Real quick, as a mental exercise: What Dungeons And Dragons class would John Wick be? The obvious instinct is fighter, on account of all the killin’, but we’re not sure that exactly lines up with Baba Yaga’s particular brand of acrobatic murder. Rogue’s not quite right either; sure, he gets the drop on people sometimes (and has a healthy appetite for gold), but Keanu Reeves’ taciturn death machine tends to be a lot more likely to get backstabbed than dish them out. Monk’s out because of the guns, cleric is just all kinds of wrong, and while ranger would line up with his affinity for dogs, it’s hard to imagine your standard Legolas type getting quite so up in the mix as JW does. Which leads us to ask: Is John Wick a wizard?
Anyway: All of that was preamble to news, announced earlier this evening via Variety, that John Wick scribe Derek Kolstad has been tapped to put together a pitch for a Dungeons & Dragons TV show. That’s in addition to the Dungeons & Dragons movie that Chris Pine is reportedly still attached to, and also gods know how many other efforts there have been over the years to transform the world’s most potent tabletop gaming brand into actual money on the large or small screens. (Looking at you, Jeremy Irons.)
Kolstad is best known for, well, John Wick: He worked on the screenplay for all three extant films, and is credited as a co-creator of the character himself. (He’s also currently writing for the upcoming Falcon And The Winter Soldier show.) Now, will he be able to overcome the basic void at the center of the vast majority of D&D adaptations—i.e., the fact that it’s a system for telling stories, and not a story in of itself? Who can say. But if we get a scene of a wizard dual-wanding his way through like 500 drow, double-tapping mind flayers with fireball spells, we’ll probably know who to thank.
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John Wick is clearly an Oath of Vengeance Paladin with the Gunner feat
There’s no way in hell John Wick is Lawful Good.
Definitely not Lawful Good, but I guess that depends on which God in the pantheon he serves. Chaotic neutral maybe? (I am taking this D&D Sorting Hat very seriously.)
I think Oath of Vengeance paladins are typically Lawful Neutral, and “Lawful” in the sense of “they play by their own rules but boy are they strict about them”.
Paladins haven’t had to be Lawful Good for two editions now.
Paladin is what I thought of, but i only ever saw the first John Wick and haven’t played D&D since 3rd edition (maybe 3.5).
I’d like to roll to save against ‘This is stupid and nobody needs it’ please
Well, it looks like someone failed his Saving Throw versus humbug.
Actually I selected “Is a grumpy asshole” off the Character Flaws table. The party doesn’t love it, but I’m very committed to the RP.
Mine is “Little sibling gets to play too”, which wasn’t great for D&D but got downright uncomfortable on my wedding night.
Art doesn’t need to be necessary.idk why people don’t get this.
“Art doesn’t need to be necessary.” – Paul W. S. Anderson
I mean, the problem with his Resi films wasn’t that they were unnecessary; it was that they were shit 😛
Fair enough.
Yeah. I love D&D but there is no reason to turn it into a show or movie. Like the whole point of RPGs is they are frameworks of world for players to tell their own stories interactively. Nothing in it lends itself to being a movie because most of it is derivative of literature and movies. The only experience would maybe be a legit adaption of some of the original Dragonlance stories(Chronicles and maybe tales). Or possible something based on a really out their D&D setting that was pretty original. Planescape, Spelljammer and Dark Sun come to mind.
Monk’s out because of the guns, cleric is just all kinds of wrong, and while ranger would line up with his affinity for dogs, it’s hard to imagine your standard Legolas type getting quite so up in the mix as JW does. Which leads us to ask: Is John Wick a wizard?Actually, 5e’s latest expansion Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything has a new feat called Gunner that allows you to gain proficiency with firearms, ignore the loading property, and allow you to shoot in melee without provoking disadvantage. So I’d say he’s some form of Ranger/Rogue Variant Human with the Gunner Feat.
Actually, NERD!
100% Monk: Gunner feat + either “Monk Weapons” class option from Unearthed Arcana or “Dedicated Weapon” from Tasha’s, you absolutely can treat guns as monk weapons, and there’s no way he would’ve survived the films without Slow Fall or Quickened Healing.
Is Assassin not still a class?
Assassin is a Rogue subclass in 5e.
God the whole “we’re adapting D&D!” thing is dumb. There’s a half dozen D&D settings to put a story in and hundreds and hundreds of novels set in them you could adapt, but no, it’s always just “Dungeons & Dragons” being adapted because the goddamn branding is better known.
In addition to being not-a-story, D&D has an issue of being not-a-world. There are multiple settings, and the popular ones are intentionally made to not have a strong narrative focus. They have a smörgåsbord of dozens of monocultural nations, intended to make it possible for players to pick the ones they like and ignore the rest. You feel like a sword and sandals campaign? Play in the sword and sandals nation, and ignore the annoying fact that their neighbors have had firearms for a century! The big settings like the Forgotten Realms are in no way coherent and sensible, by design.That’s an OK way to make a campaign setting. It’s not great, there’s a reason more modern games usually have a stronger point of view built in, but if you’re trying to be people’s first/only pen and paper RPG and immediately provide everything for everyone – as long as everything includes pretending to be a magical elf, anyhow – then sure. It’s not a good way to make a setting for … anything else, really. I guess odds are the show and movie will just go “there’ll be elf wizards and we’ll make up the rest from pure clichés as we go” like the previous attempts. I’d love to see something like an anthology of module adaptions (Ep1-2: Lost Mine of Phandelver! Ep3-6: Out of the Abyss! Ep7-10: Curse of Strahd!) with the same actors playing different characters in each module, or setting a show in one of the more thought out settings like Eberron. They wont happen because of a lack of budget and interest, but a nerd can dream.Also, John Wick is a gun kensei, clearly.
I haven’t played D&D since the early ‘80s and I remember it being very Tolkien/Game of Thrones-ish. I also remember the early ‘80s cartoon with the kids who get lost in a parallel D&D world (there were a lot of cartoons like that back then, for some reason).Anyway, if someone made a Star Frontiers show, I would watch the shit out of that
I’m in a similar boat, having moved away from D&D into other tabletop systems in the early ‘80s – started with “White Box” in 1975-76 and barely had any experience with anything after 1st ed. AD&D. There’ve been many different published campaign settings in the intervening decades, though, plus all the novel series and such. I’d have to assume that any show produced today would be tied to “entry level” 5th edition stuff, as Xerophyte describes, or else they’d be describing this as a “Forgotten Realms” or “Ravenloft” or whatever, show, instead of just “AD&D”. Most likely, they’ll just leave it all wide open for whatever scripts they can assemble and focus on stabby/’splody action.
Anthology style show is definitely the way to go, but go season by season. Doing short multi-episode arcs will be too confusing I feel. Each season is a campaign in a different setting.
And one season the setting is a map of the DM’s hometown with some mountains added. The story follows five serious, well-thought-out characters, each with a deep and emotional backstory, who all have to partner on their quest with Poo-Poo the Drunk Gnome Barbarian.
My favorite ever gag name was the Paladin “Toogo – of the Holy Order of Fries”.
Whatever class he is, those orcs will regret having killed his dire wolf familiar…
Thank god we don’t have smellovision, eh?
The accompanying image shows D&D 3.5 from 2003. Boy, I hope someone gets fired for that blunder.
I want a live action version of the 80’s cartoon series, but fate seems to decree that this isn’t possible.Life sucks!
This only exists to tantalize us with what could have been.
Dammit that is good.At the very least this can be unofficial end the tv series in which the kids did eventually get home.
holy fucking shit
Given the amount of insanely detailed but yet somehow not intrusive world-building that was present in just the first John Wick movie, this seems like a smart choice.
John Wick is clearly an urban-variant ranger with the two-blade fighting style.
John Wick is a 3.5 character made by a real munchkin player. He’s got like 3 different classes and some cheesy overpowers prestige class printed in some fly by night third party publisher D20 magazine that was never playtested.
My main frame of reference is the 1980s Marvel-produced Saturday morning show. I thought it was awesome when those characters were brought back for a Brazilian car commercial of all things, a few years ago. I wish that would be the focus for this show but I know it’s not going to be. Oh, well.