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Also, blocking forehead is a real 5head move (sorry)

Interesting talk, it got me thinking about the idea that in a lot of ways, uncertainty is more unpleasant than bad news. People prefer a 7 minute wait with a countdown than a 5 minute wait with no idea when it will end. All the talk of waiting to see what people think, how it will do, and all the updates being constant so the tension and anticipation never abates. On paper, there's no reason why somebody uploading once a week shouldn't have a weekend, but because the audience doesn't rest as a collective the expectation seems to be flowing back up to the creator. Another part of this uncertainty problem is actually figuring out how to engage as an audience member. You have the opposite problem from the creators, where they have an abundance of feedback of all types, almost every comment ever posted gets ghosted, so it is very difficult to figure out if you are reacting appropriately or not. One thing totalbiscuit said after he made his comment section invisible due to the cancer within, was that a few people still posted where nobody would see, and there was a large element of screaming into the void in what was left. So the experience of seeing a lot of content in a negative way, is that nobody ever notices or cares about your opinion (because nobody ever interacts with it) and so therefore what you say doesn't matter so you can scream whatever you want. And the way the platform reacts is often with a lot of shadowbanning of various types, it never tells you anybody saw, so the sense of void can be amplified. One great thing a discussion like this does is that it confirms yes, people do read those comments, and so it pushes back the sense of void and therefore encourages self-moderation.

Your conversation about Strahd through your modern, limp-wristed, feminized paradigm made my lip curl is absolute disgust. I genuinely cannot put into words how much I find your collective worldview repulsive. As most people do.

28:01 in a vtt, I always found that there was a stark difference between my careful prep for expected events versus what happens when my players go off the rails into unexpected territory, even with community assets available with a quick search, having to stop to modify things or add things or create fog of war layers told the players that they were missing something that I had prepared, for whatever that’s worth to them. Which leads me to think that here lies a perfect opportunity for AI, to generate new fully optimized encounter maps in seconds, that look exactly like what the DM already described instead of being “close enough“

10/10 outstanding crossover event

Really great discussion!

Thank you all for your insights. It is interesting to see how much struggle lies behind all of your awesome videos. Thank you very much for your work.

The flag comment button is useful. Turn comments onto the strict setting. There is so much competition in the TTRPG's TH-cam community, that success is never guaranteed with hard work.

Why am i just finding this place?

Really enjoyed this panel. It's interesting to see how differently I use TH-cam than most other people, apparently. I never bother with the feed. If I have seen a video and like it, I subscribe and just watch when new ones come out, and if a few videos later it turns out the channel doesn't really give me what I want, then I unsub and continue on. I use it more like TV, but I guess that's not surprising as a 47 year old lol

what miscast and luboffin! worlds collide

“It’s a 7…” 😂

Great panel, had to laugh at how many times Dael said exactly what I was thinking, even down to the wording on some things. Didn't know Jazza was involved in Live Play, so that was fun to learn.

This was a great panel, thanks for doing it! I went from working on small independent podcasts, audiobooks, indie film to working on a TTRPG YT channel with a big audience. The culture shock of having a sudden leap in exposure to my work as an editor and sound designer has been equal parts stress inducing and gratifying. The first negative comments nearly broke me, but the amount of positivity and enthusiasm for my work overall has been overwhelming. That enthusiasm can totally be a drug and as a creative person it's hard to resist the urge to work late, crunch, create something super wild and memorable, burn out. It's not sustainable, but at the same time it's work I'm proud of.... Hmmm

Tabletop Time (Before the more recent relaunch) was actually what got me into TTRPGs. Glad to seem them with the wider TTRPG scene.

Huge agree on cutting out the ragebaiters and the trolls from comments. I unsubbed from a channel this week because they evidently valued the engagement more than the good faith members of the community. If someone doesn't care who's there so long as someone is, I won't hang around. If I was going to hang around hate, I'd be around my family. At least they have good food

Awesome video as always guys!

Happy to see Trent of Miscast on this panel! He is amazingly creative. Love his channel!

Honestly what bothers me most about the current creative space is that "creator" now means only "person who makes Twitch/TH-cam videos". Since the word used to apply to anyone doing anything creative, it's irritating to painters, illustrators, sculptors, writers, etc etc.

re: thumbnails. Apparently you just need to put "WotC sucks! New Controversy" on every thumbnail, and you're golden.

My favorite Dael video is still Critical Role _ Dumb Ways To Die (Hella Spoilers)!

Awesome to see Luna on the show!

Great panel and very timely! Glad you uploaded it to the podcast channel.

My favourite form of content moderation is silent blocking (I don't know what it's actually called), where a troll can still comment on videos but no one ever sees it but them. They get the catharsis of being a terrible person without actually being able to hurt anyone.

American chiming in. What's annual leave?

I definitely feel a lot of gratitude for the content creators, the work and stress to "produce" must feel overwhelming at times, especially for something that the consumer feels entitled to "for free" and wants this content basically baby-birded into their mouths, especially when these platforms make it so difficult to meaningfully support a creator without putting in legwork. *One question I did have after watching this panel:* There's sort of two competing truisms: Do what you love for a living and you'll never work a day in your life VS. The best way to kill your joy in something you love is to make it into a job. Now that you have found success in this field, does one of them ring more true than the other, and do you have any advice to offer people to keep the love alive?

55:08 this is such a good point - there are some channels in the TTRPG scene where the comment section is not moderated as well as it should be. The creators are so focused on getting A LOT of comments, that they don't care about their quality and they allow some extremely toxic people to thrive and shout over the actually valuable conversations. When there is no signal from the creator that this kind of thing is not welcome, the audience doesn't intercede either, and the bad actors feel encouraged.

Yay! I love seeing Trent on the panel!!!

If there's a more aussie name than Jazza, I've not heard it. Oh, and really glad to have this conversation online. Thanks, folks!

I find the opposite. TH-cam channels for the RPG hobby tend to be incredibly hostile and negative in what they cover. I believe that this is because the TH-cam algorithm pays them more when they take hateful and controversial positions. I believe that YT influencers are negatively impacting the mental health of their audiences.

Great seeing Dave up there, love Tabletop Time

An extremely good panel with lots of great insight into the world of content creation. Great hearing the range of perspectives especially.

Words don't have definitions. They have usages. No two people are going to agree on the same usage of low/high/med magic.

Strongholds and followers was a huge disappointment.

"Bouncy Castle, Forgotten Realms D&D" makes me sadly grimace. If you don't judge it by years of WotC's lame ass supplements, the Forgotten Realms is neither cheesy nor generic. Whether you like it is subjective, as with all things; but the Realms are not generic. They have deep lore with very specific flavors. If you feel the need to shoehorn in every goofy species, adventure path, etc... that WotC has released, sure it gets watered down and feels generic. That's not the real Realms, to me.

I really enjoy detailed settings. I love many settings, but Eberron is definitely my favorite. No other setting achieves "what would a world be like if D&D magic and creatures were real" like Eberron does. Everything in Eberron exists logically therein.

Cool conversation about "staying current". 👍🏻 I often stay current with games I really love. D&D is one of these. I've enjoyed 5e since Xanathar's, having waited to adopt it until I felt it had enough mechanical substance to do so. I like what I'm seeing from D&D2024 thus far. I'm excited to read the DMG, and very eager to see the (very important) MM. I stay up to date with Numenera, a setting and system I love; and also keep up with some of MCG's other Cypher System products, since they're so easily hacked and spliced. I am a huge Star Wars guy, and love RPGs, so of course I love to play SW RPGs. That said, I am happy with WotC's "Saga Edition" from around 20 years ago. I have the full 13-book collection and never felt like following the license when it switched hands. Many love FFG's SW RPG, but I couldn't be bothered to spend a fortune on new books and buy fancy new dice when I already love Saga Edition.

I really liked the headquarters example from the Acq Inc book and mini campaign.

Great conversation. I really look forward to seeing that there is a new podcast available. I enjoy everyone’s perspective.

4e did a lot of stupid things, the Spellplague was one of them.

Ben should check out Ars Magica, almost essentially what he describes in terms of that free form magic system but that is an entirely different game.

Good chat!

I'm looking forward to seeing what theyve done with Bastions as both my groups of players really enjoyed having Trollskull Manor back in Dragonheist. We expanded upon it using the Durnan's Guide to Tavernkeeping from DMsGuild.

when I think of low magic I think of the Lord of the Rings setting, and if you try to run standard D&D as that setting you need to make some considerable changes on what classes you allow. I haven't read through the 5e Lord of the Rings setting books that are available so not sure how they have dealt with this.

I think 5e is a terrible system for low magic / low fantasy. There are lots of excellent systems out there that allow you to do low magic, and have a ton of fun!!! But they are all very different to each other. Band of Blades is low magic, but you're an awesome squad fighting for your lives, doing awesome things. If you play the One Ring you explore middle earth, and it's all so very very thematic. And I do think Dales point is great - "Low magic" isn't the phrase you want!

The thing that strikes me about both Bastions (at least as of the UA version) *and* Strongholds & Followers is that they're things that individual players are expected to opt into if that style of play interests them and not, by default, something targeted at the party as a whole. This just strikes me as a great way to support the kind of player who has main character syndrome and flipping the bird to players who don't. I feel like the default ought to be "This is a campaign archetype the whole party is going to get involved with. When you're at your base, there's something for everyone to do and events that the whole party will have to handle. If everyone's not into managing a castle or whatever between dungeon delves, we'll retool the campaign or play a different campaign that doesn't feature these mechanics." AcqInc struck me as the approach that best handled that kind of philosophy. Also, I'm enough of a fan of Pillars of Eternity 1 (and, if you really really really squint, Acquisitions Incorporated: The" C" Team) that I think there ought to be a megadungeon closely tied to (if not literally a part of) your base that the party can't conquer all in one go. Every time you check back at the bastion is an opportunity to delve a little deeper. Every adventure outside of your stronghold is a chance to find the answer you're missing to progress deeper into the dungeon. Ben are you familiar with Vagabond? A TTRPG TH-camr named Indestructoboy just finished up a crowdfund for his pulp fantasy RPG that has a magic system that's very similar to the one you described (I think he's got a video just on the magic system if you want to check it out)