300

The 300th episode just went live. It’s not numbered 300, because I’ve mucked up the releases at various stages, but that’s where we are. It’s not a big celebratory episode, because this is a sombre year filled with exhaustion.

This has been a tricky year, and in terms of Games From Folktales, it still hasn’t quite found its equilibrium since I let a raft of episodes free when people in the Northern Hemisphere were in lockdown. The ship should right itself in time. In the New Year you can expect three running series of episodes each month, filled in with an extra or two from whatever has been amusing me lately. This is basically because I’ve been spending all of my research time on Magonomia, and so I’m more dependant on raw material than usual.

The series are Venice, The King of Elfland’s Daughter, and The Pentamerone. The first Pentamerone episode was just bought forward to fill the gap I’d left for 300, which was to be the completion of my Post A Day project over on the Atlas forums. I’m sure Post a day is an aspiration where we make useful things even if we fail, so I don’t feel terrible at it stalling at 12 monsters.

I’m not really happy with my Pentamerone episodes because I didn’t understand my source material was as bowdlerised as it is: My initial plan was to use the public domain source I had to tell the 32 stories that were republished in the Victorian era, then use a modern translation to add the 18 excised stories. The problem is that the 32 have been severely hacked about. In the cases of the three I’ve just released, the changes vary from minor things (the flea grew large on the blood of the king) to major (about a third of the story with the hydra is missing, I believe, and the Cinderella we have is a cold-blooded murderess in the original). I’m going to record a little supplemental episode to tack to the Pentamerone episodes already recorded to explain the differences. These won’t be part of you weekly cycle. I can’t just edit them in, because my podcast host charges by data uploaded the previous month.

In terms of how the podcast is going: well, it’s not going to take Joe Rogan’s crown anytime soon, but that was never the goal. My goal is to give you a little bit of Ars each week, to keep a pilot light burning for the metagame. There were just over 1200 downloads in November. That’s not just for the four episodes: it does include people arriving and downloading the whole back catalogue, so it can be hard to tell how many regulars GFF gets. I’m certain its above 30 and think it’s around 50. To really nail it down I’d need to pay my podcast host slightly more, and it doesn’t matter enough to me to pay the extra money.

That number may seems small, but that’s just because you are used to Night Vale numbers. I like to think of it as 50 people turning up for a chat once a week, and that seems like an extraordinary number. Also, everyone’s numbers are small this year – the lack of commuters in the US and UK has torpedoed podcasting. I’d like more, of course, but the goal was never “Get a lot of subscribers and sell them adverts, then retire.” it’s just to be amusing and useful.

Games From Folktales covers its hosting fees now, thanks to the Patreons. Every so often there’s a little bit of extra money left over and I use that to expand my podcasting plan and lengthen the episodes, which is why you’ll notice that the average length per month next year is going to be about half an hour greater than this year. I also bought my first ebook specifically for GFF research, because the interlibrary loan system in Australia has closed down for now. To give you some idea of what’s coming up, it’s Daughters of Alchemy by Meredith K. Ray. I started Venice with a metaplot I liked, and I’ve been blindsided by a better thing which is already there.

Thank you all. You have been a great comfort in a trying year.