Earlier last week, I was scrolling through my Tiktok feed when I stumbled upon a group of players going by the name Gals and Goblins. After going down a rabbit hole, I quickly realized I had been scrolling through their page for thirty-plus minutes!
The story follows three students who attend Frogmont Adventuring Academy for Young Women and everything about it is fantastic. The sound design, the camaraderie, and the charismatic players give any actual play podcast fan all that they need to scratch that TTRPG itch. I reached out to them over Tiktok and they agreed to an interview with Knight’s Digest to discuss their origins, gameplay, and what it’s like to be female players in a male dominated hobby.
Want to listen before reading on? Here is their LinkTree that has their Podcast
The Gals
As mentioned in the introduction, the podcast follows three adventurers who attend Frogmont Adventuring Academy for Young Women. The location is reminiscent to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, but with an even more fantastical feeling that invokes a warm nostalgia and undertones of a mystery that needs to be solved. Instead of following a trio of human wizards, we are introduced to our protagonists:
Sawyer Cinderfoot:
Lilly Percifield plays a halfling character named Sawyer Cinderfoot. They are currently multiclassing as fighter/bard. An enthusiastic, eager, and competitive student who idolizes Frogmont Academy.
Lilly chose to play this character as she relates a lot to Sawyer and while she loves playing characters that are different from herself, she wanted to play someone more akin to herself. While not being a jock in real life, she wanted to change that in the game by becoming team captain of Frogmont’s sport called Arcanoball. Lilly worked with Jared the DM to develop the homebrew sport and has actual rules and mechanics for the sport.
Lilly also runs the Tiktok, but is quick to mention that the social media effort is a group effort and everyone plays their parts in contributing.
Beans:
Olivia Rose McCain plays the hilarious Beans, a Tabaxi monk/barbarian. Who Olivia says “came to her in a dream”. Olivia continues, saying “don’t imagine your traditional Tabaxi, go google –cat that drank too much milk– and that’s what you should be envisioning.”.
Olivia discusses how she wanted to play a character that has funny aspects and is influenced by some folklore elements that compare cats to beings from hell. In real life, Olivia describes herself as well spoken and often finds that guests of the show are surprised to find out that they have been in correspondence with the silly and not so well spoken Beans.
Esta Ruadon:
Campbell Duffy plays an elf named Esta, the fifteenth child of House Ruadon. Ruadon is a noble house in the magical realm of Eldrivale, which the world of Gals and Goblins exsists in. After not getting into Valkarie, the #1 school in which all of her siblings attend, Esta decided to settle for Frogmont.
Campbell chose to play this character for several different reasons. “Every single player I have played has been a noble spell caster. I love the hoity toity diplomacy of it all.” She elaborates more on how she relates to the character as well, “I was an angry teenage girl so it only makes sense that I would play one too.”
Jared (DM):
Jared is the Dungeon Master for this campaign, and guides the Gals through a series of adventures within the world of Eldrivale. Jared also edits the podcast audio, which includes the inclusion of beautiful ambience music and sound effects.
Actual Play Podcast & Inspiration
What is an Actual Play Podcast? In simple terms, it is a TTRPG played by a group of players and then released unto the world. They are majorly unscripted and develop as the game is played. This includes livestreams, youtube videos, or in this case a podcast.
Developing a story for any work requires a lot of time and energy, and one of the unspoken and most important rules of DMing is this: stealing from your favorite shows/movies isn’t stealing, it’s paying homage.
Now of course, everything in Gals and Goblins is pretty original stuff. Although, throughout my listen of the first episode All Aboard the Owl-Cat-Bus!, I saw a nod towards one or two different franchises. The three player characters get ready for their first day of school and they’re picked up by the Owl-Cat-Bus! If you’re familiar with Studio Ghibli, then you are probably shouting My Neighbor Totoro! at your screen right now. The obvious reference was well placed and something I will be trying to sneak into my next homebrew game.
The podcast implores inspiration from other franchises as well. Those who love Game of Thrones will love Esta Ruadon, as Campbell describes her love for Daenerys Targaryen and cites using her as a reference when creating the character. Some other influences that you should expect to encounter would be Legend of Zelda, Naruto, and How to Train Your Dragon.
Origin of their Campaign (Spoiler: They Didn’t Meet in a Tavern)
Similar to the premise of their campaign, they all met at school and became close friends with eachother. While they’re all currently based in Austin, Texas, they met at Southwestern University, where they all participated in the Theater program.
Most of them were introduced to Dungeons and Dragons through the She Kills Monsters theater play that their school performed. Google describes the play as a drama-comedy play by Qui Nguyen that debuted in 2011. It tells the story of Agnes Evans, an average woman who loses her parents and little sister Tilly in a car accident and deals with it by playing Dungeons and Dragons.
It was during their participation that they decided they wanted to learn more about the game. About a year and half later (and after indulging into the ttrpg gateway drug that is NaddPod and The Adventure Zone) they came together and formed their own home game!
What Differentiates Their Podcast?
Let’s take a moment and be honest, their might be one too many actual play podcasts out there.
Olivia said it best “The actual play podcast market is overly saturated and there is just a bunch out there, which means great options to choose from, but we had to ask ourselves “what set us apart? And how are we going to have people know about us and listen to us.”
Sound
I found several reasons that I was able to point to while listening to their first couple of episodes while researching for this article. The first has to be sound design. They have nailed this and I would compare it to companies that have endless amount of money to throw into production. Their voices are crisp, clear, and understandable. The music that Jared their DM uses is immersive to the scenes and gets you excited for what comes next. The compassion that they have for quality audio is quite obvious to my picky ears.
Community
The second was the community for Gals and Goblins. I joined their discord (and you can too here) and it was very… inviting! The people in their discord was very cordial and seems to have genuine connections to each other. I always am wary for joining a fandom as the fans can sometimes be too much for me and leads to me not enjoying the content. I found nothing of the sort here and from what I was told from the Gals, people have even met up in real life to play their own versions of the game they listen to. If you’re looking for a group of people to discuss dnd with, I would point you in the direction of this discord.
Enjoyment of the Game
The third and last thing was something they mentioned that got me thinking about the TTRPG hobby in general. They are an all female table. In a hobby that conventionally leans towards male involvement, they offer a podcast that try’s to shift this imbalance. Olivia ends the podcast stating what she calls her soapbox opinion- “If you are at a dnd table that you dread going to or not having fun, you can leave and play with other people. Don’t let a table that you don’t like, or is ran by people that don’t make you feel good, not make you like this really fun game because at the end of the day it is all made up and meant to be fun.”
Well said Olivia.
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Closing Remarks on Gals & Goblins
I think going forward with this Podcast, I have decided that I am going to keep my eye on new releases and keep up with the show. It’s one of those easy listens that we can all use on our daily commutes or whilst cleaning.
I believe that this is a show that you should keep your eye on as well. I have a good feeling that they’re going to continue to grow and emerge in this saturated TTRPG market. At the time of writing, they only have twenty-four episodes on their podcast. This is the perfect opportunity to catch up and then follow the adventure as they’re released. They teased big news coming in 2024, such as the release of a Patreon and Merch. If there was a time to join this fandom, it would be now!
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