Alexander Danner
The following was recorded live at PodTales on October 20th, 2019, using hurriedly improvised recording equipment. The sound quality isn’t great, but we hope you’ll enjoy it anyway.
Today we present Dice and Prejudice with Sean Howard. Sean shares his journey from Audio Fiction/Drama into Live Play, including how he and his collaborators went about creating The End of Time and Other Bothers. He also discusses prejudice and entitlement, from recognizing our entitlement and pointing out the need for more voices to also the prejudice we face within the industry as a live play show.
Sean Howard
Sorry, we were just on the wrong input.
Audience Member
Hello.
Sean Howard
I don’t think I need a mic for this size room I’m a pretty loud individual. So I don’t know if it works, no?
Audience Member
Can’t hear you.
Sean Howard
Thank you.
Audience Member
What’d he say?
Sean Howard
Okay. Ah, these are these are some of my shows the back row lights Is that possible and we all go to sleep lights three, lights two. Oooo, moody. Okay so these are some of my shows. Alba Salix, Royal Physician, is the first show we ever created. The Axe & Crown was our panic, we got to get something out after three years because people are listening to our show. We don’t know what to do. Then, one day, I went and created a new show, without telling my partner Eli, who has to do all the sound design engineering, he was not too thrilled. And that was The End of Time and Other Bothers, he told me don’t ever do that again. And then I went and created another show without telling him called, Civilized. I think now, I’m definitely learned my lesson I’m currently working another show, I’m not yet ready to announce, okay. So I’m End of Time and Other Bothers is what I’m here to talk about. It is a live play, but it’s a little different. You’re not going to hear dice rolling. We come from the world of audio fiction. And we wanted to create something that had that level of storytelling and sound design and music. That was unusual. So I took audio and audio fiction, and live play and try to just merge them into one new category. as a marketer. I can now tell you don’t ever do that. Just pick a category and stay in your category. It’s easier. I know sorry. If you do do that you have friends out there like me. So End of Time came out to some great acclaim right breakout star from Wil, Radio Drama Revival was always sweet. Everyone knows David hopefully Radio Drama Revival says something sweet about every show, and then eager authority is probably the biggest thing we ever got. So it’s a tale of a flightless fairy, half demons, and cafeteria line workers, dystopian empires, magical waterfalls, mysterious books, and a bazooka. And the idea of End of Time and Other Bothers, I came up with a brilliantly stupid idea of placing it inside the Alba Salix world. Not really thinking through that my players would introduce things like a bazooka, which creates some problems in canon for us inside Alva Salix, our big show, but that’s what we did. And so the live play takes place in that. Today I’m going to take you through through how we went about creating the show, like what was the actual thinking about how we positioned it, what we were trying to do. I’m going to show you how we record, the equipment we use. And then I’m going to get to what I really want to get to, um, and that is to talk about prejudice. And that is a talk about a lot of topics around what it was like for us to create a new genre show in a community that is so warm and wonderful. And realize people don’t want it. They don’t want to hear from us because we now have done a live play. And I have asked two people to share this space with me. Let’s put our hands together for Cap Blackard. Michelle, I always say their last name wrong. Nicoleisen is also going to be joining they couldn’t make it at the last minute. So they’re gonna join us on through audio and I have figured that out. So we will make that happen. And we’re going to talk about our stories. What it was like to enter this space with something that was different And hopefully that’s changing. Okay. Ah, I once wrote an elevator with a McElroy. I’m famous now, they didn’t talk to me. And at the end of it, I didn’t even know who they were. I was like, Who is that? And then I was like, What? So, adventure zone. I think it was PodCon One. I’d never heard it, they’re on stage. All this stuff’s happening. And we have our audio fiction. And I was like, what’s the big deal? I think it was four days later of not sleeping and just listening to the show non stop. I was an Adventure Zone addict, like a lot of people are. And the realization for me was when I realized that the McElroy is mostly Justin was doing comedy improvisation, which I have a background in. So I realized that they were doing things around yes and and other techniques. There was a scene in one of their more recent things where some of you will know the scene, but he’s Park Ranger, and he’s coming up to interrogate this person in in their little campfire area. And he’s like, What’s your name, ma’am? And and Griffin’s like, I don’t know, Rachel. He’s like, Oh, are you one of the, what’s your last name? And Griffin was like, do we really need to come up with a last name? and Justin was like, could you yes and me a little so we can play this game. So that’s when I realized, thank you. They were using comedy improvisation, which I love. And so I was like, Huh. And of course, there’s some other shows that I adore, that you’re using different aspects. So, you know, we come from audio fiction, where we love this immersive sound design. We all just love killing ourselves, trying to figure out how to, with our day jobs, learn how to become audio engineers. So I don’t know why we’re we love pain. But you know, this idea of immersive sound design, this idea of storytelling game systems that weren’t just the D&D. I’m an old D&D nerd for those of you that came to my earlier talk, but I wanted something that was more about stories. And so that meant I had to break out. I couldn’t just do D&D. And so I was listening to shows like Call of Cthulhu, Terrible Warriors, 20 Side Stories I love. Anybody here has not heard 20 Side Stories or any of these, please check them out, Join the Party. These were all shows that I was listening to and going, Okay. These are amazing. I love aspects of all of these and others. I listen to The Lucky Die, listen to other shows, too. And I was trying to think, what are we going to do? How do we create something different? This is what we’re used to. This is, uh, it’s a cheap studio, but still expensive. So we have an Indiegogo for Alba and then we use that to pay our actors and to have the studio and we’re used to this like there’s that’s all my pages of panic here of trying to keep up and there’s Eli watching one of our actors in the booth. And this is the environment that we came from, um and part of the problem I was trying to do and one of the reasons I keep watching your shows is I’m trying to figure out how to get out of this. Because this is really expensive and hard for us to do. And it means we have to do a big Indiegogo for any season. And I’m trying to figure out how do we record in our home? How do we do it in the third or fourth? What can we do? Like how do we other other ways we can go about creating a show. But this is what we were used to. This is our house transformed. It’s also our privileges showing, it’s hard to see, I’ll make it even darker in here so everyone can see. I’m gonna say no, no, no, no. Alright, okay. Hey, now you can’t see me at all. All right, so someone play and see if you can get an interim. But anyways, this is our house transformed. You can see how we’re set up. I’m going to talk about it. Those we have our values up on the wall, and this is how we create and yes, we’re all white people. Anyways, moving on. This is our gear. For End of Time and Other Bothers uh, we so here’s what we did. We didn’t have we had some money leftover from the Alba and, but not a lot and what we did is I went out and I rented five mics from like a local place that has, you know, one of those audio places. I don’t know what I’m in Canada, so they’re different. But you know, one of those places you can just rent like PA gear from, and I rented five mics for a day, I probably should have just done a weekend. As it turns out, it’s the same price but I did a day. And then we had a panic filled day of trying to record with different variations of all the mics and writing it down and then listening back. And what I determined was that the $400, $500, $1,000 mics that all these people talk about this bulk, it’s bunk, it really didn’t matter when we were in our room with house, like you’re gonna have a little bit of noise on any of them. And so we went with the Shure SM 58. It’s just a die hard. It’s a little expensive, but what we liked about it is that we have um– We have some noise through our electrical in our house, a lot of you will also have that noise just from the electromagnetic frequencies. And the Shure you can rotate it in its cradle until you get to the point where most of it’s gone. And so you just started, turn it with headphones on until you hear it almost go away. And so you can really reduce it with. And so that’s why we chose that mic. And again, not a fancy mic um. And what’s interesting is there’s a $20 knockoff of this mic. I don’t remember the number Eli does come by our booth there before. Yes. And it performed almost exactly the same. There was a small difference, and so yes, so but it also performed really, really well. So it was between those two, we bought flex arms for $16. They’re I mean, they’re a nightmare. We’re constantly hitting them. But it allowed us to just quickly because we need to be able to take this room apart because we share our house and so we can’t just set it out permanently. So we needed things we could put in and take out. So we bought those arms. And we did buy the Zoom L12. I love this board, I’m in heaven, we do everything through this board, it records to an SD card, all 12 tracks, I can do loop minus really easily with a push of a button. So I can join the Zoom call and not have them be sent back to them. But I’m still sending me to them, right? So I can bring them into the board and record them as a safety. And I can also have them hear me anyways, it’s a beautiful board. What’s really drove it for us is there are four headphone outs, I didn’t have to buy a headphone amp, I can actually use us around the table with four people and they can all have headphones on. We don’t do that, but so we needed a new one anyways, our little Zoom had died. It’s more expensive than the Zoom we were going to get. But um it allowed us to not have to buy a new board or anything. And it also has a conduit to your computer so you can actually record straight in as a device. So, so we don’t have to also get you know an interface for our computer. But often what we do is we record to this even just doing quick lines or in outtakes and we’ll put it on the SD card and then we just bring it down downstairs to where we all Edit. And then of course there’s all this stuff we do not I do not want to know and I do not want to track and I do not want to add it up but it’s endless right it’s like, the XLR cables you have to buy, the SD cards, and it’s a lot of money when you add it up so we just try and buy it slowly and not admit we bought it. Okay, we bought one box of Auralex studio foam. They’re they’re called wedgies those you’ll see them up there and it helped a lot. We have all these ridiculous angles which are horrific for a sound he’s like these angles on the side there. They’re horrific. And so we just stuffed we stuffed there’s you see some pillows I don’t have any pillows left on any of my sofas. I really don’t know why pillows go on sofas, but now I know why we had them so we can just stack them up in all the corners. So we stacked them in all the corners. We got moving blankets, the Deluxe moving blankets from Home Depot They’re really good. The key with with blankets, not everyone knows this. Don’t place them against the wall. The blankets don’t actually stop the sound, you need the cushion of air. It’s the air between the blanket and the wall that actually cushions and reduces the sound. Okay, that’s what dampens. So you hang them and you just leave a little bit like even an inch of space and we just have them clipped and like over here we have this weird bungee cords and this is a this is a shower curtain rod. Okay, so we’re just like just trying to get blankets on most of the sides. That’s a window where you can hear the neighbors and the dog barking. That’s an old light I have from way back anyways. So that’s how we set up the room. We use Reaper. We are big fans of Reaper. Reaper is $60 on you don’t I basically you would either be for us it would be Reaper or it would be what’s the free one. Audacity? Audacity. Yeah, the nice thing about Reaper I’ll show you a screenshot later is we sometimes have 60-70 tracks on our episodes and we have VST plugins and stuff that are often free, but we have all of that running real time in Reaper it’s pretty amazing software and you don’t even have to pay the $60 you can actually use it forever without ever paying it just comes up with this little three second countdown. Really cool software. Questions about our setup?
Audience Member
How long does it take you to put in everything and then take it all down?
Sean Howard
Well I make Eli go up and do it. So I really don’t know it’s horrible um, but I’m usually on recording day I’m in panic meltdown because I haven’t prepared and I’m just running around going oh god god god. All I have is troll written on a piece of paper? So sometimes I help it takes us the those are up pretty semi permanently that we told our roommate who owns the house that no they come right off. They don’t So, yeah, we bought you know that like stick stuff and we thought, Oh, you just pull them off, but instead, yeah, no, they’re on there permanently. I pulled one off and it just took half of the paint and nothing with it and I was just like, you know, okay, so yeah, I think it takes us about, the curtains are the hardest part over here, but I think it’s probably about 15 minutes because then we have to set up all the clamps and then all right, no, it’s half an hour because then we have to put the mics in and he rotates them all to get rid of the noise. About a half an hour setup. We often leave it until we get yelled at by the roommates. Um, And yeah, so. This is what Reaper looks like. This is how we’re set up. There is no single mic in the center. Yeah, and one of the first things we tried was for not Yetis, but the little blue Snowball whatever those are. We put we tried for Snowballs. Now the Snowballs were great. The problem was there was no way we could figure out how to connect four USB devices to one computer without it literally exploding. Like the computer just melts down with that many USB buses for some reason. I think you can try and get two, we, but then once you got over two, it just was a nightmare of we could we just couldn’t figure out how to do it. So we would have ended up having to have four computers or three or two computers. So we finally were just like, Okay, this is getting crazy. But the Snowballs worked as well having four of them. The problem with the we have with the mics is that we can go off mic pretty easily like when we because we turn and talk to each other. So we have to learn how to stay in the bubble like a circle on the mic. So that’s been a learning thing. So a lot of our early sessions there’s just a shout of “on mic!” from Eli when we drift off so we’re getting better. This is Reaper This is one of our End of Time episodes. So you can sort of see the level of work that goes in from from Eli, obviously creating that whole immersive sound. This is our workflow now. I felt really good when I built this slide I’m like wow, look at how together we are. We are just have our shit. It doesn’t go like this. It’s sort of like, so this is what we’re supposed to do. So we’re supposed to schedule on a recording day, I’m supposed to prep, then we’re supposed to record two episodes, then someone in our cast using Reaper we can share the file easily. So someone else is gonna do a dialogue edit, we actually send it to our cast for notes after dialogue, edit, everyone gets it in case they have any notes. And then we go into sound design and final review and lock. I don’t know why dialogue edit’s up there. And then final output. Basically what how often happens is we do we do all of this way in advance and we forget to start this and then we realized we’re four days out from having to put up an episode and then it’s a mad panic to get this done. And then Eli’s been sound designing the wrong version and then I anyway, so it’s never like this, but this would be beautiful. Okay, let’s talk about influences. I wanted to find a way to create something that would stand out. So again, I’m talking about those things that I was talking about earlier. So when I look at shows that have a lot of dice rolling, versus comedy improv, I knew I wanted to be down here on comedy improv. But I loved shows that have dice roll, like I love some shows that, you know, you hear the mechanics, but and there’s different variations and people can go in different ways, but I knew I wanted to be down here. Um and then this was an interesting one um table talk versus staying in character. I thought I wanted to be 100% down here. And our fans disagree. So the fans liked some table talk. So we’ve slowly brought in more more table talk and then here It was this idea of story versus fighting, um, just because of my experiences with D&D. And we talked about this earlier, the nightmare that it can be to have an endless battle. I want it to edge towards story and away from battle. And you know, other people have been doing that too. So those are sort of the influences that led to where we wanted to place End of Time and Other Bothers but again, we’ve actually drifted up on tabletop. So I wanted to sort of create a show that would be comedy improv driven. So as the GM of my show, I don’t play all the NPCs. Other people in my table will just step in as NPCs drop it step in as another NPC stuff like that. It’s fun. That’s what we decided. A quick photo almost done. I’m gonna hand off here soon, but this is behind the screen. This was actually I was funny. I went and found an article I’d written about like my system behind the scene. And and it’s funny because like, this was way early. Um now, I’m I basically have some of these things, but I literally often have most of what I have is a couple cue cards and then yeah, a couple bullet points written out on a piece of paper with something panic with a question mark on it. Like what what after, but this is basically what I use to run the End of Time and Other Bothers. I use a computer because I still don’t know Dungeon World. Dungeon World is a we use a Powered by the Apocalypse system. But dungeon world is the most complex. It’s like somebody took d&d and just shoved it into Power by the Apocalypse. And the book is like massive. So I’ll often be looking up things and like if they were gonna use a spell, but in our table in our game, that very rarely happens. These are like world cue cards. So there are things like how does money work? Because he like gets upset if I break the world that he’s built. So these are like the things in the world because he’s got this crazy I should have brought it. The money thing is insane. It’s like 12 of this is 32 of this and it’s just, it’s crazy. So basically I deal with that by just never having money come up with nobody buys anything. Then I build everything in cue cards. And I like that because I can clip them together, like into batches. And I often am just like pulling out a batch or my table might take four sessions to just get out of an inn, which I know is similar for a lot of people. So I often don’t I often overplan and even with my three lines, it’ll be over planned. I should not have dice. And interestingly, in Dungeon World, I as a GM am not supposed to ever roll. But you can see early on I was like, I got my bag of dice. I’m ready. Like I gotta roll, I got to do damage. But in Power by the Apocalypse, I actually never roll or in Dungeon World Powered by the Apocalyps. So and then I built my own screen. This is an old D&D screen where I’ve just printed out things that I found online that were helpful, because I found in playing an Apocalypse game as a as a D&D GM was not ready for partial success. It is. It’s hard, right? I’m used to I can do critical fail. And I can do critical hit till the cows come home I can be like, Oh, you slice your foot off, or Oh, the head explodes of the whatever. But partial success? Like the fact that you you you succeed, but there’s a cost. That’s hard I found to do. So there’s little tables like to remind you the kinds of costs that can be incurred on. I don’t know if you’ve run into that, but I-
Audience Member
I’m not a game master.
Sean Howard
That’s true. Good answer. Okay.
Audience Member
Delegation
Sean Howard
Delegation. So just to bring it back. So I really want to focus on story comedy improv and the characters and that’s what we did and we were having a lot of fun. Questions about any of that before we get into the fun prejudiced part?
Audience Member
Did you not label your T as an unnecessary item? Or your coffee? On the last line? Is it really shipping?
Sean Howard
I’m going to say the one is not the piece of paper, it’s the coffee mug. I’m going to go with that. Thanks him. Okay. By the way, this presentation is here. It’s on a couple other sides bit.ly/podtalesdice. Live play is generally not accepted in audio drama or audio fiction. There are sites that will not list our show. One of them’s in the room. love what you’re doing but-
Audience Member
Guilty.
Sean Howard
Guilty. Yeah, it’s okay. You’re not alone. There’s, you know, I and other live plays, I think I’ve had this experience. It’s difficult to to get your show out there. Because I think a lot of people have views of live play that are a mic in the center of the room, no production value, whatever or maybe other views, there might be other views. So that’s a problem. That’s a challenge. When you have a live play. I find it’s hard to get listed. It’s hard to get it out there even to be in those places, because we’re not allowed to be there. There’s also reviewers who won’t review, or worse redditors who will review that you really don’t want to review your show? But this, we ran into this a lot. There were people who are very interested in Alba and I was, you know, he would write back and go, Hey, next time you put on an Alba thing, let me know. But basically, like, stop sending me this. I don’t want to know about this. So anyways, I have a lot of stories on this, but I’m not going to spend any more time on it because I’m going to turn it over to the wonderful, the amazing Cap Blackard.
Cap Blackard
All right, so my name is Cap Blackard of-
Sean Howard
You beep and I’ll do the slides.
Cap Blackard
Okay, terrific. So I started podcasting back in 2009. With the Nerdy Show Network. It was largely a nerd talk program, but that very same year, we did a show called Dungeons and Doritos, an epic tabletop role playing podcast. It started as a simple actual play before there was a term actual play. And we thought, wouldn’t it be so novel to play Dungeons and Doritos instead of doing a radio show and it took off. In its own quiet way, because some I know some of you have heard of it, but it’s actually it’s quite obscure, but it’s been around a long time. And as we went on about by Episode 18, we were full fledged RPG audio drama, which is the term that I’ve used to, like describe what it is we do. So we do the actual tabletop role playing, we leave in a healthy amount of table talk and then we, you know, add in original score and full cinematic sound design. That’s what was happening in our heads all along. So it kind of made sense. We have been listener funded for the entirety of our existence, some of them are in here. And it has been an overwhelming time making all these programs that, that have, most of us come from a filmmaking background. So we’ve all been very have been able to tell big stories in a small space has been so empowering. And using collaborative storytelling to do that is the most fun ever. It’s such a beautiful, dynamic way to write, to be with friends. Like we have some pretty hard mandates, first and foremost, which is everyone’s constantly in character as much as they personally can stand. And, and that’s kind of that’s played up everything. When Dungeons and Doritoss started, we were doing Dungeons and Dragons, fourth edition. And we quickly stopped that because it was very table miniature centric, and we couldn’t that was it was eliminating the theater of the mind. Everyone was using it as a crutch. So we got rid of it immediately. And and went into a system called Sagas that was emphasized almost exclusively the theater of the mind. So moving on, we also have a show called Ghostbusters Resurrection, which uses the 1980s Ghostbusters role playing systems.
Audience Member
What? Right.
Cap Blackard
And it is it’s in the same canon as the comic books, the movies and the video game. And it’s amazing the fandom of the Ghostbusters have adopted it to to make it kind of they they treat it in the same canon as the film and everything else which is so tremendously gratifying. It’s been on hiatus for a while but there are four new episodes out this month. And but most importantly, our big thing right now is the Call of Cthulhu Mystery Program, the Nerdy Show Network still exists, and that’s where IP things sort of tend to hang out still, but we have a new brand called Omniverse, which is centered around storytelling programming, first and foremost. The Orphans who are also exhibiting here and then a while they’re exhibiting here in the Cavatica room, and and Omni, and Call of Cthulhu are all parts of that. Dedicated storytelling programming. The Call of Cthulhu Mystery Program is a different animal from my other productions, in that the first season is in the same vein as Dungeons and Doritos and Ghostbusters Resurrection, which are kind of like, let’s say, they’re 75%, full on, but they’re 100% full on roleplay and then we just enhance it with sound. With Call of Cthulhu, it’s a 5050 split with audio drama and actual play. So we next slide please, let’s go into the process. This is the non Euclidean geometry that makes up the Call of Cthulhu Mystery Program. This is this is the process. So this one dot here, this one yellow dot represents our actual play content. And everything else here represents our audio drama content. So this is where the prejudice comes in. Because when people make pre judgments about our content, they’re upset with this one dot when we have all these other dots that very much represent our stake in the audio drama community. So we, we do all our planning, we do the recording, where we we’ve done some, every season is a completely standalone adventure. To tell a little bit about the show. It is a horror comedy set in the world of HP Lovecraft, but we play place an emphasis on women, people of color, and queer people that allow for us to dynamically expand the unknowable horror genre. Series two is definitely where you should start. That’s where we really do the 50/50 split down the line. And if you come to our booth, we have it pressed to vinyl. We took it to its logical conclusion so you can come listen to our trailer excerpts from the show on vinyl as well as a preview of series three.
We do all this, I collaborate with composers, I do secondary scripting, which is the most important part. So all of the comedy and horror dynamic that keeps everything so real and visceral, these are people who know they could die. And they know that they’re in very tense situations. So they’re naturally cracking jokes, but it all feels like dramatic and realistic. And then sometimes, you know, like, the horror becomes real as they have one foot firmly into this other world. So, we take that energy, that wild energy that can only be done through improvisation, and we enhance it with everything else, I go back in, and I make sure that it has good episodic structure, that their character arcs are fully formed. I give it a radio play framing device in the 1930s. We’ll be talking more about this in my panel at two o’clock, Living in the Moment: Writing for Improvisation. Let’s go to the next slide.
Cap Blackard
Let’s talk about prejudice. So I’ve been doing this for a long time, like I said, 2009 and we’ve had some snags, time and time like because so often, you know, we know we know what we’re doing is is audio drama, we’re putting that energy and in our performances are real, our production value is high. But we’re routinely dismissed in a way that sometimes becomes just too much to bear. So one Audio Drama Sunday, we was on the Audio Drama Hub Facebook group. And a discussion started about someone was making a list of all the audio dramas. And so we put, oh, how about how about ours Call of Cthulhu Mystery Program? Well, that’s an actual play, sorry, bud. And we’re like, well, hold on. Let’s just give us, we understand. Just give us one second to explain what we do. It didn’t take it didn’t take I got a little got a little ugly. And you can see by this first comment of your thanks for no actual play passed off as legit audio drama. That was in response to the final compiled list that was made for this. So then I went to Reddit, because I was just emotionally exhausted by the whole thing and I made a post called something to the effect of examining the– here. Examining the audio drama actual play schism, and this is posted on our audio dramas back in March. I outlined what it is we do. And I just wanted, I want to understand like what is this prejudice? Why is is there’s just no credence given to, to exploring beyond this? Because the thing about those reactions it’s not just that my work isn’t being accepted. It’s the reaction is vitriolic in nature. I mean, it is knee jerk hateful. It’s like when you say to say to an American, hey, so you know, circumcision is mutilating a baby’s penis, and they’re like, whoa, hold on, not in my house. That’s an American penis. I’m sorry, getting off in the wrong subject, but like, but the thing is, like, it is a vitriolic knee jerk very fundamental reaction of like: Do not you have chocolate and you have peanut butter. I don’t want to make a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. I don’t want this to even exist and shame on you for thinking about it. What’s more, it actually like this point in this particular day. It really affected me as a trans person. Tell me who and what I couldn’t be. Shawn to your point of saying don’t mix up genres? Always mix up genres, always do what you want to do and never let anybody tell you otherwise. It makes me so incensed as you can clearly see, so, so I made this post and I got a lot of interesting insights like I personally dislike the idea of D&D podcasts being called audio drama and will adamantly fight to kick you against it. Sorry. Hahaha. Like, it’s if the policy here is the actual plays are called audio drama that we’ll probably start looking for audio dramas elsewhere we can go to the next slide please. This one was was actually a helpful post but it was dissecting the the notion of, of why people have prejudices against actual plays there. It has people talking joking around having off topic conversations cracking open their Mountain Dews in the middle of everything. What we do is rare. So we have to deal with the prejudices of this title, which is not even the title I signed up for. Actual play doesn’t say anything, RPG audio drama, however says exactly what it is. And I should point out that there is the CounterPoint there are some people who love actual plays. Just like that with all the noises and everything and when you start putting too much audio drama in them they get upset. Now, this, everyone’s entitled their opinion of course and everyone there’s no no one has an obligation to enjoy these programs but the the the vitriolic spite that comes out of this content, a complete unwillingness to acknowledge it.
And this is also not just true of, I mean, the thing is sent me off to the begin with was improvised shows at large were being routinely dismissed. I look at films that I love and adore, like, say Ghostbusters or films that I think are okay, but are nonetheless interesting, like The Blair Witch Project, which is entirely improvised, and that does not take away from what it is. And what it did is a cultural zeitgeist. Neither of those two things and they would be nothing without improvisation. So there’s this like, there’s this weird attitude about about the like a written script and sort of a pretension that exists there. And that’s fine. I’m a writer like I understand having a cohesive piece made in that way. But also I’m most of all, I’m about experiences, I’m about feelings. And the feeling that I get when my friends and I are collaborating to create this intense experience. We’ve all got our own little worlds, we have our own agendas, and our game masters leading us through this space that’s been meticulously designed. And we are breaking it in every which way. But it all, we’re all fueled off of each other and living for that energy. That’s a really special thing. And being able to capture that and elevate it to a level of cinematic experience is what I want to be doing with my life.
Cap Blackard
So here’s a great other piece of prejudice, which I believe is written by someone in the room. “I’m a scripted audio producer, but because I didn’t come from the indie audio drama community, I get a lot of comments about not being a real producer and that I just don’t understand how audio drama is supposed to work. Spoiler: I do. It’s absolutely infuriating. And I totally get where you’re coming from about the gatekeeping. Even though I’m technically the top of my field, there are a lot of people who don’t even acknowledge that I’m a part of the community because I didn’t do it their way.” And I don’t know maybe it’s Just being a queer person, or maybe it’s just being, I don’t know an artist, but when when someone talks about art and puts into a box, I lose my mind, my entire life has not been thrashing against boxes, not because I’m petulant, or demanding, but simply because expression is everything to me. And I won’t settle for anything less. I don’t remember what the next slide is. But let’s go for it. Ah, this is this is the good stuff. This is positive things. So that discussion on Reddit did actually yield some positive comments. There were some good breakthroughs there. Like, “I don’t I’m not I don’t understand this. It’s still telling the story. It’s still creativity. In my opinion, audio drama exists in a very wide spectrum. I understand where people are coming from, but this is a new era. There’s plenty for everyone.” And a part of this conversation was in about a week or so I was going to wrap Season Two of Cthulhu and I wanted to post about it on r/audiodrama. They have an audio dramas section they have an RPG section. But never show the two meats like Ladyhawke. So so but I got the go ahead from a from a kind person audiodrama.com. It’s like, “Yeah, for sure. Like, post it post to r/audiodrama. This seems to be clearly what you’re doing.” So I did, and I got 80% upvoted. So that’s nice and positive responses like this, that “This is literally my favorite podcast out there right now. I just discovered Season Two, Season One Two days ago. Please tell me you’re doing more. It’s amazing,” like the positive responses in an environment where I was also getting, you know, like some some pretty sincere static, but once I posted about it, about it coming out and people were, you know, not engaging with the conflict tree discussion that I started. It was actually quite positive. The next slide, please. It was very positive. In fact, the show’s done really well. And since March, I’ve seen a big, like a tide shift. There’s more people doing what we’re doing. They’re people who come from backgrounds that aren’t exclusively as independent as Sean or I are and it’s changing the opinion, just like people interacting with queer people or people of color like having that that diversity that intersectionality people thrive off– human beings, I should say specifically thrive off of experiences where we as a species get stuck in our ways. We like familiarity. And some of us I guess, are raised in environments where when things get mixed up, having things in boxes seems very important to us. And as soon as that gets jumbled it just activates– I’m not, I’m not a psychologist, I don’t have what the science of it is, but there’s clearly like someone’s someone’s done the work and if the if you know, please, please let me know. But it’s it’s starting to work our shows into like went from relative obscurity, and like a devoted following, to ending up in like, the top 10 and top 15 of Apple’s new science fiction and fiction lists, which is incredible. And I couldn’t I couldn’t be happier these these are these are comments talking about, like talking about us as an actual play, talking about us as an audio drama, praising us for both, and celebrating what it is, which is a combination of two things that you never have to settle for not mixing things up. All art is some kind of a remix of the next thing. Oh, here we are. So this is just some some good words of wisdom, work to be as inclusive and kind as possible, regardless of how other people treat you. When somebody directly tells you that you’re something you’re not kindly correct them. Standing up for yourself in a productive way is important. So use every opportunity you can to explain your point of view. They may not agree with you, but if you present yourself well and be clear as to why you think you do what you do that matters. Keep telling stories. Yeah, this is this is a fantastic post and we’ll have links to the actual original Reddit thread. It’s it’s an interesting thing. If you’re dissecting what’s happened here or what’s happening in the genres. It’s a great place to go to find pull quotes for like, getting into the psyche of all of this. I think I think, they’re um–
Sean Howard
Yeah, that’s good. This’ll be a good segue to Michelle. Let’s give a round of applause for Cap, please. That was amazing. Thank you all for being here to hear this.
Cap Blackard
Yes, seriously, this
Sean Howard
Is this is a conversation that we need to have. So we really appreciate you guys helping us have it. I asked Michelle Nickolaisen to speak, they were going to come and then they weren’t able to. So I’m gonna give a quick intro I’m gonna get into because it’s long. But it’s great. There’s such great stuff. Michelle is a writer, artist, marketer, public speaker. I adore their work. They’ve got a variety of shows Serendipity City, Unplaced are two big ones. They’ve got other work in writing. They also work in tech and marketing, and their voice is important and I really enjoy being able to engage with them. And this is what they put together and I help just put, I basically I tried to say something was more visual for us for this medium.
Michelle Nickolaisen
I’m Michelle Nickolaisen, I created and GM Serendipity City, Which is an old 1920s actual play podcast. And I also created in a write Unplaced, which is an audio drama. And I have a couple of other projects in the works as well, I want to say thank you to Sean, for sharing this platform with me and for reaching out to me. These are all topics that I feel really strongly about, and I’m grateful to be able to discuss them. And so the first thing is that I want to cover is to talk about what I mean when I mean gatekeeping. Gatekeeping originally referred to keeping information from people in a journalism context. So the gatekeeper was the person who decided what information went to the next stage and to the public. So the gatekeeper would be like the editor who decides what stories are going to be published. It might be the person who decides what sources are going to be interviewed. Over time, it’s kind of shifted in the way that it’s used, specifically to be used often in like a social justice and community context. I think of it as, you must be this tall to ride basically. It’s a way to block people from information, spaces. and resources, usually based on arbitrary criteria. So a more explicitly social justice oriented example might be that it’s very, very common for trans people to be blocked from receiving transitioning related health care, depending on how they present. So a trans woman might be told, I don’t think you’re actually trans, because you are not presenting, quote, unquote, femininely enough to me, the doctor who decides, like what kind of health care you get. Um you see this in community oriented ways. In basically every single space I’ve ever been in. There is a lot more to talk about both as far as how gatekeeping is imposed on marginalized people from the inside and outside the communities. But I’m trying to keep this short and we’re going to touch on that a little bit in a minute. So the next thing I wanted to talk about was gatekeeping in action and how it harms people. As I’ve mentioned, a couple of times, the specific harm is that it removes people from access to resources. And that case, I mean access to information, access to people to work with or network with, who can then introduce you to opportunities. Sometimes it means literal resources. Sometimes there will be things that are behind a wall and a community. And the rule is you need to be enough of this to enter. But and then once you’re in there, you get information on how to get more money from clients, for example, to use a free– freelancing example. But if you are not judged as being worthy of entering that space, then you can’t have access to that information. There is also an interesting dynamic that I’ve noticed, where when people talk about gatekeeping, they’re often told to make their own spaces or resources, which doesn’t really acknowledge the complexity of the situation. Like number one, making spaces and resources is hard, it’s work. People don’t want to recognize it as such. But it’s very, very hard work. Number two, if you were starting something from the ground up, it is obviously not going to have the same reach as far as people and network and established sources inside that community or that resource as something that is already established. An example of this from my personal life is that I am nonbinary. And I still participate in some spaces that are labeled for women only. The reason that I do that is because there are not alternate resources that have the same amount of reach, or same amount of things to offer that are labeled for nonbinary people. So a couple of examples of how gatekeeping and just sort of like blatant discrimination in the podcasting space has affected me and people that I know my experiences within actual play specifically are often less obvious or more insidious than straight up discrimination. There are actual there are definitely actual play spaces that are dedicated to queer players and or DMs. But there’s sort of a self perpetuating problem where a lot of the more successful actual play podcasts are run by cisgender white men who intentionally or not when looking for other actual play podcasts to cross promote with often wind up working with and promoting other cisgender white men. There’s another problem in my opinion, in audio drama focused spaces where actual play podcasts are typically either not welcomed, or the way that they are talked about favors people with much more resources. What I mean by that is that people will only talk about or only accept people who are working on actual play podcasts that sound as much as possible like a planned and soundscaped audio drama. To some extent, this is a matter of taste. And I’m not trying to police taste, but I do think that there is something that people often don’t talk about. Or think about really, where if you’re saying the only kind of actual play media that I’m going to allow in this space is an actual play podcast that imitates a scripted, well produced audio drama. You are blocking the space, which often comes with access to promotion and networking and marketing and knowledge. You’re blocking all of that from podcasts who can’t put that kind of work into them. By cutting out podcasts who don’t or can’t put that kind of work in. You are going to cut out some of the like, lazy white cis dudes in podcasting who think that everything they say is comedy gold and refused to learn how to edit to save their life. But you’re also going to cut out people who don’t have friends who can do audio editing for them for free, who don’t have the time or the knowledge required to do sound scaping and custom soundtracks on top of all of the other work that goes into an actual play, because actual play podcasts are a lot of work. And doing that is going to keep people without those resources, which in society and structures that we live in, is typically marginalized people. It’s going to keep those marginalized people and the art that they create out of your spaces and almost sort of punish them for not having those resources. If you are creating a community space, with the intention of making it accessible and making it easier for people to tell our stories, which is why I think we’re all here so we can tell our stories and have our stories heard. And you are setting up rules and gatekeeping implicit or explicit that is keeping people who don’t have resources out, then that is something that you need to think about because that’s happening, whether you’re doing it intentionally or not. I also personally feel like those attitudes that actual play needs to imitate audio drama kind of discards actual play and improvise storytelling as an art form in its own right. I don’t think that really actual play. The I don’t think the goal of it should be to imitate a scripted piece of work and trying to make it do that doesn’t really make sense to me. Just working within the medium, it’s like, it’s like trying to draw on a dry erase board with graphite pencils. I just don’t understand why you would personally. But again, I know that that’s a matter of taste. I’ve also run into this quite a bit around framing devices or having narrators for an audio drama. There are a lot of people that feel like either of those things existing in a podcast makes it inherently not an, not an audio drama, or not a real quote unquote audio drama, or means that the Creator is lazy. I personally think that’s bullshit. But I also think, again, if you’re serious about making a space that’s accessible for newcomers, and is a good and safe place for marginalized people to tell their stories, and experiment creatively, then repeatedly talking about how framing devices are lazy and how having a framing device or narrator makes something inherently less good than something else is not really the way to create that community space that you say that you want. I have experienced, Unplaced has a framing device which I created because I was a new creator. I didn’t know I don’t know anyone who works in audio professionally. I don’t know anyone who like has, or well I didn’t when I started, obviously now I do. But I did not have like a specific network of people who were already talented and or professionals or semi-professionals or had any kind of experience. And it was also really important for me to pay people because of experiences that I’ve had freelancing. And so as a way to try and keep the cast small and like sort of narrow the focus, I used a framing device, which was not even a word as a college dropout. That’s not even a word that I had heard regularly until some of these discussions came up.
Sean Howard
We don’t have time to finish, there is a link to the full again, if everyone goes here, the full mp3 is up and I have to say I listened to it like five or six times, just having to prepare and edit and create that and there’s some really great stuff in there and highly recommend everyone. I want to use the last five minutes to recognize that these are hard things we’re talking about and we’re not trying to attack anyone, but I wanted to use this to allow for other voices, and we can see even between the three of us, there are differing views, both in what we experienced, what we create, how we create it, how we value it, but–
Cap Blackard
I more calling methodologies really.
Sean Howard
Right.
Cap Blackard
Because like, you know, we all we all value what each other does.
Sean Howard
Hundred percent.
Cap Blackard
Yeah,
Sean Howard
We respect and value each other a lot. And so it’s a complex issue.
Cap Blackard
Yeah.
Sean Howard
And what I liked is the conversation that Cap, Michelle, and I were having was to really think about what is it that makes us a community? What is the role of community? We all talk about, we’re part of a community right? This it’s a beautiful thing and like this, this is a small event where a lot of us know each other or being like, Oh, I can put a face to a voice or, but what is this community and and what is the purpose of this community? Right? Is it to allow for these kind of spaces to have more difficult conversations so that we can all understand other sides? Does that matter? Right? Or is this community just about furthering careers? Right, get ahead.
Cap Blackard
It’s definitely not. I mean, like, none of us have been doing this as long as we have if it wasn’t rooted in passion. Yeah. And I mean, I wouldn’t be doing it if it wasn’t for the people who’ve, who’ve been listeners for all this time, like showing me that the work I’m doing which at the time, like seemed quite frivolous, does in fact, matter and has resonance and the community it’s built up around, around this artwork is the most meaningful thing in my entire life.
Sean Howard
Same. So, we have some resources. Tess has RPG cas, let’s talk about, it’s amazing. And it’s a focus on basically women, nonbinary people, LGBTQ+, people of color, it’s just people with disabilities. Basically, Tess has like created a site that will feature your show and you should definitely put your show in there. And it’s a great resource. Michelle and Cap have put together additional resources if you want to get a little red angry like I got very angry reading that top one. Be careful. But these are two great articles. I shared this one. This is a beautiful, beautiful piece. Both of these are beautiful pieces. But this is a therapist in the LGBTQ community who realized when they took that role of being a therapist, what what they were witnessing and what was happening about all this drama and why we are attacking ourselves and where can you find us. So you can find me a @passitalong on Twitter. Please don’t hesitate to reach out my website all my shows or fableandfolly.productions. Michelle at @chelle_shocked with an underscore website https://michellenickolaisen.com/. Cap?
Cap Blackard
You can find me at @capblackard basically everywhere. If you go to omniverse.media, that’s where all of our larger productions are there including Call of Cthulhu, The Orphans who are also exhibiting here, and my forthcoming animated series Lightning Dogs, Ghostbusters Resurrection, Dungeons and Doritos, Pokeballs of Steelix, and all of our classic IP infringing tabletop role playing games all exist at nerdyshow.com. Hopefully, you’ll check this all out on the floor, and I’ve got some Call of Cthulu bookmarks. And also, please do come to the Hephistis room at 2pm. For a discussion about writing for improvisation, we’ll go into the methods that I use for creating some things some very unique role playing experiences.
Sean Howard
We’ve run out of time so we’re gonna be I’m gonna be outside the doors once time runs out, I’d love to answer questions, talk to you. We have two minutes. Does anybody have any questions? size of the lot. There’s a lot Yes.
Audience Member
We probably don’t have time enough to really dive into this. I think Michelle touched on it a little bit. Their talk, but I’m hearing a lot of actual play. We deserve to be recognized in audio drama spaces, because we do all of these labor intensive, cost intensive things that are popular in audio drama. And so I was wondering if we can do any like, unpacking around why we feel that that is sort of more valuable than less labor intensive, less cost intensive, actual plays?
Cap Blackard
Which is a really good point listening to Michelle talk, I thought, eugh–
Sean Howard
Like, that was Michelle’s point.
Cap Blackard
Yeah. It’s okay to like the thing.
Audience Member
Yeah. Can I see some from my perspective, at least? Okay. So from my perspective, it’s a resource thing, because I’m by myself, and I know the actual play, there are a lot of actual play podcasts out there. And to vet all those and the time could no it take to that it was easier for me to just for now. Put Say, Hey, I’m just not accepting actual plays at this time. And then maybe in the future, I will add it.
Sean Howard
So let me call Yeah. And I called you out. So basically, there’s a site called fictionpodcasts.com, beautiful. You’ve just created your own time, it lists all these sites. And I did call. So one of the things I was bringing up is, hey, it’s hard to get listed. But I actually have no problem with someone that says, This is our policy. It’s posted, you know, no, vitriol, you’re very kind about it. There’s no issue. Right? I just say it’s hard. If you’re creating an actual play, sometimes you feel like, Oh, we just want to get noticed. So don’t feel
Audience Member
And when you email me, like, I literally have a tab that like in my email box that says actual play, and I put those in there so that at some point, if that ever happens, you know–
Sean Howard
So we understand that but i think was being raised. It was great. That’s why I love Michelle’s piece, Michelle was saying, hey, we I have very intensive resource on our show. You have very intense research show and Michelle is saying, Hey, we are capturing a game or we’re playing and I listen to Serendipity City. It’s beautiful. I think it does qualify as an actual play.
Cap Blackard
Yeah. And that’s how I started I think really, right. Where I get bunched up is like, you know, like, okay, so you’re excluding me and looks like and more and more, I’m playing your game and you’re still excluding me. So what do you want?
Sean Howard
It’s a complex issue guys, we’re not gonna solve it but I really appreciate you all being here raising this, we’re gonna be outside. I recommend anytime you get Sophie in here. Thanks.
