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Episode 6: Communities and Heat Death with Richie Buzzkill
80 Plays1 year ago
Host Alan Bahr is joined by Richie Buzzkill of Full Metal RPG to discuss community, how to build an engaging gaming space, Full Metal RPG.
We discuss moderation, discords, conventions, heat, Arizona and more.
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Transcript
Introduction to Radio Free RPG and Guest
00:00:10
Speaker
I'm Alan Barr and this is Radio Free RPG. Hello, I'm Alan Barr and welcome to Radio Free RPG.
00:00:32
Speaker
I'm joined today by my guest, the host of Full Metal RPG, Richie Buskill. Hi, Richie. Hey, Alan. Good to talk to you again. Yeah, it's a pleasure to have you. I've been on Richie's show a few times and we've chatted and I thought it would be interesting to bring him on to free, radio free RPG.
00:00:52
Speaker
to discuss various aspects of being a media presenter in the tabletop space, doing interviews and speaking about community building.
Managing RPG Communities
00:01:02
Speaker
Richie helps moderate a very active discord with a lot going on in it. And there's a lot of insight I think we'll get from him. So I'm really excited to dig into this. How have you been Richie?
00:01:15
Speaker
Oh, pretty good. Pretty good. Just kind of, um, yeah, the discord is quite a bit and I enjoy every minute of it. And, uh, and, uh, I've been playing some games in the real world, which is a nice change from where, where it used to be. What are you playing? Uh, well, I was playing, uh, saga age of magic, uh, with, uh, Brendan, good friend, Brendan carrion the other day. And I was playing, uh, we we've, we've also been playing, uh, Delta green. Oh, excellent.
00:01:46
Speaker
Are you playing a particular Delta Green adventure or just kind of casually playing your own campaign? Own campaign. I think we were picking out some modules, like some in-between modules from some of the pre-written adventures from Gareth Wright or Hanrahan. I love him, but also saying his name is fun.
00:02:09
Speaker
There's various challenges throughout the industry. Yeah. Sometimes names are the easiest ones and sometimes they are the hardest.
History and Perspectives of Full Metal RPG
00:02:18
Speaker
So let's talk about Full Metal RPG. Now, Full Metal RPG is a long running tabletop podcast video show.
00:02:30
Speaker
It sort of had multiple evolutions over the years. Why don't you walk us through sort of your historical involvement with the Fullmetal RPG? So Fullmetal RPG was started by Brendan Carion and Ben Bailey.
00:02:44
Speaker
Um, and about 2016, um, and then, uh, Adam sink join them. And then basically I joined after that. Uh, I was a fan first. I found them. I think I was randomly looking for, uh, RPGs. Um, I was looking for RPGs, uh, podcasts and I found, I come across them and I've always been kind of a, a bit of a different, uh,
00:03:14
Speaker
take on RPGs and they fit with what I was doing at the time. Then I met them because they lived where I was living and then we've been hanging out as friends and then eventually as time went on, I have now taken the show over. Interesting. The show has passed through multiple, we'll call them hosts and you are the latest continuity here.
00:03:39
Speaker
Yeah, I'm the longest running member of the crew, and people have come and gone, and I consider myself the producer of the show. Okay. And just as executive producer, whatever you want to call it, and I help
00:03:59
Speaker
ask some of the other members of the crew to contribute and bring their point of view. Because I feel like one of the things that I don't get a lot from RPG podcasts are different perspectives. I get a lot of the same one person's perspective and then they're kind of bringing in. So I really want to bring all sorts of different perspectives to the hobby. Interesting. And that's sort of what I'm attempting to do here at Radio Free RPG.
00:04:28
Speaker
So I appreciate that we share that same goal. Yeah, I think it's such a diverse. I think it's such a diverse hobby that we there could be many shows that can do this and we would still be just skimming the surface of RPGs.
Roles in RPG Production and Community Crossover
00:04:44
Speaker
So and my focus has been sort of from the production side of RPGs. I want to talk to the editors and the layout artists as well as the game designers. There's a lot of people that go into making an RPG happen.
00:04:55
Speaker
And I find it very interesting to talk about that team effort and who does the various parts. And I'm sure podcasting is much the same.
00:05:04
Speaker
Yeah, it's a little more, I think it's a little more sole proprietor a little bit because you tend to have like, at least on smaller shows, you tend to have one person who is the host and the editor and the wrangler of the guests and all that. And I do all that still, but I've found,
00:05:31
Speaker
as I've gotten better at doing it, it's become less of a burden. And having more people in to come up with ideas has been really fantastic to help. When you've been doing a thing for six plus years, you start to maybe say the same things over and over again. So. Yes, I can attest to that.
00:05:59
Speaker
So, uh, but yeah, I, I think, uh, with what I would like to do as an RPG podcaster is highlight those people that are in our community that write the games because I feel like attribution is highly important and we don't get enough of it. And there, there are definitely forces in the world that are preventing
00:06:23
Speaker
everyone from being attributed properly. It's because they don't want any kind of rights or, you know, to those people's hands. So. So speaking of attribution. Now you mentioned in the case of Fullmetal RPG, you kind of serve as the catch all producer slash product manager slash everything.
00:06:49
Speaker
Now, for a lot of small indie RPGs, that is usually also the case. You know, in the case of myself at Gallant, I am generally the writer. I am generally the developmental editor, the line manager. I'm the publisher. I'm never the artist, thank God. And I'm certainly never the editor, thank God. But I wear a lot of hats as well.
00:07:11
Speaker
And I often elect to reduce my hat to one or two lines of publisher or writer.
00:07:19
Speaker
I tend to not add more than that because then it would be my name with a list of things that I do at the company behind it. Well, that's sort of that's why I would say executive producer or right head writer. Right. And so with you're talking to people in this RPG space in the tabletop space because Fullmetal RPG handles a lot more than just RPGs in their discord. There's an active war game community.
00:07:48
Speaker
There's an active RPG space, there's an active artist community, active designer community. Do you find that a lot of people in the RPG space wear more than one hat when they do these things? Or are they generally wearing only one or two hats? I think there's a lot of crossover. I mean, there are people like, I mean, I was
00:08:14
Speaker
I was clean of wargaming for a good 15 years before I started up again and from some bad influences, Brendan.
00:08:30
Speaker
Yeah, I feel like there's a lot of diverse interests in the in the hobby. And that's what I'm trying to kind of like, we still have the active wargaming segment because that was kind of another podcast that was in the feed and has since lapsed. But it attracted an audience and that audience is looking for even in wargaming, an RPG.
00:08:57
Speaker
But the most popular war games in the in that segment are like Necromunda and a lot of other games that are about small forces that have a story to tell amongst them. So everything is an RPG. Artistry is an RPG, you know, war gaming, designing, you know, it's all a game to all of us. So that's, I think, why it ties us all together.
00:09:26
Speaker
a student insight, I suppose you could say that if everything is an RPG, nothing is an RPG as well, though. Right. Fake it till you make it, you know. Oh, don't we know? So let's let's speak of this discord.
Creating a Positive Discord Environment
00:09:40
Speaker
So this discord is quite large. There are. I have it up in front of me. There are several hundred members. It's smaller than many discords I'm in, but it's far more active.
00:09:54
Speaker
constant posts and multiple channels. People are involved and make friends with each other in this escort. It's a very, it's a very friendly and welcoming community. What do you attribute that vibe to and how much of it do you think is the work you put in as sort of the lead moderator of the space?
00:10:15
Speaker
Well, initially, it's like anything. There's an arc to this discord and like all discords. For a long time, almost no one was on there, right? It was, we mentioned it on the show and I would be on there and I would respond. But having a friendly voice and having a source of people that is also kind of, we had somewhat of a filtering effect from the show.
00:10:45
Speaker
In the fact that we have made stands on certain issues that that will filter out certain people and having rules. That kind of say, hey, we're going to be kind of like come down on you if you break these rules.
00:11:03
Speaker
and enforcing them. And we with the show and even we even recently I recently had somebody that like was super excited on YouTube. They were like, oh, my God, so many link to your discord. And I was like, cool. I sent a link to this court. He took one look at the rules and said. I'm out. And there's a lot of people that will self select out. And that's, I think, great that. But if we have
00:11:32
Speaker
a friendly voice that's consistent and has questions for themselves. Like I go on there and ask questions to people that, you know, allow them to, you know, contribute to a conversation. It is kind of feels like earlier in the social media space when you could actually like have
00:11:57
Speaker
you know, consistent timeline and everybody could ask questions that kind of like be at a place at a time for a conversation. That's why I like Discord. Um, but it just, it, it's like looking at like channels and stuff to trim down what you have to find those spaces that people really want to talk about what they want to talk about.
00:12:21
Speaker
That's interesting and very enlightening, some good notes for all of us who sort of moderate or are responsible for hosting various spaces.
Convention Landscape and Community Building
00:12:31
Speaker
So you're also very active in your local convention community down in Phoenix, Arizona. Yeah, we've kind of, well, I was very active. I helped run.
00:12:45
Speaker
Arizona Game Fair for five, six, you know, was almost seven years, but due to the in-between times, that was four or five. I had a lot of fun with that. That's now ended. And we have had a couple of other game days from some other people that I've enjoyed going to.
00:13:13
Speaker
but we're currently kind of in between conventions in town as far as I can tell, so. Okay. Yes, I've been to a few conventions out in Phoenix and they've been quite a lot of fun. You have a very robust and active game community, one that is very intent on supporting independent or small creators while also enjoying the more mass market versions of the gaming space.
00:13:41
Speaker
and it's very welcoming to exist in. I often tell people that some of my best convention experiences are out in the Phoenix, Arizona space. And I attribute 99% of that to the quality community that has cropped up there around these games. What do you think, from a general sense, makes that space special?
00:14:05
Speaker
Well, Phoenix is a very interesting place. And when you say Phoenix, it's really like eight to nine towns that have grown together to one metro area. So it's like the size of Rhode Island. So it takes like an hour plus to drive across, but it's not very dense, so to speak. It's very large, but it's not very dense. It's all mainly one-story, two-story buildings.
00:14:35
Speaker
Um, so we have, even though we have like the big city, like there's game stores, a lot of places, there's still not a lot of game stores. There's not a tremendous amount of like interaction between people. Like everybody's very spread apart. So when we can get together,
00:15:02
Speaker
We can kind of like, it's, it's like a big family reunion. Okay. And we have this kind of like, you start to interact with people and they, people are like, Oh, Hey, I didn't know anybody was into saga or I didn't know anybody, anybody was into cyborg, you know, like,
00:15:20
Speaker
It was it's this like you're so spread out and disparate that once everybody comes, it's like, oh, hey, we'll come to that. And then I feel like that's part of it. And then when you start finding people that like to live here that are like minded, you start to make friends and that those little groups kind of congregate and then they will come and show up in force to a to a show kind of thing. Yes, I.
00:15:49
Speaker
Definitely can see that. And I definitely have experienced that vibe there. Now, one of the big drawbacks of going to conventions in Phoenix is the hellishly intermable heat. I went out last March and it was in the 80s and it was the worst experience of my life. Well, not really, because I went out in monsoon season once. But you were in here. You were here in July. I don't.
00:16:16
Speaker
No, it was my memories just popped up. It was I was in Gilbert a year ago, pretty much this week. I know. But previous to that, you've been here. Yes. Previous to that, you've been here earlier in the December. December was nice. December is interesting. It's kind of like a weird. It's a weird winner anyways. But yes.
00:16:38
Speaker
I think you should all come out here to Fargo, North Dakota sometime between November and January for a convention, just so you can have my experience and we'll call it even. That's my pitch. Okay, well, we can definitely figure that out. But I think one of the things about Phoenix is it's kind of like the inverted Midwest. In the Midwest,
00:17:04
Speaker
of America, you go from the car to the house, the house to the car in the wintertime. You want to turn the heat on full and you want to sit in both places in the heat. In Phoenix, it's
00:17:25
Speaker
air-conditioned housed air-conditioned car between like say not for not for Alan. Alan is like March to like early November.
00:17:38
Speaker
For most people that live here, it's like from May to September. Sure. So you have this kind of like the reason that I think RPGs developed in the upper Midwest is because they had nothing better to do than play war games all winter.
00:17:59
Speaker
And then figure out, hey, we can play these as characters. So it's the same thing where RPGs are relatively popular here because we can all sit in our air conditioned houses and play games with each other while and then we can go into air air conditioned convention spaces and play there. Plus the fact that during the summertime and starting after spring training,
00:18:31
Speaker
convention spaces are very cheap here because almost people don't want to come here to hang out outside. So they don't want to come here, play golf and go to their business convention. They just don't want to come here. So we have very cheap convention space in the summertime that allows us to have
00:18:51
Speaker
interesting conventions here that you wouldn't get most anyplace else. That's interesting. So your thesis, if I could sum it up, is that the ease of building an RPG community is inversely proportional, or sorry, it would be proportional to the extremes of the climate.
00:19:11
Speaker
There's a running theory I have that you could maybe look at why the Scandinavians are super into RPGs and go, hmm.
00:19:22
Speaker
You know, why is it, you know, why, you know, Hawaii is probably, I mean, shout out. If you you're in Hawaii and play RPGs, get at me. I'd like love to hear your experience, but why I don't think you're going to necessarily see a gigantic Hawaiian RPG because it's gorgeous and nobody's going to be hanging outside all day. Why would I want to sit down in front of my computer or in front of the table?
00:19:46
Speaker
Although I will say some of my favorite RPG experiences have been playing like at a park or something with friends. So yes. Well, once you get started, right, then you're going to play anywhere and everywhere, right? It's it's this like, well, I have nothing better to do. So I just need to push them off the cliff with bad weather is what you're saying. Well, you know, just with with certain climate changes, we may be seeing a lot more people interested. That's fair. So.
00:20:16
Speaker
One of the you participate in a large variety of games within the hobby space, primarily role playing games and tabletop war games. Now, those have shared a sort of historical origin in that the early war games influenced RPG development.
00:20:35
Speaker
Do you find that participating in both gives you a perspective on RPGs you think others don't have because they don't? And obviously everybody combines their experiences differently. And what I'm asking is, do you what do you think adding war games into your RPG mix or recipe has allowed you to sort of bake or cook here?
Exploring RPG Preferences and Challenges
00:20:58
Speaker
I think that like it's having. Having. So I love.
00:21:05
Speaker
independent RPGs. And by that, I mean the more story oriented RPGs. Okay. And these tend to be a very combat light or very combat quick, very story driven combat. And that's great. I love it. But there's part of me that loves a good tactical situation.
00:21:32
Speaker
And I do find that the thing that I've kind of the crossover between is like the more tactical RPGs like the world's largest RPG and some of those other ones, I don't find it satisfying.
00:21:48
Speaker
as a small skirmish war game because it's two different brains. It's like shifting from first to sixth gear immediately. I'd much rather play Theater of the Mind or even Game Master, a tactical situation.
00:22:10
Speaker
then play a single miniature a lot of times. So that's, that's really like, I love it. I still love that. Like it's a spectrum. But a lot of times it's a lot of work to set up an RPG.
00:22:28
Speaker
as a tabletop or as using tabletop materials with all the miniatures and all that stuff. And when you have two people coming, bringing their equipment as opposed to one person that's generally responsible, the game master is responsible for that table. You get a more interesting experience. And that's I don't.
00:22:53
Speaker
Um, I definitely have enough miniatures now that I've painted over the time to maybe run some bigger stuff on the table, but, uh, but we're not, I'm, I'm not generally going to run those kinds of games at my table. I'm going to be running more powered by the apocalypse and other things that are not necessarily benefiting from. Sure. Interesting. So, um, we tend to keep this podcast between half an hour and 45 minutes. Um,
00:23:22
Speaker
So I'm going to ask you a couple sort of bullet point style questions to get some some quick answers that people can sort of digest and muse on. Right. So if I said, what are your three key principles to building a healthy and vibrant community? How would you sum them up? I would say that
00:23:43
Speaker
you know, show up, be consistent, that you being in the space out in the world, not just at your keyboard, but the way we built the one here is by going out in the world and having events at stores and at bars and coffee shops out in the real world is hugely beneficial.
00:24:12
Speaker
Don't be afraid to speak your mind, but know that other people have their own opinions and you're never going to get everyone to agree to anything. We all know as RPG players that there's always going to be a disagreement. It turns out that people like RPGs like drama and somehow that always leaks into their
00:24:43
Speaker
Shocking. Everyone is shocked. And I feel like looking for ways of including people that you maybe don't think of as gamers by allowing for their needs would be my third thing. So like having showing up on time
00:25:10
Speaker
knowing everybody's going to have a different opinion and and looking for ways of opening the door for other for people that you don't think of as gamers to play or feel like that's a solid recipe to start a community in your local area. That's great insight. One of the most successful events I ever participated in was as a counselor for the game design merit badge for the Boy Scouts.
00:25:40
Speaker
And I'm pretty sure we made several dozen new gamers that day just by presenting and talking about role playing games and running them through demos and helping them with their merit badges. You have to design a game to get the merit badge. Nice. So I was very disappointed when I learned that they had one because they did not have it when I was a child. And I absolutely loved that.
00:26:02
Speaker
Yeah, they had a lot of they have a lot more interesting badges from what I understand now. But yes, show a sort of experience. Right. You have the merit badge. So find out about that. Most schools or public libraries have game clubs or puzzle nights or things like that that you can participate in that are hobby adjacent that allow you to kind of widen that circle and develop more people to enhance that community. Yeah, I've done
00:26:27
Speaker
conventions that you wouldn't, you know, like I've gone to comic book conventions and we've been playing games on the floor in the comic book convention to promote our convention, but also, you know, people like what kind of, what is this? Like people don't understand that the depth and breadth of things is beyond UNO. And that's like,
00:26:47
Speaker
That's like if you show people they're like Uno. Oh, what about this other card game? It's like that first hit that allows them to understand that like there's something more than caffeine in the world, you know? What? Second bullet point question. What would you say are the top three RPG influences on you in terms of games?
Richie's RPG Influences and Podcast Challenges
00:27:11
Speaker
I would say it would be Apocalypse World.
00:27:15
Speaker
I would say that it would be Cyberpunk 2020. And I would say it would be West End Star Wars.
00:27:23
Speaker
Those are three very different games in a lot of ways with very different core design at those in gameplay loops. It's a very for buried sort of overview there. Yeah, that's that's kind of you. No one can see this, but I have a gigantic shelf, not nearly as gigantic as Alan's. Alan has a whole room and another shelf behind him, but I like to have
00:27:50
Speaker
of depth and breadth of RPGs. Because if I wanted to just play fantasy RPGs, I would have exactly probably one RPG RPG, maybe two, maybe two, if it, you know, because that's what anybody's going to want to play. But because I like to have a depth and breadth, and that's what we like to cover on the show is a depth and breadth of different stuff.
00:28:16
Speaker
That's very, I mean, I love that personally, is made listening to the show a lot of fun for me. And having been a guest talking about a variety of different RPGs and topics has been really nice. As game designers, we often don't get asked to discuss things outside of our immediate project. And sometimes you want to be like, there is more depth to me than this current Kickstarter. I would like to talk about things that I'm passionate about too, like movies or music.
00:28:45
Speaker
You know, for example, I make candles and soap. Not many people know that. Wow. Okay. Well, we were going to figure that out. I blacksmith like I have done many things that are interesting that define who I am. And oftentimes we can lose sight of the people at the core of the hobby.
00:29:02
Speaker
Well, I found that like a lot of shows, especially during the height of the Kickstarter boom, were just about whatever the Kickstarter, the designer was talking about. And I really, it may cost me a lot of money. So I was sort of looking in the fact that I would back all these Kickstarters. I was listening to podcasts.
00:29:24
Speaker
So I had to find I was like, you know what? I think it's more interesting to have a conversation, maybe vaguely about the Kickstarter in the in the neighborhood, but have the have the designer on and talk about a subject that is kind of tangentially applied and that will allow them to be more than just a pretty design face. Right.
00:29:49
Speaker
but also allow everybody to talk about something that is not necessarily talked about in the most other ways. So trying the differentiation. Oaks, you heard it here first on Radio Free RPG. Alan is a pretty designed face. I mean, that shaved head right now is just very pretty. It's why we have an audio only podcast.
00:30:15
Speaker
So and I have two more questions for you, and these ones are the hard ones, so I'm excited to ask them if if you could be asked any one question during an interview, what would it be? And then I'm going to ask you to answer. Oh, that is pretty hard, right? Let's see here. I'm going to say that. How?
00:30:45
Speaker
And this is, this is a really hard question. I, how does it, how do you deal with when the numbers are going in the wrong direction? How do you deal with that? So what I mean by the numbers going in the wrong direction is that when you deal in podcasting or selling an RPG or any other
00:31:10
Speaker
thing where you're doing it, there is a point when things become a diminishing return and you start to see all these charts because everything is charted with numbers start to go down.
00:31:26
Speaker
And, um, I'm currently kind of experiencing that somewhat in, in, and that's my, you know, uh, honest, uh, honesty is I think the best policy. That's why I always talk about, I have episodes where I've talked about some things that have happened to me and, and things have happened to community. So.
00:31:49
Speaker
And the way I've been dealing with it is to look for a new direction, look for a new thing. I'm going to keep doing it because I love it. And it's never going to make me enough money to really truly pay the bills unless I stumble upon some sort of magic formula.
00:32:10
Speaker
Please tell me if there's a magic formula, I don't think there is. It's just a lot of hard work. And look for changes that make me happy. And maybe those changes that make me happy will attract more people to the space. Okay, that's very insightful.
00:32:31
Speaker
Folks, and I'll include links here in the show notes obviously, but if you get a chance, I think listening to Fullmetal RPG at least find some of the episodes that you are interested in or that feature games or topics you find you are passionate about and then participate in the community. It's a very active welcoming space where I have felt very encouraged to share and be a part of it.
00:32:55
Speaker
And it's it's always a pleasure to have you come in and bring your bring your in your takes and your miniatures to our discord. I highly, highly recommend we did. I did an episode last summer and I'm probably going to do a sequel. There's an episode called RPGs in prison.
00:33:13
Speaker
Okay. Talking to a guy who was incarcerated and started playing RPGs in prison. And well, I'm not going to go much further into it, but it was a very interesting conversation. It's the one that I think a lot of people have been brought up to me when I'm like, well, what do you like about what we're doing? And we're doing some extra big things behind the scenes, but it's taking some time. So I can't talk about those things yet.
00:33:42
Speaker
but just know that you should, maybe that's an episode that you're like, I don't know if I'm, we'll listen to that episode and then go find some other episodes that are on topics you like, but. I think that's excellent advice and I appreciate you pointing out the specific starting point. I think that'll really help a lot of folks who might be looking for something to listen to. So, and then my last and final question, do you have any questions for me that you would like to ask? Um,
00:34:13
Speaker
I think I want to know from you is how do you keep all your different projects straight? Because you have so many projects I cannot keep track of all the things you're doing. So what is your system? What is your way of keeping all that straight?
00:34:34
Speaker
That's a fair question. So for context, my day job for a long time in the corporate world before I went full time into game design and publishing was as a project manager. My professional training was with tools to enable managing multiple projects with multiple stakeholders and multiple meetings, people, buy-in flows, all that stuff. And so the most basic tool I use is a calendar and Excel spreadsheet.
00:35:01
Speaker
And as I've refined my workflow, I've established various checkpoints, stages, what have you, that allow me to look at my sheet at a glance and know where each project is in terms of progress towards the finished release, or after that, the sheet tracks sales numbers, it tracks marketing responses, it tracks reviews, things like that, to help me create a holistic,
00:35:28
Speaker
a data analytic dashboard that allows me at a snapshot to sort of see from a non-fiscal perspective, if that makes sense. Because, well, I do make decisions for Gallant based on income because it's my job. I try to make decisions about the games we produce based on a combination of factors that
00:35:52
Speaker
Well, sales are considered, sales are treated more as a reception than an income driver, if that makes sense. I decide if a game gets an expansion, it's not about how much money we make, but it's about how many sales we have because 2,000 sales on a $5 game will make less than 100 sales on a $100 game.
00:36:15
Speaker
Right. And so my goal is to, well, that math was bad. It's not real math. Right. That's fine. The point was well made. And kind of what I say is trying to keep organized is somewhat one of the most, when you have a long running project, when you're doing podcasting or anything is very difficult.
00:36:36
Speaker
And I use a lot of Google Docs to list out, OK, we've got these are all the show dates that I'm recording on or releasing on. And these are the topics I'm going to try and hit and try and find people to talk about those topics. So spreadsheets and Google Docs, it's very unsexy, is literally the
00:36:58
Speaker
As long as you didn't say Gantt chart, I think then you don't have your eyes glaze over, but it's fine. I work too close with project engineers at
Project Management and Listener Engagement
00:37:08
Speaker
work. I can talk about how I programmed a dashboard in R for myself and then plugged it into a variety of analytical intake programs, but nobody wants to hear about that. Nobody wants to hear that. That's true. I don't want to hear about that. I didn't.
00:37:22
Speaker
Um, that was a great question. Um, and part of it is my daily schedule. I establish space for myself to be flexible as well as structured. I, I set goals throughout the day of four hours of creative time and, or a certain word limit or project limit, whatever happens first. If I, for example, let's say today's writing day, I will say I need to write 2000 words today, or I need to write for four hours.
00:37:52
Speaker
which everyone ends first is where I stop because I need that stopping point. Sitting in front of my computer for eight hours to pound out 500 words because I have an artificial goal doesn't help me accomplish a lot. And so I build in multiple stop points. I have over the years learned to structure myself in a way that allows me to continually operate at maximum efficiency while still having the space to be flexible and have downtime to recharge.
00:38:22
Speaker
Yeah, because if you go too hard, you burn out pretty quickly. That's for sure. I've been there. The RPG industry is a difficult place at the best of times. Yes. And so being careful and cautious and kind to yourself is as valuable a tool as a strong work ethic. So, folks, this has been Richie Buzzkill. Richie, if folks want to find you or find out more about Full Metal RPG, where can they go?
00:38:50
Speaker
Check out FullmetalRPG.com. It's our link tree. It has a link to our Discord. It has a link to our YouTube channel, Fullmetal RPG Official. It has a link to the socials and if you want to email me, you don't want to deal with any of that stuff, FullmetalRPGbiz.com. Wonderful. I want to thank you for coming on the show. It's been wonderful to talk to you and catch up again.
00:39:20
Speaker
It's been great. Thanks, Alan. No problem. All right, folks, I am Alan Barr. This has been, I almost said Full Metal RPG. This has been Radio Free RPG.