The following is the state my audio paper is currently in, right now it feels as if the majority of the paper will be centred around the discussion with the crew of Ghosts on a Train, I do not produce an actual play podcast and so instead of speculating I am going to go to the AP podcast in the network I am in.
I am going to talk about the relationship between the listener and the storyteller and the place that a sense of immersion takes in this relationship. In this case with a much more modern framing. I come from the world of Audio drama podcasts, the cousin of audio drama is the actual play podcast. Actual play is a form of storytelling where you have (usually) a group of people playing a tabletop role playing game. This can go from the extremely popular Dungeons and Dragons to more niche systems like Ghost Lines.
Audio drama is what I do, it is the form of storytelling where a script comes to life, sometimes with a narrator, sometimes with sound effects, and sometimes with voice actors. The story can be emphasised with sound effects, the images conjured up by the words are strengthened in the minds of the listener with the help of ambiences and sound effects. There are whole extra narratives happening in the ambience of an audio drama: take, for example, the sounds of gunshots off in the distance which suggest many things, but can be more solidified into a moment with the context of the words, be it by narrator or character. Audio drama in this sense of well produced worlds lends itself really well to a sense of immersion. It’s something I feel Audio Drama can do so well and is one of the mediums strengths. This is not the only way of thinking though,
“one must make it quite clear that the urge of the listener to imagine with the inner · eye is not worth encouraging, but, on the contrary, is a great hindrance to an appreciation of the real nature of wireless and the particular advantages that it alone can offer. “
while it is written in the context of radio in 1936, its still an interesting thought about what it is AD should be doing
This way of thinking I feel comes from a time when people in the world of radio were feeling threatened by cinema, its rising popularity in the 1930s and 40s represented a threat to what was previously the dominant form of entertainment. I can only speculate, but Arnheim perhaps felt the way to keep radio (or ‘wireless’ as he refers to it) relevant was to cover areas that cinema could and did not. Now though the landscape is different, podcasting has brought the audio medium a new aspect and a new life which I believe is not so threatened by cinema (a medium which is currently being threatened in its own right)
Actual play is a medium in which sessions of various tabletop role-playing games are recorded. These have existed in some form or another since the early 2000’s the more modern version of actual play podcasts owe their popularity to one of the most prolific and widely known actual play podcasts ‘critical role’ which was released in 2015. The typical setup of an AP podcast has a Game Master, and a few players. The role of the player is to create a character that they act as, rolling to see how successful their actions might be and having conversations in character. The players typically know little to nothing about the story that is being created. The GM however has control over the story and will plan out the situations that these characters find themselves in, they will also take the role of narrator and any character not played by a player.. The plot is constantly evolving, it is almost a living organism that responds to certain stimuli and will change depending on the circumstances (often a player behaving in a certain way or doing well/poorly with a roll) This, almost conversational, approach to telling a narrative is really quite unique. The role of sound is similar, it is used to emphasise and immerse, there is a slight challenge though as it is common practice for the GM and players to talk both as themselves and as the character/narrator, to discuss a ruling or crack a joke. This creates a strange sort of in-between space, where the sound can halt or continue and thwehe
I talked with Greg Carrobis of the actual play podcast Ghosts on a train about the experience of creating an actual play.
1) I’ve identified a sort of ‘grey space’ where the gm and players act as themselves for a moment, I can’t help but view everything from a more theatrical pov because of my parents but it’s sort of breaking the fourth wall right? In all mediums there is the understanding that this is fiction and there is a necessary suspending of disbelief, but when it comes to AP it feels like this suspension has to happen pretty frequently and the fourth wall is kind of… leant on a bit. I was just wondering what your thoughts are on this?
2) What’s your approach to doing sound in these grey spaces? Do you encourage them or try to edit it out mostly?