Who's this guy winning all the YouTube ENNIES?
Who is Seth Skorkowky, the man of many faces?
Hi Seth! Can you introduce yourself and tell us what kind of media you create and what kind of projects you’ve worked on?
I’m a fantasy and horror author with a few novels to my name. Then, one day I started making YouTube videos in hopes of marketing my books, but that ended up cresting past my popularity as an author. I primarily focus on RPG reviews and how-tos for an assortment of games. My channel has now won two Gold ENNIE awards and gotten me a few gigs writing scenarios for Call of Cthulhu, Traveller, and Kult: Divinity Lost, which has been amazing to be writing for the games I’ve loved for so many years.
Indeed, you won an Ennie Award (one of RPG’s most prestigious) for Best Online Content in 2019, and just this year won an Ennie for Best Podcast. Congratulations on both of those! What are your thoughts on this year’s Best Podcast win?
It’s kinda confusing because three of the five finalists were podcasts while two were YouTube channels. Every year the judges place finalists in what category they fit in, but YouTube channels seem to be the wildcard. Both years I won I originally submitted as a Website/Blog. Personally I wish they’d called the category Best Show or something to reflect they aren’t only podcasts. I also found it a bit strange that the four other finalists were all Actual Plays, while my channel isn’t. So, if I could rework the Ennie categories I’d like to put Actual Plays in one and How Tos & Reviews in another.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m stoked to have won this year and am very proud. I simply feel a lot of people found the inclusion of a YouTube channel in a category named for Podcasts a bit confusing.
This acceptance speech video incorporates all of Seth’s alter ego characters. More on that below.
Yeah, actual plays are their own thing now. It seems as though there are thousands of them at this point so I’m sure would be hard for judges to wade through them all every year! You’re coming up on ten years with the YouTube channel, and as far as the RPG niche goes, you have quite a sizable following. What does the channel serve as for you at this point? Do you have any big plans for it?
My channel is a big creative outlet for me and keeps me pretty busy. All the characters I play and spending way more time than you’d believe hunting for good green-screen backplates or Photoshopping GM screens into old-timey pictures is something I enjoy. I do that for me. I need to enjoy making videos, otherwise it starts feeling like a chore. I’ve gotten a few writing gigs out of it, and seeing my name listed in the Call of Cthulhu Starter Set as a valuable resource or Cyberpunk Red making a reference to my channel, those blew me away. Those games made such an impact on me, so having them list me in their books is a geek dream come true.
One of the big goals of my channel is I want to introduce people to RPGs I love or types of games I love. I get a lot of people thanking me for introducing them to Call of Cthulhu or Traveller and how I got them to branch out and discover their favorite games and it makes me proud every time I hear it. I know I could get a lot of clicks if I posted about D&D, but I don’t get excited about that. I’d rather show people why they want to try Righteous Blood, Ruthless Blades. As far as plans, I’ve had rough drafts for several non-RPG videos for years in my “Drafts” folder, but I never seem to get around to finishing them. Eventually I do want to make some videos on Speculative Fiction genres and a few novels that have really influenced my gaming.
You have a very firm and very rare policy on your channel of only reviewing games and supplements that you have personally played. (I am among many on the Internets who do not maintain that policy). How have you been able to maintain that policy over the years despite factors like, for example: reading something you love and want to share but can’t fit it in at your table; or being offered sponsorships to promote games and products that you like but are unable to play for one reason or another?
There’s a value to Impression Reviews, but in the RPG space there’s also a surplus of them. I’ve read and received reviews where it was painfully clear the reviewer hadn’t read the novel or played the game and made some blatantly incorrect assumptions about it. With RPGs, there’s a lot of gems and flaws that even a trained eye can miss on a readthrough. My reviews are from personal experience where I can say, “This looks a little goofy at first, but was a blast when we tried it,” or walk viewers through rough spots we discovered mid-game and also give tips on how we overcame them. Those are the kinds of reviews I want to see when I’m looking at buying or running a game. I expect my car reviewer to have driven the car or my movie reviewer to have seen the film, but it’s kinda weird that such a policy is rare in the RPG community.
I’ve been offered countless sponsorships for games where they’re wanting a “review” that’s really an infomercial. But I’ve spent years building a reputation for fairness and honesty and don’t want to throw that away. I’m not opposed to “This video brought to you by So-and-So.” I’d like to do more. But I’m never going to pretend I’ve played it or feign excitement. Money also brings up questions of honesty. If a publisher sponsored a video, then a few weeks later I reviewed a product by that publisher, people would question if my review of a sponsor was entirely honest.
Sure, there’s games or adventures I want to play and review, but they just have to wait until we can play them.
One of Seth’s latest reviews, which features two very common things for him: 1) It’s Call of Cthulhu, and 2) he played/ran the module.
What is one of the most fun recorded play sessions that you’ve ever been in and why?
Most fun was Intimate Encounters with Glass Cannon. I’m now on the second season of Voyagers of the Jump with them, but that was my first game with them, and I only met most of the guys about 20 minutes before we started recording. Normally with groups where I only just met them prior to recording, I’m much more reserved. But with that one I instantly clicked with everyone. We’re playing this modern-day Call of Cthulhu adventure that’s pretty grim, but we’re having a blast and laughing our butts off. It was great.
I got a bit of hate from people upset at how we joked and laughed in a horror scenario, like we should have been 100% serious the whole time. I feel that’s one of those cases where people watch Actual Plays like a regular TV show and not what a bunch of people playing are really like. In my personal games we laugh constantly. But what made that game really special, and what I always point out to the critics, is that while we joked and laughed, we didn’t let that derail us. We stayed focused and completed a pretty complex plot in 5 hours. I could only wish my own group could do that.
The first episode of Intimate Encounters, hosted on Seth’s channel. Content warning: the participants laugh a lot and have a good time.
Chaosium creates at least one game that you really love and tend to promote, Call of Cthulhu. If they approached you with an offer to officially promote their product on a regular basis or even help them orchestrate their YouTube channel, would you ever consider taking them up on that kind of offer?
The crew at Chaosium has even stated that while sponsoring Actual Plays and other things is something they do, they understand the issues with sponsoring reviewers. I appreciate that, because it shows we’re on the same page with it and saves us both from uncomfortable talks. That being said, Chaosium has given me books and material to look at (hoping I’ll like it enough to play and review it). They’ve paid me for freelance writing work on one upcoming project and my contributions to their Keeper Tips book. I’m not opposed to working with them or any other publisher, but there is a line of what sort of promotions I can do. I think it’s safe to say they know I’m a fan of their game and have done a lot of promotion of them without them even needing to offer anything.
What are your thoughts on the parasocial relationships that develop between content creators and their fans and supporters? And what level of contact do you have with your fans and your patrons?
Few years back, the writing group I belonged to had a table at a convention for us to sell our books. A woman grabbed one of my novels and showed it to her friend, gushing how much she loved that series. Now, I’m a fledgling author, so this was like the coolest thing ever. She asked me if I’d read it, and I said I was the author. Neither of them seemed to care in the least. She loved the content, but I was irrelevant. I evidently took that to heart. Then mixing that with a double-specialization in Impostor Syndrome, I was completely unprepared for fans caring about who I was. My first few times getting recognized I was so awkwardly freaked-out I wish I had recordings of it.
The biggest reason I attend cons is to meet fans. I try to get out and walk around and interact with people, instead of hiding in a corner. I have to remind myself to smile, suppress my natural ‘resting bitch face,’ and look approachable. Sometimes strangers come up and start talking to me like we’re old friends who happened to bump into each other. It can take me a bit to realize we’ve never met before, but they feel like they’ve known me for years.
People can create a picture of you that isn’t remotely real. I hope when they do meet me they at least leave feeling it was a positive experience.
I have no idea if that remotely answered your question.
Yeah, I’m really just more confused than ever. But I’m comforted in knowing that you are working on that “resting bitch face.” If you learn to wield it masterfully, it could be the basis of a new character. And speaking of, for those who haven’t watched your channel, you embody a number of characters in many of your videos, completely with costumes, wigs, backgrounds and props. How many character roles have you now played on your channel? Do you have any favorites?
Technically, I only have five Characters – Jack the NPC, Todd, Mike, Dweebles, and Kevin. Kevin was only supposed to be used for a single video as a player who’s always there but no one notices, but I used him again for a quick cameo. Wait, no, then there’s also coke-fueled Gygax. So, six characters. Unless you count the Bonesaw, of course.
Playing Jack is my favorite. I have no idea how many silly costumes I’ve put him in. I always try to make his outfit appropriate for the video. But whether he’s a 1920s detective, Hyperborean barbarian, wuxia swordsman, or busty wolf-headed space-farer, it’s always Jack. My favorite Jack was “Jane” from my Two-Headed Serpent campaign diary. It started just so I could do a single gag where I pulled open the top of my dress to reveal this scale mutation left over from one of the adventures. So, I put on a blonde wig, stuffed a bra, my wife helped me with my makeup, and I picked up a dress at a thrift shop I could pull open. But at the time, we hadn’t made it far enough along in the campaign where Jane was transformed into a Serpent Person. I decided to keep going with the gag. So, by the end I’m wearing a dress, fake boobs, and this rubber snake mask as I’m recounting the hijinks my players got into.
Here are some of Seth’s alter egos. If you want to see “Jack” in drag as “Jane", you’ll have to go digging around Seth’s channel yourself.
Okay, two comments and a question here. 1) Thanks for doing that Coked Up Gygax bit. I remember seeing it when you first released it and thought “Finally!” I think too many people put Gygax on a golden pedestal and don’t acknowledge some of the more unsavory aspects of his lifestyle. 2) I didn’t know the Jack character dipped into drag elements. You know, Dimension 20 recently had an all drag queen actual play that has racked up 1.3 million views and counting. You are onto something here! And 3) what technical or practical advice would you give to someone who is thinking of doing a multi-character format for their videos like yours?
One of the things I enjoy is reading about the history of the RPG industry. Shannon Appelcline’s Designers & Dragons series is wonderful. I can’t recall if it was Ben Riggs’s Slaying the Dragon or Jon Peterson’s Game Wizards that really laid out the serious dirt on Gygax’s troubled years. It’s like your mentioning parasocial relationships. People tend to ignore the ugly parts of their heroes, which is really the stuff that makes them human.
As far as doing multi-character format, give each of the characters a simple gimmick that’s instantly recognizable. They need a different voice, and cartoony ones – as long as they don’t distract from the character – are perfect. Make sure it’s a voice you can maintain for long or repeated takes. Jack’s original voice was so harsh I couldn’t do it for more than a few seconds before coughing. After that, establish where the characters are in relation to each other and always turn toward the character you’re speaking to. Regular viewers know that when Dweebles looks left he’s talking to the GM, right he’s speaking to Todd, and across he’s talking to Mike. It adds to the illusion these people are all in the room together. Script out everything they’re going to say and do, even little reactions and nods. Finally, prepare for it to take a lot more time than a regular video. Videos with a lot of back-and-forth between the characters take a lot of time with all the costume and camera changes, and lots and lots of editing.
So you’re a novelist, and one prominent series of books that you have written is Dämoren. Can you tell us more about the world you created for that series, as well as its protagonists?
Love to! The concept is that monsters from folklore are real. But instead of being a virus or mutagen or anything, it’s a type of demonic possession. So, while a silver bullet might appear to kill a werewolf, it’s only killing the host. The spirit simply moves on to another body and carries on. The only way to truly kill the entity is with these sentient magic weapons that bond with their wielders.
We follow this group of modern-day monster hunters through various parts of the world. The first book follows Matt Hollis, who wields a holy cutlass revolver named Dämoren, as he’s recruited into a secret order of knights to go to Europe and help stop a big threat. Each book follows a different knight and focuses on various themes. So, while Book One is a globe-hopping action adventure, Book 2 is a New Orleans noir horror.
That sounds so cool. Which book have you had the most fun writing thus far?
Hounacier was my favorite to write in that series. It was the second novel, and such a departure from Book1 that the whole process was completely different. It’s by far the darkest book I’ve written and I was most of the way through it before I knew how it’d end. I just kept knocking the hero, Malcolm, lower and lower with no clue how or if he was going to get out of it. While Dämoren had an ensemble of heroes, took place across several countries, and had a ‘save the world’ plot, Hounacier was a single hero in one city with personal stakes. An added hurdle was Malcolm was a conflict character in Book 1, sorta like Iceman in Top Gun – not a bad guy, but definitely a source of conflict for the hero of that book. So casting him as the protagonist of Book 2 meant I had to quickly make him likable and sympathetic in order to get the audience on his side.
What kind of overlap is there between the fans from your novels and the ones from your YouTube channel?
Pretty good overlap from what I’ve seen. The genre notes are the same, so fans of the channel generally like the same types of fiction. I’ve got Sword & Sorcery with my Black Raven series, Urban Fantasy/Horror with my Valducan series, and Ashes of Onyx for the Weird Fiction fans.Though I have had a few YouTube fans tell me some of the themes in my books took them by surprise – graphic horror, sex, drug addiction, etc.. I assume they were expecting something more light and humorous like my YouTube stuff.
What are your thoughts on creating an RPG setting/ruleset based on one of the worlds from your novel?
It’d be neat, but I’d also want the game mechanics to fit the world, instead of simply shoehorning in generic mechanics from some other system and slapping an IP name on it. So, something the way Free League tailored their Year Zero engine for Alien and Bladrerunner. Those are some impressive examples of designing a game for an established setting. It’d also want the game to offer more than simply recreating the book stories. There should be the versatility to give players the opportunity to go in wildly different directions and explore different types of adventures within those worlds. One of the finest examples of a game that offered totally opposite ways of playing was Cyberpunk 2020. Players normally go for street-smart edgerunners doing all sorts of crimes. But then you had Protect & Serve, a supplement where players in the same world are now playing cops, solving crimes, and dealing with the types of stuff police deal with in the Cyberpunk universe. I always loved how there was no single way that game could be played, so any game based off of my books I’d want to have versatility.
Are you working on any publications right now, RPG-related or otherwise?
At the moment, no. I have projects I’ve turned in to a couple publishers, but until they get to the stage where I need to make any updates or edits I’m pretty much done with those for now. No idea when they’ll be announced or released, so I’ve just been keeping myself busy with the channel as normal until they contact me for additional work.
Regarding your YouTube channel, you’ve created dozens of really valuable and helpful videos that offer gamemastering advice and guidance. Why do RPGs need so much guidance to run games? And do you think the need for so much guidance prevents the hobby from growing?
I don’t think it’s preventing the hobby from growing at all. It’s simply reflecting the growth of the hobby. Way back, RPGs were just one step away from wargames. But the hobby has evolved so much over the decades. And not just with the types of RPGs, but with what we’ve figured out we can do with them. I’ve done How To’s on running effective Mysteries, Horror, and Heist games, showing GMs how they can expand what types of adventures they offer without having to go through the same trial and error bumps that I did. There’s tons of advice out there on crafting vibrant characters that are more than just a list of stats and gear. That’s all to help gamers take their games to levels they probably hadn’t imagined, or seen on some streaming show but don’t know the tricks on how to do it themselves. It’s amazing.
But the other advice videos I give, and usually the more popular ones, aren’t about gaming as much as they’re about people. They’re about how to communicate or resolve conflicts around the table. Many might as well be re-skinned videos offering interpersonal or managerial advice. RPGs have evolved since 1974, but they’ve always been social games. And learning to communicate and work together is always going to be valuable. I could only wish I had these types of resources when I was young (and the wisdom to have paid attention if I did have them).
I’ve been watching RPG advice videos for years and years and I’m still needing guidance and reinforcement from videos like this one.
Are there any games where you strongly prefer an older edition over a newer edition?
Strongly? No. I’ve been pretty critical of Cyberpunk Red, but when stepping back, it’s not that I preferred Cyberpunk 2020. It has some serious wonky parts. I preferred my incredibly house-ruled version of CP2020 that we spent nearly a decade honing and had tons and tons of supplement material I’d amassed (we’ll just join the consensus that V3 never happened).
Back when 3e D&D came out, I hated running it. We eventually flipped back to AD&D. But that was the Frankenstein’s Monster 1e/2e hybrid with years and years of bolted on house-rules. I think a lot of the complaints people see about New versus Old editions isn’t necessarily about the rules-as-written, as much as it’s about the older rules as they’ve been modified and honed by the tables and how the brand new edition doesn’t have the catalog of cool supplement materiel yet.
You have covered the RPG Traveller quite extensively on your channel, and of course you have now written for the game in an official capacity. Regardless of version, what makes Traveller so good in your opinion?
There’s a lot that I like, but the biggest is versatility. Traveller can do just about any sci-fi with no modifications. It offers an extensive setting with hundreds, maybe thousands of established worlds, while also providing the tools for Game Masters to make up their own game universe. It’s not mechanically tied to a specific setting or theme. Whether you want military, exploration, outlaws on the fringe, cyberpunk, mystery, Traveller can do it with ease.
We both printed this same ship from Traveller. Seth’s is way nicer.
What about another of your favorite games, Call of Cthulhu? What keeps you coming back to that one?
Mechanically speaking, Chaosium’s BRP (Basic Role-Playing) system is great. But the update they gave to it for 7e Call of Cthulhu is wonderful. I love it. I feel Chaosium made a big mistake not incorporating the 7e Call of Cthulhu changes into the latest update to the BRP core system.
Plot-wise I enjoy horror and investigative games where we’re figuring out a mystery and our heroes have vulnerability. Those are my favorite types of adventures, and CoC is perfectly made for that. For longer campaigns we add the Pulp Cthulhu mod to make the characters just a little more hardy, but still fragile. Then to top all that off, because 7e Call of Cthulhu is fully backwards compatible, I’ve got 40 years worth of scenarios and material that’s still perfectly usable. If I was forced to choose only a single RPG to play for the rest of my life, I’d choose Call of Cthulhu.
You've run and played in countless Call of Cthulhu published scenarios. Which one has been your all-time favorite thus far, and why?
This is one of those questions I have to just go with my first thought, otherwise I'll over-think it and get myself locked in decision paralysis. I'll say The Dare. It's set in the 1980s with a bunch of kids who are dared to spend Halloween night in a haunted house. It's a cool scenario on its own, but we had a fantastic experience playing it. My players really got into roleplaying these 12-year-old kids and we had that perfect mixture of hilarity and gruesome horror. It was amazing.
Seth beginner’s introduction to 7th edition CoC, where he sets some things straight about possible misconceptions surrounding what the game entails.
If you had a magic wand, what would you change about the RPG hobby or industry?
Wow. That’s a lot harder to answer than I’d have guessed. But after sifting through all my initial answers that are mostly petty revenges or absurd for humor’s sake, the big one I want is survivability. For most of its history, the RPG industry has been on the razor’s edge of collapse. The last few years we’ve seen a huge upsurge in popularity due to a variety of factors, But it’s still a small industry and vulnerable. Fads that seemed unstoppable can vanish overnight, and a single miscalculation has killed many wildly successful publishers. I’ve no doubt the current explosion in popularity will end, or at least suffer a lull. I only hope the publisher’s weather the storm. I hope the current surge of new gamers are enough to keep the industry alive and comfortably healthy until the next surge comes along.
Amen to that, brother. Okay, last question. Will you ever let any of your YouTube colleagues win an ENNIE or will you keep snatching them up until further notice?
I’ll allow it. If for no other reason than when I lose out to another channel I get to claim it was because I allowed them the win.
Some helpful Seth links:
Seth’s Books! amzn.to/2jBeLNo
Twitter twitter.com/SSkorkowsky
Merch teespring.com/stores/seth-skorkowsky
Patreon patreon.com/SSkorkowsky
Got Dice? q-workshop.com/en/221-rpg-icons-seth-skorkowsky
Skorkowsky.com skorkowsky.com
Seth is the bees knees! 💚⚔️🎨
Seth's point about the blocking of the skit characters is such a good one and it's something I rarely see commented upon ─ I think that's the reason why it's so easy to drop into believing they are real characters, despite the overt pretence, the whole thing rings true (like a puppet show).