Today, Natural Six announced the line-up for their Deck of Many Friends; a group consisting of developers, actors, hosts, gamers, and journalists, including Remedy's Creative Director, Sam Lake.
Originally created as a Kickstarter tier, the Deck of Many Friends consists of twenty-two character cards "each one unique, each representing the soul of a former adventurer that could choose to aid the party or harm in the key moments," as described in the original teaser trailer. Each of the friends are tasked with creating one of those former adventurers, good or evil, are put into a deck where they might be called upon at any time. "In moments of dire need, whether it's a party member rolling a nat-10, whether it's an antagonist rolling that 20. The party can call on the power of the deck of many friends and draw blind from that deck and replace their role or an antagonist role with yours."
For those not familiar with the project, Natural Six is a Dungeons & Dragons actual play show who describes themselves as "a team of friendly and dynamic storytellers with unique voices and experiences that we can’t wait to share." Doug Cockle, the amazing actor behind Alan Wake 2's FBI Agent Robert Nightingale, is part of the star-studded cast which also includes Ben Starr, Aoife Wilson, Hollie Bennett, and Alex Jordan, with game master, Harry McEntire. The project received funding through Kickstarter in which 907 backers pledged £67,932 before fundraising wrapped up in late November.
Sharing on Twitter, Natural Six announces, "We’re excited to announce the all-star line-up for the Deck of Many Friends! Featuring talent from Baldur's Gate to Critical Role, created by gaming legends and our amazing Kickstarter backers, tune into Natural Six to see who will help us alter the fate of Reliquiae!"
Sam joins a long list of actors, developers, hosts, and gamers including: Anjali Bhimani (Actor, Overwatch & Apex Legends), Troy Baker (Actor, The Last of Us & BioShock Infinite), Tanya De Pass (aka Cypheroftyr, Senior Writer at Monolith Productions), CohhCarnage (livestreamer), Ellen Rose (Outside Xtra & Oxventure), Abubakar Salim (Assassin's Creed: Origins & Tales Of Kenzaru), Rebecca Ford (Creative Director at Digital Extremes), Matthew Mercer (Actor & Critical Roll Host), Rahul Kohli (Stray Gods & Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III), Luke Westaway (Oxventure), Robbie Daymond (Critical Roll & Actor), Austin Wintory (Composer, Journey & Abzu), Jane Douglas (Outside Xbox & Oxventure), Neil Newborn (Actor, Baldur's Gate 3 & Detroit: Become Human), Andy Farrant (Outside Xbox & Oxventure), Jasper William-Cartwright (Actor, Dimension 20 & Dark Dice), Johnny Chiodini (livestreamer & Oxventure), Samantha Béart (Actor, Baldur's Gate 3 & The Excavation of Hob's Barrow), Mike Channell (Outside Xbox & Oxventure), Erika Mori (Actor, Life Is Strange: True Colors & The Expanse: A Telltale Series), and KC Kovec.
At the moment, that's all we know about the new deck, but we'll post an update if Sam's character makes an appearance in the campaign. You can follow Natural Six's adventures on their YouTube channel, HERE.
Updated 5/10/2024 - Following the announcement of The Deck of Many Friends, Natural Six released a video explaining the feature and teased some of the characters we may see including Sam Lake's Prince Belemnor Bellompa Makkonen. You can check out the new video and its transcript below:
Transcript: Hello you! It's me, Harry McEntire, resident DM of Natural Six. Yes! That one! Well, I'm here to talk to you about a pretty cool, little, unique magic item in our game, our homebrew setting of Reliquiae, and it's called The Deck of Many Friends. Now, The Deck of Many Friends is a deck of cards. Twenty-two cards, each of which contains the souls of a fallen adventurer. It started off as a Kickstarter reward and then when our Kickstarter ended, we had some slots to fill in the deck, and I thought, well y'know, I can design fifteen/twenty characters to go into a deck of cards; it is after all, my only job. But then we thought, hey, we're not just D&D players, we're also massive fans of the amazing talent that we have in the D&D, actual play, TTRPG gaming and streaming industries. Plus, we kind of know a few cool people. So, why don't we reach out to people who we love the most, whose work we admire, who would be great collaborators, and ask them to design their own unique character to place inside our deck and inside our story.
So, if you've ever played D&D, you'll know things can very often go… extremely wrong. And in moments such as this, our players can call on the power of The Deck of Many Friends. When they've rolled like stink or attentively, an NPC has rolled incredibly well. They can choose to replace that roll that just happened by drawing a random card from the deck and taking the number on this card instead of the number on the die.
So, who exactly did we enlist to collaborate with us on this potentially DM soul-destroying magic item? Well, there was a bunch of cool people. Let's take a look, shall we?
Oh! How about Matt Mercer? Who designed Evedar the Cracked, the gnome wizard. We could also offer Anjeli Bihmani who designed Llylathia the Graceful. Or Troy Baker who designed Vallus, the drall cleric. But is it enough to just design a unique character and roll a d20? Nah, nah, no. Not for this talented lot. Instead, they decided that they would like to come up with unique mechanics for each character. And when their card is drawn, those mechanics are going to reek havoc with… frankly, my world.
For example, ooh, Jane Douglas' Grizha the cobalt. Who can offer the party insight into the strengths and weaknesses of their foes. Or Sam Lake's Prince Belemnor Bellompa Makkonen, that's easy for you to say. Fortunately, he's known as Prince Bell for short, whose magical drum could prove very useful to a certain member of the party.
Now, the eagle-eyed among you may have noticed that as I grasp Filas Smüg, designed by the masterful Neil Newborn betwixt my thumb and forefinger. I've rolled very high on my sleight of hand check and, thus, covering something with my fingertip. Now, that is the result of the d20 that each of our collaborators rolled to be added into their card. I don't want to show what it is, 'cos if I did, I'm afraid I'd have to kill you.
So, if you would like to see just how much these twenty-two unique heroes can completely derail my plans and ruin everything I had set for a long form campaign, why not check us out on YouTube, Twitch or wherever you get your podcast by searching Natural Six. And you can have a look our Patreon, Patreon.com/NaturalSix, and we'll see you soon in the world of Reliquiae, and this is where the music will come in… doo doo doo doo do doo- Alex Moukala wrote this! God, he's good. Isn't he good? We work with good people. Well done us!
