If you were to convert OOTS to film, how would you go about doing it?

[Procyonpi]

Personally, I'd probably have it as a TV show with one season per book and one episode per "Round." OOtPCs and SoD would be theatrical length movies. Some stuff from SSaDT might become bonus features on the DVDs.

Thoughts?

[Darth Paul]

Animated, naturally, because otherwise, it's just not OOTS.

(Which brings up my every-year Xmas wish- please, Santa, let there be Firefly- The Animated Series.)

[goto124]

Are we going to assume that we're not limited by money/time/etc issues?

Would we follow the storyline down to the last word, or make tweaks here and there?

Will the animation follow the comic's art progression as well, or do we do everytime in the most modern art style?

[Rogar Demonblud]

Of course the art style will change. In true animation fashion, we'll have to have a different art team for each OVA.

[MercantileOtter]

As grim and gritty as possible, of course. Whole fantasy theme is silly, not good for wide audiences, so we'll make it about drug smuggling instead. During the Apocalypse. But then they need to save the world from other drug smugglers. And to try to turn back the apocalypse with a science fiction reskinned Macguffin. Audiences aren't ready for a gender neutral character, so Vaarsuvius will be played by Bruce Willis. Roy would be played by Robert Downey Jr. The crazed slaughter and violence wont be sympathetic enough to audiences so we'll need to make Belkar a brooding misunderstood loner played by Robert Pattinson. We'll get Megan Fox to play Haley but rework her character to be the ignorant valley girl so we don't have to confuse audiences with flashbacks to her childhood of violence and torment. Our dark and gritty setting has no place for comic relief characters or any good humor so we'll just have to get rid of Elan entirely. And finally Durkon Thundershield will instead be a sassy robot.

[The Patterner]

As grim and gritty as possible, of course. Whole fantasy theme is silly, not good for wide audiences, so we'll make it about drug smuggling instead. During the Apocalypse. But then they need to save the world from other drug smugglers. And to try to turn back the apocalypse with a science fiction reskinned Macguffin. Audiences aren't ready for a gender neutral character, so Vaarsuvius will be played by Bruce Willis. Roy would be played by Robert Downey Jr. The crazed slaughter and violence wont be sympathetic enough to audiences so we'll need to make Belkar a brooding misunderstood loner played by Robert Pattinson. We'll get Megan Fox to play Haley but rework her character to be the ignorant valley girl so we don't have to confuse audiences with flashbacks to her childhood of violence and torment. Our dark and gritty setting has no place for comic relief characters or any good humor so we'll just have to get rid of Elan entirely. And finally Durkon Thundershield will instead be a sassy robot.

Now we just need to find the right voice actor for Durkbot.
Patrick Stewart, no to classy.
John Rhys Davies have already done a dwarf and we don't want the audience to be confused.

I think we should just do something crazy and have Sofia Vergara do the voice and have a sassy latina bot...:smallamused:

[Xelbiuj]

Live action, showtime series. The characters would also represent players playing D&D and it would switch between OOTS world and the "IRL" world.
Maybe something like the show "Once upon a time".
It wouldn't be OOTS if it didn't break the 4th wall and keep the D&D jokes.

Their in character problems would represent the problems in their real lives except tweaked. Like Roy's father issues wouldn't be so obvious in OOTS world, when he shows up as a ghost it's just them switching to IRL and him talking to his dad about something.

[AGD]

V would be played by a woman and than the actress would get a haircut, make-up and boobs-hiding robes, to make her look as androgyn as possible. I guess a guy could also work, but so Haleys Actress won't be alone with all the sausages.

The first move(or season) would contain some Things from OtOPCs to make a good introduction for the characters.


Their in character problems would represent the problems in their real lives except tweaked. Like Roy's father issues wouldn't be so obvious in OOTS world, when he shows up as a ghost it's just them switching to IRL and him talking to his dad about something.

What would be the RL-Equivalent to Vs Familicide-Problem?

[Anarion]

The humorist in me wants to animate it with Southpark-style walk animations, keeping all the stick figures as-in while doing the dialogue in the most epic drama style imaginable.

If I wanted to make it good instead of poking fun at it, I'd say hand-drawn Miyazaki style animation done over several seasons and arcs. Books 4-6 could probably be two seasons each.

[Don Ohnic]

There was a screenplay thread, a year or two ago. If I remember correctly, consensus then was to reduce DCF to an introduction montage, but I am fuzzy on the details. The thread was one of the most read-worthy so I heartily recommend a search and read.

Search for: The OOTS Screenplay Initiative

[Katuko]

What would be the RL-Equivalent to Vs Familicide-Problem?
V will stumble across a mob family vacationing to the small island, and acquire the help of some of their elite thugs. Once the problematic dragon (or rather, the grieving lover of an awkward humorous relief anti-villain spun from whole cloth for the TV special) has been "dealt with", the thugs propose to use their connections to slaughter the woman's entire family, which V agrees to.

[Procyonpi]

The humorist in me wants to animate it with Southpark-style walk animations, keeping all the stick figures as-in while doing the dialogue in the most epic drama style imaginable.

If I wanted to make it good instead of poking fun at it, I'd say hand-drawn Miyazaki style animation done over several seasons and arcs. Books 4-6 could probably be two seasons each.

How would you split book 4? Books 5 and 3 are fairly obvious (With the first season of War and XP climaxing with Elan and Nale's confrontation and the first season of BRitF ending with them leaving the city) but DStP doesn't have an obvious dividing point like that.

[LadyEowyn]

I think a TV show - and probably an animated one, like Avatar: The Last Airbender - would be the best medium. For DCF, the first encounter with the Linear Guild and the confrontation with Xykon would be the pilot episode - it's not worth more time than that. The rest of the first season would be NCftPB, with some episodes having thematically coordinated flashbacks (a la Once Upon a Time) to key events in On the Origin of PCs and Start of Darkness. The second season would cover Book 3, along with more flashbacks. Essentially, the prequel material would be inserted where it had the most dramatic impact and thematic resonance; some might be saved for the third season. DSTP could be covered in the third season; for that one, I'd condense or modify Roy's time in heaven somewhat so there would be time to check in on the other character's in the season's first episode. I might also do some episodes focusing entirely on one storyline or another. BRITF is extremely long, so it could be split into two books, with the season break coming after the Order leave the Empire of Blood, and the next season starting at the entrance to Windy Canyon.

There's just too many plotlines per book for any of the books to work especially well as a film, but not enough plot and drama per plotline for breaking one book into multiple films to work.

A key problem is that everything prior to the third book is basically introductory material; the core story begins when we get the massive Exposition Dump during and after the trial at the end of No Cure for the Paladin Blues.

[ella ventic]

Are you thinking an hour-long show, then? (I am!) Though I think DCF is a little too dense for only one hour; easily fixed, though, just make it a two-hour pilot!

[SowZ]

There was a screenplay thread, a year or two ago. If I remember correctly, consensus then was to reduce DCF to an introduction montage, but I am fuzzy on the details. The thread was one of the most read-worthy so I heartily recommend a search and read.

Search for: The OOTS Screenplay Initiative

Yeah, it kinda fizzled out. I was sort of organizing the thread but it fizzled eventually, I hope not just because I got lazy with it. But yeah, y'all are welcome to use any of our ideas. We could even resurrect it, (as a new thread, of course.) The thread did split off and the other one got locked because they actually had plans to animate a fan film. So, you know, fair warning.

[LadyEowyn]

I was thinking either a 45-minute show (so, "an hour" in TV-time) or a half-hour show like Avatar: TLA, depending on how much time things seemed to need. Avatar was always very good at packing a lot into a single episode. Either way, the pilot would be twice the length of the regular episodes to give the time needed to get things started.

How much occurs in DCF that needs to be covered?

Have a little intro sequence like Avatar has, or a text introduction like Star Wars, to introduce the general context.

- The team fight a few goblins to establish that they're fighting goblins. Their actions give a general sense of each person's character (e.g., Haley's keen on collecting gold, Roy's trying to coordinate an organized attack but not succeeding, Elan's doing something offbeat and dumb, Belkar's doing something evil like killing enemies who have surrendered, V's showing off his magical prowess, Durkon's healing people and is mad at Belkar).

- The team goes through a door and finds Nale; teams up with him and the Linear Guild; quick successive scenes of activating each symbol.

- The symbols give Nale access to some powerful artefact (not "control of obsolete monsters", since that's too much of a D&D in-joke). Nale gloats about how they've fallen for his evil plan and he needed them because the symbols could only be activated by the pure of heart. The Order fights the Linear Guild; the Elan-Nale combat plays out more or less as it does in the comic, but with more drama/action. End of the first half of the pilot episode.

- The Order fights Xykon, with interspersed flashbacks to Roy's determination to be a fighter against his dad's wishes (and Roy taking up his grandfather's sword), and Roy's dad later showing up at Roy's university to tell him about the Blood Oath of Vengeance. That ensures we know 1) that Roy's against Xykon for a reason beyond general adventuring and 2) why Roy's sword is important to him; these are both things that it's good for us to know in order for this plotline to have the right emotional resonance. The Order escape, believing that they've killed Xykon. As the ending (or stinger) scene, we see that Xykon is still alive inside the phylactery. End of second half of the pilot episode.

[Bedinsis]

Well, given that I contributed a bit to the aforementioned screenplay initiative thread I might have slipped my hand already but:

I don't know. The character and storyline that I would the most like to see realized on the big screen would Miko's. Therefore the natural way to end the movie would be with the end of War games and XPs, since that's when her character reaches her end. The problem is that that's a terrible way to end a movie provided we'd never see any sequels. (Roy is dead, Azure City has fallen). More to the point, while I'd like to see Miko's story realized I wouldn't want to see it done at the expanse of everything else, and the storyline of the Order of the Stick up to the end of WGaXP is a convoluted mess of storylines without an overarching theme which would mostly need to be axed for it to fit into a movie.

I've got some ideas though:
1) is to have the story be of Roy turning into a leader of the Order. The Order starting out as a non-cooperating mess of a team that is eventually shaped into something resembling a team. That would work both as an overarching arch for Roy and as introducing us to the Order as it is. Honestly, the struggle of the early strips came from within the order in the early strips (Belkar being inappropriate evil, Haley being inappropriately greedy, Elan being... Elan, Durkon clanging in the dungeon and casting turn undead on Vaarsuvius). After that the conflict became kind of a question of loyalties within the order (Roy not wanting to save Elan from bandits, Roy thinking with his trouser titan when meeting a hot paladin) which culminates in Roy terminating the contracts they signed as a sign of saying that their bond of loyalty is strong enough that contracts wouldn't be necessary. And honestly, that is a story worth telling. Roy starting out with this useless team that eventually gets whipped into shape and he realizes the Power of Friendship and all that jazz. How that would fit within the overarching story for subsequent movies I don't know, and how to cut it so that the overarching theme isn't hit over the head on the viewer I know even less.

2) is to have it as meta fiction. Have the first encounters of the Order be random without much reason, all for the sake of comedy. Because this is an inexperienced roleplaying group with an inexperienced GM. Eventually the group learns what encounters they enjoy and the GM can add gravity to previously mentioned idiosyncrasies(the brother the story-obsessed bard mentioned turns into a major player, the dragon wizard unceremoniously offed turns out to have relatives etc.)

[Ulthanash]

V would be played by a woman and than the actress would get a haircut, make-up and boobs-hiding robes, to make her look as androgyn as possible. I guess a guy could also work, but so Haleys Actress won't be alone with all the sausages.

Just use Tilda Swinton as she is!

[Anarion]

How would you split book 4? Books 5 and 3 are fairly obvious (With the first season of War and XP climaxing with Elan and Nale's confrontation and the first season of BRitF ending with them leaving the city) but DStP doesn't have an obvious dividing point like that.

Two options. One, you do a movie for each separate group, with the first movie cliff-hanging on V's transformation and the second catching up to it from the other perspective. That doesn't feel totally satisfying to me though. I'd stop the first movie with V departing the paladins, Roy entering heaven proper, and Haley taking shelter with Blind Pete in Greysky city.