Indestructoboy

Pounds was born on September 19, 1989 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and raised in the same state. He was raised in a secular household that emphasized freethought, humanism, and consequentialism.

Education and music

Pounds started playing guitar when he was 10 and began studying jazz at 14. He earned a bachelor's in music performance from the University of Tulsa in 2019 and has performed with Randy Brecker, Russell Malone, Branford Marsalis, Peter Erskine, and Andy Narell. He now does session guitar work in the Oklahoma area.

Pounds is a member of the Phi Sigma Kappa fraternity, and has a tattoo of The Triple T's on his right bicep.

Pounds participated as a guitarist in "Daddy Long Legs," the first production from the Tulsa PAC Trust under their "TPAC Presents" series in 2022.^[1]

Fireworks accident

On July 7, 2012, Pounds was attending a wedding reception and while he was lighting fireworks with relatives he was struck by a 4-inch mortar shell that was unexpectedly ignited.^{[2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]} The explosion destroyed his left maxilla, caused 3rd-degree burns across his body, and damaged his left eye beyond repair.^[10] Pounds lost much of the left side of his face and had another surgery on July 13 in Oklahoma City.^[11] Pounds was placed in a medically-induced coma for two months following the accident, and underwent a 22-hour long reconstructive surgery on September 21 at OU Medical Center to restore facial structure and tissue.^[12] Pounds spent the next 12 months, undergoing several reconstructive surgeries at OU Medical Center.^[13] Pounds had 30 surgeries by 2017 and his recovery was not complete, requiring thousands of dollars of dental work.^[14]

As of 2023, over 30 follow-up surgeries have been performed to help restore Pounds' quality of life. He now wears an eyepatch and has a tracheostomy scar.

Dungeons & Dragons 5e

In 2017, Pounds began creating third-party content for Dungeons & Dragons and selling his creations on the Dungeon Masters Guild. During his time creating there, his work has been critically acclaimed in the game industry and throughout the D&D YouTube community, causing him to become one of the DMsGuild's highest selling creators and earning him a silver ENnie Award at Gen Con 2022 for his work on Homefield Advantage: a Compendium of Lair Actions.^[15] Since 2020, the DMsGuild's Top Ten Most Popular Products has always featured at least one product with Pounds as a contributing designer. His success allowed him to leave his previous job as a teacher, and do independent and contract design full-time.

BJ Keeton for Screenrant in 2024 said that "Taron Pounds, better known as Indestructoboy to the Dungeons & Dragons community, homebrewed one of the best unofficial 5e player classes out there. ... The most interesting part about the alchemist is that it's a martial class and not a spellcaster. Not having a spell list makes the chemistry part the actual focus and not an afterthought like some unofficial subclasses have done. The class comes with downtime activities, specialized equipment, and subclasses like the apothecary and toxicologist."^[16]

After building his following on YouTube and Twitch, he created his own storefront in 2022 to sell work using the Dungeons & Dragons Open Game License.^[17] He has published two classes under the OGL (The Vanguard and The Sovereign). He ended his Dungeons & Dragons fifth edition work with his Zodiac Class.^[18]

Non-D&D work

In February 2023, the Dungeons & Dragons Open Game License controversy inspired Pounds to begin development on the Vagabond role-playing system. He founded the company, Land of the Blind, and successfully funded the system's development through a Kickstarter campaign in May 2023. The system is in currently in Early Access. His work on the system is livestreamed on his YouTube and Twitch channels.

Pounds has released work for Drakar och Demoner, Mörk Borg, and Shadowdark.

In 2019, Pounds started his YouTube channel to critically review third-party and official content for the fifth edition of Dungeons & Dragons. Pounds used his experience in third-party class design to develop a format for analyzing and discussing D&D character options as wargame units, described as the option's Playstyle and Dynamic.^[19]

Inspired by the Mike Mearls Happy Fun Hour livestreams of Wizards of the Coast, he began livestreaming his own game design work to Twitch and YouTube in 2020. While Pounds used to review requested submissions, a conversation he had with another designer in 2021 convinced him not to critique independent and free work without first being asked by the creator.

A community of aspiring game designers has formed around these livestreams, and the majority of his video content switched in 2022 from scripted to clipped content from his streams.

Social commentary

Pounds speaks candidly about his experiences as a disabled and disfigured content creator, and has been critical of how the TTRPG industry has represented disability and disabled characters.^[20] Pounds is critical of both the alt-right and puritanical progressive movements.

He advocates for progressive, consumer-friendly reporting on social issues and news in the TTRPG industry, as well as for the use of cultural consultants and sensitivity readers.^[21] He felt compelled to do so after seeing the lack of progressive YouTubers also commenting on social issues within the industry.

Pounds credits the prevalence of right-wing misinformation about the Star Frontiers: New Genesis racism controversy and the depiction of the Hadozee race in Spelljammer: Adventures in Space to making him openly vocal about his progressive ideology and social issues in gaming.^{[22] [23]}

Oklahoma in 2023 approved use of materials from PragerU in classrooms, prompting Pounds to Tweet, "I am an Oklahoma teacher, I refuse to show PragerU's revisionist propaganda to impressionable minds."^[24]

D&D Open Game License controversy

On November 11, 2022, Pounds reported on a leak he had received from sources within the tabletop game industry regarding the Open Game License of Dungeons & Dragons.^[25] Pounds claimed that Wizards of the Coast would not create a new System Reference Document for One D&D, which would have left third party content creators unable to produce more material.^[26][27] On November 21, ComicBook.com reported to have received a response from Wizards of the Coast on the leak, stating that:

ComicBook.com reached out to Wizards of the Coast about whether they planned to update the Open Game License and System Reference Document. Wizards of the Coast responded with the following statement: "We will continue to support the thousands of creators making third-party D&D content with the release of One D&D in 2024. While it is certain our Open Game License (OGL) will continue to evolve, just as it has  since its inception, we're too early in the development of One D&D to give more specifics on the OGL or System Reference Document (SRD) at this time."[26]

Despite Wizards of the Coast's statement, Pounds continued coverage of the situation through December. On January 5, 2023, an exposé was written by Linda Codega with io9 after having received a leaked copy of the Open Game License v1.1. The exposé was posted to Gizmodo and corroborated the information in Pounds' leak.^[28]

On January 9, 2023, Pounds received a leaked copy of the new Open Game License 1.1 during a livestream and read through portions of it with heavyarms, another prominent third-party D&D 5e designer.^[29][30] Since this was the first public leak of the new OGL, it quickly spread in role-playing game communities.

On January 27, Wizards of the Coast caved to community pressure and released the System Reference Document 5.1 (SRD 5.1) under an irrevocable Creative Commons license (CC-BY-4.0) effect immediately and would no longer pursue deauthorizing the OGL1.0a.

Pounds has since been celebrated as one of the leaders of the community during the #OpenDnD movement, and Codega has been nominated for several industry rewards for their coverage.^[31][32][33]

• YouTube channel
• Twitch channel