Is this worth a listen to...

The fact that they had been playing for 3 years and still had to explain Inspiration Rolls is proof enough that its shit

What would others recommend for actual play stuff to watch/listen to?

Oh look, this pasta again.

It's a mechanic in 5e, not a homebrew.

literally is reddit: the "nerds"

>Watching EP1
>No one is taking the encounter seriously
>Bard asks if he can inspire himself
>Because your you, yes you can!

Hit ALT+F4 so hard I restarted my computer

perhaps ironically, if you'd made it through an episode, you'd be begging for everyone other than the dumb barbarian brute and the womanizing bard to shut up so those two could talk more

Yes that's why it's bad that they didn't know. It's right there in the PHB, the book they were all forced to read to make their characters.

I'm excited to see the rage when the whorish Druid flakes out during the Vecna fight and causes a TPK.

There are a lot better actual play podcasts out there.

I watched/listened to episode one and that made me laugh

>They get into their first encounter in awhile
>She takes some damage
>Flees even though she had Stoneskin AND A BARD

my sides

The worst part is that she's the only person who can stop Vecna from petrifying the entire party. They literally can't win the fight without her, and she's totally incompetent.

>Reinhardt best guest

I'd assume that happened in the first fight with Vecna then. I happened to catch a part of the newest one and one mentioned getting shrekt by Vecna.

Unless she is literally beyond stupid I doubt she will run though. It is the end of the campaign so at worst she dies a session early. Plus I'd bet if they do TPK the DM will just mcguffin them back to life or hard reset since he seems forgiving as fuck

I might listen to a few more episodes. Somethings are annoying (Especially how the mics crackle every time they get loud), but it made for excellent background noise. (Plus they are all good at their voices so it helps)

Why are they fighting Vecna in a homebrew setting? Cant they come up with their own villian?

Because they are still following 5e it's just they play a little loose with the rules sometimes because they want to tell a story more than anything

The only non-5e thing they really do is that one of them is a Custom Class because they were doing it in Pathfinder and transitioned to 5e, and he was playing a Gunslinger.

Plus this campaign is fucking 5 years old

That sort of thing irritates the hell out of me too. The PF campaign I'm in (it's the only thing I've got up in my armpit of a town) is apparently set in Eragon's world, but the enemy this time around is infamous PF "ravener"/dracolich Kazavon. Real original.

IIRC she fell off a cliff and refused to save herself and so he let her revive for no penalty. It's totally lopsided how they favor her over the rest of the party.

>I hope it's copypasta cause to be that upset that people other than "hardcore" nerds are joining your hobby is autistic as fuck.
No it's not. It's not any different from being angry when you and your friends play baseball every sunday, then a bunch of skinny fucks who suck at baseball show up and start insisting on being allowed to play, bringing their girlfriends and insisting they be allowed to play. Even though they don't know the rules and constantly fuck things up and you just want them to all go away. Except if you do, you're a dickhead, right? No, actually, most people would side with the baseball guys on that one. So why the FUCK are RPGs expected to be more inclusive? Oh is it because we are poor little nerds? We're all friendless virgin losers who live in our mom's basements and smell weird, right? so we should be ECSTATIC that some chads and roasties are actually willing to tolerate our presences long enough to try out our shitty games. It's OUR job to pander to THEM even though they are unlikely to spend more than 20 dollars on the hobby, ever. Yet game stores continue to have shit like "ladies' night" to try to get women into 5e, as if the game has some kind of diversity quota it has to meet or else it will be made illegal to play. Oh and remember, the RPG hobby is dying, so we NEED new blood, just like we NEED to import those refugees. You need to MAN UP and step up to the plate and teach these new players how to game, and if they want to bring in their shitty homebrewed Argonian race from Skyrim, or name their character after the guy they played in Dark Scrolls, that's okay, because they are being creative in their own way, and you HAVE to accept them otherwise you are oppressing them, and they have more of a right to be in this hobby than you do, because they saw it on Stranger Things! Not to mention dumbing down the rules to make it easy for them.

Out of all potential villains, why Vecna in a setting like this?

youtube.com/watch?v=lfbHKyk3p2Q

>Even though they don't know the rules and constantly fuck things up and you just want them to all go away

I'm reminded of that one forever alone.jpg where he's standing by himself in the corner at a party, thinking how the music's too loud and everyone's annoying

KEKEKEK I can't say I haven't done dumb shit like that before.

To sum it up she tried to dive off a cliff but failed an athletic roll, and then almost saved herself but fucked up anyway.

As a DM I'd probably let it go and give her a pass because her punishment was looking like a gigantic fucking retard in front of like 200k people.

Plus it's his fiancee so what the fuck did you expect

This shit triggered me so much
>She didn't pay attention to him describe the cliff as a slope
>Just assumed and fucked it up
>Tries to argue it with the DM
>LOL what a dumbo let her have a free pass cause she is a hot girl

What happened to the dragonborn sorcerer?

Are there any tabletop podcasts or streams or anything that are actually worth listening to? I'm in desperate need of background noise.

He died.

The player got booted off for being a fucking retard powergamer That Guy, and his character and his entire nation died later on.

I'd expect him to be able to find someone to screw him that doesn't have a mental deficiency. But hey, some people are desperate right?

Plus he kept getting into fights and shit with people off camera and eventually moved on

Turns out he recently admitted to being addicted to drugs during the whole thing

The ones I listen too
Ghostbusters Resurrection
MILKRUN
NeoScum
Tabletop Escapades
Call of Cthulhu Mystery Theatre
The Danger Dice Game, the DM is the writer for the D&D comics
Dungeon Rats
Never Tell Me the Odds
Pretend Wizards
Crit Juice

Can you describe what genres/games those are?

He doesn't seem to be particularly obnoxious in the episodes I've watched but I'm still pretty early in. Anyway, aren't sorcerers organically broken and overpowered? Seems like a dick move of the group to rage at him for just happening to pick a strong class.

Fair enough if he was being turd OOC though but there are definitely other characters that shit me off more than him.

Sorcerers aren't OP unless you multiclass. And of the archetypes Dragonborn Sorcerer isn't strictly the best one. It's cool and flavorful, but not as broken as Favored Soul or Storm Sorcerer.

Ghostbusters Resurrection is run on an updated version of the old Ghostbusters RPG. It follows a Florida branch of the Ghostbusters. There are three season right now, each season has them dealing with a supernatural threat with a bonus episode with them fighting another 80s movie threat, like Beetlejuice or David Lo Pan. It has sound effects and a soundtrack
MILKRUN is Shadowrun not too trenchcoat but not pink mohawk either.
NeoScum is also Shadowrun, entirely pink mohawk. Very 80s action movie, very rules light, very funny. More about character interaction than story.
Tabletop Escapades is D&D. Custom setting following a group trying to stop dragons from rekindling a war between two continents.
Call of Cthulhu Mystery Theatre is the Call of Cthulhu RPG. Trying to solve a murder in the 1920s while trying not to go insane
Danger Dice Gang is Jim Zub, the writer for the offical D&D comics and Skullkickers, running his writing friends through classic modules ported to 5e
Dungeon Rats is d&d following a group of adventures framed for murder and sentenced to imprisonment in a never ending dungeon
Never Tell Me The Odds is the Fantasy Flights Star Wars RPG. Each season is broken up into Episodes like the movies following a bunch of different settings
Pretend Wizards is D&D. A group of adventurers is trying to take down an organization that is possibly controlling the walled city they live in.
Crit Juice is d&d. It's a bunch of actor friends playing d&d and getting drunk. They have drinking rules and you can submit other ones to them for every time the crit or crit fail.
I can go into depth a little more for any if you like.

I've had two new players join my group who where talking up how great it is, after a few sessions of them carrying on I decided to give it a listen. Found out both their characters are ripped straight from it with no changes except the name. So it's soured me on it a little bit, but I wouldn't recommend it

Thanks! Those Shadowrun ones sound great for inspiration.

Both of them are very fun. NeoScum has only been around since February but it is one of my favorites. Milkrun is really cool because they are really big on the Shadowrun community and at the end of each episode the GM will recommend some other Shadowrun podcasts.

This

I just can't get into this post due to the sheer amount of content

I tried to watch one random episode but I realized I have no patience to watch some strangers try to play D&D.

Unfortunatly it seems every other gamer these days loves it and learns all their bad habits so I have to hide the fact that I haven't watched it.

Just wanted to say checked out one of the podcasts (cthulhu) and immediately liked it. Audio quality, personalities, qualifications for having a podcast all hitting the spot. Thanks fa/tg/uy

I rather like it, but I get where y'all are coming from.

What bad habits (besides not bothering to learn their shit) do they have?

If you liked that one then I would also recommend you check out the Ghostbusters Resurrection one, same production crew so it has the same production quality.

I don't know if these are specifically from watching youtube eceleb RPG games but my two pet peeves are:
Asking nonstop clarifying questions even after the DM has reasonably described something, fishing for info.
Stating their character action as conditional if statements, "if that's the case then I think that my character might try to..." instead of "I do..."
Getting free extra skill checks out of turn by shouting out to the DM.

Combine all three into the neverending infinite quantum timewarping clairvoyant character, meanwhile the rest of us do our one skill check per turn as per the rules.

I get all of those. Makes sense to complain about.

I wish they would just do shit and live with it, instead of trying to optimize their action economy instead of building better characters.

Not sure what you mean by the 3rd one, but that might just be b/c I'm tired and dense.

Except they started the game in Pathfinder, and switched over to 5e for the sake of the show. They were literally not used to playing the new edition yet.

I agree, but counterpoint: they've been playing 5e for longer than they have Pathfinder at this point.

they didn't rage at him, he picked fights with the cameramen/sound guys and eventually stopped showing up to sessions for like 3 weeks, and they announced that he was no longer involved with the stream

Currently, yeah. There's no excuse for the main cast to not know how their mechanics and abilities work.

>Asking nonstop clarifying questions even after the DM has reasonably described something, fishing for info.
Sounds like lazy DM

>Stating their character action as conditional if statements, "if that's the case then I think that my character might try to..." instead of "I do..."
Should take you once to tell them to stop. If not tell them to go play somewhere else

>Getting free extra skill checks out of turn by shouting out to the DM.
?

I agreed with you until this turned into
>my immigrants
And now I'm back to not being sure if you're trolling or not.

What are good actual play podcasts

Also is it worth listening to the stolen century because it's been really boring one episode in

can i just skip to the next arc?

Actual quote from Critical Role

"I'm a Cave Bear so i'm blind like a fish"

seriously, it's normie tv

They annoy the living fuck out of me and I can't watch them, however I have met a few people who are a ton of fun to play with who gained interest in the show.

Sure there are others who are retarded but it balances out for me

That guy is actually the only player who isn't shit

I listed some of the ones I like here

Fucker are you talking about Keyleth the tard---I mean, druid? She's worse than the rest of them combined.

I think he meant Grog, who is the best of them all other than the guy who quit

Anyone else listen to pic related?

They've got to let that guy cut loose with the deck of many things at some point

What would you suggest?

Stopped listening because they couldn't stop sucking 3.5 dick

>the writer for the D&D comics
You mean the god tier 4E comics?

rip comic you were better than we deserved

Just thought I'd reply because I appreciate your post user. Keep up the quality.

....Also to be on topic, I enjoy Crit Role a lot, but yeah, there's a lot of content. Your mileage may vary!

Wow that sure is an amazing way of bending reality to suit your needs.

...And I'm talking about you here, you stupid fuck. You know Vex had that Revivify coin on her; it wasn't a case of 'letting' anyone do anything. Stop looking for reasons to hate a character/person when there's probably already plenty enough ACTUAL irritating things there to sate you.

As the DM I would have read the fucking rules where it states fall damage caps out at 20d6 and not caused all of this bullshit to happen in the first place.

But hey, Matt's game, he can do what he likes.

>I enjoy Crit Role a lot, but yeah, there's a lot of content.

Same here. At first it seemed daunting to attempt to catch up, but I eventually made the effort after I really got hooked (during the Briarwood arc).

I recently finally caught up, only to realize that they're now in their end-game story arc. Which kinda buts a bit of a buzzkill on the feeling of finally catching up to the story...

It was a cliff as tall as a 100 story building.

There is no way in hell that 20d6 is even remotely realistic damage for a fall of that height.

A fall from that height would be fatal. Don't even roll for it. Just auto-fail your death saving throws as you splatter on the ground and disintegrate into something resembling the consistency of chunky salsa.

They're starting a new campaign at about lvl 3 right after they finish up with this ark. Frankly, I hope it will happen sooner rather than later.

20d6 was the cap for terminal velocity in 3.pf

Eventually you hit max velocity for your mass. I figure if the speed is on an arc, after a certain amount of time you're not going to hit the ground any harder, or relatively not quite so hard, as you otherwise would. So I'd expect a dice-cap, and lo, there it is. 20d6.

Now you could argue that only covers 200ft when terminal velocity for a human is 1,500 or so...but still, it's RAW, and probably RAI too.If you want to house-rule it like Matt did then feel free.

>in 3.pf

Okay, but this isn't 3.pf.

And 20d6 is nothing to a character at high enough level.

20d6 even at max damage is 120hp.

Characters at their level (17 at that point?) can easily survive that.

Realistically a fall from a height roughly equivalent to the tallest building in any major city(the Empire State Building for example) would be 100% fatal, baring some freak unexplainable miracle of physics that lets the person somehow survive.

Pretty sure people have fallen from greater heights and survived though.

Just ordinary folk.

Hence the "freak unexplainable miracle of physics".

It can happen. People sky diving who survive their chute not opening for example.

But even the experts seem at a loss to explain HOW exactly those people survived the fall.

Just looking up articles on this:

"A free-falling 120lb [54kg] woman would have a terminal velocity of about 38m per second," says Howie Weiss, a maths professor at Penn State University. "And she would achieve 95% of this speed in about seven seconds."

So yeah, after a certain point, lets say....20d6's worth, you're not gaining an appreciable level of extra damage via speed.

'We know for certain a person can survive a fall of at least 20,000 feet. That’s how far up World War II pilot Alan Magee was when he had to abandon his plane without a parachute. He crashed through a glass roof that likely helped spread out the impact. According to James Kakalios, Ph.D., a professor at the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Minnesota, how and where you land is one of the major factors in whether you get up from the ground or go 6 feet further into it.'

So really, damage should be based more on what the character falls onto, and how, than how far they've fallen.

>other than the guy who quit
You mean the guy who meta gamed, power gamed and constantly rerolled his dice and then declared it his role for skill checks the DM didn't ask for? That guy who quit? Because go fuck yourself

>"freak unexplainable miracle of physics".

But it is explainable, in the sense that 'oh you rolled a bit' or 'you bounced a little'. Sure it probably still by the averages should have killed you, but that's hardly inexplicable, simply unlikely.

Either way, as the initial impact Keyleth suffered was suffered as a fish, I think that I'd be perfectly content with the label of 'unexplainable miracle of physics' as well, considering magic was involved.

So either way, it's fine. 20d6 sounds good to me.

You should watch Thrilling Intent. It feature the players at the table, but it has a slight element of animation and it's edited for a smoother viewing experience.

Thanks for the recommendations! Being able to have something to listen to while at work is a godsend.

He was into drugs, got HIV and during a testing for it was discovered to have cancer too. The reason why he left the show is actually something else he said he couldnt talk about for legal reasons. I didnt like his playing, but he was obviously going through more than i care to know. Dont know what hes up to now, but hes not coming back.

As for the show, its fun. I only recently discovered it and didnt think i could push 500 hours of catching up, but when you download the audio and listen to it like a podcast it goes rather fast. Almost halfway through in just 3 weeks from listening to it at work.

the DM is the one thing you really cant complain about with CR; he weaves good story telling, is very knowledgable and keeps track of a lot, but mostly its just his storytelling and voices that are phenominal. its what everyone would want.
He did say in the beginning that he wants to play it fast and loose so its more entertaining to follow and also keeps the levity in the cast. Thats fine. Ive sat at way too many tables that just flip through charts and books talking in low normal voices what their characters are doing like tax accountants. Fast and loose is refreshing even hundreds of hours in

I like Neals stuff so far. Heard about Frozen Frontier first in some thread here, and catched up on that, and now Hardcore heroes.
youtube.com/channel/UC4aWmW3sVylbcOdKmUnEqkw
Shame that the last two weeks of Frozen Frontier were "single player" flashback sessions, because the full troop couldn't assemble.
They usually play AD&D 2e with some hombrew rules

Please don't trick me user, I believe everything I read on the internet.

Because the Briarwoods arc, typically considered the best in the series, was about a vampire and a necromancer actively working to bring Vecna closer to godhood? Because this is DnD and important gods and evils from DnD are involved? I don't know, does anyone in this thread actually watch the show?

Anyway, best arcs:
>Briarwoods > Feywild >> Ripley > Westrun > Underdark > Raishan > Vasselheim >Current Arc >>> Eamon (Thordak) > Misc Vestige Chasing > Draconia >>> Hell

There's a lot of pasta's circling around about how Critical Role ruined DnD via casualisation of the playerbase, but I think the real issue going forward is the impact it will have on DM styles. And I'm not necessarily talking about the overloading of player-character relevancy or Nat 20 memes, although those may also become factors. No, I'm focusing on NPC's.
Matt Mercer being the voice actor he is can seed his world with up to a hundred distinct NPC's at a time, some of which have ended up with really high status in the story and cherished personalities. I'm referring especially to Gilmore and Kima, the former a vendor and the latter a rescue mission NPC. But the process of these characters becoming important can be missinterpreted by lesser minds as a deliberately designed artifact. Already back in 2015 I was encountering DM's who were honestly convinced that if you make an a-priori declared homosexual superwizard NPC that tries to make "bants" the players HAD to automatically like them.
It's ridiculous of course, and GMPC's aren't new by any means. But due to people not understanding that it requires HUNDREDS of different NPC's out of which the players might spontaneously feel attached to just one, and instead thinking that there's a recipe for likeable NPCs / it is critical to have likeable NPC's, the result will make GMPC's a staple.
Always remind people introduced to DnD and tabletop from Critical Role that the game is ultimately for players, and GMPC's are something that only happens very rarely and only under the players express desire/interest in the character. Normal NPC's should NEVER be designed with the goal in mind that the party will treat them as one of their own, and for hell's sake don't let them be gay just to score affirmative action points.

Tl.Dr. Critical Role condones GMPC's but has internal reasons to do so, always discourage your DM's from trying to do a Matt Mercer NPC style when they can't or the party doesn't want them to.

DMPCs?

Beyond Lady Kima for like 3 episodes, who else is there?

Hell was that bad? I stopped watching after the first episode when the Chain Devil started going after Vax's albino form. Couldn't handle another Vax-centric mini-arc. Also, Briarwoods = Ripley = Feywild >>> the rest.

I include Ankharell in the Ripley fight so I'm inclined to agree, but I felt the RP between Ripley and VM was a bit weak. I would've enjoyed a week long guerilla campaign on Glintshore where the two teams try to eliminate each other, with some kind of anti-magic designed by Ripley's wizard to make Scanlan's mansion inaccessible.
Briarwoods was super intense and gothic from start to finish, though, holy shit was that good.
Apropos Hell, it's the most underwhelming, even more so than Thordak. At least with Thordak they were overprepared to all degrees, but in Hell they didn't have to suffer any of the true dangers such a trip would endow. As for Vax, he doesn't matter that much despite being the primary reason they're there i.e. Hotis.
Oh and I forgot but the Aramente is strictly worse than Hell.