Critical Role is improv theater. And, respect if you are talented and able to run an entertaining improv theater. I don't consider that to be a TTRPG, however.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron on February 10, 2022, 05:50:51 PM

Quote from: RPGPundit on February 09, 2022, 12:19:33 PMCritical Role is not actually a roleplaying game or people actually playing a roleplaying game

I've never watched Critical Role. Why isn't it a roleplaying game?

It is made by group of Hollywood voice actors who started broadcasting their games on social media and met a humongous success. No one knows when (or if) they stopped playing for real and started following a script. Anyway, I'm proud to say that I never watched a single episode - only some brief samples here and there.

BTW, it isn't that they are making billions. The profits are shared between them, and are what is left after paying the people behind the camera, for sure a Director, lights, the studio... They are basically a successful single-studio show.

An indirect result is the proliferation of people who, somehow, believe that the public will be interested in their games too. The quality of these "RPGs online!" ranges from boring to boringly dire. The only exception is "The Calyx" channel: four very funny girls who play Call of Cthulhu. Their play through of "The Saturnine Chalice" was both very interesting and had me in stitches (exp. when the characters' SAN collapses). Look for it on YT.

The only sticking point of that Kotaku article is, IMHO, a writer who says "I don't like this so this means that there are... uh... others... yes others who... er... I can't point to because... But there are!" Just read it and you will find all the counterpoints needed to sink the bozo in what he wrote in the first place.

Part of the problem of anything political, besides the fact that politics sucks, is that we think in terms of binary... That there are two primary political parties when now we have more than two. We got our Marxists and our Wokists and our Conservatives and our Liberals and our Libertarians and our Communists and our Socialists and our Green Party and even our Patriotists.

We got the entire rainbow of colors here in America now.

They do boil down to Authoritarian vs Liberty though. Those are the new political divisions. Not Liberal vs Conservative.

As for Kotaku... They are just following the Woke script. Once something in America becomes a Part of American Culture it's now time to tear it down. It doesn't matter how something or someone becomes part of our culture here... This is the pattern. Look at everything in media that has become part of American culture in the last 60 to 80 year's that became really iconic (in one way or another) in our culture... D&D, Star Wars, Star Trek, World of Warcraft, Ghostbusters, The Terminator, He-Man, The MCU, the LGBT, Indiana Jones, the Comic Book Industry, the Music Industry, Critical Role (in it's own way it has become part of our culture enough to now become something to tear down), etc. At least Sony is trying to rectify the bad decision of Ghostbusters 2016. 

This is what the Neo-Marxist/Woke is doing. Anything that's truly seen as part of the American culture has been targeted, in one way or another.

Personally, I'm of the mind set that any person in the USA that comes out and says they are a Marxist and hates America has declared war on America and should be shipped off to North Korea. Then they can find out what living in a real Totalitarian regime is like.

Quote from: Reckall on February 09, 2022, 05:39:26 AM

Interestingly enough, apparently this happened after it was revealed how Critical Role is financially very successful.

I wonder if another less woke company will pick it up and run with it?

Quote from: squirewaldo on February 11, 2022, 10:59:04 AM

Quote from: Reckall on February 09, 2022, 05:39:26 AM

Interestingly enough, apparently this happened after it was revealed how Critical Role is financially very successful.

I wonder if another less woke company will pick it up and run with it?

Michelle Malkin and her family are avid D&D players. It would be hysterical if they moved in on Critical Role.

Quote from: jeff37923 on February 11, 2022, 01:37:08 PM
Michelle Malkin and her family are avid D&D players. It would be hysterical if they moved in on Critical Role.

She DMs 1e AD&D, I'm sure she has no interest in a 5e show.

Quote from: jeff37923 on February 11, 2022, 01:37:08 PM

Quote from: squirewaldo on February 11, 2022, 10:59:04 AM

Quote from: Reckall on February 09, 2022, 05:39:26 AM

Interestingly enough, apparently this happened after it was revealed how Critical Role is financially very successful.

I wonder if another less woke company will pick it up and run with it?

Michelle Malkin and her family are avid D&D players. It would be hysterical if they moved in on Critical Role.

  There is no way in hell that happens.  The blowback would literally be nuclear blast level.   Though I agree if it did happen, watching the mushroom cloud would be entertaining.

Quote from: S'mon on February 11, 2022, 02:09:31 PM

Quote from: jeff37923 on February 11, 2022, 01:37:08 PM
Michelle Malkin and her family are avid D&D players. It would be hysterical if they moved in on Critical Role.

She DMs 1e AD&D, I'm sure she has no interest in a 5e show.

Greetings!

Michelle Malkin is fucking brilliant. And gorgeous, too. I loved her defense of playing D&D with orcs and whatever. Can you imagine playing in her campaign? She's such an intelligent and sharp woman, I imagine her campaign would be a blast!

I remember watching her video where she holds up her copy of the AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide. She crushes her enemies like Genghis Khan!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: SHARK on February 11, 2022, 02:47:47 PM

Quote from: S'mon on February 11, 2022, 02:09:31 PM

Quote from: jeff37923 on February 11, 2022, 01:37:08 PM
Michelle Malkin and her family are avid D&D players. It would be hysterical if they moved in on Critical Role.

She DMs 1e AD&D, I'm sure she has no interest in a 5e show.

Greetings!

Michelle Malkin is fucking brilliant. And gorgeous, too. I loved her defense of playing D&D with orcs and whatever. Can you imagine playing in her campaign? She's such an intelligent and sharp woman, I imagine her campaign would be a blast!

I remember watching her video where she holds up her copy of the AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide. She crushes her enemies like Genghis Khan!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

LOL - yeah, I like her too. 

Quote from: jeff37923 on February 10, 2022, 12:32:28 PM

Quote from: Mistwell on February 10, 2022, 12:13:44 PM

Quote from: jeff37923 on February 09, 2022, 08:04:40 PM

Quote from: Mistwell on February 09, 2022, 05:18:49 PM

Quote from: SHARK on February 09, 2022, 02:43:19 PM
Greetings!

Geesus, the whining and absolute ridiculous mental gymnastics that Kotaku goes through in critiquing Critical Role. Responsibility to disavow the original Colonizers and explorers? God these people are fucking nuts. They are so drunk on their fucking Marxist ideology and victimhood that they can't even speak like a normal human being.

Edward Said? Fuck Edward Said and his fucking book. No one gives a fuck about his book except fucking Marxists.

Kotaku are a bunch of morons.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

I gotta ask you something: why do you keep conflating wokism with marxism? Here's the truth: Marxists hate wokism because it distracts from their class and class warfare issues. Actual marxists are not woke at all. Their stance on feminism ended at we're all equal and should all be oppressed equally. Their stances on race is we're all equal and should all be oppressed equally. Marxists don't talk about race and sex and transgender issues ANYTHING like woke people do. And for the wokists, they despise the marxist as well. NOTHING triggered the wokists more than Bernie Sanders' claim that solving for class inequality would inherently solve for racial inequalities. Wokists and Marxists are not the same and don't like each other. So why are you calling them one and the same? Kotaku isn't Marxist - they're wokist. They are ruthless capitalists - they just want the woke dollars and that's the capitalist niche they've carved out for themselves.

People calling this clickbait were correct - this whole thing is manufactured by a woke capitalist company trying to get more ad dollars by triggering people on all sides of the wokism debate to click on their article.

Why are you deliberately turning this political?

Me? How is Shark's constant calling them Marxist not "turning this political?" Is Marxism now considered "not political"? I gotta say, that's a hard sell there Jeff but I'd be curious to hear your argument.

No, this is you doing this. You are getting butthurt over Shark pointing out that they are Marxist and reacting.

I love that you have ignored the second part of my response to you.

Quote from: jeff37923
To answer your earlier question, it is because well-known leaders of these movements say that they are.
https://nypost.com/2020/06/25/blm-co-founder-describes-herself-as-trained-marxist/

I ignored it because we're not talking about BLM Jeff. Which I assume you understood. They named exactly who they were talking about, I responded to that, we all were on the same page about who we were all talking about, and then you came out of left field with BLM like that's germane to this gaming discussion concerning Kotaku when it's not.

Kotaku is not Marxist, Jeff. They are however woke. If you disagree, I'd love to see some cogent argument on how they are actually Marxist or not woke.

Now, why didn't you respond to my challenge? I'm not butthurt, I just think Shark is wrong. But I'd still love to know how Shark calling Kotaku Marxist is somehow not him making this a political discussion but my responding to him calling them that with disagreement makes this a political discussion? I find that an absurd spin Jeff. How can my disagreement with what he said be "political" if what he said wasn't "political" given we're both discussing the exact same thing and same word for that thing?

Quote from: Mistwell on February 11, 2022, 09:17:02 PMKotaku is not Marxist, Jeff. They are however woke. If you disagree, I'd love to see some cogent argument on how they are actually Marxist or not woke.

Again, we all agreed to take it elsewhere. I know your butthurt because commies like to distance themselves from any bad PR with word games, but take it to RPG pundits own forum if we want to discuss this further.

Considering how often some of the members love to virtue signal.

Couldnt happen to a 'nicer' bunch of people.

No. Really. They thought they were part of the cult and then found out that the cult MUST have its BLOOD sacrifices. And fellow members who dont pass the latest purity test will be eaten.

Course we all know they will one way or another dodge the bullet. Either by throwing one of their own under the bus. Excessive grovelling and "diversifying" for the cult. Or just waiting for everyone to conveniently forget this happened just like everyone conveniently forgot what CR has done to others.

QuoteThis may seem like an overly cynical and bad-faith interpretation of what Critical Role is doing with this new campaign. But real, respectful depictions of the Arab world and of SWANA cultures are few and far between. And we aren't the ones who have the resources to tell our stories yet. We're hired to help white creators avoid mistakes and to absolve them of guilt, to shield them from criticism and feel grateful we're even allowed behind the curtain.

This is an amazing quote. Literally just outright saying "you must fill your stories with people of color or I will cancel you, but you can't properly depict the culture of people of color because you are white, so you must hire me as a sensitivity consultant, but after you do, I will still cancel you anyway, because actually I should be in charge of everything you worked hard to create and making all your money, because I am Asian and you are not."

These are the kind of people the Critical Role cast willing got in bed with. You would think they would wake up and say "nah, not playing this game any more" when the monster they created finally turns on them and openly announces "this was a trap and a grift from the beginning, nothing you do will ever satisfy us, nor do we believe in forgiveness or redemption, so we're never going to stop taking until we suck you dry." But depressingly, experience shows that most woke people are cowards and ideologues, and will put up with any amount of abuse as long as they can keep punching down on those lower in the victimhood hierarchy than they are.

The anime "Legend of Vox Machina" is doing well on Amazon Prime, which is the prime group of players.
And yeah, they were mostly white. But guest players weren't always, and the current line-up is a bit more diverse, IIRC.
The voice cast of the side characters is fairly diverse (I keep waiting for the King to go "BOOYAH!")

But seriously, this started as a birthday game for Liam, and halfway through the follow-up campaign they started streaming.
And now they've made millions KS a 10-episode anime, which Amazon then bought an additional 14 episodes to make 2 seasons of the show.
I don't think it's scripted as some have suggested, but it's definitely a professional show.
(You're not going to convince me a pregnant woman spent 4 hours each session, never needing to go to the bathroom. Never ever.)

TL:DR version: Kotaku is trash, just as they ever were.