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

[Bolares]

I watch CR and think: this is a lot like my home game. The same beats and rhythms, people playing their characters, lots of laughter mixed in with a bit of drama. The DM does their best job of creating an exciting campaign and does a variety of voices and mannerisms (well, I do, many do not and that's okay). A lot less shopping/exposition most of the time but that's something that varies from table to table.

Are they more "focused"? I don't know but maybe my games are unusual because we tend to stay in character just about as much on the show. Maybe it's because we get a bunch of chit-chat out of the way when we're first together and take a lunch break set aside to just hang out. Having structured breaks in game time means there's not a lot of out of game stuff at our table, about the same amount as I see on CR. Our actual play time is probably a bit longer than most CR episodes.

Are they aware that this will be watched? Obviously. I just don't see how that makes it "fundamentally different than a home game".

But this has now devolved into:

Me: "CR reminds me of my home game."​

Others: "It's a performance for an audience, it's not at all the same."​

Me: "Well, when I DM I am performing, to a certain degree when I'm not DMing I'm still acting the role of a PC".​

Others: "It's not the same. They get paid"​

Me: "Right, but how does that matter? We speak in person at our table. I do voices. Maybe not as eloquent..."​

Others: "It's not the same at all"​

Me: "Huh? How?"​

Others: "Because it's a performance for an audience"​

Put on spin cycle. I'm done having that argument, we might as well be cutting and pasting at this moment.

If your table looks a lot like CR great1 It must be a fun table to play in. I don't want to sound rude here, but when we say most tables aren't, and that CR is different from home games, we are talking about the majority of games. There will always be exceptions and outliers. We're not trying to prove you or your table wrong. We are not trying to throw shade at CR, in fact, most of us love CR (Snarf is an exception because they are a bard who hates bards). I just don't get why you feel like we are attacking you...

 

[Oofta]

If your table looks a lot like CR great1 It must be a fun table to play in. I don't want to sound rude here, but when we say most tables aren't, and that CR is different from home games, we are talking about the majority of games. There will always be exceptions and outliers. We're not trying to prove you or your table wrong. We are not trying to throw shade at CR, in fact, most of us love CR (Snarf is an exception because they are a bard who hates bards). I just don't get why you feel like we are attacking you...

I don't know. Maybe I'm lucky. Most of my home games are full of laughs, people just hanging out and having fun. That to me is what CR feels like when you strip away Matt's voice acting and his dioramas. In other words, it reminds me of the things that are truly important about the game. It's a fun social activity and a break from reality.

But there is a wide spectrum of games. I don't think people are attacking me, I think they're focused on the wrong things when I say it's still D&D to me.

 

[Bolares]

I think they're focused on the wrong things when I say it's still D&D to me.

Yeah, but that's the thing. No one is saying it isn't. In fact, I know I've said (and others too) multiple times that it's still D&D.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Let us sing of the glory and goodness that is Elves! They are just better than us at everything.

Q. How do you know if someone is a soulless, dead-eyed Elf lover?

A. Just wait a minute- they'll tell you.


Lulzur, of the Marvelous Markers: How many elves does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

Thag, of the Clan Hitting Things Good-Like: Um, I don't know. How many?

Lulzur: One! The elf just puts it in, and the rest of Oerth revolves* around him!

Thag: HA HA! Good one, Lulzur! ....... so, uh, what's a lightbulb?




*Yeah yeah yeah. Scientists kill jokes dead. I KNOW. What, you think some medieval illusionist understands the difference?

 

[Bolares]

Q. How do you know if someone is a soulless, dead-eyed Elf?

A. Just wait and they will write an enourmous post about some peace of media they don't even consume

 

[Oofta]

Yeah, but that's the thing. No one is saying it isn't. In fact, I know I've said (and others too) multiple times that it's still D&D.

We got off on a sidetrack. Some people have said CR is like porn or the Harlem Globetrotters equivalent of D&D. While the porn thing was walked back a bit ... I just don't see how it is fundamentally different. When I say that it's the same thing "Actors! Performance! Audience! Paid!"

Some other streams to me are improv sketch comedy bits disguised as D&D. CR doesn't give me that same impression. They look to me like a group of people playing D&D.

So I don't take offense. I don't feel "attacked". I just have an opinion that people seem to take what are, to me, the superficial aspects of the game as making it something fundamentally different. Then I feel like I have to respond to posts like this and the cycles continues.

 

[Bolares]

We got off on a sidetrack. Some people have said CR is like porn or the Harlem Globetrotters equivalent of D&D. While the porn thing was walked back a bit ... I just don't see how it is fundamentally different. When I say that it's the same thing "Actors! Performance! Audience! Paid!"

Some other streams to me are improv sketch comedy bits disguised as D&D. CR doesn't give me that same impression. They look to me like a group of people playing D&D.

So I don't take offense. I don't feel "attacked". I just have an opinion that people seem to take what are, to me, the superficial aspects of the game as making it something fundamentally different. Then I feel like I have to respond to posts like this and the cycles continues.

Maybe "attacked" was the wrong word, I don't know wich one to use here... Targeted, something like that (I didn't mean that you took offense on anything, it just looked like to me that you felt we were talking about you and your game, not the general picture, but I might be wrong on that too).

About the porn thing... I don't know if that was the best analogy, but that's the thing about analogies, they go just so far and get lost. If we get to hung up on how applicable they are we will get sidetracked 10 out of 10 times . What I interpret those analogies were saying is that being done (even partially) for anoutside audience will change the game. Not for better, or for worse necessarilly, but it will be a different beast. The cast themselves said the same thing. Once they new the game was going to bestreamed they fleshed out the characters more, and got deeper backstories, because, with all their experience they new it would make for a better show. That doesn't make it fake, it just make them good at their jobs.

 

[KahlessNestor]

They had their backstories from the beginning. Look at the comic books that chronicle their Vox Machina origins. The early story was built out of their backstories.

That's not what the cast says. Travis literally didn't even have a NAME for Grog when he started. Sam's character consisted of him asking Liam "What's the worst race and class," and ended up with a stereotypical Gnome Bard. The biggest backstory was probably Vex and Vax, and it was only that they were really twins. It appeared to me that they were both even surprised by Thordak.

The comics are developed and written around the early adventures of the group in the home game, not their backstories. Unless you mean the new M9 comics with Jester and Caleb. Campaign 2 is an entirely different ball game from Campaign 1, by the players' own admission. They were playing stock characters in C1 and more developed ones in C2. And some of the C2 ones (Beau) still seemed pretty thin and basic and got little focus during C2.

(That isn't a criticism. Keyleth had a lot more focus in C1, and Marisa has a lot more on her plate as creative director in C2. If she wanted a basic character with little spotlight, that was entirely understandable.)

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

We got off on a sidetrack. Some people have said CR is like porn or the Harlem Globetrotters equivalent of D&D. While the porn thing was walked back a bit ...

The adult films was an analogy, and a joke from another thread. The reason I didn't further go into it is because of forum rules- the Grandmother Rule.

Like all analogies, it is imperfect. I personally don't consider it offensive, in the sense that I don't find adult films offensive- to the extent that someone finds them inherently objectionable for moral or other reasons, then feel free to use a different example.

The sole (and joking) point was simple- that you are watching a performance. For an audience. By performers. That to assume that the things that you watch can (or even should in some cases) be applied to your home game is usually an error. This does not mean that the things you watch aren't real, or don't happen, but simply that they are performers.

To the extent that you keep reiterating this point-
They look to me like a group of people playing D&D.

Yes, you are right. That's because they are REALLY REALLY REALLY good at what they do! But your continued objections that they are just a bunch of people playing D&D doesn't do them any favors- in fact, it denigrates the preparation, talent, and years of work they have spent acquiring the skills to make it look easy and effortless.

 

[MGibster]

I'll go with Goldilocks here as I've found that when most people say something is overrated it just means they don't like something that's fairly popular and generally well thought of. I've never watched a whole episode of Critical Role because it just isn't my bag, baby. Critical Role gives us a Platonic ideal of D&D that most of us can only imagine while we deal with the Aristotelian reality of our gaming experience. i.e. Most of our games will not closely resemble the Platonic ideal. And I'm okay with that. My group isn't playing for an audience so we spend a lot of game time just goofing off and socializing and I don't want to change that dynamic.

I have watched some shows similar to CR just to see if they'd give me some insight into how the game is played so far as the rules and setting were concerned. And while I found those shows helpful I kept in mind the entire time that my group wasn't going to play the game like the men and women on Youtube.