[Video-RPG] Teaser video for our 6th Numenera session

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:

1. 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.
2. 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 :)

Dyvers Great Blog Roll Call 2014 and moving towards a more video orientated format

I've recently been reading through Dyvers 2014 Great Blog Roll Call and was very pleasantly surprised to see this blog mentioned in the list, i've quoted the entry below for convenience:

An enjoyable blog that has recently begun to focus more on an AV aspect of blogging than on a written one. An interesting blog all the same.

I especially found it interesting the mention of an increased focus on the AV aspect of blogging rather than the written one; this was something that seems to have crept up on me gradually (and without me really thinking about it) as the games that I was writing about originally wrapped up and I started playing more online games. Since the online games were normally recorded anyway it seemed logical to make videos about them rather than write a lot of stuff about them (session reports aside); i've always been a believer that you can take something positive out of almost any feedback so I looked back over the blog and, having been made aware of it, I think that the author of the Roll Call was correct, all of my blog entries recently had been links to videos or session reports.

This was something that i'd not really considered up until it was mentioned, however, now that I am aware of it I plan to do something about it; my Youtube channel (which I enjoy very much and will be continuing to support) receives at least one video uploaded per week (assuming no accidents or real-life emergencies), normally on a Wednesday, going forward it is my intent to do the same for my written blog, designating Wednesday evenings firmly as blog & video evenings. Of course i'll still be linking to videos in the blog but I wouldn't want to abandon the written aspect of blogging since I find it gives me a different sort of enjoyment to creating videos and is also something I can do whilst sat downstairs whereas videos have to be set up to have minimal background noise, lighting, etc.

Also I have a new game starting this weekend, a Dungeon World game set in the Dark Sun campaign setting (or at least something based loosely on it, since a large part of Dungeon World's enjoyment comes from finding out about the setting as you play) so expect some blog entries about that shortly :)

Many thanks to Charles Atkins author of the Dyvers 2014 Great Blog Roll Call for his kind words about the blog and for bringing to light something that had escaped my notice, I hope to use the feedback to see my blog (and Youtube channel) go from strength to strength.

Red Dice Diaries - video uploads

Recently i've been thinking about the frequency with with I upload videos to my Youtube channel, and i've generally approached it in a fairly sporadic way so far, posting videos when and where inspiration strikes me. I've been trying to discipline myself when it comes to managing my RPG campaign notes recently and have already started to see that have a positive effect, allowing me to manage my time more confidently (which is important considering the amount of games i'm involved in ATM, not to mention real-life commitments). My channel is now approaching 200 subscribers (197 as of time of writing, thank you everyone out in Youtube land who had subscribed, it is great appreciated :)) it has struck me that my channel might benefit from some of the same disciplined treatment.

Starting this week I have set myself the aspiration of putting out a single new video every Wednesday, this seems a fairly manageable target and should hopefully give the people following the channel a more regular schedule for new stuff being uploaded rather than the sort of scatter-gun approach that i've been taking so far.

So what videos do I have in mind at the moment?

Well the following are just some of the ideas that I have that I want to get around to filming:

• Review - Age of Arthur (Fate)
• Review - Within the Ring of Fire (RAW Immersive Games)
• GM tips - Getting new players involved in RPGs
• GM tips - how to encourage players to be more active in sessions
• LARP bugbears - lengthy NPC briefs (with no notes)
• Roleplaying based around equipment
• Plus the usual actual-plays and stuff like that

I'm really excited and looking to the more regular schedule and filming some more videos over the coming weeks, hope that the people who watch my channel (and anyone who is new to it) will enjoy the videos :)

I'm not sure yet whether i'm going to use the new schedule to also update this written blog, I expect that i'll try it for a bit and see how it works.

Reflecting on the first Serpents Fall session

Well we made our first attempt at running an introductory session of Serpents Fall (our G+ Fate Accelerate Fantasy game) last night; i've just sent off messages to all of the players in it asking for feedback and thought i'd put my own views in this blog.

You can find a link to the video footage here.

For me the game was something of a mixed bag, consisting of both positives and negatives; since I was on a bit of a downer following the amount of work that myself and the players had put into the campaign setting only to have the first session so dogged by technical hitches I thought that i'd list some of the positive and negative points in an attempt to cheer myself up:

Positives

• Everyone seemed to enjoy the session.
• Character genning was fairly quick and I really loved how the players all grabbed hold of the story based idea of the Fate Accelerated rules system.
• Was good to do some tabletop with friends whom I don't get chance to game with (in that format).
• The player characters seemed to gel as a party with the first flickers of IC banter and relationships forming.
• We managed to carry out a small introductory (since not all players are familiar with the Fate Accelerated rules) combat that went off fairly well.
• The scene is now set for the next main session.
• All of the players seemed willing and keen to do another session.

Negatives

• Almost constant technical problems meant that we had people dropping out and jumping back in, I got booted from the hangout twice meaning that we ended up having to film it in three segments.
• Due to the tech problems the game felt a little dis-jointed since we had to keep re-capping for people who had dropped out and re-joined.

In Summary

Despite feeling a little down about the campaign when I originally sat down to start writing this post, looking at the list of positives and negatives there are far more positives from the game than their were negatives, indeed the only negative points seem to stem from the technical issues that we had.

Writing this post has cheered me up no end and made me far more optimistic about the potential of Serpents Fall as a long running campaign; I'm now going to wait for the players to get back to me with their feedback and see where we go from there, our next session is scheduled for a couple of weeks time - hopefully we'll have a bit better luck on the technical side of things and we can just jump straight into the game :)

Things I learnt making an RPG youtube video

Inspired by several members of the Youtube RPG brigade and various youtube footage that I had watched about tabletop RPGs I decided to have a go at making a couple of videos myself and uploading them to my youtube account (the results can be seen here for anyone interested). The videos that I made were fairly spur of the moment affairs using just the built in webcam on my laptop, without any real planning (or experience of handling video footage); although the videos didn't turn out too badly in my opinion and most people were fairly kind and constructive in their feedback there were a few things that became obvious that I thought i'd pass on in this blog to anyone else who is thinking of making Youtube RPG videos:

• Have some notes ready to prevent stumbling over words or rambling.
• Make sure that any props or the like are ready to go or (preferably) have them edited in afterwards to save fumbling around for a book (or whatever) during the video.
• Do a quick rehearsal or run through of what you plan to say first, this helps enormously when you come to record.
• Have a play around with some of the free video manipulation software available on the internet (i've been doing this myself and plan to incorporate what i've learnt into my future videos).
• Talk clearly and concisely, trying to minimise long pauses.

Overall I quite enjoyed the experience of making the videos and definitely plan to make some more in the future (I would recommend anyone at least try it), i've gained a few subscribers and have had some encouraging comments; hopefully by following the advice above i'll be able to make some slightly more published videos.

If you plan to make some videos and are perhaps looking for some more advice, you could do worse than joining the YouTube RPG Brigade G+ community.