“Are we ready to play some D&D?” Markku Lorentz asks before starting the first act of Frisvieg in Flames – the first episode of Natural Pengu.

“I will be the Dungeon Master today. OK. Going into Dungeon Master mode…”
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What follows is two and a half hours of live improv theatre, where Lorentz – together with five actors – determine the fate of Razah Divrin, The Bjarn, Peng Ooh, Dani Felt, and Ow Gannah through the rules of Dungeons & Dragons. The story, while physically broadcasted from a studio in Lund, brings us to The Bay of Frisvieg, where the sun never reaches above the horizon – a world scripted and imagined by the Dungeon Master – Markku Lorentz – himself, along with his writing partner Joachim Bengtsson.

Lorentz has always been a storyteller; and Natural Pengu is only the latest of his undertakings, with Lorentz carrying many creative skills and talents, as exhibited through his company, Pengu Studios.
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“Pengu Studios started when I was studying music at Paul McCartney’s Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts,” Lorentz says. “Once I had to sing one of my songs for McCartney himself, and halfway through – he joined in, so we jammed together. It’s my parade claim to fame,” Lorentz laughs. After graduating, Lorentz toured with his band Escapist, before eventually starting his own business teaching voice lessons through his own company, Pengu Studios.

While Lorentz began storytelling through music and singer-songwriting, he later found himself in Sweden, working with film. Combining animation and music, Lorentz started a children’s Youtube channel called Merry Music Box, gathering 135,000 subscribers and over 70 million of views to date. For Lorentz, filmmaking and animation became powerful media to engage audiences, tell narratives, and creative interactive content. 

In 2020, Lorentz launched Star in a GIF – which later became Star in a Movie – a new multi-tiered entertainment system built on 3D scanning. Using – what Lorentz himself deems as – “some crazy cool tech voodoo,” Star in a Movie lets anyone become a movie star by using an app, developed by Pengu Studios, in which users can scan their own face to create their own 3D avatar. The 3D avatar – almost like a more realistic Sims – may later star in GIFs and short films where the users themselves are always in the spotlight.

But storytelling can’t really go in-depth in short clips of film.
“At the root of it all, I’m still interested in exploring rich worlds and rich characters,” Lorentz says. “Short animations are fun and can be really spectacular, but it’s difficult to get a well-rounded view of a world or a character in such a short time. At the same time, we currently don’t have the resources to work on something longer, where that is possible – like a TV series or a feature film.”

But then, Lorentz re-discovered roleplaying games.

“I used to do a lot of roleplaying in my teens. Before Natural Pengu, which started this year, the last time I played D&D was when I was maybe... 18?” Lorentz smiles. “I started watching these livestreams of people playing – sessions that are three to four hours long – and I was so captivated. It just seemed like the perfect solution to what I wanted to do, as well. Roleplaying games lets the players decide how the story unfolds, lets them explore rich worlds and rich characters, while remaining fairly simple in production.”

The result is Natural Pengu, live-streamed episodes of D&D and Starfinder, two roleplaying games.

The sessions are a mix of talk-shows, stand-up comedy, live improv, podcasts, and long form TV shows, meaning they have great entertainment value, even for those who haven't played the games before.
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Since the sessions are live-streamed, they are all improvised, with Lorentz hiring local actors to play, act, and tell their stories, all based on the rules of the game. Lorentz even reveals that some of the actors had never played D&D or Starfinder before. “Out of nine, I think maybe three of us had played it before. But they’re all doing really well and seem to think it’s pretty fun,” he says.

Lorentz – the Dungeon Master – enters the session with a written script, which is never revealed to the actors. “It’s fairly simple. I give the actors a scenario and they respond to it the way they think their character would,” Lorentz explains. “They never know what I’m going to hand them, but they know the world they’re in and they’re continuously developing their characters, which makes for a really dynamic way of storytelling.” 

So far, Natural Pengu has streamed nine episodes, around three hours each, on Twitch – the world’s leading live streaming platform for gaming. While the episodes have already gained traction, Lorentz explains that they were originally intended to be a marketing campaign for Star in a Movie. “But during the first three weeks of recording our episodes, we gained over 100 followers on Twitch, meaning we are now affiliates and can monetize our streams,” Lorentz says. “It’s sort of funny, actually, because now our marketing campaign, Natural Pengu, for our product – Star in a Movie – is a product on its own. And now we’re marketing Natural Pengu… so it’s a marketing campaign for our marketing campaign,” he laughs. 

Live streaming has also given Lorentz a new way of connecting with his consumers, focusing on B2C rather than B2B. “The potential is just huge. And it’s fun, too, for us to interact with our followers directly, creating a community.”

Natural Pengu is currently taking a summer break, with Lorentz heading back into the writer’s room to prepare for episodes to come. In the fall, the plan is to launch two episodes per week – one D&D session and one Starfinder session.

You can watch Natural Pengu live on their Twitch, archived on YouTube and below to see their segment from our annual event, Crossing Borders. 

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To read more about Markku Lorentz, Pengu Studios, and Natural Pengu, head over to https://pengustudios.com/.