Dungeons and Dragons TTRPG campaigns are by no means a rare occurrence on Twitch. The genre has quite a home in the Twitch community, with lots of different D&D campaigns occurring on various Twitch channels. No Dungeons and Dragons campaign, however, has been like the upcoming campaign titled Death2Divinity. Jude, known in online spaces as MermaidRoyal, is a full-time Twitch streamer and one of the driving forces behind Death2Divinity, the first all-fat, all-queer Dungeons and Dragons broadcast campaign. Creating this experience alongside Jude is Katie Mae, an experienced D&D Game Master (GM) who has been involved in projects like Dungeons, Dice, and Everything Nice.
Death2Divinity started as an idea pitched via Twitter, with Jude tweeting at Katie Mae about how they wanted her to GM an all-fat, all-queerD&D table. From there, the two began talking and setting the Death2Divinity train in motion. To show how small the world truly is, Katie Mae and Jude actually went to the same college but didn’t know each other until planning the Death2Divinity campaign. According to Jude, Death2Divinity wouldn’t be happening at this point if Katie Mae wasn’t able to GM it. Luckily, the premiere of Death2Divinity is only a few days away, with both participants and viewers getting increasingly excited for what the campaign will hold.
What Is Death2Divinity?
The world Katie Mae has created for this campaign is expansive, and though they don’t care if the audience knows, Katie Mae really doesn’t want their players to know what they’re in for just yet. Viewers will watch players embark on a journey from the floating sky city of Kyrthys and touch down on Earth—a place they’ve never known having lived their whole lives in the sky. Katie Mae has created a magic system made up of two distinct parts: Essences and Determination, with the latter being inspired by Undertale. Essences are “the truth of being able to really know something,” while Determination “is how Determined you are to use the Arcane, which is magic, to change the Essence of things around you.”
“Where our players will descend from their hometown in the sky and go down to the Wildes, the overgrown twisted version of the Fae Wild and there they will pray for assistance from Divinity itself, which is our re-doing of the deity system for D&D 5e and it's inspired by modern arcana, modern tarot. Eventually along the way, they might even decide that Divinity has to die, we'll find out. We'll see if they can succeed or not." —Katie Mae
Katie Mae’s players will also have to grapple with concepts pertaining to legacies and how they affect different things. Katie Mae kept quiet about the role Divinity plays in Death2Divinity, so both viewers and players will get to experience that together. As a Game Master, Katie Mae will also be implementing two “house rules'' that will give players the opportunity to impact the story and world around them. First is the “I Know A Guy'' rule, in which players are able to solve certain issues by saying they know a guy and how that person can help solve the problem. However, it’s up to Katie Mae’s determination whether the explanation is acceptable or not. The second rule is Katie Mae’s personal take on the hero points system, which will allow the heroes to “control the story through their sheer heroic actions for a few moments.”
“It's going to be messy and emotional and loud and things that a lot of feminine presenting people are often not allowed to be publicly. And we welcome that and we want that and we want that messiness, that chaos, that vulnerability and the intrinsic value of being emotional and what that means." —Jude
Who Is Participating in Death2Divinity?
Death2Divinity will be streamed from Jude’s Twitch channel, so anyone wanting to watch it will need to visit MermaidRoyal on Twitch. Katie Mae (okkatiemae) will be the GM, with Jude, Samantha (TheVerbalThing), Keda (kedapalooza), Lyrica (LookItsLyrica), and Molly (Bearzerky) as Death2Divinity’s players and potential “God Slayers.” Katie Mae’s D&D history started in grade six when she played with her father, but Jude started participating in TTRPGs in January 2021. According to Jude, Lyrica and Keda are the newest Dungeons and Dragons players, having some experience in D&D but not quite a full campaign.
“... I love new players, but I love new players who haven't seen Lord of the Rings even more. Especially since I feel a lot of femme-adjacent people aren't invited to imagine these grand adventures a lot of the time and they aren't given the freedom and autonomy that Dungeons and Dragons provides a lot of the time. So when new people are starting, you'll see them asking for permission to make choices about their character, and they get that freedom and autonomy when realizing that Dungeons and Dragons and tabletop roleplaying games as a whole are a place for you to reclaim your wants and needs and your dreams. I love that moment for new players." —Katie Mae
How to Support Death2Divinity
One of the best ways to support the upcoming Death2Divinity campaign is by watching its fifteen-episode run on Jude’s Twitch channel, MermaidRoyal. Death2Divinity also has a Twitter page, a merchandise store, and a Patreon for people to support. The Patreon will house things like the Mysteries Behind Divinity talk-back podcast, which will occur after every episode, and other behind-the-scenes items that patrons will have early access to.
The Patreon is also interesting because all patrons will get access to all items offered—there are tiers, but nothing is behind a paywall per tier. Jude said they’d like to create a YouTube channel to house the VODs as well, but that will depend on how much energy they have going forward.
Supporting Death2Divinity means supporting a group of all fat, all queer, all femme people creating space for themselves in the D&D world. Dungeons and Dragons TTRPGs are great places to make friends and have fun together in fantasy lands, but the space hasn’t been inclusive for queer, fat voices for too long. Death2Divinity is a step toward changing that norm and isn’t something to be missed.
Death2Divinity premieres on July 16 at 8 PM EST on the MermaidRoyal Twitch channel.