Fool's Gambit: Piloting an Original Storytelling Podcast using D&D Mechanics

Role: Executive Producer & Principal Gamemaster

Timeline: October 2023 – June 2024 (9 months)

Budget: ~$675

Link(s): shows.acast.com/fools-gambit-podcast, Apple Podcast / Spotify / Amazon Music

The Challenge

Start a narrative D&D podcast from absolute zero while juggling a demanding day job. Simple enough, right? Except I wanted it to actually sound good—not like four friends mumbling into laptop microphones from their basements.

The mission: coordinate 4 busy adults across 3 time zones (including a pregnant mom, a Raytheon engineer, and healthcare workers) to create something that could hold its own against established shows like Critical Role. All while teaching myself audio production, managing international freelancers, and maintaining the delicate balance between "yes, and..." improv spirit and "please don't break my carefully planned story" DM anxiety.

Oh, and do it all on nights and weekends with a budget that wouldn't cover a decent microphone for most podcasts.

Process & Execution

Technology Research & Vendor Management: Fell down the rabbit hole of podcast research, consuming what felt like every D&D actual-play show on the internet. (Productivity tip: calling it "competitive analysis" makes binge-watching Critical Role sound very professional.) Evaluated recording platforms based on the very scientific criteria of "will this actually work when someone inevitably has audio issues mid-session?"

Landed on Riverside.fm for its individual track recording—because nothing says "amateur hour" like one person's bad audio ruining everyone's performance. For hosting, went with ACast after comparing analytics dashboards like I was choosing a retirement plan.

The real adventure was coordinating international freelancers through Fiverr. Managed a 13-hour time difference with an Australian logo designer (who probably wondered why this American kept sending AI-generated images of dragons at 3 AM their time) and navigated creative direction with an Italian composer despite my complete inability to speak music theory. Turns out "make it sound like adventure but not too Disney" is surprisingly effective creative direction when paired with specific time codes from reference tracks.

Production Workflow Development: Created what I generously called a "3-wave editing process" using Adobe Audition—software that made me question every life choice that led to spending my evenings learning spectral frequency editing. Wave 1: content editing and trying to salvage moments where players forgot they were performing for an audience, not just hanging out. Wave 2: layering in music and sound effects from Artlist to make footsteps actually sound like footsteps instead of someone aggressively tapping a table. Wave 3: quality control, or as I called it, "listening to my own voice for hours while questioning my life choices."

Developed standardized intro/outro templates because apparently doing custom intros for every episode was my definition of "sustainable workflow." Spoiler alert: it wasn't.

Cross-Functional Coordination: Established Discord communication channels and Google Sheets scheduling matrices to manage availability across time zones. Conducted group sessions for character development and story alignment, balancing creative input with narrative coherence requirements.

Quality Assurance & Process Optimization: When audio quality issues emerged mid-project, implemented comprehensive technical solutions including noise reduction protocols, de-essing for sibilance control, and dynamic compression for level consistency. Discovered that one player's custom audio setup created significant post-production challenges, requiring development of specialized editing workflows to maintain quality standards. Self-taught advanced Adobe Audition techniques including normalization, spectral frequency display editing, and multi-track mixing to address plosive sounds and background noise contamination. Created standardized recording protocols and equipment troubleshooting guides that reduced post-production time by approximately 20% between episodes while maintaining professional audio quality standards.

Results & Impact

Content Delivery: Produced 3 episodes totaling 108+ minutes of finished content—Introduction (2:11), "Willik of the Dustbowl" (58:59), and "Iktis of the Wilds" (47:22)—with a third episode in strategic development tied to upcoming solo adventure module.

Audience Reach: Achieved 543 listeners across 6 countries (67% US, 8% Canada, 7% UK) with 14 five-star ratings across platforms. Top episode "Willik of the Dustbowl" drove highest engagement, with Apple Podcasts (29.6%) and Spotify (21.4%) representing primary listening platforms.

Process Innovation: Established scalable production framework including reusable creative assets, vendor management protocols, and technical workflows that could support future expansion with additional resources.

Strategic Infrastructure: Built comprehensive brand foundation including social media presence (@thatfgpod), business email (talk2us@thatfgpod.com), domain acquisition, and distribution across major platforms.

Lessons Learned

Resource Planning Reality: Turns out 80+ hours of editing per episode is what experts call "completely unsustainable." Who knew? While I got faster with practice (keyboard shortcuts are a beautiful thing), the fundamental math of "one person doing everything" remained stubbornly unchanged. Future iterations would require either hiring actual professionals or accepting that not every footstep needs to be perfectly foley-ed. Pride goeth before the 3 AM editing session.

Front-load Technical Validation: Next time, test recordings happen before the "real" sessions, not during them. Nothing quite like discovering mid-project that someone's custom audio setup makes them sound like they're broadcasting from inside a fishbowl.

Strategic Pause vs. Sunk Cost Fallacy: Rather than grinding out mediocre episodes to hit an arbitrary completion target, made the grown-up decision to pause production while maintaining quality standards. Sometimes the best project management move is knowing when to stop digging. Plus, keeping the door open for future development (hello, Episode 3 tie-in with my solo adventure module) beats burning out completely.

The project successfully validated end-to-end podcast production capabilities while building transferable skills in vendor management, international coordination, and creative project leadership that apply directly to complex marketing campaign management.