#127 

Every week, I am so thankful that the Eldritch Lorecast has 3 younger, contemporary members of the TTRPG community, alongside the much more experienced Shawn Merwin. I always love the insight, wisdom, and occasionally the history that Shawn brings to the table. This podcast's format is so good for the subject ♥️

The internet needs the actual play of the Ghostfire crew playing the NASA adventure using the Honey Heist rules!!!!

I saw a TikTok that said "This tool will save you hours of D&D prep every session! It's a tool that lets you build and customize your own maps!" and my reaction was "That wouldn't save me hours, that will make me spend many hours of extra prep."

Every time his name comes up, I immerdfiately sound like Jan from The Brady Bunch. “All I hear all day at school is how great Vecna is at this or how wonderful Vecna did that! Vecna, Vecna, Vecna!" *throws up hands*

Having watched the Twitch and RU-vid versions of this, it is clear that Dante is a magnificent artist!

Feature Creep is real. There's a constant battle between what you need to run a game virtually and what can be done with a virtual tabletop and each group of players sits along a spectrum from "Shared MS Paint" to "Recreating the Universe in Unreal". There's no silver bullet but Ben hits the nail on the head about extra features adding incredible levels of burden on the GM that the players may or may not realize. Fight monsters, not your VTT

100% agree with Shawn's "don't say TT" in "RPG". I've gone back to just typing it as "RPG", figure it oput, video gamers! And also, kids, get off my lawn!

8:05 The MCDM Community is watching you, Ben. We are always watching you... ... ...It's the #1 TTRPG Podcast in all the land, after all.

Couldn't agree more with James. I miss Owlbear Rodeo 1.0 😥

I don't know what motivated NASA to attach their name to a TTRPG adventure, but I love that they did. I haven't actually played it yet, but from reading what's available it sounds like a fantastically original adventure.

i noticed a serious lack of babidas at the end. how am i suppose to know the episode is over without them?!?

If you use counters and minis, you can use cards.

Great job everyone. I always enjoy the banter and insight.#chitchatdicetime

Great discussions. Always insightful. Love you guys!

26:18 strong agree. We got feedback from folks who were testing the mcdm RPG and who spent more time setting up foundry, not reading the playtest packet, just setting up foundry then they did playing with their friends. For me thats a *huge* detraction, And the packet had maps! Whats the point of prep if it halves the amount of game I can play with my friends? Prep and VTT's are means to be an end but I fear some people treat them like ends to themselves and spend the majority of their time fiddling with stuff that will never see the light of day. Maybe that's how they prefer to interact with the hobby because they're aren't able to assemble a table of players, I don't know

Dael, you are hilarious!

James! Good callout to the community to look at Daggerheart!

Disney used to pull that manufactured scarcity with their VHS movies. " The Vault". Buy while you can!

“CAG” - collaborative adventure game

James’ description of the Daggerheart damage sounds very similar to early Shadowrun, like 2e-3e period. Anyone else feel that or am I just crazy?

I had a strong feeling of deja-vu when you spoke of different ways to speak about ttrpg (e.g. "table talk")... Was it a previous episode or am I thinking of another podcast that had the same subject? Perhaps a Sly Flourish Lazy RPG show episode? At any rate, I'm only 15 minutes in. Enjoying your show, as always.

There's also the upcoming DC20 system as another competitor by the Dungeon Coach. The play tests with other RU-vidrs have been great to see how it actually works and got me excited to try it.

I agree about OBR. But I think sometimes the same person/group has uses for both a more complex VTT and a simpler one depending on the adventure, time available to prep, and play location. So it is nice to have choices.

I agree about the simplicity of Owlbear Rodeo, and the new DndBeyond Maps

Lookin' chiseled Ben. Nice :finger_guns:

Great Episode!

26:00 My sentiments exactly.

The card system in Daggerheart is a cool gimmick but I fear that if the game takes off and it grows with added classes, features, abilities, etc that over time the card system will become large and cumbersome to manage. I don't think having to sort through deck after deck will be all that fun.

James' Lament 25:31

I assume someone has clipped "What would you do the LARPers?" by now, right? All the world's a table, and all the men and women merely PCs. They have their checks, and their saving throws, and one man, in his time, rolls many characters.

When it comes to VTTs, I use Arkenforge on a $100 wall-mounted TV because my little dining room table in my little apartment can't accommodate 4-5 players, me as DM, and also a map. Arkenforge makes building "fancy" top-down maps with lighting, terrain, ambient sound, music, and motion surprisingly simple. I don't have to store a bunch of minis and terrain pieces in my little apartment, and I also don't have to spend a small fortune on all that stuff. For the maps I usually dress up something pre-made with some ambient sound and light, but I'll go all out for something special. Looking forward to seeing what's coming from the DnDB map tool as well!

James’ heartbreak with owlbear rodeo😢

As well as Death House, there was the Elemental Power pdf that accompanied Princes of the Apocalypse. Don't even get me started on the way they dropped physical support of in store play too.

A humble telescope is far superior to an arrogant one😇

When does Ben's Lorecast outro single drop?

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who think there are two kinds of people in the world, and those who don't. There are also two kinds of people who use VTTs: ones who use it as a tool (frequently out of necessity), and those who use it for the experience. I suspect they released it because its development was far enough along at the time of the acquisition to act as a placeholder until the "real" VTT is released, and i suspect that the market for VTT-as-tool was bigger than they thought. I think the market is segmented enough to support both, unless they muck it up. But Hasbro would never sacrifice a golden goose needlessly, right?

Wasn't Maps, already linking character sheets to the tokens?

Ddbeyond maps is just about perfect right now. It does connect to encounter builder enough while keeping them separate so you don't have to get complicated to use them.

James is completely right, this is a blatant FOMO release strategy for that vecna oneshot. Made even more disgusting by the fact that its a freaking pdf on a WotC sever. There is no reason for that to "disappear" forever!

I did not have a problem pre ordering the vecna adventure bundle. It must have been a technical problem the day you tried to order it.

Oh…expect DaggerHeart to have a Candella like profile on the CR channel.

My use of D&D Beyond maps would only be so that I do not have to draw maps, I do not play online so the simple easy maps for a published book would be a benefit to me and I would think some others.

I wonder if Critical Role aren't playing Daggerheart on stream because Matt has to learn it so well that he can run it as well as he runs 5e. That's a big ask. He's had decades of experience with 5e.

Just curious (and I fully don't expect this group to even see this post.) But I wonder what this group would think about "smaller" game companies who may not have the exposure that the "Two Matts" have? Smaller companies like mine, "Khor Games LLC".

I feel the push to pre-order with "extra goodies" backfires for me. I ask myself, why are they pushing so hard? Does it suck? Is it like a movie trailer that's trying too hard because they know how terrible it is? And I always think, sure, they're *saying* it won't be available later, but once something is on the internet, it's indelible.

The HP sounds like it has extra steps for little payoff 🤷🏽‍♂️🤷🏽‍♂️🤷🏽‍♂️ crunchy

maybe dice RPG ?

Role-playing game's really just an umbrella term. People just never got around to saying Role-playing videogame (RPVG), while people did introduce TTRPG.

Ben? Was that your Barry Gibb?

The vecna adventure is lacking really though, its a level 3-4 and then you start the book at 10, it does not help with that level gap, not to mention it cuts out the local gaming store yet again.

Agree with TTRPGs are just RPGs and video game RPGs should be called something else, maybe VRPGs. But I'm also old enough to remember when video games didn't exist and RPGs did.

I support piracy of products that aren't available for sale.

I went away from WOTC products after the OGL fiasco. The fact that they are trying to capitalize on fomo after firing so many people makes me want to support them less. Which is unfortunate. I would like to support the people that put their heart and soul into creating D&D products, but the corporate element has driven many passionate customers like myself away from their products. There are so many TTRPGs that are out there that I would rather play right now.

It was SOOOO Annoying during the livestream people whinging there wasn't initiative order every 3 comments when litterally you can still use initiative and the game wont break. people just havent played any other games witout those rules they think that CR is doing something new just for the sake of it... when there are tonnes of games without initiative and they work perfectly fine

I would have to disagree with Dael about Portal being a First Person Shooter. Yes it is first person, and it borrows the controls and user input of FPS games, but it does not have the same gameplay loop at all. In fact you don't actually shoot anything. Yes the device you're given is called a portal "gun" and it sends a projectile out to create the portals, but this is nothing more than borrowing the UI trappings of an FPS in order to designate the locations of the actual portals. The game is actually a puzzle-platform game. The FPS trappings are less than skin deep and honestly are mainly the result of the game being developed based on an FPS engine and with the idea that it's intended audience would be mostly FPS gamers. So the FPS controls and viewpoint not only made development faster and easier than building something from scratch, but also served to onboard gamers already familiar with the control scheme extremely quickly. Honestly these days puzzle and puzzle-platform games that utilize FPS style view and controls is practically it's own genre as there is a whole group of games similar in this regard. I do very much agree with Dael that genre titles are really not designated for communicating game styles with non-gamers. They are really just roughly defined tags that the community, (developers, journalists, and gamers) have all collectively created, defined, and redefined over the years for communicating with each other. I don't think much thought is given to creating genre titles that are particularly descriptive of a game's style to non-gamers. For that matter, I don't think it would even be possible to be adequately descriptive to someone who lacks the context. Then of course there's also a certain amount of gatekeeping as well, where some gamers will intentionally choose to obfuscate things for non-gamers. I'm not a fan of the latter, but it does happen. To bring this back around to D&D. I don't think it's possible to come up with a succinct title for what TTRPG's are that will actually be descriptive enough for people unfamiliar with it to really have any idea what the game is or how it works based solely on said title, so we probably shouldn't worry about it. Let's just call it whatever works for us. PS. Love Shawn, but I also disagree with is point about video game RPG's. I absolutely roleplay when I play them. I still have fond memories of going out in Daggerfall and living as a thief by night in my black cloak and armor, then changing into elaborate and gorgeous clothes by day to walk around town in the guise of a noble or rich merchant as I sold off all my stolen goods. I had an extensive and well organized wardrobe to choose from and always dressed for the occasion. It's up to the individual gamer how much they will or will not engage with roleplay. But that is also true in TTRPG's. There are definitely TTRPG players that don't roleplay, and just want to smash things. You definitely can just play D&D as a dungeon crawl wargame. And on top of that MMORPG's have come back around to being even closer to TTRPG's in terms of roleplay, at least among like minded role players. So I can't agree with TTRPG's monopolizing the term roleplaying game. There are different ways to roleplay in games, sitting around a table talking to people isn't the only way to do it, even if it is many people's preferred way.

Copying something you've paid for IS NOT PIRACY.

they need the pre-orders because they know there will be no post-orders. they had one job: make Vecna look like a powerful lich/god, and they couldn't even do that. Hasbro said "Fire the people who make things look cool. We want it to look like Stranger Things Vecna had a baby with Thanos. That's what the kids like!", and we ended up with Mech-na. :(

Also, while technically correct, I vehemently disagree with Dael’s placement of portal with halo and CoD. Genre distinctions are important.

piracy only happens when companies provide inferior product case and point breath of the wild on emulators at 60 fps but on actual switch its only 30 fps and as far as an incentive to preorder it does the opposite for me it makes me not want to pay them for it