The Hobbycast — The 2022 Run
There is a door in the east wall that the Keeper has been meaning to catalogue for some time. It is not a display room. There is nothing behind it to look at — no boxes, no tiles, no glass. Only a chair, a microphone, and the accumulated evidence of a man talking for a year about everything he was not supposed to talk about.
The reason for the room is stated plainly in the first minute of the first recording. The archivist had worked out that the machine which distributes his voice rewards narrowness and punishes range; that mentioning a novel in a video about cardboard measurably costs him. So rather than stop mentioning novels, he built a second room off the side of the main hall and put in it every subject the machine would have penalised. Science fiction paperbacks, read aloud off a physical stack with the back-cover copy still attached. Japanese animation. Radio dramas from 1955. Other people’s very small channels. Two dozen games sold in a fortnight, each with a cause of death.
What the Keeper did not expect, cataloguing it, was how much of the room turns out to be confession.
This is the wing where the archivist admits that three of his favourite video games simply outran his reflexes and he will not be finishing them. Where he admits that playing a board game is sometimes the least enjoyable part of owning one — and then builds a rather good argument for why that is the medium’s fault and not his. Where he counts up the collectible cards he gave away in 1999 and arrives at a figure he would rather not have arrived at.
It bookends itself neatly. Episode 2 sets out ten qualities he wants in a dungeon crawl. Episode 26 sets out ten faults he cannot forgive — and illustrates every single one with a game he loves. Between the two sits an ask-me-anything of such length and candour that it functions as an autobiography with dice in it.
The catalogue below runs in the order the episodes were recorded. Some were hung today. Some have been on the wall for seasons. The Keeper declines to say which.
Exhibit Catalogue — earliest first:
- Dungeon Dive Hobbycast - E1 - Intro and Ranking of SoulsBorneRingKiro games — ranks every FromSoftware game, and admits three of them beat him outright.
- Dungeon Dive Hobbycast - Episode 2: Ten Things I Look for in a Great Dungeon Crawl or Adventure Game — ten specifications for a dungeon crawl built to order.
- Dungeon Dive Hobbycast - Episode 3 - Game Purge 2022 — two dozen games sold in a fortnight, each with its cause of death.
- Hobbycast Episode 4: Seven things I like about MORK BORG with Solitary Defilement — the bleakest rulebook on the shelf, and the supplement that lets you face it alone.
- Hobbycast Episode 7 - Ten Great Science Fiction Novels — ten paperbacks read off a stack; one made him cry in public.
- Episode 9: Top 5 Japanese Animated Science Fiction Things — ends on a train that stops at one moral problem per planet.
- Episode 12: When Playing Board Games is my Least Favorite Part of the Hobby — every other medium agreed on standards; board games agreed on nothing.
- Hobbycast Episode 14: Top 50 Postmortem, and 4 brief negative reviews — revisiting the list he’d just finished, plus four that didn’t work.
- Hobbycast Episode 15: How to Make Better Game Recommendations — most recommendations are bad; the first fix is asking a question.
- Episode 19: Top 5 Audio / Radio Dramas — the case that ears do more imaginative work than eyes.
- Episode 21: A Handful of Youtube Channels to Enjoy — eight small channels, chosen partly for looking shot on a camcorder.
- Episode 22: New Edge Sword & Sorcery, and The Merril Collection — a sword-and-sorcery revival, and a library devoted wholly to the speculative.
- Episode 23: Pete Jank! Quest for the Lost Pixel! Final Expansion! Rogue-like! Diablo 3! And More! — a grab-bag episode with a final expansion in it.
- Episode 24: Five Games to Get / Get Back to the Table — five intentions, and the mental hurdle stopping two of them.
- Episode 25: Ask the Dungeon Dive Anything! — three collecting eras, the cards he gave away, and Gonzo.
- Episode 26: My Ten Least Favorite Things about Dungeon Crawl and Adventure Games — ten complaints, each illustrated with a game he loves.
- How I deal with FOMO, and why I am not backing the new Cthulhu Death May Die and Wander campaigns — two campaigns declined, and the discipline that makes declining possible.
713 transcripts • 792 posts archived
– The Keeper
Observes that a room built to hold the overflow has ended up containing the only honest inventory in the building, and has quietly moved its perch closer to the door.