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INFO

THE CONCEPT:

 

Enter “D&D webseries” into Google and dozens of results immediately spring up. The internet’s the perfect place for passionate gamers to express their love of tabletop gaming and the sheer volume of series devoted to capturing the thrill and the joy of playing pen-and-paper RPGs attests to that.

 

At the same time, the depiction of tabletop gamers, even in their own media, has not, historically, been great. Stereotypes abound, from harmless basement-dwelling dweebs to harmful occult implications of decades past. Often, in an effort to reach a wider audience, even geeks themselves will turn to such tired tropes and stock characters, to help appeal to non-gamers.

 

For five years, we’ve struggled with how best to present an authentic look at pen-and-paper RPGs that’s both entertaining and doesn’t lean on these hackneyed stereotypes. The project’s taken on many forms – a mockumentary, an actual play podcast, a sketch comedy series. The goal, however – to portray tabletop gamers in an authentic and positive light, to accurately portray the friendships, the challenges and the high stakes that can be created with just a few friends and some funny looking dice – has never changed.

EXPERIENCE POINTS follows one adventuring party through one session of their weekly game. Over the course of 12 episodes, the series details the four heroes – Nadine, Greg, Perkins and their newest player, Mackenzie – as they explore the world created and orchestrated by Allen, their Dungeon Master. The webseries starts in the middle of an ongoing campaign and trusts the audience to become invested in the stories these five friends are telling.

 

What makes XP different from other similar webseries is its fidelity to the source material. Whereas other shows might cut away to the “fantasy realm” to better illustrate the action, XP stays around the table, trusting the audience to imagine, along with the players, the descriptive elements of the story. The series is targeted at actual tabletop gamers and doesn’t waste much time explaining the mechanics of the game. The show seeks to combine the authenticity of an actual play podcast with the smooth narrative of a scripted series.

 

The teaser serves as a brief prologue, chronicling one round of combat at the climax the session immediately before the one chronicled in the main series. Stay tuned for the full series in 2016.

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