D&D General Critical Role: Overrated, Underrated, or Goldilocks?

[Oofta]

My take short version:
When I say that CR looks to me like a group of friends getting together and having fun playing D&D what I'm really talking about is the feeling of a shared experience that they seem to have and the content of the play. The "polish" of the game is on a different level, but what they actually do during the game looks a lot like my home game. I don't think it being entertainment doesn't mean that it can't also be a D&D game, they aren't mutually exclusive.

Longer version:

The Mercer effect: nobody should try or expect to be an exact copy. Do your own thing, don't expect to hit the ground running and be a professional DM. See Mercer's own take on this that others have posted.

Matt Mercer's voice acting/characterization: The guy is amazing. But I do learn from him. There are times when I'm watching while exercising, biking or doing chores when I'll stop the show and try to figure out how he does that voice. I'm not saying I'm in his league (few people are) but he does much of it with a relatively small handful of accents along with voice modulation (?) and mannerisms. In part it's how he combines them that makes characters unique.

On that note, I like to do funny voices and I like to think I've gotten decent at it, but I've also worked at it for years. Yes, that sometimes means I'm in a room or in the car listening to someone and mimicking how they speak trying to get the beat and pattern down.

One of the things I've learned (that I mentioned in the other thread) is that since watching CR I've felt more comfortable acting out. Even if that means pretending to be a giant gorilla complete with grunts, vocalizations and screeches.

Dwarven Forge and set pieces: I assume this is where a fair chunk of Matt's prep time goes. The set pieces are cool to look at, but other people have posted pictures of similar things they've done for their home games.

I personally don't care for this kind of stuff, I've tried some options but they just don't add enough to the game for me to justify the prep time or cost.

The players: They're entertaining and more charismatic/eloquent than the majority of players. Are they acting? Of course they are. Isn't that the point of a role play heavy game? That you get to act and play pretend?

But if I look at Jester as an example, she doesn't really have a deep backstory. The fact that the Traveller was really just an Archfey seemed to have come from Matt. I've thrown similar twists at my own players.

The overall game: There are little things that bug me though. Like every time I have to stop myself from yelling at the screen "Grapple can be opposed by athletics or acrobatics! It's not a strength check!" Or saying "If you used initiative cards, it would be a ton easier!"

On the other hand his stories are very cool. He has his own custom world, that obviously has more detailed exposition than most people since there's a literal book. But for what matters? What the players actually interact with? Not that different in scale than my own homebrew world.

Conclusion: If I take an older car and detail it, give it an awesome paint job, make it look all bright and shiny, have I really changed the car? Or is it fundamentally the same car? Are people that play high school or college (American) football playing the same game as the NFL?

Well, yes and no. Same way with CR. The substance of what they do, the types of activities they undertake, the campaigns they participate aren't that different from my own campaigns. Strip away Matt's voice acting and his unlimited Dwarven Forge budget (and time to set it up) and I've been in campaigns where the personal interactions that they have, the type of character development I've seen look familiar.

There's a whole spectrum of games and what actual game play looks like. For example to say that they are never distracted is not true, I catch people looking at cell phones under the table or seeming to browse the web during games now and then. Most of the time my players are as engaged as the CR players although I realize that my experience is hardly universal.

Is it entertainment? Yes. Do I also play my own home game for entertainment? Yes. Would their games look different if there was no audience? To a certain degree, it's likely. Are their games fundamentally different because they have an audience? Based on what I've seen, not really.

It's funny. People say that performance is different when doing it for yourself versus doing it for an audience. While I'm not a professional by any means I have done solo performances in front of 100+ people and to me? Honestly? It felt pretty much the same to me. I was still singing "Bless This House" whether I was in my parent's bedroom (my room was too small and my brother's aim too good) or in an auditorium.

But anyway, now I'm just rambling. If I'm DMing, I'm having fun. I'm also doing for mutual entertainment with 6 other people. I just don't think it would be fundamentally different if it was being recorded.

 

[Charlaquin]

But if I look at Jester as an example, she doesn't really have a deep backstory. The fact that the Traveller was really just an Archfey seemed to have come from Matt. I've thrown similar twists at my own players.

Nah, it was Laura’s idea. She wanted to play a Fey pact warlock initially but changed the character to a cleric because Travis wanted to play a warlock.

 

[BRayne]

Nah, it was Laura’s idea. She wanted to play a Fey pact warlock initially but changed the character to a cleric because Travis wanted to play a warlock.

Well Jester started out as a oneshot tiefling trickery cleric to the Traveler as seen here, Laura's campaign two character started out as a water genasi warlock of the archfey Artagan. The Jester that appears in campaign two is a combination of those ideas.

 

[Oofta]

Let me stop you right there. It seems like you are equating “acting” to “not playing D&D.” Let me assure you, this is nor something the folks saying CR is different from home games are doing. Both are absolutely 100% D&D. It’s D&D for yourself and your friends vs. D&D for an audience (and also for yourself and your friends), not real D&D vs. pretend D&D.

Yes, everyone pretends sometimes. That’s not the same thing as acting, and a lot of actors take great offense to their craft being called “pretending.”

I would have no clue what actors find offensive, I certainly didn't mean anything by it. What experience I have is with local productions. I also assume there's a difference between improv acting and acting to a script. Or not.

In any case, then I would say that there are times when I'm acting like I'm in a better mood than I actually am when I DM. If I'm role playing, I'm doing my best at what I would call improv method acting. Trying to put myself in someone else's shoes and think like them, talk like them, respond like them. Kind of like when Fjord threw his sword from Ukatoa into the lava which felt like a spontaneous in-person decision. Is a professional actor going to be better at that than I am? In presentation, quite probably. In how they got there, or what it means to them? Heck if I know what goes on in anyone else's head but I don't see why.

But to me, scale, or polish, or whatever you want to call it doesn't change the fundamental nature of what is being done. On the other hand there is no objective standard so I'm not sure I see a reason to continue arguing about it.

 

[Charlaquin]

I would have no clue what actors find offensive, I certainly didn't mean anything by it.

No, I figured you didn’t intend to insult anyone. Just giving you a heads up, a lot of actors really don’t like when people call it “pretending.”

What experience I have is with local productions. I also assume there's a difference between improv acting and acting to a script. Or not.

They’re different skills, for sure, though you generally need both.

In any case, then I would say that there are times when I'm acting like I'm in a better mood than I actually am when I DM. If I'm role playing, I'm doing my best at what I would call improv method acting. Trying to put myself in someone else's shoes and think like them, talk like them, respond like them. Kind of like when Fjord threw his sword from Ukatoa into the lava which felt like a spontaneous in-person decision. Is a professional actor going to be better at that than I am? In presentation, quite probably. In how they got there, or what it means to them? Heck if I know what goes on in anyone else's head but I don't see why.

Generally yes, it will be different. Again, having a genuine emotional reaction to an artificial scenario is an art that actors dedicate their lives to perfecting. There’s trying to imitate the behavior you imagine the character would display, and then there’s actually experiencing the emotions you imagine the character would be experiencing and acting based on those genuine emotions. That’s why a lot of actors don’t like it when people call it pretending. They’re not pretending, they’re really feeling it. The good ones*, anyway.

*That is to say, the ones who are good at the Stanislavskian method. There are of course other schools of thought and other techniques, which can also be done well or poorly

But to me, scale, or polish, or whatever you want to call it doesn't change the fundamental nature of what is being done. On the other hand there is no objective standard so I'm not sure I see a reason to continue arguing about it.

No, scale or polish doesn’t change the fundamental nature of what’s being done, but doing it for an audience absolutely does.

 

[Oofta]

....
doing it for an audience absolutely does.

You keep making that assertion as if it were fact. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. I've given speeches/lectures in front of 10 friends and similar speech/lecture in front of several hundred people*. As I posted earlier I've done solos in an empty room and in front of 100+ people. It didn't really anything change for me. While it wasn't acting, it was in sense a performance.

I don't know what it's like to be in CR cast's shoes. I don't know how much of a difference they feel (obviously there's some). I don't think it would feel that different to me because there is no immediate audience. In a convention with hundreds of cheering fans? Yeah, that would be different and I see a difference in how the cast responds and acts when they're doing a show at a convention. But after I got used to the mics, the cameras, the production aspect of it? I dunno. I think I'd just be playing the game and for the most part forget about the cameras.

But I don't see a fundamental difference between what they do and what I do in my home campaign in style or substance. That's all.

*It was kind of a weird experience because there were probably more people in the auditorium than in my home town.

 

[ReshiIRE]

I have found from my experience that whether an audience affects you and your performance varies wildly from person to person, especially if the audience is in person or not.

I do not have as impressive experience as either Oofta or Charlaquin in terms of speaking to an audience or on stage, but I have generally found that I always try to keep my performance as consistent as possible whether I am doing it front of a small audience designed to help me collect my thoughts or tweak my performance, or to practice for a performance with other actors, and in the about a hundred or so person audiences I have performed to in amateur teenage and adult stage plays (as in age, not in theme). I haven't felt the need to modify much and generally stick to practice and plan. I haven't really gotten stage nerves... at-least back then (my mental health and anxiety have increased since then).

I thought this would be important to mention as this helps inform my perspective on Critical Role. I generally lean more towards what Oofta believes - that Cirtical Role, for the most part, is a regular D&D game played by passionate actors for fun that is also a business and broadcast to an audience. And I think part of what informs that for me is that in my amateur experience, an audience doesn't change much for me... and since we're not in any of the heads of any of the Critical Role players, I cannot judge whether it does that for them... so I lean more towards what I see and how this matches up with my experience of roleplaying games.

 

[OB1]

As briefly as I can, with the understanding that brevity is the antithesis of me:

1. I think that livestreams, in toto, are an unabashed positive for the hobby. They drive increased interest and keep the hobby relevant to a much wider swath of people.

2. I'm not a CR or livestream fan, and I don't watch them myself (other than sampling to try and understand what the fuss was about). Not because I'm not super-impressed by them, but simply because I lack the time and find that I have other uses. Mostly, reading and watching random low and high culture so I can make long incomprehensible posts that vaguely allude to those things. Wait until my magnum opus on how the Birthright is really just the Wacky WallWalker of D&D.

3. When I did sample CR, what came across to me was the sheer amount of talent at the table. I was shocked at how good they were able to make it for an audience! Not only did they make a product that entertained, they did so while making it look ... effortless. To me, that has always been the mark of extreme skill (and work).

4. I don't think that the debates over whether it is, or isn't "real D&D" or whatever that might mean are particularly productive- they are obviously playing the game with rules and dice and all of that. But having talented professional performers playing a game for an audience ... is so very different than what most people at home are doing. We can all imagine ourselves doing that, maybe, but we don't actually do this because we aren't playing for this external audience, and because we generally don't have decades of training at acting, improv, and years of credits as a professional.

5. I think it is helpful to remember that divide; to state the obvious, just because you're playing the same game, doesn't mean ... you're playing the same game. If you give Gordon Ramsay or Alain Ducasse the same ingredients and recipe as you, and everyone cooks ... then you're probably going to end up with different dishes. Here, when people have spent their lives (school, clubs, work, so much put into it) and are so good that they can make a living as performers, and you ask them to entertain an audience, they will necessarily end up with a product that is different than what we will end up with at home.

And that's not a bad thing! That's truly amazing. It is a massive tribute to the skill of Mercer & Co. that they are so skilled that they have taken something that most people would view as unwatchable (other people playing D&D) and imbued it with the drama and pathos that they've turned it into an empire.

Ah! I actually agree with all of this! I was tripped up on point 5 in your previous posts, but get what you're saying now. From my own experience of first listening to the show (on my 3 hour LA commute) and then binge watching the entire 2 campaigns during Covid lockdown (so much extra free time, so little to do) here is what I've gotten out of it.

1. Entertainment - to me CR is better entertainment with a better story than most of what is on TV
2. Engagement - Thinking about what I like and don't about what the DM and players do. Imagining how I would rule in certain situations for my group. Looking up rules and monsters and deepening my knowledge of the game. It's something that I can't do while I'm actually playing or running a game, as my attention is focused on what I'm doing. It's hard to be reflexive while playing.
3. Inspiration - Seeing people do some things better than I ever could and challenging myself to be better. Not to have my game be like CR, but to make my game better for my players. Sometimes that's by imitating, sometimes it's by steering clear of things that I might like on the show, but don't think would work on my end, sometimes it's just seeing a monster used in a way I'd never thought of. But it's all about making my game better, not trying to imitate CR.

Where I think we may disagree is that I strongly believe that getting better at any art form is a combination of the work you put into the craft itself, as well as exposing yourself to other artists, especially the ones that are far better than you, even if your goal is just to entertain a group of 4 or 5 friends, and not an audience of thousands.

 

[Charlaquin]

I have found from my experience that whether an audience affects you and your performance varies wildly from person to person, especially if the audience is in person or not.

I do not have as impressive experience as either Oofta or Charlaquin in terms of speaking to an audience or on stage, but I have generally found that I always try to keep my performance as consistent as possible whether I am doing it front of a small audience designed to help me collect my thoughts or tweak my performance, or to practice for a performance with other actors, and in the about a hundred or so person audiences I have performed to in amateur teenage and adult stage plays (as in age, not in theme). I haven't felt the need to modify much and generally stick to practice and plan. I haven't really gotten stage nerves... at-least back then (my mental health and anxiety have increased since then).

I thought this would be important to mention as this helps inform my perspective on Critical Role. I generally lean more towards what Oofta believes - that Cirtical Role, for the most part, is a regular D&D game played by passionate actors for fun that is also a business and broadcast to an audience. And I think part of what informs that for me is that in my amateur experience, an audience doesn't change much for me... and since we're not in any of the heads of any of the Critical Role players, I cannot judge whether it does that for them... so I lean more towards what I see and how this matches up with my experience of roleplaying games.

While of course none of us can get in the heads of the CR cast, I think there are some things we can reasonably infer. They are all people who have willingly chosen a career in a hyper-competitive artistic field, which is notoriously high risk, low reward except for the very, very few who break into the big time, in which people are routinely treated like garbage and 90% of the job is looking for your next job, and getting rejected more often than not. The only reason anyone chooses this kind of career is because they love performing for an audience so much that they’re willing to put up with all of that, just for the rush of performing for others.

The notion that it wouldn’t make a difference to such people whether they have an audience or not is, frankly, absurd. They wouldn’t be doing it if they didn’t live to perform for an audience.

 

[Oofta]

While of course none of us can get in the heads of the CR cast, I think there are some things we can reasonably infer. They are all people who have willingly chosen a career in a hyper-competitive artistic field, which is notoriously high risk, low reward except for the very, very few who break into the big time, in which people are routinely treated like garbage and 90% of the job is looking for your next job, and getting rejected more often than not. The only reason anyone chooses this kind of career is because they love performing for an audience so much that they’re willing to put up with all of that, just for the rush of performing for others.

The notion that it wouldn’t make a difference to such people whether they have an audience or not is, frankly, absurd. They wouldn’t be doing it if they didn’t live to perform for an audience.

But they started as a home campaign. No audience, just the group. Playing a game to presumably destress a bit and blow off some steam. The earliest recordings show a game very similar to the current one.

So I'm with you on the first part. We don't know. They're taking advantage of it, but we don't know if they would have simply kept playing a home game or not.

I also fail to see why it matters. We get assertions, opinions stated as fact into their innermost thoughts and motivations. And it's all unfounded conjecture.

In the end, why does it matter? Their motivation hasn't changed how they act significantly while playing. It doesn't change my enjoyment of the stream.

I mean, of course they're more eloquent than most people. But either you enjoy it or you don't. Either you think overall it's good for the hobby even if nothing is perfect or you don't.

All this talk of performing for an audience changes you ... how does it matter?