It’s a recipe for sure-fire entertainment: a group of Kiwi comedians must use all their ingenuity to come up with hilarious solutions to unexpected challenges, all the while seeking the approval of the mercurial dictator of fun and judgement known as… the Taskmaster!
But wait! Why, if you just swap out “task” for “dungeon” you also get a pretty solid description of a Dungeons & Dragons game! It’s no wonder so many contestants on Taskmaster New Zealand have also danced among the tumbling d20s and entered the world of playing D&D for an audience.
Here, then, is the definitive guide to which Taskmaster NZ contestants have elfed up for the cameras, and where you can watch or listen to their goblinoid antics!
Season 1
Brynley Stent
She loves the hardcore gamers, as Kura Forrester said in episode one of Bryn & Ku’s Singles Club, and so it’s no surprise to find Brynley Stent at the forefront of the Taskmaster NZ/D&D crossover story.
She is of course currently appearing in The Spinoff’s Fury of the Small podcast as Sly the goblin. That role is a bit of a homecoming in fact, as her first taste of the game was another podcast from The Spinoff, Waterdeep Mountain High, as another goblin, fan-fave Peng. Alongside a few appearances in Christchurch’s Dungeons & Comedians and a one-off D&D charity livestream, Brynley is also slated to appear in a just-announced new D&D game from Viva La Dirt League! Tremendous work, it has to be 5 points to Brynley Stent!
- Waterdeep Mountain High starting with episode “School is Good”
- Dungeons & Comedians X-Mas One Shot Dec 2019
- Dungeons & Comedians Online Special Sept 2021
- Fantasy Fundraiser – Cyclone relief livestream March 2023
- Fury of the Small
Season 2
David Correos
If you take out some of the letters and put others in, Correos also spells Chaos, and that’s exactly what he delivered in his season 2 appearances. He joined in on a Dungeons & Comedians special show during lockdown times with that same energy on display, and he couldn’t even make it through the quest briefing before making some of the most audaciously silly moves I’ve ever seen in a D&D game.
Guy Montgomery
While Guy has not himself played D&D in public anywhere, he did provide sardonic commentary throughout the D&D challenge in an episode of TVNZ’s brilliantly odd Survive The 80s reality show in 2020… a show that… doesn’t seem to be watchable anywhere? Can this be true? We cannot survive on Spelling Bees alone!
- Survive The 80s is AWOL but you can glimpse Guy behind a DM screen in the clip at the start of this video
Matt Heath
Has Matt been on any D&D actual play shows? He has not. However, in this Radio Hauraki clip he says he played D&D in high school with the nerds. This was when he wasn’t busy with his head cheerleader girlfriend “Britney Undies”. Surely a completely 100% reliable truthful account.
Season 3
Chris Parker
Looking at his career, Chris Parker is clearly game. He’s bravely ventured into spelling bees, treasure islands, and most chillingly, all-boys secondary schools. No surprise that he leapt into D&D on stage without the slightest idea what he was in for, with Dungeons & Comedians in 2020! He must have had a good time, as he returned for the star-studded online special a year later.
Josh Thomson
Before his successful run through Taskmaster NZ, but after he was done Monkeying around for Netflix, Josh Thomson visited a fantastic version of Wellington called, anagrammatically, Twillgone, as the brave (?) hero (?) Noel Leeming. Twillgone was a livestreamed game run by comedian Steve Wrigley, and all three episodes are still up to watch on Wrigley’s twitch channel. (Although it must be noted Josh’s excellently expressive eyebrows are not visible in episode one, the players are all just disembodied voices. Full visuals arrive in episode two!)
(Wrigley, meanwhile, has not yet appeared on Taskmaster NZ, but is working up a full set of D&D-themed comedy material…)
Season 4
Ray O’Leary
With a sense of humour as dry as the rulebook to 1970s D&D competitor Chivalry & Sorcery (all the oldest nerds nod sagely and stroke their long, long beards at this reference), Ray O’Leary livened up (er, livened flat?) The Spinoff’s Waterdeep Mountain High podcast from its start as a live show on stage. Delightfully, this year he reprised his substitute teacher character Hillardo in a guest appearance in Dungeons & Comedians, once again on stage. Now Hillardo has enjoyed a moving, ridiculous epilogue, very satisfying, until Ray is persuaded to return once again of course!
Season 5
Abby Howells
No TNZ contestant has delved deeper into the world of D&D than Abby Howells, who in 2015 presented an entire solo show as her D&D character Glocknid, Dwarf Warrior! In 2021 she became a regular player in Dungeons & Comedians as fantasy cowboy Hank Fresh, and late that year joined the mayhem of the online special with David Correos, Chris Parker and Brynley Stent! Can it be long before she ends up slinging spells on stage again?
Tom Sainsbury
Tom Sainsbury is known for his seemingly endless well of characters, but thus far only one of them has a Strength score and a hit point total. He can be seen making his D&D debut alongside tour mate Chris Parker for Dungeons & Comedians in 2020.
And also…
Taskmaster assistant Paul Williams
He’s not a contestant but we can’t leave him out! Paul’s deadpan manner comes out even more lethally neutral in his core cast role on The Spinoff’s Waterdeep Mountain High podcast. (Have we talked yet about what a great name this is for a D&D podcast? Because Waterdeep is a famous fantasy city in the D&D game? And the podcast is set in a fantasy high school? It’s a really good name.)
Have we missed anything? Very keen to keep this list entirely up to date for pedantry reasons! Contact KiwiRPG and let us know what we have to add!