#“why do you listen to this weird podcast kaesa?” well listen.

[kaesaaurelia]

Honestly actual play criticism is fucking wild, even when you get out of the crunchy angry Stop Having Fun dudebro criticisms, although I find those to be pretty toxic.

But like, on the "not toxic, just baffling" end of things, there's a gaming podcast I listen to that can be fun sometimes BUT also has the wildest "Well obviously Critical Role is scripted and planned out in advance because that's just good storytelling, no I haven't watched CR" takes that ignore how this show can sometimes have episodes that are SIX HOURS LONG, which. Look. I like Critical Role. But six hour long episodes is not really good storytelling and I think a major draw of it for me is that it's fairly crunchy but the players are charismatic and good at improv, unlike me who plays the face in my Shadowrun group and once froze up out of sudden social anxiety trying to play out a social roll I did extremely well on. I'm not tuning in for the brilliant narrative pacing of the shopping episodes, I'm there to watch Travis die inside while everyone else buys potions and annoys the NPCs.

One of the hosts also cited The Adventure Zone as an example of "the LAification of Actual Play," a thing he contrasted with his preferred approach, "the New York roleplaying podcast sensibility," because obviously New York and LA are the only two places in the United States and the McElroys have no regional influences outside of Los Fucking Angeles, not a single one.

(It is possible he actually addressed this later in the panel but I decided to skip that episode after the "TAZ has the same sensibility as CR and we're lumping it in with our imagined Los Angeles sensibility of actual play" statement because a. It was a recording of a live panel discussion and I don't like those very much anyway and b. I am a tired woman from Chicago trying to entertain myself while cooking dinner, and life is too short to listen to New Yorkers bitch about LA, The Only Other City, when talking about a type of performance that doesn't even require everyone to be in the same country.)

Occasionally I take a peak at DnD Podcast Criticism Subreddits out of morbid curiousity and by god you will find people out there who hate entertainers with every fiber of their being. If they're not playing exactly one-to-one with DnD rules and if they even ATTEMPT comedy or drama dudes online in these miserable little circles shake with rage. I totally think criticism towards a lot of DnD shows is fair, it's great to want the shows you listen to to improve, but good lord

If you talk like this about DnD shows online I know in my heart of hearts playing a tabletop game with you would be misery incarnate