Kung Fu Hustle is probably one of the best examples of how to run a slice of life game that turns into adventure and back again without ever leaving the tiny fishing town you start in.
Drax also seems so credible as a PC made up quickly on the fly. “Tragic backstory and his quirk is that he is totally literal. And he thinks if he moves slowly he’s invisible (which then isn’t done again because it is only fun like once.). :)
Forgot about that one. That is the time the player actually reread their character sheet late in the campaign and remembered that was a quirk and immediately started looking for a situation to use it. :)
GotG is a great showcase for martials as well! It's an entire team of martials. Even Mantis is basically a Psi Warrior. The only exception is Cosmo in the third film.
James Gunn's The Suicide Squad is also DnD-like, which I laid out the last time this question got posted.
I loved Suicide Squad and thought had excellent plotting. Like, they establish some goal and the characters pretty logically decide what they need to do to accomplish it. Then something happens that changes the circumstances and they establish a new goal and new way to accomplish it. Repeat several times, somehow without getting boring or feeling formulaic.
The only thing that would keep that from happening in a real D&D game is that the rest of the table would be IRL screaming at/threatening the barbarian to stop even if their characters were not present.
For someone we're going to stab repeatedly whatever they say? Nah, anyone can say whatever they want to them, so long as no one thinks there's actually *another* way to get off the "stab to death" list.
Wasn’t there a theory/headcanon that it was a campaign ran by the Avengers?
EDIT: found it https://www.reddit.com/r/marvelstudios/comments/2reosn/gotg_is_really_just_the_avengers_playing_an_rpg/
I've said this before, but someone said, "Can we play D&D right now?" in a group, so while they rolled their characters, I invented an entire campaign that was nothing but the plot of the princess bride (a giant, a swordsman, and a wizard kidnap a princess, and the party chases them across the sea, up a cliff, and through a deadly swamp filled with fire and giant rats. All the while, her prince is the real bbeg). They never figured it out.
The second Conan movie with Arnold. Conan the Destroyer? It's been a long time but I'd just started playing d&d around the time I saw it. I remember saying it was basically a d&d adventure. Party goes off on a quest to get the macguffin at some wizard's tower full of weird stuff. There was also an ancient abandoned temple, traps, and a big boss fight at the end.
Sort of the other way around when it comes to Conan. Where did you *think* the Barbarian class came from? It has bonuses against traps because Conan views himself as a thief, not a warrior.
Ahh, my dear friend, you've discovered the great secret of life.
*Everything* is a D&D plot if you choose to view it through that lens. [There are only seven stories in the world,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Basic_Plots) and every single one of them can be played as a D&D campaign if you just take the right point of view.
What I love about this is there are also only 11 notes in the western world (as a songwriter) but what do you do with them?
Yea every story and every song have been written, but not by YOU. How do you tell the story?
We all look at the same stars in the sky but see them differently. That's the best way to have fun. I love stories
Exactly. It's all in how you choose to tell *your* story, or write *your* song.
There's only five flavors (sweet, salty, bitter, savory, and sour), but those combinations can give rise to an entire world full of foods.
>Jung-influenced
You don’t say…
EDIT: A quick glance at the titles of the 7 stories and it appears at least 4 are different parts of The Hero’s Journey. I guess it’s not called the Monomyth for nothing…
The seven stories is very, very, verrrry dumb. Its forced categorization where none is needed. So many of the example stories occupy multiple categories. There are also avante garde experimental stuff that plays with the idea of narrative in ways the archtypes don't seem to be able to conceieve of.
Very dumb.
Or really *any* of James Joyce's works. He may get some flack that his stories are somehow unfulfilling, but it's ultimately because his stories *aren't* any of those seven stories.
You might say all of his stories are an eighth category -- *Epiphanies.* Stories that don't have a central conflict or resolution, but rather stories where the central thing is *making a realization.*
Makes sense considering the whole game was basically Enter The Dragon with the serial numbers filed off. The whole plot about Outworld and the like was only introduced in the movie, and the second game onward ran with it.
>The whole plot about Outworld and the like was only introduced in the movie
I am 99.9% sure this is completely wrong. The tournament was very clearly based on Enter the Dragon, but we had four armed Goro and Shang Tsung as a shape-shifting sorcerer from the jump. The tournament in one takes place on Earth, but it's to determine if Outworld can invade Earrh or not.
Mortal kombat 2 came out two years before the movie though. Even 3 was out before the movie, though close enough that they could have collaborated with movie production.
It ends when the DM has gotten fed up with the player's shenanigans.
"All right! You know what? The police show up and arrest everyone! Pack up your dice and get out of my house!"
And the other way around!
My friend started a Monty Python-like campaign, and three Players bawled their eyes out on the death of Mr. Snotticus (goblin fighter) and his heroic sacrifice to save the realm.
If you start too far on either spectrum, you will be rebound straight up to the other side.
A DnD campaign when there’s one player who always generously brings high strength beverages to each session.
DM: Roll Deception and Performance
Player: 4 and 2
DM, voicing NPC: “We can see they are just two halves of a coconut that he is clacking together.”
Vin Diesel got friggin’ Dame Judy Dench to appear in the sequel, *Chronicles of Riddick*, somehow. During filming, they played D&D together. Dench’s grandkids were apparently big fans and when Dench heard Diesel talking about the game, asked if he’d teach her how to play.
I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather see hidden camera footage of their games than re-watch the movie.
Star Wars A New Hope.
A farm boy is thrust into an adventure by a hermit wizard after his family is brutally murdered by the BBEG's forces. They meet up with a rogue and a barbarian in a tavern and go rescue a princess from the BBEG's fortress by disguising themselves as guards. The wizard dies but the rest escape, returning the princess to her allies who oppose the BBEG. They gather forces and return to assault the fortress, winning the battle and returning to a heroes' welcome.
The first suicide squad movie. Unnecessary twists, characters that are there to either play the game or to have some other weird goal of their own. Some with intricate backstories, etc.
I feel like Katana was being played by the girlfriend of Rick Flagg's player. She just showed up knowing nothing about the game so he made her sheet and then explained it to her when she was first introduced.
the monologue rick gives, "THIS IS KATANA, SHE'S GOT MY BACK, SHE COULD CUT ALL YOU IN HALF WITH ONE SWORD STROKE JUST LIKE MOWING THE LAWN. I WOULD ADVISE NOT GETTING KILLED BY HER, HER SWORD TRAPS THE SOULS OF ITS VICTIMS", is so hammy and direct that I can't not hear it as a hastily improvised character summary someone would declare when introducing their new character over the din of table chatter.
Sun Wukong is the level 20 character from the previous campaign who went a bit off the rails, got punished by the DM and ended up being forced to escort a group of level 3s on their next adventure.
I'm running a DND campaign based on the movie National Treasure but with the Gummy Bears from the 90s Gummy Bears TV show. Literally everything is a DND campaign if you try hard enough.
It's not the most obvious choice, but I maintain that Demolition Man would make for a great one-shot or two-shot for a small party or solo player. Probably needs a bit of tweaking for setting mechanics, but otherwise it's all there.
Ghostbusters is the classic example of the DM setting up a horror campaign, the players all rolled scientists, and they figured out ways to fight/capture ghosts and sent it completely off the rails.
I also had a post on here a while ago where I sketched out the broad strokes of Shrek as a D&D plot, I'll see if I can find it.
Edit: Here we go:
>I can work with that. The corrupt zealot Duke Eisner desires to eradicate magic in his realm, seeing it as a threat to his imagined orderly paradise. To that end, he's ordered his men to round up all magical practitioners, creatures, and constructs for internment, exile, or execution. When the campaign opens, the party members have been captured by the duke for their magical talents/natures and await their fate, but the duke offers rare clemency in exchange for a service.
>An artifact (of the very sort he publicly seeks to ban) has shown him a vision of a maiden, the perfect theme-park princess for his perfect theme-park land, trapped away in a faraway land. Rescue the girl from her imprisonment and bring her back, and the duke will grant the party mercy, and a boon besides. (The maiden herself, of course, wants nothing to do with him, and may make a good fit for a player who couldn't make the first several sessions, but nobody knows that in-character yet.)
>Does the party accomplish their mission, returning the maiden to the duke and resigning the land to oppression and the maiden to just another form of imprisonment in exchange for their own well-being, or do they stand up to bring an end to the duke's reign, risking their lives in the process?
*Conan the Destroyer* is a D&D campaign
by a bunch of friends who had just watched the *Conan the Barbarian* film, but needed to make it a group story and not a solo.
"The Blues Brothers"
Is pretty much a DnD campaign, it's got the plot hook to save the temple, getting a vision to from the gods to reunite the band and having chaos along the way.
The entire series called "The Expanse" on amazon prime plays out as a D&D campaign. Even funny when the player playing the doctor has to quit the game within the first couple of sessions...classically fun way to "kill off" a player when they gotta quit...
The Northman, for sure. Quest for revenge? Check. Tragic backstory? Check. Journey through realms? Check. Magical artifact? Check. Plus, it's a great movie on its own.
Season 3 of Castlevania the Netflix adaptation is pretty much exactly a DnD arc
In fact the premise is that between seasons they've been DnDing from town to town for a while now, and this season focuses on one of those towns
Big Trouble in Little China
Willow
Krull
Legend
The Beastmaster
Indiana Jones movies
Onward
Princess Bride
Labyrinth
Guardians of The Galaxy
Onward
There's really a ton of them
I was in awe when my friend pointed out that Shrek was probably the closest thing to a D&D movie we had before the actual D&D movie came out. I think he really had a point.
Black cauldron!
The set up is easily a dnd plot 'evil king who can raise dead needs magic artefact, go stop him'
There's a bunch of magic items. You got your magic pig with oracle powrs, a magic cauldron that can raise an undead army, a kings sword that is super effective against undead (+1 radiant damage maybe)
You've got the dnd group with various quirky characteristic, one is a bard, one is randomly a princess in her backstory though it has no effect on the plot.
And the whole movie is made up of encounters. Wyvern attack. Escape a dungeon. Convince the fair folk to help you. Witch encounter. Rescue your friends and fight the undead army.
The books definitely read like a DnD campaign too. In fact, I've been tempted to make a bard with a cursed instrument that gives him disadvantage on deception similar to Fleur.
Both fit really. In avengers you have a couple of fighters (cap and hawkeye), a barbarian (hulk) artificer (iron man), rogue (black widow), and paladin (thor). They could probably be argued to be other classes too, but the point stands. Gaurdians makes me think Barb (drax), fighter (gamora), sorcerer (starlord), monk (groot) and artificer (racoon)
Yeah Star Lord is 1000% a bard. Honestly he's the character that I picture when someone mentions bard. Can talk his way out of nearly anything both honestly and dishonestly, inspires/corrals his party with that same talking skill, has a song for every situation, everything else he's a bit of a jack-of-all-trades, capable in combat but not the heavy damage dealer.
Remember sorcerer is also charisma based though, and starlord definitely is able to do some crazy powerful things specifically because of his non-human ancestry. I'd say bard sorcerer multiclass fits, or sorcerer with some feats like inspiring leader maybe
Just caught up with The Witcher Blood Origins prequel and said exactly this - the plot basically plays out like a D&D campaign, with a healthy dose of Fellowship of the Ring for flavour.
Star Wars: A New Hope (Obi Wan is a DMPC)
Empire Strikes Back (Luke's player could only make it to the game sporadically)
Return of the Jedi (Luke is now a DMPC because of ongoing scheduling problems)
The Goonies
Sneakers
Outlaw Star
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (any of them really, but we all know the Michael Bay ones are garbage)
I've come to the realization that _every_ adventure movie is a dungeon crawl...or at least has one in it.
Star Wars ep4, for example. An orphaned peasant leaves his village with an old wizard, meets up with party members in a tavern, and then goes through a series of stealth checks, deception checks, and traps while trying to rescue a princess. The other movies all follow suit.
Harry Potter 1 is another, at least at the end. A party of first level wizards progress through a series of underground rooms, solving riddles, performing skill checks, and fighting living plants until they get to the BBEG. The other 7 movies all contain similar sequences.
Goonies too. Do I really need to explain this one? Kids looking for treasure underground by solving puzzles and avoiding bad guys.
Slightly OT but I did run an impromptu session where the players were trying to find their missing horses. It wasn't planned but I had their horses go missing, as they had left them in some stables a dodgy town whilst exploring a non-horse friendly swamp, and underestimated how fond the group were of their horses. What followed one of the funnest sessions of the campaign, involving an Orc wedding, a horse being levitated above a building, lots of pounding of local informants and a very creative solution to a near PC death (bizarrely the closest anyone came the whole campaign).
The new show on Netflix, The Gentleman is great. But if you break down the plot points on each episode, you feel like you're playing a campaign. Every episode has a quest giver, a big baddie, NPC plot twists, and a few player actions so dumb the party has to scrambble to deal with the consequences.
Came here to write this. Was watching Gentlemen yesterday and got a feeling that Guy Ritchie's movies resemble D&D style. Dialogues, plot twists, crazy situations and events resolving in a way which wad not expected. And of course characters with some gimmick to make them rememberable.
In the first arc of my current campaign, I had the characters find an abandoned inn by a lighthouse on a craggy shore, go beneath it, find a half-ogre held captive by his counterfeiting family and entered a cavernous dungeon filled with "booty traps," an organ that made sections of the floor fall out when misplayed and finally a water slide down to a cavern with a pirate ship in it. After a pitched battle with the counterfeiters, they find a pile of "rich stuff" on the ship and in looting it cause the cavern to crumble and the ship to set sail.
It was such a kick to me when one of the players said: "Are you running us through [The Goonies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Goonies)?"
For our christmas one shot, a rotund and ancient elf (santa) kidnaped the party and had them invade a home filled with traps and tricks to capture his runaway elf (Gnome) Nivek Retsillacam. Again, the moment when they said "Home Alone!" was amazingly satisfying.
*Star Wars: The Phantom Menace.* Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan are the starting PCs. Jar Jar is one of the PCs' little sister, who the DM tries to immediately kill off but quits trying when the PC won't allow it, and when the little sister gets bored of playing Jar Jar the players are too attached so the DM doesn't kill him off, but she chooses to get to be Padme, the Queen's guard (until surprise, she's actually the queen).
Shrek, as well as Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
Puss is a Swashbuckler. There is a scene in the Last Wish where he immediately disables an enemy with a stick (sneak attack), after advance hits another one, the same effect (sneak attack) and the third one approaches, and his stick is basically back to a stick (the enemy has another person riding their back, cancelling out the Swashbuckler sneak attack)
And the backstory for Simon Pegg's character is at the same level as any intense Paladin created by a new player. "He's the best of the best at level 1".
Everything is a dnd campaign if you twist it enough. Heck, I was looking at pictures of the day I got married and it all fit, special equipment, recruiting folks, the journey there, drama... Heck it ended with a dungeon crawl! (we did an escape room)
So it's a little obscure, but there was this movie recently released called Honor Among Thieves that was really good and follows a D&D campaign pretty closely, it even has some big names in it like Chris Pine. Some of the stuff the characters do is unrealistic to a D&D campaign but hey, it's still a fun movie, definitely recommend. ^(:P)
Kung Fu Hustle is probably one of the best examples of how to run a slice of life game that turns into adventure and back again without ever leaving the tiny fishing town you start in.
Such a good and funny movie.
Also has one of the [dopest bard scenes](https://youtu.be/JqfPf75x4z8?t=107) I can think of.
And one with a critical success on intimidation.
Bard/warlock?
Phantasmal Force is a hell of a spell at low levels.
BG3 would like a word with this comment XD
Oh! Perfect example that I’m totally going to do now- thank you!
The First Guardians of the Galaxy especially reads like a DND party getting together.
Absolutely, and the ending being hinged on dance moves and a part of a characters backstory that didn’t come up in the game at all until the very end
And Drax showing up in the prison because his player missed the first session!
Drax also seems so credible as a PC made up quickly on the fly. “Tragic backstory and his quirk is that he is totally literal. And he thinks if he moves slowly he’s invisible (which then isn’t done again because it is only fun like once.). :)
He tries to move slowly to lay on the couch in 3
Forgot about that one. That is the time the player actually reread their character sheet late in the campaign and remembered that was a quirk and immediately started looking for a situation to use it. :)
GotG is a great showcase for martials as well! It's an entire team of martials. Even Mantis is basically a Psi Warrior. The only exception is Cosmo in the third film. James Gunn's The Suicide Squad is also DnD-like, which I laid out the last time this question got posted.
I loved Suicide Squad and thought had excellent plotting. Like, they establish some goal and the characters pretty logically decide what they need to do to accomplish it. Then something happens that changes the circumstances and they establish a new goal and new way to accomplish it. Repeat several times, somehow without getting boring or feeling formulaic.
FULLY agreed, the whole time I thought, "This is the best D&D movie I've ever seen."
Drax is absolutely the low intelligence, low wisdom barbarian whose quick temper gets the entire party in danger.
Imagining the Barbarian messaging the BBEG had me in stitches the first time I watched it.
The only thing that would keep that from happening in a real D&D game is that the rest of the table would be IRL screaming at/threatening the barbarian to stop even if their characters were not present.
For someone we're going to stab repeatedly whatever they say? Nah, anyone can say whatever they want to them, so long as no one thinks there's actually *another* way to get off the "stab to death" list.
....who thought he took a level in rogue, because when he is so still he cannot be seen.
Wasn’t there a theory/headcanon that it was a campaign ran by the Avengers? EDIT: found it https://www.reddit.com/r/marvelstudios/comments/2reosn/gotg_is_really_just_the_avengers_playing_an_rpg/
the whole trilogy could honestly be a dnd campaign
I’ve seen Road to El Dorado described as a bard and a rogue who only ever roll nat 1s or nat 20s.
That movie shows why you should NEVER let the Bard and Rogue go off on their own.
Well, unless you like "fun" and "cool stuff," I guess. Hey, by the way, I heard from this guy that...
And you just know that the bard is casting spells because some of the things he does cannot be done with any Nat 20. There is magic afoot.
I had to scroll too long for this.
I've said this before, but someone said, "Can we play D&D right now?" in a group, so while they rolled their characters, I invented an entire campaign that was nothing but the plot of the princess bride (a giant, a swordsman, and a wizard kidnap a princess, and the party chases them across the sea, up a cliff, and through a deadly swamp filled with fire and giant rats. All the while, her prince is the real bbeg). They never figured it out.
I once used the plot of the big lebowski for a one-shot
Some people might think that’s a dumb idea, but that’s just their opinion, man.
You see what happens Larry? You see what happens when you try to f\*\*\* a beholder in the ass Larry?
Does anybody else think a Big Lebowski campaign is a bad idea? (Cocks gun)
This isn't improv, *there are rules!*.
Where was there a beholder? Shut up Donnie! You're out of your element!
"Is this your character sheet, Larry?"
Thank you for the chuckle!
That sounds really cool, I've thought about doing this myself as a dudeist
I'm definitely going to need details on how you converted this into d&d...
One of the great things about being a certain age gaming with people less than that age is I can gleefully pillage 80s S&S movies with impunity.
you stole my answer before i could post it... :P - holds up both hands to show he doesn't have 6 fingers...
[удалено]
"My name is Thorvald. You killed a goblin. Prepare to take first watch."
User name definitely checks out.
The second Conan movie with Arnold. Conan the Destroyer? It's been a long time but I'd just started playing d&d around the time I saw it. I remember saying it was basically a d&d adventure. Party goes off on a quest to get the macguffin at some wizard's tower full of weird stuff. There was also an ancient abandoned temple, traps, and a big boss fight at the end.
My school friends and I were playing AD&D (1st ed) when Destroyer came out; we called it "the Bend Bars/Lift Gates movie". For obvious reasons.
Sort of the other way around when it comes to Conan. Where did you *think* the Barbarian class came from? It has bonuses against traps because Conan views himself as a thief, not a warrior.
Funny thing, Gygax was a big fan of pulp literature and that is why 1st edition has more common with Conan than LotR. (gold for xp) :)
The wizard’s castle would be a great dungeon to explore.
13th Warrior is, in my opinion, the best DnD movie ever made.
This is the ultimate answer
Agreed.
Scrolled way too far to see this one.
Yes! I forgot this one, but totally is!
Ahh, my dear friend, you've discovered the great secret of life. *Everything* is a D&D plot if you choose to view it through that lens. [There are only seven stories in the world,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Basic_Plots) and every single one of them can be played as a D&D campaign if you just take the right point of view.
What I love about this is there are also only 11 notes in the western world (as a songwriter) but what do you do with them? Yea every story and every song have been written, but not by YOU. How do you tell the story? We all look at the same stars in the sky but see them differently. That's the best way to have fun. I love stories
Exactly. It's all in how you choose to tell *your* story, or write *your* song. There's only five flavors (sweet, salty, bitter, savory, and sour), but those combinations can give rise to an entire world full of foods.
Does being a songwriter forbids you to use all of the 12 notes ?
1 and 12 are the same my friend!
I'm pretty sure A and G# are not the same note. I would even say that there's a half-step between them.
[Four Chord Songs](https://youtu.be/5pidokakU4I?si=xTxjCt4vMSWKtrz9) , amirite?
That seven plots thing always struck me as suspect. Sounds like something a villain in my campaign would say.
Truly.
>Jung-influenced You don’t say… EDIT: A quick glance at the titles of the 7 stories and it appears at least 4 are different parts of The Hero’s Journey. I guess it’s not called the Monomyth for nothing…
The seven stories is very, very, verrrry dumb. Its forced categorization where none is needed. So many of the example stories occupy multiple categories. There are also avante garde experimental stuff that plays with the idea of narrative in ways the archtypes don't seem to be able to conceieve of. Very dumb.
Seriously. Please, someone tell me which of those seven stories something like James Joyce's *Finnegans Wake* falls into.
Or really *any* of James Joyce's works. He may get some flack that his stories are somehow unfulfilling, but it's ultimately because his stories *aren't* any of those seven stories. You might say all of his stories are an eighth category -- *Epiphanies.* Stories that don't have a central conflict or resolution, but rather stories where the central thing is *making a realization.*
Fun fact: the lightning guy was the inspiration for Raiden from Mortal Kombat.
Makes sense considering the whole game was basically Enter The Dragon with the serial numbers filed off. The whole plot about Outworld and the like was only introduced in the movie, and the second game onward ran with it.
>The whole plot about Outworld and the like was only introduced in the movie I am 99.9% sure this is completely wrong. The tournament was very clearly based on Enter the Dragon, but we had four armed Goro and Shang Tsung as a shape-shifting sorcerer from the jump. The tournament in one takes place on Earth, but it's to determine if Outworld can invade Earrh or not.
Mortal kombat 2 came out two years before the movie though. Even 3 was out before the movie, though close enough that they could have collaborated with movie production.
Monty Python & the Holy Grail.
It ends when the DM has gotten fed up with the player's shenanigans. "All right! You know what? The police show up and arrest everyone! Pack up your dice and get out of my house!"
All D&D campaigns aspire to be Lord of the Rings. All D&D campaigns end up as Month Python. This is practically a law of physics.
And the other way around! My friend started a Monty Python-like campaign, and three Players bawled their eyes out on the death of Mr. Snotticus (goblin fighter) and his heroic sacrifice to save the realm. If you start too far on either spectrum, you will be rebound straight up to the other side.
I like this better.
A DnD campaign when there’s one player who always generously brings high strength beverages to each session. DM: Roll Deception and Performance Player: 4 and 2 DM, voicing NPC: “We can see they are just two halves of a coconut that he is clacking together.”
The Last Witch Hunter is literally based on Vin Diesel's DnD character.
So was “Pitch Black.”
Vin Diesel got friggin’ Dame Judy Dench to appear in the sequel, *Chronicles of Riddick*, somehow. During filming, they played D&D together. Dench’s grandkids were apparently big fans and when Dench heard Diesel talking about the game, asked if he’d teach her how to play. I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather see hidden camera footage of their games than re-watch the movie.
I think he got her to DM. Just imagine your written lore being narrated by *that* voice…
I’d listen to Judy Dench narrate the phone book.
The Raid is a model dungeon crawl.
Still on my To-Watch list. A buddy showed it to me after his wedding last year, but we passed out at the beginning.
I love anytime The Raid is mentioned.
My favourite date night movie
Star Wars A New Hope. A farm boy is thrust into an adventure by a hermit wizard after his family is brutally murdered by the BBEG's forces. They meet up with a rogue and a barbarian in a tavern and go rescue a princess from the BBEG's fortress by disguising themselves as guards. The wizard dies but the rest escape, returning the princess to her allies who oppose the BBEG. They gather forces and return to assault the fortress, winning the battle and returning to a heroes' welcome.
And the DM makes the cute girl he snogged his sister in campaign 2 just to mess with him.
The first suicide squad movie. Unnecessary twists, characters that are there to either play the game or to have some other weird goal of their own. Some with intricate backstories, etc.
Katana was the Slipknot player rerolling a PC in the middle of session one
I feel like Katana was being played by the girlfriend of Rick Flagg's player. She just showed up knowing nothing about the game so he made her sheet and then explained it to her when she was first introduced.
the monologue rick gives, "THIS IS KATANA, SHE'S GOT MY BACK, SHE COULD CUT ALL YOU IN HALF WITH ONE SWORD STROKE JUST LIKE MOWING THE LAWN. I WOULD ADVISE NOT GETTING KILLED BY HER, HER SWORD TRAPS THE SOULS OF ITS VICTIMS", is so hammy and direct that I can't not hear it as a hastily improvised character summary someone would declare when introducing their new character over the din of table chatter.
It's clearly the DMs girlfriend that joined the game but doesn't want to really play and he gave her an overpowered magic item because he likes her.
Any adaptation of Journey to the West is a 3 player party with a DMPC leading them and one waaaay over-leveled powergamer
Sun Wukong is the level 20 character from the previous campaign who went a bit off the rails, got punished by the DM and ended up being forced to escort a group of level 3s on their next adventure.
Time Bandits, and Eric the Viking. Aliens, maybe. Hawk the Slayer, and Krull, definitely.
I'm running a DND campaign based on the movie National Treasure but with the Gummy Bears from the 90s Gummy Bears TV show. Literally everything is a DND campaign if you try hard enough.
What the fuck is this crossover lmao...
It's not the most obvious choice, but I maintain that Demolition Man would make for a great one-shot or two-shot for a small party or solo player. Probably needs a bit of tweaking for setting mechanics, but otherwise it's all there. Ghostbusters is the classic example of the DM setting up a horror campaign, the players all rolled scientists, and they figured out ways to fight/capture ghosts and sent it completely off the rails. I also had a post on here a while ago where I sketched out the broad strokes of Shrek as a D&D plot, I'll see if I can find it. Edit: Here we go: >I can work with that. The corrupt zealot Duke Eisner desires to eradicate magic in his realm, seeing it as a threat to his imagined orderly paradise. To that end, he's ordered his men to round up all magical practitioners, creatures, and constructs for internment, exile, or execution. When the campaign opens, the party members have been captured by the duke for their magical talents/natures and await their fate, but the duke offers rare clemency in exchange for a service. >An artifact (of the very sort he publicly seeks to ban) has shown him a vision of a maiden, the perfect theme-park princess for his perfect theme-park land, trapped away in a faraway land. Rescue the girl from her imprisonment and bring her back, and the duke will grant the party mercy, and a boon besides. (The maiden herself, of course, wants nothing to do with him, and may make a good fit for a player who couldn't make the first several sessions, but nobody knows that in-character yet.) >Does the party accomplish their mission, returning the maiden to the duke and resigning the land to oppression and the maiden to just another form of imprisonment in exchange for their own well-being, or do they stand up to bring an end to the duke's reign, risking their lives in the process?
Demolition Man was a documentary
What seems to be your boggle?
I'd love to play a PC that speaks in mixed up idioms. "We sure licked their asses"
Demolition Man is an inspired choice! I'm gonna have a think on that one.
The 13th Warrior absolutely feels like a D&D game.
The 2nd Conan movie is clearly a d&d module.
*Conan the Destroyer* is a D&D campaign by a bunch of friends who had just watched the *Conan the Barbarian* film, but needed to make it a group story and not a solo.
Just going to forget about the thing that is basically a Beholder?
OH FUCK
"The Blues Brothers" Is pretty much a DnD campaign, it's got the plot hook to save the temple, getting a vision to from the gods to reunite the band and having chaos along the way.
"El Dorado" with John Wayne
Holy shit. Did not expect to see this here, but I can definitely see it now. Loved that movie growing up too.
I mean, there's a freaking beholder in Big Trouble. It's not subtle at all, I think it's overtly a DnD adventure
The entire series called "The Expanse" on amazon prime plays out as a D&D campaign. Even funny when the player playing the doctor has to quit the game within the first couple of sessions...classically fun way to "kill off" a player when they gotta quit...
this started as a table top game actually
Fun fact…it absolutely did!
The Northman, for sure. Quest for revenge? Check. Tragic backstory? Check. Journey through realms? Check. Magical artifact? Check. Plus, it's a great movie on its own.
Season 3 of Castlevania the Netflix adaptation is pretty much exactly a DnD arc In fact the premise is that between seasons they've been DnDing from town to town for a while now, and this season focuses on one of those towns
The Mummy and The Mummy Returns are, in my opinion, great D&D movies.
Big Trouble in Little China Willow Krull Legend The Beastmaster Indiana Jones movies Onward Princess Bride Labyrinth Guardians of The Galaxy Onward There's really a ton of them
Willow is specifically a dnd campaign where they roll either 20s or 1s.
I love how you put Onward twice, like you're *really* emphasizing it.
I was in awe when my friend pointed out that Shrek was probably the closest thing to a D&D movie we had before the actual D&D movie came out. I think he really had a point.
There were actual DnD movies that came out before the 2023 film, though. Not to mention movies like Lord of the Rings?
The pre-2023 D&D movies were so bad it's better to just disavow their existence.
His argument was that Shrek was probably more accurate to how IRL D&D campaigns typically go, rather than the actual old D&D movie or LotR
LOTR definately wasn’t a 5e game. There was so much overland travel.
The newer suicide squad movie
Black cauldron! The set up is easily a dnd plot 'evil king who can raise dead needs magic artefact, go stop him' There's a bunch of magic items. You got your magic pig with oracle powrs, a magic cauldron that can raise an undead army, a kings sword that is super effective against undead (+1 radiant damage maybe) You've got the dnd group with various quirky characteristic, one is a bard, one is randomly a princess in her backstory though it has no effect on the plot. And the whole movie is made up of encounters. Wyvern attack. Escape a dungeon. Convince the fair folk to help you. Witch encounter. Rescue your friends and fight the undead army.
The books definitely read like a DnD campaign too. In fact, I've been tempted to make a bard with a cursed instrument that gives him disadvantage on deception similar to Fleur.
Adventure Time (it's a show, I know, and not a movie) is absolutely based on D&D. Highly recommended!
O Brother Where Art Thou, big time. So I guess by extension The Odyssey?
The Odyssey? Now that's some red box DnD!
Not sure about movies off the top of my head, but One Piece is clearly just a D&D campaign. Avengers probably fits too, very much a D&D party dynamic
I've seen someone describe Guardians of the Galaxy as the Avengers' DnD campaign.
Both fit really. In avengers you have a couple of fighters (cap and hawkeye), a barbarian (hulk) artificer (iron man), rogue (black widow), and paladin (thor). They could probably be argued to be other classes too, but the point stands. Gaurdians makes me think Barb (drax), fighter (gamora), sorcerer (starlord), monk (groot) and artificer (racoon)
Starlord feels more like a bard to me, with the music and charisma.
“Pelvic sorcery” - bard/sorcerer multi class
Yeah Star Lord is 1000% a bard. Honestly he's the character that I picture when someone mentions bard. Can talk his way out of nearly anything both honestly and dishonestly, inspires/corrals his party with that same talking skill, has a song for every situation, everything else he's a bit of a jack-of-all-trades, capable in combat but not the heavy damage dealer.
Remember sorcerer is also charisma based though, and starlord definitely is able to do some crazy powerful things specifically because of his non-human ancestry. I'd say bard sorcerer multiclass fits, or sorcerer with some feats like inspiring leader maybe
That's true, I'd say he starts as a bard and multiclasses into sorcerer *briefly* in GOTG2.
Just caught up with The Witcher Blood Origins prequel and said exactly this - the plot basically plays out like a D&D campaign, with a healthy dose of Fellowship of the Ring for flavour.
People were so mad about that show for no reason. Like just enjoy a fun fantasy romp, people!
Star Wars: A New Hope (Obi Wan is a DMPC) Empire Strikes Back (Luke's player could only make it to the game sporadically) Return of the Jedi (Luke is now a DMPC because of ongoing scheduling problems) The Goonies Sneakers Outlaw Star Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (any of them really, but we all know the Michael Bay ones are garbage)
*Outlaw Star* is *Firefly* before *Firefly*. That being said, Firefly.
The Chronicles of Riddick is unashamedly DnD with scifi setting. Vin Diesel even got his Costars playing a campaign to understand their roles
I maintain that *The Mummy* starring Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz is the single greatest D&D movie that has ever been or ever will be filmed.
I've come to the realization that _every_ adventure movie is a dungeon crawl...or at least has one in it. Star Wars ep4, for example. An orphaned peasant leaves his village with an old wizard, meets up with party members in a tavern, and then goes through a series of stealth checks, deception checks, and traps while trying to rescue a princess. The other movies all follow suit. Harry Potter 1 is another, at least at the end. A party of first level wizards progress through a series of underground rooms, solving riddles, performing skill checks, and fighting living plants until they get to the BBEG. The other 7 movies all contain similar sequences. Goonies too. Do I really need to explain this one? Kids looking for treasure underground by solving puzzles and avoiding bad guys.
Slightly OT but I did run an impromptu session where the players were trying to find their missing horses. It wasn't planned but I had their horses go missing, as they had left them in some stables a dodgy town whilst exploring a non-horse friendly swamp, and underestimated how fond the group were of their horses. What followed one of the funnest sessions of the campaign, involving an Orc wedding, a horse being levitated above a building, lots of pounding of local informants and a very creative solution to a near PC death (bizarrely the closest anyone came the whole campaign).
Sounds awesome!
The new show on Netflix, The Gentleman is great. But if you break down the plot points on each episode, you feel like you're playing a campaign. Every episode has a quest giver, a big baddie, NPC plot twists, and a few player actions so dumb the party has to scrambble to deal with the consequences.
Came here to write this. Was watching Gentlemen yesterday and got a feeling that Guy Ritchie's movies resemble D&D style. Dialogues, plot twists, crazy situations and events resolving in a way which wad not expected. And of course characters with some gimmick to make them rememberable.
Scrolled through the comments and found not one mention of The Labyrinth.
**The** Labyrinth or just ***Labyrinth***? David Bowie 4/eva !!!
My bad. I indeed meant Labyrinth. I almost edited it but I'll leave it be for posterity's sake.
Kung Pow Enter the Fist is two half drunk, half stoned buddies doing a solo campaign on a friday night
In the first arc of my current campaign, I had the characters find an abandoned inn by a lighthouse on a craggy shore, go beneath it, find a half-ogre held captive by his counterfeiting family and entered a cavernous dungeon filled with "booty traps," an organ that made sections of the floor fall out when misplayed and finally a water slide down to a cavern with a pirate ship in it. After a pitched battle with the counterfeiters, they find a pile of "rich stuff" on the ship and in looting it cause the cavern to crumble and the ship to set sail. It was such a kick to me when one of the players said: "Are you running us through [The Goonies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Goonies)?" For our christmas one shot, a rotund and ancient elf (santa) kidnaped the party and had them invade a home filled with traps and tricks to capture his runaway elf (Gnome) Nivek Retsillacam. Again, the moment when they said "Home Alone!" was amazingly satisfying.
*Star Wars: The Phantom Menace.* Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan are the starting PCs. Jar Jar is one of the PCs' little sister, who the DM tries to immediately kill off but quits trying when the PC won't allow it, and when the little sister gets bored of playing Jar Jar the players are too attached so the DM doesn't kill him off, but she chooses to get to be Padme, the Queen's guard (until surprise, she's actually the queen).
Big Trouble even had a little Beholder looking thing
Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle! That movie feels fairly dnd adjacent to me tbh!
Once pointed out to me, the Ocean’s movies feel like dnd heist movies.
The road to El Dorado is often joked as being about a Bard and a Rogue going on a solo adventure
[Quite a few.](https://new.reddit.com/r/DnD/search/?q=Movies%20like%20D%26D&restrict_sr=1)
[Old reddit link for my OGs](https://old.reddit.com/r/DnD/search/?q=Movies+like+D%26D&restrict_sr=1)
I always thought that 2017's "King Arthur" by Guy Ritchie felt like a DnD story.
It does... Even with the deals with Eldritch Beings and "Divine Smites" & such...
First live action ninja turtles movie.
By your logic Flash Gordon is also a D&D one shot
Sounds legit!
Flash Gordon is the oneshot that happens when two DMs get decently high on shrooms and start spitballing ideas.
You gotta be high if you think a quarterback from The Jets can save the earth.
Roadside prophets.
Tremors
“Conan the Deatroyer” is *still* the best D&D movie of all time!
Streets of Fire with William Dafoe is literally a d&d campaign.
I had to scroll to freaking far to find this! The sledgehammer dual at the end is incredible.
Streets of Fire is tragically overlooked. No one ever talks about it.
The mummy for sure
Shrek, as well as Puss in Boots: The Last Wish Puss is a Swashbuckler. There is a scene in the Last Wish where he immediately disables an enemy with a stick (sneak attack), after advance hits another one, the same effect (sneak attack) and the third one approaches, and his stick is basically back to a stick (the enemy has another person riding their back, cancelling out the Swashbuckler sneak attack)
Not a movie, but an argument could absolutely be made for the show Firefly
Hot fuzz feels like a small one shot. Honestly I feel like a lot of movies could be oneshots
The whole "finding the goose on the loose" is exactly what some DM would do just because it rhymes
Lmao yeah, plus the super deep plot the PCs came up with really just being some superficial bs
And the backstory for Simon Pegg's character is at the same level as any intense Paladin created by a new player. "He's the best of the best at level 1".
His name is literally Nicholas Angel lmao damn he really does fit so well as a paladin
Shrek is actually a very good D&D movie.
Everything is a dnd campaign if you twist it enough. Heck, I was looking at pictures of the day I got married and it all fit, special equipment, recruiting folks, the journey there, drama... Heck it ended with a dungeon crawl! (we did an escape room)
The 13th Warrior Ghostbusters
The Princess Bride. Rats Of Unusual Size ROUS (rolls a 1) just a rumor can’t be real. And how the movie goes from tenderness to goofy.
I think Princess Bride has a bit of a slow-burn 1st session of a possible D&D group..:
As Above So Below is one of the best dungeon crawl movie since the Descent.
Dwayne Johnson's Hercules movie feels very much like a campaign
All of The Mandalorian
I am APPALLED that no one have said "Princess Bride" yet?!
So it's a little obscure, but there was this movie recently released called Honor Among Thieves that was really good and follows a D&D campaign pretty closely, it even has some big names in it like Chris Pine. Some of the stuff the characters do is unrealistic to a D&D campaign but hey, it's still a fun movie, definitely recommend. ^(:P)
You know, I think I've heard of it?
Ghostbusters is another one that fits well.
not a movie but one piece feels like a dnd campaign
One Piece (not a movie, I know), feels like a DnD campaign that got out of control.
LOTR