17/08/2024
If you’re not in the Discord community, we wanted to make sure to share the announcement from a couple of days ago:
6 years ago, we launched Random Encounter Productions. The goal was simple enough: a bunch of friends who love playing D&D streaming our adventures. Since then, we have run multiple seasons of our flagship High Fantasy show, a Steampunk adventure, several Sci Fi campaigns, A Vampire the Masquerade saga, and countless one shots. We have launched a D&D enamel pin kickstarter, created a PVP league, vended at multiple conventions, and run live events at local game shops and comic book stores. Those of you who have been with us from the start have been there for the joy, the heartbreak, the wondrous successes, and the many many failures.
It is those failures that drove us to constantly adapt and change. Those failures were the bumps on a very exhausting road. Along that journey, we re-branded as just “Rep.” We lost players and friends due to tabletop disputes. We shifted the format of our Patreon at least a dozen times. We designed new overlays, upgraded equipment with every spare cent we had, and scrambled to adapt to the fully digital format that 2020 forced on the world.
And through all of that, the thing that kept Cody and I wanting to press on was a love of storytelling. But unfortunately, with the strain and pressure it has taken on us, both financially and emotionally, that love is not enough anymore. Try as we might (and have) we can’t keep up with the flood of Actual Plays on the market. Our combined mental health issues do not allow for a lot of networking, our day jobs make consistent stream scheduling a tremendous effort, and the pain of trying to tell a good story has become a bit too much. For both of us. The channel became, in recent years, more of a guilt and a weight than something we enjoyed. But we have poured so much money and hope into it in the past six years that we couldn’t bring ourselves to let go. We clung to the good moments as long as we could, and believe me, we tried harder than any of you know NOT to get to this point.
However, the built up pain of feeling like we are failing - failing the viewers, failing our players, failing ourselves - has become extremely unhealthy for us both. We need a fresh start, one with no expectations or guilt, or financial anxiety. We actually came to this decision a couple of months ago, but haven’t even been able to bring ourselves to officially announce it until now. As you can imagine, it is not an easy post to make.
Before I get into any “what’s coming next,” I want to take a moment and thank you all. No matter how long or short a time you have been with us, we have been grateful for every single moment of it. There are so many things we wish we had done differently, or better, but your support has been the one thing that kept us going at times. Every comment, every viewer, every time any of you let us know you liked being a part of our stories. There is no way we can ever truly thank you all for that.
Now, to business:
Outstanding Orders: By the end of this month we will either have refunded or shipped everything that is still owed. The multiple moves over the past year means a LOT of things just went missing or fell through the cracks, and we DO still want to rectify that. If you are owed missing items or think something has gotten lost in transit, please DM me. I’m making a spreadsheet.
Patreon and Website: We will be shuttering both of those ASAP, but I would like to echo again how very grateful we are for ALL the support every patron and customer has offered over the years. We couldn’t have made it past month three without you.
Social Media: We will be archiving ALMOST all pages and accounts, as they are a lot to maintain (and we weren’t even good at maintaining them when we were ACTIVE) HOWEVER, the YouTube channel will remain up. Anyone who wants to go watch past shows is absolutely welcome to, and we do want a record of the past six years of creations up somewhere. However, that also means we will be shutting down this discord server by the end of the month as well.
Fresh Start: As for me and Cody? I’m going to be getting back to my solo streaming ASAP, but Cody is finally branching out and launching his long-overdue solo channel! We do still want to find a way to keep our communities alive, and we loved playing games and telling stories with you all. So we are going to, somehow, find ways to keep doing that. It just may look a little different than we once thought. For now, to anyone who keeps in touch, we are very grateful for your patience and look forward to your input on next steps. And for everyone else who sees this as your parting, we will miss you.
So, here’s to all of our new adventures. May they be filled with magic, music, and mayhem. And may all your successes be critical.
Well adventurers ... that's showtime.
