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Post by geneweigel on Jul 17, 2016 15:01:31 GMT -5
If you haven't seen this you've got to check it out. D&D references galore. Set in 1983.
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Post by Scott on Jul 17, 2016 17:07:19 GMT -5
I'm tempted every time I login to Netflix. Might just have to watch It now.
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Post by geneweigel on Jul 17, 2016 17:22:49 GMT -5
Its like an homage to the early 80's but mostly an homage to Stephen King stories without the Stephen King.
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Post by Scott on Jul 17, 2016 22:34:45 GMT -5
I follow Stephen King on Twitter He just recommended it.
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Post by geneweigel on Jul 18, 2016 7:45:04 GMT -5
SPOILER but just talking about the D&D tangentially.
Its fairly accurate for a set piece, I remember my little brother having D&D games like that (before Mentzer basic came out) with his friends but I was never involved because their style was too kiddy (and his 11 and 12 year old friends didn't like me because I smoked. I was 14-15 around then.).
When my brother sat in, with me as DM, it was like he was the kid at the table so he had to be completely air tight "Gary Gygax Advanced" knowledgeable or else the others would burn him.
1983 and 1984 were the years that I had the largest sessions.
1984 was that apex 50 player session most of which were girls who convened to see my house guest, who was a distant cousin that looked like a male model that came to play D&D with me for the week, which in turn made the other half come running from the hills when they heard that I had played a game the night before with all these girls. Everyone enjoyed that session but I was disappointed that no one would listen to the caller, something which we didn't regularly use, as the usual players were all DMs who would be cooperative the "caller" was whoever was most clear. So the people playing extremely good (finding secret doors, going the trap-free direction, etc.) were getting dragged along with the mob.
I used to play with many people way over 40 in the early 80's then once the D&D fad was over only the hardcore peers who were teenagers back then continued.
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Post by GRWelsh on Jul 18, 2016 9:14:43 GMT -5
I can't even imagine 50 players! How did you do it? I think the biggest game I've ever been in had about 10 players. The most I DMed at one time for was probably six players.
This just reminded me, though, of the "D&D fad" of the early 80's with a lot of players -- who weren't really into it but wanted to be part of the fad -- like you describe, tangentially moving through games. That was an odd period when "everybody" was playing D&D or at least willing to try it. But that was when I started, so I had nothing to compare it to. It made for some odd games, because a lot of these players just didn't get it and there was a lot of derailing... players getting bored and attacking each other or just causing chaos or being disruptive, that sort of thing. In retrospect that all seems so annoying.
"I'm not really into this but I'll gladly roll up an assassin and join your game and pass you notes about how I plan to assassinate the other player characters."
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Post by geneweigel on Jul 18, 2016 11:08:16 GMT -5
I did a character purge in the mid-90's of all the people's character sheets that wouldn't be likely to play anymore because those who continued to play usually brought their own shit. My friend Henry isn't allowed to have toys and games in his house. So I had to hold on to his shit for years until my wife said you can have your shit but nobody else's shit.
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foster1941
Warlock
Duke of California, Earl of Los Angeles, Knight Bachelor
Posts: 475
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Post by foster1941 on Jul 18, 2016 11:46:36 GMT -5
I haven't seen this yet because we lost access to our Netflix account (we were using my fiancee's brother's login and he stopped paying his bill, and we don't want to take on any extra expenses until after the wedding) but I want to - I was already interested in it even before knowing it was full of D&D stuff.
I started playing near the tail end of the fad period so I didn't have any of those massive 20+ person sessions - there was a time, in 6th grade (1986), when seemingly almost every kid in school had me roll up a character with them, and there were hazy plans for some sort of huge lunchroom game, but it never materialized and most of those people never played (at least with me). The largest games I either played in or ran had about a dozen players, and those were usually pretty bad (on both sides). I've successfully run games with 8 or 9 players. We had a lot of 3 player games in the late 80s, which always felt like too few, so we were always scrambling to find another 1-2 players who were actually good and would stick around. Moving into the 90s we stabilized with a group 5-7 players (5 regulars + 2 occasionals), which felt like a sweet spot.
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Post by GRWelsh on Jul 18, 2016 12:32:29 GMT -5
For me 4-6 players is about perfect, anything up to about 9 still works well with the right mindset.
But 50? Is that Gene's D&D game or is the Great Gatsby throwing another party on Long Island?
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Post by geneweigel on Jul 18, 2016 13:13:59 GMT -5
It was crazy that no one was counting until the game started and I had to move from the kitchen to the "Tea Room" and open up the giant tables that a carpenter had made for an outdoor tent party and "restart" with all the newcomers it was total chaos. I have no photos of the game but here is a visual of the mania of where this took place. These are photos of the "Tea Room" from 1983 and 1984 Thanksgivings: setting up the Christmas tree before the dinner in 1984 thats a "Mob Rules Black Sabbath" shirt... EVIL!!! and this is just prior to the 1985 dinner thats Taylor on the right and me on the left. The two in the middle were some "fake friends" of the time.
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GT
Wizard
Duke of Indiana, Knight Commander
Posts: 2,032
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Post by GT on Jul 26, 2016 6:15:06 GMT -5
I loved the show--a bit of a pastiche of (old) Steven Spielberg, John Carpenter and John Hughes all rolled into one. A second series is already ordered... What gets me is how many of the "kids" at Purdue love it too!
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Post by geneweigel on Jul 26, 2016 11:47:47 GMT -5
I loved the show--a bit of a pastiche of (old) Steven Spielberg, John Carpenter and John Hughes all rolled into one. A second series is already ordered... What gets me is how many of the "kids" at Purdue love it too! Yeah, it definitely seems like someone else's early 80's to me but it feels like something right around the corner in some suburb somewhere. I believe my cousin Bill lived like that with the bikes, the D&D games and the clubhouses. A far cry from the crippling wasteland that I grew up in. Nowadays gentrified by douchebags and yuppies for your convenience...
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Post by geneweigel on Jul 26, 2016 11:53:53 GMT -5
Sorry, that came out wrong. Students "gentrifying" neighborhoods are cool but the second wave people are always assholes.
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Post by geneweigel on Aug 5, 2016 23:58:23 GMT -5
I just watched HIDDEN (2015) on pay-per-view by the same guys who did STRANGER THINGS. Nice piece that is reminiscent of the setting of 10 CLOVERFIELD LANE (2016) but a different direction.
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Post by GRWelsh on Jan 18, 2017 12:36:16 GMT -5
I finally started watching STRANGER THINGS. At first I was worried it was just going to be a derivative and unoriginal pastiche, but it seems to be its own thing enough to not just rely on nostalgia... And that's good. On the surface, it has the feeling of Spielberg directing a Stephen King or Dean Koontz story using a faux 80's synth soundtrack... And the whole time, it feels like the series is trying to remind you of E. T., the Goonies, Stand by Me, Firestarter, Watchers, etc.
It does have a lot of D&D references, but they seemed a bit off somehow, like referring to "the Demogorgon" as if "Demogorgon" wasn't his proper name. And I didn't recognize the Vale of Shadows. Calling it the Ethereal Plane would have resonated more with me. Some of the music used was anachronistic, like "Hazy Shade of Winter" by the Bangles was from 1987, and Peter Gabriel's cover of "Heroes" is from 2010 -- but I don't mind those things as long as the story is good enough.
What I really enjoy are all the X-Men and Jean Grey references... X-Men 134 kicked off the "Dark Phoenix" saga!
This is the way to do nostalgia. Nostalgia is okay, like icing on a cake, but ultimately a story has to be good and original and compelling on its own merits, and I feel like this is.
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Post by geneweigel on Jan 18, 2017 13:06:00 GMT -5
Its like someone watched BEYOND THE BLACK RAINBOW (2010) and said let me show you what life was really like back in the early 80's.
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foster1941
Warlock
Duke of California, Earl of Los Angeles, Knight Bachelor
Posts: 475
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Post by foster1941 on Jan 18, 2017 13:53:44 GMT -5
We finally signed up for our own Netflix account and watched this a couple months ago. There were a lot of weird slightly "off" things in this series' re-creation of the 80s (including the D&D references), presumably because the makers were all born in the 90s and were relying on second-hand info. Also the ostensible "Indiana" setting looked a lot more like Georgia to me. All of this nagged at me and kept me from ever totally embracing it (and made me think about how it's weird to have things I experienced first-hand treated as nostalgic period-stuff, which is I suppose how people who grew up in the 50s & 60s have felt for decades), but the story and the child actors at least were good. I've watched a lot of way worse stuff!
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Post by GRWelsh on Jan 18, 2017 14:02:44 GMT -5
Yeah, I get the same weird feeling when the 80's are treated as nostalgic period-stuff. That feeling is basically "Hey, I'm old!" But, at the same time it's not so long ago that there's any good excuse to get any of the period-details wrong... Just hire an on-set consultant from my generation! We're still alive, and can remember stuff!
What they did get right, I thought, were the fashions and the hair styles for the kids, especially the girls. There were a lot of "Barb"s (short curly hair, big glasses) in my high school!
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Post by geneweigel on Jan 18, 2017 14:28:18 GMT -5
Yeah, there were a lot of "Barbs" in Connecticut as well. The colored glasses of the early eighties were cool going forward but looking back even almost immediately (1985?) they looked like shit. I recall getting my metal "Lennon glasses" around that time because the brown ones that had I were so lame looking. Those were the ones that I smashed my head through the windshield while racing in Greenpoint in 1989. I still have the sunglasses of the same kind though.
I remember watching E.T. about 10 years ago. It was one of those things where I thought I didn't give it credit. I think that anything with a monster in it was okay by me. Nowadays not so much. Spielberg, you suck. Especially after that Universal Studios ET ride wher eit takes you to the ET planet. The fact that Spielberg is still alive and they made that is just proof that he's a mess.
I think STRANGER THINGS is taking a hint from NAPOLEON DYNAMITE (2004) and other quasi-nostalgia movies (Wes Anderson) in that its a sort of 80's but instead rather tries to be the legit 80's when it can.
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Post by geneweigel on Nov 20, 2017 12:20:54 GMT -5
So is anyone watching Season 2 of this?
I have one more left.
There is a few D&D references in here.
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