I love podcasts. They’re perfect for listening to when I’m drawing or out walking or on the bus. (Of course, occasionally it gets a little awkward, like this summer when I was out for a walk and listened to a Metamor City story, and walked right past a playground with little kids just as the podcast reached this REALLY graphic sex scene, and I was all “well… good thing I’m wearing headphones!” But those moments are rare.)

I mean, I also have an Audible account and I listen to lots of professional audiobooks and audio dramas too, but there’s something really charming about certain podcasts. They just feel more… personal. And one thing I’ve really come to appreciate is the podcast audio drama, especially when it’s fantasy-themed. Not only do we tend to get a lot more LGBT content here, but there’s this willingness to experiment and present different types of stories. And lately I’ve been enamoured with fantasy-comedy audio drama podcasts, often with lower stakes and focusing more on comedy or character interactions. 

I’ve been listening to so many of them lately that I thought I’d share a few here. Most of these are pretty lighthearted and family-friendly, with an episodic structure, though some eps might deal with slightly heavier stuff… and one show dives right into the heavier stuff and revels in it while swearing and fucking. Don’t worry, I’ll let you know which one it is.

I’ll also add links to their websites, where you’ll find the episode feeds, info on the cast and crews, and often even transcripts of the episodes.

So without any further ado, here we go:

Inn between

Website: https://www.thegoblinshead.com 

The Goblin’s Head is a standard D&D type inn, in a medieval fantasy world, where adventurers come to rest and recuperate between quests. Inn Between follows a group of adventurers whose initial quest to free a princess from a dragon ends up becoming a much bigger, more epic Quest to Rescue the Kingdom From Evil. Here’s the twist, though: We don’t actually get to hear much more than brief snippets of the actual quests. All the episodes focus solely on the adventurers’ downtime in between the battles and quest threads; usually but not always while they stay at the Goblin’s Head. 

This means that the show is more or less 100% character interaction, banter and dialogue. The adventurers bicker, become friends, discuss their adventures, solve personal dramas, and keep the listeners up with the plot through summaries and discussions. It’s not unlike hearing a real-play D&D podcast, except all the action parts and dice rolling happen between episodes. It’s even hinted (and in special episodes, outright confirmed) that this IS actually a D&D campaign and that the characters are the PCs in that campaign. 

Inn Between is seldom laugh-out-loud funny, but it’s always cute and charming. The dialogue is fun, the characters are likeable… and weirdly enough, when most of the cast changes in season three (the players have started playing a different campaign in the same world but with new characters) the new characters manage to be just as much fun. At the time of writing, the show has wrapped up its fifth season and is on its third set of characters… though the Inn and the innkeeper remain the same, and the format is the same as well.  Bonus points for taking place in a fantasy world where pretty much all genders and sexualities are accepted without any sort of hesitation. 

Sidequesting

Website: https://sidequestingpod.com

Rion is a non-binary adventurer who specializes in SMALL adventures. Sure, they carry around a big magic sword that’s supposed to be defeating that huge evil wizard that everyone talks about, but Rion would rather not get involved in that and just focus on the “side-quests”, which they actually have a lot more chance of succeeding in. The tagline for the podcast is even “Avoiding the main plot since 2019!” The result is a series of cute slice-of-life episodes, or at least as slice-of-life as you can get when the main character is a wanderer who travels through a high fantasy world.

It speaks volumes of the writing of this podcast that I REALLY like it even though Rion is really the only recurring character… other characters only get one episode, MAYBE a couple of them come back for a second appearance if we’re lucky, but probably not. I usually like ensemble casts, or at LEAST series with more than one main character. But somehow Rion makes this series work. I’m happy to follow them along to explore this high fantasy world and share in their small adventures. 

Sidequesting MIGHT take place in the same world as Inn Between; they even have a crossover episode where one of the major characters of Inn Between first appeared in an episode of Sidequesting, but nothing’s really confirmed. It’s very wholesome, at the very least. 

Absolutely no adventures!

Website: https://noadventurespod.com

The Signature Eats Bakery can boast high quality baked goods, delicious pies and cookies… and an owner who’s the Chosen One of several dozen ancient prophecies. He’s the seventh son of a seventh son, his mother is an interdimensional traveler, he’s technically the prince or duke of a few small kingdoms, and he is ABSOLUTELY NOT INTERESTED IN ANY ADVENTURING. Despite people constantly coming to his bakery to beg for help with a curse only he can break, or a Dark Lord only he can stop, or a magic sword only he can pull from its sheath, or to recruit him to the most prestigious magic school in the kingdom, Sig the baker really just wants to bake his cakes and pies in peace. Sure, he’ll help out if some princess falls into an enchanted sleep in his bakery, but he’s become REALLY good at finding loopholes and alternatives so that the prophecies can be fulfilled and apocalypses averted without him actually having to get involved.

People who know me know that I DETEST prophecies and “Chosen One” stories. There have been okayish examples of them in earlier stories, but these days just the words “Prophecy” or “Chosen One” make me balk. The great thing about this show is that Sig agrees with me completely that prophecies are stupid and it’s nonsense to put everything on a Chosen One. Instead, he helps people help themselves… and makes great pies for them too. 

The other two main characters are Happiness Escapes All Who Behold His Great and Terrible Visage… “Happy” for short… and Bea. Happy is a demon who originally came to the bakery to corrupt Sig into fulfilling his role in another prophesy where he plays a key role in plunging the world into darkness and despair, but ended up befriending Sig instead and now works for him in the bakery. And Bea is a young woman from our world (same world that Sig’s mother comes from) who accidentally stepped through a magic portal and afterwards figured out how to move between worlds, now armed with a magic laptop/tablet. She splits her time between going to magic school and helping Sig out in the bakery. The interaction between the three characters are the heart of this story, especially when Bea points out fantasy tropes or introduces Sig and Happy to Netflix and shows like The Great British Bake-Off. 

This show is just UNBELIEVABLY cute. At the time of writing it’s in its second season.

The Dragon’s Rest

Website: https://www.dragonsrestshow.com

The Dragon’s Rest is another medieval fantasy inn where adventurers come to drink and relax and look for new adventures. But unlike Inn Between, this show focuses not on the adventurers who are resting between quests; this is more like a fantasy sitcom set in an inn, with the main characters being the people who either work or are regulars at the inn. Like any good sitcom cast they’re a quirky and eccentric bunch, it’s just that the stoic but snarky boss is a female orc, the snarky and cynical slacker is a failed wizard, the naïve new employee is a wannabe adventuring hero, and the heart-of-gold idiot is a very cute but totally talentless female bard.  The entire thing is kind of like “Cheers meets D&D”.

Just like Inn Between, the majority of the charm with this show comes from the characters and the way they interact. These characters are a lot broader, goofier and more sitcom-like, but they are likeable and their jokes are generally more hit than miss. I especially love Nolan, the bard… she’s one of the most adorable “idiot” characters I’ve encountered in fiction, even drawing the world’s most bizarre conclusions… like when she tries busking, and people boo and tell her “you need to leave” she somehow manages to interpret this as them giving her the complimentary nickname “Yunita Leaf,” which she thinks is Elvish.

So far, there’s only one eight-episode season out, but I’m hoping for more.

Alba Salix, Royal Physician

Website: https://albasalix.com

Just as the title says, Alba Salix is the Royal Physician of the kingdom of Farloria… and also the sister to the Queen. There was this entire thing with the King falling under a curse and three sisters attempting to cure him, and he would marry the one who cured him, and there may have been a slight mix-up SOMEWHERE. So now Alba’s younger sister Parabel is the Queen and Alba herself is the head of the House of Healing. She’s aided by her two assistants: Magnus the failed warrior monk who thinks healing is stupid and just wants to learn dark magic, and Holly the meadow fairy who wants very much to be a good fairy but isn’t very good at it.

Unlike most of the other podcasts on this list, Alba Salix, Royal Physician is less D&D and more fairy tale parody, with some modern day satire thrown into the mix. This is a world where you might encounter houses where families of bears have left porridge out to cool, where badgers run apothecaries, where the King’s most trusted advisor is always a scheming bastard, and where beautiful princesses might fall under sleeping curses… and bureaucrats can always be trusted to slow things down.

The same podcast feed also includes the spinoff The Axe and the Crown, set in the same world, but with different characters. It’s, well, actually it’s another sitcom about an inn in a fantasy world. I don’t think it’s AS much fun as Alba Salix, but it has its charm. 

At the time of writing, both Alba Salix and The Axe and the Crown have finished two seasons, with more coming.

The Once and Future Nerd

Website: https://onceandfuturenerd.com

A friendly wood sprite (with a curious hatred for doors that squeak) tells the tale of three teenagers from North East Pennsylvania — Billy the jock, Jen the cheerleader and Nelson the nerd — who got trapped in a medieval fantasy world with elves and knights and orcs and lost princesses, and of course end up in the middle of a war and get involved in and ancient prophecy. I know, I know… prophecies. But despite this, I find this story to be a kind of refreshing, sometimes parodic take on the epic fantasy quest. I’ve never heard elves be played like Southern American gentry, for instance… complete with Southern accents. And the lost princess is a cynical, hypersexual street urchin who swears like a sailor and discusses her sex life with more frankness than characters in a Kevin Smith movie. 

As you might’ve guessed, this one’s kind of the odd one out. The other shows are pretty episodic and family friendly; this is a more traditional epic fantasy story… but with quite a bit of sex, drugs and swearing. This is a show where you’ll get some pretty dark and gruesome stuff, as well as some really HORNY sections. But even though the world here is pretty bleak and miserable, it’s all presented through a parodic, comedic angle… so it doesn’t really come across that bad compared to a lot of the heavier fantasy works out there. It’s just, compared to the other podcasts on this list, this one’s not very family friendly.

I appreciate it though. The dark comedy is often really funny, and… well, it’s impossible not to giggle when you hear one of the women refer to her pussy as “my criminally-neglected fuckhole”. Which I’ll admit is a bit of an odd phrase to get stuck in your head, but that’s what happened to me.  

And that’s a list of some of the podcasts I’ve been listening to as of late.  I might return to the topic at a later date… but for now, I think that’s it. My criminally-neglected fuckhole and I thank you for your attention.