Dice-led fantasy with character-first consequences.
Tales of Asperran follows dice-shaped uncertainty through two connected fantasy narratives: small-town adventurers trying to do good, and the Gilded Lily’s college-dropout pirates. The tone moves easily from graveyards and dangerous wards to forged ship papers, sparring mishaps, and table laughter.
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Tales of Asperran is a collaborative fantasy actual-play feed built around original stories, character decisions, and dice-driven surprises. It loosely uses Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, but the excerpts emphasize a homegrown canon rather than imported setting lore. The feed carries two connected story strands. One follows small-town adventurers trying to do some good in a world of dangerous forests, old trails, fae protections, strange magic, and painful personal history. The other sails with the Gilded Lily, where college roommates have left higher education behind and accidentally become pirates. That second strand has a lighter nautical charge, but it is still thick with consequences: forged charters, salvaged goods, magical rings, sparring lessons, spell slots, and an axe no one fully understands. The table likes a hard scene. It also likes a sudden joke. A cemetery can become the site of grief and family memory, then the conversation can tilt into buddy-cop chemistry and the name of an axe. A protective ward can raise serious questions about risk and sacrifice, then someone will find the absurd angle in magical overcasting. The show’s appeal comes from that quick gear shift. It lets character drama breathe without sealing the table inside solemnity. Recent Asperran excerpts include Thurbash, Hamlin, Eliel, O'Sheen, Aelay, Tedward, Haley, and Tewberry moving through woods, graves, visions, wards, and unsettling transformations. Recent Gilded Lily excerpts include Kothak, Neil, Riley, Zira, Thapa, and Freya Burton handling shipboard plans, documents, weapons, magic items, and grotesque salvage. The named details matter because the show is built on party texture: one player asks how a clan honors the dead, another worries about swinging a dangerous item, another praises a forged document that looks better than it should. Bonus episodes with James D'Amato and Carolina widen the creative frame with Quest Overcountry and worldbuilding exercises. The show is not a polished audio drama pretending the table is invisible. It is table-led fantasy that leaves in the rolls, questions, corrections, and laughter that make the fiction feel actively made. That gives PlayNext users a clear signal: this is for actual-play discovery, not passive lore recap. It is character-first, playful, and willing to carry heavier material when the story asks for it.
Made for: Suits a listener who wants actual-play fantasy where table talk, character drama, and homegrown worldbuilding stay equally present. Best fit for someone comfortable with both sincere emotional scenes and sudden absurd humor.
What sets it apart: The feed’s strongest distinction is its paired-campaign feel: small-town adventurers and accidental pirates share the same canon while keeping different textures. It also foregrounds original worldbuilding and dice-driven improvisation over packaged Dungeons & Dragons lore.
Tales of Asperran is an improvisational and collaborative storytelling podcast. What does that mean? Every other week we sit down at our desks and leave our everyday lives behind to pretend to be someone we are not. We record it all and release a one hour episode every other Friday. Together we will weave a beautiful story for you, second by second, page by page. The best part of it all is that we have no idea what will happen next.
A bird crunches like wood in someone's hand, and you get to hear the table recalibrate.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A graveyard walk lets Thurbash's past surface before the table eases back into banter.
A nighttime walk to Beaudry's makeshift grave becomes a subdued test of how the living make sense of the dead. Hamlin knows the cemetery by memory, while Thurbash studies the grave markers and is drawn into describing how his clan, at the feet of the Ashmore Mountains, handled…
A forged charter, shaky rolls, and a crew bound for New Bismuth keep the pirate voyage lightly off balance.
The Gilded Lily makes a forged ship's charter do the work of both joke and pressure test. As the crew prepares for New Bismuth, Neil sells the Amarilla as a gunpowder-storage vessel hauling goods from Malachi, while Kothak and the others feel out how far confidence can carry a…
A guarded cabin, a dangerous path, and overcasting risky enough to invite divine help for an unknown creature.
The episode makes a simple forest path feel like a live argument about safety, trust, and what Eliel's protection can still hold back. Her explanation of the two safe havens, the cord with O'Sheen the deer, and the danger waiting away from the trail gives the party's improvised…
A voyage back to New Bismuth turns into uneasy weapon practice, spent spell slots, and hard looks at dangerous magic.
The return from Strygers to New Bismuth settles into the uneasy aftermath of a bad encounter, with Riley rattled by crossbow bolts and the group trying to find a weapon that fits him.
A cyan-violet vision, a sparrow rescue gone wrong, and a Tewberry mouth keep the table tilted toward chaos.
Thurbash's vision brings the cyan-and-violet tree back into focus, and the table quickly turns suspicion around magic into a bird-catching problem.
Serialized pulp radio drama: Red Panda battles android-army supervillain Captain Clockwork in 1930s Toronto.
Tales of Asperran Episode 49, "The Tough Road Home," follows Thurbash and Hamlin down the overgrown Wayward Trail toward the Cult of the Thousand Branches and a dark tree tied to Thurbash's past.
Tales of Asperran’s 'The Gilded Lilly Episode 24: The Last Leg' opens with Neil presenting a forged ship register for the Amarilla, complete with a Malachi cargo story.
Tales of Asperran episode 48, The End of the Road, turns a forest-cabin meeting into a warded standoff when Tedward hurls what he thinks is a potato and learns it is a grenade.
Tales of Asperran: The Gilded Lilly Episode 23, 'Sparring and Spellcraft,' follows a week-long sail back to New Bismuth after the crew rescues three survivors from a wrecked Imporo ship.
["Tales of Asperran Episode 47 follows Tedward, Hayley, Alea, Eliel, and Rose through the rolling thicket toward the Emerald Crossroads.", "The party is chasing Thurbash after a mind-reading encounter split him from the group, and the recap names a white-furred deer with bark under its fur, a corpse with a magic boomerang, and a clearing of giant wooden spiders.", "Alea uses Summer Court healing on Hayley, then the group notices humanoid silhouettes and shafts of light at the edges of the dark path.", "A talking wooden bird asks \"Who are you?\", and Tedward's book later exposes a forked-road warning and a phrase tied to a fake crossroads."]
Tales of Asperran’s “The Gilded Lilly Episode 22: Details” follows the Gilded Lily’s crew as they salvage the wreckage of the Valiant during a threatened storm.
Tales of Asperran’s “New Moon New Me” builds a cozy new-year holiday around Aspiron’s unseen final moon and its secret-taking superstition.
Ioana and Milchen find fragments of another arcane cannon beneath a blue sail while salvaging casks from a historic wreck.
This episode is a special bonus episode where the hosts introduce their show and are joined by guest James D'Amato for a worldbuilding exercise.
This bonus episode features a special guest promoting a world-building book, with the show's usual improvised D&D storytelling format.
The cast takes a break from the main narrative to discuss a character's departure and future direction in an improvisational fantasy story.
An improvised fantasy storytelling podcast where players use D&D 5th Edition to collaboratively create a narrative, starting with a crashed airship scene.