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With Fire and Sword
Ogniem i mieczem
1999 · Film · 175 min
Part of Henryk Sienkiewicz's Trilogy
Directed by Jerzy Hoffman
In the mid-17th century, Poland was the largest, most democratic, and most tolerant country in Europe. However, a tragic civil war brought about the gradual decline of the once glorious republic... An epic story about the Cossack rebellion against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
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3 comments on Hacker News
I had a similar experience with the characters in Sienkiewicz's Trilogy. A number of the fictional characters were amalgamations of actual historical figures, with added or modified histories. For example, the character of Sir Wołodyjowski is actually drawn from two figures with the same surname.
(For those interested, Jerzy Hoffman has produced excellent film adaptations of these books, two while navigating communist censorship, which is why they were filmed in reverse order. In reading order:
- "With Fire and Sword" (1999) [1]
- "The Deluge" (1974) [0] (trailer for the significantly shortened 2014 director's cut of "The Deluge" [3])
- "The Colonel Wołodyjowski" [2]
In my opinion, and this is widely regarded to be the case, the original 5+ hour "The Deluge" is the best of the three and frankly one of the best movies I've ever watched.)
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqdrKEEt_nc
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCESk2joFo8
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFO4O4JNjXw
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBfhvt1zrfU
to visualize the characters - depiction of the Zaporozhian Cossacks from not that bad a movie "With Fire and Sword" about the rebellion https://youtu.be/4j4AYK8KGKU?t=7
In Poland there were Krzyształy Czasu (Crystals of Time) - a generic high fantasy system made by people from Magia i Miecz magazine (pioneering magazine about RPGS in Poland - it was the only such press for decades). There was also "Wiedźmin - Gra Wyobraźni" - an RPG based on Witcher franchise and targetting new players reoughly at the time that Witcher was first adapted as movie and TV series. It wasn't very good mechanically, but got some people in the hobby.
There was also Dzikie Pola (based on Polish 16-18th century - inspired by books of Henryk Sienkiewicz - Polish Dumas). If you've seen "Deluge" or "With Fire and Sword" movies you know the setting. Sabres, flintlocks, Polish nobility, Ottomans, Muscovites, Cossacs, and wide steppes of modern Ukraine :)
On sci-fi side there is Neuroshima - fallout-like setting with some quirks. It was popular a few years ago but I don't hear about it much anymore.
But the most popular was (and still is) fantasy Warhammer RPG. The first Polish edition was the first time an RPG system was marketed in Poland and it was a big deal, almost everybody to this day started playing RPG with first or second edition of that.
Apart from that the most popular is Call of Cthulhu I think? Or maybe Vampire:the Masquerade and related systems, but that's losing popularity recently I think.
D&D was never very popular, that slowly changes recently.