Article by Christopher Cruz
It’s not just video games that dominate the digital airwaves on platforms like Twitch — there’s a huge contingent of viewers who yearn for the old days of pen and paper, with tabletop RPGs making a huge splash virtually in the last few years. In fact, once-niche games like Dungeons & Dragons (which turns 50 this year) have taken on new life in the age of livestreaming, and more popular than ever.
Leading the charge are “actual plays,” podcasts or web shows that feature groups of players creating narratives from their imaginations, without the aid of flashy video game visuals, and their popularity has led to a tabletop resurgence whose audience is now more inclusive and diverse. Spanning the genre mainstays, officially licensed extensions of existing franchises, and even homebrew titles people are making themselves, it’s one of the most unexpectedly engrossing ways to lose yourself online.
But how can watching folks roll dice and making up a story out of thin air be so engaging? Like anything online, it begins with the personalities. With known super geeks Vin Diesel, Joe Manganiello, and Wil Wheaton pushing their favorite hobbies in interviews and YouTube appearances for years, alongside the rise of content creators whose fans hang captive for hours on end, it was only a matter of time before tabletop games took hold of mainstream attention. Most groups in the space, like some of the ones featured below, are comprised of beloved figures of nerdom, from voice actors who dominate the anime and video spaces, to comedians who kill on socials, but what makes actual plays so addictive to watch boils down to what has always made them work. It’s about community.
For those who play, the appeal of games like Dungeons & Dragons has long been sitting down with a group of friends week after week just shooting the shit. It’s a shared experience, limited only by imagination, where people can work together (or against each other) to create worlds and stories that reflect their own desires. It’s a ritual. And nothing describes the rise of livestreaming itself than ritualistic viewing. Think of it as an ongoing audio book that’s written in real time, narrated by a handful of professional friends just having a good time. It’s all the joys of TTRPG without having to manage the rules…
There aren’t many, but Initiative Zero runs Palladium Rifts campaigns. It is a mashup of fantasy and cyberpunk elements in ways similar to Shadowrun, and in other ways very different from Shadowrun.
The Face of Evil - Episode 1. Check the comments for handy resources to play your own game.
darktemplar as Portland, a leyline walker
Golgotha R. as Sir Lucatus “Luke” Nevita, an Atlantean Cyber Knight
Taekcu as Senate the Mind Melter
Vahilo as Lex, the Dog Boy
So, you’re kind of stuck in this heavy magic area of Southwestern Ontario. From Toronto southward, it has a lot of ley lines but the areas that are pretty saturated with ley lines and Nexus points are Old Detroit and Windsor. Still, there’s enough in Laszlo to do great things there. They have universities of learning. It’s kind of a seat of knowledge and a while and untamed land. And there’s satellite communities around there, as well.
But that’s kind of where we are. We are at a post-apocalyptic setting, which means that we have what is now today, in our day and age, just, cleared farmland, for the most part. Matter of fact, when the settlers came in there, the Europeans during colonization, they basically burnt the forests. They say you could see the fires and the smoke from Southern Ontario across the Great Lakes in the United States, when they were “clearing” the land. It’s all regrown, though, so if you’re traveling between settlements you’re mostly going to be moving through forest. It was a forested area before it was cleared, and there will be places that are cleared for ranching and for farming, but the vast majority of the landscape is now just forest and in Southern Ontario, from Toronto going south, is what’s known as Carolinian Forest, so it’s a mixture of deciduous and coniferous trees, but for the most part it’s deciduous.
We’re going to be starting in the year 101 PA, which is post-apocalyptic, so it’s been 101 years since The Coalition has established itself and began to say that it’s the time when mankind rose up again from the ashes of the apocalypse. So it’s been about a hundred years and and it’s August, so we’re a little more than halfway through the year.