Tag: D&D

3-26-17 Updates

Put up most of the Race & Subrace stuff as well as a bunch of History.  Will be cleaning things up and adding the last two session Adventure Journals over the next week.  Got a few off-brand GoPro type cameras and will be playing around with those, but we probably won’t be recording sessions any  time soon (still need mics, decent software, and a PC to run it all on).  Next Game Night is scheduled for Sunday 4/2/17, but there’s a lot going on around here so that’s tentative.  Comments, Questions, or Suggestions?

YouTube Thoughts #1

There are some quality videos out there.  There’s also some crap.  Almost a year ago, after seeing BvS: DoJ, more than ever I felt duty-bound to fire up our own YouTube channel and give a play-by-play bullet-point rant about everything wrong with that comic-cinema-cultural garbage fire.  Since then quite a few people have pretty much covered all the bases, but it’s too late to turn back now.  Nearly Infinite YouTube is happening.

So I’ve done some “research” (aka, spent a shameful amount of time watching YouTube), and come to some realizations about what works and what doesn’t.

Most Tabletop RPG YouTubers are firmly set on the D&D 5th Ed.  Fine.  I hear it’s pretty good.  But when I look for Pathfinder related videos, especially on the specific search results I look for, I always get This One Guy.  I understand it’s unwise to start a YouTube rivalry with a prominent channel or personality before you have a steady viewer base, or even before you’ve posted a single video, for the fear of alienating your potential audience.  But This One Guy…

I can’t watch his videos.  I want to – they are supposedly exactly the topic I want to see and hear about – but he Is Doing It Wrong.

Firstly, his voice.  It’s this soft, whispery, ASMR shit.  I have to crank my volume to articulate what he’s saying, and it still sets my nerves on edge.  It’s the opposite of the Radio Voice that grabs your attention, or the various excited inflections that you may have noticed on the more popular channels.  When you present this stuff, you can’t just Talk, and for God’s Sake please don’t whisper like you’re pacifying a child to sleep.  I know some people just love that ASMR shit, it’s a whole thing, but for whatever reason I can’t stand it.  Just today, after months of a hiatus, one of his videos came up with my search querry and I was at first, “Ok let’s try this,” but after 10 seconds it was a resounding “NOPE.”

Secondly, video length.  Every video I gravitate toward are these meaty chunks of about 5 minutes, 8-10 if I know the content is going to be great or I don’t have anywhere to be.  But that’s pretty much it.

This jackass can’t help but blabber on for 24+ minutes about the simplest of conceptual videos, and that’s on the short side.  His “Intro to Pathfinder,” My God.  These are how I found him while I wanted to introduce my lady friend to game.  He also uses his lady friend as a vehicle  for these introductory videos.  EACH ONE IS TWO AND A HALF HOURS LONG, AND THERE ARE NO LESS SIX OF THEM.  I think there may be as many as eight.  One entire feature-film length whisper-fest is JUST ABOUT ATTRIBUTES.

So, yeah folks, brevity.  Somehow this guy has enough views that his videos jump to the top of the search hit list.  Maybe because he’s the only one out there?  There’s not a lot of others, and those other guys also spend waaay too much time on simple concepts, and they make other amateur mistakes.

Single Takes with no edits.  Dumb.  The reason why quality content YouTubers usually post 3-5 minute videos; they know how to edit.

  • Making a good video takes a lot of time in Post-Production
  • Attention spans are short
  • If they post a 10 minute vid, you can guarantee it’s good, because they are already practiced at pacing and pairing down their content to pure distilled goodness.
  • Script your shit, or at least have an outline.
  • If you go off script, and it’s not great, edit it out.
  • Dead Air/Mumbling/ page turning/meandering FUCK YOU SRSLY.

This is a big deal.  Yeah, I’m all for Long-ish episodes of game sessions, but I’m thinking an editted-down-to-an-hour version of a 4-6 hour session.  And even then, our staples should be 3-5 minute videos.  Something easily digestible.  Something that will fit into the 4-6 videos people will jam into their coffee-and/or-breakfast moments before work.  Because even if I’ve got an hour and a half before I need to head out the door, I’m not committing half an hour of my time to  one scruffy nerfherder who may not inform or entertain me at all.  I’m offended by the very concept.  You sir have stolen my precious time, WHICH I WILL NEVER GET BACK.  And now I need to go to work disappointed, or even angry.

Besides, it’s far more tempting to click on a 4 minute video, even if it might suck, because once it is over you can bounce to another.  It’s just internet logic.

1-26-17 Recap

Another fun time.  Got to the Dungeon Crawl part of Episode 4; will probably wrap it up next session (shooting for Sunday March 5th; food plan is probably order-out Chinese or Tacos).  Moira took an insane amount of notes, like a freakin’ court stenographer, so the Synopsis should be up to date on the Adventure Journal page tonight or tomorrow, which means I can finally start adding the really sexy stuff to the Realm section.  Player sections all have Character Sheets besides Alena, and those are mostly accurate, except I forgot to add a blurb about Moira’s steed.  Even though they’ve been MIA for awhile, I’m going to put up some temporary sheets for Yoshy & The Samurai Guy, boosted to Level 4 with what I *think* they’d want, but they’re not getting any more freebie Xp than that until they actually show up or get used as NPC’s.  To the two Players in question: you’re always welcome at the table; don’t ever feel like you’ve “missed too much” to join back in at any time.

Volg is an interesting specimen.  We’re keeping the Merciful Healer Archetype for now, but I’m considering letting him retcon it if he doesn’t like it, since it seems like he didn’t realize all that it entailed.  Of course, I *could* just say it is what it is, and use this as an opportunity to introduce the function of the Lethe Lotus, since that’s a thing that’s now part of the ongoing story.  We’ll figure that out as we go.

Still haven’t finished tinkering with the other sites yet.  The Meadhall is entirely in the hands of another Busy-Body Family Guy; no timetable there.  I’ll talk to fellow Horseman tonight at the Super Bowl party about what he wants to do with our personal playground.

I’m thinking of using the Silent Paths site as a sort of memorial; how it all started, the college years, the struggle through all the revisions (whether personal decisions or forced because of new game editions), what it could be and why it probably won’t be much of anything.  Not sure how much content will wind up “free” or public, but there will be some.  I’d still like to eventually run campaigns in it, and will undoubtedly write some kind of fiction set in that world, but aspirations for publishing it as a commercial game line are admittedly unrealistic at the moment.  Still haven’t heard anything from my old co-conspirator on that front.  Hey, Mr. M: if you’re reading this, drop me a line.  It’s been FOREVER man.

Anyway, hope everyone has a great month.  Feel free to post suggestions, questions, & general comments.

Happy Birthday & Safe Journey to “You-Know-Who-You-Are.”

~Excelsior!

WOTC Shuts Down Forums

I recieved an e-mail from WoTC with this text body, which I guess is old news already:

Choosing to retire a former foundation of our community was not an easy decision, but we feel that we must adjust our communications structure to reflect where conversations about Wizards of the Coast games are taking place.

Social media has changed significantly over the last ten years, and discussions about games aren’t exclusive to company-hosted forums. The majority of community conversation takes place on third-party websites (such as Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and many other fantastic community-run websites), and it is up to us to evolve alongside our players.

We encourage past and current users to retrieve any information you want to retain from the Community Forums for both Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering. The shutdown will occur on October 29, 2015, at 10:00 a.m. PT. We want to provide enough time for our forum members to move their content, and we recognize that given our forum’s vibrant user base and extensive history, this may take time. Any information still on the forums on the cut-off date will be deleted.

Thank you to all of our past and current forum users. You helped build our community into what it is now, and we look forward to continuing to interact with you on our many active social platforms.

There’s also a footer in the e-mail with links to temporary emergency backup files & forums if I wanted to grab any content before it vanishes forever into the void.

So… what does this really mean? Is this an indicator that Wizards isn’t making Hasbro the kind of money it wants? Is this just another example of a global company (like McDonald’s did recently with thier China deal) outsourcing most of its product/content development to third parties, slashing staff, & relying on their name to simply generate income?  Posters at Quora.com seem to think it’s a budget thing, such as the tech needing updates that are too costly.  I wonder how successful 5e has really been, or if the profit they generate really has anything to do with it (regardless of how much money they are making, not spending any money on their community is still more money for the suits).

I rarely used the forums except to find an answer to an obscure FAQ, or once in a blue moon to check out build ideas for classes that I was unfamiliar with.  Even when I did the responses were typical RPG community garbage (dozens of “well in my campaign…”), maybe getting 1 or 2 legit moderator or regular user posts to clarify anything.  We’ve been a Pathfinder troupe for years now, so I can’t say I’ll be affected by this, but it is troubling to hear about major players in the industry cutting off one of their most prominent player resources.

This basically means reddit.com and various fan-run wiki’s will be the only places for long-format or downloadable resources… I mean, can you imagine what kind of format mess trying to use Facebook to talk about anything game related would look like?  Or Twitter? or Tumblr?  And if it is fan run, powered not by money and obligation-to-accuracy (aka someone’s job), but powered by love and rainbows and gingerbread, then you’re going to see a thousand answers to your question, “What racial modifiers do Lizardfolk get as a PC race?” that all start with, “Well, in my campaign…”

Undoubtedly, this is a Hasbro decision.  I just can’t see anyone at Wizards, as lame or greedy as they have become, thinking this is a progressive move.