When I watched Enola Holmes with my daughter, I really liked the protaganist breaking the fourth wall and talking directly to the audience. And I had a thought: What if someone ran an actual play D&D campaign with the same mechanism?

When I am listening to actual play podcasts, I often hear the players create an unexpected situation, sometimes I can even hear a sigh or some other reaction from the DM that indicates they didn’t expect it either. It would be really instructive in those cases to have the DM stop, turn to the audience and talk about the situation and what they are thinking about doing in reaction.

Anybody who has run a game knows what it is like to have players make unexpected choices. For example, in a recent game I had a player approach a person in a tavern, and rather than ask questions, simply punched him. OK, I didn’t expect that, and I don’t want a full bar fight, mainly due to the time it would take. The NPC had some magic at hand, so he makes a “suggestion”: “why don’t you just sit down and have a drink?”. The character makes his save, which I didn’t expect as it was a high DC. So I have another, well armed, patron step in and make it clear that a fight would not end well. Or should I have let the full bar fight happen? While a one-way soliloquy would not have helped my current situation, but it would have helped other DMs into the thoughts running through my head as a desperately tried to cope with the situation. Being a DM can be a lonely thing at times, and at least seeing others deal with the unexpected would be comforting.

I briefly thought about doing such a podcast myself, but then I think better of it given that I have no experience with audio recording, I have a really annoying sounding voice, and I don’t think my current group would be interested in being recorded. But if someone out there does this, let me know.