049 – How to start a TTRPG discussion podcast with Emil of the DoubleDM podcast

Emil: 27:46

Yeah. I think it’s the, it’s the biggest leap of faith you can do. You can plan all you want. You can wait until it’s perfect, but releasing something into the world is something you will always have to do. It will always feel a little scary. It will always feel like maybe you could have, in retrospect, you could always have done something better, but releasing something you’re happy with in that moment needs to happen. And if you do it, it almost always feels great. Universally true. I’ve talked to different people from podcasting, from streaming, from releasing tabletop role playing games on D&D home brew or music or whatever. And they all say you, at some point you will have to release something. So do it as soon as you think you’re happy and ready with what you have. And then do it. You will always have something to criticize later. And then you can, that just means that you’ve grown as a person. In retrospect, look at your first episodes and think that isn’t perfect. That just means you’ve grew as a creator. You’ve grew as a person and you’ve become better. You now know stuff you didn’t know before, so that’s just experience you’ve gained. If you never released the first episode, you would have never gained that experience.

Courtney: 29:02

It’s so true, like it’s funny. I actually think about how all the time I’m like, I don’t know that I want to go back and listen to my first couple of episodes again. I just, I want to continue believing that they were awesome.

Emil: 29:17

I feel the same. I’ve never listened to my first episodes ever again, after listening to them for the first time when they were released. Because very soon after I realized they were not great. But that’s okay. I’m not going to take those down. One of my podcasting friends, a lot of my podcasting friends actually, always were like, oh, our first episodes are so bad because, well, just like us, they just started because they wanted to, they didn’t put in the polishing work. You have some podcasts, which I know, you know, Reckless Attack have put in into their show. I will always praise Nathan and the whole Reckless Attack crew for what they’ve done for showing that people can create such polished works right from the gate, from the get go, which a lot of people don’t do. I mean, even Critical Role. When you look at it now, the first episode has so many audio issues, so many issues with talking and all of that stuff. They, they also started, oh, they also were figuring stuff out. And if Nathan is listening and listening to this, your first episode is better polished than Critical Role at campaign one episode one. Period. And that means something. But a lot of people didn’t put in that polishing work and that’s okay. You don’t have to, because a lot of us just do this because they want to, and putting in the polishing work is a lot of effort. It’s a lot of dedication that I knew in the beginning. I wouldn’t have, if I have to put that in before even starting. I would have never released my first episode if I had to spend six months polishing the product, the project and the episode. Then I would have never released it just simply of that, but I always tell a lot of my podcasting friends when they are like, “oh, our first episodes, aren’t that great. There’s a lot of audio issues and there’s things that would have cut out and I would have done things differently” and yes, that’s great. Please be proud of your project because a lot of people fail at the releasing step. And that’s always kind of sad to me when people fail at the releasing step so that you’ve even released something is such a great milestone. You should celebrate, even if it’s not great, by your perspective. I think it’s great that you release something. I think that’s great that you put your foot on the door and said, Hey, I am here and I’m here to stay. And then you can improve on what you already have, and it doesn’t matter where, at what step milestone you’re at, if you’re a polished, actual play, if you’re just a few friends sitting around the table with a phone in the middle of the room recording, and just uploading that to Spotify. Both of these are great starting points, but the one thing you will have to do is always focus on improving forward. And that is true for everyone.

Courtney: 32:07

I a hundred percent agree. Like there’s a saying that I really like that is “done is better than perfect.” It’s just, you gotta, you gotta start and you can’t compare yourself to the other shows that are out there, even if you’re comparing yourself to a newer show. And like you were saying, like Reckless Attack started off amazingly polished and really well done. And you know what, I know for a fact that they had kind of an advantage because Nathan, I went to college with him. Like he has kind of a radio background and he’s a really good interviewer. And so he already came into this with a lot of the knowledge and background that a lot of us just don’t learn until we’ve been doing this for six months, a year or more. I know it’s hard. You’re always going to compare yourself, but like you can’t, you just, you got to do it. You got to get out there.

Emil: 32:58

Yeah. And I think it’s also not bad to compare yourself. The problem, if you become fed up with comparing your, with comparing yourself, but if you come fed up with what other people are doing, you, you can compare yourself. You kind of, you can be like, okay, this podcast has way better polished audio. Why? Do they have better mics than us? Do they have better editing software? And then you can, most people, especially in this TTRPG space are very happy to answer questions and help you if you ask them, but you will have to ask them. I, for one, when I switched over to Reaper from Audacity, I just messaged David and Jonathan from Reckless Attack: how do you guys edit, and they were very helpful in helping me figure out how Reaper actually works, because I didn’t know frick about this program. And they were like, Hey cool, we can help you. You will need these free four pointers. These videos helped us. Do you have any other questions? And that was like, okay, I will look at this. I will work with this. And I started working with it and I will say our audio quality has improved since starting with Reaper. That is only because I was like, okay, how do they do this? I want that too. Or at least I want something like that too. And then I just asked, Hey, can you help me? And a lot of people will help you if you ask them. If I’ve been asked a couple of times already of how to start a podcast because I have been doing this for quite some time now. And people were like, okay, you do seem to know what you’re doing, which arguably by myself, I do not know what I’m doing. I just do stuff, but okay. People ask me and I’m like, okay, cool. Here are the pointers that helped me. And here are some tips that I learned along the way. I hope this helps. If you have any other questions, come to me. I will have time for you at some point. I can always, I will always try to help people before. I think it’s just part of, I think it’s just part of the core philosophy of also my project. I want to help people run their games. I want to help them create the best experiences they can around the table. I want them to create the best characters they can. I want to help them just be just have a great time playing these games, and if someone tells me that our show has helped them, that makes all the stuff I went through with the show worth it.

Courtney: 35:49

I feel like we’ve touched on this topic a little bit, but how has your process changed from episode one, to now a little over a year doing the show?

Emil: 36:03

So I think the process in theory, stayed a lot of the same, but a lot of the blocks have changed completely. I feel like it’s still Nils and I meet up for recording. We then put the episode into recording, into editing Blackbox, pull the episode open needs to be edited, edit it, and upload it and reduce it to the world and promote on social media. That has stayed through the whole show, always the same, but obviously a lot of stuff changed. Stuff changed about how we approach our recordings. At the beginning, it was like, okay. Yeah, let’s talk about new players at the table. Cool. Let’s do that. Nowadays, it’s we have lists of all the topics we want to do and all the guests we want to have on the show, and are like, okay, which of these are we taking for the next episode? Think what we’re taking, say, okay, let’s do this. And then we, over the course of, at least three days when we were recording is collect thoughts, any musings we have, any stories we have that relate somewhat to this topic. And then we write– we always call it a script, but it’s not a script. It’s just some talking points. It’s bullet points. It’s questions that help us guide our show. And there can be, for example, our first questions for the newest episodes is always some kind of philosophizing. 

For example, the newest episode of the show is player comfort. And we were like, okay, what does comfortable even mean? Because if you don’t know what comfortable means, you can’t talk about what it means to be comfortable or what it means to make people comfortable around you or in your audience at your table. So it was a lot. And then we collect that and then we talk about it before we start recording. We changed a lot about especially mic discipline or discipline in recordings that in the first few episodes we were moving our hats a lot. We were playing around with different fidgeting toys on our tables. And yeah, we stopped doing that because it’s just way harder to edit if someone moves their head around all the time and the audio is always different. Editors can hear those sorts of things. And they hate it. Everyone here who’s edited a podcast, knows that a guest that moves their head too much or has too much background noise or has too much different other things going on. They are going to be a pain in the ass, but they still do it and make you sound great. 

So we changed a lot about how we approach it, I think, and in general, I think the biggest thing we changed is how we approach everything we do with this project and product. And that is because we take it a lot more serious now. And I mean, everything, I take everything I do with this project and product 100% serious. I take every guest we have on our show serious. I respect them and respect their time. I make sure they are, they have all the information they need about us and about the show. I make sure that they have enough say in what becomes part of the episode in which does not because we cut out some stuff from sometimes. I make sure that they are comfortable recording with us and all of that stuff. When someone I try to take Twitter and social media and generally connecting with communities very seriously and try to not be someone that people don’t risk. I try to respect people, always. I always try to make sure that people are feeling safe and that people are feeling good. And I’m not in situations where I put them in which they are comfortable in. And yeah, I just approach everything very seriously and respectful because I think that’s one of the biggest things that helped me stay in this and create a better product is being serious about it because you won’t be able to improve your product much if you think it’s just a side thing that you do on the weekends, maybe, maybe not. Maybe I released an episode in two weeks. Maybe not. You, you need to be serious about it or people know, people will know and people will be like, if you don’t take your product seriously, I also won’t take it seriously.

Courtney: 40:23

I love that. I think it is really important to have the right mindset of, you know, is this something that I’m just doing for fun and I don’t really care or is it no, like I have a goal. And you know, whether that goal is helping people or getting the word out about a topic. You have some really great points.

Emil: 40:43

Oh, yeah. I also want to say that. If you don’t want to take your stuff seriously, that’s also an option, right? You don’t have to take your stuff as serious as I want, but I think if you, especially, if you’re wanting to make money off of stuff, you need to take the stuff seriously, because it’s something that might be come your, that might make you financially stable, that might actually pay something for you. And if you don’t take it seriously, it becomes way more unstable. As it becomes a way more unstable source of income or whatever for you, if you don’t take it seriously, because you never know when some people decide to just not vibe with your stuff anymore because you change something. And also not to say, hey on Twitter. I am, I post a lot of weird stuff and as well as one says, shit post a lot of different things. So it’s not like I’m this always serious business, personal, all of that. I still crack jokes every now and then, but that’s part of the product. That’s part of the Double DM podcast that we present everything in a fun and enjoyable way. Behind the scenes, I take everything seriously. I have deadlines. I make sure that I give my guests enough notice, that they know what we’re talking about, that they have enough inflammation that my co-host has enough information, that I treat every episode as a full on episode or not just where this episode is my favorite and this episode is not, this episode is just so I can fulfill the timetable. Yeah. Then that episode won’t be your best episode ever listened to because you’re not taking your episode seriously yourself. So yeah, I think thinking about your stuff way more as a serious thing you’re doing and not just a hobby makes it all easier to approach the stuff in general to become better at stuff. I feel like if you’re taking stuff serious, it’s way easier to improve on things. If you’re taking it seriously.

Courtney: 42:38

Mhm. How do you decide on what topics y’all are going to talk about?

Emil: 42:41

That is a very fun process in that Nils and I have a Discord server where we put everything we need for our podcasts. So that is show notes. That is clips; that is posts on Twitter and all of that stuff. And then we just have a list there, a big post, which has a long list of episode titles or nearly episode titles. For example, if I go into that list now, there’s going to be a very different things on there that haven’t even crossed off. For example, we have an episode on note taking. So one of our notes in our list is note taking and that is then that, and then we decide, okay, what do we want to talk about this week? And then one of us says, I want to talk about this because this is relevant to myself right now, or because I think I have a lot of very good points on this right now, or just because we want to, and then we take that and then we say, okay, this is this week’s recording topic. We will meet when we record, this is what we talk about. And as for what comes onto that list is everything. I never throw away an idea. 

We never throw away anything. There’s some things on that list that probably will never become an episode because they’re just not good topics, but I still throw them on there just to make sure that, Hey, maybe I can spin something later out of this. And maybe I can make this into, okay– this topic doesn’t really fit. Like it’s an episode that we would do, but this adjacent thing, that could be something very fun, and then I can just change the point and then put it in there and then Nils and I say okay. We want to record, we can look at the list and select whatever we want to do. We all have a list of, we have a long list of guests we want to record with, because well, as a show that is not located in the US, it’s a lot harder to schedule with people sometimes. Especially if they are in the PST area, which for this show might’ve worked, but there were few episodes where we scheduled with PST people and had to reschedule six, seven times before even this working out. But, yeah. And then we always like when, when we have a guest it’s going back to, I want my guests to feel comfortable. I make sure that the guests selects the topic. I want them to talk about the thing that they want to talk about because not everyone is the expert on everything. So letting them decide what they want to talk about and then bringing their hot topics or their ideas and their inspiration to the table. It’s a lot in making sure that my guests provide the best information possible and that the episode with my guest feels, as the best episode that I can create with them.

Courtney: 45:28

That sounds really thoughtful, honestly, like, I appreciate how much preparation goes into that, cuz I know i t can be a really hard with the discussion podcasts, especially when it’s a weekly one, I’ve just week after week. Like, okay, well, what are we going to talk about this time? But I appreciate the, the variety of topics that you have already, and I’m excited to keep following that as you grow. I do want to make sure that we have some time to go over some of my more signature questions, if you will. You have been doing this for about 14 months now. It’s really been just over that since you decided that you wanted to do it in the first place. So through out all of this journey that you’ve been so far, what would you say has been the most challenging part?

Emil: 46:15

Scheduling with my own cohost. My co-host works in retail and has a schedule that is decided every single week. So it’s always like, okay, can you record this Thursday? No, I have to work. Okay. Can we do Friday? Yes. But only at this specific point in time. Okay. Somewhat works. Let’s do it and yeah, that, but no other thing is probably getting people interested in educational content in a place where there isn’t a need for people telling you how to do things. Right. And as I said, our show is inspiration and insight into running games in a space where no one asks when no one wants to tell you how to run your games. Because TTRPGs are, everyone can play however they want. And that’s one of the true core tenants. I always try to adhere by. Play however you want. If it works for your table, it works. And I can’t tell you otherwise, but I can still provide insight into what I think some people can do to fix the in quotation marks problems they have. For example regarding dungeons or puzzles, which is a very hot topic apparently for TTRPGs because they challenge the player and not the character. And I’m always like, yeah, but if you would make them challenge the character, you wouldn’t have a problem. So why do you say that? And, yeah that’s one of the things, for example, that we discussed in our puzzle episode. I think that’s still where we don’t tell people how to run their games. We can’t tell you put in puzzles in your games, but we can still tell you that puzzles can in fact challenge the characters and not just the players and how to do that. I think that has been the most of the hardest part, really, in how do I get people to figure out that my show is helpful for them because we have a lot of stuff that, that can help them without making it sound like, “Hey, I know how to run your games better than you do,” because that is something I will never say to someone because I don’t.

Courtney: 48:25

I mean, honestly, as somebody who is still newer to your show, I feel like you guys have a really good chemistry going like. Every one of the episodes I’ve listened to, you’ve just been super friendly and it feels really approachable. And so I have to say, I have not once felt like you were saying, this is how you have to play your game, like you’re doing it wrong.

Emil: 48:50

That’s really reassuring to hear.

Courtney: 48:52

Yeah. It definitely feels really just helpful on here’s some suggestions and you have some really good discussion going because you don’t always agree. And I think that’s why it makes your show super interesting

Emil: 49:03

Mm, yeah, I think with Nils, especially we, we don’t always agree on a lot of stuff. There’s a lot of stuff we actually don’t agree on and I like, I can see your point, but no, I do it differently. And I think, especially in those moments, that always shows that. Everyone can run their games differently and still discuss the things and how they do stuff, which is why I really enjoy also talking to people on Twitter about certain things. Because especially if we’re both on the same page as you run your games and it’s fun for you. Perfect. I don’t want to change your opinion. I just want to state mine. Then I’m always for down for it, because that always leaves me with a lot of insight into that I could maybe consider next time. There’s been a lot of things where I changed my perspective on things after I tried Nils’ approach or someone else’s approach that we’ve had on the show or listened to on Twitter, for example.

Courtney: 49:58

Well, let us flip that question around. What, instead, over the last year, ish, what’d you say has been the most rewarding part?

Emil: 50:08

Right from the get-go it was connecting with the TTRPG community. It was connecting with the many creators that I by now call my best friends in the whole world. I can’t shout them all out, but Nathan from Reckless Attack, someone we’ve talked about already, Allie from Dice Drop Evolution, Eli from Mayday Roleplay, and there are a lot of different people that have helped me grow as a person, as a creator, and connecting with these people, getting to know them and also I’m helping them with their problems and their projects has been a lot of fun and the most rewarding part, really.

Courtney: 50:46

Yeah, I have to agree. It’s been really amazing getting to connect with so many different people in the community. So I, I hear you on that one. I would like to know if you have any upcoming projects or goals or things that you’re excited about, that we haven’t talked about, that you are able to talk about.

Emil: 51:06

Yes, one very big thing is that for nearly a year now I have been having this thought in my head. A year ago, it was just a thought. Now it’s an actual project is Double DM was not supposed to just be a discussion show. It was always supposed to be more of a production studio even you could say where we produce live a lot of different shows. We are currently producing our second show, which was called Titans Call it’s a D&D 5E actual play podcast set in a very dark and grim world where the players are the heroes that are kind of a light in the dark, in a world that is on the brink of apocalypse really. It’s players are in, in the first episode I have talked about this a few times already, so I can just say that, we’ll be, witnessing the beginning of the apocalypse, and we’ll have to try to make sense of everything that happened because there’s a lot of different things that happened. And the only question they had is why and what, and how and what …ehh? That has been the feel from our players since we started that. That is coming out at some point. I don’t know when yet, because we are still in the recording process of that, but yeah, we are also producing an actual play. We have plans for future actual play shows and more different shows, but that’s really just written in the stars. But for now it’s really our actual play show that is coming out, especially, or definitely this year, probably in two or three months at this time.

Courtney: 52:45

That is really exciting. I will be looking forward to that.

Emil: 52:49

Yeah, I am too. Just today, I’ve been messaging a lot with Nils who is again, the resident artist for Double DM. So he is mocking up the first promo piece for that right now. And with Titans Call, the name is really showing what the show is about in the first few episodes, because especially the word Titan, because all of us when we were playing that and all of my players and me were on a big attack on Titan hype when we were like, okay, we want to do this. And that’s kind of every model of this. So a world that is beautiful, but cruel to its people. There’s a lot of mysteries involved. And then I watched Godzilla vs Kong and was like, okay, I want Godzilla in this in some way or form. Okay. We have only one type is Godzilla now and new smoking up a promo piece that is a very reminiscent of, of, of the movie Godzilla, of the movie posters for Godzilla for us, and I think it’s going to look epic, and I’ve been very excited seeing the sketches he has made already. So that has been the fixation and happiness of the day.

Courtney: 54:04

That’s super cool. I’m excited for you. Well, thank you Emil for coming on that today. If people want to find you, find Double DM, where should they go?

Emil: 54:17

Well, first of all, thanks again for having me on this show. Where they can find us is everywhere under the name Double DM, really. If you’re wanting to listen to the podcast, just search on Spotify, apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts with Double DM, that’s where we will find all our episodes. We’re also in the process of uploading everything to YouTube if you’re preferring that platform. That’s not everything yet, but around half of the episodes already. So also yeah if you want to check out the podcast, you can do that that way. And if you want to check us on social media, it’s always under @DoubleDMpod, just at the little pod at the end of DoubleDM to signify that we did a podcast on social media. So we are very active on Twitter with daily content, daily memes, shit posts and connecting with people, talking about projects and, and discussing TTRPGs, in all ways, shapes or forms. And yeah, that’s about it where people can find us.

Courtney: 55:14

Awesome. I will link to all of those in the show notes. But seriously, thank you so much for coming on. This has been a really fun discussion, and I’ve enjoyed getting to know a bit more about you.

Emil: 55:25

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. It’s been a pleasure, really to be on the show and talk to someone that has interviewed a lot of cool people before and now becoming part of that roster of, of cool people is, has been very fun.

Courtney: 55:41

I just enjoy getting to talk to cool people like yourself and y’all make my job really easy.