Tom: Hey people! We needed to kick off the 12 months with an replace that goes over what Shut Up & Sit Down goes to be as much as in 2024. That is the form of factor we usually reserve for the e-newsletter, however we needed this to be broadly accessible so that everybody’s within the loop!
First off, Quinns goes to share an thrilling new venture he’s been cooking up! Then, afterwards, I’ll take you behind the scenes on what to anticipate from the positioning going ahead! It’s an extended one, so let’s get into it…
Introducing: Quinns Quest!
Quinns: So! My information, right here goes….
I believe the TTRPG scene is in the same place to the board sport scene in 2011. Once we launched Shut Up & Sit Down it was with a way of frothing confusion that board video games have been so good, they weren’t getting the eye they deserved, and at the least a part of that was as a result of the form of protection we needed to see simply didn’t exist. So, we determined to try to make it.
Now I wish to deal with that for tabletop roleplaying video games, with a wholly seperate new programme I’m calling Quinns Quest. It’s me as soon as once more deciding to try to get a complete host of underreported, terribly designers the eye they deserve, and serving to all people to have a bit extra enjoyable alongside the way in which. Shut Up & Sit Down is in fact the place I’ll cowl board video games every time I really feel the itch – and you’ll anticipate to see extra of me on the brand new Prime 100 Board Video games characteristic – however Quinns Quest is the place I’m placing my speedy focus.
It is a little bit of a brand new chapter for me – and so I needed to take a second to say thanks to the SU&SD group. You people have been so beneficiant together with your consideration through the years, particularly within the earliest days of SU&SD after I had actually no concept be a presenter. I bear in mind my family members giving me recommendations in 2012 alongside the traces of “What should you smiled if you have been on digital camera?” and “What should you talked slower, so folks might perceive you?”. The truth that you people caught with me whereas I discovered the commerce, video by awkward video, has been life-changing, and I can’t wait to place all that studying into a brand new venture that I’m extra enthusiastic about than anything proper now.
However while I’m cutting down my function with SU&SD, I needed to say how completely happy I’m that the positioning has been in such succesful fingers!
Tom is editor-in-chief of Shut Up & Sit Down, however that’s been true for some time now. The man’s a f***ing marvel, and – troublingly – he solely appears to be getting higher? Have you ever seen his video on John Firm?? Apparently he plans to deal with making equally bold movies sooner or later??? The world isn’t prepared.
Tom, you’re an awfully uncommon expertise. You’re hilarious, insightful, and technically-minded in a approach I’ve by no means been (don’t know should you seen this). However extra importantly, you’re hungrier and extra captivated with board video games than my decrepit ass. A part of figuring out when to step again somewhat is figuring out when it’s time to make room for the subsequent technology, and it’s previous time I try this.
Matt- my time spent making 2-person movies with you is what I think about my most creatively fulfilling time with SU&SD. I’ve so, so many completely happy recollections with you, not simply of workshopping jokes in your lounge, however simply enjoying video games with you.
In actual fact, if I needed to title my favorite single occasion of a sport I’ve performed, it will be the afternoon we spent enjoying head-to-head Tigris & Euphrates upfront of our marvellously unhinged evaluate. London was caught in a sweltering headwave and sweat was actually beading on my brow as we have been locked in a near-silent, totally intense battle, punctuated solely by every of us complimenting the opposite’s transfer. You’re the form of collaborator a inventive can solely dream of, however you’re an excellent higher opponent. You’ve made me a lot sharper, in comedy, in modifying, and in technique. I’ve no selection however to be my greatest round you. I believe you’ve even crushed me at a sport a few times.
And Emily! Holy kittens. Hiring Emily looks like going for a stroll and discovering a ruby on the bottom. Her evaluations are so good that it makes me ashamed of myself. It took me the higher a part of a decade to grow to be pretty much as good a video reviewer as Emily was immediately. Emily, your future is inconceivably shiny. I additionally perceive you’ll be seeing extra of the inimitable Pip Warr in the way forward for Shut Up & Sit Down, and nothing might make me happier. I additionally know nothing will make followers of the present happier, since one of many solely items of suggestions SU&SD followers have been ever courageous sufficient to offer me in particular person – over and over once more – was “Extra Pip”.
What a staff. What an unbelievable, stunning, side-splittingly humorous clutch of parents.
Tom: Wahoo! Anybody who watched Quinns’ unbelievable Get into RPGs video, or Alice is Lacking protection has in all probability felt this shift coming for some time now, and Quinns making a devoted area for RPG followers is fabulous! We’re excited to maintain working with him on the model new Prime 100 Sequence and every other board sport shenanigans that take his fancy, and naturally we are able to’t wait to see all of the… roles he…. performs? Is that the way it works?
Quinns: You’re kind of making it sound like a intercourse factor. It’s not a intercourse factor.
Matt: It’s undoubtedly a intercourse factor.
Quinns: Shut UP!
Tom: And… sit……?
RIGHT! So! With Quinns taking up this new venture, what’s taking place with the remainder of SU&SD? Let’s discuss concerning the cracking 12 months of board video games forward!
The First Ever Prime 100
Tom’s New Hat
Tom: With Quinns formally altering his place throughout the web site to ‘contributor’, I’m taking on the mantle of SU&SD’s editorial lead, a hat you’ve already seen me sporting for the final 12 months or two!
To handle an apparent query about this variation in function, although – “Why not Matt, obvious inheritor to the cardboard throne”? There’s one cause! It’s as a result of he’s an extremely gifted inventive with years of expertise making good work who, with all of the love on the earth, has the organisational abilities of a degree one goblin.
Matt: It’s true! I as soon as by accident put my passport within the bin. My spouse rescued it for me.
Tom: He’s doing simply superb, and we’re very proud. Me, then again? I’m an organisation freak! I’m a dweeb! I like lists and bullet factors and sorting my socks by color! I’m the man who likes packing away my board video games into customized labelled baggage. This one’s for me, gang!
Realistically, this expanded function does little to really have an effect on our inventive output one iota – like I say, you’ve been watching this restructured SU&SD for the previous two years! Matt and I are inventive companions on most every thing we put out – we’ve obtained workflows to assist one another with edits, we love filming collectively, and we’re very a lot aligned on what we wish the positioning to be.The studio is lastly a spot the place we are able to simply movie (don’t fear, it’s not changing our basic “evaluations from the lounge”), and we’re going to get caught proper in, and convey our rising roster of contributors proper together with us! It’ll be a deal with, and I’m so excited!
Movies and Podcasts
We’ve obtained one foremost aim for this 12 months, and it’s sustainability. We’re actually pleased with this web site, and we wish it to exist… without end? That may sound loopy, however we actually need the spirit of issues to proceed on even when the faces would possibly fluctuate. To that finish, we’re pushing our sources in 2024 in the direction of making a reliable and secure slate of movies to softly department out from.
The precedent set when SU&SD was rising essentially the most was to add a video each single week, it doesn’t matter what. This (typically!) labored, however merely doesn’t scale with the manufacturing values and ambition we’re searching for in movies as of late. Trying this method on this extra trendy, much less ‘handheld and poorly white-balanced’ period of SU&SD? It led to a complete lot of attempting to make extra elaborate and excessive manufacturing movies inside a schedule that didn’t match – and subsequently getting mentioned movies delayed, pushed again, utterly canned… or in any other case simply utterly knackering us.
We wish every thing we put out to be of outstanding high quality, and we wish to be energised by each venture! So, in 2024, we’re shedding that outdated and often-missed schedule to as an alternative deal with three movies monthly, certainly one of which is able to persistently be an entry in our Prime 100 sequence. It’s not an enormous change, nevertheless it’s a significant one.
Already this easy, semantic shift is making me really feel higher, extra inventive, and extra accountable for my work. I believe this is a superb baseline to work from, and I’m sure you’ll agree that the ‘fewer and higher’ method to video goes to end in a few of the greatest work we’ve executed in current reminiscence. I’m not going to spoil a few of the chunkier initiatives we’ve obtained deliberate, however I believe they’ll be distinctive.
What concerning the podcast? Precisely the identical deal right here. We by no means actually managed to kind out one every week, so we’ll take every week out for each three podcasts launched to any extent further. I wish to ensure that these podcasts are of reliable high quality – so nailing down our format to 3 video games per podcast mentioned by two hosts would be the norm. Nevertheless, I do wish to pursue extra ‘subject’ episodes the place we have now wider conversations with extra folks concerned – however I wish to get a reliable providing operating first!
What’s Occurring with SHUX?
Goodness, deposits are simply so costly. We find it irresistible as a lot as you do, and we actually need it to come back again… it simply is likely to be a little bit of a wait. When it does return, we wish it to be pretty much as good as ever and to be ready to run it in a wholesome approach that doesn’t obliterate the staff utterly! We’re going to be quiet on this entrance for a superb whereas, however you’ll learn about the way forward for SHUX as quickly as we do.
Bonus Bits?
All the pieces with our bonus bits and donations will keep precisely the identical. We’re going to shoot for month-to-month newsletters with a pair enjoyable further movies to go together with them. This month, we’ve obtained a video the place I ramble about Shadow Gambit, and a Bonus Podcast! I’m additionally actually enthusiastic about some potential weirder instructions for this – we’ve heard you loud and clear that early entry isn’t as thrilling as odd exclusives, so I wish to deal with making precisely that.
A Private Be aware
Lastly, I needed to take a second to share one thing from the guts. Shut Up & Sit Down has been round for about 13 journeys across the solar, which is about eighty seven in ‘Web Years’. Managing the trajectory of this creaky outdated ship is an actual problem – one which I really feel in a uniquely odd place to deal with. I used to be a fan of the positioning earlier than I began working right here, watching movies while I used to be nonetheless in secondary faculty! I wish to ensure that I shield the soul of the factor that obtained me into board video games, however I additionally wish to ensure that I’ve obtained my very own voice inside it. I need this web site to be run in a approach that’s wholesome and thrilling for everybody concerned, with out dropping the spark that obtained me hooked.
But it surely’s usually difficult to attain that. Foundational to my function because the ‘new face’ on the positioning is a continuing background radiation of comparability. That comparability begins in my very own mind, after which takes up increasingly more room because the internet-at-large pumps air into it till it dominates my headspace and paralyses me to proceed. I’ve at all times felt like there’s one other pair of footwear to fill, that I’ll by no means fairly fulfill folks’s need for one thing they’ll not have.
I’m fairly executed with that considering. 2024 marks a delicate new chapter for SU&SD, the place we’re going to play to our tempo and make nice work for the individuals who like what we do for what it is now.
I actually hope you’re as excited for that as we’re!
Questions?
After all there can be! What do you wish to know? For a few weeks or so we’ll be keeping track of this web page and can reply to queries to construct up one thing of an FAQ for folks to take a peek at when a type of ‘What Occurred to SU&SD?’ Reddit posts inevitably crops up throughout the subsequent… week? Day? These issues are maddening, aren’t they. Because of everybody who engages in these in good religion and might settle for that we’re solely human, and that in 13 years, issues do change. We’ll do our greatest to construct and preserve a web site you possibly can love, and should you don’t? A reminder that we’re on the market on the web as properly, and we’re human beings too!
Be light, people, it’s been a mad few years however we’ve nonetheless obtained our entire hearts on this great factor. In case you do too, then every thing we do is for you, and we hope you’re in a position to take pleasure in it with us within the years to come back!
Huge Love,
Staff SU&SD
