Three podcasts I don't have time to make
All right, luvvies?
‘Tis the season for scary stories - and also for seasonal depression. I’m lucky, sort of, in that while I do have depression, and the change of season does compound it, cognitive behavioural therapy helps me get through it without too much of a dip in drive to make stuff (so far, at least). The only issue then is - okay, you’re having ideas, you’re even able to feel excited about them, but is it selfish to try to make them happen right now, when everyone on earth is struggling just to stay on an even keel?
Coming right up
Now playing in the Main House
Podcasts that don’t exist
Seasonal stage scariness
Pins to hold us together
The house is now open
for Vigil: Playtime, the first Main House production from Merely Roleplayers. This is a five-act story, and the first two acts are out now in all respectable podcast apps.
Vigil is the podcast’s most collaborative production so far, in a couple of ways. First, I’m not trying to handle all the setting and ongoing story strands myself any more - the whole cast built the town of Sherrydown together, landmark by landmark, and many of the monsters and challenges the characters will face are drawn from the players’ choices in character creation. (So they’ve only themselves to blame…)
Second, post-production is a collaborative effort now as well. Alexander Pankhurst (who plays Graham in Playtime) composed the Vigil theme music, and Natalie Winter (who plays an as-yet unrevealed character in the next Vigil production) provided the atmosphere and sound effects - something we’ve never had before on Merely Roleplayers, and that really lifts the experience to a new level. Various members of the team are also handling things like writing episode descriptions and uploading episodes to Youtube.
Sharing things out like this mean the whole experience of creating the podcast feels different, in lots of good ways. Though we’re not physically together, there’s a feeling of creating side by side, which is a real lifeline right now.
To get to this point, I’ve had to get better at asking people to help me with things. I’ve never been good at that! I can’t seem to help seeing anything I want to ask for as an imposition, rather than an invitation. Obviously my own unhelpful thought patterns are a big part of that, but also? I think it’s not helped by the conditions we live in.
I want to be in a world where running a creative idea past someone, asking them to be part of it, feels like offering an opportunity: for expression, for community, for making people laugh or scream or whatever. And it is always that, but it’s also, unavoidably, a request for time, energy, work, and resources. Those tend to be in short supply, which makes that side of the equation loom larger. Most creative people I know already have to choose their projects carefully to fit around employment; it’s side hustles all the way down (sideways?)! The pandemic is making things even worse, fraying everyone’s mental health, pushing us all even closer to burnout.
Approaching someone with “Hey, I’ve had this idea for a production/podcast/whatever, what do you think, want to help make it happen?” should be this exciting, energising exchange. (Frightening too - when you first air out an idea, there’s always the possibility it’ll turn out to be no good - but that’s just another kind of excitement, really.) But Covid and capitalism have a way of turning all that positive energy sour. What’s worse? Airing out an idea and finding it’s no good? Or finding that it is good, that people believe in it, but it can never happen, because everyone’s stretched too thin already?
I’ve been stuck in this way of thinking recently. If I don’t get unstuck, I suspect it’ll lead to me becoming creatively immobilised under the weight of a hundred and one unaired ideas, so I’m on the lookout for a loophole. Like, would it help to think of art and creativity as play, rather than work?
But I also think there’s a limit to what any of us can achieve just by reframing our thinking: we also need more tangible support in place for people to get involved in creative pursuits, without risk to their health or income.
All of which is its own point, but is also a way to say how happy I am to have found the group of people who make Merely Roleplayers with me.
Podcasts I will make one day
when capitalism is defeated and we can all spend our time however we choose:
Groundhog Play: an RPG actual play where the players, characters and scenario are always the same, but the game master and system change every episode, highlighting how the design of different systems can lead to different player choices and story outcomes
An RPG actual play about the crew of a Leviathan - a hybrid oil drilling platform/aircraft carrier kind of thing - who are contractually obliged to fight rival companies’ employees for the last remaining oil fields using repurposed maintenance mechs (probably using Beam Saber)
A fantasy series (maybe actual play, maybe scripted) set in a world where reincarnation is a given, and everyone can remember their past lives - wondering how civilisation might be different if we knew we could be reborn as anyone or anything, and that we’d have to live with the consequences of all our actions
Audience with the Ghost Finder
All Hallow’s Eve may have come and gone, but it’s still ghost story season as far as I’m concerned, so here’s one for you to enjoy.
Carnacki the ghost finder is a character created by William Hope Hodgson; he’s a kind of steampunk Ghostbuster who mixes ceremonial magic with early 20th century technology to diagnose and counter otherworldly threats. Hodgson wrote nine short stories featuring Carnacki, and various modern authors have added to the canon since he fell out of copyright.
As far as I know, I was the first to put Carnacki on the stage. Audience with the Ghost Finder has Carnacki hired to break an old family curse, and asks whether a strictly empiricist approach can ever really work when it comes to the paranormal. This year it was Day One of the London Horror Festival’s Hallowe’en Advent, and a London Pub Theatres Magazine Top Pick for spookiness.
The 1st ever produced @BlackshawUpdate #RadioPlay #AudienceWithTheGhostfinder by M.J Starling for your listening pleasure!
blackshawtheatre.podbean.com/e/episode-17-t…
Stage play performed @EtceteraTheatre #LHF2013
#SherlockHolmes meets #Ghostbusters
#Celebrating10YearsOfTheLHF 
AUDIENCE WITH THE GHOSTFINDER @BlackshawUpdate
Premiered @EtceteraTheatre @LndnHorrorFest in 2013, now reimagined as a radio play
Check it out here londonpubtheatres.com/whats-on-line 
I’ve always thought it would work well at the Edinburgh Fringe. You know, if anyone’s looking for a show for 2021. You can get the script for free as a PDF or ebook, packaged with six of Hodgson’s stories.
Pinned together
This dapper raven on the left is from a pub in Bath. I went on holiday to the city with friends a few years ago, and asked around for recommendations of places to visit while we were there. Another friend recommended this pub, and we all packed in there on the first day of the holiday, with our bags, while we waited to get into the place we were staying. I’m pining for both big group holidays and packing into pubs at the moment. It’s hard knowing that just being together can cause harm just now.
The dragon on the right is ‘Advancing in fellowship with destruction’, an Eliza Gauger Problem Glyph. Gauger creates these symmetrical glyphs in response to anonymously submitted problems, as a kind of ward against them, or a lens to focus on and address them more fully. This one’s about being afraid of breaking things or messing things up; to me, the glyph and its title say “perhaps the reason you break things is because you are a powerful beast”. Not quite reassuring, but definitely a different way of looking at the problem.
Until next time,
Matt x