Preview: Dungeon Masters - The Players Handbook | Episode 1

August 19, 2024·37 min·3 clips

The Dungeon Master rolls dice to create William Deere, a Texas private investigator with legendary charisma but dangerously low wisdom.

The episode begins with a Dungeon Master framing device that introduces the listener as a player and William Deere as the player character. His stats are rolled using D&D dice: high charisma and intelligence but very low wisdom, establishing a character who is capable but lacking in self-awareness. Deere returns to his Fort Worth home after solving a kidnapping case and learns that his son Bill Jr. wants him to attend a chess tournament. His wife Betts presses him to make a real promise to be there. Deere answers a case call instead, watching as both his son and wife leave in disappointment. He slips his son's dropped chess pawn into his pocket, which the Dungeon Master registers as an inventory item. The case brings Deere to East Lansing, Michigan, where he meets the Egbert family at a diner. Their son James Dallas Egbert III was a child genius — reading at three, finishing high school at twelve, attending Michigan State on scholarship at thirteen. He built his own computer game and had no apparent enemies. The parents rule out kidnapping since there were no ransom demands, and they resist the suggestion of suicide. Deere takes the case and holds a press conference at which he explains his 'Deer Method': fully inhabiting the psychology and physical manner of the person he is seeking. A journalist named Thelma James from Disruptor Magazine challenges his credentials and a lawyer's claim that he is more style than substance. Deere deflects her and uses the press conference to get information about Dallas out to the public. Investigating the dorm, Deere interviews a student on the same hall who describes Dallas as isolated and unusually young. In the room — noted for being unnaturally neat — Deere finds Star Trek and Joy Division posters, a blacklight poster with a hidden message reading 'Tiamat must die,' a ceiling tile stash containing pills, and an Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Players Handbook. Inside the book is a note with burned edges, written in reverse and decoded in a mirror, requesting cremation if his body is found. The Dungeon Master closes the episode by framing the missing Dallas as a Dungeon Master himself, leaving the detective at the start of a game whose rules he does not yet understand.

As heard by us

A stylized audio drama that frames a missing-boy case as a tabletop campaign in August 1979 Dallas.

Q-Code's Dungeon Masters opens with William Charles Deer, a world-famous private investigator, pulled into a missing-boy case in August 1979 Dallas, and it treats tabletop rules as part of the frame.

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Why you'd press play

When a private eye gets rolled into a dungeon-mastered case, you know the mystery will get strange.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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