Nerdcore

March 17, 2010 4:15 PM

Strippers and pr0n stars (and others) play D&D in web series I Hit It With My Axe at The Escapist. Interview with participant Satine Phoenix. Surprisingly pretty much SFW so far (no nudity but, as they say, salty language)
posted by fearfulsymmetry (53 comments total)

A MIX OF AD&D AND 3RD ED??? I WILL NOT STAND FOR THIS!
posted by GuyZero at 4:19 PM on March 17, 2010 [1 favorite]

they're FAKING IT
posted by Hammond Rye at 4:24 PM on March 17, 2010

iirc, started by Zak Smith (Sabbath) because his girlfriend, Mandy Morbid was having a bad go of it with her health - so he started DM'ing a game to keep her mind off her body.

(links NSFW)
posted by nadawi at 4:25 PM on March 17, 2010 [2 favorites]

also, there is absolutely nothing faked about the nerdiness of mandy morbid or zak sabbath.

her picture account got taken down a few weeks ago so i can't link to some of the adorable justine jolie/mandy mobid D&D cuteness.
posted by nadawi at 4:26 PM on March 17, 2010 [1 favorite]

Ron Jeremy, level 4 Dwarf with 18 CON.
posted by benzenedream at 4:28 PM on March 17, 2010 [4 favorites]

I'm searching for the porn, but I cannot find it. I'm sure there is some porn in this post. Please point me to the porn. Thanks.
posted by Elmore at 4:30 PM on March 17, 2010 [5 favorites]

STD&D
posted by Hammond Rye at 4:30 PM on March 17, 2010 [3 favorites]

I put on my robe and wizard's hat.
posted by qvantamon at 4:34 PM on March 17, 2010 [16 favorites]

Camera man needs an enchanted cock-ring of Laying Off The Damn Zoom Button and should have rerolled his stats so that he'd have less trouble making his saves against nostril and clavicle shots.
posted by CKmtl at 4:41 PM on March 17, 2010 [2 favorites]

Oh, wow, this should drive some of the anti-D&D crusaders insane.
posted by namespan at 4:44 PM on March 17, 2010 [1 favorite]

Wasn't there a mention of "strippers and porn stars playing D&D" in a semi-recent thread? I seem to recall tales of bowling, pinball, D&D and other pursuits of which I'm fond.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 4:47 PM on March 17, 2010 [1 favorite]

Ewwwww, someone rolled a natural twenty all over the table
posted by kittens for breakfast at 4:48 PM on March 17, 2010 [1 favorite]

To be fair, a group of world-class D&D experts now need to oil up and make an adult film.
posted by CynicalKnight at 4:48 PM on March 17, 2010 [7 favorites]

Yeah Durn, Playing D&D with Porn Stars. It's the same people. I managed to read it for about a week before I got bored, but I'm not an aficionado of porn stars or recent D&D, your saving throw may vary.
posted by ecurtz at 4:52 PM on March 17, 2010

o/p: ah, thanks ecurtz. I'm thinking Wil Wheaton's gang needs to crash this party...
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 4:53 PM on March 17, 2010

Oh, wow, this should drive some of the anti-D&D crusaders insane.

Jerry Falwell called from 1987 and he is apoplectic. He's not sure what this internet thing is but he understands naked women are committing suicide on it and now they're playing that horrible game that Satan created so that kid would shoot himself over Judas Priest. Or something. Anyway, he's unhappy, but Highway to Heaven's about to come on, and that should chill him out to the max, no worries.

(Also, unless they're playing well into the night on Sasha Grey's mom's kitchen table, getting a huge sugar high off Sprite and wolfing down Cheetos while a shitty dub of "Tom Sawyer" plays on a cassette deck, this isn't the D&D I remember. Does Mandy Morbid have a plain brown bag full of this week's comics? Toss that over here, I wanna read the new Grendel. Should we break to watch Elvira?)
posted by kittens for breakfast at 4:58 PM on March 17, 2010 [5 favorites]

This is very bad D&D.
posted by mammary16 at 4:59 PM on March 17, 2010

Bizarre. A few weeks ago I stumbled across Zak's D&D blog, Playing D&D with Porn Stars (NSFW most likely, which should be obvious. Generally not an issue, but just a heads up). Not very interesting if you aren't into D&D I imagine, but I've actually found it to be one of the better blogs relating to the subject that I've found so far. It stole many hours from me as I poked around the archives.

Not in the FPP as far as I can tell (apologies if it is and I somehow missed it), and definitely worth looking through, especially as a DM.
posted by Stunt at 4:59 PM on March 17, 2010

preview? who needs preview?
posted by Stunt at 5:00 PM on March 17, 2010

mandy morbid probably doesn't keep the brown paper bag because it'll really hurt her asthma/chronic bronchitis, but i'd put pretty good bets on her having a rocking comic collection.
posted by nadawi at 5:00 PM on March 17, 2010

Wow. That was really boring
posted by delmoi at 5:08 PM on March 17, 2010 [2 favorites]

♪♪ ooooooh, A wizard's staff has a knob on the end ♪♪
posted by edgeways at 5:15 PM on March 17, 2010 [2 favorites]

huh. was just watching this today, as well. I gotta say that, much as i like the idea, it seems like a kinda cheap grab for pageviews as far as escapist magazine is concerned. The actual episode that's up so far is all over the place and just boring as hell. There's nothing there for porn fans or D&D fans except for whatever slight thrill a person might get knowing that porn stars play d&d, too, which - I mean you get that from reading a description of it and not much more from watching it. The editing is awful, and the parts he put in are basically the least interesting parts of beginning a campaign.

you know what it's like? if friends of yours filmed themselves hanging out and then made you watch a video that was just all of their favorite in-jokes and it was only interesting to them.
posted by shmegegge at 5:16 PM on March 17, 2010 [2 favorites]

I put on take off my robe and wizard's hat.

FTFY.

Also: This rules. His blog is awesome by the way.
posted by Aversion Therapy at 5:19 PM on March 17, 2010

D'oh, forgot to /i.
posted by Aversion Therapy at 5:22 PM on March 17, 2010

Yay Zak! He's a sweethart.
posted by The Whelk at 5:35 PM on March 17, 2010 [1 favorite]

You always break for Elvira, duh.
posted by The Whelk at 5:36 PM on March 17, 2010 [1 favorite]

Meine dispatcher says deres a problem mit deine krystal ball?
posted by Saxon Kane at 5:51 PM on March 17, 2010 [3 favorites]

What's pr0n? Is it videos of people fracking?
posted by ODiV at 5:58 PM on March 17, 2010

Is it wrong that I read her name as "Saltine Phoenix" and thought, "Wow, what a great porn name!"
posted by emilyd22222 at 6:12 PM on March 17, 2010 [2 favorites]

I cast magic missile at the hawtness.
posted by thanotopsis at 6:14 PM on March 17, 2010

while a shitty dub of "Tom Sawyer" plays on a cassette deck

We played lots of sci-fi and adventure movie soundtracks--Conan the Barbarian was a fave--lots of Tull, and Lindisfarne's Dingly Dell; and we got our sugar rush from M&Ms and Pepperidge Farm cookies. A Jethro Tull song or a Pepperidge Farm cookie still makes me want to roll a die. No porn stars, but our half-elven fighter-magic-user was pretty freaky.
posted by octobersurprise at 6:49 PM on March 17, 2010

Songs from the wo-od, make you feel much, b-better.
posted by adamdschneider at 7:12 PM on March 17, 2010

Sasha Grey's you-guys-are-so-lame face close-ups move this experiment into the realm of art.
posted by Poppa Bear at 8:28 PM on March 17, 2010

To be fair, it's not the porn stars' fault that "Playing D&D with Porn Stars" is more appealing to you than "Playing D&D with Accountants."
posted by explosion at 8:40 PM on March 17, 2010 [2 favorites]

Jethro Tull atmosphere music? Nice. I'm not sure we ever strayed far from Led Zeppelin. Except occasionally to Dread Zeppelin.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 9:58 PM on March 17, 2010

I liked the shot of what I presume are bored boyfriends in the background at 5:00. Makes a change. :)

D&D is not a spectator sport and even if it was, they're munchkins. I don't want to watch munchkins play D&D, even if they are relatively attractive, at least more so than the average munchkin.

Kudos to Sasha Grey for correctly identifying the major problem with d20-based systems, though.
posted by aeschenkarnos at 10:06 PM on March 17, 2010

I watched a few minutes of this but there was no Vin Diesel so I quit.

But it was sort of sweet and sad--nerd girls who have atypical jobs.
posted by mecran01 at 10:12 PM on March 17, 2010

"that's wizard's pizzle, harry" (has to be read in hagrid's voice)
posted by joeblough at 10:18 PM on March 17, 2010

From the blog:

ZAK: Ok, well what else do you know about your character?

KIMBERLY: Ummm...she's got an axe.

ZAK: In the game your character's got a name, some scores representing his or her abilities, a race, a job or class, a set of skills that come out of this class (or sometimes simply from being a certain race--like elves are good at finding secret doors) and then you've got some equipment. Kimberly's got an axe, a torch, some rations, some armor. The kinds of things you'd need if you were exploring. Also, anything you want to fill in about your character's background, you can---like if you want to say she has an aunt who died of leukemia or only eats beets then great, that's part of your character. Sometimes that stuff will come up in the game.

MANDY: In some games, that background stuff is provided for you.

KIMBERLY: Can we fight things yet?

If Kimberly doesn't go full-on munchkin by the end of the campaign, I'll be sorely disappoi

KIMBERLY: Yes, exactly and I rolled that so I hit it and now I roll another die to see how much damage my hit does and it's a big number so it's dead and his face comes off.

Godspeed, Kimberly.
posted by Spatch at 10:36 PM on March 17, 2010 [6 favorites]

Zak Smith's blog is actually really interesting in that he applies his artistic skills and sensibilities in some very cool ways to reexamine everything from maps to character sheets and monsters, and the way he mashes stuff up in contrast to gamers who agonize over building something perfect, never succeed, and don't play anything outside of convention spoonfeeding (these are the same people who generally give *you* play advice, by the way). I like his stuff a lot. I'll give this another go and see if the next ep. includes any of it. This one didn't, but I don't expect a refined start.
posted by mobunited at 12:34 AM on March 18, 2010

This post describes what 14 year old me thought heaven must be like. The video itself is a bit more like purgatory.
posted by jadayne at 12:47 AM on March 18, 2010 [5 favorites]

Do they wear that much makeup when they're not on camera? I wonder.

I also wonder: Do they really call it "Dungeons & Dragons"? I got tired of saying that mouthful of syllables after about my second game. I rarely refer to it by its full name anymore.

Interesting to watch, but yeah, hopefully it'll get better with time.
posted by jiawen at 3:49 AM on March 18, 2010

Okay, but if there's any girls there, I want to do them!
posted by nicepersonality at 6:12 AM on March 18, 2010 [4 favorites]

To be fair, it's not the porn stars' fault that "Playing D&D with Porn Stars" is more appealing to you than "Playing D&D with Accountants."

D&D players have by default at least one level in Accountant. Being human allows them to multiclass into the classes you usually associate them with: students, bearded warriors, XXX secret agents, porn stars.
posted by ersatz at 7:43 AM on March 18, 2010

I think I've mentioned it before, but back when I was a 14 year old nerd I met a guy on a local BBS who a) played D&D, b) was a DJ at a strip club, c) DMed a game with several strippers, and d) invited me to play with them.

Which is how it happens that I played D&D with strippers when I was 14 and thus achieved every nerd's dream. Of course they kept all their clothes on, but still, strippers! And D&D! Together!! It was pretty fun, actually.
posted by sotonohito at 7:49 AM on March 18, 2010 [3 favorites]

Porn stars and strippers (and hairdressers?) do things besides be in porn. This is obvious to anyone who realizes they are people.

Up next, porn stars eat Thanksgiving dinner! WOW THIS IS FASCINATING, THEY ARE BOTH PORN STARS AND PEOPLE WHO DO STUFF
posted by internet fraud detective squad, station number 9 at 8:25 AM on March 18, 2010 [3 favorites]

+12 to Tumble checks, phwoar!
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:07 AM on March 18, 2010

Porn stars and strippers (and hairdressers?) do things besides be in porn. This is obvious to anyone who realizes they are people.

ZOMG! First Soylent Green and now this?!!
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 10:20 AM on March 18, 2010

&lt clears throat &gt Rule 34 &lt /clears throat &gt
posted by l33tpolicywonk at 8:52 PM on March 18, 2010

shit, I just realized that Zak Smith is the same Zak Smith who's been linked here before for doing an illustration for every page of Gravity's Rainbow.
posted by shmegegge at 9:04 AM on March 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

Full Disclosure: I reviewed Zak Smith's WE DID PORN for carnal nation and he's friends with some of my friends ..and he's always come off as a real smart, stand-up guy. Check out the book if you see it, it's an amusing (if inside-basebally) look at alt porn and the art world and all that fun stuff.
posted by The Whelk at 9:20 AM on March 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

The Whelk - you've been one of the only shining stars in this thread. i adore zak smith/sabbath (does he prefer one over the other?) and mandy morbid. it's nice to see someone talking about them and not just "huh-huh porn, huh-huh nerds, huh-huh bewbs!"
posted by nadawi at 2:02 PM on March 19, 2010