Post by jeffgeorge on May 3, 2017 12:56:34 GMT -9
There are tons of videos of people playing tabletop RPGs online these days, and I want to like them...but I just don't.
I will be surfing around on YouTube for something to watch, and I'll run across a live play video of either a game I'm interested in, or a person whose work I like, and I'll start the video. But within 10 minutes, I'm getting antsy and bored with all the chatter, and within 15 minutes, I've clicked away. This happens whether I'm just sitting and watching the video, or if I'm running it in the background while I work on something else. (I usually listen to something while I'm doing visual work, like GIMP or Scribus, but never when I'm writing or coding.)
The only one I find at all watchable is Critical Role, because the cast does a better job of staying on-story than most live play videos. But often their hyper-dramatic performances seem more like...performances...than actual game play. I get that the campaign that became Critical Role ran two years before it was ever broadcast, and I'm sure that for the most part, they are playing now the way they always did. Every member of that cast is a professional actor, and they really enjoy the intense roleplaying aspect of tabletop gaming, and that's fine. But I don't think Critical Role is very representative of the way RPGs are played by most people who aren't actors, and it has created a set of expectations about what RPGs are supposed to look like. As a result, most of the live play videos you find, or at least the ones that have very many views, seem like they are trying to hard to be like Critical Role, and the acting comes off as forced, amateurish, or both.
What I think is a lot more entertaining can be campaign diaries--adventure recaps, presented directly to the camera in summarized form. Because the story is streamlined, the high-points emphasized, and the table talk eliminated, I find campaign diaries more interesting, more educational, and more efficient. Matthew Colville's YouTube channel includes lots of campaign diaries episodes, and I've both enjoyed them and learned from them.
I think the bottom line is that tabletop roleplaying games are not a spectator sport. The fun is in collaboratively creating an adventure story around a table with like-minded people, because you know the (usually) people and are sharing the experience in the moment. But most of that fun is not transferable--there's just no way that watching strangers play D&D in an unedited video is the same as actually sitting around the table and playing it yourself.
I will be surfing around on YouTube for something to watch, and I'll run across a live play video of either a game I'm interested in, or a person whose work I like, and I'll start the video. But within 10 minutes, I'm getting antsy and bored with all the chatter, and within 15 minutes, I've clicked away. This happens whether I'm just sitting and watching the video, or if I'm running it in the background while I work on something else. (I usually listen to something while I'm doing visual work, like GIMP or Scribus, but never when I'm writing or coding.)
The only one I find at all watchable is Critical Role, because the cast does a better job of staying on-story than most live play videos. But often their hyper-dramatic performances seem more like...performances...than actual game play. I get that the campaign that became Critical Role ran two years before it was ever broadcast, and I'm sure that for the most part, they are playing now the way they always did. Every member of that cast is a professional actor, and they really enjoy the intense roleplaying aspect of tabletop gaming, and that's fine. But I don't think Critical Role is very representative of the way RPGs are played by most people who aren't actors, and it has created a set of expectations about what RPGs are supposed to look like. As a result, most of the live play videos you find, or at least the ones that have very many views, seem like they are trying to hard to be like Critical Role, and the acting comes off as forced, amateurish, or both.
What I think is a lot more entertaining can be campaign diaries--adventure recaps, presented directly to the camera in summarized form. Because the story is streamlined, the high-points emphasized, and the table talk eliminated, I find campaign diaries more interesting, more educational, and more efficient. Matthew Colville's YouTube channel includes lots of campaign diaries episodes, and I've both enjoyed them and learned from them.
I think the bottom line is that tabletop roleplaying games are not a spectator sport. The fun is in collaboratively creating an adventure story around a table with like-minded people, because you know the (usually) people and are sharing the experience in the moment. But most of that fun is not transferable--there's just no way that watching strangers play D&D in an unedited video is the same as actually sitting around the table and playing it yourself.