My Dungeons & Dragons journey started with a guy named Matt. After my first session with a group of older boys in 1982, one of them took me under his wing. I was close with his sister Julie until her untimely death in 2002 (Rest in Peace, my dear friend), but even with the age gap Matt and I connected through D&D. Some of my earliest gaming memories came from one-DM/one-player sessions run for me by this older boy. I learned what happens when a black pudding hits your 3rd level magic-user in the face, or when a multi-ton slab of granite crushes him like an ant under God’s shoe. There was character suffering and death, along with the laughs and the antics that only a hyperactive, hyper-imaginative eight-year old Jamie Chambers could provide. When he got out of gaming a few years later, Matt gave me his entire set of books, accessories, and dice. He had no idea that giving his little sister’s friend a bit of attention with a particular nerdy pastime would drastically alter the course of my life.

When I sat down to write this quick blog to thank two other guys named Matthew, it suddenly hit me that it all began with one. So before I go any further, I want to thank Matt Bullock for my earliest gaming memories, for getting me started on a hobby and a career that would define much of my life.

Now hit the fast-forward button. Through high school and working as a sort-of intern with TSR, Inc. via the online service called GEnie, through college and early freelancing, and a full-time career that’s going on the better part of two decades. I’ll be 45 years old soon, a long ways from that scrawny southern boy with the dimples who sat down to play Winston the Wizard in the early 80s. With roleplaying games forever merged as both a hobby and a job, I got burned out a bit on both sides. The love never went away, but damn if I didn’t sometimes feel like hanging it all up. It’s a strange place to have a career that took you to great heights only to tumble down the mountain and start all over again. Then to have a few false starts in the foothills only to have your feet knocked out from under you. Twice. Trolls dogging your steps and reminding you of your screwups, your mistakes, as if they didn’t echo inside your head while you vainly tried to go sleep each night.

Sorry. Didn’t mean to get dark. Suffice to say I had a rough patch or three. Buy me a drink and I’ll tell you about it if you’re in the mood for that kind of story.

But today’s tale is a positive one! It’s about how two additional Matts helped me with D&D, personally and professionally, without knowing for a moment that I exist. So much so that when I wrote my new adventure, A Delve in the Cave, I decided I should thank them both on the front page.

Matthew Mercer

In the Middle Ages they said “All roads lead to Rome.” In the 21st century they should say “All nerdy avenues lead to Felicia Day.” Once again, the quirky and awesome redhead gets some of the credit. She has also provided me with a professional goal: To create anything that will impress my friends more than Felicia mentioning me briefly in her memoir. (And seriously, check out her newest book: Embrace Your Weird. I wish it existed when I was twelve years old and was stumbling around trying to find my creative voice.) D&D is a topic that gave the two of us something to talk about the day we met all those years ago, when I helped her shop for dice that were thematically appropriate for her character—perhaps the most Felicia thing we could have done on the first day of our friendship.

The way I understand it—and I’m not an authority on this subject, so take this with a grain of salt—after the acquisition of Geek & Sundry by Legendary Entertainment there was a demand for live-format shows via the streaming platform Twitch. Through her friends in the voice acting community in L.A., Felicia was aware of a Dungeons & Dragons campaign run by Matthew Mercer. All of the players were professional performers, and the game was known for being character- and story-rich. She approached Matt with the idea of running the game every week in front of live cameras, and the group tentatively agreed to go six weeks without pay to “try it out” with zero assumption that anyone would watch or care. It turns out people did watch, they did care, and it’s become the incredible success story and cultural phenomenon that is Critical Role, the “show where a bunch of nerdy-ass voice actors sit around and play Dungeons & Dragons.”

Through Felicia I learned of Critical Role. I saw that she had a guest spot on an early arc in the show. And because I’m a terrible friend, I ignored both. For years.

Like many people (including, I believe, the now legendary Dungeon Master himself) I initially believed that roleplaying games are something you do, not something you watch. And like many old men yelling at clouds, I was wrong. It’s a reminder that as I get older I need to let my assumptions be challenged, to give the new ideas in this ever-changing world a chance.

My son Xander and daughter Liz knew exactly who Matthew Mercer was long before I did. “He’s McCree in Overwatch, Dad!” said my video-game loving son; “That’s Levi from Attack on Titan!” declared my animé-loving daughter, in response to me telling them about Critical Role when the overwhelming praise from most of the internet finally drove me to watch the show a few years after my famous redheaded friend first recommended it to me. I’m never exactly cutting edge with my entertainment choices, I’m afraid.

A Reddit thread recommended a few starting points for watching Critical Role, since the show began in the middle of an existing story. It was the beginning of the “Briarwood Arc,” in which the heroes of Vox Machina launch an assault against a vampire lord and his necromancer wife who had taken over the home kingdom of Percy, one of the members of the party. And at first I was scratching my head about what all the fuss was about. Most of that first session involved the characters shopping in the capital city, spending gold and equipping their characters while waiting for some big social event. I almost turned it off, but I had it playing on my iPad while I was doing some chores around the house so I just let it go and only half-paid attention while gold pieces were plunked down.

But then things got interesting. The arrival of the Lord and Lady of Whitestone shook things up, and when Percival Fredrickstein von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III told his friends how his family was butchered and his home taken over, the impulsive rogue played by Liam O’Brien got himself into mortal danger and the session ended on a crazy cliffhanger. I went from bored an hour before to quickly clicking the next episode so I could find out what happened next. Each player not only embodied their characters so naturally and fully, but the Dungeon Master effortlessly slid from portraying a flamboyant shopkeeper to a regal liege to a sinister villain to terrifying monsters—his entire face and posture morphing along with his voice. I learned to play D&D the year Matthew Mercer was born, but I found myself taking mental notes on how he juggled the many balls a DM must constantly keep in the air: narrative flow, pacing, roleplaying nonplayer characters, making decisions in tactical combat, interpreting rules, and above all: making sure the players are engaged and having fun. And of course one more responsibility rested on Matt’s shoulders even more than the rest of the cast: making sure the audience was engaged and having fun. As the newest Critical Role convert, I was all in. And I quickly took mental notes for ideas I could steal for my own gaming, from house rules to setpiece encounters.

I had no idea when I started watching Critical Role that some of my friends would invite me to run D&D on a livestream for charity fundraising, or that I would enjoy it was much as I do. And while I’m nowhere in the same league as Matt is as a performer, his example gave me a mental starting place as I found my own voice as a DM for a live audience. And with livestreams now part of tabletop gaming culture, it’s given me ideas and tools I can take into my own business and creative ventures going forward. I’m glad I let go of my grognard impulses to avoid the show, and owe Felicia an apology for not listening to her when she first told me about it.

When I started writing my adventure, A Delve in the Cave, I wanted to bring some of the old-school style from my days in the early 1980s but I wanted to make sure it still contained fertile ground for the kinds of character possibilities and rich storytelling that I’ve enjoyed in Critical Role. In particular, some of the in-town intrigue and small tragedies sewn into the town of Shadowhaven and the adventure’s villain were very much inspired by the kind of storytelling I witnessed from Matt Mercer behind the Dungeon Master screen. I swear at one point my fingers hovered over the keys and I heard his rich baritone: “How do you want to do this?“

If all of the above wasn’t enough, I had a surprise encounter this year at GaryCon—a convention I first attended when it was the wake of Mr. E. Gary Gygax when I still lived in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. I was at my booth on Saturday morning, preparing for my big D&D event of the day while handling modest sales. A bit distracted, I noticed a low roar and saw a thick crowd slowly making its way from the front of the hall and slowly crawling its way over to my table. I was still getting things together for my Dungeons & Dragons Cartoon adventure so it wasn’t until he was standing right in front of my booth that I saw who it was.

A throng of admirers followed Matt and people kept asking for autographs or a moment of his time. I felt overwhelmed for him, and yet he handled it with humility and kindness. When I spoke to him, I told him my daughter was a cancer patient who was something of a fan, and that I was having friends write in a journal I’d brought to the show. I asked if he would mind taking a moment to write her a brief note. “Of course!” he said, as if it was silly that I’d even approach the question so delicately. He sat down inside my booth while admirers snapped photos with their phones, and he wrote Liz a letter that takes up an entire page in her GaryCon journal. We talked for a few minutes about the work I’ve done in the RPG industry and the D&D Cartoon game session I was about to run—heaping praising on my oldest daughter’s paint job of the classic characters: Venger, Hank, etc. We got a selfie together and we shook hands before he made his way slowly around the small dealer room, and he never once looked frustrated by the sea of nerds gathered around him. At the height of my success in my field I’d not known 1/50th of Matt’s notoriety, and I had become an insufferable egomaniac. As much as I admire his skill and his craft, I think it’s his generosity and humility that left me thinking the most highly of him. As far as I can tell, he really is as nice as he seems on the show.

Matthew Colville

I can’t help but wonder if Matt Colville and I walked past each other at a convention sometime in the earlier years of my career. We have a number of industry friends in common, in particular the ones out in southern California. After his earlier work in the hobby games industry, he went on to write in the (generally more lucrative, if not always stable) video games industry and self-publishing fantasy novels on the side. But ultimately it was the faceless, dreaded YouTube algorithm that made me aware of him. I have no memory of what I was doing at the time, but I remember stumbling onto one of his earlier videos, a series titled “The History of D&D, One Fighter at a Time!”

The first video in the series starts with the earliest incarnation of D&D from 1974 (the year before I was born), and I really enjoyed his look at the game from both the perspective of the wargamers who wrote and shaped the original while also seeing the game from the perspective of modern game design. It’s like tagging along with a nerdy archaeologist, digging up the past and remarking on those true pioneers who invented the hobby that quite literally changed the world. (While his later video series would truly launch his popularity as an online entertainer, I am kinda sad that Matt has yet to go back and look at later editions of D&D while creating different versions of Duncan the Fighter. And yes it’s weird referring to someone I’ve never met on a first-name basis but somehow Mr. Colville sounds weirder so just go with it.) But when he turned on the webcam the magic truly happened that morphed Matt’s channel into an engine that let him turn his passion for D&D into a successful game publishing powerhouse.

The Running the Game videos series began with a straightforward mission: to create more Dungeon Masters. Tongue in cheek, Matt declared it was a selfish motivation: so he could spend more time as a player. He worked at trying make running a game for the first time seem less intimidating, by showing how quickly and relatively easily you piece together four to six hours of game content for your friends. His example dungeon, The Delian Tomb, has now spawned countless variations and tributes.

For the past three years Matt used his YouTube channel to give advice on everything from world building to social interaction to dealing with problem players and upsetting situations at the table. He’s explained the difference between “railroad” and “sandbox” styles of play, and introduced a new generation of D&D players to the West Marches style campaign. His Campaign Diaries series let him hold a postmortem on his own game sessions while looking for lessons that could apply to anyone’s game table. A fellow fan of the Birthright campaign setting, he loves the political side of storytelling and has done an entire series of videos on how to incorporate power struggles and politics into a campaign. (Incidentally, Birthright was published during my online internship at TSR, and I was told I was first person to roll a character outside the walls of the Sheridan Springs Road offices. All hail Alexander Swordwraith, Prince of Aerenwe!) As demonstrated from the start of his channel, Matt clearly loves the legacy of earlier editions of D&D and is always looking for the lessons and even rules bits that can be salvaged and incorporated into modern versions of the game.

And as we often see, everything is connected. Through his work in the video games industry, Matt Colville was acquainted with Matt Mercer and the Critical Role cast. His channel certainly enjoyed a boost from the cross-promotion, as he would often reference what was going on near the end of the Vox Machina campaign and some of the cast would chat back and forth on Twitter to an audience of many thousands. The worlds fully collided when the Vox Machina: Origins comic was announced from Dark Horse Comics, written by Matthew Colville.

With a nerdy horde hanging on his every word about Dungeons & Dragons, Matt Colville got a team of his friends together to work on a gaming sourcebook titled Strongholds & Followers. It would bring forward the idea from 1st Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons when fighters of sufficient level would be granted a stronghold and would attract followers to their service. (Yes, I backed. I even have the t-shirt.) Made for Fifth Edition D&D, Strongholds & Followers broadens the idea that characters of any type can hold political power while still going on adventures. The Kickstarter for the project raised over $2.1 million, becoming the single most successful crowdfunding venture for a roleplaying game sourcebook—unseating the record previously held by our mutual friend John Wick. (For you non-gamers, this would be writer and game developer, not the one-man murder-machine played by Keanu Reeves.) A second book currently on Kickstarter as of this writing, Kingdoms & Warfare, will theoretically provide everything needed to run a full Birthright-style (or, say, Game of Thrones) campaign with feuding kingdoms and clashing armies.

I was writing RPGA tournament adventures that were used in convention play going back to the early 1990s and my first published adventure hit shelves a full twenty years ago. Yet I’d be lying if I claimed I didn’t take notes from Matt Colville’s videos in the Running the Game series. His “starting town” videos definitely inspired my thinking in constructing the town of Shadowhaven used in Delve. The thoughts he offered on dungeon creation, world presentation, how to best manage secrets and divulging clues, and more all filtered into my brain as I was working on my professional return to my gaming roots. And for my personal, non-published gaming, he (along with “Lazy Dungeon Master” Michael Shea) broke through my unhelpful habit of over-preparing and writing everything out as if it was intended for future publication.

I’ve never met Matt Colville, even if I might have walked right past him at a long-ago Gen Con. But I hope I get the chance to shake his hand and thank him in person one day.

For the Love of the Game

I always loved D&D, but for a while I was burnt out. I’d worked inside the business of RPGs so long and had my heart broken enough times, that I’d forgotten the sheer joy that the eight-year-old Jamie once experienced playing a pointy-hatted wizard in crazy stories as told by a boy named Matt.

So it’s with genuine gratitude that I thank two other Matts for helping me rediscover the joy and the love of the game that’s letting me move forward with adventures both personal and professional. I’m thrilled with their incredible successes and will be following them both in their work going forward. After all, you never know the next idea I’ll be able to lift and use at my own table.

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