Ironclad (2011)

From the moment I stumbled over the intriguing trailers for this mighty mediaeval siege movie I knew I had to see it - totally unaware of the fact that Ironclad is based upon the 1215 siege of Rochester Castle.

Rochester Castle being right on my doorstep (after Tonbridge Castle, which is in my back garden, although doesn't have such a martial history) added a whole new element to this for me - knowing that I could easily go and visit the site where the real events took place.

But even without the local angle, Ironclad is an engrossingly powerful, visceral, bloody, muddy and brutal story that left me physically shaken after it had run its two-hour course.

Having been forced to sign the Magna Carta, King John (an insanely brilliant Paul Giamatti), enlists a horde of Danish mercenaries - led by Tiberius (Vladimir Kulich) - to take back his country and exact revenge on the barons who made him put his name to the "Great Charter".

However, he finds one obstacle in his way, the strategically crucial castle of Rochester on the banks of the River Medway, which bars his path to London.

Holding Rochester is William d'Albini (Brian Cox) and a rag-tag handful of soldiers, including the Knight Templar Marshall (James Purefoy), whoremonger Beckett (Jason Flemyng), cool archer Marks (Mackenzie Crook) and grizzled villain Coteral (Jamie Foreman).

A clever cocktail of the Magnificent Seven and Zulu, Ironclad is must-see material for gamers with its graphic demonstrations of the lethality of various hand weapons as well as its insights into 13th Century siege warfare.

There may be no fantastical, supernatural elements, but this stands high in the ranks of inspirational Dungeons & Dragons movies, for its sheer ballsy brutality and grimy verisimilitude.

It's by no means a historically accurate portrayal of the actual siege, but is gorgeously heroic and incredibly emotional and thrilling nonetheless, with breath-taking performances from all the cast.

Sometimes there is a bit too much "shaky-cam" and the camera can get a bit too close to the fighting on occasions to actually make out what's going on, but these are trivial issues when put up against the brilliance of this movie.

As you may have gathered, I rather like Ironclad.

I was always expecting it to be great - from the sporadic trailers I had seen on the 'net - but it went so far above and beyond my expectations that it would be remiss of me not to insist that everyone who loves low fantasy roleplaying games - or such fare as Game Of Thrones - should watch this as soon as possible.

The 13th Warrior (1999)

Imagine, if you can, a film based on a Dungeons & Dragons campaign run by a gamesmaster whose favourite book is Beowulf and has just watched Zulu and the Seven Samurai.

That will give you some idea of the brilliant, OTT, wackiness of The 13th Warrior; the tale of an Arabian ambassador who teams up with some Viking warriors to fight "an ancient evil" which is plaguing an isolated village.

Based on Michael Crichton's The Eaters of The Dead, which itself is based on Beowulf, this tries to set the ancient mythical tale in a historical context by "explaining" the various creatures in "real" terms.

The village is being assaulted by the Wendol, flesh-eating creatures that attack in the night, out of the mist, and carry off the heads of their victims.

Ahmad (Antonio Banderas) and the dozen, mumbling, heavily-accented Northmen try to fend them off - then take the attack back to the Wendol's underground lair before provoking one, final attack by the beastmen on the village.

The story is all about the power of myth and being frightened of what you don't understand - the Wendol's main strength coming from their prey's belief that they are supernatural creatures.

The 13th Warrior is muddy, bloody and slightly bewildering as Ahmad's reasons for staying with the Vikings, who he has only just met, are never really made clear and one antagonist, in the form of the king's treacherous son Wigliff (Anders T. Andersen) vanishes from the story completely about half-way through the action!

The story suffers from the flawed internal logic of many Dungeons & Dragons' adventures - such as why is the village/kingdom of Hrothgar (Sven Wollter) located right next door to the Wendol's mountain base?

It's obvious, from the excellent expedition into the mountain sequence, that the beastmen have been there for a long time... that's a lot of heads they've collected! So why haven't the villagers just moved?

Much of the early fight sequences, because of the Wendol's night time tactics, are shot in the dark as well, which, while atmospheric, adds to the air of confusion and the general fog of war. Not necessarily a bad thing, but certainly something you need to be prepared for when sitting down to watch this.

Lights! Camera! Die Roll! Set-Piece Ideas For Gaming

By Elizabeth Thompson - Royal Collection , Public Domain, Link

Great memories - that is "magic moments" in roleplaying games - often come from the unplanned and unexpected, but that's not to say some gentle nudging and downright scheming from the Gamesmaster is inappropriate.

Browsing the deep back catalogue of Craig Oxbrow's excellent inspirational resource The Watch House (if you're into sci-fi and/or Doctor Who gaming then you need to read his Door In Time blog as well) I came across an article he'd written on Six Staples Of SF/F Series, by way of Den Of Geek.

These standards are:

• The Bodyswap
• The Time Loop
• Ascension To A Higher Plane Of Existence
• Alternate Dimensions
• The Doppelganger/Double/Duplicate
• The Dream Episode

And all are immediately applicable to the anime-inspired fantasy campaign I'm kicking around at the moment while the Tuesday Knights get all pulpy in Pete's new Outgunned Adventures game (season two of his epic weird science campaign).

Tie these "standards" into my own "wish list" of cool moments and there's plenty of meat for potentially memorable adventures, if I'm GM enough to script plots that can do these tropes justice.

I guess, in part, all this comes from my passion for visual media (films, TV, and comics in particular) and thus my desire to emulate moments I see in these at our table.

The main bullet points from my "wish list" were:

• Have the players running the defence of a "hopeless situation", ridiculously outnumbered by an implacable foe, as seen at Rorke's Drift in Zulu, Dros Delnoch in David Gemmel's Legend, and Helm's Deep in The Lord of The Rings. To name but three.
  
  
• A "Horatio Holds The Bridge" moment - I'd just discovered D&D when this poem was read to us at school and the two just clicked.
  
  
• An interesting time travel story (cf. Doctor Who et al)
  
  
• The party encounters cosmic entities that threaten the world and only the heroes can stop them - every Marvel/DC comic book that features this sort of stuff inspires me to greater madness, combined with a lifelong love of the works of HP Lovecraft.
  
  
• Rescuing a trapped companion from incarceration in the pit of Hell - this came from reading the dedication pages in my original (and treasured) Arduin Grimoire Trilogy, by Dave Hargrave, where he mentions an epic campaign to free his own character.
  
  
• Having the players caught up in a war between angels and demons.

Originally my list was drawn up for a legacy D&D campaign, but the ideas are so broad, universal, and potentially over-the-top that they work just as well for anime fantasy game in the same vein as Delicious in Dungeon, Frieren, and Record of Lodoss War.