, that's one thing, but unless we see some explicit text, everything else up to interpretation.
When Tolkien says Aragon had a "shaggy head of dark hair flecked with grey, and in a pale stern face a pair of keen grey eyes," that's what we're working with. He might have looked Asian to us, or some kind of pale, shaggy headed version of any other race, but at the end of the day it's really wide open to a lot of interpretation because he's a fantasy man from a fantasy land, and he's already departed far from whatever he was initially derived from by the nature of him living to over 200 years old and also having plenty of elf blood so who knows what the frick that does.
Remember, we're not talking allegories here. Nothing is intentionally representative of anything, according to Tolkien himself, and whatever the reader chooses to see is their own freedom.
Trying to impose your views, but without the text supporting you, is really just being a bit of a dumbass and not recognizing that books being open to interpretation is not some cosmic crime, but a valuable trait.
>Deriving but departing. How far they depart is up to the reader's interpretation, as even Tolkien himself expressed.
The Men upon which Tolkien's works focus are explicitly akin to Anglo-Saxons in appearance. Occasionally, they are confused for Elves. This would not be the case if Elves' appearance were akin to people racially distinct from Anglo-Saxons as per "the reader's imagination."
>Tolkien says Aragon had a "shaggy head of dark hair flecked with grey, and in a pale stern face a pair of keen grey eyes," that's what we're working with. He might have looked Asian to us, or some kind of pale, shaggy headed version of any other race
This is pathetically disingenuous. Aragorn stands out among Men for his Numenorean ancestry, and the Numenoreans are appearance-wise what any person would categorize as white people.
>The Men upon which Tolkien's works focus are explicitly akin to Anglo-Saxons in appearance.
Citation needed.
No "they were obviously based on X" or "it was revealed to me in a dream," support your argument with actual text and not just imposing your personal interpretation and conjecture.
I'm not saying you are flat out wrong, but if you're unable to support your argument without relying on "trust me bro" there's a good chance you're saying things Tolkien never said.
>Tolkien’s fundamental ambition was to entertain and to tell wonderful stories that he himself found fascinating and exciting, but it was also a reflection of a greater ambition to create an entire mythology for England, as Tolkien described it in his letters. Tolkien was greatly inspired by the English, Celtic, German and Scandinavian material he knew so well from his professional work.
https://en.natmus.dk/historical-knowledge/denmark/middle-ages-1000-1536/j-r-r-tolkien/a-mythology-for-england/#:~:text=Tolkien's%20fundamental%20ambition%20was%20to,described%20it%20in%20his%20letters.
LotR is for Anglos. Citation provided. But I'm sure you won't admit you're wrong and you'll just gay off to another post to sow neo-marxist discontent
How the frick do you go from "create an entire mythology for England" to "every character in LotR is an Anglo" without extreme conjecture?
Do you really not appreciate how far of a leap you just took?
More importantly, you failed to produce anything that resembled a description that would fundamentally exclude any other interpretation of appearance. Saying "X is based on Y" only goes so far, and you might as well try to say Hobbits are all at least five feet tall because they were potentially based on people who were at least that tall.
The people and races of LotR are a departure from reality and separate from anything that may have inspired them. Like, I understand that this is all a game of politics for you, but if you want to fight this battle you can't do so under the banner of "You must accept my personal interpretations/conjectures" because that really has no power whatsoever.
Yes, making Aragorn a black guy is dumb, but claiming that Tolkien said something when he didn't actually say it isn't going to win you any points, and at no point does "Tolkien was greatly inspired by X material" mean that everyone in his stories must look like people from X countries.
Frick off israelite
>How the frick do you go from "create an entire mythology for England" to "every character in LotR is an Anglo" without extreme conjecture?
Not the anon you're responding to, and that Anon wasn't the author of the post you were responding to (which was me), but you're trying to attribute a false claim.
The Men who are central to the LotR are descended from thew Edain (who are indisputably hu-Wite).
https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Edain
They are not all intended to be reminiscent of Anglo Saxons, but are subdivided into three lineages, one of which, the House of Hador, are explicitly described as being of Norther European appearance. Their descendants later come to be known as "Northmen;" among them are the Rohirrim and the Bardings of Dale whose names and language are directly derived from Anglo-Saxon, ex: Eomer, Eowyn, Theoden. Many of the people of Gondor are also of Northmen stock, though mixed with other descendants of the Edain. Beorn and his people are also Northmen (and his name is clearly Germanic).
The Characters of the Children of Hurin are also from the House of Hador, and the sister of the main protagonist is described as being indistinguishable from Elves when she is a child.
Aragorn is of Numenorean ancestry, along with (to a lesser degree) the nobility of Gondor: Boromir, Faramir, Denethor. The Numenoreans were also descended of the Edain, are principally descendants of Hador (though typically dark-haired), but also from the houses of Beor and Haleth. They are also "different" from other Men, having received a divine blessing.
>, the House of Hador, are explicitly described as being of Norther European appearance.
I'm sorry, but "explicitly" requires citation as proof, and we really don't have that. Saying "Northmen" are "Northern European" in appearance is conjecture. You do know what conjecture means, right? It's taking something not explicitly in the text and making assumptions, assumptions that are not necessarily true and can be disputed.
>thew Edain (who are indisputably hu-Wite).
Like, I really don't understand what's not getting through to you. You can't keep providing conjecture and expecting it to be treated as fact.
Here's what we have about the Edain's first house-
> with grey or brown eyes and skin ranging from fair to swarthy.
Swarthy is literally "dark skinned". That's from Christopher Tolkien's The Peoples of Middle-Earth, so it's not quite JRR's own words, but since it's based on his notes I think we can at least treat it as providing something of a range of what the Edain may have looked like, and that's not "pale people only".
In general, you're still trying to ascribe our world's races onto a fictional world, and that's really just not going to work cleanly. Hell, Beorn may have a Germanic name, but he's also a bear.
>I'm sorry, but "explicitly" requires citation as proof, and we really don't have that.
The Men of the House of Hador are explicitly described as being predominantly blonde and of fair complexion.
>Swarthy is literally "dark skinned".
No shit. It's also a relative term, used for (darker skinned) white people. In the 3rd Age, it's attributed to Men such as the Dunlendings, Bree-landers, and some Gondorians.
>The Men of the House of Hador are explicitly described as being predominantly blonde and of fair complexion.
And?
>used for (darker skinned) white people
No, it's used for darker skinned people in general.
Really, we're almost literally splitting hairs here, when at the end of the day, even if Tolkien had said "They're explicitly only blonde-haired, blue-eyed, pale-skinned tax attorneys" there's still enough room to say "They could not resemble Europeans."
Fair Complexion.
albino.jpg
>seemingly obvious indications that the people of Middle Earth, specifically those featured in the novels, are what any honest person would understand as white people,
Except they're explicitly not that.
"White people" is a nebulous concept that only really pertains to our own world, with shifting meanings that are cultural and not genetic in origin. Hell, even if we agreed with
about humans of middle earth being allegorical stand-ins for Anglo-Irish, there was a time and place where even the Irish were not considered "white."
Look. I get it. You want to be mad about Black Aragorn, but you need to dial it back to the level where you actually have an argument. Demanding that fantasy races be depicted as belonging to a certain real world race just isn't in the cards unless there's explicit text you can use to support that demand, and things like skin color or hair color are unfortunately just not enough to make that kind of demand.
You can argue that Aragorn should have pale skin, because that's how he's explicitly described in the text. But, once you get into "He needs to look like a race that doesn't exist in his world" is where you're in nonsense land.
This has to be bait.
Nah just textbook sophistry.
>he's entirely correct in a way I can't dispute, but it makes me mad for some reason so it's "sophistry"
Ironically, your post is actual sophistry.
>not recognizing that books being open to interpretation is not some cosmic crime, but a valuable trait.
This is only true if you aren't white. IE. sophistry.
have a nice day, slime.
Addendum: Tolkien's writings were in large part intended as a mythology for the English people. The human subjects of his works, specifically the Men of the West which are the focus of his writings, *do* physically resemble NW Europeans. Some of them, especially as children, are described as having an Elven appearance, such that they might be confused for Elves. QED: Tolkien's Elves resemble NW Euros.
Tolkien describes his characters. They're white, no matter how much you croids seethe and try to change history.
>Tolkien describes his characters
Citation needed though. You can't say "He said they're white" unless he actually said they're white.
>Ah, so you're a moronic social sciences homosexual who failed his Bio 101 course.
No, really, go look into just how much pseudo-science goes into the process of labeling and distinguishing breeds and how unsustainable maintaining the current defined lineages is. The whole idea is only about 200 years old, but because it's built around so much tradition it's all incredibly outdated. Remember that even Mendel's work wasn't appreciated for what it was until 1900.
>HE MIGHT'VE BEEN ASIAN OR BLACK THO
He could have had what we describe as "asian" or "black" features. That's kind of how it works, in that unless Tolkien stated otherwise, you have plenty, and I mean plenty, of room to work with. Him having eyes that would be rare amidst the features of one real world race or skin color that's rare amidst the features of a real world race is not outside the realm of possibility, in part because we're literally talking about a fantasy world and he is some sort of bizarre fantasy creature that lived to over two hundred.
SHOULD he be some really weird ass albino black guy or some asian-looking guy with gray eyes? Eh, probably not. But, you really can't impose that he can't be, and you've got to accept that other people are open to interpret the character as they want to. Honestly, even Viggo Mortissen leaves a lot of room to be desired as a portrayal for the character, since while he's fine when he's sort of scruffy as Strider he doesn't really clean up so well. He's also not particularly tall and lean, though I guess he might be considered such when compared to a hobbit.
>Citation needed though. You can't say "He said they're white" unless he actually said they're white.
All of the (human) protagonists in Tolkien's writings are descended from the Edain*. He doesn't explicitly call them "white people" because that would be very weird and off-topic. It is also not necessary; the Edain clearly resemble a variety of people whom anyone would describe as "white."
*https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Edain
Just stop posting already. You aren't nearly as clever as you think you are, and you have nothing to contribute. Every post you make is just you spilling more spaghetti all over this thread.
> He doesn't explicitly call them "white people" because that would be very weird and off-topic.
So, you're willing to admit he doesn't explicitly say it. That's what I'm getting at.
Saying "They clearly resemble X" is a measure of conjecture and opinion, not fact. While most of us can agree on some conjecture, like your mother clearly resembling a gaping flesh dumpster explicitly designed for the deposit of copious amounts of semen, there's still room for you to interpret her differently.
Remember, Tolkien wasn't too shy from describing orcs as
"squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes: in fact degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types." At the point where he goes "Orcs look like Mongols" we really can't argue. If Tolkien had said "X looks like Europeans", we could treat that as more than conjecture, but we don't really have that.
At best, we do have a letter from Tolkien saying the Numenorians "are best pictured in (say) Egyptian terms", but I'm going to steer far away from that just because I don't want to open up that can of worms of what "Egyptian terms" even means, especially in this post-WEWUZKANGS world.
>the physical descriptions given for the Edain are all consistent with various white people, and not at all consistent with blacks or Asians or whatever
>the material culture of the Edain is European
>the names of the Edain, when they are not derived from a language of Tolkien's creation, are real-world Germanic names
...
>B-bu-bu he doesn't say they're white people, even though it would be totally inappropriate! He doesn't give us Aragorn's DNA results!!!
Pathetic.
> are all consistent with various white people,
Except that isn't true, even beyond white people not living more than a hundred and fifty years. White people rarely have gray eyes, and they're apparently common among the Edain.
And, don't forget that Indian people also have a wide spectrum of features, including black to blonde to red hair, eyes from gray to black, and skin from pale to swarthy.
>the material culture of the Edain is European
And the material culture of the Orcs is also European.
>B-bu-bu he doesn't say they're white people
Yes.
Saying that Tolkien was too culturally sensitive to say that is kinda funny considering what he was willing to say about the Mongols, but more importantly it really doesn't matter the reasons behind the omission. Any description of them being explicitly European just doesn't exist.
Trying to fight that with conjecture doesn't move the needle. Unless you have some measure of actual description, actual text that clearly says "Yo, these people are white", you really can't demand people to agree.
While you can say "Aragorn should be pale," you can't go much further than that without leaning into conjecture. Hell, according to Tolkien we might actually have to open up the "Are Egyptians white?" debate, but please, please let's not do that.
Ah yes, because black people also have pointy ears and purple eyes? You are a moron, all elves are meant to be a kind of perfect aryan. Tall, blonde, beautiful. But Drow being evil have black skin. So they're just black skinned aryans.
>Long, sloped nose
>Strong brow ridge
>Strong jaw and chin
>High set cheeks
>Deep set eyes
>Lips aren't protruding but are still full
It's a caucasian with blueish purple skin.
He is phenotypically northwestern European.
If you want to play coy, he hasn't been depicted as looking Slavic either, but distinctly of a Northern/Western European.
If you dyed this guy blue he wouldn't look like the depictions of Drizzt. Skin color doesn't matter for facial features typical within a phenotype.
You can easily add, that, you can't easily change bone structure.
>buzzwords
Wow, it's fricking nothing!
how? it was boring as hell. utterly non-entertaining.
Speak for yourself, I found it quite entertaining.
I thought that paladin was also a long-standing character. I would’ve sworn I’ve seen a similar character portrait in Balder’s Gate2.
I think he was an original character. There’s an article about this https://comicbook.com/gaming/news/dungeons-dragons-movie-drizzt-role-xenk-scrapped/
Hmm… maybe I was mistaken.
On a related note:
Was Xenk autistic? No, seriously, did he come off as a bit “off” to anyone else? Like he clearly was very literal-minded, sarcasm and colloquialisms went right over his head (which is an actual symptom of autism). Also he seemed to be more uncompromising than even what an “Arthurian knight of valor and virtue” ought to be. Like “Sheldon” levels of “it’s not enough that I swore an oath, everyone in the party must also follow my oath”. I get the article says that he represents a player that’s “taking the game more seriously than the rest” but it feels so extreme that I wonder if Xenk’s player wasn’t a little bit on the spectrum.
Or am I just reading too much into it?
The hacks who wrote it made him like Drax from Guardians. Drax wasn’t autist but his race had the autistic trait of being too literal. Xeno is just Drax as a paladin so took everything literally to an autistic degree. Just another example of bad writing and a lack of creativity.
I thought it was just a joke about paladin players having a stick up their asses and ruining 90% of the fun things any party member comes up with. I know that because am a paladin player
That and I like to think that the main party is pretty much four guys playing for fun and a DM going with their ideas, and the paladin is a guy who joined once looking for hardcore RP.
I heard it was feminist garbage.
There was very little woke shit in it. A little bit but not that bad. It’s crime was being boring and generic more than anything else. I just thought it was a 5/10 movie, nothing too bad nothing great.
Nah. You’d have to be propagandized heavily to think this was some feminist movie.
>fear of a female planet. fear, baby...
You heard wrong. But continue to cower in fear.
Girls just don't like you.
It's because the director tried to explain away his femdom fetish
They advertised it as such but then you watch the film and it has none of that. Which makes me wonder what the frick were the director and others thinking
It was decent, better than lots of stuff they put out which is why I hoped for a sequel because even if its not great I need some god damn light in this darkness already
>Which makes me wonder what the frick were the director and others thinking
Probably one of two things:
>1) "We weren't allowed to put what we wanted into the movie by our overlords so we're going to tell you how we felt and would have wanted to do anyway."
>2) "We had no intention of putting woke into our movie but we heard (wrongly) that inciting controversy like that is ALWAYS good as free publicity."
So they ended up with the worst of both worlds, since they repelled people who didn't want to take a chance in watching a political movie and they didn't appease those who would have sucked the movie off for including their shared views.
>Which makes me wonder what the frick were the director and others thinking
They were testing to see if the actual content of a film has any bearing on the outrage it generates.
From who, discord trannies?
I didn't think so but honestly almost all movies are dying now. Covid and Marvel slop basically killed cinema as an experience.
Top Gun
top gun was nostalgia bait for boomers
That said, it genuinely and thoughtfully introduced the next generation of pilots, and featured strong, capable, unapologetically masculine leadership, and showed how men steward and raise up other men to glory, with no cheap shots or braying about 'TOXIC MASCULINITY'.
It's that something you want more of in western cinema?
It was the age old "the loose cannon it takes to get the job done" shtick, with the whole plot designed to stroke Tom Cruise's overinflated ego.
I guess the flying sequences looked kinda nice.
>that something you want more of in western cinema?
I just want to be able to watch and discuss things without people immediately jumping to how it relates to the culture war and political ideology
I care absolutely nothing about any of the things you've listed. I want to get good entertainment when watching a movie. Which this one delivered, even if there was just too much nostalgia bait in it to make it truly enjoyable from start to finish.
So - good action movie was good, because it was a good action movie, rather than [Whatever Virtue Signaling Gets Attached]
And exact same goes with the DnD movie. I'm on the position that it would work BETTER without having a DnD brand glued to it, but then they wouldn't make it in the first place. It's no longer the 00s and nobody is going to bankroll a fantasy adventure flick just based on the fact it's a fantasy adventure flick. It HAS to have a brand.
Except in this particular case, the brand was dragging it down, for they had to crowbar too much shit into a simple "bunch of randos doing a fantasy heist" - and for no other reason than the fact it was in the contract.
>Except in this particular case, the brand was dragging it down, for they had to crowbar too much shit into a simple "bunch of randos doing a fantasy heist" - and for no other reason than the fact it was in the contract.
But what would even be the draw without the license?
"generic Fantasy flick without big names attached" doesn't really scream Box Office Hit.
Whatever your opinion on WotC, D&D as a brand has never been stronger.
>But what would even be the draw without the license?
The exact same fricking movie, 50 millions cheaper to make.
>"generic Fantasy flick without big names attached" doesn't really scream Box Office Hit.
Which is why it flopped, you moron.
>D&D as a brand has never been stronger.
It was genuinely stronger 5 years ago. Which was the time when they've started producing this one. Guess why.
... wrong
The point is "how much money we pump into marketing campaign", not "what brand do we have to offer". It being a DnD movie did absolutely fricking NOTHING to the box office. Part of the reason why it flopped, in fact, was the fact their budget had to include all the loyalty fees.
However, the reason WHY it was made is because Hollywood since Harry Potter is in this delusional phase that you absolutely MUST have a brand to sell something, especially when it is even remotely fantasy-adjecant.
The point is "how much money we pump into marketing campaign", not "what brand do we have to offer".
In the age of social media and first-day reviews, marketing isn't the factor it used to be,
>because Hollywood since Harry Potter is in this delusional phase that you absolutely MUST have a brand to sell something, especially when it is even remotely fantasy-adjecant.
And they stuck to it for two decades. Almost like capitalizing on established IPs carries significantly less risk and tends to make for a more reliable return on your investment.
>In the age of social media and first-day reviews, marketing isn't the factor it used to be,
Imagine putting those two statements in a single sentence.
>Almost like capitalizing on established IPs carries significantly less risk and tends to make for a more reliable return on your investment.
Except those past 20 years proved that it doesn't work and all you end up with is having to wiggle out of paying loyalties in the end.
>Except in this particular case, the brand was dragging it down,
Let's not kid ourselves.
If someone pitched going to see "random fantasy heist movie", no one would go. Even people who really like fantasy movies or heist films would probably give it a hard pass.
It having the D&D brand slapped onto it is the only reason it made any money at all.
It was a really good film, too.
NO it wasn't. It was garbage and it will be remembered poorly just like the rest of the trash D&D movies.
Top Gun was great, you don't know what you're talking about.
It was a legitimate good movie.
Jesus homosexual it wasn't really any of that. Stop trying to co opt good things into your homosexual tier agenda
No, he's right. That's why audiences liked it, no-one wants mystery-meat dykes as main characters.
Yet it was still a fantastic movie, arguably better than the original and made 2 billion
For every Top Gun: Maverick there are like 10 major studio flops now. The model is no longer become sustainable.
Which was marvel slop
If you're into conspiracy theories then studios are trying to break the movie cycle so they can go direct to streaming services. This means a venue they control and don't have to share the profits with cinema chains. It also means they can throw away a lot of old deals with actors and writers into the garbage can because those contracts didn't include language for streaming. Studios are already abusing this to screw writers, which is why there is an ongoing strike. Also recall how the Black Widow film did a release on Disney+ alongside theaters causing Johansson to freak because her contract was for box office bux, not streaming.
Or cinema chains are doing it to themselves since the price of tickets is stupid fricking high, more than the experience could possibly be worth. Also note these things aren't mutually exclusive. No matter the case I guarantee you it's still greed all the way down.
Studios have been screwing actors with weasel words and technicalities for decades, at this point they have nobody to blame but themselves and their lawyers. I remember as a kid hearing about actors who were supposed to be paid based on profit getting nothing because the publishers were able to sell the rights to a shell company of themselves and then rent the license from themselves for the exact amount of profit they earned so there was technically zero profit at all, only revenue drained by licensing fees.
Hollywood Accounting. Just ask the guy who created Babylon 5 how he feels about it.
Oh yeah, get JMS in here.
I’d frick the Tiefling and that’s about all I can say that was a positive that I took home with me after watching it
Yeah it was honestly decent. Some of the comedy parts were legitimately funny, and it was overall about family values, which is good, despite the incessant need to implant mixed races in everything.
It was okay but I hate how they insist on making bards thieves with an instrument when they're supposed to be spellcasters.
They're kinda supposed to be a little of everything, ie. spellcasters/theives/clerics/fighters. The class for people who can't make up their minds+a lute.
Personally, I'd be more fine if they dropped the whole "bard" business and just went ahead and made a proper "Red Mage" class, but since that's not really in the cards, Bards are what we got.
I get the whole point of a bard is they're somewhat talented at pretty much everything right down to their autismal stat and class requirements in OD&D. It just irks me that Wizards seems intent on simply showing them as thieves even though they're really meant to be a mix between the original triad of fighter, thief, and wizard in older editions and 5e has practically made them a dedicated spellcaster.
Bards are basically rogue+ though, you get almost as many skills, spell casting that includes healing, Use Magic Device, party buffs from perform, which can be something like oratory, or dance or something so you can do it without taking up your hands allowing you to fight properly well using it.
Yeah, they kinda neutered the bard (I honestly thought the dude was a mastermind rogue who just specialized in music for flavour) and the druid to stick to a single "gimmick" for each party member.
I mean, there's a reason they turned the main characters into monster sheets rather then player ones.
I heard it was amazing from a million bought and paid for websites so I know it was shit. Only good thing was the marketing apparently. Get fricked Wizards.
Lol we got a live one here boys, let's ask him what his internal monologue is like lol
It was the best fantasy movie I had seen in a while.
Take that however you will.
yeah, honestly this. which you could say is a commentary on our times, a 5/10 in a sea of crap looks like a diamond in the rough, etc. there were obviously a lot of people working on this who gave a frick (unlike a lot of modern entertainment), even if it's still very easy to shit on.
but I don't think
is good news because the studios are going to read that as "well, we gave those 'people who gave a frick' a try, but they couldn't hack it. better call the shit spewers back in, at least they're cheap."
People literally don't care about D&D one way or an other let alone enough to pay for a full price movie ticket for
At last some good news.
Wrong board
Wrong board
Wrong board
Wrong board
Wrong board
Wrong board
Oops, the entire company, including MtG had only half a billion in profit in the entire year and a loss of 125 millions in the months leading up to Christmas the time when everyone usually buys board games and toys. Barely noticeable dent my ass, Magic is a full sixth of Hasbro's revenue and all that's keeping Hasbro afloat, barely. I wonder how the numbers for 2023 will look.
>Magic is a full sixth of Hasbro's revenue and all that's keeping Hasbro afloat, barely.
Curious. Is there any info on the operating costs of just the Magic or WotC division? I'm kind of curious if they could survive without them or not.
They lost a lot of goodwill right before the movie came out with the OGL shenanigans. Lot's of people were boycotting the movie and moved to other systems even after they backtracked.
Lol, no one cares about the OGL nontroversy, because it was never actually a concern for anyone except the handful of redditors who tried to get twitter and the dumbest losers on Ganker to act as their private army.
The changes WotC wanted to make to their platform liscense only affected people making more than 750k on platforms WotC controlled, which meant a handful of people who had made all of their money thanks to the exposure they got on those platforms.
It was nothing but a few homosexuals, dumb enough to publish on WotC's digital distribution network, using the internet to get idiots to help them make more money. Everyone else who joined in had no idea what the OGL actually is, or were LARPing trolls just looking for any excuse to "take down the corpo".
Go on lick them
>i was part of some queer redditor's private army!
Lol, imagine being as dumb as you.
Anyone gay enough to publish in the DM's guild deserves to be fleeced, especially if they somehow made 3/4's of a million dollars selling furry versions of 5e adventures.
>No one cared about the ogl changes!
>All the big third-party publishers start making their own systems or changing the existing ones to move away from legacy ogl stuff
Wow, you sure have a big brain. Shame it's empty.
It was a big deal to small publishers & a few thousand ttrpg diehards, but probably didn't effect the movie in the slightest. Movies live & die by normie interest & basically nothing else, it's true that a scandal can bury them but this wasn't a sex or race scandal so it didn't count.
I am also wondering how well it is doing streaming.
If it gets enough streaming attention it might be able to get a direct to stream sequel with a significantly lower budget.
>Action-adventure flick
>Postponed release for 2 years
>Marketing fizzles out half-way through
>Released in the same time with two juggernauts, all sharing the same audiences
>wAs dNd At ThE fAuLt HeRe?
I went to say DnD with my pals, I had no idea what other movies were playing. I haven't cared about movies in years and only went to this one because we made an evening out of it at a restaurant/bar and had tickets ot the vip section where we could keep drinking. I fell asleep during the last 20 minutes. 10/10 movie imo
>sweeping changes at board level
I'm not defending, I'm attacking you.
If someone was dumb enough to sign a contract with WotC, that's their problem. Lie with dogs, get fleas.
If that homosexual decides to then go "oh, boo hoo, all the money I made is not enough, who can I get to fight for me?" the proper response isn't "You have my axe, let us fight together against the vile corporation that is responsible for you making any money in the first place," it's "Get fricked, homosexual."
No one should be publishing on WotC's platforms to begin with, and you're fighting on the side of "Hey everyone, let's fight so that a handful of people who managed to extract hundreds of thousands of dollars from a shitty publishing platform can continue to do so at the same rate!"
Like, if you don't like WotC, at least know what the frick you're fighting for, and don't just be so easily manipulated that you're willing to die on some hill for a few losers who got fat sucking on WotC's teats.
Your rallying cry shouldn't have been "How dare WotC worsen it's already shitty contracts! Let's pretend WotC is trying to copyright Imagination itself!" but instead "Whoever chooses to sign up with WotC deserves to get fricked by WotC, just don't sign with them in the first place."
>corporations can frick over whoever they want and the victims are to blame for it
Holy frick you are the worst kind of corporate boot licker. WOTC were held accountable for their shitty decision that would have restricted 3rd party content and backed off. It was a win for customer rights. All ttrpgs are better off when the customer base stands up for itself and puts in boundaries with the corporate suits.
>corporations can frick over whoever they want
If they sign a contract with the company? Yes.
You make a deal with the Devil in an attempt to profit from it, you deserve to get fricked because at the end of the day you helped the Devil profit.
>would have restricted 3rd party content
On platforms WotC controlled. They have no power to control independant publishers making their own 3rd party content, and they never have had that power.
Frick, are you actually so fricking dumb you don't know what the OGL was or is? It wasn't some magical gift that enabled 3rd parties to suddenly use material they never could before. It was a corporate move to provide 3rd parties with an alternate logo (the d20 system) that they could put on compatible books in order to protect the "D&D" name and logo.
You can't copyright game rules. 3rd parties, regardless of what WotC wants, can always publish compatible material without paying WotC a dime, as long as they don't publish on WotC's own platforms.
You moron. You were fighting for people who benefited from the very corporation you hate. Let WotC frick itself and the people who sign up with them, don't meddle with a bad business decision that only fricks the idiots who not only willingly signed contracts with the company, but profitted immensely from it.
>Frick, are you actually so fricking dumb you don't know what the OGL was or is?
My brother in christ you are the one who doesn’t know what the OGL is.
>If they sign a contract with the company? Yes.
Once again you dumb frick, there was no contract to sign.
>dumb enough to sign a contract with WotC
You dumb frick, there was no contract to sign.
>Corp: I am unilaterally promising that I'm not gonna sue or ask for money if you make stuff for my games
>Random guys: Cool, imma make stuff for your games
>Corp: AHAHAHAHA, I AM ALTERING THE BARGAIN. YOU KNOW OWE ME MONEY. PRAY I DO NOT ALTER IT FURTHER
>Random guys: wtf?
>Random contrarian morons: Go corp! Take their money, it's natural that you break your legal promises and create massive pr problems for a tiny, tiny bit in short term profits! How dare anyone think this is moronic on all levels? The corp has a god-given right to squeeze every drop of blood out of stone and no one should complain about it! I am so very smart that I don't even need to know basic facts about the case to vomit my stupidity!"
>Corp: I am unilaterally promising that I'm not gonna sue or ask for money if you make stuff for my games
>Random guys: Cool, imma make stuff for your games
Lol, no.
You dumbass, read the actual contracts people had to sign to publish in the DM's guild. Those things were already draconian legal nightmares that no sane person would agree with that basically sold away your rights to whatever you published on that platform, but people still signed because they thought they could make money out of it in the end.
The proposed changes in WotC's liscensing not only didn't affect anyone that wasn't publishing on platforms WotC controlled, they didn't affect the vast majority of the people who did, only people who somehow managed to make more than 750k.
Basically, people making a shitton of money thanks to the exposure they got on Wizard's platforms, who were now crying because WotC had helped them make all that money and now wanted a bigger cut of the pie.
The right move for them would have been to say "Okay, we're out, we're done, we're gonna publish independantly with new material not based on what we already sold away our rights to," but because they knew they'd never make the same kind of ludicrous money they were making in the DM's guild, they got you to fight for them.
If you're genuinely dumb enough to think WotC has any control over 3rd party publishers, you're moronic. If you're just a troll spreading misinformation that exaggerates how much power WotC has, you're even worse.
>in the DM's guild
The OGL has existed for more than a decade before the DM's guild did. Go have a nice day you moronic zoomer homosexual. Imagine spending so much time and effort sucking corpo dick.
Holy shit.
You're actually this dumb.
Okay. Let's start from the beginning.
Before anything, Gygax tries to copyright D&D's rules. Courts tell him he can't copyright game rules, so he instead registers a few names, places, and monsters as part of "product identity", and then sues anyone who uses those.
Fast forward a few decades, and WotC produces the OGL, the Open Game Liscense, to coincide with 3.0. This is a farce. It provides 3rd party publishers with no new freedoms they did not already have, and even went out of its way to make sure everyone understood that what Gygax managed to secure under Product Identity, which is why things like the Beholder are missing from the SRD. The OGL really only lets people say "compatible with the d20 system" on their products, and that's it.
After the Book of Erotic Fantasy fiasco, where WotC tried to sue a 3rd party publisher that didn't even use their d20 logo, and failed in the process, 4e didn't bother with a new OGL and instead just had a new document outlining all the stuff they could protect.
5e comes along, and comes up with a brutal new liscense, which provides people with a lot of tools to publish on their platforms and even some access to protected material, at the cost of signing away almost all of the control of any intellectual property if you choose to do so.
People have been calling all of these "OGLs", even though only the 3rd edition technically had that name.
No, the 5E basic set was published under the OGL. You need to shut the frick up.
>The OGL really only lets people say "compatible with the d20 system" on their products, and that's it.
No, it let people reproduce the content that was listed in the OGL without having to play word games, let them stamp the d20 logo on the front of the game, and acted as a 'We will not sue you' guarantee that WotC later broke, which was important because of just how lawsuit happy companies like TSR and Palladium were.
>acted as a 'We will not sue you' guarantee that WotC later broke,
Except they never made that guarantee, which is why the BoED took extra steps to avoid getting sued, but WotC still went after them anyway because having that book on the same shelf as their books was damaging WotC's reputation and confusing consumers. And, WotC lost.
Really, for all the talk about hating the corpos, if people actually wanted to take down WotC, all they'd have to do is make smutty compatible products until the company collapsed.
>Except they never made that guarantee
They did, though. WotC breaking with that once the old guard were out isn't them not making a guarantee.
They didn't, especially not in any legally binding way.
Incorrect.
You stupid motherfricker, the entire reason the OGL got off the ground was because WotC itself was almost strangled in the crib by Kevin Siembieda suing them over RPGs and the people who were in charge then were in charge circa 3.0 and were passionate RPG players.
>Kevvy
please elaborate
Kevin sued 1992 WotC because they had a small blurb explaining how to convert their system to work with RIFTS.
a fricking blurb? holy shit.
That's not what the people who created the OGL say, that's the literal opposite of the intent of the OGL, and that's not what lawyers say. You're wrong.
This is your brain on consuming the product
Dumbass, just admit you thought the OGL was some magical document that was responsible for 3rd parties making D&D compatible products, as if they hadn't been doing that for years before the OGL even existed.
Hell, right now there's literally a flood of 5e compatible material being made by 3rd parties without paying WotC a dime, who cheekily have been labeling their products as "5e compatible" because try as they might, WotC couldn't protect the concept of a 5th Edition. You can bet that's exactly why 6e is not going to be called 6e.
>Arguing with voices in his head
Sad
>i was wrong but can't admit it
>i can't contradict anything that you've explained to me, and I'm even genuinely grateful you took the time to educate me because I really didn't appreciate just how wrong I really was, but I'm also a petty moron who can't take an 'L'
Just stop posting then.
>Just stop posting then
Ironic
Black person, I'm at least third person you are arguing with, and you still think you are facing the original anon.
It doesn't really matter who you are. You do understand that, right?
At the end of the day, you're a guy so easily manipulated that when a redditor needs you to join his private army, you'll strap on a helmet and shout "SIR YES SIR" like a good little moron.
>NOOOO! I WANT TO ARGUE! BUT ALSO TO WIN IT!
Friendly reminder you've just wasted good trips on a shitpost, underage
Projecting a bit much, aintcha?
>You are not allowed to point out moronic business practices as long as they are only used to frick over reddits and adult children.
Why do you even care if a company fricks the people who decide to sign up and use their platform?
Wizards was fricking over everyone well before the redditors decided they needed a private army, but no one was spamming multiple threads a day before then. It was only when a handful of losers who had already made hundreds of thousands of dollars off of the platform needed a group of idiots to make a fuss over something they didn't understand, and they found no shortage of idiots on twitter and here.
It's fricking embarassing, and worse, it makes it clear that any time some homosexuals need a private army of outraged idiots, they'll be able to find one here.
>Why do you even care if a company fricks the people who decide to sign up and use their platform?
Because it was wrong.
>Why do you even care
Why do you?
I thought the movie was okay but it felt about 20 minutes too long.
I saw it because I hate capeshit, and still wanted to catch up up with friends and watching something at the movies.
I probably didn't understand or get any of the in-jokes about dungeons and dragons, but i liked the action bits and the adventure.
That's a shame, it was a good film.
It means it it was a fantasy movie and unless its LotR or Conan it's an uphill battle. It'll earn it's keep with TV.
>It'll earn it's keep with TV.
I could be wrong but I don't think that's a thing anymore.
The movie was actually decent though. A simple lighthearted comedy about famili values
It shouldn't be a surprise the new D&D movie flopped. Not only was the last one an utter failure (even though a straight-played movie of the 3.5 iconics and their example adventure into the ruined monastery would have been excellent, due to how low the bar is for a DnD movie), but the fan base has only grown worse since then. Indeed, were this movie made in 2004 it might actually be tolerable. But that goes for most movies made now.
What you are seeing is the final stage of the söyification of Dungeons and Dragons. The teasing foreplay of it's prominence in Stranger Things, the Big Bang Theory, and other normalgay media, has helped flood the hobby with casuals who couldn't give a frick about the existent culture and who utterly lack imagination. This, along with the mongrel hordes of video game players, hunched and dopamine-addled, has caused the game to be flooded with League-of-Legends-style pauldroncore art, and floods of video game meme phrases.
The consumerism of DnD has skyrocketed as it is invaded by söyisraelites and women who outspend the original "nerds" by a factor of 3 to 1. In the end the RPG community has been overtaken and it's culture changes to fit the ADHD low IQ mongoloids who now infest it. Thus, the marvel tier movie should be expected, as Marvel movies are the ultimate expression of the söyisraelite mentality when it comes to storytelling. Nothing can be taken seriously, and the prominence of "muh epic upvotes RPG story of muh nat20 table slamming laughter IPA beer froth everywhere" just goes to show it.
So this movie is just the final stages of the cancer that destroyed DnD. And yet this board still tries to pretend the hobby needs fresh blood, lest it die, and ignoring the fact that it already has.
>all that writing
>not realizing no one is gonna read it because you posted a wojak
lol why would anyone listen to your moronic ass
60% of the post is him talking about shallots and Cannibalistic Underground Humanoid Dwellers anyways.
Assmad buzzwords and wojak aside, his general idea isn't wrong. He has a point when he mentions ADHD, case in point
. Can you honestly say that the audience WotC has been trying to appeal to over the past several years has been a healthy influence in the industry?
And you're forgetting
Am a big /tg/ dude and even I didnt bother going to watch it and pirated it instead. Why? because movies are dead.
Streaming took over and "going to the movies" now just means jackshit in the current years. The only movies people go to cinemas for now are big name shit like Marvel goyslop (which as you know, is also dying and isnt printing money anymore) and big name shit that needs 0 marketing to sell it anyway.
Movies are dead, and it's just boomer producers still thinking that if they sank 200 mils in a movie, they will make a billion back because that's how the industry used to work.
Even the streaming sites are fighting for eyeballs. Netflix famously quipped a few years ago that their biggest competition was Fortnite.
>anime pfp
>zoomer meme
>"lol TLDR"
yeah you're the kind of piece of shit I'm talking about. You don't belong in this hobby and you should be removed by force if necessary.
>"lol you posted a pic I don't like so your point is invalid"
Go back to Faceberg with that kind of argumentative strategy. Nothing I posted is incorrect, and you don't have a SINGLE fricking coutnerargument against it. You're not even bothering to disagree. You just have frickall to say.
said none of that shit. So not an argument.
Your hobby has been infiltrated and subverted, and you helped by posting Sir Bearington memes. Get over it. Your fauxbertarianism ruined D&D and the cancer WILL spread to other RPGs.
>
They hate you because you tell the truth. Keep on trucking anon
No I hate him because he's a troll from 2014 that is autistic to the point where he's been ban evading for nearly a decade now.
True, which is why I left this board years ago & only check in occasionally to gawk at the ruins. (At least its not as bad as Ganker)
Why are you still here, though?
Where else can you go?
>Where else can you go?
Away
>a·way
>adverb
>1.to or at a distance from a particular place, person, or thing.
Where exactly can I go that is a free speech absolutist space?
A public road.
>which is why I left this board years ago
I'm usually on Ganker aka nu-/b/, or lately Ganker because AI is fricking nuts. Literally just stopped by on a lark to see if there's an oldschool 40k thread up.
For ttrpgs, nowhere. It's dead, Jim. (Afaik)
Well frick it then, I'll start working on my own image board with blackjack and hookers seeing as the queers are invading this space as well.
> League-of-Legends-style pauldroncore art
Blame Warhammer 40k for pauldrons.
It created it, League of Legends and WoW mainstreamed it.
I'm just going to assume this is the moronic Ganker and Ganker thing where they go out of their way to insist a movie flopped despite it doing fine. Because I've heard nothing negative outside of this site. Against wizards yes, but I mean the movie.
This movie flopping that hard is too convenient to be true.
Cost of production was $150m, marketing is usually at least that much, film did $260m in the box office, probably lost upwards of $40m, but that isn't that bad for a film these days, it's just probably very bad for Hasbro and WotC's expectations of making money rather than losing it. Can't imagine there is a way for them to recoup the money in interest either, so it's just a black stain on the company history, really.
They're still asshurt over their Captain Marvel crusade failing and desperate for a win.
If Captain Marvel 2 was actually successful then why didn't they make a sequel? Even a mediocre movie like Ant Man got two sequels. The closest Captain Marvel is getting is a role in an upcoming ensemble film.
Because the whole point of Capt marvel was to introduce the Kree and Skull and set up Secret Invasion as another big arc and expand cosmic marvel further. Also to give Rogue her brick powers later. Marvels never been a big player in Marvel Comics and used mostly to push other ideas, and that trend's continuing in the movies
Do you really expect me to believe that Marvel would prioritize someone's artistic vision over making money? They even made a Black Panther sequel despite Black Panther being dead irl. Brie Larson literally has less appeal than Chadwick Bosemen's corpse.
Anon they're just recycling shitty plots from the comics into movie plots, nothing artistic about it. Several of the movies do this in bulk already but you don't recognize them because you don't read comics.
Anon, the plan was for her to lead the MCU in phase three (or four, whichever) like Iron Man did the originals. She got Scrappy'd instead but State Farm remembers.
No one, no one ever in the existence of the universe, no one except maybe Bree herself could possibly imagine that to have ever been the case.
Fury's car had a better chance of being the leader of the MCU.
I'm so sorry anon
https://www.cinemablend.com/news/2468488/captain-marvel-will-lead-the-mcu-kevin-feige-says
I guarantee that Feige kept a straight face throughout the entire meeting with Larson, didn't crack a smile even once when he made promise after promise, but the moment she left he burst out laughing.
You're forgetting how much shit feige talks to the point you can't take him seriously. Look at Ghostbusters answer the call and how much bullshit he shoveled there. Or how they actually thought Inhumans could replace Xmen. You're also forgetting how much Ms. Marvel was pushed at the same time, showing how much they were throwing shit at the wall to see what stuck.
Their inability to properly execute their moronic plans does not mean there was not a point where they acted on those plans.
It's practically the same thing when it comes to Feige and seeing the result, knowing there's no way it sticks. Understanding this instead of just mindlessly raging saves time.
After Disney bought up the MCU, all attempts at long term planning fell apart and they started doing the shit they're still doing today: stumbling forward and slapping shit together as they go and sorting it out later. They're currently barreling towards another Avengers Movie and they have no idea who is on that lineup. When they were making Captain Marvel, they had no idea what she'd do in the next few movies, but they intended for her to be the most important character going forwards. It was only because they were making it up as they went that they were able to downplay her in future movies because they had no fricking concrete plans for those movies until they were done editing.
All it means is that they love emasculating men, the vast majority of their audience.
normies like d&d to play their ocs, not pay to watch others.
and even if they did critical role exists for that.
>ctrl+f john wick
>0 results
>ctrl+f mario
>0 results
You're all moronic
Yes.
Haven't sen Mario, but John Wick was legit boring. It dragged too long, there was little to no characterization for the new characters, the villain was nonexistent, just some rich guy with an ego who hardly mattered as far as the plot goes. Even the fights were boring. Half the theater actually laughed at Keanu's attempted jujitsu in the gallery section of the hotel. Was it better than 3? Sure. But the only one I'd rewatch is 1. The rest suck.
By setting it in the Forgotten Realms (or any other D&D setting), using things innate to D&D. Certain races, classes, spells. It's just a generic fantasy movie in the end, but really that's it.
There were a shit tone of videos from actual lawyers about this. Go educate yourself before you spew your idiocy.
>from actual lawyers about this.
Lawyers who had no idea what they were saying because they were basing their arguments on video games/software, and not tabletop games, which have very different laws protecting them. It was pretty embarassing for them, and it goes to show that lawyers make mistakes just like everyone else, especially when asked to comment on something outside of parking tickets.
>uhm acshually me, totally not a WotC employee, know what i'm talking about and everyone else is wrong
The OGL is fine under contract law.
Hell even if it wasn't 99% of the game itself isn't under copyright.
Yeah, the lawyer who did his PhD dissertation on the OGL doesn't know what he's talking about. You know how dissertations work, right?
You're talking about Bob Tarantino, right? Who right from the start of his little podcast appearance gives a completely inaccurate explanation of what the 3.0 OGL was?
>So prior to the implementation of the OGL, the owners of Dungeons and Dragons had taken a fairly conventional approach to how they approach their copyright rights, and they took the approach that they owned copyright in the game, and anybody who used any elements of the game were engaged in copyright infringement.
That's so fundamentally wrong it's embarrassing. It's something that could only come from the imagination of someone who's exposure to RPGs only started in 2000. It's actually funny, because Tarantino talks about the late 90s, without really appreciating how many commercial D&D derivative works were being produced at that time and before that time.
We're talking about something that has been an understood reality of RPGs since the dawn of the genre. All the way back to Gygax trying to sue everyone and anyone and getting assfricked until he ran off to California to try and make his D&D movie.
No, it's accurate. It doesn't matter whether they were winning or losing, it mattered whether they were suing and it was a fact that TSR and Palladium sued constantly.
>it mattered whether they were suing
WotC didn't stop suing people just because of the OGL, and used the OGL's existence to hit anyone who got near their protected material harder. The OGL basically just outlined what everyone should have already known, and it's actually amusing that Tarantino says the SRD was provided to people, rather than the SRD being simply everything that WotC could not protect. It was what was omitted that was relevant, not what was provided, and they went hard after anyone that used any material omitted from the SRD.
But, legal matters like these are intentionally obtuse and usually settled out of court, and even the few court cases we know about have only fragmental information about them, such as the whole BoEF situation. During the early 2000s, WotC seemed focused on fighting court cases they could actually win with the law actually on their side, and it's not until they make egregious missteps like trying to sue a company on shaky grounds like "consumer confusion" that we get to hear more details about actual court cases.
Self-owned WotC did not sue with anywhere near the frequency of TSR and did not sue for the same reasons.
True as far as we know, but neither TSR being fundamentally moronic nor WotC focusing on fighting battles it could actually win affected whether people were making D&D derivatives or not.
People, including Tarantino, argue the OGL was responsible for the surge of new D&D derivatives, but that's only if you look at roughly1993-2000, when D&D was in general decline and had lost a lot of popularity and people were even arguing that TCGs were killing off RPGs. Prior to that, there was an endless flood of companies trying to cash in on making their own D&D derivatives, which is what kept TSR's legal team active but also constantly getting fricked for trying to claim copyright on things that they couldn't.
Very few people designing games in the 2000s saw the OGL and thought "This means WotC can't sue me! They promised!"
They saw a risk they could take, weighed the value of what the "compatibly with the d20 system" logo on their product meant to attracting customers versus the possibility of providing WotC some measure of control over their own work since anything they did that stepped over pre-existing legal boundaries would result in heavy-handed litigation if their product also had a sticker that was basically a legal admission that you were fully aware of what was and wasn't protected, and many companies said "Frick that," including the publishers of the BoEF. And that still didn't stop WotC from going after them.
, Continued
Copyright Law is scary place, and even lawyers make mistakes. They often make mistakes, which is something other lawyers like to take advantage of. At the end of the day, anyone who designed a game using D&D as their inspiration would have been smart to approach a lawyer for legal advice and check if the game could be sold as is. Before the OGL, a lawyer would counsel the best move is to make things as different as you're able/willing to make them, but a D&D clone or compatible material was perfectly legal and TSR could be as scary as they wanted but they'd be paying you in the end if you fought them, with hundreds of precedents demonstrating this. After the OGL, the lawyer would give you the same advice.
We can partly thank Gygax, because him fricking up so badly in the early 80s gives lawyers plenty of material to act as precedent, including the ability to say "Look, you fat frick, do you want us to call the Tolkien estate again?"
>And that still didn't stop WotC from going after them.
Hasbro-led WotC. There is a difference. None of this changes that one of the reasons the OGL exists is because WotC nearly died to similar bullshit lawsuits the OGL was designed to prevent.
>the OGL was designed to prevent
It was designed to protect the D&D name and brand and to put a spin on the fact that they couldn't protect anything more than a handful of IP items.
It's kind of on the same level if J.K. Rowling announced the "School of Wizards" license, allowing and encouraging writers to make stories about schools where wizards use magic and learn spells. And, while announcing this license and what it allowed writers to do, omitted the ability to use any characters from her stories, any creatures she specifically invented, any spells or items or places, and can't even exist in the same universe as her books.
While kids under the age of sixteen might go "Oh wow! Thank you, J. K. Rowling for letting us write stories about wizarding schools!" (before J.K.'s lawyers showed up and explained that they were not allowed to use the term 'wizarding'), everyone else would just go "Dumb b***h, you haven't given us anything at all."
That's basically the OGL. A weird publicity stunt that people should be smarter about, but most people really just have a hard time understand that game rules can't be copyrighted. It's such a strange and weird freedom that people really just don't expect to have and often don't understand.
Like ducks at the park.
>First, Wizards was highly motivated by a lawsuit that occurred early during their history when they were small and new, before Magic: The Gathering, in which they were sued by an established RPG company (not TSR) for releasing a product that included conversion notes for how to use their product with that game system. (You see me being vague here? That's because by the terms of the settlement we aren't allowed to discuss the details.) That lawsuit almost killed Wizards right out of the gate, which we believe was the point of it.
>Peter and the rest of us felt that this kind of inter-company hostility was hurting the RPG industry by preventing the development of an ecology of companies who worked readily together. Peter vowed that when Wizards got big it would never treat another company that way, and he followed through on that promise. More than anything else, the OGL was a direct of that early bad experience, a desire to make it legally safe for RPG companies - especially small ones - to work together without the threat of harassment lawsuits.
>Peter vowed that when Wizards got big it would never treat another company that way, and he followed through on that promise.
lol.
Also-
>You see me being vague here?
>which we believe was the point of it.
That's basically "let me spew a little bullshit for a minute".
>a desire to make it legally safe for RPG companies - especially small ones - to work together without the threat of harassment lawsuits.
There was no need for the OGL to make it legally safe, it already was, as long as you actually played by the rules.
The Palladium lawsuit was settled with WotC making a payment, because The Primal Order had used Palladium trademarks without permission. This wasn't a matter of game rules being used and adapted, there were specific registered trademarks Palladium had that WotC used without even asking.
WotC had erred, and while Palladium was pretty dickish about it, they were fully within their rights in protecting their IP. Hell, Peter had even sought legal council beforehand and been advised to first reach out and get permission to use any trademarks, but he refused to, probably because he thought everyone would just be cool about it without really appreciating that the law isn't designed around being permissive with things you've gone certain lengths to protect.
The joke is that the OGL doesn't offer any access to D&D's trademarks. It even created the d20 System logo specifically so people would use that instead of going anywhere near the D&D logo or name.
>Peter and the rest of us felt that this kind of inter-company hostility was hurting the RPG industry by preventing the development of an ecology of companies who worked readily together. Peter vowed that when Wizards got big it would never treat another company that way, and he followed through on that promise. More than anything else, the OGL was a direct of that early bad experience, a desire to make it legally safe for RPG companies - especially small ones - to work together without the threat of harassment lawsuits.
Peter sold WotC to buy Gencon.
Gencon black lists people who get attacked at their convention.
Dare I say Peter is a lier?
>game rules can't be copyrighted
Content of game rules can not be copyrighted. Expression of game rules most certainly can and regularly is. The OGL's purpose, in part, was to remove the fear of litigation over either.
It wanted to remove the fear, but in the end it didn't offer any actual legal protections that people did not already have, nor extend any new freedoms. Basically, offered nothing but an admission that they couldn't do anything more than what they already couldn't do.
Hell, Valar Project remained terrified and took several steps to protect itself by avoiding the d20 System sticker and obfuscating a fair amount of its language within the Book of Erotic Fantasy, and WotC still took them to court.
>It was a dream of Peter Adkison's (and many of the Walla Walla D&D players) to some day work for TSR and contribute to the game we loved. When D&D was run into the ground by business interests and TSR got itself stuck - unable to pay bills to get products printed that would have earned the money to pay those bills - many of us were frustrated and outraged. Peter wanted to rescue D&D and ensure it could never be imprisoned again.
>When Magic: The Gathering became such a hit and made Wizards of the Coast successful enough to do so, of course he bought TSR and rescued D&D - any D&D fan in a position to do so would have done so.
>That was half the deal - to rescue D&D.
>The other half required figuring out a way to keep it rescued, and that took more thought and work. The OGL was the direct result of that search. It was sold to Wizards of the Coast's business side of the house using the arguments you have repeated here, but those were never the core reason why it happened. That it made sound business sense made it easier to do what Peter and others at Wizards were already bound and determined to do if they could figure out any way to do it.
Yes. All these posts speculating and arguing their favorite annoyances were it's downfall.
When it got stomped by releasing around the 1billion Mario movie.
Biggest issue was it's release timing.
how the frick do you make a dnd movie. i have never even read a single "lore" about this. its a fricking sandbox rpg module.
They named dropped places (Neverwinter and Baldur's Gate, Underdark) and the spells are reflavored or name dropped (Time stop, levatate, the villain and the cuckcerer did a bigby hand fight). The lead villain (Red wizard of Thay), Monsters (Owlbear, Displacer beast, Gelatous cube), even races (Dragonborn, Aaracokra, tiefling)
I actually was talking to friends in the theater because I like D&D and know lore about it. So they asked while it came up oh and the theater was basically empty so it wasn't like I was being disruptive.
Basically you didn't realize it was D&D cause you don't know D&D lore which you get by reading the books which you do because you play games. You do play games.....do you anon?
Was he a DMPC?
either that or a player who couldn't attend the game much, which the gm filled in on some important story details to help the players gets on tracks.
Actually, I think
Had it closest. I think he was a player who joined in late, made a character that refused to vibe with the rest of the party the rest of the party had this chaotic-to-neutral “we’re not the heroes of legend, but we’re trying our best” so the players could laugh a little at their PCs, and the pally player was just insistent on playing the min-maxed stoic hero of legend and decided to duck out of the group than tweak his character to fit better with the rest of the party.
I thought it was most likely a joke about DMPCs as the paladin had all the knowledge needed, pretty much solo'ed an entire group of monsters while the group watched and had the personality of a cardboard standee that just need to look cool. Also the fact that despite being clearly the most powerful member of the group he just dipped right after his part was done.
I can only hope this leads to further failures and losses for their plans to turn D&D into an MCU multimedia brand. Their "Lifestyle Brand" talk was already enough of a problem, but they deserve to be shot in the dick for thinking they can turn this half-baked IP that they've failed to meaningfully develop into a giant cash cow franchise for normalgays.
D&D is still a poisonous brand to normies. Maybe to young normies it's more acceptable but there's no way any normie over 30 went to see this movie. If they wanted to capitalize on the D&D IP they should have just adapted one of the books, not put the D&D name on it and just downplay the fact that it isn't a new IP. Like just make a movie called Icewind Dale or Dragonlance
>D&D is still a poisonous brand to normies.
I know plenty of old boomers who play D&D, but they're Greyhawk/Dragonlance guys, they don't like the new stuff the movie was clearly evoking.
You do realize that boomers that play or played D&D usually aren't the kind of person you'd call a normie, right?
It's Forgotten Realms, one of the most popular settings, far more popular then Greyhawk or Dragonlance, mostly because 99% of the Video Games are also set in Forgotten Realms.
Forgotten Realms isn't so much *popular* as it is the one fricking setting that they insist on cramming down everyone's throats whenever they take the chance to make D&D media that isn't a TTRPG book... and for some fricking reason, they've still never published a full setting book for Faerun and FR despite 5e being nearly 10 years old and FR supposedly being the default, core setting of the whole game.
I honestly would prefer they pick Dragonlance over FR and I legitimately hate Dragonlance.
D&D is too self referential and referential to derivative fantasy literature,that it's hard to parse for normies. That's why it always fails on the screen.
Various people have said it, but D&D these days is dedicating to emulating itself, and trying very hard to uphold these very specific sacred cow ideas as part of an overall brand that just does nothing for the average normalgay. They don't care what an Owlbear is. They don't know who Mordenkainen or Elminster are and don't fricking care either. They've never read an RA Salvatore novel. They don't care about Waterdeep or Baldur's Gate or Beholders or Displacer Beasts or Lolth or any of the things that WotC so badly wants to be identifiable as iconic, world-famous elements of the D&D brand™
Beholders are badass. It shouldn't be hard to do that on the big screen.
The problem is that the focus is on jargon-filled generic fantasy shlock. In this respect, the OSR style would best transfer to the big screen. That's a story of man versus environment, which works much better for normies. It's a bunch of mercenaries delving into a dangerous location for gold and glory, dealing with tricks, traps, monsters, and the pressure cooker group dynamic.
I think it means that people who actually play DnD just continued playing whatever DnD adventures they already had instead of going to see some movie that was wholly unrelated outside of sharing a brand name.
It should have been Fell's Five and you know it.
But 4e is for WoW players and/or chuds, remember?
It wouldn't have mattered unless they shouted attack names out loud during combat
if everyone who played DnD in the last 10 years at least once would have payed to watch the movie, the movie would still have bombed.
What the frick. It was so much god damn fun.
Prior to release they stated they thought emasculating the lead male characters would be fresh and funny in 2023. Kinda shot themselves in whatever foot was supporting the hype
Doesn't account for VOD audience. Numbers probably better than expected.
Eh, it made ~$50m. It wasn't a smash hit but it was a lot of fun, and loved by an audience who would probably be more likely to turn out for a sequel now that they know it isn't trash.
That and the VOD audience isn't accounted for in that, and it had my little slice of the rpg community buzzing. I think we'll see a sequel sooner than later.
>Eh, it made ~$50m
When you consider their marketing expenses it probably didn't break even. I liked the movie but I seriously doubt it made a cent of profit.
Then again, Hasbro knows the value of movies that are advertisements for toys. It doesn't need to break even on its own.
You think folks are gonna sleep on this potential? Sure it didn't turn as much profit as it could have, but with critical roll and other popular rp groups picking up steam, folks are gonna reinvest in this asap. Try to capture that lightning in a bottle so to speak, before the clouds are gone and all you catch is piss.
Hasbro sold the film studio that produced it. Safe to say they aren't going to stay in the movie business unless it's licensing their IP for movies.
Oh shit this came out already?
I just saw the trailers, thought "alright" and forgot about it
Did it not have one fricking murderhobo?
Every body loves murderhobo stories
I liked it.
Like actual top movies of all time liked?
Or it was okay liked?
I greatly surpassed my expectations. It wasn't GOAT. It felt like a above average TV show, which is a good thing.
>above average TV show
Glad I slept on it, hollywood has been sabotaging its self with mediocrity grown complacent from over seas markets. I think DND fans actually deserve a GREAT film and not market tested slop
>market tested slop
But....that's what DnD us
DnD fans deserve to get their money taken away in exchange of a thorough whipping.
GAMES WORKSHOP CHADS ALWAYS WINNING
It had nothing to do with Dungeons & Dragons except the cynical product placement i.e. Owlbear and...that's it.
A fricking MONKEY would have told them that the proper way to represent D&D would be to showcase what the game is ACTUALLY like - we're long overdue for a "Neverending Story"-style film at this point, too.
>4-5 human characters meet up for a game
>cut to mysterious fantasy world where 4 random characters meet through action/humorous circumstance
>in irl, a mysterious person interrupts and offers to show them the REAL D&D
>former DM shows up in the fantasy world as a new character
>proceed by having a side-by-side narrative of fantasy characters with their real-world players
>all the iconic D&D stuff shows up, like treasure chests, mimics, Beholder
>throw in some goofy shenanigans like gravity fricking one character over and the others have to go get him, or one character steals an item from an NPC and the whole town goes apeshit, etc
>climax against actual fricking dragons seriously it's in the name
>win via trickery and environment rather than sheer power
>"congrats you all level up, till next time"
>mysterious DM vanishes
It's so fricking obvious, it's insane that they just made a generic fantasy movie. All I can say is that everyone who worked on it must have never actually played the game. Many such cases.
>>4-5 human characters meet up for a game
Ugh. No. That would have turned me off more than anything else you could have come up with.
Nah, you're wrong and dumb. It's the only way to do a D&D movie. Your ideas are shit.
The only way to do a DnD movie is as low cost and effort as possible while embezzling as much of the budget as possible into my private cocaine, hookers, and racist European knickknacks account.
Nah, that's the most homosexual "us gamers, huh?" approach. Treating the fiction as a game in the movie is what midwits who think they have totally original and deep ideas would want. have a nice day.
God no, that's shit.
That would have legit bombed worse. Here’s how you fix the movie in no particular order:
>don’t piss off your already tiny core fan base over stupid OGL shit
>actually market the damn movie
>don’t wedge mystery meat and mixing propaganda into everything, do it where it makes sense for the local and characters
>tell your moronic israelite producers to stfu about how their personal social views are jammed into the movie until after the movie turns a profit.
Change nothing else basedjaks and normie alike will coom everywhere over the newest capeshit movie in a D&D skinsuit. It might not blow past a billion but it will probably make money. That’s it.
Oh goodie what nonsense did they cram in? Same as the usual?
here's what honor among thieves has to offer:
>man dumb, woyamng stronk...
>unless he's a minority
>stereotypical safe nerdy black side kick
>run away from all fights until the end and even then they don't fight directly unless they get deus ex machina'd out of it
>cringe marvel/capeshit tier quips desperately trying to be somehow even less funny then age of ultron/thor love and thunder
>generic fantasy only throwing a bone to a few actual DnD races that get zero attention
>capitalism...bad
>let's have a shapeshifter then do nothing cool or creative with it
>barely does any actual thieving stuff in the movie
>"it's about (found) family"
>lame ass dragon (at least it's not a wyvern this time, good job Hollywood you actually learned the difference for once.)
>cameo bait for youtubers to sperg over and make red circle videos
still somehow less cringe then Matthew mercer's tripe though.
The only good thing about it was that the Druid had red hair. They’re trying to erase white people with any hair color other than brown because they’re pure bloods. The israelites want us to believe only racial mixing is okay to keep us divided and conquered. I would gladly frick that red head Druid and have proper white children.
Your children would be mongrel irish bastards.
You need a proper white wife.
Holy shit please never make movies. Not even a short YouTube video.
The final chapters in the Yugioh Manga where they play D&D is better than that garbage movie. Sorry brah, the movie sucked, so do the gay writers that emasculated the male characters on purpose.
Vaguely reminds me of the first two Gamers movies.
Honestly the model would work better for a sitcom then a movie though.
A movie needs to be more focused to not have a bunch of wasted runtime, a tv show can waste a lot of time with cuts like that.
That's fair.
Your idea needs a ton of work, but it is truly fricking moronic that they produced a giant fricking D&D movie and never once referenced the game itself as a game. Seemingly because Hasbro wants D&D to be the MCU and not some niche nerdshit hobby played by losers at game stores. They want iconic, recognizable branded characters, not dice and rulebooks and rules lawyering.
That's fricking garbage and you know it
have a nice day, moron.
the movie made 200m off of a 150m budget. $50m is damn good for a movie like this.
>The theaters and distributors earn nothing from ticket sales, everything goes to the production company
lol
lmao
that's part of the $150m budget, you fricking moron.
That doesn't include marketing
it means that the movie is shit
The fact of the matter is, the OGL soured a bunch of consumers on D&D.
>"but it was just redditors and twitter users and losers and-"
It was WotC shitting the bed and they got a bunch of bad PR about the matter where people who don't even play or pay attention to D&D were suddenly hyper aware of that shitstorm. Just like how people who didn't play or care about MTG were suddenly hyper aware of WotC overprinting product because Bank of America made a statement that WotC was hurting its own brand.
When the normies are aware of shit is hitting the fan, that is when you know someone has fricked up royally.
/thread
The question of any action is always "Who benefits?", and creating a temporary fuss over something that was poorly understood and remained that way raises a lot of questions.
WotC's 5e licensing agreements were already fricked, but they really only extended as far as to what was published on their own platforms and used protected material provided by WotC. The agreements were fricked right from the start, but no one created a stink about them until they planned on changing their policy to impact a few small groups that had made hundreds of thousands of dollars on WotC's controlled platforms.
To be fair, it COULD potentially impact a select few more people in the future, and everyone dumb enough to publish on a WotC platform is probably dumb enough to imagine that they too will one day make hundreds of thousands of dollars, so it didn't take much effort to push everyone who had ever tried to sell a $5 pack of LGBT-themed magical items into a frenzy.
Anyone with a chip on their shoulder about WotC was more than happy to add fuel to the fire, and that included Paizo, who made a great show of releasing their own "OGL."
Sure, it was a huge misstep by WotC, but for the people here, it should have been a laughable shitshow of idiots fighting the corpo that had given them a platform in the first place, and not a time to declare war on WotC until they re-established the status quo by saying that the leaked proposals were not going to be implemented and releasing some rainbow colored digital dice to appease the idiots they had already been taking advantage of for years, but who were profiting immensely from the relationship anyway.
Bad marketing.
Yes. What I did is stay at home and not watch it.
it doesn't mean anything about people's love (or lack thereof) of D&D, it just means that the general public did not go and see the movie in meaningful enough numbers, which happens.
D&D will probably stay dominant for a while as it's the only real big name to crack out of the 'tism pools and make it into the general consciousness.
D&D will likely be nothing more than a lifestyle niche brand in the future. Paper ttrpgs are going to die out the same way radio shows did.
Radio shows evolved into podcasts.
Also, Paper RPGs will endure largely because they can't die. They take no real resources and have always existed primarily with little effective commercialization, because even the best selling rpg brand struggles to turn a profit via book sales alone. Most RPG companies die out relatively quickly, and the few that survive usually do so by liscensing out their brand into other mediums. RPGs, purely within themselves, are a baaaad business.
The very concept of trying to make a profit with RPGs is a weird one, but right now we exist in a extremely strange time where somehow people are managing to make more money playing video game than making them, so who knows what the future holds. I can at least say that ttrpgs will endure even if every company that makes them collapses.
Everything I heard about this movie was offputting and all the praise for it by tards on here sounded like a mix of astroturfers and people heavily into the 5E anti-aesthetic.
It actually did make me go see a movie for once though.
That movie was John Wick 4.
The audience they wanted to sell it to was pretty upset with the OGL thing, and the general audience wasn't super into the idea of it, and the people that would have dragged them along didn't go see it.
When I saw the Druid turn into an owlbear I decided to not watch it.
Unfortunate for the film itself, which I think was genuinely funny and captured the vibe of a D&D adventure arc (constant quips and commentary, everyone in over their heads, finding a broken magic item ripped off from a video game and exploiting it to the hilt). It felt like a film from 2010, in a good way.
It's kinda sad that all so many people here apparently got out of it is "Interracial marriage bad." I was sold on chris pine's wife's domestic wholesomeness.
It actually is exactly what I wanted out of a D&D film; an ensemble cast heist/action/comedy film in a fantasy setting. Guardians of the Galaxy in Not-Space.
Wrong board
>author's intent is obvious to anyone
...
>NO, SEE, ACKTCHYUALLY....
>author's intent is obvious to anyone
Yes. We have the author's own words on the matter.
>"I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history – true or feigned– with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.”
We literally have Tolkien saying "I didn't want to impose on the freedom of the reader," and here you are, trying to impose on the freedom of the reader by demanding we treat conjecture as fact in order to make Tolkien's work allegorical.
>I don't know the meaning of "allegory."
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/allegory
Here you go.
Remember, Tolkien dislikes allegory in ALL of its manifestations (his words, not mine), which includes "this fictional race is supposed to be seen as this real world race."
An allegory is a symbolic representation of a concept. The Northmen of Middle-Earth being analogous to northwestern Europeans is not an allegory.
Yes. Yes it is.
To put it another way, saying Elves are white people fleeing the neighborhood when other races move in is pretty obvious, blatant allegory, were that the case.
Saying Northmen are Northwestern Europeans fighting against hordes of other races including a shit ton of mongols would also be allegory, if you were to read it as such.
Hell, I don't even really get your fixation on "Northwestern" and not just "Europeans" in general. Are you a Northwestern European by chance?
Tolkien took inspiration from allegorical stories about godlike-but-fading native Irishmen reluctantly aiding the good-but-flawed Anglo-Irish in their fight against the English.
Cool, but Tolkien dislikes allegory in all of its manifestations.
In Legend of the Five Rings, the people of Rokugan are not literally Japanese, but they are analogous to the Japanese. They are not an allegory for Japanese people, just as Tolkien's Northmen resembling real-world Germanic people is not an allegory.
>Saying Northmen are Northwestern Europeans fighting against hordes of other races including a shit ton of mongols would also be allegory
Yes, but nobody is saying that this is Tolkien's intention. Another false attribution.
"Northwestern" because Tolkien's Northmen resemble (original) Anglo-Saxons, and not Iberians, or Russians, or Greeks or whatever, and Tolkien intended his stories to be a mythology for the English people. On the other hand, Gondor has similarities to Byzantium, but it would be erroneous say it is analogous to Byzantium, because the similarities aren't strong enough.
>but they are analogous to the Japanese
Except, they're not directly analogous. The different clans incorporate traits from a broader range of Asian cultures than just strictly Japan, notably China, Korea, and the Philippines. It's kind of hard to see the Crabs defending their giant wall and not consider that maybe that giant wall might be inspired by some real life wall, maybe one that might be considered "great".
>They are not an allegory for Japanese people,
In some cases, they are allegorical, and deliberately so. Hell, in some cases it's beyond being allegory because there's nothing hidden about it, with Samurai and Ronin literally named as such.
>Tolkien intended his stories to be a mythology for the English people
Do you know what mythology involves a lot of? Allegory.
Also, about the whole "Mythology for England" business...
https://luke-shelton.com/2022/02/12/why-calling-tolkiens-work-a-mythology-for-england-is-wrong-and-misleading/
Tolkien never actually said, in his own words, that he was creating a Mythology for England. And, considering his dislike for allegory, I think I find the reading of Tolkien's works as such somewhat laughable.
Analogy does not need to mean literally identical. The Unicorn are reminiscent of Mongols, the Mantis the Philippines, the Dragon have similarities to Tibetans, but this is still built on a Japanese base. It isn't an allegory.
>It isn't an allegory.
Let's define what allegory is before we get too far.
>A narrative in which a character, place, or event is used to deliver a broader message about real-world issues and occurrences.
>A symbolic representation which can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, usually a moral or political one.
For Rokugan, a lot of it is too blatant to be allegory. We have literal Samurai with Katana who write Haikus, etc. But, there is still room for allegory, including things like the "Hantei" Dynasty taking a role very similar to the real world Han Dynasty, including being split into seven states. Whether that's intentional or coincidental is up to anyone's guess, but the Hantei being a stand-in for the Han dynasty would be allegorical in nature.
Tolkien, however, said he doesn't like allegory and prefers people not to read that into his works. Maybe it's because it's really, really easy to do so, but considering that we're talking about authorial intent here, we have Tolkien flat out saying "Don't read too much allegory out of my works please."
Elves are elves, Numenorians are Numenorians, and hobbits are hobbits. It's not that the Elves are Eskimos, Numenorians are Egyptians, and Hobbits are Potatoes.
The Han Dynasty isn't an abstract concept. You could claim that the Hantei are an analogy of the Han, but analogy and allegory are different things.
>but analogy and allegory are different things.
They can apply to the same thing.
Japanese people cannot be represented through allegory unless you are not talking about actual Japanese people, but an abstract notion of "Japanese essence"... the platonic ideal of Japanese, or some-such. The people of Rokugan are an analogous to Japanese, just as Tolkien's Edain are Huwhite people, and the Edain descended of Hador are analogous to northern Europeans. None of this is in contradiction with Tolkien's insistence that his writings are intended as a self-contained work devoid of allegory.
Allegory doesn't have to be abstract.
Here's a quote from the book. Aragorn was not black he was explicitly white. What now you social constructionist moron? Is the word pale too ambiguous for you?
You're pretty late coming here. I actually brought that up myself pretty far back.
You really did say pale was too ambiguous. Holy shit how do you manage to dress yourself in the morning while being so braindead?
...you are aware that "pale" is not exclusive to white people, right? There's pale Asians, Indians, etc. right?
Aragorn was explicitly pale, but not explicitly "white". "White" isn't even really a concept that applies to Middle Earth.
Given the context it is clear he was white in the way you and I both mean it. Only an autist or brainlet would argue otherwise, oh wait
>Given the context it is clear he was white in the way you and I both mean it.
You're insisting that someone must agree with you, but entirely without any substantiated argument. It doesn't work like that. Nothing works like that.
>Only an autist or brainlet would argue otherwise, oh wait
Only an autist would argue "YOU MUST AGREE WITH ME" and then struggle to move beyond that demand.
Nice straw man. I don’t care if you agree with me. I’m laughing at how moronic you are and how much you’re reaching.
You had a chance to make an argument, but instead just made an ass out of yourself because you know you have no actual argument.
Last chance.
Your argument to me saying that Tolkien clearly described Aragorn as being pale within the context of him being white and writing for a white audience was pathetic. Obviously he did not mean they were pale asians. You are a clown.
No no no anon, you don't get it! Tolkien never explicitly said
"the Men of Middle Earth about whom I am writing are WHITE MEN, and exactly equivalent to real people in our own world! WHITE POWER!"
Meaning, despite all the seemingly obvious indications that the people of Middle Earth, specifically those featured in the novels, are what any honest person would understand as white people, you simply cannot make any accurate assessment as to their identity. It's all up to the reader's subjective interpretation.
>you simply cannot make any accurate assessment as to their identity
That's not what you're doing. You're making a conjectural assumption, not an accurate assessment.
Jumping in on this shitshow right here but holy shit analogous is by no means synonymous with allegorical. Allegorical works typically have easily drawn analogous figures but your analogous figures don't need to be allegorical for anything.
>heh, joke's on them, I was only pretending to be obtuse