Critical Role - Tabletop RPGs is serious business, man.

[Dr. Pasquale]

o... I gave you an "agree", but if being honest, the only woman in that pic that *doesn't* look like a tranny to me is the red head. I'm curious what your second one was.

Big tiddy latina didnt trigger any fight or flight reactions on me, although she does have a weird face.

On other news, Episode 3 of Campaign 3 started with 1 hour and a half of failing to open a door (Liam's character was basically stuck inside and in the dark doing nothing the whole time, dude was sulking a lot, pretty fun to watch him get made at other people being in the spotlight and getting "le natty 20"). Then they had a lame CR 1/2 fight against a big bad shadow dwarf and some rat people. Shit was lame and was done in 3 rounds, which, tbf, is Matt the Merciful's MO.

Final hour and a half of a long ass 5 hour session was some RPing and setup of future events. They got a cunt's hair away of naming their new group and it was cringe. Also, surprise surprise, turns out Travis' character is not his real one. They foreshadowed the fuck out of his death, it was so obvious to anyone watching and to all the players it completely ruined what could have been otherwise a nice final moment for a fun little character. He dies by getting "surprised" by the big bad dwarf in some alleway, didnt even get to roll initiative, Matt just flung some dice, went "Oh no! Seems like I got a total legit Nat 20, you dead bruh" and then everyone forced a surprised pikachu face out.

Campaign 2's dice cheating continues into this one. Weirdly enough, Liam seems to get multiple Nat 20s every single session and its hard to find a moment where he or danger hair end up rolling less then a 18-19. The sheer amount of 20s roled is a mathematical travesty.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

There's probably some autist there who documented the roll statistics for the campaigns, from there it will be easy to see if the dice are loaded.

 

[Dr. Pasquale]

There's probably some autist there who documented the roll statistics for the campaigns, from there it will be easy to see if the dice are loaded.

the folks at /crg/ are doing gods work

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

the folks at /crg/ are doing gods work

I don't even get it as a part of a show, you'd think the skew would be for both 1 and 20 considering that's the "fun" actions. But holy shit what's up with Travis?

 

[Armitage]

the folks at /crg/ are doing gods work

This makes it especially funny concerning how they say that part of the reason that Orion was let go was because he cheated on his rolls (not saying he shouldn't have been let go, but them stating this was (at least part of) the reason makes it quite funny)

 

[Reverend]

the folks at /crg/ are doing gods work

Did this with my last campaign. We had a guy join halfway through our campaign. He rolled the most 1s hands down that over someone that was playing for a year longer than him. Math is funny like that. Travis still fucking cheats.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Did this with my last campaign. We had a guy join halfway through our campaign. He rolled the most 1s hands down that over someone that was playing for a year longer than him. Math is funny like that. Travis still fucking cheats.

Technically you'd probably have some bias in your rolls if you use the same die a long time due to wear and tear over time, but the chance it will happen on natural 20 is, well.... 5%.

 

[Dr. Pasquale]

I don't even get it as a part of a show, you'd think the skew would be for both 1 and 20 considering that's the "fun" actions. But holy shit what's up with Travis?

Im biased towards Travis cuz hes the best player they have, but yeah some weird shit going on there.

This makes it especially funny concerning how they say that part of the reason that Orion was let go was because he cheated on his rolls (not saying he shouldn't have been let go, but them stating this was (at least part of) the reason makes it quite funny)

Half chub Orion and his persona non grata status in the show will never not be funny to me. The fact that he's being retroactively removed from the show's canon is the icing on the cake. The avarage dice shennanigans going around every session with Liam and Taliesin would put him to shame.

Did this with my last campaign. We had a guy join halfway through our campaign. He rolled the most 1s hands down that over someone that was playing for a year longer than him. Math is funny like that. Travis still fucking cheats.

All my campaigns are happening on roll20, so theres no dice fudging there, you get what you get. Still, we somehow have notoriously lucky and unlucky players. One guy somehow manages to always roll 8s and 10s. Whenever he rolls a 18 or above everybody knows thats the last one hell get until next session.

 

[Dang Woodchucks!]

I'm guessing the reason some of the EXU characters were recycled is that the players are attached to them and did not want the dumpster fire that was having an utter crap DM with no idea of how to run a plot, even with Mercer probably feeding her hooks and railroads behind-the-scenes, to be it for them.

Also, killing off the old guy in a) a cliffhanger and b) the third episode in? How's anyone supposed to care, didn't they basically just meet?

 

[Dr. Pasquale]

I'm guessing the reason some of the EXU characters were recycled is that the players are attached to them and did not want the dumpster fire that was having an utter crap DM with no idea of how to run a plot, even with Mercer probably feeding her hooks and railroads behind-the-scenes, to be it for them.

Also, killing off the old guy in a) a cliffhanger and b) the third episode in? How's anyone supposed to care, didn't they basically just meet?

Yeah, I liked Bertrand but 3 episodes is way too soon. His death was also very poorly scripted and executed, it came off awkward as hell. He should've went down in an actual combat instead of a fake nat 20 cutscene.

 

[Kyria the Great]

Yeah, I liked Bertrand but 3 episodes is way too soon. His death was also very poorly scripted and executed, it came off awkward as hell. He should've went down in an actual combat instead of a fake nat 20 cutscene.

Well him dying in a brutal fight would have givne him some dignity or perhaps from a particular poison if you want to really add mystery.

 

[UnKillFill]

the folks at /crg/ are doing gods work

That's definitely interesting and also kind of funny, but really isn't how statistics work.
For example, it is *theoretically* possible to flip a coin 1000 times and get heads every single time. That doesn't *necessarily* mean that the coin flipper cheated. (although if that does happen, I would admit that it's ok to express some doubt.)

I watched campaign 2, and I definitely remember Travis failing some fairly important rolls.

Anyway, assuming that this graph is accurate (and I have no reason to believe that it isn't) I don't see how it proves that Sam and Laura *didn't* cheat... (To be fair, I don't see how it proves that anybody, including Sam and Laura *did* cheat either.)
Particularly Sam. He got *significantly* more 10's than anybody else. Just because 10 is the median number on a d20 doesn't mean that the dice should be any more or less likely to land on it than any other number, and yet he got *significantly* more 10's than anybody else. I know you're looking at 20's and 1's to claim cheating, but 10 would have been a success on a lot of rolls (and was a lot of the time with Sam's crazy sneak attack modifiers.)
FWIW, I don't think that Sam cheated either, but I'm just saying- it's just as statistically likely to roll an abundance of 10's as it is to roll an abundance of 20's, or even 1's for that matter.

Also, Laura and Liam's rolls look close enough. Admittedly, he got more 20's and less 1's than she did, but that's literally the nature of luck and probability. If she didn't cheat, then I don't think he did either.

If you were really going to claim that deviation from the expected plateau of rolls means that cheating has occurred (and it fucking doesn't) then I would argue that the faggot looks like he cheated the least of all (even if he does have the least nat 1's of anybody.) His curve is still the flattest.

This makes it especially funny concerning how they say that part of the reason that Orion was let go was because he cheated on his rolls (not saying he shouldn't have been let go, but them stating this was (at least part of) the reason makes it quite funny)

I thought Orion got fired because he has (literal) CancerAIDS and nobody wanted to catch it from him.

 

[DicksOutForBurgers]

I remember getting pretty far into their second season but stopped because some of my friends said it gets pretty cringe and "woke" after awhile. What's the consensus on here? I'm bored and looking for something that I can use as background noise while I do other stuff.

 

[Zync]

I remember getting pretty far into their second season but stopped because some of my friends said it gets pretty cringe and "woke" after awhile. What's the consensus on here? I'm bored and looking for something that I can use as background noise while I do other stuff.

It's more woke than it was last season. Two characters announced their fucking pronouns when introduced, so if that's the kind of shit you want to watch have at it.

It's not even a D&D game anymore, it's a production that allows fans to influence the narrative and when your fans are an army of rabid Twitter/Tumblr kids your product fucking sucks. This point could be argued, but to me the shipping community absolutely influences the show and Molly being brought back was a direct result of how popular his design was.

The relationship between Beau and Yasha was ridiculous and didn't feel organic at all. And Jester just happened to get magically aged up to be appropriately old enough to be with Fjord.

And I didn't even watch it, but the recent totally legitimate natural 20 to kill a character that was painfully obvious to be temporary seals it. Shit is fake as hell now.

 

[DicksOutForBurgers]

It's more woke than it was last season. Two characters announced their fucking pronouns when introduced, so if that's the kind of shit you want to watch have at it.

It's not even a D&D game anymore, it's a production that allows fans to influence the narrative and when your fans are an army of rabid Twitter/Tumblr kids your product fucking sucks. This point could be argued, but to me the shipping community absolutely influences the show and Molly being brought back was a direct result of how popular his design was.

The relationship between Beau and Yasha was ridiculous and didn't feel organic at all. And Jester just happened to get magically aged up to be appropriately old enough to be with Fjord.

And I didn't even watch it, but the recent totally legitimate natural 20 to kill a character that was painfully obvious to be temporary seals it. Shit is fake as hell now.

Jesus fuck I'm glad I stopped watching then.

 

[Reverend]

It's more woke than it was last season. Two characters announced their fucking pronouns when introduced, so if that's the kind of shit you want to watch have at it.

It's not even a D&D game anymore, it's a production that allows fans to influence the narrative and when your fans are an army of rabid Twitter/Tumblr kids your product fucking sucks. This point could be argued, but to me the shipping community absolutely influences the show and Molly being brought back was a direct result of how popular his design was.

The relationship between Beau and Yasha was ridiculous and didn't feel organic at all. And Jester just happened to get magically aged up to be appropriately old enough to be with Fjord.

And I didn't even watch it, but the recent totally legitimate natural 20 to kill a character that was painfully obvious to be temporary seals it. Shit is fake as hell now.

If twitch wasn't around Critical Role would be on the SyFy channel in a heartbeat with how terrible and fake it is.

Honestly for folks wanting something more "natural" but with good production value: Matt Colville's Dusk is good substitute. Still has some moments but far less theatrical as Critical Role. Matt Colville used to be a Vidya Game and TTRPG writer and is making bank with his RPG books and shows with people who absolutely hate CR.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkVdb9Yr8fc05_VbAVfskCA

Give it a whirl, LMK what you think. I hate watching live streams of TTRPG games, it's not my thing.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

That's definitely interesting and also kind of funny, but really isn't how statistics work.
For example, it is *theoretically* possible to flip a coin 1000 times and get heads every single time. That doesn't *necessarily* mean that the coin flipper cheated. (although if that does happen, I would admit that it's ok to express some doubt.)

I watched campaign 2, and I definitely remember Travis failing some fairly important rolls.

Anyway, assuming that this graph is accurate (and I have no reason to believe that it isn't) I don't see how it proves that Sam and Laura *didn't* cheat... (To be fair, I don't see how it proves that anybody, including Sam and Laura *did* cheat either.)
Particularly Sam. He got *significantly* more 10's than anybody else. Just because 10 is the median number on a d20 doesn't mean that the dice should be any more or less likely to land on it than any other number, and yet he got *significantly* more 10's than anybody else. I know you're looking at 20's and 1's to claim cheating, but 10 would have been a success on a lot of rolls (and was a lot of the time with Sam's crazy sneak attack modifiers.)
FWIW, I don't think that Sam cheated either, but I'm just saying- it's just as statistically likely to roll an abundance of 10's as it is to roll an abundance of 20's, or even 1's for that matter.

Also, Laura and Liam's rolls look close enough. Admittedly, he got more 20's and less 1's than she did, but that's literally the nature of luck and probability. If she didn't cheat, then I don't think he did either.

If you were really going to claim that deviation from the expected plateau of rolls means that cheating has occurred (and it fucking doesn't) then I would argue that the faggot looks like he cheated the least of all (even if he does have the least nat 1's of anybody.) His curve is still the flattest.

It depends on the number of rolls in the graph, assuming it's several hundreds rolls it should start to look like a plateau.
With the nature of how you can cheat in dice (stack weight on the opposite end), having a delta on the nat 20 is suspicious as shit, while having one on the lesser numbers being more excusable.

 

[Dr. Pasquale]

I thought Orion got fired because he has (literal) CancerAIDS and nobody wanted to catch it from him.

Twas a great big mess of factors that got Orion fired and blacklisted from the show.

Theres the AIDS of course, but he was also a terrible player, did more spotlight hogging than Liam sometimes, cheated at dice, misread magic items to try and get an upper hand over Matt, and, on top of it all, dude was addicted to meth. I guess a lot of his shitty beheavior and touchy feeliness with female players can be attributed to that.

For a while, even tho he was gone from the show, the party still seemed to be at good terms with him. The table got somewhat emotional when they found his frozen cadaver in a later session and even decided to build a memorial for him. Nowadays tho, with his continuous scummy behavior and him shit talking the show on twitter, the relations have completely soured.

His "dragonborn country" or whatever the fuck it was is basically completely gone from the lore. Tiberius doesnt get mentioned anywhere in new shit, and as I said before, is being completely written out of the Amazon show. You cant even mention his name on the subreddit anymore. With how big the show got and how much bank everyone involved is getting, I can only imagine how butthurt he feels.

 

[Dr. Pasquale]

Episode 4 was probably the worst one so far. It was mostly composed of RP and boring investigation. Travis is nowhere to be seen and I'm starting to think it'll take a while for him to return. They spent the first hour and a half looking for his corpse and then mourning over him, even tho they really only knew him for about 2 days (funny enough Talespin was the only one to mention this properly).
> Then they go after clues for the dwarf guy who killed him
> Investigate a place, find out more about him and a 1200 ft hole inside a tavern
> Go to another place to ask another NPC what they know
> Go to another place to ask another NPC what they know
> Go back to orc guy to ask him what he knows about new info
> Mourn Bertrand again and namedrop the fuck out CR1 to get nostalgia points and to hype up the Amazon show
> Go ask the enby character what xyr know
> Go ask another NPC dude called "The Shadow Baker" what he knows
> Get captured by weirdos cuz they asked the wrong questions and Laura used her mind talking powers too much
There, you have all that happened in a 4h session. They're certainly longer than the avarage CR2 episode now that theyre all pre recorded, but my god theyre slow as shit.

Character wise, Sam's still good, but the happy robot schtick will only go so far. Marisha and Ashley have somehow turned a complete new leaf after the Beau/Yasha disaster and have now possibly made the 2 best characters. Laura is just boring, she has a southern accent, thats it. Diversity hire guy should become regular because hes a pretty good player and he can RP well. Liam continues to be a spotlight hogging whore with broken dice. Talespin continues to be shit. Remove both of them and the campaign would improve 50%.

Overall, I'd say this is a better start than CR2. Merciful Matt is no longer afraid to railroad them as much as is necessary and it seems that the party are already on track to take part in the first big arc, but who knows.

 

[The Demon Pimp of Razgriz]

Beau/Yasha disaster

Disaster? What is this disaster of which you speak?