Rivals of Waterdeep

Greg Tito, a senior communications manager for Dungeons & Dragons, wanted to develop actual play shows after watching the success of the independent web series The Adventure Zone (launched in 2014) and Critical Role (launched in 2015) which led Wizards of the Coast (Wizards) to develop and launch Dice, Camera, Action in 2016.[3] Tito said that show was "insanely popular" and "the success of that allowed us to create relationships with smaller tabletop roleplayers that were in front of an audience. The entire ecosystem began to grow from there".[3] This led to the development of Rivals of Waterdeep.[3][1]

The Rivals of Waterdeep cast is made of a diverse group of performers based in Chicago.[4][5] Tito initially recruited Tanya DePass for the show. Tito said he reached out to DePass because she was "a strong voice in the community and was in the Chicago area" and recruited "another group of roleplayers who just put their toe into doing D&D related content, but were mostly known as improv actors and comedians".[3] Aram Vartian was season one's Dungeon Master with Carlos Luna, DePass, Cicero Holmes, Surena Marie, Brandon Stennis and Shareef Jackson as players.[6]

Luna replaced Vartian as the Dungeon Master of season one after Vartian left the show mid-season;[7][1] the Dungeon Master for Rivals of Waterdeep now rotates between various cast members.[8] In 2020, Surena Marie and Luna left the show during the sixth season when they relocated to Los Angeles after Marie joined Critical Role Productions.[9] LaTia Jacquise initially joined Rivals of Waterdeep as a guest in the sixth season at the 2020 C2E2 live show before becoming a permanent member.[10][11] Cicero Holmes left the show at the end of the sixth season.[12][10] Masood Haque joined as a guest for some Rivals of Waterdeep specials[13] before becoming a regular cast member in the seventh season premiere.[14][10] Brandon Stennis left the show at the end of the eighth season in 2020.[15][10] In 2021, Brian Gray and Eugenio Vargas joined the cast in the ninth season premiere.[16][10]

Rivals of Waterdeep premiered in June 2018 with an episode at the Stream of Many Eyes event before launching as a fully produced show by Wizards later that month.[6][1] During the COVID-19 pandemic, the show introduced social distancing measures.[11] The show streamed from the 2020 D&D Celebration event.[17] In July 2021, the show released its one hundredth episode.[8] The show's fourteenth season premiered on October 16, 2022.[18]

In 2022, Vargas commented that "the rotating DM model has really shown that you can tell coherent stories with consistent character through lines and keep the tone and style fresh by rotating your narrator. A table of all BIPOC players that has told stories for as long as the Rivals have is also a huge accomplishment, putting the lie to any statements of ‘there aren't BIPOC roleplayers out there for my show!' And, if we're able to conclude the Rivals tale like we want, we'll also be one of the few AP shows to make it to 20th level and show what adventuring at that level can look like".[19]

In 2021, Rivals of Waterdeep became independently produced and was listed as an official partner show of the Dungeons & Dragons brand.[8]

During the finale of Season 13 in August 2022, the cast revealed that Wizards of the Coast was ending its financial sponsorship of Rivals of Waterdeep; the show would become fully independent of Wizards of the Coast at the midway point of the upcoming Season 14. On October 12, 2022, Rivals of Waterdeep launched an IndieGoGo to crowdfund $60,000 to produce the final two and half seasons.[20][21] Christian Hoffer, for ComicBook.com, commented that "Rivals previously launched a Patreon to help supplement funding and support for the show, but their IndieGoGo page notes that it hasn't raised the funds necessary to keep the show's production levels at their current standards" and that "Wizards has increasingly de-emphasized community-created shows on their Twitch and YouTube channels".[21] The crowdfunding campaign ended with a total of $23,291 raised.[22]