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Narrator/Advertiser
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Mark Holmes
Tonight on the roundtable, what will really
Jasmine Bullar
change it for me is VR. Like having that headset and being able to be immersed. That would make a huge difference to me.
Mark Holmes
Mark Holmes, Community manager of yogscast and game master of High Rollers I didn't realize, like, the gravity of really role playing on Twitch until I played like a true neutral character that I feel like a lot of people really disliked and it made them dislike. Jasmine Bullar, the game master behind the 80s inspired RPG the Outcrowd.
David Nett
The underlying fundamental realities are the same. Have fun. It's not just your story, it's everybody's story. To me, that's really beautiful.
Mark Holmes
David Nett is a writer, actor, and lifelong Dungeons and Dragons game master. How you just gave me the feels over.
David Nett
Cheers.
Jasmine Bullar
Cheers.
Mark Holmes
To the moral spectrum alignment.
Jasmine Bullar
So how did you guys get into it? Because, like, I find, like, that's when I'm meeting like, new, new DMs and stuff like that. Like, that's always the fun thing of, like, how did you get into the game? And things like that.
David Nett
When I was 12, I was at the science fair in Minot, North Dakota, and I had a broken arm and I was showing off my science fair exhibit and the guy next to me had just moved to town and we got talking and he invited me to come play in his Dungeons and Dragons game. And I'd heard about it, but I was in like rural North Dakota, very religious area.
Sponsor Voice 1
Oh, yeah.
David Nett
Sort of a taboo thing at that time. This is 84ish, I think. And I went and played his game and just the moment of creating that character, I was immediately hooked. Before we even played it was everything that my nerdy, sort of introverted little self had ever really wanted.
Mark Holmes
That's adorable.
David Nett
It's kind of really adorable, especially with
Jasmine Bullar
the little broken arm.
Mark Holmes
It's like such a perfect little story.
David Nett
The kids on Stranger Things, that was me and my friends.
Jasmine Bullar
That's the title. Oh, you really fit into that 80s cliche there.
David Nett
Oh, gosh, yeah. So many. So much Nostalgia in that show for me, watching those kids play. Yeah.
Mark Holmes
I lived for a really long time in India, and so I did a lot of my growing up there. I had lived for like the first part of my childhood in America, and then I moved to India and it felt like I was Indian, but I was so different from the other kids. It was hard to connect. And I'd always been kind of a shut in. So I read a lot of books and I was trying to learn Hindi and Punjabi at the same time.
David Nett
Oh, wow.
Mark Holmes
And so my dad would buy me comics, like Hindi comics. And they were really, really bad. Like Indian comics. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. But they were. We had a superhero named Doga who's like the Punisher, but he wears a dog mask. It was bad, but it helped me pick up the languages. And that's. That's kind of where my journey with nerdiness started. And then when I moved back here, I still felt like I didn't fit in. And I started to hang out, like on the Internet and stuff. My first role play experience, and this isn't pen and paper. My first role play experience, which then got me into dd, was actually like a college program called Model United Nations.
David Nett
Oh, shit. Yeah. Of course.
Jasmine Bullar
This one was like a mega game.
Mark Holmes
Yeah. You compete for stakes, you know, meaningful larp.
David Nett
Like.
Mark Holmes
Yeah. And I remember really getting into it and being like, this weekend, I am Ireland and I will only speak as the Republic of Ireland. And you always speak in the third person. So I always say, the Republic of Ireland does not support that declaration. I love that the Republic of Ireland would like to abstain from voting. Like, it's like. And that was my first time role playing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I was pretty good at it. And one of the people in that program was like, have you ever played dd?
Jasmine Bullar
No. That's awesome.
David Nett
I saw you inhabit Ireland. Let's talk about it. Before playing games, really, you took on
Jasmine Bullar
the Persona of Islands. You made it your own. Do you want to play some D and D?
Mark Holmes
Yeah.
Jasmine Bullar
Yeah.
Mark Holmes
And I was like. And that's how it started.
Jasmine Bullar
I started with third edition and I was like, kind of you. I was a super geeky kid, but I didn't really have a lot of friends, like geeky friends at the time. Like, I was the kid that, you know, after school I had to go and stay with my grandparents. So I would get like a dust, a garbage can lid and a stick and I'd be in the garden, like, you know, doing my own stories. And then I Was quite lucky in that. Around high school, I had a bunch of geeky friends and we were in the local comic store and they had the third edition starter box and we all kind of pitched in our allowance money. We bought it.
David Nett
So amazing.
Jasmine Bullar
Took it home and like, I was the designated GM because I put the most money in. And they were just like, you put the most money in, you keep it. You learn the rules.
David Nett
And. Yeah, you learn the rules.
Jasmine Bullar
So that's like, fair. Like, my reward is I get to run the game for you guys. But I'm glad I did because I kind of. I just poured into it. And I remember, like, I gave them the setup for the story and they were like, okay, well, what do we do? And I said, what do you guys do?
David Nett
What do you want to do? Yeah. And they were just like the fundamental sort of jumping off points for the kids that I was playing with were the classics, right? So we read Tolkien and maybe Dune and we had watched Dragonslayer and Excalibur.
Jasmine Bullar
Krull.
David Nett
Okay, well, Krull was. No, Krull was there too.
Jasmine Bullar
Okay.
David Nett
But those were our touch points. We had a very sort of a narrow set of touch points. It was the typical sword and sorcery fantasy stuff. What was the background of stuff when you guys started versus Now?
Jasmine Bullar
So for me, my preferred stuff are massively influenced by Pulp Adventure in Action. Like my two callbacks that I love, like the games I really enjoy to either play or GM is ones that I can kind of trace a line back to things like Indiana Jones, the Mummy, the Shadow, like these pultene noir adventures, because that's the stuff I kind of grew up with. And like, that was the type of books that I was reading at the time and everything. What I find now, and being a GM for a game that's on Twitch and People Watch and everything else, it's. It's so character driven. Like, it's not quite soap opera or drama, but they want that Game of Thrones, that Walking Dead, that Netflix Weekly, like, what's the next big character?
David Nett
Dramatically, they want to ship your characters. They want.
Jasmine Bullar
All the ships are like, sailing. There's fleets, there's armadas of ships. The characters are really what drives it. It's no longer about the MacGuffin. I think in older editions it was always about Black Razor or there's always
David Nett
a world ending kind of situation in the older modules.
Jasmine Bullar
And that was the driving force. Whereas now I think it's so much more character. I mean, I don't know how you found it Jasmine.
Mark Holmes
It's weird. So when I started getting into RPGs, they were really rebelling hard against the classic fantasy you were talking about. I mean, I'd go to the comic book store and you see a plethora of systems and games, more than you can count. And there's like 40 of them that are gonna be steampunk every single time. One thing, and I'm not trying to throw shade at anybody, one thing that turned me off when I would like, flip through these books is like, they had such intense worlds to get into where the universe is like, wow, you really, like. I don't know how to describe it when you just overdo it a little bit ott. Yeah. And so they just. I would read it and I'm like, okay, I can barely get into this. How am I supposed to get my players into this? The concept of this world is so insane. You know, it'd take me an hour just to explain to them the setting. Especially when you talk about an audience. Because I stream on Twitch. How do I explain this to my audience? And, oh, they've gotta be able to
Jasmine Bullar
get it so quickly. Cause, you know, they tune in and they want to know it. And like, if it's gonna take you four hours to explain, they're gone on max hit points.
David Nett
We have a story that goes along with the workouts, but it's 100% railroad because you can't interact with the story. Right. What I'm fascinated with with you guys is that when I've game mastered and I've done so since I was. I guess when I first started doing it, I was 14, so a very long time ago. But I never had to worry about an audience following my story. I only had to worry about my players and were they engaged. And if I introduced an element that they didn't grok or they didn't lock onto, that element could go away and it didn't matter. I'm interested in balancing. Like, that's a new idea. The idea of balancing your players and an audience.
Jasmine Bullar
I mean, my honest answer is I don't try and balance it. Like, I always set my game out that it is a bunch of friends playing a D and D game, but there's cameras in the room, and I try and keep that. So it's like, if the audience doesn't follow something or if they latch onto a character, that's fine. But it's the players around the table that is my focus. And I write the game and I create the world for them.
Mark Holmes
And.
Jasmine Bullar
And then my Hope, which I like to think has worked, is that the audience will follow it as well as they do, and they will enjoy it as well as they do. But if you have to start really changing things for the audience, I think that that's when you're moving into a different territory. And that's not the kind of game I want to run. You know, I don't want to ever have the thing of, like, and now audience, you can vote on the next monster that they will face. I don't want to do that. Like, I want it to be in D and D game that I kind of build for my friends, and then hopefully other people can enjoy. Because also, I think that that shows the people at home, like, this is what you can be playing, and you can have these adventures.
Mark Holmes
The way I run my show on Hyper is probably not the way I would run it if we were just to play D and D right now, because it's like watching a Netflix show a little bit. Like, I have to tell a story in those three hours. You know, you have to have a little bit of everything. And you don't want to devote two and a half hours to a giant boss battle, because who wants to, in my opinion, combat some of the most boring stuff that happens in RPGs, but you also want something interesting to happen, so you have to get that formula down perfectly. I think another big thing is making sure that each player is having their moment or having. If you feel like, oh, I feel like this person had a whole episode, maybe we should make sure some of these other players get their episode so that the audience has a chance to click with them. And for me, I didn't realize the gravity of really role playing on Twitch until I played a true neutral character that I feel like a lot of people really disliked, and it made them dislike me.
David Nett
Oh, wow.
Mark Holmes
Yeah. Cause you know, you get bleed. Yeah, you get bleed. And that is tough, too.
Jasmine Bullar
Yeah. Just people criticizing the character for their decisions. And it's like, keep in mind, that's not me making that decision. I'm playing my character.
Mark Holmes
My character is flawed.
Jasmine Bullar
And it's like, yeah, exactly.
Mark Holmes
You're gonna make bad decisions. And as a good role player, I have to play tr.
David Nett
So do you think about it when you're crafting your show? Do you think about it in terms of episodes then?
Mark Holmes
I never think of the entire campaign in terms of episodes. But I will try to create a nice end point, because I never want to end it at a part where I feel like it's a cliffhanger or it's an awkward ending because that just pisses off your audience, and it pisses off your players because they're just like, really?
Jasmine Bullar
If that's true, I am in such trouble because I am so bad for cliffhangers. I am really bad.
David Nett
I'm a big cliffhanger junkie.
Jasmine Bullar
Like, I'm so bad for it. Like, it is the worst. But I kind of. There is a sick part of me which, like, when I do it, and it's like, a really good one. Like, you know, they open the tomb and then I go, like. And we'll find out what's in there next week. They'll be like, I try and see what I do in arc, but I do it so that each player does have, like, a arc dedicated to their backstory and their character. Just because I want to make sure that everybody around that table feels like they've had their moment to be the hero. That might be two sessions, that could be six sessions. It depends on what the backstory is and everything else. But in terms of episodes, it just tends to be however much we can squeeze in.
David Nett
Do you guys feel like running the shows? Like, show running the shows has changed the way that you play when you're not on camera, or do you play anymore on camera? Not on camera. I don't know if you have time to.
Mark Holmes
I do.
David Nett
Yeah.
Mark Holmes
I enjoy playing off camera. I. I don't want to say it's more formulaic when you're doing it with a show, but I definitely change things around. And part of it is, like, there's situations will occur when you're just hanging out with your friends, you know, and playing a game that, like, if people are stuck on something, you kind of just let it go. And when it's happening on camera, if my players are stuck on something, you
David Nett
gotta move it along.
Mark Holmes
Something will happen to move it along. Whereas if I'm off camera, I don't really care. If they're stuck and we're just hanging out, drinking beers, playing D and D, it can be stuck for a while. But when people are watching, it's like, you can't be here for more than 15 minutes. After that, it's getting old. Or if they can't figure out how to beat a boss, even though they should, because you gave them all the right hints and they should have asked the right questions to the right PCs. And part of it is, after looking at Twitch chat logs and stuff like that, after the episode, you see the audience, like, how did they not use fire all the backseating. Like, how do they not know?
David Nett
I didn't think about the case of backseat players.
Jasmine Bullar
That's crazy.
David Nett
Are you kidding?
Jasmine Bullar
Backseat players?
Mark Holmes
Yeah, there's a lot of backseating, and they're just like, how does he not know?
David Nett
Do your players then read chat?
Jasmine Bullar
Well, I was gonna say, do you.
Mark Holmes
Do you let them know? We do not. I do not allow my players to read Chat.
Jasmine Bullar
I think mine do, but not like I tell them not to. I'm like, don't read Chat. Like, even I, like, I struggle to go back and read stuff because I used to do it when we started, and I was like, I missed that. Or I missed that. Now I'm kind of like, you know what? If I miss stuff, it's okay. Like, it's fine.
Mark Holmes
Well, I feel like when you read chat, this syndrome will pop up, especially if you're working with a lot of other twitch talent where they want to
Jasmine Bullar
play to the audience, and it's like, no play.
Mark Holmes
Yeah, they want to, like, there's a little showmanship, or they want to be quippy, and they want to, like, curry favor with the audience. And so they don't stay as true to their characters. They'll pop out of character to do something that they know the audience will like. Because you do take it really personally when you're sitting here and you're reading Chat, and everyone's just like, I love this person, but I hate this true neutral character because they're boring or they're evil or blah, blah, blah.
David Nett
I really worry about technologies like Roll20 and what they do to the game, because the joy of the game for me is the freedom of the game. And if I have to spend a bunch of time beforehand building maps and putting pogs on maps and trying to prep for the session, and then the characters go around that, which is one of my favorite things, and I'm left on my heels. It seems like that technology almost limits me, and I wonder if you guys have experienced that technology and used it, because I haven't doubted that fear I have.
Mark Holmes
I will say that after doing both.
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Mark Holmes
there are pluses and minuses and one of the big pluses to doing it in person is you feed off of each other so much and eye contact is so big in role play.
David Nett
So what would need to happen for a remote system to work like that for you? Because I feel the same way. But again, I'm super old.
Mark Holmes
Yeah, well, I don't know. I don't know how you feel. To me it does feel really static because you're looking at a webcam you're not looking at into somebody's eyes and making that connection. Small things like even rolling the dice physically, that's a cool feeling. And clicking a button just never feels as equal.
David Nett
It's important I have my oh I
Jasmine Bullar
like the fact that you brought yours, like I have mine with me whenever
David Nett
anything important is happening. This is from when I was 12. This is my first. Not my first D20, but one of my oldest. Yeah.
Jasmine Bullar
Oh my goodness, that's amazing.
David Nett
You guys were important to me, so
Mark Holmes
I brought that one.
Jasmine Bullar
Oh, that's amazing.
David Nett
Man.
Jasmine Bullar
I feel bad now.
David Nett
Why do you feel bad now?
Jasmine Bullar
Roll20 is a fantastic tool for four people that just cannot physically get together. What will really change it for me is VR. Like having that headset and being able to go around a table and. Yeah, maybe the DM can do fancy stuff with miniatures and you can zoom in and all that stuff. But just being able to be immersed around a table and there are my friends and maybe they're dressed up as their characters or whatever. That's cool. Like, I think that would be super awesome. Just to make it a bit more, you know. Yeah. Engaging. Like, I think you're right. Like it's just too easy to be distracted and not feel connected to those players.
Mark Holmes
There was like a video floating around the Internet of like that table surface where you could put a map on it and you could put your players.
David Nett
Are you excited about the idea of that? So I was just gonna ask, is there something that you're really hoping will happen?
Mark Holmes
That, that for me would be. That would be great. I would love to be able to.
David Nett
Even with the prep work you would have to do as a game master in order to make that work.
Mark Holmes
I think the immersion would be worth it, you know.
Jasmine Bullar
Yeah. And I think for me, like, if I'm gonna do like that big epic scene anyway, I have to put that prep in now regardless.
Mark Holmes
I'll.
Jasmine Bullar
I'll print out a map on poster paper or I'll draw it out, or I'll buy the miniatures and set it all up to be able to do that on a PC much faster. Like being able to just have pre done tiles that I can snap together and then I can put a miniature down and like fire erupts around it if I click a spell card or something like that, that's amazing.
Mark Holmes
For me, I am so hyped for the stuff that's coming because I look around and I realize board games are taking off and our pen and paper RPGs are gonna be right behind them. And Open Legends. Huge success on Kickstarter. People are playing pen and paper and tabletop RPGs and just tabletop games in a way that they weren't before. There's been this like a renaissance or a resurgence and these really Great board games are coming out and people are buying them. And that's amazing. I think 10 years ago we probably wouldn't have seen that. Now people are playing like Pandemic and just like, games are so much more accessible.
Narrator/Advertiser
Right.
Mark Holmes
And what that's done is it's brought money into the stuff that we love. And when you bring in money, great things happen because suddenly you're getting products developed for you that weren't there before. And it's going to make your job as a gm, it's going to make getting creative better and easier, and you're going to be able to do stuff you weren't able to do before. And that makes me so excited. And on Hyper, we have a biotech show called Death from above. They 3D print their mechs. And so when your mech's arm gets blown off, they literally crack, honestly, 3D printing.
David Nett
So that's one of the technologies that I have found has enhanced my game because my players and I are fairly old school. But there's a. Oh, gosh, I've forgotten the name of the company now that does the 3D printed custom miniatures.
Mark Holmes
Right. I know.
Sponsor Voice 1
It's exactly Heroforce.
David Nett
Thank you. This last time that my high school group and I got together, you know, the old Fogies gaming club, i3D printed all their characters, custom characters for all of them, and brought them to the game. And that's, you know, the going through, going to a store and hoping, you know, again, when I was starting and we didn't do a lot of strategic, you know, miniatures play, we were playing 1E and 2E. And it was all what they call theater of the mind now, which makes me kind of vomit. But it was all in our imaginations. You know, we didn't play a lot with minis, but we had minis of our characters to show marching order and all that stuff. But you go to the game store and you hope that there's something roughly like the character you're playing.
Mark Holmes
Yeah. You just settle with anything.
David Nett
Yeah. And if you're creative, there's definitely not happening. But to be able to go there and to create Your character and 3D print not only the character, but the pose that you want, the attitude that you want, and a smile or a frown. That's amazing.
Mark Holmes
And we're getting all this, like, media that's talking about it and getting the conversation started, and that's inspiring people to get into it as well. And I'm sure there will be some bumps along the way. Whenever something becomes mainstream, it goes through its growing pains. And we'll probably have some crappy stuff produced along the way.
David Nett
We've had a couple of bad D and D movies.
Jasmine Bullar
I was gonna say, like, I think actually, you know what? People are kind of. They can appreciate it, and they can see that, actually, you can make some good stuff.
David Nett
What is the tip that you give to new Dungeon Masters? What is the advice that you guys give coming up when you did, learning to play when you did?
Mark Holmes
For me, it's that I feel like often there's an antagonistic relationship between the GM and the players, and so often groups have trouble finding a gm. And for me, I'm the opposite. And I always. I encapsulate my GM style as, like, the kid from Stranger Things. Like, you know how when they're fighting the Demogorgon, he's like, oh, and the Demogorgon does. He's not mad that they killed this creature he made. He is excited.
Jasmine Bullar
He cheers with them.
Mark Holmes
That is me. I cheer with the players. I cry with the players. I am with the players, and I want to see them succeed. And it's my job to tell their story. It's not their job to play out my story.
Jasmine Bullar
Yeah, I think, like, my general advice kind of follows the same thing of, like, start small. Start with a town. What makes it interesting? What makes this somewhere that your adventurers want to go, that makes the heroes want to explore? You know, what about it makes it unique?
David Nett
I think the other thing that I recommend to new players, that has always been my advice, is that they read a lot. I think as a Dungeon Master, one of the best tools that you have is a whole bunch of story references at your fingertips, whether it's reading a lot or watching a lot of movies or whatever. Because whatever shit that your players throw at you, whatever crazy thing they decide to do, that was not what you expected. If you have a bunch of stories at your disposal, whether it's things that you've written or things that you've read or movies that you've seen or TV shows that you've watched, you just have a. That's your toolbox in a lot of ways. As a storyteller, that's your toolbox. And you can throw things at them and pull things out of them.
Jasmine Bullar
And it's funny because I get people that say, like, I want to do something like this from this show, but I don't want to just rip it off. It's like, that's okay. You can change a few things here and there. But, yeah, at the end of the day. Whether you're a GM or DM or whatever, or a writer or a TV script, we're world builders. That's what you're doing.
David Nett
And there's a reason that whether it's Dungeons and Dragons or whether it's Shadowrun or the World of Darkness games in almost all of those game books, they give you a reference reading list in there. This is what inspired us. This is what can inspire you. There's a reason that shit's there. Whether it's video games or books or movies or TV informs the way you understand story. What I love about all that is that regardless of we all started at different times playing, regardless of when you started playing, regardless of what your references were that got you playing. The advice that you guys were just talking about is very similar to the advice that I give coming from, again, 30 years of playing Dungeons and Dragons. The underlying fundamental realities are the same. Have fun. It's not just your story, it's everybody's story. You know, those things remain the same. And that's to me, that's really beautiful. And that
Mark Holmes
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Jasmine Bullar
And breathe.
Mark Holmes
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Jasmine Bullar
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Podcast: Critical Role & Sagas of Sundry
Episode: Past, Present, and Future with Mark Hulmes, Jasmine Bhullar, and David Nett | Roundtable
Host: geekandsundry
Date: March 16, 2026
Guests:
This roundtable episode explores the evolving world of tabletop role-playing games (RPGs), delving into the ways storytelling, audience engagement, technology, and culture have shifted over the decades. The guests reflect on their personal journeys into RPGs, the changing expectations of both players and audiences, the impact of streaming and digital tools, and their hopes for the future of the hobby.
Memorable Quotes & Moments:
Discussion Points:
"Just the moment of creating that character, I was immediately hooked." [02:09]
"The characters are really what drives it. It's no longer about the MacGuffin." [06:37]
Notable Moment:
"I didn't realize the gravity of really role playing on Twitch until I played a true neutral character that I feel like a lot of people really disliked, and it made them dislike me." [10:33]
"To be able to go there and to create your character and 3D print not only the character, but the pose, the attitude that you want, and a smile or a frown. That's amazing." — David [26:13]
"It's a bunch of friends playing a D and D game, but there's cameras in the room... it's the players around the table that is my focus." [08:42]
"If people are stuck on something, you kind of just let it go... when it's happening on camera... you gotta move it along." [12:52]
Core Truth:
"Regardless of when you started playing, regardless of what your references were that got you playing. The advice that you guys were just talking about is very similar to the advice that I give coming from, again, 30 years of playing Dungeons and Dragons. The underlying fundamental realities are the same. Have fun. It's not just your story, it's everybody's story." — David Nett [29:32]
A rich, heartfelt discussion for both RPG veterans and newcomers, this roundtable offers insight into the changing nature of the hobby, the challenges of merging play and performance, and a hopeful look at technology’s future role in storytelling. The panelists' camaraderie, collective wisdom, and enthusiasm for the past, present, and future of RPGs shine throughout the episode.