Looking Back on Two Years - Diversity Report and Giveaway Announcement

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Hello, friends.

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Welcome to Characters Without Stories.

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Last month, I hit a huge milestone.

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Two years of podcasting.

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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.

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I held a giveaway to celebrate two years.

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Watch to the end to find out who won.

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Before moving to Oregon, just before the COVID pandemic hit, I was creating art collaboratively with a few friends in Oakland, California.

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But the move and the increasing pressures of parenthood meant that we couldn't continue.

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I got depressed.

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I didn't realize how much I needed to have a creative outlet.

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And then, out of the blue, probably while looking at my own list of unplayed characters, it hit me.

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I'm probably not the only one who has a list of characters they want to play.

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I bet those people would want to talk about them.

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It was one of those ideas you can't ignore.

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And for me, when an idea like that strikes, I have to act on it as soon as possible.

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I needed to get something out there, at least a proof of concept.

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Did this idea have wings?

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Would it be interesting to anyone else?

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I didn't have a plan in mind.

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I had just finished devouring NADD Pod and The Adventure Zone, and I was new to even listening to podcasts.

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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.

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I watched a couple of Adobe audition tutorials.

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I read some blogs about podcasting and I jumped in with no expectations.

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It took a lot of persistence and a lot of learning to get here.

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And I have other podcasters to thank for most of that learning.

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Thank you to everyone who has given advice or feedback.

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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.

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What are the guests bringing to the table outside of the character sheet?

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What of ourselves do we bring to our characters, and why?

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Why do people build characters and play games the way that they do?

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And what kind of stories do we want to tell?

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Why do we even play tabletop role playing games?

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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.

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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.

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So I did some research.

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And here's where I get into the results.

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Feel free to skip this section.

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If you're not a fan of statistics, first, some caveats.

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I only have 11 episodes in my first season.

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I have 23 in my second season, and I'm only about halfway through my third season.

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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.

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Rather than assigning gender into categories, I used the pronouns that my guests gave me.

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I recently added a question to my intake form about how my guests identify, so moving forward I'll have better data to share.

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None of the guests for my published episodes used that form yet, so I'm just going with what I have.

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With all that out of the way, let's dive in.

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I'll start with diversity of games because that's the easiest to measure.

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In my first season, 73% of my episodes were about Dungeons and Dragons, with only three about characters from other games.

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I wanted to talk about different games.

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I figured my audience would as well.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Knowing that I wanted to make this change, I made efforts to diversify my episodes and those efforts have paid off.

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My second season featured only 26% D&D episodes.

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My third season so far has featured 38%, but that number will go down once the full season is released.

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I'm happy with where I am now, and I will probably maintain this ratio.

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If you submitted a D&D character and you haven't heard from me.

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That's probably why.

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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.

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In my first season, 82 percent of my guests were white, one was Asian, and one was Black.

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In season two, I did much better.

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70 percent of my guests were white, the rest were Asian, Latine, or Indigenous.

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However, I had no Black guests.

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So, for Season 3, I made a special effort at reaching out to Black creators.

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I have had two Black guests so far this season, and then we'll have two more, at least, in the episodes to come.

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However, I have not yet had any Asian or Indigenous guests this season, and I will work to remedy that.

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Measuring gender is where I have the data, but it's a lot more complex.

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In season one, 27% of my guests identified as he/him, 18% identified as she/her.

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I had three transgender guests and the remainder had some combination of he, she, they, and any.

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In Season 2, 22% of my guests were he/him, 33% were she/her, and 2 were trans.

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In Season 3 so far, I've had a large jump in guests that identified as he/him, up to 46%.

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23% identified as she/her, and none of my guests this season have been trans.

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It's clear that my gender diversity has backslid, and that's something that I want to remedy.

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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.

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In those instances, I counted them as unknown.

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In Season 1, 64% identified as LGBTQIA+ There is a general downward trend to 31% in Season 3.

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However, there is a corresponding upward trend in unknowns from 9% to 46%.

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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.

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Disability is another topic where there could be guests with disabilities that aren't apparent.

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In this case, I only included as disabled, anyone who explicitly stated that.

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In season one, I had two disabled guests.

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In season two, I had three disabled guests, and I have not yet had a disabled guest this season.

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Obviously, that's something I'd like to work on too.

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Looking back, I realize that there are other measures that I should consider and have added them to my form.

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One is neurodiversity.

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Many of my guests have talked about having ADHD or being autistic, and I've appreciated hearing their points of view.

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As I'm starting to make more video content, another thing I want to be aware of is body size.

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If you have any thoughts about things I maybe haven't considered, I'd love to hear them.

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So what are my takeaways?

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Diving deep into my guest diversity data has been enlightening.

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It's clear I've made some progress, but I still have much to do.

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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.

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Anecdotally, about 80 percent of my submissions are from white people.

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Most of my non white or disabled guests have been actively recruited.

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I'll keep reaching out to creators I love who can bring unique perspectives to the table.

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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.

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One of the things that most podcasters do, especially in the beginning, is to look obsessively at their download numbers.

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I was not immune.

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But as overnight success was clearly not in the cards, I began to set smaller, more achievable goals.

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First 50 downloads, then 100, then 500, and I am now just past 2,500 downloads.

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I also want to continue to build on my audience on social media platforms.

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At this point, I'm on pretty much all of them.

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I also want to increase my YouTube views and subscribers.

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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.

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So what are my plans for the future of Characters Without Stories?

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First and foremost, to talk about fascinating characters with fascinating creators.

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That won't change.

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I'm always looking to feature a diversity of games and guests.

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I've also been enjoying being a guest on others podcasts and platforms.

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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.

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I also enjoyed doing a voiceover for my friend Blerdy Disposition's YouTube channel.

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If you want a guest on your podcast or actual play a voiceover, hit me up.

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Who knows?

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Maybe we can work together.

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Building a community with other podcasters has been incredibly rewarding.

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I love listening to and watching all your podcasts and streams.

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I wish I had 24 more hours in the day just to listen to other people's podcasts.

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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.

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If you're interested in doing an ad swap, let me know.

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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.

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Please go check out their Instagram at @TheCuriographer and go buy their merch on Inked gaming and Redbubble.

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My deepest gratitude to all of you who were with me from day one and those of you who have just discovered my podcast.

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And to the people recommending the podcast to their friends or writing reviews, you're beautiful and I love you.

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On to the giveaway.

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Congratulations to Tales from the Fandom who won the grand prize of a one minute voiceover.

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The second prize went to Dave Clark, a Curiographer inked gaming mat.

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Third prize went to Of Gods and Game Masters, a Curiographer dice bag, and finally these people are getting stickers, baldbeasty, snakewich, and VindicaSean.

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If I haven't contacted you yet, Please reach out.

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Here's to the years ahead.

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Thank you, and may all your characters find their stories.