Hi all,
I just finished recording, editing, rendering, and publishing the first 2 videos in my Pathfinder Adventure Card Game Skull & Shackles let's play series on YouTube...
I've been playing PACG since it was released at Gencon in 2013. In fact I was fortunate enough to be one of the volunteers teaching people the game on the trade floor. Lately I've been getting into streaming and gameplay videos for video games and wanted to see if I could branch out and do something with a game I really love. Thanks to Tabletop Simulator and lots of hours of work I am set up to play at least the adventure included in the box. Today I posted the intro/setup video and the video of the play through of Island Hopping in the Plunder and Peril adventure. My plan is to do 1 video per week (the production takes about 8 hours and I work full-time) of a single scenario attempt. Tabletop Simulator seems to have pretty poor memory management so as I begin adding adventure decks I may bump into limitations but I'll worry about that when/if it happens.
I'm using Jirelle and Lirianne because I like the idea of a pair of half-elf pirates taking on the world. If this proves to be problematic I might add a 3rd character but I want to see how far I can go with these two.
I hope you'll take a look at one or both videos and I'd love feedback. I've already made some layout changes for the next video. For one thing I won't use a separate view for the dice rolling. I've been able to fit it all into 1 HD frame now. I also know I need to vocalize better. I had to crank up the gain during editing because I was too quiet. If I can find appropriate royalty free music I'd like to have music during the entire game play but so far I only a couple tracks that I have approval to use. I've also got some lighting equipment on the way to make the cam video look better.
And yes I know I had some misplays and forgot some card effects. I'm used to Rise of the Runelords and not used to narrating while playing the game. Will be more careful in the next video.
Thanks for taking time to read my post!
Stephan
p.s. at the time of posting the HD version of the gameplay video isn't finished processing but the SD version is available.
I promise you, your going to need a healer. Me and my wife started the adventure path with the same two characters. And me and her have finished Rise of the Runelords 2 times. So lack of experience isn't the problem. We decided to add 2 more characters after the 2nd adventure deck. It just gets so difficult. A healer is worth their weight in gold from the 3rd through the 6th adventure deck.
We took those two through the AP with Seltyiel (also a half-elf) and Alaharzra, who isn't a half-elf, but is great for healing and scrying - once you start running into various henchmen or villains who are immune to some of your characters, she really pays her way...
Thanks for the feedback Brendthomas and MightyJim. I suspected having a healer would be the first change I would need to make. Oloch might be a fun addition.
If you look at Lirianne's backstory, she's not actually a pirate. She would have been a Shieldmarshal (what we would call a sheriff) in Alkenstar if a mysterious force hadn't taken her away.
TTS might be very bulky for what you're trying to do. Have you considered using OCTGN instead? The memory footprint isn't nearly as bad though you'll have to have multiple clients up.
Hey Zeroth thanks for the reply. I have considered OCTGN, right around the time when loading all my hi-res scanned cards in crashed Tabletop Simulator multiple times. But I'd already spent a considerable amount of time getting the cards in the format needed for TS so I decided to downscale them instead. I'm hopeful that since it is in early access that TS will improve its memory usage in time for me adding adventure decks. If not it will most likely become a question of pairing things down before each scenario so I don't have to load entire box contents. I'd still like to spend some time with OCTGN to see what it can do but it looked a bit more complicated for getting resources into.
2nd episode is up...