Critical role

I tried watching the first episode and the vin deisel one.

The DM has this massive fucking problem where he'll decide the player's tactics for them and constantly describe what their characters do, instead of the players themselves doing that. The players will say something simple like "I'll attack", and he goes on to tell them to roll 3 attacks or whatever, when the players in question have many more things available to them. And, like I mentioned before, he goes on to mention the specifics of how they attack, like it's not up to the player to decide that information.

Moreover, he doesn't call for rolls nearly as often as he should. He just keeps going and has rolls to remind people that they're "playing an rpg".

Last, the players themselves...many of them state that they've been playing for decades, and yet their characters are uninspired trash-tier shit. Grog the barbarian, a drink-loving, whorehouse-loving, rough and tumble barb? I've NEEEVER seen one of those before. It's something you'd see as baby's first character.

The backstories of a lot of the other characters also seem to suffer from a syndrome I don't have a name for, but is relatively common. They're LOW LEVEL CHARACTERS with extensive backstories that involve feats far beyond them. That's fine, IF you can explain why they're significantly weaker now than they were when doing that, be it growing rusty with old age and settling down into a civilian life for fourty years or some shit.

TL;DR Critical Role features a bad GM, and bad players.

U wot m8?

youtu.be/6m3jcBMI9WU?t=541

>Low level.
>14
Tibs and Keyleth have hugely Mary Sue backgrounds. Grog is a trope but a good one.
A good DM paints the world in an interesting way that engages players, and in CR's case, viewers. Describing combat is definitely part of that, and makes dnd into a tabletop RPG rather than a miniatures war game.

>20k twitch subscribers have shit taste

The Vin Diesel one is a bad example. He had two hours of content compressed into half an hour because the studio wanted to do an interview instead, and he had 3 new players.
It was a movie promotion, not an actual game.

As for the actual Critical Role episode, only Matt, Orion, and Taelisn were original players. It was the first game for the other 6. They're actors and theater kids. Grog (Travis) played college football. These aren't your average DnD players.

If you want to watch fat sweaty nerds mouth breathe for a few hours, watch Acquisitions Inc.

Tibs got kicked off for being a shit player and a power & meta gamer.

Keyleth based her character off of Avatar the last Airbender.

Forgot to add

>judging the quality of anything by one episode when it spans a year

Fuck me, jump to 9 minutes.

Honestly I love Orion and wish him the best in his things. But he has a scale-fetish, and Tibs was a huge drag, wanting to go off on big tangents from what 7/8 were wanting to do. Also meta gaming as fuck.

>Trying to persuade an item from Scanlan when Sam is absent and Matt is running him

You can paint the world in an interesting way. But leave PC actions to the fucking PC's. Let the players describe everything concerning their characters - the DM's job lies in the world, or things that affect the player characters. For instance, it's fine for the DM to describe the appearance of a disease that a PC is afflicted with, or other such factors not within a player's control - but with attacks, and anything else that a player CAN control, the player should describe.

And grog is NOT a good trope. At all. It's overused to shit, dull, and boring as fuck. It's for people who can't develop a character that's deeper than a puddle.

Lastly:
>Twitch subscribers
Yeah, they obviously do have shit taste, user. They unironically look at twitch streams. It doesn't matter how many of them there are, because a the MAJORITY of people have generally unrefined tastes. Hundreds of thousands of people eat mcdonalds, for god's sake.

Grog the barbarian beats a 100 special snowflake "I'm challenging stereotypes" characters.

I appreciate your opinion, and you make good points about twitch. Basically a cesspool. But if you want to critique the RP you'd have to watch more of the series, they all gain depth, even grog. Just if you do, expect Keyleth to be annoying as fuck.

As for the combat descriptions, yeah, it's the domain of the players to describe their attempt, then the dice decide, and the DM narrates the result. Taliesin usually describes how he specifically wants to attack, and Matt doesn't step on his toes, but the rest of the players are into it. Read the room, or the QAs

Better than a tiefling paladin, any anime insert, any edgelord, loli or waifu. IMO, in any fiction, a trope played well beats a original concept played poorly.

Normally I would try to watch more of a series than the starting episode + some random episode (which I guess is more of a promotion thing, according to an user), but y'know, these things are all 3 hours long. It'd take me an enormous amount of time to plow through all of that just to give a completely informed review, and frankly, what I saw didn't get me invested enough to want to do that. I did my best with what little information I did have.

They very well might have gotten better - and in fact, it's likely, since people don't typically stay shitty once they get to roleplaying, especially the first-timers. As far as initial impressions go, that's pretty much what I discerned from it. It doesn't seem promising, when you're experienced with actual tabletop rpgs.

I've been watching for over a year now I think? Not long after it started, at least. Good fun on a Friday afternoon, but I feel like Liam's character is getting quite silly and I hate Marisha's with a passion. I can't tell whether Marisha is roleplaying that autistic charisma amazingly well or genuinely thinks she's the main character.

DnDiesel wasn't my thing. I like dnd, I like Diesel, but dear Jesus the "I'm an 800yr old immortal witch hunter who wants to die but can't bc I killed an evil witch who caused the bubonic plague and I'm LITERALLY EVERY VIN DEISEL CHARACTER EVER" I know that he plays dnd in his private life, I hope that he plays something other than Riddick at home

Chris Hardwick's dnd thing is supposedly fun, around 30 min each.

>Grog the barbarian, a drink-loving, whorehouse-loving, rough and tumble barb? I've NEEEVER seen one of those before. It's something you'd see as baby's first character.
That's because it is his first character, he asked specifically about designing the most simple, basic Barbarian that he could.

>800 years old
>level 8
>tfw you're so retarded that you gain 1 level ever 100 hears

Speaking seriously though, I got the impression that Diesel was trying his best to have a good time, but he just wasn't feeling it with the group. He seemed awfully uncomfortable with them.

Throw them up in the background while you're doing other stuff, works for me.

Apparently they were often drunk or tipsy in some of those early episodes. Sam and Orion especially.

Uh...doesn't that defeat the purpose, if you're not paying attention to it?

The first episode was them going from PFinder (I think) to 5e, so early on I say give Matt a bit of slack for taking the reigns a bit when the players are new to the system.

I will say it's pretty interesting watching a game of trained Voice Actor's though, they definitely breath life into their characters that's enjoyable to watch. Early series Tiberius is pretty great, but he loses enthusiasm over time and ends up leaving the group.

I'm about half-way through the series myself, Orion doesn't seem to be enjoying himself as much, and Kelith as a character grates on me when she tries to overpower or speak for the group, but otherwise I appreciate her optimism and attempting to be the "moral compass".

As for Grog, if I didn't enjoy his voice so much I might have a few things to say, but the old lug is pretty endearing for a hulking behemoth (that keeps forgetting his rage bonus damage, would have won that brawl if he remembered it).

I think he was kinda pushed into it by whoever does promotion for the studio. He's well known as a ttrpg fan and was playing a fantasy trope character in a blockbuster-hopeful film. Somebody in marketing probably felt really smart

No, you just listen, because most of it you get via voice anyway.

I listen at work, bc I have 5hr blocks of sitting in front of ps everyday. It's just engaging enough to keep me awake

Marisha is just annoying and a bore now, whenever she gets emotional I just think 'alright when is this going to end'

And Liam is trying to not be so excruciatingly one note

Laura for best/cutest girl and Travis for ultimate bro.team player

Sam, Travis, and Laura are the standouts.

In that order.

agree 100% Sams Role play and anti meta game are far and away the best, his stuff with his daughter was great.

I like Taliesin too. Way less emotional drama and more interesting characterisation - I suspect that's because his background is more script adaptation and directing.

He struggles in the spotlight. It's really noticeable during the Whitestone episodes where he starts getting really nervous, I think he'd have preferred to be in the background.

No emotional drama is definitely a plus.

It's funny because I find Percy to be ok(albeit a little self important, I get it it's his character) but I just dislike Taliesin

Does anyone else think Laura kinda looks like Riley Reid ?

ok I just woke up and glad to see my thread still up. But GD, I'm going to have to re-evaluate my rankings. Do the other 2 do any stuff like this?

friendo, its morning where I am and I hate having to give an early morning fap but ya, this got me.

just did a pic search and comparison. Ya I see it. dam now that's all I'll think about while watching the show. t

>It's basically professional wrestling for ttrpg geeks.
I was going to watch it, but the first episode the DM said something about how they're ignoring rules a lot and using actors for the players. It seemed to imply that viewers shouldn't even expect their game to follow the rules, which in turned heavily implied to me that these shows were scripted.

RP games without uncertainty are little more than amateur theater. If I wanted to hear a story where things always go the way the writer wants them to, I'd pick up some actual literature or watch a TV show.

SJW garbage

2nd from right, top row has a nice 80s trash vibe going on. Otherwise meh.

I don't do podcasts so w/e.

Is this some kind of a joke thread?
Try posting this on /b/ instead next time

>the DM said something about how they're ignoring rules a lot and using actors for the players
That's not what he said. He said they play a more loose and fast interpretation of the game than a rules-lawyer crunch version, which ISNT EVEN TRUE, because they crunch the shit out of 5E and are constantly going to the rulebook for things.

Also, they're not "using actors for the players". The players are all professional voice actors who had been playing as a gaming group for nearly two years before the show started.

Seriously, I get criticizing the show. I get criticizing the cast. By all means. But anyone who says "lol scripted" is literally retarded.

Also I hung out with Matt on my show for a few hours and he's a pretty legit dude to talk to.

How about I just go right out and ask why the fuck there are 7 players at the table?

>critical role

so, are they actually worth watching? will I cringe?

you can have a good table with any number, though i'd cap it at 8.

Matt is the best girl. No homo.

It's 1000x less horrible than Wil Wheaton's shitty tabletop show, and it's not Rollplay with hat inbred pink-haired faggot running the show.

So...I guess? I mean, there's not much else out there.

Oh but the fans are horrible. And I mean the "We're gonna draw fan art and give all the characters brown skin" type horrible.

I also believe he was mainly saying that because of their gunslinger, and that they will house rule stuff if they got to.

I haven't watched in a few months. I don't think it's scripted though, it's just not full sandbox.

>will I cringe?

If you're into the hobby? A bit, but then you'll realize that's pretty much you seen from the outside except they're hamming it up as part of the performance.

>it's just not full sandbox.
Nor is any game ever. The fact that people still believe such a thing is real is probably the biggest joke.

Spoiler: No one has ever run a sandbox game. You're always being railroaded.
>In b4 "lol but my GM...."

Honestly, though, the fact that they actually act is why they're better than any other group you or I or anyone on this board will ever play with.

Because I'm sorry, but no matter how much you insist, your group is not good. They're all shit, you're shit, and your DM is shit, and the reason it's shit is because you're assholes who put no effort in AND insist that that makes you better.

So yeah. Good on them for actually giving a fuck.

I'm the eternal DM but I've recently learned playing with actors makes the best campaign
they REally get into character and cause real conflict with the group just to roleplay

I agree full heartedly.

A couple things.

1) The Witchhunter movie was, I shit you not, the product of its writer and Vin Deisel discussing the Vin's old D&D character.

2) There is an adorable video of Vin after the fact that is very at odds with his frankly stilted behavior in the video.

3) I forgot what I was going to put for #3

I like Harmonquest

Boweevil best character. Close second is Hahn Jodgman

I don't see any hot girls here. These people are all ugly with the exception of the guy in the top-right.

thank you

though i don't agree that keyleth is a mary sue, she fucks up pretty costantantly, nothing to complain about for me, because then she pulls 128 blight damages in two rounds.
Not my favorite character, but she's definitely not a mary sue or a bad character.

The actors are impressive, the game is a bit cookie-cutter and rubbish.

basically this, I do wish him all the ebst but the costant cringe-worthy moments he brought with the mid-erections tibs would have and the blatlant meta gaming killed it for me, the game picked up so much better when he got kicked.

What is this and who is the blondie on top frame ?

I thought I was the only one who saw it!

/v/ please leave

wait, are you the guy from exploding dice?

i kinda always thought that lmao

jfc you people need help

Are those the actual reasons why he's not around anymore? Did he get the boot or did he leave? I've just started watched the series (started on ep 22 just to get away from all of the audio issues).

I can like RP or DM in person at the table or online fine, but as soon as I'm watching another group do it I cringe real hard.

i don'tknow, he did make a video about it but I haven't watched it, i actually liked how G&S and matt handles the thing and didn't want to describe the situation (Matt was almost in tears), i really disliked the fact that he made a video to describe what happened.
For what I know they had a contract problem or some shit.

>7 person party
Kill me

Go watch the new one that Matt is doing, Force Grey or some shit.

I like Critical Role, though I don't watch it any more. That new show...fucking horrible.

It's not Critical Role level, but obviously being on Veeky Forums everyone needs to be cancerous about it, but anyway it is a bad show for you, do know that it isn't matt's fault.

Which one is Laura in that pic?

youtube.com/watch?v=nRBzpiPccOs

Just take a look at the nigga sitting bottom left.

I watch CR, there's nothing wrong with people being fucking people while playing tabletop games, you need mental help if you think that is something wrong with this, like cure your social anxiety, it is not good for your health.

/thread

I think you're projecting.

During the Fantasy pirates game my friend ran we all did voices and there was one point where I stood on a couch like captain morgan and shouted at another player who was doing the same on a couch across the room.

Lots of people play pen and paper rpgs so there's going to be a lot of different kinds of people playing.

Just because your game is boring or you majored in liberal arts does not mean everyone's is.

And there's nothing wrong with people having opinions. and me are saying that the show is filled with liberal SJWs, which is a fact. The fact that this nigga, besides what he actually believes, drops in with a hillary shirt shows that he's pandering to someone (their viewers). The only people that don't get what's wrong with SJWs are the SJWs themselves, or fortunate bastards that haven't had the opportunity to say something """problematic""" to an SJW.

I have no problem watching them btw, I'm just well aware what type of community them and their fans are (the kind that I wouldn't touch with an 8 foot pole), and anyone watching them should be made aware of that, lest he gets devoured for being non-PC.

dude, it's for charity

huh?

...

CR raises huge amounts for 826la and raised 80k in a week for muscular dystrophy

props to them then, but I don't see how that's related. Unless you are implying that they are running a "robbin hood" scheme, getting money from well-off SJWs and sending it to charity (in which case, even more props to them).

In any case, the autists of GDQ raise a million every winter and half that every summer for charity, that doesn't mean I would change my opinion.

Sorry to tell you this, but the vast majority of charities keep most of the money to organize more charity drives, pay their paid employees, and increase awareness of their cause. They don't really use the money to do anything useful like fund people's corrective surgeries or medicine.

Anyone who falls for the charity scams is the kind of person who either doesn't do their research, or is trying to look good on paper because "They donated to charity, man! They must be good people!"

>charity is a lie, reeeeee

>United Way
You're too young to remember.

As a rogue how are you supposed to top that in 5e? Light Armor is 12+5 Dex mod. Do your DMs give out +3 light armor like candy? What am I missing?

Laura voiced Lust, that makes her auto the hottest. Marisha has the best body obviously but she's also a lot younger.

Hey, it worked for Al Capone.

Umm...they're not low level characters? I agree Mercer SOMETIMES hands them shit on a plate, but thats also the group's playstyle, it's not just due to Mercer. I mean also when you have 7 people you're trying to take your rounds as quickly as possible. this also comes from them playing pathfinder probably as the combat rounds aren't descriptions, they're crunch

Marisha is a longtime d&d player as well.

And Susan G, Kony, whichever. Just do your research. Both MDA and 826 are good charities. If you're going to be an edgy cynic, research.

>current year
>Judging a show by its intro