Feb 02 2023

LARP Chats Season 2

It’s only been a little over a week since my last blog but I feel so much has happened that it’s time to write another. This time talking about my upcoming content and of course, as the title indicates, that means LARP Chats Season 2. I hope to get you as excited as I am for what is coming.

LARP Chats Is Back!

The big announcement is that LARP Chats is back for it’s second season! I was really happy with the first season and as the year came to an end I started gearing up for Season 2.

New LARP Chats Theme

With a new season comes a new theme. Last year it was memories, this year it is asking a question, “What is Amtgard?”. We’ll be asking a series of questions that try to get to the heart of what Amtgard is and maybe help us answer the question for ourselves. We’ll get their perspectives on what Amtgard is, spoiler, it’s more than just a game to them.

Just like in season one each guest will be asked the same series of questions. As always, there might be some differences in the questions, each conversation is different and unique. I’m excited to share what all of my guests have said.

LARP Chats Release Schedule

The first season was an every other week schedule, but I think that was a bit much. To much of the same content over a short period of time. I had the idea of releasing it like a TV show. I no longer wish to do that.

I plan on releasing LARP Chats the first Monday of every month, starting March 6th. My goal is to release at least 8 LARP Chats episodes this year and I think that is very doable.

LARP Videos and More!

I found a cache of 4 videos that I hadn’t yet edited. Guess, what? They are edited now. In fact they are uploaded and scheduled to go out over the next two months.

That’s right, I’m officially good on working on my Monday released content till March 27th, I have never been so far ahead on content before, it feels great. That doesn’t mean I won’t be working on content over the next two months, far from it.

Knowing I’m so far in my schedule means I will be able devote more time to working on my Tabletop Role Playing Game content. It is more of a side project so I haven’t been overly focused on producing the videos, but now I feel I have some breathing room to focus on them. I will, of course, still continue to gather video and edit, although at a more leisurely pace.

Winterbash 2023 LARP Videos

Of course, we are coming off the heals of Winterbash and that means Winterbash videos. As I mentioned in the last blog, i have a total of three coming out but I thought it would be worth mentioning them again.

The first one, Critias Knighting Ceremony has already been released. It went over pretty well. It’s at 94 views, which isn’t bad.

The second video comes out on Monday. It is the sword and shield bracket of the tournament at Winterbash. It’s the only bracket I was able to record.

The third video, the one I’m most excited to share is a vlog of the event. I hope people enjoy it. I had a lot of fun making it. It comes out on February 13

Last Thoughts

I’m looking forward to the next few months, it’s a nice feeling. I think I’m on track to achieve the goals I set out to do this year. It’s of course too early to tell, but I couldn’t ask for a better position to be in.

I’m of course still streaming, I think the move to YouTube for my Baelnorn and Friends LARP Chat Show was the right move. Just the one stream added 30 watch hours in the span of 3 hours of streaming. For perspective I usually get 3-5 watch hours per video.

Thank you for reading this blog. I’d love to hear your thoughts. If you have anything specific you’d like to see more of, or maybe less of, leave a comment.

If you like my content consider becoming a Patron on Patreon. You can see my Tier 2 (Rock Gnomes) and 3 (Tinker Gnomes) supporters on my Patreon Supporters page as well as find out how to become a Patron yourself.

Jan 24 2023

Winterbash 2023

Winterbash 2023 is over and I’ve had some time to recuperate. I had a pretty fun time hanging out with old friends and making a few new ones. The surprise guest of the event, at least for me, was D’gar. I had no idea he was visiting and turns out he had no idea either, at least until the Tuesday before the event.

I went to the event knowing I wouldn’t be participating in the event in any major way. My goal was to get content that I could share with all of you, but I don’t want to talk about that right now. You can read about my content journey in the Coming Videos section bellow.

This Winterbash they tried something new at a new site. We were at Havenroot, near Veneta, OR and they did a 9-5 roleplay scenario.

Story Time

I’d like to start off the meat of the blog with a story, a story of the one and only wheelbarrow knight, McCritias.

On Saturday Critias was getting knighted, so that meant Friday night was going to be his vigil, I say was, because he never made it.

After the knighting of Theory, there was a break before the Circle of Knight’s meeting. I took the chance to get a few beers and catch up with people in the Kilted Dwarf. Unknown to me, someone who shall not be named, gifted Critias a bottle of Everclear and he decided to go to town on it.

By the time I was going off to the Circle of Knights, I saw that Critias was already pretty drunk, he was totally conscious but he was no longer standing up straight. I didn’t think to much of it and I went off to the Knight’s meeting.

We were having the meeting in front of the single person cabins, which Critias was one of the lucky few to have access to one. The meeting was going pretty well, we had a bunch of people to vote on, fifteen to be exact, but it was going by quickly. About an hour goes by and a group of people walked up to the group, with a wheelbarrow in tow.

It took a second to see what they were doing, it was pretty dark out, but as they got closer I could that someone was passed out in the wheelbarrow. It was the one and only Critias. His company mates took good care of him and put him to bed. Fast forward to his knighting.

In the middle of his knighting, when the box was presented, Torg and Galinmorn came out with a wheelbarrow, a great stead for Critias. A mighty joke, well received, but then they unveiled what was in the wheelbarrow. Laying inside was a hundred McChickens.

Apparently the knight before Critias was craving enough McChickens that he could bathe in them. His company mates, Arcana, took it to heart and turned it into a bit. After the knighting everyone in attendance got a McChicken. It will be a story that will survive for many years to come.

McCritias, Knight of the Wheelbarrow

The Event

The event was a town scenario with hourly skirmishes. There were two teams for the event and the goal was to get the most points. You got points through killing other teammates and winning skirmishes.

There were the Independents and Eclipse. Throughout the event the score was fairly even, going back and forth between the two teams. The event came to a head at the last battle on Saturday where the Eclipse team pulled out the victory.

There were several logistical issues, but I think the concept is workable. I sat down with Sirex and we talked about some of the things I saw that worked, some things that could be improved upon and areas that he could experiment with. It was a good conversation and I think it was well received.

The Site

This was a new site for us. I’m told it was build by LARPers for LARPers which is a nice change. I can imagine it made working with the site owner a lot easier. I was told that they are still building out the site, so things may change and the site could expand over time.

It was very wet and muddy. That’s due to the cold and wet weather for sure, but the roads could have had some more gravel on them, which would have helped. Otherwise, it was all the weather’s fault.

They had cabins and yurts as well as spots for tents. I stayed in a cabin, it was one of the larger ones I think. I enjoyed it well enough. It had five bunkbeds, a futon, a plug in heater and a rocking chair. I got to sleep on the futon and It was comfortable I did hear that the bunkbeds were less comfortable though.

One of the coolest things at the site was the open air tavern. It even had beer taps! Oso made a point to buy to pony kegs to make use of them. It certainly felt like this was the center of the site. I spent a lot of my time hanging out there.

The main lodge was nice. It was a decent size and had a fire place. It had very little parking though, which is a problem as it was pretty far from everything and up a hill. It made it difficult for my out of shape ass to get to it.

There was only one made fighting field, which was just big enough for the amount of people at the event. I don’t think the site could hold any of our kingdom’s larger events.

Coming Videos

My plan for Winterbash was a ambitious. I went hoping to record 4 knightings, a few battle games and at least one tournament and a vlog. For one reason or another I was only able to record about half that. Despite not meeting my goal I’m happy about what I recorded.

The first video to come out will be Critias’ and Vaune’s knighting. It’s mostly Critias’ knighting, as Vaune came in at the end and received his Battle Knighthood. It was the only knights I was able to get.

Darb recorded Theories’ for me so I could participate but it was to dark to be usable. Then for Dee Metria’s knighting, I’ll be honest, I was to exhausted to do it. I feel a little bad, but there were several people taking pictures and I think somone got some video, so I’m not to bereft over it. I think it was well covered.

The second video coming out will be the sword and shield bracket of the main tournament on Saturday. I missed the first few minutes, but I was able to record most of the bracket. It was a 15 minute bearpit.

The third and last video is one I’m really excited about. It’s my vlog! I was so excited to edit it that on Monday after the event I finished the rough edit of it. I shouldn’t release it till I have the other two released though as the vlog will direct people to the previous two videos. It’s the best way to maximize watch time.

Final Thoughts

While I hardly participated in the scheduled activates, I did cast an enchantment, I did have fun. It was what I’d call a working holiday. I went there to get content more than I did to play Amtgard and content I got.

There are some good memories made, one I shared, and in the vlog you’ll get a taste of some more of the fun times. Look for that over the next few weeks.

If you like my content consider becoming a Patron on Patreon. You can see my Tier 2 (Rock Gnomes) and 3 (Tinker Gnomes) supporters on my Patreon Supporters page as well as find out how to become a Patron yourself.

Jan 03 2023

Dungeon23 Challenge Accepted

What is the Dungeon23 Challenge? According THIS GIZMODO ARTICLE Dungeon23 is a challenge to create a dungeon room everyday of 2023. The challenger’s goal wasn’t so much as to get people to create a mega dungeon, but to get people to create something every day. In that spirit I have taken the challenge and bastardized it to my own ends.

I didn’t see this article till the last few weeks December. I immediate thought it was a good idea and I’ve been preparing for the project for the last week or so. I didn’t find out about this challenge until after I set my goals for 2023. I thought I could use it to fit my goal to get back to streaming on a more regular basis.

I thought I would talk about my goals with this project

Dungeon23 Goals

I have three goals I’d like to achieve with this project in 2023

The main goal is to create a condensed dungeon focused campaign by the end of 2023. If I end up doing none of the video aspects of this project and still manage to finish writing a campaign in one year, I’ll be happy.

The secondary goal is to stream me creating this content on Twitch. By the end of the year I plan on streaming on weekly basis. 

The third goal is to create videos from my streams to upload to YouTube. I have no set goal on how many I would like to have done by the end of the year. This is the least important of the three goals.

The Campaign

With the heavy use of random generation I’ll be using in this project it’s really hard write much about the campaign but I have spent hours working on a framework to build from.

I know that the setting will be on a large island that was once one huge city. The ruins of this city are on every part of this island, an island which can take several days to travel from end to end. The civilization who built the ruins are long gone and are nothing more than myth or legend.

The Island was cut off from any naval travel from the main island for hundreds of years. The curse which caused storms to surround the island was removed by a group of adventurers around ten years ago.

There will be at least one major hub city, the Capital City, which is also the only real harbor to note on the island. I don’t have many details about the city or government yet. This is the first thing we’ll be generating on stream.

There are also many particularities on the island. The most notable one is that, despite its relatively compact size, it has many different natural environments. You can walk into a desert from a forest into a swamp all in the matter of half a day’s walk. There is often very little rhyme or reason for when one environment begins and another ends but they are relatively well established and predictable. The island’s inhabitants have never had to worry about an environment changing and their wheat farms suddenly becoming a desert.

Streaming

I’ll be honest, there is some anxiety associated with Streaming, but it’s something I’d like to tackle this year.

Streaming on Twitch will be the main vehicle for public interaction with this project. My goal is to create the bones of the project online, mostly through a combination of random generation and genuine real time inspiration. 

I did a test stream of the content I’d like to make for his project back in December and really enjoyed it so I have high hopes for this project.

Over the course of the year the content will naturally go from random generation of content to the creation of plots, encounters, campaign stories and more creative content. By the end of the year I hope to have gotten to the point that I’m streaming once a week.

YouTube

The YouTube videos for this project will heavily depend on what kind of content I capture while streaming. 

Most videos will be of me generating random content ideas for the overall campaign. This will be especially true for the first half of the year. When I get into less random generation of content the video format will likely evolve

Later videos might end up being a video of me describing one or more previously generated content ideas. I would write a script that explains what we’d like to create from those ideas, go over some goals of the content we are creating and describe how we’ll work on it through the accompanying stream. I will then condense the stream into an interesting video using the intro that I scripted

My Partner

I’ll be working with Praxius on this project, a good friend for over twenty years. We’ve been playing table top games together since high school and we both have a love for creating. 

We have frequently talked to each other about our personal projects, from campaign worlds to our own tabletop game systems, but never have we really worked on a joint project. We decided it was time.

I will be the one streaming, making YouTube videos about this project and writing the occasional blog. Praxius will be focusing on taking what we create on stream and using that as an inspirational spring board. Dale and I are both creative people, but I’ll be the first to admit he is better at detail work, which is something I struggle with. I think we will do a good job at complimenting each other’s talents.

Can I Get A PDF?

So, you’re interested in getting your hands on this upcoming masterpiece? Well, you’ll be in luck, Praxius and I have a few ideas.

Ultimately we plan on selling the campaign we create from this project but we would like to do some sort of bi monthly content drop as well. For these drops we would focus on random elements of the project, develop them a bit more, keeping in mind that it can be inserted into any campaign. Sort of magazine like.

For my part I will probably give away some of the work we do on this project for my monthly supplement I post on my Patreon in addition to any content we sell.

Looking To The Future

I’m excited to start working more on this project. It gets my creativity flowing and scratches that Dungeons and Dragons itch.

Truth be told, a lot of my excitement is coming from being able to work with my friend Praxius. I’m not sure if I could succeed alone on creating a finished campaign supplement.

Even though I am very excited to work on this project, I still need to keep in mind my main content, my LARP content. I still need to keep my YouTube content a priority, as well as my podcast content. This is probably tertiary project and goal for the year.