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chitoryu12 posted:D&D is a huge part of the lives of many of their fans. 
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Jul 12, 2020 15:51
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Matt's world is an official D&D location now so it'd probably be hard for him to use it in another system. I'm sure he still owns the IP but I almost guarantee the book getting published means it can't be used in a performance based on role playing without using 5e.
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Jul 12, 2020 17:55
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Raygereio posted:I'm having a hard time imagining people being a fan of Critical Role just because of DnD. I watch it because the people at the table have a chemistry that's enjoyable to watch. I don't really care about the specifics of the system they're playing. I think it was another thread, maybe TG as an Industry, but apparently other tabletop streamers have switched games from D&D and immediately lost ~30-50% of their viewer base, and that's conservative. It may not happen for CR, but immediate history shows that it's certainly a risk, and I'm assuming that as the unquestioned leader in tabletop RPG actual play streaming, they would take a conservative 'it's working better than literally every competitors product by an order of magnitude so don't reinvent the wheel' approach. Especially considering that there's a decent chance there are hard D&D tie-ins to the multimillion dollar animated series they just sold to investors (crowdfunded and actual corporate investors), and burning the bridge with D&D could certainly have negative connotations for those contractual obligations.
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Jul 12, 2020 19:21
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Dramatika posted:I think it was another thread, maybe TG as an Industry, but apparently other tabletop streamers have switched games from D&D and immediately lost ~30-50% of their viewer base, and that's conservative.
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Jul 12, 2020 21:16
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Raygereio posted:That is honestly baffling to me. Have they gotten any feedback as to why their viewing numbers dropped? I get that DnD is a big name people recognize, but if you're already a fan and enjoying the content then the GM & players can create the same style of content you've enjoyed before in a different system & setting. I suspect part of it is the audience having at least SOME familiarity with the system, so that you know what’s going on when people are rolling and ability checks are being asked for and whatnot. If you switch systems, a lot of people will lose the ability to understand what’s going on from a mechanical standpoint, which is a big part of people being invested in the game portion of the stream. The role playing will still be there, sure, but have you seen how many people love to blow up on the comments about this spell or that roll or what the player should be doing differently with their builds and all that. It may be annoying, but it’s part of the audience being invested and showing that they are invested.
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Jul 12, 2020 21:41
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I think a lot of people got into D&D similar to how I did. Watching the VERY early CR stuff got me interested, and I used their episodes as a way to kind of get the basics of how the game was played before dipping my toes in and actually buying stuff. There's also the cultural connection, D&D as a brand has been in a lot of things over the years. I think one only has to look at the difference in viewership between CR's main campaign, and the one-shots people do with other systems to really understand how hard of a drop they might have if they switched from it entirely. Not 100% sure of how well the Deadlands mini-campaign did though.
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Jul 12, 2020 21:46
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Dramatika posted:I think it was another thread, maybe TG as an Industry, but apparently other tabletop streamers have switched games from D&D and immediately lost ~30-50% of their viewer base, and that's conservative. It may not happen for CR, but immediate history shows that it's certainly a risk, and I'm assuming that as the unquestioned leader in tabletop RPG actual play streaming, they would take a conservative 'it's working better than literally every competitors product by an order of magnitude so don't reinvent the wheel' approach. Especially considering that there's a decent chance there are hard D&D tie-ins to the multimillion dollar animated series they just sold to investors (crowdfunded and actual corporate investors), and burning the bridge with D&D could certainly have negative connotations for those contractual obligations. I am genuinely curious how much of CR's success is Matt and crew and that 'they're playing D&D.' I'm inclined to think it's heavily for the former and if they kept playing Pathfinder we would not have seen much change, but for the smaller streaming groups/podcasts it is true that especially now D&D itself is a fandom and they're going to follow if you play D&D but not if you jump over to World of Darkness or something. I'm also curious how well the Vampire game that used to be on G&S and I think is its own thing now(?). Clearly it did not do CR numbers but I think it does okay.
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Jul 12, 2020 22:23
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Dawgstar posted:I am genuinely curious how much of CR's success is Matt and crew and that 'they're playing D&D.' I'm inclined to think it's heavily for the former and if they kept playing Pathfinder we would not have seen much change, but for the smaller streaming groups/podcasts it is true that especially now D&D itself is a fandom and they're going to follow if you play D&D but not if you jump over to World of Darkness or something. I'm also curious how well the Vampire game that used to be on G&S and I think is its own thing now(?). Clearly it did not do CR numbers but I think it does okay. From what I understand it's one of their better shows in terms of viewership. Political intrigue is a hell of a drug, especially when you involve sexy horrific monsters. I do not think CR would have had anywhere near the same success if they had used Pathfinder. We don't really have any video of the crew fiddling with all the little bullshit modifiers that are involved with PF, but I can imagine it would have been a bit of a bore to watch. That's the real strength with 5th Edition, the simplicity makes it where you don't usually need to go "Gimme a minute to figure this out." DnDBeyond only makes that even more smooth.
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Jul 12, 2020 22:39
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TotalHell posted:I suspect part of it is the audience having at least SOME familiarity with the system, so that you know what’s going on when people are rolling and ability checks are being asked for and whatnot. If you switch systems, a lot of people will lose the ability to understand what’s going on from a mechanical standpoint, which is a big part of people being invested in the game portion of the stream. The role playing will still be there, sure, but have you seen how many people love to blow up on the comments about this spell or that roll or what the player should be doing differently with their builds and all that. It’s likely this. People say “Oh they just watch for the actors and characters, nobody cares about the game,” but I’ve never heard of any CR fans who simply don’t know D&D or how it works and just watch totally blind to that. Especially when so many of the awesome moments they pull off require at least basic knowledge of the mechanics to understand what’s being done, whether it’s combat or check-based intrigue.
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Jul 13, 2020 00:18
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chitoryu12 posted:It’s likely this. People say “Oh they just watch for the actors and characters, nobody cares about the game,” but I’ve never heard of any CR fans who simply don’t know D&D or how it works and just watch totally blind to that. Especially when so many of the awesome moments they pull off require at least basic knowledge of the mechanics to understand what’s being done, whether it’s combat or check-based intrigue. I've seen people start watching CR with no understanding of D&D, but they quickly end up learning more about the game in order to have a better understanding of what the system allows players to do and what the rules are. That's why CR produced that short Youtube guide on D&D basics. I think this ultimately comes back around to D&D being one of the most fleshed out systems available, particularly for the pseudo-medieval fantasy genre, which is CR's home turf. Like I'm currently playing in long running campaign where we're using the Dragon Age tabletop ruleset. It's uh, it's... functional? This is about the best I can say about it. It's not intuitive but it works. And we've still had to insert home rules where the ruleset either doesn't make sense or simply doesn't cover all contingencies that we needed it to. And Dragon Age is definitely the same pseudo-medieval fantasy genre. A lot of other companies just don't make fantasy rulesets because D&D has that niche pretty well covered, and that's clearly what CR wants to play.
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Jul 13, 2020 01:24
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Did D&D Beyond pull their sponsorship for the new episodes? Or did Matt and Co decide to no longer have them sponsor?
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Jul 13, 2020 01:39
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It's not been addressed AFAIK. Speculating but the integration of the player's live character sheets in Beyond obviously doesn't play well with being pre-recorded, so that might be part of it.
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Jul 13, 2020 01:44
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Dawgstar posted:I am genuinely curious how much of CR's success is Matt and crew and that 'they're playing D&D.' I'm inclined to think it's heavily for the former and if they kept playing Pathfinder we would not have seen much change, but for the smaller streaming groups/podcasts it is true that especially now D&D itself is a fandom and they're going to follow if you play D&D but not if you jump over to World of Darkness or something. I'm also curious how well the Vampire game that used to be on G&S and I think is its own thing now(?). Clearly it did not do CR numbers but I think it does okay. The other thing is, D&D is straight up synonymous with tabletop gaming to a vast majority of people.The Tabletop RPG category of Twitch has 634 watchers as of the time of this post. The DnD category has north of 33k. I'm fairly recent to the tabletop gaming scene, but have been a giant nerd my whole life. I learned about Shadowrun from the Sega Genesis RPG of the same name, and learned about Vampire from the computer game. But I knew what Dungeons and Dragons was well before either of those. poo poo, my parents knew what DnD was, my teachers knew, the youth pastors at church knew what it was, and this was in the 90's, it's ubiquitous. I don't think CR ever would have made it if they stuck with Pathfinder, even if Pathfinder is a better system (I have no opinions either way, I've never played PF).
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Jul 13, 2020 01:54
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Pathfinder is pretty much just a modified version of D&D 3.5e anyway. A lot of people preferred it over 4e because 4e was a little controversial in terms of design, but 5e is just flat out better in terms of ease of use for new players.
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Jul 13, 2020 02:07
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PF2E is probably even easier cause it manages to codify poo poo in ways that make sense.
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Jul 13, 2020 02:51
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Ultimate Mango posted:Did D&D Beyond pull their sponsorship for the new episodes? Or did Matt and Co decide to no longer have them sponsor? After march 2020, marketing budgets got slashed across the whole industry. You can't read much into a podcast or other similar media not having sponsors for the rest of the year. Marketing is the easiest slash to make to a business unit to stop bleeding. Remember that WotC is part of Hasbro.
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Jul 13, 2020 03:22
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Hulk Smash! posted:Speculating but the integration of the player's live character sheets in Beyond obviously doesn't play well with being pre-recorded, so that might be part of it. I mean, you say obviously, but I have no idea why it wouldn't play well with pre-recording as opposed to live. I've never used the app though, and I've never even played D'n'D though, so that's presumably responsible for my complete ignorance of the subject.
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Jul 13, 2020 03:22
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chitoryu12 posted:It’s likely this. People say “Oh they just watch for the actors and characters, nobody cares about the game,” but I’ve never heard of any CR fans who simply don’t know D&D or how it works and just watch totally blind to that. Especially when so many of the awesome moments they pull off require at least basic knowledge of the mechanics to understand what’s being done, whether it’s combat or check-based intrigue. I went into CR with no knowledge of 5th edition (though I of course knew *OF* D&D from comics and games and being alive in the 80s) but quickly became invested in how the game itself worked, to the point where I ended up buying the core books. I'm not sure if I'd have started watching if they were playing something other than D&D though. The only other systems I was familiar with at the time were Vampire and Shadowrun, so I'm doubtful I'd have started watching if they were running something PBtA or even Pathfinder. And honestly, I'm not sure I'd keep watching if they switched systems permanently; it's definitely a bit of a commitment to gain enough system mastery of yet another RPG to be able to follow along. On the one hand I enjoy the one-shots, but those generally use very simple systems so they're quick to learn. On the other hand, I bounced hard off of Deadlands and didn't get past the 1st episode.
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Jul 13, 2020 03:24
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I've been wanting to try Pathfinder 2E, but I haven't found any online games yet on the virtual tabletop service I typically use. I also want to give 4E a shot sometime because despite the bad things I've heard about it. The at will/per encounter/per day ability system seemed like a fun way to handle encounters, and I like that it seemed to basically give martial classes abilities that were on par with spells.
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Jul 13, 2020 03:25
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4e got a bad rap for being very 'video gamey', or at least that was the complaint I heard most. I played an entire campaign in 4e and quite enjoyed it, particularly compared to 3.5, which I found too granular and mathy for me. I can easily understand how people who really liked 3.5 would hate 4e because it was incredibly different, but I don't think 4e was bad in retrospect. It just wasn't what people were expecting.
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Jul 13, 2020 04:44
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CuwiKhons posted:I've seen people start watching CR with no understanding of D&D, but they quickly end up learning more about the game in order to have a better understanding of what the system allows players to do and what the rules are. That's why CR produced that short Youtube guide on D&D basics. My friend tried to use FATE to run a tank game. It was set in a dystopic near-future where mercenary companies were fighting all the wars, and we were a tank crew in one of them. He quickly found a major problem: FATE has literally no mechanics whatsoever for what he wanted to do. Because it's so focused on improv roleplaying and just making things happen "for the story", every system for a cool tank game with ammo counts, vehicle upgrades, etc. had to be invented out of whole cloth. And figuring out combat became increasingly difficult. The d20 system, GURPS, and many others already had that and would have been just as easy to learn. That's one of the reasons I play GURPS. Along with being suitable for basically any setting you can think of and easy for beginners to learn, having a mechanical backbone that works properly (and especially one that uses real units as much as possible so you can homebrew stuff easily) is a godsend for trying to play anything but the lightest "anything goes" roleplay.
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Jul 13, 2020 05:08
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chitoryu12 posted:My friend tried to use FATE to run a tank game. It was set in a dystopic near-future where mercenary companies were fighting all the wars, and we were a tank crew in one of them. He quickly found a major problem: FATE has literally no mechanics whatsoever for what he wanted to do. Because it's so focused on improv roleplaying and just making things happen "for the story", every system for a cool tank game with ammo counts, vehicle upgrades, etc. had to be invented out of whole cloth. And figuring out combat became increasingly difficult. The d20 system, GURPS, and many others already had that and would have been just as easy to learn. That "mechanical backbone" inherently makes GURPS a lot harder to use than, like, most rpg systems and is incredibly intimidating to beginners. I don't know why you guys walked into FATE expecting a crunchy game but it sounds like that's not the game's fault. Trying to bolt on a ton of systems is kind of missing the point.
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Jul 13, 2020 05:26
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CuwiKhons posted:4e got a bad rap for being very 'video gamey', or at least that was the complaint I heard most. I played an entire campaign in 4e and quite enjoyed it, particularly compared to 3.5, which I found too granular and mathy for me. I can easily understand how people who really liked 3.5 would hate 4e because it was incredibly different, but I don't think 4e was bad in retrospect. It just wasn't what people were expecting. People don’t like to admit the truth that 4e was the best combat/encounter design that D&D has ever had. It was tactical, enemies were flavorful and could go cool poo poo beyond “do a lot of damage,” and every class had fun and unique abilities that could synergize with other abilities for combat strats. It didn’t feel “traditional D&D,” but it was a really fun system.
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Jul 13, 2020 05:34
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Blockhouse posted:That "mechanical backbone" inherently makes GURPS a lot harder to use than, like, most rpg systems and is incredibly intimidating to beginners. It wasn't like he randomly stumbled into it. It was his preferred system and he had been doing completely freeform RPGs before. He just tried to adapt it to do something that wasn't its specific niche and found that it collapsed. Also if GURPS is intimidating to a beginner, you're not teaching it correctly. It's a modular system that can have the rules reduced to one page. It provides a system for serious grognards but it can be used at any level as long as you know what you're doing and which optional rules to use based on your audience.
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Jul 13, 2020 06:02
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tsob posted:I mean, you say obviously, but I have no idea why it wouldn't play well with pre-recording as opposed to live. I've never used the app though, and I've never even played D'n'D though, so that's presumably responsible for my complete ignorance of the subject. The app and overlay pull from current, live data. If the episode’s prerecorded, the data wouldn’t change at all and could even spoil the end of an episode (or the episodes after, depending how far ahead they record.) I dunno if the overlay was part of their contract or not, though.
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Jul 13, 2020 06:13
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TotalHell posted:People don’t like to admit the truth that 4e was the best combat/encounter design that D&D has ever had. It was tactical, enemies were flavorful and could go cool poo poo beyond “do a lot of damage,” and every class had fun and unique abilities that could synergize with other abilities for combat strats. It didn’t feel “traditional D&D,” but it was a really fun system. It was fun, I enjoyed it, and I ran a campaign from 1-25 that started within weeks of 4e hitting the shelves and ended within weeks of 5e getting announced (as D&D Next back then). But the game wasn't perfect. Setting aside nebulous things like "feel" and "verisimilitude", which are pretty subjective, the game really mechanically broke down in the Epic levels (21-30). A well honed party who chose their level ups carefully could be nigh invulnerable (even when not blasting!) through pre-planned combos of abilities that were damned hard to overcome...or even mildly threaten...with any of the published monsters, especially if you stayed within the strictures of the recommended encounter design. At level 25 my players bitch slapped Orcus, and it wasn't even close. That's about when I decided to wrap things up. The other big problem was that the well balanced combat with all the powers that kept things even between the players took a long rear end time. Combats ate up a much larger percentage of your time at the table, which tended to squeeze out other things...like deeper roleplay. This, I think, is the source of the common complaint that "4e is too much like a video game." It wasn't the existence of at-will, encounter, an daily powers per say. It was the fact that so much more of your time per session was spent looking at little colored cards and deciding which ones to play rather than everything else. Combining that with the fact that I personally, subjective or not, felt the game had verisimilitude problems and didn't feel like D&D to me means that I've kept it on the shelf ever since 5th arrived.
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Jul 13, 2020 06:18
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xarph posted:After march 2020, marketing budgets got slashed across the whole industry. You can't read much into a podcast or other similar media not having sponsors for the rest of the year. The issue with this is that DnDBeyond isn't owned by WotC/Hasbro, but by Fandom so it isn't really tied to D&D's main marketing budget. Though with how small DnDBeyond is by comparison, as you say, it's probably where they are tightening their belt.
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Jul 13, 2020 06:34
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My problem with 4e is that the mechanics are 95% geared towards combat while other editions are closer to 70 or 75%. That level of focus tends to push players and DMs towards making sure sessions involve a lot of combat encounters even if a few nebulous rules allow you to do things that don't involve fighting. As a DM who often runs sessions that don't involve so much as a thrown fist, I like having rules and spells the party has to deal with even if they don't roll initiative.
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Jul 13, 2020 06:39
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Bobbin Threadbare posted:My problem with 4e is that the mechanics are 95% geared towards combat while other editions are closer to 70 or 75%. That level of focus tends to push players and DMs towards making sure sessions involve a lot of combat encounters even if a few nebulous rules allow you to do things that don't involve fighting. As a DM who often runs sessions that don't involve so much as a thrown fist, I like having rules and spells the party has to deal with even if they don't roll initiative. What mechanics aren't geared towards some level of combat in 5e? It's a fighty game, DnD always has been.
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Jul 13, 2020 08:19
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Josef bugman posted:What mechanics aren't geared towards some level of combat in 5e? It's a fighty game, DnD always has been. Skill checks, expertise, spells like Mending and Message, the special benefit you get from your background, language options, trap design, magic items like the folding boat and the immovable rod, and both rules and complications related to downtime activities. I could keep going. I have no problem admitting that D&D centers around combat in every edition, but 4th edition offers much less mechanical support for non-combat encounters and activities.
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Jul 13, 2020 10:13
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chitoryu12 posted:It’s likely this. People say “Oh they just watch for the actors and characters, nobody cares about the game,” but I’ve never heard of any CR fans who simply don’t know D&D or how it works and just watch totally blind to that. Especially when so many of the awesome moments they pull off require at least basic knowledge of the mechanics to understand what’s being done, whether it’s combat or check-based intrigue. My group often had someone sit in and listen to what's happening. This person had no idea what the rules were and how they worked, but they could still follow it. I don't know. I've played all DnD editions starting from 2nd. But also played every other system my group could get their hands on. And played with a GM who had no system at all and just made up rules on the spot. So I don't view DnD as being that special or unique. There are other systems that have a similar heroic swashbuckly feel to it. And really the rules don't matter that much anyway. But I do know people who play DnD and only DnD and almost have a hostile reaction to the existence of other systems. So maybe my experiences and views towards tabletops rpgs aren't exactly the norm.
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Jul 13, 2020 10:42
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Bobbin Threadbare posted:Skill checks, expertise, spells like Mending and Message, the special benefit you get from your background, language options, trap design, magic items like the folding boat and the immovable rod, and both rules and complications related to downtime activities. 4E literally has all of those lol.
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Jul 13, 2020 13:16
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ZenMasterBullshit posted:4E literally has all of those lol. 5E was, in a lot of ways, repacking 4E ideas for grognards who never left 3.5 so....
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Jul 13, 2020 13:23
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Dameius posted:5E was, in a lot of ways, repacking 4E ideas for grognards who never left 3.5 so.... And giving back some bad things, like boring levels. Yay, this level... I got some hitpoints and a minimal roll for them. Huzzah.
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Jul 13, 2020 16:09
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jng2058 posted:It was fun, I enjoyed it, and I ran a campaign from 1-25 that started within weeks of 4e hitting the shelves and ended within weeks of 5e getting announced (as D&D Next back then). Yeah, 4e wasn’t perfect or anything. And in fact i am with you in preferring 5E overall, even if primarily that’s because it just feels the way I remember 2e feeling back when I first got into D&D (even though thats pure nostalgia glasses because boy was 2e something).
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Jul 13, 2020 16:26
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Are there even any live plays that use 4e? The only one I know of is that Acquisitions Inc/Penny Arcade used it in the very early stuff, but transitioned over at some point. I can barely even remember it, since I only listened to all that stuff around about the time it released, but I don't recall finding it very confusing as a listener at the very least.
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Jul 13, 2020 16:51
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tsob posted:Are there even any live plays that use 4e? The only one I know of is that Acquisitions Inc/Penny Arcade used it in the very early stuff, but transitioned over at some point. I can barely even remember it, since I only listened to all that stuff around about the time it released, but I don't recall finding it very confusing as a listener at the very least. Here's a few (although other things got sorted into whatever search algorithm the site used).
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Jul 13, 2020 16:58
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BRING BACK BLOODIED
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Jul 13, 2020 17:19
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Lid posted:BRING BACK BLOODIED ALSO BRING BACK MINIONS
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Jul 13, 2020 17:20
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I do listen to an actual play that uses Pathfinder (Rusty Quill Gaming Podcast) and quite enjoy it, but if Pathfinder is so fiddly either everyone involved knows the rules real well (definitely the case for at least a few of the players) or the editing is really good at cutting out hemming and hawing from the newer players. I could definitely see that working out less easily in a live format, or with watching as part of the experience.
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Jul 13, 2020 17:37
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