How to play the D&D movie as a D&D game, according to the directors

Since Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves Once in theaters, gamers have been flocking to Reddit threads and RPG forums to discuss how they can use the film to enrich their home D&D games. Wizards of the Coast has released official stat blocks for the film’s main characters, for anyone who wants to use them as NPCs or even try to play them. But DMs and players want to go further and hope to recreate some of the film’s specific action sequences, its central heist focus, or the arena gladiatorial combat in Act III. honor among thieves In fact, writers and directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein have D&D experience themselves, so Polygon asked them for their best advice on bringing their film to the gaming table.

Goldstein says that playing enjoyable D&D games is about not idealizing the characters too much or relying too much on wish-granting. “Our characters were extremely imperfectly designed,” he says. “We’ve always believed that they’re all bugs – with the possible exception of Xenk [Regé-Jean Page’s paladin character], except that he’s imperfect because he doesn’t have a sense of humor. So any good D&D campaign is about finding the strengths of your team as a whole. Where can your cohorts fill in your own character’s weaknesses?”

“I would say if you’re creating a character, don’t let low roll counts sway you,” says Daley. “I think in a lot of ways you find out what your characters’ real strengths are through their weaknesses. From a storytelling standpoint alone, it’s always more fun to set limits on characters than to make them good at everything – it doesn’t make a good game, nor does it make for a good story to tell.”

Image: Paramount Pictures

In terms of what DMs should focus on when planning a campaign story, the directors suggested an idea most DMs are probably familiar with: Drawing on favorite media to add spice and pace to a story.

“We looked at some of our favorite movies to find the story,” says Goldstein. “That’s been burned into our minds throughout our lives of watching movies. We wanted to tell a heist story, so we looked at some of our favorites in the genre and figured out: What are the conventions? What are the tropics? How do we do it differently? And how do we make it specific to D&D where the characters have access to magic instead of technology?”

“And don’t be afraid to really go into detail about how you’re tackling a problem,” says Daley. “One of the most enjoyable scenes we envisioned and ultimately created was the portal heist sequence, where the characters attempt to smuggle a portal onto a painting and smuggle the painting onto a carriage. On paper, it’s so relentlessly specific it can almost seem boring. But for us, it’s those features, those obstacles that the characters have to overcome, where you can really create a moment that’s unlike anything you’ve ever seen in film.”

However, Daley adds that DMs must be willing to experiment and accept that not every story beat will come across as they expected. “In any good campaign, a DM could create something and only really know if it’s going to work until they tested it,” he says. “That’s the fun of making a game or playing it — and the fun of making a movie.”

For his part, Goldstein has one more specific tip for DMs: “The last thing I would like to add here for the budding storyteller is: give one of your characters a bag of contents, because you can pull out whatever you might need.” It’s very useful!”