The already expansive world of the RPG Avowed got a little bit bigger recently as developer Obsidian teamed up with Critical Role to produce a tabletop role-playing game one-shot set in the Living Lands. The game starred several Avowed actors, including Anjali Bhimani, who plays Avowed’s orlan companion Yatzli. She played alongside Whitney Moore, Marisha Ray, Travis Willingham, and SungWon Cho in a game run by dungeon master Matthew Mercer.
Game Rant spoke to Anjali Bhimani about her participation in the one-shot, the inspiration behind her elven mage Ylva, Ylva’s unexpected connection with Cho’s character Hasporo, and much more. She also spoke about her experience playing Yatzli and how the cheerful orlan was a source of comic relief and positive energy amongst her more serious companions, Kai, Marius, and Giatta. An avid Dungeons and Dragons fan, Bhimani says she would love to get the chance to play Yatzli in a tabletop setting. This transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.
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Introducing Ylva Ilendhe, An Elven Mage With A Criminal Background
Q: Can you talk about how the one-shot got started and how it was planned and organized?
Bhimani: [Laughs] That part’s above my pay grade. You’d have to ask the folks at Critical Role. But I suspect they do a lot of sponsored one-shots, like the Doom Eternal one a while ago, with Jasmine [Bhullar] and Taliesin [Jaffe] and Laura [Bailey]. With these sponsored games, generally speaking, it’s usually the company coming to them. Unless they love the game so much that Critical Role hits them up. I have a feeling that [Obsidian] came to Critical Role.
Matt Mercer is a genius. I love that he didn’t just do a re-skin of Dungeons and Dragons. He made a whole new gaming system. He sent us a two or three-page document like “Here’s the game.” He was able to show off the different skills that our characters had and that Avowed has.
Q: Your character, Ylva, was so cool—magically powerful with this fascinating background. What was the process like of coming up with her and developing her?
Bhimani: We knew we wanted to portray the different race options in the game. When Matt told me the concept of the one-shot was that we were all prisoners, I decided I wanted to be like a mob wife, and it turned out that SungWon [Cho] was also playing someone in that world. So that was fun to interact with.
And because I play an orlan in the actual game, I didn’t play an orlan in our little one-shot. I went with the one thing that I’ve never actually played, which is surprisingly an elf. I have always found them—please, Internet, don’t eat me—a little bit boring.
But Ylva was definitely not boring. I loved her, and I very much wanted her to be someone who was the brains behind the brawn. So she was very squishy, although, with my dice abandoning me all night, her intellect was not very helpful either. My dice, my babies, they needed a night off. [Laughs]
The great thing about playing games like this is that even when the dice are not cooperating with what your character wants to do, it’s always great for telling a good story. It’s always fun when someone you don’t expect to save the day saves the day. And when someone you do expect to save the day—well, everything goes horribly wrong. I love that about RPGs in general.
Q: It was neat that Ylva and SungWon’s character Hasporo knew each other because of their mafia connections. Is that something you guys decided ahead of time?
Bhimani: I knew that SungWon would be another sort of mafia-type guy. We hadn’t decided how we would know each other, but we did talk about how we’re in the same business. If we’re both in the family business, we probably knew each other or knew of each other. In-game, it was trying to figure out what the vibe would be, which is always fun.
A lot of this stuff—especially, I’ve found, with one-shots—gets decided very last minute, like my name. We decided our names before we started, because Obsidian had very kindly sent us a list of names that were already in the game – they said “please don’t use them,” because none of what we created was canon – but also names that were appropriate for each particular race in the game, so we could pull something that made sense for the kind of character that we were playing. And, even within their race, the region that they were from. So I was like, where was Ylva’s family from? OK, these guys were from the snowy north. So this is what she is.
Ylva also had a great dynamic with Lady Minette the orlan because Ylva was so worldly and Minette was so naive.
Bhimani: I cannot express enough how much I love Whitney Moore. I’m so deeply in love with all the folks at Critical Role, but as a human being, Whitney is a pure delight. She let me borrow her really cool sweater that matched what I was wearing. I had to owe her big time because that studio was very cold. [Laughs]
She came in strong, with such a strong idea of the character. And when that happens, you’ve got to go along and play along. So it was really fun to have this sort of “opposites attract” situation.
Yatzli Is A Source Of Energy And Humor In Avowed
Q: As a fellow orlan, how do you think Yatzli would have reacted to Minette?
Bhimani: She would have been like, “Darling, you really need to take better care of yourself. Have some self-worth.” Or, “Oh, you are a project. We’re gonna have to fix this because by the end of my time with you, we’re gonna do a full makeover, and you will be a whole new woman.” I think she would have fully had that experience.
That’s great. Yatzli is so wonderful, so confident.
Bhimani: I love her so much. She is saucy and sassy and brilliant. And I love that everything with her is a double entendre. I love that while, in the game itself, romancing is not an option like in a lot of other games, she’s surely trying. At the very least, she’s gonna make your player uncomfortable, and at the very most, she’s gonna make them fall in love with her. We had so much fun recording that character every time I came in. I was just so grateful. It was just such a blast.
What I really loved—that the writers were very specific about— with Yatzli is that, while in terms of the number of years she’s been around, it’s very long, but in terms of her energy, she’s also very youthful and spunky. So I tried to find that in the voice, where she didn’t sound like she’s been around for a long time, but she also has a sense of wisdom and self-composure and just an understanding of the world that, very clearly, only comes from years and years of experience.
Q: Do you think any of the characters from the one-shot would fit in particularly well with Avowed’s companions?
Bhimani: I think Marisha [Ray’s] character should be in everything. I was barely holding it together every time she opened her mouth. I just texted her this morning. I was drinking my coffee and I heard her say in my head, “Get yer molasses out your asses.” And that was it. Coffee spit-take. Any chance that there is to pull some of the Kentucky into Marisha’s characters, I love it. I am here for it.
I think that character would have been great because there is a humor behind it that kind of offsets the seriousness of Giatta and Kai. Yatzli is definitely a little comic relief, as much as possible, but she could certainly use a partner in crime.
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Sunderfolk And Other Potential Future TTRPG Adventures
Yeah, the humor in the one-shot was so good. I loved Hasporo finding an unexpected romance with the enemy aumaua. It was funny and adorable.
Bhimani: This is kind of a segue, but one of the things that I do really love about TTRPGs, whether it’s a one-shot or whether it’s a series, is that, even though it is a collaborative effort, it always feels like it ends up being one character’s story a little bit more. I feel like in this one shot, it became Hasporo’s story the same way [Critical Role] Campaign 3 felt like it was Imogen’s story. It just feels like there’s always one storyline that connects everybody else. These are not the opinions of anyone but me, but I felt like Hasporo saved the day. Also, SungWon is so freaking fantastic. I so want to play with him again.
The dynamics of the whole team were great. You even had a team name!
Bhimani: It feels like it landed in our laps. What’s better than Team Reacharound?
Q: Would you ever play Yatzli in a TTRPG setting if you had the opportunity?
Bhimani: Heck yeah. In the same way that Baldur’s Gate 3 people are getting a chance to play Dungeons and Dragons out there, I would love for us to get a chance to play our characters from Avowed. They are companions because they are these fully-fledged characters that we have lived with in the recording studio for so long. It just feels like a natural progression to be able to do that, but that is up to the fine folks at Obsidian.
Q: Do you have anything coming up relating to Dungeons and Dragons or tabletop gaming that you’d like Game Rant’s readers to know about?
Bhimani: Sunderfolk, a combination of a tabletop game and an RPG video game, is coming out soon. I have had the chance to play some of that, and it is gorgeous. It’s absolutely gorgeous. It’s so fun to play with friends. Personally, one of the challenges of video games in general is that very rarely do I feel like I get to play with my friends in the same room. I can play with my friends online and with people all over the world, but I would need two computers or two screens in my own home. With Sunderfolk, everyone can gather around the couch with their snacks, just like playing a tabletop game. I’m very excited about that one. The team at Dreamhaven is fantastic. We’re really looking forward to that launch.
I have something else I’ll be announcing at WonderCon at the end of March, so please keep an eye out for that.
[END]
- Released
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February 18, 2025
- ESRB
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Mature 17+ // Blood and Gore, Strong Language, Violence
- Publisher(s)
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Xbox Game Studios