Now and again I see people praising @VREcast for our short, self contained seasons.

I kinda have to laugh, because while that's absolutely something we strive for, internally we always joke that our seasons ALWAYS end up way longer than the GM intends.

Goes to show that the

medium of Actual Play is weighted extremely heavily in the direction of long, intricate, subplot filled, detailed, multi-arc epics.

Your Adventures Zone, your Friendses at Tables, your Criticals Roll.

And there's absolutely nothing wrong with doing that. What those shows try

to accomplish would be pretty darn difficult to pull off without dedicating, as they do, a ton of time to a single campaign.

But, boy. When the AP scene feels like it has only one shots or /hundreds of hours long campaigns/, it strikes me as not altogether surprising that the

medium's smaller shows have a problem attracting audiences. Hell. I don't commit to as many APs as I'd like because I don't always wanna roll the dice on some new show whose narrative payoffs aren't designed to come until, like, season 3.

So I'm happy that people find VRE

refreshing in that sense, but I guess what I'm getting at here is that it's astonishing to me that we are that shining example, when our average season is still like 16 45 minute-ish episodes.

That's a lot of commitment! Season 1 of Twin Peaks was 8 episodes long, after all.

In other words, our show is only notable because so so so few others are trying to do what we're doing, purely from a length perspective.

And I wonder why? Perhaps it's drawn from the notion that TTRPG (and DnD specifically) campaigns are often judged based on how long they've

existed. (How many times have you heard someone tell you about how their uncle's campaign has been going on for 150 years and everyone is level 20 with 45 completed paragon paths or whatever?)

But that neglects to remember that the audience is not a participant. They're an

audience. Sometimes they just want to binge a short story.

Anyway my show's really good listen to Very Random Encounters and start with any episode one of a system you think is interesting. No prior listening required. http://www.vre.show 

oh partway through this thread when I say our show is "only notable" because others aren't doing what we do, I mean "our show length is only notable because..."

Our show is really notable in other senses because it kicks ass.