Meet the Mages: Neal Zupancic
Get to know the people running the Marathon
Neal Zupancic is one of the Dungeon Masters who will take part in running Dungeon of the Mad Mage during the Paladin’s Archives 600 hour livestream event. The Paladin’s Archives news team interviewed Neal to get to know him a bit better:
PA: How long have you been playing/DMing D&D?
Neal: since the late 20th century…
PA: How did you get involved with D&D? What do you like about the game?
Neal: I started playing D&D in high school with 2nd edition AD&D. My friends got me involved in the game and I loved it right away. I was already a fan of JRPGs like Final Fantasy IV and Chrono Trigger, and Magic: The Gathering, and Tolkien, so D&D was sort of a natural direction for my interests to develop in. I love the roleplaying and social aspects of RPGs but theorycrafting and developing interesting and creative uses for the rules are probably my favorite aspect of the game.
PA: What is your favorite character class to play?
Neal: That's a super hard question because I like almost all of the 5e classes a lot.
Traditionally I've always enjoyed clerics, but in 5e my favorite class to play these days is probably the Warlock. It's incredibly versatile especially if you can take short rests frequently, and I love the mechanics of having a solid blasting cantrip (or weapons if you're a Hexblade) but then being able to supplement with one or two clutch spells per combat that really determine the shape of the encounter. I'm playing a Fathomless Chain warlock in a campaign right now and depending on the encounter I can choose to cast Hex or Darkness at the top of the combat, and that really massively impacts the way the rest of the combat plays out. I also really liked the Psychic Warrior in 3rd Edition, and there's a bit of a similar vibe to the two classes.
I also want to give a shout out to 5e druids, another favorite class and one bursting with versatility.
PA: What is your favorite adventure/module/setting?
Neal: I'd have to say Tales from the Yawning Portal. First of all there's a special place in my heart for Tomb of Horrors, which goes back to the time I played it in high school, rolled a one on a poison save, and died of an asp bite. I also really, really like The Sunless Citadel. I've been running it in campaigns for beginners for a while now and I have to say I think it's 5e's best beginner module. My spicy hot take is that it's a better introduction and better module than Lost Mine of Phandelver.
PA: What got you interested in Marathon of the Mad Mage?
Neal: I saw the Reddit post and instantly knew I wanted to be a part of the longest D&D stream in history. I've been interested in getting into streaming D&D for some time and apparently I don't believe in starting small.
PA: What are you working on for MotMM?
Neal: I'm a co-leader of the administrative team for MotMM, so I'm doing a little bit of work on a lot of different things. In terms of the game itself, I'll be one of the Dungeon Masters, or “Mad Mages” as we’re calling ourselves. I was also responsible for finding and installing a nice set of maps, which I did courtesy of the excellent map artist Jesper Cyren.
I am the creator and lead writer of the newsletter (in fact I’m interviewing myself right now!) and work a bit on advertising and recruiting. Closer to the event I'll be helping to organize and lead training workshops for the technology package we will be using and practice sessions to make sure everything goes as smoothly as possible once we get under way.
PA: What's something interesting about you?
Neal: Aside from DMing I also enjoy hosting quiz night at my local pub. I try to sneak in as many Star Trek questions as I can get away with.
Neal Zupancic writes about D&D on substack as Nine-Sided Dice and runs D&D games professionally as NineSides on StartPlaying. He goes by panoptical #7607 on Discord and NineSidedDice on twitch.