Taliesin Jaffe on Mollymauk and Critical Role

The following is a video transcript

Taliesin Jaffe: Yeah, Mollymauk. Mollymauk ... The thought process was a couple of things for the new character. The first was what else have I not done, and I had watched Matt build a character class, the Blood Hunger, and I'm like, "That's cool and kind of gothy. I'm into that." Then when Percy had almost died the first time I immediately started thinking up a new character. The first thing I thought of that would be fun was a traveling carnie. I had this notion of him rolling into town after ... like if Percy didn't come back and making money by telling scary stories of the Terrible Tinkerer of Tal'Dorei


Todd Kenreck: Did you choose a Tiefling for any reason?


Taliesin Jaffe: Yeah, God how did ... I wanted somebody ... I wanted a character that was charming but not charming, I suppose, would be the best. I wanted to try and recreate the carnival worker experiences tightly as I could, which are people who are very, very charming but also very used to having people make a ... There's a wonderful thing about characters who are comfortable with people making assumptions about them. It's a great super power, and I have friends who use it all the time is instantly you can take one look at somebody and instantly know ... They know one thing about you and you take one look at them and instantly you know everything about them.


You can walk into a room as a Tiefling and how you see someone react, you instantly know everything you need to know about them. It's very useful. It's a great instant witness test to figuring out who you're going to be reacting to, how you're going to be reacting to these people. It's fun for a traveling character like that to just have this nice instant filter for the world where like I've just ... There's 80% of people I don't need to talk to, and that's so nice. I'm just here to steal their shit.


Todd Kenreck: That's fascinating. Actually, that's just a fascinating outlook on life in general.
Taliesin Jaffe: Any goth kid-


Todd Kenreck: Yeah.


Taliesin Jaffe: Any goth kid knows that.


Todd Kenreck: You know. 


Taliesin Jaffe: You put on some weird clothing and there's either people that are going to be like, "Oh my God your hair is so cool," or they're going to be like, "Mmm ...", you [crosstalk 00:02:12] that way.


Todd Kenreck: People during their-


Taliesin Jaffe: Yeah, or they're not really people people at all, are they? You've got some damage if you're looking at people and making assumptions.


Todd Kenreck: Yeah. How is this character different from ... Were you looking for a dramatic difference in character?


Taliesin Jaffe: Yeah, well I mean there's a ... Percy was really a character, whereas Molly, I'm definitely delving into a little bit of my own self.


Todd Kenreck: Right.


Taliesin Jaffe: Not entirely, obviously. Not even ... And he's a little bit of me, he's little bit of older friends of my mine from the renfaire life and carnival performers, and burning man world and some artist friends of mine who are talented and charming, but kind of a mess, and moral but not trustworthy. It was a very interesting ... I know I'm getting a little ... I'm flying little bit off on this one. It's nice playing a happy person. I thought I wanted someone happy. I wanted it to be someone who is not that bright.


Taliesin Jaffe: He's emotionally intelligent, but he's world dumb. I don't think it's really come up, and he's just literate to the point that one can call one's self literate, and never read a book. Doesn't know the names of anything, doesn't know the town, doesn't know anything about the world, doesn't really care, is not really interested in things. Very much of a-


Todd Kenreck: Sort of an elemental character, really.


Taliesin Jaffe: Oh yeah, it's essentialist to libertine as much as a D&D character can be. Really just there for the ride. A good sense of getting when it's time to leave town.


Todd Kenreck: Right.


Taliesin Jaffe: No, but he's not the smart one, he's not the strong one, he's not the charismatic one. He's, if anything, just the one who knows how to take care of people that are not used to be taken care of, and how to kind of wrangle screw-ups, which is anybody who works a carnival knows how to wrangle a screw-up. It's just ... And keeping shitty, viscous, snarky tired people on track doing what they need to do.

Todd Kenreck: What about the blood hunter made you want to try it out?


Taliesin Jaffe: Oh, I like the risk/reward aspect, or at least I'll say risk/reward aspect of blood hunters in theory, actually in practice. There's a lot of risque which [inaudible 00:05:02] we're getting, like why do we have to keep putting it on the line if I want to do anything. I just immediately go 10 points down anytime I want to be seriously scary. I like, especially at the upper levels, for the build of the character and a little bit of that is still a mystery. I had this notion of making a character with a completely clean slate and I had this ... There're aspects of it that I won't really be able to get into until he's either dead and buried or the game is over.


I had this notion of a character would was really ... could come from a place of nothing, no baggage, and it was a good build for a character like that. There's all this knowledge that's just innate in him, and all this power that's whatever happened to him before he lost his memory, for anybody who doesn't know, all that information is just keyed in physically. It's such a physically-based archetype with the idea of the blood having all this power.


I thought it would be a good way to giving him all the clues to what he is, and letting him experiment with them and slowly ... It's not that he's even necessarily ... is he gaining more power, or is he just discovering things he could do before that he can't do now? I don't know, but I made sure that Matt knows that I don't know and that there's also ... I laid out everything I thought might be possible and Matt just nods, "Okay, I'll figure something out," and God only knows.


Todd Kenreck: That makes a lot of sense. The only other way you could go with that is being a sorcerer, but like to have-


Taliesin Jaffe: I was thinking a sorcerer was number two.


Todd Kenreck: Yeah. Because something ... Obviously your past is a connection. Certainly warlock could be kind of weird.


Taliesin Jaffe: Well, yeah-


Todd Kenreck: If you had like no memory, why would you just be thrown into the void of the world without purpose?


Taliesin Jaffe: Yeah, there's not a lot of characters that can run around with a blank slate and have that kind of magical power. Sorcerer was what I was going to go with if I didn't go with blood hunter.


Todd Kenreck: Yeah.


Taliesin Jaffe: I love sorcerers. They're fun. I like the management of them, but yeah I thought this would be an interesting ... and I'm very big on having a little bit of a narrative, a metaphor, for any character. Percy was all about this notion of redemption versus the irredeemable, which was really fun to play with. This one is somebody whose earned the right to not be responsible for anything that happened before. This is somebody who owes nothing and is owed nothing, and what that means and what that means with anything ... the things that are indivisible from that.
Somebody still has these things that came from a life that he had nothing to do with, but has still kind of wandered out and tried to redefine themselves and has kind of taken on an identity that is separate from anything that came before, and whether or not he owes anything to that previous life, and if he does, what are those things? And what kind of hold does that previous life still have, or does it not?


Todd Kenreck: Right. Is there anything about ... I tend to make characters that are some aspect of my personality, or something I even want to explore and figure out. I'll play a character that is like maybe confident in a way I'm not, or insecure in a way I'm not. Is there something about this character that's specifically built to you?


Taliesin Jaffe: Yes. Well, I mean a lot.


Todd Kenreck: Because you're right. He is so incredibly different than Percy.


Taliesin Jaffe: Yeah, he certainly ... He dresses the way I wish I would dress all the time, if I had my Drothers and the Unlimited Closet of Doom. He's a character whose certainly following a path that I thought about for my life, of like I can just go and work backstage at these things for the rest of my life and be perfectly content, or other versions of that, of kind of ... there's a phrase for it, "Disappearing into the oblivion of base pleasure," that is drink and drunks and sex, and working one gig after another. The endless gig is definitely another aspect of the endless gig, human, which was definitely me for many, many years.


Todd Kenreck: This has opened up a lot of incredibly unexpected creative doors for all of you.


Taliesin Jaffe: It's never-ending doors. It's difficult to focus on just one thing is what'll say. I love watching what's happening around the show. I'll say this, the D&D community, especially in LA but all over California, all over the country, all over ... we've got people in from England, this is everything I wish I had when I was a teenager. This is amazing, and it's really good even seeing a lot of familiar faces of these friends of ours that have been toiling in the Internet fields of obscurity for many, many years finally getting out and discovering that there's people interested in this sort of stuff that we're doing.


I'm loving seeing this community come together, and I love that we're seeing all these different types of games get seen. I love the way we play on critical role, and I just love seeing the way other people play too, and just seeing all these other games. I'm a big Sirens of the Realm fan, and I love the way that they've got things going with the music. I love Dice, Camera, Action. I love that all these different groups are doing so much fun stuff.


Todd Kenreck: I've probably asked you this question before, do you have a white whale? What's the most ideal scenario for you just having a completely autonomous theater troupe.


Taliesin Jaffe: I have a pretty completely autonomous theater troupe.


Todd Kenreck: You ... essentially you guys have become that.


Taliesin Jaffe: Yeah, and especially with the whole Geek & Sundry family. There's so many talented ... I mean, the streamers on that channel are so talented. I definitely know I've been making relationships with people that are going to pay off. We're going to be working together and creating together for a long, long, long time. Is there a white whale? Sleep. Eight hours. Eight hours of glorious sleep, someday. There is ... I will say whatever white [inaudible 00:11:50] are actually so close to possible that I'm not allowed to speak them out loud-


Todd Kenreck: There are many secrets.


Taliesin Jaffe: There are many ... Yeah, my hair is full of secrets. There are definitely some ideas that are so big and we look at them and we're like ... We won't utter them out loud, but my God, if we can get away with doing something so crazy.


Todd Kenreck: I like Percy a lot because I didn't like him.


Taliesin Jaffe: Yes, thank you.


Todd Kenreck: Yeah, I didn't feel like he was supposed to be liked-


Taliesin Jaffe: Uh-uh (negative).


Todd Kenreck: But the ending of it was so emotional for me [crosstalk 00:12:24]. I wouldn't say full circle, but-


Taliesin Jaffe: There was a circle-


Todd Kenreck: The moment where you give up your weapons, your guns, immediately I hear Heaven's Door in my head. I'm like ... about to cry.


Taliesin Jaffe: We didn't really talk after that. We talked right before that.


Todd Kenreck: No, no. It was right before.


Taliesin Jaffe: And you remember ... I assume, I was like, "I don't know what to do. I don't know what's going to happen. I have a plan, but it's-" and my plan went to shit so quickly.


Todd Kenreck: Oh, in the Clocktower.


Taliesin Jaffe: I had a whole thought about the contract and how I could make that work and then I was like, what the **** are you doing? What are you doing? It was great. I'd never experienced that kind of epiphany with a character before. It was really ... it was a lot.


Todd Kenreck: That decision felt like it was made at the very, very last.


Taliesin Jaffe: That whole thing happened in like the last three minutes.


Todd Kenreck: Like in your face.


Taliesin Jaffe: Yeah, I was just like what the **** is going on? I was really ... It sucked because i had been asking this question of what is his damage? Like, what is the ******* problem with this guy? Why is he like this? I didn't figure it out until like three minutes before. It was like oh my God, I have never actually talked about the fact that his whole ... He has never spoken aloud about the fact that his whole ******* family died. That's awful. Holy ****. And that was what that was, was just I have to say this out loud, don't I? Oh, shit. That was a long way to go to be like, "Okay my whole family was murdered in front of me." It was really bad and probably very traumatizing. "I should probably deal with that now that I've just ruined everything."


Todd Kenreck: It was a very intense last few moments.


Taliesin Jaffe: Yeah, I don't know if Molly's going to get anything. I don't ... But again, I don't know. I don't know what's in Molly's box of terrible yet. Molly has no interest at all, so that's going to be interesting. He's going fight kicking and screaming into that door.


Todd Kenreck: Do you have an idea where Molly's going to go? Or is this very much a character where it could be anything?


Taliesin Jaffe: Have you ever seen the movie ... I'm going to recommend a movie on YouTube ... Risk Cutters?


Todd Kenreck: Yes.


Taliesin Jaffe: That's ... Yeah, there we go. He's not going anywhere. This is actually ... I mean he's pretty much with this group because he's literally never experienced the act of being alone for more than 24 hours in his conscious life.


Todd Kenreck: Mm-hmm (affirmative).


Taliesin Jaffe: He only knows how to function in a group dynamic and only in a group of not healthy people. He's like literally hopped from a group of unhealthy people to another group of unhealthy people.

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