Actual play

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Actual play, also called live play,^[1] is a genre of podcast or web show in which people play tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs) for an audience.^[2][3] 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.^[3] The genre emerged in the early 2000s^[4] and became more popular throughout the decade,^[2] particularly with the 2015 debut of Critical Role, an actual play webseries featuring professional voice actors.^[5]

According to Evan Torner writing in Watch Us Roll, actual play is rooted in phenomena including magazine "play reports" of wargames and internet forums dedicated to role-playing games.^[3] With the emergence of esports, livestreamed gaming, and Let's Plays, actual plays of TTRPGs became a popular podcast and webseries format, and contributed to the resurgence of TTRPGs in the 2010s and 2020s.^[3][5]

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 Acquisitions Incorporated.^[6][7] After the podcast was well-received, the players began livestreaming games starting in 2010 at the PAX festival.^{[6]: 108 [8]} Acquisitions Incorporated went on to be described by Inverse in 2019 as the "longest-running live play game".^[9] 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.^[8] Another popular series is The Adventure Zone, a comedic actual play podcast which has featured several TTRPG systems.^[2] As of 2021^[update], it received over 6 million monthly downloads, and ranked highly on Apple podcast charts.^[10] By 2021, there were hundreds of actual play podcasts.^[10] 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".^[11] 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".^[11]

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 playtesting 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 Vampire: The Masquerade; it premiered on Geek & Sundry in 2018.^[12] Rivals of Waterdeep is an official Wizards of the Coast actual play show, based on their Dungeons & Dragons system.^[8] 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^[13] and Acquisitions Incorporated (2019) based on the live play game by the same name.^[9]

During the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike, Charlie Hall of Polygon commented that "actual play, which has grown in popularity since well before the pandemic, has often pulled in Hollywood types to fill seats at the table. But neither SAG-AFTRA nor AMPTP is regularly involved in the productions that Polygon spoke with, and therefore they will not be affected".^[14] Justin Carter, for Gizmodo, stated it was tricky as the "fate of an Actual Play show depends on the company behind it, and possibly what platform it's released on" – shows such as Dimension 20 on the streaming service Dropout and Purple Worm! Kill! Kill! on the "upcoming 24-hour Dungeons & Dragons Adventure streaming channel" are impacted by the strike as they "fall under SAG's Electronic Media contract, and are thus shut down".^[15] However, other actual plays such as Critical Role and shows on the Glass Cannon Network were not impacted by the strike.^[14][15] Christian Hoffer, for ComicBook.com, explained that YouTube and Twitch channels appear to be a "grey area" so "Critical Role and most Actual Play shows that air exclusively on YouTube and Twitch do not appear to impacted by the SAG-AFTRA strike, while productions like Dimension 20 that hire talent and airs on a closed platform (i.e., one that's not open to anyone to post content on) are impacted by the SAG-AFTRA strike".^[16] In August 2023, Sam Reich announced that all Dropout shows (including Dimension 20) have resumed production as it was determined that their "New Media Agreement for Non-Dramatic Programming" was actually a non-struck SAG-AFTRA contract.^[17][18]

In 2018, the Diana Jones Award for excellence in tabletop gaming named the concept of actual play as that year's award winner, marking the first year the award was not awarded to a game, organization, or individual.^[19] Academic Emily Friedman, writing for Los Angeles Review of Books, highlighted that "there's the elemental pleasure of being told a story, intertwined with the alchemy of watching that story be created in front of your eyes (or ears). [...] We perceive simultaneously the character played and the player playing".^[7]

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.^{[8][19][20][21]} Maze Arcana's Sirens, with Satine Phoenix as dungeonmaster (DM), features an all-women group of players.^[22][23] 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.^[19][24] Death2Divinity is an actual play show with an all-queer, "all fat-babe" cast.^[25] Actual play shows have also been credited with improving representation of LGBT people in media more generally. Entertainment website Comic Book Resources 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.^[2]

Friedman also commented that the largest "actual plays have viewer numbers that are the envy of some television networks".^[7] Amanda Farough wrote for VentureBeat that "the boundaries and barriers that have traditionally kept TTRPGs hidden behind an opaque divide have come tumbling down" and that actual play "long-form narrative is reshaping itself as an expression of both players and the audiences that accompany them on the journey ahead".^[8] Curtis D. Carbonell, in his book the Dread Trident: Tabletop Role-Playing Games and the Modern Fantastic, commented that shows such as Acquisitions Incorporated and Critical Role reflect "a wider phenomenon made clear by numerous Youtube.com videos of individual gaming sessions by random groups ... The confluence of these digital and analog streamed elements adds to the increasing archive of realized gametexts that can be consumed and analyzed with the modern fantastic".^[6]: 108 Both Farough and Carbonell highlighted that actual play shows have also increased sales of TTRPGs and related products.^[8][6]

The Critical Role animated series The Legend of Vox Machina was crowdfunded on Kickstarter in 2019, where it raised US$11.39 million, setting the record for the most highly-funded film or TV project in the platform's history. Following this, Amazon streaming service Prime Video acquired exclusive streaming rights to the series.^[26]

The "Balance" campaign of The Adventure Zone was adapted into a series of graphic novels, the first of which was published in 2018.^[27][28]

• The Adventure Zone^[3]
• Candela Obscura^[29]
• Critical Role^[3] and its spin-off Exandria Unlimited^[30]
• Dimension 20^[3]
• Dungeons & Daddies^[3]
• Friends at the Table
• The Glass Cannon^[3]
• HarmonQuest^[3]
• L.A. by Night^[8] and its sequel NY by Night^[31]
• Nerd Poker^[3]
• Rivals of Waterdeep^[3]

• Fantasy podcast