E-Paper
Roll of the Dice: the TTRPG scene in India
Streams of Table Top Role-Playing Games like Dungeons and Dragons are exploding in popularity across the country
It is a Friday evening, and seven people have gathered on a Zoom call. Eerie, mystical music is echoing from the screen, which glows with the horrifying image of a humanoid statue tied down by barbed wire, its eyes nailed open, and an expression of ecstasy on its face. Seven tiny dots move along the screen on a map – several elves, a Tabaxi (cat-headed humanoid creature) and a Firbolg (a character from Irish mythology) walk along the interior of a temple.
“You have woken from a deep slumber, when you hear what sounds like the wails of a man from the depths of the temple,” says a woman – her name is Swarnaa Chakraborty, but she is better known as Shana. “What do you do?” she asks the party of seven. This is an online game of Dungeons and Dragons, a tabletop role-playing game, or TTRPG, being played virtually by a group of friends based in Kolkata.
What is a TTRPG?
A Table-top role-playing game is one where players collaborate with each other to create and act out a story. Most often, they’ll play characters in a fictional world, or a fictionalised version of the real world, with a game master guiding them through the narrative and the rules. Most TTRPG ‘actual play’ sessions depend heavily on the theatre of the mind – and are sometimes aided by maps, scenarios and figurines brought in by the GM. It is like writing or creating a story in real time with friends, with all the emotional highs and lows that a good story brings. The ‘game’ part is often helped along by the use of dice – a throw can determine the fate of your character, and totally redirect the game.
The allure of TTRPGs
TTRPGs have been around for decades – the best known being Dungeons and Dragons (popularly called D&D), first created in 1974 by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. Published by the US-based company Wizards of the Coast, the game was made famous in India through shows such as The Big Bang Theory, Community and Stranger Things. There was a D&D movie recently, starring Chris Pine and Hugh Grant; and since the pandemic, the game has exploded in India throughout online spaces such as Discord, Twitch and YouTube.
“All over the world, the pandemic led to people discovering you can enjoyably play tabletop roleplaying games with your friends online, (and) it is not necessary to have everyone physically around the same table,” says Michael O’Brien, Vice President & co-owner of Chaosium Inc, a company that produces Call of Cthulhu, a horror TTRPG based on Lovecraftian stories. “That coincided with the rise of the popularity of actual play shows like Critical Role.”
In fact, actual play shows have become so popular in India that they are now filtering into the mainstream. Leading actual play shows of D&D, in which a cast of actors plays the games in real time, include the aforementioned Critical Role, which is available on YouTube, and Dimension 20 from the comedy streaming service Dropout. The shows’ game masters – voice actor Matthew Mercer and comedian Brennan Lee Mulligan respectively – have inspired thousands of amateur players all over the world, including in India.
“My favourite GM is Matt Mercer, although I can never be him!” says 26-year-old clinical psychologist Shana, who founded an actual play community in Kolkata called The House of Adventure. “I know that I want to be a GM that weaves stories rather than focusing on, say, gritty combat, like him.”
25-year-old data consultant Agney Ranjith Krishnajith prefers Lee Mulligan’s more relaxed kind of play. “Critical Role has so much lore that I know I’ll never be able to get into all of it,” he says. “I love that Dimension 20 approaches the game in such a way that even a beginner can watch it without feeling intimidated. Everything I know about D&D, I have learnt from this show.”
Why do people love these games so much? For Shana, it is about escapism. “You can be anyone or anything you want,” she says. “Right now, I’m playing a game of Monster of the Week (another TTRP) with some friends and there I’m playing a schoolteacher who has visions of the future, based on Wednesday Addams.”
For Kolkata-based musician Rivu, it’s all about the collaborative storytelling. “I’m a huge fan of RPGs in video games, and because of my theatre background, it’s amazing to watch these actors improvise scenarios on the fly,” says the 31-year-old, who got hooked during the pandemic.
From Watching to Playing
It’s one thing to play ‘homebrew games,’ but quite another to play for an audience. For the latter, all one needs to do is learn the rules and get into the spirit of fun and collaboration. But when you’re playing for an audience, an element of performance immediately creeps in – which is presumably why so many of the online actual play shows consist of actors, especially those involved in improvisation.
And no one knows the difference better than streamers. 30-year-old Ashis Mansingh from Delhi started playing D&D around 2017. In 2022, she decided to take up what she had seen her favourite online TTRPG players do: she started streaming games on YouTube. Ashis now works with friend and fellow streamer Steve, 28, from Dehradun, as part of a group called Pantsless Tables.
Panstless Tables started out as a one-time charity event in September 2023 and is now an actual play studio, with around 25 volunteers ranging from graphic designers and artists to editors, moderators and producers, having run “20 different games across 14 different systems, produced thousands of hours of content and raised almost $5,000 for charity.”
A major doorway into the actual play ecosystem for Ashis was a Discord server called Desis & Dragons, consisting of Indian and Indian-origin players from across the globe. Ashis auditioned to join their streams and was successful, and eventually, the group moved on from playing just D&D to other RPGs, such as one about vampires called Paint the Town Red, and one in which you play as a criminal, called Blades in the Dark.
“There is no purpose to Desis & Dragons except to build a community,” says 25-year-old game designer Indrani Ganguly, one of the co-founders of the server, alongside Shubham Mehta and Chirag Asnani. Although the group no longer stream games – “The streams served their purpose of teaching people how to play, and now we’re done,” says Indrani – the server itself has become self-sustaining and taken on a life of its own. There are now more than 2300 people in it, meeting up with others and playing their own campaigns at home.
Other major streamers in India include online community Infinite Tavern, which has an award-winning podcast as well. From a 72-slide PowerPoint presentation explaining every basic thing about D&D to their friends, and holding campaigns on the Clubhouse app and Discord, founders Raghav and Amaan Khan have now expanded to a community of frequent players that release pre-recorded sessions on YouTube. They hope to get sponsors soon, but for now, they and their team of volunteers handle the editing and graphics of the podcast themselves.
“I don’t think TTRPG talk shows are usually profitable!” says Amaan. “They are very much a by the people for the people kind of thing,” Raghav adds.
Then there are others focused on creating offline spaces. Like Shana’s House of Adventures, A Roll O’ Dice arranges for offline meet-ups across multiple cities in India. Founded by Goa-based cultural practitioner Gaurika VA in 2024, it began as a one-time meet up in a friend’s cafe in Anjuna because she wanted to learn how to play D&D. As interest mounted, it travelled across the country, first going to Hyderabad and Secunderabad, where even her mum joined in the fun.
“Many people were interested in playing but did not have spaces to host,” says Gaurika. “I realised I have the skills to solve that problem.”
The network is now active in 18 different cities including Bangalore, Pune, Kolkata, Mumbai and Dehradun, with the latter having a particularly active WhatsApp group, taking the game beyond just metro cities.
For Mercer, the most enjoyable part of streaming games for Critical Role has many aspects – including getting to play together, playing their own characters, and being allowed to flex their acting muscles in a very different capacity.
“Overall, just getting to return to the table every week to let the world fade away for a few hours and play with people we love remains the guiding light for all of us,” he says.
From Playing to Creating
When Tejas Oza first started playing D&D, he was in high school. The UK-based video game designer, originally from Hyderabad, discovered the game through an odd banner ad he found while in a cyber café around 2006. Now, the 36-year-old and his friend Nilesh Krishnan have created their own TTRPG called Bludgeon, with fellow designers Jithin Peter, Panchami Pradeep and Vivek Ramkumar. The game is set in a D20 system similar to D&D, but has its own “more intuitive and thematic” rules, says Oza. Most importantly, it is inspired by India, from its art to its player classes and stories. People can play characters belonging to classes like Vaanar, Yantra-log, and Bhaalu, set in a world called Ananta-Lok, with the presence of creatures such as Raktasura, Bhadbahadur, Mastan Pehelwan and Bhootiya Ped.
“The core of the game is done, and we are now polishing it and creating supplementary material, lore, adventures, backgrounds and settings,” Oza adds. “The hope is to sell enough to build more products around it – books, video games and art.”
Meanwhile, Illicit Peanuts is an India-based TTRPG company launched by four friends – Apri, Ari, Avanish and Siva – who met throught the Desis & Dragons Discord server. It currently has seven TTRPGs available for purchase, such as the Greek mythology-inspired Twist of Fates and the detective-and-criminal thrill-of-the-chase game Catch Me If You Can. But the company also heavily focuses on Indian myths.
“Everything we make is based on our lived experiences and the stories we know from childhood,” the founders say in an email interview. “(Siva’s homebrew game’s) Purva city is based on Mumbai, (Ari’s homebrew world) Ceron’s pantheon is partially inspired by the Hindu pantheon.”
Meanwhile, their game Aransi Days, which can be played solo with just a dice, pen and paper, is based on “nostalgic memories of summer vacation spent in our grandparents’ house.”
“There are plenty of incredible stories within the Indian mythos,” they sign off. “Many of us have heard these stories right from childhood and it would be exciting to adapt these stories into TTRPGs.”
Bringing in diverse representation in the TTRPG World
“As I began to play in games on other channels, I very quickly noticed that all the other players (and the DM) in the games would be white,” recalls Steve. “I was the ‘token brown’ or ‘token LGBTQIA+’ person at the table (and) I knew when I launched Pantsless Tables that I wanted (it) to be different.”
This is obvious from watching international streams, which tend to be strongly US and UK-focused, and often have very few people of colour even within those parameters. In fact, some GMs such as Aabria Iyengar, who has appeared on Dropout, have said that they feel discriminated against by audiences for the skin colour and gender. Steve now aims for every table to be “at least 75% people of colour, and at least 50% Asian.”
“At Desis & Dragons, we have created a space that was very openly queer and protective of people with these identities,” adds Indrani. “So, from Day 1, we made it clear that it was free of bigotry of any kind.”
The server has also raised money to send people to TTRPG conferences across the world, who then ended up getting jobs in the industry. One of the main motivations for doing so was to increase the representation of non-white people in the field.
More to Come
While D&D was doubtless played in India before the pandemic, the lockdown changed it all. Once resources started becoming available online, players and watchers flocked to these games which, in India, still carried a huge novelty factor. As Rivu puts it, “These games were not available in any hobby stores in India anywhere and we had no access to them. The internet and the pandemic changed all that.”
Now, India has a burgeoning TTRPG scene, with players, streamers and even home-grown games increasing by the day. Board game conventions such as Meeple Con and local organisers are holding their own events across the country, so new players can find the games much more easily. It’s a fresh frontier in game designing – and India is now catching up with the world to reach it.
Rush Mukherjee is an independent journalist based in Kolkata.
