Do you feel bad that your campaign won't ever be as good as Critical Role...

I feel like sucking cock, but I never did it, yet. Maybe you should just enjoy your game, OP.

Were Spoony's rambling that long?

I feel pretty confident critical role can't be as good as my game tbphwyaf.

No.

>knowing my games are better
Possibly, probably
>more involving than Matt Mercers
His players seem to be engrossed in it. They wouldn't be as emotionally impacted by the story if they weren't (See their very real emotions over shit like Chroma Conclave attack, Percy's death, Kayliee/Cassandra/Gilmore ruse, Vax's goodbye).

Imo its much harder to be involved in someone else's game as much as your own.

None of this fucking matters because they don't even hold themselves about the standard of "A bunch of friends playing their home D&D game over twitch). Sure it got popular but they made it a point to never change what made the game fun for them.

I know this is a troll post but no one should EVER try and hold their game up to anyone else's. Different players want different things. Some groups want a very serious game, others want a goofy experience, some just want to roll dice and kill shit.

My fun =/= your fun, but neither of us have the right to tell each other we are wrong, just different

Don't fucking look at anyone else's fun and try and change yourself to conform. Sure we got an influx of fans to D&D, but if they don't fit in with your groups play style let them know that it's you, not them, and it's ok. Help the fans of CR find games that fit their style. Maybe their taste changes as they play, maybe not, but how others play D&D makes no difference to your group.

Even if they dumb it down to facebook tier table-tops are easily homebrewed, and online its not hard to find homebrew content

Do you feel bad about starting bait threads? Don't you feel like there's a better use for your time than annoying people on a Taiwanese puppet show imageboard?

>Don't you feel like there is no point because you'll never be as good as Mercer?
I feel like there's no point for a number of reasons, but that isn't one of them.

My campaigns will never be good until I have Sam, Travis, and Joe in my party. Laura too as long as she does her shin-chan voice

I've never watched a single episode of this series, because I'd rather listen to a podcast than 3 hours of other people playing D&D. I'm going to pretend this thread isn't bait and say that people who probably think Mr. Mercer is the greatest DM in existence is because they've just watched 200+ hours of Critical Role and Stockholm Syndrome'd themselves into thinking Mercer is JRR Tolkien Jr.

I think its the fact that it started at level 10 (around where most campaigns end) and lasted till 20. tihs made everything seem more exciting (Fuck their first major bossfight was a Beholder)

People who dont realize what level 10 means were greeted to what seemed to be an incredibly insane series

Underdark Arc (Was fucking shit, but survived on being new) > Briarwood/Siege of Whitestone Arc (BY FAR the best arc of the series, legitimately great) > The Chroma Conclave (Starts of with a bang, and stays propped up by all the side stories [The Feywild, Kevdak, Encounter with Percy's nemesis, the Raksasha]) > Tarryon Darrington/Keyleth's Aramente (Is meh/awful, but by now your invested) > Vecna

For someone who knows nothing about D&D it seems like the greatest story ever told, because they are never exposed to Kobold/Goblin slaying portions.

>very real emotions over shit like Chroma Conclave attack, Percy's death, Kayliee/Cassandra/Gilmore ruse, Vax's goodbye)
sauce on some of these?

Matthew Mercer is contributing more to the downfall of the D&D community than anyone else in history. Not even Monte Cook, not even Lorraine Williams, not even Micheal Merals, not even Gary Gygax himself have done as much damage to D&D. Mercer has made the game palatable to the kind of person who spends his Friday nights playing Cards Against Humanity while slobbering microbrews all over his beard while his wife's son is sleeping in the next room. The kind of moron who thinks mirthful laughter is the end goal of everything, and fails to understand the potential that RPGs have as a fulfilling hobby. Instead, he shits on that creative potential by turning the entire game into a joke, refusing to take anything seriously and making gimmick characters, bringing along his fat girlfriend to make a shitty elf druid character that she hardly roleplays, screeching autistically whenever she rolls a natural 20 because that is the only aspect of the game that her tiny female brain can comprehend, taking copious pictures of the game and posting them to Snapchat and Instagram to show what a geek she is, before getting tired at 11 and tugging at her cuck boyfriend's shoulder so that they both leave and disrupt the immersion even further, because the game doesn't matter to these people at all. It is a mode of entertainment, nothing else. And by entertainment, I mean they consider it nothing more than a Netflix special that they can pause at any time, because it is meant entirely to pander to their enjoyment and make them laugh to cover up how empty their soulless lives are. This hobby used to be full of passionate people who cared about the game and weren't afraid to show it. Now the hobby is being diluted by hordes of casuals who couldn't give a fuck.

Im at work so there might be a bit of fluff before it (I used timestamps from the videos) but here you go.
Chroma Conclave: (The one where Matt uses "At this moment" 100 time)
youtu.be/9EToAf4nhDw?t=3h23m50s

Chroma Conclave Pt 2: GF Cries on Camera:
youtu.be/0W_by9hT6VQ?t=2h51m25s

Dead Vex:
youtu.be/KHsA0R_GovU?t=4h23m31s

Dead Percy:
youtu.be/RCnwjLK_ZuQ?t=4h10m20s

Ruse Cruise:
youtu.be/zUXL--sSc3A?t=4h41m01s

Vax's Goodbye: (Look for when Raven Queen comes, this is close timestamp)
youtu.be/XrKcdyV0eq4?t=1h24m14s

Nice pasta

I feel fucking amazing that my campaign will never be as horrific and terrible as Sam's latest oneshot.

quality post, thank you

How'd he fuck it up?

Fuck you cancerous youtuber shills.

It was basically every horror copypasta rolled into one. The game started as a literal love boat cruise with the players playing fairy tale characters. Which might have been fine except for how certain players really started to cross some lines as well as Sam himself. Shit like enabling pedophilia and giving graphic depictions of sexual acts. Some people might write it off as being "oh it's just dark humor!" but there's a time and a place. You'd think G&S would have least told the player going on about how she wanted to rape little boys to tone it the fuck down given the current climate of the entertainment industry.

TLDR: Imagine if your first ever D&D session was half of the players ERPing with the GM while you're sitting there just wanting to play some normal D&D for once.

Shut the fuck up and close this thread, Mercer. I don't do this for the hordes of adoring fans, I do it for a few good players.

He overreached, basically. Went for a one-shot with a plot based on some song lyrics, with flashbacks, flash forwads, a couple of invincible mary-sues, no real stakes...

"A mess" is the best way to describe it

That was the first one he did. The newest one they did last week was even worse.

Wait fuck me I wasn't even describing the right oneshot. Hadn't even watched the recent one yet.

Well this gives me no hope at all.

Honestly after Campaign just watch Marisha's (Which is unironically a ton of fun, albeit simple), and Taliesins if you like V:tM

Yeah, I watch them all as they come out on youtube, but watching them live or on G&S isn't really something fancy doing.

Marisha's was unironically the best so far (tied with grog's, which lost it a little at the end)

Shit Grog's is pretty great too (Maybe SLIGHTLY better) than Marisha's.

Donno how I forgot about it

I'd say the start of Grog's was better, and it had better highs (Sam finally killing trinket absolutely ruined me), but Marisha's was more watchable overall.

Both good though, no argument there.

Holy shit wasn’t this the game full of EssJayDubyahs?

Yepper

The best part is that G&S put it up on Youtube in its original version
youtube.com/watch?v=LfeAYN8f1AU

I expected the comments to be bitching about subject matter but they are all too busy bitching about Battlefront 2 being the sponsor

>critical role is now the standard of good
nice bait

Well being sponsored by shitware didn't help either. I know on the subreddit the mods were deleting any comment that wasn't basically "Best game ever zomg!" or "So brave!"

Well, they are friends with Ashly Burch, who voiced alot of characters in violent games but still says that those games are bad for people and reinforce toxic masculinity or whatever. So maybe hypocrisy runs in their circle.

Any other group would of made those jokes. a few come to mind.
'It sure is nice Kevin spacey invited out for his boat party'

>current year
>making such obvious bait threads
bitch please

Elaborate please, I find your vitriol cathartic.

This guy gets it

At the same time
>Probably made that contract months ago
>Voice Actors don't want to piss off the hand that feeds
>Mercer voices Luke Skywalker in the game

But yeah I usually dont hate reddit that much, but their subreddit is fucking awful.

>Someone says "If I were Marisha (especially)/Matt/Scanlan ect ect ect I'd do this"
>Downvoted/Deleted (Even though they said that shit doesnt bother them cause it's their game first and foremost)

Good job swallowing the bait whole, fucktard.

>Not recognizing the same stale copyshit that gets posted in every CR thread
Lurk more newfag.

>That first one
I have never seen the show, but thats some masterclass storytelling

>The leader guy giving a big long speech about stepping down
>Group is clearly shocked and a bit upset over this storybeat
>They are all trying to process this
>Oh yeah btw Ancient Dragons have come to cuck this entire city

What level were they at for that? I'm not a big fan of unwinnable battles in D&D

This is the better moment from the Percy death
youtu.be/RCnwjLK_ZuQ?t=4h19m45s

'They are freaking out so much because they don't know of anyone that can True Resurrect (and can't afford the regents cause Mercer is stingy as fuck in his game), and any normal Resurrection isn't a guarantee in their world.

You can tell Taliesin is a veteran TTRPG player by the fact he is hardly phased by it all

...But I'm easily as good as Mercer, and our campaigns are better than his.

No, I don't waste time on malcathectic entertainments.

My games are better than his, TBQH.

>malcathectic
Literally not a word

Thank you for your service.

Can’t watch/listen to CritFail for more than 10 minuets because everyone is talking at the same time both in character and out of character then randomly screaming for no reason.

They'd just freed a city on the other side of the continent from the rule of a tyrannical vampire and his necromancer wife, when the city was policed by zombies and vampire spawn lieutenants.

I think they were roughly level 13 or so when the Conclave showed up. You can see the, 'oh shit' moment occur on their faces when Grog, the group's main melee heavy hitter, fails to hit one of the dragons on a 21 (which was usually good enough to hit everything else they've fought up to this point in time). He hit next on a 23, but even then that realization of, 'you are now in the deep end of the D&D monster pool, buckle up kiddies' is something that not many DMs can drop on a party.

It's not even that they don't know anyone for True Resurrection, it's that these guys are probably the strongest mortals on the planet at this point in the campaign (save for maybe Allura and Earthbreaker Groon) and are playing cloak and dagger spy games vs. a concentrated cabal of Ancient Dragons who just blitzkreiged the main continent they called home.

They went off to get artifact-level gear to use in their fight against the dragons and this last little tidbit from Percy's arc (the Briarwood arc) reared its ugly head and had a fuckhuge rage boner for a Warlock patron wanting Percy dead after he broke the deal he'd made in a fever dream so long ago.

Also, Taliesin is the most experienced player at the table, probably as much as Matt, but 95% of it has been on the players side and not the DM side. We did see him run a two-shot a few weeks ago, with most of the cast in a VtM setting.

Critical Role got me into D&D. I don't enjoy their style of play (I much prefer when everyone chit-chat amongst themselves), but its enjoyable enough to listen to as background noise. The only thing I hate is how everything things Nat1/Nat20 is auto fail/success on ANY check because of them

I think he runs a great game for his players, but everyones tastes are different. Do what makes you/your players happy.

My absolute favorite "OH FUCK" moment was when Matt told them Vecna's Spell Save DC was 26 during his first turn
youtu.be/W-SMrG0QLc0?t=23m6s

everyone thinks*

>26 Spell Save
God I hate high level D&D

To be fair, it's Vecna, who is one of the original big bad villains in D&D lore.

...

>Mercer gives them time and specifically tells them to buff up
>Drops an impossible to save against amount of damage turn 1
>A bunch of spell slots burned
What an asshole

I thought similar. It is a damage tax and very overt way of wasting spells.

>Gods should be easy to kill

Percy isn't even his first character that campaign.
I think the first one died around the time they switched from 4e to PF which explains the whole "gunslinger" thing.

No, because my campaign is already quite a bit better than Critical Role by virtue of not having to deal with it's members.
Mind you I doubt i'll ever be as good of a character actor as Mercer, but then i'm not trying to be either.

Nope.
>Setting is Noble Dark post-apocalyptic fantasy.
>Adventure is 40% political intrigue, 40% Legend of Zelda temple raiding, 20% comfy downtime shenanigans.
>Party is two Rangers, two Rogues, a Warlock, a Warlord, an an NPC Cleric.
>Group has been around for 7 years, everyone gets along great.
>System is homebrewed, basically D&D 5E if it learned from 4E's mistakes instead of cheating off of 3E's homework.
>Combat is fast, tactical, pretty balanced, and gridless. The longest fight ever took 90 minutes, most take about 30.

I record every session and we're probably going to start a podcast with the campaign after this one. We play three 90-minute segments in a row (4.5 hours of game time a session) so it'll be far easier to digest than the 3-4 hour slogfests that are Critical Role.

>Do you feel bad that your campaign won't ever be as good as Critical Role? Don't you feel like there is no point because you'll never be as good as Mercer?
No and no

SJW's are generally some real sexual fuckups and pedophiles when they're not busy harassing other people over imagined slights.
It's why so many of them have gotten burned recently with the #metoo stuff.

I feel this way about The Adventure Zone and Griffin McElroy sometimes but it doesn't really get to me.

For a while I was but then TAZ kept going and I felt better and better about myself and my games, respect turned to disgust and then abject pity. They have about a billion podcasts and every time I forget that these guys are balls deep in Polygon culture they just take the opportunity to remind me and help me to quit that podcast.

I wouldn't mind seeing how you pace your game
Most DM's are really good at combat, rp, or exploration, but I've yet to see all three in one guy, myself included

>System is homebrewed
Yeah I'm just going to bring you back to reality before you start getting delusions of grandeur. No one is going to watch some homebrewed system without having the rules easily available to access. Even then, it's still fucking D&D. Podcasts like that are a dime a dozen right now.

Pacing can be tricky and I'm certainly not perfect at it. One of the most important things, in my opinion, is pitching the campaign to your group and having them go along with it, or altering it to fit their wants and needs. I told everyone beforehand "This is a campaign about exploring new places, raiding ancient temples, and navigating political waters. There will be puzzles and combat will reward lateral thinking and preparation. Your character and their backstory will be important to the adventure in some way. The PCs should be fairly moral and honourable, able to get along together and willing to go places and fight monsters for their treasure."

When they were all on-board with that pitch it was a lot easier to pace the game appropriately. Each section of the adventure was sort of telegraphed so the players knew what they were in for. The temples were mostly combat and puzzles, the cities were downtime with political intrigue, and travelling from one to the other was exploration with side-quests along the way.

The basic rules easily fit on a single page. Most character sheets can fit on a queue card. Think 4E but with passive abilities and skills replacing Powers and better rules for improvising combat maneuvers and weapon/spell attacks. Less "I can do X because this power says I can" and more "I want to do X, and I get a bonus to X because of this passive."

There were only 2 that I'd call SJWs. The rest were standard West-coast yuppie liberals. There wasn't even any lesbian content if I remember, as one of the girls was playing a male character (Peter Pan). It was an ok session, and Sam was a better DM than in his last 1 shot.

I think he had a character from the start that was a few levels higher (3rd instead of 1st) for some training wheels and he dropped him after everyone got the gist of things.

I enjoy watching streams like this, but haven't seen any of this particular group. Is there a recommended 'skip-to-this-episode' point, or is this one worth watching from the beginning?
I ask because a lot of these types of channels have very slow and awkward starts.

Man, grognards are like insane conspiracy theorists. I'm right there with them right until the end, and then it derails into "ZIONIST CONSPIRACY JEWS" for the conspiracy guys and "I HATE WOMEN SO MUCH" for the grognards.

Just... stop talking like three sentences sooner.

I still play video games even though I'll never be as good as some let'splayers and streamers. I want to experience it myself. If my friends can share in the experience, too, all the better.

Bait thread is bait.

To be fair to him, it's a woman, the GM's gf of all people, who drags it down from just schlock into 'pure suffering to experience' tier. It's everything she does, good god man.

Going full grog and keeping your women and gaming separate is a small price to pay to avoid that particular kind of woman. I can see where the sentiment comes from.

>because you'll never be as good as Mercer?

i'll probably never be able to afford as many accessories as he can

but money can't buy you a big swinging dm dick

Keep swallowing those blue-pills, (((comrade))).

I recently started recording and uploading the sessions of the new Dark Heresy game I started with some Autists I met on Discord. My voice sounds like shit on recording (because of my accent and poor mic quality), one of our players is barely understandable because he’s a Serb, and the others are often drunk or getting there. I don’t foresee it lasting too long, but whatever.

I’ll put the link here so you watch thrifty seconds then call me a faggot. Skip to session two if you want avoid the boring set up.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=iOMTa_OngnI

they have episodes in podcast form too just fyi

check out the funny moments videos of the episodes and see if those do anything for you

show is good but the people in and around the show are total shit

The first arc is fine, but plagued with technical issues.

Either
>Start from beginning if you can handle technical issues
>Start with "Shopping & Shipping" or "Skyward" if you can handle slower episodes containing "that guy (powergamer) that set up important shit (Gilmore/Vasselheim)
>Start with "The Feast"/"Crimson Diplomacy", read the synopsis of "Consequences & Cows"/"The Path to Whitestone" (though Path to Whitestone is pure out of character cringekino) then skip to "The Sun Tree"

Apparently there is a Periscope floating around (I think CriticalScope is the Youtube) from after one of the episodes in the 60s where Marisha explains that sometimes (especially in the past) she purposely casted spells wrong in character because Keyleth was supposed to be a super naive and inexperienced Druid. She does this less and less in the later episodes to show her characters growth.

This makes total sense and is something I'd expect out of Marisha the person (She seems to be intelligent but airheaded IRL), however this doesn't explain why she OOC lawyers with Matt over shit most often (Especially when she does make a big fuckup like Mistform against the Worms)

I thought it was universally accepted that Critical Role was heavily pre-scripted.

To steal the good ideas and take note of the bad ones.

But I don't watch Critical Role because it looks too commercial.

How exactly do you script die rolls? They must be some masterclass actors to memorize a 3-4hr script a week AND remember the relative results of every die roll

The fuck? are soap operas not a thing in your country?

That’s just because they have some real money behind it, and actual actor people instead of Some Guy

Since when do soap operas involve dice? Also
>hurr CR is scripted
For what purpose? What would they gain from this?

Soap Operas are not filmed live, and the actors get breaks to look over the script between takes.

If someone CR was scripted whoever edits together the footage deserves a seat next to God because I have never seen a bad cut

>whoever edits together the footage deserves a seat next to God because I have never seen a bad cut

Actually CR lost their entire production staff at one point (they went on to launch hyperrpg) and everything went to shit and the editing become rather jarring for months.

This is the event which caused Marisha to become Creative Director and help save G&S, or was this before that?

My friends > Actual actor people