Waiting: The foggy outline expands
All right, luvvies? Welcome to the first Waiting edition of Ready & Waiting, a fortnightly newsletter from Foggy Outline.
Until now, Foggy Outline has just been a label that means "by Matt Boothman" (hello, that's me). As of now, it means more.
I invented the name Foggy Outline when I was thinking about collecting everything I was doing and making into one website: playwriting, podcasts, writing, copy-editing, a little bit of game design.
I'd been doing a lot of separating and firewalling before that: one Twitter under my real name for my employed work, a second one under a pen name for my independent projects, different blogs for drama and gaming...
First, that was getting exhausting; too many things to manage! And second, I was realising that while it felt like I should keep all those activities separate, because they belonged to different categories and sectors and fields, in reality they weren't separate. Because I was doing all of them. The dividing lines between them were completely imaginary.
And enforcing those lines was hurting me! I was maintaining all these focused, one-topic sites and accounts, and none of them were getting me anywhere because there wasn't enough activity in any of them. I was running a mile a minute, but through each of these narrow little windows it looked like I was standing still.
So I said, no more subdividing my presence or my work or my self. Those things feel like they're in separate boxes, but if you prod at the sides just a little bit, you start to see they're less rigid than you think. Less like walls and more like curtains of fog that ideas and audiences can pass through easily.
Since then Foggy Outline has been the name of my website and this newsletter, and Merely Roleplayers listeners will be used to hearing "a Foggy Outline production" in the credits of each episode.
Then, late last year, the outline blurred and expanded again.
I was in talks with a producer about making I Need A Miracle, a new scripted micro-fiction podcast I've been writing on and off since lockdown. The week they sent the first budget, I was having a working morning with my Dad, Richard, in Coffee & Fripes on the Roman Road. I told him that before signing any contracts or transferring any money, I was probably going to have to do something I'd been putting off: incorporate as a company, rather than sticking as a sole trader.
A week later, Mum and Dad called me with a proposal.
For years they've been the directors of ideostone, a company that improves environmental literacy. They make videos, animations and training courses to help people and companies understand and do something about climate breakdown.
I needed the structure of a business to be able to deal with producers on bigger projects, and they wanted help with marketing – and continuity for their business.
Lots and lots of meetings and paperwork later, Foggy Outline has changed from a solo act to a family show. Rather than me trying to start a limited company by myself in time to make I Need A Miracle happen, ideostone changed its name to Foggy Outline and I joined the company as a director. Our work is now even more eclectic: all the bits I was already doing, plus Mum and Dad's environmental literacy work.
I spent December and January expanding the website and working on how we talk to other people about what we do without resorting to vague gestures of all-encompassing-ness. (Not all the website changes are visible yet, but watch this space and stay subscribed...) I think I did a pretty good job finding the common thread through all our work!
So now you see why I thought I'd better make this newsletter fortnightly instead of monthly. There's just a lot more to talk about now. Do stick around; this is probably the only newsletter that might give you exclusive free fiction and discounts on professional development.
Matt plays Heart: The City Beneath on Actual Play UK
16 & 23 February, 20:00 GMT, twitch.tv/actualplayuk
Contains body horror
A long-awaited delve indeed. Grant Howitt and Christopher Taylor's Heart is hands down my favourite roleplaying game to run, and in this two-part livestream, I get to run it for:
Fiona from What Am I Rolling?, playing Regina Mellifera, a deep apiarist
Maddy from Realms of Peril & Glory, playing Abelard, a witch
Zack from Realms of Peril & Glory, playing Killian Thistle, a junk mage
Dan from Brit Twits, playing Ruff Barkley, a hound
Heart is a subterranean city that might be alive and seems to reshape itself into dark reflections of its inhabitants' desires. Regina, Abelard, Killian and Ruff are all determined to discover the unknowable and do the impossible. Nothing could go wrong, surely.
We were originally scheduled to stream this back in November/December 2023. The players' characters and my plans for them have matured like a fine cheese during the various delays. This is me going all-out weird in a way I never have on Merely Roleplayers, and the players meet me right in that place. Don't miss it.
Introduction to renewable energy
This first course in our planned series will be a general introduction, examining the background to renewable energy and why we need it. We've been spending time in January researching and gathering information for this and other courses in the series.
Later additions will focus on specific renewable technologies: solar energy, biomass, hydroelectricity and others. These won't be in-depth explorations of the technology and how it works – instead they'll focus on the advantages of each one and the barriers to their continued exploration.
Also on the planned course list is one about the importance of food choices for the environment.
I Need A Miracle
Casting starts soon, and I'm working on converting the original scripts into production drafts (by adding bits and bobs like credits around the in-character lines), to make sure recording sessions are nice and smooth and we don't miss anything while we're in the studio.
Friends of the Dales
We’re working on a video to promote their Living Woods campaign and to highlight the problem of the use of plastic tree guards in our protected areas. We produced a very rough version of the video some months ago and have since been refining the script.
We’re looking for an artist to volunteer to voice the main character in the video: a teenage girl with south Asian heritage. If that sounds like you or someone you know, please point them our way.
Merely Roleplayers
After Vigil: Fear Itself wraps up, we're airing the audio from our Dragonmeet Podcast Zone live show, where Morgana Le Fay, Jemima Puddle-Duck and Tom Thumb have to rid their cosy coffee shop of some badly behaved newcomers.
After that, we're playing a selection of games from The Ultimate Micro-RPG Book, edited by James D'Amato – we're playing one game in full per episode instead of our usual longer game serialised over four or five, so this'll be a bit of a change of pace for the podcast, and hopefully a good place for new listeners to start!
We also have the next two Vigil productions recorded (though not edited or produced yet): Dream Big starts with an earthquake and has Vigil's first car chase, and Tailor Made introduces Ellie's mysterious new main character. Vigil: Dream Big will start after the Micro-RPGs, then there'll be another Studio production which is to be confirmed (but is likely to either be ARC by momatoes or the Labryrinth RPG), followed by Vigil: Tailor Made.
Camlann by Ella Watts and Tin Can Audio – it's Arthuriana-geddon and it's suddenly very important to be able to tell the difference between a horse and a kelpie
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer has been called a “hymn of love to the world” and this sums it up beautifully. This book has been praised widely in environmental networks over the past couple of years. The mix of hard science and indigenous wisdom is inspiring
The Magnus Protocol from Rusty Quill – The Magnus Archives was cassette tape horror, and this sidequel is floppy disk and CRT monitor horror
See you in two weeks for the Ready edition: a round-up of Foggy Outline things you can enjoy straight away, no waiting.