Iam Spencer Crittenden, Star And Game Master of Seeso's Harmonquest, Ask me Anything

Have you heard about these Chinese death vans?

totally. its fucking crazy

Keep the questions coming, but I'm gonna get back to work so my responses will be fewer and farther between. Also I'm gonna drive somewhere so It'll probably be like a half hour until my next answer.

thanks so much guys, follow me on twitter @thesixler and check out the harmontown subreddit if you want to keep up with anything harmontown or harmonquest related, it's where i try to post the most relevant information for fans because we don't really use our website for information dispersal very well.

also im like always on reddit so technically this ama could last forever

You the man for answering a shit ton of questions for so long!

thanks

Season 2?

edit: referring to Harmonquest, but it also applies to Great Minds.

I hope. Don't count your chickens, that's my thing right now

How many chickens do you have?

no clue

If you found a tray of cupcakes in a public bathroom, would you eat them?

I think I would eat them if they were small cupcakes, but the bigger they were, the less likely I would be to eat them.

What in particular inspires your worldbuilding? Source materials, history, fiction, etc?

I think video games and magic the gathering inspire it the most. I think pokemon, zelda, and saga frontier (1) were probably the most influential in terms of video games, but mega man also always captures my imagination.

One of my favorite parts of Spencer's D&Ding, especially early on in the Harmontown podcast tapings, is the references to Magic: The Gathering. Place names, monster names, item names - lots of stuff. It's like a bunch of Easter eggs.

Interesting, I've never even seen a game of Magic so I had no clue! So what's an example, is there like an embermauler or treasure pig card?

Lim-Dul is one that sticks out to me at the moment. There are a bunch of Lim-Dul cards, and Spencer used it to name something in an earlier episode. An item, I think.

Card: http://gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers/Image.ashx?multiverseid=113522&type=card

And there's an Ember Hauler, though not a mauler: http://gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers/Image.ashx?multiverseid=208008&type=card

haha yeah the ember hauler i dont think anyone caught that before

Hey Spencer, loved Harmonquest, thanks for making it.

1) As a DM, what was the biggest challenge for you in telling a roleplaying story in ~25-minute increments?

2) How much material from the shoot didn't make it into an episode, typically?

Combat! As most people who play rpgs will probably know, combat is the single clunkiest and hardest thing to manage in any campaign in any system, it's also where most of the rules come to bear, it's not particularly exciting (being turn based) and in my experience, typically ends about 30 minutes to an hour after you want it to end (In game design terms this is terrible, you never want to put players in a game experience that they want to be over). This makes it an obvious challenge in multiple ways to incorporate combat, one of the pillars and most recognizable aspects of roleplaying and particularly pathfinder or dnd into a show that needs to tell 1 complete story in 20ish minutes and part of a larger story over 10 episodes.

In most episodes I designed a sort of collapsible segment into most dungeons that I could edit out later or cut short if needed. In 1, a wrestling match with the village chief was cut. In 2, I kinda used the pickaxe to collapse the collapsible mine cart / ghost segment for time. In 3, There was a downstairs portion in the union house's party, you can I think here me say they go upstairs and a different band is playing, this is reference to the cut bit. In 4, the shark people segment was cut (most combats were edited down to only plot relevant or interesting attacks) down a bit for time. In 5, many guard encounters were cut for time. In 6, we cut some shenanigans towards the end and cut combat down, we also cut the gang digging up the sandwiches before they got changed back. In 7, I think most everything made it in but I cut out some obstacles and encounters from the map because Thomas was more compelling. in 8 I nixed some combats also and we cut a lot of good riffing iirc but nothing else. They bypassed the fighting the possessed dragon, though I probably could have expected that too. in 9 we cut down the combat even though it was most of the episode, in 10 we cut out a plot to protect the village by getting the townsfolk to construct a wooden dome around it. I think we also cut some good matt bits.

We cut a lot of good bits, and plenty of chaff, in total we cut out 40+ minutes from ~1 hour leaving ~20 minutes.

Is there any chance of the full sessions being put up? Not animated obviously, but I'd love to hear all the stuff that was cut for time.

working on it. no promises.

Have you guys considered posting the cut bits?

yeah we want to do something like this

Have you dabbled at all with Dungeon World? Combat is a much more streamlined affair and the focus is much more on the narrative and building the world/characters as you go, which you appear to be incredibly talented at.

no but i hear a lot about it. i should check it out. its a fate game isnt it?

Hi, question for Mr. Crittenden:

In episode 2F09 when Itchy plays Scratchy's skeleton like a xylophone, he strikes the same rib twice in succession, yet he produces two clearly different tones! I mean what are we to believe this is some sort, uh, magic xylophone or something? Boy I really hope somebody got fired for that blunder.

stuff like that irks me too.

Is roleplaying coming back to Harmontown?

in the long term, yes, probably. in the short term, i hope so, maybe.

Is there anything we (fans/listeners) can do to help move the process along?

tweet dan

Hi Spencer. Have loved seeing your heroic journey from your first appearance on Harmontown to where you are today. Beware of the heavy price! :-)

Really intrigued to find out how you ended up in front of the camera in Community and Brooklyn Nine Nine.

Whose idea was that and how did they ask you? What do you remember about the experience, did you get nervous?

Community: Breaking a story about Britta falling in love with someone and it's causing problems with the group. They decided it should be annie's brother, who was just a generic cool guy character, but the story wasn't working, so dan temp'd in 'me' for the role, describing and rewriting the character in the script as a 'large, unreadable, somber, viking type guy' and the room was into it. This made me nervous because I have a big crush on Gillian (who doesn't though right?) but luckily the story continued to not work so the Britta/Anthony story changed into the awesome Pile of Bullets Story, and didn't require any real acting from me. I was really nervous but after the script change I felt like it was something I could actually see myself doing (thanks to Dan for writing my lines to be exactly like I would say them) and I went for it. I was super nervous though, the most nervous I've ever been in my life, I threw up in the morning and was dizzy and sweaty all day every shooting day but everyone on set was the nicest and most hardworking professional people I've ever met so they made it really easy for me to do what I did without dragging anyone down with my inexperience. Danny and Alison were really awesome and cracking all sorts of jokes and Brie Larson was really cool and they all made me feel really welcome and not like the showrunner's friend who randomly got put into the show for some reason without any qualifications.

Brooklyn 99: they had the same (I'm terrible at hollywood titles) casting director(?) and for the scene they needed a guy with a long beard, I believe this joke got cut for time but I think originally Rosa says 'I hope your beard comes to life and strangles you' so they wanted a long beardo and she thought of casting me and I got cast. That was also a terrifying experience and I also threw up in the morning but Stephanie Beatriz and Terry Crews were super awesome, I recall Terry was telling anecdotes like you might talk about what happened at the grocery store, just these super mundane life stories that weren't name droppy but were amazing and engaging, it was a lot of fun hanging out with them.

Hey Spencer! I've heard you discuss that you immediately distrust people who are friendly to you right off the bat. How do you deal with this distrust with fans who approach you in various cities? Are there any ways us fans can improve our fangirling behaviour?

no i had the recent epiphany that putting myself out there gives people knowledge of my preferences and aesthetic tastes which means that they can use this knowledge to try and manipulate me in subtle maybe even unintentional or well-meaning ways which means that they have an inherent power over me, and this dynamic probably reveals itself to anyone who enters the public sphere over time and probably fucks them up and that's why famous people are all crazy? i dunno really what to do about this new epiphany knowledge though.

In general after a show I'm probably tired, I typically get to sleep before 10:30 most nights, but when I'm talking to fans I really get anxious about the fans after the fans I'm talking to getting their turn, which weirds me out in fan interactions, but I don't really have a solution for that, maybe suggest circling back later if you want to talk more but there's a bunch of people around? I dunno. I dunno.

If Season 2 becomes a thing...any chance we could petition for 45 minute or hour long episodes, so the players don't have to be guided quite as much?

I think dan wants to shorten the record times and only slightly lengthen the runtimes which probably means we'd have to guide it even more. The burden of writing something that airs like a tv show and has networks and executives to answer to is it needs to have some sort of cohesive overarching plot so it's going to be impossible to avoid railroading to the extent that a real campaign should, but specifically with this group, in the past, not railroading them leads to nothing, whereas railroading them leads to them running in the opposite direction, which is mildly better than doing nothing, but I believe that since we're making a show they're more self-driven to perform and 'follow the plot' more than they otherwise would, so leaving options available (which to be fair, I think I allow for to an extent, even if it doesn't come up) isn't always gonna help make the game/show seem off rails.

The time constraint is really taxing to the format of DnD/fRPG. We'd want to have a 2-3 hour taping that gets edited down to something too long to be marketable as a 'show' like this to really approximate the true fRPG experience but what we put out with harmonquest very closely represents the harmontown rpg experience, which is a really stretched and bent out of shape but totally valid version of rpgs that we did on harmontown and that's what we're trying to bring to the table with harmonquest.

Yeah I've been trying to watch the Rooster Teeth dnd show, heroes and halfwits, and it just feels too... Raw? To be watchable. The episodes are really long and don't always feel like they are going anywhere. I feel like it's really hard to strike a good balance of fun to watch vs staying true to the format which makes the comedic success of season 1 of Harmonquest all the more impressive.

yeah i mean i think we accidentally happened on that format and i don't know that i would have planned it but so far i do think its a better format in terms of both gameplay and entertainment than anything else ive seen (which to be fair is probably not much)

Does Dan drive you up the wall sometimes? Does it end with you two arguing until you are blue in the face? any examples?

No. Usually when we argue its pretty civil and we usually explain our stances in ways the other understands. Typically dan ends up agreeing with me, but there's plenty of times he convinces me too.

How do you fight a bunch of coyotes?

the idea is to break as many backs and necks as you can, as fast as you can. the second you break a coyote neck you have yourself a weapon to use on the rest of them. You want to stay on your feet, avoid getting grappled by their jaws, as you break necks and spines, hoping to cause enough damage to scare off the pack. you want to be punching throats, noses and eyes. Never get in a tugging fight with a coyote, they're great at pulling things, you need to get them off the ground, they can't pull you down if they're not touching the floor. you're punching noses and throats to fend off the ones that lunge, you're picking up and suplexing or snapping coyote backs and necks, you're swinging dead/dying coyotes around as improvised weapons, that's your best bet, if unarmed. Also probably you won't have to fight coyotes, they're usually pretty cool and scared.

Hey Spencer! Thanks for doing an AMA.

In the opinion of my friends and I (especially on Harmonquest) you've become as funny as Dan. Ever considered having a show where your surname is the prefix?

A show? Like what kind of show? Like a podcast? I've definitely thought about doing a podcast before. I definitely haven't ever thought of doing a live show before.

The Critten Den!

obviously but what would it be about

Whatever shit you wanna talk about. People just like hearing you talk about whatever. Especially when you get really into it. Obviously a lot of the time on Harmontown, you don't have a lot to contribute with whatever conversation's going on. So do your own thing on top of that and talk about whatever new small obsessions you've got, or games, or complain about service industry workers and talk about how much better than them you are just what's going on in your life. Small annoyances, whatever.

Shit, you don't even need guests. It wouldn't hurt, but you could just get in front of a mic and unload. I'd be all over that shit. You're an interesting dude.

i am terrible at talking when i dont have anything to talk about so i think without structure it would go bad really quick.

What's Harmontown "about"?

dan has talent and improv and standup experience and training.

Crazy idea: you and Goldberg start a podcast.

about what

Video podcast of you DMing a home game plz.

i find most of these out there really hard to watch, i dunno how i would make one that wouldnt make me hate myself

Spencer Variety Show. Singing bits, puppets, etc!

no thanks

Would you rather fight 10 coyote-sized Dan Harmons, or 1 Dan Harmon-sized coyote?

Are the dan harmon's intelligent/armed? 10 people who could hit me with rocks or knives would be pretty rough, but if they were like 10 smaller man-beasts I think I would prefer the 10 over the 1.

Hey Spencer!

When you were on the indoor kids podcast you described a general anxiety or nervousness that you felt on stage during Harmontown episodes. I have always found you to be composed and ready for an off the cuff hilarious response whenever you are called upon by Dan or Jeff. Do you still get nervous while on stage? Any advice for overcoming any anxiousness while public speaking?

I still get nervous, but its not nearly as bad. I am pretty good at dealing with shit that comes at me. I also have the luxury of not looking particularly nervous when I am freaking out. Usually when I'm bent out of sorts I look stoic or tired, which resembles calm more closely than other visible reactions to anxiety. I think the thing is (like with all hard stuff I am learning) you just gotta fucking do it. You do it over and over until you're numb to pain. That's what athletes and fighters do, that's what you have to do with relationships and love and getting heartbroken and breaking up and exercise and diet and writing and stand up and comedy and speech and anything, it's just like grinding in elder scrolls.

the elder scrolls reference is what really drove this message home for me

yeah man i mean its dumb but its the truth, eventually you're just super good at it but there's no way to see any of that when you're just starting or in the thick of grinding away.

Has Meltdown done anything to combat the infestation of Nidoran?

They've put up signs banning the use of incense and poke lures in the area but they've been all but useless.

who are 5 people--dead or alive--you would want to play a game of d&d with?

How about Patton Oswalt, The Rock, Oscar Wilde, Stephen Colbert, Matt Gourley. Pretty diverse I think. Edit: Barack Obama and Joe Biden would be amazing also Edit: Terry Crews would be awesome now that I think of it

Where does the username "thesixler" you use for all of your accounts come from?

when i was in high school my friends were playing a freeform rpg my friend wyatt was making up and the character creation involved picking two 'elements' from a wheel and combining things, collin (the sleepy canyoneer) picked an orange and master chief and his character was dubbed the Colander and i picked the thief and the bagle and I was the Bagler. But then I didn't like the bagel and wanted to change it to the concept of the number 6 so I became the sixler. In the game, wyatt made us fight a mayonnaise golem and the combat system was throwing paper balls into a moving hand-hoop. The sixler happened to be untouchable though, and was unaffected by things such as bullets, the questions of guards and security staff, and lava from a volcano eruption. Later in hs I would envision a shitty home movie series I never made about the sixler, which was like a captain planet esque character that formed when the artifacts of the 6, a hat, trench coat, cane, pair of gloves, a bag, and something else were assembled. The sixler would fight the fiveler and the fourler but the sevenler didn't exist, but rumors would always fly around the false sevenler. I dunno. it was dumb. I liked the name though, so I went with it, it replaced my old name (merfy, which was short for merf knight, which was short for knight of merf, which was a nonsense phrase). I like it cuz it doesn't get taken by other people usually so I can use it without adding numbers or whatever.

Spencer! You are awesome man.

Any advice for people who want to get into DnD casually? Harmonquest is great awesome and it seems like you do a great job hiding a lot of the nitty gritty stuff.

Big fan of the podcast.

I dunno. DMs have it the roughest, if you want to just play you need to find a dm or dm yourself. There's resources online to find gaming groups but i dunno the specifics, maybe someone else here has some tips. Maybe go to a card/gaming/comic book store? in plenty i've been in, there have been weekly rpg events. going to those and talking to people might be fruitful. the thing about dnd is playing it is simple but the rules and character creation are like doing your taxes, it's just a complex thing.

Fuck, marry, kill? Dan Harmon - Rob Schraub - Jeff b. Davis

i hate these. rob dan and jeff because i dont want jeff to fuck me because his dick is probably super huge

When is a time you've been the most surprised by players in a D&D session?

There was a villain who was a mad alchemist that the players were fighting, the dungeon was like a mad scientists layer with dangerous experiments, caged monsters, magical fluids and shit, and in the final room was a the fly-esque combination chamber and the guy fused with a flesh golem that he had infused with all sorts of potions and he had glass vials of gunk jutting out of his skin so when they fused he had all sorts of weird mutant potion powers and was a boss monster. When they beat him, all the players wanted to mutate themselves by combining themselves with a magical item they had in their inventories, I definitely didn't expect that.

The notable ones were an everful bottle or whatever the hell so the person got infinite water blasting abilities, and someone else fused with a bag of holding and gained a super elastic asshole that was tied to a pocket dimension, which was as useful as it was funny to us.

Is Dan right when he says you are truly the hero of this story?

i get what he's saying, i don't like being called a hero, but i think im a cool guy and it really is miraculous/storybook esque the things that ive done although you could claim it was part of a plot by harmon to create compelling narratives in anything he does including people's real lives and this was all engineered intentionally or not by that impulse

How do you feel on Harmontown now that there's no roleplaying? I personally love it when you have stuff to stay.

i feel unmoored and without purpose ;-; i try to contribute when i can but due to my position on (off) the stage it's hard to be part of the action, but the dming forces me into the action which i think helps.

IMHO you always chime in at the right time. "Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something." My GOD I laughed my ass off when you were putting Ryan Ridley in his place when he was going after an audience member.

i definitely have gained a lot by knowing when to not say anything, that's a constant in my life.

Also, is there any hope role playing will come back to the podcast?

yeah plenty of hope

So I'd imagine this is a question you get a lot but I'll ask it anyway, what does Dan Harmon smell like? And if he had his own fragrance line, what would it be called?

dude smell. he smells fine. Sometimes when he's really stinky he'll smell like a dad who had some light exercise but didn't necessarily need to shower out of schedule to deal with the results of that exercise. I'm not super close to him and we aren't intimate but I think he plays up the effects of his lack of hygiene.

You guys drive together a lot though, right? Is he a pretty good co-pilot or does he sleep? Do you guys listen to music while you drive or just chitchat?

he's pretty quiet, hes on his phone, we listen to npr and sometimes talk but usually just stick to ourselves. its great cuz thats how we both are naturally in cars with people it works out great

How does it feel to be picked out of the audience to run a D&D at Harmontown to starring in your own show?

really really really really crazy. the craziest thing thats ever happened to me or just about anyone i know or am aware of. i literally dont know where my life would be now without all of this but i know it would be really sad and lame.

Will you ever do any voice work on Rick and Morty?

god i hope so. i doubt it though.

WILL BONEWEEVIL EVER RETURN?

i hope. did you see the marvel-esque end-tag-sting?

Spencer, in a purely objective sense, what did you think of the D&D scenes in Netflix's "Stranger Things". If you've seen it. Do the kids suck or would they survive one of your campaigns?

havent seen it. they're probably good, right?

Spencer, congratulations on all your success. I've been following your career basically since it started, and it feels like it would make at least a good youtube series.

My question is, what's the weirdest thing you had to do for Dan?

i had to pick up 2 segways from orange county, learn to drive them, teach that knowldge to dan and rob, and then decorate rob's segway to look like scud. I also helped schrab make the comic con iron man suit dan wore and i am tasked with procuring various gifts for people. nothing super weird though.

Hey Spencer!

Two questions: 1) in episode 1 of Harmonquest, Fondue was given a bell to detect evil, I believe. Was there a purpose for that bell, storywise? And 2) I remember seeing a preview thing once for Harmonquest with Blake Anderson. What happened to that episode? And were there other guests that didnt make the final cut?

It was just supposed to be an option for if they didn't know what to do. I thought it might shake stuff up. We shot a 6 episode harmonquest that was eventually used as a pitch package to sell harmonquest to seeso. we had the first episode animated fully, but we changed format and they wanted new episodes so we started fresh.

Is there anything that your players do, in particular, which does actually get to you? Also, did Thomas Middleditch's knowledge of the game make DMing on the show more or less enjoyable for you (if it made any difference at all)?

Thanks for taking the time for this AMA, and for everything you've brought to Harmontown!

on harmontown dan would really thwart any thing i tried to have happen in the game which really got to me a lot. i loved middleditch, i like when people actually use lore skills.

Was there a link between Admiral Darkstar and the bad guy from Harmonquest? He was drawn simillarly to how I pictured Darkstar.

yep. i'm pretty trope driven but i also used some of my favorite tropes in harmontown dnd and didnt want to deprive myself of them if they made sense in harmonquest because i wanted to create a resonant fantasy story that would read as fantasy roleplaying and not something more esoteric like the shadow plane or something

Hi Spencer! Why don't you make the table roll their own dice on Harmonquest? My players would complain bitterly if I rolled for them, especially if they failed.

Also, thank you for your constant use of the line "You do that." It's quickly become my go-to line when behind the GM screen myself.

we evolved the format from harmontown, and they never had a table at harmontown, we added a table but it was off the stage, so the players couldn't roll dice unless they got up and went to my table. also i based it off of community's dnd which had abed as the dm rolling the dice.

Nickelback's third studio album Silver Side Up was released on September 11, 2001. The same day as the infamous 9/11 World Trade Center terrorist attacks.

Do you think this is something worth investigating, or simply coincidence?

probably both

As someone who's building their own D&D campaign right now, I'd love to know what your process is for structuring a campaign. What's the best advice you'd give to a first-time DM?

I have a skeleton for a large overarching plot. usually this gets ditched in favor of smaller plots that we happen across in game. It's hard to explain but if you envision a target with 3 rings around it, and the players are in the center and the rings are the immediate future, near future, and farther future, I like to plan the most for just ideas on the innermost ring, and less planning for the outer rings. Usually what happens is the things players do change the stuff in the outer rings so planning too much there is wasteful, but if you don't plan well in the inner most ring, it leads to awkward situations. You don't have to plan the cave outside of town out very well, but if you tell someone they're in a house and see two doors going deeper into the house and they decide to burn the house down and you don't have alternative options or fleshed out characters/worlds/locations that can create real consequences and alternative things to do, you'll be screwed in the short term and there won't be anything for anybody to do, and you won't have any time to improvise a lot of new shit until you can end the play session to really figure out how to rewrite the idea for the next session in the campaign.

here's also something https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/2n6394/so_you_want_to_dm_advice_for_new_players/

What's the weirdest thing Dan Harmon has ever said to you?

no clue. probably something while he was really drunk in canada or nyc.

Are we ever going to get a conclusion to Sharpie and friends?

highly doubt it. they would have gotten killed by the giant jarl though.

Are you friendly to the point with Jeff Davis that you hang out together? If so, what's he like when his showmanship is turned off. He, of all in the group seems the least candid during any of the shows you guys do.

What's the craziest experience you've had since being associated with Hollywood types.

he's the same on and off. we don't hang out much but he's wanted to, im just an anxious antisocial wreck.

If you had your druthers, would Harmonquest be more race-neutral or racially-aware?

racially aware! I wish i knew more diverse performers, and i wish we tried to lock down more diversity. we went out to a lot of people but we locked down a lot of white guys when our more diverse offers were still pending, so when we got no's from more diverse talent we already had filled a couple slots. Anyone you want to see?

I feel deep shame about inclusivity especially after seeing how masterfully and nonchalantly it can be done on shows like steven universe.

Why do you need a plumber?

leaky faucet

Well this is the first time I've seen an elementary school classmate do an AMA! And on the front page of Reddit! Looks like you're doing well for yourself. Congrats!

Do you miss anything about NorCal?

who is this!?

i miss the weather the most. it was so nice.

Ashley from Ehrhardt. Named my kid brother after you because I thought your name and personality were cool. So far, never met a Spencer that didn't have a unique personality!

oh shit i dont remember very much but this definitely triggers some half memory bit.

Howdy! I'm very curious to know what the game notes in your book look like for HarmonQuest...any chance you'd post a pic of a page? I've never played D&D and find the show completely fascinating, especially your creative role.

maybe later i dont have the book on me. my notes are usually scattered bits of npc dialogue or description, and then unintelligible garble, the harmonquest notebook was a lot more refined, i taped printed pages into the pages of the notebook because i find typing easier than writing on paper, i tend to edit a lot.

If our currently perceived reality is nothing more than an infinitely complex simulation and we're all involved in a role-playing game (similar to Roy, but multiplayer) - what would be the name of this module we're playing?

The Universe? Maybe just Universe?

The moon colony talk hasn't really happened on Harmontown in a while, and I feel like you never really got a say in how that would go down. What's your ideal society? What kind of government would there be, if any?

i think we need something like a representative government, with strong rule of law. I definitely don't think anarchy can work without some structure or framework. so in that sense i disagree with dan.

but dan also thinks we can 'crack' the 'code' that is ALL interpersonal conflict with one cohesive set of equations, like a block of code, and if everyone obeyed the 'code' it would be fine, and if we discovered and employed this code which could be discovered and employed, all problems would cease. which doesn't really seem like anarchy to me either.

Are there any moments on the Harmontown tour you wish had made it into the doc?

oh actually i rapped at a dave and busters but the cameras werent rolling and when they got the cameras i choked on the rapping so they didnt use my mad fire

not that i can recall, honestly. I was mostly just lazing around during the tour.

You and Dan seem like friends, you're also collaborators, but he was or is your boss?

That's an interesting dynamic, how do you guys maintain?

yeah hes my boss, im his assistant, we're friends, i think that makes the weird logistical part of employer/e relationships harder but everything else easier. i also try to keep my distance so i'm not like hey buddy whats up pal all the time at work so he doesn't have to worry about me as a friend when im being his employee. we think pretty similarly and i think that goes a long way.

Have any literary aspirations or writing tips?

i never know what i want to do forever as a job and the only tip is write a lot and edit a lot but i don't really have any tips. don't procrastinate? All the obvious stuff. thats all there is.

What is your haircare routine? For both the flowing locks on your head and the ones on your beautiful face.

I literally shower like once every two weeks or less. I try to brush my hair at least once a day but I generally fail. I manage to not smell, but usually my unwashed shorts start to smell and I generally do all my laundry and shower at that point. It's truly a modern marvel.

I just finished watching Harmonquest, very funny stuff, especially the episode with the people sandwiches. Where do you draw your inspiration from? Do you have any advice for me who wants to give DMing a try?

video games and magic the gathering but also like everything from wikipedia to tv and movies.

i have some advice scattered in this ama but here's a link to this again. https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/2n6394/so_you_want_to_dm_advice_for_new_players/

also read the premade modules and study them. They're like super elaborate outlines you can copy and modify to make your own campaigns/adventures starting out.

Hey Spencer, I met you at OutsideLands a few weeks ago outside of the Barbary. Highlight of my weekend forsure! Thanks for being so awesome.

Question: What are your thoughts on Terraria? Have you given it a fair chance in comparison to Minecraft?

its great. i beat it on pc, i played it on iphone until i got to the endgame which was shorter than the pc, then i played it later on pc, then i beat it on the 3ds. its great.

Hi there Spencer, great to see you doing an AMA!

• Me and my friends have never played D&D but I recently convinced them to give it a try so in about a month I will be DMing for them for the first time in my life. I've been reading up on it as much as I can but any little practical tips you may have for an aspiring DM would be much appreciated!

• I understand you were running a version of 3.5 and/or pathfinder back in the Harmontown D&D-days. Do you have any experience with and/or opinions of 5th edition?

• Do you ever get to play a character in D&D yourself and do you have a favourite race/class combo?

• How would you feel about bringing the Harmontown gang over to Sweden for a live show?

https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/2n6394/so_you_want_to_dm_advice_for_new_players/

i also gave some advice about the a 3 ringed target concept earlier.

im about to play 5th edition as a player tonight for the first time. it looks awesome, like how 4th edition could have been in a better timeline. i really like it.

i dont play much but i usually go human/sorcerer or some other caster class. I like non-humans but not common races, like monstrous humanoids, but generally there's level advancements and shit that prevents this. I like necromancers? I usually go for characters that match some high concept i have. nothing specific though i guess.

we want to tour everywhere but we need to get people to construct a feasible tour before we can make it happen. I think we're going to australia, but we hope to get all over the place. but also im terrified of planes crashing and terrorists these days.

Hey! Big fan!

Do you have any plans on starting your own podcast or something? I needs me some more Spencer.

Also, do you have any plans on a Season 2 of Harmonquest?

Thanks!

no specific plans. i would like to but none of my ideas are good enough. also i might need a cohost. also i want to record it in my car and smoke weed but that seems dangerous if i want to include guests.

for hq2 i dunno anything yet. i hope.

I really loved Harmonquest. Any way you can get a sketch comedy group together like the Whose line crowd or Key and Peele? (Either as a season 2 ep or as a full standalone special)

that would be cool as a standalone special, for sure!

Spencer I wanted to thank you for your contributions to Harmontown, Community, Brooklyn 99, Harmonquest, and Great Minds. My question is where do you see yourself in 5 years? You are getting lots of great chances and opportunities, but for you what do you want to do with them?

i dont know man, not squander them i guess. i never knew what i wanted to do when i grew up after i learned that scientist wasnt 1 job but like 200 different disciplines and you couldnt work in all of them. i think i can do a lot of stuff but i gotta pick something and work at it, so far ive just been doing whatever presents itself

What's your favorite moment as a DM?

at this point i honestly don't know, i'm pretty sure i've completely forgotten the coolest stuff of the golden years. It felt amazing to finish ep 10 of harmonquest though, all the tapings went super well, above and beyond what i could have imagined. It was incredibly satisfying and maybe the first 'campaign' i told entirely from start to finish.

I know you like minecraft, but do you guys ever play Terraria. Speaking of other games what do you think of mtg?

i love magic but i hate the magic subreddit. magic is the best game but i hate a lot of the new cards. I loved the crazy complexity of the older sets and there's none of that now. I loved future sight and they hate future sight style designs. I love terraria, answered a question about it above (or below)

Having a very creative mind and the affinity for role playing and exploring "other worlds", do you dream actively? Ever thought about utilizing lucid dreaming in your day to day life? Asking because I'm an oneironaut and a gamer and from following you, admittedly not for long, I could relate to some ways you behave, express yourself or sometimes not express yourself, if that makes sense.

Also: Any cameos in Rick and Morty season 3?

Edit: Typos

i can never remember my dreams. i used to but i never do these days. when i do dream its super mundane shit. like i'll literally dream about downloading an app or putting 10 dollars in my wallet and then in real life ill go to get that 10 bucks or open that app and realize it was just a stupid sabotage dream

Would you be open to writing SCUD fanfic if the community asked you to, even really nicely?

no

How much planning went into the DMing back in early Harmontown? How much was planned, and how much was just you making it up as it came along? Oh, and also: did you have an endgame in mind for Admiral Darkstar?

too much was planned early on. i really gave that up. i never really had an endgame in mind other than him finding the fragments of power and attaining godlike powers a la final fantasy tactics

Is it difficult to keep impro professionals like your team in line in a show like HarmonQuest? also, did you keep that bear pen I gave you a couple of weeks ago in Montreal?

yeah i have it in my house, but it doesn't actually write! greg proops is hard to nail down, but the rest of the people i've worked with have been pretty good. I feel like improv probably lends itself better to the format than standup, but I like the energy each type of performer brings.

Yo Spencer!

A couple years back, I built an app (“Noice”) that enabled users to trigger sounds on their friend’s phone; I somehow convinced Schrab to generously provide his voice.

Schrab mentioned you wanted to try the app, but I never heard anything after I sent the link. I’m curious to know if you and the gang tried it out, and what you thought of it.

i tried it out. it was great for a while, but then you stop. it's kinda like snapchat except snapchat has more utility since there's pictures and text. i think it wasnt a deep enough experience to be long-lasting for users. But it was fun, i used a lot of the schrab sound effects. also there wasnt a history of sent sounds, right?

Do you write long-form stories? Working on a novel, or anything?

no. i don't really have much experience in longer formats, or with characters whose dialogues i control completely. its very intimidating to me.

Do you watch any of those DnD/Pathfinder/etc. streams on Twitch (like itmeJP's RollPlay)?

no. any time i've ever tried its always been boring and lame.

Spencer, in your own words, how has your life changed since you met Dan Harmon?

every single aspect of my day to day life is completely unrecognizable from anything i was doing 5 years ago. my family is exploded to the 4 winds, i live with a roommate doing a completely different line of work, i have completely different friends and do way different things in different places. i still lay around on the internet eating and doing drugs but everything else is different.

What is it about pugs that appeals to you so strongly? Your Twitter feed is full of them.

i had a pug and i think they're super cute. people think they're ugly and i guess i get what they mean but i think they're super cute. I think bulldogs are ugly though and people think those are cute so its probably the same thing.

Hey Spencer, you're the best! What's the plumbing issue?

leaky tap

What plumbing work are you having done? (Asking the important questions)

Seriously however, do you command a wage of sorts? If so I imagine Dan pays you? Surely you can't be doing this all for gratis.

leaky tap.

yeah i make a paycheck as dan's personal assistant. I also get paid for jobs like acting on great minds or EPing harmonquest. the money that harmontown makes is being put into a big pile and we want to use it to scale up harmontown to be bigger and better so i haven't specifically gotten any of that money in pocket but a slice of it belongs to me.