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I enjoy that the McElroys made up a wild magic table when they absolutely 100% do not know how wild magic or basically any aspect of 5E actually systematically works.
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Oct 14, 2023 16:03
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Have they learned any rules, at all, about anything involved with the game they’re playing or is it still Calvinball with dice rolling sfx added in the background?
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Oct 20, 2023 04:07
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If they want to make a radio play they should just do it, but there’s a fundamental difference between rule one and making a game not a game and thus completely removing the actual dramatic interest of actual play. Every win is meaningless because it’s authored and stakes don’t exist because there isn’t any actual danger. Let alone fundamental elements of ttrpgs these three dudes still somehow don’t know after a decade of monetizing knowledge of ttrpgs. Like remember how Justin learned that spell slots existed? This year? Due to a video game?
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Oct 20, 2023 04:15
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The choice is not binary between telling a good story and actually, like, playing the game of DnD; see also NADDPOD or D20, two infinitely superior actual play products that also not coincidentally follow the rules. They’re still funny, the players’ choices still have weight and meaning, but the DMs for both understand that one the whole reason that games are interesting is that they have rules and those rules create constraints and force their players to think creatively within the restrictions they set, and two rule enforcement creates better storytelling and not worse because every victory within their restrictions is earned. So no, Brian Murphy nor Brennan Lee Mulligan let their players cast from the entire spell book nonstop, nor lets their players take fifteen actions a turn, nor never actually punishes their players for any action they take as their storytelling has to override player agency no matter what, and yet surprisingly they both still tell good, emotive, funny stories with stakes and meaning. Weird.
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Oct 20, 2023 18:10
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It doesn’t matter what version of any ttrpg they play, as long as they are utterly afraid of any consequences and they have Travis McElroy in the party they’re still gonna be stakeless and boring nothing adventures. Blaming the system for their straight-up refusal to tell an interesting or engaging story is like blaming the server for a bad meal instead of the chef, let alone that 5E is notoriously roleplay focused with very little cruft. They refuse to learn the rules, don’t follow what few rules they do learn, and have a dude who decides to be the Biggest Main Character ever. Balance was okay when it came out because there was literally nothing else but once you consume any other D and D podcast that either is super rules focused while still being entertaining (prime examples: CR, D20, and NADDPOD) or goes completely the other way and goes entirely for goofs over system (like say, Dragon Friends or Rude Tales), it immediately becomes apparent just how inept and poorly done a podcast this is. Everything it tries to do, another podcast does better; it’s not that funny, especially in comparison to actual play run by comedians, its drama is contrived, boring, and stakes free, it creates a completely harmless and ineffective version of whatever system it’s running by breaking the rules in half so nobody ever Feels Bad, and it has multiple problem players who destroy any semblance of fairness or competitive balance by refusing to be willing to fail/take their ball and go home when they don’t get their way the few times the D/GM punishes them. Again, it’s essentially a bad radio play at this point, and blaming the system for the mcelroys being bad storytellers is…misguided, to say the least.
NieR Occomata fucked around with this message at 18:00 on Nov 4, 2023 |
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Nov 4, 2023 17:56
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Original NieR didn’t highlight where you had to go very well. Theres a lot of criticisms of the McElroys, and most of them are legitimate, but that was a poorly signposted section of the game.
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Nov 5, 2023 02:13
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Alaois posted:it literally puts a trail of footprints on your map leading to where you need to go No it doesn’t. It places a red circle on the map, which itself was handwritten and has a weird perspective where it’s hard to figure out exactly where it wants you to stand, especially when the actual fishing spot is near the outside of the circle.
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Nov 5, 2023 09:01
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SamuraiFoochs posted:Also it would pretty much suck rear end unless there was an opportunity for redemption. Like, the amount of medium to long form narrative art that ends badly is extremely minimal because most people don't want to feel bad while consuming generally Good Times Escapism with the world as hosed up as it is. The point isn’t that there aren’t bad endings, it’s that nothing bad ever happens. They never lose, unless it’s a specifically orchestrated loss that’s a secret win. Theres no loving stakes to anything; they had one PC death, ever, five years ago, and in the fuckin’ like five years and three campaigns since then there’s been no actual danger, stakes, or difficult character choices they’ve ever had to make. They treat campaigns like riding a rollercoaster, where any perceived danger is actually 100% safe because they’re on the track and everyone gets off the ride safely. But moreso than that, it’s a lovely lazy rollercoaster for toddlers where the drops are five feet at most and the whole thing goes two miles an hour. Never mind the lazy encounter design or complete lack of knowledge of the game they’ve monetized a significant portion of their lives playing, which is a serious enough charge in and of itself, it’s little things like as aforementioned their complete lack of lateral thinking, inability to take even small losses like a bad perception check or hosed up stealth roll, tiny little failures that ultimately don’t mean anything but show that these people in this world are fallible and they could lose, even if they won’t. There’s never a single moment now where disbelief is suspended because everyone will always be fine, they’ll always succeed, and even if the roll is bad they’ll lie and say it’s actually a success. Again, let’s contrast this to infinitely superior podcast NADDPOD, which has almost the exact same setup of one DM with three PCs in a comedy-focused campaign except it involves people who took the time to learn how to play the game, great encounter design from a knowledgeable DM who cares about enforcing the rules, and a willingness to punish the players when they roll badly or do stupid poo poo. Two recent examples: in their current campaign, a PC got a cursed helm that he eventually succumbed to and his entire body was taken over by a malignant soul that had cursed his helm. So as a result the spent the next third of the campaign up to this point with the player’s PC just gone, with the player having to play a backup character while they spent a huge amount of time and multiple campaign arcs hunting down where this player’s former PC had gone, confronting him dramatically, then finally breaking him out of the helm to finally get the player his original character back. That is a situation that involves zero character deaths and had actual dramatic stakes, with the win being a hard-fought and narratively earned because the party went through a trial to achieve it, over whatever way TAZ would’ve handled something like that. Second scenario: In this campaign, the party was sneaking through a fortress and one of the PCs thought of a way to combine a silence spell and a grenade to kill an entire encounter of like four to five dudes before they even had a chance to act, in a way that didn’t alert anyone else within the fortress. This wasn’t some rear end-pully bullshit; it required several successful stealth and arcana checks to get everything in place and good rolls to set everything off, but when it did they essentially solved a combat encounter in one action. It was one of the coolest moments I’ve ever witnessed in any actual play podcast literally ever, and it was done more or less 100% RAW (or if not 100%, the ignorable part was safely within rule one guidelines). And the reason it was successful was because it utilized an extremely knowledgeable player who thought and always thinks super creatively, an extremely knowledgeable and experienced DM who knows what checks and difficulty to set an ask like that so the victory is earned and still has a chance to fail, and a willingness to bend but not break to player demands. They did the homework and as a result created an organic moment, via shared storytelling, that was one of the coolest single moments I’ve ever heard in an AP podcast. It wasn’t some “okay Travis roll a d20. Oh uh 8? Roll with advantage. 13? Uh yeah sure you win.” Aka the TAZ experience.
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Nov 9, 2023 17:48
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thebardyspoon posted:I don''t think that is a very serious charge to be honest. It’s an entertainment product that (ostensibly) has rules. It is serious. It’d be akin to being a fan of an NFL team where the QB doesn’t know that you can’t throw a forward pass beyond the line of scrimmage (aka, being a Jets fan). But to complete the analogy, it’d be like watching Zach Wilson huck a bajillion interceptions and bad passes into triple coverage all loving game and the refs swooped in at the end of the fourth quarter to give them the win every time and they’re 8-0 instead of what they actually are right now, 4-4. It would not only make the Jets fradulent as hell, but it’d make the product as a whole worse because nothing actually matters, the zebras are gonna swoop in and give them the win regardless. This is currently where TAZ is, because they refuse to stop repeating the lie that it is a game based off a ttrpg system as opposed to what it actually is, which is a radio play with dice rolling sfx added in to the background. And again, like I said before, that’s loving fine. You want to make a radio play, then do it. Seriously, if that’s what the McElroys want to do, then they should do it, but I think you and I both know they can’t hack it as “real” storytellers of actual, authored narratives considering how often they trip over the low as hell bar that is AP storytelling, so instead pretend that it’s all just a game, ha-ha, while both playing the game terribly and telling bad stories. It’s this horseshit disingenuous framing of what they’re actually doing that is the central problem, while both putting out a bad product and putting on a bad showcase of the game that is supposed to be on display in their actual play podcast. And it’s made all the worse by any number of infinitely superior, better played, funnier, and more engaging AP podcasts that are put out by people without the last name McElroy who aren’t as successful because they do not have the last name of McElroy.
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Nov 9, 2023 20:02
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Android Blues posted:Outre Space finale was a bit of an anti-climax, sadly. Clint's good at bits and cute setpieces but the plot just stopped existing at the end there. A McElroy actual play podcast ending badly with a bad plot? Weird! Shinjobi posted:The brothers have gotten together and watched Wonka A mildly funny at best recurring bit gets run into the ground and finally, mercifully gets cut off weeks past its sell-by date? Double weird!
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Dec 23, 2023 17:44
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Also calling re4 “just” a remake is dismissive at best and an outright lie at worst. It’s an almost entirely new game.
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Dec 29, 2023 02:32
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jeeves posted:Imagine having Travis not only as your brother but also having your business depend on his constant inclusion and participation. I wouldn’t wish such a curse on my worst enemy.
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Apr 20, 2024 18:47
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