[3] Tito said that show was "insanely popular" and "the success of that allowed us to create relationships with smaller tabletop roleplayers that were in front of an audience.

Tito said he reached out to DePass because she was "a strong voice in the community and was in the Chicago area" and recruited "another group of roleplayers who just put their toe into doing D&D related content, but were mostly known as improv actors and comedians".

[3] Aram Vartian was season one's Dungeon Master with Carlos Luna, DePass, Cicero Holmes, Surena Marie, Brandon Stennis and Shareef Jackson as players.

[9] LaTia Jacquise initially joined Rivals of Waterdeep as a guest in the sixth season at the 2020 C2E2 live show before becoming a permanent member.

[12][10] Masood Haque joined as a guest for some Rivals of Waterdeep specials[13] before becoming a regular cast member in the seventh season premiere.

[16][10] Rivals of Waterdeep premiered in June 2018 with an episode at the Stream of Many Eyes event before launching as a fully produced show by Wizards later that month.

[19] In 2021, Rivals of Waterdeep became independently produced and was listed as an official partner show of the Dungeons & Dragons brand.

Fortunately, there are several diverse actual play shows out there already, such as Rivals of Waterdeep and Dames and Dragons, they just have not received as much attention as Critical Role and The Adventure Zone yet".

[27]: 108  Amanda Farough, for VentureBeat, also highlighted that "Wizards of the Coast has been able to put a finer point on the impact of actual play shows on its brand awareness and sales.

Notably, Rivals of Waterdeep's cast are all people of color, offering important representation to a group typically underserviced in both the D&D streaming space and the wider tabletop roleplaying game community".