#i never got the chance to play 4e. a lot of people say it sucked but it looks fine to me. but i Love 5e.

[nightmarist]

cries. cracked out all my dnd editions for Information.

[annakie]

An Annotated Mass Effect Playthrough, Part Seven

List of Posts: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Wherein we... talk to the crew. I didn’t quite make it off the ship.

Still, a lot of words.

Aka the nearly All-Gif update.

Didn’t get a chance to play ME at all this week, so I’m going to spend a few hours this weekend (double-checking to make sure screenshotting works :p) and have some real updates later.

So making it back to the ship from Therum, it’s time to talk to the crew.  I maybe could have gone and talked to them after getting on the ship after the Citadel, but they don’t really have any unique lines then so, I usually wait til now to go chat.

First, let’s talk to Liara.

The thing that sucks about talking to Liara (or Kaidan, or Ashley, if you don’t want to romance them) is, you know, the accidental romance.  Making “picking the Paragon-place choices = romance by default with NO WARNING” design was very Not Good.  They fixed this in later games, well moreso in Dragon Age games than ME, (and Andromeda is done very well for this) but still.  In ME3, the BackOff mod does a great job of making romance dialog more obvious and intentional.  

Liara’s dialog choices I feel like are even LESS obviously flirting I feel like than Ash and Kaidan’s.  Honestly with Liara’s most of the lines can be read and even said aloud as friendship then BOOM, all of a sudden she wants a threesome.  I choose middle dialog options whenever possible with Liara just to avoid this.  I’m not interested, never have been, don’t want Kaidan to think he has any competition.  But seriously, it’s poor game design here that you literally have to be a jerk to a companion at some points to avoid having them think you want to bang.   God, half of the reason I’d love a remaster would be to hopefully fix shit like this to avoid some of the pitfalls.  

I hate that some people use this as a reason to dislike these characters more.  And I’ll admit, in my early days as a ME fan, I held it against Liara, too, until I realized how dumb that is.  I especially hate it when you get to the “confrontation scene” and people use Kaidan not wanting to be in a threesome as a reason to dislike him more?  It’s not a bad thing to want to be monogamous?  (And of course, it’s not a bad thing to NOT want to be, assuming everyone is open and OK about it.)

I just prefer to not get that scene at all now, and to avoid “leading anyone on” accidentally etc.  My Shepard knows early on what she wants, and sticks with him all the way through.

I was going to talk more here about my feelings about Liara in general but uh, I guess I’ll do that later.  This is already really long.

Here’s a great post about how to avoid romancing Kaidan while being rude as little as possible to him.  

Well since he’s right outside the medbay anyway, let’s go talk to the LT.  

Have I mentioned how much I hate the orange glow?  

So anyway, I thought maybe I’d talk here a little bit about Why Kaidan?

I will point out here that I am mostly a hetero woman, so my choices in video game romances lean towards men first, though I’m also very cool with doing non-m/f romances in games, and often do on subsequent playthroughs of games I love, but that’s almost never gonna be my primary romance.

I’d already mentioned my love for Carth Onasi, one of the most hated companions in video games, If You’re A Guy.

By today’s standards, even the Carth romance isn’t that great.  But at the time, it was the greatest romance I’d experienced in video games.  There were a few others that were really good -- Valen Shadowbreath in Neverwinter Nights: Horde of the Underdark was the other really great one, but we also got nightmare fuel like Anomen in Baldur’s Gate (though that gets better with mods + the final BG expansion) or just under-written characters or romances like Casavir in NWN2 (who was much better with mods) or hell, either of your choices in KotOR2 imho.  But I used to play KotOR over and over for many reasons, such as holy shit a Star Wars game(!!) and one where you can actually be a female main character AND has that great Bioware storytelling... but a big reason was Carth.  

A funny thing about Carth Onasi... if you play a male main character, you have a very different experience with Carth than if you play a woman.  And even I can agree that hoo boy Carth gets tiresome quick if you play a male, as a female you at least get to flirt and that calms him down and evens him out a lot. But the one time I tried playing as a male, I didn’t make it off Taris because.. yeouch I could actually see what the guys playing were so mad about.

But hey, that voice.  Raphael Sbarge, I love that voice.  So like I said early on in these posts, I immediately knew I was going to romance Kaidan the very second I confirmed he was romancable, before I even ran back into the ship and met anyone on the crew aside from Joker and Kaidan.

And... that only got confirmed more and more as I went through ME for the first time.  The character is smart, and capable, and respected you, and never questioned your command, but made his feelings pretty clear along the way.  He could be a little doofy but in an adorable way with some of the things he said, honestly there was almost never anything I didn’t love about this character.

I realized some time ago that I have a thing for the Paladin archetype personally. 

This is Casavir, from Neverwinter Nights 2, and in NWN2, there are two romance options for women.  An under-written Lawful Good Paladin in his late 30′s who is willing to buck his superiors to do what he thinks is right but also places you on a pedestal and holds back all his emotions.  He’s a romance option. Or....

Bishop, a chaotic evil ranger who insults you a lot, threatens to rape an NPC under your protection, and ultimately betrays you.  

Most people who played NWN2 seemed to prefer the CE Ranger.  I loved the paladin so much I wrote fix-it fic that I never have gotten around to publishing anywhere to retcon his terrible dumb ending.

There’s a fan-made romance mod that helps with the romances in this game, though I dislike a lot of what they did, ultimately I always use it.

In Dragon Age?

Ah yeah, the Templar-Warden.  Love him.  He does have that “Oh I’m so young and experienced tee-hee” thing going on that isn’t my favorite, (at this point mostly because I’m actually in my mid-40′s so uh, I’m just Old) but otherwise, yeah, love Alistair.

Dragon Age 2, I mean I usually romance Anders but... I’m not real excited about either him or Fenris, or even either of the ladies, though I have done Isabella’s romance (as well as Fenris’) and enjoyed it.  I’d probably romance Avaline (or Varric!), if she were an option.  But yeah, Anders mostly because he IS trying to do what’s right, even if he... well.  You know.  

But Dragon Age Inquisition?

Give me that Blackwall-angst.  That stoic guy trying to be a Warden who comes undone for you.  You’d think I’d go for Cullen, but hey this game gave us two paladin archetypes, though one is merely pretending, he still atones and becomes what he was trying to be, one way or another, if you let him.  I picked this paladin archtype first because I did not like Cullen based on interactions with him in DA1 & 2.  I like him well enough in DA:I but Blackwall is my guy here.

Out of all the many, many companions in SWTOR, who’s my fave?

If Aric Jorgan isn’t a Paladin-type I don’t know who is, especially since any romanceable Jedi are uh, all your female padawans (don’t get me started) until Lana (also female) comes along. 

Hell, in a very long-running 4e D&D game I played from around 2009 to 2014 where my character fell in love with our party leader’s son, married him and fought the final boss 4 months pregnant with our twins.  That character’s husband... was a paladin.  I mean look at this art my friend picked out for his character’s son:

I mean dang, who (of those who are attracted to men of this type) wouldn’t?

I always pick the Paladin.  The guy who is gonna Do What’s Right no matter what it costs him, the guy who’s gonna be loyal, the guy who may bottle up his emotions or keep them under control all the time but ultimately does what it takes to get the girl... that’s my fave.  And that’s Kaidan.

I will also say my second fave archetype is rogue-with-a-heart-of-gold, and that’s more of a Garrus or Varric (if only he were a choice!!! :( ) type.. aka my second choice in these games.

Well that was a lot more words on that subject than I meant to do, so I’m going to just say real quick here that what I love about this first conversation with Kaidan is that he’s already no dummy, he knows something is up, and warns you about it.

We’ll save talk about his backstory for another day.

Let’s head downstairs.

Yay for sped-up elevators!  What used to take like 20 seconds now takes like, four.

URDNOT WREX.

This another place where Shepard starts out just sticking their foot in their mouths completely.  I feel like this is something the game definitely has problems with here.  Shepard should know a lot more about the Genophage, like they should have about say, Spectres, even if the player doesn’t. So basically every response you can give to Wrex about the genophage and what his people are going through sounds really insensitive.  Comparing the relatively minor First Contact War with the entire galaxy more or less uniting to keep the Krogan from taking over after the Rachni war seems pretty dumb, and also like something Shepard should already know.

Loredumping on the Krogans a bunch with Wrex is necessary, but  I think it could have been done better.  Though I think there are a lot of questions about the Krogan and the Genophage that ultimately are important but go unanswered. I’m going to be honest, because generally I want my companions to be happy and ultimately I want the happiest ending I can get, I usually cure the genophage and leave Wrex in charge.  But also I don’t think that ends up with the happiest ending for the galaxy.  Everything about the genophage is terrible, how it works, how it was administered, what it’s done to the Krogan as a people, but let’s be honest, the galaxy will also be in huge trouble just from a resources perspective if each krogan woman can have hundreds (or even just dozens) of babies a year, who are gonna all live a thousand years.  There’s got to be a compromise that, eventually, hopefully Wrex works out if he’s alive at the end of ME3 or the council figures out with Wreav or whoever.  

It is kinda funny though that here, I basically met Wrex at C-Sec, told him I’d help him with Fist, sent him to my ship, and basically just kidnapped him to go help with the rest of the mission.  He wanted to be here, right?  I can only assume I’m paying him a lot.

Ashley!

I do love Ashley Williams.

I’m not going to turn this into a “Is Ashley Racist” thinkpiece.  I’ve read a lot of both sides of this argument and no, I don’t think she is.  Some pieces of her attitude do need to be kicked up a bit, for sure.  She’s got about the same issues with aliens as most of the species of the galaxy have with each other, which sometimes isn’t great, but she’s far from supporting Terra Firma.

She’s smart, she’s funny, a hell of a shot, she’s being held back due to her family name.  I would love for if someday a Wilshenko OT3 were possible.  I’d do that in an instant.  I despise the fact that you can only keep Kaidan forever if you lose Ashley forever, though I don’t see that changing even in a remaster.  Please Bioware, for the super ultra remaster?

I know I need to do another run through the game with Ashley alive. I don’t remember too much of what happens in ME3 when she’s there.

I also love that her story is so much one of family.  From her stories of her sisters, to the point that it’s her own grandfather’s legacy that’s holding her back.  She’s so grounded, she reminds us that there are civilians out there we’re keeping safe, a whole world we rarely see, up in space and in the middle of so much military conflict.

GARRUS.

First of all, whew Garrus looks amazing in the lighting and with the textures with ALOT/MEUITM.  Very handsome.

Interestingly, Garrus does not really loredump on the turians.  We absorb a lot of what we find out about the turians more naturally.  Garrus is more all about C-Sec and the general politics of the Council, of Spectres, of C-Sec.  Gonna be honest, I expected C-sec to play into the game as a whole a lot more than it did based on Garrus’ talks about it.  I mean it was always there, but Bailey ends up being the face of C-Sec 

Garrus’ Law vs. I Do What I Want attitude is a nice way to do a non-goody-two-shoes companion story without having to go evil.  I love that Garrus’ story kinda mirrors our own as players, how are we going to get things done?  Shove a blaster in people’s faces, accept collateral damage, and do whatever it takes to get it done?  OR play by the rules, compromise, and see if that fixes things.

The thing is though, Mass Effect actually is great at giving us the illusion of choice without making a huge difference in the end.  Like I mentioned before... not bringing Garrus to ME1 makes little difference in how he acts in ME2 outside of a few lines of dialog.  Lots of things are like that, like pick Ash or Kaidan on Virmire, and yes one is always gone, but 80% of the content is basically the same from there on out for either character.

There are games out now that do that choice better.  Pathfinder: Kingmaker is one I can think of.  Or Tyranny.  Things you choose can alter the endings of those games drastically, locking entire paths out of the game.  

I used to think that was what I wanted.  Until I played Kingmaker and locked myself out of things I really wanted without realizing it.  I stopped playing the game, sad that my LI dumped me and wouldn’t come back without reloading many, many hours worth of game.  Despite enjoying the game overall, I still haven’t gone back.  When I do play again, I’ll probably keep a lot of tabs open of walkthroughs and tips on how to keep things going how I want.  Kind of defeating the purpose of the game.

Anyway, I got super off track again.  The point is, Garrus is the companion that gives us the most Choice in who he is.  Which is cool.  He illustrates our Paragon vs Renegade dilemma.  And it’s neat that it does make changes in some of the things he says in the future, but overall, his story doesn’t change much no matter what you do (Unless you, ya know, get him killed in ME2).

And therein lies a problem with Mass Effect, and video games as a whole.  It’s neat to see the little changes, but it’s rare for anything to be an actual Big Change, because... that’s a loooot of work for a developer and how much more money is all that going to cost him.

At some point in the future I’ll point out how lucky we are for what we did get, though.

Heeeey it’s Chief Engineer Greg Adams!  I wonder how many people don’t even know he has a first name?  Anyway, thank you for your one short conversation in which you explain how the Normandy works (honestly, great job with explaining this, Bioware, even if the science is ???) and like three sentences on who you are.  Wasted opportunity to give you an actual character.  Glad you like Tali, though!  See you in ME3.

TALI!

Okay, I will totally accept that Shepard doesn’t know much past the basics of quarian society.  That makes a lot more sense than Shepards not knowing much about asari.  

The quarians are so much more of an original creation I feel like than a lot of what we’ve seen in the galaxy so far.  Krogan?  Basically Klingons.  Turians?  Space Romans. Asari?  Twilek/Space Elves but ALL Hot Ladies.  Qarians feel like something new though.

I mean, I guess before they had to live in suits they were pretty normal, but their entire culture doesn’t feel like something we’ve seen everyplace before.  I mean I’ve seen space (g-slur)  but, eh not really.  

And Tali herself is such a good character.  I mean, she does suffer a little from being Very Important with her father being one of five admirals in a population of six million people but, I’ll allow it.  Nobody else on the crew has Very Important Parents.  I mean Garrus’ father is a little high up in the ranks but that’s a non-factor, Ash’s grandfather was but he’s dead and never seen, Wrex’s father is a chieftan but none of those is central to their current story or as big as this one. I mean, Spacer Shep’s own mother is a captain of a ship.  Tali herself in-game isn’t that sexualized -- most of that was the fandom’s doing.  She’s young but also confident and has her shit together.  

She shoulda been a same-sex romance in ME2/3 though, damnit!

Joker. Is. Amazing. And uh, also shoulda been a romance option. 

Hey first of all, how great was it that they put in disabled representation in this game.  I have read a few posts on how it could have been better, and definitely agree, but it’s also been so important to have say, Geordi LaForge as chief engineer of the Enterprise and also Joker here, in space, being awesome on spaceships.  And he really earns his the right to his bravado in calling himself the best pilot in the galaxy.  

Also?  Casting Seth Green was such a great choice.  I couldn’t imagine Joker as anyone else.  I mean this is Bioware so we expect, and definitely got, great voice acting (except for... ugh you know, we’ll get there in ME3) but honestly Seth Green was a particularly good choice.  I don’t care that he’s covered with sixteen layers of plot armor, he deserves it.

He’s the companion that we don’t ever get to take in the squad.  (I mean, except for that brief amazing moment in ME2)

I only wish in ME1 he had as much to say as in ME2/3.  At least he gets cool snarky lines after all the major missions.

One last thing before we get off the ship for awhile, I love that the crew is actually comprised of both men AND women in ME1.  With different hairstyles and faces, and even skin tones.  It’s nice to see they didn’t just reuse the same guy over and over for the nameless NPCs.  

Well, I guess they get names in ME2. :v

Anyway, I would like to point out, that there are seventeen nameless NPCs on the Normandy.

Then there’s Adams, Tali, Garrus, Wrex, Ashley, Kaidan, Chakwas, Liara, Pressley, and Joker.

That’s twenty-seven people and eight sleep pods.  Let’s remove the aliens, who couldn’t fit in a sleep pod (Garrus and Wrex), twenty-five people.  Are there people sleeping in the sleep pods now?  There must be, right?  Everyone can’t be awake when we’re on the ship just because we’re there?  How does that math add up?  Who is sleeping where, HOW DOES IT WORK!?  

Well, that’s their problem. I got my own bed.  Kaidan can share.

Also just... don’t get me started on how stupid this is.  I mean it’s nice having a shop on the ship but... the justification is terrible.  We all know it.  He was counted as one of the 17 nameless, btw.

Okay well, I was going to get off the ship this update but this is already stupid long and honestly I don’t have too much more content to post so, I’m gonna go actually play this game!

[clonerightsenthusiast]

I’ve been so frantically trying to cram in more hours of content than was possible in under two days so that I could catch up (at least enough) to watch the 100th episode live that I haven’t paused to even like. think about the fact that this is the 100th episode tonight until like. right now. Like holy shit. I started watching at the very end of the Whitestone arc (like literally post-finale... the first episode I watched live was either Denouement or Winter’s Crest in Whitestone, I honestly can’t remember which) and have been watching since then mostly regularly, sometimes in fits and starts, staying up until 2 am every Thursday night for over a year now.

I’m gonna put the rest of this post under a read more because hot damn I rambled on for a while but basically... this show means a lot to me.

And like... I feel like I’m sort of weird, because I was into D&D streams long before I was into playing D&D. I’d been doing play-by-post roleplaying since I was maybe 11 and first discovered the internet (in fact I think it’s fair to say my first experience with other people on the internet was me stumbling into an rp forum and going ‘guess ill do what theyre doing’ and made a character), but I’d never even heard of tabletop roleplaying. I first found out what D&D was by finding a link to the recordings of a campaign by a handful of like D-list internet celebrities on TV Tropes when I was in... late middle school? Early high school? And I followed that down a rabbit hole that led me to more and more and I would download the audio and listen to them during class because I was a lazy student (and listen y’all if anyone out there reads this and watched the Wyrmwick campaign... hmu bc I still think about those assholes sometimes and lose my shit over “Plan A: Yoink” and Dhother eating a vampire apple) and eventually I ended up at a D&D Twitch stream every Friday where maybe 15 of us would show up and hang out and joke with the players and name every single animal that showed up in the campaign and refuse to refer to them as anything but our chosen nicknames. That game was the first time I experienced the type of community that D&D builds, the inside jokes and funny anecdotes and bonding experiences that come from hanging out together and watching a story unfold in real time in the most unpredictable fashion possible. (And if by some infinitesimal chance any of y’all from the Two Worlds game read this... extra hmu. I miss you guys.)

After the Two Worlds campaign ended and school got more serious and couldn’t make the Friday night streams anymore because I was busy and tired and the internet in my house sucked, D&D sort of... faded from my life. I never had any friends in high school who would be at all interested in it and every so often I would go back to that channel and find some of the highlights that were still saved and I would listen to them and wish that I could have that sort of thing back, because D&D is such an unparalleled storytelling device and as hard as it is when you’re into a TV show or book series that doesn’t have a huge following--imagine what it’s like when what you really care about is random strangers playing a tabletop game on the internet.

And then came Critical Role.

I am forever grateful that someone I followed (who I won’t @ just because I don’t really talk to them and I don’t want to give them a notification for a stranger’s long rambling post lol) started reblogging a lot of gifs of CR because I was. immediately interested. I never really lost my interest in D&D, I just lost access to it, so as soon as I saw images of people rolling dice and cheering about crits I was into it. It took me a little while to find out what it was and where to get it but when I did I blew through it, over 30 three hour long episodes, staying up past 3 am every night even though it was fucking reading and finals period, and watched the entire backlog up to that point (a third of what it is now, but pretty considerably even so). The three-hour-long videos were familiar to me, though the live action format was not (every stream I’d watched was through an online program rather than in person, so I’d only ever seen character tokens and heard voices).

Critical Role came at exactly the right time. I found it at the end of my first semester at Wellesley, where for the first time I’d found people who shared my interests and were every inch the geeky loser I am. I was finally in a place where I felt comfortable exploring my most out-there interests more publicly, and while I didn’t find my first in-person fan until this year (shout out to @wingedscribe for talking to me for over an hour about what an idiot Vax is when we first met), or at least the first one I didn’t make myself (thanks Susie, and I see you reblogging CR posts still), I did find enough people willing to try out roleplaying with me. I finished bingeing Critical Role just in time for winter break, I grabbed an old fantasy world I’d built ages ago for a different forum RP group, and I drafted a campaign. I was the DM, because we tried another person and it was an unmitigated disaster, and because I knew the most about how the game worked--again, solely because of my years of watching D&D streams and just sort of absorbing the rules (tho they had all been 4e, so I definitely was still learning).

That campaign doesn’t exist anymore because I definitely threw myself way in over my head with it and burned myself out, but Critical Role still kickstarted my creativity and imagination and that stuck with me. I talked some friends into trying a Star Wars RPG with me and we’re having a hell of a time, and I’m trying out D&D as a player and fucking loving it (god I miss both those games right now though, the downside of summer is splitting up our group). I wrote fanfiction for the first time in my entire life, and started to actively participate in a fandom on a wider basis for pretty much the first time ever, because of this show. I bought (and wear, very often, because that hoodie is my favorite article of clothing ever) fandom-related clothing for the first time because of this show. That’s how much it means to me: I, who am perpetually embarrassed to talk about literally everything that interests me, walk around with the Critical Role logo and How Do You Want To Do This emblazoned across my body on a regular basis.

Critical Role, more than anything, has made me feel what it is to be part of a fandom community. Just like those 15 people showing up every Friday night to hang out and watch some strangers play D&D, but on a massive scale. There’s something so incredibly engaging about watching a story unfold in real time, especially when the cast is so eager to engage with the fans themselves. Seeing Laura Bailey as ready to fistfight Sam Riegel as I am on a daily basis is a powerful thing when it comes to making me feel connected to the show, and seeing everybody else on this site also ready to square the fuck up has made me feel more connected to the Critter community as a whole. And maybe it’s because it’s a relatively small fandom, or maybe it’s because of the medium of D&D in general and Critical Role more specifically, or maybe (probably) it’s some combination of the two, but I am so glad I found this show and this community at a time in my life when I was actually ready to be a part of it.

This is real fuckin long and I’m not sure I even said what I wanted to, but basically: Thank you, Critical Role. Thank you, Matthew Mercer and the rest of this incredible cast. And thank you, Critter community. Y’all mean a lot to me.

[xt1erminator-blog]

“Celebrity” DMs That Slay

I love Dungeons & Dragons. I love playing it, DMing it, reading about it, watching YouTube videos on subject matter relating to it (Nerdarchy, Matt Colville and Drunkens & Dragons: Play D&D Like A Badass are all great YouTube channels with quality content).  Some games are even great to watch live streams of, especially observing talented “celebrity” Dungeon Masters working their magic, some of them admitting a lot of their “performance” and the content they come up with for their players is improvised and off the cuff.  It takes a lot to pull that off.  Most games out there however, are very difficult to watch and enjoy. There are too many distractions among groups when streaming stuff and it can be boring.

So, for anyone new to the D&D hobby that might be reading this blog, I just wanted to write up some stuff on three of the best publicly known Dungeon Masters out there thanks to the Internet - most of us into D&D will know who they are, and they are all are on a lot of people’s Top 3 Dungeon Masters Ever lists I’m sure. These guys put in some crazy hard work to help the online community better ourselves as Dungeon Masters. Thank you.

(And you know, I should have mentioned this in one of my first posts on this site, but I’m not a professional blogger or even a good writer. This is just my space to shoot the shit (probably mostly talking to myself no doubt) about one of my favourite past times, D&D). Warning: some of this post may seem out of logical order, sorry in advance :)  I had to go back and edit it a few times. Apologies for any inaccuracies as well but I’m pretty confident it’s solid.

Chris Perkins, “Celebrity DM to the Stars”

Being a semi-regular reader of Dungeon magazine for quite some time, I didn’t really pay attention to names of the authors of the short adventure modules published within the magazine’s pages.  When I reconnected with the hobby a couple of years ago after hearing a lot of good praise about 5th Edition D&D, I did more and more research about the people behind it, and naturally stumbled across reading about Chris and the Acquisitions Incorporated live games run at some of the PAX (Penny Arcade Expo) Conventions with the Penny Arcade guys (Jerry Holkins, Mike Krahulik and Scott Kurtz, as well as occasional appearances by celebrities/TV personalities like Wil Wheaton and Morgan Webb, author Patrick Rothfuss, etc.).  Then I went back through old Dungeon magazines after reading that’s how Chris got his start to getting his foot in the door, and have since become a fan of his. He’s even replied to Tweets of mine once or twice. Woo.

I am very entertained by how Chris runs his live games. It’s quite easy to see why he is held in such high regard. I started to lose a little interest in his work however when his regular weekly Dice, Camera, Action web series started. They were starting to run a series based on The Curse of Strahd just before the book released. The PAX games are still great, as are the in-studio AI series episodes, however with Dice, Camera, Action things seemed to really be a struggle and it was hard to follow and really get in to. Between technical difficulties in the first few episodes, to things taking a long time to pick up due to excessive chatter which was in my opinion a waste of time (get on with the game ffs! This happened quite frequently), it was hard to keep myself entertained and motivated enough to finish watching each episode. By the 6th episode or so, I stopped watching D, CA entirely. I decided to revisit it recently and while the presentation is a bit better and they seem to have worked out the kinks in the system, I have come to the conclusion why it wasn’t a success for me: the cast picked for this series is not very good. It’s not Chris - how can it be. The guy is probably the most dedicated and passionate Dungeons & Dragons fan, Dungeon Master, works for the company who makes the game (Wizards of the Coast), and spends a shitload of time on Twitter answering questions from fans with his unique sense of humour, I love the guy (not that way).  The cast though. Very weak. Generally speaking they are either too silly to take seriously or not entertaining enough in role playing their characters (hey, I’m not very good when I play and probably an even worse DM so I’m not tooting my own horn by any means), etc. but they are on camera for this and I really cannot believe so many people like this show like they say they do. The whole “Waffle Crew” thing I just don’t get I guess. The cast isn’t exceptional and I think Chris should be spending his time with a different group doing bigger and better things. Again, I am a heavily opinionated bastard as stated in the header of this blog :) “ProJared” is probably the weakest link in the D, CA group. He just doesn’t bring anything to the table and quite honestly, his attitude sucks. It is a puzzle to me how he was chosen to partake in this show with the legendary Christopher Perkins, DM. Just watch his videos on his YouTube channel, ProJared Plays I believe it’s called. I suggest watching his video entitled “Worst Player Ever”. Wait for the part where he describes how he “loses his shit” with “Steve”.  But enough about him... Chris rocks.

Matt Mercer, He’s Pretty OK

One of the players in a campaign I run is a very, very big fan of Critical Role. If you don’t know what CR is, Google it. It’s one of the reasons she became interested in Dungeons & Dragons and wanted to try it out, which opened a huge floodgate for me that had been closed for several years, and caused my re-connection with the hobby a couple of years ago. The addiction resurfaced and hundreds (OK, probably thousands) of dollars later I am the proud owner of a collection of nerdy D&D stuff that has been amassed. Damn you, Liesl.

Anyhow.  I was curious and tried watching some episodes of CR. At the time, I wasn’t into it. Not at all. I wouldn’t say I am now either, but I have probably watched around half of the 80+ episodes and find quite a bit of entertainment in the performance everyone in that group delivers.

So, at the time we started getting into 5e via the infamous Starter Set, featuring the introductory Lost Mine of Phandelver adventure module. Naturally, I ran it improvising mostly everything and only referencing major area and plot details when absolutely required.  I admittedly do not care much for running any of the current 5e premade adventures and therefore probably won’t ever run any of them in their entirety (I will pick apart things, and throw in content from an old Dungeon magazine, even 4e source book, etc. or borrow a part from some other WotC hard cover adventure campaign book, that, like I said, will never run in its entirety). There’s good stuff in there, but it doesn’t play like modules back in the good old days. Anyhow I think it went well. The more we played, the more references were made to Critical Role and how Matt did things. So I got more and more curious and gave Matt and CR another chance. Glad I did.

It turns out what I really went back for though after thinking I didn’t like CR, was Matt Mercer (after awhile the cast of that show grew on me, but I was paying particular attention to Matt most of the time). It’s absolutely unlikely I would ever be able to pull off 1% of what he can do with voices, and describing and gesturing things when he spins his tale - but I try to absorb everything I can, and hope my poor little brain remembers just a smidgen of it and it enters my game at some point and does just a little bit to help my improvisational skills. I don’t think I’ll ever attempt performing NPC or monster voices, but who knows... like they say, you’ll never get anywhere with it if you don’t just start doing it, no matter how much of a fool you think you are making of yourself. There is a reason why Matthew Mercer is regarded as one of the best Dungeon Masters in the world, because he truly is just that damn good.

Also - FORCE GREY IS AMAZING. It’s a short run series Matt DM’d for several other celebrity players including the immortal Brian Posehn.

Matt Colville, the YouTube DM Activist

Finally, I think my personal absolute favourite "popular” Dungeon Master these days would have to be none other than Matt Colville. He claims to be a normal person just like anyone else, but he’s totally a celebrity now, to me anyhow. Ha ha. Dude, you’re on a now-quite-popular YouTube channel. You’re awesome. Thank you.

Matt is a writer by profession. He’s got a couple of fantasy novels he’s written that you can find on Amazon.com (Priest, and Thief I believe are the titles - check them out).  He’s also lead writer at Turtle Rock game studio in California. Makers of games like the Mercenaries series on consoles, and more recently the party vs. big bad enemy shooter Evolve (he says he’s most proud of this title), all of which Matt did major writing on. From the game sessions I have watched that he has posted on his channel, it is evident that he is very creative and an extremely bright person more than capable of running a really great game that is well thought out and has all the bells and whistles and logistics of everything worked out just right (in my opinion). I wish I could run my games with his brain :)

The last few videos I’ve linked on my blog here are a few of my favourites of his, and they have really kickstarted my brain. So now I am thinking of better ways to run my games, and attempting to infuse a similar kind of quality material that Matt seems to ooze out of his noggin.  Watch his videos, all of them. When I first discovered his channel, I was amused. However, after watching maybe a half dozen more videos, I had to stop. I think it was the rapid rate at which he discusses the topics presented, it was maybe overwhelming me. I took a break for a couple of months and avoided his channel.  Then a colleague and I were discussing him, and in hindsight I realized I really totally dug his stuff. So when I went back to checking out his videos and gave some thought about what it is that he is doing with his channel, and what he is doing to help Dungeon Masters (new or old) better the quality of their games. I watched every single video (and rewatch several frequently for inspiration) and it’s now my top rated Dungeons & Dragons influenced channel.

I respect his genuine passion for the game and how he conveys his message to us, and appreciate the time he takes to create such brilliant content for the DM crowd. I highly suggest subscribing to his channel. If you can get past the fast paced talking, it’s worth the time to check his stuff out. If there ever was such thing as a “Church of D&D”, Matt Colville should be the high priest of it.

In the words of Mr. Colville:

“Peace. Out.”

And now, enjoy some whiny ProJared! (”he’s such a dumbass!”)

-runDMsteve