Tabletop role-playing games can be intimidating. Here's one anyone can jump into

It took me many years to finally play a game of Dungeons & Dragons. There was something intimidating about it, like I'd embarrass myself if I made the wrong decision or used a silly voice that sounded way cooler in my head.

According to the best-selling author of The Fangirl's Guide to the Galaxy and one of CBC Arts' Think Like An Artist contributors, Sam Maggs, I'm not alone with this feeling.

"I find tabletop games really intimidating," she confesses. "There's a lot of rules that you have to learn before you even show up at the table and that was always a big barrier of entry for me and I think for a lot of other people, too."

Her latest project is a response to that dread. Designed and developed by Spenser Starke, Rowan Hall and Matthew Mercer (among a robust team of other artists, designers and writers), Daggerheart is a new fantasy tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG) from Critical Role that positions itself as being accessible and inclusive to anybody and takes a story-first approach to games.

Starke, who chatted with me alongside Maggs, is the senior game designer for Darrington Press, the publishing imprint under the Critical Role banner, and the mastermind behind Daggerheart. He describes the game as "a heroic role-playing game that focuses on collaboration between the players and telling great stories."

Maggs and Starke had previously worked together on Critical Role's first TTRPG, Candela Obscura.

"I think that game writing is the future of storytelling," Maggs says when reflecting on writing for video games such as Call of Duty: Vanguard and working on TTRPGs like Candela and Daggerheart. "I have never felt as passionately about a story as I do about stories that I have played because it puts you as the main character."

From the get-go, Starke says there was a conscious effort to make Daggerheart as inclusive as possible, starting with working with a diverse group of people.

"We had so many people that were working from so many different backgrounds all over the world — artists, designers, consultants and writers. We wanted to make the game reflect the people who built it and the people who we knew would be playing it," he explains. "Our goal was to reset the default."

For example, the game's core rule book has a section dedicated to playing characters with disabilities written by creators Rue Dickey, Deven Rue and Rogan Shannon who identify as persons with disabilities, blindness and hard of hearing, respectively.

"I know that representation matters sounds like such a cliché today, but it remains true," says Maggs. "It really can't be underestimated what a difference it can make to see all the different ways that you are allowed to be."

Celebrating 10 years of Critical Role

Critical Role is a streamed series where people play tabletop games (a.k.a an actual play) and it's what got me to finally roll the dice and play D&D. It features talented voice actors making their way through a session every Thursday night, complete with bad rolls, bad judgement and surprisingly clutch moves. And they have a blast doing it!

Matthew Mercer (voice of Ganondorf in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom) is a voice actor and the resident game master at Critical Role and one of its founding members. He shared with me the surreal feeling he had holding Daggerheart in his hands and then seeing it in the hands of other people.

"This game reflects a lot of that 10 year journey of fine tuning and pointing out the things that makes [playing games] so special for us," he says.

That journey started with friends around a table, including fellow voice actors Ashley Johnson (The Last of Us), Laura Bailey (Dragon Ball Z), Liam O'Brien (Naruto), Marisha Ray (The Legend of Vox Machina), Sam Riegel (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), Taliesin Jaffe (Injustice 2) and Travis Willingham (Avengers Assemble) who are the founders and main cast of Critical Role. Together with a multitude of artists, writers, producers and collaborators over the years, including Maggs and Starke, they went from one session of D&D online to an animated series on Amazon Prime, novels, card games, comic books, campaign settings and a streaming service called Beacon. They even released a Christmas album last year under their own music label, Scanlan Shorthalt Music.

With Daggerheart, there was a goal to be accessible for people new to TTRPGs. Mercer says they "wanted to invite new players who might either be having a hard time finding that in other types of game experiences or just identifying with and enjoying the way that we play our games."

Starting Thursday, May 29, Critical Role will be streaming an eight-part miniseries called Age of Umbra on Beacon, Twitch and their Youtube channel. It's based on the campaign frame in Daggerheart designed by Mercer and featuring the whole cast of Critical Role, with Mercer as the game master. It's described on their official Instagram as "a dark, survival fantasy undertaking, in which small communities hold fast against the darkness of a dying world."

"I love dark fantasy," Mercer says, "I love worlds where that bleakness is present, but that's what makes the moments of light and hope that much more impactful."