Adventures based on movies
- Thread starter Kargush
- Start date
Clovenhoof
Mongoose
That's funny, we just watched the 13th Warrior a few days ago. Had I known that my players didn't know this flick before, I might have withheld the DVD and made it into a game, too.
I think it can work, but preferrably if the players don't know the movie. If they know it, it's kinda pointless since even if the players manage to refrain from metagaming, the story holds no real surprises for them.
I think it can work, but preferrably if the players don't know the movie. If they know it, it's kinda pointless since even if the players manage to refrain from metagaming, the story holds no real surprises for them.
Sutek
Mongoose
Not seen 13th Warrior? How aold (nay, young) are you people???
LOL (just kidding)
13th Warrior is based on the Norse Sagas and Beowulf, so books are a great source too, even if they aren't fantasy. Grabbing NPC motivations from CSI, Lost or other TV shows works too. Anywhere I can get ideas, I do it and form it into something I can use. Nothing's a straight port into my games, but the seed is rarely brand spanking new.
Who hasn't sent the party on a quest into the dark, dangerous regions of the world to destroy a magic ring...ahem...I mean, sword...or was it an amulet? Heck, once...it was a person that was the key to all evil that had to be destroyed!
LOL (just kidding)
13th Warrior is based on the Norse Sagas and Beowulf, so books are a great source too, even if they aren't fantasy. Grabbing NPC motivations from CSI, Lost or other TV shows works too. Anywhere I can get ideas, I do it and form it into something I can use. Nothing's a straight port into my games, but the seed is rarely brand spanking new.
Who hasn't sent the party on a quest into the dark, dangerous regions of the world to destroy a magic ring...ahem...I mean, sword...or was it an amulet? Heck, once...it was a person that was the key to all evil that had to be destroyed!
Yogah of Yag
Mongoose
Dagon (HPL story or movie with Macarena Gomez. Mmmmm. 8) )
It'll be on again on SCIFI this evening, IIRC. Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Magnificent Seven. (Not that I like westerns, per se, but they do sometimes provide good story-ideas.)
It'll be on again on SCIFI this evening, IIRC. Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Magnificent Seven. (Not that I like westerns, per se, but they do sometimes provide good story-ideas.)
slaughterj
Mongoose
I thought the TV movie for Dagon was pretty good actually, for a change.
Scorpion13
Mongoose
slaughterj said:
TV movie?
No, no, it wasnt a TV movie.
The thing you saw was edited for television. In the regular movie, it was pretty dark and unpleasant.
Like, see, you know how in movies and whatever they say theyre going to skin someone alive, but then they never do it?
Well......guess what.
In other news, I did start a previous thread about this very subject a while ago. I think the thread was called Cinematic Inspirations.
Anywho, I was thinking that The Wild Bunch, with almost no tweaking, would be good for a Conan games.
Yogah of Yag
Mongoose
I finally broke down and bought my 1st collection of Lovecraft tales. I was surprised that "Dagon" was shorter than I expected. The movie apparently also draws a little from "The Late Arthur Jermyn and his Family" and perhaps other stories. Great reading. There are passages from "LAJahF" that sound very REH-esque.
Sutek said:
Actually, it is based on the book Eaters of the Dead by Michael Crichton, who based his book on an actual manuscript which scholars(no, not the class) use as a source for info on life and culture in the viking age. Part of it(the manuscript) is quoted in history books here in Norway(the "lo, there do I see" etc).
FailedSpotCheck
Mongoose
Kargush said:
Wasn't it Ibn Fadlan's account of the Rus?
I think the 13 Warrior was more the product of Crichton's use of "controlled substances" in the 70's than any legitimate scholarship.
I thought Eaters of the Dead was a brilliant bit of Historical Fantasy that did a wonderful job of relating the Vilking Beowulf mythology to a very Howard-like premise involving a stone-age European indigenous race.
I liked how the grendle mythology tied the two cultures together in somewhat symbiotic relatinship - a ritualized tradiontional form of warfare that kept each side from totaly whiping each other out.
In the novel it is suggested the grendle are neaderthals. In the movie they seem more human. The movie was great fun, I thought. Filmed on Vancouver Island, Canada. The clear-cut old growth forrests looked like authentic viking era danish settlement to me. The tall stealth/ranger viking character was played by one of my friends high school teachers, if i remember right. Not a proffesional actor, he was picked up from a local extra casting call.
I liked how the grendle mythology tied the two cultures together in somewhat symbiotic relatinship - a ritualized tradiontional form of warfare that kept each side from totaly whiping each other out.
In the novel it is suggested the grendle are neaderthals. In the movie they seem more human. The movie was great fun, I thought. Filmed on Vancouver Island, Canada. The clear-cut old growth forrests looked like authentic viking era danish settlement to me. The tall stealth/ranger viking character was played by one of my friends high school teachers, if i remember right. Not a proffesional actor, he was picked up from a local extra casting call.
windman said:
I love that character, and the man does a good job of the role.
Anyways, the thing I do when making adventures based on movies is to make changes to the story that makes the outcome far from certain. in the case of 13th Warrior, I might make the wendol a race of man-ape, the settlement a lone village in the border kingdoms populated by gundermen, and so forth. maybe even make the man-apes the thralls of a sorcerer.
Evil_Trevor
Mongoose
I use every episode of Zena too
Clovenhoof
Mongoose
FailedSpotCheck said:
As a matter of fact, the first three chapters of "Eaters of the Dead" are pretty much verbatim of Ibn Fadlan's original account. The rest of the manuscript is lost. So everything from 4th chapter onwards is Crichton's imagination.
Still, the original Ibn Fadlan is an important scientific source even in modern Scandinavistics / Northern studies. However you also need to have an idea about the Arab mentality to put his account in the right context.
The movie Dagon (the one I saw at least) is basically an adaptation of Lovecrafts The Shadow Over Innsmouth. Shadow Over Innsmouth is a fantastic story, BTW, and would make a rockin' Conan tale (only in the Conan version you wouldn't be running away from the monsters, you'd be charging right at them, high as a kite on Crimson Mist :wink: ).Yogah of Yag said:
Yogah of Yag
Mongoose
I have not yet gotten to Shadow Over Innsmouth. Very excited. 
Just got done with "He" and "The Festival." Joshi's annotations are also insightful. Maybe if I can locate Clark Ashton Smith's Hyperborean saga I'll read up on that too. Too much to read, so little time.
Just got done with "He" and "The Festival." Joshi's annotations are also insightful. Maybe if I can locate Clark Ashton Smith's Hyperborean saga I'll read up on that too. Too much to read, so little time.
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