Earlier this week, the free ad-supported (FAST) Channel Dungeons & Dragons: Adventures from Hasbro Entertainment launched on Amazon Freevee and Plex. It arrives with 3 different shows: Faster, Purple Worm! Kill! Kill!, Encounter Party, and Heroes’ Feast.
Faster, Purple Worm! Kill! Kill! premieres tonight, and it’s a comic take on Dungeons & Dragons where in each episode, different celebrity guests and gaming stars play through an improvised, stand-alone story where all of the characters face certain death. Here’s the trailer:
I recently got a chance to speak with series co-creators Matthew Lillard and Bill Rehor. Lifelong friends, the pair are also co-founders of Beadle & Grimm’s, a company dedicated to immersive gaming with products like the Legendary Edition of Phandelver & Below: The Shattered Obelisk, which I recently reviewed for GeekDad. Bill serves as the host of Faster, Purple Worm! Kill! Kill! while Matthew plays in the adventures on several of the episodes.
Me: How did Faster, Purple Worm! Kill! Kill! get started?
Matthew: Well, I’ll start it then Bill will finish all the questions because he’s definitely the smarter one. We, you know, we were trying to answer the riddle. How do we play in the streaming space? I mean, it’s a space owned by Critical Role. And so we felt like it was like a piece of our company that was missing. And the more we looked at it, the more we realized it’s just not how we consume media. So, we sort of ran it through our Beadle & Grimm’s sort of take on it, right? Like what’s our take, what makes us excited about it? And then Bill came up with a fantastic idea, which is…
Bill: What we saw as the main hurdle for D&D as entertainment is the length of the game. There’s a couple of groups out there, Critical Role is obviously amazing. I think Glass Cannon does an amazing job and can be entertaining for hours and hours. But it’s a very tough hurdle to overcome to keep people’s attention for a three hour game, and then to keep them coming back to the same campaign over and over and over again. Sort of our internal joke is that, we are the SVU of Dungeons & Dragons. So how do you create a version of D&D that has sort of a standalone quality that is easily digestible and very entertaining, but that, you don’t have to invest hours and hours and months and months of following a campaign in order to enjoy it? And the answer we came up with, well, what if everybody dies every single time? By allowing us to change out the cast and the DM every single time, we create this great variety of voices and takes on what playing D&D is all about.
Matthew (laughing): Did you, I just wanna clarify, you said we’re the SVU of D&D. I’ve never, that’s a new way. Paul, you’re our first interview and I’m now gonna steal that line the rest of the time. That’s awesome.
Me: I’m going to have to put a note in the article that it was coined here first. So, how long does the show take to shoot?
Matthew: We shot three a day. We aimed for like an hour, hour and 10 (per espisode), and then we cut down in the editing process. I think the thing that we were all surprised about is the magic of editing. I mean, the games are fast, they’re ruckus. There’s really high stakes. I think that we found during the process of shooting the show that, you know, a lot of them have this emotional undertone. We found that there is this element in the game, that the game really becomes about what these characters do facing certain death.
Me: I love the improv.
Bill: It’s really great to hear you say that because that’s a big goal for us. It goes back to what we were saying earlier, we’re trying to remove the barriers for people to enjoy D&D as entertainment. And part of that is the length and the commitment of knowing that you can come in on episode eight and you don’t have to have seen one through seven to get it. But also part of it is just that very sort of loose, improvisational energy of it that basically tells you that there are no wrong answers in Dungeons & Dragons. There’s no wrong way to play it. If you’re having fun, you’re doing it right.
Matthew: We believe it’s a love letter to Dungeons &Dragons. We feel like it becomes a brand ambassador in a really profound way that we collectively, as Beadle &Grimm’s, are really proud to present. You know, I think it represents the tapestry of humanity you find in this community. We made a really clear choice to make sure we had diverse tables and everyone was represented. Every game plays different. And at the end of the day, every show delivers. Some are emotional, some are dramatic, most are funny, but our hope is that the community cherishes this show, cherishes D&D Adventures, all the shows.
Me: Is there one particular episode from this first season that, if you could only watch one, that’s the one to see?
Bill: I mean, there’s definitely one that stands out as very unique on sort of the emotional side of it, which is the Marcus episode. But the one that stands out for me that I’ll just bring up real quick before Matt talks about that (the Marcus episode) is a Spelljammer episode. Beadle & Grimm’s co-founder John Ciccolini DMs it. And it’s a nearly perfect episode in my mind as if you want to see what the Purple Worm format is all about. It’s super funny. The performers are amazing. And the story moves very quickly. It comes to a very fun end. And there’s a lot of great improvisational moments in that episode. And the funny thing for us is just the night before (we shot the episode) our DM and one of our players had to bow out for very valid reasons. And so, John had to make this thing up on the fly. And we had to bring in Nora Ibrahim, who’s a great friend of ours and worked very hard on the show with us. We had to pull her in and just say, “hey, look, you’re going on tomorrow and we’re gonna figure it out.” And so that was like the most improvisational experience we had the whole time because we were all unprepared and kind of flying by the seat of our pants. And it turned out to be one of my favorites.
Matthew: So, the episode Bill’s referring to (the Marcus episode) is an episode that we did where, you know, the storyline in the show…(Matthew chokes up a little) I can’t talk about it. So weird. Storyline of the show is that this family goes to bring back the father figure. My dad’s really ill. And I’m playing this game and in the game, my character is like, I would love to hug my dad again. So it just, I ended up sobbing. Bill, who’s lost his dad, he was cracking. So I cracked. And so, you know, I think that the powerful thing about that episode is that, you know, the stakes in which we tell stories and the way we sit around the table and share fellowship is the most important human thing in the world. And that’s why the game is so great. It’s not because of the mechanics of the monsters or the treasure. It’s like sitting around the table and playing and sitting with friends. And so, you know, that episode ends up being this crazy emotional thing. Just talking about it, like six months later, I’m getting emotional.
Me: Last question. For the non-D&D players out there that you want to bring in, what’s your elevator pitch to them?
Bill: You know, I would say that it’s a bunch of amazing performers having a fantastic time around the table. And my feeling is that all games, D&D, Monopoly, whatever, they’re all just a vehicle to get at a table with people you love. It’s the joy of people interacting together and having a fantastic time. And when you take these amazing performers who are hilarious and charismatic and get to watch them having a great time together. It’s just enjoyable and D&D just happens to be the vehicle that provides that experience.
Matthew: The longest elevator pitch you’ve ever heard. It’s a long elevator. It’s like a 50 story building. (we all laugh.) My elevator pitch is Matthew Lillard is in 13 of the 20 shows. No, I will say the same thing to Bill said. Look, it’s Whose Line Is it Anyway meets Dungeons & Dragons with some of the best performers you’ll find anywhere on any platform.
Me: That’s awesome. Thank you guys so much.
Faster, Purple Worm! Kill! Kill! has new episodes Thursdays & Saturdays at 6PM and 9PM PST on the Dungeons & Dragons: Adventures FAST Channel on Amazon Freevee and Plex. This Thursday, November 16th, is a 2-episode premiere.
