Wizards of the Coast launches official Dungeons & Dragons Actual Play show

saviirkad · Monday at 4:59 PM

Maxperson said:
I actually find those times to be among the best times. I love it when the players find clever ways to get around or invalidate something. Keeps me on my toes!

My favorite moments across an 8 year campaign were the moments when either the players threw a curveball to my planning that required significant rework, or wanted to introduce some aspect of their character's backstory and lore to the world that required collaboration and making space for it to fit.

Boy did I find out the hard way that if you put a major villain in front of them, give a monologue, and then have him head back to his mountain lair atop his roc steed, that the players will refuse to allow that, will drop that roc out of the sky and will orbital drop a barbarian on top of the fallen villain.

Which marked the second time in a row that my players saw a big dungeon crawl and went nahhhhh.

Anticlimactic? So much. Everyone's favorite moment? So much.

LaTia J · Monday at 5:03 PM

SlyFlourish said:
Ok, on to the show...

I have a few questions I can't find answers to:

How long are the episodes?

How long is the total series?

Is it PG-13ish?

I'm not big into liveplay shows but when it comes to whether this is a good thing for the hobby overall, I think those questions matter. If episodes are shorter than bigger livestream shows like CR, that hits a niche not being served very well in my understanding. Shorter focused episodes as part of a shorter series with relatively clean language means I can send videos like this to people who don't know anything about D&D and they can see what it looks like without investing 900 hours and exposing their kids to hard-R rated situations. I'm no prude but I don't think every liveplay has to be for 18+.

Anyway, if anyone knows, maybe @LaTia J? Those would be some questions I have.

This is a reply of acknowledgement while I source the answers! (I see you too, @Hutchimus Prime)

AlViking · Monday at 5:12 PM

saviirkad said:
My favorite moments across an 8 year campaign were the moments when either the players threw a curveball to my planning that required significant rework, or wanted to introduce some aspect of their character's backstory and lore to the world that required collaboration and making space for it to fit.

Boy did I find out the hard way that if you put a major villain in front of them, give a monologue, and then have him head back to his mountain lair atop his roc steed, that the players will refuse to allow that, will drop that roc out of the sky and will orbital drop a barbarian on top of the fallen villain.

Which marked the second time in a row that my players saw a big dungeon crawl and went nahhhhh.

Anticlimactic? So much. Everyone's favorite moment? So much.

Yeah, there's a reason I figure how what's going on, who's involved and why but never how the PCs are going to handle it. I may have some vague ideas because I want to be sure they have cookie crumbs to follow but if they decide they want cake instead of cookies I'll figure out how to make the cake. It's one of the reasons I love gaming with a real DM instead of playing a video game.

Whizbang Dustyboots · Monday at 6:26 PM

Nobleshield said:
The fact that they are calling them "Cast Members" like it's freaking Disney

They're professional actors with SAG cards. It's entirely possible that WotC is contractually obligated to refer to them this way.

cranberry · Monday at 6:48 PM

One difference that I noticed between this group and CR, is that in most pics, the CR folks are smiling.

This group almost looks angry, bored or "zoned out".

MonsterEnvy · Monday at 6:53 PM

Mournblade94 said:
Honestly I figured this part of the discussion was over.

The quote your responding to was in response to calling this a flat earth magnitude misconception. Thats why science was brought into it because flat earth breaks fundamental laws.

I never ONCE claimed people from an industry are lying. OTHER people made that assumption and I do not accept that accusation.

Ok i was uninformed on this. At this point I don't care about this very minor issue. I already said id shut up about it. I'm not going to fly the AP flag because its NOT scripted. I tried to get into them and watching other people play whether it was a script or not just is not something I can spend time on.

Its much better to paint my opinion as calling people stupid (not once), paranoidly calling industry workers liars (not once), or impugning an industry (i thought it was an open secret). The reaction is as ridiculous to me as my opinion is to all of you.

You can just say you don’t enjoy APs. They are generally not my thing either.

Whizbang Dustyboots · Monday at 6:57 PM

cranberry said:
One difference that I noticed between this group and CR, is that in most pics, the CR folks are smiling.

This group almost looks angry, bored or "zoned out".

They were given a preview of how this thread was going to go.

saviirkad · Monday at 8:02 PM

Whizbang Dustyboots said:
They're professional actors with SAG cards. It's entirely possible that WotC is contractually obligated to refer to them this way.

It's also just still accurate to call them that. They are both cast and they are playing a game.

I mean when one of the many, many YouTube groups play a board game, like Ticket to Ride, they're cast members playing Ticket to Ride.

Mort · Monday at 8:21 PM

cranberry said:
One difference that I noticed between this group and CR, is that in most pics, the CR folks are smiling.

This group almost looks angry, bored or "zoned out".

I've only seen the one picture (of this group) so far, and yeah, they're certainly not smiling.

They are starting with Ravenloft. Maybe when they took the picture, it was right after a tense session and no one was in a smiling mood?

Reynard · Monday at 8:26 PM

Mort said:
I've only seen the one picture (of this group) so far, and yeah, they're certainly not smiling.

They are starting with Ravenloft. Maybe when they took the picture, it was right after a tense session and no one was in a smiling mood?