Casting Shadows

Week 5: Share Prompt 26: Share a great actual play source

Today’s prompt for #RPGaDay2018 was difficult to pin. While I wrestled with it, chaos reigned in my house and it took the whole pack to subdue to topic. What made it difficult was that I was undecided on presenting a single session (a great Actual Play video) or a channel which generally shares good AP videos.

Why was that so hard?

For me, I like to see AP videos embody the spirit of sharing which is encapsulated in this week’s prompt word and in the movement in general. I am not looking for performance, cosplay, or promotion. Instead I am looking for groups willing to share their explorations of games new to them, their passion for and fun with games familiar to them, and their experiences with both.

This Prompt was not prompt

Although my specific requirements narrowed the field quite a bit, that then left me with the choice of having to choose, or to list and pretend to choose. The last grail knight would never accept that, so here is my search for the cup of a carpenter after lengthy, lengthy thought.

The contenders in my checklist for this year are Adept Play, Complex Games Apologist, JDRD30, and Dungeon Musings. Each of these produces AP videos fairly regularly, each meet all or most of my criteria all or most of the time, and each likes to explore a range of games of different types and eras. How then does one choose one to recommend?

Among his many activities, Francois at JDRD30 has been using the RPG Super Setting project to pair randomly chosen game systems with randomly chosen regions to explore the whole book and the many, many different approaches to play that there are out there. That is a fascinating and ambitious project. In fact, as I type this, he is running one right now. Francois runs his channel in both English and French.

Kevin Madison at Dungeon Musings is likewise building a monstrous playlist of different games of different types, some one-shots, some longer. The channel employs good tech and is rapidly moving toward a great collection of important and interesting games, played with enthusiasm.

The CGA is mainly producing tutorials and reviews these days, but he too is actively playing an interesting assortment of games, and I hope that more and more of them will find their way onto his channel. He has recently been doing great stuff with 2D20.

The final entry isn’t a YouTube channel, but instead Ron Edwards’ site for the discussion and development of games, Adept Play. There, anyone who is playing and thinking about the games that they are playing is invited to share and discuss their AP experiences with write-ups, recordings, video, or whathaveyou, and organize play sessions to do more. The type and tech-level of what is shared varies with each but the variety and depth of discussion is spectacular.

The Eye of the Beholder

Ultimately, each of these contributors is worth attention, I think. Ideally, all of these people could start collaborating on videos and producing play, commentary, annotation, and discussion on the wide variety of games that they play, but until that unlikely event happens, we will have to watch them individually.

For this year, because of his history in recommending play + discourse, for his hosting of a space for people to do that and his active encouragement of those who do, and because of his own enthusiasm in sharing games, I will force myself to make a choice from my cool list of great sources and put Adept Play at the top of the pile for this year as meeting the largest number of my personal criteria for the greatest amount of time.

What will next year bring?

Tomorrow

We continue Week 5 of #RPGaDay and in the land of “Share.” In this final week of the event, we will be asked to share the games of others that we appreciate, share stories of those who have influenced us, and so on. This final week is all about who we are.

YouTube

As has been my habit since the second year of #RPGaDay, I am also keeping pace with the prompts on video. The content of the videos and the blog overlaps, but is not exactly the same, and where the greater emphasis on detail resides varies from day to day.

#RPGADAY 2018

This is the start of the fifth week of the fifth iteration of the monthly roleplaying gaming celebration launched by Autocratik for all forms of social media. Share your responses however you prefer to share. If you want to get involved, grab and share the infographic with the prompts and jump right in!