‍The Amazing Race 37 concluded this past week, naming Carson McCalley and Jack Dodge as the winners. That might not seem like an announcement you’d see on a tabletop RPG website, but it turns out Carson and Jack are our people. Yes, this duo are Dungeons & Dragons players on top of being Amazing Racers! They even created a well-known DnD show! 

Carson McCalley and Jack Dodge created Please Don’t Kill Us, an interactive DnD livestream where the premise is that the audience decides their fate. Viewers are invited to vote in polls to determine what comes next, hence the title asking them nicely to not drop rocks so everybody dies. The PDKU cast has tackled Strixhaven, Eberron, and Spelljammer and also non-DnD games like Call of Cthulhu.

PDKU keeps the laughs rolling as they deftly deal with whatever dangers the audience throws at them. Carson and Jack tend to join the cast as players, giving the DM chair to a rotating set of storytellers. As if that wasn’t enough randomness to throw into the mix, PDKU often challenges themselves with wild themed one-shots like Hunger Games battle royale DnD, speedrun campaigns, and playing DnD blindfolded. They even had other Amazing Race contestants on to play Amazing Race DnD. 

Outside of PDKU, they run a comedy YouTube channel called Dweeb Wars with Carson & Jack. They answer burning pop culture questions such as “Who is the hottest D&D monster?” and “How much money is Avatar’s cabbage man owed in damages?” This channel is also where you can find their recaps of each Amazing Race episode, leading up Carson & Jack’s reaction to their big win. 

Speaking of the Amazing Race 37 finale, the duo reveal in this interview how they had a surprising lead on the other teams. “They edited it to be really close. I think we had at least an hour on them,” Jack said. Carson recalled noticing their lead growing after the hoverboard competition transitioned into boating around the island. 

The show calls the duo a pair of gamers from Brooklyn. While that is true, and their YouTube channels show this, they also have other talents. Carson has acted on Broadway and won an episode of Nickelodeon’s Brainsurge in 2009. Jack speaks in the above interview about wanting to prove that people can be as powerful as their heroic DnD characters. By overcoming the challenges of The Amazing Race, he did just that. 

‍Sergio Sólorzano is the best Dungeon Master in the USA (according to a Wizards of the Coast competition, anyway). He loves minis and terrain but also goes all-in on improv!