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Last nights episode made me realize that I don't actually care much for Liam's style of DMing. He always starts out with an extremely interesting premise that I badly want to see played out, but then it gets bogged down in too many combat encounters and the players never get the chance to stretch their acting muscles. I don't think Erica's performance is at all comparable to Sumalee's when Sumalee got two episodes in which to actually do RP stuff.
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Aug 31, 2018 23:12
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Yeah that's what made my comparison start to break down as I thought more about it, not a lot of RP room in there. We've mostly seen Liam DM absolutely crazy stuff that kind of forced RP to be the focus because everything happening was so outside of normal DnD, seeing him run something more regular there was definitely room for improvement. He kind of screwed the encounter design in the second fight too by just making one big fat monster for them to fight so it was usually attack spamming each round and not more dynamic. Sumalee had so many small touches that gave an "instant genius" vibe that Erica never really gave me, so I can't discount my perspective entirely.
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Aug 31, 2018 23:17
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i only watched the first hour so far and my main takeaway is that travis's "studied abroad and came back with an accent" voice constantly makes me laugh
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Sep 1, 2018 00:23
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I would love to see these guys do something in Glorantha. I love the setting and themes and everything of it and I would just really enjoy more people learning about it and some cool people getting to run around in a place I like. But yeah, Apocalypse World would be one of the best things to see these guys do. I think you could even do a fairly decent one shot from it if I am honest.
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Sep 1, 2018 09:17
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Re: a few pages back someone mentioned the early fans got behind Orion and its sort of looked over now - way back when, and during those early parts, Orion had cancer and was going through chemo. His weirdness to an extent was argued to be a side effect of chemobrain, and people by nature tend to overly cater towards sick people as in they can't be sick and complete assholes. As times gone on it turned out Orion was mostly at the time drug addled and on top of his metagaming was fudging rolls which no amount of chemobrain really explained, and everything since has been more that he had cancer AND was an rear end in a top hat. Now people try and talk around it as he has HIV so still sick and talking down to an HIV sufferer, but its not that people got overly attached to him for weird reasons - they were just sympathetic to a sick guy but got shown sick people can just be full of themselves assholes, liars and manipulators. As for Dread, if you want to see it done right https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqGDrhAXq-I
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Sep 1, 2018 10:51
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CuwiKhons posted:Last nights episode made me realize that I don't actually care much for Liam's style of DMing. He always starts out with an extremely interesting premise that I badly want to see played out, but then it gets bogged down in too many combat encounters and the players never get the chance to stretch their acting muscles. I don't think Erica's performance is at all comparable to Sumalee's when Sumalee got two episodes in which to actually do RP stuff. His best one was The Screw Job, and that was entirely removed from the DMing - that was Ashley and Sam just running the game over with awesomeness while Travis got to play an intelligent and evil character and was so good at it (whose rolls hated him). The best guest DM out of the entire crew has been Travis.
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Sep 1, 2018 10:52
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I will absolutely defend both Liam Quests as being good especially the first one
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Sep 1, 2018 16:25
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The Liam Quests kinda struck me as a little awkward, and he admits that they were the product of a dream he had about his friends, which makes me think they were just a little too personal. The Screw Job was a great one, though. I loved the heist format and how everyone (save Obby) had their own secret agendas. Naturally, Ashly Burch was a delight to watch.
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Sep 1, 2018 16:43
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What is the song that used to play during the fanart gallery segments?
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Sep 1, 2018 19:50
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CJ posted:What is the song that used to play during the fanart gallery segments?
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Sep 1, 2018 19:55
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The one from the first season is from Pillars of Eternity 2, I think? Edit: this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYMLvmilS24 I hate the new fanart music, it's incredibly loud and makes my tinnitus go apeshit, so I just turn the sound off now :I
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Sep 1, 2018 20:47
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Blockhouse posted:I will absolutely defend both Liam Quests as being good especially the first one Oh no, I loved Liam's Quest. I just think that the second one in particular got a little too combat-y, especially for a party that was deliberately designed to be quite bad at combat.
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Sep 1, 2018 22:51
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Lid posted:The best guest DM out of the entire crew has been Travis. Q F loving T
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Sep 1, 2018 23:48
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Lid posted:The best guest DM out of the entire crew has been Travis. My favorite surprise (though not unexpected) from Travis was how devious and threatening he could play a character in that game Liam run.
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Sep 2, 2018 00:10
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My favourite part of the Screw Job was Liam deliberately not giving Sam a hidden agenda just to gently caress with him. EDIT: Also thank you to whoever mentioned Mary and Steve Blum playing the FF Star Wars game on a stream because that sounds extremely my jam and I found the vids on YT. They have Sam Witwer (Darth Maul's voice in basically everything after Ep I) GMing what looks like the starter set adventure for Age of Rebellion. Gaz-L fucked around with this message at 04:08 on Sep 2, 2018 |
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Sep 2, 2018 03:50
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Gaz-L posted:My favourite part of the Screw Job was Liam deliberately not giving Sam a hidden agenda just to gently caress with him. You can't say this without providing us lazy people a link.
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Sep 2, 2018 04:24
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https://youtu.be/EpbRqZT7-tc
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Sep 2, 2018 04:29
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Gaz-L posted:My favourite part of the Screw Job was Liam deliberately not giving Sam a hidden agenda just to gently caress with him. Yeah they're running the beginner adventure for Edge of the Empire. It's pretty hilarious how off the rails they go so quickly, turn what is usually a 3 hour or so one shot into 4 episodes lol. In their defence its very 'first time playing rpgs' kind of gameplay but having Kanan, Ezra, Hera, Zeb and Governor Price play a star wars rpg is worth checking out.
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Sep 2, 2018 06:12
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Gaz-L posted:My favourite part of the Screw Job was Liam deliberately not giving Sam a hidden agenda just to gently caress with him. There's another good EotE game out there called Pencils and Parsecs, which I think I mentioned before. It's on Hyper RPG's Twitch and YouTube channel and ran for ages if you want something to dig into for a while. As far as 'names' go, it starts with Darin De Paul but he leaves, although he's eventually replaced full time by Keith Silverstein so they do maintain that Overwatch VO presence. My favorite character is played by Kym Canon, whose day job is being a Jedi at the Disneyland live Star Wars show, which is neat. (She takes a little while to get into things because it's her first RPG, but it's fun watching her grow as a gamer.)
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Sep 2, 2018 13:39
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I want to like that show, but Hector Navarro, while he seems like a nice dude, gets on my nerves, like he's trying a little too hard to convince himself he's having fun. EDIT: Finally got a chance to sit down and watch some of the Rebels cast playing Star Wars EotE and... Steve Blum decided to give his droid a Harvey Fierstein impression as a voice.... which is A Choice. Gaz-L fucked around with this message at 19:20 on Sep 2, 2018 |
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Sep 2, 2018 13:41
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Gaz-L posted:I want to like that show, but Hector Navarro, while he seems like a nice dude, gets on my nerves, like he's trying a little too hard to convince himself he's having fun. I agree there is something just "off" about him that annoys me, he 's on a ton of the Geek & Sundry stuff. Although it could be me, it took me forever to warm up to Taliesin, I couldn't stand Percy for the longest time.
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Sep 2, 2018 21:27
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Liam's DM style is super laid back and theatrical, which to me clashes with Matt's move-it-along, energetic style. It also takes him much longer to get answers/solutions on the fly, which I'll just chalk up to experience. The real wrench in the works was when Laura, surprisingly, just bolted up to the Drow and attacked. Liam tried to save it by having the dad yell "stop!" but Benicio almost tore his throat out and that was it.
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Sep 2, 2018 21:31
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Gaz-L posted:I want to like that show, but Hector Navarro, while he seems like a nice dude, gets on my nerves, like he's trying a little too hard to convince himself he's having fun. By all accounts, that's just Hector being Hector. Aside from Darin, they were all kind of nervous at first and reacted in different ways.
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Sep 2, 2018 23:59
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Dawgstar posted:By all accounts, that's just Hector being Hector. Aside from Darin, they were all kind of nervous at first and reacted in different ways. Yeah, I know. I didn't just mean I felt that way about Hector on that show. I watched a few episodes of Shield of Tomorrow, and a few of the book club show on Alpha. He always seems like he's afraid if he's not trying at 110% then everyone will know he's not having fun at all times.
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Sep 3, 2018 01:50
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Gaz-L posted:Yeah, I know. I didn't just mean I felt that way about Hector on that show. I watched a few episodes of Shield of Tomorrow, and a few of the book club show on Alpha. He always seems like he's afraid if he's not trying at 110% then everyone will know he's not having fun at all times. Down the line he settles into playing a giant violent cat man looking for his wife. (Oddly it's Shield of Tomorrow that features other folks who seem like nice people but I don't want to see role-play.) It also eventually features Screen Junkies' Joe Starr playing Dashing Space Pirate Eren Val, which is a treat.
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Sep 3, 2018 13:25
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Jetrauben posted:Even aside from Orion's...issues, bluntly his style of play was very grognard hyper-cautious Stupid PC Tricks. He played like he expected Matt to throw Fantasy loving Nam at them at any moment and that basically meant he wasn't actually committed to the drama of the game so mouth as he was to being paranoid about any possible dirty trick, nasty trap, or other OSR bullshit. Remember how long he spent trying to load up on every possible anti-vampire measure, well past the point of dramatic lock and load and into the neurotically obsessive? (And if he'd succeeded it would have basically had no dramatic tension?) He would have probably tried to do a lot of stupid Scry and Die stuff, because that's the sort of thing that that play style rewards rather than dramatic play - and streaming as a whole probably would be poorer for it. Yeah, man. That's some opinion. Storygame vs. OSR is real (on the internet), but this is the first time I got see someone call the D&D core assumption of resource management as "toxic". There was different mindsets in the players, but the way CR plays is not the loving One True Way.d When I recruit people for games that say their only experience is watching CR (this has happened more than a few times), it's always paired with about 3 red flags for actual play. Orion didn't vibe with the crew and I didn't like him, but your reductive take makes me think you have never played this game before. Firstborn fucked around with this message at 13:30 on Sep 3, 2018 |
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Sep 3, 2018 13:27
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There's a wide variety of ways to play D&D and if you like playing it as a game where the DM is going to try to kill the players and you need to maximize your potential - or even just a game where you want to focus on combat over RP - that's fine. You just have to make sure everyone in the group is on board for the same game. I personally DM'd a game that was more storybased with a lot of tedious travel mechanics and unnecessary combat removed because that's just not how I prefer to play. Of my 5 players, 4 liked that and 1 hated it. That 1 player also minmaxed the poo poo out of their character and was nigh unkillable. The other 4 had barely played D&D before. I wouldn't call any style of play for D&D toxic in and of itself, but I would say there's some classic grognards who are deeply toxic towards styles of play that aren't whatever they consider to be The Right Way. I mean, I've never seen it here but I've definitely seen people on Twitter (and other places) loudly declaring that they loving hate CR's entire existence because it's popularized D&D to a "casual" crowd that they don't want in their community (read: women and LGBT folks). Now those people are morons for sure, but they're also the usual defenders of the type of play you're talking about and they've sort of tainted the image of that gamestyle even though I know that most people who like it aren't dumb assholes.
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Sep 3, 2018 14:58
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Yeah, there's nothing wrong with playing the game to have fun with the combat mechanics or to do a death run through the Tomb Of Horrors, but there's also nothing wrong with playing a game where playing your character's flaws and quirks is rewarded and encouraged, otherwise everyone would just end up playing the same min-maxed munchkin build and that's barely fun for me when I play a video game, let alone a tabletop game that is usually going to be about playing make-believe with your friends and making them laugh at your goblin dick joke. Also a decent chunk of D&D resource management is bullshit that's there simply to add complexity to the rules without necessarily doing anything to make it more fun or even really more challenging. Case in point: 3.5e making you have to memorise Magic Missile 4 times if you want to cast it 4 times in a fight, meaning you can't cast any other spells of that level that day, thus making your wizard completely boring if you want to be useful in a fight. Is that possibly an interesting tactical decision? Maybe. Does it kind of make lore sense? Sure, having to have components ready for each time you want to cast the spell is logical. Is it more fun than simply being able to cast 5 1st level spells and being able to decide what those are as and when it comes up? Not really. Also, I may regret this, but define what you mean as 'red flags', because if players who are more into playing their characters than in 'rules' is a red flag? (Which is the main thing I'd guess a newbie would take from CR) You may not be a great GM. Gaz-L fucked around with this message at 22:13 on Sep 3, 2018 |
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Sep 3, 2018 22:04
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While Critical Role presents a legitimate form of play, let's not pretend it isn't a heavily idealized, polished, and unattainable form of play for most groups. Most DMs aren't going to have Matt Mercer's prep time and materials, or his penchant for presentation, and most players aren't going to be on the level of professionally-trained actors (and award-winning writers). While there's certainly been some bad faith criticism of the show's popularity, I can sympathize with any DMs and/or veteran players who have to put up with any bright-eyed newcomer's inflated and/or faulty expectations, and bad habits gleaned and copied from Matt's table without the player chemistry or history that make them work. If you're in your own game, with your own friends, you can do whatever you want, but if you're joining somebody else's game, either underway or with people you don't know, I can imagine a myriad of red flags that would cause a lot of DMs to hesitate. The Critical Role crew get away with a lot of stuff that wouldn't fly at most tables - again, by virtue of their professionalism and enduring friendship - that would cause problems with new players trying to emulate their style of play, which I don't doubt for a second is happening. "It's what my character would do" is already the longstanding excuse of choice for poor player behavior, but now you've got the burden of a highly publicized group where the players are adept at sweeping that sort of thing under the rug, which your garden variety player is not gonna be equipped to deal with. Angst-ridden backstories (Caleb), stealing from the party (Nott), threatening a party member (Fjord, Beau), flirting and making romantic advances on other party members, solicited or otherwise (Beau), deliberately avoiding plot hooks your DM wrote for you (Molly), going on hour-long shopping trips and spending time in shared public bathhouses (everybody), and so on. These are not habits that are conductive to a functional game in most cases, and you're always going to have players who think they're Sam when really they're Orion. In the wake of Molly's death, I'd also wager there's a venn diagram to be drawn of players fresh off Critical Role and players who get fussy when their character dies. Matt had a lot more grace than I would upon being accused of being a kill-happy bigot. To reiterate, if you're running your own game with your own circle of friends, you all know each other, you all understand what is and isn't allowed at the table, you're probably fine. If you're joining a pre-existing group, a pre-existing game, or a game of randos from across the web, there's probably gonna be some party friction. It's player dynamics.
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Sep 4, 2018 02:54
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Bad Seafood posted:To reiterate, if you're running your own game with your own circle of friends, you all know each other, you all understand what is and isn't allowed at the table, you're probably fine. If you're joining a pre-existing group, a pre-existing game, or a game of randos from across the web, there's probably gonna be some party friction. It's player dynamics. Yeah so I was typing something up but this is what I was saying but way better. I'm someone specifically in a circumstance where I'm running a 5e game where some of the players are hot off TAZ and/or CR as their roleplaying points of reference and theres definitely been points of confusion and tension with regards to me obviously being a different GM and having different likes and dislikes. Some are small misunderstandings like not knowing that my setting (TM) is going to have different theme, societies and racial qualities to either Matt's setting or Faerun etc. Learning that D&D doesn't have a setting per say is a pretty weird quirk. Other times it's moments I'll not focus on because I don't really engage with them while CR might, a good example is travelling, unless theres something specific I want to happen I'm usually going to screen wipe and time passes to when they arrive at their destination and that can be genuinely confusing when that happened the first couple of times. Or the aforementioned 'lets go to the bathhouse' moment being really out of tone for the setting or the group etc. Additionally, a big part of why CR is good and why Matt is a good GM is that he also has very good players whom he can bounce off and everyone can feed off of each other energy. Its something that really isn't clear until you've tried rpgs yourself at how important that table dynamic and its really not something you can just do at the flick of a switch. I have one player who just genuinely doesn't like having their character messed with or losing control of their agency. I know I could never say use the mountain of mind control abilities in the game against that character because they would feel shafted even if there was some kind of bennie attached. The CR antics would genuinely piss this person off and thats fine but if I had a new player who genuinely didn't understand how that dynamic could be so different, it cause a hell of a lot of problems. Firstborn posted:Yeah, man. That's some opinion. Storygame vs. OSR is real (on the internet), but this is the first time I got see someone call the D&D core assumption of resource management as "toxic". There was different mindsets in the players, but the way CR plays is not the loving One True Way. I mean I don't want to get into an argument or anything but I think its fair to say a lot of the resource management in D&D is set up purely to play an old style dungeon crawl and genuinely doesn't make a lot of sense in the types of story driven games a great many people go to D&D for. kingcom fucked around with this message at 03:32 on Sep 4, 2018 |
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Sep 4, 2018 03:22
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Lol did they really expect a bath house scene? That's weird.
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Sep 4, 2018 03:41
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Kraps posted:Lol did they really expect a bath house scene? That's weird. I mean not really that weird coming from their perspective, going to a bath house is like a thing CR did and was most of an episode or something. So, with that context its not really that crazy to think they had been travelling and doing dirty work, so naturally thats the next step. Just not really in the context of any rpg I'd be running lol.
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Sep 4, 2018 04:17
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I don’t think it’s necessarily a “We must have a bathhouse episode because CR did” as much as an expectation for down time for the characters. CR has whole episodes with no combat that serve to just further the story or character development. Because the players are professional actors with strong improv skills, it’s easy for them to do stuff like the Hupperdook tavern episode and make it all come off very naturally.
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Sep 4, 2018 04:37
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chitoryu12 posted:I don’t think it’s necessarily a “We must have a bathhouse episode because CR did” as much as an expectation for down time for the characters. CR has whole episodes with no combat that serve to just further the story or character development. Because the players are professional actors with strong improv skills, it’s easy for them to do stuff like the Hupperdook tavern episode and make it all come off very naturally. As has been suggested, with the right setting and mix of characters and GM, it's possible to pull off a lot of things, professional improv actors or not. One of my most harrowing and successful mini-arcs in a Runequest campaign involved a PC, who was in a relationship with another PC, being confronted with a political arranged marriage set up by his superior in the priesthood with a prominent Rune Lord who was a unicorn rider. The rest of the party scrambled to work out a way to save the situation. Cue one of the most tense dinner parties you ever saw. After successfully resolving matters to the prospective bride's satisfaction, we played out both the bachelor party and the marriage ceremony itself, which, let us say, involved some departures from the regular format devised by the group as a whole but which the groom's player had to pull off properly for their solution to work. That was a group of nine players who had been playing those characters for over a year (over six years, for two of the PCs) and who had played with each other frequently for between 4 and 10+ years. Some of them had started RPGs in the early 70s. Expecting the same thing to happen with a pick-up game at your local store between a mix of new players and vets is unrealistic, but it can definitely be cultivated over time.
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Sep 4, 2018 05:18
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I come at pen and paper rpgs from a predominantly online/computer based perspective. So you've better believe the first thing I do in session one of a new D&D game is go hat shopping.
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Sep 4, 2018 06:12
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I sometimes see posts on the dnd reddits of people bragging about how amazing their group is because they spent a whole session without even touching the dice and all i can think is they'd probably have more fun attending an improv class than coming to a DnD game.
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Sep 4, 2018 10:43
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CJ posted:I sometimes see posts on the dnd reddits of people bragging about how amazing their group is because they spent a whole session without even touching the dice and all i can think is they'd probably have more fun attending an improv class than coming to a DnD game. Tell them to stop loving playing DnD and play a PBtA game that loving supports this in a worthwhile way oh my god
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Sep 4, 2018 11:27
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What always gets me about the CR folks is how they managed to stay on-topic and in character/in game for nearly 95% of the session. My group does our best but we all go off on tangents or "oh this reminds me of" more often than not. I know they're all professional actors but it's still drat impressive.
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Sep 4, 2018 12:02
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CobiWann posted:What always gets me about the CR folks is how they managed to stay on-topic and in character/in game for nearly 95% of the session. My group does our best but we all go off on tangents or "oh this reminds me of" more often than not. I know they're all professional actors but it's still drat impressive. Yeah. That's generally why I've got at least some combat in every game, to keep my players focused. They're all good players, too, who do solid in-character work but eventually their minds will wander.
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Sep 4, 2018 13:43
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It's also a function of being live streamed, they discussed this. Back in their home game they would do normal things like talk about out of game stuff and leave the table to get snacks during other player's turns, but making it a show forced them to tighten it up. I think it came up when asked what the biggest change was going from the home game to streaming.
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Sep 4, 2018 14:10
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