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Comment by gamblor956 | Hacker News Reader

I watched the 2000 D&D film before watching the 2023 film.

TBH, the 2023 film isn't that much better than the 2000 film. The special FX are better but the dialogue and acting is just as campy in the second film as it was in the first. It's just that our tastes have changed. The 2000 film reflects the way D&D was played 2 decades ago, i.e., more as high fantasy; the 2023 film reflects that D&D today is played more as action comedy.

EDIT: see, for example, Stranger Things, in which D&D is played a straight high fantasy. The 2000 has comedic relief (D&D isn't Warhammer), but it's first and foremost a high fantasy. The new film is an action comedy with a few serious moments, like Vox Machina or any of the dozens of D&D gaming podcasts.

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Anime D&D games from the 80s and 90s were "Record of Lodross War" (serious), and "The Slayers" (action-comedy).

My 00s group was more of action-comedy. "The Gamers: Dorkness Rising" (2008 low-budget movie), was more in the spirit of how we did things.

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There's always a play between drama vs comedy. It depends on the group, personalities, and even emotions on the day-to-day. Generally speaking, do what the group wants and try to keep a feel of the overall atmosphere everyone's vibing with.

Slayers isn't D&D. It's maybe inspired by it in some ways, but the world setting is its own. The mechanics are also not D&D.

Which I think actually goes to show why WOTC trying to be grabby with the property was a horrible idea. The general concept of it is easy to imitate in a way that would owe nothing to WOTC. You can even replicate the feel substantially while keeping none of the setting.

D&D is a set of rules and high fantasy / pulp fiction that meshes together.

The "settings" are called Greyhawk, or Balckmoor, or Forgotten Realms (In the case of this movie: its in the Forgotten Realms). Or Pathfinder, if we're going 3rd party. But the idea was that anyone could craft their own world using the D&D rules as a baseline. (Or alternatively, use a pre-made world if you're not feeling too creative).

> The mechanics are also not D&D.

I don't think the D&D Movie from year 2000 followed the mechanics either.

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My understanding is that in the 80s, a bunch of anime-writers managed to play a translated version of D&D, and that served as the basis of anime high fantasy anime for a good bit. Record of Lodoss War is the most obvious, but Slayers looks to be part of that trend.

Both Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest are allegedly part of the D&D trend as well... at least when they started. Its a bit more obvious in Dragon Quest (today, Final Fantasy has changed dramatically from its roots).

I'd call that more "RPG inspired", than D&D in any way.

What part of D&D is reflected in the show? It's not the setting. It's not the monsters (except for stuff present everywhere like dragons). It's not the spells (except for stuff present everywhere like fireballs). It's not the classes. It's not the power scaling.

> It's not the monsters (except for stuff present everywhere like dragons).

And Trolls that regenerate except when hit by fire or acid. And giant Golems made out of various magic metals.

And evil priests/clerics who follow under Gods of chaos (Rezo the Red Priest)

> It's not the spells (except for stuff present everywhere like fireballs). It's not the classes.

The Priestess/Cleric Sylphiel does healing spells. Lina, the sorcerer cannot heal as per the rules of DnD. Gourry is strictly a fighter with a magic weapon.

Lina not only has access to the DnD spell fireball, but also regularly casts Levetate (which is locked to the sorcerer class)

Clerics like Sylphiel have healing, scrying, flame "arrow" (likely a custom spell based off of Flame Strike + Japanese Miko-archer archetype?).

> It's not the power scaling.

Magical artifacts like the Philosophers stone that have literal connections with the gods is exactly the kind of adventure that DnD was designed to be about.

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The year is 1990. There are very few tabletops that have been translated to Japanese. And we here have a novel about trolls, dragons, magic weapons, sorcerors vs clerics and different spell lists for them that line up with DnD spell lists. The party of Lina, Goury, and Amelia/Sylphiel line up with the original DnD 1st edition (1974) Wizard, Fighter, Cleric (Rogue wasn't invented yet). This also happens to be the edition that was translated into Japanese in 1985.

Most of these concepts (trolls, western dragons, fireball spells, philosopher stone) are Western lore and have no history in Japanese folklore.

The similarities are uncanny. It's clearly not just inspired by 'some tabletop system's , but by DnD itself. Yeah, there's custom spells like Dragon Slave or whatever. But custom spells and custom magic items were part of DnD from the start.

D&D didn't even have a (main product line) sorcerer class until 3rd edition. What Lina's doing throughout the series has no connection to Vancian magic which was overwhelmingly the D&D magical mode at the time. (Her powers actually best align with Druid or some of the other shamanic classes which were... a long ways off, in D&D at least. She can in fact heal.)

Your underestimation of Japanese knowledge of English/European fantasy is verging on offensive.

Sure, D&D inspired Slayers, but so did other stuff. It's no obvious system-specific replay like Lodoss War.

Record of Lodoss war was a computer magazines write up of how to play DND that proved to be very popular.

https://archive.org/details/record-of-lodoss-war-comptiq-mag...

I dont think slayers engaged with DND at the same level.

> I dont think slayers engaged with DND at the same level.

While I agree on this point, The Slayers seems to be comparable to say... the 2000 Dungeons and Dragons movie (or this 2023 version).

No one is seriously going to suggest that "Honor Among Thieves" is how you actually play DnD in practice. The "gamey" bits, like choosing spells at the beginning of the day, will give way to more freeform storytelling.

Thats all fine and easily agreeable.

I just like spreading the link to the original replays.

You mean early D&D where there's an invisible moon with cat samurais, gnomes have a flying city, and there's a giant robot somewhere. (I.E. everything in the Mystara setting)

There was always comdey action in D&D. Just like there was always horror genere in d&d and survival.

Comedy was definitely a regular component of D&D and other RPGs way before 2000. I don’t think the 2000 film was particularly targeted towards people who actually played RPGs.

> D&D today is played more as action comedy.

Is it? I may be isolated but the small group I game with (newer players) definitely play it straight, gritty serious vibe.

Really depends what the group wants out of it. My group has always been joking and riffing, both in game and out. Most groups of friends I've been a part of really like making each other laugh regularly, and that will carry naturally into gameplay and role playing.

That's my preference as well, and I think it represents a fairly large contingent of players.

But the podcasters and streamers lean heavily to action comedy, and I think that's what's in the popular culture as far as the game goes.

Given that, I can't blame the movie for not playing it straight.

D&D is a really bad game for playing straight, gritty, serious. Older editions like 2e are good at it, but 3.5,4,5e are all really bad. Its much better to play like Runequest, Mythras, Warhammer, Mork Mork or any number of games that actually support that play.

> D&D is a really bad game for playing straight, gritty, serious.

Compared to the best non-D&D TTRPGs for that mode, sure.

> Older editions like 2e are good at it, but 3.5,4,5e are all really bad.

If I was going to run straight, gritty, serious out of the core books with no house rules but only rules options in the core, 5e would by far be my choice, whereas 2e would probably be the last choice (though, if I broadened it to all official first-party sourcebooks, 2e might move up to second place, with some of the historical sourcebooks and, IIRC, some options in the late 2e era DM’s Option and Player’s Option rulebooks.)

(In 5e, the combination of the longer-time options for short/long rest plus not underusing exhaustion is a big push, mechanically, toward gritty play.)

I mean, I’d prefer to just use GURPS for that, but its easier to find players (even for that style) for D&D.

> The 2000 film reflects the way D&D was played 2 decades ago, i.e., more as high fantasy; the 2023 film reflects that D&D today is played more as action comedy.

Having played D&D for over 40 years, I wouldn’t agree that that’s how dominant playstyles have changed between 2000 and now. It might have been something WotC wanted to try to shift the brand image toward at the time of the 2000 film (its not a coincidence that the film and the first edition of the rules done at WotC after acquiring TSR were released in the same year), though.

> see, for example, Stranger Things, in which D&D is played a straight high fantasy.

As someone who played in the 80s & early 90s, my experience was that it was much more of a low fantasy game than the contemporary way it is played. If the Stranger Things crew were playing a high fantasy game, that may not be as realistic to the time period.

I'm pretty sure the extra humour in the 2023 one is just them trying to copy the Marvel formula.

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