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Television Games

Paramount+ Orders 'Dungeons & Dragons' Live-Action Series (deadline.com) 87

Posted by BeauHD from the what-to-expect dept.
Paramount+ has given an eight-episode, straight-to-series order to an adaptation of Hasbro's wildly popular Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game franchise. Deadline reports: Red Notice filmmaker Rawson Marshall Thurber wrote the pilot script and is set to direct the first episode of the series which will be a co-production between eOne and Paramount Pictures. At Paramount+, the Dungeons & Dragons series will join Halo, the video game adaptation, which is one of the streamer's most popular originals. Over the last couple of years, there has been a resurgence in bringing gaming titles to television, and this is the latest example.

Adapting Dungeons & Dragons for television has been a major focus for eOne under President of Global Television Michael Lombardo following the company's 2019 acquisition by Hasbro. The live-action series has been tipped to be the studio's largest-scope TV project ever, potentially launching a "Dungeons & Dragons" universe spanning multiple scripted and unscripted shows. Overseeing the series for eOne is Gabriel Marano, the company's EVP Scripted Television.
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Paramount+ Orders 'Dungeons & Dragons' Live-Action Series More

Paramount+ Orders 'Dungeons & Dragons' Live-Action Series

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  • OGL 1.1 (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Some other things are happening in the D&D world [reddit.com] at the moment that might see people turning away from this series.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      wtf? OGL (Open Gaming License) 1.1, the word count having expanded by an order of magnitude (thanks to lawyers, no doubt), and having revoked the relatively cruisy OGL 1.0, sounds like John Deere's take on Right to Repair legislation. Way to antagonize your community, WotC.

      • Re: OGL 1.1 (Score:5, Insightful)

        by cfalcon ( 779563 ) on Wednesday January 11, 2023 @04:46AM (#63198272)

        Pretend that somehow it turned out that Microsoft owned everything under the GPL, and in week a GPL 4.0 that prevents anything released under prior GPL version from being distributed by anyone but Microsoft was coming out. Now pretend that the EFF mostly considered that situation plausible and possible.

        That is where over half of TTRPG developers are right now- all their shit is about to belong to Hasbro, because they released it under a license that they thought was open for the last TWENTY YEARS. Until April 2022, Hasbro themselves claimed, on their website, that it could not be revoked.

        Now tomorrow or soon, Hasbro will come out and do some PR. Maybe even walk it back. But at this point, the damage is done- no one can trust the OGL

    • Explain to me why I as a player of a TTRPG should give a fuck about some lawyers wanking all over it?

      • Explain to me why I as a player of a TTRPG should give a fuck about some lawyers wanking all over it?

        If you're a player of a TTRPG, there's statistically excellent chance you're a player of an OGL game. D&D 3.0e/3.5e, Pathfinder 1 & 2, D&D 5e, and a bunch of other d20 system derivatives.

        Future products for those systems, and future sales of existing products for those systems are about to get hit. Sure, you can play the "I (or my DM) have a shelf full of product" card, and you're not wrong. But that shelf full of product didn't happen because you (or your DM) didn't aren't inclined to buy

        • Played none of them.

          Yes, guess what, you can play TTRPGs without ever reaching into the Fantasy genre. Sorry, but it's not my cuppa java. The closest I get to fantasy is a Shadowrun world where I play a fast and smooth talking elven con artist.

          I know, it's never a wise idea to play yourself in a RPG, but this time around I just couldn't help it.

          I frankly don't know whether any of the games I play are OGL. Then again, I never gave two shits about the licenses of the games I play. I don't plan to sell anythin

      • The game my group is playing is White Box FMAG, basically a retroclone of the original D&D from the 1970s. With OGL 1.0a expected to be superseded and everyone forced over to the new version, OSE/OSR games like Basic Fantasy Roleplaying Game, Swords and Wizards, White Box and a whole host of games that revisit thirty or forty year old games, and did so by using the OGL licensing schemes, are now either going to have to pay royalties, try to expunge anything from the D20 SRD, still remain at risk for D

        • Basic Fantasy's community is busy documenting every part of BFRPG that refers to wording that is covered by WotC material offered under OGL. And the forums are active with new wording and replacements. BFRPG's goal is to be OGL free and instead 4th edition will be under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0.

          For the most part, rolling a die and adding and subtracting things pre-dates D&D by a few millennia. Even 20-sided dice numbered 1-20 are older than Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. Although mass p

      • I guess it depends on if you like paying Hasbro multiple times for access to digital books and apps in order to play a game that for the most part is hosted in the imagination of players.

        I recommend instead: Fate Core, Torchbearer, 24XX SRD/18XX, Cepheus Engine/Sword of Cepheus, TinyD6 2nd Edition, Worlds Without Number (strongly recommended), ...

        You can browse Bundle of Holding's offer of a collection of non-OGL fantasy RPGs [bundleofholding.com] for inspiration. Or I guess buy it if you want a whole set of very different and i

  • It will be trash (Score:2, Insightful)

    by khchung ( 462899 )

    The huge difference between D&D and stuff like LOTR or GoT is, D&D is a system, it is not a story nor a novel. Sure, there are many stories and novels that were set in the D&D-style world, but for all purpose that is almost no different from saying those stories are in a fantasy world setting, or a "sword and sorcery" world setting.

    And it will be trash because after they spent so much money on the IP, and then the money for the cast, they will have no money left for paying script writers to wri

    • Wrt your last paragraph, Paizo mostly has that covered.

    • Re:It will be trash (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Wednesday January 11, 2023 @06:23AM (#63198448)

      It may even be good, but if you think you've seen people go bonkers over stuff being "wrong" with any LOTR content, be prepared for the battle of the rules lawyers.

      "The $character_class could not do that because he was trying to hit a $creature with $weapon and you cannot do a $combat maneuver against that kind of creature in the first round of battle, you'd first have to do a $maneuver and then you'd have to do $more_obscure_shit_from_some_footnote_in_a_supplemental..."

    • Dwarven women are said to be hard to distinguish from their male counterparts anyway, so anyone could be trans to begin with. An Asian character would be wonderful as a rogue (ninjas, anyone?) of any alignment. A female paladin would also be a nice fit, as long as they spare us the bikini armor. For the gay character, maybe a druid would be good, since you could give homosexuality a naturalistic/pagan spin. A black fighter with a nice Saracen (magic?) sword would be totally badass, in my opinion. My point i

    • Re:It will be trash (Score:5, Insightful)

      by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Wednesday January 11, 2023 @07:22AM (#63198512) Homepage Journal

      Most likely it will also have black elves

      You mean like the drow [fandom.com]? Found the guy who's never played D&D but wants the geek cred of commenting on it. What a whore.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      The fact that D&D doesn't have an established lore is what could make it good. LOTR, Star Wars and countless others are confined by the fans demanding that they stick to established stories.

      I doubt the D&D IP was particularly expensive. There have been a lot of low budget D&D movies over the years, not all of them terrible.

      As for evil white guys, maybe you forgot the 90s and early 2000s when every evil antagonist was a British guy. I can understand why much of the world associates the accent wit

      • The fact that D&D doesn't have an established lore is what could make it good.

        D&D does have established lore, but canon varies with edition. [wizards.com] Wizard's stance is that every "expression" of D&D has its own canon, so each version stands alone, and so does each series of novels. That kind of flies in the face of prior editions' handbooks, which in some cases treated the novels of their time as canon, but the body of D&D lore is generally taken to be meaningful by the playerbase.

        Since D&D has different "planes" of existence, anyone making a new D&D can feel free to ign

    • I mean, yes, D&D is a system, but there are most certainly worlds and settings that are attached to it (with full novels and characters). They say this will be a "D&D" series but I'm sure it will be set in one of the main D&D campaign settings like Eberron or Forgotten Realms,

      If they wanted to they could even base it on a novel series like RA Salvaore's Drizzt collection.

      Granted, I haven't seen any details associated, and I'm crossing my fingers that they don't smack this thing with the woke tr

  • And at the same time... (Score:4, Informative)

    by DrXym ( 126579 ) on Wednesday January 11, 2023 @03:52AM (#63198220)
    ... Hasbro didn't think they were getting enough money from the franchise so they've decided to shit all over the players and creator community. Instead of the old "a rising tide floats all boats" terms they've moved to "fuck you, pay us" terms that limit 3d party products, demand royalties and also strongly suggest Hasbro is about to cash in by selling D&D NFTs.

    Sounds like it's time for the community to jump ship.

    • The Fantasy genre needs a large special effects budget - beyond even sci fi - to be convincing, otherwise it ends up with latex elf ears type comical. It also needs decent script writers so it doesn't end up with sub cod-viking beards and bellowing dialogue. Unfortunately studios often forget this and you end up with the Shannara series. Sure, there've been a few exceptions such as Xena and Hercules (though even they were ropey on more than a few occasions) but in general low budget -> total crap.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        The only way to make low budget work is to make is so bad that it underflows and wraps around to good again. Hawk the Slayer is the perfect example, it was pretty much the first D&D movie in all but name.

        • It's actually amazing what some Youtube channels that lampoon and spoof D&D and similar games can do. Shows that good writing trumps gimmicky effects.

    • Sounds like it's time for the community to jump ship.

      I would love it if this happened. A lot of us table top RPG players had high hopes that with fifth edition D&D becoming so popular that we would see a boost to other RPGs as well. It seems to me that the opposite has happened and fewer people than ever play other RPGs.

      I like D&D just fine and have been having fun playing since second edition but it's always been my least favorite rule set.

      • Rules, meh. How many strictly follow the rules anyway?

        Or even basic reality? For example, have you even been on a dungeon crawl and had to deal with the smoke from your torches? Or had any serious issue with light at all?

        Players are so used to the non reality gaming.... I had an all human group who didn't have a single light source among them invade a goblin cave complex. I described how it got pitch black going forwards any further by the time they were 50+ feet in. Dumbasses tried to continue forwar

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by skam240 ( 789197 )

          I think you're under stating how significant to the experience the rule sets are. Combat is basically one long secession of interacting with the rules and most experiences outside of combat often see interactions as well.

          On the other hand they arent everything which is why I still have fun playing D&D. I would personally just have more fun with almost any other set of rules.

          • It's been my experience that even at con tournament games they still don't really play by the rules.

            And in any home brew game? I expect not to. I'm currently in an online 5e game where we're really playing an odd blend of old school 2e with a 5e base but gm says it's 2e.

            Anyway every table is different and they even say the rules are just a guideline; fun is rule 1.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by skam240 ( 789197 )

              It's truly bizarre to me that you seem to be saying RPG rules don't effect game play. Why else would your friend play their weird hybrid of 5e and 2e if they didnt? It's because they find their rules are more fun to play with at least for themselves otherwise they'd be going with the much lower effort base rules of the current edition that everyone knows rather than spending all that effort developing home brew and then teaching all the ins and outs to the players. You're example there doesnt support your a

              • I know exactly why these guys (I just started playing with them btw) use a funky mish mash of versions. They're all old school 60+ year old and spent most of their gaming life playing 2e. A couple of them go back to the basic dnd yellow book. They skipped 3e and 4e mostly for reasons I don't know. Then decided to run their first 5e campaign.

                Sooooo.... you got a bunch of OG grognards who know 2e in n out and kinda sorta know 5e but not really so although our characters and the spell lists and etc are all

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by skam240 ( 789197 )

                  I've run much lower rules game than what you describe while traveling. "Name one thing you're very good at, two things you're kind of good at and one thing you're bad at" and the random element is controlled by a single d6. Of course when everyone is home and has a choice of what to play they all go to much higher complexity games by choice because they want characters that gain experience and the rest of the trappings that come with a major game.

                  Tell me this, why do you even play 5e or use any rule set at

                  • Yes you were done when you started because you're looking for a fight and to "be right" from the beginning while I was trying to engage. I never took your silly fight bait.

                    I've explained. You ignored. That's fine. This could have been a real conversation but you didn't want that.

                    Why do I play 5e? Because that's what they play. If they played something else I'd play that. It doesn't matter to me at all which ruleset as long as the game is fun.

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by skam240 ( 789197 )

                      Hahaha, and now you're upset and lashing out. Have fun with that. I'll sleep fine tonight.

        • For example, have you even been on a dungeon crawl and had to deal with the smoke from your torches? Or had any serious issue with light at all?

          Hi. I'm that DM. I nearly had a total party kill because they went hog-wild with the fireballs inside a tiny cave, and at some point, I had them start making CON saves and Dungeoneering checks to see if they'd realize they'd depleted the available oxygen.

          They were all at around -3 CON by the time anybody figured out what was going on, and fled the cave. As

          • Lol I love that. My group didn't figure it out until they found themselves swinging in the dark at goblins throwing rocks at thrn.

            Me: "The ONLY source of light and ONLY thing you can see is the cave exit".

            Player: "Uh guys I'm kinda hurt maybe we should leave...?"

      • From being peripherally involved in convention organising and looking at the numbers of DnD and Pathfinder games against other systems, other systems are doing pretty well. There's a lot of other stuff out there, and people are increasingly inclined to try it. Free League seem to be doing especially well.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by skam240 ( 789197 )

          That's not my experience at all nor is it the buzz in the RPG forums I go to. The general buzz I've been picking up is either "DND rulez, other RPGS droolz!" or "Why is everything D&D?"

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by DrXym ( 126579 )
        I expect it would be possible to produce a basic rule set in the spirit of the original that was legally safe and formed the basis of an open source alternative that the community and creators could build on.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by skam240 ( 789197 )

          Huh? While what you lay out here sounds nice it has nothing to do with my stated issues with D&D. I've played plenty of other non "open source" RPG rules and have enjoyed them all more than D&D.

    • "The community" has largely been independent from official D&D for several editions, which is probably part of why they're grasping for cash. Since 3.5e they haven't had a great first-party showing, and alternatives like Pathfinder and other D20 products have been a lot more popular among die hard players.

  • I can't think of a good D&D adaption to the screen. The best have been unlicensed fantasy works that are much in the vein of Jack Vance;s Dying Earth universe.
    Hopefully this one breaks the pattern but, I won't hold my breath.

  • Interesting timing. (Score:3)

    by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Wednesday January 11, 2023 @04:30AM (#63198262)

    Don't they want to wait to see how badly the upcoming movie will flop, like the 2007 movie flopped, and the 2009 movie flopped, and the 2012 movie flopped, before they greenlight this flop?

    • Honestly, if the movie is half as good as the trailer, I'll pay to see it in theatres n>2 times. Good fantasy movies are rare. Acceptable ones? Also rare.

  • So an orc and a wizard face off... and they keep taking turns rolling dice to see how the fight ends up? That's certainly Must See TV.

    • Wrong conglomerate, "Must See TV" is a trademark of NBC, not Paramount.

    • No matter how good they make the movie, I really can't see how this would be any different than say Lord of the Rings, or any of the fantasy adventure movies released during the past 50 years.

      The formula generally goes like this,

      $BIG_THREAT threatens $VERY_IMPORTANT_THING (usually the world)*

      $TEAM bands together and fights their way through $BAD_ARMY

      Epic battle ensues which finishes off $BIG_THREAT and $BAD_ARMY, the end.

      *Often $PRINCESS gets kidnapped by $BIG_THREAT.

      A bunch of fille

      • The fun is in the trip, not the destination (or the summary). In other words: these movies generally follow one of a few formulaic paths, but the details, the characters and their development, the world building and other details differ greatly between fantasy movies. And the same is true for the other genres, which can also be summarized in a similar fashion, yet yield a wide variety of movies.

        Also: why should movie makers accommodate your particular fetish?

        • Yeah the trip is the fun part, and seeing the epic battle with the hero getting slammed into rocks with 80 tons of force multiple times, the first which would atomize a real person but our hero manages to survive without a scratch, the guy he is fighting is as tall as the Willis tower in Chicago, and ultimately falls from the top of a cliff which is in the ionosphere yelling "NOOOO!" and triggering a 9.2 earthquake when he lands is great for a quick thrill, but otherwise these movies are formulatic and pred

          • Yeah the trip is the fun part, and seeing the epic battle with the hero getting slammed into rocks with 80 tons of force multiple times, the first which would atomize a real person but our hero manages to survive without a scratch, the guy he is fighting is as tall as the Willis tower in Chicago, and ultimately falls from the top of a cliff which is in the ionosphere yelling "NOOOO!" and triggering a 9.2 earthquake when he lands is great for a quick thrill, but otherwise these movies are formulatic and predictable.

            Sounds like you're describing the bulk of the Marvel / DC fodder rather than proper Fantasy.

      • In the case of the new D&D movie, it's ultimately a heist film starring a wiseass character. Not unlike the appeal of Firefly, in that regard

    • So an orc and a wizard face off... and they keep taking turns rolling dice to see how the fight ends up? That's certainly Must See TV.

      IDK, the couple of episodes of Community [wikipedia.org] where they played D&D were pretty entertaining... Then again, I liked the entire series.

      - Advanced Dungeons & Dragons [wikipedia.org]
      - Advanced Advanced Dungeons & Dragons [wikipedia.org]

  • They'd better include at least one of the Wayans brothers. Or else!

  • The live-action series ....will be (Score:3)

    by bsdetector101 ( 6345122 ) on Wednesday January 11, 2023 @07:42AM (#63198558)
    The live-action series ....will be players rolling dice and talking....

    • Between their Star Trek, Halo, and now D&D series being on Paramount+, it seems like Paramount is dead set on keeping all of their "Hardcore Nerd Content" behind a paywall.

      Not that Disney is any better, as they're doing the same thing with all of their Star Wars and Marvel content. I guess that comic book and Sci-Fi fans have more disposable income?

  • Streaming services wars! EZTV wins!

  • Obligatory jokes (Score:5, Funny)

    by nospam007 ( 722110 ) * on Wednesday January 11, 2023 @08:00AM (#63198588)

    Why does leather armor make you better at sneaking?

    It’s made of hide.
    ---
            How do you get a DnD player to go out with you?

    You ask them for a d8.
    ----
            Why was the gnome artificer embarrassed when his clockwork crocodile stopped working?

    He had a reptile dysfunction.

  • Until now, when you entered "D&D" into a Google it would give you search results about actual D&D. Now, due to the amount of money that is going to be spent on advertising of this shite, all you will ever see is the series.

  • Live Action? (Score:3)

    by necro81 ( 917438 ) on Wednesday January 11, 2023 @09:14AM (#63198722) Journal
    It's already been done. The ,7-minute scene [youtube.com] in Stranger Things, s4ep1, (that cuts between the Hellfire Club fighting Vecna and the basketball team is outstanding film-making. You don't have to know a damn thing about D&D to understand what's going on, get caught up in the rising tension as players are knocked off, and thrill at Hellfire's victory. Who would have thought watching a D20 clattering around could be so interesting.

  • But with it be set in 3rd ed rules?

    Everyone knows that 2nd edition is the last good D&D ruleset (THAC0 4 LIFE!) ;)

  • ..because they've gone mainstream.
    Oh and the new profit-centric OGL is going to kill D&D anyway.
    Guess that full set of D&D 2nd Edition books I've got will be more valuable now.
  • I'm so surprised that the shittiest streaming service immediately jumps in bed with a shitty company after their shittiest PR move in decades.

    It's a shame WotC and DnD have gone money-grab as a business model. At least Rings of Power was kind of a story-based endeavor rather than just exploiting the IP for money (though Chris Tolkien wouldn't agree).

  • ... than (A)D&D was more than 30 years ago. I live in Germany, where the RPG and RPG-publishing scene is and always has been one of the most diversified, especially when regarding the audience. With RPGers here the whole D&D-camp is usually regarded as tacky and backwards, sometimes even vis-a-vis such old-school classics as RuneQuest, Harnmaster or The Dark Eye. And it has been that way ever since I've been active in the broader German RPG scene in the late 80ies/early 90ies.

    I just got back into so

  • You'll get my subscription dollars for a limited-run series starring the 5-headed draconic goddess in all her glory.

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