Cleveland Browns players have nerdy fun in ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ charity event (photos) - cleveland.com

2022-05-28 11:05:57 By : Mr. Albert Wang

Live Dungeons & Dragons game for charity, May 26, 2022

CLEVELAND, Ohio – Chants of “here we go Brownies, here we go” resounded as three football players worked their way through a crowd of cheering fans.

But this was no football game. Johnny Stanton, Wyatt Teller and Myles Garrett were competing in a different kind of game: a one-shot of “Dungeons & Dragons,” held at Tabletop Board Game Café in Cleveland’s Ohio City neighborhood.

The sold-out fantasy role-playing event packed the board game bar with fans, many of them donning Browns jerseys or “Critical Roles” shirts. (One tee featured a D&D D20 dice, saying “I roll with Myles Garrett.) Beyond the in-person component, hundreds of viewers tuned in to a live Twitch stream, topping out at around 600 viewers.

Seated at a table near the front windows of Tabletop, the NFL players were paired with Aabria Iyengar and Ify Nwadiwe, known for their performances on “Critical Roles” games and podcasts. (Iyengar is a dungeon master on “Exandria Unlimited” miniseries, and Nwadiwe has appeared on several episodes of D&D shows.) Together, the five –- plus an extra character, a pet imp named Beans – completed the Dire Dogs.

The party entered an adventure crafted by dungeon master Brandon Tharp, a longtime D&D player and TikTok personality from Youngstown. They faced off against the Steelers-esque “Mecha Boargo” machine robots, aiming to keep the medieval “Clevelandia” safe and to make it into the TFL (akin to the NFL) in the process.

Rolling sets of D&D die to determine their next moves, the crowd whooped in cheers for any natural 20s (the highest score in the game) and groaned at critical fails (the lowest score). Taking on the alter ego of a Fire Genasi Gunslinger named “Heller Highwater,” Stanton became the de facto leader of the slightly less-experienced Browns players (Teller, a half-elf moon cleric named Tellen and Garrett, a dragonborn samurai named Zax).

Stanton was clearly the most experienced player out of the three football personalities, and with good reason: he’s been the dungeon master of their D&D sessions for the past couple of years, according to a Sports Illustrated feature.

But Iyengar and Nwadiwe were even more well-versed in the role-playing game. Iyengar, playing as a one-eyed elf celestial warlock named Xero, was often one step ahead of Tharp, asking for advantages or disadvantages on die rolls based on her actions in the game. (Notably, one of Iyengar’s dice rolls was a little too forceful, and it accidentally hit an audience member in the front row.)

Nwadiwe, playing a half-elf circle of the shepherd druid named Lev’ren McKnackle, had a consistent character quirk: that he was always trying to offload “non-fungible trinkets” to villagers.

Garrett showed his muscle when he took out a crew of mecha boargos in a stadium during the campaign’s climax, slaying two of the opponents demon-slayer style with a sword while Stanton had to stay out of the action for a couple of rounds to fix a misfiring gun.

As the party defeated the last of the enemies of Clevelandia, the event crept past its $10,000 fundraising goal.

The event benefited Red Nose Day, a charity aiming to end child poverty. Attendees at Tabletop were given clown-like red noses to wear during the game, and they were able to bid on silent auction items like signed jerseys, official D&D models, dice-rolling containers and a football and helmet signed by Browns players.

The whole event was possible because of a TikTok video that Tharp posted to his popular account in November, sharing an idea to DM a charity one-shot game with the nerdy Browns players, after reading the Sports Illustrated feature.

It ended up being a lot of fun for Tharp and the players onstage, judging by their bursts of laughter and excited punches to the air. And it was a lot of fun for the audience, both in-person and online, which was awarded with a unique, entertaining evening.

“What an intersection of my RPG and Cleveland love,” said one commenter named Dakota Duffy on the donation page. “Could never have imagined a thing like this. So much fun, and thanks to all involved. GO BROWNIES!”

“Exciting to see the intersection of jocks and nerds get bigger and bigger,” shared another commenter named Ryan J. Lucas. “For a great cause too!”

See more photos from the event in the gallery at the top of this article.

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