The Dark Crystal

Have you ever wanted to play a game set in this world?

youtu.be/OGzVYyV_Jsg

Other urls found in this thread:

darkcrystal.com/mythology.php
youtube.com/watch?v=ID2Fkse1bmg
youtube.com/watch?v=rPv2I-mArD8
readcomiconline.to/Comic/The-Power-of-the-Dark-Crystal
youtube.com/watch?v=6dHoYsj0UVQ
comixology.com/Jim-Hensons-The-Power-of-the-Dark-Crystal/comics-series/86651
twitter.com/NSFWRedditVideo

I already am niggah

It's a bit too mono-thematic to make for a good long-term setting, but it did have some good ideas that one could crystallize into set-pieces in other worlds.

Holy shit...

This can only end badly.

Real muppets...err, puppets? Great!

Now bring back Fraggle Rock, Netflix.

>One of my favorite movies is getting a sequel
Hope its not complete garbage like most sequels/prequels these day.

>All those Practical Effects

Well, guess I have to watch it...

Oh sweet Jim Henson

I fucking need it

...

Oh man I fucking loved this movie when I was a kid, hopefully this won't be a giant flaming pile of shit.

Holy SHIIIIIT

The big question on everybody's mind is will Aughra still have pokies. This is a potential deal breaker!

Definitely one of those films I saw as a kid that I'm sure had a profound influence on my world building. This and probably Labyrinth, ESPECIALLY the goblin city.

I would play the shit outta it.

...

I really want to know is how did they get Bowie in on that movie.

>Hey Bowie, you wanna be a floofy-haired, free-balling, ephebophile goblin king?
>Sure

Honestly, not really. Yes, the creature designs are very neat, but from what I've picked up the lore of the world itself is equally simplistic and overly complicated. You've got aliens being split in half by a crystal and there's the nasty aliens and the good aliens and there's some old lady who's immortal, and it just seems kinda lame outside of the visual department.

I'm reasonably certain you just answered your own question.

There's a core race in my setting which aesthetically began as a carbon copy of the appearance of the mystics. Just the appearance though, the backstory is much different.

They ended up becoming a very important part of the lore and I made multiple species of them before I went back to think about the consequences of stealing them for my own setting, now it's too late. I feel especially guilty now that there's a TV series coming, before that not many people knew about the film. Now it will look like I added them after the TV series brought TDC back into the public eye and not because of some obscure inspiration.

Kind of funny, really, that we don't really know too much about their societies anyway and we've never seem the Skeksis at the height of their Empire nor the Mystics as the height of their knowledge and spiritual understandings. By the time the movie takes place both societies have been whittled down to only ten members each. The Skeksis are just hedonistic assholes with zero ambitions as a culture as they fight over the scraps of their former glory and the Mystics just muddle through the motions of ancient rituals with very little memory for why the fuck they do anything.

At least this prequel sounds more promising than the proposed sequel, which was otherwise, "Whoops, we broke the Dark Crystal again, well fuck, hey let's make the rest of the movie about the inner earth!" I'd much rather explore more of the setting.

I'm hoping that the TV series isn't geared for younger audiences, and it probably won't be. There's of course a much larger adult audience for the universe now, its a cult classic from what I have observed. Kids don't care about the design and the amount of effort the film clearly took as much as adults do. The plot follows a bland template, but the premise and design are very unique.

I would like to see a more mature, complex, and intriguing portrayal in the prequel. A world like this deserves a more grand and detailed story.

Why the heck did they make its dick removable.
You can clearly see the decoupler at the base.

what are you talking about? the original movie was geared toward younger audiences. let's hope that doesn't change. I don't want them to try making something for older audiences just to be more edgy for the sake of being edgy. that would ruin the spirit of what made the original great

I'm not talking about edginess. The original was plenty dark. I'm just talking about having more complex motivations, morality, character interactions, less archetypes, and whatnot.

>We want to make this a gritty, modernistic story!
>Gelfling resistance are freedom fighters/terrorists against Garthim oppression
>Skeksis are the Russian chessmaters propping up the Garthim regime
>Mystics are the fat cat lazy Westerners who don't really care about shit going on outside their borders

Stupid joking aside, it IS an interesting setup for a world. Ultimately the Skeksis and the Mystics are complete opposites, yet neither can move against the other because to kill someone on the other side is to kill one of your people, maybe even yourself. They just leave each other alone for 1000 years, the Mystics content to argue philosophy in caves and the Skeksis free to rule over the rest of the world, at least when they care. Mostly they just seem to sit in their castle and order out forces to collect food and slaves.

Still you'd think for a true Age of Resistance you'd need the Mystics to be otherwise looked upon as good, kind, and something the world needs, otherwise anyone who fights the Skeksis and kills them otherwise wipes out a Mystic. Or maybe it's just hoping they can eventually get the two back together if the joined state is truly a useful thing.

Intelligent crab races are kind of neat, though these are not. Not by a long shot.

I guess there's, what, Eclipse Phase? I don't really do much more than poke through those threads for art now and then.

The mythology of the world is...interesting:

darkcrystal.com/mythology.php

>darkcrystal.com/mythology.php
they don't need good lore, if they are able to replicate or improve on how they were animated from the original movie they'll have enough impact on the story since they're so uncannily disturbing

He got to fuck the underage lead actress.

True story: David Bowie loved The Dark Crystal and actually contacted Jim Hensen and said he wanted in his next big project. Jareth was written from the ground up with Bowie in mind.

Hoggle got there first, cuz Hoggle can haggle. Afterwards Bowie got sloppy seconds on the bog of internal stench. Tra la la.

>Implying she got bogged when she could have had raw alpha male Bowiecock crammed deep in her jailbait puss
>Implying you wouldn't do the same in her situation

Hoggle paid for those transgressions.

Man is that what his puppet looks like now? that's rough

Hey man, you know what they say. Once you've been Hoggled your mind will be boggled.

I think they're showcasing the mechanical puppetry inside the head. It's a shame puppets are used more often because they can do some badass stuff with the tech. The popular meme is everything in the Star Wars Prequels was CGI but the wearable animatronics they had were kickass, and that was well over ten years ago.

youtube.com/watch?v=ID2Fkse1bmg

Between EP1 and EP3 the tech had gone from wearing a robot mask that puppeteers would manipulate by remote control during scenes from prerecorded mocap data.

Of course fuck Star Wars, Farscape is superior.

I love animatronics. Hell, I went to see that shitty hitchhikers guide movie in theatres just for them. I wish more movies used them.

you do not pass up the opportunity to bang Jennifer Connelly

This is Veeky Forums. People wouldn't pass up the opportunity if a skeksis came up to them and bent over. Though whether desperation, low standards, or too many monster girl threads warping their perception, or a combination of all three, is open to debate.

I don't know user, Skeksis are really ugly looking as far as bird creatures go.

tell us more. Tell us everything.

How do we balance male gelflings with female ones? It's hard to balance 'can fucking fly' against things.

The giant bug crabs legit scared the shit out of me when I was a kid, but I would always re-watch the movie and cover my eyes when it got to the part with the rabbit things and the ledge. The rabbit screams were pretty haunting as a child. Later in my adulthood I watched it again high on mushrooms. I wasn't disappointed.

...

Oh, hi my old childish nightmare.

I missed you.

HmmmMMMMmmmMMM!

youtube.com/watch?v=rPv2I-mArD8

Well, they can glide. Also just don't put the players in environments/situations where gliding is a feasible solution to the main problem. It shouldn't be that difficult.

From a game design perspective, you can't always rely on that. You must balance them as player options.

There's a measure of trust that can be granted to the players. You'd have to have a really munchkiny group for them to all pick lady gelflings just for the gliding power.

You're still speaking like a GM and not a game designer.

Why were they all proud of hitting the thing before they cut it in half?

I love this text.

I love those quads.

I love this user.

Trial by Stone. It's personal combat without hitting each other, targeting the stone instead. The objective isn't to break the stone, as such, but just to provide the most impressive blow against it. You'll note it has damage presumably from previous Trials.

When the one dude broke it you can see their looks of, "OH FUCK!" Basically the dude rolled a nat 20 on his attack to the stone and instantly won the challenge.

Now the Lord of the Rings, the Dark Crystal and things, we use these as a reference tool

Did the males have any cool abilities, or were they just expected to be shitters ducking about on the ground?

They get to be main characters.

Kidding, kidding. They technically both had powers, of a sort, but she of course had the biological benefit of wings. Other than that she could call animals, but I think that was largely a learned ability - or at least the podlings taught her how to call up at least the nebrie. Jen, meanwhile, learned the power of music from the Mystics. This allowed him to mimic the vocalizations they used which did have certain powers. He could use it to cause the true shard of the Dark Crystal to glow, but the Mystics, if memory serves, had some other powers. Pretty sure they fucked up some Garthim with it while marching into the castle? Not sure if Jen could duplicate that but he almost certainly didn't know about it.

Oh, and he had reading and writing.

I know you just wanted the biological stuff but I figure I'd mention the other abilities they had even if they were learned.

Jeez, I just realized the last time I watched this was 1997 or 1998.

The also both have this weird psychic connection thing, the "dreamfasting," and later on Jen starts shouting at Kira to fight the Skeksis when their resident Nazi scientist was trying to drain her essence. The movie implied, at least the way I see the scene, as Jen only waking up from having rubble dumped on him because she was in trouble which he somehow sensed from afar and similarly she heard him apparently psychically.

Aughra has some weird ass powers, too. Errybody's got some kind of powers in this world, seems like.

His ability is a learned one. Anyone can get that. That's not a benefit for male gelflings ni genreal.

Well yeah the post did say that. What was your point?

That he missed the point of who he was replying to in the first place.

God those things are the creepy creatures in the movie.

I hate to break this to you but people are under no legal obligation to remain within the narrow confines of the stated intent of the person they are responding to and are free to add whatever details they want for the purposes of discussion.

This information will hopefully make your Veeky Forums experience easier.

>Do something stupid
>Act like a sarcastic idiot when it's pointed out it was stupid

They are kind of horse faced. Maybe the show will have updated versions, although there were some conceptual items regarding the proposed sequel.

According to the background material the gelfling taught Aughra dreamfasting, so a learned ability but then she's hardly normal herself. This is derived from background material so I have no idea what is considered canon to this new series.

In the movie Aughra told Kira she had the "gift" to call to animals, but whether that implies some innate talent or ability beyond simply learning I do not know.

Yes, user, you did act stupid but it's okay. You're anonymous so you don't ever have to own your mistake that you were too stupid to recognize a post straight up mentioning both biological and learned abilities - in fact mentioning the distinction several times - when replying to a post asking about abilities.

I hope they're improved and I have more hopes for this than I did about Power of the Dark Crystal. For what it is worth Boom Studios is going to be adapting the unused script into a 12 issue comic series.

>12 issue comic series.
Checking into it the first two issues are already out:

readcomiconline.to/Comic/The-Power-of-the-Dark-Crystal

Jim Henson's Creature Shop was a very limited series on the syfy channel. Their second challenge was to create their own Skeksis.

youtube.com/watch?v=6dHoYsj0UVQ

fwiw looks like they mostly keep the naming convention seen in material like pic related: I'm sure there are notebooks with production material and details that didn't make it in the movie, but I'll admit I'm not versed in the background material for Dark Crystal.

What stats would Skeksis have? Intelligent, maybe not too wise, apparently potentially quite strong, but definitely they don't seem that fast. Looks like as foes they'd rely more on their slave races and creations to protect themselves.

>Have you ever wanted to play a game set in this world?

GAAAAHHHHHH NO. NO NO NO NO. NOOOOOOOOOOO.

Becuase a game set in this world has to include the Garthrim, and the Garthrim scare me. Like, inconceivably and for no real reason.

I love The Dark Crystal, I want to make that clear...but the Garthrim...GAAAAHHHHH.

>the fucking cliffhanger after issue 2

When does the next issue come out?

Remember that The Dark Crystal shows us the Skeksis as very old. Like, to the point where they're starting to die of old age. Their relative lack of speed or agility in the movie probably shouldn't be taken as representative of what they were like in their prime.

As a kid I recall Aughra's eye freaked me right the fuck out. Garthim weren't so bad, but then the Emperor's face collapsing into itself after he died and the scene where they reduce the podling to a zombie slave, yeah.

But I was really young at the time. I remember much later I saw the Ray Harryhausen Clash of the Titans which had a similar removable eye and it was some of the tightest shit. These old stories gave me a love of mythology (real or otherwise), fantastic worlds, etc.

Curiously the background material (not sure if it's considered canon or not) says that the Master of the Mystics basically willed himself to die on purpose. He knew the Great Conjunction was nigh and believed the best help he could be to restoring the Crystal was if he took the Emperor with him and left the Skeksis to infighting. It's true that the banishment of the Chamberlain did help Jen's quest despite the Chamberlain's true intentions.

I'm not sure about them being particularly speedy. The Garthim-Master who became the new Emperor did take the rejuvenation potion but then he had his great display of strength that so shocked the others Chamberlain just dropped his sword (and probably crapped his skekRobes too).

You're right about their age, but my overall impression just from their design is they were probably never very fast.

Just a fun little factoid. We do briefly see a newly created Skeksis in a vision the Dark Crystal shard showed to Jen in the film. It doesn't show their movement speed so that's no help to this topic, it just shows the Skeksis who smacked the fuck out of the Crystal and broke it in the first place.

This always confused me when I was younger because I thought the Crystal breaking was what split the races just as restoring it repaired them, but apparently the split was just the Great Conjunction. Breaking the Crystal is what corrupted it into the Dark Crystal which also corrupted the castle and many creatures of the world.

I don't one but I've been dying to read it. Last night when my fiancé was giving me head I asked her and she nearly choked on my dick laughing.

No clue. Also that Fireling is fairly adorable.

Okay according to comixology the next issue is supposed to be out next week:

comixology.com/Jim-Hensons-The-Power-of-the-Dark-Crystal/comics-series/86651

Click on the individual cover images for more details which includes projected release date. So basically next Wednesday check out /co/'s Win-o-Thread.

Thanks.

>An alien invader shows up, planning to break a magical artifact which the world requires intact to survive so it can steal a fragment to take back to its own world and I'm supposed to feel sympathy for it?

Might get delayed. I'm actually a bit iffy about the release schedule because it says 4 and 5 are supposed to both come out in June. This is possible, but seems unlikely. I'll be overjoyed to be wrong.

I can't recall how well Boom Studios was with meeting release dates, though of course all studios occasionally suffer problems. Last time I read Boom, though, was the continuation of Farscape. Shame that was rushed a bit towards the end but at least they managed to conclude the story and didn't leave it on another cliffhanger. I couldn't handle another moment like season 4 gave us.

>not wanting to protect this frown
You, user, are the true monster!

>when your kingdom has turned into a shithole but you don't care since it's naptime.

I actually like this comic a lot more than I thought I would since I didn't like how the story was described. Really glad it's proven me wrong.

Sucks that things turned into shite but the prophecy seems pretty straightforward. Both worlds are apparently suffering in tandem and fixing the inner world will end the surface, but you just know it's one of those fakeout prophecies where the world that ends will be the shithole it's in now and restore it to a new and better age.

How the heck are the Skeksis returning without their joined forms being present, or did they become one with the Crystal or something? Guess we'll find out.

...

>prancing around like a bunch of skeleton bird assholes
HA!

Honestly it's possible that they suffer a combination of age and being hedonistic assholes who gorge every day with no sense of moderation or, frankly, even good table manners. It's part of their charm. That said I do find it hard to imagine them ever being too fast. Not sure why, though. Clearly part of the issue is meta because the suit is really cumbersome, but it's just a weird feeling on my part. Like trying to imagine the Mystics ever had a time when one said, "GOTTA GO FAST!" Hilariously despite their slow gait they left after Jen and still arrived at the castle on time for the Great Conjunction.

I'd love to run a game in this setting but I have the feeling someone would want to be a skeksis, even if it's a Drizzt "he's good now because he learned nobility and shit" but there are so few of them I can't that should be allowed. Skeksis and Mystics are NPC only. Is that a fair restriction?

Well, their not inherently evil, they just became that in their paranoia induced by old age. They're the Id to the mystics Super Ego, the hedonistic half of the urSkeks, while the mystics are the altruistic half. Either could be evil give the right circumstance.

Well fuck that then. Playing one of the two, would be the only reason I would play.

So their personality is basically that of a dragon? Hm, humanoid dragons. Can't quite place were I've seen that before....

Aw hell I'm only thinking out loud, as it were. It is very clearly doable, and I'll be honest I can't quite decide how the two would work, especially how to keep them from being too op. Would the Mystic be more like a bard with their magic voice? Would Skeksis need to rely on slave creatures?

There's supposed to be 18 of each in the beginning and we only ever see 10 in the movie. I'm not sure how much background the others have but they could easily be treated as lost Primarchs-style so players could create their own unique whom we never saw. Looks like that was the challenge here to create exiled Skeksis who had been in far off parts of Thra. Could be cool!

Really liking the additions this comic is adding and the Netflix series should flesh it out a lot more. It's a nifty setting.

Kinda hot

I think it could be argued that that is inherently evil. Unchecked hedonism, anger, selfishness, cruelty, debasement, hubris, deception, and desire to dominate.

Sure they weren't evil right the very instant of their birth, or hadn't defined themselves such by their actions (which was to freak out, smack the Crystal and break it, then drive out the Mystics), but with the ingredients that went into them I think a case could be made that there was no way they weren't going to end up as a bunch of weasel dicks in a bag.

It's like saying when Captain Kirk got split into his two halves by a transporter accident the other one didn't HAVE to end up all rapey, but that's the exact kind of character traits he was left with unchecked by all the components that went into the other half.

This.

Browsing furaffinity can be beneficial.

>Background:
SkekCha did not manage to spend much of his life in the luxury of the castle where the Skeksis lives, early on the, to be 1000 year long, war he displayed his dislike for the whole ordeal and knew that causing so much destruction and killing off the Gelflings would only bring trouble in the future. The other Skeksis found him annoying and lacking of loyalty, it eventually lead to SkekCha being banished from the other Skeksis, casted out to survive on his own. Before he got kicked out he was beaten badly, he managed to reach the deep forests of the land, long away from the dead desert land of the Skeksis. His powers though did not last forever and he collapsed. He was found by a Mystic, named UrIhtl (xtaabay's character) passing by, and we all know what's up between Skeksis and Mystics. However, this Mystic decided to give the bruised Skeksis a chance and took him to safety where he nursed him back to health. SkekCha was very weary about the whole ordeal, but he never felt truly threatened, after all this Mystic had helped him recover. This eventually lead to a forbidden friendship, if the other Skeksis would learn about this he would sure be beaten down to more than an outcast

I actually would rather fuck the skeksis.

What system?

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