From game reviews to actual plays, Tavern Watch recommends some of our favorite TTRPG content creators

On a recent episode of the Tavern Watch Podcast, we discussed some of our favorite tabletop gaming content creators — after all, while we know Tavern Watch is your favorite tabletop podcast, there are a ton of other TTRPG content out there on the internet! We thought we’d share links to a few of our favorites — whether you prefer podcasts, video or audio actual plays, or even just really nicely-written blogs, there’s something here for almost everybody.

Actual play streams

• Dimples ‘n’ Dice — extremely long running Vampire: the Masquerade actual play, “Philly by Night,” with a diverse and entertaining cast. Available on YouTube and Twitch.
• Dimension 20 — Dropout TV’s headliner actual play, covering everything from a fantasy game set in a high school to sci-fi romps and fae court politics. Available on Dropout, which does require a subscription — however, you can also watch a lot of episodes on YouTube to decide if you want to subscribe.
• Critical Role — the absolute juggernaut, the 800-pound gorilla of video actual plays, usually with DM Matt Mercer and his motley crew of voice actor friends. Now currently on their fourth main season! There are, however, a ton of smaller spinoff seasons as well, such as Candela Obscura, their pseudo-Victorian supernatural investigator RPG. The best place to start is probably their website or their YouTube channel.
• Callisto 6 — a show from Geek and Sundry, Callisto 6 is best described as “superheroes meets cyberpunk.” With two seasons spread across about 70 episodes, this is just a good solid actual play RPG.
• Oxventure — the tabletop show originally from Outside Xbox, Oxventure has spun off into its own thing, and features a variety of games — D&D, Blades in the Dark, Daggerheart, Dread, and more, in both campaign and one-shot formats.

Actual play podcasts

• Not Another D&D Podcast — otherwise known as NADDPOD; a pack of chaos gremlins playing D&D, some of whom you might know from other media, like Dropout’s Dimension 20!
• Dungeons and Daddies — a hilarious D&D podcast with a simple concept: four dads from our reality get flung into a high fantasy world. If you’ve ever worried you won’t have fun playing tabletop games because you don’t know how to play, please listen to season 1 — they didn’t know how to play D&D either, but it didn’t stop them from having a great time.
• Worlds Beyond Number — a relatively new actual play podcast starring Brennan Lee Mulligan, Aabria Iyengar, Erika Ishii, and Lou Wilson, who folks will recognize from other places on this list like Dimension 20 and Critical Role; WBN has recently finished their first season, titled “The Wizard, the Witch, and the Wild One,” and the depth of character-building is such a fun highlight of this season.
• Friends at the Table — one of the longest-running actual play podcasts, Friends at the Table bills itself as being about “critical world-building, smart characterization, and fun interaction between good friends.” There’s a lot of FatT, and if you’re interested especially in indie games rather than D&D, this is the podcast for you. The one downside is that the amount of it out there is overwhelming; I recommend fairly standalone season “Marielda,” a Blades in the Dark season in their own custom setting that serves as a prelude to some of the other seasons, and “Perpetua,” their currently-ongoing Fabula Ultima season.

YouTube channels

• Bob World Builder — Bob bills his channel as “where we learn to have more fun playing roleplaying games together,” and that pretty much sums up what you can expect — no clickbait, no outrage, just even-handed and good advice and a lot of extremely chill nature walks.
• Power Word Spill — Power Word Spill wants to level up your D&D campaign, and presents a lot of offbeat and cool ways to just plain run RPGs better; everything from how to run better mysteries to an in-depth dive into fourteen virtual tabletops to figure out the best one for your table. (I can’t even name fourteen VTTs!)
• Seth Skorkowsky — Similar to Bob, Seth Skorkowsky gives a lot of good advice (especially aimed at the folks running the games) on better ways to run games or tackle problems at the table. Seth also does a lot of reviews of things that aren’t D&D, such as the Blade Runner RPG or recent Call of Cthulhu modules.
• Quinns Quest — Quentin Smith of Shut Up and Sit Down fame takes on tabletop RPG reviews. One major highlight here is the Quinns Quest Guarantee: he’s played an actual campaign of any game he discusses on the channel, not just read the book. There’s also an associated audio podcast, Play the Find Out, available on his Patreon where they play weird old RPGs, such as 80s science-fantasy box set Skyrealms of Jorune and the incredibly complex and cool “white coffee table book” edition of Nobilis.
• Ginny Di — Covering a lot of areas of running roleplaying games that other channels might not, like how to properly run horror and how to handle (or choose not to handle) romance at the table, Ginny Di also is a cosplayer and musician — talk about multi-talented.
• Pointy Hat — A sentient magical hat and its extremely funny human familiar, Antonio Demico, give in-depth advice about parts of D&D that might otherwise be heavily glossed over — then provides incredibly well-thought-out free material to give a written example of their points. Ever wanted a lich — for every single class, not just Wizards? Ever thought Genasi are a little vague and could be so much cooler with just a little effort. You want Pointy Hat.
• Dungeon Dudes — Starting out as a source of both player and DM advice for D&D, the Dungeon Dudes are branching out every which way; from converti ng their third-party dark fantasy supplement Dungeons of Drakkenheim into a Daggerheart compatible setting to starting their own actual-play-meets-escape-room series, Tales from Woodcreek, DM’d by Deborah Ann Woll.

Blogs and other written content

• Bastionland — written by game designer Chris McDowall, Bastionland both serves as a wealth of add-on information for Chris’ games, like Into the Odd and Mythic Bastionland, but also sometimes serves as a sneak peek into the game design process as it happens, like his sneak peeks of recently kickstarted minis game MAC Attack and a forthcoming science fiction Bastionland game.
• Dyson’s Dodecahedron — you need a map for a fantasy roleplaying game? Dyson Logos has a map for a fantasy roleplaying game for you. His work has even turned up in some official D&D materials! These are some of the most professionally-made maps available on the net, plus there’s at least a dozen full-fledged adventures in there too.
• Sly Flourish — Some of the most common-sense advice on running tabletop games, especially with a minimum of effort, comes from Mike Shea of Sly Flourish. Sly Flourish also provides a large amount of free material for tabletop roleplaying games and even full-fledged books like The Lazy Dragon Master, available for nothing.