... how something that should be small and insignificant can keep coming back to bug you? Well, maybe those of you who are less of a pedant and control freak get it less, but then I think maybe my point is that some things that are small and insignificant to everyone else clearly aren't to me.

There follows a somewhat unfocussed rant in the grand tradition of expounding on irrelevant opinion when one has no actual content for the 'blog.

Let's start with a minor revelation. I am what you might call a man with no taste, at least when it comes to films, music and various other media. And probably clothes, and hairstyles, but that's another discussion. Of course, I won't admit this - I may even be in denial - but the end result is that I can grow to like almost any music, and will enjoy almost any film.

I also have some twisted subconscious addiction to playing Devil's advocate and just stick up for whatever is being criticized, which doesn't help me remain credible during debates in which I didn't plan a prior position.

It's this blanket acceptance of anything that even looks like it might have plot that led me to sit in front of the Dungeons and Dragons movie, which was on the television last night. If you have got this far down the post and feel like giving up, Annie has some comments on Point Break, which was on the same channel two films later.

I'm not a huge fan of D&D. It is at once the greatest boon and the direst bane to roleplaying gamers (who I will henceforth refer to as roleplayers, without sexual connotation intended). Without it, the 'normal' people might have no idea what it is we do, which might make it that much harder to introduce people to the hobby. But then since the idea everyone has is that roleplayers are a bunch of socially inept misfits with very strong glasses who sit in dark rooms and ... Hell, I'm not even sure what they're meant to do. Oh, yes, don't they worship demons? Anyway, it's a perception that does us few favours.*
Other games are available, but those of you who haven't already had the 'why are RPGs a good use of my time' speech can get it later.

The film wastes performances (or more to the point, somehow fails to elicit them) from some particularly noteworthy actors, wastes an opportunity for a thought-provoking and powerful plot, has cardboard characters with comic relief as a substitute for real emotion, and so on. [What's with the dwarf? The dwarf is a non-character with no depth and few lines, and appears to be there only because Post-Tolkien Fantasy Cliché Number Seventy-Two says that all adventuring groups must include exactly one dwarf and one elf.]
I can get over all that, but for some reason one line just stands out as completely inexcusable, and is still bugging me.

"I'm an aristocrat! A mage!"
"A low-level mage. Completely expendable."



People don't say that. Sure, any author worth his salt can explain how - in that world - it is completely normal for mages to belong to 'levels', but if you want it to be part of the world you're supposed to put that explanation somewhere that the audience can see it (preferably without being distracted from it). That's difficult on film, granted, which is why you'd be better simply changing the line. What you have there is a nod to the game, deliberately having the characters talk about game mechanics.

There's a rule. It's the most fundamental one in roleplaying (I'm still talking about roleplaying games, although it might apply to bedroom performance artists too). The deal is that the divide between in-character and out-of-character is absolute, inviolable. The real world is populated by players, and it's where the dice, levels, statistics and so on live, as well as whatever off-topic chat you can find. The world in the game contains characters, who can perceive and comprehend nothing beyond that.
To let the characters talk about game mechanics ruins the mood. This is an elementary mistake; now more the realm of computer roleplaying games than pen & paper ones. Also undesirable is letting characters have information that you as a player has access to, but they have no reason to know; that's slightly harder to avoid. Even worse is letting your character's life impinge on your real one, which could get you committed...

I could rant about this all day. Partly, it bugs me because the screenwriter went out of his way to poke suspension of disbelief in they eye: a few excess mentions of 'class', 'experience' or other game terms in places where characters might say them would have been fine (since the aristocracy is made up of magic users, there's a class distinction both in social class and game mechanical profession, but they failed to use that). Probably. But mainly I think it annoys me that they wasted such a big opportunity to get the name out to the mainstream in a good light. After all, the stock D&D setting may be a huge Tolkien rip-off, but it's got lots of good elements for interesting fantasy stories and it deserved more than a laughable film adaptation that will pretty much guarantee nobody touches the license with a barge-pole in future.
It's also somehow offensive from the 'giving roleplayers a bad name' point of view, but somehow the argument in that direction that made sense in my head doesn't on the computer, so I'll leave you with the above.


I'll finish with a caveat: Due to various concerns of game mechanics and player preconception, D&D is one of the worst RPGs I know of. Certainly the rules-obsessed gamer stereotype fits some people, but other kinds of game - and other kinds of player - are available.


* Although it probably wouldn't get much better if another game had broken through. M.A.R. Barker's Tékumel, for example, actually seems to pre-date D&D, and is a beautifully detailed fantasy world inspired by various Polynesian cultures, with a civilisation underpinned by religions and traditions entirely different to prevailing Western belief. The Christian fundamentalists would have a field day with various aspects of the inhabitants' views on sex, religion and politics though...