A role-playing game born half a century ago in a Wisconsin basement has spawned an empire spanning film, TV and YouTube. How did it leave its mark on Stranger Things, ET and everyone from Stephen King to Elon Musk?
‘We didn’t mean to unleash the greatest evil the world has ever known,” says Chris Pine’s voiceover. “But we’re gonna fix it.” In the forthcoming movie Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves, Pine plays Edgin, a lutenist bard who, according to the blurb, leads a band of medieval misfits with special powers who undertake an epic heist to retrieve a lost relic, but things go dangerously awry. Their enemy is played by Hugh Grant, hopefully channelling his villain from Paddington 2.
The release of the Dungeons & Dragons movie, next March, will be the culmination of a story more improbable than anything spawned by a Hollywood hack. As Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) approaches its half-century, the game, first played in a Wisconsin basement by a handful of geeks, is the most successful and popular role-playing game in the world, with a fanbase extending to the likes of Stephen King, Drew Barrymore, Dwayne Johnson, Elon Musk and, yes, Michael Gove.
