According to the directors, how to play D&D movies like a D&D game

Since then Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves In theaters, gamers have started Reddit threads and RPG forums to discuss ways they can draw from the film to enrich their home D&D games. Wizards of the Coast Released Official statistics block for the main characters of the movie, for anyone who wants to use them as NPCs or even try playing them. But DMs and players want to go further, hoping to recreate some of the movie’s specific action sequences, the focus of the heist or the gladiatorial battle in the third act. Honesty among lies screenwriter-director John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein really have D&D experience it for yourselfso Polygon asked for their best advice on getting their movie onto the gaming table.

Goldstein says that an important part of playing enjoyable D&D games is not making the characters too idealized or relying too much on desired fulfillment. “Our characters are created very imperfectly,” he said. “We always accept the idea that they are all at fault — maybe except for Xenk [Regé-Jean Page’s paladin character], except that he’s not perfect because he doesn’t have a sense of humour. So with any good D&D campaign, it’s about finding the strengths of your entire team. Where can your team fill in your own personality weaknesses?”

“I’d say, if you’re creating a character, don’t be swayed by the low reels,” Daley said. “I think in many ways, it’s through the weaknesses of the characters that you discover where their real strengths lie. Just from a storytelling perspective, it’s always more interesting to put limits on your characters than to let them be good at everything — that doesn’t make for a good game, nor does it deliver a good story. to tell.”

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As for what DMs should focus on when they’re planning campaign narratives, the directors suggested an idea most DMs are probably already familiar with: rely on favorite mediums to create sentences. A little bit of taste and the right pacing.

“We watched some of our favorite movies to find the rhythm of the story,” says Goldstein. “It always burns in our brains after a lifetime of watching movies. We wanted to tell a heist story, so we took a look at some of our favorite stories in that 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 instead of technology, characters have access to magic?”

“And don’t be afraid to detail how you’d approach any issue,” says Daley. “One of the most gratifying scenes for us to visualize and ultimately create was the gate theft scene, in which the characters are trying to sneak a gate into a painting and sneak the painting onto a car. horse wagon. On paper, it’s so specific that it seems almost boring. But for us, those specifics, the obstacles the characters have to overcome, is where you can really create a moment unlike anything you’ve ever seen in the cinematic space. .”

However, Daley added that the DM needs to be willing to experiment and accept that not every story beat is going to go the way they expect. He said: “In any good campaign, the DM can create something and not really know if it will work or not until they play it. “It’s the joy of making a game or playing it — and the joy of making a movie.”

For his part, Goldstein has a more specific tip for the DM: “The last thing I want to add to the soon-to-be narrator here is this: Give one of your characters a Bag, because you can get anything out of there that you want. may need. It is very useful!”