Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

 Roll for initiative…

Dungeons & Dragons is so hot right now.  I mean it's cool to be a nerd now.  Or maybe I should say cool people are coming out of the nerd closet.  It’s finally happened people, all the social walls are falling.  I think it must have started with the Berlin Wall coming down.

I mean they tried it to make DnD cool before, but the last time I watched a Dungeons and Dragons movie in the cinema it was not good.  But the year 2000 was an awkward time and we are 23 years removed.  Empires have risen and fallen in this time and Stranger Things made the Dungeons and the Dragons popular.  I am even in a group with work colleagues.  

So they decided to have another go at it.  Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves came out and, well it's fun.  It's a classic popcorn movie.  It's silly at times and has lots going on.  I reckon that when I rewatch it it will probably suffer here and there but for the most part, it's good.  Movie on, brain out job done.

Now the movie has a plot.  Chris Pine is a bard who is looking to reclaim his daughter and to do so he gets a rag tag group of DnD PCs (that player characters) together for this quest.  There are your generic fantasy classes, although no dwarf, and they get involved in a bunch of different set pieces along their way.  Some are actually really cool, like the heist on the road to Neverwinter.  And this is my biggest compliment of the movie… It feels like a game of Dungeons and Dragons.  There are parts when I thunk, oh, he rolled low there, and big set ups that get ruined by one of the characters being stupid.  Very DnD.

It is legit enjoyable.  There’s never enough time for logical thinking to come into play, which is good because there is plenty of Dungeons and Dragons universe lore I know nothing about, like; What are those cat people, why can she turn into a bear that has the face of an owl, what is an owlbear?  It doesn't matter because there is a fat dragon, a fun heist, a hilarious Bradley Cooper cameo (that just hit me in the right place) and really, who cares?

Now then, I am from sunny Northern Ireland which just happens to be the place where they filmed a lot of the movie.  This may have won me over a bit more.  Seeing places I’ve been in a Hollywood blockbuster (probably right?) was cool.  Oh look there Carrick Castle!  I mentioned in the podcast episode a story of some of my family bumping into one of the stars, check that out.

I hope Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves does spin off into other things, a TV show is the perfect format for DnD.  It would give it the feel of a game session and this could actually bring more people to the game (Wizards of the Coast/Warner Bros. Discover call me or email the podcast dyespodcast@gmail.com).  Or they could just get Joe Manganellio on it.