Who Is Van Chapman And What Is Epic Level 6? Cloudward, Ho! Interview With Siobhan Thompson
Dimension 20 is heading out on another adventure, and this time they’re taking it to the skies. Cloudward, Ho tells the story of a group of adventurers reuniting to search for the mythical land of Zood. Van Chapman is the bosun on this adventure, making sure that everything is ship-shape. I got to catch up with Siobhan Thompson ahead of the premier to learn more about Chapman’s motives, what the inspiration was for Chapman’s very ‘milennial’ restaurant, and how D&D is getting a new twist for Cloudward, Ho!
Who Is Van Chapman?
To begin, I wanted to know what inspired this competent character and her retirement from the life of adventuring.
“Van Chapman is a retired ship bosun and now she is running a very greyscale, small plates-large plates, gastropub with her very tiny husband.” Thompson began.
Where we first meet Champan, though Thompson wanted to be clear, “she’s done with adventure, she doesn’t need to go back, she’s living a vey happy retirement.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=/P0B-JHNnH28
The cast of Cloudward, Ho! is filled with the other members of the Intrepid Heroes; Lou Wilson, Ally Beardsley, Brian ‘Murph’ Murphy, Emily Axford, and Zac Oyama not to miss Brennan Lee Mulligan, the DM.
For the player, I was also interested in learning what it was that Thompson found most important in a character introduction. What notes she always wanted to hit when coming into a new game.
She was able to describe it quite succinctly as “give a physical description, even though we have art, there’s something about the linguistic description that’s helpful. I always try to give a description of how they’re feeling in this moment.”
Getting The Band Back Together? I’m In
As the party is getting pulled back together over the course of episode one, in a mix of Oceans Eleven meets Atlantis: The Lost Empire style recruiting, we learn how each member is integral to the crew. Whether it’s Maxwell Gotch (played by Murph) as the wallet bankrolling the trip, Marya Junkova (played by Emily Axford) as the engineer, or Olethra MacLeod (played by Ally Beardsley) as the new member with a key piece of information to draw everyone together.
Knowing that each member of the Intrepid Heroes had an important role to play in the crew it was interesting to hear how each player and character fell into place.
“We all came in with a bunch of different ideas, for me the Bosun was so fun because it’s that you’re not the Captain, but you’re the one telling everyone what to do,” Thompson explained “and it was fun to come in with a character whose big defining trait is loyalty.”
“She’s a good soldier and in the real, true sense of the word, if there was an order that she recieved that she thought was stupid she would push back on it but she also knows that her job is to make things happen for other people”
I questioned Chapman’s drive saying “I know you’re playing a fighter, but it almost sounds like you have a Paladin oath.”
“Yes, that is very philosophically where she is. She is a pirate to her bones. She comes from this long line of adventurers and she’s very… she’s not even proud of it, it’s just so utterly defining of her”
The Rusty Nut Is Milennial Incarnate
A key part of Chapman where we pick up with her is in the description of the Rusty Nut, the gastropub that she runs with her husband. With “Milennial Grey” walls, and rustic lights all at head height there was a very clear idea in her mind when creating this setting.
“It was [based on a specific location], unfortunately there are so many of these places. I also have to give credit to my friend Bea Roberts who I asked ‘What are good pub names?’ and we just sent pub names back and forth and she came up with Rusty Nut”
“I feel like calling it Milennial Grey is so unfair because none of us painted it that color it’s just the houses we’ve ended up living in and none of us can afford to buy anything”
“Some are born Milennial, some achieve Milennialdome, and some have MIlennialship thrust upon them”
Thompson also added that with her own experience working in the restaurant industry she “also loves making fun of the way that the service industry works. It was a fun little side game for me”
Cloudward, Ho! Uses Old D&D Rule: Epic Level 6
As each character is introduced and we’re provided their stats I couldn’t help but notice that there’s a currently empty field labeled Epic Epiphanies. Thompson revealed that for this season of Dimension 20, the characters wouldn’t be leveling up, but would instead use a remixed version of Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition‘s Epic Level 6 ruling.
“Instead of leveling up you take a feat everytime that you would level up. It gives you a much more ‘adventure genre’ set of stats”
Thompson explained it by comparing Cloudward, Ho! to classic adventure titles like Indiana Jones. “Indiana Jones is very smart, and strong, and quick but if a giant Nazi is going to come and punch him he’ll die and he’s very aware of that and whatever his ‘in-universe’ health stats are”
This shift from leveling to Epic Level 6 allows for the adventure for Cloudward, Ho! to continue to develop mechanically without fear of the characters reaching the kinds of god-like powers that are seen in higher levels of D&D play.
Thompson also highlighted that on top of keeping the game tense this approach to leveling also really promoted players getting deep into the different feats available to characters.
The first episode of Cloudward, Ho! is available right now to watch on Dropout.
