Telling stories is human nature. From cave paintings to Dickensian novels, from ancient tapestries to 30-second tiktoks, storytelling is part of how humans experience the world and how we share those experiences with others.

When most people think of stories, they think of classic written prose; novels, poems, the collected works of Shakespeare, that kind of thing, but storytelling as an artform encompasses a much wider collection of media than just the neatly printed pages that adorn our bookshelves. Film, music, art, dance, social media, gaming, live streaming, advertising; arguably every artistic medium possible can be used as a form of storytelling, a way for one person to pass on an experience, an emotion, a feeling to another. Some stories are made to inspire us. Some are made to sell us new brands of toothpaste or seriously consider buying an electric car. But all are stories, in one form or another.

Significantly missing from this array of modern storytelling techniques is the art of oral storytelling. A traditional practice that has fallen out of fashion with modern audiences. That is, until now…

The lost art of oral storytelling

Oral storytelling is not a new concept. From the bathhouses of ancient Rome to the travelling minstrels of the Middle Ages, oral stroytelling had been around throughout history as a form of entertainment, as a way to connect through narrative, to teach stories of shared history and impart knowledge to future generations.

And when we talk about oral storytelling, we’re not simply talking about reading a story out loud or performing a piece of prose for an audience. Oral storytelling is a specific practice: the process of weaving a narrative solely for the listeners present. It’s an active process, a dynamic process, that happens in real time, with the audience and storyteller working together to create a story. And it’s an experience that is hard to replicate in any other medium.

But in recent centuries, the art form has fallen out of popularity, at least in the western world. Modern audiences expect a polished, practised narrative when they’re consuming a story, not an improvisational tale that requires their input to create. We might read a book, watch a movie, converse with friends about the events of the day, but seldom do we sit down and tell stories simply for the sake of telling stories. Seldom do we experience the creation of a story, but rather consume the end product once it’s complete.

But there is one little corner of the world, full of dungeons, dragons and a whole lot of dice, where this ancient art is finding its feet once more.

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Dungeons and Dragons: Nerd 101

If you’re a stranger to the world of tabletop gaming, or gaming in general, let me give you a quick lesson in this particular brand of nerd culture.

Tabletop Roleplaying Games (TTPRGs) are just what they say on the tin: roleplaying games you play in person, usually around a table (or, for those more digitally inclined, over a Zoom meeting or Discord channel). TTRPGs are distinguished from their gaming cousins, RPGs (roleplaying video games), by the fact you don’t need a game console or a computer to play. All you need is a pen, paper, and a set of dice — true analogue gaming at its finest.

There are hundreds of brands of TTRPGs, from multi-rulebook epics to one-sheet wonders, but the most famous, the most infamous, and the one that gives this particular style of gaming its reputation for wizards, goblins, and nerds in cloaks, is Dungeons and Dragons.

But how can Dungeons and Dragons, a game that’s been around since the 70s, constitute a new form of storytelling? People have been playing DnD for decades! What could possibly be new about it?

Well, my friend. That’s where the internet comes in.

Enter: Twitch!

A brief history of liveplay D&D

Twitch, for those uninitiated, is an online live-streaming platform popular with gamers. It’s been around since the early 2010s, but became popular with DnD fans in 2015 after Geek and Sundry started streaming the first ever liveplay DnD campaign, created by the cast of Critical Role, the now world-renowned professional liveplay creators.

This original CR stream didn’t start out as polished and put together as it is today. It was just a bunch of friends sitting around a table, playing a game they loved, complete with fart jokes, spilt drinks, miscommunications and malfunctioning props. It was underground, accessible, something new and exciting going on in a small nerdy corner of the internet, and it quickly found its niche on a platform already home to so many other gaming nerds.

Twitch became instrumental in growing the DnD fanbase with a new, younger, more tech-savvy audience as the platform allowed fans to not only watch shows live, but also provided an interactive chat for viewers to converse with players and other fans directly, creating an instant community around an already beloved game.

Matt Mercer, acclaimed Dungeon Master and cast member of Critical Role, spoke on the power that DnD liveplay gave the community, and why it caused such a boost in popularity for a game that had been around for decades.

“There aren’t a lot of entertainment-based mediums that empower the audience to go off the next day and create it themselves. You can’t watch a movie or a show and the next day say, “I want to make that.” You have to go to school. By comparison, there’s a certain punk-rock accessibility to liveplay. People watch these shows and think, “I could do that.” (1)

And the popularity of liveplay DnD only snowballed from there.

Online streaming skyrocketed the Dungeons and Dragons fanbase, bringing a relatively old game to a whole new generation, growing the audience and building a platform for even more creators to start streaming. From Critical Role to Dimension 20, Acquisitions Incorporated to High Rollers, liveplay took a game that’s been around for 50 years, a game that is built around the concept of collaborative storytelling, and remade it into something new, something powerful, something engaging and dynamic, and beamed it across the internet.

Traditional storytelling for a modern audience.

But how can games be storytelling?

But Franky? I hear you ask… How does watching someone else play a game constitute storytelling? I can watch my friends play Red Dead all day, but I would hardly call that storytelling!

And you’d be right. Traditional gaming is different in one integral way: with conventional RPGs, you’re consuming a story that has already been written.

Even with an incredibly expansive games like Baldur’s Gate 3 or Red Dead Redemption, the story is already hardwired into the game. You can tell incredibly variable stories with your gameplay choices, but those stories are all still predetermined, pre-written, pre-coded into the game before you play. The options are immense, but they’re not infinite.

With TTPRGs, there is a little more to it…

Allow me to explain…

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Roleplaying as Storytelling

There are two main components of TTRPGs that allow the medium to step out of the confines of regular gaming and become a collaborative exercise in group storytelling: active roleplaying and the sandbox nature of the game.

Let’s delve into each of those aspects, and see how they affect the stories we tell.

Active roleplaying

During a game of DnD, players dictate their actions aloud to the table, taking on the persona of their characters as they do so. All conversations between players, all actions and decisions that happen in-game, are narrated by the players from the point of view of their characters. Instead of a player saying, “my character shoots their crossbow”, it becomes “I shoot my crossbow”. Instead of “he talks to the shopkeeper”, it’s “I talk to the shopkeeper”.

This sounds like a small distinction, but this kind of active roleplaying creates an ongoing dialogue between characters and changes the story significantly from the audience’s perspective. Instead of watching someone move a character through a scene, the audience is watching that character engage with the world themselves. Instead of a far-removed omnipotent narrator telling you what’s happening, you’re seeing everything from the point of view of the character, hearing their thoughts, watching them struggle, seeing them make decisions, and going with that character as they progress on their journey.

In short, it turns a game into a show.

Playing in the sandbox: Anything is possible

The second aspect that allows TTRPGs to be a storytelling device in their own right is the sandbox nature of the game, which is best exemplified by the specific role of the Dungeon Master.

The Dungeon Master, (DM for short, if you want to sound extra nerdy), is the player responsible for facilitating the game. They guide the other players through the adventure, making things up as they go, but unlike most other styles of gaming, a game of DnD has no set boundaries. There are no predetermined quests that need to be completed or specific plot points that need to be hit in order for the game to progress. The game, and subsequently the story, is free to become whatever the players want it to become. Free to ebb and change depending on the inspiration of all the people around the table.

To veteran DM Matt Mercer, this turns the gamespace into an “organic, improvised space for storytelling”. (2)

Maybe the King is dead and war is breaking out across the land. Maybe goblins are raiding villages in the south and the local Baronesse calling all fighters to her cause. Whatever scenario the DM might throw at their players, the players have absolute creative control over what they do.

“Goblins you say? I don’t much care for goblins. How about we join the fleeing villagers and hire ourselves out as bodyguards?”

“A war? Interesting. While the General is distracted at the war council, let’s sneak into their mansion and steal their most prized possessions”

…Talk to the goblins and take up their cause. Broker a peace treaty. Become an arms dealer. Run away to the Fae realm. Ask a demon for help. Rise through the ranks of the army. Betray your new King for the promise of gold…

There is no right or wrong answer. Once the DM puts a scenario in front of the players, they release control of that story and let the collective group determine where the narrative takes them, which could be hundreds of miles, literally and figuratively, from where they started.

In no other medium is fiction so open to outside influence.

In DnD, anything is truly possible.

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What makes DnD the perfect catalyst to tell epic stories?

So, TTRPGs set the stage to tell stories through gaming, and liveplay streaming allowed these stories to reach an ever-growing audience. But the big question still remains: are the stories told through DnD actually any good?

A good story is more than just interesting characters doing fantastic things. You need rising action, falling action, climaxes and resolutions. Plot structure, character development, world-building and conflict; these things are all needed to tie a story together, keep readers invested, make them care. So how could improvised storytelling possibly compare to carefully crafted prose?

The secret is once again hidden in the building blocks of what makes DnD a great game to begin with: creative conflict and collaboration.

Creative conflict

The driving force of any story told through DnD comes from the characters. Each character is created, controlled, and embodied by a different person at the table, and each have their own goals, backstories, ambitions, and personalities, much like any set of characters in fiction.

But what makes these stories intrinsically different from standard narrative, is that while the characters may all have different goals and motivations, so do the players that control them.

Generally, a novel is written by a single author, through whose eyes we see the world. An author can create characters who have conflicting motivations, but the author will always have their own opinion as to what makes a good story. And when push comes to shove, they have the final say.

With group storytelling however, there is no single person in charge of the narrative. The DM may help tie the overall plot together, but the bulk of the story comes from the players making decisions in-game and pushing the story forward. A group of people with vastly different opinions as to what makes a good story.

Some players love exploring backstory and want to spend hours by the fire chatting about their tragic pasts. Some players love combat and are always itching to resort to violence as soon as any new character enters the room. And some players just want to explore, pushing the big red button marked ‘do not press’ just to see what happens. And having this variety of motivations, not just from the characters but from the storytellers themselves, creates a narrative that combines different styles of storytelling in a way standard fiction can not.

Is it better if the villain lives or dies? Is it better to stand and fight, or live another day? Do the ends really justify the means, and where is the line in the sand your protagonist won’t cross? Every writer will have their own opinion of what a story needs at any point in time, and when you’re playing DnD, these conflicting opinions within the group can push the story into territory you would never have taken it on your own. Imagine having George R R Martin, Terry Pratchett, Anne Rice and Stephen King all writing a story together, flipping a coin for who gets to make the next narrative choice. It would be chaos, pure anarchy, a gothic, silly, blood-soaked mess, but gods it would be a good read!

Yes, And…

Having a group of narrators working together to tell a story also makes liveplay the perfect space for the ‘Yes, And’ style of improvisation.

Yes, And is a concept originating in improv theatre: the idea that an actor should accept anything said by another member of the cast (Yes) and build on it with their own suggestions (And). Yes, And doesn’t mean that every question will be answered with a literal “Yes”, but rather that every suggestion will be accepted, played out at the table, and allowed to affect the plot as a whole.

This principle lends itself perfectly to roleplaying games, as the improvisational nature of the games relies on players sharing their ideas with the group and actively participating in telling the story. For group storytelling to work, everyone involved needs to be able to add to the narrative. If a player makes a suggestion that gets ignored or denied by the group, that player will be less likely to contribute to the story in the future. But if their ideas are listened to and collaborated on by other players, they’ll end up feeling invested in the outcome, invested in the story, because now it’s more than just a story; it’s their story.

The And part of this principle is equally as important a concept, and relates to building on suggestions from other members. Not only is everyone at the table free to come up with ideas, but others will actively build on those ideas and add their creative input to the game. Without the And, one player could be left creating the narrative alone while other players just sit back and watch. The And makes sure every narrator is actively involved, and the story becomes a collaborative effort from everyone at the table.

From a game perspective, this creates character investment and player interaction. From a narrative standpoint, this is what turns a game into collaborative group storytelling.

Watching as a story is created

Much of the popularity of liveplay comes from the magic of getting a front-row seat to the creation of a story. In other mediums; novels, movies, TV shows, plays- the script is created off-screen, written and perfected before the moment, and presented to the audience as complete, polished, finished.

Liveplay breaks this rule.

The audience get to watch as the narrative is created in real-time, watch as the plot develops right in front of their eyes. The story can be rocky, it can slow down, get stuck, be thrown off by unpredictable dice rolls, but the audience gets to experience the story right alongside the narrators. Experience their excitement, their fear, their indecision, and their suspicion. They get to celebrate a win, console a loss, and hold their breath when the dice roll.

Just like watching live sports, this shared investment creates action, immediacy, and a sense of group participation shared by everyone watching the show. It’s exciting. Unpredictable. Instead of simply consuming a story, the audience becomes a part of it, present and invested as the story unfolds.

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Mechanics as Fiction Framework

A game of D&D is not solely designed to tell a great story. It is a game after all. The point is to play and have fun. The game mechanics of DnD act as a storytelling framework, pulling the strings behind the narrative to keep the adventure consistent, moving forward with momentum, and threaded with conflict and tension.

In short, great storytelling comes baked into the rules of the game.

Sewing the seeds of chaos

An integral game mechanic that adds a sprinkle of drama to every story crafted through DnD is one of the game’s most recognizable and infamous components: Dice.

These little cubes of chaos are used to determine a player’s success within the core mechanics of the game, but as a storytelling tool, they add a layer of chance and unpredictability that you don’t get with standard writing techniques. And when your narrative is tied to dice rolls, the story becomes completely unpredictable, even to the people telling it.

This might sound frustrating, but surprising your audience is an integral part of great storytelling. I was never more thrilled and enraged than when George R R Martin slaughtered Robb Stark in ASOIAF. The nerve to kill off one of his most beloved characters hooked many of us into his story and threaded the threat of untimely demise throughout the rest of his work. And it’s exactly this style of unpredictable narrative twist that comes hardwired into a story told through DnD. Without needing the guidance of a gifted author, the game itself creates unpredictability and tension through dice rolls, keeping the narrators and viewers on the edge of their seats, and infusing every interaction with surprise and a sprinkle of chaos.

A little consistency

The complete randomness of dice rolls are somewhat mitigated by another mechanic: character sheets, which give characters predetermined strengths and weaknesses based on a common set of skills. This lets a character’s actions, their successes and failures, reflect the type of protagonist they are. In other words, it’s character consistency 101.

For example, if one character is particularly stealthy, when faced with a locked door, they might choose to sneak around the guards and pick the lock. If another character is particularly strong, they might instead choose to knock out the guards and smash the door in, as they are more likely to succeed on a strength check than a dexterity one.

This kind of consistent character voice is integral to great fiction and is one thing that many new authors struggle with. A DnD character sheet act like a creative writing coach, sitting next to our storytellers while they craft their narrative, reminding players: “Hey, when you created this character, they were XYZ. Are you sure they would make that decision at this particular point in the story?”, which can be invaluable to new and old writer alike.

Who of us couldn’t use a helpful reminder of character voice now and again?

Character development

Another theme you will remember from creative writing class is the art of character development. You start a story with a character that wants something, and throughout the story, they will either get that thing or not, and hopefully change and grow in the process. A character that ends a story the same as they started it falls flat, their journey pointless, their struggles a waste of time. Great characters are changed by the events of a great story. Again, creative writing 101.

The mechanics of DnD ensures this progression is a core part of the story through a system of experience points and character levels. As players progress through the game, they gain experience points (a literal tally of all the things that character has experienced), and when they reach a certain number, they ‘level up’, which ultimately allows the characters access to more powerful skills, so they can do more powerful things and generally be better at being a badass.

Separate this mechanic from the game itself, and you have a very simple structure that ensures our main characters grow and change as a direct result of the trials they face. Character progression, in a nutshell.

In game, levelling up allows the players to face bigger threats and fight bigger monsters. But as a narrative story tool, it creates a fluid story arc with a consistent structure of increasing tension and conflict. Our characters start out fighting goblins, progress to fighting Kings, and end up fighting gods. The stakes are raised, their actions have greater and greater consequences, and as the journey progresses, these characters grow into their powers, refine and redefine who they are, and become more fully realized versions of themselves. Which is just what we want to see from any fictional character.

It’s like this game was made to tell great stories.

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The Puppet Master Behind it All

Don’t worry. I can see you at the back there. With your hand raised patiently this whole time. And yes, you’re right. We’ve been forgetting one integral part of the whole collaborative storytelling process. The head of the table. The player with all the power. Our esteemed and long-suffering DM.

If the players are our protagonists, and the game mechanics are our creative writing professors, then the Dungeon Master is our chief storyteller, our editor, our publisher, and our first reader all rolled into one. They take the raw threads of our story, the first draft mess of ideas and actions, and weave it into something bigger than the sum of its parts. The Dungeon Master runs the game, rolls dice for combat and tells you how much damage an ogre does when it punches you in the face. But there is so much more to it than just rules adjudicating and battle planning.

A good Dungeon Master will immerse you in their world and bring unique NPCs to life. A great DM will make every decision matter and let the players take the story wherever they want to go. And the best Dungeon Master’s will make collaborative storytelling look like magic.

Here’s how they do it

Making the chaos look intentional

“What higher commandment in storytelling is there than to make it matter”

Brennan Lee Mulligan

The ability to thread themes and on-running story arcs through collaborative group storytelling is an art form in its own right. Mercer has talked in detail about his process, and one of his most common questions from the community is ‘How do you do what you do?’ How do you make it all look so planned, so seamless, so structured, when we all know it’s anything but.

And the answer, is improvisation, intentional and extensive pre-planning, and understanding the difference between rails and player agency.

Rails vs player agency

Rails, or train-tracking, is the act of forcing a story down one particular path regardless of the choices the players make. In fiction, this leads to weak characters getting thrown around by a plot that feels out of their hands. And the same is true in gaming. If the character’s actions don’t matter, the game, and the story, falls apart.

Players need to see the consequences of their actions to feel invested in the story. If your choices don’t matter, you stop bothering to make them. But behind the scenes, there still needs to be some consistency to tie the story together, otherwise, everything will dissolve into pure anarchy.

Brennan Lee Mulligan, acclaimed DM for the liveplay group Dimension 20, says that he sees the dichotomy between rails and player agency not in a negative light, but rather as a storytelling tool integral to great DMing:

“My job when I’m telling a story is not to have a story in mind for you to go on. (But instead to) improvise in reaction to the players with a bag full of storytelling tropes.” “I’m in reaction to you. You’re driving, but I have these shapes that I’m going to throw in front of you because I know you’re trying to go straight, but I know you’ll be sad if you do” (3)

Achieving the shape of a story

The dichotomy between what a player wants from a story versus what the character wants is at the heart of great fiction.

The player, the reader, or the viewer, wants the convoluted character arcs. We want adventure and intrigue, chances for the characters to fail and grow, to explore the lore and backstory that make up the world. But the character just wants to complete the quest. Characters in fiction don’t know they’re in a story, so their goal will always be to complete their objective in the most straightforward way possible. We want the convoluted, magical tales, but the character just wants to kill the damn Dragon.

Between these two contradictory motivations is where you find the story. Allowing the characters to choose the path of least resistance, but guiding that path in convoluted and engaging ways to give the players and audience the complex character arcs they crave.

“Achieving the shape of a story whilst you were trying your hardest to go in a straight line” (4)

Brennan Lee Mulligan

Doing the homework

Great Liveplay DnD doesn’t just happen on stream. There are hours of pre-planning that go into telling a great story. Hours of work before the show to set the storytellers up for greatness. It’s not as simple as just writing a script. It’s a game of creating possibilities and potential, writing enough to be prepared, but not too much that it can’t all be reworked at a moment’s notice. Planning for the unexpected, and expecting to be surprised.

“Part of the preparation is getting to know enough about the world and the kind of story that you are hoping to tell, (…) so that when you start, you can let all of that preparation go and just ride with the player’s actions and agency.” (5)

Matt Mercer

It’s up to the DM to find what’s important to the story, what the players need to drive their characters forward, and then to find a way to give players access to these modular story hooks wherever the story takes them.

Or, as Brennan Lee Mulligan succinctly puts it:

“Make it matter, make it count, hit the beat, keep it moving”

It’s not magic

Everything mentioned here, all the storytelling devices and skills that brilliant DMs like Mercer and Mulligan use to tell captivating stories- these things aren’t magic, as much as they may appear to be. Just like any art form, these skills come hard-earned with time and practice.

Brennan Lee Mulligan, Matt Mercer, Matt Coville, Chris Perkins, Mark Hulmes, Aabria Iyengar: These master storytellers make it look effortless, like their games just naturally flow and develop around them, but in reality, what we’re seeing is years of hard work and painstaking practice, resulting in a group of artists at the top of their fields, pushing the boundaries of what can be done in this medium.

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Turning a Good Story Into a Great Show

We all know that you need more than just a good story to make great entertainment, and there are countless additional details that turn a good liveplay game into a great show.

There’s production quality, audio and visual elements, immersive sets, lighting, music, acting skill and narrative delivery. It’s no coincidence that two of the biggest names in liveplay DnD, Critical Role and Dimension 20, also happen to consist of trained actors, voice actors and comedians. The ability to improvise in character, work in front of cameras, deliver powerful dialogue and confident narration inevitably adds quality to the content.

It’s not a requirement of the genre, but acting experience gives these cast members the innate skills needed to excel in this medium. Creating space at the table for each player to contribute, making sure not to talk over each other, giving each character their time in the spotlight, paying attention when others are talking, not arguing with the DM, trying to always act in character, taking notes so you don’t get lost in the story- one could write an essay on how to be a good DnD player, and how important those aspects become when put in front of an audience.

Things that don’t matter during a home game (stopping the game to look up a specific spell or taking a bathroom break right before your turn in combat) can break the immersion during a liveplay show. And the best streamers understand that they are not only playing a game but producing entertainment, and respect the additional parameters that liveplay brings. It’s not about playing up to the cameras or making decisions based on what you think the audience would want, but rather understanding that the audience is there, and knowing how their presence affects the story you’re telling, and the way you’re telling it.

A safe space to walk into the dark

Just as a novel can break your heart, and a movie can leave you weeping as the credits roll, any story can teach us about ourselves, show us the world in a new light, and help us see through another’s eyes. Fiction uses lies to tell us the truth, and a properly structured liveplay game, using safety mechanics for players and when treated with respect, can tackle hard-hitting themes and darker narratives just as well as traditional prose.

The cast of Critical Role have been telling stories for almost 10 years now, and though those stories are often peppered with jokes and light-hearted moments, there have been some dark times.

The show has covered themes of loss and death, of moving on from past mistakes and trying to leave the world better than you found it. The very real topics of betrayal, abuse, and the darker side of responsibility are dealt with by various players throughout the show. Struggling with mental health and the conflict of leaving those you love are not light, breezy topics, but the cast takes on these challenging themes with respect and an openness that shines through their words, never shying away from the brutal honesty these themes demand from their characters.

There is no guarantee that things will turn out alright, but there is the promise that the cast will treat these themes with tact and respect, will hold our hands as they take us into the dark, and promise to bring us out the other side, changed but perhaps stronger because of it. And this promise has created a safe space for both players and viewers to heal and grow through story and through shared experience.

Inclusivity in fantasy

The world-building of Critical Role is masterful and ever-expanding, covering continents, religions, entire ages and planes of existence. But as astounding as this creative vision is, it’s the people of this world that truly bring it to life.

In Exandria, the world in which many of Critical Role’s stories are set, you won’t find fair maidens waiting to be rescued by dashing knights, or strange women lying in ponds distributing swords. Critical Role rejects the tropes of sexism, homophobia, and misogyny that perpetuate the fantasy genre, and instead, have created an inclusive world, rich with diverse identity that plays against the stereotypes common to the genre.

It’s refreshing to see a fantasy space that uses diversity and inclusivity as more than just a plot device but as an honest and natural part of the world, and it sets many of these new TTRPG worlds apart as examples of world-building done right. Critical Role, Dimension 20, High Rollers- these creators actively promote diversity in their narrative, creating a community around their franchises of respect, inclusivity, and positivity. A community that more and more people want to be part of.

A story people want to be a part of

Critical Role is now considered one of the biggest names in liveplay DnD, producing not only liveplay content, but also novels, comics, board games, music, miniatures, art, dice, apparel, and even an original animated TV show now on its third season- all based on the stories they tell through liveplay gaming. They have even branched away from their DnD roots and created their own TTRPG systems and in-house publishing house. But their heart remains the same, no matter what game they’re playing: incredible, honest storytelling.

Over the years, the community of CR has continued to grow, with an array of guest stars joining the cast at the table and behind the microphones. Names from across the range of fandom include Patrick Rothfuss, Will Wheaton, Mark Hulmes, Vin Diesel, Robbie Daymond, Dominic Monaghan, Billy Boyd, David Tennant, and Matthew Lillard, not to mention the thousands of creators that produce fan art, cosplay, music and novels, and the team of talented creators behind their extensive content.

Troy Baker, who voiced Syldor in The Legend of Vox Machina animated series, was asked in a recent interview how it felt to finally be a part of the Critical Role family. As you may know, Baker has previously worked with many members of the cast on games like The Last Of Us and Call of Duty, and has watched CR grow from its “offhand and casual” beginnings to a worldwide enterprise.

“There is not a single word that would be considered hyperbole for what this is. It’s phenomenal, it’s remarkable”

“The most important thing that I have seen, the best by-product I have seen, the thing that I think is the true global phenomenon, is that anybody can create content. It takes truly skilled people to create good content, but it takes a truly heroic group of people to create a community.”

Troy Baker

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The Future of Liveplay D&D

Dungeons and Dragons is more popular in 2024 than ever, due in no small part to the booming popularity of liveplay DnD over the last ten years. Honour Among Thieves, the Hollywood DnD movie, brought the game to mainstream audiences in 2023, and the release of Baldur’s Gate 3 last year, a videogame famously based on DnD that uses much of its base mechanics and lore, brought even more popularity to the already famous franchise. DnD marked its 50th anniversary this year with the long-awaited release of three new core rulebooks, and though some big liveplay names are branching out into their own in-house systems, the popularity of liveplay shows no signs of slowing down.

Liveplay TTRPGs mark a new brand of narrative storytelling that is changing the way we see the modern fantasy genre, the way we see modern gaming as a whole, and is challenging long-held truths about the art of storytelling.

Liveplay transcends the restrictions of standard narrative. It goes beyond fiction, beyond fantasy, to become an experience in and of itself. An experience unlike any other. It fills a void in the fantasy space, offering fans a new way to experience the genre and gives creators access to a fast-growing and inclusive medium as a new form of expression.

Watching liveplay DnD is more than being told a story. It’s more than reading a story, or writing a story, or consuming a story. It’s about being part of a story, watching as it’s created, growing with the characters, and walking alongside the narrators as the story unfolds around you. It’s about taking a game you love, a game many people love, a game that is traditionally played for only a few, and showing the world what you can do with only a few dice and your imagination.

It’s about a new age of fantasy world-building, that rejects the historic tropes of the genre, and a growing community that is pushing the boundaries of fantasy, and promoting positive representation for everyone involved.

And it’s about a group of friends, sitting around a table, telling a story together.

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You don’t need to be a fantasy nerd to watch liveplay DnD. You don’t need to know the rules, have ever played it yourself, or have any intention of ever playing it yourself. What this genre offers goes far beyond the rules and mechanics of a game, and creates an open, collaborative space for storytelling to shine.

But don’t take my word for it.

Whether you’re into space opera, battle royale, demons and destruction, fairy tales, alien horror, high school hacking or drama and romance, have a watch for yourself, plug in and play…

and welcome to a new age in modern storytelling!

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