~HALFWAY!~ Wederra Keep progress update

We recently crossed a little milestone in the editing process! Episode 15 is edited, designed and mastered - Julian just sent it back to me to review. I've just finished cutting the voice tracks for episode 16 and I get to dig into the sound design and score. There are 29 episodes in this series - we are crossing the halfway point!

Editing The Witches of Wederra Keep is somehow unexpectedly one of the biggest artistic projects I've done to date, so hell yeah, it feels great to get here.

One of the real joys of this editing process is getting to live in this story again. When we recorded it, we took an intense week in September 2024 to play the game and since then I've had the pleasure of sinking deep into the world of these witches again and again. I'm opening up material I haven't listened to in 18 months and continuing to be delighted by the tale that our table wove. When I put sound and music to it, I find a deepening of the story, painting background and foreground, filling out an imagination of this world to bring you along with me. It is a lot of work, but it's deliberate choice to work in this fidelity.

I've got a mostly-drafted post about the work that went into this show - I want to get us a little closer to the end before I share that.

There is one question that constantly bothers me: Am I doing it right? Is working like this the right way, the right thing? Director, producer, creator and performer - these are different tasks but they blend into each other - do the needs of one overcloud the practicality of another? This is an improvised work, is the material worth the effort that I'm putting into it?

I have a lot of thoughts on artmaking and self-directed work. I'll save many of them for another time, but focus in on one - the expectations in actual play, this specific genre (if that's the right word) of storytelling. Much of actual play and our online media landscape is fast-paced. This new work you get each month from me comes from antiquity! It's like staring at the stars, seeing a snapshot of a moment of artistic collaboration and storytelling, the planets aligned in a special and unique pattern, this constellation broadcast through time. Is it better to have a constant churn of entertainment or is there a place for this kind of slower, deeper work as well?

Is it actually slower and deeper? It's an unrefined improvised narrative held in a carefully formed lattice of sound and music. I know what it's not, and that's planned and executed, edited and re-edited like a novel or film. But it's also not a true improvisation - shown once and then moved on from. We crafted it together, taking time to plan our moves, recorded it, and now I'm going over it again, finding a way to bring the world to life. It's complex, gratifying and hard both in the work and the philosophical positioning.

I'm always asking myself lots of questions about production cycles and art. I'm constantly confronted by the mismatch between the depth of process, intention and craft exploration in what I want to make versus the resources that I have to make that space available for myself and my collaborators. Basically, I want to make big things, and I don't have the money and resources to make it a sustainable process for myself - yet.

This comes up over and over as I traverse the contours of the artistic landscape and my own predilections toward specific types of working process. Big, complicated process-intensive projects are my default mode. I could try to simplify, but I honestly don't know how to do that. I'll continue to dig into the wellspring of life and imagination and make the things that come to me.

If you're following along - thank you so much! I'm extremely grateful to everyone who supports me and my work and the work I do with collaborators. I'm especially happy every time I can produce something for you to enjoy.

Please consider taking a moment to recommend the show and my work to a friend or colleague. And, if you have a spare coin in your pocket, please consider supporting me with a tip or subscription - that's how I can keep this going.