At the very end of April, I had brand new 1 Gbps Internet installed. I celebrated by actually live streaming for the first time since August 2019. Mostly I live streamed actual play of Ironsworn: Starforged but also played a lot of Destiny 2, and a little bit of No Man’s Sky and Outward.
My current tabletop streaming setup is pretty much the same as it was back in August 2019, but I did add, in May, a chroma background, which works mostly. My lighting is crappy, so it doesn’t work as well as it should, but it’s fine.
For live streaming games, I use to play on my Mac (iMac, Retina 5K, 27-inch, 4.2 Ghz i7, 64 GB RAM, Radeon Pro 580 8 GB), either native or using Parallels to run Windows on a virtual machine. I’ve given up on that. I picked up an extra screen that was on sale (Sceptre 27″ IPS QHD 144Hz), an Elgato HD 60 S+, and an HDMI splitter. Then I hooked all that up to my old Nvidia Shield TV, and plug in a keyboard and mouse. Then, I play games I own on Steam or Epic through GeForce Now on the device, and capture that to OBS on my Mac through the Elgato. It works pretty darned well, I must say. I also picked up a chat link cable, but, for some reason, that doesn’t work at all, so if I’m streaming I can’t yet use in-game voice chat in things like Destiny 2. The audio for chat has to go through the controller, but if I do that then the audio doesn’t reach OBS at all. But, that’s fine. I just listen to the audio routed through OBS as I play, without voice chat.
I signed up for the GeForce Now service, so I get priority access to virtual machines, and RTX is turned on. It’s pretty! And works better than trying to play on my Mac whilst also streaming from it. As someone without funds to get a real PC just to play games, this is an amazing solution. And the streaming works great, and there’s plenty of bandwidth for all of it!
The major downside, however, is that I really can’t play indie games anymore. I can only play what I have access to through GeForce Now, which is not small, but certainly precludes a lot of my library. But, what I do have access to includes a lot that I couldn’t even try to play before. So, it’s a trade off.
At some point this month, I bit the bullet and recreated a Twitter account. I found that I kept going back to Twitter to check on news from particular accounts, so I created a private account where I only have a list of those accounts I want news from; and I neither accept follows nor follow directly anyone else. It is my compromise. Without followers, I’m not tempted to lie to myself that tweets reach someone, that I’m not howling into an empty void. So, that’s where that is. (And, here I am howling into a different void. FML.)
Also, I heard about a replacement for the old Project Wonderful scrappy ad auction site, which I used to run over on Hermetic Library for a long time. I always liked being able to offer ad spaces that were more indie and open to people jumping in that wouldn’t really do so otherwise. So, I signed up and added an ad space to this blog through the ComicAd Network. The focus is less about books and writing, so doesn’t really work well for Hermetic Library like PW did, but the game and nerdy Odd Order blog does fit, even if there’s not much traffic. It’s neat to see what interesting and wacky stuff show up!
Yeah. What else?! Idek. That’s what comes to mind.
Twitch
I started to stream tabletop / actual play every Thursday 4:20pm–6:66pm US/Central. Other streams were entirely random, but probably a lot more than I will stream in June. I’m vaguely thinking about scheduling a video game stream on Saturdays 6:66am–4:20pm, but I’m not sure yet. If I had people watching, I would take it more seriously, but that’s chicken-and-egg …
Anyhow, for May 2021, I had an average of 0.9 viewers, gained 1 follower, have 0 subscribers, made $4.03 ($4 from cheers, and 3¢ from ads), and streamed for a total of 58 hours. Sad, but true.
I decided to only archive my actual play videos to YouTube, so the video game streams will stay on Twitch and expire in a week or two after they are live.
Ironsworn: Starforged Actual Play Series
Here’s the series so far, archived to YouTube:
- Ironsworn: Starforged preview edition, first look and readthrough!
- Ironsworn: Starforged, first look and readthrough with truths worldbuilding and character creation
- Ironsworn: Starforged, first look and readthrough with sector creation and my first adventure
- Ironsworn: Starforged, first look and readthrough with first adventure wrap-up and new oracles
- Continuing Ironsworn: Starforged! Mad lib plot thickens! Exiled from a cult! Things go awry!
Here’s other videos and archived streams for May 2021
- Unboxing The Unclean Leporello of the Foul Wizard Baum, for Mörk Borg
- Unboxing Tower of Scoundrels, a Third Party Mörk Borg Adventure
- Unboxing The Dead Eye (April, but apparently I skipped listing it last summary)