Speaker 1: So are we gonna are we gonna use spells or
Speaker 1: just well we were working on this episode. Our supervising
Speaker 1: producer Vicky Ergolina told us her twelve year old son,
Speaker 1: who loves video games, was having friends over for a
Speaker 1: game session. But the game they were excited to play
Speaker 1: didn't require a VR headset or even a controller. It
Speaker 1: wasn't Fortnite or Destiny or Minecraft. Now. They wanted to
Speaker 1: play a fantasy game that's almost fifty years old and
Speaker 1: all you need to play is a pen, a piece
Speaker 1: of paper, and many sided dice. Yeah, you got it.
Speaker 1: They were playing Dungeons and Dragons. When you're playing video games,
Speaker 1: you can't really see your friends and actually like interact
Speaker 1: interact with them. And with D and D you can
Speaker 1: like look at your friends and you can like talk
Speaker 1: the situation out and like what you're gonna do to
Speaker 1: like save your friend or like slay a monster or something.
Speaker 1: It's like an open world, like you can go whever
Speaker 1: you want, and like, I like like some of the
Speaker 1: monsters and like, yeah, it's fun most of the time.
Speaker 1: I'm the DM, so I really like making the stories.
Speaker 1: But about playing DUD, I really like working with my
Speaker 1: teammates and just like finding ways to beat the monsters
Speaker 1: in like clever ways. It's freedom, the way that you
Speaker 1: can just go wherever you want, make any decisions you want,
Speaker 1: and the fact that like the decisions you make, you're
Speaker 1: just free completely and dandy. Literally, look it's one. I
Speaker 1: got a lore I you from Bloomberg News and I
Speaker 1: Heeart Radio. It's the big take. I'm West Cosova today.
Speaker 1: Dungeons and Dragons is a massive game? Can it become
Speaker 1: a massive business? Too? Generations of players old and young,
Speaker 1: As we just heard there has spent untold hours playing
Speaker 1: D and D. Now, the game's company, Hasbro, is hoping
Speaker 1: to cash in on that popularity with a big budget
Speaker 1: movie and an array of D and D products intended
Speaker 1: to hook players and keep them paying for more. Business
Speaker 1: Week correspondent Felix Gillette is here to explain why that
Speaker 1: might be a risky bet. This did not go over
Speaker 1: well with the D and D world, and later in
Speaker 1: the show, you know you'll sit down at a table
Speaker 1: with them, and the entire conversation you're going to realize
Speaker 1: is going to be stories and experiences that they had
Speaker 1: in their game. We hear from a store owner who
Speaker 1: caters to the D and D crowd. Felix. Today we're
Speaker 1: talking about something I never thought we'd do an episode about.
Speaker 1: But in the BusinessWeek story you've written with Thomas Buckley,
Speaker 1: you say people are looking to make Dungeons and Dragons,
Speaker 1: of all things, into a big moneymaker. Why now after
Speaker 1: all these years? Yeah, I mean Dungeons and Dragons is
Speaker 1: kind of the classic role playing game that was invented
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventies, so it's coming up on its fiftieth birthday.
Speaker 1: For those who haven't played before. You basically create a
Speaker 1: character according to these set of rules, and then you
Speaker 1: sit around with a group of friends. One person serves
Speaker 1: as the dungeon Master, and they kind of guide the
Speaker 1: players through these group adventures. A lot of it is
Speaker 1: based on your imagination, and then there's these books that
Speaker 1: have endless rules for like how you fight and the
Speaker 1: monsters and how you engage with them and spells you
Speaker 1: can use. And it's really fun, and it's going through
Speaker 1: this enormous resurgence in the last couple of years where
Speaker 1: it's probably more popular now than it's ever been, and
Speaker 1: that's because of a number of different factors. I think
Speaker 1: part of it is a generational thing. There's all these
Speaker 1: people like myself who played as a kid who are
Speaker 1: now grown up and have more spending power and have
Speaker 1: gotten their kids into it. It's been very prominent on
Speaker 1: the Netflix hit show Stranger Things, which has introduced a
Speaker 1: whole new group of people to this game. Shadow girls
Speaker 1: on the wall behind you, swallowing you in darkness, It
Speaker 1: is almost here. What is it? But Jesus were so
Speaker 1: screwed if it's not an army of trauga that's charge
Speaker 1: into the chamber. And there's also this whole new crew
Speaker 1: of D and D influencers. So if you go on
Speaker 1: YouTube you can watch shows, there's D and D podcasts, TikTok,
Speaker 1: the whole thing. And it's a game that lends itself
Speaker 1: very well to live streaming. It's kind of a mix
Speaker 1: of fantasy, imagination, storytelling, improvisation and comedy. And if you
Speaker 1: have a bunch of funny people doing it, it's pretty
Speaker 1: entertaining to watch. And so the thing behind it really
Speaker 1: is this story that the story is unfolding in real time.
Speaker 1: You don't really know which direction it's gonna go. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's just a bunch of obstacles that come out. Usually
Speaker 1: players will have an adventure module that will kind of
Speaker 1: provide a setting and the large goal and some of
Speaker 1: the monsters that you might encounter along the way. But
Speaker 1: it's very much up to the dungeon master to turn
Speaker 1: that loose structure of a campaign into a linear series
Speaker 1: of events and challenges, and it's up to the players
Speaker 1: to try and solve the problems and get their characters
Speaker 1: to the end. And there's an element of chance in this, yes,
Speaker 1: and a lot of it. It's all basically determined through
Speaker 1: rolling of dice, and the classic D and D cultural
Speaker 1: icon is the twenty sided die, which if you have
Speaker 1: ever played it just has a certain feel that twenty
Speaker 1: side is amazing. I just love it, even to this day.
Speaker 1: I haven't played Dungeons and Dragons myself for more than
Speaker 1: thirty years, but even so, you pick up one of
Speaker 1: those twenty sided dice and it's just it's sweet. So
Speaker 1: you were at Dungeons and Dragons kid, Oh? Yeah. We
Speaker 1: had this great babysitter when I was in late elementary
Speaker 1: and early junior high school who had this babysitter, Pip
Speaker 1: Pippa Potter, who introduced me and my brother and our
Speaker 1: best friend to it, and she was an amazing dungeon master,
Speaker 1: and we played for years every time she came over
Speaker 1: to babysit us. Eventually, Pippa went to college and then
Speaker 1: we realized we would have to do it ourselves, and
Speaker 1: my brother, who was older than May, became the dungeon master,
Speaker 1: but me and my friend Daniel really could never accept
Speaker 1: his authority and it fell apart from there. Back in
Speaker 1: the day, I mean, I remember when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: I was not a D and D kid, but a
Speaker 1: lot of friends who played in like some of their
Speaker 1: parents thought this was a terrible influence on their lives. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventies, as this was gaining popularity, there
Speaker 1: was all this stuff about don't let your kids play
Speaker 1: Dungeons and Dragons, it's going to ruin their brain. On
Speaker 1: the one hand, I think it actually drew players in
Speaker 1: and increase the popularity of the game among teenagers in particular.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, it made it difficult for Dungeons
Speaker 1: and Dragons owners, the businesses that were trying to make
Speaker 1: money from this game. I think over the years it
Speaker 1: really has hurt D and d's ability to kind of
Speaker 1: branch out and become a broader, more mainstream, family friendly brand,
Speaker 1: which has kind of been the goal of its owners
Speaker 1: for like almost a half century now, and now all
Speaker 1: these years later, that's exactly what some big companies are
Speaker 1: trying to do. Try to take this game that was
Speaker 1: once seen as edgy and now kind of looks a
Speaker 1: little wholesome and make it into a really big brand. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: Dungeons and Dragons is now owned by Hasbro, which is
Speaker 1: one of the largest toy companies in the world. They
Speaker 1: have monopoly, they have scrabbled, they have toggled, they have transformers,
Speaker 1: all these different toys in games in their portfolio of brands.
Speaker 1: And during the last couple of years, as there's been
Speaker 1: this huge surge in interest in playing Dungeons and Dragons,
Speaker 1: Hasbro has looked at this and they've said, Wow, this
Speaker 1: is like a great opportunity to really make a lot
Speaker 1: more money from this brand. And last year Hasbro set
Speaker 1: this aggressive growth goal and they said, we're gonna increase
Speaker 1: our profits by fifty percent over the next three years.
Speaker 1: And as they laid out their strategy for doing this,
Speaker 1: they pointed to Dungeons and Dragons. They said, that's really
Speaker 1: an under monetized brand, and we see it as a
Speaker 1: big potential growth sector for us. So what's kind of
Speaker 1: fascinating now is we're really at the forefront of Hasbro's
Speaker 1: blitz to really make more money from Dungeons and Dragons.
Speaker 1: So over the next year you're going to see all
Speaker 1: these D and D brand extensions coming down the pipeline.
Speaker 1: And the first really big one is Hasbro's E one
Speaker 1: studio and Paramount Pictures recently premiered Dungeons and Dragons Honor
Speaker 1: among Thieves, which is this big, CGI laden blockbuster movie,
Speaker 1: comedy adventure movie. Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Hugh Grant all
Speaker 1: star in this movie. I think exactly that you bring
Speaker 1: to this. I'm a planner. I make plants. You've already
Speaker 1: made the plant, so the existing plan fails. I make
Speaker 1: a new plant, so you make plants that fail. He
Speaker 1: also plays the loot not relevant. So this is one
Speaker 1: of their big investments. There's also Balter's Gate three, which
Speaker 1: is a video game based on Dungeons and Dragons that's
Speaker 1: coming out later this year. They've announced that Paramount Plus
Speaker 1: the streaming service is working on a live action D
Speaker 1: and D series, and next year they're going to be
Speaker 1: rolling out one D and D, which is the next iteration,
Speaker 1: the next edition of the classic tabletop game. In addition
Speaker 1: to new rule sets and new books, they're also promising
Speaker 1: fans that this is going to be a more digitized experience,
Speaker 1: and it's going to come with all these new digital
Speaker 1: add ons, including a virtual tabletop, which is basically a
Speaker 1: three D environment. Hasbro really for years has been looking
Speaker 1: at Dungeons and Dragons and thinking, how can we make
Speaker 1: this more of a digital experience, because, frankly, the classic
Speaker 1: tabletop role playing industry is pretty small. It's one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty million dollars of retail sales in the US
Speaker 1: and Canada, which, when you think about it, is less
Speaker 1: than the studio can make from a single hit movie
Speaker 1: or a single video game. So part of the effort
Speaker 1: to grow Dungeons and Dragons is, okay, what can we
Speaker 1: do that's something in between a game you play around
Speaker 1: a table with your friends and not quite a video game.
Speaker 1: And when the pandemic hit in twenty twenty, it sort
Speaker 1: of accelerated the process, right because suddenly you couldn't get
Speaker 1: together with your friends and sit around a table, and
Speaker 1: so you started seeing a real uptick and you know, okay, well,
Speaker 1: let's get together over zoom or discord. Traditionally, you would
Speaker 1: keep track of your character's evolution on a piece of
Speaker 1: paper with a pencil. While we can't really see each
Speaker 1: other's characters, like, maybe there's an app. There was an
Speaker 1: app called D and D Beyond that allowed you to
Speaker 1: do this digitally. People started playing a lot of times
Speaker 1: with D and D Beyond open on their phone, and
Speaker 1: that service, which at the time was independent, that got
Speaker 1: a lot of growth. Upsurged during the early months of
Speaker 1: the pandemic. So Hasbro was watching all of this and
Speaker 1: they were thinking, Okay, the evolution is happening. We want
Speaker 1: to get involved in this, we want to get ahead
Speaker 1: of this. So last year they went out and they
Speaker 1: acquired D and D Beyond. They paid close to one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty million dollars, and now they're essentially saying
Speaker 1: they're going to make this the center of the D
Speaker 1: and D experience. I think what they ideally would like
Speaker 1: is for D and D players to use the D
Speaker 1: and D Beyond app while they're playing the game. They'd
Speaker 1: like people to go on to the D and D
Speaker 1: Beyond forums to chat with their friends, and even more so,
Speaker 1: they would like people to start gathering virtually in this
Speaker 1: virtual tabletop that's coming out and once they're there, I
Speaker 1: think their ideas, Okay, well, how are we going to
Speaker 1: make more money for the game. And they're kind of
Speaker 1: looking at this model that's very popular in the video
Speaker 1: game world, which is like, we'll give away the digital experience,
Speaker 1: either for free or for a low cost, but once
Speaker 1: you're in there, we're going to lure you with all
Speaker 1: the potential add ons for your characters, so you can
Speaker 1: get you a cool outfit for your wizard or like
Speaker 1: a new spell that lights up the screen or something,
Speaker 1: and you'll pay us like a couple of dollars here
Speaker 1: and there. And they're hoping that all these micro transactions
Speaker 1: will add up to a lot more money over time
Speaker 1: when we come back. Can Hasbro get people to pay
Speaker 1: for a game that's been nearly free for decades. My
Speaker 1: name is Eric and I'm from Cincinnati, Ohio. I think
Speaker 1: the beautiful thing about DND is that's a game where
Speaker 1: you can see yours and the other players in the tables.
Speaker 1: Decisions and choices impact the world, the story, and the characters.
Speaker 1: In another medium like video games, you can really only
Speaker 1: solve a problem in a way that the designer planned
Speaker 1: for you to be able to solve, whereas in D
Speaker 1: and D you're able to address problems these creative, out
Speaker 1: of the box solutions that maybe you're the only person
Speaker 1: that would have thought of to try it that way,
Speaker 1: but then you're able to see that scenario play out
Speaker 1: and how that would impact the world and the story Felix.
Speaker 1: Hasbro is trying to turn what's always been is very
Speaker 1: face to face analog game into something more digital, which
Speaker 1: makes sense. But you had mentioned earlier that there's been
Speaker 1: this resurgence in playing D and D, and a lot
Speaker 1: of that, is you right, was based on the fact
Speaker 1: that it wasn't digital. It was almost like proudly antidigital.
Speaker 1: Are people going to accept what Hasbro is trying to
Speaker 1: get them to do. I think it's going to be
Speaker 1: a tough sell. I think that part of the appeal,
Speaker 1: as you said, of Dungeons and Dragons is that it
Speaker 1: is this analog experience, and I think it's a way
Speaker 1: of getting together with friends where you don't have to
Speaker 1: deal with all the trappings of digital life, social media feedback,
Speaker 1: you know, cameras, microphones, Like it's a really great feeling
Speaker 1: to get back and just sit around at a table
Speaker 1: with people, and I think that's been part of the appeal.
Speaker 1: Then I think it's also been really fascinating to watch
Speaker 1: now because the concern of parents almost universally, is like,
Speaker 1: our kids are spending too much time on the screens, right,
Speaker 1: They're just always playing video games, looking at social media,
Speaker 1: watching their streaming shows, and this huge desire to get
Speaker 1: them off the screens and to do anything else. And
Speaker 1: I think D and D has been great and very
Speaker 1: appealing for that very reason. So now you see parents
Speaker 1: really wanting their kids to go play D n Z.
Speaker 1: Go down in the basement, Hey, get the dice out.
Speaker 1: You know, you guys will have fun. And I think
Speaker 1: ironically that's been part of the multigenerational boom that D
Speaker 1: and D has been experiencing in popularity is its appeal
Speaker 1: as an analog product. So I think that's part of
Speaker 1: the challenge that hasro is going to have. The other
Speaker 1: big part of the challenge is that historically, part of
Speaker 1: the reason that Dungeons and Dragons has been a difficult
Speaker 1: business for its various owners over the years to monetize
Speaker 1: is because of something about the fan base itself and
Speaker 1: anything that reeks of kind of unfettered commercialization or dumming
Speaker 1: down the game. They get very very vocal that, like,
Speaker 1: this is not a good thing. Hasbro actually found themselves
Speaker 1: in this huge controversy with its fan base. Basically what
Speaker 1: happened is that twenty three years ago, the original company
Speaker 1: that owned Dungeons and Dragons, they sold the business to
Speaker 1: Wizards of the Coast, which was this hobby company outside
Speaker 1: of Seattle, which had this hit game called Magic the Gathering,
Speaker 1: and they were flush with cash. They go out they
Speaker 1: buy D and D and so what they did, and
Speaker 1: this was very smart, probably the best decision that's been
Speaker 1: made in the fifty year history of Dungeons Dragons, as
Speaker 1: they said, we're going to adopt this open game light
Speaker 1: and it was essentially saying, if you're a fan of
Speaker 1: the game, if you like to play it, and you
Speaker 1: want to create a little add on feature, you want
Speaker 1: to write an adventure module that you could take your
Speaker 1: friends through and it's really fun, and you decide you
Speaker 1: want to sell it, that's great. You don't have to
Speaker 1: ask us for permission and go start selling it. Yourself.
Speaker 1: It's kind of been taken for granted that that's how
Speaker 1: the D and D world works. And the other thing
Speaker 1: that was great about this open licensing framework is it
Speaker 1: really broadened the types of people. The groups of people
Speaker 1: that were playing Dungeons and Dragons initially was a lot
Speaker 1: of boys in the Midwest, men in the Midwest playing
Speaker 1: This is kind of the community that grew out of
Speaker 1: Now you suddenly you have more women coming in, you
Speaker 1: have more people of color, and allowed people to make
Speaker 1: characters and adventures that appealed to them and their friends,
Speaker 1: and it was this great diversifying effect on the broader
Speaker 1: Dungeons and Dragons community. Felix, why do I feel like
Speaker 1: there's a big butt coming here? Yeah. But then late
Speaker 1: last year, Hasbro started reaching out to people in the
Speaker 1: role playing game community and saying, oh, you know what,
Speaker 1: we have this new contract that's going to replace the
Speaker 1: open game license. We're going to update it. And when
Speaker 1: people took a look at it, all help broke loose.
Speaker 1: I mean, people were so pissed off because essentially what
Speaker 1: it signaled in many small ways was that the open
Speaker 1: Dungeons and Dragons era was coming to an end, and
Speaker 1: it was going to be replaced with something else, in
Speaker 1: which Hasbro was much more tightly controlling the ecosystem around
Speaker 1: Dungeons and Dragons. If you were a publisher and you
Speaker 1: were making more than fifty thousand dollars a year from
Speaker 1: D and D related products, you'd have to go to
Speaker 1: them and say exactly what it was you were selling
Speaker 1: and to who. If you were making more than seven
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year, then it would
Speaker 1: kick in a licensing fee, and this did not go
Speaker 1: over well with the D and D world, huge controversy
Speaker 1: in that world. So by the end of January, Hasbro
Speaker 1: essentially capitulated. They apologize we're going to keep the open
Speaker 1: gaming license in place and we want everyone to participate.
Speaker 1: They did not really say too much about the future.
Speaker 1: So to what degree third party creators are going to
Speaker 1: be able to create supplemental materials in this new hybrid
Speaker 1: digital Dungeons and Dragons world. That's very much something that
Speaker 1: D and D fans and creators and community members are
Speaker 1: wondering about. In all of this, there's nothing that keeps
Speaker 1: people from just using the old books they use when
Speaker 1: they were kids. Are the ones that are still out
Speaker 1: there and just doing their own games. It's not like
Speaker 1: you have to be part of the Hasbro ecosystem now
Speaker 1: to plate Dungeons and Dragons. Correct. You could go back
Speaker 1: and play the original Dungeons Dragons, you could play Vance
Speaker 1: Dungeons and Dragons. You could play the second edition, the
Speaker 1: third edition, the fourth edition. There are all these books circulating,
Speaker 1: rule sets circulating over the years. I think the difference
Speaker 1: is that, especially if you're kind of watching the Dungeons
Speaker 1: and Dragons influencers on Twitch, and you're you know, going
Speaker 1: on YouTube and watching people talk about the game, and
Speaker 1: you're listening to D and D podcasts, I think all
Speaker 1: of that has added an element of currency and wanting
Speaker 1: to be part of the new version because you know,
Speaker 1: the old versions work, but the rules are different, and
Speaker 1: this is really just there's no board game involved with
Speaker 1: Dungeons Dragons. It's really the rules. And so I think,
Speaker 1: if anything, this broader ecosystem of Dungeons and Dragons fans
Speaker 1: that's built up has put more emphasis on being part
Speaker 1: of the era. And like I said, I think that's
Speaker 1: part of the reason that the current edition, which is
Speaker 1: the fifth edition, is the most popular in the game's history.
Speaker 1: I think the question becomes how many of those devoted
Speaker 1: happy fifth edition players is Hasbro going to be able
Speaker 1: to move over to this new version? And is there
Speaker 1: some risk of as you're trying to broaden this, as
Speaker 1: you're trying to make it more digital, as you're trying
Speaker 1: to make it more appealing to non players, do you
Speaker 1: lose something and do you potentially risk alienating this group
Speaker 1: of existing fans that are playing it happily now? So
Speaker 1: what do you think the answer is? Hasbro is putting
Speaker 1: a big bet on this game. It's still a really
Speaker 1: complicated game, is still sort of a niche game. Do
Speaker 1: you think that they can build this into a mass
Speaker 1: market success? I think it's going to be really difficult.
Speaker 1: I think the nature of Dungeons and Dragons is that
Speaker 1: the most important element is the imagination of the people
Speaker 1: who are playing in the group, and that's a very
Speaker 1: hard thing to turn into a product. So, Felix, after
Speaker 1: writing the story, has it rekindled your childhood love of
Speaker 1: D and D? Are you going to start playing again?
Speaker 1: It has? I'm very game to start playing again. I
Speaker 1: want to get my kids into it. We've been playing
Speaker 1: a stripped down role playing game that's much simpler, that's
Speaker 1: kind of geared for younger kids called Hero Kids, that
Speaker 1: similarly uses a lot of the conventions of Dungeons and Dragons.
Speaker 1: But I think it's a feeling like it might be
Speaker 1: time to graduate them up to Dungeons and Dragons. Felix,
Speaker 1: thanks for coming on a show My pleasure. After the break,
Speaker 1: we meet a store owner who makes a living serving
Speaker 1: these gamers. My name is Raven and I'm from eastern Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: growing up in a religious community. D and D was
Speaker 1: something that I had heard foreign tails of, this strange
Speaker 1: game that people would partake in, and I didn't really
Speaker 1: know where, understand a whole lot about it, only that
Speaker 1: I was dissuaded from playing it. So as an adult,
Speaker 1: coming to D and D was interesting. I'm a person
Speaker 1: who's very involved in the arts, so the idea of
Speaker 1: being able to make up a story and live in
Speaker 1: that story was very appealing. We wanted to talk to
Speaker 1: someone who's deeply familiar with Dungeons and Dragons and the
Speaker 1: people who play it, and also what it takes to
Speaker 1: make D and D a business. Our producer Michael Falero
Speaker 1: called up Lauren Bolanco she's the co owner of twenty
Speaker 1: Sided that's a board game retail store and event space
Speaker 1: in Brooklyn. Can you describe how you would explain your
Speaker 1: business to folks if they asked, like, what do you do?
Speaker 1: What is twenty sided do? How do you explain it?
Speaker 1: Twenty Sided Store and twenty Sided event Space has been
Speaker 1: going on for twelve years. The detail side of things,
Speaker 1: we sell games on the secondary market, so we sell
Speaker 1: a lot of board games, everything from party games to
Speaker 1: heavy strategy games. We started off as an event space
Speaker 1: and the retail kind of grew out of that. When
Speaker 1: we started, we were running Magic the Gathering events and
Speaker 1: then started picking up Wizards of the Coast, Dungeons and Dragons,
Speaker 1: organized play kits, all kinds of ways for people to
Speaker 1: come together and meet other people. I think over the
Speaker 1: twelve years, we've really realized that that's been kind of
Speaker 1: the key is, you know a lot of people are
Speaker 1: looking for other people who are into this hobby and
Speaker 1: they want to find other people to play with. What
Speaker 1: we do at twenty sided is we create an environment
Speaker 1: where people can come and learn how to play as
Speaker 1: they're playing. So we started off right away with that
Speaker 1: kind of being the foremost of it, we would have
Speaker 1: pregenerated characters that you could play, and then as you
Speaker 1: sort of got a little bit more familiar with it,
Speaker 1: we'd have opportunities for our dispense to create their own
Speaker 1: characters and bring those characters back. But then there's also
Speaker 1: now these experiences where you know, people want to watch
Speaker 1: other people play games. Because there were people who constantly
Speaker 1: were like, I'm new to this, I'm really afraid to
Speaker 1: try this out. Is there any way that I could watch?
Speaker 1: But then eventually I thought, oh, you know what if
Speaker 1: we have people that are willing to be on stage
Speaker 1: and want to perform this for other people, then this
Speaker 1: is a way that we could have an audience for
Speaker 1: somebody who walks off the street. You've described kind of
Speaker 1: this learning how to make a character, learning how to
Speaker 1: start playing, which can be an overwhelming but a very
Speaker 1: fun experience. If someone walks in during one of these
Speaker 1: nights where you have an of these events going out,
Speaker 1: what are they most likely to see? Are they sitting
Speaker 1: down at a table with other folks like paying us
Speaker 1: a picture? Yeah, it all starts off with you know,
Speaker 1: you just preregister on our website for either one session
Speaker 1: or I like to kind of group it into smaller,
Speaker 1: more palatable ways for people to register for an event.
Speaker 1: You know, we're all adults and lives are busy, So
Speaker 1: if we do campaigns, I will have people sign up
Speaker 1: maybe for four weeks at a time, and so there's
Speaker 1: always an opportunity to kind of take a break or
Speaker 1: come back. And then for the individual sessions, we try
Speaker 1: to write things in a way where each of the
Speaker 1: storylines can have an end, even if they're just a
Speaker 1: one shot. But if you keep bringing that character back
Speaker 1: for a series of one shots, they are all still
Speaker 1: sort of set in the same world where you can
Speaker 1: keep bringing that character back. And I've started creating my
Speaker 1: own world for this experience. Even though we've got a huge,
Speaker 1: huge selection of role playing games that we sell and
Speaker 1: different games that we run at the store, Dungeons and
Speaker 1: Dragons is still probably our best seller and the one
Speaker 1: that most people want to play and learn how to play.
Speaker 1: You've had this business for twelve years. You just had
Speaker 1: your anniversary recently. Just describe in a few words, like
Speaker 1: how has the D and D scene at your store
Speaker 1: changed in those twelve years. It's changed a lot, you know,
Speaker 1: for the most part, now almost everybody has a better
Speaker 1: idea of how to play and what it is. And
Speaker 1: I think that's because they're watching other people play. There's
Speaker 1: a lot more resources out there for people to watch, right, Like,
Speaker 1: can I just see how this is done? How do
Speaker 1: people do this? So back when we were first running games,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of it was people came to
Speaker 1: it realizing that they were an equal participant in the process.
Speaker 1: And I think now there's more of this expectation of
Speaker 1: this entertainment value. So for an audience like hours that
Speaker 1: I would imagine most of them haven't played D and D.
Speaker 1: Could you explain, you know, what is the appeal of
Speaker 1: the game for everyone? What can the appeal be? You know,
Speaker 1: we get to develop a world and create a character
Speaker 1: and play in this fantasy environment that is super fun.
Speaker 1: And I think for people who play in ongoing campaigns,
Speaker 1: you know, you'll sit down at a table with them
Speaker 1: and the entire conversation you're going to realize is going
Speaker 1: to be stories and experiences that they had in their game.
Speaker 1: They're memorable, you know, these things that happen because you
Speaker 1: are part of the storytelling process that you create something.
Speaker 1: The support and the encouragement from everybody around you helps
Speaker 1: you create things that you never thought you could do,
Speaker 1: to come up with ideas that you never thought you
Speaker 1: could ever have, And that's where I think you get
Speaker 1: these memorable experiences that stick with you for life. So
Speaker 1: you know, it's wild. Lauren Blanco, thanks so much for
Speaker 1: coming on the show. Yeah, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: having me. This was a pleasure. Thanks for listening to
Speaker 1: us here at The Big Take. It's a daily podcast
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Speaker 1: a great weekend.