|
So I didn’t read the OP or anything because if I watch this I wanna come in totally blind, but is this a show I can jump into without knowing any of the backstories? I’ve been trying to find more adult animation to watch but I don’t want to have to watch like 200 episodes of a bunch of people playing D&D to jump into this. Also is there any annoying anime little kid/monster/rabbit-person/whatever? Thanks thread!
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2022 20:12
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 29, 2024 14:13 |
|
Robobot posted:So I didn’t read the OP or anything because if I watch this I wanna come in totally blind, but is this a show I can jump into without knowing any of the backstories? I’ve been trying to find more adult animation to watch but I don’t want to have to watch like 200 episodes of a bunch of people playing D&D to jump into this. Yes, you can jump right in. No annoying little kid/whatever characters.
|
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2022 20:19
|
|
|
Awesome! Gonna watch the first three episodes sometime this weekend! What are the spoiler rules in here? Is it open discussion about the YouTube stuff or is this a new story they’re doing just for the show? Just wanna know if I should avoid the thread all together or if it won’t really matter if I’m chatting about it in here.
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2022 20:30
|
|
|
Overall I liked this show and I have limited exposure to Critical Role , only learning about it here on the forums. Its good though the first 3 episodes are good.
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2022 20:46
|
|
|
Dameius posted:You know, the more I think about it the more i feel that the show should keep the major plot beats and work in whatever jokes and other stuff they want, but otherwise should break away some from the stream. Season 1 seems to just be the entire Briarwood's arc which means it's going to be massively condensed. As the episodes are 30 minutes and there like 10 episodes or so in a season.
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2022 21:00
|
|
|
Robobot posted:Awesome! Gonna watch the first three episodes sometime this weekend! What are the spoiler rules in here? Is it open discussion about the YouTube stuff or is this a new story they’re doing just for the show? The first two episodes are a canon story that happened before the youtube/stream started... so like adapting a star wars EU novel? Not new but it's a relatively small set of fans who knew anything about it. To the best of our knowledge, everything beginning in Ep 3 is adapted directly from major plot arcs in the stream with some tweaks, changes, and time jumps. With that said, if you're feeling ambivalent after two, know that the consensus of the reviewers (who saw through 6) is that if you liked episode 3 more than the first 2, stick around through next week If people geeking out about a character's first appearance or being inexplicably excited about someone's weapon will lessen your enjoyment because it hints that it'll be something important to come in the future, you may want to skip the thread. But thus far we've not seen anything like "it's really cool that character accidentally attacks his teammate this way because that's how he'll eventually kill her when he betrays the group later" Either way, welcome and I selfishly hope you stay and  because it's awesome to hear the thoughts of people whose first exposure to this world and these loveable fuckups is the cartoon!Hollismason posted:Overall I liked this show and I have limited exposure to Critical Role , only learning about it here on the forums. Its good though the first 3 episodes are good. 
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2022 21:11
|
|
|
Excellent! Thanks for the reply. Generally I don’t really care about spoilers, but I like to make that decision after seeing a few episodes. I’ll watch the first three and check back in if I decide a few random spoilers will be worth discussing it with others.
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2022 21:25
|
|
|
I myself have watched about half of C2 and am up-to-date on C3, but have never seem more than a couple little clips of C1 content. I know a little bit about the C1 characters based on mention of them turning up in discussions of C2/C3 I've been in, but not much about plot details of C1. I'd love to avoid major plot spoilers, but given that C1 has been done for some years now, expect I'm taking a bit of a risk hanging out in any large CR discussion spaces. I think my C2 experience set a baseline for style-of-content such that I'm not surprised by some vulgarity, violence, and nudity in TLoVM and I've enjoyed the first three episodes, though the third is definitely the most enjoyable, starting to dig into Percy's backstory and surface some quality baddies to oppose the party. Looking forward to the next drop of episodes.
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2022 22:16
|
|
|
I just realized how unique this show is in terms of the performances. The main party are all voiced by the people who have written these characters and played them for years and years. I've seen every episode of Critical Role so it might not stand out to me but I have to wonder if that is noticeable in the performances to someone who isn't familiar at all with CR.
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2022 00:21
|
|
|
Dexo posted:Season 1 seems to just be the entire Briarwood's arc which means it's going to be massively condensed. As the episodes are 30 minutes and there like 10 episodes or so in a season. Yeah, I feel like, right now at least, the smart thing to have done would have been to map out the absolute must have moments from the arc that will get potted to the show. Then, while still trying to keep faithful to the source material make up whatever you have to so that all those scenes connect properly for the format. I guess technically they are already doing this wholesale with Pike for this arc. So I guess I'm saying just do that for everyone.
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2022 01:39
|
|
|
Dameius posted:I guess technically they are already doing this wholesale with Pike for this arc. So I guess I'm saying just do that for everyone. That does make me as a spoilerish question: did Pike have a problem channeling divine energy in the campaign?
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2022 02:42
|
|
|
Dameius posted:I was already telling some people who bounced off the stream because of its runtime to watch the show and basically treat it as the anime to the source manga. Think they should just lean into that the further in we get. I was thinking its little like this is Scanlan's retelling of what happened and he's changed a few things and trimmed some of the fat to make it work a little better for the wider audience
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2022 03:24
|
|
|
Dawgstar posted:That does make me as a spoilerish question: did Pike have a problem channeling divine energy in the campaign? They got a little bloodthirsty at one point and had to atone but IIRC didn't that impact her mechanically, eventually taking a leave of absence from the group to help rebuild a temple (while the player was off filming on the other side of the country.)
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2022 03:45
|
|
|
Yeah like Rougey said, Pike was leaning a little too hard into the murderhobo nature of D&D and Matt actually had consequences for that since she worships a good deity. I'm guessing that in this case, the fact that she's been roaming around with VM who have explicitly not been doing good and mostly don't care to has been giving her a spotty connection at best to Sarenrae.
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2022 05:34
|
|
|
Robobot posted:So I didn’t read the OP or anything because if I watch this I wanna come in totally blind, but is this a show I can jump into without knowing any of the backstories? I’ve been trying to find more adult animation to watch but I don’t want to have to watch like 200 episodes of a bunch of people playing D&D to jump into this. To Question 1: Yeah you can. The characters' backstories eventually come along as the story goes. It doesn't bog itself in exposition. Just "here are these dumbasses and here is what each of them do" To Question 2: No little kid but it depends whether you like the horny gnome bard or not.  Dragonstoned posted:I was thinking its little like this is Scanlan's retelling of what happened and he's changed a few things and trimmed some of the fat to make it work a little better for the wider audience I think they just retconned most of the pre-campaign story arcs except for their character backstories and their personal bonds. This is evidence by (pre-campaign lore & TV show spoilers) The party saying they never fought a dragon even thought they actually did fight one in the Winter's Crest arc of the pre-campaign. And Lady Allura was already acquainted with them personally in the pre-campaign. . I think they really wanted to squeeze things and keep it simple without doing so much exposition. Part of the reason I think Kraghammer got cut was because it was mostly a wacky adventure without too much developments. Then there's the extra work of having to say That One Dragonborn Sorcerer never existed. It's just easier to get to the juicy stuff. DesertIslandHermit fucked around with this message at 07:32 on Jan 30, 2022 |
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2022 07:19
|
|
|
Re: Pike, Dont think this is really a spoiler but I think her running out of magic was less to do with a spotty connection to her deity and more to do with them coming up with a way to explain the mechanical limits D&D puts on magic use. This show was Number 1 in Ireland according to Amazon's thingy. Wasn't expecting that.
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2022 08:46
|
|
|
My 70 year old parents liked Vox Machina. Not a good sign.
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2022 08:48
|
|
|
It's probably the Critter fandom rush but it's really funny to see a theatre guy beat a more well-known theatre guy with a song about anal beads (but it's never going to be #1 because Disney has a big fanbase) https://twitter.com/neal_acree/status/1487534818266996737 Marsupial Ape posted:My 70 year old parents liked Vox Machina. Not a good sign. My mom knew about Critical Role because she asked me about it last year since I played D&D and she had been hearing of it from people at work. I told her about how they were making an animated series for it. I thought she wouldn't care (or get turned off by the gross stuff of Episode 1) but she called me earlier today and said she liked it. Vax is her favorite. DesertIslandHermit fucked around with this message at 09:18 on Jan 30, 2022 |
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2022 09:15
|
|
|
I went looking at the merch they have linked on the Amazon page and I'm pretty sure this is a machine generated design
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2022 10:47
|
|
|
Abroham Lincoln posted:I went looking at the merch they have linked on the Amazon page and I'm pretty sure this is a machine generated design Death from the Shadows is a really a bit on the nose, they'd undoubtedly shift more units with "Dagger Dagger Dagger (breathes) Dagger"
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2022 11:04
|
|
|
I've tried to get into the podcast and never could, and I watched these episodes and I quite liked them! They feel very self-aware and tropey and, sure, stereotypical in many ways, but, I do like that there are hints of more meaningful character stuff to come, which will hopefully all be worthwhile. In the meantime, kinda just like seeing D&D stuff on a show where, I dunno, Tiamat might come onscreen and you can be like "ooh! It's Tiamat!"
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2022 11:26
|
|
|
No CR Experience (Was a TAZ listener before Graduation) but I really enjoyed it. That said Sam's acting did a lot of heavy lifting for Scanlan which I'll admit to that being a 'me' thing. Also the Doctor Who fan in me got a laugh at Tennant being a dragon that named itself the Raging Storm 'cause I'm ten, mentally. Escobarbarian posted:Grog in the show is painfully generic “big dumb guy” so far In a world without Sonic Boom I'll take anything I can for more Travis-as-goofball. ConanThe3rd fucked around with this message at 11:43 on Jan 30, 2022 |
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2022 11:35
|
|
|
No, you're dead on, Scanlan works almost by sheer force of will from Sam Riegel because almost anyone else would either make him too obnoxious or too tame
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2022 14:37
|
|
|
Yeah, Sam Riegel is, and I mean this as a compliment, a menace to society that refuses to be stopped.
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2022 14:55
|
|
|
Agaragon posted:Yeah, Sam Riegel is, and I mean this as a compliment, a menace to society that refuses to be stopped. I still cackle every time I rewatch the birth announcement skit of Travis & Laura’s kid. Also I’m a cat
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2022 15:16
|
|
|
BrianWilly posted:I've tried to get into the podcast and never could, and I watched these episodes and I quite liked them! They feel very self-aware and tropey and, sure, stereotypical in many ways, but, I do like that there are hints of more meaningful character stuff to come, which will hopefully all be worthwhile. In the meantime, kinda just like seeing D&D stuff on a show where, I dunno, Tiamat might come onscreen and you can be like "ooh! It's Tiamat!" The thing that really made C1 unique compared to C2 and C3 was just how and when we started following the band of heroes. Before the stream started they were pretty much like any other friends group table that's ever had a campaign. Vox Machina were really called the Super High Intensity Team Squad (or, The S.H.I.T.S. (may have slightly goofed the words but the acronym is right)). Vox Machina was what they came up with basically on the spot when Felicia Day convinced them to bring the game on stream. While everyone in the game are professional actors and directors, the game was their way to have a scheduled reason to get together one Saturday a month and spend all day catching up with each other and tell dick and fart jokes. All of these characters had as much planning and forethought as needed to survive a single birthday party oneshot by a group of people who most of had never played any table top game ever. By the events of episode 3, all of this started to change. At this point we are in the high 20s (27? 28? doesn't matter) number of streams for Critical Role and everyone involved is starting to get a sense of the lightning in a bottle they have and this story arc from the campaign that will make up season 01 of the show was when they really transitioned from actually just being a group of nerdy rear end voice actor friends sitting around a table and playing Dungeons and Dragons and instead became a group of nerdy rear end voice actor friends who were using structured improv to deliver A Story™ to an Audience™. So this is really when everyone started putting the narrative focus on fleshing out who and what these characters are and tightening everything up. This also applies to the cast as well since before the stream they were playing Pathfinder, not D&D 5e and Matt the call to convert them to 5e for the stream in accommodations to the stream audience. Percy's class doesn't exist in D&D so Matt had to homebrew it for the switch and everything was very much a Work In Progress that didn't all start clicking together into what CR would become until around here in the campaign. For this and other important but not relevant to this post reasons, most people suggest starting C1 at basically where episode 3 does. This is in contrast to C2 and C3 where from the start everything about the characters/game/world building/the game was already done with the knowledge of them being Dramatis Personae for a long haul narrative and thus built from their foundations with the audience/the show in mind. As someone who has been watching the stream weekly since almost the first episode and has had waaay to much time to idly think about these things, I am really curious to see how anyone in the thread who picks up the show with little to 0 CR knowledge reacts to all of this so I want to echo the sentiment from the OP to please and especially if you're one of those people.
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2022 16:18
|
|
|
Dameius posted:
I'm one of those people. I'm enjoying it. Frankly I've had issues with a lot of fantasy being grim and dark and I want something fun and glorious and they deliver. I bounced off critical role, though. It's just so much.
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2022 16:33
|
|
|
I think it's also worth noting that due to the nature of the origin as a D&D campaign the characters are all coming from the actors/players with input from Matt Mercer as DM, and I think this arc works because Percy just was a bit more thought out than the others were at the start (Vax and Vex are very much generic Fantasy Hero types, Keyleth pulls a lot from the Last Airbender, Riegel's been open that Scanlan started life as a riff on Eminem, and Grog was like 90% the voice), largely because Taliesen Jaffe is the most experienced, other than Mercer, with TTRPGs and put together a backstory for his character that lent itself to being made a major plot hook.
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2022 16:44
|
|
|
Gaz-L posted:I think it's also worth noting that due to the nature of the origin as a D&D campaign the characters are all coming from the actors/players with input from Matt Mercer as DM, and I think this arc works because Percy just was a bit more thought out than the others were at the start (Vax and Vex are very much generic Fantasy Hero types, Keyleth pulls a lot from the Last Airbender, Riegel's been open that Scanlan started life as a riff on Eminem, and Grog was like 90% the voice), largely because Taliesen Jaffe is the most experienced, other than Mercer, with TTRPGs and put together a backstory for his character that lent itself to being made a major plot hook. Yeah Taliesen was the one person with enough experience to be like "my character has Actual Conflict in his backstory that the DM can bring up when ready," something basically everyone did in campaigns 2 and 3 but was relatively unique in 1
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2022 17:01
|
|
|
I mean everyone else does have stuff that comes up, but I'm honestly not sure how much of that was in the home game and how much got fleshed out once they realised the stream was a success and their theater kid sides came out.
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2022 17:05
|
|
|
Yeah Talisen was brought into the original birthday game via Matt as his ringer for the group to help the first time players (he actually didn't play Percy then, but a paladin. Marisha was also also Matt's ringer but with no character, just purely out of game coaching/assisting with rules explanations and such). Talisen's take on the game was basically a series of, "oh honey..." as he kept bailing them out of Baby's First D&D Puzzle or encounter or etc... after they flailed around for awhile. e: Gaz-L posted:I mean everyone else does have stuff that comes up, but I'm honestly not sure how much of that was in the home game and how much got fleshed out once they realised the stream was a success and their theater kid sides came out. Everyone was supposed to show up to the game with a character/class/name in mind. Travis did none of these and was late. So Goliath because they are the biggest. Barbarian because the flavor text sounded cool and was a melee/not-spell caster class. Grog because when he realized he forgot to pick one beforehand it was the first word to come out after "uhhhhh". Sam told Liam he wanted to play the least favorite class as the least favorite race and as mentioned above made it an explicit Eminem parody. And so on. Because Talisen had grown up playing table tops like and with Matt, he did the thing every experienced player does and just kind of naturally built Percy with backstory plot hooks already included, as opposed to everyone else having to figure it out on the fly both pre-stream and especially once the stream took off. Pre-Stream they had already had a story arc involving the twin's dad. Marisha made Keylith also with natural hooks built in and one of the most memorable for them big bad arcs pre-stream was Keylith accidentally Dameius fucked around with this message at 17:37 on Jan 30, 2022 |
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2022 17:09
|
|
|
Gaz-L posted:No, you're dead on, Scanlan works almost by sheer force of will from Sam Riegel because almost anyone else would either make him too obnoxious or too tame Sam has shown his flexibility in comedy when he went on to play Nott in C2 and F.C.G. in C3. Animated Scanlan is going to be a new challenge because Scanlan’s biggest jokes in the stream besides the Cutting Words insults and Counterspelling villains trying to pull a fast one was singing really catchy parody songs. Scanlan was essentially a very naughty Weird Al. But now they have to avoid for the new show because of copyright idiocy. So far he has shown he can make a good song like episode 1 and an absolutely outrageous song for episode 3. It’s only three episodes so far and Scanlan hasn’t been a spotlight hog. I trust Sam and Matt to balance his airtime and rate of jokes, even if Scanlan might do a song about his dick. I hope he does a song for (Major Campaign Final Arc Spoilers) Counterspelling Vecna, right down to Vecna being absolutely confused and angry at the song.
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2022 18:19
|
|
|
DesertIslandHermit posted:I hope he does a song for (Major Campaign Final Arc Spoilers) Counterspelling Vecna, right down to Vecna being absolutely confused and angry at the song. I really hope this gets the ratings enough to take it to the end because I can't wait to see Arkhan deliver the best campaign capstone moment. Really gotta hand it to him (  ).
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2022 18:36
|
|
|
eke out posted:Yeah Taliesen was the one person with enough experience to be like "my character has Actual Conflict in his backstory that the DM can bring up when ready," something basically everyone did in campaigns 2 and 3 but was relatively unique in 1 I believe they've said they weren't even really role-playing things very much until Laura just started talking in character while haggling with a merchant.
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2022 19:02
|
|
|
Dawgstar posted:I believe they've said they weren't even really role-playing things very much until Laura just started talking in character while haggling with a merchant. yeah that's part of why I don't mind the first two episodes so firmly establishing them as dipshits, it's quite accurate. they're just going to rapidly accelerate that bit to the part where they start becoming actual people rather than broad archetypes
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2022 19:06
|
|
|
eke out posted:yeah that's part of why I don't mind the first two episodes so firmly establishing them as dipshits, it's quite accurate. they're just going to rapidly accelerate that bit to the part where they start becoming actual people rather than broad archetypes Yeah even when they are basically stereotypes of the game's classes (low INT Barbarian, edgy Rogue, hippie Druid, horny Bard), that was pretty much how they played in the home game and their first impressions when they debuted on stream. The closest they ever got to being a more formal party is Campaign 3 if you ignore Ashton saying 'gently caress' all the time and Fearne stealing things. Campaign 1 was the story of absolute dumbasses growing a heart and saving the world.
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2022 20:09
|
|
|
Maybe it's just because the actual character backstories and main storyline haven't kicked off yet, but my goodness everything about the main cast is amazingly generic. Maybe that's on purpose (I know they're based on a bunch of friends goofing off in a D&D game) and I'm assuming they'll be fleshed out a lot more as the series goes on. Dragon episodes weren't really doing it for me, but I did like the dinner party episode because it felt like something was starting to happen. The dialogue is pretty good and I can tell the actors are having a good time with their characters. Really my only complaint is how "by the books" everything is, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing if the characters start to drive the story. All in all I'd say so far I've enjoyed it and am looking forward to the next episode. Also the fights were fun, I like the animation style, I like the character designs, I like the acting, and I like most of the humor. Trinket rules.
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2022 20:29
|
|
|
Robobot posted:Maybe it's just because the actual character backstories and main storyline haven't kicked off yet, but my goodness everything about the main cast is amazingly generic. Maybe that's on purpose (I know they're based on a bunch of friends goofing off in a D&D game) and I'm assuming they'll be fleshed out a lot more as the series goes on. Dragon episodes weren't really doing it for me, but I did like the dinner party episode because it felt like something was starting to happen. The first two episodes run into the issue to introducing everyone, selling what their deal is and then pushing through a two-episode quest. And the plot of the first two episodes is essential for a number of reasons related to the campaign so it was unavoidable. Critical Role is used to drawing out quests over several hours and episodes and then had to grind it down into around 40 minutes for just one adventure. Thankfully the next adventure is assumed to go to the end of the season so there's more time for character development, showing the world and more intrigue.
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2022 20:51
|
|
|
DesertIslandHermit posted:Sam has shown his flexibility in comedy when he went on to play Nott in C2 and F.C.G. in C3. Animated Scanlan is going to be a new challenge because Scanlan’s biggest jokes in the stream besides the Cutting Words insults and Counterspelling villains trying to pull a fast one was singing really catchy parody songs. Scanlan was essentially a very naughty Weird Al. But now they have to avoid for the new show because of copyright idiocy. So far he has shown he can make a good song like episode 1 and an absolutely outrageous song for episode 3. Scanlan has a moment during the Briarwood arc that I can't wait to see animated. It makes it absolutely clear that sure, Scanlan is a funny meta character, but absolutely can't be underestimated.
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2022 21:02
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 29, 2024 14:13 |
|
|
AngryBooch posted:Scanlan has a moment during the Briarwood arc that I can't wait to see animated. It makes it absolutely clear that sure, Scanlan is a funny meta character, but absolutely can't be underestimated. If it's the scene I think you're thinking of, then yeah. That was when I went from liking Scanlan to loving him.
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2022 21:57
|
|