Rigaroga's Odd Order

Summary for the month of August 2019

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Rigaroga
in

Here’s a summary of activity for the month of August 2019.

The final couple episodes posted to the archive of season 1 of Expedition: The roleplaying card game by FabricateIO. Through ten quests I leveled up three characters to retirement.

I also continued playing D&D 5e solo with characters from the Stranger Things themed D&D Starter Set. I actually added one more, Max’s Zoomer, an archetype of Rogue, to the other five. But I continued with them using the first of three linked 4e modules themed around the Shadowfell, starting with H1 Keep on the Shadowfell. I’ve been calling that adventure Keep on the Upside Down, and the first have posted to the archive, while the rest I’ve streamed will post through mid-September, once a week. I streamed through Episode 7.

I finished streaming episodes of season 1, The Island with No Name, the introductory adventure in the Seas of Vodari Quickstart Guide. I got that because I was a backer of the crowdfunding effort, and played it because it seemed like a fun thing to do next.

For Seas of Vodari, instead of playing a bunch of full characters, I decided to try one character with some sidekicks, using mostly the Sidekick rules from D&D Essentials Kit but also considering the Unearthed Arcana Sidekicks rules as well. For the most part it worked well. It took a little while to get used to the sidekicks, and to stop treating them as full characters, instead of as support characters. And, a few episodes in I realized I needed to add an additional, third, sidekick. Even then, through the entire playtest, I feel like I was very underpowered. I suspect that if I play using sidekicks again, I’ll treat the suggested levels for encounters as actually n+1; so that if an encounter thinks characters should be level 1, I really need to be at least level 2 when playing solo even with a good roster of sidekicks. Ultimately, it was a pretty harrowing adventure with lots of danger faced! But, it was super fun to get to play the character I played and I really liked the funny, silly sidekicks I created. I’m actually sad to see that come to an end and felt bad for what I put them through!

I’ve got prep notes for tabletop RPG things I’ve been thinking about doing solo … but I’ve made a really big change recently that means I won’t be streaming anymore.

I actually did also stream a few video games this last month, so those are listed below too. But, I’m pretty much done with doing videos of video games, I think. Just no one ever watched them except for me (watching myself play a game in a video I already played when I streamed it is strange and silly!) so there’s not really any point to it. I always liked getting to check out new indie games when devs or publishers sent me a key, but also felt bad when I streamed them but had no audience watching. So, yeah. Going to let that go.

I did keep doing re-run marathons on Twitch through last month with all the videos that hadn’t expired. All in all, hanging out for 17 hours two times a week by myself commenting on myself playing was a bit much. I did see a lot of unique viewers and so forth, but not really any increase in people following my profile or hanging out to chat much.

I did see a few people come to my D&D 5e solo streams and hang out, which was pretty fun, and we joked about things and thought things out in realtime. I’ll miss that now that I’m not streaming. But, as great as that was, here’s the thing: I’m currently seeing more people checking out my actual play videos on YouTube in 48 hours than check out my streams on Twitch through the entire month. Still not a lot, but it’s a big difference! It seems like people find me on YouTube a lot easier than on Twitch.

A couple months ago, the promotional pricing on my Internet expired, and I called to cancel; but, I was told I could have a new promotional pricing that was only $1 more than it was. Okay, cool. Only that never got applied to my account. I felt lied to, to be honest.

There are two companies in this town working on symmetrical gigabit fibre but neither are on my street yet. They each charge about $100/mo which is a lot. But Spectrum/Charter charges $91/mo for a soft 400/25, and in comparison that’s just bonkers. When it was only $70/mo I could justify it. Not at $91/mo.

So, that’s it. I cancelled my overpriced high speed Internet service at the end of August. That means I won’t be streaming again for … who knows how long? Permanent hiatus until further notice. I just can’t justify the expense, and the only reason I justified the expense to myself was that I needed it to keep streaming. Without one leg, the other falls too.

I’ll probably try to record and post more actual play videos as premieres to my YouTube and Twitch channels to see if I keep it up. If I can get them uploaded. I’ll try it out, and I’ve got until mid-September queued up from past streams to tide people over until I do figure out a way, if it can be done well enough.

No longer thought of myself as a streamer even though I was streaming, and now I’ll not even be streaming. But, I may still post videos as premieres. We’ll see how it goes from here!

But, either way, that’s my summary of things through the end of August.

Here’s videos and archived streams this last month

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