By: Terra Clarke Olsen
If you’ve never listened to an RPG podcast, it’s time you discovered Crit Juice, a magical realm of fantasy and booze that will leave you laughing.
Crit Juice is a podcast that features comedians and actors playing Dungeons and Dragons…while drinking. The storytelling and interaction between the players is simply captivating. Listening in, you can’t help but feel like you’re along for the ride.
Guest Player, Jillian Bell
Each episode follows the main party embarking on new adventures. They often include guest stars, like Jillian Bell from 22 Jump Street and Workaholics, which keeps things lively and fresh. And as if having comedians and actors don’t provide enough entertainment for you, their four golden rules ensure that things get…interesting. What be these golden rules—perhaps they must save a certain number of puppies or help defeat the evil that’s bewitched the greatest of mountains? Nope. Their golden rules keep things way more enticing; players must drink on initiative, drink on crits, drink on achievements, and drink on action points. As if that wasn’t enough, they also roll a d6 to see how many additional drinking rules will be applied during the session (these drinking rules are submitted by listeners, btw). So yeah, they basically drink. A lot. This might lead to a bad morning for them, but a wonderful hour of entertainment for us!
In addition to being humorous, Crit Juice engages their audience by finding ways to include the listeners in their shenanigans. Besides audience members creating new drinking rules for each session, listeners can also submit “Critical Successes” and “Critical Fails” for the DM to use in-game whenever a 20 or 1 is rolled (I’m particularly fond of the example they give on their site, reading “You pull a small whistle from a hidden pocket inside your armor. When you blow in it, no noise can be heard. Your enemy laughs. Then from nowhere, Chuck Norris roundhouses the baddie into a trillion pieces.”) They also include audio clips from listeners saying “Roll Responsibly,” promoting safety when rolling and drinking. Listeners can also send in photos of their own drink-infused game sessions that Crit Juice then shares on “Yousday” (also known as Tuesday). Crit Juice’s engagement with their listeners brings a sense of life that is often lacking from other podcasts, but does so in a not-in-your-face way that would distract from the most important part of the podcast — the game!
All in all, Crit Juice provides an entertaining story that gamers and non-gamers alike can enjoy. Cheers to you, Crit Juice crew!
*Image of Jullian Bell was taken from the .