This is going to be mostly about TTRPGs and YouTube.

As always, I’m grateful for my freedom. I’m grateful for you being here. Thank you. We’re going to do a lot of rapid fire takes about YouTube and TTRPGs, so if that’s not your jam, there’s a lot of other stuff out there on my blog and elsewhere. Thanks for stopping by.

First up, “They sent me a copy for free…” said Diana of the Rose.

Well, it’s my opinion, but you probably shouldn’t take advice on buying a $55 boxed Dungeons & Dragons starter set from someone who has never had to actually pay for one. Come talk to me about buying choices when you actually have some money invested in the game. We all know Wizards of the Coast likes to send free gifts to well known attractive young female DungeonTubers and mindless D&D shills alike. It’s hard to take anything they say seriously anymore.

Look, kid, I know you’ll never read my blog and probably don’t know I exist and that’s okay. But I’m here to say, “You have a lot of potential if you just make good choices.”

Self-editing will come with the territory the older you get. Yes, you have to disclose your sponsors on YouTube as part of their rules. But was that short sponsored by Wizards of the Coast? Because you mentioned other boxed sets for other games. Did they all sponsor you? Are they all sending you free product?

I get that being an attractive young lady in this hobby has its advantages. I get it. I can’t really be jealous of that given my demographics, especially my age. But do you have to rub our noses in your free product? It seems unnecessary for someone of your caliber and reputation.

Moving on, the tireless shilling of Dungeons & Dragons.

Y’all DungeonTubers are starting to make me ill. I’ve seen at least 10 different reviews for the new D&D starter set that retails for $55 go past my Home feed on YouTube in the last 12 hours. Now, my feed is somewhat curated toward TTRPGs, especially D&D along with Pro Wrestling, ASMR, and wacky paranormal/conspiracy stuff, but the point is, I’m more likely to see that news. The thing that eats me about every one of these videos is “I got my copy for free from Wizards of the Coast.”

Would it be all that great if you had to pay for the bloody thing? Seriously, if it hadn’t showed up in the mail, for free, would you still feel any compunction to recommend the thing? I didn’t see a whole lot about Dragon Delves when that smelly heap came out a month or two ago. Wonder why?

Now, I’ll confess I do get a few PDFs here and there from Free League. (I love you guys so much) and other companies here and there. The only company I have any real loyalty to aside from my own endeavors on DTRPG is Free League. And occasionally the OG GM, because his stuff is awesome, but I always make sure to state that I’m biased.

Please, take my review of any given game product with a dash of skepticism. I highly encourage you to go check out anything I recommend before you buy. Because sometimes I get it wrong. Or maybe my taste in fantasy TTRPGs doesn’t line up with yours. That’s okay. Use your discernment.

My own meager YouTube efforts.

We’re now going on month two of my YouTube hiatus. I will be coming back soon, I think. I happen to know there are a few physical items in the mail that will probably require an unboxing and review. Mostly I’ve been behind the scenes building my PDF content and just holding the fort down for my wife and kids. Summer is like that around here.

Yes, it’s September 19th already. It feels like May around here at my house. And because the Des Moines Public School system can’t seem to go more than a week or two without having yet another Perfeshional Development day or honoring some random holiday as an excuse for a day off, we still have kids running amok in the house at all hours.

I’ve been debating for months about switching my content to D&D because it seems like those channels do about 100x better than what I’ve got going. I knew I was picking a difficult part of the TTRPG niche, and that theory has proven true over and over again. On the other hand, I can’t bring myself to spew the same corporate driven rhetoric that comes with the D&D territory. It feels disingenuous to you, the fans. I’m not sure how the people I mentioned earlier can stand it sometimes.

 I was once told hitting 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours would take a year or two. Well, I’m currently sitting at about a tenth of that. That’s a lot of why I’ve taken about two months to get the gumption back up to make a new video. I think it’s going to happen, though. Once you get bitten by the YouTube bug, it’s hard to quit completely.

And in case anyone says otherwise, it’s not the algorithm’s fault. The YouTube algorithm wants to keep viewers engaged with the platform and keep videos rolling for that advertiser ching-ching. It’s doing exactly what it’s designed to do. I just need to make more videos, better videos, and the aforementioned content shift-o-rooni that I don’t want to necessarily do.

The unfortunate “assassination” of a public speaker.

I’m tired of this very tragic topic. I’m sure most people know who I’m talking about. That man’s poor family. I feel so bad for them. No one should die like that. Unfortunately I saw the video and that just hurts the whole of humanity right there.

I’m not saying I agreed with the guy. One of my trans family members showed me one of his speeches a few days prior and we were both floored with the news of the shooting. Say what you want about someone’s political or religious stances, he didn’t deserve to get shot in front of his family. No one does.

Unfortunately the death of CK has polarized an entire nation and then some. If it was getting dangerous for my LGBTQIA+ family before, it’s downright frightening now that the Right Wingnuts have an excuse to target liberals. The social media backlash against anyone who even remotely mentions anything negative the man did is ostracized and worse. At least two of my YouTube colleagues have received death threats pretty much just for existing and being liberal. (One of them has never mentioned CK’s untimely passing and is getting threatened.)

As a proponent of the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, I’m still all in favor of gun ownership more than ever. “Guns for me and not for thee” is not a stance we want to see the government take right now with the Big Bad Bill’s ban on anyone who ‘appears’ to be homeless, addicted, or mentally unstable.” Apparently I have a mental health condition just being pro LGBTQIA+ which is ridiculous in and of itself. If they want to ban guns for trans people, who’s next?

I keep asking when the US government is going to start rounding people like me and my family up, forcing us to identify ourselves on our social media accounts, sew patches onto our clothes to identify us, and then start rounding us up for the camps. I wish I was being flippant.

It’s bad enough the way immigrants have been treated in this country already. This is how Germany 1933 got going. We know how the poem goes. Who’s it going to end with?

This is why I tend to stick to roleplaying games.

So, Justin Alexander of the Alexandrian and the book So, You Want to Be a Game Master, really stuck his foot in it with this CK business. Like some other public figures, teachers, and other people who should know how to watch what they say, he popped off in a social media comment. (No, I won’t quote it.) I sure as heck won’t defend that comment.

That’s why I say, “Stick to gaming,” when it comes to this stuff. Build your brand. Protect it by not popping off on social media. Unlike 20 or 30 years ago, word of mouth goes a long way. I might be a tad out of touch with reality sometimes, but Justin Alexander is getting bit in the butt by it these days. I won’t be surprised if he loses subscribers from YouTube, his blog, etc. (I say this not as competition, but as an observation.)

It’s the same thing that happened to Jason Buhlman last year. I noticed a lot of the same Right Wingers called out Justin Alexander wasted no time calling out Jason Buhlman during that incident. Let’s say I just think it’s advisable to stick to roleplaying game topics and remember not to associate your political opinions your TTRPG related accounts on social media. Yes, have the opinion, even voice it if you must. No, don’t drop it on social media from the account where you do all your gaming promos and advertising.

Now, Alexander did what all wise content creators do in this situation and deleted the comment. I believe he even apologized, but the damage had already been done. Some of the OSR guys and a few other Right Wing Conservatives wasted no time calling him out with screenshots. I hope Justin recovers from this someday. Personally, after what I read from the post, I can’t support the guy any more. He’s a wise man when it comes to being a Game Master, but… yeah. It was pretty bad.

I realized I’m contradicting myself by on the one hand saying, “watch what you say” with “speak up and have your voice be counted.” One applies to the TTRPG business/hobby. The other applies to the real world. Just understand that you might end up burning one set of bridges to reinforce the other. Use your discernment and do what you think is best. The problem with shooting off a flare in pitch dark night is that everyone sees it whether you want them to or not.

Depression is real.

This real world stuff can be a tough thing to cope with sometimes. Real world violence and hate just plain sucks. I think about that some days and it drags me down. I feel like most of my problems are insignificant next to homelessness, poverty, hunger, war, street violence, drug addiction, chronic illnesses, and so many other ills in the world. I wonder why the Universe lets it all slide. I want to believe in a benevolent Universe; that Source wouldn’t put us here just to suffer.

It’s sort of the apologist vs atheist argument about if God is all powerful and benevolent, then why allow so much needless suffering, pain, and turmoil here? Are we so insignificant? If we’re such an important creation, why watch us squabble, suffer, and ultimately annihilate ourselves?

Like I said my own problems are minor in comparison.

My computer keeps restarting at random times for no apparent reason that I can find beyond the fact that it’s old and on its last good leg. Microsoft is phasing out Publisher where I do all of my PDF layouts currently. I want a compy that can run Affinity Publisher. I can’t even download the thing right now for fear it will lock up and crash.

It’s only a matter of time before my SSDI benefits come to a crashing halt under the current administration if I had to guess. There’s talk of making everyone on Social Security under a certain age having to get jobs. If I could work Part Time, would I really need to be on Social Security? Pretty sure that’s why I fought that particular battle in the first place.

I already have Ko-Fi. I’m considering Patreon. I’ve considered homelessness for myself. It causes about as many problems as it solves, though. I dunno.

I’m going to need something that can run higher level software than I have now. My phone is getting older, too. Pretty soon making videos on it might become difficult. Plus our household expenses are, um, a sore subject I’ll get into next month. We’re not going to starve, but spare funds for literally anything else are getting kinda… that phrase we’re not supposed to use with Law of Attraction.

I wish I could dial up some of these LoA gurus and ask them how they really got all their money. Better yet, I would love to chat with Ra personally since that’s where some of this stuff stems from. See also The Law of One. Otherwise I’d like to get Kryon, Bashar, and the Ninth Dimensional Arcturian Council together in the same room I’d call the Galactic WtF Were You Thinking Summit. I’d ask a lot of tough questions like, “Why does Earth suck so bad?”

Changing topics again for a moment.

There are certain topics I’ve simply heard enough of in the TTRPG sphere. The big three, all to be subject to their own articles soon:

  • “There’s a Game Master shortage.”
    Short answer: Bullshit! Anyone trying to convince you of that is probably trying to sell you something. Call it for what it is and move on.
  • “Being a GM is too stressful.”
    No. No it’s not. Again, anyone attempting to sell you on this concept probably has their own agenda. Any stress from being a GM can usually be easily mitigated. The hobby is supposed to be fun. See also “Being a GM is too hard for most people.”
    No. No it’s not. Easy to learn. Slightly harder to master, but still not unattainable. There is so much good advice out there and here on this blog. Trust me when I say there are answers to just about every GM question or situation out there. (Except Reddit. Don’t go there.)
  • “The GM is just simply another player at the table, not that important.”
    <Taps the sign.> You can’t design a game by committee. You can’t run one by committee, either. Anyone trying to convince you of this nonsense should see the previous two statements. The GM is in charge. GtFO if you can’t handle it and go form your own quiet little game. I’m a GM. I’m da Man in charge of my game.

I don’t charge money to run games. I just want to run the thing  and have some fun with it. The real world is bad enough. We don’t need a bunch of additional convoluted drama from DungeonTubers, WotC shills, and other less scrupulous individuals pushing these nonsensical agendas. You can be a GM. It’s not that hard.

And “they” wonder why so many people are turning to solo gaming now.

(I had to put on another pot of coffee for this one.)

There’s a crowd of people, many of whom have hair in every unnatural color of the rainbow, who love to signal their virtues and try to say old (neckbeard Grognard) white guys from the Midwest flyover states can’t leave the hobby fast enough. If I self-identify as one of the “old guys,” then no, I don’t want to hang around and play 5E or show off Dragonbane where I’m certainly not welcome. Solo play looks pretty good at that point.

Likewise there is a group of old, middle-aged Caucasian men who lean very heavily and vocally to the Right who would more than happily gatekeep people out of the hobby. I want more people to play TTRPGs, not fewer. I don’t care what color their hair is or how much metal is sticking through various parts of their body. Come play. But if I continually walk into a room where I’m not wanted and it really appears no one is wanted except the same crowd of old dudes? Yay for solo gaming.

I’ve recently gotten into a game called 5 Star Match that I backed on Kickstarter last year. Basically you play as a booking agent for a professional wrestling company. You get to put together matches and segments. The dice determine the success of that evening. I’m so into it that I’ve already come up with enough material to create an entire sourcebook of things not covered in the rules.

I’m also still a huge advocate for solo Dragonbane games. The nice thing about Dragonbane, aside from the rules, the magic system, the monsters, and a lack of insanity from the company that makes the game, is that it’s centered on mirth and mayhem. I get goofy lighthearted moments along with the serious hero adventuring stuff. It’s not all grimdark and depressing. My imagination runs wild with this game.

On a more lighthearted note…

Thank you if you’ve made it this far, btw. I wanted to chat about a couple of games that I’ve been looking at to maybe eventually pick up. It’s a ways down the road, though.

The first is a newer game called Outgunned. I came up with a bit of a campaign one night after I was watching action movies. There are a lot of modern action games out there, but Outgunned sports a different take on the D6 dice pool system. It’s fast and furious in ways other games have tried unsuccessfully to capture. Also Outgunned Superheroes is coming soon. I have been begging 2 Blind Mice/Free League to send me some kind of a review copy.

The other game that has caught my attention recently is the game that won multiple Ennie awards this year, Land of Eem. It’s promoted as “Muppets meet Lord of the Rings.” All of the videos and reviews I’ve read have said good things. The Quickstart guide is very well put together. And yeah, the muppet-tude seems legit. I like it.

Wait… Mayhem and Mirth. Sounds kinda like Dragonbane. Maybe that’s why I’m fascinated with both games.

I’ll never give up ICONS, but it doesn’t keep me from looking at other supers games. I’m always looking to port my universe into a new setting. There’s just something special about supers games especially in times like these. I like bright, 4 color style games. I love teams such as the JSA, JLA, Avengers and X-Men. I’ve always been more of a DC guy, so a lot of my worldbuilding comes from there, but I slip in a lot of other comic book universes as well.

Spooky month is almost here.

We might not have our regular Freedom Day post next month unless it’s in addition to #Monstober. I have my own calendar set for this project and it’s going to be very Dragonbane focused. Monsters, woot!

It’s time to take comfort in fantasy escapism and just chill. There’s too much insanity outside to want to set foot out of the house. I don’t know about you, but I need that 15 minutes or more of just taking a breath and getting away from it all. YouTube, social media, and the gods-awful mainstream news can wait. Just breathe, go analog, and take a break.

Thank you for being here with me today. I appreciate you. Keep it real, but please strive for positivity, too. Please embrace the things that bring you the most joy in your life.