Critical Role - Tabletop RPGs is serious business, man.

[PaladinBoo]

This is when the DM (should) have a BBEG show up with a massive army, burn a few of the PC's home towns down, and threaten to bring upon a world ending apocalypse.

I get you need to cater to your players desires too, but the DM spent perhaps dozens of hours working on a campaign, you can at least grab a plot thread every now and again (you want to start a bar? Fine, I'll accommodate, but you better be ready to let the Druid Plain Shift you to the next plot point when it starts calling). This goes double for a show like Critical Role, yeah the downtime stuff is fun, I'll admit, but it looses a lot of its charm when it's not broken up by action, the occasional fight, or a looming and consistent threat in the background.

This is why I keep saying campaign 1 is my favorite, from pretty much the beginning it had a goal, an end game, a mad lich god threatening to tear the world asunder. Without a clear end goal, at least in a D&D game, all people are going to get is a bunch of dicking around.

The big reason for that is that Critical Role is now part of WoTC and thus more corporate. When it was just Matt and his friends playing D&D with no corporate backing they were allowed to be more edgy and experiment. Now that they are corporate they are no longer allowed to be edgy or experiment. They have to follow a set of corporate guidelines, which, in turn, makes them and their brand very stale, by the numbers and safe. Modern corporations today are more or less the kiss of death for franchises. These corporate suits have no idea what made something so popular and instead try to pander to as many people as they can in order to maximize their profits instead of pandering to actual fans.

 

[Wingnut]

The big reason for that is that Critical Role is now part of WoTC and thus more corporate. When it was just Matt and his friends playing D&D with no corporate backing they were allowed to be more edgy and experiment. Now that they are corporate they are no longer allowed to be edgy or experiment. They have to follow a set of corporate guidelines, which, in turn, makes them and their brand very stale, by the numbers and safe. Modern corporations today are more or less the kiss of death for franchises. These corporate suits have no idea what made something so popular and instead try to pander to as many people as they can in order to maximize their profits instead of pandering to actual fans.

I don't think it's WoTC pushing any hard guidelines on them. They created a tugboat of danger hairs and mentally ill twitter people who will throw money at everything they put out and defend them to the death. Why wouldn't you slow down your campaign to a crawl and shoehorn in wokeshit to pander and milk them? Not even to mention that I'm pretty confident a majority of the cast are true believers.

 

[A Useless Fish]

I don't think it's WoTC pushing any hard guidelines on them. They created a tugboat of danger hairs and mentally ill twitter people who will throw money at everything they put out and defend them to the death. Why wouldn't you slow down your campaign to a crawl and shoehorn in wokeshit to pander and milk them? Not even to mention that I'm pretty confident a majority of the cast are true believers.

I have seen it speculated that the CR gang are just going in circles, as they wait for Matt's latest WotC book to be published. While sounding a bit far fetched, it's publication date is nearly here, and it's as good a reason as any at this tage as to why nothing seems to be happening.

 

[Trenchgunner]

I don't think it's WoTC pushing any hard guidelines on them. They created a tugboat of danger hairs and mentally ill twitter people who will throw money at everything they put out and defend them to the death. Why wouldn't you slow down your campaign to a crawl and shoehorn in wokeshit to pander and milk them? Not even to mention that I'm pretty confident a majority of the cast are true believers.

I would love to know if/how this is affecting WotC's bottom line.

I know that I'm only buying stuff in inverse proportion to how woke it is, and I'm sure I'm not alone in that.

 

[Mega Black]

I would love to know if/how this is affecting WotC's bottom line.

I know that I'm only buying stuff in inverse proportion to how woke it is, and I'm sure I'm not alone in that.

A running trend with woke media is that they get really cagey about sales figures. Things usually just get quietly shelved. It'll be interesting to see how Wizards is doing in 5 years, if they're even around at all.

 

[Andthensomeguy]

I would love to know if/how this is affecting WotC's bottom line.

I know that I'm only buying stuff in inverse proportion to how woke it is, and I'm sure I'm not alone in that.

If I had to guess, probably a bit, but not hard enough for them to care just yet.

MTG is their biggest money maker right now, and while I imagine D&D does bring in a good bit of revenue, a small-to-moderate loss in sales in that area won't cause them to panic so long as MTG keeps bringing in the big bucks.

Kind of like how Blizzard didn't care too much that WoW was going down the tube during the mid 2010's because Overwatch and Hearthstone were practically printing money. Only when those games finally started to drop off in popularity did Blizzard start loosing its shit. When that happens, from what I've seen at least, companies end up doing one of two things; 1. Go back to doing what made you popular in the first place and putting some damn effort into what you make -or- 2. Double down, ignore the complaints of the fans, and stay the course in the vain hope that, somehow, things will do a 180 and everything will work out in the end.

 

[Wingnut]

They sent out a new newsletter today and this blurb made me laugh.


"composed almost entirely of women and non-binary writers"
Shortly followed with "Led by: (List of 3 white men)".

 

[PaladinBoo]

They sent out a new newsletter today and this blurb made me laugh.
Ver archivo adjunto 3080689

"composed almost entirely of women and non-binary writers"
Shortly followed with "Led by: (List of 3 white men)".

LMAO! "Our product is made by mostly women and troons so that makes it good!" I hate this so much. If a product is good it will speak for itself. Nobody will care if the writers are women or troons so long as the product is enjoyable and well made. If your product has to be elevated by the genitals and gender identity of the writers instead of the quality than that tells people that the product is not very good.
Off topic but as someone who frequents the local Barnes & Noble at least once a week it is funny seeing D&D and Critical Role products be shelved in the same shelves as manga instead of the fantasy and sci-fi section.
"Hey kids! You love isekai don't you? In that case you will love D&D and Critical Role! It is just as good, if not better than manga! Please buy our product!"
You would think that if both D&D and Critical Role are doing so well that they wouldn't be trying to piggy back off the popularity of manga.

 

[Pargon]

LMAO! "Our product is made by mostly women and troons so that makes it good!" I hate this so much. If a product is good it will speak for itself. Nobody will care if the writers are women or troons so long as the product is enjoyable and well made. If your product has to be elevated by the genitals and gender identity of the writers instead of the quality than that tells people that the product is not very good.
Off topic but as someone who frequents the local Barnes & Noble at least once a week it is funny seeing D&D and Critical Role products be shelved in the same shelves as manga instead of the fantasy and sci-fi section.
"Hey kids! You love isekai don't you? In that case you will love D&D and Critical Role! It is just as good, if not better than manga! Please buy our product!"
You would think that if both D&D and Critical Role are doing so well that they wouldn't be trying to piggy back off the popularity of manga.

The common viewpoint is that in terms of widely-consumed media the East has been beating the pants off the West at nearly every turn other than The Mouse, and Disney’s biggest earners for the last ten years have been skating by on Memberberries.

Western media isn’t creatively bankrupt but if you hold it up to things like anime, manga and Korean television it’s hard not to come off with that impression.

The same sundae you’ve been eating for the last twenty-five years isn’t made suddenly novel with the addition of a few differently-colored sprinkles.

 

[PaladinBoo]

The common viewpoint is that in terms of widely-consumed media the East has been beating the pants off the West at nearly every turn other than The Mouse, and Disney’s biggest earners for the last ten years have been skating by on Memberberries.

Western media isn’t creatively bankrupt but if you hold it up to things like anime, manga and Korean television it’s hard not to come off with that impression.

The same sundae you’ve been eating for the last twenty-five years isn’t made suddenly novel with the addition of a few differently-colored sprinkles.

True, one of the biggest problems with companies like Disney and other corporations like WoTC is the skating on "nostalgia". Everything now is either a remake, reimagining or a sequel. People, especially younger audiences, I think are craving something different. New stories and new ideas. Western companies just aren't doing that now for some reason. It isn't a lack of ideas. Just go to your local bookstore and head over to the mythology and folklore section and you will find a whole bunch of stories that you can get your ideas from. From what I heard the reason why is because companies are scared of trying new ideas for fear of failing and losing money. Instead of taking a risk and making a big reward they rather play it safe and have a guaranteed profit. Entertainment is a risky business. Sometimes taking a risk nets you a billion dollars. Other times you end up losing half a billion.

 

[Chilson]

True, one of the biggest problems with companies like Disney and other corporations like WoTC is the skating on "nostalgia". Everything now is either a remake, reimagining or a sequel. People, especially younger audiences, I think are craving something different. New stories and new ideas. Western companies just aren't doing that now for some reason. It isn't a lack of ideas. Just go to your local bookstore and head over to the mythology and folklore section and you will find a whole bunch of stories that you can get your ideas from. From what I heard the reason why is because companies are scared of trying new ideas for fear of failing and losing money. Instead of taking a risk and making a big reward they rather play it safe and have a guaranteed profit. Entertainment is a risky business. Sometimes taking a risk nets you a billion dollars. Other times you end up losing half a billion.

Its also due to increasingly nepotistic hiring practices. They keep hiring Gender trash morons and their rich uncle's son to make garbage content. To no one's surprise, both populations are creatively bankrupt losers who think writing bad fanfiction cancerously attached to tentpole franchises created by actual visionaries will please audiences.

Of course they almost always end in complete disaster pieces that are lucky to make back their budgets, yet no one is punished because doing so is -phobic or pissing off the relative of someone with real power. People with actual talent are simply passed over or unfairly blamed for failures because they were born the wrong gender/skin tone, lack a mental illness or born poor. So much for the "equality" these morons constantly try to say they represent.

Critical Role and D&D are squarely in that boat. And by the looks of both their recent endeavors, they are paddling on gladly towards ruin with blind mentally challenged captains at the head.

 

[PaladinBoo]

Its also due to increasingly nepotistic hiring practices. They keep hiring Gender trash morons and their rich uncle's son to make garbage content. To no one's surprise, both populations are creatively bankrupt losers who think writing bad fanfiction cancerously attached to tentpole franchises created by actual visionaries will please audiences.

Of course they almost always end in complete disaster pieces that are lucky to make back their budgets, yet no one is punished because doing so is -phobic or pissing off the relative of someone with real power. People with actual talent are simply passed over or unfairly blamed for failures because they were born the wrong gender/skin tone, lack a mental illness or born poor. So much for the "equality" these morons constantly try to say they represent.

Critical Role and D&D are squarely in that boat. And by the looks of both their recent endeavors, they are paddling on gladly towards ruin with blind mentally challenged captains at the head.

Another thing too that I watched from Film Courage is how writers today just get their ideas from modern pop culture. Video games, movies, and tv shows, Nobody gets their ideas from books, classic movies or traveling the world anymore. A good example to me would be the Fallout New Vegas mod The Frontier. That was a mod made by people, who were all rapid SJW gender trash, who all wanted to get into the industry and it highlighted to me just how these people have never had a original idea in their life. The mod was either filled with degenerate fetishes, their personal politics and every single bit of pop culture they consumed in the past 20 years. It is no different with people who are actually in the industry. The Wokists have never had an original idea in their life. They are, in a sense, illiterate.
That is not a slight towards Mercer. To Mercer's credit he actually comes across as someone who has had an original idea. Critical Role wouldn't have been as successful as it is if Mercer didn't have a sense of creativity and originality. But like many in WoTC he has drank deep of the Woke Kool-Aid. So far it hasn't ended in disaster for him. Will it though? Time will tell.

 

[Random Internet Person]

Apologies for lack of new episodes.

And the CR team is also celebrating!

 

[Wingnut]

Apologies for lack of new episodes. https://youtube.com/watch?v=rMPp8dP1OC0https://youtube.com/watch?v=rMPp8dP1OC0https://youtube.com/watch?v=O6-NaqWorI0https://youtube.com/watch?v=c66mDHckyoM
And the CR team is also celebrating!
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Cz1Ma9OzbUs

Excluding the group photo, those thumbnails look like "calling Barney at 3 am (Gone Wrong)" clickbait thumbnails.
They are exceptionally cringey.

 

[A Useless Fish]

Excluding the group photo, those thumbnails look like "calling Barney at 3 am (Gone Wrong)" clickbait thumbnails.
They are exceptionally cringey.

Everything about them has become fucking cringey.

Also, it looks like the peeps who thought the campaign proper would start with the 7th Anniversary were wrong. It was just four and a half hours of nothing.

I wonder how many people actually went to movie theatres to see that? Jesus Christ, everything has become so corporate, dull, and disappointing.

 

[The Ugly One]

If I had to guess, probably a bit, but not hard enough for them to care just yet.

MTG is their biggest money maker right now, and while I imagine D&D does bring in a good bit of revenue, a small-to-moderate loss in sales in that area won't cause them to panic so long as MTG keeps bringing in the big bucks.

Kind of like how Blizzard didn't care too much that WoW was going down the tube during the mid 2010's because Overwatch and Hearthstone were practically printing money. Only when those games finally started to drop off in popularity did Blizzard start loosing its shit. When that happens, from what I've seen at least, companies end up doing one of two things; 1. Go back to doing what made you popular in the first place and putting some damn effort into what you make -or- 2. Double down, ignore the complaints of the fans, and stay the course in the vain hope that, somehow, things will do a 180 and everything will work out in the end.

It's very hard for companies to do a hard 180 and keep it going that way. Look at what happened to COD. Its sales declined from Ghosts through Black Ops 4, MW2019 turned it around...and they went right back to the same retarded shit that sells like crap, with Vanguard being the wokest and dumbest COD yet.

This is because the only way you get to the point where your product is getting ruined is that people with bad ideas have infested your organization, and they can't easily be rooted out. I can pretty much guarantee that there's nobody at WotC who will openly say, "Maybe we shouldn't put Gay Everything so front and center in our content. In fact, we did really well when sexuality was left out of the 5e game manual completely. This seems to drive customers away," because saying so will get you fired.

 

[Mega Black]

Another thing too that I watched from Film Courage is how writers today just get their ideas from modern pop culture. Video games, movies, and tv shows, Nobody gets their ideas from books, classic movies or traveling the world anymore.

This actually impacted New Vegas itself, if you'll believe it. Sawyer mentioned once that when talking with the team he mentioned The Postman as a source of inspiration for New Vegas that most of the new developers had no idea what he was talking about. For the unaware, The Postman is a post apocalyptic dystopian novel about a mailman. The new generation of millenial talent entering the creative sphere have never touched a book outside of whatever woke trash their gender studies professor made them read, likely some YA coming of age garbage starring a latinx troon in an all-white neighborhood.

People don't go out to make things from their own experiences anymore, they go out to create things that are like other things the media told them is okay to like. Marvel. Gay people. Critical Role. Originality has always been a bit of a farce when it came to raw content, but now what we have is a lack of original experiences and thought fucking things up too. Everything has been distilled down into a safe rainbow haired soup, and this is a huge part of why Critical Role has been so fucking TERRIBLE past campaign one. The entire table is so scared of getting cancelled that they don't have any fun at all anymore.

I wonder how many people actually went to movie theatres to see that? Jesus Christ, everything has become so corporate, dull, and disappointing.

I think a lot of Critical Role's original appeal was the friend simulator aspect, part of the reason they've fallen off is because of how phoned in everything feels. It's no longer like you're watching a raunchy and fun DnD campaign, because what you're actually watching is a five hour advertisement.

I can pretty much guarantee that there's nobody at WotC who will openly say, "Maybe we shouldn't put Gay Everything so front and center in our content. In fact, we did really well when sexuality was left out of the 5e game manual completely. This seems to drive customers away," because saying so will get you fired.

This is really why wokeism is so insidious. It becomes impossible to speak out against it without losing everything you have and becoming a total social pariah. There's no proper way to say "I don't think we should include all this gay shit." without it being a direct reflection of you being a racist, homophobic, piece of human filth that despises everything that isn't a direct reflection of the straight, white male ubermensch.

Which is true in my case but you know, that's just me.

 

[PaladinBoo]

This actually impacted New Vegas itself, if you'll believe it. Sawyer mentioned once that when talking with the team he mentioned The Postman as a source of inspiration for New Vegas that most of the new developers had no idea what he was talking about. For the unaware, The Postman is a post apocalyptic dystopian novel about a mailman. The new generation of millenial talent entering the creative sphere have never touched a book outside of whatever woke trash their gender studies professor made them read, likely some YA coming of age garbage starring a latinx troon in an all-white neighborhood.

I read The Postman. Damn good read. If you love New Vegas you will enjoy the book. Reading it you can see the inspiration that Sawyer had for New Vegas. Tim Cain also talked about this being a problem too. When making The Outer Worlds he brought a whole list of books he wanted to use as inspiration and the creative team looked at him like he was a pariah. They told him that they never read any of those books before and wanted their inspiration to be current pop culture movies and other video games like Borderlands. In the past, creators used to get ideas from books and pulp fiction. Not anymore though. Millennials and Zoomers get all their ideas from whatever pop culture crap they consumed onscreen or whatever gender queer crap their activist professor shoved down their throat. It is no surprise that recent studies have shown that 54-58% of the population in America only has a 6th grade reading level. These people are, in a sense, intellectually illiterate and it shows in the content they create.

 

[Random Internet Person]

I’ll be honest, I’m one of those guys who thinks inspiration can come from anywhere if you’re willing to see where it takes you, and while I won’t be someone to say “everything has been done before, nothing is truly original”, I think one thing I CAN say is that there’s some things that show blatant creative bankruptcy and a desperate attempt to cash in on fads, like live action Disney or The Emoji Movie. Or whatever gets you into the cool kids’ club where people will like you.

As for D and D and Critical Role, I’m not well versed in those, but I think that TTRPGs by design allow for creativity since the guidebooks and whatnot are more for jumping off points than anything from what I’ve seen. But I guess the CR has cracked the code for east money, so maybe this TTRPG scene will end up having a phase where they’re just as creatively bankrupt and risk averse as Hollywood.

But honestly, I think the issue is that there’s a big dung-heaping pile of garbage. And nobody’s willing to Wade through the shit to find something at least decent. That or people are afraid of adding to the pile. Or too desperate to get in with the movers and shakers that they won’t bother just doing their own thing, even if the results could be less than ideal.

The obsession over image and PR is a real pain, isn’t it?

 

[WhatIsThePunchline]

I've been watching CR season 2 because well... I think it's somewhat entertaining, if frustrating.

I watched like, 20-30 episodes of the first season a couple of years back before giving up on it. Up to like 13 on this one.

Thoughts sofar:

Roleplaying
Sam Riegel is the best roleplayer by far. Most in character, most coherent backstory, most aware of what's going on, certainly plays smarter than anyone else in the room.
Liam is very good as well. Caleb is a nice character and he seems very in tune with it. He also plays him smart.
The others aren't great. I'm much less annoyed by Marisha's monk than expected. It helps she seems to genuinely enjoy the character. Travis and Laura are also okay. Travis isn't very active and his character isn't that interesting but he plays it ok when he needs to. Jester is a bit of a gimmick character but Laura can pull her off ok and will occasionally do seriously clever stuff. They're not great but they are passable. Occasionally they pull of something fun.
Talesin is clearly not liking his character, can't get it to work, and when he tries to do something he usually isn't that aware of what's going on. Part of the problem I think is he tried to make a 'cool debonair' swashbuckler. A high social status character. Those are always much more difficult to pull of than something low status. Especially in a campaign where the premise is clearly to play as misfits.

The fights are boring as fuck. Dnd is not that fun of a combat system, especially not watching on stream, especially whenever Mercer fudges things to keep the characters alive which happens pretty often. I can't blame him to much for it though, as he has to because it's a stream and it's earning them millions of dollars and in this cause murdering the characters would absolutely kill the stream. Honestly would be better if the fights where rarer but had I like, higher stakes or mattered or somesuch. Or if they houseruled some alternative to death.

No idea how long I'll keep watching it.