Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves

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CT_Phipps

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DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS: HONOR AMONG THIEVES made me tear up a bit at the end. It was an involuntary reaction, I certainly didn’t intend for it to happen, but it’s something that occurred nevertheless. Against my better judgement, I came to care about these characters and whether they managed to make it through the end of the movie. So, in the words of Rick and Morty, “You son of a bitch, I’m in.”

The movie isn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination but it is recognizably and explicitly Dungeons and Dragons. Which is a harder thing to embody than many people might think. Dungeons and Dragons isn’t a setting by itself but a method of creating and playing a setting. This is the problem of previous adaptations because you can play any fantasy setting with D&D rules but you can’t just say, “Dungeons and Dragons is the setting.” Here, it’s the Forgotten Realms and I kind of wish they’d called it Forgotten Realms or Neverwinter Nights because either of those titles would have been appropriate as well.

Energy-wise, this is a Marvel Cinematic Universe movie for better and worse. I honestly compare this most to Paul Rudd’s Ant Man movie in terms of rough mixture between family melodrama, quips, and action. Well, this has a lot more dragons in it and I’ll give that is an impressive boost over Ant Man. It’s a movie about a failed father trying to reconnect with his daughter, a heist, and an oddball crew of misfits. So let’s say Ant Man meets Guardians of the Galaxy meets dragons. Which, yes, is probably why I love this movie against my better judgement. Neither of those films are my favorite Marvel films but throw in an owlbear and the Red Wizards of Thay? Yeah, now we’re cooking with fireballs.

The premise is somewhat overly complicated at the start with, essentially, an entire movie’s worth of backstory in the prologue that could have been the first part of a trilogy. Edgin Darvis (Chris Pine) is a Harper who turns to thievery after his do-goodery gets his wife killed by the Red Wizards. He ends up as heterosexual but platonic partners with Holga (Michelle Rodriguez) and raises his daughter, Kira, with her.

Hearing there’s a magical tablet that can raise his wife from the dead, Edgin robs the Harpers and gets sent to magical prison with Holga when the heist goes wrong. They break out and decide to get Kira back from their partner who, obviously, betrayed them but is raising the girl as his own.

This is just the prologue.

The movie is mostly a heist film with our leads recruiting bumbling sorcerer Simon Aumar (Justice Smith) and kickass Tiefling druid Doric (Sophia Lillis) to help take down Lord Forge Fitzwilliam (Hugh Grant) as well as his Red Wizard partner Sofina (Daisy Head). They go from action scene and comedy scene to action scene to comedy scene with the movie never really taking a break. Some of the comedy is stupid like a scene where they waste their Speak with the Dead questions while other comedy is stupid but entertaining as hell (Holga’s ex being a halfling? Eh. Holga’s ex taking up with another Amazonian barbarian? HILARIOUS).

The movie is utterly drenched with fanservice and you’ll be unable to turn off your brain from the, “I recognize that, they said the thing, I recognize that, reference to that thing I know!” Memberberries (i.e. things you remember from your childhood) are a pretty low form of humor perfected by Buffy: The Vampire Slayer and Iron Man but it works on the nerd side of my brain. When they mention Simon is Elminster’s descendant, I went, “Yeah, him and half of Faerun” and realized they’d gotten me.

I feel almost bad about how mad I am for unabashedly loving this movie. I am deeply cynical about Hasbro’s handling of D&D and mad at them for a dozen things ranging from the OGL to the novels being abandoned. However, this movie has an morbidly obese red dragon, the cast of the Eighties Dungeons and Dragons cartoon, and Szass Frigging Tam (who is the villain of my current D&D campaign). What am I supposed to do with that? I can’t stay mad at a movie trying this hard to entertain me.

The cast is a bunch of bumbling misfits and everyone looks like an idiot but Doric (Michelle Rodriguez gets a lot of mileage out of being a dumb barbarian), yet I can’t complain about that since it’s my style of humor too. They’re also competent when it counts. I even like Hugh Grant in this as he basically shows what he would have been like if he’d play Gilderoy Lockhart in Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets. Literally my only complaints are the fact that I wasn’t aware Faerun was enlightened enough to have prisons with a healthy pardon system and the fact movie dragged in literally two places.

See the film.
 
That's a lot more positive than I expected:grin:!
 
I bit deep into this thread: Reddit (caveat lector)

"it's about as good as the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie"

"people unfamiliar with the hobby are going to see it ... be convinced to try 5e out, and feel like they got positively cheated"

"issue resides in how a lot of the action, combat, character abilities, spellcasting and heist-planning cannot actually exist in game ... not without the DM tossing the whole rules et to the side and running a game composed of literally only the rule of cool"

Enjoy.
 
You're giving money to a shitty company that just last month tried to scam you and only backed off because of a weeklong customer revolt vs
You're giving money to a shitty company that just last month tried to scam you and only backed off because of a weeklong customer revolt
 
"people unfamiliar with the hobby are going to see it ... be convinced to try 5e out, and feel like they got positively cheated"

"issue resides in how a lot of the action, combat, character abilities, spellcasting and heist-planning cannot actually exist in game ... not without the DM tossing the whole rules et to the side and running a game composed of literally only the rule of cool"

I know the feeling. I was bitterly disappointed after I took up Karate after watching American Ninja 2 and found that I'd never be able to take on ten guys in hand to hand combat at once while wearing a bucket over my head.
 
I know the feeling. I was bitterly disappointed after I took up Karate after watching American Ninja 2 and found that I'd never be able to take on ten guys in hand to hand combat at once while wearing a bucket over my head.

but what if you tried the Crane Maneuver on them?
 
Narrative guy who hates 5e goes into exhausting detail about how the movie isn’t based on 5e, and is a lot more fun.

and?
Storm in watercup?

I mean, I didn't need another proof that D&D isn't the best system even for emulating even D&D-inspired media. I already assume that to be the case by default, actually - I'm just kinda surprised that even the "official D&D movie" falls outside the range of what can be emulated comfortably with the system:devil:!
 
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I expect a movie to be entertaining not to follow every rule of the game. The fact that this seems to have some appeal outside of gamers is a plus.

Yeah, it could be an opportunity to send people who want to play MOVIE D&D into something like 13th Age or another high fantasy game.

(Similar argument to the new Marvel game - where I think it should reflect the movie and not the comics)

Whether or not WE know that D&D the Movie is not D&D the Game is immaterial. It's about newbies to the industry.

(Again, shades of the things WE GAMERS take for granted - turns, rolls, saving throws, whatever. People being so blind to their own jargon that they can't see the flaw in a massive marketing spend like a movie not being emulated by the game it's literally advertising).
 
As long as it sends new people to the hobby it’s a win, regardless of what game they end up with. Let’s be honest though they will go to D&D and chances are only a small percentage will be fortunate or diligent enough to try any other game.
 
"issue resides in how a lot of the action, combat, character abilities, spellcasting and heist-planning cannot actually exist in game ... not without the DM tossing the whole rules et to the side and running a game composed of literally only the rule of cool"

Well, WotC is in active development of a new edition as we speak, most of the proposed changes for which seem to be about eliminating restrictions and making PCs cooler, so maybe what’s true today won’t be by next year.
 
"issue resides in how a lot of the action, combat, character abilities, spellcasting and heist-planning cannot actually exist in game ... not without the DM tossing the whole rules et to the side and running a game composed of literally only the rule of cool"

Well, WotC is in active development of a new edition as we speak, most of the proposed changes for which seem to be about eliminating restrictions and making PCs cooler, so maybe what’s true today won’t be by next year.
Yup,

Maybe this is all about 6e and the automation of creating PCs at 10th level to start. (Which makes sense rather than having everyone you meet being "0th" level.)
 
You're giving money to a shitty company that just last month tried to scam you and only backed off because of a weeklong customer revolt vs
You're giving money to a shitty company that just last month tried to scam you and only backed off because of a weeklong customer revolt
I am going to spam this at anyone who expresses any interest in this movie.
 
Could you image a dnd movie where two hours are just the first combat against goblins? What a shock that they didn’t adapt the dnd rules 1 to 1 for a movie.
The Paladin gets an hour to explain why his act wasn't actually evil and he should get his powers back.
 
Oh Jesus was that horrific. Who in their right fucking mind thought that would be a watchable movie? "Hey everyone, you know which one is the goofy sidekick because he's wearing that fucking hat."
When that movie came out my player friend & I went to see it. A non-player friend was walking out of it, saw us, and said it was a pretty good movie. So the player & I were now more excited as we went in to it.
That non-player was no longer my friend after that...
 
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