Darkmagic vs. Do'Urden - Watch Friday's Night's Acquisition's, Inc. Game!

Friday night's two-plus hour live Acquisitions, Inc. game at PAX Prime is now available for your watching delight. Chris Perkins, dressed ... interestingly ... runs the Rage of Demons adventure in front of a live audience. The players were Mike Krahulik (playing the wizard Jim Darkmagic), Jerry Holkins (playing the half-elf Omin Dran), Scott Kurtz (playing the dwarf Binwin Bronzebottom), and Patrick Rothfuss (playing the rogue Viari). In the runup to it, it was billed as "Darkmagic vs. Drizzt Do’Urden".

[video=youtube;LA3VbDqj7C4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LA3VbDqj7C4&feature=youtu.be[/video]
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[Voort]

My DM sense wasn't twitching too bad until Omin cast two concentration spells at the same time.

 

[Dkase]

Lot's of pot shots about Salvatore. It'd be interesting if he shows up as a surprise guest at one of these things in the future!

 

[kingius]

I'm surprised by how much railroading there is here. I'm 12 minutes in and I've yet to hear the players actually make a decision about what they actually want to do. They seem pretty passive and content to let the DM move things along and to follow the 'plot'. This is really nothing like the old school philosophy of play.

 

[erwtenpeller]

There is a massive amount of railroading!

You have to remember, this is a stage show and an exhibition game first, a player's game second. They're there on stage to try and give the audience the most possible entertaining version of Dungeons & Dragons -- And that within a set time limit. Concessions have to be made.

 

[kingius]

That's true, but like in a film (or perhaps more accurately, in a play), wouldn't the audience prefer it if the players took their roles seriously? I was listening to them descending into the underdark thinking, hmmm... lol

Anyway, must be difficult to do something like this in front of so many people, but if I was Portia or whatever the name was, I wouldn't be thinking that these heroes are any good, I'd be 'Next!' So I suppose the whole thing is surreal, unreal, and everybody knows it.

It does show that D&D can be fun and if that was the intention then it's a success, however it is showing a particular style of D&D play which is to mess around a lot.

Edit - some of this is the problem with the plot to the module. The players are right; Drizzt is never going to die no matter what he faces. Should've caught that one WOTC!

 

[erwtenpeller]

It happens to be my favorite way to play. I'm also a big fan Terry Pratchet and Warcraft - I think there is something inherently silly about Fantasy stuff, and I like playing with those aspects. To me, that's what makes it so much fun!

I do like that one game (D&D, in this case) can cater to both audiences perfectly well. There's bound to be very serious D&D podcasts out there.

God roleplaying is fun.

 

[Hussar]

That's true, but like in a film (or perhaps more accurately, in a play), wouldn't the audience prefer it if the players took their roles seriously? I was listening to them descending into the underdark thinking, hmmm... lol

Anyway, must be difficult to do something like this in front of so many people, but if I was Portia or whatever the name was, I wouldn't be thinking that these heroes are any good, I'd be 'Next!' So I suppose the whole thing is surreal, unreal, and everybody knows it.

It does show that D&D can be fun and if that was the intention then it's a success, however it is showing a particular style of D&D play which is to mess around a lot.

Edit - some of this is the problem with the plot to the module. The players are right; Drizzt is never going to die no matter what he faces. Should've caught that one WOTC!

I wouldn't go that far. These guys didn't whack Drizz't but they certainly could have. The PC's were more than powerful enough to get the job done.

But, then again, I wouldn't read too much into what's going on here. There's a huge amount of fast and loose with the rules.

Absolutely loved the Purple Worm head inn though. That's some dark whimsy right there. Reminds me of the worm house in Land Beyond the Magic Mirror - you enter a fairly normal looking house that turns into a worm that eats you pretty quickly. Deadly encounter.

 

[kingius]

There were definitely some good ideas there. First one of these I've ever seen.

 

[Ningauble]

Wizards took down the video. It says video no longer available due to a copyright claim. Anyone know if it is up on WOTC's site or somewhere else? I had a 1/2 hr left. I'm bummed- I was enjoying the humor.

 

[pedr]

I think this should work as a link to the archive on the PAX Twitch channel: http://www.twitch.tv/pax/v/13339844 - it includes the Rage of Demons trailer and the animated recap, which wasn't on the video some third party uploaded to YouTube. Things start about 40 minutes in, I seem to recall.

If you want to watch on a mobile you may need to go to the desktop site and add the channel as a favourite then use the Twitch app, rather than watching in a browser.

WotC are likely to upload a version of the video to their YouTube channel once they have time to process it.