Product Code Database
Actual play, also called live play, is a genre of podcast or Web series in which people play tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs) for an audience. Actual play often encompasses in-character interactions between players, storytelling from the gamemaster, and out-of-character engagements such as dice rolls and discussion of game mechanics. (2026). 9781476643434, McFarland & Company. ISBN 9781476643434 The genre emerged in the early 2000s and became more popular throughout the decade, particularly with the 2015 debut of Critical Role, an actual play webseries featuring professional Voice acting.
In 2008, the creators of Penny Arcade partnered with Wizards of the Coast to create a podcast of a few 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons adventures which led to the creation of the actual play Acquisitions Incorporated. After the podcast was well-received, the players began livestreaming games starting in 2010 at the PAX festival. Acquisitions Incorporated went on to be described by Inverse in 2019 as the "longest-running live play game". Critical Role, a web series in which professional voice actors play Dungeons & Dragons, launched in 2015. Critical Role has been credited by VentureBeat as responsible for making actual play shows "their own genre of entertainment", and has since become one of the most prominent actual play series. Another popular series is The Adventure Zone, a comedic actual play podcast which has featured several TTRPG systems. , it received over 6million monthly downloads, and ranked highly on Apple podcast charts. (2026). 9781476642017, McFarland & Company. ISBN 9781476642017 By 2021, there were hundreds of actual play podcasts. Many web festivals, such as New Jersey, Minnesota, Los Angeles, Baltimore, Cusco, and New Zealand, "now include actual play categories, and many have scholarship programs". Polygon highlighted that "web fest selections are quickly becoming one of the best places to discover the undersung 'ambitious middle' of actual plays — that is, shows that aspire to the same storytelling heights as the most popular troupes, but that lack the resources of time and production budget".
Early visual layouts were often either "fullscreen, edited multi-camera shows" or simultaneous-display shows with "boxes arranged on screen: one for the Storyteller or Dungeon Master, two or more for the players, either separately (in remote shows) or in groups (in studio). Another box may display character art, battle maps, sponsors, or other information". The simultaneous-display would become the most prominent layout in the genre. This visual layout is also "a holdover from video game Let's Plays"; Friedman attributed the widespread usage of the simultaneous-display layout to Critical Role dominance in the genre as well as the layout working well for remotely filmed shows which "boomed after the move to COVID-19 pandemic protocols in 2020". (VTTs) also became more commonly used in remote shows during the pandemic lockdown. Shelly Jones, writing in The Routledge Handbook of Role-Playing Game Studies (2024), commented that actual play shows have a wide range in "production quality of editing, sets, costumes, props, and the like" as well as episode length. They noted that some shows, such as Critical Role, have an average episode length of three to four hours with "campaigns that arc over a hundred episodes" while "other hit shows like High Rollers and Dimension 20 eschew lengthy run-times and seasons". The actual play genre has also seen format changes as creators jump to "newer social media platforms such as TikTok", including adjusting the length of episodes "and incorporating special effects and interactive elements to further engage new audiences".
TTRPG publishers have engaged with actual plays by licensing shows based on their products, running their own, incorporating content from actual plays back into source material, and games in actual play format. L.A. by Night is an actual play licensed by the publisher Paradox Interactive, and based on their role-playing game ; it premiered on Geek & Sundry in 2018. Rivals of Waterdeep is an official Wizards of the Coast actual play show, based on their Dungeons & Dragons system. Wizards of the Coast has also published collaboration sourcebooks based on actual play shows, such as the Explorer's Guide to Wildemount (2020) based on Critical Role and Acquisitions Incorporated (2019) based on the live play game by the same name. Jones highlighted increased commercialized in the genre, noting that many sponsorships are from tabletop gaming accessory companies. Actual play productions have also expanded their reach through merchandise and transmedia products, including game supplements, comics, novels, and animated adaptations.
Actual plays have contributed towards improving representation of people of color, women, and others in tabletop gaming, which has had a reputation of being primarily made up of white men. Maze Arcana's Sirens, with Satine Phoenix as dungeonmaster (DM), features an all-women group of players. Rivals of Waterdeep, DMed by Tanya DePass, and Into the Motherlands are actual play shows with casts that are entirely made up of people of color. Death2Divinity is an actual play show with an all-queer, "all fat-babe" cast. Actual play shows have also been credited with improving representation of LGBT community people in media more generally. Entertainment website CBR has said that LGBT representation has been more easily incorporated into actual plays because they are often produced by independent creators and distributed online. The site named The Adventure Zone and Dimension 20 as two examples of actual plays which include LGBT characters. Academic Melissa Allen, in the Journal of Fandom Studies, wrote that "viewers often feel it is their right to address happenings in-game they do not like because they too are an active participant despite being viewers, not players", which has led actual play series to carefully navigate when to let fan conversations occur freely and when to intervene directly. In particular, she highlighted the problematic treatment of female players in fan discourse – "there is a small window in terms of mechanics knowledge fans find appropriate" for female players, noting that these players "have to be extremely knowledgeable of game mechanics to an almost impossible extent, but they cannot be so outwardly knowledgeable that they challenge men's standing as arbiters of D&D knowledge". Allen commented that fan criticisms often "reflect the unease when women and their characters are the focus of the campaign's story". Allen also stated that "despite the presence of these gatekeeping behaviours and comments that reflected misogynistic discourse, there were many that applauded the female players" in actual plays with fans who frequently challenged sexist discourse, "indicating that male preserve-sanctioned behaviours are actively pushed back against by many in the fandom".
The "Balance" campaign of The Adventure Zone was adapted into a series of , the first of which was published in 2018. The "Fantasy High" campaign of Dimension20 was adapted as a webcomic; it was first released on Webtoon in 2025.
| Acquisitions Incorporated | 2008–present | |
| The Adventure Zone | 2014–present | |
| Candela Obscura | 2023–2024 | |
| Critical Role | 2015–present | |
| Dimension 20 | 2018–present | |
| Dungeons & Daddies | 2019–present | |
| Exandria Unlimited | 2021–2025 | |
| Friends at the Table | 2014–present | |
| The Glass Cannon | 2015–present | |
| HarmonQuest | 2016–2019 | |
| L.A. by Night | 2018–2021 | |
| Natural Six | 2024–present | |
| Nerd Poker | 2012–present | |
| Not Another D&D Podcast | 2018–present | |
| NY by Night | 2022 | |
| Rivals of Waterdeep | 2018–2022 | |
| Worlds Beyond Number | 2023–present | |
|
|
