The sound of cogs and spindles

On Thursday I posted episode twelve of our podcast Crudely Drawn Swords and it is going pretty well so far. We've now got a handle on the game we're playing and I feel as though we've managed to create a fun balance between ridiculous antics and grand adventure.

The great thing is that we've got a lot of really good feedback, people who aren't familiar with this style of podcast are surprised how enjoyable it is listening to other people playing a game. People who have listened to a few Actual Play shows think we're up to standard - obviously I am biased, but I would say we're as good as any I've heard, with the exception of Friends At The Table which transcends game podcasting altogether to just be the best thing one could possibly listen to. We're not there yet, but its nice to have a target. When I'm editing I often find myself crying with laughter at the quality of the ridiculousness on display. It turns out that the theory that if you have a collection of sufficiently funny and imaginative people that matters more than the structure they are working in, is pretty much right. So far a little over 500 people have listened to episode one and although that trails off somewhat, in the next couple of days we'll top 2000 total listens. That is approximately two thousand hours of our antics being listened to.

I have had to teach myself to process and edit voice recordings, to arrange strings and use linux midi tools ( which I've got better at as we've gone on, so I'll probably have to revisit the original theme ) in addition to getting better at running the game. As you might expect, hearing every word you say repeatedly is a good way to refine your storytelling and to pick up on every irritating mannerism.

So if you haven't given it a listen yet, I can confidently say that the first season will reward you, but if you want a more competent jumping-on point Season 2 will start in a couple of weeks. You can listen on Soundcloud or just search for "Crudely Drawn Swords" on iTunes or your podcast client of choice and we should turn up. The only proviso is that it's perhaps a little bit sweary and disreputable for the kids. That aside, it is our attempt to bring joy to everyone.

A few years back I got a new phone which, unlike it's predecessor, did not pack with a built in radio. Consequently I needed to find something else to listen to and I ended up listening to a bunch of podcasts. Being a massive geek, some of the ones that appealed to me most were just people sitting in a room playing tabletop games - I really enjoy the combination of humour and storytelling, the way that a roll of the dice or a random comment can totally change the direction of the narrative. My favourites so far have been Critical Hit and more recently the truly brilliant Friends at the Table which hits all the right spots for me. Over the last few years I have listened to a lot of dice rolls.

Of course, being one of nature's original copyists, I couldn't just leave it at that so, taking the path of least resistance, I got together with a bunch of my most ridiculous friends and we set about recording something along the same lines. As we have a few episodes ready to go, I figured that New Years Day 2016 was as good a place as any to start publishing them, so if you want to hear our adventures begin, they are here: Crudely Drawn Swords or if you have an RSS client ( as most podcast clients are ) there is an RSS feed. We should be popping up on ITunes soon too.

It's quite silly, a bit sweary ( because we have doveston on our team ) and I think it works pretty well. Given that it's something pointless that we're giving away for free, I'm surprisingly proud of it.