Jesters of Ravenloft: A D&D Podcast

Jesters of Ravenloft has one of the best hooks in actual play podcasting: a group of improvisers and comedians discover that they are the characters in a D&D campaign, and their sketch comedy troupe has to escape the nightmare realm of Ravenloft. It is a meta premise that actually works because the cast -- Tyler Hewitt, Del Borovic, Guy Bradford, and Adam McNamara, with Ryan LaPlante as DM -- are legitimately skilled improvisers who can sell the bit. The show is part of the Dumb-Dumbs & Dice network, which operates under the Fable & Folly umbrella, and they produce eight different TTRPG shows. Jesters stands out as their flagship. Two new episodes drop every week, recorded and streamed live on Twitch every Wednesday at 7:30 PM ET, which is an aggressive release schedule that keeps momentum high. The podcast has racked up over two million downloads and regularly lands in the top 50 fiction podcasts on both Spotify and Apple Podcasts, which is impressive for a show that leans hard into comedy. The Ravenloft setting gives the show a horror-comedy tone that works surprisingly well -- think improv comedians trapped in a gothic horror campaign where nothing goes according to plan. The D&D 5e rules provide structure, but the comedy always comes first. If you like your tabletop gaming with a heavy dose of sketch comedy energy and do not mind some chaos at the table, this one is worth your time.