Hello, and welcome to snows return a tabletop role playing podcast. Easy chowder for you will last in the bright lights of the big city of Atlanta. They will come soon, the shepherds to lead you to the camerea for the night is dark and full of terrorists, including you. My guest tonight is a storyteller, voice actor podcaster Dungeons and Dragons total and director. She guides the shepherds coterie in the twitch stream ATL by night. So let's start a vampire story. Welcome to the weaver of dark fates. Ellie Collins. Ellie, welcome to the show.
Ellie Collins:Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here.
Snyders Return:It's it's an absolute pleasure. I appreciate you agreeing to come on. Before we get into what you are currently doing. Would you mind giving us a little bit of background about yourself and how you got into tabletop role playing games, please.
Ellie Collins:I got into tabletop. First with vampire my friends introduced me to it when I was 13. And then I got into Dungeons and Dragons A few years after that, and just played at school with my friends, I would come to Atlanta, because I'm originally from Alabama. And I would come to Atlanta to play in vampire larps with other people. And it just kind of grew from there.
Snyders Return:All right. Well, thank for for that little black background. So where did at all by night and making that clear distinction between ATL and Atlanta? Where did he go by night sort of spring from? And what is your involvement with with that been like?
Ellie Collins:It's been wonderful. So it started with, I run a DND home game for myself and some of the cast and crew of my horror audio drama podcast, the blood curse stories. It's myself as the dungeon master with nine players. And it's a big game. And we would tell people kind of the stuff that would happen and show the maps that I had built for them. And everyone wanted us to stream it. But since we're all actors, and creatives and crew, we kind of wanted one creative thing that we didn't try to profit off of. And so I said, well, I've been really wanting to run a vampire game and vampire kind of is more attuned for streaming. And at that time, la by night was already airing. And so when I went to choose the name, there was a LARP group in Atlanta for many, many years, called Atlanta by night, or I think it was Atlanta interactive theatre. But they called their Chronicle Atlanta by night. And I've just always held an immense respect for how long their LARP group was going all the stuff that they did. So we decided to go with ATL by night, which is it's technically the airport code for Atlanta. But it is something that that like a lot of local say, or just like, yeah, I'm from ATL. So that's kind of our way of putting that bit of locality attitude on to our own Chronicle name.
Snyders Return:Alright, so take us through the, the sort of background of of ATL by night where where did the story start? And without going too much into it or spoiling too much if you choose not to? Where does where do we find the story today?
Ellie Collins:So one of the things to start with that makes Vampire the Masquerade very unique to things like Dungeons and Dragons, is that there is a grander world canon. So the, you know, official released books, and official release novels, that is the Grand Canyon. And so the last cannon that we have for Atlanta is a book called The Fall of Atlanta from the final Knights. And that's it. There hasn't been any new content for Atlanta for to cover the last 20 years. So when we started our Chronicle, we decided the camera rella managed to regain power after the final night's ended. And I'll leave that one vague, but the they regained power and they have been forming kind of this rebuilding of Atlanta because in the final night's Atlanta was almost completely wiped off the map. And so we pick up with that cannon that it was devastated. So now we have, you know, a very, you know, skeleton crew camera court. And we have the shepherds who are the coterie of the show finding the lost child or as their, their request starry coterie, which is a coterie that has a main goal, a quest that they have to do. And the last childer are what this faction of the camera has dubbed anyone who was orphaned by the final Knights. So during the final nights, the sebata turned a lot of people just to be shovel heads, or they just were kind of going wild and turning people indiscriminately. So these are a lot of people that post final night's have nowhere to go, they may not even understand what's happening to them. And so it's our cast job to bring them in and help ferry them to sort of a finishing school kind of a Professor Xavier school for gifted youngsters. But for vampires.
Snyders Return:I like that reference. I like that. But it's it sounds really, you say unique, but it's all built on the canon, as you say that sort of 20 years old, but engaging, definitely. So what what has it been like for producing the twitch stream over the last couple of seasons,
Ellie Collins:it initially was far more expensive than I thought to accomplish what we wanted to accomplish. By doing it in a stream style has been, I think, in my in my personal feelings, the best way for me to play vampire because coming up through doing LARP for so many years, I've played the same character for larps for 16 years, and she worked her way up to Prince. So I've had 16 years, you know, being used to having this like community interaction aspect to what I do. And we get that in a live sense with Twitch, I always have the twitch stream pulled up both so I can make sure that the cameras are technical. I do apologise my dogs can, if you can hear my dogs, they hear an ice cream truck outside. Um, but the I have the stream up to, you know, make sure that cameras are on. We have connectivity and everything. But I can also see the chat and getting to see live reactions getting to hear from fans while we're going. It kind of brings that little bit of community atmosphere from LARPing to a digital age, which is especially important right now. And then we had a lot of unique challenges with the pandemic hitting. But we like the crew and myself and the cast. We are all very much homebodies we have been very like aggressive with quarantining because we all wanted to keep making this show together. So we've made it to where this is the one place where we go around other people. And we do that specifically so we can keep doing the show.
Snyders Return:And you're doing such an excellent job though. I remember seeing on Twitter, I think today or yesterday you were struggling with zoom. But
Ellie Collins:that one is new, because we're we have one cast member that because he works in film, and film has a lot more strict guidelines on what people can and can't do during the pandemic. He can't be on the show anymore, physically with us. So we have built up these vignettes, that kind of cover because his character is wonderful, and we don't want to say goodbye to that character. So these are vignettes where we get to follow what he is doing while the group is doing their main stuff. Because he did take on the position of Scourge within the camera rella which is sort of like the sheriff enforces the law but the scourge does the execution of the law. So we have these vignettes following him which we do over zoom with special guests and everything we have one our first one features Mark Mir, who's from Mass Effect, and we get to do these fun cool things but it is a unique challenge learning how to do the games through zoom.
Snyders Return:I couldn't imagine I'm I'm yet to tread that murky water of of interactive media. Yeah. You mentioned the your, your cast. Would you mind taking us through your cast and their characters just just briefly so anyone that's listening can maybe catch a thread and maybe engage with one of them?
Ellie Collins:Absolutely. First we have Leona roar. She plays Thomasina who is a ventrue. She is a superintendent very headstrong. We have Zachary Votto who plays and Tom Wolfe, who is a college professor and a tremere, who are like the warlocks. We have Renee Cooper, who plays hexadecimal. She's a Nosferatu and a big time gamer. We have Brittany transpower Smith, who plays Melisandre. And she is a brouhaha. But she's very like she's a CNN CORRESPONDENT. She's more of the there's a brouhaha kind of background called like cancer in the system, where like she's a part of the politics to make it better. And then we have Tyler Sutherland, who plays Aaron, who is a gang girl, and he is a detective. And so he uses his Gangrel powers as a detective.
Snyders Return:So a very varied cross section of the vampire society. I think that's a fair way of phrasing it.
Ellie Collins:Yeah, they they did a really good job with in our session zero of character building, because the only person in this group that has remotely played vampire before is Zach, the tremere. He mainly has played other world of darkness games like changeling, but everyone else is new to the game. They're all brand new, they're my friends who I thought would have a lot of fun. So we kind of get to take that angle with it as well, because V five is still new for a lot of people in LA by night has helped bring vampire to a lot of new people. So in having new players, we also make sure to explain what we're doing and explain the roles that we're doing, as we're doing them so that people can also kind of learn along with the cast.
Snyders Return:All right, well, you mentioned that la by light by night. And there there are sort of by night I don't want to call them franchises. That's unfair on the creators. But there's la by night, there's a try night you are involved in iron city by night there is yes. Also Vancouver as well. So would you mind taking us through your involvement with iron cities by night, please.
Ellie Collins:Okay, ah. So the the by night thing is it's kind of a naming convention. Because the old books were named that way and Chronicles will get named that way. So now a lot of stories have just become this city by night. And so you'll see that with books as well. Iron city by night iron city is the nickname for Birmingham, Alabama, and I'm originally from just north of Birmingham. So I've joined that show. I will be playing Madeline a Nosferatu and she's a specific kind of Nosferatu that has always really intrigued me called a Cleopatra. And Cleopatra's are Nosferatu that were turned to teach them a lesson. It's to essentially make your outside as ugly as your inside. So I had She's a former college cheerleader, she was a bully. And now she's a very hideous Nosferatu trying to get by in Birmingham, Alabama.
Snyders Return:Wow. That's quite a shift. If that's all right to say, so mentioned a couple of places. If people are maybe we picked some, at least somebodies interest, I'm sure a number of people will be will be interested, where can they go to find you, and the content and the things you're involved with?
Ellie Collins:Please. So on Twitch, I am twitch.tv slash ATL by night. Twitter is twitter.com slash ATL by night. It's pretty much ATL by night everywhere. I personally am at Twitter at Le underscore a underscore Collins and I think I'm le underscore a underscore Collins everywhere If not, there's a dot instead of underscore.
Snyders Return:Fair enough, I'll make sure there are links to as much of that as I can find, for people to go and reference and and sort of engage with you and the show slash shows because I'm sure there are links to that a few of the others as well. So you are sort of treading the line between the storyteller for at all by night and Kindred for iron cities and sort of with all the other by night prospects out there, what's been your biggest influences on how you do your storytelling and how you play vampire.
Ellie Collins:I think a lot of my influences have come from kind of an amalgamation of everyone that I've worked with over the years. And then the d&d campaign that I've been running, I was always I was a voice actor first, before I became a DM. And so a lot of voice acting stuff has kind of come into my dming style, which wound up informing my storytelling style because I prefer vampires, more RP leaning, as opposed to Dungeons and Dragons more mechanic heavy. And so it's kind of influenced my style, just from LARPing of having voices and putting more effort into the NPCs and the characterization. So a lot of my descriptions, and guidance to the characters are less personally theatrical, I described things. But I think someone described it as I'm very neutral, when I storytel. And then that means that when there's an MPC, so much more comes out of the MPC, that it makes them fully fleshed characters, so I tend to focus on delivering the information in a neutral way and then having very bombastic NPCs.
Snyders Return:Alright, well, that's certainly a style that works for you and, and you manage to in in Thrall and entertain many, many views of the stream and on Twitter and various other places you can be found so clearly works and is a fantastic way of doing things. You mentioned their pleasure. You mentioned their Dungeons and Dragons, recently tweeted a time of recording. We got a brief insight into varu your tortall. Would you mind telling us a little bit more about your Dungeons and Dragons side of things, please?
Ellie Collins:Absolutely. I've been playing d&d for for many, many years. I always like to play very, very unconventional characters. I don't think I've ever played a human or an elf. I tend to drift towards the monster races. Our home campaign when we started, I actually limited my players to I built an entire continent, and huge world map for them. And I told them, there are no humans, no elves, no gnomes, no dwarves no halflings. Essentially, if it could pass for a human in society, they don't exist here. You can pick your races from Volos guide to monsters or any of the monster races. So we have this really unique campaign going at home that and now we do of course on zoom, where, you know, we get to explore a lot of the same things. But without the safety net and comfort of playing humans. And then I bring that into my character varu, who I use for a lot of one shot guest appearances just because she's a very fun. One shot character. She's a turtle. And she is a druid who she's just very shy and she's very kind and not so great with people. She kind of, you know, talks out of the side of her mouth a little too much. But she she's very fun to play because and I think it's because a lot of people don't think about the major bonuses and challenges that come with playing a lot of these characters because a turtle in battle when they decide to go into their shell, they have an AC of 20 you know, they they get almost impenetrable in lower level fights. And so it's a lot of fun to play a character that has these really wonderful strengths but socially she's just not that great.
Snyders Return:Sounds like a fantastic Carter. Welcome at any table. I would I would think so. You mentioned there about home game and well building How is it your approach well building from either a DM or storytellers perspective? How is it you go into The process of creating and fleshing out a world or an environment that you want to present to your players.
Ellie Collins:Um, so the, the way that I do it got, it was labelled years ago, by another dm that that I was with as the flashlight approach, which is I build the world. And then the players have a flashlight more or less, and wherever they shine, that light is what I'm going to flesh out and build. And it keeps me from getting too overwhelmed. So with our home game, I built this non human world. And I have like country names, city names. And some general information like up here's a snowy area over here is where the yuan T, all live down here is more beachy area. And that's as far as that'll go. And then as players turn their attention, I'll flesh out kind of everything within that cone of a flashlight of the direction that they're looking. And then with a TL by night, I get kind of that with a little extra because I get the bonus of being based in the city we live in. And it's a city that we understand very well. And so then with the same flashlight approach, it's where are they looking? And how do I integrate vampires into it? Because like in Atlanta, we have, I think upwards of in the state of Georgia 300 waffle houses. And we have these tonnes of waffle houses. And one of our fans had made a joke and was like what happens when Kindred go to Waffle House. And I contemplated that and we decided that waffle houses are illicium their neutral ground for everybody. Because there's just too many waffle houses, we have to declare them all neutral. So we get we get to take what we know and what we have and just inject vampire fun into every little nook and cranny.
Snyders Return:But is amazing. And I'm now slightly hungry to be fair. And so that's your approach, say if someone was looking to get into a tabletop role playing game, it doesn't necessarily have to be vampire, which you're familiar with, or dungeons of dragons, which you sort of built this whole home campaign, what advice would you give to new gems using a generic term moving into sort of running tabletop role playing games.
Ellie Collins:The advice I give generally is, and this will vary depending on what people can do. But I try and get the players backstories as early as possible. And I have them at least right being two paragraphs. Because the thing that makes players have the most fun sometimes it depends on your player, some players prefer prefer, you know, just dungeon crawls. And that's something to talk to your players about. But I get the backstories early, and then I use that to inform kind of the campaign path that I want to take. Because their backstories will give you a lot of hints and tips and things that you can kind of use to go Okay, well, this one has a tribe from the north that has issues with pirates, and then this person wound up building that they are a former pirate so we can build conflict there. And player backstories if if you can get them to write you about two paragraphs can give you a lot of information so you don't feel like you're going in blind.
Snyders Return:I think that's fair and good advice. And I appreciate you, you sort of sharing that with us. So you do the ATR stream, which takes up a portion of your time plus the zoom stuff, the nets and the podcasting. And you're sort of direct directorial writing voice acting. How is it you find time for you Do you do you get downtime Do you get a chance to step away from from it or are you always sort of engaged with was a project
Ellie Collins:I definitely have less downtime these days than I did. I have a problem with like, over committing to games, because I just love playing but then even when I do have downtime, I'll try and at least force myself to have one hour of downtime each week where I want 100% like turn off my phone. So I try and find something that like completely disengages me from things Just at minimum to give myself an hour of not thinking about it, but of course, I'll always wind up thinking about it. That's usually when you get the best ideas is when you're not thinking about it.
Snyders Return:That's fine.
Ellie Collins:So it's, I probably should do more downtime than I do. But I really just don't do much downtime. Just because it's it's kind of this trick that I learned when I was younger that it was easier to work on one project when I was working on to, because it keeps you it kind of keeps you in that mode of being creative. But you're not hitting a writer's block, because you're not focusing on one thing at all times. So when you know I'm writing a d&d campaign, and I get stuck, I start writing on vampire and then vampire can give me an idea for d&d, and then DND can give me an idea for vampire and back and forth.
Snyders Return:Yeah, so ping pong in between the two almost. So that's the sort of the the two main ones is there any other sort of tabletop role playing game or board game, for that matter, game in general, that has caught your eye and you think I really like to try that system out. If I get your hour of downtime, maybe, maybe give system x a turn,
Ellie Collins:I have been trying to work my way through more of the cars vampire is a part of a larger franchise called World of Darkness. And I have very little experience with a lot of the other world of darkness franchises and I'm slowly working my way into learning those getting more comfortable with those. I recently started learning Magi which is, I jumped into the deep end with that one. And I am also trying to learn changeling. And then after those, there is currently a fifth edition werewolf the apocalypse book coming out. So when werewolf comes out, I want to give that one more of a chance. Just because well, the wave World of Darkness is set up with the storyteller system, it means I'm going in with a system I'm familiar with. And I can just focus on learning this world and how to apply.
Snyders Return:Well that was going to be my next question with these different parts of the world of darkness that you're exploring. To put it one way is the game mechanic the same it's just the sort of the thematic the aesthetic that changes or are there subtle differences between each of the games you've played,
Ellie Collins:there are subtle differences. Like with major, the concept of skills and attributes is generally the same, but then you have made spheres and you have to level up these certain spheres of spheres kind of replaced disciplines, from vampire and there's Quintessence and I'm still learning it, so I will mess up describing all that so it's, it's kind of the, the bones of all of them are the same, but the muscle and skin of all of it is very different. So learning may age has been a big undertaking, but it means that when it's time to roll, I know how to count my rolls and I know kind of I can interpret it much easier. So it kind of gives me a better foundation to learn an entirely new system because that foundation is the same across all games.
Snyders Return:Right? Okay. So you in theory and will work with a theory should be able to sort of pick and choose between these sort of subsections or subsets within the larger world of darkness and still have a a engaging and fun gaming experience.
Ellie Collins:Right? Um, I've tried to describe it to people that it's sort of like like if you know ballet you obviously know the basics of ballet, you know the positions and everything. But if you go to one theatre to another, it's going to be completely different routines, different expectations, different demands. And so with having the the foundation learning age is easier than if I picked up made straight off the street. Just because I have the foundation from vampire, but it is an entirely new game to learn. So I guess probably the better analogy is is more like playing games on Xbox. You know, you know how to use an Xbox controller, but each game is gonna be a completely different game. But yeah, you at the core know how to play At least your hands know how to play because you're familiar with the controller.
Snyders Return:Yeah, so that's a good analogy, and I wouldn't have thought to use that. So thank you for putting in layman's terms that I understand. Are you working on any projects that are outside of sort of the World of Darkness vampire or your d&d stuff?
Ellie Collins:My horror narrative podcast is currently on hiatus just because of the pandemic. But to explain that, because it'll explain why we're on hold. I run a podcast that is a fully cinematic sound, horror narrative show. And it's formatted kind of similar to American Horror Story, in that we do 20 episode seasons, and each season is a self contained horror story. And so we have a cast of around 35 actors. And we have a full like sound system, we do all of our own fully all of our own music. The only time we didn't do what we did half of it was our Western season, we partnered with a wonderful band that does Western music. And but so like the first season, we did a 1920s cruise ship with an eldritch God on board. Season Two was serial killer in the Old West. Season Three was biblical demons and a cyberpunk future. And we're currently in the middle of season four, which is Colton ghosts in Hollywood.
Snyders Return:Wow. But let's, that sounds, eclectic sounds, it sounds like an insult. And I don't mean to sound like that. But it is varied in his content. That isn't impressive, to say the least.
Ellie Collins:We we wanted to make it very intentionally eclectic. Because a lot of times with a horror podcast, you know, by the time you hit your third or fourth season, it's not scary anymore to people, because it's been the same story the whole time. So we wanted to create these condense stories. And then I decided the format for each season was going to hit three key points, and it was going to be what horror genre are we doing? What decade setting are we doing? And what audio delivery? Are we doing? By audio delivery? I mean, like, so season one, you know, we have 1920s. And then we have lovecraftian horror. And a lot of that audio was delivered through tapes that were that were recorded by the people on the ship at the time. And then in season two, every episode opened with the sheriff of this kind of Magnificent Seven style adventuring party writing a letter to his last daughter. And then season three, began with 911 calls, and then turned into a lot of like communication through demons. So we just we try and pick three completely different things. So then that way, we're not just saying like, oh, let's tell a ghost story on a pirate ship. You know, we we try to push ourselves out of the box by picking these three categories distinct of each other, so that we kind of make ourselves tell a new kind of story each time.
Snyders Return:Well, you mentioned the American Horror, American Horror Story, and that is a good touchstone for for a lot of people. I would have thought hooves has their production influence. Do not say that you ripping them off. That's time. Yeah, but or have you got other influences that you've drawn to sort of help with that creative process?
Ellie Collins:Um, they only influenced the way that we told, like the the way that we formatted our seasons, because they were like, Well, why do we never get tired of watching American Horror Story, but we get tired of like, horror TV shows. And it was Oh, because they change it every season. So okay, we're gonna change it every season. And then each season has its own influences. So like season one, was very influenced by by mountains of madness, season two, very heavily influenced by westerns. Just classic westerns. I grew up watching westerns with my grandfather, so that's in my blood. And that was the year that I lost him. So that was kind of like my love letter to my grandfather was doing the western season because that was what we had shared. So I just took a lot of influences from the movies we watched together growing up, and then the season three, the cyberpunk one. I am very huge Blade Runner fan. So a lot of Blade Runner influence there and then just growing up in the south a lot of influence with biblical themes.
Snyders Return:Thank you, thank you. And it's a very touching thing that the western season second season was was the memory of a loved one. So, using that slightly as a link to rest upon a mountain, bringing it back to vampire has there been times in your ATL by night stream that has touched you to emotional person is the storyteller as your players have sort of manoeuvred through the world you've created for them?
Ellie Collins:Yes, and I think a lot of it has been I'll create things that are very emotional for them. And then they'll surprise me with their reactions with you know, and then that'll get emotional for me in turn, because vampire is a very collaborative storytelling. So I'm only writing half of it, they're writing the other half. And biggest emotional episode for me was season one visit, I think it was season one yet visiting Tilly at the farmhouse. Because, and this one, I guess, just because of season one, it's not really spoilers, but as an example of situations, because they had just had this battle with a character and I hadn't expected it to turn into a battle. I thought at most they were going to staker and bring her in, you know, but they wound up setting her on fire. And then due to a beast shield failure roll Diablo rising her. And I i've never wanted so much to have printed out a character sheet so I could have just ripped it in front of them. But one of the premier gin was actually her sire. And it was when I got home and started thinking about what they had done. And the fact that the sire was using a power that lets her share the senses with someone else. And so she was sharing the senses with her because she was like, because she's a Mel cavion. And so she doesn't really always think things through. And so she was wanting to see the grand rescue of her child her. And instead she got to not only see but feel and hear her child or die. And when they went to visit her the other provision of the tremere, who is her girlfriend had this very elaborate basement setup. That kind of made it appear like she was a prisoner. But it was because she was so distraught and in pain and heartbroken that she had to be kept still, or she was going to completely go feral. And the way that that broke the hearts of the players was completely unexpected. And it was very hard to keep it together.
Snyders Return:It sounds very emotionally charged to be to be frank. So it sounds like a very touching moment. Difficult, maybe, as you say, to maybe to keep it together. But I'm massive amount of respect to you guys for putting something like that out for for people to consume, maybe with their dinner or whatever. So it's weighty, should we say? Do you have any more joyful moments.
Ellie Collins:We've had some some wonderful, fun moments there. They we did an episode that I knew was going to be very heavy. But I had prepped the players for it ahead of time. And I knew that the second half was going to be very heavy because we were dealing with the topic of human trafficking, because it's actually a very big problem in Atlanta. And so it was something that we wanted to be able to because the old vampire books kind of had a tacky way of saying vampires were involved in all this stuff. But we still want to find that middle ground of not being tacky about it, but being able to address some of the problems that we see in the world and especially in our city through vampires. So we have Had this Nosferatu who was a victim of human trafficking that she was hiding in six flags, which is our local theme park. And because that is actually one of the big human trafficking centres in Atlanta, a lot of people use that as a facilitation place. And so we want a chance to address that. And so in the first half of the episode, I told them, they could just do whatever they wanted and Six Flags, I gave him a heads up, I said, This episode's gonna be about human trafficking. And we're going to Six Flags. So download the Six Flags app on your phone. So you have the map, and do whatever you want in six flags. And I kind of thought that they were gonna like heavily investigate every nook and cranny because they knew that they were going to find something there. But the Thomasina play by Leona, she's a very straight laced person, and doesn't really have a lot of fun. And two of the other characters convinced her to ride a roller coaster for the first time. And so they, they sort of, uh, stole the keys and turned on one of the roller coasters to let her ride a roller coaster for the first time. And it was just so beautiful. I just absolutely loved it. Afterwards, I gave her like an extra humanity point for riding a roller coaster for the first time.
Snyders Return:That sounds brilliant. It sounds brilliant. And you mentioned there a problem that affects the real world is there anything else that the ATR by night or yourself look to, to support any thing you want to sort of bring to the table that's not directly linked to tabletop
Ellie Collins:wear, where we're being careful with what we talked about right now, just because that gets rather uncouth. Like we, we made an agreement amongst ourselves, that we were never going to address the virus or anything related to it. Because we are still living through that. We don't want to address police brutality, because we are a mostly white cast. And that feels inappropriate. But there's things with Atlanta, that we want to work on infrastructural issues that they can influence. And right now, this faction of the camera guerrilla functions a little differently than traditional camera Illa. And right now we are having elections for a prince, which gives us a way to kind of in a classy way. Talk about like political reform and talk about making change for the better and the process that it takes to make change for the better and being willing to fight the hard fight to get there. And so we're able to have a better vampire way to discuss those things, because it's a thing that's happening to the vampire culture, but we can draw a lot of parallels.
Snyders Return:Yeah, that's fair enough. And so you are moving towards a new season in the new year when this on when this gets released. So what can we expect from the future of of ATL by night?
Ellie Collins:So at the time, we're recording this, we are in the middle of season three. So we're in the middle of camera elections. By the end of this season, we will have a new Prince in Atlanta. That'll be our finale is announcing the prince. And so season four, we're going to pick up with a new Prince. How are they running the city? What are they doing about the threat of the second Inquisition, which is very pervasive in the city? And with the low Sombra threat now loose? What are they going to do about the Sombra in the city? So it's essentially with the new year, we have a new Prince and we kind of dawn into a new age for the Atlanta Kindred.
Snyders Return:Well, that's exciting prospectus or permanent engage with do people need to start season one, or is it can lease or start at the start of Season Three? Or where can people sort of jump on board and to get involved with the story?
Ellie Collins:So we do suggest starting with season one, though, our audio is a little rough. In Season One, we had a lot to learn. And we got our formal studio and season two. But we intentionally keep our games to two hours so that it's easier for people to catch up on and we're not asking too much of your time and each season is is only eight episodes. So 16 hours each season. And then we take a two month break in between. and that's allowed a lot of people time to catch up with us before a new season begins.
Snyders Return:All right, well, I will be one of those people trying to catch up in amongst everything else that draws my attention these days, unfortunately. We mentioned towards the start this interview about all the other sort of by night that are out there that form part of the family. Do you have much interaction with those? We mentioned dying city. But further afield, shall we say?
Ellie Collins:Yes, we have kind of this wonderful community. Some of us have jokingly called it clan storyteller, because of all the different vampire clans. But then there's the clan of the storyteller. There's a charity series called no Kindred hungry that I'm a part of, with a storyteller, the storyteller from Chicago by night, the storyteller from Vancouver by night, one of the storytellers from table goth, and Shane Easton, from LA by night. And it's a it's a story of a sabat coterie the, you know, the Subodh are no longer in power. So it's just this coterie kind of running roughshod all over the country trying to find a place to stay. Sorry. And we do that for charity, we do it for No Kid Hungry, raising money to provide meals for families in need, because that's extremely important, especially right now. Especially with kids, you know, doing school from home. And so I get to do that with, you know, three other storytellers. And we're all really close. And we're close with Shane. I'm friends with a few other storytellers. And it helps because we can all kind of hit each other up if we have questions concerns, a recent episode, we had dealt with some malevolent ghosts. And I was able to reach out to another storyteller, and just kind of say, how do you run ghosts, because we don't have a lot of concrete rules on them. And I could tell that my coder, he was probably gonna agitate. So I was able to reach out and say, how do you run ghosts, any advice on how to run their powers and things like that. And so we all are kind of a resource for each other. And we try really hard to keep that community going. Obviously, it's not everyone, it's not sunshine and rainbows. 24. Seven, but it is something that we strive for, to kind of be that clan storyteller for each other.
Snyders Return:No, it's great that you have that support and support each other in that way. Before we sort of move on, would you like to remind people where they can find yourself and your content on various social media platforms, please?
Ellie Collins:Yes, you can find me on Twitch TV slash ATL by night and ATL by night on all social medias. On Twitter. I am le underscore, a underscore Collins. And then the podcast that I was talking about is called the blood CRO stories and it's available on all major podcast platforms.
Snyders Return:Thank you very much for that information. Again, I'll make sure there are links in the description below. Please, is there anything else you want to bring to the table? We've spoken about a lot of topics, some more in depth than others. Is there anything you want to just call voice?
Ellie Collins:Um, I just I'm so excited right now that we are in such a renaissance for the World of Darkness. I feel like every week we get more information about a new game. Because we have bloodlines to in production. a werewolf the apocalypse heart of the forest is coming out soon. I got to demo that game. And I'll be doing a full review of it for everyone. werewolf. what's what's the other new game? race isn't? We have Wraith coming out there's another werewolf game coming out. That's more adventure style.
Snyders Return:Yes,
Ellie Collins:and then rape. There's a VR game for Wraith. Which I so badly want to play but I can't because I'm a chicken. It would just be a stream of me crying. Um, and then we've got coteries of New York which is visual novel style. game and then shadows of New York the sequel to that. It's just, it's one of those. This is a wonderful time to be in the family and be a part of the world of darkness in ways that teenage me could have never anticipated. And I just love that the world is getting to that level. And you know, in paradoxes hands, we've got just vampire content out the wazoo. And it's, it's very wonderful because it's it may sound strange, but I've always the thing that I've liked about World of Darkness, and vampire and things is like, in d&d, we're all striving to be heroes. And there is an aspect to tabletop games called bleed, which is where the emotions from the game bleed into real life. More, I feel like in d&d, you're playing a heroic character, and then bad things happen to them. And that can hurt and you take that home with you. But it feels like in vampire, we're kind of often bleeding the opposite direction, where it becomes this safe place to kind of get it out. And so there's therapy in playing in the darkness, and being able to explore these dark themes and handle them because we can't always directly handle the bad things in the world, but in like vampire, we can. And so there's this wonderful therapy to it. And so seeing it blow up and become so big and welcoming in so many people. It makes me very excited that everyone else can kind of, you know, have this outlet in this way to tell beautiful stories, and kind of work through a lot of things internally as well.
Snyders Return:Absolutely. And I think it's such a good point to end on such a positive message from from the darkness finding the light in a metaphysical way. So thank you very so much for your time, I really appreciate coming on and sharing the your wealth of knowledge of the family and and all the franchise's your your own hard work and high production. So I really appreciate your time today.
Ellie Collins:Thank you so much for having me. It was a lot of fun to be here.
Snyders Return:It's been a pleasure. I would love to have you back on again in the future, if you'd be willing.
Ellie Collins:Absolutely, anytime.
Snyders Return:Thank you very much. We will speak again soon. And he Thank you very much. Thank you. Thanks for listening. If you'd like to learn more about the show, then go to WWW dot Snyder's return.squarespace.com. Alternatively, you can find us over on Twitter. At Return Snyder, you have a link tree link in the description of this episode. And if you want to support us, come and join us over on Patreon. And we also have a Discord server. Please leave us a review because we'd love to learn how to improve the channel and provide better content out for for those who are listening until we until we speak again. Thank you