you set unrealistic expectations for the genre, and every normie expects a grand, 150 hour long adventure full of intrique, drama, humor, good voice acting, and seamless world design.
also im a games journo about to write the same thing about BG3.
They're always super passive and make boring characters too. Like it's your job to dance like a monkey to entertain them at all times and they don't have to make any effort themselves.
No shit, the trannies are their main revenue stream. Not pandering to them is suicide for their business. I dont hate CR for catering to them, they are incentivized to because you would never be a paypig like a gender obsessed fan. The only thing i hate is that everyone is going insane over it.
No shit, the trannies are their main revenue stream. Not pandering to them is suicide for their business. I dont hate CR for catering to them, they are incentivized to because you would never be a paypig like a gender obsessed fan. The only thing i hate is that everyone is going insane over it.
so nice to see fellow gender haters on this web sight
I've never watched many episodes but I wish the players were just improvisers and comedians and friends narrating in third person and just laughing and having a good time with their characters in a gritty rules heavy system that isn't afraid to kill their characters, but that with a little luck they can get powerful in, and then I want them realloy playing up the "get me my breast plate stretcher" or whatever schtick they're going with. Just becoming Caligula mixed with Dennis from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
It's the vapidity of their melodrama that's toxic, really. It's like fricking Saturday morning Disney cartoons.
Oh no, Minnie, I dropped my muffin!!!! Oh no, Mickey, that's so tragic! Oh no, now we need to get super serious, you guys, because this needs an hour of psychobabble about our feelings to really hash out how Mickey feels about his dropped muffin.
D&D is not your fricking therapy session, and your gender identity bullshit is not what we're here to to explore. For starters, therapists get paid a hundred bucks an hour, and the patient is expected to put in WORK to improve. Not just wallow in emotional dysfunction and maladaptive narcissism.
It really says something that the show and its insufferable creators are still known for that one time when one of them made a saucy comment to the wife of another one and it was such a catastrophe that he was immediately kicked off the cast and blacklisted - and all his appearances in the show to that point had to be scrupulously deleted.
Why? Because he dared to talk about anything that wasn't Mickey's dropped muffin tragedy.
And that's before we talk about Hasbro's sponsorship. Shallow corporate melodrama. That's all they are.
They do that a lot. Chris Hardwick, completely unfounded accusations placed on him and despite every actual employer of his investigating the matter and finding no merit to it Matt never took back the very petty off-camera death of Hardwick's guest character. Same happened with Orion's in the end, but at least he gave him a heroic death.
And don't get me started on Brian Foster and how that's all playing out. The chance that Ashley was full of shit just keeps increasing, but you won't see the company as a whole backtrack and put up all those hundreds of hours of content they delisted.
Man I hate that thing some players do where they go into a therapy session “ironically” and think it’s funny or meta
It was maybe a little clever a decade ago but it’s so played out
This
my biggest issue with some new players is that they want to play in commands like "I do this", "I grab that", "I punch him"
and expect me to voice act and create funny reactions for them on the fly every single time. at one point i just ignore their irl memes they want to bring into the game and they get mad about it.
your character trying to be funny by spouting current tiktok memes at every npc gets old very fast.
It's also a social game where you have to read the room, I'm not going to do funny voices at all times if you keep demanding more while your thinly veiled self-insert is just going to be you
And like with models, it's because the people doing it are professionals who spend a lot of time in prep, and the product you get passes through significant editing.
>also im a games journo about to write the same thing about BG3.
They're always super passive and make boring characters too. Like it's your job to dance like a monkey to entertain them at all times and they don't have to make any effort themselves.
>They're always super passive and make boring characters too. Like it's your job to dance like a monkey to entertain them at all times and they don't have to make any effort themselves.
My campaigns are kill shit, get loot.
You get 3 sentences max to describe your character.
Simple as.
> normie expects a grand, 150 hour long adventure full of intrique, drama, humor, good voice acting, and seamless world design.
I can do all of that except voice acting doe
Don't forget the characters normies will bring >haha regurgitated lord bearington hahah so funny haha >dark kill everyone to prove their point because everyone's morality is wrong except for his edgy man >bawd bawd bawd that'll jerk off over voice channel and seduce on a nat 20 plz describe the ERP while I jerk off GM you want a good story right >postmodern I don't care about the adventure the party or anything I don't care isn't that so deep and mature and awesome character
That’s what I really really don’t like. But I don’t think Matt sets unrealistic expectations for a game, he’s not same magic grandmaster, everything he does anyone can do but the voices. In fact my world and game is better because it doesn’t feel like a modern metropolitan American city
It is that bad. No culture clashes, no religion clashes, every shop is owned by gay black men married to tiefling men and no one cares. >I-it doesn’t have to be historically accurate chud!
Yes but open homosexuality in a medieval setting completely ruins the vibe and makes it feel too modern, unless you incorporate homosexuality in the pedophilic Greco-Roman way, which is overblown anyway.
7 months ago
Anonymous
if you seriously think same sex couples ruins a setting then I genuinely feel pity at how easily your immersion is broken.
7 months ago
Anonymous
homosexual, I pity you for being cringe and having bad taste. I’m fine with homosexuality in a setting if it’s handled in a way that makes sense.
7 months ago
Anonymous
One, occasionally, is not a problem. When every fricking NPC is gay, or a "strong woman", yeah it starts to get pretty obnoxious
7 months ago
Anonymous
is gaslighting the only thing you homosexuals can do?
>everything he does anyone can do but the voices
firstly Im not spending thousands of dollars on dwarven forge or whatever they use for terrain
Aside from that, the issue is because CR is a scripted story you end up where characters always have their "arcs" or whatever theater kid nonsense tied to the game and characters will complete their arcs as they, as a team, planned out. Nobody will ever die an early death from a crit in a dungeon, its always going out in some fantastic plot resolving blaze of glory
Any DM *can* fudge the rolls and let their player tell them how the story will play out from the start, but expecting that is fricking nonsense because thats not how DND actually plays. You pick up the starter kit for any edition and youll run a dungeon to get some loot where players might die, not sit around dealing with their family drama from pages upon pages of backstory
Damn man I’m not saying “literally every single thing he does is good and you should want to do”. My point is that he doesn’t do anything so special that only he, the alpha chad geniuse GOD of the DM’s can do,
7 months ago
Anonymous
I agree anon. He is only exceptionally good at the most shallow levels of GMing being that he can do voices and can spend 5 minutes autistically describing a scene to the smallest detail. He cannot tard wrangle his players to save his life, his setting is generic nu-dnd slop and his encounter are incredibly lame.
7 months ago
Anonymous
And often his descriptions are bad. Just repeating the same fricking thing over and over. "Sort of, kind of." etc. You'd think he could take a bit of time reading a thesaurus with how much money he makes off this shit.
7 months ago
Anonymous
"Toothy maw" is what made me realize this, he would say it multiple times a episode
7 months ago
Anonymous
>'It appears to be' >it is exactly that thing
This one really pisses me off.
This is the dumb shit that this thread exists to farm and get reactions to, really.
Putting on a show is not the same as doing the real thing in a more typical setting. We all understand that here. But it's not exactly his fault people from outside of the hobby couldn't see that. It's not his fault that they set expectations without thinking about what other actual people typically do as part of their hobby.
It sucks that there's a bunch of people who think that the game meant to entertain the people playing it is equivalent to a show meant to entertain the people watching it. But that's the fault of those viewers.
Mercer's players are unusually good at shutting the frick up and not talking over each other. As annoying as they can be, their investment and good manners are half of the 150hour epic story.
I don't hate or even dislike Mercer but his world design is hardly ever seamless or good. Slop like what Brennan Lee Mulligan writes clears his "worldbuilding" (copying final fantasy and warcraft) out of the water.
I’ve only watched the inverted “legally distinct hobbit adventure” one and it didn’t seem railroaded at all
7 months ago
Anonymous
That's because that's not what he does. The way he pulls off the apparently "seamless" story isn't by forcing the players to make certain decisions, it's by first deciding on a setting, then having the players make characters that fit the setting, then tailoring the campaign to suit those characters all before session 1. He goes into detail on this over and over again.
I remember Brennan mentioning that the series you mentioned was structured to end with a PvP battle, but the players went against that and the final fight ended with them fighting an Orc side character.
I think people don't want to believe brennan is actually a good DM because of his gay politics and how he presents as a normal man. People are more forgiving of mercer because of his fricked up hair and love of button up vests
7 months ago
Anonymous
It legitimately upsets me that someone with the skillset to be one of the best comics of his generation is inexplicably treading water as some eceleb YouTube DM.
It’s such a waste. Just why.
It’s like if Dali were working as a house painter. It’s so depressing.
7 months ago
Anonymous
>It’s such a waste. Just why.
Because his passion is D&D. Crafting settings, visual storytelling, engaging with players and audience.
Just because you consider this a lesser art doesn't mean he does.
7 months ago
Anonymous
I don't know man, I really think you're undervaluing the idea of having a job and coworkers that you love over a career with more of an upward trajectory. If he's financially stable and having fun working a job where he does D&D and dorky gameshows for a living, I can't really fault him for sticking with that. I think most people would kill for a setup like that.
7 months ago
Anonymous
Most comics except the top of the top get paid dog shit and have to travel like crazy and live in NY or LA. Maria Bamford published her financials in a recent book she wrote and even a top comic with a multi-season Netflix show and a successful VA career on the side still probably makes only a bit more than Brennan makes in his current ventures. Successful internet content creators get fricking PAID.
7 months ago
Anonymous
It's because there's such minimal overhead in being an internet personality. Don't have to pay for access to venues or compensate their staff, don't have to have broadcasting agreements, there's almost zero red tape, etc. All you need is a couple thousand people who like your stuff enough that they're willing to pay $5 a month to make sure you keep going. And if you hit it big you keep the WHOLE pot. No execs or corporate staff to siphon anything. Sure Patreon or whoever takes a cut, but their shit is automated and as long as you bring in customers they can't be fricked to care.
7 months ago
Anonymous
>I remember Brennan mentioning that the series you mentioned was structured to end with a PvP battle, but the players went against that and the final fight ended with them fighting an Orc side character.
Same series had the shepherd druid able to transport directly to where they were intended to head towards to reach the second encounter set, which meant the encounter couldn't happen that way. So he created the character they were trying to meet on the fly and gave the scenario enough downtime with RPing for him to adjust and reuse what he already had in play to create the setpiece scenario. There's a definite bottleneck, but the terms by which PCs can reach encounters in these series can seem to vary. I'd even argue that player actions led to him popping a cherry sooner than he was intending in Neverafter, because the Lines Between was probably never intended to be visited before the halfway point. The man has a bunch of flaws and there are much better examples of soft railroading like reminding players of revelations/details that they never explored the moment before they're important, but I'd never call the actual structure a railroad.
FPBP.
Literally all you need to do for your product to be despised is to put slightly more effort into it than other products. Nogames struggle to imagine having more than 1 encounter/city/map prepared at a time
>150 hour long
This should be around 40 sessions? This is genuinely not a big deal if you play weekly, less than a year, 10-12 level-ups, why does anyone even complain about this
His NPC dialogue is shit too. It's stilted and lacks any kind of authentic speech patterns. Everyone speaks in generalities even when they're supposedly being specific, and nobody will just say 'yep, the monster looked like a fricking huge snake' even when it would fit their character.
has this ever been confirmed? i always assumed but yknow
No, because this is clearly the vastly superior Dimension 20 background and not his shitty Critical Role set.
dim20 is way better because it feels like an actual live play. i would love to see cr as an actual game with actual invested players and not drama prostitutes
it wasn't confirmed but I always thought so. Especially with 2nd campaing forward.
they don't stream live anymore
every episode must be interesting and finish a story beat (how many times did your players derail your plans by going in totally different way, or decided to approach the problem in a different way. Combat lasted longer than you anticipated. Random combat encounter that wasn't planned because players decided to escalate.
I never had shorter sessions but I had ones that lasted 1-3 hours longer because of above mentioned stuff. I can afford a average session but they are in entertainment business. They have to entertain thousands of people to keep their business going.
>every episode must be interesting and finish a story beat (how many times did your players derail your plans by going in totally different way, or decided to approach the problem in a different way. Combat lasted longer than you anticipated. Random combat encounter that wasn't planned because players decided to escalate.
Counterpoints: the episodes aren't interesting, and the players try to talk their way out of damn near everything instead of fighting. Ending on a story beat is pretty much down to Matt have experience and knowing when to call it, thus a wide variety of run times.
I think it's just a railroaded campaign, and it seems like most of the people at the table need that because they don't know how to make characters who pursue their goals. >They have to entertain thousands of people to keep their business going.
And they are not doing well at it. Even in chat and reddit, people are complaining. Honestly, they have shit characters and there's no scenario you could put them all in together that would be compelling without turning everyone else into the supporting cast for one character. >Verification not required
>don't know how to make characters who pursue their goals.
they booted the one most likely to early in c1.
I can't blame the bg of their characters, God knows most pc will have similar slightly cringe ones, yet their bg is the only thing defining them and they barely deviate
He's keeping the kid's gloves on tight while also not railroading the players as much as they clearly need. The result exceptionally tedious, which is why viewership is going down the toilet.
It's not scripted, but the players plan out a lot more ahead of time
You can really fricking tell that they're improving "big" scenes when they painfully take their time trying to say something deep instead of it flowing naturally
has this ever been confirmed? i always assumed but yknow
[...]
dim20 is way better because it feels like an actual live play. i would love to see cr as an actual game with actual invested players and not drama prostitutes
Campaign 3 is totally scripted but the first two weren't, at least not to a huge extent. Campaign 1 started off as just an ordinary table game, and Campaign 2 is far too shitty and meandering for me to believe it was heavily scripted. With 3 though they've accidently shown teleprompters.
The teleprompter is for the ad bit at the start of the show. Those are obviously scripted. You can even occasionally see them lose their places or stumble over how to pronounce certain words.
I’m not saying the rest isn’t rehearsed and preplanned, but it certainly isn’t presented on teleprompters.
They did far more elaborate sponsored skits back on their old set before the teleprompters, I can't think of any justification for them being there beyond the game as a whole being scripted.
>They did far more elaborate sponsored skits back on their old set before the teleprompters
Thr ones where they had clearly visible scripts?
The ones where they had to shuffle around looking for the right piece of paper? The ones where they still skipped over sections that were written down right in front of them? The ones where Laura looked confused and had to be reminded of the merch she needed to shill? Replacing that with a teleprompter being run by someone who has their shit together is a big step up.
They did far more elaborate sponsored skits back on their old set before the teleprompters, I can't think of any justification for them being there beyond the game as a whole being scripted.
dimension20 is insufferable. Critical role is gay and melodramatic yes, but at least they are civil.
Dimension20 has a series called Dungeon & Dragqueens, which is beyond bizarre
Brennan atleast has a spine and will tell players "No." Mercer has the backbone of a wet spaghetti noodle. The only one worse than either of them is Abria "Roll me a Wisdom save" Iynegar.
Taliesin was terrible too, as were all the mystery meat guest DMs they've used for one shots.
>Making decisions based on what your character would do instead of being a metagaming homosexual is... LE THEATER!
have a nice day you scourge on the hobby.
[...]
[...]
>triggered by /misc/ when nobody brought it up
back to the CR reddit with you
Travis, Laura, and Sam were genuinely checked out of campaign 2 for that reason. It got obvious when they murdered the crew and stole the ship, at which point it was run back as "they were actually bad people". You could see Travis and Sam disappointed, and then realising that there would be no repercussions, ever. And then later on, after one in particular (I think the plane of fire death of the kid) it was excused as "not your fault" and Travis/Laura openly rolled their eyes at each other.
I think Liam realised as well, but he just used it to run rampant.
I think the current campaign is funny for similar meta-reasons:
1) It's plainly being used to set up whatever system switch they'll do after this (probably to their own system thing?) so suddenly the gods are evil and completely different in character to previous campaigns.
2) big player backstory moments and their reveals have clearly all been planned and scripted in advance, so even in downtime nobody has anything to say to each other because it's not the right moment to actually flesh out your character yet
In C3 they murdered a whole temple of clerics under Pelor, an angel and used the blood of a priest to summon a demon. Doormatt dropped no repercussions on them or drop the fricking obvious twist that the old women pushing them was part of a cult. None of them questioned what they just did and they still portray themselves as good people. I can see why films these days have absolute dogshit themes and messaging because everyone in Cali are morally deprived goblins.
>Liam rampant
Liam made his best friend be his lackey from the beginning of C2 so he could steal from them, hide items useful to other party members, and have a bodyguard from their retaliation. A retaliation which they were prevented from RPing (executing his PC) because of upsetting Liam and ending his scripted story.
7 months ago
Anonymous
What the frick is this moronic player character. Why would someone even do this? It must suco to play in a table like this...
7 months ago
Anonymous
I’ve watched as the story has progressed. They make one note of theft of a paper to drive the story and don’t engage in party theft again.
The dude is playing a goblin and to be fair, they steal, the fact he didn’t steal after a team building conversation is proof that the character is developing beyond wild savage gobby girl.
7 months ago
Anonymous
>Early in the campaign, another player's (Travis) PC held his falchion to Liam's PC's throat in a threat if he ever did that shit again, visibly upsetting Liam. The only other time they RP'd was Marisha snatching an item he was hiding they had been risking their lives to find, and identify.They could have even dealt with everything (including the stranger with them) better if they had been told right away, but Liam wanted to be see if the item was either be useful to him or he could be episode hero (he always plays both sides). This upset Liam and fans, so Marisha's PC was forced to apologize the following week and let his Liam and his PC continue being a piece of shit, even trying to kill her with collateral spell damage.
Liam is the epitome of all the bad player tropes and wouldn't be asked back for a second session of any real game. It just shows how bad and fake Matt, cast, and their circle of performers are.
>Liam's lackey is playing a goblin halfling turned into a goblin
7 months ago
Anonymous
I've seen the pictures and his mystery meat femhafling looked better as a goblin
7 months ago
Anonymous
>even trying to kill her with collateral spell damage
Kek, I remember that one.
>Marisha PC is unconscious in a grapple with a troll >Liam tries to 3x scorching ray the troll ("because fire") but every time something hits the troll it also hurts Marisha and she auto-fails death saves >he gets shouted down from doing it >Liam instead tries to do a magic missile (3 bolts) at it instead, which would also result in dead Marisha >NEARLY gets away with it he's about to roll damage before Laura cuts in with "you can't do that she'd die" >can see him visibly get a fixed smile on his face as he decides what to do >"fine then I cast haste that's my turn" >shittalks later with "my CHARACTER knew, I didn't know the spell would do that and kill her but you gotta drop that dead weight"
7 months ago
Anonymous
in the campaign, another player's (Travis) PC held his falchion to Liam's PC's throat in a threat if he ever did that shit again, visibly upsetting Liam
That was clearly an unnecessary c**t move though and if he hadn't pulled that unnecessary confrontation they could have left that area without incident.
>even trying to kill her with collateral spell damage
Kek, I remember that one.
>Marisha PC is unconscious in a grapple with a troll >Liam tries to 3x scorching ray the troll ("because fire") but every time something hits the troll it also hurts Marisha and she auto-fails death saves >he gets shouted down from doing it >Liam instead tries to do a magic missile (3 bolts) at it instead, which would also result in dead Marisha >NEARLY gets away with it he's about to roll damage before Laura cuts in with "you can't do that she'd die" >can see him visibly get a fixed smile on his face as he decides what to do >"fine then I cast haste that's my turn" >shittalks later with "my CHARACTER knew, I didn't know the spell would do that and kill her but you gotta drop that dead weight"
>but every time something hits the troll it also hurts Marisha
That isn't how grappling works, and definitely isn't how magic missile works, Matt.
7 months ago
Anonymous
>the projectiles of infallibly-accurate force energy still cause collateral damage because… they just do, chud!
t. most popular DM the hobby will ever have
7 months ago
Anonymous
in the campaign, another player's (Travis) PC held his falchion to Liam's PC's throat in a threat if he ever did that shit again, visibly upsetting Liam
That was clearly an unnecessary c**t move though and if he hadn't pulled that unnecessary confrontation they could have left that area without incident.
[...] >but every time something hits the troll it also hurts Marisha
That isn't how grappling works, and definitely isn't how magic missile works, Matt.
Obviously the other anon didn't given context, but this isn't pulled out of nowhere. The troll was the variant that's all bloated with poison, so every attack on them makes them do a 5-ft radius of poison damage.
7 months ago
Anonymous
>another player's (Travis) PC held his falchion to Liam's PC's throat in a threat if he ever did that shit again
Not what happened. Liam's PC wanted to steal some scrolls but Travis got pissy because that might incriminate them (as if all the other bullshit they done that night did not lmao) >even trying to kill her with collateral spell damage >implying you wouldn't to the same thing
He didn't say no, but I do remember when he had Marisha's character die because they jumped off a cliff then turned into a fish.
That woman is impressively fricking stupid.
Idk if it was her, but there was a time when a player actively wanted to do a noble sacrifice thing and jumped into an abyss, he accepted it but her or the other one pulled some bullshit and claimed d20 so he just resigned to it and allowed the bullshit
dimension20 is insufferable. Critical role is gay and melodramatic yes, but at least they are civil.
Dimension20 has a series called Dungeon & Dragqueens, which is beyond bizarre
Because despite having gay/non binary/troony characters, the fact of the matter is Brennan is a much better dungeon master, and the political shit is just what you expect from NY/LA dwelling webseries producers.
The real difference is that CR's cast is voice actors, who are all used to having scripts, and D20's cast is the old cast of collegehumor, many of which are trained Improv actors, including brennan, and improvising is what makes ttrpg's what they are ultimately.
when did he admit this? pretty much everything he's said in the past is the complete opposite
7 months ago
Anonymous
All his DM tips are >ignore what the players do, it is YOUR story, if your plot is right and they go left, the plot is on the left now
It's why he does huge monologues and epic dialogues and his players usually have simple responses. They know it's his story and they're just there to experience it.
bullshit, why does everyone want to believe that everyone better than them at playing these games is actually a complete fraud?
It's a good show that can entertain people like you, but it isn't a game
7 months ago
Anonymous
what the players do, it is YOUR story, if your plot is right and they go left, the plot is on the left now
Thats not a railroad, thats a quantum ogre, which he does to get to the setpieces.
7 months ago
Anonymous
A quantum ogre is the largest warning sign of a railroad, you have to be moronic to think >o-oh so he railroads the players into every single setpiece he plans but the campaign is still 100% organic!
>if your plot is right and they go left, the plot is on the left now
That's how I run my campaigns. All roads lead to Rome, all side-quests are related to their main-quest in some form.
And you are not playing ttrpgs then
7 months ago
Anonymous
>And you are not playing ttrpgs then
Yeah, they are, you fricking worthless cretin. So tired of this gay, pointless, pedantic, definition israelitery. Fricking cry about it, gay. People play a type of game you like in a different way.
7 months ago
Anonymous
Yes I am and no amount will seething will change that
7 months ago
Anonymous
I used to think it was clever, but Quantum Ogre is still railroading. You're just moving the ogre to whichever fork in the rails the train takes.
7 months ago
Anonymous
it's not so much a railroad as it is a train station. the story can get to this place in many ways, and it can go many ways from the place too, and what exactly happens in the place is also highly variable.
It's true that Mulligan's 'theatre of the mind' series are better than the ones with minis though and he clearly is playing more relaxed and free.
7 months ago
Anonymous
>if your plot is right and they go left, the plot is on the left now
That's how I run my campaigns. All roads lead to Rome, all side-quests are related to their main-quest in some form.
7 months ago
Anonymous
That's how every campaign works moron. Where the group goes, the plot goes. All those different hooks the GM threw at you? All lead to the same plot. You switched cities? No problem, the plot is happening there now.
7 months ago
Anonymous
Nah, that's just bargain bin DMing. I'm sorry you've never experienced real TTRPGs before.
7 months ago
Anonymous
>t.nogames
7 months ago
Anonymous
>i cant dm worth a shit and never had a good dm so its impossible that any dm is actually good and not a railroader youre nogames!
Wow. Do we really have Black folk on /tg/ who think railroading is normal? That used to be a meme here and we have people unironically supporting it.
Narrative games can be fun if set up in advance. Railroading by anyone is just shit. If you tell me you have a story or preset I'll play it. But if you're a hack and just keep railroading while blowing smoke up my ass pretending my decisions matter then you're just an uncreative dickhead who should stick to writing fanfic or something.
7 months ago
Anonymous
>t.0games /misc/cuck
7 months ago
Anonymous
sit down, Susy
7 months ago
Anonymous
>That's how every campaign works moron.
That is how most campaigns work, to a degree. Outside of extreme examples, it is not like every decision ever is always completely open-ended, and neither do all campaigns consist completely of quantum ogres.
Ideally, the players, the PCs and the GM's prep are somewhat in sync with one another and the party generally moves in the direction that the GM prepared for. If your party randomly decides to move to a different city at the other end of the planet for the sake of escaping the GM prep, that's either a sign of shitty GMing, spiteful players of incoherent PCs. In that case the problems are deeper rooted than just quantum ogres.
7 months ago
Anonymous
I will never understand quantum ogre/false choice. Why even do it? Just tell them where to go or where they wanna go next sessions. Why bother creating an illusion? What purpose does it serve?
Why ask a question you don't wanna hear the answer for.
Just...do your think, why fudge/lie? You're pretty muvh saying you don't wanna GM, or just wanna railroad.
7 months ago
Anonymous
There's a difference between recycling an unused encounter from one scenario into a later one, and railroading players. It's a question of scope.
7 months ago
Anonymous
anyone saying they never recycled unused content/quantum ogre is a giant ass liar or never GMed anything
The frick you guys talking about? I never talked about recycling content, I made it very clear the issue was in the illusion of choice.
If you tell me there's 2 doorways in opposites sides of the room, and then both lead to the exact same encoutner and path, then why even have 2 of them? just put one.
Recycling content is fone, why let work go to waste. As long as there's enough redesign to fit in in a later session/oneshot/other campaign, who cares.
But Qt isn't about recycling content, it's about creating a false sense of content, choice and freedom for no reason. Atention? False sene of better campaign? I genuinely can't understand it.
7 months ago
Anonymous
If the players don't realize and are having a fun time, then there is literally no reason to care. If the players go back out of door 1 after going through it, and look behind door 2, they're going to find some new stuff, but it was more fun for them and safer for them to get the door 1 stuff first.
7 months ago
Anonymous
Short term fun is an easy way to create bad habits. The problem isn't that much from the player side. To me it is, I can see fudge and QT from miles away due my autism, it is very obvious when the GM is trying to bullshit their way out of a situation because their passion and ivnestment onto the game differs greatly between what they have prepared/Care for and what is a simple tool for a purpose.
The issue here is that it creates bad habits for GMing. You become used to the idea of forcefully redirecting players towards where you want rather than aknowledging their ideas or giving them an actual choice.
If I want players to go through something first for safety or progression, I'll convey that through ingame information, wether it's things in the enviroment like signs, ruins or dead bodies pointing at stuff, NPCs that might be around to help or just the mission/campaign briefing. I trust they'll make the right choice and if not, well, too bad, but it will still be their choice, their story.
You already decide "what" is there, let them to at least have the right of the "how" and "when".
Be an arbiter, not a director.
7 months ago
Anonymous
I agree with your perspective for the most part, but if the characters decide to run off into the wilderness of an area that i have absolutely zero prep for, you can bet your ass they're going to run into something that was originally going to be somewhere else.
7 months ago
Anonymous
anyone saying they never recycled unused content/quantum ogre is a giant ass liar or never GMed anything
7 months ago
Anonymous
Because you are storygaming, that is, what your are playing is not a game. You are watching a dumb story being told to you while rolling dice to help the storyteller from time to time. That is not a game, you see. Exactly what gygax said.
7 months ago
Anonymous
Gygax is lawful evil in D&D’s own cosmology who gives a frick
Go play AD&D or warhammer if you want a lawful evil game
bullshit, why does everyone want to believe that everyone better than them at playing these games is actually a complete fraud?
7 months ago
Anonymous
Its because they are not playing a game, they are playing an Improv theater that distorts expectations and paints the game as this cringy performance based activity
7 months ago
Anonymous
I'm sorry to break this to you anon but Brennan's support staff did not make all those Diaramas, models and write all those epic speeches just so the players could take a complete left turn off the campaign railroad. Here is the secret that most actual GMs know and im going to let you in on it. Any "plot" can easily be destroyed by an intelligent or incredibly dumb player taking an action you could not foresee which could change the direction of the campaign entirely.
7 months ago
Anonymous
For example in one of the most recent sessions of critical role, 2 players jumped into a pool of lava like absolute morons and instead of doing the right thing and just killing them and having the campaign take a complete left turn, they survived so matt could do his big final boss shows up cutscene.
7 months ago
Anonymous
>write all those epic speeches
Nah say what you will about the rest of the show, but other than maybe the intro speech of any given campaign, I'm fully willing to believe that Brennan is capable of monologing about anything on the spot. See the snack speech, see the Trump as Sauron speech, the Cannot win speech.
7 months ago
Anonymous
He *taught* at arguably the best improv troupe in the world for years in his *twenties*. There’s video of him doing various improv-adjacent stuff everywhere and it’s clear he’s a big fish that somehow took a wrong turn to wash up in CollegeHumor’s backwater of all places.
Brennan only seems better because his campaigns are bigger railroads than critical role and are much shorter in scope. I dont care how good at improv you are, you aint pulling full pre-rehearsed in the mirror speeches on your players at a moments notice. If i had a full support crew making me maps and props with a group of players fully invested because they are getting paid thousands of dollars just to play a D&D session, I would look like a million bucks too.
>pre-rehearsed in the mirror speeches
I’m a tourist here but I’ve done improv and that’s something anyone that’s done it seriously can do half-asleep. It’s clear what parts are the main story/rehearsed and where he’s ad-libbing, and if you know how to listen most of the most “grand speeches” are actually a common tic in improv where they distract with generic bluster while they try to think of what to actually say.
Brennan TAUGHT at UCB, which is basically where anyone on SNL that isn’t from NYC is from. He’s massively underselling himself as a comedian and actor by working at some random failing 2000s-era company and I have no idea why. Maybe because he’s fricking one of them. He should have moved on years ago.
If anything his performance on d20 is subpar for improv considering a drinking game of whenever he says “hell yeah” would leave you dead or in a hospital.
Unironically Matt Mercer is far and away the best part of Critical Role and I'd play with him any day. It's the other pieces that tend to be tiresome or outright red flags.
This. I don't mind too much the unrealistic expectations. Anyone who thinks that is probably moronic to expect every ttrpg to be run by literal voice actors and shit. And he does tend to run great games. But every character and player is "teh spork of doom" tier bad. I've never seen players try so hard and fail so miserably. It's incredible. I watch CR just for the cringe. I've never seen a thing this bad before even with amateurs.
And the men. Like I saw the kraken example here. Women being at the table (married no less) is bad news. Because not only do you get their shit play, but nobody will go "hey maybe sending a tiny wave against a giant kraken is stupid, you fricking idiot. try something else". It's just "lmao yeah just do whatever lol yea its so cool bae" tier homosexualry. Any time I see a woman in a group I know for an undisputed fact that it will be shit and she is the only Black person at that table that will ever be catered to and will make or break the entire campaign.
We saw what happens when DM's girlfriend gets pissy with the DM when she actually gets called out for being moronic when she used the Tidal Wave against the dragon.
We saw what happens when DM's girlfriend gets pissy with the DM when she actually gets called out for being moronic when she used the Tidal Wave against the dragon.
Imagine actually thinking shit like this. This hobby is full of bad players of whatever gender, but there are good players in them too.
You can pull all the anecdotes you like and yammer on about stereotypes of people dragging their SO to something they weren't really interested in and then problems happening. But good players have nothing to do with whether you're a man or a woman, and everything about whether or not you and your group are all actually in this together. Shared understanding of expectations and strong communication are always key to a good gaming experience, and if someone selfishly tries to cram in a change to the existing dynamic instead of integrating people in as part of the whole, and make short-sighted sacrifices to try to force it to work, of course it's going to worsen everyone's experience.
Include me in the screenshot you send to your gf/wife when you show her how hard you simped for good boy points.
Women do not belong at the table. Not only do they suck egregiously, but it makes every man there a moron too as explained. Cry about.
7 months ago
Anonymous
>Anyone who disagrees with me must be the image I've conjured of me-no-like in my brain
Just because you've never actually had girl players at your table who give a shit about the game and are good players doesn't mean they're not out there. If you keep up that attitude, you sure lower your chances of encountering them though.
I GMed for around 20 people, all good or close friends to me, 12 of them women, the rest were men.
While I enjoyed my time with all and never had a major issue (the only one I actually had to kick out was a guy and we could talk it out), there was a clear pattern to be seen for either side. Guys might be better or worse, but they all put some effort into the game when it comes to the rules. They at least try to understand the rules and how they're applied. Even the potthead has a good understanding of how magic works and makes custom sheets.
Now girls? Polar opposite. Only one out of those 12 learned the basic rules after the first game, the others, including the 3 that have been playing for almost 4 years, are almost unable to understand a thing. Still asking which dice is used to attack, which damage dice used in thr spell they use every week, magic classes are too complex, etc. That the guy are way smarter and better yhan them.
I also learned to be very careful with sexual stuff, as women know even less restrain and the moment you bring it up they'll derail the game to ask how homosexual thia NPC is or flirt with NPCs, etc. Once I tested it by not intervining, when they started making a lot of sex jokes because a loose character showed up, I sat there in silence to see how long it would take for them to stop on their own (had warned the other guys in advance). 40 entire minutes went away while they discussed how to frick this guy, how this other PC was sexy and such.
Gary might be autistic but he was right. Women don't like to lay TTRPG, at least not the "PG" part. They come for the social aspect and specially the theatrics, but the moment there's rules more complex than monopoly, their brains turn off.
I know this is anecdotical and a small sample size, but still find interesting that the exceptional guy was the one I had to kick, the exceptional woman was the one I did noy have to help.
7 months ago
Anonymous
This is my experience as well, though sort of in reverse. I had a female DM who was extremely talented at the RP side of things, very good at voice acting, character drama, that sort of thing. She tried her best to keep the combat rules consistent, but she was absolutely terrible at balance. The other (male) players constantly tried to get OP homebrew shit accepted by her, and most of the time they succeeded. She didn't understand how this would undermine the world she had created. (Why would anyone use any other weapon than a javelin when they are objectively better in every single way than every other weapon in the game? Why would the NPCs? Are they just moronic?)
It put me in an awkward situation since I could see what they were doing and I wanted to give some advice but didn't want to undermine the DM's authority and be seen as the guy trying to spoil someone else's fun, but it was just so transparent and stupid.
Either way, it's also been the case when I've DMed for women. They enjoy the social aspect, but the rules are incomprehensible to them. Works alright in a rules-light game, but it's definitely a barrier to entry.
Gygax's inability to understand woman is well known though.
https://dmdavid.com/tag/meet-the-woman-who-in-1976-ranked-as-the-second-most-important-person-in-roleplaying-games/
and so would almost all of them, i don't like sucking matt off and i think as a person i would not like him at all, but he is the only one actually interested in dnd. all of them meta game, forget rules after 750,000 sessions, refuse to ever let their characters die, beg for advantage and special treatment almost every single round, treat their character like its shakespeare and otherwise generally just make a low effort money printing tv show.
now, the funny thing for me is, they are still more respectable than when they are doing their old jobs, being unionised, constantly cast and pandered to, voice actors. these people do not live in the real world.
> and so would almost all of them
Maybe? Sam and Liam would definitely be too slimy to game with IRL. Ashley would probably get kicked for just not getting it. The others seem okay. Not great, but passable.
I haven't watched in years, but I remember in their first campaign where he decided to spend his time shitting during combat, and Matt was clearly getting frustrated.
Not sure what happened to him, I watched a few episodes of C3 and he is big cringe.
He used to be based before CR began streaming for S&S. He was running Pathfinder and preferred older systems.
I guess your hobby becoming your job will take its toll.
>Making decisions based on what your character would do instead of being a metagaming homosexual is... LE THEATER!
have a nice day you scourge on the hobby.
>Pretty sure he was talking about D&D not being a storytelling game.
Gygax ran D&D as a wargame. That comment is a direct criticism of Arneson's style which was very much grand storytelling with participants.
I like OD&D and Dungeoncrawling more than most but sometimes Mr.Gygax wasn't on the money on the subject of storytelling.
Like the OD&D example of moving in a dungeon.20' north, you reach a landing, door on the right etc.
There was more room for "storytelling" and people found it.
Then they went full moron 2E and forwards.
Gygax was at his best when he was editing the work of others.
> sometimes Mr.Gygax wasn't on the money
I remember when he stuffed ad&d full of shit like earworms if you listened at doors, bugs that looked like coins but would eat your treasure if you put them in with it, and other meta game trash, and then went on a rant in the Dungeon Masters Guide about how to frick with players for being cautious and checking shit out. He was lucky enough to catch lightning in bottle, but most of his views on gaming were dogshit.
Gygax is the Jobs to Arneson’s Wozniack. Anything he says about DND has as much merit as Jobs thinking a fruit starvation diet would cure his pancreatic cancer.
This quote is asinine. Roleplaying is storytelling. Difference is because the story is being told by multiple people dice are used to arbitrate story disputes. Roleplaying isn't a game since there is no win state and usually no competition.
Brother, ttrpgs arent storytelling, they are games, you can win, as in when you live another session, get loot in the dungeon, discover a new interest point, and you can lose, when you die. You are first and foremost playing a game, not acting. If you arent playing a game, you dont need dice, you dont need combat, HP, anything really, just get on a table with your friends and start playing pretend.
Look, you can do your funny voices and have your fake melodramatic moments and still be playing a game.
What gygax is saying is that the DM is not directing a story, he is refereeing a game, that can go wherever the players decide it to go.
It shouldnt be this hard...
[...]
These aren't mutually exclusive things. It can be a game and a story at the same time.
I was being hyperbolic saying it isn't a game to mirror Gygax dumbass commentary. The win states of an RPG fluctuate consantly and are often irrelevant.
Saying dying is losing is moronic. All you do is roll a new character and continue playing. Often dying is preferable if it makes a cool story moment or lets you let go of a boring character to play one more interesting.
So yes, the dice are more important to informing the story than to achieve a "win". They are a resolution mechanic.
Certainly you COULD play using rules that punish death or have an on-rails end goal, but you'd be hard pressed to find players that will buy into that kind of rpg.
TL;DR: RPGs without a story aren't worth playing. If you wanted that you'd play a board game instead, or an "RPG" designed to replicate such a simple and sterilized concept like a hex/dungeon crawler.
Of course It is losing, not every loss has to end in b***hy rage. Interpreting a loss as something that happens as is Fine does not make It less of a loss. You just Lost your character, the worst consequence possible, the thing you try to avoid.
You cant be this studpid
Brother, ttrpgs arent storytelling, they are games, you can win, as in when you live another session, get loot in the dungeon, discover a new interest point, and you can lose, when you die. You are first and foremost playing a game, not acting. If you arent playing a game, you dont need dice, you dont need combat, HP, anything really, just get on a table with your friends and start playing pretend.
Look, you can do your funny voices and have your fake melodramatic moments and still be playing a game.
What gygax is saying is that the DM is not directing a story, he is refereeing a game, that can go wherever the players decide it to go.
It shouldnt be this hard...
These aren't mutually exclusive things. It can be a game and a story at the same time.
Of course they arent mutually exclusive, though It is evident what the main course should be.
Gygax's quote is simples, he is saying that the players are players, not actors in a story, and that the DM shouldnt try to change that, otherwise it would not be a game any longer
This is out of context, though you can still agree or disagree with him.
When he said this, he was talking from the perspective that as the dungeon master, he gave the players objectives but then he had them self-direct how they were going to accomplish them. It's not just that "role-playing isn't storytelling," it's that "there's no story being told by the DM, it's all unfolding right now."
>TSR era: My character has come of age. He seeks to adventure and see the world. Let's see what the dice will... >5e/theater kid era: My snowflake wizard's teacher was mean to him. He seeks vengeance and will have extra spells from domains created just for him. You will give me that outcome, DM! Let's see what I want my dice to say (one is loaded)... (see Liam).
>extra spells from domains created just for him
I’ve never watched CR but these are fine as long as it’s just another spell reskinned and follows whatever rules are applicable to that (e.g. a Drider artificer has “sling web” that’s just thorn whip but a web
not D&D, but I've been playing a ghoul in Age of Sigmar: Soulbound, who's basically the potion-seller meme merged into one character. All of his spells(which are the madness domain) all got fluffed to look(to him at least) to be him using various potion vials.
Roleplay isn't storytelling, that's true... just like how flour isn't a cake. But there is no game without a mediator directing and arbitrating it. So that entire second sentence is just absolutely categorically wrong.
And as it so happens, we have a loooooot of documentation about Gygax's style of GMing, which could only be described as arbitrary, capricious and antagonistic. The only game being played at Gygax's table was Mother May I, which is not technically a game.
D&D survived in spite of him, but only due to the effort of those who understood it.
>I’m gonna take what he said exactly and literally while also being incredibly obtuse, that will own this old dead CHUD.
>Roleplay isn't storytelling, that's true... just like how flour isn't a cake. But there is no game without a mediator directing and arbitrating it.
I’d imagine he’d agree with this incredibly normal take
Anon, don't, no amount of hotness makes up for that woman's soul-crushing dumbness. Five minutes of the kraken fight will make her utterly repellent in your sight.
I mean yeah, but as I recall it was after the tidal wave flopped that she got really deep into the drinks. You would have thought that someone would have come up with some ideas on how to fight a kraken before going to fight a kraken, but I guess not.
Since there's never any real consequences to the players, they don't feel the need to actually prepare for anything. If Matt didn't pull any punches and had balls for TPK, they might learn.
7 months ago
Anonymous
Don’t be stupid. The characters are used to sell merch. If any of them were to be killed and unable to be resurrected, the warehouse would be full of unsalable merch. They’re way too mercenary to allow that to happen.
Which doesn't make it better. It was Keyleth's story arc, therefore Marisha knew she would be in the spotlight. So maybe DON'T get drunk/high as a kite if you know this session is going to focus on you?
I am amazed that Travis haven't strangled her yet.
To be fair. This was the "friends playing a game together who happen to be streaming it" phase of CR. Its still shitty she did it during her boyfriend's game and at a massive plot involving her but it wasn't the soulless Corpo D&D it became in campaign 2.
7 months ago
Anonymous
I noped out of C2 extremely fast, couldn't handle the gay goblina
7 months ago
Anonymous
I guess you are right. Even with all those snags (or maybe because of them) C1 was just fun. C2 and especially C3 are lame as frick by comparison. Apparently, there is a big part of fandom that adores C2, but I don't see it.
I always thought this guy is a gay for painting his nails. Now I googled his wife and realised this pornhub amateur tier bimbo that I wouldn't even click her thumbnail is his wife. Now I'm 100% sure he is a gay.
My first time DMing two out my three players kept complaining after the session that it wasn't like CR. This is going back five years ago before it is what it is now. Killed the vibe and the campaign.
That being said, I do not blame him for any problems of "the hobby", since I wouldn't know about it. I don't play with randos anyway, only with my friends (or friends of friends).
my main problem is that the players have been doing long campaigns for years and years, for more money than any real and impactful job, and they still struggle with basic rules every single episode. how many billions do they each need to read one or two paragraphs?
at least they were already conceited LA phonies before the cash, though.
Frick that they need to get out of Matt's "generic high fantasy setting #1072" world already. They should go (attempt) to play cyberpunk or shadowrun or some shit.
>Call me a boomer if you must but why have young people become such insufferable narcissistic homosexuals?
Because you no longer compete with your town, or the region of towns, but the entire rest of the world for attention/opportunity/sex.
t. Xennial who is glad cell phones weren't a thing when he was a kid fricking around
This is objectively and verifiably wrong, educate yourself. Here’s a random starting point.
https://theconversation.com/why-are-we-becoming-so-narcissistic-heres-the-science-55773
Digital era made people feel that the world betond their local vommunity matters and you have to be an upstanding citizen that adheres to the values of every country in the world except the ones labeled as bad.
I don't have a problem with Matt Mercer, hell I don't have a problem with the fake game he runs.
My issue is with the homosexuals who watch that shit, and then expect me as Gm to bend the world over backwards for stupid shit like: >le epic pop culture reference bard >cool warrior guy who doesn't afraid of anything and dismisses everything because he is cool warrior who has seen something scarier in his backstory >one joke b***h who makes jokes about one concept, like dicks, and whenever npcs hear it they need to turn into morons who give her everything because hahaha funny >drama homosexual who's character is built on ignoring and being a dick to everyone and if they don't cooperate they don't understand his grand plot man his character is just as good as hamlet your character just has to do everything he says and suck his toes off too while they're at it
Matt Mercer is okay. The homosexuals who follow him? Trash.
The average person is not an artist and likely pretty stupid. Apologies that you had to find this out while playing a game that rewards creativity and reading comprehension.
I don't have a problem with him cause the one episode I watched, there was a half hour of "bookkeeping" (ads) and then he started the campaign by letting all the theater kids talk about how quirky their character is and never leaving the fricking inn
So yea I have no idea how he actually DMs besides, uh, not.
Show got too big for it's own good.
I can accept early vox machina being an actual game but there's 0% chance Might 9 and the new show aren't mostly scripted/outlined for the players
Yeah. It doesn't help that they're lolsorandumb. Even that annoying Asian chick from LA by Night is more tolerable. You'd think they could script it to make the characters less insufferable.
It appears like a real game. Except for maybe the red head, I think she lies about initiative.
I’ve played rpg’s and wanted to see if dnd was worth it (it isn’t imo) but watching these guys play has been definitely neat. I started with campaign 2 only and I think for what it is, a taster into dnd mechanics and a show about friends working through their real life stuff with characters they role play with, it’s compelling.
It seemed after the sad man on the right with the German accent goes too hard with his character that the next week he dials it back. I think off screen they meta game and try and make the characters more compelling but I don’t believe they save anyone from dying.
Hey, Matt. 'member >March 2019 - Animated show Kickstarter begins. CR is given millions by fans. >November 2019 - Amazon acquires the rights to stream the show exclusively on Prime Video, nullifying CR's agreement with donors.
>Mid 2019: After the explosion of fan support, Melissa Wolfe, Amazon Studios’ head of animation and family, reached out to Critical Role’s Sam Riegel (who was directing some projects for Amazon at the time) to propose turning “Vox Machina” into a full-blown series.
https://variety.com/2021/digital/features/critical-role-amazon-legend-of-vox-machina-1235088274/ >October 2021 - Twitch (owned by Amazon) leak that CR is highest paid channel, and would have been near the top for years. They were already rich enough to fund the special kickstarter episode themselves, anyway.
No wonder all PCs, NPCs, and "LG" creatures like blink dogs are RP'd CN (at best) on the show. The whole cast are sociopaths.
>*sociopaths
Using para-social manipulation ("We love you very much" every sign off) to prey on the gullibility and generosity of often mentally ill fans. Technically 'psychopaths' is more accurate. They're narcissists and Machiavellian too. Dark Triad personalities. All the scum Gary's game was meant to repel.
Beasts is what the Bible calls them. Amoral, filthy, lawless beasts whose primary characteristics are that they are congenital liars, and murderous. And they would, if they could, kill every one of us.
Beasts is what the Bible calls them. Amoral, filthy, lawless beasts whose primary characteristics are that they are congenital liars, and murderous. And they would, if they could, kill every one of us.
>Content creators have a relationship with their fans >THEY ARE DEMONIC! PSYCHOPATHS! THEY WANT TO KILL US ALL!!!
jfc get your head checked
I don't like to watch other people play games, and I don't. The weird thing is people on /tg/ will be like "Yeah I watched 200 episodes and I fricking hate it..." I listened to 2 episodes of campaign 1 and 2 while driving my daily commute, that is to say, not time I could have used for much else. I listened to the first episode of each and the one people say is the "best" episode of each. It wasn't worth my time. I am baffled that people will listen to 200 hours of slop they hate.
Now there is a single exception to my above statement against watching other people game. If you are about to play a new system for the first time, say you're getting into Twilight 2000, Burning Wheel, etc. and you want to see some play examples, that's reasonable.
Nope. His content attracts the kind of people to D&D who ONLY want to play D&D. Unless they popularise a quirky, Scooby-Doo-esque Delta Green game, I'm content to let him make money at the expense of people who'll buy all the books and dice to play once, then sell them online because their group of friends don't play like the professional actors online. Maybe some poor newbies can snap them up cheap and get their intro to the hobby.
NOBODY CARES ABOUT IMOGEN OR YOUR DUMB MOON SHIT FOR FRICK SAKE STOP SIDELINING ALL YOUR OTHER PLAYERS TO PUSH A MARY SUES SHITTY SKIES OF ARCADIA KNOCK OFF.
Honestly my biggest problem is Talliesin, I've watched all C2 and C3 so far, and I'm just getting to the point I can't even watch that dude. I'm sure he's a wonderful person and a good friend to them, but god I just wish he wasn't at the table.
At least he's not doing the voice thing that makes me want to shake the monitor shouting "clear your goddamn throat"
I think I might just be done with CR. It was a blast, but C2 was really it for me. They spend so much time doing absolutely nothing now, like that last episode holy shit 4 hours of nothing.
I just hit a breaking point maybe. I also can't handle Ashley still not knowing how to play after all these years. I mean jesus, I prefer kindness and generally thinking the best about people but what the frick man.
>problem?
None really, i just don't like streamers per se so i don't watch that kind of content to begin with and i don't play 5e so i don't have to deal with theater kids gone uppity. >Inb4 what if you ever get a CR fan player migrating from 5e to your games
If he's obnoxious about i just kick him out of the table at the third strike plainly explaining that nobody in his mind would expect a whole group to adjust to the expectations and likes of a new element, it's always the other way around buddy. >Inb4 what if ALL or the majority of the table is composed of obnoxious CRitters
I just pick my stuff (and like-minded friends) and leave, no game is always better than shit game.
In the same way that Jobs is known as the father of iShit
The “sociopath exploiting the young and eager gifted autist” is basically a primordial archetype that predates history
Keep falling for it though; I’m sure it has nothing to do with the gangs of child-raping sociopaths that run everything
Voice actors aren't the problem; it's the trannies invading and degrading our hobby: https://www.twitch.tv/transplanarrpg/clip/LachrymoseAntsySpaghettiSmoocherZ-W2RxH6v5Ko9OBw1a
Voice actors/theater kids see ttrpgs as something for an audience. As a play, show, or story that must be plotted out and have total control of, rather than a game (i.e. CR's consensual death). They can't even grasp that role-play is not a performance. It is the antithesis of what D&D was supposed to be.
They started the phoniness so common now.
Yes. Every PC death has been orchestrated by player and DM, or in the cast of any player no longer welcome, completely DM scripted. Matt even admitted after C1 that it was fixed for them to max because none had done it before. All but one (player scripted) maxed again in C2, consequence free, despite doing every asinine thing possible. C3 has had another PC scripted death, but was simply a fully narrated by DM cut-scene death without a single roll of the dice.
>Uh, yeah? I'm going over next weekend's script and I dont have any lines, I'm not mentioned in it at all. Also Will Wheaton is playing my character now? What's going down, Mercer? I'm Felcia Fricking Day! I'll cut you, I'll fricking cut you!
you set unrealistic expectations for the genre, and every normie expects a grand, 150 hour long adventure full of intrique, drama, humor, good voice acting, and seamless world design.
also im a games journo about to write the same thing about BG3.
They're always super passive and make boring characters too. Like it's your job to dance like a monkey to entertain them at all times and they don't have to make any effort themselves.
their characters have become increasingly gayer and melodramatic. not to mention they chug the gender identity koolaid like it's water
No shit, the trannies are their main revenue stream. Not pandering to them is suicide for their business. I dont hate CR for catering to them, they are incentivized to because you would never be a paypig like a gender obsessed fan. The only thing i hate is that everyone is going insane over it.
so nice to see fellow gender haters on this web sight
as for Mercer, I do not like his dumb vests
I've never watched many episodes but I wish the players were just improvisers and comedians and friends narrating in third person and just laughing and having a good time with their characters in a gritty rules heavy system that isn't afraid to kill their characters, but that with a little luck they can get powerful in, and then I want them realloy playing up the "get me my breast plate stretcher" or whatever schtick they're going with. Just becoming Caligula mixed with Dennis from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
It's the vapidity of their melodrama that's toxic, really. It's like fricking Saturday morning Disney cartoons.
Oh no, Minnie, I dropped my muffin!!!! Oh no, Mickey, that's so tragic! Oh no, now we need to get super serious, you guys, because this needs an hour of psychobabble about our feelings to really hash out how Mickey feels about his dropped muffin.
D&D is not your fricking therapy session, and your gender identity bullshit is not what we're here to to explore. For starters, therapists get paid a hundred bucks an hour, and the patient is expected to put in WORK to improve. Not just wallow in emotional dysfunction and maladaptive narcissism.
It really says something that the show and its insufferable creators are still known for that one time when one of them made a saucy comment to the wife of another one and it was such a catastrophe that he was immediately kicked off the cast and blacklisted - and all his appearances in the show to that point had to be scrupulously deleted.
Why? Because he dared to talk about anything that wasn't Mickey's dropped muffin tragedy.
And that's before we talk about Hasbro's sponsorship. Shallow corporate melodrama. That's all they are.
They do that a lot. Chris Hardwick, completely unfounded accusations placed on him and despite every actual employer of his investigating the matter and finding no merit to it Matt never took back the very petty off-camera death of Hardwick's guest character. Same happened with Orion's in the end, but at least he gave him a heroic death.
And don't get me started on Brian Foster and how that's all playing out. The chance that Ashley was full of shit just keeps increasing, but you won't see the company as a whole backtrack and put up all those hundreds of hours of content they delisted.
Man I hate that thing some players do where they go into a therapy session “ironically” and think it’s funny or meta
It was maybe a little clever a decade ago but it’s so played out
> they don't have to make any effort themselves.
Show them this.
checked and saved.
its good of him to make that post.
This
my biggest issue with some new players is that they want to play in commands like "I do this", "I grab that", "I punch him"
and expect me to voice act and create funny reactions for them on the fly every single time. at one point i just ignore their irl memes they want to bring into the game and they get mad about it.
your character trying to be funny by spouting current tiktok memes at every npc gets old very fast.
It's also a social game where you have to read the room, I'm not going to do funny voices at all times if you keep demanding more while your thinly veiled self-insert is just going to be you
Is this the "models set up unrealistic body types" of ttrpg?
Kinda yeah.
And like with models, it's because the people doing it are professionals who spend a lot of time in prep, and the product you get passes through significant editing.
>also im a games journo about to write the same thing about BG3.
>They're always super passive and make boring characters too. Like it's your job to dance like a monkey to entertain them at all times and they don't have to make any effort themselves.
My campaigns are kill shit, get loot.
You get 3 sentences max to describe your character.
Simple as.
> normie expects a grand, 150 hour long adventure full of intrique, drama, humor, good voice acting, and seamless world design.
I can do all of that except voice acting doe
Don't forget the characters normies will bring
>haha regurgitated lord bearington hahah so funny haha
>dark kill everyone to prove their point because everyone's morality is wrong except for his edgy man
>bawd bawd bawd that'll jerk off over voice channel and seduce on a nat 20 plz describe the ERP while I jerk off GM you want a good story right
>postmodern I don't care about the adventure the party or anything I don't care isn't that so deep and mature and awesome character
That’s what I really really don’t like. But I don’t think Matt sets unrealistic expectations for a game, he’s not same magic grandmaster, everything he does anyone can do but the voices. In fact my world and game is better because it doesn’t feel like a modern metropolitan American city
>feel like a modern metropolitan American city
I didn't realize shitical role was that bad holy frick
It is that bad. No culture clashes, no religion clashes, every shop is owned by gay black men married to tiefling men and no one cares.
>I-it doesn’t have to be historically accurate chud!
Yes but open homosexuality in a medieval setting completely ruins the vibe and makes it feel too modern, unless you incorporate homosexuality in the pedophilic Greco-Roman way, which is overblown anyway.
if you seriously think same sex couples ruins a setting then I genuinely feel pity at how easily your immersion is broken.
homosexual, I pity you for being cringe and having bad taste. I’m fine with homosexuality in a setting if it’s handled in a way that makes sense.
One, occasionally, is not a problem. When every fricking NPC is gay, or a "strong woman", yeah it starts to get pretty obnoxious
is gaslighting the only thing you homosexuals can do?
>everything he does anyone can do but the voices
firstly Im not spending thousands of dollars on dwarven forge or whatever they use for terrain
Aside from that, the issue is because CR is a scripted story you end up where characters always have their "arcs" or whatever theater kid nonsense tied to the game and characters will complete their arcs as they, as a team, planned out. Nobody will ever die an early death from a crit in a dungeon, its always going out in some fantastic plot resolving blaze of glory
Any DM *can* fudge the rolls and let their player tell them how the story will play out from the start, but expecting that is fricking nonsense because thats not how DND actually plays. You pick up the starter kit for any edition and youll run a dungeon to get some loot where players might die, not sit around dealing with their family drama from pages upon pages of backstory
Damn man I’m not saying “literally every single thing he does is good and you should want to do”. My point is that he doesn’t do anything so special that only he, the alpha chad geniuse GOD of the DM’s can do,
I agree anon. He is only exceptionally good at the most shallow levels of GMing being that he can do voices and can spend 5 minutes autistically describing a scene to the smallest detail. He cannot tard wrangle his players to save his life, his setting is generic nu-dnd slop and his encounter are incredibly lame.
And often his descriptions are bad. Just repeating the same fricking thing over and over. "Sort of, kind of." etc. You'd think he could take a bit of time reading a thesaurus with how much money he makes off this shit.
"Toothy maw" is what made me realize this, he would say it multiple times a episode
>'It appears to be'
>it is exactly that thing
This one really pisses me off.
>normies
I played with every one of these characters in 1993
>unrealistic expectations
>some Gankerermin shit
pathetic, absolute homosexualry, frick off nogame
This is the dumb shit that this thread exists to farm and get reactions to, really.
Putting on a show is not the same as doing the real thing in a more typical setting. We all understand that here. But it's not exactly his fault people from outside of the hobby couldn't see that. It's not his fault that they set expectations without thinking about what other actual people typically do as part of their hobby.
It sucks that there's a bunch of people who think that the game meant to entertain the people playing it is equivalent to a show meant to entertain the people watching it. But that's the fault of those viewers.
Mercer's players are unusually good at shutting the frick up and not talking over each other. As annoying as they can be, their investment and good manners are half of the 150hour epic story.
I don't hate or even dislike Mercer but his world design is hardly ever seamless or good. Slop like what Brennan Lee Mulligan writes clears his "worldbuilding" (copying final fantasy and warcraft) out of the water.
Examples please? I don't want to comb through hours of play videos to witness it for myself.
I strongly disagree with Brennan's GMing philosophy, but he's a good player imo.
What's his GMing philosophy?
Very railroady from everything I've seen
I think anons need to realize what railroading is and what a linear campaign is before posting.
The only difference is players volunteer for linear campaigns without understanding that it is a railroad campaign.
You need to reread the post you replied to and actually absorb what it means, anon.
I’ve only watched the inverted “legally distinct hobbit adventure” one and it didn’t seem railroaded at all
That's because that's not what he does. The way he pulls off the apparently "seamless" story isn't by forcing the players to make certain decisions, it's by first deciding on a setting, then having the players make characters that fit the setting, then tailoring the campaign to suit those characters all before session 1. He goes into detail on this over and over again.
I remember Brennan mentioning that the series you mentioned was structured to end with a PvP battle, but the players went against that and the final fight ended with them fighting an Orc side character.
I think people don't want to believe brennan is actually a good DM because of his gay politics and how he presents as a normal man. People are more forgiving of mercer because of his fricked up hair and love of button up vests
It legitimately upsets me that someone with the skillset to be one of the best comics of his generation is inexplicably treading water as some eceleb YouTube DM.
It’s such a waste. Just why.
It’s like if Dali were working as a house painter. It’s so depressing.
>It’s such a waste. Just why.
Because his passion is D&D. Crafting settings, visual storytelling, engaging with players and audience.
Just because you consider this a lesser art doesn't mean he does.
I don't know man, I really think you're undervaluing the idea of having a job and coworkers that you love over a career with more of an upward trajectory. If he's financially stable and having fun working a job where he does D&D and dorky gameshows for a living, I can't really fault him for sticking with that. I think most people would kill for a setup like that.
Most comics except the top of the top get paid dog shit and have to travel like crazy and live in NY or LA. Maria Bamford published her financials in a recent book she wrote and even a top comic with a multi-season Netflix show and a successful VA career on the side still probably makes only a bit more than Brennan makes in his current ventures. Successful internet content creators get fricking PAID.
It's because there's such minimal overhead in being an internet personality. Don't have to pay for access to venues or compensate their staff, don't have to have broadcasting agreements, there's almost zero red tape, etc. All you need is a couple thousand people who like your stuff enough that they're willing to pay $5 a month to make sure you keep going. And if you hit it big you keep the WHOLE pot. No execs or corporate staff to siphon anything. Sure Patreon or whoever takes a cut, but their shit is automated and as long as you bring in customers they can't be fricked to care.
>I remember Brennan mentioning that the series you mentioned was structured to end with a PvP battle, but the players went against that and the final fight ended with them fighting an Orc side character.
Same series had the shepherd druid able to transport directly to where they were intended to head towards to reach the second encounter set, which meant the encounter couldn't happen that way. So he created the character they were trying to meet on the fly and gave the scenario enough downtime with RPing for him to adjust and reuse what he already had in play to create the setpiece scenario. There's a definite bottleneck, but the terms by which PCs can reach encounters in these series can seem to vary. I'd even argue that player actions led to him popping a cherry sooner than he was intending in Neverafter, because the Lines Between was probably never intended to be visited before the halfway point. The man has a bunch of flaws and there are much better examples of soft railroading like reminding players of revelations/details that they never explored the moment before they're important, but I'd never call the actual structure a railroad.
FPBP.
Literally all you need to do for your product to be despised is to put slightly more effort into it than other products. Nogames struggle to imagine having more than 1 encounter/city/map prepared at a time
wat
>150 hour long
This should be around 40 sessions? This is genuinely not a big deal if you play weekly, less than a year, 10-12 level-ups, why does anyone even complain about this
Your Ganondorf voice was shit.
His NPC dialogue is shit too. It's stilted and lacks any kind of authentic speech patterns. Everyone speaks in generalities even when they're supposedly being specific, and nobody will just say 'yep, the monster looked like a fricking huge snake' even when it would fit their character.
your show is scripted
has this ever been confirmed? i always assumed but yknow
dim20 is way better because it feels like an actual live play. i would love to see cr as an actual game with actual invested players and not drama prostitutes
it wasn't confirmed but I always thought so. Especially with 2nd campaing forward.
they don't stream live anymore
every episode must be interesting and finish a story beat (how many times did your players derail your plans by going in totally different way, or decided to approach the problem in a different way. Combat lasted longer than you anticipated. Random combat encounter that wasn't planned because players decided to escalate.
I never had shorter sessions but I had ones that lasted 1-3 hours longer because of above mentioned stuff. I can afford a average session but they are in entertainment business. They have to entertain thousands of people to keep their business going.
>I never had shorter sessions
Bullshit
believe what you will. My group is able to play every 2 weeks and we always play for 5-6 hours.
>party never fricked up so badly that you have to call it early
Sure thing nogames.
>party never fricked up so badly that you have to call it early
>Sure thing nogames.
having a competent GM that doesn't have freak out when things go of the rails and is able to adapt.
>every episode must be interesting and finish a story beat (how many times did your players derail your plans by going in totally different way, or decided to approach the problem in a different way. Combat lasted longer than you anticipated. Random combat encounter that wasn't planned because players decided to escalate.
Counterpoints: the episodes aren't interesting, and the players try to talk their way out of damn near everything instead of fighting. Ending on a story beat is pretty much down to Matt have experience and knowing when to call it, thus a wide variety of run times.
I think it's just a railroaded campaign, and it seems like most of the people at the table need that because they don't know how to make characters who pursue their goals.
>They have to entertain thousands of people to keep their business going.
And they are not doing well at it. Even in chat and reddit, people are complaining. Honestly, they have shit characters and there's no scenario you could put them all in together that would be compelling without turning everyone else into the supporting cast for one character.
>Verification not required
>don't know how to make characters who pursue their goals.
they booted the one most likely to early in c1.
I can't blame the bg of their characters, God knows most pc will have similar slightly cringe ones, yet their bg is the only thing defining them and they barely deviate
He's keeping the kid's gloves on tight while also not railroading the players as much as they clearly need. The result exceptionally tedious, which is why viewership is going down the toilet.
It's not scripted, but the players plan out a lot more ahead of time
You can really fricking tell that they're improving "big" scenes when they painfully take their time trying to say something deep instead of it flowing naturally
>instead of it flowing naturally
instead of it flowing in a clearly rehearsed way, you mean
i mean dimension20 are absolutely theather kids and drama prostitutes, but they actually like playing dnd too
Campaign 3 is totally scripted but the first two weren't, at least not to a huge extent. Campaign 1 started off as just an ordinary table game, and Campaign 2 is far too shitty and meandering for me to believe it was heavily scripted. With 3 though they've accidently shown teleprompters.
The teleprompter is for the ad bit at the start of the show. Those are obviously scripted. You can even occasionally see them lose their places or stumble over how to pronounce certain words.
I’m not saying the rest isn’t rehearsed and preplanned, but it certainly isn’t presented on teleprompters.
They did far more elaborate sponsored skits back on their old set before the teleprompters, I can't think of any justification for them being there beyond the game as a whole being scripted.
>They did far more elaborate sponsored skits back on their old set before the teleprompters
Thr ones where they had clearly visible scripts?
The ones where they had to shuffle around looking for the right piece of paper? The ones where they still skipped over sections that were written down right in front of them? The ones where Laura looked confused and had to be reminded of the merch she needed to shill? Replacing that with a teleprompter being run by someone who has their shit together is a big step up.
Lol you fricking idiot
No, because this is clearly the vastly superior Dimension 20 background and not his shitty Critical Role set.
wild people here love dimensional 20 more than critical role when dimensional 20s cast and games go even harder on troony dogma.
dimension20 is insufferable. Critical role is gay and melodramatic yes, but at least they are civil.
Dimension20 has a series called Dungeon & Dragqueens, which is beyond bizarre
Brennan atleast has a spine and will tell players "No." Mercer has the backbone of a wet spaghetti noodle. The only one worse than either of them is Abria "Roll me a Wisdom save" Iynegar.
Taliesin was terrible too, as were all the mystery meat guest DMs they've used for one shots.
>triggered by /misc/ when nobody brought it up
back to the CR reddit with you
So you’re just a troony obsessed gay?
Travis, Laura, and Sam were genuinely checked out of campaign 2 for that reason. It got obvious when they murdered the crew and stole the ship, at which point it was run back as "they were actually bad people". You could see Travis and Sam disappointed, and then realising that there would be no repercussions, ever. And then later on, after one in particular (I think the plane of fire death of the kid) it was excused as "not your fault" and Travis/Laura openly rolled their eyes at each other.
I think Liam realised as well, but he just used it to run rampant.
I think the current campaign is funny for similar meta-reasons:
1) It's plainly being used to set up whatever system switch they'll do after this (probably to their own system thing?) so suddenly the gods are evil and completely different in character to previous campaigns.
2) big player backstory moments and their reveals have clearly all been planned and scripted in advance, so even in downtime nobody has anything to say to each other because it's not the right moment to actually flesh out your character yet
In C3 they murdered a whole temple of clerics under Pelor, an angel and used the blood of a priest to summon a demon. Doormatt dropped no repercussions on them or drop the fricking obvious twist that the old women pushing them was part of a cult. None of them questioned what they just did and they still portray themselves as good people. I can see why films these days have absolute dogshit themes and messaging because everyone in Cali are morally deprived goblins.
>Liam rampant
Liam made his best friend be his lackey from the beginning of C2 so he could steal from them, hide items useful to other party members, and have a bodyguard from their retaliation. A retaliation which they were prevented from RPing (executing his PC) because of upsetting Liam and ending his scripted story.
What the frick is this moronic player character. Why would someone even do this? It must suco to play in a table like this...
I’ve watched as the story has progressed. They make one note of theft of a paper to drive the story and don’t engage in party theft again.
The dude is playing a goblin and to be fair, they steal, the fact he didn’t steal after a team building conversation is proof that the character is developing beyond wild savage gobby girl.
>Early in the campaign, another player's (Travis) PC held his falchion to Liam's PC's throat in a threat if he ever did that shit again, visibly upsetting Liam. The only other time they RP'd was Marisha snatching an item he was hiding they had been risking their lives to find, and identify.They could have even dealt with everything (including the stranger with them) better if they had been told right away, but Liam wanted to be see if the item was either be useful to him or he could be episode hero (he always plays both sides). This upset Liam and fans, so Marisha's PC was forced to apologize the following week and let his Liam and his PC continue being a piece of shit, even trying to kill her with collateral spell damage.
Liam is the epitome of all the bad player tropes and wouldn't be asked back for a second session of any real game. It just shows how bad and fake Matt, cast, and their circle of performers are.
>Liam's lackey is playing a goblin
halfling turned into a goblin
I've seen the pictures and his mystery meat femhafling looked better as a goblin
>even trying to kill her with collateral spell damage
Kek, I remember that one.
>Marisha PC is unconscious in a grapple with a troll
>Liam tries to 3x scorching ray the troll ("because fire") but every time something hits the troll it also hurts Marisha and she auto-fails death saves
>he gets shouted down from doing it
>Liam instead tries to do a magic missile (3 bolts) at it instead, which would also result in dead Marisha
>NEARLY gets away with it he's about to roll damage before Laura cuts in with "you can't do that she'd die"
>can see him visibly get a fixed smile on his face as he decides what to do
>"fine then I cast haste that's my turn"
>shittalks later with "my CHARACTER knew, I didn't know the spell would do that and kill her but you gotta drop that dead weight"
in the campaign, another player's (Travis) PC held his falchion to Liam's PC's throat in a threat if he ever did that shit again, visibly upsetting Liam
That was clearly an unnecessary c**t move though and if he hadn't pulled that unnecessary confrontation they could have left that area without incident.
>but every time something hits the troll it also hurts Marisha
That isn't how grappling works, and definitely isn't how magic missile works, Matt.
>the projectiles of infallibly-accurate force energy still cause collateral damage because… they just do, chud!
t. most popular DM the hobby will ever have
Obviously the other anon didn't given context, but this isn't pulled out of nowhere. The troll was the variant that's all bloated with poison, so every attack on them makes them do a 5-ft radius of poison damage.
>another player's (Travis) PC held his falchion to Liam's PC's throat in a threat if he ever did that shit again
Not what happened. Liam's PC wanted to steal some scrolls but Travis got pissy because that might incriminate them (as if all the other bullshit they done that night did not lmao)
>even trying to kill her with collateral spell damage
>implying you wouldn't to the same thing
Meds, now.
Hey, remember the time when Matt went ballistic over Orion Acaba killing a random peasant for no reason?
Whatever happened to that Matt?
It was a bandit that happened to be an old woman. He later had no problem with Scanlon vaporising peasants in the Goliath battle.
Abria is a genuinely terrible dungeon master and the fact they keep giving her a shot is beyond me.
You know why.
He didn't say no, but I do remember when he had Marisha's character die because they jumped off a cliff then turned into a fish.
That woman is impressively fricking stupid.
Idk if it was her, but there was a time when a player actively wanted to do a noble sacrifice thing and jumped into an abyss, he accepted it but her or the other one pulled some bullshit and claimed d20 so he just resigned to it and allowed the bullshit
i don't care about politics, i care about traditional games
Because despite having gay/non binary/troony characters, the fact of the matter is Brennan is a much better dungeon master, and the political shit is just what you expect from NY/LA dwelling webseries producers.
The real difference is that CR's cast is voice actors, who are all used to having scripts, and D20's cast is the old cast of collegehumor, many of which are trained Improv actors, including brennan, and improvising is what makes ttrpg's what they are ultimately.
Im sure there a better actual plays out there than dont have any of the problems of scripted CR nor any of the debauchery of dimension20
Dimension 20 is actually almost entirely scripted by Brennan as he admitted, the entire thing is a railroad.
when did he admit this? pretty much everything he's said in the past is the complete opposite
All his DM tips are
>ignore what the players do, it is YOUR story, if your plot is right and they go left, the plot is on the left now
It's why he does huge monologues and epic dialogues and his players usually have simple responses. They know it's his story and they're just there to experience it.
It's a good show that can entertain people like you, but it isn't a game
what the players do, it is YOUR story, if your plot is right and they go left, the plot is on the left now
Thats not a railroad, thats a quantum ogre, which he does to get to the setpieces.
A quantum ogre is the largest warning sign of a railroad, you have to be moronic to think
>o-oh so he railroads the players into every single setpiece he plans but the campaign is still 100% organic!
And you are not playing ttrpgs then
>And you are not playing ttrpgs then
Yeah, they are, you fricking worthless cretin. So tired of this gay, pointless, pedantic, definition israelitery. Fricking cry about it, gay. People play a type of game you like in a different way.
Yes I am and no amount will seething will change that
I used to think it was clever, but Quantum Ogre is still railroading. You're just moving the ogre to whichever fork in the rails the train takes.
it's not so much a railroad as it is a train station. the story can get to this place in many ways, and it can go many ways from the place too, and what exactly happens in the place is also highly variable.
It's true that Mulligan's 'theatre of the mind' series are better than the ones with minis though and he clearly is playing more relaxed and free.
>if your plot is right and they go left, the plot is on the left now
That's how I run my campaigns. All roads lead to Rome, all side-quests are related to their main-quest in some form.
That's how every campaign works moron. Where the group goes, the plot goes. All those different hooks the GM threw at you? All lead to the same plot. You switched cities? No problem, the plot is happening there now.
Nah, that's just bargain bin DMing. I'm sorry you've never experienced real TTRPGs before.
>t.nogames
>i cant dm worth a shit and never had a good dm so its impossible that any dm is actually good and not a railroader youre nogames!
Wow. Do we really have Black folk on /tg/ who think railroading is normal? That used to be a meme here and we have people unironically supporting it.
Narrative games can be fun if set up in advance. Railroading by anyone is just shit. If you tell me you have a story or preset I'll play it. But if you're a hack and just keep railroading while blowing smoke up my ass pretending my decisions matter then you're just an uncreative dickhead who should stick to writing fanfic or something.
>t.0games /misc/cuck
sit down, Susy
>That's how every campaign works moron.
That is how most campaigns work, to a degree. Outside of extreme examples, it is not like every decision ever is always completely open-ended, and neither do all campaigns consist completely of quantum ogres.
Ideally, the players, the PCs and the GM's prep are somewhat in sync with one another and the party generally moves in the direction that the GM prepared for. If your party randomly decides to move to a different city at the other end of the planet for the sake of escaping the GM prep, that's either a sign of shitty GMing, spiteful players of incoherent PCs. In that case the problems are deeper rooted than just quantum ogres.
I will never understand quantum ogre/false choice. Why even do it? Just tell them where to go or where they wanna go next sessions. Why bother creating an illusion? What purpose does it serve?
Why ask a question you don't wanna hear the answer for.
Just...do your think, why fudge/lie? You're pretty muvh saying you don't wanna GM, or just wanna railroad.
There's a difference between recycling an unused encounter from one scenario into a later one, and railroading players. It's a question of scope.
The frick you guys talking about? I never talked about recycling content, I made it very clear the issue was in the illusion of choice.
If you tell me there's 2 doorways in opposites sides of the room, and then both lead to the exact same encoutner and path, then why even have 2 of them? just put one.
Recycling content is fone, why let work go to waste. As long as there's enough redesign to fit in in a later session/oneshot/other campaign, who cares.
But Qt isn't about recycling content, it's about creating a false sense of content, choice and freedom for no reason. Atention? False sene of better campaign? I genuinely can't understand it.
If the players don't realize and are having a fun time, then there is literally no reason to care. If the players go back out of door 1 after going through it, and look behind door 2, they're going to find some new stuff, but it was more fun for them and safer for them to get the door 1 stuff first.
Short term fun is an easy way to create bad habits. The problem isn't that much from the player side. To me it is, I can see fudge and QT from miles away due my autism, it is very obvious when the GM is trying to bullshit their way out of a situation because their passion and ivnestment onto the game differs greatly between what they have prepared/Care for and what is a simple tool for a purpose.
The issue here is that it creates bad habits for GMing. You become used to the idea of forcefully redirecting players towards where you want rather than aknowledging their ideas or giving them an actual choice.
If I want players to go through something first for safety or progression, I'll convey that through ingame information, wether it's things in the enviroment like signs, ruins or dead bodies pointing at stuff, NPCs that might be around to help or just the mission/campaign briefing. I trust they'll make the right choice and if not, well, too bad, but it will still be their choice, their story.
You already decide "what" is there, let them to at least have the right of the "how" and "when".
Be an arbiter, not a director.
I agree with your perspective for the most part, but if the characters decide to run off into the wilderness of an area that i have absolutely zero prep for, you can bet your ass they're going to run into something that was originally going to be somewhere else.
anyone saying they never recycled unused content/quantum ogre is a giant ass liar or never GMed anything
Because you are storygaming, that is, what your are playing is not a game. You are watching a dumb story being told to you while rolling dice to help the storyteller from time to time. That is not a game, you see. Exactly what gygax said.
Gygax is lawful evil in D&D’s own cosmology who gives a frick
Go play AD&D or warhammer if you want a lawful evil game
What
bullshit, why does everyone want to believe that everyone better than them at playing these games is actually a complete fraud?
Its because they are not playing a game, they are playing an Improv theater that distorts expectations and paints the game as this cringy performance based activity
I'm sorry to break this to you anon but Brennan's support staff did not make all those Diaramas, models and write all those epic speeches just so the players could take a complete left turn off the campaign railroad. Here is the secret that most actual GMs know and im going to let you in on it. Any "plot" can easily be destroyed by an intelligent or incredibly dumb player taking an action you could not foresee which could change the direction of the campaign entirely.
For example in one of the most recent sessions of critical role, 2 players jumped into a pool of lava like absolute morons and instead of doing the right thing and just killing them and having the campaign take a complete left turn, they survived so matt could do his big final boss shows up cutscene.
>write all those epic speeches
Nah say what you will about the rest of the show, but other than maybe the intro speech of any given campaign, I'm fully willing to believe that Brennan is capable of monologing about anything on the spot. See the snack speech, see the Trump as Sauron speech, the Cannot win speech.
He *taught* at arguably the best improv troupe in the world for years in his *twenties*. There’s video of him doing various improv-adjacent stuff everywhere and it’s clear he’s a big fish that somehow took a wrong turn to wash up in CollegeHumor’s backwater of all places.
Yes.
I enjoy their Delta Green stuff
Brennan only seems better because his campaigns are bigger railroads than critical role and are much shorter in scope. I dont care how good at improv you are, you aint pulling full pre-rehearsed in the mirror speeches on your players at a moments notice. If i had a full support crew making me maps and props with a group of players fully invested because they are getting paid thousands of dollars just to play a D&D session, I would look like a million bucks too.
>pre-rehearsed in the mirror speeches
I’m a tourist here but I’ve done improv and that’s something anyone that’s done it seriously can do half-asleep. It’s clear what parts are the main story/rehearsed and where he’s ad-libbing, and if you know how to listen most of the most “grand speeches” are actually a common tic in improv where they distract with generic bluster while they try to think of what to actually say.
Brennan TAUGHT at UCB, which is basically where anyone on SNL that isn’t from NYC is from. He’s massively underselling himself as a comedian and actor by working at some random failing 2000s-era company and I have no idea why. Maybe because he’s fricking one of them. He should have moved on years ago.
If anything his performance on d20 is subpar for improv considering a drinking game of whenever he says “hell yeah” would leave you dead or in a hospital.
Yeah, I'm DMing today. Get the FRICK outta my seat.
Unironically Matt Mercer is far and away the best part of Critical Role and I'd play with him any day. It's the other pieces that tend to be tiresome or outright red flags.
This. I don't mind too much the unrealistic expectations. Anyone who thinks that is probably moronic to expect every ttrpg to be run by literal voice actors and shit. And he does tend to run great games. But every character and player is "teh spork of doom" tier bad. I've never seen players try so hard and fail so miserably. It's incredible. I watch CR just for the cringe. I've never seen a thing this bad before even with amateurs.
>every character
it's mostly the women let's be honest
And the men. Like I saw the kraken example here. Women being at the table (married no less) is bad news. Because not only do you get their shit play, but nobody will go "hey maybe sending a tiny wave against a giant kraken is stupid, you fricking idiot. try something else". It's just "lmao yeah just do whatever lol yea its so cool bae" tier homosexualry. Any time I see a woman in a group I know for an undisputed fact that it will be shit and she is the only Black person at that table that will ever be catered to and will make or break the entire campaign.
We saw what happens when DM's girlfriend gets pissy with the DM when she actually gets called out for being moronic when she used the Tidal Wave against the dragon.
Imagine actually thinking shit like this. This hobby is full of bad players of whatever gender, but there are good players in them too.
You can pull all the anecdotes you like and yammer on about stereotypes of people dragging their SO to something they weren't really interested in and then problems happening. But good players have nothing to do with whether you're a man or a woman, and everything about whether or not you and your group are all actually in this together. Shared understanding of expectations and strong communication are always key to a good gaming experience, and if someone selfishly tries to cram in a change to the existing dynamic instead of integrating people in as part of the whole, and make short-sighted sacrifices to try to force it to work, of course it's going to worsen everyone's experience.
Include me in the screenshot you send to your gf/wife when you show her how hard you simped for good boy points.
Women do not belong at the table. Not only do they suck egregiously, but it makes every man there a moron too as explained. Cry about.
>Anyone who disagrees with me must be the image I've conjured of me-no-like in my brain
Just because you've never actually had girl players at your table who give a shit about the game and are good players doesn't mean they're not out there. If you keep up that attitude, you sure lower your chances of encountering them though.
good simp
I GMed for around 20 people, all good or close friends to me, 12 of them women, the rest were men.
While I enjoyed my time with all and never had a major issue (the only one I actually had to kick out was a guy and we could talk it out), there was a clear pattern to be seen for either side. Guys might be better or worse, but they all put some effort into the game when it comes to the rules. They at least try to understand the rules and how they're applied. Even the potthead has a good understanding of how magic works and makes custom sheets.
Now girls? Polar opposite. Only one out of those 12 learned the basic rules after the first game, the others, including the 3 that have been playing for almost 4 years, are almost unable to understand a thing. Still asking which dice is used to attack, which damage dice used in thr spell they use every week, magic classes are too complex, etc. That the guy are way smarter and better yhan them.
I also learned to be very careful with sexual stuff, as women know even less restrain and the moment you bring it up they'll derail the game to ask how homosexual thia NPC is or flirt with NPCs, etc. Once I tested it by not intervining, when they started making a lot of sex jokes because a loose character showed up, I sat there in silence to see how long it would take for them to stop on their own (had warned the other guys in advance). 40 entire minutes went away while they discussed how to frick this guy, how this other PC was sexy and such.
Gary might be autistic but he was right. Women don't like to lay TTRPG, at least not the "PG" part. They come for the social aspect and specially the theatrics, but the moment there's rules more complex than monopoly, their brains turn off.
I know this is anecdotical and a small sample size, but still find interesting that the exceptional guy was the one I had to kick, the exceptional woman was the one I did noy have to help.
This is my experience as well, though sort of in reverse. I had a female DM who was extremely talented at the RP side of things, very good at voice acting, character drama, that sort of thing. She tried her best to keep the combat rules consistent, but she was absolutely terrible at balance. The other (male) players constantly tried to get OP homebrew shit accepted by her, and most of the time they succeeded. She didn't understand how this would undermine the world she had created. (Why would anyone use any other weapon than a javelin when they are objectively better in every single way than every other weapon in the game? Why would the NPCs? Are they just moronic?)
It put me in an awkward situation since I could see what they were doing and I wanted to give some advice but didn't want to undermine the DM's authority and be seen as the guy trying to spoil someone else's fun, but it was just so transparent and stupid.
Either way, it's also been the case when I've DMed for women. They enjoy the social aspect, but the rules are incomprehensible to them. Works alright in a rules-light game, but it's definitely a barrier to entry.
Gygax's inability to understand woman is well known though.
https://dmdavid.com/tag/meet-the-woman-who-in-1976-ranked-as-the-second-most-important-person-in-roleplaying-games/
good simp
>loves plays/Shakespeare
>gets copy of Gary's game
>disrespectful and arrogant enough to create ripoff
>Gary mocks her
Which bring us back to OP and
What am I missing?
>Matt Mercer is far and away the best part of Critical Role
Travis and Sam exist, anon.
> Sam is somehow good
Same is literally That Guy. His shit is okayish in a scripted show, but he would be lynched if he tried to play at a real table.
and so would almost all of them, i don't like sucking matt off and i think as a person i would not like him at all, but he is the only one actually interested in dnd. all of them meta game, forget rules after 750,000 sessions, refuse to ever let their characters die, beg for advantage and special treatment almost every single round, treat their character like its shakespeare and otherwise generally just make a low effort money printing tv show.
now, the funny thing for me is, they are still more respectable than when they are doing their old jobs, being unionised, constantly cast and pandered to, voice actors. these people do not live in the real world.
> and so would almost all of them
Maybe? Sam and Liam would definitely be too slimy to game with IRL. Ashley would probably get kicked for just not getting it. The others seem okay. Not great, but passable.
I haven't watched in years, but I remember in their first campaign where he decided to spend his time shitting during combat, and Matt was clearly getting frustrated.
And neither of them is better than Matt. You had no point but you had to try to make one.
Not sure what happened to him, I watched a few episodes of C3 and he is big cringe.
He used to be based before CR began streaming for S&S. He was running Pathfinder and preferred older systems.
I guess your hobby becoming your job will take its toll.
>doesn't say anything
>thinks they've made a big point
>leaves
Ok byeeeee
Yes, there is one fundamental problem, among many. Now go back to your theater, you phony.
>Gaygag being factually wrong again
Proof that him and anything he touched is best left in the past.
ywnbadndp
You should join a theater team instead, buddy
Isn't it called a troupe?
Yes, probably
>Making decisions based on what your character would do instead of being a metagaming homosexual is... LE THEATER!
have a nice day you scourge on the hobby.
Sorry, are we talking about the same gygax quote you dumb homosexual?
Pretty sure he was talking about D&D not being a storytelling game.
>Pretty sure he was talking about D&D not being a storytelling game.
Gygax ran D&D as a wargame. That comment is a direct criticism of Arneson's style which was very much grand storytelling with participants.
So they were both moronic.
Got it.
What is the right way of playing?
Not DnD.
>/pol/
you're the blight of this hobby
Back with ye.
you have to go back
>the replies
haha that post didn't turn out how you thought it was going to go
ok boomer
I like OD&D and Dungeoncrawling more than most but sometimes Mr.Gygax wasn't on the money on the subject of storytelling.
Like the OD&D example of moving in a dungeon.20' north, you reach a landing, door on the right etc.
There was more room for "storytelling" and people found it.
Then they went full moron 2E and forwards.
Gygax was at his best when he was editing the work of others.
> sometimes Mr.Gygax wasn't on the money
I remember when he stuffed ad&d full of shit like earworms if you listened at doors, bugs that looked like coins but would eat your treasure if you put them in with it, and other meta game trash, and then went on a rant in the Dungeon Masters Guide about how to frick with players for being cautious and checking shit out. He was lucky enough to catch lightning in bottle, but most of his views on gaming were dogshit.
50% of the game wasn't even his idea, it was the dude who died
Dave Arneson is the real reason why D&D exists. Gygax was just there to market it and take credit.
Gygax is the Jobs to Arneson’s Wozniack. Anything he says about DND has as much merit as Jobs thinking a fruit starvation diet would cure his pancreatic cancer.
His game wasn't for munchkins, cheezers & phonies. WotC's shit is.
>roleplaying isn't story telling because the DM is directing things
by this logic actors aren't playing a role because the director/writers exist
work on your reading, ESL.
They are acting you dumb frick not playing a game Jesus Christ
This quote is asinine. Roleplaying is storytelling. Difference is because the story is being told by multiple people dice are used to arbitrate story disputes. Roleplaying isn't a game since there is no win state and usually no competition.
Brother, ttrpgs arent storytelling, they are games, you can win, as in when you live another session, get loot in the dungeon, discover a new interest point, and you can lose, when you die. You are first and foremost playing a game, not acting. If you arent playing a game, you dont need dice, you dont need combat, HP, anything really, just get on a table with your friends and start playing pretend.
Look, you can do your funny voices and have your fake melodramatic moments and still be playing a game.
What gygax is saying is that the DM is not directing a story, he is refereeing a game, that can go wherever the players decide it to go.
It shouldnt be this hard...
It really shouldn't, and yet look at you, a stupid motherfricker. You can't even grasp this very simple concept.
He’s not the dumb one here, fricktard
I was being hyperbolic saying it isn't a game to mirror Gygax dumbass commentary. The win states of an RPG fluctuate consantly and are often irrelevant.
Saying dying is losing is moronic. All you do is roll a new character and continue playing. Often dying is preferable if it makes a cool story moment or lets you let go of a boring character to play one more interesting.
So yes, the dice are more important to informing the story than to achieve a "win". They are a resolution mechanic.
Certainly you COULD play using rules that punish death or have an on-rails end goal, but you'd be hard pressed to find players that will buy into that kind of rpg.
TL;DR: RPGs without a story aren't worth playing. If you wanted that you'd play a board game instead, or an "RPG" designed to replicate such a simple and sterilized concept like a hex/dungeon crawler.
Of course It is losing, not every loss has to end in b***hy rage. Interpreting a loss as something that happens as is Fine does not make It less of a loss. You just Lost your character, the worst consequence possible, the thing you try to avoid.
You cant be this studpid
>the thing you tend to avoid
Not everyone avoids it. Sometimes people prefer it. So how is it the worst consequence?
What the frick you are just playing dumb right now I wont bite this shit take.
>gets proven wrong
>refuses to admit fault or even try to move goalposts
Alright buddy
These aren't mutually exclusive things. It can be a game and a story at the same time.
Of course they arent mutually exclusive, though It is evident what the main course should be.
Gygax's quote is simples, he is saying that the players are players, not actors in a story, and that the DM shouldnt try to change that, otherwise it would not be a game any longer
This is out of context, though you can still agree or disagree with him.
When he said this, he was talking from the perspective that as the dungeon master, he gave the players objectives but then he had them self-direct how they were going to accomplish them. It's not just that "role-playing isn't storytelling," it's that "there's no story being told by the DM, it's all unfolding right now."
This quote really ruffled the feathers of all the theatre-trannies
>TSR era: My character has come of age. He seeks to adventure and see the world. Let's see what the dice will...
>5e/theater kid era: My snowflake wizard's teacher was mean to him. He seeks vengeance and will have extra spells from domains created just for him. You will give me that outcome, DM! Let's see what I want my dice to say (one is loaded)... (see Liam).
>extra spells from domains created just for him
I’ve never watched CR but these are fine as long as it’s just another spell reskinned and follows whatever rules are applicable to that (e.g. a Drider artificer has “sling web” that’s just thorn whip but a web
not D&D, but I've been playing a ghoul in Age of Sigmar: Soulbound, who's basically the potion-seller meme merged into one character. All of his spells(which are the madness domain) all got fluffed to look(to him at least) to be him using various potion vials.
>will have extra spells from domains created just for him
So you don't know how spells were made. Got it.
Roleplay isn't storytelling, that's true... just like how flour isn't a cake. But there is no game without a mediator directing and arbitrating it. So that entire second sentence is just absolutely categorically wrong.
And as it so happens, we have a loooooot of documentation about Gygax's style of GMing, which could only be described as arbitrary, capricious and antagonistic. The only game being played at Gygax's table was Mother May I, which is not technically a game.
D&D survived in spite of him, but only due to the effort of those who understood it.
>I’m gonna take what he said exactly and literally while also being incredibly obtuse, that will own this old dead CHUD.
>Roleplay isn't storytelling, that's true... just like how flour isn't a cake. But there is no game without a mediator directing and arbitrating it.
I’d imagine he’d agree with this incredibly normal take
Then why did he say the opposite?
why are you moronic?
>But there is no game without a mediator directing and arbitrating it.
There's a lot of games without a mediator directing or arbitrating them.
I don't know. I don't understand how people can sit and watch 4 hours-long sessions playing tabletop games.
I never sit down and watch it. I always have it on in the background either while working, playing video games, or driving somewhere.
You are parts of the problem consoomer
I have never purchased critical role merchandise, you buzzword spewing moron
This lol
Its not even interesting, not to mention i cant find it funny
Watching ttrpg makes me cringe. This is solely for nogames
His wife is hot.
Anon, don't, no amount of hotness makes up for that woman's soul-crushing dumbness. Five minutes of the kraken fight will make her utterly repellent in your sight.
>I use tidal wave
>Against a KRAKEN
>UNDERWATER
>Also the Kraken is bigger than the wave
That fight was fricking painful.
To be fair she was clearly drunk at the time.
I mean yeah, but as I recall it was after the tidal wave flopped that she got really deep into the drinks. You would have thought that someone would have come up with some ideas on how to fight a kraken before going to fight a kraken, but I guess not.
Since there's never any real consequences to the players, they don't feel the need to actually prepare for anything. If Matt didn't pull any punches and had balls for TPK, they might learn.
Don’t be stupid. The characters are used to sell merch. If any of them were to be killed and unable to be resurrected, the warehouse would be full of unsalable merch. They’re way too mercenary to allow that to happen.
Which doesn't make it better. It was Keyleth's story arc, therefore Marisha knew she would be in the spotlight. So maybe DON'T get drunk/high as a kite if you know this session is going to focus on you?
I am amazed that Travis haven't strangled her yet.
To be fair. This was the "friends playing a game together who happen to be streaming it" phase of CR. Its still shitty she did it during her boyfriend's game and at a massive plot involving her but it wasn't the soulless Corpo D&D it became in campaign 2.
I noped out of C2 extremely fast, couldn't handle the gay goblina
I guess you are right. Even with all those snags (or maybe because of them) C1 was just fun. C2 and especially C3 are lame as frick by comparison. Apparently, there is a big part of fandom that adores C2, but I don't see it.
I would spitroast Laura Bailey though.
She also seems to be more fun.
Travis and Laura seem like a genuinely nice couple.
Yeah they are and Liam is disgusting.
I still would like to share her with Travis, though.
I always thought this guy is a gay for painting his nails. Now I googled his wife and realised this pornhub amateur tier bimbo that I wouldn't even click her thumbnail is his wife. Now I'm 100% sure he is a gay.
>bad players are the fault of a famous DM most people in the hobby have watched at least once
I'm tired of this meme.
My first time DMing two out my three players kept complaining after the session that it wasn't like CR. This is going back five years ago before it is what it is now. Killed the vibe and the campaign.
Sounds like you should have killed them and eaten their flesh.
Calm down, Ghoul.
The only logical decision, naturally.
I never watched him, and I am bewildered by the idea that everyone apparently has.
That being said, I do not blame him for any problems of "the hobby", since I wouldn't know about it. I don't play with randos anyway, only with my friends (or friends of friends).
my main problem is that the players have been doing long campaigns for years and years, for more money than any real and impactful job, and they still struggle with basic rules every single episode. how many billions do they each need to read one or two paragraphs?
at least they were already conceited LA phonies before the cash, though.
Critical Role is based and I'm tired of pretending otherwise
release a calamity/ apogee solstics global crisis adventure already.
Frick that they need to get out of Matt's "generic high fantasy setting #1072" world already. They should go (attempt) to play cyberpunk or shadowrun or some shit.
>wat do I roll to attac mat?
Matt mercer had to sit and watch while another man did sexual roleplay with his wife on livestream for money
h-hot
Travis had to watch while his wife played house with a mohawk homosexual for about a year.
>Gets to enjoy NTR while also being the only one to actually frick his wife
Sounds like a win/win to me
The only thing I know about Critical Role is the animatics that some fans make, and that the animatics are fun. Or at least I find them fun.
Y'all need to calm down.
The original clip is very fun too. Sam is killing it as usual
I got a spike of estrogens just listening to that
>*effortlessly outclasses your show*
Who even are these
The only actually good actual play podcast, probably because literally none of the cast members have any ties to the entertainment business.
Sure, and whats the name of the channel?
>better GM
>actually knows PF2e
Yeah, no. Not even close.
make way, bigots
www.polygon.com/23916207/dnd-connie-chang-transplanar-rpg-queer-trans-noncolonial-actual-play
Call me a boomer if you must but why have young people become such insufferable narcissistic homosexuals?
>Call me a boomer if you must but why have young people become such insufferable narcissistic homosexuals?
Because you no longer compete with your town, or the region of towns, but the entire rest of the world for attention/opportunity/sex.
t. Xennial who is glad cell phones weren't a thing when he was a kid fricking around
social media and COVID lockdowns
People have always been like this.
You were just in when it was your peers and then didn't notice when it wasn't.
This is objectively and verifiably wrong, educate yourself. Here’s a random starting point.
https://theconversation.com/why-are-we-becoming-so-narcissistic-heres-the-science-55773
>Olivia Remes
>the israeliteess who consults media on behalf of temple isaiah in LA
Don't you have a hospital to destroy right now?
Digital era made people feel that the world betond their local vommunity matters and you have to be an upstanding citizen that adheres to the values of every country in the world except the ones labeled as bad.
LMAO
nuke America, anyone
>Declare to be more diversive in their podcast
>The only LGBT-member of the cast quits 1,5 years later
What did they mean by this?
If you mean Grant, he still works there but he just doesnt do shows anymore afaik
Had to swap him out to make room for the maximum number of women and PoC Troy could stomach.
Except for the episodes with the cosplay prostitute fudging every other roll.
I needed to be reminded that /tg/ is full of god awful idiots again. Thanks thread.
I don't have a problem with Matt Mercer, hell I don't have a problem with the fake game he runs.
My issue is with the homosexuals who watch that shit, and then expect me as Gm to bend the world over backwards for stupid shit like:
>le epic pop culture reference bard
>cool warrior guy who doesn't afraid of anything and dismisses everything because he is cool warrior who has seen something scarier in his backstory
>one joke b***h who makes jokes about one concept, like dicks, and whenever npcs hear it they need to turn into morons who give her everything because hahaha funny
>drama homosexual who's character is built on ignoring and being a dick to everyone and if they don't cooperate they don't understand his grand plot man his character is just as good as hamlet your character just has to do everything he says and suck his toes off too while they're at it
Matt Mercer is okay. The homosexuals who follow him? Trash.
The average person is not an artist and likely pretty stupid. Apologies that you had to find this out while playing a game that rewards creativity and reading comprehension.
I don't have a problem with him cause the one episode I watched, there was a half hour of "bookkeeping" (ads) and then he started the campaign by letting all the theater kids talk about how quirky their character is and never leaving the fricking inn
So yea I have no idea how he actually DMs besides, uh, not.
never seen the show
Is he an actual good DM?
I heard Gary Gygax preferred femboys to women, is that true?
Show got too big for it's own good.
I can accept early vox machina being an actual game but there's 0% chance Might 9 and the new show aren't mostly scripted/outlined for the players
Yeah. It doesn't help that they're lolsorandumb. Even that annoying Asian chick from LA by Night is more tolerable. You'd think they could script it to make the characters less insufferable.
It appears like a real game. Except for maybe the red head, I think she lies about initiative.
I’ve played rpg’s and wanted to see if dnd was worth it (it isn’t imo) but watching these guys play has been definitely neat. I started with campaign 2 only and I think for what it is, a taster into dnd mechanics and a show about friends working through their real life stuff with characters they role play with, it’s compelling.
It seemed after the sad man on the right with the German accent goes too hard with his character that the next week he dials it back. I think off screen they meta game and try and make the characters more compelling but I don’t believe they save anyone from dying.
Hey, Matt. 'member
>March 2019 - Animated show Kickstarter begins. CR is given millions by fans.
>November 2019 - Amazon acquires the rights to stream the show exclusively on Prime Video, nullifying CR's agreement with donors.
You phony, grifting sacks of shit.
>Mid 2019: After the explosion of fan support, Melissa Wolfe, Amazon Studios’ head of animation and family, reached out to Critical Role’s Sam Riegel (who was directing some projects for Amazon at the time) to propose turning “Vox Machina” into a full-blown series.
https://variety.com/2021/digital/features/critical-role-amazon-legend-of-vox-machina-1235088274/
>October 2021 - Twitch (owned by Amazon) leak that CR is highest paid channel, and would have been near the top for years. They were already rich enough to fund the special kickstarter episode themselves, anyway.
No wonder all PCs, NPCs, and "LG" creatures like blink dogs are RP'd CN (at best) on the show. The whole cast are sociopaths.
Wow that’s super fricked up.
God I hate Liam.
>*sociopaths
Using para-social manipulation ("We love you very much" every sign off) to prey on the gullibility and generosity of often mentally ill fans. Technically 'psychopaths' is more accurate. They're narcissists and Machiavellian too. Dark Triad personalities. All the scum Gary's game was meant to repel.
Beasts is what the Bible calls them. Amoral, filthy, lawless beasts whose primary characteristics are that they are congenital liars, and murderous. And they would, if they could, kill every one of us.
Not necessarily. Surgeons and clergy are professions with a high percentage of psychopaths.
>Content creators have a relationship with their fans
>THEY ARE DEMONIC! PSYCHOPATHS! THEY WANT TO KILL US ALL!!!
jfc get your head checked
I’ve never watched the show but the main guy was a player on d20 once and he gave off BPDemon energy the entire time
Let’s be honest I don’t think there’s any D&D show Ganker likes
probably because the people on those shows look like they're actually having fun playing the game, which is wrong.
I don't like to watch other people play games, and I don't. The weird thing is people on /tg/ will be like "Yeah I watched 200 episodes and I fricking hate it..." I listened to 2 episodes of campaign 1 and 2 while driving my daily commute, that is to say, not time I could have used for much else. I listened to the first episode of each and the one people say is the "best" episode of each. It wasn't worth my time. I am baffled that people will listen to 200 hours of slop they hate.
Now there is a single exception to my above statement against watching other people game. If you are about to play a new system for the first time, say you're getting into Twilight 2000, Burning Wheel, etc. and you want to see some play examples, that's reasonable.
>encounters and PC arcs aren't predetermined, you guys!
pic is hilariously apt.
Why does that bald guy have a dog poop bag on his head?
To let viewers know what to expect from the show.
God that fricking DM has the strongest “I own a snake” energy I’ve ever seen
I need to know who someone is and interact with them before they can be a problem. E-celeb homosexuals will never achieve either of those things.
Nope. His content attracts the kind of people to D&D who ONLY want to play D&D. Unless they popularise a quirky, Scooby-Doo-esque Delta Green game, I'm content to let him make money at the expense of people who'll buy all the books and dice to play once, then sell them online because their group of friends don't play like the professional actors online. Maybe some poor newbies can snap them up cheap and get their intro to the hobby.
NOBODY CARES ABOUT IMOGEN OR YOUR DUMB MOON SHIT FOR FRICK SAKE STOP SIDELINING ALL YOUR OTHER PLAYERS TO PUSH A MARY SUES SHITTY SKIES OF ARCADIA KNOCK OFF.
This is what you get when you don't flush the uppity theater kids heads in the toilet.
Honestly my biggest problem is Talliesin, I've watched all C2 and C3 so far, and I'm just getting to the point I can't even watch that dude. I'm sure he's a wonderful person and a good friend to them, but god I just wish he wasn't at the table.
At least he's not doing the voice thing that makes me want to shake the monitor shouting "clear your goddamn throat"
I think I might just be done with CR. It was a blast, but C2 was really it for me. They spend so much time doing absolutely nothing now, like that last episode holy shit 4 hours of nothing.
I just hit a breaking point maybe. I also can't handle Ashley still not knowing how to play after all these years. I mean jesus, I prefer kindness and generally thinking the best about people but what the frick man.
I mean she has never had to learn how to play so why would she know how?
I used to like running adventure's league at my LGS
Then your shit started attracting the worst people.
>problem?
None really, i just don't like streamers per se so i don't watch that kind of content to begin with and i don't play 5e so i don't have to deal with theater kids gone uppity.
>Inb4 what if you ever get a CR fan player migrating from 5e to your games
If he's obnoxious about i just kick him out of the table at the third strike plainly explaining that nobody in his mind would expect a whole group to adjust to the expectations and likes of a new element, it's always the other way around buddy.
>Inb4 what if ALL or the majority of the table is composed of obnoxious CRitters
I just pick my stuff (and like-minded friends) and leave, no game is always better than shit game.
No sir, no problem here sir.
>Collaborates with WotC in order to make his own shit canon, shitting on every principle of Gygax's game in the process.
>Claims imposter syndrome
Narcissistic, two-faced, phony, butthole, manipulator... it just keeps going.
Good thing he’s playing Arneson‘s game then
All of Gygax’s games are shit
You can keep trying to force this meme but Gygax will forever be the D and D guy and the godfather of the RPG hobby in general. Seethe.
In the same way that Jobs is known as the father of iShit
The “sociopath exploiting the young and eager gifted autist” is basically a primordial archetype that predates history
Keep falling for it though; I’m sure it has nothing to do with the gangs of child-raping sociopaths that run everything
Nice head canon, you think about raping kids a lot, huh? Is it intrusive? Please consume pharmaceuticals before posting.
Gygax is chaotic neutral (good tendencies), he's a libertarian cokehead, stop being so moronic.
He's talking about Zagyg
No , he isn't.
>two zigzag lines side by side
Is that just the SS insignia?
Arneson hated theater types and predetermined outcomes just as much Gygax did.
didn't know ttrpgs had pussified so much
Where have you been for the past 5-10 years, and why did you decide today was the day to come back?
Voice actors aren't the problem; it's the trannies invading and degrading our hobby: https://www.twitch.tv/transplanarrpg/clip/LachrymoseAntsySpaghettiSmoocherZ-W2RxH6v5Ko9OBw1a
Voice actors/theater kids see ttrpgs as something for an audience. As a play, show, or story that must be plotted out and have total control of, rather than a game (i.e. CR's consensual death). They can't even grasp that role-play is not a performance. It is the antithesis of what D&D was supposed to be.
They started the phoniness so common now.
What do you mean consensual death? Does Matt Mercer really ask his players "are you ok with dying?" lol
Is this real?
I know of tables that do that and cases of players getting their characters or something similar back because they couldn't deal with their death
Yes. Every PC death has been orchestrated by player and DM, or in the cast of any player no longer welcome, completely DM scripted. Matt even admitted after C1 that it was fixed for them to max because none had done it before. All but one (player scripted) maxed again in C2, consequence free, despite doing every asinine thing possible. C3 has had another PC scripted death, but was simply a fully narrated by DM cut-scene death without a single roll of the dice.
Well the evil corpse-hag died, but there was no way they were going to kill one half of their latest pandering relationship.
I meant "orchestrated" too in that they can always come back if the player wants to script it (Vax, Molly, Laudna).
>Uh, yeah? I'm going over next weekend's script and I dont have any lines, I'm not mentioned in it at all. Also Will Wheaton is playing my character now? What's going down, Mercer? I'm Felcia Fricking Day! I'll cut you, I'll fricking cut you!