Scrambling for lost dice on a dark stage
All right, luvvies? After a couple of issues where I struggled a little bit to find new and interesting things to talk about, it suddenly feels like everything is happening all at once. Mostly below the parapet at the moment, but that’s why you subscribed to this, isn’t it? To peek behind the scenes and see all the work that goes on before the big unveilings.
Coming right up
- Lights Out
- In Your Benevolence
- International Podcast Month 2021
- Merely Roleplayers
- Pinifesto
Keep this one under your hats
because it hasn’t been announced officially anywhere yet:
Merely Roleplayers and Blackshaw Theatre Company present
As Part of the London Horror Festival
LIGHTS OUT
a one-hour improvised story of encroaching darkness, inevitable doom, and unquenchable hope
8:30pm | Sunday 24 October | Pleasance Theatre, London
Contracts are signed, the venue is reserved, the show is cast, rehearsals are scheduled. I have to provide publicity copy and promotional images to the Pleasance and the London Horror Festival before the end of the month. (Save the date!)
Like I mentioned last time, when I first introduced this possibility: I also have some game design to do. We’re taking Stephen Dewey’s Ten Candles as a starting point. It’s played by candlelight, includes some haunting ritualistic elements, and candles go out as the game goes on. All theatrical qualities that we connected with strongly. It’s an amazing game that delivers super-intense stories and character moments without fail - I highly recommend playing a session or two if you have a few friends you think would enjoy it.
But Ten Candles is designed to last 2-3 hours, not ideal for a fringe theatre experience, and involves rolling pools of up to 10 d6, which I just don’t like the feel of on stage (not to mention the practicalities of potentially scrambling for lost dice on a dark stage).
So what I think we’ll end up with is a game in the same spirit as Ten Candles - dwindling candlelight that represents diminishing hope, a thematic focus on finding hope and purpose in a dire situation - but that:
- yeets most of the actual gameplay mechanics wholesale in favour of something that gives us a bit more control over the timing (the show must last no more or less than an hour, so we can’t be beholden to candles and dice to pace the scenes)
- has a few less things for the players to keep track of, since we’ll all be coping with the extra pressure and cognitive load of performing to an audience
- includes some visual flourishes for the audience’s benefit - I’m looking into playing/tarot card draws as the resolution mechanic, rather than dice, just for example.
This will also be the first time I’ve performed on a stage in front of people, as opposed to behind a microphone, since Hallowe’en Tales in 2014. I’m starting the process of psyching myself up now, to be on the safe side.
Lots more details to come, of course, including cast announcements and poster reveals and more details of the specific haunting scenario we’ll be roleplaying for your entertainment. Once tickets go on sale, if there’s any kind of discount code or early bird deal, rest assured subscribers to this newsletter will be among the first to know.
Oh, and for the full under-the-bonnet view you subscribe for:
Merely Roleplayers is an unincorporated association, and Foggy Outline is the name I trade under as a sole proprietor. The only ads we run on the podcast are arranged as promo swaps, paid for with the promise of in-kind promotion. We didn’t start the podcast to make money, and it doesn’t. There’s a fair few of us, but we’re not a big operation.
Which is to say I’m funding Lights Out from my own pocket, so when tickets go on sale, I would love to see a few early bookings as a little stress reliever.
Are you interested in the finances? There are some tabletop companies who make a point of publishing all their financials and it’s often an eye-opener and a conversation starter. If the numbers behind staging a stage show spun off from an actual play podcast at a genre festival are of interest, reply to this email or talk to me on Twitter - I’d be happy to share a breakdown in a future issue of this newsletter.
Two different podcast pitching opportunities
just crossed my radar in quick succession. Remember me talking about In Your Benevolence many issues ago? I said I’d ordinarily be trying to pitch it in convention bars, but lockdown was shutting that possibility down. Well, it’s come to my attention that Rusty Quill Productions (of The Magnus Archives fame) and BBC Sounds are both accepting podcast pitches via email at the moment.
Of course it makes sense these opportunities would both come up just as I agreed to put together a live show in 12 weeks (10 by the time you read this)! But it’s ok, I can multi-task. Actually, both opportunities are very helpfully templated, which cuts down on time spent staring in agony at a blank page; plus I have existing blurb from that earlier newsletter and from when I submitted those work in progress scripts to the Ragged Scratch Podcast.
Nothing might come of either pitch - that’s pitching! - but it feels good to be putting the work out there. It’ll never get made if I don’t take that risk at some point. Just the idea of working with the producers of The Magnus Archives, which I listened through for the first time in lockdown, is electrifying. And the act of pitching the idea is already improving it, by making me think more about what it’s about, where it could go, and why it should be made, in terms someone else might understand and agree with.
September is International Podcast Month
and I recorded my contribution to it last weekend! I’m appearing in a one-shot actual play podcast of Nora Blake’s Dust Wardens. My character, Archie, has the knack of magically navigating the ever-changing landscape of a world overtaken by uncontrollable plant growth. His preference for navigating around difficulties rather than facing them head-on may also extend to interpersonal situations!
Archie roams the post-apocalypse with his friends Kiran (Kelly from Tabletop Tiddies) and Rowan (Justen Jess from The Babylon Podject), riding in a giant gyro monowheel with like, a small farmstead’s worth of cabins in the middle, don’t ask how it works, it just does, in fact it actually works better the less you think about it…
The episode was organised, and the game run, by Ursula from Queer Dungeoneers. We all stressed Ursula out quite a lot by being spread across as many time zones as it’s physically possible for four people to be (it was something like 3am my time when we finished!), so I hope you’ll make it worth it by grabbing the episode when it comes out in September! You can follow the IPM feed now and all the great interviews, actual plays and audio drama collaborations will drop straight into your phone.
Our Dust Wardens one-shot strikes a pretty different tone to the Beam Saber game I appeared in for IPM 2020, in which I was an ambassadorial type who piloted a solid gold mech with a cape, and acted like it. That episode is still up on the feed if you feel like doing a side by side!
Now playing in the Studio
The First Nova launched this week. I’ve explained plenty about this one in previous issues; now I get to let it speak for itself.
Since last issue, we’ve also recorded the next Vigil production for the Main House, featuring the returns of Ellie as Percy Byron, Alex as Graham, Nat as Gwynned, and Josh as Jinny Greenteeth. Josh subbed in at the last minute (thanks Josh!) after Starkey, who was all booked in and raring to go (as Cameron), very reluctantly had to cancel. As a result, I shifted the mystery I’d planned for Percy, Graham, Gwyn and Cam onto the back burner, and ginned up a new one for Percy, Graham, Gwynnie and Jinny. The original mystery just had so much juicy stuff for our Cam to sink his tenacious teeth into, I didn’t want to run it without him.
I dithered a bit over the subtitle for this one. I liked Common Ground, but there’s another high profile podcast project about to launch with that name; we’d get away with it, but I wouldn’t want the confusion. Our Land and Our Streets were also contenders, but both phrases have connections with real-life protest movements I’d rather not draw spuriously.
The current favourite, for me and the cast, is Vigil: Bad Dog.
Here’s a logistical thing about developing a live show based on your podcast: you do generally have to keep making the podcast at the same time. I’m in the middle of the dialogue edit on Bad Dog, planning the Studio production that we’ll soon need to record to go out after it, and designing a game and a publicity campaign for Lights Out. I also need to write and record my interval announcements for The First Nova every two weeks.
This applies to the rest of the team too - Nat does the sound design for Vigil productions, Alex composes music and runs the Instagram account, everyone does something, and now we’re all pitching in on the live show on top of our usual stuff. Also, there are the jobs we have to pay the bills. These are the lives of people who like to make creative things. It’s everything at once.
This is not to gripe - I chose to do all these things! I like doing them and I like the outcome of them! The act of listing these things out is actually really important for avoiding burnout. A comprehensive list of to-dos looks intimidating at this point, but without one, it’s easy to get ambushed by tasks you’ve either put off or lost in the mix, and that can bring the whole house of cards tumbling down.
In the interests of keeping the house of cards standing, I’m putting off publishing the next Sherrydown Enquirer zine. My aim is to get each one of these out within a few weeks of the Vigil production it’s based on, but the Tourist Trap one needs to shift so I can work on Lights Out. I might look at publishing the Tourist Trap and Bad Dog zines at the same time and running some kind of double issue deal to make up for the delay.
If you’re itching to run Tourist Trap for your Monster of the Week group, get in touch: I can always send you the unedited notes without the extra lore.
And breathe
I’m listening to a lot of sort of low-key music at the moment, to trick myself into feeling like everything’s mellow and I’m not working a mile a minute. (It works! The brain is very easy to fool.) The new Billie Eilish is ace, as I’m sure you know - but indulge me for a sec and have a listen to NDA, there’s something I want to check:
Doesn’t it have a bit of … a Vigil theme tune vibe?
There’s not not a resemblance, right…?
Pin-on artistic statements
Top: a wide silver-blue pin combining a waveform design with text reading “This is the sound that we make”, from ArtyfartsDesigns on Etsy. Technically this is a Biffy Clyro pin. I like Biffy fine (though I haven’t heard an album all the way through since Puzzle), but I got this pin not to say “I love the Biff” but to say “I make audio things”. This one’ll be in the mix when conventions are a thing again, for sure.
Bottom: a metal pin of Tom Nook from Animal Crossing waving a moneybag in each hand, above text reading “F_ck you, pay me”, from Bone Daddy Pins. It’s Tom Nook serving up “trying to make art under capitalism” vibes! Hey economy? If you’re going to make creative fulfilment so difficult, the least you could do is make it lucrative as well.
I need to start thinking about which pins I’ll wear on stage.
Stick around and I’ll talk to you again next time, Matt x