There are absolutely loads of actual play podcasts. At current count, 2210 out of the total 11329 podcasts I've got listed in my podcast database (19.5%) are actual plays. They're popular. But they're also oversized in some regards. They can have episode counts that run into the hundreds, and they can have episodes that are five hours long.
Compare that to the majority of scripted fiction podcasts, which have much fewer episodes, much shorter episodes, and have a relatively well-defined upfront start, middle and end.
If you're writing a script, you want to know where that script ends up, and how it gets there - you want to build to your finish. (A complaint for some shows that may not know where they're going can be that they meander a bit.) Actual plays don't always have quite that level of control. A good game master probably has an overall narrative thread they're trying to hit, but it's a collaborative construction between the players and the GM.
How "true" the game is, is an ongoing consideration when you think about the fact that hopefully the game is entertaining both to the GM and the players, but also the audience. The minute you turn your home game into an actual play, it becomes a performance, and that can colour many elements. It also means that actual plays can have very different skill levels, and a wide range of variable "quality".
I use quality in quote marks, because art is subjective. We can mean recording quality - good mic setup, no static, we can mean a deeply gripping narrative, or we can mean how terrible the accents are. (My home game's accent hasn't been the same two sessions running.) There is something of an advantage then in terms of using players and GMs who have theatre (and particularly improv or comedy theatre) backgrounds. This is what Critical Role does, as discussed by a recent article I've lost the link to. It's also what Rusty Quill Gaming did (another one I recommend), and it's what Hell or High Rollers does.
Here it's a particular set of theatre people, who attracted my attention because they do "The Play That Goes Wrong". They've done a show in Cambridge a couple of times that I've enjoyed (including Magic Goes Wrong), and they also did a short TV run. It's not improvised (generally), being a carefully scripted work of dialogue and stunts, but it has the same chaotic energy as here.
We follow four players, all of whom have recently died. No wait, their characters have recently died. There's Chris Leask, Adam Meggido, Ellie Morris and Henry Shields, playing a barbarian, a necrowanker, a mushroom, and a ranger respectively, all GM'd by David Hearn.
Their quest, should they choose to accept it (they don't have to, players can do anything, but I feel the story might slightly shove them along), is to escape hell. D&D hell (Avernus) has nine layers, and they will have to travel through all of them to get out. And so they try and do that, with all the madness that implies.
They're in hell, and so they're probably not very good people. This proves to be the case, with unnecessary violence, a whole bunch of insults, and not a few "deaths". There's a fun rule in play here about dying when you're already dead - I won't ruin any surprises, but I suspect they're generally house rules, rather than in one of the campaign books. (I've not read Descent into Avernus, so I don't know how much is from there (if any) versus entirely made up.)
Being a comedy troupe, it is mostly comedy. That's generally a thing with actual plays, not many of them go full horror and stay there - Dark Dice might be pretty close - but naturally half the personality of improvisers is coming up with the best line. Makes it a very enjoyable listen. Similarly to Dungeons and Daddies, I think I might say the female player (Brooks) is again the funniest. Not sure why, perhaps the character she's playing - a psychotic mushroom with absolutely the worst ethics of the group - makes that difference.
Also interesting from a Play That Goes Wrong point of view, is the GM. BLANK BLANK generally plays a complete idiot (or at least when I've seen him), which runs counter to the GMing situation here. Controlling four players and responding in real time to what they do, while also trying to maintain a complex world and plot is quite hard. Which I suppose proves he's very good at playing an idiot. Definitely an enjoyable contrast.
The first season is done, and can be considered a complete arc, with it building to a sufficiently impactful climax. Not entirely sure why, but I had found myself dreading this, as given it was giving finale vibes, I'd assumed they show would just stop after that. Despite every episode being labelled "S1". I have to just allow I might be an idiot. Luckily, the show will continue, which I am pleased about.
To bring this back to my first point about meandering, the show also doesn't do that much. It's kept pretty tightly to an hour long, which means it doesn't demand too much time. Some shows love spreading out. The only one I listen to that really does it is Flintlocks & Fireballs. That's multi-hour, and I'm still two years behind. I'm very slowly catching up. If I listened to two or three shows of that length each week, I couldn't listen to anything else. It does "price you out" of a lot of the market, and so your fans need to be dedicated. Getting shorter does eliminate some of that problem, and I appreciate when it happens, as here.
All in all, can heartily recommend it. It's very funny, it's got an ending you can listen up to, and it won't steal the entirety of your earholes.
