The team at Beadle & Grimm’s on giving DUNGEONS & DRAGONS fans all they need for an immersive gaming experience

For anyone new to the company, how would you describe what Beadle & Grimm’s does?
Beadle & Grimm’s gives you the stuff you need – maps, handouts, artifacts, jewellery, bonus encounters, and much more – to immerse yourself and your players in the world of the game.

If you’re going to play through the DUNGEONS & DRAGONS adventure Curse of Strahd, instead of using only the book, we provide you with a massive box full of battle maps, Strahd letters, documents, artifacts, custom DM Screen, extra content and encounter cards… Things that help everyone see and feel a little more into that world.

The company and D&D feel like a perfect partnership. Was the brand in your minds when you launched the company?
It was the ONLY thing on our minds! D&D has been a part of our lives for such a long time. We all played as kids… Charlie – Bill’s older brother – ran him through the adventure In Search of the Unknown when they were in elementary school.

So, when we all started spending time together in our twenties, D&D was one of the common bonds that tied us all together. We have so much affection for this game – and so much gratitude for it – that creating a company around it was the most natural thing in the world. For us at least, our first Platinum Edition felt less like a product and more like a love letter to the hobby itself.

“If we think an item is essential to running a campaign, we’ll go to frankly stupid lengths to include it in the box.”

Before we dive further into your D&D launches, why do you feel the brand has endured over the decades?
For us, D&D has always been this great combination of seemingly opposed ideas: escaping into a fantasy world, but doing it with your friends around a table… An open world of imagination and fantasy, but grounded in a set of rules and settings that gives us all a place to start and way to work together… Having a parade of new characters and personas to inhabit, while also having a few favourite characters who we come back to again and again – Beadle & Grimm being just two of them!

D&D as a brand over the years has managed to find that great balance of fantasy and community, of freedom and structure, of the new and the familiar… It’s these elements that continue to delight both the old-timers like us who have been playing for years and the newbies who are just now learning about the game for the first time.

Beautifully put! Right, let’s talk product. Your premium boxed editions look fantastic. If we look at something like the Platinum Edition of Vecna: Eve of Ruin, what comes in the box?
We give the Dungeon Master everything they need to create an amazing immersive experience at the table, all while making their job easier. We include the adventure, of course, but we break the full book up into easier-to-manage booklets. We also pull out the amazing art so you can hang it on your DM screen. If it’s an enemy, we include the stat block on the back for the DM.

Other favourites? Custom DM screen, 18 painted WizKids minis, a separate box filled with rolled-up poster-sized battle maps, a booklet of three original adventures that fit nicely into the adventure, a set of seven metal magic item artifacts that fit together to make the adventure’s McGuffin: the Rod of Seven Parts.

Wow! Jam-packed! Oh, is there more?!
Oh yes! A pack of in-world handouts, three more metal artifacts – coins and tokens – annotated maps, DM and player aids… And, of course, the faux-leather wrapped, foam-lined box that it all comes packaged in.

An incredible line-up there. What does the start of the development process look like on a product like that?
Well, first everyone retreats to their corner and reads the adventure. While we read, we all compile a list of what we’d want if we were DMing the adventure ourselves. Then we get on a call, and everyone pitches their list, which leads to a series of long discussions, digressions and running battles over minutia… Further complicated by someone – who shall remain unnamed – lobbing ideas like finger puppets or butterfly wings into the mix.

Ha!
All of which, eventually, leaves us with a hit list of favourite ideas. Then we pick some unlucky bastard to actually run the project and we’re off to the races.

Ha ha! And how does the team assess what to include? And what to leave out?
The favourites list we end up with usually contains far more than we could ever reasonably include in a boxed edition smaller than a refrigerator, so it’s up to the project lead to begin culling the list. Ultimately the decisions involve practical issues like time and cost, but our guiding light will always be what’s most useful to the DM.

If we think an item is essential to running a campaign, we will go to frankly stupid lengths to include it in the box. And then, finally, we try to leave room for one weird item per edition – see finger puppets or butterfly wings! After all, these things are supposed to be fun.

I’m pleased finger puppets got its moment in the sun! What do you think is important to crafting an immersive D&D experience at home?
We like to talk about those “Wow!” moments at a table… When a player joins the Harpers faction, and you hand them the metal pin to wear! When you reveal the art of the big bad, or hand the rogue the hidden letter they just found in that secret compartment in the villain’s desk. When you roll out the battle map of the room where the boss fight is going down…

We once included a set of five wearable fairy wings and I remember my players eyes going wide and saying, “THAT didn’t come in the box, did it?” We love those moments. That said, the less-flashy elements like the DM annotated maps and the broken-out booklets really help the DM to keep the game running smoothly, and that can’t be overstated.

You also have a Premium Edition of Quests from the Infinite Staircase on the way. What should we expect from that?
Infinite Staircase really speaks to us. The six adventures it honours and recreates were a big part of our childhoods, and we were thrilled to see them updated for 5e. We want our boxed edition to be both a great playing experience and the perfect collector’s item for the 50th anniversary – whether you were around back then or not!

With six wildly different adventures, the challenge has been to create a distinct style for each one, whether that’s the compass rose on the Pharaoh’s Tomb map, or the access cards you need for traversing the spaceship in Barrier Peaks. And for those who are interested in the original modules, we’re creating a very unique scrapbook containing a ton of the old art and text… Reading it gives you a powerful sense of the journey this hobby has taken over the years.

Can you also tell us a bit about the six Classic Module Dice Collections you have on the way for D&D. What comes with those?
Jon Ciccolini, Head Production Goblin: Each of these collections come in a felt-lined box themed to a classic module and contain module-themed elements. These include a set of eight resin dice, including an oversized d20, four collector cards with art on front and lore on the back – and a 50th anniversary commemorative coin celebrating the module.

Matthew Lillard, Co-Founder: The 50th anniversary of DUNGEONS & DRAGONS was a perfect opportunity for us to celebrate the game we’ve all grown up with and love so dearly. We decided to celebrate this moment with something that every gamer loves… Dice! But like everything we do, we incorporate that extra lore and those extra elements that we’re excited about and think players will get a total kick out of. These sets are celebratory, nostalgic, and totally bad ass!

A triple threat! Now you guys speak with so much passion about the brand, and you mentioned earlier that you’re all big D&D fans. Does being a fan help when it comes to the development process? Or can it make things difficult?
Paul Shapiro, Chief Financial Goblin: Absolutely, being a fan of D&D – and games in general – is an essential part of our process for developing new products. Our whole focus for starting the company was to create the products and elements that we wished we had as players and DMs, so our understanding of the game is at the core of every product we make. We’re always looking for ways to improve and expand the game experience for everyone at the table, and that always starts with understanding what’s happening at the table.

“Our focus for starting the company was to create the products and elements that we wished we had as players.”

That said, being such big fans does create some difficult situations. The biggest one for us is that because we’re all so involved in the production of each of our premium editions for D&D adventures, we can’t actually play those adventures as a group… A few of us have DM’ed games using our Platinum Editions with other groups of players – but in a way we’ve essentially ruined a lot of our own gaming opportunities as a group! Not that we don’t play D&D anymore – we just have to work a little harder to find stuff that we haven’t actually created products for!

Fascinating. Guys, a huge thanks for this. I have one last question: How do you fuel your creativity?
Jon: I’m committed to DMing regularly, and I do it using our premium boxes. It allows me to see what works, what doesn’t work, and what the players seem to be wanting more or less of. We have to put ourselves in our customers’ shoes.

Bill Rehor, Co-Founder: For me, it’s collaborating with other artists. We hire a lot of experienced people – most of them far more talented than me – and working side-by-side with them is educational and inspiring.