Tonight, 8pm Eastern: the RPGPundit Livestream. I'll be reviewing the latest peak-Mercer moment, and the harm he's done to the #dnd & #ttrpg hobby, answering your questions, and a lot more! Don't miss it! #osr #dnd5e

Let me guess, setting expectations for the game to be that of a multi-million dollar produced game with professional voice actors and scripts will be part of this.  As soon as someone mentions critical role when interviewing new players, bye.

I don't really pay attention him or critical role really. As far as my hobbies are concerned he just some dude.

Obviously I haven't seen the pundit video as it hasn't premiered yet so I'll just state my thoughts here instead.  I don't think he damaged the hobby overall but rather grew it.  Not everyone (frankly not even most) of the people who watch his show will transition into a traditional game themselves (whether digital or in person) but some minority of them will want to progress beyond just sperging onto their keyboards in unison.   An even smaller portion of them will be normal non-mentally ill people with non-neon hair colors that will stay and be welcome in a campaign and they still owe their introduction to the tabletop gaming hobby to his show.   The crazies tend to out themselves pretty quick and it's relatively easy to weed them out once you learn the patterns.  No amount of granny shawl wearing nail polished terror supporting mental health crisis videos will change that.

Quote from: honeydipperdavid on March 04, 2024, 01:36:37 PM
Let me guess, setting expectations for the game to be that of a multi-million dollar produced game with professional voice actors and scripts will be part of this.  As soon as someone mentions critical role when interviewing new players, bye.

I already did that video, like 5 years ago:





So no. What this will be about is how in general, Mercer is a kind of avatar for everything that went wrong with D&D in the 5e era, and how he himself has been an atrocious role model for new gamers in almost every way, not just in creating unrealistic expectations of fun.

And now, he's literally killing people.

Quote from: RPGPundit on March 04, 2024, 03:35:58 PM

Quote from: honeydipperdavid on March 04, 2024, 01:36:37 PM
Let me guess, setting expectations for the game to be that of a multi-million dollar produced game with professional voice actors and scripts will be part of this.  As soon as someone mentions critical role when interviewing new players, bye.

I already did that video, like 5 years ago:

So no. What this will be about is how in general, Mercer is a kind of avatar for everything that went wrong with D&D in the 5e era, and how he himself has been an atrocious role model for new gamers in almost every way, not just in creating unrealistic expectations of fun.

And now, he's literally killing people.

Not sure if you added this in, this is the cardinal sin of Matt Mercer and he needs to be pilloried for it.  He was playing an asian character on a black youtubers RPG blog and twitter posts got him to stop playing said character and apologize - yup a roleplayer apologized for roleplaying someone who he is not.  To me, this is an unforgivable sin by Mercer.  Anything that a person in the D&D space enables racism needs to be called out. 

Or when Critical role was sponsoring what Wendy's and they decided to publicly state they were dropping Wendy's because Wendy's wasn't bowing to some leftarded union  on tomato pickers.  That action alone did one hell of a death shot on RPG's getting sponsorship in mainline companies.  Why would Paramount want to sponsor a D&D show playing a game based on their upcoming movie when the lead RPG player is a commie, what about the other guys in the space are they commies will they break their contract and cause negative sales as well?

Their charity doesn't do anything, they take a 11% cut to pay "salaries", 8% goes for "emergency fund" and then the rest goes to other charities.  So 11% of donations goes to the big guy.  Ok, and what 80% goes to a charity that has administrative costs (salaries) as well eating up more, and those charities aren't related to gaming, half of them goes to race or genital hole preference. Hey why don't they take their administrative costs and run programs to give impoverished kids after school time playing D&D?  It gives the parents a break or the ability to work more hours and teaches the kids basics of strategy, reading and statistics.  And at least that administrative cost is doing something.

Yeah I'm being a bitch here, but whenever Mercer has a chance to stand up for the gamers, he breaks down like a shotgun, goes full weak sister and we get a fricken David Hasselhof in a shower scene of him crying about Palestine.  Matt, man the fuck up, parachute into Gaza and I'll give the hams to cook for them.  They'll treat you like the white savior you believe you are.



A lot  of German citizen's feelings were hurt by this video.

/salty rant

Fortunately I don't believe the Hobby is what I share with the vast majority of D&D players.

*MY* Hobby is thriving. I don't give a flying fuck about Mercer or what he does, or how it impacts those that follow him.

Livestream starting in 30 minutes!

I never watched an episode of Critical Role. There was some Amazon Prime TV show, and I watched the first episode, but it was dogshit and I passed.

I'm gonna go off on a limb here and say that Matt Mercer damaged the hobby by becoming popular enough that the grognards feel compelled to bitch about how he taught new players to Play The Game Wrong (tm). Frankly, I'm not convinced Matt Mercer did any more damage to the hobby than a bunch of goths sitting around wearing eyeliner, drinking clamato juice, and having a contest about who can be the most melodramatic twat at the table.

You know...

Swap the rainbow for the color black...

Swap stupid pretentious pronouns for stupid pretentious names...

I think I'm on to something here.

Quote from: Corolinth on March 04, 2024, 10:37:19 PM
I never watched an episode of Critical Role. There was some Amazon Prime TV show, and I watched the first episode, but it was dogshit and I passed.

I'm gonna go off on a limb here and say that Matt Mercer damaged the hobby by becoming popular enough that the grognards feel compelled to bitch about how he taught new players to Play The Game Wrong (tm). Frankly, I'm not convinced Matt Mercer did any more damage to the hobby than a bunch of goths sitting around wearing eyeliner, drinking clamato juice, and having a contest about who can be the most melodramatic twat at the table.

You know...

Swap the rainbow for the color black...

Swap stupid pretentious pronouns for stupid pretentious names...

I think I'm on to something here.

#NotLikeOtherGirls

You're certainly right about depression - shame, contempt for it, & self contempt are dominating emotions. It's not something sufferers boast about.

Quote from: Corolinth on March 04, 2024, 10:37:19 PM
I never watched an episode of Critical Role. There was some Amazon Prime TV show, and I watched the first episode, but it was dogshit and I passed.

I'm gonna go off on a limb here and say that Matt Mercer damaged the hobby by becoming popular enough that the grognards feel compelled to bitch about how he taught new players to Play The Game Wrong (tm). Frankly, I'm not convinced Matt Mercer did any more damage to the hobby than a bunch of goths sitting around wearing eyeliner, drinking clamato juice, and having a contest about who can be the most melodramatic twat at the table.

You know...

Swap the rainbow for the color black...

Swap stupid pretentious pronouns for stupid pretentious names...

I think I'm on to something here.

Well, the livestream went very well, and you can watch the replay to find out what my actual argument was.

Quote from: Corolinth on March 04, 2024, 10:37:19 PM
I never watched an episode of Critical Role. There was some Amazon Prime TV show, and I watched the first episode, but it was dogshit and I passed.

I'm gonna go off on a limb here and say that Matt Mercer damaged the hobby by becoming popular enough that the grognards feel compelled to bitch about how he taught new players to Play The Game Wrong (tm).

There is no one right way to play DnD or any tabletop game. But there are plenty of absolutely wrong ways to play it too. Matt Mercer encouraged storygaming, dicefudging, and trying to force a linear story onto a campaign. Fundamentally, what he does wrong is teach 5E players that DnD is a "creative storytelling exercise" (exact words from the man himself.) he demonstrates to others a fundamental misunderstanding that causes others to fundamentally misunderstand the TTRPG hobby. TTRPGs are not stories. Stories are linear and do not require participation to advance continuity. TTRPGS are still fundamentally games. You play them and by playing them move things forward. The GM might have an idea of how the campaign can go. But that is easily ruined by the simple fact that participation drives continuity forward. And players can fundamentally shift the direction of the game in ways a GM doesn't intend. And Matt Mercer's stupid philosophy doesn't account for. Which is reason number 1 why so many 5E GMs are shit. They are playing the game wrong because they don't even want to play a game. They want to be shown or create a story. And the idea of even playing a game where failure is possible is scary to them.  Even in the most rules light games. The game advances via the actions of the players. And any story that arises comes after the fact. That's the harm Mercer does. It's like convincing a bunch of football players to turn up to the pitch with Hockey sticks and start ignoring all the rules. They aren't playing Football anymore. They aren't even playing Hockey. They're just wandering around the pitch telling you about how great their Tiefling Warlock is and all the romance they've done. And no one plays the damn game.

Pundit, my cat looks very similar to yours.

I don't watch CriticalRole and kinda don't get watching others play a game (for TTRPGS or video games). But I do know one member of Critical Role and have for 30 years as a casual acquaintance. Can vouch for him being a genuine nerd who has played TTRPGs for decades before he was on Critical Role, and that he was playing with the Critical Role crew as just an ordinary game before they even considered the possibility of filming it for others to see it. And that he became a voice actor long after he became a gamer, unless you count him working Renaissance Faire as "acting". 

Quote from: Mistwell on March 05, 2024, 10:01:35 AM
Pundit, my cat looks very similar to yours.

I don't watch CriticalRole and kinda don't get watching others play a game (for TTRPGS or video games). But I do know one member of Critical Role and have for 30 years as a casual acquaintance. Can vouch for him being a genuine nerd who has played TTRPGs for decades before he was on Critical Role, and that he was playing with the Critical Role crew as just an ordinary game before they even considered the possibility of filming it for others to see it. And that he became a voice actor long after he became a gamer, unless you count him working Renaissance Faire as "acting".

Actors can be actual gamers as well. That doesn't mean that what they do on camera is actual gaming.