Untamed Rant 5: Storytelling

It's a day late, but here it is, the 5th episode of the Untamed Rant!!

Untamed Rant New Year's Special!

A couple days later than intended but the New Years special resource episode of the Untamed Rant is uploaded! Check it out here!


UPDATE-here are those links I forgot yesterday

-http://www.sfwa.org/
-http://arcadia.net/Cruinne/DnD/Articles/worldbuilding.html
-http://inkarnate.com/
-https://www.dmsguild.com/
-https://slack.com/
-http://www.dmsupportgroup.com/
-http://tvtropes.org/
-http://whothefuckismydndcharacter.com/
-http://www.eviloverlord.com/lists/overlord.html
-http://jamesclemens.com/
-http://www.kimharrison.net/
-http://www.peterclines.com/
-http://www.jameslovegrove.com/

Latest Untamed Rant!

Good morning everyone! Thursday saw our release of the third episode of the Untamed Rant. If you haven't already caught it, this one is about thaumaturgy and the way 5th Edition changed up how cantrips were tackled. Stay tuned because later today I'll also have episode 2 of the Luxarrah game!!!

Untamed Rant Episode 2: Cthulhu

Welcome to episode 2 of the Untamed Rant! Try not to mind the squeaky chair (we won't be using it next time!) and the abundance of loud vehicles that apparently were out that recording night. Despite this please enjoy our rant about Cthulhu, Lovecraft, cosmic indifference, and this type of horror at the table!





Links:

www.hplovecraft.com/popcult/games/rpg.aspx

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cthulhu_Mythos

www.yog-sothoth.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-aprpylMuCdnaFEYwTzAobqUZGxS1D5p


Intro and outro music
"Spark Of Inspiration"
Shane Ivers (Silverman Sound Studios)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

Where Is Everything!?

Have you ever formulated a plan for when things started slowing down and you had more time? A good plan with plenty of time to get everything caught up and back on track? Then you realize that the first time-frame in that plan is actually going to be the most hectic yet and that is the worst time to try to start that plan. Well, yeah, that happened. In August you all know I sat down and stopped working on stuff because I had been loosing control of any semblance of plan. September was for re-establishing things, because the summer business was over. Well the busy first week of September, and I should have known this, is actually the busy first month of the semester. Work, class, work, class, work double, work, work. Every week through September.

So, while I did manage to get some planning in place and figure out a lot of things, not nearly enough foundation work had happened by October. Regardless we are on course with Cracks of the Rift and the new Untamed Rant podcast. There is also two pages in my notebook of ideas, notes, and reminders for the (second) re-work of Patreon including some swag pricing for patron rewards, some dice pricing to start giveaways for patrons, and ideas for newsletters for patrons to see what they may have missed or should expect. I finally have the beginnings of a list for Resource For Every GM too. This means better preparedness on my part, and timely releases of the article.

I have also been keeping an eye on things on Twitter and started a list of things that people talk about to write articles on. Next will be to get a list going for re-skins. If you cannot tell I am fond of lists, but all these lists will help me track things I can do on this blog. I will give me a place to look and, with no particular order to them, I can pick which ever one I have a lot to throw out at you at any given time.

Then there is, of course, the DMs Guild. My projects have become woefully ignored. I feel I have cheated anyone waiting on what I have mentioned, as well as myself, in delaying all of these. But, I know that I have needed to. So, I am not going to promise this or that will be out at any time or even when you "should" expect them. Just know that I am working hard on getting back to them and greatly desire being at that point again.

Untamed Dice is something I can promise though. I have taken advantage of a friend's offer to clean up the audio for me and we have 5 sessions of audio sitting in that folder. The plan is that November WILL see the re-release of Untamed Dice episodes, beginning with Star Wars: Edge of the Empire. As a thank you for listening and apology for so long without episodes, the entire final session will come out all at once to kick us off. It was, by far, the best and most fun of those sessions and a great ending to the adventure. Proceeding that is enough audio to carry us for a while while we continue to record more, but I'll have more on that later.

Stay tuned for more updates and more. It's all coming soon!

Untamed Rant: Resurrection

Hello everyone and welcome to our first new episode of D&Donuts, now called the Untamed Rant! In this episode we talk about the changes to resurrection and similar spells throughout the years of Dungeons & Dragons, and we get into the importance and occurrence of character death in the game.

In the next episode we will be discussing Cthulhu, as voted on by our followers on Twitter. If you would like to vote on the third episode's topic follow @42nd_Alchemist and @untamedscribe. If you enjoy the show, want to help us out, or just get it two weeks before everyone else become a patron over on our Patreon page! And don't worry about our current goals or reward levels, those are undergoing revision for November and any pledge you make will get you early access to this podcast and our Cracks of the Rift story!

Autumn Approaches...Finally!

Before I get into what has been going on, I just wanted to thank everyone who has continued watching the blog for updates, all our listeners of Untamed Dice, and everyone who helps keep the creative juices flowing on Twitter. You are the best.

Things have been pretty crazy for the past month or so. Those of you who have followed my updates here know a bit of why and those of you who follow me on Twitter have a good idea. August, very quickly, got away from me. In fact, I am having trouble recognizing the fact that we are already halfway through September. While Summer is always pretty busy for me, the end of it really got crazy this year.

First off, I work IT at a high school and there is a lot of upgrades being done to the system. So, in addition to the prep for the start of the year, there was also a significant amount of extra work. The result was much shorter breaks for lunch and less time after the workday to get things done. Secondly, I work at an ice cream shop during the summer and this year we lost some employees, we had some less than awesome hires, and just generally were busier than last year. The main result of this was just longer, harder nights each weekend. Both of these jobs, with the school year approaching and the season nearing its end, only got crazier as September approached. Very suddenly it was September and even more suddenly we have reached today.

I made a decision in the beginning of the month though, and I have, obviously, been taking a break from making sure stuff get on here. Getting things outside of the blog to make myself more able and comfortable to get things done was a big part of this. Resting, cleaning, organizing. And a lot of thinking. Untamed Scribe and I have also talked about what's been going on and what will be going on here. To best relate to you our plans I am going to break things up a bit.

Notes of the Wandering Alchemist

In August I did attempt to expand on my Monday notes throwing up some of the items I had noticed or run into over the week. Announcements, new Kickstarters, releases, and other related things were all included. I want to continue this and will continue doing the news posts this way, with a couple tweaks. First off all I may do this twice a week depending on how much stuff I manage to come across. Secondly, I will be creating a separate post for updates to the Blog. In fact, I mean to be less strict on myself for posts like that in timing and more lenient on when they come out. I will not be sharing every single post to various sources, though links to each and every post will likely still journey through Twitter and Facebook.

Additionally I will continue to release Resources for Every GM again, once a week, though I may change the day. Tuesday and Thursday are still the two best days to get big posts out there, however, and it is likely to stay on Thursday. A minor change will be in increasing reviews. A big part of this is the large number of DMs Guild titles I have at this point. I want to begin getting reviews out for those and not use them as Resources replacements. Instead I will throw those up around once a week when I start getting to it. Probably on weekends.

What all this means is that I will be more focused on getting Resources articles out regularly, getting more reviews out, and sharing links to awesome stuff more. As this all becomes routine, I will continue to seek to improve it, but there are other projects to work on as well.

Untamed Dice

We haven't had a new episode in a number of weeks now, sadly. At first this was a simple lack of time to edit properly. Now it is a deliberate decision. We still have audio to get you and I am sorry for the delay to our Edge of the Empire game, but I think it'll be worth the wait. One of my players works with audio for a living and he is going to help get me some better software to work with and some tutorials on some basic editing techniques. This increased knowledge should allow Untamed Dice to become that much better.

Another reason we haven't been releasing anything is so that we have a plan in place for new stuff. That plan has begun to form and will hopefully take shape sooner than later. First it involves the very simple fact that a new episode of Brave New World will not be recorded (very likely) until almost November. It's a work schedule thing and unavoidable. Secondly, it involves that all those time issues that caused the lack of material coming out also caused us to play very few games. In fact, we have not played Strahd in almost 2 months, we have not managed to get Monster of the Week finished, we have not had time to try something else, and we have played maybe 2 games in general.

This means we have nothing aside the end of the Star Wars adventure. Well, almost. One of the nights we played was a small Luxarrahn game. Luxarrah has been on my mind quite a bit since prepping the last game of BNW. I have come up with a lot of stuff while putting computers together and stocking ice cream. The result is this new game and I am very excited to keep exploring Luxarrah through 5th Edition D&D. That game is also one we recorded. It is one we will continue to record. It is the easiest game group to get together and should become a very regular game. The only thing that will take as much precedent will be BNW. One shot games of other systems are pretty much on hold till things get brought under control again, but more on that down the road.

DMs Guild & Beyond

This is something I have really enjoyed doing and want to do more of. It is something I have been putting some work into whenever I can. Part of my time will continue to be more regulated towards those projects. I have a few things coming down the line and a hopeful schedule for these. Included among them are the (finally) 3rd Volume of Spells of Old, as well as a 4th. I am also working on some more patrons for Paths to Power Volume 2 to finally come out. Finally there is also the trinket supplement I have been working on.

In addition to DMs Guild products there are a couple of things being worked on, but these are more long-term. Soonest you should see a class a friend and I are working on. A test version at least. Then later on we will get that up as a full class. The other world I am working on with another friend is slow in taking shape, but as winter proceeds I hope to take some larger steps there. Finally in terms of getting some of my homebrew out there, I think Luxarrah will be foremost among my development. In what way this will show up, big supplements or small or both, I do not know yet. Nevertheless these are the things I am dedicating some of my time for.

Patreon

This has probably changed least over its existence, but changes fairly significantly each time. Untamed Scribe and I have decided we need to make some changes here and those are going to be fleshed out overt the coming weeks. Included will be changing goals from things we plan on doing anyway to milestones for which we can reward you folk, such as giveaways and more stuff like wristbands and stickers. We will also be changing the Patron rewards quite a bit. First of all we want to share the Untamed Rant with everyone. This will get more people the Rant and will make things easier on us. All of the Patrons will get it 2 weeks earlier than everyone else though, just like the Cracks in the Rift story.  Other things we are talking about are giveaways for Patrons, newsletters, a mailbag addition to each Rant, and similar things. I will be sure to keep everyone apprised of what is up as we figure it out.

What This All Means

We are coming back. Effort as been focused on making work less daunting and more doable. Ideas and talks are to change things up so that what we do is better and easier on us, even if that means there is less for a while. We will not be overextending ourselves by trying to start this whole plan Monday. October is when we begin to make a big shift. By then a new routine will be in place. Lists for Resources, schedules for Untamed Dice, a reworked Patreon, and more will all be in place. The rest of September is to take all the information above and everything we have been talking about and building a foundation for future things. Extra time will be spent in prep work for this stuff and more fully recovering from August. To keep up with what I am thinking and working on be sure to follow me on Twitter. Do not be dismayed by a lack of posts for September. We look forward to making a good re-impression in October!

Last D&Donuts Before Rename!

Here it is folks out last D&Donuts before it gets renamed to The Untamed Rant (as voted on by you!). Well, the preview of it anyways. Become a Patron (link to the right) to get the full episodes and more. Sorry for the popping and crackles. Some kind of recording problem for the first half of the episode (aka: preview part) appears, gets worse, and won't go away. Hopefully it doesn't annoy you too much!