Ben Starr and Hollie Bennett have sat down with NME to discuss Natural Six, an upcoming Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) series featuring a number of famous faces and voices in gaming.
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While Starr is best known for his performance as Final Fantasy 16 protagonist Clive Rosfield, Bennett has worked on the likes of PlayStation Access and Cyberpunk 2077‘s Night City Wire.
The pair are joined by Doug Cockle, the voice of Geralt Of Rivia in The Witcher, along with veteran games industry personality Aoife Wilson and Alex Jordan, who plays Mr. Hands in Cyberpunk 2077. Finally, actor Harry McEntire (Xenoblade Chronicles 3, The Last Kingdom) will serve as dungeon master for the group’s campaign as they explore the land of Reliquiae.
Speaking to NME, Starr says the group originally planned to play an “entirely casual” D&D campaign, but after realising they shared an “undeniable” chemistry, they wanted to do something bigger.
“Five bottles of rosé later and things do tend to spiral,” joked Bennett. Now, the group is running a Kickstarter to fund everything from setting up a studio and hiring equipment, to editing fees and production costs.
“This is such a huge risk because a lot of us haven’t done this kind of thing before, but that’s what’s going to make the whole thing exciting,” said Starr. “Hollie and I haven’t really experienced Dungeons & Dragons before.”
While both are new to the tabletop game, they both took different approaches to taking their first step. Bennett, who usually plays “independent redhead females who just swing swords around” in role-playing games, wanted to stick with what she knows.
“I wanted a character that I felt wouldn’t run away with me, that I could learn what it’s like to express yourself,” she explained. “I’m not an actor like some of these people, so this idea of having a character that I feel can embody and express was really important to me. I went relatively basic in the D&D world, with a human female fighter, but I worked with Harry and we developed a rich and beautiful backstory for my character.”
Starr went in another direction, asking “What’s the most complicated character I can create?”
“I’m always intrigued by the idea of characters battling nature versus nurture,” he explained. “I thought let’s do that, but make him a wizard. My character has washed up on the shores of this great lake and doesn’t know who he is. He’s constantly battling with his own identity, he has this kind of confidence and hubris that he can do all of these things, but he doesn’t even know if he can.”
Looking ahead, Natural Six’s Kickstarter campaign has raised just over £32,000 of the £50,000 it’s aiming to raise by November 15. As the group prepares to launch its Session Zero on Friday (October 27), Bennett and Starr are excited to kick things off.
“Joining a D&D group was very much out of my comfort zone, which sounds like a contradiction for someone who was a YouTuber for six years and has done all kinds of crazy things,” shared Bennett. “I wanted to run away from committing to this so many times, even in the last few months I was like ‘Oh maybe I can still back out’. I’m really glad that I haven’t.”
“I’ve never been energised to do things like this before,” adds Starr. “And even if things come up, and I think this is hard and [will be] a long old journey, I’m energised to do it because I feel like it could be something truly great.”
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