Podcast news

Games Discussion Ars Magica
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Change of plans:

August 24: The Extended Mind and Hermetic Magic
August 24: Cornwall - Romance of the Rocks (bonus episode due to scheduling mistakes)
August 31: Cornwall - Merrymaids

September 7: Dunsany - TBA: technically it should be The Quest for the Queen's Tears, but I may need something short.
September 14: Triclops plague
September 21: Either Goodman's Grue or Wittgenstein's Beetle. Probably the later because I stumbled into grue when talking about colour names. It's amazing how similar what I came up with is to Goodman's grue.
September 28: Cornwall - Lost cities

October 5: The Adventures of Shard Part 1
October 5: The Adventures of Shard Part 2
October 12: Funereal biscuits
October 17: Nozick's Utility Monster (or possibly Chalmer's Philosophical Zombies, but again, most incognizant faeries are literally philosophical zombies, so you've seen it before.)
October 24: TBA
October 31: Cornwall: TBA (depends on Lost Cities)

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Updates:

September 7: Dunsany - The Quest of the Queen's Tears
September 14: Triclops plague
September 21: Funeral Biscuits
September 28: Cornwall - Lost cities
(All queued in Wordpress and Libsyn, as is the Halloween epsiode).

October 5: The Adventures of Shard (huge epsiode)
October 12: Abeffraw biscuits
October 17: Nozick's Utility Monster (stats for a demonic muse)
October 24: Cornwall: Fire worship
October 31: Dunsany - Why the milkman shudders when he perceives the dawn

These are all written, and the first and last are recorded. The middle three are each quite small episodes, but I hope you'll forgive it because of the size of Ep 75 and the bonus Ep 79.

November: Still in the planning stage
The Dunsany should be Feast of the Gibblens, but that' s so much work in might be "How Nuth would have practised upon the Gnoles".
The Cornwall chapter is Demons and Infernal Spirits, which I'll need to stat and might need to split.
The episodes between are likely about how Wittgenstein's idea that even if we taught a lion English, we could not speak with him can be a model of the nature of the Gift, and an excerpt from the Golden Ass about the Witches of Thessaly, with a digression into an alternative take. There's one other space there, but I've not preped anything much for it yet. I have a few things which have been floating around as little bits of trivia, which I might confetti out as a microepisode week.

All of this assumes I don't try and do post a day in November. If I do that, then the podcasts will become a sort of digest of the week's material, so that you don't get showered with microepisodes. The key to that is Dunsay's book "The Food of Death". I've identified 19 tales I'd like to work up from it. This could work well if I cut up the Cornish demon chapter into individual creatures.

If you'd prefer one or the other approach, give me a hoy...

64

People may have noticed the notes and audio don't match this week. I had my dates crossed, and the corresponding pairs will come out next week.

I've found out that the easiest way to get my overlarge 75th episode up is to pay the Libsyn people a bit more for one month, so that instead of having 50 minutes to work with, I have 250. To avoid wasting as much of this as possible. I'm trying either to record 200 minutes (to add to the 50 I've pre-loaded for September) or 250 (for October). That's pushed things forward a bit more completely. Currently I've pre-recorded 142 of those minutes. Here's the new running sheet:

With the exception of the one marked with an asterisk, all are recorded.

September 14: Triclops plague / Funeral Biscuits
September 28: Cornwall - Lost cities
October 5: The Adventures of Shard (huge epsiode)
October 12: Abeffraw biscuits
October 17: Nozick's Utility Monster (stats for a demonic muse)
October 24: Cornwall: Fire worship (slightly rubbish source material, to be honest)
October 31: Dunsany - Why the milkman shudders when he perceives the dawn (extra story for Hallowe'en and because Fire Worship was a bit rubbish)
November 5: Hoard of the Gibblens
November 12: Anosognosia
November 17: The Witches of Thessaly
November 24: The Trophaeum of Granatus of Tytalus* (I'm planning demon stats here, but have yet to write them)
December 7: Dunsany - How Nuth would have practised his art upon the gnoles

Then we hit the "planned, but no work done yet" stage.
December 14: the use of phyllo pastry in magic.
December 21: Wittgenstein's lion as a model for the Blatant Gift
December 28: Cornwall: The Saints
January 4: Dunsany - City on Malington Moor (The Wonderful Window has been cancelled, gang. There's not enough "there" there.)
January 11: A history of the hot crust pastry pie, and its suitability as a single use magic item.
January 18: Belgian whetstones (this is one of the very first ideas I had for this podcast. I was going to mix it in with some other odd sources of covenant income, but it's good enough for its own short)
January 25: Cornwall: Holy Wells
February 2: Dunsany - The long porter's tale

I'm planning this out so far ahead because the easy way to get the extra minutes I need is just do all of the Dunsany ones in October. Actually, the easiest cheat would be to have a chat with the SR people and clear my article on Sacnoth, and do it (41 minutes without my bits) or read my articles from Peripheral Code, Hermes Portal or Mythic Perspectives into the podcast. but those seem a bit boring for the old hands. That China stuff would go on forever...

If I do a heap of Dunsany, I'll still time them so they come out once a month, rather than a glut. They'll be "Secret of the Sea", "Watchtower", "Exile's Club" and "Three Infernal Jokes". After that I really do need to work out what to do about Sacnoth for July next year. That brings me to the end of his public domain short fiction, excepting his micro-stories in 51 Tales. He has some plays and poetry about...then we will probably skip over to MR James as monthly author. The Librivox recordings by Peter Yearsley are just beautiful.

If, when I review my progress at Ep 100 (currently late March 2018) I decide not to keep going, I'll burn off the spare episodes.

Sadly, because I'm pushing this so hard, I don't think I'll be able to do "post a day" for November. I have 19 Dunsany microstories I'd like to do, and a heap of little bits of Cornish folklore from Hunt, so I have the raw material, but in terms of time and energy I'm not up to pushing things this far out, and then adding an extra hurdle and going again. I've bitten off slightly more than I can chew already, and instead of just doing the sensible thing and cutting the Shard episode in half, I've kind of doubled down on it.

So, that's where I'm up to. Thanks again to the Patreons.

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First off, I continue to love this podcast.

Going to 250 minutes a month would be absolutely wonderful, if you could sustain it. Perhaps there's ways others could help. Are guest podcasts possible? You've often spoken about your desire to encourage others to podcast; perhaps they could do a single trial run episode on your show, or you could have guests on to talk about a subject? I know this is not normally what your show "does," but I'm trying to think of ways to lighten the work load for you and perhaps allow more longer shows.

Since you're always looking for and going back to topics, I'll note you never finished your walk-through of Sanctuary of Ice. Since I ran 16 episodes of my campaign in that book, and used your Alpine Apocrypha material, I'd really like to see you go back and finish those "author's notes" on each chapter. Like the "Second Foundation" idea, or the covenant dedicated to breaking the lunar sphere, which was cut. How would you bring that in now, considering House Criamon's plot to do the same thing?

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Hi Doctorcomics!

Thanks for the support!

I seem to have accidentally got your hopes up, so I'll put it another way. Sorry for the too-rosy picture in my last note.

Currently my idea is to step up to the larger plan for one month, to allow me to post my 75 minute episode. The way Libsyn plans work is:

5USD : 50 minutes
15USD: 250 minutes
So, basically it gives me the space I usually use in 5 months, to use in one month. (Technically I use slightly more, because I paid an extra upload fee to get epsilon 50 loaded.) My goal is to fill that extra time, to build up a buffer of episodes.

I can't currently get enough material together to fill 250 minutes a month. That'd take a couple of hours a week just to record, with extra writing and stat time. You are right that if things ever did reach that scale, I could just give the time to people doing experimental stuff, possibly as a second channel. If my Patreon amounts ever get that high, I'll talk to Atlas and ask people to send me stuff, but for now, that's outside my scope for this.

(If you are reading this and thinking "I wish Timothy would set up a network. I'd love to have a podcast but I'm too broke..." then let's thrash it out. There's a bit of planning before you do your first recording.)

So, I'm sorry I got your hopes up.

It does mean you'll get more material, I think, because it means my big chunks of work will be already done for a few months, which will free me up to do other little things, and to stat more stuff. Stats are dead air for podcasts, but people love them, so I try to do at least one a month. That means that the treadmill of the podcast often forces me to go on with something else, thinking a version of "When I put all of the Cornish stuff together, that demon will need stats".

The feedback on the blog was basically that I should keep SoI for when I could hear the spoon scraping across the bottom of the barrel. I think it might work better for me to cut the ideas up and present them fresh, rather than assuming people have read SoI. I'm glad you liked it, and I'll do more, but it needs me to find a way that doesn't scare off the people who are looking for things they can put in their stories in Spain, or Scotland, or who don;t play Ars but are dropping in because they are pinching it for D&D. So, I will cover some of it...but I need to find a better way.

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Revised episode guide:

So, the uploaded episodes now look like this:
This top set are all recorded and scripted. I've not done all of the pdfs yet, but they are complete through to the end of November.

October 5: The Adventures of Shard (huge epsiode)
October 12: Abeffraw biscuits
October 17: Nozick's Utility Monster (stats for a demonic muse)
October 24: Cornwall: Fire worship (slightly rubbish source material, to be honest)
October 31: Dunsany - Why the milkman shudders when he perceives the dawn (extra story for Hallowe'en and because Fire Worship was a bit rubbish)
November 5: Hoard of the Gibblens
November 12: Anosognosia
November 17: The Witches of Thessaly
November 24: The Trophaeum of Granatus of Tytalus (demon stats)
December 7: Dunsany - How Nuth would have practised his art upon the gnoles
December 28: Cornwall: Saints and Holy Wells
January 4: Dunsany - City on Malington Moor (The Wonderful Window has been cancelled, gang. There's not enough "there" there.)
February 2: Dunsany - The long porter's tale

Then we hit the "planned, but no work done yet" stage.
December 14: the use of phyllo pastry in magic.
December 21: Wittgenstein's lion as a model for the Blatant Gift
January 11: A history of the hot crust pastry pie, and its suitability as a single use magic item.
January 18: Belgian whetstones (this is one of the very first ideas I had for this podcast. I was going to mix it in with some other odd sources of covenant income, but it's good enough for its own short)
January 25: Cornwall - King Arthur.

68

I'm offine for a few days: my SSD died and I'm having to reconstruct things.

The podcast and transcripts are stored on vendor servers, though, so it should go live as normal.

69

You also recently had Funeral Biscuits on a podcast.

Are you getting enough to eat? :smiley:

70

No, I'm on a diet... 8(

That being said, I really like food history, and I hope to do enough of these that they can be gathered into a single PDF as a sort of Ars Magica cookbook.

In the past when I've debuted a "column", as I think of the regularly themes episodes like Dunsany or Cornwall, I've announced it, and then when I cease them because people give bad feedback (like SoI), it's obvious. Now, I'm just being a bit cagey with the experiment.

Each of them is really quite short: the phyllo one takes one page, so I'd need to get quite a few of them to make it worth a pdf booklet. I could pad it out with the salt and Goblin market (fruit) episodes.

The one that's after this in the "food category" is about wine slush, which was a 15th century thing, but I think magi in the Alps could be doing it already. It's the direct ancestor of ice cream and the things nuns made with it have odd similarities to the recipes made by the cooks in Zen monasteries, so I can pull House Jerbiton and House Criamon in...

...but I'm getting ahead of myself.

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In more general news,

The Shard massive episode is out and I hope you like it. 8)

In a stroke of stupidity, when I was formatting my replacement for my primary drive, I set it incorrectly and formatted my backup drive. This is less of a problem that it seems, because all of the recordings for the podcast that have been completed are already on the LibSyn server, the scripts for the episodes not yet recorded are on the Wordpress server and the pdfs are on the Canva server. The only real delay in making more episodes are setting up Audacity again, and recutting my intro and outro music (which I will make less loud). My Ars writing files were on Dropbox, so I've been able to pull them back...as absolute backup failures go, this is a relatively mild one.

In terms of scripting, all of the scripts until 4 January 2018 are written, plus one February one I did when I needed to fill that extra space I'd bought as a one off (or maybe a two off? - I'm thinking of getting a lot of Cornwall stuff done for November...depends on how long this computer setup takes) . Recordings are done for everything this year except December 14 and 21. They are both relatively short episodes, so when I get everything back in running order I can get them done in short order. They feel a bit too short, so I may put some microepisodes in to extend those weeks.

I made a concerted push to get three months worth of material recorded before 1 October, so I'm a bit short on topics for now. I may just push ahead with the Cornish and Dunsany writing until inspiration strikes, knowing I have a little cushion of episodes to let me come up with new stuff.

Still no big themes for ep 100. I have been looking at some long poems, but nothing suits me yet. Without microepisodes to pull the number forward, episode 100 will be on 22 March 2018.

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Thanks for toning down the volume for the intro/outro. I listen while driving and I really shouldn't be fiddling with the volume in heavy traffic :blush:
I like the Cornwall series, maybe other main land lore would also be inspiring, e.g., Slavic or German mythologies of the time.

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I'll be doing a post a day for November, and will collate these into a weekly podcast. They will be a mix of Cornish material and Dunsany material. There's no overarching theme this year. Sorry: I didn't have prep time for a big fiction arc.

74

Running sheet revision:

You may recall I said I'd done everything until February? I'm shredding that for the November project. I'm bringing all of the Hunt material forward so it will be done this month. This changes the running sheet of the blog to look like this. All of the things below are written. Stars are recorded, but I'm not sure what release schedule I'll use.
November
1 Cornwall: Romances of the fishers*
2 Dunsany: hoard of the gibblens*
3 C: Death tokens
4 C:Charms 1
5 C:Charms 2
6 C:Charms 3
7 C:Customs of ancient days 1 - the year of festivals
8 Anognosia*
9 C:Customs of ancient days 2 - sham mayors.
10 C: customs of ancient days 3 - mob sports
11 C: Romances of demons and spectres*
12 C: Romances of Saints and Holy Wells*
13 C:Tales of Arthur*
14 C:Witches
15 C:Miners
16 Habits of the Witches of Thessaly*
17 C: Miscellaneous stories
18 --22 (not yet written)
23 Trophaeum*
24-30 (not yet written)
December
7: D - How Nuth would have practised his art upon the gnoles*
14: Phyllo pastry*
21: Wittgenstein's lion*
January
4: D - City on Malington Moor (The Wonderful Window has been cancelled, gang. There's not enough "there" there.)
February
2: D - The long porter's tale

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So, all this extra material for November...how should I pod it? One huge extra ep a week for November? Smaller ones spread out over November and December?

76

I like the idea of smaller ones spread out

77

New Cornwall map

drive.google.com/open?id=1oMZRG ... sp=sharing

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Second Cornwall map: surrounding covenants.

drive.google.com/open?id=1SbZ9D ... sp=sharing

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That's a useful map.

Where did you get the location of Voluntas from? I only ask because the 4th edition rules say Voluntas is near Wilton, and there's a Wilton on the north-east edge and a Wilton on the south edge but none near the western part of the Moors. I always pictured it as near the southern one, because that's the Wilton I know.

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It's an approximate: Google Maps drops a marker there if you are looking for the Yorkshire Moors. 8)

I'll move it to the southern Wilton.

81

Hi all,

I've written some thing for each day this month, with the exception of the final day. I'm trying to get it to ashcan stage to be published that day.

I've pushed this rather harder than I should have done, so I may be about to fall at the last hurdle, but, hey 56 000 words!

The plan for the ashcan is to rework all of the notes, add more plot hooks, and cut out a lot of the establishing information. Also, I need to work up the two fallen covenants.