Dungeons and Dragons podcasts and streaming shows have become very popular, especially with the advent of so many digital tools for players and DMs to use in order to streamline their experience like Roll20 and DnD Beyond. Eric Silver is the host of Join the Party, and the DM/content creator sat down with Game Rant to talk Dungeons and Dragons, podcasting, and about his approach to the game and opinions on the direction that DnD is moving.
Going into their fourth year of putting out Join the Party biweekly, the podcaster answered questions about how he and his players create a game world together, the process of adapting DnD rules to a modern superhero theme, and the inevitable need to improvise when the game goes off the rails. The following interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
GR: With how many digital options are available now and with the nature of how things are right now, what kind of tools do you guys use in your games? As far as things like DnD Beyond and things like that?
Eric Silver: Hmm, that’s a good question. We actually don’t end up using all that much. Because the podcast is set up to not be a visual experience. We have never used any sort of tokens or battle maps. To make sure that everything is up here, you know? In our heads and making sure that we’re explaining it for theater of the mind. So really, when we’re recording it, we just go in with everyone’s recording sessions, using Google Meet, which we’ve discovered has the least latency out of all of them out there.
Being professional podcasters, we nailed it trying to find the one that we need. So it’s the thing that we do, just Google Meet, and then our own individual dice. I like rolling dice in my hand, I don’t use an online dice roller. Everyone maintains their own character sheet on their own. I then use Notion for my notes. I really like the modular way Notion is set up. It has little sections for each subject.. It’s not just a word processor, like Google Docs. And it reminds me that I shouldn’t be writing all that much when I do prep.
I just need some bullet points. And then everything kind of goes from there. So yeah, that’s all the tech that we use. But all the tech that we do on the back end, is that we do a ton of editing and mixing that making it like a story that is concise and sounds good. And I mean, incredible shout out to our editor and one of our players, Brandon, who is our mixer and sound designer and does an incredible job.
There’s the sound design making it sound like you’re in a banquet hall or you’re outside, or you’re in a city that’s underground that’s falling apart. Really setting all of that up, and then putting sound like voices to different sides. And in our newest campaign, the one that we’re working on now it’s more of a modern world. So setting that up and making it sound familiar, like hearing that listeners think that there are birds in their apartment while they’re listening to this is like the highest level of praise for us.
So yeah, we do a lot of mixing and a lot of like editing and tech stuff on the back end after we record. But our recording setups are pretty much just like pen and paper plus video recording software.
GR: Going into your fourth year recording, when you first started doing the show, were y’all playing in person and recording? Or were you still doing it digitally and playing individually?
Eric Silver: Oh, yeah, we were playing a lot in person, we were actually playing in one in one of the players’ living room for a while. That was where [Brandon] set up all the mics. And we would go over on Sunday mornings and eat a big bagel and then play DnD for like four hours. It was really fun.
But it’s just like figuring out your medium and realizing the right way to do it, like we were doing it for ourselves. And it was the only thing that we knew how to do. Now we’re playing remotely, Brandon moved to LA and one of our other players lives far away as well. And I’m in a pod with our other player, Amanda. So we play together here in the multitude studio. So it’s just like a lot of putting this stuff together.
I mean, we try to be prepared. We tried to make the best show possible, regardless of whatever show that we’re doing. But it just so happens we’re rolling dice and telling the story at the same time. And being aware of the audience at the same time has just been really important for us, regardless of what we’re doing.
In DnD usually there’s just a relationship between the DM and your players, right? The DM and the players have this back and forth where you do stuff, you’re the DM and do some things and the player responds, or the player does something unexpected. And then the DM responds, but then you need to remember there’s a triangle and the audience is sitting right there.
And something the audience might say later like it’s a little out of time in that way but you’re cheating towards the audience, you know, like you might do during a play. Like obviously people don’t stand with their their bodies rotated one way so that we’re standing on the other side of a lamp, but you have to do that in podcasting because the audience is going to listen to it.
And we love doing those flourishes and having that relationship. So regardless of it’s digital or in person we want to make sure that it sounds good for everybody. For me, the DM, for the players and for the listeners.
GR: So, with that, the decision to do it as an audio exclusive podcast, was that like a conscious decision? To not include a video component?
Eric Silver:
Listen, we’re podcasters man, we would not be able to give you the thing that you want from a video podcast. We don’t know that much about minis, we were not video people. But we know microphones. And we know podcasts. And we want to give you that podcast. So it was always a conscious decision. And then playing everything to make sure that it’s for for an audio medium was always huge for us.
Also, I make so many silly faces when I’m DMing. Like when I make voices for the NPCs. There’s a lot of handwork that’s involved. Like, I don’t know how to express that. But I like that it comes out in my voice when I do. I do Tuna, the ghost cat that follows around one of our players in campaign two, and it’s like the the paws are always up. So there’s a lot of handwork that goes into the voice. But I don’t want to show you the hands. Like I’ll show you the hands at live shows like I’ll definitely do that. But that’s like my secret until I reveal it to everyone else.
GR: One thing with the recent change they made on Adventurers’ League with PHB+1 rules and in general, do y’all have a lot house rules to use for the show? Or do you allow what the players want to use the most in general?
Eric Silver: Yeah, it’s usually the stuff that the characters want to use. When we talk about house rules. It’s funny, it’s like I said about cheating towards the audience is that we’re trying to tell a story here. And I love rules, I love sticking to them and how that is the skeleton that makes Dungeons and Dragons go, but you know, if we want to do something that’s cool for the story, or moves the story forward. We’ll do that. Also, I’m a game designer…I’ve made supplements for reskinning DnD, and turning it into a superhero or modern world.
I made a game that was called Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, with my friend, Mischa Stanton about a Friday Night Lights inspired high school drama. I love building stuff. And I’d rather just build you something or build you a table or build you some game mechanics if that’s what you want.
So it’s not even about house rules, but like I want to, I will facilitate it for them. And if not, I’ll just like Yeah, man, let’s do it for whatever is cool for this story. I mean, wht we’re doing in campaign two right now, we’ve ripped the high fantasy skin off of the DnD monster as it is, and we’re playing a totally different thing that we don’t necessarily have the same guardrails and we’re doing that through storytelling through this communal world building that we’re doing together. Like we started by doing like four sessions of world building for campaign two using this game that I hacked together.
I called it RPG City Planner. It’s like a world-building matchmaking game. And I said well, we’re gonna start in a small town. What do you want to put in this small town? What kind of features? And let’s build out this community. And we answered a bunch of questions. And then slowly we built on top of it until we had this city.
And now we have Laketown City, which is where [the game] is set. It’s this city the size of Portland, in upstate New York, which started from being like a little lake ski town and turned into a massive city and how that’s changed New York state politics, United States politics, throw some superhero stuff in there as well.
And like, that’s the kind of stuff that I want to do to make it. Like, we all have ownership over the storytelling together. And I want the listeners to hear us do it and know that like, this game is just as much about communal storytelling, as it is about like a fun action-based podcast where we’re rolling dice to make attacks and such.
GR: With the communal world-building, because you all create so much of these worlds together, how much are you still, as the DM, hiding your hand so to speak from your players?
Eric Silver: The thing is that just because we came up with some of the plot points together, that we named the neighborhoods or we named a museum, or it’s like, hey, my character works here. He really loves this bowling alley, or my character lives in this historic district where the same people have lived there for 100 years, like I want to do that. We all come up with that together but they don’t know what I’m going to do next.
Like they don’t know the idea or the character that I’m going to introduce, like our entire game is the history of the city…this Lake Placid type of place in upstate New York, and the scientist, Dr. Cassandra Morrow. She discovered a new element up there called diafrom and diafrom has tons of energy in it, and they use it for clean energy that kind of like pushes the United States forward 30 years in terms of science. At the same time, when she discovered it, it unleashed a ton of radiation that is delta radiation, one more than gamma radiation because suck it to the Incredible Hulk and Bruce Banner.
I had this idea of what I wanted that to happen. It’s like, then one generation goes forward. And the characters, the PCs that we’re dealing with, are the children of the people who got irradiated originally in 1985, and Laketown, and others living in Laketown City in 202X. And they’re dealing with that. So this is the history that I want, can we build off of that? Then one of our players, Amanda was like, I would love it if my family lived there…and now I’m responsible for it.
Kind of like, okay, let’s build some stuff out from that. So the way that this would have worked is that historically, this neighborhood, which used to be Laketon, now is historic Laketon, kind of like historic Williamsburg in this way. It’s preserved and the government of New York State must have done that. It’s like okay, then what are some other things that government of New York State might have done?
Well, if this place did become like a metropolis, a futurism utopia, then maybe it’s the new capital of New York State, like they moved it from Albany. And now it’s the new capital and all that goes from there. And now there’s this different relationship between New York City and Laketown City. And we now have that relationship that we’re putting together. Now there are people from New York City who are coming to Laketown City, maybe they’re commuting and if it’s a futuristic place there’s probably a bullet train that connects New York City to Laketown City.
So like, these just build on each other. And now when someone from New York City is just popping in. We already established this. And now I have this reporter, Teagan Murphy, who shows up from from Average Bear, which is like our BuzzFeed news equivalent and now Teagan Murphy is this reporter who’s getting involved in the superhero stuff that’s happening around there and may or may not be having this Lois Lane relationship with with one of our characters.
So it’s like we have just built on top of all this stuff because I said, let’s talk, let’s do a superhero story. And let’s build off that. And then we did that progressively. And then boom, we had that in episode one Teagan Murphy showed up. And it’s been this wonderful relationship that the players and I have. And like, I never feel like I’m spoiling anything. I always feel like oh I’m so happy you said that because then I’m going to surprise you with something else.
GR: About how much time per week would you say you actually put into prep? Because that’s one of the things that a lot of DMs kind of struggle with is finding the time to, you know, build the fleshed out world that you’re talking about.
Eric Silver: There is a lot of work that I just kind of do ambiently in my brain, like I just love world building. And I love doing these things and keeping secrets from my players. And maybe when I’m at the beginning of an arc, like a few episode arc, I’m going to do a lot of world building. But I try to hew to this maxim that I heard on the internet somewhere, is that you should never prep more than half of the time you’re going to play.
So we usually play for two hours, I always try not to prep more than an hour for an individual play session. And that not might not seem like a lot. But all of that is going into things that I need to do…because it’s this modern game, we’re very much having a conversation about what happens outside of the three superheroes, what happens in the city when they’re not looking.
So I might be doing that off to the side, but like, I’m going to storytell about what they want to do, and how they start touching those other things. So that I can fully feel like oh, you do this, then this might happen. And like, that’s what I put my time towards.
I really try to give myself just bullet points, unless I’m doing something a little bit more specific, like setting up for a fight and that’s going to be a full episode. Yeah, then I go crazy. And I do like two, three hours of prep. But I really, really try not to do too much prep, because then you lose the spontaneity of the game itself. And then all of that world building that I did all that characterization, I did have NPCs then like, what did I do it for?
Like, I should know how every single NPC responds to a challenge, right? Or like, if someone tried to come on, if someone tried to mug one of my NPCs I should know what every single one of their responses would be. And I do. So I really try to lean into my characterization and the world building. I mean, that’s the fun, that’s the fun part. And then we get to play the actual game.
GR: With the spontaneity and the improvisation of DnD such a big part of it, have you ever had an episode go completely off the rails? Because DMs can tend to kind of make a general assumption about what their characters might do. So have you ever had that really happen? Where maybe you had to kind of improvise almost an entire show?
Eric Silver: Oh, 100%. Absolutely. Usually the episodes in the middle of arcs, where it’s like, okay, I have no idea what’s going to happen. And then the guardrails are off, where I’m leading them into the next stage of the campaign, then I have no idea what they’re going to do next. And they routinely surprise me. They make choices that I don’t think they’re going to do. They’re bolder than me, they surprised me with things that I said, like three episodes ago, and then they’re on, they’re on top of it.
But, I mean, I love it. I really, really love it. Honestly, I’ve gone into episodes with like two sentences of prep, because I would rather throw myself into that, then get surprised and have to throw out notes that I’ve already written down. You know, what I’m saying is like, it scares me more and keeps me more off balance. If I thought something was gonna happen, and they take a totally left turn, I’m like okay, this one’s going to be an improv heavy episode and I need to lean on the things I already know about the world.
GR: So with that, when things do go off the rails and you end up with that unused material, do you find yourself recycling things like encounters or NPCs for later on in the show?
Eric Silver: Oh, 100%, I think that’s the best thing about it. So what I describe DMing as being like is, if you’ve ever played a card game, or Magic the Gathering or Yu-Gi-Oh, or whatever your TCG of choice is, how you have your hand, and no one else knows what’s in your hand, only, you know what’s in your hand. And then there might be an expected way of how you play your hand, like, oh, I’m supposed to play a card in defense mode. And then I put in this trap, and then I do this. Shout out to all the people who cared about my Yu-Gi-Oh reference.
There might be an expected way of how you play your hand. However, depending on what your opponent does, or what your players do in this situation, you can play your hand however you so choose. So like move your notes around, put rooms of dungeons in different places, they won’t know. If they take a left instead of a right or they go above it instead of like through the front door, then have them come into a different room and just use your notes.
I’ve definitely reused battles that were encounters that my players never touched on. I’ve got one that I’ve been using a lot lately. But I remember early on in campaign one, I wanted to have these illegal snail races where you could bet tons of money on different snails in the back alley of this bar. And they would have to go around the loop-de-loop and then like, like a small obstacle course. And then there was a sprint at the end. And you can make Animal Handling checks or Intimidation or other rolls to make them go faster. And I knew I wanted to do this thing. And I was like, oh, maybe it’s behind the bar or somewhere else.
And then in this one session, Tracy was just like, I’m going to be Batman. And I’m going to bust in through the back of the bar into the kitchen. And I’m like, oh, I wasn’t expecting that. But then I had them run into some illegal snail racing. And like, that’s where I put the snail races. And I feel like I have in the back pocket. If you want to have something like an illegal dice game, or you want to have some sort of black market stuff. I always have snail races in my back pocket. And I know how those mechanics work. So always have illegal snail races in your back pocket is my advice.
GR:
So it seems obvious that as a DM you enjoy when the game kind of goes off the rails. With that, do you have a favorite moment or episode where that happened?
Eric Silver: Oh, that’s a really good question. Honestly, one of my favorite fights that we’ve done so far was one of the first episodes of campaign two, which is where we start, we introduce our heroes for the first time. And it’s the first fight where we actually get to see what they can do. And they’re doing it as like, regular people.
Like in the first episode of a Netflix Marvel TV show, or the first episode of the comic, you’ll see like Peter Parker beat up a robber or something and when he does, he’s wearing street clothes. He hasn’t become Spider-Man for the first time yet.
And that was kind of the moment we had, there was a bank robbery that was happening. And it was up to every single one of my players to be like, alright, what do you do? Do you fight them? Do you cower or do you try to be sneaky about it? Are you worried if someone’s gonna see you use your superpower or not? It became a lot of characterization and that’s when I started throwing a lot of things at the wall.
This is when I introduced the Knight of Mirrors for the first time who is this masked hero who rides in on a glass-plated motorcycle and just this reflective glass outfit. And he drives in on like this Tron bike and beats people up in a very sort of Red X, Teen Titans situation. Just comes out of nowhere and runs people over with their motorcycle. And they didn’t know who that was like they were just this vigilante driving around. And then it’s become like, is this person a friend or foe? We need to process this? What would my character do?
What would my character do? And I finally got to where I was throwing a lot of things that were new at them like the bank robbers had this really interesting strange tech. That was like 1980’s Gold, Silver Age of comics, inspired, you know, like lots of chrome, lots of bright colors, lots of like wings coming off of technology that did that you didn’t think needed wings at the time or like spoilers on like ray guns and stuff like that. So that first fight was really was really strange.
I just like seeing what would happen when they were going to be fighting for the first time. And like doing it in a bank at an auction. It was like a silent auction, which was really fun, too. So there were special items around that. What were they, what were the bank robbers trying to heist? What was the Knight of Mirrors doing there? And seeing them beat people up for the first time was really, really fun.
GR: One thing that definitely comes through is how much fun you all seem to have playing the game together, so to go backwards a little bit, what would you say was the reason y’all decided to start doing the game as a show?
Eric Silver: So my first introduction to the power of storytelling in tabletop RPG games was the Adventure Zone. I know that it’s not something that they were doing intentionally, but it really was really interesting watching a game unfold and then telling the story. And it really felt like everyone was contributing, both the players and Griffin McElroy did an incredible job.
And I was listening to it. I’m like, you know, this would be so much fun to do. I would love to do this. But starting from being intentional about it. Because with McElroy he’s like, we just found this thing. Like we were just doing it for fun. We didn’t know what we were doing.
But I’m like, if you were intentional from the jump, about making it sound good with editing, making it inclusive for everybody, not just like, not just nerds, because we saw how Dungeons and Dragons was expanding. So like, not just nerds, it was like truly for everyone making it is as inclusive, and people finding themselves expressed in the story. And then like having a good time, right from the jump and making sure that episode one was really fun and interesting.
Like, you know if we were intentional about it, that would be so much fun. And this was when I really wanted to start to break into podcasting. It was something that I loved for a really long time. One of my really good friends at the time, Amanda McLaughlin was doing a show called Spirits. Which was this mythology show they just started that I’d been on. And I’m like, Amanda do you want to do this show? Would you like to figure this out at the same time?
I had known Brandon from work. And we were like, we both love the Adventure Zone, we could just do this. And we could do it together. Then we all came together and started making Join the Party and it has been the backbone of what Multitude is, which is our podcast collective and studio. And now it’s my full time job.
I’m the head of creative at Multitude, Amanda is the CEO and the founder, and Brandon is the head of production. And all of the things that we learned while doing Join the Party, we’ve adapted towards all of our ideas about doing podcasting Which is make it intentional, make it fun, make it as accessible for as many people as possible, and be open arms. Open up the gates and have people participate.
It’s been the backbone of our podcasting philosophy for a really long time. And it’s incredible that we’ve been running this fiction show for such a long time. I feel so creatively fulfilled from doing Join the Party, because it’s like, I pour all of my storytelling and feelings into it. And I get to play with my friends for two hours during the work day, like every week or so. And it’s been a lot of fun.
Especially with everything we’ve been doing with campaign two. I feel like I’ve leveled up my DMing a little bit, but also getting to play in a genre that I love. This magical realism sort of space, or our slipstream fiction as you might hear it, like a modern world where one thing is different. Plus superheroes are entirely my s***. And I love doing it and playing in a space and a genre that I love so much. And also like conforming DnD, and tabletop RPGs to work for me and for the story that we want to tell.
GR: That leads into some of my next questions. Going into your fourth year of making the Join the Party podcast, what would you say are the biggest things you’ve learned in that time?
Eric Silver: I feel like I’ve learned so much. I mean, I had only DMed a few times before I started DMing on the podcast, and it really was a trial by fire. Like I thought that I’ll do, I’ll take care of this. But like, being responsible for the story beats and knowing what’s gonna happen next and feeling responsible for that has been just…I feel like I’m pushing myself.
Like learning a new tabletop RPG that I can take parts of and bring into our game, or trying to mold DnD to be the thing that we want for our story. I’ve just been pushing myself on it. It’s been the thing that I’ve learned the most about. Honestly though, people wanting to see themselves in stories has been the biggest thing for me lately. Being aware especially that we’re doing campaign two [in this modern world], we’re doing real people.
Things like naming people’s race and gender and making sure that I’m explaining who they are and what they look like, as best as possible. Because people want to see themselves in this story that they’re telling. And I’ve been starting to understand that and how much responsibility I feel like I have as the Dungeon Master populating the world with all these NPCs.
That’s been the thing that’s been really important to me. So I’m Jewish. And I’ve been thinking a lot about how storytelling in the United States definitely comes from a Christian background, like what we call secular in the United States still has so much Christianity built in there. And when we talk about like heaven, and hell, and even the people who have invented the genre of fantasy, and what biases they had, when that happened, and of course, how that trickle downs into Dungeons and Dragons.
And now, this other genre where we’re exploring superheroes in a modern world, like, I can’t not look at stuff in the face, and like trying to make this from my own perspective, from a Jewish perspective, and then making NPCs where people feel seen. Whether it’s gender or having same sex relationships, or having non-binary characters, and having people’s skin color be named.
Having black men and Asian women and all this stuff in our NPCs and making them important, and having them have agency and real characterization. Like I’m trying, I’m learning just as much as I can. And like, I know that I’m only coming from my own perspective. And I’ve reached out to people to about other sensitivities and listeners, and stuff like that. And it’s been really important.
And I take that story really seriously. Like I said, if we’re going to open up our arms to as many people as possible, to make it accessible. So you might see yourself in the story, and also teaching you how to play the game, which is something that we do in our after parties. Every two episodes, we talk about what happened in the last two episodes, and what it means to run a DnD game and teaching people how to play. So accessibility and opening our arms has always been something about Multitude. And so that started from Join the Party.
GR: So with that, with the moves that Wizards has been making, going forward with things like the rerelease of Curse of Strahd and Tasha’s that changes player race to origins, I don’t know if you’ve read those yet. How do you feel about those moves along with things like making the armored wheelchair canon? Just in general do you think the game has been moving in the right direction to be as inclusive as the game has presented itself to be?
Eric Silver: You know, people have been doing this at their own tables to see themselves in stories for a very long time. And I think it’s the responsibility of Wizards as a company that makes money off of publishing this stuff, to hear people out, and to actually make changes when people want want to hear them.
I don’t know necessarily, if I’d agree with [the game being inclusive], because, again, it’s coming from traditional fantasy and the game was established by these guys writing in in the 70’s and is pretty restrictive. I mean, it has a very specific idea of who is a hero and who’s not. And although you can tell that story, and every story at each table is different. There’s the tension, of course between what happens at the table and what is in this published book. I think that was the publisher taking very small steps.
I’ve written about how there is embedded anti-Semitism in a lot of the stuff that’s still in Wizards of the Coast books that they’re still selling. Like how the dwarves that are in the Player’s Handbook comes right from Tolkien’s dwarves, which he said were Jews, like he said that in an interview and like that doesn’t make me feel great.
That the Lich, the thing that was created by Gary Gygax in Greyhawk or I think for the Monster Manual for the original DnD, like the thing where the Lich keeps his soul in a phylactery which is the word that Christians might use when you mean Jewish to fill in. I mean, an item the Jews wear for their morning prayers on their head and on their on their arm.
And the Golem just got erased, like the Golem means something very specific in Jewish mythology. And our Golem is any construct made out of anything. So that really got flattened. And like those are things that I wish were changing and Wizards didn’t make money off of. And these are also slow incremental steps that people have been asking for, for a very, very long time.
This thing that was in the [Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything] about race and fantasy racism and tosses was just, you guys figure it out at your table, whatever you want to do is fine. But that doesn’t necessarily negate the things that were in the other books. It’s just like, if you feel like you’re changing, it’s on you, whatever.
So they’re a really big company. And I think that they still have a lot of work to do. But the people who are playing DnD and want to see themselves reflected in these stories, are pushing them to do it. And I think that they should listen to their audience more. Unfortunately, I also think that it is to the peril of the folks asking for this stuff to change. They’re getting piled on and, like getting terrible things on the Internet, and like getting death threats and stuff.
Putting yourself out there as being from any sort of minority group, and speaking for me as a Jewish person, but being in whatever race or gender or being disabled, you’re putting yourself out there and you get piled on by other people who think that you’re changing the game or that you’re just being a social justice warrior is ruining the game. So it is at your own peril, but it’s something you want to change.
And then Wizards is making these very, very small steps, because they’re owned by a very large company that takes really, really small steps. And that’s how, you know, companies in this country are allowed to exist. So yeah, I would say I’m glad that they’ve listened to people. And to your original question. Yeah, they’re changing, but it is very, very small. And it is off of the backs of people who are putting themselves out there and exposing themselves to a lot of hate on the internet.
So you pay the price that you have to pay to put it out there. I’m not saying that’s good. It’s not good. It’s not great. But it’s just like it is what it is and that’s just the way that the internet works. Yeah. Unfortunately, a lot of the time.
GR: Especially with those criticisms and others about DnD’s 5e in general about not being very “plug and play” and putting so much of the impetus on DMs to do a lot of the work, have you tried running Join the Party in other game systems either entirely or just in the piecemeal way you’ve described?
Eric Silver: Yeah, listen, I love other games. Like I love Blades in the Dark. I’m in a Masks game right now. I love Masks. I’m in or I played a bunch of those one-shots that are out there that we’ve done for live shows. I think the tabletop RPG community is vibrant and well. And I love the things that everyone’s making. Plus all the supplements that people are making to add on to fifth edition.
I also like all the games they play on Friends of the Table. Like I’m really interested in Beat Saber, I need to figure out how it works. Like there’s just there’s a lot happening. I feel like Join the Party was made to teach people how to play DnD and that was our first two episodes. We have episodes to teach people how to play their game. Where we stop and be like, this is what a roll is. We stop the action and pop in and then pop out to help people learn to play.
So you’re learning while you’re listening and enjoying the story. So I feel very responsible for our listeners and for people who come to us for learning DnD. So right now, we’re still in Dungeons and Dragons. And I think that DnD is great for telling a story where you have capital-H heroes, and there are epic battles. And that is something that we’re doing in the podcast. But if it were that we wanted to do a different type of podcast, like if we want to tell a story in a high school, then we’ll play Kids on Bikes. If we want to play like more of a monster story, then we’ll play Monster Hearts.
If we want to tell other types of stories I can see us looking at other games. But you know right now we’re a Dungeons and Dragons podcast. And we’re pushing DnD and molding it. It’s a game we get to do what we want with it, you know? We’re making this game into what we want to see and to tell the story we want to put out there.
GR: So as someone who seems to prefer creating their own worlds, do you find yourself ever using the published DnD material to supplement your games?
Eric Silver: I’ve never run a module before, it really freaks me out. I think that I would have so much more of a hard time following what’s in a book than just coming up with my own thing. And maybe like, that’s why I gravitated towards DMing in the first place. I don’t shade anyone who uses modules, I can totally see how that’s helpful if like, you’re working your your nine-to-five, and you’re like, I just want to play a game, can you just tell me what happened and like, again no shade on modules, but I always find it more confusing.
And in breaking down the different subclasses, I enjoy making my own, I came up with a bunch of subclasses. Like with turning DnD into a form that will fit the superhero setting that we’ve created. Like our Druid is a Circle of Spirits, which is a subclass i created for our game, and has ghost powers that I homebrewed. I used like, if you’re pulling from the plane of the dead in the way that a druid would, it would fit nicely.
Coming up with new stuff is really fun for me, I have a lot of fun doing it, and now it’s my full-time job. But I take that very seriously, and I like challenging my brain with creating what the books might not give me. And I mean that in the truest sense of a content creator, as someone who creates things in the DnD media bubble that other players might use.
I also really like using the UA (Unearthed Arcana, the content DnD provides to players that isn’t fully playtested yet). I kind of liking it more than what becomes the published books. Like with one of our players being a Way of Mercy Monk, giving that player the option to have abilities to avoid violence is something powerful in a game system that can often prioritize violence.
GR: So in a climate with many very popular shows like Critical Role, how would you say that Join the Party distinguishes itself from those shows?
Eric Silver: To give credit to Critical Role they’ve sort of exempted themselves from the podcast medium, they’ve created this show that feels very much like a full stage show, but what we’re doing is very much focused towards being a podcast, an audio format show. But we’re in your ear, everything we do at Multitude, is made to seem a seamless audio experience.
I don’t want to compare ourselves to Critical Role, they’ve created this thing that’s on the lines of must-see TV, but we’ve created this thing specific to podcasts, to the audio medium. And what they’ve done is great, but what we’ve done is this different thing. And we focus on being inclusive, bringing the stories that people might want to hear in this intimate way, we try to make this thing that’s made for podcasting.
At Multitude, we make this thing that seems like a heightened version of what you might be doing at home through post-production, etc. But like this intimate thing you’re hearing in your ears, this relationship with our fans. Especially through Covid. We love this direct support we have through things like Patreon, we have this direct connection with fans who want to like, send in fan art and the like. And we’re open to that, come on in, we’re doing superheroes.
GR: So this will seem like an obvious question, but what advice would you give to new DMs, and to people who might want to start a DnD podcast?
Eric Silver: What I would is that if you’re having fun, the players are having fun. Remember that as DM, you are like an architect. You’ve put in the number of bathrooms, you put in the number of bedrooms, or like you have a lawn and a backyard, see what you want to do with that.
But only once the family moves in will you see how the space is being used, are their bunkbeds, is there a rain shower? Will the space in the backyard be a pool or a basketball court, or something else? You won’t know how players will use your stuff until they’re there, and then as the architect you need players to take off their shoes so to speak. Take the pressure off of yourself until the players are there.
As far as podcasting, make sure your show is unique. Why is your show unique? Is it who you are? Is it the structure of your show? Is it the sound quality or your perspective different or the game you’re using unique? Is it the premise? There are so many ways to do it, but make it unique.
The podcasting environment is so bursting with DnD podcasts that you have to make yourself stand out. That’s the biggest advice to give, is to make the show that you’re making unique. Is your show bringing in new people, telling their stories in a way to draw those people in. Find the thing that makes your show unique to draw them into your show.
GR: Awesome, thanks Eric for taking the time to talk with us. As we are ending, is there anything you’d like to plug to our readers?
Eric Silver: I talk about DnD and Jewish stuff through on Twitter @El_silvero, which is what my Luchadore name would be, and find Join the Party on IG and Twitter @jointhepartypod. We have finished our first campaign which helps teach people how to play DnD and we are currently in our second campaign set in the futuristic superhero setting. Join the Party is available anywhere you download podcasts!
Join the Party releases every other Tuesday wherever podcasts are available.
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