Monster hunting with messy hearts and table chaos.
Thornvale follows a Monster of the Week campaign through supernatural danger, alternate Thornvale, fraught character bonds, and endgame consequences. Its table energy swings from emotional farewells to loose, funny outtakes where names, plans, and rules sometimes collapse mid-scene.
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Thornvale is a Monster of the Week actual-play audio drama with the scale and sentiment of a long-running home campaign. Its later episodes carry the weight of a story that has been lived in for a long time. The excerpts point to a supernatural town saga involving the Riftlands, an oracle, a lich, alternate Thornvale, and characters who have to make peace with versions of people they no longer fully recognize. The drama is earnest. Henry, River, Bjorn, Hank, Manly, Gideon, and others move through scenes shaped by grief, blame, rescue, and the strange intimacy of people trying not to hurt each other again. The finale material treats the end of the campaign as a real ending, complete with tissues, ritual, reference sheets, and the bittersweet feeling of closing a familiar game window for the last time. It is not all solemn. The table is loose, chatty, and very comfortable letting mistakes breathe. Outtakes feature forgotten names, timeline confusion, wrong words, derailed searches, and repeated pleas for Jonathan to cut things. That casual friction gives the show much of its personality. Thornvale also expands around the main campaign with Behind the Veil arc discussions, community updates, Patreon mentions, talk of other shows, and a one-shot built around a drinking-game premise. The boozy special goes knowingly off track while still pausing for a responsible note about alcohol. The core appeal is the contrast. Big supernatural consequences sit beside players laughing at logistics, inventing names late, and debating whether a dented Lamborghini is still worth protecting. The result feels less like a sealed fiction product and more like a campaign table that slowly became a shared mythology. Its audience will likely be most at home with long-form actual play, character-heavy genre storytelling, and the messy pleasure of friends building lore in real time.
Made for: Thornvale suits actual-play listeners who like serialized supernatural drama, emotional character arcs, and a relaxed table that leaves room for laughter. It is best for audiences comfortable starting a long campaign with dense history and recurring in-jokes.
What sets it apart: Its strength is the mix of campaign-ending sincerity and unguarded table presence. The excerpts show a group willing to treat character stakes seriously while still preserving the stumbles, bloopers, side chats, and behind-the-scenes reflection around the game.
Thornvale is a narratively-driven, actual-play, Monster of the Week RPG podcast following the lives of three monster hunters as they struggle to protect a small island town in Florida.
A rooftop showdown pauses for a rules check, then puts your feelings back in danger.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A blooper reel that keeps finding its way back into the story.
The episode keeps Andrew, Jonathan, Sammy, Susanna, Kelvin, and the others in constant motion, with the comedy built on catch-ups, cut lines, bleeped jokes, and the kind of studio chaos that makes a small mistake spiral into a bigger bit.
A drink-fueled detour that turns a truck, a trailer, and a soap joke into chaos.
Thornvale treats its boozy one shot as a deliberately unruly sprint, kicking off with the bad news that the long-planned drink-heavy outing lands just after Hannah cannot drink alcohol.
A finale that folds the save and the goodbye into the same ritual, with one more epilogue still to come.
Thornvale closes Season 3 by folding its ending into the show's own small rituals: the Monster of the Week reference sheet, the Roll 20 setup, the bookmarked tabs, and the last push to get the people of alternate Thornvale across before the finish.
Dice, divine mysteries, and the trouble with good intentions.
Thornvale Final Outtakes and Bloopers opens with Andrew and Susanna turning the start of the recording into a marriage joke, then immediately redirecting into cat chatter and edit notes for Jonathan.
Thornvale’s "The Boozy Boozie One Shot" starts with Hannah saying she is "Pregante" and cannot drink, while Andrew gives a responsible-drinking disclaimer and sets rules like "drink when you curse." The cast pregames with bourbon, cranberry-vodka-mule attempts, pina coladas, and White Claw before the story moves to Lake Constance, where an "1,800-pound ball of gin" has been sunk.
Thornvale Season 3, Episode 78, "Seeing the Light," opens as probably the final Thornvale episode, with Bjorn pulling Henry back from a rooftop fall in alternate Thornvale.
Thornvale Season 3, Episode 77, “Risking the Dark,” follows Bjorn, Henry, Sammy, Hank, and Manly as they prepare to confront Bjorn’s alternate self across a breach between worlds.
Thornvale's "Final Preparations" follows Bjorn, Sammy, Henry, Miguel, and their allies as they prepare to confront an alternate Bjorn after Samantha's death and a funeral.
Thornvale's episode 75 opens with a Minecraft anecdote about killing a natural pink sheep (a 0.164 percent spawn) before moving into a recap of the failed ritual on Samantha.
Sammy's book roll reveals Jadis is centuries old and stays sane by switching bodies every couple of decades.
Thornvale’s fifth annual Thorny Awards rank Season 3 episodes and 2023 one-shots across ten categories.
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The host welcomes listeners to Thornvale, an actual-play Monster of the Week RPG podcast, and promotes their Discord community and Patreon.
The host welcomes listeners, promotes the Discord and Patreon, and teases the upcoming episode of their Monster of the Week RPG actual-play podcast.
The hosts celebrate reaching episode 202 and invite listeners to join their community before starting the game session.
The cast recaps a previous arc involving a lich and an oracle, discussing what happened to their characters after a mysterious disappearance.