I grew up in the fantasy realm. My dad has been playing and gamemastering Dungeons & Dragons since its first edition in 1974 and has continued to play until the present day with the release of the 5th edition in 2014. My brothers and I couldn’t just jump into a tabletop roleplaying game with him and his friends, but he wanted to foster our relationship with his favorite fantasy series. That led us to Neverwinter Nights, an online RPG that came out in 2002, based on the Forgotten Realms campaign setting of Dungeons & Dragons. My brothers played the main campaign and the multiplayer modes relentlessly, and once I got old enough to sit in front of a computer, I was hooked along with them. The ability to create a new character with pretty much any traits you could think of was an almost overwhelming truth, but it gave us the freedom to explore and become something other than mundane.
I eventually grew up and moved on from the computer game, but my love of fantasy remained. I chose almost exclusively fantasy books to read and I adored any movie that took me away from the world I knew. Another aspect of my fantasy adoration comes in the form of Renaissance festivals. There is one that takes place close to my house every year that has been hosted since 1974 and spans thirty acres in southern Wisconsin. It has always been one of my favorite summer activities to go to the faire for a day and literally experience a culture like no other. Sure it is a bunch of nerds and theatre kids in eighty-degree heat and ninety percent humidity outside all day, but getting to explore the town they created and meet vendors and performers from all over the world is like nothing else. Growing up came with the loss of my love of adventure and being a nerd. I still love the faires and reading fantasy, but D&D fell by the wayside. Then I saw the ads for Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves with an unbeatable cast and the child in me had to know if my love for the series was gone.
Spoiler alert: my love for this series is nowhere near gone. Seeing a ragtag team consisting of a tiefling druid, barbarian, sorcerer, and a paladin was nothing less of fun. Getting to see monsters such as the gelatinous cube, mimic, displacer beast, and, of course, dragons on the big screen reawakened my love of this RPG. I got to hear characters refer to and see infamous locations such as Baldur’s Gate and Neverwinter and explore the locations as I had all those years ago. It was a funny movie full of action, heartwarming scenes, and found-family bonding that left me wanting to be there with them. What would an elven ranger (my usual character) add to the mix? How would they face any of the other monsters? The possibilities with a franchise like Dungeons & Dragons are endless as there are many premade campaigns and ways to play along with infinite options for customization.
I’ve seen more and more people experiencing the joy that the fantasy genre can bring them as they experience their first Renaissance festivals or read their first fantasy series online and get hooked on the genre. Releasing a Dungeons & Dragons movie with mainstream actors further builds towards mainstreaming fantasy. Now people can leave the theatre and find a group (online or in-person) to play the game they just saw on-screen and their knowledge of what fantasy can be can grow. I understand the want to gatekeep these games and this genre as it feels almost ethereal to those that play and love it, but by teaching more people of younger generations, fantasy lives on. I cannot wait to see what this movie does to fantasy and D&D campaigns to come. Not only does mainstreaming keep fantasy alive, but it makes something like D&D thrive. It is no longer a nerdy hobby; rather, it is something we all know of and can appreciate. I believe that we should keep bringing genres like fantasy into the light to keep them from falling into darkness. My call to you is to be a nerd and try a TTRPG or, if that is too daunting, read a fantasy book!