Harmonquest!

[Werthead]

Just watched the first episode, which is up free on YouTube.

It's basically a group of people playing Pathfinder (which, for the uninitiated, is basically Dungeons and Dragons) live in front of a studio audience, mixing gaming with improv comedy moments and, then the Rick & Morty team animate chunks of the game for the purposes of comedy. The party consists of group of permanent players and a "guest player" who changes every week. It's all the brainchild of Dan Harmon, the creator/writer of Community and co-writer of Rick & Morty.

The first episode was very funny, with it helping that the DM is very, very good. He lets the comedy moments flow but makes sure to keep the story moving in a tight fashion.

[red snow]

that was quite fun once the players and in turn myself got into it. Some laugh out loud moments eg failed attacks and the improv was great in places.

Where do we see more though?

[Werthead]

In the UK? Unknown, since this is an NBC streaming-thing exclusive. Apparently some kind of international release method is being worked on.

[red snow]

23 minutes ago, Werthead said:

In the UK? Unknown, since this is an NBC streaming-thing exclusive. Apparently some kind of international release method is being worked on.

I'll have to keep an eye out. Would be for watching in UK

[Kalbear]

Amazing.

[Pliskin]

The barbarian (is she Harmon's wife?) was hilarious.

Will the guest die at the end of each episode?

Hope it ends up on Netflix for the international release...

[Werthead]

Quote

"I call for the militia to form up."

"Three guys show up."

"Wow. Where is the rest of the goddamned militia?"

"They're all on vacation."

"During the Restoration? Who signed off on that?"

"We don't plan our calendar very far ahead."

"We have 99 years from the last Restoration to prepare for this."

"These are all reasonable points."

As a GM, every single time a player raises a well-argued and perfectly logical objection to something that's going on, you should now just say "These are all reasonable points" and just carry exactly on as before.

 

[Morpheus]

The pilot is fun, if Seeso has a free trial I may check out the rest.

For anyone interested, HQ has its roots in the Harmontown podcast where Spencer was plucked from the audience at random to DM for Dan, who hadn't played D&D since the 80s, and Jeff who had never played. Someone edited and collected all the relevant parts of the podcast, you can hear Spencer developing a style of play that fits the improv comedy stylings of the members and makes allowances for the inebriated state of the players since the game was usually played late in the episode. Not as polished as the Seeso series and obviously lacking the animation. They stopped playing rather abruptly and attempted to switch things up with a Shadowrun campaign which proved less suited to the loose and comedic style of play.

 

[Kalbear]

I'm up to ep 5, and there's a part with aubrey Plaza that is as funny as anything I've ever seen in my entire life. Not all the eps are as good as the first but that one is so far the best by a large margin.

[Durckad]

That was pretty awesome. Paul lighting his hair on fire and Jeff failing to cut the tendons on the two cultists were the best parts, although the conversation with mayor about the militia was pretty great. I'm definitely going to binge watch a bunch of these tomorrow (hopefully).

4 hours ago, Dickwad Poster #3784 said:

I'm up to ep 5, and there's a part with aubrey Plaza that is as funny as anything I've ever seen in my entire life. Not all the eps are as good as the first but that one is so far the best by a large margin.

Aubrey Plaza playing Pathfinder? Be still my beating heart.

[Talleyrand]

"There's nothing more on autopilot than an annual centennial" 

might be one of my favourite lines from any Harmon related show.

12 hours ago, Pliskin said:

The barbarian (is she Harmon's wife?) was hilarious.

I don't think they were married at the time this was filmed but they have subsequently got married and got divorced.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

 "There's two things I know in life. There's dice...and there's no dice. This is no dice."

[red snow]

11 hours ago, Durckad said:

That was pretty awesome. Paul lighting his hair on fire and Jeff failing to cut the tendons on the two cultists were the best parts, although the conversation with mayor about the militia was pretty great. I'm definitely going to binge watch a bunch of these tomorrow (hopefully).

Aubrey Plaza playing Pathfinder? Be still my beating heart.

Yeah. waiting 5 minutes for Jeff's sneak attack to pay off (along with the "are the two of them standing in a line", "how can they not be") only to fail spectacularly was fun. That and Paul forgetting his hair was still on fire.

[Werthead]

10 hours ago, Talleyrand said:

I don't think they were married at the time this was filmed but they have subsequently got married and got divorced.

They were together before but were going through the divorce whilst they were making the show. Apparently it helped them keep negativity down and things focused because they had to do the show. In fact, during the divorce they were tweeting some of their breakup conversations, like who got to keep the Emmy.

[Davrum]

"You sent a strong message Fondue!"

[Davrum]

"You got a lot of heart, and that is not lost on this group."

Love this stuff.

[Veltigar]

This was actually pretty fun. Although I'm as good as uninitiated (only played D&D a couple of times), I would like to see more. This Seeso thing seems rather odd though, reading the youtube comments, there are a lot of complaints about this service (can't say that I'm familiar with it). 

 

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

3 hours ago, Veltigar said:

This was actually pretty fun. Although I'm as good as uninitiated (only played D&D a couple of times), I would like to see more. This Seeso thing seems rather odd though, reading the youtube comments, there are a lot of complaints about this service (can't say that I'm familiar with it). 

 

 There's a link in the comments section that leads you to the site. They are offering a month's membership for free, but they require credit card information to get it. I haven't done it for that reason alone. 

[Paxter]

I just finished the series and it's pretty great. There is a bit of variation in the quality of the episodes (mostly depending on the guest player), but the consistently brilliant animation more than makes up for it. Hopefully this does well enough to prompt a second season.

Thanks Wert for the recommendation!

[Werthead]

And here's my full review:

HarmonQuest: Season 1

Fantasy roleplaying! A bunch of friends create characters - wizards, elves, thieves, dwarves, sorcerers and what have you - and make their way through a vivid world created and controlled by the Dungeon Master Gamemaster. Various attempts have been made to capture the fun of roleplaying and put it on the screen, but they've largely ended up being a bit poor.

HarmonQuest takes a different tack by combining fantasy roleplaying with improvisational comedy in the vein of Whose Line Is It Anyway? Just typing that makes me realise how blinding obvious an idea it is and why no-one thought of it years ago and cashed in. HarmonQuest features three regular players: Dan Harmon, the famous comedy writer (Community, Rick & Morty) and podcaster (Harmontown); comedian Erin McGathy; and actor Jeff Davis. Respectively, they play half-orc ranger Fondue Zoobag, elven barbarian Biaro Shift and goblin rogue Bone Weevil.

There is also a special guest slot which is filled in by a rotating cast of comedians and actors: Paul F. Tompkins, Ron Funches, John Hodgman, Rhea Butcher, Kumail Nanjiani (as a pathological gold and handjob-obsessed kobold), Matt Gourley, Steve Agee, Chelsea Peretti (Brooklyn Nine-Nine) and Thomas Middleditch (Silicon Valley), along with an excellent appearance by the immortal Nathan Fillion (Firefly, Castle). The greatest turn, arguably, comes from the mighty Aubrey Plaza (Parks & Recreation) as the randomly insane gnome Hawaiian Coffee. The in-joke is that the guest characters can't continue into the next episode, so they have to be introduced to the adventure, fulfil a vital story role and then be written out (usually killed off in a ludicrous manner, but a couple survive) in an organic fashion, all in an hour (the episodes are the edited half-hour highlights of each game session).

That's a tall order for any Dungeon Master Gamemaster, but fortunately HarmonQuest employs the impressive skills of Spencer Crittenden, a GM for the ages. His ability to let the crazy comedy play out when it should, reign in the insanity when it threatens to completely sidetrack the adventure and pushing the story forwards whilst adapting for his players' impressive improvisational skills is completely amazing. I feel a better Gamemaster for just having watched him in action.

The adventure itself is splendid, old-skool fun: Fondue and Bone Weevil's favourite village haunt is destroyed by an evil cult seeking to unleash a powerful manticore upon the world. Teaming up with barbarian warrioress Biaro, they try to stop the cult getting its hands on the three gems it needs to complete the summoning ritual. This doesn't entirely go to plan. Along the way they have to deal with Fondue's unresolved childhood issues and confused sexuality (Harmon basically making a one-man argument in favour of characterisation in roleplaying), Bone Weevil's need for respect and Biaro's tendency to hulk out in a barbarian rage. There's some excellent running jokes but it's the guest actors that really make the show, each one bringing a different sensibility and style to the story which mixes things up nicely.

The big trick in the bag is that each episode of HarmonQuest is partly animated, with the live-action shots showing the actors and players discussing what they want to do and animated segments showing the result of their plans. The animation is colourful, well-characterised and quite funny. This is HarmonQuest's ace in the hole which lifts it from being simply entertaining to occasionally bordering on genius.

It's all very, very funny, although some episodes are funnier than others: the first, fifth and last ones are the stand-outs but even the weakest installment still unleashes regular laughs. Interestingly, the actors who have serious Dungeons and Dragons fantasy roleplaying experience seem to be the least amusing, as they take it all a bit too seriously, whilst those who have never played seem to do the best as they don't worry about the rules, just having a fun time.

I'd be interested to see that audiences with no fantasy roleplaying background at all make of it, but the show pulls back on anything to do with the rules in favour of the story and laughs so it should be pretty accessible for everyone.

Season 1 of HarmonQuest (****½) is excellent, being clever, funny and featuring a surprisingly well-executed story. I recommend it very much.

You can see Episode 1 on YouTube (embedded above) but the remaining nine episodes are only available (right now) on the Seeso streaming service in the United States. I imagine there will be some kind of international release (Netflix? Amazon?) for those wanting to watch the show in other parts of the world.

Note: the fantasy roleplaying game that is being used is the excellent Pathfinder from Paizo Publishing and, as Harmon rather worriedly points out several times, absolutely not Dungeons and Dragons in any way, shape or form, and certainly not any that suggests anything even vaguely copyright-infringing.