Archive for April, 2009

Last night, I was talking with Leonard Balsera about some elements of Mythender I discovered while writing up notes — going beyond mere mechanics & base ideas, into areas of the setting that I hadn’t yet fully explored.  I was telling him about how, in my home campaign, the players and I are pretty sure their characters are up against a “dark Mythender,” for lack of a better term.  Since it’s my damned game, so I need to be able to back this idea up with the right mechanics and in-setting justification.

I say “for lack of a better term” because it turns out that there are two things I could mean by that (either of which this foe could be at this point), and they’re vastly different in my mind.  The first is a “fallen Mythender” — a mythic being of some sort that was once a Mythender and now fully fallen to the Mythic World.  That’s the first idea.  But should “succumbing to corruption” br the only way you might run across a Mythender as a foe?  After all, based on what I’ve set up, at that point they aren’t even a Mythender anymore, just a myth.

That leads to the second idea — of a “renegade Mythender,” a hero who hasn’t changed or been corrupted, but has shifted his focus away from ending Myth to ending his own kind.  In explaining this idea to Lenny, who has listened to me at length talk about Mythender, I said (paraphrased):

It’s Clint Eastwood’s character from Unforgiven.  A Mythender puts down his Mantle to have a normal family and raise children.  One day, he goes off to trade when a new generation of Mythenders comes in and causes the chaos that Mythenders do, ending the status quo.  In the ensuing carnage, his boy is killed.  He comes back to his home — everything he put his Mantle down for destroyed.  So he takes it up again, this time to end those who would thoughtlessly leave heartbreak in their wake.

We talked about this idea at length (as this is just one form a renegade Mythender could take), and it occured to me how often I go back to Westerns rather than Fantasy to explain Mythender.  I have half-jokingly called this game the “Ryan Macklin takes Ken Hite’s axioms of the Western and applies them to epic, semi-historical fantasy” the RPG.

For those playing at home, Ken’s axioms of the Western are (and I’m going to misquote here, because my copy of Dubious Shards is at home):

Only the gun can keep civilization safe from the barbarians.
Those who take up the gun become barbarians.

And that explains why when I watch over-the-top semi-historical fantasy movies (300, Beowulf), I get a sense that that’s how a Mythender game should look like in the minds of the players, but also how I feel about how “look” isn’t the same as “theme.”  The themes of those movies and of what Mythender has become are pretty damned far off — which I consider this a feature, not a bug.

But to make sure I fully flesh out this feature when writing the text and to communicate it as best as I can, I need to add some more Westerns into my current media diet.  For that, I’m going back to Ken’s “Westerns 101″ list (posted last October), which I recommend to everyone interested in Westerns.  I’ve seen some of these, not all, but I’m going to re-watch those I have seen anyway just to refresh my memory.

Once Mythender is done and out for a bit, I might write an alternate setting for it: The Mythic West.  One that more directly expresses the original paradox of The Gun.  But, that is for later — now is the time for working on the original game itself and not setting hacks.  (But yes, when I do, it might be The Magnificent Seven meets 300.  And yeah, I’m sure that Ken would read that as utterly heretical.  I seem to get that response out of him, from time to time.)

- Ryan

So, I promised Daniel Perez my thoughts on this a few weeks back.  Canon Puncture has released three episodes since, the last two of which I’m on, so these thoughts don’t reflect the current show.  That said, listening to CP 60 was interesting — I completely hated it, but it gave me something to think about regarding why I did and why, frankly, that was my problem.

In brief, the Canon Puncture guys changed their format at episode 60.  Instead of the prior “homage to Sons of Kryos” format (for lack of a better term) that involved multiple segments headed — and in some places even wholly created — by the different hosts, they have opted to just do one segment where the hosts talk about news & blog posts that have hit their radar over the last week. It went from a buffet of topics about what was on their mind to a disorganized news show.

I have a rule when it comes to new podcast & podcasts that changed their format: I’ll give you five minutes.  If, after five minutes, I have no interest in listening, I won’t — my MP3 player doesn’t own me, I own it — and I’ll skip over to the next show or play a song or whatever.  Five minutes in, I turned off CP 60 in disgust, and only turned it back on out of a desire to give Rich Rogers, my good friend, full feedback rather than just “eh, I turned it off after five minutes.”

So, I used “listener agenda” in my title.  Here’s where I get to that: there might not be anything inherently wrong with what the guys are doing on Canon Puncture, on any objective level.  Yes, I used “in disgust,” but I’m responsible for my own reactions, not them — because I’m responsible for my own personal listener agenda.  (Oh, and for those paying attention, I’m totally burying the lead here.)

(I’ve delayed on this post because I’ve tried to work out what I mean by that, but I have learned that I rarely know what I think about something until after I have written and posted it.)

The way I figure it, Listener Agenda is the idea that listeners have different desires and goals in listening to podcasts or other media.  This isn’t a revolutionary idea — in fact, we often will say something like “this isn’t the show for you” — but it’s one I don’t think we generally explore enough.

To be upfront: listeners have constantly shifting agenda, depending on what they are listening to, what sort of day they’ve had, etc.  I think people can see a baseline agenda in their media consumption, but also accept that it depends on various factors.

Some listeners have the agenda to be entertained.  They are focused on laughter, or levity, or whatever it is that they get out of the media they’re listening to that helps pass the time and please them.  I suspect a lot of commute-listeners are in this category, which is why actual play podcasts are as popular as they are, since that’s a lot of content with with to fill time.

Others have the agenda to be educated.  They are listening to shows in order to learn something, either on an abstract “I like learning!” level or for a specific subject they are dealing with.  I’m usually in this boat, as I have a constant desire to understand better my craft.  Listening to shows in order to understand something is very much engaging in that something.

Another agenda is to argue.  You see this a lot with any politically-charged topic or interviews with people that others love to hate, but there are listeners out there who will consume media specifically to make contact with it by arguing against it.  A lot of shows that stir up controversy are looking for listeners of this stripe, because they’re vocal.  (But I’m getting ahead of myself by talking about shows attracting certain listeners.)

There are other agendas, but let’s stick with these three.  First of all, these are not mutually-exclusive, but I would bet money that deep down at any given moment, there’s always one that’s dominant.  There’s never equality for that first-place spot at a point in time, even if so over a long enough sampling of someone’s listening habits.

Now, here’s where I get back to my reaction to CP 60.  Previously, I was engaging with two agendas: Education and Fellow Podcaster (yes, not in the three I listed, but that’s a specific agenda that media creators often engage in).  Specifically, I prefer Education in the form of detailed thought on a topic, akin to the old Sons of Kryos format and my own Master Plan.  So, when I listened to episode 60, my agenda was in no way met.  Instead, I had this other thing that, if my agendas were more aligned, I might have enjoyed.

I told Rich about some of the technical bits that he could tighten up on, and about why I didn’t like CP 60, but when it comes down to it, they crafted a show more meant to engage someone who wants to be entertained — illustrated by the ratio of banter to news content, particularly the more bileous banter that I really, really didn’t care for.  (Whether that’s also crafting a show for the Arguing listener or not is another question that I’m not sure I know the answer to.)

It was probably disappointing for Rich to hear it from a friend, but I told him that I didn’t expect to listen to Canon Puncture again, because there’s nothing in the show for me.  Others have said that the show’s new format is great, and cool — I totally disagree, but I respect that the reason I do is wholly about my tastes versus theirs.

Now, all that said, there’s another shift in Canon Puncture starting with 62.  Rich & I talked months ago about possibly doing some segments for CP, and back with their old format that made sense.  Given the new format, we brought up the idea again, and decided to give it a shot.  I enjoy the conversations that Rich & I have, and I hope others do as well, but I can respect if it doesn’t fit in with the current listener expectations — it certainly don’t seem to with Daniel Perez, who has jokingly (but not untruthfully) said that it doesn’t belong on the show.

By the way, “it doesn’t fit in your agenda” isn’t meant as a dismissal.  There’s a reason my third in my Podcaster Three Questions is “who is your target audience?”  You need to know what agenda you’re shooting for and if that’s the agenda your target audience cares about.  To those who complain about your show — if they’re not really in your target audience, whatever, but if so and you’re missing the mark, you need to fix your damn show.  Thus, if I’m actually in CP’s target audience (and I’m not sure I am), then they’re missing with the pure news format (though, possibly fixed with the additional content that Rich & I are doing as a second segment).  If Daniel is, then they need to this about ditching the stuff Rich & I are doing.  If we both are, having apparently radically different agendas, then they have a lot of soul-searching to do in order to resolve the conflict within their listener base.

Regardless of what they do, I wish the crew of the HMS Canon Puncture the best of luck, and will always be in their corner to help them out.

Anyway, this topic is something I’m going to chew on for a bit and write on more in the future, because I don’t think we ask a craft — by which I mean RPG podcasters — do enough discourse on stuff like this.  This is an awesome craft, and we could use more analysis of this thing we do.

- Ryan