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Adventure! RPG - LXG! And the Game is On!


Arcanum_V
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The trailer looks pretty good, is the league of extraudinary gentlemen based off a comic/series or is fox just ripping off as much as it can from a heap of places?

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (LoEG) is a fantastic limited series of comics being written by Alan Moore (From Hell, Watchmen). Moore's encyclopedic mind brings together characters from almost every realm of late 19th century and early 20th century fiction, including Stoker's Dracula, H. G. Wells' Invisible Man, and Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. It all takes place a decade or three before the setting for Adventure!, but it's exactly what an Adventure! game should include.

Much like Moore departs from the original texts that create the characters that he uses, the film (LXG) changes his stories. The film does not follow either Volume I or Volume II of LoEG, and it introduces a couple of period-appropriate characters that aren't in the comics (Dorian Gray, Tom Sawyer, and a new villain). I wouldn't call it "ripping off"; "creatively adapting" is probably a better term.

Once you get into the series, extensive annotations are available here.

[Edit] Since no one has seen the film, we can't say with absolute accuracy that no one ever gets dirty, but if that's the case, you might as well ask why Spiderman doesn't have to cope with armpit stains, why the X-Men aren't nauseated with some horrible musk that Wolverine exudes, and why torn away clothing never reveals the hero's naughty bits. It's a fantasy world that can include an incredible car (a tight whip by today's standards!) and a submarine in the late 19th century. Good guys brush away the dust and sally forth!

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I hate to speak with the voice of the Devil's advocate, but that trailer just made me cringe. Sure it looks kind of cool. . .but so did the Avengers, and that reeked to high heaven. I'm just really, really scared it'll suck. And LXG? ::blink *gags* They're not the Victorian Age X-Men. Yeesh.

Just don't let it suck. . .that's all I ask.

-Def.

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Must admit that after all the hype, The Avengers was a major let down.

Can only hope that that after all the changes that were made to League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, that LXG at least a villain that will be intresting.

Has anyone seen this films version of the Nautalus ?

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  • 3 months later...

The Nautilus is visible in the new trailer (Trailer 1) and there's an interactive feature about it on the LXG site. Be warned -- the Map Room has some spoilers about the film and its villain.

And now . . . the reading list for the film, based on the way the characters appear on the poster:

H.G. Wells' The Invisible Man.

Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Tom Sawyer Abroad, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

H. Rider Haggard's Allan Quatermain novels.

Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray.

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Although, I do find the addition of Dorian Grey (I don't think he was in the graphic novels) interesting, he is not very pulpish & Wilde is probably rolling over in his grave or laughing his you know what off.

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Actually, if you go on their website, Dorian Grey may actually fit in... But I am concerned that, although it looks great, the change from Mr Hyde being an incredibly strong, intelligent but deceivingly frail to a speech impaired superbeast may be a little oveboard... But I have never read the comics. How was Hyde portrayed in them?

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In the first LXG trade paperback, Hyde was presented as sort of unholy cross between Hannibal Lector and a low-powered Hulk- plus, he looks a heck of a lot like some sort of mutated ape. But hey, he did have good diction and grammar skills... ::smiley1 So what if he ended up eating a few dozen chinese gangsters? He devoured British criminals just as eagerly...

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Re: Hyde's IQ- Sorry to have given you the wrong idea about Hyde's level of intelligence, SnakeEyes. ::blush I'm afraid that Hyde is just about as smart as Jekyll is- it's just that Hyde doesn't share Jekyll's ethics, morals, or politeness. In the first LXG trade paperback, Hyde was cunning enough to keep his ability to see Griffin (the Invisible Man) a secret- until the time was right for Hyde to find out what invisible meat tasted like... ::devil

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The thing with Hyde is that he is a caveman. A primitive human. You see , when the novel was written Darwin's Theory of Evolution was a very shocking thing. Most people couldn't belief that man was an animal that imposed the rules of civilazation on himself. That is what made the story so shocking back then.

Mr. Hyde physical description in the novel is very similar to that of an ape. Unlike the LoEG TPB inwhich his apperience is that of a monster ( in my opinion at least). I also think that in the LoEG story Hyde is a lot more sinister and "evil" than in the original novel. There is the missconception that when Dr.Jekyll drinks the potion his evil side takes over ; that is not entirely true. When he drinks the potion his bestial and animalistic side takes over.

Alan Moore is a genius. And I loved the LoEG TPB. In no way Im I critizicing his work ; on the other hand , reading the LoEG is a lot more fun than reading Dr.Jekyll and Mr. Hyde ( which is a great book).

::biggrin

Vicious

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I saw it last night! It's not a perfect movie, but it's a good movie. If you watch it as a movie without getting hung up on either the original texts and characters or Alan Moore's adaptations of those characters, it's even a pretty good movie.

On its own, perhaps the largest obstacle is that there are too many characters and there's too much exposition to get through. X-Men overcame this by making a Wolverine and Rogue movie with some other characters, but LXG gives a healthy background on everyone, and sometimes it's a little tricky to keep up. The positive reading of that is that it has not been turned into a Sean Connery and His Companions movie: it's actually a league in which everyone is important.

The special effects could use a little polishing, especially when compared to some of the other things out this summer. There's an explosion and fire early in the film that doesn't look right, and there are other little things throughout the movie that could be better, but overall, the stylized Victorian era is nice one.

From an Adventure! point of view, this movie rocks. This is exactly how an Adventure! team should work and exactly how a mastervillain should operate: big plans, plans within plans, and his first action is always to run away and let the extras take the punches. Mina's a lot more powerful than an Adventure! character probably should be, but everyone else could be done pretty easily.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Actually - Dorian Grey DOES appear in the graphic novel. Though only his portrait (No, not that one, obviously)

I believe it's on one of the covers where Miss Murray et al are posing for a photograph with several portraits behind them (presumably including the rather nice one of Mr & Mrs Blakeny and Mistress Hill - a hint that there have been otherleagues before this one - and as good a reason as any to use the League in games of A! as a society, or backing background, but I digress) one of the portraits is in fact labled as being that of Dorian Grey.

As for Tom Sawyer - well - if you'll pardon my cynicism, it's an American produced film - and without him, all of the 'Heroes' would be British, or, in the case of Nemo, heavily connected with the British Empire - and that simply wouldn't do - no Americans to save the Brits? tut tut!

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Actually there were supose to be two other leagues and at least one after the comics, of course the one after might end up begin made. The cover you are talking about I know is used for the first vomels cover.

My favorite thing is that in the second volume there is an almanac that talks about interesting sites all over the world.

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My favorite thing is that in the second volume there is an almanac that talks about interesting sites all over the world.

If you like Moore's very abbreviated gazetteer, you'll love Alberto Manguel and Gianni Guadalupi's Dictionary of Imaginary Places (ISBN 0-15-100541-9). I can't understand why so many Adventure! players want White Wolf to write a book about the places of adventure, since the Dictionary is already it (only more thorough than anything White Wolf could produce). Manguel and Guadalupi have brought together over 1,200 entries about inner earths, lost cities, fabled islands, hidden plateaus, mist-shrouded valleys, and every other place that you might want to set a story. Moore's "New Traveller's Almanac" offers just a line or two about a lot of these places, but the Dictionary gives enough detail about the inhabitants, customs, flora, fauna, and other features to run stories in the lands.

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