Matt Mercer and Charlie Sanders Consulted on 'Waterdeep: Dragon Heist'

Todd Kenreck: I spoke with Chris Perkins about Water Deep Dragon Heist and two of the consultants they worked with that helped them make this adventure unique.

Chris Perkins: With every story we tried to bring in one or more consultants who will help us shape certain aspects of the story but also bring their personality into it. In some cases, there's a deliberate goal behind it, like when we brought in Pendleton Ward to consult on Tomb of Annihilation because we knew we were dealing with a very dark story of death and we wanted somebody to come in and help us lighten it up and give us a little bit more contrast with his indelible humor. With Dragon Heist, we had two consultants, not at the same time.

We brought in first Charlie Sanders, who is a long time D&D player. He was a writer on Key and Peele. And Charlie, what he gave us very early on, long before writing on the project began, was his help in flushing out some of the organizations, particularly the Xanathar's organization, within Waterdeep. And he also helped us kind of figure out what the boundaries or scope of our story is. The idea that Waterdeep: Dragon Heist is a very simple story. It's just a heist. Where the complexity comes is in dealing with the mishaps and things that go wrong and the interference of the villains. Those ideas were born out of conversations with Charlie, who helped us create a simple story but a very complex, interactive interface in Waterdeep.

And he helped it when we sat down to flesh out the Xanathar's Guild and we thought of it as this mafia organization. He helped us define many of the roles, like does the Xanathar have an accountant? Does the Xanathar have a fish keeper? Does the Xanathar have an enforcer? Does the Xanathar have a lawyer? So he helped us basically create a lot of those subordinate characters to the Xanathar. It was out of our conversations with Charlie that we decided to give the Xanathar a pet fish, because we needed something about the Xanathar that was surprising and bizarre to kinda make the Beholder more relatable. So I don't think we would have Silgar if Charlie had not been part of those conversations.

And so when Charlie left, we had some time and we were concepting art for Waterdeep, and I was putting the finishing touches on a document we call the story bible, which we give to our partners. After the story bible wrapped up, we brought in our second consultant, Matthew Mercer, who many of you might know from Critical Role, the marvelous D&D show on Geek and Sundry. And with Matthew, what he gave us was his sensibilities as a dungeon master storyteller. We basically told him the story that we had in mind, who the villains we had in mind were, and what he helped us do was then flush out the various details of Waterdeep, like where would be good places to have fights in Waterdeep or encounters in Waterdeep? Where would the villain's lair be? What sorts of ... how would the villains behave when confronted with the heroes?

So with him, whereas Charlie was giving us some of the framework or skeleton, Matt was helping us dive down into details and make sure that all the villains and the motives made sense, that there was complexity there, that when you scratched beneath the surface, there was more to see. He helped us create more dimension to things in the city and also helped us to find things like, hey, we have all these factions, Harpers, Zhentarim, Lord's Alliance, Emerald Enclave. Where do they fit in to all this if at all, and how can you entwine all that together to create an interesting and compelling story? So Matthew brought in a lot more detail, and like Charlie, was just a sounding board.

Working with him, it's like working with one of the great DM storytellers in the world. He's one of the best. And I don't think either of us would ever tire each other out talking about D&D. I think it's like a perpetual engine that we could just go on forever and ever and ever. I could have consulted with him for six months on this story if time and money had allowed it. I don't think either of us would have gotten worn out or tired from the experience because we're in our happy place. With him I found a kindred spirit with whom I can talk about D&D constantly and it never gets boring or dull. The great thing about Matthew and other collaborators like him that we've had is they're so open minded. They're not married to their own ideas. That's the type of person we try to hire, and that's the type of person I enjoy working with the most. It's like I could look at you and say, "You are literally a bottomless well of ideas," and I can basically dip into that well as often as I like and keep getting good ideas out of you. You never run out and you never become so married to an idea that you just sort of block out other possibilities. That's hugely beneficial for someone like me, who's trying to pick a brain and tell a story unlike any we've done before.

 

 

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