At MCM Comic Con in London last month, I got the pleasure of meeting Fiona KT Howat, producer of TTRPG podcasts: ‘What Am I Rolling?’ and the DM’s Book Club.
For the uninitiated, ‘What Am I Rolling?’ is an Actual Play podcast where Fiona hosts a variety of TTRPG one-shots featuring talented players from across the Actual Play scene. The DMs Book Club, meanwhile, is a Dungeons & Dragons lore podcast that Fiona co-hosts with Hamilton where they explore various resource books and how you can implement them in your games.
I caught up with Fiona to find out all about what goes into making these podcasts and how she manages them around her busy work life.
What Am I Rolling?
‘What Am I Rolling?’ seemed to start as simply a way of enabling Fiona to experience new TTRPGs and play them with her friends. Now it spans over 100 episodes and has covered over 50 different games. These range from solo games like Quill and Field Guide To Memory to group games like Call of Cthulhu and Flabbergasted.
What Am I Rolling? Find your new favorite one-shot here!
Each episode, Fiona introduces the game and gives a succinct rundown of how the game works and any content warnings. This means listeners can discover a variety of suitable games, and learn how they work pretty quickly. Not to mention that these episodes have excellent storytelling and entertainment value on their own!
As well as a great way of discovering new TTRPGs to play, listeners can also discover a whole host of talented groups and individuals in the world of Actual Play. Guests have included the cast of Realms of Peril & Glory, Backwater Bastards and Girls Run These Worlds.
Fiona also runs bonus episodes where she interviews games creators and other tabletop industry professionals to learn about their work and innovations in the world of TTRPGs. Last month, she interviewed game developer, Charlie Menzies, as he talked about his solo RPG, Don’t Play This Game. This proved to be a fascinating rundown of the game mechanics that task you to create your own story through a range of prompts. These prompts can have you exploring local places and creating scrap books and really get you thinking about ways of playing outside of the traditional tabletop setting!
The DMs Book Club
The DMs Book Club, came about during the 2020 lockdown. Fiona spoke about how she wanted to use this time to finally read the many D&D books she had accumulated. However, she admitted finding it difficult to stay focused and motivated without being able to talk things over with someone. And so she got together with Ryan Cook and later Hamilton to delve into, and discuss, this dragon’s horde of tombs! Since then, she and her co-hosts have explored 5e Player’s Handbook, Volo’s Guide to Monsters, Bigby Presents: Glory of Giants and many others. As well as giving valuable summaries of these works, they also discuss applications to their own games!
Fiona spoke of her love of learning and wanting to share her learning journey with others. Each episode, she and her co-host discuss these topics in a very accessible and conversational way. At MCM we spoke about how sometimes the sheer volume of rules for D&D can be a barrier to learning. Especially for new DMs who want to provide the best possible experience for their players. The breadth of D&D resources can be overwhelming to learn, keep track of and make use of.
The idea behind the DMs Book Club is to help DMs learn in a more engaging way. I recently listened to an episode about a new feature from Wizards of the Coast; Bastions and Cantrips. This feature allows players to build their own bastions (or lairs). It provides mechanics for how to customize your lair, what perks it can give you and how to maintain it. The show notes always include links to these resources. But having Fiona and Hamilton discuss them provides a very light, accessible way of getting to grips with them.
Fiona and Hamilton hosts the DMs Book to explore D&D lore and share their findings with you!
What It’s Like Doing All the Podcasts!
As well her two TTRPG podcasts mentioned above, Fiona is also fairly active on other shows. She has recently been on two episodes of Actual Play UK, playing a guest character in Realms of Peril & Glory‘s Vael, set in the game 13th Age. You can also currently find her on RPGeeks, GMing a four part series of KULT: Divinity Lost. All in all, she’s very busy and this isn’t even her day job!
Making the Time
Fiona acknowledged that keeping up her TTRPG podcast commitments can be challenging. She encourages anyone else thinking about podcasting to ask themselves if they commit to a consistent schedule. ‘What Am I Rolling?’ comes out twice monthly whilst the DMs Book Club comes out every week. Committing to a regular schedule like this even when life gets hectic can be tough. As well as the personal commitment of producing the show, there’s also the logistics of getting people together. I’m sure any TTRPG players and GMs reading this can relate to that!
Making the time for this can mean you have to cut back on other things you enjoy. For her, this meant cutting back on playing video games among other hobbies. However, she has made these alterations to her lifestyle and put the effort in because this is something she truly loves doing. Speaking with her it was clear that she gets great satisfaction about discovering new game systems, learning new things about established games and creating stories with others. In her day job, she is an educator and leads workshops on improvisation. She seems to have developed a positive symbiotic relationship between her role as an educator and her role as a podcaster. She spoke of how her improvisation practice has fed into running TTRPGs and getting players into a state of flow. But she has also taken TTRPG mechanics and used them to improve her improvisation practice as well.
In short, if you’re going to be a busy podcaster on top of working 9-5, doing something you love and that feeds into your career will be a massive help.
Dealing with Naysayers
You may notice at the start of ‘What Am I Rolling?’, Fiona reminds listeners that people make mistakes whilst playing and that the important thing is that everyone enjoys themselves. This seemed to be a response to receiving negative comments about ‘mistakes’ made during Actual Play episodes. This is something that can easily derail and knock back growing podcasters. However, rather than being upset by it, she used such instances to engage with her audience and improve her offering. Even negative comments showed her that people cared enough about her content to reach out.
Having that kind of positive mindset seemed to prove vital. If anything, instances such as these have only encouraged her commitment towards creating fun, inclusive spaces for people to get together and share their love of games.
If you would like to find out more about ‘What Am I Rolling?’ and the DM’s Book Club, be sure to check out the links in this article. To have a listen yourself, simply search for them wherever you get your podcasts. Both shows are rich resources of advice, guidance and good times that I would definitely recommend you add to your lists.
To see more about the world of TTRPGs and Actual Plays, keep an eye out for future articles from KeenGamer!
