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What’s with all the Podcasts?

I don’t know if you’ve noticed yet, but I’m involved in making and producing three different podcasts now. Three. On this very website. Every week.

That’s a lot of talking.

Anyway, for the unobservant of you out there, in addition to the venerable “Pixels & Dice” gaming podcast, hosted by Beoulus and myself, we added in two more over the last few weeks. First there was “Knights of the Tabletop”, a group podcasts which is recordings of our tabletop roleplaying group playing various games each week, and more recently, I added (back) in “Roleplay Domain”.

You see, several years ago, I used to be involved in multiple podcast-like projects. I did videos for YouTube, and I was in a now-defunct podcasting network called “The Gaming and Entertainment Network”.\where I produced two weekly podcasts: “Massive Failure” (a weekly news and commentary show about MMORPGs), and the aforementioned “Roleplay Domain”.

So, what was RD? It was a weekly show about all things Roleplaying. One week I might talk about a particular bit of Tabletop roleplaying news, the next I might comment on an upcoming Cosplay event… or a Renaissance Faire… or some MMORPG news (if applicable to roleplaying, anyway)… and so on.

RD is about roleplaying, period. I love the hobby, have been a roleplaying in some form now for forty years (Beoulus and I started playing “Dungeons & Dragons” in 1979!), and it seemed like a good time as any to reboot the podcast. I obviously still have things to say about… pretty much anything… so why not use that voice to talk about one of my favorite meta-hobbies?

Of course, those of you who have been following me since the old days may remember why RD was cancelled in the first place. I got overwhelmed with responsibilities, what with work, home-life, and all of the projects I was involved in on the side. So I blew it all up, stepped away from the podcasting network I was a founding member of, and cut back my extra projects significantly.

… Which is really kind of sad to say, because I have been busier than ever the last year or so, and doing just fine, actually. I think I was just falling into a deep depression back then, as my projects were struggling, and it all felt like a waste of time, so I walked away. That was rather stupid, because the only “waste of my time” was the YouTube content, since it took up so much time to produce. The podcasts were actually not a problem at all, and “Massive Failure” and “Roleplay Domain” were doing just fine for solo podcasts, actually.

You see, people react differently to various podcasts. You can have two podcasts which cover the same topics, in the same basic way, and one will do much better than the other for one basic reason: The popular podcast has two or more people as hosts, while the other is a single person hosting.

Helpful Hint for Prospective Podcasters: Don’t do a solo show! It may seem like an easier way to do things, not having to schedule recording times with other people, let alone trying to get all cast members to come across at the same audio level, etc, but you’re wrong. That stuff is actually a lot easier to do than you think, and well worth doing, if you want your show to be successful.

“Pixels & Dice” is, for all intents and purposes, “Massive Failure”, simply rebooted with a new name and multiple hosts. Where it did take some time to get P&D up to the relative popularity of MF (which isn’t very popular, actually, but better than nothing), “Massive Failure” had the backing of a multi-podcast network behind it, providing many more listeners each week than I would have had on the show’s regular feed alone, simply because it was bundled in with shows people actually wanted to listen to.

The same could also be said for the original “Roleplay Domain” at the time, but it mostly got by on downloads off of the network feed. I don’t think many people were discovering the show via it’s own feed to iTunes, Stitcher, and so forth. I hope things are a bit different now, though.

Our flagship show is still “Pixels & Dice”, which gets several thousand downloads each week. “Knights of the Tabletop” is already pulling over a thousand downloads each week, which is remarkable, considering I’ve seen no activity for the podcast on either Apple Podcasts or Stitcher Radio! It is this success (such as what it is, I know these aren’t exactly huge numbers overall) which lead me to reboot “Roleplay Domain”.

I’ve been itching to do another solo podcast for a while now, something I can just ramble out on my schedule, as I needed to, and on a topic I knew I could drone on about at length for at least 30 minutes each episode. I think RD will provide a nice counterbalance to the other two podcasts on the website, being not only a solo show, something a bit more intimate in nature, it is also Clean… Which is to say, devoid of foul language. Something the whole family can listen to. Kid-safe. Significantly lacking in F-Bombs. Completely unlike my nature.

But is it, really? I livestream at least twice each week, and manage to get through them with mostly Clean language. I make a concerted effort to keep those shows family-friendly, even though I go Live most well after the kiddies are in bed, at least here in North America, if only because some people just would rather not dodge F-Bombs all the time. Some people just want to hear a streamer talk about, well… whatever, without cursing all the time.

If I can (mostly) manage to keep it clean on my Livestreams, I can do that again on RD, which was a Clean podcast, back in its original run.

Now then, I did actually consider uploading the old “Roleplay Domain” shows to this new feed, and just picking up where I left off, but ultimately decided to go with a reboot, instead. Why? Because my equipment is much better now, and I would like to think I have improved as a Podcaster, as well. Yes, I know the first episode of the RD Reboot has a few recurring audio dropouts, which are very annoying but I can’t fix and re-recording the whole show won’t work, since it is already published. I have found the problem and strangled it to death in a dark alley (I removed the Noise Gate), so we shouldn’t have that problem again in the future!

Anyway, in addition to the three podcasts each week, I plan on posting weekly blog entries (much like this one) on Wednesdays, and bringing back Twitch clips on Tuesdays, giving us plenty of things to enjoy here on the website every weekday! There may be more blog posts as needed throughout the week, but every Wednesday sounds doable, as does posting one clip a week, in addition to the podcasts (which are not hard at all, compared to YouTube).

Enjoy!

Hi, I’m Scormus

I'm the editor, publisher, and primary "talent" here at Scormey.com.

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