RPG Streams General /RPGSG/

Welcome to RPG Streams General

First Thread Edition (Let's see how this goes)
>RPGSG is a discussion on our favourite streamed RPG games (or in some cases, tabletop wargames) Discussion of style/actions of players/strategy/rules is what we are going for. Combining it into a general will prevent shitting up other threads or making 20 threads to be shit on clogging up the board.

>Due to a desire not to violate Global 11, we will not be posting links to any streams until we get a nod from a mod that we can. Until then, google is your friend.

Open Question: Are there any good cyberpunk streams currently ongoing? With 5es popularity, the bulk of streams seem to be that, or Pathfinder. Is it inherently harder to run a future/post-modern game as a stream?

They're all hot garbage.

Thanks for the bump. Why in your opinion, would you claim that there are no good streams? Do you not like the players, the portrayal of their characters, the production values, the story, the GM, the setting, the on table banter? There are lots of things to dislike in a given game, what makes you feel that they are all bad?

Honestly curious, as I find several streams to not be entertaining as the players do not draw me in with their interaction, and are generally monotone when describing their actions, rather then immersing themselves in the character.

So someone in the last thread mentioned C-Team. What I liked in their brief description was 2.5 hours runtime, so easily consumable.

Could I get a synopsis of the story, characters, and general comportment? Don't want to commit if it isn't humourous at times.

So continuing on from the CR thread, let me explain what I think the worst thing of the new season is.

Everyone has a mysterious background. They gamed a few sessions to get to level 2 that was not shown. We are introduced to the characters as a description of physical features only. No understanding of their motivations or desires. There are no real familial bonds, save Nott and Caleb, and even that is an unknown.

Contrast to the first campaign, where we got nice character bios with some char art, explaining who these people were, in a fun way. That's what drew me in initially.

I get not wanting to put all your cards on the table immediately, but there's no draw for me to watch a show that has characters I don't care about in it.

We are six episodes in, and they need to fix it soon.

They had several years and 7 levels to craft backstories and bonds before the first campaign started being streamed, give them a bit more time to find their interplay.

Ok, but what I'm saying here, is that in streaming an RPG session, you need to have a strong draw.

Matt screwed up by not having an immediate goal for the players, and the team screwed up by not having more info on their characters available to the audience. It's different then just a gaming group, where mysterious backgrounds can be part of the fun, but when you are watching 3~4 hour shows where the story is vague, the chars are vague, it's not a good option. If you compare it to a tv show, this is the pilot for a spin-off, and it was weak.

The draw at this point I think is the Player not the characters. The Characters are strangers and it makes sense that they are. The Players on the other hand know each other very well and play off one another in a new and fun ways from the last campaign. I wish we knew more about the characters too, but I'd much rather than happen organically over time and watch the relationships in the party develop naturally.

I agree that season two didn't have a strong start but having long background exposition wouldn't improve it any, to go with your tv comparison how many shows frontload all character background? Honestly they should have had more than one session off camera and it should have been as a group.

Ah, but this is not completely TV either. Why not have characters voice their backgrounds over art of their characters, explaining who they are? Season 1 did this, and it was a big hit.

Fjord should have been a paladin.

There any good modern or future game streams? Everything is always fantasy.

Pencils & Parsecs is a decent Star Wars RPG stream.

There's going to a SWN2e game under the Rollplay banner sometime in March. About all we know about it so far is that Adam's going to be the one running the show, and that the PCs will belong to a military organization (to allow for them to have access to mechs and fighter ships early on). We don't even know who the cast will be, as they're trying to finalize the list.

Sounds interesting, they have anyone nailed down on the cast so far?

Not that guy but you definitely need a good DM and two good players at least, and more than five players at start is a cluster I cannot follow.

It's why season 1 of Save or Dice was good but season two sucked. And why I can never get more into critical roll then watching skits of their best moments.

No, we don't know who the cast will be.

>And why I can never get more into critical roll then watching skits of their best moments

I was invested in Percy's story honestly, I watched for that. After whitestone, it became more 'meh'. I mean, they went to hell, and somehow the game was boring? What is up with that?

I liked it initially but eventually the purchased bonus dice just got fucking obnoxious.

Streams gotta make money.
I think they could do it better though, for sure.

That would take any of them actually playing a good person. Caleb is on the edge of doing that once he sorts his shit out, the rest are once again a bunch of assholes who happen to help people because it helps them in some way.

I get they've gotta make money, but holy shit the rolls that have more than 15 dice thrown are just absurd and disruptive to play.

Which clashes with Mercer's hops for a heroic campaign unfortunately.

They will be good people user. Eventually. It's like you faggots have never read a book or watched a movie.

>Implying by the end of last campaign they were actually good people
It's like you don't pay attention or know what a good person is.

I think at the end of the campaign, only Scanlan, Vax, Grog, and Pyke were good.

Percy was lawful neutral.
Vex was Chaotic Neutral. (stealing brooms)
Keyleth was chaotic stupid.

Who's the best at the table at staying in character? I think Liam and Travis.

There's a relatively small following around a few Star Trek Adventures games.

The biggest is one by Geek & Sundry called Shield of Tomorrow. It hasn't exactly been great in terms of narrative or play style, but that's the fault of the snowflake players and non-charismatic GM. Not to mention the SoT fanbase is a bunch of pronoun-using RP fags that have made a whole crew for the players' ship to pull from for NPCs. The kicker, though, is that recently the GM had to roll up some injuries and a death or two. The community flipped the fuck out that their characters were harmed, and the admins had to step in and tell people to knock it the fuck off. There's more problems than that with the show and community, but it'd take multiple posts to go through them all.

The one that gets posted at least once a week in /stg/ is STA: Ophion. The GM seems to really like "big" storylines like discovering Ringworlds and portals to other galaxies. Personally I think it would have been better set in the Star Trek Online timeline rather than in 2378, but there's at least some respect to canon nonetheless. Dunno about the community surrounding it though.

There's another game that gets posted in the SoT discord that's been going on for awhile, but I've never checked it out. Valkyrie Flight or some such.

Liam is great at staying in character.

Vex "worked off" the negative karma from said broom-stealing, and was returned to CG alignment around the time they finished dealing with the dragons.

Scanlan was probably CG, Vax started as TN and ended NG, Grog started CN and ended more TN, and Pike remained at NG for basically the entire adventure.

Travis, Sam, and Taliesin are probably the best at staying in character and trying to not metagame.

>and trying to not metagame.
Taliesin has literally said, "Wait, I wouldn't know that, nevermind" and made me adore him as a player. He's a lesson on how to not metagame, and I wish more players in my games would follow his example.

Scanlan I can agree on due mostly to hints of his group Robin hooding it up. Pyke was always good and never was around enough to prove otherwise, the rest were in it purely because it helped their family (Grog, Vex, Percy), they had no choice (Vax) or it was just expected of her/motivated by revenge for killing Vax (Keyleth).

Just because they put down an alignment doesn't mean any of them lived up to it in the end.

Travis did it once or twice as Grog as well also for the longest time you could see how annoyed he was that everyone was missing the obvious but Grog wouldn't have noticed so he didn't point it out. At the end he started skirting that line as much as possible.

>the rest were in it purely because it helped their family (Grog, Vex, Percy)
What does this even mean? Freeing a people from oppressive vampiric leadership, hunting down tyrannical dragons, battling a godlich for the fate of the realm, these are good acts.

Ok, so how would you align the currect campaing PCs?

I don't think any of them can even hope to ever be lawful, which kind of sucks desu, would be nice to have this change.

They're all on the Chaotic spectrum. Fjord maybe not so much.

Fjord so far is true neutral.

I was leaning towards Neutral Good. He WAS the only one pushing for a speedient solution to the captured humans, on top of saying things like "I thought we agreed to put PEOPLE over money?" (followed by "Okay maybe we didn't, but let's agree to it NOW").

During one of the more recent Talks episodes, Taliesin said that Molly actually has a pretty strong moral compass, but comes off as being a dick because he's a carnie. He said something to the effect of, "you don't fuck with good people." So for the most recent thing with the gnolls Molly was being played pretty straight and honest; he wanted to help the townsfolk because it was the right thing to do, and the coin is just a nice bonus.

>During one of the more recent Talks episodes
never watched the talks honestly.

>not Veeky Forums related

Please fuck off. Reported.

>Freeing a people from oppressive vampiric leadership,
>It's my home and I think it's time to take it back
Motivated by purely selfish reasons that just happened to help people. Along with having to clear their name after brutally murdering a group of bounty hunters with one having tried to flee.
>hunting down tyrannical dragons,
That their leader spawned from the portal near one of the tribes nearly wiping them out. Kept saying it was their duty, with one of them going full tard always saying it was their fault.
>battling a godlich for the fate of the realm
No choice in the matter because Vax boy sold his soul to the RQ. He didn't have an option in the matter and the rest weren't going to abandon him. I've never said they didn't do good acts, just that outside of two none of them are good people.

He has the potential but he was all too ready and willing to look the other way if Caleb and Nott wanted to try robbing the wagon train going by. Until Travis start asserting himself more in situations instead of going with the flow, he's hard to pin down. Especially with the admission that the voice change during the patron encounter was intentional.

Doing good things makes you a good person

Doing good things for selfish reasons does not. An "evil" person can easily still do a couple good things, it doesn't mean they are a good person.

But what "evil" have they done to make them not good people. Ignoring the fact that it sounds like you want them all to play Lawful Stupid Devotion Paladins who don't swear and give all their money to the church, the idea that Vox Machina, Heroes of the realm, saviors of an innumerable number of lives, aren't good people is simply ridiculous.

>Killed a fleeing person and joke about it
>Every time the issues are talked about it is we have to do this for x reason, not just because it's the right thing to do
>Couple members are outright willing to put everyone and everything in danger for their personal grudge
Also nice strawman about lawful stupid, no where have I mentioned any of bullshit you decided to spout than to say they aren't good people. They do it out of a feeling of obligation and commitment to each other not out of any desire to help others. A heartless bastard can save an innumerable number of lives, be hailed as a hero of the realm and still be a shitty person.

Hell for a great example of this look at the Clasp, they saved and help the people of Emon during the fighting. Not because they cared or were good people, but because it gained them something in the long run. Joe's character is another, he was after a very specific thing but still helped them fight Vecna, not because he was a good person but because it got him something he wanted.

Let's also not forget the groups hair brained scheme that allowed a sadistic Fey Lord to have access to the material plane at will, how many people will pay for that decision? How about them killing their own loved ones because Vecna knows they how quick to violence the group is?

Some of them are good people. Keyleth is not, she's killed hundreds of innocents.

Keyleth hated the clasp as well too.

Iirc doesn't she also try to cause trouble with them just because they're bad? Despite it being one of the only courses of action that would actually help the survivors?

>Adam's going to be the one running the show
So more totally-subtle! hints and storylines about how space Arabia is the best and that everyone should be inclusive.

Don't get me wrong, Adam as a person I generally don't have a problem with (aside form his stupid fucking haircut), but when he starts GMing or talking about GMing he (to me) becomes the stereotypical SJW everyone likes to boogeyman that is breaching the sacred walls of Traditional Gaming.

pike was downgraded to TN and her holy symbol cracked when she coup de grace'd a dark dwarf early in the first season

Thoughts on Matt Colville and his future dnd stream?

With a mace, that is a key part on that one.

I like Colville but my hopes are not high for the stream. A stream's entertainment value depends as much on the players as the GM, and I'm not confident in his players.

Who are his players?

Well, I'm assuming at least some of them will be the same as when he streamed before, and they weren't terribly interesting. I suppose they were relatively new players so maybe it'd get better, but still.

a mace of disruption to be specific
I'll give it a shot, I find him pretty likable.

Old Grandma Monk with a million grandchildren.
Creepy but inoffensive Drow warlock.
Dragonborn Narcissist (show description is pretty much dead on)
Wood Elf Shapeshifting Druid and token gay; still a fairly fun character.

Plot is broken into mini-contracts, with an overarching story and tie ins to the Acq Inc main show. Lots of great minor characters and reoccuring guest stars, including a Southern Accented Gentleman Werewolf, A deadly bard and Pat Rothfuss as an emo orc adopted son of the grandma that is multiclassing into every class in order to 'find himself.''

I enjoy it, and there's plenty of animatics to check out.

VM made the deal with that Fae Lord because they at least knew a BIT about what the Fae Lord would do if he regained access to the Material Plane (which was generally be a dick for the lolz), but compare that to a lich who completed a ritual to ascend to godhood and was one apocalyptic event away from becoming a literal god on earth and cement his newfound deity status, and would rule over the land with an iron fist and probably force the other gods into another war to get him off the material plane.

Sure, in 100, 200, maybe 1,000 years from now said Fae Lord will become a problem, but the only one who'll be around is Keyleth, and if the "legend" of VM inspires a new generation of adventurers, then perhaps the new kids can solve this problem they left behind.

Should I watch the first campaign of CR? Or is it too long to be worth the time?