Anjali Bhimani holds down a lot of jobs as many creative people do. She is an actress, producer, publisher and philanthropist. I spoke with Bhimani during a rare quiet moment for her at Gary Con last month.
“The opportunity arose to work with D&D Beyond,” said Bhimani, “to write an adventure that was anything I really wanted it to be. I wanted to highlight some of the abilities in the 2024 rules. What I did was go back to what I loved about this as a child and what has changed and developed now.”
Bhimani is also a very familiar face on the actual play scene. She’s appeared on Critical Role, raised money for charity via The Puppy Roll and hosted a game at LEGO Headquarters that launched their massive Dungeons and Dragons set. Now she’s taking a step into the world of game design and adventure writing with The Malady of Minarrh.
“I am dipping my toes into a brand new world of adventure writing and publishing,” said Bhimani. “I started Road to Ithaka Press, which is the fiction wing of my publishing company, after I published I Am Fun Sized. I wanted to lean into two things. One, actual storytelling as opposed to non-fiction. Two, I really wanted to get into epic storytelling because that’s where my heart was from childhood. I’ve been playing D&D since I was 8 so that’s part of it as well.”
The adventure is designed for two to three sessions for fifth level characters. It starts with an investigation of a mysterious illness that’s spreading through the titular town. Players have to figure out the cause of it and eliminate it, but it’s not as simple as finding the bad guy and putting them to the sword.
“It’s dark and mysterious,” said Bhimani. “There’s room for tons of roleplay but also some very dangerous encounters. There’s secrets, codes, riddles and all sorts of fun stuff. All these big sweeping themes.Working with Wizards was great. I’m excited to get it up on D&D Beyond because it’s my saving grace when I’m playing these games.”
The horror tinged adventure works well for campaigns set in Ravenloft and other spooky worlds. Bhimani leaned into these aspects on the basis of feedback from people she sent drafts to and her editor on the project, Hannah Rose.
“There’s a fine dusting of horror in there,” said Bhimani. “I think it’s because a lot of the things I’ve played in the last few years, like Candela [Obscura]
, were a little more on the dark side.”
Bhimani’s first time in the Dungeon Master chair was her LEGO experience on camera. With that fresh on her mind, she wanted her adventure to encourage long time players to try out running a game. She wrote the adventure with advice for new DMs.
“I love trying things for the first time,” said Bhimani, “because not only is it exciting, but the more things you do for the first time and literally just don’t die, the more you train yourself to be daring. You train yourself to do more things even if you don’t know what you’re doing and realize ‘I can figure this out’.”
