Topic: CRITICAL ROLE

[RandalThor]

If you don't know about this "show: on Geek & Sundry, you need to check it out. A bunch of voice actors (some also do regular acting, as Ashley leaving for a show in NY shows) in Hollywood play D&D 5E Thursday nights. Now, these people are all gamers, this campaign they had already been running for 2 years prior to getting on G&S. They were originally using Pathfinder, but switched to 5E when they when on the air, as it is just much easier for the GM and everyone else to learn and play.

There are currently 18 episodes you can watch on their site (their video player works in both IE and Chrome, I don't know about other browsers) each one running around 3 hours. The first episode has some audio problems in the first couple of minutes, but they clear it up and it goes fine from there.

I requested that the members of my current group watch at least the first episode to see the level of background each player did for their character and how much they stay in character during the session, as I want to run/play games to that level. (Once you see it you will know the "level" of which I speak.) Now, of course these are professional voice actors (if you play lots of video games you will recognize several of them, I believe) so I don't expect (and cannot produce) their level of capability in this arena.

Something Critical Role has inspired: The gaming group I am part of is called The Saturday Knights, and has been going for about 2-years now, the longest running game-group I have been a part of in the last 15-20 years. I am thinking about putting together t-shirts for the regular members* complete with a logo and their character's name on the back. Maybe even a number, like on a sports jersey. If/when I put this together, I will send one to each of the Critical Role crew with their character's names as they will be honorary members of The Saturday Knights. I am also thinking about recording our sessions and posting them on-line as an audio blog. (I have some recordings of the first 4 game session when we were palying AD&D, but the quality is bad - too hot - and we can hear people peeing in the bathroom, so no good. I was just doing it so I could review what happened and keep track of what happens in the campaign.)



* We are part of a Meet Up group, so we occasionally get some individuals who will pop in for a game or 2, & I have to limit the number of players to 8, otherwise I will have 10-12 people show up on occasion.

[Cory Magel]

Regarding 'role'... we like our players to put together a background, but it can be everything from an outline format to several page story. This helps the GM come up with material in general, but also helps them weave the PC into the story, which usually keeps the player more invested/interested in play.  This is kind of an 'if you're going to play in the campaign, try to contribute to the campaign' that is expected.

However, and this is a big however in some peoples views, we don't expect people to stay in character in a first person manner.  None of our group speak in a first person in-character manner a majority of the time and some never do.  Ever.  The only reason I mention this is while this is what you want, it may not be what your players want... you're always going to have a mixture of personalities.  So as a GM you have to ask yourself (and I'm not addressing you specifically) if all your players like doing this and if that's truly important to you.