During the D&D Celebration, we had the pleasure to sit down and have a chat with Zac Naoum from “I Speak Giant” and this is how it went down.

1. How did I Speak Giant come about?
   A. Really it came down to wanting to spend more time with friends. Recording it and putting it on the internet meant we’d be (a little more) regular about it. It had the unfortunate downside of revealing to our listeners that we are incorrigible dumbasses.
2. When were you first introduced to D&D?
   A. It is my most shameful secret that I’m not an OG D&D fan, I’m one of those whippersnappers who caught the wave of Fifth Edition. While I always loved fantasy more than anything from a young age, I didn’t get truly into D&D until a few years ago, stumbling into Harmonquest and devouring it whole.
3. How long have you been involved with the D&D scene?
   A. My three or so years seems humbling in comparison to some DMs out there sitting on three decades.
4. How has D&D impacted your life?
   A. For me, D&D is a great way to express a kind of passionate hodge podge of hobbies. I was a bookish nerd, but also a theatre kid. I loved books, writing, video games and performing. D&D allowed me to jam all those things into one monstrous experience I call my campaign.
5. What positives are there in D&D that you think make it such a great game?
   A. I think a lot of people don’t express themselves creatively because they don’t see a point. It’s easy to think, ‘well, who’ll see this anyway.” D&D can be a place to express your talents – you write, draw character art, design monsters or maps and make yourself and your friends experience better. It turns ‘esoteric artistic expression’ into ‘good times with pals’.
6. What difficulties are there going from home games to streaming?
   A. While there’s that split second of delay between talking, that slight gap in human interaction, it does make one huge problem of playing much easier – scheduling. Anyone who’s played themselves knows that the most difficult part of playing is sometimes just getting a handful of human beings to be in the same place at the same time. With online it’s much easier to just sit at your computer and open up discord.
7. Do you prefer using the premade campaigns or do you prefer running your own campaigns?
   A. I’ve always homebrewed my own campaigns, my style is somewhere between Die Hard and Discworld, with a liberal amount stolen influenced by my favourite games, films and books. Which is a highly reputable practice among Dungeon Masters, as far as I know.
8. What special guest would you love to have on the show?
   A. Dwayne The Rock Johnson would take the D&D world by storm if he ever sat a table. Dice would be all but useless within his gentle but powerful charismatic aura.
9. How has it been partnering with Wizards?
   A. When we first worked with Wizards last year a friend of mine commented, “it’s like if my Friday night pickup basketball game got drafted by the NBA.” So yeah, it feels like that.
10. What is one of the best moments you’ve had in D&D?
    A. So when we started I Speak Giant we obviously talked a lot about our characters, who would be what, and how we’d play off each other. We were fools. In only the 6th episode, our Wild Magic Sorcerer, brimming with potential and a lengthy backstory, had a wild magic surge that caused him to nuke himself with a Fireball, killing him outright. Wonderful.

And there we have it. Again, a huge thanks to Zac at “I Speak Giant” for his time.