# The Actual-Play Boom - Event: Movement - Date: 2008 – present - Houses: Wizards of the Coast - Canonical: https://www.lanternhall.org/culture/actual-play-boom/ > From Penny Arcade's podcast table in 2008 to Critical Role, The Adventure Zone and Dimension 20, people watching and listening to other people play roleplaying games became one of the most popular forms of online entertainment. **Why it matters:** Actual play turned a private hobby into a spectator medium. It taught millions how tabletop games work, fed the fifth-edition D&D boom, diversified who was seen at the table, and created a new kind of star: the professional Game Master. ## Quick answers **What is The Actual-Play Boom?** From Penny Arcade's podcast table in 2008 to Critical Role, The Adventure Zone and Dimension 20, people watching and listening to other people play roleplaying games became one of the most popular forms of online entertainment. **When did The Actual-Play Boom begin?** 2008 to the present. **Why does The Actual-Play Boom matter?** Actual play turned a private hobby into a spectator medium. It taught millions how tabletop games work, fed the fifth-edition D&D boom, diversified who was seen at the table, and created a new kind of star: the professional Game Master. ## What happened Players have always told each other what happened at the table. Wargame magazines printed after-action "play reports," fanzines recounted campaigns, and early internet forums filled with session logs. In the 2000s, cheap recording and podcasting turned those reports into performances. Enthusiasts such as the Bradford Players, whose recordings circulated through the Lovecraftian gaming site Yog-Sothoth.com, may have been the first to record play for an audience that found it entertaining in itself. The form found a mainstream foothold in 2008, when [Wizards of the Coast](https://www.lanternhall.org/houses/wizards-of-the-coast/) recorded a [fourth-edition](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/dnd-4th-edition/) D&D game with the creators of the webcomic *Penny Arcade*. *Acquisitions Incorporated* was a hit, and from 2010 its players performed live before packed halls at the PAX festival. In August 2014 the McElroy brothers and their father launched *The Adventure Zone*, a comedic D&D podcast whose first campaign, "Balance," ran 69 episodes and was later adapted into graphic novels. Then, on March 12, 2015, a group of Los Angeles voice actors began streaming their home game on Twitch as [*Critical Role*](https://www.lanternhall.org/culture/critical-role/). ## Why it mattered *Critical Role* made actual play a genre of its own. Its multi-camera composite, with the Dungeon Master and each player visible at once, was borrowed from esports and Let's Play videos, and it became the standard look as dozens of shows followed. Twitch and YouTube supplied the infrastructure; [fifth-edition D&D](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/dnd-5th-edition/), launched in 2014, supplied a rules set simple enough for viewers to follow. Observers credit actual play with a real share of the tabletop resurgence of the 2010s, and with introducing roleplaying to people who had only known it through [*Stranger Things*](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/stranger-things/) (2016) or the old stereotypes. Other formats flourished. *Dimension 20*, created for the streaming service Dropout in 2018, used short, tightly produced seasons, elaborate miniature sets and a rotating cast, with Brennan Lee Mulligan as its regular Game Master. *High Rollers*, *The Glass Cannon Podcast* and hundreds of smaller productions found their own audiences. Publishers joined in: *L.A. by Night* (2018) was a licensed [*Vampire: The Masquerade*](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/vampire-the-masquerade/) show, Wizards ran official streams such as *Rivals of Waterdeep*, and actual-play settings were canonized in sourcebooks like *Acquisitions Incorporated* (2019) and *Explorer's Guide to Wildemount* (2020). In 2018 the Diana Jones Award, one of the hobby's most prestigious honors, was given to actual play as a concept. The genre also changed who was visible at the table. Shows with all-women casts, casts entirely of people of color such as *Rivals of Waterdeep* and *Into the Motherlands*, and queer-led productions offered a different picture of a hobby long stereotyped as white and male, and critics have noted how easily independent actual plays incorporate LGBT characters. ## Legacy The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated everything. Remote shows filmed over webcams and [virtual tabletops](https://www.lanternhall.org/culture/virtual-tabletops/) multiplied, and the split-screen layout suited them perfectly. Actual play had become a business with sponsors, merchandise and transmedia ambitions: *Critical Role*'s crowdfunded animation became Amazon's [*The Legend of Vox Machina*](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/the-legend-of-vox-machina/) (2022), while *The Adventure Zone* and *Dimension 20* expanded into comics. During the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike the genre's labor status became a live question: productions on YouTube and Twitch continued, while *Dimension 20* briefly paused until its union contract was found not to be struck. Academic study followed, including the essay collection *Watch Us Roll* (2021). Actual play has also changed how people play at home. A generation of Game Masters learned pacing, voices and table management from Mercer and Mulligan, a mixed blessing that some players call "the Mercer effect." And the audiences actual play built are part of the backdrop to D&D's wider pop-culture moment, from [*Stranger Things*](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/stranger-things/) to the film [*Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves*](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/honor-among-thieves/) and the video game [*Baldur's Gate 3*](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/baldurs-gate-3/), both released in 2023. The hobby that the [The Satanic Panic & D&D](https://www.lanternhall.org/culture/satanic-panic/) once cast as a secret cult is now a spectator sport. ## Facts - Actual play has roots in wargame magazines' play reports and online forums; early recordings such as those of the Bradford Players on Yog-Sothoth.com may predate the better-known shows. - Acquisitions Incorporated began in 2008 as a D&D podcast with the creators of the webcomic Penny Arcade and went on to live games at the PAX festival from 2010. - The McElroy family's comedy podcast The Adventure Zone began in 2014 and by 2021 was drawing more than six million downloads a month. - [Critical Role](https://www.lanternhall.org/culture/critical-role/) premiered on Twitch on March 12, 2015, and its composite multi-camera layout became the genre's standard look. - Dimension 20, an anthology series run by Brennan Lee Mulligan for the streaming service Dropout, debuted on September 26, 2018. - In 2018 the Diana Jones Award for excellence in gaming went to the concept of actual play itself, the first time it honored neither a game, a company nor a person. - Wizards of the Coast has published sourcebooks based on actual-play shows, including *Acquisitions Incorporated* (2019) and *Explorer's Guide to Wildemount* (2020). ## Sources and further reading - [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actual_play) - [Wikipedia: The Adventure Zone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventure_Zone) - [Wikipedia: Dimension 20](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimension_20) --- From The Lantern Hall (https://www.lanternhall.org/), a museum of fantasy literature and roleplaying games.