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OKAY! I've eaten, slept, and now a full day later than I'd planned I wanna tell you everything you'd wanna know about my new audio drama project @RogueRunRadio ! It'll also be a chance to share a little bit about my storytelling philosophy. :)
For folks new to actual play they're a type of show where the cast of the show plays a tabletop game, or TTRPG, often D&D. We have four players I'll be spotlighting soon, who are SUCH consummate professionals/comedians that they consistently leave me breathless with laughter.
This isn't your older sibling/cousin/parent's D&D though. We made something called a module, which in short is a new set of rules laid over the D&D rules, which change the way we play the game. It lets us adapt other games to D&D, such as #HadesGame as we've done here!
If you've never played HADES before - you're still gonna love it. If you have, you'll see how carefully we carried over the mechanisms from the base game to tabletop: rogue-like room generation, blood crystals, BOONS! Getting to meet the Greek Mythology pantheon (and others...)
So what do I do? I'm the dungeon master, which means I craft the story for the players, narrate their adventures as they battle their way out of the Underworld for another chance at life, and — my favorite part of all — voice act as all the gods they meet on the way!
It's a kind of storytelling I've never done before. If you've listened to @CARAVANradio, you know how meticulous I am with the smallest details of the listener experience. I've had to break out of my comfort zone to build an *improvised* and *collaborative* story this time!
There are many types of dungeon masters and storytelling styles. It's been such a gift to discover mine: I personally see storytelling as the dungeon master to be a *service* type role. These players sign up for an adventure, and I create the sandbox for them to play inside.
It means even with my best laid plans, the players VERY often outwit and outmaneuver my traps and challenges, and I have to adapt! And it can't *just* be improvised, it has to be interesting and funny the first time! It's completely counterintuitive to how I made audio drama.
So is it just like all other actual play podcasts out there? NO. Not even close. I've listened to a LOT of actual plays (several hundred hours of them), and let me assure you this is different in a number of ways.
We're calling it an *audio drama* because while many actual plays have elements that qualify them as audio drama, our emphasis first and foremost was on crafting a narrative experience *for* this medium, not *incidentally* for this medium by recording us playing a game.
It means we take great care to use language and specificity that works for digesting a story consumed primarily through audio (sidenote: we'll still have transcripts! Another thing we invite more actual plays to do!).
The show is also sound designed to an extent I have not yet seen for actual play. In actual play, people swing their swords several thousand times. Roll dice that many times. They rarely have a sound effect for that; mostly the action is in the theater of the mind. Not so here!
The sound design of it is really meant to immerse you in the feeling of battling through hell with these characters. The title music, music for character themes, everything is based around you consuming the story like an audio movie rather than watching friends play a board game.
(NONE of this is shade at any other actual play, a genre I love and consume more than any other. Rather, this is more a meditation on what we've observed in the medium so far, and what we see as our contribution to expanding it.)
So what can you expect? Well it's freaking hilarious, for one. But also tells some of the most intimate character stories I've ever seen (I was literally in tears during a season 2 recording of the show yesterday -- yes, we've already made season 1!).
The sheer range of themes we explore really feels like some of the boldest storytelling I've ever seen improvising actors tell. At its core, @RogueRunRadio meditates on the questions of punishment, redemption, and making the world better within oppressive systems.
It's also just been such a humbling experience for me to try my hand at actual play after being a bit of an AD "purist." I've really had to let go of my self-righteousness about story-teller-as-auteur role to move into story-teller-as-service role.
Anyway, that's a high-level overview of why I think this show is special. It really tries to innovate in a genre I love. It's made by some of the very best storytellers I know. And it's gonna rock your world. If you have questions, ask me anything!
Also, if you're looking for other actual plays with killer sound design that are really dedicated to delivering an aural experience (which are already out!), I cannot sing the praises of @20SidedStories and @LibertyEndures enough!
