Hello Travelers,
I am really considering doing every other week Episodes of the Chronicles for a variety of reasons.
The Episodes themselves are recorded two at a time and we take a 15 minute break in between. We recap in the middle and it does seem to break up the flow of the game a tad. If I did every other week Episodes the whole nights session would be one Episode. I think the quality of each episode would be better since I won't have 'downtime' episodes where it is all setup to the following episode like I feel we have had so in the past.
Editing wise this works better for me time wise. It also give me a chance to get work with Cat Head Eagle more in having music that fits the segments a lot better. Also I hope it would give me more time to provide you guys with written content. I plan on writing up the creatures my players have encountered as well I have a couple of great idea for "The Adventures of Jeseric" Short stories I want to write. However I spend a good deal of my free time editing. So I have little to spend on the written endeavors. I am working on a new website to house a better site with better content for all of you.
There are downsides however. I fear I will loose listeners. Episode 4 The First Discovery. The one with battle with the large beast, has less listeners then Episode 5. It is also the one Episode that had a one week hiatus before it. People like to ingest story content weekly. That is how Television works and they are used to it. An every other week schedule could totally alienate the majority of you listeners that download this podcast every week.
The story also stays fresh. Weekly I am having to start punching up my GMing a bit more. Making sure there is a new interesting encounter about every 30-45 minutes. I'm limiting down time and discussion as much as I can to get things moving forward. This I hope makes for a better listening experience. Slowing to a 3 hour Episode may slacken my resolve on this a bit. I hope it doesn't but you never know.
Myself I am conflicted. There are good reasons for both. I am leaning towards every other week just for polish and sanity reasons but if you guys don't like it I will power through with a weekly schedule.
So what do you guys think. I have posted a Poll on the top of the website. Please let me know your thoughts.
I haven't actually listened to any of the podcasts (yet), but I can give an opinion anyhow. Personally, I think you should do whatever is best for you. If it makes things difficult for you, don't do it. 'cuz let's face it, if you don't enjoy editing and making the podcasts, then you won't do it as often or with high quality, which ultimately renders the effort pointless. So make sure that YOU are happy and satisfied with the method used.
ReplyDeleteMy $0.02.
Another new listener... I just got directed here by Roo Sack Gamers' Roy and am mid-download, but I spotted this post and thought I'd answer anyway...
ReplyDeleteI don't know how you're tracking listeners is one thing - iTunes stats, file downloads? For me personally, I very rarely listen to anything on a strict schedule. I tend to go through phases, so I'll power through a bunch of one podcast, then flick to something else. Sometimes I don't catch up on episodes for months. I usually have about 50 files downloaded waiting to listen, so exactly when something came out really doesn't bother me. It's only things like current affairs podcasts that it makes much difference. So personally I'd rather have quality than regularity. In fact most of my favourite podcasts aren't regular or predictable - one has breaks of a few months whenever work gets tough.
I can see you'd worry about longer episodes getting less tight. On the other hand you might find it works better for building up momentum because you're not having that break. Swings and roundabouts really.