Adventurers have Parties!

In my last installment, I discussed the design of my hero, Jon Warder. So far, so good, but...

Action movies typically focus on a single hero, or, in the case of a buddy picture, two. Dungeons and Dragons, being a social game, favors adventuring parties. So do I write an ensemble movie or do I drop the D&D convention?

Actually, I get to be a Libra again here and chart a course between the two. When ensemble television shows come to the big screen, they often keep the team but focus on the leader. The Captain (either one) in the Star Trek movies. Mal, in Serenity. Even the real D&D movie had a lead character and a bunch of companions.

Jon Warder is my lead, no question. But he won’t go into adventure alone. Which means I need to make some more characters. Some will no doubt arise in the writing process, but I want to have some idea where I’m going.

I’d like to tell you that I went to the D&D source material for inspiration, planning out my ideal D&D party. But I didn’t. The first thing I decided was that I wanted to accumulate characters through the film, rather than trying to introduce them all at once.

I figure I can introduce one more in the village where the movie begins and the image comes to mind of a musician in the tavern. In D&D, the bard class is the jack-of-all-trades – a little bit of magic, some fighting skills, and a lot of knowledge and lore. Seems useful to me. For one thing, it allows me to have the font of necessary knowledge available without a full-blown Gandalf clone. I picture a slender and elegant man with an easy smile.

I need at least two other party members, met after we leave the village. Since Jon’s past is outside the village, at least one will be someone he already knows. I consider the cliche of encountering someone surly and difficult who turns out to be on the good guy’s side after all. I’m picturing something a bit like meeting Little John for the first time.

So I have Jon Warder, a bard, and a big surly guy. And so far I haven’t actually tapped into any of the characters I’ve made for my own gaming experiences – and I’ve been gaming since the early 1980s. So for fun, I’m going to toss in my very first D&D character, whose name is Tatters.

But she has to make some changes for the movie. The original was a half-elven magic-user/thief with an enchanted talking dagger. The movie version is going to be simplified to the core concept: she’s a street thief. I want the characters – or at least their roles and abilities -- to be quickly understood by the audience. So Tatters will be human, non-magical, and dangerously sneaky.

So far, my D&D party is entirely human, three-quarters male, and has only limited magic. I like that (at least, I like the limited magic part) – but I think I might have the bard turn out to be the half-elf – it suits the little-bit-of-everything concept I have for him.

It’s a start. I'm still pondering whether I need a love interest and whether that role will default to Tatters. And I have no idea what I’m doing for a villain.

Yet.