The new film Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves brings the favored tabletop role-playing recreation to life with nice writing and powerful manufacturing values. Michael Witwer, writer of Empire of Imagination: Gary Gygax and the Birth of Dungeons & Dragons, is glad that D&D followers have lastly gotten the film they deserve.

“This movie loves D&D, and you can feel it in every fiber and grain of the film,” Witwer says in Episode 540 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. “I enjoyed every minute of it.”

Honor Among Thieves is at the start a comedy. Science fiction editor John Joseph Adams says the movie does a great job of replicating the improvised absurdity of a typical D&D journey. “The movie really does feel like a D&D campaign,” he says. “There’s a bunch of stuff that’s silly, or doesn’t make a lot of sense, but that’s how D&D is, so it kind of works.”

Ben Riggs, writer of Slaying the Dragon: A Secret History of Dungeons & Dragons, was impressed on the quantity of D&D lore that was included within the movie. “Given all the things that this movie does, given that it explains this new fantasy world, a rather complicated plot, and also has to make D&D rules nerds happy, it does it pretty seamlessly and gracefully,” he says. “There’s never a rough patch where you’re like, ‘OK, now we’re getting 10 minutes on the backstory of this city.’”

Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy host David Barr Kirtley hopes that Honor Among Thieves will assist to lastly dispel the notion that Dungeons & Dragons is one thing area of interest and peculiar. “My friends and I tried to organize a D&D club at my high school, and the administration just totally wouldn’t allow it, because of the supposed nefarious influence of D&D,” he says. “So to go from that to having such a huge mainstream hit movie, with all these stars and everything, it really does feel like we won. The nerds won.”

Listen to the entire interview with Michael Witwer, John Joseph Adams, and Ben Riggs in Episode 540 of Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy (above). And take a look at some highlights from the dialogue beneath.

Michael Witwer on John Francis Daley:

I knew John Francis Daley was one of many administrators, and that resonated with me as a result of Freaks and Geeks was one in all my favourite exhibits when it was on … The complete forged is future stars, like everybody, and John Francis Daley is the primary character, Sam. And on that present they play D&D a number of occasions—that present has loads of D&D themes. So I knew he had a background in it, whether or not that was him or simply his character. Because I presently work on different D&D books, I research all of them actually rigorously, and he was one of many contributors to Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frost Maiden, which was a 2020 journey. And I keep in mind seeing his title on the contributor record and pondering, what’s that about? So I began to comprehend, oh, this particular person’s actually into this, and he’s even working with Wizards employees on their tabletop recreation. That’s a extremely good signal.

Ben Riggs on the displacer beast:

The design of the creature is simply so implausible. It’s creepy. Even although it’s a panther with a pair tentacles, at first you’re creeped out … I believed that the way in which they had been deployed within the maze was actually, actually cool. You principally had a redshirt struggle one in all them first to form of clarify the principles of the displacer beast, in order that you can then know the stakes once they’re chasing down Chris Pine. The writers considered this—clearly. That’s not a mistake, that’s not some glad accident. They thought, how are we going to elucidate the principles of this monster to the viewers with a purpose to make this scene as suspenseful as doable? And they did it.

David Barr Kirtley on humor:

One of the administrators mentioned, “Ours is a movie that doesn’t take itself with great seriousness, but it’s never a spoof.” And I don’t assume it’s solely correct to say it’s by no means a spoof. I believe it’s generally a spoof. Like the half the place Xenk walks straight over the rock. Come on, that’s a spoof … I liked the film, I believed it was hilarious, however it’s a comedy, and at some stage I’m perhaps just a little bit upset that we haven’t gotten a great, severe Dungeons & Dragons film. I believe this might be a great stepping stone that can hopefully assist make that occur, and we’ll get a severe Drizzt story or a severe Dragonlance story or one thing like that.

Michael Witwer on his novel Vivian Van Tassel and the Secret of Midnight Lake:

Gary Gygax used to wander round this deserted sanitarium in Lake Geneva referred to as the Oakwood Sanitarium. I began finding out these sanitariums in Lake Geneva, and it turns on the market had been half a dozen of them round city, and I believed it was such an fascinating backdrop to this in any other case form of mysterious, fascinating resort city in southern Wisconsin the place [Gygax] lived and did loads of his work. It occurred to me how fascinating it might be if Gary didn’t think about these fantasy creatures, however he really noticed them along with his personal eyes. What if folks had been being dedicated to those sanitariums as a result of they had been seeing “delusions” of creatures within the woods that had been like bears with the face of owls, or maybe a panther with tentacles popping out of its again. I believed that was an fascinating place to begin, and that form of led me down an extended street.

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