If you’re a fan of genre cinema, you probably know about Fantastic Fest. Austin’s week-long film festival is home to some of the industry’s strangest genre films. And because it’s held at the Alamo Drafthouse, there’s always a wide range of live events and activities going on. And that’s how I found myself holding a fistful of dice in a group of strangers for a special edition of Dungeons & Drafthouse, the Alamo’s monthly Dungeons & Dragons series.
If there’s anything that piques my interest better than tabletop games at a film festival, I don’t know what it is.
D&D should be on the schedule
If the thought of D&D on a festival program surprises you, it’s actually more appropriate than you might think. Over the past few years, many film festivals have expanded their schedules to include television, podcasts, and even video games. And while D&D may lack the obvious audio-visual connections of other media, tabletop is still a medium that’s heavily influenced by our relationship with movies – especially when it comes to the roles we assign ourselves at the table. It’s a great opportunity to step out of your passive self as a viewer and become an active storyteller and roleplayer.
So I had already made up my mind to skip some movies and throw some dice. Although I’m a big consumer of actual games of D&D – shows like NADDPod accompany me on my runs or in the car – I’ve only participated in a handful of sessions at my own table. I tend to lean more toward rules-less games like Frontier Scum or Death in Space for my groups of friends, but a session designed to be self-contained over three hours seemed like the perfect way to try my hand at D&D and a welcome change of pace during a long weekend.
One-shots are fun shots when done correctly
It also didn’t hurt that the Dungeon and Drafthouse fully embraced horror vibes for the session, offering a collection of supernatural horrors ripped straight from the pages of a John Carpenter screenplay. The story in a nutshell: We played a group of mercenaries who were hired to figure out why a small mining town was no longer sending supplies—or, as one player noted, the fictional equivalent of the Pinkertons. When we got there, we learned that the miners had uncovered a cursed artifact that had trapped the village in an unholy aurora and turned its residents into a mix of flesh and appendages.
(The moon made a face and winked at us. It was very bad.)
My character was Barfur, a dwarf priest who had a love-hate relationship with the other gods. Part of the fun of a one-shot is that there’s not much time to think about your character; three hours won’t let you delve into the tragic backstory or reveal any horrible secrets, so it’s mostly an excuse to pick a fun voice and let your character discover himself at the table. I quickly discovered that Barfur was incredibly pedantic and a bit obsessed with fire, encouraging the others to burn down the village’s only church (which, given the third-act twist, would have screwed up with the town).
And around the table were other players of varying experience levels. The guy sitting to my right had never played a single game of D&D in his life – so, naturally, he rolled pretty well and did more damage than the rest of the party. Across from him was a DM who had his screen turned on to make sure we had the whole party at the table. He was leaning heavily into his barbarian himbo, encouraging us all to take big blows with our characters (and answering questions about our character sheets out of character to keep the action from slowing down).
D&D is a great way to connect with movie lovers
Even with a group of complete strangers, there was no shortage of brilliant moments. In one scene, our barbarian rolled a natural 20 while attempting to throw a wizard through a broken window, only to discover minutes later that the front door was wide open. We also agreed, loudly and often, that we didn’t think too much about the monster we killed outside the village, who may or may not have been a normal villager caught in a spell. As I told the table, I don’t have any healing spells for PTSD, so out of sight, out of mind.
We laughed. We made pop culture references. We silently gave Kate Siegel the thumbs up as she strolled through the event room (“Ooh, Dungeons & Dragons!”). For those few hours, we stopped the usual conversations about movies — what you saw, what you thought — and began to engage with others in a more active way. And while that may seem overly sentimental, in a setting where so much conversation is skewed toward criticism, it was fun to stop egos at the door and be silly with a group of complete strangers.
And while this experience may not inspire me to adopt D&D as my game of record — I’ll stick with my rules-light horror system, thank you — it definitely inspired me to check out the next Dungeon and Drafthouse session. I’m always looking for new ways to combine my love of cinema and my love of the tabletop, and it turns out that getting to know fellow cinephiles over a stack of dice is a great way to break the ice. If you’re lucky enough to have a film festival in your area that’s based on the tabletop game, be sure to give it a try.
