On August 20, actor and author Anjali Bhimani will be the Game Master for a TTRPG stream called The Puppy Roll that will be raising money for Petco Love, a charity that supports shelters and reuniting animals with their humans. The cast of players is stacked, featuring the likes of Critical Role’s Mattew Mercer and Ashley Johnson and Resident Evil Village‘s Maggie Robertson. And the best part of all: All of the players are role-playing as their dogs.
“I will be DMing and my dog Charlie will make an appearance obviously as his Dungeons and Dragons character,” Bhimani told me. “We also have cast members Matthew Mercer, Aabria Iyengar, Ashley Johnson, Emily Swallow from The Mandalorian, [and] Maggie Robertson from Baldur’s Gate and Resident Evil. And as my co-host, we are very, very, very happy to be welcoming Jonathan Graziano, who is known in this beautiful crossover between Pet Talk and Dungeons and Dragons because he is the owner of the late Noodle the Pug and Noodle and the Bone’s No Bone’s Day was a big thing during the pandemic. He’s going to be coming out and co-hosting with me, and we’re going to have some surprise guests along the way as well.”
This is Bhimani’s second time in the Game Master seat, having made her debut this past April in Lego Dungeons & Dragons Game Night–a one-shot adventure featuring YouTuber and cosplayer Ginny Di, actor Luis Carazo, The Lego Group design manager Jordan Scott, and Lego Ideas design winner Lucas Bolt–advertising the new $360 Dungeons & Dragons: Red Dragon’s Tale Lego set.
“I’m just ridiculously excited and I hope that my lack of experience is made up for by my incredible enthusiasm because I couldn’t be more excited to be doing this with this particular group of people and this particular partnership with Petco Love, I think it’s going to be a blast, and then I’m going to crash for four days,” Bhimani said.
For her sophomore effort, Bhimani is once again using the D&D 5e system, though she added that the rules will be “5e-lite,” clarifying that the charity stream will not feature a lot of combat despite utilizing a combat-heavy TTRPG system. This isn’t going to be a story about dogs killing each other Watership Down style and casting Fireball at one another, but instead a tale about pups living their best lives in a The Secret Life of Pets-style narrative.
“Petco Love, one of their incredible initiatives is Petco Love Lost, which is their initiative to help reunite as many lost pets with their humans as physically possible,” Bhimani said. “And one of the cool things that they have is this facial recognition software so if you register your dog in their database or your cat or whatever, if you register your animal in their database and someone finds them, that facial recognition software can help them reunite with them. And so we are incorporating that into the adventure. So there may be some puppos that are having a little bit of trouble finding their way back to their people. Oh gosh, what can I tell you without spoiling it? Because I also don’t want to spoil it for the players, not just for the audience. Let’s just say these are going to be our dogs living their best lives, living their ren faire dreams.”
The Puppy Roll will livestream on Anjali Bhimani’s YouTube channel ( Sweeetanj) on August 20 at 6 PM PT / 9 PM ET and go until 10 PM PT / 1 AM ET. Following the livestream, the VOD will go up on Bhimani’s channel, allowing folks who missed it to watch it at a later time.
