Critical Role & Sagas of Sundry - Relics and Rarities: Behind the Game

Episode Date: September 2, 2024

Take a sneak peak behind the scenes of Relics and Rarities as Deborah and the cast discuss the making of the show, the building of the campaign and the overall experience that is R&R! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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This is not. Yeah, me like seeing my microphone. Let us fad... What is happening? I've always known about Dungeons and Dragons. When I was a kid, I was very curious about it. But when I was finally exposed to it, I was just asking around. I just really wanted to play.

When I was a child and it was kind of like more of a, as everybody knows, it was much more underground, it was like a movement. I used to force my friends to play with me at birthday parties, and that was the only way I would get to play. but I would have to DM for them and explain the game. Growing up, I always wanted to play D&D, but I didn't really have enough friends to play or nobody, and or nobody asked me too.

And then when we were shooting True Blood, Deborah mentioned that she played it. Deborah 100% introduced me to RPGs. And a friend of mine bought me the starter kit for edition four, which I kind of rifled through, but didn't have anyone to play with. But then my manager at the time had been playing Dungeons and Dragons,

his entire life. So I asked Alan if he would run a game from me and my friends, and we're still running that same group. I think I flat out asked her like, if you ever wanted me to play with you, maybe you can invite me to play Dungeons and Dragons with you. And she finally did one day. And so we've been playing ever since.

It is a game of imagination, of mental dexterity, of collaboration and teamwork, and that you cannot be afraid to fail. It's like watching your make-believe come to real life. I'm a huge fan of games in general. I play loads of games, but never have I played a game where you feel like you're in the game. So far from this experience, I've been surprised by how free and open it is. Like with video games, of course, you have to follow a path.

But like with this, whatever you say you can do. But of course, you have to roll for it. If you're an RPG person and you've never played D&D, you're missing out. Kevin Smith can tell you that now. Sam Richardson can tell you that now. If you're a gamer and you haven't, because this is sort of like, D&D is sort of like the most pure version of what that is.

I was so excited about rolling a natural 20 after I was told that it was a good thing. The whole room lit up and I didn't know what I did. It was like I was a child again and I made a boom boom. Everybody was so proud of me, it was great. I didn't really understand that it was a role-playing game. I didn't really understand that there's like, you have a character and occasionally you like speak as that character.

I was kind of really horrified by that. But I actually found it, you know, I got into it, I found it really enjoyable and very silly and that's great. What brings me joy when I play this game, it's the collaboration with other players, and it's watching them solve problems in ways that I could never have guessed. I love saying, all right, here's a 30-foot wall, and there's no way around it. What are you going to do? And everyone solves that problem differently. And watch as a bunch of different imaginations unfold together and see what actual pure

undivided freedom is, because that's how I feel when they play. You're on a journey, and it's a collective story shared amongst everyone at the table, and that these intersections of great things happen and are determined by the role of the dice. So it's a story that has a direction and a sort of beginning, middle, and end, but you don't know where those things are going to happen or what's going to happen in the storytelling. So if video games and all of these other kind of stories exist now, and they're super immersive and amazing. They all came from this original idea back in 1973 or 74,

whenever it was. And yeah, I think once you go back and you taste the pure stuff, it'll give a whole new flavor to the other games and you'll try to find that same sense of play and freedom that you had in D&D and kind of apply it to the rest of it. I think RPGs have come a long way. When I first got started, you know, getting into this sort of war, things like shows like this one didn't really exist, especially not on this scale.

And now the fact that it is becoming extremely mainstream, widespread, the geeks rule the world kind of thing, makes me very happy. I grew up in the 90s and it was sort of at the end of this like satanic panic that surrounded not just Dungeons and Dragons, but I guess RPGs in general. Something was weird about kids getting together in a basement and discussing magic that kind of scared the culture as a whole. whole and it's been cool to see this transition and acceptance both I think in large part to geek and sundry and nerdist and alpha and all of these these programs we're at the forefront of making it accessible to people it is the era of the geek the geek have inherited the earth which is a thing that we say often to be of the generation that grew up with these nerdy things and then have been

able to be the adults that get to like be at full wingspan within them to not only create content, but just to have content that involves the things that we love is really special. Relics and rarities came to me pretty early on. The first sort of impulse I had about this game was that I wanted to hit them with heavy stuff that they couldn't handle, but give them creative options about how to solve it. The world Deborah created was incredibly detailed and impressed. I'm still kind of blown away by the idea that we as players kind of suggest ideas, and we're limited only by our imagination.

So 16, he hits. Strong. So now let's... Our imagination is so enhanced with everything that she's created from her brain. I mean, look around this room. It's completely accurate, every single thing, which makes us play even bigger and even stronger.

I've long loved this idea of trinkets that they're not powerful, they're not particularly flashy, but if you've used, you've used to you. use them in the right way, they can have tremendous results. As a fellow GM, it's something I really admire about her. It's like she really sat and mulled over the world and the settings and the characters. So that every question we as players ask,

she has a great answer to. Now you two, like back to back in the middle of the That's right, okay? The great thing about working with Deborah and this adventure is that she's already into props. Like she's giving the players all these things that are telling story and tactile. I like the idea of creative magic items.

So rather than just getting powerful plus one swords or amulets or things like that, I like the idea of creative magic items. So I do this a lot in my home games where the loot that they get will be like a spool of thread and they're like, well, what do I do with this? And it turns out it has a little bit of a magic property and you can do incredible things with that when you're creative. The most unique and special experience so far with relics and rarities is the expansive and immersive set we've been placed in.

It's absolutely fantastic to see the world completely coming. alive around you in an RPG sense. I don't think it's been done before to my knowledge in this way. I don't think it can be topped. I just didn't think the set was going to be this beautiful. All of these things fell out of Deborah's brain. I mean the set, this set, the set that we played on, um, played the actual game in was just, it blew my mind. And at one point there was lightning and then there was actual lightning. Um, there was a lighting, uh, effect, which just, uh, it was just incredible and it kind of helps you feel so immersed in the environment. and the enjoyment of it.

I think it's really awesome, like, when you step into this room, the answer chamber before you get into the room we're actually playing the game. And the world that Debra created, like, you know, she put more work into this game than I put into, like, every movie I ever made. More thought process went into this. She's got answers for all the questions and stuff.

And I just remember sitting on set and people were like, why are Jay and Silent Bob striking back? And I'm like, I don't know. Never thought about that. Where were you when I wrote the script? So I had this idea that I wanted to fill a space with mundane items that actually had magical properties to them. And I thought, okay, well, that's an antique store. That's a curio shop.

That's these funny little things. So I started thinking, like, what would be the best name for something that has no magic, like, is mundane and boring? And I was like, relics and rare. Like, I like the idea that you walk in here and you're like, nothing here is a relic. And nothing here is particularly rare. So, yeah, so when I sent the sort of images and my descriptions, I was like, I think it should look like your grandmother's attic. A bunch of, like, crappy stuff that you think is really old and annoying.

But then she goes to Antiques Roadshow and gets $4,000 for it because it was actually really precious all along. I really wanted to do very distinct environments. I wanted them to explore six completely different worlds, which meant that sometimes your strengths are going to shine, sometimes an ally's strengths are going to shine. And it allowed everyone to kind of show up and be the leader at different points. in that game.

There's a great... ...back. It has times where it's really dark and creepy, and we switch between those rapidly as we go along on our adventures. We'll be in a cute little curio shop one minute, and the next minute we're in a haunted mansion, like, exorcist style. It's fantastic. Shh!

Where the bad man will come. The fact that at any turn there's danger and unexpected characters that you don't know whether to trust or not is exciting. I think that it's just a testament to Deborah's genius. It's amazing thing with his feet that cats do that's like this, like... My preparation over the years of DMing has changed a lot. I mean, specifically for this show, for relics and rarities, it was very, very different because what we were trying to accomplish was one, something that was more of a show.

And two, because of the change out of guest characters, I really wanted to make that feel integral to the structure. So I came up with this idea of like, like, whore cruxes. Harry Potter, right? So you can't defeat Voldemore until you destroy all the whore cruxes. So you have these mini quests that lead to the ultimate quest. So that was sort of the structural idea of relics and rarities was that we would have five one-off adventures that would be integral to defeating the baddies in the end. So that was items, that's information, you know, it's Zelda. It's a map and a compass and a sword and, you know, you do what you got to find the things you've got to find in order to defeat the batty. So this was the structure of this was very, was very tight.

So this required a tremendous amount of pre-planning, everything I wanted to plant clues for the final episode in the first episode, and how do I kind of make this feel like an overarching story, despite the fact that we're gonna kind of wrap everything up each time. I think the world that Deborah's created has been pretty amazing. She's so detailed and like so imaginative.

It's like really fun just seeing everything that she comes up with. And I knew I wanted to do impossible stories. I think it's so fun when you're, you know, you're a squishy little fifth level character and you're fighting a freaking death night and it's just clear you're gonna die unless you're smarter than it that I find that if battles are too evenly matched you just get you know you hit and then they hit and you're just kind of knocking off HP and kind of go in that But the great thing is when you know you're never gonna survive and just straight on battle with something you have to come up with some other way

I knew I want to do something that was intense and and and And so we just, I sort of pitched this thing. I was like, what if they fought two to three bad guys? You guys were on board and excited for that. And yeah, and then we talked about the element of having an overarching story, but also on each episode to be able to stand alone. I wanted to make sure that the change out of the guest characters made sense and that we weren't just like, oh, and then they disappear,

and now you've someone knew, that we really understood why new people were joining the group every time. And so, yeah, it was almost a fun, problem-solving exercise, I think, from our end as the creatives, you know, the creators of this from the beginning, is, you know, how do we sort of take these challenges and make them feel authentic? I think the great thing about playing some like Dungeons & Dragons, it supports and embellishes your imagination, your storytelling, your interactive ability to hang out with people and problem solved. But there's something to that, that's, there's more depth that it isn't just about vanquishing, the bad guys and saving the innocent townsfolk. I mean, that's in there. But there's something more to it. It's really discovering parts of yourself and committing to character in a way that I think is even stronger than what you experience when you read it from an outside perspective.

RPGs, I could say, are the core of why I want to perform. From day one, taking acting classes or going on stage or being on film. All that I'm doing are playing these characters that I've developed going on adventures, playing with my friends, and it's always interesting to see these aspects to come out in the characters that I play. I do think it is a way to get to know yourself better. So much of our life is about taking the path of least resistance. You know, you come up upon an obstacle and you go, all right, well, we'll do something else, or that's too hard. The whole point of D&D, especially as a dungeon My job is to throw challenges and obstacles at you, and your job is to figure out how to get through them.

And I think you learn about yourself and the way that you think and your leanings. But I do think that I learn about myself and my own conflict resolution and how I deal with challenges and my own awareness of myself by playing D&D. Here's what I hope is different about relics and rarities. I think, again, similarly, this game can sometimes feel like a, like a, like a combat game, you know, and it gets into that world of, that can sometimes feel kind of a little masculine in a more traditional sense. And I liked the idea that with this game, it was going to be lots of very fun, violent combat,

but also it would take place in a curio shop, and rather than a tavern, and that my baddies are women, you know, that we could kind of bring that element to it and say, like, look, this is just as engaging and creative, and the cool thing about Dungeons and Drive. is it is that open. Just because traditionally maybe it's been more of a more dominated by men doesn't mean that it doesn't have absolutely the capacity to take on any story that you want to offer. I like as well that in that same vein I can go from a haunted house to the woods, to a submarine, to an Egyptian Kekesh tomb. It's so open and available in that way. So yeah, when I think about the fact that fans are going to like go with us on this journey here,

I'm excited but I'm also nervous. I want them to like it and I want it to open people's perspectives a little bit about D&D, especially for newer players. Because I think a lot of times when I meet people, they say, well, I don't even understand what this is, or am I smart enough or is it too complicated? And I really tried to make it about the mystery and the story and the quests rather than rules and stats, which all those things are really fun if that's the way that you want to play, but I think that that can sometimes prevent people from getting started.

So I'm hoping that the fans that watch this show, I hope that some of them will be new to the game and we'll go, I just kind of want to see what this is. I want to see Simone Missick play a bounty hunter. I want to see Charlie Cox play a pirate, you know? I want to see Matthew Lillard play a medium. The war is over and both sides lost. The 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, merges 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. We all know there are a lot of celebrity interview podcasts out there, but there's only one happy, sad, confused. I'm Josh Horowitzin. Yeah, I'm the host of the show, so I'm a little biased, but truly happy, say, I confused is the place for nerdy and intimate conversations with all your favorite actors and filmmakers. From Andrew Garfield and Scarlett Johansson to Christopher Nolan and

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Kevin Smith is a private detective. You know, like, I wanted to give them fun backgrounds so that you can see that, like, that's what matters. You can play the character and the fun and the story. And then when you have to make a role, It's okay if we take three minutes and figure out where it is on your sheet. I hope the intimidation factor goes down.