Prisoners Of The Lost Universe (1983)

Three years after creating the most Dungeons & Dragons film of all time (Hawk The Slayer) Terry Marcel and Harry Robertson reunited to try and recapture that 'lightning in a bottle' magic with Prisoners Of The Lost Universe.

The chances are your impression of their success can be gauged against how well you feel George Lucas recaptured the magic of the original Star Wars trilogy in the Ewok movies.

Even bringing back Peter O'Farrell and Ray Charleson in essentially the same roles as they had in Hawk, a roguish dwarf and a gifted elfin creature, doesn't really help.

TV presenter Carrie Madison (Kay Lenz, best known as Thursday from the classic western The Great Scout & Cathouse Thursday) and handyman Dan (Richard Hatch aka Captain Apollo from the original Battlestar Galactica) find themselves shunted from our world to the primitive parallel world of Vonya. There the warlord, Kleel (a slumming-it John Saxon) is using his stash of Earth weaponry to maintain a brutal grip on the nomadic locals.

Kleel takes a shine to Carrie (because of her blonde hair and feisty nature) and it's up to Dan and the adventuring party he soon gathers (an elf, a dwarf, and a giant... sound familiar?) to rescue her.

As with Hawk, there's a strong whiff of Dungeons & Dragons in Prisoners Of The Lost Universe, with its abundance of random encounters.

But the cheesy monsters our heroes cross swords with are more reminiscent of the Italian low-budget sword-and-sandals fare such as the Hercules movies, Conquest etc that were being made around the same time.

Unfortunately for gamers - and neutral observers - all the humanoid monsters met are simply interchangeable, disposable goons in different costumes with no discernible differences in their abilities beyond their different outfits (be they midgets with glowing eyes, subterranean cloaked critters, or the Jason Voorhees-like waterbeast).

If Hawk The Slayer was Marcel and Robertson's Robert E Howard, then Prisoners Of The Lost Universe is their Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Despite the '80s opening on Earth and the presence of firearms, the sci-fi vibe that's suggested by the film's advertising (see poster/DVD cover above) is largely trampled by the fantasy elements, giving the film a micro-budget sword-and-planet John Carter of Mars flavour more than anything else.

Although Dan The Handyman is no John Carter!

On top of clunky dialogue and bargain basement effects, there's also a quite heavy-handed attempt to force humour into the mix by injecting some odd, comedy sound effects, which are totally cringe-worthy.

Trying too hard to lean into "camp charm", when such elements should be allowed to blossom naturally, it doesn't take long to realise why Prisoners Of The Lost Universe never gained the cult following that their earlier work did.

Mordenkainen Headlines New Dungeons & Dragons Comic

Main cover art by Esad Ribić

Gary Gygax's wizard Mordenkainen stars in a new ongoing Dungeons & Dragons comic coming from Dark Horse in November.

Powerless in the face of a draconic apocalypse, the story follows:

"... Mad Mage Mordenkainen as he assembles Faerûn’s most legendary heroes, including Volo, Tasha, and more fan-favourite adventurers, for a high-fantasy epic that spans the Forgotten Realms!"

Each issue will also include roleplaying-themed backmatter penned by RPG "personalities" or D&D gaming material.

Issue one will feature an essay by Erika Ishii, voice actor and actual play participant in the YouTube show Dimension 20.

The Dungeons & Dragons series will be written by Eisner-nominated creators Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly (Star Trek: The Last Starship, Captain America, NYX), penciled by Ibraim Roberson (Star Wars, Weapon X, Thor Annual 2023), inked by Arabson Oliveira, coloured by Dan Brown, and lettered by Haley Rose-Lyon.

Issue one variant cover gallery:

Dungeons & Dragons 3 - The Book Of Vile Darkness (2012)

I hate to admit it - because I'm as shocked as the next man - but Dungeons & Dragons 3: The Book Of Vile Darkness is actually pretty bloody good.

Sure, it's not going to win any awards, but I was expecting something as craptacular as Camp Blood, when in fact it's a fairly decent swords and sorcery B-movie.

For those who worry that these movies might have harmed the public perception of the Dungeons & Dragons game or Wizards Of The Coast's IP, this movie does a convincing job of portraying the exploits of a party of "murderhobos" in a typical D&D campaign.

The plot sees neophyte Knight of Pelor, Grayson (Jack Derges) infiltrating a group of evil adventurers in the hope that they will lead him to his kidnapped father.

The group, led by Shadar-kai witch Akordia (Eleanor Gecks), is looking for the fragments of an evil ancient artifact, The Book Of Vile Darkness, on behalf of the villainous Shatrax, who seeks to return the world to state of chaos and darkness from his base within the Shadowfell.

Yes, the film is packed to bursting with Dungeons & Dragons name-dropping, most well used to create the impression of a fully-rounded world, but some - such as Grayson's visit to The Adventurer's Vault shop to stock up on magical items - are quite groan-worthy as they highlight weaker aspects of more recent iterations of Dungeons & Dragons.

Bezz (Barry Aird) - the rot-mage

But even so, thanks to some surprisingly impressive special effects, we're treated to variety of visually stunning uses of magic spells - both by Akordia and the party's wonderfully anarchic (chaotic evil?) rot-mage Bezz (Barry Aird), enchanted items (Grayson may purchase his "bag of holding" from a shop, but it's still pretty cool to see it in action) and a fantastic array of monsters: the armoured energy man is nice and the dragon is good, but the stand-out creature is the undead child that feasts on negativity.

This twisted little horror show could have walked straight out the pages of a Mörk Borg or Lamentations Of The Flame Princess adventure module.

Then, for the final act, we - and the party - are transported to the alternate dimension of the Shadowfell and even on the limited budget of a direct-to-DVD fantasy flick, this is incredibly striking.

This is where we also finally get to meet Shatrax, a superbly realised villain with a stapled-shut mouth who "speaks" through a pair of female servants chained to him.

Like many of the monsters here, because I'm not up on D&D lore, I don't know if Shatrax is an original creation of the filmmakers or an antagonist lifted from a game book, but nonetheless he's head and shoulders above the pasty-faced villain of the first two D&D flicks (Damodar).

Dungeons & Dragons 3, of course, has plentiful weaknesses: there's some groanworthy dialogue, some sorry acting and I can't guarantee that the plot makes 100 per cent sense.

But this is, by far, the best of the original run of Dungeons & Dragons' movies (not that that's saying much) and I'd argue a very accurate live-action portrayal of what goes on in the heads of most people who regularly gather around a gaming table to indulge in a slice of 'theatre of the mind'.

Akordia (Eleanor Gecks) the Shadar-kai

It certainly captures the dungeonpunk aesthetic of Third Edition (which I think was the current iteration of the game when this was released), with its design palette of black leather, tattoos, piercings and spikes.

As well as the requisite violence there's a decent amount of sex here as well.

This caught me slightly off guard as the previous D&D movies have been very prudish in that regard, but I guess scriptwriter Brian Rudnick was truly channelling Monte Cook and Robert Schwalb's controversial Third Edition supplement when he sat down to compose this piece.

I have no idea what non-gamers will make of the Book Of Vile Darkness, as so much is heavily rooted in a hodgepodge of game lore (for instance, the Shadar-kai are from the Forgotten Realms, while Pelor is a Greyhawk god), but gamers looking for a visual representation of a Dungeons & Dragons game world won't be too disappointed if they approach this with an open mind (and probably a few cans of beer).

The story is actually quite secondary to the enjoyment of the film because of its stylised presentation of a game world.

If you simply refuse to accept that Grayson can convincingly infiltrate this party of high-level (presumably) evil sorcerers, fighters and assassins, then just enjoy the magic and monsters. That worked for me.

However, the most bizarre aspect of this movie is the blurb on the back of the DVD box:

This was clearly written by someone who hadn't seen the film, or even read the script, because except for the appearance of a dragon it bears no real resemblance to the plot of The Book Of Vile Darkness, which is only connected with the earlier movies by its name.

The protagonists are not a "band of heroes" - the whole point is they're band of villains - they're not "defying an empire" (there is no empire ever mentioned), they are not fighting "against evil", they are evil. Yes, there is a single dragon, but, again, no evil emperor.

This blurb is basically a string of generic fantasy words strung together by a work experience person to fill space on the back cover of the DVD. Ignore it and just watch the film.

Why I Embrace Random Character Creation in TTRPGs

The Adventures Of Superhero Girl by Faith Erin Hicks

"I didn't pick my superpowers, they picked me"

- Superhero Girl

Careers have been made in the comic book industry by being able to dream up new and imaginative superheroes and villains, yet "point-build" roleplaying games expect players to do this - sometimes at a moment's notice - right there at the games table.

In this article about my general preference for random character generation, I have leaned into superhero RPGs for the most part as this is where I have largely encountered this issue.

The out-the-door epic scale of some comic book heroes, compared to the street-level 'normality' of others, also helps make my point about emulating genres, even if in an exaggerated manner. 

Sometimes a player will arrive with a preconceived idea for a character, but more often than not - especially if, for example, the players are not totally au fait with the superheroic oeuvre - there's be a lot of umming, ahhing and staring off into space before he or she cranks out a thinly veiled clone of an established, popular character.

This mental constipation can also lead to further frustration and ultimately taint a player's opinion of your campaign before the first adventure has even begun.

And this, for me, is what makes Villains & Vigilantes' random superpower generation system so wonderfully appealing.

Anyone can pick up their dice and within 20 minutes to half-an-hour have the outline of a unique character, ready to play.

It's quick and easy, but there also remains an element of choice - so the experience doesn't go to the other extreme and the player feels totally at the mercy of the gods of fate.

Under normal circumstances, that is playing the "rules as written" in the 2nd Edition Villains & Vigilantes of my youth, each player character gets 1d6+2 rolls across his choice of the five tables of superpowers (powers; devices; magic/psionic items; skills; and magic/psionics) plus a random drawback from the "weaknesses" table.

The player must discard one of his rolled powers and if he wants to drop his "weakness" he has to scrub off a second of his random powers.

Now, of course, the observant among you would have realised this can mean a character ending up with only a single superpower.

Back when we were running our superheroes as a play-by-(snail)-mail game at the dawn of time, we addressed this very issue in our introductory material:

"Whenever someone rolls up a character and then moans: 'But I only got one power! What use is flight?' ... stop and think. If you woke up one morning and suddenly found you could fly would your first reaction be: 'ohhh, boring, wish I could fire blasts of super-heated energy and fry people's skin off..."

You just have to look at classic TV shows like Heroes, No Ordinary Family or Misfits or the original X-Men comics to know that people with a single superpower can thrive in a superhero milieu if enough effort is invested by the writer/player into developing the character's personality and backstory.

On the other hand, game-wise, this striving for realism is often more an ideal than a true reflection of the game as it relies on the other players not having rolled up Superman, Dr Manhattan, or Captain Marvel.

Comic book superteams usually represent a broad spectrum of power levels, but there has to be some degree of compatibility and synergy between team members in a game - no one wants to be the Wonder Twin stuck back at Titans Tower, while the team are off facing Deathstroke or Brother Blood.

This, again, ultimately comes down to discussions between the player and the Gamesmaster.

If he genuinely believes his character is unplayable (or unable to gel comfortably with characters generated by the other players), it's quick and easy to start the random generation process again - rather than endure the mathematically complex juggling act of point balancing, min-maxing and optimisation that goes into "points-buy" character builds.

I've played several different supers systems over the years, but the most memorable characters I - and my peers - have created at the table have all come via the random generation process (e.g. my Acrobatic Flea, Steve's Silverfist, Pete's Hurricane & Brutus, and characters from other V&V games, such as Dave's Nightgaunt and Mark's Copernicus).

I guess my issue is with the idea of "wholly designed characters", and this pretty much applies to any genre, probably because I was introduced to gaming via "old school" Dungeons & Dragons and Traveller.

Both of these systems employed - very different, but no less inspirational - random character generations methods.

I really admire the random "story path" method of character creation in Traveller (yes, your character used to be able to die in the process and, no, they no longer can), but also the fantastic 'group' method of random character creation in Beyond The Wall & Other Adventures from Flatland Games.

This clever folk fantasy system sees your party creating its home village as part of the character creation process, as well as weaving meaningful connections between all the player-characters which, in turn, influence their starting statistics and abilities.

Meanwhile, I have friends who draw Tarot cards to stimulate ideas for their character's personalities and I don't see random generation as being any different.

When it comes to superheroes, all the major teams (such as Justice League, Avengers, Watchmen, Teen Titans etc) feature characters with a broad range of power 'levels' and abilities.

It's only certain structured teams - such as the Fantastic Four - who could be seen to have roughly equivalent power levels.

But the FF are the exception, not the rule, as this "style" of team also tends to share a common origin story as well.

Generally I find that point-buy systems, without a degree of randomness, don't gel for my tastes and style of gaming.

The whole idea of artificial balance is ridiculous and fails to simulate either 'real life' (whatever that means to you, of course, in the context of sci-fi, fantasy, and superpowers) or the comics, novels, films, TV shows etc that your games seek to emulate.

Let's strip this down to ridiculous basics: Players A and B each design 100 point characters; Player A just uses the 100 points and takes no weaknesses, but if Player B takes "heavy smoker" for a bonus of 10 points or "terminal illness" for 50 points, why should Player B's character then have more powers and abilities than Player A? It makes no sense.

I'm not saying character's shouldn't have weaknesses (in fact, as with V&V, I like the risk of random character weaknesses), I'm saying I don't see how the 'reward' for taking them in a point-buy system reflects any degree of verisimilitude.

[Footnote: I strongly recommend you check the highly entertaining Adventures Of Superhero Girl, from 2013, by the talented Faith Erin Hicks, for a wry take on the idea of superheroes with real lives. I can't praise it highly enough - just read and enjoy!].

Sorceress (1982)

In a rare break from tradition, the poster (also the DVD cover) for the Roger Corman-produced 1982 sword-and-sorcery flick Sorceress is actually surprisingly accurate.

All the characters pictured there - including the griffon/manticore creature, the ape-man, the snake and the fancy sword - really do appear in the story, to some degree or another.

However, it's been a long time since I've watched a movie that felt so much like its plot was being made up as it went along.

Evil sorcerer, and possible '70s sex cult leader, Traigon (Robert Ballesteros) has pledged to sacrifice his first born to the gods, in exchange for "great power". Only his wife gives birth to twin girls and refuses to reveal which was born first.

The realm's magical martial arts master Krona (Martin LaSalle) spirits the girls away, and leaves them in the care of trusted peasants, who raise them as boys!

Mira and Mara grow up to become Leigh and Lynette Harris, identical twin Playboy Playmates, who clearly weren't hired for their acting chops, but rather their willingness to disrobe when asked.

Honestly, they're young men... with breasts!

The girls - who think they are boys - are discovered skinny-dipping (of course!) by horny satyr Pando (David Milbern), the travelling companion of pseudo-Viking Baldar (Bruno Rey), who looks like he's stepped off the cover of a Dungeons & Dragons novel and spouts random Norse words as oaths.

Although Pando can only communicate through bleating and mime, he fails to tell Baldar that the girls are actually girls, so that when Baldar comes to them in the wake of their adopted parents' murder by Traigon's wandering warriors, he fails to see through their 'cunning disguise'.

Krona pops up again to dispense some words of wisdom, setting them all on a quest to defeat Traigon, before walking into the parents' pyre.

Arriving in the city, the adventurers meet an old friend of Baldar's, the pun-cracking, permed barbarian rogue, Erlick (Bob Nelson), who tags along to make up the numbers.

Casual nudity aside, there's a definite Dungeons & Dragons vibe to this yarn, as the core "party" expands, then fractures off into smaller units for side-quests, but it's also full of random fantasy names and verbiage that doesn't feel like world-building so much as obfuscation of the fragile main plot thread.

The Harris twins as Mira and Mara

Everything culminates in a grand fight in a crumbling temple - although there's a parallel, sub-surface dungeoncrawl by Baldar and one of the girls - which features explosions, duelling gods in the sky, and some pretty cool-looking zombie-mummy-ghouls that rise out of the ground to serve Traigon.

As the "two who are one", Mira and Mara share a psychic bond that is actually employed in the story, although it's most memorable use is during a 'comedy' sex scene that leads Baldar to initially think one of the women is being tortured.

Possibly because he is cosplaying as Sturm Brightblade from the Dragonlance Chronicles, Baldar, it has to be said, is the best character in the 83-minute movie, not only looking the part but also maintaining a heroic persona throughout.

For all its Corman-inspired cheapness, dodgy special effects, and musical score lifted from Battle Beyond The Stars, Sorceress does have an overall engaging look about it. As well as Baldar's 'authentic' costume, Traigon's forces all wear these (probably totally impractical) neat-looking beaked helmets, for instance.

Ultimately Sorceress (there is no 'sorceress' in this movie) isn't actually that bad, it just lacks a coherent story for its quirky characters to fully engage with, leaving much of what happens to come across as just a bit random.

The Devil's Sword (1984)

Sometimes I stumble across a film that truly taxes my limited reviewing repertoire when it comes to expressing its unique brilliance: the Indonesian fantasy flick The Devil's Sword is just such a beast.

At its heart, it's the story of errant warrior Mandala (Barry Prima), tasked by his guru to retrieve the powerful Devil's Sword (a sparkling, snake-bladed Kris) and use it to overthrow the shapeshifting Crocodile Queen, who is seeking world domination as a side dish to satisfying her carnal cravings.

Her main activities appear to be ordering her servants to kidnap local unmarried men and hypnotising them into becoming her sex slaves, rather than concentrating on global conquest.

Now, don't get excited, what passes for sex in The Devil's Sword (a metaphor for the male member?) is very coy, clothed and frankly quite ridiculous, taking place on comfy sofas, in firepits and even underwater and never really progressing beyond kissing and cuddling.

I think (but it's never explained, unsurprisingly) The Crocodile Queen may be draining her sex slaves of their youth to prolong her own life, but equally I might have just made that up from a couple of random lines of dialogue.

Although there are also a number of evil warriors after the magical MacGuffin (who end up killing each other after initially working together), Mandala's main opponent is his old training classmate Banyunjaga (Advent Bangun), a  master of the menacing cackle.

Along the way, we are treated to: amputations; decapitations; mushrooms that fight back; flying rocks; enchanted umbrellas; long meaningful looks; skeletal boatmen; a genuine dungeoncrawl complete with traps, secret doors and a Cyclopean mud monster; an indecipherable treasure map; an outbreak of unexplained laser-hands; an arsenal of imaginative weaponry; an interpretative dance number; and blood, lots of blood (although all very unconvincing).

While being its own unique brand of entertaining, madcap sword and sorcery, there are certainly traces of Zu: Warriors Of The Magic Mountain, Monkey!, Deathstalker (sans the gratuitous nudity) and Hawk The Slayer to be found in The Devil's Sword.

This is a very special 101 minutes of game-inspiring, retro, martial mayhem that should be in the Appendix N of all budding gamesmasters.

Flying Rock: The Only Way To Travel

PROJECT 60: Off The Rails!!!

Photo by Pixabay

Some of you may recall in the past I've talked about my PROJECT 60, an ambitious desire to get both a skirmish wargame and a roleplaying campaign all set up and ready to run by the time I turn 60 towards the end of this year.

You might also have noticed that I haven't actually mentioned it since February - when Nick and I went to our local wargames show and I picked up some suitable 3D printed buildings.

I'd like to blame the hot weather and my general ill-health, but honestly it's my fickle nature and life-long inability to stay focused on any one particular aspect my hobbies for long.

PROJECT 60 was, therefore, rather ambitious - but that was the point.

On the skirmish wargame side, I'm still sticking firmly to my plans to build a tabletop Wild West town for games of Dead Man's Hand.

I just haven't sent off any Western figures for painting this year and have actually done nothing concrete towards assembling and painting the buildings, which was always a goal for this Summer.

Everything has simply remained in a clutter in the gamesroom.

I really need to get sorting that before things go missing as I move books, Blu Rays, and bits & bobs around looking for other things.

And this isn't to say my wargaming thoughts haven't gone round the houses from Bronze Age Greece to Fantasy Medieval and 17th/18th Century pirates and highwaymen!

They've just circled back (for the moment) to the American West.

On the roleplaying game front, my initial passion for Twilight Sword has rather dampened (even before the printed materials show up), and been replaced by flickering flames of interest in Dragonbane.

I haven't found the time to read the rules properly yet, so my confidence still swings all over the place and my mind darts off in other directions every now and then (even, most recently, considering a Wild West roleplaying campaign... but with a twist).

However, as well as 40-year history in Sweden, Dragonbane (aka Drakar och Demoner) has a solid core of fans who really, really love the system, which gives me a lot of encouragement. 

I have actually noticed some mechanical similarities between Twilight Sword and Dragonbane, which has led to my brain classifying Twilight Sword as modern Basic/Expert Dungeons & Dragons whereas Dragonbane is modern Advanced Dungeons & Dragons!

Of course, I'm essentially starting from scratch with Dragonbane, and you know how slow I am at reading and absorbing things... especially new things.

So, I'm still hoping to get these games back on track for PROJECT 60, but I know my birthday isn't that far away and I have way fewer years ahead of me than behind.

Even if I can one or both of these games up and running, just how long will these "forever campaigns" actually last now?

Ironmaster (1983)

No battleaxes appear in this film!

Surprisingly, for all its low-budget awfulness, Ironmaster actually has a powerful message to deliver: that violence begets violence.

It just doesn't do it that well.

A slice of not-particularly sleazy '80s Italian exploitation cinema (shot largely in Custer State Park in South Dakota), the film tells a fantastical, pseudo-prehistoric story of two feuding half-brothers, the amiable Ela (male model Sam Pasco, in his only non-'adult movie' role) and the ambitious Vood (George Eastman aka Luigi Montefiori).

Initially, Vood is driven out of their hunter-gatherer tribe of Zog-worshipping good guys after he kills their leader and then the wiseman (at their leader's funeral).

But then, wandering near an active volcano, Vood stumbles upon a conveniently-shaped spike of iron that he realises will make a powerful weapon.

Egged on by luscious dark-haired priestess of Eferron the Earth Trembler, Lith (Pamela Prati as Pamela Field), who appears out of nowhere like the shopkeeper in Mr Benn, Vood takes back control of the tribe, driving Ela out, and laying his plans for world domination.

While Vood is leading the tribe in a violent wave of conquest against other tribes in the area, Ela falls in with blonde-haired Isa (the lovely Elvire Audray, who you may remember from Amazonia - The Catherine Miles Story), who - like Lith - also wanders in like a Dungeons & Dragons random encounter.

She happens to be the daughter of Mogo, the headman of a pacifist tribe of lakeside dwellers.

A proto-'old hippie', Mogo (William Berger aka King Minos in Hercules) is not impressed by Ela's warning about Vood's aggression nor his determination to take the fight to him.

Eventually, Vood's growing army discovers Mogo's village and the final confrontation looms...

Directed by Cannibal Ferox's Umberto Lenzi, except for a few moments of cheap gore and a nip- and willy-slip or two, Ironmaster is tame fare that unfolds at a snail's pace, especially when just as you think something interesting is about to happen, it doesn't.

The film's just over an hour-and-a-half long, but, often, feels much longer.

As the meme goes, there was a time when I was growing up that TV and movies made me think quicksand was going to be a big problem in my life, but Ironmaster would have you believe it's lions.

Every so often, out of the blue, lions jump into shot, growl, scare people, and - usually - exit stage left.

Despite its attempts to frame itself as an allegory about the nuclear arms race, Ironmaster is an ill-judged attempt to jump on the 'caveman movie' bandwagon.

Its screenplay by Alberto Cavallone, Lea Martino, Dardano Sacchetti, and Gabriel Rossini, is underwhelmingly pedestrian.

However, the movie is riddled with moments of unintentional humour, from the mammoth models seen early on, through the assemblage of strange wigs and the actors' wardrobe of fur bikinis and slippers (Vood's penchant for assless chaps - which presumably he invented - are of particular note), to the preposterous way Vood's tribe go from poking things with sticks to smelting iron and forging swords in the space of 24 hours.

An added historical bonus is the gobsmackingly bizarre way, in preparing for the final battle, Ela suddenly "invents" archery!

Obviously, Ironmaster isn't a documentary, or even vaguely based on any sort of facts, so it's not the sort of sword-and-sandal flick where such matters should be taken into account.

Yet, the liberties Lenzi and his team of writers take are hilarious and make the film difficult to treat with any semblance of seriousness.

Another bizarre aspect of Ironmaster is that Ela appears so 'roided up that he moves like he's had an accident in his underpants. Which is ironic as he's clearly not wearing any.

It's A Marathon Rather Than A Sprint: Why I Will Always Champion The "Forever Campaign"

Trawling back through his archives recently, I found myself agreeing with the sage wisdom of Grognardia's James Maliszewski, in his pontifications on a subject near and dear to my heart: the desirability of long-running campaigns.

I've mentioned a number of times on this blog my personal white whale: my dream of an open-ended "forever campaign", which I have long-considered the definitive expression of our hobby (certainly where Dungeons & Dragons-style games are concerned).

Inspired by the early practitioners of our art (from Gary Gygax's Greyhawk via David Hargrave's Arduin to Dave Arneson's Blackmoor), I'd always felt this was how the game was meant to be played.

Characters should live, grow old, and die (either in battle or in the comfort of their own keep) during the run of a campaign, but the world always carries on. Characters have long and storied careers, then retire, raise castles and families, become legends, but the world always carries on. 

The world shouldn't 'end' when a particular adventure ends (unless, of course, it's an apocalyptic adventure such as I concocted for the Tuesday Knights in The Chronicles of Cidri).

Modern campaigns, to me, feel like they have a story to tell and once it's told, it's time to pack things up and move on to another game.

For instance, while I loved playing my human fighter Syr Edvard in Simon's Dungeons & Dragons 5e Curse of Strahd campaign, we knew from the moment we stumbled through the Mists into Ravenloft we were destined to ultimately confront the vampire lord Strahd and try to free the land from his grasp. 

Us and the thousands of other gamers who have - and will have in the future - played through this campaign book, all following roughly the same story.

The details may vary, both in the plot and how the character's react, but, ultimately we all have a single primary objective.

The current crop of campaigns from Wizards are designed to take characters from 1st to 20th level, in a compressed period of time (10 to 18 months of weekly games, I believe), and then those characters go away, and new characters are "designed" (not generated)  for the next book-length campaign.

Ultimately, we are telling the story that Wizards wants us to tell. And that's okay, if that's how you want to play Dungeons & Dragons. And a lot of people do, I get that.

These are blockbuster movies, whereas my gaming interest lies more in the direction of the on-going soap opera, a marathon rather than a sprint.

I look at Robert Wardhaugh's famous four-decade spanning campaign, and the original campaigns I mentioned above, and that's what I want a piece of.

I like the idea of a sprawling, living, setting where the characters create their own story, rather than characters being created for a story.

I, again, cite my own Chronicles of Cidri as a small example of what I have in mind: when I began that campaign (taking over the reins from Pete a few sessions in), I had no end goal in mind, there was no set objective for the characters. A string of events - all driven by the player-characters (knowingly or unknowingly) - led to the final apocalyptic battle and the destruction of the world.

If Clare's character hadn't fallen under a certain curse and then hadn't chosen to trust the untrustworthy Witch of The Woods the campaign - and the world - would have turned out a lot different.

James pulled out a brilliant quote from 'noisms' of Monsters and Manuals:

"We need long campaigns. We need to sit down with the same group of people on a regular basis over the course of years, telling the kind of stories which require concentration and thought and, above all, loyalty; stories which gain their own momentum through peaks and troughs, ebbs and flows, ups and downs and ins and outs; stories in which the events which happen matter because they have a context and a background and an unknown future waiting to be discovered. We don't need the inconsequential frippery of the one-shot; we need time."

However, 'noisms' also wraps up his own commentary on the need for long campaigns, thus:

"Almost everything worth doing, knowing, reading, hearing, feeling or saying in life has the character of being unobtainable via shortcuts except in a form which diminishes both you and it. Why would you expect RPGs to be any different?"

While I have been known to enjoy an odd one-shot as a palate-cleanser, a way to explore new and different rules ideas, I want my players' characters to become enmeshed in their game-world, there to live and breathe, rather than drive one single plot forward at breakneck speed.

In his article, James said:

"A multi-year campaign is, I think, the ideal form of most roleplaying games ... and by "ideal," I don't mean some unattainably lofty goal but rather the most desirable and satisfying version of this type of entertainment."

I realise my time on this Earth is finite, I'm heading towards my sixtieth birthday later this year, and I'm plagued with a host of health issues that fate has foisted upon me.

If I'm lucky I have the time - and energy - left in me for one last, massive, sprawling campaign in the manner I aspire to. 

This is why I remain staunchly zealous (almost certainly to an annoying degree at times) about protecting the Tuesday Knights' precious, monthly gaming slots.

I'm still quite adamant that while we are bound to "one RPG session a month" (meaning a maximum of 12 a year, and we rarely achieve that for sundry health, family, and work reasons) I want to play (or, more crucially, run) something with the potential to become this kind of open-ended "forever campaign".

I'd love to see characters invested in something other than an "overarching plot", putting something back into the game world, be it building a castle or a dam, seizing a crown and struggling with the mantle of rulership, getting married, growing their dynasties etc

There would still be the grand expeditions, the megadungeons to loot, the Big Bads to slay, but between all this the characters would have lives, dreams, aspirations, passions, and growth that might not be measured in experience points, but would certainly make their personal stories more rounded and interesting.

Of course, I realise if I'd just stuck to my guns when we launched the Tuesday Knights, back in 2008, and kept my initial Castles & Crusades campaign going, there's every possibility that I would be running such a "forever campaign" as I dream about. 

But there's no point having regrets over my stupidity back in the day. At least, it was a learning experience. Albeit rather late in life.

I'll let James have the final word on the subject of extended campaigns, quoting one of the founding fathers of our glorious, and occasionally frustrating, hobby:

"Indeed, I'd argue this is the way D&D at least was intended to be played, as Gary Gygax states in the foreword to OD&D: "it is the campaign for which these rules are designed."

THROWBACK THURSDAY: The Whole World Is A Sourcebook!

As a creative, gaming-obsessed, pre-teen I sat in my corduroy shorts in prep school assembly seeking inspiration from the hymns we sang... just what was the to hit/damage bonus of a "bow of burning gold", what effect did "arrows of desire" have and just how fast was a "chariot of fire"?

In 1977, as well as discovering Star Wars, I had been introduced to Dungeons & Dragons and the whole world was suddenly "research material".

Everywhere I looked there were potential magic items or monsters for characters to contend with in dungeons drawn from every imaginable source.

My prep school co-dungeoneer, Tom, even ran me through a D&D adventure based on the first season of The Hitchhikers' Guide To The Galaxy (a radio serial he had introduced me to and also had a major impact on my life).

Television and books (particularly the sword and sorcery tales of Fritz Leiber, and a little later Harry Turtledove's first Elabon stories - Wereblood and Werenight) shaped many adventures and characters in those early years; then later comic books became a major source of inspiration as our games moved away from straight fantasy into the four-colour world of superheroes.

From these I still have three comic book standards that I would one day love to weave into a single, long-running roleplaying game: time travel, alternate dimensions, and cosmic entities.

Yet somehow, even in the games I've run for the Tuesday Knights in the past couple of decades, I have yet to squeeze all three of them in successfully; feeling that a campaign needs to progress at a steady pace for a considerable length of time before such contrasting, incredible elements can have their full, desired impact when introduced.

That said, all three feature heavily in The Sailor on The Seas of Fate, the second of Michael Moorcock's Elric books.

Even dreamier, more surreal and more psychedelic than Elric of Melniboné, this 190-page delight had me joining Elric on a ship sailing a strange ocean that linked not just islands, but worlds and planes of existence in time and space.

In a series of three adventures, Elric discovers he is but one face of The Eternal Champion, travelling to the Earth's future with three other incarnations of the Champion (Hawkmoon, Corum and Erekose) to battle two universe-threatening alien magicians; then he finds himself being chased by a Melnibonean sorcerer from history and swept up in a mythical love story; before finally taking a Heart of Darkness-style river journey to the legendary, lost birth place of his people.

These stories continue to leave me breathless, blown away by the absorbing text, the clever imagery and mental stimuli they spark in my enfeebled brain.

It also made me appreciate, perhaps, why I have never successfully tackled such cosmic themes as I desire to in my roleplaying games - they are best left to the master storytellers!

Jack The Giant Slayer (2013)

The first thing we need to get out of the way is the fact that 2013's Jack The Giant Slayer is NOT a reworking of the '60s fantasy classic Jack The Giant Killer but, instead, a retelling of the well-known fairy tale of Jack And The Beanstalk.

The movie - working from a screenplay by Darren Lemke, Christopher McQuarrie and Dan Studney - does a fantastic job of sidestepping cliché while still paying homage to fairy tale tropes.

After a marvellous pre-credit bit of worldbuilding, that establishes the mythology of the giants and their relationship with the land of Cloister, our likeable hero Jack (Fury Road's Nicholas Hoult) accidentally exposes a magical bean to rain water - creating a beanstalk up to the kingdom of the giants, Gantua, above the clouds.

He joins an expedition to to rescue the errant princess Isabelle (Poldark's Eleanor Tomlinson), who has managed to get herself trapped at the top of the beanstalk, is led by the captain of King's Guardians, Elmont (Ewan 'Obi-Wan Kenobi' McGregor, doing some fine 'stiff upper lip' acting) and Crawe (Eddie Marsan as the grizzled and worldly sergeant major type) - 

Their adventuring party (the whole film has a very Dungeons & Dragons quality about it) includes the treacherous Roderick (Stanley Tucci) - fiancé of the reluctant princess - and his sneaky manservant Wicke (Ewen Bremner) who have their own reasons for wanting to get to Gantua.

Jack The Giant Slayer rattles along with such great pace that you don't notice its almost two hour duration as the story is continually switching up a gear.

Although, in parts, the movie is also obviously quite CG heavy this never distracts from the human story as the characters are so well-rounded and the whole world believable that the viewer is just swept up in events.

Jack The Giant Slayer might be a bit long - and possibly scary - for some children but adults, especially gamers, will love the non-stop action and adventure.

Of Course, The Asylum Has Its Own Take On The Odyssey

Based on the Ancient Greek epic. After ten years of war, King Odysseus sets sail for Ithaca, eager to reunite with his beloved. But his journey home is far more treacherous than the battlefield, as he must face deadly monsters and vengeful gods to survive.

And it looks bloody brilliant. A pure Dungeons & Dragons monsterfest, a sword-and-sorcery, fantasy epic of the kind that The Asylum is particularly adept at magicking up.

While I'm interested in seeing - at some point, at home - the, possibly pretentious, big budget version of The Odyssey that's about to hit cinemas (it's Greek myths, gods and monsters, after all), I have to confess The Asylum's iteration looks  more my speed.

Note, this is a different movie to The Asylum's earlier Troy: The Odyssey which was mockbustering Wolfgang Petersen's Troy.

Your Highness (2011)

In the little publicity over here at the time of its cinematic release much play was made of Your Highness - and even later in the marketing of the DVD - being a "stoner comedy", with much of the humour seemingly derived from pot-related jokes and situations.

But that is so not the case. Your Highness is a brilliant, well-observed, swords-and-sorcery film that happens to also be hilariously, tears-down-the-cheek, laugh-out-loud funny, obscenely lewd and crude (although with very little actual nudity), quite gross at times with moments of graphic violence and only about two or three scenes involving weed.

James Franco is Fabious, heroic favoured son of King Tallious (Charles Dance) who returns home from his latest quest, having rescued a beautiful maiden - the naïve Belladonna (Zooey Deschanel) from the tower of the evil sorcerer Leezar (Justin Theroux).

Unfortunately, on the day of Fabious and Belladonna's wedding, Leezar crashes the festivities and kidnaps the bride-to-be - thus prompting Fabious to embark on another quest.

However, the King insists that Fabious is joined by his foul-mouthed, feckless and irreverent brother Thadeous (Danny McBride) to "make a man of him".

After an unfortunate, early betrayal, the brothers  - and Thadeous's page Courtney (Rasmus Hardiker) - team up with lethal, no-nonsense warrior Isabel (Natalie Portman) who saves them from an acid-spitting hydra - and manages to look utterly gorgeous throughout the movie.

The dialogue is a hearty cocktail of cod-dramatic, almost Shakespearean, seriousness and jaunty slang - with the only true anachronism in the story being the appearance of a plate of fishfingers!

The marketing for Your Highness was so intent on pushing the "edgy" drugs angle - which is such a small part of the humour anyway - that it failed to even hint that this was a film with magic and monsters in!

In fact, this is everything I had hoped for from Kröd Mändoon And The Flaming Sword Of Fire (remember that?) and failed to get.

Old School gamers, in particular, will get a kick out of this because Your Highness is basically a true representation of "in-character" dialogue between participants in a Dungeons & Dragons adventure - swearing, banter, crude jokes, sexual innuendo and a lot of laughing - while slashing their way through a "rescue the princess" scenario.

There's a chance this could become the gamer's 21st Century go-to movie for "at table quoting" - alongside earlier classics such as Monty Python And The Holy Grail and Army Of Darkness.

It also made me think: there aren't enough "rescue the princess" scenarios in gaming these days. It's all about finding a special treasure (which Thadeous does) and averting prophecies (which they do), but Your Highness is a great example of how you can blend the classic dungeon-crawl, hack'n'slash mentality with a genuine romantic story as well - and not let the latter get so soppy as to overwhelm the former.

This sort of adventure is heightened by giving the player-characters a personal stake in their quest - which is why it's always good, eventually, to find out a bit about a character's backstory or try to inveigle them into some kind of in-campaign romance or relationship.

Hawk The Hunter: What Could Have Been

Terry Marcel, director of Hawk The Slayer, talks with Oliver McNeil, of The Fantasy Podcast and The School of Wizards and Witches, back in 2015, just as it looked as though we might get a sequel (Hawk The Hunter) - with the aid of Kickstarter.

Sadly, as we know, that never happened.

However, the interview also covers the samurai roots of Hawk The Slayer, the film's Easter Eggs, its world's creatures and magic, the casting of Lost's John Terry and Jack Palance, Terry's tantalising plans to take the Hawk brand to television, the Dark Knight TV series, how we almost had Tom Hardy as Hawk back in 2009, and handing over the reins to a younger director.

Ah, those were the days! What could have been...

Honestly, it breaks my heart to hear all these plans and imagine a world where Hawk got the Renaissance it deserves, and we could all be watching a TV show, reading an ongoing comic book series, and even playing video games based upon the most Dungeons & Dragons film of all time.

While we bathe in the warm glow of "what might have been", here also is a selection of interviews that Rebellion conducted with the lovely and optimistic Terry Marcel prior to the launch of the doomed Kickstarter:

Dragon Quest (2009)

I've said it before and I'll say it again, for my money, legendary mockbuster-makers The Asylum are at their best when they're turning out fantasy movies.

While Dragon Quest (or Dragonquest or DragonQuest) may not be anything particularly original (it's basically another rehash of the "hero's journey" we all know from Star Wars) it's still a half-decent Dungeons & Dragons-style adventure yarn.

Reluctant, magical-dope-smoking hero Arkadi (Daniel Bonjour) learns from local wiseman Grandfather (Jason Connery) that he is actually the prophesied Keeper tasked with collecting the stones of virtue under the guidance of legendary warrior Maxim (Marc Singer) and his rather attractive protégé, the scantily-clad Katya (Jennifer Dorogi).

Katya (Jennifer Dorogi) - Dragon Quest's eye candy

It's no surprise really that former Beastmaster Marc Singer steals the show with a scenery-devouring performance that blends Mister Miyagi with Yoda and a dash of Basil Exposition.

To be honest Maxim justified the minimal cost of the DVD alone and I could easily have enjoyed 90-minutes of his solo adventures!

The Keeper has been called into action because a former colleague of Maxim's, the Darth Vader-ish Kirill (or Krill) - played by X-Files/Buffy The Vampire Slayer bad guy Brian Thompson - has summoned a wicked (CGI) dragon of smoke and fire to act as his avatar in his (generally unspecified) plans for world domination... and bolster-up his legions of anarchy-spreading Tolfar mercenaries.

There's dragons and there's questing and some other CGI beasties along the way for Arkadi and crew, some running about and some fighting and it's all wrapped up in an easily-digestible 85 minutes.

Filmed in the deserts of California and interspersed with stock, aerial footage of sweeping landscapes, Dragon Quest quickly shakes off its early fairy tale vibe and segues into full-blooded swords and sorcery territory.

While it delivers very little we haven't seen before, it does so with an innocent, cheeky charm that makes it enjoyable nonetheless if you are open-minded to what it has to offer (and let's be honest you have to be reasonably open-minded knowingly sitting down to watch a movie from The Asylum).

The Season Of The Witch (2011)

I'd been awaiting Season Of The Witch to drop onto DVD since I first saw trailers for it in 2011, as it looked to share the grim and gritty stylings of last year's Black Death (with Sean Bean), but with the added bonus of actual monsters for the knights to fight.

And it is like The Black Death - being set around the same time - and even has a whiff of The Name Of The Rose about it, yet despite this - and a reasonably stylish final conflict - there's no escaping the fact that Season Of The Witch is ultimately a very humdrum film.

It's not bad per se (if you like this sort of pseudo-Dungeons & Dragons, medieval adventure romp - which I do), it just could have been so much better.

At times it almost feels as though everyone is simply going through the motions to get the film wrapped up and finished so they can get on and do other things.

Nic Cage and Ron Perlman are a couple of disillusioned crusaders who desert the battle front after being ordered to slay women and children.

On their way home they stumble across a town in the grip of a virulent plague and are charged by the local Cardinal (Christopher Lee) with transporting a young girl (Claire Foy) to a remote monastery, where she can be tried for witchcraft and rituals performed to purge the disease from the land.

At first Nic doesn't believe she's a witch - despite demonstrations of her supernatural physical strength - but as the six-day cross-country journey progresses, and members of their party start being killed, he begins to change his mind.

However, it's not until the group of travellers reach the monastery that the truth of the situation is revealed.

There are some nice touches in Season Of The Witch, with the most important being the undermining of the typical cliché of this genre that the Church has been torturing an innocent girl (because it's not that straight forward and I rather wish more had been made of this during the progress of the story).

However the obstacles the group have to face along the way seem rather underwhelming, despite director Dominic Sena's attempts to up the stakes - the "rickety, old wooden bridge that looks like it won't support your weight" has been done to death (was anyone surprised that it fell apart AFTER they got across?) and what was with the pack of wolves that mysteriously transformed into slightly more aggressive wolves?

Ex-Misfit Robert Sheehan turns in a solid performance as the runaway choir boy who wants to be a knight, Ulrich Thomsen is superb as the grizzled, but reliable, man-at-arms and Stephen Campbell Moore is surprisingly good as the priest Debelzaq, who travels with them. Initially it is clear that we are supposed to see him as the enemy, but as the plot develops and he protects the witch from a summary execution, you realise that he truly believes in justice and not just simple vengeance.

However, it's Cage and Perlman - names I usually associate with memorable performances - that are phoning it in for most of the movie's 90 minutes. And the monsters (even the zombie monks) were rather a case of too little, too late.

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Kickin' It Old School!

Supreme fantasy author Michael Moorcock admired pulp maven Robert E Howard's brutal barbarian Conan so much that when he set out to create his own swords and sorcery epic he wanted it to be as unlike the tales of the Cimmerian as possible.

And so, he created Elric: the doomed, feeble, albino sorcerer-king kept alive by, first, mysterious narcotics and later by the evil energy of his cursed sword, Stormbringer.

When I last reread the first of the Elric books - Elric of Melnibone - it took just about two days, I still couldn't put it down.

A combination of my insomnia and the power of the writing saw me reading at all hours of the day and night.

Moorcock proves you don't need a ponderous, phonebook-sized tome to tell a thrilling, memorable fantasy tale.

In a 'mere' 190-pages Elric goes from languishing on his Ruby Throne to dealing with elemental creatures, fighting off an invasion, crossing the Young Kingdoms to find his kidnapped sweetheart and finally journeying to another plane of existence to retrieve Stormbringer at the behest of the Chaos demon-god Aroich.

Outside of Tolkien's main Lord of The Rings' characters and Conan himself, Elric and his legendary sword must be two of the best known names in fantasy literature... their dreamy, nightmarish adventures seeping into all manner of related media (e.g. heavy influences on early roleplaying games from Dungeons & Dragons and Arduin to Chaosium's own Stormbringer game; to the prominent technomage in Babylon 5 universe called... Elric).

And next year, we're getting three different new Elric roleplaying games: one for Dragonbane, one for Dungeon Crawl Classics, and one for 5e!

Reading Elric of Melnibone again stirred in me nostalgic memories for the other books of my youth - Fritz Leiber's Nehwon tales with Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser or Harry Turtledove's stories of Gerin The Fox - and the old school fantasy roleplaying games of my teen years.

It filled me with a hankering for that '80s Dungeons & Dragons-style vibe, that feeling of wonder and "not knowing what's around the next corner".

To quote Wikipedia:

"Some fans of pencil and paper role playing games use [old school] to describe RPGs characterized by simple game mechanics and flexible rules. The character generation system in such RPGs tend to lack extensive lists of skills and abilities. Basic Dungeons & Dragons and the first edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons are often considered 'old school' role playing games."

All this hankering for past gaming glories was also been stoked back in the 2000's by several great rules-lite, war story-heavy fantasy gaming podcasts I listened to at the time. Sadly, these are now gone - swept aside by the tidal wave of "actual play" podcasts.

The pods I listened to eschewed the attitude of some of the more snobby or 'elitist' podcasts back then which looked down their virtual noses at "game stories" or the "tell me about your character" attitude.

Personally I believe that's a central element of roleplaying games - you are generating collective stories, so why not share them? Isn't this just another form of creating fantasy literature?

As long as the stories are interesting, they are as valid as any other anecdote you may care to tell.

Outlander (2008)

Some ideas are so obvious - and brilliant - that you're surprised that no one has thought of them before.

As far as I am aware, Outlander is the first film to pit Eighth Century Norse Vikings against an extraterrestrial monster!

Jim Caviezel is Kainan, the sole humanoid survivor of a crashed spaceship in Norway, but he soon discovers that an alien Moorwen has tagged along - the dragon-like beasts that his race have been fighting - and it's rampaging around the woody neighbourhood.

Kainen is captured by Viking warrior Wulfric (Jack Huston) and taken before king Rothgar (John Hurt).

The "outlander" tries to convince the locals of the Moorwen's existence, but they prefer to blame the attacks on a giant bear.

Matters are further complicated by the return of Gunnar (Ron Perlman) and his troops, who believe Rothgar's men raided their village while they were away trading - little realising it was the Moorwen.

Rothgar's warrior daughter Freya (Sophia Myles, of vampire detective series Moonlight and Doctor Who's Girl In The Fireplace) takes a shine to Kainan, despite Wulfric's desire to have her, but Dirk Blackman and Howard McCain's script manages to sidestep the cliched love triangle sub-plot by, instead, focusing on the grudging respect that grows between Wulfric and Kainan.

Opening with suggestions of Predator and even the original Planet Of The Apes, Outlander quickly develops into a superb Dungeons And Dragons-flavoured "man against monster" movie and a strong contender for the title of Top Film Of 2009!

The excitement is non-stop, the battle scenes are superb, with just the right dash of gruesome (there's one particularly shocking decapitation which caught me by surprise) that culminates in a tense engagement between the Vikings - led by Wulfric and Kainan - and the Moorwen in the beast's charnel lair.

What helps to elevate this story above the usual fare though is the backstory of Kainan and the Moorwen which reveals that Kainan's people aren't really the "good guys" when you view the larger picture and it was their treatment of the Moorwen that provoked the whole situation in the first place.

There are a few minor plot wobbles along the way - Freya seems almost indestructible whenever she is cornered by the man-eating beastie and there is some ridiculously fast sword-making by the Vikings when they are preparing for the final showdown - but these are trivial issues compared to the sheer thrill ride of the movie as a whole.

Jim Caviezel is a solid action hero while the ever-reliable Ron Perlman and John Hurt both bring their A-Game in roles that were made for them.

A simple, without being simplistic, script, delivered by great actors on top form, aided by slick special effects and a particularly imposing monster, make Outlander's 110 minute duration pure entertainment of the highest calibre.

Midnight Chronicles (2008)

There is a major flaw in Midnight Chronicles that isn't addressed in the movie (and is only hinted at in passing in the trailer)... this is not a complete story, but part of a series.

Sadly there is no indication of when, if ever, the remainder of the story will be told.

Perhaps it is supposed to be a "set-up" for a roleplaying game campaign (which would be pretty cool if it was) as the movie, made by Fantasy Flight Studios, is based on Fantasy Flight's Midnight setting for Dungeons & Dragons.

The backstory is a clever spin on Lord Of The Rings (and Peter Jackson's trilogy is clearly homaged, in a low-budget way, especially in the establishing exposition sequence): what would a fantasy world be like if the bad guys won?

In Midnight Chronicles, the world of Aryth has fallen under the thrall of the wicked god Izrador, the elves have fled to their forests and the dwarves disappeared underground, leaving mankind to be ruled by Izrador's dark priests, the Legates, and his legions of orcs.

An infamous Legate, Mag Kiln (Charles Hubbell) is on a mission to track down a missing priest, assisted by the annoying, hedonistic Kruce (Sam Landman).

However, they are diverted by acolyte Chuzara (Dawn Brodey) to the town of Blackweir - to investigate why the town's temple still hasn't been completed after a hundred years... and whether attacks by a local brigand known as the Hunter are to blame.

And this is where a second fault with the film begins to reveal itself, a fault tied very heavily into the first, that there is simply too much going on in the story for the audience to keep track of.

Compound that with the surfeit of 'otherworldy' names and characters and it's no wonder the full story couldn't be told in 100 minutes.

There's a "monster" (or is it a force for good?) lurking in the temple, but it's exact nature is never explained, and there are hints of a heroic warrior - who doesn't know his destiny is to be the counterbalance to Mag Kiln's rise to power - but he barely registers in the story and is quite possibly redundant to the plot of this movie.

The film makers clearly accept that they are working on a limited budget and don't try to overstretch their special effects, limiting the non-humans, such as the orcs and elves (dwarves are talked about, but never seen), to pretty decent masks and make-up and the film's CGI effects to attractive backdrops and subtle magical effects.

However, the script is clearly written by a gamer rather than a professional scriptwriter because, as I have said, a lot is set-up that never pays off - which is fine in an RPG because the characters can always go and explore those avenues at a later date, but a film script really needs to be self-contained.

The blurb on the DVD case says the film is:

"...the epic narrative that tells the tale of two legendary characters - one for the cause of good, the other for the cause of evil. This is the story of their rise, their struggle and ultimately their fate, as their destinies become intertwined with that of the world and the dark god that occupies it"

That's a lie... kind of. That's the plot of the whole 'epic' that this is simply the prologue of. And if the series ever gets made, I'd gladly watch it because there's a lot of detail in this world that has the potential for some thrilling storytelling.http://

What we actually get here is the first two episodes (a 'pilot' as it were) for a potential television series that never took off. Given the success of Legend Of The Seeker around the time of this film's release there would definitely have been a market for this, but I suspect that boat has sailed.

Unfortunately I don't think the rest of the story will ever be told because Midnight was a 3.5 edition Dungeons & Dragons setting, from what I can recall, and the gaming world has moved on from there.

Fantasy Flight has turned its attention to Warhammer, Anima and Grimm these days and wasn't supporting Midnight anymore.

Which is a shame, because this movie certainly has potential. The script and the acting certainly aren't Oscar worthy, but the effects don't grate and the setting has the strong verisimilitude of all good game worlds.

So instead of the launch pad for a television series that could have become the role-players' equivalent of Lord Of The Rings (maybe), Midnight Chronicles stands alone as a quirky experiment by a games company that will probably, sadly, fade into gaming lore as time continues to move on.


Back in 2010, over on Facebook, Angus Abranson, then at Cubicle 7, explained:

"I believe that this was made as a pilot to tout around various TV networks. Also Midnight is an IP that FFG own themselves and are quite fond of (they've already used the Midnight setting in one of their Runebound Board Games too) so don't be surprised to see other 'Midnight' related products appear outside of the RPG market at somepoint."