Five Years and a Convention (So Far)
This is an anniversary that kind of snuck up on me. I knew it was getting close to the yearly marker of when we first broadcast Authors & Dragons, but it somehow escaped me that this will be the fifth time we’ve celebrated such an occasion. Five years since several comedic-fantasy authors started their journey to explore a vast, magical world, and probably ruin it in the process. Five years since a group of people I had at most passing familiarity with became dear friends.
If you have no idea what I’m talking about, then are you in for a sudden glut of new content. Authors & Dragons began life as a D&D-game podcast centered around a group of authors playing together on August 15th 2015. It stars Rick Gualtieri, John Hartness, Joseph Brassey, Robert Bevan, and Steve Wetherell as the players with myself acting as Dungeon Master. Not only are we over a hundred episodes in by this point, but last year we threw our first convention in Las Vegas, putting together as much fun stuff for the fans as we could. We were planning to do the same this year until Covid, so instead you can join us for a Digital Convention this weekend on our Youtube page. No price, no costs, just hours of convention-style content for anyone who wants to watch.
That said, our D&D game was only the start of things. When we launched a Patreon, we started several new types of shows to create fresh content. This included stuff like Mimic Chest, where we do the podcast format of a more popular show such as Doughboys, and Authors & Dragons At the Movies, where we talk loudly over a generally terrible film everyone is watching together. This is also around when we started the A&D Discord on our Patreon, which has grown into an amazing little community. Those new programs we’d worked on were good experience for 2019, when we funded enough on Patreon to add Side Quests to our main channel. Those are more traditional podcast episodes, and have allowed us to do fun formats like games, in-depth discussions, and interviews with fascinating people.
Remember when I said if this was new to you, it was a lot of content? We’re still not done.
We’ve also been working on more video-based components, Steve Wetherell and I started the Adventure Brodeo, where we badly play World of Warcraft with a level of incompetence one could generously call “childlike”. There have also been segments featuring the whole cast, and as the digital con tomorrow suggests, we’ve got plenty more on the horizon.
Then, of course, there are the books. On top of the individual character stories many of the authors have written, we collectively do a series of monthly novellas called Shingles. This is where you’ll find many of our more outlandish ideas, ones that perhaps couldn’t be molded to a traditional tale. For my part, these sorts of stories include aliens infiltrating a kegger, a slasher vs slashers story set in a theme park, and a magician stuck in a deadly martial arts tournament (Action Kadabra coming in September). If you’re an audio person, we’ve even got audiobook collections available of them.
Good gravy, I’ve been part of all this, and even I didn’t expect the recap to take up that many words. That’s the thing about projects like this one, they can surprise you. What started as a wild idea we were pitching around online slowly morphed into an actual episode, then two, then twenty, then a spin-off, then a Patreon, then a convention, and suddenly you look back and say “How the hell did our game where one of the players nearly drowned themselves in episode two come this far?”
The answer to this isn’t “an” answer so much as it is a culmination of things. To call out the obvious, we got lucky with our timing. I’m not going to say that there was no D&D podcast scene five years ago, but it was certainly much leaner than it is these days. Hopping on to a trend before it started fully rising definitely helped us tap into an under-served market. But that was only one piece of it, there have certainly been other D&D podcasts to rise and fall in the five years we’ve been at this.
Another essential in making it this long has been our incredible fans. From the responses on episodes, to the interactions when we do live events, to the people on Patreon funding our expanded efforts, to the folks who flew out to Vegas to see us in person, to the amazingly kind and supportive community that sprouted in the Discord; we are constantly surprised by and grateful for you all. Doing this kind of stuff, be it in writing or audio mediums, it’s easy to wonder if anybody out there will actually enjoy it. Getting feedback from you all has been a major encouragement when the work got rough, and I doubt we’d still be standing, let alone growing and thriving, without the tremendous support you all have offered.
For the last major component, there can be only one answer: the cast. While I could call them out as a whole, this seems an excellent chance for a bit of personal recognition and some plugs.
Robert Bevan – Klaus: The other person here since it’s inception, A&D began life as me and Bevan shooting the shit about wanting to play D&D again, and look at where it’s led us. On top of writing the Caverns & Creatures series, Bevan is also the driving force behind Shingles, more than once covering for the rest of us when schedules got crunched. While his work is the least safe for work among the bunch, Bevan has a knack for finding the most ridiculous, hilarious joke in a given situation, and never fails to crack me up.
Joseph Brassey – Bjorg: A man we lovingly call the Social Justice Berserker, Joe ended up in the very strange position of being both the barbarian of the party (read: murder machine) and the moral compass. For a guy who spends his real life time heavily training with swords and standing up for every cause he believes in, it’s an oddly fitting role, one we’re better as a party and people for having around. Joe has written works like Skyfarer and Dragon Road, if you like high fantasy and emotionally driven characters, you should check them out.
Rick Gualtieri – Silas: On top of being one of the few people to love spreadsheets as much as me, Rick plays an attempt at the most annoying paladin imaginable. For those of you who’ve had paladins in your party, you understand just how high a bar that is, and yet Rick very well might have reached it with his madcap archer/paladin/secret vigilante. When not finding ways to try and fire imaginary arrows, Rick is quite a prolific author, with comedy-fantasy series like Tome of Bill, Midnight Girl, and Crypto-Hunters. Between his output and his talent, if you enjoy fun stories about monsters, Rick’s work may be right up your alley.
John Hartness – Fandingo: Thanks to the rest of the cast being largely out of their minds, John has to play a bard often forced into the diplomatic position, a role he manages to fill while still staying true to Fandingo’s general fuckery. Looking back, even I can’t fully recall how they talked their way out of some situations. Outside trying to minimize how much trouble the party is in, John is our font of wisdom on the industry. From the systems of traditional publishing, to helping us connect with freelancers on projects, to the absolute wealth of convention education he’s given, John is a man always happy to share from the lessons he’s learned. If you want to see how well all that experience translates onto the page (hint: very well) then you should check one of John’s series like Bubba the Monster Hunter, Quincy Harker, or The Black Knight Chronicles.
Steve Wetherell - Brandon Thighmaster: The monk with incredible abs, an aversion to being touched, and a desire to punch one of every animal, Steve took what is normally a bit of a boring class in entirely unique, and hilarious, directions. While Steve has a smaller catalog compared to some of us, you’ll find his writing is just as hilarious as his vocal work, the bastard. As I’ve told him many times, one day the guy will be a household name, so go check out Doomsayer Journeys and you can say you read his stuff before it was cool.
I do realize that this blog was very self-indulgent, half a recap of five years of project growth, and the rest mostly a plug for my friends. But given that I’m pointing you toward hundreds of hours of free entertainment, I think it’s forgivable on occasion. Especially when that occasion is five years in the making.
If you want to join us for A&D Con this weekend, then head over to our Youtube at 12pm CST on August 15th, and brace for some fun!