Happy Hour #5 - The Things We Don't Plan (Patreon)

I'd like to begin this installment of Happy Hour with a prayer:

Praise Log.

Thank you.

In the final hours before we left our Portland hotel room to play Session 5 of our Strange Aeons game last Saturday night, Troy sat on the bed, head buried in his laptop, typing furiously. This is a routine I've noticed. In the days and eventually hours before a live show, Troy writes. He writes and writes and writes. Occasionally, he takes a break from writing to say something viciously mean about me. Usually I laugh, sometimes I cry, other times I just shrug. If I laugh (and especially if I cry), maybe it stays in the show that night, maybe it doesn't.  Either way, excellent performances stem from extensive preparation, and Glass Cannon Live! is no exception. There is, however, another side to that coin.

During one of the breaks in his typing last Saturday, Troy lifted his head, and I steeled myself for the inevitable insult. But none came. Instead, he was lost in a moment of...I would call it "philosophical reflection" if I didn't know Troy better. He was probably momentarily distracted from the comfort of a dick joke and found himself thinking about the broader scope of what really makes The Glass Cannon Network what it is. After a moment he looked at me and said, “You know, no matter how much I write here, the most memorable thing that always comes out of these shows is something I didn’t plan or predict.” 

Whatever muse spoke to Troy in that moment must have had visions of our future at the Mission Theater that night. For that is where Praise Log was born, and I can assure you, it doesn’t appear in the outline of the show, or the dozens of jokes that made the final cut. 

I don’t bring this up to keeping parading around an inside joke that still has a few days to be understood by all of The Naish. I bring it up because today I’m thinking about comedy, and RPGs, and this business we started. To put it simply, preparation is vital, but you have to leave room for the unexpected to breathe and take shape. You have to be ready to not just allow the unexpected, but to welcome it and figure out how to make it work for you. Too often in business, just as in GMing, I find myself frustrated when things aren’t going according to plan. I need to remember that there was no plan for Praise Log, or Don’t Leave Town, or old Neon Green. Amazing things happen when you’re not afraid to go off-script.

Not sure if you noticed, but MOST of our Episode 200 Release Party Twitch was "off-script". We just decided to enjoy ourselves, hang with the Naish, and let the chips fall where they may. We ended the night with our most successful Twitch yet. Even outpacing Episode 1 of Doomsday Dawn. Thank you to all of you that carved out the time to join us for the party and especially those who so generously donated during the show. When the office was empty at 2am, as I walked in a daze from solo cup to half-full Coors Light can with a sad, wet, lemon-scented trash bag, I thought about how happy I was that this brief stretch of insane stress was passed. The Portland show went off without a hitch, the Episode 200 Release Party was a blast, and all 4.5 hours of Episode 200 itself was finally published. 

But there is no rest for the weary. All Season 3 Bottlecap Boosters went out to our $15 subscribers in the days before flying to Portland and the new Patreon shirts have arrived! There was a delay due to the printer getting the coloring wrong from the original image. We finally got it fixed, though, and I'm looking at a tall stack of boxes filled with one of our favorite shirts yet! Those will be in the mail by next week and all of you at the $25 and up tier should expect to receive your shirts and bottlecaps in the coming days. Thank you for your support and your patience.

I've got to wrap it up here, because I've run out of time and the guys are arriving at the office to record tonight (no happy hour for me this week). Before I go, though, I just wanted to mention that the Portland Posters for Glass Cannon Live! have gone on sale in the merch store. When I think about the unexpected things that totally blow minds, these posters come to mind. A member of Glass Cannon Nation just dropped off her vision of the Chicago show poster at our merch booth as a gift to us. Who knew that in this person we would find something we didn't even know we were missing: an artist to capture the dark feel of the live Strange Aeons game and to make it unique to each city we visit. Praise Log.

We are working on the Portland video now and expect it to be up WELL before our Brooklyn show. Stay tuned for more on that!

Thanks again, guys, for another couple weeks of being the best community in gaming.

Talk to you soon --

Joe