Going on three years since I bade that place farewell forever.
It seems like June just started yesterday and here we are already. Time flies when you’re having fun, I suppose. It’s been a pretty emotional month for me so far.
Our oldest is fixing to move 5 hours north of here to go to college in the fall. We’re wrapping up the spring baseball season and moving into summer swimming. Our 15 year old has a summer job on top of mowing, band, orchestra and swimming. Our 13 year old is a massive source of frustration at the moment and the littlest one is a handful every day, all day. Plus my wife is “off work” for the summer. (*teacher.)
Anyone who says teachers don’t work year round has never met my wife. She’s already planning her fall curriculum and working with another teacher on things. She’s as in touch with what’s going on in the district and her students as if school were still in session. I swear she wouldn’t know what to do if we took her computer and her keys away for a week and told her she had to take a break.
Disclaimer: Statements expressed in this article are strictly my opinion. If you disagree or have a different opinion, that’s okay. I’m not an expert on everything. I’m not always right. I’m just writing from my experience as I know it. Your mileage may vary.
Peace on the YouTube front.
I’ve mentioned before that I watch copious amounts of YouTube videos about TTRPGs among other things. Recently I stumbled onto two that I think deserve a ton of merit. The first is Bear the Gen X GM talking about Just Play the Game! The other is a brilliant take on gatekeeping by Wizards and Wordslingers . I highly recommend watching both videos in their entirety.
That’s the kind of thing I’m talking about when I say we should be keeping the #TTRPGcommunity on YouTube peaceful and positive. I used to absolutely enjoy TTRPG YouTube and TTRPG social media in general. Nowadays we’ve gotten a couple of guys that royally crush my daily groove with their negative waves in the hobby. There are definitely a couple of channels on YouTube in particular that have become straight up toxic toward roleplayers and the hobby in general.
I want my channel if/when I do the full launch to be a beacon of goodness in the hobby. I might never hit Bob Worldbuilder or Ginny Di status, (*That’s a compliment!) but a thousand subs would be an outstanding accomplishment. Heck, a hundred subs would be an outstanding accomplishment.
Gotta engage the skills to pay the bills.
We have some bills coming due and things I want to do. Our gas stove is going out on us. I intend to manifest a new laptop for publishing and YouTube purposes. Did I mention our oldest is going away to Culinary School in the fall? Nothing is cheap these days. I’ve apparently lost track of how expensive certain things are getting.
I’m still working out all of the details, but I’ve come up with a plan to at least pay for my hobby, my computer equipment, and maybe; if all goes well, have enough for some other things, too. I read this book by Peter Rudin-Burgess, published by Parts Per Million Games called Easier RPG Publishing. I recommend it to anyone looking into TTRPG publishing in any format. It’s definitely inspired me. Review to follow one of these days.
The other thing I’ve been doing is watching a lot of how-to videos on YouTube about making videos. Molly Keyser, link here, is an expert when it comes to YouTube and marketing. The other Content Creator I have a great deal of respect for is Meredith Marsh. She has a ton of good advice. Her channel is here. I’ve also watched Nick Nimmin and a couple of other Content Creator tutorials, but I find the people who work directly for YouTube don’t necessarily have the creator’s interests in mind so much as making money for the platform. Nimmin is cool and he’s been around a while. Link here if you’re interested.
That being said plus my newfound love for Dragonbane RPG has me plotting and scheming on some stuff. I’m hoping to have some things ready before fall rolls around. I’m going to be a lot less fussy about every little editing detail this time. The (for use with) Shadowdark Deck of Many Portals is on the back shelf for now.
As I was writing this, our 13 year old had a major meltdown.
I’ll start by saying he’s fine. No one was hurt. We did get a broken window out of the deal, but no one was injured. He got his phone taken away for not meeting his obligations and he’s still pretty angry about it.
It’s been a stressful couple of hours. I’m going to leave things here for now. I’ll be back tomorrow to talk more about Dragonbane and how awesome it is.
Thank you for being here today with me. I appreciate you. Please embrace the things that bring you the most joy.
Jeff's Game Box 