Even though we have seen plenty of gaming and media come out of Lucca Comics & Games, tabletop games like Dungeons & Dragons are the heart of the festival. This was apparent when we spoke to Joe Manganiello four years ago at our first Lucca, and again when we spoke to him in the festival’s 60th year. D&D is one of Manganiello’s passions, and after working with Wizards of the Coast and Dungeons & Dragons since 2018, he has made a real impact on the game and the tabletop world.
During a roundtable discussion at Lucca Comics & Games, we wanted to chat about the new push into D&D Icons, and Manganiello had a lot to say, from what they are working on now to hopes and dreams, and even other passions within the D&D universe. He described D&D Icons in the most concise way he could before going into details, “Icons is going to the past and refreshing that so we can meet up in the present, but it’s also taking the game into the future with the other settings.”
Dragonlance was a major topic for the actor and gamer; he let us know where it was headed, including a new world book, “A big, comprehensive, gorgeous, chunky world book with everywhere you can go, but also pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with roleplaying. There are elements of Dragonlance that are essential to its DNA that we’re looking to put at the forefront. Things you haven’t been able to do. Things that haven’t been a part of traditional gaming.”
He also let us know that there would be changes, but that they are being careful and trying to bring some forgotten things to the forefront of Dragonlance: “And then also the restoration of canon to a certain degree because there’s a lot of bright lights out there. We’re not invalidating anything. We’re just putting the magnifying glass over certain places.”
Joe Manganiello is clearly passionate about Dragonlance and D&D as a whole, and watching him dissect things was fascinating. He gave examples of ideas that could be on the horizon for the future, including talking a bit about his work on the TV series:
“What I loved about developing Dragonlance as a TV series was that I had access to all the material from the beginning. I had access to pitch documents, all the old modules, the books. There’s hundreds of them. You can kind of retrofit a lot of it and also ask yourself questions like, if the waters receded from Tarsis, for example, what happened to all those sea creatures?
If we’re in a fantasy setting, and there’s an ocean full of dead sea creatures in these salt-flat deserts, maybe that’s just a giant field of undead that you have to go through to get to the city. That’s not in the books, but if you think about it and logic it out, why wouldn’t it be?
There’s so much gold left in the mines. They kind of put the signs up and said, ‘Here are all of these gold mines,’ and it was just waiting for me to go in and start pulling the gold out.”
There was also a lot of talk of other places he would love to see explored, and some that are in talks right now. Luke Gygax was mentioned: “When he won this lawsuit and got control of Gary Gygax’s unpublished Castle Greyhawk notes, he was going to publish them independently. But I said, ‘Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, let’s put them out in D&D.’ So we’re going to do that.”
The last thing he mentioned actively working on was Death Saves with Mike Mearls: “Mike Mearls and I are creating this post-apocalyptic world of Death Saves.” He went on to describe it for us: “Basically, it’s like the Blood War, and the demons defeat the devils, but they take over the world. So the Lady of Pain in Sigil opens her eyes and speaks for the first time and sends out this wave that kills all of the demons but collapses the Outer Planes.
So gods lie dead. And it’s almost like it would have been better if she wouldn’t have done that. But in doing that, you and your party also realize that there’s an opportunity because the demon lords have also been weakened. Each one of the box sets will be you and your group going into the world of the demon lord to try to kill them. You’re god-killers. You’re moving from place to place trying to find out where they are and hunt them down and kill them all.”
Manganiello drew comparisons of Death Saves to popular comic universes, “So it’s almost like a Marvel Ultimate, DC Nightmare type of universe where everything gets reshuffled, and you don’t know who’s who. You may have to team up with someone who’s a known Dungeons & Dragons supervillain because they have information that you need. You might be running a mission for one of them. So it’s just a way to reshuffle and play with the canon and give a whole new experience to the world.”
What seemed the most intriguing to me was how Joe Manganiello discussed working with Bob Salvatore, “Talking to Bob Salvatore about something, because he doesn’t get involved; he doesn’t get asked to be involved in the gaming aspect. He’s seen as an author, but he’s a great dungeon master. I’ve gone to his house and played, and Bob’s an incredible game designer. So I want to help him get that out.”
Salvatore is best known for his work on Drizzt Do’Urden, which originally sparked controversy, but Manganiello was passionate about his work. “I love Bob Salvatore’s world. I think there’s an audience that’s emotionally mature enough that we could create something really cool out of it. I think there’s a lot of noise. I think people get caught up on what race the drow are in our world, and I think that detracts from what Bob Salvatore wrote.”
Bob Salvatore didn’t write something that had to do with any sort of race on Earth, and I know that. I know the man. So I think getting through all of that noise, there’s an amazing story, and I think it is misunderstood by most people. I think what Drizzt represents for the kid in high school who feels like they don’t belong, it’s about that.”
Joe Manganiello then told us a lengthy story about someone he met while working on his D&D documentary who believed in Salvatore’s story as well and how it has shaped how he feels about Drizzt Do’Urden today. This was his direct story:
“In the D&D documentary, I spoke to a former gang member, a former African American gang member who went to prison and wound up in solitary confinement, which is nothing but a concrete room for an extended period of time. Someone slipped a copy of Homeland, Bob Salvatore’s first book, under the door. He read it, and he said to me,
‘I’m a Black man living in the United States who was indoctrinated into gang culture. I think everybody in my race is a certain way and viewed a certain way. But I read this book about this character who was born into a similar situation but breaks all of those conventions, meets friends, proves that he’s not like everybody else, and becomes a hero.’
He said it changed his mind forever. When he got out of solitary confinement, he said he was walking through the main area, and there were people around a table with maps. He walked by and looked, and this white supremacist-looking, swastika-tattooed gang member stood up and said, ‘You want to play?’ He thought it was a challenge [to fight] and said, ‘Yeah, maybe I do want to play. You want to play?’
And the guy said, ‘No, no, no. Sit down.’ He handed him a character sheet and said, ‘This is how you play.’ He said in that moment, his mind went somewhere else. He wasn’t in prison. He realized the power of gaming, the power of Dungeons & Dragons, that he could get out of prison. He didn’t have to be in there anymore. His mind didn’t have to be in jail. His body was, but his mind wasn’t. And that’s how he got out.
That first character he was handed to play was a barbarian. And he wrote, ‘I’m not a barbarian. I’m a cleric. I’m a healer. And I’m going to use my experience to heal people and heal my community.’”
Manganiello is a passionate gamer and really believes Salvatore’s world can do some good in the world:
“When you hear stories like that, and you see the way that the press wants to portray what Bob wrote, the importance of Drizzt, you realize that’s worth fighting for. There’s a sense of justice in me that wants that story to get out, and I want it to get out in the right way. I would love to bring Bob’s characters to life. And I feel like I’m somebody who understands the message behind it and how the message could reach people and change lives.”
Since starting with Wizards of the Coast in 2018, and even before that as a player, Manganiello has been well known for his love of Dungeons & Dragons. He brought the game to mainstream media, even popularizing a meme about fit men playing D&D today. He touched on how that has affected his career,
“I realize now how much of my creativity as an artist was sharpened or developed playing role-playing games. I mean, all of it. And it’s such a direct form of expression. As an actor, which I love being an actor in the right projects; One Piece is a great example.
The amount of work that I was given to shoulder and carry was amazing, and they allowed me to be an instrumental part of the storytelling. Oda allowed me to do things that I wanted to do and needed to do with the character in three dimensions, which is just amazing. It’s not always that way as an actor, and sometimes that can get frustrating.
He went on to talk about what it means to him to be able to be so deeply involved, “To be able to be allowed to go in and play with their canon and their pieces, not only restore my favourite properties from the past, from my childhood, that makes the kid in me happy, but also to use them…to be able to do that is just mind-boggling.”
And though the stereotype of the kind of people who play D&D is changing, even Manganiello has his own stories of being starstruck by people who play D&D, “I was at Disney World coming off of Thunder Mountain, and there was Trent Reznor, who was a god to me. We got to talking—Trent allowed me to use Closer in Magic Mike XXL as a dancer for my dance routine. So we talked about that, and then he just wanted to talk to me about how he was trying to get his kids to play Dungeons & Dragons during the pandemic.”
Because D&D is his passion, it isn’t lost on Manganiello how incredible this journey has been: “Whatever sort of fame or notoriety that I have, it really warms my heart in moments where one of the biggest rock stars and greatest poets and writers of my generation just wants to talk to me about D&D. That’s amazing.”
Wizards of the Coast and Dungeons & Dragons have some great things on the horizon for D&D Icons. Joe Manganiello’s excitement and passion about the project at Lucca Comics & Games drives home the importance of bringing some of these stories back to life for past players, but also new generations of gamers.
