#eric silver

And especially for people like myself an adult who has a background in improv we're used to not having those things be adjudicated, right? It's just due to the collaboration ‘-and yes-ending’ of the partners on stage and that's beautiful. I love improv and I will always love improv and that perfect free form role playing.

What is beautiful about the dice is it means you are improvising with someone that you know doesn't care about you and it makes risk and heartbreak and danger…

Adal Rifai: I'm sorry. I'm crying. You, I never realized DnD is unrequited love. Unrequited love with the dice that don't care about you.

Brennan Lee Mulligan: In a moment where you're in an improv scene and something has the emotional resonance of hanging in the balance. You know that it's not really hanging in the balance because there's a human being across the stage from you who you trust who also wants the show to be as good as possible so it's never hanging in the balance. It's just the illusion of it hanging in the balance.

But there's a moment at a gaming table where everyone looks around and they all want the characters to survive. And instead of allowing any of the human beings who have invested months or years into the survival of that character to have a say in their ultimate fate, that fate is handed over to the inscrutable faceless prognostications of small plastic polyhedral dice-

Adal Rifai: Have that sewn into a pillow Eric! I want that I want that in a pillow by tomorrow.

Eric Silver: I'm flipping it (the pillow) over.

Brennan Lee Mulligan: -and as the dice rises into the air there is a moment of surrender to whatever is to come and the emotional resonance of being forced in a story of your own telling. To be ejected from the seat of the ‘storyteller’ and rocketed into the seat of audience member. To a tale of your own devising and to watch that plinkety-planking little D20 roll around. And in the moment of your most dire need you see two numbers; a two and a zero and when that Nat 20 comes up when, it was the only number that could save you the entire table erupts in a moment of triumph and joy and sweet relief. There is no high I have experienced in life like when the whole table knows it's what they need and somehow with only a five percent chance you all get it. Sweet, sweet joy.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tell me about it Podcast (background)