Critical Role & Sagas of Sundry - How to Be a Better TTRPG Player w/ Ross Bryant | Quests N’ Answers

Episode Date: April 16, 2025

Welcome back to Quests N’ Answers! This week, Dan Casey sits down with the inimitable Ross Bryant (MST3K, Improvised Shakespeare Company, Dropout) to break down his philosophy on character creation, worldbuilding, the ritual power of TTRPGs and communal storytelling, and much more   Verily, thou might enjoy The Improvised Shakespeare Company: https://www.improvisedshakespeare.com/ Laugh your entire butt off at Chill Touch: https://www.instagram.com/chilltouchimprov/   New episodes of Quests N’ Answers air every Wednesday on Geek & Sundry or wherever you get your podcasts: https://lnk.to/goblinmodepod   Learn more and sign up for the Geek & Sundry newsletter at https://www.geekandsundry.com/!   Subscribe to Geek and Sundry: http://goo.gl/B62jl Twitter: http://twitter.com/geekandsundry Facebook: http://facebook.com/geekandsundry Instagram: http://instagram.com/geekandsundry TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@geekandsundry Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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turns at AKA.m.S. College PC. Greetings, adventurers, and welcome back to Quest and Answers, the show where we talk to all manner of awesome people from around the gaming world. I'm Dan Casey, and today joining me in our Conversation Dungeon, we have a very special guest. You've seen him gracing this stage as part of the improvised Shakespeare Company, destroying prompts with want and abandon on dropout shows like Make Some Noise. In Written and Riffin Form is one of the writers on Mystery Science Theater 3,000, and even right here on Geek and Sundry as a very special guest on sagas of Sundry Goblin mode,

just to name a few. Folks, it's Ross Bryant. Ross, how you doing? I'm doing great. Thanks for having me, Dan. Of course, my absolute pleasure. Yeah, I was very excited to chat with you further. You're someone that I have seen performing out in the world before and had the chance to perform with when you joined us for Goblin Mode. And I was like, okay, I want to pick his brain about all sorts of things. And that's why we're going to do here today. I love it. Yeah, it was great meeting you and I had so much fun doing that, those couple sessions of Goblin Mode. What a wonderful weird world to drop into it. And you joined us on spoiler alert, folks, two of the strangest episodes and the series, two of my favorites. But I urge you go back, watch up to, I believe it's episode 12 and 13 or 11 and 12.

Folks, go watch them. You'll thank us later. But I want to talk to you a little bit first about TTRPGs. That's sort of tabletop role playing games for people that hate acronyms. I want to talk to you about your experience with them because obviously I know you, I know that you're someone who plays quite a bit of them, but how did you first get into this world of pen and paper RPGs? I'm a person who had I discovered these games at a young age,

the age that possibly it is intended that they are played, I would have fallen head over heels in love with them, but I just never was. I'm an adult adopter of these games. I remember distinctly going to a comic book shop in Norfolk, Virginia on a visit to my grandparents and, like, picking through the books and finding what, in retrospect, were TTRP, like, modules for, like, forgotten realms or something. And, like, thumbing through them and really being fascinated by the illustrations, but having absolutely no idea what all these numbers meant, what these graphs and tables related to. and I was just totally befuddled as to what the hell this thing even was.

But that sort of like was a splinter in my mind of like, what was that thing? And only much, much later did a friend of mine that I did improv with in Chicago after I moved to L.A., invite me to this gaming group to play GERPS. It was a real leap into the deep end. Immediately. Holy cow. So the generic unified role-playing system. system, a famously crunchy system of role-playing. Yes, thank you, Steve Jackson.

Yeah. So that was my, that was my, um, my road to Damascus moment as I was struck by, by the blinding light of the, of the potential of TTRPGs. And, um, that gaming group goes on to this day. I played, I played games with them a week ago. And that crew, when the pandemic hit was the sort of brain trust that formed this little streaming channel that that was launched in in like 2001 called the stream of blood and the sort of like nucleus of it was the dungeon master or the game master jared Logan and clinton trucks and they're sort of like constellation of fellow performers and dorks of which i was one and so we started this tiny little

streaming channel and it became this incredible creative outlet at a time where as a as a theatrical improvise I felt extremely constrained and like bummed out at the idea that maybe maybe improvise in our form is about to just vanish. Are we ever going to get to do this in a theater again? And it was this wonderful, beautiful outlet of like recreating that sense of like imaginative communion with your friends. And and then Stream of Blood was sort of absorbed into the glass cannon network, another, another actual play concern. and I've just continued to to dive into that world. And I also do some stuff with this other network called Ain't Slade Nobody. And I continue to play in home games all the time.

I love it. It's, uh, it, it has become just such a rich component of my life. And I, I love them so much. You, I'm going to have to follow up on like 16 different points you just made. But I want to start back with, uh, one that you're talking about going into like a comic book shop as a kid. and being drawn in by the fantasy artwork. I feel like that is a dying art form almost

because I would cherish, I'd go every Wednesday to Webhead Enterprises in Wakefield, Massachusetts, with my dad to get new comics. And the first thing I was drawn to was this like row of all these tiny pictures of incredible fantasy creatures, which I realized a couple years later

were Magic the Gathering cards. And there's the same thing, like a scholastic book fair, always drawn to the like things that should be airbrush, on the side of a van somewhere, but instead we're just on like a Dragon Lance book or something.

And I feel like that even, even not being incomprehensible. I remember begging my dad and he bought me, I think it was the like A D&D box set. It was like one of those like D&D home box sets which had this incredible red dragon on the cover. I did not get to play with anyone. I was playing by myself just like exploring all of these endless tomes.

You know, the life of an only child who leads a rich inner life. I relate. I too was in that mode. Although I didn't have the guts to purchase. I didn't have the coin to purchase one of those, nor was I, I don't think my parents were present. Maybe if I'd really put the screws to them, they would have gotten me that.

But holy smoke, yeah. There's a lot of like only child energy in tabletop role playing. Yes. Yeah, rich inner worlds are a part of this thing and sharing them. And then they become worlds that you get to share. with other people. Yeah. Now, something you mentioned is, you know, obviously having that enduring quality with

your gaming group. I feel like that is half the battle with getting people into TTRPGs is, you know, it does, and I don't want to call it like a commitment, but you are making commitment to your friends to show up together to play something. The same way you'd make a commitment if you made plans to go to a bar, go to a restaurant, whatever. It's just a different type of appointment that you're all making with each other. But one thing that really resonated with me is you sort of mentioned, you were worried about improv potentially instead of yes-handing, no-butting, going away during a very dark period.

And having this outlet, I think, is essential. Because for me, like, I was playing in a game of Curse of Stratt at the time with some friends. And we were playing entirely virtually. And that has just, that's been my most enduring gaming group to this day. We started playing during lockdown and we still play every week pretty much. And it's just a nice outlet because you're not just showing up together. You're showing up together to do something communal, communal storytelling in particular, especially improvisational storytelling. It feels like, you know, in our emails back and forth before the show, you said a couple things that really resonated with me talking about this as a unique art form.

And to me, it feels like the campfire tradition with the benefit of random chance. just they've gamified, you know, the telling of tales to entertain each other. But I'm curious, you, you, you, we're talking about the ritual properties. Yeah. And I think I sent that to you. Yeah. And to me, it's, you know, like, it's like you mentioned, you have this gaming group. Your ritual is to play to get, like, get together on a weekly, biweekly, whatever basis.

That is the ritual. And the part of the ritual involves games. But what about specifically about gaming or TTRPGs have these ritual qualities to you? And what were you thinking? What were you thinking? when you type for those words. I don't know. You and I may be around the same age

and kind of like were aware of these games culturally in the comic book shop but also in the way in which culture at that time was evoking them in the language of the satanic panic of that era. So these games have always for me been infused with this sort of charged with this sort of

occult energy. As you get to learn about them, you realize that that's absolutely absurd. Of course. But nevertheless, it had that for me as a kid. And as an improviser also, and somebody who is into just experimental theater and like weird performance art and stuff as a teenager in early 20-something, that's something that just keeps coming up again and again, how spontaneous creativity, theatrical modes of expression, communal imaginative experiences all have these ritual components. A lot of the ferment of theatrical culture

in the mid-century threw up a lot of these things like super experimental site-specific theater, like the 60s happenings, if people know what those are. These sort of like theatrical experiences where the barrier between audience and performer fades away and it takes on this thing,

this aspect of a communal ecstatic ritual. If you've ever watched the movie, My Dinner with Andre, Andre Gregory talks about this sort of thing a lot in that. But that same sort of mid-century theatrical artistic firm is the same thing that threw up improvisational theater. In the 50s and 60s, you've got groups like

the Compass Players in the early Second City, creating spontaneous theater as an art form as it exists in a continuum to this day in things like Second City as it goes on and upright citizens brigade and that sort of, and the dropout shows that you mentioned are all part of that sort of like continuum. And, and all of these things, like, of course,

they're silly absurd fun, but they do, there is something I like thinking about in a sort of highfalutin way, the way that they are these sites where we set aside a, quote unquote, ritual space. We sort of draw the sigil, the circle within which different rules apply.

And, and within that circle, we, we surrender to, um, this experience of collective imagining, which is like, just like you said, something as old as humanity itself, sitting around a fire and spinning tails. And also with this ritual component of the dice, the element of random chance, the introduction of fortune, randomness, luck, which in itself is a ritual

thing when you think of something like, yeah, any, any like throwing, casting bones or scrying or or the E. Ching, things like this. And so it has all these components of, of ritual and shared imaginative communion. And that stuff is the stuff that just really speaks to my soul. I love that. And I love that you can draw this line between all of these things that goes right up into actual religious ecstatic experiences. I read this C.S. Lewis quote recently where he's talking about how losing yourself in a work of art, in a work of literature, has this quality of, of, this sort of ecstatic imagining, which he describes as in a higher state is religious experience and in a lower state is game.

And I, and I kind of think that like, I disagree with CS Lewis about many things, but I think that you can, there's a flattening of all of these things where game is ritual, is religiosity. And I think, and something that just keeps striking me is I think the satanic panic to get back to it, the reason that it created, that role-playing games created this anxiety in the American fundamentalist imagination was not just that it was using folkloric elements that looked like devils and demons. Not just that it has these sort of ritual properties that make it look a little occult and scary, that that, that, that the, that the fundamentalist imaginary needs to create moral panics to perpetuate itself, but also that there's a discomfort

with how much a game rhymes with religion. And there's a discomfort in seeing how similar these things are, that there's, that there's not too much of a bridge between someone getting hit with the spirit and someone like creating an avatar of themselves. in a character and building an imaginative world that is as real in their memory as the their trip to the supermarket last week. I think that's all very cool. Yeah. And that we get to have those kinds of experiences around a table with our friends eating

Doritos is pretty cool. You can tell that A, C.S. Lewis never rolled a crit. And B, he never tried nacho cheesier Doritos. Yeah, yeah. Yes, yes. he's he's not willing to indulge in secular imaginings and he doesn't know the pleasures of cool ranch. Yeah, otherwise he'd be cheese stain Lewis. We can all agree.

Yeah, otherwise the white queen would be offering the kids, um, chito's paws instead of Turkish delight. Oh my. So just a crazy side note, because I want to get back to the more important points you just made. But do you know what they call cool ranch Doritos outside? of the U.S. No, I don't. Cool American. I learned this in Iceland, and I was like, all right, that's, maybe they're going to

change the flavor name now, but in the meantime, we'll take it. That's what we're known for. A zesty, a zesty chilled out ranch flavor. The cultural legacy of America is secure. Yeah. I do want to go back to what you were saying, though, because I love how you sort of broke that down, because to me, it's sort of the, just sort of the ritual. components, you are, you know, you talked about sort of like writing the sigils, making this,

you're summoning this mutual, mutually agreed upon liminal space, like a narrative backrooms that you can spend as much time in or as a little time in as you want, but you're all buying into and creating this collective reality and evolving it together in real time. That's what I love. It's like, I know, I love playing video games, but that is an experience that's been curated. I'm taking an active role in that I'm pushing forward. I have to be the one to move the adventure forward, but it's still ultimately on the predetermined rails that have been laid out by the storytellers and the developers.

You know, same thing with watching movies. That is a predetermined vision that has been established and curated by filmmakers with a specific vision. And yes, you can argue that when it comes to tabletop role-playing games or tabletop games in general that have like a narrative element. A lot of that is given structure in many forms. forms by the dungeon master, game master, storyteller, narrator, whatever system you're using. But it's one of the only art forms that I've experienced where everyone, it feels like, has an equal part in shaping and reshaping the end result. And, you know, that, that ecstatic high that you're talking about, like, the joy of creating something that, the joy of creating something so

deeply, narratively satisfying or, you know, like, you know, I joke about like rolling a crit, but something like that that has such incredible implications for this project that you've all embarked upon together, there's nothing like it. That's such a high. It's such an ecstatic experience when you, when you, when you, when you're a group of friends with Cheeto stained fingers are fist pumping and cheering at the table because, because someone rolled a 20 at a pivotal moment. And from the outside, the person outside that magic circle can easily see that as utterly

ridiculous. Like, what the hell is this? Yeah. From the outside, impenetrable. Yeah, yeah. Much like that is, that's the definition of occult. It is esoteric. It is, it is something that is not known by the laity outside, but inside we know, we, we members of the secret society understand that that is, that that is an ecstatic experience. That, that I have, I have laughed harder than I've laughed like any time in these games. I have I have had moments

of like thrill and suspense more than any film. I have wept in these games and it's and it's and it occurs in a way that is so different from other art forms and I truly think that these games are it's a it's an art form.

Yes and it doesn't and not even if you're I think a lot of people you know people have been talking about like you know with the rise of things like Critical role, Dimension 20, et cetera, actual play. I feel like people view it as an art form in that respect, and it absolutely is. But I don't think it even, it's not even if it's intended for mass consumption. Just the simple act of sitting down to do this together is a type of performance, is a type of art,

is a type of storytelling that you're doing together, even if you think you're just sitting down to play a game. Yeah, yeah. And it's, there's something about the intimacy of it, too, as someone who does a lot of actual plays, like, and I love it. And, but viewing actual plays, there's, there's, there's, there's that remove. It's, it is, it is consuming. It's, I like, when I describe what I do to friends who have no idea what the hell

that any of this is, it's like, we're, it's improvised radio plays. That's how I kind of describe it. But like, it's altogether different when you're with your friends around your table doing your thing. That, that's, that's, that's the kernel of it. And much like, and it's part of the reason why I love, in, improvised theater as well, on just doing improv, that like, God bless dropout for making improvisation

into something that is, that is capturable on camera and clearly translates to a broad audience. I'm so grateful that that exists. But nothing is the same as the experience of you and your ensemble in a room with a live audience, experiencing it together in real time, much like there's nothing like the hit of you and your friends. friends around the table with the gummy bears doing it in real time.

That is the essence of that artistic experience. And I must, I have to say that all this time, my tongue is in my cheek the whole time. Because of course, any given improv show and any given role playing game has a character named Johnny Broccoli, who is. Yeah, of course. And these are total, total like ding dong parades. But every now and then, every now and then, you, you, you, touch that ecstasy.

Yeah, but you can, to your point as well, like, where you'll be playing a game that also, it makes you laugh, but a character named Johnny Broccoli can also rip your heart out. It's just about the journey you take together. Totally. And, you know, I think almost going back to your point about sort of the like satanic panic, I feel like that when people are thinking about stuff like TTRPGs and perhaps a reluctance to adopt them or why they were other than that way is, I think ultimately, sitting down to play a game like D&D, it is

performing the active play. Something that feels frivolous, something that feels counterintuitive to like, like that good old fashioned like Puritan pilgrim work ethic where you just have to like, you know, just rise and grind hustle culture. If you're not doing something that's furthering your, your end goals, then it's not worth doing. The instrumentalization of everything we do is a curse of our modern, life to me.

And I think it's one of the amazing poetic things about these games is that you don't win them. Like, like, you win when interesting things happen. You win when a beautiful story is told.

Yes. You might win when you lose. Some of the most powerful moments in these games are when my characters die. Yes, absolutely. One of my favorite, some of my most resonant, like, experiences have been playing games

where every character's intended to die. Things like 10 candles, for example, where it's like, hey, you're doomed. What are you going to do with the time that you have? And to me, it's just such a fascinating question to explore where you're not trying to just get the high score, get a plus 12 broadsword, which, look, there's a time and a place, but all fun. All fun. But it's nice when you can sort of break through and sort of get yourself out of the, like, power gamer brain and tap into, okay, what's really important here? And that's connecting with the people I'm sitting with at a table. because I'm taking the time to do this amid all of the hustle and bustle.

Like, you know, I don't know where, I don't know where play sits on Maslow's hierarchy of needs, but it should be in there. It should be something that you do for yourself because even if it's not playing a TTRBG, doing something positive and enriching for yourself that, you know, is not just in service of the things you need to do to survive, I do feel like is important to girding your quality of life. I feel like play is just so rich for its own sake. I mean, as somebody who is kind of like accidentally devoted his life to play, I feel like. I feel it incumbent upon me to be its champion and advocate. And yeah, I think it's there's this Ursula K. Le Guin quote that floats around the internet. And I found it a few weeks ago and it really, and it really resonated with me for all the kind of things that we're talking about here. but especially that like people from outside seeing it as frivolous.

And it comes from a question that I too have sometimes, like, is this escapist? Is this kind of denying? Is this a sort of infantile refusal to look at real life to like to go into these imaginative worlds? Because I don't feel that that's true. I feel that that's some cursed, cursed cynical part of me talking. And this Ursula K. Le Guin quote articulated it for me better than I could have. This is, this is Le Guin now.

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don't we consider it his duty to escape? The money lenders, the no-nethings, the authoritarians have us all in prison. If we value the freedom of the mind and the soul, if we're partisans of liberty, then it is our plain duty to escape and take as many people with us as we can. I love that.

That is the escapism that we that we, that we seek. Now, obviously in these games, there is part of it that is like setting aside time out of life, out of the currents of real life and communing with friends and fellowship. But to call that escapist is to debase friends and fellowship and play, which are very, very important. And I read up on this quote a little bit more. She herself in this quote is paraphrasing a much longer quote of J.R. Tolkien, who is even more kind of like revel, revel, in how he describes it. He describes people who criticize fantasy as escapist,

that they are confusing the escape of the prisoner with the flight of the deserter. That the deserter is escaping from reality. The deserter is in a way escaping by acquiescing to the cursed reality, nature of their reality, perhaps. whereas the escapeist is the person trying to free themselves from prison. And I feel like, I don't know, not to get political, but nowadays, there's a lot of cursed energy out there that I think having a rich and playful imagination is not merely escapist. It allows us to push into mental areas where we can imagine a future that these people do not want us to even contemplate. plate.

1,000% it's there's so much ambient psychic damage that you take from simply opening up any any application on the phone, any news site

reading any headline, there's just a level of absurd dumarism that's permeating the culture in a way that I think now more than ever makes it essential to carve out time for escapeism

because you're not trying to bury your head in the sand, And obviously, like, there's extremes and that's not good either. But sort of taking a break from just the never-ending onslaught of the abattoir of horrors that we exist in as we continue terraform airway to the Fury Road. I think that there's a lot of utility. And I say that I realize utility is probably not the best word, but there's a lot of it serves you in every capacity, both enriching the spirit and like preventing you from preventing your act. actual health from getting too less. Yes.

Yes. Play is just good for, A1, just good for you. Like I already earlier was like, not everything has to be instrumentalized. There are instrumental reasons to do this. There's good benefits to be had. But I never want to lose sight of that these things are pleasant for their own sake. We do these things because we love them, not just because like it's going to create new linkages in my neurons or whatever and make me a more effective manager or something.

I, I like, you could make, you can make, make you could make a lot of money selling a course called like dn d for mbAs don't think i haven't thought that and been tempted like you you definitely could it would probably benefit many people as coming from a person who has taught taught many corporate improv workshops i have i have i have crossed that that boundary certainly um and i think and hopefully god bless if if i can if i can convince one person getting an MBA that like the power of listening might be more important then the power of talking, then great. I, too, wake up each morning and open my social media apps and instantly take 15 points

of sanity loss. Yeah, just unrecoverable. I've lost so many stat points at this point. I'm just like a tall baby walking around. Yeah. One thing I do want to talk about that you mentioned sort of things that you love and sort of uniting this act of communal storytelling with a live audience and your love of improv and your love of creating with, you know, your troop, you know, you are not just a fantastic performer and storyteller,

but now I would argue that you're a bit of a game designer as well through a show that you have developed a live comedy show called Chill Touch. So for people who don't know, can you tell us a little bit about what Chill Touch is and how it employs TTRPG mechanics? Yeah, it wears the TTRPG mechanics very lightly, I will say. But it's an improv show. We're doing improvised scenes based on audience suggestions, just like 99.9% of improv shows. We just steal some dice mechanics from our favorite games. The premise of our show is that we build a table of suggestions, like a whole grid of them. And then we use the, you know, the scrying bones of fortune to pick our suggestions for us. We roll on our table and we create unique combinations that the dice allows to inspire us to do our

scenes. And because, of course, we're playing in front of an audience that is well steeped in the worlds of these games and the fantasy and sci-fi that we all love. We air a little bit more on the side of digging into those tropes than we probably feel comfortable doing in our other improv shows. So not only are we trying to pay homage to the sort of genre worlds that we that we love playing in in the games, but we kind of steal the dice to get us into some fun and interesting inspirational places for our show. But it is by and large, just a fun improv show with people, like all the people that we play with, the other members of the ensemble being like Sarah Kaplan, Mary Lou, Zacharino. We all play D&D together every other week.

So it's the, our show asks the question, you've seen plenty of improvisers do actual play shows. What if nerds did improv? It's an idea whose time just may have come. See, I love that concept. And I'm also curious because we're seeing, I feel like right now it's a very interesting time because we're seeing D&D TTRP mechanics leaking through onto the stage in various ways. I mean, there's the off-Broadway show, the 20-sided tavern. there's stuff like this. So for you,

are you approaching this just from a perspective of, hey, we're going to do what we're going to do and we're going to hope that the audience has an awareness of what TTRPGs are? Or did you have to think about, okay, how do I adapt these ideas in a way that's maybe comprehensible to someone

that maybe likes fantasy and sci-fi but has never seen a polyhedron like a D20 in their life? Luckily, it doesn't take that much explaining. But the origin of this show was that we wanted to do a comedy show at GenCon, the big TTRPG convention that happens annually. And all of us have done actual play shows. I truly think that that's just such an amazing and unique mode of improvisation. I love it for that. And I was like, well, great.

What if we just kind of strip away the mechanic? What if we just did an improv show of the style that we've all trained in for, ages and and we all perform week to week at at various theaters around LA and but just kind of lightly sprinkle on some some some game stuff because we're it's very funny we're now dealing with in improvisation now because these actual play shows like like critical role like d20 etc are so popular a lot of people are getting into improv now because of actually Wow. Like that is now one of the biggest on ramps into comedy improv, which is kind of mind

this should be the real satanic panic. Yeah. So I feel like honestly, audiences are maybe more aware of the game mechanic stuff than they are of the sort of language of improvisational theater perhaps. It's funny. I just like I just I love improv I love doing shows with my friends it seemed like a great place to do it and a fun way of like trying to just kind of get the break out of the break out of the way in which most actual play shows are in a live context which is like five people with laptop sitting at a folding table like just just standing up and doing doing doing the type of improvisation that we're used to doing in theaters felt felt really good yeah it's it's a really fascinating union between the two because and also really interesting to hear that that pipeline has been created of like the dn d to ucb uh yeah yeah sort of on ramp there um now obviously you have an

amazing background at improv that's how i came across you first as an improviser i urge anyone out there who has not seen the improvised shakespeare company to go and do so at their earliest convenience because i've seen a lot of improv in my life and it is a plus absolutely well worth your time. But I'm curious for you, Ross, how does, how do you feel that your experience as an improviser informs how you approach storytelling, specifically in like a TTRPG environment? In a way, I feel like I was very, like the type of improvisation that I've spent the most time doing really helped me to, A, become a player in these games and throw myself in. And it's really helped as a GM as well, as I've begun doing that more.

both improvised Shakespeare and a lot of the other shows that I do are, our narrative, this is getting a little bit into the weeds of improv, but they're narrative improv shows. A lot of shows that you see are what we as improvised might call montages, where you get one suggestion, and that sort of inspires a collection of scenes

that are kind of loosely connected to that suggestion, and they riff on each other, and it sort of creates, it's almost, it should look a little bit like a, like a sketch comedy show. And there are slightly more codified forms, we would say. Things like if people have a passing familiarity with improv,

they might know of forms like the Herald, which are where you get a suggestion and you sort of as a group brainstorm out themes and premises and then improvise scenes with those premises. And it has this sort of like theatrical structure. And then what Improvichs, what I actually Xer does is because we're like trying to, imitate to the best of our ability, the vibe of a Shakespeare play, as we kind of take from both,

where it has a sort of herald-esque structure where we do scenes and group scenes, but we do try to tell a story, which is not the goal of most improv shows. In fact, when you're learning improv teachers will often tell you not to focus on story and especially not to focus on plot. they will and that's very useful advice because you can get kind of bogged down in planning which is the death of improvisation when you start planning and you stop listening so the way that we kind of get over that in in narrative improv shows like improvise shakespeare and the others that i do is that you you turn off the part of your brain that's trying to plan ahead and you focus on listening like you should and all improvisation but you also really are focused on what characters want and that's the thing that drives you

through the show. As long as a character is always pursuing something they want and the more personal and sort of emotional it is, the better. The more they push for that, plot just happens. It happens totally organically. And it really opens up your mind to the way, like, to writing stories and watching shows, the more, the most effective ones are ones where characters are clearly pursuing a want throughout. And then the, the plots don't feel kind of mathy and clunky maybe as long as you have just like an emotional drive propelling a character and just having that muscle built up is so helpful in games because as long as your character can articulate that kind of emotional want what's the reason they want to go on an

adventure what do they want from their fellow players what do they want from the villain in this story what do they like then you can get into just engaging with the world through that lens versus, like I said, planning. Now, there's a type of player that loves to create like a book-length backstory for their character. And that's great. Coming from improvisation, I find that burdensome. I like to come up with backstory.

I like to improvise backstory. Like, so that when something happens, the way it emotionally resonates with the character implies backstory, that when I say, it becomes true. So it all happens in the moment and you just have to kind of pay attention to it and maintain it in your memory and your notes. So having that sort of want first mindset is super helpful both as a player because it helps you to engage in the world more. It's very helpful as a GM because knowing precisely and clearly what NPCs want and especially what your villains want keeps the story very compelling

because the villains are not necessarily, they're not villains in their minds. They want things for very particular reasons. And being able to articulate that is going to make it so much richer. And it's going to make story just happen. Exactly. I really appreciate that sort of,

I think active listening is something that can sort of fall by the wayside sometimes and being too precious about, you know, this ream of backstory you've built up. If that floats your boat and like that helps you envision the world and buy into the reality and by all means do it.

But I feel like having this sort of like scaffolding, I think that's totally appropriate. Oh, very. Oh, yeah. Just know that something else may go on the outside. It may be a totally different building by the time that you're done. Exactly. And yeah, I just, I appreciate that approach to it.

I'm curious, though, do you, you know, do you find yourself when you're sitting down to create a new character? Do you find yourself falling into specific tropes or patterns or do you find yourself drawn to particular styles of character or class, etc., anything like that? Dan. Crack a Cayman Jack

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I'm like, when I sit down to make a character, the first thing I'm thinking of is like, like, what's another character in fiction or history that I kind of want to, that I'm like kind of riffing on or borrowing from? And, yeah, my, my, I like what you said, scaffolding. I think that's a very good way to put it.

just like a few little little pylons that you can rest things on, but not something fully, so fleshed out that you feel hidebound to desperately cling to it at the expense of the story as it's proceeding. For example, in the Glass Cannon Network, we're playing through the famous, called Cthulhu Scenario, the masks of Nyarlathotep,

which is set in the 1920s, all the investigators are solving this big horror mystery. And 1920s, I knew I wanted, I was like, I just finished reading Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited. And I wanted to, so I was like, I want to make a character that would be in that world. Not necessarily like a one-to-one of any particular character, but, but, but, but, but, but, an Evelyn Waugh-esque guy. And so, uh, so picking a sort of, um, um, upper crust, dilettantish English gentleman who is a veteran of the First World War and dealing with that.

And also has some kind of unresolved desires about maybe one of his one of his college classmates, let's say. I was also pulling from like E.M. Forster, E.m. Forster's Maurice and Room With a View and stuff. basically it's like what were the last three books I read I want to I want to make somebody like that so so that just kind of gives me a little like one or two little bullet points that I can kind of put in my mental cocktail shaker and kind of blend together but that's all I've really got I think anybody who plays these games knows that you can have all those ideas in your head but you never really get to know the character until you play maybe two three sessions and then when they start to interact with the other characters then you learn so much about them. And they sort of take on a life of their own. Yeah. Always the nice moment you're like, actually, my accent is going to suddenly change because I've decided I don't want to do this for 90 more hours. Absolutely. Or if you're me, you're going to dig into the accent harder and do it more. Yeah, triple down. Oh, people aren't digging it. Don't worry. They will. Come back around and be enjoyable. Now, one thing that stands out to me about you as a performer is I'm

very impressed with your command of language. You're someone who is very verbose and you're able to summon, I think, a level of erudition that I find incredibly impressive and I think would maybe not be as easy for others to conjure at a whim. Do you find that that is something that leaks into a lot of your characters? Is that just sort of a bit of Ross spilling out into these people? For better or worse, I am like, I like wordiness. And, uh, and, uh, and, and, uh, and, uh, and, and yes, part of what I love about making characters, especially characters in Call of Cthulhu, and I really loved it in Blades of the Dark as well. Like these sort of very arch heightened fantasy history sort of places.

One thing I love about engaging with things set in the past or reading things from the past is that like the way people wrote and talked is so. can be so malephalous and poetic and to our modern years verbose and with this like odd syntax that you kind of have to follow as it spools out in these unfamiliar ways and i like to get i really love to get on the wavelength of that and try on those types of voices try on that style of speech yeah that's i understand that's totally not for everyone but yes wordiness and trying to get into the lingo of a particular region or era is very, very fun for me. That's part of why I like this. For the record, I love it. It's something, it's something that I was like, man, this is awesome that he's able to

summon this ability like this and manifested in that way. It's the son of an English teacher. I very much appreciate it. I too am the son of an English teacher. That part of my personality is very much just a, hey, that's chip off the old block. Thanks, mom. Yeah, it was my dad. I'm just like, you know what, I wish I still had weekly vocab test so I could just keep adding more words to the lexicon. Yeah. Mom was definitely the sort of person reading like roll doll books with us and being very happy, like really loving and being, my mom is a person who's really tickled by obscure vocabulary and finding interesting, funny words. And so, of course, that's like, this is a way to please mother. So you'll never guess what I learned today. Yeah.

Yeah. My dad would drop in just words into conversation that would just feel patently absurd as a child. And I'm like, there's no way Goldbricker can be a real term. That feels like something you just made up. But nevertheless, here we are. He was right, as he was with most things. Yeah. Yeah.

So I want to also talk a little bit about you mentioned that you're spending some time behind the screen too. What is your approach to, you know, you told. just a little bit about your approach to character building, but what's your approach to world building, especially like when you are sitting down with a group of players, like you have your philosophy when it comes to character creation, but how does that shift when you are on the other side of the screen? Yeah, obviously when you prep a game, you've got to,

you have to prepare. You need more, more preparation. You can't be as off the cuff with it, maybe as I like to be as a player. But I still don't like to plan too too much. I always like that. There's like a sweet spot where you, where you've got, again, want based. Who's the, if there is a, if there is a villain or an oppositional force in this game,

who are they, what do they want? Why? What's their philosophy? Like, articulating that stuff, that to me is the most important thing. And again, yeah, I'm like, I'm trying to steal from, from the things I love, the things I find compelling. I've been DMing this home-brewed D&D campaign with my friends. It's the people in Chilthatch, basically, and a few more, play this D&D game.

And I think I just finished reading a bunch of the books in the Trader Beru Kormorant series, if people are aware of that. It's a terrific fantasy series that I, the first book in particular I really love. And it's a very interesting fantasy world. And it involves a lot of like political. maneuvering between different kind of dukeal houses. And I liked, I really liked that vibe. I like that vibe of, because it reminded me of like the Renaissance in Europe, of like warring states in Italy during the Renaissance, like the, or, or these horrible conflicts like the

hundred years war in the Holy Roman Empire. And so I was like, I'm going to make, I want to make a little a little group of duchies and make our players like agents of one of these duchies and just have a lot of this kind of background intrigue going on that slowly reveals itself to the players as they have to as I present them with opportunities again and again to like pick sides in this conflict where all the sides seem flawed in their own way or maybe they might find their own way through this this thorny network of political intrigues while at the same time. time uncovering this historical sort of mystery and learning more about like what happened centuries ago in this in this realm so that's a lot that's a lot of stuff going on but it's yeah you

just i kind of sketched out a map and and and figured out like what's the general vibe of all these areas what do they want and then and then you just kind of turn the players loose and let him let him cook and yeah because then it's it's it's nice to have all of that understanding of how how everything's interconnected their relationships. But, you know, there's a non-zero chance that a good chunk of that could ever could never come into play. Exactly. So being able to be like, okay, well, they want to go this direction. So let me get a bit more granular with these specific duchies and their, their disagreements over tariffs.

Right, right. So yeah, week to week as they explore, I, I have the fun of like following their imagination and kind of trying to yes and their. ideas and build out this world more and more and more. And part of the fun of it is just this whole little realm is slowly but slowly building and in our imaginations and as more and more details get added. And it's very cool to have this this little world into which we can escape. Absolutely. I relish the experience. I talk a lot about in video games that joy of discovery, but here it's sort of peeling back that collective fog of war as you're both discovering what this thing is in real time. Because, you know, you might not know what lies down the road, but you're picking up on sort of the clues your players are putting down about what might float their particular boats.

And it becomes this mutual push and pull, which is always exciting to experience unless things go completely and utterly off the rails, which can be exciting for different reasons. Which certainly happens. I think every, but, yeah, I think every DM or GM has had the experience of like having their, their, their, pet theory about the big thing that's about to be revealed. And then one of your players theorizes a much better idea. And you're like, oh, yeah, it's that now. Yeah, that was absolutely what I was going to say when I started talking. Yeah. I've experienced the opposite as well where a DM I was playing with a very dear friend of mine. He presented us with there was a large train onto which all of these nobles were boarding. And there was an item on the train we needed. And obviously, we

snuck onto the train. And afterwards, he's like, I, uh, I really didn't think you guys were going to board the train and do some sort of train heist. I'm like, but I thought you were, I thought you were literally railroading us in this instance, but that's okay. And it wound up, it wound up being a very memorable session, but it's just that, I think there's that moment of people, like your stomach dropping when something goes completely out of control. Yeah, yeah. But I think to your point of, you know, just being able to articulate wants and thinking, just listening and sort of figuring out, okay, well, they clearly want a train heist. Yeah. I will do my best. And he did and it was great. So much of it is just re-skinned your plans on the fly of like, oh, that thing that I thought

was going to take place in a hot air balloon, that's in a submarine now. Yeah. Yeah. It's not that, It's not that hard. We get so hung up on clinging to our plans. And you can, it's, it's okay just to go with the flow a little bit. That's that, I can, I can, I can thank improvisation, being spending my time in the improv trenches to be like, it's going to be fine. Things are going to work out. It's all, I think definitely to people's benefit if they can develop any sort of comfort with improv, just it'll feel less like conversational free fall and just knowing that you can tuck and roll. when you hit the ground and keep running.

Yeah, yeah. And I feel like even as a deal, like your players give you more grace than you probably think. You don't have to be up there delivering the one-man show of the century all the time. Like, if they throw you for a loop, just be like, hey, can you give me five minutes while I take some notes real quick? Everyone's going to be fine. I'm going to do some rejiggering. Go get some more gummy bears from the kitchen. Totally.

Yeah. They will be grateful for a break to go and eat stuffed crust pizza. Exactly. 1,000%. Now, I'm curious as well, you mentioned that you're playing in this homebrew world. do you have a favorite homebrew rule that you like to employ or that you've encountered in any of your games? I don't think I've got any homebrew rules in that game necessarily.

One of the ones, I tell you, one of the rules that I've... The war is over and both sides lost. Kingdoms were reduced to cinders, an army scattered like bones in the dust. Now the survivors claw to what's left of a broken world praying the darkness chooses someone else tonight. But in the shadow dark, the darkness always wins. This is old school adventuring at its most cruel.

Your torch ticks down in real time. And when that flame dies, something else rises to finish the job. This is a brutal rules light nightmare with a story that emerges organically based on the decisions that the characters make. This is what it felt like to play RPGs in the 80s. And man, it is so good to be back. Join the Glass Cannon podcast as we plunge into the Shadow Dark every Thursday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on YouTube.com slash the Glass Cannon with the podcast version dropping the next day. See what everybody's talking about and join us in the dark.

Welcome to Mick Unplugged, the number one podcast for self-improvement and modern leadership. I'm Mick Hunt, your host, and I'm here to challenge your why and fuel your because. This is where leaders, entrepreneurs, and go-getters come to level up. Each week, I bring you unfiltered conversations, game-changing strategies, and the kind of motivation that transforms lives and legacies. I've learned from legends like Les Brown, Damon, John, and Robert Irvine. And now, I'm bringing their lessons, along with mine, straight to you. From modern leadership tips to creating unstoppable momentum, this is the podcast that redefines what's possible. Hit play, subscribe, and join the millions who've made Mick Unplug their go-to source for growth and greatness, because your next breakthrough is just one episode away.

This is Mick Unplug, the voice and face of modern leadership entrepreneur and self-improvement. Let's get started. I play a lot at home and on cam with Jared Logan, someone who I think is like a true genius at whatever this art form is. he's a Mozart of it. And he has a lot of like little, little rules that flow through. And my first time playing Calla Cthulu, one of my favorite TTRPGs was with him. And I think Rules is written. You can spend as much, there's a mechanic called luck in Calla Cthulhu, which, like, if you fail a role, you spend luck points to get your role to be a success.

But that, of course, lowers your luck stat, which if you need to have a lucky, break later and when you roll against it is going to make it harder. Like the luck is always a diminishing resource. Now, in rules is written, you can spend as much of it as you want to get your, to get your roll down. The house rule that Jared uses, I think you could never spend more than 12 points. So, because as when, which I thought was just the rules when we played it. That's very funny.

So that when I played it later and people were like, okay, I'm going to spend 40 points of luck to make that a success. I was like, what? You could do that. Excuse me. Point of order. Yeah. We were dying a lot.

Yeah. Yeah, Jared is a tough taskmaster. He makes it hard on you. But that makes it fun. It raises the intensity. So that is actually a fun rule. But I can see why some players might not find it fun because it's not necessarily to your benefits. Yeah, I think that absolutely a case of, I think, knowing your audience, like knowing what your group wants.

That's definitely, if they like an experience that has a possibility for higher play early Lethality, 1,000 percent. I definitely can get on board with that. And I'm sure more people have said this, but Blades in the Dark, my other, my other favorite improv game. I'm playing right now at my home game. TDRBG game. Oh, man, is it good? So good.

The flashback mechanic in that is so awesome. And I think if you can find, that's one that you can incorporate into lots of other games. If you can find the attendant kind of cost that a flashback entails, it's so great. Yeah. Yeah, it's, I'm always a fan of any system that employs some sort of like shared narration rights almost because that to me speaks to our point earlier about it being a communal act and sort of, you know, it's, I love the idea that it's, we don't have time to showcase every single thing that went into it because you as the player getting new information in real time, which would have affected what you would have done previously. But in, in Blades in the Dark in particular, it just plays out so beautifully. but also I love how the dice, you know, it's a success with consequence. It's a failure with consequence, an amazing success.

There's still that level of variance in there that determines what's going to happen and, you know, get to manage your stress as well to make sure you don't crash out. Yeah, that game is so elegantly and beautifully made because you're right. It empowers everyone to contribute to the narrative of the, and the world building. Everyone is kind of a GM in that game. You can contribute so much. But the mechanics also, it's a game. Like you've got a, it's not just you telling a story.

There's a lot of push pull and economy to keep track of and compromises you have to make that they make it so suspenseful and great. Well, since we're on, since we're on the subject of, we talked about Calla Cthulhu, talked about Blades in the Dark. I'm curious, what is your favorite TTRPG that you think people are either sleeping on or you wish got a bit more shine or a game that you would be excited to sit down and play with a group of people that have not played before. Golly. I mean, those called Cthulu and Blades in the Dark are probably my favorite games just because they're so, they're so narrative focused. And that's what I like, I like most of. As far as like for a first timer, I would go with either of those, honestly, but just to bring up one that I haven't, that I haven't spoken of before, a game that just

just crossed my desk. This same little home group did a two shot of this game that I'd never heard of before called Eat the Reich. It's a slim little game. You could absorb it pretty quickly.

And the premise is utterly irresistible and crazy. It's that during World War II, when Germany has occupied France, there is a secret allied special forces organization called F-A-N-G that brings Fang, that brings vampires into the, under the aegis of the Allied powers, air drops them into occupied Paris

with one mission, drink Hitler's blood. Incredible premise. That is, I've seen this at my local game store, and now I simply must pick it up. That's incredible. it's it's um we we all just played the pre-gen characters in the book and it was so fun it's also it's so gonzow and crazy and over the top in a very fun way and um and in the way that you know you play a new game and you're kind of trying to get your arms around it the whole time like how are we playing it exactly right it's a very player empowering game you you you are given a lot of leeway

to describe a lot about what you do and and the world. It's an interesting, it's an interesting narrative-driven game with a lot of like interesting mechanics along the way. And the world it's in is just so compelling. And again, not to get political, but there was something very cathartic

about like, about sucking a bunch of fascists dry. Felt very good. Yeah. Yeah. I can, I can see why that would be satisfying. Even if I can't definitely draw a direct parallel to

current events. All right. So my last question for you, Ross, it's game night. You've been tasked with choosing any board game, table top game that you want to bring, game of your choice. What are you showing up to Game Night with? I'm bringing Regency Cthulhu.

There's a call of Cthulhu hack that is set in Jane Austen era, Regency England, and that's what I would bring. Oh my gosh. I have one little homebrew scenario that I've played both on the Ainsulated Buddy podcast and at home. And I had so much fun kind of inventing it and playing it. And I, it's just so, what I love most about Calla Cthulhu, even aside from the Cthulhu-esque stuff in it, is just that it's a historical fiction game that you get to play in different eras. and the Regency era is so

it's so hypercharged with emotion. Whether you're playing it as a a Jane Austenie thing or a Bronte thing or a Bridgerton thing, you could, you're bringing that, it speaks to me because you have that like heightened language like we were talking about, heightened emotions like we were talking about.

And the idea of dark and twisted horrors invading you know, the Bennett sisters cotillion. It's pretty fun. Mr. Darcy's even darker secret. Yeah, yeah. Heathcliff was left on the heath. By what? And who came back?

Yeah. Mr. Rochester's got something locked away up there in his attic. What is it? What is in Miss Havisham's cake? Yeah, yeah. No, I love that. I didn't realize there was a regency hack for Calla Cthulah Thulele that. It will absolutely have to check that out. If we can find a link, we'll put it in the description below. But Ross, thank you so much for taking the time to join us today. I really appreciate it. This has been such a wonderful conversation around stuff that I think

is very near and dear to both of us. So I would urge everyone out there is listen to make some time to go play this week, next week, whenever you can at your earliest convenience. But in the meantime, Ross, where can people find you on the World Wide Web if, in fact, you want to be found? Good question. These days, we must hide in the shadows lurking, waiting for our time to strike. No, you can find me on Instagram. Yeah, I'm on Instagram at Ross B.B. So yeah, come and follow me there. That's really the only social media I regularly engage with. Yeah, and if you like cartoons, you'll be doubly rewarded. So please give Ross a follow. Yes, yes. I actually, I don't know, this might be another edit point, but I can find the next

chill touch date here. Oh yeah, absolutely. And please come, like Dan was so kind, bringing up the Improvice Shakespeare Company with those kind words. I love that show. I love doing the show. And we do tour around. So come and see it in LA. We play at the Largo once or twice a month here in Los Angeles.

But we're also, we tour around the country. So keep an eye on that website or on my Instagram to know when we're going to be coming to your town. And if you are interested in Chill Touch, the daring show that has the courage to finally let nerds play improv. You can see our next show at Upred Sins Brigade here in Los Angeles on Saturday, May 31st at 7 p.m. And if you're elsewhere in the world, that is available on live stream. So you can watch it through the power of the internet as well.

Yes, you're no longer bound by the shackles of geography through the worldwide web. Anything including laughter can be yours. That's awesome. I didn't realize they were live streaming now. That's amazing. Fantastic. Well, Ross, thank you again. Folks, you can find me each and every week trapped here in the conversation dungeon on Geek

and Sundry, also on Nerdist, wherever fine podcasts and videos are found. And thank you so much. So get out there, go play, and we'll see you next time. Bye. Bye. Welcome to Mick Unplugged, the number one podcast for self-improvement and modern leadership. I'm Mick Hunt, your host, and I'm here to challenge your why and fuel. you're because.

This is where leaders, entrepreneurs, and go-getters come to level up. Each week, I bring you unfiltered conversations, game-changing strategies, and the kind of motivation that transforms lives and legacies. I've learned from legends like Les Brown, Damon John, and Robert Irvine. And now, I'm bringing their lessons, along with mine, straight to you. From modern leadership tips to creating unstoppable momentum, this is the podcast that redefines what's possible. Hit play, subscribe, and join the millions

who've made Mick Unplug their go-to source for growth and greatness because your next breakthrough is just one episode away. This is Mick Unplug, the voice and face of modern leadership entrepreneur and self-improvement. Let's get started. Look, we all know there are a lot of celebrity interview podcasts out there, but there's only one happy, said, confused. I'm Josh Harrow-Witsyn.

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