Author: Ross

From Trolls in the Corner: 5/5.

I’m on an email list for RPG podcasters. A few months ago, one of the podcasters conducted a survey of RPG podcast listeners to get a sense of what they thought. The results came back in recently. My podcast, RPPR, got a lot of positive comments and someone on the list asked why my listeners were so engaged with the podcast. I can’t read minds so I don’t know. All I can say is what I’ve done to engage listeners. Here’s an incomplete list of what I’ve done so far.

• Our 4E D&D campaign, The New World, really boosted our popularity. We have 28 AP episodes posted so far (with quite a few more recorded) and some of the players have their own fan clubs. We’ve even created a series of PDF sourcebooks, freely downloadable on our site https://slangdesign.com/rppr/the-new-world-free-4e-dd-campaign-setting/ I financed them through the ransom model so I got to pay my hosting and equipment costs, which is nice. Listeners can not only listen to the campaign, they can follow the discussions in the comments and in the forums and read the PDFs to see how they can run their own New World campaign.
• I outline each episode before we record it and I try to make sure we keep it on topic. I’ve gotten a lot of feedback from listeners who say they listen to RPPR because we keep it on topic, unlike podcast X or Y.
• I encourage listeners to post comments on the site  and thankfully we get a lot of discussion on most episodes.
• I like to experiment with podcasting and try new things – we started doing sporadic readings of terrible fanfiction stories as short comedy skits. Listeners either really love or really hate them but they are short so it’s easy for the people who aren’t fans to skip them.
• The RPPR AP podcast (which is weekly) is a big success – some listeners really love it and now that all the APs are on a separate feed those who don’t care for it can ignore it. It’s a lot of extra work to set up, maintain and keep posting new episodes though. Also, I’m rather fortunate that the regular RPPR gaming crew is very verbose and witty – people like the side table chatter.
• A few months ago I ran a 2 part horror game (merged both parts into 1 AP, 6 hours long) based on the creepypasta Candle Cove. It went viral when it was first posted, even reaching Boingboing. The AP got a huge response from our listeners. One listener said he listened to the 6 hour game straight from midnight to 6 AM because he was so enthralled it. I eventually emailed the Candle Cove author, webcomic artist Kris Straub, and told him about the game. He posted it on ichorfalls,com the original home for the story, http://www.ichorfalls.com/2010/06/07/rppr-plays-candle-cove/ – we got new listeners as a result and he got new fans of Candle Cove.
• I take a very loose approach to editing – I basically never edit AP episodes for content. I only edit interviews to trim out dead space caused by interruptions in connection or whatever. I take a minimalist approach to editing episodes. I’ve never set a minimum or maximum show length. I don’t see why I should place artificial limitations on RPPR.
• I redesigned the RPPR site in January, with new original art for the banner and I tried to make links to the forums and the New World setting page highly visible (well and our paypal donation button of course)
• I’ve made some RPPR schwag – postcards that I hand out at cons and just recently buttons that I’ve mailed to some RPPR fans who asked for them.
• I post links to the RPPR forums in the show notes and encourage listeners to post there. A friend familiar with PbP games recently expanded our forums to accommodate PbP games.
• I try to stay positive in the show – complaining about stuff is fun but I prefer to talk about stuff that interests me rather than stuff that irritates or annoys me.
• In RPPR shout-outs, I try to mention stuff that ISN’T super-popular – I want to shine a light on stuff not everyone knows about it rather than state “yes, Iron-Man is a neat movie”
• I try to make our show notes informative so a person will understand what a given episode is about before he listens to it. I’ve seen a lot of podcasts that have extremely sparse show notes. A recent RPG podcast episode had this for show notes: “Topic: Player Narration, Comic Book Movies, Writing Inspirations” along with a list of what games or shows they talked about at given times in the show. I have no idea if I want to listen to that or not.

Read some of the comments from the survey below the fold.

I emailed Kris Straub (the guy who wrote Candle Cove and the artist behind starslip crisis and chainsaw suit) about the game I ran based on Candle Cove.

He posted a link to the game on his sites:

http://www.krisstraub.com/post/673757468/a-candle-cove-roleplaying-session

http://www.ichorfalls.com/2010/06/07/rppr-plays-candle-cove/

I added a positive review of my first book, A Curriculum of Conspiracy and a good review of The Goblin Hulk, the second New World PDF to the portfolio section.