As this is a Crit Role thread, I'll restate something for the too manyeth time: If you look at Critical Role and think/say, "This is not the D&D I know. I've never seen any D&D games that resemble Critical Role. I hate it," ... then I suggest you give the style a try, even if you're sure you'll dislike the style. If you've never seen such a game, you can't really understand what it is like to be invested in a game in that way. That style of game has many elements, and even if you're entirely right that you will not like playing that style, you can still learn a lot from trying it out.
As an example, I had a player in one of my games roll up a barbarian. In the very first session, that barbarian was insulted, and responded violently. From that point, the PC was shown to have a very assertive per
I can assure you that many games out there run in a style similar to Critical Role for prolonged periods and are greatly enjoyed by a wide variety of players. None of these games are exactly like CR, but there are a lot of RP heavy games with many similarities. I've played in games that were in the vein of Critical Role with many different dungeon masters. There were people that heavily gravitated towards the RP and enjoyed crafting complex storylines around their PCs ... and then there were players that took a less intensive tract and played characters with less depth. All had a lot of opportunity for fun.
It is not technically hard to role play at that level, although it takes a bit of bravery to put yourself out there in character in the way a Taliesin, Laura or Liam did from the 'start'. The other players (Travis, Sam, Marisha, Ashley) had to develop their chops to be as comfortable doing so, with some taking years to get there and others only months.
Take a look, specifically, at Travis. His first D&D experience was the start of the CR home game. He'd been asked to play many times, but turned down the opportunity, with disdain. He was an actor, he'd done some geeky stuff (he was into comics) - but if not for him being with Laura Bailey, he would not have played that fateful night, as he essentially only went because the wife ... urged ... him to go. A quote from him about his view of the game going into that night:
I didn't know anything about the game. I didn't know anything about the people that pkayed it. I had never seenanybosy else play it. I didn't know what kind of people were interested in it or inspired by it or what effect it had in any way. In my mind, it was just something that people did in the basement. The same thing that I had been told during the satanic panic in the '80s. That was it.
He wanted to be as responsible for as little as possible with a PC because he was very unsure.
When they talked about taking the game to stream, Laura had to convince him to sign on because he was embarassed to be seen playing D&D. Does that describe a person willing ti put themselves out there in a home game, much less a streaming game?
And he
didn't. He took the easy way out. Rather than throw himself into a character with a deep backstory like a Percival or the twins, he played a dumb barbarian that could just hit stuff. But, he played that character in a game with an experienced dungeon master that dropped in a few seeds that were easy for them to sprout. They developed the friendship between Grog and Pike, as well as the backstory from his Herd. As Travis said, they slapped on more layers of clay and simulatenously exposed the wires to get at more raw sides to the character. They slowly built up his comfort and then he took a starring role in a few of the storylines with Kraven's Edge, the Herd, etc... From there, you can see his willingness to take on more depth with his next character, etc...
HOWEVER, his development and comfort levels with that style of games isn't a stand-alone self contained benefit. Travis has spoken at length about the therapeutic benefits of this style of game. He has spoken about how it allowed him to work through some fears and negative history. It called back to the (limited) military knowledge and (extensive) sports experiences he'd had going into the game, and gave him ways to express that history. When he made his second character, he thought he'd been a little bit of a 'playing it safe' @#$%& with Grog, and he put himself out there - giving him a chance to explore more of his own self, and of sides ofhis personality that he had been afraid to explore previously. It changed his views on many types of fantasy stories as well - from Harry Potter to Lord of the Rings. I'm not saying that it game him a new interest in these styles of fantasy - I'm saying it changed how he thought about them.
So - you might be right that that style of game may not be as fun for you as hack and slash / optimization / etc... focused games: But there can be things you can learn from trying the style that are worth experiencing.
