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Maximum effort!

The Fire Giant video I published last month was a project I put maximum, unreasonable effort into. It was about 6000 words written over a week, two days of filming, three days of editing, and my wife spent about 25 hours illustrating the map animation. It flopped.

But that’s OK! I like to put maximum effort into some projects to benchmark my skills and processes, and this time I enlisted a consultant to audit the video. I’d originally tried to get my wife to consult on the video, but she got bored partway through and closed the tab to watch a video about Taylor Swift conspiracy theories instead. I should have taken that as a sign, because the proper consultant dug through my 48-minute video twice and came out the other side frustrated. Here’s why.

I am failing my audience

Donald Miller is a marketing wonk who peddles a glib-sounding system called StoryBrand which triggers every scam instinct in my cynic hind-brain. But damnit, after I pushed through the business guru vibes, this system helped me understand my audience and my role in their story.

“My goal is to help anxious GMs simplify complex adventures, boost their confidence, and run rad D&D sessions their friends will love—without needing to be Matt Mercer.”

That’s the brief I gave my video consultant, and through a three-hour conversation, this is what we worked out together: I’m not simplifying anymore.

• I’m not giving the viewer tangible direction. In every scene, I should be saying, “In this room, your job is to do X.”
• I’m not translating raw book data into usable story moments. Who cares if it’s a DC17 strength check to rig a trap to deal 6D6 damage? What does that even mean for you and your friends around the table? That’s book talk; I’m not the book.
• In trying to make each video a one-stop-shop for running a particular section, I’m burying my actionable advice and best game tools in 48-minutes of reference material.
• I’m not integrating the Battle Sim and The Monsters Know What They’re Doing segments into my analysis. Instead, I’m just dropping that information and walking away, leaving the viewer to do the analysis.
• I’m not distinguishing between my original ideas and the book’s official content. This is underselling my contribution.
• My editing choices and conflicting stage movements sometimes muddy the structure and pacing of the video.

So I need to change

This massive Fire Giant dungeon guide should have been broken into two kinds of videos to serve two slightly different audiences:

1. People who ARE NOT running this particular adventure, but are interested in the game tools I make.
2. People who ARE running this adventure and want to use the video as a reference document.

In this 48-minute video, the first audience doesn’t even know there’s content in there for them because they didn’t click it. And the second audience already has 20 tabs open to prep their session, so they’ll be fine with opening another video if I airlift those relevant game tools out of this script and into another.

In this instance, my Fire Giant video should have been four videos:

1. I made a tool to use a clock face to make game decisions.
2. I made a tool to handle a red alert.
3. I made a tool for writing player handouts in a language the players aren’t proficient in.
4. Here’s how to run the dungeon.

My friends, the tools are the juice! As an example of what I’m doing wrong, imagine if a D&D adventure was written like this.

“Here’s room 1, and in here there are some zombies which the players might fight, so here’s all the rules for running combat and the zombie stat block. Then there’s room 2, which the players might sneak through, so here’s all the stealth rules. The wizard in room 3 knows Fireball, so here’s the magic rules and the Fireball spell…”

Now try to unpick that tangle of information to find the rules for Fireball. That’s my problem! If I’m making reference material, it needs to be referenceable.

But what about this newsletter?

I’m going to be more loosey-goosey with Start A Quest. A few months ago I wrote a thing about orcs in the newsletter, and a bunch of you let me know that it resonated with you, so I made a short video about it. And it’s a good video!

So Start A Quest is going to be my low-stake testing ground for RPG thoughts. If you ever see something in these letters which you’d like to talk about deeper, you gotta let me know so I can make a video about it.