If we only sent in questions without personality I think the show would be much poorer, much shorter* and not be as fun for Adam and Christopher to do.
*And I'm not sure by what measure people are saying time is being wasted by the personalities. Aside from Christopher and Adam's time there's no limit on how long the podcast could be and the questions are chosen by Christopher and Adam, if the question wasn't asked then it's probably because the answer wasn't very interesting to them or wasn't asked in an entertaining way.
FYI: Matchstickman is right. Asked Adam about this here at Gen Con, and he confirmed the flavorful questions are not taking away from answering other questions, just adding to the length of the episodes.
People worried that the extra time taken means that questions get cut as not having enough time to ask them.
People saying that listening to 2+ hours of podcast is a big time commitment as a listener already without some of that length ending up being devoted to not-Sentinels-Lore stuff.
I don't think I've seen anyone saying they think nobody should ask any personality questions at all, I should clarify. More a matter of moderation.
(Also maybe I should clarify I personally don't have any huge problem with it so far, but it wouldn't be very accurate to report only my opinions in a thread I started on a topic…)
I'm happy with the personalities appearing in the podcasts, they make it all that much more fun.
And if you think about it, the episode lengths have been increasing because the character's we're covering are becoming more and more important to the over-arching timeline of the Multiverse arc of the Sentinels mythos, and therefore there's more stories and events connected to these characters, meaning longer and longer episodes.
A few minutes of silly personalities in the questions section comparativley aren't going to boost episodes that much.
And if it makes Adam and Christopher have a bit of fun in the process, then why not? :)
I don't have a problem with the personalities, I think the Cult of Gloom is hilarious, and I now want a villain/environment deck of some kind that involves the Gloom/Biomancer war.
That said, I feel like sometimes they "waste" time on questions that were already answered. Sometimes these are asked by the character questioners, sometimes they're not, but if we already heard in the backstory introduction who Major Flay was and their whole story, why do they then need to read a question about who Major Flay was and say, "Well, we went over this already."
On a different note, while I do like the question-asker-character interactions, I feel like it kind of shuts out new questions. If I ask a question and the Cult of Gloom asks the same one, I feel like my letter isn't going to be read. The podcast could do with diversifying when it comes to multiples of the same question.
They did say on a previous episode(I THINK the Tachyon episode, but don't quote me on that) the more interestingly written questions will usually win out over other questions that just blatantly ask questions.
Along with Phantom, I can't remember the specific episode, but they did specify that with the volumn of questions they've been getting, having your question read means asking a good/interesting/well-worded question. Assuming you're asking the same question as someone else, at least.
Granted, you could have a very good/interesting/well-worded question, also asked by the "Cult of Gloom", and then your question doesn't get read in favor of advancing the "Gloom plot" or whatever. But if you had other questions not covered by the Cult, it seems like your question would probably still be read/answered.
Personally, I've been quite enjoying the RP-style questions. I listen to every episode once to get the lore, and all my subsequent listens (I've listened to every episode at least twice, some probably as many as 10 times) are because I find the episodes funny/amusing to listen to. The RP-style questions have been adding quite a bit to the amusement factor, and I'm more likely to re-listen to a longer, funnier episode than I am a shorter, less funny one.
Just for reference, I tried to time the episode, and I measured the amount of shtick at about 11 minutes of the episode. That's a pretty fuzzy number because of the issues in measuring where 'shtick' starts and ends, but it gives a good idea of how much time is being taken up, I think.
I love the shtick, but I think that sometimes they drag on too long on specific topics. Peppering it about is fine, but I personally would like them to avoid extended digressions.
Incidentally, I sent in a question stack with an "personality" intro that didn't make it into the podcast at all. I suspect that there is an iceberg of shtick that we are not seeing. I do hope, however, that new personalities aren't being entirely shut out by the existing ones.
For what it's worth, given the 105 minute runtime of the latest episode and assuming that your tally is correct, the "schtick" takes up over 10% of the episode. That's proportionally a pretty significant chunk of time.
Again, I don't want to poop on people's parades–I do find the comedy amusing, but it's not what I'm coming to the podcast for. I want to hear about Sentinels lore. And if 10% of that time or more is actively not that, I think there's a valid complaint to be made.
I come for the lore too but their personalities is what keeps me coming back just as much. It's their podcast they are freely spending their time and effort on. If they want to keep up with the schtick so be it.
It was fun when it started, but the thought of everyone turning their question into a roleplay opportunity makes me groan. I hope they can keep a lid on it.
I honestly enjoy the schtick, It's not precisely sentinels lore but it's usually funny so i don't mind. I do wish they could do both, but they know the questions and honestly if Christopher and Adam (damn that song) enjoy making the podcast as much as we enjoy listening to it it will be better overall regardless of how much schtick time they spend. Then again I've only had the one question on air so, not much Schtick to be had from me.
Frankly, I really enjoy the RPing. It means people are really getting involved and engaged with the podcast, which is all good in my opinion!
I’ve only had one question of mine answered (why did Akash’Bhuta curse Michael Conteh) but I’m not too worried about it. I have a couple coming up for later episodes that may get in.
