Podcast / Hero Club

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Hero Club is an immersive Dungeons & Dragons actual play anthology series created and hosted by Nick Williams and George Primavera. Each self-contained story arc is called a season, and usually have wildly different genres. Beyond their podcast works, they have done live play campaigns on their Twitch channel. Besides George and Nick, regular cast performers have included associate producer Dylan McCollum, associate producer and series artist Marty Abbe-Schneider, series composer Matthew McCollum, and Jack Quaid. They also have had special guests, such as Matthew Mercer, Nolan North, Karen Fukuhara, Antony Starr, and P. J. Byrne.

Their podcast content consists of:

• It Never Sleeps: A Hank Blackstone Mystery: a Fantastic Noir Lovecraft Lite story released in March 2018. Set in 1946 in New York City, Hank Blackstone and Big Charlie "Chuck" LaPorta own a magic shop by day, and are P.I.s of the unexplainable by night. Hank might be a good shot and Chuck is a rock golem, but the case given to them by the Museum of Natural History throws them into a mystery beyond any they've faced.

• Adversary: a Weird West Action Horror story released in July 2018. Christian preacher Elias Craig, demon hunter Mary-Elizabeth "Ember" Craig, and gunslinging outlaw Jeremiah "The Gentleman" Finch are chosen by God Himself to band together, and kill Satan.

• Santa's Little Helpers: a Christmas themed Rescue Arc story released in December 2018. Set in 1960's America, an elite team of toys are sent on a mission by Santa himself. Alpha Team Tinsel- tin soldier Cuthbert Buchanan, marionette milkmaid Helga Attentater, toy robot S.W.A.P.R., and teddy bear Tiberius "Tubs" Huggins (TM)- have to find Timmy Calloway, nice list child who's vanished on Christmas Eve

• Here There Be Monsters: a Swashbuckler style pirate tale released in April 2019. It follows Captain Drake Muldoon and his daring crew. The world is one of anthropomorphic animals, similar to works like Redwall. Drake the otter, Bastien the elephant, Lilia the spider monkey, and Vivien the mouse steal treasure and stay one step ahead of the Empire of Emporia's navy, but stumble upon a cursed prize that puts them in the crosshairs of dark forces.

• The Rift Rats: A pulpy Sci-Fi tale released in August 2019. Its set in the future of 2219, after Earth becomes a member of the Galactic Coalition of Civilizations. Outlaws Reagan Cross and "C. B." Cheeseburgers (yes, that's his name) get captured and given a offer they can't refuse: serve decades for their crimes, or take on a GCC escort and head into a strange rift to save a soldier who vanished within: Reagan's sister.

• The Wild Hunt: a Supernatural Horror tale, released in October 2019. Set in 1930's Virginia, following Sheriff John B. Darrow's raid of Barlowe Reed's bootlegging operation. Things take a dark turn in the aftermath, and the pair of former friends have to band together for a chance to survive the supernatural threat.

• O Holy Knights: a Christmas themed Fantasy season released in December 2019. Young child Adelle Little must seek out the help of the Yuletide Knights to save the vanished citizens of her town before Christmas arrives.

• Paid Back In Spades: A Hank Blackstone Mystery: a Fantastic Noir/Cosmic Horror sequel season to It Never Sleeps, released in March 2020. Hank and Charlie are continuing to investigate the dark horrors in the shadows, but a past ally goes missing and the case brings back some old threats bent on revenge.

• Pom Pom Bloodbath 3: Killer Dismount: a B-movie styled Splatter Horror episode released in October 2020. Set in 1987 Ohio, the Bobcats cheer team's fall break goes wrong, as their venue brings them all into the territory of the Red Bend Slasher.

• The City of Mirrors: a globe-spanning Action-Adventure tale released in April 2021. Set in an alternate 1909, disgraced English explorer Sir Theobald Darringcroft assembles an international team, to embark on a quest to save his name and find the fabled City of Mirrors.

• Johnny Pineapples In: Trouble on Vacation Island: a Fantasy/Comedy episode released in December 2021. When Johnny Pineapples, satyr and famed resort owner hears his nemesis has risen from the dead, he has no choice but to send four of his employees to face him down and serve him a cease and desist.

• Brand's Bargain: a Swashbuckler style prequel season to Here There Be Monsters, released in March 2022. Infamous Emporian navy captain Wayland Brand saves some of the world's most dangerous criminals from their death sentences, to press-gang them into the most dangerous hunt of their lives.

• ClusterMuck: a violent Action Sci-Fi season set in the same universe of Rift Rats, released in August 2022. Inspired by the work of Quentin Tarantino, the planet of Aromatica is a grimy place of dark deeds, and a epic conflict begins once the solution to everyone's problems lands in one of its backwater swamps.

• Chains of Atlantis: an Action-Adventure sequel season to The City of Mirrors released in February 2024. Sir Darringcroft and his team have managed to find The Lost City of Atlantis, but they find something within that threatens to rip the team apart and doom them all.

• Members Only: a behind-the-scenes podcast that first released in 2021, and transitioned to their Patreon in 2024. The show creators talk about their work, interview cast members, and sometimes play a chaotic one-off adventure with their guests.

Their live-play Twitch campaigns are:

• The King of Tides: a Swashbuckler tale in the world of Here There Be Monsters and Brand's Bargain. Released in 2021, and concluded on Sept 16th, 2022

• PairOfSocksLost: a Fantasy tale based on fairy tales and the D and D 5th Edition adventure The Wild Beyond the Witchlight. Released in November 2022, and concluded on May 7th, 2024.

George Primavera, Nick Williams, and other Hero Club cast have also created The Re-Slayer's Take, a Critical Role collaboration released on May 20th, 2024. Set in their fantasy world of Exandria, it follows the tale of Heera Agneheart, Idrin Shadowstep, Farah Vallari, and Frog, as they attempt to become members of the legendary monster-slaying group The Slayer's Take. On the journey, they discover the group's past kills have been re-animating. and they resolve to put them down.

Hero Club's website, Youtube channel, and Twitch channel can be found here[1], here[2], and here [3]. Hero Club also collaborates with the D and D 5th Edition homebrew group Mage Hand Press, who can be found here [4]

Unmarked spoilers ahead!

Hero Club provides examples of:

• Aerith and Bob: O Holy Knights has Sir Oren the Peaceful, Sir Dane the Good, Lady Holly the Joyful, and Grumplinus the Harsh. It also has Lady Holly's steed Goosey, Sir Oren's animal companions Beth the moose and Dave the bear, and Grumplinus's greed troll minon, Kevin.

• All Part of the Show: In It Never Sleeps, after a squid creature crashes a Broadway's "Paradise is a Gin Fizz" and Hank and Chuck chase it off, Hank recruits Charlie to start dancing and play it off as a bizarre ending to the show. It goes okay, until everyone freaks out again when Charlie reminds them of their bleeding ears.

• Bayonet Ya: Cuthbert Buchanan wields one on his rifle to great effect, as appropriate for a toy soldier.

• Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: In Paid Back In Spades, an Illuminati agent spills that the lindberg baby works for them (pours a mean cup of coffee apparently), and that Babe Ruth is one of their assassins. The details don't get out, since they're an incredibly influential, wealthy, and ancient conspiracy who keeps to the shadows and keep the idea they're just a myth alive.

• Big Eater: Sir Oren from O Holy Knights, and Jade Pickett from The City of Mirrors and Chains of Atlantis. Sir Oren eats whole hams regularly, and was caught by a plate of meat under a box and a stick trap when we first meet him. Jade wolfs down all Theobald's food every time she gets a chance, and when she has a fairly small but expensive meal during an important meeting in Chains of Atlantis, she eats her food, Theo's, and another guest's portion!

• Bumbling Henchmen Duo: "Soapy Eyes" Jim and Tony "The Hero" from It Never Sleeps. They're henchmen of the Mafia don Lazy Al sent along with Hank and Big Charlie on a job, and they're very inept. Besides the weird mob nicknames, the pair have a huge argument over sports on the car ride over, throw up multiple times seeing mangled bodies left by a creature, and one only barely makes it out of a fight with a crowd of them. Hank even wonders why Lazy Al sent Abbot and Costello along!

• Cats Are Mean: Played straight by Deathwhisker, and averted by Applesauce from Santa's Little Helpers. Deathwhisker attacks Alpha Team Tinsel when they go into his yard, while Applesauce is pleasant, goofy, and helpful to Alpha Team Tinsel.

• Catchphrase:
  • Cuthbert Buchanan: "Buchanan!", shouted whenever he charges into battle or performs a daring deed, which is often.
  • Theobald Darringcroft: "This is, without a doubt, my favorite part", said whenever something exciting or adventurous happens. Planning an ambush, fighting off villains, solving mysteries, doing a rousing speech, etc.
    • The only time he subverts it is in the aftermath of the expedition in Chains of Atlantis, when he's badly hurt, cursed with horrible visions that won't let him sleep, and his team's broken up in large part because of his actions
  Theobald Darringcroft: [exhausted, staring up at a cloudy sky in his bed] The morning after a grand adventure. Dividing up the spoils, seeing the team off... This used to be my favorite part.
  • Jeremiah Finch: "As the tailor said to the naked man, suit your fucking self.", said whenever appropriate
  • Drake Muldoon: "What HO!", said during a swashbuckling maneuver like swinging onto a ship. Even Imitated by one Bastien's penguins at one point.

• Creepy Child: The Supervisor from Paid Back in Spades. She looks and sounds like a little girl, but she sits in a darkened bedroom with abandoned toys and stares into a powerful divining artifact called "The All Seeing-Eye" all day. She's also head of the Illuminati,controls their amoral meddling in world affairs, and is actually very old. It's implied she was once a normal girl with special powers that caught the Illuminati's eye (hah), and is the current host/reincarnation for the force leading the organization.

• Creepy Doll: Gross from Santa's Little Helpers. He's a sentient strange looking knit doll, and being given that name and left to collect dust have soured his outlook.

• Corrupt Church: The Church of Sol from Here There Be Monsters, Brand's Bargain, and The King of Tides. They worship the sun and seem to espouse good teachings, but they're in partnership with the nasty Emporian empire and have performed witch hunts against wizards and arcane magic. By the time of Here There Be Monsters, all magicians we see have gone into hiding or have become criminals.

• Expy: The Rift Rats, It Never Sleeps, and The City of Mirrors each feature one
  • The Rift Rats features Bravus Boss, a bold daring space explorer with a sentient animal companion in the vein of Captain Kirk and Flash Gordon. However, he's not from earth, and is sexist and creepy to both Reagan and Kora whenever they interact
  • It Never Sleeps features Doctor Rudolph Heisenberg, a Nazi and amoral chief medical officer under Hitler like Josef Mengele. Unlike Mengele, the Doctor was conducting experiments involving actual eldritch rituals, and he's the one who killed Hitler over disagreements and made it look like a suicide.
  • The City of Mirrors features Detective Caltabiano, an expy of Hercule Piorot. He's got the unusual accent, tough to pronounce name, and is an ace detective on a train who's there to solve a murder. Except none of this is true, he's actually the murderer and the thief. His cover's absurd to throw people off his scent.

• Faux Affably Evil: Several appear across various seasons, often leaders or high ranking villains.
  • Kit Rockerfeller and Jonathon "Uncle Jack" O'Connor from Paid Back in Spades qualify. Both are polite and friendly when we meet them, but are nasty individuals when they don't get what they want.
    • Kit is pleasant and respectful to most people, and mostly seems to be a upper-class twit. However, he's a member of the ruthless and nasty Illuminati, and supports their cause. He also has armed thugs he uses, and uses a deadly artifact called the Macrocian Box to kill people.
    • Uncle Jack is soft spoken, and looks and dresses like a fatherly middle-aged man, with a greying beard, sweater and flat cap. He's also the head of the O'Connor mob family, and personally shoots and breaks the knees of goons that have failed him.
  • Adversary has Dashel. He's unfailingly polite to everyone he meets and gives the impression of a bilbical pastor. However, he's actually a cult leader and servant of Lucifer, who's an expert at mentally breaking people and can personally summon a hellhound to attack his enemies. He also gets very angry and cruel whenever someone quotes the actual bible to him.

• Four-Temperament Ensemble: Alpha Team Tinsel's members correspond to each:
  • S.W.A.P.R. is Melancholic: a analytical literal robot who is also paranoid and stiff in body and with people
  • Tubs is Sanguine: Extremely friendly and warm to everyone, but naive and goes beyond scatterbrained to being pretty dim
  • Cuthbert Buchanan is Choleric: Bold and daring, but very willing to charge into any situation without much thought.
  • Helga Attentater is Phlematic: Very calm and serene, but has trouble reining in other team members like Cuthbert

• Friendly Sniper: Theobald Darringroft from The City of Mirrors and Chains of Atlantis. His weapon of choice is a long-range rifle and he likes to stay back in a fight. He's also a pleasant gentleman to everyone on and off the battlefield, and is often the the face of his adventuring team.

• Friend to All Children: Helga, Tubs, and S.W.A.P.R. all are searching to find a lost child, and are all made to love children due to being made as gifts by Santa's elves.

• Giant Enemy Crab: The Dread Crab from Brand's Bargain. It's essentially a Kaiju: massive, seems to be the source or made of the supernaturally bad dark water infecting the seas, and is so scary an infamously powerful navy captain has to recruit some of the most powerful magicians in the world to hunt it down and kill it.

• Good Old Fisticuffs: Bones Mahoney. He's lived a rough and tumble life before Theobald recruits him, and he punches and takes hits like a pro boxer.

• Gorn: Excluding the many examples in their horror material, George and his players often describe messy violence and the sound effects used can be visceral. Deathwhisker the housecat in Santa's Little Helpers gets its nose badly cut, Flintbeak from Brand's Bargain bleeds and electrocutes himself whenever he uses his powers, and Rift Rats has a gladiator fight that the heroes win by blasting holes in their opponents and ripping a hole in one's throat
  • ClusterMuck has more examples than many other seasons, with characters getting blown up, shot, and stabbed in great detail. Phil, a Valdivian mercenary, dies by getting messily eaten by the Snapdragon and its children, a huge dragon turtle combination. Another Valdivian named Glyph also uses its psychic powers to make Delilah McGurk see a moving, talking vision of her brother Dirk's corpse during a fight, and the results of his fatal fan-blade accident are not glossed over.

• Homage Derailment: The City of Mirrors contains one to Murder on the Orient Express. The protaganists journey on an impressive train called the Krug Roscoshi, a rich passenger is murdered, and a foreign detective with a funny accent named Detective Caltabiano appears to solve the crime. However, the actual culprit turns out to be very different than the original, and Theobald's team hunts them down and exposes them instead.

• House Rules: George and Nick have used material from Mage Hand Press on the show such as classes, races, magic items, and used their supplement books High Seas, Weird West and Dark Matter as inspiration for seasons. George also uses a severity table to figure out how badly a natural one "botch" roll turns out.

• It's Personal: In The Wild Hunt Barlow Reed chooses to go after the the Talbot gang for killing and turning his son Miles into a werewolf. Sherriff John B. goes along with it for the same reason, as well as the fact werewolf Miles killed his deputy Saul Tucker.

• Knows the Ropes: Helga dual wields her marionette strings like ropes and whips after she gets empowered with magical energy.

• Living Toys: Alpha Team Tinsel is Level 3: Toy Masquerade on The Sliding Scale of Living Toys. They all talk and are sentient, children and animals can hear them speak and see them move, and they have to pretend to not be alive when adults are around

• Magicians Are Wizards: In the world of It Never Sleeps and Paid Back in Spades, actual magic exists alongside stage magic, and notable figures like Hank Blackstone, June Reno, and Dante Laporte blend legitimate magic along with sleight of hand. June performs on stages in Las Vegas, and Dante owned a shop for stage magicians with actual artifacts in the back. He trained Hank and Big Charlie in both real and fake magic and left them his store, which Big Charlie and Hank use as their cover identity when they're not doing P.I. work.

• Musical Assassin: Marblemouth uses a violin amped up with dark powers when we see him in combat. It can control minds and bodies and send out powerful sonic or magical blasts when he swings his bow. He also leans into this, and uses musical puns during combat.

• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: The Rift Rats's King Thor's-beard-ravens-wolf. His name involves Norse myths and powerful mystical animals, and rules over all Plutonians. These aliens eat and might be made of plutonium, snort giant killer insects for fun, and routinely kill and enslave people they come across. He also captains a very big and powerful spaceship, and is an arch-enemy of the Flash Gordon-like hero, Bravus Boss

• Never Heard That One Before: Jake the blind bartender from It Never Sleeps always says "Didn't SEE you come in." whenever Charlie and Hank come to visit. They let it slide, begrudgingly.

• Our Demons are Different: Silas and Sidecar Soup. They are called demons from the underworld in It Never Sleeps, and are shown reassembling their bodies after being brutally "killed". They and their names also appear in other seasons of wildly different times and places like the Wild West, Montana circa 1910, in a space ship in 2219, and even as birds in Here There Be Monsters. They usually keep their personalities as two vaudeville performers trying to put on an improv performance, likely under the influence of drugs. Each time they appear, their last name is spelled differently, from Soup, Sciouxp, Sooulp, Zoop, to Swoop (with a silent W).

• Overly Long Name: It Never Sleeps and Paid Back In Spades: Count Jessica Michelangelo Aldus Vanderhorn.
  • The City of Mirrors and Chains of Atlantis: Sir Theobald Cedric Plimpton Darringcroft.

• Private Military Contractors: The City of Mirrors features a group of these as the mooks of a prominent villian. The specific company are Hessians, who were in real life the soldiers and military of what would later become germany, who were hired out to nations or groups to boost their particular duchy or principality.

• Public Domain Artifact: Several seasons feature these, The City of Mirrors most notably
  • Adversary mentions the Holy Grail, though it has been sacrificed to make something else by the time we hear about it
  • It Never Sleeps and Paid Back in Spades feature the Necronomicon as a powerful source of dark magic and lore
  • The City of Mirrors has King Tut's Burial Mask, part of the Rosetta Stone, some of the Terra Cotta Army, and the Pyramidion (pyramid cap) of Dashur’s Black Pyramid show up in a hoard of treasure. All have magical powers, which is notable since this setting has hardly any actual magic. The mask lets wearers see auras around magical artifacts, the Rosetta Stone lets wearers understand languages, the Terra Cotta soldiers behave like golems controlled by a user, and the Pyramidion behaves like a altar that grants the user the power of participants who smear their blood on it.

• Rat King: It Never Sleeps features one, who rules over the local junkyard and sewers beneath it. He has mental control over the rats, grants them intelligence and the ability to swarm as one, and can eat them alive to heal himself. He also looks like a rat like man in a tuxedo who eats garbage, and his powers and likely his appearance were given by a magical circlet he wears.

• Really 700 Years Old: Dierdre Dullahan and The Supervisor from Paid Back In Spades are both way older than they appear
  • Dierdre looks middle-aged, but is the last member of an Irish Mob family who's kept alive for over 200 years with a magical potion she takes. She masquerades as a forgotten ancestor of the Dullahan family in the modern day.
  • The Supervisor looks like a 10-year-old girl, but is at least 300 years old and is described by an agent as "Not a kid." She was apparently a somewhat normal girl once, but was also a 65 year old man once in her lifetime.

• Retired Outlaw: Adversary's Jeremiah The Gentleman Finch is one of these, his nickname being one he got during his outlaw days. When Ember and Elias Craig find him, he's living in the middle of nowhere and under a different name, and he's very concerned about anyone who knows about his past

• Retirony: Played for Laughs with the cabbie in It Never Sleeps. As he drives Hank, Chuck, and Professor Courtland to a potential crime scene, he announces they are his last fare after 25 years. He then says he wants to make up for lost time with his wife and 6 kids, and shows a family photo. He also mentions his first thing to do tomorrow is get his will notarized, as his family gets nothing if it isn't. He spends his time parked outside thinking aloud of ways to make the world better, like how to keep plastics out of the ocean and use wind power over coal. When the team chases the monster they find outside, it attacks the cabbie, and his last words before it rips out his eyes and hands are him failing to say his full name and social security number.

• Shock and Awe: S.W.A.P.R. gets lighting based magic after being empowered by magical energy, and Flintbeak wields lightning magic due to his experimintation.

• Shout-Out: Several crop up during the course of many of Hero Club's seasons
  • ClusterMuck draws from the work of Quentin Tarantino, and includes things like a goblin gang called "The Unkillable 8", and has violent mercenaries fighting over a mysterious box with something valuable within like Pulp Fiction.
  • It Never Sleeps and Paid Back In Spades borrow from Lovecraft's work. They feature the Necronomicon, which was uncovered from a whaling ship that might have been one related to the one in Call of Cthulhu. Also, dreams feature prominently like in Lovecraft's works about the Dreamlands, and a violin related to eldritch horrors appears like in The Music of Erich Zann.
    • Another shoutout appears in a gunfight ambush in a park, where a character says "It's like Birnham Wood in there.", like the moving trees in Macbeth
  • Johnny Pineapples In: Vacation Island has the old sailor Salty Glenn rattle off Abe Simpson's onion on a belt story, and the description of Johnny and Coconut Gary's original showdown is a remixed version The Devil Went Down to Georgia, sung to the same tune. Also, Johnny has a moment with a random child with a crutch just like Scrooge at the end of a A Christmas Carol.

• Snowlems: Version 3. Alpha Team Tinsel have to fight their way through a crowd of malicious animated snowmen blocking a cabin in Santa's Little Helpers.

• Some Call Me "Tim": Skillet from Adversary. His actual name is Erasmus Jessop Lindsey Stillman, but Skillet is easier for people to say and references his amazing cooking abilities.

• Sophisticated as Hell: Jeremiah "The Gentleman" Finch. He got his nickname because he enjoys using large words and long sentences, wearing fashionable clothes, and a good bourbon. He also swears often, especially when angry or insulting people he doesn't like.
  Jeremiah Finch: [Holding some unexpected guests to his home at gunpoint] Well, why don't y'all come inside, nice and copacetic-like with your hands held fast where I can gaze upon them so you may elucidate an old man over a drop of bourbon on the particulars of your visit, this auspicious fucking morn!

• The Gunslinger: Jeremiah "The Gentleman" Finch. He has both good aim with his rifle, and is a quickdraw artist with his pistols as well. He's also got a checkered past, being a former outlaw who decided to turn his back on that to fight for good.

• The Illuminati: They show up as a faction interested in Hank and Charlie in Paid Back in Spades. They're interested in controlling the world and powerful people and artifacts, and their grand plan includes orchestrating things like World War 2. Their leader uses an artifact called the All-Seeing Eye shaped like the Eye of Providence, and their agents uses special magical stickers to teleport and all go by Mr. Mister and Mrs. Missus.

• The Irish Mob: It Never Sleeps references the Irish mob in New York at the time, and Paid Back In Spades elevates the Irish Mob into a very important part of its plot

• The Mafia: It Never Sleeps and Paid Back In Spades have the Italian mob feature prominently in their plots, which suits the New York setting of the stories.

• The Stinger: Nearly every episode of Hero Club ends with a short scene. It's usually a blooper from the episode, like a flubbed line reading.

• Tome of Eldritch Lore: It Never Sleeps and Paid Back In Spades prominently feature the Necronomicon. It has all the infamous knowledge it has in other adaptations, along with containing such lovely spells as Death Coil, Disintegrate, and Steal Life. Anyone exposed to it is also gradually driven mad, or to do terrible deed and use its powers.

• Too Dumb to Live: The Deputy in Killer Dismount's introduction. When investigating an abandoned government medical facility, at night, by himself, he goes through a door that's clearly been barricaded. He also doesn't see "God Have Mercy On Our Souls" written in blood on a wall, and a bunch of strung up corpses literally dripping with maggots in a later room. While he lives longer than his sheriff, the Red Bend Slasher kills him fairly quickly.

• Vengeful Abandoned Toy: Gross is one of these, a toy from Timmy's grandmother who he names and left to collect dust in his closet. He's been warped into something awful by his hate, and he's determined to harm Alpha Team Tinsel and stop them from rescuing Timmy.

• White-and-Grey Morality: Santa's Little Helpers, and Oh Holy Knights. The protaganists in both are undeniably good, being decent-hearted children, toys that help out all children, or knights that embody positive virtues. The antagonists tend to not know better, or are decent and are just lashing out due to hurt or neglect.