D&D:HAT

My Blu-ray copy of Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves arrived this afternoon. The release date being May 30th has been known for some time, but for whatever reason until this morning, Amazon said it was going to arrive on June 20th. Surprise, surprise... here it is now. I actually probably have time to pop it in and watch it one more time tonight. In spite of the fact that fans have every reason to be unhappy with WotC, Hasbro, and even Paramount, this movie is better by far than I expected it to be. Even my wife quite liked it, and she is not a fan of D&D. My characterization of the movie as Guardians of the Galaxy meets Lord of the Rings was sufficient to get her into a mood where she wasn't just dutifully going to see it because I wanted to, but I'm sure she still wasn't expecting to actually like it very much. She did, and has in fact highly recommended the movie to all of our far-flung kids. We even went back to the theater with my daughter and son-in-law, and I'm hoping to watch it with another of my college-aged sons when he's in town in a few weeks, now that I have a copy on Blu-ray.

I do feel like D&D and I parted ways some time ago, and while we still pass each other and give each other a friendly greeting and some small talk, we're really on quite different paths. My preferred rules are very rules-lite, and should probably be called OSR adjacent, while D&D has become a game of very many rules. My settings are grim and humanocentric; a combination of old-fashioned sword & sorcery and gothic horror, like Dracula or something, complete with an X-files like conspiracy vibe and anxious tone of brooding menace. My characters are grounded and grim guys with freelance roving commissions looking to root out supernatural evil; D&D's characters are whimsical superheroes and animal people. My game has genuine risk for PCs; D&D is meant to be won, and without too much challenge, quite honestly.

I guess maybe it's fair to say that my game more closely resembles older games of D&D from the 70s and early 80s than it does D&D from now, but even that's not really accurate. It more closely resembles them in system, I suppose, but the setting, tone and themes I would explore are much more similar to something like Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, or that unfortunately poorly made Van Helsing movie from a few years ago. Maybe toned down a fair bit from the over-the-top swashbuckling of that movie, but still—poorly made though it may be, it's still a close analog of the tone and theme that I shoot for in my games.

That said, there's still plenty to like about D&D-like higher fantasy. I recently re-read the original Icewind Dale trilogy by R. A. Salvatore, for instance. And the movie itself, as noted, is pretty good. Although how much it resembles the high fantasy style of D&D from the late 80s and 90s is hard to say. 

I can't be bothered to boycott every company that does something stupid or evil, since corporations, by their nature, will tend to do both routinely. Rather; I'd like to see movies like this be successful enough that more like them are made. And I'd also like to encourage people to keep their bloody opinions to themselves rather than try and foist them on their customers.