Podcasts, Blogs, and Sites I love!
Leading up to the release of Afterlife: Wandering Souls on Kickstarter I’ve been soliciting a lot of blogs, podcasters, and YouTube channels to cover my game. It’s par for the course when promoting a new game and most small game developers do the same thing – trying to get their game picked up by someone to generate some buzz. When a media outlet actually agrees to cover your game it’s the most brilliant thing ever, it feels like you’ve won the lottery – someone cares and is willing to put in the work to promote your game! To cover a game it not only takes maybe an hour or two of interviews with the game designer—but then hours of editing, be it video, voice files, or text to make the video, podcast, or blog ready for viewing consumption.
A lot of the times while blanketing as many media outlets as I can as a designer I forget how much work gets put into someone else promoting my game. Media outlets are often under loved by designers after their Kickstarter (or whatever else they need to promote) ends. So before my Kickstarter even starts I wanted to do a small blogpost dedicated to just a few outlets that I personally love. Not just as a designer, but as a fan of their work.
A note at the start: I’ve only covered three media places I’m a huge fan of, but I honestly love so many more. I will definitely do a second article on this, but for now a special and loving shout-out to the Lounge Podcast, Pear of Geeks, Nerdarchy, and GnomeStew.
She’s a Super Geek
Who they are in their own words: “Run by @idellamithlynnd and @theCraftyDM, SASG is an actual play RPG podcast highlighting womxn as GMs. New ep. every other Tuesday! We are at least 50% queer.”
Most of my research into channels that I want to cover my games starts with channels I am a fan of. I found She’s a Super Geek (SaSGeek) through Twitter by fan-girling over OneShot Podcast with Senda one of the hosts of SaSGeek. Senda and I got to talking through Twitter and I discovered she had a podcast. This was all the way back when I was still promoting WITCH: Fated Souls. Eventually, I was invited on to SaSGeek to play a magical girl version of One Last Job, which was hilarious and amazing. A couple years later when Familiars of Terra came out, Senda and I were still in contact, and I ran a game for her and Emily. Recently, I got to run a game of Bloody Demon Slayers for the two ladies which was amazing and so empowering to spend roughly the first hour of play just talking about our periods… I’m weird, I know. Over the years SaSGeek has shown me a lot of love and now I’d like to share just a sliver of that love back.
The reason I love SaSGeek so much is not only my deep abiding respect for its co-hosts, but because every episode they put out is genuinely entertaining. I often lose focus when listening to podcast actual plays, I’ll zone in and out while people talk and normally tune back in at the end for the big finale. This isn’t the case with SaSGeek. Not only is the banter between Emily and Senda entertaining enough to keep me listening, but the hosts have an amazing way of centering games to keep them on track, fun, and interesting.
As I said I recently ran a game of Bloody Demon Slayers for SaSGeek and I was more than a little bit ill at the time. Once we actually started playing and I started laying out the plot of what Emily and Senda’s characters had to do – half way through my cold-fueled monologue I completely lost any sense of what I had planned. Luckily, thanks to Emily, who guided me with a few questions along the lines of ‘so what do we have to do’ I managed to ramble out an entertaining-enough plotline for the two women to follow and make amazing. I was honestly so impressed at the skill she showed as a host in that moment and the two women show that skill over and over again each episode of SaSGeek.
Victory Condition Gaming
Who they are in their own words “I knew there had to be other parents introducing their kids to tabletop games, so I decided to create a channel showcasing what games we’re excited about while teaching having fun at the table should be the most important victory condition when you play. Hopefully your “gamer” family will find our content worthwhile, you’ll consider subscribing to our channel and share your gaming experiences along with us.”
I met the owner of this channel, Doug, through my friend Alan who runs the awesome company Gallant Knight Games. I pestered Alan to introduce Doug and myself, because I started watching Victory Condition Gaming (VCG) do reviews of many of Alan’s products I’d written for. I became a fan, because I loved the dynamic between Doug and his daughter Sydney who sometimes co-hosted the show. It was so cool to see a dad so invested in showing his daughter how awesome gaming was. Doug and Sydney then covered Familiars of Terra for me and I’ll be running a game of Afterlife: Wandering Souls for VCG coming out soon!
Being a fan of VCG for longer than a year the reason I still keep coming back to the YouTube channel is for Doug’s genuine love of gaming. Most of us in the hobby love games, but few have Doug’s enthusiasm for trying something new. Many of us become jaded over the years, start narrowing our preferences, avoiding certain games, and while I am sure Doug has preferences on the games he enjoys – that doesn’t stop him from being an overwhelmingly positive force on his channel for all types of games. I watch VCG, because of Doug’s genuine love for all things gaming. This shows time and time again in his interviews and also the numerous actual plays he has on his channel.
GeekNative
What is GeekNative in their own words, “The premise is simple; roleplayers don’t just talk about their characters. We belong to a healthy, booming, culture. Geek Native covers much of the geek spectrum, through anime, comics, movies, films, books, technology, internet, television, music, art and plenty more. The site is for geek natives.”
I met Andrew the owner of GeekNative (GN) purely through me trying to push my game WITCH: Fated Souls onto as many media outlets as possible. Andrew let me do a free giveaway on his site and has hosted articles on just about any game I throw his way as long as the content is clear and the message interesting. He always replies back quickly, professionally, and thinks with you on ways to promote your game, but also how to make interesting content for GN.
The reason I am mentioning GN here isn’t for the more personal reasons I mentioned for the other two media outlets, but because GN is something I check on the daily for regular news in the gaming sphere. I probably check the site at least once a day and am always entertained by what I see. Posts are regular, news is fresh, and unlike a lot of gaming-related sites that have become so large adds eclipse actual content – GN’s content is clear, easy to read, and if articles are advertisements for a game they have meat to them. There is always a special exclusive for GN readers in the article or an interesting bit of information I didn’t know on a quick Google. This is why GN is my #1 news site for RPG-related things and it will be for the foreseeable future.
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So much love to all the amazing sites and content creators. Do you have a favorite RPG outlet? Give it a shout-out in the comments!