[Movie] Dungeon & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

[Svifnymr]

The movie isn't a shared setting tho, it's a particular adventure with a particular set of characters that happen to include a Druid that mostly shapeshifts and a Bard that mostly uses thieving skills and bardic inspiration. I'm not sure why it would need to have the most general, all-bases-covered version of the Bard for the character to be accepted as one, anymore than the Barbarian would need to use every weapon type in existence to confirm that yes, indeed, t'is a true red-blooded Barbarian.

It's not a shared setting, except in the sense that it's based on a shared setting (FR) and game (D&D). It's fairly common for book adaptations to vary from the source material and for folks to argue about it. The fact this forum carries everything as a holy war is a different thing really. For the movie though, it doesn't need to be anything in particular, it's about the expectations that some folks have about the material heading into it and how it deviates from that. When they come to a discussion forum to discuss this, they've entered a battle as should be obvious if you look at the responses to my post that precede your reply.

So, to reiterate, there is a baseline rules set and setting established. Deviating from that is fine in your space, but in a shared space you can't make that assumption. When you have a property based on that shared setting and rules, deviation from expectations will result in some people disagreeing with the choices made.

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No Elves. You don't want to come off as hanging off Tolkien's coattails even if the hobby absolutely started as exactly that (to the point that "halflings" were originally "hobbits" until Tolkien's estate threatened a lawsuit).

Gnomes, halflings, and dwarves all run the challenge of filming them being short. That either takes CGI or special filming shenanigans. Just having them not be those races means you don't have to bother.

Yeah, I'd love a solid gnome presence, but then you get into logistics issues that cost $.

Warforged are an Eberron race and this is Faerun. Technically. I say this as an Eberron fanboy who keeps buying Baker's third-party 5e Eberron books.

Fourth edition broadened them out more, but they never really took a large foothold elsewhere for sure. I don't think they'd "drop into" a generic fantasy setting movie though. Besides, if we're stealing from Eberron, a changeling would be fun, but of course cgi$.

A lot of the rest are just a ton of makeup and/or CGI. Do Tabaxi and risk looking like a Cats knockoff? Iffy. A lot of these races aren't from the PHB, either. Dragonborn are, but now you've gotta convince a non-D&D-interested audience why the dragon-person isn't a villain or monster.

I can see why they made these choices for the first shot. If it's successful, you can make more movies and take bigger risks. Man, do I really want an Eberron-set movie, now. The whole setting is designed around pulpy adventure and it establishes a pretty distinct take on fantasy, and it's not even a big risk for the audience; Arcane's setting within League of Legends is magipunk too and that show got tons of acclaim, both popular and critical.

Eberron would make a great animated series, even if I never really liked Sharn for a variety of reasons. A lightning rail based series of pulpy mystery would be fun.

The races seems sort of the "easy" / low effort level to keep costs down for the intro movie. Hopefully a future movie can push the look a bit more without becoming too much.

[quras]

While they aren't in the main party (and yes the sorcerer is a half-elf), almost all of those races show up throughout the movie.

Oh My Jonathan!

[Myradin]

Oh My Jonathan!

Honestly I was rather surprised to see the bird person, as I've never really seen them in my D&D or Forgotten Realms book reading experience

[Gabriel]

I haven't seen it yet, but I already have a disappointment: the lack of non-human races. There's a token Tiefling, and possibly a Half-Elf, but that seems to be it...? No Orcs or half-Orcs? No Gnomes or Halflings? No Dwarves? Warforged, Tabaxi, Kenku, etcetera? Not even a 'holy man' Aasimar? That's disappointing. I get the idea that they're trying to appeal to a wider audience and if the movie does well, then they can expand on it, but it just feels like a missed opportunity, as this was the best place to show that, "Hey, there's a lot more people out here than just Humans."

There are at least aarakocra, tabaxi, dragon born, halflings, orc, yuan-ti. Could be more that I'm not remembering right now.

[quras]

Honestly I was rather surprised to see the bird person, as I've never really seen them in my D&D or Forgotten Realms book reading experience

If I remember right they were first in the Fiend Folio D&D book back in the early 80's and then made playable some 7 or 8 years later.

they have been around longer than many realize. I played a lot of D&D but I missed out on a lot of 3.5 and 4E so maybe they were sidelined then. I'm not sure.

There are at least aarakocra, tabaxi, dragon born, halflings, orc, yuan-ti. Could be more that I'm not remembering right now.

And from what I can tell the guy in the beginning that "Disturbed the Bread eating" was a Hobgoblin.

[Svifnymr]

Aarakocra, kenku, githyanki/githzerai, drow and lots of other stuff were Fiend Folio based, yeah. Originally White Dwarf based in many accounts, before Games Workshop became it's own thing. Slann, Slaad being one of the amusing ones to trace the evolution of.

I like Kenku, I kind of want to have a kenku warlock, but just haven't found the right campaign for it yet.

[Myradin]

If I remember right they were first in the Fiend Folio D&D book back in the early 80's and then made playable some 7 or 8 years later.

they have been around longer than many realize. I played a lot of D&D but I missed out on a lot of 3.5 and 4E so maybe they were sidelined then. I'm not sure.

Oh I know they've been around for a while, they've just been a bit...obscure. My D&D experience has largely been 3.x and 4e, with a little bit of 5e stuff lately, though I've largely been running my own mess of a system for years.

[eschatological]

Kenku is annoying if you stick with the gimmick of just mimicking speech....and it's annoying if you just drop it completely.

I also (when I DM) hate anything that gives you an innate flying speed from level 1, so I don't care for arakocroa or aasimar either.

[Svifnymr]

Kenku is annoying if you stick with the gimmick of just mimicking speech....and it's annoying if you just drop it completely.

I also (when I DM) hate anything that gives you an innate flying speed from level 1, so I don't care for arakocroa or aasimar either.

The Kenku would have been the warlock with telepathy, so communicating with PCs wouldn't be an issue, but would still fit. Though again, it depends on the campaign too. Some might focus on a kenku walking around, some might treat it as just another person walking about.

[Corvus]

Aarakocra were playable back in 2e, on the Dark Sun setting, and possibly the complete book of humanoids as well.

[Endus]

Kenku is annoying if you stick with the gimmick of just mimicking speech....and it's annoying if you just drop it completely.

I also (when I DM) hate anything that gives you an innate flying speed from level 1, so I don't care for arakocroa or aasimar either.

It's a bit off-topic, but for DMs who face this and don't want to ban it, a few pointers;
1> given enemies ranged attacks. Anything big enough with anything like a hand can huck boulders as an improvised weapon.
2> If you go unconscious (always) or prone (unless you have hover, and most PC races don't), you immediately fall to the ground, both ending the flight and dealing fall damage. Getting knocked down to 0 hp means you're gonna fall and smack the ground which immediately fails a death save.
3> Almost definitely no cover whatsoever. You're a really obvious target. Anything with ranged weapons should be shooting the easy target rather than their friends hiding behind cover.

[Gabriel]

I also (when I DM) hate anything that gives you an innate flying speed from level 1, so I don't care for arakocroa or aasimar either.

Suddenly all fighting takes place indoors, and all rooms are max 5 feet high.

[Svifnymr]

Suddenly all fighting takes place indoors, and all rooms are max 5 feet high.

In an old shadowrun game, playing around with the Rigger rules I had a hyped up drone, then suddenly every random guy we met had Anti-Vehicle ammo. Was quite the coincidence.

[VMSmith]

I got to see the movie tonight with my wife and adult son, all three of us were very entertained. It felt like a D&D movie should, to me. There were just enough references without being obnoxious about them, and the MacGuffin served a purpose beyond the scene in which it was revealed so that moment wasn't too terrible. The only thing that felt off to me was the CGI, perspective, or whatever style they used to portray the halflings. It wasn't bad, it just wasn't particularly good, given what we experienced with hobbits in The Lord of the Rings so many years ago.

[Gabriel]

In an old shadowrun game, playing around with the Rigger rules I had a hyped up drone, then suddenly every random guy we met had Anti-Vehicle ammo. Was quite the coincidence.

Purely a coincidence I'm sure.

[Witchblade77]

isn't Michele Rodriquez relatively experienced with DnD? since as far as I know, Vin Diesel got most of the cast of Fast movies, her included, into the game?

[Xath]

Suddenly all fighting takes place indoors, and all rooms are max 5 feet high.

and suddenly you no longer have a gaming group weird how that works

[Daedius]

Enjoyed the film.

Liked the Cameo of the characters from the animated series in it.

[Fencers]

Big drop, bad demos and they lost most of their premium screens to... Mario Bros. this week.

They should push this on ancillary like 65 last week. That would boost this product and get it in front of broader demos.

[Eapoe]

Just saw it last night. Didn’t like the first 1/3-1/2 of the movie. It wasn’t bad, but the jokes just weren’t landing with me. About the 1/2 way point, they felt more natural and were a lot funnier.
The references were nice, and I’m sure I missed a lot as I’ve never played the tabletop game to catch everything. I just know enough to see that it seems like the makers really wanted to make it for fans of the game.
I really enjoyed the Easter egg of the old cartoon that showed up. It actually got me to make an out loud remark in the theatre (in a good way).
Overall, I’d probably watch it again, but the first part just really didn’t land with me.

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Oh My Jonathan!

Sorry if I’m nitpicking, but isn’t it Jarlthon? Just wondering if I misheard it the entire time lol.