Actual play with jokes, care, and table noise.
The gist
Nerdy People Play D&D follows a group through Dungeons & Dragons-adjacent tabletop play and side projects, with play often kept conversational and messy in the best table-night sense. Alongside tactical Lancer fights and space-pun detours, it makes room for frank talk about safety, belonging, and growth.
PRESS PLAY
Find your next episode
About Nerdy People Play D&D
Nerdy People Play D&D is a long-running actual-play show built around the sound of friends finding the game together. It has dice, pens, paper, rules lookups, tactical mistakes, and character choices that become jokes before they become plot. The feed is centered on Dungeons & Dragons, but the excerpts show a table willing to move into other systems and moods. Lancer brings the loudest contrast. In those episodes, the group navigates mecha combat aboard the enormous juggernaut ship known as the PBC Klauschwitz, trading questions about reloading, movement, reliable damage, and how much style a failed attack should still earn. The play is crunchy, but not sterile. Someone hums a secret agent theme song. Someone worries about a custom paint job. Someone realizes a grenade may never have been armed in the first place. Better Homes and Dungeons adds another lane entirely. Those episodes use tabletop culture as a way into community responsibility, harmful online signals, exclusion from a game table, and what hope can look like after changing old beliefs. The show is sometimes blunt. It is also consistently concerned with care: taking breaks, protecting people at the table, and asking what players owe to one another when games stop being just games. Its farewell episode gives the broader project a human shape, with Josh reflecting on years of recording, friendship, lockdown, work, and the mental health value of a regular game. That makes the show feel less like a studio product than a record of a tabletop community in motion. It can be chaotic. It can be tender. It can spend real time on both a rule interaction and a moral one. For listeners who want immaculate audio drama, it may feel too table-native. For listeners who miss the ramble, friction, jokes, and care of an actual group night, that is the point.
Made for: For tabletop listeners who enjoy conversational actual play, visible rules chatter, tactical combat, and players who sound like friends at a real table. It also suits people interested in how gaming communities handle safety, exclusion, and belonging.
What sets it apart: The show pairs loose, funny campaign audio with unusually direct reflection on tabletop community ethics. Its Better Homes and Dungeons material gives the feed a personal, self-questioning edge beyond standard session recap.
In their own words
Nerdy People play Dungeons and Dragons!
Why you'd press play
Mech combat rolls into community reckoning, giving you both table banter and hard conversations.
Press play if you want
- your actual-play combat served with rules questions, missed swings, and gleeful mech mayhem
- to feel like you are at a table where failed rolls become running jokes
Talks about
Podcasts like Nerdy People Play D&D
One Less DieMessy monster hunts with table-side sparks.
Sneak Attack!Sci-fi actual play with a long memory.
Take20 D&D Our Little D&D GameScrappy D&D, sharp banter, real table chaos.
Just Roll With ItChaotic dice, big fantasy fallout.
Rivals of WaterdeepWaterdeep adventures with earned emotional fallout.
Backwater Bastards: An Actual Play PodcastChaotic friends, cosmic trouble, terrible plans.
Episodes
- 1
Better Homes and Dungeons, Positive Roll Model, Episode 4, Finale
Hidden gem["Nerdy People Play D&D's \"Better Homes and Dungeons, Positive Roll Model, Episode 4, Finale\" opens with Josh taking a 5am call from Robbie, who says he got pulled into a group that blamed minorities, homosexuals, and trans people for his problems.", "Josh connects that story to de-radicalization research, a paper on stigma, and the book The Accidental Gorilla, then compares it with Afghan farmers facing poppy profits, Taliban pressure, and coalition-force collateral damage.", "He pivots to Rebecca Solnit's A Paradise Built in Hell, Robert Evans' It Could Happen Here, and a German-Jewish family story from Tigranosaurus to argue that community can resist isolation and hate.", "The episode closes on TTRPG voices from Katie Downey, Jess, Sean Banerjee, and Jamie Flecknow, who describe inclusive tables, sensitivity readers, and the need to keep bad-faith people like Vau and Ernie Gygax out."]
Aug 27, 2021·41m·2 clips - 2
Goodbye
Aug 21, 2021·10m - 3
Better Homes and Dungeons, Positive Roll Model, Episode 3
Hidden gemNerdy People Play D&D uses Robbie’s exclusion from a D&D table, his Reddit activity, and encounters with friends wearing extremist symbols to introduce radicalization through social isolation.
Jul 28, 2021·56m·5 clips - 4
Nerdy People Play D&D, Lancer episode 5
Nerdy People Play D&D returns to Lancer combat as Dastoine drills a sniper through the ceiling and Evgeny fires six Mjolnir rounds at another mech.
Jul 23, 2021·48m·3 clips - 5
Nerdy People Play D&D, Lancer episode 4
Nerdy People Play D&D, Lancer episode 4 follows the party inside the PBC Klauschwitz, a juggernaut ship rumored to have disappeared 200 years earlier.
Jul 11, 2021·57m·4 clips - 6
Nerdy People Play D&D, Lancer episode 3
Nerdy People Play D&D's Lancer episode places the party inside the PVC Klauschwitz, a juggernaut ship rumored to have disappeared 200 years ago.
Jun 27, 2021·57m·4 clips - 7
Nerdy People Play D&D, Lancer episode 2
Jun 19, 2021·50m - 8
Better Homes and Dungeons, Positive Roll Model, Episode 2
Jun 16, 2021·49m - 9
Better Homes and Dungeons, Positive Roll Model, Episode 1
Jun 3, 2021·44m - 10
Nerdy People Play D&D, Lancer episode 1
May 30, 2021·37m - 11
Nerdy People Play D&D, Off The Tracks! Episode 55
May 23, 2021·45m - 12
Nerdy People Play D&D, Off The Tracks! Episode 54
May 15, 2021·43m - 13
Nerdy People Play D&D, Off The Tracks! Episode 53
May 8, 2021·48m - 14
Nerdy People Play D&D, Off The Tracks! Episode 52
May 1, 2021·42m - 15
Nerdy People Play D&D, Off The Tracks! Episode 51
Apr 26, 2021·52m - 16
Nerdy People Play D&D, Off The Tracks! Episode 50
Apr 17, 2021·52m - 17
Nerdy People Play D&D, Off The Tracks! Episode 49
Apr 12, 2021·41m - 18
Better Homes and Dungeons Episode 59
Apr 6, 2021·49m - 19
Nerdy People Play D&D, Off The Tracks! Episode 48
Apr 2, 2021·50m - 20
Better Homes and Dungeons Episode 58
Mar 31, 2021·48m - 21
Nerdy People Play D&D, Off The Tracks! Episode 47
Mar 29, 2021·45m - 22
Better Homes and Dungeons Episode 57
Mar 22, 2021·46m - 23
Nerdy People Play D&D, Off The Tracks! Episode 46
Mar 20, 2021·52m - 24
Nerdy People Play D&D, Off The Tracks! Episode 45
Mar 14, 2021·43m - 25
Nerdy People Play D&D, Off The Tracks! Episode 44
Mar 6, 2021·43m - 26
Nerdy People Play D&D, Off The Tracks! Episode 43
Feb 20, 2021·41m - 27
Better Homes and Dungeons Episode 56
Feb 17, 2021·47m - 28
Nerdy People Play D&D, Off The Tracks! Episode 42
Feb 13, 2021·54m - 29
Burn Bryte, Episode Retrospective and Catch Up For Our D&D Game
Feb 5, 2021·44m - 30
Better Homes and Dungeons Episode 55
Feb 1, 2021·46m - 31
Burn Bryte, Episode 11
Jan 29, 2021·47m - 32
Better Homes and Dungeons Episode 54
Jan 26, 2021·56m - 33
Burn Bryte, Episode 9
Jan 8, 2021·50m - 34
Burn Bryte, Episode 8
Dec 21, 2020·56m - 35
Better Homes and Dungeons Episode 53
Dec 14, 2020·42m - 36
Burn Bryte, Episode 7
Dec 12, 2020·48m - 37
Burn Bryte, Episode 6
Dec 5, 2020·48m - 38
Better Homes and Dungeons Episode 52
Nov 30, 2020·44m - 39
Burn Bryte, Episode 5
Nov 28, 2020·56m - 40
Better Homes and Dungeons Episode 51
Nov 24, 2020·44m - 41
Burn Bryte, Episode 4
Nov 20, 2020·46m - 42
Better Homes and Dungeons Episode 50
Nov 16, 2020·1h - 43
Burn Bryte, Episode 3
Nov 13, 2020·47m - 44
Better Homes and Dungeons Episode 49
Nov 9, 2020·40m - 45
Burn Bryte, Episode 2
Nov 6, 2020·52m - 46
Burn Bryte, Episode 1
Oct 30, 2020·45m - 47
Better Homes and Dungeons Episode 48
A humorous actual play D&D podcast where the host interviews a guest about their roleplaying experience.
Oct 26, 2020·45m - 48
Better Homes and Dungeons Episode 47
A group of nerdy players engage in a Dungeons & Dragons session with space-themed puns and character introductions.
Oct 21, 2020·48m - 49
Better Homes and Dungeons Episode 46
Host Josh introduces guest Grant Howard, discussing their upcoming Kickstarter and engaging in humorous banter about Dungeons and Dragons.
Oct 16, 2020·52m - 50
Better Homes and Dungeons Episode 45
The host interviews game designer John Harper about his experience playing Blades in the Dark, a tabletop RPG, with humorous anecdotes about their criminal campaign.
Oct 7, 2020·1h