055: Bringing TTRPGs & dice with Indrani of Desis & Dragons

Courtney: 2:50

Today we are chatting with Indrani, the founder of Nonagon Dice, and the co-founder of Desis Dragons. Indrani, I am so excited to have you here today. How are you?

Indrani: 3:02

hi, Courtney. I am really happy to be here and I’m doing pretty good. It’s it’s nine in the morning, which is earlier than usual for me, like I told you earlier, but I’m doing this, so it’s a good morning. this is great. I’m so glad that you decided to have me here. How are you doing?

Courtney: 3:18

I definitely appreciate the early start for you. I know that mornings are never fun, but it’s, it’s super fun because we have a 12 and a half hour long difference.

Indrani: 3:30

Yes, we do. And that led to a little bit of a hiccup yesterday, won’t happen again.

Courtney: 3:35

we are all good. So to start us off, would you please tell us a little bit about yourself, where you’re from and how you got into gaming?

Indrani: 3:46

Yes. I’ll start with a little bit about myself. My name is Indrani, like Courtney just mentioned, and I can’t do introductions about myself without saying my name, which is a weird thing, but I’m a handmade dice maker and I’m a TTRPG streamer. And I’m the co-founder of Desis Dragons. Desis Dragons is India’s sort of largest TTRPG community. But it’s a place for people to come in, play games with each other, meet other like-minded people and nerds, I suppose. And a Nonagon Dice is where I make pretty handmade dice. And I stream around the internet. That’s what I do. I’m from Mumbai, India, and my day job is in marketing. I do social media stuff and digital marketing stuff for a bunch of different places, but that’s me. That’s, that’s who I am. I, I suppose. It’s a fascinating question. Like, you know, tell me what about somebody? Where do I begin? I’ve got nothing interesting, interesting to say about myself, but yeah,

Courtney: 4:47

I am kind of the same where I’m like, well, okay, this person may have just said my name, but I’m Courtney and uh,

Indrani: 4:54

it just feels incomplete without reintroducing yourself. I don’t know why that is, but it happens all the time.

Courtney: 5:01

nah, I totally get it. So how did you get into gaming?

Indrani: 5:05

I was a very lonely kid who lived in the middle of nowhere on the outskirts of Mumbai, who was into a lot of nerd stuff, but didn’t have other people to share that with. So of course, as any sane person, does, who has unrestricted access to the internet, even though they shouldn’t? I looked up virtual like worlds on, on Google. And I came across a couple and I signed up for one and that had a Harry Potter role playing community. It was this text-based sort of world where you would create your own characters based on the Harry Potter world and interact with other people. And I spent like a really long, an embarrassingly long time. Which is to say like almost 10 years of my life at that place. And that’s, that was my introduction to role-playing. And somewhere between that time I got into playing video games, like, you know, I was playing RPGs and that was sort of my introduction to role-playing and nerd culture and gaming in general. We had a couple of people there who wanted to try D&D and stuff, but we never really got around to doing it. And then a friend of mine who came down from South Africa who had been playing there for a long time, was like, Hey, do you folks want to play? And we were like, yeah, that sounds right up our alley. Let’s do it. And that’s basically how we got started. It was a very simple story of like someone who knows it was like, do you want to give it a shot? And I’d always been into role-playing. It was always just this thing that I’d done. So. So transition from, from internet role playing, which had sort of outgrown by that point, I was like, okay, really need to let this go. And so I took the best, most fun parts from that experience. And I was like, oh, I can just do that through tabletop role-playing games. Great. Perfect. Done and dusted. That’s basically how we ended up here. Yeah.

Courtney: 7:08

That’s awesome. What was your first game?

Indrani: 7:11

I’m sorry, but it was Dungeons and Dragons 5E.

Courtney: 7:15

Oh, you don’t have to apologize.

Indrani: 7:18

I think with their sort of recent wave of just, you know, indie games exploring, and it’s so good that they are, I’ve started exploring so many other in the tabletop role-playing games that I kind of just like, man, I wish I’d known about all these before. It’s fascinating to me because it, it’s obviously the normal sort of entry point, the gateway into tabletop role-playing games for a lot of people. But what I’ve noticed is that in, in the Indian TTRPG community, where we’re seeing a lot of first-time tabletop role playing players because the community is fostered by people who are into indie games, a lot of people, their first exposure to tabletop role-playing games is indie stuff. So like, there are a lot of people I know who play like Wanderhome or campaigns of Masks or Monster Hearts. And that’s what their main focus is as opposed to D&D 5E And it makes me really happy, but that was not my experience. Mine was like, I played daily for like two or three years before I was like, oh, let me try this stuff out. I’m not mad about it, but yeah,

Courtney: 8:25

Yeah, I totally understand that. It’s been really cool and interesting the last few years, how much, not only tabletop in general has exploded, but how much the indie scene has really started to come out and be a lot more prevalent. And I mean, I know that those games are always going to have to fight against the big guys of the field, like D&D and Pathfinder, but it’s just been really cool. Like even in the last year, I want to say, I think I backed like eight to 10 different TTRPGS on Kickstarter.

Indrani: 8:59

that’s great.

Courtney: 9:00

it’s just, it’s so cool that I know I’ll make my shelf is getting so expanded. It’s so pretty.

Indrani: 9:06

I love that. I would love to see a photo of that.

Courtney: 9:08

Yes, I can definitely send that over.

Indrani: 9:12

Well, what TTRPGs have you backed?

Courtney: 9:14

Huh. Okay. So I mean, definitely Wanderhome and then Yazeba’s for the latest Possum Creek Game. I’ve literally had like five episodes where I’ve interviewed Possum Creek people. Like, I just, I love them. I want to be their best friend. It’s fine. Yeah, so definitely those. And then Motherlands RPG. I just backed Emerald Templars by De’Angelo Murillo.

Indrani: 9:36

Hey, my friends on that.

Courtney: 9:37

Oh, that’s awesome.

Indrani: 9:39

Yeah.

Courtney: 9:40

Let’s see. Oh Kalymba, I just backed that, but that’s this year? What did I back last year? There was so much. I don’t know. It’s a lot. I could definitely send you a picture of what’s arrived.

Indrani: 9:50

Great. And I, and I love those sort of just vast variety of genres and everything you just mentioned, which is my favorite part. Like there’s so much to explore and I’m glad that folks are finally doing it.

Courtney: 10:01

Yeah,

Indrani: 10:01

It makes me really happy.

Courtney: 10:04

it is. It’s so cool. I love how much is getting published. I love that people are being more accepting of other games, so it’s, it’s a good time to be in this industry.

Indrani: 10:15

Absolutely.

Courtney: 10:16

I would love to know at what point it went from, oh, let’s try out D&D that your friend has suggested, and you started playing that. And then, you know, now you fast forward to this point and you’ve got a dice making business, and you’re part of this amazing community. So please tell me the story.

Indrani: 10:37

Okay. I’ll start with a dice making one and then I’ll move onto Desis Dragons, but with dice making, I’m going to cut back to like again, nine or 10 year old Indrani. And I always had this fascination, with people who collected things. Like, you know, the eccentric person who has a collection of seashells or coins or stamps, I’ve always wanted to like collect something. And I didn’t know what it was. I never found the thing that I was like, I want multiple versions of this until I came across dice. My friend gifted me that first set of days and I was like, oh, these are really pretty. And they were just like standard mass manufactured dice, which are great. I have so many of them. I saw that and I was like, I really want more, but India, because tabletop role-playing games, haven’t sort of exploded here the way they have in the states or any Western country. The choice of designs, I suppose, that was available to me was fairly limited. So I was like stuck with like opaque colors of dice or like glitter and transparent dice. And I was like, yeah, these are nice, but have you looked at Instagram? And I was like, what if I just make them myself? How hard could it possibly be? And it turns out it’s pretty hard, but but I’m sort of like headstrong in a sense. And I’m like, I’m going to do it. And then I just committed to it and you know, struggled through it for the first couple of months, but figured out a way of making dice on my own. And the weird thing is now that I’ve started doing it, I don’t make as many sets for myself as I was hoping to when I started. But that I’m a collector now of dice and that’s how the dice making thing got started. The Desis and Dragons side of things that was more of a group effort between me Shubham Mehta and Chirag Asnani. Shubham is the person who writing on Emerald Templars. And the one who introduced me to D&D. We have been playing together in the same sort of circle for awhile. And you have to understand that the D&D community was so small that literally everybody who played TTRPGs knew each other. So if you’ve ever played games with someone and you’re like, oh, I was playing with this person, they would probably be like, oh yeah, Hey, I know that guy. And that’s kind of how tiny the community was. And we were like, there should be more people playing this, right? Like, this is, this is fun and more people need to know about it. And that sort of what the core of the Desis Dragons was; that’s where we began. We were like, why don’t we play games of D&D and other TTRPGs on the internet. And maybe people will see it and maybe they’ll want to play, and maybe they’ll get together with their friends to do it. And then as we were doing that, we were like, okay, this isn’t enough. We need to create a space for people to find other people to play with. Because the initiative of like seeing something, enjoying it, and then finding five other people to go do it with, that’s a lot of expectation on someone. And we wanted to make that process a little bit easier. So we set up a discord server and that blew up like in, in its first year, we, we ended up with like 700 people on there and that’s the largest TTRPG space in India. So That’s where the server came in, which was basically a way for us to connect people together and create a safe space for anybody who was interested in this hobby. And those are the two things that have sort of taken over my life for the last couple of years.

Courtney: 14:20

When did, each of these start?

Indrani: 14:23

So Desis Dragons started last year. It’s been a little over a year. I think we started in March, 2021. And that’s been its own thing, but Nonagon Dice has a bit more of a complicated history because I think I started Nonagon Dice in 2020, late January, 2020. But I was, I am. I correct myself. I am struggling with Mental health issues. Like I have clinical depression and anxiety, and even though I’d started then, I had this massive sort of period of time. I think it was like a whole year almost where I just didn’t commit to it. I would make it like maybe once or twice a month or even less than that. it would just, all the equipment would just sit in my house, taking up a lot of space. But I think I started Nonagon Dice in earnest in I think January 2021. Yeah. So I think it’s been around a year since I’ve been doing it actively and around two and a half years since I first got into it.

Courtney: 15:31

That’s a lot all at once.

Indrani: 15:33

it is, it is. I have this habit of delving into things, headfirst, and it, sometimes I’ll, I’ll, I’ll come up swimming and I’ll be fine. But sometimes I just am in over my head and it’s a habit that I’ve been trying to break. Like I’ve been trying to sort of like dip my toes and get into things in moderation. It worked out with these things. And I’m really glad that I did, you know. There are things that I’ll try and I’ll get overzealous about, oh, this is going to be my new thing that I’m going to get into. And then it doesn’t work out and I feel bad about it. But with Nonagon Dice and Desis Dragons, I think because of how passionate I am about creating safe community spaces, which also weirdly came from that Harry Potter role playing place that I ran for a couple of years after I joined– just the need to create a good community space sort of fuels this desire to keep doing it. And it feels very different than all my other personal endeavors because of that. So I’m very grateful that I got to do it, that I keep getting to do it.

Courtney: 16:44

Yeah, definitely. So I want to spend some time, cause I know we’ve been going back and forth between both of these endeavors. So I think I want to spend a little bit of time on Desis Dragons and just asking you some questions around that and then we’ll switch gears at some point. So with Desis Dragons, it’s been going on for a little over a year. And so I know that you mentioned that you’ve got the discord server and that grew pretty big, like with in this first year, and that that’s been a really good community source, but I would just love to dive into all the other things that y’all have been doing. So I know you’ve got the actual play. I think you’ve been starting to interview some people, but just, yeah, for our listeners, if you can give us a bit more detail around all of the different initiatives that y’all have been taking on over this last year.

Indrani: 17:34

Absolutely. Yeah. so we have the actual play stream. It’s a weekly stream that we do. We used to do everything on YouTube, but we’ve sort of transitioned over to Twitch, but the AP is a 5E Eberron based campaign. It’s called a Broken 12. I’m a player in that. And my friends Shabaam and Alika play alongside me and Chriag who’s our DM and our co-founder runs the show. And that’s great, but it’s what people who already love and enjoy D&D come in for, I think we have like a dedicated group of people who watch and occasionally we’ll have new people come in and that makes us really happy. But the other side of things where we wanted to explore, for tabletop role players do with their time, and the people creating these things for us that sort of led us to start interviewing people. And we started the series back when we started called Cast Friendship, and we interview a bunch of different, amazing creators for that series. And we started with folks like Satine Phoenix, Anjali Bhimani. Recently we had Jay Dragon on the show. We also had a Momatoes and Hannah Rose. So we’ve got a bunch of like incredible creators. Who’ve been willing to come speak with us and take questions from our community about the work that they do talk about their journeys. And it’s been a really incredible experience to be able to do that. And it also seems to give our community an insight into what goes into making the stuff that we love so much, which is always a nice perspective to have. It always, I think. Makes us feel grateful for the games that we get to play, knowing where they come from. 

So that’s Cast Friendship, and we also are sort of like dipping our toes into merch. Alika Guppta, who plays on our actual play is an incredible artist and was willing to like create some really great graphics and illustrations that combined being desi or being Indian specifically with D&D or tabletop roleplaying games, generally. And that intersection of, of merchandise or representation through physical goods does not yet exist. At least not that we could find anywhere on the internet. So it seemed like the obvious extension of what we were doing. And we created a couple of different designs. They’re beautiful. And for, you know, figuring out how to get them to people right now. And hopefully soon folks should have it and we’re not like big there’s nobody funding or bankrolling us. So we put up a poll on our, so we were like, Hey, would anybody be interested in buying these? And, and, you know, we got a couple of responses, so we were like, yeah, sure. Let’s, let’s do it. We’ll see how it goes. So that’s another thing we’re getting up to. And the most exciting thing that’s happening recently with Desis & Dragons is that one of our goals is to bridge the gap between the Indian TTRPG community and the international TTRPG community. And one of the best things that’s happened because of this endeavor is we have introduced the Big Bad Con people of color scholarship to the Indian communities creators. So I’m on the leadership team for Big Bad Con, which is a great convention that happens in Oakland, California. 

Yesterday the online version of it ended, but basically it’s a scholarship for a couple of people who are creators, writers, designers to be flown out to the actual convention and be a part of their POC programming, which allows them to sort of interface with industry leaders and, and, you know, network to find work. And it’s a very structured thing. It’s not just going to a room and talk to people sort of thing. But that, and it has a bunch of other great things for POC to network and sort of find their space in the community in terms of like actual working professionals. So that’s something we’re getting up to recently, and there’s obviously the Discord, server which we already covered a little bit, but that space is important because it’s an extremely safe space for queer people and people from marginalized communities in India. And that’s really important to us because we’re all queer neurodivergent and we wanted to make sure that we created a space that allows everybody to feel safe in their skin because that’s not something you find often in India because of how, you know, the current political power is and general cultural biases. So that’s the Discord space.

Courtney: 22:24

That’s a lot of different things that y’all are doing and a lot of really important work.

Indrani: 22:29

I would hope so. I mean, it does feel important and in the sense that I feel like it’s doing something big for this really fledgling community, I like to call it. Like, we’re just we’re babies where, you know, it’s not nearly as big as other places. So hopefully what we do sort of sets the tone of what the community looks like as it grows. Yeah, which is why I think it does feel important in that regard for sure. And thank you for saying that.

Courtney: 23:01

I believe it a hundred percent. And I think that, that what you said about trying to set the tone for how the community is going to grow and as tabletop becomes even more popular in India, like I think that it’s really important. And it’s really cool that to have a group that cares this much and is so focused on trying to make a positive experience for everybody that does find you guys. I wanna ask a bit more about the scholarship and how you became involved with being one of the, I think you said leaders of that.

Indrani: 23:39

Yeah. So the scholarship is an initiative, of Big Bad Con. They’ve been doing this for a couple of years now. And one of my mentors Ajit George. He works closely with Big Bad Con for developing the POC programming at the convention. Ajit, for people who don’t know is the cool lead of the upcoming Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel book by Wizards of the Coast. He also came up with the whole thing, which is awesome, but he was, is very interested in uplifting voices of people, of color from different countries and reached out to us about, you know, potentially facilitating this for him because they don’t have the resources to vet people and to find the right creators to take on board. So they sort of were like, would you be able to handle this process for us? And we were more than happy to. The actual programming isn’t, isn’t something that we came up with. It’s just, we’re finding people who are, you know, who fit Big Bad Cons community standards who have created work that is, is inspiring worthy of like, you know, well, I don’t want to say that I judge anybody’s work or whether it’s being worthy or not, but people who have a definite interest in, in working in TTRPGs, as opposed to just enjoying it as a hobby, cause those are two very different things. 

So just helping them find the people who are interested in what payback on is open to providing is, is what we’ve been getting up to. It’s been a really fun experience. The applications haven’t closed yet. So we haven’t gotten into the sort of meat of things so far, but I’m looking forward to how it plays out. I think this is going to be big for the community because a lot of people of color who I know and see around on Twitter, talk about how the POC programming at Big Bad Con was their break into the international sort of industry and, and how a lot of their work contacts came from that convention. So it feels like a really important thing for people to be able to experience. So yeah, I, I hope it works out, you know, with, with the pandemic. Honestly I’m not holding my breath about anything being set in stone these days. I’m like, we’ll see if it happens when I set foot in the door. Do you know what I mean? Like I’ll put until the very last moment, I’m like, something’s going to go wrong. I think that’s just a, become a cynic the last couple of years, but yeah, that’s what we’re getting up to.

Courtney: 26:14

That is really cool. And I also completely understand. It feels like we can’t take anything for granted. And it, I mean, I even, I’m supposed to see some friends in a couple of weeks where it’s just going to be a couple of hour drive and I’m like, but is it really going to happen? We’ll see.

Indrani: 26:32

Right?! It’s oh Yeah. We could get into the whole pandemic and not stop talking about that, but yeah, it sucks, but it is how it is. Yeah.

Courtney: 26:44

Indeed.

Indrani: 26:46

I can hear us laughing, but there’s like a tear rolling down both our cheeks.

Courtney: 26:50

isn’t that normal? Don’t you always cry when you laugh?

Indrani: 26:55

Oh, my God. Where’s therapy?

Courtney: 26:57

It’s it’s been a great couple of years. It’s fine.

Indrani: 27:01

This is fine. Now I actually need a handkerchief, hold on. I’m joking. I’m joking.

Courtney: 27:08

Okay. So yes, Big Bad Con sounds really awesome. And it’s really cool that you were able to get involved with that. And it’s funny. I had seen, I think, retweets from your account or the Desis account about it happening. And it was just like, oh, what is this? This looks really cool for the virtual one that just happened.

Indrani: 27:28

Oh yeah.

Courtney: 27:29

I appreciate too, that it just, like, there were so many panels and that it was across like such a broad spectrum of time zones. Cause I feel like it’s so common for even virtual events to be taking place. Like, you know, either, you know, on one side of the world or the other, but not spreading like a whole kind of 24 hour period.

Indrani: 27:51

Absolutely. And I think one of the genuine positives of being shoved into our homes and being forced to use the internet to socialize is that we’ve sort of realized how much more there is out there. And the fact that accommodating for people who aren’t in your geographical location can lead to such diverse and such interesting conversations and panels. And my hope really. with not just Big Bad Con, but every convention is to adapt this hybrid model where you have an online version where people who aren’t in your country, who aren’t in a Western country, or who can’t afford to be flying out to a Western country can still participate and still, you know, add to the conversation. I think that’s so important and I, which is why I really loved big, bad online. We got to do a panel: me and Shubbam and a couple of the friends from Panic Not, which is another D&D publishing company here in India. So it was, it was not a chance that would have been afforded to us had it been in like Oakland? Do you know what I mean? We would not have been able to go out there and do this panel for the most part. So It’s great. And you’re right. Like the fact that it was spread out over 24 hours and it allowed for so many different people to come in and talk about interesting perspectives that, that, that we wouldn’t have heard of otherwise. And I think there’s so much value in that.

Courtney: 29:22

Yeah, absolutely. I just, I really hope that virtual conventions stay. Cause I think that we’ve really been able to benefit a lot from them. Just like you said.

Indrani: 29:32

Yeah. I see all these big conventions, like PAX and Gen Con and this and that. And I’m like, damn, I really want to go. But I can’t and I mean, I’m happy for all the people having fun there, but you know, give us a little slice of the pie, do something on the internet. And hopefully, you know, this is a widely adapted and normalized part of conventions going ahead.

Courtney: 29:59

okay. But now also I’m imagining that in a few years time, there’s going to be like a Desis Dragons convention.

Indrani: 30:06

Oh, my God. It, you know what, I didn’t mention this earlier when you asked what we’re getting up to. Cause this has been sort of like a slow inertia ridden thing that we’re trying to get off the floor, but it is something we’re working on. It is a it requires a lot more effort than we currently have the spoons for, for various reasons. But it is in the works as they say. And hopefully sometime this year, if I’m being ambitious, it is something we can do. Yeah.

Courtney: 30:38

Okay.

Indrani: 30:39

Yeah.

Courtney: 30:41

Virtually or in person?

Indrani: 30:42

I’ll send you an invite. Oh. Probably virtually. Again, India is also a really vast country and a lot of our community members are like from different states and to expect them to come through where we’re based out of, which is Mumbai is… again, I feel like that would be hypocritical of us for us to be like, oh, international convention should do a hybrid model or, or do online stuff and then go and be like, okay, this is just for people in Mumbai or who can come to Mumbai seems a bit yeah, it’d probably be online or a hybrid version, but definitely online. Yeah.

Courtney: 31:17

yes. If it was going to happen as soon as this year, I would definitely think so, but I know it was just, you’re talking about like, oh, the PAXes, and the GenCons, it’s like, well maybe, maybe there could be one that all of us are like, crap. We want to go over to India and go to this convention.

Indrani: 31:31

wouldn’t that be great? Hopefully, man, I hope, I hope that we’re able to do something as interesting. We have some ideas. We’ll see how it goes.

Courtney: 31:41

Amazing.