Puzzle horror with table banter intact.
Crumpets & Kerosene follows a 5th Edition campaign where social scenes can turn into lethal games, cursed vials, riddles, and undead threats. Kelly keeps the table moving with offhand humor while recurring characters like Charles, Blanche, and Elizabeth test plans against strange rooms, suspicious hosts, and unreliable bargains.
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Crumpets & Kerosene is a 5th Edition actual-play campaign with a scrappy table feel and a strong appetite for darkly comic trouble. Kelly serves as host and Dungeon Master Storyteller, introducing scenes with a casual, self-deprecating rhythm before dropping the party into something far less casual. The recent stretch plays like a chain of haunted social encounters. A funeral becomes a chance for deception. An inn visit grows uncomfortable before anyone reaches a bed. A dinner party reveals itself as a survival game with traps, locked doors, disappearing hosts, and an hourglass counting down. It moves fast when the danger arrives. The fun is often in the hesitation beforehand, as the players inspect objects, ask oddly specific questions, and try to decide whether a vial is medicine, resurrection magic, acid, poison, or a terrible idea wearing a useful label. The campaign favors rooms with secrets. Books, numbers, paintings, apple trees, foam on plates, chutes beneath chairs, candles, clockwork locks, and portraits all become possible clues or threats. Charles, Blanche, and Elizabeth tend to approach the world with different instincts, so scenes turn into negotiation before they become action. Someone wants to read the room. Someone wants to question the priest or the husband. Someone wants to move the coffin before the situation moves them. That push and pull gives the show its texture. The horror is present but rarely solemn for long. Undead fear effects, corpses in kitchens, suspicious cooks, paralyzing food, and unsettling NPCs sit beside jokes about episode titles, favorite bands, scary movies, art, drinks, siblings, and the realities of recording multiple episodes at once. The table talk stays visible. Rules clarifications are part of the rhythm, as are missed rolls, microphone bumps, side comments, and the occasional title-worthy aside. That makes the show feel less like an edited fantasy drama and more like a campaign night preserved with its rough edges. Its strongest moments come when the players realize the room has rules they do not know yet, then begin testing the walls of the game from inside the fiction. Crumpets & Kerosene works best for listeners who enjoy actual play as social strategy, not just performance. It offers puzzle horror, character banter, and improvised problem solving from a group willing to let confusion, comedy, and danger share the same table.
Made for: Best for actual-play listeners who enjoy 5th Edition mechanics, fantasy setups, and the sound of players reasoning through danger in real time. It especially suits fans who like puzzles, strange NPCs, and casual table humor alongside the campaign story.
What sets it apart: The show stands out through its handmade, conversational energy: Kelly’s rulings, player uncertainty, and out-of-character jokes remain part of the experience. Its recent episodes lean heavily on trap rooms, riddles, social deception, cursed objects, and oddball horror rather than straightforward combat alone.
Crumpets and Kerosene is a real play 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons Campaign inspired by our favorite science fiction, video games, tabletop games, pencil, and paper games, books, movies, and our imaginations. Join our gamers as they meet up online to play the year's biggest release only to find out that the game is more real than expected.
A burning bear prompts a fire-safety joke; you'll know if this is your kind of game night.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A cleric follows a numbered-book riddle through biblical clues, failed checks, and a suddenly sprouting apple tree.
Crumpets and Kerosene frames a sibling question as the doorway into a 5th Edition actual-play puzzle, with Charles Wolfe, Philippe's cleric, trying to make sense of random books, three-digit numbers, and a riddle that seems to lean toward a biblical clue.
A dinner table, hidden chute, and hourglass turn a fantasy meal into a survival puzzle.
A dinner party shifts into a mechanical survival game when the husband tells his guests they must be the last one standing and uncover each room's secret before they can move on.
A resurrection mystery turns a handful of vials into dangerous evidence.
A Dungeons & Dragons session settles into a resurrection problem with a sharp chemical risk: the vials may tether a soul to the plane of existence, but each player is told their vial works differently.
A D&D search for Midge turns kitchen small talk into darkly comic suspicion around a dead guard.
A routine Dungeons & Dragons search for Midge turns grotesque inside what appears to be a family-run business. The questioning keeps drifting from a cook and filthy kitchen spaces to someone who died yesterday and the guard who has just died, until the whole scene feels both…
A tired party looks for dinner and beds at an inn where the welcome feels difficult to trust.
Crumpets & Kerosene turns a search for food and beds into a quietly uneasy piece of actual-play theatre. Kelly, the Dungeon Master and Storyteller, guides the party into an inn where practical choices -- eat, sleep, leave early -- sit beside darker questions about a prison…
Pokemon fantasy, dice drama, sprawling party chaos.
Serialized pulp radio drama: Red Panda battles android-army supervillain Captain Clockwork in 1930s Toronto.
Crumpets & Kerosene S3 Team Alpha Episode 22 opens with Kelly Williams asking the cast about siblings before the table shifts back into a 5th Edition dungeon crawl.
A dinner-table puzzle in a nameless house turns into a five-course survival game when the host says the party must be "the last one standing." Kelly Williams runs the table as Dungeon Master, while Felipe Garcia, Stephanie Mccleskey, and Bettina Schroeder play Charles Wolfwood, Blanche Gray, and Elisabeth Everly.
["Crumpets & Kerosene's \"S3 Team Alpha Episode 20: Another 1 in the Bag\" centers on Abraham's resurrection business, where bodies are stored for three years and 500 gold buys a very literal insurance policy.", "Philip Garcia as Charles Wolfwood, Stephanie McCleskey as Blanche, and Bettina Schroeder as Elizabeth Everly drive the table talk, starting with odd habits like pairs, constant singing, and potion-like jars.", "Kelly Williams recaps Typhoid Mitch, the purple rose poison, and Blanche's mage hand crushing the flower into Mitch after a resurrection test.", "The party ends up at a polished house with armed occupants and artifacts from different centuries, turning the session into a moral and investigative choice rather than a clean solve."]
Crumpets & Kerosene's Team Alpha Episode 19, Typhoid Midge, opens with an Ice and Dice convention ad in Cincinnati, Ohio and then drops into a Noxplay 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons table run by a dungeon master who plays most NPCs.
The audio opens with an Ice and Dice convention ad for Cincinnati, Ohio, then shifts into Crumpets & Kerosene, a fifth-edition Dungeons and Dragons actual-play led by Kelly.
Crumpets & Kerosene: The Golden Age follows Charles Wolfwood, Elizabeth Everly, and Blanche Gray as they investigate a suspicious funeral and attempt to resurrect a dead woman.
Crumpets & Kerosene’s “S3 Team Alpha Episode 16: First mission or our Last” follows Elizabeth Everly, Charles Wolfwood, Blanche, and Twig as they begin Abraham’s corpse-revival assignments.
Callie Williams leads the Crumpets and Kerosene Dungeons & Dragons party through a confrontation with armed hooligans, a graveyard, and an apothecary.
Dungeon Master Kelly leads Team Alpha through a town where a living breakfast precedes a visit to the Widow's Maker, a spider-run clothing shop.
Crumpets & Kerosene begins a Team Bravo campaign with Andrea playing Ruth, a paladin who arrives at the Priory of the Shadow Nuns.
Crumpets and Kerosene’s “S3 Episode 14: Leveling up and Breakfast Time” follows Charles, Elizabeth Everly, and Blanche as they reach level two in a shared dream.
Timothy Conley leads Team Alpha through Gary Gygax’s 1976 Barrier Peaks module using Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st edition rules.
Crumpets & Kerosene’s “Shopping with the Widow” follows Blanche and Elizabeth through a capital-city shopping trip after a giant-rat encounter.
Crumpets and Kerosene: S3 Episode 12 follows Zandra O'Keefe and Blanche as they pursue money, reputation, and equipment in the town of Baladon.
Crumpets and Kerosene: S3 Episode 11, “The Marle District,” follows Kelly's international Dungeons & Dragons party as Charles Wolfwood searches for a holy place in an unfamiliar city.
Crumpets & Kerosene: The Golden Age follows Blanche and Elizabeth through a library where a glass orb identifies Blanche as a wizard and Elizabeth as a ranger.
Crumpets & Kerosene’s “S3 ep 9: Battle of the Bards part II The House of Gray” follows the party after a bard competition, where they receive 14 gold, re-strung instruments, two free nights, and one city reputation point.
Crumpets and Kerosene: “The Battle of the Bards Part I” places Zandra O’Keefe, Elizabeth Everly, Blanche Gray, and Charles Woolford in a 5th-edition Dungeons & Dragons bard contest.
Crumpets and Kerosene follows Elizabeth, Charles Wolfe, Blanche, and Zandra after a one-year time jump leaves them deciding whether to seek a king or a church.
Crumpets & Kerosene: The Golden Age follows Charles Grayson, Elizabeth Everly, Blanche Gray, Wolf, and Twig as a pocket watch displays August 17, 1503, coordinates, and an exact time.
Crumpets & Kerosene: The Golden Age opens with Morai, a spectre formed from Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos after Zeus destroys their physical forms.
Crumpets and Kerosene Golden Age: S3 Episode 4: Roman Bath House follows dungeon master Kelly and players Stephanie McCluskey, Bettina, and Istartios Koutsoumanis as Blanche, Elizabeth Emily, and Charles Grayson.
Crumpets and Kerosene's Golden Age episode follows Kelly's new adventuring crew as Elizabeth Everlust emerges from a tree while searching for her fox Oliver.
Crumpets and Kerosene: S3 Episode 2: What's in the woods follows Kelly’s Season 3 Dungeons and Dragons party into a confrontation with a nine-foot brown bear.
Crumpets and Kerosene Season 3 opens with Kelly, a host and Dungeon Master, introducing a new crew whose characters travel from the 1800s toward the 1500s.
The season finale of an actual play D&D campaign where the characters begin to dissipate as a patch is incoming.
A group of gamers play a 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons campaign that becomes more real than expected.
A group of gamers plays a Dungeons & Dragons campaign that becomes more real than expected, with comedic banter and dice-rolling.