Ever wonder what it would be like if you lived a world where role-playing adventures were real? Where people actually had job titles like Barbarian, Bard, Fighter, Wizard and Druid? Now imagine your adventuring party were made up of real people with serious issues. Where your wizard gets in trouble with a demon debt-collector because he defaulted on his magic school loans or your bard is a whiny rich-kid who cowers in fear during a battle. The creators of the webseries, Walking In Circles: An Epic Tale about Dragons N’ Stuff, have created a hilarious new series of adventures bringing to life just such a world.
The mockumentary series follows the misadventures of a newly-formed adventuring party led by the Barbarian Krag, played by the handsome Eric Radic and looking a bit like a grown-up Atreyu from The Neverending Story. Krag put together his party while drunk in a pub one night and discovers that his new comrades aren’t really great at what they do and he neglected to hire anyone who could guide them, hence their group motto, ‘walking in circles’.
This motley crew is made up of a surfer-dude Barbarian, a Ditsy blond Druid, a sarcastic and bitter Wizard, a spoiled and cowardly Bard, and the silent and homicidal Fighter. They’re all pretty bad at their jobs in one way or another, but this all makes for plenty of entertainment for the audience. During the first battle, Garand, the whimsical rich-boy Bard (played by stand-out Jonah Priour) cowers in fear and plays his lute. When confronted after the fight by Krag and asked why he didn’t fight, Barand earnestly responds, “I was inspiring courage, helloooo”. This line made me die laughing as I am currently playing a Bard in my Pathfinder Campaign and I can totally sympathize. No one respects the Bard!
The dialogue is whip-smart, the cast is charming across the board, the costumes look fantastic and the creators and crew make excellent use of natural Southern California locales. I definitely look forward to seeing what improvements could be made with more funding for future seasons.
I spoke with the creators of Walking In Circles and got to get to know a little bit about the origins of the series and where they’re hoping the series will head in the future:
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Nerds in Babeland: I think I can already guess, but where did the idea for the series come from?
Walking In Circles: The idea came from years and years of playing Dungeons and Dragons. We always wanted to know what heroic adventurers would be like as real people and to take a look at something epic like slaying a dragon and break it down to where it was just a job. Like some people flip burgers, other people plunder ancient tombs and kill monsters.
NIB: Hah, I think I’d rather fight a dragon than work the drive through at McDonalds. How did you assemble the cast and who writes the show?
WIC: We used CAZT casting. They run a pretty cool service where we get to throw up auditions, actors submit for them, and then they tape the auditions so we can go back later and review everything. And it’s free! James Rodehaver is the writer for the show. He’s a life-long nerd and almost life-long aspiring writer. This is the first project that he’s ever done that got through the first draft stage.
NIB: How do you finance the show?
WIC: The production was primarily funded by Adam Rady, James Rodehaver and Adam Cier. The crew contributed a lot of funding too. For example, our costume and prop designer bought the supplies he used. We were also fortunate enough to have a lot of costumes donated to the project. After production was over we started a fund raising effort on indiegogo.com to get money for advertising, marketing and distribution. Our families and friends were extremely generous and we were able to raise just over $3,600. We’ve set-up a PayPal donation option on the website to help with funding for season 2.
NIB: Where would you like to see the series go next?
WIC: Our current goal is to have season one be successful enough that a second season is possible. We have a lot of story to tell, we just need the means to do it. We’re looking for backing through corporate sponsorship and viewer donations. We’d also like to be able to sell merchandise to support the series.
We’d really like to be able to get to a point where we can pay our crew and actors for their hard work. Everyone involved with this project put a vast amount of effort and love into it and they did it for free. In fact, many of them ended up supporting the project with their own money.
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Visit http://www.walkingincirclestheseries.com/index.html for episode streaming, character sheets, cast/crew bios and hilarious behind the scenes specials like “Krag Kam”. I hope you’ll give this little series a chance. Role-players and newbies alike should enjoy the charming and attractive cast, witty dialogue and the energy of everyone involved.
