Transcript
Greetings good humans, and welcome to a brand new tabletop hobby channel: Tabletop Alchemy. I’ll explain that title in a bit. First off, my name is Ignatius. Yep, Ignatius. And yeah, it’s a cool name now that I’m not, like, you know, seven.
I’m sure the main question is: what kinda content should you expect from me? Followed by “why bother watching” and maybe “who is this old dude and what’s he doing here?”
First and foremost, this is a variety channel within the tabletop hobby space, which is why I’ve called it Tabletop Alchemy. You know, alchemy is essentially the mixing of different elements in the hopes that something new emerges.
I like Dungeons & Dragons, I like Warhammer, I like skirmish games, I like painting miniatures, crafting terrain, writing adventure content for rpgs, making maps, I like sci-fi/fantasy as a genre from books to movies to art and everything in between. Couple things I dig outside this tabletop hobby are Lego and Minecraft. Hey! Who’s the geek here?
My professional background includes filmmaking, special fx, videography and photography. I started out in the film industry creating miniatures for movies like Titanic and The Fifth Element – in fact, my very first job was fabricating the front end of the Earth warship from Luc Besson’s epic sci-fi adventure flick. And right there, you can see the little canvas lifeboat covers I made for the James Cameron flick. As an indy filmmaker I wrote a sci-fi/horror flick for a friend of mine to direct called The Men Who Fell, which was shot on the original DVX100 standard definition video camera with an anamorphic lens – for those of you that know, you know. I co-wrote and directed my own feature film called Lisl and the Lorlok, it’s a dark fantasy for kids and their grandparents [laugh] and it played on Russian TV for a while. Then I made the first, uh, let’s call it the first volume of a cheesy no-budget fantasy action adventure web series called Freelancers The Series.
[insert scene from freelancers]
I’d really like to remake that as a full show with a real budget someday. My dream scene to direct is masquerade ball that devolves into a pitched sword fight and magic duel.
All these indy projects were done on shoestring budgets – “shoestring” being generous – and they’re not great by any means, but they were an intense amount of work and pretty wonderful to work on.
My background as a tabletop gamer, briefly, is probably like a lot of folks out there in my age range. I stumbled into playing D&D at the end of high school, played it through a few years in the Army, and then got into Shadowrun and cyberpunk and that’s when I started painting miniatures and eventually fell into the Warhammer warp. I played 40k 2nd edition, Warhammer Fantasy 4th edition and even Bloodbowl 3rd (yeah, I think 3rd edition). I had too many armies, too many ideas, et cetera. Then I got the job in the film industry working in special fx and that killed my gaming hobby right quick. Working on models in an industrial shop 60 hours a week for a few years can do that to a person. And then I went off into filmmaking territory and didn’t find my way back into the tabletop gaming hobby until a few years ago. I’ve always loved miniatures for some reason and I found D&D was alive and thriving. And then Stranger Things hit and we know what’s happened since then.
So, what can you expect from Tabletop Alchemy. Like I said, I’m interested in all kinds of facets within this gleaming gem that is our tabletop hobby. I’ll be discussing a variety of tabletop topics related to writing and designing rpg adventures, crafting terrain for skirmish war-games and rpg scenarios, painting miniatures and trying out new techniques and tools and stuff like that, discussing fantasy books, movies and series as well as artists and filmmakers … I might do some product reviews once in a while, maybe conduct an interview or two with other creators or artists, or just share things I find really interesting. And I’ll most likely talk about life philosophies that somehow pop into my head because of and along with all this tabletop stuff.
My goal is to drop a video every Thursday, and within that release schedule I plan to have a monthly category structure that includes one D&D or rpg-related video, one skirmish game-related video, a crafting or painting video and the fourth monthly video will be on whatever tabletop hobby thing has caught my interest.
I’m fully aware that this not how one is supposed to engineer a YouTube channel – we’re supposed to pick a niche and drill down on that niche until we’re burned out or simply don’t do anything else. I know myself enough by now to know how and why I get burned out on things, and it’s really because I’m interested in a lot of different things. Producing content for Tabletop Alchemy is designed in some ways to help me put a dent in my own Pile of Opportunity but overall this channel is dedicated to sharing and discussing OUR journey – that’s right, you and me – our journey through the tabletop gaming hobby.
So there it is – welcome to Tabletop Alchemy. A little bit of everything, but with specific focus. Let the dice roll – go do something.