Planning ahead
All right, luvvies? It's been hot and I don't want to talk about it. I've also left it a bit late to write this, so let's get straight to it, shall we?
Coming right up
Stop press, it's a new Sherrydown Enquirer!
Merely Roleplayers comes home
Dead Weight planned out
Recharging at the Fringe
Play pins
The Sherrydown Enquirer
is a combination ready-to-play Monster of the Week mystery and Merely Roleplayers: Vigil lore supplement. My plan was always to release one at the end of each Vigil production, with all the tools a Keeper needs to run the same mystery we play through in the production. I've got quite behind, but issue 3 - which goes with Vigil: Tourist Trap - is out now!
Get Sherrydown Enquirer issue 3: Tourist Trap
It's bad enough when someone skims your bank card and drains your accounts. But when your accounts are not just drained but gone, as if they were never opened? When the physical card changes, the numbers to zeroes, the name to a placeholder? When the anonymisation spreads to your driving licence, your Facebook profile, your birth certificate? That's not just bad ... it's monstrous.
Sherrydown's high street is dying - and the carrion feeders are moving in.
Also, now that issue 3 is out, I've dropped the price of issue 1 (Playtime) and issue 2 (Cold Snap).
I'm working on issue 4 (Bad Dog) at the moment, and aiming to catch up so that I can publish issue 5 to coincide with the end of Vigil: Quarry as per the original plan. Place your bets now on whether I'll get there!
Merely Roleplayers
returns from its video experiment in the Studio for a new Main House production, starting 16 August, back on the podcast feed.
In fact, we've got our release schedule for the rest of the year planned out:
From 16 August - Vigil: Quarry
Hoofbeats echo off Sherrydown’s cobbled streets as our heroes race full tilt into their bloodiest adventure yet.
Starring Starkey as Cameron Jarvis, the Wronged; Vikki as Renko, the Flake; Strat as Brier, the Monstrous; and Helen as Melody, the Constructed, playing Monster of the Week.
Contains blood, bloody violence, and a character experiencing fallout from childhood trauma.
https://twitter.com/MerelyRoleplay/status/1502946102949167105From 11 October - Monumental Exit
After 67 years, Bilbo Biltong’s ready to quit the band. But who out there could possibly step into his worn old shoes?
Starring Josh as Bilbo Biltong, Alexander Pankhurst as Mike Sherpa, Natalie Winter as Sue Sherpa, and Matt Boothman as Greg Nevin, playing Fiasco Classic.
Contains hard drug use, lewd and morbid imagery, and a funeral scene.
From 22 November - Vigil: All Aboard
A way long shut is open again, promising to carry away all souls stuck in Sherrydown. Will our heroes make it to the end of the line?
Starring Ellen as Jess Butterworth, the Spooky; Chris Buxey as Calistarius Softbinding, the Expert; Natalie Winter as Gwynned, the Divine; and Marta da Silva as Harper, the Searcher, playing Monster of the Week.
Content warnings to come once I get properly stuck into the edit!
We're also recording the next Vigil production this month, with Ellie (Percy, the Exile), Chris MacLennan (Kincaid, the Professional), Strat (Brier, the Monstrous) and Dave (Mick, the Mundane). I need to organise a Studio recording to go between that and All Aboard - I owe a couple of people guest appearances, which means it probably wants to be an online recording, which may unfortunately rule out a couple of the options I had in mind for this one (I want to do a noir game using Fate Condensed, and I want to play Storybrewers' Good Society, but both games involve a fair bit of paper-shuffling that might be hard to keep track of in a remote game). I'm considering ARC - as a game with a real-time timer, I think it might work really well in an actual play. We'll see how it shakes out!
Dead Weight
is that cyberpunk audio drama I'm working on; as well as a pilot script, I now have a very rough six-episode series plan, thanks to a helpful concentration session with my writing group. The plan will need refining, and I doubt it'll survive contact with actual scriptwriting, but I needed to stick the major beats down on paper and split them into episodes just to see whether there's actually enough there, and whether any of the characters are at risk of twisting in the wind with nothing to do.
Good news: it looks like the pilot sets up enough shenanigans to support a solid six episodes! And those six episodes set up enough other shenanigans to justify a second series if that ever becomes a possibility. (One of the lessons I learned from pitching In Your Benevolence to Rusty Quill: producers do want to know how you plan to end the series, actually. A killer starting concept is important, but the thinking that follows it up is important too!)
I'm heading to Edinburgh
for a couple of days this month to experience the Fringe for the first time in a few years!
There was a period when I went every year. The first time I went was for the whole month, as the lighting designer with a show (supported by the university drama society). The following few years I went for between a fortnight and the full month as a reviewer with The List and the British Theatre Guide. I saw so many shows it kept my creative batteries charged for years. Lately I've been feeling the lack.
I need a hit of those kinds of shows that only work at the Fringe, that are just too weird or gimmicky or experimental or, sometimes, actively bad to see in London. Here I would never wittingly go see a show I suspect might be actively bad, but at the Fringe, that same probably-actively-bad show will cost under a tenner and it'll only be one of five or six shows I'm seeing that day, which makes it a whole different kettle of fish. Worth taking a punt in case it's secretly good, or simply because it adds texture to the whole Fringe-going experience. I need to come away with new definitions of what's possible, and newly solid ideas of what I can do and want to do. I'm never more sure of my abilities and drives as a writer than in the half hour immediately after seeing someone else's show. They're right when they say to write, you also need to read (or watch or experience). Every experience is a learning experience.
Play pins
Left: a large green button badge showing a book that says Don't forget to: play! on the cover. I think I picked this one up at Shakespeare's Globe but I can't be sure about that.
Right: a large square black button badge that says "I coulda been a contender" in orange block capitals, above the title On the Waterfront in white stencilled capitals. This one's from a previous trip to the Edinburgh Fringe, when there was a stage production of On the Waterfront going on. Badges are probably outside the marketing budget of most Fringe shows, but they are very effective at getting me, personally, to become a walking ad for your show (even if I don't actually see it - I definitely didn't see this one...)
Anyhoo, play on!
Matt x