Move forward, never look back. With trends passing faster than ever and new tech coming out every day, everyone is always looking to find “the next big thing” no matter what industry they’re in. Why, then, does it feel like film and TV haven’t done anything new in a while? Streaming has changed our means of consumption, sure, but the art form itself hasn’t seen a major revolution like the addition of sound, colour, or CGI for quite some time now. I can respect that every director has stylistic quirks and there might be a new technique every so often, but the final product is still more or less the same: actors playing characters from a set narrative, resulting in a final product which the audience is expected to passively watch.
Or at least, that’s the way it was until recently. In the past few years, a new form of content has started to surface, though it hasn’t made its way fully into the mainstream yet : table-top role-playing game (TTRPG) liveplays. TTRPGs have their origin primarily in Dungeons & Dragons, a game originally developed in the 1970s, though the genre has evolved a lot since then. To play the game, a group of people get together, with one acting as the Dungeon Master (DM) or Game Master (GM) while the others act as players. The DM designs the world and helps guide the plot while the players create characters and play as them, making choices which determine the ultimate direction of the plot. At the same time, though, the outcomes of these choices depend on the roll of a die, meaning that not every decision will go as planned. TTRPG liveplays, then, are when this game session is broadcast to an audience.

It sounds fairly simple, but its basic concept hides three major fundamental breaks from traditional media forms that have made me and many others become obsessed with the genre : it changes the relationship between actors and their characters, it creates a new storytelling dynamic, and it breaks the boundary between the creators and the audience.
The relationship between actors and characters is one of the most noticeable differences between TTRPG livestreams and other forms of media. Normally, when an actor is hired to play a character, the story has already been written and the character already has a clear background and development arc. There might be some room for changes, but at the end of the day, the actor is hired because they fit the character design. In TTRPG liveplays, however, characters are designed by the players in collaboration with the GM. Instead of an actor having to fit a character, the character is made to be who and what the actor wants to portray. The character’s story, as well, is controlled in large part by the players as they decide what the character does, allowing them to fully embody their role. Because the actor effectively takes on the role of a writer as well and creates such a personal relationship with the story and character, the emotional impact of each success and failure becomes that much stronger. Not only for the player, of course - the audience, too, grows attached to the characters they’ve seen develop and come to life.

The fact that the players are active participants in the story creation also adds to the beauty of TTRPG liveplays’ storytelling, too. Because the stories are told collaboratively with input from both the GM and the players, not only does the audience get to see the creative process in real-time, but the players also get to bring their unique perspectives and themes to the story, ultimately creating a more robust and diverse plot. The fact that dice are used to determine the outcome of choices is an interesting element as well, introducing an element of fate to narratives that isn’t present in other genres. The dice don’t just prevent anyone from having too much power or control - they also mean crazy ideas work sometimes, resulting in a far more engaging story as even the creators don’t know where it might go next. Even without the collaborative nature of the stories, though, the lack of visuals in TTRPG liveplays means that the story is given enormous importance. As someone who loves good stories more than anything else, highlighting the plot above all else in this way is exactly what I look for and has given me a greater appreciation for masterful storytellers like Brennan Lee Mulligan and Matt Mercer.

As much as I enjoy the performances and stories, though, the most intriguing aspect of TTRPG liveplays as a genre is how they change the relationship between the audience and creator. There is the most basic form of this, as the creators are featured as much as their characters and stories are, allowing the audience to feel a stronger (if rather parasocial) relationship with them, but the gap between the creator and the audience is also bridged in far more innovative ways as well. On the one hand, the creators become their own audience as different characters and story elements are given screen time, meaning that a player or a DM watches how others move the story forward as much as if not more than they move the story forward themselves. On the other hand, the viewers, too, become creators in a way due to the lack of concrete narrative visuals. The genre forces the audience to imagine for themselves what they characters, locations, and actions look like, so they become part of the creative process, an “art director” of sorts, increasing their personal connection to the story. In fact, for some audience members, the story becomes so important to them that they create their own media based on it, most notably fan animations.

All told, TTRPG liveplays are a unique innovation in visual media, and their popularity is evidence of their great promise. While the improvisational style naturally lends itself to comedy, there have already been shows such as Dimension 20’s horror season, Neverafter, their murder mystery season, Mice & Murder, and Critical Role’s dark and serious Exandria Unlimited: Calamity which demonstrate liveplays’ potential in a variety of genres. Though liveplays may not be obligatorily visual in nature, their set design and player reactions make video the ideal format to consume them in. What really makes liveplays unique and inventive, however, is the way they reflect a more traditional form of storytelling, one that is off-the-cuff, creative, and deeply communal, like telling a story around a bonfire to a rapt crowd. In fact, one of the most important lessons that liveplays might teach us is that sometimes, when you want to move forward, looking back might be just what you need for inspiration.
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