It’s human nature to tell stories. From cave paintings and oral traditions to structured narratives and printed prose, storytelling is part of how humans experience the world and how we share those experiences with others.

But there is a perceived hierarchy within the world of storytelling. Novels are seen as the ultimate expression of the art form, followed closely by short stories, plays, essays, and poems. Film and TV land somewhere further down the spectrum, followed by comics, graphic novels, and animation, which tend to be overlooked by purists who like to think drawing is a medium reserved for children. Further down still is short-form media, such as YouTube videos and advertising, and scattered throughout the list you’ll find adjacent mediums that tell stories without the need for the written word, such as music, dance, and art in all its forms.

Significantly missing from this hierarchy is the art of oral storytelling. I’m not talking about narrating a story aloud, performing a piece of prose to a crowd, or relaying a story once told to you to another, but rather, the art of weaving a narrative as you go, solely for the listeners present.

Traditional storytelling for a new audience

Oral storytelling is not a new concept. It has been present 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. In recent centuries the art form has fallen out of popularity, with modern audiences expecting a polished, practiced narrative rather than an ever changing, improvisational story. Case in point: ‘reality’ shows today even have scripts.

These days, oral storytelling is seen as a device for children, mainly as bedtime stories or imaginative games. If the modern consumer wants to experience a story, we might read a book, watch a movie, attend a show or a play. When conversing with others, we might reflect on the day’s events, offer insights and criticism, or relay an interesting anecdote, but seldom do we sit down and tell stories for the sake of telling stories. Rarely do we experience the creation of a story, and instead, we simply consume the end product once complete.

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

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Dungeons and Dragons: Nerd 101

If you are a stranger to the world of tabletop gaming, let me give you a quick lesson on this particular brand of nerd culture.

In Tabletop Roleplaying Games (TTPRGs), players create custom characters and roleplay as those characters around a table, playing through an adventure campaign narrated by their Game Master or Dungeon Master (the player responsible for facilitating the game). There are hundreds of brands of roleplaying games, covering all possible themes and genres, but the most famous, and the one that gives this style of game its reputation for wizards, goblins, and nerds in cloaks, is Dungeons and Dragons.

But how does Dungeons and Dragons, a roleplaying game that has been around since the 70s, constitute a “new” form of storytelling? People have been playing D&D for decades! What could possibly be new about it?

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 for years, and became popular with D&D fans in 2015 after Geek and Sundry started streaming the first campaign of Critical Role, the now world-renowned D&D liveplay creators.

Twitch allowed fans to not only watch games live, but provided an interactive platform to converse with the players directly, as well as other gamers and fans watching the show, creating an instant community around an already loved game. The show didn’t start out as polished or well produced as it is now, a fact that I believe added to its popularity. It wasn’t a Hollywood produced movie, all shiny and disinfected, rehearsed and perfect. It was real, warts and all, complete with fart jokes and spilled drinks, misunderstandings and disagreements. It felt like you were just watching a bunch of friends sitting around and playing a game they loved.

Matt Mercer, Dungeon Master for Critical Role, spoke on the power that D&D liveplay gave the community, and why it created such a boost in popularity for a game that has 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 it just snowballed from there. No one knew how popular 4+ hour videos would be on a platform made for short-form media, especially since marketing trends at the time were pushing for shorter and shorter content to capture people’s attention online. But stream they did, and watch it people did.

Online streaming skyrocketed the Dungeons and Dragons fan base, getting more and more people playing, growing the audience, and building a platform for even more groups to stream. From Critical Role, Dimension 20, Acquisitions Incorporated and High Rollers to the new supergroup dropping in march; Worlds Beyond Number… there are hundreds of TTRPG streamers growing this fledgling community, and showing us the power in this new form of storytelling.

How can games be storytelling?

But Franky? I hear you ask… How does playing a game constitute storytelling. I’ve played through Call Of Duty a few times, I wouldn’t call that storytelling!

And you would be right. When you play a regular game, be it a video game or boardgame, you consume a story that has already been written for you. You might be experiencing different parts of the story at different times depending on your choices in game, but the story you are uncovering has already been written.

With TTPRGs, there is a little more to it…

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Roleplaying as storytelling

There are two main components of tabletop roleplaying games that turn them from games into exercises in group storytelling: Roleplaying and sandbox gaming.

During a game, 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, all game mechanics, pretty much everything that happens, is narrated from the point of view of the characters in game. This creates an on-running dialogue between characters punctuated by descriptions and story hooks from the Dungeon Master (DM).

From an outside perspective, this allows a viewer to see the characters react and converse as the story unfolds, giving you insight into a character that you wouldn’t normally get from traditional narrative. As a player inside the game, are not watching as a story happens to your character, but rather, you become the character, actively involved in the story as it’s happening around you.

The second aspect that sets TTRPGs apart from other mediums, and allows them to be a storytelling device in their own right, is the sandbox nature of the game, and the specific role of the Dungeon Master.

The Dungeon Master is responsible for facilitating the game and guiding players through the world and the adventure, but unlike other styles of gaming, a session of D&D has no set boundaries. There are no predetermined quests that need to be completed or specific plot points that need to be hit. The story is free to become whatever the players want it to become.

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

Playing in the sandbox: Anything is possible

Each DM starts a game with an idea, an outline of possibilities. They have a world to place their story in and a notion of what’s happening in that world. Maybe the King is dead and war is breaking out across the land. Maybe goblins are raiding villages in the south and the Baroness is calling all able-bodied fighters to her cause.

The DM will create a bunch of these scenarios to throw at their players, but the thing that makes this particular game magical, that turns this from a mere game into a creative experiment in group storytelling, is the fact that the players have absolute creative control over where the story goes.

“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 power…

There is no right or wrong answer. There are no train tracks forcing the story to go in any one direction. Once the DM puts the pieces in front of the players, all bets are off. They release control of their story and let the collective group determine where the narrative takes them.

In no other medium is fiction so open to outside influence. In D&D, you don’t start with a story. There is no beginning, middle, or end figured out before you begin. There is a world, filled with possibilities and places for stories to happen, and the actual narrative gets created as you go.

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What Makes D&D the Perfect Catalyst for Powerful Group Storytelling

So, TTRPGs set the stage to tell stories through gaming, and liveplay streaming allows these stories to reach an ever-growing audience. But the big question is: are the stories told through the medium of D&D any good?

What is it that makes a great story? What makes a listener, reader, or viewer care about a character or invest in a plot line? What turns a good story into a great one?

There are multiple building blocks that make great fiction, and more specifically, great fantasy fiction. Plot structure, character development, world-building, and conflict; these things tie a story together, keep a reader invested, make them care. A good story is more than just interesting characters doing fantastic things. You need structure, resolution, and meaning.

So how could improvised, oral storytelling possibly compare to carefully crafted prose?

Creative conflict

The driving force of any story created through D&D comes from the players and the characters they’ve created, and each character in the game is designed and narrated by a different person.

Each character has their own goals, backstories, ambitions, and personalities. But what makes the narrative they create intrinsically different from standard fantasy fiction, is that so does each player.

Some players love exploring backstory and dialogue heavy interactions with other characters. Some players love combat and are always itching to draw their sword and resort to violence. And some players just want to explore, following every narrative thread and pushing the big red button marked ‘do not press’ just to see what happens.

Having this variety of motivations, not just from the characters but from the storytellers themselves, creates a rich and compelling narrative, that weaves together different styles of storytelling in a way standard fiction can not.

Generally, a novel is written by a single author, through whose eyes we see the world. This author can write varied characters with conflicting motivations, but they have an intrinsic opinion as to what makes a good story, and in the end, they’re in charge of where the story goes. With group storytelling, there is no one person in charge of the narrative, no one voice, or one possible ending. A Dungeon Master helps tie everything together, but the driving force behind the narrative comes from the collective motivations around the table.

It’s the characters that are at the heart of the story, and everyone is allowed to tell their story, in the way they want to tell it. This creates wildly different characters, with conflicting motivations and vastly different ways of reacting to the world.

Yes, And…

Having a collection of narrators at the table, all with their own motivations and goals for the story, makes liveplay D&D the perfect space for the ‘Yes, And’ style of improvisation.

Yes, And is a concept originating from improv comedy: 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).

This principle lends itself perfectly to roleplaying games, as the improvisational nature of the games relies on players coming up with interesting ideas and feeling empowered to share those ideas with the group. If a player makes a suggestion or tries to start a conversation during a scene that gets shot down and denied by the group, they will be less likely to contribute to the game in the future. For this style of group storytelling to work, everyone involved in the story needs to feel empowered to add to the narrative. Yes, And doesn’t mean that every question will be answered with a Yes, characters are still allowed to disagree, but the idea is that every suggestion will be accepted, played out at the table, and allowed to mature into part of the plot.

The And part of this principle is equally as important 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 while other players lose interest, or pursue their own narrative threads that aren’t linked to the main storyline.

The And makes sure every character is involved and every player is involved, and the story will be a collaborative effort from everyone at the table. From a game perspective, this creates character investment and player interaction. From a narrative perspective, this is the foundation of collaborative storytelling, and what sets this medium apart from all other styles of narrative fiction.

You can see this principle in play during any one of the top-rated D&D liveplay shows: Critical Role, Dimension 20, High Rollers- all of these players, and Dungeon Masters, actively use the ‘Yes, And’ style of improv to create a positive and inclusive space for creativity at their tables, expanding on each other’s ideas and actively participating in the collaboration process.

Watching as a story is created

From a viewer’s perspective, as an outside observer consuming liveplay content as entertainment, the popularity of this genre of storytelling comes from the magic of getting a front-row seat to the creation of a story.

In other narrative mediums; books, movies, TV, plays- the script is created off-screen, written before the moment, and presented as complete, polished, finished. It doesn’t matter if it’s good writing or terrible writing, the reader is not a part of the creation process.

Liveplay D&D breaks this integral rule. There is no polished story presented for our entertainment. We are not watching a rehearsed performance or scripted lines. The narrative is being created as we watch. The lines written in front of our eyes. There is no editing, no rehearsing. The story is real, constantly changing and adapting to the whims of our narrators. It can be rocky in parts, it can slow down and speed up, it can get stuck in circles or thrown off by unpredictable dice rolls, but the viewer gets to experience the story right alongside the narrators. You experience their excitement, their fear, their indecision, and suspicion. You get to celebrate a win, or console a loss, cross your fingers and hope for success, and hold your breath when the dice roll.

Instead of simply consuming the story, you become 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.

But because of the nature of TTRPGs and the fact that there is no set script, no pre-designed narrative to play through, the game itself forces players to create a story as a byproduct of playing the game. Storytelling comes baked into the rules.

The game mechanics of D&D 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. The game is reigned in and structured by the mechanics of dice, combat turn order, and character stat sheets. Player interaction, the core of any tabletop game, becomes storyline as players converse in character, and scene setting and backstory become narrative description as the DM explains to the players where they are in the world.

Let’s dive into some of these core mechanics, and how they bring narrative storytelling techniques to the forefront of this new medium.

Sewing the seeds of chaos

An integral game mechanic that adds structure and narrative consistency to a story crafted through D&D, are the little math rocks of possibility: 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. An author plots a narrative and decides the outcome of events depending on what they think is best for the story. When a narrative is tied to dice rolls, however, the story can end up in a completely unpredictable direction.

This might sound frustrating, but surprising your audience as a writer is integral to 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 narrative.

This style of narrative twist, this level of subverting expectations, comes hardwired into a story written via the medium of D&D. Without needing the guidance of a gifted author, the game itself creates unpredictability and tension, keeping the narrators and viewers on the edge of their seats, and infuses every interaction with surprise and a sprinkle of chaos.

A little Consistency

The complete randomness of dice rolls are somewhat mitigated by character stats and modifiers, which add strengths and weaknesses in game based on a character’s skills. From a narrative point of view, it lets a character live up to their persona, letting their successes and failures reflect the type of protagonist they are.

For example, if one character is particularly good at stealth and thievery, when faced with a locked door they might choose to stealth around the guards and pick the lock silently under the cover of night. If another character is particularly strong, they might choose to knock out the guards and smash the door in, as they are more likely to succeed on strength-based skills than dexterous ones.

Consistent character voice is integral to great fiction and is one thing that many new authors struggle with, writing themselves into a narrative corner that their main antagonist has to act completely out of character to get out of.

The mechanics of a D&D character sheet act like a creative writing coach, sitting next to our storytellers while they craft their narrative, reminding players: “Hey, when you wrote this character they were shy and lacking self-confidence. Are you sure they would make that decision at this particular point in the story?”. 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, that needs something, and throughout the story, they will either get that thing or not, and change and grow in the process. A character that ends a story the same as they started it falls flat, their journey feels pointless, their struggle a waste of time. Great characters are changed by the events of a great story.

The mechanics of D&D ensure this progression is a core part of the story. As players progress through a game they gain access to higher levels, which ultimately grant more powerful abilities during play. Separate this from the game itself, and you have characters growing and changing as a result of the trials they face.

Leveling up allows the players to face bigger threats and fight bigger monsters. 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 finally end up fighting gods. The stakes are raised, their actions have greater consequences, and as you journey alongside them, you get to see these characters grow into their powers, refine and redefine who they are, and become more fully realized versions of themselves.

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The Puppet master behind it all

Tying all these threads together, weaving in story-lines and backstory, and populating the world with heart and lore- we come back to the master of ‘Yes, And’, the unseen puppeteer and omnipotent world-builder: our beloved Dungeon Master.

If the players are our narrators and protagonists, and the game mechanics are our creative writing professor, then the Dungeon Master is our chief storyteller, final editor, publisher, and first reader all rolled into one- taking the raw threads of a story, the first draft mess of ideas and actions, and weaving 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 hits. But there is so much more to the role than just rules adjudicating and battle planning.

A good Dungeon Master will immerse you in the world with narrative description, bring NPCs to life with unique characterization, and make you feel invested in the story. A great DM will make every decision matter, will let go of the reigns and let the players take the story wherever they want to go.

Learning from the Masters

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

Brennan Lee Mulligan

There is no right or wrong way to DM; if everyone at the table is having fun then you’re doing it right. Having said that… there are ways to be a better DM, to make the story more engaging, to make encounters feel more real, and give players the chance to make meaningful decisions. There are good DMs, bad DMs, and a few great DMs.

When it comes to Dungeon Mastering, Critical Role’s Matt Mercer just so happens to be one of the best.

Incredible voice acting skills aside, Matt Mercer’s style of Dungeon Mastering is one of inclusivity, immersion, incredible attention to detail, and masterful storytelling. There is even a joke within the community known as the ‘Matt Mercer effect’: when rookie DMs are so in awe of Mercer’s skills that they become intimidated to try the game themselves.

Though most of us will never reach the level of talent Matt brings to the table, we can all learn a lot, DMs and authors alike, from watching Matt, and others like him, at work.

Making the chaos look intentional

One of the most integral differences between crafting a story through liveplay D&D and the standard art of storytelling through prose, is that none of our authors have final say over what happens. The DM can create possibilities, sew the seeds of intrigue and plot, but they can’t make the players, and protagonist, go one way or another. Their story is taken out of their hands.

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 in various interviews, as 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 know chaos and random chance are at the game’s core?

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

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 this style of storytelling, and goes a long way to explaining how some DMs create good stories and some create great ones.

The player, (or viewer, reader, or author), wants the convoluted character arcs. They want adventure and intrigue, chances for their character to fail and grow, chances to explore the lore and backstory that makes up the world they’ve created. But the character just wants to complete the quest. Characters in fiction don’t see themselves as characters, they don’t know they’re in a story, so their goal will always be to complete the objective in the most straightforward way possible.

Between these two contradictory motivations is where you find the story.

Brennen Lee Mulligan, DM for Dimension 20 and guest star on Critical Role, broached the idea during a roundtable discussion on the art of DMing liveplay D&D; that the job of a Dungeon Master, and the art of telling a compelling story, is to make both things true;

“To achieve the shape of a story whilst you were trying your hardest to go in a straight line”

The trick is to allow the characters to always choose the path of least resistance, but to guide that path in convoluted and engaging ways to give the players, and readers, the complex character arcs they crave.

It’s rails, rhythm, and three-act structure, but not in the way that you know them.

Rails vs Player Agency

Rails, or train-tracking, is the idea of forcing a story down one particular path regardless of the choices the characters make. When writing fiction, the author is the rails, but when storytelling through roleplaying games, player choice is the driving force.

So the rails in a game of D&D have to be far more malleable. Player choices have to matter. Players need to see the consequences of their actions to be invested in the outcome and stay immersed in the game. But behind the scenes, there needs to be consistency and on-running themes to tie the whole game, and the whole story, together.

Brennan Lee Mulligan, when speaking on his experience as a guest DM for a Critical Role, said that he sees rails 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. (Instead, I) 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)

In short: it’s free will and destiny working hand in hand. Your choices matter, but you’re going to keep moving in the direction I want you to go, and it’s a skill that sets world-class DMs like Matt Mercer, Brennan Lee Mulligan, and Aabria Iyengar, apart.

Doing the homework

Liveplay shows D&D don’t just happen on stream; there are hours of pre-planning that go into telling a great story. The general rule for TTRPG gaming is one hour of pre-game work per hour you expect to play, but for liveplay shows that stream to millions, that number will inevitably be higher.

It’s not as simple as just writing a script. There are months of pre-planning before a campaign starts: world-building, character creation, and overall story themes. Then for every game, there is the nitty gritty work of creating towns and environments and turning those ideas into maps; developing NPCs with unique identities for the players to interact with; and the number crunching of encounter creation- ensuring encounters are hard enough to be a threat, but not too hard to be impossible.

It’s a game of creating possibilities and potential, fleshed out enough to give each a unique flavor, but not too unique to stop them being reusable in a different scenario. It’s a balance of writing enough to be prepared, but not too much that it can’t all be thrown out and reworked at a moment’s notice. Planning for the unexpected, and expecting to be surprised.

Matt Mercer has this same approach to game prep; the idea of planning enough but making sure all that planning can be molded to fit with player actions:

“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.” (4)

You should know which things are important to tell the story, what the players need to drive them to their goals, and give them access to those 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 separate brilliant DMs like Mercer and Mulligan from those of us stumbling our way through a disjointed game- these things are not Magic, as much as they may appear so.

Just like any art form, these skills come hard-earned with time and practice.

Mulligan, Mercer, Matt Coville, Chris Perkins, Mark Hulmes and 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

There are countless additional details that turn a good liveplay game into great entertainment. D&D gives you the building blocks of a great narrative, but we all know that you need more than just a good story to make a great show.

There is production quality, audio and visual elements, immersive sets, lighting and music choices, acting skill, and narrative delivery. It’s no coincidence that two of the biggest names in liveplay D&D, Critical role and Dimension 20, also happen to be made up of trained actors, comedians, and voice actors. 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 of improvisation 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 D&D player, and how important those aspects become when put in front of an audience. The DM can only do so much to keep a story moving, and the players are equally as responsible for creating a captivating viewing experience.

Things that don’t matter during a home game (such as stopping the game to look up specific spell rules or taking a bathroom break right before your turn in combat) can break the immersion during a liveplay show. 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 an integral part of the process.

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.

The roleplaying aspect of liveplay games creates a space for both players and viewers to heal and grow through story, through shared experience. Fiction uses lies to tell us the truth, and a properly structured liveplay game, using safety mechanics for players and treated with respect, can tackle hard-hitting themes and darker narratives.

The cast of Critical Role have been telling stories for over 8 years, 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 of trying to leave the world better than you found it. Very real topics of betrayal, abuse, the darker side of responsibility, and caving in to the desire for power are dealt with by various characters 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.

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 the many stories of Critical Role are set, you won’t find fair maidens waiting to be rescued by dashing knights, or strange women lying in ponds distributing swords (thank you Monty Python).

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 gender identity and sexual orientation that actively rejects the gender stereotypes common to the genre. There are enough horrors to explore in Exandria, homophobia and gender bias don’t need to be one of them.

It’s refreshing to see a fantasy genre that uses diversity and inclusivity as more than just a plot device but as an honest and natural part of the world. This positive portrayal of all identities and orientations is severely lacking in the fantasy genre as a whole and sets many of these new TTRPG-based 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 these 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 D&D, just recently celebrating their 8-year streaming anniversary. These days they produce not only liveplay content, but also novels, comics, board games, music, art, miniatures, dice, apparel, and an original animated TV show- all based on the stories they tell through D&D.

Over the years, the community of CR has continued to grow, with an array of guest stars joining the main cast at the table and behind the microphones. Names from across the range of fandom include: Patrick Rothfuss, Wil 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 art, and the team of talented creators behind their content.

Troy Baker, who voiced Syldor in the second season of The Legend of Vox Machina: the animated show based on CR’s first D&D campaign, was asked in a recent interview how it felt to finally be a part of Critical Role. 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

Liveplay D&D marks a new brand of narrative storytelling that is changing the way we see the modern fantasy genre, and challenging long-held truths about the art of storytelling.

This game, that is more than a game, transcends the restrictions of standard narrative. It goes beyond fiction, beyond fantasy, to become an experience in itself unlike any other. It fills a void in the fantasy space, offering fans a new way to experience the genre, and giving creators a fast-growing and inclusive medium as a new form of expression.

It’s more than being told a story, more than reading a story, or writing 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 we 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 anyone and everyone.

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 D&D. You don’t need to know the rules of the game, have ever played it yourself, or have any intention of ever tabletop roleplaying. 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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