“Welcome to Night Vale” had a quiet debut in 2012, but it took off after shout-outs on other programs and social media. Last year, Mr. Fink and Mr. Cranor published a “Night Vale” novel, and are working on another. And in 2013 “Night Vale” went on tour — a major source of the show’s income. In early 2014 it sold out two performances at a 750-seat theater within two minutes. Since then, the show has toured “with the regularity of a band,” Mr. Fink said of the traveling production, which is independent of the podcast. “I don’t think any other podcast has toured the way we have. We’re on the road three or four months a year.”

Life on the road is what inspired Mr. Fink to write “Alice Isn’t Dead,” in which an unnamed truck driver searches for her wife, who she long thought was dead. Every drive in the show could be made in real life, he said. It is also serialized with a linear plot, more like television, which is a departure from the purposefully aimless stories of “Night Vale.” One of the few elements the two podcasts share is the actress Jasika Nicole, the star of “Alice Isn’t Dead,” who occasionally appears on “Night Vale” and has performed in the live shows.

Fiction podcasts created in recent years tend to blend public-radio-style reportage with a horror vibe. Multiple producers cited “Serial” and “Night Vale” as their inspirations. For years, though, the exception has been “The Truth,” a fiction anthology program that became popular contemporaneously with “Night Vale.”

Each episode of the “The Truth,” created by Jonathan Mitchell, is a short radio drama. Although some elements of the formula are a throwback to the golden age of radio, the production is different — because of a Christmas present Mr. Mitchell received as a boy in 1977.

The gift, a “Star Wars: A New Hope” record consisting of isolated audio from the film, was Mr. Mitchell’s introduction to the franchise. When he later heard a radio adaptation of the film, he preferred the record. “The radio drama sounded like it was recorded in a studio, and it was written in a way that spelled out everything visual,” he said. “The record wasn’t, because it was made to be seen.”