Musings on Courts of Crystal

If you follow me on social media, or attend any of my Twitch streams, you are already well aware of the fact that I won’t ever shut up about Courts of Crystal, the TTRPG podcast that I’m lucky enough to be a part of the cast for.

Today’s episode has a very deep significance for me, and so it inspired me to write this out. Initially I considered doing a twitter thread, but…well, I know myself and I know how long this is going to get. So a blog post seems like a more appropriate place for it.

My journey thus far

I’ve sort of danced around the edges of the TTRPG sphere for a long time now, both as a player/DM and a miniature painter. I’ve been playing TTRPGs off and on for a long time, but it wasn’t until the pandemic hit that I really started getting involved in the wider…”community” is a word I feel some level of discomfort using, as I have pretty strong opinions about when that term should be used, so I guess the TTRPG online sphere? Words are hard.

For various reasons (time, money, moving to NYC where I didn’t know anyone) I fell out of engaging with tabletop games entirely pretty hard. Eventually I met a group of people who became wonderful friends of mine at an NYCC Critical Role meetup and got to sit at a table again, while also starting to DM a couple of games for people who had expressed interest at work. It was wonderful to have that part of my life reconnected, but that went away when the pandemic started. While one of the games I DM transitioned into online play successfully (and I still run it bi-weekly to this day), everything else stopped.

I can trace my discovery of the wider Actual Play space extremely specifically. While working from home, back when we all still thought this thing would be over in a couple of weeks, I happened to spot a tweet about a charity stream that Cypheroftyr was running on Twitch, and decided to pop in.

That decision opened up a whole new side of streaming I had never even considered existed before, and resulted in my coming to know some people who I now hold as some of my dearest friends (Cypher very much included, whose friendship has been a major factor in my finding my feet in whatever way I currently have in this space)

But to keep this post at least somewhat on topic, as time went on I started finding my way onto a few charity one-shots through various systems - D&D, MoTW, Lancer etc. These were fun and I’m proud to have taken a part in them, but their nature leads to a particular issue.

Holding Back

There is a whole other series of posts I could make about Tyriont Gaidal, my long-term RPG character and the ways in which I’ve explored aspects of myself using him, but the important part for this post is that through several of these one-shots, the more comedic ones hosted by the delightful DC Lasair, I fell back on using Ty because he is comfortable. The other characters I played too - Rez, Hoarkrul, Shellshock - they all share one trend, which is that they’re designed to make people laugh. Which for a one shot is great! But all are very, very much in my wheelhouse.

Even when I got invited to be a part of my first ever longer form game, the Brinkwood game run by Balrog1911 which was a far darker and more serious tone than anything I’d ever done, I broke out Croix…who has been in existence as long as Tyriont has, and is a character I am intimately familiar with. I know Croix, so while Brinkwood allowed me to demonstrate that I can be more than just the laughs guy, it wasn’t a stretch for me - especially because I was already friends with both Diane and Stephen, so 50% of the cast were people I already knew well.

I loved the things I was getting to do, but they were all safe. I was playing entirely within the box I had placed myself in, and I was really just playing with friends to try and raise money for charity for the most part

At PAX Unplugged 2021, I was able to catch up a little with Anne - who was a part of that group of friends I met at NYCC - and we chatted a little about a show she was trying to get off the ground, and I expressed my interest.

Things got interesting from there

Carrying the tank

After a long period, the group which would eventually become the cast of Courts of Crystal were assembled. This was a different situation for me, as not only was Anne the only person in the group I knew, I was already aware of everyone else she had brought on, having either seen them on other shows or at the very least come across their posts on social media.

I felt entirely out of my depth.

I believed at the time - and frankly, probably won’t ever believe otherwise - that the only reason I was on the cast was because Anne is a wonderfully supportive friend and she threw me a bone. Listening to the early episodes of this, our first season, I can hear it in my performance. I don’t know how evident it is to the people who don’t have to live inside my head, but it’s blatant to me - I tend to take a back seat, don’t engage as much in the pre-show banter…I don’t feel like I deserve my place there.

That’s not a NEW feeling, by any means - it was present for the one-shots I’ve done, but like I wrote before, those were more comedic in nature and I know I can do that. Throw out a quick pun, a hastily re-written sea shanty, boom, I’ve at least justified my being there. But that wasn’t the feeling of this show, and it wasn’t Brock, who was specifically built to challenge the “Grrr Rarrr Drink, Fight, Fuck” Barbarian stereotype and so was quiet and gentle instead.

Which, as I write this out, I realize was probably also a way of me trying to protect myself and make it natural for the rest of the cast to take the lead.

Huh.

Anyway.

Anxiety aside, I had a blast playing this game and got to know the rest of the cast better - who are all extraordinarily kind and wonderful people, none of whom ever did a single thing to justify my feelings of inadequacy and impostorhood, but those feelings run deep and were ever present. But it was fine, because I had my role as the group’s tank, the quiet, gentle one the others can bounce off easily and it worked. I could rely on their talent to mask what I felt was my own weakness.

Then came the flashbacks. Where the focus was solely on one of us at a time, and suddenly that protection wasn’t there any more. The first one I did was easy, as it was world building, background setup and let Anne do a lot of the lifting as she portrayed Archdruid Kyanite.

But the episode that came out today is different, and is the reason for this post.

Shining a spotlight

Brock’s backstory was written out well before we ever started recording, and had been discussed between Anne and I at length so the events of Brock’s flashback in episode 9 weren’t a surprise - I had written the outline of them myself. The actual events aren’t relevant to this post, so I won’t bring them up here so as to avoid spoilers for anyone who hasn’t listened to it (but why not? Go listen, our show is great). The relevant part is that this was the longest, most intense focus I had placed on Brock to date, and the longest solo focus on ANY character I’d played beyond a particular scene with Croix in Brinkwood - but again, I know Croix extremely well, so that felt more natural. Even if I was doing a bad French accent.

I have to give endless credit to Anne’s abilities as a DM here, because she guided the flow expertly while giving me time to shine. I know many of us in the performance space find it hard to listen back to things we’ve done - I certainly do. But listening back to this today…I actually enjoyed it. And then I noticed a shift afterwards too.

See, what you will never be able to experience as a part of the audience is what I experienced recording that scene, which was the reactions of my fellow castmates in the Zoom call at the time. They were invested, attentive, things about Brock clicked for them…and these are all storytellers I immensely respect, so to be able to elicit that response from them felt amazing. And I think you can see a shift in the rest of the episode, as something changed within me as a result and I’m far more engaged, vocal and confident throughout.

Changes

When I bring up Courts of Crystal, I often talk about how it helped me grow as a performer. Anne’s selflessness as a DM brings out the best in all of us. Diana, Kris and Syrup were wonderfully supportive and welcoming, making me feel accepted and welcomed by people I had never really interacted with before.

I’m legitimately terrified about today’s episode going out, as it’s going to be the most eyes (ears?) on something that I’m so heavily the focus of in a storytelling way that I’ve done…I think ever. There’s other things coming down the pipe which are similar, and have that same deep seated fear. But I’m proud of it, and that’s new to me in a way that isn’t just me being the clown.

I said earlier in this post about how finding Cypher’s stream was one of those moments that stands out in my brain as marking a shift in the path my life took from then on. That conversation with Anne at PAX U was another one, because it directly lead to this.

I never know how to end things like this, especially when it’s largely an outpouring of emotion. So I’ll just say thank you to anyone who read my brain exploding all over this article and say to look forward to more things I do in future, both going into Season 2 of Courts of Crystal and elsewhere.

Because now I’ve been able to put myself out there in this way and, shockingly, it didn’t kill me. Which means I am now powerful.

I hope you all enjoy the stories so far, because I have a lot more of them I want to tell. And for the first time, I actually think people might want to hear them.