So Critical Role is on hiatus this week, and they’ll be taking another break over Christmas and New Years. Are you bored and needing another tabletop show to scratch that itch? Yes, there’s TAZ too, but they’re biweekly so you’ll still have off weeks. And everybody knows about Critical Role and TAZ. Don’t you want to try some of the lesser known but still very very good roleplaying shows?
I hope the answer is yes, because I’m gonna rec some of my favorites! Please feel free to reblog and add your favorites too! There are so many very good D&D/tabletop podcasts/web shows that get overlooked and a Critical Role hiatus is a great time to shine some light on those gems! And without further ado:
Not Another D&D Podcast: the campaign after the campaign! NADDPOD is set in a world that has already been saved by a team of legendary heroes...except maybe the legendary heroes didn’t do such a great job saving the world as we thought and fucked up quite a lot and left mountains of problems to be solved in their wake! NADDPOD has a great story and drama and heartbreak, but mostly it’s wildly hilarious. The Band of Boobs consists of Hardwon Surefoot (a human fighter raised by dwarves who left home for adventure and is used to be being a big fish in a small pond,) Beverly Toegold V (halfling paladin boyscout and Very Good Boy who’s trying to earn his merit badges) and Moonshine Cybin (wood elf druid, hillbilly and chaotic bi who flirts with every woman she meets. She has a possum companion named Pawpaw. I love Moonshine.)
Dungeons & Daddies (Not A BDSM Podcast): Four dads from our world gets transported into the Forgetten Realms on a quest to rescue their sons! This podcast is extremely goofy and if you thought the McElroys played Calvinball, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Dad jokes cause psychic damage, and there are a LOT of dad jokes. It’s 90% hilarious shenanigans and then 10% feelings (I cried about a character called Lizardboy Scales McStuffins.) The dads are Darryl Wilson (barbarian and stay at home coach dad, big softy on the inside,) Henry Oak(druid and mega crunchy hippie dad,) Glenn Close (bard and rock’n roll pot-smoking dad,) and Ron Stampler (rogue, emotionally detached stepfather and honestly probably a cryptid. What the fuck is Ron? We just don’t know.)
Dimension 20: Escape from the Bloodkeep: this is a fairly short webshow, just 6 episodes long, and I admit that I only checked it out because Matt Mercer and Erika Ishii were on it, but I absolutely loved it! Escape from the Bloodkeep follows the subordinates of the Lord of Shadows right before the great final battle of good vs evil that they were totally going to win...except a couple halflings threw some magic jewelry in a volcano and fucked everything up. It’s wildly funny as a LOTR parody but the evil villains end up becoming a found family at the end, because of course they do. The vile villains include Efink Murderdeath (elven grave cleric who turned evil to rebel against her dad,) Sokhbarr the Boglord (half orc ranger and basically the Steve Irwin of monsters,) Kraz-Thun AKA Leiland (anxious insecure Ringwraith warlock,) Lilith (queen of the spiders and wine mom to thousands of tiny spider kids,) Maggie (tiefling barbarian and daughter to the Lord of Evil) and Marcus St Vincent (human pirate who sided with evil to get rich.) Dimension 20 has some other shows like Fantasy High and The Unsleeping City that I’ve heard good things about, but I haven’t gotten around to watching them yet!
Rusty Quill Gaming: I’ve only just started this one but I love it already! It’s set in an alternate 19th century London that has magic and all the usual fantasy trappings, but also Lord Byron is there? It’s a lot of fun so far but I’ve been told that there’s a lot of pain coming and I’m very scared. The squad (at least where I’m at) includes: Sasha (socially awkward human rogue,) Hamid (halfling sorcerer and Fancy Lad,) Zolf (dwarf cleric, has a peg leg and possibly the owner of the team’s only brain cell) and Bertie (human fighter and loud, flashy buffoon.)
And it’s not a tabletop/roleplay podcast but I only got into Rusty Quill Gaming because of one of Rusty Quill’s other podcasts, The Magnus Archives, which I can’t recommend highly enough. It’s a horror series that follows the new head archivist at the Magnus Institute, which is an organization that documents all manner of supernatural and spooky shit. What happened to the last head archivist? It’s a ~mystery~. At first it seems like a bunch of stand alone stories but soon you start to realize that there are all these threads connecting everything and I can’t really say much more because a big part of the fun is seeing how the overarching story comes together. Also lots of LGBT+ characters. The main character is canon ace. Please listen to The Magnus Archives.
Hope you’ll give some of these a try, and again, feel free to add your own! Give some other shows some love!
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