Dark Dice changed the way I think of monsters

The first time I heard about Dark Dice was from an advertisement on another podcast. It's been a few years, so I don't know which one it was. I listen to a TON of TTRPG podcasts—perhaps the topic of another blog post. In any case, the ad was for season 2, featuring Jeff Goldblum. I was immediately turned off. Something about it felt mainstream, which, to my punk-rock sensibilities, read as "lame." I was wrong on all counts, which is pretty typical for that scared little hater voice that I carry with me from my adolescence.

Eventually, I chilled out and came around to listening to the podcast. It was intense. The most obvious thing that stood out was its production. The soundtrack was incredibly immersive and professional. The music and sound effects were evocative and dramatic. The actors were not using a bunch of different webcam mics of varying quality in echoing rooms. This was an audio play with smooth, leveled recordings of solid voice acting. On top of that, the audio was edited, and the NPC dialog was re-dubbed during production to tell the story in the best possible way. 

But, as a forever GM, what stuck with me was how the DM (co-creator, director, producer, sound designer, and editor), Travis Vengroff, presented the world to the players. Until then, I had been marinating exclusively in mainstream D&D5E discourse, so I had specific ideas about how a D&D game should run. I would later learn I was getting a taste of a core principles of OSR (Old School Renaissance/Revolution/Revival) play, specifically Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG.

First, a little background on the podcast. Dark Dice is one of the many great offerings from Fool & Scholar Productions, a joint venture of Kaitlin (K.A.) Statz, and Travis Vengroff. Statz is the primary writer, and Vengroff is the primary editor and sound designer. The duo also do everything else, from directing to voice acting.

The story involves a party of six characters from Ilmater's Hope who venture off in search of the town's children, who have vanished in the night. It is a dark and disturbing adventure into the realm of a mad god emerging from slumber to reshape the world in its foul image. Despite the use of Ilmater, it's clear that this isn't the Forgotten Realms, and it is also clear that this isn't vanilla D&D5E. Vengroff added mechanics to create tension and confusion, including a stress/sanity stats and a night watch mechanic that I love so much I stole, I mean borrowed, it for my zines The Sorcerer's Fate and The Sorcerer's Return (in production now).

The first season is fantastic. It has twists and turns and ends with a dramatic, if a bit confusing climax. The second season, the one with Jeff Goldblum, is more scattered, with two campaigns happening simultaneously, and never achieves the same level as season one. Part of that may be due to the irregular release schedule, which made it hard to follow. I have not listened to season three yet, but have read positive reviews. I have been a Patreon patron of Fool & Scholar productions and have enjoyed their non-D&D live-play work as well.

The big caveat I need to put upfront is that what I first experienced in the second episode of Dark Dice exemplifies a well-documented strategy for creating immersion. Dark Dice introduced me to principles I would later find enumerated in the "Monsters" chapter of the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG rulebook.

From "Chapter 2 – Mindless" of Dark Dice:

 

 

Now, that is how you introduce an intellect devourer. He never names the creature, normalizes it, or puts it into context. The true horror of this monster is allowed to sink in. After I heard this, I decided to stop saying things like "a bugbear enters the clearing." Bugbears are the things of nightmares—cave-dwelling, child-eating bogeymen.

The pop culture D&D5E universe is about removing the grit and instituting a shared worldview that sanitizes everything to create a consistent experience. However, this removes all the mystery and drama, leading to things like, "Oh, look, a troll... set it on fire." I don't blame WotC. It's just what has happened after 50 years of development. It has been institutionalized.

I later discovered Dungeon Crawl Classics, which opened my eyes to a game that treats monsters like they were in Dark Dice. The Monsters chapter of the rulebook has headings like Making Monsters Mysterious and "The" Monster vs. "A" Monster. Under Descriptive Encounters, it has a couple of examples of the difference between referring to a widely known stat block and describing an encounter with monsters: 

The great thing about D&D is it belongs to us. Dark Dice was played using 5E, but didn't follow conventional play in favor of something more compelling. I prefer DCC, but still love D&D5E, and will continue to run it, though with a Dark Dice/DCC twist.