You're right, and they would be right in thinking that way too. Nothing wrong with that, of course. Thing was that they weren't even thinking of that direction, at all - internal, external, partnership, nothing; Dead end, and authors were just guns for hire, zero input on that. It wasn't their property anymore. I wasn't brazen enough to offer talks towards the dark elf immediately. Idea, which to be honest lingered for maybe a month before initial contact was shot down immediately, was to start with something smaller to test the (production and market) waters first like Cleric Quintet which could work but it could also open the forgotten realms brand into the TV world. Anyways, nice remembering this past life and an anecdote.

Honor Among Thieves wasn't quite the all-time great that Baldur's Gate 3 was, but I thought it was pretty fun and enjoyable.

I think the other D&D game that came out recently (Dark Alliance) is probably a better example of devaluing the brand.

Honor among thieves made the D&D lore appear generic. It wasn't a bad movie but it didn't utilize D&D to the extent it should have been utilized. It could have been just as good if it was a normal fantasy movie without the D&D IP. There's great depth in the D&D world and I would say much more complex and imaginative than LOTR.

Only the D&D universe allows for games like the BG series or Torment. It's all about the lore.

Let's make no mistake, D&D is all about the lore. The RPG mechanics are pretty generic. You have thousands of cookie cutter rpgs out there (especially jrpgs) with complex and interesting game play mechanics that are largely forgettable. D&D is still relevant not because of the game play mechanics, but because of the lore. And this lore was not really used very well in Honor among thieves.

Maybe you're right though. The D&D universe is specifically designed to support complex narratives and generic ones as well. Though for honor among thieves with the D&D name featured so prominently in the title I'm sure most people unfamiliar with D&D walked away thinking that D&D was some generic fantasy universe. D&D Lore is better, deeper and more complex than GOT or LOTR by a huge margin. It's barely comparable it's like comparing GOT with the Harry Potter universe.

I agree with D&D having a richer lore (and as someone who bounced off of tabletop play, though that's more likely the groups I was playing with, I love that BG3 exists and I can sink deep into it).

I think the thing I enjoyed the most about Honor Among Thieves was how the different characters were manifestations of player archetypes. You have the master planner, the strong and silent, the high-level lawful good guest player who the DM sets up an extra-hard challenge for, and so on.

> There's valid reasoning why a company wouldn't let another company make a movie or TV series. It cheapens the IP if the movie/series goes bad.

Season 8 of Game of Thrones.

The spin off was alright but I didn't really care enough to keep it up, and I get a lot of people didn't. LOTR comes to mind too, ditto for a lot of the "slop" that Disney has been pushing for Star Wars.

There is a lot more stuff out there, and most of it isn't great, so Ima tune it out until the test of time determines if it's worth it.