Would Honor Among Thieves actually make a good D&D game?

For people who don’t play Dungeons & Dragons, the new Dungeons & Dragons movie, Honor among thieves, is a pretty solid time at the cinema – a lively fantasy thriller full of chases and banter, with a smug villain and creepy villain swapping places in the middle of the stage, and some recognizable movie stars doing their respective things. For long-time players, however, it’s much more: a non-stop collection of Easter eggs and visual references, a satisfying visual tour of a familiar environment, and a chance to see many familiar game elements on screen for the first time, of very specific magical uses. (such as item reconciliation and wild magic peaks) to the town of Neverwinter.

Sure, the movie seems designed to spark discussions between the “That was fun” crowd and the “This movie breaks the next 18 rules!” typing, in the same way that each movie set and shot in a specific city shows the clear division between “Hey, I know that place, I’ve been there!” revelers and “Ugh, those two roads they were driving on not even connect in real life!” nitpickers. But for some players, discussing how the movie and game fit together isn’t a criticism, it’s just a fun thought experiment. With that in mind, here’s a thought worth delving into: Would Honor among thieves actually be a fun D&D module to play?

[Ed. note: Broad spoilers ahead for the overall plot of Honor Among Thieves.]

Let’s leave aside the issue of the characters themselves and the specific ways they interact – presumably at your own D&D table you’re not going to sit down with Chris Pine and Michelle Rodriguez. (If so, the viral marketing for this movie is much more detailed than we realized.) You may or may not want a Honor among thieves game with the stats for the official movie characters, rather than your existing characters, and even if you did, you’d probably play those characters slightly differently than the on-screen versions.

Each playgroup’s version of the story will vary: everyone will make their own choices in how they face Themberchaud, the burly red dragon, or how they break the Arcane Seal of Mordenkainen. Dice luck alone will often change the story a lot. (The Honor among thieves scene where Simon the wizard accidentally destroys the puzzle bridge in the Underdark plays out like a pretty classic “rolled a 1 on your Perception check and failed when you save Dex” event. But a luckier party can find a less elaborate solution to the puzzle, roll some natural 20s and find a switch that disables the fall, or cast some Spider Climb or Fly spells.)

So let’s stick to the structure of the hypothetical module: two of the players have to escape a dungeon, travel to a town and escape execution there. They recruit the other two players, search for a magical item, encounter a high-level NPC who takes them to the Underdark, take the item and match it, and pull off a heist. Then they fight in a gladiatorial arena, escape and then choose whether to run away and get rich together or return and save the city from a plan to make the populace undead.

Structurally, the big problem here is that two of the players can’t do anything for about a third of this module – not a problem if you’re playing it out as a campaign and half the players can’t make it through the first couple of sessions, but not very fun for a real four-person game. Yes, a creative GM will find solutions to absolutely every problem we address in this piece – starting with “OK, so the four of you are in this prison together…” in the opening scene – but for the sake of mental health questions we whether the movie as written would be a good experience at the TTRPG gaming table, not whether someone could take the broadest elements and massively rewrite it into a fun time. So let’s stay focused.

Photo: Aidan Monaghan/Paramount Pictures

Aside from the caveat that only half the party gets to play for the opening session or two (depending on how quickly your home playgroup takes action, or how much they delve into social situations and settings), that opening session has a lot of compelling possibilities. First, there’s the prison break itself, which is approachable in all sorts of ways. (Including delaying the actual escape until you find out if your Persuasion scrolls work on the parole board.) Then there’s the escape from Icewind Dale, which the movie skips past, but which can be quite challenging. (There are snow golems wandering there after all!)

Once back in warmer southern climes, the social encounter with Forge Fitzwilliam needs to run more or less on rails to accommodate the rest of the story. But since Forge has all the power in that situation and the PCs don’t have much to offer him in return for what they want, the rails shouldn’t be too obvious or feel too forced. And there are many ways to approach the fight that follows – almost certainly with more PC interaction than in the movie, where Edgin the Bard tends to get out of the way and twiddle his thumbs when Holga the Barbarian engages in combat. is.

From there, assuming the players don’t bypass the fact-finding opportunities in the story, we’re back in the area where only one of the players gets any action. Honor among thieves was deliberately modeled to feel like a real table experience, and it often does – except when it splits up the party and lets one of them do all the action, be it Holga solo fights or Doric the Druid frantically fights his way out of a spy mission. Doric’s breakout segment in particular would need a heavy rewrite to be enjoyable at the gaming table. The other PCs would need ways to join in, and her actual method of escape wouldn’t work, as spell druids can only shape-shift twice before resting.

The graveyard recon scene, where the party tries to figure out who last had the McGuffin of the hour, the Helmet of Disjunction, is one of the better designed parts of this scenario. It’s an extremely flexible setup that allows a GM to fine-tune a game to suit their party’s preferred style of play. The movie mostly lengthens it for comedy, which could work just fine. But another GM might as well play the investigation straight and fast, or introduce unsolicited information from the corpses (including the seeds of future storylines), or even turn the whole scene into a fight. (“Looks like the last party that came through here didn’t bother to ask anyone they asked five complete questions. There’s a small army of vengeful, resentful undead attacking you. Call for initiative.”)

The whole Xenk arc is the main problem for the hypothetical Honor among thieves module, at least as it plays out on screen. The players must go to a powerful NPC, listen to his lectures and backstory, dutifully follow him on a journey where they have no expertise or input, get a giant info dump on Szass Tam from him, then stand back and watch as he retrieves their mission item for them and then solos an undead battle? Boring. There are plenty of ways to get PCs more involved in all that action than in the movie, but given how obedient the movie characters are to Xenk’s every command, it feels like this part of the module was written to see just how far players can be pushed before refusing to go with a haughty NPC who thinks it is are story.

From there we have the Themberchaud run-in, which could be a good opportunity for charismatic characters to flip to a social encounter – that dragon must be at least a little curious about the outside world, given its history. Or it could work as one extensive skills challenge. But some PC groups will try to stop him and kill him, which feels like TPK territory. They need a clear way out if the GM doesn’t want the story to end there. Then there’s Simon’s attempt at tuning into the helmet, which doesn’t work with the tuning rules as written, but could easily be scrapped for a character who doesn’t enjoy one-on-one role-playing scenes or deep character exploration.

The heist itself, intended to free Forge of all his ill-gotten goods, could easily be the crux of this module. The movie characters find a number of different ways to get into Forge’s large vault, and many more possibilities are on the table. Assuming a group that enjoys puzzle challenges, this whole challenging setup, with its back-pull surprises and the chance for the whole party to shine in their area of ​​expertise, would make a strong centerpiece of a module. Who doesn’t love a heist story?

And the gladiatorial ring that follows similarly has loads of possibilities depending on how the party wants to play it. Like the graveyard challenge, this one can go in a lot of different directions, and the open options are a lot of fun. Is the party trying to get the crowd on their side? Are they recruiting those other factions running around the arena? An enterprising GM could even bring in some other players for a one-session special event to spice up regular play. Are they playing it all out as a straight fight, or are they trying to take control of the arena’s magic? Either way, if they manage to escape with the loot, like the movie’s characters, the arena could be the story’s big, dramatic climax – or just an appetizer for a group showdown with the story’s Big Bad, Sofia the Red Wizard.

The greatest strength of Honor among thieves as a potential D&D game module is that it offers the characters so many meaningful choices. After all, this story is designed like a movie, so the characters have dynamic and action-oriented roles to play. But more importantly, they usually face scenarios where there is not just one right way to approach the problem. And the ending in particular is strong, where they can authentically go down a selfish path or a noble one, and each path will lead to further story options. If they steal the gold, they’ll be rich and free – leaving behind them an entire city of ravenous undead, sure to reappear in future adventures. If they go back to defeat Sofina, they’ve certainly made enemies of the Red Wizards, who can launch endless future stories.

Anyway, Honor among thieves has its ups and downs, both as a movie and as a potential play experience, but it seems like there’s a lot of potential. A great GM and a great group of players will find the fun in every module, scenario or scene, but it really helps to have the bones of a good story lined up already. The Dungeons & Dragons movie isn’t expressly designed for a gaming experience, but it does have a solid skeleton beneath all the on-screen action. It’s just waiting for players to work it out and get it moving.