One of my players and I were surfing cable the other night and talking about D&D when we stumbled across Hellboy II, which we'd seen before. It wasn't long before we were noting similarities between the onscreen action and D&D, specifically 4e.
We'd both seen Hellboy II before, but if you haven't you'd better stop reading.
I think Hellboy II would make a spiffy 4e campaign basically because of all the flashy set-piece fights in unusual places: the troll market, the library, the churning gears of the Golden Army's vault.
Then there are the monsters. It would be a lot of fun to recreate Hellboy II's monsters in 4e. There seemed to be a similarity in that you've got kind of a basic attack and then some sort of surprise power. For instance, the huge troll can shoot out his fist on a chain. The forest lord is an insta-kill if you 'crit' him in the head. And then of course there's The Golden Army itself, which would be great as one of those big combats that turns out to really be a skill challenge. The point at which the heroes realize that the automatons repair themselves and that they are screwed is awesome.
Then there's the psychicly linked elven prince and princess. What a great hook for a BBEG that would be! The person you're trying to save is the good twin of the person you have to destroy.
And of course, you have your party of bad**** with diverse powers: Hellboy himself works pretty much straight-up as a tiefling fighter (albeit one who has taken INT as his drop stat). Liz is, what? A dragon sorcerer? An infernalock? Someone with lots of FIREpower, anyway, and I'd say a high CHA by the way she ensnares men. Johann Krauss is clearly a revenant, maybe as a leader class of some sort. I think Abe might be some sort of homebrew. As a DM I might advise him to rethink that one, as his stats seem a little lacking. Maybe try a psion instead?
The real inspiration, though, was The Angel of Death, the bizarre character with eyes on its wings that Liz has to bargain with for Hellboy's life. My player turned to me and said, "Our game needs something like that. Creepy but cool." I grinned and said, "Don't worry..."
If there's anything I would really want to take away from Hellboy II, though, it's flavor. Harnessing just a little bit of the bizarro creativity that inhabits every moment of this movie would definitely take our game to the next level
