Joe Manganiello's Star-Studded Dungeons & Dragons Life

When the time comes to sit back and relax, just know that Joe Manganiello has a favorite way to relax. He's got a game, all right. But it's not baseball, nor is it football, basketball, or even hockey. Nope-Joe Mangianello is a die-hard Dungeons & Dragons head.

Manganiello isn't only an expert D&D player, though-he's also a host, with "everybody in L.A," he jokes, stopping by at his house to play. Including himself, the number he hosts can range between five and nine people. The group stopping by includes people like Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave guitarist Tom Morello, Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn, and Rampage director Brad Peyton.

Others, like NBA legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and TV host Stephen Colbert-a noted fantasy nerd himself-want to come over and join the game, he told Men's Health.

The actor was big into the role-playing game as a kid, mentioning that it really helped to inform the acting, character building, and writing that's shaped his career. "Its where I figured out how to develop a character and how to tell longform narrative stories, like on a TV series," he said in his Men's Health cover interview."The earliest evidence of me producing and acting and writing all came from that"

While there was a long break, Manganiello's childhood passion came back with a vengeance in 2013. He was performing in a production of A Streetcar Named Desire at Yale, and a childhood friend of his-whom he actually taught Dungeons & Dragons to-lived in New Haven. The actor got in touch to the friend, who had since married and had children, to offer him tickets. "He was like, 'Dude, youre not gonna believe it but we started playing again, and you need to make a character and come over." One car rental, and a ride half-way across the state later, and Manganiello was all the way back in on D&D.

Even though Dungeons & Dragons has long been part of Manganiello's stress relief strategy, it's recently shifted into work-he says he's now writing for the game, officially. "I created all these characters for it, and Im now licensing it out and turning them into figures," he said. "Im art directing and farming out artwork to different artists around the world who are putting together the next collection of pieces."

Manganiello has talked about his experience with the game before, and it almost seems like he's doing a bit of recruiting to continue building out his group.

He's been connected to the role of Deathstroke for a while-he made a post-credits cameo as the character in Justice League, and was originally set to face off with Ben Affleck in The Batman. If he remains in the role, you'd have to wonder if Manganiello could start to recruit the new Batman , Robert Pattinson-having significantly dabbled in fantasy fare, having played both a Wizard and a Vampire-would be interested in joining the game. What better way for Batman and one of his chief foes to get acquainted, right?