Quinns' quest is here to make some seriously good RPG reviews
You know him from Shut Up & Sit Down, a channel about board games but now he's doing RPGs on a new channel
I got to interview Quintin Smith of Shut Up & Sit Down fame. We talk about the origins of that legendary boardgame YouTube channel and his thoughts about his new project Quinns Quest, an RPG review channel that he’s running solo.
Key Quinns Links
The Interview
As with any YouTuber I interview, I always take a peek at their very first videos. And almost invariably those first videos are pretty rough. The first video currently posted on the Shut Up & Sit Down channel is a how-to-play of a board game called Lords of Vegas, posted in May of 2016 and it’s… pretty polished! Is this the channel’s actual first video or did you guys trim off earlier, rougher videos?
Ha, it's not at all our first video. We actually bet big on Vimeo, if you can believe it, because it meant we could use the music of artists we liked. It was years later that we swapped to YouTube and began laboriously uploading all of our stuff.
But rest assured, the first video we shot on Vimeo was very rough indeed. It was back in 2011 and neither of us knew how to use the (borrowed) camcorder we were using, and we pirated our video editing software.
But by the time we released the first Shut Up & Sit Down video, I'd actually been working as a video game journalist for 10 years. I started doing that in 2002, when I was 16 years old.
So 22 years of experience at this point. And it shows. Who has made up the cast and crew of Shut Up & Sit Down over the years? And where did the name for the channel come from?
Oh gosh. While I was there, Paul Dean, Matt Lees, Tom Brewster, Pip Warr and Ava Foxfort did most of the coverage. The name came from Paul. He said "I have an idea for a channel, but I don't think we can use it." He said the name and we both laughed, and I said something along the lines of "Well now we HAVE to use it.
As the channel grew to become a go-to source for board game reviews and tutorials, that obviously brought with it ad revenue and sponsoring opportunities. At what point did the channel become a major source of income for you?
Ooh, the channel became sustainable in about 2016, but that certainly wasn't through ad revenue or sponsorship! Actually, we had ads switched off back then, and wouldn't do sponsored content until years later. Instead, Shut Up & Sit Down was actually part of the first wave of creators who pioneered making money through donations. The promise we made our audience was that they wouldn't see ads, and all of the games we covered would be there because we believed in them. We made ten times the money we could have made through ads via donations.
Which is exactly what I'm doing with Quinns Quest! I'd be tempted to keep ads switched off on YouTube entirely if I hadn't heard troubling rumours that it causes the YouTube algorithm to take less of an interest in sharing your work.
I also had ads turned off until I discovered that YouTube was playing ads in my videos anyway and just keeping all the money! What are some of your absolutely most favorite board games and why?
Oh gosh, after reviewing board games for 12 years that's like when you ask Windows to search your entire hard drive for something! Let me think...
A few absolute standouts? Tigris & Euphrates is my favourite smart game. Cockroach Poker is my favourite stupid game. Sidereal Confluence should be locked up somewhere, and I love it. Flamme Rouge is the game every family should be playing at Christmas. Hansa Teutonica is a perfect game, so is Brass: Birmingham, so is Arboretum.
You put out a few RPG reviews on the SU&SD channel and they always made a relatively big splash in terms of viewership. What was the moment that led you to think: ‘I should start an RPG review channel’?
I got this question in my Reddit AMA and it actually gave me pause!
I absolutely could have carved out a little corner of SU&SD to review RPGs in, the team would have been 100% behind me. But I think after 12 years it was time for me to shake things up, creatively. There's something about launching a new channel with zero subscribers, and starting a brand-new Patreon, that basically caused me to enter something between a fugue ambitious state and total panic. When you're given a blank piece of paper, you're gonna end up designing a small home that's different than if you just made a new office in your attic, you know?
Quinns Quest has a bonkers 1989 aesthetic, a whole lot of weird art design and even a whole commissioned soundtrack, and I don't think those ideas would have come to fruition if I'd stayed in the nest.
But also, as I say, there's panic in there. The unprecedented dread of the question "What if this doesn't work?" has caused me to work just that much harder with my research, writing and editing.
Do you think you will be able to keep up the schtick of being a reviewer from the 1980s over the long term? I imagine that adds an extra layer of creative work and exertion. Could you see yourself ever transitioning to a “straight” approach (that would include all the endemic charm and jokes, but sans ‘80s motif)?
Nah, I'm like Odysseus when he got lashed to the mast. [Adam Sandler from Uncut Gems voice] This is how I win
You're right that it's additional creative work, but it's not quite additional exertion. When you have a weird wrapper for your project, it gives you a whole world of weird technical, historic, tonal ideas to play with. Honestly, some of the hardest SU&SD reviews were because we were playing it "straight". That's actually harder to write jokes for. This way, I can watch an episode of Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction, or read bizarre bits of TTRPG history from the late 80s, and suddenly I've got all sorts of other ideas.
That said, all of the content on the Quinns Quest patreon is played pretty straight! So that's where I'm free to simply talk turkey.
Quinns lets loose in the intro video to his new RPG review channel. I wish I had that insight about the theme overlay when I started my deadpan RPG reviews channel. Speaking of, I did a review of The Wildsea, but yours is much more entertaining, funny, and most importantly for a lot of viewers, exhibits a lot of your personal experiences from playing the game. You wrote in your reddit AMA that you don’t ever plan on putting out a review of an RPG until you’ve played a “campaign” with it. What constitutes a “campaign” in this context and how long does it take you to play through one?
Ah, yes! That's the Quinns Quest guarantee: I'm only going to review games that I've played. When you look at the quality of RPG books that are coming out now, with such beautiful ideas, art and layout, and such obvious playtesting, it feels like the minimum that the designers deserve. But I'm very aware I'm making a rod for my own back! But as to how long a campaign should be, there was a phrase we used a lot back when I was a video game journalist that "How do you know when you're done reviewing a game? You just know." And that's been true of testing RPGs in my experience. After 7 or 8 evenings, or sometimes even less, I generally have the sense of how much I like a big-book game. The bigger problem is that often, campaigns run longer than it takes for me to figure out how I feel about them, but I need to still keep running the game in order to bring the story to a close. That's not about reviewing, that's about respecting my players who are showing up week after week. I'm not sure they'd be so keen to travel to my house if the stories we told never got endings!
That said, Quinns Quest is for sure going to shine a spotlight on smaller games in future, which I think is both going to be good for the TTRPG scene and for my mental health. One-shot RPGs, you might get what you need in a single night.
(If any RPG designers are reading this, if y'all wanted to work on more single-evening experiential games like Alice is Missing, I'd appreciate that very much!!)
How long has it taken you on average so far to produce an RPG review video, from reading it, playing it, writing the script, shooting it and to doing post-production? And for that matter, how much time is required for a board game video?
Oh gosh. Let me do the maths on an RPG video. Obviously it depends on the game, but if we're talking a big ol' book like Wildsea? 4 hours of reading, 3 hour session zero, eight 4 hour play sessions, 4 hours writing the review, 10 hours filming, 16 hours editing, 4 hours putting it live and managing the response? What does that add up to? (edited)
Not counting the time it takes me to assemble and disassemble my home studio and all the lights and cameras! That's a few more hours for sure.
Or all the prep I'd put into each session. But I do less and less of that as I become more experienced as a GM. These days I do most of my prep in my head while on the treadmill at the gym.
Wow. You have to disassemble the studio every time, too? Arrgh. How will your time be divided between working on SU&SD versus Quinns Quest?
We had a big post on SU&SD about this, actually.
I'm basically only on SU&SD for maybe 1 day a month now. Quinns Quest is my big new thing!
What are some RPGs on your list to review at the time of this writing?
Oooh, I couldn't possibly spill, Dave! But if people really want to know I'll be teasing upcoming releases from time to time on the Quinns Quest patreon.
Do you have any plans or hopes to attend any RPG-focused conventions this year?
I love PAX Unplugged! That's a great show and I'll probably go if they'll fly me out again, like they did with SU&SD. I'd also love to get out to Big Bad Con, but that's probably a 2025 goal.
Where in England do you hail from? Are you known locally for your YouTube work?
I grew up in London, a city where you're not gonna be known locally for anything, certainly not journalism. Unless you're Louis Theroux or Amelia Dimoldenberg. These days I live in Brighton, which is smaller and the quality of living is much higher. It's really nice to be able to walk everywhere I need to go. But no, still not known locally.
I move among the people incognito, not unlike Bruce Wayne or an ex-con
You’re a genuinely funny, energetic entertainer (who can also simultaneously teach and inform). Where did you get that entertainer instinct and talent from? Do you have a theater background? Or were you maybe a class clown type who always had it in you?
Ha ha ha, thank you very much! There's a simple answer to this and then a slightly darker answer. The simple answer is that I've been filming myself and editing myself for 12 years, which means you get a lot of practice and then also you get to spend a lot of time watching footage of yourself back and thinking "Wow, I shall never do that with my hands ever again." The darker answer is that my parents didn't get along, but the one thing my family did together was every Sunday we'd have this long 1 hour meal together where my parents wouldn't talk to one another, but so long as I spoke and filled the room with chat, they'd have a good time. So I got year after year of experience "running a table", and so long as I could run my smart lil' mouth, everything was okay.
That last answer hit me by surprise. I know that feeling all too well.
Otherwise, amazing stuff! His review of Wildsea popped in my recommendations multiple times, but I haven't watched it yet (I got the game already and know what it is about, I just need my group to wrap the current campaign so we can try it).
That being said, reviewing what you play, rather than what you read, is something I can very much get behind and I think others should follow suit.