Even before Christopher Vogler introduced to the world the primary seven character archetypes in his 2007 textbook The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers, players of Dungeons & Dragons had already been experimenting with the game’s ‘aligment’ system – wherein their player character is placed on an axis of “law” versus “chaos” and “good” versus “evil” that defines their morality and ethics – since 1974. While the rules of the popular tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Amongst Thieves is based on already dictate the characteristics that belong to characters who are assigned to a certain class – and thus, a specific role to play in the course of a gameplay session – the film nonetheless toys with the conventional archetypes present in role-playing fantasy narratives while still delegating each character to a distinct role, or mask. Certain characters embody the archetypes previously defined by Vogler, some wear multiple masks, and some subvert the mask entirely.
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