"How Do You Want To Do This?": Us, Role-Playing Games, and The End of the World

Abstract

As role-playing games become popularized through the advent of role-playing game actual plays, we must better seek to understand their implications both in terms of the relationships they build and the narratives they propagate. More specifically, the paper uses Critical Role, one of the most prominent actual play series, as a case study for both the parasocial relationship between audience and livestreams as emerging media, as well as the assertion that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. This study examines how high fantasy narratives consistently rely on apocalyptic events to create stakes, particularly those in tabletop roleplaying games. By analyzing Critical Role’s storytelling, parasocial dynamics, and capitalist-realist conventions, this paper argues that the specter of capitalist realism persists even in a medium defined by collective storytelling. The paper uses Critical Role’s show Exandria Unlimited: Calamity, which ostensibly critiques power and corruption but ultimately reinforces capitalist logic, arguing ultimately that despite its progressive ethos, Critical Role inadvertently perpetuates capitalist ideology through its storytelling structures, audience engagement, and economic model. It highlights how role-playing games, even in their most communal and imaginative form, remain constrained by the ideological frameworks of the real world.