Would Honor Among Thieves actually make a good Dungeons & Dragons game?

For people who don’t play Dungeons & Dragons, the new Dungeons & Dragons film,Honor among Thieves, is a pretty solid time at the movies — a brisk fantasy-thriller full of chases and banter, with one smug villain and one creepy villain swapping places at center stage, and some recognizable movie stars doing their respective things. For longtime players, though, it’s a lot more: a nonstop collection of Easter eggs and visual references, a satisfying visual tour of a familiar setting, and a chance to see a lot of familiar elements of play on screen for the first time, from highly specific magic use (like item attunement and wild-magic surges) to the city of Neverwinter.

Sure, the movie seems designed to start arguments between the “That was fun” crowd and the “This movie breaks the following 18 rules!” types, in the same way any movie set and shot in a specific city reveals the clear divide between “Hey, I know that place, I’ve been there!” celebrants and “Ugh, those two roads they drove on don’t even Register in real life!” nitpickers. But for some players, debating how the movie and game fit together isn’t a criticism, it’s just an enjoyable 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.]

Image by Paramount Pictures

Let’s leave aside the question of the characters themselves and the specific ways they interact — presumably at your own D&D table, you aren’t going to be sitting down with Chris Pine and Michelle Rodriguez. You might be surprised at how specific the viral marketing is for this film. Playing an upcoming movie is something you might want. Honor among Thieves game with the stats for the official movie characters, rather than your existing characters, and even if you did, you’d likely play those characters somewhat differently than the versions on screen.

Every play group’s version of the story will vary: Everyone will make their own choices in how they face Themberchaud the hefty red dragon or break the Arcane Seal of Mordenkainen. You can change the ending by simply using dice luck. (The Honor among Thieves scene where Simon the sorcerer accidentally destroys the puzzle-bridge in the Underdark plays out like a pretty classic “rolled a 1 on your Perception check, then failed your Dex save” event. Lucky parties might be able to find a simpler solution. They could roll some natural 20s or use Fly or Spider Climb spells.

So let’s stick to considering the structure of the hypothetical module: Two of the players have to escape a dungeon, travel to a city, and escape execution there. The two other players are recruited and they search for the magical item. They meet an NPC of high rank who guides them to the Underdark. Once inside, the item is attuned to their abilities and then the group robs a bank. The two players fight in a gladiatorial battle, then escape. They can choose to either run away and become rich or to return to the city to stop a plot to make the population undead.

Structurally, the big problem here is that two of the players don’t get to 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 the first couple of sessions, but not much fun for an actual four-person game. Yes, a creative GM will find workarounds to absolutely every issue we raise in this piece — starting with “OK, so the four of you are in this prison together…” in the opening sequence — but for sanity’s sake, we’re asking whether the movie as written would be a good experience at the TTRPG play table, not whether someone could take its broadest elements and massively rewrite it into a fun time. So let’s stay focused.

Photo Credit: Aidan Monaghan/Paramount Pictures

Except for the fact that half of the group is not allowed to participate in the first session, depending on the speed at which your home play group moves or how deeply they explore social settings and situations, the third has many engaging options. First, there’s the prison break itself, approachable in a wide variety of ways. This includes postponing your escape in order to determine if you Persuasion rolls are valid on the parole boards. Then there’s getting out of Icewind Dale, which the movie skips past, but which could involve a fair bit of challenge. There are even snow golems out there!

The social interaction with Forge Fitzwilliam once he is back in southern climes will more or less have to continue on rails. But given that Forge has all the power in that situation, and the PCs don’t have much to offer him in exchange for what they want, the rails shouldn’t be too obvious or feel too forced. And there are a lot of ways to approach the fight that follows — almost certainly with more PC interaction than it gets in the movie, where Edgin the bard tends to get out of the way and twiddle his thumbs whenever Holga the barbarian is in combat.

From there, assuming the players don’t bypass the story’s fact-finding opportunities, we’re back into territory where only one of the players is getting any action. Honor among Thieves was consciously modeled to feel like a real tabletop experience, and it often does — except when it splits the party and lets one of them handle all the action, whether it’s Holga soloing fights or Doric, Doric the Druid, wild-shaping herself to escape from an spy mission. In fact, Doric’s escape segment in particular would need heavy rewriting to be enjoyable at the play table. The other PCs would need ways to get involved, and her actual escape method wouldn’t work, since game druids can only change forms twice before resting.

One of the best parts of this scene is the graveyard exploration scene. This allows the party to try and figure out who has the McGuffin. It’s a supremely flexible setup that would let a GM fine-tune a game to meet their party’s preferred play style. This movie prolongs the film for humor, and that could be fine. A different GM might be able to play it straight or fast, introduce unasked for information from corpses (including seeds for future story arcs), and even make the entire scene into combat. (“Looks like the last party who came through here didn’t bother to ask anyone they raised five complete questions. There’s a small army of vengeful, resentful undead charging at you. Roll for initiative.”)

Hypothetical’s biggest problem is the whole Xenk arc Honor among ThievesIt is at least how it looks onscreen. Players must go to an NPC to listen and learn about his backstory. Then, they will have to follow him around on a quest where there is no input or expertise. Finally, watch him retrieve their quest item and then take part in an undead battle. Boring. There are plenty of ways to get PCs more involved with all of that action than they are 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 how far players can be pushed before they refuse to go along with a haughty NPC who thinks this is his story.

From there, we have the Themberchaud run-in, which could be a good opportunity for charismatic characters to pivot to a social encounter — that dragon’s gotta be at least a little curious about the outside world, given his history. It could also be used as an extended skill challenge. Some PC groups will try to kill him. This feels almost like TPK territory. They’re going to need a clear way out if the GM doesn’t want the story to end there. Then there’s Simon’s attempt to attune to the helmet, which doesn’t work with the attunement rules as written, but could easily be scrapped for a character who doesn’t like one-on-one role-play scenes or deep character exploration.

This module could be at its heart if Forge is robbed of his illicit goods by the heist. The movie characters find a couple of different ways to get into Forge’s big vault, and there are a lot more possibilities left on the table. This entire puzzle-challenging setup would be a great center for any module, especially if it is populated by people who enjoy solving puzzles. Who doesn’t love a heist story?

The gladiatorial rings that follow offer a lot of possibilities, depending on the way the parties want to use them. This one is similar to the graveyard challenge. The open-ended possibilities are great fun. Do they try to persuade the crowd? Does the party try to get other groups in the arena? A GM might bring in other players to add spice and variety to the regular game. Do they play it all as a straight fight, or try to get 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 big, dramatic climax of the story — or just an appetizer before a group confrontation against the story’s Big Bad, Sofina the Red Wizard.

This is the greatest strength Honor among Thieves as a potential D&D play module is that it offers the characters so many meaningful choices. Because this story is a film, the characters are given dynamic roles that allow them to take on action-oriented and challenging tasks. But more importantly, they’re mostly facing scenarios where there isn’t just one correct way to approach the problem. They have the strength of ending with a choice. It is clear that they are able to choose between a selfish and a noble path, both leading to more stories. If they bolt with the gold, they’re rich and free — and they’ve left an entire city of the ravening undead behind them, which is bound to come up again in future adventures. If they go back to defeat Sofina, they’ve definitely made enemies out of the Red Wizards, which could launch endless future stories.

Or you can do it either way. Honor among Thieves has its ups and downs both as a movie and as a possible play experience, but it seems like there’s plenty of potential there. Great GMs and great players can find fun in every module, scene or scenario. But it’s important to already have the foundations of a solid story. The Dungeons & Dragons movie wasn’t expressly designed for a play experience, but it does have a solid skeleton underneath all the on-screen action. It’s just waiting for players to flesh it out and get it moving.