Intrepid Web Fest is an experimental web festival that aims to celebrate and uplift innovation in the art form of Actual Play.
Intrepid Web Fest is an experimental web festival that aims to celebrate and uplift the art form of Actual Play. We are especially interested in showcasing APs that push the art form to expand and that feature stories and performances from marginalized communities.
While a wide variety of performance and artistic styles are welcome, we do aim to attract shows and artists whose work focuses on liberation and countering oppression in some way, shape, or form. This can take a lot of different forms, and there is no one particular formula that we are looking for!
Good question. The answer is... many! While we'll focus APs that align with our values (listed below), we believe there is no singular right way to make Actual Play and that a plurality of styles make the art form stronger.
We welcome a diversity of artistic perspectives and styles of AP in this fest, from AP that steers closer to audio drama to AP that is primarily centered around demonstrating the rules of a game. If you think your show innovates in the art form, go ahead and apply!
Intrepid Web Fest is a little different than most festivals in that we do not offer awards, but rather feature peer reviews of each accepted Actual Play.
If your show is accepted, you will be asked to write one or two 300-500 word reviews of other accepted shows, which will be published on the Web Fest blog. (You can write longer reviews if you want; we'd just like there to be at least 300 words about each show we feature.) You will have approximately three months to view the AP screeners and write your reviews prior to the Fest going live in January 2026. While critical thinking and critique is welcome in these reviews, we will ask that you keep all feedback constructive, and will have a detailed matching process to ensure that you are writing about shows that you're excited to engage with.
Intrepid Web Fest will take place January 9-11th, 2026 primarily in a Discord server, where we'll screen and discuss each accepted show. We will also have a blog, featured on this website, where we publish each peer review provided as part of the fest.
Intrepid Web Fest is going to start small, featuring 6-8 inaugural shows.
We accept podcasts, streams, and prerecorded videos, with the understanding that you will provide us with a festival screener that utilizes prerecorded material. We unfortunately cannot accomodate live shows as part of the fest itself.
Our rules are inspired by Rainbow Roll Fest's qualifications for admission.
1. Your show needs to be Actual Play. Our definition of Actual Play is: a show where the performers use a game system and roleplay to craft a story and/or demonstrate or teach the rules of said game system. (We know this is not the definition everyone would use. It's just the one we're using for this fest.)
2. Your show may not use generative AI, including and not limited to generative AI used for art, performances, scripted performed content, music, and game systems.
3. Your show needs to feature people of color. Intrepid Web Fest does not admit all-white Actual Play productions. If this excludes your show and you would like to participate in a web fest, we encourage you to apply to any other web fest out there that admits AP, because as far as we know we're the only one with this rule! (We also encourage you to really think critically about why you are making an all-white show and work to change that in your current and future endeavors.)
4. Your show, screeners, and web presences for the show, cast, and production team need to align with Intrepid Web Fest's values of liberation and counter-oppression.
5. Your show must feature accurate and easily readable English captions. Accurate English-language transcripts are also welcome and may be submitted with your files in the application. We welcome shows that are played and captioned in languages other than English, and because our primary audience for the fest is composed of English speakers, we do ask that folks are able to read along via captions for accessibility purposes.
6. Your show screener can be anywhere from 30 minutes to one hour long. The minimum length requirement is 30 minutes, and the maximum length we can accommodate is one hour. Screeners longer than one hour will not be admitted to the fest.
7. Your show screener must include content warnings, and must also include credits for all featured cast, crew, artists, musicians, etc.
8. Your show screener needs to have a narrative or educational arc and tell a story of some kind/show internal cohesion. That is to say, your show can feature clips, but it needs to be more than a clip show. If your screener is edited so that the audience experiences a rapid-fire series of clips that are only a few seconds each in duration and are largely disconnected from each other, it's not a good fit for Intrepid Web Fest.
9. Your show needs to be released by October 3rd, 2025. The show may have been released at any point prior to October 3rd (older shows are welcome!) and does not have to be complete by the 3rd, but the episode(s) submitted for the festival do need to have aired by that point in time.
Nope! Intrepid Web Fest does not support the use of generative AI for many social and ethical reasons: environmental impacts, models trained on bigoted and biased materials, labor violations, and more. For this reason, we do not accept projects that are made wholly or partially using genAI. That means: if you consciously include even a single piece of art in your project that someone made using generative AI, you are disqualified from entry here.
If your project is accepted to the Fest, you are also not allowed to use genAI to write any part of your review(s) of other projects.
If we learn that you have used genAI for any part of your participation in Intrepid Web Fest, your project will be immediately disqualified from participation in this year's fest, and your show may be banned from future festivals.
If you learn after submitting that your project unknowingly used a piece of art, music, or game system that incorporates generative AI, please get in touch right away by emailing us at intrepidwebfest@gmail.com, and we can talk about options for removing the material from your screener and your continued participation in the fest.
This is a fantastic question and I (Esther) think I could write a PhD thesis on the subject and probably feel like I've only just scratched the surface. I'm cautious of trying to give a single all-encompassing definition of what liberatory art is and how exactly we practice liberation in the process of making art, because it seems to me this can mean a lot of different things to different people, and may be highly dependent on personal, cultural, and political contexts.
I also think that practitioners can and will disagree on the praxis of countering oppression (both in art and elsewhere), and I'm more interested in holding some tension around different approaches than I am in labeling one the "right" way.
That being said, I think that a lot of liberatory art does (and is not limited to) the following:
considers systems of oppression and ways to counteract those systems
values personal experience and its role in informing narrative, while also valuing collective ways of knowing
incorporates various theories of liberation into dramaturgy or educational praxis
aims to introduce liberation into its narrative in some form (through inclusion of personal narratives of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, disability, neurodivergence, class, religion, etc.; more high-level theory; thematic structure; editing; visual art and music; and more!)
Liberatory artistic practices for AP can look like (and are not limited to):
considering how systems of oppression affect the artistic process, and finding ways to push back against them (for example, this might look like having conversations around dominant culture constructions of productivity and what pace the production team wants to work)
committing to diverse casts where the majority of performers at the table are people of color
using robust safety tools to discuss boundaries and desired themes, and the way those themes will or will not be explored
discussing accessibility needs for ALL members of the production team, honoring those needs, and keeping accessibility needs of the audience in mind
asking all members of the cast and production team how they would like to infuse the process with small actions that cultivate a mindset of liberation, collectively agreeing on some to implement, and then practicing them together
considering what shapes fair labor practices might take when it comes to Actual Play as a performing art. For example, how should we be aiming to compensate performers in paid shows? If a show is unpaid, how much labor is it fair to ask people to perform for free? How do we disclose expected "job duties" up front in a casting process?
Apply HERE!
Intrepid Web Fest is Esther's (@dungeonminister) passion project. Esther is a white, bisexual/queer, genderfluid, disabled game designer and Actual Play artist. More people will probably sign up to help as the event develops, but for now, it's just me launching my dream project.
Great question! I (Esther) used to be a professional event planner and have been a core member of the organizing team for Rainbow Roll Fest for the past two years, and also have experience showing my own shows on the web fest circuit.
That being said, this is my first time running this particular festival, so I'm sure I'll be doing some learning in that process. Totally understand if you read all this and decide this particular fest isn't for you.
Another great question! I'd like to qualify this by saying that if one or more people I know and trust hit me up and tell me they want to help me run this, I probably will have a team helping me choose which shows to admit. No pressure, friends, but if you want to... let me know.
Right now, I'm starting this as a passion project. I want to launch a mini version of Intrepid Web Fest this year to see if 1) people are into the idea and 2) it works. If I'm choosing shows solo, I do have some internal guidelines to help me select which shows will make up the inaugural fest.
1. The show must share Intrepid Web Fest's values (as outlined below) and abide by the rules of entry.
2. The show must feature people of color. (Shows with casts that are at least 50% BIPOC will be prioritized.)
3. The show must feature the perspectives of marginalized people as an integral part of its art.
4. Based off the description provided in the application form, the show will provide a unique perspective on liberation and counter oppression as presented through the art form of Actual Play, and will complement the perspectives of other accepted shows.
Intrepid Web Fest aspires to be a liberation-focused event. We value art that counters oppression and encourages critical thinking and critical engagement. We believe in liberation for all oppressed peoples, as well as decolonization, land back, and reparations. We believe that bold, diverse art featuring the perspectives of marginalized groups is a necessary tool for getting free.
Statement on Palestine
Intrepid Web Fest is in solidarity with the Palestinian people and calls for the immediate and permanent liberation of ALL of occupied Palestine. Zionists and Zionist art are not welcome in Intrepid Web Fest.
Cool! Shoot me an email at intrepidwebfest@gmail.com and I'll do my best to answer.