Rôle’n Play: three characters, one world
Updated: 9 hours ago
I’ve been Kauch’hal, then Tolios, and now Aleksanteri in Rôle’n Play. Three characters in the same world, at different points in its history. Quite different people to sit down at a table as, too.
The first two could spend a lot of time keeping quiet. Aleksanteri talks. A lot. My voice changes, my posture changes, and so does how much space I take up in a scene. I fancied talking a little about that, and about these characters I’ve spent years with.
For anyone new to Rôle’n Play
Rôle’n Play is a filmed tabletop role-playing show: a group of actors, a campaign, some dice and a story we build together. It has been running since 2018, with the sessions available on the Rôle’n Play YouTube channel. Julien Dutel creates the adventures and runs the game in his world of Pangée. We bring our characters, our decisions and a lot of listening and improvisation. The dice get a say too. There are very funny moments, and sometimes emotions that catch us completely off guard.
I joined in 2021, with Résurgence. L’Ombre des Douze came after that, and now ECLYPSE. We’re still in the same world, but with different companions, different periods of its history, and a different person for me to step back into.
Aleksanteri always has another question
In ECLYPSE, I play Aleksanteri, a dwarven mage whose illusions and psychic abilities can be convincing enough to cause harm. He is extraordinarily intelligent. He has spent a great deal of his life studying magic, gathering knowledge and getting very involved in complicated ideas. Sarcasm can still leave him completely lost.
Reading emotions, picking up on an implication, understanding the social rules everyone else seems to know: those things are much harder for him. So he asks questions. Then a few more. He’s friendly and gets very involved in conversations, even when he hasn’t quite understood what’s happening in them. He takes up a lot more room than my previous two characters did.
He’s quite a large fellow as well. There’s a different physical presence, a different pace of speech, a different way of following what someone says. Underneath all that precision, he can be very demanding of himself. He wants to understand things and get them right. People don’t always make that easy.
What I hadn’t expected to find in him was compassion. Accepting that he might not understand someone, and loving them anyway. I find that very touching. I’d put together his history, his traits and how he thinks. That particular tenderness was something I found by playing him.
It’s too early for me to pick a favourite Aleksanteri episode. If you’d like to discover ECLYPSE, start with Ismer-komà, ECLYPSE, Prelude, Part 1. It’s a very good way into what we do.
Kauch’hal kept a great deal to himself
Kauch’hal, my goblin ranger in Résurgence, was more of a quiet presence, with a very pointed sentence every now and then. I gave him a scratchy voice, a slightly hunched posture and manners he was quite careful about. He watched a lot. There was plenty going on behind that.
He specialised in hunting monsters, knew his way around poisons and could do a great deal of damage to dangerous creatures. But what stays with me most is how much he held back. Over a lot of sessions, I kept comments and gestures to myself. He hesitated. He cared about the others as well.
His past had a lot to do with his need to find a place among people. Being useful, being respected, having something to hold on to mattered to him. His outward loyalty could make him seem very sure of himself. From where I was sitting, there was always doubt, including doubt about his own right to judge anyone else.
So the pressure built up. By the time it came out, it carried a lot of what we’d been through together. I loved that about playing him. A scene could mean an enormous amount because of things we had lived through many sessions earlier.
Tolios wanted a simpler life
Tolios, Le Dragon Pourpre in L’Ombre des Douze, was a monk who also gained warlock abilities through a pact connected to fire. He was dynamic and physically strong, but I played him with a more slender, reserved presence. He could stay in the background for a while too, then step in at a particular moment.
He understood social conventions. He just wasn’t particularly clever. He could be naïve, quite silly, and looking for a simplicity life rarely gave him. I enjoyed the gap between what he could do physically and the human situations he had absolutely no idea how to handle.
Being naïve didn’t spare him complicated feelings, though. He was tenacious, wanted to protect what mattered to him, and could get carried away by something he felt was unfair. There was plenty underneath the funny moments. He wouldn’t necessarily have been able to put it into words. He still felt it.
For Tolios, I would pick the final fight. That’s where he really reveals himself. You can watch it in Ils sont Légion, the L’Ombre des Douze finale (La Chute, Arc 4, Episode 12). This is the very end of the campaign, so expect major spoilers.
Before we sit down to play
Technically nothing. Technically a lot of things.
I prepare much as I would for an ordinary tabletop RPG. I need to remember where the character is in his life, how his abilities work and what happened last time. Mostly, I’m getting back into his shoes.
I write a different background for each of them and choose traits that take me somewhere I haven’t been before. I use a grid when I write to think through those choices. Qualities and flaws are a bit like mirrors: take a quality far enough and it can come with an equally strong flaw. The reverse works too.
That history is still there when it never gets mentioned. It comes through in a hesitation, in how he talks to someone, in a decision he finds difficult. I don’t need to explain all of it at the table for it to affect what I’m doing.
Then we start. Julien Dutel brings his world, the other players bring their characters, and the dice get involved. I’ve found my way back into this person. Now we find out what happens.
Sometimes I just get to watch
One of my favourite things about the show is being there for a touching scene I’m not actually part of. I can sit and listen, watch the others build something, and be completely caught up in it. I had a lot of that with Kauch’hal and Tolios. There’s a great deal of pleasure in being there for someone else’s scene.
Roxane Michelet and I also built some very intense scenes in L’Ombre des Douze, because our characters were close. I won’t spoil the season finale, but I was so caught off guard that the emotions came pouring out. That was quite something to experience.
The cameras disappear. The audience does too. Outside our introductions and outros, which naturally connect with the public, I don’t really think about them. Although we do occasionally slip in a look to camera. ;P
We trust each other. We take what the other person offers, say yes to it and build from there. If something goes wrong between us, we talk about it. That trust gives us room to get carried away, whether we’re right in the middle of a scene or watching it happen.
Behind the table: Mimir Productions
There is another side to this adventure once the cameras are off. Rôle’n Play has been produced by Mimir Productions since 2023. I co-founded the company with Julien Dutel and Laura Hoffmann. Laura leads the production, and Julien creates the campaigns and runs the game. Alongside playing, I work on partnerships and developing new projects.
It is a different part of my work, but I enjoy being involved on both sides of the table. If you’d like to see more, have a look at the official ECLYPSE project presentation or my hosting and production work. And if you enjoy watching, sharing an episode with someone who might like it helps us a great deal.
Ryan Highley is a British actor working internationally in English and French. Kauch’hal, Tolios and Aleksanteri are performed in French.
Character illustrations supplied by Black Book Éditions. Illustrators: Ignacio Corva (Aleksanteri and Tolios); Xavier Baudelet (Kauch’hal).
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