097: Community Management & Running a Production Studio with Kay of Chaotic Wholesome Presents

Courtney: 0:32

Hello friends. Today we are chatting with Kay Purcell Of Chaotic Wholesome presents, a TTRPG production studio focusing on creating engrossing stories and actual play content. They highlight social topics, discuss hot button issues, and focus on charity work. Kay is a delightful guest and I enjoyed chatting about the network and also their work in community management. We chat about processes behind running a TTRPG production studio and also tips for navigating social media. before we jump in, I wanted to give a quick project update. In case you missed the last episode, I am the project manager for a project that is currently funding on BackerKit Laszlo’s Cubed Crypt by Attention Deficit and Dragons. We are creating a map puzzle cube, think Rubik’s Cube, even though I’m not technically supposed to say that, that corresponds to a level 12 D&D adventure in which players have to confront a lich. We are a little over halfway to our initial funding goal, and if we can hit some stretch goals, we’ll be able to add more Adventures to the lineup that also incorporate the cube at additional levels. I will drop a link to the show notes, and you can also find it by looking up a laszlo’s cubed crypt on BackerKit. I really want this project to succeed because I would like to have a cube of my own on my shelf. All right. Let’s go ahead and dive into with Kay. Hello friends and welcome back. Today I am joined by Kay Purcell, the co founder of Chaotic Wholesome Presents. How’s it going today?

Kay: 2:22

Going well, how are you?

Courtney: 2:24

You know, got some coffee. It’s mostly sunny. We might actually get snow, which is kind of weird, but it’s fine.

Kay: 2:31

Keep hearing people have snow and i’m like this is bananas. I’m, so glad i’m not there

Courtney: 2:36

Yeah, I’m in Seattle and, like, we’re north enough that people would think that we get snow all the time, but we don’t just because of our, you know, winds and stuff. Weather patterns, I don’t know, but it’s like There’s, there’s a 10 percent chance of snow today, but then it just keeps, like, growing sporadically over the next week, so it should be interesting because it is way too hilly here for snow, which means, like, the entire city shuts down, even though technically people know how to drive in it, it’s like, well, we will die on those hills.

Kay: 3:06

Exactly. Yeah, I just escaped several years in new york where

Courtney: 3:09

Ah.

Kay: 3:10

snow happened and it didn’t leave

Courtney: 3:13

Yeah, I was in Chicago for about five years when I was an undergrad, and I That, that was enough. I’ve done my duty with Snow.

Kay: 3:22

Mm hmm.

Courtney: 3:23

Well, to kick off our conversation today, I would love to know, what is the very first game that you remember playing?

Kay: 3:31

Oh, goodness. Whoo. I’m going to date myself here. I am fairly sure it was a Pac Man something at an arcade or, you know, an Atari that a friend had the first game that I like. See. I don’t remember which came first, the Exit to DOS or the, the Nintendo, the NES. So it was either, like, Mario Duck Hunt combo, which I have right back there. My NES and the game is there and it still works. Or, it was the Exit to DOS Quest for Glory. Or I guess at that time it was Heroes Quest, which was my absolute obsession for many, many years. It was my favorite game. it was one of those, like, 40 hour RPGs by Sierra, it was incredible. But my parents were so worried that if I saved my game I would eat up all the space on the hard drive. So I was trying to beat a 40 hour game in one setting. And, like, memorizing everything I had to do and the timing and the dialogue options perfectly. And then I was constantly in trouble for playing this game for too long. I kept explaining that I have to go through every part to get to something new.

Courtney: 4:47

Oh my gosh. Did they ever relent and let you save it?

Kay: 4:51

So they finally invested in the floppy

Courtney: 4:54

Mmm.

Kay: 4:55

were the big ones, the 5x whatever. And I finally got to save my game, and I did finally get to beat it, but I only beat the rogue and the, or the thief and the wizard options. I never got to beat the fighter class.

Courtney: 5:11

I’m also just sitting here like, trying to imagine a video game fitting on a floppy disk. Yeah, like, obviously, it was, you know, a much smaller game than what we’re used to, but still, I’m just mind blowing right now.

Kay: 5:25

It was multiple floppy disks to install it. I think it was like four or five to install it. I remember my brain melting recently when It wasn’t recently. It was a while back when they announced Final Fantasy 7 was available for the iPhone and I’m like that game is huge. That was like four CDs. That’s probably not even four gigs that Wow. Okay Yeah, I can play that on my phone. Can’t I. Wow

Courtney: 5:53

Yeah. On the one hand, it’s like, cool, technology’s advanced so far, but on the other hand, I’m like, no, it’s too much.

Kay: 6:01

I have to go think about my life, right? People talk about retro

Courtney: 6:06

Right.

Kay: 6:06

gaming and they’re talking about the PlayStation 2 and I’m like, oh no.

Courtney: 6:11

Yeah, you know, I still have, like, my little Game Boy Color, and

Kay: 6:15

my brick of a game boy has gone missing and I’m so sad because that was Link’s Awakening was the other influential game in my life and I played that, I was only on the brick original Nintendo until it was very recently released for Switch I loved that game, and I’m so glad I have my NES still, but I want that Game Boy.

Courtney: 6:36

Yeah, I mostly grew up on the Sega and, or Sega Genesis. Yeah, I will say, like, having the little Sega pack on the Switch now is, like, okay. It’s not the same, but I can at least play, like, Echo the Dolphin and remember how freaking hard this game is.

Kay: 6:55

Yeah, old school games were so challenging.

Courtney: 6:59

Yeah, especially since you, like, couldn’t save.

Kay: 7:02

And game devs still had the mindset of like, the arcade thing where you need to, it needs to be brutal and you need to die so that you’ll put more quarters in.

Courtney: 7:10

Huh. So what about board games?

Kay: 7:15

Oh goodness. We, I mean, we played a lot of Chutes and Ladders, and a really cool one called Labyrinth, you know, obviously those. We didn’t play board games or TTRPGs in my family. I actually didn’t play a TTRPG until a couple years before the pandemic. My parents thought I was already too weird and nerdy, and they were not going to encourage or partake in any of this. So, I was on my own there.

Courtney: 7:44

So, how did you get introduced to ttrpgs?

Kay: 7:48

Hilariously, I had, you know, all of these friend groups across video games, nerd culture, tech and I was just like, you know, I keep hearing about TTRPGs, I was working in video games, I was writing video game reviews, and, Kept getting part of the blog that I wrote for also did TTRPGs, and I’m like, I am curious. I have always been curious. I never got to play as a kid because satanic panic. My parents still had bought into it. And I said to one of my friends, like, you know, I said to David, my co founder, I really want to try, like, D& D, TTRPG, something like that. He’s like, oh, oh. Dane wants to, and Kato wants to, and as soon as I said I want to play one of these, I suddenly had like 12 friends who were all like, Oh yeah, we want to play. And I’m like, None of you mentioned you played to me, ever. I never knew any of you played this. So, yes, I cut my teeth on Pathfinder 1e. Which, friends don’t let friends make Pathfinder 1e characters with only books. We had a four hour character creation session. I was trying to build a level five druid. I didn’t know what a cantrip was and two and a half hours in, I still didn’t know and I was too afraid to ask. So just did it. And unfortunately we broke that campaign four sessions in and it fell apart, but it started the network and the group and it went from there. I’m so sorry. I ruined your game, Dane. I’m so sorry.

Courtney: 9:28

Definitely feel like there’s a story there.

Kay: 9:31

We were supposed to pick a side in a war and we kind of picked a fight with one side, ran back to the side we were supposed to be on, got mad at the racist spec commander, so our dwarf Paladin, holy dick, or did a holy punch in his dick. Maru had accidentally let the lit the tint on fire, and we ran up into the mountains and just watched the two sides fight.

Courtney: 9:59

I’m going to say that a holy dick punch is absolutely a legitimate attack.

Kay: 10:05

yeah, it, if you, apparently if you multiclass the right way with Paladin and Monk, you can do a holy dick punch. You can smite punch.

Courtney: 10:16

Okay, smite punch is now the official term, so.

Kay: 10:20

Yeah, if you play a Tabaxi, you can also if you play a Tabaxi Damphir, you can also smite bite.

Courtney: 10:25

Interesting. We are starting to make characters for Vecna Eva Ruin, but I am reusing uh, Topaxi Pirate that I used in a former campaign that I very much miss. And, you know, I’ve been thinking about, like, multi classing her, and now I’m like, hmm. Smite Bites sounds fun.

Kay: 10:45

Someday I’ll get to use my hairless Tabaxi swashbuckler. Someday.

Courtney: 10:50

Mine’s a munchkin tabaxi, so she’s like three feet tall. the And yeah, she’s a pirate captain because now we’re starting at level 10, and yeah. I adore her. Anyways.

Kay: 11:03

We could do this all day. Let’s run away from it.

Courtney: 11:06

Oh my god, absolutely. Talk to me about starting Chaotic Wholesome. I

Kay: 11:15

had been kind of doing the streaming thing a little bit anyway. I had my my channel to affiliate through just streaming video games and hanging out with friends while I did that. And I had started kind of, especially during the pandemic, applying to be on a couple different projects. Shows and different games had a really cool charity game with some really big names that I was really proud of until we no longer associate with a couple of those people, and so that VOD is a little bit not as joyful as it used to be. And I had other friends who were, you know, in the space and of other minority groups than me and started, you know, just about how we We liked the games we were playing, right, but we weren’t necessarily getting to play the kind of games we wanted. We weren’t getting to tell the kind of stories we wanted. We weren’t getting the depth or the table chemistry and we were facing different ways for each of us, you know, just some discomfort at tables and sometimes a lack of respect, sometimes just a lack of understanding of why this was a problem. And it was a combination of that and then I also Had always wanted to run, like, a pressure cooker campaign. A game where the party doesn’t know each other at the start, they have no reason to trust each other, you’re playing, you have to work together, but also you’re just, you don’t know about other people, a situation where no one wants to info dump, right? You want to keep your secrets precious for a while. I couldn’t find the module that would let me do that. And so I did the thing, which I always end up doing, which I looked at David and I was looking at, like, I want to tell the stories we want to tell with better, safer tables, more exclusive with who we invite, play with, and have some of these pressure cooker games, some of these more interesting approaches to, I’ve got to do it myself, don’t I? Heck. And I very reluctantly started running The God Plane, which is an original 5E horror campaign, which I’ve had the great pleasure to run with Candice the Magnificent and Urban Bohemian and Piper and some other just incredible people. We’ve run it twice, technically three times, but shh, where’s that, when is that third one coming out? I don’t know, when is that happening? But yeah. And we just kind of went from there. We finished the God plane, we knew we were getting ready to run some more stuff we started doing the table talk show, which was every Tuesday. We’d just get on and talk about issues challenges and happenings in the tabletop space. And it was supposed to be just like a, a space filler. people started asking us to cover topics and saying how much it meant to them. And it was like, oh, well maybe this is a thing we actually up, okay. And then we did, we knew, and then an important thing to both David and I is charity, so every year we do a big Christmas charity game, where we raise money for extra life kids in hospitals, and then it to Pride Month, to Black History Month, and yeah, we, we tell stories and be nerdy together and do it for a good cause.

Courtney: 14:39

love that so much. Yeah, and I know you guys have done a lot of shows by now. I would love to dig in a little bit more into just the evolution of like, okay, you started with the God plane and then. You know, you just kind of expanded beyond that.

Kay: 14:56

Yeah, it just kind of took on a life of its own. Some things just fell into place. We started having friends coming to us and saying, hey, I have this I really want to tell. I can’t run production. Will you produce this? So this past Black History Month we ran an all black table by Candice the Magnificent with Danielle Radford who came on and played, raising money for Black and Pink. Uh, we had Q Midnight Inc. come to us and say, I have an American Gods style game where it is the old gods from Africa going through different time periods in America and how they’re reacting to this. And it was incredibly touching and A story that I really wanted to facilitate the telling of. So the channel is growing in ways that I, as a white person, could never have done had I just said, no, I have to be involved in all of these things. But it got to the point where it’s like, okay, there are certain people in our community, be they GMs or players, that I trust. And if they come to me and say, I want to run something, I will hand the reins over. It is important for me that, yes, I I have a minority background in certain ways, but I also have privilege in a lot of ways. I am white, and it is really important for me to understand where I can help and where I best help by not being there. By giving things over to other people. So, by being less precious about it, by being very particular about who we let run games and who we let be at the table, but once we know and trust those people, Letting go and giving them control. I was not even in the green room. I let David run production for all of our all black tables, because my whiteness in that space would change the vibe. We’re looking at running another all black campaign and they, after seeing how the space I gave and how I treated it, they were like, actually we want you in the room for this one. Please be here. Which I actually fought for quite a while until they were like, K. But I mean we’ve been incredibly fortunate that we have reached out to people and they’ve agreed to come on and run games, play games, we’ve, I’ve been fortunate enough to play with Connie Chang with Naomi Kyle of G4 fame incredible, truly incredible people with Incredible imaginations, great stories to tell, and I love the little stories that I tell, and I love being able to sit back and either be a player in someone else’s world, or just watch other people weave something truly magical. And sometimes, the community just decided what we were going to do. Someone who was still anonymous to this day gifted me the My Little Pony TTRPG book when it came out, and I was like, welp. I guess we’re running My Little Pony, and so I got to run that adventure, and it was bananas and fun and just a pure source of joy. So yes, we run incredibly intense horror campaigns, we run really socially conscious games, and then we do My Little Pony! And everything in between. I don’t know

Courtney: 18:19

Yeah.

Kay: 18:19

answered your question there, but that’s where

Courtney: 18:22

Absolutely, yes. So I love to dig into processes. Ah, okay. You know, I’m a project manager, and so that’s, that’s my whole thing. But I guess I would love to know how your processes have evolved from the time that you first started with Godplane and you’re just starting out the channel and trying to get followers and whatnot. Like, how have your processes in preparing for a new campaign and actually doing the production changed from that first one up into, your current shows?

Kay: 18:56

I would really like to say we’ve like polished and streamlined. I have the ideal of what I would like to get done, what I would like to happen by what point, but with a TTRPG you are wrangling sometimes as many as eight or nine people. Schedules, approvals, all of that. So it kind of begins with who is running the game, because if I’m running the game, cool, I have a lot more control. Someone else is running the game, it’s okay. You as the GM, do you have, what is your vision for what the overlay should look like, for what the advertising graphics should look like? you creating that or do you want me to? We are incredibly fortunate that we get to work a lot of the time with Jason Wooldridge, who is just the most amazing designer. He designed the My Little Pony overlay that we actually were nominated for Best Overlay for Crit Awards for. And it looked like something out of the show. There was no question. So it comes down to then of, okay, who’s making it, what do we want it to look like, what iterations do we need, what is required, because a lot of what we run is theater of the mind. With our charity games especially, we have maps that are player facing only, because with some incredible people who have no internal visualization and need maps, and I don’t always have time to make a map for all the potential encounters, so it’s not pretty, but the audience doesn’t need to see it. We set all that up, we figure out what the release date is going to be, we agree on what the copy is going to be, is there going to be multiple, copies? Are there going to be multiple advertising images? Because I really like that. It keeps things a little bit fresh. Are we doing it still graphics only? Are we doing video? Sometimes we work with amazing people. Candice the Magnificent actually recorded a parody song for campaign of the God Plane, which they put on TikTok and it’s just a delight. And then it’s make sure people get there as early as they can for setup. That’s a challenge, because schedules are not great. Trying to make sure the overlay does what we want it to do. All of the streamer bot commands work how we want them to do. Is this a charity thing? Are there donations? Do donations unlock in real time? Do they unlock when the GM decides is relevant, which is what we did for the God Plane a lot. We hit milestones, and once those milestones were hit, the players could find a cache within the world when the narrative made sense. Whereas a charity game, oh, nope, it’s time to pull from the deck of many things, hope you don’t get dead, and you got death, okay. So, figuring out all of that, and again, ideally, overlays are done at least a month in advance, streamer bot commands and all that is ticked off and figured out. Often, literally had. Overlays come in the day before. We’ve been working off of temporary holding ones, hoping those are correct. You know, we are, we are wholesome, but also chaos is part of our name. So we, we roll with it. But a lot of the elbow work for me is the editing after making sure we’ve got separate audio for everyone, cleaning up that separate audio, putting it all together, cutting out commercial breaks. You know, doing all of those things. So there’s a nice video that lives on forever after, and we’ll hopefully have people see clips of it and go, Oh, maybe I want to follow this. Maybe these are stories I would enjoy. And yeah, making short form content. I hate making short form content. It is so necessary for everything we do these days, but I hate making short form content. I’m fortunate that I get to play with amazing people who make it easy. But it’s still like, I gotta cut it down. Okay. I’ve got to have it vertical for shorts and TikTok. I’ve got to have it this way for other socials. Do I have to have it this way for other socials anymore? Hmm.

Courtney: 22:59

That is, like, always the question of which social platform is it worth posting on today?

Kay: 23:05

Oh my goodness. I do community management and social media for my day job. And people just like, where, what’s social media now? It’s like, I don’t, your guess is as good as my,

Courtney: 23:15

also, that is really rough that you’re like, I hate doing short form content and that’s your day job. Mm

Kay: 23:24

I don’t mind other people. Making the short form content. I don’t mind saying, okay, we need short form. Use this clip, turn it,

Courtney: 23:30

hmm.

Kay: 23:31

But when you don’t have a team and you have to do it yourself, and especially if it’s your own voice and face in it,

Courtney: 23:37

Yeah.

Kay: 23:37

terrible.

Courtney: 23:39

Yeah, I am so terrible at like actually getting clips from this show, which I know I have to do. But it’s always just like, but I just spent hours editing and one hour to conversation. I don’t want to.

Kay: 23:52

Yeah. the one thing I’ve given myself, like the one happy that I’ve gotten is, especially for, I also do this for the Emergency of Power podcast, which is under the cataclysm umbrella. It’s a Starfinder actual play podcast. And GM does most of the editing, and so they pull funny

Courtney: 24:15

mmm.

Kay: 24:16

clips, and then I get to take them, and I have it pre set up in DaVinci Resolve. it’s audio only, so I just have a pretty, I have the character that’s talking, I have a waveform, and I just get to watch the waveform bounce, I make sure it’s good, I send it to everyone for approval, because And, you know, you want to make sure, especially if it’s going out to the audience at large, everyone’s okay being represented that way. And I just get to watch the waveform bounce, and that’s pretty great.

Courtney: 24:40

Yeah, not having to actually pick the sound clip. That, that’s the, that’s the battle. That’s the hardest part.

Kay: 24:46

Absolutely.

Courtney: 24:49

Hey, entrepreneurs. I love introducing you to new creators every episode, but I could really use your support. I would love to invite you to join our Patreon page where you’ll gain access to behind the scenes content. Add your questions to upcoming interviews, and you could even receive a shout out on our site in an upcoming episode. To learn more, go to Lightheart Adventures dot com slash rpg and now back to the show. So I did want to circle back on something that you said just to make sure that I understand how that works, which is that the donations you said can unlock at specific points if the GM wants it. And so, yeah, just talk me through what you mean by that.

Kay: 25:34

Yeah, so, you know, with charity games, obviously, real time. Oh, someone give us advantage right now, right? I love that chaos, but that chaos is not always conducive to all styles of games. Especially horror games, where Breaking the mood, breaking the moment can absolutely destroy the scene, can just take you out of it. one of the things I put together was people can donate. I keep track of those donations and they especially can unlock caches, and these caches will have things like healing potions, magical items, special items for each character, because the God Plane is very character focused. Depending upon when it’s run, it’s between 6 and 12 episodes, And, it’s a, a middle form, right? It’s not short form, but it’s not long form. And it’s very much, we start with these characters who are unknown, who have, clearly have interesting pasts. How do we get them to speed run a redemption arc, help them resolve the issues of this world? And so just all of a sudden, OOP, and this magic item just dropped in front of you doesn’t work very well. So Godplane has a lot of a Ravenloft feel where there’s, you’re in the mists everywhere, and there’s a compass which tells you how to get through the mists, and sometimes a little blue needle will pop up, will point players to item caches that audience have unlocked through donations. So there are magic items hidden in the world, but when it is time, they can go, Oh, what, what’s this? And they’ll have healing potions and magic items, and they can figure out who gets what. a way that makes sense, because they’re at camp, or they’re, it’s a between beat, and so we’re not trying to shoehorn a magic item appearing when we’re, you know, trying to decide, Hmm, do we trust this person? Are they here to betray us? We’re having a really intense conversation. Oh, look, a magic ring. Being a GM especially If you’re also running production is so much work, so I’m always trying to figure out whether I’m someone else is GMing on stream and I’m running production and or a player, how can I give you this stuff in a way that will not break your train of thought, that will not ruin the moment. try to, try to find ways to streamline things to make it for audience consumption and GM sanity.

Courtney: 27:58

Oh, for sure. Yeah. I really admire people like you that can GM live in front of an audience and make it interesting. I have only one long term campaign, and I don’t even like taking notes on my own stuff so I can’t even imagine just the pressure and additional work that has to go into like being on for more than just your players.

Kay: 28:25

I have DMed a long term campaign. The longest campaign I’ve ever run was 12 sessions. But I have also only ever run two sessions not streamed. I just jumped in hard mode. I was like, Well, here we go. I’m gonna, I’m gonna GM now. May as well do it live so I can watch back and critique myself and hate my life.

Courtney: 28:46

So was that literally like the first one you ever GM’d was live?

Kay: 28:49

Yeah.

Courtney: 28:50

Oh my gosh. All right.

Kay: 28:53

I am incapable of half assing anything. So yeah, I was like, well, if I have to do this, I may as well do it live. Heck it, we ball.

Courtney: 29:04

That is very admirable.

Kay: 29:06

Or foolish! Take your pick! I’m

Courtney: 29:09

mean, you’re still doing it and you have an audience, so I think it worked. I’m so

Kay: 29:15

grateful for the people who come out and support us and join in our stories, be it on stream or in the audience chatting, encouraging us on, giving us more ideas, giving us more puns GMs with. Like, I am so fortunate that I have these people who have Come and found my silly little channel, it’s, it means a lot.

Courtney: 29:38

So I am curious about, I mean, I think it’s going to probably be different for each campaign depending on who’s actually running it and whatnot, but I guess for the ones that you are more involved in, how do you find your cast?

Kay: 29:54

So, I tend to build tables around who I think would be a great fit for the game, the system, etc. I think it’s decently well known at this point that I am not the biggest fan of Powered by the Apocalypse and its subsequent systems. I really enjoy D20 systems. However, I can and will do Rules Light for one shots. So I look for, I’m looking for a system or a GM, you know, what’s that match there, who’s going to have an interest? If I am running it, okay, so what system are we running? Because I think it’s very important that your, you find the system that matches your game. Yes, I run a horror game in 5e. Is it the most ideal system? No, but for shorter term campaigns, most everyone knows 5e and I can ease them through it. Certainly a Trophy Dark is gonna be much more atmospheric, but I am not as good at running those. I first look for who would be the ideal person. Who do I want most? I will start making a list of who do I think would be good for this. And then I look at that list and go, okay, who do I want most? So if it’s like, I want Candice in this game, I’m gonna reach out to Candice first and say, Candice, I want you to play this. you to play in this. This is the game. This is the system. This is kind of the feel. Here’s some other people I’m thinking of inviting. Are you cool with all of them? And do you have anyone else you’d like to suggest? And then I take the list that person gives me, combine them, decide then, okay, who’s top three, reach out to the first top three and say, okay, we have this person confirmed. We’re looking at inviting these other two people. you have any? Concerns. Is there anyone that you must have at the table? Let me know. I think it’s very important, especially given what we’re learning about a lot of people in the space, to make sure everyone knows up front who’s going to be involved, make sure everyone knows the themes. When I invited Brian Urban Bohemian to come on God Plane, he was like, well, I don’t, I don’t know how well I can play horror because I’m usually the funny one. And I’m like, Brian, you will be amazing at this. And he was, right? when I was running My Little Pony, I’m like, Ohenio, DM Jazzy Hands, please, please come on. And he’s like, I am down, but I have never watched My Little Pony. And I’m like, watch these three episodes, because he said I want to play a party planner pony. And I’m like, cool, watch the first two episodes, and watch the one with Weird Al playing a party planner. And Got the assignment, showed up, brought it, was incredible. So you start with, and it’s also very important especially if you are a person who has skin my color, focus on your minority players first because especially if you’re doing open casting calls you’re gonna have a lot of white people, you’re gonna have a lot of men, you’re gonna have a lot of straight people. That’s gonna be the majority of your applicants. That is not a bad thing, but if you are wanting to commit to diversity and making sure that there are various viewpoints at the table, you have to start with the people who are going to be least likely to apply first, and make sure that they are comfortable, and then you can reach out to the other folks. So Again, and I hate that I have to say this, but this is where we are, DEI not mean that the people who are the diversity, who are diverse, are only getting this job, this role, because they are this. It means that they are as good as everyone else and we just want to make sure there’s space for them at the table. Because there’s a hundred applicants from straight white dudes. And, when we played our home game, the majority of our home game were straight white dudes. And I have been trying to get Kato to come on my stream and play with us forever. And he’s like, I’m a straight white dude, I don’t need to be there. And I’m like, but you’re hilarious, you are so brilliant. Nope, mm, I’m over represented. You have fun. And I also hate that I have to say this, but we do have to. Diverse spaces also have diverse abusers. So you also have to be aware that just because someone is gay or a certain skin color doesn’t mean that they don’t have the potential to be problematic. And you have to listen to when people. that people are problematic.

Courtney: 34:37

It’s definitely been a tumultuous couple of years

Kay: 34:40

Oh yes.

Courtney: 34:41

this space.

Kay: 34:42

And oh my goodness, people having drama? Never.

Courtney: 34:48

What? None of

Kay: 34:49

us are former drama kids. None of us are, are at all main character syndrome. No, we don’t.

Courtney: 34:55

Why would someone like that enjoy a game where they tell a story and center it on being a hero?

Kay: 35:03

That doesn’t attract a certain personality.

Courtney: 35:06

Not at all. Ugh, God, yeah, I I don’t know if you, have felt this way, but it’s definitely, you know, I always used to be like, okay, I’ll check social media profiles before I reach out to someone or if they reach out to me wanting to be on the show. But it seems like there’s almost like a little bit of a paranoia these days because it’s just like, okay, the media looks okay, but also there’s lots of media, so now I have to, like, go search in all of these different places and But also, are they actually okay?

Kay: 35:37

and with a lot of people like leaving say Twitter,

Courtney: 35:40

Mm hmm. A lot of their posts

Kay: 35:41

are gone. So if

Courtney: 35:42

Yep.

Kay: 35:43

that might be gone. I am really fortunate that I have grown this community that are dedicated to protecting people, to uplifting the right voices, and I have people I can go to now and be like, okay, I’m looking at this person. What do you think? What do you know? What have you heard? And they have never steered me wrong, so. Again, community is everything.

Courtney: 36:09

100%. Yeah. It’s, it’s so vital to have those networks and that is something that I love about having grown my show over the last several years and just engaging with people you know. Especially with, like, the smaller users, which I think is where I tend to focus a lot is trying to uplift, like, newer designers and whatnot. It’s always, very interesting, getting a fresh perspective all of the time. So I, especially since you’re a community manager for your day job, I’d love to talk about if you’ve got things that in this social media hellscape that you have found have been still working or tips on growing an audience and connecting with your audience.

Kay: 37:00

Unfortunately, everything is so tumultuous that it is just incredibly challenging. The other thing is, given the The state we’re in and we’re going to be for the next four years, it’s going to be more and more risky to use social media. If you have not downloaded Signal, cannot encourage you all enough to download Signal and to donate to them because they pay their workers above minimum pay wage, above average pay wage actually, and they run entirely off of donations. But it’s going to be a great resource coming up. Because, again, it’s gonna even be dangerous to talk about these diversity things here in the very near future. When growing your space, Discord is always a great, Discord’s great but the the thing I always stress, and this is true across your social medias, be it Twitter or Blue Sky, be it Discord, be it Wherever y’all are hanging out, Slack to people. I don’t think anyone uses, I hope no one uses Slack for personal, but what do I know. Anything you condone, you endorse. Any behavior that you tolerate will be seen as just acceptable, but allowed and encouraged. So, That’s my biggest thing, is if you start seeing questionable behavior, if you start seeing people pushing the boundaries, it is better to kick that person out it is to let them hang out, because they will bring more people who think like them, and then when people see that being tolerated, they will go, oh, this is a space where I can do that, and you’ve got a much bigger problem on your hands. But yeah short form content, video Gen Alpha especially is very into very casual, be very real, talk to people, don’t try to sell people. If you try and sell, it’s really not gonna work. But yeah, just being open, being inviting, being friendly and casual is Right now that’s the best advice I can give because everything is so up in the air and changing so quickly and Who knows what’s gonna happen next and are we potentially witnessing the death of social media? Maybe. We’ll see what happens.

Courtney: 39:31

Such a comforting thought.

Kay: 39:33

It’s really weird that Tumblr’s making a comeback, right? Like Tumblr is becoming a thing again and I, that hasn’t happened since they banned porn so I’m just watching this with popcorn.

Courtney: 39:45

Yeah, so what’s funny is I never actually got onto Tumblr. And it’s only in the last couple of weeks that I’m just like, should I do it? Why is this even a question now?

Kay: 39:56

At the height, I was never a Tumblr power user, I loved Tumblr at the height of Tumblr because I would follow the fandom and culture wars on Tumblr like most people follow sports teams. It was like, okay, who are the furries fighting with today? Okay, the Team Wolf fandom is up at arms. Who is it with? Let’s go. It was incredible.

Courtney: 40:22

Oh, it’s great. Yeah, there is this one project I’m It’s almost done that I was working on with a new game designer and he kept being like, yeah, you know, like I’m posting about it on Tumblr and like trying to get followers there. And I’m like, really? And this was three years ago. So it’s just the fact that he was just very actively on there and I’m like, I mean, okay. And now, he was the only person I heard talking about it until literally a few weeks ago and now everyone’s talking about Tumblr again. Yeah,

Kay: 40:51

Yeah, there’s always been some niche active fandoms, so if you could activate one person on Tumblr, they would go, everyone look at this new thing and come join me in obsession.

Courtney: 41:03

Mm hmm. It’s amazing. So one thing that I like to ask in every interview, we make content, we work, et cetera in this industry because we like games, presumably. If you don’t, why would you be here? But, obviously, there’s challenges. And so, I would love to know, outside of the social media marketing hellscape, what are some of the challenges that you’ve had to face as you’ve been trying to grow Chaotic Wholesome?

Kay: 41:34

Just finding an audience is always a challenge. We live in an era where everything is competing for everyone’s attention. Video games, mobile games, television, Netflix, TikTok, everything is competing for everyone’s time. Especially streaming, especially on Twitch, starting out. If you are wanting to start streaming on Twitch now, you’re gonna have to get very comfortable with the fact that you’re probably gonna be streaming to an empty chat room for at least the first year. Unless you get real lucky. Finding that audience is always the biggest challenge. And I always say, like, don’t try to partner with Ninja right away. You Find other small creators who share your values, who are interested in the same thing as you, and build your own little community. Don’t be selfish with your, with your stream times, with your community, with your activations, work together, share ideas, uplift each other, because the rising tide really does lift all boats. If you are trying to get into tabletop content to make money, it doesn’t matter if you are doing it. Third party PDFs if you’re doing indie games, if you are a streaming channel, it is difficult to get money, it is easier to get product, so you can get product to give away, then you also have to deal with shipping costs, international shipping customs, what if it gets lost in the mail, who’s responsible for replacing it, so there are a whole lot of challenges. You do this, you really have to do this because you love it. If you are trying to jump into TTRPGs to get rich, maybe there’s a small chance you could be the next Matt Mercer. But again, Matt Mercer didn’t get to where he was because of his DMing originally. It was because he was a very well known and beloved voice actor first. Please, please, if you are starting out, do not go out and spend thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars on equipment. Get your audio in line. Spend your money first on audio. You only really need a decent webcam, it doesn’t have to be great. Get your lighting done and upgrade your internet. That’s the first thing to do if you’re wanting to get into this. You’re gonna have to have a good processor if you’re wanting to run production on TTRPGs. It is so much more demanding on your computer and your internet speeds than you would expect. Yeah, those are, the challenges are, you know, Do you have the ability to even stream? Because getting into this is pretty much a privilege to start with. Part of the reason I produce as much as I do is, as much as I have, is because people have come to me and said, I just can’t do it. I can’t afford the equipment. I can’t get the good internet here. Learn to be patient and learn to adjust because Things happen. People are going to ghost you, people are going to no show someone’s internet is going to go down in the middle of a session. You are going to have to cancel minutes before or, or decide am I running with one less person? Figure out what your safety tools are going to be. Y’all we have available at chaoticwholesomepresents. com. We have a form fillable auto updating Google. based, lines and veils document that I was watching so many people try to convert PDFs into taking six people’s lines and veils, trying to put them into one master document that later could not be edited if someone went, I didn’t think about this, but I need this added. Figure out your tools, figure out what conversation you need to have, which can be what’s off limits. What’s your safety word, right? How do we get out of here immediately if we need to? What, many people have to be missing before we cancel without everyone’s feelings getting hurt because you have to discuss that beforehand or someone is going to feel targeted. There is a lot of equipment and process to figure out before you even start dealing with We’re a bunch of theater kids! Okay. There’s egos, there’s frustrations, there’s neurodivergence, there’s mental illness, there’s chronic fatigue, there’s physical illness. to deal with all of that. So you’re going to have to learn to be patient and flexible, because. If the party takes two hours to do what was supposed to be the first 45 minutes of your one shot, you have to get the rest of that story in there somehow and finish it without suddenly holding people captive for a seven hour one shot when they only signed up for a three hour one. That sounded very, that was very long and it sounded very doom and gloom, but again you do this because you love it and if you are aware of these challenges going in you’re going to be so much better equipped to run them, to deal with them, to put on an awesome show and leave everyone feeling happy and honestly if things go wrong And everyone leaves happy? It’s fine. The number of times we have had mid game, on air, everything has gone wrong, audio has stopped working, my entire computer crashed while I was running production one time, we had to turn it back, turn everything back on, switch production over to David’s computer, pick it back up mid game, I was like, I am so embarrassed, everyone is going to judge me, no one is going to want to work with me, we finished that game and everyone went, You just, you fixed it, you made it work, and you finished on time. I am so impressed. You’re the most professional person I’ve ever worked with. And I’m like, that was so not, thank you, but that was not professional. But thank you, but,

Courtney: 47:35

mean, that is impressive. I, it’s stressful. So stressful. But impressive. Okay, you’re right, it can sound doom and gloom. But that is why I like to follow up with, what is the most rewarding part of doing this?

Kay: 47:49

Oh, the most rewarding parts have come in ways that I did not expect. Obviously, you finishing, finishing the game, and everyone going, that was so great. That was awesome. Thank you. I had so much fun. I didn’t think I’d get to tell that story or I got to reveal that thing about my character. Like it feels so good. What really is amazing is when you realize that what you have done has impacted people beyond who’s at your table, beyond anyone or any way you would have expected. I don’t want to go into too much detail, but my co founder, my creative partner, David, has been in the hospital for a couple months now. And our community started recording videos and voice memos I could bring and play for him while he was stuck there. number one, that was so nice. Like, just them being willing to do that. But the personal stories that people have shared, the things that people have said about, I found your community through your talk show because you were talking about. Issues that I was dealing with other parts of my community and I would not still be in this space, I would not still have the friends I have if I had not, not just taken the advice that you’d given, but seen it handled in a way with kindness, with a logic but also, not just advice, not just tools, but the way you approached it, let me know that I was not alone, gave me tips on how to deal it, and how to remove myself from the situation if it just wasn’t going to work, because sometimes we don’t actually know where the boundaries are, and that they have been crossed until someone else tells you, yo, that’s, that’s not cool, that’s not okay. I would never have known that I had impacted those people in that way, had my partner not fallen ill, right? I’m not gonna speak for David, but I certainly cried, teared up listening to some of those. So, yeah the community you find, the people you find along the way, and occasionally learning that you did as much good for them. As they have done for you, is, there’s no words for how much that means.

Courtney: 50:09

That is so special and I’m I’m so glad that your community was able to pull together for you both. That’s so sweet.

Kay: 50:20

Like I said, I am so lucky to have the community I do. It’s the best part of what I do. I get to play games, I get to raise money for charity, games with people I adore. And then on top of that, I have an incredible community that I cannot wait to have enough pre written, pre built modules that I can run games for these people offline and we can all just be friends and play games together. It’s gonna be great.

Courtney: 50:47

Amazing. Well, Kay, do you have any upcoming projects that you are excited about and are able to talk about?

Kay: 50:58

So, Season 4 of the Emergency Power Podcast is actively being edited and will come out very soon. It is a Starfinder Actual Play. playing the worst character in the world. They are just an absolute scumbag. And Season 3 was kind of their coming to terms with the fact of the person they’ve become. And I can’t wait for you all to see their arc in Season 4. The cool thing about Emergency Power is season three is the longest season, but you can jump in at season three, there’s a really great recap, so if you’re like, hmm, I wanna dip my toe in and see, because we had two new cast members join at the start of season, no, we had three new cast members join at the start of season three, so you don’t have to go through all of the backlog to get to kind of the meat and potatoes. You can find us at the Table Talk show every Tuesday, where we talk all things TTRPGs from indies to intersectionality. And, got some other things coming up that I really can’t talk about too much, but there’s, there’s As I hinted at before, there is a third campaign of the God Plane that will hopefully be coming out this year. You can also find me over at Entropy Emporium every other Friday playing the Weird Wilds War, which is a homebrew 5e fantasy campaign where I play Brandon, the T Fork Drake Warden Ranger, who’s like never had a thought in his head. And he makes good Goodberries, and he just got to hand some out last night. And There’s a the only other thing I can really say at this point is there’s a Star Wars game in my future.

Courtney: 52:42

Amazing!

Kay: 52:42

lots of other stuff on the docket. Hopefully, we will have David back in action soon, and we’ll be able to do some of our charity games coming up, Pride Month, Black History Month, and or Christmas. But, right now, question mark, question mark, question mark.

Courtney: 52:57

Amazing. I will have links to things in the show notes. Kay, thank you so much for coming on today. This has been so fun and I feel like this last hour has gone by so fast.

Kay: 53:10

Thank you so much for having me. It was a treat to chat with you. And, you know, I hope I didn’t go too chaotic.

Courtney: 53:18

Not at all. It was very fun. Thank you, listeners, for hanging out today. At this point, I am going to stop the recording and then immediately start it back up where we are going to do a fun quick question blitz for patrons, where I am going to ask Kay some more silly questions, some of which are gaming related, some are not. If you want to check that out, you can go to patreon. com slash Roll Play Grow. Thank you for listening, and thank you again, Kay.

Kay: 53:49

Thank you. Bye!