Tabletop roleplaying has always had a performative aspect; the players and gamemasters were encouraged to embody their characters to some extant, and to be able to interact in character. The early community spaces around roleplaying games like Dragon Magazine (1976-2013) and Gen Con (1968-) were built on the shared experiences of gaming in small groups, and much of the early humor in gaming periodicals and associated media dealt with the peculiar quirks of players and rules interacting during a live session—as well as recounting the epic adventures characters underwent at those tables. This has been the basis of a good deal of media surrounding gaming, including comics like Knights of the Dinner Table (1990-) and Dork Tower (1997-), and the Japanese phenomenon of the replay, or transcripts of a gaming session packaged and sold for entertainment.
This performative aspect has been especially notable when gaming was done in public, before an audience, such as when participating in a tournament at a gaming convention or when doing live-action roleplay in any public space. There have been various efforts over the years to expand this practice in different media; for example some of the Knights of the Dinner Table strips were animated and voice actors brought in to provide short episodes like “Scream of Kachooloo,” based on the popular Call of Cthulhu Roleplaying Game. With the advent and popularity of YouTube (2005-), Twitch (2011-) and other streaming services, video and audio became increasingly popular media for gaming of all stripes, from video game let’s plays to various efforts to dramatize and/or capture the performance of a gaming session, which gelled into a format called actual play.
At its most basic, this can be as simple as group with a webcam and a cheap microphone recording a session at the kitchen table; at its most sophisticated, talented gamers/actors from around the world with their own high-end recording set-ups can collaborate on a gaming session together, and the whole professionally edited, produced, and with music or visuals into a viable product. The more high-end actual plays tend to have associated websites, social media, patreons, tipjars, and maybe even advertisements or sponsors to help defray the cost of production or run a modest profit for the gamers/actors involved. Shows like Critical Role (2015-) and its episodes CelebriD&D (2015-2020) have effectively migrated the concept from amateur or semi-professional to professional productions, but the community that generates and watches actual play primarily remains, first and foremost, dedicated hobbyist gamers who want to share the roleplaying experience.
While many actual plays focus on popular game systems like Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition or particularly popular and notable published campaigns like Horror on the Orient Express, the format is democratic and allows for diverse gaming groups to run through any scenario or campaign, published or homebrew. This sometimes gives the rare opportunity to see, for example, a group of Black gamers play through roleplaying game designed for primarily Black player characters.
Queen’s Court Games (web, YouTube, Twitch, Bluesky, Patreon, etc.) is an award-winning actual play web series with a diverse cast; their byline is “Character-focused. Rules-light. Banter-free. Never D&D.” and they deliver. In 2023, the group (Noir Enigma, Jas Brown, Robert Madison II, Christian McKinzie, and Laura Tutu) played through the scenario Harlem Hellfighters Never Die by Chris Spivey, a scenario that came with Harlem Unbound (2017) by Darker Hue Studios (2nd edition). The actual play is spread out over six sessions/episodes, each of which is 2-3 hours long, with Noir Enigma playing the Keeper and the five gamers each as a single player character as they play through the scenario.
The performative aspect of actual play sometimes lends a scripted air to most proceedings, but the Queen’s Court Games group feels much more natural in their delivery. There is a conscientiousness to the performance, because the players all give each other space to talk, rarely trying to talk over one another, getting into little asides, etc. The Keeper, Noir Enigma, gets an oversized amount of attention because the Keeper is the driver for the scenario, the one which all the players have to interact with regularly and who has to set the pace and maintain the flow of the session for hours on end. Of the cast, Laura Tutu stands out as the most dramatic of the players. While they did practice some of their lines before play, there’s very much an improv group feel to the whole production, and the cast plays off each other well.
What sticks out the most is how much the players seem to enjoy the Harlem Unbound setting, and to inhabit those characters. It is not unusual to see Call of Cthulhu gaming groups that are all white people playing white characters and going through scenarios where anybody described as “dark” or “swarthy” is likely to wear a robe and wave a sacrificial dagger, so there is a different dynamic to having an all-Black group playing Black characters, the kind of humor they can bring (Christian McKinzie and Enigma Noir in particular get many of the funnier interactions, which have the other players in stitches with McKinzie’s self-deprecating humor and animated style). It is a playstyle that is conscious of and avoids the worst expressions of racism during the period, without playing down that racism and discrimination were prevalent at the time.
Spread out as Queen’s Court Games is over different channels, it is difficult to get a handle on viewership numbers and how well-received it was, but it is notable that the NZ Web Fest selected Harlem Hellfighters Never Die among its 2024 video actual plays.
Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.
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