Your hosts for the podcast! As envisioned by, and c/o, Andre Joshua Smith!
A silly, charming and inventive fantasy romp, Nerd Poker is a podcast in which a group of friends and frequent Dungeons and Dragons players embark on a game of said D&D. This intrepid crew, featuring Brian Posehn, Gerry Duggan, Sarah Guzzardo, Blaine Capatch and Ken Daly, venture deeply into the mind and worlds of Mr Sark (Scott Robison) and take the opportunity to search for loot, laughs and bad decisions, never returning empty handed. A love of fantasy is a must for anyone looking to listen, though those with an ear for jovial comedy and a fascination with others playing games won’t be disappointed either.
The Gang, (Photo from Earwolf)
In all truth, I do find Nerd Poker something of a strange concept to get my head around, even having listened to and enjoyed all thirteen episodes. Despite it’s obvious trappings in the eighties and nineties, the show’s very modern concept is having long time friends and collaborators play D&D as a group, whilst the audience listens in from afar and the future. To anyone outside the general populace of podcast listeners, this concept doubtless feels a little off. Listening to people you don’t know play a game you can’t take part in, a game which happens to be one wresting on imagination and making your own individual decisions seems utterly anti-thetical to any draw in this entertainment. But in this conceit it is, in a sense, perfectly matched to a podcast market. An audience stuffed with the ageing nerds who would’ve played as youths, those who learnt about it through osmosis and the lucky few who are still playing. People who ‘get’ the idea of the game, but maybe don’t have the time or group availability to table a finishable game, or enjoy listening to comedians having dumb fun playing a silly game. With this perspective in tow, the only reliance is on the quality of the story and comedy, which is fortunate, since the narrative is rarely short of excellent, whilst the daftness of the humour only lifts the story a little higher.
For the narrative thrust, we lie prostrate and present our cut out hearts to Mr Sark’s elegant creationism. Though the nominal host is Posehn, he is more of a figurehead and in-route for consumers, whilst the Dungeon Master is the one who ends up as the real leader of the show. Functioning as paceseeter, terraformer and storyteller, he makes the difficult task of vision realisation seem a relatively easy task, handling new ideas and inventions with enough filigree and restraint that both imagination and created ideal can be conjoined universally. It is testament to his skills in this that the crew sing from the same page much of the time, understanding the provided world and navigating it with enough freedom and enough items of interest to rarely raise such a ludicrous idea as boredom.
Guzzardo, Robison, Posehn, Daly, Capatch and Duggan
But thats not to ignore the thing that every game needs, and every podcast even more, it’s players. Otherwise this show would be more a journal of one man’s battle with madness, through a continued attempt to forge a co-opted universe alone. The current crop of likely lads and lady is lead by the titular Brian Posehn, backed up by Blaine Capatch, Sarah Guzzardo, Ken Daly and Gerry Duggan, who are all known for various reasons in the comedy world. They are delightful company, who luckily delight in one another’s company too, possessing a hearty attitude for mischief, terrible choices and daft jokes throughout. This is further shown by the section where they recount the mishaps of previous adventures, which, whilst it would be better served being simply fed into the show as it plays, works well to further enhance their history and friendship in the game.
A lovely show for anyone with a passing interest in Dungeons and Dragons, or anyone interested in innovative fantasy roleplay, or even anyone who wants to hear more from any of the comedians involved. For now it is an engaging, amusing and unusual show, though I guess that the real test will come when the current adventure ends and the next begins, with a new world, new characters and one presumes a switch-up in the players, but given the level of quality running through this show, they are more than capable of pulling it off again.
You can find the show on iTunes or at Earwolf.com, and all the various people are on twitter. Night night!