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Pennsylvanian posted:I also get really confused with the world, but that's likely also just me. Not just you. It's weirdly trying to be odd, but ends up more generic than the first season. Kind of feeling like they fell into the same trap of adventure zone. They went "dnd sucks, we hate dnd" but didn't replace it with anything interesting. A lot of my favorite moments from season 1 directly from dnd rules that they either misunderstood or used to completely gently caress up whatever Anthony laid out for them. This season is mostly Anthony saying a thing, them trying to improv a funny solution to the thing as they follow breadcrumbs, then the thing is over and something else happens. I can't think of a time that has truly derailed anything. I think season 1, at least the first half of it, was more reactive to the characters and their dumb decisions. Season 2 has felt more rigid, and yet less defined somehow. I don't know. It's not bad, it's just not as fun to me.
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May 18, 2023 19:26
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I do become more impressed by the day with NADDPOD’s ability to create unique encounters and incredible shenanigans while still largely respecting the rules and mechanics of D&D; not because the sanctity of the game is important to me or anything, I just think it’s neat that they can do that
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May 18, 2023 19:39
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Beef Jerky Robot posted:and Will being perfect.  If there was a patreon level that prevented him from having his weekly rapidfire freakout rant I’d be tempted
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May 18, 2023 20:58
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Snowy posted:
I’m sure I’ll get frustrated by it eventually but “I concede the remainder of my time” gets me everytime
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May 18, 2023 22:12
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Ainsley McTree posted:I do become more impressed by the day with NADDPOD’s ability to create unique encounters and incredible shenanigans while still largely respecting the rules and mechanics of D&D; not because the sanctity of the game is important to me or anything, I just think it’s neat that they can do that After multiple tries I finally stuck with it and clicked with NADDPOD. A big reason was I've only gotten into the rules light chaos of things like Dungeons and Daddies and Dragon Friends. Combat can be so boring. But NADDPOD has a great dynamic and I'm finishing up the first season now.
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May 18, 2023 22:13
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Ok I finally listened to the latest episode and they should let will replace Justin roiland
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May 19, 2023 11:51
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Tori I’m so sorry
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May 24, 2023 07:46
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That poor woman having to parse so many in-jokes.
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May 24, 2023 08:44
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Hello all. I made a feedback thread for RGD. Since this sub might be full of people who live in their bookmarks, I am linking it in here too. Come tell me about RGD.
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May 24, 2023 20:12
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Latest episode is absolutely unhinged and Anthony should get both jail time for conning a starving actor into sitting in on that and an award for committing to the most deranged concept ever conceived. It may not have been perfect, but that's obviously the point.
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May 24, 2023 20:28
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Oh right I just remembered how the last episode ended and what the premise of this one is lmao. I haven't had a chance to listen yet but I can't wait
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May 24, 2023 20:41
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The episode starting with stand-up and ending with a mass wedding in space was honestly not something I saw coming.
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May 24, 2023 21:37
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The end of that episode just went fully off the rails
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May 30, 2023 22:39
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Freddie was pretty good in this one I thought And of course Matt but that’s the free space on the bingo card
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Jun 8, 2023 14:06
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Have to say happy content Scary/terri is a real fun energy too, for right now. I kind of got lost on some of the back and forth planning but it was a good episode
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Jun 8, 2023 14:16
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https://twitter.com/throwawaypt2/status/1673847830803259397?s=20 ron??
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Jun 28, 2023 19:01
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This episode started rough for me, but I eventually ended up really liking it. It's the first time in a long time that I listened to an episode and could give someone a synopsis on what happened.
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Jul 5, 2023 22:03
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i unsubscribed because i really wasn't feeling it anymore and the podcast has been kind of narratively and tonally all over the place. may resubscribe again if the main feed starts jelling as a cohesive whole again.
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Jul 6, 2023 17:58
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I saw a reply in the subreddit that made a lot of sense, and that was that the podcast was starting to feel more like Story Break than DnDads. The DM felt extraneous to the whole experience because the players were setting the scenes while other players were pitching other characters and events on top of one another. This latest episode felt like it took that reply to heart. Anthony didn't really reply to attempts to change his scenario, only letting the players describe their own actions. I also have to say I never understand where the "People don't want to listen to combat" remark comes from, and to be fair, DnDads isn't the only Actual Play I've seen make that remark. I've listened to so many Actual Plays, and as a DM, I find D&D to be kind of useless without utilizing its combat elements. Without players being able to use their abilities, you're essentially relying on basic skill checks (mainly when it comes to persuasion/deception/intimidation), and those tend to have limited consequences when it comes to player interaction. I'll say that I think Anthony played one of the best Cthulhu campaigns I've ever heard, as he really grasped how degradation as a concept works in that system, and I think Cthulhu could have worked better for this season. I could be wrong, but I feel that if you pull combat out of D&D, you're basically ripping out a large part of player characters' identities. I think this episode was definitely better. Characters were using abilities, there was very little chatter, and the editing seemed way better. Not to be mean to the current editors, but I really feel like losing Freddy as the main editor was a net loss. I think he was better at removing chaff. Like Coquito (who's one of my players and can probably tell everyone how bad or good I am as a DM), I always came away from S2 episodes just confused and overwhelmed, and this is the first episode since the beginning of the campaign where I feel like I understood the broad strokes of the episode's events on the first listen. On another note, I think Hermie was a mistake. He's not interesting and he's too active of a participant when it comes to being an NPC.
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Jul 8, 2023 02:16
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I'm one of the people who doesn't like listening to combat. Like I just focus on the dishes and chores when NADDPOD has a heavy combat episode. I think that's just a natural divide between people listening for dnd actual play and people listening for funny people to do things in the dnd system
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Jul 8, 2023 02:36
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It's just frustrating because there are a ton of other options for more narrative systems that would provide some useful structure and probably make their jobs a lot easier.
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Jul 8, 2023 02:45
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That's very fair. The Cthulhu and Sons and Sonsabilty episodes are some of the best things they've done.
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Jul 8, 2023 14:51
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I still can’t believe how accidentally symmetrical sons and sonsibility was
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Jul 8, 2023 14:58
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Combat is boring to me unless it’s made interesting somehow but that seems to be a challenge. On Nerd Poker I’ll skip an entire episode if I realize it’s all combat and it won’t make a difference. I’d even be interested in a version of D&D that downplays the combat
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Jul 8, 2023 15:02
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I think a lot of it depends on the cast and how they handle combat. NaDDPod seems to be creative and interesting and give you some ups and downs when they're doing it, it's not just "I rolled a 25, I do 17 slashing damage, then I rolled a 17, does that hit?". There's some of that, but for the most part they sprinkle in some fun stuff going on while they're in combat. For a little less rules heavy, Rude Tales does the same thing, it's things happening, people are doing crazy poo poo, they might not even be trying to win the fight they're going for some other goal. I think in both of those they're using the combat to tell a little story inside the bigger story. Here they don't seem to be doing that as much, it's more of telling a story and if they do have combat it seems to get in the way. Most of them try to be doing that, but it seems like Freddy just barges in and does something insanely off the wall that derails it and then it just bogs down.
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Jul 10, 2023 01:58
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The problem isn't even really the idea of not having combat as much as just shaving out abilities entirely. Why pick a Warlock if you don't do Warlock stuff, for instance? There's not much to the character when they're only making skill checks. I think combat can be done well. The group just needs to know to keep things moving along. When I DM, I am welcoming to new players who want to learn the game, but after a while I'm not going to keep pulling out the handbook to tell you what your spells do. This keeps combat rolling with "I do this, I roll. Success, okay, let me roll my damage/effects." Throw in some roleplay flavor and move on. If you keep to the hit points, combat can be compelling. Usually what drags combat down for me is when a character or multiple characters start splitting apart to do wacky stuff or try to find some way to obfuscate the combat in a way that's not really any more compelling than using attacks/abilities. It goes for enemies, too. If enemies aren't really engaging in conflict, then what are we doing playing D&D? I mean, I know the answer to that- it's because D&D is so widely-known and accessible, but cutting out combat and classes really limits what you can do with the system.
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Jul 15, 2023 22:43
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if they're so disinterested in combat, i think a different system would probably help, but i think the larger problem is the absence of a specific overarching goal that players can meaningfully work for and use to measure their success. like, the first season had an in-built progress bar in the form of "how many children have we gathered" that it stuck with but season two has jumped from A to B to C seemingly at random. the (relatively) recent addition of the anchors seems like an attempt to rectify that, but i don't get the sense that the players view them as especially compelling. that's not to say that there can't be individually fun moments in between here, but i would have some difficulty trying to explain the logic of this piece
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Jul 17, 2023 03:32
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some of the funniest moments of season 1, in my opinion, were because of them engaging with combat in ways that weren't exactly RAW but were fun. Beheading the vampire with the bag of holding, killing the bandits in the cave by using the colorful flowers or whatever, throwing the bag of beans and making a pyramid... Like, way more of their successful comedy was actually enabled by D&D than they seem to want to admit. 5e is not a perfect system, no, but it's also not oppressive or anything either. You have a ton of weird magic items, some weird magic spells, and some class abilities that can be used in funny ways. I think you have two choices with successful D&D actual plays... either you keep not knowing poo poo about playing the game and just keep going off the rails (Rude Tales), or you learn the rules well and do funny poo poo by turning the game against your DM (NADDPOD). Both put a lot of pressure on the DM to "yes, and" in funny but clever ways. I think a universally unsuccessful model is, "I hate D&D, I don't understand any of the rules, I refuse to learn them and I get frustrated by it. Let's just ignore it or try to change it into some half-assed original game system." Honestly, combat doesn't have to be boring. That's the fault of a lazy DM. Combat should be just as much of a puzzle as everything else, and can be as small scale as you'd like it to be. Want quick combat? Give the enemies much less health, but do twice as much damage. But also don't make every combat solved by killing people one by one.
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Jul 17, 2023 10:19
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Jeremor posted:some of the funniest moments of season 1, in my opinion, were because of them engaging with combat in ways that weren't exactly RAW but were fun. Beheading the vampire with the bag of holding, killing the bandits in the cave by using the colorful flowers or whatever, throwing the bag of beans and making a pyramid... Like, way more of their successful comedy was actually enabled by D&D than they seem to want to admit. 5e is not a perfect system, no, but it's also not oppressive or anything either. You have a ton of weird magic items, some weird magic spells, and some class abilities that can be used in funny ways. I think you have two choices with successful D&D actual plays... either you keep not knowing poo poo about playing the game and just keep going off the rails (Rude Tales), or you learn the rules well and do funny poo poo by turning the game against your DM (NADDPOD). Both put a lot of pressure on the DM to "yes, and" in funny but clever ways. Yeah, I don't hate that kind of thing as a rule, I'm mostly talking about the kind of situation where one player says "I'm going to go off and do a random thing" and everyone else does their own thing too, and ending up crowding the scene. I agree with you about season 1. Those moments were usually a group effort or letting one player lead the way, like with Terry Senior, or the fighting pit, or trying to trick The Library. The latest episode felt decent in this regard, as everyone was heading towards the same goal even while separated, creating the "I tug on his toes" moment with Freddy and Matt. The other example is Anthony's football game in S1. When I heard him describe the rules, it sounded to me like he made a system without taking into account how long and arduous it would be. Then Will just turned into a bird and made the whole scene into a really funny roleplay moment. They could use other systems. Like I said, Anthony used Cthulhu really well. He used the system to wear down the players, which made it fit with the idea of this encroaching eldritch force. With S2, I just don't see what the threat is with The Doodler. Willy seems like the main bad guy again, but it's all kind of confusing.
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Jul 17, 2023 15:48
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Anthony was very open about hating the constraints of DnD in the latter half of season 1 already. But it is the well documented problem of actual plays - switching to another system would inevitably hurt listernership numbers, even when people listen pretty much just for the banter and storytelling.
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Jul 17, 2023 16:11
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Yeah I feel the same way about s2. It isn't without its funny stuff, for sure, but there's been a lot of kind of friction with the characters themselves and the plot. Not interesting friction. Just sort of confused tension. Their cthulu playthrough was awesome, and perfect for a cthulu game. But was it as funny as their other stuff? I'm having a hard time remembering funny moments now, probably need to relisten. I'll never forget film reel cutting scene though. Guess it just depends what kind of show they want to make. Feels like they do want more drama than just pure wacky comedy.
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Jul 17, 2023 16:14
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I’ve found this season really strange, it’s been really funny and weird, in the way that I thought made the first campaign so fun, things like the black parade reveal have been great. But it’s also full of their worst writer impulses, where they want to tell a poignant story about trauma and growth, and an improvised podcast seems like the worst possible venue for that story. The main thing is that I just really need to stop listening to Teen Talk, because it feels like every episode of that show is about how ‘this episode was bad and we dropped the ball on this Emotional Beat’ and it’s a weird energy.
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Jul 17, 2023 17:44
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fatherboxx posted:Anthony was very open about hating the constraints of DnD in the latter half of season 1 already. I mean a lot of the issues they're having are very clearly more about Anthony deciding he hates dnd because he thinks the mechanics (mostly spells ig) let players skip his "cool" scenes so he tries to "fix" it by going against everything recommended about how to run it and creating new pointless mechanics (5e has its issues but you absolutely can't fix it by adding more stuff to it and playing it against advice) when he could massively improve things for both the players and himself by just making a campaign that's better structured and allows for more player interaction in the way dnd expects. in this way this is the perfect and most accurate actual play ever created
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Jul 17, 2023 18:48
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Swan Lake Algae Problem posted:I’ve found this season really strange, it’s been really funny and weird, in the way that I thought made the first campaign so fun, things like the black parade reveal have been great. It’s like they’re trying to create The Great American Novel in improv D&D form when the fun goofy stuff and silly premise were a huge part of the initial popularity quote:The main thing is that I just really need to stop listening to Teen Talk, because it feels like every episode of that show is about how ‘this episode was bad and we dropped the ball on this Emotional Beat’ and it’s a weird energy. I stopped listening to Teen Talk and while I miss hearing them chitchat, the comically serious post game analysis is terrible so I feel unburdened
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Jul 17, 2023 18:55
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Crazy how much of this conversation also applies to the latter part of Adventure Zone season 1. I don't know who the audience that likes this is, but any time there is a drawn-out emotional scene and/or a player starts crying I just check out. At least I don't have to listen to two brothers roleplay a wizard trying to gently caress a skeleton though.
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Jul 17, 2023 19:10
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Friend posted:Crazy how much of this conversation also applies to the latter part of Adventure Zone season 1. I don't know who the audience that likes this is, but any time there is a drawn-out emotional scene and/or a player starts crying I just check out. Well, for example, the tumblr fandom has been basically nonexistent prior to season 2, and it is bustling now
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Jul 17, 2023 20:38
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Friend posted:Crazy how much of this conversation also applies to the latter part of Adventure Zone season 1. I don't know who the audience that likes this is, but any time there is a drawn-out emotional scene and/or a player starts crying I just check out. It can apply to a lot of casts that had a successful first campaign. The players/DM got a lot of positive vocal feedback on their story, so then all of the players go in with very specific backstories that they want to share with the audience. I swear that the McElroys and the Dad Crew have kind of gaslit themselves into thinking that they had these expertly crafted PCs from the start, instead of roleplaying some basic DnD characters and filled in their characters as they went.
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Jul 17, 2023 20:57
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NADDPOD wins again
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Jul 18, 2023 04:01
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im not listening to comedy d&d podcasts for high drama and emotion, but it can be effectively deployed when used sparingly. dimension 20 mostly does this well. unfortunately, almost every one of the last dozen episodes has foregrounded high drama and extreme tragedy in a way that feels very limiting. the players are all talented individuals, but i don't think any of them (except maybe Will and Beth) are able to improv intense emotion. will also say the season also lacks a Ron-like character who can insert levity whenever things get a little too self-serious. goblin week posted:Well, for example, the tumblr fandom has been basically nonexistent prior to season 2, and it is bustling now shocked that tumblr didn't want to draw a bunch of middle-aged, khaki-clad dads but are falling over themselves to depict emotionally unstable teenagers QuoProQuid fucked around with this message at 18:13 on Jul 18, 2023 |
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Jul 18, 2023 18:01
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I've felt the same thing about a lack of Ron. There's no real wildcard to the group. They generally just kind of talk about poo poo and then do it. Occasionally Freddie will get a really dumb idea that he overcommits to and is kind of fun, but yeah... I miss Ron.
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Jul 18, 2023 18:10
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