Non-Fantasy Tropes with Jackson Lanzing, Eric Campbell, and Matt Colville | Roundtable

Summary

Podcast Summary: Non-Fantasy Tropes with Jackson Lanzing, Eric Campbell, and Matt Colville | Roundtable

Podcast: Critical Role & Sagas of Sundry
Host: geekandsundry
Episode: Non-Fantasy Tropes Roundtable
Guests: Jackson Lanzing, Eric Campbell, Matt Colville
Date: March 9, 2026
Current Season Highlight: Ten Candles: Eclipse

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Overview

This episode brings together acclaimed RPG designers and storytellers to discuss roleplaying games beyond the fantasy genre. Jackson Lanzing (comic writer and RPG designer), Eric Campbell (game master), and Matt Colville (author and YouTube educator) dive deep into how non-fantasy genre tropes, especially from science fiction, shape storytelling and player experience at the table. They explore how shifting away from traditional fantasy opens new avenues for creativity, challenge, and personal expression in RPGs, and reflect on their personal journeys, emotional attachments, and favorite system quirks.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Appeal and Limits of Classic Fantasy Settings

• Default Familiarity:
  • Players and GMs often “know” how fantasy settings work: the blacksmith, the tavern, the implied rules of “Fantasy Land.”

    “There's a term they use in criticism called Fantasy Land, which is the implied setting that all fantasy novels and games take place in...” –Matthew Colville [06:25]

• Limitations and Nostalgia:
  • Fantasy may feel limiting for longtime players or GMs familiar with the tropes.
  • Science fiction offers a sense of creative freedom not always found in “default fantasy.”

    “I always feel like I’ve read the story I want to tell.” –Brian Lucci [06:53]
    “It’s almost like you gotta be mindful of walking in the shadow of the typical when it comes to fantasy.” –Jackson Lanzing [07:51]

• Personal Attachment:

  “That would be like removing half of my body if I decided to step away from it ... it just feels more intimate.” –Jackson Lanzing [09:38]

Science Fiction: Infinite Canvas

• Genre Flexibility:
  • Sci-fi games (like Star Trek, Doctor Who) allow for more genre-blending: time travel, politics, even fantasy-within-sci-fi via holodecks or magic-like tech.

    “If I want a fantasy episode, I can go do that ... sci fi opens the door to doing everything.” –Jackson Lanzing [03:03]

• Mechanics Reflect Storytelling:
  • Star Trek’s episodic nature lends itself to adventures spanning mysteries, political intrigue, diplomacy, and more.
  • Sci-fi settings help break social and cultural limits inherent in medieval fantasy.

    “You can take all the social mores off … with sci fi I have this very ... world-building is less limited.” –Brian Lucci [31:52]

• Memorable Moment:

  “In fantasy, you start small and end big ... whereas in sci fi, you start determined, you end victorious.” –Jackson Lanzing [05:28]

Genre Hybrids and Unusual Settings

• The group reminisces about D&D’s Spelljammer setting, which mashed fantasy with planetary romance and space opera:

  “Spelljammer is Dungeons and Dragons in Space ... it just feels, like, so pulpy.” –Jackson Lanzing [13:04]

• Sci-fi and fantasy aren’t opposites; cross-genre experimentation (e.g., running “Game of Thrones” political arcs in Star Trek) can reinvigorate old tropes.

Personal RPG Journeys & Therapy Through Roleplay

• First Non-Fantasy RPGs:
  • Many started with D&D, then branched out; for example, Champions (a superhero system) taught intensive rules and math.

    “Champions is a game where you have to do calculus... if your Superman character is gonna fly across the board ...” –Matthew Colville [11:44]

• Roleplay as Therapy:
  • Characters often reflect the player’s hidden strengths, desires, or struggles.
  • RPGs provide space for self-exploration, identity, and growth.

    “The amount that this is illuminating my personality ... it's like therapy.” –Brian Lucci [26:01] “For a long time ... before I knew how to deal with that ... I’d have periods I couldn’t walk. When I started playing, I was always playing these hyper-capable [characters] ... it was seriously therapeutic.” –Brian Lucci [27:58]

Empathy and Identity: RPGs as Social Laboratories

• Empowerment & Empathy:

  • Players start with characters similar to themselves; eventually, many branch out, roleplaying wildly different personalities.

    “There is definitely a psychological component to the first characters you make ... eventually you start branching out into characters that are wildly different from you. And that is a great exercise, just as a human being.” –Matthew Colville [28:58]

  • Engaging with different character types fosters empathy and self-awareness.

    “That is the bedrock of empathy.” –Jackson Lanzing [29:30]

• Social Growth:

  • RPG tables provide rare, nonjudgmental spaces where people from different backgrounds (tribes, in Colville’s language) convene and learn about each other’s worldviews.

    “D&D was the way out of that for me ... I would intensely judge these people ... and then one of them would be invited to the D&D table and would be an amazing DM in a completely different way ... and obviously I was completely wrong about everything.” –Matthew Colville [26:34]

The Evolution of Fantasy

• Changing Fantasy Tropes:
  • Game of Thrones and similar works have brought a broader, more political, and multicultural flavor to fantasy, attracting a new generation.

    “All the people who are coming to fantasy through Game of Thrones and, man, there are a lot of them ... you’re gonna see a whole generation ... whose primary fantasy is not one that exists wholly on a swords and sorcery level. I’m looking forward to the fantasy that it births.” –Brian Lucci [30:46]

• Inspiration from Multiple Genres:
  • “Anything can be anything” in RPGs: no need for genre gatekeeping.

    “I think you can do anything in anything.” –Matthew Colville [09:22]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Sci-Fi's Reach:

  “Sci fi opens the door to doing everything.” –Jackson Lanzing [03:03]

• On Fantasy’s Senses:

  “I know what it smells like to cook meat. I know what it’s like to get tired ... but I don’t know what a lightsaber smells like.” –Matthew Colville [10:16]

• On RPGs and Self-Discovery:

  “The amount that this is illuminating my personality ... it’s like therapy.” –Brian Lucci [26:01]

• On Empathy:

  “That is the bedrock of empathy.” –Jackson Lanzing [29:30]

• On Genre Flexibility:

  “I think you can do anything in anything.” –Matthew Colville [09:22]

• On Social Growth:

  “D&D was the way out of that for me ... obviously I was completely wrong about everything.” –Matthew Colville [26:34]

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Important Segment Timestamps

• [03:03] Jackson Lanzing on sci-fi’s infinite genre potential.
• [06:25] Matthew Colville on “Fantasy Land” and the comfort of genre conventions.
• [07:51] Jackson Lanzing on the shadow of the typical in fantasy.
• [09:38] Jackson Lanzing on fantasy’s intimacy compared to sci-fi’s scale.
• [10:16] Matt Colville on the sensory grounding of fantasy.
• [13:04] Jackson Lanzing explains Spelljammer.
• [26:01] Brian Lucci on RPGs as therapy.
• [28:58] Matt Colville on starting to play characters who are different from yourself.
• [29:30] Jackson Lanzing: “That is the bedrock of empathy.”
• [30:46] Brian Lucci on the Game of Thrones generation.
• [31:52] Brian Lucci on sci-fi’s worldbuilding strengths.

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Final Reflections

• Genre is a tool, not a boundary: The group agrees that while genre influences tone and expectation, skilled GMs and players can tell any story in any setting—so long as they mind the "shadow of the typical" and dare to try something new.
• Non-fantasy RPGs are not just viable but vital: By stepping outside swords and sorcery, RPGs unlock new domains of creativity, address wider human experiences, and offer deeper therapeutic potential.
• RPGs foster empathy and resilience: The stories we tell shape who we are, encourage understanding, and help us heal.

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For those seeking inspiration, validation, or simply a roadmap beyond fantasy dungeons: this episode is a must-listen and a heartfelt, humorous tribute to the endless possibilities of roleplaying games—regardless of genre.

Transcript

[Narrator/Advertiser]

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[Brian Lucci]

Tonight on the roundtable, the amount that this is illuminating my personality and allowing me to recognize the kind of person I am, it's like therapy. Yes.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

Jackson Lansing, co writer behind the hit

[Brian Lucci]

comic books Joyride and Hacktivist and the RPG Vast.

[Matthew Colville]

Like, I spend a lot of my time on my YouTube channel trying to explain to people that, like, there's a million different ways to be a GM and that what. Whatever it is that excites you, then that's your path into it.

[Brian Lucci]

Matthew Colville, a video game writer with

[Jackson Lansing]

Turtle Rock Studios, Sci Fi opens the door to doing everything. Like, if I want a fantasy episode, I can go and do that. We can time travel to, you know, anywhere.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

Eric Campbell, game master of Eric's TBD

[Brian Lucci]

RPG and GNS Live.

[Matthew Colville]

Talking about stuff apart from fantasy makes me happy.

[Brian Lucci]

There's plenty of settings that don't have dungeons.

[Matthew Colville]

Correct? Yeah, exactly. Ye. Oh, hey. You got dessert?

[Brian Lucci]

Yeah, I did. I got a smooth.

[Matthew Colville]

I didn't know we could.

[Jackson Lansing]

What did you get?

[Brian Lucci]

So this is a smooth Lansing, which is a drink created by Shay, one of our fans on Vash.

[Matthew Colville]

I just got ice tea.

[Brian Lucci]

You got nice tea.

[Matthew Colville]

I just got iced tea. Yeah. I don't drink.

[Jackson Lansing]

It's funny because I'm drinking such a traditionally, just like. But. Cause my great ancestors used to drink this. But this in this wonderfully beautiful, delicate glass is honey mead.

[Matthew Colville]

Nice.

[Brian Lucci]

Did you have them, like, make it from scratch?

[Jackson Lansing]

I did. I even had them burn a village when they were. When they were doing it.

[Brian Lucci]

Well, cheers.

[Matthew Colville]

Cheers.

[Jackson Lansing]

To brave new worlds.

[Brian Lucci]

Yeah. To the roundtable.

[Matthew Colville]

Yeah. What were we talking about?

[Jackson Lansing]

We were talking about.

[Brian Lucci]

Oh, dang, that's good.

[Jackson Lansing]

We were talking about Star Trek. We were talking a lot about Star Trek because.

[Brian Lucci]

Well, because we learned very early that

[Matthew Colville]

we all have this thread in common.

[Jackson Lansing]

Right.

[Brian Lucci]

I've spen a lot of time designing a Star Trek system because I couldn't find a system I loved. You designed, apparently, a system that was

[Matthew Colville]

the closest thing to the one I would have loved. Two different Star Trek RPGs and you

[Brian Lucci]

have obsessively collected the books, it's funny. From his system.

[Matthew Colville]

That's crazy.

[Jackson Lansing]

That is wacky because. Yeah, like I said, I mean the decipher RPGs have been out of print for a long time. So people who wanted to pick up and play a Star Trek RPG have been kind of left out in the wind. There have been a lot of like fan made stuff out there. But for the most part I think deciphers RPG has been out of print since like 2005. 5 or something like that.

[Matthew Colville]

Which is weird because I feel like there should always be a Star Trek.

[Jackson Lansing]

I think so too.

[Matthew Colville]

It should be everywhere.

[Brian Lucci]

Don't. I agree. I'm so glad there's finally this new one coming down.

[Jackson Lansing]

Yeah. But it drives me out of my mind that because the flip side to the rising popularity of tabletop RPGs means that suddenly it's becoming a collector's market because now. Yeah, I hadn't thought of that now. Because that's because decipher RPGs. I paid 100 bucks for my starships.

[Matthew Colville]

Are you serious?

[Jackson Lansing]

Decipher? Yeah, that one was one of the

[Matthew Colville]

hardest ones to get because I've got like 50 of them.

[Jackson Lansing]

Oh God, can I flip this table?

[Brian Lucci]

And by the way, I can flip

[Jackson Lansing]

the T. I spent my tax return collecting the Decipher art book.

[Matthew Colville]

I mean there's some really like talking about storytelling outside of the fantasy genre. If you just go by like the GM books that we wrote or the core books and the DM's advice in it. There is a ton of like how to take a TV episode and break it down into an RPG episode and into a mission into an adventure. Like you were talking about watching Deep Space Nine and trying to translate those episodes and I'm like a whole bunch of them make great adventures.

[Brian Lucci]

You have a lot of shows. The thing that I think you can go back to over and over again is like, do you want to know how to run a mystery in a Star Trek system?

[Matthew Colville]

There's an episode for that.

[Brian Lucci]

It's like you want to do a Klingon episode. There it is. It's all there. And it's. Well, you were talking about doing like

[Matthew Colville]

Game of Thrones in Star Trek and the Klingon Empire. And there is more than ample material just in the show.

[Jackson Lansing]

Klingon Empire. Yeah, you're right. What I love about running sci fi games is sci fi opens the door to doing everything like with sci fi, like in the Doctor who RPG that I'm Running right now. If I want a fantasy episode, I can go and do that. We can time travel to, you know, anywhere. We can do. We can do all of these things. Star Trek kind of does the same thing with holodecks and whatnot. I myself, as a storyteller, I feel limited. This is so bizarre to say, but I have felt limited by fantasy. And I'm not saying one is better than the other, because I would never do that, but I would not because I'm worried about Flack, but because I can never make that call. Like, I love them both enormously. But the thing is with. With sci Fi, I can go from space and then immediately go into a setting where everyone just has swords and they're fighting a supernatural. You know what I mean?

[Brian Lucci]

In a Star Trek show, you can have characters rolling around with their phasers as much as you want, but when you're fighting Klingons, one of those Klingons is gonna pull a batleth and now you're in a sword fight.

[Jackson Lansing]

Or a makleth.

[Brian Lucci]

Or a mechleth. Exactly. Or a duktach. Or a. We can just go down that list.

[Jackson Lansing]

I know.

[Matthew Colville]

I love Klingons. That's one of the things I like about Star Trek is I think it's like the great science fiction RPG setting. Because everyone knows it feels like the

[Jackson Lansing]

beginning to end for fantasy is you start small, you end big. Like, you're the Hobbit, you end. You know what I mean? Whereas in sci Fi, it feels like you start determined, you end victorious.

[Matthew Colville]

Sure.

[Jackson Lansing]

Do you know what I mean?

[Brian Lucci]

Yes, dude. That's interesting. I think you can still start small and end big.

[Jackson Lansing]

I think so too.

[Brian Lucci]

I think it's about.

[Jackson Lansing]

But I've noticed that the journey is a little different because it seems like whenever I play D and D, like in critical role, for example, you start doing some questing and you start doing some. You helping out. And you start by making a difference. And then by the end of it, you're fighting fucking dragons that are destroying mountainsides and like, all this. Whereas in, like, sci Fi, the story seems to change from, like, from, you know, you have a couple of missions and then you go rescue a few people and then you get involved in, like, political conflict and all of a sudden there's a war going on. I'm wondering what it is about fantasy that draws us, because there's something wholly unique and sort of intimate about fantasy.

[Matthew Colville]

Fantasy.

[Brian Lucci]

You know where you're looking.

[Matthew Colville]

Yeah.

[Brian Lucci]

So, like, you walk into a town and you know where the Tavern is.

[Matthew Colville]

There's a term they use in criticism called Fantasy Land, which is the implied setting that all fantasy novels and games take place in, where, you know, there's gonna be a blacksmith to fix my weapons. I'm gonna be able to get a horse to get from here to here. I have a basic understanding. And the problem when you throw, I think, players into new, not well established apart from Star Trek science fiction settings, is that they don't know those things. They don't know if they're playing Traveler, for instance. They don't know, like, well, are there space stations around here? How do we get. Do we have faster than light travel? Can we anywhere we want?

[Brian Lucci]

Fantasy as a default setting for RPGs is great, but I actually believe it's very limiting. I've always had a hard time running fantasy as a setting. I find that if I'm gonna run a fantasy setting, I always feel like I've read the story I wanna tell. Like, I've read too much fantasy. Maybe I'm gonna run into those things where I go, damn, I feel like I'm ripping something off. Whereas if I set it in a universe that runs by a different set of rules, but I'm telling a relatively similar story, I feel like I'm getting something else out of it. With knights and orcs, I feel like I'm always gonna be walking them through planes and putting them at campfires and walking them up mountains and having them fight dragons. Like, with these guys, I can be like, you know, you hit a planet that's filled with rock monsters that act like knights, we can go into these weirder settings. Maybe it's just I have a harder time being creative in fantasy now that I'm saying it out loud again.

[Matthew Colville]

I mean, the existence of Fantasy Land are answers to questions that you don't want answers. You want to come up with your answers to them. You're like, well, I don't think that. Why? What's the point of playing in this sandbox when everything's already been so it's

[Jackson Lansing]

almost like you gotta be mindful of walking in the shadow of the typical when it comes to fantasy. Because, like, when I.

[Brian Lucci]

Great, great, great way to say that. Yeah.

[Jackson Lansing]

At least our modern fantasies that are huge today are springing, of course, from Granddaddy Tolkien and his completely disagree and his story, which. Well, there's really good reason because there's such a huge, rich library of mythology and fantasies that have sprout up that we've discovered, of course, Dungeons and Dragons being heavily influenced by Tolkien going forward and that being the big kid in the room when it comes to the fantasies that we know today, maybe sometimes we fall into the trap of that traditional fantasy trope. You know what I'm saying? Like what you were saying?

[Matthew Colville]

Well, like I said, you just accept that this is what fantasy is. And you're like, well, we already all know that. And that's not interesting. Right? It's much more interesting to find out what a hyper intelligent cockroach with robotic legs is going to react to the situation than it is to find out what another human with a sword is going to do. We've seen that a million times.

[Jackson Lansing]

I hope we haven't created a narrative that sci fi is better than fantasy, because that's certainly. No frigging way I'm saying that.

[Matthew Colville]

I feel like I'm going to be the definition defender of fantasy.

[Brian Lucci]

No, it's fine.

[Matthew Colville]

I'll do it. I'll do it if I do it.

[Jackson Lansing]

Please.

[Matthew Colville]

Maybe it's just because there's such a renaissance in fantasy gaming right now that people want to get back to that. They're excited to get back to that roots. And so it feels like all we're doing is recapitulating the hobbit and the hero's quest over and over again. But, like, I've got a one shot that I run whenever friends are like, hey, we haven't played. That's just Tears of the sun, the Bruce Willis movie where these fantasy characters are like, they start at seventh level and they're a Delta Force team and they have to go on a mission.

[Jackson Lansing]

That's great.

[Matthew Colville]

And it's got politics. It's just all done in like, I think you can do. I think you can do anything in anything.

[Brian Lucci]

I agree. I completely agree. I'm not trying to say that fantasy is limiting in and of itself.

[Matthew Colville]

No, it becomes personally limiting. Like we find it personally limiting because of our own experiences.

[Brian Lucci]

Yeah, no, I get that.

[Matthew Colville]

I get that.

[Jackson Lansing]

I'm just curious because the thing is, when it comes to fantasy, I could never. That would be like removing half of my body if I decided to step away from it. You know, when I play fantasy, the reason why I get so into it is when I'm in sci fi, I'm dealing with these massive themes. But when I play fantasy, it just feels. I don't know why, it just feels more intimate to like. I can picture my character walking across the cold soil as they're approaching their campfire with food that they just got for the party. Stuff like that. That's the stuff. As a storyteller and as a player, I would be like. My soul would be.

[Matthew Colville]

It's interesting because I wonder how much that is just because of our senses and the fact that I can imagine.

[Jackson Lansing]

That's a good point.

[Matthew Colville]

I actually have no idea what Dave Bauman smells when he walks around inside the Discovery. I don't know. But as far as campfires and stuff like that, that basic. I know what it smells like to cook meat. I know what it's like to get tired. And so these are.

[Brian Lucci]

They're more cool concepts.

[Matthew Colville]

Yeah. These are things that are kind of built in. And it's easy for the dungeon or the game master to bust these. These smells and senses out. But I don't know what it's like. I don't know what a lightsaber smells like.

[Jackson Lansing]

I think you just got it. Like, when I think about the Neverending Story and what it would be like to ride on Falkor's back, all I had to do as a little kid was run just really, really fast.

[Matthew Colville]

Sure. Yeah.

[Jackson Lansing]

And feel the wind whipping past my ears. And I could get it now when I'm watching. When I'm playing Star Wars, I'm playing with a toy and I'm imagining everything, and it's really liberating. It's wonderful and everything. But in fantasy, I could draw a plastic sword and go fight a dragon.

[Brian Lucci]

You guys gotta spend more weekends on spaceships. I feel like my experience is so different from yours. No, it's funny. So I agree with what you're saying.

[Jackson Lansing]

I'm curious, then. What was the first. I'd just love to hear what you guys. What was your first RPG outside of. Because did you start with fantasy or did you start. Okay, so what was your first non fantasy rpg? Like, what did you.

[Brian Lucci]

That I played in or I ran.

[Jackson Lansing]

That your first experience with, like, Star Trek game?

[Brian Lucci]

Yeah, my Star Trek game.

[Jackson Lansing]

That's right. And what was yours? Because you started with D and D as well, right?

[Matthew Colville]

Oh, yeah. I mean, we're going back into the midst of time. This is like. This would be like 1986. 87. It might have been Champions. It might have been a superhero game.

[Jackson Lansing]

Oh, yeah.

[Matthew Colville]

It might have been Champions is an intent, by the way. Champions is a game where you have to do calculus if you. I've heard about that.

[Jackson Lansing]

If you want to.

[Matthew Colville]

Like, it was the 80s and people were like, we've got these cool calculators. We might as well use them if you want to. If your character. If your Superman character is Gonna fly across the board and punch that guy or punch something. He's like, okay, well, I've got this much movement.

[Jackson Lansing]

Grab your TD82.

[Matthew Colville]

I've got 100. I can move 100ft of movement, but if I have 100ft of movement, I'm not moving 100ft per round at this point. I'm only moving 100ft per round at this point.

[Brian Lucci]

Yeah, you've got someone.

[Matthew Colville]

You literally have to sit there. You have to do a derivative to figure out how fast am I going at this point in my movement. And at the time, I am hard

[Brian Lucci]

enough doing basic arithmetic in my head to keep it.

[Matthew Colville]

Well, you know, we were. Whoa, what's wrong? This makes perfect sense to us. Why aren't all games like this? Because you're a certain age. You just want that super intense.

[Jackson Lansing]

On my SATs, I was like 40 points away from a perfect on the verbal, and I crashed the math so hard, which, actually, this is a little adjacent. But of all the classic storytelling games that I've played growing up, because we've been talking about fantasy and sci fi, but I just. I'm so disappointed that I never got my. My feet wet with Spelljammer.

[Matthew Colville]

Oh, interesting.

[Jackson Lansing]

In D and D. Did anybody ever play that?

[Matthew Colville]

Did you ever play that? No, because it looked weird to me. It's.

[Jackson Lansing]

That's the thing is, it's a polarizing thing.

[Matthew Colville]

Either you look at that and you're like, ooh, I want it. Or you look at it and you're like, what is it?

[Jackson Lansing]

It's like opera.

[Brian Lucci]

I don't know what that is.

[Jackson Lansing]

Spelljammer is Dungeons and Dragons in Space, and it came out in, like, the late 80s, I guess.

[Matthew Colville]

Or maybe it's not science fiction, though.

[Jackson Lansing]

No, it's not.

[Matthew Colville]

It's not. It's like, imagine back when they thought that the. Everything was like, Flagstone. It's like planetary romance. It's like John Carter. John Carter of Mars. Planetary romance. Like. Like, the ships that go have sails, they're going through space, and they have.

[Jackson Lansing]

And they have. And a mage, basically PI. A wizard, pilots them using. Sitting on this throne. And some of them are giant whales. Some of them are like ships with sails. And some of them are. And. And what's crazy, it's so. So like, it just feels, like, so pulpy.

[Brian Lucci]

Like early 80s.

[Matthew Colville]

Yeah.

[Jackson Lansing]

I've always. And I'm like. I'm like, somebody has to have made conversion rules out there. So I'm always just checking in. They were coming out with all these different sort of genres. That they were trying to branch it out, to make it more than just go on this quest, kill this monster and stuff like that. Right.

[Brian Lucci]

Getting out of the traditional fantasy. So even they early on were recognizing the fantasy setting can be Limited. But RPGs as a story format are so intensely engaging from a long term story perspective. I think you can do stuff there that you could never do otherwise.

[Sponsor Voice]

Sure.

[Matthew Colville]

I mean, every time in 30 years that I've had one player be the mole, there's at least one other player who gets legitimately upset because of how intense an experience. Like, I trusted you. I literally trusted you. Right. And my character trusted you and I trusted you and look what happened. The experience of being a player is so different than the experience of being a dungeon master. Like the dungeon master is literally, I am having to read all these players constantly and judge what are they responding to. And that gets into like my friend Dave, when he had kids, all of a sudden, if there was. If you needed to engage his character, you could put a child in danger and he would have an intense visceral react. Whereas that same. I've known this guy since we were 15, he would not have reacted that way when he was 15 or 16. It becomes intensely personal. It's funny that you have. I mean, this is a footnote. Like, I spend a lot of my time on my YouTube channel, try to explain to people that, like, there's a million different ways to be a gm and that whatever it is that excites you, then that's your path into it. And that comes from me. Like my first DM, this was Dungeons and Dragons. And this is like 1987, 88. This is somebody who was not a writer and had a serious stage fright. It was dyslexic. And yet in spite of that, this dude was an amazing dm. And he put this huge map. It was actually a map of the city state of the Invincible Overlord. And it was a Mayfair product from the Judges Guild. And it was about as big as this table and every single building on it was keyed. So you could literally go, I want to go here. And he would go, flip, flip, flip. Okay, that's an alchemy shop. And it was all about urban intrigue and murder mysteries and stuff like that. And so my first experience had very little to do with kind of knights questing and going and finding an inn and that kind of stuff and riding on horseback from one point to the other. And that complete. I feel like I've spent most of my life trying to be A dm? Like, that guy was a dm.

[Jackson Lansing]

I had the same experience.

[Matthew Colville]

Really? Are you serious? That's awesome.

[Jackson Lansing]

So I grew up in South Texas from a Southern Baptist family who absolutely believed that Dungeons and Dragons is going to summon the devil and that we were all going to die.

[Matthew Colville]

And it will.

[Jackson Lansing]

So I had a very rough childhood growing up with regards to my education, because starting from first grade to the day I graduated senior year, I was placed in special education, diagnosed with a learning disability. And they told me that because apparently I tested very high in, like, IQ and stuff like that, but I was not taking the material in, and they did. So I got diagnosed with anxiety and attention deficit disorder and all of this other stuff at a young age. Yeah, really young. And I got pumped on Ritalin and they put me in spec ed and I stayed there. And so I had that typical geek story where I loved. I'd want to come to school with my Transformers Trapper Keeper, and I'd get my ass kicked for it.

[Sponsor Voice]

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[Jackson Lansing]

That was the kind of thing. By the time I got to middle school, I had run into my friend Curtis, who was a Dungeon Master, and I decided to give it a try because I saw them just rolling dice at the lunch table one day. And then he, as a dm, playing in his game. I will never forget this, but the way he would deliver everything, the way we would come to, there's a door, and we'd be like, all right, well, I'm going to try to open it. And he would describe, it's not opening. And then he'd be like. And that's when you realize there's no lock. In fact, there's no keyhole. This door is remaining closed, and you

[Brian Lucci]

can't figure out why.

[Jackson Lansing]

Like, that's how he would deliver everything. Like, he would be just as amazed by the fact that you couldn't open this door. It's informed everything about who I am as a DM today and as a game master today, because I never felt like I was just narrating a character that existed in some fantasy world. I felt like I was standing in a room and the GM was next to me going, but why?

[Brian Lucci]

I have a similar story, but it operates on kind of different terms. Obviously, I got into RPGs a little bit later. I played my first sessions at 25 or 26.

[Matthew Colville]

Right.

[Brian Lucci]

I built vast. The universe of vast. I built it when I was.

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[Brian Lucci]

I couldn't have been older than 10 and I built it on a little. I had a little tape recorder like that. I would walk around like Agent Cooper just like talking to myself in my room cause I had no friends and I would just sit around cause I should have been diagnosed with a bunch of stuff and I wasn't. So I was walking around just being like what about the Sirin and what are the paka. And I was literally coming up with all of it back when I was a kid. And I would write it all down. It was the first stuff I wrote, and it was the first stuff where I was like, oh, I think I'm a writer. I know a really, really good friend named Dan. He was writing a fantasy novel and I was writing a bunch of sci fi. And so he would tell me all about his fantasy stuff and I would read his fantasy stuff and I would tell him all about my sci fi stuff and I'd read my sci fi stuff and we'd like. We'd workshop worlds with each other, which wasn't really like RPG ing, but it was a lot like game mastering.

[Sponsor Voice]

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[Brian Lucci]

Because we were sitting there and talking about, like, what's over here? And how do you do this? And what is this character supposed to mean? And how does this mystery get set up? By the time I was playing, which was in a World of Darkness campaign with just two other guys. But here's what I liked about my dm. He'd lean in and he would have conversations with me as the NPCs, and his conversations off the cuff were really good. And he wouldn't break eye contact and he would do voices and he would challenge everything I said. And if I wanted to beat back on this stuff, I had to roll socially to get him past that stuff. Right. And I found myself thinking, like, the amount that this is illuminating my personality, that it's illuminating what I'm good at and what I'm bad at, and allowing me to recognize the kind of person I am.

[Matthew Colville]

It's like therapy.

[Brian Lucci]

Yes, it becomes therapy. So all the combat stuff, all that, sure, it's there, it's fun, the mechanics are there, it's fun. But what that GM taught me was to be like, engage with this on a level that has nothing to do with the mechanics. Engage on this on a level that is demonstrable to you and your character. And that's what I took.

[Matthew Colville]

My high school experience was very. This is a hallmark of the 80s, I think. I don't know, maybe this is still true, where they're like the guys that listen to heavy metal and they didn't hang out with anybody else. The surfer guys.

[Brian Lucci]

That's not a product of the 80s, that's a product of being a teenager.

[Matthew Colville]

It was super, super tribal. Right. Intensely tribal. And D and D was the way out of that for me because I would intensely judge these people at the age of 16 or 17 for what I thought was their wrong headedness. And then one of them would be invited to the D and D table and would be an amazing dm and DM in a completely different way than anyone. And of course, when you're young, I only had one or two DMs, only a couple of examples. And I'm like, okay, so obviously I was completely wrong about everything. Everything I thought about these people or about that person got thrown into a cocktail.

[Jackson Lansing]

That's a fantastic point, because that happened to me too. I got socialized, really, by playing Dungeons and Dragons. And so half of my gaming group were all women. And so when we would sit down at the gaming table, we always had a diverse group. I learned to love, like, things that I had never been exposed to, but I fell in love with musicals. I used to think Rush was the most ridiculous band, but people would kind of make fun of you for, like, your wish fulfillment, like, your fantasy wish fulfillment for, like, playing, oh, I'm gonna be a fighter, because I can't really move in real life. Like, that's how you be portrayed or whatever, Right? But what I discovered was there is some truth to, like, the character styles that you pick. I started to notice throughout high school that I kept choosing a character that had some secret awesome power, but no one ever knew about it. And I didn't realize that what I was actually doing was telling my story to myself. That I felt like I, as a person, was buried deep down inside and that I had something special to offer and I just needed to find the right situation to give it.

[Brian Lucci]

So I have a similar story. I was born with spina bifida. My back is all messed up. And for a long time, before I knew how to deal with that, before I knew the exercise and things that I needed to do to make sure that my body worked properly, I'd have whole periods of time where I couldn't walk. When I started playing, I was always playing these hyper capable. I was the, oh, I can't fight in real life, so I'm gonna fight. Because it was seriously therapeutic to me to have a character that was never gonna be told, oh, you can't walk over there, right? Like, I would play the biggest, baddest thing I could. And the thing that I've realized now, having done this a few times, is that I've also always attached that character to a really difficult personality. Like, a personality that, like, yes, I'll be hyper capable, but I'll also have, like, pretty strong opinions and I'll be pretty unpredictable. And I'm like, yeah, I'M just writing myself with capabilities. Like, I'm just. It's like I'm just taking my best aspects and my worst aspects, and I'm funneling them together into something that I can play in a safe environment. I love that it is therapy.

[Matthew Colville]

There is definitely a psychological component to, like, the first characters you make. And it's one of the things, like, I'm lucky in that I played with the same group for years. And there eventually comes a point where you just get bored playing a version of yourself for the first time. You're making a character, and you tend to want to play characters that are like you, and there's nothing wrong with that. But then eventually, if you do that enough, you're gonna get bored doing that. And that's when you start branching out into characters that are wildly different from you. And that is a great exercise. Just as a human being, I agree. Just as a person, it's just like, okay, well, I've done me certainly enough now. Like, let's play somebody completely different.

[Jackson Lansing]

I mean, that is the bedrock of empathy.

[Matthew Colville]

I was wondering if this gets back to the kind of science fiction versus fantasy thing, because certainly if we talk about fantasy and the idea of fantasy land, we are talking about that classic medieval Western European tradition, right? And that, though there are ethnicities that are kind of built into that, right? And there is feudalism that's built into that. But if we talk about science fiction, we are deliberately throwing all those things out on purpose so that we can have anybody in there.

[Brian Lucci]

And again, that's the thing I love about sci fi is you can take all the. You can take all the social mores off. There's something about fantasy where you kind of have to accept, like, there's going to be a lot of, like, human social mores that you have to stick to, that lets the players dig into the concept of their own relative morality of, like, what I believe versus what you believe versus what you believe. Like, we're all talking and we're all agreeing right now. If we talk long enough, we'll find stuff that we fundamentally disagree about.

[Jackson Lansing]

I feel like it's limited to say that I can't do everything with a fantasy setting when I can do anything I want with sci fi. But fantasy feels like fantasy. It almost feels like if it doesn't have that feel of opening up an old book and telling a story with a pipe in your mouth kind of thing. You know what I mean? I feel like if I move too far away from. From that, then I've lost The charm of fantasy altogether. Do you know what I mean?

[Matthew Colville]

I do, yeah. But isn't that kind of like what Game of Thrones is? Taking, like, hoary old fantasy cliches and just marrying it? Soap opera plotting that we've all seen a million times. No one done that before.

[Brian Lucci]

All the people who are coming to fantasy through Game of Thrones and man, there are a lot of them, like, more I think, than maybe any of us realize yet, that you're gonna see a whole generation of people who are coming down the pike whose primary fantasy is not one that. That exists wholly on a swords and sorcery level. I'm looking forward to the fantasy that it births.

[Matthew Colville]

It'll be more political and it'll be

[Brian Lucci]

more multicultural and it'll be more alien. And for me, again, I think maybe I've come across a little bit as the anti fantasy guy here, and that's to some degree true. I am a bigger science fiction fan than I am a fantasy fan.

[Jackson Lansing]

But you're not anti fantasy. You're just a science fiction writer.

[Brian Lucci]

I'm just a science fiction writer, but I look forward to writing fantasy someday. It's not my core. My core belief system was raised on Star Trek. It was raised on science fiction and raised by scientists. So for me, I have this very. Like, that is where my perspective comes from, but in playing games. I think the only advantage that science fiction has had for me is that it allows for those. For the world building to be less limited, for the perspectives to be less limited, for the cultural perspectives to be less limited. And I'm wondering if that's a temporary thing.

[Matthew Colville]

It's funny that I find myself in a venue talking about mostly science fiction now because. But isn't that great that we are in a position where. Look, if you're here watching this because you're interested in role playing and you're interested in Dungeon Master being a gm, there is a colossal variety of things you can do with this. And so let's talk. Talking about stuff apart from fantasy makes me happy.

[Brian Lucci]

There's plenty of settings that don't have dungeons, correct?

[Matthew Colville]

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[Brian Lucci]

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[Matthew Colville]

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[Brian Lucci]

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[Matthew Colville]

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[Brian Lucci]

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[Brian Lucci]

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[Matthew Colville]

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[Brian Lucci]

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[Matthew Colville]

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[Brian Lucci]

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[Matthew Colville]

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[Brian Lucci]

I almost couldn't breathe when I saw the discount they gave me on my first order. Oh, sorry. Namaste.

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[Matthew Colville]

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[Brian Lucci]

Hi, I'm Brian Lucci, a former Chicago cop. Now I'm a producer on Chicago pd and I'd like to introduce you to the official One Chicago Podcast, the first ever behind the scenes look at the iconic TV shows. We're talking Chicago Fire, Chicago PD and Chicago Med. Join me each week for an exclusive conversation with the writers, the crew members and the stars. Void's doing the right thing for Voight. Check out the One Chicago Podcast from Wolf Entertainment and USG Audio, available now wherever you get your podcasts.