Before moving to Luxembourg I used to make the dreadful task of folding laundry more tolerable by listening to podcasts. It all started with he Freakonomics podcast. I had already read and enjoyed the book, and I thought it was worth a shot when my brother recommended it. Around the time we moved to Luxembourg I started exploring other podcasts, mainly science based such as "This Week in Virology" and "The Skeptics Guide to the Universe". I more or less discovered Actual Play Podcasts by accident. I was looking for other people's experience playing a Swedish RPG campaign called "Svavelvinter" (lit. Sulfur Winter), which has somewhat of a cult following in Sweden. It was way ahead of its time, and still stands out today for its quality. The author, Erik Granström, recently novelized the whole campaign which has been published to even more acclaim. Sadly neither is available in any other language than Swedish. While googling this I happened to discover a newly started podcast called "Vi Spelar Rollspel" (lit. We Play RPGs), which had just started playing this campaign. This made me curious and I downloaded the app Podcast Addict, and started listening. Even though the sound quality was quite poor initially, and some of the players were new to RPGs and it took them some time to find their voices, I really enjoyed.
Although I enjoyed the material, I didn't always agree with the execution. I often found that there was too much joking and laughing which distracted from the storytelling. So in a break between campaign arcs I started looking into what else there was out there. I wanted something more atmospheric, and therefore thought that Call of Cthulhu might suit me better. I did some research, and decided to give "How We Roll" a shot. The initial episodes also had some audio quality issues, but I quite enjoyed it, even though I somewhat missed the character progression and epic storytelling you would only get from a longer campaign. This was also the first time I experienced added sound effects, like creaking doors, background music etc. I initially found it quite cool, but soon came to the conclusion that this too distracted from the story. I probably find background music more acceptable than sound effects, as this is less intruding, while setting the mood better than anything else.
At this point a lot of new Swedish RPGs were coming out, many of them revamps of the RPGs I used to play as a child, and as a result a lot of new Actual Play Podcasts emerged playing these games. One of the first and most noteworthy is perhaps "Rollspelsradio"'s (lit. RGP Radio) Mutant År Noll: Genlab Alfa (Mutant Year Zero - Genlab Alpha), with excellent audio quality and production quality. I sampled a couple of other Swedish Actual Play podcasts, but nothing else really made a lasting impression. They weren't bad, they just didn't play RPGs or campaigns I was interested in, or the focus was different from what I wanted.
In the autumn 2017 a new podcast called "Red Moon Roleplaying" emerged announcing that they would be playing "The Black Madonna", for the then upcoming Kult: Divinity Lost. This too was a revamp of cult classic, and even though I had never played the game myself, I had heard a lot about it. Having similar themes to Call of Cthulhu, and with a promised focus on roleplay and story, I gave it a shot. I was instantly amazed by the quality. The first few episodes had some issues with sound quality, but it was everything I had been looking for. It was almost like a professional radio dramatization. Excellent background music, edited and cut, with heavy focus on story, not an endless roll of dice. I think the first episode passed without a single die roll. This was what I had been looking for.
Red Moon Roleplaying followed up with an equally good production of Curse of Strahd, and are currently playing the latest edition of Vampire. They went on to win a well deserved Silver ENnie for "Best Podcast"at the ENnie Awards last year. I look forward to seeing what they do the coming year.
I am also happy to see that a lot of new podcasts are popping up in Sweden, some of them even getting international recognition such as "Sweden Rolls". The production value and quality is improving everywhere and I look forward to seeing what will happen both in Sweden and abroad going forward.
