Laura Ferguson
OK, I love Dungeons & Dragons. I run a game and am a player in another. I collect dice. I obsess over reddit threads discussing how to best fight beholders and I have over 70 characters created on the DnDBeyond website. So you can imagine how excited I was to see Diceratops Presents: When Dwarves Cry. The show involves Dungeons & Dragons played live on stage within the ongoing story that Diceratops has on their podcast. The Dungeon Master, Morgan Davies leads the story, creating the world and plot as the three other players interact with it. Hilarity and intrigue abound, dice are thrown, successes are cheered, failures are met with sympathetic hisses. This is definitely what I expect from DnD.
In a nutshell, Dungeons & Dragons consists of throwing dice when you decide you want your character to do something. The Dungeon Master (the one running the game) will tell you what dice to roll and what to add to it in order to see if you succeeded. You can let your imagination run wild, want to kick a mountain to see if you can cause an avalanche? Sure! Roll an Athletics check. Want to poke a sinister wizard in the face with something sharp? Absolutely, make a Attack roll. Want to invent, market and form a cult for your own brand of bubblegum? Go ahead and extoll this divine bubblegum’s virtues with a Persuasion check. And that’s DnD.
Morgan Davies is the DM for When Dwarves Cry. He is very confident in his world-building. He never really seems perturbed by the antics the rest of the cast throw at him. His arms flail as he describes the scene unfolding before us and smiles with glee throughout the show.
Davies’ players are improvisers and comedians and it is my understanding that Diceratops has a rotating cast on their podcast. Tonight we have Steven Youngblood, Wiremu Tuhiwai and Jarrod Baker. Respectively, they are playing Randy the dwarf, Ford the ranger and Frun, a mostly atheist priest. There are a lot of kittens, a bit of heartbreak and a fight with a mother-in-law and the audience love every second. The storyline bouncing easily through the 90-minute long show and I was impressed with how Davies kept the flow going to fit within the timeframe.
The show does state that any amount of DnD experience is alright for watching the show but it would slow down the pace an awful lot to explain every rule as the cast play. I would recommend having a basic grasp of gameplay before attending to avoid confusion and to help immersion into the story.
Diceratops Presents: When Dwarves Cry was only for one night at this years Fringe Festival but they do sporadically put shows on at BATS theatre. It is a good way to introduce friends to the game if they have an interest and especially if you’re a fan of the podcast, it is an absolute riot.
You can check out when the next Diceratops Presents show is on here.