Quote from: S'mon;1070760I think the vast majority of viewers can tell that stuff is hyped up for the cameras and is not an exact reflection of a typical game.

You wouldn't know it based on my interactions with literally hundreds of "critters" on Twitter, all of which think I'm Voldemort for daring to even suggest there's acting or pandering to the cameras going on.

Quote from: sureshot;1070763He has to admit nothing of the sort. Is it just one way to run a game though. Nor is it Mercer issue to worry about nor minee or any other DMs/Players issue. If players new to the hobby as I cannot see older players making the sort of mistake or assumption on it being Critical role is the responsibility of the individual. If one bakery likes to bake smoked meat into a loaf of bread and one assumes every other bakery will do it. It's not Bakery XYZ  fault for baking bread into loaves of bread. Or to put it another way it's not Mercer, mine or anyone else fault if new members to the hobby are both ignorant o f CR being a show and/or come with into the hobby with too high an expectation.

Or to use your example about porn it's the person who was stupid not to research the movie he was buying and not the porn industry fault that he bought vanilla porn instead of anal porn.

You know, I'll give you partial credit: it is NOT Mercer's responsibility to worry about the state of anyone else's game.  So if people are complaining about the "Mercer Effect", he had the right to keep quiet.

But where you fail is that he didn't keep quiet, he answered in a way that was essentially a LIE.

So, to use your example, let's say a bakery puts bacon grease into their bread.
Someone else can complain about the fact that its hard to get people to like their normal bread when that bakery put bacon grease into their bread.

The baker in question could say "yeah, it's not normal bread", or he could just not give a shit and shut up, and either way he's in his rights.

But if he says "Oh our bread doesn't use bacon grease, it's just like any other bread", then he's being a fraudulent piece of crap.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1070925You wouldn't know it based on my interactions with literally hundreds of "critters" on Twitter, all of which think I'm Voldemort for daring to even suggest there's acting or pandering to the cameras going on.

Why are you on Twitter?  That's the first question.  The second is:  Why do you believe that those idiots whose sole existence is to spend their time watching Twitter for updates, take time to play video games on their phones, much less put their phones down and think for themselves??

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1070940Why are you on Twitter?  That's the first question.

It's the best online game I've found.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1070925You wouldn't know it based on my interactions with literally hundreds of "critters" on Twitter, all of which think I'm Voldemort for daring to even suggest there's acting or pandering to the cameras going on.

Maybe they like trolling you, or maybe they have bad reading comprehension and think you're saying the whole thing is pre-scripted.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1070927You know, I'll give you partial credit: it is NOT Mercer's responsibility to worry about the state of anyone else's game.  So if people are complaining about the "Mercer Effect", he had the right to keep quiet.

I will give you no credit if you base your videos on what you read and see on Twitter. Thant and trying to compare Critical Role to porn in the first place. If people are too stupid and ignorant to understand that other playstyles exist besides what they see on CR it's on them. I'm not a fan of Mercer yet people need to stop blaming themselves for their personal failing and take responsibility. I don' t assume that because someone gets shot on TV and goes "tis but a flesh wound" and assume that it will be the same for me.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1070927So, to use your example, let's say a bakery puts bacon grease into their bread.
Someone else can complain about the fact that its hard to get people to like their normal bread when that bakery put bacon grease into their bread.

Well as a business owner it's one responsibility to be ready for the market to change at any time. If all it took in this case was baking white bread as a baker to be successful then everyone would be doing it. Bakeries had to expand to carry whole wheat bread. Then Gluten Free and so on. If one wants to remain competetive one apadts. .
Then if it's the new tho

Quote from: RPGPundit;1070927But if he says "Oh our bread doesn't use bacon grease, it's just like any other bread", then he's being a fraudulent piece of crap.

Unlike your imaginary scenario where no one notices and gives a crap. In the real world that baker pre-internet days would be steadily losing business as word of mouth between customers would slowly eat up his market share. If he is lucky and people love the taste than sure he probably will not say anything. People can and do notice when food taste differently and if it adds nothing to the taste or makes it taste worse. They lose their clients and possibly their business with people blogging about the baker putting bacon grease and lying about it. How you ask with social media you seem to hate when you it does not benefit you and love when it comes to pushing your product.

I saw a bakery that had been in the area for at least 20 years slowly go under because they went from making frsh bread to making it fresh say Monday. Then freezing it overnight and trying to sell the same day bread as "fresh". As a kid I bought a loaf and I was wondering why it felt so cold in my hands as freshly baker bread is supposed to be room temperature. Being a kid I totally forgot about that two seconds later and went to play soccer with my friends. I get back home my mom makes me a sandwich and I notice both slices had a cold spot in the middle of both. I told my mom and she told her friends and so on and the baker tried to lie about it and he never recovered and lasted surviving for another ten years.

I will always blame viewers for being ignorant and lazy if they can't tell the difference between CR and that other tables being different. If you come to my game expecting and demanding it be like Critical Role you get once change to stop. If not your being shown the door. I don't have time for ignorant and lazy people especially one who refuses to learn to know better. I can almost pretty much guarantee that your chicken little scenario of CR ruining the hobby is just that a scenario in your head. Anything new to you seems to be the end of the world in this hobby.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1070925You wouldn't know it based on my interactions with literally hundreds of "critters" on Twitter, all of which think I'm Voldemort for daring to even suggest there's acting or pandering to the cameras going on.

I don't think it is possible to separate out of this equation the situation that you are well known* as a cantankerous complainer about the modern state of RPG affairs, a state of affairs that precedes your presence on Twitter. Self-described 'Pundit' attracts volatile positive and negative attention? Who would have guessed? Someone warn Rush Limbaugh/Michael Moore/less-90s-ish-and-less-US-centric-examples before it's too late!
*Or sort of well known, I will be the first to admit that 'how big/not big a deal is Pundy in this arena?' is a question for which I genuinely can't determine an answer.

Quote from: sureshot;1070977Well as a business owner it's one responsibility to be ready for the market to change at any time. If all it took in this case was baking white bread as a baker to be successful then everyone would be doing it. Bakeries had to expand to carry whole wheat bread. Then Gluten Free and so on. If one wants to remain competetive one apadts. .
Then if it's the new tho

Unlike your imaginary scenario where no one notices and gives a crap. In the real world that baker pre-internet days would be steadily losing business as word of mouth between customers would slowly eat up his market share. If he is lucky and people love the taste than sure he probably will not say anything. People can and do notice when food taste differently and if it adds nothing to the taste or makes it taste worse. They lose their clients and possibly their business with people blogging about the baker putting bacon grease and lying about it. How you ask with social media you seem to hate when you it does not benefit you and love when it comes to pushing your product.

I saw a bakery that had been in the area for at least 20 years slowly go under because they went from making frsh bread to making it fresh say Monday. Then freezing it overnight and trying to sell the same day bread as "fresh". As a kid I bought a loaf and I was wondering why it felt so cold in my hands as freshly baker bread is supposed to be room temperature. Being a kid I totally forgot about that two seconds later and went to play soccer with my friends. I get back home my mom makes me a sandwich and I notice both slices had a cold spot in the middle of both. I told my mom and she told her friends and so on and the baker tried to lie about it and he never recovered and lasted surviving for another ten years.

I will always blame viewers for being ignorant and lazy if they can't tell the difference between CR and that other tables being different. If you come to my game expecting and demanding it be like Critical Role you get once change to stop. If not your being shown the door. I don't have time for ignorant and lazy people especially one who refuses to learn to know better. I can almost pretty much guarantee that your chicken little scenario of CR ruining the hobby is just that a scenario in your head. Anything new to you seems to be the end of the world in this hobby.

For more historically significant examples, consider tags on mattresses and peanut butter labeled with percentage of contents being peanuts (they were historic examples of people trying to doctor the ingredients without acknowledging it). The primary difference between these things and gaming is that it becomes trivially easy to detect the difference in products, and assigning blame is also easy. If anyone accidentally thinks* that gaming is like the parts of CR that gaming isn't really like, they pick up on it very quickly, and there's no nebulous mattress supplier who the store can blame it on -- it goes right back to Mercer.
*And I agree that the amazing chicken-little scenario that there are vast swaths of ignorant and lazy people who somehow don't realize that CR is modified by tapes rolling (something I thought we'd all realized since back when there was actual tape in the cameras) just seems incongruous to my experience.

Mercer has no reason to acknowledge anything. He's making a buck doing something he enjoys his own way. That it contributes to ruining the expectations of new GM's/Players is really irrelevant to him. Because he has no incentive to care at all. Quite the opposite.

That said - I think his performance gaming is weak gaming by my standards, which I largely agree with then novel idea of comparing it by analogy to porn-sex. I suspect Mercer could/does probably run good games away from the camera.

There appear to be a number of cast members of Critical Role (including Mercer) who will be guests at Emerald City Comic Con.

Wheeeeeee.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1070447In my latest video, I talk about the so-called "Mercer Effect", a phenomenon causing problems for a lot of D&D DMs with newbie players joining their groups.

Have you taken a look at Geek & Sundry's Star Trek game sessions? It's almost like watching a TV game show from the '70s.

There have been plenty of studies showing how porn creates unrealistic (and questionable) expectations for real sex. Unfortunately, people are morons and do think what they see on their screens is real. That's not a new phenomenon. It's why Jackass movies had warnings to not try these stunts at home....because people were doing the stunts at home.

So Critical Role confusing first time gamers doesn't surprise me.

But the current Nerd/D&D fad isn't going to last much longer (no fad lasts forever) so I wouldn't stress it.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1071068There have been plenty of studies showing how porn creates unrealistic (and questionable) expectations for real sex. Unfortunately, people are morons and do think what they see on their screens is real. That's not a new phenomenon. It's why Jackass movies had warnings to not try these stunts at home....because people were doing the stunts at home.

So Critical Role confusing first time gamers doesn't surprise me.

Indeed, I recently saw a commercial where folks were pulling down Imperial Walkers with their Toyotas (or something), during which they felt the need to admonish watchers "Do not try this at home." You know, just in case you're 4-wheeling your Tacoma on Hoth.

Never overestimate the public!

Quote from: Haffrung;1070466I hope you're not suggesting Pundit has taken such an intense disliking to Mercer because the latter's success and online popularity dwarfs his own efforts at becoming an RPG social media star.

Perish the thought.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1070564They're actors, playing an improv theater act of hobbyists playing a session.

Quote from: estar;1070637It not common as most hobbyists are not interested in acting as a different personality and/or doing funny voices.

My experience has been completely contrary.

Quote from: SP23;1070645Perkins is a great! Best 4E game I ever played in he was the DM.

Quote from: SP23;1070661I worked at WotC for 13+ years so it wasn't a big deal. One day, in I want to say 2010, but it could have been plus or minus a year, a Air Force Major, (or was it a Lt. Colonel, I can't recall, he was a Predator pilot), (total aside, but he would put a the D&D mini model that had a scythe into the Predator before he flew it off to kill Taliban), visited us, and really wanted to play D&D with the designers. Chris, I think, was volunteered, (kinda like he was for the PAX actual play stuff that he's know for), so he sent an email out looking for other employees to fill out the party. I don't remember everyone who participated, but I do remember Ian Richards of RPGA fame, myself, and 2 people from the sales department filled out the rest of the party for an after work session (well, maybe we started around 3 pm, so we got paid for playing )

I've played D&D for 36 years, and have played with lots of famous designers like Jonathan Tweet, Sean K Reynolds, SRM, the list goes on and on..... but Perkins is the bees knees, he really made 4E flow just like any other edition of D&D, which I thought was impressive, as it's one of my least favorite version of the game. I only dislike OD&D, & Holmes more then 4E.

And more clues to SP23's true identity emerge.

Quote from: S'mon;1070760I think the vast majority of viewers can tell that stuff is hyped up for the cameras and is not an exact reflection of a typical game.

I would hope so.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1070927it is NOT Mercer's responsibility to worry about the state of anyone else's game.  So if people are complaining about the "Mercer Effect", he had the right to keep quiet.

And yet your entire video is demanding he take responsibility and speak up.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1070927But where you fail is that he didn't keep quiet, he answered in a way that was essentially a LIE.

Here's what you requested:

QuoteIf he went and just said "know what? We're a bunch of professional paid actors, and we're doing this game, and we're presenting it in this way, and it's not that our game is completely fake, it's not scripted, but we do a bunch of stuff and 'normal' D&D games are not like this, they're not the same thing, but you could try D&D and it will be really fun anyways if you don't assume it's going to be like being on the Matt Mercer TV show.

If he said that, that's all that it would take,

And here's what Matt Mercer posted:

QuoteNeed I also remind your players that we are a table of professional actors, and I have been DMing for well over 20 years. We have spent our lives training in particular skills that allow us to get as immersed in the characters as we enjoy doing. Anyone can jump in as deeply, should they wish to, but EXPECTING that immediate level of comfort and interest is unfair and absurd. Do they want a deep, convoluted emotional journey like Scanlan? They better be able to bring it like Sam did. No? Then sit down and just have fun finding your own path.

So who's the liar here?

Quote from: S'mon;1070958Maybe they like trolling you, or maybe they have bad reading comprehension and think you're saying the whole thing is pre-scripted.

Or maybe Pundit is not being clear and/or honest about what they're trying to do.

Quote from: estar;1070637They are roleplaying by acting as their character. It not common as most hobbyists are not interested in acting as a different personality and/or doing funny voices. But people do play this way and it how I play my characters as a player.

I often pick voices for the characters I play; I want them to be larger than life, and find having a unique voice is a helpful tool for roleplaying.  A bombastic high-charisma character running in to try to bluff his way through a bad situation would just be ridiculous in my own voice, but I can get over that hurdle if I have a different voice for it.  It helps to ramp me up past my introverted nature and be in roles that are further removed from just being me.  That said, I've never seen this YouTube show, so if they're espousing being scene-stealers who hog the DM's time, I can see where that's a considerable problem at most peoples' game tables.

Quote from: Almost_Useless;1070543I don't have any problem with Critical Role for what it is.  It's the pro-wrestling of rpgs -- performers engaging in a mostly-arranged exhibition.

Quote from: kythri;1070597Scripted (or at least, outlined) play and outcomes for dramatic effect, rather than letting the dice fall where they may, makes this a simulacrum.

They're not actually playing D&D.  They're pretending to play D&D.

It's really not like pro-wrestling. They don't pre-arrange it.  It's not outlined either before hand, at least not by the players (the DM of course has stuff planned in advance) It really is improvised. Many players really were playing D&D well before any camera showed up.