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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6457955" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>I have enjoyed watching people I know RP live for lengthy stretches without participating, but in general I find RP unwatchable as well. You have to have some sort of personal investment in what is going on, and typically you don't have that watching someone else's session.</p><p></p><p>I think you could make an entertaining show by carefully editing live RP footage and adding supporting material to help the audience understand things from the perspective of the players. So, you might add some additional narration and exposition done in a style more conducive to the audience experience than the player experience, potentially replacing some of what was actually said in play. Battle mat footage idly would be animated and annotated to give the viewer a better sense of what is going on, perhaps clay motion style, with little pop-up 'pows' and '-18 h.p. lost' boxes, and interspaced with cuts of the players describing important actions and decisions. Props at the table are probably far more important to an audience than they actually are to players. And not every declaration to attack and to hit proposition is inherently interesting even in play, and draggy combat experiences are even more draggy when you aren't participating. Certainly the DM's mental and logistic pauses, which are often necessary or inevitable need to be removed, as does a lot the party planning nonsense that tends to be OOC even with experienced group. Idle chatter that isn't entertaining also needs to go, though obviously some of the OOC asides and jokes can be entertaining (though this is usually a sign of inexperience, as IC jokes are usually more entertaining). </p><p></p><p>The important point is that probably only 30%-60% of play time depending on the session style is actual story building and so engaging to a non-participant. A four hour one shot could probably be condensed to a core 1 1/2 hour story. This is even more true of dungeon crawling, which tends to be what you see in one shots.</p><p></p><p>The trick here is producing this sort of thing and making it entertaining is probably almost as expensive as a low budget TV show. You've probably got a DM investing 20-30 hours prep a week, plus 4-6 hours working on the show, and additional 2-4 hours working on post production, that needs to basically be doing this for a living. You need probably multiple camera angles and a sound guy. You've got to do hours of film editing. You need probably an animation team doing images for the DM's narration (maps, pictures, whatever), clarifying combat, and putting footnotes on the screen in post production (thought bubbles by the actors, notes on rules or character sheet). It's basically 'reality TV'. Right now, I'm not sure that the market is large enough for the cost involved.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 6457955, member: 4937"] I have enjoyed watching people I know RP live for lengthy stretches without participating, but in general I find RP unwatchable as well. You have to have some sort of personal investment in what is going on, and typically you don't have that watching someone else's session. I think you could make an entertaining show by carefully editing live RP footage and adding supporting material to help the audience understand things from the perspective of the players. So, you might add some additional narration and exposition done in a style more conducive to the audience experience than the player experience, potentially replacing some of what was actually said in play. Battle mat footage idly would be animated and annotated to give the viewer a better sense of what is going on, perhaps clay motion style, with little pop-up 'pows' and '-18 h.p. lost' boxes, and interspaced with cuts of the players describing important actions and decisions. Props at the table are probably far more important to an audience than they actually are to players. And not every declaration to attack and to hit proposition is inherently interesting even in play, and draggy combat experiences are even more draggy when you aren't participating. Certainly the DM's mental and logistic pauses, which are often necessary or inevitable need to be removed, as does a lot the party planning nonsense that tends to be OOC even with experienced group. Idle chatter that isn't entertaining also needs to go, though obviously some of the OOC asides and jokes can be entertaining (though this is usually a sign of inexperience, as IC jokes are usually more entertaining). The important point is that probably only 30%-60% of play time depending on the session style is actual story building and so engaging to a non-participant. A four hour one shot could probably be condensed to a core 1 1/2 hour story. This is even more true of dungeon crawling, which tends to be what you see in one shots. The trick here is producing this sort of thing and making it entertaining is probably almost as expensive as a low budget TV show. You've probably got a DM investing 20-30 hours prep a week, plus 4-6 hours working on the show, and additional 2-4 hours working on post production, that needs to basically be doing this for a living. You need probably multiple camera angles and a sound guy. You've got to do hours of film editing. You need probably an animation team doing images for the DM's narration (maps, pictures, whatever), clarifying combat, and putting footnotes on the screen in post production (thought bubbles by the actors, notes on rules or character sheet). It's basically 'reality TV'. Right now, I'm not sure that the market is large enough for the cost involved. [/QUOTE]
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