The Big Roll (Patreon)

Hey Everyone!Recovered and back at work after the the Big Roll promotional event Patreon hosted down in LA and I just wanted to take a moment to share a bit of my experience, shout out a hearty thanks to the hard working folks at Patreon who put this little adventure together, the wonderful motley crew of other Creators who made this whole thing so special, and to all of my incredibly patient Patrons who put up with this random little excursion.If you're just here for the miniatures then no worries you can skip all this! I'll have new minis out by the end of this month plus a special "Bog Dog" mini inspired by the crowd favorite Bayou Groff, and then a little collaboration with the fine folks at Stinky Dragon just for fun.The Big RollAs part of a push to highlight and grow TTRPG communities on Patreon they flew a bunch of Tabletop RPG Creators down to LA to collectively roll a massive d20 die down a hill and depending on the result of the die each creator (or group of creators as the case maybe) will create and/or do something for their community. In case you missed it you can check out the result of the roll in the drone video at the start of this post.

Full list of other Creators Involved (check out their Patreon pages for more information on what they'll be doing based on the results of the roll):

Amy Vorpahl

Ginny Di

Legends of Avantris

Worlds Beyond Number

Tales from the Stinky Dragon

You can check out my list of potential miniatures I was prepared to make depending on the roll here. All of the other creators were from notable Live Plays and Podcasts - well established personalities use to being in front of cameras and talking into mics, so I was honestly surprised Patreon wanted to include me and a little nervous; I do after all just spend my days sitting alone in my house drawing little paper people and annoying my cat XDI had nothing to worry about though, everyone was incredibly welcoming and inclusive. Between the initial meetup, being ferried to and from the event location, chilling for production, and post event decompression beers I had several wonderful opportunities to get to know and hangout with the other creators. It was pretty funny how shared the surreal experience was of, "I was playing D&D with my friends and start doing this thing... and now I guess I get to just keep do it as a living?"

Once the die had been rolled and we were no longer at risk of accidentally sending it down the hill ahead of schedule (we had several very close calls lol) they let us climb all over it and it was hilarious how quickly we all just became little kids with a new toy. By the end it was literally getting dark, the snake wranglers had closed in, and the Patreon team had to drag us back to the cars.

I'm sure the other creators talk about this on their own channels from time to time, but having shared this unique experience with them and witnessed them all to some degree express the same appreciation of, "Can you believe we get to do this?" I feel I can speak for all of them and for myself here by express a deep awareness and gratitude of how fortunate and privileged we are that we get to make stuff we enjoy making for folks who enjoy our work enough to support what we do. And occasionally we even get to chase a stupidly big d20 down a hillside.Thank you!-Marshall Short