Last weekend, some of the Roll20 team headed to Los Angeles for a hellish time of evil elves, dastardly demons, and enough string to supply all the souls in Avernus. Celebrating the Dungeons & Dragon community as well as the announcement of Wizard’s of the Coast’s upcoming adventure, Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus, D&D Live 2019 was the event of an after-lifetime.
We wanted to do our best to share the experience with you, so our Content Producer Carlos worked his magic to gather it up and transmogrify it into videos for all to see. There were great parties, awesome cosplay, fantastic story-telling, and we got to chat about Roll20 on Dragon Talk! Possibly the coolest thing of the whole convention though (most definitely the coolest part for those not in attendance) was that we got an exclusive behind-the-scenes tour from Greg Tito. Exclusive. Behind-the-scenes. Tour. Watch it!
We also asked our ground team to give highlights of their time in hell. Turns out being Infernal Merchants is quite the job!
I loved watching all the little ways that both actors and players brought Avernus to life! We had attendees who came by the booth in costume, using their character voices, and played along with our Infernal Merchant act. There were always little scenes going on, like the time a medusa came up to confront someone who’d switched to our faction and we “had to” chase her away.
We had red string at our booth to make connections on our player-made map of Avernus, and one of the silliest things that happened was that our string became an accidental part of the plot. See, players were supposed to collect a bunch of scrolls that came bound up in string, and one of the NPCs gave them a task to bring him string expecting them to get it from their scrolls. But since the Roll20 booth had so much bright red string, people started coming to us - and we had no idea what they were talking about or why they wanted string! But I figured, what the hell, so I decided to trade string for information. I learned a lot of people’s names and favorite colors that way… but I didn’t find out why they wanted string until after the event ended!
I got to attend this event last year and it was one of my favorite experiences as a new Roll20 employee. This year only got bigger and better, and I’m excited to see where it goes next. We want to thank our friends at D&D for organizing it all - we had a lot of fun, and we hope that the folks who joined in (whether from home or at the studio) did too!
I loved interacting with people in character! I wish we got the opportunity to do that more often, a huge shout out to the narrative organizers for asking us if we’d like to be a part of the game (Thank you to Carnelian!!!).
One of my favorite interactions was an attendee asking an Imp for another seal. The Imp, of course, would not give it away for free, so he entreated the attendee to “Sing Happy Birthday to a stranger.” The attendee nodded, walked 10 feet away and in a glorious, confident baritone began to sing to a slightly shocked stranger. The best part was a bunch of other people (attendees and actors alike) joined in by the end, making a chorus. The attendee got their stamp and everyone just continued on their way. After all, this is Avernus and the unexpected happens all the time!
I am very excited about the new books coming out later this year, starting with Descent. We’re gonna make some great conversions for Roll20 that I can’t wait to hear about you playing!
Ready for your own plunge into the depths of Hell? Preorder the infernal adventure Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus right now on the Roll20 Marketplace!
Grab your favorite weapons, some warm weather gear, and prepare for your Descent.
Dungeons & Dragons, Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus, D&D Live 2019: The Descent, D&D, their respective logos, and Wizards of the Coast are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast LLC. ©2019 Wizards. All rights reserved.
