Watch Us Roll

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 Watch Us Roll
Essays on Actual Play and Performance in Tabletop ­-
Role-Playing Games
Edited by Shelly Jones
Studies in Gaming
Series Editor Matthew Wilhelm Kapell

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers

Jefferson, North Carolina

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 Studies in Gaming
The Play Versus Story Divide in Game Studies: Critical Essays (Matthew Wilhelm Kapell, editor, 2016)
Player and Avatar: The Affective Potential of Videogames (David Owen, 2017)
Speedrunning: Interviews with the Quickest Gamers (David Snyder, 2017)
The Minds Behind the Games: Interviews with Cult and Classic Video Game Developers (Patrick Hickey,
Jr., 2018)
The Postmodern Joy of ­Role-Playing Games: Agency, Ritual and Meaning in the Medium (René
Reinhold Schallegger, 2018)
Responding to Call of Duty: Critical Essays on the Game Franchise (Nate Garrelts, editor, 2018)
Storytelling in the Modern Board Game: Narrative Trends from the Late 1960s to Today (Marco
Arnaudo, 2018)
Storytelling in Video Games: The Art of the Digital Narrative (Amy M. Green, 2018)
Teach Like a Gamer: Adapting the Instructional Design of Digital ­Role-Playing Games (Carly Finseth,
2018)
Video Gaming in Science Fiction: A Critical Study (Jason Barr, 2018)
The Composition of Video Games: Narrative, Aesthetics, Rhetoric and Play (Johansen Quijano, 2019)
­Forum-Based Role Playing Games as Digital Storytelling (Csenge Virág Zalka, 2019)
Narrative Design and Authorship in Bloodborne: An Analysis of the Horror Videogame (Madelon
Hoedt, 2019)
The Pokémon Go Phenomenon: Essays on Public Play in Contested Spaces (Jamie Henthorn, Andrew
Kulak, Kristopher Purzycki, Stephanie Vie, editors, 2019)
The Minds Behind Adventure Games: Interviews with Cult and Classic Video Game Developers (Patrick
Hickey, Jr., 2020)
The Minds Behind Sports Games: Interviews with Cult and Classic Video Game Developers (Patrick
Hickey, Jr., 2020)
Rerolling Boardgames: Essays on Themes, Systems, Experiences and Ideologies (Douglas Brown, Esther ­-
MacCallum-Stewart, editors, 2020)
What Is a Game? Essays on the Nature of Videogames (Gaines S. Hubbell, editor, 2020)
Women and Video Game Modding: Essays on Gender and the Digital Community (Bridget Whelan,
editor, 2020)
The Minds Behind Shooter Games: Interviews with Cult and Classic Video Game Developers (Patrick
Hickey, Jr., 2021)
Roleplaying Games in the Digital Age: Essays on Transmedia Storytelling, Tabletop RPGs and Fandom
(Stephanie Hedge and Jennifer Grouling, editors, 2021)
Strictly Fantasy: The Cultural Roots of Tabletop ­Role-Playing Games (Gerald Nachtwey, 2021)
Who’s in the Game? Identity and Intersectionality in Classic Board Games (Terri Toles Patkin, 2021)
Playing with the Guys: Masculinity and Relationships in Video Games (Marc A. Ouellette, 2021)
Being Dragonborn: Critical Essays on The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Edited by Mike Piero and Marc A.
Ouellette, 2021)
Watch Us Roll: Essays on Actual Play and Performance in Tabletop ­Role-Playing Games (Shelly Jones,
editor, 2021)
The Minds Behind Sega Genesis Games (Patrick Hickey, Jr., 2021)

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 This book has undergone peer review.

ISBN (print) ­978–1-4766–7762–0

ISBN (ebook) ­978–1-4766–4343–4
Library of Congress and British Library cataloguing data are available
Library of Congress Control Number 2021030884
© 2021 Shelly Jones. All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publisher.
Front cover images © 2021 Shutterstock
Printed in the United States of America

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers

Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640
www.mcfarlandpub.com
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To Keith, who encouraged me to play the cleric all those years ago
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 Acknowledgments
Many thanks to our fellow gamers, family, and friends, who
supported this project through copious hours of discussion,
watching YouTube, and, perhaps most importantly, playing with
us.
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 Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Preface
Shelly Jones
Introduction: From Actually Playing to Actual Play
Shelly Jones
What Is Actual Play?
Actual Play Reports: Forge Theory and the Forums
Evan Torner
Birth of a New Medium or Just Bad TV? Framing and Fractality of Actual
Play
Julia J.C. Blau
Audience, Framing and Flow
Critical Role and Audience Impact on Tabletop Roleplay
Robyn Hope
Communal Narrative in Actual Play Environments: Roles of Participants,
Observers and Their Intersections
Anthony David Franklin
“Your fun is wrong”: Actual Play and Fans
Diversity and Audience Interaction in Critical Role and The Adventure Zone
G.L. van Os
Critical Fails: Fan Reactions to Player and Character Choices in Critical Role
Christine Dandrow
Actual Play Audience as Archive: Analyzing the Critical Role Fandom
Shelly Jones
Commodification and Pedagogy: Other Approaches and Uses of
Actual Play
Consumable Play: A Performative Model of Actual Play Networks
Mariah E. Marsden and Kelsey Paige Mason
Actual Play as Actual Learning: What Gamers, Teachers and Designers Can
 Learn About Learning from Actual Play Videos
Alex Layne
Conclusion
Shelly Jones
About the Contributors
Index of Terms
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 Preface
Shelly Jones

In the summer of 2013 my partner, Keith, downloaded the playtest for

DnD Next, a text that would ultimately become the basis for D&D 5e. For a
long time, we had been talking with our close friends, Lisa and Chris, about
potentially playing Dungeons & Dragons. Chris and Keith, being men who
grew up in the ’70s and ’80s, had played when they were teenagers and
fondly remembered the red box, playing in a friend’s basement, having a
beloved character killed off with an entertaining story: the kind of
experience that would be glorified and ­nostalgia-fied by the hit Netflix
original show Stranger Things, but without the demogorgon. Lisa had never
played but had devoured the Dragonlance novels as a teen and ­secretly-not-
so-secretly loved “nerd shit,” as she would affectionately call it. I, on the
other hand, was, at the time, a complete newb. I had an abstract notion of
what it meant to play Dungeons & Dragons, and in fact, it scared me. I am
not referring to any remnant of the Satanic Panic, although after we began
playing, my mother did ask me repeatedly if I was participating in any
“weird rituals.” No. The idea of playing D&D scared me because I thought of
it as acting—and I was always a backstage kind of kid. I was nervous about
the idea of performing, of making an ass out of myself, of doing it wrong,
even (or maybe especially) in front of my friends. For years Keith had joked
that we were going to play D&D and that I would play the healer, a
suggestion he thought would bring me comfort. (I do, to this day, prefer
being a support character as opposed to taking center stage.) So finally, one
day, we rolled up characters and got down to it.
While we had been debating about playing or not, Keith had come across
a few podcasts of people playing D&D. We started listening to the inaugural
sessions of what eventually would become Acquisitions Incorporated. As a
total newbie, it was comforting listening to Chris Perkins patiently guide the
players (some veteran like Jerry Holkins and some completely new like me,
Mike Krahulik) through creating their characters and eventually playing.
“Can I roll to kill Irontooth?” asks Mike Krahulik, ­half-jokingly but
somewhat seriously as he tries to feel out the paradigm of D&D in the first
episode. This was something I could relate to; this reassured me that maybe I
wouldn’t “mess it up” as though D&D were an art form, a performance, a
thing to be judged by others.1
Personally, we are still active players (and maybe not as active as we wish
to be: insert meme of trying to schedule game sessions with friends) of
several campaigns. We listen to actual play podcasts on long car rides or
walking to work. We follow actual play players on Twitter and read updates
on the industry. We’ve watched Acquisitions Incorporated spiral into several
other shows with new players, watched Critical Role become a ­multimillion-
dollar endeavor. We use Roll20 to play with friends who have moved away
and have started playing with a colleague’s teenage daughter whose friends
think it’s still nerdy to play D&D. Not only do we play and watch, but we
write, too. Listening to actual play podcasts and discovering new ways to
play games helped spur my scholarship as I began analyzing ­role-playing
games of all kinds. One day in the summer of 2018 my husband and I were
spending some quality time on the couch the way many modern couples do:
we were each engrossed in our own device reading about things that interest
us. On this particular occasion, my husband turned to me and asked me if I
knew that Analog Game Studies, a scholarly journal that I coedit with Aaron
Trammel, Evan Torner, and Emma Waldron, had been nominated for the
Diana Jones Award for Excellence in Gaming.2
“What? Let me see. Is that real?” I asked, unwilling to believe that the
reddit thread he was reading was legitimate. After some quick googling, I
was thunderstruck that our academic pursuit could be nominated for one of
the most prestigious awards in the analog gaming arena. We soon received
an invitation to attend an industry party the night before GenCon in
Indianapolis, where the award would be announced. On the night of the
party, we nerdily got to the party venue first and staked out the best booth,
as though we were still those good students of our youth sitting in the front
of the classroom. Sitting there, sipping beer from plastic cups, I watched as
board game designers and gaming personalities that I recognized began to
mingle and celebrate. Meanwhile, I sat in our booth, agog, trying desperately
not to ­fan-girl out.3 But as I sat there watching actual play stars like Ivan van
Norman, Ruty Ruttenberg, and Satine Phoenix accept the Diana Jones
Award that year, I became more than just ­star-struck. The ­aca-fan in me
began to think that there was more to the concept of actual play than
simply ­binge-watching Critical Role or listening to Acquisitions Incorporated
on road trips. This was a phenomena that deserved academic study. This, I
thought, needed a book.

Notes
1. And yet, here we are seven years later, and we have the Mercer effect: the “unrealistic expectations
of new Dungeons & Dragons players who believe their games will be similar to Critical Role”
(Girdwood), so perhaps my initial nervousness about my acting ability wasn’t completely
unwarranted.
2. See https://www.dianajonesaward.org/.
3. Thankfully, this had not been my first GenCon experience. At my first con, it took me three passes
to walk up to the Table Titans booth because I couldn’t muster up the courage to talk to the artist,
Scott Kurz, who, for several years, was also part of Acquisitions Incorporated. “I’ve seen him on the tv,”
I tried explaining to my husband, who wondered where his confident, professorial wife had wandered
off to and who this ­puddle-person was next to him.

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 Introduction
From Actually Playing to Actual Play
Shelly Jones

We are living in a golden age of tabletop ­role-playing games. Despite

persistent stereotypical portrayals of D&D players on network television,1
the ­role-playing game community continues to thrive. The recent resurgence
of tabletop ­role-playing games has come about, in part, due to the
convergence of participatory culture and gaming. No longer are players
hiding away in their parents’ basement. No longer is Dungeons & Dragons
erroneously synonymous with the occult, witchcraft, and the Satanic Panic
of the ’80s. Instead, players are freely gaming in their homes, in their local
board game stores, on virtual tabletop simulators like Roll20, and on live
streaming platforms like Twitch and YouTube Live. Curiously, it is this
intersection of technology and analog gaming that has transformed
tabletop ­role-playing games from a covert act that once labeled someone a
“nerd” to a ­multimillion-dollar entertainment industry. As noted by ­-
MacCallum-Stewart and Trammell, RPGs “demand fan involvement and
sharing, and, with the rise of online video sharing (e.g., YouTube) and live
streaming of gameplay (e.g., Twitch), they are also easy to consume for
spectators” (p. 374). Nowadays, not only are more folks playing tabletop
roleplaying games like Dungeons & Dragons than ever before,2 but they’re
also watching other people play Dungeons & Dragons and other RPGs.3
Actual play is the live streaming or recording of people playing ­role-playing
games to be consumed by others in the form of videos and/or podcasts.
Similar to video game “let’s plays,” “actual plays” are a form of “new
entertainment phenomenon” (Hope 1) in which people watch other people
play games. It is estimated that in 2017 “9 million people watched others
play D&D on Twitch, immersing themselves in the world of the game
without ever having to pick up a die or cast a spell” (Pilon). Wizards of the
Coast, the company that produces Dungeons & Dragons, believes that over
40 million people are playing D&D (BusinessWeek). According to one
assessment, more than half of the people currently playing Dungeons &
Dragons were inspired to play by watching and listening to actual play shows
and podcasts (IGN).4 These online streams are not only serving as a kind of
entertainment, but they are inspiring a new generation of storytellers.
Actual play has become a phenomenon in modern culture. It seems every
few weeks there is an article in the Guardian or the New York Times that has
to reiterate and reassure their readers: no really, D&D is cool again!5 Seen on
shows like Stranger Things and The Big Bang Theory, tabletop roleplaying
games are not only “having a moment” as one article from 2018 claimed
(Hall), but rather are quickly being assimilated into mainstream media. In
September 2019 it was announced that FunkoPop! would be creating figures
of the characters from both seasons of the actual play Critical Role (Hoffer).
As a testament to its nearly mainstream status, celebrities like Stephen
Colbert are rolling up characters as a way to nostalgically recreate their
childhood experiences.6 Indeed, educators across the world are touting the
impact of cooperative storytelling games like D&D on students’
development in imagination, ­problem-solving, and other cognitive function
(Bowman 2010, Adams 2013, Gilsdorf 2018).
As actual plays have become more popular and created more content,
there has been a continued proliferation of the source of that media: namely
TRPG content. Indeed, we are seeing ways in which campaign content by
players and unofficial game designers is being folded into and brought into
the canonical Dungeons & Dragons world. Acquisitions Incorporated, a ­long-
time actual play DMed by Wizards of the Coast lead designers, now has its
own official Dungeons & Dragons manual. With the help of this new
product, players may utilize official rulesets for how to organize a corporate
environment in their own campaigns, following the business model and
acumen of Omin Dran (Jerry Holkins’ character in Aqc Inc). Similarly, the
Critical Role Tal’Dorei Campaign Setting (5e) was published by Green Ronin
as a guide for players to create their own campaigns in the world imagined
and built by Matthew Mercer. While this text was not published by Wizards
of the Coast, by September 2019 Critical Role was brought into the official
Dungeons & Dragons canon. In the latest (as of this writing) official
adventure by Wizards of the Coast, Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus, an
NPC (­non-player character) named Arkan appears. This character was
created and embodied by Joe Manganiello, who guest starred on Critical
Role as this character, wowing fellow players and audiences with his
portrayal of the Dragonborn Paladin/Barbarian, as he deceived the party
during his ­two-episode appearance. Wizards of the Coast is now capitalizing
on the popularity of this character, incorporating him in Descent into
Avernus. Within Arkan’s official backstory in this text is a reference to
Exandria, the world in which Critical Role takes place (Hoffer). So while we
do not (yet) have official Critical Role products created by Wizards of the
Coast, the narrative of the actual play show has affected official Dungeons &
Dragons content. This example of transmedia storytelling further reiterates
the narrative and financial potential of actual play as a medium and market.
The essays in this book explore the historical, ­socio-cultural,
psychological, and pedagogical implications of the concept of actual play.
While none of the essays in this book are scoring these actual play shows on
some grand TRPG grading rubric, we are now at a point where the playing
of games like Dungeons & Dragons is a digestible, consumable text for
individuals to watch, enjoy, learn from, and, for ­aca-fans like us, to analyze.
It should be noted that the majority of the live streams and actual plays
mentioned in this book are based on Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition.
However, this is in no way meant to disregard or discredit the myriad of
indie ­role-playing games, ­one-shots, and actual plays out there. The actual
play world is replete with a wide variety of rulesets, editions, and types of
play. While the essays here focus specifically on D&D, particularly Critical
Role, The Adventure Zone, and Acquisitions Incorporated, there are thousands
of actual plays, videos, and podcasts out there for folks to enjoy. Dungeons &
Dragons is not the only gaming system, and I would encourage anyone to
look into and support indie ­role-playing game designs and designers.
The first section grounds the reader in the fundamental understanding of
what the concept of actual play is, how it has evolved over the years, and
how it can be understood as a genre unto itself. In Evan Torner’s essay he
provides an etymological and ontological study of the term “actual play” and
its origins on the seminal Indie tabletop ­role-playing game forum The Forge.
His examination provides insight into the ways in which “actual play
reports” began as a pathway for game designers to experiment with the
system and design of their developments. Torner then contrasts these design
analyses with the performative aspects of the current actual play media
spectacle. But what is this media that is part game, part narrative, sometimes
audio, sometimes ­audio-visual? Some actual play franchises are viewed as a
kind of television show, even going so far as to have their own (or several)
imdb.com pages (e.g., Critical Role, Acquisitions Incorporated, Acquisitions
Incorporated: The “C” Team to name a few). Yet others, such as those
specifically created by Wizards of the Coast like Dice, Camera Action and
Rivals of Waterdeep, are not showcased on imdb.com and not categorized in
the genre of television show. Utilizing mathematical and psychological
methodology, Julia J.C. Blau argues that actual play videos should be
considered a burgeoning new medium. Her study analyzes actual play video
footage and discovers a fractal pattern within the editing structure which
indicates that this type of entertainment qualifies as a new medium
altogether. These two essays introduce the reader to the underpinnings of
actual play, focusing on ways in which we can understand this gaming
phenomenon.
The essays in the second section “Audience, Framing and Flow,” each
explore that which makes actual play different from simply playing a
roleplaying game: the audience. By looking at this new element of gameplay,
these authors illuminate the performative aspect of actual play, highlighting
how play can transform into something more. Utilizing frame analysis
theory and the concept of flow, Robyn Hope analyzes actual plays in order to
determine how and why these shows appeal to audiences. She carefully
dissects key moments in Critical Role and The Adventure Zone to examine
what specific aspects of these shows, and others, transform them from
watchable play to entertainment. In his essay, Anthony David Franklin
explores the ­ever-blurring roles of observer and participant in relationship
to actual play, noticing how the boundaries dividing these roles becomes
increasingly less defined. Looking at actual play as a model of communal
narrative, Franklin discusses the significance of the observers on actual plays
and how the addition of an audience can affect the ludonarrative elements of
the game.
In the section “‘Your fun is wrong’: Actual Play and Fans,” the authors
investigate how digital participatory culture interacts with and potentially
affects the content of tabletop ­role-playing games. Focusing on the
representation of diversity within the show Critical Role and The Adventure
Zone, G.L. van Os analyzes the audience responses to the ways in which
these actual plays incorporate diverse characters. Their work highlights the
need for balanced and respectful attention to equality within RPGs and
Dungeons & Dragons in particular, a product that has had a ­long-fraught
relationship with incorporating diversity into their modules.7
Diving into the fandom of Critical Role, the next two essays examine the
role of fans on actual plays and the ­sometimes-fraught relationship between
fans and the narrative. Christine Dandrow explores the ways in which the
performative framing of actual play affects the fans’ perception of player
failure. Her essay highlights the nuances of fan agency in the realm of actual
play, emphasizing the tensions inherent in a genre that blends together game
mechanics and narrative.
In her essay analyzing the ­fan-created spaces such as the Critical Role
Fandom wiki, Shelly Jones investigates how actual play fans carefully elide
negative representation of their fandom objects by altering the narrative
details in their paratexts. These acts of erasure reiterate the toxically positive
attitude surrounding the Critters and, though intended to protect the
reputation of the show, ultimately function as a kind of gatekeeping of the
fandom.
In the final section of the book, “Commodification and Pedagogy: Other
Appraoches and Uses of Actual Play,” we find essays dedicated to
understanding actual play as something more than mere entertainment. In
their study, Mariah E. Marsden and Kelsey Paige Mason examine the
phenomenon of actual play through a lens of consumable play by
emphasizing the capitalistic opportunities inherent to the larger gaming
network. Their analysis focuses on the tensions between play and
performance, creation and consumption within several actual play shows,
particularly The Adventure Zone and Critical Role. Alex Layne takes a
holistic approach to actual plays as she examines the ways in which this
immersive and interactive entertainment can serve as a form of pedagogical
tool. Exploring the instructional application of actual play shows, Layne
argues that this genre of entertainment may be educational for both the
audience as well as the players.
All of these essays provide key insights into the phenomenon of Dungeons
& Dragons actual play, examining not only why these podcasts and
livestreams have become popular, but how they contribute to the overall
hobby of tabletop ­role-playing games. While there is certainly more to be
said about the ­ever-growing body of actual play texts, the essays here add
significantly to the ongoing scholarly conversation surrounding Dungeons &
Dragons.

Appendix
While it would be impossible to include information about every single
actual play podcast and stream, it is important to me to acknowledge
additional shows out there not referenced in these essays. When creating
this edited collection, I noticed that the majority of the proposed essays were
dedicated to, what are arguably, the more popular actual play media: Critical
Role, The Adventure Zone, and Acquisitions Incorporated. However, there are
many, many other creators and players out there, featuring mainstream and
indie ­role-playing game systems alike. Please note that this list is by no
means exhaustive and merely scratches the surface of available content. If
you are interested in discovering other podcasts, I highly recommend
www.rpgcasts.com, a very thorough directory of ­role-playing game shows.
In particular, RPG Casts is dedicated to highlighting podcasts created by or
featuring marginalized folks.

Acquisitions Incorporated
https://www.­penny-arcade.com/podcasts/show/ai
Starting off as a D&D 4e podcast, this collaboration between Penny
Arcade and Wizards of the Coast quickly became a ­much-beloved actual
play. The cast, which has changed over the years, plays live at the PAX
(Penny Arcade Expo) shows throughout the year. Acquisitions Incorporated
is now officially part of the world of Dungeons & Dragons with a campaign
book featuring how to franchise on adventuring.
Acquisitions Incorporated: The “C” Team
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?
list=PLjZRIC6PMEFkWSAyAcwsiqCIbKXe9lMoF
A ­spin-off of the Acquisitions Incorporated, this weekly actual play
livestream and podcast is DMed by Jerry Holkins, a player in the original
series. This group also features live shows at various PAX events.
The Adventure Zone
https://www.themcelroy.family/theadventurezone
 Originating as a ­one-off of the My Brother, My Brother, and Me podcast,
The Adventure Zone quickly garnered critical acclaim as its own podcast on
the Maximum Fun network. The Adventure Zone now features multiple
campaigns and different tabletop RPG systems including D&D, the FATE
system, the Monster of the Week system, the Urban Shadows system and
more.
Bombarded
https://bombardedcast.com/
A combination of actual play and concert, this podcast features musicians
playing bards in various Dungeons & Dragons campaigns.
Critical Role
https://critrole.com/
Arguably the most popular actual play, Critical Role started off as a live-
streamed show through the Geek and Sundry channel. Their two larger
campaigns are based off of Dungeons & Dragons, but they often produce ­-
one-shots that showcase indie RPGs such as the ­much-beloved Honey Heist,
a free, ­one-page RPG created by Grant Howitt.
D&D Live 2020: Roll with Advantage
https://dnd.wizards.com/dndlive2020
A special ­three-day event hosted by Wizards of the Coast featuring
multiple live streamed sessions. This event served as a promotion for the
newest campaign adventure book, Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frost Maiden, as
well as a fundraiser to support the charity Red Nose Day Fund.
D&D Presents
https://dnd.wizards.com/articles/events/­dd-presents
A newer official Wizards of the Coast actual play show, D&D Presents:
T.O.R.C.H. was announced in the Fall of 2019, with a planned debut in
Spring 2020. The ­Covid-19 pandemic seems to have affected the premiere of
this show, which was to feature ­long-time professional DM, Chris Perkins.
D20 Dames
https://d20dames.com/
This ­bi-weekly podcast features an ­all-woman cast playing Dungeons &
Dragons. In their three seasons of content, they frequently have special guest
stars on their episodes. This show is also very conscientious about providing
trigger warnings regarding the content of their episodes.
D20 Live
https://www.youtube.com/user/D20Live
First created in 2012, D20 Live is a livestream show out of Canada that
features videos about how to DM, live tutorials of on various ­role-playing
game systems (e.g., Fate, Paranoia, Shadowrun, etc.), and various campaigns
(e.g., Dark Sun, Legend of Five Rings, etc.).
Dark and Dicey
https://dnd.wizards.com/articles/events/­dark-dicey
DMed by Kaiji Tang, this ­short-lived actual play told the story of a group
of shipwrecked villains who encounter a tyrannical Mageocracy on an island
nation. The ­twenty-two episodes can be found on youtube.com and Twitch.
Dice, Camera, Action
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?
list=PLfS8QgUdeGYo8F3RPUQ2Wsi2mZLPcaU6X
DMed by the prolific Chris Perkins, Dice, Camera, Action was a much-
beloved actual play podcast that lasted for four seasons. Another official
Wizards of the Coast product, this show featured live ­play-throughs of
Dungeons & Dragons campaign books (e.g., Curse of Strahd, Storm King’s
Thunder, etc.).
DiceStormers
https://www.youtube.com/channel/­UCiHMbAFXhVslHs0wPd8-JrA
Created in 2011, DiceStormers is an actual play show that varies its
campaign materials. They have played systems such as Pathfinder, Call of
Cthulhu, Shadowrun, and more. They also feature “how to” videos for
budding DMs to learn how to run various campaigns as well as videos on
generating characters for players.
Dimension 20
https://www.youtube.com/channel/­UCC8zWIx8aBQme-x1nX9iZ0A
A product of the internet comedy company College Humor, Dimension
20 features six campaigns DMed by Brennan Lee Mulligan with rotating cast
members. With over 120,000 subscribers on YouTube, this show is a very
popular actual play.
Dragon Friends
https://thedragonfriends.com/
An Australian comedy podcast, Dragon Friends has six seasons of
content. Many of their episodes are performed as comedy shows before a
live audience (though this format was unfortunately cancelled due to the ­-
Covid-19 pandemic).
Dungeon Dome
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/oneshotpodcast/­dungeon-dome-
season-1
Combining Dungeons & Dragons with professional wrestling, Dungeon
Dome is an actual play show created by James D’Amato of One Shot podcast
fame. A successful Kickstarter in 2018 allowed for the creation of 15
episodes of the livestreamed show that can be found on YouTube.
Dungeon Drunks
https://www.dungeondrunks.com/
Dungeon Drunks is a weekly actual play podcast using the Dungeons &
Dragons system. Initiated by a convention charity game, this group
frequently plays in order to raise money for Extra Life, a fundraiser that
emphasizes the power of play for children in need.
Dungeons & Daddies
https://dungeonsanddaddies.com/
On the surface, it is what it says: dads playing Dungeons & Dragons.
Beneath that surface, however, are five professional writers and actors who
make content for their living, in addition to playing D&D. The show began
in January 2019 and still is being produced as of this writing.
Encounter Party!
https://encounterparty.com/
Using Dungeons & Dragons as their ruleset, Encounter Party! is a podcast
that features five professional actors. They have two seasons, Living in
Fantasy and a run through of Ravnica, and are currently producing a third
campaign, Islabrea.
Encounter Roleplay
https://www.youtube.com/c/EncounterRoleplay/featured
A U.K.-based actual play livestream, Encounter Roleplay was created in
2015. They feature a variety of gaming systems including Dungeons &
Dragons, Warhammer, Alien, Zweihander, Masks, Call of Cthulhu and more.
The End of Time and Other Bothers
https://albasalix.com/­other-bothers/
This ­bi-weekly actual play podcast features the Dungeon World
roleplaying system. They emphasize that in the content of their shows, no
animals are harmed. In addition to links to their podcast and patreon page,
their website features links to their character sheets, allowing listeners to
immerse themselves further into their content.
Fandible
https://fandible.com/
Featuring many indie ­role-playing games (e.g., Ten Candles,
Monsterhearts, Dread, Masks, Blades in the Dark, etc.), Fandible has a little
something for everyone and is a great choice of podcast for those who want
to see many different flavors of RPGs. They feature both ­one-shot and
campaigns and produce content weekly.
A Fist Full of Dice
https://www.youtube.com/c/aFistfulofDice/
Started in 2012 by Matt Click, this actual play livestream features episodes
with multiple game systems including Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, Call
of Cthulhu, and more. This project also features ­how-to videos with tips and
advice for DMs and players alike.
Force Grey
https://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/­force-grey-giant-hunters
A collaboration between Wizards of the Coast and The Nerdist, Force Grey
was a ­web-series created to promote new D&D campaign books (e.g., Storm
King’s Thunder and Tomb of Annihilation). DMed by Matthew Mercer
(Critical Role), the cast featured several famous actors including Joe
Manganiello, Ashley Johnson, Chris Hardwick, Deborah Ann Woll, and
more.
Ghostpuncher Corps
https://ghostpuncher.net/corps/
Set in the world of Ghostpuncher, this actual play podcast features a
diverse cast who play hunters gathering entities that have escaped Hell.
Emphasizing accessibility, their website features transcripts of their episodes
in addition to audio links.
Girls, Guts, Glory
https://www.girlsgutsgloryrpg.com/
An ­all-woman cast, this weekly livestream features friends playing
Dungeons & Dragons in costume. If you are interested in cosplay or just
want to see beautiful costumes and excellent narratives, this livestream is a
must.
Glass Cannon
https://glasscannonnetwork.com/
An official podcast of Paizo, the company that creates the Pathfinder RPG
system, Glass Cannon provides weekly content. Highly regarded, this
podcast offers shorter episodes averaging between ­forty-five and ninety
minutes.
Godsfall
https://godsfall.simplecast.com/
Combining Dungeons & Dragons 5e with some homebrew elements,
Godsfall began in 2015. In addition to weekly content, the creator, Aram
Vartian, has produced two successful Kickstarters to publish the Godsfall
worldbook and a campaign book, Rise of the Demigods.
Greetings Adventurers (previously known as Drunks and Dragons)
https://geeklyinc.com/tag/­greetings-adventurers/
With nearly four hundred episodes created (as of this writing), this
weekly podcast is one of longest lasting. Begun in 2012, Greetings
Adventurers is an ­award-winning podcast using the Dungeons & Dragons
RPG system.
Happy Jacks RPG
http://www.happyjacks.org/
Started in 2012, this actual play and advice show provides a wide variety
of content featuring many different RPG systems. Featuring a diverse cast,
Happy Jacks emphasizes being approachable and accessible to new and
veteran players alike.
HarmonQuest
https://vrv.co/series/GRNQZ129R/HarmonQuest
What began as a bit in a ­stand-up comedy act by Dan Harmon, creator of
Community and Rick and Morty, has developed into a ­multi-season adult
cartoon. The ­stand-up episodes can be found on the Harmontown D&D
YouTube channel. HarmonQuest, the tv show, was on the VRV network and
can now be found on Amazon Prime Video.
Heart Beats
https://www.heartbeatspodcast.com/
Using a homebrewed version of the Ryuutama RPG system, Heart Beats
began in 2018. This show resists the typical epic fantasy and instead focuses
on the everyday lives of folks living in a fantasy realm.
Heroes of the Vale
https://dnd.wizards.com/articles/events/­heroes-vale
Another Wizards of the Coast creation, this actual play livestream lasted
35 episodes and was DMed by Todd Kenreck, Content Director for D&D
Beyond. The episodes can be found on the D&D Beyond YouTube channel.
High Rollers
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3qtZRMtWNaD2Q96STxgOrA
DMed by Mark Hulmes, High Rollers is an actual play livestream out of
the UK that uses the Dungeons & Dragons system. To date, this is the largest
RPG stream in Europe and boasts over 80,000 subscribers on YouTube.
Join the Party
https://www.jointhepartypod.com/
This ­bi-weekly podcast began in 2017 and has multiple campaigns as well
as ­one-shot episodes featuring indie RPGs. With an emphasis on
worldbuilding and helping new gamers, Join the Party includes ­pre-game
episodes to highlight the creative process behind the gaming sessions.
Maze Arcana
https://www.youtube.com/channel/­UC6N3-Mjh3VdU0lOU7sBewAA
­Co-created by Satine Phoenix and Ruty Rutenberg, Maze Arcana was
another actual play livestream sponsored by Wizards of the Coast. The
livestream included multiple campaigns such as the Inkwell Society set in
Eberron, the ­all-woman gaming group of Sirens of the Realm, as well as the
Theogony of Kairos campaign DMed by B. Dave Walters.
Missclicks
https://wiki.roll20.net/Misscliks
 Missclicks began with the intention of being an online community
dedicated to increasing representation of women within gaming. Acting as
advocates and role models, Missclicks created multiple series and campaigns
featuring ­all-woman and diverse casts.
Nerd Poker
https://nerdpokerpod.com/
Featuring actor Brian Posehn and friends, Nerd Poker began as a home
game that eventually was recorded starting in 2012, with a reboot in 2016.
This weekly podcast uses the Dungeons & Dragons RPG system and has
several campaigns worth of material online.
Not Another D&D Podcast
https://www.naddpod.com/
With over a hundred episodes and a successful Patreon, Not Another
D&D Podcast is a weekly show in which DM (Direct Messenger) Brian
Murphy (also in the cast of Dimension 20) runs the players, affectionately
known as the Band of Boobs, through adventures in the realm of Bahumia.
One Shot Podcast
http://oneshotpodcast.com/
A network of gamers and designers, One Shot Podcast features monthly
games with rotating casts. Their goal is to explore and showcase many
different types of ­role-playing games, emphasizing indie games and diverse
designers.
Rivals of Waterdeep
http://www.rivalsofwaterdeep.com/
An official Wizards of the Coast actual play livestream, Rivals of Waterdeep
showcases a diverse cast of players including Tanya DePass of
#INeedDiverseGames, Brandon Stennis, Shareef Jackson, Masood Haque,
and Latia Bryant among others. In addition to six seasons of campaign
content, their episodes also include conversations about diversity in gaming
and the occasional one shot.
Stream of Annihilation
https://dnd.wizards.com/streamofannihilation
A promotional event to showcase the publication of the Dungeons &
Dragons campaign guide Tomb of Annihilation, this two day stream included
­ ne-shot games by many of the gaming groups included on this list such as
o
Dice, Camera, Action, Acquisitions Incorporated: The “C” Team, Girls, Guts,
Glory and more.
Stream of Many Eyes
https://dnd.wizards.com/articles/events/some
Another promotional event by Wizards of the Coast, this ­three-day event
showcased the publication of the Dungeons & Dragons book Mordenkainen’s
Tome of Foes. The stream included ­one-shot games by members from several
actual play media including Critical Role, Force Grey, and High Rollers.
Titansgrave
https://titansgraverpg.com/
GMed by Wil Wheaton, this ­ten-episode actual play show was a product
of Geek and Sundry. A science fantasy setting mixing magic with
technology, a Titansgrave companion book using the Fantasy AGE RPG is
available through Green Ronin Publishing.
20 Sided Stories
https://www.20sidedstories.com/
A combination of comedy and ­role-playing game, this podcast features a
variety of tabletop RPG systems and guarantees a complete arc within 16
episodes or less.
Very Random Encounters
https://vre.show/
Produced weekly, this actual play podcast showcases different ­role-
playing systems in both campaign and ­one-shot episodes. Some of the RPGs
they have played include Dungeons & Dragons, Tales from the Loop, Monster
of the Week, Fiasco, One Last Job and more. Unlike many shows, Very
Random Encounters keep their episodes to a manageable 30 to 45 minutes in
length.
You Meet in a Tavern
https://youmeetinatavern.podbean.com/
A ­bi-weekly Dungeons & Dragons 5e podcast, You Meet in a Tavern boasts
nearly a hundred episodes of content. Their second season, VOID, is set in a
dystopian Pokémon world.
Notes
1. A 2019 SNL skit portraying D&D players as “pocket protector clad nerds from the 80s”
(@nichterhorst 4/8/2019) led to a battle cry from the Internet to share #dndselfie—photos of what
D&D players really look like. Hint: it’s everyone.
2. See Hall 2017.
3. See Hall 2018.
4. Significantly, these numbers only reflect the popularity of Dungeons & Dragons specifically, and
not all ­role-playing games out there. There are myriad indie ­role-playing games that folks are also
playing, which are not included in statistics or studies like these. According to a recent study
conducted by the Orr Group Industry examining games played on Roll20.net, a virtual tabletop
simulator, a little more than half of the games played are Dungeons & Dragons (Hall 2019).
5. See Alimurung, Armstrong, Gilsdorf, Sjoberg, and Stuart among many others.
6. See the Red Nose Day video from 2019.
7. See Jones (2016), Trammel (2016, 2019), and Stenros and Tanja Sihvonen (2016) for more on this
topic.

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Adams, A. (2013). Needs met through ­role-playing games: A fantasy theme analysis of Dungeons &
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Alimurung, G. (2019, April 18). How Dungeons & Dragons somehow became more popular than ever.
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dungeons-and-dragons-somehow-became-more-popular-than-ever/2019/04/18/­fc226f56–5f8f-
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Armstrong, N. (2019, July 13). No more nerds: How Dungeons & Dragons finally became cool. The
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Bowman, S. (2010). The functions of ­role-playing games: How participants create community, solve
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please consider a donation and learn more about their work: http://farmworkerjustice.org <3
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creative and compassionate. Ted.com. Retrieved from https://ideas.ted.com/­how-playing-dungeons-
dragons-has-helped-me-be-more-connected-creative-and-compassionate/.
Gilsdorf, E. (2019, November 13). In a chaotic world, Dungeons & Dragons is resurgent. New York
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Girdwood, A. (2019, August 9). What is the Matt Mercer effect? Geek Native. Retrieved from
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Hall, C. (2017, July 20). More people are playing D&D online than ever before. Polygon. Retrieved
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Hall, C. (2019, July 29). How many people are playing D&D compared to other tabletop RPGs?
Polygon. Retrieved from https://www.polygon.com/2019/7/29/8934912/­how-many-people-play-
dungeons-dragons-pathfinder.
Hoffer, C. (2019, September 5). Critical Role is officially part of the Dungeons and Dragons canon.
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exandria-canon/.
Hoffer, C. (2019, September 27). Critical role is getting Funko Pop!, action figures, and more.
ComicBook. Retrieved from https://comicbook.com/gaming/2019/09/27/­critical-role-funko-
mcfarlane-toys-apparel-dungeons-and-dragons/.
IGN.com (2019, October 2). Why is D&D so popular again? Retrieved from
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Jones, S. (2018, March 5). Blinded by the roll: The critical fail of disability in D&D. Analog Game
Studies, 5(1). Retrieved from http://analoggamestudies.org/2018/03/­blinded-by-the-roll-the-critical-
fail-of-disability-in-dd/.
­MacCallum-Stewart, E., & Trammell, A. (2018). ­Role-Playing games as subculture and fandom. In S.
Deterding & J. Zagal (Eds.), ­Role-playing game studies: A transmedia approach (pp. 364–376).
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Mercer, M. (2017). Critical Role Tal’Dorei campaign guide. Green Ronin Publishing.
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Nichterhorst. (2019, April 8). Seeing that SNL D&D skit was painful so let’s post some [fire emoji]
selfies to remind folks that D&D doesn’t look like pocket protector clad nerds from the 80s. We’re
out here being nerds now and our brand of socially awkward is frankly much more entertaining
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Radulovic, P. (2019, November 5). Two seasons of the Critical Role animated series coming to
Amazon Prime. Polygon. Retrieved from https://www.polygon.com/2019/11/5/20947648/­critical-
role-legend-of-vox-machina-animated-series-amazon-prime-two-seasons.
Sjoberg, B. (2019, August 24). How ‘Stranger Things’ is inspiring new waves of Dungeons and
Dragons fans. The Daily Dot. Retrieved from https://www.dailydot.com/parsec/­stranger-things-
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The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/games/2019/nov/29/­gamers-back-
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Coast.

OceanofPDF.com
What Is Actual Play?
OceanofPDF.com
 Actual Play Reports
Forge Theory and the Forums
Evan Torner

Actual play of a tabletop ­role-playing game (TTRPG) means playing a

system and/or scenario and documenting that play somehow for oneself and
others. The term has its ancestry not only in ­so-called “play reports” for
American and British wargame magazines (Peterson 2012) or “replays” in
Japan, but also in the early days of the public Internet, when RPG forum
commentators were encouraged to ground their overly cerebral speculations
about play with the presumed evidence of reported, lived experience. War
stories, or the embellished oral ­re-telling of a TTRPG play session among
friends and colleagues, are distinctly not actual play: within current game
culture, war stories’ enthusiastic orality renders them untrustworthy,
presumably because they are expected to be full of embellishments for
emotional effect and narrative coherence that belie what the lived play
session contained. In the words of William J. White (2015):
[Actual play refers] to primarily verbal accounts of one’s own experience of play, not as a fictional
experience related to one’s character, but as the ­non-diegetic interpersonal experience of being at the
table and interacting with others in order to play the game [p. 87].
In other words: the game experience itself is not the cool thing that
happened to one’s character in the story. Here is an excerpt of an example
actual play by Kath on RPG.net about a first session of the TTRPG 13th Age:
In the great hall, they found the missing flesh golem from Eldolan, and a series of intricate magical
wards. The wards would activate when someone living walked over and armed and strengthened the
golem to destroy the interlopers. Merenthilimus called upon his theatrical illusionist background to
disguise the group as undead, and they were able to bypass the golem and the wards [Kath 2016].
Committing a private verbal or written document of this kind to a
(semi-)public written forum, podcast, or recorded stream makes it somehow
seem more authoritative and authentic. Yet as the niche cultures of the
Internet turned mainstream over the course of the late 2000s and early
2010s, ­so-called “eSports” and ­live-streamed play established a monetized
culture of performing and watching others play games (Taylor 2018). The ­-
now-nominalized actual plays of TTRPGs followed suit, first by seeing
greater and greater audiences for traditional podcasts and forum posts, and
then later by creating whole emergent media franchises such as Critical Role
and The Adventure Zone dedicated to building fandom and profit from
actual play. This essay situates the linguistic and abstract definitions of actual
play within its cultural manifestations; although linguistic genealogy helps,
we cannot define actual play without understanding its context and
stakeholders.
This story is itself a personal one. In June 2018, our humble publication
Analog Game Studies was nominated for a prestigious Diana Jones Award. I
found out while setting up the registration table at the TTRPG event I run at
Origins, Games on Demand. Mark Diaz Truman from Magpie Games broke
the news with a hearty “Congratulations, man!” Surprised and encouraged, I
pulled up the Diana Jones nominations webpage on my smartphone, to see
who the other nominees were: The ­200-Word RPG Challenge, Harlem
Unbound, Charterstone, and something called “Actual Play,” defined as:
a movement within ­hobby-games in which people record and broadcast their games—usually
campaigns of ­role-playing games—on the internet. Primary examples include Critical Role (a weekly
show for Geek and Sundry), The Adventure Zone (a biweekly show for Maximum Fun), Maze Arcana
(a biweekly D&D show featuring Satine Phoenix and Ruty Rutenberg), Acquisitions, Inc. (an
irregular D&D show by Penny Arcade), The One Shot Podcast (by James D’Amato and Kat Murphy),
and a variety of shows produced by Hyper RPG [Diana Jones Award 2018].
“Actual play” was defined as a “movement” rather than a ­designer-oriented
practice. Although I, too, was quite pleased with the positive exposure that
TTRPGs have received through these shows, I found the use of the phrase
“actual play” curious. Specifically, the term actual play was an important
part of an earlier TTRPG community, namely the hive of publishing and
theorizing collected at the Internet forum The Forge between 2000 and
2012. White’s definition above encapsulates what we earlier saw as “actual
play.” I seek now to bridge between the heuristic actual play of the early
2000s (White 2015; forthcoming) and the performative actual play (Chalk
2018) of ­present-day streaming culture that is rapidly changing the culture
of TTRPG play. I delve into the definitions of actual play and frame it in
terms of wider subcultural conflict, before then offering discursive readings
of several forum posts between 2012 and 2017 that illustrate the tensions
inherent in the term.
Culture and the Problem of the “Actual”
­Role-playing games now permeate society (Byers and Crocco 2016) and,
as such, serve well as illustrative examples of cultural shifts. Cultures
around ­role-playing games develop, propagate, and contest their own
terminologies both for their own purposes as well as for posterity (White
forthcoming). Many different game cultures exist, each with their own value
systems, hierarchies, debates, and histories. As Frans Mäyrä (2006) argues,
the tools of the Internet have accelerated “processes of language creation,
value sharing, and community formation” (p. 105) that characterize these
cultures. Here, I am writing about a clash between two distinct subcultures
in the online ­role-playing community: the indie TTRPG culture centered at
two ­now-defunct web forums—Story Games and the Forge—and the
ongoing culture around ­live-streaming of TTRPG play on the Internet. Dick
Hebdige’s (1979) study Subculture reminds us that the status and meanings
of subcultures are always under dispute (p. 3), that they simultaneously
point back to a hierarchically ordered past and an ambiguously utopian
future (p. 6), and that they can be thus studied for the particular values they
enshrine and advance (p. 7). Despite my own personal commitments to
previous communities, there is no halcyon time period of TTRPG
discussion during which terms mentioned can be considered holy writ or
indisputable; rather, by studying the various forms of use and contestation of
terms, we arrive at a more substantive picture of what their creators value
and how their language gains traction and meaning in society.
The term “play” is, by its nature, culturally and linguistically ambiguous
(Stenros 2015): to play is not only to seek respite from reality, but also to
simulate and rehearse it for various uses. Play in modern culture is virtually
always subject to being instrumentalized for something else, leaving
boredom and inactivity as sites of rebellion and mystery (Bogost 2016).
Indeed, the general study of actual play as found in this volume is not a
study of games in and of themselves, but of their deployment within specific
communities to achieve specific ends. One does not simply post an actual
play report without believing one might not, at bare minimum, be rewarded
with social capital. To make actual play reports publicly available is an act of
publication, and play within that context has been edited, framed, and
narrativized in such a way that the finalized experience may little resemble
the lived experience or even the raw recorded footage or notes of that
experience. Mediation of play is nothing new—here, we can think of
predecessors and parallels in organized sports, game shows, descriptions of
chess matches, and so forth—nor does this constitute automatic alienation
between the beings at play and those consuming them. Yet given the
dynamics of character interiority and fictional worldbuilding that TTRPGs
offer, mediation of ­role-play is so challenging that it only makes sense for
actual play creators to focus on making their material useful for their end
consumers.
There is no single way to record or capture the play experience, with every
method containing within it some form of artifice. After all, play is not only
gestural, somatic, and vocal, but the very inflection and conversational
asides of a human speaker during play are endlessly parsable. For example,
Angelina Ilieva (2010) introduced speech transcription as a means to
research ­live-action ­role-play in response to Jaakko Stenros’ (2004) assertion
that, in the end, to ­role-play is to produce a ­role-playing text. What she
found is “the multitude of meanings of the speech act according to the
contexts, where the participants lay and interpret it; [and their] impossibility
to be cut into segments, i.e., their ­non-discretion” (Ilieva 2010, p. 234). A
transcript from one larp session boggles the mind in terms of its ­stream-of-
consciousness nature, even when the players remain fully ­in-character:
[1] X (pointing a finger) A cloak, keeps from the cold….
[2] Y Leather protectors….
[3] X Belts…. Sacred stones in particular….
[4] Z How sacred are they?
[5] X Among the most sacred!
[6] Z Among the most sacred? Where are they dug out? In the backyard?
[7] X Oh, no! No….
[8] Z Oh no?!
[9] X (in a singsong) From the highest mountain in our kingdom!
[10] Z The hill over there?
[11] Y (pointing) Magic potato we offer….
[12] Z Magic potato, no…. No need of dying yet, thanks [Ilieva 2010, p. 236].

Games are absolutely saturated with what Greg Costikyan calls

“endogenous meaning,” or the fact that “a game’s structure creates its own
meanings.” (Costikyan 2002, p. 22) Written transcripts of recorded oral
utterances are one way of achieving a ­role-playing text, but one thing
remains clear: they require substantial editing, clarification, and refinement
to make them palatable for a broader audience. Editing and refinement
means fundamental alteration of the report, and thus of the substantive
content of the session itself. Ilieva (2013) later asserts that RPGs are a
bricolage of speech and culture, a space which complicates our very notions
of what is inside and outside of the game, let alone one that is legible to
outsiders who might consume it for various purposes. To interpret “play” as
anything other than emergent, ­human-generated chaos when the players
begin the game is to impose a certain kind of order on it, often with a
purpose: to demonstrate a system in action, to maintain status in a design
community, to earn revenue from advertisers who want to reach viewers
watching the play, and so forth.
This brings us to the definition of the adjective “actual.” The word itself
was derived from the French (actual) and Latin (actualis) in the early
Middle Ages, and first encompassed a religious meaning: “characteristic of
or relating to acts or action; exhibited in or arising from deeds; practical,
active.” (OED) The implication was that, unless something was “actual,”
however someone described the thing or deed in scripture, tales, and/or
anecdotes did not necessarily correspond with lived reality. This doubt
carried into its modern, secular meaning: “Existing in fact, real; carried out,
acted in reality. Opposed to potential, possible, ideal, etc.” (OED) “Actual” is
always contextual. The actual became a measuring stick to weigh intentions,
simulations, and models against the weighty, sticky substance of the real,
which Jacques Lacan has productively described as existing beyond the
symbolic order of language. Because the real cannot be fully grasped,
however, something that is “actual” still refers to a ­second-order object: a
description or report of a thing experienced, hopefully by someone who has
been confirmed as both confirmed and trustworthy by broader journalistic
and scholarly communities. We accept this mediation because it is the best
we can do, but it also leads to a bifurcation in the meanings of the word
“actual”: someone’s incomprehensibly complex lived experience and a
trustworthy someone’s faithful representation of a slice of that experience,
mediated and ­re-packaged for others so that they can nevertheless come
closer to that person’s lived experience than they otherwise would have.
Actual play means our acceptance of the mediation of TTRPGs: seeing game
systems in action that are otherwise described in rulebooks and PDFs,
locked away from a viewing public. As with Biblical scripture, TTRPG rules
texts exist as a set of stories and dicta to be interpreted, their content
suspended in a context of sheer potentiality (Torner 2016). Actual play
permits us to pass final judgment on them.
Yet the “actual” also poses us with a problem: any way one looks at it,
actual play is mediated. Moreover, its creators have an agenda that often
affects play itself. Markus Montola’s (2008) ­so-called “invisible rules of ­role-
playing” describes three frames through which one can analyze the TTRPG
activity: diegetic (within the ­in-game fiction), endogenous (within the rules
framework), and exogenous (within the social framework). An actual play
report is primarily preoccupied with the diegetic and endogenous frames of
play—“The wards would activate when someone living walked over. …
Merenthilimus called upon his theatrical illusionist background to disguise
the group as undead” (Kath 2016)—without often treating the AP author’s
own exogenous commitments as material as well. For players who have a
heuristic notion of AP, then their objective may very well be to “break” the
game, so as to test the outer limits of the TTRPG design structure. For
players who have a performative notion of actual play, then their objective
may very well be to create fan endearment to specific characters and
suspense around these characters that produces emotive fan responses in the
stream chat. The act of deciding to transform TTRPG play into some sort of
“actual play” recording will likely affect the actual play itself. Exogenous
commitments to learning about game design or making money do not
permit unmediated, procedural access to the TTRPG system’s rules and
social dynamics.
Having dispelled any notion of “authenticity” or a phenomenological
“actual” that can be accessed through a written report, edited podcast, or ­-
live-streamed video recording, we can turn to what is accessible, namely:
what is presented as AP and the overall discourse about the boundaries of
AP. The rest of this essay explores three contentious moments in the lifecycle
of this term: its creation in 2001, its ­re-formulation in 2012, and the 2017
indie TTRPG reflection on the transformation of AP into an online, ­-
multimillion-dollar phenomenon. It means we need to turn toward the
community for which the term first had meaning: The Forge.

The Forge
 The Forge was an Internet forum that developed a lasting online
community, an independent publishing movement, and a body of RPG
theory with which ­present-day developers and players still wrestle. Those
who helped found the forum in 2001 and run it until its closure in 2012
included Ed Healy (Gamerati podcast), Ron Edwards (Sorcerer), Vincent
Baker (Apocalypse World), and Clinton R. Nixon (The Shadow of Yesterday).
The forum not only empowered its discussants with the tools and support to
publish their own RPGs, regardless of commercial viability or subject
matter, but also preserved its own ­unique-if-frustrating Socratic form of
dialogue about RPGs. Paul Czege’s My Life with Master about a ­sado-
masochistic relationship between a mad inventor and his servants, Julia
Ellingboe’s Steal Away Jordan about slaves rebelling in antebellum 19th
century America, Vincent Baker’s Dogs in the Vineyard about ­law-enforcing
Mormon cowboys, Emily Care Boss’ Breaking the Ice about going on three
dates, Ben Lehman’s Polaris about tragic Arctic knights, and countless other
influential indie RPGs from last decade emerged thanks to interactions with
this forum and its adherents. In a positive light, Forge theory, as Boss writes,
“benefited from being derived from a mixture of theoretical analysis, critical
commentary, accounts of applied play and hands on design” (Boss 2008, p.
232) In a negative light, Forge theory, was marked by an “­over-reliance on
obscurantist jargon … churlish moderation, and … a refusal to engage with
anyone who hasn’t already absorbed hundreds of pages of prior online
discussion” (White 2015, p. 85). As a discourse community, the Forge thus
proved the site of many contradictions: between intellectual rigor and
outright ­anti-intellectualism, welcoming gestures and ­in-group policing,
critical engagement and overt groupthink.
Whatever one thinks of the Forge, however, it cannot be disputed that the
inventor of the term “actual play” in Internet forum parlance was Ron
Edwards, chief interlocutor of the forum. It happened in May 2001, shortly
after the forum’s creation, in response to a thread by poppocabba (2001)
entitled “we need a gaming method forum.” The original poster (OP) sought
a rigorous method that “applied to playtesting as well as more ­non-
mechanical aspects of game design.” The need was seen to cut through the
fog generated by many independent TTRPG designers discussing mechanics
and theoretical structures without grounding them in lived player
experience. Or, as Paul Czege (2019) put it: “It’s pretty impossible to tell if a
tabletop RPG is any good just from listening to the designer talk about it.”
Less than 48 hours after poppocabba’s post, Edwards offered the following
response, which now marks a turning point in TTRPG history:
Actual Play
In other words, the forum is for discussing actual ­role-playing experiences, system applications,
settings in action, and usage of text and so on. I *really* do not want to see a “general topics” forum
on the Forge, and I want to stay focused on the real point of the site: development and promotion of
independent RPGs.
So an “Actual Play” forum would be a great place to discuss how these games WORK, and I think
it would serve Poppocabba’s point perfectly, and keep the “well what if ” and “this would happen”
vaporing out of it [Edwards, inpoppocabba 2001].
Edwards’ post would inaugurate the practice of posting “AP reports,” which
would ­more-or-less follow his prescribed format: seeing the system in action
through the lens of a game facilitator or player. Reports of play had been
features of wargaming and TTRPGs and magazines since the 1960s and ’70s;
Actual play reports were something different. They meant the public, critical
probing of a game’s text and rules through play: what worked, what didn’t
work, what was innovative and needed streamlining. It was a heuristic
concept of play: play that informed designers about their designs, created in
order to improve future designs (White 2015).
Actual play in the Forge tradition was one of its sacred doxa: that play
itself should inform any new theory about RPGs, and that the games being
played were fundamentally about the players themselves. This was not just a
mere talking point: the Actual Play forum received much more traffic than
the sections associated with Theory, and received much more attention and
moderation overall (White 2015). The expectations of an actual play thread
were to deliver a detailed, thick description of how an RPG worked when
actual players played it, i.e., used it to structure their conversation. Was the
core loop of the game coherent? Did players make use of relevant ­sub-
systems? Did the fiction produced indeed resemble the desired genre? The
actual play thread demonstrated proof of concept, while also weaving a
certain kind of story interrupted with notes about how the players and
system engaged with that story.
Actual play threads averaged in density of around 10 posts, often with a
respondent from among the senior members of the forum interrogating the
OP about their actual game experience. OP Motipha (2012), for example,
writes of the complicated story situation of his game of In a Wicked Age, a
game of backstabbing Babylonian fantasy:
­ abni-Ishtar will give Dolawat a child, if she promises to help banish ­Ku-aya. Dolawat is willing to
T
agree, but here’s the rub: ­Ku-aya still has advantage over both those two characters. By negotiating,
one of them has to agree to drop out of the fight, and Dolawat is the one who wanted to drop out,
but ­Ku-Aya doesn’t want her out yet: she still has a stick to wield.

He receives a reply from the author of the game himself (Baker) that their
players’ negotiation is indeed tricky. Interestingly enough, this 2012 example
also shows the actual play movement as performative as well: “We record our
sessions for AP on the Jank Cast podcast, and I’ll link when this one is
shared” (Motipha).
Yet an even more evocative example of the shift from actual play as
heuristic (play as informing game design) to performative (play as
entertainment for others to consume) is found in the Forge actual play
threads. During this final “Winter” phase of the Forge, Nolan Jones
(NolanTJ 2012) chose to post a personal history of how he came to develop
Roll20, an online virtual tabletop app that now (in 2019) represents the
primary instrument connecting over two million users to virtual tabletop
RPG sessions. Roll20 allows players to seamlessly control information in a
shared “tabletop” era and broadcast content of interest to both the group
itself and the wider audience watching it play. Joined with Twitch and
YouTube, it constitutes a powerful tool in the kit of industry ­up-and-comers
such as the One Shot Podcast or The Gauntlet. But none of this could be
necessarily foreseen in 2012. In 2012, Jones was simply a poster on The
Forge.
The response to Jones’ post was from none other than Edwards, chief
moderator and figurehead of the site at the time. As if singling out Jones to
make a point, Edwards zeroed in on a side comment Jones had made (“and
Gamma World … oh Gamma World”) and replied “I’d really like to learn
more about your specific experiences with Gamma World. Your post implies
that you really found what you wanted in ­role-playing at that point, and
perhaps that you applied whatever principles were involved to your own
designs.” Jones responded with what would have likely been seen as a
heretical comment in The Forge: “I just think Gamma World is loads of fun.”
Within a short while, Edwards returns to the thread: “If you can’t anchor the
discussion in this thread with some specific discussion of a real ­play-
experience, then I will close the thread.” Edwards then did so, as moderator.
 This hostile exchange illustrates a notable moment in RPG history.
Edwards as moderator was sticking by the Forge’s principles: to keep
discussions focused as well as free of ­self-promotion or explicit RPG
ideology. The point of the Actual Play forum was to demonstrate how play
was impacted by the various systems derived by people at The Forge and
elsewhere. Of course, Jones’ system would impact the play of millions at
mass scale: he and his team would raise $40,000 on Kickstarter the following
year, and even become one of the main Internet hubs for Dungeons &
Dragons 5th Edition material. Roll20 would enable these players to
document and broadcast their actual play experiences for others to
consume, which of course means an absolute expansion in the very “play”
data set from which The Forge said it drew. And yet in 2012, Edwards chose
to shut down discussion of this performative tool to make a point about the
heuristic value of one of Jones’ play experiences (which winds up never
being described in any case). In this instant and within broader historical
context, Edwards looks particularly like an inflexible bully incapable of
seeing the future of actual play for the hobby he ostensibly cares deeply
about. Jones looks particularly like a naïve outsider who is also shilling for
his homebrew virtual tabletop system in perhaps the wrong thread. Two
birds passing each other in the night.

The Actual Play of Streaming

Several years later, the Forge community, including its dissenters and
diaspora, would have to reckon with the looming reality of an actual play
much more along the lines of Jones’ Roll20 app, which enabled players at a
distance to have a shared virtual tabletop as well as streaming capabilities
(White 2019). Gameplay could then be viewed in real time and, as with any
activity in the modern media ecosystem, could accrue viewers as well as
advertising dollars. Story Games (2006–2019) was a forum set up by Andy
Kitkowski as a “Forge minus the workshop,” a casual Internet hangout spot
for indie TTRPG designers. It also had over 1700 threads in its AP section.
After Critical Role took off in 2015 as a major media phenomenon on Geek
and Sundry, designers on Story Games began to take notice on the forum
that Dungeons & Dragons was surging in popularity as a result. The general
sentiment was that they were pleased at the renewed interest in the TTRPG
hobby among mainstream viewers but were very apprehensive of the AP
style exhibited by these shows. As Paul_T writes in a thread also analyzed by
William J White (2019) elsewhere:
[I] watched a bit of Critical Role, and I’m a little disappointed by the style of play. It’s exactly what I
remember of D&D from when I was a teenager, and what a lot of people interested in “story games”
were turned off by.
People display incredible skill in colourful descriptions, voice acting, and rule mastery. However,
it’s also full of all the genre tropes, gamer cliches, and counterproductive practices that largely drove
me away from D&D in the first place [Paul_T 2017].
On the one hand, commentators such as Paul_T suddenly had access to a
treasure trove of facilitators and players showing how one actually plays the
TTRPGs, and in front of an audience of millions, “hundreds of hours that
people are watching religiously, tuning in live every week” (Paul_T 2017).
On the other hand, such actual play revealed that the right people seemed to
be playing the wrong TTRPGs, and badly at that. “Actual play” in the Forge
sense was to demonstrate faithfulness to (and insight about) TTRPG
designer and system intention. Such an orientation stands in contrast to the
emphasis on performativity and suspense in the actual play media that
would then win the Diana Jones Award, with its ­talk-show-style gags,
product plugs, and poor gamesmanship.
Yet Alex Chalk (2018) reveals that, despite what the Forge elites may have
had to say about the rise of D&D, the period from 2012 to the present marks
the “conflation of producer and consumer” that appears to have been one of
the objectives of the Forge movement: to take back TTRPG design for
ordinary people who want to express themselves and their interests in their
games. TL Taylor (2018) describes the joy of streaming and watching
streams through a framework of parasociality—that the celebrity streamers
appear to be responding to their fans in an intimate environment, when they
are, in fact, quite unaware of these fans’ existence. Critical Role, Adventure
Zone, The One Shot, and Maze Arcana nevertheless pride themselves on an
intimate relationship with their fans. These fans with extensive influence
quickly rise to become organizers in the community, interviewees, and hosts
who help frame the content for the wider audience. Their art helps inspire
efforts such as the Critical Role animated series or NeoScum ­dress-up parties.
These media franchises benefit from ­multi-platform engagement—Twitch,
YouTube, iTunes, Discord, Twitter, among other services—but also actively
respond to those fans who choose to engage, creating a seductive illusion of
interactivity. One dismisses the leviathan of modern AP at one’s peril, in
other words.
Whereas the Forge community saw actual play as a way to better one’s
designs and close the gap between the potential and the actual, ­modern-day
actual play is geared toward an outside audience who become invested in the
characters, narrative, storyworld, and ­meta-play behaviors of the players. It
legitimates the TRPG hobby as a media event (White 2019). Why is it
important to discuss how a term used by a small group of predominantly
white, cis men was ultimately ­co-opted, reappropriated, and transformed
into commercial performances by—let’s face it—a larger group of
predominantly white, cis men? As geek culture takes center stage in the
mainstream (Woo 2018), it is critical to understand its rhizomatic origins
and the orthogonal relationship between designers’ intentions and overall
societal outcomes. The environments and terms we use to educate ourselves
can be rapidly commercialized and, indeed, that commercialization simply
belongs to our present cultural moment. The dual meaning of actual play is
also important because its prior meaning has not been completely subsumed
by its new meaning. In August 2019, designer Jeeyon Shim wrote on Twitter
that “AP reports are fantastic, both as documentation for designers/aspiring
designers + players to get a taste of whether a game might be their jam. It’s
also a celebration of why we do this weird story game thing in the first place:
the countless ways our imaginations play together!” A new generation of
designers finds the old form of actual play quite useful, as well as
entertaining, to create and read. Disconnected from The Forge, actual play
has become an autotelic activity, one that needs no justification whatsoever,
even though a sizable movement is making profit in parallel to the smaller
form of actual play. Earlier in 2019, Edwards highlights territory that the
older and newer notions of actual play perhaps share:
If you want to get value out of [TTRPGs], it has to be much more in terms of … the activity itself,
which all too often gets ignored or saddled with buzzwords, phrases, and quite dubious claims … [as
well as] the actual people whom you connect with through the course of doing this [Edwards 2019:
28:00].
In other words, actual play may have always been a strategic lunge toward
sociality among geeks, a public way of dignifying what they do and the
relationships they have formed in the process.
References
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­role-playing games. Edited by Markus Montola and Jaakko Stenros, 232–247. Ropecon
Ry/Gummerus Kirjapaino Oy.
Byers, A. and Crocco, F., eds. (2016) The ­role-playing society: Essays on the cultural influence of RPGs.
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Chalk, A. (2018) A chronology of Dungeons & Dragons in popular media. Analog Game Studies 5.
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PV4t4tI.
Hebdige, D. (1979). Subculture—The meaning of style. Methuen.
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_____. (2013). Cultural languages of ­role-playing. International Journal of ­Role-Playing 1(4): 26–38.
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OceanofPDF.com
 Birth of a New Medium or Just Bad TV?
Framing and Fractality of Actual Play
Julia J.C. Blau

Actual play shows record a group of people playing a ­role-playing game

(RPG). In a typical RPG, players (professional actors or otherwise) act as
characters engaging in scenarios put together by the game master (GM, also
known as dungeon master, DM). Typically, the scenarios contain a blend of
combat and personal interaction with freedom and flexibility in how the
players achieve their goals within the scenario. Following rules from one of a
variety of RPG systems,1 success or failure at attempting actions is
determined either by chance (dice rolls, pulling cards, etc.) or by the GM
(Tychsen, 2006; Deterding, & Zagal, 2018). Actual play shows might choose
to present all of the action (as Critical Role does; Critical Role Productions,
2015), or they might choose to present only the action that is related to the
narrative (as Titansgrave does; Geek and Sundry, 2015); in either case, the
narrative is an emergent property of the ­GM-actor-game system interaction.
The recording of actual play shows comes in a variety of forms. ­Audio-
only (or podcast) forms are common, but ­video-and-audio forms are the
focus of this essay. Hosted on platforms such as Twitch
(https://www.twitch.tv/) and YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/), they are
recorded using what are almost certainly digital cameras and often ­live-
streamed (i.e., broadcast to an internet audience in ­real-time, while being
recorded for later viewing). Some shows have high production value and are
backed by production companies (such as Geek and Sundry), while others
are amateur productions using the players’ own equipment.2
Actual play is a narrative medium.3 The earliest known forms of
entertainment are narrative (Anderson, 1996), consistent with emerging
evidence for humans’ psychological need for narrative forms (Rosenberg,
2018). There have been a variety of narrative mediums over the years, each
one distinct from the one that came before; herein, I argue that actual play is
a new narrative medium. If this is correct, it offers a unique opportunity: the
emergence of new mediums is almost always studied in retrospect (partially
due to the historical split between art and science, see Anderson, 1996)
identifying this emergence as it is happening opens an avenue of research for
art and perceptual scientists alike.
Crucially, merely capturing a different type of story is not enough for the
vehicle of that story to be considered a new medium. In order to be
considered a new medium and not simply a variant of an existing one, the
medium must meet two criteria: First, it must meet the exclusion criteria—
that is, it must be fundamentally different from those mediums that came
before. Second, it must add something unique; it is not enough to recombine
the technologies and techniques of the previous mediums. Actual play meets
both criteria.

Exclusion Criteria
Actual play draws inspiration and uses techniques from a variety of
narrative mediums; however, it cannot be said to belong to any of them.
While what follows is not an exhaustive list of all narrative mediums, it is
sufficient to illustrate that actual play meets the exclusion criteria—actual
play does not fully meet, nor is it fully met by, any of the existing categories.

Storytellers
Storytelling has existed for all of recorded history; indeed, it is how
history was recorded prior to the advent of the written word. Even cave
drawings that date as long as 35,000 years ago are thought to be an early
form of storytelling (Aubert et al., 2014), either as a pictograph or as a visual
aid to an oral performance. The tradition of oral narration is widespread:
From the Griots of West Africa (Hale, 1997), to the Pingshu of China
(Børdahl, 2013), to the Dastangoi of the Urdu (Farooqui, 2011), to the bards
and minstrels of Western civilization (Schuchard, 2008), it seems as though
storytelling is a ­near-universal art form.
Actual play cannot be conceived of as part of the storyteller medium.
First, storytellers typically told and ­re-told the same narratives (Lord,
Mitchell, & Nagy, 2000); actual play looks to create new stories. Additionally,
the narrative in actual play is a collective art, while storytellers are usually a
single orator. Most importantly, traditional storytellers practice their art live,
in person; actual play is often (though not exclusively) consumed ­after-the-
fact and usually on a digital screen.

Live Plays/Theater
Born out of the tradition of oral storytellers, live theater was likely first
created in Athens in the 4th century bce (Brown, 2013; Goldhill, 1997). Few
of the earliest works survive, but those that do suggest there is a difference
between the earliest plays and modern theater. First, the influence of the
previous medium (i.e., storytelling) is remarkably pervasive in early works.
Narrators, expository asides, and soliloquies are common—all of which tell
rather than show the story (Clemen, 2004). Over time, that tradition has
become less common.
Plays differ from storytelling in a variety of ways. First, plays are usually
(although not always) a result of group effort—an assemblage of actors,
director, playwriter, etc., collectively produce a play. Second, an innovation
of live theater is the “fourth wall” (roughly the 16th century; Bell, 2008).
This is a dramatic practice whereby the actors pretend that a wall separates
them from the audience—the audience observes the action through the wall,
but the actors pretend they are alone. This innovation allowed for a new type
of storytelling, one where the story was intentionally and obviously divorced
from the personalities of the actors. They become someone else. Ultimately,
this practice led to what Coleridge (1817) called the “willing suspension of
disbelief ”—that is, the audience treats the play’s events as if they are real (if
at some remove). Whole swaths of theater (and later film and television)
practices exist to maintain that suspension of disbelief.
Actual play is not part of the live theater medium. While actual play
retains the group nature of plays, the presentation of the narrative is
categorically different. For one, they cannot be said to have the “fourth wall”
in quite the same way. There is no intention to convince the audience that
what they are watching is reality: The players talk to the audience by looking
at the camera, mention that they are playing a game, and even go so far as to
talk about the fact that they are talking about the game. And while some
experimental theater has been known to have this type of ­self-referential
dialogue (even Shakespeare’s “All the world’s a stage…” speech [Shakespeare,
2007], could be considered a ­tongue-in-cheek metareference), it is not
typical of the play medium. Moreover, in actual play, the personalities of the
players are nearly as important as the personalities of the characters when it
comes to viewer enjoyment.
With few exceptions, the action of the narrative (that is, the physical
movement of the characters) is enacted physically by the players in a play,
whereas in actual play it is carried out through oral description and
(sometimes) the movement of small representations (i.e., “miniatures” or
simply “minis”) of the players’ characters and ­non-player characters (NPCs)
on a “battle map” (i.e., a depiction of the landscape in which the scene is
taking place). Additionally, once again, actual play is a digital video medium
and so is consumed completely differently from plays, in which the audience
is ­co-located with the actors.

Improvisational Theater/Film
In most narrative mediums, the narrative is entirely created ahead of
production. In improvisational theater (which could include live theater or
films with improvisational content), any amount of the narrative might be
created during the performance. The first known improvisational theater
was the Atellan Farce in Italy in 300 BCE (Smith, 1964), which evolved into
the ­well-loved commedia dell’arte in the 16th–18th century (Lea, 1962). In
these productions, the actors might have tropes and broad outlines to follow,
but all dialogue was invented in the moment. In its more modern form,
improvisational theater is often used for short comedic effect (as in Whose
Line Is It Anyway?; Leveson & Patterson, 1998), although some theater
companies (e.g., Second City, https://www.secondcity.com/; The New Colony
http://thenewcolony.org/) also use improvisational techniques for character
and scene development during ­pre-production and even for portions during
the performance itself. However, in typical modern improvisational theater,
the entire show is never improvised live; while the “final” script might
include flexible portions that the actors can experiment with on the day of
the performance, even those portions still achieve ­pre-written narrative
beats (i.e., emotional or physical events that must be achieved).
This is a continuum, of sorts, within the narrative mediums. On one end
of that continuum are productions that tightly script the narrative: Every
word is chosen in advance, every shot is planned ahead of time, and
production is merely following that set mapping at the highest level of
quality possible. Hitchcock, for example, (in)famously said, “Actors are
cattle” (Truffaut, 1966/1983); by this, he meant that filming was merely a
formality because all of the actual creative work had been accomplished
ahead of time (by him). In contrast, other productions (such as The One I
Love, 2014), might allow the actors to improvise their dialogue, but the
narrative beats are scripted ahead of time. The vast majority of productions
exist between these two extremes.
Actual play could be considered an extension of this spectrum. For most
RPG and actual play groups, the GM likely has some narrative beats
planned, but the players theoretically have free reign to improvise whole
scenes. The biggest difference between improvisational theater or film and
actual play—and what sets actual play apart—is that the choices made by
players as they improvise scenes may result in radical changes to the GM’s
initial plans and by extension, the entire unfolding narrative arc. Given the
typical length of these shows, the GM might have to set aside the entirety of
what they had planned for that episode, forcing the GM to create the next
several hours of story in the moment.

Radio Dramas
Although radio dramas did not last long as a popular medium, they are
worth mentioning because actual play has much in common with them.
Once again, this new medium was an outgrowth from an existing medium:
plays. The first radio drama was broadcast in France in the 1880s (Crook,
2002) and was merely an airing of a theater production over telephone wires.
The medium evolved, and in the 1920s, first real radio dramas were aired in
the United States (Beck, 2000); however—because of the popularity of film
and television—by the 1960s they had all but disappeared (Cox, 2002).
Radio dramas were narratives constructed specifically to be aired live on
the radio—complete with sound effects and dialogue that could convey the
physical actions of the characters without them having to be viewed. For
example, the heroine might say, “No, don’t pick up that chair! It’s an
antique!” to give the audience an idea of the relative movements of the
characters. The stories were often presented in a serial format and were
intensely popular for a short time.
 Actual play shows are not radio dramas. They are predominantly a visual
medium, are not primarily consumed live, and are not as tightly scripted as
radio dramas had to be (because of the sound effects). Having said that,
there are some interesting similarities. Actual play shows face the same issue
as radio dramas did, in that the actions of the characters are not (always)
visible to the audience. Radio dramas solved this via the dialogue and sound
effects, but actual play solves it through the players or GM describing the
actions of the characters (e.g., “I walk over and pick up the chair”) and the
movements of “minis” on battlemaps. However, like with radio dramas (and
storytellers before them), the audiences of actual play events construct much
of the visual aspects of the story in their mind. This is also likely why
consuming actual play shows in their podcast format (entirely audio) is
common, with even ­video-based shows choosing to release podcast versions
of their episodes.

Film and Television

The moving image camera was invented in the late 1880s (Gosser, 1977).
At first, it was only used to record ­non-fiction—the changing of the shifts at
a factory or a train pulling into a station; however, it did not take long for
the medium to turn to narrative works. The first narrative film was Alice ­-
Guy-Blaché’s The Cabbage Fairy4 in 1896 (Ettleman, 2017), but modern
techniques (editing over time, moving the camera between shots, stringing
together multiple scenes into a coherent narrative, etc.) were not introduced
until the early 1900s and were not ubiquitously used until some time later
(Bordwell, 1997). Synchronized sound was not commercially available until
1920s, but it became industry standard by the 1930s (Geduld, 1975).
Just as with previous mediums, film had a period of transition where it
first attempted to merely record or mimic the previous predominant
narrative medium. The first narratives were captured using “static shots.” In
a static shot, the camera does not move, and there is no editing used to force
the audience to focus on different aspects of the scene. Or, in other words,
the scene is filmed as though the action being watched is a play: taking place
on an unmoving stage. The industry rapidly realized that the medium
offered opportunities for expression not found in the previous medium, and
it was not long before those techniques were implemented. Modern films
would never include that type of static shot, as audiences would find them
flat and visually uninteresting (Stockman, 2011). Modern films also include
techniques like ­close-ups, cutaways and editing not possible in plays.
Technologically and visually speaking, they are distinct from plays.
Some important remnants of plays still remain. The most relevant for our
purposes is the fourth wall: Every effort is made to avoid breaking the
illusion that the cinematic world is a fully realized one that the audience is
somehow observing through a “mobile window” (Gibson, 1979/2015, p.
284). In this particular way, the narrative presentation of a film is very
similar to that of a play, even if the technology is radically different.
Television was invented in its crudest form in the late 1920s (Abramson,
1995); it did not take long for it to invade the homes of most people in
developed nations for both its entertainment and informative value. By the
1950s, television had become the primary form of influencing Americans
politically, supplanting newspapers and radio (­Diggs-Brown, 2011).
Many of the early differences between film and television have
disappeared or lessened over the years. At first, films could only be viewed in
the theater, but the advent of VHSs and DVDs made home viewing of
cinematic releases commonplace. Television was originally exclusively shot
in a much more ­play-like form (similar to how sitcoms like Friends [Crane &
Kauffman, 1994] or The Big Bang Theory [Lorre & Prady, 2007] are shot), but
television is increasingly adopting ­film-like framing and lighting. Even the
narrative structure is evolving, and television is increasingly approached
“less like fragmented installments of a serialized story than like marathon
movies, constructed piecemeal” (Nevins, 2018). Both films and television
shows are available online, often ­side-by-side on subscription platforms such
as Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu.
The biggest difference that still remains between films and television is
duration of the narrative. Films typically have a “runtime” or duration of (at
most) a few hours long.5 Television shows are shorter in individual
installments: typically, 22- or ­47-minute runtimes that become 30 or 60
minutes with commercials. The total runtime of television shows, however,
greatly exceeds that of films. A ­47-minute show over the typical ­22-episode
season results in well over 17 hours of programming for a single season.6
Narrative structure is vastly different when you have 17 hours to tell a story
than when you only have two.
 Film and television are—on the surface—the most obvious correlates for
actual play. In reality, however, actual play is different in almost every
respect. While the argument might be made that people consume actual
play similarly to how modern audiences consume film and television (i.e.,
on the internet and not typically live), the argument cannot be made that it
is created in the same way. It may use similar technology (e.g., digital
cameras are becoming increasingly common even in ­big-budget films), but
the framing, editing, visual techniques, and—most importantly—narrative
presentations are all profoundly different. This statement can be
demonstrated using more than mere logical argument; it can be
demonstrated by a careful examination of the production elements of actual
play and how they compare to film and television.
Study 1: Framing and other production elements. Testing the assertion
that actual play constitutes a new medium requires demonstrating that it is
not subject to the same set of constraints that the previous mediums are. In
particular, the framing and production of the videos can be examined to see
if they mimic the traditional rules of film and television production.
For example, in film or television, introducing a scene at a new location
requires a sequence of shots that is rigidly followed with very few exceptions
(Anderson, 1996; see Figure 1). First, there is an “establishing shot” of the
outside of a particular location (say, the outside of the diner where the scene
takes place). This is followed by a “wide shot” that shows all of the characters
and their orientations to each other. This is followed by medium or ­close-up
views of the individual characters for the duration of the scene (the director
may also choose to return to the “wide shot” periodically). “Static shots” (or
shots including little to no movement) are stringently avoided, and editing is
typically used to “look around” the scene. That is, rather than have all of the
actors visible at once, the director’s preference is to focus on each character
one at a time and thus shape the person to whom the audience is paying
attention, coordinated with important narrative events (Blau, 2020).
Figure 1: the standard introductory sequence for a new location in film and television (from left
to right): establishing shot, wide shot, over-the-shoulder at first character, over-the-shoulder at
second character.

Given the historical precedent of new mediums mimicking old ones for a
time, we would expect to find elements from the previous mediums (i.e.,
film and television) as well as elements unique to actual play. However, if
actual play is, indeed, a new medium, then we would expect a different set of
constraints to apply with regards to those elements. To test this, I collected
information on a number of actual play shows and coded them in terms of
production elements.
Method. An effort was made to collect information on a large selection of
actual play shows that exist in video format. (Given the desire to compare
visual formats, the podcast versions of these shows were not included.) This
resulted in a list of 43 shows across two platforms (YouTube and Twitch).
Each show was then coded for a variety of measures, including:
Panel- or ­traditional-framing. The framing of the different shows tended
to fall into two broad categories: (1) trying to follow the traditional rules of
film/TV framing or (2) flaunting those rules in favor of panel framing that is
unique to this medium.7 Shows in the first category rarely include the ­-
Hollywood-esque “wide shot” and even less frequently include the broader
“establishing shot”; however, players are either alone in the shot or in smaller
groups, and editing is used to change which player(s) were being looked at.
Shows in the second category overwhelmingly favored a “panel” style: all
characters (including the GM) present on the screen at the same time (see
Figure 2). Some editing was still present in these shows, but was usually to
present graphics or battle maps.
Figure 2: Panel format preferred by many Actual Play shows. All players are visible (right side of
screen), DM is alone in the top left, character statistics are visible in the bottom left (that space is
also used to display the “battle map” as appropriate).

Editing over time. Nearly all film and television edit over time.8 They film
different angles of the scene at different times and then edit them together so
they appear to happen back to back (for example, in Figure 1, the third panel
might have been filmed hours before the second panel, but in the finished
product the viewpoint jumps instantaneously from one view to the next).
For each of the actual play shows, they were coded in terms of whether any
editing over time was present.
Character statistics. Some shows include a graphical representation of the
character statistics—that is, numerical measures of various aspects of the
characters that dictate how well they will perform at tasks (although the type
and use of these statistics are governed by the specific RPG rule system that
the actual play show uses). For example, a character’s strength statistic might
dictate how much weight they could carry, while their charisma statistic
might dictate how easily they can persuade someone. Some shows had these
statistics constantly present (in a frame around the player’s face); others
periodically showed it as a graphical card in an empty part of the frame.
Regardless of the display method, whether or not character statistics were
displayed was coded.
Sound effects and music. Sound effects and music are nearly ubiquitous in
the world of film and television. Even ­so-called “silent” films still had a
musical score. Each show was coded for whether they included sound effects
and/or music (collapsing across the two categories).
Edit density. This is a rough measure. Edits were not counted (as they are
in Study 2), but shows were coded by a ­non-biased research assistant as
having either light editing (i.e., fewer than a handful of edits across the
entire episode), medium editing (i.e., a few edits per minute), or heavy
editing (i.e., edits every couple of seconds).
Results and Discussion. If actual play shows are a new medium, then we
would expect certain historical patterns to hold. In the past, whenever a new
medium is introduced, the emergence is marked by some productions
mimicking the previous medium to ill effect, while others move toward new
production elements that uniquely succeed in the new medium. For our
purposes, if actual play is a new medium, and following historical precedent,
that would predict that those shows using traditional formatting would be
more likely to also exhibit other production elements that are omnipresent
in traditional filmmaking (editing over time, sound effects and music, and
higher edit density), while those with the panel formatting would be more
likely to exhibit production elements unique to actual play (character
statistics). If actual play is merely “bad television” (i.e., television that simply
fails to follow the characteristic production elements), then these patterns
should not emerge (i.e., formatting will have no relationship with
production elements).
To test the new medium hypothesis, ­chi-square tests for independence
were performed comparing the “panel” variable to all other variables. A
significant difference was found with regards to editing over time, such that
traditionally framed actual play shows were more likely to edit over time and
­panel-framed shows were less likely to edit over time, χ2 (1, n = 43), 9.69, p
< .005. Traditionally framed actual play shows were also much more densely
edited than the ­panel-framed shows, χ2 (2, n = 43), 23.81, p < .001, although
that is somewhat of a trivial result as one of the side effects of the panel
format is that everything of interest is visible, and so editing is not as
necessary. Additionally, there was a ­non-significant trend toward an effect of
sound effects: ­Panel-framed shows were less likely to use sound effects
and/or music, while traditionally framed shows were more likely to use
sound effects and/or music, χ2 (1, n = 43), 2.88, p = .09.
Alone, these results could be taken to mean that actual play is just
television that is sometimes done badly. However, if that were the case, then
we would expect traditional framing to significantly predict how many
followers a given show has (a proxy measure for how ­well-liked the show is).
Contrary to this hypothesis, no significant difference exists between the
traditionally framed shows and the panel framed shows in terms of how
many followers they have, t(1, 37) = 1.5, p = 0.14. Additionally, the ­chi-
square tests also revealed a significant effect of framing type on whether or
not a graphic of character statistics was included, such that traditionally
framed shows were far less likely to include character statistics than ­panel-
framed shows, χ2 (1, n = 43), 13.28, p < .001.
Taken together, these results suggest a kind of paradigm shift within
actual play—characteristic of a new narrative medium coming into its own.
That is, there are shows that are still mimicking the traditional modes of
production (alternating shots of characters, editing over time, etc.), and
there are those that are using production elements unique to the actual play
medium (panel framing, character statistics, etc.). If this paradigm shift
follows historical precedent, we will see more shows embracing the unique
production elements and shying away from the old elements over time.
While not explicitly coded, there were a number of other production
elements that are stringently avoided in film and television that were present
in a number of the actual play shows. The two most notable were static shots
and visible production. As mentioned above, films and television will go to
great lengths to avoid the static shot. Instead, camera movements and
perspective changing through editing (to give the feeling of movement) are
standard. In contrast, actual play shows often actively embrace the static
shot. This is particularly true for shows that feature a panel format, which
presents all the characters and often includes other relevant materials (such
as the battle map). Panel format shows usually have little to no movement in
the camera and seldom change the camera angle.
Visible production is when the production equipment (boom
microphones, camera tripods, lighting equipment, etc.) is caught on
camera.9 Largely because of suspension of disbelief, visible production is
stringently avoided in film, television, and even plays (e.g., in plays, set
changes are made in the dark by production members dressed in dark
clothing). However, visible production is not avoided in actual play shows—
at least, not to the extent that it is avoided in films and television (see Figure
3). The microphones are often clearly visible, and no attempt is made to hide
the fact that a production is happening. This set up is more reminiscent of
video productions of radio shows (e.g., The Howard Stern Show; Stern, 1990)
than of ­narrative-driven video entertainment.

Figure 3: A common editing sequence in Actual Play. The players are wearing headphones and
speaking into visible microphones.

Focusing on elements of production that are immediately apparent to

viewers, Study 1 has demonstrated clear differences in customs of actual play
compared to television and film. However, previous research (Blau &
Carello, in press) has shown that—over and above production elements—the
timing of editing can influence viewer enjoyment. Study 2 directly examines
how editing influences enjoyment of actual play to explore differences in
audience expectations, further establishing actual play as a novel medium.
Study 2: Fractal editing. Previous research has found that the timing of
the editing in Hollywood films has a particular mathematical structure;
namely, it is fractal (e.g., Cutting, de Long & Nothelfer, 2010; Blau, Petrusz,
& Carello, 2013). The fractality of a time series can be assessed using
detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA), which results in a Hurst exponent
(H). If 0.5 < H < 1.0, then the time series is fractal. Differences within this
range also indicate differences in the ­long-range correlations in the time
series. Specifically, for sequences at the H = 0.5 end, the length of the events
is completely uncorrelated—that is, the length of one event has no
relationship to the length of the event that follows it. At the H = 1.0 end, the
length of the events is more deterministic—that is, the length of an event is
determined by the length of the events preceding it. ­In-between these two
extremes, the time series is persistent, which means that a short event is
most likely going to be followed by a short event and that a long event is
most likely going to be followed by a long event. The vast majority of
biological processes (heart rate, step length, breathing, neurological activity,
etc.) fall into this persistent, fractal, range (see Newman, 2005, for a review).
Human perception of relatively neutral events has also been shown to be
fractal (Blau & Carello, in press; Blau, Petrusz, & Carello, 2013; Isenhower,
Frank, Kay, & Carello, 2012)—specifically, Hperception = 0.65. Interestingly, this
is roughly the same as the structure found in films, leading to the hypothesis
that successful films are successful at least in part because they replicate the
fractal structure of human perception. Indeed, films without that structure
are less ­well-liked and less ­well-remembered than those with it (Blau, 2011;
Blau, & Carello, in prep). If actual play were following the same rules as films
or television, we would expect the same to apply here: Those shows with
fractal structures nearer to 0.65 would be more successful (broadly defined)
than those shows farther away from that target.
Method. Ten actual play shows were chosen that met the following
criteria:
Available on YouTube. Although it is not necessarily the most popular
platform for these shows, YouTube has several key features that make its use
advantageous. First, several ­third-party applications allow the shows to be
downloaded from the internet in a variety of forms, including those
compatible with the chosen editing software (i.e., Final Cut Pro). Second,
the number of views, likes, and dislikes are all readily available and make a
good measure for the likeability of the episode.
­Video-recorded and edited. Because this study focused on the fractality of
the editing, it was crucial that the shows used be ­video-recorded and that
they be edited. (Shows that were exclusively ­audio-recorded may be edited
as well, but such editing would be nearly impossible to detect from the
public record; raw audio files would have been required to reconstruct the
edits.) Care was also taken to select shows that had editing throughout and
not just in the first few minutes of the episode, as that could bias the results
in favor of the hypothesis that these have a different fractality. In other
words, choosing this type of editing pattern was conservative with respect to
the hypothesis that actual play is a new medium.
Of sufficient length. While it is not a guarantee that they would have
enough edit points to run the fractal analysis, preference was given to shows
that were longer than an hour. Shows shorter than a ­half-hour in duration
were eliminated. Again, given the way that fractal time series behave when
truncated (Weron, 2002), this is conservative with respect to the hypothesis
as longer time series are more likely to have a stable distribution.
Published at least 10 episodes. With the rising popularity of actual play,
there is an incredible number of groups publishing or releasing new series,
and there is a tremendous amount of variability in their popularity. Some
shows only have hundreds of views, while others have hundreds of
thousands. Therefore, ­between-show comparisons would not be statistically
appropriate, as they are simply not on the same scale; a ­within-show design
was selected to account for such differences of scale. However, to ensure
enough difference between the best and worst of each show, the shows had
to have at least ten episodes from which to choose. Four episodes were
chosen from each show that represented the best- and ­worst-liked of the
series (see below for selection criteria).
Procedure. Once the shows were chosen, each episode was cataloged in
terms of the number of views, the number of likes, and the number of
dislikes on YouTube. All data entry for a single show was completed within a
­two-hour period; because the numbers change over time as more viewers
watch the show and possibly like or dislike it, the limited window ensured as
much ­within-show consistency as possible. For each episode, the normalized
like (likes divided by views), the normalized dislike (dislikes divided by
views) and the relative dislike (normalized dislike divided by normalized
like10) were calculated. For each show, four episodes were chosen: two from
the highest end of the normalized dislike scale (i.e., they were the most
disliked) and two from the lowest end of the normalized dislike scale (i.e.,
they were the most liked). The only other constraint was that the episode
had to have enough edit points to run the analysis (i.e., roughly 100 or
higher). Table 1 provides a complete list of the forty episodes chosen.

Table 1: Average Descriptive Statistics for Actual Play Show Separated by Two Best and Two
Worst.

All forty episodes were downloaded from YouTube using MacX YouTube
Downloader (Version 5.0.0) and imported into Final Cut Pro (Version
10.4.3) where the edit points were identified. While “edit points” in film or
television typically only include abrupt changes in viewpoint or scene, these
shows also frequently used graphics (i.e., a graphical overlay) as a means of
communicating information about the characters or the scene (e.g., a “stats
card” explaining the attributes of the character might appear on the screen
when that character is the one speaking), and so the appearance and
disappearance of graphics were also counted for these purposes. The ­inter-
edit-intervals constituted the time series for each episode.
Each time series was subjected to DFA, and an Hedit obtained for each
episode. To see if distance from the typical editing target resulted in
differences in likeability, a difference score was also computed: Hdiff = |Hedit—
0.65|. The length of the episode (in minutes) and the number of edits were
used to compute edit density. Episodes were also coded for whether they
were traditionally framed or ­panel-framed as defined in Study 1.
Results. ­Independent-samples ­t-tests comparing the traditionally framed
shows to the ­panel-framed shows showed that the traditionally framed
shows were closer to the editing target of Hedit = 0.65. Or in other words, Hdiff
was significantly lower in the traditionally framed shows (M = 0.09, SD =
0.07) than in the ­panel-framed shows (M = 0.16, SD = 0.10), t(38) = 2.50, p
< .05. This is in keeping with the results from Study 1, which suggested that
there are some actual play shows that are still attempting to mimic ­-
television-like structure but that others are exploring other production
methods.
Interestingly, the traditionally framed shows also had a significantly
higher edit density (M = 7.8 edits/min, SD = 4.2) than the ­panel-framed
shows (M = 1.8 edits/min, SD = 1.2), t(38) = -4.8, p < .001. Findings by Blau
and Carello (in press) suggest that professionally made films have an edit
density of 9.92 edits/minute (SD = 4.9, n = 15). That is not significantly
different from the traditionally framed actual play shows, t(41) = 1.49, p =
0.14 but it is significantly different from the ­panel-framed actual play shows,
t(25) = 5.59, p < .0001. Traditionally framed shows were also shorter (M =
102.2 minutes, SD = 65.15) than the ­panel-framed shows (M = 176.7
minutes, SD = 48.75), t(38) = 3.55, p < .005.
Once again, the foregoing results on their own might suggest that actual
play shows are merely film or television done poorly; however, if that were
true, we would expect that the traditionally made shows would be better
liked than the ­non-traditional shows. Consistent with my predictions, that is
not the case, as an ­independent-samples ­t-test showed that framing had no
effect on relative dislike, t(38) = -1.25, p = 0.22.
Additionally, if actual play shows were film or television that was
sometimes done badly, then we would expect deviations from the “target” of
Hedit = 0.65 to result in a ­drop-off in viewer enjoyment (as we see in
deviations from that target in films; e.g., Blau, 2011; Blau & Carello, in press).
Again, this is not the case: Hdiff was not correlated with relative dislike,
Pearson’s r = 0.272, n = 40, p = 0.1, two tails.
It is possible that the appropriate “target” for editing could be a different
number for actual play than it is for film and television. If that were the case,
we would expect a curvilinear relationship between Hedit and relative dislike,
such that there was a point where the liking was maximized (i.e., the relative
dislike variable was minimized). However, such was not the case (see Figure
4). A polynomial regression model of relative dislike on Hedit was not
significant in either the linear or the quadratic terms, F(3, 36) = 2.154, p =
.11. While it is difficult to draw too many conclusions from null findings, it
is interesting that none of the Hedit constraints that usually apply to films
(even with a comparable sample size; see Blau, 2011) seem to apply here.

Figure 4: The quadratic best-fit on H by relative dislike was not significant, explaining only 5
percent of the variance. See Table 1 for symbol key.

Discussion. Study 2 investigated the hypothesis that actual play is

following different rules by explicitly comparing the editing structure of
actual play shows to that of successful films (and television). If actual play is,
indeed, its own medium, then it need not follow the same rules as film and
television in order to succeed. The results from Study 2 support the findings
from Study 1: actual play appears to be a new medium that is undergoing
the same sort of paradigm shift that marks the emergence of every new
narrative medium. Specifically, there appears to be one group of shows that
are still replicating the traditions of film and television (Hedit = 0.65,
traditional framing, high density editing, runtimes of just over an hour and
a half) while others are exploring other techniques (high range of Hedits, ­-
panel-framing, lower density editing and longer runtimes). Interestingly, the
audiences for these shows do not appear to be responding to these
techniques one way or the other—liking measures are unrelated to any of
the editing structures analyzed here. More work needs to be done (and
perhaps the medium simply needs to mature) to uncover the production
elements to which audiences are responding.
Thus far, I have focused exclusively on the first of the two criteria
regarding defining a new medium: that it must meet the exclusion criteria.
However, to truly be a new medium it must also add new elements to what
came before.

Unique to Actual Play

If it is to survive as a new medium, actual play will need to have elements
that are unique to it. Plays had multiple actors and invented the “fourth
wall,” which was different from the storytellers that came before; films edited
over time and space, which was different than plays. Each new medium
must exhibit advantages over the old, or they will not be embraced by
entertainers or audiences. I argue that there are several elements that are
already unique to actual play narratives, although the list I present here is by
no means an exhaustive one, and it may not include elements that may
emerge as the medium matures.

Element of Chance
In all other narrative entertainment, choices are made deliberately as to
whether something will “work.” That is, if the main character attempts to
persuade a shopkeeper to let them hide in a back room while the “bad guys”
are looking for them, the choice is made by the writers as to whether the
shopkeeper will allow it, usually based both on how that choice would play
out in the broader narrative of the film and how it fits with the motivations
of the characters involved. In actual play, the players suggest actions they
would like to take, and then they roll dice to see whether they are successful;
in the current example, the player character would roll a die to determine
how successful they were in their attempt at persuasion. Although characters
typically have specific characteristics and skillsets that can influence dice
rolls, success on such actions is strongly determined solely by the outcome
of these rolls. In no other medium are choice points determined by chance
alone.

­Story-in-Story
One of the benefits of the low ­edit-density coupled with ­panel-formatting
approach is that the audience can pay attention to whatever part of the
action interests them because all of the action is presented to them. This
might be the main narrative (in our example, perhaps the GM talking one of
the characters through their interaction with the shopkeeper), but it might
also be the interplay between the players (for example, two of the other
players having a whispered exchange about how they might help their
compatriot, complete with hand gestures and intense facial expressions).
Blau, Petrusz, and Carello (2013) made the argument that the fractal editing
of films made them more successful by virtue of replicating human
perception of events. Actual play seems to violate that hypothesis—its
editing does not replicate event perception, and yet it is still successful. It is
possible, however, to reconcile these seeming contradictions: actual play is a
new medium. Film proceeds by presenting those events and only those
events salient to the narrative (cf. Blau, 2020; Blau & Capetta, 2020); by
contrast, actual play proceeds by presenting a much broader set of events,
both of the narrative and of the players’ real world. The narrative of actual
play is a story within the story of the actors themselves. Traditional
television presents fictional narratives but not “real life” ones; reality
television shows present “real life” narratives but (purportedly) not fictional
ones. Actual play combines both simultaneously.

Audience Interaction
Although this is not in all actual play shows, enough of them feature
audience interaction that it is worth mentioning. Some shows—especially
more popular ones—allow for direct interaction in the narrative or narrative
elements. Acquisitions Incorporated: The “C” Team (pennyarcadeTV, 2017)
for example, allows audience members who are watching live to vote for
their favorite players and characters. Once enough votes have been cast for a
given player, that player’s character will receive an ­in-game boon (e.g.,
advantage on a single roll or a temporary bonus to a single stat) with direct
consequences for the narrative. Other shows have indirect interaction with
the show; many shows have a live chat room that scrolls on the side of the
screen, which players might see and respond to ­on-air (especially those
hosted on platforms like Twitch that are designed to facilitate audience
engagement). In Critical Role (Critical Role Productions, 2015), the audience
has more than once participated in creating an NPC that has gone on to join
the narrative for several episodes (for one such example, see the entry for
“Orly Skiffback” on the Critical Role Wiki which outlines the creation of an
NPC via a “fireside chat” with the GM, Matthew Mercer). While other forms
of narrative entertainment (e.g., narrative video games, Smith 2014; ­choose-
your-ending type movies like Bandersnatch, Voets, 2019) have points where
the audience can participate, the audience is—at best—choosing from a
handful of ­pre-set options at specific narrative turns.

Looking Forward
The historical pattern of emerging narrative mediums is fairly consistent.
At first, the medium mimics the old—holding on to traditions and
techniques that worked in the previous forms. In some cases, those
traditions still worked (e.g., the “fourth wall” of theater continuing into film
and television), but in some cases, these ­held-over techniques resulted in
awkward and sometimes unpalatable entertainment (e.g., the “static shots”
of early film). In the latter cases, the medium adapted and created new
techniques to present the narrative, compelling innovation consistent with
the technological abilities and entertainment niche of the new medium. The
one exception to this pattern has been the convergence of the film and
television mediums into a common visual language.
In addition to having the sine qua non of new mediums (i.e., that they
meet the exclusion criterion of being different than what came before and
that they add something unique), actual play is also following this historical
precedent. The framing and fractal editing are in a period of transition:
Some shows are following the old techniques; some are adapting new
techniques. Previous mediums have taken decades to settle in to an
identifiably different style, and there is no reason to expect that actual play
will be any different.
Previous empirical work in cognitive psychology suggests that similarity
in gaze path is causally related to comprehension of narratives (Richardson
& Dale, 2005) as a result we might expect that editing in film serves a similar
purpose by forcing the audience to pay attention to what the director
believes are important story elements (Blau, 2020). In a more ­panel-like
structure where there is no exogenous constraint on the object of the
viewer’s attention, we might expect lower uniformity of comprehension
across all viewers. In other words, since the panel structure allows the viewer
to attend to whatever part of the scene they find interesting, they might
attend to different events than another viewer (continuing the earlier
example, choosing to attend to the GM as the shopkeeper vs. attending to
the conversation between the players). One possibility for further
psychological research in this area is investigating whether the lower edit
density and panel format results in more variable comprehension of the
main story line.

Conclusion
In this essay, I have presented convergent qualitative and quantitative
explorations of a new medium in flux, providing a window into the lifecycle
of actual play. As actual play continues to grow as a new medium, more
research should be conducted to explore the emerging narrative techniques.
No doubt the studies contained within this essay would yield very different
results in a few years, and the longitudinal change would be informative for
those attempting to create new mediums in the future. If the predictions
made in this essay hold, the current work should provide meaningful
insights into the dynamics of this transition by examining an interesting
period of time in which artists, actors, and audiences are grappling with
what works—and what doesn’t—in this new medium. Academic interest in
emerging mediums has never had such an opportunity to watch this process
in real time within such a large body of data.
Notes
1. Dungeons & Dragons (http://dnd.wizards.com/), White Wolf (https://www.­white-wolf.com/),
Pathfinder (https://paizo.com/pathfinder), etc.
2. A common form is to use a group video chat platform such as Google Hangouts
(https://tools.google.com/dlpage/hangoutplugin) or Roll20 (https://roll20.net/). Interestingly, this
allows for the individual players to be anywhere in the world and still record the show together.
3. A “medium” here refers to the materials used to create the piece, where materials might include
the technology, people, set pieces, techniques, etc. This is in contrast to “genre” which is the content of
the story, rather than the method by which the content is conveyed. For example, mediums include
plays, television, and radio. However, within a medium (say, film), there are different genres and
applications (horror, vs. comedy, romance, or vs. drama. Any medium might convey any genre, any
genre might be conveyed by any medium.).
4. Many incorrectly believe that The Great Train Robbery (made in 1903 by Edwin S. Porter) was the
first narrative film. It was the first to combine more modern filming techniques with a narrative, but it
was not the first narrative film (see Ettleman, 2017).
5. Obviously, this does not account for film sequels or sprawling franchises like the Marvel
Cinematic Universe, but given that each of those is (typically) intended as a ­stand-alone film, the
point remains.
6. Although both runtimes and season length are becoming less rigidly defined as television shows
are being made exclusively for subscription platforms, which have neither intrusive commercials nor
the demands of network programming.
7. It is not without precedent, however. Split screen has been used effectively in films such as
Conversations with Other Women (Canosa, 2005), and the talking heads panel format has been used in
news programs such as Meet the Press on NBC. Nevertheless, sustained static shot panel format is
unique to this medium.
8. There is a second type of editing over time in films. The different scenes might take place at
different times in the story. For example, the scene in the diner might be followed by a scene in a
grocery store that actually takes place the following day. We do not see the intervening time, and so
that time is “edited over.” Given the nature of Actual Play, this might happen, but it would happen by
virtue of the narration (e.g., the GM saying “a week goes by”) rather than a consequence of editing.
Therefore, it is not included in this analysis.
9. There are entire websites dedicated to identifying moments of visible production in film and
television (e.g., Clark, 2013) because the presence is both rare and embarrassing for the production
team.
10. While “relative like” (normalized like divided by normalized dislike) would have made a more
intuitive measure (i.e., with a higher number meaning it was better liked and a lower number
meaning it was less liked) this proved impossible as many episodes had no dislikes, which would have
resulted in dividing by 0.

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OceanofPDF.com
Audience, Framing and Flow
OceanofPDF.com
 Critical Role and Audience Impact on
Tabletop Roleplay
Robyn Hope

Actual play refers to the live performance of ­non-digital roleplaying

games. In order to understand actual play, we need to understand tabletop
roleplaying games—both in their original private incarnation, and how they
transform when they become spectacles. The goal of this essay is to examine
actual play as a performance in order to understand exactly what the players
are creating and why it appeals to viewers. Or, in other words: What is so
exciting about watching someone else’s Dungeons & Dragons game?
One of the major barriers to entry on actual play—both to studying it and
to enjoying it as a viewer—is that tabletop roleplaying can be very
complicated. Players engage with tabletop roleplaying games through
imaginative ­story-crafting, but also through strategic combat, which
involves extensive, complicated rules. Because tabletop roleplaying is a
complex thing to execute, it is also a complex thing to communicate and
consume.
Previous research on tabletop roleplay focused on private roleplaying
games, usually relying on participatory ethnography in which a player or
game master studies their own group. This research typically concerns itself
with how players engage with a complex activity like roleplaying, and with
the social roles the game creates for its players. Writers frequently rely on
Goffman’s frame analysis as a theoretical model, as interactional frames help
them explain the multiple levels of engagement players experience during
tabletop roleplaying. Because so much research on private tabletop roleplay
uses frame analysis, using frame analysis to understand actual play sets up a
productive ­compare-and-contrast.
Critical Role is perhaps the most successful actual play show to date. The
show is led by voice actor Matthew Mercer, and the players are also
professional voice actors: Laura Bailey, Liam O’Brien, Taliesin Jaffe, Ashley
Johnson, Marisha Ray, Sam Riegel, and Travis Willingham. The show is now
midway through its second campaign—its first story arc, centering around
the band of heroes known as Vox Machina, is complete, and the players have
started over with new characters in a new setting. This essay draws examples
from both campaigns to help ground our understanding. Before that,
however, we benefit from a quick overview of how frame analysis is typically
applied to tabletop roleplay.

Tabletop Roleplaying Before Actual Play

Many theorists who write on tabletop roleplay are roleplayers themselves.
Of these, Gary Alan Fine, Daniel Mackay, and Jennifer Grouling Cover have
written books that use interactional frames to analyze tabletop roleplay.
Gary Alan Fine’s Shared Fantasy, a sociological look at tabletop groups,
provides an outline of their social structure; Daniel Mackay’s The Fantasy
Roleplaying Game: A New Performing Art examines tabletop roleplay using
the framework of performance studies; and Jennifer Grouling Cover’s The
Creation of Narrative in Tabletop Roleplaying Games provides a useful guide
to how a tabletop roleplaying game can construct an overarching narrative.
Alongside these three books, I have also drawn on Markus Montola’s Ph.D.
thesis, On the Edge of the Magic Circle: Understanding Pervasive Games and ­-
Role-Playing, which offers a useful ­re-imagining of frame analysis. Of these
four theorists, Mackay provides the most concise definition of a tabletop
roleplaying game:
an episodic and participatory story creation system that includes a set of quantified rules that assist a
group of players and a gamemaster in determining how their fictional characters’ spontaneous
interactions are resolved [p. xix–xx, emphasis in original].

This definition is best understood piece by piece. Firstly, tabletop

roleplaying games are episodic: groups meet periodically for discrete and ­-
self-contained sessions of play. These episodes—or “sessions”—may form an
ongoing story, creating what is known as a “campaign.” Sessions are
participatory because the gamemaster (who manages the setting, ­non-player
characters, and conflicts within the fictional ­game-world, and who has
absolute, final authority over the rules), and the players (who each control a
single character in the world), contribute collaboratively to the progression
of a story. The rules of the game create a flexible system for resolving
narrative conflict. When the players encounter a challenge, puzzle, or
enemy, they explain how their characters intend to resolve the situation. The
gamemaster will then use a combination of published rulebooks, dice rolls,
and personal judgments to determine the outcomes of the players’ attempts.
The majority of these actions are spontaneous. While the game master
may plan out locations or story hooks ahead of time, they have no way of
predicting how the players will approach them; players and game masters
are constantly improvising. There are many tabletop systems, but Critical
Role uses the fifth edition ruleset of Dungeons & Dragons with a handful of
custom rules—or “house rules”—created by the game master, Matthew
Mercer. There are currently seven players on Critical Role in addition to
Matt, and each of the seven players controls one character within the game
world.
To explain what the players and game master are doing, Fine, Mackay,
and Cover all use Goffman’s model of interactional frames, as developed in
Goffman’s book Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience.
Simply put, a “frame” is a set of principles that dictates social behavior
within a particular context. Gestures, words, and acts have different
connotations within different social frames, and these connotations are
developed over time within that context. For example, raising a hand in class
is a request to speak; a basketball player raising a hand during a game is
requesting a pass, or trying to defend a shot. Among other things, social
frames keep us from confounding the meaning of similar gestures in
different contexts, so teachers are not usually in danger of throwing
basketballs at their students.
Frame analysis appeals to many theorists studying tabletop roleplay
because it can account for multiple layers of understanding, including an
understanding of fictional worlds and performances. Roleplayers, like
theatrical actors, are pretending to be someone other than themselves. In
Critical Role, they are pretending to be heroes in a fantastical world. At the
same time, players follow a complex set of game rules to determine how
their characters overcome challenges. They must think strategically one
moment and creatively the next, and thus become adept at shifting between
different layers of understanding—different frames—in order to understand
each other.
In Fine’s model, tabletop roleplayers oscillate between three primary
frames: the narrative frame, encompassing all actions within the narrative
diegesis; the gameplay frame, concerning the rules, dice, and play
mechanics; and the social frame, comprising the extradiegetic relationships
the players have with each other (Fine 1983). Tabletop roleplay requires fluid
movement through the narrative, gameplay, and social frames. Because
players and information move through multiple frames in tabletop roleplay,
it is worth reintroducing the concept of the interactional membrane. Instead
of thinking of frames as ­hard-edged squares, Montola (and Goffman) think
of them as cells:
A living cell [has] a membrane which cuts the cell off from … its external milieu, ensuring a
selective relation between them and the internal composition of the cell … a membrane does the
actual work of filtering and does not merely designate that a selection from the external milieu is
being maintained. The membrane is subject to many threats, for it can sustain its function over only
a small range of changes in the external system [Montola, 2012, p. 50–51].

In any system of frames certain information from the external world must
persist, while certain information must be filtered out of the cell to maintain
its health and integrity. Montola emphasizes that the membrane metaphor is
“not about isolation, but about transformation” (2012, p. 52). Information is
transformed as it moves through different interactional frames. This is also
true of tabletop roleplay; the mechanical, social, and narrative frames all
inform and transform each other.
It is also possible for players and game masters to lose track of the frame.
This is a misunderstanding that occurs every so often on Critical Role. In
Episode 2 of the first season, Laura wonders aloud if she can ask a
mechanical question, but Matt misunderstands her, thinking they are still in
the narrative frame:
Laura: Can I ask a question?
Matt [with a Scottish accent, in character as a dwarf]: Ah, yes!
Laura: Oh, not to you—to the other guy. Matt.
Matt [in his own voice]: Ah, yes. Yes, Laura? [“Into the Greyspine Mines–Critical Role RPG
Show: Episode 2”]

Fine observes that these frame errors happen quite frequently in tabletop
roleplay, and that they must be swiftly corrected so the game can more
forward. Laura’s mechanical question is about when their characters will
regain their power to cast spells, as each character can only cast a certain
number of spells per day. Matt says that the characters need to sleep for
eight hours to get their power back. That piece of mechanical information is
then transformed into narrative information: the characters decide to stay
the night in town before continuing into a dungeon.
Anyone who wants to play Dungeons & Dragons must understand how
information flows through its various frames, but once tabletop games are
put before an audience (thereby becoming actual play) the audience must
also comprehend this flow of information. They may not know the rules by
heart, but they would at least need to understand why Laura, in the example
above, would refer to “the other” version of Matt. As such, the presence of an
audience creates new demands of the players. In a private game, players only
need to understand each other; in an actual play scenario, the tabletop
roleplaying activity is marketed as something not only legible to an
audience, but enjoyable for an audience. Players are now aware that they are
being watched by an external group—one they cannot communicate with
directly at the moment of performance, unlike how they can directly access
their ­player-peers. While the players themselves must decide how much
effort they put in to making their game scrutable to an external audience,
the mere presence of the audience creates another interactional frame. I call
this new frame the performance frame.

The Critical Appeal

From the moment a group of players decide to make their tabletop game
into a public performance, the performance frame has an immediate effect,
as it poses a basic technical question: how will the players distribute their
sessions to an audience? The Critical Role cast has chosen to livestream their
session on Twitch: other actual play shows release YouTube videos or
podcasts. Within these different distribution channels, the players make
subsequent technical and artistic decisions to help sculpt how their show
will be received. In other words, looking at the technical architecture of an
actual play show reveals features put in place purely for the sake of the
audience, and this will lead us to what part of the actual play spectacle the
audience is most interested in consuming.
I have lifted this idea from T.L. Taylor and her book on ­e-sports, Raising
the Stakes: ­E-Sports and the Professionalization of Computer Gaming. By
Taylor’s description, the transformation of sport into spectacle involves
clarifying the flow of the game. ­E-sports fans may initially find spectatorship
challenging because digital game interfaces are typically designed to
facilitate the player’s perspective, not the perspective of an audience. Taylor
describes multiple tactics used to clarify the action of ­e-sports—and
traditional sports—for viewers, including everything from changes in the
rules, to the role of commentators, to the introduction of new technologies
such as instant replays (Taylor, 2012). In the case of ­e-sports, watching the
game from a single player’s perspective made the action hard to follow, so
games developed ­spectator-friendly camera modes. These changes were not
made for the sake of the competitors, but for the ­e-sports viewers.
This idea of clarifying for spectators is quite useful when approaching
actual play: Critical Role clarifies certain elements of tabletop roleplay and
obfuscates others. Tabletop roleplay is complex. There are hundreds of pages
of rules for Dungeons & Dragons, not to mention the hundreds of hours of
spoken content created by the players. So, of this mass of information, what
have the players of Critical Role chosen to clarify, and what have they left
untouched? Places where technical architecture (cameras, microphones,
stream layouts and public websites) are places where the performance frame
has provably changed tabletop play.
We can begin by looking at what every viewer sees when tuning in to
Critical Role: the basic visual layout of the livestream. This layout features at
least three simultaneous camera feeds arranged in a single window. Two
cameras are pointed at the players, with a third pointed at the game master.
A fourth “Battle Cam” can be turned on when necessary, to show a ­close-up
of the miniatures and models used for ­in-game combat. The livestream
window is very simple, but it has been repeatedly redesigned: at various
times it also displayed sponsors, a live feed of the Twitch chat, the player’s
Twitter handles, and combat information. As the show progressed, however,
this excess text was stripped away: now, the players are each labeled with the
names, classes, and portraits of their characters, and aside from the
mandatory block for sponsor advertisements, there is almost no other
additional text. The physical set has also grown simpler. In early episodes,
the players sat in front of a chalkboard and bookshelves; these were later
replaced with a façade of stone, wood, and electric lanterns.
After years of experimentation, Critical Role’s visuals have been refined to
prioritize simplicity and immersion. Critical Role wants to draw you into its
narrative world. The players are identified by the names and classes of their
characters, rather than their real names. The background is not distracting,
but the wood and stone are also evocative of the fantasy genre, and the
lighting on the back walls can be tweaked to match the mood of the scene.
When the players are in combat, the players and viewers alike must
understand the exact positions of their characters and the enemies, and so,
much like the overhead cameras developed for ­e-sports spectatorship, the
Battle Cam shows us the miniatures Matt uses to model the battle for his
players. Battle is when the mechanical frame tends to dominate, and so
another camera is used to communicate battle flow more clearly. At the
same time, Critical Role uses expensive miniatures and maps during combat
to add the gloss of narrative immersion. We don’t see ­stand-in pieces
moving around a board, like we might for a game of checkers; we see a
miniature wizard or rogue sneaking through the halls of a model dungeon.
If these visuals took top priority, we might conclude that Critical Role
focuses on its central fantasy narrative and, to a lesser extent, its combat
encounters, in order to entice and engage viewers. We might conclude that
the narrative and mechanics are the appealing part of the spectacle.
However, the visuals are only part of the puzzle. What we see on Critical
Role is not as important as what we hear. When asked for the most
important feature of an actual play show, Matthew Mercer’s first answer was
“good audio quality” (Kenreck, 2017). Critical Role is now available in
podcast form, and other popular actual play series (like The Adventure Zone)
are only released in podcast form. If the actual play spectacle can be an ­-
audio-only spectacle, this suggests that the players’ speech is the single most
important element of actual play.

Listenable Narrative
If the most important element of an actual play spectacle is what the
players say, an analysis of player speech can help us understand exactly what
changes when tabletop turns into performance—in other words, how the
performance frame impacts player behavior directly. Helpfully, Jennifer
Grouling Cover identifies six different types of speech that can occur during
tabletop roleplay: game master speech, ­in-character speech, dice rolls,
narrative suggestions, narrative planning, and ­off-record speech. These
modes of speech are organized in descending order of “narrativity.” Game
master speech possesses the highest concentration of narrativity, because
everything the game master describes is instantly taken as true within the
story; ­off-record speech has low narrativity, as it refers to moments when the
players “break character” and talk about something entirely outside the
game’s fiction (such one player asking to borrow another’s pencil, or to pass
the snacks). Regardless of their narrativity, all of these types of speech are
required for a game to function. Dice rolls, for example, are key to the
game’s mechanics and therefore dictate what happens in the narrative, but
they exist at a level of abstraction away from the narrative world, slightly
detached in time and space, thus making them less “­narrative-rich” than a
dialogue performed by players while entirely ­in-character.
Cover defines the concept of “narrativity” quite thoroughly. As opposed
to understanding narrative as a form—say, a plot structure with a beginning,
middle, and end—Cover defines narrative as an experience. This is
particularly useful for tabletop games, because the “narrative” of a tabletop
game comes into existence as the game is played; it is the experience of
building a story. If a type of speech possesses a high degree of narrativity,
then it engages the player more thoroughly in the narrative experience.
Cover identifies three major ways speech can create narrative engagement. If
a speech act gives players a more vivid mental picture of the setting, they are
spatially engaged. If the speech act makes a player unsure of what is going to
happen next, they are engaged temporally. Colloquially, we might refer to
this as being “in the moment”: the uncertainty of the character’s present
moment and the player’s present moment converge, creating a shared feeling
of suspense. Tabletop roleplaying is particularly effective at creating this
kind of engagement, because the success of player actions must be
determined by a dice roll, rendering the immediate future uncertain for
players and characters alike. Finally, if the speech act helps players
sympathize with or understand the emotions of a character, they are
emotionally engaged.
We can also relate this understanding of narrative engagement to the
psychological concept of flow, developed by Csikszentmihalyi. “Flow” refers
to the positive state of being completely immersed in an activity—typically
an activity that involves utilizing a ­well-honed skill to overcome challenges
in a way that provides swift, clear gratification or feedback. While thus
engaged, the actor’s concentration is heightened, and ­self-consciousness and
stress disappear. Csikszentmihalyi specifies that games are ­well-structured to
facilitate flow, as they provide the necessary challenges and feedback.
Tabletop is no different: players can achieve flow if they are deeply
engaged in roleplay, or if they are juggling combat rules and trading blows
with monsters. Additionally, as mentioned above, combat information can
transform into mechanical information and ­vice-versa. If this transition
between frames is executed smoothly, the flow persists. The sense of
achievement may even be heightened if a character pulls off a move that is
both mechanically advantageous and narratively impactful, such as killing a
dangerous villain. The players on Critical Role do seem to experience flow to
some degree; as a recent guest, Mica Burton, explains, the cameras and set
around the players seem to “melt away” once Matt has everyone invested in
the story (“Talks Machina: Discussing C2E75—Rime and Reason”).
Returning to Cover’s speech model, we can see how some modes of
speech facilitate flow better than others. ­Off-record speech—talking about
things unrelated to the game—has the lowest level of narrativity, because it
distracts players and may therefore break engagement or flow. Gary Alan
Fine offers the example of players complaining about the taste of the water
they are drinking, a conversation which destroys the mood of a tabletop
session. Critical Role’s livestream has been briefly derailed by everything
from killing a fly in the studio (Episode 74, Season 2, “Manifold Morals”) to
the players receiving pizzas donated by their viewers (Episode 3, “Strange
Bedfellows”). Meanwhile, speech acts with higher degrees of narrativity are
much better at creating flow. The moments of “melting away” that Mica
Burton refers to are most visible during the players’ extended ­in-character
conversations, or in moments of intense combat, when players are
describing their actions and the dungeon master, in return, describes their
effects. These moments most resemble conventional narrative storytelling.
The players all exchange dialogue and narrate action, description, and
sensory experiences (sights, smells, and sounds) without “breaking the
fourth wall” by referring to game mechanics or the studio around them.
With this in mind, I have observed that, in actual play, the players tend to
maximize the quantity of ­narrative-rich content and minimize ­narrative-
poor content. I believe this shift is an impact of the performance frame; of
the players’ consciousness that they are gaming before an audience. ­-
Narrative-rich content is, in some ways, the most appealing content for
viewers because it is also the most accessible (though we complicate this
conclusion later in the essay).
In the following sections, I elaborate on how the performance frame has
shifted the balance of conventional tabletop roleplay by looking at some
specific moments of ­high-narrative and ­low-narrative speech.

­Narrative-Rich Speech
If we take Cover’s definition of narrative as an experience, it seems that
sharing the narrative experience would be an effective way to engage the
viewers of actual play. If players can become temporally, spatially, and
emotionally immersed in the narrative frame, then it follows that viewers
can become immersed in these elements as well. Therefore, one way the
presence of the performance frame influences actual play is to make ­-
narrative-rich material clearer and more prevalent.
We can see an emphasis on ­narrative-rich speech in Critical Role in a
number of places, from Matt’s elaborate ­pre-written descriptions to the
extensive ­in-character conversations, but one place where this emphasis
becomes particularly clear is during combat encounters. Combat can be a
very large part of tabletop roleplaying, if the players and game master so
desire. However, because combat is so complex and involves so many rules,
it also tends to slip into ­narrative-poor speech. Combat is when rule
questions and ­out-of-character strategizing are most prevalent: the players
end up immersed in rulebooks and mental math. Combat also decouples
temporal engagement with the narrative: while each “round” of combat—
essentially each player taking their “turn” and deciding what action to take—
lasts approximately six seconds within the narrative world, a single round of
combat might take multiple minutes in our world, depending on how many
characters are present and the actions they decide to take. A rare handful of
Critical Role’s ­four-hour episodes are spent entirely on a single combat
encounter (Episode 52, “The Kill Box,” is the best example). While combat
can be very exciting in certain moments, it also takes a very long time, and a
lot of that time is bogged down with calcula-tion.
Despite glaring exceptions like “The Kill Box,” most of Critical Role is not
­combat-intensive. According to CritRoleStats—the unofficial “scorekeepers”
of Critical Role, all volunteer fans—roughly 28 percent of the minutes of the
first season and only 23 percent of the minutes of the second season (at the
time of writing) were spent in combat. The vast majority of the time, the
players are talking, navigating, or engaging with the world in other ways—in
other words, they are roleplaying.
When they do engage in combat, or other moments of ­low-narrative
speech, the players on Critical Role make a considerable effort to infuse
speech acts with more narrativity. For each turn in combat, a player will
select their actions, roll the required dice, and then tell Matt the total
amount of damage their character inflicts on a monster. This exchange is
typically low in narrativity. However, Matt will then describe the character’s
blows as vividly as possible, with hand gestures, sound effects, and
monstrous reaction noises. For these brief moments, the viewers and players
are temporally adhered to the action again, hearing the blow described “as it
happens.” Most importantly, Matt invites the players to participate in this ­-
narrative-rich combat through his signature question: “How do you want to
do this?”
Matt asks the players “how do you want to do this?” when they land the
deathblow on a significant enemy (either the last active hostile, or any
important villainous character). Matt allows the victor to explain how they
dispatch their enemy, often creating a moment of vivid sensory description
and drama. While long combat encounters might drag on or fall into lulls,
the “how do you want to do this?” moment is often very memorable, and on
occasion, deeply emotional for the players. In one such scene, Vox Machina
coordinates to slay Anna Ripley, a recurring villain, after she has killed
Percy, a member of the party. Three players, Travis, Marisha, and Laura,
coordinate the deathblow:
Travis: I’m gonna take the axe and go straight across her navel.
Matt: Keyleth?
Marisha: I’m gonna take a grasping vine and choke her around her throat.
Matt: The vines wrap around to hold her in place. Vex?
Laura: I want an arrow straight through her heart, and one in her mouth as she screams.
Matt: The scream is cut short as the arrow finds itself placed in the back of the skull, the other one
straight through the chest. Grog, your blade cuts through the midsection as the other grasping
vine pulls the lower half down. Ripley is entirely torn asunder in a final, silent scream [“Cloak
and Dagger | Critical Role RPG Show Episode 68”].
This is a prime example of ­narrative-rich speech at work. The players are
all visibly distraught over their Percy’s death, and so Matt allows catharsis
through the synchronized slaying of his killer. The image of Ripley,
vivisected and impaled, engages us spatially; Matt’s description of the
moment of silence that falls after her death, in which all the characters turn
to look at Percy’s corpse, engages us temporally; and the characters
expressing their rage and heartbreak engages us emotionally.
These moments of intense emotional investment leave their marks on the
players. In Episode 85, the entire cast improvises an argument that causes
one member, Scanlan, to leave the party. Matt, the game master, says
nothing for the ­eighteen-minute duration of the scene. In his own words,
such moments allow him, “for that moment, to be the audience … that’s the
reward for all the hard work” (“Talks Machina: A Bard’s Lament and Daring
Days”). It’s quite telling that the game master characterizes himself as “the
audience” during a moment of ­in-character performance, and dramatic, ­-
narrative-rich content as “the reward” of Critical Role. During gameplay,
Matt is almost always at work: he starts the game and ends it, he keeps track
of the numbers and the rules, and he delivers all the verdicts on ­out-of-
character questions. Matt characterizing intense roleplay scenes as a
“reward” for his hard work, therefore, means not only that he thinks that
roleplay scenes are rewarding content to watch, but also that his hard work
elsewhere exists, in part, to set up these ­narrative-rich scenes. Considering
Matt’s perception of these scenes, and his players’ propensity for staging
them, the popularity of Critical Role may be ­self-reinforcing: the Critical
Role group is naturally inclined to create narratives through their gameplay;
therefore, they have found an audience that enjoys ­narrative-rich tabletop;
therefore, the players, encouraged by the vocal support of their audience as
well as their enjoyment, seek out more emotionally rich moments within
gameplay. In this sense, the presence of the performance frame is less of a
transformative agent and more of a reinforcement of something the players
already enjoyed.
Of course, this assumes that the narrative elements do appeal to Critical
Role’s viewers. It is difficult to find concrete data on what, in specific, the
audience of Critical Role enjoys without asking them outright, but it is not
impossible to infer. We could look at the ten thousand pieces of fanfiction
written about the characters on Archive of Our Own; or the ­full-to-bursting
weekly slideshow of fanart of the characters; or the series’ spinoff shows,
Talks Machina and Critical Recap, both of which are devoted to
summarizing or expanding upon the plot elements of Critical Role. Perhaps
the most persuasive piece of data is the fact that when the Critical Role cast
set up a Kickstarter requesting $750,000 to create an animated series about
Vox Machina, over 80,000 fans pledged 11 million dollars to the project. The
animated series will by necessity eliminate some of the tabletop roleplay
elements—the “liveness” of the dice rolls, the unpredictable story, and the
length of the episodes—but the promise of more narrative was apparently
more than enough.
Still, we cannot entirely give credit to Critical Role’s central narrative for
keeping viewers immersed. When we, the viewers, watch Critical Role, there
is always a chance that the players will fall into a scene of intensely ­-
narrative-rich content, but that is not a guarantee. If those moments of
sublime performance made up the entire show, it would be no different from
a scripted melodrama. Indeed, there are still lulls in the action, moments of
confusion, and flies buzzing around the studio to throw off the pace of the
game.
By Cover’s model, the least engaging type of speech is ­off-record speech—
speech that has nothing to do with the narrative at hand. If ­off-record speech
detracted from the experience of watching actual play, an actual play
livestream would not be such a viable model. Livestreaming removes the
opportunity for an editor to remove dialogue, so ­off-record speech is always,
ironically, on the record, and mixed in with everything else. How, then, does
­off-record speech change under the influence of the performance frame?

Modifying ­Off-Record Speech

At the end of each episode, Critical Role makes a point of setting ­off-
record speech aside. Once four to five hours have passed, Matt will wind his
narration down to the point of saying “And that’s where we’ll pick up next
episode.” At that moment, the players all “break character,” disengaging from
the game. Sometimes, when the episode ends dramatically, this breaking
character involves emotional reactions from the players. For one example, at
the very end of Episode 69, “Passed Through Fire,” Matt reveals that a ­long-
time ally is an evil dragon in disguise. The players remain composed and
silent until Matt officially ends the episode—at which point the players start
shouting in reaction to the twist.
Importantly, the Critical Role stream itself does not end when this official
“­breaking-character” moment occurs; the camera runs for two or three
minutes while the players react to the events of the episode. Only once Matt
addresses the camera and delivers his other signature line—“Is it Thursday
yet?”—does the livestream end. While the central narrative is finished for
the evening, the performance is not.
This segmentation creates a question of spectatorship: are these ­post-
closing screams “part” of Critical Role? CritRoleStats records two different
run times for the show, called “Full Time” and “Gameplay Time.” When I
asked about the distinction between the two in a personal correspondence,
CritRoleStats replied:
with Gameplay Time, I start the clock right before Matt begins describing what happened last time
(“Last time on Critical Role, [start] Vox Machina…”), and end it as soon as Matt finishes saying
“And we’ll pick this back up next week!” (right before all the groans happen, haha). If they continue
discussing what they’re going to do after he closes it, I’ll usually not count that as part as the
gameplay, unless Matt specifically states something that influences the story.
This comment indicates, firstly, that viewers are quite aware of the
differences between frames at play during Critical Role. CritRoleStats’
instinct to record both the length of the livestream and the length of the
“gameplay” suggests that there are at least two different ways of
understanding the text of Critical Role: there is the text made up of the
narrative and mechanical frames, concerning the story of Vox Machina; and
there is the full content of the Critical Role stream, which includes
considerably more ­off-topic, ­off-record speech. These ­off-record moments
may not be part of the central narrative, but they are part of the larger
spectacle, and as such they are still influenced by the presence of the
performance frame. This is made fairly obvious when looking at the content
of the minutes before and after the “gameplay” of each episode. Before the
game starts, cast members will make ­out-of-character addresses to the
viewers, announcing upcoming events and new merchandise, or promoting
the show sponsors. The performance frame has thus introduced a whole
new type of ­off-record speech: a type of speech that conceptualizes Critical
Role as a media product rather than a private game or narrative. Players
recognize that this type of speech doesn’t integrate with their narrative and
gameplay frames, and so they have pulled it to the front of the show,
segmenting it in the same way television stations divide commercials from
other programming; similarly, the viewers at CritRoleStats recognize that
these moments are not a part of “gameplay time,” while they are still part of
Critical Role.
The social lives of the players are a notable part of this ­off-record
spectacle, as players have shared a handful of major life events—like Matt
and Marisha’s engagement and wedding, and the birth of Laura and Travis’s
first child—during ­pre-stream announcements. Fans often pursue these
stories through the cast members’ social media feeds, which provide
wedding and baby photos aplenty. In a sense, this is the point where the
social frame of a private game transforms into ­semi-public performance,
and where private individuals become minor celebrities. While the cast
members’ private relationships aren’t exactly under tabloid scrutiny, they are
of interest to viewers, and shared via the performance frame.
That said, Critical Role still includes more conventional instances of ­off-
record speech, such as references or jokes shared by the players as people
outside the game, rather than in character. The players on Critical Role are
close friends in real life, and they might instinctively make inside jokes that
only the other players will understand. However, because these players know
they are being watched by a broader audience—in other words, due to the
presence of the performance frame—they will almost always double back to
explain these jokes to the audience. Take the following exchange from
Episode 72:
Liam [as Vax]: Is there like an aerated wine cellar, Scanlan? [laughter from everyone at the table]
Sam [as Scanlan]: Yes, it’s constantly aerating.
Matt: [makes aerator sound effects into the microphone]
Travis: No one will—
Taliesin: No one has the slightest—
Matt [inaudible]: —the internet with our inside jokes.
Sam [to the camera]: Inside joke. I’m being teased right now for owning and using a wine
aerator.
Matt: Yes, you are.
Travis: Someone sold you that and said it was an aerator and is laughing their happy ass off [“The
Elephant in the Room”].

Within a few seconds of the jab at Sam’s wine aerator, at least three people
at the table—Travis, Taliesin, and Matt—realize that their joke will not
translate to their viewers. Sam breaks character to explain part of the joke
directly to the audience, and Travis adds a detail that makes the comedy
translate (that the wine aerator is probably a scam). In this instance, the
explanation of the joke does not possess narrativity, detached as it is from
Critical Role’s main story world; however, the players are still making a
conscious effort to entertain, even with their side chatter.
There is one other major place where ­off-record chatter is impacted
through the performance frame, and that is via the intervention of the
Twitch chat. Because the viewership of Critical Role is now so large, it is rare
for the players to interact directly with the livestream chat as they play.
Players are especially careful to avoid taking gameplay or character advice
from the viewers. However, this still leaves room for the viewers to be
impactful in simpler ways, usually falling under the umbrella of ­off-record
interaction. In Episode 105, “The Fear of Isolation.” Laura loses an important
card somewhere in her notes. Observant viewers remind her where she
stashed the card the previous episode. She retrieves it, and the players all
laugh and thank the viewers for their help. Here, the viewers are not just
engaging in the central narrative of Critical Role, but in its entire existence—
in ­out-of-character commentary, in the players as people outside their
characters, and even in the minor logistical and sensory details of the entire
production.
While the cast makes an effort to limit ­off-record chatter and to make it
accessible, it is worth emphasizing that viewers are not necessarily just
tolerating ­off-record chatter as part of the necessary clumsiness of a
livestream. These ­off-record moments are also part of the spectacle. We can
see this most clearly by comparing Critical Role to actual play shows that
are ­pre-recorded and edited, such as The Adventure Zone. If these actual play
productions were striving for perfect narrative immersion, they could edit
out the ­off-record chatter, remove all anachronistic jokes, and cut technical
malfunctions. However, these shows often preserve ­off-record chatter in
their final releases. Even more curiously, The Adventure Zone was recently
adapted into a series of graphic novels, and these graphic novels also
preserve elements outside the narrative sphere—not only occasionally
referencing dice rolls and character stats, but also completely ­off-record
jokes about Kenny Chesney (Menegaz 2019).
According to the McElroys—the family behind The Adventure Zone—
these ­off-record moments were included because they believed their ­real-life
relationships were “an intrinsic element” of the appeal of the show (Menegaz
2019). They recognized that the graphic novel had to address the social
frame of play, along with the narrative frame, to capture the full spirit of The
Adventure Zone. Because of this, Griffin McElroy, the dungeon master,
appears as a character in the graphic novels—typically to allude to the game
mechanics or contextualize ­off-record jokes as part of “our world.”
By contrast, the players—Justin, Travis, and Clint—are not characters in
the graphic novels, because, in the words of Travis McElroy, “We … realized
it would undercut the stakes and the story we were telling. The story is [our
characters] and [their] world” (Menegaz 2019).
The narrative world of The Adventure Zone—and of Critical Role—exists
in its own sphere, like the world of a play onstage, and within that world, the
characters, their emotions, and the consequences of their actions are all very
real to each other. As such, viewers understand and enjoy these narrative
elements as they might with a novel. However, in actual play, the social and
mechanical frames are also available to viewers. The scaffolding of the game
is always exposed. Instead of detracting from the narrative, these external
structures are also consumed as part of the spectacle: like a charming
metatextual narrator, they are entertainment in their own right.

Conclusion: The Pleasure of Play and Watching Play

Critical Role and its actual play cousins prove that tabletop gaming can
make for compelling entertainment even for those who do not participate
directly. While the introduction of an audience does necessitate shifts in the
other constitutive frames of a tabletop game, it does not entirely transform
or eliminate any of these frames, and most of them behave as they would in
private tabletop play. It is the entire apparatus of a tabletop game,
reproduced for viewers, that makes actual play what it is.
That is not to say there are no changes to typical tabletop play; we have
already covered the most pertinent ones here. Players tweak the tabletop
formula to make things more engaging, clear, or accessible to their audience.
The narrative frame becomes intense, pronounced, dramatic, and allows the
players to stage melodramatic scenes that create intense narrative flow; the
mechanical frame is clearly communicated via the miniatures, with players
loudly relating their dice rolls and Matthew explaining rules, all while the
combat is given more narrative color to make it more exciting; the social
frame is made visible and accessible to all viewers, who can share in the
pleasure of an inside joke, finding something the players might have lost, or
killing a fly.
Earlier in this essay, I referred to the concept of “flow,” suggesting players
can achieve flow while immersed either in the narrative or mechanical
frames. However, I conclude by suggesting that watching actual play may
also provide fertile grounds for flow. Csikszentmihalyi argues that the
consumption of media can create flow, but only if this consumption requires
cognitive effort: TV, which can be passively consumed, is more numbing;
poetry, which requires rhythmic appreciation and analysis, can facilitate
flow. Actual play is an ideal source for this ­spectator-flow, as it requires
considerable cognitive work. It may not be the same cognitive work as the
work undertaken by the players, but it is a cognitive activity that makes
order out of chaos. Viewers must keep track of the narrative, the rules, the ­-
out-of-character jokes, and the relationships and transformations between
them, in order to enjoy the spectacle of actual play. The architecture of
actual play is perpetually exposed to the viewers: we see the puppeteers
behind each of the characters, and we understand the chance and
mathematical factors behind their odds of success. Actual play might fit
alongside pleasures like Brechtian theater—an art form where the spectator
draws pleasure not necessarily from the story itself, but also from
understanding the architecture and history behind it—appreciating not only
the lights, but also the engineering of the exposed wiring.
An important caveat to make is that these pleasures are not perfect or
constant. There are lulls in many actual play episodes, delays where the
players are forced to do mental math or where Matt deliberates on the rules.
That said, the enduring popularity (and profitability) of the model means
that its successes outstrip the failures. For the viewers of actual play, there
are smaller pleasures and there are larger ones. There are the small ­memory-
game pleasures of remembering each of the characters’ abilities,
remembering old characters or plotlines, or remembering where Laura has
placed a notecard in her game binder. While viewers cannot strategize or act
in the battles themselves, they can play their own or strategy games while
they watch, perhaps trying to guess at their favorite character’s next move.
Even the rules of a satisfying narrative—which villains should return when,
who will betray the party, which characters will fall in love, etcetera—are
part of the mental games viewers can play. The “rules” necessary for
achieving flow are the same for the audience and the players—the rules of
the narrative world and the rules of Dungeons & Dragons—and the
“feedback” is not dissimilar. If viewers guess right, remember correctly, or
even follow the jokes at play, the positive “feedback” is watching their hopes
and best guesses play out onscreen.
In my own experience, there are also truly transcendent pleasures
available for players and viewers alike, provided they understand the
movement between the game’s multiple interactional frames. The
characteristic pleasure of actual play spectatorship is watching the
mechanics of the game and the narrative of the game work together—
understanding the flow of information, and, in doing so, potentially
achieving flow yourself. Laura’s joke from Episode 2 about talking “to the
other guy, Matt,” is only funny if you understand how and why Matt can play
two different people. Viewers immortalize moments when gameplay rules
and narrative logic cohere—when a character is lucky enough to land a
killing blow on their rival, or when a perfect dice roll combines with true
love’s kiss to bring a character back to life. This kind of mental play and
satisfaction can only occur because of the interplay of frames, and as such it
may be the defining pleasure of actual play.

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Press.

OceanofPDF.com
 Communal Narrative in Actual Play
Environments
Roles of Participants, Observers and Their Intersections
Anthony David Franklin

The rise of streaming tabletop ­role-playing games coupled with the

revitalization of Dungeons & Dragons in the public sphere has brought forth
the practice of actual play. Critical Role and Acquisitions Incorporated: The
“C” Team are two digitally broadcast programs, amongst many, that have
come to make their narratives more accessible. This is largely, if not
completely, due to the global reach of digital mediums and their cultivation
of a wider, inclusive audience. Expanding games beyond localized space
grants audience members narrative experience but the degrees to which the
audience is able to interact is variable. While Critical Role provides a more
traditional sense of gameplay, it limits its audiences to largely acting as an
indirect participant; inversely, The “C” Team grants its audience a greater
level of interaction in the creation or influence upon narrative. Through
actual play, these programs utilize differing barriers between participants
and audience and, by extension, their ability to influence narrative
formation. The complexity of these relationships is only compounded when
considering the impact of dice and game mechanics. Recognizing
interaction highlights the complexity of these narratives in a digital space.
These, at times, disparate elements can be better understood as fluid
interactions mediated through an actual play setting. Digital environments
blur the boundary between participant and observer; as a result, actual play
often fosters inclusive, global interaction and collaborative narrative creation
by breaking down the traditional ­storyteller-listener relationship.
The construction and progress of narrative in Dungeons & Dragons can be
difficult to define for who controls it is constantly in motion and more akin
to an ebb and flow than static possession. Hatch and Wisniewski (1995)
define narrative as, “the linguistic form that preserves the complexity of
human action with its interrelationship of temporal sequence, human
motivation, chance happenings, and changing interpersonal and
environmental contexts” (p. 7). While the story may be simple, the way in
which it forms is a continual interaction between several key elements.
Narrative is not of singular momentum in Dungeons & Dragons as there is a
perpetual shift in control and interaction. There are two kinds of narrative
creators: the players and the Dungeon Master. The player has the ability to
guide their character and interact with the setting. A planned, structured
narrative from the Dungeon Master can easily be derailed due to player
interests and goals. Even preplanned modules like Storm King’s Thunder, The
Rise of Tiamat, or Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage can find themselves
thrown askew. Thus, narrative is created rapidly and whose guiding factor is
the will of the player. Dungeons & Dragons tends to resist rigid narrative
structures for such structures reduce player autonomy.
The successful Dungeon Master intertwines narrative elements in the
path forged by the players. Through subtle—or even ­heavy-handed—
guidance, the Dungeon Master seeks to guide the party toward an objective.
Prior to actual play, Gary Fine’s (1983) Shared Fantasy recognized three
variables when negotiating tabletop ­role-playing games: dice, referees (i.e.,
Dungeon Masters), and players (pp. 86–92). These three components act
and respond to one another and create a web of interactions—akin to a kind
of check and balance. This ensures the narrative is continually in flux and
unable to be concrete or guaranteed; thus, the narrative becomes something
that resists structure by the very nature of the game. But the rise of actual
play provides audiences with the ability to intervene, via the machinations
constructed by active participants, and alter narrative choices. An action by
one participating element courts a response by the others. This formula of
interaction can adapt to nearly every scenario. The Dungeon Master guides
the players, and they act in tandem with, and respond to, the Dungeon
Master.
Yet dice are the most easily defined element in this web of interactions.
They make narrative elements and player choices variable while interpretive
mechanics provide structure and guidance. The Dungeon Master and party
must forge a story for the dice to impact, but the dice remain unpredictable,
but modifiable, in the narrative’s realization. Dice are the first and most
easily defined element of this web. They play a significant role in the
formation of narrative as rolls determine success and failure. Dice produce
or alter narrative by representing how choices manifest. In short, they are
the manifestation of chance. Fine (1983) recognizes not only the importance
of dice in how they “reflect the laws of probability” and, by extension,
success or failure (p. 91). In discussing the superstition surrounding dice,
Fine (1983) places emphasis upon the power of the dice and their ability to
influence gameplay as though they were a force in themselves. Such a
moment manifests in Critical Role’s “Uninviting Waters” and, regardless of
whether the fault lies in the dice or player, this moment embodies the
perception of dice as an autonomous force (Mercer, 2016). The next logical
step in understanding the web of narrative creation is to recognize the role
of the Dungeon Master, the individual who interprets the dice.
When considering the intersection between dice and Dungeon Masters,
Fine (1983) claims that there is a less defined relationship than exists
between player and dice:
Dice are not central for referees … the referee is not playing against the players, and his rolls are not
supposed to be significant to him—he only administers them…. Because creating an enjoyable
scenario is seen as more important than enforcing the laws of chance, referees, like players, alter
their rolls…. Since many referees rolls their dice behind a screen, preventing players from observing
them, changing the dice rolls is easy. Further, because this alteration is not for the benefit of the
referee, it is not considered cheating, but discretion—an indication of the effect of perspective on
labeling [102].
This passage highlights the negotiation that occurs between the Dungeon
Master and two other elements of narrative influence: dice and players.
However, Fine’s (1983) claim regarding the benefits to the “referee” should
be challenged for the concept of benefiting remains interpretive. This
interpretation rests upon the perception of the Dungeon Master in
Dungeons & Dragons. If they are seen as a more neutral arbiter of the game
then, yes, Fine’s (1983) point does hold true, but if they are seen more akin
to a participant—managing NPCs, challenging players, or allowing them to
play a more active roll—then dice are not entirely neutral to the Dungeon
Master. Thus, when it comes to the creation of narrative both of these roles,
dice and Dungeon Master, can become active participants in its creation.
The Dungeon Master must also interpret the results of the dice, again, as
though they were an autonomous entity producing thoughtful results. Fine’s
(1983) commentary regarding the Dungeon Master and dice carries two
conflicting implications. First, that the dice are something for the Dungeon
Master to interpret. Second, that the act of dice rolling may as well be
performative should the outcome of the scenario be predetermined—what
Fine (1983) titles “referee’s judgement” (p. 90). There is an illusion of
narrative purity being maintained, likely for the sake of the relationship
between Dungeon Master and player, for the Dungeon Master retains a
position of authority by being the arbiter of success and failure.
This role as arbiter manifests in Critical Role’s “Uninviting Waters,” and
likely any other installment of either Critical Role or The “C” Team, as
narrative shift occurs through the failure of a character, Keyleth. The
Dungeon Master of Critical Role, Matthew Mercer (2016), states, “So as you
guys begin to prepare your attempt to cross the river, Keyleth concentrates.
The river stalls for a moment, and then pushes past, seemingly unaffected.
Mind you, the spell does seem to have an effect when you’re having a better
time concentrating, but it is a magical force versus a magical force, and you
can see it actually angrily swells against the resistance” (45:25). This
narrative shift in Critical Role highlights the difference between Dungeon
Master and player: the participant makes the choice, the dice determine
success, and the Dungeon Master enacts the scenario. The failing roll acts as
a kind of intermediary between the player and Dungeon Master—
translating actions or desires into quantifiable means. These means are then
interpreted by remaining players, who may try to intervene, or the Dungeon
Master who will make the results into narrative. The difference between
these two participants is that the players make choices while the Dungeon
Master interprets, or even alters, results. Fine (1983) continues, “Although
the referee is not omnipotent, he does exert considerable influence over the
development of the fantasy. Often this shaping is a consequence of his desire
to create an aesthetically pleasing and enjoyable scenario for the players.” (p.
88). This idea is compounded upon by a later when Fine (1983) also states,
“The referee has the right and obligation to set the scenario for the players.
He does this through the rules of the game, the information he releases to
the players, and his decisions when to roll the dice” (p. 115). Thus, Mercer’s
narrative development from “Uninviting Waters” represents Fine’s (1983)
ideas of influence and obligation. It is Mercer’s obligation to utilize his
influence to create a narrative structure that is satisfying to both the players
and audience. While the obligation to the players is traditional of most any
Dungeons & Dragons game, it is an obligation to the audience that sets actual
play apart. These two elements of narrative influence can come close to one
another, but they also are notably different in several key ways.
The first difference that Fine (1983) recognizes is in the perception of
gameplay. This separation is something that occurs not only between
Dungeon Master and player but can also vary from player to player. Fine
(1983) writes, “Considerable discussion between players and referees derives
from their different perspectives on game events—the scene being enacted
in one’s mind’s eye” (p. 107). However, the degree to which this difference
manifests stems from the former notion that the Dungeon Master’s objective
is to “set the scenario” (Fine, 1983, p. 115). Should this be fulfilled then
issues of perception will be less likely to rise. Shared perception can
frequently be seen in Critical Role as Mercer is generally regarded as a
superb storyteller within the Dungeons & Dragons community. Another
factor that impacts this is a degree of familiarity within the group; thus,
players will be more likely to know how scenes are set and what is likely of
value based on past descriptions or narrative cues. Ultimately, there is a
difference between the role of the Dungeon Master and player, yet they
fulfill similar rolls in that their actions are guided by dice and game
mechanics. However, the most notable difference is that the Dungeon
Master guides the mechanics of the game while the players participate
within them. Thus, the parameters in which narrative can develop are
established by the Dungeon Master and both groups create within that
space.
Yet actual play has given way to the rise of a fourth participant whose
integration varies between productions. When considering the role of the
audience in actual play settings, it must be understood that the scope of
inclusion is greatly expanded beyond localized space. Fine (1983) recognizes
that most communities of fantasy ­role-playing gamers are “limited in scope”
(p. 229). Spacial limitations create narrative limitations. Simply, the narrative
cannot reach those who do not have access to it. It can be surmised that the
expansion of Dungeons & Dragons into actual play environments breaks the
mold of tradition as spacial limitations inhibit the development of audience.
By increasing accessibility (i.e., migrating to a digital platform) the narrative
is able to simultaneously reach further. The shift toward actual play has
shown that a stronger sense of community can be developed by digital
expansion and broader narrative inclusion and interaction.
 While the Dungeon Master has an obligation to the players to foster
meaningful gameplay, the development of actual play creates an obligation
to the audience as well. This obligation will be more restricted than that to
the immediate players as the frequency of feedback is not as prevalent;
however, with an expanded sense of community the quantity of feedback
received could easily dwarf traditional gameplay structures. While Penny
Arcade, the hosting channel of The “C” Team, currently features 47,000
subscribers on Twitch, Critical Role boasts a staggering 510,000. Despite this
substantial difference, Critical Role retains a more traditional ­storyteller-
listener relationship while The “C” Team becomes a strong example of
communal integration and audience impact on narrative development. Jerry
Holkins, the Dungeon Master in The “C” Team, frequently integrates the
choices of their audience—termed the Shadow Council. Thus, Fine’s (1983)
idea of obligation is transformed as it manifests not as gameplay for the
audience but rather as the inclusion of their choices, votes, and donations.
Three manifestations of this exist with their livestream: bits to players, bits to
Holkins, and the narrative poll. Bits are effectively a token donated from an
audience member to support their chosen participant. Once the poll is filled
a player may use a special ability, but the Dungeon Master may create a
special scenario or event in game. Both of these are capable of narrative
impact as they can throw an event askew, lead a player to quickly conclude a
conflict, or, given the nature of Dungeons & Dragons, throw one more awry.
In addition to abilities donated to the party, The “C” Team showcases active
community polls during their show. Some polls directly impact the course of
the narrative: “In the party’s First Hoard, who should get an item: Rosie
Beestinger or K’thriss Drow’b,” “Where to next season, friends,” and “What
is the greater threat?” (Holkins 2017a, 2018, 2019b). There are other polls
that are less meaningful to the course of the narrative: “What is the villain’s
title,” “For Season Two, what color are Brahma’s flowers? Silver, Red, or
Purple,” and “Prophan Dran served with many devoted soldiers. She was
particularly fond of a(n)” (Holkins 2017b, 2017c, 2019a). Finally, some polls
are more abstract in nature, “Is it the same as he remembers it, or different”
and “When did things go wrong” (Holkins 2019c, 2020). The audience has
ample opportunities to be able to influence the narrative in both subtle and
impactful ways.
What emerges are two variations of audience: the inactive and the active.
The inactive audience may find itself able to interact with the narrative, but
it will be to a more limited capacity—mainly onlookers peering inward.
Meanwhile, the active audience will be enabled and have some degree of
influence upon the narrative. The active audience will find variance in its
potential, likely based upon the broadcast and the employed means of
interaction, but their actions, votes, or donations could impact the direction
of the narrative in a myriad of ways. Regardless if those influences are
immediate, upcoming, minute, sweeping, or aesthetic, their presence is still
felt in game. The audience of Critical Role is able to watch the narrative
unfold as the participants navigate fantasy settings. Critical Role maintains
an inactive audience, for the border between participant and audience is
hardly stressed and the narrative of Critical Role remains unaltered.
Interactions between players and the audience remains more relegated to
tertiary means: shared fan art, online forums, social media, or the rare live
audience. The “C” Team does break this more traditional mold of both
gaming and the ­performer-audience relationship. Where The “C” Team
deviates from Critical Role, and its more traditionalist approach to the ­-
participant-audience relationship, is in the integration of unique mechanics
and daily polls. This potential for interaction allows for the narrative to now
be impacted by the global audience and creates yet another vector of
narrative creation, impact, or misdirection. The audience member can select
who has more narrative force, perhaps a favorite character, and the impact is
ultimately directed by the impartial, randomized dice. Yet even this moment
is mediated by the player’s choice as to when to activate the mechanic. This
web of interaction reflects the narrative complexity that comes to develop
from actual play and how they can become something akin to cultural
products.
What Michael Kearns (1999) writes of rhetorical narratology becomes
valuable to conceptualizing the ­narrative-audience relationship; however, it
is not so much the application of rhetorical narratology but rather an
adoption of its tools. Kearns (1999) claims, “[rhetorical narratology] draws
on narratology’s tools for analyzing texts and rhetoric’s tools for analyzing
the interplay between texts and contexts in order to better understand how
audiences experience narratives” (p. 2). When considering Critical Role and
The “C” Team, an underlying rhetoric unfolds, for that experience varies
between audiences. As Kearns (1999) later states, “Every narrative implies a
rhetorical situation that is fundamental to all analysis: an audience listening
to someone telling a story…. Without an audience there could be no
narrative, and both authors and readers know this, the former often
emphasizing that necessity” (p. 45). Kearns’ (1999) statement must be
modified to correlate with the narrative impact derived from actual play. The
foundational narrative element of the broadcasts remains the same: a story
being told to an audience. The precise manifestation of that digital audience
exists between two poles, inactive and active, and will vary upon the
broadcast but existence and potential for narrative impact is undeniable.
Actual play allows for that story and the subsequent rhetoric to be cast
abroad and greatly expanded due to the ease of consumption. From live
streams to podcasts, the rhetoric of interaction is easily accessible to the
consumer. However, there is another element of Kearns’ (1999) commentary
that needs to be adjusted to compensate for actual play. Regarding Dungeons
& Dragons more broadly, a kind of tiered participation and viewership
occurs. Characters create a narrative through ­dice-driven means, but the
active participants who control these characters juggle narrative potential
between themselves. Then, the narrative is consumed or interacted with, to
variable degrees, by the audience members who may be indirect participants
and whose decisions may alter the choices made by the active participants.
Meanwhile, the narrative and its rhetoric can be interpreted between each of
these participants or audience members to mean different things. When
considering how vastly actual play broadens the viewership and audience
size, the potential variations in narrative interpretation become, quite
possibly, limitless.
These variations in interpretations can begin to be understood through a
narratological tool, and Kearns (1999) writes of this that “the
communication triangle [links] sender, receiver, and message in an
interactive relationship” (p. 49). However, this statement comes with a caveat
for Kearns (1999) also warns, “because readers come close to doing
everything at once, I can’t capture what actually happens…. However, I do
believe that much is to be gained by specifying the main expectations that
authors and audiences bring to experiencing the narrative” (p. 49). This
narratological tool can be used to help aid in the understanding of how
actual play narratives remain almost perpetually in flux, for it helps to
conceptualize the complexities of interaction that frequently occur. To adapt
actual play to Kearns’ (1999) triangle I would suggest the three points to be
mechanics (to include dice and rules), active participants (to include the
Dungeon Master and immediate players), and audience (to include either
active or inactive viewers). Now, this suggestion must not be taken as
absolute for it does not fully encapsulate the potential for interaction.
Consider how a Dungeon Master might interact with their own players or
how an active audience might interact with either the Dungeon Master or a
singular player.
Albeit an imperfect model, the complexity of interaction can be more
easily mapped as something continually in flux. It is from this narratological
mapping that Michael Toolan’s (1988) elaboration upon Gérard Genette’s
(1979) focalization can be interwoven: “Genette’s term for this inescapable
adoption of a (limited) perspective in narrative, a viewpoint from which
things are seen, felt, understood, assessed, is focalization. By this is meant
the angle from which things are seen—where ‘seen’ is interpreted in a broad
sense, not only (though often most certainly) in terms of visual perception”
(p. 68). When merging the communication triangle and focalization, the
way in which actual play narrative forms in Dungeons & Dragons begin to
come into focus. Narrative ultimately depends on what position on the
triangle is held. While the degree of audience interaction varies between
Critical Role and The “C” Team, it is a safe assumption that each audience
still conceptualizes themselves as such and apart from the active
participants. Focalization occurs once the position of the participant is
defined on the triangle of interaction. To claim there is a singular
focalization is erroneous for the utilization of the triangle implies many. I
would not suggest the position of dice and mechanics as a viewpoint that
can be considered, but the other two will still produce multiple perspectives:
Dungeon Master, participant (one per person), and active or inactive
audience. This could be pushed further as each individual could view
Dungeons & Dragons through the lenses of their own identity: race, religion,
economic class, and so forth. Jennifer Grouling Cover (2010) contests that
narratives should be perceived as both a social and rhetorical entity to
heighten their perceived value across all genres (p. 72). However, due to the
intersectionality of identity it is likely to be exceedingly difficult—if not
impossible—to isolate components of the self to be a singular lens through
which focalization could occur. Consequently, each individual that views
these broadcasts and participates in the actual play will come to view the
narratives in highly individualistic ways that, likely, remain innumerable.
That these narratives have come to mean something to a broad audience
speaks to two byproducts of digitized gameplay. First is that these narratives
now reach a global community and secondly inclusivity is fostered within
that community, but it must be considered how gameplay is presented to its
audience. As Toolan (1988) asserts “a narrative is never without contexts
which both shape and come to be shaped by the story that is told and heard.
And I have put contexts in the plural for the obvious but ­often-neglected
reason that the teller and addressees of the very same narrative may assume
quite different grounds for the tale being told, and may individually deduce
rather different ‘points’ from the story, grounds for its tellability, and ­real-
world consequences” (p. 227). The contexts in these broadcasts come to
represent modern, western norms, increased ­self-expression, individuality,
diversity, and so forth, so what the audience might derive is exceedingly
variable. With each audience member pulling their own meaning from a
common source, the meaning of texts like Critical Role and The “C” Team
come to manifest the narrative as perceived by the audience member. Hatch
and Wisniewski’s (1995) “complexity of human action” serves as a signifier
for diversity of interpretation and, by extension, focalization (p. 7). It should
be recognized that there are two moments of focalization in actual play
environments that could occur.
The first occurs between the active participant and the game and is then
followed by the audience member; consequently, the audience member
cannot observe the game free of the interpretation of the participant. The
audience’s focalization must first pass through the participants as the
audience cannot receive the narrative unaltered. First the narrative is
interpreted by the participant, and what they choose to recognize as key to
the narrative is then passed on to the audience. Other elements may go
unrecognized and, as a result, become unimportant to narrative
development. Thus, the control of the narrative is accessible only amongst
the participants. This first ­second-hand narrative form is most present in
Critical Role as they maintain a traditional ­storyteller-listener relationship.
With this a ­participant-audience model of focalization is created as the
narrative must first pass through the participants to reach the audience.
The second form operates in murkier terms as recognizing who first
interacts with the narrative is less definable. While Critical Role maintains
the ­participant-audience model, The “C” Team strains that with its high
degree of audience interaction. The first model becomes inverted by
permitting the audience to alter what the participants have yet to encounter.
Now it is the participants that perceive a narrative that is altered by the
audience. However, once the participants act within that altered moment the
narrative is then passed on again to the audience. This forms an ­audience-
participant-audience model, but where this becomes problematic is that the
audience may then use that narrative to inform future choices. Unlike the
linear interaction of Critical Role, a cyclical narrative interaction exists
within The “C” Team. This more complex relationship with the narrative
represents the weaker boundary between storyteller and audience. The more
influence the audience has upon the narrative the closer they come to
becoming a storyteller.
With this complexity the relationship between participant and audience
must be more thoroughly defined. To claim they exist in only those two
categories downplays the potential for interaction but to suggest they are
one in the same implies a lack of boundaries. Denis Jonnes (1990) writes of
the audience that “only by evoking, implicitly or explicitly, a sense of routine
or norm from which the events perceived as wonderful, shocking, tragic
would be seen to deviate…. It specifies what characters involved in the story
normally do, where they are usually to be found, what they customarily
think of feel, and thus identifies a larger framework within which an
audience can relate and respond to figures and events” (p. 34). Jonnes (1990)
makes a distinction here that will help to solidify Kearns’ (1999) triangle
and, perhaps, the relationship between audience and participant in The “C”
Team. The primary difference between participant and audience is the act of
reaction. The audience reacts to the participant who establishes routine or
expectation within the audience, and by doing this they separate themselves
from the audience member. More than control over the narrative, it is
control of the character that defines the audience from the participant.
The audience comes to rely upon the routine for their expectations, and
these components represent the relationship between participant and
audience. According to Jonnes (1990), this separation is about “establishing
a relation—one of identity, respect or simply of curiosity— between the
characters about whom the story is to be told and the audience” (p. 34). This
relationship acts as further evidence of the division between participant and
audience, and, to a degree, better defines their roles. With Critical Role’s ­-
well-defined ­participant-audience model, there is no space for them to get
mingled or confused. The audience is more a spectator to the narrative and
must firmly rely upon the participants. The “C” Team permits a high degree
of permeability in that relationship and, thus, the line between participant
and audience becomes more permeable. However, the idea of routine or
norm implies that the participant still establishes a precedent that the
audience will abide by in their narrative choices—regardless of how
intertwined the two roles become. While the relationship and boundaries
vary in their solidity, the element of story remains constant between the two
broadcasts. This commonality between Critical Role and The “C” Team,
despite their differences, represents how each enjoys a great deal of freedom
in the creation of narrative. Yet the idea of story suggests the participant
creates and the observer interprets. It becomes that these two populations,
regardless of narrative impact, still hold a ­storyteller-listener relationship.
The degree to which that relationship is maintained is highly variable, but it
exists, nonetheless. Despite the ability for the audience to enact narrative
change, the participant is still the one who wields the true ability for
storytelling as the audience can only act upon what is created.
What comes from the ­participant-audience relationships of actual play—
even those that limit audience participation—is a stronger sense of
investment. By broadcasting their narratives, Critical Role and The “C” Team
offer their audiences something to be gained. Those that engage in narrative
development can recognize a greater role, beyond observance, in what they
enjoy and can enact their desires upon the narrative. Even if the narrative
influence didn’t end on their behalf, the obligation—the social contract—
between active participant and audience is fulfilled. Even those who only
observe, even if granted the opportunity for engagement, can still come to
appreciate the stories told unlike ever before. Not unlike a favorite television
show, a viewer can come to appreciate the characters or plot but know they
share a common interest with those they watch—observance transforms
into investment. With the expansion of Dungeons & Dragons beyond
localized space, greater enjoyment for any ­wish-to-be adventurer can be
found. Somewhat ironically, Dungeons & Dragons humanizes the foreign
and otherworldly: elves, dwarves, orcs, gnomes, and the myriad of other
creatures that populate these narratives. It is because of the participants’
ability to create a compelling narrative that they can position themselves
within a universe of the unfamiliar, surreal, and fantastical. Ultimately,
actual play retains the potential to continue the ­storyteller-listener
relationship and, simultaneously, enable its breakdown.

References
Cover, J.G. (2010). The creation of narrative in tabletop ­role-playing games. McFarland.
Fine, G.A. (1983). Shared fantasy: ­Role-playing as social worlds. University of Chicago Press.
Genette, G. (1979). Narrative discourse: An essay in method. Cornell University Press.
Hatch, J.A. & Wisniewski, R. (1995). Life history and narrative. The Falmer Press.
Holkins, J. [PennyarcadeTV]. (2017a, April 14). Dungeons and wagons, Part 2—S1 E5—Acquisitions
Inc: The “C” Team [Video]. Youtube. https://youtu.be/TlD1_9XWrwI.
Holkins, J. [PennyarcadeTV]. (2017b, May 26). Homecoming, Part 3—S1 E11—Acquisitions Inc: The
“C” Team [Video]. Youtube. https://youtu.be/9iKItnTvAlo.
Holkins, J. [PennyarcadeTV]. (2017c, November 10). Dran incorporated, Part 3—S1 E33—Acquisitions
Inc: The “C” Team [Video]. Youtube. https://youtu.be/tJm9u_kPTvI.
Holkins, J. [PennyarcadeTV]. (2018, October 18). Matriarch, Part 9—S2 E35—Acquisitions Inc: The
“C” Team [Video]. Youtube. https://youtu.be/zNzatjdxe7I.
Holkins, J. [PennyarcadeTV]. (2019a, August 22). Crucible, Part 3—S3 E27—Acquisitions Inc: The “C”
Team [Video]. Youtube. https://youtu.be/ENKJyek6dnA.
Holkins, J. [PennyarcadeTV]. (2019b, October 31). Crucible, Part 9—S3 E33—Acquisitions Inc: The
“C” Team [Video]. Youtube. https://youtu.be/hxOSau3t60c.
Holkins, J. [PennyarcadeTV]. (2019c, November 7). Crucible, Part 10—S3 E34—Acquisitions Inc: The
“C” Team [Video]. Youtube. https://youtu.be/0ja3_f5wyD4.
Holkins, J. [PennyarcadeTV]. (2020, February 6). Preface, Part 1—S4 E01—Acquisitions Inc: The “C”
Team [Video]. Youtube. https://youtu.be/nawqAabhVIM.
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Gruyter.
Kearns, M. (1999). Rhetorical narratology. University of Nebraska Press.
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https://youtu.be/QePayxU0kKo.
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Additional Research
Berger, A.A. (1997). Narratives in popular culture, media, and everyday life. SAGE.
Bowman, S.L. (2010). The functions of ­role-playing games: How participants create community, solve
problems, and explore identity. McFarland.
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com.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/docview/1968393049?accountid=13158.
Simpson, J., & Elias, V. (2011). Choices and chances: The sociology ­role-playing game—The
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www.jstor.org/stable/41308923.
Stark, L. (2012). Leaving mundania: Inside the transformative world of live action ­role-playing games.
Chicago Review Press.
Taylor, T.L. (2018). Watch me play: Twitch and the rise of game live streaming. Princeton University
Press.
Torner, E., & White, W. (2012). Immersive gameplay: Essays on participatory media and role-playing.
McFarland.
Tresca, M.J. (2011). The evolution of fantasy ­role-playing games. McFarland.
Tychsen, A., Hitchens, M., Brolund, T., & Kavakli, M. (2006). Live action ­role-playing games: Control,
communication, storytelling, and MMORPG similarities. Games and Culture, 1(3), 252–275.
https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412006290445.
Vororhees, G., Call, J., & Whitlock, K. (2012). Dungeons, dragons, and digital denizens: The digital ­role-
playing game. Continuum.
Wahlin, C. (1996). Perspectives on narratology: Papers from the Stockholm symposium on narratology.
Peter Lang.
Waskul, D., & Lust, M. (2004). ­Role-playing and playing roles: The person, player, and persona in
fantasy ­role-playing. Symbolic Interaction, 27(3), 333–356. doi:
http://dx.doi.org.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/10.1525/si.2004.27.3.333.

OceanofPDF.com
“Your fun is wrong”
Actual Play and Fans
OceanofPDF.com
Diversity and Audience Interaction in Critical
Role and The Adventure Zone
G.L. van Os

Introduction
Over the last decade, actual play has rapidly expanded and made a name
for itself. One of the most ­well-known shows within the genre, Critical Role,
recently raised 11 million dollars with a Kickstarter to create a cartoon
adaptation of their stories, which shows the scale of the medium and its
audience. An area where actual play stands out from other forms of
traditional media is the amount of interaction between content creators and
their audience, which also seems to be an important factor in the popularity
of the concept. This interaction can lead to audience influence on the game
and story, depending on the game system and the creators. Additionally,
often audience members become inspired by the games they watch, and they
start their own ­role-playing games, which may lead to more actual play
content. It is then necessary to look at actual play from an academic
standpoint, since it is a ­fast-emerging cultural practice with significant
influence. It is especially valuable to look at diversity within this new media
and new form of storytelling, since while there are diverse games available,
many of the ­well-known shows are predominantly white and straight, and
do not feature minorities.
Two of the most ­well-known actual play shows are Critical Role (CR) and
The Adventure Zone (TAZ), and both have a white cast. Critical Role is a
weekly show, where professional ­voice-actors play D&D. The game is led by
Matthew Mercer who is the Dungeon Master (DM). The group has been
playing since roughly 2013, and they have been streaming in collaboration
with Geek & Sundry since 2015. They finished their first campaign in 2017,
and started a new campaign, with new characters, in 2018. The group has
recently started their own company, also called Critical Role,1 with its own
studio. The Adventure Zone, on the other hand, is a ­bi-weekly podcast hosted
by the McElroy family, where they play several different TTRPG systems.
They started playing and airing in 2014. The family consists of three
brothers, Justin, Travis and Griffin, and their father Clint. The main DM
switches; two of the bigger arcs were led by Griffin, but the current story is
led by Travis.
This essay aims to analyze how these two shows deal with diversity,
especially considering the fact that the creators are all white, and how
audience response features into this, since the creators of both shows have
shown an awareness of the issue of diversity and have responded to their
audience’s concerns about diversity.2 This essay argues that the audience
response forms an important influence for change concerning diversity
within the shows.

Actual Play and Audience Interaction

Audience interaction is an important factor of actual play, and as
aforementioned, it is more prevalent in this form of media than in more
traditional forms of media. The reason for this is twofold: firstly, the creators
are often not necessarily big Hollywood names, and are thus more
accessible, and secondly, due to the online nature of actual play interaction is
rather easy, because of social media and the chat function that many
streaming sites have. Moreover, the creators of actual play shows are very
visible to the audience, especially compared to, e.g., TV shows, where only
the actors are visible, and not the writers and directors behind the scenes.
Another contributing factor to the audience’s familiarity with the creators is
that during a show they often also hear ­out-of-character conversations,
which can lead to the audience getting to know the creators relatively well.
This further differentiates actual play from traditional media, since the
audience of an actual play show will feel a personal connection to the people
who not only play out the story, but also create it. Additionally, these
creators usually do not have executives or producers involved in their shows,
which means that audience feedback is more easily implemented if the
creators want to, without having to justify this to higher officials. This
follows Henry Jenkins’s convergence culture: the audience has a significant
impact on the content that is being produced, and smaller, ­grass-root
creators are able to become more mainstream (2006).
 Audience interaction with the creators of both shows happens primarily
through two ways: Twitter, where almost every cast member is present and
active, and a form of a talk show. Critical Role hosts a weekly talk show
called Talks Machina, where audience members send in questions which the
guests, cast members from the show, will discuss and answer. While Critical
Role is aired live on Twitch, the cast is not often present in the chat,
minimizing the interaction there. The Adventure Zone does not have a
regular talk show, but there have been several special episodes of the
podcast, called The The Adventure Zone Zone (TTAZZ). These episodes have
a similar format to Talks Machina, in that the McElroys discuss the show
and what has happened and answer questions from the audience. Much of
the audience response featured in this essay is thus in the form of social
media comments and questions, since that is the main way communication
happens.

Critical Role, Ethnicity and Race

Racial and ethnic diversity is a complex concept with regards to TTRPGs.
While it is possible to look at the ethnic diversity of the cast, ethnicity is not
really transferable to fictional worlds, since usually the cultures and the
world that is presented are different (­Williams-Smith, 2018). However, often
these worlds contain groups of people with similar racial features to our
world, such as a darker skin. Another difficulty is that some TTRPG
systems, like D&D, uses the word race to distinguish between different
species (Crawford et al., 2014): there are humanoid races, species that whilst
not human, resemble humans and human culture, and ­non-humanoid races,
which are more monstrous and differ from humans (­Williams-Smith, 2018).
When looking at ethnic diversity within TTRPGs and streams it is thus
important to keep this difference in mind, and to be aware of these two
layers of diversity and representation. The first layer is the actual people who
are playing the game. In the case of Critical Role all the regular players and
the DM are white, although Sam Riegel is Jewish. Jewishness is not
necessarily a race or ethnicity, but Jewish people form a marginalized
community that often deals with harmful stereotypes and ­anti-Semitism,
sometimes based on physical features. The lack of diversity in the cast is ­-
counter-balanced to some degree by the fact that both in the official
campaigns and on the show’s various special episodes guest players are
brought in. There have been several guest players of color, such as T.J. Storm,
Sumalee Montano, Khary Payton, Ify Nwadiwe, Ashly Burch, Mica Burton
and Erica Lutrell. It is important to note that only four of these guests have
featured in the show’s main storyline, which is roughly 21 percent of the
guest stars that have been present.3 That being said, Critical Role mainly
invites friends from the ­voice-acting industry, which itself has diversity
issues (Blancaflor, 2018; Hetfeld, 2018), making the immediate circle of
colleagues that could be invited on the show mostly white, and guest stars
only feature rarely in the main show.
The second layer of racial diversity concerns the ­in-game universe.
Ethnicity cannot be transferred to a fictional universe, and race is complex
as well, because of the mixed use of race and species. Moreover, a fantasy
world differs from our own world, meaning that concepts of whiteness or of
being of color cannot simply be applied without acknowledging this divide.
Since ethnicity and race are difficult to apply, this section mainly focuses on
the visible aspects of diversity, namely skin color. In D&D, the game system
that Critical Role uses,4 the notion of skin color is complicated by some ­non-
human races. For instance, the race known as Dragonborns can have
multiple skin colors, such as red, blue or silver. Additionally, races with dark
skin cannot necessarily be compared to people of color without very
problematic implications, because of racist undertones. Two prominent
examples are orcs and drow folk, dark elves. Both races have a long history
of racism, going back to J.R.R. Tolkien, and in some instances even to
Germanic folklore (Edwards, 2018; Hodes, 2019; ­Williams-Smith, 2018).
Orcs have been associated with both Asian people and black people and
drow mainly with black people, which is a problematic idea when one
considers that both fantasy races are supposedly inherently evil. Only in
more recent years has this been slowly amended. The fifth edition of D&D,
for instance, tries to move away from the racist undertones by making dark
elves have their own distinct culture, and by adding nuances to the idea that
the entire race is evil. That being said, D&D has been critiqued on multiple
points regarding racism and sexism over the decades, even when there
seems to have been some improvements with the newer editions
(D’Anastasio, 2014, 2017; LammaticHama, 2019; Schuller, 2016; Trammel,
2016a, 2016b; ­Williams-Smith, 2018). Mercer has created his own world,
and deviates from the system sometimes, such as in his depiction of dark
elves. However, since Critical Role is using D&D as a system, and Mercer
borrows material on occasion, it is hard to completely remove the inherent
problems. While it is difficult to fully compare our world to the fantasy
world that Mercer has created, it is still important to address the inherent
problems that carry over from D&D, and to make observations based on
official character art, as it provides the audience with the “official” visual
representation of the character, the baseline for representations of that
character and thus a basis for criticism.
The majority of the player characters, the protagonists, are depicted in
official art as being ­fair-skinned (Knox, 2017, 2018), which the audience
could read as white, especially if they do not separate the fictional and the
real world. One exception is Beauregard, a character from the second
campaign, who is depicted with darker skin on the original character art
(Knox, 2018). Another player character who was revealed to have a darker
skin is Veth Brenatto. Veth has been presented as Nott, a goblin girl,
throughout the first half of the second campaign, but she used to be a ­-
darker-skinned halfling woman (Critical Role, 2019e). However, the official
art that is commissioned by Critical Role is not always consistent, which led
to critique when Critical Role presented a new piece of art where
Beauregard’s skin was depicted rather light (Critical Role, 2019a). The
audience saw this as whitewashing, a concept which is used to describe
when ­darker-skinned people or characters are represented as being whiter,
or are even completely replaced by a white person (Chan 2017; Chow 2016).
There was a divide within the audience: one group was critiquing the
whitewashing (AvisLightwing, 2019; boopabelle, 2019; hickumu, 2019;
kitarkivo, 2019; segcosplays, 2019), yet another group defended Critical Role
and found it a ­non-issue because of the fantasy aspect of the game (Akers,
2019; llamaofdeath, 2019; osalinasv, 2019; Smithers, 2019). Critical Role
reacted within hours on this critique and promised that there would be an
adjustment of Beauregard’s skin color (Critical Role, 2019b). Beau’s skin
color was darkened in a later version of the art print. It is unclear why the
whitewashing happened in the first place, but it was the audience response
which caused the company to change the depiction of the character, rather
than Critical Role focusing on the consistency of their representation and
preventing these kind of issues. This highlights the influence of the audience
and the results of the interaction between audience and creators.
Besides the player characters, Mercer has introduced diversity in his
world by inserting ­non-player characters (NPCs) with darker skin, such as
Shaun Gilmore (Buss, 2016).5 Additionally, different continents have
different peoples and cultures. People from the continent Marquet are
described as having darker skin and hair, and Ank’harel, one of the largest
cities on this continent, is heavily influenced by the Arab world (Mercer,
2016a). The representations are unfortunately not always without flaws. For
example, the center of erudition and magic in Ank’harel is led by a very pale
individual: “The face is pure elven, skin pale white, the eyes white with a
very faint gold iris. No pupil,” and his clerk also has “[p]ale skin, paler than
most of you and definitely most people you’ve seen here in Ank’Harel”
(Geek & Sundry, 2016h). This introduces connotations of white superiority,
and the notion that wisdom and erudition are the field of white people, in
which people of color have no place (Feagin, Vera & Imani, 1996).
Additionally, while the ruler of the city is described as having “­reddish-
brown” skin when they are in their human form, they are a dragon and not
actually a person of color in power. There is one instance of a ruler that is
traditionally associated with the Middle East, a sultan, but the situation in
the city that he rules is abysmal: slavery is rampant and it is unsafe for most
humanoids to enter the city unprotected. It is unclear whether the sultan is
actually a person of color, but regardless of the skin color, the depiction of
this power structure is negative. The City of Brass, where this sultan rules, is
not a creation by Mercer himself, but it is the only representation of a sultan
in the story, and it follows harmful stereotypes. There is thus a lack of
positive representation of people of color in positions of power, whether it is
as the ruler of a city or as ­high-ranking individuals within important
institutions. Even in places where the population is predominantly ­darker-
skinned, pale or ­fair-skinned people tend to be prominent. While there are
attempts at diversity regarding skin color, there is still much room for
improvement.
There is also some contention regarding one of the ­fair-skinned player
characters, Keyleth. Played by Marisha Ray, Keyleth is a ­half-elf druid from
the Air Ashari, and while the ethnicity of this group is unclear, parts of
Keyleth are based off Maori culture. A first example of that is her traditional
greeting “Kaitiakè,” which Ray acknowledges is borrowed from Maori
culture and altered (Ray, 2017a). Kaitiaki, the word which the greeting was
based off, actually means guardianship, and a sense of preservation and
protection, rather than a greeting (Te Ahukaramū Charles Royal, 2007).
Additionally, during the first campaign Keyleth is tattooed to mark her
chiefdom, and Ray posted pictures on Twitter of what she imagined these
tattoos to look like (Ray, 2017b). These pictures depicted ­Maori-like tattoos,
and while some fans pointed out that Ray was using the tattoos
appropriately, neither Ray nor Keyleth are Maori, so using the culture can be
regarded as appropriative (fl0werb0ys, 2017; hightdes, 2017). The issue was
brought to Ray’s attention, and she apologized and said that the tattoos were
meant to appreciate, not appropriate (Ray, 2017c).
These examples of back and forth between the cast of Critical Role and
their audience on the topics of race and shortcomings highlights the
audience participation that characterizes the genre of actual play. The cast
attempts, not always successfully, to be diverse in their storytelling by
inviting guest players and including some people with different skin color in
the game. The audience response to their narrative is often acknowledged,
and seems to drive the cast to do better, as visible with the whitewashed
Beauregard art.

Critical Role’s Kickstarter and Resulting Position of Power

On March 4, 2019, Critical Role launched a Kickstarter campaign to
create an animated version of their show, called The Legend of Vox Machina.
The Kickstarter was immensely successful, reaching its goal of $750,000
within an hour, and the campaign ended after 45 days with more than 11
million dollars in donations. This success propelled Critical Role into a
bigger spotlight, with several news sources picking up on the phenomenon.
However, with this increased coverage, controversy started to arise as well,
especially concerning diversity. A first issue was highlighted by Mercer
himself in a Q&A about the project, where he said that he would love to
voice Shaun Gilmore, a beloved NPC, but that it is complicated, since
Gilmore is one of the few canonically ­darker-skinned people (Critical Role,
2019d). As mentioned before, there are diversity problems within the voice
acting industry, and people of color generally do not get many opportunities
(Blancaflor, 2018; Hetfeld, 2018). This animated special could create more
opportunities and work for people of color, especially with roles like
Gilmore. Mercer acknowledged this, although he admitted that Gilmore is
very dear to him. The reaction of the audience to these statements was ­wide-
ranging. There were some calls that political correctness has gone too far (­-
roll-initiative-to-survive, 2019); some that related creative ownership as a
general permission slip to do anything with it (ceridawn, 2019; ­giggles-
manically, 2019; lv20wiz, 2019). Some have suggested giving other parts to
people of color, perhaps even when the original character was white to
negate the whitewashing of Mercer voicing Gilmore (luckyjak, 2019). A last
group is insistent on casting a person of color to voice Gilmore, because to
do so otherwise would be whitewashing (fandomshatepeopleofcolor, 2019;
owlsofstarlight, 2019). This interaction between creators and audience is not
yet finished, since the cartoon is not out yet and it is unclear whether
Gilmore will be in the cartoon and who would voice him. However, Critical
Role offered the audience a chance to help design another character in the
cartoon, a tavern keep, which provided the audience with another way to
directly influence the representation in the show, and which could be read as
a way to placate some of the controversy (Romero 2019).
The amount of money that was raised also led to discussions regarding
accessibility and opportunities. A commonly voiced opinion is that while it
is great that Critical Role is doing well, they are one streaming company
amidst many more diverse TTRPGs and streamers who do not have the
same success as Critical Role has, because they do not have access to the
same opportunities and visibility. Hall, a writer for Polygon, comments that
“Critical Role has already earned more than 12 percent of the revenue of the
entire TTRPG retail sector in just a few days” (2019). He suggests that this
made people anxious, since indie developers, and smaller companies in the
industry often cannot make a living off of their work. The fact that people
are eager to give money to streamers playing games rather than the
designers of games is upsetting to people (Mott 2019). Hall argues that the
fact that Critical Role consists of mainly white people who are now taking
up a large economic space leaves little room for actual developers and more
diverse groups. According to Hall, Critical Role can do better, “for small
TTRPG creators, by bringing attention to the weird economics that keep
them from succeeding financially. They could do better for people of color,
by simply including them in their project. And they could do better by being
open to a dialogue with their critics on social media” (2019). Hall’s words
highlight the position that Critical Role is in, and the attention to diversity
that it brings.
The article itself also received a considerable amount of backlash (Joule,
2019), and seems somewhat unfavorable toward Critical Role. The company,
and Mercer in particular, have made it a point to support and highlight
smaller creators (2019a; 2019b; 2019c; 2019d) and Mercer hinted at a future
project to highlight more creators (2019e). Throughout the process the
company also encouraged fans to donate to other Kickstarter campaigns of
smaller developers. Additionally, as mentioned before, while the main cast
of Critical Role is indeed white, they are aware of that, and invite people of
color on the main show, and on some of their other shows. Mercer also
commented on the article and the outraged fans that came to the company’s
defense and said that criticism is welcome and should not be easily
dismissed (2019f), further engaging in a dialogue between fans, creators and
critics.

Critical Role and the LGBTQ+ Community

Race and ethnicity are just one aspect of diversity. Another aspect
involves different genders and sexualities. Of the main eight cast members,
only Taliesin Jaffe is openly queer, and has come out as bisexual (Geek &
Sundry, 2017c). Some guest stars are also queer, most notably Noelle
Stevenson and Molly Ostertag, who recently got engaged to each other
(Stevenson, 2019). This is a rather small group, but it is unclear how the rest
of the cast and guest stars identify, and they are not obliged to publicly come
out for the sake of diversity. However, there is ample opportunity for queer
representation within the game’s universe (Crawford et al., 2014), and there
are several examples of Critical Role using that opportunity.
In the first campaign, several player characters were queer: Vax’ildan
(commonly referred to as Vax) and Vex’ahlia (Vex) are confirmed to be
bisexual (Geek & Sundry, 2016e; Bailey, 2015), and Taryon Darrington came
out as gay (Geek & Sundry, 2017a). The bisexuality of Vax and Vex has been
the topic of some discourse, since people felt that the fact they both end up
in “straight” relationships negates their queerness (ledamemangociana,
2016; “LGBT Issues in Critical Role–Fanlore,” n.d.). This is a biphobic
notion, though, since it equates one’s relationship to one’s identity and erases
the individual, who remains bisexual no matter their relationship status.
Another discussion surrounding Vex and Vax was that during the show it
was said multiple times that they were identical twins. However, identical
twins are the same sex when they are born, while Vex and Vax are female
and male respectively. This introduced the idea that either Vex or Vax is
trans, an idea that many queer people in the audience appreciated. When
asked about it, Liam O’Brien, who played Vax, reacted that since it is a
fantasy world, they could just be identical twins without a trans identity
coming into play (2019a). Nevertheless, he remarked that while that is not
how he viewed his character, people are free to interpret it differently
(2019b).
The first campaign also introduced several queer NPCs. The most popular
example is aforementioned Shaun Gilmore, who is portrayed as gay. He and
Vax initially flirted, and Shaun seemed to have developed genuine feelings
for Vax (Geek & Sundry, 2015a, 2015b). It did not result in a relationship,
since Vax developed feelings for Keyleth, another party member, but the two
remained close friends. There is also a canonical ­same-sex relationship,
namely Alura Vysoren and Kima of Vord, both friends of the party, who
marry each other (Geek & Sundry, 2017b). There are not many different
gender representations, but there is one gender neutral character: J’mon Sa
Ord, an ancient brass dragon who rules the city of Ank’Harel. J’mon Sa Ord
is generally addressed with they/them pronouns (Mercer, 2016b), and is
described as ­androgynous-looking when they are in their human form
(Geek & Sundry, 2016g). It is unclear whether Mercer added these NPCs
based on audience requests, but the inclusion of J’mon generated more
interactions. J’mon was misgendered on stream several times, although by
accident, and combined with some purposeful misgendering of a villain,
there were chastising comments from the audience (cloudnoodle, 2017),
which in turn led to reactions from other audience members complaining
that the cast does not have to be politically correct all the time (Cazmir0,
2017; Lewellen, 2017; Radtke, 2017). Mercer has responded to the criticism
on several occasions by saying that the cast are trying to be good allies, that
their hearts are in the right place, and that any misgendering is an accidental
mistake (2017a; 2017b). There were also audience members who thanked
Mercer for including ­non-binary representation (crimsonelevendelight,
2017; NBvagabond, 2017; sparrows413, 2017), which in turn may have led
to more representation in the second campaign and in the cartoon, which
both feature at least one ­non-binary character.
The second campaign also has multiple queer characters. While not all
the backstories have been revealed yet, Beauregard has indicated attraction
to women and has slept with one during the show (Geek & Sundry, 2018f).
Yasha Nydoorin, another player character, revealed that she was once
married to a woman, who was killed (Geek & Sundry, 2018h). Mollymauk
Tealeaf, a former player character, was confirmed bisexual and gender fluid,
although the latter was not overtly clear during the show (D&D Beyond,
2018). His pronouns were he/him, but after his death, Mercer described him
as: “A man, a woman, a they” (Geek & Sundry, 2018f). Jaffe, who played the
character, was asked about different labels for Mollymauk, and replied that
while he does not know or understand most of the newer terms that are
present in the LGBT+ community, Mollymauk is “definitely something”
(Geek & Sundry, 2018e). Jaffe’s other character, Caduceus Clay, has been
hinted to be asexual (calebwidowgasts, 2019; otdderamin, 2018;
widobravely, 2019), although this has upset some people, who feel that it
would be preferable to have another male character attracted to men now
Mollymauk has died (heliosapphic 2019). Additionally, there are several
NPCs that are queer. Dolan and Horris Thrym seem to be a gay couple,
although this was never officially confirmed (Geek & Sundry, 2018c). Most
notably there is Bryce, a law enforcer who goes by they/them pronouns
(Geek & Sundry, 2018a). Like with J’mon, many people responded positively
to Bryce’s presence. Perhaps encouraged by this, the company has had two
opportunities where the audience could build an NPC that would be
featured in the main storyline and in the cartoon. This provided the
audience with a more tangible way to impact the diversity in Critical Role,
and they created a character with a stutter for the main campaign, and a ­-
non-binary tavern keep for the cartoon.
With the inclusion of queer characters also comes the responsibility of
telling their stories in a respectful way. A common but harmful concept that
permeates queer stories is the Bury Your Gays trope. This trope has its
origins in the 19th century, when censorship demanded a negative depiction
of homosexuality, leading to tragic stories about ­same-sex couples where
one person died and the other person was left behind and often eventually
entered a heterosexual relationship (Hulan 2017). However, this trope
persisted beyond the censorship, and its definition has broadened to “a
narrative arc wherein queer characters die, often violently, in service of
someone else’s character development” (Cameron, 2018, pp. 1–2), or “the
statistical probability that a LGBT+ character will know a violent death,
often deemed unnecessary in the narrative” (Le Cudennec, 2018, p. 41).
Critical Role has been accused of falling into this trope as well. There are
two player characters who permanently died in the two campaigns:
Vax’ildan, the bisexual ­half-elf from the first campaign, and Mollymauk, the
bisexual and genderfluid Tiefling from the second campaign. The
circumstances of their respective deaths are vastly different. Vax died but
made a deal with his god to temporarily come back and defeat the villain
they were fighting, before permanently dying (Geek & Sundry, 2017d). This
ending was planned by Mercer and O’Brien. Vax died at the very end of the
campaign, making it unlikely to have benefited another character’s personal
development. Mollymauk’s death was different: rather than being a narrative
choice, it was the result of gameplay and bad dice rolls. This led to a sudden,
violent death ­mid-campaign, without any chance of revival, but it has had a
profound effect on the rest of the characters (Geek & Sundry, 2018d).
Mollymauk’s death specifically sparked a loud outcry among the audience
and resulted in accusations of the Bury Your Gays trope. While, in the
broadest definition, this might be true, it is complicated by the fact that
Critical Role is live improvisation based on dice, rather than a scripted
narrative. A part of the audience thus argued that it cannot be Bury Your
Gays because it was not planned, it was caused by bad dice rolls, and the DM
could not compromise the villain (aceavengers, 2018; LolthienToo, 2018).
Mollymauk simply had bad luck: his queerness had nothing to do with his
death and it could have been any other character. However, the opposing
side argues that while this might be true, the DM is essentially the god of the
story, and he could have found a way to prevent permanent death.
Accordingly, Mollymauk’s death could, and should, have been avoided if
Mercer had made different decisions, and had weighed the importance of
queer existence and representation as higher than staying faithful to the
personality of his villain (fandomshatelgbtqpeople, 2018a, 2018b). There
were no responses from Critical Role that specifically commented on the
Bury Your Gay trope, but Mercer said that he was sorry if he had
disappointed people, but that he sees Mollymauk’s death as “a dark spot in a
vibrant narrative” (2018). Guest star Ashley Burch who was present during
the particular episode commented that death is an inevitability and that
engaging with it in a narrative can be both healing and an aid to come to
terms with it (2018).
However, when it comes to the Bury Your Gays trope it is questionable to
what extent Critical Role can really respond and change their story to
prevent it from happening. It is questionable whether the trope can really be
applied to Mollymauk’s death, since not only did it happen during
improvisational and collaborative storytelling, but it happened in D&D, a
game where anyone can die. While so far in Critical Role only been queer
characters have permanently died, many other characters have been close to
permanent death as well, and during Mollymauk’s last fight, the other
characters were also at risk. The only way Mercer could prevent queer death
in Critical Role would be by giving certain characters Plot Armor, a trope
where “a main character’s life and health are safeguarded by the fact that he’s
the one person who can’t be removed from the story” (TV Tropes n.d.).
However, it is questionable whether this is desirable for several reasons: it
would downplay the consequences of the decisions that the player makes,
something that Mercer highly values (D&D Beyond, 2017); it would remove
the stakes from the game; it separates queer people from other people,
which could be detrimental and patronizing; and players might be less likely
to play queer characters, since they would be treated differently than their
peers. There thus might be a limit to what extent the audience can influence
a narrative, especially when its expectations are based on tropes that are
based on conventional media, which are not necessarily suitable for
improvisational gameplay where luck and dice play a large role.
Critical Role is arguably the most influential actual play show there
currently is, given the general scale of the show, both in content and in
monetary value. It therefore forms a good example for the reaction and
interaction with its audience, and it is clear that the company pays attention
to the reactions of its audience. In the cases of the whitewashing and
potentially the call for more queer characters changes are made to increase
diversity and appeal to the audience. It thus seems that it is the interaction
between the audience and the creators that improves the diversity within the
Critical Role, following the idea of convergence culture (Jenkins, 2006), as it
is the audience that and holds the company accountable and advocates for
changes. The example of Critical Role also shows that it might be productive
to construct new tools to analyze diversity within actual play, since the
applicability of concepts such as race and ethnicity and traditional tropes is
questionable.

The Adventure Zone

The second case study of this essay is The Adventure Zone. This show is
different from Critical Role in several ways: it is a podcast, which is recorded
and edited rather than streamed live; the cast has used different game
systems; they have switched DMs a few times; and most importantly, the
show was started as a ­one-off podcast episode to fill in for another podcast,
rather than being intentional storytelling from the beginning. Since they
thought it would be a ­one-time show, they initially did not take the game or
the podcast seriously. The show works with arcs, the first and most ­well-
known of which is called Balance. One arc encompasses an entire story with
specific characters.

The Adventure Zone, Race, Ethnicity and Other Cultures

The McElroys are all white and they do not feature guests on their show.
They are aware of this lack of diversity, however, and have deliberately
withheld creating visual images for their characters and worlds. They feel
that leaving visuals open for audience interpretation increases inclusivity, as
Griffin put it: “it’s important to me that this show has, like, good
representation? […] I feel like this is a really cool way of doing that, of just
saying, like, whatever interpretation you have, go for it” (McElroy et al.,
2017b). This also means that the color of someone’s skin is very rarely
commented on. There is only one canonical mention of skin color: Lucretia,
an NPC in Balance, is described as having dark skin (McElroy et al., 2016d).
While this emphasis on audience interpretation can be useful to let
multiple communities claim the character, it can also result in an
overabundance of white interpretations, or it can cause unforeseen
complications. This is especially the case with one of the player characters,
Taako (pronounced taco), who was originally named that as a joke. As
Cuesta points out: “Many fans, especially Latinx fans, decided to interpret
Taako as Mexican so that their cultural food would remain theirs. Anything
else would be a hijacking of Mexican culture” (2018). These interpretations
were encouraged by the McElroys, although they did not want to make it
canon, since it made them uncomfortable that they as four white men would
have created a Latinx character with a stereotypical name, which would be
racist (McElroy et al., 2017b).
However, this refusal to commit to one depiction became problematic
when it was announced that the show would be turned into a graphic novel.
While the McElroys insisted that the depiction in the graphic would not be
the canonical visual image (McElroy et al., 2017d), it is still an official
representation of the characters, and the primary visual image for
newcomers who only read the graphic novel. The initial preview of the
character art led to criticism, since all the characters were depicted as white
(boss1000, 2016; roswelltxt, 2017). The white depiction did not meet the
expectations that the McElroys had created by claiming to want diversity.
These negative reactions were acknowledged (J. McElroy, 2016b), and the
designs were changed: Merle, one of the main characters, is now depicted as
black, and Taako is depicted with light blue skin. In addition, Lucretia, and
Angus McDonald, two NPCs, are presented as black. However, this did not
solve the audience’s criticism, since Merle has abandoned his children and
his wife, which follows a stereotypical and negative depiction of black men
(Fucko_Bucko, 2017). Additionally, Taako is still not a person of color, while
being connected to a Mexican identity. Moreover, combined with earlier
depictions of Taako as ­green-skinned, some people suggested that his light
blue color, which borders on green, can be associated with harmful
depictions of Jewish people (yourbudolo, 2017). This is especially
concerning combined with Taako’s behavior, since he steals a considerable
amount, and can seem greedy, more stereotypes connected to Jewish people.
A rather large part of the audience thus found the presented changes
unsatisfactory.
The Adventure Zone responded to the reactions that both art reveals
received, and they explained that “all of this comes from this underlying
friction between where The Adventure Zone and us, its creators, were when
we started doing the podcast, and where we, the show, and you, the
community, are at now” (McElroy et al., 2017d). They acknowledge that they
have made mistakes, and that they did not consider the importance of
representation and diversity in the beginning of the podcast, mostly because
they are four white men for whom that never was an issue, and also because
they thought it would be a ­one-time joke show (McElroy et al., 2017d). They
agree that they should strive to do better in the future, but that for the
Balance arc “those characters were created and played by white people who
didn’t consider the ramifications of their every action when viewed through
a specific cultural lens while playing” (McElroy et al., 2017d). Like
mentioned before, they feel uncomfortable making Taako a Latinx character,
since it would also be stereotypical and racist, and because they were not
particularly mindful of representation during the first part of the show, there
is no clear solution to the problem, since most depictions would be
problematic in some ways. They acknowledge that, and have kept the second
design of the novel, and promised to try to do better in the future. This
entire discussion forms another good example of how the interaction with
the that exists in actual play influences the creators and their decisions, but it
also highlights the limits of this influence, since it is impossible for creators
to appease every audience member.
After the Balance arc was finished, the McElroys did some shorter,
experimental arcs, in which they tried different game systems, switched
DMs, and explored different types of stories. In these arcs there is a clear
attempt to be more diverse and concrete with their representation, and they
have ­outright-stated ethnicities, although they still insist that there is no
canonical visual depiction of their characters. In the first experimental arc,
called Commitment, Travis specifies that his character Nadiya is ­-
Bangladeshi-British, although she grew up in the U.S. (McElroy et al.,
2017g). Justin introduced a character that was inspired by Inuit mythology,
and he prefaces that by saying that he specifically reached out to that
community to ensure he would not appropriate the culture but instead
represent it well (McElroy et al., 2017g). He adds that his character is
inspired by the culture, but it is not just a copy, since that would be
appropriative (McElroy et al., 2017g). The McElroys also show awareness of
stereotypes and are careful to try and avoid them. In a Wild West arc, called
Dust, they preface the story by saying that while the era forms the
inspiration, they will not follow the misogynistic and racist stereotypes
associated with it (McElroy et al., 2018a). Additionally, they clarify that the
supernatural beings in the arc are not used to represent people of color, and
that the supernatural elements are not a metaphor for racism, since that
would be “dismissive of very serious and very real problems” (McElroy et al.
2018b). In this arc Justin plays a greedy, corporate magnate, and specifically
makes him a Caucasian man, since that would be most like reality (McElroy
et al., 2018a). Clint plays Gandy Dancer, who is East Asian, and Griffin plays
a Latinx man who is ­half-werewolf, and he stresses that the ethnicity is not
connected to the beastly nature of the character, but rather to the
“community leader and idealistic politician” aspect of his personality
(McElroy et al., 2018a). In Amnesty, the second big arc, Travis plays Aubrey
Little, who is confirmed to be Puerto Rican (keplercryptids, 2018). The later
arcs thus show that the McElroys have learned from the audience interaction
that arose with Balance and the subsequent graphic novels and are more
mindful and outspoken in creating representation and ethnic diversity.

The Adventure Zone and the LGBTQ+ Community

The cast of TAZ are all cisgender and heterosexual men, and they do not
play with guests. However, within the games they are playing they attempt to
create a diverse environment. TAZ only has three player characters,
compared to Critical Role’s seven, and also has considerably fewer NPCs,
who often feature more prominently, so there is less necessity to divide the
two categories. There are several queer characters in the Balance arc: Taako,
aforementioned player character, is presented as being gay (J. McElroy,
2016a), and he eventually ends up in a relationship with Kravitz, a grim
reaper; Taako’s twin sister Lup is transgender, which is mentioned during
her introduction, but does not feature heavily in her story (McElroy et al.,
2017c); Carey and Killian Fangbattle, two women who are part of Lucretia’s
organization, marry each other in the final episode (McElroy et al., 2017e);
and Sloane and Hurley, another lesbian couple, were central to an earlier
part of the storyline (McElroy et al., 2015). After the Balance arc, the
McElroys did some experimental arcs, which were short, and did not have
much time for character development and romance. These arcs also had
fewer NPCs. However, there a few queer characters in these arcs: Aubrey
Little, from the Amnesty arc, is confirmed to be bisexual (McElroy et al.,
2018c); and in Dust, the Wild West arc, one of the main plot points revolves
around a man being in love with another man, although this is unrequited
love and ends tragically (McElroy et al., 2018b). Other characters may have
been queer as well, but it was not mentioned in the character’s creation, and
the short arcs did not allow for romantic interests to develop.
TAZ has also been accused of falling into the Bury Your Gays trope. The
story of Sloane and Hurley ends tragically: Sloane was under the influence of
a powerful relic, and while Hurley tries to save Sloane, in the end they both
die and transform into a tree. Compared to the ambiguity of Critical Role,
the trope is more applicable in this scenario, since both characters are NPCs
and Griffin McElroy specifically planned a tragic ending (G. McElroy,
2016a). It is also again relevant to mention that TAZ is a recorded and edited
show, rather than being played live, which means that what the audience
hears is released intentionally. This is different from Critical Role, where
Mollymauk’s death happened live, without any editing or revisions. The
audience made Griffin aware of the problematic nature of the Sloane/Hurley
ending, and he apologized and explained that he was not aware of this trope
beforehand (G. McElroy, 2016b). Toward the end of the arc it was revealed
that Sloane and Hurley were not dead, but had been turned into dryads,
which, while still a tragic ending, removed some of the initial sting and
violence that queer people in the audience felt (Alarcorn, 2017;
loverofpodcasts, 2018). The audience response thus led to changes in the
story, showing the influence of the interaction between creator and audience
once more. In TTAZZ Griffin acknowledges that he stepped into the Bury
Your Gays trope in the Balance arc, and that he is more aware of this now
(McElroy et al., 2017b). Another concern that was raised by the audience
was that Taako seemed to be a stereotypical gay man with a high, effeminate
voice, and that only went on one canonical date with Kravitz, and that he did
not tell this to the other characters, which could be interpreted as shame
(McElroy et al., 2016d). Justin explained that Taako’s voice was based on a
real person and was conceived unrelated to his sexuality (McElroy et al.,
2016c), and that the secrecy was not caused by shame, but that Taako is a
private person who does not trust other people easily. He also added that
while he has no issues with playing a gay man, “It is […] weird to go on
imaginary dates with [his] brother” (McElroy et al. 2017f).
TTAZZ also provides some insight in the creation of Lup, the trans
character in the show. Griffin reveals that he read up on harmful tropes that
he wanted to avoid and asked for tips from the community to create a good
transgender character (McElroy et al., 2017f). However, he also reinforces
that creating a trans character is not a burden: “I don’t want it to sound like
this was like, so hard, right? […] It really wasn’t difficult but […] I just really
didn’t wanna fuck it up. I super didn’t want to fuck it up” (McElroy et al.,
2017f). This intent also shows that after the audience interaction that
followed Sloane and Hurley’s death, the McElroys seem to have realized that
they might not be aware of harmful tropes concerning identities that are
different from their own, and that they need to research other identities to
avoid making similar mistakes.
The Adventure Zone initially started with the stance that by being ­non-
specific about their characters’ physical forms, they would be able to bring
more representation, since anyone could interpret the character in any way
they wanted to. However, it soon became clear that there are significant
drawbacks to that, from potentially racist undertones to a controversy
surrounding their graphic adaptation. The feedback that the audience
provided led the creators of The Adventure Zone to change their approach,
which is visible in the experimental arcs and the following Amnesty arc. The
talk show episodes reveal that the family is more focused on researching the
identities they seek to represent, in order to prevent a repetition of earlier
controversies. The fact that TAZ is recorded and edited, rather than being
live improvisation, makes criticism based on traditional tropes somewhat
more applicable. However, here too there is a certain amount of friction
between the novelty of the genre and the conventional tools for analyzing
storytelling, further indicating the need to develop new ways of analyzing
actual play narratives.

Other Forms of Diversity

Race, sexuality and gender are not the only facets of diversity, although
these aspects receive the most attention. There are other identities that can
bring diversity to a show, and that deserve representation, such as different
body types, disabilities and mental illnesses. These types of diversity are hard
to measure for the actual cast of both shows, since it would require them to
share private medical details about themselves. Additionally, while both
casts seem ­able-bodied, there are multiple disabilities that might not be
visible at first glance, and they should not have to disclose that information.
That being said, Travis McElroy has mentioned that he has ADD (2016),
which he features in one of his characters as well.
In game there is a little more room for representation. However, most
gaming systems do not offer options to play disabled characters without
huge penalties. D&D offers some optional rules for disabilities, or “lingering
injuries” (Crawford, Perkins & Wyatt, 2014, p. 272), and for mental illness,
“madness” (Crawford, Perkins & Wyatt, 2014, p. 260), but these come with
disadvantages for the players, and the disabilities can be circumvented
through magic (Crawford et al., 2014; Jones, 2018). This can work
discouraging for players, especially because D&D partially focuses on
creating a powerful character. It is also problematic in terms of
representation, since this kind system implies that disability is something to
overcome and something that has to be fixed, rather than being a part of
someone’s identity (Stokes, 2017). Potentially as a result of the game systems
used, or because of oversight of the casts of both shows, Critical Role and
The Adventure Zone have few examples of disabled representation, and it is
often flawed. It is also noteworthy that there is less audience response and
interaction regarding disability, compared to other aspects, resulting in less
accountability.
Critical Role has a few characters with mental disorders: Caleb Widogast,
a player character from the second campaign, shows signs of PTSD, and
Marion Lavorre, an NPC, has agoraphobia. There are also several NPCs and
two guest PCs with physical impairments. In the first campaign there is
Tyriok Gadsworth, a mapmaker who loses his arm after being petrified
(Geek & Sundry, 2016d); Cerkonos, a druid who loses his arm fighting a
dragon, but then regrows it (Geek & Sundry, 2016b, 2016c); Anna Ripley, a
villain who lost her hand in an experiment, but replaces it with a mechanical
hand (Geek & Sundry, 2016a, 2016i); and Shale, an old, retired fighter who is
missing an arm and an eye, played by Chris Perkins (Geek & Sundry, 2016f).
The second campaign adds Orly, a tortle sailor who is missing an eye and
who has a stutter, designed by the audience (Geek & Sundry, 2018g); Zorth,
an older goblin who is missing both his arms, but who is very dexterous
with his feet (Critical Role, 2019c); Shakäste, a blind cleric who sees through
his magic animal companion, played by Khary Payton (Geek & Sundry,
2018b); and Deilin, an elven girl who is mute (Critical Role, 2019f). The
majority of these portrayals are flawed. Depicting villains with disabilities is
a harmful but common trope that vilifies disabled people (Ng, 2014; Onyx,
2018, 2019). Moreover, the majority of the disabilities listed above are
cosmetic disabilities, meaning that “disability [is] being treated as a cosmetic
choice that has no impact on the story, where a character is given magical or
mechanical body parts just to make them look more hard core” (Onyx,
2017a). This not actually represent the lived experience of disabled people.
The idea of a magical cure also presents disabilities as an obstacle to
overcome, rather than it being part of one’s identity. This “sends the message
that disability is a terrible thing and that being disabled is inferior to being ­-
able-bodied” and there is no positive future unless one’s disability magically
disappears (Onyx, 2017b). Cerkonos, Anna Ripley and Shakäste all fall
under these tropes, since magic or mechanics negate their disability, and
especially Ripley’s disability mainly contributes to her aesthetic. Shale does
not necessarily fall under these tropes, but she is essentially suicidal after
losing the respect of her clan for being old and disabled. While this can be
seen as an old person feeling their life is done, it also suggests that a disabled
person has nothing to live for, which again instills the idea that there is no
positive future for a disabled person. This shows that while Critical Role has
some representation for disabled people, it is minimal and there is much
room for improvement in order to create positive representation.
The Adventure Zone falls in similar traps. In the Balance arc player
character Merle loses an arm after it crystallizes, but he almost immediately
receives a new arm made of wood, negating the disability (McElroy et al.,
2016a, 2016b). Another character who can be perceived as disabled is
Davenport, who is intellectually disabled after having his mind wiped, and
who is ­non-verbal for the majority of the arc, although both of these things
are undone toward the end of the story (McElroy et al., 2017a). Both of these
characters are thus magically cured, which again strengthens the idea that
disabled people must focus on seeking a cure in order to have a positive
future. Aubrey Little from the Amnesty arc has ADD (keplercryptids, 2018),
and the Graduation arc has Rainer, who is in a magic wheelchair (McElroy
et al., 2019). These last two examples seem to have avoided harmful tropes
so far. TAZ too thus limited representation of disabled representation, and
there is room for improvement in the quality of this representation,
although it seems to be slowly improving.
Another aspect of supporting diversity is the accessibility of the shows
themselves. Accessibility has received a significant amount of attention from
the audience. Both shows have transcripts for the majority of their materials,
although this has been a fan effort up until this point, and not an official
measure. Critical Role recently announced that they would officially start
captioning and transcribing the show (Lockey, 2019a, 2019b), by a
professional company, in order to accommodate fans who are hard of
hearing or who have other reasons for needing captions. This increases the
accessibility of the show, and also shows that the company listened to their
audience and react to their suggestions. Maximum Fun, the company
hosting The Adventure Zone, also announced that they would start officially
releasing transcripts, rather than relying on fans (Molski, 2019). Within the
TAZ audience there is also an emphasis on providing image descriptions of
fan art, in order to accommodate visually impaired people. This notion has
been introduced to the Critical Role audience as well, but it has not caught
on as much (keplercryptids, 2019).
It is clear that both shows still have a long way to go when it comes to
other forms of diversity, especially with regards to representation of disabled
people. Both shows are attempting to make their shows more accessible, but
within the games there is still much room for improvement. Especially The
Adventure Zone has very little disabled representation. It is possible that the
shows are lagging behind in this aspect because there is less audience
response and interaction on this topic. There seems to be more ignorance
about the issues surrounding disability representation both from the
creators and from the audience, since the few people who are vocally
advocating for good disability representation tend to be drowned out by a
focus on other kinds of diversity.

Conclusion
Critical Role and The Adventure Zone are two of the most ­well-known
examples of actual play at this moment. Both of the shows have issues
regarding diversity within their cast, but both shows have shown awareness
of this and attempt to diversify their narrative to make up for this lacuna.
These attempts are rarely without fault, but their audiences are vocal about
keeping the shows accountable for these mistakes, which provides the
creators with an opportunity to learn and do better. Both of the shows have
had several examples where the audience directly influences the narrative,
whether that is in the form of NPCs created by the audience, more diverse
NPCs, or in the changing of a narrative. This indicates that the audience
interaction currently present in actual play will ultimately lead to more
diverse stories. The fact that the audience is able to communicate with the
creators, and have them listen to their concerns, improves the likelihood of
better representation, and gives some power to minorities, who have a better
chance of being heard within the actual play genre compared to, e.g., TV
shows. At the same time, this audience interaction is complex, since it is not
one singular being, but rather a large group of people who never quite have
the same opinion, and the anonymity that comes with the online nature of
this interaction can lead to hatred and vitriol both among the audience itself
or targeted toward the creators.
There are some questions that arise in light of actual play and diversity. It
is unclear how to navigate the line between representation and
appropriation when the established cast is white and/or straight and/or ­able-
bodied. It is important to create diverse narratives, but to what extent is it
possible to do so without having the lived experience? Additionally, how do
concepts like whitewashing, appropriation and established tropes fit into
actual play, when the nature of the game is to live experiences that are
different from regular life? Moreover, if white, straight, ­able-bodied people
should not play identities that do not correspond with their own, yet they
are more ­well-known than diverse alternatives, the result is more stories
about white, straight, ­able-bodied people, and no improvement in
representation for minorities.
Further research should consider these questions and reconsider concepts
of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and disability in this context to devise
tools for critical analysis of this new form of media content.
On the whole, actual play holds new possibilities to create diverse stories,
where the audience can directly have an influence on correcting harmful
storylines. That being said, the most popular actual play streams at the
moment tend to be predominantly by white people, which is objectionable,
even when they make their worlds diverse. This is yet another form of media
where voices from minorities will have to be sought out and lifted up, in
order to create a more diverse playing field within actual play. Fortunately,
there are several diverse actual play shows out there already, such as Rivals of
Waterdeep and Dames and Dragons, they just have not received as much
attention as Critical Role and The Adventure Zone yet. While more and more
diverse actual play shows pop up and gather attention, it is important to
continue to push current audience favorites to do better to increase the
representation within the genre as a whole.
Notes
1. When referring to the show Critical Role or CR will be used, when referring to the company
Critical Role will be used.
2. For transparency and accountability, it is important to note that the author of this essay is white
and European, and they consider themselves a fan of both of the shows.
3. At the time that this essay was written; there may have been guest stars since.
4. D&D is a TTRPG game system, meaning that it has a set of rules to facilitate ­role-playing and
character building, etc., but the game also has a significant amount of lore and adventures that can be
used by its players; a ­pre-set world to play in.
5. Gilmore is depicted as having a darker skin in official art, and is from Marquet (Geek & Sundry,
2016g).

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insane & will allow us to do some incredible things in storytelling. There are also many other
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OceanofPDF.com
 Critical Fails
Fan Reactions to Player and Character Choices in
Critical Role
Christine Dandrow

It’s an interesting position, because the livestream TTRPG format

feels like a bridge between scripted TV dramas and “unscripted
reality TV.” […] In the case of Keyleth and [Critical Role],
although the players are doing their best to act as their characters,
there’s plenty of time you see the players as themselves, and see
them react to the game as themselves, and the community’s
criticism of a character can have the unfortunate habit of
morphing into criticism of the player as a result.—Anonymous
participant
Critical Role is a weekly livestreamed web show in which groups of
professional voice actors play Dungeons & Dragons, a phenomenon also
known as an “actual play podcast” due to its nature as a game turned into
entertainment for viewers. Fans of the show, who call themselves Critters,
experience a sort of dual fandom in which the media they consume contains
elements of both the actor and the character at different times and
occasionally simultaneously in a very explicit way. By livestreaming their
game, the cast of Critical Role complicates the role of the fan. Are they a fan
of Sam Riegel, Scanlan, ­Sam-Riegel-as-Scanlan, or some combination
thereof? Because the nature of tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs) is such
that the ­player-character relationship is not stable (Mackay, 2001), it can be
difficult for fans to interpret which actions and beliefs are being espoused by
whom. This specific type of entertainment—not just tabletop roleplaying
games or livestreamed gaming, but the combination of the two—is so new,
having only gotten popular in the past few years (Hall, 2018), that there are
not firmly understood frameworks for understanding the ­fan-cast
relationship. This study (which consists of a qualitative questionnaire) is
concerned with how fans of Critical Role understand their relationship to the
show’s cast and characters.
Because there is not yet much research on actual play podcasts or their
fans, I first place this research within studies of TTRPGs, then I turn to
studies of television fandom as active audiences in order to contextualize the
modern ­fan-producer relationship. I then discuss the limited research about
fans who watch online video games (including livestreamed games) and how
this impacts livestreamed TTRPGs. Ultimately, I argue that livestreamed
TTRPGs, as a melting pot of entertainment types, have further complicated
the ­fan-producer relationship and altered the way fans perceive narrative
and entertainment (as well as whether ­in-game victory is a requirement for
quality of both).

Tabletop Roleplay Games

So many different types of attitudes and behaviors are involved in the
activity that defining and describing tabletop roleplaying games can be
difficult. Elements of drama, social gatherings, improvisational theater,
games of chance, board games, collaborative storytelling—all of these and
more come together to make TTRPGs what they are. Tabletop gaming is
“not competitive, has no time limits, has no ­score-keeping, and … has no
finite definitions of winning or losing … the goals are survival and character
development” (Waskul & Lust, 2006, p. 20). Schallegger (2018) describes the
games as “collective efforts of structured play (games) that negotiate and
create a communal narrative experience from actions in secondary reality
through verbal interaction in primary reality” (“Of Dice and [Wo]Men,”
para. 5, eBook version). Cover, building on Mackey’s (2001) description of
TTRPG as “an episodic and participatory ­story-creation system that includes
a set of quantified rules that assist a group of players and a gamemaster in
determining how their fictional characters’ spontaneous interactions are
resolved” (p. 4–5; emphasis his), notes that all of those elements can be said
of other media (television, literature, board games, wargames), except for
one. She writes, “It is the interaction between the players and the
gamemaster that sets this form apart” (Cover, 2010, p. 11). The gamemaster
(GM), who Schallegger (2018) describes as the ­hub-player, performs almost
any action that would be performed by a computer in a video game,
including planning the skeleton of the story, narrating the story as it
happens, refereeing battles, making judgments about rules, and acting as all
­non-player characters (NPCs). The degree to which they do these things
depends on the specific rules of the source books the players have chosen to
consult (Schallegger, 2018). Note that each system of rules has their own
term for this person, although gamemaster is most often used as the ­stand-
in term. Critical Role uses the fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons, which calls
the position the Dungeon Master, and that is how Matt Mercer is referred to
in this essay.
All of this is helpful in understanding the game that Critical Role’s cast is
playing but fails to get at how CR is different from just a group playing a
game. What sets livestreamed TTRPGs like Critical Role apart is the unique
interactions between the fans and the cast members and the question of how
having an audience does or does not affect the cast’s decisions on and off
screen. In an offline TTRPG, a player has a relationship with their character,
the GM, and the other players. Building on Fine’s (1983) work, Mackay
(2001) discusses the movement between an actor and a character as a
“switching of frames” (p. 54), which he identifies five of: social, game,
narrative, constative, and performative. In a scripted television show, with
very few exceptions, actors remain in character at all times; they are
constantly in the performative frame. In unscripted shows like talk shows or
reality television, the cast typically are playing themselves. At most, they
might switch between social and game, or social and performative (if they
are exaggerating their personalities for the camera). In a TTRPG, Mackay
(2001) writes, the players and GM move fluidly between all these frames. In
a livestreamed TTRPG, the addition of the audience can complicate the -­
frame-switching. This is partially the focus of this research: understanding
how the audience interprets this switching, as well as how the audience sees
their role in relation to the cast. My goal is to understand how the fluidity of
frame switching does or does not enable fans to feel comfortable criticizing
Critical Role when they disagree with player and/or character decisions in or
out of the game’s world, in particular, what makes a decision a failed/bad
decision, and how do the multiple layers of roles play a part in that
construction?
Media Creators and Active Fans
Fandom has its roots in resistive practices and transgressive readings
(Gray et al., 2007), but for years fans largely limited their public activism and
interaction with media creators to attempts to keep their show on the air, as
with the ­oft-cited example of Star Trek (­Bacon-Smith, 1992), and later Joss
Whedon’s ­short-lived but ­much-loved Firefly (Johnson, 2007). Wilkinson
(2010) describes the pre–Internet days of fandom:
It all used to be so simple. There were fans and there were The Powers That Be (TPTB) […] TPTB
created stories that we, the fans, adored, consumed, criticized, and chopped into bits and made into
shiny new things for our amusement. There was a version of the fourth wall—more a ­one-way
mirror, really—between the source text and fandom, with both sides generally happy to keep it that
way [para. 1.1].
Fans practiced a sort of quiet but still active resistance via their writing of
fanfiction and their creation of other fan artifacts, like zines (­Bacon-Smith,
1992; Hellekson & Busse, 2006; Larsen & Zubernis, 2012), but overall did
not interact with the creators of their beloved media (Johnson, 2007,
Wilkinson, 2010). This continued for decades, but with the rise of social
media came increased access to those media creators, and more direct
approaches have become increasingly common (Jenkins, 2006; Johnson,
2007; Wilkinson, 2010). Chin (2013) notes that “fans of newer shows are
used to interacting with showrunners, often in official forums set up by
television networks” (p. 90), going on to describe fans debating series finales
with executive producers. Some scholars fear that the increased access, as a ­-
two-way street, opens fans up to exploitation (Johnson, 2007), but Jenkins
(2006) notes that many media creators see fans as a threat because of their
potential collective power. Fans have a history of organizing, but the internet
enhanced and solidified their ability to do this. There are countless examples
of modern fandom coming together to be heard, but a relatively recent
example is the fan reaction to Game of Thrones season 8. Fans on the GoT
reddit r/Freefolk posted a picture of the showrunners, D.B. Weiss and David
Benioff, with the caption, “Bad Writers. Upvote this post so its the first result
when you google ‘Bad writers.’” As of this writing, the post had over 51,400
upvotes and was in fact the first result on Google when I searched, “bad
writers.” If fans have a sense of entitlement and decide a story should be a
certain way, and then successfully organize efforts to punish a creator for not
creating that story in that way, the media creators are largely powerless to
stop it. Considering the changing nature of online fandom is important for
understanding how Critters interact with the cast and characters of Critical
Role, because the show is a ­web-based show and its fans interact with the
cast primarily through the internet (including sometimes a live interaction
during the show). Every cast member has a significant social media
presence, and some of them regularly participate (or at least lurk) in the
central Critter forum on reddit.com, r/criticalrole.

Livestreamed Games
Since around 2006, video game players have recorded and commentated
their gameplay and posted it to YouTube, a phenomenon that came to be
known as Let’s Plays (Glas, 2015). Ever since Twitch was founded in 2011,
many players who were known for their Let’s Plays on YouTube began to
livestream their play either partially or exclusively on Twitch (Consalvo,
2017). Glas (2015) argues that the “combination between ludic immersion
and ­non-ludic engagement [in Let’s Plays] offers an experience of vicarious
play” (p. 84). That is, viewers feel as if they are playing along with the player.
The goal of a Let’s Play is specifically the narration by the player-streamer,
and the mastery of the game is secondary to the point of sometimes being
completely unimportant (Glas, 2015). Consalvo (2017) agrees with this,
stating that many streamers attract viewers specifically because of their
persona instead of their gaming successes. She adds that understanding how
a streamer performs failure is essential to understanding this persona
(Consalvo, 2017). Failure in a video game is clearer than in TTRPGs, at least
on the surface: you either achieve your objective, or you do not. In a Let’s
Play or streamed game, Consalvo (2017) argues, achieving the objective is
not always or exclusively the goal. Livestreaming in general and Twitch in
particular have altered the gaming landscape, allowing for an unprecedented
type of tandem play and a kind of interactivity that changes how we
understand gaming (Consalvo, 2017). There is a long history of playing ­-
single-player games in tandem, but Let’s Plays and livestreaming have taken
a largely educational practice (experienced player guiding inexperienced
player through a game) and turned it into an entertaining practice
(Consalvo, 2017; Glas, 2015). Thus, the objective of the player is not
necessarily the objective of the character they are controlling, because the
player may have educational, relational, or entertainment goals in addition
to their character’s narrative and/or objective goals. This is a helpful context
for analyzing livestreamed TTRPGs, as it illustrates how having an audience
could alter the ­player-character relationship. One could argue that there is
an additional “frame” (Mackay, 2001) here, or perhaps that the audience
intensifies and extends the performative frame. The question then becomes
whether (and how) this altered ­player-character relationship, which is
further complicated by the ­player-audience relationship, affects the
audience’s views on player and character actions/decisions.

Context of the Controversy: Episodes 85 and 88

At the time of this data being gathered, Critical Role was viewable live
every Thursday night at 7:00 p.m. PST both on the viewing platform Alpha
and on the Twitch channel run by the website Geek & Sundry (G&S). The
recordings of that live show were rebroadcast on the Twitch channel later
and were also available to rewatch on demand on Twitch and, at a delay of a
few days, on YouTube. Alpha has a subscription fee, as does G&S’s Twitch
channel if one wishes to view the recordings of past episodes (live viewing
on Twitch is free). The delayed viewing on YouTube is also free. Since my
initial research was performed, Critical Role has branched off into its own
company with its own Twitch channel. It is still available live on G&S’s
Twitch channel, and the backlog of episodes up through Episode 51 of the
second campaign are viewable on G&S, but all episodes past that are only
viewable on CR’s Twitch and YouTube channels. It is also available in
podcast form, but to my knowledge all of my participants watched the
episodes rather than listened to them. In my questionnaire, I asked fans
about two episodes, Episode 85: “A Bard’s Lament,” and Episode 88:
“Tangled Depths.”
In addition to Matt Mercer, who runs the game as the Dungeon Master
(DM), the cast consists of seven players with ­self-created characters. The two
players most relevant to this essay are Sam Riegel and Marisha Ray. At the
time of this research (which was done during their first campaign/season),
the players’ characters referred to their group as Vox Machina. Marisha’s
character was named Keyleth, and Sam’s first character was named Scanlan.
In one of the episodes this research deals with, Scanlan chose to leave the
group and Sam began a new character, Taryon Darrington.
In the episode prior to Episode 85, Sam Reigel’s character Scanlan
Shorthalt dies and is brought back to life via a resurrection ritual, which Vox
Machina asked his daughter to participate in (his daughter is a ­non-player
character controlled by the DM, Matt). As a joke, which they genuinely
believed both Sam and Scanlan would think was funny, Vox Machina then
took his ­now-alive-but-still-comatose body and put him in a lady’s
nightgown, tied his wrists to the bed, and covered him in pudding. However,
the controversial part of Episode 85 occurs when Scanlan wakes up.
He begins angrily swearing at Vox Machina, accusing them of never
caring about him, disrespecting him, using him for his spells and abilities,
making him look bad in front of his daughter, seeing him as only a funny
little man, and generally being selfish. They defend themselves against these
attacks as best they can, but the encounter ends with Scanlan deciding to
permanently leave Vox Machina to travel the world with his daughter and
get to know her. Later in that episode, Sam pulls out a ­brand-new character
—Taryon Darington, who quickly joins the party. Both the decision to leave
and the decision to create Taryon were heavily debated among Critters.
There was much discussion about whether it was Sam or Scanlan that was
actually unhappy, as well as discussions surrounding Taryon’s character
creation, in particular whether certain choices were made as a revenge move
by Sam against other players or simply as a ­well-meant dig between friends.
Other fans devoted time to discussing VM’s collective actions leading up to
this point—was Scanlan (and/or Sam) justified in being angry? Or does the
fault lie with him and his incredibly high ­deception-related abilities? Many
questioned whether it was fair to expect VM to know his feelings when they
were mathematically incapable of overcoming his deception dice rolls.
Questions like these are largely the source of controversy surrounding this
episode.
The other episode I asked fans about is Episode 88, in which Vox Machina
(minus Scanlan and plus Taryon) must fight a kraken that they are not
allowed to kill. This episode is very ­Keyleth-centric because it is the final
major step on her Aramente, her journey of preparation to become the
leader of her people. They have a very specific task: return with three
lodestones and do not kill the kraken. The kraken repeatedly grapples the
members of VM, which means they can perform actions but not move.
Inability to move means inability to escape without killing the kraken.
Multiple characters are swallowed by the kraken and vomited back up, or
damaged to the point of losing consciousness, or outright killed. Faced with
her party falling apart and finding herself running out of options, Keyleth
chooses to grab the only two people she can reach in one turn (one of whom
was dead) and cast Plane Shift, moving them to total safety but leaving three
other characters behind.
Although all of the characters ultimately survived, this episode is
controversial because this decision was perceived by some fans as Keyleth
abandoning her friends to their probable death. In addition, this episode is
controversial because of the perception of the cast’s behavior during the
episode. This episode is one of the longest episodes in Critical Role history,
clocking in at 5 hours and 22 minutes (4 hours and 46 minutes of actual
gameplay). Vox Machina took a long time to make each decision during the
battle, and a few times cast members were clearly frustrated either from the
pace, the length, or the apparent futility of the battle. Some fans accused
Matt of going easy on Marisha, who is his ­real-life wife. Others were
questioning Marisha’s lucidity, with varying degrees of bluntness. Some
accused the entire cast of being drunk and slowing down the show with
their indecision, and yet others complained about the individual choices
made leading up to and during the battle. They claimed that either VM
and/or the players did not prepare enough or they prepared incorrectly or
they made ignorant decisions about how to best accomplish their goals in
the moment.
For both of these episodes, responses escalated to the point that the
responses themselves became a subject of intense scrutiny within the
fandom. Fans were fighting, attacking players and each other, to the point
that Matt felt the need to step in and publish a response of his own on the
subreddit. This triggered an introspective discussion about what the fans’
role is in relation to the cast and the story they are telling. How much say do
the fans have in how the story goes? Do fans have a right to be unhappy with
a character or with a player? If they do, do they have the right to voice that
unhappiness, and in what context?
Research Questions
This leads me to my research questions. I am interested in unpacking the
responses to these episodes in order to understand the nuance of this
relationship. With this in mind, for both Episode 85 and Episode 88:
RQ1: How do viewers of Critical Role discuss player actions?
RQ2: How do viewers of Critical Role discuss character actions?
Here, players refers to the cast members of Critical Role. A character is the
persona created by the players and embodied by them during the game.
Note that player does not refer to the Dungeon Master (DM) Matt Mercer.
Viewers refers to the people who watch Critical Role via any of its
distribution channels.
There were not specifically any questions on the questionnaire concerning
DM failure, because I wanted to zoom in very closely on the players’
relationships. The relationship between the DM and the players, the DM and
the characters, and the DM and their NPCs, is, in my opinion, different
enough from the relationship between the players and their own characters
to bear its own, separate analysis. This is especially true for CR, as even
without prompting fans made references in their responses to Matt being a
god, etc. His relationship with the fandom is unique among all the other cast
members and is worth studying on its own. Thus, it is not the focus of this
essay. However, it is discussed briefly in the results as part of something the
respondents brought up frequently, as well as some discussion of the way he
responded to the attacks on his players.

Method
In order to answer these questions, I decided to focus on two specific
episodes. I chose these episodes both for logistical reasons and for ­data-
related reasons. Logistically, these episodes aired long enough before the
beginning of the study that they were available on all distribution platforms,
but recently enough that viewers would not have to work extremely hard to
remember what had happened in and around them. I also chose them
because my preliminary research indicated that these episodes were
unusually controversial and generated significant fan backlash: Episode 88
for Marisha’s/Keyleth’s choices and Episode 85 for Sam’s/Scanlan’s. The
circumstances surrounding the specific choices were very different, so I
wanted to look at how fans constructed these two instances and how they
understood fan responses to function. There have been other controversial
episodes, but few that had such heated responses that the cast felt it
necessary to respond and essentially defend themselves and their choices.
That being said, these issues and questions are hardly settled. The discussion
of the role of the fan is ongoing and always changing (as is the makeup of
the fandom itself, even more so now that there is a second campaign).
In addition to actually being present as a fan during the discussions of
these episodes, I also spent many hours retroactively reading posts on fan
forums (specifically, r/criticalrole on reddit.com) and reading through
replays of chat logs in order to make a final decision about which episodes to
choose.
Using the information gathered in this preliminary research, I created a
questionnaire with ten ­open-ended questions and five ­demographics-type
questions. I specifically asked the questions about E88 first, because my
preliminary research showed that the fan response to this episode was and
still is far more complicated than the response to E85. In separate questions,
I asked fans to describe their feelings about Keyleth, Scanlan, and Taryon. I
also asked them to describe the events of the respective episodes and to
discuss Vox Machina’s choices leading up to and during those events, as well
as asking what the fan response to those choices was. The last ­open-ended
questions asked why the participants watch Critical Role and what their
other experiences were with TTRPGs or ­TTRPG-related products. The
questionnaire was created using Qualtrics and distributed on Reddit via the
Critical ­Role-centric ­fan-curated subreddit r/criticalrole, with permission
from the moderators. After collecting responses, I began reading responses
and looking for themes utilizing the method that Warren and Karner (2015)
describe of reading and rereading until themes emerge. The questionnaire
was available for approximately 48 hours from April 15, 2017, to April 17,
2017, and 175 Critters filled it out.
I did not distribute the questionnaire elsewhere partially for practical
reasons: I knew the Critters would be willing to participate in large numbers
and did not want to be overwhelmed with data that I would then need to
code. But in terms of methodological reasons, I chose r/criticalrole over the
Facebook group or Twitter because I knew that the subreddit was extremely
focused on interpretation and analysis over other types of fan engagement
(as per their stated description, and as per my own experiences there). Also,
the subreddit is where Matt chose to engage with the fans after the escalation
began.
As a viewer and fan myself, my perspective on Critical Role is inherently
at greater risk of bias, and I was mindful of this as I worked through my
data. In order to help prevent potential bias from affecting my results, I
discussed my findings with multiple colleagues, including some who
identify as Critters and some who do not. Although bias is a risk, my insider
status also may have made gathering data simpler, and certainly made
contextualizing the answers simpler. Despite only having started a little over
two years prior to this study being performed, Critical Role at that time had
over 350 hours of content just in the main show, which is more than 14 days’
worth. They have few to no ­long-term ­in-between-season breaks like
scripted television shows, and almost every episode is between 3 and 5 hours
long. Catching up from scratch would take months, but at the beginning of
this project I was already caught up, which meant I only had to maintain
that instead of starting from the first episode. As of the time the
questionnaire was released, Critical Role was on Episode 94 and its ­after-
show Talks Machina was on Episode 20. Someone who wanted to study
Critters while not being a part of the community would have needed far
more time, so being already involved gave me much greater opportunity for
insights into the discussions happening within the fandom.
Several respondents mentioned an episode of a YouTube show by
Matthew Colville (a ­well-known DM with his own TTRPG show, a ­big-
name fan in this community, and a colleague of the cast) called Running the
Game, specifically Episode 36, “Slog,” which was inspired directly by the
events of Episode 88, so I also watched this episode in order to better
understand those answers. Running the Game is a show that teaches DMs
how to be better DMs, and this episode, which dealt with the titular
phenomenon of slog, used Critical Role as an example of a game that went
on so long that players ceased to have any fun and the game became a chore.
This is one possible definition of failure, and I wanted to be sure I
understood where my respondents were coming from when they talked
about this episode.
Themes
The most interesting thing about the data was the nearly universal
understanding among the respondents that Critical Role belongs to the
players, not the fans, and that the show is a privilege to witness. The data
also revealed themes that fell into two categories: fans defining acceptable
criticism and fans defining failure. This first category describes the spectrum
of what fans felt were and were not acceptable ways to critique the cast
and/or the characters when they perceived a mistake: a hateful group of fans
that are unnecessarily cruel in their comments, a group that partake in fair
and polite discussion, and a group that stick to discussion of character and
plot instead of discussing the cast. The latter overarching category, the
discussion of failure, contains three separate but interrelated themes: the
importance of making ­character-driven choices, the importance of telling a
good story, and the importance of roleplaying well/staying in character.

The Spectrum of Acceptable Criticism

Your fun is wrong. This theme centers on what fans felt was unacceptable
criticism. “Your fun is wrong” is a phrase that originated in a partial cast
Q&A session following Episode 43, in which Matt Mercer answered a fan
question about whether the intensity of fan scrutiny would ever cause the
cast to pull the plug on the stream and go back to playing off screen without
an audience. His answer was that although their experience was largely
positive, there is a very real fear that by putting a thing you created and love
onto the internet, you will inevitably find people who will “set fire to it and
tell you that your fun is wrong.” True to form, some people set fire to it and
told them their fun was wrong. As evidenced by almost every single
respondent’s answers, fans note that there is a group of viewers who
excessively criticize every minute “mistake” or ­mistake-adjacent choice by
pointing out what they feel are better tactical options. This often gets vile
and can devolve into personal attacks on the actors. These people are more
than offering critique; they are vitriolically attacking. My respondents
collectively view this group as a loud but small group. They are described as
a vocal minority, and everyone criticized them, even if the criticism was
couched within disclaimers of everyone being entitled to their opinions.
Nobody who took the questionnaire admitted to making posts that fit into
this category, so I cannot speak to the origin of their dissatisfaction.
However, based on my preliminary research in the reddit, I can say that they
often will claim that they are not attacking anyone and are merely expressing
their fandom through critique. It is unlikely, even given the small percentage
of respondents versus total viewers, that absolutely none of my respondents
had ever participated in discussions in this way. More likely, the respondents
may not be aware of the intensity of their own behavior or may not be
willing to admit (even in an anonymous questionnaire) to being part of a
universally derided group within the fandom. The fans that fall into the
category of Your Fun Is Wrong tend to believe that character failure is player
failure. They tend to name the player in their comments instead of or in
addition to the character and will often be frustrated by the player’s choices.
They say things like, “Marisha never remembers her spells,” rather than,
“Keyleth should really use her spells more creatively.”
According to my respondents, there is a ­sub-class of “Your Fun Is
Wrong”–type viewers known as White Knights, who jump in and defend the
actors against personal attacks with equally personal attacks against the
attackers. They are, by their actions, claiming the fun of the Your Fun Is
Wrong crowd (the “critiques”) to be wrong. As one respondent put it, “Fans
who look up to the players and characters naturally get defensive about
perceived attacks on them from those inside the community.” This person
further noted that “it’s hard sometimes to judge whether harsh criticism of
the game, characters, or players (that wouldn’t be considered hateful) is
coming from some animus the person has towards one of the players or is
meant as a tough but fair critique,” and as a result, some fans perceive any
even remotely negative post as mean and shut those people down in the
same blunt and cruel manner as the people they are attacking. It is
understandable that their engagement with it is active and passionate (and
their fellow fans note this). The problems between fans arise when, as this
respondent pointed out, people read what might be poorly phrased or
perhaps unnecessarily blunt posts concerning their favorites. Faced with a
post or tweet with questionable motives (is it ­mean-spirited or simply
undiplomatic?), White Knights err on the side of ­mean-spirited, assuming
the worst and lashing out angrily. This behavior escalated to the point that
Matt felt it necessary to say something, publishing a post on r/criticalrole:
 I would ask that people that feel the need to “defend” or shoot down counter-opinions to our game’s
play or story to restrain from furthering any conflict or downvoting based on disagreement. You can
offer your counter to theirs, but do so with civility and as a way to continue the conversation, not
demonize.

This was followed by example sentences to show appropriate and

inappropriate tone and phrasing for critique of others’ critiques.
Interestingly, this was met with largely positive responses. Fans view Matt as
their overlord or leader, and when my respondents discussed his response, it
was occasionally lamenting that it got “bad enough that Matt had to step in,”
as if he were a referee between the players and the fans, or the fans and the
other fans. Some respondents were just grateful he was “willing to step up
and say something.” Rather than viewing this behavior as producer policing,
fans viewed it as a natural extension of his leadership of the cast. This raises
interesting questions about the nature of the evolution of the ­fan-producer
relationship specifically re: the DM/GM, but that is a question that this essay
does not have the space or data to properly answer.
Polite critique. There is also a contingent of fans who feel it is appropriate
to criticize cast members if it is done carefully and without hostility. One
such fan wrote
Direct responses and inquiries to the castmember playing the [character] should be restricted to
either appraisal or questions regarding motives in almost any case. The only exception is if the
viewer is personally affected by something [such as being triggered by a traumatic event happening
to a character]—in that case, I feel very carefully worded criticism is acceptable. […] Harsh criticism
or personal insults are never acceptable.

Several Critters suggested people take time to absorb and process an episode
before posting in order to prevent overemotional reactions.
It’s not our game. This sense that Critical Role is a gift granted to fans was
found within almost all of the responses, even if the question was not asking
directly about fan relationships with the show or the cast. Responses tended
to include sentences like, “This is their own game and they’re kind enough
to share the journey with us,” and, “The way I see it is that the cast blesses us
fans with the gift of watching their absolutely amazing game. It is not the
fans’ game/show to dictate.” Others described being able to watch the show
as a privilege and an honor.
Many of these fans do not perceive anything that happens in the show or
the game as something that they have a right to actively critique, however, a
significant number of viewers feel that discussion/critique/theorizing is
welcome provided everyone sticks to focusing on the characters and the plot
and not the cast members. Some feel this is best for the sake of avoiding
accidentally devolving into personal attacks and flame wars, while others
prefer it simply because they do not think they have a right to criticize
choices made for a character that does not belong to them, harkening back
to the idea that the show is something they are being “honored” to view.
Many of these participants made the connection to their own games, stating
that they would never tell a fellow player what to do with their character, so
why would they presume to tell the cast of Critical Role what to do with
theirs? Others discussed it in terms of television:
We don’t always agree with character decisions on television shows, and that is part of what draws us
in; we get mad at poor character choices, because we feel passionately about the character. That is a
natural and good response. However, players should not be criticized for playing the game the way
they would like to. It’s okay to get mad at Vax for getting himself into sticky situations; it is not okay
to get mad at Liam O’Brian for doing so.

What all of these responses have in common is the clear separation between
cast and character. Fans who feel this way about the game might get upset
when a character does something they do not like (like Scanlan leaving), but
they do not believe they have the right to say whether Scanlan’s decision was
wrong (and note that they do see it as Scanlan’s decision and not as Sam’s).
When the characters do something that fans react negatively to, these fans
will respond by talking about the characters as if they are independent
beings that exist separate from their cast members and creators. They fully
understand that they have the opportunity and the ability to voice their
criticism about the cast, and many do have criticism to offer; they simply
reject the notion that fans should express that criticism. These Critters were
very specific in stating that their ­self-silencing is linked directly to the nature
of Critical Role as an actual play podcast and their belief that the cast should
be allowed free reign to play with their creation. Apparently, at least for this
show, Critters very much want to restore and maintain Wilkinson’s (2010) ­-
one-sided mirror of fandom.

Failure and Success in Livestreamed TTRPGs

Making relevant character choices. Participants felt very strongly that
one of the most important aspects of the show was the ability of the cast
members to make choices that are true to their characters’ natures, and the
general consensus is that this is one of Critical Role’s strong suits. Phrases
along the lines of, “That’s just who they are,” were common when describing
almost any action or event, and a significant number of responses more
explicitly praised Marisha and Sam for Keyleth’s and Scanlan’s respective
choices, indicating that viewers believe the cast to be quite good at making ­-
in-character choices that make sense. At the same time, there were several
responses that stated the opposite (specifically about Keyleth), criticizing
Marisha’s ability to stay in character and claiming that she allows her own
feelings to impact how Keyleth would react. These responses reflect the
tension that exists across Mackay’s (2001) frames. Marisha inhabits multiple
frames here. She is acting in the role of Keyleth, but is also still herself, and
in this case, she is also a cast member who is mindful that she has an
audience. Fans who criticized her ability to stay focused as Keyleth felt that
she should be better about inhabiting one frame at a time, and they saw it as
player failure for her not do so.
Roleplaying well. This has to do with the quality of acting and
improvisation. The difference between roleplaying well and making valid
character choices is subtle, but important. Character choices are about
staying true to your character’s personality, abilities, and background.
Roleplaying is more about maintaining internal consistency of the game
world. One of the potential pitfalls is metagaming, or the use of knowledge
that the player has but the character would not have (based on their
aforementioned abilities and background). Consider one fan, who began by
describing how he felt the character choices surrounding Scanlan leaving
made sense, but then adds:
As a sidenote it was a dick move by Sam Riegel to bring a cheat sheet with information Scanlan
wouldn’t necessarily have access to, and use it to ambush the other players with a prepared speech in
what is expected to be an improv setting. I found his actions deplorable if somewhat understandable
and am no longer interested in Scanlan as a character.
He does not question whether Scanlan made the right choice; he simply
argues that Sam was in the wrong. Assuming that Scanlan had that
knowledge, his actions would have been the same, so technically the choice
was a ­character-correct one, but this fan believes it was a poor roleplay
decision for Sam.
On the surface, it might seem that comments like these would suggest an
ability to distinguish fairly well between player choices and character choices
(since the participant is criticizing Sam while praising Scanlan), but it is
worth noting that this person’s discussion of the incident ends with them
explaining that Sam’s actions have colored their entire experience of Scanlan
as a character. This suggests that the relationship between character and
actor is harder to separate than it initially appears to fans. Again, Mackay’s
(2001) frames are relevant here. The above fan is angry that Sam let his
personal knowledge influence Scanlan’s actions, in other words, the fan is
angry Sam did not stay in one frame at a time.
Telling a good story. Another very important aspect of the show to fans
is the narrative. One fan wrote:
Most of the responses that I saw were positive surrounding the character leaving, sad obviously, but
generally supportive of taking the character where the story was naturally leading. These responses
made me happy, because we should support the cast making character choices that are right for the
growth of the story, even if we don’t like the choices.

Note the phrasing “where the story was naturally leading.” Phrasing in this
vein was very common in participant responses, which all seem to regard
the story as a thing that organically manifests itself. They talk about the story
as a living thing, or as if it were ­pre-destined, while simultaneously talking
about the ways the cast and Matt directly or indirectly controlled that
destiny. Fans acknowledge that players can fail at making choices that tell a
“good” story, but frequently choose (as above) not to discuss whether a
choice could be considered a failure, typically because they do not see it as
their right to do so when they are not the ones telling the story.
Many participants wrote about the ways that improvised storytelling
differs from scripted storytelling like that of television. Critical Role is
entirely in the hands of Matt and the cast; there is not writer’s room, no
director, no producer, no network. Nobody else has influence over the story.
Fans spoke very positively of this, believing this to be a purer form of
storytelling because it is safer from outside influences. Worth noting is that
this is the closest any fan came to defining a good story.
Entertainment? Consalvo (2017) and Glas (2015) note the ways that
livestreaming video games altered the “goal” to include entertaining others;
interestingly, although many, many fans noted the importance of making ­-
character-relevant choices, roleplaying well, and telling a good story, not a
single one noted entertainment as an adjacent goal. None of the fans who
participated in this study explicitly talked about entertainment. There are
hints of the reasoning for this in their discussions of the game belonging to
the cast. If the game is, as they say, a privilege to witness, and something
ultimately not belonging to the fans at all, then it stands to reason the fans
do not perceive “good entertainment” as being something the cast can
succeed or fail at. However, upon closer examination it becomes clear that
entertainment is an important goal for fans, even if they are unaware of it.
All three of the previously discussed player goals (as perceived by fans) are
ultimately things that would only matter to fans if they considered their own
entertainment important. They disliked it when Marisha made ­out-of-
character choices, Sam metagamed, or when the choices the players make
seem to deny the story its “natural” course, and because they dislike it, their
entertainment quality decreases when these things happen. Thus, I would
argue that even those who insist the game does not belong to them do feel
some sense of ownership, even if it is subtle and they are unwilling to
express it.

Conclusions
This research focused on two episodes of Critical Role that aired several
weeks prior to the study. As previously discussed, this widened the pool of
possible participants, but it also caused an unexpected limitation. Many
viewer responses indicated that after the initial ­blow-up of reaction, the
controversy largely settled and fans began to rethink their positions. This
does not invalidate my data, as viewers were easily able to recall what
happened and the general fan responses at the time, but it does suggest that
further study should look at more immediate responses for comparison.
Also, with the broadening of the Critical Role brand to include other content
, the advent of campaign 2, and the ­record-breaking success of the animated
series’ Kickstarter, it is worth asking whether fans’ perceptions may have
shifted to seeing Critical Role as less of a privilege and more of a product.
The fandom has grown in size and possibly shifted in composition to
include more “traditional” media fans than gamers/players. Further research
may find that with this shift comes a shift in perspective that more closely
aligns with old media. Anecdotally, some more recent ­fan-creator incidents
may suggest this is the case (or, perhaps, that ­fan-creator perceptions are
different in different fan spaces). My research here is ultimately asking
whether Critters see Critical Role as a show or a game or hybrid of the two,
and the fact is that that the answers I have found may not still be true
because of these potential changes—but that is for future researchers to
discover.
One of the more interesting results to come out of this research is the idea
that viewers of livestreamed TTRPGs construct failure and success similarly
to viewers of livestreamed video games as discussed in Consalvo (2017).
Failure of the ­in-game objective was almost entirely unimportant to the
Critters. Instead, success was measured ultimately by how well fans were
entertained via how well the players stayed in character, roleplayed, and told
a good story. The evidence also suggests that these values stem from the
origins of this fandom in analog gaming. Many of the fans in this study
started as TTRPG players first and then discovered CR. That is not
universally true, but it seems that fans who come into the fandom from
traditional media fandom are quickly acculturated, learning the norms and
changing their habits of criticism and construction of failure. My
participants’ descriptions of ­self-reflective discussions that happened in
r/criticalrole concerning the role of the fandom and its relationship to the
cast suggest that these fans want to be keenly aware of their positionality
(even if sometimes they are unsuccessful).
The negative responses to Critical Role, that is, the people who tell other
fans that their fun is wrong, are fairly standard fare for both internet trolls
and for fandom trolls more specifically. The other fan responses, however,
are very different. With the breakdown of what Wilkinson (2010) describes
as the ­one-way mirror of fandom, fans have unprecedented access to media
creators, and they often use that access to express passionate opinions.
Critters, in sharp contrast to this, seem to want to hold themselves as
deliberately separate from the cast when it comes to criticism, even if that
criticism centers on the cast themselves. This seems to indicate that a
separate framework is needed for the study of these fans, one that takes into
account its unique position in the ­cross-section of television fan studies,
(analog) game studies, and livestreamed gaming. The data I have here is
insufficient to fully flesh out what that framework would look like
(especially given the ongoing evolution of actual play podcasts and their
fandoms), but I believe it is sufficient to demonstrate the need for it.
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OceanofPDF.com
 Actual Play Audience as Archive
Analyzing the Critical Role Fandom
Shelly Jones

Arguably the most popular actual plays is Critical Role, a weekly liveshow
that streams every Thursday on Twitch.tv.1 As of the writing of this essay,
Critical Role has approximately 600,000 followers on Twitch and almost a
million subscribers on YouTube. On average, their episodes, each of which is
usually between three to six hours of content, are watched approximately
two to four million times. Incredibly, the video for their first campaign has
been watched on YouTube over 14 million times.2 As evidenced by these
numbers, the fandom surrounding Critical Role has been growing steadily
since the show’s debut in 2015. A further testament to the show’s success is
its 2019 Kickstarter for an animated video series of the show’s original story
arc. This funding campaign raised $11.4 million and is currently the sixth
highest grossing Kickstarters of all time.3 The ­fan-base for Critical Role,
dubbed “Critters” by the community, are arguably the largest and most
active fandom within the overall actual play medium. While other actual
play shows like The Adventure Zone (a ­spin-off show of the popular podcast
My Brother, My Brother, and Me) and Acquisitions Incorporated (a D&D
podcast turned ­live-show featuring the founders of the Penny Arcade
webcomic and PAX convention, Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik) have
sizeable fan support as well, the Critters have proven themselves the most
active, embracing participatory technology to interact with the creators of
the show and each other. As Taylor notes in her study of video game live
streaming, these “communities will also frequently expand the sphere of
interaction with other platforms or creative activities, such as forming
groups in games or producing fan art” (p. 45). While most actual play shows
that broadcast via Twitch.tv include a live chat in which viewers can
comment, pose questions, and even sometimes interact with the show (e.g.,
vote on specific aspects of the upcoming show like which monsters to fight
or the name of a ­non-player character [NPC], etc.), the Critters have gone
beyond this basic level of ­audience-participation by amassing their own ­fan-
created platforms. In addition to typical fannish acts of labor such as fan art4
and fan fiction, Critters also dedicate their time to metatexts and paratexts,
websites external to Critical Role that collect, collate, and calculate
information about Critical Role. These ­fan-made sites include the Critical
Role fandom wiki, a website dedicated to documenting aspects of the show;
CritRoleStats, a website “dedicated to keeping track of stats, lore, and
anything that can be quantified” (“About CritRoleStats,” n.d.) on the show;
Critical Role Transcripts, a ­fan-site dedicated to writing closed captions and
complete transcripts of the show for fans who are deaf or hard of hearing, or
just prefer a written document to a video5; and Critical Role Translate, a ­fan-
run site dedicated to translating Critical Role episodes into more than 30
languages by providing ­language-specific closed captioning on the YouTube
videos.
Given the robust fan production surrounding Critical Role, we can use
these prolific ­fan-created spaces to explore the nature of fan archival
practices. Much of the research out there on fans and fan production focuses
either on the role of ­fan-fiction as a way of extending or changing the
narrative canon into fanon (Chaney & Liebler, McCain), or it focuses on the
blurring of the boundaries between creator and consumer as fans in today’s
participatory culture are no longer passive receivers of media, but active
(participants) within it, ­co-creators and ­re-mixers (Jenkins 2006). Some
research focuses on the gift economy of fans between exploited into the free
labor of industrial/commercial agents (Turk 2014) or the pervasiveness of
fan toxicity as evidenced by incidents of fans harassing or threatening
producers or fellow fans (Proctor & Kies). Instead, this essay focuses on the
information that is recorded and archived in these digital fan spaces. In
particular, when potentially controversial content is created within the
origin source, how do fans document this? Looking at the Critical Role fan
wiki, this essay examines the content that fans record in their paratexts in an
effort to determine fan praxis and, as we will see, the inherent bias therein.
Through a close reading of these paratexts, we see they exhibit protective fan
behavior as fans alter the narrative of Critical Role in an effort to preserve
the brand of the show.
The Role of the Wiki
The Critical Role Wiki is a ­fan-produced site on the fandom.com
platform.6 Very early on in the wiki’s existence, the Critical Role Dungeon
Master himself, Matt Mercer, was a contributor.7 However as the show has
grown in popularity, the fans have taken over the duties of collecting,
collating and curating the information that populates the site. As a shared
resource, wikis traditionally ascribe to “collective action, meaning no one
individual can make unilateral decisions; collective ­self-governance, in that
all members of the commons can contribute to the mores of the group; and
social capital, meaning, members of the commons must find value in being
part of the commons” (Booth, 2010, p. 83). As communal authors, fans work
in tandem with one another, sometimes ­re-writing or ­over-writing another
fan’s contributions until a commonly agreed upon version is accepted by the
larger group. A hallmark of revision, a wiki page “is always in process,
embracing fluidity over static form” (Mittell, 2013, p. 37), as fans comb
through the episodes and find more information to catalog.
Like many extant wikis, the Critical Role Wiki functions as a “complex
archive of narrative information” (Booth, 2010, p. 81). As a “narrative
database” (Booth, 2010, p. 81) created by fans, the site’s “primary function is
as a repository of canonical fact” (Mittell, 2009). According to the subtitle,
the Critical Role Wiki is “a Place Documenting the Current History of
Exandria,” emphasizing the focus on the narrative of the show. As of this
writing, the site currently hosts “2,388 articles dedicated to the live Twitch
D&D show Critical Role” (“Home,” n.d.), a statement that may suggest an
attempt at capturing the spectacle of the show, as opposed to only the
canonical narrative of the show. While the majority of the information
provided in the wikis is focused on the storyline of the characters, some
information scopes beyond the canon of the narrative. Pages are dedicated
to individual characters, both PCs and NPCs, summaries of individual
episodes, significant settings and other worldbuilding elements of the
narrative. Though much of the wiki information is sourced from the show
itself, solely referencing the episodes themselves as their primary source
material, there are occasional ­meta-references to content from Twitter,
Reddit, or external panels and interviews by the cast. This kind of secondary
source material often lends to a blurring of the type of information that the
wiki catalogues as fans attempt to collaborate and collect key information
relevant to the show itself as opposed to the narrative of the show. For
example, on the wiki page devoted to the character Fjord, played by Travis
Willingham, the character is referred to as “Texblade,” the nickname that
Critters, the fans of the show, call Fjord outside of the game as he is a
hexblade warlock with a Texan accent (“Fjord,” n.d.). This is not, however, a
name that Fjord goes by in the narrative; the name does not pertain to the
story element of Critical Role, but rather the larger spectacle of the show.
Moreover, with the advent of the Critical Role: Tal’Dorei Campaign Setting
book has come the opportunity for fans of Critical Role to play their own
characters in the same world as their favorite player characters of the show.
The Critical Role wiki then, not only offers a space for fans to collaboratively
write about the narrative of the campaigns but also has digital spaces in the
form of blog posts for CR fans to write about their own adventures in
Exandria.In its democratizing ways, the wiki becomes a space not only to
catalogue about the creative content by the official players, but also amateur
adventurers whose characters and campaigns can intermingle with the
canon (but—importantly, as of yet—not alter the official canon as created by
the players).
Yet, the wiki does not include all information about the entity that is
Critical Role as fans carefully select and curate the material entered. If the
wiki were designated as a repository for any and all information related to
the brand of Critical Role, it would undoubtedly have to include secondary
source evidence (e.g., Tweets, videos, etc.) regarding the more controversial
moments of the spectacle of the show (e.g., discussing the dramatic
departure of former cast member, Orion Acaba) and the external strife
associated with those issues (e.g., disgruntled and deleted Tweets,
uncomfortable AskMeAnything [AMA] on Reddit, etc.).8 This type of ­meta-
information is absent from the wiki, perhaps because of its supposed intent
on the narrative, on the fictional world of Exandria.
Like many other fan wikis, the Critical Role Wiki then is a collaborative
space where “fans faithfully transcribe each narrative element from the show
to the wiki” (Booth, 2010, p. 82). Yet, upon further examination of the wiki,
we see that, in their communal authorship, fans have altered the narrative of
Critical Role in an effort to erase or disguise potentially controversial
elements that potentially mar the brand of the show as well as the cast.9
Though Critical Role has, overall, been positively received by fans and critics
alike, there have been a few controversial episodes featuring storylines that
have resulted in the inevitable backlash by the internet. By focusing on one
of these moments in particular, the coming out story of a character, this
essay examines how fans disguise and color these larger spectacles within
the context of the wiki. What does this information suggest about fans’
archival10 practices in terms of (self)censorship and the ethics of ­fan-
produced documentation and of participatory culture in general? As ­fan-
driven archives, how do fans deal with their own inherent bias regarding
their fandom? How do fans report and archive information about episodes
that are potentially controversial? For a closer examination of the inherent
bias of the ­fan-created wiki, let us turn to the story of Taryon Darrington,
adventurer extraordinaire.

Taryon Darrington: A Case Study

In Campaign 1, Episode 94 entitled “Jugs and Rods” Sam Riegel’s second
character, Taryon Darrington, reveals that he is in love with his former tutor,
Lawrence. Over the course of the episode, the other members of Vox
Machina (the name of the adventuring party) encourage Tary to hook up
with an NPC (­non-player-character) named Trish (often referred to by
members of Vox Machina as “Trish the Dish”). Tary is arguably reluctant to
participate in this encounter, but is enthusiastically encouraged by his
friends, despite the fact that Tary has only just, in this same episode,
revealed that he has previously only been interested in a man. Many Critters
took to Twitter after this episode with different concerns. Some Critters were
disappointed that a ­cis-male (Sam) would try to portray a gay character,
while others (e.g., Wisdomgiver) were thrilled to see a complex (albeit
tragic) backstory for a LGBTQ+ character portrayed at all, particularly in
the context of Dungeons & Dragons, which has, historically, been seen as a ­-
white-male-hetero-game.11 Some Critters were pleased to see any
representation at all and were thankful for a seat at the gaming table that
didn’t feel forced or token (Rsreds). But some Critters also acknowledged
that it was problematic that the players, through the narrative, seemed to
ignore Tary’s recent professing of loving a man, and seemed to thrust the
experience of Trish the Dish on him (Critical Catboy). The incident was
perceived by some as reveling in the spectacle of trying to “convert” a gay
character through the sexual encounter with a member of the opposite sex,
whether consciously or not. Still others were grateful for the complicated
portrayal of sexuality that seemed to reflect a more complex process of
coming out, an attempt to figure out, literally in the moment, at the table, as
it were. As the online debate raged on, some fans wanted the cast to
apologize and to ­ret-con or “fix the mistake” of encouraging this kind of
apparent conversion—because it seemed to imply that they didn’t believe in
Tary’s statement of his own identity (Ryrity). Instead, Matt Mercer took to
Twitter to convey his thoughts on the incident and explain his own
relationship with acknowledging and supporting others through their
process of coming out.12 The response was overall ­well-received as an
attempt to listen to the concerns of others, but to stand by the narrative that
they had created within the game.
Interestingly, despite all of this tumult on the internet regarding this
particular incident, none of this information features on the wiki regarding
Taryon or this episode. Unlike other characters’ pages that often cite external
sources such as Twitter or various convention interviews, Tary’s wiki page is
strikingly absent of metatextual evidence. This is especially surprising given
the fact that the character of Taryon was a rather large surprise for the
Critical Role audience as Sam Riegel had decided to step away from his
previous character, Scanlan Shorthalt, for a while.13 Despite the sudden and
unexpected nature of Taryon’s foray into the adventuring party, his wiki page
contains no information regarding the controversy surrounding his creation
nor any of the controversy surrounding his backstory or coming out. This is
very different from some other pages in which clarifying character
information is linked back to transmedial, ­extra-textual, or ­meta-textual
comments and posts that have been footnoted or cited within the wikis.
However, these are often for clarifications of seemingly trivial things (e.g.,
Cadeuceus’s physical resemblance to RPG designer Adam Koebel).14
Looking more specifically to the events of Episode 94 and how, if at all,
they are portrayed on Taryon’s wiki page, we begin to see two tactics:
elaborate details on some interactions and incomplete information on
others. As we examine aspects of the wiki, we see that memorable quotes are
sometimes pulled out of the narrative and highlighted in a separate box,
signaling importance in some manner. Rarely are quotes used in the
summary of an individual episode, but when they are, there seems to be an
editorial lean toward quoting material that is euphemistic or up to
interpretation. For example, in the “Jugs and Rods” episode summary, the
wiki states that “Vax asks if [Taryton] ‘goes rogue or ranger’15 but Tary does
not understand the euphemism” (“Jugs and Rods,” n.d.). To clarify, this is a
joke alluding to the fact that Vax, a male twin of Vex, is a rogue, while she,
Vex, is a ranger. Putting this line in as a particularly highlighted quote does a
few things: (1) emphasizes the character’s language—potentially absolving
the wiki editors of the responsibility of this innuendo, (2) emphasizes the
sexual nature of this euphemism, (3) emphasizes that it is a euphemism that
blurs the lines between the narrative and the mechanics. Vax is not asking
Tary his character class (something that would be a ­player-question as
opposed to a ­character-question), but rather a metaphorical question about
whether he prefers men or women. Highlighting this exchange in detail by
reiterating it in a separate box is in stark contrast to the elision that happens
on the wiki regarding the later incident with Trish in this same episode.
For example, in Taryon’s entry on the Critical Role Wiki, the encounter
with Trish is discussed briefly in his narrative, but in the “Connections” ­-
side-bar, Trish is not listed as someone he has ever had a relationship or
connection to. This is surprising especially since Trish is an NPC that Matt
Mercer has portrayed and acted out, whereas Lawrence, Taryon’s previous
love interest who is listed as a key Connection, is not. Lawrence, the ­non-
player character, has only ever been referred to or talked about, but never
“embodied” by the DM, as it were.16 Curiously, under “Connections” on
Trisha’s wiki page, Taryon is listed as a “­one-night stand,” suggesting that
fans are specifically attempting to minimize on Taryon’s page the
controversial incident, reiterating his queerness without drawing attention
to his process of coming out. In the entry for Taryon, the encounter with
Trisha is brusquely summarized:
Tary admitted that the only person he’s ever had romantic feelings for was another man, explaining
that he pursued damsels because in all of the books he read, none of the heroes ever had
relationships with men. Following this admission, he slept with Trisha and, upon meeting with Pike
and Grog the next morning, declared that “women are soft and tender, and … they are not for me”
[“Taryon Darrington,” n.d.].

This summary elides any role the rest of Vox Machina had in this encounter.
The way the summary reads, it suggests that Tary was the active pursuer (“he
slept with” as opposed to she slept with him or they made love or any
number of other ways of documenting their sexual encounter), when in
reality (and to the apparent hilarity of the cast and some audience members)
Tary was overwhelmed by Trish’s physical presence and sexual prowess.
Even in the much longer episode description on the “Jugs and Rods” wiki
page, the actual occurrences of the encounter are largely glossed over,
particularly with regard to the potentially bullying behavior of the other
characters toward Taryon’s sexuality. In the summary of this episode, the
entirety of what leads up to the sexual encounter between Taryon and Trisha
is completely omitted. Although the summary provides a ­step-by-step
detailing of what occurs earlier in the bar (including such minor
background details of the NPC Shauna, the bartender who is a mother of
two and has an interest in textile work as a hobby), the summary essentially
omits the scene in which Trish takes Tary upstairs to a room. The last ­-
content-related comment regarding this scene in the summary is “Keyleth
asks why Tary didn’t tell them sooner” (that he was interested in men).
Going back to the actual video footage, this statement occurs at 1:21:00 in
the episode. The summary of the episode on the wiki then cuts to the typical
“Break” that the cast takes, and the announcements made during the break
(e.g., giveaways, fan art display, etc.). But in the actual narrative and content
of the episode, much more happens before the break. The break doesn’t
actually happen until 1:39:00, so the summary here omits eighteen minutes
of content. Interestingly, this omission is not just of the incident with Trish
but also a scene in which Percy uses the scrying eye to spy on Scanlan (Sam
Riegel’s previous character). This additional information, however, is then
recovered within the wiki summary conveniently when Percy recaps to Vex
what he did. But importantly, only some of the content of this omitted
eighteen minutes is later recapped in the summary, but not all. A key feature
of wikis is that the technology makes “the traces of their creation visible and
accessible to users” (Mittell, 2013, p. 36), allowing someone to review when
changes, additions, deletions were made on each page. Examining the wiki
revision history of this particular page, we noticed that despite the fact that
this episode aired on April 13, 2017, the majority of the wiki summary was
not added right away.
Within 24 hours of the airdate, a brief summary of the first part of the
show was posted on the wiki, but the fans did not tackle the discussion
surrounding Taryon’s coming out story. According to the editing history of
this particular page, it was not until October 7, 2017, when a fan editor
named Androgynousweirdo added the summary for Part II of the episode,
including the “Morning After” section.17 For over five months, this
particular episode remained a stub entry, despite the fact that fans made
thirty other edits to the page in that time, all carefully avoiding writing
about the scene in question.
This wiki summary then is not faithful to the narrative of the show, but
instead works to paint Vox Machina (the characters as well as the players) in
the best light, a way to avoid recapping the actual incidents of the episode
that ultimately caused such a stir on social media afterwards. In her
ethnography of the Critical Role fandom, Robyn Hope interviewed multiple
fans to get a sense of the nature of the community. She comments on how
“Even quite early in Critical Role’s lifespan, Critters were conscious of
newcomers. They selected key pieces of information from their show,
enshrined moments of particular importance in summaries, gifsets and
stats, and created fanwork that would help viewers enjoy their fandom
experience more completely” (Hope 58). While the Critters seem to revel in
documenting the text of Critical Role to ensure ease of entry for new fans,
this lack of narrative consistency seems peculiar. The summary here would
appear more intent on eliding any potentially controversial elements rather
than committing to clarifying the narrative itself. For a fandom that prizes
themselves on being so thorough and replete with details (Hope), this
lengthy gap in the record is unusual, particularly in contrast to the minutiae
that is present within the rest of the summary (e.g., a random NPC’s
hobbies). Further, this narrative gap in the summary makes it difficult to
understand what is being referenced later in the summary when the cast
returned from the break and the episode continued. The summary on the
fan wiki states that “Pike and Grog decide to spend the night at the tavery to
wait for Tary” (“Jugs and Rods,” n.d.). Wait for Tary to do what, begs a
reader unfamiliar with the episode in its entirety. Similarly, a heading
further down below this is entitled “The Morning After,” which is suggestive
phrasing. This section header could have easily been entitled “The Next
Day,” but the phrasing “the morning after” suggests that there’s “something”
that happened in the night. Which of course there is—but the summary, up
to now, has not even alluded to what that “something” would be.
 Shauna wakes them up the next morning, just as Trish comes downstairs. Trish dashes past without
stopping to talk, as she is running late to get to her post. Tary follows a moment later, looking bleary.
He tells them about his night with her, saying that he has now “experienced the pleasures of the
flesh.” After a moment of talking, he pukes and confesses that women are not for him [“Jugs and
Rods,” n.d.].

Again, the details in this section are strangely specific and yet poetically
vague: why do we need to know why Trish is hurrying away and yet we have
not even clarified where Trish and Taryon were.
On the tvtropes wiki page for this particular episode of Critical Role, fan
editors took a different approach to summarizing this incident, one that
similarly blurs the frames within the description and seemingly absolves the
players for the controversial moment: “Tary somehow manages to turn a ­-
Coming-Out Story into something so funny the entire table is too consumed
by laughter to properly respond for nearly a minute” (“Critical Role Taryon
Arc,” n.d.). Further, on the tvtropes page for Taryon, the fan editor focuses
the blame for Taryon’s sexual encounter on Shauna, the bartender, for
inflicting Trisha on Tary, almost as if to absolve the players and DM for the
incident altogether: “An unknowing barmaid, however, sets him up with the
guard Trish for the night … and Tary discovers that women are absolutely
for sure not for him” (“Critical Role Vox Machina,” n.d.). Here the focus is
on the narrative itself, emphasizing what the characters (particularly the ­-
non-player characters) did and what they could have known (or not known)
as opposed to the knowledge and interactions of the players (or in this case,
the DM). And yet, the wiki author does not solely concern themselves with
only the narrative as the sentence above emphasizes that the players (“the
entire table”) found the incident amusing. Noticeably the description of the
coming out story is not discussed in language that suggests the author’s
opinion on it, but rather focusing on factually what happened (e.g., the other
players found the incident/ moment so funny they were incapacitated with
laughter). Furthermore, while the summary states that the barmaid is
“unknowing” of Taryon’s history and preferences, it should be reiterated that
the DM and players were not. And while character knowledge versus player
knowledge is traditionally kept separate in tabletop ­role-playing games to
avoid the dreaded ­meta-gaming, there was nothing stopping any of the
characters from stepping in and telling Shauna to mind her business or Trish
to go find a new partner. Instead, the characters allowed the interaction to
happen, apparently due to the supposed hilarity of the situation and the
humor of the players.

FVF: Fan Versus Fan

And while all of this fuss over the choice of words in a single fan wiki may
seem like I’m making an ancient dragon out of an imp, others have
expressed similar concern over how particular scenes are portrayed on the
wiki. While there were no fan comments that specifically discussed Taryon’s
coming out or his sexuality, one fan did voice concern over a different
incident: the initial hazing of Taryon by the rest of the party. As mentioned,
previously, Sam Riegel had been playing the gnome bard, Scanlan Shorthalt,
for nearly a hundred episodes before he decided that Scanlan, the character,
was annoyed with Vox Machina and needed some space. Scanlan left the
party and Sam created the character of Taryon Darrington.18 The cast was
not aware of this and were, it would seem, annoyed by the narrative change
and in particular, how Scanlan (and Sam) introduced this decision to the
rest of the party. Upon presenting Taryon Darrington to Vox Machina, the
adventuring party proceeded to beat up the new character on the premise
that he would need to learn to be tough if he were going to be a proper
adventurer.19 Examining the fan wiki, in the comment section of Taryon’s
page, an anonymous fan20 seemed to question how the information within
the page was represented:
“Back at Whitestone, some of Vox Machina decided to test Tary’s capabilities by attacking him.”
Should anything be made of this? I remember watching it and honestly this is one of the low points
of the show. To put it bluntly this is hazing, by the heroes, as a requirement to join their group. It is
just a game but I do expect better of them than this [February 5, 2018, by A FANDOM user].

Here the fan attempts to navigate their enjoyment of the show with the
anticipation that the show will adhere to the standards it has set for itself,
recognizing the nature of the game itself and yet having higher expectations
of the characters and of the players. It’s a low point of the show, the fan
states, emphasizing that it is the cast (as well as the hazing heroes) that the
fan expects to be better. Furthermore, this fan is attempting to engage in a
more collaborative model of online authorship.21 Their comment originates
with the question, “Should anything be made of this?” suggesting an attempt
to understand how the other wiki authors are portraying the show. As “wikis
afford ­large-scale collaborations” (Hunter, p. 42) among many fans, it may
sometimes be difficult to merge different fan concerns into a single text.
Moreover, wikis provide spaces for fans to “collectively decide on shared
principles and goals” (Mittell, 2013, p. 37) whether overtly stated or not. On
the ­public-facing surface of the wiki, “individual contributions to articles are
deemphasized and textual ownership is completely abandoned” (Hunter p.
45) as authors work collectively, writing and ­over-writing/riding others’
work.
Interestingly, the Critical Role wiki does not utilize the “talk pages” feature
of the wikia technology.22 This feature is specifically designed as a place for
wiki authors to collaborate and discuss as they attempt to negotiate how best
to preserve and illustrate their content in question. In his analysis of the
Lostpedia fan site, Mittell (2009) points out that these fans utilize the “Talk”
pages so that the wiki “can function as a space of debate over how to
appropriately use the site, as well as how best to watch the show itself ” and, I
would add, how to write about the show. Similarly, Rik Hunter notes about
the authors on the WOWwiki, these fans “negotiate the content of articles
(what is, should be, or could be in articles) and what makes good writing” by
utilizing the talk pages (p. 46). Yet, the Critical Role wiki does not take full
advantage of this functionality. An early wiki blog post by the Critical Role
fandom wiki’s founder, Dexcuracy, suggested instead to use a separate Slack
channel to discuss the content of pages, as they found the talk pages too
“tedious to communicate through” (“Critical Slack Team,” August 10, 2015).
This use of an external tool necessitates the additional steps of inviting
individuals to another digital space and potentially risks losing voices who
are unfamiliar with the supplemental tool. The Critical Role fan wiki does
incorporate the “Comments” section on each article, a space where fans can
“leave a quick message with your thoughts on a blog post or article page”
(“Help: Comments,” n.d.) as opposed to Talk Pages, which are “primarily
used to hash out improvements to a single page or to the community as a
whole” (“Help: Talk Pages,” n.d.). The Comments section then is often ­-
content-driven and antagonistic, whereas the Talk Pages allow for
contemplative discussion for the larger project as a whole. There is a clear
need for the Talk Pages as the aforementioned anonymous fan’s comment
regarding how Taryon’s hazing incident was represented on the wiki
demonstrates.
 By not providing a space for these kinds of fan praxis conversations to
emerge organically, the Critters have created an environment in which those
who question the way the wiki portrays controversial moments in the
narrative are often derided. In response to the anonymous fan’s comment
regarding the hazing incident (cited above), an established wiki editor23
(with over 900 edits to his credit24) validates the narrative of the show while
acknowledging the social underpinnings of the scene:
Calm down. It is indeed just a game, but it was also (much like what Vax tried to do with Kynan) an
attempt at a ­wake-up call, that the world out there was very dangerous for someone so
inexperienced. Was it a bit harsh? Yes. Was it a blatant OOC [out of character] attempt to get back at
Sam for what he pulled the previous episode? Most likely. Was it ultimately necessary? In the long
run, definitely. Besides, it all worked out in the end [February 5, 2018, by TiamatZX].

TiamatZX carefully negotiates between the narrative itself and the social
aspect of the show as an answer to this potential issue. He suggests that the
players’ emotions external to the game sometimes affect the narrative itself, a
phenomenon called bleed, which is widely acknowledged and studied,
particularly in LARP (live action ­role-play).25 But his admonishing post does
not answer the anonymous fan’s concern: is the sentence in question an
accurate portrayal of what occurred in the episode? No. By the players’ own
admission in the episode, this summary is not an accurate portrayal of the
hazing incident. TiamatZX insists that the act of brutality by the characters
was merely a “­wake-up call” despite the fact that in the episode referred to in
these comments, the cast themselves call this incident a blatant act of hazing:
Marisha: This is a part of our Vox Machina hazing. This is what we do!
Matt: This is pretty fucked up, you guys.
(all laugh)
Taliesin: So fucked up!
[…]
Matt: Hello everyone and welcome back to Critical Role. So, last we left off, in the middle of the
Whitestone courtyard, two members of Vox Machina decided, as part of the hazing process, to
assault our new temporary party member.
Taliesin: (laughs) When you put it like that.
Travis: How about test? [https://crtranscript.tumblr.com/ep086]
Here, while Marisha’s comment may have either been an ­in-character or ­out-
of-character statement, the DM’s observation that these actions are “pretty
fucked up, you guys” is a clear signal that he is addressing the players not the
characters. It would seem then, recognizing the negative connotations of this
encounter, the fans of Critical Role and editors of the wiki paratext have
taken it upon themselves to ­re-frame the narrative in an attempt to reiterate
the positive outcomes of the show. After all, as TiamatZX says, “it all worked
out in the end,” thanks to the careful elisions and omissions by the fans.
While Feleki observes that fans “actively participate in the production of
textual meaning, offering their own reading paths and their own writings of
the story” (p. 46), what we are seeing here seems to go beyond mere
interpretation, but rather the toxic doxa of the Critters: Critters do not speak
ill of Critical Role.
Moreover, it would seem that some fans are speaking up about the overtly
staunch (and sometimes caustic) support of the show by fellow Critters. In
an open letter to the cast after the success of their Kickstarter, one ­self-
proclaimed fan urgently asked Critical Role to acknowledge their lack of
diversity within the cast.26 Within this missive, the fan articulated their own
frustration at being perceived by fellow Critters as a critic of the show for
recognizing any potential flaws or problems with Critical Role. They wrote,
“there is a very vocal segment of the fandom that has responded very
defensively to this criticism,” recognizing the caustic situation in which
anyone posing any questions or feedback is perceived as antagonistic
(QueerDnD). We see this same kind of insistence on only positive comments
when TiamatZX and other wiki editors rail against fans posing questions
about Critical Role, particularly concerning the beloved cast.

A Feast of Burden
More recently, another area of conflict in the Critical Role fandom is the
concern of overt commodification of their brand. Fans, however, seem to
pick and choose when Critical Role has overstepped their boundaries. Many
of the actual play streams are funded, to some aspect, by corporate sponsors
such as Wizards of the Coast, D&D Beyond, and other prominent gaming
entities. In addition to D&D Beyond, Critical Role has been sponsored by
Wyrmwood, a company that makes custom dice trays, The Rook and the
Raven, a small paper products company specializing in ­role-playing
merchandise, and Dwarven Forge, a company with prominent ­million-
dollar Kickstarters for their modular terrain. However, when fast food
magnate, Wendy’s, sponsored a Critical Role ­one-shot run by Sam Riegel,
fans were outraged. Feast of Legends is a tabletop RPG “that was equal parts
advertisement and ­tongue-in-cheek RPG ­adventure-tisement” created by
Wendy’s “in a bid to capture the hearts (and lucrative market) of gamers
everywhere” (Zambrano). When the Critical Role cast ran the ­one-shot,
many fans, such as @factofthemattr, took to twitter bemoaning the
corporatization and capitalism on display, decrying, “this sucks. do better
critical role. brands aren’t friends. feast of legends is ­anti-union propaganda
disguised as ‘silly’ ttrpg.” Wendy’s had previously faced criticism and
boycotts due to their refusal to join the Fair Food Program, which is
“partnership of farmers, farmworkers, and food retailers committed to
ensuring humane wages and working conditions for the laborers who pick
fruits and vegetables on certain farms” (Morill). Critters were upset by
Critical Role’s apparent collaboration with the reviled corporate giant as they
not only played through the fast food ­role-playing game, but Wendy’s
financially sponsored the episode.
Further, many fans and indie gamers expressed concern that the author’s
name wasn’t on the Feast of Legends pdf that one could download to play
themselves. One of the authors of the gaming module eventually revealed
himself on Twitter, claiming his work. In response to why Wendy’s hadn’t
included his name on the Feast of Legends pdf, he reiterated that, though the
text was a game, it was ultimately an advertisement, and like most
advertisements, the focus is on the brand, not the individual creator (Keck).
Thus some audiences were viewing the Feast of Legends as an indie game, an
independent text that should be authored, while others saw it as an inventive
marketing ploy, a kind of gamified advertising. This bifurcation of
interpretations and the appearance of “selling out” to a giant fast food
corporation led to severe criticism of Critical Role. In response to the fan
backlash, Critical Role tweeted that they had donated the profits from the
sponsored ­one-shot to Farm Worker Justice, an act that many saw as a
blatant attempt at damage control, meant merely to pacify their fans. Matt
Mercer later tweeted that Critical Role was forever experimenting and
learning the limits by listening to their fanbase:
In this vulnerable space, we make our decisions out in the open, sometimes stumbling. Hard lessons
can, and will be learned from. We intend to do just this, and want to be the best we can be. The
world is full of complicated, delicate choices. You often don’t see the ramifications of your actions
until it’s done. What we have always done and will continue to do is listen and learn from you, the
Critters, and make amends the best we can. And we will [2019].
Shortly after these social media posts, the Feast of Legends video was
removed from the VOD and never posted to YouTube (“Feast of Legends,”
n.d.). Presumably, these decisions to remove the offending video and not
share it were made by the Critical Role development team for purposes of
branding and controlling the criticism circulating about the failed
experiment.
Turning to the ­fan-created wiki, the Feast of Legends episode seems to be
yet another area in which Critters are erasing any evidence of negativity in
an effort to protect their fan object. After the episode aired, fans made a page
dedicated to the ­one-shot special, as they would for any of the previously
aired ­one-shots. The page was given the name Feast of Legends and a link to
the VOD was included here. On January 28, 2020, however, this page, as well
as all of the comments posted on the page, was deleted by user
Hemhem20X6, a ­long-time editor of the Critical Role wiki with nearly 6000
edits to their credit. In the rationale for why this page was deleted, the
phrase “Copyright Violation” appears in the log (“Feast of Legends,” n.d.).
However, it is unclear what this brief description suggests: surely Critical
Role did not violate the copyright of Feast of Legends if Wendy’s sponsored
the ­one-shot episode. A quick search on YouTube reveals other actual play
groups running through the module without fear of copyright violation. The
list of specials includes several other ­one-shots that use alternative, indie
RPG systems such as the much beloved Honey Heist. Moreover, even if
Critical Role did violate the copyright of Feast of Legends, it would not be a
copyright violation for the ­fan-created wiki to acknowledge the name of this
RPG. As a repository of knowledge about the fan object, Critical Role, the
fans could include this specific information, cataloging its existence, just as
the Wikipedia page for Wendy’s does (“Wendy’s,” n.d.), without worrying
about violating anyone’s copyright. This suggests, then, that some Critters
may be using the temporal flux of the extant wiki to not only control the
narrative of Critical Role, but the narrative about Critical Role as well.
Further, if one searches for “Feast of Legends,” no results return; the entire
wiki has been scrubbed of any evidence of the ­one-shot running this
particular module. Even in the list of special episodes, the ­one-shot is simply
titled “Special 48” (“Specials,” n.d.); it is the only special episode to not
include a more descriptive title that might indicate the ­role-playing system
used in the ­one-shot. Clicking on the title of the episode brings a user to a
new page that states that this episode “used sponsored promotional rules
and a campaign guide. Following a tweet by Matthew Mercer (footnoted
link to tweet), the VOD was removed from the Critical Role Twitch channel
and never posted to YouTube” (“Special 48,” n.d.). The VOD is not located
on this page, unlike every other episode which has a video and sometimes a
transcript linked in a sidebar on the page. Oddly enough, within the list of
special episodes, a VOD is listed for Special 48, but this sends a user to a
Google Drive link that was created by a user named Critical Backup as
opposed to any officially sanctioned Critical Role site. Looking at the history
of this wiki page, we see that user LynnE216, a prolific editor with over
10,000 edits, posted the google drive link to the ­much-debated episode on
October 28, 2019. According to the history of the Specials wiki page, no
other editor has made any edits since October 2, 2019, before the Feast of
Legends episode aired. This perhaps suggests that Hemhem20X6 or others
are unaware that a rogue video exists in the list of episodes, or at least that a
unified fan reaction to the Feast of Legends incident, and thus a unified fan
praxis to controversial episodes, does not exist.

Conclusion
Of course, where have the Critters learned this behavior of erasure in the
guise of maintaining a positive attitude? Perhaps, it would seem, by the show
itself. In the ­multimillion-dollar Kickstarter, Critical Role has reiterated that,
despite the fact the funding campaign was for an animated series depicting
the first series (The Legend of Vox Machina), the character of Tiberius
Stormwind, a member of the original cast played by Orion Acaba, would not
be appearing. While there are many possible reasons for this exclusion, the
result is the same: the ultimate distortion of the narrative of Critical Role.
The administrators of the Kickstarter, however, did incorporate this
information into their FAQ, stating that Tiberius would not be part of the
animated translation of the original text, which is an effort toward
transparency.27 Yet, it is this kind of elision of the original narrative in a new
transmedial product that seems to encourage and permit fans to pick and
choose how best to frame the show on their own paratexts.
Many Critters have suggested that their passion for archiving and
preserving moments from Critical Role either in the wikis or through
creating gifsets comes out of a desire to help future Critters gain access to
Critical Role, to make their forays into fandom easier by providing nuggets
of key moments in the show, as if crystalizing them in amber. But what we
see instead are fans carefully scrubbing away any potential mars, hiding
potential issues and controversy in between the frames of the show. What we
are witnessing on these fan created paratexts such as the wiki is a
phenomenon that Jason Mittell (2013) labels “wikiality” or “a reality where,
if enough people agree with a notion, it becomes the truth” (p. 41). While
this kind of careful coding and layering of meaning on the part of the fans
may not be as dangerous as toxic fan practices like harassment or threats, I
would propose labeling this as a saccharine fan practice, one that subtly
influences the behavior and praxis of a fandom and is ultimately still
nocuous. Indeed, Matt Mercer has himself described the Critter community
as “a juggernaut of positivity” (“Critical Role’s Impact on D&D”) and it is
ultimately this overly and overtly positive attitude in the face of all else that
has lead Critters, in their archival efforts, to censor potentially controversial
aspects of the larger spectacle of Critical Role. Critters, then, seem to try to
“win Dungeons & Dragons” as they diligently transform the show,
polymorphing it into the best version of itself.

Notes
1. As with many Twitch streams, the video is later posted to YouTube. Critical Role now also makes
their content available in podcast form.
2. Presumably this episode has been watched more because folks wanted to see what all the hype and
media was about.
3. See Stimmel 2020 for more details.
4. It should be noted that Critters are prolific when it comes to fan art. Each episode’s 20–30 minute
break includes a cycle of recent fan art that artists have tweeted to the show. The fan art is so integral
to the Critical Role experience that there is a Critical Role fan art book and, as of July 2019, a second
volume is being published (“Art Book,” n.d.). In January 2019 there was also a live art show at a gallery
in Los Angeles featuring Critical Role fan art (“Art show: The Art of Exandria,” n.d.).
5. It should be noted that as of April 5, 2019, this service is being deactivated as Critical Role has
decided to perform this work ­in-house. An announcement was made on twitter (Critical Role, 2019).
6. For purposes of corporate clarity and potential conflicts of interest, it should be noted that as of
December 2018 Fandom owns Curse Meda, which used to be owned by Twitch. Fandom is also the
owner of D&D Beyond, the official sponsor of Critical Role as of the second campaign (D&D Beyond,
n.d.).
7. While one might wonder if perhaps this handle of Matthewmercer could instead be an avid fan
adopting Mercer’s name for the wiki, some of the contributions to the wiki and the phrasing suggest
that the author behind this handle must in fact be the DM himself. For example, one edit made by
Matthewmercer was “Was misspoken in the episode (due to Brainfart), it is the Dwendalian Empire”
“User Contributions for Matthewmercer,” n.d.). This suggests that the DM himself misspoke during
the show (as only he would know that he misspoke due to a “Brainfart” as opposed to another reason)
and updated the corresponding page appropriately. It should be noted that the majority of
Matthewmercer’s contributions to the wiki were very early on in the history of the show and the wiki
itself, filling in important worldbuilding history such as the population of towns in the storyline or
clarifying relationships between PC and NPCs. The bulk of these contributions were made in 2015
with his last contribution being made in 2017. Since then, it would seem that the DM has recognized
the site as a space for fans to collaborate as opposed to a content creator to overwrite and authorize
information.
8. There is an entire ­sub-reddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/criticalrole/wiki/orion) dedicated to the
rules of not discussing Orion Acaba’s departure from the show, complete with a list of frequently asked
questions and what not to say. Within this source, the posters and moderators specify that they are
doing this at the request of the cast of Critical Role and that the Critter Community should respect
their wishes.
9. To be clear, I am not interested in analyzing the gory details of the controversies that have
happened, but rather how these incidents have been portrayed by the fan community.
10. I should note that Abigail De Kosnik (2016), in her exploration of ­fan-fiction sites as rogue
archives, specifically states that she does not consider wikis to be a kind of archive as wikis “mostly
offer factual information and commentary about cultural texts, and not the texts themselves” (76). I
would argue that while this is true, the information and commentary about the cultural text is a text
itself to be consumed and analyzed (as I am doing). Just as original source material may be subject to
discrimination as to whether or not be included in the archive, so too can summaries, metatexts, and
“facts” be elided or modified to better fit the fandom’s perception of the show. Moreover, the Critical
Role wiki does also include links to the original source material as well as some fan art (again:
carefully culled) and other fan productions. The wiki itself then is a fan production that dons the guise
of “fact.”
11. For more on Dungeons & Dragons specifically and tabletop ­role-playing games, see Fine,
Grouling Cover, Mackay, and Trammell, among others.
12. This tweet only received 288 likes and 38 retweets, which is a fraction of the average number of
responses that the majority of Mercer’s tweets typically receive.
13. See Sam Riegel’s AMA on Reddit for more information about this.
https://www.reddit.com/r/criticalrole/comments/6mkaze/spoilers_e104_i_am_sam_riegel_ama/
14. See footnote 138 on the “Caduceus Clay” wiki.
15. This is an allusion to the fact that Vax, a male twin of Vex, is a rogue, while she, Vex, is a ranger.
16. Critics of the show might also point out that 1) Lawrence was supposedly killed by Taryon’s
father, further reiterating the stereotypical “bury your gays” trope, and 2) Lawrence is never seen but
only mentioned in a few episodes, including in Mercer’s “epilogue for Taryon” in “The Chapter
Closes” (episode 115). This further supports some fans’ view of the show, particularly campaign one,
as queerbaiting as queer relationships were often alluded to, but never really played out.
17. A benefit to analyzing wikis is the breadcrumbs of changes revealed in the history. See
https://criticalrole.fandom.com/wiki/Jugs_and_Rods?action=history for this particular page’s revision
history.
18. See Christine Dandrow’s thorough discussion of this in her essay in this collection.
19. See Episode 86 “Daring Days.”
20. Note that many fans prefer to remain anonymous while posting. It is especially interesting that
this fan chooses to be anonymous while making a comment that could be perceived by the fan
community as sacrilege. Looking into this particular fan’s wiki posts, this is only one of three
comments the fan ever made on the wiki
(https://criticalrole.fandom.com/wiki/Special:Contributions/50.79.201.81).
21. As Henry Jenkins notes about wikis, “the fan community pools its knowledge because no single
fan can know everything necessary to fully appreciate” the fan object in question (139). Wikis are
hallmarks of the collective intelligence, then, as fans each contribute to the common text (Mittell,
2013, 39).
22. There is a discussion forum on this particular wiki, but the conversations here tends to be more
about asking for help from the admins to rename pages or other questions. This feature is also highly
underutilized by the fans. In the past year, only 19 posts have been made to the Discussion Forum
(https://criticalrole.fandom.com/f).
23. As Mittell (2013) observes, in the realm of wikis “expertise is tied to active participation within
the Wikipedia community rather than an authorial identity” (p. 37).
24. See https://criticalrole.fandom.com/wiki/User:TiamatZX.
25. See Sarah Lynne Bowman, Maury Brown, and Evan Torner for more on “bleed” in RPGs and
LARPs.
26. Despite numerous efforts to be inclusive, ultimately it cannot be denied that the cast of the show
are all white with the majority of them being heterosexual.
27. See Kickstarter FAQ here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/criticalrole/­critical-role-the-
legend-of-vox-machina-animated-s/faqs.

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OceanofPDF.com
 Commodification and Pedagogy
Other Approaches and Uses of Actual Play
OceanofPDF.com
 Consumable Play
A Performative Model of Actual Play Networks
Mariah E. Marsden and Kelsey Paige Mason

In the 2014 Player’s Handbook of Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), Mike

Mearls calls our attention to the personal, intimate aspects of tabletop
gaming. “Above all else, D&D is yours,” he writes. “The friendships you
make around the table will be unique to you. The adventures you embark
on, the characters you create, the memories you make—these will be yours.
D&D is your personal corner of the universe, a place where you have free
reign to do as you wish” (p. 4). Mearls focuses on the table—the gathering
point and shared terrain of players and storytelling Dungeon Masters (DMs)
—as the primary site of imaginative production and ownership, where
players establish private worlds to which they lay claim. But in recent years,
this private experience has extended into public performance. The “personal
corner” where Mearls encourages players to “do as you wish” instead has
become a performance stage. Today, players now record and circulate their
games as web series, podcasts, and textual narratives for public consumption
and for profit. In this study, we see the phenomenon of actual play as a
significant shift in tabletop gaming. We ask: what are the physical and
imagined boundaries of performance, and how are they permeable in actual
play? How does the consumption of play complicate the roles of performers,
spectators, and participants? To answer these questions, this study analyzes
examples of actual play through frameworks of experiential consumption
and a capitalist mode of consumption. The first frame of economic
consumption involves not only official products and services but also
homebrew ventures. The second frame of experiential consumption involves
affective and narrative engagement. These consumptive frameworks expand
the viewing of actual play beyond the local to the global, wherein audiences
are not just fellow players in a campaign but digital communities of
interaction, and it is from these two frames that we begin to develop our
theory of consumable play. We define consumable play as a broad,
multifaceted concept with multiple forms and dynamics.
Consumable play: a framework concept that defines play as a
sociocultural and monetary economy based upon communicative
competence and social contracts; a concept with distinct features that frame
play as networks in which performers and spectators operate through
capitalist (related to production, material goods, etc.) and experiential
models of consumption (related to participatory networks, ­performance-as-
commodity, online markets of exchange, etc.).
While this definition connects our theories of play and consumption, it by
no means includes all manifestations of consumable play; rather, it provides
a lens through which we can interrogate the focus of our study, actual play
performances, as sites of consumable play. Actual play affords us the
opportunity to explore the impact of theories of consumption, and we have
developed the concept of consumable play to situate ­play-performances
within existing economic structures.
Before arriving at our definition of consumable play, it was important in
the course of our research to first begin by working through redefinitions of
“play” that highlight the performative dimensions of this social activity. We
then intervene with our new conceptual framework, breaking down the key
features of consumable play. As we envision consumption through multiple
models, we break down how we see these approaches aligning with actual
play gaming more broadly. Next, we turn to two separate case studies of
actual play and code for features of consumable play. Our data includes
episodes of actual play as well as material generated by spectators, players,
and fandom communities. After applying our theoretical lens of consumable
play to our corpus, we illustrate how one might further apply our theory
through transformative networks of consumption, considering the five
nodes of roles, products, genres, contracts, and systems. Ultimately, we
consider possible projections regarding the future of the tabletop
community in a digital age. How will play continue to be commodified?
How will commodification shape the ways in which gaming communities
form, interact, and develop? What does it mean for play to be developed
with consumption in mind? To consider these questions, we must first
extend our critical gaze beyond the confines of Mearls’s gaming table to
recognize the conceptual entanglements of play and performance.
Reframing the Tabletop Through Play and Performance
“Play” is interdisciplinary, inviting theories of folklore, performance,
anthropology, and ludology. In early ludological scholarship, play was often
framed as a bounded, contained experience that was initially defined by
Huizinga’s “Magic Circle” theory of play (1938). Scholars have since revised
this configuration, attending to the transformative, ritualized aspects that
often emerge (Pearce, 2009; Kapchan, 1995; Warde, 2005). ­Role-play
scholars have found this move particularly useful, focusing on the theatrical
and performative elements of play that invite further inquiry. The combined
dynamic of ­role-play acting and spectating, for example, have not received
much theoretical attention (Hoover et al., 2018, p. 217). Performance studies
have much to offer game studies at large, and ­role-playing games in
particular. We find Richard Bauman’s definition of performance particularly
useful when thinking about actual play, as he suggests a social contract that
can be formed between performer and audience. Performance is “a mode of
communication, a way of speaking,” writes Bauman, “the essence of which
resides in the assumption of responsibility to an audience for a display of
communicative skill, highlighting the way in which communication is
carried out, above and beyond its referential content” (1977, p. 3). This
demonstration of skill is an integral part of actual play experiences, and we
are interested in further exploring the effects of consumption on
communicative agency and interaction. Our approach situates performance
and play within larger systems that are necessarily connected to economic
conditions and operations.
The concept of consumable play is less a label and more a configuration—
an invitation for researchers to ask: how can we think through specific
play/performance experiences with consumption in mind? To this end, we
offer several significant features of consumable play to better define it as a
concept: permeable boundaries, dynamic roles, and systems of competency.
These three features form the basis of our analysis; however, we anticipate
future research which will expand this list.

Permeable Boundaries
One of the major aspects of consumable play is the permeability of
boundaries during play. Here, we deviate further from Huizinga’s assertions
about the bounded experience play, which he articulates when describing
his Magic Circle Theory: “All play moves and has its being within a ­play-
ground marked off beforehand either materially or ideally, deliberately or as
a matter of course.” Huizinga continues, “The arena, the ­card-table, the
magic circle, the temple, the stage, the screen […] are all in form and
function ­play-grounds, i.e., forbidden spots, isolated, hedged round,
hallowed, within which special rules obtain. All are temporary worlds
within the ordinary world, dedicated to the performance of an act apart”
(1950, p. 10). Huizinga emphasizes these boundaries through spatial
references and metaphors, concretizing those markers which separate the
play world from other worlds of experience. With the advent of massively
multiplayer online ­role-playing games (MMORPGs), digital landscapes,
corporate gaming industries, and virtual reality technologies, scholars have
since questioned the strict boundaries Huizinga draws between mundane
experience and what he marks as the “­play-ground” and have offered more
porous boundary terms, such as “synthetic worlds” (Castronova, 2005) and
“magic nodes” (Lammes, 2008). In actual play performances, boundaries
can be established through metadiscursive feedback in which participants
might comment on the inclusion or exclusion of ­out-game signals, such as
noise interference or the insistence of character voices to distinguish
between players and their avatars during the emergent performance.
Extending the work of these later scholars, we identify a kind of
permeability in actual play performances that facilitates commodification
and consumption. Like Castronova’s synthetic worlds, actual play
performances allow for ­boundary-crossing by players, spectators, producers,
and consumers—spatially and temporally. Archived recordings of play offer
opportunities to blur performance contexts and new channels of audience
engagement. Permeability in this case operates on a continuum; certain
performances are more or less permeable than others, depending on the
rhetorical and gaming mechanisms utilized by the performers and
participants. Permeability, then, is an ongoing and emergent element of
consumable play that is continuously negotiated by participants.

Dynamic Roles and Footing

Consumable play features dynamic shifts amongst participant roles that
are mediated through language and performance. Sociologist Erving
Goffman (1981) describes this dynamic in terms of narrative footing: the
positioning of participants during a speech event and the shifts that can
occur over the course of the event. Goffman (1981) writes that “[a] change
in footing implies a change in the alignment we take up to ourselves and the
others present as expressed in the way we manage the production or
reception of an utterance” (p. 10). In actual play, participants can gain
footing linguistically, gesturally, and/or virtually, depending on the medium
of the performance. Performers build the narrative of play, reacting to cues
from both players and their DM that vary over the course of the
performance event. With virtual platforms such as Twitch, Twitter, and
Reddit, spectators also have the opportunity to position themselves in
relation to the performers, whether this occurs in ­real-time (i.e., Twitch) or
over a period of time (i.e., Twitter and Reddit). Chris DeVille (2017)
considers how these platforms impact fans: “Add in the interactivity of a live
stream—which typically allows viewers to comment, pose questions, and
even affect the course of gameplay—and you get a uniquely addictive
viewing experience: part game show, part talk show, part ­fantasy-adventure
serial.” Permeability and the blurring of boundaries affect how participants
navigate their footing through multiple channels, whether directly through
performance or through peripheral platforms. These shifts occur within
participant networks—from producers to consumers of these actual play
performances—and noting these shifts allows us to better grasp the
transformative potential within the network of play.
This interactional positioning allows for the evolution of dynamic roles in
consumable play. In our analysis, we complicate static categories of
“performer,” “spectator,” “player,” “character,” and “DM.” For example, rather
than operating as mere spectators, audience members can take on active or
passive roles depending on their engagement with the performance and how
their contributions are integrated into the performance. This “active” or
“passive” classification captures the dynamic nature of these roles that can
change over time. Further, in our analysis, we make a distinction between
“players” and “­player-performers,” as players can sometimes operate in a
markedly performative register while personifying their characters, while at
other times they may be explaining the mechanics of their gameplay (such
as dice rolls) and the resultant choices. While this role designation is not
unique to actual play, the ways in which these roles shift in the presence of
an audience is an important aspect of this consumed ­play-performance
network.

Systems of Competency
Even in the midst of dynamic play, actual play performances engage with
explicitly structured gaming systems such as the various editions of D&D.
Both players and game masters must navigate these rules and confirm their
competency. Scholars have written about communicative competence within
specific linguistic and sociolinguistic systems (Chomsky, 1965; Hymes, 1972;
Bauman, 1977), but in evaluating competency during roleplaying games,
participants must also demonstrate their shared knowledge of the game
system in which they are operating. We say “knowledge of ” and not
“adherence to” because performers can deviate from the rules of the game in
certain contexts that can be premeditated or emergent. They often justify
these ­system-breaks through a display of citational competency, which is the
DM’s ability to cite a rule even as they break it. In actual play, the shared
knowledge of a game system between audience and performers opens a new
evaluative dimension: navigational competency. Performers are expected to
navigate explicit rule systems that are shared within the community,
whether that be the Fifth Edition of D&D or Monster of the Week. Play is
performed in this structured frame but, as we have noted earlier, the
permeable boundaries and dynamic roles of consumable play allow for
deviation and adaptation even as this play functions within networks of
consumption.

Intertwining Models of Consumption

While an exhaustive list of models of consumption and production are
outside the scope of this study, a more general definition composed from a
variety of models will serve to approach our ultimate theory of consumable
play. John Storey (2017) clearly outlines consumption in two distinct ways:
“as an economic activity and as a cultural practice” (p. xi). This study
approaches consumption from a similar structure while keeping in mind the
nuances of consumption which could be overshadowed with too simplistic
of a definition. Therefore, this study also acknowledges how ­consumption-
as-cultural-practice has its own layers. Robert Dunn (2008) summarizes:
“Consumption, like all social practices, is shaped and conditioned by a
multitude of material and nonmaterial factors. But compared to other social
practices, consumption now forms the most powerful link between the
economic and sociocultural realms” (p. 3). He goes on to connect this link to
“the production of meaning, identity, and a sense of place and social
membership” (p. 3). Therefore, while consumption is undeniably linked and
often begins with a moment of purchase, what this study also seeks to
uncover is the different ways a consumer can “buy in,” and how actual play
as a vehicle of performance encourages a variety of access points. Our
exigence, in part, is owing to Isaac Knowles and Edward Castronova who
argue that, to date, little scholarship has addressed tabletop roleplaying
games (TTRPG) economics as well as the shift “from physical print copy
sales to often crowdfunded, ­digital-first value chains, not unlike other
entertainment industries” (Knowles, 2018, p. 311).
Actual play and our model of consumption demand a more flexible
viewpoint on the dynamic roles inhabited in actual play spaces. Starting
with active and passive spectators, we recognize the variety with which these
roles interact, consume, and produce. First, in actual play performances, the
permeability or boundedness of the space affects the level to which a
spectator may be more or less active; for example, an actual play series
which is ­pre-recorded and then uploaded at a later date necessarily has fewer
interactions available than a live performance with communicative
resources, such as Twitch chat, Tweeting, etc. Characteristics of an “active
spectator” includes more elements of production than a passive spectator;
such production ­post-or-alongside consumption might include the
persistent use of communicative resources, as mentioned, or the creation of
fan art. Active spectators are those who will watch a ­live-stream of an active
play session (and interact via social media or chat), or who keep updated on
most recently produced active play content (in the case of ­non-live
performances) (See Figure 2). Passive spectators, on the other hand, more
commonly adopt modes of ­consumption-only, especially those who are
separated from the actual play performance via temporal distance (See
Figure 3). For example, a passive spectator might begin watching Critical
Role’s first season on YouTube, despite its age (produced in 2015) and be
unable to access the ­live-viewing features (advertised specials on corporate
sponsors, the Twitch chat, or donating opportunities). Regardless of the
spectator’s level of interaction, this interplay between consumption and
production reinforces the development of actual play and interactive
frameworks facilitated through methods of technological engagements. The
ways in which one consumes and produces as part of a TTRPG community
has evolved because of continued developments in technology which foster
actual play performances.
In building our nuanced framework of consumable play, we have to keep
in mind that consumption is tied to an ­ever-evolving and ever-expanding
network which is no longer limited by physical space nor intimately tied to
any kind of monetary exchange (Dunn, 2008, p. 1). As Dunn writes, “Of
special importance more recently is the burgeoning field of information
technology, which is transforming older forms of media and amusement” (p.
1)—a point which in this study of actual play has particular resonance.
While D&D and other tabletop systems were originally limited in scope due
to the demands of physical proximity, current access to a virtual realm—one
which allows for players, spectators, and DMs across the globe to interact
and play—allows for this transformation of an older system into the actual
play model of consumption. Actual play has inextricable roots to
consumption as a broadcasted performance, whether it is broadcast through
­text-only, ­audio-only, or video/audio media. Viewing actual play as a
consumable product—both in the economic and sociocultural sense—
allows us to recognize how tabletop networks and performances that were
once closed off as private, bounded spaces can be better understood as
expanding networks. While other significant changes to tabletop systems
have reinvigorated the field in the past (such as the initial movement from ­-
six-sided dice systems to the dice pool systems of D&D’s current Fifth
Edition),1 the actual play movement is one of the most impactful in tabletop
history.

Actual Play: A Lucrative Business

As the 2018 Diana Jones Award for Excellence in Gaming shows, the
gaming community has fully embraced the actual play movement.
Discussions of the development, evolution, and history of tabletop gaming
now must necessarily include actual play; however, while 2015 marked an
increase in actual play, D&D podcasts and analog narratives were around
much earlier. Even before the Internet, players have always been sharing
their imagined adventures through written and verbal mediums (Hoover,
2018, p. 217). That storytelling and performances can now happen live with
thousands of viewers is a testament of the changing times.
While this essay includes examples of actual play from two of the most
popular broadcasts, The Adventure Zone and Critical Role, these are
examples rather than representative templates of the actual play movement.
It is useful, therefore, to first discuss the characteristics and distinctions one
might see between actual play performances. The first designation between
these performances is between audio/visual productions and podcasts (or ­-
audio-only). The second is distinction is “quality”: a production is either
professional or amateur, and it is either a ­for-profit production or not for
profit. While there are now innumerous actual play productions, this project
is most concerned with discussions of professional, ­for-profit productions of
both ­audio-only and audio/visual performances.2 To be more limited in
scope, our study focuses on actual play of D&D, Fifth Edition, as we argue
that Fifth Edition itself has been advertised as a more accessible system that
has stimulated unprecedented, revitalized interest in tabletop gaming.3
While we argue in part that the changes of the Fifth Edition system
mechanics directly leads to increased accessibility for new players, Nathan
Stewart instead attributes this increased interest to actual play: “Over half of
the new people who started playing Fifth Edition [the game’s most recent
update, launched in 2014] got into D&D through watching people play
online” (cited in DeVille, 2017). For Stewart, then, actual play directly
contributes to the increased profit margin coming out of the release of the
Fifth Edition, and DeVille’s article, whether intentionally or not, reinforces
the inextricable relationship between actual play and consumption.
While the D&D creators initially focused on producing content for
consumers’ personal games—such as campaign books and gaming manuals
—the company has now recognized the economic possibilities with actual
play. As DeVille describes, while actual play movements began much earlier
than D&D’s Fifth Edition and were mostly grassroots or amateur
productions, “Stewart says the Dungeons & Dragons team is now
‘aggressively’ investing in the scene as well, filling its official Twitch channel
with more than 50 weekly hours of liveplay programming either produced
or sponsored by Wizards of the Coast” (DeVille, 2017). The insistence on
framing actual play as a site for investments, innovation, and consumption is
reinforced by actual play DMs, such as Matthew Mercer, who says, “[Actual
play is] so fresh and it’s so new that we’re still trying to figure it out
ourselves…. We’re trying to catch up from a business standpoint” (DeVille,
2017). DeVille marks the impact of shows like Critical Role by listing
products that are consumed (and produced) rather than the overall affective
experience of the performance: “a comic book, an art book, and even a line
of merchandise ranging from tank tops to tarot cards—all in addition to
inspiring countless works of ­fan-generated art, music, and literature”
(DeVille, 2017).4 Without Critical Role’s popularity, these products could not
have had as much traction, and the more performances that are produced,
the greater the possibility for continued investments and a wider range of
merchandise.
By acknowledging the interplay between consumption, actual play, and
the recent popularity increase of tabletop gaming, we can make possible
projections about the future of the tabletop community in the digital age.
The evolution of participatory mechanisms is already a significant part of
play; actual play performances allow viewers to interact and become active
rather than passive spectators through Twitter naming campaigns, live chat
channels during gameplay, fan art, and live performances onstage. Tabletop
gaming corporations are looking for the best ways to capitalize on actual
play through ­profit-driven system changes (Knowles, 2018, p. 300).
Contemporary actual play performances already show a movement away
from the more traditional tabletop systems—where rules, game mechanics,
and character statistics were key—and instead show innovation in seeing the
simple “play” of these imagined worlds and adventures instead as
performances. Just as corporations produce and distribute tabletop gaming
supplements and are pushing for more streamlined rules for broader appeal,
actual play similarly benefits from streamlined rules focused on
performances. In the next section of this essay, we examine the key features
of consumable play in The Adventure Zone and Critical Role.5

“Have you named your crossbow?” The Adventure

Zone and Participatory Frameworks
 On October 22, 2017, over two thousand fans packed the Jackson Hall
theater in Nashville, Tennessee, to watch the McElroy family play D&D. The
McElroy clan—with brothers Justin, Travis, and Griffin, and their father,
Clint—had been producing their actual play podcast, The Adventure Zone,
for over three years at that point, and had since amassed a huge following.
The Nashville crowd erupted into cheers upon the onstage entrance of the
podcasters. “Before we get going,” Griffin, the DM for the group, called out,
“is there any way we can get full house lights and—so we can see all the
cosplay? Because we’ve only been following it through Twitter.” As the lights
rose, the crowd renewed their cheers. “God!” Clint exclaimed, accompanied
by Travis’ “Holy shit!” “It’s everybody,” Griffin then intoned. “It’s everyone.”
After a few more riffs with the audience, Griffin called folks to order: “You
can turn the lights down now, I’m having a panic attack. And there they go,
there they go, there they go … and they don’t exist, it’s just the four of us!”
“They’re gone, they’re gone,” continues Justin. “It’s just us four.” What ensued
was a night of tabletop roleplaying games, complete with the three iconic
characters—Taako the elven wizard, Magnus Burnsides the human fighter,
and Merle Highchurch the dwarven cleric (played by Justin, Travis, and
Clint, respectively)—and a few ­fan-favorite NPCs who participated in the
heist at the imaginary Grand Grimaldis Casino.
This ­live-show format is not the norm for the McElroys; the four
typically ­role-play remotely using Skype, and Griffin edits the content and
distributes it through the Maximum Fun podcasting network. The McElroys
do record the audio for most of their live shows to strategically release later
as podcast specials. Their bimonthly show has been in production since
2014. During their first season, known as “The Balance Arc,” the group
experimented with the Fifth Edition of D&D as their primary game system,
though they often tweaked the rules to suit their performance needs.6 “I
don’t think I do a lot of, like, proper DMing,” Griffin points out in an episode
of their actual play talk show, The The Adventure Zone Zone, “cause this
thing is, as—as much as it is a, like, actual play podcast, um, like, it’s also a
very ­storytelling-heavy podcast, so there is like, there’s a lot narrative going
on, and not a lot of like, for instance, long battles” (G. McElroy, 2016).7 As he
tries to create more of what he calls “interesting radio,” Griffin acknowledges
that there may be some listeners who express frustration that they don’t
“play straight D&D” on the show (G. McElroy, 2016). The McElroys’ remote
play decenters the ­rules-based tabletop experience and privileges a style of
play that is more entertaining to audience members.
Almost from the show’s inception, the McElroys have found ways to
include their audience in their play and to benefit from this incorporation—
both economically and as promotion for their show. For example, until 2018,
Griffin McElroy would read a list of ­listener-paid-for “Jumbotron” messages
during the episode intermissions alongside their corporate sponsors. During
the Balance Arc, fans could suggest items to stock for the players in the
imagined “Fantasy Costco,” ranging from imagined weapons to potions and
helpful (and humorous) gadgets.8 The McElroys encouraged fan engagement
through these explicit mediums. Through the framework of consumable
play, we can analyze the discursive and performative mechanisms that
position audience members as consumers in more nuanced ways. The
Adventure Zone capitalizes on two features of consumable play that we
outlined above: permeable boundaries and dynamic role shifts. By
examining these elements more closely in The Adventure Zone, we can
evaluate how actual play producers build their audience networks through
their performances and play systems, and how these participatory networks
allow for transformations in audience roles, genres, gaming systems, and
more.
As most of The Adventure Zone episodes are recorded remotely and later
edited as podcasts, there is a certain level of control that the ­player-
participants wield in their interactions. The amount of control and open
interactions ­player-participants have between themselves and the audience
is impacted by consumption. Spectators who feel they have more intimate
engagement with and some influence over the performance may feel a
greater sense of investment, but recorded and edited performances allow ­-
player-participants to maintain greater control over the finished
performance product. One notable example is the players’ habit of naming
NPCs after fans. “[T]weet about the show using the TheZoneCast hashtag,”
Griffin regularly instructs listeners, “you might end up as a character in this
arc” (G. McElroy, 2015). Griffin will often comment on which NPCs in that
episode were named after listeners during the ­mid-show advertising break,
but in the early days of the podcast, this naming strategy sometimes caused
breaks in play. An example of this occurs during the “Here There Be
Gerblins–Chapter Six” episode in which the characters encounter a young
orc in their travels:
Justin: What’s the orcish boy—what’s the orcish boy’s name?
Clint: It’s Emorc.
Travis: [­Stage-whispering]9 Dad, when Justin asked about that, it means we’re about to use the
name of a listener who tweeted about the show!
Clint: [­Stage-whispering] Yes. We now return you to our podcast.
Travis: [­Stage-whispering] Okay.
Justin: Already, I’m—
Travis: [Upbeat] You know, we’re having a lot of fun here today, but we need your donations to
keep—10
[Clint laughs]
Travis: We don’t like doing these, you don’t like doing these—
Griffin: His—
Travis: The faster we hit our goal—
[Laughter]
Griffin: His name is Kurtze.

This moment of interpretive confusion demonstrates how the naming

process can be a collaborative effort for the performers. Justin’s opening
question, “What’s the orcish boy’s name?” is a signal to Griffin that it would
be a good opportunity to bring a listener into their play. Clint misreads the
signal, seeing it as a cue to open a joke. Travis lays bare the mechanism with
his corrective explanation as a ­stage-whisper, as if an aside. Utilizing
terminology from Goffman’s “The Frame Analysis of Talk” (1974) this
miscommunication causes a break in the gameplay frame which requires
repair. Goffman notes how special interest broadcast announcers, looking to
invite further participation from audience members, oftentimes “give open
voice to apologies, ­self-castigations, exasperation, and may even let the
audience into their confidence” when they make a mistake, in contrast to
national ­prime-time announcers who oftentimes minimize or gloss over the
error (p. 543). Similarly looking to foster a closer audience connection,
Travis works to repair the frame break above by adopting a new speaking
style to key a different frame. His upbeat tone and jovial affect in line 7, 9,
and 11 index the performance style of broadcast fundraising drives, such as
those frequently conducted on the PBS television network. This discursive
frame allows him to make a direct address to the audience in line 7, showing
that he is aware of their attention during this frame break and keying a new
frame as a joke. Griffin, as the DM, eventually upkeys to the previous
gameplay frame in line 13 and returns to the ­role-play action of the episode.
 While the McElroys employ a certain degree of controlled incorporation
in their remote broadcasts, the dynamics shift during their live
performances, which typically occur in auditoriums with a seated live
audience.11 Audience incorporation requires new regulating mechanisms
when spectators are in the room with the players. The 2016 recording from
the show in Boston was later released as a podcast during Travis’s paternal
leave of absence, and this live performance reveals further moments of
interactional difficulty when the boundaries between spectators and
participants are contested in real time. During the show, Griffin describes
the space the characters have entered: a ­WrestleMania-style arena where
several characters will be competing.
Griffin: Yeah … uh, so uh, the four of you are standing in front of Chaos Stadium, and the crowd
is rambunctious. The, the BattleFest [some yelling from audience] Yeah, okay, a little bit of Foley
work from the audience? [slightly more yelling] That was maybe the least rambunctious crowd
I’ve ever heard? [audience laugh]
[…]
Travis: Okay.
Griffin: Last time we did this, we’ve only done one live Adventure Zone by the way so there might
be some rough edges—
Clint: That’ll show you how good it was.
Justin: Yeah, that was in front of 125 people who, frankly, didn’t seem to wanna be there very
much. [audience laughs]
Audience member: [distant] You always remember your first time!
Griffin: Yeah, that is true.
Travis: It’s not a ­back-and ­forth-kind of thing.
Justin: Yeah, it’s kind of a one—[audience cheers and claps]
Clint: It’s D&D but it’s not that interactive.
Travis: Yes.

The audience’s footing as spectators shifts as the performers attempt to

police boundaries through corrective discourse, selecting what forms of
interaction are acceptable during their gameplay performance. In line 1,
Griffin incorporates the audience’s audible response into the story, situating
them as ­stand-in figures for the imagined audience at the fictional Chaos
Stadium. His reference to “Foley work” in this line signals the McElroys’
history with radio broadcasting.12 Through this reference, Griffin
incorporates the audience’s interjections as sound effects that occur in the
imagined scene; he ratifies the audience’s participation through this move.
However, their footing shifts as the interaction continues in line 7 where a
single audience member interjects with a joking response to Griffin’s line.
While Griffin initially ratifies this interjection by agreeing with the
statement (line 8), Travis intercedes to foreclose further direct participation
in line 9: “It’s not a ­back-and-forth kind of thing.” Here, Travis explicitly
limits the audience’s options and articulates the ­one-way performance of
ratified speech. This shift in audience footing is emergent and negotiated in
real time. Travis’ move to foreclose individual interjection is confirmed first
by Justin in line 10 (a phrase which he repeats several times throughout the
performance when audience members later intrude) and by Clint in line
11.13
Clint’s line, “It’s D&D but it’s not that interactive,” demonstrates the
impact of the gaming system on participatory frameworks. The Fifth Edition
of D&D is often lauded by players as allowing more space for roleplaying
performances. Clint’s reference to D&D’s interactivity acknowledges this
characteristic even as it, too, manages audiences’ intrusions. We might think
about the conventions surrounding audience participation when
considering this moment in gameplay. In his discussion of participation
frameworks during podium performances, Goffman (1974) outlines the
spectator role of the audience and its accompanying restrictions: “the role of
the audience is to appreciate remarks made, not to reply in any direct way.
They are to conjure up what a reply might be, but not utter it; ‘­back-channel’
response alone is what is meant to be available to them. They give the floor
but (except during the question period) rarely get it” (p. 138). Goffman
describes the footing of the podium audience: ratified but restricted. Any
verbal intrusion is automatically positioned as unratified “­back-channel”
responses unless otherwise mitigated. Travis, Justin, and Clint, in the
previous interaction, confirm this informal social contract and police it
during moments of interactional difficulty. But while this policing is
repeated throughout most of the live show performances, there are specific
occasions in which the performers allow for controlled audience interaction.
In the 2017 Austin live show, for example, Griffin solicits guided responses
from individual audience members in the crowd, asking them to judge the ­-
player-characters’ schoolwork during a high ­school-themed adventure and
assign the players a specific grade. The audience members are incorporated
into the fictional world as teachers—as individual actors rather than as a
group—with their specific roles carefully managed by the DM. So, while the
boundaries between audiences and performers are permeable during actual
play performances, certain moments in gameplay are more or less
permeable than others, depending upon performance context, medium, and
available participatory frameworks.
In actual play, the ­game-space goes public as it enters new markets. Even
as Griffin articulates his initial discomfort with seeing the crowded audience
in Nashville, he nevertheless asks the crew to raise the house lights and
acknowledge that presence (as well as the costumes they have purchased or
designed). This move—the request to raise and then lower the lights—
highlights the ways in which the McElroys manage audience interaction
through particular devices, whether through the generation of character
names or turning on the house lights. We can see these workings in
moments of interactional difficulty, but these mechanisms of repair and
negotiation crystallize as they are discursively repeated throughout multiple
performances.14 Even as the incorporative mechanisms control the
audience’s roles during performance, they also facilitate ratified audience
participation that connect with new issues of consumption and the
circulation of goods—be it in the form of entertaining podcasts to be
downloaded or merchandise to be bought. It is worth considering in closer
detail how these ­audience-performer dynamics economically serve the
producers of actual play by transforming participating audiences into
consumers.
In thinking about producer and consumer experiences, we might benefit
from the work of anthropologist Mary Douglass and economist Baron
Isherwood (1979) who connect economic theories of consumption with
theories of communication. “[G]oods are coded for communication,” they
write. “They have other practical uses, but the one we need to investigate is
how they allow one customer to engage with others in a series of exchanges”
(p. xxi). With our concept of consumable play, we are interested in how
consumers and producers communicate with one another through
particular frameworks, mediated by the exchange of consumable content.
Just as the McElroys police and manage audience participation, so too do
they mediate the development of fan materials and frame consumer
experiences. One such issue has arisen with the development and sales of ­-
fan-created merchandise on platforms such as Redbubble and Etsy. In a
Twitter post from 2018, Justin McElroy repeated his ongoing request to end
these kinds of sales: “I’ve asked before, but I figure it bears repeating, if
you’re somebody who cares about the stuff we make and are selling
unlicensed items based on our stuff on Redbubble, etc. could you please not
do that? Thanks, I really appreciate it” (J. McElroy, 2018). In response to this
post, several users argued that official content should compete with fan
content to better the overall product, and that this should be seen as free
advertising in any case (Brewer, 2018; Phelan, 2018). Here, issues of
intellectual property and audience engagement become entangled. While
the McElroys encourage audiences to break through conventional barriers
between performers and spectators in certain contexts—through tweets,
cosplay, live show participation, and feedback—they nonetheless utilize
certain mechanisms to monitor these permeable boundaries and manage
shifting roles, especially when there are economic stakes. Even as permeable
boundaries and flexible roles allow the McElroys to build a robust, receptive,
and engaged fan base, they monitor these gray areas in order to ultimately
claim creative and economic authority over their material.15
More can be discussed regarding The Adventure Zone as a site of
consumable play. For example, the McElroys often discuss their relationship
with their audience on their talk show and have described how online
platforms and social media have collapsed the communicative distance
between podcasters and their listeners (G. McElroy, 2016). In the 2016
episode of The The Adventure Zone Zone, Griffin comments on the accuracy
of plot theories he found when reading Reddit and Twitter threads. Tumblr,
too, provides a wealth of ­fan-created art devoted to the show, which the
McElroys praise or comment on during their performances. The way that
the McElroys respond to audience feedback and critique regarding the
representation of marginalized characters in their play is also worth deeper
consideration.16 We discuss more explicit moves to commodification and
capitalist influence in our discussion of Critical Role, but our application of
consumable play in The Adventure Zone highlights audience reception and
performer mediation as well as the transformative power of this network;
participants, genres, and gameplay are transformed through discursive
interaction and play, whether that occurs during live performances or as
reactions to the broadcast episodes in digital landscapes.

The Critters as Consumers: Critical Role and Layers of

 Consumable Play
Since March 12, 2015, when Critical Role aired their first episode on Geek
and Sundry, the group of voice actors has experienced immense success; the
first season ended their adventure with Vox Machina, and Critical Role is
now in its second season with the current campaign following the
adventures of The Mighty Nein (having aired Episode 97 as of February 27,
2020). The first campaign began as a continuation of the group’s weekly
gathering since 2012 to play D&D, but it has grown into a movement, a
multimedia success, an iconic model for both veteran and new players, and a
booming business (Alimurung, 2019; D’Anastasio, 2017; Haeck, 2019; Hall,
2018). Not only has Critical Role undergone the transformative framing
from private to public play, but now the friends enjoy public play for a ­-
million-plus viewers, corporate sponsorships, and a growing industry all
built around the Critical Role brand. Therefore, this study is interested in
tracking the intersections between Critical Role as consumable play and the
salient transitions between the two seasons of Critical Role which are
informed by capitalism, consumption, and audience interactions.
Critical Role’s first episode in its first season looks as many beginning
gaming streams do, with more professional resources than most—a few
cameras to capture the players and DM as well as one pointed down onto a
gaming map, miniatures and some mapping elements, and audio equipment
that can mostly handle the large group of eight players, DM, and
accompanying musical selections. While the first few episodes have their
own technical issues, nothing is out of the ordinary for an adjustment to a
new streaming experience. Similar to The Adventure Zone and the McElroys’
experiences in radio and entertainment, as voice actors, the Critical Role ­-
player-participants have a professional quality of voice performance and
character interaction. However, in addition to setting a high bar for
performance, what makes Critical Role and other successful actual play
streams most interesting is how they interact with, evolve because of, and
selectively ignore audience participation.
Matt Mercer’s introduction to Critical Role and various asides made
throughout the first episode illustrates a clear understanding of potential
audiences: “­rules-lawyers,” who might be concerned the players following
RAW (rules as written) in the Fifth Edition player’s handbook, and players
who are familiar with a variety of tabletop games, including other D&D
editions. All members of the audience are unaware of the adventures which
came before—a unique challenge for Critical Role in that the show begins
streaming in the midst of a previously started campaign. During the first
campaign, fans of Critical Role take on the charming nickname of “Critters.”
This nickname persists through the second season, with the only
differentiation between spectators being “new viewers” and Critters.
However, while this nickname might denote a level of intimacy, the reality is
that as the show grows in success, the audience’s opportunities for ­in-show
interactions lessen rather than increase.
The Critical Role cast evokes the audience quite frequently in the first
season, mostly to address questions or comments which are posted to the
chat. The chat feature, which in the first season was only available up until
Episode 32 (where it was changed to a ­sub-only chat room and then
eliminated from the display by the next episode), was short lived and the
cause of several ­out-of-game interruptions which were often then
incorporated ­in-game. Once it was no longer displayed, Critical Role still
had crew members monitor the chat for any issues with technology or
audience suggestions. For audience members, these chats could only be
accessed during the live show on Thursday evenings. Spectators became
limited to ­behind-the-scenes interactions. Audience members also could
interact with the Critical Role crew through Twitter and other social media
accounts, but once the archive of the gameplay chat was eliminated as part
of the display, what was also eliminated was an element of audience
participation which could not be filtered or controlled.17 In many ways, the
chat displayed alongside the gameplay forced response, again, mostly to
address tech issues, but also to address questions, critiques, and suggestions
from the audience. Moments where ­in-game interactions cross over into ­-
out-of-game interactions are numerous and natural to tabletop gaming,
where characters allude to ­out-of-game experiences, celebrities, and pop
culture references and either incorporate those references into the game or
choose to interact with those references as if they are unknown.18 While
these interruptions are part of the natural flow of gameplay, in the case of
actual play and live streaming, where the audience is also a participatory
member, the complexities of performance and play are heightened (See
Figure 1).
 In Episode 2 of the first season, there are several examples of switching
roles within the game’s liminal space, including moments where the players
and DM are inhabiting all roles within just a few minutes: the players are
both players and their characters, demonstrating ­in-game and ­out-of-game
competencies; the DM is both ­rules-master and NPC. However, barely a
minute passes before the players have once again inhabited their characters’
personas and speak to Mercer, who has reinhabited his role of the NPC. This
typical role switching is then temporarily interrupted by another ­out-of-
game address, one which is in response to the chat room and listening
audience but is also directed to the Critical Role audio crew. In the NPC’s
voice, Mercer says: “Fair enough.” But then he adds, transitioning slowly out
of his NPC’s accent to his normal speaking voice: “Also, apparently my mic’s
a bit loud. If you can turn it down a bit for you guys.” O’Brien interrupts and
asks ­in-character, “What’s a mic?” And Mercer responds as the NPC, “Forget
that, you heard nothing. It’s a strange echo in the caverns of Kraghammer.
Anyway—” (Geek and Sundry, 2015, 34:57–35:08). In this moment, the
game not only stops to address the number of chat room participants who
are pointing out the crackling feedback they are experiencing from Mercer’s
mic, but then the ­in-game conversation picks up on this ­out-of-game
interaction and incorporates it with O’Brien’s and Mercer’s ­in-character
interaction. These moments where audience participation enters the game
change once the chat is not publicly displayed, and as the game garners more
success, the focus on audience interaction turns primarily to one of
commodity.
The second season’s production value increased substantially, and now,
Critical Role enjoys over half a million viewers every week for a show which
usually lasts longer than any film (at approximately 4 hours). The show now
extends to a number of secondary shows, podcasts, comic books, and as of
April 19, 2019, a Kickstarter Project for an animated special, The Legend of
Vox Machina that reached over 11 million dollars with almost 90,000
backers (Haeck, 2019; Hall, 2019). Critical Role’s focus on donations and
charity work, especially with their partnership with 826LA, has continued
throughout the two seasons, but the transition from the end of the first to
the second season shows a much heavier insistence on merchandise,
sponsorship, and advertisements. Addresses to the audience in the second
season are more directed on giveaways or special deals for “Critters” at their
various sponsors. In the first season, one of the players (usually O’Brien or
Riegel) would put on their “advertisement voice” or, in the case of Riegel,
sing a little rhyme about one of their sponsors: Wyrmword Games, Marvel
Puzzle Quest, and Loot Crate were hailed alongside generous freelance
artists, volunteers, and other small businesses. By the second season, these
sponsorship memos no longer have just the ­almost-satirical inclusion ­in-
game; instead, the banner “Support the Stream by checking out D&D
Beyond’s digital toolset at dndbeyond.com” is displayed, each ­player-
participant uses D&D Beyond for keeping track of their character data while
rolling custom dice in their Wyrmwood dice trays. If viewing on YouTube, a
Critter must skip through YouTube Ads in order to watch Critical Role’s 10–
15 minute advertisement intermission. Therefore, where the first season of
Critical Role encouraged a type of audience participation alongside the
game, the second season shows a selective approach to that audience
participation: one which is inherently tied to consuming products and
winning giveaways—consuming the show not as a participatory story, but as
entertainment.

Spoilers for Season 2, Episode 26, Critical Role

Due to its overwhelming popularity, Critical Role’s episodes always garner
quite a bit of online chatter and response, especially among devoted fans of
the show. However, one of the more recent outcries concerning the show
was with Season 2, Episode 26 “Found & Lost” which ended with a
controversial character death. While D&D is a game with imagined violence
against NPCs and players’ characters, and character death can be more
common with some DMs and player’s playing styles, in the years of Critical
Role’s broadcasting, there were very few permanent character deaths. There
were several factors which heightened the tensions around Mollymauk’s
death, all of which illustrate different types of audience interaction and
consumable play. Mollymauk was a bisexual, gender fluid character whose
player, Taliesin Jaffe, also came out as bisexual in 2017; while the Critical
Role crew generally leans more socially progressive in their playing styles,
many LGBTQ+ Critters saw Mollymauk as the first character who had really
embraced a ­non-heteronormative identity.19 Some Critters on Twitter lashed
out against the Critical Role team, and especially Mercer, who they argued
did not have a good reason to kill Mollymauk, and that other players’
characters had been much closer to death but survived. Since Mercer
controlled the NPC who killed Molly, his decision to kill Molly originated
from his engagement with the story’s consistency and D&D’s rules; Mercer
analyzed and acted on what that villainous NPC would have done at that
moment. After the episode aired with significant backlash, Mercer
apologized on Twitter.20 One does not have to go much further than Game of
Thrones, Season 8 to find correlations between audience participation and
commitment leading to disappointment and negative emotional responses
(McCluskey, 2019). While Critical Role did not have a petition of over
100,000 signatures demanding a ­re-writing of the episode, what is
interesting about the comparison is the placement of fault.
While Game of Thrones’ critics placed blame on the writers, there are no
writers to blame in actual play. Blame instead was directed toward Mercer as
the DM who controlled the NPC, Jaffe as the player who controlled the
character, and at the other characters in the party. The audience response
illustrates the conflict between agentic or systemic power, but expanded to
the level of performance: “a debate over whether power operates in the
decisions players make or in the systems of game rules that constrain
decisions,” with Mercer as the systemic power (Hammer, 2018, p. 450).
Critters were also disappointed at the timing of Molly’s death: during the
filming of the episode, three of the players (Laura Bailey, Travis Willingham
and Ashley Johnson) were unable to play. Instead, a guest player (Ashly
Burch) joined the party, and many on Twitter attributed unfamiliar player
dynamics and a smaller party as reasons for Molly’s death. Additionally, fans
argued that having a guest player was a reason for Mercer to go easy on the
party (Wilde, 2018). On one hand, the Critter community responded to this
situation as most audience members do for any entertainment: a person’s
favorite character dies, and they grieve. Ashly Burch, whose partner passed
away in 2012, said on Twitter in support of Mercer following the episode’s
backlash: “When we attach ourselves to characters—and then lose them—
we expand our emotional capacity. We look at this hard, scary, inevitable
thing in the face. And—if we’re open—we can learn to accept. To be less
afraid” (cited in Tamburro, 2018; Hoffer, 2018). While Burch’s assessment of
negotiating real grief through grieving characters can be acknowledged as a
coping mechanism, the Critters also had a slightly different interaction with
Critical Role than with traditional scripted films or books. There is a sense of
ownership on behalf of the audience, a type of interaction in this unscripted
storytelling that, regardless of a displayed chat screen or simply having the
opportunity to tune in each week, is representative of the concept of
consumable play we have articulated throughout this piece.
What we can see from both of these examples from Critical Role is first
the importance of control over audience participation and interaction, and
second, that the audience’s sense of ownership over the campaign, the
characters, and the story is not real. Even with the intimate nickname and
the seemingly permeable boundaries that are heightened by Molly’s
controversial death, the permeability of these boundaries is as controlled as
the McElroys asking for the house lights to be lowered. These boundaries
were made permeable as a reaction to the audience’s response—to the extent
of releasing a public apology and to talk about the grief of losing a loved one
(fictional or in real life). However, the permeability never crossed into a loss
of management over their own game; just as HBO has denied the petition
for a remake of Season 8, Critical Role did not owe it to their viewers to
bring back Molly or redo the catastrophic fight. Instead, as with any
performance, “the show must go on,” and it did. However, the friction that
occurred between the Critical Role cast and their audience is representative
of consumable play’s larger, transformative network.

Beyond Application: Transformative Networks of

Consumable Play
What we have argued for is to view actual play through the framework of
consumable play. However, we see consumable play as a term that focuses
our attention on the transformations of play, performance, and consumption
that occur in actual play across multiple platforms and media.
Transformation,21 in this sense, is not a complete change of state. Rather, it
encapsulates the multiple shifts and dynamic fluidity of a network of players,
audience members, characters, producers, consumers, distributors, game
makers, and sponsors that make up actual play. From our analysis of
consumable play, we take our two intertwined models of consumption—
economic and cultural—and situate them within these networks of actual
play. The complicated layers of evolving performance and play in actual play
must always be informed by consumption; we see this as an important
intervention in the study of actual play. Further, this approach helps to
better highlight the different active nodes within consumable play networks.
There is no hierarchy to these nodes—just different categories which
temporally, spatially, economically, and culturally operate and intersect. In
our configuration of these networks, we note five significant nodes which
undergo transformations during actual play: roles, products, expressive
genres, social contracts, and systems.22 We explore these, here, to
demonstrate the potential of the term “consumable play” beyond a ­case-
study analysis, and we propose that acknowledging transformations within
play networks will allow for more speculative analysis of actual play
phenomena in the future.
Figure 1. Transformative Networks. This figure illustrates the dynamic interactions within
transformative networks of consumable play. As players and their player characters (PCs) interact
with each other, they are also engaging with the dungeon master (DM) and non-player characters
(NPCs). Gathered around a physical or non-physical space, the players and DM must express both
play and performance competencies. This play space is then either bounded, in as far as
interactions are limited to just between the play-performers, or the play-space has permeable
boundaries, which allows for some interchange between play-performers and spectators. Even
with a permeable boundary, not all interactions necessarily are allowed to cross, especially
uncontrolled or unmediated.

First, we consider the node of roles within transformative networks of

actual play. These roles shift and undergo friction within participatory
frameworks. As we have discussed in our applications, roles span across
active and passive spectators, consumers, producers, and interactors. While
D&D traditionally has had these roles as part of the tabletop framework
before actual play, these roles are transformed when superimposed onto a
theory of consumable play. Where interactions were mostly bounded
between DM and players, actual play opens up further participatory
frameworks and thus build on previous established roles—moving them
from roles of “play” to roles of “performance” in front of audience members.
Participants oscillate between “players” and “performers” as they factor in
how their play is being consumed by both active and passive spectators,
shifting their footing and opening new frameworks as they create more
episodes, events, and products.
Before considerations of actual play, game products were mostly seen as
supplements bought to enhance gameplay (campaign books and materials,
and miniatures) with clear distinctions between producers (such as Wizards
of the Coast) and consumers (Knowles, 2018, p. 304).23 TTRPG gameplay
was not a public product but rather a private experience. Even the ­role-
playing arcs created by individual DMs were temporally limited products,
having a lasting effect only if the experience was recorded, written down,
kept in the memories of the DM and players, or shared within other gaming
communities. Actual play, and the various technologies which make it
possible, takes “play” to the level of “performance” by producing content
which is designed to be consumed by a larger audience outside of the game
space. Products are transformed in this configuration, shifting between
private and public commodities, between vernacular and popular materials,
between remote and live experiences. Actual play has also embraced the
digital dimension in compelling ways as creators utilize online and virtual
platforms to package and distribute their play as episodic products with
accompanying materials. The Adventure Zone creators, for example,
repackaged their arcs as graphic novels, and Critical Role has and will
produce a number of supplements as part of their adventures, including the
Tal’Dorei campaign book, graphic novels, and their upcoming animated
special.
The transformations of products also connect with the transformation of
genres within actual play networks. When thinking about the shift from
TTRPGs to actual play, perhaps the most obvious is the introduction of
spectators—an addition which emphasizes the performative dimension of
play within a new context. As discussed, performance and play are tightly
intertwined, but as expressive genres, they engage different conventions and
expectations. The expressive genre of performance, for example, reframes
audience engagement as an aspect of entertainment; spectacle and show gain
value and significance in these interactions. Play, as an expressive genre,
gives added weight to competency and interactional systems of exchange.
Transformations occur along the scale of play and performance during
actual play, and the move of many producers toward more ­performance-
based play (demonstrated by Critical Role’s voice actors and The Adventure
Zone’s emphasis on narrative) indicates how new characteristics and styles
emerge within these networks based on performance conventions. However,
within this transformative node, there is friction between the traditional
tabletop system of ­improv-based play and ­narrative-grounded interactions,
especially when performed by more professional players; the audience
expects more polished entertainment during performances rather than the
rougher improvisational play more at home in private tabletop gaming.
Figure 2. Sliding Scales of Consumption: Active and Immediate. This figure shows the sliding
scales of consumption related to interactive spectatorship and temporal distance. This version of
the scale shows the markers positioned on the most active and immediate range. Active spectators
are those who are interacting with the play-performers as much as the bounded or permeable play
allow. Therefore, these are spectators who are producing content (for example, writing episode
reviews and creating fan art), consuming (such as watching/listening to every episode and buying
merchandise), and interacting (including using social media or chat functions to communicate
with the play-performers and engaging with the fan base). In terms of temporal distance, then,
active spectators are often also immediately consuming: if an actual play performance is
broadcast live, they are tuning in or are viewing the most recently posted episode. These scales
can accommodate different levels of spectatorship as the markers move along the lines, and the
scales similarly address different levels of permeability or boundedness to play-performances.
Figure 3. Sliding Scale of Consumption: Passive and Delayed. This figure shows the sliding scales
of consumption related to interactive spectatorship and temporal distance. This version of the
scale shows the markers positioned on the most passive and delayed range. Passive spectators are
those who do not interact with the play-performers to the upper limits of what could be possible
with a bounded or permeable play. Therefore, these are spectators who are producing little or no
content, interacting very little or not at all, and whose main form of engagement is through
consumption (such as watching episodes and buying merchandise). In terms of temporal distance,
passive spectators are often also delayed in their consumption: even if an actual play performance
is broadcast live, these spectators may not watch it until significant time has passed. These scales
can accommodate different levels of spectatorship as the markers move along the lines, and the
scales similarly address different levels of permeability or boundedness to play-performances.

As a part of this move from the private play space to public performance,
the assumed contracts between performers and spectators have a new
weight. By “contracts,” we mean unofficial social contracts or conventions
for interaction that are often implicit but cited during moments of
interactional difficulty. For example, during The Adventure Zone live
performances, the McElroys expressed the unofficial rule when audience
members attempted to interact with the performers during gameplay: “it’s
not a ­back-and forth kind of thing.”24 There are expectations one has from a
performance, and some of those expectations create friction with the
original play contract. As actual play producers create more frameworks for
participation—creating new mechanisms for incorporation, such as the ­-
weapons-naming feature or the inclusion of a ­live-stream audience chat—
new contracts are negotiated that shape how players and audience members
agree to interact. These implicit agreements are a part of the play network,
shifting as events happen during gameplay to accommodate new avenues for
production and consumption.
The transformations of actual play networks have an effect on and will
continue to affect TTRPG systems, our fifth and final node. While we have
already seen the development of D&D’s Fifth Edition both as in
consideration and support of actual play, one has to wonder what TTRPG
systems in the future will look like. With the Fifth Edition, the focus was on
preparing a system that novice players could easily interact with, rather than
moving back to earlier systems which emphasized numerical stats and
complex battle systems. As more groups record and distribute their play—
whether they be amateurs or professionals like Critical Role and The
Adventure Zone—we must consider how models of performance may impact
play styles and the evolution of new systems. Newcomers to D&D are
frequently encouraged to explore actual play media in order to learn the
rules and expectations for play (Wizards of the Coast, 2017; Heller, 2019;
Moreno, 2016; Herkewitz, 2018). With the popularity and spread of actual
play, performance styles and game conventions will shift and stabilize within
these networks of consumption. By attending to this node as well as the four
others previously discussed (roles, products, expressive genres, and
contracts), we can think more critically about the impact of entertainment
media, performance, and consumption on gaming interactions in a global
network.

Beyond Consumable (Capitalist) Play

In our consideration of The Adventure Zone and Critical Role, we
demonstrate that consumable play is not a stable, repeatable concept but
rather a lens through which we might examine the communicative and
economic networks brought to bear in actual play performances. We see the
transformative network of consumable play, which shows shifts and friction
between play and performance. Ultimately, we propose this concept as the
beginning of larger conversations linking gameplay to commercial systems
and performance models. The two case studies we explore—Critical Role
and The Adventure Zone—highlight the ways in which this term can be
applied to focalize different aspects of consumable play. Further, we have
gestured toward future work that can be done exploring the transformative
dimensions of this phenomenon. As we have shown, one example of
consumable play does not necessarily look or operate like another. While
actual play producers utilize different mechanisms, networks, and
participatory frameworks, we recognize the need to situate these
performances within the larger capitalist frameworks that impact the
creation, distribution, and consumption of these episodes. Performance and
mediation operate within modes of production and consumption.
Consumable play describes how actual play performances are consumed by
an audience; alters how actual play is performed, produced, and distributed;
and complicates the interactions between audiences, players, and DMs.
What this means for the future of actual play is that we see the possibility of
a growing emphasis on producing actual play content alongside updates and
developments in TTRPGs and a ­re-evaluation of the intersections of
capitalism and actual play. Already, these intersections are blossoming,
including Wizards of the Coast’s D&D Live 2019 event which showcased
official merchandise promotion (Descent into Avernus) alongside actual play
performances, celebrity guests, and inventive game styles (Hoffer, 2019).
Where it was the case that your local DM might hold a few sessions at a bar
or cafe, now being a professional DM is not only a possibility, but a
sustainable career choice, with local, online, and actual play possibilities
(Pilon, 2019; Greybey, 2019; Hammer, 2018, p. 463).
Additionally, conversations about expanding tabletop fantasy worlds
beyond reimagining our own world—as sites of critical conversations and
social critique—are not only encouraging more diversity in game play, but
specifically are taking to task the white, heteronormative, ableist, and
colonial origins of mainstream TTRPG corporations (Barber, 2019;
Alimurung, 2019; Hammer, 2018, p. 453; Hoover, 2018, p. 217; Jones, 2018).
This includes ways in which players are attempting to remove traditional
capitalist economies in TTRPGs or invent new economic systems (Knowles,
2018, p. 300). For example, instead of the neoliberal “grind” leading to “­one-
line traits written on a character sheet, not unlike a resume or CV”
(Hammer, 2018, p. 452), some developers have pushed back, like in the Eat
the Rich anthology which foregrounds workers and laborers with ­anti-
capitalist adventurers (Hoffer, 2019). Not only do our discussions of
consumable play provide frameworks of analysis for contemporary actual
play performances, they also allow us to ask how future tabletop systems
could acknowledge performance and entertainment through actual play as
part of their design, thus also factoring in the possibilities for that
performance to be broadcast for profit. Acknowledging TTRPGs’ grounding
in a capitalist framework of consumption carves out space to speculate on
what we could do with our own “personal corners of the universe” if the
gaming table was a site of community empowerment rather than simply an
exchange of consumable play.

Notes
1. D&D’s increase in consumption/production potential is owed in part to the “Open Gaming
License” of the d20 system since the third edition: “[this means] that others could freely publish
scenarios, books, and rule sets using the d20 system … [and] led to a flurry of fan and small press
publications” (Knowles, 2018, p. 305).
 2. While outside the current scope of this study, it is important to note that while we propose
“consumable play” as an applicable term across the actual play movement, there are important
differences between how mainstream productions are consumed compared to less ­well-known
productions. Thus, we make these designations between actual play performances to assist in coding
future analyses of diverse performances.
3. McElroy (2014), Hall (2014), DeVille (2017), and Hall (2018) comment on the role of D&D Fifth
Edition and actual play in the evolution of gaming culture in recent years.
4. Interestingly, in the original article, each of these commodities have a direct hyperlink to their
product listing for ease of purchase. Though the article’s focus is on discussing the growing impact
and popularity with actual play, it is also representative of actual play’s inseparable capitalist
foundation—where a discussion of actual play’s success necessarily is hyperlinked to promoting a
product line.
5. While beyond the scope of this study, comparing The Adventure Zone and Critical Role also allows
analysts to comment on issues of accessibility (captioning, streaming, chat, technology) game
mechanics (traditional rules versus “homerules”), informal regulation (gameplay discourse and
interactional rules), advertising, financial solicitation, and performance style as they relate to theories
of consumption. For example, one might point to Critical Role only recently taking over responsibility
for providing closed captions on their videos, where before the service was provided entirely by
volunteers at https://crtranscript.tumblr.com/transcripts.
6. The McElroys would later work with the Monster of the Week system for a later season: “The
Amnesty Arc.”
7. Griffin’s insistence on describing The Adventure Zone as “storytelling” rather than “long battles”
illustrates an acknowledgement of a shift in TTRPG focus, informed and continued through actual
play; rather than focusing on mechanics and battle systems, as was the case with earlier D&D and
TTRPG editions, the emphasis is on storytelling, character development, and performance.
8. This “Fantasy Cosco” incorporative mechanism further reinforces the connection between
consumption and audience participation; listeners are called upon to imaginatively produce goods
which the characters can purchase. In this way, the audience members are incorporated into gameplay
as producers.
9. Transcriber’s notes are italicized and enclosed in brackets.
10. Of note in this interaction is Justin’s playful reference to their need for “donations” to keep
producing their content. This move highlights the precarity of the performers as producers within the
entertainment industry.
11. Critical Role has also performed in front of a larger audience in both of their campaign seasons
with restricted rules of audience participation. Notably, Kevin, the director of Geek & Sundry and the
emcee for their premier ­live-audience event, outlined specific rules for the performance: “please do
me a favor, put your phones on silent, all right? The house lights are going to be kind of dim, so you
can use your phones, you can tweet, you can do social media posts, whatever you wantv… So yeah,
just put everything on silent and be silent about it. You can tweet about the show, please use the
hashtag #CriticalRoleLivev… this not a Rocky Horror thing, so don’t shout out like, ‘I would like to
rage.’ Don’t do that stuff, don’t ‘how do you want to do this?’ … Be respectful of the people on stage.
Think of this as a funny play. You can laugh, you can woo, but maybe don’t shout out suggestions…
Wait, I have one other thing. There’s a merch thing… After the show, the merch table’s going to be
open, so if you didn’t get a chance to get merch, you’re going to get another chance to get merch.” In a
few quick instructions, Kevin outlines how Critical Role wishes for their audience to interact—
through silence, ­performance-appropriate vocalizations, and the purchasing of merchandise.
12. “Foley” is the recording of physical sounds to augment an aural performance, something very
much like sound effects. Clint McElroy is a former radio personality, and the family regularly employs
this specialized language during their gameplay. This move further demonstrates the hybridity of The
Adventure Zone performances, which incorporate language and discursive moves across a range of
genres, from radio to public television broadcasts.
13. Of note here, as well, is the equalization of performer footing in this interaction. The ­DM-
performer, who conventionally wields more incorporative authority during gameplay, is eventually
overruled by the assertions of all three ­player-performers. Griffin (the DM) opens the floor for
audience participation. Clint, Travis, and Justin then do discursive repair to foreclose this
participation as they attempt to order a more bounded style of gameplay that is restricted to the stage.
14. These mechanisms can be used to correct both audience members and the performers
themselves, as we have seen during Clint’s misreading of the named crossbow event. As the
performers/producers strive for fluid interaction—and a more felicitous performance—they employ
these mechanisms to discursively manage any difficulty or unproductive downkeyings that may arise.
15. The Adventure Zone’s economic network is vital to its production. As a part of the Maximum Fun
network—an independent podcast network that distributes a variety of variety—the McElroys
regularly participate in the MaxFun Drive, which solicits donations from listeners to help support
their shows and the network at large. The McElroys also host several other podcasts on this network,
including Sawbones, Shmanners, and the popular My Brother, My Brother, and Me. Maximum Fun
strives to emphasize their independent status with the tagline at the end of their podcasts: “Artist
owned. Listener supported” (G. McElroy, 2015).
16. Griffin and the other McElroys have given numerous interviews about the integration of queer
characters and characters of color even as they acknowledge their positionality as white, cisgender
male performers (Enlow, 2018).
17. Compared to The Adventure Zone, the McElroys encourage audience participation, but through
controlled interactions, such as suggesting names for the NPCs. Where audience communication
originally was displayed on Critical Role’s game display and was not edited or modified, as the show
continued, control over audience communication became more important and reactive—responding
to posts on Twitter or on Twitch, for example—rather than interactive.
18. At another intersection of active and passive spectators and their interactions with the
performances are volunteers who produce archival content. Similar to the transcriptions of the show, a
group of volunteers has archived puns, media references, and other allusions at
www.critrolestats.com/
19. A number of Twitter users categorized Mollymauk’s death as part of a narrative trope called
“Bury Your Gays.” This trope identifies a trend where ­non-heteronormative characters cannot be
expected to have a happy ending, and worst, that it is likely that individual will die (Mollymauk
Tealeaf, 2018).
20. The full Twitter thread from July 18, 2018, reads: “I appreciate the support, and judging by the
conversation, a number of people suddenly hate me. That’s fine. I’ll weather the slings and arrows.
Ours is a story of heroism and hope in a dark world. A story many of us need. One that turns in
unexpected ways, and one I believe in. I love my players, deeply. I am constantly checking in with
them. Our trust is endless and mutual, and is the nature of the game, not all ends are written. If you
found this one, singular moment so strong to somehow break your trust in me, then… I am sorry.
Genuinely. However, it’s a dark spot in a vibrant narrative. There is so much to come. We’re preparing
for the worst because it’s healthy. When the stages of grief have washed over, I hope you still wish to
join us. If not, then I wish you luck and good travels.” (cited in Tamburro, 2018; Hoffer, 2018).
21. While we recognize the rich history in fandom / fan studies regarding the term “transformative”
as it relates to “transformative works,” “transformative” in this sense only represents this stage of
change, fluctuation, or interconnectedness as it pertains to relationships and networks. However, there
is ample potential to recast these transformative networks of consumable play in light of fan studies
since TTRPGs and actual play performances are transformative works in their own right. In
particular, we can see a fan studies’ reading of “transformative” as including transformations for
cultural commentary, for appreciation, for community, and for profit (Booth, 2018).
22. There is certainly the potential for more transformative nodes beyond what we have identified
here; these five dimensions represent a starting point for future research. See Figure 1 for an
illustration of these nodes and their relationship with the sliding scales of temporal distance and
interaction.
23. Knowles and Castronova also helpfully outline “three ­revenue-driving strategies”: extension,
where publishers start with a basic rule book, but then supplement with additional adventures and ­-
add-on rules or backstories; collector’s items, which encourage consumers to purchase unique
collectable versions of standard products; and accessories, which are usually physical products (such as
maps or character figures), though now these accessories might also extend to digital “helper” apps
(such as online character sheet builders or dice rollers) (2018, p. 305).
24. See our earlier discussion of the Live in Boston episode for this example and excerpts of this
dialogue.

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OceanofPDF.com
 Actual Play as Actual Learning
What Gamers, Teachers and Designers Can Learn
About Learning from Actual Play Videos
Alex Layne

Introduction
Platforms like Twitch and YouTube have dramatically changed the way
gamers game. While much press has been given to the large audiences
drawn to esports events and personalities, a parallel community has been
growing and thriving in the realm of tabletop gaming. Just as top League of
Legends players can change the entire game by using a novel playing strategy
during a stream session, tabletop games like Dungeons & Dragons (D&D)
and board and card games are heavily influenced by those who post play
sessions online. For players, aspiring players, and fans, these videos, called
Actual Play videos, are a key part of gamer culture.
Actual Play videos are full of story, community, and imagination; they’re
an immersive and interactive form of entertainment, much like the board
and tabletop games being showcased. In this essay, the author explores a
secondary purpose for Actual Play videos: instruction. Board and tabletop
games are complex rhetorical artifacts, and learning a game takes familiarity
with genre conventions, deep critical thinking skills, and, above all, time.
Actual Play videos, while they often serve primarily as entertainment, are
also used by players to learn how to play games, and as such have a
multifaceted duality that can be useful for players, educators, game
designers, and game companies to explore.
YouTube is becoming increasingly recognized as a venue for education
and instruction (Clifton & Mann, 2011; Lee & Lehto, 2013; Kousha,
Thelwall, & Abdoli, 2012). Likewise, games have been shown again and
again to be effective teaching and learning tools (Gee, 2003, 2007; Finseth,
2018; Prensky, 2007; Squire, 2008). This essay explores the merger of these
two worlds through an analysis of the strategies used by some of the ­top-
viewed Actual Play videos produced by groups such as Geek & Sundry;
Dice, Camera, Action; High Rollers DnD; Watch It Played; Games Night;
and Shut Up & Sit Down and Actual Play videos by relatively unknown
groups. These videos share common strategies, organization patterns, and
rhetorical language that can be useful in exploring why these videos are such
an interesting and effective mechanism for learning.

Methods
For this essay, 40 Actual Play videos were examined for 77 points of data.
The purpose of this research was exploratory, and thus a systematic and
replicable method of choosing videos was not a priority. Rather, the author
attempted to choose a breadth of Actual Play videos: those with the most
views (10,906,881), the fewest views (46), those by the most ­well-known
YouTubers (Matt Mercer), those by unknown YouTubers (The TableTop
BellHop), a range of tabletop game types, a range of lengths, a mix of game
genres, etc. The data collected is not meant to be a systematic breakdown of
all Actual Play videos, and the results cannot be assumed to be reflective of
the entire Actual Play landscape. After all, coding the hundreds of thousands
of Actual Play videos is far outside the scope of this project. However, the
data collected and discussed does show some interesting trends that can be
pursued by future researchers.
The coding sheet was created by watching 10 top Actual Play videos and
recording commonalities. There is not an objective mechanism that exists
for this type of content analysis, thus it was created organically in an attempt
to describe and catalogue Actual Play videos as they exist rather than
working from a set of conventions and applying them to the videos. The
coding sheet was calibrated by three researchers and revised to a 95 percent
similarity before being applied to the Actual Play videos. Once calibrated,
the author applied them to each of the 40 chosen Actual Play videos, which
ranged from 6 minutes to over 4 hours. Google Forms and Excel were used
to input, visualize, and analyze the data.

Results
General Data
 Of the 40 videos analyzed, 62.5 percent were of a tabletop ­role-playing
game (TTRPG), with D&D being the largest category. Board game Actual
Play videos made up 37.5 percent of the Actual Play videos analyzed. The
top three viewed videos were all D&D Actual Plays, while four of the five
least viewed videos were board game Actual Plays, suggesting that currently
the audience for D&D videos is more robust than the audience for board
game Actual Play videos. While some definitions of Actual Play only include
TTRPGS like D&D, I have more broadly defined Actual Play here to include
board and card videos. I have done this for two primary reasons: first,
groups like Geek & Sundry were publishing Actual Play videos, Tabletop
(2012–2017), several years before their groundbreaking Critical Role (2015–
2018) series. It is important historically to recognize the role of board games
in the genre of Actual Play, and it could be argued that board games are
foundational to the current success of Actual Plays. Second, board game
Actual Plays can be extremely useful for teaching and learning, which is the
focus of this essay.

This graph indicates the type of game played in the actual play videos analyzed.

Almost all of the videos had a fun tone to them (92.5 percent). Those that
did not have a fun tone were more focused on teaching the mechanics of the
game. Though fun, 80 percent of the videos were also serious, which was
apparent through things like roleplay and competition. Tone was a key
component in drawing in the audience. All of the top videos used humor,
while the two videos with the least views (46 and 210 views) do not use
humor or have a fun tone. Based on this information, levity is a genre
convention of successful Actual Play videos. It should be no surprise to
game scholars than being serious and having a fun atmosphere are not
mutually exclusive. Actual Play videos seem to capitalize on this crossover
successfully.

The tone of actual play videos can vary, but levity would appear to be a genre convention of a
successful actual play video.

The most common setting was in a studio (45 percent), which suggests
that Actual Play videos are being invested in on a larger scale. Often the
studios were equipped with ­high-end gaming tables, numerous cameras, ­-
high-quality microphones, and other ­professional-level gear. The second
most common location was at home (25 percent), followed by being
streamed from multiple locations (17.5 percent). Of the videos analyzed,
17.5 percent had locations decorated in a style appropriate to the theme or
setting of the game. Most often these were D&D games where sessions took
place regularly, or they were professionally produced videos.
Having a decorated table was not counted as a location being decorated
according to the theme of the game. While many of the D&D and other
RPG games did have elaborately decorated tables, it would have been
impossible to calibrate that with board games that also cover the table in
themed items.

The settings of actual play videos are diverse with a majority performed within a professional
studio setting.

A deliberate attempt was made to find videos of varying length. This was
done in an effort to have data that represented all lengths of Actual Play
videos, not just marathon role playing (RP) sessions or quick board games.
Of the videos lasting over two hours (11), only two belong to board games
while the others are D&D or other RPG, suggesting that RPG streams are
generally longer than board game Actual Play videos. However, this data
may not represent the entire picture, as some games take multiple Actual
Play videos to complete. Most, if not all, D&D videos had multiple episodes
as well. Therefore, this data does not show the entire picture.
While actual play videos can be any length, the majority of them tend to stretch beyond the two
hour mark.

Fifty percent of the Actual Play videos analyzed had 5 or more presenters.
This included the game or dungeon master in the case of RPGs. 18 of the 19
of the videos with 5 or more presenters were Actual Plays of D&D or
another RPG. Only 1, or 5 percent, of the videos with 5 or more players was
a board game.
As actual play videos depict playthroughs of games, many include five or more presenters even if
those individuals are not playing an RPG.

The category of gender representation showed surprising results. Of the

Actual Play videos, 67.5 percent had a cast of more than one gender.1 Five
percent of the Actual Play videos had all female casts, while 27.5 percent had
all male casts. ­Forty-five percent of the ­all-male casts were for RPG games,
and 55 percent were for board games. One hundred percent of the ­all-female
videos were for RPGs.
The majority of the actual play videos analyzed included both male and female gamers.

Of the videos, 87.5 percent have a specific introduction segment, while

12.5 percent did not. Almost all of the videos with an introduction
introduced the players/announcers/gamers being featured (97.1 percent).
They also mostly introduced the game being played (82.4 percent), though
some of the videos analyzed took place in the middle of a series of videos
and thus announcers likely assumed the audience was familiar with the
game being played. The videos almost never discussed ­role-playing elements
(14.7 percent), suggesting that the rules about how to roleplay are either
loose, up to the individual, or implicitly understood. Most of the videos
(71.4 percent) were humorous in tone, with numerous jokes and laughing.
Forty percent of the introductions had members that introduced themselves
in the character they would be playing in the game. Viewer/Home player
addressed means that the speaker on the video is directly talking to the
home viewer.
Fifty percent of the introductions were 5 minutes or less, 26.5 percent
were between 5 and 15 minutes, and 23.5 percent were over 15 minutes.
There were some Actual Play videos that dedicated an entire “Episode Zero”
to introducing the world, rules, characters, etc. Therefore, these numbers are
not entirely accurate.

As a didactic tool, most actual play videos include some content introducing the viewer to the
game being played.

Game Play Specific Data

Seventy percent of the videos used roleplaying either heavily or
intermittently. This suggests that even while playing board games, role
playing one’s character is common. However, not surprisingly, 12 of the 13
games that used roleplaying rarely or not at all were board games (92
percent). The level of dedication to role playing one’s character varied
widely, even between players on the same video. Some players would dive
heavily into their role, adopting accents and only ever speaking as their
character. Some players would go between speaking as themselves or
speaking as their character. Some players continued to talk about their
characters in the third person while directing their actions (she does this, he
says that, etc.).
70 percent of the actual play videos analyzed incorporated role-playing, even if the game being
played was not an RPG.

Most of the Actual Play videos used humor, with 85 percent using it
heavily or intermittently. Of all the game play specific data analyzed, this was
the strongest category. While many jokes were told in the introduction and
conclusion, they also were present in the gameplay of even heavily ­role-
played games. Players would often alternate between being completely in
character and laughing about how serious they were taking the game.
The average number of views for videos that do not use humor at all is
17,099 whereas the average number of viewers for videos that use humor
heavily is 506,066. This suggests that viewers want and expect humor from
Actual Play videos. Videos that use humor heavily or intermittently (average
1,034,111) were much more successful that those that did not. There is a
5947 percent increase in the number of viewers from videos that used to
humor to those that used it intermittently or heavily.
 Humor would seem to be an integral part of actual play videos.

Surprisingly, very few of the videos directly addressed the audience,

which means speaking directly to the viewer. None of the videos heavily
addressed the audience, while 77.5 percent addressed the audience not at all
or rarely (usually in the introduction). This is a point of interest because
“How to Play” videos continually address the audience. Despite being used
by viewers to learn a game, there is little to no direct instruction given to the
audience.
Contrary to “How to Play” videos, actual play videos rarely address the audience directly.

Voice impression is another category that held some surprising data.

Forty percent of the videos analyzed had no use of voice impressions (i.e.,
speaking in a voice different than your own while roleplaying a character). ­-
Thirty-one percent of the videos that did not use voice impressions at all
were an RPG video such as D&D. The other 69 percent belonged to board
games. Videos that used voice impressions heavily or intermittently were
47.5 percent. Players often would speak in their character’s voice and then
do exposition or actions such as rolling the dice in their own voice. While
this data is interesting, it should be noted that some of the board game
Actual Play videos analyzed do not have characters, thus it is expected that
they would not do voice impressions. These numbers could skew drastically
depending on the type of game being played. However, it is an accurate
representation for D&D and other RPGs where players always have a
character they are playing.
Despite what we might see on very popular actual play livestreams (e.g., Critical Role), voice
impressions are not a requirement for actual play videos.

Narrative is a key category, particularly for RPG games like D&D. The
narrative of the game was discussed heavily or intermittently in 75 percent
of the videos. One hundred percent of the videos that do not discuss the
narrative at all were Actual Play of board games. As some board games have
little or no narrative, that is an expected number. In one of these cases, the
withholding of the narrative from the audience was part of the game. The
audience was made to figure out the game despite having no context. Thus,
not discussing the game narrative does not necessarily mean narrative is not
an important part of the game and the Actual Play video. That said, these
numbers suggest that viewers of Actual Play videos typically expect the
narrative to be discussed heavily or intermittently.
 There is a heavy emphasis on narrative in actual play videos.

The number of videos that discuss narrative fairly closely mimic the
number of videos that dive into character background. Videos that discuss
character background were 65.5 percent, while 32.5 percent discuss them
rarely or not at all. However, similar to narrative, there are sometimes
strategic reasons for withholding information about character backgrounds.
It can be a function of the game or done to provide the audience with a more
organic experience, letting a player’s character unfold through action instead
of exposition.
As mentioned above, the more professional groups making Actual Play
videos, such as Geek & Sundry, often do separate videos that introduce
characters. Even so, almost all RPG games started with at least a cursory
mention of character background, even if that only included information
such as name and class.
Similarly, many actual play videos emphasize character backgrounds in addition to the narrative
being played out.

The discussion of strategy decisions was one of the most crucial aspects of
this analysis. ­Seventy-five percent of videos have either heavy or intermittent
discussion of strategy decision. Players would often vocalize the various
choices in front of them, sometimes soliciting feedback but often just stating
the different options out loud. This ­out-loud thought process was one of the
most intriguing parts of the Actual Play videos. Often comments would
specifically mention moments where a player would vocalize about a
particularly difficult decision, showing that this strategy is engaging to the
audience. This category became one of the most important elements for how
Actual Play videos teach viewers.
Discussing strategy and decision-making seems to be another integral aspect of actual play
videos.

Only 62.5 percent of the videos had a formal conclusion. Often the
dungeon master would simply declare the game over and the video would
end. Videos that had conclusion with purely serious conclusions were 76.9
percent. This was particularly the case in the more professionally recorded
videos, as there was often a long concluding segment that mentioned the
players’ YouTube channels, sponsors, and where to watch future streams or
videos. Several of the videos ended on a “break,” and the next video in the
series had the conclusion. Therefore, these numbers are not necessarily
representative of whether or not Actual Play videos typically have
concluding segments.
As many actual play videos feature narratives that carry across multiple episodes, a concluding
segment does not seem to be a requirement.

Other Data
The number of viewers for the videos ranged from 46 to over 10,000,000.
The average of all the videos was 805,105. The oldest viewed video was
uploaded on 10/7/2011 and the most recent was 5/18/2019. This suggests
that Actual Play videos are far from a new, unknown concept. They have an
enormous and engaged audience. Many of the cast members, such as Matt
Mercer or Felicia Day, have a cult following. Two of the analyzed videos
were rebroadcasts of podcasts. While searching forums for favorite and
popular Actual Play videos, it became apparent that podcasts are a favored
way to consume Actual Play; this is mostly the case for D&D and other
RPGs.
Videos continuously recorded (this includes videos with an animated or ­-
pre-recorded introduction or outro) were 67.5 percent, while 32.5 percent
had actual edited gameplay. The most common screen positioning for
players was a distant view that showed all games in one shot (57.5 percent of
videos). Videos used a split screen to feature multiple players or other data at
once were 27.5 percent.
 One failed category of data collection was genre. Genre here is meant to
mean the category of game being played, such as strategy, eurogame, party
game, and so on. The author anticipated many of the videos would discuss
genre conventions, particularly for board game Actual Play videos. However,
this was not the case. 62.5 percent of the videos did not discuss genre at all,
and 30 percent of them discussed it rarely, such as one mention in the
introduction. This may be because the players assume the audience is aware
of conventions, or that they themselves are not familiar with the idea of
genre conventions. Or perhaps talking about genre is not seen as
entertaining or effective instruction and thus it is purposefully not talked
about.
Another category of failed data collection was about comments. Only 1 of
the 40 videos (2.6 percent) had comments that specifically mention learning
from the video. While not all comments were read, the top 100 comments
on every video were analyzed. The video that did have multiple comments
mentioning learning was not designed specifically to teach players how to
play the game, which was D&D in this case. However, the video, called
“(D&D5E) Beginners Play D&D: Episode 1” had a cast that had not played
before. Many commenters thanked the producers for creating such an
effective teaching tool (the author’s words, not the commenters).

Anecdata
One of the categories not accounted for on the analysis sheet but that
could have yielded interesting data was the number of crossover guests for
different RPGs. Many times a D&D or other RPG party would consist
entirely of other YouTubers, streamers, or gaming personalities. Just as
interesting, and just as frequent, was the number of times a player was
included who had never played the game at hand. That player’s interactions
because some of the most useful, and wholly unintentional, “teaching
moments” of the Actual Play videos.
The number of videos that had players who never played the game before
was also a surprise and also contributed to the learning that happens
through Actual Play videos. While this data was not recorded, anecdotally
around 80 percent of the videos analyzed had at least one player who had
never played the game before. This allowed other members or the game
master to teach the audience through teaching the new player how to play.
A point of missed data collection is the amount of time spent discussing
strategy decisions v. other things like narrative and character backgrounds.
Anecdotally, vocalizing about how and why a player is making a certain
decision is a significant part of the Actual Play videos. This may be
surprising to find, as one would typically expect Actual Play videos like
D&D to focus more on story. While numbers were not collected to
determine this, the impression the author got from the videos is that more
time is spent discussing decisions than anything else Actual Play videos.

Discussion
The main research question of this essay is this: how are viewers using
Actual Play videos as instruments of learning? The data presented above
show three promising areas to be studied in future research:
1. Actual Play videos are effective instructional tools because the
presenters verbalize strategy decisions
2. Actual Play videos consistently use humor to make teachable
moments fun
3. Actual Play videos often do not draw attention to the learning that
is taking place
S­ eventy-five percent of the videos analyzed had players that verbalized
their decision making heavily or intermittently. This significantly
contributed to the learning that could take place. The average number of
viewers for videos where players heavily or intermittently discuss their
strategic decision making is 996,322, while the average number of viewers
for videos that either rarely or never discussed strategic decisions is
significantly lower at 231,454. At the very least, this suggests that the Actual
Play videos where players verbalize their decisions is more entertaining.
However, it also can be an effective learning tool.
“Humor” and “fun” consistently show up in the data as the strongest
category across the most videos. The two videos that do not use humor at all
have the two lowest number of views. This suggests that humor and having a
fun atmosphere is a crucial part of making Actual Play videos successful.
Furthermore, as Actual Play videos are analyzed as instruments of learning,
it suggests that levity is key in having a successful atmosphere of learning.
Few of the videos attempt to directly teach the audience how to play the
game. Instead, it is assumed that the learning will take place through
observation. Many of the videos have players who have never played before,
and the game masters typically point out that the audience can learn the
game along with the player. While learning through demonstration (i.e.,
watching players verbalize as they think through a decision) happens in
almost all of the videos analyzed, much of the learning happens by watching
new players struggle with the rules. This is a kind of indirect learning that
has promising implications for teachers and developers.

What Gamers Can Learn

There may be no concrete answer to what gamers are learning when they
watch Actual Play videos. However, after watching and analyzing over 80
hours of Actual Play videos, a pattern starts to emerge. This pattern suggests
that there are strong genre conventions, speech and behavior conventions,
and gaming conventions that exist, if not in board and tabletop gaming
culture as a whole, at the very least in Actual Play videos. Thus, some of the
things gamers may learn from watching actual play videos:
1. The gaming world is diverse. Contrary to what may be expected, 67.5
percent of videos included some obvious gender diversity, many times with
women outnumbering men, particularly in D&D videos. Five percent of the
videos had an ­all-female cast, while 27.5 percent had an ­all-male cast. Of
course, assigning gender on sight is problematic for many reasons, not the
least of which is that it is inaccurate. Gender and race were both coded with
this in mind, as race is not always visible either. Fifteen percent of videos
had some obvious racial diversity. Minority visibility is important in the
gaming realm, and it is important to hold groups accountable for the
diversity, or lack of diversity, they choose to put on screen. That said, these
numbers are problematically based on the inaccurate visual assumptions of
what race and gender look like.
Nevertheless, while these numbers can seem promising, they suggest that
those publishing Actual Play videos need to work diligently to incorporate a
diverse cast. Videos were chosen mostly based on popularity, date posted,
and type of game. No attempt was made to gather videos that were
representative of certain groups. While the diversity of gamers themselves is
more well known, the spokespeople, designers, and characters of the games
have often been overwhelming white and male. Actual Play videos can
casually sidestep this norm, instead making it normal to have a diverse
group of gamers on the screen. From this, viewers and gamers can
peripherally learn what tabletop gamers look like, sound like, and act like.
While beyond the scope of this project, including casts that can represent
differently abled gamers, varying ages, and so on is also something to strive
toward.
2. How to think like a gamer. Verbalizing strategy decisions is one of the
three primary ways Actual Play videos teach. While this obviously helps the
gamer play the game being showcased more effectively, it has another
benefit: it shows viewers how gamers think. Being good at tabletop games
takes years of experience and practice. Actual Play videos give viewers a
glimpse into the mindset of a seasoned tabletop gamer. This is especially
evident in the D&D Actual Play videos. Playing a rich game like D&D for
the first time is overwhelming. The rules are immense, and being able to
productively participate in moving the storyline forward takes practice.
Watching Actual Play D&D videos act like a shortcut, teaching viewers the
norms and nuances of playing that can only otherwise come from years of
gaming.
There is a playful seriousness that gamers use to attack problems in Actual
Play videos. As shown by the data, 85 percent of these videos use humor
heavily or intermittently throughout the videos, and many players use
humor while simultaneously operating at a very high level of critical
thinking and decision making.

What Teachers Can Learn

­ ink-aloud protocols have been used for years by researchers in areas
Th
such as Psychology, Writing, Technical Communication, and Usability
Studies (Krahmer and Ummelen, 2004; Cooke, 2010; Ericsson and Simon,
1998). It is used as a method of collecting data, usually related to how people
come to certain decisions. While ­think-aloud protocols are often used to
analyze different teaching and learning methods, they are not often thought
of as a teaching and learning strategy.
 This type of teaching is often called “showing” versus “doing” or
“apprenticeship learning,” and it has some scholarly traction. For example,
Ho et. al. (2016) found that teaching by showing is actually more efficient
than teaching through abstract concepts (p. 2–3). Actual Play videos utilize
this method of teaching whether intentional or unintentional. Many videos
had new players alongside seasoned players, which allowed the viewer to
learn along with the people on screen. Instructors can and should keep this
in mind, particularly because it is more entertaining. The videos that directly
attempted to teach the viewer how to play the game had far fewer views than
those that let the viewer learn organically through observation.
This is particularly true in board game Actual Play videos. ­Eighty-six
percent of the board game Actual Plays analyzed showed the viewer how to
set up the game as part of their Actual Play video. The ­on-screen players talk
through the setup and the context of the game as they set up, often
mentioning times when they set something up incorrectly or misunderstood
a rule and had to look it up. This feels like a natural part of the board game
Actual Play videos, suggesting that in that type of Actual Play video,
apprenticeship learning, or showing how to do something, is purposefully
utilized and important.

What Designers Can Learn

In their proposed extension of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM),
Lee and Lehto (2013) add “user satisfaction” to the ­well-known “perceived
usefulness” and “perceived ease of use” dichotomy that users face when
deciding whether or not to accept a new technology. They find that “User
satisfaction is considered an important factor affecting the success of
learning systems” (195). The results of this study support this addition in the
realm of learning board and tabletop games.
What this means for game designers is that Actual Play videos may be the
most effective, efficient, and fun way of learning to play a new game. The
tomes that accompany most board games may have a high perceived
usefulness, a medium perceived ease of use, but they most likely also have a
low user satisfaction score; in other words, game manuals are not fun or
entertaining and as such are not the most effective way to teach someone
how to play a game. Likewise, how to play videos may be easy and useful,
but they usually are not entertaining. The three main findings from this
study (verbalizing strategy decisions, using humor, and not drawing
attention to the learning taking place) are missing from most ­how-to videos.
These findings suggest that it would serve designers and companies to
invest in Actual Play videos. Few of the videos studied for this project had
sponsors, and those that did had markedly better graphics, editing, intro
videos, camera angles, ­on-camera personalities, and so on. With many
Actual Play videos surpassing 1 million views, the time may be right for
sponsorship and advertisement. The global board game market is currently
making around $8 billion, and this is projected to continue growing at a rate
of 9 percent (Research and Markets, 2018). With investment from the
industry, Actual Play videos could more effectively help the player base grow
and learn.

Conclusion
The data presented here dives into the content of Actual Play videos.
Analysis shows the tactics used by Actual Play videos are often used
consistently and effectively to teach viewers and future players. Teachers can
learn from this and make their lessons more engaging, dynamic, and
effective by incorporating elements like humor, utilizing the apprenticeship
model, and allowing learning to happen organically. Gamers learn that the
gaming world is diverse and how new or seasoned gamers think and
approach different problems. Game designers and companies can improve
the reception of their games by investing in Actual Play videos as a tool to
teach players how to play their games.

Notes
1. See discussion section for a note on assessing gender.

References
Clifton, A., & Mann, C. (2011). Can YouTube enhance student nurse learning? Nurse Education
Today, 31(4), 311–313.
Cooke, Lynn. (2010). Assessing concurrent ­think-aloud protocol as a usability test method: A
technical communication approach. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 53(3), 202–
214.
Ericsson, K.A., & Simon, H.A. (1998). How to study thinking in everyday life: Contrasting ­think-
aloud protocols with descriptions and explanations of thinking. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 5(3),
178–186.
Finseth, C. (2018). Teach like a gamer: Adapting the instructional design of digital ­role-playing games.
McFarland.
Gee, J.P. (2003). What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. Computer in
Entertainment, 1(1), 20–24.
_____. (2007). What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. St. Martin’s Press.
Hall, C. (2018). “Actual Play” RPG experiences like Critical Role, Adventure Zone are having a
moment. Polygon. Retrieved from https://www.polygon.com/2018/7/9/17549808/­actual-play-
critical-role-adventure-zone-kickstarter-graphic-novel.
Ho, M., Littman, M., MacGlashan, J., Cushman, F., & Austerweil, J. (2016). Showing versus doing:
Teaching by demonstration. 30th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems. Barcelona,
Spain.
­Hsiu-Sen, C., &. Hziao, K. (2015). YouTube stickiness: The needs, personal, and environmental
perspective. Internet Research, 25(1), 85–106.
Kousha, K., Thelwall, M., & Abdoli, M. (2012). The role of online videos in research communication:
A content analysis of YouTube videos cited in academic publications. Journal of the American Society
for Information Science and Technology, 63(9), 1710–1727.
Krahmer, E., & Ummelen N. (2004). Thinking about thinking aloud: A comparison of two verbal
protocols for usability testing. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 47,2, 105–117.
Lee, D., & Lehto, M. (2013). User acceptance of YouTube for procedural learning: An extension of the
technology acceptance model. Computers & Education, 61, 193–208.
Orús, C., Barlés, M., Belanche, D., Casaló, L. Fraj, E, & Gurrea, R. (2016). The effects of ­learner-
generated videos for YouTube on learning outcomes and satisfaction. Computers & Education, 95,
254–269.
Prensky, M. (2007). Don’t bother me, mom, i’m learning! How computer and video games are preparing
your kids for 21st century success and how you can help. Paragon House.
Research and Markets. (2018). $12 Billion dollar board game market—Global outlook and forecast
2018–2023. Retrieved from https://www.globenewswire.com/­news-
release/2018/08/07/1548201/0/en/­12-Billion-Board-Games-Market-Global-Outlook-and-Forecast-
2018–2023.html.
Squire, K. Video games and education: Designing learning systems for an interactive age. Educational
Technology, 48(2), 17–26.

OceanofPDF.com
 Conclusion
Shelly Jones

The previous nine essays demonstrate that the concept and practice of
actual play is still evolving as this medium develops. Importantly, it should
be emphasized that these essays are merely a starting point of scholarship on
actual play. There is much more to analyze about this burgeoning medium as
creators, fans, and ­aca-gamers1 alike try and test its boundaries. In
particular, the ­Covid-19 pandemic has already caused a shift in how actual
play is performed (e.g., virtual gaming as opposed to ­in-person sessions)
and perhaps how it is consumed.2
In summation, as the essays of this book demonstrate, actual play
ultimately involves:
1. Folks (of any background and ability/familiarity with gaming)
playing an RPG (either physically together or remotely) and broadcasting
that play session in some way (e.g., podcast, livestream)3
2. Consumption of that media as a commodity by an audience thereby
transforming play into performance
3. Sharing or spreading this media through participatory culture as
fans interact with the content in some way
Emphasizing the significance of actual play from a design perspective, in
his essay Torner breaks down the concept of actual play from its heuristic
origins. Through the actual play reports on the Forge forum, contributors
examined what worked in a game session and what didn’t, teasing out
designs for future playthroughs. This early form of actual play may be a far
cry from the ­performance-based actual plays the majority of the essays in
this book study, but even in this early format, there is still an emphasis on
sharing private game session details in a (semi-)public sphere with the
purpose of others consuming that media for some larger purpose. Blau’s
view that actual play constitutes a new medium reiterates Torner’s
assessment that actual play is rooted in introspection. After all, her essay
examines the “dynamics of this transition by examining an interesting
period of time in which artists, actors, and audiences are grappling with
what works and what doesn’t in this new medium” (p. 46). While early
experiments in actual play focused on reports and documentation of play in
an effort to focus on game design, the performative actual play is a space in
which players and fans alike still struggle to define what works best in this
new medium. As Marsden and Mason point out, “actual play opens up
further participatory frameworks and thus build on previous established
roles—moving them from roles of ‘play’ to roles of ‘performance’ in front of
audience members” (p. 270). This shift from play to performance is the crux
in understanding the phenomenon of actual play and actual play as a
medium.
Still, even as the contributing authors and I wrote this book, the views on
actual play shifted and morphed, as evidenced by RPG designer Orion D.
Black’s twitter thread from August 9, 2020, in which they write, “if trpg
wants to expand outside of its small fan/consumer base, you’ve got to stop
making Actual Plays and start making SHOWS.” Black emphasizes the need
for a format that is easily consumable (e.g., shorter episodes) and edited to
focus more on the narrative rather than the downtime of play (e.g., chitchat,
looking up rules, extensive planning sessions). These observations align with
Blau’s insights regarding actual play adhering to techniques of the past that
ultimately result in texts that are often “awkward and sometimes unpalatable
entertainment” (p. 45). But Black would propose that, if creators “want to
expand outward” beyond their niche fandoms, then they should return to
and follow a more traditional format that involves ­post-production
processing, editing down a livestream, and potentially even scripting their
material rather than relying solely on improvisation. For Black, the problem
with the current iteration of actual play isn’t the quality of the content, but
the ease of the presentation of that content, an issue that Robyn Hope
explores in her essay on the framing and flow of actual play. Transforming
someone else’s play into an entertaining performance is an integral challenge
for actual play media—one that, as Franklin discusses, can be mitigated
through a blurring of the boundaries between observer and participant as
audiences affect the ludonarrativity of actual play. Similarly, Dandrow’s
exploration of fan agency and Jones’s analysis of ­fan-created archives
reiterate how the sharing and spreading of digital content can alter a
fandom’s communal practices as well as how they define play, performance,
and success.
As with any longer academic project, much has developed in the months
since we began our work and the landscape of actual play will continue to
transform as the medium comes into its own. It is clear, as van Os’s brilliant
observations indicate, there is a need for, and indeed a continued cry for
from fans, actual play media that embraces diversity and reflects the
inherent diversity of the fandom and players. The release of a commitment
to diversity statement by Wizards of the Coast in June 2020 suggests the
mainstream corporation’s attempt at addressing discrimination in the
content of their RPG materials. Yet, this statement was met with decries of
mere lip service, particularly after former WotC employee, Orion Black,
excoriated the company on Twitter for their exploitative treatment of Black
designers. For actual play to be successful, the content creators must
encourage participation from those gamers and designers who have long
been relegated to the margins of the RPG community. One way actual play
media creators can ensure this inclusivity is by being cognizant of and
respectful to their players and their audiences. Player comfort and safety are
not unique concerns to actual play specifically, as these aspects of healthy
gameplay that should be taken into consideration during any session,
broadcast or not.4 However, given the public nature of actual play as content
for others to consume, both as entertainment and as didactic tools, as
argued by Layne, respect and sensitivity for player and viewer safety should
be a priority for anyone running a ­role-playing game. The recent cancelation
of Far Verona due, in part, due to the lack of safety measures for the players
by GM Adam Koebel, ­co-creator of the Dungeon World RPG, reiterates the
crucial need for transparency and respect in collaborative storytelling,
regardless of whether this play is at a private table or performed on a
livestream for the world to consume.
In closing, I would like to reiterate the continued need for additional
research and express the hope that the essays here can serve as inspiration
for future explorations. The essays included in this book were limited almost
exclusively to actual play media that utilized the ­role-playing game
Dungeons & Dragons. This parameter was not a conscious or concerted
effort, but rather the ultimate results of an open call for contributions. As the
oldest established ­role-playing game, it is unsurprising that the majority of
the received research concerned media surrounding D&D. However, further
analysis that takes into consideration the wide breadth of indie ­role-playing
games and alternative systems of play would greatly benefit the current
scholarship.
Notes
1. An homage to Henry Jenkins’s ­aca-fans (academic fans), I consider myself an ­aca-gamer.
2. Anecdotally, I have seen many tweets bemoaning the fact that, with the pandemic, folks no longer
consume podcasts as regularly because they would typically listen on their commutes to work.
Similarly, with an increase in childcare, homeschooling, and other responsibilities, some folks have
tweeted that they cannot commit to watching three- to ­six-hour episodes.
3. In a first draft of this conclusion, I had written that actual play involved “folks sitting around a
table playing an RPG and broadcasting that in some way.” ­Post-pandemic me shudders at this naivete
and instinctively reaches for the Purell.
4. See Torner (2013) and Brown (2018) for more on the importance of safety in RPGs.

References
Brown, M. (2018, June 3). ­Post-play activities for larp: Methods and challenges. Analog Game Studies.
Retrieved from http://analoggamestudies.org/2018/06/­post-play-activities-­for-larp-methods-and-
challenges/.
DungeonCommandr. (2020, July 4). my statement. [TwitLonger]. Retrieved from
https://archive.fo/VdjpS.
DungeonCommandr. (2020, August 9). I’ve made this thread a few times over the years. If trpg wants
to expand outside of its small fan/consumer base, you’ve got to stop making Actual Plays and start
making SHOWS. Let’s talk about it. [Tweet]. Retrieved from
https://twitter.com/dungeoncommandr/status/1292488625876111365?s=21%20#####%
20end%20transmission%20#####.
Hall, C. (2020, April 6). ­Role-playing YouTube series canceled after livestreaming sexual assault
scenario. Polygon. Retrieved from https://www.polygon.com/2020/4/6/21207309/rollplay -­far-
verona-sexual-assault-lets-play-season-2-canceled.
Torner, E. (2013). Transparency and safety in roleplaying games. In S.L Bowman & A. Vanek (Eds.),
WyrdCon Companion Book 2013 (pp. 14–17), WyrdCon.

OceanofPDF.com
 About the Contributors
Julia J.C. Blau is an assistant professor of psychology at Central Connecticut State University. She
earned her doctorate in ecological psychology with a focus on perception, action, and cognition from
the University of Connecticut. Her research focuses on the fractality of event perception and she is an
avid ­role-playing and tabletop gamer.
Christine Dandrow earned an MA in communication from the University of Hartford. Her master’s
thesis was on how TTRPG players understand/make sense of the character creation process. She is a
Ph.D. student in media & communication at Temple University, where she does research at the
intersection of (analog) game studies, fan studies, and memory studies.
Anthony David Franklin received a master’s degree in literature from the University of Toledo. His ­-
post-graduation academic pursuits have included literature, composition and rhetoric, and the
intersection of American popular culture. Within these fields, he often pursues topics of ethnic
representation, analyses of cultural trends and norms, and implementation of pedagogical and literary
practices. He is a lecturer of English at Pennsylvania State University.
Robyn Hope is a Ph.D. student in NCSU’s Communications, Rhetoric, and Digital Media program.
She has a broad research interest in digital culture, devoting special attention to actual play, fan
communities, digital games, and queer gameplay. Under the mentorship of Mia Consalvo at
Concordia University, she completed her master’s thesis, Play, Performance, and Participation:
Boundary Negotiation on Critical Role, from which her essay in this collection is adapted.
Shelly Jones is an associate professor of English at SUNY Delhi, where she teaches classes in
mythology, folklore, literature, and writing. She received a Ph.D. in comparative literature from SUNY
Binghamton. Her research examines analog, digital, and ­role-playing games through the lens of
intersectional feminism and disability studies.
Alex Layne is an associate professor at Metropolitan State University in the Department of Technical
Communication and Interaction Design. She teaches in the Game Studies and Technical
Communication programs, and she focuses on language at the intersection of technology, writing,
and culture. She is the ­co-director of Metro State’s Center for Game Design and New Media Studies.
Mariah E. Marsden is a Ph.D. student at Ohio State University, where she studies folklore and the
dynamics of vernacular storytelling. Her work explores the ways in which creative power can be
shared between storytelling participants through complex and ritualized exchanges, affirmations, and
resistance. She also analyzes discourses of place, ranging from the rural region of the Missouri Ozarks
to the imagined geography of tabletop gaming spaces.
Kelsey Paige Mason is a Ph.D. student at Ohio State University. Her interests lie in the consumption
and production of ­19th-century utopian/dystopian literature. She also analyzes archival materials
from utopian communities and state institutions. Her chapter, “A Lifetime Sowing the Blues: The
Diary of Lucius Clark Smith, 1834–1915,” appeared in Diary as Literature (Hooks, ed., 2019).
Evan Torner (Ph.D., UMass Amherst) is assistant professor of German studies at the University of
Cincinnati, where he also serves as the undergraduate director of German studies and the director of
the UC Game Lab. He is a ­co-founder and editor of Analog Game Studies and has published numerous
special journal issues and ­co-edited volumes, including Immersive Gameplay (2012) with William J.
White, as well as more than 40 articles and book chapters.
G.L. van Os has a research master’s degree from Leiden University in the Netherlands. They have
written two dissertations on Arthurian adaptations, and remain interested in Arthuriana in popular
culture. Other research interests include alternative storytelling, such as actual play or interactive
storytelling games. Within these interests their focus tends to be on the topic of diversity.

OceanofPDF.com
 Index of Terms
Acaba, Orion; see also Critical Role
Accessibility
Acquisitions Incorporated; campaign book; see also Penny Arcade
Acquisitions Incorporated: The “C” Team
The Adventure Zone; Amnesty arc; Balance arc; Commitment arc; Dust arc; Graduation arc; graphic
novel
The The Adventure Zone Zone (TTAZZ)
Air Ashari; see also Critical Role
Analog Game Studies
Ank’harel; see also Critical Role
Apocalypse World
Archive
Archive of Our Own
Arkan; see also Manganiello, Joe
audience
Bailey, Laura; see also Critical Role
Baker, Vincent
Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus
Beestinger, Rosie; see also Acquisitions Incorporated: The “C”Team
The Big Bang Theory
Black, Orion D.
Blades in the Dark
board games
Bombarded
Booth, Paul
Boss, Emily Care
Breaking the Ice
Brenatto, Veth; see also Critical Role
Bryant, Latia
Bryce; see also Critical Role
bullying; see also hazing
Burch, Ashly
Burnsides, Magnus; see also The Adventure Zone
Burton, Mica
Bury Your Gays trope
Call of Chulhu
camera framing
canon
capitalism
censorship
Cerkonos; see also Critical Role
Charterstone
Chesney, Kenny
City of Brass; see also Critical Role
Clay, Caduceus; see also Critical Role
Colbert, Stephen
Colville, Matthew
coming out story
commodification
Consalvo, Mia
convergence culture
cosplay
Critical Role; art; Critical Recap; Critical Role Tal’Dorei Campaign Setting; Critical Role Transcripts;
Critical Role Translate; Critical Role wiki; CritRoleStats; The Legend of Vox Machina animated series
Critters; see also fandom
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly see flow
Curse of Strahd
Czege, Paul
D&D see Dungeons & Dragons
D&D Live 2019
D&D Live 2020: Roll with Advantage
D&D Presents
D20 Dames
D20 Live
D’Amato, James
Dames and Dragons
Dancer, Gandy; see also The Adventure Zone
Dark and Dicey
Darrington, Taryon; see also Critical Role
Davenport; see also The Adventure Zone
Day, Felicia
Deilin; see also Critical Role
DePass, Tanya
De Rolo, Percy; see also Critical Role
Diana Jones Award for Excellence in Gaming
Dice, Camera, Action
DiceStormers
Dimension 20
disability representation
diversity; see also disability representation; gender representation; LGBTQ+ representation; racial
representation
Dogs in the Vineyard
Dolan; see also Critical Role
Dragon Friends
Dragonlance
Dran, Propha; see also Acquisitions Incorporated: The “C”Team
Dread
Drow’b, K’thriss; see also Acquisitions Incorporated: The “C”Team
Dungeon Dome
Dungeon Drunks
Dungeon World
Dungeons & Daddies
Dungeons & Dragons; D&D Beyond app
Dwarven Forge
education see learning
Edwards, Ron
826LA
Ellingboe, Julia
Encounter Party!
Encounter Roleplay
The End of Time and Other Bothers
Esports
Exandria; see also Critical Role
fan art
fan fiction
Fandible
fandom; agency; one-sided mirror; toxicity
Fangbattle, Carey and Killian; see also The Adventure Zone
Fantasy AGE RPG
Fantasy Costco; see also The Adventure Zone
Far Verona
FATE RPG system
Feast of Legends
Fiasco
Fine, Gary Alan
Firefly
A Fist Full of Dice
Fjord; see also Critical Role
Flow
Force Grey
The Forge
frame analysis
Friends
FunkoPop!

Gadsworth, Tyriok; see also Critical Role

Game of Thrones
Gamerati podcast
Games Night
Games on Demand
Gamma World
The Gauntlet
Geek and Sundry; see also Critical Role
GenCon
gender representation
Ghostpuncher Corps
Gilmore, Shaun; see also Critical Role
Girls, Guts, Glory
Glass Cannon
Godsfall
Goffman, Irving see frame analysis
Green Ronin publishing
Greetings Adventurers
Grouling Cover, Jennifer
Guy-Blache, Alice

Happy Jacks RPG

Haque, Masood
Hardwick, Chris
Harlem Unbound
HarmonQuest
hazing
Healy, Ed
Heart Beats
Heroes of the Vale
High Rollers
Highchurch, Merle; see also The Adventure Zone
Hitchcock, Alfred
Holkins, Jerry; see also Acquisitions Incorporated; Penny Arcade
Honey Heist
The Howard Stern Show
Huizinga, Johan see magic circle
Hurley; see also The Adventure Zone
Hyper RPG
Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frost Maiden
In a Wicked Age
Jackson, Shareef
Jaffe, Taliesin; see also Critical Role
Jank Cast podcast
Jenkins, Henry
Johnson, Ashley; see also Critical Role
Join the Party
Jones, Nolan; see also Roll
Keyleth; see also Critical Role
Kickstarter
Kima of Vord; see also Critical Role
Kitkowski, Andy
Koebel, Adam
Kraghammer; see also Critical Role
Krahulik, Mike; see also Acquisitions Incorporated; Penny Arcade
Kravitz; see also The Adventure Zone
Kurz, Scott
Kynan; see also Critical Role
Lacan, Jacques
LARP
Lavorre, Marion; see also Critical Role
Lawrence; see also Critical Role
League of Legends
learning
Lehman, Ben
Let’s Plays
LGBTQ+ representation
Lionett, Beauregard; see also Critical Role
Little, Aubrey; see also The Adventure Zone
Lost
Lucretia; see also The Adventure Zone
Lup; see also The Adventure Zone
Lutier, Brahma; see also Acquisitions Incorporated: The “C”Team
Lutrell, Erica
Mackay, Daniel
Magic Circle
Manganiello, Joe
Marquet; see also Critical Role
Masks
Maximum Fun; see also The Adventure Zone
Maze Arcana
McDonald, Angus; see also The Adventure Zone
McElroy, Clint; see also The Adventure Zone
McElroy, Griffin; see also The Adventure Zone
McElroy, Justin; see also The Adventure Zone
McElroy, Travis; see also The Adventure Zone
Mearls, Mike
medium
Mercer, Matt; see also Critical Role
Mighty Nein; see also Critical Role
miniatures
Missclicks
Monster of the Week
Monsterhearts
Montano, Sumalee
Montola, Markus
Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes
Mulligan, Brennan Lee
Murphy, Brian
Murphy, Kat
My Brother, My Brother, and Me; see also The Adventure Zone
My Life with Master
Nadiya; see also The Adventure Zone
narrative
NeoScum
Nerd Poker
Nixon, Clinton R.
non-player character (NPC)
Not Another D&D Podcast
Nott the Brave; see also Critical Role
Nwadiwe, Ify
Nydoorin, Yasha; see also Critical Role
O’Brien, Liam; see also Critical Role
One Last Job
One Shot Podcast
Origins convention
Ostertag, Molly

Paranoid
parasociality
participatory culture
Pathfinder
PAX; see also Penny Arcade
Payton, Khary
Penny Arcade; see also Acquisitions Incorporated
performance
Perkins, Chris
Phoenix, Satine
play
player failure
Plot Armor
Polaris
Posehn, Brian
racial representation
Rainer; see also The Adventure Zone
Ravnica
Ray, Marisha; see also Critical Role
reddit.com
Riegel, Sam; see also Critical Role
Ripley, Anna; see also Critical Role
Rise of Tiamat
Rivals of Waterdeep
Roll20
The Rook and the Raven
RPG.net
Running the Game
Ruttenberg, Ruty
Ryuutama RPG
Sa Ord, J’mon; see also Critical Role
Satanic Panic
Schalleger, René Reinhold
Shadow Council; see also Acquisitions Incorporated: The “C”Team
The Shadow of Yesterday
Shadowrun
Shakäste; see also Critical Role
Shakespeare, William
Shale; see also Critical Role
Shauna; see also Critical Role
Shim, Jeeyon
Shorthalt, Scanlan; see also Critical Role
Shut Up & Sit Down
Skiffback, Orly; see also Critical Role
Sloane; see also The Adventure Zone
Sorcerer
Spectacle
Star Trek
Steal Away Jordan
Stennis, Brandon
Stevenson, Noelle
Storm, T.J.
Storm King’s Thunder
Stormwind, Tiberius; see also Critical Role
Story Games
Stranger Things
Stream of Annihilation
Stream of Many Eyes
Strongjaw, Grog; see also Critical Role
Taako; see also The Adventure Zone
Table Titans
Tabletop
Tabletop BellHop
Tales from the Loop
Talks Machina; see also Critical Role
Taylor, T.L.
teaching see learning
Tealeaf, Mollymauk; see also Critical Role
Ten Candles
Theogony of Kairos
13th Age
Thrym, Horris; see also Critical Role
Titansgrave
Tolkien, J.R.R.
Tomb of Annihilation
Trickfoot, Pike; see also Critical Role
Trish (the Dish); see also Critical Role
20 Sided Stories
Twitch
Twitter
200-Word RPG Challenge
Urban Shadows
Van Norman, Ivan
Vax; see also Critical Role
Very Random Encounters
Vex; see also Critical Role
Vox Machina; see also Critical Role
Vysoren, Alura; see also Critical Role
Walters, B. Dave
Warhammer
Watch It Played
Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage
Wheaton, Wil
White Knights
Whitestone; see also Critical Role
whitewashing
Widogast, Caleb; see also Critical Role
Wikis
Willingham, Travis; see also Critical Role
Wizards of the Coast; see also Dungeons & Dragons
Woll, Deborah Ann
WoW (World of Warcraft)
Wyrmwood
You Meet in a Tavern
YouTube
Zorth; see also Critical Role

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