Looking Back on Two Years - Diversity Report and Giveaway Announcement

I've been bringing characters without stories and the creators who made them to the table for TWO YEARS! It felt like a good time to get reflective and talk about something I've been working on - diversifying my guests and the games we talk about.

I also did a two year anniversary giveaway - tune in to find out who won!

Cover art by The Curiographer
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Thanks for listening, and may all your characters find their stories!

Transcript

0:00

Hello, friends. Welcome to Characters Without Stories. Last month, I hit a huge milestone. Two years of podcasting. It's been immensely rewarding to connect with you, my listeners, my guests, and other podcasts and creators in the tabletop role playing game space. I held a giveaway to celebrate two years. Watch to the end to find out who won. Before moving to Oregon, just before the COVID pandemic hit, I was creating art collaboratively with a few friends in Oakland, California. But the move and the increasing pressures of parenthood meant that we couldn't continue. I got depressed. I didn't realize how much I needed to have a creative outlet. And then, out of the blue, probably while looking at my own list of unplayed characters, it hit me. I'm probably not the only one who has a list of characters they want to play. I bet those people would want to talk about them. It was one of those ideas you can't ignore. And for me, when an idea like that strikes, I have to act on it as soon as possible. I needed to get something out there, at least a proof of concept. Did this idea have wings? Would it be interesting to anyone else? I didn't have a plan in mind. I had just finished devouring NADD Pod and The Adventure Zone, and I was new to even listening to podcasts. I went to my friend Andrew with my idea, a list of questions and an intro script and a $50 Amazon basics microphone, and we hopped on discord and we recorded it. I watched a couple of Adobe audition tutorials. I read some blogs about podcasting and I jumped in with no expectations. It took a lot of persistence and a lot of learning to get here. And I have other podcasters to thank for most of that learning. Thank you to everyone who has given advice or feedback. It became clear to me very early on that what was interesting about the podcast was not the stats of the characters, but the themes. What are the guests bringing to the table outside of the character sheet? What of ourselves do we bring to our characters, and why? Why do people build characters and play games the way that they do? And what kind of stories do we want to tell? Why do we even play tabletop role playing games? To continue to have interesting conversations about these questions, I needed to bring a diversity of players and a diversity of games to the table. I set out to diversify my games and my guests, and I want to hold myself accountable by sharing where I started, where I've made progress, and where I need to do more work. So I did some research. And here's where I get into the results. Feel free to skip this section. If you're not a fan of statistics, first, some caveats. I only have 11 episodes in my first season. I have 23 in my second season, and I'm only about halfway through my third season. I'm also only working with the information that I have or can reasonably assume, especially when it comes to things like disability or membership in the alphabet mafia. Rather than assigning gender into categories, I used the pronouns that my guests gave me. I recently added a question to my intake form about how my guests identify, so moving forward I'll have better data to share. None of the guests for my published episodes used that form yet, so I'm just going with what I have. With all that out of the way, let's dive in. I'll start with diversity of games because that's the easiest to measure. In my first season, 73% of my episodes were about Dungeons and Dragons, with only three about characters from other games. I wanted to talk about different games. I figured my audience would as well. Also, several Wizards of the Coast scandals happened in a very short timeframe, leading a lot of us in the community to reconsider talking about, or even playing D&D anymore. Personally, I made the decision to stop buying WOTC products, and I cancelled my subscription to D&D Beyond, but I still talk about D&D on the podcast, and I still play it. You can listen to the episodes Why I'm Still Talking About D&D and Capitalism is the BBEG if you want to hear more of my perspective on these events and how they relate to my podcast. Knowing that I wanted to make this change, I made efforts to diversify my episodes and those efforts have paid off. My second season featured only 26% D&D episodes. My third season so far has featured 38%, but that number will go down once the full season is released. I'm happy with where I am now, and I will probably maintain this ratio. If you submitted a D&D character and you haven't heard from me. That's probably why. It's important to me to consider racial diversity when bringing on guests, and that was clearly an issue when I looked back at season one. In my first season, 82 percent of my guests were white, one was Asian, and one was Black. In season two, I did much better. 70 percent of my guests were white, the rest were Asian, Latine, or Indigenous. However, I had no Black guests. So, for Season 3, I made a special effort at reaching out to Black creators. I have had two Black guests so far this season, and then we'll have two more, at least, in the episodes to come. However, I have not yet had any Asian or Indigenous guests this season, and I will work to remedy that. Measuring gender is where I have the data, but it's a lot more complex. In season one, 27% of my guests identified as he/him, 18% identified as she/her. I had three transgender guests and the remainder had some combination of he, she, they, and any. In Season 2, 22% of my guests were he/him, 33% were she/her, and 2 were trans. In Season 3 so far, I've had a large jump in guests that identified as he/him, up to 46%. 23% identified as she/her, and none of my guests this season have been trans. It's clear that my gender diversity has backslid, and that's something that I want to remedy. It gets a little tricky to measure whether or not my guests are members of the LGBTQIA+ community, because many of them did not self identify. In those instances, I counted them as unknown. In Season 1, 64% identified as LGBTQIA+ There is a general downward trend to 31% in Season 3. However, there is a corresponding upward trend in unknowns from 9% to 46%. With all the unknowns, I don't think it's clear enough to truly make a statement , but I'll be keeping my eye on it as I have more information self identified by my guests. Disability is another topic where there could be guests with disabilities that aren't apparent. In this case, I only included as disabled, anyone who explicitly stated that. In season one, I had two disabled guests. In season two, I had three disabled guests, and I have not yet had a disabled guest this season. Obviously, that's something I'd like to work on too. Looking back, I realize that there are other measures that I should consider and have added them to my form. One is neurodiversity. Many of my guests have talked about having ADHD or being autistic, and I've appreciated hearing their points of view. As I'm starting to make more video content, another thing I want to be aware of is body size. If you have any thoughts about things I maybe haven't considered, I'd love to hear them. So what are my takeaways? Diving deep into my guest diversity data has been enlightening. It's clear I've made some progress, but I still have much to do. It's also clear that as I make progress in one area, I should be careful not to backslide in the progress I've made in other areas. Anecdotally, about 80 percent of my submissions are from white people. Most of my non white or disabled guests have been actively recruited. I'll keep reaching out to creators I love who can bring unique perspectives to the table. I'm also putting out a call to you, my listeners, to introduce me to any amazing creators I should meet or to submit yourself. One of the things that most podcasters do, especially in the beginning, is to look obsessively at their download numbers. I was not immune. But as overnight success was clearly not in the cards, I began to set smaller, more achievable goals. First 50 downloads, then 100, then 500, and I am now just past 2,500 downloads. I also want to continue to build on my audience on social media platforms. At this point, I'm on pretty much all of them. I also want to increase my YouTube views and subscribers. I have numbers I'd like to hit on all the platforms, at least for the time being, and if you're interested, maybe I'll do another video or episode about it. So what are my plans for the future of Characters Without Stories? First and foremost, to talk about fascinating characters with fascinating creators. That won't change. I'm always looking to feature a diversity of games and guests. I've also been enjoying being a guest on others podcasts and platforms. Being a part of D&D Denial's Moonstone Matriarchy stream has been a blast, and I love the opportunity to turn the tables and guest on other podcasts as well. I also enjoyed doing a voiceover for my friend Blerdy Disposition's YouTube channel. If you want a guest on your podcast or actual play a voiceover, hit me up. Who knows? Maybe we can work together. Building a community with other podcasters has been incredibly rewarding. I love listening to and watching all your podcasts and streams. I wish I had 24 more hours in the day just to listen to other people's podcasts. Reviewing others' podcasts, featuring other podcasts in my episode outros, and doing ad swaps is part of my commitment to lifting up the work of other creators. If you're interested in doing an ad swap, let me know. Speaking of lifting up others' work, I wanna give a special shout out to The Curiographer for giving me their beautiful cover art for my podcast. Please go check out their Instagram at @TheCuriographer and go buy their merch on Inked gaming and Redbubble. My deepest gratitude to all of you who were with me from day one and those of you who have just discovered my podcast. And to the people recommending the podcast to their friends or writing reviews, you're beautiful and I love you. On to the giveaway. Congratulations to Tales from the Fandom who won the grand prize of a one minute voiceover. The second prize went to Dave Clark, a Curiographer inked gaming mat. Third prize went to Of Gods and Game Masters, a Curiographer dice bag, and finally these people are getting stickers, baldbeasty, snakewich, and VindicaSean. If I haven't contacted you yet, Please reach out. Here's to the years ahead. Thank you, and may all your characters find their stories.