I and some friends have a project of trying to watch all movies, tv episodes and other stuff with moving pictures related to roleplaying games ever made. We’re pretty far along on this goal. I’ll write here about old and new things we’ve found and watched.
Scourge of Worlds is a Canadian lesser known D&D movie from 2003. It’s kinda amazing: It’s a computer animation film starring the D&D 3rd edition signature characters featuring a choose-your-own adventure style choice structure realized using cutting edge DVD menu technology.
To be honest, it’s not a great movie. The animation looks like it’s from a PS2 cut scene, the characters are lifeless and one-dimensional and the story (about an artifact so powerful its essentially a weapon of mass destruction) inconsequential.
However, it has some merits as well. The differences made by viewer choice are surprisingly big. We watched it through three times and there was very little overlap in the scenes we saw between first and second viewings. An early choice immediately kicked us into totally different directions.
Often in a movie or a game like this, the differences in narrative created by choice are purely cosmetic. Not here, especially in the first half of the story.
It’s not really a movie I can recommend, except if you happen to be interested in the very small genre of choose-your-own adventure movies.