This is the first session of our new Jadepunk campaign, it finds our heroes aboard a sabotaged Aerum airship plummeting towards Kausao, perhaps our heroes weren't the only ones attempting to take advantage of the Governor's aerial tour of the city? But can they allow the massive collateral damage that the airship crash will cause?
A short while ago someone commented on one of my videos (sorry I can't remember who, I have an abysmal memory for names) suggesting that perhaps I should focus more on the audio elements of my RPG reviews etc given the amount of referencing written notes that I do in my videos; thinking about this the person had a point, I do tend to write down fairly comprehensive notes and then reference them frequently during a video to make sure that I don't miss anything or leave anything out (all too easy to do with my lack of memory power). I considered moving across to an entirely audio format such as a podcast or something similar, it would be much easier for me to create and edit the files, not to mention taking far less time to upload than the normally lamentable times on Youtube; however, I don't want to abandon the visual element entirely since i've very much enjoyed making Youtube videos and hosting them, plus getting involved with the whole Youtube RPG Brigade.
I also considered just doing an audio feed and then adding a static image over the top, as i've done with some of my Sunday RP Rambles and the recent RPG interviews that I did at Dragonmeet 2014, but, although this works fine for interviews it's not particularly interesting to look at; one possible answer came when I was watching a Youtube video about conspiracy theories, effectively the creator of the video had made a slideshow of still images that were keyed to show up at certain points of the video. Having recently started experimenting with using the program Inkscape to create vector drawings (after it was recommended by Alex Gillot) I decided to have a go at creating a cartoon version of myself that could potentially be used to quickly create a series of images to go with the audio feed.
This is what I ended up with (not bad for a first attempt I don't think):
I'm thinking of making a sample video using the cartoon version of me in the near future to see what it looks like, i'm hoping this might be a chance to combine my love of making RPG videos with my recently re-discovered (and long dormant) enjoyment of drawing (plus giving me more practice at using Inkscape); would love to hear your opinions and thoughts, send them to reddicediaries@gmail.com :)
I've alway been a fan of handouts in RPGs since I think that they give players a greater sense of involvement in a game, touching something or actually examining a torn document is far different to just describing it and help players become more invested in the game. This philosophy hasn't changed with me moving to playing more RPGs online, if anything it's come more to the forefront of my thoughts, since I can now share images/documents and such like on Google Drive, Dropbox, via Facebook, G+ and many other avenues, these can be linked to events or given to the players in advance to give them a taste of what's coming up in the session, allowing them a sneak preview or chance to look at them as their own schedule allows.
My two rules for making this sort of handout would be:
Don't blind your players with information, everyone has limited time to devote to game stuff, try and keep handouts and the like short and to the point, no-one wants to have to wade through a 60,000 word dissertation before they can understand the game, ain't nobody got time for that.
Don't make it vital that players have to have read or examined the handout, because inevitably someone want have done because of RL commitments or whatever, make the handout an optional extra, rather like a prologue in a book, it gives you a broader understanding of what is going on, but isn't required reading.
With that said, below is a video that I created for the upcoming 6th session of our Numenera game, at the end of the last session the players had fled from the headquarters of the Pangea agency with an Aeon Priest and the Director of Pangea in tow after an apocalyptic cult called No Hope stormed the base.
The pic above is a sketch from my session planning notes.
Inspired by this amazing pic I saw on DeviantArt:
Unfortunately I can't remember the name of the artist, if anyone out there in internet land knows, message me in the comments so I can credit him - amazing picture :)
