How does Dungeons & Dragons hold up from a long-time player's perspective?

This week, Dungeons And Dragons: Honor Among Thieves hits theaters, with stars Chris Pine and Michelle Rodriguez leading a party of adventurers on an epic and glorious quest to … well, steal crap. (They are thieves, after all.) You can read our full review of the film right here, but suffice it to say that it’s one of the more bracingly fun action-adventure movies we’ve seen in some time: Fast-moving, inventive, and with a surprising amount of feeling behind it.

But feelings, schmeelings. What we really wanted to know, as long-time players of the tabletop game on which the movie was based, was this: Is it recognizably Dungeons & Dragons? And we don’t just mean tossing a displacer beast into a battle, or giving each character a distinct character class. (Although that stuff does count for something, especially when compared to some of those other Dungeons & Dragons movies.) No, what we wanted to know was whether the film replicates the real D&D, the mixture of annoyances and joys that can only come from collaborative storytelling between a bunch of people who all agree, in the interest of fun, that they care what happens to a bunch of pretend dwarves or elves or bird-people, etc.

To that effect, we’ve catalogued five different ways Honor Among Thieves nails the D&D experience, from emulating common foibles of DMs and players alike, to the ways it lifts some of the best parts of the tabletop experience. So pull up a chair, grab some dice, and let’s dive into the adventure.

Actually, this is covered in my backstory…

Look: You took the time to write an elaborate backstory for your player character down, and now everybody else at the table is damn well going to hear it. That’s the abiding vibe of the opening minutes of Honor Among Thieves, as Edgin the bard (Pine) attempts to browbeat some judgmental officials into submission with an in-depth accounting of how he ended up as a dashing adventurer/scoundrel/criminal.

To be fair, Ed’s backstory is pretty compelling, full of moral compromises, sudden tragedy, and cute kids. (One of the strengths of the film is that it sells its “found family” conceit with quite a bit more sincerity than any other Michelle Rodriguez-starring action movie franchises you might care to name.) But even so: If you’ve ever had to sit through a 10-minute monologue on why your party’s drow rogue turned against his people and became a noble (but tormented) anti-hero with two swords and a magic bow, etc., etc., etc., the moments where Pine demands the floor for some all-important “context” are going to ring familiar.

The ever-dreaded DM’s “Pet NPC”

In the grand book of Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master clichés, few are as infamous (or as eye-roll-inducing) as the “pet NPC.” Which, to be clear, isn’t a character with an animal companion—although that can introduce its own complications, ones Honor Among Thieves smartly avoids. Rather, it’s a character created by the DM, inserted into the party to keep them on the proper rails, and introduced basically so that all the player characters can stand around, watch them do cool shit, and then tell them how awesome they are.

We can’t say with 100 percent certainty that Regé-Jean Page’s Honor character Xenk—a high-powered paladin who wanders into the movie, delivers a bunch of exposition, and then has some cool solo fight scenes while the rest of the party watches in admiration and awe—is an explicit reference to this trope. But we’d be kind of shocked if he wasn’t: He’s so perfect, powerful, and morally good that he feels like he was plucked straight out of the DM’s fan-fiction and plopped down into the movie to remind everyone involved what a real hero is supposed to look like. That doesn’t make him a bad character—Page gives a great, weird, high-Charisma performance. But it definitely feels like someone somewhere was winking at this particular bad Dungeon Master habit with his inclusion.

Why would I cast spells when I can just turn into a horse instead?

It’s like the old saying goes: When all you have is [the ability to Wild Shape into basically any animal with a sufficiently low number of hit dice], everything looks like [an opportunity to turn into an owlbear and mess a bunch of evil Red Wizards up]. You don’t roll a druid in D&D if you don’t want to solve almost every problem by turning into some kind of animal, real or imagined, and Doric (Sophia Lillis) is clearly no exception. Infiltration mission? Turn into an animal. Fight? Animal! Need to get out of a room? Doors are so cliché; why not turn into a fly and buzz out the window instead? Druids in Dungeons & Dragons actually have some pretty potent spells on their casting list—but nothing says real druid like ignoring all of that junk in favor of turning into a 300 lb. hybrid of the forest’s deadliest neighbors and going to town on some goons.

(Into this same category, we can toss the rest of the film’s class-based behaviors: Barbarian Holga applies the direct approach to all and any problems, sorcerer Simon causes as many problems as he solves with his bursts of wild magic, and Pine’s bard almost never fights—instead tossing pep talks and plans at his cohorts in a pretty solid simulation of the game’s Bardic Inspiration effect.)

Load your players/viewers up with treasures

While we’re on the topic of D&D clichés, here’s another: “Monty Haul,” a gamer nickname for the kind of Dungeon Master who is, if anything, too ready to load their players down with magical loot. And Honor Among Thieves certainly qualifies: It has plenty of the traditional kind of treasure, of course—this is, after all, a fantasy heist movie about a bunch of thieves executing a daring magical robbery. But it’s also willing to dish out, in abundance, the kind of shiny baubles that the nerds in the audience will crave, i.e., a whole boatload of D&D Easter eggs.

We won’t get into an exhaustive list here because it would be, well, exhausting. But rest assured that almost every one-off bit of lore or monster to appear in the movie has some kind of basis somewhere in the Monster Manual or Player’s Handbook, from the appearance of fan-favorites like the displacer beast and the gelatinous cube, to being able to tell which spells the magic users are throwing around in combat without them even yelling out the names. (As any good wizard knows: When the beefy types close in, it’s time to Misty Step the hell out of the line of fire and resume combat from a handy roof.) Amazingly, none of it feels pandering, or ironic: These characters just happen to live in a world where you might conceivably be walking around with a token that lets you cast “Speak With Dead” in your pocket, or where you have to be careful opening treasure chests because you never know when they’re going to be filled to the brim with some very angry tongues and teeth.

Good DMs steal

It’s not easy being a DM: You have to keep a whole world in your head, and play every character in it, and control every monster, and, sometimes, you’re also expected to bring the Doritos. So no one could, or should, blame you for, let’s say, homage-ing moments from your favorite movies or games in order to keep your players entertained.

Honor Among Thieves gets that—whether it’s lifting a certain iconic teleportation-based video game weapon basically wholesale for some of its heisting fun, or lifting one of the most crowd-pleasing moments from The Avengers for a story beat near its climax. The joy of the movie isn’t in it being some boundless well of creativity: It’s in seeing everybody involved push forward relentlessly in search of fun, using whatever parts they can get their hands on for the smoothest joyride possible. And that’s a huge part of the core of great Dungeons & Dragons, too: The acknowledgment that we’re all around this table to have a good time, not to throw nit-picky-y roadblocks in the way of the fun. Honor Among Thieves genuinely gets that; it’s probably the highest compliment we can lay at the movie’s feet.