What the film captures is the chaos and ridiculousness you’d find in an actual D&D game.
(The directors told Polygon that while this was intentional, they still stuck as closely to the rules that govern the game as they could on screen.) All the attention paid to creating that balance between honoring the game and making a good movie results in a film where the creators’ love for D&D really shines through, welcoming existing fans as warmly as it invites new ones in.
Complex gameplay concepts like spellcasting and character classes are smoothed over they’re just portrayed in use without being too explicit about the details, making them fit for a mass audience. And that seems to have worked for a lot of people, judging by the movie’s top box office spot on its opening weekend.ĭirected and co-written by Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley ( Game Night, Vacation) - longtime D&D players themselves - Honor Among Thieves is conscious of the pitfalls of its source material and, largely, avoids them. Although the movie is packed with fan-service references and Easter eggs, you don’t have to know anything about the game before you take your seat. It’s fun, it’s funny, and most of all, to this regular player, it feels like D&D. If Dungeons & Dragons fans have suffered from bad dice rolls with past movies based on the venerable role-playing game, the new one, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, is more like a critical hit.
