The videogame hall-of-famers behind the Natural Six Dungeons and Dragons series are a mix of lawful and chaotic personalities. After one year of actual play adventures, it seems that both alignments are crucial to the success of the series. Serious worldbuilding and spreadsheets are one pillar of the party, while deliberately dodgy character decisions seem to be another.
For those not already familiar with the team, Natural Six is a party of five. The players include Ben Starr (Final Fantasy 16), Doug Cockle (The Witcher series), Aoife Wilson (formerly Eurogamer), Hollie Bennett (formerly PlayStation Access), and Alex Jordan (Dragon Age: Veilguard). Meanwhile, Harry McEntire (Xenoblade Chronicles 3) leads as D&D Dungeon Master.
We caught up with each of them at this year’s MCM Comic Con in London to find out about Natural Six’s talents, goals, and desires to play D&D with Barack Obama.
Reckless storytelling
Generally, Dungeons and Dragons is a game where you want to succeed. A bad roll means a door stays locked, and a poor choice can mean the end of your character. This isn’t much of a concern for Natural Six, though – in their mind, bad decisions make better stories.
“I’ve played with lots of first-time players”, says Harry McEntire, “and lots of them make poor decisions because they don’t know how the game works”. “Ben [Starr] is the only person I’ve played with who makes poor decisions because he thinks it’s more interesting.”
Starr plays as a DnD Wizard who is, apparently, allergic to using Mage Armor. “I’m playing him with this recklessness,” Starr explains. “He has a very low armor class, but he just likes walking up to stuff because I think it’s interesting for the story.” “That’s not how I should play a Wizard, but there’s something fun about getting up in people’s business.”
Starr is a clear contender for ‘most chaotic player’ (and not just because he records a Hobgoblin audio drama that changes the campaign lore so drastically that McEntire has had to intervene). However, his habit of ‘reckless’ storytelling is a trend among other players, too.
“I’m not saying I want I [the Kobold DnD Rogue] to die, but I’ve had a second character since episode two”, chimes in Alex Jordan. “I think the great thing about our characters is that we put ourselves in danger in service of the story”, says Aoife Wilson. “I’m thinking of an episode that we haven’t put out yet – it is wild.”
Similarly, Doug Cockle’s DnD Druid has a reputation for, as McEntire puts it, “doing some mad shit”. Despite a set of DnD stats that Hollie Bennett says are “29 points above standard array”, Cockle regularly chooses not to use his freakish superpowers in order to keep the story interesting.
“We need the mechanics, and there’s a joy to be found in discovering cool things your character can do”, McEntire tells Wargamer. “But we’re a really story-driven party.”
“I feel proud as a DM when I see [the players] make decisions that are, if we were running them through a computer, the wrong decisions to make – but the right decisions for the truth of the character.” “Out of those failures and successes come the most interesting party dynamics”, McEntire adds.
Funding the shenanigans
There’s a lawful logic to all this chaos, however. Natural Six is a show that aims to feel like a home game but is produced at a professional level. That means cameras, lights, minis, and so on. And all that means making money.
Natural Six originally raised $86,987 (£67,932) on Kickstarter to fund its first ten episodes. The series now has 16 episodes on YouTube (with two more apparently already recorded), plus multiple post-show chats. Bennett, who the crew insist is something of a spreadsheet queen, takes the lead when explaining how Natural Six plans to keep the lights on.
“The Kickstarter fully funded ten episodes and paid for branding – you know, logos, overlays, everything that makes something look like a professional package”, Bennett tells Wargamer. “Patreon started about halfway through episode five.”
This was apparently to give the audience an idea of what they were getting by putting money in Natural Six’s pocket. “We’d already asked people to speculate and believe in us”, says McEntire. “It didn’t feel right after episode one to say ‘now back our Patreon’.”
Bennett adds that the team have raised some money from sponsorships, for example by helping promote the new 2024 Player’s Handbook. “That’s what’s keeping us going in a financial way and helping to pay for production, editing, and filming”, she says. “We’re hoping one day that Patreon will take over.”
Natural Six is keen to highlight that this isn’t a profit-seeking venture. “We certainly haven’t taken anything”, Bennett says.
“The people who create stuff for us are the people we pay”, Starr adds. “We don’t do this for money. Our meet-and-greet is free. You can watch us on YouTube for free. And if you want to pay us, cool – then you’ll get all the weird stuff.” Starr is referring to the Patreon bonuses, which include his aforementioned Hobgoblin audio drama – plus behind-the-scenes recordings that he describes as “absolute filth”.
What’s next for Natural Six
Natural Six’s one-year anniversary has just passed us by, so all eyes now naturally turn to the year ahead. McEntire assures us that the core campaign and its setting have plenty of juice left in the tank. “I’ve had an idea since the beginning, and the idea is probably 100 episodes”, he tells Wargamer. “We just want to keep telling this story for as long as we can tell it.”
The night before our press meeting, the Natural Six team went for an anniversary dinner – where they apparently had plenty of “bluesky conversations” about what to do next. McEntire is personally keen to bring some special guests into the mix, such as Baldur’s Gate 3’s Neil Newbon or Oxventure’s Johnny Chiodini.
Another suggestion comes from Alex Jordan, and that’s more merch. “It’s a way of helping sustain the project but also creating something that the community can engage with”, he says. “But it’s not going to be like ‘oh, here’s a thing with Natural Six written on it’. We want to put care and creative process into it to come up with cool ideas that mean something.”
Because this is Natural Six, you can’t have all this order without throwing in some chaos. On this note, Doug Cockle has an ambitious collaboration in mind. “I haven’t pitched this yet, but I think former president Obama would be great”, he says.
If Natural Six has you itching to play some games of your own, here’s all you need to know about DnD classes and DnD races when creating a character. Or, for more of our MCM adventures, here’s what it’s like to play Dungeons and Dragons with one of its top designers.
Source: Wargamer
