The Messengers of Marino - Episode 01 Beta

The Messengers of Marino Episode One Beta is now available here.

Summary:
The adventurers have been sent by officials in the city of Marino, to liberate a dwarven mine that's been overrun by rebels. After encountering a group of monks being accosted by a band of goblins, the adventurers proceed to the "back door" of the mine.  What lies just inside the back door?  Listen and find out.

The Woodland Players in this episode are:
Troope - The DM
Brennan - Thrymyr (Elven Cleric of St. Cuthbert)
Finn - Thomas Ember (Human Fighter, Brother of Roarin Ember)
Mike - Roarin Ember (Human Fighter, Brother of Thomas Ember)
Sarah - Vesta (Elven Ranger)
Terry - Arthur Penrose (Human Rogue)

Next Episode:
The Messengers of Marino - Episode 02 - "The Descent to the Dissidents"

Ideas & Delays

I was a little late in getting things transferred, but better late than never.  I did say that the schedule was rough, after all.  After posting this, I shall be removing the ugly-as-all-hell alpha version.  The beta version is not quite complete, as I've neglected to include our shiny new player character introductions, and an official outro.  Those things will be found in Episode Two - and every episode thereafter - along with an intro by one of our other Players - who shall be fighting in a barbed wire cage battle royale to determine who gets thrown onto that particular grenade last.  Or we could go by who won the card game we played the other night in Brennan's absence.  (Yes, there is audio and video of that too, coming soon.)  In which case, Troope, the DM for Messengers of Marino, shall be the victim for Episode Two.

Other Programmatic Announcements:
The Messengers of Marino shall be moving to a weekly schedule.  Due to Brennan's absence for our foreseeable wednesday nights, Messengers of Marino sessions will only occur every monday night.  Wednesday nights will feature a Delta Green campaign currently in development by Finn.  I am under oath not to divulge more information than that at this time.  The Lonely Islands sessions are on hiatus until June 30th.  So I have plenty of time to finish editing the first episode.

I'm sure I'm missing a few things, but new content is coming thick and fast now.  Stay tuned.

Until next time, good luck and good hunting.

Pushing Into Beta

Well folks, it would appear that the test was a success.  I've done some more editting and normalizing on episode one of the Messengers of Marino.  Apologies for the anomalies.  They have been worked out.  Episode two does not have the same robotting issues the first one did.  Introductions have been recorded by each member of the Woodland Players, and I've got additional introductory and informational stuff recorded.  So later today I'll swap the beta in for your perusal.  Also, we have a Pathfinder game being recorded.  Watch for The Lonely Islands campaign coming soon (as soon as episodes two and three are editted and posted).  The Lonely Islands sessions will be broken up into two or three parts.

Release Schedule:
Thursday: Messengers of Marino - Episode One Beta

Friday: Messengers of Marino - Episode Two
Saturday: Messengers of Marino - Episode Three

Sunday: The Lonely Islands - Episode One, Parts One & Two (or possibly even Three)

Tuesday/Wednesday: Messengers of Marino - Episode FourThursday/Friday: Messengers of Marino - Episode Five


Recording Schedule:
The Messengers of Marino - Every Monday and Wednesday Night at 11 PM Eastern Time
The Lonely Islands - Next Game: June 30th, 2012

This is a very rough program schedule for everyone. Now for a few notes.

I will be re-working tags so that only podcast releases will be tagged with their campaign names, or at the very least posts regarding specific campaigns will only have those tags.  General announcements shall be handled differently.  I'm somewhat new to tagging so this could be a little bumpy.  Regardless!  We'll keep on pushing here at the Woodland Players.

Until next time, good luck and good hunting!

Messengers of Marino Podcast Test

The recording of the first session of Troope's Pathfinder campaign, "Messengers of Marino," was eaten by my netbook.  However, the second session was successfully recorded fully in audio and partially in video.  While the audio stutters or robots periodically, the audio is good for the most part.  The introduction in particular was oh-so-conveniently eaten by the robots, so we will have to redo the introduction before the game on Monday.  The video recordings will be limited to two hours due to the capacity of the camera we're using.  It might be a good way to keep us focussed, although banter is usually hilarious.  The file sizes for video are enormous (4GB) and will take longer to convert and edit to a reasonable filesize than the audio version.  The audio is more stable on the camera, and could give us - and you, the audience - the added benefit of being able to see the battle board.  This is very much an on-going learning process for all of us, but I suspect we're already getting a feel for how to do it.

Now, some words of warning:
This episode is alpha as hell - and not entirely in the good way.  I haven't quite finished the painstaking process of normalizing the spikes and ampilifying the quiet bits.  I need to speak toward the microphone more.  That was my mistake.  I was more worried about getting the other players on the microphone.  As I mentioned before there is some robotting, I have ways to avoid that next time, but no way of fixing it in post-production, yet.  Some the action in the game might be clear.  There was some use of visual gimmicks which don't exactly translate well to audio.  I recommend a moderate volume when listening to this, and apologies in advance for any earballs that get blown.  We'll do better next week.

Technical disclaimers aside:
The comments and opinions of the individual members of the Woodland Players do not reflect those of the group as a whole.  We definitely earned an explicit podcast tag this time.  With all that in mind, listener discretion is advised.

Well, that's all for tonight folks.  Enjoy the podcast.  In the meantime:
Good luck and good hunting.

Edit: Link to the hideous alpha version has been removed.  The beta version can be found here.

Goodbye Meadowbrook

Well, last night we finished our first adventure.  I ran a - by-the-end - heavily-modified version of the published adventure, "Music From A Darkened Room" for a group of five players.  I will be posting a summary of the campaign's events thursday.  Wednesday night we'll do a post-game analysis.  We'll also discuss our next adventure.  As five of our six members have expressed an interest in running their own adventure we shall also decide who will be running the next adventure.  Also, watch for character sheets to be posted with the Meadowbrook summary.

Until next time, good luck and good hunting

Introductions

The Woodland Gamers are a tabletop gaming group located in Southern Ontario.  We gather each week for a few hours of collaborative storytelling.  Currently, we are working our way through a published adventure for the Call of Cthulhu: Delta Green setting.  The purpose of this blog is to keep members up-to-date on meeting times as well as post summaries of each session for anyone who is interested.  Later on we may even post player character sheets.  We hope to branch out over the following weeks and months into different systems including: Dungeons & Dragons 3.5, Pathfinder, Eclipse Phase, and many more.  Of course, we welcome game recommendations.

If you're local, feel free to follow us via Facebook.


Until next time, good luck and good hunting.