The dice clattered across the table and came to rest, finally, in the middle of the map. It was a nat 20. Alex groaned and threw his head back in mock anguish. “You never would have got that without advantage!”

  But Ryan didn’t hear him. “YES!” he whooped as he jumped to his feet. Arms held high, he ran a victory lap around the table and his friends. “That’s a crit, baby!”

  He got a little too close to the webcam and, in his best Rockslide Maddox, Dungeon Desk, commentary voice he screamed: “Now that’s what I call a crit!”

  Groans and laughter rippled around the townhouse living room. Two of Alex’s other friends, the cheer squad, were half sprawled on the couch that had been turned away from the TV for the night’s game. Character sheets and notepads and dice bags fought the empty chip bags and soda cans for table space.

  The final blow of the night’s battle was dealt and the Hobgoblin champion mini was knocked over – victory belonged to the party.

  “Wow! Everything blew up with that one – chat’s going crazy. I can’t keep up,” Jun said, the anxiety clear in his voice.

  “Let it ride buddy. Don’t sweat it. We can go through later and answer any questions,” Ryan said as he leaned toward the webcam, mugging it up for the video as the chat scrolled past at lightspeed.

  “Oh God, someone just wrote ‘Kaladrin Lives Again’ on the twitch chat.” Kira turned to the webcam. “My dudes! Kaladrin died in campaign one. Deal with it.” The couch crew cracked up. The chat doubled down with KALADRIN LIVES AGAIN spam until the emote wall practically glowed red.

  Alex watched it with a mix of pride and disbelief. It was still surreal to him that thousands of strangers cared about this tiny story he spun out of a notebook. He’d grown up with campaigns that never left a basement. Now his dumb goblin NPCs had fanart. It was exhilarating, terrifying, and just a little absurd.

  “Campaign two, session five is in the can, people.” Jake laughed and made a hand and dagger silhouette on the wall with a pen.

  The light in the room wasn’t great, but then nothing in the school townhouse could be called ‘great’ really. Solid. Durable. But not great. The walls were all off-white. The tiles in the kitchen were a sheet of linoleum and the ceiling fixture gave off the dull, yellow haze of a dying firefly.

  They’d learned during campaign one that bad lighting made their streams almost unwatchable, so now they had ring lights clamped awkwardly above chairs, a boom mic propped up with duct tape, and Ryan’s DSLR jury-rigged to capture the whole table for a second stream perspective.

  It wasn’t professional, not by a long shot, but it was good enough. Their fans didn’t seem to care about polish anyway. They cared about the moments: the way Jake’s voice cracked when his barbarian gave a speech, Kira’s habit of doodling her character in the margins of her sheet, or Ryan’s constant table theatrics.

  Every time the dice cam caught a nat 20, their Twitch chat exploded and that chaos bounced right back into the room.

  Alex leaned back in his chair, closing his binder with a satisfied snap. “Alright. That’s it for tonight. You’ve earned your long rest.”

  “And how much experience?” Jake asked immediately.

  “Not enough to level yet.” Alex smiled, anticipating the reaction.

  Another round of groans went up, followed by exaggerated complaints about stingy DMs and unfair XP thresholds. Alex laughed, shoulders relaxed for the first time in days. The troubles of the week, class deadlines, social awkwardness, Marissa, the heavy weight of the email in his inbox, they were all forgotten for now.

  His friends celebrated their win. There were cheers, mock toasts with mostly-empty bottles, and the familiar post-session glow. They had been doing this together for years. It was important enough that they had all agreed to go to the same university so they could continue. The rhythm of it was as comfortable as breathing. Here he could be himself – even with 5,000 people watching online.

  Jun stretched and sighed. “Man, this feels different. Campaign two energy, y’know?”

  “Yeah,” Kira said, curling her legs under her. “Campaign one was… forever. Like, what, four years? Almost five? We basically grew up on that story.”

  Alex smiled despite himself. He still remembered their first shaky session. It had been just him, Ryan, and Jakey at his parents’ dining table, nervously fumbling with character voices and rules. None of them had thought about cameras back then. It was just friends rolling dice.

  Somehow, that silly home game had evolved into Side Quest Heroes and a modest but loyal community of fans who tuned in week after week.

  “Remember when Ryan crit that blue dragon mid-air?” Jake asked. “And Alex was so mad he tried to figure out how to kill Ryan with the whole physics of it for an hour?”

  “I wasn’t mad,” Alex protested automatically. “I was… respecting velocity.”

  “You were pissed,” Kira said with a giant grin. “You spent forever calculating impact damage and chat was trying to help you. The rest of us were bored out of our minds after we stopped laughing.”

  “Hey, that fall should have killed him,” Alex muttered, though the memory tugged a reluctant smile out of him.

  The clip had gone semi-viral: the dumb-ass barbarian leaping off a crumbling tower onto a dragon's back and then climbing up its neck to stab it in the eyes.

  Ryan seemed to be able to roll 20’s whenever he wanted and Alex hadn’t been a good enough DM to derail the attempt at that point. And so the dice clattered, the dragon fell and everyone screamed at once. People still referenced it in the chat.

  It was only one of the many times that chaos had driven the story and their sessions, despite all his best efforts to plan for everything. There was also Mr. Pickles, the throwaway shopkeeper Alex had improvised in a panic. By the end of campaign one, he’d been voted Best Supporting Character by their Patreon. Alex hadn’t planned any of it. The story just… happened.

  Ending campaign one had been the hardest call he’d ever made. He’d planned the finale for months with layers of foreshadowing, tying up every plot thread he could.

  When it was over, they’d all cried. Not just the players, but their audience too. Best ending since Critical Role season two one commenter had written. The words had stuck in his head like a song lyric. No, more like the numbers of pi – he was shit at song lyrics.

  But university had forced his hand. Not everyone was moving with him and they lost 2 core players in the end.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Campaign two had almost not happened, until Alex realized he couldn’t not run a game. Storytelling was mana to him. They needed this. He needed this. And the fans demanded it. So, after a 2 month hiatus, they were back at it.

  “New school, new city, new campaign, new vibes,” Jun said. “I swear, it’s sharper so far. Tighter, you know? You’ve come a long way since Mr. Pickles, or Teddy the ‘giant-dwarf’ store keeper Alex.” Everyone laughed, Alex rolled his eyes again.

  Ryan leaned over, nudging Alex with his elbow. “Speaking of sharp… heard anything from Dungeon Inc.?”

  The laughter quieted a little as everyone perked up. Alex hesitated before admitting, “Yeah. They emailed me. Interview’s tomorrow. One o’clock.”

  Ryan grinned and said, “no kidding. I’ve got one at one–thirty.”

  “Wait, what?” Jake sat up straighter, half spilling chips onto his lap. “You both got interviews? That’s shit! I got a ‘please try again next time email’.”

  “Not shit,” Ryan declared with mock grandeur, thrusting an arm to the ceiling. “Fated.”

  Kira rolled her eyes. “Oh my god. He’s going to make a paladin speech about destiny, isn’t he?”

  Alex gave a faint smile, but shifted in his seat. “It’s weird, though. I never… I mean, I filled out the form on my phone, but I never hit submit. I figured I’d never be able to act, so I put the phone down.”

  “Pfft.” Kira waved it off. “Sometimes if you hover over the button too long, it registers a click anyway. Happened to me with an Amazon order once. Bam – thirty bucks gone.”

  The group laughed.

  “Whatever,” Jun said, “You’ve got an interview. That’s huge. You’ve got to promise us something.”

  Alex raised an eyebrow. “Promise what?”

  “Get us autographs from all the heroes! Selfies, signatures, anything!”

  “You heard me say I have an interview too right?” Ryan looked offended that Alex was getting all the attention.

  “I want a date with Clara,” Kira cut in. “Seriously. If you meet her, tell her I like… you know – exist! Ah, Team Justice!”

  The room burst into laughter again, Ryan loudest of all.

  “Can you imagine the chat if you two actually got in?” Jake said, half laughing, half serious. “It’d be chaos. People would clip the hell out of it. ‘The DM of Side Quest Heroes joins Dungeon Inc.’ That headline writes itself.”

  Side Quest Heroes. The name had been a throwaway joke years ago. Something Ryan had suggested when they were scrambling for a Twitch handle. Now it was a minor brand.

  They had a thriving Patreon, merch designs floating around Redbubble, even fanart popping up on Twitter. Their Discord server had more than ten thousand community members, buzzing even on off days.

  And yes, fans still spammed Justice for Kaladrin memes whenever campaign one came up.

  Alex hadn’t expected any of it. To him, it was just their game. But to thousands of strangers, it was a story worth watching.

  He should have been thrilled. Their group’s name in the same sentence as Dungeon Inc. was wild. Unthinkable.

  And Ryan getting an interview made sense: Ryan was a natural on camera. He was always hamming it up, always drawing eyes. But him? Alex wasn’t a performer. He was the guy behind the screen, the one who wove the story. He did NPC voices and gave good speeches, but he was never the star of the show.

  His gaze drifted to the binder sitting closed beside him. Years of notes, scribbled maps, NPC quirks, homebrew monsters with strange abilities that had made his players groan and laugh. All the hours he’d poured into making the world feel alive... The idea of stepping away from it, even temporarily, made something cold settle in his chest.

  What if he couldn’t keep up with the extra workload. What if campaign two sputtered out because of him? What if his friends got bored waiting and found another DM?

  Kira popped the tab on another soda despite the late hour. “So what are you even going to say in the interview? Like, do you tell them you run a show already? Or is that flexing too hard?”

  Ryan grinned, leaning back in his chair with hands behind his head. “I’m gonna tell them I crit like a god and have a natural proficiency in charisma.” Clearly he was still riding high from the night's Hobgoblin champion win.

  There were groans all around. But Kira just stared at Alex, waiting.

  Alex’s stomach twisted. “I thought I’d go with ‘Hi, I’m socially awkward and accidentally overshare about the process behind creating imaginary elves?’ It’ll be a great pitch, trust me.”

  His brain ran through what the scenario would actually be like: panel interview; glaring lights; questions he couldn’t prepare for; him squirming in his seat, stammering halfway through his first answer; the recruiters exchanging glances; someone noting “lacks presence” in neat black ink.

  Worse, what if they asked why he was different from everyone else? He could practically see the cursor blinking at him again, waiting for the word he couldn’t use: autism. If he dodged, he’d sound fake. If he admitted it, they would just smile politely and move on like so many others.

  Ryan would wing it, could wing it and charm them, probably even get a few laughs in the process. Alex would analyze every syllable for weeks afterward. The thought made his chest feel tight. It was a critical failure just waiting to happen.

  Jake turned back to Alex. “Seriously though. You’re gonna crush it. You’re basically the brain of this whole thing.”

  “Wait, what?” Ryan leaned forward glaring at Jake who just smiled back at him.

  “But you're the personality Ryan!” Everyone laughed. Kira turned to Alex. “Jakey's right though and if they don’t see it, they’re idiots and don’t deserve you. But I really hope they do. Because Clara.”

  Alex nodded, but the words didn’t land. His chest was tight again, a little electric knot right under his ribs.

  The session wound down the way they always did: banter over loot distribution, jokes about in-game romances, predictions about where the story would go. They bid farewell to the audience and the cameras were turned off. The lights clicked dark one by one.

  The walk back to Res was quiet. It was the kind of damp autumn night where every sound carried, but all the dense rows of trees behind the townhouses made it so that only the sounds around him seemed to exist. Gravel crunched unbelievably loud under his sneakers, streetlamps buzzed teasing the moths, and the air smelled faintly of wet leaves, petricore and the fryer grease drifting out from Dan’s Diner.

  His mind kept replaying the game: Jake’s speech, Ryan’s ridiculous crit celebration, Kira’s deadpan quips. For a moment, it almost felt normal.

  But the email sat heavy in his pocket like a cursed item. Tomorrow wasn’t just another game. Tomorrow was the roll of dice he couldn’t control. He pulled his hoodie tighter and kept walking, heartbeat counting down the hours.

  Tomorrow, one o’clock.

  The thought pressed down on him like a weight, both terrifying and intoxicating.

  Side Quest Heroes ranks within the top percentile of independently produced live tabletop content, demonstrating sustained growth driven primarily by creator chemistry and narrative cohesion rather than production scale. While overall subscriber numbers remain within mid-tier range, the program exhibits repeated breakout moments—short-form clips and improvised exchanges that circulate well beyond the core tabletop audience and show strong meme propagation across platforms.

  Viewer sentiment analysis indicates high trust in the group’s game master, who maintains consistent narrative direction while allowing player agency to drive emergent outcomes. Episodes featuring heightened stakes or unexpected failure correlate with increased engagement, suggesting an audience comfortable with tension and uncertainty when framed through character-driven storytelling.

  Notably, the team demonstrates an ability to recover momentum after setbacks, both in-game and on-stream, without loss of audience goodwill. This resilience under live conditions remains a key indicator of scalability.

  Recommendation: Active monitoring advised. Recruitment alignment potential assessed as favorable.

  Excerpt from SCRY Audience Engagement Report

  Independent Live Play Content — Talent Identification Review

  Hey everyone!

  Thanks for taking the time to check out my crazy little mashup of a story. I'll be dropping chapters all day until I hit 20k words, after that It'll be 1 chapter per day.

  I am a new writer here on RR, so your reviews and ratings and especially follows mean a ton - please consider taking a moment to help if you like my story!

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  DUNGEON INC. // RECRUIT DIV.

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  ? ━━━? THE STORY CONTINUES… ?━━━ ?