'Dungeons & Dragons' Drops New 'Honor Among Thieves' Trailer Amid Game Publishing Controversies
A new trailer for Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves dropped on Monday as the drama surrounding the original game continues. The new two-minute video adds a lot of characterization to the main cast and summarizes their quest as well. Along the way, it emphasizes the role of comedy in this burgeoning new franchise.
Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves comes out on March 31, 2023, so it's no wonder a new trailer is giving fans more details than ever. It introduces fans to Holga the Barbarian (Michelle Rodriguez) and Edgin the Bard (Chris Pine), who do not seem to evenly share the work of getting out of a precarious situation. We also meet Simon the sorcerer (Justice Smith) and Xenk the Paladin (Regé-Jean Page), who share several punchlines together, and we're left wondering if Forge Fitzwilliam the Rogue (Hugh Grant) is even on their side.
The cast is rounded out by Sophia Lillis as Doric the Druid, Daisy Head as a Red Wizard of Thay, Jason Wong as Dralas and Chloe Coleman in an undisclosed role. The movie looks poised to capture the fun and light-heartedness of the original tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG), even if that source material is currently in an uncertain state.
Dungeons & Dragons is published by Wizards of the Coast, which has been a subsidiary of Hasbro for many years now. The game has gotten a huge boost in popularity in recent years thanks to fan-made content including podcasts and livestreams where players use the core rule set and write their own original material to play. However, earlier this month a draft of the game's new Open Game License leaked, and the terms would have changed that whole content ecosystem for good.
The Open Game License (OGL) allows D&D players to use portions of the game's intellectual property in their own work without oversight from the publisher. This applies to content creators online like the cast of Critical Role as well as publishers of third-party content compatible with the game's core rules. The leaked update to the OGL would have taken away a lot of legal protections for these smaller creators, which fans regarded as unfair since those creators were responsible for the D&D resurgence in the first place.
A widespread boycott of D&D material caught the publisher's attention immediately, and the company announced that leaked OGL draft would be scrapped. Recognizing the importance of community to a game like this, the company is now asking for fans to submit feedback on the latest version of the OGL, known as OGL 1.2. There are still aspects of this deal that some fans take issue with, and in the meantime, alternate TTRPGs have managed to get a greater foothold in the market as fans search for an alternative to play.
All this has put the plans for a D&D screen franchise into a different light for some fans, and many are wondering how the synergy between that media and the game itself will proceed. Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves premieres on March 31 in theaters.