Podcaster Spotlight: The Independent Characters - Carl Tuttle (Part Three)

Today we finish up the conversation with Carl Tuttle, host of The Independent Characters Podcast. Check out their site and join their forums! I think they also have a Facebook.

One thing that seems to be a challenge with any kind of hobby-related blog, podcast, forum, etc. seems to be getting your name out there and promoting. What advice would you give to someone just starting out? 
I think there are a couple of things you can do to get your Blog or Podcast some exposure.  First, provide a quality product. I think this is the number one thing you can do. And if you keep doing it, people start to take notice.

Second, get yourself out there on various forums, events, etc. Attend gaming conventions, be outgoing and social (a hard thing for some people who play this game admittedly!), and make friends.  If these two things occur, before long you will get a larger and larger audience.

I don’t know that there is an easy answer to this. We are actually always looking to extend our reach. We started out by being active on various forums, and actually we paid for some advertising on some well known 40k sites for a period of time. Ultimately most of the people learn of our show by word of mouth.

Obviously articles like EvilEds “This Week in Podcasting” on Bell of Lost Souls (and formerly on From The Warp) can go a ways towards increasing your profile.  Heck even this interview may get someone who didn’t previously know about our show to take a listen.

Right now we are focusing on trying to get people who are not familiar with Podcasts in general, to at least give them a try. I strongly feel there is an “untapped market” of people who have either previously listened to poor quality Podcasts or discounted them all as bad, or have never really considered Podcasts as a form of entertainment.

What are a few things that you'd like to get out of the rumored 40k 6th edition this summer?

I would like to streamline wound allocation a bit. That's a somewhat small change. I would like, more than anything, more ways to play the game. By that I mean more than the 3x3 table. A 6x6 or even a 9x9 would make for way more mission types to be played. But deep down I am hoping the changes are a bit more drastic than that. I am wondering if they will make changes to terrain like they did in Fantasy! I would be ok with that!

You seem to be very into Forge World and the items they produce. What has been your favorite model that you have put together, painted, and used? 
Wow that is a really tough call. I do have quite a bit and I love my Death Guard plague marines, but I guess I would have to say at this point it is probably my Khorne Demon Prince. I use it as a Summoned Greater Demon for my World Eaters army. But every time I pull him out onto a table in a store or event, he draws a lot of attention. It is just such a beautiful model people are drawn to it.

Your Badab War coverage was something that personally inspired me to start a Mantis Warriors army. You had mentioned previously when you decided on Ultramarines that you had looked at some of the BW chapters... what made you decide to ultimately not start one of those chapters? Will you be doing any BW campaigning any time soon?

Well I was REALLY close to doing a Red Scorpions army. I still wonder if I should have just done it. But in the end I think it was really the color scheme of the Ultramarines that won out there. I was also seriously considering doing a Howling Griffons army. I sometimes still think I should have maybe gone that route. I have seen some really amazing versions of that army… but the problem there is that Forge World doesn’t have any doors for vehicles for the Howling Griffons yet. And as we have just discussed – I am a Forge World addict.

I don’t have any plans to do a Badab War Campaign at the moment. We did just finish a campaign that basically borrowed heavily from the rules of the Badab war Campaign rules. It just allowed people to play any race they wanted. The campaign system described in The Badab War books is truly a lot of fun and you can’t go wrong with it. I found it to be really superior to the Planetary Empires system.

Next up is the Eye of Terror Campaign for us.

Your name is always out there regarding your podcast, Adepticon, gaming, etc. Do you worry about having your somewhat unique name (as opposed to Bill Smith) associated with 40k and all that you do? A lot of people don't understand the hobby. I know personally I've struggled with it before, especially when it comes to work, but I've kinda gotten past that now - what do you think about it? 
No. I don’t really worry about it. Look, I’ve played role-playing games since the mid 70s. So I’ve been through all of the “Dungeons and Dragons is Satan Worship” panic that went on in the late 70s and 80s. I long ago came to grips with who I am and what kind of hobbies I enjoy. Whether they are more “socially acceptable” or my relationship with them is “exposed” doesn’t make a difference to me.

I work in a professional environment at a large company, and I am (at least I like to think I am) fairly well respected in my professional life. The majority of my friends also work in the corporate world. We are all pretty open about what our hobby is. It really boils down to your own self confidence. If you are confident in what you do and believe, you don’t feel the need to justify it to other people. If they can’t understand it, well that’s really their problem not mine.

Most of my co-workers actually ask to see pictures of what it is we are doing or like to ask a lot of questions about it.  I have never had it become a problem.

Is there anything else you'd like to tell the world?

Well obviously if you haven't listened to The Independent Characters, please give it a try! I really think you will like what you hear. Beyond that, make sure when you are playing, you are having fun! That's the whole point.