Watch On
While Critical Role has partnered with Wizard of the Coast on collaborations like The Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount, most actual-play series where you can watch people play D&D are unofficial. Though there have been several produced by WotC over the years (I used to watch the Spelljammer campaign Legends of the Multiverse religiously), it seems they’re about to get back into them in a big way with the announcement of Dungeon Masters.
As D&D Beyond explains, this will be an anthology series, which suggests they’ll rotate through different campaigns and potentially cast members. It begins in Ravenloft, with a gothic-horror game run by Jasmine Bhullar (who ran one of my favorite Dimension 20 sidequests, Coffin Run, as well as DesiQuest). The players are Devora Wilde (Lae’zel from Baldur’s Gate 3), Neil Newbon (Astarion from Baldur’s Gate 3), Mayanna Berrin (Coupé from Dispatch), and Christian Navarro (Tony Padilla from 13 Reasons Why).
What marks Dungeon Masters out from unofficial actual-plays is that it’ll tie directly into upcoming D&D releases. In this case that’s Ravenloft: The Horrors Within, a supplement full of dark domains, monster stats, and subclasses, several of which will be shown off by the players in Dungeon Masters. Looks like Neil Newbon’s playing a gnome reanimator artificer, which I guess means a three-foot tall Doctor Frankenstein.
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Each episode will be accompanied by a “play-along pack” that includes an encounter based on one Jasmine Bhullar had planned, though “as with every D&D campaign, characters can take unexpected paths or make choices that send the story in a different direction.” It’ll also have stats for a monster from the supplement and a quickplay map you can use in D&D Beyond’s virtual tabletop.
The first play-along pack will be free, and will be released the day after the first two episodes of Dungeon Masters debut on April 22 at 6.30pm PT.
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