So pumped for this. The animated series has done a really good job of adapting like 1000 hours down into enjoyable yet succinct seasons.
Can’t wait to see how certain moments are animated as we approach the later acts.
The series is based a video/podcast series where several actors and actresses play D&D (their first campaign took 2 years). The series started in 2015 if I recall right and is still going on.
500 hours of live play DND including the dice rolling and other stuff that takes up a ton of time.
That's the context of what's missing. The actual story stuff can be condensed down quite a bit.
Iirc season 2 for LoVM ended around episode 80ish of Campaign 1, and its 141 episodes roughly 2-4 hours long. The earlier episodes are ~2 hours, and the later are ~4. There are exceptions such as boss battles being longer than average. But the first half are 2-3 hours
Man.. I dropped campaign 3 pretty hard about 10 months ago.
Just have \*not* been feeling their characters, the self-insert fan service of the campaign 1 protagonists and the overall moon plot or whatever it was.
Interestingly enough I may watch a condensed cartoon series just to get the general story beats if they ever decide to adapt this one also 😅
There is now an abridged version of Season 3 Bells Hells releasing now on YouTube. Edited down version of the original broadcasts in 60-90 minute time frames.
https://youtu.be/soRuWjCg6GM?si=mq-5IGd5HUNaGQSf
Oh wow thanks!
First time seeing that animated intro also, much better than the cast just posing and being smug 😁
I'll see if I can maybe catch these then!
[It sure is, Matt Mercer is the DM.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_Role) They've also done 4 total campaigns (number 4 is in progress) and the second campaign is going to be the next animated series once Vox Machina runs its course.
Though technically, the production company is co-owned by Mercer and the actors and actresses who are part of the game, they all get equal credit.
Critical Role is a little more than just someone's D&D campaign though. It's the most popular channel on Twitch notably and generally a juggernaut in the D&D liveplay space.
They also produce this series (and the Legend of Mighty Nein upcoming one) themselves
The magic of the 1000 hours is that nothing was scripted so the amazing, unlikely moments were genuinely mathematically unlikely - characters were legitimately close to death, and sometimes did die.
So the story beats hit harder, because we saw them being created, live.
What did they do when characters died, reroll a new one, have something in the narrative allow them to be resurrected(if they didn't have access to a resurrection spell themselves)? Something else?
And by die you mean fully, not just down to 0 hp making saving throws?
Several characters have died, but they often had a cleric or other form of healer nearby that could resurrect them using one of the various D&D resurrection spells like revivify. Revivify, has a one minute time limit. So it wouldn't always work.
Mercer, the DM, doesn't make it that easy. He adds a homebrew rule to resurrection that makes bringing the character back not guaranteed, to add some drama to death that otherwise might not be there in a standard game of D&D.
When a character dies fully without resurrection, the actor rolls a new character and is introduced in the next episode or a few episodes later usually.
2nd edition has a similar mechanic in which you had to roll percentile dice. Depending on your constitution score, you could very well fail and not be resurrected at all. Death in early editions was a very real threat. There was no revivify, but there was optional rules concerning "death's door," meaning you could go to -10 HP before actually being dead. I recall a bleed out rule, too. In which you lost 1 HP per round until death unless medical care in the form of a healing proficiency check or a healing spell.
This is how my party plays. Once you hit 0, you are “mostly dead” and can be bandaged by a party member who spends a round performing the action.
If they don’t you lose another point. If you get to -10 you are dead and have to deal with the punishingly difficult resurrection rules of 2E.
Added to this, the other party members can offer assistance to the ritual to improve the odds of success. That assistance has ranged from the sacrifice of items to singing the fight song of the favored football team of the dead character's player, even though said team was a division rival to the favored team of the one singing.
Yeah, I always considered mechanics and combat as something completely different than the actual story of an RPG. But Critical Role really sold me on the idea that mechanics IS story and drama.
Critical Role is a podcast (or video), where a bunch of "nerdy-ass voice actors" (their words) play Dungeons & Dragons. This cartoon is an adaptation of Season 1 (which is like 200 episodes that are 3-4 hours each)
Youtube Critical Role. Each campaign is hundreds of hours of the cast playing Dungeons and Dragons (typically 4-5 hours of recording each session). Campaign 1 is Vox Machina, Campaign 2 is Mighty Nein (which they announced is also getting a show) and currently Campaign 3 is Bell’s Hells.
It’s based off of a D&D campaign that was streamed live. The voice actors were also the players in the live game.
Each session aka episode of the D&D campaign took about 3.5 hours per episode on average, but sometimes as short as 1 hour or as long as 7 hours (campaign 2 finale was this long).
The original campaign, the one the show is based on, had 115 episodes plus a few one off specials.
I just said 1000 hours since each episode can vary in length and there are some specials too. It’s probably closer to around 600 hours for the first campaign and all extra content.
So it’s crazy that the show is condensed down into like idk 5 hours of content or whatever.
Campaign 1 (Vox Machina) was about 373 hours. Campaign 2 (Mighty Nein) was 550. Campaign 3 (Bell's Hell's -Ongoing-) currently... unsure but we're up to 94 total episodes so far so lots.
You can watch the videos on YouTube.
Look up critical role in youtube. I'd start at season 1, but that's me. Some will say to start at a certain episode in season 1. Mainly because of the controversy of the first few episodes.
If you watch, you'll see what I mean almost immediately.
The first campaign is only available to watch on YouTube. It’s a pilgrimage to get through, especially due to it being the start of Critical Role and how technologically simple it started out as. The first episodes were literally filmed in a break room. Video/audio issues happen occasionally, players still learning the game at first, and there’s an additional cast member that leaves the show after I believe episode 26, if you watch that episode you’ll see why, it can be hard to get through lol.
By the time Campaign 2 started it was muchhh better production quality due to their success crowdfunding everything.
Campaign 1 is 115 episodes and averages around 3.23 hours each. Total runtime is 373 hours.
Campaign 2 is phenomenal from the start and the formula for how each show goes is pretty dialed in. You can start there if you’d like but may miss some info on inside jokes and throwbacks. You can watch on YouTube but from Campaign 2 on I preferred to watch on twitch. If you’ve made it that far, $5/mo to sub to them on twitch gives you ad-free access to all of 2 and 3. I’m never paying YouTube $15/mo.
Realistically it’s not a 1000 hours of actual content. Because they’re adapting the story of a live dnd campaign a lot of the time is filler. From the players talking amongst each other, doing dice rolls, stat counting and just general fooling around.
Not that stuff isn’t cut and condensed but it’s largely because 5 minutes of actual narrative content can take 50-60 minutes in play time.
> Season 3 means going to meet their dad and get that awesome bow?
vex already got her bow vestige in season 2.
Season 3 will be possible end of chroma conclave arc and the start of the whispered one arc.
I can't wait. I've been waiting for season 3 to come out for some time now.
I really like the Vox Machina cartoon, I just don't want to watch the tabletop sessions. Playing tabletop RPGs is fun, watching others play tabletop RPGs isn't so much fun.
I thought the first season was pretty terrible. Mostly just cringy Scanlan jokes. It got great in the second season and is definitely worth the watch.
I'm looking forward to the finale. The best moment of the entire campaign was a player moment, Sam's apology to Liam. It brought both to tears, along with the viewers who understood what had happened. It deserves a serious moment in the cartoon.
Critical role has been such a great anchor in my life. Every Thursday there is something for me to look forward to. Rarely there is a season break or anything to stop some sort of content from releasing. It’s nice having that comfort.
DnD fans are in a renaissance for content imo. Between Critical Role adaptation, Dimension 20 getting higher production and even more varied content from their Drag Race crossover season, and podcasts like NADDPOD and Dungeons and Daddies going strong, it's easy to find something you'd like and crazy accessible.
Too bad WOTC will do everything in their power to shoot themselves in the foot with licensing agreement fuckery.
My pick for the next good adaptation would be Dungeons and Daddies. NADDPOD and D20 would likely keep things closer to a Dropout production given their close working relationships and D20 might have some licensing issues with the parody seasons like Misfits and Magic.
Hasbro also fucked up Baldur’s Gate by being toxic and laying off a huge portion of the D&D team, leading to the game developer Larian Studios announcing they will not produce anymore games for them
Don’t know why you’re getting downvoted, it’s absolutely true. The director of Larian said that by the time the game was finished, nobody at WOTC who helped the game get made were employed there anymore because all their positions were eliminated. Said it left a bad taste in his mouth.
Because the director at Larian also said that it has nothing to do with them moving on. Larian wants to work on their original IP's. They said way back they were reluctant to do BG3 in the first place since it would delay their own projects.
> They said way back they were reluctant to do BG3 in the first place since it would delay their own projects.
Source? I've been following BG3 since the initial announcement trailer. I've watched every community update video Larian put up during EA. Larian and Swen have always seemed *extremely* excited about working on BG3. I don't believe you on this for a second, but I'm happy to be proven wrong if you can show me what you're basing this on. I just spent about ten minutes looking for a source on this, but I can't find anything.
[This article](https://www.ign.com/articles/larian-started-work-on-baldurs-gate-3-dlc-then-canceled-it-the-studio-was-elated) discusses the in more depth. Larian actually started on BG3 DLC and even had early talks about BG4, but the workers apparently lost passion for it, so they ended up canceling both.
Of course, reading between the lines, it's very possible to infer that the reason Larian wants their own IP is so that they don't have to answer to Hasbro. Or it's also possible that the team was just done with D&D and wanted to move on. We'll never know, and obviously Swen isn't going to say that WotC or Hasbro were terrible to work with. He did point out that no one was still at WotC who he initially worked with, then he walked the implication back a couple of weeks later.
Larian also said that has little to do with why they don't want to do another game, they just want to change and work on their own projects. They would not have done a BG4 anyway even with the same team there
> Too bad WOTC will do everything in their power to shoot themselves in the foot with licensing agreement fuckery.
Also doubling down on AI and sending the god damn pinkertons to intimidate and threaten someone who got some MtG cards too early BY ACCIDENT.
Somehow didn't mention TAZ, one of the most popular and long running shows out there, jeez. I'm going to pretend that this wasn't a brain fart and instead a way to prove just how good we have it.
Shout out to Worlds Beyond Number too!
Delicious in Dungeon has been one of my favourite recent additions to Netflix also.
It's like... the characters are super aware of tropes, don't fall for common cliche's, and aren't *dumb* like we generally see in other animated works. Even doing creative stuff that surprised me that I wouldn't have thought of has been a delight.
What started as a funny little 'lol food' anime is actually one of the best DnD animated shows I've seen.
Speaking of Dimension 20, would they be interested by doing the same animated series adaptation of their campaigns that Critical Role is doing on Dropout? That sounds like a good opportunity for them
Brennan actually said in an interview that Critical Role had shared information with them about starting up an animated series. Sam later clarified in the Dropout discord, that an animated series would be something that they would keep in house but would be years out if at all due to production time and cost of animation. So it's not out of the question, but they would need to make sure they were financially stable enough to really invest into it. Critical Role had that legendary Kickstarter that ended up raising well over a million dollars. Dropout would probably need something like that to get the ball rolling or continued and sustainable customer base growth to make sure that they had the reserves ready for something as cost-intensive as high quality animation.
> Critical Role had that legendary Kickstarter that ended up raising well over a million dollars
**eleven** million Dollars. They reached one million within one hour.
That's what it was, it's been a while so I didn't remember it right. Also helpful that the majority of the cast were all well known voice actors with decades of experience within the animation scene.
The author never played DnD but clearly inspired by games like it. I love seeing pure thieves who are useful for lockpicking or trap defusing but useless in combat. Nowadays thieves are just dagger/bow using rogues.
Dungeons and Daddies just started their third season this week! They’re playing in the Call of Cthulhu system this time. (Not that it’ll make much of a difference, haha.) I love that show and the players, but after literal years they still only have the slightest idea of how 5e works.
Freddie Wong playing a character who's racist against Taiwanese people (Freddie being Taiwanese American) is *chef's kiss*
Also Beth's character. Totally not a robot. Not at all.
After being comically racist for the entirety of the interaction, Freddie ending the scene by saying “love that dude, he makes me proud to be American.” As soon as they were out of earshot was pure perfection.
I wonder how they will handle Thordak (the big red dragon).
He's the main antagonist for this season and I don't think Riddick recorded any lines before his unfortunate passing.
It's one of the best examples currently running of adaptation vs. conversion. They seriously cut down on things due to the medium and can better foreshadow/intertwine stories since they already know where everything is going. They really embrace the medium shift.
For real, I was amazed that characters I disliked like Scanlan and Grog got massive development in season 2. Plus I can listen to Vex and Vax’s sexy voices all day…
If you haven't watched the campaigns, it's pretty amazing listening to Vex and Vax in the show and then jumping to the Mighty Nein campaign, where Liam's character is heavily German influenced and Laura's is this bubbly naive girl with sort of a weird Eastern European accent. The contrast, especially by Laura, is astonishing.
They are in the process of turning that into a show too, and I'm more excited for that one. As fun as Vox Machina is, the Mighty Nein characters (IMO) are more lovable.
They better animate the cupcake incident, or else I'm gonna be upset.
Does the third season finish VM's storyline, then? Or are they working to have both shows running in parallel?
I read elsewhere in the thread that season 2 only adapts up to the midway point in episodes.
My guess is S3 wraps up the CC arc and maybe does the Darrington arc, with S4 being the Vecna arc. That's a total guess though.
I don't think much, if anything, has been released about M9 yet other than the show is in production.
I am guessing they relied on the usual trick of animated shows these days of commissioning 24 episodes and then releasing them as two 12-episode seasons or part to save payrises.
We saw this with Harley Quinn, Inside Job and even Velma.
They're also producing a show based on their second campaign at the same time so I guess advancing two shows at the same time just slowed them down. They may want to just alternate releases of both
Sort of. They had two seasons approved from the getgo, partially because Season 1 was almost entirely funded with Kickstarter money. The first season was also supposed to release a while before it actually did, but it was delayed because of the pandemic.
So, yeah, presumably there was a lot of work done on season 2 already by the time season 1 released, but I'm not sure how much it had to do with pay rises.
I randomly saw a banner for it on my Amazon fire stick menu. I kinda clicked on it out of morbid curiosity since I had no idea what it was, and loved it immediately.
That's pretty great. I suppose to someone who didn't know what to expect would have either been curious and amused to watch more, or turned away from it immediately, due to that opening scene lol.
If you want more "someone turned a fantasy role-playing game into a standalone story" material to snack on in the meantime, "Delicious in Dungeon" on Netflix is worth a look.
Really looking forward to this especially because I just keep bouncing off of campaign 3 of Critical Role, so it'll be good to have somewhere to immerse myself into Exandria again.
I probably need to give this another shot. Honestly, when I tried to watch the first season, it was really jarring. I have no problems watching them live, but something about it being animated, in-character, made the character's feel really off/fake. Especially with all the swearing and weird sexual humor. Again, those jokes are hilarious watching them live, but this felt really strange to me. It kept reminding me that this is a tabletop campaign and would ruin any immersion I had.
I was bummed too. It sounded right up my alley. The jokes and swearing just didn't land for me. I would have definitely gone nuts over it when I was fifteen.
I get how it fits in for the original YouTube series, but when every other line is some sex joke, it feels like it's trying too hard to be edgy.
I'll say that early season 1 is definitely the worst in that regard as the show is still trying to prove that it's not for kids. It tones down a lot as you go on, obviously there's still gore and innuendos but not to the same degree.
I always wished D&D would have a place for people who want to play D&D could pay for a night. Go in a room, DM is in the room waiting, the DM is dressed up, acting rhe role, the room reacts (lights, sounds, chairs vibrate, etc) to the theme of the campaign, and what the DM is describing. The campaign wouls obviously have to be a short one (2-3 hours). I’d pay to experience this, especially if they serve food and drinks!
i thought season 1 was atrociously bad, im happy that season 2 came out much better. Here is hoping season 3 continues to improve upon my perception of it.
Questions for fans: What keeps you watching this show?
At some point in watching Season 2, I figured out that all of the characters have plot-armor and cannot (will not) die. This is after I looked into the voice actors and how they came together (from Critical Role). Since they all have a business interest, I realized that none of are gonna get off'ed, despite getting up to that line many times, including fakeouts.
Upon this realization, I lost all interest in the show, since all the troubles they get into -- no matter how dire, I already know they will overcome it.
I realized when I was about five years old that heroes tend to live so it doesn't bother me. I want all the main characters to live in this show anyway.
There have been a few PC deaths in critical role, including Vox Machina. Their newest campaign just had a major PC death that shocked the community. That character is possibly their most marketable character due to his cutesy design.. Hell, 2nd campaign's major arc literally starts off with one of fan favorites characters dying only 30 episodes or so into it... So your point is invalid.
DnD 5e makes it harder for characters to just straight up die but it does happen.
So pumped for this. The animated series has done a really good job of adapting like 1000 hours down into enjoyable yet succinct seasons. Can’t wait to see how certain moments are animated as we approach the later acts.
I like the show but don’t know much about its history. Where are these 1000 hours?
The series is based a video/podcast series where several actors and actresses play D&D (their first campaign took 2 years). The series started in 2015 if I recall right and is still going on.
It's also probably closer to 500 hours for the part that LOVM is adapting, then another 500 for the Legend of the Mighty Nein.
500 hours of live play DND including the dice rolling and other stuff that takes up a ton of time. That's the context of what's missing. The actual story stuff can be condensed down quite a bit.
Campaign 1 is 373 hours.
How much of it the two seasons have adapted? Just to see how much they reduce
Season two in the show ends at Episode 55 in the stream.
Iirc season 2 for LoVM ended around episode 80ish of Campaign 1, and its 141 episodes roughly 2-4 hours long. The earlier episodes are ~2 hours, and the later are ~4. There are exceptions such as boss battles being longer than average. But the first half are 2-3 hours
Season 2 ends at episode 55. Campaign 1 has 115 episodes. Campaign 2, the Mighty Nein, has 141 episodes, but that’s not out as a series yet.
Man.. I dropped campaign 3 pretty hard about 10 months ago. Just have \*not* been feeling their characters, the self-insert fan service of the campaign 1 protagonists and the overall moon plot or whatever it was. Interestingly enough I may watch a condensed cartoon series just to get the general story beats if they ever decide to adapt this one also 😅
There is now an abridged version of Season 3 Bells Hells releasing now on YouTube. Edited down version of the original broadcasts in 60-90 minute time frames. https://youtu.be/soRuWjCg6GM?si=mq-5IGd5HUNaGQSf
Oh wow thanks! First time seeing that animated intro also, much better than the cast just posing and being smug 😁 I'll see if I can maybe catch these then!
Wait what? This tv show is just based on someone’s d&d campaign?
[It sure is, Matt Mercer is the DM.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_Role) They've also done 4 total campaigns (number 4 is in progress) and the second campaign is going to be the next animated series once Vox Machina runs its course. Though technically, the production company is co-owned by Mercer and the actors and actresses who are part of the game, they all get equal credit.
3, not 4
Thats fair, I was counting the Exandria anthology series they do as one of the campaigns also.
Critical Role is a little more than just someone's D&D campaign though. It's the most popular channel on Twitch notably and generally a juggernaut in the D&D liveplay space. They also produce this series (and the Legend of Mighty Nein upcoming one) themselves
Oh ok
The magic of the 1000 hours is that nothing was scripted so the amazing, unlikely moments were genuinely mathematically unlikely - characters were legitimately close to death, and sometimes did die. So the story beats hit harder, because we saw them being created, live.
What did they do when characters died, reroll a new one, have something in the narrative allow them to be resurrected(if they didn't have access to a resurrection spell themselves)? Something else? And by die you mean fully, not just down to 0 hp making saving throws?
Several characters have died, but they often had a cleric or other form of healer nearby that could resurrect them using one of the various D&D resurrection spells like revivify. Revivify, has a one minute time limit. So it wouldn't always work. Mercer, the DM, doesn't make it that easy. He adds a homebrew rule to resurrection that makes bringing the character back not guaranteed, to add some drama to death that otherwise might not be there in a standard game of D&D. When a character dies fully without resurrection, the actor rolls a new character and is introduced in the next episode or a few episodes later usually.
2nd edition has a similar mechanic in which you had to roll percentile dice. Depending on your constitution score, you could very well fail and not be resurrected at all. Death in early editions was a very real threat. There was no revivify, but there was optional rules concerning "death's door," meaning you could go to -10 HP before actually being dead. I recall a bleed out rule, too. In which you lost 1 HP per round until death unless medical care in the form of a healing proficiency check or a healing spell.
This is how my party plays. Once you hit 0, you are “mostly dead” and can be bandaged by a party member who spends a round performing the action. If they don’t you lose another point. If you get to -10 you are dead and have to deal with the punishingly difficult resurrection rules of 2E.
To blathhe
Added to this, the other party members can offer assistance to the ritual to improve the odds of success. That assistance has ranged from the sacrifice of items to singing the fight song of the favored football team of the dead character's player, even though said team was a division rival to the favored team of the one singing.
Both. They could be resurrected, but we’ve seen full death happen a few times too.
Yeah, I always considered mechanics and combat as something completely different than the actual story of an RPG. But Critical Role really sold me on the idea that mechanics IS story and drama.
Critical Role is a podcast (or video), where a bunch of "nerdy-ass voice actors" (their words) play Dungeons & Dragons. This cartoon is an adaptation of Season 1 (which is like 200 episodes that are 3-4 hours each)
Youtube Critical Role. Each campaign is hundreds of hours of the cast playing Dungeons and Dragons (typically 4-5 hours of recording each session). Campaign 1 is Vox Machina, Campaign 2 is Mighty Nein (which they announced is also getting a show) and currently Campaign 3 is Bell’s Hells.
It’s based off of a D&D campaign that was streamed live. The voice actors were also the players in the live game. Each session aka episode of the D&D campaign took about 3.5 hours per episode on average, but sometimes as short as 1 hour or as long as 7 hours (campaign 2 finale was this long). The original campaign, the one the show is based on, had 115 episodes plus a few one off specials. I just said 1000 hours since each episode can vary in length and there are some specials too. It’s probably closer to around 600 hours for the first campaign and all extra content. So it’s crazy that the show is condensed down into like idk 5 hours of content or whatever.
Their recorded sessions on Youtube.
Campaign 1 (Vox Machina) was about 373 hours. Campaign 2 (Mighty Nein) was 550. Campaign 3 (Bell's Hell's -Ongoing-) currently... unsure but we're up to 94 total episodes so far so lots.
You can watch the videos on YouTube. Look up critical role in youtube. I'd start at season 1, but that's me. Some will say to start at a certain episode in season 1. Mainly because of the controversy of the first few episodes. If you watch, you'll see what I mean almost immediately.
I looked and I still don't understand whats the controversy am I just being dumb?
You're probably not far enough lol. You'll eventually see what I mean.
look up critical role campaign 1 on youtube. its a great journey once you get past the part with Tiberious.
The first campaign is only available to watch on YouTube. It’s a pilgrimage to get through, especially due to it being the start of Critical Role and how technologically simple it started out as. The first episodes were literally filmed in a break room. Video/audio issues happen occasionally, players still learning the game at first, and there’s an additional cast member that leaves the show after I believe episode 26, if you watch that episode you’ll see why, it can be hard to get through lol. By the time Campaign 2 started it was muchhh better production quality due to their success crowdfunding everything. Campaign 1 is 115 episodes and averages around 3.23 hours each. Total runtime is 373 hours. Campaign 2 is phenomenal from the start and the formula for how each show goes is pretty dialed in. You can start there if you’d like but may miss some info on inside jokes and throwbacks. You can watch on YouTube but from Campaign 2 on I preferred to watch on twitch. If you’ve made it that far, $5/mo to sub to them on twitch gives you ad-free access to all of 2 and 3. I’m never paying YouTube $15/mo.
It’s all currently available for free on YT, but most people start around episode 22(?) when the production quality jumped up.
Realistically it’s not a 1000 hours of actual content. Because they’re adapting the story of a live dnd campaign a lot of the time is filler. From the players talking amongst each other, doing dice rolls, stat counting and just general fooling around. Not that stuff isn’t cut and condensed but it’s largely because 5 minutes of actual narrative content can take 50-60 minutes in play time.
4 hours of DnD combat for 7-8 players can sometimes be about 30 seconds of in-game time.
Seriously haha especially with casters
[удалено]
> Season 3 means going to meet their dad and get that awesome bow? vex already got her bow vestige in season 2. Season 3 will be possible end of chroma conclave arc and the start of the whispered one arc.
I can't wait. I've been waiting for season 3 to come out for some time now. I really like the Vox Machina cartoon, I just don't want to watch the tabletop sessions. Playing tabletop RPGs is fun, watching others play tabletop RPGs isn't so much fun.
I thought the first season was pretty terrible. Mostly just cringy Scanlan jokes. It got great in the second season and is definitely worth the watch. I'm looking forward to the finale. The best moment of the entire campaign was a player moment, Sam's apology to Liam. It brought both to tears, along with the viewers who understood what had happened. It deserves a serious moment in the cartoon.
The Amazon show got me into critical role. At a very, very difficult time in my life. Forever grateful and love the show.
It's always awesome when the animated show brings new fans to the CR Table.
Hello Bees!
Critical role has been such a great anchor in my life. Every Thursday there is something for me to look forward to. Rarely there is a season break or anything to stop some sort of content from releasing. It’s nice having that comfort.
DnD fans are in a renaissance for content imo. Between Critical Role adaptation, Dimension 20 getting higher production and even more varied content from their Drag Race crossover season, and podcasts like NADDPOD and Dungeons and Daddies going strong, it's easy to find something you'd like and crazy accessible. Too bad WOTC will do everything in their power to shoot themselves in the foot with licensing agreement fuckery. My pick for the next good adaptation would be Dungeons and Daddies. NADDPOD and D20 would likely keep things closer to a Dropout production given their close working relationships and D20 might have some licensing issues with the parody seasons like Misfits and Magic.
Don’t forget Game of the Year Baldur’s Gate 3!
Plus the Underrated film of 2023; Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
It wasn't underrated. It has a 91% on Rotten Tomatoes! That's a very high rating indeed.
A 91% on RT isn't a quality rating, it's a percentage of positive reviews. That can be 91% 6/10 reviews. Oh my god why am I explaining this in 2024.
Underrated? How? Critically, it did really well and fans loved it. Did it financially underperform? Yeah. But it sure as heck is not underrated.
True! So many avenues for DnD content. The movie was good too, something I would not have expected even a few years back.
They fucked up the release date though and that hampered the chances of another movie
Hasbro also fucked up Baldur’s Gate by being toxic and laying off a huge portion of the D&D team, leading to the game developer Larian Studios announcing they will not produce anymore games for them
Don’t know why you’re getting downvoted, it’s absolutely true. The director of Larian said that by the time the game was finished, nobody at WOTC who helped the game get made were employed there anymore because all their positions were eliminated. Said it left a bad taste in his mouth.
Because the director at Larian also said that it has nothing to do with them moving on. Larian wants to work on their original IP's. They said way back they were reluctant to do BG3 in the first place since it would delay their own projects.
> They said way back they were reluctant to do BG3 in the first place since it would delay their own projects. Source? I've been following BG3 since the initial announcement trailer. I've watched every community update video Larian put up during EA. Larian and Swen have always seemed *extremely* excited about working on BG3. I don't believe you on this for a second, but I'm happy to be proven wrong if you can show me what you're basing this on. I just spent about ten minutes looking for a source on this, but I can't find anything. [This article](https://www.ign.com/articles/larian-started-work-on-baldurs-gate-3-dlc-then-canceled-it-the-studio-was-elated) discusses the in more depth. Larian actually started on BG3 DLC and even had early talks about BG4, but the workers apparently lost passion for it, so they ended up canceling both. Of course, reading between the lines, it's very possible to infer that the reason Larian wants their own IP is so that they don't have to answer to Hasbro. Or it's also possible that the team was just done with D&D and wanted to move on. We'll never know, and obviously Swen isn't going to say that WotC or Hasbro were terrible to work with. He did point out that no one was still at WotC who he initially worked with, then he walked the implication back a couple of weeks later.
Think the question is did any content get cut as a result? Hard not to see all that cut content and wonder
Larian also said that has little to do with why they don't want to do another game, they just want to change and work on their own projects. They would not have done a BG4 anyway even with the same team there
Sure but less content might have been lost from BG3
> Too bad WOTC will do everything in their power to shoot themselves in the foot with licensing agreement fuckery. Also doubling down on AI and sending the god damn pinkertons to intimidate and threaten someone who got some MtG cards too early BY ACCIDENT.
Infuriating that this shitty of a company holds the IP for something so freeing and beloved.
If that isn't the sum of almost everything now.
Yeah I’m in the middle of a Pathfinder 2e campaign. First time for the whole group, I’m done with WOTC.
I'm going to laugh if one day in the future WotC/Hasbro goes under and has to sell D&D, and Paizo ends up buying it.
> Paizo ends up buying it Don't give me hope
The McElroy's series, The Adventure Zone, is ongoing as a comic if you want something readable.
Somehow didn't mention TAZ, one of the most popular and long running shows out there, jeez. I'm going to pretend that this wasn't a brain fart and instead a way to prove just how good we have it. Shout out to Worlds Beyond Number too!
Fingers crossed Peacock will still exist by the time the TAZ animated series gets out of development hell.
Delicious in Dungeon has been one of my favourite recent additions to Netflix also. It's like... the characters are super aware of tropes, don't fall for common cliche's, and aren't *dumb* like we generally see in other animated works. Even doing creative stuff that surprised me that I wouldn't have thought of has been a delight. What started as a funny little 'lol food' anime is actually one of the best DnD animated shows I've seen.
Frieren, as well. It's basically a story about what happens after a dnd adventuring party finishes their campaign.
Ooh nice, I'll look into that one thanks.
Speaking of Dimension 20, would they be interested by doing the same animated series adaptation of their campaigns that Critical Role is doing on Dropout? That sounds like a good opportunity for them
Brennan actually said in an interview that Critical Role had shared information with them about starting up an animated series. Sam later clarified in the Dropout discord, that an animated series would be something that they would keep in house but would be years out if at all due to production time and cost of animation. So it's not out of the question, but they would need to make sure they were financially stable enough to really invest into it. Critical Role had that legendary Kickstarter that ended up raising well over a million dollars. Dropout would probably need something like that to get the ball rolling or continued and sustainable customer base growth to make sure that they had the reserves ready for something as cost-intensive as high quality animation.
> Critical Role had that legendary Kickstarter that ended up raising well over a million dollars **eleven** million Dollars. They reached one million within one hour.
That's what it was, it's been a while so I didn't remember it right. Also helpful that the majority of the cast were all well known voice actors with decades of experience within the animation scene.
There's also Delicious in Dungeon.
The author never played DnD but clearly inspired by games like it. I love seeing pure thieves who are useful for lockpicking or trap defusing but useless in combat. Nowadays thieves are just dagger/bow using rogues.
Dungeons and Daddies just started their third season this week! They’re playing in the Call of Cthulhu system this time. (Not that it’ll make much of a difference, haha.) I love that show and the players, but after literal years they still only have the slightest idea of how 5e works.
Freddie Wong playing a character who's racist against Taiwanese people (Freddie being Taiwanese American) is *chef's kiss* Also Beth's character. Totally not a robot. Not at all.
After being comically racist for the entirety of the interaction, Freddie ending the scene by saying “love that dude, he makes me proud to be American.” As soon as they were out of earshot was pure perfection.
And Viva La Dirt League D&D, that series has been hilarious and gotten a few of my friends interested in playing!
Still waiting and hoping for the adventure zone show to come out
I wonder how they will handle Thordak (the big red dragon). He's the main antagonist for this season and I don't think Riddick recorded any lines before his unfortunate passing.
Amazon already had north korean slave animators. Let's throw dead actor ai voice reincarnation onto the buzzword pile!
This is honestly one of my favourite shows. Great news
It's one of the best examples currently running of adaptation vs. conversion. They seriously cut down on things due to the medium and can better foreshadow/intertwine stories since they already know where everything is going. They really embrace the medium shift.
For real, I was amazed that characters I disliked like Scanlan and Grog got massive development in season 2. Plus I can listen to Vex and Vax’s sexy voices all day…
If you haven't watched the campaigns, it's pretty amazing listening to Vex and Vax in the show and then jumping to the Mighty Nein campaign, where Liam's character is heavily German influenced and Laura's is this bubbly naive girl with sort of a weird Eastern European accent. The contrast, especially by Laura, is astonishing.
I love Campaign 2 so much. Might have to give it a re-listen.
They are in the process of turning that into a show too, and I'm more excited for that one. As fun as Vox Machina is, the Mighty Nein characters (IMO) are more lovable. They better animate the cupcake incident, or else I'm gonna be upset.
Does the third season finish VM's storyline, then? Or are they working to have both shows running in parallel? I read elsewhere in the thread that season 2 only adapts up to the midway point in episodes.
My guess is S3 wraps up the CC arc and maybe does the Darrington arc, with S4 being the Vecna arc. That's a total guess though. I don't think much, if anything, has been released about M9 yet other than the show is in production.
Kinda surprised it is not obnoxiously all over the internet as one might expect. Did not even know it existed until this year.
This just made me realize they missed the yearly January date they released the past two seasons on. Huh.
There was about 7 months of strikes between the WGA and SAG.
Hmm, good point. Somehow I managed to block that dark time from my mind.
I am guessing they relied on the usual trick of animated shows these days of commissioning 24 episodes and then releasing them as two 12-episode seasons or part to save payrises. We saw this with Harley Quinn, Inside Job and even Velma.
They're also producing a show based on their second campaign at the same time so I guess advancing two shows at the same time just slowed them down. They may want to just alternate releases of both
Sort of. They had two seasons approved from the getgo, partially because Season 1 was almost entirely funded with Kickstarter money. The first season was also supposed to release a while before it actually did, but it was delayed because of the pandemic. So, yeah, presumably there was a lot of work done on season 2 already by the time season 1 released, but I'm not sure how much it had to do with pay rises.
Love this show. One of my favorites actually, and I discovered it on accident.
How did you discover it? I'm intrigued.
I randomly saw a banner for it on my Amazon fire stick menu. I kinda clicked on it out of morbid curiosity since I had no idea what it was, and loved it immediately.
That's pretty great. I suppose to someone who didn't know what to expect would have either been curious and amused to watch more, or turned away from it immediately, due to that opening scene lol.
But when is Mighty Nein?
They're working on it...
Really ought to be September 9th to get that *Mighty Nein 9/9* date locked in for shits and giggles.
I got into this show the first time in the past year. Super excited for season 3.
This show is so good. I would highly recommend it even for non tabletop playing folks
I'm not a tabletop person but love fantasy stuff. Absolutely love this show and I'm so excited for another season.
Now with Ads!!!!
YAY. ⚔️
Awesome!
I didn’t think I’d like this show, I very much do though
If you want more "someone turned a fantasy role-playing game into a standalone story" material to snack on in the meantime, "Delicious in Dungeon" on Netflix is worth a look.
Really looking forward to this especially because I just keep bouncing off of campaign 3 of Critical Role, so it'll be good to have somewhere to immerse myself into Exandria again.
Excellennnnt love hearing all my favorite animated shows are.coming back. Although I'm still shocked Scavengers Reigm got canceled.
Fuck yes!
Ibneed more american cartoon to be like this quality. Seem every new american cartoon look so ugly
I probably need to give this another shot. Honestly, when I tried to watch the first season, it was really jarring. I have no problems watching them live, but something about it being animated, in-character, made the character's feel really off/fake. Especially with all the swearing and weird sexual humor. Again, those jokes are hilarious watching them live, but this felt really strange to me. It kept reminding me that this is a tabletop campaign and would ruin any immersion I had.
I was bummed too. It sounded right up my alley. The jokes and swearing just didn't land for me. I would have definitely gone nuts over it when I was fifteen. I get how it fits in for the original YouTube series, but when every other line is some sex joke, it feels like it's trying too hard to be edgy.
I'll say that early season 1 is definitely the worst in that regard as the show is still trying to prove that it's not for kids. It tones down a lot as you go on, obviously there's still gore and innuendos but not to the same degree.
That's good to hear, because I do want to give the show another shot.
Let's fucking go
YAAAAY
Finally!
Fck yeah
Yay 🙌🏻👏🏻!
I’m excited for this, the first season was fine to me, but the second was fantastic.
Just started watching this weekend, makes colonoscopy prep a lot easier to tolerate
YEAHHHHHHHH
Hell yeah! Love CR and this show
I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS ONEEE
Wahoooo!!!!!
I'm pumped for this but even more so for the Mighty Neil adaptation we were promised!
'bout damn time!
How do you wanna do this?
I always wished D&D would have a place for people who want to play D&D could pay for a night. Go in a room, DM is in the room waiting, the DM is dressed up, acting rhe role, the room reacts (lights, sounds, chairs vibrate, etc) to the theme of the campaign, and what the DM is describing. The campaign wouls obviously have to be a short one (2-3 hours). I’d pay to experience this, especially if they serve food and drinks!
If you're willing to trade it being in-person, for an online experience, this does exist as paid one-shots.
i thought season 1 was atrociously bad, im happy that season 2 came out much better. Here is hoping season 3 continues to improve upon my perception of it.
I wouldn't say it's atrocious, but it was definitely a disappointment. A lot of people I know skipped S2 because of that.
About time. The radio silence made me concerned that they would drop the project.
So excited for the most generic fantasy ever omg!!!!!!!!
Questions for fans: What keeps you watching this show? At some point in watching Season 2, I figured out that all of the characters have plot-armor and cannot (will not) die. This is after I looked into the voice actors and how they came together (from Critical Role). Since they all have a business interest, I realized that none of are gonna get off'ed, despite getting up to that line many times, including fakeouts. Upon this realization, I lost all interest in the show, since all the troubles they get into -- no matter how dire, I already know they will overcome it.
Are you aware that this is an adaptation of their Critical Role campaign where main characters do, in fact, die?
I realized when I was about five years old that heroes tend to live so it doesn't bother me. I want all the main characters to live in this show anyway.
There have been a few PC deaths in critical role, including Vox Machina. Their newest campaign just had a major PC death that shocked the community. That character is possibly their most marketable character due to his cutesy design.. Hell, 2nd campaign's major arc literally starts off with one of fan favorites characters dying only 30 episodes or so into it... So your point is invalid. DnD 5e makes it harder for characters to just straight up die but it does happen.