Update 07/16 - Looking for Your Thoughts and Feedback on a New Project!
Added 2023-07-16 09:57:31 +0000 UTCHi everyone and welcome to JOHN MADDEN football (distorted bitcrushed NFL theme plays)
Two weeks into July already, and we've got another informative update regarding our very lives here at Ogre Poppenang, with your bi-weekly writer Earndil here as the guide [and Alfabusa who like the gremlins living in the walls will write between the lines in...].
We're still between videos right now in the grand scheme of things, still putting together the important parts of this upcoming Hunter the Parenting script (It's been a real rollercoaster getting this particular kind of script going, it'll make more sense later) and there's some bits and bobs to discuss around it and other stuff. So let's go!
WIZARD GAME: A NEW H:TP PROJECT
[FIRST OFF!!
HELLO THIS IS ALFABUSA, WITH A FUNNY LITTLE ADDENDUM!
I am writing this AFTER Earndil so graciously provided me with this Post, but, as it turns out, I am putting something a little EXTRA in as a video that I'd like you to review for us up above, if you have the time and interest!
This is the first of four "episode 0s" of our Mage: The Ascension series, a highly edited, highly immersive Mage Chronicle playing out in our Hunter: The Parenting universe!
We'd love to get some thoughts and feedback on this, what your feelings and reactions are to the story at hand, what confusions you might have, what gripped you, what excited you, what did you want to know more about, what mysteries intrigued you, what were you favourite little interactions and who were your favourite characters that you'd potentially like to see again?
Anything like that, we'll swallow it all up!
It exists both in video-format up above, and as an mp3 attached to this post, should you choose to check it out!
We know that long-form roleplay stuff isn't everyone's cup of horrifying sewer water, but for those of you who are viewers of such things outside of this, be it enjoyers of Narrative Declaration's Rotgrind or Warhams, or fans of quality World of Darkness works such as LA By Night or Stitch of Fate/Cracked Crown for instance, all in all, we're really trying to dig out a niche within a niche with this and we'd love your feedback especially.
If you are not very familiar with this kind of stuff though but willing to give it a shot, we absolutely want your feedback too, we want to see how easy or hard it was for you to get into this, and how we could potentially develop further, how we could rope more people in, when we begin with our proper Episode 1!
For full context though;
This is a roleplaying session of Mage: The Ascension, one of the many World of Darkness games standing alongside the likes Vampire: The Masquerade and Hunter: The Reckoning, and uses the ruleset from the 20th Anniversary Edition.
It does not take place in Norfolk, UK, like Hunter: The Parenting, but Norfolk Virginia, USA.
We're introducing one character at a time in a so-called "Awakening", a story about how each of our main characters saw the truth of the world and suddenly became "awakened" to the world of the Mage.
Speaker has been wanting to do a Mage game for YEARS and this is finally his time to shine, please give the love of his life a shot if you can!
That's that for now though, we shall await your thoughts eagerly!
ADDENDUM OVER]
Back to WoD for a while, I also have confirmed with SpeakerD that our first (tentative) day we shall be all together for the first session of the UPCOMING MAGE LIVEPLAY YES PLEASE DO NOT FORGET ABOUT THAT will be on July 30th, which is very exciting. Hoping that it shall be the start of something EPIG AND VERY COOLG.
Tabletop Battle-Report Project???
From what I can best discern about the state of work chat however, Alfa and Garrot have been working on some sort of secret thing that I myself am not privy to, but I can only hope it is as good as they can make it!
If it's a public release, then that's good!
If not, I will make Alfa drink hot dog water until he tells me what it is!
I will not speculate on what it is personally (He'll probably make some kind of addendum to my post here anyway explaining), but I can only assume it'll be grand.
[ADDENDUM: yes I will okay...
it is an experimental project that's just been lying around for a bit, that Garrot (Lead Illustrator) and I started up for fun on our off-time.
Its a narrative tabletop battle-report.
If you're a fan of tabletop wargaming, like popular tabletop wargame "War Hammer", you might be familiar with the concept of a battle-report!
Our project is an attempt at a fully narrative battle-report with elaborate narration not from two to seven non-diegetic guys playing the game and commenting on their rolls.
Rather, we have the game told as a story through a narrator as well as dialogue between the various characters involved in the skirmish, not unlike the banter between enemy units in the Dawn of War series.
The game we're playing here is Turnip28, which I highly recommend you look up, its marvelous.
It is an experiment, it looks and sounds pretty rough but if it seems like a successful format, it might be worth looking into using it as a branching-out point...
There we go no hot dog water drinkage for me today hahahahahahhfhggghfffffffffölgöflölfg
ADDENDUM COMPLETE]
Onto Hunter the Parenting!
As stated previously we are putting the finishing touches onto this script!
While I will spoil nothing about it, I will say that the kind of episode this script is for is like none that we've done in the past, so we have had to work extra hard to make sure that the subject is engaging, easy enough to follow, and is filled with character.
We're on the final end of the Panelling stage right now, and once that's done we'll give it a final editing pass to ensure it's all ship-shape before we move onto getting all the necessary voicework done, then onto art, and animation.
All I will say about the script is that you should prepare to see two old men fighting. Near constantly. We genuinely had to trim down the amount of old man fighting because it was getting out of control.
Half-Life on the backburner, for now...
As alluded to previously, Zero Viscosity has gone on the back burner for now because... regrettably, the delightful and definitely not creatively stymying YouTube Algorithm which prioritizes much shorter and much more frequent uploads, such as the sudden smash hit of the Skibidi Toilet Franchise (of which Alfa is obsessively invested in like he is 10 years old again and using GMOD for the first time), has resulted in ZV receiving very low viewership, to the point where it has begun to affect revenue. I personally despise having to even reference revenue when it comes to creative projects like this where we're all doing our best to be entertaining, but it's a necessity since it keeps us going. Hopefully we'll get lucky and the algorithm will decide to randomly reprioritize us, but that remains to be seen.
Funny little extra thing; a few of us in the project group are meeting for the first time!
[ADDENDUM: Alfabusa again coming at you with another thing I felt was worth adding.
I am going to take a bit of a vacation this upcoming week to meet up with our friends and dark abettors ThunderPsyker (voice of Kitten), Blessed (writer and project court jester), Karl (animator, deranged), Kristina (illustrator), Ironirocal (illustrator) and a few others!
Blessed, however, is currently stuck on fucking Iceland because there's been a big volcano eruption and his plane has been delayed 8 hours, with threat of more to come. I hope he survives, oh god, he's gonna arrive in the middle of the night and likely perish on the very bed we've prepared him.
Thunder and I have been friends and worked together for over 10 years now yet we've never met until this fated day. He, fortunately, has just recently arrived in Sweden and is getting picked up by lead illustrator Garrot and Kristina, safe from the wrath of the icelanding volcano deity.
We're gonna be having a good time, go to HobbyShopen here in Gävle, go to Stockholm for a day and check out the place, maybe go to the local Gamers Workshop, inbibe drink and explore the local legends and get Blessed spirited away by the local legend of the otherworldly fae priest, stuff like that.
I will be returning to work proper on the 24th but, until then, Speaker, Earndil and the other fail non-swedes who could not come visit this time around will pick up the slack for us...
We will see just how socially drained we will all end up from this our Grand Meet-Up.
ADDENDUM COMPLETE]
That's all I've got for this week's update, keep your ears peeled and your eyes opened for any further updates as we get on with everything!
Hope you all have a poppeng rest of your day!
-Earndil
Until next time, have a good one!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Comments
This is very exciting! Very excited to meet the rest of the Cabal!
DrawnCap
2023-08-30 15:52:44 +0000 UTCI would really like to see more of it!
The Red Duck
2023-08-25 11:44:47 +0000 UTCI rally love the style of this one shot and the introduction to a very grounded world. Great work!
2023-08-03 01:12:12 +0000 UTCThe Mage game was spectacular! Top three things I enjoyed: 1. The gritty and grounded tone. I love how all the mundane aspects of Bill’s life were emphasized so that the supernatural elements were all the more jarring, and I hope that tone continues. 2. The visual design! It added so much and set the tone very well. It could be helpful to have icons that light up when a particular person is talking, since sometimes it’s hard to differentiate voices in a new Actual Play. 3. The expansive and unexplained setting. I love how Bill kept running into things with no context or explanation, and that discovering what these things are is a compelling mystery for the audience as well as him. Very very eager to see more. Watching this really helped me understand what makes MtA so great!
Kyran Schnur
2023-07-29 18:30:16 +0000 UTCmy arachnaphobic ass was screaming BIG SPIDER for the seconf half.
2023-07-23 15:18:16 +0000 UTCI've only watched a bit, but I love it! Just wanted to ask though - someone's posted the link on the r/huntertheparenting subreddit, is that an official post?
Blue
2023-07-23 14:00:58 +0000 UTCCan't wait for the next episode!
Josef Lynn
2023-07-20 16:32:07 +0000 UTCThat was amazing, great storytelling, looking forward to the other ''Awakenings''
2023-07-19 00:29:20 +0000 UTCThis sounds awesome!
GhostReaper
2023-07-18 21:45:54 +0000 UTCVery much enjoyed the Mage session. Tough it occurs to me that the other Awakenings will also include other flavors of people saying "What the fuck..?" in disbelief. That may get a bit trite. Props to Speaker for the improv VA the supporting cast. It gave each a much needed bit of character, and as an Ex-DM I can fathom the effort that took. I'm quite curious as to how this was edited. How much is full game audio, how much is post-embellishing.
A Birb
2023-07-18 19:16:22 +0000 UTCI really like this, I forgot it was even a session it flowed so smooth and so well!
Xocoxoco
2023-07-18 05:51:47 +0000 UTCAwesome! I love the H:TP audio dramas, but as someone with no prior experience with WoD it's also a pleasure to get glimpses into other parts of the lore.
Branden Lange
2023-07-17 21:17:23 +0000 UTCEnjoyed the Mage episode very much. I'm curious as to what guided the mixing of the game banter, VA and sound effects.
A Birb
2023-07-17 20:14:52 +0000 UTCnice mage is a very interesting stuff but i admit i cant wait to see the werewolf stuff too
Thomas Nab
2023-07-17 13:33:19 +0000 UTCYes, more mage! It's the most underused WOD setting (even wraith can steal from other ghost movies), and needs some lovin. Go forth, and make some magic!
Deltarno
2023-07-17 04:41:12 +0000 UTCThat was pretty cool!
Rick Jenkins
2023-07-17 04:16:30 +0000 UTCI did comment this on the youtube video, but just wanted to add it here too in case.
Sharkface
2023-07-17 00:03:29 +0000 UTCReally enjoyed this, I've only experienced a little bit of Mage as a player, and it was really interesting to actually kinda sit in on a different game and a different storyteller. I really enjoyed the visuals, I struggle to listen to podcasts cause I got ADHD, and I was able to listen and watch the screen and actually focus on what was happening. My only real addition, beyond my excitement for the next instalment, is to ask for the addition of subtitles. As I said, I have ADHD, and during some points the atmospheric noises, or voice effects, they made it really difficult for me to process what was being said. The autogenerated subtitles Youtube provides were often incorrect during moments where I was actually able to hear what was being said accurately, so yeah pretty woeful. That being said, being almost 2 hours of improv, I can understand the sheer magnitude of work that request entails. But, maybe it could be implemented during moments when audio effects are layered? I hope you'll consider it. Otherwise, very engaging, I find myself trying to follow the strings you've laid myself.
Sharkface
2023-07-17 00:02:26 +0000 UTCSo, Mage: Loved it! A textbook example of an awakening, with all the weirdness and character depth they should have! Hell yes, more of this! SpeakerD is so good at this and HulkyCrow is really having a hoot! As for the battle report idea, I would love to see how it comes out in an example but it sounds like a blast with you guys at the helm! I did love the tabletop battle scenes in Text to Speech and this sounds like a more focused version, so hells yeah! Sad about Zero Vis, I do like it but if it's acting as an anchor for now, well... life choices right?
Trevor Bond
2023-07-16 23:27:37 +0000 UTCpretty interesting
Chull33
2023-07-16 22:26:17 +0000 UTCI loved every moment of this episode, from the beginning to end! The voice acting is top notch considering it has scary ass aliens ripping reality apart. The visuals and the atmosphere mix well together as the unknown slowly reveal themselves. The way this shadowy organization is written is terrifying and mysterious which fits perfectly with the HTP universe. I am intrigued in the weird blue dude's motive and I want to know why did he assist Bill in that cell.
2023-07-16 19:17:36 +0000 UTCIt's in moments like these I wish i was a millionaire so I could donate shitloads so you wouldn't be beholden to Ad-revenue
The Winter Weasel
2023-07-16 19:08:49 +0000 UTCAs someone whose already familiar with narrative declaration, I could tell right away it was Hulky we were seeing first, which already showed promise of a good time since, like speaker, chaotic shennanigans often follows and you two did not disappoint. Hearing speaker be verbally giddy at some of Hulky's choices and rolls also added some dopamine I fully welcomed. The premise is so engaging and there were sooo many good moments; consider me a fan of Bill's new threaded friend. I also found some of the visuals really fascinating, like when Bills group looks at the map at 32:26. If I treated the vid like a podcast then I would of missed that detail, so it's nice that viewers get to see stuff like that. I am sad that ZV will be put on the burner for a bit since I really enjoy that series, but I hope it will return soon, youtube algorithm be damned. Keep up the amazing work all; I am reaaaalllly looking forward to seeing the other awakening intros.
Cottonbonbon
2023-07-16 18:48:39 +0000 UTCI'm sorry to hear the almighty algorithm has deemed HL:ZV to be worthy of smushing. All I can do is share it as widely and with as many people who will listen to me about it, in the hopes of getting it out there. Regarding the mage game, I was absolutely enthralled by this production. I always loved the audio logs and podcasts and things from TTS and HTP, and I love this. The pacing was excellent, the mystery was intense, the character of Bill was a joy (I may or may not know several people just like him irl). Speaker did a FANTASTIC job with the theatre of the mind, and the images and sound effects of the video aided in that. I would love to see all the other awakenings and then more gameplay like this after them. Bill's Awakening scene sent literal chills down my spine, it was so good. I would also love to see the battle reports. Someone else here said the same but the TTS segments based on actual gameplay were some of my favorites (Kaldor Draigo failing at everything he tried to do during the battle at Khaine's Gate comes to mind). Everything you guys make is of such high quality and so good I cannot imagine the Battle Reports will be anything less than a stellar addition to the Popennang Constellation. Looking forward to everything y'all have coming up in the future!
Oliver McKowen
2023-07-16 18:46:38 +0000 UTCI am going to listen the sh!t out of a Speaker Wizard game.
Quinty1984
2023-07-16 17:35:42 +0000 UTCThis thing is the best thing ever. I want this thing, I need this thing, please produce more thing. {please, please please please...ease...se} As to feedback to the SpeakerD wizardculaba, if you wish to produce it as WODs, this format was marvelous, it was fresh, funny and amazing. If it is going to be another War-Ham, with regulars as Earndil, Zoran, Odo, Thurston. Yeah, that stuff I may watch till I die, like rest of your creations. {God I am addict, am I not, screeee}. Karl singing in radio was the best btw, force him next time sing there rattlin' bog. Yay, never gonna stop with that btw. Cheers.
MorningCock
2023-07-16 16:45:24 +0000 UTCWizard Game brings me untold mirth. That EP0 is very intriguing and sets an interesting mood! Very much looking forward to the others.
BlevRuz
2023-07-16 15:04:12 +0000 UTCAs someone who absolutely loved the TTS episodes that based themselves off of actual tabletop game results you guys played out, the idea of battle reports is really, really interesting (whether or not the war game in question is GW stuff)
Matthew Burke
2023-07-16 14:55:37 +0000 UTCI will continue throwing zero viscosity at my friends until YouTube decides to take it seriously
Nechronom
2023-07-16 14:10:36 +0000 UTCAs far as feedback goes: All of this (save for the pause on HL: ZV) is great news! I think all of us just love your content, and you've proven that you can dip into pretty much anything, including different methods or styles of storytelling, and we will absolutely eat it up because you put the love into it that we love too.
2023-07-16 13:35:19 +0000 UTC22:39 - "...and so you three together..." Aren't there four characters involved in the scene immediately before this? Which of them is being left out of the investigations?
2023-07-16 13:11:32 +0000 UTCSince Mage Ascension is the only wod franschise that ive played to any greater extent im very happy that you are doing a show in it. The format is pretty damn nice giving it a balance between actual play and the feel of a fully scripted audiodrama. The level of imagery/animation is enough to keep the mood and theater of mind going. And its not enough going on that i feel the need to focus completely on the show while having it up on a second screen while doing other things. Settingswise you are of to an absolutely great start here setting the mood and there being enough for a mage player to start getting ideas what kind of spheres/skills the player might have here. Im quite pumped to get more of this in the future. Makes me wanna play the game again. Also the formatting in the webview here on pateron is balls.
2023-07-16 12:22:24 +0000 UTCThat’s Amazing!!
Kittensinstars
2023-07-16 10:37:18 +0000 UTC*pursuit, not purchase xd
Hubert Wójcik
2023-07-16 10:35:11 +0000 UTCA shame about Half-Life: ZV being put on the backburner like that, but I can understand you guys' reasoning since you've got animators, voice actors, writers, Karl wranglers and who knows who else that do need to get paid. Maybe some day it'll be back, but for now I'm sure I can entertain myself with Hunter: The Parenting. And I'll also take a look at your Mage Game when I have more time, considering how much I've enjoyed the works of Narrative Declaration which some of you are a part of as well. Thanks for the update and keep up the good work, folks!
Risax the Imp
2023-07-16 10:06:03 +0000 UTCGlad to hear that there is a lot going on, good luck guys! But to be absolutely honest with you - I am not a fan of ZV, so the news do mot bother me at all. I hope that in the future you be able to purchase any projects you want, fingers crosses.
Hubert Wójcik
2023-07-16 10:02:23 +0000 UTCOmg :D
Crowmen
2023-07-16 09:59:19 +0000 UTC
