Three theatre nerds explore the intersection of Tabletop Role Playing Games and Theatre

We (Todd, Percival, and Nick) are three theatre professionals on the East Coast. Mostly we know each other from twitter (and due to the Covid-19 pandemic Todd and Percy have never met). The three of us were interested in examining TTRPGs the way we often examine plays to see how the mechanics of a game shape the stories those games tell. It's also been useful to look at theatre from a more tabletop-influenced walk of life so we do a bit of both! In our first season we explored games like Dungeons and Dragons, Apocalypse World, and Paranoia; and topics like devising for theatre and tabletop, intimacy choreography for brave spaces, and artistic legacy in theatre and tabletop. Our listeners are theatre people interested in tabletop, and tabletop people interested in theatre.
 

The three of us all listen to different actual plays and thought it might be an interesting way to make case studies out of tabletop campaigns. The whole thing started as an ongoing joke on twitter between the three of us. Whenever it came up people seemed excited by the idea of exploring the theatrical side of games. So in the spring of 2019 we made a plan and slowly figured out what all we would need over the course of the next year. We launched in the spring of 2020 just after Covid shut everything down, and released just about every week until we finished our first season with 48 episodes. It definitely took some planning to get our first episode out, but that was because Todd was worried if we didn't have most of Season One recorded by launch day that we just wouldn't get it done.
 

We release weekly thanks to the talents of our editing wizard Anthony! Todd has a full-time day job and Percy, Nick, and Anthony are all getting MFAs at the moment, so our hands are all full, but we find the time to make everything work! We're definitely self-funded and currently that money goes towards hosting and distribution.
 

All of us have found this past year to be really thrilling. Todd used to run a webseries (that Nick even appeared on) doing theatre reviews and it felt like he could connect to the national conversation on theatre more that way. This podcast is definitely different, but it's been fascinating discussing different theatre and tabletop topics with people all over the country (and even making friends and collaborators on other parts of the globe) through this project.
 

Since Percy, Nick, and Todd are all in different places we planned on recording over Zoom or something like it from the get-go. We schedule a couple play sessions with each GM and cast of players that we'll break into six or seven episodes each and those will be our actual play sessions. Most of the people we've played with so far have been friends or acquaintances of one of the hosts, but some of them have been people who just reached out and wanted to play! Then our commentary episodes are largely done with just the hosts exploring the narrative implications of rules, discussing plays with similar vibes, that sort of thing, but we have called on a number of guests to talk about devising theatre, intimacy choreography, digital theatre, and more!
 

Theatre and Tabletop communities definitely seem more active on twitter. We also have an instagram and facebook, but most of our engagement is on the bird app. We post weekly with releases, and follow up with different takeaways from the hosts as a teaser, we often have players that are quite active on social media too. For distribution we're on just about anywhere you can point a podcatcher. Most of our downloads come from Apple Podcasts and Spotify, though.
 

Definitely record a test or two and really listen to it to see if you've got something you want to commit to.
 

You can find us at www.dungeonsanddramanerds.com or at @DNDramaNerds on twitter, insta, or facebook.