I chatted with Aaron Voigt about broadening horizons, building relationships through podcasting, and what makes a good video essay.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Alex: You wear many hats in and outside of the TTRPG scene. You make video essays, you’re an author, you’re an RPG designer. Am I forgetting any?
Aaron: I do a podcast with my friend. I used to do two podcasts actually. The first one was Bible Boys that I did with my good friends Michael and Josh where we would review Christian media. It started because God’s Not Dead came on Netflix and I have a sick obsession with that franchise. It was during COVID too, so I was like, “I need to have someone to talk to about this insane movie!” I knew Michael from from Twitter, and Josh is his little sibling, and that’s how we started doing this podcast. We ended up doing over 100 episodes.
Alex: A hundred episodes!
Aaron: They’re not publicly available anymore because Michael is gonna have a public-facing job, and Josh is a public educator, and I also work for the government in a small capacity. So we thought it’s probably better that we don’t have our extremely critical opinions of Christianity publicly available. But it was really fun, and I’m still good friends with them. I still play tabletop games with them basically every week, and I’m going to officiate Josh’s wedding. So it’s not like we had a falling out, it’s just that we just got too busy and we didn’t want that stuff to be public.
Alex: No, I get it. You said you have another podcast as well?
Aaron: The other podcast that I do is with my good friend Leyla. They’re a pipeline manager over at Zenimax Online right now, but I’ve known them for getting close to 10 years at this point. They’re really one of the many reasons that I ended up doing my essays. It started because they had been posting online, just making their own one-shot essays, and I was like, “You know, this seems like something that’s a really useful skill.” So in 2021 I just wrote a nonfiction essay, you know, copying them over the course of a year and then in January 2022 I thought, “Maybe I should write about tabletop games,” and then that’s when I opened my channel. So Leyla is a huge influence on my history and work, and I’m very grateful to them.
Alex: What’s the podcast that you do together?
Aaron: We do a podcast called, “Mortified! The Friendship Quest” that’s about just any media that we’re recommending to each other. And that has really been helpful for me as both a critic, and somebody who is trying to just expose themselves to more media. Before I did these podcasts I basically never watched movies, so doing this podcast project allowed me to get so many more movies that I had never seen before. Do I think that anybody outside of like our friend groups listen to those podcasts? No. I know I’ve seen those numbers and it’s not a popular podcast, but I’m still very proud of it, I’m still very happy to do it every other week.
Alex: It sounds very intimate, just a personal recommendation between two friends.
Aaron: It’s a great way to build friendships. I had known Leyla through Twitter, but I hadn’t talked to them before we started doing the podcast on a video call. And now it’s just a thing where they’re one of my best friends. You know, it is. It is intimate in that way but also it’s been a really useful creative exercise.
Alex: And you said because of Leyla , that’s really what pivoted you into starting to make RPG video essays.
Aaron: You know, there’s a hundred different people who have influenced me to make those video essays. Obviously I’m trying to ape the style of Jacob Geller and Noah Caldwell-Gervais but you know I have to shout out the Polygon video team because Polygon sadly was acquired by Valnet recently and just the vast majority of their employees — including important tabletop reporter Charlie Hall — were all laid off within… I think it was like a month ago at this point. It feels like it’s been more recent, but it’s a terrible blow to all media, but especially tabletop because there are just so few professional tabletop outlets out there. RIP Dicebreaker, but the Polygon video team… I got into them for the same reason I got into tabletops, which is of course the Adventure Zone by the McElroy brothers. Justin and Griffin McElroy helped to found Polygon. I started watching their content, then I started watching the rest of the Polygon video team’s content after they departed. So those people absolutely had an influence on my videos as well.
Aaron: And obviously Leyla as well, doing their essays and inspiring me to do essays as well. You know Austin Walker, Right? I can’t… I wouldn’t be in the space without Austin Walker, who is just a genius. I could sit here and list my influences all day and I’d be happy, to but that’s probably not a very good interview for you (laughs). But yeah, Everything I do is is because of the people that are alongside me, and that have come before me, and I am just really grateful to be able to live in a time where there’s just like infinity smart people making stuff that I can watch or read or listen to essentially for free in a lot of cases. Even when it’s not for free, I can still get access to so many smart people’s ideas so I’m very lucky in that way.
Alex: When you are making your own videos, how do you decide what to cover, or what to write an essay about. I mean, that takes a fair amount of work.
Aaron: The process basically starts with me finding a game. Sometimes people send me their games to review. Most of the time if you send me a game, I’ll look at it, I’ll read it, but I probably won’t cover it just because I have to find an angle. That’s not to say anything bad about your particular game, I just can’t, you know, if I don’t find a certain angle that I can write a piece on, I can’t really make something out of it.
Alex: That makes sense.
Aaron: But a lot of that is going on itch.io, and just being like, “Oh, there’s a game on Itch that that’s that’s been interesting to me.” A lot of that is theme. I recently did a video on Jess Levine’s Going Rogue because I’m a big Star Wars fan, and that was really really easy to write about, especially—
Alex: Currently on Kickstarter.
Aaron: Yes! Shout out to their Kickstarter that’s going right now. I’m sure they’re doing great, it’s probably the best Kickstarter launch I’ve ever seen. Incredible, incredible production line out there! But, yeah sometimes it’s just a theme, like Andor season two was coming out, I wanted to do something about Andor, so I wrote about a Star Wars game. Sometimes it is just something that speaks to me. I think one of the videos that I’m most proud of was the video I did for Moss [Powers’] Hellwhalers which is basically doing Moby Dick, but also drawing on Christian concepts of hell. Because I pretty regularly talk about how I you know used to be Catholic and I’m no longer Catholic, anything that has a vaguely Christian, or especially Catholic, flavor can hook me in that way. Reading Hellwhalers, I was like, “Oh I’m able to connect to this game’s endings with a sermon that I learned about in high school about what happens when you die, and about how a very very small percentage of people actually go to heaven.”
Aaron: So sometimes it’s just like this weird experience in my life helped me, and I create the thesis for this essay, but sometimes I find a game out there that wedges in my brain, and I’m able to craft a thesis out of that to say something interesting about that game. Then I sit down and write an essay based on it. Part of that is just listening to a ton of podcasts and being active online in the space and realizing, okay there’s all these new games coming out, so you know I’m looking at the the list of games that I want to cover and it’s you know one two three four… you know I have probably twenty, thirty games on my list that I’d love to cover at some point that just are probably never going to get covered. It’s all about time, and these videos are incredibly time-consuming. So you know it’s really just about luck unfortunately.
Alex: That’s one of your roles, being a video creator and, to some extent, a tastemaker. What about your role as an RPG designer, can you talk about that?
Aaron: I broadly don’t consider myself an RPG designer. I like making games, I think it’s really interesting, but especially in the last couple of years, I’ve been… specifically with Détente for the Ravenous, I was like, you know I made a game that was pretty big and I’m very proud of that game, but it’s not professional, right? It’s kind of a game that is clunky and definitely has edges, and that hasn’t been sanded down to a professional sheen. I think I was pretty explicit in saying that game is a marketing gimmick becauseI know people that know me in the RPG space probably won’t read my book unless I make a game about it so I did that.
Alex: Is it crass to ask if that worked?
Aaron: I don’t want to talk numbers, but broadly, I’m happy with the amount of money. It wasn’t huge, but you know, I’m very pleased that anybody bought it at all, frankly.
Alex: Do you have more novels planned?
Aaron: I had a literary agent, unfortunately she decided it wasn’t a good fit for her. That happens! It wasn’t a bad dissolving of our partnership, it’s a completely professional thing, and I don’t bear her any ill will but it was kind of sad for me. I was like, you know maybe writing novels isn’t isn’t what I’m meant to do. But I at the same time had been starting to gain some steam here in the tabletop space, so I was like maybe I should focus my time more on the tabletop scene. And that’s kind of where I’m at right now. I like making games but they’re much easier turnaround than novels and frankly I think I can crank those out and be like hey here’s a game that I’ve made. It’s not especially professional, but if you’d like to buy it I’d appreciate it. But that’s kind of a fun side project. I try at this point to be more focused on videos.
Alex: That makes sense. One question I’m always asking is what makes your design yours? What is an Aaron Voigt design?
Aaron: I’m going to change that question a little bit, because I don’t think of myself as a designer. So I’ll change that to be about my video work, and my writing work. And that I always approach from a place of sincerity. I also always try to bring in other points of comparison. I think it is really useful to be like, okay this thing is like X thing but also X thing can be this thing, and trying to read things with a spirit of generosity and sincerity. But also trying to make interesting comparisons that aren’t the ones you would have immediately considered. Obviously with things like Going Rogue, the Star Wars comparison is really clear. But with things like Hellwhalers, pulling that specific sermon about hell I hope is a little bit more obscure. That’s what I want to do with my work is to kind of hit that sweet spot between making you know broadly popular work that appeals and draws people into the hobby while at the same time being niche and weird enough to have a distinct flavor and taste.
Alex: I’m glad you mentioned that, because that’s something I wanted to bring up. The first video I remember seeing of yours was about Spire and Babel. You just mentioned looking at two different things and finding those connections between them. When you’re looking for a compelling take that — you know, you said you’re not going to review something unless you have a unique take on it — Are you more interested in looking at, oh, “I can look at and find connections between these two works” like you did for Babel and Spire? Or is it more, “I can look at this with a lens that someone else might not have?”
Aaron: I try to do a little bit of both. Frankly I’d like to say that I could do the second, which is to to bring a completely unique critical lens to something, but more often than not I am doing a lot of description and and making those comparisons between existing work. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I do think it is slightly less cool to be like, “Oh yeah this thing is like this thing” than than to say, “Oh I’m a completely unique critical mind that that can draw these these connections with my with my incredible brain.” But all that said, I’m still very very proud of the Spire / Babel video. We’ll see what happens when I make my Patreon video, maybe I’ll make something super long. But for now, that Spire video is my longest video. I’m really proud of it, and I don’t know how I did it in three weeks.
Alex: Three weeks!
Aaron: Yeah I don’t know what was going on with me in 2023 (laughs). Whoever’s reading this, please go watch my Spire Babel video if you don’t mind being spoiled on Babel. I’m really proud of that because it started with, well both of them have two big long towers in them, but also they’re extremely about colonialism and racism and the necessity of violence as Rebecca Kuang would say all right I suppose also as Frantz Fanon would say, sorry.
Alex: Where would you tell people to start with you? Would you tell them to start with Détente, or with your Babel video?
Aaron: (laughs) I would not tell anyone to start with Détente, not unless they were a true sicko for my brand of nonsense.
I think I would start with my Youtube videos, go through and if there is a game there that that speaks to you, pick that. If we’re thinking about games I’ve talked about this year alone, probably something like… I’m really proud of my Translating NIGHTHAWKS essay. I think that’s a really good place to start because it gets to that thing where I’m trying to bring in Edward Hopper and an indie designer. Obviously Lex Kim Bobrow (AKA Titanomachy)’s Nighthawks is a game that is explicitly about Edward Hopper. But that essay gets to the heart of what I’m hoping to do. Of all the stuff I’ve published this year, that’s the essay I’m most proud of. So I would say start there!