S01E20 — Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

SPOILER ALERT: This episode and transcript below contains major spoilers for Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.

Featuring hosts Timothy Haynes, Donna Haynes, Rebekah Edwards, and T. Josiah Haynes.

We’re breaking from the norm today and discussing the film that’s based, in one way or another, on maybe more books than any other movie in history! Join us as we review the 2023 D&D film and nerd out about races, classes, magical items, and more!

Final Verdicts

If you haven’t listened to the episode yet, we recommend waiting to read our verdicts. (But you’re probably grown, so do what you want!)

The Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves movie isn’t based on a specific book but draws from decades of D&D lore, rules, and campaign settings. While the film streamlines the experience with humor, action, and relatable characters, it captures the spirit of an actual D&D game — chaotic, creative, and full of surprises.

Tim: The movie was better

Donna: The movie was better

Rebekah: The movie was better

Josiah: The movie was better

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Full Episode Transcript

Prefer reading? Check out the full episode transcript below. It’s AI-generated from our audio, and if we’re being honest… no one sat to read the entire thing for accuracy. (After all, we were there the whole time.) 😉 We’re sorry in advance for any typos or transcription errors.


[00:00:00] Rebekah: Okay, well, welcome to the Book is Better podcast. We are a family of four, and normally we review book to film adaptations, but today we are going to be doing something different. We’re going to review the Dungeons and Dragons movie that came out about a year ago. It’s called, And we’re gonna just talk about it.

It’s not a traditional book to film adaptation. You know, some of us are D& D nerds and have played some D& D in the far back past, or the present maybe, you know. And so we’re gonna just talk a little bit about, we’ll give you a quick plot summary if you haven’t seen the movie, and then we’ll just talk about the movie, we’ll talk about our favorite characters and how they use D& D lore, and then maybe get into a little trivia about the movie and the production and all of that.

So, um, here’s our spoiler alert. Spoiler alert. We are going to spoil all of Dungeons and Dragons Honor Among Thieves. Um, we’ll also be talking about some basic Dungeons and Dragons rules, but that’s not really spoiling anything. We may mention a couple of broad things about the lore, but in general we’re mostly just spoiling this movie.

So, before we get started, uh, we are gonna tell you who we are. And we’ll give you a little fun fact. Today’s fun fact is what is your favorite D& D related memory or story? I’m going to let Josiah go first because I think ours might be the same one and I don’t want to use his. So would you like to go before me so we don’t use the same story?

[00:01:29] Josiah: I’m Josiah. And I have a memory. That’s a good thing. We’re 

[00:01:39] Rebekah: proud of you for having a memory. 

[00:01:41] Josiah: Yes. I’d 

[00:01:42] Rebekah : be worried if you didn’t.

[00:01:47] Josiah: Oh my goodness. Okay. Um, hmm. All right. I’m Josiah. I’m the brother slash son, and I have a memory from Dungeons Dragons about when I got to Dungeon Master, a one off campaign that I wrote. It was really good. That’s very sweet. Um, you know, there were, it was definitely my first one, you could tell, but I had a lot of fun with it, and um, my best friend who doesn’t play Dungeons and Dragons.

I convinced him to come over since it was just a one, one off, uh, night. It was like a one night. No, about six hours, maybe something like that. And so, and then all my other D and D friends were there and it was just a lot of fun to experience it from that side of the dungeon matters board that blocks, that hides all the stuff behind what is, what is back there?

What is back? So I get to be in that position and it was fun to. create a little story that people could experience in just one night. And it was a, it was a great time for multiple reasons. 

[00:02:56] Rebekah: And by the way, I was there, I was obviously part of that campaign, and I played a, uh, half orc, uh, druid, but somebody who, like, wanted to be a bard and be the guy that made everybody think he was hot.

And, uh, It was really fun, except the voice that I did sounded kind of like this, and it like destroyed my voice for like a week afterwards, and so I have a memory of that, but for different reasons. The things 

[00:03:20] Josiah: we do for Dungeons and Dragons. 

[00:03:22] Rebekah: It’s so true. Well, I am Rebecca. I am the sister slash daughter of the brew.

I’m introducing our third word again. Yay. Um. Um. Yay, I have a very distinct memory of my very first Dungeons and Dragons campaign. And now that I’m saying this, I’m not actually sure that Josiah was even in this campaign when this happened. So I, but I think you were anyway, it doesn’t matter. So we were playing with my friend, Derek.

Who had been super into D& D for a very long time. I was just brand new to D& D. I think this was like our third session. He had us start out as like level three characters or something. And we get to this thing that was essentially supposed to be a dungeon crawl. So. For those of you who don’t know D& D, a dungeon master is like the person who instructs the player characters.

Player characters are the people at the table who have characters, they roleplay through situations. At the time, I was still treating it kind of like a board game, so this was my very first time where I actually roleplayed and tried to come up with something interesting rather than just trying to quote unquote, you know, win a fight.

So he brings us to this like, kind of rundown castle and there are dozens of goblins throughout the castle. Is it the cauldron? And he had prepared, huh? Is it the cauldron? Yes, this is what I’m talking about. Oh yeah, that was great. Yeah, so I had, he had prepared this whole session of a dungeon crawl through this castle and he had prepared it so that it could be hours long and he’d done all of this setup work.

So we get there and I had literally. told him the last session I’d had this brilliant idea that I was going to steal spider venom from this big spider thing that we had fought. And I was like, I’m just going to take some from it, it’s dead now, and I’ll take it with us. So I said I wanted to use, I think it was a spell, like, Oh gosh, I can’t remember the one off the top of my head.

It was a spell where it creates a fake hand. And I rolled a bunch of times. I rolled really well and used that to like get into this little window in the dungeon or whatever where the goblins were making their food. Magic hand. Yeah. And so I dropped the spider venom into the stew that the goblins were going to eat.

And he made me roll like, I don’t even know exactly how he did it, but whatever it was, I rolled a nat 20, which is the best role that you can do, like in D and D in terms of when you’re making an action or checking skills, I roll a nat 20. And he literally realizes the way he has set this up. I have now just killed all of the people, all the goblins in this, in this whole dungeon.

So we’re a few, like we’re like 25 minutes into the session and he’s like, I have nothing else. Like they’re all dead. 

And so we just went through the whole thing and stole all the treasure that we were supposed to have to fight for and stuff. And you could just see the look on his face. Like so much preparation went to waste because I was creative and it was, I will never forget that.

It was so like, I was so pleased with myself. 

[00:06:16] Josiah: Oh, that’s so sad. Yeah, I never got to use the alembic that I stole from that castle. 

[00:06:23] Rebekah: What is that? 

[00:06:24] Josiah: Oh, it’s like an alchemical, uh, still consisting of two vessels connected by a tube used for distillation of liquids. 

[00:06:32] Rebekah : You totally didn’t look that up. 

[00:06:34] Josiah: No. 

[00:06:35] Rebekah : While we were sitting here.

[00:06:38] Donna: Who’s next? So I’m Donna. I’m the wife slash mom of the Gru, and I’ve never played D& D. So my favorite D& D related memory or story was a little different because when I was young, like when D& D came out in the 80s, I was a teenager. And so, yeah. Um, my parents wouldn’t have necessarily cared if I played or not or whatever.

The church I was involved in, the church I was attending at the time, well, it was Dungeons and Dragons and it included magic. So it obviously had to be like wicked and evil. It was part of the satanic panic as it came to be known. Yeah. It was a very, very. bad thing. And so I accepted that. I was like, okay, I don’t want anything to do with that.

I didn’t really look into it. I didn’t really, honestly, didn’t research or anything like that. So when you all got involved in all of it, and you said, you know, we’re, we’re very particular about what we do and how we control what kind of things we get into, it’s, it’s fun. We don’t get into an, an evil nature or get into, you know, satanic, more spiritual, evil type things.

Yeah, we stay away from the 

[00:07:56] Rebekah: stuff that’s like very demonic or feels like charged by real spiritual things in the real world. 

[00:08:03] Donna: Um, I was like, okay. So I, I still was a little hesitant to play just because I’m not great at role playing things. And so. Um, I, but I watched. And so my memory is just realizing how much fun it could be and how, um, how enjoyable.

And at some point, I want to say that I’ll try to play sometime, I guess, but that, that’s really my, my memory is to, to realize that you could have fun with it and enjoy it. And so it could be a good community building thing with friends and like that. I remember 

[00:08:37] Rebekah: this correctly. I think you were there, the session we were with the Bailey’s, right?

Okay. 

[00:08:41] Donna: I was there. Yeah. 

[00:08:42] Rebekah: Yeah. And so that was a session I did a custom dungeon that I built, and one of the special items they found was a spell scroll for a custom spell called Tur . 

[00:08:53] Rebekah : And it was like, I was there. Yeah. It was a, yeah. Oh my goodness. And so we definitely, uh, it’s like a seventh level spell. And it was so funny.

I found 

[00:09:02] Donna: it as a custom or home brew item online. I can remember all of them looking at you going, Hey, tornado. Oh wow. 

[00:09:09] Tim: Okay. Well, my, my memory goes way back. Um, actually the game wasn’t introduced in the eighties. It was introduced in the mid seventies when I was a teenager. I’m a few years older than, than Donna.

And so I was split into, apparently split into two branches in 77. But by the time I went to college a couple of years later, I was introduced to it. And just like Donna, I had heard about, you know, You know, this is demonic and all of those kinds of things. So I was a little hesitant, but I had a good friend, uh, while I was in college named Leslie and he liked to play.

And, um, so he introduced me to it and I played a few times. It was extremely popular while I was in college. Um, but I never got deeply into it. Um, but, uh, but I remember, I remember I was introduced to it, uh, during that time and I, I played a few campaigns, I guess part of the reason that I didn’t do it was, uh, since it was college time, uh, the guys that played usually played way into the night and I’ve always, I’ve always enjoyed my.

bedtime and, and having time to sleep. I don’t do too well when I don’t have time to sleep. So a couple of years ago, maybe, uh, we did a, I was involved with a campaign that, uh, they’re at the kids and we had a really good time. I had a care, I created a character that I wanted to continue to play and I haven’t had a chance to play again.

So 

[00:10:37] Rebekah: we haven’t. Actually, if I remember correctly, we played that the night before Christian’s adoption. That 

[00:10:43] Rebekah : was, we played that at the Airbnb. 

[00:10:46] Rebekah: Yeah. Cause Josiah was there. It was me. Uh, Christian, who’s my son now, uh, it was the night before we adopted him. And then my husband, Josh, and then Josiah and Timmy, I want to do a D and D one shot with you guys on like recorded so that we can release it as a bonus episode.

Well, I think that’d be fun. Yeah. Cool. Cool. So we’ve all had little different experiences. Uh, let’s get into the movie that we’re here to talk about. Honor Among Thieves. Dungeons and Dragons, Honor Among Thieves. Again, I was, um, I’m just going to call it hat quicker. 

[00:11:24] Josiah: Yeah. 

[00:11:25] Donna: Or DeeDee hat. So let me share a brief plot summary with you.

In DeeDee hat. Our new name for this wonderful film. Uh, set in the mystical forgotten realms, Edgen, a charismatic bard and his companion, Holga, journey to receive the tablet or to retrieve the tablet of reawakening to resurrect Edgen’s late life. They reunite with an amateur sorcerer, Simon, and team up with a brooding druid, Doric, facing various challenges posed by their former ally, Forge Fitzwilliam, who now serves the sinister red wizard Sophina, disciple of the necromancer Lich Sazam.

As their journey unfolds, they battle monsters from classic D& D lore, aiming to clear the misconceptions fed to Edgen’s daughter Kira by Forge regarding her father’s intentions. The climax crescendos in the city of Neverwinter. Whereupon retrieving the tablet and reuniting with Kira, they thwart Safina’s nefarious plan to convert the townsfolk into an undead army using a colossal spell beckoning death.

Despite the Red Wizard’s blade claiming Holga’s life during their final battle, Edgen uses the one time use tablet to revive her, acknowledging her mother like bond with Kira, and ultimately sacrificing his plan to bring back his wife. 

[00:12:58] Tim: Aw, so it’s a love story. 

[00:13:00] Rebekah: Well. 

[00:13:00] Tim: And an action movie. No, they 

[00:13:01] Rebekah: don’t, they’re not in love.

It’s like a, it’s a family story. 

[00:13:05] Tim: But it’s a love story. It’s a different 

[00:13:07] Josiah: type of love story. It’s not romantic. Exactly. I love that. And the wife sent that dragonfly to say, let me go. Let me go. 

[00:13:16] Rebekah: So we chose D& D Honor Among Thieves for a bonus episode, partly because it does sort of fit the format that we do.

This movie was based on probably more books than any other movie that we’ll ever cover. The difference being that it doesn’t go, it doesn’t, it’s not based on the plot of those movie or of those books. I’m going to say that again because that was horrible. We chose. We chose DD Hat, as it were, to cover on this bonus episode because in one way it sort of fits what we do normally, book to film adaptations.

Dungeons and Dragons Honor Among Thieves is based on more books than any other film we’ll probably ever cover. The difference is that it’s covering like lore and a tabletop RPG play system. It’s not covering like the story of a D& D book. 

[00:14:09] Speaker 2: And 

[00:14:10] Rebekah: so Yeah, it covers the world. So when you mentioned, um, the Forgotten Realms, that is the universe of D& D, essentially.

Um, Neverwinter is one of the most common, like, towns in the Dungeons and Dragons lore. Um, and even the way that the monsters were set up and all of those things was very similar. And we’ll talk a little bit more about that. Um, I just wanted to talk about a couple of little interesting things about the movie itself.

So the first Dungeons and Dragons movie, just titularly Dungeons and Dragons, was released in the year 2000. It was terrible. It was a very bad movie. I don’t know if any of you have ever seen it, but I watched my favorite podcasters like do a live watch and react to it. And it, it was just so bad. It was awful.

And um, it was, it made D and D look bad, not just like, oh, it’s a bad movie. It made the franchise look bad. And so then they also did films in 05 and 2012. which were Dungeons and Dragons, Wrath of the Dragon God, and then the Book of Vile Darkness. Both of them are pretty low quality, so all of them got pretty poor reviews, um, in general.

Now Honor, those I believe follow some of the same lore or story or whatever. Honor Among Thieves was designed to be a reboot, so Wizards of the Coast, who’s now owned by Hasbro, now owns the Dungeons and Dragons. And so they wanted to up level it and make it like a cool thing, especially because of the popularity of things like stranger things, making Dungeons and Dragons more interesting.

And so, um, ultimately it, it did pretty well in terms of, it got a lot of good reviews and was a much better quality movie than any Dungeons and Dragons movie. we’ve seen so far. 

[00:15:53] Tim: Well, apparently the characters from the television cartoon from 1983, Dungeons and Dragons animated television series. I’m sure they would prefer that.

Um, they actually make an appearance during the high sun games, the climactic big maze game. They’re part of the parties trying to make it through the maze. And when I was initially, watching it, I thought that’s the kind of thing that they looked like. I didn’t know they were from the cartoon or animated version, but I thought those must be characters that are, they’re common.

So 

[00:16:32] Rebekah: yeah. Have you seen the television show? 

[00:16:35] Josiah: I have not. No, 

[00:16:36] Rebekah: I’ve never seen it either. 

[00:16:38] Josiah: But I had the same experience where I was like, I bet that’s a reference I don’t get. Yeah. There were several things that I thought were references. 

[00:16:45] Rebekah: Yeah. They absolutely were. Did a lot of callbacks, throwbacks, common characters, 

[00:16:50] Tim: common themes, common things in it.

Uh, yeah, I have a question. I don’t even know if it pops up anywhere, but the, um, the, the gel stuff that they, that they get stuck in. Yeah. Is that a common thing? 

[00:17:06] Rebekah: Yeah, that’s a monster that’s called the gelatinous cube. Okay. And so they can move. They have a move speed of up to 10 feet per round and they are very like acidic, I guess.

And so eventually you will die if you stay in it too long, you start taking like points of damage and stuff. But yeah, that, among many other things, um, were, were thrown into the movie. I thought it was really interesting. Actually, do you just want to talk about the lore next and then kind of go back and talk about the movie as a whole?

Because I feel like that’s where we’re leading. 

[00:17:36] Tim: It seems like a lot of the things in the movie, when I first watched it and when I watched it again, seemed like a lot of things in the movie were designed to really reference things Yeah, but unlike some movies where it’s like, Oh, I don’t know what in the world that is or I don’t understand it.

I felt like it, it flowed into the movie well enough that it didn’t feel like, Oh, if you haven’t played, you don’t really know. And you’re completely lost because sometimes that’s. That’s the problem when you’re making a movie for the fans of a book or in this case, a game in a series of books. Um, sometimes you can lose the casual viewer, but I, I felt like it, it worked.

Mm hmm. 

[00:18:18] Rebekah: Yeah, I think that that was one of the things they did well in general when creating the movie was they made a movie and that like any hardcore D& D person can be into And, you know, maybe find this tiny little inconsistency here or there, but if you’ve never played Dungeons and Dragons, you can still watch this.

And it is a super fun adventure. 

[00:18:41] Tim: Yeah. 

[00:18:43] Donna: Well, I, I was really glad to know that in general, Critics and audiences like the movie. Um, we saw it, I think we saw it the second weekend. I’m pretty sure we didn’t go out the first weekend. I think we saw, we saw the second weekend, um, that it was out and for it to draw me in and, and I’ll be honest with you, I snoozed.

It was in the afternoon. It was right after lunch. And I did snooze for some of the movie. So I knew the general things that were going on, I remembered characters and I didn’t sleep through the whole thing, but I missed, I did miss a good bit of key information because we watched it again last night and to have like a fresh look at it and I was really captivated by everything that was going on, um, so to find that they, The critics and audiences liked it.

They liked the immersive world building. It did appear epic. You know, it was a, it was a large, it encompassed a large place, a large area of time and space. The plot kept moving. It wasn’t dragging along. Um, the characters were relatable. The humor was lighthearted. But there was also true drama. I felt like the very, uh, the short amount of time that they gave you with Edgen and his wife, I still felt love there between them.

Like that was, uh, yeah, that I thought that was done very well. Even people like me who were very unfamiliar with D& D could get involved in it and watch it and follow it. It didn’t lose me in the, in all the terminology and stuff like that. Negative reviews, I mean, they said it was the silly nature of the plot and the lore, and I thought, really?

Can we say that about anything? I mean, the silly plot. Um, the disconcerting quickness with which the movie moves from scene to scene. 

[00:20:43] Rebekah: Yeah, I looked through a lot of negative reviews and a lot of people that didn’t like it said that they didn’t like how many things that happened, like that it was fast to this, fast to that, fast to this, fast to that.

But isn’t it was like you kept, 

[00:20:56] Tim: isn’t that kind of standard D and D stuff? I mean, you’re, you’re in this big campaign and then you’ve got this little thing inside it. You’ve got to. to undo this thing or capture this particular device that’ll allow you to do the other thing that you need to do. Yeah. And so you’re constantly moving for things.

For sure. 

[00:21:13] Rebekah: I just thought it was interesting that that was a thread through the reviews. 

[00:21:16] Donna: Without the credits, say it’s about a two hour movie. Yeah. They covered a lot. I didn’t feel like it drug on and on. Oh my gosh, how long we’ve been here. 

[00:21:24] Josiah: The, I think he was one of the directors, Jonathan Goldstein, explaining, uh, that while the creative team wanted to make a comedy, they didn’t want to mock the source material, which I did feel they succeeded at.

They, uh, Oh, here’s a quote. We never want to go too far where it becomes a spoof of fantasy films, but we also wanted to be able to pivot from something creepy, traditional fantasy. to an absurd, almost Monty Python type sequence. And I think that that basically works. I think, you know, I think that spoofing something doesn’t necessarily mean you’re mocking it.

But, um, I think of Galaxy Quest being the best Star Trek movie. Spoof. It is a great, do you mean the best Bart spoof 

[00:22:11] Rebekah : movie? Do you mean the best Star Trek movie spoof or do you mean the best Star Trek movie? No, a 

[00:22:15] Josiah: lot of people, A lot of people say that Galaxy Quest is the best Star Trek movie, . 

[00:22:20] Rebekah : That’s sad.

[00:22:21] Rebekah: That’s 

[00:22:21] Rebekah : amazing. If you haven’t seen Galaxy Quest, please watch it. It’s very funny. 

[00:22:25] Rebekah: Let’s talk a little bit about the primary characters that we saw through the movie. Did you guys have any favorites? 

[00:22:30] Tim: Oh yeah. 

[00:22:31] Rebekah: Hmm. Of course. Who was your favorite dad? 

[00:22:34] Tim: One of, one of my favorites, interestingly enough, is Simon Almar.

He’s the uh, sorcerer. He’s a half elf, apparently, and he’s responsible for all of the magic. I like the fact that in the beginning, he, um, He just doesn’t have any confidence in himself. And I think that Justice Smith, the actor, uh, did a very good job. I think it’s easy to get, to get connected to him. The very beginning of the movie, there’s the part where You know, they’re going, they’re going to retrieve this one thing and they go to do that.

And so you only have, you know, a few minutes to really connect with the characters in that. But even in that small amount of time, you, you do. And I, I think that a number of the characters you connect with very easily. I, apparently he’s an American actor. Um, But he doesn’t use his natural accent.

Apparently, Hugh Grant thought that he might have actually been a fellow Brit at first. So he did a really good job, apparently. 

[00:23:35] Josiah: I really like Holga. Holga Kilgore! Because there wasn’t really much gore in the movie. But Holga Kilgore, she’s a human barbarian, and her subclass is the Path of the Berserker.

And it says here that her role is a serious and straightforward powerhouse, known for her combat skills and simplistic problem solving approach. She balances out Edgen’s humor. I really liked Olga because, I mean, honestly, the actress was Michelle Rodriguez, and she kind of left a sour taste in my mouth after Lost when she played Anna Lucia.

You all remember Anna Lucia. She was flipping 

[00:24:15] Donna: Anna Lucia. 

[00:24:16] Josiah: Yeah. I 

[00:24:17] Donna: have no connection to anything. I 

[00:24:20] Rebekah: only see Fast and Furious like I just expected. Yeah, that’s Vin Diesel to walk in the room and say something about family every time I see her, so. Right, bro. 

[00:24:27] Josiah: And see, I, I don’t, I haven’t really watched the Fast and Furious movies, so I just remembered her as Anna Lucia being annoying.

Um, but I really enjoyed her in this movie being the quiet, silent combat type. Mm-Hmm. , who does have a Mother Ally side. And also has that little side romance with Bradley Cooper’s little person. He’s, he’s 

[00:24:49] Rebekah: a halfling. He’s not a little person. I’m sorry, 

[00:24:52] Josiah: I’m not saying a little person to be political correct.

I was just saying he is a little person. 

[00:24:57] Donna: Yeah, I was gonna ask you what his race was, because I thought, I thought that, that little minor arc was cool. Yeah, he’s a halfling, and I love the little, 

[00:25:05] Rebekah: I love the little nod at the end where she meets the halfling like when they’re getting their award or whatever and their recognition and she kind of like, there’s the cute little, little thing.

[00:25:14] Josiah: I thought that was so nice that she could get just that little character arc. That was enough. 

[00:25:20] Rebekah: I will also say I loved Michelle Rodriguez because I, I really appreciated that this movie didn’t feel like a romance. I didn’t know if they were going to go there with it. But one cool thing about D& D is that like a lot of times players at the table, like avoid their characters having any sort of romantic attachments, just because it can be really awkward.

to roleplay with your friends in that way. And so I thought it was really cool that like, Edgen and Holga, like, they could have easily made that where there was like some tension between the two of them, but they established really early on that does not exist. That is not part of this. 

[00:25:54] Josiah: Oh, and did you know that Michelle Rodriguez, in order to make her character a more authentic barbarian, she grew out her armpit hair and she also gained 15 pounds of muscle.

Well, 

[00:26:06] Rebekah : the reason you’re emphasizing the wrong parts of those words, 

[00:26:09] Rebekah: armpit hair. I mean, like that’s commitment. I feel like as a woman, it would take me a long time to grow out legit armpit hair. So like, you know, commitment to your craft. 

[00:26:18] Donna: Think that was a smart move to remove her. From looking like Dom’s wife in Fast and Furious because her spoiler alert, I 

[00:26:29] Josiah: didn’t know she was his wife.

[00:26:31] Rebekah: Oh my gosh. It’s your fault. You haven’t watched these movies. They’re like decades old. There aren’t 10 

[00:26:36] Josiah: of them. Yeah, I can’t. I’m not going to watch 10 of them. 

[00:26:40] Donna: Listen, after Well then why are you complaining about it being spoiled? After three or four The first 

[00:26:45] Josiah: three 

[00:26:45] Tim: don’t matter. Just 

[00:26:46] Donna: put those out. Watch the end ones, doesn’t matter, but I, I did think that the extra weight helped remove her because, because Dom’s wife is very small.

She’s tough and she’s a fighter. That part was fine, but to see her bulky like that, and I love the clothes they put her in, man, and the whole guy had, I thought it was very, very bossy and just 

[00:27:11] Tim: strong. Those leather pants she was wearing. I was wondering if she was a different type of creature because her bottom half from her waist down looked really thick.

Yeah, that was 

[00:27:24] Rebekah: probably on purpose. Yeah. Like, costuming. I 

[00:27:27] Donna: thought at first you were going to say those black, those leather pants you had on. I was wondering if I could get them for Christmas, but okay, you didn’t go there. They weren’t black anyway, but. Okay, so my character, The first one I think I really enjoyed was Edgen and I didn’t just pick him because he was kind of their, their leader.

I thought that Chris Pine, again, I’m going to go back to casting. I thought he was spot on the best person to put in that role. He can be funny, but he can be serious. Oh, he was great. And I thought he handled the role so well. Um, he is a human bard and his subclass is College of Eloquence. Um, he was the charismatic leader of the group.

He made the crucial decisions and improvisations and a lot of improvisations, which I thought was funny. 

[00:28:17] Josiah: Plannings that go wrong. 

[00:28:19] Donna: Yeah, the main quest he had revolved around his family, particularly around, around Kira, his daughter. And I thought he handled the character very well. I thought it was him. I didn’t see Captain Kirk.

Again, that suspension of disbelief sometimes is hard if you’ve seen an actor in a lot of things. But I felt like that was honestly that was one of my favorite things about the movie was because there were several characters that I did relate to other having other famous things in their background, in their repertoire, but I didn’t see them there.

I saw them playing these parts, so. 

[00:28:56] Josiah: I related to Ed. I would be a bard myself. I don’t know that I would be a leader. I don’t, I don’t necessarily want to be a leader of the D& D group, but I did connect with him being a bard and using his charisma to, to solve problems and to come up with solutions. 

[00:29:14] Rebekah: One thing as.

I am typically the person who is the dungeon master or DM of our games. And one thing that I thought was interesting, as I was going through like their races and classes of all of these primary characters, was Edgin is the College of Eloquence subclass, like, uh, you mentioned. I’ve played a Bard. Uh, Josiah has also played a bard before in various campaigns.

Alberto Whimsy in College. Eloquence. That’s right. Mine. I was Yoshi Sparkles. And you were Alberto Whimsy. We were half sister and brother. And your mother was a whore, but not your real mother. The one in DD . Um, anyway, I just thought it was interesting because College of Eloquence, my mom 

[00:29:53] Josiah: was beautiful. My mom was beautiful.

[00:29:55] Rebekah: Yes, of course. Uh, college of Eloquence is the. subclass, not so much for bards who are primarily like musicians or performers, but for people who are persuasive. And so college of eloquence is literally the subclass for bards that are more persuasive, like leaders who convince people to do things. And the music or whatever side is less important.

I think that the reason that they did the scene where they threw the illusion of him playing the lute was to make it clear that he was a bard because he wasn’t, he wasn’t just like the traditional way that everybody plays a bard, which I, again, I like that as a, as a DM. I 

[00:30:39] Tim: thought it, I thought it was funny and went to what you were talking about, the college of eloquence with, with Ed.

Um, When Doric was, was there and she said, what do you do? And he said, I make plans. And then he said, and then I have to make, why do you have to go then if you’ve already made the plan? Well, I have to be able to make other plans. So you make bad plans. She, you know, and I thought that was a great college of eloquence.

If it’s a person that influences others and gets them to follow them, that was kind of a scene that said, Oh, your quality. Is that people will follow you even if you make bad plans and you have to switch them in the middle and all that kind of stuff. So, I just thought that was interesting. 

[00:31:21] Josiah: Well, to round out our party of the four main PCs, Doric is a tiefling druid subclass Circle of the Moon.

She’s 

[00:31:33] Rebekah: the traditional druid subclass. 

[00:31:34] Josiah: She is the newcomer to the group. The other three in the, in the main party knew each other before the story, but Doric is new. She only knew Simon before the story and brief, only briefly. She’s known for her mastery in wild shape ability, aiding the group with her transformative powers.

She turns into all sorts of animals. And monstrosities. But, um, yes, the actress, Sophia Lillis. Did you guys recognize her from the IT movies? As the main girl? 

[00:32:05] Rebekah: No, but now that you say that, it makes sense. 

[00:32:08] Josiah: Yeah, I really like the actress. The character was fine to me. It was it was interesting that she was the only newcomer to the group.

I thought that. I would have liked that to work into her character arc more that she didn’t, maybe she didn’t understand why they were friends or something and then she learned or something. I don’t know. All right. So what about the non playable characters, the main characters who aren’t like part of the main four?

Hey, I’ve got 

[00:32:32] Tim: Forge Fitzwilliam. That’s the bad guy. One of the bad guys, one of the bad guys. Well, he’s the, he’s the sort of bad guy. He’s the friend that will stab you in the back. Um, you’ll walk with you as long as it’s to his advantage. Um, apparently he’s a human rogue, which makes, makes sense to me. I have no idea what the subclass mastermind would mean otherwise, but, uh, he was that.

Master of deception who maneuvers situations more through cunning than combat. Showcasing a menacing yet entertaining president presence throughout the movie. Yeah, he, he has an Who was the actor? It was, uh, somebody that’s kind of famous. It was Hugh Grant. You know, um, Wow. And I, I thought it was, I thought he did a really good job.

You kind of liked him a little bit. End. You didn’t like him. He’s the kind of villain that you care about, but you want him to get their comeuppance because some villains are just like, okay, we want them to get their comeuppance. That’s the only thing we really want. Uh, we don’t want to any other arc for them, but his character, his character was, uh, was better than that.

You wanted, you wanted to see his story, but you still wanted him to get what, get what was coming to him. He apparently, in the story, is the one who takes Kira, because Ed asked him to, but he decides, for whatever reason, that he’s going to poison her mind to her dad. And he gets what’s coming to him, the rest of the movie.

[00:34:07] Donna: They didn’t take a lot of effort to make you think he could be a good guy. Like you pretty much knew, yeah, he’s in it for him. You know what I’m saying? He’s not super evil. They didn’t drag that out as like a surprise. 

[00:34:19] Rebekah: He’s probably like more chaotic neutral than he is chaotic evil because ultimately he just like he wanted treasure.

He wanted power. But he wasn’t, he wasn’t trying to. 

[00:34:30] Tim: Rule the world. Hurt 

[00:34:31] Rebekah: people, necessarily. Yeah, he didn’t really want to rule the world as much as he was just like, I just want stuff and power. Like, I don’t know. He was definitely more of a rogue than like an evil whatever. 

[00:34:43] Donna: Which does make sense, honestly, because it’s, because he teamed up with Safina.

Which is, uh, which is the, the red wizard of Thay, um, her monster type’s an undead human wizard, and she’s the school of magic necromancy, and it, it’s interesting, it, it kinda does, it does really tie in that he would partner up with her, because if he were really a wicked, uh, Like a crafty, wicked person that was shrewd.

He would never have gotten together with her because she would just completely take over. Imbalance. Yes. Yeah, for sure. Um, she’s the antagonist under the rule of Lich Zastam. Um, she used Forge’s position and his influence as Lord of Neverwinter to ultimately create this army. of dead from the townspeople.

She was sufficiently creepy and scary. 

[00:35:37] Josiah: Mm hmm. Definitely. 

[00:35:38] Donna: Like I was anytime I saw her, I was like, Oh, bad person. I do not want to be here. I would not want to meet you in an alley somewhere. Creepy. 

[00:35:46] Rebekah: Yeah. Now in the movie, she serves Saz Tam, who is a well known, well, sort of well known lich from like classic D& D lore.

He is also an undead character and a necromancer, and he’s the leader of the Red Wizards of Thay. So in the movie, he kind of is teased as a Thanos level threat. He wants to turn everyone into the undead. And so Ian Hanmore plays this character that has very few actual spots in the movie, but is kind of like this underlying person that, you know, Sophina’s doing things kind of for his bidding ish.

But, uh, the interesting part about that to me is he is not the biggest bad, um, undead lich. And so it was interesting too, because if you were thinking in, in conjunction with like sequels, which is kind of what it seems like they set up for, um, SASTAM would not necessarily be the one that they’d want to set up as the big bad evil guy for sequels.

Um, there are larger liches that would be like kind of, more powerful than him. So I thought that that was interesting. It did throw me off. I had no idea who he was. I thought he was, um, I thought he was, uh, what’s the one from Stranger Things? Oh my gosh, it just left my mind. The Mind 

[00:37:00] Josiah: Flayer? 

[00:37:01] Rebekah: No, the guy from the last season.

Oh, 

[00:37:05] Josiah: hold on. Vecna. 

[00:37:08] Rebekah: I thought it was Vecna the first time you saw his face because the liches in D& D kind of have that similar look. Um, but he was not Vecna. Uh, speaking of that, the other character I know that we wanted to just kind of briefly mention was Zenk Yendar. So Zenk is a human paladin. His subclass is the Oath of Devotion.

He’s a very like serious, almost like a trope of a paladin where the only thing he cares about is his devotion. Um, and so it’s just, it’s an interesting guy. He, it made for a lot of funny little jokes about how he was like almost too much to handle, you know, because he was so serious and couldn’t understand humor and yeah, he was the Drax of things.

Um, also one of my favorite scenes with him, uh, Roger Jean Page. Is where he’s leaving the party. Uh, he leaves the party, by the way, because of the difference between PCs and NPCs and d and d, which I’ll talk about in a minute. But, um, he leaves the party and walks off and he steps over the boulder without, like, he just walks in a straight line and steps over the boulder.

So that whole thing was actually improvised. Um, he did that without plan, which I thought was very funny. Um, the original role for that was actually going to be Drist, which is a famous D& D character. And so Drist was in some of the early movie strips, uh, scripts, but according to, depending on who you ask, either licensing issues or the fact that Drist was a black skinned drow, which is kind of a, uh.

an elf from the Underdark. And so apparently some people thought that he was replaced because a black skinned drow might play into racist fantasy stereotypes. But yeah, they replaced Dritzt with this newly created character of Zink Yandar. Zink is not a famous D& D character or anything like that. He was made for this movie like the PCs or 

[00:39:01] Tim: I think, moving, moving into the, the lore part, I think that the fact that he walked away in a straight line kind of gives you this, you know, just a funny little, uh, nod to the fact that he’s a non play, non player character, and so he’s kind of walking in a straight line, you go, you point him in that direction, and that’s the way he goes, um, he doesn’t make any decisions on his own, so that, I think that might just be a little, a little nod to that thought.

Uh, the difference between playable character or player characters and non playable characters. Um, so you’ve got nods to that throughout and you know, we’ve, we’ve seen that when they’re in the maze, you see lots of characters who are doing similar things. to what the main group is doing, but they’re going their own way.

They’re just, they’re background, but they’re background that are active. They’re not just, they’re not just in the background. They’re actually active, but you don’t play them in the game. And I thought that was a good thing to include as well. And I thought as they were going, especially through the maze, that you could tell, Some of those characters must have been, you know, important, must have been regular parts of the D& D lore.

Yeah, 

[00:40:19] Rebekah: I think getting into how the movie used D& D lore, that’s a great first point, is that they, I feel like, very clearly had, The player characters were the four people that traveled together and then they had NPCs. And that’s, like I said, it’s the reason that Zank left the party before they go into their big fight in a regular movie.

He probably could have just banded with them, but because this was based on, you know, a D and D campaign. It was clear that he was not one of the main PCs. And so as an NPC, you never, as a dungeon master, want your NPC to be able to come in and like save the day. It’s very important specifically that you don’t do that.

So 

[00:40:56] Josiah: I do think about characters and the lore. One thing that was adapted for the movie that wasn’t necessarily true to D& D, but maybe a good choice for adapting it to the movie was all of the names were relatively simple. 

[00:41:11] Speaker 2: Yes. 

[00:41:12] Josiah: Thank you. Which I do appreciate. And I’m just thinking, I’m just thinking about some of our D& D campaigns.

One of my characters was Orhemeth Mykost, Orhemeth and Wockwall, the widower, and Sassana Cloudstone. Yeah, they have very long 

[00:41:24] Rebekah: names in a lot of campaigns. 

[00:41:26] Josiah: You love those strange names though. But it’s not just, it’s not just me. It’s not just me. It’s not just me, Rebecca. What were, what was like Josh’s, uh, Oxidon, Loxodon name?

[00:41:36] Rebekah: Uli, which is his streamer name. 

[00:41:38] Josiah: That’s adorable. Yes, his was short. 

[00:41:40] Rebekah: What was Christian’s? But there’s some of them that are really long. Um, oh gosh, I don’t even remember. I’m so bad with names, but I think that you’re right. Like they did, they used odd names. So they didn’t seem like just Americanized or Westernized names, but they were short and easy to like go back and forth.

You know, you have Forge, you have, Edgin, who’s Ed, but like not Edgar, and you have Doric instead of Dora or Dorian or whatever Holga, which is a name we’ve all heard, Simon, you know, very basic name, um, Jarnathan, by the way, was one of the funniest names in my opinion, 

[00:42:16] Josiah: Jarnathan, where is Jarnathan? And then a big Aarakocra comes in, 

[00:42:23] Donna: I love that.

That was very funny. Here this whole time I thought he wanted him. That’s a, that’s a good surprise. I thought they were wanting Jarnathan to come in because he would be sympathetic to them. He would talk to the council and say, look, they’ve done this, da, da, da, da, da, no, they just want him cause he could fly.

So just tackle him and throw him out the window. 

[00:42:41] Rebekah: One of, honestly, one of my favorite lines in the movie is where the other people at the table are like, but we approved your pardon, because it speaks to the fact that like Helga and Ed were just so. laser focused on how they were going to get out of a situation.

He makes bad 

[00:42:55] Josiah: plans. 

[00:42:56] Rebekah: Yeah. He doesn’t always make the best plans. So. Um, they also used, uh, races and classes familiar to D& D as we’ve stated, like they literally gave us the, the subclasses for all of the people, you know, in the movie that we had read off the list. 

[00:43:13] Josiah: Yeah. Those are from Wizards of the Coast that owns Dungeons and Dragons.

[00:43:16] Rebekah: Nice. So they had like actual stat blocks. 

[00:43:19] Josiah: Yeah. Yeah. The ones that we were reading off. That was, those were. Yeah. I don’t know how much the writers influenced, but I do know that Wizards of the Coast made them, uh, officially. 

[00:43:28] Rebekah: Nice. That’s how you, if you’re a character in D& D, you have a stat block and, or monsters have them too, where you have like lists of like your abilities and different things.

So, for instance, uh, Barbarians would typically be a character who would, uh, rank her intelligence stat pretty low. And so I think that’s the reason that there were a couple of times where she says or does things that’s like, You, it feels a little stupid, but it’s, that’s because her stat block probably would have shown a deficit in the intelligence, uh, skill.

Now there were a couple of things in the races and classes and I’m okay. I DM games. Like I’ve said, we have one of the kids that lives with us. He’s a, um, he’s become really, really into D and D. He’s become what we call a rules lawyer in some ways where he like learns. Yeah. all of how it works and all of how this goes with that and how this doesn’t work here, but you can do that there.

And so he watched the movie with us and he kept pointing out, he’s like, I don’t think you can do that. And he was like, uh, I don’t think Doric can wild shape into a, into an owl bear. Cause that’s a monstrosity. And so I looked this up. There were a few things that they did where they actually pulled from older versions.

The current version of D& D is called D& D 5th edition or 5e. They’re working on D& D 1 which will be essentially the 6th edition. They’re trying to call it D& D 1 as if it will be the last one. I think it’s a marketing thing. Um, but 3. 5 is the previous edition that most people consider like the best before 5e.

Edition 4 was terrible. Three was okay. And then the older ones had just very limited things you could do. And in 3. 5, um, Doric was a tiefling, and normally tieflings have to be blue or red, but in 3. 5 they were flesh tones. And so again, that was D& D rules as written, just a different version. the druid being able to wild shape into an owlbear you could also do in 3.

5 with a specific feat or prestige class and then the same thing about the druid um normally you can’t wild shape and attack on the same turn but in 3. 5 there’s a feat you could take for that so like they took great care with the writers to make sure that those things were reflected accurately. 

[00:45:29] Josiah: Very nice.

I mean, and the transferring the lore of the game to the movie, I think they did a pretty good job with the party structure. We’ve talked about that there are four playable characters and there’s NPCs that come in, but they’re not like part of the party that might help or hinder you. But, um, I really liked that.

First the party getting together and yeah, first the party getting together was like, Oh yeah, we’re going to go and get, we’re going to go and do this. Was very D& D campaign beginning. Just a bunch of random people getting together. And then I did enjoy the save the, we’ve, we’ve saved the princess and we’re escaping, but now we’ve got to save the world.

I thought it was very appropriate. for both Dungeons and Dragons and for a movie that that decision raised the stakes and furthered their character arcs while feeling like, oh, it’s appropriate that these random vagabonds, which is always what you get in D& D campaigns, they’re basically always random groups of people that go on adventures together.

It made, it made sense that those random people were saving the world because they were trying to save Kira small scale, but then it, I just thought they did a really good job with a few different aspects of the party structure and how the campaign ballooned, taking into account that these were random people, but also making logical sense.

[00:47:01] Rebekah: I also liked that the, uh, party structure used a bard. A barbarian, a druid, and a sorcerer. That’s like a very standard kind of makeup in general in D& D 2. 

[00:47:13] Tim: I have a, I have a question or something, something to insert. There’s another game, well, that you can play now, but Jumanji that’s been turned into, turned into movies, the most recent two movies.

Um, and I, I find the structure of D& D. And the structure of Jumanji, two very different ways for movie makers to take a four player game, basically, and turn it into an adventure. 

[00:47:45] Josiah: Talking about adapting D& D movie, that there were some moments that really felt like it was a D& D campaign and you were rolling not so good.

Or you were, you were coming. across with some really weird ideas. I really liked when Holga in the, what is it called, under the Underdark, in the Underdark, Holga said, okay, the bridge is gone, but I have some rope. And I mean, literally every D& D player has said, I have some rope. I have some rope and I can tie it to an axe and I can throw it into, uh, the stone over there.

And he was like, the stone is really hard. And in my head, I was like, maybe she’ll roll a nat 20 though, and it’ll work. Oh yeah. Very unusual. And then someone has a better idea. Yeah, I have, I’ve absolutely tried something. 

[00:48:36] Rebekah: So in a D and D game, if you’re going to do like a full campaign, it’s usually broken up into like the broad campaign, which often has a BBEG or big bad evil guy that you get to at the end, which is probably SazTam.

Although in this movie specifically, it’s almost like a A chapter of a campaign, which Sofina would have been the BBG that they actually fought. And then breaking that down when you’re doing D& D in real life, you usually do sessions and like sessions usually have between three and five encounters often in like a specific place or you’ll do a session where you’re traveling or whatever.

And then you break that down and encounters are just like any time where the party is like solving a specific problem, combating a specific monster or whatever. And so I thought it was cool using, for instance, the Underdark section. They meet, uh, Zink and then they go into the Underdark and they kind of enter.

And the first thing I believe, if I’m not mistaken, that they have to do is figure that bridge thing out where Holga says, you know, I’m going to throw the axe. And so then they find the Hither Thither staff. They realized that she has this insanely powerful magical item that just happens to be on her person, which there were a lot of little things in the movie that were convenient in that way.

But, um, that was like its own encounter. And then you had another encounter where they fight that band of undead people. Then you have an encounter where they fight the dragon. And then you have a fourth encounter in that Like session essentially where they have to figure out how to get out is that they thought they defeated the dragon.

Then it came back. And so I thought it was cool. It was like, I literally could see this being written into a D and D book where it’s like, here’s session one and here’s the encounters you’ll do. And then here’s session two and here’s the encounters you’ll do. And I thought that that was just really well done.

[00:50:23] Josiah: Definitely a nod to the fans really liked. The corny way that the backstory, I, you know, not necessarily in a traditional script, but in a d and d movie, the corny way that backstory is suddenly revealed in lengthy monologues. I feel like that happens all the time in d and d. You come, you come to an encounter with an NPC and they’re like, let me tell you about the backstory.

Ofa. Let me tell you about the backstory of how your daughter. Came to be with Forge, all of these things, it’s, um, I also the visual component in the movie where during the backstory you saw it happening, I feel like that illustrates how players of D& D would imagine these things happening in their head while the DM, while the Dungeon Master is diatribe, is monologuing about.

These backstories. I thought that was a cool thing that might not work in a traditional Hollywood script, but as a, as a D and D thought at work. 

[00:51:27] Rebekah: Yeah. There’s also, um, a lot that they use that’s accurate to the rules of combat, typically in five E and the spells that they use, like where, whether it’s, you know, combat or they’re trying to do other things.

So again, I was, we were watching with, uh, Nathan, one of the kids loves the rules lawyer that I mentioned, who’s really sweet. And he was like pointing out, oh, that’s like this spell, like. Sofina casts Meteor Swarm in the final fight that they’re doing, and that’s where she like throws down all the meteors and stuff like that is very powerful.

In the Rules of Combat, I noticed in the first time where Holga and Ed are fighting the guys that Forge told to like chop off their heads, Holga, if you watch closely, has two hits for every one hit somebody else deals her. Well, she’s a barbarian who has multi attack and they get two hits per attack versus one for most characters.

There’s And so there’s a lot of, um, little things like that. And so looking it up, the spells that they used were all D& D specific. And so they had some, you know, from the little thing where he creates the smell of freshly cut grass or whatever it was, that’s a D& D spell to all of the, the things that Sophina does and, and everything in between, which again, it works not only for the fans, but like that and the combat, it was kind of cool to see.

Cause I think a lot of people complain. That like D& D combat doesn’t feel accurate. And I don’t think that they necessarily got it accurate down to like, every round of combat is six seconds or whatever. But they, they used a lot of those rules to kind of keep it all in line and show you, basically give you a visual of what it should feel like when you’re in a D& D campaign.

[00:53:07] Tim: I think that’s really nice, especially because as someone who, who doesn’t play it. You know, with any kind of regularity and wouldn’t remember any of those kinds of things. Um, somebody like me can watch the movie and it’s not distracting. You know, occasionally you’ll try to do this. Okay, this is for the fans.

And it’s like somebody else says, what was that about? You know, why was that there? But this, this was not, it was not intrusive into the plot line. It didn’t feel like it was forced in wedged in. 

[00:53:36] Rebekah: Well, and, uh, speaking of spells, there was even one thing where, uh, what’s his face? There was one thing where Simon was wanting, like, they wanted to talk to people who had been dead for a very long time, and, um, he is a sorcerer, and so in D& D 5e, sorcerers don’t have access to the spells speak with dead.

But they wanted him to be able to use it and so they actually added an item that would allow him to do that as a sorcerer. They really didn’t have to do that. He could have said, Oh, I have a spell that allows me to do this. But again, the fans would have been able to look at that and the rules lawyers in the audience would have said, Hey, he’s a sorcerer.

He doesn’t have access to that spell. And in reality, the way they did it was very clever because they made sure that everything ended up working with the rules as written to satisfy the fans. with those items and lots of other things. 

[00:54:31] Tim: That was one of the, yes, corny, but very funny and very appropriate, especially for the guy that says, you know, you need to ask me more questions.

That was just four. No, that was five. And he’s still sitting there 

[00:54:47] Rebekah : and then everybody’s gone. Yeah. I thought that was very funny 

[00:54:49] Tim: in that you pop back to him. Is there nobody else going to ask me a question that that was the Monty Python influence kind of. Yeah. That was 

[00:54:57] Rebekah: very, that was very good. They also used a lot of, um, D and D items.

They did add new items that were not in traditional D and D lore, um, but they used the hither thither staff. They used the bag of holding, which was where Simon kept all this stuff. The hither thither staff is a classic D and D item. The thing where you like shoot a portal and then another portal. Um, and they even mentioned like the range on it is 500 feet, which I thought was really fun.

Um, but they, not all of the items used in the movie were classic D and D because honestly, you can add homebrew items at any point in a campaign you want. Um, but I, I did think that was a really interesting, um, addition. 

[00:55:36] Josiah: I think that the token allowing five questions to the dead corpses was very fun and very funny and it was justified.

I did think that although the lampshading was corny, it was absolutely something that would occur in a D& D campaign. Let me, I guess for people who don’t know what lampshading is, lampshading is when you, when the characters in a story say that something doesn’t make sense, or something is arbitrary, or something is stupid.

Um, and then the audience goes, Oh, okay, the writers know that it’s stupid, so I won’t ask any more questions. Uh, so even, even though they kind of did that trope of lampshading, where Doric, I think, says five questions seems kind of arbitrary. Um, that is absolutely something that would happen in a campaign.

So, but it was true to that spirit. 

[00:56:25] Donna: For Python, uh, Monty Python folks out there, they used, they had used that a lot. They had a great shtick where they’d go along in some sketch and then see one of them by himself and he’d say, uh, the next thing you’re going to see is the next thing you’re going to hear is lie, a lie, , or there’s a birch.

And it just, they would take it like to the nth degree. Uh, to, to make it funnier, and it, it, you’re right, when it’s used right, it’s really good. 

[00:56:58] Rebekah: Oh yeah. The other, some of the other like actual items they used, the Red Wizard Blade is a 5e thing that causes, uh, 3d necrotic damage. And then when you cause a creature to reach zero hit points with it, that creature dies, cannot be raised by a deity or through the power of a true resurrection spell, which is an incredibly high level spell.

Most characters don’t. ever have access to. And so that’s where the tablet of reawakening comes in. That basically operated like a one time use spell scroll for the, uh, true resurrection spell. So that was a little bit, you know, homebrew there. They also use ascending stones. So where the, uh, Simon had them like talk into the rocks, that’s ascending stones thing.

That’s a normal, um, D& D item. Uh, the pendant that Kira wears that makes her invisible, basically a ring of invisibility, they just made it into a different accessory. Um, I still didn’t figure out if the Helm of Disjunction was, like, totally legit or if it was, like, Something that they created for the movie, um, and then the Bag of Holding, like I said, and then like the Tablet of Reawakening is basically a spell scroll for one spell.

They also used monsters. I, sorry, I wanted to bring that up because we mentioned them earlier, um, you see monsters throughout the movie that are the same. So the gelatinous cube dad mentioned earlier, there was a displacer beast in that maze thing with the two flexible tentacles. It kind of looks like a panther otherwise.

the mimic, which is the, um, the, the treasure chest that actually is like a monster with the big tongue. That’s from D and D the owl bear. I think like literally all of the races and monsters that they used were all totally from D and D. They didn’t, they didn’t make any of them up. Um, they all were existing things from D and D.

I guess there’s like a little cameo where a rust monster or two of them are like Fighting over who gets to eat rust or something like it was a very brief little side thing in the movie So there were a lot of little things like that But I thought 

[00:58:54] Tim: it makes a good bit of sense if you’re writing something like this though To to utilize that material because for this d& d there’s so much available Why would you try to create something different?

You know, it’s like, just choose one of the things that’s already a part of it. Makes sense. 

[00:59:13] Josiah: Rebecca, I’m getting the impression that the Helmet of Disjunction is, was created for the movie. 

[00:59:20] Rebekah: Okay. Yeah, I didn’t think I could find it as a legit 5e item. So that makes sense. 

[00:59:24] Josiah: Well, I think it is a legit 5e item that originated from the movie.

Oh, they created it after the 

[00:59:29] Rebekah: movie. It 

[00:59:29] Josiah: wasn’t 

[00:59:30] Rebekah: in existence before then. Okay. Why don’t we talk a little bit about, like, the movie itself, how it performed? Because like we’ve said a lot, this is created for people, both D& D fans and non D& D fans alike, and D& D has grown wildly in popularity since Stranger Things came out and you know, especially since 2020 hit.

Um, and so let’s talk a little bit about that. Mom, did you want to kind of review some of that stuff for us? 

[00:59:54] Donna: Like I mentioned before, the critics were mostly positive about it, some negative things about it, but I was really surprised to see the production cost of the film at 150 million, which I’m not surprised about that amount.

I can see where that money went, but their opening weekend was only 35. 5 38. 5 million. Um, however, it was released on the weekend in between John Wick and Super Mario Brothers. I think that did have a bearing on, on some of the lower numbers. Unfortunately, the did worldwide 114. 9 million USA Canada gross.

93. 3 million. So they, they hit their production, but not. They’re in the red. 

[01:00:44] Rebekah: They had to make about 400 million from what I saw to be profitable or to, to break even. And they were so far off of that. I did see someone in terms of release date that said if they had waited to release it this Christmas season, or if they had waited to release it during a summer, uh, year, block where there weren’t as many big movies, like it could have been a summer blockbuster, but like the timing was poorly chosen.

[01:01:09] Tim: That’s a pretty bad, that’s a pretty bad box office considering Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 91%. Yeah, exactly. Flixster is a 93. 

[01:01:17] Josiah: It’s like, Good grief. March 31st is a horrible time to release a movie. Yeah. Yeah. And I think 

[01:01:23] Tim: there were some other things going on at the same time or, or leading up to that that may have influenced it.

[01:01:29] Rebekah: I follow a lot of D& D influencers and stuff because we play a lot. And so there was something, I didn’t find this in any of the articles, which I thought was interesting. I don’t think the journalists that were writing about the box office really considered this, I think this is probably a pretty major part of it.

Around January of 2023, there was a huge controversy because Wizards of the Coast, who is creating one D& D, like I said, they’re trying to create this new version of D& D. They decided, hey, we’re going to make some changes to, and I’m just giving you context, so this makes sense. They said, we’re going to make changes to the OGL, which is the Open Game License.

It’s basically what allows creators to use the D& D system, like the tabletop RPG system with all of its stats and magic and items and stuff like that. They can homebrew their own campaigns and you can actually sell those so you can like produce books where you can use their copyrighted stuff under this open gaming license.

and you can profit from it. So they decided they were going to change the OGL and they, it was, the way they did it was very shady and there’s been, I’m not going to go into all of it, you can totally see so many videos on YouTube if you want to, but essentially there was a lot of, um, kind of murmuring that WOTC, Was under pressure, particularly from Hasbro, who doesn’t care about the DND community as I’m not saying that that’s true, I’m just saying this is something that was said in the videos where people said they interviewed, um, anonymously interviewed people from WOTC and all this stuff about what it had been like, um, to work for Hasbro and what, you know, why this open gaming license was changed.

They kind of made it sound like, hey, we want to know what the fans think, and they put out the new license and said, also, you have to sign this right now. like to make money. Now, in reality, in general, it wouldn’t have changed a whole lot, but it basically would have said that Hasbro would have been able to take royalties from any creator making 750, 000 or more per year on things that they published using the open gaming license, which doesn’t affect everyone.

A lot of smaller creators don’t make that much. However, it would have affected people like critical role, which is an, um, incredibly popular D& D podcast, um, slash Twitch stream that comes on every week. They’ve been going for ever. I mean, they’re super, super popular. Um, and it was just, it was a big deal.

So all of the influencers I watched were like super upset with Wotsy and just felt like this was such a, uh, A slap in the face because the Open Gaming License had been the same since like 20 or 2001. Like, no, they had introduced it then. 

[01:04:02] Tim: I don’t watch a lot of news, but I actually knew that this was going on.

I actually heard about this. A 

[01:04:11] Rebekah: lot of people were like, you know what? I want to keep playing TTRPGs, but I think I’m done with Dungeons and Dragons officially. There are a lot of TTRPG systems, tabletop role playing games, that you can use other than D& D. So a lot of people said that they were going to move over to doing things like Call of Cthulhu.

Um, there’s Warhammer, which is kind of a different one. Um, there’s one that’s based in the Star Trek universe that I can’t remember the name of. I think the most popular one that a lot of people, Ended up moving to was pathfinder. Um, and then there’s dungeon world, which is another one. So there’s a lot that have similarities, but they all use different systems in terms of how you roll to do things and, and whatever, even critical role, who, like I said, would be affected by that change.

Cause they do put out content that they make money from using the D and D system. Oh yeah. It would have affected streamers probably. Because a lot of people stream their D& D games that made that amount of money. Uh, even Critical Role at that time, they couldn’t say anything publicly. It seemed like there were some PR issues.

But they kind of said a lot of things that sounded a little bit, you know, under the surface. That were kind of we’re going away from Dungeons and Dragons and it’s also when they started emphasizing a lot more that they had created a TTRPG that they were going to be releasing and then they were going to do this other campaign that was not going to use the D& D system they were going to use this other TTRPG system.

And so there were a lot of people that were like boycotting D& D. And so a lot of people didn’t go see it that normally would have because that was literally the worst timing that you could possibly have done that. Now I still went to see it. I think that a lot of it was overblown. But yeah, I think that that’s one reason it didn’t make a lot of money.

[01:05:48] Tim: I hope that these things don’t keep it from having a sequel because I think it’s the kind of movie that you could have, um, you could have a sequel to and it could be very good and all that. So yeah, 

[01:05:59] Rebekah: it seemed clearly set up for that. And I think it could be interesting. I would love to see that happen, but I think that if you are someone on like Hasbro’s board of people who decide all of that and you’re not into D& D, you’re just like looking at the numbers, I think it would have to be a pretty compelling case to convince you like, yes, this is okay.

One of the things that 

[01:06:21] Tim: I found interesting and I paid attention at the end of the movie to make sure, um, Chris Pine was one of the producers. Um, I always like to see it when, when actors, because that means they’ve invested in the movie, right? And they’re also invested in, you know, they get money from it.

But I like to see that, so it seems, seems like a good thing, uh, when actors actually invest in the movies they’re in. They’re not just acting. They want it to go somewhere. 

[01:06:50] Rebekah: Um, just a couple. You mentioned filming. I thought it was really interesting that every scene with an actor, all of those were were filmed at Titanic Studios in Belfast.

They did not do any on location shooting for anything. Um, I don’t know. Uh, but they did do, well, I do know they did some like larger wide shots across England and Iceland. There were a bunch of European castles where they did little things. And I assume, I mean, I feel like some of the scenes with actors could have been shot there.

So one thing I loved was that they did share some of their shooting locations. Um, with the Harry Potter movie series, and so apparently some of the interior scenes are an exact match for some hallway scenes from Hogwarts, but just decorated differently, which I think is really fun. 

[01:07:36] Tim: Well, in years gone by, studios kept back lots, and a lot of times you would see the same kinds of things because, you know, they would, they would have the whole city behind the studio.

with all of the facades. So it was very common to see, um, that looks off an awful lot like this other thing from another movie. Well, because it was so, 

[01:08:00] Rebekah: and I just say, this is like, this has nothing to do with this movie. You just said that. And it reminded me there is A blue and white cup that I’m pretty sure every movie studio has ordered from the same company or every TV studio that is used to represent like takeaway for like any Asian dish like soups or rice dishes or noodle dishes or stuff like that because I have seen it.

It’s in friends. I’ve seen it in how I met your mother. I’ve seen it in various movies and it is literally always the same stupid blue cup and it cracks me up because I’m like, does no one think that that’s not obvious? It’s like, 

[01:08:36] Rebekah : I’ve noticed it so many times. 

[01:08:39] Tim: Well, it’s, there again, it’s a physical trope, I suppose, of sorts.

It’s like, well, you, you know, what does a Chinese takeout box look like? Well, it’s the little box that has the fold on the top. I mean, so you get that thing where you always know what it is, you know, see, see it sitting on the counter. You don’t have to ask, what did you have for supper? Or what did you order?

The audience already knows. So. Maybe that’s where it comes from that type of thing. So, um, they did have some screenings before the movie. Um, and the main cast, uh, including Hugh Grant and the others and, um, were there and they were out of costume. They were thanking the audience for coming to see a movie in a theater.

Of course, this is post COVID and all of that stuff too. Um, the text of the message, distributed line by line among the participating cast members. Um, Was, we play heroes in our movie, but all of you are the real movie heroes cause you’re here seeing a movie the way it was meant to be seen in a theater on a big screen surrounded by other movie fans eating popcorn that somehow tastes better than popcorn anywhere else.

I love going to the movies, so did they, because they’re heroes, your movie heroes, and we thank you for being the best part of going to the movies, and now please enjoy Dungeons and Dragons, Honor Among Thieves. It was part of an industry wide campaign to encourage moviegoers to return to the theaters. A lot of the streaming things during, during COVID caused a lot of people to say, eh, we’ll, We just, we’ll just watch it at home when it comes out because, uh, the theaters, when they first started releasing back into theaters, they were simultaneously releasing, uh, their things on HBO, Max, or whatever, whatever streaming service, so you didn’t have to go to the theater, and I know locally, what that has meant for our theater is, Um, they’ve had a hard time recovering.

[01:10:41] Josiah: I feel like it’s a little bit corny, but I do like it, you know. I do like the theater. 

[01:10:47] Rebekah: I do too. It is a different experience than you’re going to ever get at home. Even if you have a home theater, there’s something special about going out. Like we love to go out, meet friends. Grab your big thing of popcorn.

I mean, mom and dad, you’ve established that you literally can’t watch a movie without popcorn despite the fact that sometimes you’re even full from dinner. But like, it is amazing popcorn. You go in and like, you’re in a You’re with a group of people there, that community aspect to it. I was talking to one of the kids that lives with us and we were talking about how he remembers being in the theater and watching a movie and like cheering at a specific point in the movie and everyone in the theater cheered.

And it’s like, you don’t, you will never get that at home. 

[01:11:27] Speaker 2: But 

[01:11:28] Rebekah: like some people just don’t care. I mean, we are. odd in how much we love going to the theater. Like, I know how many movies I can do on my AMC pass and I know it’s coming out and like, I love going and like, having that experience. I think a lot of people just don’t care as much about it.

It doesn’t like, resonate with them, you know? 

[01:11:46] Josiah: I do hope this film has sequels. The film set up sequels. It works well with sequels. I wouldn’t mind a sequel with the same characters and I don’t think I would mind a character where We meet a new party of playable characters. Because they’ve proven that they can make them interesting.

They get the right actors to, uh, make them dynamic and fun to be with in a movie. But, um, the poor box office performance makes it unlikely to happen without Some major stipulations, uh, but I think they could probably do it if they do a lower production cost for the next movie. 

[01:12:27] Rebekah: I will also say, just on the topic of if they did a sequel, I think it would be really fun to have Kira as one of the PCs because she was, um, spec’d as a rogue, like, I don’t think that I mean, she didn’t do a ton, but they lost their rogue in forge who obviously betrayed them and everything.

And so it’d be kind of cool because a typical D& D party has like four to five players. And so you could absolutely add in a rogue character and give their give some depth to what’s going on there. And so I think that could be really cool. But I agree. I would watch another one with another party. I think it would be hard.

Not impossible by any means, but I think it’ll be hard to, to set it up with such an engaging party that like, I like the characters and I relate to them, but yeah, I love that idea. 

[01:13:13] Tim: I would certainly hope they would use the same actors. I, I felt like they, I don’t feel like anybody faded. from the screen.

And I think sometimes that happens. I’d like to see more from Doric. 

[01:13:24] Donna: Yeah, true. But she was a good, she was a good balance against Simon. And they did kind of establish a little bit of a, of a love relationship there, even though I know that’s not a big focus. Um, there’s a little teaser of some attraction there.

Last little bit of trivia I’ll share. There is an eight episode live action D& D series slated in partnership with Paramount Plus, and it would be directed by Ross and Marshall Thurber, who has also written the script. They have not released details of cast or a date, um, yet, and maybe some of what we’ve been talking about plays into that, not sure.

[01:14:06] Rebekah: Well, uh, since this is a review episode, we don’t have a book to compare it to necessarily, so we’re not really saying whether or not the book was better, but. What was your kind of final takeaway? I think all of us obviously liked the movie in one way or another, but give us a little bit of a breakdown.

We’ll just do each of our individual reviews before we call it a day. 

[01:14:25] Donna: Well, since I’m the only one of the four of us that really has never played or been involved actively involved in a game, I’ll start. Um, I went in not knowing what to expect and I tried not to have any preconceived notions because a lot of times the I was not playing the game around the table.

I try to stay with it but kind of get lost. But I’ll say after watching the movie and realizing how easily connected this was, I could see trying to play in the future. So it caused me to think, you know, I mean, I could do anything. This is, oh, now it makes it, you know, the light comes on. And so, um, I was really, I was really happy with it.

Loved the actors. Um, not just because I liked them before. I thought they were compelling and interesting and I wanted to know about them and I wanted to see where they were going to go and see if they would succeed and all those things. So. I was, I was pleasantly surprised. 

[01:15:21] Josiah: I think that the movie was really good and there were some corny moments and there was some quick pacing and, uh, the idea that Keira would so easily listen to Forge about how awful her father was kind of bothers me.

I don’t know how many daughters would believe Hugh Grant over their father. Um, but I, I guess it, it made some sense and it definitely made the story happen. So, but overall, I thought it was a really good movie, really fun, and it was pretty true to D& D. And so I’m not going to say that movie is better than the game, but I will say that the movie was pretty true to the source material.

While making a good movie adaptation. 

[01:16:13] Rebekah: I liked the movie a lot. I thought that it was a lot of fun. I enjoyed like the, what Josiah said that it stayed true to like what I knew of D& D, having played it for a little while now. Um, I thought it was really interesting. I think that it, I, it’s actually going to be maybe surprising, but I thought it did move a little too fast.

I think they tried to put a little too much into it. Um, and there were a couple of things that felt so convenient, like, Oh, I have this item that does this exact thing that I need to do. And it’s, you know, and it just happens to be here. There were a few things like that that took me out of it just a little bit.

Um, but I thought that it was. Super entertaining. Um, but I will say it was interesting. My husband who also plays a lot of D and D knows a lot of the rules. He hated it. Like he was like, I thought this was so lame. Like, Oh my gosh. And I don’t even know why. Like, I’m not even sure what it was about it. So I think that.

Obviously, everything like this is subjective, but I really enjoyed it. I’ve now watched it again a couple of times. Um, I would say it’s like an easy re watcher, like, thing to put on the background. So, I would say, like, you know, probably 8 out of 10 for me, 7. if I had to put it on a scale like that. Hmm.

[01:17:23] Tim: Well, I really enjoyed, uh, I enjoyed the movie. I thought it was, I thought it was really good. Um, you know, Josiah is always talking about the fact that the movies are better than the books because, you know, it’s a visual medium. Um, and there’s some, there’s some connection to that in, in what I thought about it.

It put, um, these game things that you have to imagine in your own mind, just like when you’re reading a book. Uh, it put it into a visual medium and I thought it did a really good job of that. I had. One spot that I really didn’t care for, aside from the one that TJ was, or that Josiah was talking about with Kira.

I don’t know how that would happen so quickly either, but the other part was, I thought the special effects were really good, were really classy, except in one small spot, um, where they, they’re getting the small cat child out of the fish. I thought those were the least believable, um, makeups and characters of the movie.

It’s like everything was like, wow, I believe everything. And this 

[01:18:29] Josiah: looks like a cartoon. Do you know that that was specifically a scene where they had to make a bunch of practical effects because they wanted to do it all in one shot? 

[01:18:41] Tim: Oh, 

[01:18:41] Josiah: well, so they, they had to spend extra time making sure that the cat baby would fit in the fish and that the cat suits could be, you know, fully operated during the full shot.

So that’s fun. And I appreciate 

[01:18:55] Rebekah: practical effects. Like I, I don’t want everything to be special effects, um, for what it’s worth. Uh, those are probably tabaxi, which is a D& D race of cat folk. But anyway. Yeah, I agree. I would say that that, that visual was a little bit. It felt a little bit lower quality than a lot of the rest of it.

[01:19:12] Tim: It would have been easier, I think it would have been easy for that to have been edited out. I know that it, I know that it said something about one of the characters, but, um, I’m not sure. You literally 

[01:19:24] Rebekah: saved the cat, but he could have done that in a different way. Yeah. 

[01:19:27] Tim: But I, but I really enjoyed the movie.

Um, it is something that, well, I’ve seen it twice now. And I like Chris Pine. I like, I like the other characters, the other actors, and I think it was, I think it was well done and I think it was faithful to the source material while being a good movie for people who have never played any bit of Dungeons and Dragons.

So, I think it, I think it hits, hits that way. I liked it. 

[01:19:55] Rebekah: Thanks for listening to the Book Is Better podcast. If you have feedback, ideas, future episodes, or questions for any of the hosts, you can email us bookisbetterpod at gmail. com. You can find us most places online at bookisbetterpod. Next week, we’ll be dropping an episode on Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief covering the old movie, the new TV show, and until then, have a great week.

[01:20:23] Tim: And I’m not even sure what a paladin is.

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