Roleplay which has been recorded, and is available on video streaming services, has proven to be incredibly popular. So much so that it appears to be edging towards its own entertainment medium. In this article extract we talk to the members of one such show, Dicestormers. This article originally appeared in Issue 16 of The Campaigner, published in 2016. The issue is still available as digital download or in limited print stock.
Interview by Matthew Lee (ML)
Video content is fast becoming one of the primary ways people learn about, and experience, games. It offers a format that can educate and entertain, and engages its audience in a way most other media can’t. Six tabletop roleplaying friends in Australia have come together and created a hugely popular video empire, the Dicestormers. Built around fun and friends, the show provides viewers with an insight into the world of roleplay games.
Five members of the Dicestormers, Nathan, Derek, Johnny, Jon and Ben, sat down and answered questions sent to them by The Campaigner. They discuss the trials and tribulations of video production, group dynamics, and the corrective service they offer for those having the wrong kind of fun.
ML: How did you end up as a group? What brought you all together?
Ben: Jon and I were the two remaining members of my original group, which played 3.5 Dungeons & Dragons. Everyone kind of drifted away until it was just Jon and me. At this time I was working with Murray on an opera project, called WotOpera. I thought that Murray was a pretty darn creative guy and would make a fantastic roleplayer. But it would be a bit embarrassing if I asked him to play and he said no, or he came and played and it turned out he was really bad at it. But I did eventually work up the guts to ask a workmate to come and join us in a game, which is kind of a risk I guess, but it turned out fantastically well.
Nathan: And then he awkwardly showed you his garage. Which was full of roleplay stuff.
Jon: Turns out he was really into RPGs.
Ben: Now there were three of us, which isn’t quite enough to play a tabletop roleplaying game. Jon said he knew of Nathan, and he and I had had a conversation previously where he said he owned all the books but had never had a chance to play.
Nathan: There was a D&D store at the end of my street. I used to go along and buy all the D&D miniatures, because they used to sell them as singles. So I would buy an orc, then a book. And I had a whole box full.
Ben: So I went to JB Hi-Fi, an electronics store in Australia, where Nathan was working in sales and invited him along to play. And that was an absolute hoot.
Nathan: That was one week after Murray started. Murray had been there one week, then I came to the next game but Murray wasn’t there. But that is where we started Under the Gods, which is one of our Pathfinder games that has lasted the length of the show.
Ben: So then we were three players and a GM.
Nathan: We were talking about getting another player on board, and I had this guy Johnny in mind that I thought would be really cool. Jon knew him because they used to act together. I was at a New Years party with him, and as all good nerds do, we sat down and started talking about nerdy stuff. I told him about the group and that he had to come to a game, and he sounded really excited. Later he followed up with me and we got him to a game. Was your first game Maelstrom, Johnny?
Johnny: No, it was well before Maelstrom. I think it was Star Wars.
Jon: It was our second game of Star Wars D6. It was filmed, but the camera didn’t work.
Nathan: Yeah, that was the second game we were going to film. And it didn’t work.
Johnny: So, I had never played a tabletop roleplaying game in my life, at that point.
Derek: I came into the fray a little bit of a different way. I was organising a panel at the very first PAXAus, and I was trying to assemble a group of people who had worked on digital products to enhance roleplay at the table. I had worked on an app called Dungeon Map, and through the grapevine I heard about Syrinscape. It was suggested I invite Ben on my panel. Which I did. We had a great time, and got to know each other. We decided to do another PAXAus panel the year after, so we had a Skype meeting to discuss it. The meeting was set up because I thought he was in Melbourne, and he thought I was in Melbourne, and it turns out we were about 2km away from each other.
Jon: Did you figure this out during the conversation or after?
Derek: It was after.
Ben: That was the first RPG Live+ then?
Derek: That’s right. We had a rehearsal at Murray’s house, which is the first time we played together.
Ben: So we did that, but you weren’t a member of the group. For a while we were having issues where, with four players and a GM, if you have two people away you loose functionality. We thought if we expanded a bit more we would always get a game on no matter what.
Nathan: And if everybody is here we can still play.
Ben: We played with you once, so we got you along for some more games. I made a phone call to you where I said “Hi Derek, would you like to become an official Dicestormer?”
Derek: I remember that so vividly, because I was at work. And I was like, “The Dicestormers have called me!”.
Johnny: I didn’t go to the PAX, nor did I go to the rehearsal, nor did I play in the first game where you were officially a Dicestormer. Then there were a couple of games after that that you couldn’t play but I could. So we didn’t meet for months after you had joined the Dicestormers.
Derek: There was some suspicion that we were the same person.
ML: What inspired the idea to record your game sessions?
Nathan: I think I get the blame for this one. I was watching Acquisitions Incorporated, and I thought that it was amazing, cool content and we need to get out ahead of this. I had kept raving about how cool the stories our group was creating were, and I thought if we just recorded them and put them up it would be heaps of fun. We all had different cameras at the start. They all had different lenses and frame rates.
Ben: And white balancing. We would flick from one shot to another and it would change from yellow to white to yellow again.
Nathan: So I decided lets put it up and if it doesn’t work, whatever. I remember the first time we got another person liking and commenting on our video. We were all just like “We have ten people who have subscribed to us guys. We’ve made it!” We were so ecstatic at the numbers, because we were just doing it as a record of what we were doing, to laugh at our own jokes.
Jon: What’s been really good about it is that, as much as it’s been fun too, it’s a really good technique for learning how to GM. So you can go over what you have done, if you didn’t think you did something right, you can watch it back and you might have actually done really well. Moments like that have been really crucial to us growing as players and GMs.
Johnny: The other thing that helps, with having a camera, is that you don’t have side conversations.
Johnny: It keeps us in the game and makes the game more fun.
Ben: It forces us to run with things, and enforces the ‘always say yes’ philosophies, which we have talked about in videos.
The remainder of this interview is available in Issue 16. The issue is still available as a digital download.
