Acquisitions, Incorporated
This week I spent several hours getting caught up on the adventures of the Acquisitions, Inc. characters. Long ago if you had asked me if I would enjoy listening to and/or watching other people play tabletop RPGs, I would have thought the answer would be no. But when the DM and the players aim to entertain, it can be a really fun experience. Thanks to the podcast revolution, YouTube, and other streaming services we now have "celebrity" roleplayers and that's awesome.
The Acquisitions, Inc. team started during D&D 4E and transitioned into 5E. Surprisingly, they only play the characters for public entertainment and thus they only have a few adventures a year; thus the characters, even after a decade, are still not epic level.
This page links to info about the entire series of adventures, with them in order from 2008 to now:
http://www.acq-inc.com/portfolio
I also found that someone on YouTube made a playlist with all of the full sessions:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rXYCmL0roM&list=PLKq1kPlDnoWrcNW1OjubVOHNRnpDQnmUh
With Chris Perkins from Wizards of the Coast as the DM, this group really stands out as not only entertaining, but inspiration for any roleplaying group. Perkins often plays with the improv sense of trying to never say no to the players and he even fudges the official rules (even though he helped to write them, which is interesting); he also uses the D&D Next playtest rules for critical hits (instead of the official newer rules) even in the recent 5E adventures - but I'm nitpicking and it's really fun to watch. In my opinion the players meta-game too much talking strategy and telling each other what to do with their actions, but they are having fun and that's what matters. Anyone who wants to know how to play D&D could easily watch these videos and figure out many of the concepts of the game.
2008-2009
The original voice-only podcast contained "Season 1" (8 episodes) with the [D&D 4E] characters Omin Dran (half-elf war cleric), Jim Darkmagic (human wizard - played by someone who was brand new to playing D&D), and Binwin Bronzebottom (the dwarf fighter/barbarian). Celebrity Will Wheaton joined them in "Seaons 2-3" (8 episodes each, thus 16 total) as the elf Aofel.
2010
Jerry, who plays Omin DM'd a side series of Dark Sun adventures (that featured different characters entirely and thus is avoidable if someone just wants the Acquisitions, Inc. story). The year 2010 also gave us the first convention live play adventure with DM Chris Perkins and the Acquisitions, Inc. group (Omin, Jim, Binwin, and Aofel) at PAX Prime.
2011-2012
The group continued their new live convention play tradition at PAX Prime in 2011 and 2012, giving us the final Will Wheaton appearances for Acquisitions, Inc. D&D 5E team leader Mike Mearls participated in a 4-part podcast series helping the players convert their characters to 5th edition. This podcast is not necessary to listen to for people who just want to follow the story of the Acquisitions, Inc. characters since it's not story-based.
2013-2014
DM Chris Perkins led the group (Omin, Jim, Binwin, and Viari the human rogue) through an 8-episode podcast adventure "Ark of the Mad Archmage," leading up to a live convention play session at PAX Prime 2013. Viari is played by the bestselling fantasy author Patrick Rothfuss. When Rothfuss had a scheduling conflict in 2014, Morgan Webb joined as the elf ranger Morgaen for PAX East and PAX Prime live play sessions.
2015
Perkins led Omin, Jim, Binwin, and Viari through live convention sessions at the 2015 PAX East and PAX Prime events. The PAX Prime 2015 adventure gave the group the chance to fight the insane Drizzt Do'Urden, whom they rescued from the underdark (without the expressed permission of R.A. Salvatore - which Rothfuss seemed somewhat concerned about); as a result of this adventure, Drizzt was considered a friend/ally of the group in the future sessions.
2016
The PAX East 2016 event brought something really special because Perkins allowed the players a chance to DM if they wanted; both Rothfuss and Mike (who plays Jim) took the DM's seat. Their adventures were released as modules on the new Wizards of the Coast DMs Guild website - though the official publication doesn't mention Acquisitions, Inc: "How Not to Host a Murder" and "ISTAR Facilities." This year also brought a new YouTube series with 12 episodes (some of which were only about 30 minutes) that featured a dwarf vault heist adventure. The culmination of that series led to a conclusion as a live convention session at PAX West 2016 (with the group assaulting a cloud castle).
2017
In January the Acquisitions, Inc. group released a "Holiday Special" (filmed like the 2016 YouTube series) that used some of the material from Storm King's Thunder (with the village of Nightstone being where Viari grew up). Off-screen, Binwin resigned from the group after that session (going off into a spin-off called Binwin's Minions). Morgaen returned for live play at the PAX South 2017 convention. I just watched that event on YouTube last night.
Apparently just this month they released material for an Acquisitions, Inc. "Team C" group (which I still need to watch). On March 24 the the PAX East 2017 live play session featured Omin, Jim, Morgaen, and K'thriss Drow'b (a drow warlock). K'thriss is a part of the "Team C" split off group, with Jerry (who plays Omin) as the DM.
Updated character descriptions are posted here: http://www.acq-inc.com/our-company/staff/
Inspirations
Over time I mixed in small references to the existence of Acquisitions, Inc. for my own multiverse version of the Forgotten Realms. The characters became a background element for my campaign, but they were also great NPCs to add in for fun. More recently, I decided to use their connection to Drizzt as a story element. I also enjoyed running the Cloud Giant's Bargain adventure with my players actually vying for an intern job at the Neverwinter franchise of Acquisitions, Inc. I also decided to create an NPC group called Loot Company, inspired by the official characters.
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