For any Critical Role fans.
So…nice! I cannot wait to see this! I’ve seen 125 episodes of the campaign 2, and the cast is amazing!
Damn, I’ve been meaning to check this out for ages now and I keep forgetting!
I guess its still the best if I start from the beginning?
WTF?? Having just googled it, it says the first season is 373 HOURS??? And the second 530??
Okay… Not sure I can invest that sort of time. Crap.
Its a massive time investment.
Personally, I skipped the first one, and over the last year or so I’ve heard the shows as podcasts while commuting.
Otherwise, I can recommend starting out with Campaign 3, which starts on 22. of october (If you are a twich subscriber - otherwise a week later) - and then watch/listen to the 3 shows that will air each month.
edit: and yeah - if you want to see one of the campaign, you have to start at the beginning. It is very, very much worth it though - they are wonderful people who have a great time together, and the production values of campaign 2 are INSANE - there is literally no other rpg show that comes even close.
The animated series will be covering parts of campaign 1, so I guess you could skip the first campaign and get the gist of it by watching the animated series when it releases.
Campaigns 1 and 2 are separate enough that you don’t need to have watched the first to enjoy the second, though there are call backs that you won’t appreciate as much by skipping the first. I imagine campaign 3 will follow a similar pattern.
Small warning - the first dozen episodes audio quality is a little wonky, but it gets better quickly. Additionally, they start in the middle of the story (as an extension of their home game), which isn’t a problem most of the time, but they sometimes refer to people and events that happened before they start filming. The investment in worth it, but took me 2 years to catch up by listening at the gym and on commutes.
Yeah… it all sounds great, but again, that’s a humongous amount of time & I’ve got a list of audio books that I’m still trying to work through & those are “only” 20-30h ones…
Had been contemplating a wheel of time listen, but that’s also 450hrs!
Perhaps I’ll give the first ep a chance one of these days.
When I first started and saw how long each episode was, I also was hesitant. But one day was bored and had nothing else to watch so gave it a go. I was quickly hooked. Took me awhile, but I eventually caught up and was eagerly waiting for the next episode to drop.
I watched the first season while enjoying a severance package a few years ago. I watched a few eps of the second but found I’d had enough. Most of the players are talented, charismatic actors, and the DM is incredible with acting out his NPCs.
They do lots of “sidebar” scenes where two characters improvise a conversation, much like in a JRPG. And the characters have relationships and form couples. Critical Role fans get crushes on both characters and players and take the drama incredibly seriously. I read somewhere that one of the characters in Season 2 permanently died (not that easy in 5e, it seems) and the fans threw a shitfit and the DM publicly apologized to them.
But I mentioned the sidebars and relationships to my players in an adults-and-kids, Xmas-holidays game I ran that lasted several years, and the kids in particular thought it was the stupidest idea they’d ever heard. They’re old-school all the way, especially the youngest, a boy who made his Beastmaster character at age 5. He just wants to KILL and LOOT with his animal buddies.
This is finally out now (well, the first three eps, part of four weekly drops), and having watched the first two, I’m definitely having fun with it. Much more so than suffering through hours of 5E math-rocking; the cast genuinely are crazy charismatic and fun, and the myriad talent they brought in for side characters is impressive. The animation’s not half-bad, either.
Feels like a lot of influence from that particular genre of hyper violent over the top anime that was big just as all these guys were either starting their careers or getting ready to, but with their patented perverted and irreverent brand of fantasy humor mixed in.
To each their own, but that last paragraph makes me so sad. I feel like two-thirds the RPGs I run or play in these days are romantic dramedies first, introspective character pieces second, and maybe action nonsense as third at best, hah.
I was listening to Here and Now on NPR the other day when they were talking about this show, and they mentioned those original hours, and I think I swore out loud in the car. I honestly don’t know how someone could have that much time, unless they listened all day at work, in the car, while playing games, basically all the time, and ignored all other audio options for entertainment for a long, long time.
Yep. I know lots of people have these kind of streams running on a second screen while gaming / working. However I can’t really multitask like that, though I do listen to podcasts / audiobooks while on the go or doing housework. But that doesn’t really add up to THAT much and I do still want to listen to music and other content in between.
I started on the first season and got about 5 episodes in, then sort of drifted off. With the current season, I’ve been able to keep up to date for now (it does help that they’ll only drop 3 eps a month). Not sure I’ll go back to the old stuff for now.
I started watching the webseries about halfway or more through campaign one. Initially the amount of content was overwhelming, and seeing an episode lasting 3 or 4 hours I was hesitant to start. But I eventually gave it a try and was surprised at how quickly I caught up.
Though now with the animated series, you can get a good feel for the series without having to watch hundreds of hours.
I’ve now watched the first 3 episodes of the animated series, and I am enjoying it immensely. I believe even people that aren’t familiar with Critical Role will be able to enjoy it.
FYI, the series is NOT kid friendly. This was made for adults.
I listened to Season 1 while doing other things and while I was living on a phat severance package a few years back and taking a break from working. The real fans watch the Twitch stream live, and not just the campaigns, but novelty one-shots, the post-game show where (I guess) the players share their thoughts on the game they just played, etc., and they talk about it in their “communities” including communities for CR fan art, etc. To me it’s just D&D played by creative players, but JEEBUS CRIPES do the fans care about it.
Watched up to episode 3 today. Makes me wish I’d been able to slog through the really painful early eps of campaign 1; some of these moments would have been great to see play out amongst still fairly novice roleplayers coming into their own. Alas.
If you don’t mind spoilers for campaign 2, this is one of my favorite scenes in the series.
Up through Ep 9, now, and this is continuing to be pretty enjoyable, even if it leans REAL hard on the “teehee we said bad words and showed boobies cuz of how GROWN UP our ADULT ANIMATION SHOW is!” angle sometimes. I’m making myself pick campaign 1 back up, because I need to see these various Percy Moments played out on-stream, damn.
I thought the first two episodes were REALLY weak, but 3-9 have been a major step up; I am really enjoying the show.
I am 10 EPs into campaign 1 of the podcast and yeah it’s quite enjoyable, some genuine laugh out loud moments, but it is very unabridged so the time investment is large, but it’s killing time at the gym.
I watched the first few eps of the show, but it seemed to be covering events prior to the first podcast campaign, or do they not get to Kraghammer until a few more eps in while they are establishing characters?
It’s a real negative and the Bard almost makes the show unwatchable IMO