TMF Jeff
TMF owner and co-founder
- Joined
- Apr 2, 2001
- Messages
- 27,124
- Points
- 83
OK, so this is obviously ridiculously nerdy, but what can you do - I really like them. 
I used to play a ton of D&D as a kid, but I haven't played since I was a teenager 30 years ago. I kept a casual eye on the way it evolved over the years and once in a while I would pick up one of the rulebooks just to see what it had turned into.
Now in the last year or so, on youtube and twitch, tabletop games are gaining a LOT of traction, and occasionally a really good group of gamers will start broadcasting their sessions. The best one by far is called Critical Role, which has a group of professional voice actors (If you've ever watched a cartoon or played a video game, you've heard these guys) running a weekly four-hour game.
They're incredibly good because they're all actors so they convey a lot of very real emotion (it's not uncommon for the girls to start legitimately crying,) and their Dungeon Master is just ridiculously talented - not only can he do any voice for any character or monster, but the way he runs the game is that he has the player describe the mechanics of what they do, and then he interprets it as an amazing piece of improv. It's impossible to describe effectively, but here are a couple of short examples of him doing his thing.
This one is from their original home game. The girl posting it is Ashley Johnson from Blindspot (also the waitress who serves the Avengers their schwarma.)
This is their gunslinger (they converted to 5E from Pathfinder when they launched the stream) buying gunpowder. If youtube had Emmys, Matt should win one for this performance.
In this one they're finishing a fight with a Banshee. Their bard uses Vicious Mockery, which does a small amount of psychic damage, and happens to kill it. When Matt asks "How do you want to do this?" it's like a tradition of the group - when they finish an encounter, whoever dealt the death blow gets to add a personal flair to it. Here Scanlan chooses to "shame it to death."
The is the thing that made me actually think of posting this, though - Acquisitions Incorporated, pretty much the Godfather of live D&D podcasts - with Chris Perkins, the lead designer of Dungeons and Dragons as their DM - just graduated to a weekly show as well. Broadcasting out of an actual basement, no less.
I used to play a ton of D&D as a kid, but I haven't played since I was a teenager 30 years ago. I kept a casual eye on the way it evolved over the years and once in a while I would pick up one of the rulebooks just to see what it had turned into.
Now in the last year or so, on youtube and twitch, tabletop games are gaining a LOT of traction, and occasionally a really good group of gamers will start broadcasting their sessions. The best one by far is called Critical Role, which has a group of professional voice actors (If you've ever watched a cartoon or played a video game, you've heard these guys) running a weekly four-hour game.
They're incredibly good because they're all actors so they convey a lot of very real emotion (it's not uncommon for the girls to start legitimately crying,) and their Dungeon Master is just ridiculously talented - not only can he do any voice for any character or monster, but the way he runs the game is that he has the player describe the mechanics of what they do, and then he interprets it as an amazing piece of improv. It's impossible to describe effectively, but here are a couple of short examples of him doing his thing.
This one is from their original home game. The girl posting it is Ashley Johnson from Blindspot (also the waitress who serves the Avengers their schwarma.)
This is their gunslinger (they converted to 5E from Pathfinder when they launched the stream) buying gunpowder. If youtube had Emmys, Matt should win one for this performance.
In this one they're finishing a fight with a Banshee. Their bard uses Vicious Mockery, which does a small amount of psychic damage, and happens to kill it. When Matt asks "How do you want to do this?" it's like a tradition of the group - when they finish an encounter, whoever dealt the death blow gets to add a personal flair to it. Here Scanlan chooses to "shame it to death."
The is the thing that made me actually think of posting this, though - Acquisitions Incorporated, pretty much the Godfather of live D&D podcasts - with Chris Perkins, the lead designer of Dungeons and Dragons as their DM - just graduated to a weekly show as well. Broadcasting out of an actual basement, no less.
