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Froghammer
Sep 8, 2012

Khajit has wares
if you have coin
"A bunch of professional actors have turned out to be REALLY GOOD at roleplaying games, so rather than accepting that I'm choosing to belive that they're using camera tricks and reshoots in order to pretend to be good at roleplaying games"

Sure. Okay. 100%

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Serf
May 5, 2011


i got into rpgs seriously because of the first acquisitions incorporated podcast they did way back in the day to promote 4e. this was way before the modern actual play thing was as popular as it is today, so i think i viewed it more as a teaching tool for the rules than anything else. i definitely didn't go in with the idea that me and my college buddies would meet some standard of roleplaying set by the players and gm (tho i did take a lot of lessons from those gms and incorporated them into my style)

SkyeAuroline
Nov 12, 2020

IME CritRole and the like have given new players the wrong impression of how RPGs go, but those same people have been pretty willing to adjust to the reality of them and do pretty well. The Matt Mercer effect is real but overblown I suppose.

Froghammer
Sep 8, 2012

Khajit has wares
if you have coin

SkyeAuroline posted:

IME CritRole and the like have given new players the wrong impression of how RPGs go, but those same people have been pretty willing to adjust to the reality of them and do pretty well. The Matt Mercer effect is real but overblown I suppose.
I'm cribbing off of another poster (maybe TheIronJef?), but as a person who's ran a whole bunch of public RPG events, you can teach a person how to run a character in a given system ("I make an attack roll! Which one's the d20 again?"), but you can't teach them how to roleplay a character with a Russian accent in public without feeling awkward. People who get into RPGs via Critical Role have the second part down cold.

Honestly, I'm grateful. It's been a boon to the hobby.

SkyeAuroline
Nov 12, 2020

Froghammer posted:

I'm cribbing off of another poster (maybe TheIronJef?), but as a person who's ran a whole bunch of public RPG events, you can teach a person how to run a character in a given system ("I make an attack roll! Which one's the d20 again?"), but you can't teach them how to roleplay a character with a Russian accent in public without feeling awkward. People who get into RPGs via Critical Role have the second part down cold.

Honestly, I'm grateful. It's been a boon to the hobby.

but I got into RPGs through hearing others play and I still can't do that without feeling awkward and/or getting it wrong
But I'm a bad example to use here, experience has proven I'm a black hole of creativity & performance skills.

Froghammer
Sep 8, 2012

Khajit has wares
if you have coin
Commit to character voices. Commit early. Learn how to do it via loving up. Make it your own. Bad character voices are always better than talking just as yourself.

SkyeAuroline
Nov 12, 2020

Appreciated, but voices are the least of my concerns for RPGs currently, trying to push through poorly-treated/untreated ADHD is a lot higher on the menu and focusing on weird voices undermines that.

But I feel like I'm derailing now and can pick this up somewhere more appropriate.

CitizenKeen
Nov 13, 2003

easygoing pedant

Froghammer posted:

I'm cribbing off of another poster (maybe TheIronJef?), but as a person who's ran a whole bunch of public RPG events, you can teach a person how to run a character in a given system ("I make an attack roll! Which one's the d20 again?"), but you can't teach them how to roleplay a character with a Russian accent in public without feeling awkward. People who get into RPGs via Critical Role have the second part down cold.

Honestly, I'm grateful. It's been a boon to the hobby.

Agreed completely. My experience with the Matt Mercer effect has been mostly positive, because the last half dozen people I've brought into the hobby see RPGs as something geeks do, something influencers do, as opposed to something nerds do. (Apologies for relying on tired categorizations, it's late.)

They don't view RPGs as something to be embarrassed about or hidden in a basement. It's something they don't quite get but their approach is much more enthusiastic - they think they don't get it because they haven't tackled it yet. They've just got to dive into the deep end and it'll all click. One of my newest players likened the experience to how Chris Evans must have felt the first time he wore the Captain America suit - weirdly tight pants, but also, Captain America is a badass so that's cool.

Every time this thread comes back to this subject, somebody makes the comparison to porn. But it's always a note about unrealistic expectations, etc. I'll note there's the other side of the coin. I've found new players are showing up with a giant box of freaky toys, with the expectation that "this is normal, right?" Voices, mannerisms, accents, a willingness to follow a weird narrative and fail spectacularly, drawings of their characters... They're pumped.


Oh, hey, welcome!

Roadie
Jun 30, 2013

CitizenKeen posted:

Agreed completely. My experience with the Matt Mercer effect has been mostly positive, because the last half dozen people I've brought into the hobby see RPGs as something geeks do, something influencers do, as opposed to something nerds do. (Apologies for relying on tired categorizations, it's late.)

They don't view RPGs as something to be embarrassed about or hidden in a basement. It's something they don't quite get but their approach is much more enthusiastic - they think they don't get it because they haven't tackled it yet. They've just got to dive into the deep end and it'll all click. One of my newest players likened the experience to how Chris Evans must have felt the first time he wore the Captain America suit - weirdly tight pants, but also, Captain America is a badass so that's cool.

Every time this thread comes back to this subject, somebody makes the comparison to porn. But it's always a note about unrealistic expectations, etc. I'll note there's the other side of the coin. I've found new players are showing up with a giant box of freaky toys, with the expectation that "this is normal, right?" Voices, mannerisms, accents, a willingness to follow a weird narrative and fail spectacularly, drawings of their characters... They're pumped.


Oh, hey, welcome!

TG As An Industry: Weirdly tight pants, but also a badass so that's cool

Warthur
May 2, 2004



A GNS effortpost, because I have thoughts.

Illusionism: The way Forge terminology ultimately evolved, this doesn't mean what people upthread have said its means. Specifically, it's not a proposed creative agenda - it's a GM style, and was usually regarded as a dysfunctional one, and was based around using deceptive techniques to try and make it seem like the player's choices were actually affecting the direction of the game even when they weren't. Hence "illusion".

So, saying "Your PCs are in front of the dungeon - pitch to me how you got there" isn't illusionism, it's the reverse of it: if you say that you are being 100% upfront with the players that the dungeon is what this session is going to be about and you are not pretending anything different.

It's closer to illusionism if you're saying "Your PCs leave town - which direction are you headed in?", and then whichever direction they choose to go in, bam! That happens to be the direct route to the dungeon (and any encounters you had planned for the trip to the dungeon).

But I'd say you're only getting into true illusionism if, were a player to ask you "OK, level with me, does the direction we go in matter or are we always going to encounter the same thing?", and your answer is either an evasion or an outright lie. Illusionism, by my recollection, tended to be frowned on in discussions where people actually understood the Forge terminology, because holy poo poo gently caress that noise, refereeing might require you to keep some secrets from your players (for instance, if you are playing a gamist/simulationist-style investigative scenario where the answer to the mystery is an objective fact set in advance, you're not going to want to leak that spoiler) but once you get into the position of bullshitting your friends and gaslighting them into thinking their decisions made a difference when they didn't then a) what is the point of even presenting your game in an interactive medium, might as well just write the story you want to see happen and b) gently caress you for thinking that's an OK way to interact with your friends.

"Your PCs are in front of the dungeon - tell me how you got there" is instead an example of what the Forge called "Participationism", which is when you are entirely upfront with your players that the game is going to work through a prewritten scenario and you get them onside to make it work. Which, maddeningly, wasn't seen as a Creative Agenda, even though "We are going to play this prewritten scenario and try and engage with it on its own terms" totally is a perfectly adequate description of an intended purpose of play. It was seen as a technique, because the Forge community in general could never agree on there being a fourth slice of the pie.

GNS: This was always a weird way to split things up not least because the slices of the pie weren't very even. Simulation was fuzzily-defined because the Forge largely consisted of people who either actively didn't like it or thought that existing games on the market already covered it perfectly adequately, which in practice meant that everything got lumped in under there. (For my own part I'd tend to define it as making game decisions on the basis of "Based on what is IC established about the setting, either in active play or in pre-prepared setting material, what outcome makes sense here?", and treating the game world as a secondary creation which we get to experience through our characters, rather than as the backdrop of a story or as the constraints of a game scenario. But that doesn't capture a lot of the stuff that got tagged as Simulationist.) Gamism was generally fairly-well understood because it had a fairly clear definition, but was also reasonably broad because there was a recognition that there are a lot of different ways you can set up a game.

"Narrativism" was actually kind of astonishingly narrow - Ron had particular ideas about how a narrative was supposed to work and how it was meant to address premises and stuff. Even in his most recent definition of Narrativism, which he now calls "Story Now", he states as a requirement that a story must address real-world human problems - so if you just want to play through a light, silly story which isn't really about any real-world problems but is just fluffy entertainment, you're not doing real Narrativism according to Ron, no matter how story-oriented the rest of your stuff is. (Of course, there were other minds than Ron discussing stuff at the Forge - but Ron wrote the essays, Ron set the ground rules for discussion, and Ron shut down the theory discussion when he was tired of it, so even though he wasn't dominating the conversation there he could exercise more than enough soft power that he didn't need to.) People tended to assume it was the same thing as Usenet-era Dramatism (where you make decisions on the basis of "What would make a more interesting story?"), but that's 100% not how Ron meant it.

The big problem with the whole Creative Agenda thing is that the three categories all, on the surface, sound like they are specific enough to actually make a meaningful statement about what the intended approach to play actually is, but they're not. There's the kernel of a good idea in there in that people can want entirely incompatible things, but I think to actually get a compatible approach in a game group you need to go more specific than just Gamist/Narrativist/Simulationist. For instance, Player 1, Player 2, and Player 3 all agree to participate in a game which is billed as being run in a "Gamist" manner, but their actual preferences for what they want out of a game are totally incompatible. Player 1 wants to play a game where the PCs will, so long as they don't make very suboptimal or outright foolish choices, more likely than not survive every encounter, except perhaps for the final boss. Player 2 wants to play a game where every fight has a 50/50 chance of defeat for the PCs, where every participant at the table 100% plays for keeps, and the referee challenges the players' system mastery to the hilt. Player 3 doesn't want a players-vs-GM game at all, they're really into PVP and want to play a game where the PCs are directly competing against each other.

Is there some compromise these three players can reach where they all enjoy themselves in the same RPG campaign? Sure, I see it all the time, but in my experience that compromise often entails walking away from Gamism (or whatever the original planned creative agenda was) altogether because they realise their tastes in that area of the game aren't compatible so they will be better off seeking to scratch that particular itch elsewhere, but while they're talking about it they all find they have broadly compatible view of Glorantha so they end up playing a fairly simulationist RuneQuest game or a rather narrativist HeroQuest campaign and it works fine.

The good thing GDS/GNS did was to remind people you need to talk to each other about what you want to get out of a campaign, the bad thing it did was that it tricked people who hadn't thought about it deeply enough into thinking that you just needed to figure out which of the three segments of the pie you were in, and persuaded them that there was only one particular way to cut the pie, or that you had to consistently follow the same Creative Agenda in a campaign rather than working on an agreed hybrid basis. (For example: "Peacetime politics of the Kingdom we treat in a narrativist manner so we can have our cool political intrigues and doomed romances, combat and warfare we treat in a gamist manner and get the minis and strategic maps out and maybe spend a weekend wargaming out the battles.")

Ron Edwards: Ron Edwards is not the devil and Pundit can gently caress off, but I don't think it's at all inaccurate or irrelevant to note that Ron had kind of a weird view of how literary theory etc. worked (ISTR he claimed to have at least some knowledge from teaching 101-level college courses, but it wasn't his actual academic background) and a really weird way of communicating with people. On the former, he did stuff like shutting down the Forge RPG discussion forum because he'd decided that the theory there was "complete" and didn't need further criticism or refinement or discussion, which is... not how academic discourse works, ever? At most a theory or model gets set aside when a more compelling one comes along, but that's not how it's gone for Ron - he's decided that the Big Model (the final version of Forge theory, incorporating the old Threefold) is "It" as far as he's concerned and so far as I am aware has not moved on from it, instead establishing a website and wiki to preserve it in amber forever.

I feel like this kind of ties into some of the reasons for him communicating weirdly. Some of his communication stuff was 100% own goals on his part - like when he said the original brain damage thing, then doubling down by saying "no, I literally meant brain damage (by my personal definition of brain damage), then tripling down by comparing it to the effects of child abuse. That was bullshit, and people on the Forge told him it was bullshit (while others tied themselves in knots to try and argue that he didn't really mean it, even when he said "No, I 100%, definitely mean it"). But a lot of the stuff with him communicating weirdly was him trying to find a way to explain ideas where there wasn't really a widely-recognised and agreed terminology for - in particular, his personal spin on Narrativism, which often got misread as the broader Dramatism and he kept having to say "No, no, unless you are addressing a premise rooted in a real-world human problem it's not hot for me".

I think the reason Ron got traction was, in part, because he was working on a problem which a lot of other people realised - he was finding that his gaming sessions consisted of 20 minutes of fun delivered in 3 hours of gameplay, and he was trying to improve that ratio, and the approach he took to improve that ratio was to really zero in on that 20 minutes of fun to try and make games which would deliver that fun more consistently, because he either would not or could not find what was going on in the remaining 2 hours and 40 minutes fun. I think this can be something which is quite common in people whose taste in RPG play is not particularly broad and want their games to scratch a very particular itch, and the Forge's emphasis on games which scratched very specific itches was laudable. It is a legitimate different approach to, say, the Robin's Laws one, which tends to better acknowledge that some people actually find a broader range of activities fun and can get a pretty decent fun-to-playing-time ratio out of 20 minutes of one flavour of fun here, 20 minutes of another flavour there, 20 minutes of another there, 20 minutes of a type of fun which isn't usually their thing but the player who enjoys that poo poo is getting really into it and their enthusiasm is infectious, and so on.

Warthur
May 2, 2004



Froghammer posted:

Commit to character voices. Commit early. Learn how to do it via loving up. Make it your own. Bad character voices are always better than talking just as yourself.
My view is that it's more important to have a characterful mode of speaking - the vocabulary, the bits you stress on, the body language when talking, the way you express emotions - than an accent. If you can have both, then great, wonderful, fantastic, but if you can only have one I'd drop the accent and keep the other set every time.

I agree with you that the failure state is if a player is talking to an NPC in the same general manner of speaking in which they'd ask you for a rules call or talk to the delivery person showing up with the pizza mid-session. But I have had plenty of encounters with people where them playing with a goofy accent is just that - it's them with a goofy accent, the accent doesn't unlock any characterisation or improve any immersion, it's just them putting on a silly voice.

Equally, I have found that sometimes putting on a voice can help with all the rest. But it's one part of the auditory costume and if the rest of the costume isn't there it ain't doing much. I'm 100% not saying that people shouldn't try accents if they want to (and provided they aren't playing with someone who could potentially find that offensive or insulting), but I am saying that accent uber alles a) is not always true and b) can be exclusionary/unhelpful for people who really don't wanna do the accent, or for whom doing a funny voice isn't actually a helpful way to deliver the characterisation they've opted for for the character in question.

Warthur fucked around with this message at 12:20 on Dec 2, 2020

hyphz
Aug 5, 2003

Number 1 Nerd Tear Farmer 2022.

Keep it up, champ.

Also you're a skeleton warrior now. Kree.
Unlockable Ben

Tsilkani posted:

I don't get why people keep trying to push this point. Like, no-one watches Wicked on Broadway and then goes to the local theater's version and expects it to be the same. No-one goes to the Superbowl and then expects to get the same experience from Friday night high school football. Of course your game isn't going to look like one where everyone is a professional voice actor and the GM has all the free time he needs to do extra planning. Them being paid to do this isn't the difference here, it's that they all have acting and improv experience, and the GM has more prep time and has been building this world for a while now.

It's not that they're being paid to do it, it's that what they're being paid based on is a factor that doesn't exist in standard games.

A football player is paid to win football games by playing football well, which ought to be the same whether others are watching or not. Even though it might be the presence of the audience that gets them their salary, if a football player is being told to play in a particular way purely in order to appeal to people watching then that's called a corruption of the sport.

It might not be called a "corruption" in an RPG but it's creates a difference - the fact that they're on camera and the fact that the real-life rewards come from the camera can't be forgotten by anyone, amateur or professional. The amateur group might not have an audience but they are presumably hoping to get one - if they're streaming (as opposed to recording) it's unlikely they're doing it for themselves.

I mean, if you're going to stream vidya games, the #1 error is to think you can do it by just playing the game like you would normally, when there's a ton of extra interaction involved in the successful streams. They might not be "scripted" in the sense that the other players' activities aren't pre-listed, but there's probably still a plan. And it's widely know that the main rule of reality TV is that it's not reality. Why would successful RPG streams be different?

The community theatre Wicked might not be the broadway production but it still is expected to be played before an audience, even if a smaller one - so there's no similar context difference.

And yes, playing guitar well is hard and takes lots of practice, but streaming your guitar playing is a different matter. Is it just the same skill as playing guitar? Well, no, streaming the learning process is a thing, so the criteria for succeeding at that might be totally different.

Whybird
Aug 2, 2009

Phaiston have long avoided the tightly competetive defence sector, but the IRDA Act 2052 has given us the freedom we need to bring out something really special.

https://team-robostar.itch.io/robostar


Nap Ghost

Warthur posted:

My view is that it's more important to have a characterful mode of speaking - the vocabulary, the bits you stress on, the body language when talking, the way you express emotions - than an accent. If you can have both, then great, wonderful, fantastic, but if you can only have one I'd drop the accident and keep the other set every time.

Yeah, saying "Who you saying I karked?" versus "I'm accused of murdering whom?" is a good way of conveying information about a character. Saying either of those lines in a Russian accent isn't, unless you wish to convey that the person saying then is Russian.

moths
Aug 25, 2004

I would also still appreciate some danger.



Accents are more useful for NPCs. It's a helpful shortcut when there's dozens of characters; Players are able to remember a broad stroke like "that French guy" rather than "the man who doesn't use contractions and uses 'less' and 'fewer' incorrectly."

thetoughestbean
Apr 27, 2013

Keep On Shroomin

moths posted:

Accents are more useful for NPCs. It's a helpful shortcut when there's dozens of characters; Players are able to remember a broad stroke like "that French guy" rather than "the man who doesn't use contractions and uses 'less' and 'fewer' incorrectly."

I would remember that guy, but I’m a pedant

Ettin
Oct 2, 2010

Calico Heart posted:

However, I'd like to also state that... I'm a little lost as to what to do now. Where do I promote this? How do I get clicks? Is there anything I need to do? Does anyone have any general advice?

Some of the advice in here might be worth a try!

dwarf74
Sep 2, 2012



Buglord

Jimbozig posted:

Again, I know nothing about CR, but I know TAZ was like that. Griffin had the sessions essentially plotted out ahead of time and his family played within that essentially pre-written story.
The big difference with CR is that the game is live-streamed, whereas TAZ is a recorded and edited podcast.

I don't get how folks think CR is edited or re-shot when people are actually watching them doing it, while they are doing it.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Froghammer posted:

Commit to character voices. Commit early. Learn how to do it via loving up. Make it your own. Bad character voices are always better than talking just as yourself.

Even though I mostly GM in text, I still practice character voices because doing improvised dialogue for characters helps you feel out their narrative voice and a writing style for them.

Liquid Communism
Mar 9, 2004

коммунизм хранится в яичках

Comstar posted:

Disney, Apple or Amazon could buy WOTC, and not even notice the cost. The ability to buy the IP is worth much more. They need content and there's 50 years of stories and background just waiting for someone to actually use it. Baldur's Gate: The TV series is just like, there. Just like comics, there is mountains of material waiting to be mined, looted and pillaged.

There's the D&D movie coming out in a year or two - better to buy WOTC now, cancel the movie and allow some executive to take over and make their own vision. I have full confidence they wouldn't actually know what to DO with it correctly, but it took 10 years and The Mandalorian for someone working at Disney to figure out Star Wars.

Why one of them haven't bought it to stop one of the others getting it is just a fair question.

I would not at all be surprised if Disney eventually ends up owning WOTC in their quest to mine everything for IP.

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

HELL SERPENT
Lipstick Apathy

Liquid Communism posted:

I would not at all be surprised if Disney eventually ends up owning WOTC in their quest to mine everything for IP.

Mialee becomes a Disney princess

Liquid Communism
Mar 9, 2004

коммунизм хранится в яичках
I can already see the animated Boo and Minsc spinoff.

90s Cringe Rock
Nov 29, 2006
:gay:
Minscy and (the) Boo.

whydirt
Apr 18, 2001


Gaz Posting Brigade :c00lbert:

dwarf74 posted:

The big difference with CR is that the game is live-streamed, whereas TAZ is a recorded and edited podcast.

I don't get how folks think CR is edited or re-shot when people are actually watching them doing it, while they are doing it.

Faking technology has improved by leaps and bounds since the moon landing

Jimbozig
Sep 30, 2003

I like sharing and ice cream and animals.

dwarf74 posted:

The big difference with CR is that the game is live-streamed, whereas TAZ is a recorded and edited podcast.

I don't get how folks think CR is edited or re-shot when people are actually watching them doing it, while they are doing it.

But again, I wasn't saying they edited or reshot or scripted or rehearsed or anything like that. Just that the GM had a story planned ahead of time for the players to improvise within.

hyphz
Aug 5, 2003

Number 1 Nerd Tear Farmer 2022.

Keep it up, champ.

Also you're a skeleton warrior now. Kree.
Unlockable Ben

Jimbozig posted:

But again, I wasn't saying they edited or reshot or scripted or rehearsed or anything like that. Just that the GM had a story planned ahead of time for the players to improvise within.

Yea, I'll admit I was wrong on the scripting issue, but I believe that they do give the GM a hint between sessions of what they're planning because.. that's what regular good groups do. The difference is, the regular groups don't give others the impression they don't do it.

Dexo
Aug 15, 2009

A city that was to live by night after the wilderness had passed. A city that was to forge out of steel and blood-red neon its own peculiar wilderness.
They don't give the impression that they don't communicate.

They frequently talk about their group chats, and Matt never hesitates to say he's talked to his players about something.

Sion
Oct 16, 2004

"I'm the boss of space. That's plenty."

Dexo posted:

They don't give the impression that they don't communicate.

They frequently talk about their group chats, and Matt never hesitates to say he's talked to his players about something.

No, you see, this thing that I think Critical Role is is bad, actually

FMguru
Sep 10, 2003

peed on;
sexually
Getting some real Pundit Tarnowski "storygaming swine don't even like RPGs, they're just hipsters pretending for the nerd clout" vibes from the Actual Play Truthers.

Dawgstar
Jul 15, 2017

FMguru posted:

Getting some real Pundit Tarnowski "storygaming swine don't even like RPGs, they're just hipsters pretending for the nerd clout" vibes from the Actual Play Truthers.

Has it been pointed out they're working actors in LA and thus spending roughly 95% of their waking time going to and from auditions? It has and was ignored? Good, just checking.

Froghammer
Sep 8, 2012

Khajit has wares
if you have coin

FMguru posted:

Getting some real Pundit Tarnowski "storygaming swine don't even like RPGs, they're just hipsters pretending for the nerd clout" vibes from the Actual Play Truthers.
Critical Role was an inside job. Jet fuel can't melt d20s.

hyphz
Aug 5, 2003

Number 1 Nerd Tear Farmer 2022.

Keep it up, champ.

Also you're a skeleton warrior now. Kree.
Unlockable Ben

FMguru posted:

Getting some real Pundit Tarnowski "storygaming swine don't even like RPGs, they're just hipsters pretending for the nerd clout" vibes from the Actual Play Truthers.

I don’t think even Pundit said that. He did say that “they are too excited”, which was mocked at the time, but is emblematic of the energy difference between something done as a job and something done after a day’s work.

admanb
Jun 18, 2014

I'm guessing they brought the same energy when the game wasn't being filmed, because they're used to bringing that energy to their performances. They're no less excited in episode 1 than in their current episodes.

TBH I don't really buy the idea that someone will automatically bring less energy after a day's work. External energy and internal energy can be completely different. Someone can be completely depressed/exhausted and still present a high-energy front (note that I'm not saying that's a good thing.) People bring less energy to RPGs because showing excitement/emotion is opening yourself up, it shows vulnerability, and that's hard. I say that as someone who's very bad at it so like, I get it, but it's not a consequence of Too Much Work. Also, the CR cast was doing full-time voice actor work when they started, which is completely loving exhausting, and still brought that energy to a show they filmed after work hours on a weekday. So, naw.

Finally, personal anecdote: the people I've played with who have the most excited/energetic roleplaying moments are the people who did acting in high school and/or college. They also work full-time jobs.

Farg
Nov 19, 2013
yeah i mean i think if you are coming at things from the point of 'people inherently find this draining and will come into it low-energy' you are way off base. a good game that you are excited and invested in can be super energizing

That Old Tree
Jun 24, 2012

nah


hyphz posted:

I don’t think even Pundit said that. He did say that “they are too excited”, which was mocked at the time, but is emblematic of the energy difference between something done as a job and something done after a day’s work.

I'm pretty tired of this weird tangent, but: Pundit absolutely pushed "they don't even play the games!" Which is one of the reasons I cringe extra when people around here say the same poo poo about someone they don't like.

sexpig by night
Sep 8, 2011

by Azathoth

hyphz posted:

I don’t think even Pundit said that. He did say that “they are too excited”, which was mocked at the time, but is emblematic of the energy difference between something done as a job and something done after a day’s work.

I genuinely have no idea what this means. Are they 'too excited' for something that's their 'job' or something?

Tsilkani
Jul 28, 2013

sexpig by night posted:

I genuinely have no idea what this means. Are they 'too excited' for something that's their 'job' or something?

He's trying to say that they're having too much fun to be just enjoying the game and they're just playing it up for work, as best I can tell, which is an absolute nonsense take. I will absolutely get a second wind when it's game night and be more energetic than I probably was at work that day, because I give less of a gently caress about work than I do about RPGs.

theironjef
Aug 11, 2009

The archmage of unexpected stinks.

To me there's something of a measurable difference between AP fans in general and "critters". Where like while I love playing with an average AP fan because they get the jokes and the streamlining that are just natural to how I've always played and run games, the critters on average are one of those blocks of people where everyone assumes they have to branch out eventually but they never do, they just refocus their attention on the core product.

Marketing to them reminds me of when I used to work at the air and space museum in San Diego and they'd always try to get some exhibit up to draw the visiting nerds during Comic Con. It was an absolute waste of time and money, visiting comic con goers were never going to be more than half a mile from the convention center.

Dawgstar
Jul 15, 2017

theironjef posted:

To me there's something of a measurable difference between AP fans in general and "critters". Where like while I love playing with an average AP fan because they get the jokes and the streamlining that are just natural to how I've always played and run games, the critters on average are one of those blocks of people where everyone assumes they have to branch out eventually but they never do, they just refocus their attention on the core product.

It's not dissimilar to the 'D&D is a gateway RPG' myth. I'm not sure there's a lot of trickle down with CR.

Pocky In My Pocket
Jan 27, 2005

Giant robots shouldn't fight!






Jimbozig posted:

But again, I wasn't saying they edited or reshot or scripted or rehearsed or anything like that. Just that the GM had a story planned ahead of time for the players to improvise within.

Do your GMs not have a plot for their games?

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hyphz
Aug 5, 2003

Number 1 Nerd Tear Farmer 2022.

Keep it up, champ.

Also you're a skeleton warrior now. Kree.
Unlockable Ben

admanb posted:

TBH I don't really buy the idea that someone will automatically bring less energy after a day's work. External energy and internal energy can be completely different. Someone can be completely depressed/exhausted and still present a high-energy front (note that I'm not saying that's a good thing.)

And people who are having their session broadcast - whether they actually are big or believe there's a chance they'll make it big - have much more reason to present that front than private groups.

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