We love a bit of wordplay around here. We get it in riddles, crossword clues, brain teasers, and the simple shameless joy of a well-executed pun.
I’m sure plenty of roleplaying game enthusiasts have encountered puns and wordplay in their travels. Sometimes it’s a funny reference or an offhand remark or even a character’s name that inspires groans or chuckles.
But some folks are unaware that there are puns lurking not just at the D&D table… but in the very mechanics of the game Dungeons & Dragons itself.
One of the interesting aspects of spellcasting in D&D is the inclusion of spell components. These are actual physical materials the character must carry on them and use in order to properly perform a given spell. When combined with verbal cues or physical actions, the material components help the spellcaster summon the magic to life.
Some material components are quite thematically appropriate. You need bat guano and sulfur — two ingredients in gunpowder — to produce Fireball. To cast Lightning Bolt requires either a glass rod or a piece of amber, plus a piece of fur to rub it with… just as you would in a science lab to make static electricity.
A pinch of sand for Sleep, a drop of molasses for Slow, a bit of copper wire for Message.
Looks like another tragic instance of out-sorcery…
But if you look at the material components used for some spells, you can’t help but notice a jokey recurring theme.
For instance, the material component for the spell Detect Thoughts is a copper piece, a coin of small denomination. The spell literally requires a penny for one’s thoughts.
To cast Confusion, it requires three nutshells. You know, like the ones you’d use in a shell game to make them lose track of the pea they’d just bet on.
All sorts of illusion spells require a bit of fleece or wool. Like the wool you pull over someone’s eyes.
To cast Feeblemind, you need a handful of clay, crystal, or glass spheres. Like the marbles you want your target to lose.
Levitate has several options, but one of them is a simple loop of leather. Like the bootstraps you’re expected to pull yourself up by. (Reinforcing the original meaning of that phrase by proving IT’S TOTAL FANTASY TO ACTUALLY DO SO.)
To cast Tongues, you have to smash a small clay tower or ziggurat. You need to symbolically smash the Tower of Babel.
Passwall requires sesame seeds. Open Sesame, anyone?
Rary’s Mnemonic Enhancer gives you the ability to retain additional spells. Its material component is an ivory plaque… because elephants never forget!
Perhaps the silliest is Gust of Wind. It was later changed to require a “tiny leather bellows,” but in different editions of the game, all it requires is a legume seed.
A bean. A bean to give you wind.
I told you earlier that many puns are shameless.
Still, it’s fun to find these little easter eggs tucked away in the D&D rulebook. It shows the playfulness and the level of attention to detail that helps make roleplaying games an immersive escape like none other.
Have you found any wordplay lurking unexpectedly in your games, fellow puzzler? Let me know in the comments section below, I’d love to hear from you!
There have been some huge announcements in the actual play / live play space on YouTube, Twitch, and elsewhere, and it has huge ramifications for the RPG industry in general.
(If you’re unfamiliar with roleplaying games, I’ll have a brief glossary at the bottom of the post explaining the bolded terms in today’s post. Let me know if I should add more, or create a separate RPG glossary page to link to!)
So not only are industry icons Jeremy Crawford and Chris Perkins working on material for Daggerheart, but it was announced that Keith Baker is creating a new setting for Daggerheart!
(This video by Todd Kenreck — another popular public face for D&D, and another recent loss for WOTC after they unceremoniously fired him — details all the exciting new developments for Daggerheart.)
Most RPG games have core rulebooks that explain the game mechanics (why and how and when to roll dice) and a system for building characters to play, but it takes an exciting, immersive setting to help build a fanbase of players that want to return to the game again and again.
Keith Baker created Eberron, one of the most popular D&D settings ever, so his contributions are a big plus for the burgeoning Daggerheart gameplay space.
Darrington Press are making smart moves to position Daggerheart as a genuine challenger for the tabletop RPG market’s top spot, one that D&D has been losing its stranglehold on after years of unpopular business and creative choices.
But that’s not the only industry-shaking news being made by the Critical Role / Darrington Press camp.
They recently announced during one of their live shows that their upcoming fourth campaign — a years-long storytelling endeavor hotly anticipated by their fans — will have a new game master. For a decade now, Matt Mercer has told three epic-length stories with the Critical Role cast, all set in his homebrew setting of Exandria.
But for Campaign 4, there will be a new setting, new characters, and a new GM.
Brennan Lee Mulligan will be shepherding the Critical Role crew through Campaign 4, and Matt Mercer will finally get to step out from behind the GM screen and play a long-term PC on his own show.
Now, Brennan Lee Mulligan is a popular name in the liveplay TTRPG world. He GMs for Dropout’s Dimension 20 series, as well as running the wonderful audio-only RPG podcast Worlds Beyond Number, which will be wrapping up their flagship campaign “The Wizard, The Witch, and The Wild One” very soon.
Despite signing on for a potentially years-long storytelling adventure with the Critical Role team, Brennan claims that his GM work at Dropout will NOT be slowing down.
I envy him both his energy and his creative output.
As for all of this potentially industry-altering RPG news…
I have some thoughts.
1. Yay Keith Baker!
Keith Baker is absolutely one of my favorite creators in the world of games and RPGs. Eberron is a wonderful game setting that he continues to add to and enhance with blog posts and worldbuilding through his Patreon. (He also created one of my all-time favorite card games, Gloom.) He’s brilliant and I cannot wait to see what he creates for Darrington Press.
(This is not meant to downplay the good work being done at Darrington Press already OR to ignore the forthcoming creative contributions from Chris Perkins and Jeremy Crawford. I’m excited to see what they have in store as well.)
2. Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro seriously needs to watch out.
While they have been making money-first decisions for years and burning decades of good will with the players (the OGL scandal, the Spelljammer cultural insensitivity kerfuffle, sending actual Pinkertons after someone for leaking Magic: The Gathering details), Darrington Press has been quietly building and expanding their efforts.
They’re actively seeking out new game ideas and systems to diversify what they can offer their audience. They’ve got in-house D&D alums with DECADES of experience, and they’re collaborating with other prominent names in the RPG world (as well as the crew from the popular D&D podcast Tales of the Stinky Dragon).
While D&D keeps stumbling, Darrington Press is rolling. The next year or so is going to tell us a lot about the future of the industry.
3. I’m stoked for Matt Mercer.
He’s been running Critical Role’s game for over ten years, creating a world not just for his friends and fellow players, but for an audience of tens or hundreds of thousands of viewers. That’s daunting, even when you do love GMing (as Matt clearly does).
But the chance to set that aside, recharge your creative batteries, and play instead of run? I hope Matt gets to really spread his storytelling wings in a different way and enjoy Campaign Four.
4. A new setting, a new Game Master, and a reshuffling of players could breathe new life into Critical Role.
Their third campaign was divisive, and I think a clean break could not only offer some excellent roleplay and storytelling opportunities, but it could help the audience MISS the setting of Exandria for a while. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and this might just be what both the audience and the cast and crew of Critical Role need to continue telling hilarious, engrossing, emotionally-affecting stories around the table with some dice. Here’s hoping.
5. Brennan Lee Mulligan is an absolute madman.
I mean, I get it; at one point, I was running four weekly games AND playing in a fifth. I once roleplayed eight days in a row, and my week feels weird if there’s only one game that happens. Gods forbid there’s a week with NO games. It’s a hobby, a release, and it brings me joy.
But still, he’s putting a lot on his plate. Someone on social media referred to him as “the world’s most employed man,” and it’s hard to disagree.
6. With all the talk about D&D and Daggerheart, it’s a little bit of a bummer that I’m not hearing more about Matt Coville’s Draw Steel and Kobold Press’s Tales of the Valiant.
When the OGL Scandal exploded a few years ago, they were among the three games constantly touted as a rising competitor to D&D (Daggerheart was the third). But it feels like Daggerheart is taking up a lot of the oxygen in the room these days, so I hope that Draw Steel and Tales of the Valiant can also carve themselves out a nice chunk of the market space D&D is ceding.
The live play TTRPG space is vast, and there are so many great live plays to choose from, big and small. (Maybe I should do a future post about my favorites!)
It’s certainly going to be interesting to see if Daggerheart live plays begin to gain traction on YouTube and Twitch, and D&D live plays fall out of favor over the next few years. (With the company’s new franchise business model focusing on monetizing the brand over relying on D&D gameplay and sourcebooks as a lure, they might’ve already unconsciously ceded some territory online to their competitors.)
And speaking of competition, a lot of people view Dimension 20 and Critical Role as competitors. Sure, any companies that operate in the same space are in competition somewhat, but I prefer to think of them as siblings scrambling for slices of the same fresh-baked pie. No one is cutting throats over pie, after all.
In the end, I just want people to be excited to sit around a table (either a real one or a virtual one) and play roleplaying games with their pals. If any of these big changes, collaborations, or endeavors mean we get more players trying RPGs, then I’m calling it a win.
How do you feel about all of this RPG live play hullabaloo, fellow dice-rollers? Let me know in the comments section below! I’d love to hear from you.
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Brief RPG Glossary!
Campaign: Shorthand for all of the creative work that goes into running a D&D game for any length of time. The campaign is the mix of your choice of game, the players, the setting, and the story you all tell together. Campaigns can be as short as a few sessions or run as long as decades, all depending on player interest, scheduling, and enthusiasm for the game. For comparison, Dimension 20’s live play campaigns range from 4 sessions to multiple chapters with 10-20 sessions per season.
Session: A single instance of gameplay. If you play a game four times in the same story in the same world as a continuing narrative, you’ve had four sessions of gameplay.
Players & Player Characters / PCs: Those who play the game. They create a character that explores the world, interacting with the other players as well as NPCs performed by the DM
Non-Player Characters / NPCs: Characters played by the DM/GM. Everyone the players interact with in the game, friend or foe.
DM / GM / Dungeonmaster / Game Master / Storyteller: the person who runs the game. They describe what the players see and experience, they play all of the characters the players interact with, and they explain the consequences and results of all the dice rolls the players make. They create villains to fight, conflicts to be solved, and provide every voice, sound, and piece of description the players encounter. A good description for the GM is “everyone and everything else.” (Thanks to the audio-only D&D podcast Worlds Beyond Number for that perfectly concise phrasing.)
Setting: The world where the story and the game’s events take place, described to the players by the GM. Some settings are created especially for a given RPG (and can have dozens of sourcebooks dedicated to them), but many GMs create their own settings (which are known as “homebrew” settings). An intriguing and exciting setting can be crucial to helping an RPG attract and retain an audience of players.
Actual play / live play: Dungeons & Dragons or other RPGs played live on YouTube, Twitch, or other online video services. Some are run/played by professional actors or comedians (Critical Role, Dimension 20), others by enthusiastic players outside the entertainment sphere. Production values can vary, and some are audio only. But there’s a whole world of them out there to explore.
At the start of the pandemic in 2020, game companies around the world rallied around their customers, offering discounts, producing print-and-play versions of their games, and creating new online variants of their games to allow for Zoom play or remote play.
It was a remarkable effort at a very trying time, one that many board game enthusiasts like myself remember warmly.
So, five years later, as this baffling tariff war threatens the industry as a whole, we’re seeing the board game industry again roll with the punches and work with the audience to survive.
Some are having “tariff sales” at deep discounts to help clear inventory, gauge audience interest in certain games, or create a cash bumper to help them weather the uncertain tariff storms.
Others are making PDFs more available to customers, helping mitigate both prices for the audience and reduce production costs for the company.
Today, I want to highlight a few companies that have gone beyond that, offering free products for customers to enjoy.
Yes, they would obviously rather that you visit their shops and pay for PDFs or physical copies, but the fact that they have free board game libraries AT ALL is worthy of attention and admiration.
Every year, dozens of roleplaying game companies create Free RPG Day handouts for game stores to offer fans. Sometimes they’re quickstart versions of the games to introduce new players. Sometimes they’re exclusive adventures or modules to play either in-store or at home. Othertimes, they’re entirely new games, free of charge.
For five years now, 9th Level Games has created their own Free RPG Day offering, the Level 1 Anthology. It’s a collection of new games by up-and-coming and established RPG creators, all centered around a theme. Last year’s edition was all about programming. This year’s is about the end of the wild west.
You can visit your friendly local game shop on June 21st this year to pick your physical copy of the game.
9th Level Games is one of my favorite RPG companies — making classics like Kobolds Ate My Baby!, Mazes, Return to Dark Tower, and The Very Good Dogs of Chernobyl — and I’m proud to have a game featured in last year’s Level 1 collection as well as a game in this year’s upcoming collection. Please check out both the freebies and the full lineup of games on their website.
A company called Cheapass Games launched with a very simple idea: they only give you what you need to play the game. No reselling you tokens and dice and chips and fake money that you can already borrow from other games. Just what you need to play their games. It was affordable and brilliant.
They’ve created some of my all-time favorite board games, including:
–The Big Idea (can you put two cards together to make a silly product and market it to your investors/other players?) –Kill Doctor Lucky (can you eliminate the luckiest man alive?) –Unexploded Cow (can you combine unexploded World War II ordnance and mad cows to turn a profit?) –U.S. Patent Number 1 (can your time machine beat other time machines to the day the patent office opened and claim the very first patent?)
I know that the prices of D&D books can seem daunting these days, but what you might not know is that there are publicly available rulesets for you to enjoy right now! You can use their own quickstart rules, as well as the advice on DnDBeyond.com to delve into building your own game world free of charge!
If Dungeons & Dragons is still a little intimidating, no worries! Have you ever tried a one-page RPG?
Rowan, Rook, and Decard offers a brilliant library of RPG games at all price levels, and many of their one-page RPGs designed by Grant Howitt are Pay What You Want. It’s a delightfully affordable way to try out the hobby without breaking the bank! (There’s also a free RPG section!)
Want to play bears planning the perfect crime? Try Honey Heist.
You’d be amazed at what’s out there for gamers on a budget if you just know where to look. Please support any and all of these companies where you can. They’re helping keep the hobby alive, affordable, and exciting.
I had a different post scheduled for today, but unfortunately, Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast cannot stop making bad choices, so I must turn the PuzzCulture spotlight toward Dungeons & Dragons once again for sad reasons, rather than pleasant ones.
For the uninitiated, Wizards of the Coast (WOTC) is the company that owns the Dungeons & Dragons brand. They, in turn, are owned by the toy company Hasbro, and these conjoined companies have done a staggeringly impressive job burning decades of good will and consumer confidence over the last two years.
There have been numerous scandals involving:
the use of AI-generated content (and regular promises NOT to use AI, only for it to “accidentally” show up again)
accusations of racial insensitivity (over the reintroduction of beings known as the Hadozee for their Spelljammer expansion)
the disastrous OGL scandal, where the company had to backpedal after trying to bleed the entire third-party market for their own gain. (And accidentally creating several new competitors by driving former allies away.)
But none of those are the reason for today’s outrage.
Apparently the plan is to fold Sigil (or some of its assets) into the current virtual platform owned by the company, D&D Beyond.
Sigil, as it stands, is a far cry from the 3D interactive virtual gaming platform promised in the summer of 2024 by WOTC. Instead, a buggy, unfinished version of Sigil was recently launched as an early playtest for Master Tier subscribers to D&D Beyond, many of whom had problems even accessing the limited version of the Sigil platform.
It’s hard to know the future of Sigil or the remaining development team at this point. This could be part of a fire-and-rehire-as-contractors maneuver, something that plagues modern development companies these days.
This could be an attempt to refocus their efforts on the video game market after the success of Baldur’s Gate 3, which uses Dungeons & Dragons settings, characters, monsters, and other content.
Honestly, it’s hard to believe that Hasbro and WOTC, which are not video game companies, can hope to replicate either BG3‘s success or realize their grandiose plans to release multiple games a year, something that’s a challenge for even top video game companies.
Especially since Larian Studios, the company responsible for BG3, already announced they won’t be producing any additional content for BG3.
I don’t believe Hasbro and WOTC have given up on their plans for digital D&D content. We know for a fact that they aspire to create AI Dungeon Masters to run games for players so they can further monetize their remaining audience. (And Dungeon Masters are in relatively short supply compared to players. This has always been the case; good DMs are hard to find and harder to “manufacture.”)
I wish nothing but the best for the former members of the Sigil development team, and hope they all land on their feet.
Although the future of the D&D brand remains in the hands of WOTC and Hasbro, thankfully for fans of Dungeons & Dragons, the future of playing and enjoying the game remains wholly in our hands. We have the books, we have a thriving third-party marketplace to provide exciting new content, and we have our imagination, which is the greatest resource a table will ever need.
As long as we keep gathering around a table — virtual or physical — and telling our stories, roleplaying games as a whole are in good hands.
A lot of cool things are happening in the actual play RPG scene these days.
For the uninitiated, actual play games (also known as liveplay games) are when a party of roleplaying game enthusiasts share their gameplay for viewers.
Some of them simply record a regular session around the table, while others create sets, graphics, and expend a fair bit of coin on their production values to enhance the viewing experience.
There are LOADS of podcasts and video series in the actual play RPG arena, and over the last few weeks, several of the heavy hitters in the genre have announced big projects.
So let’s do a roundup of actual play RPG news!
Dimension 20 + WWE
The comedy streaming service Dropout is the home of Dimension 20, one of the premiere liveplay games running today. Fresh off of selling 20,000 tickets for a show at Madison Square Garden, Dimension 20 recently announced a new campaign featuring their flagship Dungeonmaster Brennan Lee Mulligan. And his four players at the table are all WWE superstars!
Xavier Woods, Kofi Kingston, Bayley, and Chelsea Green will be tackling a gladiatorial arena in the time of ancient Greece in Titan Takedown, starting April 2nd!
It’s interesting that they’re using D&D rules instead of any pro wrestling RPG systems, but otherwise, I’m excited to see this campaign play out!
Critical Role 10th Anniversary
The top dogs in the RPG actual play scene are undoubtedly Critical Role, a self-proclaimed group of “nerdy-ass voice actors who sit around and play Dungeons & Dragons.”
They have a hit show on Amazon Prime, The Legend of Vox Machina, which is based on their original RPG campaign.
They just wrapped up their third multiyear campaign with a huge crossover event featuring the characters from all three campaigns. (The final episode lasted a whopping EIGHT AND A HALF HOURS.
They’re currently running a short follow-up game, Divergence.
Not only that, but there are big expectations for the announcement for their fourth campaign, which could feature their in-house RPG system, Daggerheart.
Ten years after their debut on Geek & Sundry, Critical Role is still shaping the actual play landscape.
Geek & Sundry
And speaking of Geek & Sundry, they recently announced a tabletop charity event featuring several top names in the actual play community.
Alongside Geek & Sundry’s own Felicia Day, Matt Mercer of Critical Role is returning to Geek & Sundry for this special one-shot event, and he is joined by Daredevil star (and RPG influencer) Deborah Ann Woll, Superman portrayer Brandon Routh, and comedian Reggie Watts. The game is being DMed by Bill Rehor of Beadle & Grimm’s, which not only produces topnotch specialty RPG products, but also created the D&D/improv comedy show Faster, Purple Worm! Kill! Kill!
And it’s also advertising a unique opportunity for viewers to experience the game “firsthand” by using VR headsets to virtually sit at the table alongside the players!
I have no idea if the technology will back up the interactive promises made, but at the very least, this should be a very entertaining round of roleplaying for a very worthy cause!
Baldur’s Gate Liveplays at Conventions
One of the biggest success stories in RPG-inspired video games over the last few years was the 2023 release of Baldur’s Gate 3. Set in the Forgotten Realms D&D setting, the video game brought many new eyes to the world of Dungeons & Dragons, giving them a sampling of the worldbuilding and storytelling potential of traditional tabletop gaming.
But an unexpected and delightful spinoff of the game’s success has been the series of actual play games inspired by Baldur’s Gate 3 at major fan conventions.
The voice actors for some of the game’s most popular characters have been playing D&D for live audiences, and seeing the voice actors learn to love the game that inspired their video game roles has been a wonderful treat.
Astarion, Karlach, Lae’zel, and Wyll have all come to life for gamers and D&D fans alike as the actors themselves roll dice and take control of the story.
Did any of these projects grab your attention, fellow puzzler? What’s your favorite actual play group or campaign? Let us know in the comments below!
PuzzCulture 