Cast your minds back to the 1980s when a little tabletop role-playing game called Dungeons & Dragons was sweeping the nation – not as a popular game for families but as a cautionary tale.

Extremist groups claiming the game promoted devil worship, witchcraft and murder led to a moral panic and fans of the game facing social ostracism, unfair treatment and false association with the occult. Even a fictionalized account of these reactions was captured in the 1982 TV movie “Mazes and Monsters,” starring a pre-famous Tom Hanks.

As the decades went by and the obvious false panic subsided, new generations were picking up the game and slowly bringing it into the mainstream, both in good ways like the “Stranger Things” series and in not-so-good ways like the 2000 film, simply called, “Dungeons & Dragons.” And now, after nearly a decade in development hell, a new big-budget Hollywood movie that captures everything fans of the game love is in theaters.

“Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” is the last film anybody expected anything from. Fantasy comedies based on a nerdy game your little brother and his friends would play in the basement are not supposed to lead the box office. But after successes like “The Lord of the Rings,” Marvel and DC comics and the Transformers movies, why not D&D?

Rich in both game lore and Easter eggs for the fans while also being broadly appealing and entertaining for non-fans with its witty script and charismatic cast, “Honor Among Thieves” somehow managed to pull off the impossible, or as D&D players would say, it rolled a Natural 20 and scored a critical hit.

Set in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting of the games, the film follows the bard Darvis (played by Chris Pine) and his best friend, the barbarian Holga (Michelle Rodriguez), after they escape from prison. They were captured after their teammate, a rogue named Forge (Hugh Grant), tricked them on a previous mission and made off with their treasures and Darvis’s daughter, Kira.

Now on a new mission to rescue Kira and a recover an important piece of the treasure back, a new team including amateur sorcerer Simon (Justice Smith), tiefling druid Doric (Sophia Lillis) and paladin Xenk (Regé-Jean Page) make their way to the city of Neverwinter where Forge is now the Lord in control.

The band of misfits travel across a land where they encounter a number of strange beasts and traverse dangerous obstacles — even a dungeon with a dragon — in order to arm themselves mentally, physically and magically against Forge and his mysterious acquaintance.

There’s a lot about “Honor Among Thieves” that works wonderfully throughout, but most of those elements are on display right from the start. The fantasy world is fully realized and lived in with each unique setting and character standing out as their own thing, not just a copy of previous fantasy stories. There is an attention to detail in worldbuilding that isn’t always seen in less-praised genres like this, and it’s refreshing to see all that care from the start.

As what is essentially a buddy road-trip movie, the characters and their rapport hooks the audience from the start and doesn’t let go. Although Pine’s bard is the leader of the group, each member has an important role to play and fills any lacking gap — just like in a real D&D campaign. Whether it’s Rodriguez’s muscles, Smith’s magic or Lillis’s animal transformation, their strengths build each other up.

Despite fantasy comedies not always doing well, taking the comedic approach really worked best for this story because it felt like what it’s like playing the game, poking fun at the world itself and what would be real-world friends playing the game together. From the cheeky banter and ribbing each other to going over a list of rules for a puzzle only to find a clever workaround, the comedy works as both in-jokes for players and general audiences.

For a franchise like “Dungeons & Dragons,” beating the odds and coming out on top all these decades later is a needed win for fantasy movies as of late, but “Honor Among Thieves” is also just a fun time at the movies, which is just as rare and welcome today.