The Stranger Things cast filmed a festive Dungeons & Dragons one-shot campaign
Aux Features Lost Odyssey: Toy Time For Ten-Towns
The influence of Dungeons & Dragons on Stranger Things is, like Stranger Things, not subtle. It all starts with DnD, as a matter of fact. So this was pretty much inevitable:
That’s David Harbour, Finn Wolfhard, Natalia Dyer, and Gaten Matarazzo with Wizards Of The Coast story designer Chris Perkins. They’re playing, with Perkins as Dungeon Master, a DnD one-shot campaign (that’s a self-contained story played in one session) in which they save Christmas. And on Friday at 1 p.m. ET/10 a.m. PST, you can watch it on YouTube.
The campaign is called Lost Odyssey: Toy Time For Ten-Towns, which is a title worthy of this chaotic-good cast. It was filmed while practicing social distancing and through the use of “SOLO Cinebot, a robotic camera that allowed Wizards of the Coast to film the game at cinematic quality using a fully remote team,” per The Wrap.
Stranger Things resumed production in October, but there’s no telling when we’ll get a new season, so let’s just hope the gang saves Ten-Towns and goes on to quest another day. And if we might make a suggestion: Let Robert Englund play next time? Or maybe Chris Pine?
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13 Comments
So did it go WAY longer than 6 hours and end up having to be two or three sessions? Because that’s what usually happens in our one shots. PCs will waste time on the stupidest details and entirely miss major plot points.
That’s what happens when everyone thinks they are the main protagonist of the story.
While incredibly annoying, I’d say that’s mostly the DM’s fault for not putting them in their place.
Hah, seconded. Never had a one-shot that didn’t have to be split into more sessions, and none of those additional sessions has ever actually happened. Then again, these guys are getting paid, which is more than pretty much any DM can hope to offer.Haven’t run one myself, but I think I’d intentionally make it a three-parter off the bat if I were to go for something shorter than my current 30+ session (and still going!) campaign. But damn is DnD just made for that long-term payoff.P.S. I’ve just remembered that I actually *was* part of a wildly successful one-off Call of Cthulhu run that wrapped in a tidy 6 hours. But that’s probably because combat in that game is better avoided.
My one shots have actually been 4-6 hours lately so I think I”m getting better at putting them together. Write a really good intro, 2 bigger combats or 3 small ones and it’s good. I did a ripoff of Seven Samurai/Magnificent 7 and the group did it in right around 6 hours, though I did have to drop a combat.My group has definitely gotten through a couple CoC sessions in a reasonable amount of time but yeah it’s mostly because avoiding combat is preferable lol
Chris Perkins has been running live D&D in front of audiences as part of his job for ten years now. He’s probably got the hang of it.
In my game last night, the party spent 40 minutes trying to come up with a way to wedge a door open with an Immovable Rod in a way that would allow them to retrieve the rod later and prevent someone following them from simply turning the object off and leaving them trapped beyond the closing door. Those are often the most entertaining moments in the game. Players don’t do that sort of shit unless they 1) feel it is important, and 2) are being entertained by it. So let them do dumb shit. The dumb shit is what people remember dozens of sessions later and the parts that they share with people when they are talking about the games they have played in.
DMs getting pissed off that the party didn’t hop through all the hoops they laid out in some convoluted breadcrumb trail of tired tropes and Mary Sue NPCs are the goddamn worse. Let the game breath.
Yep sounds like something the group I play with would do lol!“DMs getting pissed off that the party didn’t hop through all the hoops they laid out in some convoluted breadcrumb trail of tired tropes and Mary Sue NPCs are the goddamn worse.”Yeah that’s why I generally go with railroading because I hate to see people wasting their time with stupid crap. Thankfully I’m a good enough storyteller that people have a lot of fun and don’t even notice they’re on the tracks:)
I can’t think of anything more tedious than watching other people play D&D, and I love playing.
It actually really works for me in a way that watching people play video games doesn’t. Jared Logan has a pretty fun Twitch stream called Stream of Blood where he plays horror RPGs like Call of Cthulhu and Vampire with Ashly Burch and Thomas Middleditch and others.
Watch out, ladies.
At one of the cons the kids more or less admitted they had no idea how D&D is actually played – IIRC the question was about character classes and they were utterly clueless – despite acting out one of the more memorable performances of it in recent memory, so this is great on a few levels.Perkins is terrific at one shots, and I have a sneaking suspicion Harbour has played at some point in his life, so I’m glad they’ll get a chance to see it in action.
Incredibly disappointed the game didn’t include Winona Ryder who for sure would not have known what she was doing