''Rivals of Waterdeep'' is an American

actual play Actual play, also called live play, is a genre of podcast or web show in which people play tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs) for an audience. Actual play often encompasses in-character interactions between players, storytelling from the game ...

web series, with a podcast adaptation, where the cast plays ''

Dungeons & Dragons ''Dungeons & Dragons'' (commonly abbreviated as ''D&D'' or ''DnD'') is a fantasy tabletop role-playing game (RPG) originally designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. The game was first published in 1974 by TSR (company)#Tactical Studies Rules ...

'' using the fifth edition ruleset. It is set in the ''

Forgotten Realms ''Forgotten Realms'' is a campaign setting for the ''Dungeons & Dragons'' (''D&D'') fantasy role-playing game. Commonly referred to by players and game designers alike as "The Realms", it was created by game designer Ed Greenwood around 1967 as a ...

'' campaign setting and the show's Dungeon Master changes each season. The show premiered in June 2018; the show's thirteenth season ended in August 2022. It is one of the longest running official ''Dungeons & Dragons'' web series.

Cast

* Aram Vartian as season one's Dungeon Master * Carlos Luna as Noc Noc, a half-orc fighter, and as season one and two's Dungeon Master *

Tanya DePass Tanya DePass, also known by her username Cypheroftyr, is an American journalist, activist and streamer. She is the founder of the non-profit organization I Need Diverse Games, which she established in 2016. Early life DePass grew up in a poo ...

as Selise Astorio, a human

paladin The Paladins, also called the Twelve Peers, are twelve legendary knights, the foremost members of Charlemagne's court in the 8th century. They first appear in the medieval (12th century) ''chanson de geste'' cycle of the Matter of France, where ...

, and as season eight's Dungeon Master * Cicero Holmes as Perrin Underbough, a

halfling Halflings are a fictional race found in some fantasy novels and games. They are often depicted as similar to humans except about half as tall, and are not quite as stocky as the similarly-sized dwarves. Similar to the depiction of hobbits in the w ...

bard In Celtic cultures, a bard is a professional story teller, verse-maker, music composer, oral historian and genealogist, employed by a patron (such as a monarch or chieftain) to commemorate one or more of the patron's ancestors and to praise t ...

, and as season five's Dungeon Master * Surena Marie as Ashbourne, a

half-elf A half-elf is a mythological or fictional being, the offspring of an immortal elf and a mortal human. They are often depicted as very beautiful and endowed with magical powers; they may be presented as torn between the two worlds that they inhab ...

ranger A Ranger is typically someone in a military/paramilitary or law enforcement role specializing in patrolling a given territory, called “ranging”. The term most often refers to: * Park ranger or forest ranger, a person charged with protecting and ...

, and as season four's Dungeon Master * Brandon Stennis as Rinn Leodin, an elven sorcerer * Shareef Jackson as Shaka, a

tiefling The tiefling ( ) is a fictional humanoid race in the ''Dungeons & Dragons'' (''D&D'') fantasy roleplaying game. Originally introduced in the ''Planescape'' campaign setting in the second edition of ''Advanced Dungeons & Dragons'' as a player ch ...

warlock A warlock is a male practitioner of witchcraft. Etymology and terminology The most commonly accepted etymology derives ''warlock'' from the Old English '' wǣrloga'', which meant "breaker of oaths" or "deceiver" and was given special applicatio ...

, and as season three, six, and seven's Dungeon Master * LaTia Jacquise as D'Hani Lai, an Arakockra

monk A monk (, from el, μοναχός, ''monachos'', "single, solitary" via Latin ) is a person who practices religious asceticism by monastic living, either alone or with any number of other monks. A monk may be a person who decides to dedica ...

, and as season nine and twelve's Dungeon Master * Masood Haque as Gazrick Nomrad, a

gnome A gnome is a mythological creature and diminutive spirit in Renaissance magic and alchemy, first introduced by Paracelsus in the 16th century and later adopted by more recent authors including those of modern fantasy literature. Its characte ...

druid A druid was a member of the high-ranking class in ancient Celtic cultures. Druids were religious leaders as well as legal authorities, adjudicators, lorekeepers, medical professionals and political advisors. Druids left no written accounts. Whi ...

, and as season ten's Dungeon Master * Brian Gray as Virgil, an Aasimar sorcerer, and as season eleven's co-Dungeon Master * Eugenio Vargas as Kent, a tiefling rogue, and as season eleven's co-Dungeon Master

Premise

The show features a

party A party is a gathering of people who have been invited by a host for the purposes of socializing, conversation, recreation, or as part of a festival or other commemoration or celebration of a special occasion. A party will often feature f ...

adventurers An adventure is an exciting experience or undertaking that is typically bold, sometimes risky. Adventures may be activities with danger such as traveling, exploring, skydiving, mountain climbing, scuba diving, river rafting, or other extreme sp ...

in the ''

'' campaign setting with a rotating Dungeon Master. ''Rivals of Waterdeep'' initially adapted the '' Waterdeep: Dragon Heist''

adventure module An adventure is a playable scenario in a tabletop role-playing game. These can be constructed by gamemasters for their players, and are also released by game publishers as pre-made adventure modules. Different types of designs exist, including l ...

. It has since adapted other official ''Dungeons & Dragons'' storylines such as '' Baldur's Gate: Descent Into Avernus''.

Production

Development

Greg Tito, a senior communications manager for ''Dungeons & Dragons'', wanted to develop

shows after watching the success of the independent web series ''

The Adventure Zone ''The Adventure Zone'' is a weekly comedy and adventure actual play podcast based loosely upon the ''Dungeons & Dragons'' game series, along with other role-playing games. The show is distributed by the Maximum Fun network and hosted by brother ...

'' (launched in 2014) and ''

Critical Role ''Critical Role'' is an American web series in which a group of professional voice actors play ''Dungeons & Dragons''. The show started streaming partway through the cast's first campaign in March 2015. Campaign one ended in October 2017 after ...

'' (launched in 2015) which led

Wizards of the Coast Wizards of the Coast LLC (often referred to as WotC or simply Wizards) is an American publisher of games, primarily based on fantasy and List of science fiction themes, science fiction themes, and formerly an operator of retail stores for ga ...

(Wizards) to develop and launch ''Dice, Camera, Action'' in 2016. Tito said that show was "insanely popular" and "the success of that allowed us to create relationships with smaller tabletop roleplayers that were in front of an audience. The entire ecosystem began to grow from there". This led to the development of ''Rivals of Waterdeep''.

Casting

The ''Rivals of Waterdeep'' cast is made of a diverse group of performers based in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

. Tito initially recruited

for the show. Tito said he reached out to DePass because she was "a strong voice in the community and was in the Chicago area" and recruited "another group of roleplayers who just put their toe into doing D&D related content, but were mostly known as improv actors and comedians". Aram Vartian was season one's Dungeon Master with Carlos Luna, DePass, Cicero Holmes, Surena Marie, Brandon Stennis and Shareef Jackson as players. Luna replaced Vartian as the Dungeon Master of season one after Vartian left the show mid-season; the Dungeon Master for ''Rivals of Waterdeep'' now rotates between various cast members. In 2020, Surena Marie and Luna left the show during the sixth season when they relocated to

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

after Marie joined

Critical Role Productions Critical Role Productions, LLC is a multimedia production company incorporated in 2015 by the members of the creator-owned streaming show ''Critical Role''. The first two shows from the company, ''Critical Role'' and ''Talks Machina'', originally ...

. LaTia Jacquise initially joined ''Rivals of Waterdeep'' as a guest in the sixth season at the 2020

C2E2 The Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo (C2E2) is a Chicago fan convention dedicated to comics, pop culture, graphic novels, anime, manga, video games, toys, movies, and television. The inaugural event was held April 16–18, 2010 at the McCormic ...

live show before becoming a permanent member. Cicero Holmes left the show at the end of the sixth season. Masood Haque joined as a guest for some ''Rivals of Waterdeep'' specials before becoming a regular cast member in the seventh season premiere. Brandon Stennis left the show at the end of the eighth season in 2020. In 2021, Brian Gray and Eugenio Vargas joined the cast in the ninth season premiere.

Filming

''Rivals of Waterdeep'' premiered in June 2018 with an episode at the ''Stream of Many Eyes'' event before launching as a fully produced show by Wizards later that month. During the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...

, the show introduced social distancing measures. The show streamed from the 2020 ''D&D Celebration'' event. In July 2021, the show released its one hundredth episode. The show's fourteenth season premiered on October 16, 2022. In 2022, Vargas commented that "the rotating DM model has really shown that you can tell coherent stories with consistent character through lines and keep the tone and style fresh by rotating your narrator. A table of all BIPOC players that has told stories for as long as the ''Rivals'' have is also a huge accomplishment, putting the lie to any statements of ‘there aren't BIPOC roleplayers out there for my show!' And, if we're able to conclude the Rivals tale like we want, we'll also be one of the few AP shows to make it to 20th level and show what adventuring at that level can look like".

Cancellation and future

In 2021, ''Rivals of Waterdeep'' became independently produced and was listed as an official partner show of the ''Dungeons & Dragons'' brand. During the finale of Season 13 in August 2022, the cast revealed that Wizards of the Coast was ending its financial sponsorship of ''Rivals of Waterdeep''; the show would become fully independent of Wizards of the Coast at the midway point of the upcoming Season 14. On October 12, 2022, ''Rivals of Waterdeep'' launched an IndieGoGo to

crowdfund Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising money from a large number of people, typically via the internet. Crowdfunding is a form of crowdsourcing and alternative finance. In 2015, over was raised worldwide by crow ...

$60,000 to produce the final two and half seasons. Christian Hoffer, for ''

ComicBook.com The following is a list of major assets that are owned by Paramount Global. Paramount Pictures Corporation (Film) * Paramount Pictures ** Paramount Home Entertainment ** Paramount Television Studios ** Paramount Pictures International ** Param ...

'', commented that "Rivals previously launched a

Patreon Patreon (, ) is a membership platform that provides business tools for content creators to run a subscription service. It helps creators and artists earn a monthly income by providing rewards and perks to their subscribers. Patreon charges a co ...

to help supplement funding and support for the show, but their IndieGoGo page notes that it hasn't raised the funds necessary to keep the show's production levels at their current standards" and that "Wizards has increasingly de-emphasized community-created shows on their Twitch and YouTube channels". The crowdfunding campaign ended with a total of $23,291 raised.

Episodes

Series overview

Season 1 (2018)

Season 2 (2018)

Season 3 (2019)

Season 4 (2019)

Season 5 (2019–20)

Season 6 (2020)

Season 7 (2020)

Season 8 (2020)

Specials

One-shots

Kids on Bikes

Reception

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'', ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', ''

VentureBeat ''VentureBeat'' is an American technology website headquartered in San Francisco, California. It publishes news, analysis, long-form features, interviews, and videos. History The ''VentureBeat'' company was founded in 2006 by Matt Marshall, a ...

'', and ''

Polygon In geometry, a polygon () is a plane figure that is described by a finite number of straight line segments connected to form a closed ''polygonal chain'' (or ''polygonal circuit''). The bounded plane region, the bounding circuit, or the two toge ...

'' all highlighted that ''Rivals of Waterdeep'' is part of the trend of

shows re-popularizing ''Dungeons & Dragons'' and that the show is notable for a cast "made up predominantly of women and people of color". G.L. van Os, in an essay in the book ''Watch Us Roll'' (2021), wrote that "voices from minorities will have to be sought out and lifted up, in order to create a more diverse playing field within actual play. Fortunately, there are several diverse actual play shows out there already, such as ''Rivals of Waterdeep'' and ''Dames and Dragons'', they just have not received as much attention as ''

'' and ''

'' yet". Amanda Farough, for ''VentureBeat'', also highlighted that "Wizards of the Coast has been able to put a finer point on the impact of actual play shows on its brand awareness and sales. While the company wasn't willing to share its impression numbers, in 2019, live show viewership increased 49%. Of its total views, 15% are during live broadcasts (mostly represented by Twitch), with the remainder coming from video on demand on YouTube". By 2020, ''Rivals of Waterdeep'' was only the show that premiered at the 2018 ''Stream of Many Eyes'' event to still be on the air. Christian Hoffer, for ''

'', called ''Rivals of Waterdeep'' the flagship show for the ''Dungeons & Dragons'' brand in 2020. Hoffer, in a separate article for ''ComicBook.com'' in 2021, wrote that "the longevity to ''Rivals of Waterdeep'' is impressive, not only because the show's characters are on the cusp of reaching the fabled 'Tier 4' levels that most D&D campaigns never reach, but also because of what the show means to the wider D&D community. Notably, ''Rivals of Waterdeep's'' cast are all people of color, offering important representation to a group typically underserviced in both the D&D streaming space and the wider tabletop roleplaying game community". Hoffer highlighted the show's innovation of Dungeon Master rotation which gives each season "a distinct flavor". He also highlighted that while the show "incorporates elements" of the official storylines, it makes these storylines its own. ''Rivals of Waterdeep'' was included in ''

Syfy Wire Syfy (formerly Sci-Fi Channel, later shortened to Sci Fi; stylized as SYFY) is an American basic cable channel owned by the NBCUniversal Television and Streaming division of Comcast's NBCUniversal through NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment. Launc ...

'''s "12 High Fantasy Podcasts That'll Take You on an Adventure During Your Commute" 2019 roundup and in ''

Screen Rant ''Screen Rant'' is an entertainment website that offers news in the fields of television, films, video games, and film theories. ''Screen Rant'' was launched by Vic Holtreman in 2003, and originally had its primary office in Ogden, Utah. ''Scr ...

'''s "D&D: The Best Livestreams & Podcast Campaigns Still Going In 2022" roundup.

References

{{D&D topics 2010s YouTube series 2018 podcast debuts 2018 web series debuts 2020s YouTube series Actual play podcasts Actual play web series American podcasts American web series Audio podcasts Dungeons & Dragons actual play Fantasy podcasts