Cynthia Marie Interview: Reality RP

There are few franchises that have seen shifts in popularity like Dungeons & Dragons. There was a time when being a D&D player was used as a media shorthand for defining someone as a nerd with no social skills. Times have changed and tabletop gaming is experiencing a renaissance in popularity, yet the kind of people associated with games like Dungeons & Dragons and Vampire: The Masquerade might not be what you expect.

The reason tabletop gaming has found a huge new audience is thanks to streaming shows like Critical Role and L.A. By Night. Fans can now easily experience games of D&D played by professionals and see what the fuss is all about, before deciding whether they want to try the game for themselves. Social media and the appearance of gaming stores in major cities around the world have made it easier than ever for people to find nearby tables that are just waiting for players.

The next major Dungeons & Dragons event is D&D Live 2020: Roll w/ Advantage, which has moved to a digital format due to real-life circumstances. The event will introduce the next D&D campaign to the world as part of a show called Reality RP, which will force ten players into an uneasy alliance as they try to work out the identity of the traitor in their midst. One of the ten players is Cynthia Marie, who is a fixture of the tabletop gaming world and is best-known for playing Nelli G (the Baron of Hollywood) in L.A. By Night. We talked to Cynthia about Reality RP, the future of D&D, and the changing faces of the fandom.

So, tell me about Reality RP, as this D&D Live event is going to be a bit unusual due to real-life circumstances.

Yeah, it’s definitely very different, and very cool by the way. There are at least ten of us type players who are all gonna be sequestered in our own homes using “scrying glasses” or, what’s known as Instagram I believe. It’s that we’re all playing characters that are trying to get help from various players outside of our little lockdown areas.

One of the aspects that people loved about L.A. By Night is the costumes. I’ve heard that in Reality RP you’ll be donning costumes for the series. Will these be ones provided to you or will you guys be making your own?

Absolutely, it’s actually one of my favorite parts. I think it’s a combination of some, because I’m a LARPER outside of here I have oodles of costumes all over the place, so it was actually really quick for me to pull stuff from my closet. I know some of the other folk may not have some of the stuff, but I think the majority of us provide our own costumes. Most of my costumes are professionally made but I have a bunch in my closet from the various LARPs and shows that I’ve been doing. So, I just pulled from the stock.

Wizards of the Coast revealed 2019 was their best-ever year of sales and that 39% of the D&D player base is now female. If you consider tabletop gaming as a whole that number is likely even larger. That’s a pretty big leap from the days when D&D was considered to be a bit of a boys club. What do you think led to such a change in interest in the game?

I think it’s fantastic and I really love the fact that there are so many more females coming out and playing such an exploratory game. I think there’s still more room for change, as always, but everybody who I’ve ever played with has been nothing but kind and inclusive. One of my first experiences with an “all boys club” was about two years ago. I saw them playing outside and I said “Hey guys, can I join?” and they were like “Absolutely” and I said I don’t really play anything outside of bard, and they were like “well bards are banned at our table, so you gotta play something else”. It was hours worth of learning D&D from a group that had been playing for years and that I never got the sense that it was an “all boys group”, even though it was all men. They were just so inclusive with me and if I didn’t understand the rules they would show me and they were like “Oh you pack a bigger punch than all of us” and I was a fighter. I think it’s awesome that females are jumping in and stuff like that, but my advice to them is to don’t be afraid and just go for it. Even if people say that this isn’t your table then find another table that’s inclusive and let them play on their own. We have a reason to be here just as much as anyone does, so just go out and play.

We recently spoke to Greg Tito (senior communications manager at Wizards of the Coast) and he said that there has also been a shift towards people of color coming to the game. D&D itself started to become more diverse in the early ’00s, but do you think streaming shows and their diverse casts have been a factor in introducing more people to the game?

I absolutely think so, at least as a Latina in California, absolutely. I think that having someone who represents you makes it more accessible especially with social media going on. If you’re following a particular person based on race, and you start seeing them getting into more of the nerdier culturesm, then it’s a lot easier for them to pick up the book and keep on rolling. At least for World of Darkness, there is World of Darkness Latin America and they are incredible players. They play all kinds of tabletop games obviously their niche is World of Darkness. There has never been a hindrance because we’re Hispanic that we did not play tabletop games. Maybe with D&D perhaps the Latin culture wasn’t as up on the times where D&D was at, but I think that has drastically changed now. I never heard about it when I was growing up, I heard about Magic: The Gathering cards and that’s about it. The first time I ever heard about tabletop gaming was at college, but that was ten/fifteen years ago.

I’m curious, how did you first get into tabletop roleplaying? Was it through your other geeky hobbies, as you’re also into cosplaying and LARPING?

So, it started about ten/fifteen years ago, playing a small little game called Changeling in college with my friends. And that’s around the time that I met Jason Carl (brand marketing manager for World of Darkness) on one of his Kickstarters for Vampire: The Masquerade. That was really cool, and then he brought me into the world of LARPING. He brought me over to my first LARP ever in Las Vegas, let me tell you, I’ve been spoiled ever since. So yeah, once that happened, I made a couple of connections, I met Satine Phoenix, who auditions me for Sirens of the Realms and two or three years later I’m doing Vampire and D&D. Yeah, it has been a never-ending rollercoaster, which I’m very happy to be on.

So, what’s your history with D&D? 

So, D&D actually started strictly with Satine Phoenix. Jason had told me that he wanted to introduce me to Satine and low and behold, we actually have met. I met her at Meltdown Comics and she was there producing and I was a dancer at the time and I came and performed at one of her shows. So it was Satine and Jason that taught me about D&D two years ago. The first time you guys ever seen me on Sirens of the Realms was like my third game ever, playing Dungeons & Dragons, my favorite class has always been a bard and I’ll always be a bard.

So, one thing that has become popular with tabletop gaming is something called “Session Zero”. For the benefit of the readers – Session Zero is where the players and DM meet before the first game and set out boundaries for what they’re comfortable dealing with in-game. I’m curious if you guys ever had something similar for L.A. By Night or for Reality RP and were there any storylines or character development that you turned down?

Absolutely. So for L.A. By Night we had multiple Session Zeroes. There had to be about three. In Vampire: The Masquerade fifth edition, you actually do go through a character map where you tie your characters together. We had about three or four different sessions on character building and the last one really helped us flesh out the mechanics. We really started L.A. By Night just as V5 was coming out and not a whole lot of people were able to play it. The mechanics are much different from previous versions, so, a lot of the character/session zero were about learning the mechanics and each other. For Reality RP, we had one meetup but not a Session Zero but those are in the works in the next couple of weeks. So, I’m actually just really excited to get into those sessions. I just did some filming about the character I will be playing. I did a couple of videos yesterday and just feeling out the character and… I really like her.

Could you see yourself moving to play D&D digitally through live streaming in the future, seeing as how COVID-19 is making it almost impossible for people to play in the traditional way?

On a personal level, absolutely. I haven’t seen the slowdown of tabletop gaming. I’ve actually seen it absolutely speed up and playing games on Discord/Roll 20. I think the community just really strengthened with the pandemic and really understood that we needed each other and that space & time was not going to be the issue. I never really saw the difference. But I think going forward I don’t mind doing Zoom. I think it’s really easy. I’m not a DM, so I’m not sure how hard it is for a DM to wrangle people on video, but you hyper-focus on a video. When you play tabletop, I know for myself that I’ll sometimes zone out and check my phone real quick. With playing online with people you’re hyper-focused because they’re not there. I think we’re moving into a really cool world and industry that is going to be completely virtual online and we get to play with people across time zones and it’s fantastic and awesome.

D&D Live 2020 and Reality RP will take from June 18 to June 20. Cynthia Marie can be followed on Twitter and Instagram.

About The Author

Scott Baird
(2522 Articles Published)

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Scott has been writing for Screen Rant since 2016 and regularly contributes to The Gamer. He has previously written articles and video scripts for websites like Cracked, Dorkly, Topless Robot, and TopTenz.
A graduate of Edge Hill University in the UK, Scott started out as a film student before moving into journalism. It turned out that wasting a childhood playing video games, reading comic books, and watching movies could be used for finding employment, regardless of what any career advisor might tell you. Scott specializes in gaming and has loved the medium since the early ‘90s when his first console was a ZX Spectrum that used to take 40 minutes to load a game from a tape cassette player to a black and white TV set. Scott now writes game reviews for Screen Rant and The Gamer, as well as news reports, opinion pieces, and game guides. He can be contacted on LinkedIn.

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