Guys, I did a thing I've been wanting to do since like, my freshman year in high school I made a podcast with my friends! We play D&D and it's called Don't Die! You can listen to it here!
I'm gonna give a little reflection here, because this project actually started as homework for Morgan's class (hi Morgan!). I knew I had a pretty big challenge coming (the assignment was probably not supposed to be an hour long, but Morgan has always given lots of room for interpretation of her assignments, which is why there's a link to a full hour podcast above). So, below, let's get into the rhetoric of my friends fighting goblins and making weed jokes. I'm going to address a few pre-written questions and dig into topics of audience, genre, and the process we used to record. Who, specifically, is the intended audience for this piece of media? What audience(s) are invoked in the piece? This question actually took a second to think about. To answer, I kind of had to dig into my influences, which I could probably spend an entire other blog post talking about. First and foremost, The McElroy family’s podcast The Adventure Zone was an enormous inspiration for getting started and putting a story together via D&D, for listener’s entertainment. And I think, having listened to their podcast for the last six months or so, I did a good job emulating, but not copying Griffin, the McElroys’ eternal dungeon master. As their first story went on, his narration got very cinematic, with much of his narration being recorded outside he and his family’s sessions of play. I loved this, as it worked well to tell their increasingly complex story, but I can’t see myself ever using this strategy; I prefer to keep my friends in the room while I tell the story, even parts that have nothing to do with them yet, because they’re telling the story alongside me; they’re part of it. In a sort of weirder direction, another influence of mine was the plethora of video games I played as a kid, particularly 8-bit beat-‘em-ups and RPGs like Pokémon, Final Fantasy, EarthBound, and weirdly enough, Mortal Kombat. You can really see that influence in the music I used (MUCH more on this later) but also in the simplicity of the piece. This episode in particular is just the beginning, featuring characters that aren’t really fully fleshed out yet, so there are several directions the story can go in as our characters get stronger and reveal more of their pasts, goals, and talents. In the same vein, Maya and Dakota had both never played Dungeons and Dragons in their lives, so there was a lot of explanation throughout the podcast, which I think fit right in in a very weird way. Considering all this, I think I’ve found a very niche demographic in terms of audience, a group of people I’m actually a member of, as well: my intended audience is young people, who likely grew up in the 90s and early 2000s, played video games, and have an interest in collaborative story that has roots in their own histories with role-playing video games. I took a great deal of space to answer a pretty simple question, but you got some good rhetorical analysis out of it, so I doubt you’re upset. What is the specific genre of your audio composition? Why did your choose this genre? What affordances and constraints did you encounter as you tried to produce this particular kind of audio media? What I want to drive home most about Don’t Die is that all we want to do is tell a story. And it may not always be clear to us where that story’s going, but I think that’s actually the real soul of D&D—it’s not the destination, it’s the journey. And what’s wonderful about that journey is that you and your best friends get to make it up as you go along. As for me, the dungeon master, I’ve got ideas, sure, but I’m always (ALWAYS) ready for them to fall apart and to give the steering wheel to my players. So, at it’s basest, this is a storytelling podcast, but I’ve just been telling everybody it’s a D&D podcast, because that’s actually become a genre of its own. Now, let’s talk about constraints. My house, like many, is made of wood. While that’s usually conducive for many things like fire and termites, it’s not very good for podcasting. We had to rig up the weirdest studio in one of our vacant upstairs bedrooms, consisting of a small coffee table (for my laptop and Jacob Fox’s microphone), a curtain over the window (without a rod because there was no way to hang it; I had to jam it into the frame) and two blankets, one hanging on my broken lamp, and the other sitting on the floor for Dakota and Fox’s comfort. Most of the time, you play D&D sitting around a table, and we technically did, just sitting on the floor so the mic could pick us up more easily. Thankfully, I can’t think of any other constraints than the actual rules of the game, which I’m very lenient with in the first place. For instance, when Joanna makes her first attack, we definitely went against the traditional rules of the game, which tend to limit a fighter’s options in combat to one target at a time. The truth is, I just hate saying no to people when they want to do something cool in a game—why limit everybody? I know that may irk a few traditionalist fans of the game, but if that’s the price to pay for my friend hacking and slashing her way through the world I’ve made, I think I’ll live. Explain and think through the specific and different uses of sound, music, silence, and vocal style. How does each of these elements establish ethos, appeal to emotion, or help build logos in the piece? Okay, this is one I’ve been wanting to talk about for a hot minute. Before I left class on Friday, I asked Morgan what she thought about using electronic music in the podcast. She seemed a little put off by it, not necessarily like she was against the idea, but I was definitely going to have to work to pull it off. And I’m really happy with what I’ve got. The use of electronic music (specifically chiptunes) is a not to the show’s video game influences, as well as the Adventure Zone, which also has several original soundtracks that I still jam to every once in a while. Unfortunately, I don’t know the first thing about making my own music, so I reached out to my friend Curtis, who’s been doing it since he was in high school. I figured his music would really lend itself to the opening and closing themes, as well as the music accompanying our fight scenes (well, fight scene…there will be more damage dealt in episode 2, I promise!). As for the vocal styles, I chose to stay pretty laid back in my approach with everybody. I want the audience and my friends to be comfortable with our style of storytelling, and I figured the best way to make that happen was to just narrate the same way I do when I’m just playing the game. The result was okay, I think. Our biggest problem in the episode was probably talking over each other, but that’s to be expected in a large group of people, and I think as we keep going with the story (which I fully intend to do) we’ll get better about our speech and be a bit more coherent. Also, I’m not absolutely happy with the sound quality, but it’s the best we could do—I don’t have a real studio or anything, as much as I’d like one someday. What’s really great is that Dakota has some really good sound equipment, and he’s offered to allow us to use his microphones and recording software, so I hope things get more and more professional and the story gets better as we go along. Hey, I want to say that if you listened to this podcast, thank you so much. We had so much fun making it and I seriously can’t wait to see where this story goes. Expect more moral ambivalence, axes, arrows in Arthur’s stomach, and sick barbarian chiptunes as we go along. On that note, I’m gonna sign off. I’ve got more editing to do! Matt |
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