Fifty Feet of Rope, a D&D Podcast

In 2019, my friend Ron and Adam got to talking. They both loved D&D and tabletop. They proposed an idea. “Let’s get our own game going,” they said. “Let’s play D&D”.

I was reluctant. I grew up playing D&D. As a young boy, I found the game complex, unforgiving, and sometimes, just boring. Yet, there were times when D&D shined. In one session as a kid, we played a module one Friday night. There were six of us crowded around a table. We cheered each die roll. It was amazing. But that was the exception.

Adam and Ron were persistent and soon, there was a little group of us. No one wanted to DM, so I took the role. I must admit, I caught the fever. Also, I didn’t want to replicate those boring sessions as a kid. I wanted to do it right. So, I dug into the rules, the pre-written modules, and prepped a new campaign.

We played The Lost Mines of Phandelpher that segued into Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage with lots of homebrew mixed in. Along the way, Julien joined the group and so did Darek.

Yet, things fell apart despite all our enthusiasm. Ron left for scheduling reasons. Chris also left to focus on his PhD. I felt DM burnout and so I took a break. The game was over. So I thought.

Adam was at it again. After months of regular life, Adam felt the itch. He started collecting people again. We formed a new group with Josh and Lindsey joining in. This time we shifted to once a week. Julien was back along with Darek. Chris rejoined. And soon, we had a serious weekly game going.

Josh took over DM’ing from me and we played 54 consecutive sessions of Curse of Strahd, missing only one session.

With the release of Spelljammer in 2022, Julien took the DM reins. Whereas Josh and I used prebuilt modules, Julien opted to create his own campaign. We played ten consecutive sessions when Lindsey proposed an idea. “Why don’t we make this a podcast?”

I don’t particularly like D&D podcasts. It’s generally just a group of people around a table cracking inside jokes. I tend to get bored pretty fast. Except, our group was different.

We favored roleplay and while we do have our inside jokes (the podcast title), our sessions tend to character focused. When editing the episodes, I opted to remove a lot of the side talk and rules discussion. In short, I tried to make them as character-focused as possible.

Also, I grew up with Old Time Radio. Hence, I punched up dramatic moments with music. I added sound effects. I even recorded introductory narration.

Hence, Fifty Feet of Rope.

In the days ahead, I’ll be posting all the episodes. If you are interested in hearing them, you can find them over at fiftyfeetofrope.com. You can also find them at all major podcast providers. By all means, please listen and if you have any feedback, please let us know.

We hope you enjoy!