Hey folks! I just wanted to write a quick update on how I've been livin'.
Ready to ingest the lumpen truth? I've been livin' BAD
For the last 9 days I've been limping around with a flu that didn't so much knock me on my ass as creep behind me like Agent 47, choke me out and sling me into a dumpster, causing me to dematerialise beyond the regard of the game engine. I am saying this flu erased my personhood
But I'm almost better now! Why, today, you'd only know I was ill from the background noise of me barking out mean little gobbets of phlegm and my self-pitying (perhaps a little noble?) shuffle as I journey around the flat.
So today I'm finally able to write this post, and address my paranoiac dread that if I don't speak to my Patreon community every two weeks, you folks will all - as one - cancel your pledges with messages like "I'm just really disappointed in you"
Let's give you guys some lovely subheads on what I've been up to.
Writing Season 2 Episode 6 💿
It's almost time for me to film the final review of season 2, but there are a few reasons this script in particular (all 11,000 words of it 😵💫) has been a really sweaty lift. It's been the kind of rare script where I put so much heart and caffeine into writing each morning that I'm foxed and grumpy for the entire rest of the day.
Why? Obviously it's the season finale, so I want it to be great, and I've been saving the final slot for a game that I think is particularly special (just like I did for Slugblaster for the finale of season 1) and I wanna do the game justice.
But there's another reason why I've been trying to summon every ounce of my fighting spirit: The last *three episodes* of Quinns Quest Season 2 have all not trafficked as well as the first two episodes in the seasons. Triangle Agency didn't get shared much because it wasn't me being purely positive. The Boxed Game Special didn't get shared because people are less excited by small games (which is a shame, as that's where lots of indies start their career). So by the time of Public Access I was sick of this trend and put 110% into making a blockbuster video, and it started off performing better than any episode in the season... only for it to then get age-restricted because YouTube's spiderbots didn't like the .jpg of a Yoda bong. 👽
So right now, nothing in season 2 has trafficked as well as episodes 1 and 2. So for reasons that are partly sensible (e.g. brand relevancy, discoverability) and partly come from the wedge of my brain that I share with a howling ape, I want the final episode of season 2 to do well. I want it to shoot across the desktops of everyone who plays TTRPGs like a comet.
So the script has been weeks of work. Which makes sense, because 11,000 words is something like 13% of a novel. But it's almost done now!
Preparing for Season 3 📺
Despite having some speedbumps in terms of subscriber growth, Season 2 has been very, very good for the Quinns Quest Patreon.
I am intensely grateful to each and every one of you for pledging your support. Please allow yourself to feel a moment of uncomplicated pride in knowing that you've not just changed just my life, but more lives besides- for a while now I've been able to pay my artist, musician and editor not just the day rate they asked for, but the day rate they deserve.
But now on top of this you folks also need to feel some amount of hesitation and anxiety, because you bastards have funded this project so much that you've left me no choice but to commission some of my most talented young friends to make season 3 a bit more, uh, let's just say "ambitious".
You careless folks have, horror of horrors, made my disorganised ass a manager
Lucky for all of us, my first and only sensible decision as a manager was to hire a producer to take the managing away from me, and this producer is, as we speak, overseeing the construction of a full, ridiculous set for season 3, with custom lighting, a powerful aesthetic and dozens of goofy props.
(But Los Angeles this ain't. The set is, in fact, being constructed in a barn that is owned by a baffled woman who - I promise this - will at no point in the filming of Quinns Quest Season 3 gain any comprehension of what the hell I'm doing in her back garden, or what a TTRPG is.)
This is, I think, the biggest leap forward my career has ever enjoyed. The fact that I get to do something this ambitious and give some of my most talented young friends proper paid creative work at the same time? That makes my heart absolutely soar.
Playing too many games 📚
A lot of people are surprised that I have the time to play these long campaigns of the games I review on Quinns Quest. Because I live in fear of this problem, I've worked hard to prevent it. I've built up a broad supergroup of 13 friends to play games with, I'm usually in 2 campaigns at any one time (right now it's 3), and the moment a campaign ends I'm always forgetting to take a breath before creating a Whatsapp group with the hand-picked squad that will be diving into the next dank .pdf.
Which means - aren't creative projects a fucker? - I have found out that it's possible to go too far in the other direction.
The last couple of months have partly been taken up with me playing RPGs at a rate that way outstrips my own ability to make videos about these things (which is itself limited by my YouTube audience's ability to absorb hyperbaton). Right now I could already write scripts for the first three episodes of Quinns Quest Season 3! Except I can't do that, because the way I have to work is that I finish writing a script as close as possible to publishing the video. (I could offer you an explanation as to why this is, but that explanation would, I fear, sprawl disgustingly beyond the remit of this post like the wordcount equivalent of Tetsuo at the end of Akira. Let's just stay on topic.)
So yeah, this sucks. Packing too many game nights into each week is just me doing extra work that, in turn, creates problems for myself. I'm putting my love of TTRPGs in a pressure cooker when I don't have to, and I'm forcing myself to write my review scripts waaaay after the campaign has ended, which takes the technicolour emotions I had when we were actually playing and puts them behind museum glass.
So I'm just slowing down right now. Which is good timing, because...
Buying a house! 🏠
In non-Quinns Quest related news, something that's been taking a lot of my energy is that at the ripe old age of 39 I am buying my very first home. This is exciting! And as you'd imagine for a content creator, not a situation I ever felt safe imagining for myself.
I'm not going to be sharing pictures for privacy reasons, but I do want to give you guys some details so you can create a fun mental image of where I'll be creating Quinns Quest from.
The home is way, way, way taller than it is wide, so I've been thinking of it as my wizard's tower. 🧙♂️
Literally every home with a garden in Brighton has a stone buddha in it, and this place is no exception. Am I a Buddhist? No. Am I willing to risk the karma of removing the statue? Also no. ☸️
Having my own property will also allow me to rehome my niece's unwanted snake, a ball python called Rune. In a way, I've gone from paying rent to a landlord to being Rune's landlord. 🐍
All the same, buying a house takes a lot of time, and involves things like paying a man £995 to crawl around your house and provide you with a .pdf on the many ways that it is slowly falling down. But with a bit of luck I'll be moved in by June, and then me and Rune will be able to relax for a bit.
Reading a lot! 📖
Being sick meant being able to do a lot of reading, so I'd love to pass on some of my favourite books. Honestly, when I get tired of TTRPGs I could see myself becoming a book influencer.
I had a fantastic time with The Ask by Sam Lipsyte, which makes sense, because my favourite author is Martin Amis and Lipsyte is a similar kind of amphetamine'd prose stylist. A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor was bliss, it felt like I was discovering treasure and made me reflect on how different my backpacking was when I was the author's age. And I'm currently reading Good Girl by Aria Aber, which is the sexiest book I've read in ages. Perfect company as I'm fishing another clot of mucus out of my nose.
Okay, that's it from me for now. Thanks so much for supporting this project, everybody. I'm gonna go and hack up another entire Nerds Rope of sludge.
Ooh, and keep your eyes peeled later this week for a poll! I want you folks to vote on something.
-- Quinns