► Tell us about you and your podcast
The Goblin’s Corner is a tabletop and storytelling podcast with the mission to help others embark on the wonderful journey of creating collaborative stories. Whether you’re a newcomer to the world of TTRPGs, a gaming pro, or somewhere in between, you can be assured to learn something that will make your game more interesting, engaging, and most of all fun. Building a home brewed world? Working within a module? We have you covered. Perhaps you are a player instead? We have interesting creation options as well as roleplaying techniques to get you into playing your character better, and also working within a group of other players as well.
Eric & Matt are the co-hosts of The Goblin's Corner, and between them have decades of gaming experience in various formats. Both are also heavily invested in the gaming community, as well as acting and film.
► Why & how did you start this podcast?
The Goblin's Corner was started in early 2020 with the intent to record our thoughts on gaming, storytelling, improv and TTRPGs overall. For years we would hang out and play games or talk about playing games, and as we got more involved in the gaming community found that these back porch hangout talks could actually help others make and play better games. The COVID shutdown in early summer gave us the incentive to sit down and record something, as well as learn from scratch (neither of us are audio engineers). It was a fun learning curve and in August of 2020 we popped out the first episode.
► How'd you find the time and funding to do this podcast?
We generally record during the evenings, which works well as we're both night owls. As both of us work a day job, this also allows us to be flexible in our interviews and episode scheduling, as well as having the option to record a couple of episodes at a time.
We currently host the show through Buzzsprout, the website through Bluehost, and edit/market all in house. Right now everything is personally funded, but we do hope to increase revenue through our expanding advertising, merch, and at some point a Patreon.
In general, one hour long episode takes about 2 hours of editing time as another couple to put the video on YouTube. The Goblin's Corner drops every Monday, and we often push on all the social media services on Monday, as well as respond throughout the week to listeners and comments.
► What do you gain from podcasting?
The Goblin's Corner wants to help others make better games and stories, tell better stories, and play better characters. If our show helps others do that, then we've done our job. Podcasting for both of us has been a great creative experiment, and an amazing way to connect with others in the TTRPG community. The table top gaming community may not be particularly large, but it is very tightly nit, and we've found not just sponsors, but also wonderful friends along the way. This has directly related to downloads, even more outreach, and fun outside projects (such as live streams with others, terrain builds, and so forth).
► How does your podcasting process look like?
We've managed to get great sound out of very little investment (our gear includes 2 Samson Q2U mics, a Behringer U-Phoria, and an older game PC Eric had). We've since expanded to include video and are very happy with our investment of 2 Go Pro 9s. Our software is a two-step process: we first edit the audio in Audition, and then finish the video in Premiere. When we have guests, we generally record via Zoom and splice it into the show. Guests can contact us through email, our various socials (particularly Twitter) and PodMatch.
As both of us can talk for hours about our favorite subject, we tend to keep preparation fairly minimal...an outline keeps us on track as well as make sure any salient points are addressed. Guest interviews are similar...we both come from the improv scene so can roll with whatever our guests throw at us.
► How do you market your show?
While The Goblin's Corner is on all the major social media channels, our largest engagement is through our Twitter following. Instagram also tends to be very useful, particularly when we showcase a terrain build, or something interesting from the podcast episode. Those two are most useful, as we're able to chat quite a bit more than on something like Facebook or TikTok. We also find PodMatch is quite a handy tool if you're looking for interesting individuals to interview or be interviewed by.
Listener-wise, we are fairly evenly split between Spotify, iTunes and Gaana (with Spotify slightly larger). Podcast Addict and Google Podcasts are also even and make up half of our iTunes distribution.
► What advice would you share with aspiring (new) podcasters?
Love what you do! Many podcasts don't see large engagement for quite a while, so it's a marathon, not a sprint. Make sure you are relevant and sound good to your listeners...these are easy things you have control over and if it jives with your audience then you'll get a following. Most importantly, have fun...that's why you started it in the first place.
► Where can we learn more about you & your podcasts?
Feel free to find us on all the things (just look for The Goblin's Corner on Spotify, Podchaser, iTunes, YouTube, Twitch etc.)! We also post on Twitter (@goblinscorner), Instagram (thegoblinscorner), and Facebook (goblinscorner). If you fancy getting in touch with us, email info@goblinscorner.com and of course you can always find everyplace we are at www.goblinscorner.com (as well as unique articles in addition to the podcast).