Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves recently released its first trailer, and it looks much better than the last D&D movie in the year 2000. With things like this and the existence of actual play shows like Critical Role, D&D is becoming more mainstream. If Dungeons and Dragons: Honour Among Thieves ends up being a success, it could open the door to many more potential D&D settings or other tabletop role-play games (TTRPG) becoming on-screen franchises. We already have Cyberpunk Edgerunners coming to Netflix, which is based on the Cyberpunk system and setting. If the new D&D movie breaks the curse surrounding RPG movies, then it could coax nervous executives into taking a risk on some other TTRPGs.

Hollywood is always on the lookout for a property with fans, established lore, and franchise potential, and most TTRPG settings have those things. The question, of course, is: which of these settings is the best for adaptation? The issue would be finding a story to start with that centers audiences in these large and expansive worlds. This list will identify a few settings and pitch some likely storylines based on the lore of the settings.

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5 World of Darkness

     Via Paradox Interactive

The World of Darkness setting is the main setting of Vampire: The Masquerade and several other Urban Fantasy TTRPGs. World of Darkness is a setting with a shared lore that includes vampires, werewolves, mages, and even demons. Vampire: The Masquerade, the most popular RPG in the setting, simulates the drama and politics of vampires. In World of Darkness, Vampires have clans that often serve as the basis for their ideological and social outlook. Vampire Clans often “embrace” (the V:TM term for turning someone into a vampire) those who fit their ideologies for how the world works. Each clan represents a different archetype of vampire. The Brujah, for example, are punk rock vampires while the Ventrue are the aristocratic vampires. Some even have iconic powers or traits, like the Nosferatu, which look like monsters or the Malkavians who are linked in a maddening psychic network. This all serves as a backdrop for a power struggle between the Camarilla, who wish to uphold a secret order of Vampire life known as the Masquerade, while the Sabat want to dominate the world of mortals.

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A Vampire: The Masquerade TV show could be a bloody Game of Thrones-like political thriller between different vampires, or a social drama focusing on the lives of the vampires themselves. You could even go for some other World of Darkness games. From wizards in Mage: The Ascension to Lycanthropes in Werewolf: The Apocalypse, the possibilities are endless, and the lore is always very intriguing. Per Metacritic, Vampire: The Masquerade sits at a solid 66% rating, which is an indication of its decent popularity among gamers.

4 Dark Sun

     Via Wizards of the Coast

Unlike the Forgotten Realms setting of D&D, Dark Sun presents a very different sort of fantasy world. Rather than being based on traditional European fantasy, Dark Sun is a post-apocalyptic world where every day is a struggle to survive. Metal for weaponry is scarce, and so weapons are made from bone, obsidian, and other materials. There are several D&D races specific to this universe, like the Thri-Kreen who are insects with four arms or the Mul who are hybrids between dwarves and humans. Magic is much rarer in the setting, but instead there’s an interesting emphasis on psionics, which are the fantasy D&D version of psychic powers. A Dark Sun TV series or movie could explore the dark hopelessness of the setting, similarly to how The Walking Dead and spin-offs explore the zombie apocalypse. A storyline could have one of the Sorceror-kings, who are the bloodythirsty rulers of the remaining cities.

3 Eberron

Unlike Dark Sun, Eberron looks much more like your traditional fantasy setting, except in this case it has more advanced technology such as trains and skyships. Eberron lends itself to intrigue, mystery and politics, much like Vampire: The Masquerade, as there are a number of different factions that characters have to navigate. Eberron introduces new fantasy creatures, like the magical robots known as the Warforged and the psionic Kalashtar. Eberon is generally described as emulating the noir genre in fantasy. There are lots of fun possibilities for storylines in Eberron. There are 12 nations which, though the Last War left everyone desiring peace, constantly send spies and espionage missions to sabotage and spy on one another. There’s also the noir angle, and the change to do a mystery in a fantasy setting. Much like Forgotten Realms, Eberron is a big world with lots of possibilities for stories.

2 Spire and Heart

     Via Rowan, Rook and Decard

These two RPGs by Rowan, Rook, and Decard are in the same universe that has very distinctive and interesting world-building. Spire deals with the city above, and the intrigue between the masked High Elves and the Dark Elves, who are oppressed by the former. Heart, on the other hand, deals with the roiling undercity that lies beneath spire, having all sorts of monstrous horrors in its depths. Both have interesting and flavorful classes, such as the Spire Vermissian Sages, who transport letters through the defunct Vermissian transport system, or the Heart Deep Apiraist, who is a wizard who has a swarm of bees hosted within their body. Both are unique takes on fantasy and have intriguing potential storylines. Heart could lead to a terrifying horror movie or a TV show exploring the horrors underneath. Spire could be an intriguing rebellion stories.

1 Starfinder

     Via Paizo

Starfinder takes a lot of the D&D fantasy tropes and plays them out in a Star Trek or Star Wars-style space opera universe. A continuation of the lore of the RPG Pathfinder, a fantasy game much like D&D, per Game Informer, Starfinder is many years ahead of its fantasy counterpart in the lore. Androids and elves both exist in the setting, as do paladins that wield the energy of the stars and magical witches. Starfinder is a very fun genre mash, melding sci-fi and fantasy in an innovative way. One perfect example of this is the Assembly Ooze, which is a nanobot ooze that acts like a regular D&D ooze except it disassembles matter and then assembles things with the disassemble matter, like items. Starfinder lends itself to the same adventurers of something like Dungeons of Dragons, with its adventurers and explorations, but with the Star Trek-style sci-fi twist.