Critical Role’s Candela Obscura: World Building to Build a Better World

Board Game Academics, March 2025
Published in Vol 2.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.70380/209g985rv

Victoria Smurthwaite
Kutztown University

Critical Role’s 2023 game Candela Obscura strives to ensure that all players will feel welcomed within gameplay despite the challenges presented by both setting and genre. Critical Role’s dip into the horror Tabletop Roleplaying Game (TTRPG) scene is designed with social equity in mind allowing for a safe exploration of the world for all players. By stepping away from the genre’s racist history, embracing gender equality, and portraying bodily autonomy and varied abilities in enlightening ways, Candela Obscura teaches Game Masters about world-building and game-running with empathy. 

Candela Obscura’s efforts are part of a larger trend to make tabletop roleplaying games safer and more accessible to everyone. The new Dungeon Master’s Guide (DMG) for Dungeons and Dragons, released in late 2024, for example, added safety features such as a “Game Expectations” sheet to ensure players can communicate any “potentially sensitive elements” to the DM prior to playing (Perkins 14). In the section “Ensuring Fun for All,” the DMG suggests discussing expectations as well as hard and soft limits to ensure that any potentially harmful or triggering information is avoided or limited (Perkins 15). These are all positive steps for the TTRPG community; however, the focus on safety for players puts all responsibility on the DM and players to apply safety rules and champion the causes of social equality and diversity. Even the new DMG, with its positive intentions, does little to educate game masters and players. The extra steps that the makers of Critical Role and Candela Obscura take to ensure that their world-building and mechanics provoke understanding and empathy show their audience a wonderful example of the expectations that TTRPG fans should have for game designers moving forward. 

A BRAVE NEW WORLD FOR CRITICAL ROLE

In 2012, a group of friends who also happened to be voice actors got together and began a Dungeons and Dragons campaign (“About Us”). The YouTube channel Geek and Sundry partnered with this group of friends, led by now legendary gamemaster Matthew Mercer, to share their Dungeons and Dragons campaign with the public in the summer of 2015 (“Arrival at Kraghammer”). Since then, the popularity of their show Critical Role has spread like wildfire. No longer attached to Geek and Sundry, Critical Role has its own merchandise line and publishing company, official Dungeons and Dragons published materials, and more than three campaigns shared with viewers across multiple platforms. Their publishing line, named Darrington Press after a player character in their first campaign, has released many board games, such as Uk’otoa, based on an antagonist from their second campaign, and unrelated games, such as Til the Last Gasp with some distance between the published games and the TTRPG live-plays that made the group so famous. 

Lately, Critical Role has put more distance between itself and  Dungeons and Dragons. Darrington Press has released two new TTRPGs: the investigative horror game Candela Obscura and the forthcoming fantasy game Daggerheart. Though there are promising hints that Daggerheart will continue Candela Obscura’s strides toward social equality in the TTRPG world, the community is still eagerly awaiting the full release of the game. Both games have received attention on Critical Role’s streaming platforms, with multiple live-plays for each. Candela Obscura is particularly eye-catching in its deviation from Critical Role’s primary focus: the world of fantasy. Candela Obscura is a horror TTRPG that features investigations of strange magickal and supernatural happenings in a Victorian setting.

Candela Obscura makes bold claims about its game setting known as the Fairelands in the country of Hale. Most of the game takes place in Newfaire, a city that “resembles [our] own during the turn of the twentieth century” and which resembles historic cities like “Edinburgh, Lima, New York, Paris, and Istanbul,” blending an ancient past with an industrial present (Hall 4). Victorian settings are often associated with colonial and racist connotations that the core rulebook hurries to dispel. Candela makes this bold claim: “What doesn’t exist here is institutionalized racism, homophobia, transphobia, or other forms of prejudice… there is no country-wide sense of bigotry” in Hale (Hall 89). Candela also states that “the systems of power within the Fairelands are designed to provide a scaffolding for the corruption that has long been a facet of the horror genre” (Hall 101). Newfaire certainly hides some dark secrets that the horror genre could not live without. Yet, its strong connection with grimdark fantasy illustrates significant strides in the TTRPG community regarding social equity and player safety. The rulebook focuses on race, gender, sexuality, and disability. Candela Obscura uses these areas of focus to promote empathy between players; this empathy, in turn, teaches players and Game Masters alike how to maintain an atmosphere where prejudice will not cause mental and emotional distress within gameplay. 

Unfortunately, the laws of the land in real life outside of gameplay often support systemic prejudice. Systemic oppression exists at the level of societal structures such as the education system, healthcare, transportation, and the economy, which are interconnected and reinforce inequality between themselves (“Lens of Systemic Oppression.”). The word “systemic” is the key; it is a historical bias that intentionally disadvantages certain individuals based on gender, race, class, sexual orientation, and culture, among other factors, while promoting a dominant group in multiple facets of life (“Lens of Systemic Oppression.”). It’s difficult to say if it is even possible for a book written in a prejudiced world to be entirely free of it. 

Morality and prejudice outside of TTRPGS can be affected by the games we play. Joseph Laycock investigates this phenomenon in his book Dangerous Games: What the Moral Panic Over Role-Playing Games Says About Play, Religion, and Imagined Worlds. According to Laycock, “the alternate worlds imagined during these [role-playing] games have consequences for how players make sense of the real world” (Laycock 179). Laycock explains the three frames of play: reality, game mechanics, and the game world (Laycock 196). By taking imagery we are familiar with, like the landscape of historic cities, and defamiliarizing them with the addition of supernatural entities like the antagonists of Candela Obscura, the player traverses from frame one to frame three and fleshes out the created world with details they can relate to (Laycock 186). In this world, players can engage in activities and make choices that would be impossible in real life. Those choices invoke the same mechanisms that are responsible for the formation of culture through liminal spaces, ritual, and narrative (Laycock 185). Games, like ritual and narrative, offer “an alternative mode of interaction in which the ordinary social order is suspended” (Laycock 189). Perhaps, then, Candela Obscura would be doing a disservice if it created a game setting without systemic prejudice since “players cannot make sense of evil if it remains taboo even in the context of play” (Laycock 190). Instead, without institutional power backing prejudiced mentalities, there can be real consequences for prejudiced behavior. Laycock explains this by saying: 

Role-playing games are fun exactly because the decisions one’s character makes have consequences: if characters are violent and cruel they will be hunted by authorities, outraged communities will retaliate, and so on. This suggests that violent fantasies and role-playing games are a tool for analyzing violence and its consequences”(Laycock 194). 

This is the key to understanding what Candela Obscura is doing. Candela has created a world in which characters can engage in prejudiced activities, within GM and player discretion, and there will be consequences. Rather than leaving it up to GMs and players to fully police prejudiced behaviors, the world Candela creates has taken on the responsibility of making such behavior the exception, not the norm, giving players a safe place to play and taking power away from prejudice. 

Candela strives to recognize individual prejudice and represent multiple genders, sexualities, disabilities, and cultures in ways that preserve dignity and encourage the empathy that allows players to maintain safety at the table. To underscore the degree of progress that Critical Role is making, I will contrast Candela’s efforts with the most famous and infamous title in the horror TTRPG genre, Call of Cthulhu, a game that shares many similarities in setting and tone. 

STEPPING OUT OF A RACIST’S SHADOW

Fictionally created worlds like those in Call of Cthulhu have not taken proper responsibility for the prejudice in their pages, but that is beginning to change. According to Elana Gomel and Danielle Gurevitch in their essay “What is Fantasy and Who Decides,” “fantasy is more and more transnational, so readers must be more culturally sensitive to the genre’s use of otherness” (Gomel 2). Since Candela’s country of Hale has some animosity with a neighboring country named “Otherwhere,” this is a facet of racist and xenophobic prejudice that requires exploration. By using Victorian-era aesthetics and technology, Candela brings a particular “horizon of expectations” that includes our own social, cultural, historical, aesthetic, and personal contexts (Gomel 10). When informed players pick up the game, they may envision a world where gender spheres are rigid, xenophobic beliefs are the norm, and disabilities are little understood. It is past time for world-builders to take more responsibility for how other cultures are represented in media. 

While Candela struggles with the connotations of their setting, other similar role-playing games seem to have little concern about addressing racism and cultural insensitivity, perhaps best exemplified by the TTRPG Call of Cthulhu. When players open the Keeper’s Rulebook for Call of Cthulhu, they see a large picture of Lovecraft on the end pages. In the foreword by Sandy Petersen in 2014, she credits Call of Cthulhu with popularizing Lovecraft and making Cthulhu “a household word” (Petersen). That is a lot of pride to show in spreading the influence of such a flawed man’s work. In chapter one of the book, they say that Lovecraft is now a “cult figure in his own right” and that Cthulhu stories are still being written today by “the heirs to Lovecraft’s literary legacy” (Petersen 12). I, for one, do not feel comfortable being a part of H. P. Lovecraft’s literary legacy. In fact, in the rulebook, players are encouraged to read at least one of Lovecraft’s stories before playing (Petersen 17). The game seems to be one big advertisement for Lovecraft. Sandwiched between glowing descriptions of Lovecraft’s literary prowess and imagination from childhood is a short admission that his “social and artistic views [were] more suitable to centuries past” than his own (Petersen 24). There is even one sentence that states, “his racism is far out of touch with modern social attitudes,” but the idea is quickly brushed aside in favor of describing his allergies and dislike of seafood (Petersen 24). This leaves players with the responsibility of managing the racist past of the game while presenting it to others. 

Critical Role recognized this need for management early on. In July of 2019, Critical Role was sponsored by Chaosium, the creators of Call of Cthulhu, to run a one-shot of the game. Taliesin Jaffe, credited as a contributor to Candela Obscura, was the GM for the one-shot. Jaffe mentions that he is a fan of the cosmic horror genre; however, he opens the game with a strong disclaimer: “Before we begin, it is worth noting that the man behind the name most associated with this genre was a problematic mess even by the standards of his time” (Critical Role 4:28). Jaffe goes on to defend their engagement with the genre by adding that, “It is a big genre with lots of big things happening in it right now and many voices doing really important work” (Critical Role 4:38). I cannot say for sure if their involvement with Call of Cthulhu five years ago inspired the setting and scares of Candela Obscura, but the game is conspicuously absent from the touchstones specified within the Candela Obscura rulebook. In perhaps the most reassuring statement to address the “problematic mess” that is Lovecraft, Jaffe encourages GMs of the game to take the reins and make the genre “a little less about him and a little bit about you” (Critical Role 4:33, 4:56). 

That the creators of Candela Obscura attempt to distance themselves from H.P. Lovecraft is understandable. Lovecraft has a reputation as a racist figure in history that casts a shadow over the enjoyment of the genre that he popularized. Yet, some scholars have come to his defense. For example, in Jed Mayer’s chapter “Race, Species, and Others: H.P. Lovecraft and the Animal,” he notes that while Lovecraft states his equal indifference for “monkeys, human beings, negroes, cows, sheep, or pterodactyls,” in “Cats and Dogs” he may have just been challenging the belief that animals and human beings are distinct from one another (Mayer 117). Mayer states that Lovecraft’s distaste was mainly for humanity and the importance we assign ourselves (Mayer 118). Even in this context, however, Mayer clearly states that Lovecraft was unequivocally racist (Mayer 119).  

Call of Cthulhu  only briefly acknowledges these issues in a section entitled “Distasteful Historical Themes” that says: 

Distasteful issues may arise during the game. You may feel that your portrayal of fictional prejudice and bigotry is worthy of an Oscar; however, another player may find it offensive. The world was a very different place in the 1920s. Behaviors most of us would find repugnant today were ordinary and acceptable then. Racism, xenophobia, religious bias, and sexual discrimination were part of everyday life and often loudly espoused. Many laws systematically supported segregation and discrimination of every sort, and social forces of great power underwrote the legislation. 

Scenario authors and Keepers can choose to ignore social history as not germane, or decide to incorporate specific elements into their plots. Both approaches can be found in published scenarios. Ultimately, how you play it is up to you and your group. But if you are going to use the themes of discrimination in the game, it is strongly recommended that you discuss the issue early on (Petersen 185). 

This disclaimer shows forethought being given to issues of prejudice in-game; however, the fact that published scenarios utilize the systemic prejudice of the time can be alienating to some players, and the creators place responsibility for that on the players rather than taking on that responsibility for themselves. Beyond this, they do little to assuage concern about racism in-game. For example, “tribe member” is a listed sample occupation. It gives the player the “occult” specialty and a credit rating of 0-15 (Petersen 41). This occupation choice and the associated consequences in-game could be seen as playing into stereotypes. For students of other cultures, anthropology is an in-game skill; however, if a character pushes this skill, they may face the consequence of “going native,” which means that being lost in the culture is a severe consequence for failing this skill and is mechanically similar to the game mechanics for insanity (Petersen 57). While the creators put some effort into removing the prejudiced shadow hanging over this genre, they are not nearly as careful about it as the makers of Candela Obscura. 

Candela Obscura’s attempts to deal with racist and xenophobic prejudice at first appear uninspiring. In the game, Hale is recovering from a recent war with a rival country. Otherwhere is “years behind [Hale] technologically” and is aggressive to the point where “it is only a matter of time before Otherwhere decides to test out its capacity to use electricity as weaponry,” but in fact, Hale itself used a secret electrical weapon that killed tens of thousands of Otherwhere’s military forces on their own shores (Hall 94). 

Notably, no clues point to any sort of real-world inspiration for Otherwhere. There are no racial characteristics given to its people and no governmental structures vilified. Thus it is hard to say that this is an example of institutionalized racism if there is no race difference between the two countries. Additionally, Candela Obscura, the secret society that gives the game its name, is a “diverse and global secret society” that does not allow one region to gain power over others through supernatural means (Hall 74-6). In this way, any power gained by player characters can be sure not to strengthen one institution over another. 

Powers, artifacts, and occult texts are hallmarks of the horror genre that typically strengthen the xenophobia associated with it. Candela Obscura’s rulebook cautions that “we often analogize what we don’t know – rituals from other cultures, sacred rites, and practices from traditions that aren’t our own—to be ‘strange’ or ‘mystical’” by nature of being foreign to our own understanding (Hall 17). The rulebook suggests that Game Masters “design with empathy [as] many may not appreciate having deeply sacred symbols, artifacts, and rituals fictionalized” (Hall 17). This shows that Candela Obscura goes the extra mile and tries to educate Game Masters on matters of “otherness” and on instances of xenophobia that they may engage in unwittingly if they are never taught about the issue. Overall, Candela’s handling of cultural and racial systemic prejudice may not be flawless, but its authors fare far better in matters of gender equality. 

EMBRACING GENDER DIVERSITY IN AND BEYOND FANTASY

Fantastical worlds, even grimdark ones that feature in horror games like Candela Obscura have seemingly unlimited options when it comes to worldbuilding, but too often, patriarchal power structures relying on systemic sexism to remain in power proliferate the genre. Lian Sinclair calls for “a world from which interventions can be staged, interventions into the consensus fantasy universe and, through the genre, it can also intervene in our own historical imaginations.” like the world she saw in the works of Terry Pratchett (Sinclair 6-7). Sinclair supports the inclusion of female heroines, the inversion of the patriarchy, and the strengthening of characters through “ignoring binary notions of gender.” These are seen as admirable steps toward breaking the hold of systemic prejudice on fantasy worlds, even when that presence can be felt within those created worlds (Sinclair 10). Sadly, Sinclair laments that “while fantastical literature has great potential to imagine gender outside the constraints of our world, this potential is left largely unfulfilled by canonical works” (Sinclair 17). This is the area in which Candela Obscura can be of real benefit through its worldbuilding. 

The shortcomings regarding gender within role-playing games that came before Candela Obscura have left the canon of TTRPGs in much the same patriarchal place that fantasy literature is in. Call of Cthulhu‘s rulebook, formerly such a bad example in educating GMs on social equity, does reassure players that there is no penalty for choosing male or female player characters, so players can create their characters without having to worry about how their choices will affect their ability to perform in-game (Petersen 45). It does, however, warn that “some published scenarios may consider the effect of gender in specific societies and historical periods” (Petersen 45). There is no attempt at inverting patriarchal expectations or upsetting the gender binary here, just a bland warning that their worldbuilding will occasionally choose to uphold the patriarchal values of the past in their published works. 

Candela Obscura does attempt to take on traditionally patriarchal institutions in-game. Western societies have a bad habit of using the clergy to facilitate and validate patriarchal values. In Candela Obscura, however, though religious structures can be problematic, the central figures can be fathers, mothers, or guardians (Hall 99). Additionally, the traditionally taboo and predominantly female practice of sex work is “lawful, profitable, safe, and socially acceptable” (Hall 106). The “standard belief of the Fairelands” is that characters, regardless of their gender, have complete bodily autonomy and may utilize that autonomy however they wish (Hall 106). Bodily autonomy and the proliferation throughout the text of nonbinary character options fulfill the potential that Sinclair sees in world-building to think outside of the gender binary and to produce worlds that are separate from patriarchy. This rulebook teaches Game Masters what a fantasy world with gender equality might look like. It even teaches them about bodily autonomy and the effects of it, such as the treatment of sex workers. This is a wonderful illustration of the broader effects a step forward in equality and bodily autonomy may have on a created fantasy or homebrew world. 

PORTRAYING BODILY AUTONOMY AND VARIED ABILITIES

Outside of the gender binary, bodily autonomy is continually challenged by ableist prejudice. The fantasy genre is infamous for offering shallow diversity in the form of disabled main characters that only last until the fantasy trope of “affirmation” kicks in and their disability is cured as a reward for their journey (Cheyne 109). Ria Cheyne points out in her chapter on fantasy and affirmation that, like the xenophobia behind the practice of making foreign cultures mystical that Candela Obscura cautions against, disability is often used as a magical prop in fantasy to facilitate worldbuilding through secondary characters like the blind seer or the mad mage (Cheyne 114-115). The “otherness” associated with disability makes disabled characters more likely to be associated with magics that the able main characters do not or cannot understand. According to Cheyne, “grimdark” fantasy, being freed from expectations of reward and healing, comes to the rescue in this respect and adds some refreshing diversity to these narratives (Cheyne 114). Within the grimdark fantasy genre, Cheyne praises George R.R. Martin’s use of disabled viewpoint characters because, through those characters, “the series encourages an immersive affective engagement with disability experience, something that can itself encourage reflection upon disability through the creation of moments of recognition or affective connection between reader and character” (Cheyne 116). This sounds very similar to how Joseph Laycock explains the players immersing themselves in their characters and the world to engage with concepts they are separated from in the real world. Unfortunately, some TTRPGs tend to lean into stereotypes rather than encouraging empathy. 

The TTRPGS Call of Cthulhu and Blades in the Dark both have disappointing game mechanics surrounding disability. In an astonishingly shallow display, players must roll for their appearance score.  A score of 0 makes the character “appallingly ugly… provoking comment and shock everywhere,” and a score of 15 is described as “ugly, possibly disfigured due to injury or at birth” (Petersen 31, 37). The possibility of disfiguring harm being treated so cavalierly within character creation before play even begins is troubling. That score becomes a factor that can influence how other characters treat the PC within the game, even though there is very little that the player can do about it. What is worse than this insensitivity is the portrayal of mental and intellectual disabilities in both games. In the same character creation process an Intelligence score of 0 is described as a “babbling, drooling idiot” with all the same tact used to describe the appearance mechanic (Petersen 31). Separate from, and worse than, the intelligence mechanic is the disability mechanic that Cthulhu, Blades in the Dark, and Candela Obscura all have in common: insanity. 

In Call of Cthulhu, three stages of insanity ostensibly follow Cthulhu’s attempts to “make the world realistic” (Petersen 211). The first of the three phases is a “bout of madness” where control of the player character is taken away from the player and given to the GM; the character is described as “completely unhinged,” and the Game Master may also erase a trait assigned to them by the player and replace it with something “more suitable” such as “bully” or “drug addict” (Petersen 155, 157). This is the antithesis of the freedom that is the greatest strength of role-playing games. Unlike the exploration of unfamiliar or taboo subjects that Laycock posits are so beneficial, the players have no control here over what topics they wish to explore. Instead, they are forced into dealing with situations they did not choose. If Game Masters are not careful, moments of insanity can be seriously emotionally and mentally damaging to the players as well as the player characters, especially in cases like one described in the rulebook where a moment of insanity leads to a player character “holding the smoking barrel of a gun to [their] temple” (Petersen 158). Troublingly, another example of this bout of madness mechanic in the rulebook is a “panic attack,” which suggests that anxiety disorders and suicidal actions are both instances of “insanity” that the Game Master can choose to dramatize and play with without requiring consent from the players (Petersen 156). 

 In phase two of insanity, there is no more freedom than in phase one; the character is delusional, which means that the Game Master can give the player false information at their discretion, and players must make a “reality check” to know what is really happening in the game (Petersen 162). This is another instance of a loss of freedom in how the player explores the game, placing them at the Game Master’s mercy with only the hope that they have some kind of safety agreement previously discussed. Phase three is the longest of the three, and despite this phase being recovery, there is no more player freedom. Players are cautioned that, though the psychoanalysis and institutionalization mechanics can improve sanity scores, these things can be improperly done and harm the character instead of helping them (Petersen 164). Additionally, the rulebook cautions that “no player should count on [the privilege of recovering from insanity] as a right” (Petersen 156). In other words, if they want to continue playing their character or if they find playing through recovery to be something they want to explore, the Game Master could take that possibility away and remain within their rights as per the rulebook. 

While Call of Cthulhu’s game mechanics surrounding player freedom in the instance of sanity are immensely disappointing, Blades in the Dark, a touchstone for Candela Obscura and an inspiration for many of their game mechanics, is far more delicate. Exposure to the supernatural in Blades in the Dark leads not to insanity but to a much more believable freeze-or-flee response, which is far more temporary than the insanity mechanic (Harper 14). The game mechanic that is more like Call of Cthulhu’s insanity is the Stress and Trauma mechanic. Stress is an option players choose to take to avoid harm and failure (Harper 13). When a character builds up too much stress, the character takes a point of trauma and is removed from the action (Harper 13). This allows much more control to be in the hands of the player regarding the risks they want to take and the amount that they want to confront the topic of trauma. Unfortunately, the trauma conditions, once earned, are permanent, and four trauma points will remove the character from the game permanently; however, the player has control over what happens to them (Harper 14). If the character wants to explore what a happy ending in retirement would look like or if they want to benefit the group by sending their character to prison to lower the party’s wanted level, they may choose the ending for their character instead of leaving it in the hands of the Game Master. When characters take a point of trauma, they choose a trauma condition such as cold, haunted, or obsessed, but players are not required to include these in their roleplay (Harper 14). Though mental strain and mental scarring are included in this game, control over how these are represented is never taken out of players’ hands. 

Candela Obscura takes the player choice demonstrated in Blades in the Dark to a new level. Candela has a system of body and brain marks within the game mechanics to track the physical and mental harm that a character goes through. The rulebook sets clear expectations for players and GMs alike on how these measures of harm are to be handled. The rulebook points out that “disability and mental illness are facets of the human experience and are not convenient narrative beats behind evil actions, or ‘evil people’” (Hall 16). This explanation is explicitly given to address the “legacy of harmful mental health representation in the horror genre,” and to that end, brain marks are indicators of the weight of stress upon the character, not insanity (Hall 16). The rulebook also states that “Scars, especially brain scars, should be understood as both a mechanical and narrative change to your character and not an opportunity to engage in ableist stereotype” (Hall 17). With a few simple sentences, Candela Obscura handles matters of disability better than both Call of Cthulhu and Blades in the Dark: not only is the narrative behind disability addressed but the rules educate Game Masters on these issues rather than leaving them to their own devices or glossing over the effects of an important game mechanic on players. 

The game mechanics of brain and body marks, once they begin to add up, turn into scars. Unlike the disfigurement that Call of Cthulhu made light of, these scars do not permanently disadvantage the character, and they still maintain character freedom. Though scars are permanent changes to player characters, players do not lose any traits; instead, they “shift a point from one action rating to another to reflect how the scar changes the way [the] character interacts with the world” (Hall 14). Not only does the player have the ability to adapt to an acquired scar or disability, but players can also seek out the opportunity to heal scars within the game’s mechanics, a freedom denied in other role-playing games (Hall 17). When considering how to heal these characters, some final advice is given regarding the choices in Cthulhu and Blades in the Dark: institutions and prisons, respectively. According to the world-building, “institutions such as prisons or asylums may present formidable adversaries, remember that these locations exist for players to confront and resist, rather than to glorify mistreatment. Monsters can take on many forms – choose your foes wisely and in vanquishing them, find comfort” (Hall 106). The comfort of players is the top priority whenever discussions of disability and prejudice are concerned, however, there is one system of prejudice that is treated very similarly in all three games. 

If, as Joseph Laycock states, “the alternative worlds imagined during these games have consequences for how players make sense of the real world,” then Candela Obscura is doing a remarkable job educating players while still allowing them the freedom of exploration. It is a lesson to all TTRPGs on how to protect players through careful world-building. In the future, it would be refreshing to see more TTRPGs take responsibility for the worlds that they create rather than trusting in Game Masters to protect players without any advice on how to do so.

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WORKS CITED

“About Us.” Critical Role, www.critrole.com 

“Arrival at Kraghammer | Critical Role: VOX MACHINA | Episode 1.” YouTube, Geek and Sundry, 24 June 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-p9lWIhcLQ  

Cheyne, Ria. “Chapter Four: Fantasy: Affirmation and Enchantment” Disability, Literature, Genre: Representation and Affect in Contemporary Fiction. Liverpool University Press, 2019. pp 109-133  

Critical Role, “Call of Cthulhu: Shadow of the Crystal Palace” YouTube, 31 July 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uhqZdJ8swQ   

Gomel, Elana and Danielle Gurevitch. “What is Fantasy and Who Decides.” The Palgrave Handbook of Global Fantasy. Palgrave Macmillan, 2023. pp 3-13. 

Hall, Rowan, and Spenser Starke. Candela Obscura Core Rulebook. Darrington Press LLC, 2023.  

Harper, John. Blades in the Dark. Evil Hat Productions, 2017.  

Laycock, Joseph P. “How Role-Playing Games Create Meaning.” Dangerous Games: What the Moral Panic Over Role-Playing Games Says about Play, Religion, and Imagined Worlds, 1st ed., University of California Press, 2015, pp. 179–209. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/j.ctt13x1hs5.10.  

“Lens of Systemic Oppression.” National Equity Project, www.nationalequityproject.org/frameworks/lens-of-systemic-oppression.  

Mayer, Jed. “Race, Species, and Others: H.P. Lovecraft and the Animal” The Age of Lovecraft, edited by Carl H. Sederholm, and Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, University of Minnesota Press, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central. 

Perkins, Christopher, et al. Dungeon’s & Dragons. Dungeon Master’s Guide. Wizards of the Coast, 2024. 

Petersen, Sandy, et al. Call of Cthulhu Keeper Rulebook. Edited by Lynn Willis, 7th ed., Chaosium Inc, 2015. 

Senior, W. A. “The Politics of Fantasy.” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, vol. 15, no. 1 (57), 2004, pp. 1–3. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43308679.  Sinclair, Lian. “Magical Genders: The Gender(s) of Witches in the Historical Imagination of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld.” Mythlore, vol. 33, no. 2 (126), 2015, pp. 5–18. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/26815986.