In This Issue…
Elliot introduces a new column: The Page That Got Me about those single pages in a TTRPG that push them from “want-to-play” to “must-play.”
Brian interviews Drakoniques about his path to becoming an actual play streamer and learns how to build and grow an audience.
Introducing “The Page That Got Me”
How DIE Sets GMs Up For Success
For each TTRPG that grabs ahold of me and won’t let go, there’s often a single page or spread that is the genesis of my fascination. It’s the mechanic that bumps it to the top of my “must play” list, the bit of writing that builds a world in my mind, or that one piece of art that makes me drop an audible “Fuck YES!” This series is an ode to those pages among the books and zines on my shelf and in admiration of the work done by the many incredible talents in this space.
DIE has many pages I could enter in this series, but the spread on pgs. 124-125 is an encapsulation of some of the best GM advice I have read, all laid out beautifully with art that grabs.
Writing That Talks
(Writing by: Kieron Gillen, Kienna Shaw, Lauren Bryant-Monk)
“DON’T OVER-PREPARE.” An oft-repeated piece of advice in TTRPGs that I, frankly, never really read in other game breakdowns. But these particular pages are packed with practical advice written in what I can only describe as the language of DIE. There’s an honesty and humor to the tone that makes the role of Master far less intimidating. Like the game, the comic, and the act of playing any TTRPG, the text on these pages is a conversation, and a fun one at that.
Layout That Sings
(Layout by: Lone Archivist)
True of the entire book, these two pages present a lot of information in a format that is just so dang readable. One of the bits I love is the use of bullets; it feels highly intentional, giving the GM a quick list to re-reference in a moment of preparation or improvisation. The text and images here work beautifully in concert to keep the pages from being overly cluttered.
Art That Emphasizes
(Artwork by: Stephanie Hans, Marguerite Sauvage, Aviv Or, Tula Lotay, Abigail J Harding, Gene Ha, Elsa Charretier)
These two art pieces capture key facets of what it means to run the unique GM role of the “Master” in DIE.
The artwork on p. 124 reflects the text beside it perfectly—the choice of motive for your antagonist. Are they a victim? A villain? Or something in between? Which hand is the Master? It’s a challenging role to play, one that asks you to control this chaotic world and its twisting morality.
The p. 125 image, on the other hand, captures the mystique of the Master as a character your players will meet, shrouded in shadows yet surrounded by immense power.
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Like what you see on these pages? I highly recommend you check out the game in its entirety. It’s available now in digital form from our friends at Rowan, Rook & Decard.
-Elliot
An Interview with Drakoniques
How He Got Here and What He Learned Along the Way
(This interview has been edited for length and clarity)
Brian: I know you mostly as an actual player, but also know you're doing a bunch of stuff in the tabletop role playing space. What are all your multi-hyphenates at this point?
Drakoniques: I'm a TTRPG writer, so I've been writing recently for quite a few different publishers, some of the projects are already out. I'm doing a lot of that now. I'm an actual play production manager, so I’m just kind of like the guy who does all the admin and paperwork that no one wants to do behind the scenes to get sponsorships, plan out schedules, and all of the behind-the-scenes stuff. I'm also an actual play performer. Anyone reading this will know me from My First Dungeon, but also I played on a bunch of other campaigns, other channels, and shows.
Is your work on actual plays full-time or part-time right now?
It's part time. I'm a student as well. I'm a computer science student. So whenever I'm not studying I'm doing this, which is fun but also tiring because both take a lot of effort and energy. But I enjoy doing both.
Is [being in the TTRPG space full-time] your long term goal?
I mean, I'd be lying if I said I didn't want it to be the thing I'd do. But I also would be lying if I didn't say I know that's from a very unhealthy mindset or a very capitalist mindset being like, your hobbies need to earn you money too.
I've really fallen into the trap of saying, “What? Am I not gonna record this D&D game?”
Yeah, exactly! I legitimately don't have any off-stream games. Every game I'm in is a performance for an audience on stream for some kind of revenue. I'm lucky that I'm enjoying that, but it's also a slippery slope that I'm aware I am on.
I think for anyone else considering this, ask yourself: Do you want to monetize your hobby? Think about that very hard before you do. I would love to reach a point after university where I could just be doing this and have it be a sustainable living. And I'm definitely making steps towards it.
How did you get started doing actual plays?
I think even if you're not into TTRPGs it's very hard not to hear about D&D. Even the layman has some concept of what D&D is. At the very least you know it’s what nerds do in movies. I think I was very much in that house for quite a while. D&D? I guess it's the thing that nerds do. I'm not a nerd. I do sport.
So I never really looked into it until I got to university and I realized I couldn't fall asleep without, like, a noise. I needed something going on in the background to fall asleep. So I remember playing a Markiplier video on YouTube. I let it play and I fell asleep and when I woke up I realized that auto play had been on and a new video had started and it was in the middle of Geek & Sundry’s Foreververse.
I was like, what are these people doing? Trisha Hershberger was on it and I recognized Trisha from another YouTube channel. So I figured, I like Trisha, I'll stick around and watch it. And when I started watching it. I was like, this is kind of cool. Is this a thing? Can I find more videos like this? So I end up diving into a lot of other actual plays and just watching those.
It's wild that the auto play button is how you got here. It's amazing how often that happens–a random conversation, a random bit, you know, serendipity. Fucking love that.
At the time I thought, I'm fine with just watching this, that's all I really want to do. And then I found HyperRPG. And there's a show on there that’s probably one of the best actual plays I've ever watched: Kollok 1991. It’s incredible! It's like the blueprint of an actual play that I wish I could make one day and it’s going to be my ultimate goal. But I was watching that and saw Aabria Iyengar on it–the one of incredible fame and legend. But this was quite a bit before she got huge over the summer.
But I was watching her and I just realized she might be the first black person I've seen in any of the actual plays I've watched. And I kind of flipped a mental which I didn't even know was off in my head where I was like, actually I'm not satisfied with just watching this. I want to play in these things. So that was when I actively sought out a D&D group in my university. I only got to play it for a month or so before the pandemic hit and then everything went remote, we couldn't meet up in person anymore. Games became much harder to schedule because everyone was still in university, of course, doing their own studies and had kind of crappy webcams and mics. So it became increasingly hard even when we could schedule a game to even play that game.
Finally I decided to just go online and find people to play with and I found otherdoc and their Twitch channel. They put out a casting call for a one-shot for an indie game on stream. And I was like, I might try this out. I have chronic stage fright. I'm incredibly anxious. But I'm gonna dive head first and kind of go through exposure therapy while doing this thing I enjoy doing. I was nervous so I just played a nervous character so I could hide that and make it seem like I was role playing. And after that, someone I played it with said, “I really like you, you're really cool and fun to play with. Do you want to play with us more?” I said yes and after that I was invited to a bunch of other games. We ended up making our own Twitch channel–Friends Who Roll Dice–and I ended up becoming a co-founder of that channel. And from there I started branching off into other channels while also producing my own shows.
You and I didn't know each other before My First Dungeon. I saw that you were talking about DIE on Twitter, and was like, “Hey! Come hang out with us.”
What do you look for in a project? Because an actual play show is a lot of fucking time. It's 3 to 4 hours, multiple sessions. What are the things you look for in a show that makes you think, “This is gonna be a worthwhile experience. This is going to be worth my time. This is gonna be fun.”
It changed for me as I had more friends in the industry. At first, I honestly just check the person's social media and just kind of vibe check them because the last thing I need is to play in a game with a Trump supporter, you know? So I do a quick vibe check. After that, if they pass a vibe check, I just check out if I would be interested in the game. So if the system is something I've been interested in, if the story that they've pitched is a fun concept to me.
I've been obsessed with the idea of being sucked into your own game. When I saw DIE–because I heard about DIE the RPG before the comics–so when I saw your message I was like, “I watch too much anime to not want to do this.”
But now that I have more friends in the industry, I also just kind of hear if people have vouched for the person. Because you can't really tell everything about a person from their social media. You can't tell everything from just the story they're pitching to you. If anyone has very glaring bad experiences with the person and they're willing to share that with you, that can always be like a good warning or at the very least to be like, OK, keep an eye out for this.
Especially for marginalized people, vouching and that kind of network of vouching is a really big thing. So I definitely would recommend taking advantage of that if you have that
Well, I'm glad we passed the vibe check. It was lovely to have you on My First Dungeon.
In your personal experience, what have you found were the most effective ways for you to build your audience?
Honestly, just be flat out and straight up with everything you plan on doing. For example, when I was the co-founder of Friends Who Roll Dice our goal was to make it a safe space for people of color and LGBTQIA+ and we just made that so blatantly obvious–from the logo itself being the colors of the rainbow, to whenever we do casting calls, we just outright say “people of color and LGBTQIA+ have priority when we pick cast members”–we just made it so clear and obvious that we ended up attracting the people who are interested in that and made it easier for us to build that audience.
And honestly, you saw one of the ways I also find games. I sometimes just tweet out, “Hey, I really would love to play this kind of game,” and people often are like, “OK.” People are very excited to introduce others to games. So showing that you're excited to be introduced to that game will attract those people to you as well.
The reason we met was because I was talking to Kieron and Grant and I think Kieron hit me up and was like, “Hey, there's this guy that keeps talking about DIE. I know a friend who knows him and he seems cool. You should hit him up.” And I was like, “All right, sounds great.” And I checked you out and thought, “Oh, this guy looks awesome.”
Yeah, it works for me. Just put it out there because I think a lot of people don't realize that we all are just a bunch of nerds who want to play games. So if you make it clear that you want to play games, people will actively gravitate your way.
I heard something a while ago that has really stuck with me.
I've always felt weird about self-promotion. But I saw someone post the question online: What do you think is more egotistical: putting yourself out there and telling people, “Hey, come look at my thing” or thinking your thing is so, gosh, darn amazing that they're going to find it without anyone telling them about it? And I was like, “Oh, now I don't feel weird about it anymore.”
Yeah, everyone in the TTRPG space is incredibly supportive.
What are your biggest tips for anyone who wants to become an actual play streamer?
So for anyone starting out, I think–this is the stereotypical advice but I'll give it anyway–invest in a decent mic before a camera. Your laptop camera is usually good enough, but audio is where it really matters, especially in actual plays where a lot of times it is theater-of-the-mind and will be focusing more on what you're saying. If what you're saying sounds like it’s going through a tin can, then not many people are gonna enjoy listening. So if you can invest in a mic, there are countless websites and tweet threads or the best mics to pick. (We recommend starting with the Samson Q2U, ~$50)
I would also say if you're only just starting out, don't be afraid to just play an exaggerated version of yourself because that might be a bit easier than playing someone entirely separate, entirely different. My first few characters were just like me but with silly voices or like me but way more hyper than usual or something. I just grab me and then turn something up to 11 (or something down to zero).
For anyone who's already a streamer and wants to expand their audience, I think I did that a lot through kind of like a lot of crossovers.
I would collab with a lot of other TTRPG Twitch channels like charity streams or series. I remember I made a Hyper Light Drifter series where three episodes were on Friends Who Roll Dice and then the other three episodes were on another channel. So we could encourage trading and switching and merging of audiences. We've done charity streams with channels like Transplanar where we would do a three hour actual play charity stream on one channel then we would raid into another channel for an actual play and then raid into yet another channel to mix and merge audiences.
At the end of the day you're not competing with each other. You're not like, oh, this viewer is mine and I need to make sure they stay with me and never learn about other channels. You need to be able to just be happy to switch and swap and merge and play on other people's channels. That's a big thing as well. Even though I was a co-founder of Friends Who Roll Dice, I played on so many other channels that I made some kind of impression on their audience and on their team as well. So it made those collabs way easier to initiate because they're like, “Yeah, Drak’s cool. He played on our channel and made me cry with that emotional speech. Of course, I let them on for another show. Of course, I'll collab with Friends Who Roll Dice for the charity game.” I think that'd be my advice.
It's about people trusting you in some way. If you're gonna listen to actually play, you're dedicating hours to listening to something. If I, as a listener, come in and I don't know anybody and there's any reason at all to turn if off–bad audio, slow start, etc.–I'll turn it off.
But if I come into something and Drak’s there and the first few minutes has an audio issue or something, I’m much more likely to forgive it and give the show a bit of grace because I trust that Drak wouldn’t waste my time with a bad production. You're gaining trust. Under-promise and over-deliver. Do what you're gonna say, say what you're gonna do. Exactly
And don't be afraid to have a brand. I know a lot of people are like, “Oh, I want to keep everyone guessing.” But there is like a safe space and a trust that can be built from knowing what kind of character you tend to play. If people know roughly what they’re in for, then you'll build a trust and attract the audience who is into that and from there you can maybe start trying out new and different things if you want to, you don't really need to. But if you want to, you can.
The streaming space is something I'm very unfamiliar with. Are there any best practices that people should be aware of if they're getting into the streaming space? Things to do or not to do?
This is more from the production side. And this is what I've learned as a marginalized person myself, but also working actively with others if you are going to produce an actual play.
If you're going to produce an actual play and are going to be reaching out to people to play, give them an info dump. Give them every single bit of information that you possibly have on how this is gonna work: How session zero will work, whether or not it's going to be paid, what potential players might sign on. Honestly, I learned that last one the hard way. There are a few bad eggs around and you might not know which eggs are bad. So let people know who they’ll be playing with to avoid any awkward situations that could throw a wrench in the game.
Give a full of a layout of what this game is and let them say yes or no, fully informed. It gives them space to make an informed decision and give a comfortable answer that doesn't put them on the spot. So I think that would be like the biggest thing, lay everything out even if it's a big word doc, send them the doc that can be like, hey, read this whenever you can, but we’d love to have you play. Here's all the information you need to know.
At the bottom of my massive info dump emails I always say “Apologies for the length. Here's everything. If you have any questions, it's in this one email.”
Exactly. That the best way because, again, when it comes to marginalized people–especially for me when I first started–whenever someone asked me to play, I was like, “I can't say no. If I say no, this might be the very last time anyone ever lets me play.” Even though logically I'm fully aware, that's not the case, as someone who's been marginalized, there's always that fear that someone I’m working with will think, “OK, this person is too much effort to work with. I'm just gonna find someone else now.” So it makes it hard for us to ask those questions. Don't put anyone in that position where they have to ask, just give it to them from the start.
I'd also say if you’re producing a stream, make it as dynamic as you can. I highly recommend learning the ins and outs of OBS (Open Broadcaster Software, free and open-sourced video recording and live streaming software) so you can make moving overlays where you can highlight the important characters in a scene. It makes it more intimate for people watching.
If you're producing, I highly recommend getting your hands on a Stream Deck. Even if it's not a Stream Deck, just some kind of control board that makes it easier for you to use OBS quickly on the fly.
The benefit of streaming is that you have a visual thing about it. So you might as well make it as visually pleasing as possible. Have it be dynamic and move around a bit. Because if you're only going to invest in audio you might just want to make it a podcast–it will probably be a bit easier for you. So if you're gonna go into streaming, try and make the visuals of it as enticing as you can–as much as your budget allows, of course.
For performance, I highly recommend if you can find apps like Snapchat Snap Cam to give yourself fun colored eyes and different filters for fun. I've done a lot of that for my games because–I don't know–it’s just fun. It's fun to see myself with purple or red eyes and for a little bit more in character there,
It’s always fun to show up to a stream and see someone's added some lighting to their room or is cosplaying as their character. It's just fun.
What are your goals in the TTRPG space? What kind of things would you want to put out into the world?
I definitely want to write more. I’d love to write for bigger publishing companies. I love to be in the room with Wizards of the Coast–depending on how or if they fix things. I've been privileged enough to write for a lot of much smaller companies and I don't plan on stopping. I think that's where I've gotten most of my learning experience and just kind of–I don't like to use this word–but it feels more like a family. They feel way more understanding than the blank corporate stare of Wizard of the Coast probably would. But Wizards of the Coast is Wizards of the Coast. They're very big in the TTRPG space and I’d love to have my name there to be able to say I did this thing for them. So I think that's one goal.
I also love to be known as an actual play production manager as well as an actual play performer. I've reached a point where I love playing, but I love helping to make games happen just as much. I don't know, I just get some level of fulfillment from doing that. And I kind of learned that through being a co-founder of Friends Who Roll Dice that I enjoyed putting these games together and not necessarily having to play all of them.
People like GabeJamesGames or SuperDillin are good examples. I always see them tweeting these incredible ideas for campaigns, but they don't have the time or energy to make them happen. So I'm like, let me take some of that off your plate so they have more time to make this happen. Even if it's just for me. I wanna watch it. Just make it for me and I'll watch it. I think that's my ultimate goal: to be the person people think of when they want to produce an actual play. “I really wanna produce this actual play. I'm gonna reach out to Drak so he can help me make this happen.”
I fucking love it. Are there any other tips, tricks, or–I don’t know–foibles that you can think of in the kind of streaming space or just like your general ethos about tabletop role playing that you want to expound into the world.
I mean, I'll give the overall heads up. Unfortunately, the way it is now, if you’re playing in actual plays that are lower than Dimension 20 or High Rollers there isn’t much money in it. So just be fully aware of that.
You're not gonna get much money from donations unless you have already quite a large audience, so make an effort to reach out to sponsors, especially small companies. They've probably been the most generous when it comes to sponsoring shows. So definitely reach out to them. But be honest about what you're offering. Don't say you have X viewers and guarantee that all of them are going to click your link. Give them very realistic metrics or analytics or anything that you can or can't do. Honestly, they're probably more likely to support you if you're being honest about it.
So I think that'd be like my one piece of wisdom to power there. Unfortunately, it's become the norm to not get paid for shows, despite the channel itself or the podcast itself getting paid. So try to circumvent that by actively looking for sponsors and support.
Yeah, it's a tough world out there, man.
I also recommend a thing called pally.gg. It's a tipping service where people can tip–like you do with apps like Ko-fi–but you can add people to it. So it's evenly split, or split however you want, between people. It helps a lot with taxes because they don't have to take all the money in and then pay it out and they still have to pay the tax for everyone. It splits up evenly to whoever you want it to be split to highly recommend that that came out maybe a year ago. And I think it came out of early access, like six months ago. So you can just make an account easily from there.
I might look into that for myself.
I want to talk about other projects: both yours and other peoples that you're excited about. What are some of your upcoming projects that people should check out? And what are some projects that you're not involved in at all, but are really excited about?
One project I am involved in is the biggest show I’ve done as a production manager. It’s called Enemy of My Enemy, which is premiering on DemiplaneRPG on May 5th. It's gonna be every Friday for the next five Fridays at 8PM ET and it's a Vampire: The Masquerade x Hunter: The Reckoning crossover where we have Hunters and Vampires reluctantly working together to fight a mutual threat. I've been scrambling for years–not years, I guess, months really, but it definitely felt like years–but now it’s finally coming into fruition.
We've got a really cool cast. It's gonna be very, very messy, very queer and very dramatic and action-packed. You can check that on DemiplaneRPG or on YouTube and Twitch.
And then something that I'm not involved in…there are so many things. Keep an eye on Tablestory. There's gonna be a Pathfinder 2e campaign. I don't know how many episodes it will be, but I think it's gonna be premiering sometime in May and it's called Gate Walkers. And it's gonna be over on Tablestory on Twitch. A good friend of mine, Stellaluna, is going to be playing in that and they’ve shown me some sneak peeks of their costume for the show and it's wild. They go all in for every cosplay, but I think this is the biggest and most in I've seen them go. So you're not gonna want to miss that.
Upcoming Schedule
My First Dungeon Presents: DIE
5/5 - Episode 4
5/12 - Episode 5
5/19 - Episode 6
5/26 - Cast Reunion
6/2 - New Season Announcement
We are releasing a new track from the DIE OST by BE/HOLD every Tuesday. Check out the first four tracks out now and follow BE/HOLD on Spotify so you don’t miss a new release.