Reflections on Six And Twenty

Bear with me. I’m a little rusty at writing and I’m not really versed in how to write a good post here. However, the drive to start documenting some of these experiences I’m having on twitch with table top gaming is pushing me to get this down. It’ll be a little rough, but stick with me.
(I reserve the right to edit this a bit based on comments. I promise to note where I make changes.)
This evening, I’m going live on Twitch to talk about Six And Twenty, a project that 4 months ago didn’t exist. Together with my partners in crime (UnMadeGaming and NotSoSpeedyRuns), we’re going to talk about:
- The inception of the project.
- Recap the events and episodes so far.
- Talk about the plans we have for the future.
I won’t be touching any of the that, for fear of exhausting myself prior to tonight’s stream. I’m already exhausted from the 10 weeks and I’ve got a new season to prep for.
What I do want to do is acknowledge the scale of what we attempted and how it really was a success. When we described it initially, it didn’t sound too daunting:
Two Rival Crews, One Contested City & One GM playing Blades in the Dark. Six and Twenty. Live on Twitch.
What that really meant was:
- 9 Players and 1 GM.
- Playing a recently released game without a lot of prior examples of gameplay.
- 1 Shared Setting where the players could affect each other.
- Streamed on 2 Twitch Channels.
- 10 episodes/sessions per channel.
- Streamed on back to back nights.
- Average of 30 viewers per session.
What isn’t captured in that breakdown are the things that aren’t simple to quantify. Things like:
- The hours that went into building the narrative elements of the world to establish some plot threads the characters could follow.
- The gathering of players through casting and conversations.
- The hours of work that went into setting up the shows on each channel and the social media presence that was established to promote them.
- The number of hours spent in chat conversations in discord of the plotting and planning by players in group channels.
- The private group chats that I (As the GM) was not a part of where any number of ideas thrown out about how to tackle existing goals and obstacles.
- The individual threads of conversation with between any given player and I, talking about the nuances of a character’s background, their motives and how they fit into the larger shared world.
I honestly don’t think I remember everything that we did. Even the attempt to distill it in the above two lists can’t really do it justice.
In the end, mistakes were made. I screwed up the rules a lot. Players crossed the lines a bit with characters going after other characters. We lost one player due to personal differences.
However, the result was: A fun game, an entertaining tabletop streaming show (so the viewers tell us) and a lot of enthusiasm for doing it again for a second season. And that doesn’t even cover the feeling of family that the cast has off screen.
So… I’d call that a success. Wouldn’t you?
