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The Critshow

Overview

Welcome to The Critshow - an actual play podcast where a group of friends uses tabletop role playing games to walk the line between humor, horror and heart. Focused on character-driven storytelling, our show features a variety of systems, from pulse-pounding horror to high fantasy to fast-paced sci-fi and beyond. Whether you're a seasoned gamer or new to TTRPGs, The Critshow offers engaging narratives, hilarious moments, and captivating arcs that will keep you coming back every Wednesday. Seasons 1-6: The Other Side of the Coin - Three friends find themselves as the last line of defense between the everyday world and the things that go bump in the night. Using

Monster of the Week

and other

games, the team works to save the Omniverse in this dimension hopping story. Season 7: The Clockwinders – Cadvini is in peril and it’s up to a group of Clockwinders in training to rediscover and repair the movement cores to save their world from the looming threat of destruction by fire, frost, and Fey. Using the

Fate

system in a world where there are eons of lost history, players unlock a world's worth of mysterious lore.

Shows

The Clockwinders

The planet Cadvini is dying. Tidally locked, with one side a burning wasteland, and the other side a frozen forever-night, its people have managed to forge their lives in the temperate zone between. But the great old machines that keep the planet steady, called Movement Cores, have started to break down. The planet is beginning to spin, which could mean the ruin of all. Join Arkady ‘Kade’ Atwater, Einon Kerning, and Maxine Hollis as they venture across the wilds in order to find and fix the broken cores. They have Fey folk, aether-enhanced beasts, and all other manner of dangers to face… but this is their duty. They are The Clockwinders.

Shadows in the Smoke

Shadows in the Smoke tells the story of Hargrave House, a group of mysterious investigators in Victorian London who tackle the cases that Scotland Yard can’t or won’t. Amidst the monsters and murderers on the shadowy streets, an ancient power is growing in strength – a Queen in her own right, seeking vengeance against Victoria. Can the hunters discover her plot and save Queen and country, or will they succumb to their own darkness and become little more than the monsters they once hunted? Find out in Shadows in the Smoke, a Victorian gothic horror Actual Play utilizing The Between by Jason Cordova.

Other Side of the Coin

Our Monster of the Week campaign, wherein the characters are alternate-universe versions of the players themselves. Imagine that one minor thing could mean the difference between our universe and another; something as simple as a coin flip having the opposite result can lead to two drastically different outcomes. We set the game in what is essentially our world, albeit a version in which one small decision changed the course of our hunters’ lives and set them on a completely different path. While Monster of the Week will always be the “home base” of our show to which our team will return, our show is that it exists in a Powered By the Apocalypse universe with many worlds… each of which conveniently seems to be set within a different PBtA game!