Critical Role & Sagas of Sundry - Non-Fantasy Tropes with Jackson Lanzing, Eric Campbell, and Matt Colville | Roundtable

Episode Date: March 9, 2026

Join Jackson Lanzing, Eric Campbell, and Matt Colville are your GMs for this episode of The Roundtable! This week, the topic of discussion is non-fantasy tropes. Immersive storytelling has the power to transport you to a whole new world, but becoming a storyteller requires time, patience, and dedication. We've gathered some of the most notable storytellers to hear their perspectives on their craft, their passion, and how they build worlds. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Yes. Jackson Lansing, a co-writer, behind the hit comic books Joyride and Hacktivist and the RPG Vast. Like, I spend a lot of my time on my YouTube channel try to explain to people that, like, there's a million different ways to be a GM. And that whatever it is that excites you, then that's your path into it. Matthew Colville, a video game writer with Turtle Rock Studios. Sci-fi opens the door to doing everything.

Like, if I want a fantasy episode, I can go and do that. We can time travel to, you know, anywhere. Eric Campbell, game master of Eric's TBD, RPA. PG and GNS live. Talking about stuff apart from fantasy makes me happen. There's plenty of settings that don't have dungeons. Correct, yeah, exactly. You got dessert.

Yeah, I did. I got a smooth. I didn't know what did you get? So this is a smooth Lansing, which is a drink created by Shay, one of our fans on Vash. You got nice team. You got nice tea. Yeah, I don't drink.

It's funny, because I'm drinking such a traditionally, just like, but because my great ancestors used to drink this. But this, in this wonderfully beautiful delicate glass, is honeymead. Nice. Did you have them like make it from scratch? I did. I even had them burn a village when they were doing it.

I know, before the time we went off on. Cheers. Cheers. To breathe new worlds. Yeah, to the round table. Yeah. Oh. What were we talking about?

We were talking about Star Trek. We were talking about Star Trek. We were talking a lot about Star Trek because we learned very early. We all have this thread in common. Right. I spent a lot of time designing. a Star Trek system because I couldn't find a system I loved. You designed apparently a system that's the closest thing

to the one I would have loved. And you have obsessively collected the books from his system. That is crazy. That is wacky because yeah, like I said, I mean, the Decipher RPGs have been out of print for a long time. So people who wanted to pick up and play a Star Trek RPG have been kind of left out in the wind.

There have been a lot of fan-made stuff out there, but for the most part, I think DeCyfer's RPG has been out of print since 2005. or something like that. Which is weird to me because I feel like there should always be a Star Trek. I think so, too. Don't I agree. I'm so glad there's finally this new one coming down the bike.

Yeah, but it drives me out of my mind that because the flip side to the rising popularity of tabletop RPGs means that suddenly it's becoming a collector's market because now now, because that's because decipher RPGs, I paid a hundred bucks for my starships. Are you serious? Yeah. That one was one of the hardest ones to get. I've got like 50. Oh God.

Flip this table. And by the way, I spent my tax return collecting the decipher RPG books. Well, I mean, there's some really like talking about storytelling outside of the fantasy genre. There's some, if you go, if you just go by like the GM books that we wrote or the core books and the DM's advice in it, there's a ton of like how to take a TV episode and break it down into an RPG episode and into a mission, into an adventure. Like you were talking about watching Deep Space Nine and trying to translate those episodes and I'm like, a whole bunch of them make great adventures. You have a lot of shows. The thing that I think you can go back to over and over again is like, do you want to know how to run a mystery in a Star Trek system? There's an episode for that.

It's like you want to do a Klingon episode? There it is. It's all there. It's ready for you. You were talking about doing like Game of Thrones in Star Trek and the Klingon Empire. And there is more than ample material just in the show. Klingon Empire, yeah. You're right. What I love about running sci-fi games is sci-fi opens the door to doing everything. Like with sci-fi, like in the Doctor Who RPG that I'm running right now, if I want a fantasy episode, I can go and do that. We can time travel to, you know, anywhere. We can do, we can do all of these things. Star Trek kind of does the same thing with Holodex and whatnot. I myself, as a storyteller, I feel limited. This is so bizarre to say, but I have felt limited by fantasy. And I'm not saying one

is better than the other, because I would never do that, but I would never. Not because I'm worried about Flack, but because I can never make that call. Like, I love them both enormously. But the thing is, is with sci-fi, I can go from space and then immediately go into a setting where everyone just has swords and they're fighting a supernatural, like, you know what I mean? Well, like, in a Star Trek show, you could have characters rolling around with their phasers as much as you want,

but when you're fighting Klingons, one of those Klingons is gonna pull a Batluth, and now you're in a sword fight. Or a Meklith. Or a Mechlith, exactly, or a Duktach, or a, we can just go down that list. I know, I love Kliens. That's one of the things I like about Star Trek,

I think it's like the great science fiction RPG setting because everyone knows it. It feels like the story, the beginning to end for fantasy, is you start small, you end big. Like you're The Hobbit, you end, you know what I mean? Whereas in sci-fi, it feels like you start determined, you end victorious. Sure.

Do you know what I mean? Yes. Dude, that's interesting. I think you can still start small and end big. I think so, too. I think it's about... But like, I've noticed that the journey is a little different. Because it seems like, it seems like whenever I play D&D, like in critical role, for example,

you start doing some questing and you start doing some... You're helping out, and you start by making a difference, and then by the end of it, you're fighting fucking dragons that are destroying mountains and like all this stuff. Whereas in like sci-fi, the story seems to change from like, from, you know, you have a couple of missions, and then you go rescue a few people,

and then you get involved in like political conflict and all of a sudden there's a war going on. I'm wondering what it is about fantasy that draws us because there's something wholly unique and sort of intimate about fantasy. Fantasy, you know where you're looking. Yeah. So like you walk into a town and you know where the tavern is.

There's a term they use in criticism called Fantasyland, which is the implied setting that all and novels and games take place in where you know there's going to be a blacksmith to fix my weapons. I'm going to be able to get a horse to get from here to here. I have a basic understanding. And the problem when you throw, I think, players into new, not well-established, apart from Star Trek, science fiction settings, is that they don't know those things. They don't know if they're playing traveler, for instance. They don't know, like, well, are there space stations around here?

How do we get, do we have faster than light travel? Can we be anywhere we want? Fantasy as a default setting for RPG is great, but I actually believe it's very limiting. I've always had a hard time running fantasy as a society. I find that if I'm gonna run a fantasy setting, I always feel like I've read the story I wanna tell. Like I've read too much fantasy maybe. I'm gonna run into those things where I go,

damn, I feel like I'm ripping something off. Whereas if I set it in a universe that runs by a different set of rules, but I'm telling a relatively similar story, I feel like I'm getting something else out of it. With Knights and Orcs, I feel like I'm always gonna be walking them through planes and putting them at campfires and walking them up mountains and having them fight dragons.

Like, with these guys I can be like, I can be like, you know, you hit a planet that's filled with rock monsters that act like nights. We can go into these weirder settings. I mean, maybe it's just I have a harder time being creative in fantasy. Now that I'm saying it out loud. Again, I mean, the existence of fantasy land

are answers to questions that you don't want answer, you want to come up with your answers to them. You're like, well, I don't, why, what's the point of playing in this sandbox when everything's already been solved? So it's almost like you gotta, you gotta be mindful of walking in the shadow of the typical when it comes to fantasy.

Because like, when I, Great, great, what is it? Yeah, at least our modern fantasies that are huge today are springing, of course, from granddaddy Tolkien and his... Completely disagree. And his story, which, well, there's really, well, there's really good reason,

because there's such a huge, rich library of mythology and fantasies that have sprout up, that we've discovered, of course, Dungeons of Dragons being heavily influenced by Tolkien going forward, and that being the big kid in the room, basically, when it comes to, like, the fantasies that we know today, maybe sometimes we fall into the trap

of that traditional, like, fantasy, You know what I'm saying? Sure. You know what you were just saying? You just accept that this is what fantasy is. You're like, well, we already all know that and that's not interesting, right? Like it's much more interesting to find out what a hyper-intelligent cockroach with robotic legs is going to react to the situation than it is to find out what another human with a sword is going to do. Like, we've seen that a million times.

I hope we haven't created a narrative that sci-fi is better than fantasy. I'm not saying that. I'm not saying that is no freaking way. I'm saying that's, I feel like I'm going to be the defender of fantasy. No, please. I'll do it. I'll do it. Please.

Renaissance in fantasy gaming right now that people want to get back to that they're excited to get back to that roots and so it feels like all we're doing is Recapitulating the Hobbit and Heroes Quest over and over again, but like I've got a one shot that I run whenever friends are like Hey, we haven't played that's just tears of the Sun the Bruce Willis movie where these these fantasy characters are like they start at seventh level and they're a Delta Force team and they have to go on a mission. That's great and it's got politics. It's just all done and like I think you can do I think you can do anything in anything. Yeah, I agree. I agree. I agree. I I completely agree. I'm not trying to say that fantasy is limiting in and of itself. No, because it personally limiting. Like, we find it personally limited because of our own experiences. Exactly.

I get that. I'm just curious, because the thing is, is when it comes to fantasy, like I could never, like, that would be like removing half of my body if I decided to step away from it, you know? When I play fantasy, the reason why I get so into it is when I'm in sci-fi, I'm dealing with these massive themes, but when I play fantasy, it just feels, I don't know why, it just feels more intimate to me. like I can picture my character walking across the cold soil as they're approaching their campfire with food that they just got for the party.

Stuff like that, like that's the stuff I, as a storyteller and as a player, I would be like, my soul be sucked dry. It's interesting because I wonder how much that is just because of our senses and the fact that like, I can imagine the- That's a good point. I can like, I actually have no idea what Dave Bauman smells when he walks around inside the discovery.

I don't know. But as far as like campfires and stuff like that, that basic, like I know what it smells like to cook meat. Like I know what it's like to get tired walking, right? And so these are tools. They're more approachable concepts. Yeah, these are things that are kind of built in. And it's easy for the dungeon, the game master

to bust these, these smells and senses out. But I don't know what it's like. I don't know what a lightsaber smells like. I think you just got it. Like when I think about the never ending story and what it would be like to write on Falcour's back, all I had to do as a little kid was run just really, really fast.

Sure, yeah. And feel the wind, whip and past my ears, and I could get it. Now, when I'm playing Star Wars, I'm playing with a toy. And I'm imagining everything, and it's really liberating, It's wonderful and everything.

But in fantasy, I could draw a plastic sword and go fight a dragon. You guys kind of spend more weekends on spaceships. I don't know. I just, I feel like my experience is so different from yours. No, it's funny. So I agree with what you're saying. I'm curious then, what was the first, I mean, I'd just love to hear what you guys. What was your first RPG outside of?

Because did you start with fantasy or did you start? Okay, so what was your first non- Fantasy RPG? Like, what did you? That I played in or I ran? That, your first experience with, like, Star Trek. Yeah, my Star Trek. Yeah. Yeah, my start tricking.

That's right. And what was yours? Because you started with D&D as well, right? Oh, yeah. I mean, we're going back into the midst of time. This would be like 1986, 87. It might have been Champions. It might have been a superhero game.

Oh, yeah. It might have been champions. By the way, champions is a game where you have to do calculus. I know. I've heard about that. If you want to like, it was the 80s and people were like, we've got these cool calculators, we might as well use them. If you want to, if your character, if you're a superman character

is going to fly across the board and punch that guy or punch something. He's like, okay, well, I've got this much movement. Grab your T-A-82. I've got a hundred, I can move a hundred feet of movement. But if I have a hundred feet of movement, I'm not moving a hundred feet per round at this point. I'm only moving a hundred feet per round at this point. Yeah, you got to do velocity calculations.

You literally have to sit there. You have to do a derivative to figure out how fast am I going at this point in my movement? And at the time, we were like, I'm doing basic arithmetic in my head to keep all my players. Well, you know, like, well, what's wrong? This makes perfect sense to us. Why aren't all games like this?

Because you have a certain edge. You just want that super intense. On my SATs, I was like 40 points away from a perfect on the verbal, and I crashed the math so hard. Which, actually, this is a little adjacent, but like of all the classic, like, storytelling games that I've played growing up, because we've been talking about fantasy and sci-fi,

but I just, I'm so disappointed that I never got my feet wet with Spell Jammer in D&D. Did anybody ever play that? Did you ever play that? because it looked weird to me. It's the thing. It's so... It's a polarizing thing either.

Either you look at that and you're like, ooh, I want it, or you look at it and you're like, what is it. It's like opera. I don't know what that is. Spell Jammer is Dungeons and Dragons in space, and it came out in like the late 80s, I guess, or many 80s?

It's not science fiction though. No, it's not. It's like, imagine back when they thought that the, everything was like Phlogistan. It's like, it's like, John Carter. John Carter, Mars, Planetary Romance. Like the ships that go, have sales. They're going through space and they have...

And they have, and a mage basically, wizard pilots them using sitting on this throne and some of them are giant whales. Some of them are like ships with sails and some of them are and and what's crazy. It's so it's so like it just feels like so pulpy like early 80s pop. Yeah, I've always and I'm like somebody has to have made conversion rules out there. So I'm like always like just checking in like they were coming out with all these different sort of genres that they were trying to branch it out to make it to make it more than just go on this quest, kill this monster and stuff like that.

Right getting out of the traditional fans. I mean, so even they, early on, we're recognizing like the fantasy setting can be limited. But RPGs as a story format are so intensely engaging from a long-term story perspective. I think you can do stuff there that you can never do otherwise. Sure, I mean, every time in 30 years that I've had one player be the mole,

there's at least one other player who gets legitimately upset because of how intense an experience on RP, like I trusted you, I literally trusted you, right? Right, right, and my character trusted you, and look what happened. The experience of being a player is so different than the experience of being a dungeon master. Like the dungeon master is literally,

I am having to read all these players constantly and judge, what are they responding to? And that gets into like, my friend Dave, when he had kids, all of a sudden, if you needed to engage his character, you could put a child in danger and he would have an intense visceral reaction of that. Whereas that same, I've known this guy since we were 15,

he would not have reacted that way when he was 15 or 16. It becomes he's intensely personal. It's funny that you have, I mean, this is a, a footnote. Like I spent a lot of my time on my YouTube channel try to explain to people that like there's a million different ways to be a GM and that whatever it is that excites you, then that's your path into it. And that comes from me like my first, my first DM, and this is Dungeons and Dragons and this is like 1987-88. This is somebody who was not a writer and had a serious like stage fright.

It was dyslexic. And yet in spite of that, this dude was an amazing DM. And he put this huge It was actually a map of the city-state of the invincible overlord. And it was a Mayfair product from the Judges Guild, and it was about as big as this table. And every single building on it was keyed. So you could literally go, I want to go here, and he would go, flip, flip, okay, that's an alchemy shop. And it was all about urban intrigue and, you know, murder mysteries and stuff like that. And so my first experience had very little to do with kind of knights questing and going and finding an inn and that kind of stuff and riding on horseback from one point or the other.

And that complete, I feel like I've spent most of my life trying to be a DM like that guy was a DM. I had the same experience. Really? Are you serious? That's awesome. So I grew up in South Texas. Okay. For a Southern Baptist family who absolutely believed that Dungeons and Dragons is going to summon the devil and that we were all going to die. And it will. So I had a very rough like childhood growing up with regards to my education.

Because starting from first grade to the day I graduated senior year, I was placed in special education with diagnosed with a learning disability. And they told me that, because apparently I tested very high in, like, IQ and stuff like that, but I was not taking the material in. So I got diagnosed with anxiety and attention deficit disorder and all of the stuff. Are you young? Yeah, really young. And I got pumped on Ritalin and they put me in spec ed and I stayed there. And so I had that typical, like, geek story where, like, I loved, like, I'd want to come to school with my Transformers Trapperkeeper and I get my ass kicked for it. Yeah, that was kind of thing.

By the time I got to middle school, I had run into my friend Curtis, who was. as a dungeon master and I decided to give it a try, because I saw them just rolling dice at the lunch table one day. And then he is a DM, like playing in his game, I will never forget this, but like, the way he would deliver everything, the way we would come to like, there's a door,

and we'd be like, all right, well, I'm gonna try to open it. And he'd be like, he would describe it's not opening, and then he'd be like, and that's when you realize there's no lock. In fact, there's no keyhole. This door is remaining closed, and you can't figure out why. Like, that's how he would deliver everything.

Like, he would be just as amazed by the fact that you couldn't open this door. It's informed everything about who I am as a DM today and as a Game Master today, because I never felt like I was just narrating a character that existed in some fantasy world. I felt like I was standing in a room. And the GM was next to me going, but why?

Why are they similar story, but it operates on kind of different terms. Obviously, I got into RPGs a little bit later. I played my first sessions at 25 or 26. I built VAST. The universe was VAST. I built it when I was. Greetings Adventurers.

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Eligible students get a year of Microsoft 365 premium and a year of Xbox GamePass Ultimate with a custom color Xbox wireless controller. Learn more at Windows.com slash student offer. While supplies last, ends June 30th, terms at AKA.m.S. slash college PC. I couldn't have been older than 10. And I built it on a little, I had a little tape recorder that I would walk around like Agent Cooper just talking to myself in my room because I have no friends. and I would just sit around because I should have been diagnosed with a bunch of stuff and I wasn't.

So I was walking around just being like, what about the Siren and what are the Paca? And I literally coming up with all of it back when I was a kid. And I would write it all down. It was the first stuff I wrote and it was the first stuff where I was like, oh, I think I'm a writer.

I had a really, really good friend named Dan. He was writing a fantasy novel and I was writing a bunch of sci-fi. And so he would tell me all about his fantasy stuff and I would read his fantasy stuff and I would tell him all of my sci-fi stuff and I'd read my sci-fi stuff and we'd workshop worlds with each other

which wasn't really like RPGing, but it was a lot like game mastering. Sure. Because we were sitting there and talking about what's over here and how do you do this and what is this character supposed to mean and how does this mystery get set up. By the time I was playing,

which was in a World of Darkness campaign with just two other guys. But here's what I liked about my DM. He'd lean in and he would have conversations with me as the NPCs. And his conversations off the cuff were really good and he wouldn't break eye contact and he would do voices

and he would challenge everything I said. And if I wanted to beat back on this stuff, I had to roll socially to get him past that stuff, right? And I found myself thinking, like, the amount that this is illuminating my personality, that it's illuminating what I'm good at and what I'm bad at, and allowing me to recognize the kind of person I am.

It's like therapy. Yes, it becomes therapy. So all the combat stuff, all that, sure, it's there, it's fun. If the mechanics are there, it's fun. But what that GM taught me was to be like, engage with this on a level that has nothing to do with the mechanics. Sure. Engage on this on a level that is, that is demonstrable to you and your character.

And that's what I took. My high school experience was very, this is a hallmark of the 80s, I think. I don't know, maybe this is still true, where they're like, that guys that listen to heavy metal and they didn't hang out with anybody else. No, that's not a product of the 80s, that's a product, that's a product of being a teenager. It was super, super, um, tribal, right? Intensely tribal. Yeah.

And D&D was the way out of that for me because I would judge the, intensely judge these people at the age of 16 or 17 for what I thought was their wrong-headed. And then one of them would be invited to the D&D table and would be an amazing DM and DM in a completely different way than anyone. And of course when you're young, I only had one or two DMs. I only had a couple of examples. And I'm like, okay, so obviously I was completely wrong about everything. Like everything I thought about these people or about that person got thrown into a cocked hat. That's a fantastic point because that happened to me too. I got socialized really by playing Dungeons and Dragons.

And so half of my gaming group were all women. And so when we would sit down at the gaming table, we always had a diverse group. I learned to love things that I had never been exposed to, but I fell in love with musicals. I used to think Rush was the most ridiculous band, but people would kind of make fun of you for like your wish fulfillment. Like your fantasy wish fulfillment for like playing,

oh, I'm going to be a fighter because I can't really move in real life. Like that's how you'd be portrayed or whatever. Right. But what I discovered was there is some truth to like the character styles that you pick. I started to notice throughout high school that I kept choosing a character that had some secret awesome power, but no one ever knew about it. And I didn't realize that what I was actually doing

was telling my story to myself, that I felt like I as a person was buried deep down inside and that I had something special to offer, and I just needed to find the right situation to give it. So I have a similar story. I was born in Spina Pippina, my back is all messed up, and for a long time before I knew how to deal with that, before I knew like the exercises

and things that I needed to do to make sure that my body worked properly, I'd have whole periods of time where I couldn't walk. When I started playing, I was always playing these hyper-capable. I was the, oh, I can't fight in real life, so I'm going to fight. Because it was seriously therapeutic to me to have a character that was never going to be told, oh, you can't walk over there. Right?

Like, I would play the biggest, baddest thing I could. And the thing that I've realized now, having done this a few times, is that I've also always attached that character to a really difficult personality. Like a personality that, like, yes, I'll be hyper-capable, but I'll also have like pretty strong opinions and I'll be pretty unpredictable. And I'm like, yeah, I'm just writing myself with capabilities. Like, I'm just, it's like I'm, I'm just taking my best aspects

and my worst aspects and I'm funneling them together into something that I can play in a safe environment. I love that. It is therapy. There is definitely a psychological component to like the first characters you make. And it's one of the things like I'm lucky in that I played with the same group for years. And there eventually comes a point

where you just get bored playing a version of yourself. Yeah. For the first time, you're making a character and you tend to want to play characters that are like you. But there's nothing wrong with that. But then eventually if you do that enough, you're going to get bored doing that. And that's when you start branching out into characters that are wildly different from you. And that is a great exercise just as a human being. I agree.

Just as a person is just like, okay, well, I've done me certainly enough now. Like, let's play somebody completely different. I mean, that is the bedrock of empathy. I was wondering if this gets back to the kind of science fiction versus fantasy thing. Because certainly if we talk about fantasy and the idea of fantasy land, we are talking about fantasy land, we are talking about. about that classic medieval Western European tradition, right? And that, though there are ethnicities, they're kind of built into that, right?

And there is feudalism that's built into that. But if we talk about science fiction, we are deliberately throwing all those things out on purpose so that we can have anybody in there. And again, that's the thing I love about sci-fi is you can take all the social moors off. There's something about fantasy where you kind of have to accept, like, there's gonna be a lot of human social moors

that you have to stick to. That lets the players dig into the concept of their own relative morality, of like what I believe versus, believe versus what you believe versus what you believe. Like, we're all talking and we're all agreeing right now. If we talk long enough, we'll find stuff that we fundamentally disagree about. I feel like it's limited to say that I can't do everything with a fantasy setting when I can do

anything I want with sci-fi. But fantasy feels like, if fantasy, it almost feels like if it doesn't have that feel of opening up an old book and telling a story with a pipe in your mouth kind of thing, you know what I mean? I feel like if I move too far away from that, then I've lost the charm of fantasy altogether. Do you know what I do? I do, yeah. But isn't that kind of like what Game of Thrones is taking? like hoary old fantasy cliches and just marrying them to like soap opera plotting that we've all

seen a million times and no one done that before. All the people who are coming to fantasy through Game of Thrones and man there are a lot of them like more I think than maybe any of us realize yet that you're going to see a whole generation of people who are coming down the pike who whose primary fantasy is not one that exists wholly on a swords and sorcery level. I'm looking forward to the fantasy that it births because that's political it'll be yeah and it'll be more multicultural and it'll be more alien. And for me, again, like, I think maybe I've come across a little bit as like the anti-fantasy guy here.

And that's, to some degree, true. I have a bigger science fiction fan than I am a fantasy fan. But you're not anti-fanty. You're just a science fiction. I'm just a science fiction writer. Yeah. Like, my, but I look forward to writing fantasy someday, right? It's just not, it's not my core,

my core belief system was raised on Star Trek. It was raised on science fiction and raised by scientists. So for me, I have this very, like, that is where my perspective comes from. But in playing games, I think the only advantage that science fiction has had for me is that it allows for those, for the world building to be less limited,

for the perspectives to be less limited, for the cultural perspective, be less limited. And I'm wondering if that's a temporary thing. It's funny that I find myself in a venue talking about mostly science fiction now because, but isn't that great that we are in a position where look, if you're here watching this because you're interested in role playing

and you're interested in Dungeon Master, being a GM, there's a colossal variety of things you can do with this. And so let's talk about stuff apart from fantasy. There's plenty of settings that don't have dungeons. Correct, yeah, exactly. 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

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