Critical Role Professor DM interviews Critical Role Cast

[Parmandur]

Stranger Things and the rise of streaming games (which is mostly CR).

Well, the folded ia the incorrect premise: streaming RPGs are not mostly CR, not by a long shot. They are a major stream, but they are not even the largest audience among TTRPGs.

And when CR has done non-D&D games, they have a smaller audience. A fairly large chunk of CR viewers are there to watch them play D&D specifically more than to watch them play anything.

 

[Parmandur]

It's easy to get big publicly traded companies mixed up with smaller private companies. Critical Role is huge but there's no reason to think that making money is their primary concern. My wife and I run Sly Flourish and earn enough to make a living (except for health care...) but money isn't our goal. Helping GMs run great games is our goal. If it was just about the money, I certainly wouldn't be in the tabletop RPG hobby.

Watching Travis and Matt talk to PDM, I feel the sincerity of what they're saying. You don't have to believe them, of course, but now we're just going with our own vibes instead of any real information. The real information is what they said until we have information to the contrary.

Yes, I imagine the main reason they are playing D&D is pretty straight forwardly that they enjoy playing D&D.

 

[Jacob Lewis]

This one thing I keep coming around to. This is their system! They wrote it in house. How was it not taylor-made for the sorts of games they run?

Before One D&D, a fair number of people talked about how the next version of D&D would be designed for streaming online because of how popular that format became. Daggerheart could have (and may be, I don't know) been exactly that format – a deep long-term high-fantasy RPG built for the sorts of dramatic play the CR team exudes at their own table.

I'm certain they must have discussed this pretty thoroughly when making these choices (along with Matt stepping down for BleeM to take on this season) and it would have been wild to hear how those conversations went.

Also, how do the designers of Daggerheart feel about this? They spent years building this game in-house only for CR to then go back to the old standby (though D&D 2024 isn't the old standby). Maybe they're totally cool with it but I'd have felt let down I think.

I'm not arguing for one way or the other. I was just excited to hear the conversation. I knew, no matter what direction they chose, it was going to be a big deal.

I agree with your first point—that’s how it looks to many of us from the outside. But we also have to go back to what they said: the decision was already in place before Daggerheart even released. We don’t really know how much long-term prep and planning goes into these shows. People tend to assume it’s either all improvised or fully scripted, but the truth is likely somewhere in between. For example, Matt always has elaborate 3D terrain models ready for battles—does that mean everyone knows what’s coming ahead of time, or does he really keep a vault of just-in-case builds? Probably some mix of both.

That said, I agree with you that Daggerheart feels custom-built for CR’s style of play. A lot of its design seems aimed at smoothing out pain points that cropped up in their shows—things like analysis paralysis, stopping to reference rules and abilities, or the hard tonal shift when combat suddenly slows into round-by-round initiative.

And given how strong the support for Daggerheart has been so far, I wouldn’t be surprised if there are already plans—or at least serious conversations—about integrating it into the mainline brand of the show at some point. They’ve hinted often enough about ongoing discussions and future plans they can’t yet share. So while D&D is the right choice for this campaign, I don’t think that rules Daggerheart out of a bigger spotlight down the road.

 

[Clint_L]

One thing I think is interesting in their decision calculus is that D&D may be familiar but D&D 2024 is not. If they made the decision a while ago, they made that decision when D&D 2024 was very new. Sure, it's mostly just 5e, but there's a lot of little changes going on in there. So, for that, we could really consider it a new system and I don't know if they did. We'll see how that plays out.

I'm curious as to how you think the 2024 rules consitute a "new system;" in my games the only really notable difference that stands out is weapons mastery. Like, there are lots of little changes but they feel more like tweaks or changes to specific subclasses, which was always an ongoing thing with the 2014 rules anyway. Weapons mastery is the big thing that stands out as feeling different, but it feels like a bolt-on, not a new system. Most of my players didn't even notice the difference, aside from having weapons mastery.

Most 3PP that claim to be 5e diverge far more from the 2014 rules than the 2024 rules do.

This is obviously a huge win for WOTC. I think it's really interesting that it wasn't any sort of sponsorship deal. If you were WOTC, how much would you have paid for CR to use D&D 2024? What if they had chosen D&D 2014, which better fits the goals they state?

Again, which stated goals fit better with the 2014 rules than the 2024 rules? I would think that if they are going to keep D&D, it makes sense to stick with the most up to date version, as that is what most of their audience will be playing.

I think that CR probably recognize that being seen as shills for WotC could have been very damaging to their brand identity. It's one thing to be seen as an independent company playing D&D because you know it, you love it, and it's what you built your company on. It's another thing to be seen as paid advertising. I think the latter really would have been seen as a lack of faith in their own work.

 

[AlViking]

You're absolutely correct, none of us are really going to know the actual answers and I don't even think most of us actually care one way or the other. So all I can do is make a supposition as to why things happened as they did. As far as we on the outside are aware, CR was not offered money by WotC to stick with D&D and they chose to stick with D&D anyway instead of moving over to "their own" game. This could be for any number of reasons, but with my untrained eye I would venture to guess that it's because they know like we all know that hooking (general) your wagon to Dungeons & Dragons gets more eyeballs on your product and thus probably more sales than if anyone chose to do some independent thing. So a D&D stream will be more likely to have a larger audience than a Daggerheart one (which I think they already know to be true.)

It's the same reason why so many people who publish RPG products do so through DMs Guild or make products that are D&D expansions or D&D-adjacent-- the potential audience is exponentially bigger than just making a generic RPG product that is not in any way connected to the largest-selling and most popular RPG there has ever been. And if (general) you want to make money off your work... you go where the most dollars are.

They explained why they didn't in the interview. There's no "As far as we are aware" when it comes to CR not being offered money by WotC to stick with D&D unless you assume they are lying when they said they have not. They chose to continue with D&D because they started planning this campaign before DH was released and they didn't know how well DH would be received. They also felt that since DH is still in it's infancy it made more sense to stick with D&D. There isn't really any big mystery here if you take them at their word. It's a simple straightforward and logical explanation.

I get that some people are excited for a new game but would it have made anywhere near as big a splash if it were published by anyone else? Good news is that they will be doing DH live streams for those that want it. If those streams get enough views there's nothing stopping them from spinning off another long term campaign While Brennan continues as the DM for D&D.

I guess I just don't understand why this is a big issue other than WOTC hate I guess, switching over to an unproved brand new system would have been a huge risk when they're already taking a risk in changing the DM and style of the game. I don't see DH ever really overtaking D&D, that doesn't mean it can't be quite successful or that you can't play it if you want.

 

[AlViking]

Since they work there I hope they are on standby like those game shows where you phone a friend or how the nfl has the x ref to give the audience the best answer
It’s funny but has some of this already been recorded? Is it no longer a live show at all? I’ve seen still shots with them around a table

They switched to pre-recorded in season 3, it made it easier because of scheduling issues. AFAIK it's still not edited in any significant way.

 

[SlyFlourish]

Well, the folded ia the incorrect premise: streaming RPGs are not mostly CR, not by a long shot

Who are the bigger ones? How many and how many views are they getting?

 

[DEFCON 1]

They explained why they didn't in the interview. There's no "As far as we are aware" when it comes to CR not being offered money by WotC to stick with D&D unless you assume they are lying when they said they have not.

That's the thing, as none of us have an actual knowledge of the situation, there's no reason for any of us to assume they are lying-- but also no reason to assume they are not (other than what we believe Matt and Travis' respective morals to be.) And on that front I would agree that they almost absolutely are telling the truth, but as I do not actually know I shouldn't act as though I do. That's why I said "as far as we are aware". I don't want to talk like my opinion holds any factual weight, because it doesn't. I'm not going to give myself that much credit, and no one else should either.

 

[AlViking]

That's the thing, as none of us have an actual knowledge of the situation, there's no reason for any of us to assume they are lying-- but also no reason to assume they are not (other than what we believe Matt and Travis' respective morals to be.) And on that front I would agree that they almost absolutely are telling the truth, but as I do not actually know I shouldn't act as though I do. That's why I said "as far as we are aware". I don't want to talk like my opinion holds any factual weight, because it doesn't. I'm not going to give myself that much credit, and no one else should either.

I take people at their word until proven otherwise. In this case I see no evidence of it or really any reason for them to do so, the reasons they gave were reasonable and logical. There's no evidence they've ever knowingly mislead anyone so I see no reason to imply that they are being less than truthful. I think if it came out that they were lying it could be pretty devastating to their reputation. Doesn't mean they're telling us everything of course I kind of think Matt may just be burning out on DMing or simply running out of steam a bit. It would be another reason to switch DMs and even perhaps some of the issues with season 3. But that's far different from implying they lie.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I take people at their word until proven otherwise. In this case I see no evidence of it or really any reason for them to do so, the reasons they gave were reasonable and logical. There's no evidence they've ever knowingly mislead anyone so I see no reason to imply that they are being less than truthful. I think if it came out that they were lying it could be pretty devastating to their reputation. Doesn't mean they're telling us everything of course I kind of think Matt may just be burning out on DMing or simply running out of steam a bit. It would be another reason to switch DMs and even perhaps some of the issues with season 3. But that's far different from implying they lie.

Absolutely. I believe them both too. But it would be highest point of egotism for me to suggest here on EN World that just because I believe them then of course I'm right and everyone else should thus believe them too. I may think highly of myself, but not that much, LOL!