On February 15, 2023, less than a year after graduating from Southwestern University, theatre alumni Campbell Duffy ’22, Olivia McCain ’22, and Lilly Percifield ’22 released the first episode of their podcast, Gals & Goblins. What originally began with a chance encounter inside SU’s costume shop has blossomed into a lifelong friendship, a profitable business, and a podcast that garners up to 25,000 listeners a month.

The weekly podcast, centered around Duffy, McCain, and Percifield’s adventures playing the popular fantasy tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG) Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), has grown into one of the top niche podcasts in the gaming world, attracting an audience of worldwide listeners.

When they first enrolled at Southwestern in 2018 to hone their crafts on the stage and in the classroom, neither Duffy, McCain, nor Percifield had much experience with D&D.

“We all got interested in D&D while we were at Southwestern,” Duffy said. “[Costume Shop Manager] Glenda [Wolfe] would always play D&D podcasts while we were working there. That was the first time I was exposed to that world. It very quickly became our number one hobby to do together.”

Spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic, the trio began learning all of the ins and outs of the game. Routine gatherings to play became more and more common, and as the group continued to research the game and learn more about the D&D community, it became increasingly clear that there was a void in the D&D space.

“D&D and tabletop role play gaming are historically very white male-dominated hobbies,” Percifield said. “Even when you look at the casts of popular D&D podcasts, it’s not super common for them to have a majority woman cast, or for the business side to be majority women-led. We made a space for ourselves, then once we had that space, we wanted to use it to make space for other people.”

Lilly Percifield ’22Duffy, McCain, and Percifield began seriously considering expanding their hobby into a podcast shortly after graduating from Southwestern in 2022. Fresh off their theatre training, the trio invested the time and effort needed to begin planning their venture, with the goal of long-term success in mind.

“The theatre training at Southwestern prepares you for the production side of things, all the behind the scenes work, and the on-stage performance,” Percifield said. “I think that’s part of the reason why we took it so seriously. We knew that we needed to do all of this work upfront. It took months of planning to make sure the marketing campaign was really solid, that our social media presence was unified, and we had a mission statement.”

A dual theatre and English graduate, Percifield played a major role in crafting the podcast’s official mission statement, which reads, in part: “We are part of the movement to tell anyone who might have been previously excluded from the TTRPG community: ‘We belong here, and so do you!’”

“D&D can look very intimidating,” she said. “There’s books, and years and years of history, and different editions. It can be very dense, if you want it to be dense. What we are trying to show is that this is a game that you can play with your friends. It’s about telling a good story. That’s the goal of the game – to tell a good story and have fun with your friends.”

Dungeons & Dragons is known as being the original and most popular fantasy tabletop role-playing game. In D&D, players create characters, then roll dice to dictate the actions of their characters, from going on adventures and finding treasure to fighting monsters and solving challenges. The games are directed by a Dungeon Master (DM), who serves as a sort of emcee, helping guide the game and the world in which it lives. The Gals & Goblins podcast, with McCain’s partner Jared VosWinkel serving as the DM, chronicles the trio’s adventure as they play through their own game of D&D.

Jared VosWinkle, Campbell Duffy ’22, Olivia McCain ’22, and Lilly Percifield ’22“We wanted to make sure that we’re clear to people who maybe have no idea what D&D is, that we are an adventure podcast,” Duffy said. “You’re going on an adventure with us. We love to use words like ‘cozy,’ ‘silly,’ and ‘fun.’ It’s something where you can feel like you’re sitting around a table playing games with your friends.”

McCain describes their podcast as “loosely following the rules of Dungeons & Dragons and strictly following the rule of cool,” a guideline among the TTRPG community in which the DM can bend or break established game rules to allow a player to perform a creative action that isn’t strictly allowed. This format allows the group to not only make their podcast more accessible to the broader and more casual gaming community, but also lets Duffy, McCain, and Percifield exercise their natural creativity and the storytelling skills that they developed at Southwestern.

“Other than just creating a podcast for people to listen to, our main goal is always to create community with other people who also enjoy this storytelling vehicle of sitting around a table and playing with their friends. Building community has always been our number one goal,” Duffy said.

Associate Professor of Theatre and Theatre Production Coordinator Kerry Bechtel has seen first-hand how the group has been able to incorporate the talents developed at Southwestern into their podcast.

“They’re taking the skills that they learned – storytelling, critical thinking, analysis, project management, collaboration – and are combining those with their interests in literature and playwriting and storytelling,” Bechtel said. “They take these marketable skills that they’ve learned in the fine arts and the humanities and have turned them into something that is new, innovative, creative, and leans into an outlet that allows them to capitalize so that they can make a living doing what they love.”

When the podcast first launched in 2023, the group was focused solely on establishing their product and making it the best it could be. They release an episode of their main Gals & Goblins podcast every other week, with special “Study Break” editions released in-between episodes.

“A theatre degree is so helpful for any career, and that has only exacerbated in this digital age. To have a stage presence and a screen presence, or even just the ability to speak publicly and put your ideas into words, is so valuable.” – Lilly Percifield ’22

Each main episode takes between five and six hours to record, then is edited down to under two hours. Immediately after taping each episode, the group records an hour-long “Study Break” where they recap the episode, covering decisions made, ideas, theories, and game strategy. Their hope with the “Study Break” series was to further open the door for those learning the game to understand strategy and gameplay.

In less than three years since launching Gals & Goblins, their community has exploded in numbers. Today, the podcast averages between 18,000 and 25,000 downloads per month.

“The fact that this many people would listen is kind of unbelievable,” Percifield said. “But at the same time, we went into it so intentionally. We wanted the marketing to be good. We wanted the sound quality to be good. We planned for the long-term. There was that intentionality that this is a big project that we were committed to, but I can’t believe that it worked.”

Campbell Duffy ’22As the podcast, and its audience, continued to grow, Duffy, McCain, and Percifield added more content, creating Patreon and Discord channels, and launched an online merchandise store, opening the door for the franchise to begin earning revenue. Through their website, fans can purchase Gals & Goblins branded merchandise, including stickers, posters, t-shirts, tote bags, and more.

“We did not start this with the goal of making money,” McCain said. “We started it as an artistic, creative outlet. We set ourselves up to hopefully make it a business, but if it never happens, we agreed that it doesn’t matter. Starting with that mentality actually helped us grow exponentially because we weren’t thinking about how quickly to earn revenue. We were really thinking about our fans and how to build that community.”

On Patreon, subscribers can pay for bonus content, including a bi-monthly “Gabbin’ with the Gals” episode that is structured more like a talk show, as well as a monthly series, “Goblin Mode,” where the group explores other non-D&D TTRPG games. Through the Gals & Goblins Discord channel, fans can interact with Duffy, McCain, and Percifield, share theories and predictions about upcoming episodes, and converse with fellow listeners.

“Our community loves to send theories in the Discord,” Duffy said. “We’ll have an episode come out and there will be two completely different theories about what’s going on or what they think is going to happen. It’s really fun to see the theories. It’s awesome. It’s one of the best parts.”

As Gals & Goblins’ digital presence grew, the group received an invitation to bring their show from the studio to the stage in the form of a live taping at The VORTEX theatre in Austin. During their time at Southwestern, Duffy, McCain, and Percifield all performed at and made connections with the non-profit theatre venue: Duffy working as a marketing associate, McCain assistant directing shows, and Percifield completing scenic design and set painting.

Olivia McCain ’22When The VORTEX approached the trio about the possibility of hosting a live show at the venue, it was a natural fit. The first live taping of Gals & Goblins took place in March 2025 and featured special guests from various backgrounds across the Austin-area theatre scene.

“We are all actors, we are all comfortable on stage,” McCain said. “We trained at Southwestern for four years to have a great stage presence, but it’s different playing a character that people like in a show versus being myself on stage. The audience was there for us. I was Olivia and they were screaming for me.”

The first live taping sold out, bringing in fans from across the country. Tickets were sold to fans in Arizona, Florida, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Tennessee. The overwhelming demand led the group to live-stream the taping, which garnered an international audience as fans tuned into the event from Australia, Poland, and South Korea. The success of the first live show led to an invitation from The VORTEX to host a second.

“It’s easy to see when we have a big number of listeners every month, or talk to them in a Discord, but moving to a live format was the first time that it felt real,” McCain said. “It has always been real to us, but it crossed over into real life where there were people standing in front of us saying ‘I flew here’ or ‘I drove 14 hours to be here.’”

The live shows consist of a mix of scripted and improvised material, allowing the audience to participate in the gameplay and feel like they are making an impact on the direction of the show. The group is planning on hosting even more live shows in 2026, with the goal of taking the tapings on the road outside Texas.

“The goal of the podcast is to make everyone feel like they’re sitting around a table with friends, but the reality is, with a podcast, you’re just listening to that,” Duffy said. “You’re not really there. The live shows are a good opportunity to really carry out that mission of everyone being in the living room playing D&D together. It is a great culmination of our mission.”

While translating the show into a live format allowed the trio to exercise a variety of theatre experiences learned at Southwestern, it also required assistance from a variety of theatre professionals. Duffy, McCain, and Percifield were able to lean on connections made with classmates at Southwestern to pull off the live shows.

“Southwestern really did a great job of teaching us how to really hone in on the community and the network that we built,” McCain said. “There were a lot of professors and people in the SU community that we could reach out to and build a network. At Southwestern, I got really good at identifying what I was good at, and honestly, what I was bad at so that I know when to ask for help.”

For Bechtel, it has been a joy to follow the group’s success, witnessing not only how they’ve utilized the skills and network developed at Southwestern, but have continued to add their own expertise and creativity to the landscape of live theatre.

Olivia McCain ’22, Campbell Duffy ’22, and Lilly Percifield ’22“When they do these live shows, they get to perform and interact with each other,” she said. “It’s a super fascinating way of looking at their skills and innovating every day. I think that’s definitely a Southwestern thing. We want them to look at the skills they’ve learned, innovate, and be the forerunner of what comes next.”

At Southwestern, Duffy, McCain, and Percifield were able to develop many of the talents that they utilize every day. All three were officers for the University’s Mask & Wig student organization, and all three were drawn to Southwestern for a similar reason: to have the opportunity to immerse themselves in SU’s Theatre Department in a variety of ways.

“I liked Southwestern because I knew for a theatre program, to get on stage and get hands-on experience, that was the number one thing,” McCain said. “It doesn’t matter what you learn in a classroom if you can’t apply it. That’s what was pitched to me and it was very true. I don’t think there was a show that I didn’t work on in my four years there.”

“I was really drawn in by the opportunity to do both acting and costume design, and to dip my toes into directing and stage management,” Duffy said. “Southwestern offered a holistic theatre approach that I was really interested in. Learning how to do it all was what drew me to Southwestern.”

“I really wanted to do scenic design and scenic painting,” Percifield said. “Those were passions of mine, along with acting and the performance side of things. Southwestern was one of the only programs that I found that emphasized a multi-faceted theatre education.”

Rooted in the skills they learned and experiences they had at Southwestern, the trio continues to find ways to enhance and innovate their show. They recently joined the Rusty Quill Network, an industry-leading independent production company and podcast network that specializes in the original audio fiction podcast space. As the group turns their attention to the third anniversary of the launch of Gals & Goblins in early 2026, this new partnership opens the door to an even wider audience, building upon the momentum they have built since graduation.

“We are so proud,” McCain said. “We can all say, even at 2:00 a.m. after the recording is finished, that we are really happy to be here. I’m happy that I can say that I am putting my degree, truly, to the fullest use possible. I don’t think there’s a skill I learned in college that I have not touched on.”