This is a guest article by writer Gena McCrann, a freelance writer often losing a fight with a screenplay or a game pitch in New York.
Third Person has taken Critical Role Moonward. Following the conclusion of Midst, a narrative audio podcast by Third Person that was acquired by Critical Role in 2023, its sci-fi fantasy cosmos expands with Moonward: A Midst Roleplaying Story, a four-part standalone miniseries and the introduction of The Midst Cosmos as a universe of work.
Sara Wile and Matt Roen of Third Person are joined by Critical Role’s Liam O’Brien and Marisha Ray in a search for what remains of Midst’s destroyed moon. Xen, the third of Third Person, leads the table through a roleplaying story as their Guide Narrator, loosely comparable to a Game Master. Storytelling in Moonward is more structured than that of Midst: all cast members continue to be narrators and participate freely in painting scenes and setting stakes, but the twists and truths of Moonward are in the primary care of its Guide Narrator.
The idea of a “standalone” work that does not require prior familiarity is often a difficult promise to keep, even more so when the miniseries centers one of Midst’s most important narrative beats and is set after the podcast’s finale. Moonward successfully keeps any potential lore-based barriers of entry low. Worldbuilding concepts are described anew, the handful of returning characters are freshly reintroduced, and direct references to the events of Midst are minimal — the most obvious being a tongue-in-cheek to-camera observation that events between the prologue and the narrative proper are detailed “somewhere else”.
On top of keeping the miniseries accessible to those new to the cosmos, this also establishes Moonward as not a simple sequel to Midst but as a work with its own narrative identity. It is a consideration that feels like a true realization of the idea that Midst and its cosmos is “more than a podcast”, a sentiment that Third Person has maintained as a guiding principle. “To me,” Wile said in our recent interview, “‘more than a podcast’ isn’t really a goal so much as an explanation. Midst wasn’t conceived of as a podcast. It was just a big gangly art project that we happened to coax into the shape of a podcast.”
This mindset has pushed Midst beyond an audio-only format into other modes, first through unique episode icons and appendices comprising the aforementioned diegetic documents. Their partnership with Critical Role produced versions of the episodes illustrated by a roster of nearly three dozen artists and led to a three-part comic series from Dark Horse, the first of which released shortly after the premiere of Moonward. The comics, like Moonward, are dedicated to exploring the cosmos beyond of Midst’s limits — with one installment set in the past relative to the podcast, one set in the present, and one set in the future — and was similarly described as in keeping with the “more than just a podcast” principle.
Moonward expresses the cosmos for the first time through a live filmed medium. Moonward is a production that has invested a lot into its atmosphere: a black box theater setting, set dressing, props, costuming, fog machines, dynamic mood lighting, music mixed and played live by Xen, the composer and audio specialist for Midst. It’s all well beyond what is possible in audio alone. Third Person, however, considers it a return to the fount of Midst’s inspirations: the table and the games played there.
“Before it was an audio drama podcast,” Xen said, “Midst was originally an experimental TTRPG that the three of us at Third Person created and ran for each other. Midst‘s narrative style and collaborative delivery is born out of those gaming origins, and returning to the Midst cosmos in the format of a tabletop experience with Critical Role felt like slipping back into very familiar territory.”
Even with this return to a gaming sphere, and though O’Brien and Ray are known for their work on the Dungeons & Dragons actual play series Critical Role, Moonward does not use a tabletop game system, only narrative roleplaying and improv in which all contribute to the unfolding narrative in real-time. With an absence of a system or any formal rules beyond the worldbuilding’s logic, narrative tension, and “yes, and—”, the series raises an interesting question about the nature of actual play as a form or genre, perhaps even a question about what can be found within the bounds of the phrase tabletop roleplaying game.
Midst revels in the ambiguous and the amorphous, from its genre to its characters, so it feels fitting that this miniseries too lives at the nebulous edges of category and definition. With that, and with exploring this cosmos across myriad mediums and creative hands and pushing at form, how does it all stay Midst-y? Roen doesn’t feel there’s anything really esoteric about what makes something feel like a Midst project. “Sure, we have a ‘canon’, and internal cosmological logics that contribute to the flavors of Midst, but in the end I think it’s about telling a story that knows it’s a story, and having fun with it along the way.”
Images via Critical Role
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