The show is exact­ly thus — four great actors play­ing Dun­geons and Drag­ons on stage, led by an emi­nent­ly like­able DM.

I must admit I had my qualms when com­ing to this show, as I’ve always found play­ing D&D to be more fun than watch­ing it, but the cast is excel­lent, the mood appro­pri­ate, and the cam­paign very fun. Good vibes all round.

Har­ri­et Preb­ble is the show’s gnome cler­ic, This­tle, who’s badass and per­haps has a bit of a Trag­ic Back­sto­ry. Allan Hen­ry plays Armand — a wild-haired tiefling bar­bar­ian with a pen­chant for pulling off peo­ple’s arms and a gener­ic East­ern-Euro­pean/­vam­pir­ic accent. Gavin Ruther­ford brings a cer­tain foot­ball spec­ta­tor cheek­i­ness to human sor­cer­er Gart, and Gabriela Rocha plays high elf rogue Kyrrha with a great wil­i­ness. The four friends are joined by a colour­ful cast of char­ac­ters played by Dun­geon Mas­ter, Ryan McIn­tyre.

Our group of trav­ellers has escaped a port and are sail­ing the wild open seas. To where? Who real­ly knows — but there’ll def­i­nite­ly be some ‘boat things’ to do along the way. Through fights with geot­her­mic fairies, ten­u­ous rela­tion­ships and lots of rope coil­ing, they find their way to Thistle’s home­land to dis­cov­er the fate of her vil­lage. But first, they must fight an orc and a much put-upon human accoun­tant named Steve (STEVE!!!!!) and gen­er­al­ly make nice with the locals.

It’s so nice to join the group from with­in the sto­ry some­what — there’s none of that get­ting-to-know-you awk­ward­ness, no uncom­fort­able pos­tur­ing — these char­ac­ters know each oth­er, have rela­tion­ships and def­i­nite­ly have rival­ries. For a fair­ly impro­vised piece, with a degree of com­plex­i­ty to it, the show runs smooth­ly, and there’s some excel­lent one-lin­ers, as well as some excel­lent dice rolls (five nat 20s from Rocha alone). The sto­ry­telling is supreme — McIn­tyre is an excel­lent DM, with plen­ty of voic­es for addi­tion­al char­ac­ters, and a quick wit — and the world feels well-formed and well-spo­ken around the main sto­ry.

Per­haps there’s a lit­tle too much of the prob­lem­at­ic ele­ments that D&D often falls into (can we say colo­nial­ist ideals and iffy stereo­typ­ing of cer­tain char­ac­ters?) but for the most part, the show feels fresh and excit­ing.

My only regret is that I did­n’t get tick­ets for the rest of the sea­son.

(Seri­ous­ly though, some­one keep me post­ed on the plot?)

 

This show is sold out, but you can (and should) find D&D games being played lit­er­al­ly every­where in Welling­ton these days. (It’s a good time, get amongst.)