I watched this movie over the weekend. It was excellent. I had some reservations about Nick Cage, but they were proven baseless.
The movie actually has a lot to teach us about running medieval fantasy RPG adventures. I want to discuss that but let me give you a VERY STRONG SPOILER WARNING first. I will totally spoil the movie for you below. So if you care, stop reading.
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1st Commandment: Thou shalt hang
You need to include a good hanging every once in a while. A hanging of people who might very well be innocent. A hanging that highlights just how much of a douchebag the people in charge can be if they suspect you are up to no good.
2nd Commandment: Thou shalt pull a fast one
In the opening scene, a priest is trying to pull the corpse of a woman hung as a witch out of a river by the noose. GM calls for a strength test. Player fails the test. Player thought they were rolling to pull the rope, actually it was a test to see if they could resist being pulled into the water themselves. Tricked!
3rd Commandment: Thou shalt show evil is out there
The priest from the above encounter (the only person who believed that the witches really needed extra rites to make sure they stayed dead) gets hung by the witch in the same spot where she herself was hung. Ouch. The moral of the story? Make sure that the players occassionally see that evil does win sometimes. In a spectacular way even. It reinforces versimillitude.
4th Commandment: Thou shalt send assholes to lead them
Allow the players to hitch their wagon to the command authority of someone who they think is pretty good. Let that NPC show themselves to be a douchebag extraordinaire! Now leaving their service results in calls of cowardice and desertion. Tricked again!
5th Commandment: Thou shalt send thy players underground
Usually the players are going to a place where nobody knows who they are. Mix that up a bit. Throw in some people who hold a grudge, know about some crime they commited in the past, etc. Force the players to avoid being exposed.
6th Commandment: Thou shalt be force them to make hard choices
The knights in the movie are forced to choose between jail/execution and doing something for the assholes that they used to work for but left because they were assholes. Tough choices. But nothing brings assholery to a new level like repeat offences and forced servitude.
7th Commandment: Thou shalt mislead them about evil's true power
The whole time they think this woman is a witch. Turns out she was a really powerful demon pretending to be a witch. Nothing throws a player for a loop like watching their goblin captive shapeshift back into a Rakshasa. Tricked again!
8th Commandment: Thou shalt make good appear evil and evil appear good
Throughout the whole movie, you are being led to believe that this one priest in the party is really a self-serving douche and the witch is wrongfully accused. In reality, the priest was the one character who really saw the witch for what she was and the witch was really actually evil.
9th Commandment: Thou shalt make them their own worst enemies
Most of the movie is about the fighting between the characters about what is really going on in the 8th commandment switcheroo.
10th Commandment: Thou shalt make thine world dark and forboding
The entire film has a strong sense of darkness, evil, and suffering. People are dying of plague. They are travelling through dark and scary locations. There are strange noises about, bizarre creatures, evil happenings, loads of suspicion, and few facts to go on. Fighting a few hobgoblins on a flat field is not really exciting. When they duck and dodge between trees, casting strange shadows, making strange noises, and generally being quite scary... that is good gameplay right there.
I have my doubts about a lot of the prognostications of James Raggi, but if you ever wonder what he is really trying to convey to you about how a D&D game should be, watch this movie. Horror and fear are important, people. Bring it into your game.
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