D[isney] & Dragons

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Wed Sep 05, 2012 11:43 pm

I'd prefer to solve a mystery or rewrite history, personally. But that's Huey, Dewey, Louie, and Scrooge, not Donald.

During the timeline of Ducktails Donald was in the US Navy, and presumably participated in the first Gulf War.

People also tend to forget that Donald served in the US Army as a commando during World War II. He single-handedly took out an entire Japanese airfield, once.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Wed Sep 05, 2012 11:56 pm

Still very different from playing a bunch of schmoes in Toon Town which is what, I would imagine, most people would think of for a game where everyone is at a Donald Duck or Doug power level. Darkwing is basically just Disney's Batman, just less morose. Doug is a high school student, and no oneI seriously doubt anyone has a desire to play a bunch of perfectly normal high school students. If they are mystery solving high school students with an intelligent and semi-literate dog, they are not normal high school students, and I would point out that Scooby Doo et al. are probably around power level 2-4 in a "no super powers" M&M game. Even playing in a 101 Dalmatians based game, your party is a bunch of domestic animals fully capable of kicking a grown man's ass who are opposing the plot of the devil. No, seriously, the book 101 Dalmatians was based on implies Cruella is the devil. The most mundane a group of Disney Canon characters is going to be is either living toys, or towns people to whom interesting things happen, and I would think that characters should be relatively skilled enough to handle interesting things happening. I will point out that shit like Goof Troop, and even Donald and Mickey, is not part of the Disney Animated Canon, and I'm only playing along because I reached outside the actual company, so I can't really call foul on reaching outside the DAC to other Disney things.

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Thu Sep 06, 2012 1:13 am

Doug lives in rural Virginia. If he doesn't have immediate access to a firearm, then he can easily get one. Even if he can't turn into Quail Man, he can still shoot things. That comes in handy during a zombie apocalypse or an ork invasion.

Doug's power level is baseline modern day human, which is significantly higher than baseline iron age peasant due to equipment access. Between modern vehicles, telecommunications, and firearms he has a huge advantage against pre-modern characters.

In a Doug of the Dead game you're going to have Doug, Patty Mayonnaise, and Skeeter back-to-back-to-back with Mossbergs and a satchel full of buckshot until they make a sufficiently large hole in the encircling zombie hoard that they can make it to the car.

He might not be Rambo, but he's probably gone quail hunting and even an untrained high school student can hit shambling zombies.

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Thu Sep 06, 2012 1:23 am

I'm actually pretty happy playing mediocre to outright weak characters provided that nobody else in the group gets to be Green Lantern while the rest of us watches him solve every encounter. I view RPGs as a cross between play acting and collaborative problem solving rather than outright power fantasy, so frankly I find the idea of a Disney game where fucking Donald Duck is an afterthought pretty baffling.

The whole kitchen sink thing hits me as plain unworkable, or at the very least, not workable to my satisfaction. If you stuck a gun to my head and said "Make a disney game or else," I'd probably just make a Ducktales game where you're a team of explorers bankrolled by Uncle Scrooge with the top end of the powerscale being gizmoduck and Darkwing villains.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Sep 06, 2012 6:59 am

I literally cannot comprehend why someone would want to make a Disney game where you are fully expected to play Doug Funnie (possibly partially because I was only every vaguely amused by that whole thing. Was it funnier if you were actually in High School when it was on?). Doug of the Dead is like saying "We're going to run a zombie game. You're all fast food workers. You can pick from Dante, Randal, Elias, Jay, and Silent Bob, " I get it, but... either the characters or the zombies are an after thought at that point. If the zombies are an after thought, you don't really need a system, fandoms are full of people who do non-erotic, non-rules based canon rps. If the characters are an after thought... well, there's a reason why I have yet to play Bender in a D&D game with Warforged. It'd be funny, and pretty fun, for about two or three games, after which point I'm just a warforged rogue with a bad attitude.
Ducktales or Talespin or Darkwing Duck the Rpg, I can see better. Hell, Kingdom Hearts style King Mickey, Sir Goofy and Magus Donald I can see. But... why would you bother playing a bunch of schmoes who happen to be funny looking people in completely average life.

I would much rather play the Disney game where the party consists of people from the settled lands featured in Brave, How to Train Your Dragon, Hercules, Aladdin, etc (yes even though a couple of those aren't Disney). I'd be fine with playing various disguised aliens and covert government workers in Hawaii. I can even see playing one of a number of domestic animals with a level of badass and rescuing puppies from an evil woman implied to be descended from the devil. But basing a Disney game around Doug Funnie is like basing D&D around Joe the Crap Covered Farmer. At the very least, there's no reason to do a specific game. Doug of the Dead (and god damnit, every time I type that, I want to play it just a little bit more, you suck) is really just All Flesh, and the players decided to play characters from Doug. Ducktales is just an exploration game where the DM said "you're all duck people."

(granted, Disney[esque] Fantasy Film Land is really just a campaign setting for D&D or the like... but there's at least a little more to the setting than naming areas, placing them around a real-ish globe, and saying "the people look funny.")

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Thu Sep 06, 2012 2:49 pm

Prak Anima wrote:Who are these deranged mutants, and do they play non-adventuring farmers and leather workers in D&D, too?

If you're making a Disney game aimed at the general populace, people will want to play characters that resonated in their hearts and gave them a good feeling. If you seriously think that more people -- even people part of the nerd subculture -- are going to want to play Cobra Bubbles or even Gizmoduck than Ariel or Winnie the Pooh you've got another think/thing coming.

Prak Anima wrote:But... why would you bother playing a bunch of schmoes who happen to be funny looking people in completely average life.

I find this attitude pretty sad, since Doug (at least the Nickelodeon version) is genuinely more heartfelt and sincere than anything that happens in Kingdom Hearts or Disney Adventures or any of the 'OMG this crossover will be SOOOO awesome' crossovers that tried to distract us with faux awesome.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Thu Sep 06, 2012 3:08 pm

Lago PARANOIA wrote:
Prak Anima wrote:But... why would you bother playing a bunch of schmoes who happen to be funny looking people in completely average life.
I find this attitude pretty sad, since Doug (at least the Nickelodeon version) is genuinely more heartfelt and sincere than anything that happens in Kingdom Hearts or Disney Adventures or any of the 'OMG this crossover will be SOOOO awesome' crossovers that tried to distract us with faux awesome.

It painfully depends on the game you're creating. This is a game, not fan-fic writers pooling together. If you're wanting to support Doug, then you need to make the system support this; Maid, Mouse Guard, whatever.

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Thu Sep 06, 2012 5:27 pm

Prak_Anima wrote:Ducktales is just an exploration game where the DM said "you're all duck people."

That's missing the forest for the trees. Yes, the duck thing is a secondary trait and I totally agree that the kind of characters those ducks happen to be is way more important than whether they have feathers or not. But that actually doesn't matter, because what you're really buying into with a Duckburg universe is the setting and the power level and implications that come along with it, since those are the things that let Duckburg characters continue to matter at all. With Duckburg you get magicians, space aliens, time travel, robots, some dork with glitchy power armor, and sadsacks with plant control powers but survivability is set high and nobody has brutal save-or-die effects* that cause experienced adventurers or navy seamen to just keel over when they get involved.

So, yeah, you could pull the feathers off of everyone and hand out pants and call the setting something else, but that's irrelevant. What matters is whether you can add feathers to the ruleset and call the villain Glomgold without the the game devolving into one roll of the dice and the adventure being over because your character is actually the Mighty Thor.

*Well, Magica's pretty OP, actually, but that's wizards for you. She'd almost certainly be the top dog villain.

Prak_Anima wrote:and do they play non-adventuring farmers and leather workers in D&D, too?

No, because if you want to play D&D you should play an adventurer. But if you want to play Harvest Moon you should probably, you know, play a farmer rather than Harvey Birdman, Attourney at Law. It's totally possible to play characters who are unfit for a power fantasy game if your game isn't about crushing trolls between your pecs.

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Thu Sep 06, 2012 6:45 pm

Prak_Anima wrote:(and god damnit, every time I type that, I want to play it just a little bit more, you suck)

Good. Take your weapon. Strike me down with all of your hatred and your journey to the Doug Side will be complete.

Was it funnier if you were actually in High School when it was on?

I never actually watched the Disney version. The Disney Channel just wasn't my thing at the time. The Nicktoons version was in elementary school though, and it probably was more engaging if you were that age. I do remember that it was my least favorite of the Nicktoons along with Rugrats. I much preferred Ren and Stimpy and Rocko's Modern Life.

But the entire point of a Doug of the Dead game is to put these innocent characters into a harrowing situation. It's a juxtaposition between their sheltered childhood innocence and the very real violence that they must participate in that's the attraction and all the drama around an untrained kid being forced to step up and be a hero. Doug works because he's a pre-established character, so the player doesn't have to put any effort into establishing that he is an innocent, sheltered kid on the cusp of growing up. Jumbo Pictures did that already. The player can just take the preexisting characterization and jump into the heart of the action, changing and evolving the character as he goes through the trials and tribulations of a zombie apocalypse.

No one wants to play Doug Funnie, high school student with a boring normal life. But by the same token no one wants to play Arthur, 11-year-old squire who helps Sir Kay put on his underpants. A lot of people want to play Arthur, 11-year-old squire who just pulled Caliburn out of a rock.

Remember, Luke Skywalker was a moisture farmer on Tatooine, which I'm pretty sure is actually worse than a dirt farmer in a less dry setting. That didn't stop him from blowing up the Death Star. Having characters start at low level generally means that they'll participate in some sort of Hero's Journey.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Sep 06, 2012 9:42 pm

Well, hell. I'd like to point out that I'm really not even advocating everyone choosing from a list of "Simba, Hercules, Genie, Stitch, (etc)," but rather crafting a setting and character generation system which supports making those kind of characters.

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Fri Sep 07, 2012 10:21 pm

Prak_Anima wrote:Well, hell. I'd like to point out that I'm really not even advocating everyone choosing from a list of "Simba, Hercules, Genie, Stitch, (etc)," but rather crafting a setting and character generation system which supports making those kind of characters.

In that case, it might be better to to keep the settings separate in order to avoid option overload. In a Lion King or Jungle Book setting, it''s pretty easy to come up with unique and interesting non-anthro characters who fit the setting and have something interesting to do. In a fusion, that's much more difficult.

The fairy tale settings are problematic because, ultimately their conflicts are deeply personal and don't lend themselves well to serial adventures with randomly thrown-together parties.

Cinderella's enemies are her wicked stepmom and stepsisters, they're dangerous to her because she is suffering from learned helplessness due to constant emotional abuse. But they have no real power other than what she gives them. All she has to do is walk away.

Likewise, Snow White's enemy is her abusive stepmom who is only a threat to snow white herself. Rasputin has magical powers, but he's really only a threat to Anastasia. Maleficent , though powerful, is really petty and doesn't do anything all that evil except to torment one girl. And Ursala is only dangerous because Ariel made a deal with her.

These aren't adventures in the D&D sense so much as they're the characters personal journeys . And there generally one-off affairs. You can't have a sequel to Snow White or Sleeping Beauty or Cinderella or Beauty and the Beast. It isn't just that the happily ever afters, it's that these people aren't professional adventurers and only one interesting thing ever happened to them.

Fairy tale protagonists seriously need to have the entire adventure intimately tied to their character background.

Likewise, things like 101 Dalmations, the Aristocats, Land and The Tramp don't lend themselves well to serial adventures.

Really, you need a plot generator. D&D has dungeons and dragons, between wondering monsters and lost treasures there's always space for a plot. Shadowrun has Mr. Johnson. WoD has byzantine supernatural politics and built-in factional conflict. Rifts has rifts. Most Disney films are one off and don't have a plot generator.

The series are easier to work with in that regard. Ducktails has Uncle Scrooge, whose insane wealth and unquenchable thirst for adventure make him a living plot generator. The Rescue Rangers are essentially rodent-sized cops in a lawless world of danger and corruption. That gives them plenty of adventure space. Bonkers is also a cop. Aladdin has the Gennie and Arabian politics to serve as plot generators.

A Rifts style mash-up setting is a decent idea because the resulting conflicts are an effective plot generator. Kingdom Hearts style doesn't work because the worlds are too far separated and most parties will have no reason to ever do anything.

Walking the Earth like Kwai Chang Caine makes for a good plot generator, since you can have different adventures at every stop. But that means that you have to play nomadic characters.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Sep 07, 2012 11:26 pm

You can't have a sequel to Snow White or Sleeping Beauty or Cinderella or Beauty and the Beast.

You can, they are just extremely terrible, and you shouldn't.

-Username17

sabs · Post by **sabs** » Fri Sep 07, 2012 11:41 pm

I would like to point out
Third Time is really not the charm

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Sat Sep 08, 2012 2:35 am

FrankTrollman wrote:
You can't have a sequel to Snow White or Sleeping Beauty or Cinderella or Beauty and the Beast.
You can, they are just extremely terrible, and you shouldn't.

-Username17

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_C._Hin ... ess_Series

Not really disney, though. Cinderella's ghost mother gives her glass slippers, but then also gives her a magic glass sword when the fairies steal her husband and she has to stab them in the face to get him back.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sat Sep 08, 2012 3:23 am

hyzmarca wrote:The fairy tale settings are problematic because, ultimately their conflicts are deeply personal and don't lend themselves well to serial adventures with randomly thrown-together parties.

That is merely the dynamic of the movies. There have been stories in Fairy Tell settings with randomly thrown together parties that lend themselves to serial adventures:

Likewise, things like 101 Dalmations, the Aristocats, Land and The Tramp don't lend themselves well to serial adventures.

The fact that there are several movies which boil down to a bunch of domesticated animals having their own society under the noses of their human masters, each with a different plot, means that there is room for multiple plots.

Really, you need a plot generator. D&D has dungeons and dragons, between wondering monsters and lost treasures there's always space for a plot. Shadowrun has Mr. Johnson. WoD has byzantine supernatural politics and built-in factional conflict. Rifts has rifts. Most Disney films are one off and don't have a plot generator.

The series are easier to work with in that regard. Ducktails has Uncle Scrooge, whose insane wealth and unquenchable thirst for adventure make him a living plot generator. The Rescue Rangers are essentially rodent-sized cops in a lawless world of danger and corruption. That gives them plenty of adventure space. Bonkers is also a cop. Aladdin has the Gennie and Arabian politics to serve as plot generators.

The various Fairy Tale movies of Disney, Pixar, Dreamworks, etc. have dragons, evil witches, dungeons, literal genie sellspells, evil fae, and even gods and monsters with their own motives and goals. Hell, Hercules is a serial adventure. He trains up, then when he heads off to be a hero, he finds a centaur intent on raping a woman, and stops it. Then he saves a couple of kids from a hydra. Then he fights a slew of monsters sent by a BBEG, culminating in making a deal with the BBEG so that the BBEG can pull off his plot, and Hercules' love is safe. His love gets hurt, Hercules gets his powers back, and goes to stop the BBEG.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Wed May 28, 2014 9:20 pm

So, the discussion of copyright and TTRPGs had me doing the following thought experiment:

If you were going to make a game where you grabbed Disney characters and had them do whatever and you wanted to make money off of it, how far could you go and what would you have to excise in order to make it work?

The obvious starting point of course are the characters. You have a pretty juicy list to choose from of characters who could just be a straight-up adaptation. From Forbes' list of Disney characters that aren't protected by copyright -- and aren't relentlessly lame, like Oliver from Oliver and Company:

Alice
Aladdin
Cinderella
"The Little Mermaid"
Badroulbadour (Princess Jasmine)
Tom Sawyer
Belle
Beast
Ebeneezor Scrooge
Hercules
Mulan
Peter Pan
Pinocchio
Robin Hood
Sleeping Beauty
Snow White
Tarzan
The Three Musketeers

And of course if you really wanted to you could probably drag in the rest of the popular characters via the magical world of parody. For example, reimagining Woody as a killer doll in an evil amusement park.

But here's the snag with this gambit: people want to play the Aladdin and Winnie the Pooh characters that they've seen in the Disney movies. They don't want to play some Chinese dude in harem pants with the name of Aladdin or a velvet yellow bear with a sweater -- they want to play those specific characters. An overly broad adaptation or parody may go too far and defeat the whole point of a non-Disney Company supported Disney(ish) game. Unfortunately, it's also really the only way forward for this project if you want it to be more than a freeware RPG.

So with that in mind, I foresee three courses of possible action:
1.) Go with that dumbass idea floated earlier in the thread where you Faux-Badass up the characters and dress them up in clown suits and give them a Gritty Hipster Reboot. For example, Pooh no longer goes topless in a red sweater and eats hunny all day, he's dressed up in one of those ridiculous X-Men movie BDSM suits and his superpower is to transform objects into candy. He has some ridiculous name like Winston T.P. or Honeymaw or whatever.

2.) Go full-on parody. Obviously you're going to have to lean on the more light-hearted properties like Toy Story and Rescue Rangers. You can either do a light-hearted parody like Pocket Princesses or a mean-spirited one like one of MAD Magazine's interminable Disney parodies. People who don't want to do something silly like Ariel in a water-filled Popemobile can just mind caulk or even outright Rule Zero the elements they want away.

3.) Try to get as close to the line as possible and then just let people fill in the blanks. Don't use the Gritty Reinterpretation or Comedy Parody explanation unless absolutely necessary. After all, you're writing the TTRPG under the assumption that your audience consists of tweens who want to have Alice and Snow White in a SERIOUS, ADULT tea party without having to endure disaffected Gen-X hacks snarking or jazzing up the characters. While there's no way in hell that you can publish a TTRPG that lets people play the exact characters of Mickey Mouse and Elsa, what you could do is use the list of public domain characters, bring them as close to the line as possible, and then encourage people at the tables to insert enough mind caulk to fill in the gaps.

Of course, you get an unintentional assist from Disney's writing staff with point 3. The characters in the movies, especially the pre-Pixar ones, aren't sketched very strongly. Cinderella gets a tragic post-movie story about how she's mistrusted by the nobility and tries her best to soldier through. Pinocchio studies extra-hard at school because he's something of a social misfit (having missed a huge chunk of his childhood) and also because he wants to make his father proud. Belle and Beast's post-marriage hobby is scouring the world for rare books. Stuff like that. Your goal is to give the characters enough of a character to play that's still consonant with the original adaptations but they can just mentally patch in an image of Belle being a brunette French bookworm in yellow.

Dean · Post by **Dean** » Wed May 28, 2014 10:22 pm

I think a reboot would be your best bet but not a gritty one. Making a gritty reboot alienates your target demographic of teen girls just getting into roleplaying and wanting to jump into a story they like. You'd reboot the world to make it somewhat cohesive and then you'd just draw all of the characters anew. You don't need the characters to look the same they just need to be in the same theme, they need to feel the same. On Broadway right now there is an Aladdin show, a Cinderella show, and a Sleeping Beauty show and none of the main characters look like the cartoons. Their costume's look vaguely similar but if you saw them on the street you probably wouldn't identify them as the character. The most important thing is the name. No matter what color robe Aladdin has on if he's "Aladdin" everything is gonna be cool. If you reboot the world to make it still a place of fun lighthearted adventure and draw the characters in that style then everyone will get what they want.

A problem worth mentioning with this idea is that no matter what you did Disney would sue you and they might win. I don't think there is any defense, no matter how unquestionably legal, that could stop DisneyCorp from having at least a 50/50 shot of owning your dog, car and wife by the end of things. Remember that they literally wrote the copyright laws we have, the legal system is like a game of Calvinball to them.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu May 29, 2014 12:44 am

I had to go back and reread the thread to get back into context for the two most recent posts, and so I haven't actually read those yet, but I was thinking about the "Disney Avengers" plot Cham put forth and realized that it can be done, he just chose the wrong characters--

Loki: Hades
The Chitauri: Alien Criminals/Space Pirates
Thor: Hercules
Captain America: Prince Charming
Fury: Cobra Bubbles
Iron Man: Buzz Lightyear
Black Widow: (aged up) Lilo
Hawkeye: Stitch
Hulk: Elsa

Hades finally gets out of the river of the dead. It's been several years, but gods are immortal, and it did nothing for his grudge against his nephew Hercules. He reaches out to all the multiverse of DAC to find a force strong enough to bring him revenge and victory and finds (one of Hamsterviel and his prison full of alien criminals/Long John Silver and his ship full of alien space pirates/Zurg and the myriad alien criminals which Star Command put away), and makes a deal. He gets a loan of troops and equipment, and goes to take over Olympus and Ancient Greece.
But first he needs a McGuffin that will allow him to move his troops. Apollo's Sun Chariot should do nicely, if we trade on energy requirements and sun symbolism. The chariot is, for some reason, in the custody of the Galactic Council, so Hades goes there to steal it, and in process turns Galactic Agent Stitch with the high tech artifact that [Villain Number 2] gave him to control the army, who switches sides and helps him make his get away.
Cobra Bubbles is alerted, but rather than let Galactic Agent Lilo get worked up over her partner being turned, sends her to retrieve a reclusive queen in Switzerland with an icy personality and control issues. Lilo retrieves Elsa with little difficulty, while he contacts Prince Charming, a living legend and immortal soldier with front line combat experience who is trying to get used to the changing world while dealing with the knowledge that everyone he knew has died.
Buzz hears about Hades stealing the ship, and goes to track him down and get it back before he can do any damage with the most miraculous technology yet developed, and meets Prince Charming in so doing. While they're transporting Hades to Cobra Bubbles' fancy high tech head quarters, Hercules charges in and mucks things up trying to bring Hades back to Greece to face home justice.

It still has issues, but at least it cares more about original character backgrounds and motivations.

Dogbert · Post by **Dogbert** » Thu May 29, 2014 1:20 am

Was Maleficent the one from Sleeping Beauty? Didn't she do the whole "AD&D-Shapeshift into a dragon" thing at the end of the movie?

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu May 29, 2014 1:34 am

Yeah, as I say earlier in the thread, she's basically a D&D Wizard

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Thu May 29, 2014 1:36 am

Prak Anima wrote:It still has issues, but at least it cares more about original character backgrounds and motivations.

The dissonant Mad Libs plot was a symptom of the problem, not the actual problem. The problem was that there is no strong campaign setting or at least a metaplot.

If you're going to do a gritty reboot of the Disney Universe where Bonkers, Jack Sparrow, and Cinderella don clown suits and oversized swords and fight through a horde of AUTO clones to face fused Scar and Jafar, you need a setting that facilitates that. You can't keep expecting DMs to special plead a metaplot out of thin air, that way lies Ninter Vale and all the lameness it entails.

Seriously, think about what you just posted. You ran the campaign, everyone enjoyed it, then you decide to run another one with many the same characters and the events that just transpired being canon. How does your next campaign flow organically from that? What exactly stops the next adventure from feeling like a disconnected kudzu plot that we got in shows like Super Mario Bros. Super Show and Captain N, where except for a few recycling of concepts and characters what happened in the last episode had no thematic or even logical connection to what's happening now?

Mord · Post by **Mord** » Thu May 29, 2014 5:44 am

This is resurrecting a long, long dead point... but if you have Disney worlds separated by semi-permeable membranes, why can't you just disallow characters of a certain power level (Maleficent) from bodily crossing into certain worlds? Shit, it worked for Frank with Limbo and the King With Three Shadows. Maleficent can't walk into 101 Dalmatians because that world's sheer mundane twee factor makes it especially resistant to incursions from high-tier badasses. Bald Mountain, on the other hand, has an extremely low standard for what won't fly, so pretty much anyone could waltz on in.

There's your metaplot. Maleficent has found out there are all kinds of other worlds out there that she can shit on, so she's ripping little holes in the fabric of the universe and sending her minions through. They tear at the fabric of narrative coherency more and more, with the end goal of allowing Maleficent to force a total convergence of the multiverse in the manner of her choosing. Maleficent herself is directing the whole shebang from Hollow Bastion, a barren shitball with a very low barrier to entry that she's crafting into the perfect fortress from which to rule the amalgamated universe.

Various local villains get in on Maleficent's scheme for the promise of power in her New Disneyverse, and eventually some of the good guys decide to counteract her plan with their own A-Team of crossover heroes. Merlin may not be able to hop freely among planets because he's either too powerful or too busy, but he has the spare time to rip a portal open under Simba's feet and dump him into an adventure with Donald Duck. Maybe some villains even decide to oppose Maleficent for their own reasons - after dealing with Mufasa, maybe Scar doesn't like the idea of bowing to anyone.

Basically Merlin is your best bet as a contrivance to assemble a party. In the Disney Crossover Universe, "you all meet in a tavern" becomes "Merlin yanks you all out of your native lands through portals in your closet mirror." Where you go from there is where competence on the MC's part has to come in.

Dean · Post by **Dean** » Thu May 29, 2014 7:01 am

That actually sounds fantastic to me

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Thu May 29, 2014 7:25 am

My big question with this idea has always been more about "Who gets to be the PCs?" than anything to do with the metaphysics. Simba is simultaneously one of the more powerful protags in the disney canon yet at the same time it's pretty easy to gin up situations where he loses to anyone with thumbs.

Dean · Post by **Dean** » Thu May 29, 2014 7:38 am

Disney animals come with thumbs if they are PC's or major villains. The wolves that attack Belle in Beauty and the Beast don't have thumbs but Simba does.