July 22, 2008 | David

As I was planning the GOLD shoot, it quickly became apparent that I had to create a fictional RPG for the characters to play.

Of course, we could have used an existing RPG, but that brought on a lot of complications. For one, there’s always the copyright issue. My favorite game, the game of my youth, is and was Dungeons and Dragons. Thing is, because D&D is the biggest and most popular of the fantasy RPGs, the copyright issue is the thorniest. And, when I realized that 4th edition would drop just before we began shooting GOLD, it occurred to me that even if I was able to convince WOC’s lawyers to let me use the D&D name (Wizards of the Coast is the current owner of the Dungeons & Dragons brand), I’d have to delay production until I could read and digest all of 4th Ed. and incorporate those new rules into the script.

Creating my own fantasy RPG was a much easier option. It allowed me to tell the story without violating any rules which were beyond my control, and it allowed me to praise and/or criticize the fictional game without worrying about who I might be hurting (or who might decide to sue me ;-). Thus, Goblins and Gold was formed. As you watch the series, you’ll see that G&G shares a lot of characteristics with early editions of D&D and Palladium Fantasy Role Playing. I borrowed heavily from those old systems as I wrote GOLD—those were the games I spent the bulk of my youth playing. Frankly, I still believe 2nd Ed. Dungeons and Dragons is the most playable of all fantasy RPGs, past and present. If you wanna know details of how Goblins and Gold works, pick up an old 2nd Ed. D&D book—that’s where my RPG heart lives.

So, do you need to know the rules of Goblins and Gold (or 2nd Ed. D&D) to follow the series? Absolutely not. I don’t even know all the rules. Just know that G&G is a fantasy RPG with its roots in the grand old traditions of D&D and D20. It’ll help if you know that Elves have pointy ears and Dwarves have bushy beards. And that a beautiful set of dice are the strong right arm of any self-respecting role player. But, honestly, if you know anything about fantasy or gaming or know anyone who does or, frankly, if you’ve ever seen an advertisement for D&D or WOW or EQ or MERP or any of the Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter movies, you’ll get the idea.

July 22, 2008 | David

Back in the day, my players used to try to throw CE characters into a party. The new Batman movie shows why that can't work.

Chaotic Evil, or even (to some extent) Chaotic Neutral, characters have always been a pain in this Dungeon Master’s ass. Inevitably, some jackass wants to play a priest taking advantage of the power of a Chaotic Evil god, or a thief who is the embodiment of chaotic neutral selfishness. As a DM, I often tried to persuade a player away from the latter course, and always forbade the former. While some DMs might disagree, I find that Chaotic characters, unless they are good (and especially if they are evil) are simply too hard to motivate and build story around in a party adventure context. CE characters are obviously the worst - not only are they uncontrollable, they are outright destructive by nature.

I think the Joker, as written by Chris Nolan and portrayed by the late Heath Ledger in the new Batman movie is a strong example of what a Chaotic Evil character must be, in order to be true to the declared alignment. From the first moments of the movie (I won’t give away any spoilers here, don’t worry), it is clear that the Joker cannot operate inside a party or group of any kind, much less be guided through the story of an adventure. Motivation for such a character is, again by definition, beyond logic. When a character operates outside the bounds of ethics (which even LE characters have) or morality, embracing only chaos and destruction, it is impossible for that character to operate in a group, or follow through an adventure. Therefore, I never allowed such a character in my parties. It’s not just the new Batman movie which portrays the Joker in this light, BTW—The Dark Knight is a just a very topical and popular example. All the best Joker stories—The Killing Joke, Arkham Asylum, etc.—show the Joker in this light.

4th edition Dungeons and Dragons comes complete with a new alignment system. I understand where they were going with this, and I find the idea of “unaligned” interesting. I’m not certain yet that I like it. We’ll see. But I’ll still refuse to allow CE characters in my parties.

Oh—and, in case you didn’t guess, I loved The Dark Knight. You should go see it. 

July 18, 2008 | David

A website. A trailer. A bunch of D20s. A couple dozen people pulling together to make a web series. How'd we get here again?

Four years ago, I decided to write a short screenplay. The screenwriting impulse was pretty straightforward: I’d gone to college for a few years to be a writer (and a physicist - long story) before switching schools and getting a BFA in acting. I moved to Los Angeles and, having trouble finding acting work, I decided I’d create my own. The result was a fifteen page short film about Dungeons & Dragons at the Olympics called GOLD. I know, awesome, right?

Thing is, it’s expensive to rent a stadium and hire ten thousand extras. And I had trouble getting hold of Ahmad Rashad and Bob Costas (who I’d written as my co-commentators). And, in the end, it just wasn’t the right time. I didn’t write a script I could actually shoot. (Plus, as my first finished script, it frankly wasn’t very good).

In late 2007, the time was right. Shannon and I had just closed Lucid by Proxy’s production of Rick Robinson’s Multiverse, which had been a great success. Earlier in the year I had done a short film with Kyle Dickinson and Nolan Wang (I saved the World from Global Warming, and had met a bunch of fantastically talented folks. And Clark and Michael had proved to me that long-form web series could be both popular and high quality. With Shan’s encouragement, I cracked open that old short film script and converted it into a web series about professional role playing gamers.

In the following months, Andrew, John, Rich, Niall, Rick, Kyle, Nolan, Chad and of course Shannon helped me mold the series into something shoot-able. With John’s help, I decided to transform my originally planned ten fifteen minute episodes to two seasons of six episodes, each eight to ten minutes long. Andrew provided a draft script for a short series prologue, which would lay the groundwork for the series and provide some context for viewers who might not already be role playing gamers, as well as give us an opportunity to shoot a test episode before we committed to the full first season, just to make certain we could actually pull it off.

So, we began to shoot that Prologue. Some of that footage is what makes up the teaser trailer currently showing on the site. We were all excited about the footage we got, and launched into planning the full first season. In the middle of planning, we learned that three films (shorts and features) created by members of our production team had gotten into the 2008 Comic Con film festival—basically the entire production team would be presenting work in front of what essentially was GOLD’s target audience.

Under the original plan, the website and all you see here would not have been born until fall of this year. But in light of our Comic Con good fortune, we needed to get something up, and fast. And that’s how we got here: website, trailer, and all. So many thanks to everyone who has worked, is working and has pledged to work on GOLD with me. You guys are amazing. It’s going to be an exciting summer and fall. The time is right, and this is going to be awesome.

- David