First Week Went Well But What Happened Leading To My Second Video - What Is The GM or DMs Role
The second video was not originally going to be "What Is The GM or DMs Role" but was going to be about RPG genres. When shooting my first video "What Is A Tabletop RPG?" I was inspired to do a video about the GMs role in a Tabletop RPG. I had a lot of good ideas and thought it would be a very good video. Little did I expect how busy I would be on Mother's Day Weekend. This whole week was really busy and sort of chaotic.
We bought a wardrobe from IKEA which shouldn't have been an issue because I am good at putting IKEA furniture together. Well we bought one part wrong. So the next day I had to go to the store and exchange it for the right one. Then when I got it home and went to finish putting it all together realized the part I exchanged it for didn't have any of the screws because they fell out of a hole in the packaging.
Sunday on Mothers Day We went to lunch and back to IKEA (which did I mention is about 45 minutes away). Finally had what I needed but had to finish putting together what I should have had done mid day Saturday. Now Sundays are my days of filming my videos. With it being Mothers Day and having to do a lot of stuff I felt pressed for time. I did not write down any of my thoughts for my video until the last minute.
Filming the video for what a GMs role is went fine because I had a lot of ideas and they kept on flowing. They came out in a poor order which I knew I would need to edit them together in a way that made sense. That is what happens when you ramble and tend to go off topic at times.
One thing I was very excited about was talking about the GameFor app. That app is going to help a lot of people find gaming groups and events locally. The cool thing is that it is for all tabletop games like card games, board games, war games, and role-playing games. It has every store I can think of locally in its database and you can set up events as long as they are tied to gaming stores. There is a also a feature where you can start groups within the app. I could see this used for gaming clubs or even a place for gaming groups to just communicate with each other. It is a good app and has a ton of potential for more.
Monday I worked on some new thumbnails including the one for this video. Updated some of my cover images on social media. Still need to fix my YouTube Cover image. I like it but I under estimated how small of an area that shows on desktop. One of my favorite things to work on is graphics like thumbnails and stuff. That is why I made the GameFor Master the Game graphic. I took their 2 flyers from their side and then added my stuff to make one big graphic. I hope to do more things like that when there are products I would like to recommend. I am slowly working on some graphics to use within my videos too. So be sure to let me know what you think of those please.
Tuesday I was ahead of schedule in my video editing process but noticed that the video footage was corrupted (audio was still good though). I am not sure what happened but I had to get creative in spots with my editing. If you go back and watch the video now I am sure you will notice the places where I had to hide the problems. I also had a small portion that was removed because I couldn't do anything creative to fix the video and I am not yet using B-roll. Eventually I will probably use B-roll though. When I uploaded the video I did have a couple people give me some feedback. It was all good constructive criticism. Things like this help me realize how fortunate I am to have good honest friends. It is always important to me to surround myself with honest people. I hope I continue to facilitate an open environment where they trust they can be brutally honest with me. Something important about this is also not being too hard on myself with their criticism. This comes pretty natural for me. I am pretty humble and realize I have a lot of room for improvement. With all of this I am learning as I go just trying to improve with each day, and week. Hopefully with each video everyone will see the improvements too.
I also managed to put a video up on Tabletop Gaming with Juce encouraging my subscribers there to subscribe to the new channel I think it worked because I saw my subscriber count jump by 7 on the new channel overnight.
Wednesday brought my son to Chelsea Treehouse which is an indoor play place. Played a little with my son and raced him down the slides a couple of times. Then time had come to pull my laptop out and begin writing this blog. Normally I would write this on Friday but we have a wedding so my morning is packed. Wake up early and take the kids 2 hours to Grand Rapids. They will be staying with the in-laws for the weekend. This opens my wife and I up to game with DMG the owner of the 7DSystem sometime on Saturday. That will be a lot of fun. We are really looking forward to it.
Looking back at the first video I had over 111 views on it in the first week. That isn't bad at all for a first video. We managed to get 70 subscribers too. I am very happy with my first week results and I am hoping I can keep this up. It is encouraging to get these results as well as the positive feedback it has received. There are some things I took from the feedback to improve this weeks video and I hope it shows.
Thursday morning I woke up and had a discussion with DMGinfo about some things I could do better with future videos. He showed me some tricks that I am excited to try and implement in future videos. Then right before posting it was waiting for the Nerdarchy Live Chat to go on and I received a message from Dave asking me if I wanted to come on the chat because their guest may have over slept. I agreed and Jim Davis showed up too! For those of you who aren't sure who that is he is from Web DM. Web DM is an awesome YouTube Channel with Davis, and Pruitt as the hosts. Travis is the man behind the camera who works his magic to make the show what it is. I sort of had a moment of fandom come over me because I love Web DM. It was cool hearing Jim Davis say of course he knows who Juce is. Later on the original guest Amanda the Witty did make her appearance on the show. The chat was a lot of fun and I can't wait to go on Nerdarchy again. Then posted the new video and a few new people subscribed. It went from 70 to 73.
The plan is to pick up Mordenkainens Tome of Foes on the way back from Grand Rapids. I love seeing all of the previews online by people. I would not be honest if I didn't mention how jealous I am of all of those who have a review copy so far. I am always eager to get the latest 5e book as early as possible. This book has so many great things in it. Really looking forward to the Gith. I think using the Giff (not to be confused with the Gith) would be funny in a one shot or in running something in a way sort of like Doctor Who with a lot of planar travel. Obviously this book has a lot which works for planar travel too.
Friday (today) I did manage to pick up Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes. In fact the first store I went to had damaged copies. They were scratched up on the spine and warped really bad. I pointed it out to the clerk and mention the recall from Wizards of the Coast but was told if they returned them they couldn't sell them and make money. I said ok and decided not to buy there. I probably would have paid for one if they returned one for a good copy. Then I went to Vault of Midnight Ann Arbor and they had good copies. When I walked in I was impressed with their customer service. An employee came up and was talking to me about the book as I looked at them. He was so nice and friendly. They did have some slightly warped copies but were barely noticeable. I shared the story with them and they seemed so apologetic even though it wasn't even their store. They actually acted like they cared about the product quality which was nice. So while I was there I also bought Tal'Dorei the Campaign Setting by Matt Mercer (DM for Critical Roll on Geek & Sundry). Vault of Midnight will be my go to store for in person purchases because they always offer amazing customer service. Not only that but on social media they are also very pleasant to work with. Haven't read either of my new books yet but in skimming them I can say I am very happy with my purchases. Both books are beautiful and look to have a lot of good stuff in them for use in a future 5e game.
So there you have it! Another week and doing a pretty good job of staying on task and occasionally getting even more done than expected. If I can continue this pace and getting further ahead I will up my video release schedule to two videos a week. This is currently just in the idea stage and not happening anytime soon. If you haven't subscribed to Master the Game yet please head over and do so. I appreciate all of the support and I promise to continue working hard at improving this for all of you.