Amy Vorpahl is the voice of Fizban, multiverse-spanning god of dragons, in Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons. We discuss this character’s view of the world and how to write for D&D.

Episode Transcript

Photographer:@anetherealfire, Gown: @chadhatter, HMU: @redrighthanded

Amy Vorpahl: Fizban would definitely at least try to get along with everybody, but he would be, I think, most similar to Volo just because Volo is also delighted and a little goofy. I do feel like those are qualities that Fizban has. The difference is, Volo has Elminster to kind of reign him in and Fizban has literally nobody. So, you know, there, there’s this kind of, because he’s a freaking god, he made the world, like, what are you even going to do to this person who wants to, you know, cast this spell that maybe he just made up? Like, you can’t do anything. He’s going to do what he’s going to do.

Lucas: Welcome back to Making a Monster. I’m here with Amy Vorpahl, who is an actor writer, dungeon master singer songwriter, and contributing writer for Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons, Amy, welcome to the show!

Amy Vorpahl: Yay. Thank you. That was very good. You got through all of those. hyphenates like a pro!

Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons

Lucas: I wanted to talk to Amy because of the work that you’ve done on Fizban’s Treasury. And if you don’t know, you should by now, if you’re listening to this, Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons is a comprehensive source book for dragons in D and D, including gem dragons, lair and hoard mechanics, and dragon-themed subclasses we first saw in Unearthed Arcana.

Amy Vorpahl: I contributed probably the least helpful situation for the book, as far as if you want to play a dragon or look into the lore of dragons, my contributions will not help you. But I, I did contribute as the voice of Fizban himself. In the same way that Volo’s Guide to Monsters has Volo “back-and-forth-ing” with Elminster and Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything has Tasha quipping in from time to time, I played the Fizban kind of flavor text, or what I called, when my boyfriend was asking me what I was doing, I was like, “I’m writing my wizard tweets!” So just the things like as if Fizban were attaching post-it notes to the actual crunchy texts and the how-to’s in the treasury.

Lucas: I’ve asked like two dozen people about monsters and I’ve, I’ve also asked them how they got into tabletop RPGs. And there are some common threads, but it has been two dozen unique and interesting stories. So, this has been a hobby since 1974, you get into it?

Amy Vorpahl: I got into it when I was 18, a freshman in college, uh, on my very first day at school. My cousin was a sophomore at University of Oklahoma and she came to greet me and see my dorm room that was decorated with nine Lord of the Rings posters and one Yoda poster. And she brought a friend who kind of took one look around, knew that I was a BFA acting major and was like, “Have I got the game for you!”

And just sort of did the math for me and invited me to play D and D. And my cousin was like, oh, it’s this nerd thing. I don’t play with them, but you, you, you can. And I was like, yeah, let’s what else am I doing? So I, I started playing, I can’t, I really can’t remember if it was that night or the night after. And we just played for that entire afternoon, evening night. And it was like a no brainer. I was deep in already. And, uh, and we played all four years of college together and the summers too. It was great. So that’s how I got into it. It was pretty much at the best time of my life, because you know, it’s college, you’re kind of setting your own rules, especially for the weekends.

And, and yeah, I was able to make a lot of friends. You’re kind of, you’re kind of assigned to be friends with the theater people because you’re a theater major and you’re with them all the time. And this was an immediate way to have meteorology friends and literary majors and English majors and, and, uh, film majors, which was different from the theater department.

So it was like a good way to, yeah, it wasn’t forced, but it was a fun way to have, extra bonus friends outside of the theater department.

Lucas: Yeah. And to explode that a bit, uh one of the things that I love about this game is that it’s a bizarre cross section of humanity and there’s no

Amy Vorpahl: Well said! Bizarre being the operative word here.

Lucas: It’s like, really? You? And yeah, we all have a common vocabulary and some common ground to build from. So, so that’s fantastic. Uh, but as an actor, I mean, this must have been a really interesting confluence for you because, 2013 to 2018, I think, was when this all began to explode into the mainstream and it became, uh, uh, don’t want to say like a viable profession because I don’t want to reduce the magic of it, but, it became like a thing that you could do

Amy Vorpahl: Yes you, I mean, viable profession is, yeah, again, the caveat is not for everybody, but, uh, for me, for sure. There was one time I went through, you know, doing taxes and I was like, okay, well, it would be interesting to see if I categorize where my income came from, , which again, as a freelancer is kind of everywhere, 60 to 70% for a few years was D and D slash livestreaming RPGs. And it, so yes, viable, viable income, viable thing that you have to put on the resume at this point. Yeah, it did explode and it surprised the hell out of me and never in a million years would I have thought that I would need to track my experience playing this game? Uh, and yet here we are. And, I didn’t even have to try to exploit my hobby. D and D came for me and exploited it for me.

Lucas: So it sounds like it wasn’t necessarily intentional. Is there like a line that you can trace from, from now back through Dimension 20 to your first time playing?

Amy Vorpahl: Right? Yes. So the, the first thing I played in college and then moved out here, it was trickier to find people to play with. And then. someone wanted me to be a dungeon master and, and after a panic attack, I just couldn’t do it. Uh, so that, all of that kind of kerfuffle was crazy. I always float by that, but yes, my first time dungeon, mastering resulted in a panic attack in which I couldn’t read a single word and couldn’t dungeon master at all.

We, they wound up going, wow. Uh, it was just for two friends and I couldn’t do it. Like it, it was not happening at all. I couldn’t say words, I couldn’t read. And, and we had to like, just kind of call it because panic attacks. So for all of those out there who think that boy, Amy is a great, confident, successful dungeon master – not always, and it did take a long time and and that, Nope, you know, like give yourself permission to have a few panic attacks before you get it right. I guess is my advice.

But then it all came to culmination when Saving Throw Show got started and Saving Throw Show is a Twitch stream, still going today, and they actually had auditions because they wanted to do a “how to play a Pathfinder” web series. And that was a very successful Kickstarter and they got it funded and I wound up actually auditioning for them, uh, which turned into making the series and also becoming friends with them. And that’s where I, if you know, Ivan van Norman, that’s where he and I met. Dom Zook, who runs Saving Throw Show, that’s where we met. Tyler Rhodes. Uh, anybody from Saving Throw Show, who you might know now, I that’s where it’s really, really where I spent like my formative livestreaming years before I got hired to, as a writer actually for Nerdist and Geek and Sundry’s live-streaming platform Alpha.

So, uh that would be the line. And then from there, after, you know, working at the, this internet company as a writer, most people were like, well, Amy’s around. And any time there was any need for an on-camera fill-in that was me. And then it turned into, me being kind of prominent on, on those streams as well. So it was just, I loved working there cause I was, I was what we call using the whole buffalo.

Writing for Wizards of the Coast

Lucas: Let’s talk about how you got to writing for games. Writing for D and D is, is less narrative design than people think and more, almost technical writing, like you’re writing an instructional manual.

Amy Vorpahl: dang. That is well said and correct. I don’t know if I need to go any further than that.

Lucas: Did you have to develop that skill on purpose or was that something else that you kind of discovered as you moved toward Candlekeep?

Dungeon in a Box has run two successful Kickstarters for “skinny minis” to include in their monthly dungeon run subscription box.

Amy Vorpahl: I didn’t know that it wasn’t narrative until I did it. And the way I even got started, I had dungeon mastered and all that before, but my friend, uh, David Cronin built a company called Dungeon in a Box, which is a subscription service that provides adventures once a month, complete with maps and minis and other fun, little accoutrement that you might want to play, uh, use in your play sessions. And he was kind of getting buried under the writing a new adventure every month

Lucas: It’s a lot.

Amy Vorpahl: it’s a lot. And he was, and so he just asked his friends, like, does anyone want to write for this? And he had all of us submit a, an 8,000 word adventure, and he chose me as the writer and my adventure. I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily it’s definitely not perfect. It’s it’s also not correct, I guess, but. But he saw it was definitely it’s me. Right? So there’s, there’s intrigue and silliness and fun stuff and like a cool concept. And what he saw was like a fully developed idea and thought, well, I can at least work with this. So he chose me and I worked with him to write a few adventures for Dungeon in a Box before I couldn’t do it anymore.

Cause yeah, it is, it is a lot. So I did that for that for a few times. And then Chris Perkins tweeted out one fateful day, “does anybody write TT RPGs that I might not know about?” And I was, and so I replied to the tweet and I had played games with him at Gen Con and in other like live stream things before.

So I knew he knew who I was, but. I just replied to him. And then basically a year later I got the email that was like, Hey, would you like to, you know, contribute an adventure to this Candlekeep Mysteries situation? And I was like, oh, wrong Amy, it’s fine, uh, but you might want to get their right email address. And they were like, no, no. Apparently every writer said that. Everyone was like, oh, I don’t think you mean me. And then, then Bill who was running, the project had to go. Yes, I do. I mean you but yeah, that was, and of course I said, yes. And then we were off to the races. But it was that, that was kind of the game writing journey.

And then writing for D&D is very different from writing Dungeon in a Box, because the writing for that is a little bit more, we know you’re not going to play this exactly as written. So here are some ideas. D and D however, is, is written as if you might be playing this exactly as written.

I need to give you every single- exactly how it’s lit, exactly the stats for everything, including this door, you know, like it’s, it’s very, yeah, like you said, it’s like writing an Ikea manual and you’ve got to be really specific and, and not only like, I guess, visual as well as, you have to be the dungeon master and the player.

In the actual adventure, you can’t write or plan what the players are going to do. You can just build the Ikea playground and hope for the best. So yeah.

Writing a Character Voice for D&D

Lucas: And for Fizban and you’ve had to pivot again, out of very technical work I think you might’ve been the perfect choice because of the intrigue and the silliness and the whimsy that that are embodied by Fizban.

Amy Vorpahl: Thank you.

Lucas: Yeah, absolutely! He’s a great character to write for.

Amy Vorpahl: It’s definitely an honor. It is. And also to be a woman and considered for the voice? It’s it’s just quite, I don’t, I don’t know. I also think when they gave me the job, and once I started doing some research, I was like, oh yeah, definitely me. I don’t know who else would be suited for this. Not to say that someone else couldn’t do it, but I felt very much like they had hired the right person. And I felt like, oh, I can do a good job on this. Uh, so that did feel good.

Lucas: When you were approaching the character of Fizban and doing this kind of writing, what are some of the things that you had to do to get this right that we might not expect from the outside?

Amy Vorpahl: I’ll paint a little bit of a picture. So my adventure in Candlekeep Mysteries is arguably the silliest adventure in the book and they buried it right in the middle of the 17 mysteries. I think it is, I think it is smack dab number nine. So that, that being said, Chris Perkins led that project.

He was the project lead and James Wyatt is the project director for Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons. And James asked Chris if he knew anyone who might be able to get Fizban’s voice right. And Chris was like, Amy! Just Amy. Uh, and I think he, he knew from having played with me before, but also, yeah, the, the silliness and the whimsy of my own adventure.

Not to mention my background is actually a lot of acting and a lot of sketch comedy and improv, not to mention songwriting, but I have a lot of training in comedy, specifically comedic characters, specifically comedic characters who wear wigs. So, so, you know, putting on a beard and a hat is kind of like, okay, no big deal, we’ll just do this character. But the acting part of it and the quips and the one-liners, I just have that experience. I don’t know if I’m the best one, but I can, , I think I can get that voice right.

Once I was hired and onboard, James Wyatt came back to me and was like, okay, we have to, I have to just be honest, like Fizban is notably a forgetful character, uh, to the point of, I think, killing himself trying to cast feather fall because instead of casting feather fall, he actually just summons feathers and it’s, and that’s how he dies?

But he, so he’s, he’s the guy who’s like, oh, what is a dragon? And like, his human form is so messy. And, and how do you write quips in a book that who’s supposed to be kind of knowledgeable about dragons with someone who can’t remember maybe what a dragon is or how to cast any of these spells or who this person even is?

So Fizban, when I say human form, Fizban is also canonically Bahamut. He’s the dragon who created dragons. He’s the father of all dragons along with Tiamat. So he’s a deity basically, but he also has so many other, forms, which they get into and Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons.

It’s really fun. It’s like dragons are basically, they’re not lizard, they’re not animal, they’re not beast, they’re not monster, they’re magic. They’re manifestations of magic, which means there’s also ways as you pass through the realms where there is a version of that dragon humanoid, or otherwise that exists in every plane and they’re all linked and also simultaneously not really linked.

So you do with that what you will. Uh, but, but he’s got this list of people who he is humanoids to, monks, bards, uh, obviously Fizban, uh, he’s been dragons he’s, he’s all over the place. So he’s got many manifestations, which we have to deal with. He’s also in the form that we know him, the Fizban name he’s forgetful.

So how do we combine kind of everything without, without putting too much of a stamp on it? Like we want the voice to kind of transcend a, an old white male. So that’s fun. Wrapping, wrapping your head around that. And what I came to was like, well, I can’t, that’s so much information. I just need a specific voice that I can write to and write kind of jokey quippy stuff for.

And so when it came to for myself was he had mentioned doddering professor, which I liked, and I kind of qualified that even closer and made him a little bit similar to the musical theater dean at my college, who is an old white male extremely queer, uh, very, very into plaid and sugar treats and, he loves musicals, but when you talk to him, it’s always more about like, he’s just trying to get ya, I guess? Like, he’s always, he’s not, he doesn’t want to necessarily talk about the latest show or whatever he wants to play tricks. And I’m like, that, that seems like, like a fun grandfather, a little doddering, doesn’t say what you expect. And so simultaneously I wanted the character to, when it comes to important things like creating the world, I wanted him to be flippant about that, but then when it came to something maybe not so important, like, uh, whose square, literal square foot of land, whose layer is this? Because lairs can be anything from a cave to a town, an entire town to a country, to a, yeah, like a tiny, one square foot of patch of grass, whatever the dragon freaking decides. So when it comes to the one square foot, patch of grass, Fizban would care very much about that, but not so much about the creating of the world.

There is this quip that I have that I believe I can share. So this is about the creation of the world. “Bards do have a way of editing and exaggerating. I remember that time as one big, boring, patience-trying, dilly-dalliance, a lot of hurry up and wait!”

So in his mind, bards are like telling the story of the creation of the world. And in his mind it’s just taking like centuries and forever. And he’s just like deciding what to eat throughout all of that.

Lucas: I have to ask at this point, does, does that Dean know that he’s Fizban now?

Amy Vorpahl: No, he doesn’t, I don’t know that I, cause it is loosely based on him. I, he doesn’t necessarily talk about dragons or world creations or fantasy at all, but, but I just get an image of him and that, that always tends to help. And I even do, you know, when I was writing the quips, doing the voice back and forth, uh, to my boyfriend and then just sometimes to myself to see if, to see if it would work.

Lucas: Yeah. And so much as any inspiration is ever the entire character that, you know, there’s some, some play there.

Amy Vorpahl: Yeah. There’s also a lot of Amy Vorpahl in It’s also like some of the quips I know I submitted are basically like adventure pitches. So it’s like, okay. Yes, y’all are introducing this monster or the way that this, this kind of gem dragon works, that’s fine. And then it’s me going, but what if? And then just kind of naming it and being like, I remember this dragon who did this and it’s like, oh yeah.

If you want to take that and use that in your campaign, go for it. But it’s kind of, it’s also yeah, like adventure pitches just from the point of view of it absolutely did happen in Fizbans’ memory.

the way I wrote Fizban was different from other writing, same as adventure writing is different because, with narrative writing, you kind of are allowed to type and go and where your mind takes you. You’re like answering questions as you go, like, okay, so the character enters the room. What are they wearing? Answer that in prose. What does it look like? Answer that in prose. What do they say? Answer that in prose and adventure writing is again, just kind of technical. Like what would the player’s questions be? So you’re answering those questions.

For Fizban, there’s no real question. There’s like, what would Fizban say? And, and that’s, that’s almost, I don’t want to say it’s a more difficult. But, but it’s different. It’s more like when you’re making a table and you’re like, okay, here are some personality traits and you’re making a bulleted list and you’re answering the same question just multiple times. It takes a different part of your brain muscle.

So the way I tracked it, the way I tracked writing Fizban was I had a bullet journal where I think it was for every five quips, I wrote, I would, I got to color in a square and I had a timer and I would just see how many or sorry, an hourglass, because I don’t like timers cause they beep I like to pretend like, I don’t know how much time it actually took by the time I look over at the hourglass. So I flipped the hourglass and I tried to see how many quips I could, come up with in that time, because it’s infinite right? Fizban could say anything. But to have a very specific take, it takes a little bit of like sitting in the character, thinking of the voice, thinking of actually how it sounds and like, oh, I’m Fizban so that kind of thing, uh, it is, it requires, it requires a truncated period of time for me to just be in that zone.

And so I got to color in, and I got to a point where I did about six or seven quips for every half hour. And that felt good because I was, I was also focused on, you know, ending at the punchline and making the word efficiency very good. And as short as possible, because you only have this much post-it notes and if you can make the quip three to five words even better. And then every once in a while, like I said, I would indulge, but by the end of it, I don’t know why, but I am a rewards-based person.

Maybe we all are and coloring in the different colors was how I got through it. And by the end of it, I had a stack of like lots of different colored squares. And that made me very happy. And I think when you’re creating, if you can do anything that makes you happy, uh, you should do that

Lucas: A friend of mine, uh, in my D and D game he plays a wizard and his idea was also like the smartest person in the room who can absolutely can’t remember what’s going on. And his, like the voice that he does for his wizard, Laust, is almost exactly the same as the voice that you do for Fizban and

Amy Vorpahl: Oh my God. We all have an old doddering man in our, in our vocal range.

Lucas: Exactly that’s the way he described it to me. He’s like, there’s a little bit of Laust in, in everybody. I had what I thought was a very clever question whenever I wrote like, what’s his deal? I think we got it.

Amy Vorpahl: I know, it’s sorry. I gave you a, I gave you a long-winded answer, but I have a lot of thoughts about obviously, Fizban and. I guess switching the voice from, from really a character who doesn’t, who at least pretends not to know, like you get a sense in the book that, oh, he, he knows what he’s doing all along, but in a non-narrative sense, you can’t have that character pretend to not know anything and then by the end of the book of this Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons, now he knows everything. It’s not that sort of book. So he has to know everything in a way that’s different than you expect someone to know everything to be. And that, that switch was it, I guess once I got it, I got it. It took a little bit of trial and error, but James seemed really on board with everything I submitted and I just had a lot of ding dang fun with it.

Fizban, Tasha, Volo & Elminster, The Xanathar, Mordenkainen . . .

Lucas: Fizban stands alongside this whole roster of other characters that have their names at the top of sourcebooks now: Tasha, the Xanathar, Mordenkainen, et cetera, et cetera. And you’ve talked about him being very different from those. So, I want to work from general to specific here. Why, why is it that you think we have guides through these source books? Why do we need a Tasha or a Xanathar and a Mordenkainen?

Amy Vorpahl: well, I guess I, my answer is twofold. In planning a D and D adventure, my main, like once you have this, you have everything, and it’s environment. If it’s a mossy swamp or it’s a, a city sewer or a city apartment, like now you have a visual and whatever the players do, you can pull from, and it’s all thematically appropriate. And also they can suggest something like, if you’re in an apartment, they’re like, oh, is there an end table I can hide behind? Versus if I’m in a mossy swamp, is there a, a pile of swamp I can hide behind or moss or a tree like they can do. Everyone can do the work for each other in storytelling once the environment’s set.

And I feel the same about these books. Like they have to come from somewhere, right? Like you can’t just be like uh, spells! Uh, because the spells already exist, right? So if you’re going to to make something an agendum, you want it to have yeah. Some flavor or a theme, and the environment and the situation would be like, uh, from the point of view of someone’s brain of a character that we all know and love, like Tasha. Specifically, I was told Tasha is sardonic and, and a little bit caustic and sarcastic where, and she gets her kind of humor and kind of, uh, fun stuff from, from that personality.

And they definitely wanted to lean away from that because Fizban is not sarcastic. He’s like very delighted, I guess by pretty much everything. Except the things that he should be delighted by like the creating of the world. But he,

But I also think it’s important just logistically. It’s important in the source books to have a frame of reference of what kind of spells and what kind of monsters and what kind of stuff we’re even doing here in the book with the rules and the lore, but then also for the reader, you might not want to give them like an AP bio textbook D and D lore.

You might want to, uh, yeah. Punch it up I guess, and, and add some flavor and color to some pretty what’s going to arguably be pretty crunchy pages. And the crunchy pages are for very specific people. And I think the flavor and the color is kind of for everyone.

Hanging out with Fizban

Lucas: Because now I know Fizban, and I feel like I know Tasha and Xanathar and Mordenkainen, maybe I think the best way to ask this question to you would be if Fizban met one of these other or any of these other, uh, guides, we’ll call them, do you think that there’s one who would he get along with and who would he NOT get along with?

Amy Vorpahl: I think, well, Fizban would definitely at least try to get along with everybody, but he would be, I think, most similar to Volo just because Volo is also delighted and a little goofy. I do feel like those are, those are qualities that Fizban has. The difference is, Volo has Elminster to kind of reign them in and Fizban has literally nobody. So, you know, there, there’s this kind of, because he’s a freaking god, he made the world, like, what are you even going to do to this person who wants to, you know, cast this spell that maybe he just made up? Like, you can’t do anything. He’s going to do what he’s going to do. But Volo is a human and, has his own flaws. So I think he would definitely hang out and get along with, and they would, uh, they would have long, late night chats with full of salted caramels Volo.

And, who would he not get along with? I, I think Fizban has an acceptance for everyone and even the trickery of Xanathar and the like, uh, causticness and sardonic tone of Tasha. He would just still be delighted and intrigued. Maybe not friends, but yeah, I think he’d be delighted and intrigued. He could probably learn something from Xanathar.

The Eyedrake, a Beholder-kin Dragon

Lucas: Having paged through all of Fizban’s guide, uh, is there a stat block or a creature with a stat block that you saw that you would qualify as your favorite? Like the thing that makes you most excited about this book and how much me about it?

Amy Vorpahl: I probably can’t say anything specifically, but if you look at Volos Guide to Monsters, beholder-kin are freaking cool. This is the way, beholders have babies through dreaming of them. It’s also the title of my album, Behold Her Dreams. The pun came first, Behold Her Dreams came first, and then I was like, oh, also I could just name my album, behold, her dreams. And anything that comes into my mind that manifests into reality is technically a beholder dream. If I’m the beholder.

So beholder-kin are a real messed up, screwed up monsters that come directly from a beholder’s brain while the beholder is sleeping. So if a beholder is like dreaming of looking at himself in the mirror, there, now you have pretty much a version of this beholder, a little bit messed up because of the dream. But other than that, you have a new beholder, and he has just had a baby.

If the beholder is dreaming of a room full of mirrors and the beholder is in that room full of mirrors. You might get just a lot of beholder babies. Now, if you’re, let’s just like extend that into what if the beholder is dreaming of a dragon, you might get a beholder-kin dragon. You might, who’s to say? And maybe that beholder-kin dragon has a stat block. And he has just had a baby of a real messed up weirdo, dragon that may or may not have like extra limbs or something.

This is an Eyedrake, a CR 8 beholder-kin that is created when a beholder becomes obsessed with a dragon. pic.twitter.com/rGDDGRARFb

— Christian Hoffer (@CHofferCBus) September 21, 2021

Lucas: Jeez,

Amy Vorpahl: Or extra eye stalks for that matter.

Lucas: ah, Amy, this was supposed to be whimsical.

Amy Vorpahl: Woopsies! Who’s say that dreaming and having like nonconsensual babies, isn’t whimsical?

Amy Vorpahl: Singer Songwriter

Lucas: Amy Vorpahl, thank you again for being so generous with your time and your enthusiasm. How can people get involved with, the next steps, the next things that you’re doing?

Amy Vorpahl: I am coming off of a really successful Kickstarter launch for my new solo music album. And at this point if you’re listening to this, you missed it, but you can still you can still PR sorry guys. Uh, you can’t give me money in that specific way, but you can give me money other ways. I have, uh, I have all my albums up on Bandcamp. Behold Her Dreams is the newest album. It’s not there yet, but you can get Songs in the Key of D&D, which is my first album. That includes The DM’s Lament, which you may or may not have heard. Uh, and that’ll be on my band camp. If you’re just curious about anything I’m doing, you can go to AmyVorpahl.com and for more up to date things, and like, kind of in the now and going live on Twitch, that kind of thing.

You can follow me at Twitter and Instagram at VorpahlSword. So, uh, I, I guess my next step is making a music video because. I can tell you now that I have reached that goal the stretch goal for that Kickstarter. So thanks to the audience for helping me make that happen. yeah, I’m just, I’m having a great year. Candlekeep Mysteries came out, Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons came out. If I guess what I would ask is if you ever play my adventure or enjoy Fizban’s voice, just throw me a tweet. It really, it really makes my day. There’s no royalties on these books.

So, uh, I consider those, the royalties is like, if I have brought joy to someone through working for wizards of the coast, that, that, that is payment enough. And, and that’s what I really, really, really, like. I just love it when people are like, I played your adventure and my character is my player characters were like, what is going on?

I’m like, yay. I did it. So just toss me a tweet that that will make my day and I do, read them all.

Lucas: Thanks for sticking with this episode all the way to the end for listeners like you. I have some free TTR RPG extras to level up your games, including stat blocks for monsters on the show, discount codes for top selling DMS Guild products, even short stories and artwork from my guests. Just go to scintilla.studio/monster that’s S C I N T I L L A dot studio slash monster and click on Yes, I want those!”

Email subscribers will also be the first to know about my upcoming D and D releases, including something frankly incredible I’m working on with Mage Hand Press, you know, the D’vati / Dark Matter / Wizmos guys? It’s going to make you believe D and D can be more than you ever thought it could. And I’m so excited to share it with you.

If you really like what I’m doing, consider supporting the show on Patreon. Patrons get bonus content like music I recorded for the show, extra conversations with my guests, live episode premieres with other podcasting friends and you, and believe it or not stickers! This show takes hours every week to produce and edit and Patreon support helps offset the value of that time, as well as allowing me to upgrade equipment and license new music for the show.

If supporting the show, monetarily, isn’t an option for you. Please share it with the people who play games with you. There’s a monster for everyone and your recommendation lets people know they can trust me with their time and attention. It’s a real gift to me and the creators I feature. You can also rate and review the show on iTunes, Google Podcasts, or your podcast app of choice.

I haven’t mentioned that in a while, but even three dozen episodes in five stars and a few words helps new listeners take the leap and join the conversation with this show.

Next Episode: Planegea, the Stone-age D&D Setting for D&D

Body-snatching jungle aliens called the Kelledros roam the prehistoric, stone-punk world of Planegea, a new setting for D&D 5th Edition by Atlas Games and designer Dave Somerville. It’s a young world of new magic and fledgling gods. Learn how identity and mystery shape the nature of horror in your D&D game.

Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons with Amy Vorpahl