Strange worlds, built in public.
The Unexplored Places builds long-form audio drama through tabletop play, shifting from superhero conflicts to storm-wrought fantasy and doomed expeditions. Its best moments pair literary narration with lively table debate over magic, politics, loyalty, and how a story should feel.
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The Unexplored Places is an actual-play anthology of serialized genre stories, built with unusual patience for setting, tone, and consequence. It listens like a collaborative writers' room where the game system matters, but so do the images, politics, and emotional logic of the world being made. Recent episodes center on The Stormwrought Shores, a fantasy chronicle shaped by the Thousand-Year Storm, the land of Alcyon, and the ever-growing Kingdom of Denoria. The table builds from myth outward. Ancient weather, buried peoples, cliffside cities, empty coasts, hospitality norms, taboo magic, automata, and rival houses all become pieces of a living history. Karmir and Vordan are not just names on a map. Their succession crises, spies, wills, relics, coups, informants, and uneasy peace make the world feel politically tangled before the main season even begins. The show is especially good at letting players disagree productively about vibe. A conversation about avoiding a steampunk feel becomes as important as a battle, because aesthetic choices shape the fiction's rules. That attention also appears in East Haven Heights, where superhero drama is framed through splash pages, rival teams, strange powers, damaged trust, and the slow work of acting like a team again. It gets very specific. Silver Veil reads intention in combat, reality can be patched through loom imagery, and an arrest can open an issue with comic-book immediacy. Chiron's Doom shows another mode entirely: a solo game of doomed exploration, where cards reveal a monument's secrets while the expedition deteriorates. The show can be ornate. It can also be casual, self-correcting, and very funny at the table. That contrast is the point. Literary narration gives way to jokes, rules talk, pronunciation fixes, and quick debate, then folds back into myth. Listeners who enjoy polished fiction but also want to hear how narrative decisions are made will find a lot to hold onto. The Unexplored Places favors bold invention over tidy efficiency. It makes room for strange magic, political inheritance, superhero teamwork, doomed knowledge, and the messy pleasure of deciding together what kind of story this is.
Made for: For actual-play listeners who like serialized fiction, collaborative worldbuilding, superhero drama, and fantasy politics with visible creative process. It especially suits audiences who enjoy hearing players debate tone, stakes, and setting details in real time.
What sets it apart: The show foregrounds the act of making a world: inheritance disputes, visual framing, magic aesthetics, and cultural norms matter as much as combat or plot. Its range across superhero arcs, storm-wrought fantasy, and solo doomed exploration gives the feed a wider texture than a single-campaign actual play.
THE STORMWROUGHT SHORES— On a distant continent shaped by ancient storms, two separate quests across the ever-growing Kingdom of Denoria find themselves beginning to intertwine. THE UNEXPLORED PLACES is an actual play podcast about exploring weird worlds and making bold choices. We are currently playing Stormwrought by Andrew Perricone and Christine Prevas.
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Collaborative play becomes visible craft as the cast turns rules, questions and shared decisions into intricate fantasy histories and character-driven conflict.
The Unexplored Places lets fiction emerge in public, with players negotiating a world's rules and then testing their choices through play. Its Stormwrought Shores sessions turn succession disputes, espionage and competing forms of magic into a shared history, while the table…
A reality-mending loom starts as a table argument, if you like your fantasy visibly handmade.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Court intrigue and dream magic keep colliding until the setting feels wet, unstable, and politically volatile.
The episode treats power as something underground and unsettled, with magic moving like groundwater through wells, wishes, and dreams while the war between houses keeps shifting direction.
Hidden bluways, a disputed will, and palace intrigue keep the city politics humming.
This episode is strongest when it ties the citys hidden bluways to the feud among the houses above them, letting succession and expansion pressure the story from underneath.
Storm myths, house politics, and a world where weather and custom press on the same fault line.
The review centers The Unexplored Places on Alcyon, where storm-wrought shores, the Thousand-Year Storm, and the different responses of elves, Avani, and humans give the setting its pull.
A rule-driven descent where curiosity, fear, and sacrifice keep tightening the screws.
Chiron's Doom follows Christine through a solo run built around an expedition pulled toward a strange monument that leaves its explorers transfixed.
A superhero story where strategy, repair, and team trust stay at the center.
East Haven Heights Volume 2 Issue #07 keeps its attention on a superhero team split across two leads, with one side drawing attention while the other handles the real investigation.
Future-history comics criticism with bite.
Serialized pulp radio drama: Red Panda battles android-army supervillain Captain Clockwork in 1930s Toronto.
["The Unexplored Places episode \"The Stormwrought Shores Appendix A: The Emerald Bloodletting, part 3\" ties House Vordan and House Carmere to a magic system described as groundwater beneath the earth.", "Imrathi Vordan is introduced as a they-them ruler of House Vordan in an uneasy peace while a regent of the infant queen asks for aid.", "Vikrian's warning about a great power beneath the catacombs leads to street attacks, a grand-ball reveal of Oraly Razmi's surveillance spell, and Oraly's arrest.", "Kadir, Thraxius Dream Auger, and a necromancer push the catacomb thread forward, while Carmere agents find Imrathi's journal and Theria Vordan takes control of House Vordan."]
The Unexplored Places' "The Stormwrought Shores Appendix A: The Emerald Bloodletting, part 2" uses the game "Explore Your History" to build a fantasy chronology around House Karmir, House Vordan, and Sir Race Aldana.
The Unexplored Places opens The Stormwrought Shores with the legend of Alcyon, where the Thousand-Year Storm drives elves underground, pushes the Avani off their cliffside cities, and leaves humans shipwrecked on empty coasts.
A trailer for a fantasy audio drama about heroes on a quest in the storm-wrought shores of Alcyon.
Christine pauses The Unexplored Places main feed with a solo playthrough of Nick Bate's Chiron's Doom, a game about three explorers confronting a monument at civilization's edge.
The Unexplored Places returns to the Riley Rethel game Venture with Andrew's Cal, Sam's Asius Vulner and Christine's Tamina Mar back in a city locked behind a writ of passage.
The Unexplored Places cast answers listener questions about East Haven Heights Volume 2, a nine-episode, GMless mini-season, comparing it with the 13-episode Volume 1.
The Unexplored Places closes East Haven Heights Volume Two with the table deciding that a possessed Aftershock and the robot will tumble into the yawning chasm, which then swallows half of City Hall.
Silver Veil's intention-reading trick, Sentinel's missing precognition, and a Phantom Wind possession turn East Haven Heights Volume 2, Issue #07, "Misguided Ghosts," into a fight for time rather than victory.
The hosts discuss the opening of a comic issue where Alana is arrested by Aftershock while Horizon talks to Sentinel.
Christine introduces a preview episode about designing the Covenant card game with her brother Ben, promoting the full version on Patreon and the ongoing crowd sale.
In the aftermath of rifts opening, characters discuss the status of their isolation and the need for an accounting of the surrounding area.