Not everyone has a regular Dungeons & Dragons group waiting around the corner. Finding players, learning the rules, and setting aside time for a campaign can make getting started feel like a challenge. D&D podcasts offer a way to experience the excitement of a campaign without needing to organize a game night. Whether you’re a longtime player looking for a new campaign to follow or a curious listener interested in exploring Dungeons & Dragons for the first time, these podcasts offer plenty of adventures.
1. Critical Role: Professional Voice Cast
Critical Role started as a private tabletop game years before it became a show. Liam O’Brien asked Matthew Mercer to run a one-shot for his birthday in December 2012, and the group liked it enough to keep playing every month or so for two years, using the Pathfinder rules. Geek & Sundry founder Felicia Day later asked the group to bring their game to Twitch, and the cast converted their characters to Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition just before the first stream aired on March 12, 2015. Mercer stayed behind the screen as Dungeon Master for three main campaigns before stepping into a player’s seat for Campaign Four, handing the screen to Brennan Lee Mulligan of Dimension 20.
The Kickstarter campaign for an animated special based on Vox Machina became one of the largest crowdfunding results the platform had ever recorded. What started as a goal of $750,000 for a 22-minute special turned into $11.3 million from more than 88,000 backers, enough to fund a 10-episode season. Amazon Prime Video picked it up, and The Legend of Vox Machina has since run four seasons. Critical Role Productions, the company the cast built to run the show, also publishes original tabletop books through its imprint Darrington Press. Fun fact: The Legend of Vox Machina Kickstarter closed in April 2019 as the fifth most funded project in Kickstarter’s history, with 88,887 backers pledging a combined $11,385,449.
2. Not Another D&D Podcast: Comedy Troupe Roots
Brian Murphy, Emily Axford, and Caldwell Tanner met through CollegeHumor, where the three worked together long before Not Another D&D Podcast existed. The trio had already made a comedy show called 8-Bit Book Club before Jake Hurwitz asked to learn the game for the first time. Murphy became Dungeon Master, and Hurwitz played his first session live on the podcast’s debut episode when it premiered on the Headgum network in February 2018. The launch came amid a wider wave of Dungeons & Dragons podcasts. Since then, the four hosts have built three major D&D campaigns together.
Not Another D&D Podcast is one of the biggest shows on Patreon, ranked 10th among all creators on the platform and 7th among podcasts, with more than 39,000 paying members. Beyond the main campaigns, the group produces spinoff series such as Dungeon Court, a mock trial show built from rules disputes at the table, and 8-Bit Book Club, the video game inspired series that predates the main podcast. Fun fact: The hosts are developing a video game based on their first campaign, titled ‘Not Another RPG: The Search for the Chronocruxes’.
3. Dimension 20: Anthology Style Campaigns
Dimension 20 launched on September 26, 2018, as one of the first shows built for Dropout, the streaming service CollegeHumor spun up that year. Brennan Lee Mulligan created the show and still serves as its regular Game Master, though the cast and setting change with almost every season. That anthology format lets the show jump from a fantasy high school in Fantasy High to a candy themed monarchy in A Crown of Candy without breaking continuity, since each world stands on its own. Mulligan has run tabletop RPG sessions since childhood. He first stepped into the Game Master’s seat at age ten, a year after his mother introduced him to Dungeons and Dragons at age nine.
Dimension 20 has become known for producing a large share of the DnD actual play content people watch today, releasing 27 seasons and close to 300 episodes since it began. The show has also sold out arenas, taping a live episode at Madison Square Garden in front of 20,000 fans complete with staged pyrotechnics. Critics and fans alike often list its longest running seasons among the best D&D campaigns ever streamed, particularly Fantasy High and its two sequel seasons. Fun fact: In a side quest called Escape From the Bloodkeep, a guest cast including Critical Role’s Matthew Mercer played the lieutenants of a freshly deceased Dark Lord, scrambling to hold his empire together, as a Lord of the Rings parody told entirely from the losing side.
4. Dungeon Master’s Block: DM Advice
Dungeon Master’s Block gives advice straight to the person running the table. Chris Thompson and Mitch Connelly started the show in 2014 under the Block Party Network. Each episode focuses on one tool, monster, or mechanic that a Dungeon Master can try out that same week. Neal Powell later joined as a permanent co-host. Guests have included veteran designers such as Jonathan Tweet, a co-creator of the D&D 3rd edition rules, and novelist Richard Baker, who has written for the game since the 1990s.
Two recurring segments give the show its format. DM-Nastics picks one D&D topic a week and breaks it into three parts, an idea to try, a way to practice it, and a resource to go with it. Creation and Inspiration brings in guest designers to pitch batches of campaign ideas. Outside those segments, the show covers everything from running Dungeons and Dragons games to designing magic items and full campaign arcs. Years of back episodes now give Dungeon Masters a steady supply of tabletop RPG advice to work through one at a time. Dungeon Master’s Block has become one of the D&D podcasts built for exactly that kind of weekly advice. Fun fact: The Creation and Inspiration segment has drawn in more than a dozen guest Dungeon Masters over nine installments, working toward a shared goal of 300 total campaign concepts.
5. Dungeons & Daddies: Absurdist Family Comedy
Dungeons & Daddies takes an ordinary premise, four suburban dads, and drops them into a fantasy world run on DnD rules. Anthony Burch, who had already written for the Borderlands games, pitched the idea and became Dungeon Master when the show premiered in January 2019. Matt Arnold, Will Campos, Beth May, and Freddie Wong play the dads, later joined by their in-game grandchildren for a second season set generations after the first. Season three swapped systems completely, trading the tabletop rules for Call of Cthulhu and handing the Dungeon Master’s chair to Will Campos while Burch took a seat as a player instead.
The show has since grown well beyond the podcast feed. Since 2023, Dungeons & Daddies has sold out live theater tours across the country and overseas, mixing scripted music with improvised scenes drawn from the group’s D&D campaigns. In 2026, the team launched a BackerKit crowdfund for an original sourcebook based on the show, and it raised $1.1 million in less than 24 hours. The series stands out among Dungeons & Dragons podcasts for turning a home game into a business built on live shows, merchandise, and now a rulebook of its own. Its mix of raunchy humor and unexpectedly emotional family stories has become a template for DnD actual play that trades high fantasy for domestic drama. Fun fact: The Dungeons & Daddies sourcebook crowdfund raised more than a million dollars in under a day and was still climbing toward its final total ahead of its scheduled close on August 14, 2026.
6. Three Black Halflings: Diversity in Fantasy
Three actors who met through London’s theater scene turned their off-stage conversations about the game into Three Black Halflings in June 2020. Jasper William Cartwright, Jeremy Cobb, and Luyanda Unati Lewis-Nyawo were the original three hosts. The trio built the show to talk about diversity within Dungeons & Dragons. Their conversations soon grew to cover the wider world of tabletop RPG culture, mixing interviews, advice, and one-shot actual play episodes rather than committing to one continuous campaign. Unati eventually stepped back from hosting duties, and Olivia Kennedy, known to listeners as Liv, took over as the show’s third permanent voice, joined years later by full time cast member Candace the Magnificent for the show’s 5 year anniversary in June 2025.
The show has since moved to the Headgum network and built out a growing catalog beyond its weekly episodes. In 2024 the hosts partnered with Roll and Play Press on City of the Black Rose, a campaign setting that was fully funded through Kickstarter and gave listeners a published world to run their own games in. Unati, the original third host, has gone on to voice characters in Baldur’s Gate 3 and Space Marine II, and appeared in Netflix’s Wednesday, since leaving the show. Three Black Halflings has become a leading example of D&D podcasts that spotlight race and representation in the hobby. Its hosts also point listeners toward D&D Beyond for the character options they discuss on air. Fun fact: Original host Unati Lewis-Nyawo returned for a voice cameo on the show’s 5 year anniversary episode in June 2025, years after stepping back as a full-time cast member.
You don’t have to be an experienced player to enjoy a D&D podcast. These shows can be a great introduction for newcomers while also giving longtime fans new campaigns, ideas, and perspectives to explore. Whether you’re curious about trying Dungeons & Dragons for the first time or looking for a new group to follow, the right podcast can offer a fun way to experience the game.