Oct 2024 || DTRPG Halloween Sale, Mothership Month, and My Worst Character Voice to Date
Plus, Call of Cthulhu solo play, some gaming updates, shout-outs, and podcast updates!
Your friend shares their live vidfeed with you and explains they found an abandoned curiosity at their last port. It might be some sort of early two-way communication device from Old Earth. Your friend describes how it sometimes rings in the middle of the night, only when they are alone. As they describe how they hear faint voices on the other end, the normally clear vidfeed deteriorates in quality. You could swear you heard a third party of voices just before the vidfeed frame freezes. While waiting to reconnect, you access the new Escape Vector Transmission on your portable reading terminal…
🎃 Site-Wide Halloween Sale!
This free newsletter uses affiliate links. Please consider using them to further support me, at no extra cost to you! Thanks to those who already do!
Take advantage of the DriveThruRPG Halloween Sale from Oct 17 to Nov 1st (starting/ending on 09:00am CST)! I plan on finally purchasing some existing and new wishlist items.
👉 Check out the site-wide sale here!
👉 Check out the MOTHERSHIP-specific items on sale here! (and see my current list of personal recommendations copied below)
The PDF for What Stirs Below is 25% OFF on DriveThruRPG*!
*For the duration of the Halloween Sale.
Again, whether you already have it or pick it up, thank you for supporting our first Mothership adventure supplement. I would love to read your reviews, feedback, and gameplay stories about WSB! By the way, our PDF+Print Bundles climbed to the first page of bestsellers on TKG’s Mothership webstore and we are so close EVEN CLOSER to the Copper Bestseller medal on DTRPG!
Horror Solo Play on Sale
I mentioned I wanted to get into more solo play last Transmission. A quick update is that I had an incredible time concluding one of my solo Cloud Empress adventures. I will write more about it sometime soon and I am considering releasing a podcast episode about it… I just need to think about the format.
My Cloud Empress adventure wasn’t spooky enough, so I will give the Call of Cthulhu TTRPG Alone Against The… solo play supplements a try, starting with Alone Against the Flames (the FREE intro one) and at least one that is on sale. Here is the list:
FREE INTRO. Alone Against the Flames
Not on sale? Alone Against the Dark
🚀 Mothership Recommendations
Do you have an insatiable hunger for horror and want to dig into some spooky games during October? You have been dying to play Mothership more or for the first time? In addition to my intro-to-Mothership episode (on your favourite podcast app or Youtube), here are some recommendations (in no particular order and with affiliate links)!
Asterisk(*) indicates ones I have reviewed on the podcast so far.
🔫 Action and Survival Horror.
Your players will light ‘em up!🤢 Body Horror.
Your players will squirm. Long live the new flesh.🐙 Creature Features.
Your players are screwed. The big bad is coming. “Game Over, man!”🌌 Exploring the Unknown.
Your players will wonder how much further they can/should go?🔎 Investigation.
Your players will gather clues but need to watch their six.😵 Simulation and Mind Bender Horror.
Your players will have chilling thoughts about reality.
Transmissions #2
🎙Podcast Updates
I have been editing one new episode coming out soon. Several existing episodes are now on YouTube (currently, all are audio-only except for the review episodes).
Activity since last Transmission
Mothership
UPDATE. Ep #10. Review: Piece by Piece (Mothership 1E) (~10 mins)
Added visuals to previously audio-only YouTube episode.
😑 My Worst Character Voice To Date
For my latest Actual Play episode of Salvation at the Seed Vault (part 5), sorry to the Aussies and anyone with hearing. …Also, since the accent was all over the place, I might as well apologize to members of language groups I may have inadvertently offended!
The Event.
It was awful. I really don’t know what I was thinking!
Character voices have never been my strength but I can usually get by in at a casual table. I push myself a bit for the podcast, and for this episode I had practiced a bit leading up to game-day. And I immediately choked and could not get it back together. If I remember right, it took me a few scattered tries before I decided to cut my losses and move on.
To be honest, I was really tempted toward rerecording!
Why Didn’t I Rerecord?
Podcasters and content creators vary in their priorities, codes, and practices. My current vision for my Actual Plays is to
Represent a regular game session with relatively normal people, minus some things like false-starts, audible breathing, breaks, redundancies, bad audio, etc.
Be a compelling and enjoyable listening experience
So,
I split session recordings, because I think it helps with pacing and listener attention. I feel like 40-80 mins is a good length.
There are minimal additions like intro and outro music to set the mood. I rarely add ‘in-game’ or ambient music in other spots.
I do not plan on adding sound FX nor do I plan to add ‘in-game’ voice content that was not actually experienced by the players.
I invite and feature players and special guests who may or may not have acting ability (I have 2 theatre kids among my gaming groups but I do not exclusively invite them for APs).
I do more prep to focus and organize the sessions, like pre-rolling random encounters and having a list of possible story beats to address within the session (so the session is not aimless and at least some part of the story progresses), but nothing is scripted, fudged, or told to the players ahead of time. I am open to pre-session requests from players asking for a bit more limelight or to address something specific in session (but this has not happened yet), but I often introduce/modify subplots based on character backstories, in-game character development and choices, and player interests/game-style.
I try to be ‘cinematic’ but I distinguish my AP from an audio-drama. I try to be as close as I comfortably can to reflecting normal gameplay, but I would rather not post a full, raw recording. There are many great APs out there and I have my favourite series, episodes, and creators to follow. I realize that, for some audiences, my kind of production might not always be as flashy as other ones, but my production choices lead me to create outputs that align with my current vision. And I hope that you enjoy my outputs, along with those of others!
I will try my best with character voices, but you should expect to hear the original session audio! I will look into help to improve my character voices and will be happy to follow any resources my readers and listeners share!
🚨 Mothership Month & New First-Party Product!
Was MONTHership ever on the table?
Tuesday Knight Games, the publishers of Mothership, announced the first annual Mothership Month (Nov 10 to Dec 12, 2024).
To wit, it will involve new supplement releases (crowdfunded via Backerkit’s new Collab-Funding features), community-building events, and other media like Actual Plays and soundtracks. TKG described it as, “a group-collab project led by Tuesday Knight Games featuring some of the brightest stars from the Mothership third-party publishing (3PP) community, each with a brand new adventure.” and “a pep rally for the entire Mothership community”.
One of the projects being crowdfunded for Mothership Month is friend-of-the-show Terry Herc’s third-party adventure supplement, “What was Left to Rot”. Follow the campaign HERE.
Another project is a first-party 200-page (!) Bounty Hunting Toolkit titled Wages of Sin. The teaser trailer is below.
This one got a little long. Tune in next time for a Spooky Season 2024 retrospective, project updates, and more!