Radio Hour: Scouting Days

In the latest episode of the Rascal Radio Hour, Chase and Caelyn are joined by Wargamer's resident haunt-lover, Mollie Russell, to discuss (among other games) Call of Cthulhu's campfire scouts-meets-cosmic horror RPG – Campfire Tales. The crew also explores Magic: The Gathering Arena's new union, United Wizards of the Coast, and the workers' plea to ownership for voluntary recognition.

After that, Mollie explains D&D's official actual play, Dungeon Masters, to Chase — who is on the record as agnostic but fascinated by the medium. Dungeon Masters distinguishes itself in a crowded field by leaning hard on promotion and rules explanation. Does it work? Kind of! In the Question Dungeon, everyone decides what color of miniatures paint they would be before chasing our white whales.

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Here's an excerpt:

Mollie: For both fiscal reasons and possibly, genuinely trying to carve out their own angle, I do think spotlighting the system is a bigger priority for [Dungeon Masters], which I think could work. There are a lot of people out there whose first contact with games like Dungeons & Dragons is the licensed stuff. It's Baldur's Gate 3. It's watching people play D&D, but they've never picked it up. I know so many people who love Critical Role — never touched a d20. And they probably never will based purely on Critical Role. Maybe they will because everyone's aware they're playing the system, Dungeons & Dragons, but I think [Dungeon Masters] is definitely gearing more towards trying to onboard people to the system. Whether it will be successful, I don't know, but I think there's interesting stuff in what they're attempting to do.

Chase: Is Dungeon Masters already set up for a certain amount of episodes in the season? And are they putting episodes out on Twitch and YouTube?

Mollie: I don't actually know. I couldn't see a set schedule when I was writing about it. I couldn't see a set schedule It's coming out every Wednesday, so there was a new episode last night (which, for me, is like 2 a.m.) But I don't know how long it's gonna run for.

It's on YouTube, and I think after every episode they're giving out free PDFs on D&D Beyond with the stat blocks of the monsters they use and stuff. Multimedia! Hasbro loves to be multimedia.

Chase: I only ask that because the other big concern with this is, and I think it's probably valid, that Wizards of the Coast has a penchant for abandoning its shows. They even launched an entire channel for D&D-related shows and that has been put on ice indefinitely, swept under the rug to be forgotten. It makes me very cautious about the fate of Dungeon Masters.

Mollie: Yeah, you're not the only one. When I was watching the first episode on YouTube, a lot of comments were like, please don't let this die. I really enjoyed it. They were like, please carry this on because it was great fun.

Chase: That's not a good place for your audience to be in. Yikes.
Yeah

Caelyn: The way you describe it is very reminiscent of Games Workshop's Warhammer TV Battle Reports. It's the sort of thing that treads the line between producing something that is entertaining and is going to be representative of the game, and also effectively being a corporate showcase.

Mollie: Yeah, pretty much. You can never really separate Dungeon Masters from the corporate intent of it. It's always going to be an advert for the new book and the system. If they don't abandon it, I would not be surprised if the runtime is their whole Season of Horror that they're doing. Dungeons & Dragons have got a new product strategy where they don't just release a book; they have a whole season where they bring out related products and things like that. So, with Ravenloft coming out in early June, it's all about horror right now. I would not be surprised if that was the predicted runtime for the story arc they're going for.

Chase: The seasonal model does give me hope that they'll at least try this a few different times with the different seasons. There's a season of horror, might and magic for 2026. So, maybe they'll at least keep Dungeon Masters going for those three seasons, and then kill it behind the shed if they're going to do anything. But I would really love to see it transition between these seasons. Will they experiment with the format, bring in different actors and dungeon masters? For folks who watch actual play, that's likely a big draw: different actors, different people in different permutations around the table — maybe playing different systems.

Mollie: I suspect it's why the new season of Critical Role is such a huge cast. We have so many great people involved in this that people enjoy. How can we cram as many of them in as possible? Westmarch is the answer.