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An actual play RPG show where we create a new world and play games in it using a combination of different systems. The last 6 episodes are the Weeping Cedars prequel actual play, and are canon. The rest of the series is not canon, but is still great!
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Visible game mechanics, collaborative deduction, and recurring small-town dread make its actual play feel constructed without feeling predetermined.
Refugees of Esmerelda lets the rules of an actual play remain visible without surrendering the fiction to them. Blaine can explain how a card draw shaped a death or transformation, then join the cast in making frightened, imperfect decisions inside Weeping Cedars.
A drowned boy reaches out, and you're left weighing a hug against kicking down the door.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A church crawl that starts in dream fire and ends with a body-horror reveal.
Episode 32 opens in dream fire and keeps tightening the screws: burning children, a black-clad stranger with a white collar, a church that promises a grim reset, and a final turn toward something older and bodily wrong.
A river-bound investigation finds its sharpest horror when a mill museum's ordinary exhibits give way to obsidian wood.
The River follows a search for landmarks in Weeping Cedars and gradually turns it into a clearer picture of a town bound to its water. Its strongest images are immediate: a moonless street, a historical society giving way beneath an inky shadow, and a mill museum whose displays…
A subterranean room, a drowned child, and a diary that makes the town feel rotten.
A subterranean room full of filing boxes throws the story into a sharp stretch of uncertainty, then the past starts bleeding back in through diary pages. The drowned child image lands hard.
A creeping haunt where the road darkens, the doors hold, and even the watch seems to disagree with the day.
This episode settles into a slow-burn haunt built from ordinary talk and worsening signs. Outside a stone house, a child that appears drowned reaches toward the group, the door will not give, and the road keeps darkening as the rain picks up and daylight seems to slip away.
A measured curtain-pull that makes the earlier horror scenes feel more earned.
Refugees of Esmerelda moves past scene-setting and into the machinery behind it. Blaine revisits the last two weeks of English Eerie, a single-player horror role-playing game built around journal entries and card draws, and shows how those mechanics shaped what came next.
Rules, quests, derailments, and consequences.
Serialized pulp radio drama: Red Panda battles android-army supervillain Captain Clockwork in 1930s Toronto.
Episode 33 of Refugees of Esmerelda follows the group through a shadow-filled church connected to Weeping Cedars, where Father Nader fights an ancient creature.
Alan and Joe wake from the same fire nightmare and land in Weeping Cedars with smoke and screaming still stuck in their heads.
A bridge crossing turns into a 1914 steamboat fire with a screaming crowd and a sinking boat.
The group slips through the rear door and down into the old town hall basement.
They start outside a large stone house, staring at a drowned child on the path.
Blaine says this week will be a little different.
The host introduces episode 17 of an actual play RPG podcast, featuring the second half of a single-player horror game called English Eerie, and apologizes for the delay due to a migraine.
The host introduces a single-player RPG called English Eerie, a slow-burning horror game using a modified deck of cards, to be played by different hosts over the next few weeks.
A group of refugees from the fallen city of Esmeralda begins rebuilding in a new land after escaping a devastating siege.