If you’re asking those questions, you have a well-developed sense of sarcasm, but this blog post might not be for you. (Note: You might taste something by licking your screen at this time. Such flavors are not the fault of this blog post and could pose a health risk.)

On the other hand, if you’ve worked in the games industry (analog or electronic), or if you’re a gamer who pays attention to the games industry, you’ve probably run across the term.

Flavor text can refer to any text that isn’t rules, such as in the great flavor-versus-crunch ratio debates about D&D content. (Doesn’t that sound fascinating? Thrilling stuff, that.) But it’s more common use in the industry is in reference to the sentence or two of non-rules text associated with a card, miniature, or electronic object in a game. It’s text that gives something context and meaning beyond a picture, the name, and “+1 Attack Power.”

Flavor text helps set the tone for the product and develop a player’s sense of the game’s world. Much of the time it’s a forgettable cluster of words that a player reads once and then ignores. Sometimes it’s an annoying nuisance because the flavor text implies rules that don’t exist. Yet every so often, it fires the imagination or hits the funny bone hard and becomes a defining element of the game.

I’ve written my fair share of flavor text—for Magic: The Gathering, Dreamblade, doomed Gleemax games that will never see light of day, the Lords of Waterdeep board game, and various Dungeons & Dragons game elements. Despite all that experience, I can’t say I’m an expert. In fact, I know I’m not even in the same league as the best. But if it becomes your job to write a sentence or two about 400 different game objects, I might be able to help with what little I’ve learned.

Be Brief

In most cases, flavor text has a limited amount of space. This limit is usually not a number of words but an actual length of text or number of characters. In this way, writing flavor text is like tweeting.

Of  course, you can’t rely on internet abbreviations such as “rly” or “r u ok.” Instead, cut useless helper words like “very,” and beware of adverbs as they tend to lengthen and weaken sentences (“slowly walked” vs. “trudged”).

Be Pithy

The thing to do when you only have a sentence or two of space is think about every sentence as a joke. By that I mean, it should structured to have a punchline. In essence, getting to the end of the sentence or two rewards you for reading it, regardless of if it was meant to be funny, poignant, sad, or whatever.

Being pithy is also a lot like writing tweets, but in this case, it’s about being good a writing those clever tweets that make you chuckle or think. Check out @ElizaBayne some time. Her tweets are mostly jokes, but they get at the idea of the punchline in a single sentence.

Also, quotes attributed to Ben Franklin or Abraham Lincoln are a good place to look for more pithy structures. Some are of course humorous, but many are more serious.

Use the Context

The art and name associated with your card or digital item defines the boundaries of your flavor text. If the name is “Ghost Legion” and the art is a gloomy picture of misty spirits suffering from deadly wounds, your pithy joke won’t work no matter how funny it might be.So you need the art and name. If you have the art, but it’s your job to come up with the name, it’s tempting to think that makes it easier, but don’t be fooled. Naming objects for a game is its own knotty problem. If it’s your job to define all three elements, for the love of everything holy don’t try to do it all at once! Here’s the most advantageous order: rules, art, name, flavor text. If you get any two of those elements right at the same time, count yourself lucky.

Be Good

Write to fire the imagination of the reader. Use unusual metaphors, unique thoughts, and subtext.

Just the other day, I was reading a novel and a character was described as having “hands that had never dug a grave.” Out of context, it’s not that great (doesn’t most everyone have those hands?), but put those words as the thoughts of a hardbitten, muddy soldier on a battlefield looking at some well-heeled, neat commander who leads from his tent, and then those seven words are suddenly laden with subtext and meaning.

Ultimately, there’s only two ways to learn to write well: Read and write.

Of course that’s an oversimplification, what I really mean by “read” is experience most every damn thing you can get your hands on, and read. Go hiking. Enter a marathon. Visit Peru. Buy beer from a corner store in the bad part of town after two in the morning. Take risks, whatever you consider a risk. I don’t mean be stupid—wear a seatbelt and use a bike helmet—but expand your boundaries. Build the neural network that will let you make unusual but meaningful connections.

Then read all the greats, the not-so greats, and the terrible hacks, and read enough of them so that you really understand why people make those distinctions. Read histories. Read romances. Read mysteries. Read science fiction. Read fantasy. Read westerns. Read children’s books. Read suspense. Watch movies of all kinds and when one really excites the writer in you, read its script.

And then write.

Flavor Strategies

So with all this advice in mind, what do I actually do? Usually, I stare numbly at the computer screen and wonder what the hell to write. That’s when I rely on strategy.

I’ve put flavor text into a few categories. I turn to this list as an idea starter when I’ve otherwise run out of steam.

• Zen Wisdom: This is my shorthand for anything that sounds mysterious or profound. A good example comes from a Terry Pratchett novel, Soul Music, that I recently read: “Some shadows are so long they arrive before the light.” Even without context, it’s a great concept, and you can see the punchline structure of the sentence quite clearly.

• Boasting Quote: A boasting quote is just what it sounds like, but it doesn’t have to be the subject of the card or digital item doing the boasting. It might instead be someone talking fearfully or lustfully about the subject, “Her glance was fire, and when our eyes met my soul burned.”

• World Revelation: This kind of flavor text relates some detail of the world of the subject or some fact about the subject itself. “The monks of the Sky Abbey vow never to allow their feet to touch the earth after ordination.” Most flavor text about items in a digital game take this form. Such details might sound like game mechanics but have very little to do with how the item functions in play: “The TK42A Assault Rifle fires 72 energy rounds per second in and can be fitted with an underslung plasma cannon.”

• Comic Concept: It can be hard to make a comedy work is such a small space, and it should always suit the mood of the art, but the punchline structure obviously lends itself to this approach.I call it a comic concept and not a joke because often it can be more successful to relate something funny about the subject (world revelation).

• Myopic Focus On Thing: This is my shorthand for picking out some element of the art and highlighting it for the flavor. Perhaps there’s a chaotic battle scene but one set of warriors is interesting. Maybe there’s a scene in an alchemist’s lab and the flavor text focuses on a particular bottle. Often this is a way to take art that didn’t quite work out and make it suit the rules better, like in the case when the rules and name talk about a magic sword, but the image is a whole guy in armor holding a sword that looks pretty normal.

• Fancy Description: This isn’t usually a great strategy, but sometimes it suits the subject. Basically, the flavor text just describes the object in the art in some compelling way. This usually only works when the object is alone in the image and looks interesting or needs some element of it explained. “Twelve rubies adorn its hilt of gold, and its black blade is pure adamantine.”

Of course, you can do more than one, such as by revealing some humorous (comic concept) aspect of goblin culture (world revelation).

Looking back over what I’ve written, the task of writing flavor text simultaneously sounds scientifically tactical and artfully mysterious. That’s fitting because good writing is alchemy. It’s quack science. You have to absorb all the principles, read all the experts, and consult the work of the great ones, but then at some point you’re left with the leaden rules, and you have to turn them into gold. If that’s your job, I wish you the best of luck!

At work I often use the phrase, “Chocolate and peanut butter.” It’s become shorthand for things that people like but that shouldn’t mix: Two great tastes that don’t go great together.

If you grew up in the 80s, you know where the idea comes from, but it takes a little disambiguation, as I’ve inverted the meaning. For those of you deprived of the old Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup ads, Youtube is your salvation:

I like Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, and I think putting chocolate and peanut butter together is a great idea, but there are some flavors that shouldn’t mix, and “chocolate and peanut butter” is snappier and gets the point across better than “clam chowder and rainbow sherbet.” The phrase usually comes up when people are talking about mixing genres, usually fantasy and science fiction.

Whoa there! If a dozen or more successful mixed-genre properties just leapt to mind, you don’t need to tell me about it. I know that it can work to mix fantasy and sci-fi, and there are many examples that I love. But in the specific case of D&D or Magic the Gathering, the two properties that I work with on a daily basis, inserting science fiction usually doesn’t work out.

Yes you might have had fun playing Expedition to the Barrier Peaks or Tale of the Comet (or god help you, City of the Gods), but if the original Player’s Handbook had laser pistols and space suits in its equipment list, D&D might not be around today. An occasional toe dipped in the water of another genre won’t sink such big ships as D&D and Magic, but a true blending would be bad news. Whenever you blend genres (any two genres), you run the risk of alienating the fans of both and leaving yourself with the tiny audience who love that blend. That smaller audience might be very passionate (I love Firefly! LOVE IT!), but there’s no denying that the mixed-genre property typically fails to gain as much attention as more straight-forward fare—even when the single-genre properties are of poorer quality. (Cleopatra 2525 got a second season. If you’re Cleopatra 2525 fan, don’t even try to tell me it’s as good as Firefly. Just don’t.)

But I digress.

Science and magic don’t mix—or more to the point, they shouldn’t. In this case I’m talking about any property in which some form of magic is explained away with science.

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

I rest my case.

Or at least I should be able to leave it at that, but people keep on committing this crime against good sense, so I’ll explain.

People want to believe in magic. It’s part of human nature. Even if you don’t believe in ghosts, leprechauns, or God, part of you wants to believe in them. The world is more wondrous and exciting with magic and powers we don’t understand. It’s why people go to magic shows and cheer instead of hurling things at the magician.

When you tell people that the magic works because of some science, it makes folk examine the idea instead of letting them be swept away by the wonder of it. The whole idea is of course nonsensical and illogical (that’s the point of magic) and so the scientific explanation always falls flat.

In science fiction, you can spread a thin veneer of science over a magical idea (teleportation through transporters, disintegration rays from phasers) and people happily play along. Sure it doesn’t work with today’s technology, but in 2525 or 2266, who knows? But when you explain magic with science, you force people to call bullshit. The magic that people were ready to be swept away by is immediately revealed to be a sham. People know magic does not exist—especially your made up magic that they’re seeing for the first time in a movie or reading about for the first time in a book. It’s like telling kids Santa doesn’t exist while they watch a Christmas special.

Magic is great. Science fiction is great. But they don’t make a great taste when mixed together. Chocolate and peanut butter, people. Chocolate and peanut butter.

Gathering of Heroes lifts all the tropes of D&D: healing spells, characters who represent different classes, and even drow—or as they are calling them “deep elves.” It’s a pretty obvious homage to D&D and maybe to World of Warcraft (but since WoW rips off so many tropes of D&D, it’s hard to tell).

While it’s no Hollywood production, it looks like the folks who are making it are pouring a lot of passion and energy into the work. And more power to them!

It’s not easy to get a big-budget fantasy movie made. You’d think you could just walk into a studio and say, “Let’s make a D&D movie,” or “Let’s make a Drizzt movie.” D&D has huge name recognition, and R.A. Salvatore is a perennial best seller. What’s the problem?

Well, the problem is that there have been D&D movies that didn’t do all that well, and there are plenty of big-budget fantasy flops to look back on (including the recent Conan film).

However, I take heart in the fact that most of the highest grossing films of the last decade (or ever) have been fantasy movies: Harry Potter, Pirates of the Carribean, Lord of the Rings, Alice in Wonderland. And many more are in the works at one stage or another. After all, it’s not that it’s so hard to make a good fantasy film, or that people don’t have an appetite for it; it’s that it’s an extraordinary challenge to make any film that millions of people want to watch.

The folks making Gathering of Heroes will get my money when they do a DVD release (or even a blu ray). Success or failure, kudos to them for taking up the challenge.

Anyway, this post is about the two upcoming fantasy films based upon the property. One is a fan-film and the other only looks like one.

Okay, that was unkind. It’s not clear what Felicia Day’s web series will look like in the final production, but I’m sure I’ll while away some hours gleefully watching people run around with swords. The last I heard, Felicia Day was not only starring in the series but also writing for it, which is tremendously cool, and I hope it turns out to be awesome.

It doesn’t make a ton of sense. There’s something about a magic box that lets you travel through time (and picture frames) and someone immortal and some villains that fly around in a car with wings kidnapping vicars and burgling houses. And somehow, it all takes place around Christmas, making this a Christmas series in a bizarre way.

That fact that these things seem only vaguely related in the narrative of the series hardly matters though as each episode meanders from one unexpected event and odd character to another. It’s like The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe if C.S. Lewis had written it while on an acid trip during his winter holiday.

The opening for the series certainly sets you up for some weirdness, but not to worry! The Box of Delights is neither as weird nor as scary as the video below.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like you can get this series on DVD in the States. It’s a damn shame, because I’d certainly recommend buying it. But, fortunately or unfortunately, someone’s put the whole thing on YouTube, if you’re inclined toward the free option.

Final Rating: WATCH

Why, in 1987 of course!

This weird little fantasy film was a co-production of Sweden and the Soviet Union. Maybe the third Red Scare in the eighties was the reason I never heard of it until a few years ago.

Finding this movie can be something of a challenge. Even bootleg DVDs sell for over a hundred dollars on Amazon. Is it worth the trouble?

In a word: No.

In three words: Oh, hell no!

If you were lucky enough to glimpse this film on some weird cable channel when you were a child, you might have found it fascinating and have a fond memory of it. But take off those rose-tinted glasses and look at it with the clear eyes of adulthood, and you’ll see a plodding, poorly acted, badly written, saccharine, and slightly trippy wish-fulfillment film.

Following child-fantasy tropes now made famous by Harry Potter, Mio lives with his terrible Aunt and Uncle until he is wisked away to a magical land where he is the only one who can defeat a dark lord and save everyone. Of course, in Mio and the Land of Faraway, he is carried off to that land by grasping the long beard of a flying, decapitated head of enormous proportions. And waiting for him in the fantasy land is his father, who didn’t die but instead is the king of a fantastic and wealthy kingdom. Going much more into the details will make my brain hurt, and it might intrigue someone into seeing the film, so I’ll just say something about Christian Bale and Christopher Lee.

Christian Bale plays the sidekick role of Jum Jum, pronounced “Yum Yum.” He is by far the better of the two child actors and should have had the lead role rather than the position of sidekick.

Christopher Lee is wooden and stiff as the villain, particularly in action sequences.

Although I often recommend you watch hard-to-find fantasy films, the only thing to recommend this one is that it might not be a wild misinterpretation of the end of the film to believe that Mio’s experiences in the land of Faraway were his dreams as he lay unconscious and dying of exposure.

Final Rating: DO NOT WATCH

Solomon Kane

I was intrigued by the controversy of it not getting a wide release. Folks saw it (or clips of it) before its release and were wowed enough to clamor for it. From what I saw of the preview, it looked like fun.

Boy was I wrong! Basically, it rains and snows a lot on Solomon Kane. He walks or rolls around in mud a lot. He kills a ton of nameless mooks. He has a drawn-out and predictable religious crisis. There are a lot of shots in slow motion that extend the displeasure of watching him slog through bad weather and bleak scenery. When at last the movie ends, it provokes nothing but a feeling of relief.

It is a relentlessly downbeat film. The pacing is slow, the action predictable, and the soundtrack is plodding. It has, literally, a single mildly upbeat moment of humor wherein one character makes a sarcastic remark before yet another long battle scene liberally strewn with slow motion and spattered mud. The rest is a drab slog.

I wish I could say something more to recommend it, but honestly, I think you’re better off watching In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale. And that’s a blunder of a film if there ever was one.

Having watched Solomon Kane, I completely understand why it didn’t get a wider release and why it’s still not for sale as a US DVD or blu ray. It’s a bad film. But it’s not SyFy-channel-schlocky bad; it’s a downer. If you’re a huge fan of the Solomon Kane stories by Robert E. Howard, I could understand you taking the time to see your dreams of a cool movie crushed, but I don’t recommend it.

Final Rating: DO NOT WATCH!

There might be a very good reason for the gentleman who now has the job to take over, but it does seem a shame that a film with a female heroine, written in large part by a woman, will now not be directed by the woman whose obviously put a great deal of passion into the project.

Here’s a rundown of the plot from Disney’s press release:

“A rugged and mythic Scotland is the setting for Pixar’s action-adventure The Bear and the Bow. The impetuous, tangle-haired Merida, though a daughter of royalty, would prefer to make her mark as a great archer. A clash of wills with her mother compels Merida to make a reckless choice, which unleashes unintended peril on her father’s kingdom and her mother’s life. Merida struggles with the unpredictable forces of nature, magic and a dark, ancient curse to set things right.”

http://pixar.wikia.com/Brave
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_(2012_film)
http://www.slashfilm.com/mark-andrews-replaces-brenda-chapman-as-director-on-pixars-brave/
http://www.cartoonbrew.com/feature-film/exclusive-brenda-chapman-no-longer-directing-pixars-brave.html
http://michelgagne.blogspot.com/2009/06/pixar-and-skeleton-crew.html
http://www.gagneint.com/Final%20site/Whatsnew/archive/2009/05_may/20.html

On the face of it, this premise makes for an interesting alternative history but it doesn’t seem like Hollywood material. I mean, anyone could come up with some equally odd fantasy premise, such as:
• It’s WWII in an Earth with witches, ley lines, druids, and lycantropes. Bombers drop menhirs to alter the ley lines on battlefields while werewolf Nazis terrorize troops in the trenches.
• Cortés and his conquistadors have come to conquer the Aztecs but they discover the harsh Aztec gods to be very real beings of supernatural power.
• Victorian England is under assault by its long-neglected Faerie people. A war between two worlds begins with England calling upon its old heroes Arthur and Merlin, long trapped in the world of Faeire, to save them.

There, you see? I came up with three ideas and it took all of two minutes. Of course, my ideas don’t have a young-adult novel series attached to them (yet . . .). That seems to be all it takes to get a movie deal these days.

I haven’t read the Temeraire novels but many people think they are awesome, including Peter Jackson, which is the whole reason why this odd fantasy premise might become imprinted on film. Peter Jackson has talked about making Temeraire into both movies and a TV series. To be more precise, he’s optioned the series for film or television treatment. He’s even had folks at Weta working on the visuals.

Of course, Peter is a bit busy right now with The Hobbit, so it’s not likely we’ll see anything new about Temeraire anytime soon, but I hope a series is made. I’d love to see a dragon blown up by cannon fire.

For more info about Temeraire film possibilities, check out the links below.
http://www.aintitcool.com/node/43301
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temeraire_(series)
http://screenrant.com/peter-jackson-temeraire-adaptation-ross-36862/
http://www.geekanthem.com/fantasy-film-casting-the-temeraire-series

Okay, horribly wrong is a bit unfair. It’s not a terrible film; it’s just not very good either. What resulted from the efforts of the filmmakers was a mediocre fantasy action film no better really than the spate of similar ginned-up fantasy movies. Pound for pound, this movie really isn’t much better than The Scorpion King or Prince of Persia or even The Last Legion. It follows a banal fantasy-plot recipe: There’s a villain, a threat of doom to the world, a chosen one who is fated to save it, and a romantic interest; throw in a mentor figure and a sidekick character to taste. Admittedly, the casting choice of Jay Baruchel for the hero was both brilliant and brave, but the film failed to capitalize on the full range of his comedic talent. The flaws in the film start in its first moments, with some goofy mumbo jumbo with killing Merlin and then continues with “Merlinists” and “Morganists.” Apparently if you are a Morganist, you’re hell bent on releasing Morgana from a nesting doll and destroying the world rather than having a good time being a superpowered wizard.

Let’s talk about the nesting doll concept for a moment. On the face of it, some magic artifact that is a nesting doll—with different evil wizards trapped in each layer—is a neat but weird idea. Add to it the fact that the nesting doll is not in Russia or someplace like that but in merry old England at the time of Merlin, and things start to go south. Now make a movie that heavily features that nesting doll full of evil wizards, but only put four on screen with one dominating the whole film, one being Morgana who shows up for the last five minutes and the other two being gone in a flash. Why bother with the concept (as goofy as it is in context) and then not capitalize on it by showing lots of different, cool, villains?

Also, the magic of the sorcerers is described in terms of pseudo-science. Why do so many make that mistake? Why not let magic be magical?

Beyond niggling points like that, there are fundamental problems.

The main villain we see, Maxim Horvath (great name!), is neither evil enough nor threatening enough. Most scenes with him in it end up as slapstick. Plus, he grabs as a sidekick a villainous wizard from the modern age who has taken up as a stage magician. This character is clearly intended for comic relief and occasionally achieves it. The combination of these elements disembowels him as a threat, turning him into a cartoonish baddie less worrying than Cruella Deville.

The relationship between our hero, Dave, and his mentor, Balthazar, never really jells. Nicolas Cage is terrible as a thousands-of-years-old wizard. None of the time seems to have affected him or made him any more interesting or wise. Plus, he’s quixotic in the training of his pupil. One minute it’s the most important thing in the world, and the next it’s “Awe, let the kid have some fun.”

Add to that the fact that Balthazar is supposed to have a love interest trapped in the nesting doll. This “relationship” fails on every level. We see him lose his love in the first five minutes and get her back in the last five. In between he has about five seconds of looking a bit sad about the situation. This subplot doesn’t work, and the movie didn’t need it. Besides, he’s had some time to get over his loss. I mean, how many hundreds of years does it take for Balthazar to get a date? Maybe he’s just not into the singles’ scene.

However, the film got one element pitch perfect.

The relationship between Dave and his love interest, Becky (played subtly and well by Teresa Palmer), works. In every scene between these two, the film actually achieves some emotional impact. I found myself wanting to watch that romantic comedy rather than the fantasy film in which it was embedded.

But as another example of where the film falls down: It establishes that Becky is afraid of heights. Then at the end it puts her in the position of climbing a dish tower atop a huge building in order to foil the villains’ magic circle. Hey, that’s great payoff for the investment! Great! . . . Except that we never see her climb the tower or struggle with the dish and her fears. It’s all off camera. No payoff. Plus, not long after that, she’s happy to fly on the back of a metal bird—apparently across the entire ocean to Paris. Little things like this occur throughout the film too many times to write about them all.

Final Rating:

DO NOT WATCH