Photo via Fight Dice - Facebook
Fight Dice
Fight Dice
“Roll for Initiative!” It’s one of the common phrases exclaimed by players of fantasy tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), which debuted 50 years ago. The game continues to entertain and fascinate gamers young and old, bonding friends and family in quests that foster teamwork, creativity and fun. D&D fandom has even expanded well-beyond the game into new creative outlets.
That includes Milwaukee rock band Fight Dice, a group of longtime friends, D&D players and veteran Milwaukee musicians who create songs based on elements of the game. In September the group released its debut album Total Party Kill, a reference to an event in D&D where everyone in a group perishes.
Like all journeys, it starts with an origin. About four years ago singer Jay Gilkay (Evel), bassist Todd Bell (Braid, Hey Mercedes), drummer Dan Didier (The Promise Ring, Maritime), guitarists Brett Schwandt (Evel, Ceilishrine) and Eric Arsnow (Tigernite, Devils Teeth) began playing D&D virtually during the pandemic to pass the time.
Often meeting up to three times a week—something that they feel is miraculous given the difficult nature of getting people together even in person to play—the friends played D&D using Google Meetup. Each player signed in from their home and Gilkay displayed the game board on his screen.
Creating Stories
Creating their own stories provided hours of pure joy. Oftentimes, Gilkay and Schwandt took on the role of Dungeon Masters, who organize gameplay and create worlds for players to journey in a campaign. They used campaigns either from a manual or something “home brewed” that they created. Each player took satisfaction in taking the characters that they made and using their powers or abilities to complete certain tasks. Players combated mythical creatures and sought to survive the game’s many twists and turns.
For Bell, who played D&D since middle school but had trouble in recent years finding interested friends, the group has been very fulfilling. Playing D&D was one of the things that kept his calendar rolling.
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“It was one of those things that just kept us socially connected and engaged,” says Bell. “We create our own rules and make it as fun as we can because D&D has a lot of flexibility depending on who you’re playing with and where you want to go with it. We are doing it just to have fun, make jokes, create some laughs, kill time and be social.”
Writing Songs
‘Total Party Kill' by Fight Dice
‘Total Party Kill' by Fight Dice
During the waning days of the pandemic, Gilkay and Schwandt got together to write songs based on D&D and some of the campaigns they had done. It went so well that they brought in the others with the idea of creating a fun side project band. In 2021 they played their first show as Fight Dice at Cactus Club.
“We decided we liked playing music together,” says Gilkay. “We started taking it a little bit more serious and people were becoming interested, so we started playing live.”
The band’s name refers to the dice that are used to determine actions on the board, as well as how they refer to D&D. “We would say, ‘let’s get together and do Fight Dice,’ since Dungeons & Dragons is a dice-based role-playing game,” says Bell.
About half of the album features narrative songs detailing real life scenarios and situations they’ve experienced, while the other is more of a manual detailing different parts of the game such as certain spells (“Magic Pact”) and monsters (“Owlbear”).
“We’re a little bit all over the place but keep it in the realm of Dungeons and Dragons and making sure that the content is relatable to people who play the game, but also accessible to people who don’t play the game and will just vibe and enjoy the music,” says Gilkay.
Bright, Harsh and Heavy
Sonically, the 26-minute album offers a heavy blast of rock and punk influences, drawing on styles such as mid to late-‘90s rock or stoner rock and post hardcore. It’s not doom and gloom but rather its bright underside buffers the harsher and heavier elements.
Gilkay feels their enjoyment hanging out and creating music help them create something “magical.”
“Just that vibe of us being together, I think that’s the thing that really makes it all worthwhile,” he says. “I think it helps us all when we think about the mood or the feeling that we had playing and how we can convey that through the actual song. I would like to think that even if you’re not into D&D and don’t know about it, you’d still be able to listen to the music and have fun with it.”
The band is especially excited that the album is released on vinyl. They celebrated the release with a show on Friday, Oct. 25 at X-Ray Arcade.
The band hopes to add more shows in the future around the area and are open to finding new ways to share their music and love of D&D. That might include playing random pop-up shows or even a comic or gaming convention.
“It’s always exciting to think so many years ago, 30 some years ago when we were just all kids going to basement shows and punk rock shows, here we are doing a band at this point and having fun together,” says Gilkay. “It’s kind of a wild thing.”
