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Originally posted by Azar

Expecting CR to accurately represent actual Dungeons & Dragons is comparable to expecting pornography to faithfully illustrate realistic sexual intercourse.

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Originally posted by sleyvas

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Originally posted by Azar

Expecting CR to accurately represent actual Dungeons & Dragons is comparable to expecting pornography to faithfully illustrate realistic sexual intercourse.

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Wait, so I SHOULDN'T go get a job as a pizza delivery guy in hopes of being dragged into women's apartments to satisfy them?

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Originally posted by Azar

Expecting CR to accurately represent actual Dungeons & Dragons is comparable to expecting pornography to faithfully illustrate realistic sexual intercourse.

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Originally posted by Irennan

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Originally posted by Azar

Expecting CR to accurately represent actual Dungeons & Dragons is comparable to expecting pornography to faithfully illustrate realistic sexual intercourse.

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It's basically a cleaner version of a TTRPG campaign, so that it can be shown to an audience. But I'd say that it does a good job of representing D&D.

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Originally posted by Irennan

Even then, it does a good job of representing what D&D is as a game.

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Originally posted by deserk

Like for instance, if they are ever going to adapt the story of Drizzt, doing it animated would be a lot more smart than live action, since with live action many critics would be eagerly ready to hurl accusations of "black-face".

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Originally posted by Azar

Yes...if you manage to get the stars to align .

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Also, as someone elsewhere noted, there's the observer effect to factor into the equation.

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Originally posted by Irennan



If anything, we have to acknowledge that CR and other streams are the main reason why D&D has gained popularity as of late, because they show D&D at its best through the performance of well known people--with the good and the bad that comes with it (I know of a lot of DMs who say that their players expect the campaign to look like a CR session). So yeah, CR can provide a false expectancy of what playing D&D is like, but also a quite faithful portrayal of what a smooth D&D session feels like. The problem is that D&D sessions don't always go smooth, for one reason or another, so players shouldn't be expecting all their games to go like the CR crew's games, and if they really want that, they need to be proactive and invested and involving others, not passive and expecting the epicness to just come to them. They should also know to avoid campaigns that just play out modules, if they want a character-focused story.

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Originally posted by Irennan

From my understanding, the factors you list (that happened over 2 decades, and that could be applied to any TTRPG or fantasy in general, not just D&D) made D&D noticeable enough for streams to become a thing. However, the streams made it explode in just a few years. Countless new D&D players know nothing of traditional D&D stuff (many aren't even aware of Drizzt beyond hearsay), and are all about the stream characters&lore. And it makes a lot of sense: that kind of parasocial engagement is an efficient form of marketing (that WotC has always failed at), much more than indirect exposure to fantasy, or offering more of the same, can ever be.

We all know how trying to cater to MMORPG players with pen&paper MMORPG (aka "MMORPG, but worse and more laborious") ended. OTOH, showing people something that they could never get anywhere else, hooking people through parasocial engagement that also showcases your product at its best--that kind of thing can bring results. CR did that for WotC.

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Originally posted by Irennan

If anything, we have to acknowledge that CR and other streams are the main reason why D&D has gained popularity as of late

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Originally posted by Wooly Rupert


Again, people aren't going to watch the streams if they're not already interested in D&D. They wouldn't even know about them if the popularity wasn't already there -- people don't stream paint drying or clipping their nails or things like that because it's not popular enough to attract an audience.

No one is saying "I'm going to watch a D&D stream!" if they haven't heard of D&D.

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And while you say "that could be applied to any TTRPG or fantasy in general, not just D&D," that's not really true. Except for a brief period during the 4E era, D&D has always dominated the TTRPG market. Generally, they've dominated the market to the point that sales of all other TTRPGs together don't match D&D sales.

Many people don't even know other RPGs exist, aside from D&D. Heck, when I got into D&D, I didn't know about other RPGs at all until I bought my first issue of Dragon and saw them mentioned there.

For non-gamers, D&D is the only RPG they know of, and anything that's fantasy that they encounter is going to be compared to D&D. You mention Pathfinder or RuneQuest or Warhammer or Mork Borg to a non-gamer, you're getting a blank stare, until you say "It's like D&D."

It's kinda like the conflation between a single dominant brand (or small number of dominants) and the generic product. People don't ask for a cotton swab, they ask for a Q-Tip. They don't put an adhesive bandage on their minor wounds, they put on a Band-Aid. No one asks for a soda, they want a Coke or Pepsi. And that's the position D&D has: if it's a tabletop RPG, it's D&D.

Honestly, I think a large part of D&D's continued success isn't that it's a better system or anything like that, it's the name recognition and market dominance. Not saying that the rule system is any better or worse than any other, I'm just saying that when you've dominated your market for decades and your brand is synonymous with that market, that tends to drive sales your way and not to your competitors.

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Heck, Critical Role might even be more popular than D&D itself.

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Originally posted by Irennan

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Originally posted by Wooly Rupert


Again, people aren't going to watch the streams if they're not already interested in D&D. They wouldn't even know about them if the popularity wasn't already there -- people don't stream paint drying or clipping their nails or things like that because it's not popular enough to attract an audience.

No one is saying "I'm going to watch a D&D stream!" if they haven't heard of D&D.

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I'm going to question this. Just like people can read D&D novels without giving half a crap about D&D, they can watch D&D streams without giving half a crap about D&D. I played a D&D videogame (NWN) without even knowing what the hell D&D was (and after playing that game, I wanted more videogames like that, not to play D&D, btw). There are many ways to come across streams like CR, especially in this era of everything being connected, and especially when the streams are led by notorious people.

Heck, Critical Role might even be more popular than D&D itself. Why? Because it's the people and their interactions that grab the audience, not the game itself. People are after stories and the parasocial stuff, not after dice rolls and "ohh, I do 8d6 damage!!!11!" (that kind of stuff can even hamper your storytelling; nothing like a critical moment in a story being interrupted by having to roll dices and add them together). Tabletop games aren't fun to watch, they're boring af. What's fun to watch--and therefore makes popularity spikes--is the interaction between people. That's what the audience wants in a story, show, and so on, because that's what our "domesticated brains" love. In turn, that leads to the mimetic nature of human desire kicking in, because those streamers become sort of "models" of what's good to want, and this leads the audience to try D&D. Any other form of D&D-related entertainment won't lead to a popularity spike as huge as those streams (heck, it can even lead people to want more of that entertainment and not even try D&D, like it happened to me with NWN), because of the lack of parasocial engagement and of the use of mimetic desire to your advantage.

All of this is to say that fantasy movies and VGs spiking in popularity wouldn't necessarily lead to D&D doing so, because D&D is not a movie of VG. It can't offer the kind of flow that those do: it requires a lot of work, and has mechanics that pose obstacles to storytelling, rather than enhancing it, and on a large scale people are far more likely to want to try more pre-pacakged fantasy entertainment, rather than D&D. Fantasy being popular alone can help D&D, but can't make it explode, you need something else that draws people and that they can associate D&D to. Remember that all the factors that you mentioned have been a VERY slow burn thing (over 2 decades). Meanwhile, those streams made D&D explode overnight in comparison, precisely because of the parasocial factor.

I don't even know how the ratio of people who got into critical role because they had already heard of D&D vs. people who got into CR because "ohh, what are those famous people doing over there?" looks like. Even if someone got into CR because they had heard of D&D, they probably only got into D&D because of the show.

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And while you say "that could be applied to any TTRPG or fantasy in general, not just D&D," that's not really true. Except for a brief period during the 4E era, D&D has always dominated the TTRPG market. Generally, they've dominated the market to the point that sales of all other TTRPGs together don't match D&D sales.

Many people don't even know other RPGs exist, aside from D&D. Heck, when I got into D&D, I didn't know about other RPGs at all until I bought my first issue of Dragon and saw them mentioned there.

For non-gamers, D&D is the only RPG they know of, and anything that's fantasy that they encounter is going to be compared to D&D. You mention Pathfinder or RuneQuest or Warhammer or Mork Borg to a non-gamer, you're getting a blank stare, until you say "It's like D&D."

It's kinda like the conflation between a single dominant brand (or small number of dominants) and the generic product. People don't ask for a cotton swab, they ask for a Q-Tip. They don't put an adhesive bandage on their minor wounds, they put on a Band-Aid. No one asks for a soda, they want a Coke or Pepsi. And that's the position D&D has: if it's a tabletop RPG, it's D&D.

Honestly, I think a large part of D&D's continued success isn't that it's a better system or anything like that, it's the name recognition and market dominance. Not saying that the rule system is any better or worse than any other, I'm just saying that when you've dominated your market for decades and your brand is synonymous with that market, that tends to drive sales your way and not to your competitors.

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I didn't mention only other TTRPG, but other fantasy-related entertainment. Like I've already said, if people like fantasy movies and videogames, you don't grab them by offering an inferior version of what they already have. That's why 4e failed. If anything, all the factors you mentioned would lead to more fantasy movies, books, and VGs being released, more than affecting D&D specifically. You grab people by offering stuff that they can't get otherwise, by actively engaging them, and showing them how your product looks like at its best. As I said, WotC has constantly failed at this. CR and the likes did that for WotC.

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Originally posted by Wooly Rupert

Watching people play a game, if you don't know the game, you're not going to get everything and you're not going to be as interested.

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And you can watch people interact in a lot of ways that don't involve D&D. Like TV shows and movies, for example.

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You can't build a successful stream on something if people aren't interested in it.

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I'm not going to go any further, though, because I think it best we drop the topic and let other conversations happen.

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Originally posted by PattPlays


Also.... it's a pathfinder campaign. They weren't even playing D&D.

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Originally posted by Wooly Rupert

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Originally posted by PattPlays


Also.... it's a pathfinder campaign. They weren't even playing D&D.

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Pathfinder 1E is basically D&D 3.75. IIRC, it was even advertised as such, originally.

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Originally posted by Irennan

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Originally posted by Azar

Also, as someone elsewhere noted, there's the observer effect to factor into the equation.

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What do you mean by observer effect? When you say observer effect, I think of observers altering the outcome of something because observation is an interaction, but Idk how to apply it here.

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Originally posted by PattPlays

Hi, context fairy.
There was a fundraiser (that broke records within hours of the kickstarter campaign opening) that iirc was to help the company and crew leave Geek & Sundry to make their own production hosue and rent a studio and put people on their own payroll. Travis (Grog) is the CEO of the new company since they left G&S.
They got millions of dollars in under 6 hours, more in the next 24. The fully animated series was a stretch goal as a "funny haha we will never get a million dollars" and then they got 8 million by the time it was all set and done, so they had to do all of their stretch goals.
I just want everyone to know that these 80's kids have to make the animated series (already totally funded within minutes) as a fundraiser oath. So they basically got to hire every individual person they could have wanted for the project and nobody to oversight them. They got to make their own thing- it didn't even need to make any money back because as I said- it was already funded years ago.

They actually played D&D for 3 years prior to streaming, and the entire campaign began because Liam and Sam (on an episode of their podcast) wanted to try out D&D as a thing they had never done before. So it's not like this story was pulled out of thin air- they are telling their pre-stream stories in whatever way they want and had boatloads of internal money to spend on it.
They literally had to make the cartoon and the cartoon literally doesn't have to contribute anything to anyone besides satisfy the backers. Though I'm sure there was oversight when they got far enough in pre-production to sign a deal to air the program on a mainstream platform.


Also.... it's a pathfinder campaign. They weren't even playing D&D.

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Originally posted by sleyvas

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Originally posted by PattPlays

Hi, context fairy.
There was a fundraiser (that broke records within hours of the kickstarter campaign opening) that iirc was to help the company and crew leave Geek & Sundry to make their own production hosue and rent a studio and put people on their own payroll. Travis (Grog) is the CEO of the new company since they left G&S.
They got millions of dollars in under 6 hours, more in the next 24. The fully animated series was a stretch goal as a "funny haha we will never get a million dollars" and then they got 8 million by the time it was all set and done, so they had to do all of their stretch goals.
I just want everyone to know that these 80's kids have to make the animated series (already totally funded within minutes) as a fundraiser oath. So they basically got to hire every individual person they could have wanted for the project and nobody to oversight them. They got to make their own thing- it didn't even need to make any money back because as I said- it was already funded years ago.

They actually played D&D for 3 years prior to streaming, and the entire campaign began because Liam and Sam (on an episode of their podcast) wanted to try out D&D as a thing they had never done before. So it's not like this story was pulled out of thin air- they are telling their pre-stream stories in whatever way they want and had boatloads of internal money to spend on it.
They literally had to make the cartoon and the cartoon literally doesn't have to contribute anything to anyone besides satisfy the backers. Though I'm sure there was oversight when they got far enough in pre-production to sign a deal to air the program on a mainstream platform.


Also.... it's a pathfinder campaign. They weren't even playing D&D.

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Good to know, and they may not have incentive to carry it forward (not that it might not, nor would I be perturbed if it were). If it was all because "guys, we were paid to do this, if we don't want to have to pay back that cash, let's get started". That being said, the grey guy is a goliath, no? Or is there something in pathfinder that looks like that (or that's maybe an interpretation of a half-orc or something). I did note the blue dragon looked wrong, but that may be the Pathfinder look for said creature.

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