On 4th May 2017, BadEye (Adam) and Leah from Curse, were featured in an interview on the Dragon Talk Podcast. It's an interesting listen, but we figured you guys might like the written text to refer to.

We've run the podcast through some professional call centre voice recognition software and the mod team have gone through the text, corrected recognition mistakes and tweaked the text for readability. #TeamMod

Quote with red text - BadEye (Adam Bradford) Product Manager for D&D Beyond - @BadEyeAdam
Quote with green text - Leah Koons - Marketing & Event specialist for Curse @LeahKoons
Plain text - Dragon Talk hosts, Shelly Mazzanoble & Greg Tito.

Adam

Right, so for the denizens of the Underdark,  D&D beyond is an official digital tool set for the fifth edition of Dungeons & Dragons, and what that... sound bite right there means, is that we are working on digital tools that are going to help people play the game. They're going to enhance game play around the table, whether that's virtual or sitting across from each other, and ultimately all of the tools themselves are aimed at... making it where you don't have to thumb through every single book to find exactly how to grapple creature or how to shove a creature or any of those other rules that are wonderfully simple in fifth edition, but we still have trouble finding some times.

D&D Beyond is really focused on eliminating any of... that pain and trying to automate as much of the process as we can. Then of course we are also trying to help people manage their characters. If you've ever created a character for Dungeons & Dragons you realize that that process can be very lengthy. I recently did this for a group of six twelve year olds and I think that it entire process took about four hours.

Doing it pen and paper you mean?

Adam

Doing it pen and paper. So creating characters, especially for new players, is really a challenge and D&D Beyond is... making that character builder. It is providing a character sheet that people can use to play that character around the table, and even if they're on their lunch break and they want to just take a peek at their character, they can see that very easily right on their phone. So, that's what the D&D Beyond is trying to do; it's trying to enhance game play and make Dungeons & Dragons really focused on what makes it such a great game in the first place. That is  that interaction with other players and with the DM and telling that interactive story.

I love that

As someone who can take four hours to create a character, I really am excited about the character builder! I saw there's going to be options for new character or new players and then more advanced options is that true?

Adam

Yeah, absolutely. From from day one, we've been talking about game accessibility as an extremely important thing to us. That is going to apply on the technology side, so we want you to be able to access D&D Beyond, whether it's on your PC, Mac, on your phone, tablet, anywhere that you can get to a web browser. Then of course we also do have mobile app plans, as well, in the pipeline, but, anywhere that you can possibly access this, we want you to be able to access it.

But then, the other side of that is player experience and so that accessibility comes into, if you're a beginner, we want to make sure that we hold your hand appropriately, to where you can actually know what's going on with that character and know which choices you need to make, at what time.

So we'll have a step by step version of this character builder that's going to really walk you through that with ample help text and everything else you'd be looking for out of that experience. Then for the advanced players, I've been playing twenty plus years at this point, I might not want to read every paragraph and everything that would be in the beginner section, so you can go right into an advanced way for making that character that is much more linear. It's just going to take you exactly to where you need to be and you can provide those inputs for that character there.

That's very cool and there's a whole like community side to this as well too. Leah, can you speak a little bit about that and what Curse brings to the table for D&D Beyond?

Leah

Yeah, for sure! Also, just as a quick touch point of what we're talking about earlier, on the new player versus, a total expert, I'm a newer player to Dungeons and Dragons and I'm super excited. Adam had a very sneaky long-con and he’s like well, let's just get some of the some of the team, some of the company, to play Dungeons & Dragons, just see if it's something the company might want to do. Now, bless his soul, he ran a one-off for twenty people last week.

We've got three D&D sessions in the office, but as someone that's newer, the very natural process for them is, okay what do I? I’m that annoying one, like okay what do I roll? How do I what am I doing? But having something like the character builder is, I'm finding, making it the barrier of entry so much lower for me. So it's way easier for me to say, okay now I really can play Dungeons and Dragons. Because, as you guys know, there is a there's a steep learning curve, so I'm excited, as kind of a newbie to be able to make it easier for people that have always wanted to play, but are kind of confused, on what does SL mean d10 twenty five mean? What do I have to upgrade? It makes the process so much easier and I'm really excited about that.

But back to the original question. Curse has been around for years and years. If anybody plays World of Warcraft, or any of those hardcore PC games, you know we've been in that space for a really long time. But Curse’s bread and butter has always been community. That's what we've been built on. That's what we thrive on, so we're really excited to be able to bring our prowess on being able to build the toolset, being able to build things that will help players enjoy the game. Make that play experience better. But also, provide a community where a lot of people that play Dungeons & Dragons can get together and talk about everything from D&D, to whatever Adohand is cooking in the kitchen, to whatever they feel like they want to. So Curse is very comfortable in this space. This is definitely our wheel house.

And I saw that there is going to be something for people's home brew campaigns?

Adam

Yeah, absolutely. So we've got campaign management, that is coming in phase three of our beta, and as part of that we're going to introduce this concept of allowing a dungeon master to create a campaign, invite other players to that campaign, and in a very simple way, they share a campaign URL. Someone clicks on that they can accept the invite. Once they are in that campaign, that allows the Dungeon Master and players to share a great many things. One of those things is if the Dungeon Master has created homebrew content, custom content on the site, which that's also coming as part of that third phase of the Beta. Then, the DM can share that freely with the players in that campaign.

In the most recent issue of Dragon Plus, we did talk about some of the subscription plans, and part of that is also any content that a dungeon master has unlocked, if they have a master tier subscription, that is also shareable across that campaign, for any content they have unlocked. So once you create that custom content, you can utilize that freely within the builder, within the character sheet, and you can make your dungeon master create that custom content, where you don't have to do all the typing yourself, because that's what we love to do is make life difficult for us.

So when you say custom content does that mean like maps or artwork or like new spells new monsters or what exactly do you mean there?

Adam

So, for homebrew content, we definitely have plans that extend for, possibly, years here with what we could do. But what is going to be available right out of the gate is, you will be able to create a custom spell so if you want a frost ball instead of a fireball, you can. The sensible thing to do, maybe, would be to start with a fireball. You can kind of create a copy of that spell. You'll be able to then rename that spell, change any of the modifiers that would go on with that spell. You'll be able to provide what we call 'metadata,' which is another part of the listing portions of D&D Beyond, that have been really powerful so far and the community has really responded to. You can go in there, and see any spell that requires a Charisma saving throw.

So if you wanted the frost ball, instead of requiring a dexterity saving like a fireball, to require a constitution saving throw, which is typical for more ice based spells, you could change that, for that custom spell that you've created. You could provide that 'metadata.' It would show up in a listing, like the other spells that you currently see on D&D Beyond, and you could also use that within the builder and throughout the site. So you'll be able to do that for spells, magic items and monsters right out of the gate. You'll also be able to do that for sub-classes, sub races. We will be adding all of those types of content over time.

My god that's so cool! Now I love it this is like combining like so many different parts of my fandom over the last like fifteen years. It's a good idea. I mean, cause I was a big user of Curse, you know, back in the early days of WoW, downloading add-ons from the site and doing all that in the talent calculators and stuff and some of what you're talking about reminds me of what a different service, Obsidian portal, used to do as far as having people have a campaign page to be able to go to. It seems like some that functionality is being folded into this, as well as just the idea of being able to have, on your phone, your character. I forgot my printed out sheet, I don't have with me, but it doesn't matter because everybody's got their phones, and I can always have that that information. There's always that you can log into Curse. Play D&D at the drop of a hat. I also like that you call it DDB, like that's shorthand we like the acronyms, yeah we do.

Adam

Yeah that's definitely taken root, so DDB is kind of the official acronym.

So with the homebrew stuff can you view other people's campaigns, or is it just for the people who are invited? Can I search and see what kind of weird ass spells Greg's coming up, or do I have to be part of his campaign?

Adam

So you definitely.. for anything that Greg creates, so if he created the frost ball spell you know hopefully Greg can be a little more creative than that if he couldn’t be…

I also just want to congratulate all of us for not making the obvious Frost Ball joke of just throwing that out there good job Shelly, Meah.

I still don't get it

It's a bold face lie.

Adam

So if Greg creates that frost ball, if he has that as something that he has marked as private homebrew contents, this is something that he's not necessarily wanting to share with the public…

<noise of people talking over Adam>

Adam

…so if you keep that private though you're going to be able to share that within the campaign only. So that's a way for someone that doesn't want to share that publicly, they can simply share that with the players inside their campaign. There will also be some other toggles within that a campaign can say that we don't allow any homebrew content, for instance. You can share that private homebrew content from the DM within the campaign. But then if you want to be someone in the community that is contributing to other players in the community, you can absolutely go in and create something more creative than a frost ball, maybe, and you're going to put that up as public.

It's going to go to a moderation queue, that we have on our end, just to make sure that it's meeting the standards that we would hopefully expect for a spell in that case. Then that is approved and released to the public.

Shelly, you can browse that listing of all of those homebrew spells, like you're looking at a catalog, and you can find the ones that you like, you can then add them to your homebrew collection, which is similar to adding something to your Google Drive. So you're adding that to your homebrew collection, you can then use anything that you've added to that collection inside the character builder and the character sheet and any tools that we produce in the future.

OK so I know earlier you guys asked what does Shelley do, and that's going to become totally irrelevant because what I'm going to do is spend all day making spells.  That's all I want to do now, that's good, I mean I'm fine with it.  You're going to be moderating all day, every day, there we go.

What's the first spell you're going to make?

Frost ballz.

That has a different connotation where you say frost ballz on it.

With a zee.

That sounds like a bard spell that's going to be, like, oh I cast frost ballz on the audience.

You'll see!

Adam

You know, I'm sure that will make it just fine through moderation.

I don't think it's going to pass muster, and can we have a special hashtag for Shelly just to make sure it passes.

Yeah so you know it's one of mine.

Adam

We’ll just make Shelly a moderator.

Yeah that's a smart thing.

There you go.

Because she needs stuff to do, so.

Yeah, I mean, we're not co-hosting this show... I don't have anything to do, yeah.

You have all these meetings that we have to work around – I don’t understand.

My meeting is like spell creation meetings. You can find me at Nordstrom around two to five.

You were mentioning hashtags in the in the metadata stuff; I so far with the phase that's available to beta testers now that has been the biggest response I've seen with people in the Twitters. It's like the idea, that the ability, to be able to search for spells with that metadata has already been a huge boon for people and fans, and is it true, Adam, that you're co-leading a lot of that metadata yourself?

Adam

You know they locked me in the basement.

Leah

We've been very gracious in letting him out.

I think we should be thanking you, Leah, for that.

Adam

It was many hours. I'm not going to lie about that part, but I went through all the spells and we've gotten, I think, every spell that currently exists in the game completed at this point. So it's just an exercise of, "Hey this fireball, or this frost ball, requires a constitution saving throw. Let’s mark this and make it part of the data itself."  We're going forward and we can do a lot of really, really handy things with that. Everything that we are laying the groundwork for now is really marching toward a great deal of automation in the future.

The next major roadmap items that we're going to be tackling after we launch, with what we've talked about for the three phases of beta, is we'll go right into a monster builder; an encounter builder that goes along with that. Once we have everything for the player character side that we'll be launching with, and then when we have everything for the enemy side with monster builders and encounter builders, we’ll then put all those elements together into combat tracking, initiative tracking, and at that point all of that metadata is going to really pay off.

So you know we'll be able to do things like: a PC targets a group of kobolds with a fireball, and they target those within that combat tracker.  If the player desired to, it could roll that automatically for them and say the results of that. We're going to have it where it can prompt the user for input. So if you want your players to roll those saving throws when it's applicable, they could do that at that point and then just essentially say whether they passed or failed its save. It's going to do all of that math, and the reason that we're laying that groundwork now is because we have those big plans for down the road and we want to make sure that the data is available for us.

Very cool. I love it. Yeah, I mean just having stuff when we were talking mostly about spells, magic items, to being the library, we have this: I'm looking for something that I can wear as a belt that effects my health and things. You know your metadata allows everybody to just search that way easier. I love it. Its been a super great tool and the beta testers have been like crazy. What can we say, how many beta testers have been there? Like in the hundreds of thousands of beta testers.

No, are you serious?

Adam

Yeah, I think as far as active accounts that we actually have on the site, we've definitely crossed one hundred thousand at this point so we're…

Oh my God, that’s amazing.

Adam

…we're really happy with the results that we've had so far, and to be honest we’re AOK with talking about this. Unfortunately phase one of the beta... we've kind of known all along that it was kind of the homely date, or whatever you know that…

<multiple people talking over each other>

Adam

We knew that people wouldn't be as excited about what's going on right now. The thing that I'd love to tell people here on Dragon talk is that everything that's happening in this first phase is just extremely crucial to everything that comes after this, and so we're really grateful for all the help that has already happened here. We're laying a very firm foundation and once we have that, we can get a character builder, and a character sheet in people’s hands with the second phase and those numbers will go up. People will be really interested in what happens, so we're really looking forward to that happening. We keep getting asked, before you guys prompt me, when that's going to happen…

So when is that going to happen?

That's part of my research.

Adam

…so no. We have said, and we definitely stand by the fact, that we will be launching this summer. There's no question that we're not talking months and months here; we're talking in terms of weeks at this point. So, yeah, we're pretty excited! I have no idea when this will actually air...

We're thinking this Thursday actually, so what is that, May sixth?

Adam

So we will not be in phase two quite yet, but it won't be too much longer after that.

Ooh, I like that. I like that answer.

Really?

Yeah it's the old Blizzard, you know, soon.

Can I go back to the character creator? I'm really excited about that, so we're going to create characters, and it's just going to feed right into a character sheet that I just have?

Adam

Yeah, absolutely. The idea behind this kind of originated... we knew we would be doing a character builder from the time that I pitched this internally. We talked about the stealthy tactics that I was using to get people to play it; the need to really pay attention to this. From the early days I knew that a pretty major gap that had not really been filled in a satisfactory way in the community was a character builder; especially one that could incorporate the official material from Wizards of the Coast. So we started marching down that road very, very early, and from that people started to say, within our game, "What if we could also use this just right on our phone in order to play the game itself."

I was a little bit skeptical to be honest, at first, because I had seen some attempts at this in the past and it's a lot of information. I'm not sure if you guys are aware of it as makers of the game... there is a lot of information that goes on in a character sheet! These people we're looking at; there are six pages of back story.  With all the things that go into making a character in front of them they said, "no I think we can condense this down to Mobile in some way." And so we started looking at ways to do that, and I think the end result is something that is just truly remarkable.

I'm really excited for people to get this in their hands. I can certainly see someone seeing this character sheet and enjoying the automation that we've got. I can't wait until everyone is able to this up on an Android phone and open the hit points tracking piece. I'd love to see the reaction with the little vibration that's going to happen when you move the wheel. Little things like that... there's just an incredible amount of polish that's been able to get into this thing. And so as that is happening, I understand some people might not want to use that, to be honest for a long time I was one of those people. It's like, OK I'll build my character, and I will print out that character on a piece of paper. Of course you will be able to do that with DDB as well, and it's AOK if you take that route.

But the thing about the character builder, the character sheet, that I'm excited about is that World of Warcraft armory effect. I spent an embarrassing amount of time just on that page for my character, Sorenvir, and I'm just looking at this dude and thinking, OK this is what I want next out of life; this is what out of this raid. This is just hours and hours of time spent looking at this digital character that I've developed this connection to. And I think that for Dungeons and Dragons players we connect to our characters in all the best ways, and I think that everything that DDB is doing with that character sheet and that ability to pick it up while you're on break, or the ability do it while you're at home sitting on the couch... you just check out your character and you just had a popcorn thought about what spell you want to pick next, or whatever. You can do that with so much convenience, and that's the thing that I'm really looking forward to getting out to people.

That is awesome. Yeah, I think that's cool. I think you're right there's going to be people who are going to do it on their pen and paper still mode. What I did then when I used the D&D insider tools for fourth edition. I would print it all out you know and have it already and make my notes and go back in. There was like a fun thing the next day was to go in and during the changes are things that had gone right yes and I think there's definitely people who who latch on to that and do it that with DDB. Eight to ten years, back then people didn't have phones that were capable of this kind of thing, at the tracking level that you're talking about, and now that I think that's become a lot more ubiquitous.  I assume you guys are probably building in some social media tags for this, so that people can share their characters way more easily. I just love that idea yeah.

Leah

Something that's important to us is the ability both, as a community, get excited about their characters, as well. But also, what Adam said. again as a new player.  The ability for me to feel like this is my character and it isn't just on a bunch of pieces of paper. As a new player that initial like this is my character taking ownership of it learning all about it. For someone that isn't familiar with all this paperwork, isn’t familiar with all of these things, that was a big barrier to entry. So, as a newbie, I'm super excited to be able to say to all of my friends, no like this is it this sounds, super intimidating but it's not, it's super easy now, and now we can all go be Elves, all run around and all go do all of this. So that's something, from my perspective. Also to enhance a community which is what we always want to do, but also to bring in those new people and make it as easy as possible to get hooked on this game.

Right, Leah had you not played it until Adam forced you into it?

Leah

No, I always really wanted to. I'd always kind of like it. I also didn't really have any cool DMs around me that would be patient but I finally got to be like no this is for work like I have to dedicate eight to ten hours of this for work. This is work.

Isn’t that the best?

Leah

So yeah, I started playing a little bit before we launched, just because I knew that I was going to be helping to market this and I wanted to really understand it and then within like I mean I'm in two things.

Adam

We’re playing like three campaigns at this point.

Leah

Yeah, it's a bit of an issue. But it's been a lot of fun.  I love that the community is super hardcore and everybody plays a lot, but I can still come in and kind of be the noob and be like, “Can I roll these on the… Can I roll this in D&D Beyond, because I'm tired of doing math, like I know that you guys have this down but I'm tired of it.”

I’m with you I don't like the math as much either so it's having something that does that for me is amazing. You mentioned Elves is that, do you play Elf characters?

Leah

Well so my gamer tag is ElfQueen like it's always been ElfQueen, like I have a thing for Elves. In the campaign in the office that I play, I'm an elf. I'm actually a dragon born drag queen in my other campaign. Yes so we've it's all kinds of fun stuff but immediately any opportunity to get me to play something if someone's like you can play an Elf like, I’m like ahhh, alright I’ll do it.

I think we talked about this earlier but I'm an Elf person as well you know.

Leah

I love Elves.

We have three out of four people who are Elves, Adam what are you?

Adam

Man, I haven't gotten to play for like I don't know fifteen years…

Oh, you’re the Dungeon Master.

Adam

Always the DM.

Yeah, you’re playing everything, every character, every class.

Adam

You know trying to just you know I want to beg Perkins to let me in one of his games. I want to play so bad.  But I think if I were to play, I imagine that I would really like to play something that has a lot of versatility. So, probably a little more boring with the human there but….  I would create the variety and the actual role playing and the class that I chose and that's what we’ll say about that.

Elves are so good.

What's the race class combo for your WoW character that you mentioned what's with your main there?

Adam

I was Sorenvir and he was a human Paladin on the alliance side before I saw the light about both the Horde and also the warrior class because I tanked through raid progression and everything else.

As a Pally?

Adam

Well I started out as a Pally, but then I felt a little inferior, and so I went and rolled the warrior. So I was an orc warrior. I do love orcs quite a bit and so went through raid progression all the way through IceCrown Citadel, Wrath of the Lich King. Stopped playing at some point after that but yeah it was it was always an orc warrior because I love charge. Charge is my favorite ability in the game.

That makes sense and I was just trying to get a sense of who you were from you know from your yeah

Adam

Did you just psych profile me?

Exactly right from a boring human Paladin and then moved to a somewhat more exotic orc warrior not really that exotic really.

To each their own.

I was a Dwarf Paladin which there's like none of those on any server I’ve ever found, like if you look at any of his stats like one of those one of the smallest slivers of the population.

I know humans are the it's not the most popular.

Night elves and humans on the Alliance side so I don't get…

I had a buddy who when we signed up in two thousand and four was like yeah it's like I don't want to I want to be human I'm like

<multiple people talking over each other>

So I am someone who treats all of my characters like they're my children and I love them all dearly… So if you like my children I really don't like them at all. Just kidding.

Adam

Really if your characters ever you know projectile vomit all over.

Oh don't even, I’m getting the cold sweats.

But I was intrigued by a feature in which you could just be a random character.  You can just random say do it for me and then out comes a totally random character.

Adam

I'll be honest, I'm really surprised, by not only your reaction, but a lot of the community, when that came out that it was something that we have the ability to do. It's not terribly difficult for us, so we said we're going to also include this, in addition to a quick build option. So, straight out of the players handbook, you can hit that quick build. Choose a race and a class I think and then after that, it does everything for you to have a first level character, ready to go. But for the randomized, you can get into a few more options than that.

You can do race and class, you can do what character level you want that character to end up at, and all of that would automate into something. We will  have some algorithms that try to kind of optimize across all those parameters the best that we can. It's really a great way for a Dungeon Master to quickly get an NPC if they need to.

It's also against someone else here in the office said I can't wait to create random characters. I'm going to create these characters, I'm going to give them all names based on what they come out as, what I think their personalities are when they when they randomize. So you know it's really intriguing and yet I didn't know that that would resonate with as many people as appears to. But we're excited that you're going to have the ability to do that.

I mean it sounds fun, that would be a really fun game, yeah just sit down with your group and hit random and then just doing what you come as.

Now you got another thing to do during the day when you’re not recording Dragon Talk

I know, I love making characters.

I think it's what you exactly mentioned, Adam, was the Dungeon Master being able to have that tool at his disposal, to be like oh right I know I just randomly made up this dwarf.  OK now he's in a fight, I don't have any stats ready, what happens? So being able to do that very quickly is awesome. I have one of those books it's called them D.M.'s tool box, it's a thick paperback that is basically brain and tables for stuff like that. A lot of it is story based and dungeon based and location based, but like just the idea I always do used for just being like alright, need to I need a character stat and you know D&D Beyond being able to provide that is amazing.

You know who is going to have fun with that?

Who?

Your daughter.

Oh yeah totally.

Edna's going to make characters all day.

I know.

and then draw their pictures.

When we're making our World of Warcraft characters, there was a lot of randomizing and then, you tweak it after that, like you can make it how you want. So I think a lot of people will use that as a starting point in making a character and then make changes along the way.

Adam

Well, that is really the path we're taking here so, if it's a quick build randomized, it takes you right to the screen where you can see these characters. Once you see that character, you can go right into the sheet and start playing with that character or you can take the other path and go right into the builder and tweak that character. We're trying to make it really easy to jump back and forth between the sheet and the builder and whether you're editing or playing.

That’s sweet.

So does the Dungeon Master ... can they see your character sheet?

Adam

That's a really great question and it is tied to the Campaign Management that I was talking about earlier so, if you have a campaign as a Dungeon Master, that you've invited players to be a part of, then by default that Dungeon Master is able to not only view, but edit the characters that are inside that campaign.

Well that happens all the time you know, Leah was talking about we ran a one shot here in the office the other day myself and one other DM and we had twenty players that all kind of started out together in the audience chamber of the Zanathar and you they are going off on separate quests for the Zanathar and then they come back at the end and of course they try to kill the Zanathar.

<multiple people talking>

Adam

Ultimately, thinking about that campaign. our co-DM for the night - he spent I don't even know how many hours creating twenty characters that are usable and ready for these players as they were coming in, because the vast majority of these folks have never played D&D.

So with the campaign management and that DM being able to see the characters and be able to tweak those characters, they can review that character because I know in a lot of campaigns we we say, "Yeah I'm good with everything except if it came from this source," or whatever, and that Dungeon Master has the ability to see those things and step in and make some of those changes for the players.

Of course the players can see that, when that happens, but still it's just an interactive process for those characters and giving the DMs and the players that ability to share that back and forth is really important to us and we're looking forward to that.

Other players within the campaign, if they're not the DM, they can see pretty basic information about the other characters in that campaign. They can see ability scores, they can see race, class, level those kinds of things. The more secret juicy bits that, you’re gonna write eight pages worth of notes about how you're actually a gold dragon in disguise or whatever, all of that wouldn’t be available to see for those other players in case players have secrets they'd like to keep.

Way to spoil Leah's character right there.

Yeah what the heck.

But I think it's really interesting you guys mentioned a few times you have run this internally at Curse with folks that may not be familiar with D&D and the fact that there's a lot of fans out there of MMO, you know fantasy MMOs and other things that are comfortable with all the tropes of Dungeons & Dragons because of all that. Do you guys anticipate there's going to be a lot of crossover amongst those kind of fans that be like, oh well maybe I can do Dungeons & Dragons role playing sessions because a lot of this is being taken care of.

Leah

Yeah I think so I mean I think that what's great about Curse is that we have a network of sites and communities that span all kinds of games so, once we get DDB up and going, that this is a great thing for us to be able to tap into our existing other communities. I mean Curse reaches, I think it's like some some ridiculous number I don't say that I think it's a my boss will hear it and yell at me but many many many...

fifty gazillion.

Leah

But we have a lot of different communities that are all very active and it will be great for us to be able to say, because I mean at the end of it everyone that uses Curse is a nerd like you all know, at the core of being a huge nerd is just wanting to play some really cool game. The fact that we could say , "Do you really really love your WoW character?" for when we're talking to MMO champion or something, "Well cool, but you can bring it over here we can we can play a campaign based on that!" - so that'll be a lot of fun for us to be able to toy with and and bring that capability to players of any type of game so I'm super excited about that personally.  Yeah I think it I think it's going to be great and I got to go on for ever.

<general chatter>

Adam

As an avid video game player for years and years, much older than Graham … and playing D&D for as long as I have, Dungeons & Dragons is my first love. No doubt about that, but I think that playing these video games, people start to understand that the market is really saturated and it's very difficult to find that time in front of a screen somewhere, to continue to play the video games that you want.

I have a backlog that's pretty long at the moment that I'm trying to get through and I think many of us, as we get older, continue to experience that. The thing about Dungeons & Dragons is, whether you're doing it virtually over one of the TTs, or if you're playing around the table with people, there is actual human interaction and that element is just so important for Dungeons and Dragons. I think for us, we definitely can say (and this was you know the pitch here in the office when I started all this) you know you guys play Diablo, you play World of Warcraft, you play all these other games,  you play Fallout, whatever - Dungeons & Dragons was the start of everything that you're enjoying in these games and it really speaks to these video game players and they want to come over.

You know the other side of that - you know we won't talk too much about older editions or anything here but, I think there has been some backlash at times in the past that says, Dungeons & Dragons is not a video game - we don't want to make it a video game.

I think that, as we are setting out to make this digital toolset, it's really important to make the distinction that we are not in any way trying to turn Dungeons & Dragons into that video game - we're trying to let D&D be everything that it's always been and that's that interaction and that focus on epic interactive storytelling with friends. We're just trying to make that part easier and I think that's the thing that we've really been focused on from the beginning and the great news is that all of these people that enjoy roleplaying games of any sort, video games or otherwise, once they're introduced to Dungeons & Dragons with a good DM, there's just nothing like it.

Correct yeah, I've been experiencing that as well. You can get as much as you can get from a single player or even a multiplayer RPG on the computer or the X-Box, but nothing beats just laughing around a table. Just being able to get that tabletop experience, whether it's virtual or not, is paramount. It's cool that some of the folks that may have only experienced the videogame side, can now experience roleplay, with the ease of something like D&D Beyond, doing all that for them.

You have a couple more minutes Adam, but you mentioned a few times that you played Dungeons & Dragon for twenty years now. Sometimes we ask our guests, what was their introduction and how do they get started. So when did you start playing D&D and what was it about at it that brought you in?

Adam

I'm glad you finally got around to it. I have played for a while - my first exposure to Dungeons & Dragons was actually with the wonderfully charming cartoon. I absolutely loved that and, if you can't tell by the accent, I live in Alabama and growing up in the south, kind of in the middle of the Bible belt, the satanic scare was really a real thing here and it kind of lasted a little bit longer in this part of the world. So growing up it was strangely taboo to talk about Dungeons & Dragons, or to think about playing the game and so for many years I saw that cartoon it just stimulated my imagination so much. I would be in class, in middle school, scholars Bowl period or whatever and I'd be I'd have graph paper out drawing maps that I will run my friends through without even understanding anything about the game of Dungeons & Dragons. So I kind of like to think that I was doing a lot of that before even being introduced to D&D.

I think I was around fifteen and started playing in an Advanced Dungeons & Dragons campaign with, at the time, a student minister at a church I was attending. It was kind of the calls of the perception, it was a little bit hush hush but he introduced me to the game and I'm just forever grateful for that. I remember that we were in Dragon Lance, so adventuring in Krynn and I remember I was a human Paladin that game so there we were, I started out as a paladin.

I think I only played for maybe three sessions and just absolutely loved it and then after that, the guy that introduced me asked me if I would Dungeon Master and then I've basically been Dungeon Master ever since.

Oh oh oh wow that's cool yeah yeah we hear that. It's a very similar background to me as far as the feeling that it was taboo and still being fascinated with it, maybe even fascinated with it more because of that reason but that's awesome. I like that it was a student minister that brought it in because I hear that a few times that people fought through that taboo by having either a priest or youth ministers introduce that, is like this is something that can explore almost the ideas of faith in a way that you can’t explore absolutely as an adolescent in other ways.

Adam

I completely agree with that and I think that where, because of people doing this and introducing people to the game, we're just way better off for it at this point. I think you know Huntsville Alabama, where Curse is located, is kind of a Mecca for geek activity, here in the southeast.

Absolutely Dungeons and Dragons is extremely prominent - it it's not surprising to drive down the street almost every time I'm coming home from work I see something about Dungeons & Dragons on someone's car.

I thought you were going to say that there's like D&D games in the in the alleys and on the sides of the street.

Adam

Maybe not that prominent.

Leah

Wearing a DDB shirt, walking around in Huntsville is my new favorite thing because you can't really get much done but at least five people will be like oh my gosh can I, DID YOU ... did do you have anything to do with Dungeons & Dragons Beyond?

That's cool I'm going to go to Huntsville and wear all of my D&D t-shirts.

All my wardrobe is D&D t-shirts, so it’ll be perfect.

Well thank you guys so much for joining us to talk about your this big project and all the work you're doing on it yeah where I mean yeah where can people find out more about D&D Beyond, but also you guys personally?

Adam

So D&D Beyond definitely check out www.dndbeyond.com - that's where you can come and join the beta and you can start using the Compendium the listings all of that stuff you know right now in your games it's hard for me to go without it now we will be announcing when Phase two releases pretty soon so keep your eyes on that please join us there also @DnDBeyond on Twitter and we also have a Facebook page you know we've got some pretty active communities springing up there as well personally I am @BadEyeAdam on Twitter and encourage you that's a really good way to reach out if anybody has questions, I pay a lot of attention to that because it's very bite sized Twitter because you are encouraged to reach out to me there.

Leah

I am @LeahKoons on Twitter and yeah we're you know he's also super active in the forums are forums are huge so you guys ever want to test it out have any feedback throw it in the forums reach out to us on Twitter you know we listen this is for the community so we want to make sure that we implement everything and make it the best that it can be so we're excited to see where it goes from here.

Nice meeting you

Awesome - get in touch with those folks there definitely benefit a bit anybody can join so just go ahead and sign up now and you can figure out what the Compendium is all about and then when the phase two of the character builder drops you'll be you getting a notice and be one of the first ones in there so go make it happen. All right thank you so much!

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