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D&D Ideas — D&D Movie

Welcome once again to the weekly newsletter. This week’s topic is the D&D movie Honor Among Thieves, which we discussed in our weekly live chat. We hangout every Monday evening at 8 p.m. EST at Nerdarchy the YouTube channel talk about D&D, RPGs, gaming, life and whatever nerdy stuff comes up. Speaking of the D&D movie Honor Among Thieves a mob of zoo animals looking to get made may put this old adage to the test. You can discover if there’s honor among you mob of animal gangsters as one of the first people to get FREE Quick Start Rules for Zoo Mafia RPG. You can get Nerdarchy the Newsletter delivered to your inbox each week, along with updates and info on how to game with Nerdarchy plus snag a FREE GIFT by signing up here.

Nerdy News

Glitch out to the week that was! Make the most of your knightly echoes, roleplay a being whose existence is a clockwork routine of perfect order make your the zoo is safe in your Zoo Mafia games. Plus our weekly hangout, a live chat and the penultimate episode of our Zoo Mafia RPG round out this week’s Nerdy News. Check it out here.

Delving Dave’s Dungeon

What do we want or need from a D&D movie? I hear some saying Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves will make or break the future of D&D. I do believe it’ll be huge for the hobby if the movie does well. If it bombs, well, let’s just say I‘ve seen that movie before. As a matter of fact approximately 22 years ago I saw what a terrible movie did for the hobby. I remember being so excited for a D&D movie and being so disappointed. There were two other movies afterwards. They never even made it into theaters.

The trailer for Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves already seems to have a lot going for it. As far as monsters we’ve seen three dragons, an owlbear, a displacer beast, a mimic and a gelatinous cube. Then there are the spells — a Twinned Spell ray of frost, thunderwave, shield, misty step and dimension door. There’s also of course the character classes barbarian, bard, druid, paladin, rogue and sorcerer. That’s a ton of nods to us D&D fans without mentioning any of the Forgotten Realms easter eggs like the Red Wizards of Thay, Neverwinter and Revel’s End Prison in Icewind Dale, which appeared in the Rime of the Frostmaiden D&D adventure.

I’ve seen the observation the movie is going the Marvel route with a fantasy meets Guardians of the Galaxy take. To this I say good. Marvel makes successful movies I enjoy.

I don’t know what people expect. Maybe another epic fantasy? But we’ve already got a Lord of the Rings trilogy. The Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves needs to be its own thing. I’m hoping either the end of the movie or in a post credits scene we see group of people sitting around a table playing the game and their campaign was the movie.

More of the D&D games I’ve played in have been more like Guardians of the Galaxy than Lord of the Rings anyway. Perhaps your experience is different though.

Here is the IMDb info below, where we can see a few more things there and I’ll also mention some of the rumors I’ve heard. We know co-director Jonathan Goldstien mentioned there will be at least one cameo from a celebrity D&D player. At this point it  could be anyone. The ones who jump to mind are Matt Mercer, Vin Diesel, Joe Manganiello and Stephen Colbert. Some are speculating the magic horn we see in the trailer is the Horn of Orcus, which isn’t from D&D lore but from Critical Role. This would lend some credence to possibly seeing a Critical Role cameo.

“At Comic-Con, we also learned that cast members from the hugely popular Dungeons & Dragons actual play web series Critical Role are set to make cameo appearances in the movie. Characters that resemble those from the 1983 Dungeons & Dragons animated TV series are also set to crop up throughout the film.” — from WhatToWatch.com

I’m not sure if this means the celebrity D&D player cameo or it’s Critical Role plus another big time D&D player. From the cast we can see the spellcaster is indeed a sorcerer. It looks like we can expect tabaxi and wood elves to get some representation in the movie too. Both of the founders of Dungeons & Dragons are getting writing credits.

Cast

• Sophia Eleni … Tabaxi Mother
• Natali Servat … Wood Elf Prisoner
• Chris Pine … The Bard
• Michelle Rodriguez … The Barbarian
• Regé-Jean Page … The Paladin
• Justice Smith … The Sorcerer
• Sophia Lillis … The Druid
• Hugh Grant … The Rogue

Writing Credits

• Michael Gilio … (screenplay by)
• John Francis Daley … (screenplay by)
• Chris McKay … (story by)
• Dave Arneson … (game)
• Jonathan Goldstein … (screenplay)
• E. Gary Gygax … (game)

Directed by

• John Francis Daley
• Jonathan Goldstein

From Ted’s Head

I am very excited for the Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves movie to come out. If you watched the live chat with me and Dave then you heard as much speculation and enjoyment of the trailer as I could get out in the hour long chat. I am sure they might talk it up some more so I am going to go into a completely different direction.

Since the topic this week was more vaguely “D&D Movie” I went and watched the 2000 film despite all of its flaws. If you are familiar with it then you probably know all the hate it has received over the years. If you are expecting me to pile on it is not going to happen. Today I am going to look at the positive aspects of the movie and look at the magical items present within. The movie is over two decades old but just in case you need the warning — SPOILERS AHEAD.

First up are the good D&D aspects like getting the party together. In the movie you clearly can see who is a party member and who is an NPC. I see the party as two thieves, a mage and a fighter (maybe barbarian if you feel like pushing). Without the details you have two people in the wrong place at the wrong time, adding in a convenient distraction at the right time causing a mentor figure to die and run into the last party member. It all happens fast — just like it would at a gaming table with fast decisions.

As regards magic in the movie I feel it is underrepresented compared to what I feel we can expect in Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves but there was still some great magic to be seen. There were a number of magic items. There were some magic swords that looked to either add lightning or fire. There was a magic light that folded up to look like a mug. The major items involved in the primary plot were the two rods of dragon control. Considering these items did not require anything seriously challenging to get a hold of them it does make me scared to live in the film’s setting.

One of the best things in the movie was the carpet that turned into quicksand. Looking closely at the scene it could be really great to incorporate this kind of hazard as the quicksand did not pull the character under so much as stopped them from being able to go anywhere under their own power. Presenting this kind of hazard in a room during a combat encounter could really change the scenario.

While it was not the best movie out there, as a D&D player there are plenty of things to help inspire character concepts as well as Dungeon Master inspirations you can discover.

From the Nerditor’s Desk

The idea of acknowledging the player aspect of D&D feels like the most critical part of the upcoming Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. I’m already on board with the tone of the film demonstrated in the trailer because silly jokes, awkward party dynamics and irrational plans sounds like just about every D&D game I’ve ever played.

But carving out a special niche among big budget films like the Marvel Cinematic Universe, especially Guardians of the Galaxy to which the D&D movie has been compared to heavily, is going to take something unique. I feel like the connection between the players at the table and the amazing adventures we embark on is key. In this regard my take on the movie as it pertains to the hobby overall is it can only do good, or at worst nothing.

If Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves doesn’t take off with audiences then I don’t think it’ll affect the hobby at all. People who weren’t interested in the game will remain so and the rest of us will keep on rolling funny shaped dice like we always have. If it does really well, the way the MCU caught on with mainstream audiences, I still don’t think there’ll be much impact on the hobby. I’m pretty sure there hasn’t been any huge spikes in comic book readership since Marvel movies started crushing it at the box office.

For my 2 cp the best way to create a D&D movie that’s meaningful to the game itself is shown in the film Of Dice and Men, which tells parallel stories of a fantasy RPG campaign alongside the story of the players participating in the game. Honor Among Thieves needn’t cleave this closely to the model but if I’m honest I’ll be really disappointed if there isn’t at least a scene somewhere in the movie showing players whose campaign is the film’s story.

Adapting any sort of popular media that connects with people on a deep level runs a certain kind of risk because the experience those folks engage with is often very personal. For example although Mass Effect is far and away my favorite video game ever largely due to the story, I’ve never been interested in seeing a movie version. This is because the experience was MY version of the story.

D&D is the same way. If Honor Among Thieves cleverly demonstrates how players can create these unforgettable, amazing and action packed moments together while playing then the movie will undoubtedly resonate with audiences in a way that could introduce a lot of new players to the hobby.

One last thing only tangentially related because of the connection between our real world where players exist and the fantasy worlds where our adventurers do their thing is the idea of the crossover adventure. Have you ever taken the D&D adventurers in your games to our own world? I’ve done this a couple of times for one-off adventures and players sure do remember them.

In my longrunning Spelljammer campaign the characters wound up on Earth. It was some time before it dawned on the players because I was described things as the characters would perceive them. The other time was during Ingest Quest 2 and this scenario was even weirder because the characters encountered their players during the live stream game.

In both cases it was a lot of fun and quite interesting to explore the notion of fantasy adventurers spending a bit of time here on good old Earth. If you’ve never tried this gimmick I encourage you to give it a shot at least once. At the start of your next session any sort of magical phenomenon you can imagine takes place and what do you know when the magic fades the party finds themselves inside a large structure that looks like a village except it’s completely enclosed. Store fronts along the thoroughfare display endless varieties of goods, and glowing boxes of light on the ceiling illuminate the interior as brightly as the sun on a clear day.

A young human wearing an apron hails the party from behind the counter of a nearby vendor. “You folks look strange. Are you in town for the Renaissance Faire? We’ve got a special for people doing cosplay.”

*Featured image — Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is an upcoming American fantasy action-adventure comedy film co-written and directed by Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley, based on the tabletop role-playing game, Dungeons & Dragons. The film is set in the campaign setting of the Forgotten Realms.

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