April 28, 2023 • 52 mins
Johnny Jensen wrote the interconnected adventure for THE DEAD WARS, which holds the Guinness World Record for the most players in a single game of D&D, 1227! Pro Dungeon Master Dax Levine ran the adventure, but it required an entire team of dedicated volunteers to pull off the adventure of a lifetime!
Support Dax at https://www.patreon.com/dungeonsanddax
Hire a Pro Dungeon Master at https://dungeonmasterdirect.com/
Purchase your digital copy of THE DEAD WARS at https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/434770/The-Dead-Wars
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:35):
And welcome to Dungeons and Dax,the awesome podcast, all about
collaborative storytelling, workingtogether to tell better stories.
And I am so excited for this veryspecial episode cuz I am here with
Johnny Jensen, the author and writerof The Dead Wars, which was a Guinness
(00:55):
World Record setting D&D game thathad, how many people did we have?
Last weekend, 1,227.
1,227 people all playing D&D at one time.
One massive interconnected story whereone person's table can affect people on
the other side of the venue, and Johnnywas the Mastermind who orchestrated it all
(01:19):
long before I even came into the picture.
I was just the guy on stage.
Johnny, thank you so much for,for coming in and talking.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
It's my pleasure.
Nothing I like more thantalking about myself.
This is really exciting for me.
You're, you're not an introvert at all.
You love, you love No, yeah.
You know, bragging about how cool you are.
Well, let's start withyour, your backstory.
(01:41):
Like what brought you to this point?
Yeah.
Who were you before youbecame the Johnny Jensen?
Yes, my humble origin story.
It's not very humble, honestly.
I'm not a very humble person.
Just self-deprecating.
I So I had, I've been in D&Dfor maybe five or six years now.
I got into it because of critical role.
(02:02):
I wanted a way to bring my familytogether and I noticed that we
all had, we were very differentages, very different interests.
And the one thing that we allhad in common was storytelling.
We all loved talking about movies andbooks and all this kind of stuff, but
that didn't really happen very often.
And so I thought, let's find away for us all to collaboratively
do something together.
And that was D&D.
So years and years pass.
(02:23):
During 2020, I took a I took this,this online kind of writer's workshop
that teaches you how to writeyour own one shot and publish it.
And that was a big moment for mecause it made me realize like, oh,
I'm, I can be pretty good at this.
Like, this is a lot of fun.
And it taught me kind of the skills thatI really needed for this event because
back in December, my wife saw a TikTok.
(02:46):
And it was Andy, right?
Andy Ashby and his family had openedup a game store at a local mall.
And I thought, wow, that's so crazy.
Like, I'm glad that we'regetting nerd stuff, you know,
really popping up in our town.
Cool.
Now?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And that malls are for nerds.
But it was amazing.
I love, I was really,really happy about that.
(03:07):
And we went in, right?
We went in the week of Christmas.
And Andy was doing thepitch to everybody, right?
Anybody who would listen, anybody whojust walked up to the counter and talks to
him, he would say, Hey, keep your weekendsopen in April because we are going to be
running a game of D&D with 500 people.
(03:27):
And I gave him a look likethis just kind of a Oh, okay.
All right.
500 people dream big buddy.
Yeah.
You just opened the store a month ago.
Yeah.
Yeah.
500 people.
Well, what was, what was interesting isthat I like, I wanted to know, right?
Everyone wants to know.
(03:47):
When they hear about this, they're like,okay, well how does that even work?
And he said, right, we're notgonna have one dungeon master.
And 499 other folks, we're gonnahave individual tables and everyone
will be playing at their own table.
And those tables will be all over anin universe kind of shared battlefield.
And I thought, oh, okay,that's interesting.
And then he said, yeah, and we're gonnahave, you know, and all these tables
(04:07):
will be able to interact in special ways.
And I thought, okay, that'snot as easy, but Sure, sure.
And I went home and I thought, wow.
Or I, I even took one of their cards.
I took one of their cards cause Ithought, I absolutely wanna, you
know, like, like get in touch.
I absolutely want to be a part of this.
If I can be a dm, that'd be awesome.
(04:28):
If they can pull that off,wouldn't that be something, right?
Sure.
Yeah.
No, in my mind I was like, this isgonna be a train wreck and I would like
to be there for it one way or another.
Right.
Even if it's just making surethat my table has a lot of fun.
Cool.
But it'll be a train wreck.
I was like, there's no way.
It's not gonna be, it just won't function.
So I think like a night or a few dayslater or whatever, I was on a call
(04:50):
with my siblings and I brought it up.
I was like, guys, you'renot gonna believe this.
This is just the silliestthing you've ever heard.
And we all started like laughing aboutit and we're like, that's not possible.
Right?
Just mechanically in the game andnarratively it just doesn't work.
And I said, right, the onlyway you make that work is if
you did something like this.
And they were like, well,I mean you can't do that.
(05:10):
You would need something else like this.
Right?
And we'd be like, okay, well, wellto make that happen, you'd, and we
accidentally kind of like joked our way.
Into the solution and we jokedaround into the solution.
I pulled out like a whiteboardand I started writing crap down.
And I said like, okay, like, so if we didsomething like this and we did something
like this, then yeah, it would work.
And Royal like justkinda like, oh man, okay.
(05:31):
It's possible.
And my last brother, who wasn'ta part of the call, who is a game
designer he is only at 17, but hemakes fantastic board games and card
games, really, really good stuff.
He joins the call.
And he says what areyou guys talking about?
And I, I pitched it to him and I'mlike, look, if they had the right
person, they can make this happen.
And he was like, right.
But the only person who knows all ofthose skills, Johnny, is you, like,
(05:55):
you only know those skills because ofthe workshops that you've taken and
the kinds of the, the degree that yougot and all of these different things.
Like it would only work if theright person was in charge and
the right person would be you.
And I said, Like, well then I, I said,look, Caleb, it's just theoretical.
It's all theoretical.
Don't, don't get yourpants in the water, right?
We're just playing kind of the,the, the, the hypothetical realm.
(06:18):
And he said, okay, wellthen I think you're wrong.
And that I didn't like that.
And I was like, okay, wellthe little snot like, what?
Why do you think I'm wrong?
And he is like, I just don't think,no matter how much organization
you have, that it's possible.
And I was like, well, no,let's just theoretically.
And he's like, then prove it.
He said, prove it.
If you really think that this is possible,you go out and prove it yourself,
because I don't think that it's possible.
And it was such a, it wassuch a jerk thing to do.
(06:41):
We were just kind of playingaround mentally, and I was
like, what a challenge.
Like he threw the gauntlet downand Your Honor was at stake
at that point A little bit.
Yeah.
And I was like, fine.
You know what y'all, it's like, sure.
Cool.
Yeah, I will do it.
Then show you.
I'm gonna write a a proposal and I'm gonnashow it to them, and if they want me to
be a part of the project, I'll be a partof the project and I'll make it happen.
(07:02):
And so I did, I spent, like, I spent myChristmas break like writing up this,
this proposal and it was in a binderand I had like a QR code to my resume
and to my previously published one shot.
And I had like thewhole thing planned out.
And I essentially, while I was doingthis, I said you can't do this soon.
It has to be like at the nextconvention season in fall.
(07:22):
We would need tons of planning.
We would need We, we wouldn't be ableto even get above 200 people cause
that's unwieldy right after 200 people.
It's impossible.
And I brought it in to Andy and Andycalled me back after reading it and
he said like, look, this is amazing.
You absolutely need to be a part of this.
You've arrived at so many ofthe conclusions that I did.
You're clearly the man for thejob, but one, it's happening
(07:45):
in April no matter what period.
Like if that's done, there'snothing we can do about it.
And two, we absolutely can do.
More than 200 people, wecan do more than 500 people.
If he's like, I thinkwe can do a thousand.
And I was just like, okay.
Andy like, oh boy.
And he said, look, don'teven worry about that.
He said, just write some, like, we'llwork on this, but like you, I'll,
(08:08):
I'll worry about the attendance.
You worry about making the story work.
And that's how we got started.
That's how it all just.
Week after week, we started like talkingabout what I'd written and what we were
working on and what, what we, what weneeded to have solved by a certain day.
That was January-ish, right?
That was January was right, right.
(08:29):
Early, early January.
And it was, there wasa lot of big problems.
There's a lot of big problems thatwe couldn't solve very easily, and
we had to come up with some creativesolutions to figure those problems out.
And there's a lot that we had to cut.
There was tons and tons ofstuff that we had to cut.
We had this big vision forhow this would play out.
And we realized that with the manpowerthat we had while I am a performer, right?
(08:50):
While I could be one of these NPCs, I waslike, no, I'm, I'm, I am trained to be
a businessman and to, to be a manager.
And more importantly, no one else can dothe job of running the story mechanically.
And so I was like, I, we need,like we, we had all these ideas for
NPCs and for people playing NPCs.
And we had to cut it all.
We had to cut all of it because we justneeded to focus on what we could do.
(09:14):
Enter Dax.
Enter Dax.
Yeah, man.
Yeah.
Well, let's, let's gothrough this chronologically.
This is fun, this is Sure, sure, sure.
I present together, like how we got tothis point because I, I live very close to
the mall and I had visited it a few times.
I think it was on my,my birthday, my wife.
And I went in and she got some stufffrom me and I was supposed to wait with
(09:35):
the kids on another part of the mall.
And I knew this thing wascoming in in December.
And I ran into Everett Andy's brother atLife, the Universe and everything, which
is a big convention in Provo, Utah forscience fiction fantasy every February.
And Everett was there sellingleather and he was also trying to
get people into this Guness event.
(09:57):
And I have that kind of same feeling.
I'm like, It's been two months andthey're, they're still gonna do this.
They're doing this two months from now.
Like, so I asked them like, who's thehead dm who's going to run this story?
Because not only am I a professionaldungeon master, this is my full-time
job, but I've been doing more stufflive and in person at Life Universe and
(10:18):
everything at Fanex, at Dragon Steel Con.
And I've been looking for ways toget more involved with the community.
This just seemed like the perfectopportunity and the perfect timing.
So I had to play it real cool, right?
I didn't wanna just be like, let me comein and take your project and be like,
Hey, you got someone working on this?
He's like, yeah, we gotsomeone working on this.
I assume he meant you.
(10:39):
And I'm like, okay, cool.
Here's my card.
A few weeks later, I went inwhen Andy was in the store.
And I bring my kids, youknow, cause it's casual.
They, I didn't want to put anypressure on it, but I'm like, oh yeah,
I'm a professional dungeon master.
Here's a flyer with a QR code on it, youknow, advertising my services, my website.
And we started talking about itand eventually I came in with
(11:00):
a resume and a cover letter.
A dang good one too.
And I'm like, hey.
This sounds like a very huge project.
4,000 people.
I don't know if one headDM is going to be enough.
And I outlined my idea for delegatingthings out to having a head dungeon
master or two head dungeon masterscuz you know, if they had a guy,
(11:21):
I didn't want to replace that guy.
But so that we'd have other captains whoreported to us to make it more manageable
and to play as NPCs and to bring.
Back to life.
And so I played it real cool.
I gave him that and I walked outand then a week later he's, he's
like, okay, I gotta talk to Johnny.
He called you.
Well, lemme tell you what that call,lemme tell you about that call.
(11:42):
I was in this room.
Okay.
Yeah.
So cuz because I at that point inthe project, and I actually know
around when, when this was becausemy brother had gone to that event.
And around that time we were.
Things were going well,things were on track.
Things were on schedule.
But it was starting to look likethings were about to be off schedule.
We were like, okay, we're on schedulenow, but there are things that are
(12:04):
going, like the hard, really, reallybig, hard work is about to happen and
we need to start bringing people inso that they can real, so that we can
kind of offload work onto other people.
And so I was exhausted.
I was exhausted at this point.
I was working just.
Every night if I could in this projecttrying to figure out exactly what I
wanted exactly what was going to belike where essentially this is going
(12:27):
to be, and excuse me, eventually, thiswas like four separate one shots and
they all needed to be original and theyall needed to be br with branching pads
and they all needed to feel consistent.
So I was this massive, intricate spider'sweb that all connects in the middle.
Yes, yes it was.
And I'm, I'm not a spider man.
I'm, I'm more of a Batman guy myself.
(12:48):
And so you can't throw money at it?
No.
No, you cannot.
And so when Andy called, Andy called, andhe was very, very kind of like, cautious
and he was like, Hey, look we're start,like, I know you're feeling the pressure
right now, and I know that we're startingto hit the, the, you know, the rubber's
about to hit the road at this point.
And he said, look, I have a guy who camein who wants to be like kind of a head
(13:12):
dungeon master and be the, the, not,like not, he wouldn't do any of the, the
like reporting, like the mechanical side.
He really wants to be in chargeof the story side of things.
And I was like, oh, thank goodness.
Yes, yes.
Oh, that makes me happy.
Cause I was nervous that weekend.
I was like, no.
Andy was like, and he was like,I don't wanna step on your toes.
(13:34):
I don't wanna like, oh no, bring him in.
Like, let's meet him tomorrow.
Like, can he come in on Monday?
Like, let's have him come in on Monday.
I need him meet him now.
He needs to be briefed and he needs to beready to, we start working on stuff and
Andy was like, oh, oh yeah, okay, okay.
Yeah.
Let's, let's, let's get 'em in here.
And I was, I was the like, fullhonesty, I really did want to do.
(13:55):
The job that you ended up having.
But I also recognized that I wouldn'thave the energy or the focus or
anything else to, to make it happen.
And so when you did volunteer, Iwas overjoyed because I was like,
finally, there are other peopleand you were kind of the first one.
Who there were other people whoshowed up and were like, I am just
crazy enough to go along with this.
(14:15):
And it made me really happyto know I wasn't alone.
Cool.
So why'd you, why'd you pick meover some of the other candidates?
Oh, I mean, absolutely likeyour resume a hundred percent.
Your resume you were exceptionallylike skilled and, and talented and
you've had, had experience with,with large conventions in the past.
(14:39):
Not to mention you actuallywere like a business owner.
Like really?
That meant a lot to us because otherpeople were like I'm a dungeon master.
I could be a head dungeon master.
And I'm like, you okay?
That's, that's cute, right?
Like every, everybody lovesbeing the Dungeon Master, right?
Like that's, yeah, that's,that's the easy part.
But, but nobody, nobody has set upa website, set up a company, made
connections worked and traveledat Cons, streamed like no one
(15:02):
has done all of those things.
And so I was like, okay.
I didn't even need to doa background check of you.
I didn't need to do do a back.
I didn't need to think,okay, who is this D guy?
You were all over the place.
I couldn't throw a rock and not find you.
Right?
Yes.
Yeah.
Working.
Yeah.
Yeah.
My empire's growing.
Well, it it worked.
(15:22):
It worked.
So when you came in, when you camein and it was like almost right
away, we were like, let's happen.
Like let's have it happen this weekimmediately as fast as possible.
What were, what were yourinitial impressions about
what we already had going on?
So I wanted to know whatthe story was about.
I knew it was going to be a Helms deepstyle battle, and I was wondering how
(15:45):
it was all going to be connected, whypeople were going to care about it.
Because I, I love the roleplaying aspects of the game.
And some people have this distinctionof, oh, we're role-playing now,
but now we're doing combat.
We're shifting gears.
For me, we're always role-playingevery, every move in combat,
every quip, every attack has likemotivation and intention behind it.
(16:10):
And so I, once I heard the story fromyou and we were already taking notes
in that very first session, I remember,I think that, I think I stole, Your
notebook your scratch pad for that.
That's right.
But we started mapping it out.
We started talking about the ending andkind of going back and we figured out
four branching paths for the ending.
And I, I was excited it was real.
(16:32):
And then it hit me.
We have like two months topull this off and that's it.
Yes.
But in once, once I had clearance that,Hey, you are it, I'm like, okay, let's,
let's do the business side of things.
Johnny's working on the, Johnny's stillworking on, you know, the story, right?
I didn't want to pressure you.
(16:53):
I wanted to give, you know, my adviceas needed, but I figured the best thing
that I could do with my time then isto make sure we get a thousand people.
And so that's when I startedreaching out to my network.
And so, yeah, and all of my fans,all of my dozens of fans, dozens.
There's dozens, dozens of fans.
And, and then I also started reaching outto companies that I had worked with before
(17:17):
that have sponsored streams that I've beenon or have been in as part of these live
events and started making connections,asking people to, Hey, come be a sponsor.
These are all the benefitsyou get for being a sponsor.
We'll get you tables in the v i psection, we'll get you a vendor table.
And that was a lot of fun.
And you actually got to comewith me on one of those calls.
We got to, I, I won't say who it was, butthey were really cool and they were there.
(17:41):
It was cool.
I was, I was glad that I went becausethey, in particular asked a lot about
the story and they were like, I haveno, they're like, I don't know, this
is, and I was like, no, no, don't worry.
It's cool.
Without revealing who they were, theywere really big into stories in general.
Yes, very into stories.
Yeah.
Anyway, anyway, it was, it was,but I'm, I'm glad that I went.
(18:02):
It was very exciting.
I did study finance and businessmanagement, and I realized, That,
you know, I've just been workingentry-level jobs for the past year
or so, and you like getting to gowith you on that was fantastic.
Cause it made me be like, oh cool.
Like, I know what's going on here.
I kind of understand the,the negotiation process.
It was a lot of fun andI didn't realize before.
(18:22):
Oh right.
Like my business and finance trainingcan translate to my creative hobbies.
It was very exciting.
It was around the time though that youstarted reaching out to your network.
That we actually saw the, the.
Outpouring of support and the,the sign, the registration.
The registration really took off?
Yes, yes.
Once that, around thattime, like early March.
(18:43):
That was early, early March.
Mm-hmm.
Sounds about and yeah.
After what?
After that, for me, it was just, itwas just like, Just, just a grind.
It was just the grind.
Right?
I was, I was every night staying up pastmidnight writing I have a nine to five.
And so it was just all night,every night afterwards, just making
sure everything looks right andrunning it past other people.
And it was, it was really nice becausewhen, when you showed up the stuff
(19:06):
that you brought back in, right?
All the, like I mentioned, there wasstuff that we cut and the stuff that
you brought back in was integral,I think, to the overall story.
The finales were, It, it reallybrought everything together.
There was a lot of stuff that waskind of still in flux because we
hadn't nailed down the finales becausewe hadn't had a dungeon master.
And so when you showed up and yousat down with my notepad and you, you
(19:28):
wrote out those four different endingseverything really started to gel.
And it, it, that was when it startedfeeling real after we went out on
that, that That call it was, I waslike, oh my gosh, this is happening.
This is really happening.
Yep.
It's happening whetherwe, we wanted to or not.
I think at that point wehad 700 people signed up.
(19:50):
Yeah.
And we were like, they're gonnashow up whether we're ready or not.
So Yeah.
Let's make it happen.
AF after that.
For me it was all a lot of work.
So I like between like thosefun moments and then the event,
all it is was me writing.
It wasn't very exciting.
I don't have any other fun stories.
So was there anything else for youthat happened before the event?
So this is my full-time job.
(20:12):
Yes, I was thinking about thisstory, but I had so many other
stories that I had to tell.
In the meantime, I have a story everyMonday night, every Tuesday night, every
other Wednesday one, every other Thursday,I've got a couple weekend things.
I was planning to do a livestream at every evermore park
with a few of my friends.
So there's a story for that.
There's the book that I'm procrastinating,querying that aren't we all being around?
(20:35):
Yeah.
So all these stories are constantly inmy head cuz I do this professionally.
So I had to really compartmentalizemy time and I wasn't able to stress
too much about Dead Wars becauseI had our evermore stream coming
up like two weeks before that.
And so that was the big focus and Ihad to get props for that and work
with some of the other sponsors.
(20:57):
And, but in the back of my head,I knew that everything was going
to be preparing me for Dead Wars.
So I, I.
Compartmentalized my time and my energy.
I focused on each story, made sureevery game that I ran for the last
two months was still my best effort.
Still putting all the energy into it.
That's, that's why people come backbecause they get emotionally invested.
(21:20):
And then after that evermorestream was done, it was like,
okay, what's the next big thing?
What's the next big thing?
Oh yeah, dead Wars.
Let me look at my notes.
Where's that piece ofpaper I got from Johnny?
Oh, this is happening inlike two and a half weeks.
I'm gonna, I'm gonna reachout to Johnny and see if that
first version is ready to go.
And, and it wasn't ready to go just yet.
(21:41):
There were still a few other piecesthat needed to fall into place.
I was being, I was being a perfectionistbrat is what I was being, that's
what I was being what we, even,even what we had at the event.
I feel like I, I could have, I, I.
I needed to have broadened morepeople before that before that point.
(22:03):
Because, because at that point whenI didn't have everything quite ready,
ready, it was because I had decided.
Foolishly, I think, totake it all on by myself.
I was like, no one elseunderstands this as much as I do.
No one else gets this system.
I need to be the one doing all of this.
This is my burden to bad.
This is my burden.
Yes.
(22:23):
It was very, I, I, I can, I havea bad habit of being melodramatic.
And that was one of those cases well,it, I, I, I said like, look, I have a
hard deadline of a week before the event.
Let me get this in by the hard deadline.
And all the way up until that point,this last few weeks, I was up until 2:00
AM 3:00 AM every morning I was running.
(22:44):
I was, and I only in the last fewdays, I was finally like, okay,
I cannot do this alone anymore.
I need to reach out to people.
And so we sent out the early versionsof the packets that week to some of the
dms, the people who were on a discord.
And they, one of a handfulof the dms were incredible.
They would reach out and they'd say,Hey, they're, I've noticed this.
I've noticed that they were amazing.
(23:06):
And then I sent it out to mydad who does Contract law.
And so he's all about just like grammarand just this line checks of everything.
And he was Oxford commas and thesemicolons in the right place.
Yeah.
And he was amazing at that.
I had messed that up really bad.
I need to work on my commas.
However, however, like I realizedcoming up to that deadline
(23:27):
that once again I had, I had.
Forgotten the, the powerof friendship, right?
I, I realized that I, well, my,it was what my dad said, my dad
said after doing his line check,I was like, thank you so much.
I really couldn't havedone this without you.
And he said, you're right.
You couldn't have, he said, the onlything that you can do by yourself is fail.
(23:47):
He said, true strength comes fromour connections and our friends and
the people around us and relyingon other people's expertise.
And he's a very wise man, andI'm sure that I will learn that
lesson at some point in my life.
But, but it was, it was another moment.
It was another moment where I realized,no, this was, this is a communal effort.
And so we finally got the packets out.
(24:08):
We, I, I even, I have one here thatthis thing is just a thick mm-hmm.
Just, just thick with information.
I printed mine, double-sided, but yeah.
Andy, Andy.
Andy accidentally printed all of themdouble-sided except for this packet.
And thank goodness he did, becauseI had specifically designed two of
the maps to like, to interconnect.
(24:29):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay.
And so, not the point.
The point is, is that finally like justthe stroke of midnight, I was sending this
thing in or sending this out to people.
And I'm sure that was not a stress-freeexperience for everybody else because
some of our sponsors were like,Hey, we were told we were gonna, you
know, see this early so we could, youknow, and I, I do apologize for that.
(24:53):
I do.
That was, you're forgiven.
You're forgiven.
You know exactly who I'm talking about.
And you know how much he sangYou're praises at the event.
Yeah.
And so I think it was,it was a rookie mistake.
And I've learned my alert.
I have, I've had my rookietour now, but it was.
I'm glad that it all workedout the way that it did.
Yeah, so, so when I got thatpacket I mean, everybody had
their own section to read.
(25:14):
And even though I was gonna be onstage and I wasn't gonna be running
any individual tables, I wantedto read every word of that packet.
I wanted to get a broad overviewof everything, and I, I wasn't
gonna memorize anything.
I wasn't gonna take extensive notes,but I wanted to get a feel for the
tone and the emotion of the drama.
And so I, I blocked offsome time on my calendar.
(25:36):
I'm like, okay, I'm away from my computer.
I'm on my couch.
I'm cozy, and I, I'veread through all of them.
And I be, became more and more excitedand I, I saw not just the journey
of Vecna Beijing, entropy incarnate,trying to destroy everything around
him, but I also wanted there to be somehero that everybody looked forward to.
(26:03):
And at first I envisioned,Maybe it's the king, right?
The king is going to be thehero that unites everybody.
And so I asked.
I asked Andrews like, Hey,could I also be this king, NP C?
And he's like, well, we've been playingin the store and the king is dead now.
I'm like, that's cool.
Love that.
But okay, I need someone else who's like,well, there's this, there's this captain.
(26:25):
And so I had a few ideas.
I'm like, maybe there's a, a lostprince that I could play, right?
Because I didn't just wanna be upthere and be Vecna the whole time.
Good dms play multiple characters,and I wanted to show this duality.
And so I was trying to find wheneverI'm starting a new story and I'm
(26:46):
looking at the overarching, theoverarching conflicts, I asked
myself, who's in the most pain?
Right?
Who is suffering the most, who hasthe most interesting story to tell?
And so I, I looked over everything again.
I'm like, it's not the, it's notthe nobility, it's not the king,
it's not the privileged class.
It's this goddess.
It's the goddess of peace.
Yes.
(27:06):
Who believes in and family andthe home and music and song.
And she herself.
Is taking up her spear and fighting.
And if the goddess of peacearmors up, you better believe
everyone's going to be behind her.
And I started seeing it from herperspective and her journey and how
(27:26):
she was going to change over it.
And I'm like, okay, I gottaplay the goddess of peace.
Hmm.
Wouldn't it be the firsttime I played a goddess.
But you know, I wanted it tobe a little bit more immersive.
Because I knew not everyone was going tohear my voice and how can we elevate this?
So I asked.
I asked you, and I asked Andrew, could webring in someone else to play this role?
(27:50):
Someone who could stand on stagewith me, match my energy as I portray
Vecna, and they could portray Eldath.
And I told you that, and we both gotreally excited about making her like
the core figure of this narrative.
Yeah.
Things started clicking together.
And we were both like, who do we get?
Who do we get?
Then what happened?
(28:11):
I mean, Andy literally just sent a text.
He just said like, oh, I know.
Just the person.
He sent a text.
Yeah.
And then like, not even 20 minuteslater, he was like, yep, she's in.
And we were like, whoa.
Like hold up, hold up, hold up.
Wait a minute, wait a minute.
I was like, who is this?
What has she done?
She's like, no, she's,she's an evermore actress.
She's used to kind of moving throughthe people and interacting with people.
(28:34):
She, I was like, she can capturethat feeling of, of of gentle,
like loving protector, but alsolike Mother Bear energy, right?
Yes.
And he's like, oh yeah, ohyeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
No problem.
And she does like cosplay and stuff.
And so we were like, fine.
Cool.
Let's bring her in and let's kind ofbrief her on all of this And truth be
told, I I, I was, I was really happythat you had caught my vision so much.
(28:57):
Just from reading through it, youwere like, yeah, like the goddess of
piece is this, this dramatic figure.
Mm-hmm.
And so even during this meetingwith her, I felt kind of useless.
I was like, wow, Dax kind of hasthis one, like, like I was building
off the foundation that you set.
Yes.
And then Janie, who we had as theGoddess Eldath, we, we met with her.
(29:18):
Was it the day before?
Was it two weeks?
The night before.
The night before we finally met with her.
I had a busy game schedule.
You had your nine to five job.
She had a job.
So we finally got togetherthe night before and we're
like, Hey, here's the lore.
Here is who the goddess is.
And we started playing with ideas.
I believe at one point we'relike, maybe like a Princess Aldec
(29:40):
character, but it felt a little soft.
We wanted this to be someone who wholed the armies, not someone who's
passively waiting to be rescued.
And so we, we latched onto theGoddess Athena as like an archetype.
Yes.
That this warrior who was wise and wasn'tfighting because she enjoyed blood lust
or chaos, but no, because she, she, Shecared about the people she was protecting
(30:04):
and we were able to build, the three of uswere able to build on that idea, and that
came to how are we going to use costume?
What sort of accessoriesis she gonna have?
We went around the store and we foundarmor pieces that she could Yeah.
Put on and wonder was there.
We were like, yeah.
We were like, we need a spear.
A spear.
Luckily, Tim was thereand was like, mm-hmm.
(30:25):
I got, I got a spear for you.
He's, yeah, no problem.
I got a spear.
Yeah.
And you're just like, oh, okay.
That happens.
I'm not one meet people who have spears.
Yeah.
It was so cool seeing her come to lifeand I don't know if you saw much of her
on the day that we performed it, butI was talking to her a lot in between
scenes, like, how about we do this?
How about we make this change?
(30:45):
Let's, let's go act this thing out.
And it was very fun to see her take notesand put her own interpretation on it.
And she did a great job.
She's going to be my nextguest, not the next guest.
Next guest is gonna be Andrew.
Then it's going to be Janie.
Janie.
Cause I want everyone'sperspective on this.
But yeah, she was great.
How do you, so how did it feel seeingher on stage bringing your video?
(31:09):
I only saw, I only saw heron stage for, for two scenes.
I saw her introduction, right?
I saw her initial introduction.
And then I saw her at the very, very end.
I saw the very final scene.
Cause I was up on stage at that point too.
And then I would see her just in passing.
And I've seen a lot of cell phone footageof her floating around on the internet.
Cool.
And it was, when, when I wrotethis, I had I had that image
(31:33):
in my mind of who Eldath was.
And when I did see her out and about andwhen she was on stage and the way that
she just projected this energy, it was,it was just, If I wasn't so busy, if
I wasn't so busy to lay up, I would'veloved to have just like, stood there and
watched because she, I, you know, I wrotethis character a certain way, and then the
(31:57):
way that you two kind of like took thoseideas and elevated them to reality, right?
It wasn't just this, this funidea in my mind, it was this real
experience that was happening.
And it, it did have that drama and Ihad that push and that pull and it was,
it was, Gosh, it was just fun to see.
I saw cell phone footage of yourripping of, of, of the very violent
(32:19):
scene, and people were like, oh, no.
And I, it just, you couldn't, youcouldn't help, but like, sure.
It wasn't, it wasn't, itwasn't like Avengers, right.
It wasn't even like, it, it wasn'teven like a high quality YouTube
video that I've seen sometimes,but it, it had, it had the.
It was everything that we needed.
Right?
Like, I don't know how else tosay that is that it's still, it
(32:42):
got people excited and it got themessage across and it was exciting.
And it was dramatic and it was personal.
Mm-hmm.
And that was the biggest issue that I had,right when I was writing this is I said
like, look, we, we, we were writing allthese different packets and these packets
are designed to be run at 200 tables, butno one's gonna get to actually see Vecna.
No one's actually gonnaget to see you l a, right?
Because we can't.
(33:03):
Like monitor that.
What happens if one tablekills the goddess of peace?
And like, we can't have that happening.
No.
And so what I was, I wasentranced the first time.
I really shouldn't have been standingstill and watching your guys'
performance, that opening, likewhen her, with her introduction.
But I, I stopped and I was like, oh, cool.
All Duff is being introduced and Ijust froze, like watching just this,
(33:26):
this, this Shakespearean kind of like.
You know, like Night Underthe Stars performance.
And I was like, oh, cool.
Like people are getting hyped, likepeople are getting up from their
tables to go to the stage and see ithappen and God, it was just magic.
It was just magic.
Yeah.
And I.
Man, she did so great and when shewas going one direction in the venue,
(33:47):
I would go the other direction.
So chaos and confusion.
Oh, I loved that.
So, because she wasn't my onlyhelper, I recruited nine captains.
They were the ones goingaround with the golden sashes.
And their job was to help and tosupport and to make sure that all
the dms were having a good time, thatthey were engaging with the texts,
and that everything felt connected.
(34:09):
They were basically my eyes andears because when I, when I game,
I love looking people in the eyes.
I love seeing what they're feeling.
I love getting them engaged.
And so I, I couldn't do thatfor 200 tables, so I had nine
other people doing that for me.
They each had about 25 tables each.
And then one person was just kindof a wanderer and I'm like, okay,
you each need to come up with fourarchetypal characters, have a healer
(34:33):
in case you know, a table's struggling.
Have someone who can beat them down, havesome sort of defender that can help them
fight for a round or two, and then havesomeone who can cause a lot of trouble.
Chaos.
Yeah.
And so while LDA was, was outgiving hope and inspiration and
peace, my captains were wrecking.
Mayhem over the place.
(34:55):
And I, that's what I wanted to do.
When I first signed up, I wantedto go from table to table.
I didn't get that much of a chancebecause not everybody could hear me.
And so I would run to the otherside of the mall and shout out
the top of my lungs, all of theannouncements that they had missed.
But my generals, my captains,they got to come in as cameos and.
(35:16):
You guys, you guys knockedit out of the park.
You really, really did.
And whenever I talked to thecaptains, they were just fierce.
They were fierce, fierce, like justbearers of this of this banner.
The John, I don't knowif you know John, Yep.
His whole thing was he went andfound table because this was,
everyone understood that thisadventure was going to be fighting
(35:36):
the undead and fighting cultists.
And so a lot of peopleshowed up with holy.
People like Paladinsand, and clerics mm-hmm.
Specifically designed to slaughterthe undead with their holy power.
And John was amazing.
He would go around and target tablesfull of paladins and clerics, and
he would just, just mess 'em up.
(35:57):
And I, that made me so happy because,and I, I always knew, I knew where
you were in the venue by whetheror not I could hear cheers from
a certain section of the venue.
Because people would, when, whenyou were just like, you'd have like
your book there and you would belike, monologuing as Vecna and you'd
be attacking them individually.
When people would cheer and get reallyexcited, I, I knew like, okay, cool.
(36:19):
Dax is down on the wall.
I can't be over at the Calvary.
He has, he has things handled over there.
I gotta be over there because the dayof, the day of, I was very busy just
kind of making sure that everythingmechanically was in place, right?
Mm-hmm.
Like the, the.
Suc reporting the successesand failures was my whole job.
Just making sure that that was happening.
So, and super spreadsheet.
Yeah, kind of.
(36:39):
Kind of.
And so when we, when I did see you outthere and when I did see your captains out
there, and when I did see l d a out there,I saw it heightening the experience in
a far more personal manner than I or anyof my moderators were capable of doing.
It made the event feel,you're right, it was personal.
It was this look in the eye.
Mm-hmm.
(37:00):
Like all of this is like youwere all, this is all connected.
Not something I could have done.
It was something you were ableto pull off and I just, yes.
It, it was beautiful.
It was something amazing.
How did you feel at the very endwhere we told everybody to walk in an
orderly fashioned down to the stage?
No trampling, but we want it all.
We didn't even know what the totalcount was at that point, but we wanted
(37:21):
everybody to see the final final scene.
How did that feel for you?
So we had, so I had the spreadsheet open.
I was watching the damage come in.
So for, for listeners who don't, aren'tquite sure what was happening, all the
players were allowed to roll damageall at once against Vecna and all that
damage would be added up and dealt tohis max HP and we had a set max HP.
(37:43):
And it was I mean, it's coolif I say it here, right?
It's cool if I say theexact numbers on here.
Not cool.
I don't know.
I don't, it's yours.
These are your secrets.
I know it was adjusted based on howmany tables we had and like a fair
number, knowing not every tablewould succeed in dealing damage.
There was a lot of little, therewere a lot of little things to be
calculated the day of to make it fair.
(38:05):
Fair but difficult.
Right?
Fair.
But challenging.
We underestimated our players.
We had set it to 20,000 hp.
20,000 we felt was, was reasonable.
I think we underestimated how manypeople were gonna show up, right?
Mm-hmm.
And then we also underestimatedthat there were those guys that
had tables full of Paladins Yes.
And bringing the Smite train.
(38:26):
Yeah.
Really.
And so they dealt, and so I waswatching as the number went up,
I had 20,000 sitting there and.
We, we knew that the adventure was overand people were walking up and I get,
I'm invited up on stage to be therefor the final scene and sitting, you
had you sit at the table as if you wereplaying in this, sitting at the table.
I'm looking at my phone and Iwatch it just soar past 20,000.
(38:49):
We hit 24,000 damage.
And I just thought like, my gosh,like I did not make that hard enough.
Like, that was next, nexttime it'll be 25 next time.
I think I, I think that, I think that ifit It was, it was, it was player count.
Like I didn't know exactly how manyplayers, cause there was a lot of people
who showed up just day of just somewalk-ins that I was unprepared for.
(39:09):
And there were those mid maxers.
But when I watched that number passand we told LDA and we told you
like, okay, like this is the ending,this is the one of the four ending.
I was just in shock.
I like put my phone in my pocketand I looked around and there was a
thousand people standing around meand I, it hadn't like hit me yet.
That it was over, right?
(39:30):
Like, there's like, oh, like I am,there's nothing left for me to do.
Like Dax is gonna just walkthis sucker into the end zone.
And I was kind of just like, I was just,I was just in shock until you said it was
the first time I saw you relaxed all day.
Yeah.
It was not relaxed.
It was not relaxed.
It was, it was exhaustion.
(39:50):
It was total fatigue.
You're like, I'm done.
It's finished.
Yeah.
It's proto with the ring on mount.
Once the ring goes in, not doom.
Yeah.
And he comes back outand he's like, it's done.
I'm like, Johnny, you need to sit down.
You need to sit down.
It's funny you said that.
It's funny you said that cuzafterwards I told the moderators
like, I hold your oath fulfilled.
You may go home, but Nice.
I sat there and you gavethis wonderful performance.
(40:12):
You went all that really justhammed it up in this very light.
Hammed up feels like a little itfeels a little derogatory, right?
It feels a little derogatory.
Yeah.
Because it was when it happened, right?
Like I, I, I don't know if you wannatell this a bit, but the end of the
story was that is that El Death died.
Elev died, and she surrendered, shesacrificed herself to destroy Vecna and
(40:36):
to allow the players this opportunityto, to like have hope and to, to
carry on themselves with the, thevision and the, the spirit of l d a.
And when l a fell to the ground, therewas like an audible, like, like, whoa.
I'm like, oh my gosh.
Like, whoa.
And I didn't expect that that happened.
(40:57):
And it like shocked me how,like silent, like the, the gasp
that came outta the audience.
Just this like, oh, like she,she died and it was, I don't
know if it, once again, it felt.
More, it felt more than anythingI could have just put on page.
(41:18):
Oh, there was another momentleading up to that that you probably
hadn't seen, but I'm gonna, I'mgonna talk about it next week.
Please, please, please.
Cause I want to, I want to hear it fromher head because I stopped and watched
the stage when she was just on it, butthat was, that was earlier in the game.
But yeah, that, that was so exciting.
And getting a thousand people toroll their dice all simultaneously.
(41:41):
That was beautiful.
That was one of the biggoals that Andrew had.
It, he, he wanted everyone rollingat once and wanted to hear that
that was a part of his vision.
From the very first meetingI had with him, I was like, I
want this scene at the very end.
And I was like, okay,we'll make it happen.
And it was a lot of workand a lot of coordination.
But
(42:02):
you it, we did it.
We did it.
We did it.
We did it.
And that was it.
And you performed thisbig final monologue.
And I felt it was, it was spectacular.
And, and the, the I, I gotthe hand of the microphone.
I'd had this speech practiceand I was just a gog.
(42:25):
I was just a GOG at the whole scenario.
I was, I just, I had nothingto say, but thank you.
I was like, thank you all forshowing up because I, it was
this, it was a community, right?
Yeah.
I was one guy who did onething and so many people.
Came together for this moment.
And if it hadn't been a thousandpeople, it wouldn't felt the same.
And if it hadn't been you, and ifit hadn't been Jamie, if it hadn't
(42:46):
been Andy, and if it hadn't been myfamily who flew in from overseas to be
there it wouldn't have been the same.
It was, it was, I wish that I couldcapture this moment for anybody
listening to this podcast, but I can't.
I can't.
It was, it was, it was a communallike story and I just, It
happened and you weren't there.
And I'm sorry, how didyou feel the next day?
(43:09):
I don't know about you, but I was inbed pretty much the whole next day.
It's like, church nothappening, kids feed yourselves.
Just kidding.
I'll give you cereal.
But but I got on my phone and I juststarted scrolling through social media
comments of people who were there, peoplesharing their pictures and their stories.
When you, did you see anyof those stories come in?
You mentioned the seeing l a videos.
(43:31):
What?
Yes.
How did that make you feel the day after?
So, I, I did, I did drag myself to church.
I did, I, I got up.
I couldn't even, it washard for me to walk.
It was hard for me to walk.
I was fatigued.
I would had to lean on thingswhere I would pass out.
And there were people at.
The church, right?
Like these, you know, these olderfolks, and they'd heard about it,
they'd heard they'd read about itin the local newspaper, of course.
(43:53):
Like they'd heard about it on thenews and they wanna hear about it.
And I was just, I, the lastthing I wanted to do was think
or talk about the event, right?
Like I but at the same time,like I, I, I went and saw those
things and people started reachingout and just saying Thank you.
Right.
It wasn't even a, it wasn't elike, and eventually people started
(44:13):
reaching out and being like, Hey,let's, let's figure something out.
Let's do a thing.
Like, let's do this again.
It's some other place.
And I was like, okay,look, let's talk later.
But so many people just came outtathe woodworks to say thank you.
Or some people didn't.
Right.
Some people did just like do a post.
I saw plenty of posts on Facebookand TikTok and my, my wife posted
it on Reddit and people justwere like, Hey, I was there.
(44:34):
Like, that was me.
And it was, it was.
I, I get, excuse me, I get alittle emotional thinking about it.
I don't know.
I don't know.
It was, it was, I've, I'vecreated a lot of stuff.
I've performed a lot ofstuff never before I do.
I think, has it reachedsuch a wide audience?
(44:56):
Never before.
Has never before has it had such atalented group of people making it happen.
Besides like the work thatI was putting into it.
I don't know if I'm a talented person,I know I'm a hard worker, but there's a
lot of folks there that were genuinelytalented and people would come up
and say like, Hey, like thank you.
And they didn't evenknow I was the writer.
They didn't know anything.
They just said like, Hey, likeyou were there at the event.
(45:18):
I knew that you werethere making it happen.
Thank you for just workingas hard as you did.
And every time I felt like thisrelease, it was this just, ah, I
don't know how else to explain it.
It was, it was a release.
It was just this, like, it was worth it.
It was all worth it.
And every time anyone sayslike, you did a good job.
I feel that way.
(45:38):
I feel this.
Like, I feel like I just woke upfrom the most restful nap ever.
Just for like five seconds.
I get this punch in the gut where I'mlike, Ooh, ooh, that's a good nap.
That, yeah.
Does that make up for allthe 3:00 AM writing sessions?
I still haven't recovered from that.
I'm still a bit of a mess.
But yeah.
I don't know how to explain it.
(45:59):
There's, there's no,there's no single look.
I got the, the only other thingthat is, that has competed
with it was my marriage, right?
Getting married was the most wonderfulday of my life, and it was so incredible.
And it's because I, it was a lotof hard work to get there too.
But this is, this is a second place.
This is.
Until I have a kid.
Right.
(46:20):
Have a kid.
Hey, that's, that's a good feeling too.
That's a great feeling too.
Thank you.
I don't know if I've said thank youenough for letting me in, for letting
me take your vision and put my owntwist on it, and then building on
my twist to put more of your twiston it because we, we built on each
other's energy, on each other's ideas.
(46:40):
I remember we were struggling tofigure out how we were going to
bring people back from the dead,and it was like, at the same time
we realized it's the holy symbols.
It's the holy symbols of l a,and those are going to become
the spheres that the final.
We looked at each other at thesame time and went like, like this.
Like L d a?
Yeah.
She was the solution to allof our problems and the story.
(47:03):
We, we'd had a few ideas like that,but we hadn't quite figured out
narratively how to make that work.
And while you may say thank you tome, like truly the collaboration
was, was a pleasure and a joy for me.
I was, I felt very much alone in, youknow, fighting against the storm and
feeling you just being there with me.
(47:25):
It was still a storm, right?
The storm didn't change.
The storm didn't get easier, thestorm got significantly harder.
But knowing that you, and knowing thatthe people that you brought with you
were there to collaborate and enhancethis experience, and then seeing
you guys do it so efficiently andsuccessfully I, I couldn't have asked.
I couldn't ask for anything better.
I couldn't have asked forbetter people working on the
things that you guys worked on.
Really, I mean, that.
(47:46):
Like, I'm a, I'm a jokey guy.
I say a lot of jokes.
I mean this sincerely.
Like I getting a little misty in here.
I've, I've been a part of alot of shows, been a part of a
lot of theater productions, andthis was this felt like that.
This felt like that.
Where it was, it was, you know, buton like, you know, 10 times that
scale where I was just like, I, I'm sohappy that I had people I could trust
(48:09):
handling everything that I couldn'tin my single role, and I really could.
Gosh, you guys, you guys nailed it.
I'm so happy about that.
That was six days ago.
Oh, woo.
Six days.
No, I, I went into, I went into the store.
I went into the storeto see Andy yesterday.
And I walked into the mall, and I'vebeen in that mall a hundred times.
(48:31):
I have lovely, lovely memories ofbeing in that mall, and I just, I
breathed in the mall, and that mallhas a very distinct scent, right?
Malls have different smellsand that distinct scent.
It knocked me right back to Saturday.
Not a single other memory, not any otherhappy evening with my wife or my friends.
It hit me back to Saturday and I couldsee a thousand people and a hun 200
(48:52):
tables, and it was like good P T S D.
What's that called?
I don't know.
Well, it's not traumatic.
Not traumatic, unlessit was just so happy.
Can't handle it.
No, you, you've made a very strongassociation, very very salient
association and the old factory senseis tied very strongly to memory.
(49:16):
Yes, yes.
That's fantastic.
So we did it.
We did.
We did it.
You did it.
You did it, and you did it.
And I hope no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Other people did it.
We, we did it.
We did it.
We did it.
Heaven sakes.
Don't, like, don't, don't shove any amountof responsibility of what you did onto me.
(49:37):
You did it too.
We did it.
Ah, it was awesome.
And every single person atevery single table has a unique
story about what happened.
And I.
I love hearing all of them, becausein a perfect world, I would've
been at every single table, justyes, enjoying every moment of it.
That's why I'm glad I hadcaptains to do that for me.
(49:58):
You had moderators to do thatfor you, and it's, we're still,
we still get to enjoy it.
We still get to enjoy the storiesthat are coming out and we're doing
a lot of interviews and a lot ofbehind the scenes stuff about it and.
I just want everybody to hear thestory cause it was so much fun.
Dear listener, if you want to see whatJohnny put together it is available to
(50:20):
purchase through drive through R ppg.
That should be linked in the description.
I, I had my free copy,but I still bought a copy.
I think I was the first one.
Like as soon as you sentit, I was like, boom.
Bought it.
I wanted to support you.
You're a real gex, you know that.
I appreciate that.
So yeah, and we had to file off someof the serial numbers you know Vecna.
(50:43):
Eldath yep.
Eldath.
But yeah, please support supportJohnny support this podcast.
I'm gonna be bringing on other people andhearing other perspectives of this event.
And thank you so much for, forcoming in on a Friday night.
Thank you for the two peoplewho watched this live.
There will be dozens of you someday.
(51:03):
There will be dozens of you.
Do you have any other questions for meor any final words you want to give?
Yeah.
What's the next big project for you?
Right?
You did evermore, you did this.
Where's the, where's,where's Dax headed next?
Oh, I had a, a meeting this morningwith a very big company that I can't say
anything about, and there's another thing.
(51:24):
What can I talk about?
I'm just running, running games and my, mydaughter turns one in a couple of weeks.
Like that's my next big adventure.
But I look forward to the next time youand I get to collaborate on something.
I've got some ideas.
We'll talk, get some sleepfirst and then then we'll talk.
I haven't been able to stop thinkingof new, I've come up with, I've also
(51:45):
had some ideas and I just wanna.
Everyone said, you know, when'sthe next time we're doing this?
And I just said like,oh, I'll figure it out.
Like, I don't have any ideas yet.
And then this week they'vejust come seeping in.
And so, so we'll see youguys next year, right?
We'll see.
Um, See you all next year, everybody.
And welcome to Dungeons and Dax,the awesome podcast, all about
collaborative storytelling, workingtogether to tell better stories.
And I am so excited for this veryspecial episode cuz I am here with
Johnny Jensen, the author and writerof The Dead Wars, which was a Guinness
(00:55):
World Record setting D&D game thathad, how many people did we have?
Last weekend, 1,227.
1,227 people all playing D&D at one time.
One massive interconnected story whereone person's table can affect people on
the other side of the venue, and Johnnywas the Mastermind who orchestrated it all
(01:19):
long before I even came into the picture.
I was just the guy on stage.
Johnny, thank you so much for,for coming in and talking.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
It's my pleasure.
Nothing I like more thantalking about myself.
This is really exciting for me.
You're, you're not an introvert at all.
You love, you love No, yeah.
You know, bragging about how cool you are.
Well, let's start withyour, your backstory.
(01:41):
Like what brought you to this point?
Yeah.
Who were you before youbecame the Johnny Jensen?
Yes, my humble origin story.
It's not very humble, honestly.
I'm not a very humble person.
Just self-deprecating.
I So I had, I've been in D&Dfor maybe five or six years now.
I got into it because of critical role.
(02:02):
I wanted a way to bring my familytogether and I noticed that we
all had, we were very differentages, very different interests.
And the one thing that we allhad in common was storytelling.
We all loved talking about movies andbooks and all this kind of stuff, but
that didn't really happen very often.
And so I thought, let's find away for us all to collaboratively
do something together.
And that was D&D.
So years and years pass.
(02:23):
During 2020, I took a I took this,this online kind of writer's workshop
that teaches you how to writeyour own one shot and publish it.
And that was a big moment for mecause it made me realize like, oh,
I'm, I can be pretty good at this.
Like, this is a lot of fun.
And it taught me kind of the skills thatI really needed for this event because
back in December, my wife saw a TikTok.
(02:46):
And it was Andy, right?
Andy Ashby and his family had openedup a game store at a local mall.
And I thought, wow, that's so crazy.
Like, I'm glad that we'regetting nerd stuff, you know,
really popping up in our town.
Cool.
Now?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And that malls are for nerds.
But it was amazing.
I love, I was really,really happy about that.
(03:07):
And we went in, right?
We went in the week of Christmas.
And Andy was doing thepitch to everybody, right?
Anybody who would listen, anybody whojust walked up to the counter and talks to
him, he would say, Hey, keep your weekendsopen in April because we are going to be
running a game of D&D with 500 people.
(03:27):
And I gave him a look likethis just kind of a Oh, okay.
All right.
500 people dream big buddy.
Yeah.
You just opened the store a month ago.
Yeah.
Yeah.
500 people.
Well, what was, what was interesting isthat I like, I wanted to know, right?
Everyone wants to know.
(03:47):
When they hear about this, they're like,okay, well how does that even work?
And he said, right, we're notgonna have one dungeon master.
And 499 other folks, we're gonnahave individual tables and everyone
will be playing at their own table.
And those tables will be all over anin universe kind of shared battlefield.
And I thought, oh, okay,that's interesting.
And then he said, yeah, and we're gonnahave, you know, and all these tables
(04:07):
will be able to interact in special ways.
And I thought, okay, that'snot as easy, but Sure, sure.
And I went home and I thought, wow.
Or I, I even took one of their cards.
I took one of their cards cause Ithought, I absolutely wanna, you
know, like, like get in touch.
I absolutely want to be a part of this.
If I can be a dm, that'd be awesome.
(04:28):
If they can pull that off,wouldn't that be something, right?
Sure.
Yeah.
No, in my mind I was like, this isgonna be a train wreck and I would like
to be there for it one way or another.
Right.
Even if it's just making surethat my table has a lot of fun.
Cool.
But it'll be a train wreck.
I was like, there's no way.
It's not gonna be, it just won't function.
So I think like a night or a few dayslater or whatever, I was on a call
(04:50):
with my siblings and I brought it up.
I was like, guys, you'renot gonna believe this.
This is just the silliestthing you've ever heard.
And we all started like laughing aboutit and we're like, that's not possible.
Right?
Just mechanically in the game andnarratively it just doesn't work.
And I said, right, the onlyway you make that work is if
you did something like this.
And they were like, well,I mean you can't do that.
(05:10):
You would need something else like this.
Right?
And we'd be like, okay, well, wellto make that happen, you'd, and we
accidentally kind of like joked our way.
Into the solution and we jokedaround into the solution.
I pulled out like a whiteboardand I started writing crap down.
And I said like, okay, like, so if we didsomething like this and we did something
like this, then yeah, it would work.
And Royal like justkinda like, oh man, okay.
(05:31):
It's possible.
And my last brother, who wasn'ta part of the call, who is a game
designer he is only at 17, but hemakes fantastic board games and card
games, really, really good stuff.
He joins the call.
And he says what areyou guys talking about?
And I, I pitched it to him and I'mlike, look, if they had the right
person, they can make this happen.
And he was like, right.
But the only person who knows all ofthose skills, Johnny, is you, like,
(05:55):
you only know those skills because ofthe workshops that you've taken and
the kinds of the, the degree that yougot and all of these different things.
Like it would only work if theright person was in charge and
the right person would be you.
And I said, Like, well then I, I said,look, Caleb, it's just theoretical.
It's all theoretical.
Don't, don't get yourpants in the water, right?
We're just playing kind of the,the, the, the hypothetical realm.
(06:18):
And he said, okay, wellthen I think you're wrong.
And that I didn't like that.
And I was like, okay, wellthe little snot like, what?
Why do you think I'm wrong?
And he is like, I just don't think,no matter how much organization
you have, that it's possible.
And I was like, well, no,let's just theoretically.
And he's like, then prove it.
He said, prove it.
If you really think that this is possible,you go out and prove it yourself,
because I don't think that it's possible.
And it was such a, it wassuch a jerk thing to do.
(06:41):
We were just kind of playingaround mentally, and I was
like, what a challenge.
Like he threw the gauntlet downand Your Honor was at stake
at that point A little bit.
Yeah.
And I was like, fine.
You know what y'all, it's like, sure.
Cool.
Yeah, I will do it.
Then show you.
I'm gonna write a a proposal and I'm gonnashow it to them, and if they want me to
be a part of the project, I'll be a partof the project and I'll make it happen.
(07:02):
And so I did, I spent, like, I spent myChristmas break like writing up this,
this proposal and it was in a binderand I had like a QR code to my resume
and to my previously published one shot.
And I had like thewhole thing planned out.
And I essentially, while I was doingthis, I said you can't do this soon.
It has to be like at the nextconvention season in fall.
(07:22):
We would need tons of planning.
We would need We, we wouldn't be ableto even get above 200 people cause
that's unwieldy right after 200 people.
It's impossible.
And I brought it in to Andy and Andycalled me back after reading it and
he said like, look, this is amazing.
You absolutely need to be a part of this.
You've arrived at so many ofthe conclusions that I did.
You're clearly the man for thejob, but one, it's happening
(07:45):
in April no matter what period.
Like if that's done, there'snothing we can do about it.
And two, we absolutely can do.
More than 200 people, wecan do more than 500 people.
If he's like, I thinkwe can do a thousand.
And I was just like, okay.
Andy like, oh boy.
And he said, look, don'teven worry about that.
He said, just write some, like, we'llwork on this, but like you, I'll,
(08:08):
I'll worry about the attendance.
You worry about making the story work.
And that's how we got started.
That's how it all just.
Week after week, we started like talkingabout what I'd written and what we were
working on and what, what we, what weneeded to have solved by a certain day.
That was January-ish, right?
That was January was right, right.
(08:29):
Early, early January.
And it was, there wasa lot of big problems.
There's a lot of big problems thatwe couldn't solve very easily, and
we had to come up with some creativesolutions to figure those problems out.
And there's a lot that we had to cut.
There was tons and tons ofstuff that we had to cut.
We had this big vision forhow this would play out.
And we realized that with the manpowerthat we had while I am a performer, right?
(08:50):
While I could be one of these NPCs, I waslike, no, I'm, I'm, I am trained to be
a businessman and to, to be a manager.
And more importantly, no one else can dothe job of running the story mechanically.
And so I was like, I, we need,like we, we had all these ideas for
NPCs and for people playing NPCs.
And we had to cut it all.
We had to cut all of it because we justneeded to focus on what we could do.
(09:14):
Enter Dax.
Enter Dax.
Yeah, man.
Yeah.
Well, let's, let's gothrough this chronologically.
This is fun, this is Sure, sure, sure.
I present together, like how we got tothis point because I, I live very close to
the mall and I had visited it a few times.
I think it was on my,my birthday, my wife.
And I went in and she got some stufffrom me and I was supposed to wait with
(09:35):
the kids on another part of the mall.
And I knew this thing wascoming in in December.
And I ran into Everett Andy's brother atLife, the Universe and everything, which
is a big convention in Provo, Utah forscience fiction fantasy every February.
And Everett was there sellingleather and he was also trying to
get people into this Guness event.
(09:57):
And I have that kind of same feeling.
I'm like, It's been two months andthey're, they're still gonna do this.
They're doing this two months from now.
Like, so I asked them like, who's thehead dm who's going to run this story?
Because not only am I a professionaldungeon master, this is my full-time
job, but I've been doing more stufflive and in person at Life Universe and
(10:18):
everything at Fanex, at Dragon Steel Con.
And I've been looking for ways toget more involved with the community.
This just seemed like the perfectopportunity and the perfect timing.
So I had to play it real cool, right?
I didn't wanna just be like, let me comein and take your project and be like,
Hey, you got someone working on this?
He's like, yeah, we gotsomeone working on this.
I assume he meant you.
(10:39):
And I'm like, okay, cool.
Here's my card.
A few weeks later, I went inwhen Andy was in the store.
And I bring my kids, youknow, cause it's casual.
They, I didn't want to put anypressure on it, but I'm like, oh yeah,
I'm a professional dungeon master.
Here's a flyer with a QR code on it, youknow, advertising my services, my website.
And we started talking about itand eventually I came in with
(11:00):
a resume and a cover letter.
A dang good one too.
And I'm like, hey.
This sounds like a very huge project.
4,000 people.
I don't know if one headDM is going to be enough.
And I outlined my idea for delegatingthings out to having a head dungeon
master or two head dungeon masterscuz you know, if they had a guy,
(11:21):
I didn't want to replace that guy.
But so that we'd have other captains whoreported to us to make it more manageable
and to play as NPCs and to bring.
Back to life.
And so I played it real cool.
I gave him that and I walked outand then a week later he's, he's
like, okay, I gotta talk to Johnny.
He called you.
Well, lemme tell you what that call,lemme tell you about that call.
(11:42):
I was in this room.
Okay.
Yeah.
So cuz because I at that point inthe project, and I actually know
around when, when this was becausemy brother had gone to that event.
And around that time we were.
Things were going well,things were on track.
Things were on schedule.
But it was starting to look likethings were about to be off schedule.
We were like, okay, we're on schedulenow, but there are things that are
(12:04):
going, like the hard, really, reallybig, hard work is about to happen and
we need to start bringing people inso that they can real, so that we can
kind of offload work onto other people.
And so I was exhausted.
I was exhausted at this point.
I was working just.
Every night if I could in this projecttrying to figure out exactly what I
wanted exactly what was going to belike where essentially this is going
(12:27):
to be, and excuse me, eventually, thiswas like four separate one shots and
they all needed to be original and theyall needed to be br with branching pads
and they all needed to feel consistent.
So I was this massive, intricate spider'sweb that all connects in the middle.
Yes, yes it was.
And I'm, I'm not a spider man.
I'm, I'm more of a Batman guy myself.
(12:48):
And so you can't throw money at it?
No.
No, you cannot.
And so when Andy called, Andy called, andhe was very, very kind of like, cautious
and he was like, Hey, look we're start,like, I know you're feeling the pressure
right now, and I know that we're startingto hit the, the, you know, the rubber's
about to hit the road at this point.
And he said, look, I have a guy who camein who wants to be like kind of a head
(13:12):
dungeon master and be the, the, not,like not, he wouldn't do any of the, the
like reporting, like the mechanical side.
He really wants to be in chargeof the story side of things.
And I was like, oh, thank goodness.
Yes, yes.
Oh, that makes me happy.
Cause I was nervous that weekend.
I was like, no.
Andy was like, and he was like,I don't wanna step on your toes.
(13:34):
I don't wanna like, oh no, bring him in.
Like, let's meet him tomorrow.
Like, can he come in on Monday?
Like, let's have him come in on Monday.
I need him meet him now.
He needs to be briefed and he needs to beready to, we start working on stuff and
Andy was like, oh, oh yeah, okay, okay.
Yeah.
Let's, let's, let's get 'em in here.
And I was, I was the like, fullhonesty, I really did want to do.
(13:55):
The job that you ended up having.
But I also recognized that I wouldn'thave the energy or the focus or
anything else to, to make it happen.
And so when you did volunteer, Iwas overjoyed because I was like,
finally, there are other peopleand you were kind of the first one.
Who there were other people whoshowed up and were like, I am just
crazy enough to go along with this.
(14:15):
And it made me really happyto know I wasn't alone.
Cool.
So why'd you, why'd you pick meover some of the other candidates?
Oh, I mean, absolutely likeyour resume a hundred percent.
Your resume you were exceptionallylike skilled and, and talented and
you've had, had experience with,with large conventions in the past.
(14:39):
Not to mention you actuallywere like a business owner.
Like really?
That meant a lot to us because otherpeople were like I'm a dungeon master.
I could be a head dungeon master.
And I'm like, you okay?
That's, that's cute, right?
Like every, everybody lovesbeing the Dungeon Master, right?
Like that's, yeah, that's,that's the easy part.
But, but nobody, nobody has set upa website, set up a company, made
connections worked and traveledat Cons, streamed like no one
(15:02):
has done all of those things.
And so I was like, okay.
I didn't even need to doa background check of you.
I didn't need to do do a back.
I didn't need to think,okay, who is this D guy?
You were all over the place.
I couldn't throw a rock and not find you.
Right?
Yes.
Yeah.
Working.
Yeah.
Yeah.
My empire's growing.
Well, it it worked.
(15:22):
It worked.
So when you came in, when you camein and it was like almost right
away, we were like, let's happen.
Like let's have it happen this weekimmediately as fast as possible.
What were, what were yourinitial impressions about
what we already had going on?
So I wanted to know whatthe story was about.
I knew it was going to be a Helms deepstyle battle, and I was wondering how
(15:45):
it was all going to be connected, whypeople were going to care about it.
Because I, I love the roleplaying aspects of the game.
And some people have this distinctionof, oh, we're role-playing now,
but now we're doing combat.
We're shifting gears.
For me, we're always role-playingevery, every move in combat,
every quip, every attack has likemotivation and intention behind it.
(16:10):
And so I, once I heard the story fromyou and we were already taking notes
in that very first session, I remember,I think that, I think I stole, Your
notebook your scratch pad for that.
That's right.
But we started mapping it out.
We started talking about the ending andkind of going back and we figured out
four branching paths for the ending.
And I, I was excited it was real.
(16:32):
And then it hit me.
We have like two months topull this off and that's it.
Yes.
But in once, once I had clearance that,Hey, you are it, I'm like, okay, let's,
let's do the business side of things.
Johnny's working on the, Johnny's stillworking on, you know, the story, right?
I didn't want to pressure you.
(16:53):
I wanted to give, you know, my adviceas needed, but I figured the best thing
that I could do with my time then isto make sure we get a thousand people.
And so that's when I startedreaching out to my network.
And so, yeah, and all of my fans,all of my dozens of fans, dozens.
There's dozens, dozens of fans.
And, and then I also started reaching outto companies that I had worked with before
(17:17):
that have sponsored streams that I've beenon or have been in as part of these live
events and started making connections,asking people to, Hey, come be a sponsor.
These are all the benefitsyou get for being a sponsor.
We'll get you tables in the v i psection, we'll get you a vendor table.
And that was a lot of fun.
And you actually got to comewith me on one of those calls.
We got to, I, I won't say who it was, butthey were really cool and they were there.
(17:41):
It was cool.
I was, I was glad that I went becausethey, in particular asked a lot about
the story and they were like, I haveno, they're like, I don't know, this
is, and I was like, no, no, don't worry.
It's cool.
Without revealing who they were, theywere really big into stories in general.
Yes, very into stories.
Yeah.
Anyway, anyway, it was, it was,but I'm, I'm glad that I went.
(18:02):
It was very exciting.
I did study finance and businessmanagement, and I realized, That,
you know, I've just been workingentry-level jobs for the past year
or so, and you like getting to gowith you on that was fantastic.
Cause it made me be like, oh cool.
Like, I know what's going on here.
I kind of understand the,the negotiation process.
It was a lot of fun andI didn't realize before.
(18:22):
Oh right.
Like my business and finance trainingcan translate to my creative hobbies.
It was very exciting.
It was around the time though that youstarted reaching out to your network.
That we actually saw the, the.
Outpouring of support and the,the sign, the registration.
The registration really took off?
Yes, yes.
Once that, around thattime, like early March.
(18:43):
That was early, early March.
Mm-hmm.
Sounds about and yeah.
After what?
After that, for me, it was just, itwas just like, Just, just a grind.
It was just the grind.
Right?
I was, I was every night staying up pastmidnight writing I have a nine to five.
And so it was just all night,every night afterwards, just making
sure everything looks right andrunning it past other people.
And it was, it was really nice becausewhen, when you showed up the stuff
(19:06):
that you brought back in, right?
All the, like I mentioned, there wasstuff that we cut and the stuff that
you brought back in was integral,I think, to the overall story.
The finales were, It, it reallybrought everything together.
There was a lot of stuff that waskind of still in flux because we
hadn't nailed down the finales becausewe hadn't had a dungeon master.
And so when you showed up and yousat down with my notepad and you, you
(19:28):
wrote out those four different endingseverything really started to gel.
And it, it, that was when it startedfeeling real after we went out on
that, that That call it was, I waslike, oh my gosh, this is happening.
This is really happening.
Yep.
It's happening whetherwe, we wanted to or not.
I think at that point wehad 700 people signed up.
(19:50):
Yeah.
And we were like, they're gonnashow up whether we're ready or not.
So Yeah.
Let's make it happen.
AF after that.
For me it was all a lot of work.
So I like between like thosefun moments and then the event,
all it is was me writing.
It wasn't very exciting.
I don't have any other fun stories.
So was there anything else for youthat happened before the event?
So this is my full-time job.
(20:12):
Yes, I was thinking about thisstory, but I had so many other
stories that I had to tell.
In the meantime, I have a story everyMonday night, every Tuesday night, every
other Wednesday one, every other Thursday,I've got a couple weekend things.
I was planning to do a livestream at every evermore park
with a few of my friends.
So there's a story for that.
There's the book that I'm procrastinating,querying that aren't we all being around?
(20:35):
Yeah.
So all these stories are constantly inmy head cuz I do this professionally.
So I had to really compartmentalizemy time and I wasn't able to stress
too much about Dead Wars becauseI had our evermore stream coming
up like two weeks before that.
And so that was the big focus and Ihad to get props for that and work
with some of the other sponsors.
(20:57):
And, but in the back of my head,I knew that everything was going
to be preparing me for Dead Wars.
So I, I.
Compartmentalized my time and my energy.
I focused on each story, made sureevery game that I ran for the last
two months was still my best effort.
Still putting all the energy into it.
That's, that's why people come backbecause they get emotionally invested.
(21:20):
And then after that evermorestream was done, it was like,
okay, what's the next big thing?
What's the next big thing?
Oh yeah, dead Wars.
Let me look at my notes.
Where's that piece ofpaper I got from Johnny?
Oh, this is happening inlike two and a half weeks.
I'm gonna, I'm gonna reachout to Johnny and see if that
first version is ready to go.
And, and it wasn't ready to go just yet.
(21:41):
There were still a few other piecesthat needed to fall into place.
I was being, I was being a perfectionistbrat is what I was being, that's
what I was being what we, even,even what we had at the event.
I feel like I, I could have, I, I.
I needed to have broadened morepeople before that before that point.
(22:03):
Because, because at that point whenI didn't have everything quite ready,
ready, it was because I had decided.
Foolishly, I think, totake it all on by myself.
I was like, no one elseunderstands this as much as I do.
No one else gets this system.
I need to be the one doing all of this.
This is my burden to bad.
This is my burden.
Yes.
(22:23):
It was very, I, I, I can, I havea bad habit of being melodramatic.
And that was one of those cases well,it, I, I, I said like, look, I have a
hard deadline of a week before the event.
Let me get this in by the hard deadline.
And all the way up until that point,this last few weeks, I was up until 2:00
AM 3:00 AM every morning I was running.
(22:44):
I was, and I only in the last fewdays, I was finally like, okay,
I cannot do this alone anymore.
I need to reach out to people.
And so we sent out the early versionsof the packets that week to some of the
dms, the people who were on a discord.
And they, one of a handfulof the dms were incredible.
They would reach out and they'd say,Hey, they're, I've noticed this.
I've noticed that they were amazing.
(23:06):
And then I sent it out to mydad who does Contract law.
And so he's all about just like grammarand just this line checks of everything.
And he was Oxford commas and thesemicolons in the right place.
Yeah.
And he was amazing at that.
I had messed that up really bad.
I need to work on my commas.
However, however, like I realizedcoming up to that deadline
(23:27):
that once again I had, I had.
Forgotten the, the powerof friendship, right?
I, I realized that I, well, my,it was what my dad said, my dad
said after doing his line check,I was like, thank you so much.
I really couldn't havedone this without you.
And he said, you're right.
You couldn't have, he said, the onlything that you can do by yourself is fail.
(23:47):
He said, true strength comes fromour connections and our friends and
the people around us and relyingon other people's expertise.
And he's a very wise man, andI'm sure that I will learn that
lesson at some point in my life.
But, but it was, it was another moment.
It was another moment where I realized,no, this was, this is a communal effort.
And so we finally got the packets out.
(24:08):
We, I, I even, I have one here thatthis thing is just a thick mm-hmm.
Just, just thick with information.
I printed mine, double-sided, but yeah.
Andy, Andy.
Andy accidentally printed all of themdouble-sided except for this packet.
And thank goodness he did, becauseI had specifically designed two of
the maps to like, to interconnect.
(24:29):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay.
And so, not the point.
The point is, is that finally like justthe stroke of midnight, I was sending this
thing in or sending this out to people.
And I'm sure that was not a stress-freeexperience for everybody else because
some of our sponsors were like,Hey, we were told we were gonna, you
know, see this early so we could, youknow, and I, I do apologize for that.
(24:53):
I do.
That was, you're forgiven.
You're forgiven.
You know exactly who I'm talking about.
And you know how much he sangYou're praises at the event.
Yeah.
And so I think it was,it was a rookie mistake.
And I've learned my alert.
I have, I've had my rookietour now, but it was.
I'm glad that it all workedout the way that it did.
Yeah, so, so when I got thatpacket I mean, everybody had
their own section to read.
(25:14):
And even though I was gonna be onstage and I wasn't gonna be running
any individual tables, I wantedto read every word of that packet.
I wanted to get a broad overviewof everything, and I, I wasn't
gonna memorize anything.
I wasn't gonna take extensive notes,but I wanted to get a feel for the
tone and the emotion of the drama.
And so I, I blocked offsome time on my calendar.
(25:36):
I'm like, okay, I'm away from my computer.
I'm on my couch.
I'm cozy, and I, I'veread through all of them.
And I be, became more and more excitedand I, I saw not just the journey
of Vecna Beijing, entropy incarnate,trying to destroy everything around
him, but I also wanted there to be somehero that everybody looked forward to.
(26:03):
And at first I envisioned,Maybe it's the king, right?
The king is going to be thehero that unites everybody.
And so I asked.
I asked Andrews like, Hey,could I also be this king, NP C?
And he's like, well, we've been playingin the store and the king is dead now.
I'm like, that's cool.
Love that.
But okay, I need someone else who's like,well, there's this, there's this captain.
(26:25):
And so I had a few ideas.
I'm like, maybe there's a, a lostprince that I could play, right?
Because I didn't just wanna be upthere and be Vecna the whole time.
Good dms play multiple characters,and I wanted to show this duality.
And so I was trying to find wheneverI'm starting a new story and I'm
(26:46):
looking at the overarching, theoverarching conflicts, I asked
myself, who's in the most pain?
Right?
Who is suffering the most, who hasthe most interesting story to tell?
And so I, I looked over everything again.
I'm like, it's not the, it's notthe nobility, it's not the king,
it's not the privileged class.
It's this goddess.
It's the goddess of peace.
Yes.
(27:06):
Who believes in and family andthe home and music and song.
And she herself.
Is taking up her spear and fighting.
And if the goddess of peacearmors up, you better believe
everyone's going to be behind her.
And I started seeing it from herperspective and her journey and how
(27:26):
she was going to change over it.
And I'm like, okay, I gottaplay the goddess of peace.
Hmm.
Wouldn't it be the firsttime I played a goddess.
But you know, I wanted it tobe a little bit more immersive.
Because I knew not everyone was going tohear my voice and how can we elevate this?
So I asked.
I asked you, and I asked Andrew, could webring in someone else to play this role?
(27:50):
Someone who could stand on stagewith me, match my energy as I portray
Vecna, and they could portray Eldath.
And I told you that, and we both gotreally excited about making her like
the core figure of this narrative.
Yeah.
Things started clicking together.
And we were both like, who do we get?
Who do we get?
Then what happened?
(28:11):
I mean, Andy literally just sent a text.
He just said like, oh, I know.
Just the person.
He sent a text.
Yeah.
And then like, not even 20 minuteslater, he was like, yep, she's in.
And we were like, whoa.
Like hold up, hold up, hold up.
Wait a minute, wait a minute.
I was like, who is this?
What has she done?
She's like, no, she's,she's an evermore actress.
She's used to kind of moving throughthe people and interacting with people.
(28:34):
She, I was like, she can capturethat feeling of, of of gentle,
like loving protector, but alsolike Mother Bear energy, right?
Yes.
And he's like, oh yeah, ohyeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
No problem.
And she does like cosplay and stuff.
And so we were like, fine.
Cool.
Let's bring her in and let's kind ofbrief her on all of this And truth be
told, I I, I was, I was really happythat you had caught my vision so much.
(28:57):
Just from reading through it, youwere like, yeah, like the goddess of
piece is this, this dramatic figure.
Mm-hmm.
And so even during this meetingwith her, I felt kind of useless.
I was like, wow, Dax kind of hasthis one, like, like I was building
off the foundation that you set.
Yes.
And then Janie, who we had as theGoddess Eldath, we, we met with her.
(29:18):
Was it the day before?
Was it two weeks?
The night before.
The night before we finally met with her.
I had a busy game schedule.
You had your nine to five job.
She had a job.
So we finally got togetherthe night before and we're
like, Hey, here's the lore.
Here is who the goddess is.
And we started playing with ideas.
I believe at one point we'relike, maybe like a Princess Aldec
(29:40):
character, but it felt a little soft.
We wanted this to be someone who wholed the armies, not someone who's
passively waiting to be rescued.
And so we, we latched onto theGoddess Athena as like an archetype.
Yes.
That this warrior who was wise and wasn'tfighting because she enjoyed blood lust
or chaos, but no, because she, she, Shecared about the people she was protecting
(30:04):
and we were able to build, the three of uswere able to build on that idea, and that
came to how are we going to use costume?
What sort of accessoriesis she gonna have?
We went around the store and we foundarmor pieces that she could Yeah.
Put on and wonder was there.
We were like, yeah.
We were like, we need a spear.
A spear.
Luckily, Tim was thereand was like, mm-hmm.
(30:25):
I got, I got a spear for you.
He's, yeah, no problem.
I got a spear.
Yeah.
And you're just like, oh, okay.
That happens.
I'm not one meet people who have spears.
Yeah.
It was so cool seeing her come to lifeand I don't know if you saw much of her
on the day that we performed it, butI was talking to her a lot in between
scenes, like, how about we do this?
How about we make this change?
(30:45):
Let's, let's go act this thing out.
And it was very fun to see her take notesand put her own interpretation on it.
And she did a great job.
She's going to be my nextguest, not the next guest.
Next guest is gonna be Andrew.
Then it's going to be Janie.
Janie.
Cause I want everyone'sperspective on this.
But yeah, she was great.
How do you, so how did it feel seeingher on stage bringing your video?
(31:09):
I only saw, I only saw heron stage for, for two scenes.
I saw her introduction, right?
I saw her initial introduction.
And then I saw her at the very, very end.
I saw the very final scene.
Cause I was up on stage at that point too.
And then I would see her just in passing.
And I've seen a lot of cell phone footageof her floating around on the internet.
Cool.
And it was, when, when I wrotethis, I had I had that image
(31:33):
in my mind of who Eldath was.
And when I did see her out and about andwhen she was on stage and the way that
she just projected this energy, it was,it was just, If I wasn't so busy, if
I wasn't so busy to lay up, I would'veloved to have just like, stood there and
watched because she, I, you know, I wrotethis character a certain way, and then the
(31:57):
way that you two kind of like took thoseideas and elevated them to reality, right?
It wasn't just this, this funidea in my mind, it was this real
experience that was happening.
And it, it did have that drama and Ihad that push and that pull and it was,
it was, Gosh, it was just fun to see.
I saw cell phone footage of yourripping of, of, of the very violent
(32:19):
scene, and people were like, oh, no.
And I, it just, you couldn't, youcouldn't help, but like, sure.
It wasn't, it wasn't, itwasn't like Avengers, right.
It wasn't even like, it, it wasn'teven like a high quality YouTube
video that I've seen sometimes,but it, it had, it had the.
It was everything that we needed.
Right?
Like, I don't know how else tosay that is that it's still, it
(32:42):
got people excited and it got themessage across and it was exciting.
And it was dramatic and it was personal.
Mm-hmm.
And that was the biggest issue that I had,right when I was writing this is I said
like, look, we, we, we were writing allthese different packets and these packets
are designed to be run at 200 tables, butno one's gonna get to actually see Vecna.
No one's actually gonnaget to see you l a, right?
Because we can't.
(33:03):
Like monitor that.
What happens if one tablekills the goddess of peace?
And like, we can't have that happening.
No.
And so what I was, I wasentranced the first time.
I really shouldn't have been standingstill and watching your guys'
performance, that opening, likewhen her, with her introduction.
But I, I stopped and I was like, oh, cool.
All Duff is being introduced and Ijust froze, like watching just this,
(33:26):
this, this Shakespearean kind of like.
You know, like Night Underthe Stars performance.
And I was like, oh, cool.
Like people are getting hyped, likepeople are getting up from their
tables to go to the stage and see ithappen and God, it was just magic.
It was just magic.
Yeah.
And I.
Man, she did so great and when shewas going one direction in the venue,
(33:47):
I would go the other direction.
So chaos and confusion.
Oh, I loved that.
So, because she wasn't my onlyhelper, I recruited nine captains.
They were the ones goingaround with the golden sashes.
And their job was to help and tosupport and to make sure that all
the dms were having a good time, thatthey were engaging with the texts,
and that everything felt connected.
(34:09):
They were basically my eyes andears because when I, when I game,
I love looking people in the eyes.
I love seeing what they're feeling.
I love getting them engaged.
And so I, I couldn't do thatfor 200 tables, so I had nine
other people doing that for me.
They each had about 25 tables each.
And then one person was just kindof a wanderer and I'm like, okay,
you each need to come up with fourarchetypal characters, have a healer
(34:33):
in case you know, a table's struggling.
Have someone who can beat them down, havesome sort of defender that can help them
fight for a round or two, and then havesomeone who can cause a lot of trouble.
Chaos.
Yeah.
And so while LDA was, was outgiving hope and inspiration and
peace, my captains were wrecking.
Mayhem over the place.
(34:55):
And I, that's what I wanted to do.
When I first signed up, I wantedto go from table to table.
I didn't get that much of a chancebecause not everybody could hear me.
And so I would run to the otherside of the mall and shout out
the top of my lungs, all of theannouncements that they had missed.
But my generals, my captains,they got to come in as cameos and.
(35:16):
You guys, you guys knockedit out of the park.
You really, really did.
And whenever I talked to thecaptains, they were just fierce.
They were fierce, fierce, like justbearers of this of this banner.
The John, I don't knowif you know John, Yep.
His whole thing was he went andfound table because this was,
everyone understood that thisadventure was going to be fighting
(35:36):
the undead and fighting cultists.
And so a lot of peopleshowed up with holy.
People like Paladinsand, and clerics mm-hmm.
Specifically designed to slaughterthe undead with their holy power.
And John was amazing.
He would go around and target tablesfull of paladins and clerics, and
he would just, just mess 'em up.
(35:57):
And I, that made me so happy because,and I, I always knew, I knew where
you were in the venue by whetheror not I could hear cheers from
a certain section of the venue.
Because people would, when, whenyou were just like, you'd have like
your book there and you would belike, monologuing as Vecna and you'd
be attacking them individually.
When people would cheer and get reallyexcited, I, I knew like, okay, cool.
(36:19):
Dax is down on the wall.
I can't be over at the Calvary.
He has, he has things handled over there.
I gotta be over there because the dayof, the day of, I was very busy just
kind of making sure that everythingmechanically was in place, right?
Mm-hmm.
Like the, the.
Suc reporting the successesand failures was my whole job.
Just making sure that that was happening.
So, and super spreadsheet.
Yeah, kind of.
(36:39):
Kind of.
And so when we, when I did see you outthere and when I did see your captains out
there, and when I did see l d a out there,I saw it heightening the experience in
a far more personal manner than I or anyof my moderators were capable of doing.
It made the event feel,you're right, it was personal.
It was this look in the eye.
Mm-hmm.
(37:00):
Like all of this is like youwere all, this is all connected.
Not something I could have done.
It was something you were ableto pull off and I just, yes.
It, it was beautiful.
It was something amazing.
How did you feel at the very endwhere we told everybody to walk in an
orderly fashioned down to the stage?
No trampling, but we want it all.
We didn't even know what the totalcount was at that point, but we wanted
(37:21):
everybody to see the final final scene.
How did that feel for you?
So we had, so I had the spreadsheet open.
I was watching the damage come in.
So for, for listeners who don't, aren'tquite sure what was happening, all the
players were allowed to roll damageall at once against Vecna and all that
damage would be added up and dealt tohis max HP and we had a set max HP.
(37:43):
And it was I mean, it's coolif I say it here, right?
It's cool if I say theexact numbers on here.
Not cool.
I don't know.
I don't, it's yours.
These are your secrets.
I know it was adjusted based on howmany tables we had and like a fair
number, knowing not every tablewould succeed in dealing damage.
There was a lot of little, therewere a lot of little things to be
calculated the day of to make it fair.
(38:05):
Fair but difficult.
Right?
Fair.
But challenging.
We underestimated our players.
We had set it to 20,000 hp.
20,000 we felt was, was reasonable.
I think we underestimated how manypeople were gonna show up, right?
Mm-hmm.
And then we also underestimatedthat there were those guys that
had tables full of Paladins Yes.
And bringing the Smite train.
(38:26):
Yeah.
Really.
And so they dealt, and so I waswatching as the number went up,
I had 20,000 sitting there and.
We, we knew that the adventure was overand people were walking up and I get,
I'm invited up on stage to be therefor the final scene and sitting, you
had you sit at the table as if you wereplaying in this, sitting at the table.
I'm looking at my phone and Iwatch it just soar past 20,000.
(38:49):
We hit 24,000 damage.
And I just thought like, my gosh,like I did not make that hard enough.
Like, that was next, nexttime it'll be 25 next time.
I think I, I think that, I think that ifit It was, it was, it was player count.
Like I didn't know exactly how manyplayers, cause there was a lot of people
who showed up just day of just somewalk-ins that I was unprepared for.
(39:09):
And there were those mid maxers.
But when I watched that number passand we told LDA and we told you
like, okay, like this is the ending,this is the one of the four ending.
I was just in shock.
I like put my phone in my pocketand I looked around and there was a
thousand people standing around meand I, it hadn't like hit me yet.
That it was over, right?
(39:30):
Like, there's like, oh, like I am,there's nothing left for me to do.
Like Dax is gonna just walkthis sucker into the end zone.
And I was kind of just like, I was just,I was just in shock until you said it was
the first time I saw you relaxed all day.
Yeah.
It was not relaxed.
It was not relaxed.
It was, it was exhaustion.
(39:50):
It was total fatigue.
You're like, I'm done.
It's finished.
Yeah.
It's proto with the ring on mount.
Once the ring goes in, not doom.
Yeah.
And he comes back outand he's like, it's done.
I'm like, Johnny, you need to sit down.
You need to sit down.
It's funny you said that.
It's funny you said that cuzafterwards I told the moderators
like, I hold your oath fulfilled.
You may go home, but Nice.
I sat there and you gavethis wonderful performance.
(40:12):
You went all that really justhammed it up in this very light.
Hammed up feels like a little itfeels a little derogatory, right?
It feels a little derogatory.
Yeah.
Because it was when it happened, right?
Like I, I, I don't know if you wannatell this a bit, but the end of the
story was that is that El Death died.
Elev died, and she surrendered, shesacrificed herself to destroy Vecna and
(40:36):
to allow the players this opportunityto, to like have hope and to, to
carry on themselves with the, thevision and the, the spirit of l d a.
And when l a fell to the ground, therewas like an audible, like, like, whoa.
I'm like, oh my gosh.
Like, whoa.
And I didn't expect that that happened.
(40:57):
And it like shocked me how,like silent, like the, the gasp
that came outta the audience.
Just this like, oh, like she,she died and it was, I don't
know if it, once again, it felt.
More, it felt more than anythingI could have just put on page.
(41:18):
Oh, there was another momentleading up to that that you probably
hadn't seen, but I'm gonna, I'mgonna talk about it next week.
Please, please, please.
Cause I want to, I want to hear it fromher head because I stopped and watched
the stage when she was just on it, butthat was, that was earlier in the game.
But yeah, that, that was so exciting.
And getting a thousand people toroll their dice all simultaneously.
(41:41):
That was beautiful.
That was one of the biggoals that Andrew had.
It, he, he wanted everyone rollingat once and wanted to hear that
that was a part of his vision.
From the very first meetingI had with him, I was like, I
want this scene at the very end.
And I was like, okay,we'll make it happen.
And it was a lot of workand a lot of coordination.
But
(42:02):
you it, we did it.
We did it.
We did it.
We did it.
And that was it.
And you performed thisbig final monologue.
And I felt it was, it was spectacular.
And, and the, the I, I gotthe hand of the microphone.
I'd had this speech practiceand I was just a gog.
(42:25):
I was just a GOG at the whole scenario.
I was, I just, I had nothingto say, but thank you.
I was like, thank you all forshowing up because I, it was
this, it was a community, right?
Yeah.
I was one guy who did onething and so many people.
Came together for this moment.
And if it hadn't been a thousandpeople, it wouldn't felt the same.
And if it hadn't been you, and ifit hadn't been Jamie, if it hadn't
(42:46):
been Andy, and if it hadn't been myfamily who flew in from overseas to be
there it wouldn't have been the same.
It was, it was, I wish that I couldcapture this moment for anybody
listening to this podcast, but I can't.
I can't.
It was, it was, it was a communallike story and I just, It
happened and you weren't there.
And I'm sorry, how didyou feel the next day?
(43:09):
I don't know about you, but I was inbed pretty much the whole next day.
It's like, church nothappening, kids feed yourselves.
Just kidding.
I'll give you cereal.
But but I got on my phone and I juststarted scrolling through social media
comments of people who were there, peoplesharing their pictures and their stories.
When you, did you see anyof those stories come in?
You mentioned the seeing l a videos.
(43:31):
What?
Yes.
How did that make you feel the day after?
So, I, I did, I did drag myself to church.
I did, I, I got up.
I couldn't even, it washard for me to walk.
It was hard for me to walk.
I was fatigued.
I would had to lean on thingswhere I would pass out.
And there were people at.
The church, right?
Like these, you know, these olderfolks, and they'd heard about it,
they'd heard they'd read about itin the local newspaper, of course.
(43:53):
Like they'd heard about it on thenews and they wanna hear about it.
And I was just, I, the lastthing I wanted to do was think
or talk about the event, right?
Like I but at the same time,like I, I, I went and saw those
things and people started reachingout and just saying Thank you.
Right.
It wasn't even a, it wasn't elike, and eventually people started
(44:13):
reaching out and being like, Hey,let's, let's figure something out.
Let's do a thing.
Like, let's do this again.
It's some other place.
And I was like, okay,look, let's talk later.
But so many people just came outtathe woodworks to say thank you.
Or some people didn't.
Right.
Some people did just like do a post.
I saw plenty of posts on Facebookand TikTok and my, my wife posted
it on Reddit and people justwere like, Hey, I was there.
(44:34):
Like, that was me.
And it was, it was.
I, I get, excuse me, I get alittle emotional thinking about it.
I don't know.
I don't know.
It was, it was, I've, I'vecreated a lot of stuff.
I've performed a lot ofstuff never before I do.
I think, has it reachedsuch a wide audience?
(44:56):
Never before.
Has never before has it had such atalented group of people making it happen.
Besides like the work thatI was putting into it.
I don't know if I'm a talented person,I know I'm a hard worker, but there's a
lot of folks there that were genuinelytalented and people would come up
and say like, Hey, like thank you.
And they didn't evenknow I was the writer.
They didn't know anything.
They just said like, Hey, likeyou were there at the event.
(45:18):
I knew that you werethere making it happen.
Thank you for just workingas hard as you did.
And every time I felt like thisrelease, it was this just, ah, I
don't know how else to explain it.
It was, it was a release.
It was just this, like, it was worth it.
It was all worth it.
And every time anyone sayslike, you did a good job.
I feel that way.
(45:38):
I feel this.
Like, I feel like I just woke upfrom the most restful nap ever.
Just for like five seconds.
I get this punch in the gut where I'mlike, Ooh, ooh, that's a good nap.
That, yeah.
Does that make up for allthe 3:00 AM writing sessions?
I still haven't recovered from that.
I'm still a bit of a mess.
But yeah.
I don't know how to explain it.
(45:59):
There's, there's no,there's no single look.
I got the, the only other thingthat is, that has competed
with it was my marriage, right?
Getting married was the most wonderfulday of my life, and it was so incredible.
And it's because I, it was a lotof hard work to get there too.
But this is, this is a second place.
This is.
Until I have a kid.
Right.
(46:20):
Have a kid.
Hey, that's, that's a good feeling too.
That's a great feeling too.
Thank you.
I don't know if I've said thank youenough for letting me in, for letting
me take your vision and put my owntwist on it, and then building on
my twist to put more of your twiston it because we, we built on each
other's energy, on each other's ideas.
(46:40):
I remember we were struggling tofigure out how we were going to
bring people back from the dead,and it was like, at the same time
we realized it's the holy symbols.
It's the holy symbols of l a,and those are going to become
the spheres that the final.
We looked at each other at thesame time and went like, like this.
Like L d a?
Yeah.
She was the solution to allof our problems and the story.
(47:03):
We, we'd had a few ideas like that,but we hadn't quite figured out
narratively how to make that work.
And while you may say thank you tome, like truly the collaboration
was, was a pleasure and a joy for me.
I was, I felt very much alone in, youknow, fighting against the storm and
feeling you just being there with me.
(47:25):
It was still a storm, right?
The storm didn't change.
The storm didn't get easier, thestorm got significantly harder.
But knowing that you, and knowing thatthe people that you brought with you
were there to collaborate and enhancethis experience, and then seeing
you guys do it so efficiently andsuccessfully I, I couldn't have asked.
I couldn't ask for anything better.
I couldn't have asked forbetter people working on the
things that you guys worked on.
Really, I mean, that.
(47:46):
Like, I'm a, I'm a jokey guy.
I say a lot of jokes.
I mean this sincerely.
Like I getting a little misty in here.
I've, I've been a part of alot of shows, been a part of a
lot of theater productions, andthis was this felt like that.
This felt like that.
Where it was, it was, you know, buton like, you know, 10 times that
scale where I was just like, I, I'm sohappy that I had people I could trust
(48:09):
handling everything that I couldn'tin my single role, and I really could.
Gosh, you guys, you guys nailed it.
I'm so happy about that.
That was six days ago.
Oh, woo.
Six days.
No, I, I went into, I went into the store.
I went into the storeto see Andy yesterday.
And I walked into the mall, and I'vebeen in that mall a hundred times.
(48:31):
I have lovely, lovely memories ofbeing in that mall, and I just, I
breathed in the mall, and that mallhas a very distinct scent, right?
Malls have different smellsand that distinct scent.
It knocked me right back to Saturday.
Not a single other memory, not any otherhappy evening with my wife or my friends.
It hit me back to Saturday and I couldsee a thousand people and a hun 200
(48:52):
tables, and it was like good P T S D.
What's that called?
I don't know.
Well, it's not traumatic.
Not traumatic, unlessit was just so happy.
Can't handle it.
No, you, you've made a very strongassociation, very very salient
association and the old factory senseis tied very strongly to memory.
(49:16):
Yes, yes.
That's fantastic.
So we did it.
We did.
We did it.
You did it.
You did it, and you did it.
And I hope no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Other people did it.
We, we did it.
We did it.
We did it.
Heaven sakes.
Don't, like, don't, don't shove any amountof responsibility of what you did onto me.
(49:37):
You did it too.
We did it.
Ah, it was awesome.
And every single person atevery single table has a unique
story about what happened.
And I.
I love hearing all of them, becausein a perfect world, I would've
been at every single table, justyes, enjoying every moment of it.
That's why I'm glad I hadcaptains to do that for me.
(49:58):
You had moderators to do thatfor you, and it's, we're still,
we still get to enjoy it.
We still get to enjoy the storiesthat are coming out and we're doing
a lot of interviews and a lot ofbehind the scenes stuff about it and.
I just want everybody to hear thestory cause it was so much fun.
Dear listener, if you want to see whatJohnny put together it is available to
(50:20):
purchase through drive through R ppg.
That should be linked in the description.
I, I had my free copy,but I still bought a copy.
I think I was the first one.
Like as soon as you sentit, I was like, boom.
Bought it.
I wanted to support you.
You're a real gex, you know that.
I appreciate that.
So yeah, and we had to file off someof the serial numbers you know Vecna.
(50:43):
Eldath yep.
Eldath.
But yeah, please support supportJohnny support this podcast.
I'm gonna be bringing on other people andhearing other perspectives of this event.
And thank you so much for, forcoming in on a Friday night.
Thank you for the two peoplewho watched this live.
There will be dozens of you someday.
(51:03):
There will be dozens of you.
Do you have any other questions for meor any final words you want to give?
Yeah.
What's the next big project for you?
Right?
You did evermore, you did this.
Where's the, where's,where's Dax headed next?
Oh, I had a, a meeting this morningwith a very big company that I can't say
anything about, and there's another thing.
(51:24):
What can I talk about?
I'm just running, running games and my, mydaughter turns one in a couple of weeks.
Like that's my next big adventure.
But I look forward to the next time youand I get to collaborate on something.
I've got some ideas.
We'll talk, get some sleepfirst and then then we'll talk.
I haven't been able to stop thinkingof new, I've come up with, I've also
(51:45):
had some ideas and I just wanna.
Everyone said, you know, when'sthe next time we're doing this?
And I just said like,oh, I'll figure it out.
Like, I don't have any ideas yet.
And then this week they'vejust come seeping in.
And so, so we'll see youguys next year, right?
We'll see.
Um, See you all next year, everybody.
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