I got hooked on radio drama when I was young mostly by accident — it followed the comedy hour on CHUM-FM. I listened to Orson Welles on the The Third Man serial long before I saw any of his movies. Thanks to various sites, I’ve been enjoying the old time radio drama on my MP3 player.

Almost a year ago I was struck with the idea that it would be interesting to make a kind of audio drama that took advantage of the MP3 player, to turn it into a kind of primitive interactive story. I grew up on computer text games like Zork and books of the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure ilk so it was a natural fit. And here’s the result: the first 20 minute episode of “The Letter” that you can listen to on an MP3 player or the computer. At the end of each track, you decide what should happen next…

Try this Flash player below or click through for other playing options:

How To Listen/Play

On any MP3 player:
Right-click and save this zipped file, unzip it, and drop it into your player. [13 MP3 files, 11megs]

On an iPod:
If you put this podcast feed in your iTunes or click here to launch iTunes it will automatically download this and future episodes in enhanced chapterized AAC format. [single m4b file, 12megs] Note: if you’re going to listen to it in iTunes, you’re better off with the option below.

On the computer via a music player or iTunes:
There’s a low-fi or hi-fi playlists of the episode, click one and see if it launches an external music player.

There’s also a bunch of different formats and sizes on this archive.org page.

If you have trouble, please let me know via the comments below!

More Episodes

Thanks to an enthusiastic group of voice actors and other helpful folk, this has been a really fun project, requiring me to collect sounds in alleys and take notes on panel vans. If you’re interested in hearing a second episode, consider making a Paypal donation below. I don’t mind working for free, but it’d be nice to be able to throw a party for the cast. Also, feedback is always welcome, I like criticism. If you’d like to hear about new episodes via email you can subscribe on the left sidebar.

Feel free to distribute, it’s got a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike licence. I’d be happy to see other people make pick-your-own-podventures of their own. God knows I’m not the first to make something old new again — Decoder Ring Theatre and Joey Dubuc’s Neither Either Nor Or are two inspiring examples.

Credits

“The Letter”
Episode 1
a pick-your-own-podventure
written and produced by Jim Munroe
sound engineered by Lyle Crilly
and starring Kevin Fell and Luke Costello

with (in approximate order of appearance) Susan Bustos as the Choice Voice, Jim Munroe as Man-In-Black 1, Sean Lerner as Man-In-Black 2, Michael Higginson as Mike, Jessica Westhead as Stef, Guy Leshinski as Dr. Kinderson, Derek Wuenschirs as Other Voice, and Lyle Crilly as Alex.

Special thanks to Paul Lamoth and Matias Rozenberg for the use of their microphones, Mark Slutsky for the AAC action, and Susan Bustos, Guy Leshinski, Carma Jolly, Jon Sasaki, Sean Lerner and Gregg Taylor for excellent script feedback.