Actual play - Wikipedia

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]

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