Feuding gods, mind flayers, and players narrating the misses.
Chafing Armor is an actual-play Dungeons & Dragons show, with Michael Corley as Dungeon Master and players Lee, Riley, Dare, James and Izzy taking on drow, mind flayers and meddling gods. Its signature move is handing combat narration to the players, who describe how an enemy's blow fails or how a foe goes down.
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Chafing Armor is a Dungeons & Dragons actual play built around a table of friends and a Dungeon Master, Michael Corley, who introduces himself with a different adjective from one session to the next: insidious, demonic, lovable, irascible. The players heard across these sessions are Lee, Riley, Dare, James and Izzy, and each answers roll call by naming the character they have brought to the table. That cast is gloriously odd. Gronk of Grumsh is an ever-vengeful half-orc, half-troll; Tix Birchmanson is a gnome paladin of Garl Glittergold; Penton Chalice is a spellscale sorcerer; Merezzi Mugrah is a half-orc barbarian; and Distant Bells is a Kenku former rogue who has been transformed into a stuffed toy. The main campaign keeps returning to Kalimvor and the Staff of Seraphim, and to a struggle among gods in which the death god Falazure and Bane both loom. Mind flayers recur, and one thread turns on Penton's mother falling to an illithid infection. Side series stretch the map. 'Descent into the Demon Webs' follows a party into the Underdark and toward Lolth, the spider queen; 'The Dragon Realms' hands the Dungeon Master's chair to Dare; 'The Hornless King' features a party that includes an alchemist rabbit-folk and an axolotl-folk cleric. What a listener gets, above all, is combat played as shared storytelling. When an enemy misses, Corley often turns to the player and asks how the attack failed, so a blade catches on a gorget or a monk bends clear of four swords at once. Kills get the same invitation, and players answer with a flaming whip that flings a soldier into the air or a halberd carving into a shark man. The arithmetic stays on mic. Attack totals, damage tallies, willpower saves and a house rule that the defender wins all surface mid-fight, along with the occasional mental-math stumble. Some episodes open with a short dramatized scene before roll call: a drow baroness handing out a disguise, a dragon resisting the presence trying to claim her mind, minor gods bickering over who has a spare champion. Between rounds the table wanders, into an X-Men comics tangent, a Skyrim joke, a family story about a girl at a fishing camp. The humor is teasing and often bawdy. Guests turn up too, among them the cosplayers Idlywylde, Mike Mews and Lightbearer_reborn, who voices Skhald in 'Penton Shallus Epilogue: Take wing', an epilogue James wrote. For a self-contained run, the miniseries 'Descent into the Demon Webs' is a natural place to try. For the larger arc, the numbered main episodes carry Penton's family crisis and the fight against Falazure through titles such as 'Barnacles Below' and 'A baleful, blue glow'. Sessions close with thanks to the players and a promise to roll with listeners soon.
Made for: Suits a listener who enjoys hearing the mechanics of a fight, from attack totals to saving throws to house rules, alongside the jokes and tangents of a close-knit gaming group. Best for someone comfortable with gory combat descriptions and bawdy humor.
What sets it apart: The Dungeon Master regularly hands the narration of misses and killing blows back to the players, so combat plays as a run of described moments rather than bare dice results. Dramatized scenes before some sessions and side series with their own parties, including one run by a different Dungeon Master, widen the main campaign.
Dungeons and Dragons Podcast
A frog tells the party to hurry up; your fantasy detour has acquired a heckler.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A dragon reunion turns into a loose, funny table scene about magic items, water breathing, and awkward bargaining.
Chafing Armor's "Reunions" opens on a broken mountaintop, where Droom reconnects with Elphaxia and recounts how mind flayers forced him to breathe fire over piles of gold until an orc and a kind spellscale helped free him.
A slave-pen sermon on power and vengeance turns into a frantic, funny hunt for an exit.
Chafing Armor starts in the slave pens of the City of Spiders, where Gan receives a harsh lesson in surviving the Underdark. A bored slaver frames the world as nothing but power, suspicion, and vengeance, while Gan resists the idea that captivity is proof of weakness.
A blood-marked seal turns a slaver hunt into a focused test of Gronk's nerve and ingenuity.
Chafing Armor's "Descent into Madness" sends Gronk of Grumsh into Massgate's Dregs on a rescue mission that keeps narrowing into one stubborn question: how to get past a blood-marked seal.
A deadly staff, a strained Mugrah alliance, and a coastal threat make five days feel perilous.
A divided clan, an imperiled king, and a staff that may kill its wielder give this Chafing Armor episode a clean crisis to work from. Michael Gourley steers the table into a negotiation shaped by a missing daughter, a fragile pause in military action, and the uneasy Mugrah…
A fading horizon, a blind fighter, and one uncomfortably funny bite keep this shipboard battle messy in the right ways.
Blood in the Water turns a fading-light fight aboard a resurrected ship into a loose, funny stress test for a party already working at a disadvantage.
Anne Brontë's escaping wife, heard in her own words.
Serialized pulp radio drama: Red Panda battles android-army supervillain Captain Clockwork in 1930s Toronto.
A group of players introduce their characters and recap the previous session in a Dungeons & Dragons actual-play podcast.
Chafing Armor Podcast episode 156, “Hidden Horrors,” follows Dare’s new half-orc cleric Gronk of Grumsh through Massgate’s Dregs.
Chafing Armor: “Descent into the Demon Webs, Part 2” resumes in Embry after Gan discovers platinum stamped with Loth, the Spider Queen, on a powerful doppelganger.
Chafing Armor episode 174, "Armies Within," follows Michael Corley, Dare, Riley, James, Izzy, and Lee as their characters regroup in Kalimvor after fighting undead and a death knight.
Chafing Armor’s “The Perfect Sacrafice” sends Rigor Mortis, Winston Wally, and Selvurn Tripp underwater into the Leviathan’s lair to recover an asset for Drau Zuana.
Chafing Armor’s “06 The Dragon Realms – Sorry to bug you” opens the Dragon Runs campaign in the Decapolis, a region of 10 dragon-ruled cities.
Chafing Armor episode 10, "Descent into the Demon Webs – The Pit and the Pendulum," places Corvus, Gan, Gronk, and Eleonora at the Weaver's Loom, a drow site linked to Loth's Demonwebs.
Michael Corley leads Lee, Dare, Izzy, James, and Riley through a Chafing Armor adventure in which the party races back to Kalimvor with the second half of the Staff of Seraphim.
["Chafing Armor Podcast 149, Reunions, centers on Thora Grayfield pulling a broken rapier from a 6,500-pound aboleth after Droom warns her not to reforge it.", "Michael Corley introduces Riley, Izzy Corley, Dare, James, and Lee as the table for the session.", "The party also revisits Kalimvor's yearly ritual to Isis, the perfect pearl in the town fountain, and the plan to recover the second half of the Staff of Seraphim.", "The session turns to Galen Bay's potion shop, where two aboleth eyes buy four potions and a severed hand attacks Tix Bertsmanson inside the Cragmane house."]
Chafing Armor episode 172, "Blood in the Water," follows Michael Corley as the party returns on a resurrected ship toward Kalimvor, where Lakovus offers to die with the staff of Seraphim if the lithid infection can be transferred.
Gronk of Grumsh, played by Dare and framed by Michael Corley’s Dungeon Mastering, starts episode 157 by chasing rumors of slavers in Massgate’s Dregs.
Chafing Armor episode 147 follows Michael Corley’s party in Kalimvor as they prepare for the Salt of the Sea pearl-diving ceremony with ten days left to deliver the completed staff of Seraphim.
Chafing Armor: The Hornless King opens in Draxul, where Thaddeus Brightstone has hammered for 36,524 days to destroy the demon weapon Heart Cleaver.
The players introduce their characters and recap their previous adventure in a frozen gallery.
Two sisters confront a corrupted man fused with a magical shard, planning a desperate attack to save refugees.
Two axolotl folk explore a lost temple, triggering a trap and communing with a storm goddess in a D&D actual play episode.
Chafing Armor episode 11 follows Michael Corley, Lee, Riley, Dare, and James through a Dungeons & Dragons battle involving Lady Corvus, drow guards, assassins, and rampaging driders.
Chafing Armor’s “Descent Into the Demon Webs” Episode 8 follows Gan, Gronk of Grumsh, Corvus Dragonchoked, and Eleonora as they travel through the Underdark toward Loth’s domain.
Michael Gourley's Chafing Armor Podcast episode 158 follows Merezzi Mugrah, Penton Shell, Tix Bertsmanson, and Distant Bells as Beltrane and the Mugrah clan converge on Kalimvor.