# Actual Play - Genre: Screen & live genre - Date: 2000s recordings and podcasts; mainstream from 2015 (Japanese print 'replays' from 1986) - Canonical: https://www.lanternhall.org/atlas/actual-play/ > Watching other people play Dungeons & Dragons, and loving it: the podcast and stream genre that turned home games into hit shows, record-breaking Kickstarters and animated series. **Why it matters:** Actual play made the tabletop RPG a spectator medium and a major on-ramp to the hobby, credited with helping drive the D&D renaissance of the 2010s. It also created a new kind of celebrity, the professional game master. ## Quick answers **What is Actual Play?** Watching other people play Dungeons & Dragons, and loving it: the podcast and stream genre that turned home games into hit shows, record-breaking Kickstarters and animated series. **What are the hallmarks of Actual Play?** A real tabletop game, played unscripted, recorded or streamed for an audience; The game master as showrunner, narrator and chief voice actor; Genuine dice: outcomes, including character deaths, are not planned; Both in-character drama and out-of-character table talk, rules and all; The split-screen 'boxes' layout inherited from video-game Let's Plays; Fan communities that produce art, merchandise and crowdfunding records. **When did Actual Play emerge?** 2000s recordings and podcasts; mainstream from 2015 (Japanese print 'replays' from 1986). **What are the key works of Actual Play?** The Legend of Vox Machina, Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition and Vampire: The Masquerade. ## What it is Actual play, also called live play, is the genre of podcasts, streams and web shows in which people play a [tabletop roleplaying game](https://www.lanternhall.org/atlas/tabletop-rpg/) for an audience. The game is real: the [game master](https://www.lanternhall.org/lexicon/game-master/) has prepared a world but not a script, the players improvise their characters, and the dice decide what happens. A single episode can swing from comic banter about rules to a character's death that no one saw coming, and the audience watches both the story and the people making it. The genre's appeal is double. It works as improvised fiction, with the pacing and voices of a radio drama, and as a window onto the hobby itself, showing newcomers what a good session looks and sounds like. Long-running campaigns run to hundreds of episodes of three or four hours each; other shows prefer tight seasons and heavier editing. ## Origins The idea of sharing a game with people who were not at the table is old. Wargame magazines printed play reports, and early internet forums filled with accounts of real sessions. In Japan the practice became a publishing genre: from 1986 the magazine *Comptiq* serialized "replays," edited transcripts of Dungeons & Dragons sessions run by Group SNE, and one of them, *Record of Lodoss War*, grew into novels and an anime. The high elf Deedlit, later an anime icon, was originally played at the table by science-fiction novelist Hiroshi Yamamoto. Recorded audio followed in the English-speaking world in the 2000s. Scholar Emily Friedman has pointed out that the often-repeated claim that Acquisitions Incorporated began actual play is wrong, and suggests that earlier groups such as The Bradford Players and the Yog-Sothoth.com community may have been the first to record sessions and circulate them for listeners. Still, Acquisitions Incorporated was the breakthrough. In 2008 Penny Arcade's creators partnered with [Wizards of the Coast](https://www.lanternhall.org/houses/wizards-of-the-coast/) to record [fourth-edition D&D](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/dnd-4th-edition/) sessions as a podcast; the comedy proved so popular that from 2010 the group played live on stage at the PAX conventions. ## Evolution The explosion came in 2015. On March 12, [Critical Role](https://www.lanternhall.org/culture/critical-role/) began streaming on Geek & Sundry: a group of professional voice actors playing the long-running home campaign of [Matthew Mercer](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/matthew-mercer/), converted from [Pathfinder](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/pathfinder-rpg/) to [D&D fifth edition](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/dnd-5th-edition/) for the show. Their skill at improvisation and Mercer's world of Exandria built one of the most devoted audiences in online video, and the show is widely credited with making actual play a genre of its own. The McElroy family's comedy podcast *The Adventure Zone* (2014) grew equally huge in audio, drawing hundreds of millions of downloads and spawning bestselling graphic novels. CollegeHumor's *Dimension 20* (2018), hosted by Brennan Lee Mulligan on the Dropout service, perfected the short, lavishly produced anthology season. Publishers took notice, licensing shows such as *L.A. by Night* (2018), set in [*Vampire: The Masquerade*](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/vampire-the-masquerade/), and folding actual-play settings back into official books: Exandria became an official D&D setting in 2020, and Acquisitions Incorporated got its own sourcebook in 2019. The 2019 Kickstarter for [*The Legend of Vox Machina*](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/the-legend-of-vox-machina/) raised about $11.4 million, and the resulting animated series premiered on Prime Video in 2022. The COVID-19 pandemic pushed many shows to remote play on [virtual tabletops](https://www.lanternhall.org/culture/virtual-tabletops/). Along the way, actual play widened who is seen at the table: shows such as *Rivals of Waterdeep*, run by Tanya DePass, put all-POC casts in the spotlight. The [actual-play boom](https://www.lanternhall.org/culture/actual-play-boom/), alongside [*Stranger Things*](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/stranger-things/), is often credited with driving the tabletop renaissance of the late 2010s. In 2025 Mercer handed Critical Role's game-master chair to Mulligan for its fourth campaign. ## How to tell it apart **Actual play vs Let's Play.** A Let's Play records someone playing a video game, with the software as referee and the player as commentator. Actual play records a tabletop game, where a human game master improvises the world in response to a group. Actual play's split-screen layout is borrowed from Let's Plays, but the creative engine is conversation. **Actual play vs audio drama and podcast fiction.** Scripted fiction podcasts are written in advance. Actual play is improvised, and its dice rolls are genuine; a plot the GM prepared can be derailed by a single bad roll or a player's whim. **Actual play vs [animated or scripted adaptation](https://www.lanternhall.org/atlas/fantasy-television/).** *The Legend of Vox Machina* adapts Critical Role's first campaign, but it is a written, edited cartoon. The stream it came from is the actual play. **Actual play vs replays and play reports.** Japanese replays and forum reports are edited after the fact and read rather than watched; modern actual play is usually presented as it happened, table talk included. ## Where to start - [Critical Role](https://www.lanternhall.org/culture/critical-role/), Campaign One (2015–17): the show that defined the genre, and the source of *Vox Machina*. - *The Adventure Zone*, "Balance" (2014–17): the great comedy podcast campaign, and proof that audio alone can carry it. - *Dimension 20: Fantasy High* (2018): a tightly edited season showing actual play as produced television. - Acquisitions Incorporated at PAX: live-stage D&D as comedy. - *Record of Lodoss War*: the Japanese replay-to-anime saga, for the genre's deep roots. ## Hallmarks - A real tabletop game, played unscripted, recorded or streamed for an audience - The game master as showrunner, narrator and chief voice actor - Genuine dice: outcomes, including character deaths, are not planned - Both in-character drama and out-of-character table talk, rules and all - The split-screen 'boxes' layout inherited from video-game Let's Plays - Fan communities that produce art, merchandise and crowdfunding records ## Facts - Japan got there first in print: Record of Lodoss War began as 'replays,' transcripts of D&D sessions serialized in the magazine Comptiq from 1986. - Acquisitions Incorporated began in 2008 when Penny Arcade's creators recorded Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition sessions as a Wizards of the Coast podcast. - [Critical Role](https://www.lanternhall.org/culture/critical-role/) began streaming on Geek & Sundry on March 12, 2015, after its voice-actor cast converted their private Pathfinder game to D&D fifth edition. - The Adventure Zone began in 2014 as a one-off episode of the McElroy brothers' comedy podcast My Brother, My Brother and Me. - In 2019 Critical Role's Kickstarter for an animated special raised about $11.4 million, then a record for a film or TV project on the platform. - During the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike, Dimension 20 was briefly caught up in the dispute while Critical Role, streaming on its own channels, was not. - The split-screen layout of most video actual plays, one box per player, was borrowed from video-game Let's Plays. ## Sources and further reading - [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actual_play) - [Critical Role (Wikipedia)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_Role) - [Record of Lodoss War (Wikipedia)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Record_of_Lodoss_War) --- From The Lantern Hall (https://www.lanternhall.org/), a museum of fantasy literature and roleplaying games.