Listening to an episode of the "Dice for Brains" podcast is like watching a movie in your head - complete with cinematic background music and sound effects.

And for a tabletop role-playing game player and fan such as myself, it's an accurate reflection of what players hear and see while sitting around a table with dice and character sheets.

It's the reason St. Augustine resident Ross Rockafellow started "Dice for Brains." He wanted to build a bridge to the world of tabletop RPG.

"There's a chance to present it in an audio-only format where you can really engage an audience," said Rockafellow. "Usually when you play these games you're playing for the group at the table - entertaining yourselves - but entertaining a wider audience never occurred to me."

As a longtime player, he recognizes that tabletop role-playing games can be intimidating to those who aren't familiar with them. There are hardcover books of rules that dictate how players create characters, engage with monsters and enemies during combat, what their characters gain as they advance in the game and so on.

Rockafellow said the payoff at the heart of all those rules is creating an engaging story with friends. It's what brings him back to the table game after game, and what he wanted to share through the "Dice for Brains" podcast.

"Dice for Brains" is an actual play podcast, a genre that describes podcasts that either play or talk about tabletop RPGs and related topics. Each episode is a session of the group's current story set in the Star Wars universe, with Rockafellow guiding the main plot of the story as the game master and three other people reacting to those situations as player characters. The player character's actions also help to shape the plot of the story and how the story ends.

Rockafellow said it takes the group three to three and a half months to finish a season of the podcast. They spend a month to settle on a recording schedule - since the cast is from all across the state - and two to two and half months to record and upload episodes.

Rockafellow edits each episode into a radio drama format, adding music and sound effects that match the players' actions and environment of the story. Rockafellow said that it's his love for the radio dramas of the 1920s and 1930s that made him realize that they were the perfect fit for tabletop RPG. He came up with the initial idea for "Dice for Brains" while listening to a radio drama podcast on his phone with friends.

Rockafellow's other goal with "Dice for Brains" is to open tabletop RPGs to people with different backgrounds and experience. That's reflected in the podcast's cast of players. Some have years of tabletop RPG experience, while others have little or no experience in tabletop RPGs, but as a group they represent a wide range of backgrounds and ages.

That diversity has really resonated with the "Dice for Brains" audience. Since its first episode in December 2015, "Dice for Brains" has gotten 140,000 downloads. In January 2017, it had 26,000 downloads within that month.

Rockafellow has also gotten emails from listeners saying that they started playing their own story campaign after listening to "Dice for Brains" episodes. The podcast has also attracted a lot of families.

Rockafellow was surprised to know that so many people listen to the podcast with their kids, but credits it to the Star Wars setting and the lack of violence and profanity in each episode.

"We get letters from parents who've now started playing these games with their kids. And they listen to the show on their way to school and stuff like that," said Rockafellow. "It's really cool … I didn't think we would have as much of an impact as we've been having."

Want to hear more about "Dice for Brains" and meet some of the cast? Check out Nerd in the Know's latest video featuring Dice for Brains on Florida Times-Union's YouTube channel jaxdotcom.