Lights out, irons back in the fire
All right, luvvies? Since I last sent one of these, I've been on stage, and people liked it!
Lights Out already seems a bit unreal. Did we really do that? That quickly? And nobody stopped us? I'm fully on the wind-down from it still, and just about hitting the point where I feel relaxed instead of tired. While allowing myself to rest and reflect - battling that unreal sense, cementing it into memory - I'm about ready to start looking again at all the things I left on the back burner while Lights Out was bubbling hot and needed constant attention.
Coming right up
Next on Merely Roleplayers
Looking back at Lights Out
Roundup of projects on the go
Kickstarters
'Hello my name is' but make it badges
The penultimate act
of Vigil: Bad Dog is available now on Spotify, Youtube, Apple Podcasts and all the usual places. Get caught up now before Tuesday's Act 5 finale:
The plan is to follow up Bad Dog with the audio from Lights Out, then to move into our next Studio production, where we're playing The Andromeda Ward by Chloe Mashiter. Still working out exactly how to title this one: it's framed as one episode of a cancelled radio programme called The Andromeda Ward, the episode is called 'Trust Me, Slime A Doctor', and it's also a bit Christmassy. The trick is to not make the episode titles too long for Twitter or for podcast apps. I'm tending towards 'Andromeda Ward Xmas' at the moment.
This will also be the first Merely Roleplayers production we've recorded using Zencastr. This was so much less stressful and complex than running Zoom plus an Audacity backup at the same time, which is how we've done remote recordings until now. I'm interested to know whether anyone in the audience notices a difference in the sound quality as well!
Lights Out
This feels like the issue where I should do a post-show analysis, but I think I'm still processing.
I'm happy overall. I think we told a good fun, creepy story. The audience seemed to enjoy themselves, and breathed something into the show that it didn't have in rehearsals. I had a long conversation with a pair of audience members in the bar afterwards, who'd picked the show at random from an event listing and had the time of their lives, and wanted to check out Merely Roleplayers. I hope they did, and liked what they found!
In terms of what the show set out to do? Early on, I had a vision of breaking the mould of tabletop roleplaying games in theatre spaces by getting out from behind the table. In the end, the gravity of that format was too much to escape - this time, anyway.
But another goal I think we did nail was having the game elements add to the tension without getting in anyone's way (ours, the story's, or the audience's). Drawing cards, burning virtues, etc, all happened in what felt like a pretty frictionless way, and our story was full of incident. And we got external confirmation from a review in The Spy In The Stalls:
...the rules are easy to follow during the show. It’s a great device for keeping the proceedings spontaneous and engaging...
That's pretty much exactly what we were going for.
A few people have asked what the plans are for doing the show again. I have no idea! I've been concentrating on making this one performance work, and haven't had much capacity to think beyond that. But I think we know the format works now, there are some ideas floating around about how to make it even better, and it's always easier to pitch and market a show with a successful performance and a nice review to point at. I'd be surprised if this turned out to be both the first and the only performance. But beyond that, I have no details. Stay subscribed and I'll let you know when I know anything.
The next Lights Out announcement is likely to be when I publish the official version of the rules. They exist and are mostly written down in one form or another, so the job is to edit, clarify, add some specific advice for production and performance (clear the use of open flames with your venue at the earliest possible time!), and lay them out for publication. It's not an enormous ton of work, but at the same time, there's not a ton of time to work on them between now and the new year. Again, stay subscribed - I'll have at least a progress update in the December issue.
Irons in the fire
What do I have on the go, that hasn't got much love and attention while Lights Out was centre stage?
The Sherrydown Enquirer issues 3 + 4 (Tourist Trap + Bad Dog): in a similar position to the Lights Out rules, in that the bulk of the writing is done, and I just need to polish, write a bit of additional material, and lay out for publication. I want to see if I can wrestle Canva to do more interesting things than I did with issues 1 + 2, or try using something else for the layout. My plan was to give using Pages a go, but since I updated my Mac to Catalina, launching Pages has correlated strongly with the machine having problems shutting down or just crashing. I'll make something work, though. There's also the question of what I should prioritise: the Lights Out rules (while the show is still relatively fresh) or these (since they're technically already late)? Reply to this email if you have an opinion.
In Your Benevolence: I pitched this to Rusty Quill a little while ago but at this point I'm not holding my breath about hearing back. I'm going to the Podmas winter meal in December, so there might be other folks there I can talk to about getting it off the ground.
Other audio dramas: after Lights Out, I'm yearning to create something scripted. I have two ideas for full-cast serialised dramas, one a cyberpunk story about resistance in the shadow of a space elevator, and one a dark fantasy about an Exchange where people can bargain with otherworldly entities, spinning off something I wrote and pitched to Tor Novellas a few years back. The cyberpunk thing in particular is twitching my writing fingers. I'll probably have some sample script pages down within the next few weeks, just to see if it's got legs.
Project Bigbird: my Forged in the Dark game of talent tournaments. I'm probably letting this one fall by the wayside, for reasons I'll go into in a sec.
Project Polarbear: a fleshed-out version of the Powered by the Apocalypse shipwreck survival game I bodged together for Merely Roleplayers: Prospero & Viola. Unlike Bigbird, I still think this one has legs, and won't need tons of development to get ready for publication and play.
Cool Kickstarters
There's been a rush of great games funding on Kickstarter lately. I've thrown monies at all of these in the past month:
Upriver, Downriver by Ella Watts and Max Briar: a game about sailing either up or down a magic river, with a fantasy setting inspired by the Tarot, and a focus on telling queer stories that can contain conflict and death, but that ultimately come from a place of hope and comfort.
Our Haunt by Jamila R Nedjadi: a cosy-creepy game where you play a group of ghosts who haunt a house.
Suburban Consumption of the Monstrous by Banana Chan and Sadia Bies: a collection of horror live action RPGs themed around food. This is one I backed because I want it to exist, rather than necessarily because I want to play it. All the games sound cool and interesting and worthwhile, and even though I can't see myself or any of the folks I usually play with wanting to dive into them, I still wanted to support the project.
Tournament Arc by Biscuit Fund Games and Fight With Spirit by Storybrewers: two nearly-simultaneous funding campaigns for games based on sports drama and tournament arcs. Now, I subscribe to the view that there's room for multiple games (or books, dramas, etc) about similar subject matter, and even if something you want to make has already been made by someone else, it's still worth making your thing because it'll be yours, and therefore different to theirs. HOWEVER. When I saw these games and how much they overlapped with Project Bigbird, the thing I felt most of all was relief. Like, oh! they did the thing so now I don't have to! And that, luvs, is my heart trying to tell me something. So if you liked the sounds of Bigbird from what I've said about it here and in other places, don't be disappointed that I'm shelving it; go pick up one or both of these games instead!
Flair for going out and about
Left: a pin of the Pleasance Theatre's smug dog logo. Thanks again to the Pleasance for having us!
Right: a bold and shiny HE/HIM pronoun pin from the Gay Pride Shop. Hoping I'll soon be in a position to go to things where this would be useful (ie where I'm meeting new people), though with conditions in this cold, dark plague island at the moment, that might still not be for a while. I'm skipping Dragonmeet this year and sticking to smaller gatherings like Podmas for now.
And of course, talking to cool people online! See you next time, luvvies!
Matt x