Posts Tagged ‘podcast’

I’ve mentioned before that I think more podcasters take the idea of “seasons” as a silly, “let’s pretend we’re real media” way. Like, “ohh, look at us, we’re season 2! Aren’t we keen!”

Not that I mind people having fun, playing around at something, whatever, but I feel like if that’s what someone thinks of as a season, they’re missing the point. And it’s a point I’ve been talking about here and there for the last year or so. That seasons can be a good idea, if you understand them.

These days, I don’t enter into new projects without some plan of an exit strategy. Things that sounds like they’ll go over forever tend to end at a point of low energy, which is a violation of one of my podcast rules: “Leave people wanting more, not having wanted less.” Which means that with anything on-going (including this blog), I break my time spend doing that into seasons, and choose whether to renew that project after each season.

I’ve been talking with a friend about starting a new show, something we’re both interested in talking about but want to make separate from our current shows. He was worried about adding another ongoing commitment to his life, and I agreed.

“That’s why podcasts aren’t ongoing commitments to me anymore. I think in seasons. Tell you what, let’s try five-episode seasons. If we like our first season, we’ll renew.”

As I described my thought and the advice I’ve given over the years, he came at me with a new thing I hadn’t considered before. “No. I don’t want to do something episode-based. That doesn’t feel like it has a hard stop.”

This blew me away, because I hadn’t considered something based on time-elapsed before. Or, rather, I had and discarded it. “Yeah, but if we say ‘Let’s try this for two months’ and we only do an episode…I dunno.”

We compromised. Five episodes in fourteen weeks. That’s one episode every two weeks, with an extra four weeks to cover life happening. Not that we’ve started that yet, but then GenCon recovery really only started with me last week, and I have a backlog of life. We should be recording our pilot in September.

Another podcast I might be a part of (holy crap, it’s almost like I’m a media producer again) is taking a similar approach, and it’s smart[1].  Small, agile seasons. It gives us a target to shoot for that’s reachable in the short term, a period when we not only can but must seriously evaluate what’s happened, a time where we can plan to take a break rather than it just happening…and lasting several months. Most importantly, it gives us permission to walk away.

Permission to walk away while you’re at a high point is important to being successful at anything. You’ll be remembered for your last acts on something. If you ride something all the way down to it crashing, that’s what people will remember. People give me shit still for Master Plan podfading rather than properly ending (though I am, slowly, getting back on that horse because I feel like I should finish it right, even if that violates my rule above). And that’s the point of seasons — to give yourself permission to quit something while it’s still good when you think you don’t have another full season in you.

Also, funding. But that’s another topic for another time.

- Ryan

(Not sure if I’m going to stick to “Media Monday” as a blog topic, but I’m playing with the idea. We’ll see if it survives a season!)

[1] Yes, I just said my own idea is smart. I’m a humble guy.

For someone who has supposedly retired from podcasting, I have been a bit prolific lately. But first, some congratulations:

Canon Puncture hit episode 100! Woo!

The guys over at CP are pretty awesome, and watching them grow into the show they’ve become over the years has been really neat. I wish them the best of luck in enacting their master plans!

I already announced this earlier, but since we just put up the second episode, I’ll announce again!

This Just In…From Gen Con! 2010 edition is up! Pre-show #2 has been released, and we’ve got more coming this Thursday through Sunday!

Chris Hanrahan and Brian Isikoff were foolish enough to have me crash the most recent episode of 2d6 Feet in a Random Direction. We talk about the Dresden Files mini-con at Endgame, the Go Play SF Bay kick-off, ICONs, and #ShitRyanMacklinSays[1].

But, that’s all old news…

Today, August 2nd, 2010, Master Plan has returned from podfading. I give you: Master Plan #54, wherein I’ve interviewed Ken Hite about Setting Creation and Day After Ragnarok. (Right now, I’m having some DNS issues, so you can find it at http://masterplan.libsyn.com/master_plan_54_kenneth_hite_setting_creation_day_after_ragnarok)

This is the first in a series I’m doing where I’m publishing interviews from 2009 that I’ve been sitting on for months. Those who follow me in other spaces know how busy I’ve been and know how long it takes me to produce an episode that I’m happy with, so it’s been something I’ve pushed off again and again. But it felt really good to kick this out, so expect it to continue for a little bit. Whether I keep doing it after I’m out of my old material or not is up in the air.

- Ryan

[1] Which, by the way, Karen has asked that other people take part in — since she can’t be at Gen Con to chronicle me putting my foot in my mouth.

Howdy!

A lot going on here in my world. I’ve been buried under a pile of work, day-job and elsewise. But I’m taking a quick breather to tell y’all about stuff:

Podcasts

I’ve been on a few podcasts recently. Of course, there’s the most recent episode of Master Plan, where Monica Valentinelli and I talk about horror game design. It was a great conversation, and I’m happy to have teamed up with FlamesRising.com on that ep. Those guys are pretty awesome.

(As yes, that’s proof that I’m not podfading yet. Master Plan is still around!)

I was interviewed by Wolfgang Baur on the Open Design Podcast episode 006. We talk a bit about how I got started as a podcaster, making my journey as a game designer more public than most. Of course, I come from indieland, where we’re all fairly public about it — I suppose the main difference is that I turned my journey into produced show rather than something more journal-esque. (Not because I look down on journal-type stuff — I read them all the time. But producing a show is fun for me.

While at RinCon, a few of us “hijacked” an episode of The Game’s The Thing. It was fun to sit down with Don Dehm & Derek Rex from Pulp Gamer, and of course as always with Paul Tevis. We talked about the con and just had a good time doing the episode.

Neoncon

Also, I’ll be at Neoncon in Vegas this week! I’ll be speaking at GamesU, with at least two panels on my docket:

Gaming Podcasting 101 (alongside Ed Healy), Sunday 11am

Interested in getting your voice out there in the world of podcasting, but don’t know where to start? This presentation is for you! You’ll learn the basics on a variety of topics, from microphone & recording space, to audio editing (on PC and Mac), to show theory and speaking to your target audience. In addition to planned topics, there will be plenty of time to answer your questions.

and

5 Major Design Mistakes and How to Avoid Them (alongside Leonard Balsera), Sunday, 2pm

In this seminar, you’ll learn about five foundational mistakes that people make in the process of designing a roleplaying game and how to keep them out of a game during development. Whether you’re working on a project right now or are just interested in learning more about the design process, this overview will provide you with some concrete techniques and tactics to focus both the concept and execution of your design.

I’ll be attending some of the other panels, and otherwise be popping around having a good time. If you see me, feel free to say hi!

Dresden Files RPG

Oh, and we have a little announcement about the upcoming Dresden Files RPG on the official site. Enjoy!

Anyway, that’s it for now. There’s more on the horizon…but there always is. Hope to see some of you at Neoncon!

- 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

Master Plan #43: Interview with Crafty Games, Part 2

Right before heading off on a bi-coastal convention adventure, Ryan serves up the second half of the interview with Crafty Games. In this half, they talk about collaborating as a team and their main hurdles in revisiting their system & making Fantasy Craft & Mastercraft — along with, naturally, their own personal master plans. Afterward, Ryan tells you that he’ll be at OrcCon and Dreamation this month, and gives a shameless plea to donate to the show.

Crafty Games:

• Fantasy Craft
• Spycraft 2.0

Running time: 21:29 / File size: 14.8M

Master Plan #42: Interview with Crafty Games, Part 1

Ryan starts 2009 off with the first of a two-part interview with Alex Flagg, Scott Gearin & Patrick Kapera from Crafty Games. They talk about their upcoming product, Fantasy Craft, and how they retooled their award-nominated Spycraft system both for streamlining the rules (for their new Mastercraft base system) and for working with a different genre. After the first part concludes, Ryan talks about a game & a content that has hit his radar, and figures it’s worth other people knowing about.

Crafty Games:

• Fantasy Craft
• Spycraft 2.0

Other mentions:

• Sexy Deadly
• Game Design Company Game Design Challenge (Story-Games.com)

Running time: 25:19 / File size: 17.4M