Making the Honorable (Among Thieves) Choice

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves mixes adventure and humor with the nimble pacing your DM wishes your party could stick to.

Seriously, use the group calendar for your scheduling conflicts. That's what it's there for.

The story's core builds from the motivations of Edgin "Ed" Darvis, using a nuanced take on character motivation that goes deeper than the oft-advised "Give a protagonist a want to pursue, but a need that must be fulfilled."

The engine pushing Ed forward is grief over his past mistakes. As he pushes to reach his goal, he confronts that he's trying to do the wrong thing for the wrong reason.

This is a character torn between a need to heal a wound and the belief he can erase the injury. Let's take a look at the story beats that shift his focus gently, detailing how a protagonist can keep moving forward toward a single objective, but change their motivation to better align his actions with his goal.

The Problem

Bard and former Harper Edgin "Ed" Darvis explains to a parole board why he and his fellow prisoner Holga Kilgore took part in the heist they were arrested for. Years before, Ed's wife was murdered by disciples of a red wizard that he had arrested. Since the red wizards use a poison that cannot be cured by conventional magic, she died and left him to care for their infant daughter, Kira. Holga dropped in to help Ed pick himself up, care for Kira, and engage in some petty larceny to keep them all fed.

Years later, after Ed and Holga assemble a crew of thieves, they learn of a Tablet of Reawakening, that could bring a person back to life no matter how they were killed. Ed sees this as a chance to bring back his wife and reset where things went off course...

But the heist goes wrong, and Ed leaves the tablet and Kira's protection to Forge Fitzwilliam, another member of the crew.

The film's story is set in motion by the protagonist's choice: In order to bring his wife back to life, he chose to risk leaving his daughter behind without either parent. Every decision he makes following this relates to what he believes is the best way to correct this wrong.

The Attempt to Start Over

Ed and Holga escape from their parole hearing and track down Forge, who is now the Lord of Neverwinter. When they see Kira, she immediately rushes to Holga (who calls Kira by her nickname "Bug") and is cold to her own father. Part of this is that Forge has had two years to convince Kira that the tablet Ed tried to steal was simply a way to generate incredible wealth, and that he had abandoned her for nothing more than a chance at a pile of gold.

Kira refuses Ed's offer to come with him, and Forge refuses to turn over the tablet. It's a double-cross, and Forge sends guards after Ed and Holga, telling Kira that her father abandoned her again.

In these scenes, Ed's trying to convince his daughter that the best thing to do is bring her mother back to life and start over. Kira tells him that he's still trying to avoid taking responsibility for leaving her behind for the heist. Ed wants to erase his mistakes. He believes that will make him feel better, but it's not something Kira feels willing to go along with.

Clinging more tightly to the goal

Ed holds on to the same goal, but the plan itself has to change. Now he and Holga need to recruit a team to steal the tablet again, but this time from Forge's vault.

Ed sticks with a goal that his daughter rebuffed, and he's repeating the same actions that previously lead to disaster: In order to undo the consequences of the past heist to steal the tablet, he's engineering yet another heist to steal the tablet.

Ed's still early on this journey. He's not questioning why Kira would refuse to go with him, assuming it all has to do with Forge's lies. There's a character-driven faith in his ability to pivot, manipulate, and improvise his way out of any problem instead of taking the harder, more vulnerable path.

Discovering a better motivation for the same goal

During the heist, Ed looks for Kira to convince her to come with him. He gets a chance to make his case and talks his way into a realization: He wanted the tablet so he could bring back his wife, who was someone Kira never really got to know. Even though he said he wanted Kira to have her mom back, Kira was too young to feel that sense of loss.

Ed separates the pain that's motivating him (losing his wife) from the pain he's trying to heal (his daughter's loss of her parents). And as soon as this realization hits him, he's captured and unable to act on it.

A delay creates a crisis and an opportunity

Hijinks ensue. Ed, Kira, and the rest of the heist crew capture Forge's boat full of treasure and are sailing off, free and easy. Now all that's left is to use the Tablet of Reawakening to...

Wait.

Ed realizes that the ominous smoke tendrils mean that the entire stadium full of people is about to be turned into an undead army for the red wizards.

This is very bad.

Ed chooses to turn back, and the heist crew agrees to try and stop this crisis despite how it risks them losing everything they just gained. Ed's choosing an action that might once again leave Kira abandoned.

But put it into context with the rest of the story: This is an attempt to stop harm caused by a red wizard. It's not some random threat giving this motley crew a chance to be big damn heroes because it's the right thing to do.

It's a chance to stop the harm caused by the same group that killed Ed's wife/Kira's Mom. It's an attempt to prevent a new cycle of death and grief. It's fighting back in the present at the ones who caused the pain of the past.

Finding alignment and making a choice

During the climactic battle, Holga receives a mortal wound with the same red wizard poison that killed Kira's mom. Once the Wizard is defeated, Ed runs to Holga and sees Kira's emotional connection to Holga.

That's where it clicks for Ed: All those scenes from the past of Holga caring for Kira as she grew up, and how she was there in a way that Ed's wife never got to be.

So Ed uses the Tablet of Reawakening to save Holga, for his daughter's sake.

The same MacGuffin he's wanted from the beginning, but to save a different person in order to better fulfill the goal: Make sure Kira has the family she needs.

Takeaways

• This is not a structure to apply to character development over the course of a script. But it's a solid example of this character reacting and adapting to the story as they work through it. Even if you have a protagonist whose basic goal doesn't change, does their motivation grow and change with them?
• Ed's pain and Kira's pain are related, but not the same. They can't be solved together. Ed's choice is about being responsible for his daughter and helping to heal her pain. Is there something (or someone) who could motivate your protagonist to sacrifice their victory? Who or what would make them give up what they've been striving for?
• In your story, what is the wound that needs to be healed? Does your protagonist see it differently, or are they in sync with that understanding? If they're out of sync, what can help them see clearly?