I’m a nerd. I’m a thespian. I practice weird voices. It was inevitable that I fall in love with the world’s greatest roll playing game: D&D or Dungeons and Dragons. It’s my favorite hobby, and honestly the easiest way to stay in touch with numerous friend groups across the country. Like many, I was introduced during the first campaign of Critical Role (now, the Legend of Vox Machina show on Amazon) and have since used the expert storytelling device as a way to escape the pressures of graduate school, startup life, and the chaotic existence that is being a millennial on a dying planet.
Injecting Science Communication:
The longer I played, the more I wanted to combine my loves of D&D and science communication. D&D has a natural game mechanic around an Herbalism Kit, which is incredibly underused and rather boring. I thought – Hey I’m a plant scientist, can I jazz this up by adding some real botany to the game? Turns out I could, and Medica Plantarum was created! This is a completely free guide that gives players scientific information on 100 plants from various biomes, and how they could be combined (or have been combined in real life) to create healing salves, love potions, poisons, increase cognitive function, etc. I published this on DM’s Guild for free and to date it’s been downloaded over 5,000 times!
To be honest, I never thought anyone would care about this guide, let alone have so many downloads. In a very real way, this guide more than any scientific publication or talk is my most viewed piece of scientific content. I’m humbled that so many have enjoyed it, and will continue to push the injection of science communication into new places.
Kickstarter Chaos!
Never underestimate the power of a fad. After publishing Medica Plantarum, Anna Urbanek of Double Proficiency (Check out their page, she and Jakub are amazing creators) and I agreed for me to be her science editor for her upcoming kickstarter project – Herblist’s Primer, to be published by Exalted Funeral. Though, at the time, we honestly weren’t sure if we’d get to the specific stretch goal of $20K… we were wrong. Herblist’s Primer had a similar premise to my Medica Plantarum, but was much, much, much more detailed complete with full page illustrations, lifecycle drawings, and detailed botanical information on 100 plants.
I’ve never been a part of a Kickstarter before, let along one this successful. It was awesome. The project raised $814,806 across 18,725 backers. … Let that sink in for a second. We hit our initial goal of $10,000 in literally 15 minutes of the launch, we unlocked “Science Editing” another twenty minutes after that. We landed on the Kickstarter “Projects we love” page. While all credit goes to Anna and the Exalted Funeral team, I will never match this in eyeballs on something I’ve helped write or edit. Herblist’s Primer may be the coolest thing I’ve ever worked on.
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