Wizards of the Coast launches official Dungeons & Dragons Actual Play show

Wizards of the Coast is getting back into the Actual Play game. Today, Wizards announced via Variety that they are launching a new Actual Play show called Dungeon Masters, starring Jasmine Bhullar as the Dungeon Master along with players Mayanna Berrin, Christian Navarro, Neil Newbon and Devora Wilde. Wilde and Newbon are veterans of Baldur's Gate 3, a smash hit for the Dungeons & Dragons IP. However, both actors will be playing new characters and not their Baldur's Gate 3 characters.

Of note is that the show will feature "official, unreleased D&D content" which will be put up for sale on D&D Beyond following every episode. The first arc takes place in Ravenloft and will feature content from Ravenloft: The Horrors Within. New episodes will be released weekly on YouTube, starting on April 22nd.

Wizards of the Coast previously produced several official D&D Actual Play series, including Dice, Camera, Action and Force Grey. Dice, Camera, Action was their flagship D&D program for years until it unceremoniously ended due to a scandal involving two of its players.

 

[plecostomus]

I thought it was a very clever how they got to Innsmouth, and with all the characters as-is. I was wondering how they were going to pull off, "You get back to Baldur's Gate...but then the mists surge up and grab you again!"

As it turns out, they didn't need to! Will be curious if anyone dies here, though I can at least see many possible explanations for that having no immediate effect back in the main plot.

Also if anyone was curious about how the voices sound without the post-processing, when Shorts are posted, those don't have it.

• Devora SLAPS Neil!!! | Dungeon Masters Official D&D Actual Play Series
• We Are PARENTS! | Dungeons & Dragons: Dungeon Masters Official

 

[Clint_L]

Having caught up to date with all the content, Jasmine Bhullar is now in the running for Best Dungeon Master Ever, IMHO.

Obviously, she's a fantastic voice actor (her Lavindria? ADORABLE). But I just love how she runs the game so seamlessly. She knows the rules inside out, and knows when to bend them to accommodate cool player ideas. I love that WotC is showcasing that RAW are actually more like guidelines that shouldn't be used to bludgeon player creativity. And she effortlessly encourages the players while still challenging them. She's also awesome with a player who is still learning the rules, Devora Wilde.

Overall, the first campaign is 5/5 actual play entertainment. The pacing is perfect, the effects are just enough to enhance without detracting from the live play, and the players are brilliant. Bringing in Alex Ward as Lividity added a little more spice at just the right time. Just a great, great show.

 

[Selas]

Not only that, but her experience with CoC helped a lot for setting the rhythm on the first Innsmouth episode. It was phenomenal.

 

[plecostomus]

I feel like I can count the number of times Jasmine has rejected a player's action on one hand, even after this many hours. I need to learn this skill. My Bard once wanted to cast Calm Emotions on an Undead that had been raised from a NPC the party met previously. She knows the spell only works on Humanoids, but she was trying to use it to break the control a higher power had over this Undead, as it was forcing him to fight the party.

I've been trying to stick close to the rules of the game since this is my first time DMing, so I told her that her character would know he is 100% Undead and that the spell will not work, and she could pick a different spell.

Jasmine's DMing makes me think I could probably invent some beneficial effect instead, even if that's not exactly how the spell works.

Also stunned at the players' willingness to maim their characters (hi Eloin). No one is trying to win here, they're just trying to tell a story, which is awesome.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I feel like I can count the number of times Jasmine has rejected a player's action on one hand, even after this many hours. I need to learn this skill. My Bard once wanted to cast Calm Emotions on an Undead that had been raised from a NPC the party met previously. She knows the spell only works on Humanoids, but she was trying to use it to break the control a higher power had over this Undead, as it was forcing him to fight the party.

I've been trying to stick close to the rules of the game since this is my first time DMing, so I told her that her character would know he is 100% Undead and that the spell will not work, and she could pick a different spell.

It also depends on the group. Some players would hate you bending the rules, while others would love it.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

It also depends on the group. Some players would hate you bending the rules, while others would love it.

Yeah, I can think of a player in each of those camps in my core group.

 

[plecostomus]

I think I got a little lost in this Innsmouth section due to the different factions and all the NPCs being crazy. The final episode was good though. Eloin starting to say he's on the ceiling and everyone telling him, "We know where you are!" was great. I also liked the banshees being used very creatively again as the bridge back to Sithicus.

I'm not sure if the player(s) properly got advantage on their Initiative for ambushing amidst all the 2014-style mislabeling of surprise. The initiative rolling gets edited a lot. But I am so over the 5.5 Stealth rules that I kinda shook my head and moved on, and maybe wrote a couple sentences on a forum about it. This is about how player ambushes go in my game too. Also it's not like the players needed any help with rolls this session, wow!

As a pleasant coincidence, the game where I play a Cleric is currently in a homebrew version of Stygia, so everything we've been doing is fish and ocean-themed too.

 

[BruceWright]

With all the editing, it’s really hard to understand what was going on at all with the end episode.
What was the plan? What did Crem learn in the Cthulhu vault so that he went “oh, geeze Cthulu is actually evil, we need to change our plans?”


What WAS the plan at all in the lighthouse? How did they know to go to the Lighthouse? Why was half their plan something to do with fighting the priestess and the other half of them on the roof and the banshees are in the lighthouse lamp and here come the ravens???

I just couldn’t follow it.

Still, I enjoyed it. But yeah, that ending was just “we’re outtta time folks so goodnight!”

 

[plecostomus]

Some technical notes for the premiere of the Arcana season:

1. Starts at Level 6.
2. PCs are all members of the Order of the Ninth Quill, a faction that hunts magical artifacts in the Anauroch Desert - lots of Netherese remains here.
   • Ninth Quill faction details are in the first play-along pack (the first one does not require an Arcana Unleashed preorder) Claim Dungeon Masters: Living Spells Play-Along Pack now! - D&D Beyond
   • Christian's Transmuter Wizard Cadmus is the new guy.
   • Mayanna's Vestige Warlock Sapphira and Devora's Arcane Archer Hobnip just got back from a mission to the Witchlight Carnival.
3. The first fight is with a Living Flaming Sphere from the play-along pack.
4. This time when the PCs roll initiative, their character art is displayed along with their roll.
   • The virtual map and images are still very difficult to see when recorded from the table. I think I only saw one non-recorded shot of map in this premiere.
5. Neil's Mystic Arts Monk casts Absorb Elements (seems to work the same as previous).
   • Mystic Fighting Style feature (Lv 6) seems unchanged from the UA.
   • Vestige Warlock uses Guiding Bolt through her Vestige Spells (Lv 3) feature.
6. Monster locally called a Thornback Worm mentioned - these are briefly shown on the map as "Phaerimm Agents", and the second episode is called The Phaerimm Ambush.
   • These phaerimm can cast Synaptic Static and Counterspell.
   • The party chose to run away from these.
7. A monster called a Tlinkali (sp) appears, looks like a scorpion centaur, has a language and carries weapons. Sapphira convinces the Tlinkali that the party is just here to trade and they escape.
   • Cadmus also steals a Tlinkali egg for reasons known only to him.
8. Sapphira has the Familiar Trainer background, which grants the Familiar Friend feat - which has "several benefits", including Helpful Friend, which grants advantage on checks with the trainer's proficient skills when the trainer's familiar is nearby.
   • Lots of terrible rolls in this session. The first roll of the game was a Nat 1, and Helpful Friend did not help!
9. Party encounters another new faction at night in the oasis, The Bringers of the Cosmic Dawn. Described in the pop-up: "A secretive order of immoral Transmuters. They are dedicated to preparing themselves for visitation from mysterious alien beings via dangerous Transmutation magic."
   • The Cosmic Dawn guys include: two identical twins, one older than the other, and one has an extra pair of arms. There is also a gnome with hair that appears to be "made of worms".
   • The Cosmic Dawn guys reveal that Zargon is trapped beneath a ruined city in the desert! As someone who just ran The Lost City, this is very relevant to my interests. Considering the party is Level 6, this may be a one-off mention. Otherwise an encounter with Zargon may be social or otherwise amended as in The Lost City.
   • One of the Cosmic Dawn guys provides a prophecy wherein he tells the party to find a Flumph.
   • This faction was a lot of fun.
10. Sailor's tribe living in the desert is called "the Dukes of the Dunes".
11. This premiere censors the swears! First season had no censors lol.
12. Hobnip's pet frog casts "a new spell from Arcana Unleashed" that lets Hobnip reroll a Saving Throw. She...still fails the Save.
13. Ends with a 1-1-2 party split as the PCs all run in different directions to escape the phaerimm.

 

[Silam]

Mystic Fighting Style feature (Lv 6) seems unchanged from the UA.

I am so pumped for this