Randomly rating fantasy-ish movies for tabletop nerds;
* The Fellowship of the Ring is pretty much my favorite for providing a more urgent, compelling pacing and more appealing characterization than the book - throw in awesome visuals.
* there's a batch of wuxia and jidaigeki which I'd consider really good, and even if the trappings aren't quasi-Tolkien-quasi-Europe D&D, they're definitely D&D thematically (f'rex Sanjuro, Throne of Blood, Iron Monkey, House of Flying Daggers).
Randomly rating fantasy-ish movies for tabletop nerds;
* The Book of the Dead. This isn't technically a fantasy film but it has so many cool elements.
* Conan the Barbarian, The Thirteenth Warrior, Alexander Nevsky, Henry V, what I've seen of the Kung Fu Panda series; these all have really appealing D&Dish elements; raids, dungeon crawls, underground prisons, brutish guards, huge battles, evil armies. And, by and large they're fairly good quality as movies go.
Randomly rating fantasy-ish movies for tabletop nerds;
* the remaining two Peter Jackson LotR films; good, but they don't blow me away like the first one.
* good movies with fantasy elements but which have a fairly different genre to them - like Aliens, The African Queen, Flushed Away, The Secret of NIMH, Hellboy, the Indiana Jones films.
* Excalibur, Van Helsing, Underworld, Hellboy II. These aren't great movies or completely D&Dish, but they have fun bits - actively brilliant in places.
Randomly rating fantasy-ish movies for tabletop nerds;
* The Peter Jackson Hobbit films. There's some good stuff there, but largely they're just kinda eh. They're definitely Things You Watch Because They're The Most Palatable Thing On TV in the Motel.
* Krull, Beastmaster, Wizards, Master of the Flying Guillotine, Conan the Destroyer, Heavy Metal. These aren't good movies at all, but there's a certain joy to how bad they are that keeps you coming back.
Randomly rating fantasy-ish movies for tabletop nerds;
* Fire and Ice, any Beastmaster sequel. We're scraping the bottom here. This is "starved for escapism" or "morbidly curious" territory.
argh, I somehow forgot to rate Dragonheart (middle-low on the scale), Dark Crystal or the Rankin-Bass Hobbit (fairly high up there) and Labyrinth (about exact middle). And I'm sure I'm forgetting more examples!
Randomly rating fantasy-ish movies for tabletop nerds;
@Leucrotta So one that might not occur to you at first: Big Trouble In Little China.
A group of us once watched it and was making up stories about how it was an RPG session. The GM had an entire crazy wu-xing backstory, this session was his climatic finale...and he lets his idiot friend in at the last minute with a hastily-built character. Jack Burton. No skills whatsoever, but Luck stat fully maxed out.
Jack proceeds to wrecks all plans.
Randomly rating fantasy-ish movies for tabletop nerds;
@emanate definitely “good but not immediately D&D.” Reminds me of my theory about Aliens and Wrath of Khan as someone’s game session!
Randomly rating fantasy-ish movies for tabletop nerds;
@Leucrotta @emanate so according to @Oneironott yesterday, Leviathan Wakes (and by extension, The Expanse) was adapted from a custom-setting scifi tabletop rpg. I can definitely see it!
Amos is the STR character who realizes it's not that kind of campaign :D
Randomly rating fantasy-ish movies for tabletop nerds;
@starkatt @Leucrotta @emanate @Oneironott
Yeah, Vloe and I have had fun watching it and going "no don't split the party!" and "well clearly this player got a new character to play" and all the tropes. :-)
Randomly rating fantasy-ish movies for tabletop nerds;
@emanate @starkatt @Leucrotta @Oneironott All of the xXx and Fast and Furious movies are physie-adept shadowrun campaigns that started as one-shots, but the players and the GM had so much fun getting up to ridiculous shit that they just kept going and getting more OTT.