#kollok edit

[jackaycola]

⚠️ CW /// quick movement? ⚠️

Happy 5th birthday to KOllOK 1991!

art cred: @elidove & Monica M Morgana !

[utilitycaster]

I'm keeping this somewhat on a back burner because I think I need more data, but I feel like a current boundary being tested in actual play, for TTRPGs that are, for lack of a better way to put it, party-based and ostensibly heroic, is exploring in-game whether the PCs might be the bad guys or even just neutral guys who are not up to the task. (For this reason, "evil" campaigns do not count here, since those aren't about exploring it as a possibility but instead are simply stating that's the situation - I'm looking for the doubt and realization).

I feel like fans (and some GMs and players) get really skittish about this as a possibility, which is unfortunate because it's one of the most interesting things you can do.

[higgslilpizzaslice]

god of charm 😳😩

[aceofspaces16]

I made a simple Kollok edit with a sound from tiktok and I hope there are still people who can appreciate this so here you go

If this gets noticed I’ll post more Kollok edits that I have made

[strawberrynova]

i forgot how much i love watching table top rp games this is so fucking fun

[narukyuu]

The editing doesn't evoke horror to me, is the thing.

I don't like the shot-reverse-shot between Brennan and himself, it's redundant and distracting.

I also feel the same way regarding the crossfades and zooms.

It feels like it is trying very hard to be unsettling in the horror way, in a very cheap way. It distrupts the flow of the episode. Good editing is editing that enhances the experience.

What makes jump scares work is when the editing is invisible enough that there is clear contrast whenever the editing does anything that is not invisible, like a jump cut.

If the editing is visible and in your face 100% of the time, the times when it needs to do something shocking will be underwhelming at best, or will have to increase its prominence artificially in a way that often tends to evoke absurdity or silliness, or worse - be outdated and cliché.

(absurdity and silliness can work for a d20 season, you may say. But as I said editing should enhance what exists, the more visible it is - the more of the viewer's attention it attracts - there is a reason sitcoms and comedy films rarely have much editing at all - the jokes told by the comedians is the main attraction, not the clever cinematography.)

Want to see great horror editing in a ttrpg liveplay? KOLLOK 1991 does it phenomenally. It manages to be genuinely creepy and bizarre without ever breaking the immersion.

Hell, Fantasy high sophomore year did an amazing job with horror as well.

D20 tried something new stylistically. Good on them, it's not easy to try new things. Sometimes those new things don't work well, or need more fine tuning.

This is one of those times.

idk why some of yall are being so nitpicky about the editing in neverafter so far. and its not like its about the “give me a wisdom saving throw.” jumpscare (which was fucking genius imo), its about that One Single cut where they show brennan talking as two different characters LIKE WHY IS THAT THE ONE YALL ARE UPSET ABOUT SHDBDBD

[wedontdeservethestars]

⭐️The God of Night🌙

Please credit or tag me if you use!

[cardiaccadillac]

stop flirting Guilt & Charm || Josephine McAdam and Troy Baker in KOllOK | Council of the Gods

[payton-bagel]

Genocide does not have an effect on your blorbo score

[jackaycola]

#Kolloktober2023 : 3. best duo!

(there are so many more to pick from but they… they are my faves).

[utilitycaster]

Do you think part of the D20 journalistic bias comes from D20 being edited? It gives the appearance of much more effortless play and lets them control the pacing in a way unedited play like CR simply can't do. They get to (potentially) hide a lot of stuff people would jump on as flaws while CR has no choice but to let it all play out. I greatly prefer CR's approach, despite it biting them in the ass a bit through no fault of their own.

Answering these both together to group cause and my opinions, and I do want to note this is specifically about journalism/press coverage, not their respective fandoms even though there's obviously some overlap.

I think there's a couple things, but I do want to note this was actually prompted by Daggerheart, not Critical Role. The response from several prominent voices in the Actual Play journalism community, whom I will not name here but whom I do not respect intellectually, really was, within hours of the open beta (which as far as I know they didn't have early access to - more on that later) "um it could be better, I don't like xyz and also it's sooooooo important to have criticism" and again, it is important to have criticism, but also you act like D20 has never had a mediocre moment and that Kollok is brilliant, so.

This...got away from me a bit. I'd say I'm sorry but actually I adore writing thousands of words about actual play and it will happen again but I'm putting the detailed answer below a cut. The short answer is I think a lot of Actual Play journalists actually sort of fell into their jobs through being vaguely involved in nerd spaces and aren't actually equipped to talk intelligently about TTRPGs and actual play as a medium that should, at its best, be a perfect fusion of narrative and mechanics. So instead they're distracted by flashy edits and bright lights and cool noises and some abstract concept of "novelty" and write only about that. Also Critical Role is the 700 lb gorilla in the AP space (though not, actually, the TTRPG space) and doesn't give them early access and that's meaaaaaan. Indeed, for all I think a lot of their coverage of D20 and Worlds Beyond Number is obsessively fawning, I also think it's extremely surface level, frequently factually wrong, and fails to get at what's truly excellent about those shows either.

I think, honestly, the biggest one is that I don't actually think a lot of Actual Play journalists watch series in full. I was looking for Polygon coverage of Fantasy High Junior Year and they have one glowing article but it's more about Fantasy High as setting and institution and D20 "changing the game" (also more on this later) to the point of outright contradicting the pull quotes they used from interviewing Brennan Lee Mulligan (also more on this later). So I started looking through their coverage and actually, quite a number of their write-ups are based on only one episode, or half a season. Clearly, they haven't read the full open beta (nor have I, but I think their complaints about the character build process belie a profound misunderstanding of what TTRPGs are, also more on this later). So editing is certainly part of it because it's really easy to see cool special effects and sound design within one episode and shit out a hacky article about it, whereas actually getting to the substance - character relationships, cohesive narrative, storytelling - requires work that I do not think they're doing. And on the one hand I do kind of get it, because yeah, if journalism is your livelihood then you perhaps do not have the time to watch 4 hours of D&D a week for 2-3 years if you're only going to get one article every six months out of it. But I don't think the answer is "focus intently on Microsoft Powerpoint-esque scene transition tricks while ignoring that nothing occurring at the table is actually fun to watch." For more on this, see this post.

The second, which is very relevant to Daggerheart but also is actually a big gap in D20 and WBN coverage in my opinion, and which I put in the tags, is that I actually don't think a lot of journalists have a solid understanding of TTRPGs nor of most genres. And I think Critical Role has a particularly good understanding of both these things, actually, if one skewed towards collaborative storytelling that is not rules-light. I think one really big example is that one person within the space is mad at the Daggerheart questions for the character archetypes because what if your character doesn't fit these. I think this is dumb as shit. I actually think that a common criticism of D&D - that you can't play ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING - is not valid, or rather, it's a valid opinion to hold but if you want to play a character who doesn't fit into the available archetypes perhaps you need to find another game. We all inherently understand that Blades in the Dark characters will be members of a criminal organization in a relatively low-magic setting, correct? That you can't show up to BitD and play a lawful good wizard prince because that's not the story being told? Or like, how in Honey Heist, you are a bear and you are trying to get honey, and you cannot play a human child investigating the old abandoned house at the edge of town, but there's a cool game called Kids on Bikes that will let you do that? Great! Why is this suddenly so hard to understand in the realm of heroic fantasy, that you will fit into specific archetypes? Why do people's brains, if they have them to begin with, vanish suddenly? I know I just did a big old rant that included this within it but genuinely I think a lot of people are deeply ignorant of heroic fantasy, or don't like it, and either is fine, but then they get mad at the heroic fantasy game for having heroic fantasy archetypes when the answer is "maybe this will never make you happy because it's not for you." (Frankly, I think this is also why they love D20, because it doesn't really do straight-up heroic fantasy, and that's fine, but they do keep acting like doing a Game of Thrones pastiche is equivalent to the invention of the wheel.) Like...I remember in the Midst Q&A that Xen said they tend to not like playing typical D&D classes, but their solution was to, you know, create Midst instead of sitting around going "actually, because D&D doesn't support cyberpunk narrative and the character archetypes within very well it is an utter failure." (I could go on forever about how actually TTRPGs are not a showcase for your already extant OCs to prance around but that's a totally separate post).

Mechanics and story are inherently intertwined, is what I'm trying to get at (sorry I'm really tired and have a lot to do but I'm passionate about this answer, it will be rambly, she says like 3 pages in) and I really don't think most actual play journalists get this. At all. And I do think that CR, and Daggerheart, and the people working for it, and especially Spenser Starke, Rowan Hall, Matt Mercer, and Travis Willingham, get this more than almost anyone else in the field. I also think Brennan Lee Mulligan and Aabria Iyengar get this, and the thing is, for all the praise showered upon them, much of which I think is deserved and most of what I think is undeserved is not because they are lacking but because the person writing about them is an idiot crediting them for things they (Brennan and Aabria) would never claim to have invented, their mechanical prowess is rarely if ever written about well. Fantasy High Junior Year's downtime mechanics actually fill in a famous gap in D&D, namely, downtime, and provide an excellent marriage of story and mechanics in my opinion, and I haven't really seen any discussion, because that would require watching the part of the TTRPG show where they play the TTRPG, and knowing the vague word on the street about D&D criticism that isn't just "*nods sagely* capitalism is the BBEG."

And finally: related a bit to the edit but Critical Role used to not be able to provide any early access to press, because it was literally a live show, and I suspect they never broke the habit, and I think that is for the best. As discussed a lot of D20 coverage actually feels like they watched the press screener and then never returned to the show. And I do not know the politics about them, but given that several of these publications (notably Polygon, but some others) have been shitting on Critical Role for several years, and just generally given the way CR's leadership vs. how D20's leadership respond to fandom pressure, I suspect Critical Role does not give these journalists a ton of early or increased, if any. Honestly, why should you, if you're getting interviewed in Variety? And I think the journalists are mad, because they think they're special and should get treated as such.

I do want to wrap something up, and I want to thank @captainofthetidesbreath for talking a little about this in game design/ttrpgs and giving me the idea, but in story, you should be challenging your audience, expanding their horizons, and being new and interesting. In the actual playing of TTRPGs, especially a new one, it is vital to be inclusive and easy to understand and patient and provide points of reference. I really feel like many Actual Play journalists and some TTRPG ones as well have this equation flipped and are looking for challenging concepts that most people will never be able to get a group to be willing to play, and bells and whistles in production, but leave story as an afterthought. Critical Role designs games to actually be played and to be used specifically to tell good stories, and puts story before production, and I think that undercuts those journalists' whole deal.

[ko11ok]

DUMP AND THEORY TIME - POST EPI ONE

I have a feeling I’m going to be taking notes during each episode because we learn so MUCHHH

I have very little in terms of theories when it comes to the ascended, I just think we know so little about them and the general world right now that theorizing about it will make more sense later. I remember very little about alice, but she’s here so there’s that!

HOWEVER. I have BIG thoughts about the legacy cast.

namely: 

Tibby is most likely the driver, the there was a section in the narration that sounded TOO MUCH like tibby

a lot is fucked right now. i want to see tibby’s card GIVE IT TO ME. we know so little

I think mallory and tibby might have switched places, and tibby erased the radar’s minds. he clearly knows more than he should.

I solidly do think that tibby is the driver. I don’t think he’s ALWAYS been the driver, but I think he became the driver at some point. 

We know so little about what happened after the events of season two, it’ll be interesting to see what exactly happened

I’m a little less sure that mallory’s alive? But I think he ABSOLUTELY has something to do with the black rock

The black rock seems like it might be a central figure this season, esp with it rotating in front of the players

I’m SO happy marcus is a central figure this season! I always wanted to know what happened to his! I hope he’s still drinking yoohoos and isn’t too insane

I think that skye might be dead. If you look at Ven’s card “death” there is a woman in a suit she stands on top of with redish hair and a ponytail. i could be very wrong tho.

did tibby become a broker? did mickey bring him back? WHY WAS HE KILLING HER? HEH?????

finally: ZAC IF YOU CAN BRING ONE OF YOUR SELF INSERTS BACK YOU CAN BRING BOTH BACK GIVE ME PERRY BUCKET BACK YOU COWARD. thanks <3 :)

[channelrat]

Day 2 of trying to remember how to use Sony effects: Mickey A appreciation because she deserves it

[perksofbeingahalfie]

kinda thinkin about making kollok crack videos for each episode and posting them on youtube :/

[fischyplier]

They need couples therapy ASAP!

[zizzyiscrying]

This was kinda an excuse to use Kollok 1991 for an edit :P