In today's video: When a PC died in the popular Youtube #DnD based Reality-Show Soap Opera "Critical Role", there was an outcry of complaints from their fans (the "critters").
This proves that a big part of the audience are not D&D players, do not actually care about the game, just want to see a story, and have NOTHING IN COMMON with actual D&D gamers. Ergo, there's no such thing as a "Community" with them.
Because in D&D, character death is a huge part of making your character's life worthwhile.
Guest starring: Bill the Elf!
[video=youtube_share;Jld0Yi2PBZ4]https://youtu.be/Jld0Yi2PBZ4[/youtube]
To be fair, I have seen gamers (even playing D&D specifically) that bitch & moan about character deaths. Usually reserved for PC deaths, but I've even seen a few of them do this when certain NPCs are killed. These may not be the players you want in your game, but they are playing and thus are gamers by any definition.
Critical Role is just one huge-ass virtue signal.
Good vid mate...
To be honest, I've only heard about critical roll recently... I checked out one session and felt ill. WTF are all those insipid players doing? Screaming, shouting, hugging and high-fiving. Who actually games like that FFS? I'm far too old and cynical for that malarkey. It felt like I was watching some weird quiz show where the annoying people had just won a Ferrari or something. Ugh!
But back on topic... I'd be the first one that would say, that I don't like killing off characters. But hey it happens. And I'd hope, a PC would be pretty disappointed when it happens as it shows that they really liked their character. But it's a gaming fact! PCs die and in some games they die like flies.
Why would 'viewers' be gutted if a character dies and actually bother to voice their opinions? Unless they are watching some soap opera! Matt Mercer was only doing what a GM does after all. Surely, it would only add to the drama and make the PCs feel more special in the world. I mean, if the PCs feel invulnerable and never die whats the point in playing?
It's interesting.... Because, if you watch any of the other YT channels' actual play (where the channels have a lowish sub) you'll see no such thing. That's because they are watched by gamers and not fans of reality shows.
1. I tend to think this issue is pretty much orthogonal to whether there is a "D&D community", and
2. I am certain there are tons & tons of actual D&D players who don't like GMs and
3. Matt Mercer clearly does run an actual D&D game with stakes and consequences.
Obviously the way Matt, you, me etc do it with real PC death is objectively better than GM-fudged no-death gaming, but those other guys are still playing D&D. There could be a "D&D community" taking both approaches. Heck there may even be an OSR community with both approaches.
So does this, like so many things before it, boil down to 'these people are playing D&D wrong!'?
All that the the Critical Role situation shows that when watching other people experience something that the viewers develop likes and dislikes. When something positive or negative happens people going to have an opinion. This is one of the reason why reality shows works as a genre.
In the case of Critical Role they figured how to make watching a group of player experiencing a tabletop roleplaying campaign entertaining and interesting. The show is just as much about the people participating in the various segments as it is about what they are doing. Thus the observation I made in the first paragraph is going to come into play. It doesn't prove that the audience are D&D hobbyists or not. All it means they really liked how the player roleplayed the character and had a reaction when the character died within the campaign.
And if some of those opinion state strongly that the character should have gotten a pass, well everybody can a have an opinion but it is Matt's table and show.
Meh. I'll try to give it a watch later.
In all honesty, I'm dreading the production value. The last video I checked out was landscape, but it was also a sustained shakeycam shot of two of Pundit's books on a desk. Pundit, if you insist on this format for the visual portion of your productions, then please stabilize what you're using for a camera (presumably a cellphone at this point).
However, I would recommend you switch to a montage for your video portion. You have lots of images of your hometown along with a ludicrous number of memes. I think a slideshow of those would go along nicely with your rants. It's kind of part of the Pundit "brand" anyway. Even toss in a slide of your game covers into the mix. Just about anything would be superior to the present video component of your productions.
Quote from: RPGPundit;1049566Because in D&D, character death is a huge part of making your character's life worthwhile.
Well... That's progress. At least in text you didn't claim as you historically have that player character death is the only reason RPGs in general are worthwhile.
I would correct your text that in one style of gaming that you prefer, a very strong and broadly applicable style I will readily admit, that player character death can be a huge part of the experience.
Performance Gaming.
Dumb.
But good luck with trying. Eventually one part of the equation will win out over. In the end you get the worse of both.]
Edit: good video btw!
Thing is. D&D players have been bitching about PC deaths for a long long time.
Also note that sometimes the complaints arent so much about the PC death being bad as it is just that the PC died. Akin to seeing a character in a movie die. They just got to liking that character and this is an "awwww." moment rather than a "Fuck you DM this is WRONG!!!" moment.
There is a huge difference between the "awww" player and the "Fuck you DM" player. And this is not isolated to D&D.
Another problem is that some players seem to be utterly blind to the little fact that in D&D death can be undone IF the other players are determined enough. That could be as ,kinda, simple as dragging the body back to a town with a cleric or druid high enough level to raise/reincarnate the lost member. Or an epic voyage into the outer planes to petition the gods to restore the PC. Or whatever other routes the rest of the group is willing to tread to get someone back.
So the PC is dead? Do something about it!
(https://pics.me.me/the-thief-black-leaf-did-not-find-the-poison-trap-34412908.png)
Quote from: Ratman_tf;1049618(https://pics.me.me/the-thief-black-leaf-did-not-find-the-poison-trap-34412908.png)
This is the first thing I thought of too.
Quote from: RPGPundit;1049566In today's video: When a PC died in the popular Youtube #DnD based Reality-Show Soap Opera "Critical Role", there was an outcry of complaints from their fans (the "critters").
This proves that a big part of the audience are not D&D players, do not actually care about the game, just want to see a story, and have NOTHING IN COMMON with actual D&D gamers. Ergo, there's no such thing as a "Community" with them.
Because in D&D, character death is a huge part of making your character's life worthwhile.
Guest starring: Bill the Elf!
[video=youtube_share;Jld0Yi2PBZ4]https://youtu.be/Jld0Yi2PBZ4[/youtube]
I thought this was an interesting video. My chief quibble in all this is, while plenty of us like to have death on the table in D&D and in other RPGs, I know from just being in the gaming hobby for several decades that a sizable portion of the hobby reacts very negatively to character death. It is a known playstyle at this point (it ranges, but I've definitely met plenty of people who pretty much make character death impossible unless you do something monumentally stupid). So I don't know that people reacting, proves anything about whether they are part of the gaming community or not.
I think there is also the possibility that people are missing the opportunity a show like critical hits affords us. Yes, plenty of people will be watching who don't play, probably will never play, but you are going to have more people trying out the hobby because they were inspired by the show.
It is true people reacted strongly on twitter. People always react strongly on twitter. When characters were killed on Walking Dead or Game of Thrones, people freaked out on social media. But killing off characters has been an effective formula for generating interest in a show. My feeling is Critical Roles probably gained greater interest from its viewers with this death, despite the very public complaints. Just going by how every other type of media seems to operate today.
If most of the player base want PC death off the table, they should revise the game to account for that preference. But it would be a fundamental change to the mechanics. D&D was designed from the ground up as a game where PC death is the fail condition.
I have to say, stuff like this (http://www.gamerevolution.com/geek-culture/408397-critical-role-dm-matthew-mercer-is-genuinely-sorry-for-shocking-twist)is pretty freaky - they definitely are using scripted fiction terminology to describe what's going on.
There's long been a lot of people tangentially involved in the hobby who don't actually play. I was painfully shy in HS and subscribed to the Dragon magazine and dreamed up stuff for YEARS after I lost touch with my middle school group. I've also noticed that how much I play and how much I post on forums are inversely related. When my kids were young and I couldn't play regularly I'd spend most of my subway commutes writing homebrew rules, setting stuff and longwinded forum posts. Now that I have a regular weekly group I barely check in with online game chatting.
That's not necessarily a bad thing as these kinds of people help RPG gaming be a thing people have at least heard of. They're only really a problem when they post enough online to collectively become taste setters (big problem with Storygames and places like The Gaming Den) and drive sales towards products that read well instead of play well (hello there adventure paths). Having them hang out in youtube channels seems pretty harmless.
Quote from: Haffrung;1049645If most of the player base want PC death off the table, they should revise the game to account for that preference. But it would be a fundamental change to the mechanics. D&D was designed from the ground up as a game where PC death is the fail condition.
In effect, people are retooling the mechanics when they that. It is still common enough. Personally I keep character death on the table. But if anyone thinks large sections of the hobby are not playing with some kind of plot immunity or greatly reduced lethality (I.e. taking death off the table unless someone does something stupid) they are living in a cave.
While PC death is a reality, I think many people are deliberately ignoring that fact that spells to bring back the dead have existed in D&D since day one. When a character died and the party had enough money, you went to the Temple of Law (or whatever) and had him raised. Hell, in OD&D, a cleric only had to be 7th level to cast it.
This is really one of the revisionist strains of the OSR that I don't like, the absurd idea that back in the day it was gritty, grimdark, fantasy Viet Nam, where characters constantly died so there was no character development, just a meat grinder. But that's not the case, otherwise there wouldn't have been the back section of Rogue's Gallery.
Pundy's right. He's absolutely 100% right. These people losing their shit about the character dying? They aren't gamers. Fuck them.
Quote from: JeremyR;1049665While PC death is a reality, I think many people are deliberately ignoring that fact that spells to bring back the dead have existed in D&D since day one. When a character died and the party had enough money, you went to the Temple of Law (or whatever) and had him raised. Hell, in OD&D, a cleric only had to be 7th level to cast it.
This is really one of the revisionist strains of the OSR that I don't like, the absurd idea that back in the day it was gritty, grimdark, fantasy Viet Nam, where characters constantly died so there was no character development, just a meat grinder. But that's not the case, otherwise there wouldn't have been the back section of Rogue's Gallery.
Yeah, it says in the 1E DMG that character death should "likely be no great matter". If you had the cash, or were willing to complete a quest, and only died of HP loss (as opposed to the more gnarly special attacks that degraded/destroyed the body) then anyone who wanted to keep their character could. (edit - presuming they could return to a cleric in time)
That was why certain monsters that killed you in a way that ruined your corpse were feared more.
Quote from: EOTB;1049668Yeah, it says in the 1E DMG that character death should "likely be no great matter". If you had the cash, or were willing to complete a quest, and only died of HP loss (as opposed to the more gnarly special attacks that degraded/destroyed the body) then anyone who wanted to keep their character could. (edit - presuming they could return to a cleric in time)
That was why certain monsters that killed you in a way that ruined your corpse were feared more.
New players fear character death.
Smart players fear level drain.
Yes. Don't eff around with unanticipated undead. Get away, plan, and come prepared.
Quote from: EOTB;1049677Yes. Don't eff around with unanticipated undead. Get away, plan, and come prepared.
READY YOUR WEAPONS BROTHERS, WE DESCEND UPON THEM WITH FIRE! (and holy water)
Quote from: thedungeondelver;1049676New players fear character death. Smart players fear level drain.
Why? Level Drain just means you have to spend more work at getting back to the level you were at. Or you end up dead. Oh look, it's the same thing.
Oh look, it's not the same thing. Level drain to 0 level means good bye forever (save for a wish) to the character, since it is now a wight/wraith/specter/vampire/ whatever and thus cannot be raised from the dead*, or resurrected. Oh, and as an added bonus, the newly created undead gets to attack its former party members, which are conveniently nearby. And it drains levels too.
There are other major reasons to fear level drain, but the above is the the foremost.
IIRC, throwing a Raise Dead on some level draining undead actually destroyed them.
Quote from: Christopher Brady;1049693Why? Level Drain just means you have to spend more work at getting back to the level you were at. Or you end up dead. Oh look, it's the same thing.
It wasn't work getting it to whatever level I was at, it was fun. It will be fun getting it back there and beyond.
I don't worry about level changes because what I want out of my investment is a playing in cool adventures; I've played enough at all level tiers.
Quote from: Franky;1049694Oh look, it's not the same thing. Level drain to 0 level means good bye forever (save for a wish) to the character, since it is now a wight/wraith/specter/vampire/ whatever and thus cannot be raised from the dead*, or resurrected. Oh, and as an added bonus, the newly created undead gets to attack its former party members, which are conveniently nearby. And it drains levels too.
There are other major reasons to fear level drain, but the above is the the foremost.
IIRC, throwing a Raise Dead on some level draining undead actually destroyed them.
Level drained to zero means the character is dead. A character hit to zero hit points (depending on the edition) also means the character is dead. Most players don't do the resurrect thing, in my anecdotal experience. They just wander away from the table bored for the next couple of hours while the rest of the party carries on. Or they make a new character and try to fit back into the party.
Dead is still dead, no matter how you end up there.
Quote from: HappyDaze;1049570To be fair, I have seen gamers (even playing D&D specifically) that bitch & moan about character deaths. Usually reserved for PC deaths, but I've even seen a few of them do this when certain NPCs are killed. These may not be the players you want in your game, but they are playing and thus are gamers by any definition.
Except that this has nothing to do with the situation I'm talking about in the video. This wasn't the actors on the show, it was the viewers, the fans, who are clearly fans of the show, not of the game.
These people are NOT playing, and are thus not gamers.
Quote from: The Exploited.;1049578Good vid mate...
To be honest, I've only heard about critical roll recently... I checked out one session and felt ill. WTF are all those insipid players doing? Screaming, shouting, hugging and high-fiving. Who actually games like that FFS?
No one. Not even them. They're all pro ACTORS, and they are ACTING.
Quote from: Gabriel2;1049601Meh. I'll try to give it a watch later.
In all honesty, I'm dreading the production value. The last video I checked out was landscape, but it was also a sustained shakeycam shot of two of Pundit's books on a desk. Pundit, if you insist on this format for the visual portion of your productions, then please stabilize what you're using for a camera (presumably a cellphone at this point).
This one is probably 'shakeycam' again. But as I mention in the video, someone crowdfunded me the cost of a stand, so you'll see that as of this weekend's episode of Inappropriate Characters.
Quote from: Omega;1049612Thing is. D&D players have been bitching about PC deaths for a long long time.
Also note that sometimes the complaints arent so much about the PC death being bad as it is just that the PC died. Akin to seeing a character in a movie die. They just got to liking that character and this is an "awwww." moment rather than a "Fuck you DM this is WRONG!!!" moment.
There is a huge difference between the "awww" player and the "Fuck you DM" player. And this is not isolated to D&D.
Another problem is that some players seem to be utterly blind to the little fact that in D&D death can be undone IF the other players are determined enough. That could be as ,kinda, simple as dragging the body back to a town with a cleric or druid high enough level to raise/reincarnate the lost member. Or an epic voyage into the outer planes to petition the gods to restore the PC. Or whatever other routes the rest of the group is willing to tread to get someone back.
So the PC is dead? Do something about it!
You didn't watch the video, did you?
Quote from: The Exploited.;1049578Good vid mate...
To be honest, I've only heard about critical roll recently... I checked out one session and felt ill. WTF are all those insipid players doing? Screaming, shouting, hugging and high-fiving. Who actually games like that FFS? I'm far too old and cynical for that malarkey. It felt like I was watching some weird quiz show where the annoying people had just won a Ferrari or something. Ugh!
Really? I've heard of this show and some others like it (though I can't remember their names). I've never had an iota of interest in watching/listening to any of them, but what you've said here is the first thing that's made me even slightly morbidly curious.
It's like hearing about a televised chess competition where each player weeps, laughs uncontrollably or flips the table each time their opponent moves a piece.
If they're just acting or hamming it up for the camera, I'm not sure whether that's better or worse; though, I guess I don't have to worry about it as I'm clearly not in whatever target audience they've been appealing to.
IME it has always been common for PCs above about level 3 to be Raised on death, unless the campaign disallows resurrection (eg for a low fantasy feel), which is rare and less popular than the default rules. "Fantasy Effing Vietnam" was/is only a very low level thing ca 1-3, and sometimes not even that - eg Mentzer Expert Set recommends a high priest with Raise Dead in the Starter Town. In Gygaxian 1e AD&D a raise might cost too much for a low level PC, but common enough after that.
Raise dead being common in AD&D 1e made sense because of (a) it wasn't automatic success and got harder as your con went down, and (b) your suffered -1 Con penalty so the chances of permanent death kept increasing.
Quote from: Spinachcat;1049732Raise dead being common in AD&D 1e made sense because of (a) it wasn't automatic success and got harder as your con went down, and (b) your suffered -1 Con penalty so the chances of permanent death kept increasing.
Preach it! :)
The four main classes (and sub-classes) had to always worry about CON & CHA because one meant how much you could endure and the other how others will react to you. Both were major survival values. So even if you did a more generous stat method, you always had to keep those two stats in mind.
Quote from: Daztur;1049654There's long been a lot of people tangentially involved in the hobby who don't actually play. I was painfully shy in HS and subscribed to the Dragon magazine and dreamed up stuff for YEARS after I lost touch with my middle school group. I've also noticed that how much I play and how much I post on forums are inversely related. When my kids were young and I couldn't play regularly I'd spend most of my subway commutes writing homebrew rules, setting stuff and longwinded forum posts. Now that I have a regular weekly group I barely check in with online game chatting.
That's not necessarily a bad thing as these kinds of people help RPG gaming be a thing people have at least heard of. They're only really a problem when they post enough online to collectively become taste setters (big problem with Storygames and places like The Gaming Den) and drive sales towards products that read well instead of play well (hello there adventure paths). Having them hang out in youtube channels seems pretty harmless.
That's basically my situation now (with the exception of occasional online games via Discord.)
I work in a tier 2 city in China. There isn't a very active D&D scene here.
Quote from: thedungeondelver;1049676New players fear character death. Smart players fear level drain.
Smart players dont fear even that.
Quote from: RPGPundit;1049712You didn't watch the video, did you?
I did. But I still like to comment on salient points covered or not from a different perspective.
As for the commentors. So? What else is new? Its a video. Its like complaining about people commenting on the D&D movies. Of course theres going to be comments like that sooner or later.
Quote from: RPGPundit;1049709These people are NOT playing, and are thus not gamers.
The problem is actually deeper than this (as you probably know). They *believe* they are. They believe they're the ones that have the right to dictate how things should be.
This is the whole point of all the
Gate issues.
These fans of the show, these fans of Marvel comics, these fans of regressivism are the lemmings that follow the real people attempting to gatekeep via their shiny new brand of collectivism that they conveniently think won't end poorly as such things invariably do.
They exist to tell those that endeavor in these things the Right(tm) way to do it.
It's a taste-maker. It's just there to promote D&D. Not every one who watches will buy the books, but if one person does every so often? The show is a success. It's a marketing tool. A session long commercial. That's all it is.
Pundy is just ranting against a commercial.
Quote from: RPGPundit;1049709This wasn't the actors on the show, it was the viewers, the fans, who are clearly fans of the show, not of the game.
These people are NOT playing, and are thus not gamers.
I find myself inclined to agree.
Games aren't like movies or TV shows, where the main mode of interaction is inherently
meant to be passive consumption. Games are interactive by their very nature; if you don't play video games, you aren't a member of the "video game community" even if you like to watch Let's Plays on Youtube. Likewise, if you aren't playing D&D then you aren't really a part of the D&D community. Rather, you're a member of an adjunct group that is - at most - consuming
parts of the game experience without actually engaging with the game itself.
Quote from: JeremyR;1049665While PC death is a reality, I think many people are deliberately ignoring that fact that spells to bring back the dead have existed in D&D since day one. When a character died and the party had enough money, you went to the Temple of Law (or whatever) and had him raised. Hell, in OD&D, a cleric only had to be 7th level to cast it.
This is really one of the revisionist strains of the OSR that I don't like, the absurd idea that back in the day it was gritty, grimdark, fantasy Viet Nam, where characters constantly died so there was no character development, just a meat grinder. But that's not the case, otherwise there wouldn't have been the back section of Rogue's Gallery.
It certainly existed in The Fantasy Trip, thankfully. (Well, there is a Revival spell, but you need IQ 19 (heh), to spend 50 fatigue (hehe), and to find someone who can & will do that less than an hour after death (muahaha), and even if successfully cast, it revives the person barely alive, unconscious, and having permanently lost 5 attribute points (actual serious consequences).
I gather that many D&D games also had pretty rare revivals.
(http://images.dailykos.com/images/360090/story_image/eye_roll.jpg)
I quite like games where raise dead isn't possible. You don't have it in Lion & Dragon (or Albion, if you play it with some other system and follow the guidelines on modificiations to Vancian spells). You also don't really have it in DCC, which is one of my favorite OSR games.
But when you do have it, I like the AD&D "resurrection survival" roll. It means you have a good chance of being raised, but it's not a guarantee.