D&D Fan/Scoobie-Doo Actor Matthew Lillard Selling D&D-Inspired Whiskey

Dungeons & Dragons players are plenty used to encountering spirits of various sorts, ghosts and succubi and harpies all haunting the castles and caves where their characters venture for loot. Now they’ll be able to grab some game-appropriate spirits of a different kind, grog to go with the adventuring, courtesy of Quest’s End, a new venture from actor Matthew Lillard (Scooby-Doo, Good Girls) and two partners.

Find Familiar Spirits – founded five years ago by Lillard, screenwriter Justin Ware, and Blue Run Spirits co-founder Tim Sparapani – this fall is launching Quest’s End, a D&D-themed series of 16 collectible versions ( “expressions”) of blended bourbon whiskeys. The bourbon’s special bottles will be accompanied by chapters of a new D&D-inspired saga written by Kate Welch, a veteran dungeon master and game designer.

The founders’ friendship and tabletop gaming roots go back decades, and took another step when Lillard and Ware co-founded Beadle & Grimm’s, which focuses on selling upscale versions of gear for tabletop games such as D&D and Magic
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: The Gathering. Beadle & Grimm’s has expanded from a single SKU to more than 200 in the $2.2 billion tabletop game industry. Sparapani is also a long-time friend who recently sold his Kentucky bourbon company to Molson Coors
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Going upscale and fan-focused with a line of spirits also made sense, especially given the lucrative exits enjoyed recently by prominent actors turned alcohol entrepreneurs such as George Clooney (Casamigos tequila) and Ryan Gosling (Aviation gin).

“Communities respond when you pay them the respect of building something luxury,” Lillard said in a phone interview. “We built something special (with Beadle & Grimm’s products). The idea of that really made sense when we applied it to whiskey. It’s specifically built for fandom. It’s a powerful approach to competing, (because) I’m certainly not The Rock or George Clooney. We’re finding communities and building specifically for them.”

The company acquired three different batches of bourbons, and hired Ale Ochoa as master blender to do the fine-tuning of specific expressions tied to the Quest’s End series. The first to arrive is called Quest’s End: Paladin. It arrives in October, to be followed every three months over the next four years with other themed expressions, including “Rogue, Warlock and Dragon,” Lillard said.

The bottles include D&D-specific references like a stopper with an image of a D20 compass rose on top, and labels that keep track of “hit points,” the game’s measure of character health. Even signing into the website, which has an “age gate” question to ensure only adult visitors, asks the visitor which of several races of creatures from the game – orcs, elves, humans, etc – they are.

The idea is to create a super-premium whiskey that sticks out, but also can be a collectible for superfans, Lillard said. Each bottle sells for $150, and each will be numbered as part of a relatively small batch.

“Each (expression) drop is an addition to a saga told over all 16 drops,” Lillard said. When the drops are done, and the story is told, that particular series is done too.

The company is also taking a different approach to distribution, always a thorny issue in the highly regulated, badly Balkanized world of alcohol sales in the United States.

Rather than try to pry open shelf space in traditional retail, the Quest’s End line will be sold online, through specialty alcohol retailer Seelbach’s. Given the many, many limits on online alcohol sales, Quest’s End bottles won’t be available outside the United States, and in only about 41 states inside the country.

“There’s this antiquated business model in the spirits industry,” Lillard said. “It’s really hard to find shelf space, 40 to 50 percent of revenue goes to distribution. We want to circumvent that, so we’re trying to create a direct-to-consumer link and bypass the need to deal with these companies.”

To further burnish the brand’s credibility within the fan community, Find Familiar Spirits not only commissioned Welch to write the accompanying saga, but also hired fantasy illustrator Tyler Jacobson to create original artwork for the accompanying booklet.

“People sitting around and telling stories is as old as time,” Lillard said. “But we can’t compete against the big brands. There’s 100 yards of whiskey at BevMo. We can’t compete against that” for shelf space.

Lillard acknowledged that, in an era of transmedia, the new saga and accompanying whiskeys could be the basis for a bigger narrative opportunity, much like Lillard’s fellow actors turned media barons at Critical Role, who built their Thursday-night D&D gatherings into a huge online fan base, an award-winning Amazon Studios animated series, and numerous other ventures.

“There’s all the elements that, in success, would see us partner with a company to create a high-end boxed edition,” Lillard said. “In success, the world’s our oyster.”

Lillard said Find Familiar Spirits template and production pipeline can also be applied to other kinds of branded or specialized spirits for specific fanbases or other communities. Indeed, the company is already in talks with “two huge companies for an in-world spirit during a TV show or film. We would go out and create the real version of that, then create the legend and lore around that brand.”

That narrative-first approach would allow production companies and studios to take advantage of Find Familiar Spirits’ combination of spirits experts and creative talents to expand its own program or brand.

“In our pitch deck raising money, one thing we say is that we’re basically taking the movie studio format, the business model, and applying it to this world,” Lillard said. “Here’s our thriller genre, here’s our (awards contender). Here’s our fantasy branded whiskey.”

The company will be working with influencers in the D&D and tabletop communities, and working with other brands and communities that are closely allied to those games.