Jared Knabenbauer on 'Dice, Camera, Action' and Characters

Jared Knabenbauer on Dice, Camera, Action and Characters

Todd Kenreck: I spoke with Jared of Dice, Camera, Action about the Waffle Crew and his advice for D&D players.

Jared Knabenbauerared: My character is Diath Woodrow, who is a human rogue and it's a character I've been playing for a long time. I started using him in Second Edition A D&D, then really started playing him a lot more come Third Edition, but thanks to Dice, Camera, Action this is the most I've ever actually got to play Diath, the highest level he's ever been too, and the most fully realized and fully fleshed out he has ever been.

I always enjoyed playing rogues because what interested me about the class was the not combat stuff. I don't really care about getting sneak attack damage or backstabbing. I like the stuff where it's like sneaking forward and picking locks or detecting traps or disabling the traps, or using magical devices. That kind of utility is really fun to me, rather than just being a damage dealer.

My subclass is a thief, but the way I play Diath is that he is not a "thief" in that he goes around and stealing things. So his slight of hand is purely for disabling traps. He does not pick pocket off of people at all. I was the first member of Dice, Camera, Action actually decided. Greg had approached me and said, "Hey, we have this idea for a show, we think you'd be great for it. Do you know anyone else who would be an excellent party member." And I said, "I do know a couple of people."

So I was like pretty much the first one and I helped gather the rest of the crew. Starting out, I kinda kept Diath a little more subdued because I didn't really know where to place him and how he's going to affect things and then it became very quickly clear that the party needed a pragmatic leader to kind of steer the party in the right direction and make important decisions. Then everyone is very funny. Everyone is very funny on the show, and to help them funnier, you need a straight man. So Diath ended up being kind of the more serious down-to-earth character rather than a more comedic one.

A lot of times I end up playing D&D so much, 'cause I'm always the Dungeon Master. I loved the crafting a world and creating up these challenges and stories for whoever is playing in my games. So I've always enjoyed that creative aspect of it, so that's why I've been playing it for so long. Then as a player, I keep coming back to Diath because a lot of his personality traits are just bits of me put into him and just enhanced tenfold. So it's a lot of me right in here, whether it's physically or emotionally or how he react or handle situations. So I enjoy him so much because it's how I myself would try to react or handle whatever fantasy situations he ends up in.

Especially when it comes to first characters, if you put a piece of yourself into it, you'll get more attached to them, you'll be better able to role play them, you'll better be able to just play them mechanically and then if something horrible happens to them, you'll want to fix things, or want to make it better or have a desire to improve whatever it is that is happening. So if there's a piece of you in that, and you have that kind of investment into your own character, you're basically also investing into yourself and everyone like themselves.

One of the things I do with being a Dungeon Master, and it's something I've really been trying to improve over the years, is I am not the person writing the story. I've got like the setup and the NPCs are meeting up, but it's just not my story. It's everyone's story, so as a Dungeon Master, you've gotta realize that everyone there has a story to tell, and you're telling it together, rather than the players experiencing just your idea of what could happen. So a big thing I've been really practicing and trying to improve on is making sure that everyone's ideas end up being vital to what's happening in the adventure.

 

1

Comments

Posts Quoted:
Reply
Clear All Quotes