[Keyframe]

Eons ago, when I was in TV/movies business, I spoke with a prominent Forgotten Realms book author (if not _the_ author) about a certain book series he wrote that I thought it would make a fantastic TV series (in a world before netflix had their own production) and he nodded in agreement. I said let's make it it happen, let's warm up parties on both ends (I'm on production side, he would be on property side).. basically cold shower was that, hiw he told me, they (writers) were hired to write pieces for Hasbro and Hasbro didn't want to let go of anything (as in control) nor would it do anything on their own.

So much potential, such a large world, and nothing. Blizzard spun up large business around basically 1% of what they're sitting on top off. Toys can be their sideshow. Alas..

[faitswulff]

Was it R.A. Salvatore? I would love to watch Drizzt Do'Urden on the big screen.

[yurishimo]

I think it has to be. Nothing else makes sense. On the bright side, Brandon Sanderson is moving full steam ahead growing his brands into fully fledged productions. He has been a huge help in bringing Wheel of Time season 2 back in line for what fans want, and he's using that experience to begin re-writing some of his series' into TV scripts. While the franchises of our youth might be approaching the EoL, the future still looks bright for epic fantasy fans!

[bitexploder]

Ed Greenwood was also quite popular. And a couple other authors wrote a number of pieces for the Forgotten Realms series.

[Keyframe]

Yeah, it was Salvatore.

[Eumenes]

aw, you beat me to typing this out. I've only read them once so I suspect a massive wave of nostalgia.

[corethree]

There's valid reasoning why a company wouldn't let another company make a movie or TV series. It cheapens the IP if the movie/series goes bad.

It's hard to describe the effect. Essentially this is what happened with LOTR.

Also take for instance the recent D&D movie which was just ok/slightly good. The movie cheapens the D&D IP, while something like Baldurs Gate builds on it.

Maybe from a business perspective it's the most profitable move but for the original subject the IP was centered around, whether it was books, games loses the charm if the movie sucks and Hollywood churns out shit movies for a quick buck really fast.

It's not always bad though. While Marvel did well, DC did not.

It's weirdly irrational but that's just how people behave.

[sunshowers]

Honor Among Thieves wasn't quite the all-time great that Baldur's Gate 3 was, but I thought it was pretty fun and enjoyable.

I think the other D&D game that came out recently (Dark Alliance) is probably a better example of devaluing the brand.

[corethree]

Honor among thieves made the D&D lore appear generic. It wasn't a bad movie but it didn't utilize D&D to the extent it should have been utilized. It could have been just as good if it was a normal fantasy movie without the D&D IP. There's great depth in the D&D world and I would say much more complex and imaginative than LOTR.

Only the D&D universe allows for games like the BG series or Torment. It's all about the lore.

Let's make no mistake, D&D is all about the lore. The RPG mechanics are pretty generic. You have thousands of cookie cutter rpgs out there (especially jrpgs) with complex and interesting game play mechanics that are largely forgettable. D&D is still relevant not because of the game play mechanics, but because of the lore. And this lore was not really used very well in Honor among thieves.

Maybe you're right though. The D&D universe is specifically designed to support complex narratives and generic ones as well. Though for honor among thieves with the D&D name featured so prominently in the title I'm sure most people unfamiliar with D&D walked away thinking that D&D was some generic fantasy universe. D&D Lore is better, deeper and more complex than GOT or LOTR by a huge margin. It's barely comparable it's like comparing GOT with the Harry Potter universe.

[sunshowers]

I agree with D&D having a richer lore (and as someone who bounced off of tabletop play, though that's more likely the groups I was playing with, I love that BG3 exists and I can sink deep into it).

I think the thing I enjoyed the most about Honor Among Thieves was how the different characters were manifestations of player archetypes. You have the master planner, the strong and silent, the high-level lawful good guest player who the DM sets up an extra-hard challenge for, and so on.

[Keyframe]

You're right, and they would be right in thinking that way too. Nothing wrong with that, of course. Thing was that they weren't even thinking of that direction, at all - internal, external, partnership, nothing; Dead end, and authors were just guns for hire, zero input on that. It wasn't their property anymore. I wasn't brazen enough to offer talks towards the dark elf immediately. Idea, which to be honest lingered for maybe a month before initial contact was shot down immediately, was to start with something smaller to test the (production and market) waters first like Cleric Quintet which could work but it could also open the forgotten realms brand into the TV world. Anyways, nice remembering this past life and an anecdote.

[red-iron-pine]

> There's valid reasoning why a company wouldn't let another company make a movie or TV series. It cheapens the IP if the movie/series goes bad.

Season 8 of Game of Thrones.

The spin off was alright but I didn't really care enough to keep it up, and I get a lot of people didn't. LOTR comes to mind too, ditto for a lot of the "slop" that Disney has been pushing for Star Wars.

There is a lot more stuff out there, and most of it isn't great, so Ima tune it out until the test of time determines if it's worth it.