The design behind actual play podcasts like Critical Role

The act of growing up is the actual play. Or, as actress and producer Jennifer Kretchmer puts it, “Actual play is going through puberty, and we’re having to figure out how to adult.”

YouTube and Twitch have made streamed playtable games a recognizable form since the beginning of the 2010s. Search either platform for actual play tabletop shows these days, and you’ll quickly notice two things. One, there are a lot of shows to choose from — on one ordinary weekday afternoon, nearly 70 tabletop role-playing game sessions were streaming on Twitch, in a half-dozen languages and even more countries. While the story, language and stories can vary, they often have a similar vocabulary.

For the vast majority of these shows, you’ll see a lot of boxes arranged on screen: one for the Storyteller or Dungeon Master, two or more for the players, either separately (in remote shows) or in groups (in studio). A second box could display sponsor information, character art or battle maps. As producer DC Lasair says, “Faces are interesting to look at, so I want my overlays to show off as much of the talent as possible.” Grid-like overlays also allow space for interactive elements, sponsors, and branding. Josh Simons, community and content manager at tabletop service company Demiplane, says that such overlays are one of the first ways he can tell whether professional designers have been involved in a show’s design, though even shows with very small budgets often invest in them.

The inspiration for this signature look came from both practical necessity and inspiration from other TV shows. Actual play researcher Alex I. Chalk points to J.P. “itmeJP” McDaniel’s RollPlayThis was an esports-style visual of players sitting in boxes overtop of virtual tables. It also included cuts to characters stats. When Geek & Sundry prepared to launch a new in-studio experiment called Essential RoleThe layout removed the awkward parts of wide-angle lenses, multipurpose tables, cables and other clutter. It displayed all sides of the table simultaneously by cropping and organizing. The audience was able to experience the best moments of the show through the player reactions.

And while Essential Role — and its visual layout — came to dominate actual play, the look wasn’t a foregone conclusion. It was not a standard style from the beginning. In 2015 even, it was not a standard. Essential Role began to stream, Geek & Sundry was producing fullscreen, edited multi-camera shows like Wil Wheaton’s Titansgrave. Both styles were refined by the channel, which produced fullscreen programs like There are many Sagas of SundryAnd We’re Alive: FrontierSimultaneous-display Shows like Shield of Tomorrow, ForeverVerse, Callisto 6And LA Night. Simultaneous displays look great for shows that are run remotely. This contributed to their widespread acceptance.

These changes are visible in many different forms Acquisitions Incorporated, Penny Arcade’s collaboration with Wizards of the Coast. After many years of being a play podcast, AcqIncSince 2010, PAX began to record its PAX Live Shows. Over time these shows became more complex, with two cameras being used in the hotel ballroom becoming a multi-camera set up that included costumed PAX Prime performers in 2012. Kris Straub even created an animated recap. Following was an experiment with editing actual play prerecorded.The Series on Artificial Intelligence (2016-17). Similar TitansgraveIt was positioned around a coffee table by. AIIt was film around a single table. The footage was edited to a 30-45 minute run time with very little visual clutter. However, Penny Arcade was the longest-running show with a record of success. The “C” Team(2017-21), Which like Essential Role The entire cast was shown in the layout. A similar setup was used in pandemic remote-play.

However Essential RoleIt has been long since independent and has improved its overlay and built a set. DM Matt Mercer can trigger lighting cues to activate it. What viewers see is essentially the same basic layout that it had always had. The appeal of real play is the ability to see not just the player characters, but also the people sitting at the table. Jason CarlLA Night, New York City at Night) notes livestreamed or unedited live-to-tape “draws on the improvisational skills and the role-playing skills of the players and makes it all real and immediate and genuine.” Unlike other cinematic or televisual forms, this kind of visual layout doesn’t direct the viewer’s eye, and different audience members may pay attention to different parts of the screen. Fans love to share their reactions by creating supercuts and clipping moments. Many shows even get into the clipping fun.

For performers, however, the format can be exhausting, as Kretchmer says: “It’s like being on stage the entire time. You never get a break.” Zac Lim Eubank (Hyper RPG) agrees: “We had to do some training with the actors: no looking at your phone, always look up, be engaged. If you’re doodling, you’re disengaging.” Being live, like theatre, but recorded — so your performance can be seen, remixed, recirculated, for weeks or months or even years after — is a risk that not all actors, especially ones coming to actual play from film and television, are willing to take. Shows featuring celebrities like D&Diesel, CelebriD&DAnd Essential Role’s Red Nose Day specials with Stephen Colbert, are pretaped and edited.

A lot of shows that have the money and the ambition to produce high-quality shows are shifting to prerecorded shows. They want to make them more easily accessible, and to experiment with new visual styles. Some points to HarmonQuestAs inspiration (2016-19), a show that recorded an hour-long session in front of a live audience and then cut them into animated 20-minute episodes. G4’s Dungeons & Dragons Presents: Invitation to Party B. Dave Walters hosts the event as a spiritual successor. HarmonQuestAnimation can be substituted for an open circle, where players are able to actively participate in role-play.

Some others point out the continuing Dimension 20 (2018), which set itself apart with a color-shifting geodesic dome whose panels separate to allow cameras at multiple angles, and its elaborate custom physical miniatures built by Rick Perry — an element so beloved that the minis were sold at auction for hundreds or thousands of dollars each to cover future production costs. Editing cuts down on awkward moments and pauses, while allowing for fullscreen views of the best camera angles at all times. The postproduction enhancements include character art, scene illustrations and shots of terrain, which allow viewers to view the scenery from the viewpoint of miniatures.

These elements can add significant cost but Carlos Luna (content producer at Roll20) says that editing is fundamentally visual and something all plays, regardless of their size, budget, or ability, to do. But, he notes, it does take time: “People are cool with doing three hours a day of actual plays, but not doing one day of actual play and then four days of editing.” Kretchmer points to the “seamless” editing of podcast The Adventure Zone as both proof that good editing works, but also can become invisible: “I think a lot of people missed that it was by design, thinking that this is what it’s like when people play live at a table.”

But not all artists are prepared to lose the magic of live performance. Zac and Malika Eubank create live content for both their company and on their channel. The actual play is their flagship. KOllOK, is the show you’ll hear referenced most often by other creators if you ask about inspirational innovation. As Malika puts it, “Hyper is what happens when you have a filmmaker and a game designer come together, and KOllOK is when filmmakers get around a table to play and film it for you.” That means experimenting with a palette of custom sound and lighting in front of dynamic projections and virtual spaces. The recent season even used aspect ratio as part of the storytelling, enclosing the Legacy cast in tight 4:3 boxes with extreme close-ups that rarely had the cast interactions visible, while the adventuring young Ascended cast were in the “sprawling epic” of widescreen. As Malika says, it’s “all about creating a new visual language.”

Dungeon Run attempts to split the difference between the pleasures of live performance and the appeal of tight editing, with a livestreamed studio show and 15-minute “Dungeon Rush!” recaps. With no overlays, the live show is shot from five angles. Morgan Peter Brown says the edited version of the show is all the more important precisely because of the commitment to livestreaming: “When live is such an important part of the show, it becomes even more of a priority to help people catch up faster.”

Image from The Dungeon Run

The Dungeon RushOffers a longer version of clips that are increasingly being used by plays in order to bring new viewers. “Awareness is the number one thing” where many shows are missing the mark, says Luna. TikTok is a platform that has just begun to produce play content, he says. He’s edited two D&D specials for the platform’s vertical aspect ratio, which drew in tens of thousands of live viewers and hundreds of thousands of views since. According to him, short clips do even better. Jason Carl and Martyna “Outstar” Zych agree that short gameplay clips on TikTok can bring new curious viewers, and point to the ways in which other VampireActual players have created entire campaigns using TikTok.

While Zych’s upcoming Hunter’s Garage for World of DarknessHer broadcasts will be on YouTube and Twitch. She will also include TikTok behind-the-scenes content. Hunter’s GarageIt is not like its predecessors. Vampire sibling, will be prerecorded remotely, with the feel of a “community show.” Some community-run shows have also moved to prerecording. Ellie Collins Atlanta at Night records in the show’s home studio, but still finds prerecording necessary now that the team’s main jobs in film, television, and theatre are back up and booking. Zych and her international cast prefer prerecording to livestreaming. This avoids dropped calls and connects issues and allows her more time in postproduction. This includes displaying players as animated avatars inspired by VTubers and other virtual tabletop elements.

Hunter’s Garage is just one sign that experimentation isn’t just happening in studio shows. Several producers point to Mikaela Sims’ Mage campaign Just as Above, So BelowAs a remote liveplay, which included visual spell effects and virtual sets as well as cuts to Google Earth and interactive QR-coded eggs. As Lasair puts it, while bigger-budget shows have the ability to get closer to traditional models that major sponsors are familiar with, “I believe we have something unique […] with a live audience that we can tap into, but as a comparatively new-ish medium, we’re still finding what really works.”

Many of the people interviewed in this piece say we’re at an important point for real play. It is due to intense competition and tight budgets as well as many creative possibilities. It’s unclear what will happen. What will happen to the audience? Is the audience growing? Unions will be involved. Actual plays are just one gig among many for creative professionals — and one protected by no union nor any agreed-upon best practices. “We’re in a bubble,” says Collins.

It’s a challenging but exciting time, Zac Lim Eubanks says. “Make it [a]It’s worth trying. It’s worth trying things and asking hard questions. You might not receive an answer five to six years later. It’s not supposed to be easy… It’s a terrifying thing to be doing.”