Dungeons & Dragons has exploded in popularity over the years, thanks in part to the advent of livestreaming games. While Critical Role and The Adventure Zone have helped introduce more players to D&D than ever before, neither of these are official programs set up by Wizards of the Coast itself. The company has organized live-streams of Dungeons & Dragons before, though the most ambitious of these undertakings remains Stream of Many Eyes.
Stream of Many Eyes was at once a showcase of upcoming Dungeons & Dragons content, as well as an opportunity to entertain audiences with multiple one-off campaigns featuring celebrities and internet personalities coming together to play with dice and imagination. The three-day event ran from June 1-3, 2018 and represents the potential and ambition fans of the game wish we could experience more often.
The Event Itself
Over the course of three days, the Stream of Many Eyes conducted ten live-streamed sessions of Dungeons & Dragons, some of which featured internet personalities while others featured celebrities. Some of the games featured popular D&D streamers, including Critical Role, Dice, Camera, Action!, High Rollers, and Girls, Guts, Glory. Celebrities like Joe Manganiello and Deborah Ann Woll played alongside these established figures.
Alongside this were numerous interviews conducted with many iconic players about their experiences with the game, as well as Wizard of the Coast staff about what would be coming up in the world of Dungeons & Dragons. At the time, the event served to promote two new adventures: Waterdeep: Dragon Heist and Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage. The event served as part-live entertainment and part-promotional material.
The event also provided players an opportunity to interact with a recreation of the fantasy city of Waterdeep. Provided you could attend the event and pay the entry fee, players were allowed to preview two new adventure books and a showcase of art and material. On top of that, there was also live musical entertainment, dancing and other exciting shows and demonstrations for those lucky enough to be in attendance.
These three days of entertainment remain archived on the official Dungeons & Dragons website, with many of the individual campaigns proving to be highly entertaining adventures in and of their own right. What they manage to do is highlight and capitalize on the fun of a few friends just crafting a narrative on the fly. Still, watching them, one can only wish they were there to see these creative players live.
The Impact of the Event
Obviously, Stream of Many Eyes is not the first time Dungeons & Dragons and live-streaming mixed, but the three-day event provided a colossal amount of content, aided by the participation of established D&D enthusiasts alongside celebrities. And of course, many D&D events, such as Extra Life, have proven themselves popular ways to both promote the tabletop game and raise money, usually for a good cause.
However, to see such a large collaboration of Dungeons & Dragons enthusiasts in one place left many fans clamoring for more. It might have introduced fans of one D&D group to check out the work of one of the others introduced in the show, as well as encouraged players to explore the Waterdeep adventure modules.
Events like these, however, are sadly super expensive to both produce and attend in-person, which means campaigns like this are less common than the usual streams you see on Twitch. Nevertheless, the next time we see a Stream of Many Eyes-esque event pop up -- especially as more and more players become immersed in the world of dice and adventure -- we can only hope it will be a colossal success.