Man, I miss “D&D Live”...
We shot the FPWKK (Faster, Purple Worm! Kill! Kill!) TV show about eighteen months ago, over two chaotic weeks at the XRM Studios in Burbank. Since we were filming in the Los Angeles area, we did a series of warmup shows at the Guildhall bar, just a short hop from XRM, utilizing the absolutely stacked pool of local RPG talent here. Amateurish, frenzied and wonderful, each Guildhall show brought in faces we hadn’t seen in years, people who have played important roles in stitching together the fabric of what is now such a vibrant, diverse and supportive D&D community in Southern California. And every night, I’d hear the same two exclamations over and over:
We shot the FPWKK (Faster, Purple Worm! Kill! Kill!) TV show about eighteen months ago, over two chaotic weeks at the XRM Studios in Burbank. Since we were filming in the Los Angeles area, we did a series of warmup shows at the Guildhall bar, just a short hop from XRM, utilizing the absolutely stacked pool of local RPG talent here. Amateurish, frenzied and wonderful, each Guildhall show brought in faces we hadn’t seen in years, people who have played important roles in stitching together the fabric of what is now such a vibrant, diverse and supportive D&D community in Southern California. And every night, I’d hear the same two exclamations over and over:
- “Wait, you mean EVERYONE dies?”
- “Man, I miss D&D Live.”
For those who don’t know, “D&D Live” was a massive annual event hosted by Wizards of the Coast here in Los Angeles. It featured huge in-world sets from the latest adventure, dozens of licensees showing off their latest wares, and celebrity interviews… not to mention sword fights, live music, and pancakes in the shape of beholders. It only happened twice, in 2018 and 2019, but it instantly became everyone’s favorite RPG event. It was intimate, passionate, and lavish, all reasons why we shouldn’t have expected it to last.
D&D Live is a profound memory for us. We literally launched our company backstage at the 2018 event minutes before kickoff. We walked out onto the show floor knowing nobody and barely able to articulate what our company was selling. And all these other licensees - who we expected to look at us as competitors - went out of their way to lift us up. Jon Peterson of Art & Arcana fame bought our very first Platinum Edition. Why, Jon? We were idiots. You didn’t know us from Adam. We couldn’t even tell you what was in the box! I don’t remember his exact answer, but it was something along the lines of what we heard from dozens of others as the weekend went on: “We’re all in this together.”
Years later, LA’s D&D community persists but without the big events that bring us face-to-face. I think that’s why I heard that comment so much during Purple Worm: those crowds packed into the back of Guildhall were in some way looking for the next “D&D Live: Stream of Many Eyes.” Not the enormous plaster statues, necessarily, just the part where we all hang out together.
So now it’s 2024, and we’re committing hard to FPWKK continuing as a live event. We’re doing the big Cons, of course - San Diego Comic Con, Gen Con in Indy, and PAX Unplugged in Philadelphia are already booked - but what we really wanted was a residency here in LA. We’d be just like U2, except that instead of playing every night inside a hot glowing ball of advertisements, we’d perform like once a month in a comedy club where all the seats smell vaguely of gin. We lucked out on this front, because our friend Brian Baldinger, the Casting Director of FPWKK, now works at the world-famous Comedy Store in Hollywood. He liked the idea of us doing a monthly show there, but we’d have to prove ourselves first with a single show in July. Sell it out, be funny, don’t burn the building down. Those were the goals. In that order.
That first show happened this past Sunday, with an amazing cast of Luis Carazo, Paula Deming, Seth Green and our own Matthew Lillard, with Jon Ciccolini as DM and myself as host. We sold out and were greeted by a supportive crowd full of familiar faces. Backstage it was the most relaxed group I’d ever seen. All seasoned pros and veterans of our TV show, they knew exactly what was needed to grab that audience and keep it. I brought them out on stage one by one, Jon launched into the story, and the rest of the night was a big happy blur.
The adventure was a funny riff on the Wizard of Oz, ending with a massacre at the hands of a pack of flying demon monkeys. (Flying Demon Monkeys is also a great band name. Thank me later.) I always know a little bit about the story before I get out there, but you can never predict where the players will take it. We’re all improv-ing up there and the best moments come from places you don’t expect. Paula found out early on that her character was, in fact, a frustrated opera star, and she used that bizarre development to craft some key moments. Seth’s lounge-singer tabaxi bard brought down the house in an on-the-spot collaboration with our great accompanist, Scott Passarella. Luis made a brilliant move to melt a powerful hag that we hoped was the “Big Bad”, but sadly wasn’t. And then there was Matthew, reminding everyone that when you use INT as a dump stat, you’ve got to role play that shit to the hilt. “I’LL BE SURPRISED IF IT’S NOT A PORCUPINE.” Sheer bliss.
As a bonus, the building was most definitely NOT burned down.
So now we’ve got our residency. Just like U2, we will be performing a live D&D show once a month in Hollywood. It’s a dream space that’s right in our backyard. And most of all, we love the opportunity to put an amazing group of LA’s RPG artists on stage each month for everyone to enjoy and support. Because when it comes to fighting demon monkeys, we’re all in this together.
