DnD Session Recap Audio, with a Voice for Every NPC

A D&D recap template: previously on, stakes, cliffhanger

Three beats are enough. Previously on: two or three sentences on what the party did, in order. Stakes: who wants what, and what happens if the party fails. Cliffhanger: the exact moment you stopped, so the session starts mid-breath. Quote one or two NPC lines, the ones players will remember, and leave the rest to the narrator.

Here's a short recap written that way: Previously, on The Salt Crown. The party reached Greywater at dusk, three days ahead of the storm and one day behind the thief. [low, unhurried] "You owe me a ship," said Captain Ilsa Marr, "and I collect." In the bell tower, Brother Fen found the ledger torn in half. [whisper, like sharing a secret] "Someone in this town paid for the fire," he said. Tonight the tide turns at midnight, and the drowned bell has started to ring.

In the studio, Captain Marr and Brother Fen each get their own voice, the narrator takes everything outside the quotes, and the bracket notes shape how each line is read. That's about 70 words, roughly half a minute of audio.

Voices for NPCs, villains and the narrator

If you've read up on how to do character voices for D&D and decided live voices aren't for you, casting does the job instead. Cast for contrast. The narrator should be easy to listen to and a little warm; it carries most of the words. The big bad wants something memorable, slower and lower than everyone else, or unnervingly gentle. Recurring NPCs should differ from each other in age, pitch or accent, so players can tell the harbour master from the smuggler by ear. Walk-on characters can share a handful of supporting voices.

Player characters are a table decision. Some players love hearing their character's best line from last session; others would rather nobody else voices their character. Ask before you quote them, and when in doubt keep player characters in the narration ("Kestrel talked her way past the guard") and save the voices for NPCs. For techniques you can use live as well, see AI voice for storytelling.

Keeping NPC voices across a long campaign

Make one project per campaign and add each session's recap as a new chapter. The cast list stays with the project, so Captain Marr sounds the same in session 3 and session 30, and the chapters line up in order as a running campaign archive. When an arc ends and you'd rather start fresh, create a new project and copy the cast from the old one.

Speaker detection keys on names, so spell each NPC the same way every time. If a villain goes by two names, pick one for the recap, or set the speaker by hand on those lines. You can always swap a voice later in the cast list, but re-generating old recaps uses credits again, so it's worth settling the main villain's voice early.

Playing it at the table or on Discord

Aim for one to three minutes per DnD session recap. At about 150 words a minute, a 300-word recap runs about two minutes, long enough to set the scene and short enough that nobody reaches for their phone. As a 192 kbps MP3, a two-minute file is under 3 MB by our arithmetic.

At a physical table, play it from a phone or laptop through a speaker as the session starts, then go straight into the cliffhanger. For online games, post the MP3 in your campaign channel before the session, or play it from your computer while sharing your screen with sound, if your voice app supports that.

Actual-play podcasts: intros and recaps

Actual-play shows use the same tools for cold opens and "last time on" segments, and TTRPG session recap audio works the same for any system, from Pathfinder to Call of Cthulhu. Export each recap as its own MP3 and drop it into your editor next to the table recording; recurring NPC voices from the cast list keep the show consistent across seasons. For a fully dramatized episode rather than a recap, see the AI audio drama generator, and for short scenes, multi-voice text to speech.

Rights: your campaign vs published adventures

Your homebrew world, your NPCs and your recap text are yours, and the audio files you export are yours to use under our terms. Published adventures are different: their read-aloud text and named characters belong to the publisher. Summarising what happened at your table in your own words is a recap; reading the module's boxed text into a public podcast is much closer to copying it.

Publishers set their own rules for fan content. Wizards of the Coast's Fan Content Policy, for example (last updated November 2017, checked October 2026), asks that fan content stay free to access, allows sponsorships, ads and donations, and requires a notice that the content is unofficial. Check the policy of whichever publisher's game you run before you post. This is general information, not legal advice. When you're ready to try it, the examples on the home page show what a cast sounds like, and pricing lists the plans.