Jann transformation and the D&D movie

For a long time, I've had the jann race as one of my Dark Fantasy X signature races. Like most of the demihumans, they are heavily influenced by the concept of the "planetouched" races from D&D; demihumans being in this case a situation in which humans manifest some traits related to some of the classic Outsiders. My 2002 incipient setting Bloodlines was my first exploration of this idea, where I revised the rules quite a bit, including removing most of the traditional D&D races and replacing them with the six "standard" playable outsider races: the four elemental genasi, the tiefling, and the aasimar. Although they've changed a fair bit since then, as has the setting which gives them context, you can see that of my existing non-human races, three of those go all the way back to that 2002 Bloodlines experiment. The tieflings and aasimars, which in Dark Fantasy X have evolved into the kemlings and seraphs.

The fire genasi may or may not always have been my favorite of the genasi, because I'm not sure that I really thought too much about it, but after reading The Pirates Guide to Freeport for the first time, in 2007 I was convinced. Freeport has—although I didn't know this until this time—a race of Barbary corsairs called the azhar, who are basically fire genasi. Although they were clearly a later add, and not many iconic NPCs belong to the race because the iconic PCs were already in place before they were invented, it was probably that which led me to keep the fire genasi, but none of the other genasi, who gradually evolved into the jann.

But I didn't really do much with them either. This is especially true in Dark•Heritage Mk. V, which directly became Dark Fantasy X. In previous iterations, the jann had a significant kingdom called al-Qazmir based on that jann (influenced by Freeport's Kizmir.) The jann were specifically kind of Barbary corsairs, Ottoman villains, for the most part, with an Arabian Nights like vibe to them. However, in DH5 and Dark Fantasy X, al-Qazmir disappeared and the jann were a little displaced. They still existed in the setting, but they had no proper homeland, and as the geography evolved, they went from being eastern and southern to being northern and western. Their appearance as "Oriental" probably needed to change. At best, they'd end up like pseudo-Turkified or Mongolized Slavic people; northern and exotic, but not really Middle Eastern. Their origin wasn't likely to be from the ifrit anymore or the City of Brass, since both were specifically Arabic (or possibly Persian) in origin. So where do they come from, and what are they going to be?

I'm still kicking it around, but I think that they're going to be somewhat "Icelandic"; their homeland off the map to the north and west will be a volcanic place, and that will be their supernatural origin. Rather than ifrit being the model, Muspelheim and Surtur will be the source. In fact, I'll almost certainly change the name of jann to either surtlings or surturs. And I'll probably update a few of the images that look just a little too Middle Eastern in their clothing, and re-skin the former jann to lose most of their Middle Eastern baggage. This is still a work in progress, and I've really only come around to accepting its need this last weekend, although I've been heading this direction for months.

Viking-like new imagery

Also, the D&D movie came out this last weekend. I haven't seen it yet. My wife bought tickets, but it's a couple of weeks out. I like doing this for several reasons. 1) Opening weekend is usually huge for how successful a movie is judged. I do want to see this movie, especially as the emerging consensus is that it's a pretty harmless "fantasy Guardians of the Galaxy" kind of movie, but I don't want to reward WotC or Paramount for their ridiculous behavior towards the fans, their sexist behavior towards men, or their racist behavior towards white people. Seeing the movie a little over two weeks after its opens, at matinee prices, means that I get to have my cake and eat it too. I can see the movie, in theatres, without actually contributing anything of value to the metrics that studios and box office analysts use to judge the success of a movie. 2) Plus, seeing it on a Tuesday night two weeks after it's released at matinee prices is a better experience anyway. Much lower likelihood of obnoxious fellow movie goers make the experience less. Crowds are low. Average age is up. All that jazz. I'll actually end up seeing Mario Brothers before I see D&D. That said, in spite of my lack of personal experience with the movie, I think that there's some interesting things to be said about it and its performance, and the stories that are out in its wake.

First, stories are mostly talking about how it overperformed studio estimates this weekend, at least by a modest amount. However, that's lacking context; studio expectations were lowered for various reasons from what they would have been a couple of months ago. The controversies by Wizards of the Coast (1. OGL drama, 2. no more white men drama) and Paramount (emasculated men drama) had a very material effect on the movie's performance, but the reasonably good word of mouth had a material effect too. Secondly, the virtue-signaling led many of the potential audience to assume that the movie was going to be woke, but it seems that the only wokeness really is a kind of ambient wokeness associated with the casting (one middle-aged white guy and one young white girl are merely part of an ensemble that includes a burly masculine Mexican girl, a half-black man who will pretend to be black, and a mostly white gay guy who has just enough black in him to claim that identity too.)

The result there; be careful. Studios and corporations seem to be unable to maintain any discipline about insulting their target customers these days, and then acting surprised when their target customers say, "Uh, no" to people who hate them, but want to sell to them. Shut up about controversial stuff, and by controversial I mean "Yeah, everyone in your crazy corporate bubble believes this stuff, but no normal people do at all." Controversy is in the eye of the beholder; what most journalists really mean when they say controversial are opinions that are hateful and nobody really believes them at all. But be that as it may, whomever they're trying to virtue-signal for, it is tanking their audience, and some communication discipline is called for. As much as I don't really think Jeremy Crawford is probably a good person; I'm sure he's as woke as they come, his twitter feed is—with very minor exceptions—pretty professional rather than insulting and political. Is that really so hard to do? To be professional and not say or do stupid things that will seriously turn off your audience right before the launch of your product? That used to be a pretty basic requirement of having a job.

Another interesting thing is the demographics of who saw it. According to the Hollywood Reporter article, the audience skewed young (college student aged, roughly) and male (60%). Not sure what motivated that, but there's some stuff here that is interesting. Older core D&D players seem to have avoided the movie. From what I've seen on YouTube comment sections, these are the guys who are more ticked than average about WotC and Paramount and what they've said and done. Will they be drawn in (like me) for post opening weekend viewings based on decent word of mouth? It's not clear.  In fact, WotC and Paramount both have avoided courting the core D&D market at all. Professor DungeonMaster, for instance, made a big deal out of WotC being AWOL at GenCon and other gaming conventions, and only pushing the movie at ComicCon. I'm not sure how much this matters, (Professor DM also studiously ignored the "white guys" controversy and the "emasculated men" controversy completely, so he's either being deliberately obtuse or otherwise disingenuous.) But given the fandom research that was all the rage a couple of months ago, you'd think that both Paramount and WotC would recognize that in order to snatch a broader catch, you first need to make sure that your core demographic is taken care of. The fandom study suggested strongly that your way to expand beyond the core is that the core itself provides the positive word of mouth. If you don't have the core on your side, then expanding to a more general audience is almost impossible.

So, that's another marketing fail. I saw recently a video where two industry professionals were chatting, and they suggesting that movie marketing is absolutely terrible right now, and hasn't been good since the 70s and early 80s. There's no more key imaging, or at least key imaging went pretty generic and non-informative in the 80s, starting with Flashdance and Beverly Hills Cop and a few other titles. Once that replaced the key imaging that used to precede it, the era of cookie-cutter template marketing which really serves almost no one was upon us, and now we get to the point where marketing is more like a money laundering scheme than it is anything effective.

Anyway, I wonder. It wasn't that long ago that Marvel, for example, could take B-list or C-list characters (in terms of popularity) and make A-list movies out of them, with the launch of Iron Man and Thor and Captain America. Dungeons & Dragons is a long-lived brand with plenty of IP material to draw upon. It shouldn't have been hard for them. But of course, things have changed. Marvel itself can't seem to maintain the momentum it used to have, and is a brand in trouble. Star Wars, which should have been a golden goose that required very little effort to turn in big returns is a brand in trouble, without a loyal core anymore. 

It's rather easy and shallow to say "get woke go broke" and there is at least some truth to that in the entertainment industry, if not necessarily anywhere else. But there's more going on than just that, and there's a lot of nuance involved. Failed marketing, missed opportunities to actually use recognizable IP (Prof. DM suggested that using the Dragonlance main characters like Tanis and Raistlin and Tasslehof, etc. is so obvious a move that it's bone-headed not to have done so) and yes, there was certainly some wokeness involved, even if the movie itself seems to have avoided it. (By report. Again, I haven't seen it yet.) What is going on in the movie industry? Why did movies like Shazam 2 flop so hard, and why did Antman 3 underperform if not outright flop so hard, and why did Cocaine Bear and John Wick 4 overperform, etc.?

I don't have all of the answers, or maybe even any of the answers, but there's an interesting discussion to be had there, and I think D&D is an interesting data point, because it's not a Marvel or DC movie, or part of any existing franchise at all, although it does come from a well-known brand, at least.