#137 

The problem with Alpha wasn't the paywall. If they had just put "extra content" behind the paywall, nobody would have cared. Heck, I might have gotten a subscription, because a couple of the shows that have gotten to youtube from behind that paywall were actually really good. The problem with Alpha is that they stupidly decided to move some formerly free stuff behind the paywall. They decided to move Tabletop Season 4 behind it. Back then, Tabletop was still one of their benchmark shows, and they destroyed it, taking other amazing shows like Titansgrave with it. If Critical Role were moving their main show behind a paywall, or if they were moving their backlog behind a paywall, people would balk. But they're not. They're saying "hey, you love our stuff. If you want other stuff like this, maybe check out this service we have now"

Nahhh. It feels like the only difference with beacon is that if you’re a super fan, or don’t want to support twitch or RU-vid, you can support critical role directly.

I agree, Alpha and Beacon are not super comparable, Beacon seems like an alternative to your twitch sub where you don't cut in amazon, where as Alpha paywalled and cut cintent to the point it was impossible to tell what they were still producing. I thiught G&S was dead long before it really stopped production because they stopped posting stuff to RU-vid, and removed Tabletop which was the show that was keeping my friend group interested

DBD revealed that the killer would indeed be Vecna! James was correct

Alpha was started before there were so many subscription fees for things like Dimension 20 and such, also I think the fall of Geek and Sundry/Alpha was when CR left and created their own channel. The fees for Beacon are comparable to what you pay for RU-vid or twitch subscription and so far their hardware seems so much better than Twitch and their Amazon overlords.

Alpha wasn't a Geek and Sundry decision, it was their parent companies decision.

Its also worth remembering that it was legendary that was pushng alpha. It wasnt geek and sundry specific, it was legendary, who woned both nerdist and G&S at the time. This is all post felicia day owning.

So, the DBD representative is actually Vecna... O:

I’m curious if the group is familiar with the DC20 RPG, or if it’s too underground, as a potential counter-culture competitor?

The aurora borealis and australis always happen together and are mirror images of each other. For future reference.

As a woman myself what annoys me about the red box warrior thing is that they didn't need to do it and it's very clearly a lie they're making up. The art is very clearly depicting a male character. Everyone who looks at it can tell it's a dude. If you think it's "ambiguous" then you're just lying to yourself, cuz Larry Elmore is VERY famous for how he draws women. If he draws a woman, you know it's a woman. And he very clearly has stated the character is a dude. There was 0 need to change the gender, they could've highlighted an existing iconic dnd lady instead!! Instead they decided to ragebait us so they get more attention on their product. It's so obnoxious when this happens. I'd rather have something like a Tasha's mini or more spotlight on the other classic lady wizard in the vecna adventure (who's name I'm forgetting)! But when this happens it makes us who feel representation matters look like clowns, it's so performative. I jate the buzzfeed strategy of "provoke the other side and feed 'our' side's want to express their personality with their politics so we get as many shares and vitality as possible" nonsense.

Hey, I'll be at GenCon and I have been lfg for Good Society since I Kickstarted that system. ;) For social rules, I built a little bit off of the DMG rules, but I added two extra levels per side. So it goes Beloved / Trusted / Well-Liked / Neutral / Disliked / Ill-Will / Hated. Trusted you'll get advantage on persuasion checks, Ill-Will gets you disadvantage, Beloved means you don't even have to make the Persuasion check because this person will literally put their life on the line for you, Hated means don't bother, they will willingly lose life or limb if it means it will harm you, etc. But one thing I always wanted to try with a party that was down would be to have me tracking that NPC reputation on the back-end, but then also have the players have their OWN binders (*gasp* _whaaaat?_ ) to track (among other things) NPC info and what they _think_ their relationship with an NPC is. I think this could work really well in a module like _Dragon Heist_ or _Wild Beyond the Witchlight_ but I haven't had the opportunity to try it out IRL yet. You definitely need players who are more RP-oriented for this to work.

So sick of individual subscriptions. So sick. So many individual services. Too many. F them all. I turn in my fandom card.

Tales of the Valiant is another way to play 5E like Level Up Advanced 5E. The impression I get from reading it is it's not out to replace D&D but to be a unifying structure for Kobold Press's 5E material. If you go into some KP material on D&D you are already playing a pretty different game, for example their Deep Magic spells have a lot more effects that reduce saves, these are things that by design official D&D spells don't do. The Deep Magic books are hard to use piecemeal as player options because very few of the spells actually fit "the meta" of the official spells, some are way ahead of the curve, most are massively behind. Counter intuitive as it may seem if you throw the whole lot in to play and enjoy the chaos that works better. The same is true with their other player options like subclasses and feats. ToV just takes that to its natural conclusion. If WotC moved away from 5E then KP is absolutely the best positioned to take a up a similar role to Paizo and 3.X and become the biggest provider of 5E content and the people selling the rulebook. But two things, that Pathfinder ever outsold 4E is a myth and it doesn't look like WotC are doing that anytime soon. 5E is a stable framework which new versions of D&D can be published in, much like how pre 3E AD&D, AD&D2E, Basic (in its many editions and expansions) are more or less compatible and running on the same core. I backed ToV, though really for the monster book and kind of just kind of upsold myself to both books (and then the GM book out of completionism). I've not really dug into the player book too much but the "Monster Vault" IMO is the best replacement for the monster manual. A5E Monstrous Menagerie has better additional information for using monsters and the design is very balanced but also kind of bland. Flee Mortals isn't really functional as a replacement as it's missing a lot of MM creatures, the CR's don't always match between closest equivalents. Also Flee Mortals is really mechanically dense so I really only want to use it for an encounter which goes big, but on that front I've found FM's monsters are often a little under-tuned and need some adjustment. ToV's Monster Vault the creature are both spicy and easy to run.

Re: Daggerheart not appealing to Grognards so can't take over DnD - havent' Grognards moved on to DCC or Shdaowdark or other OSR games? None of these is a D&D killer, but maybe "together, games strong!"

Ben 52:07 "it's not really a problem with the MCDM negotiation system itself" If he said that one more time I'd be convinced that he's lobbying to shorten his persona-non-grata status on Matts social media. 😉

I think the elephant in the room about black flag is that it is not the Open 5e people thought it would be. Only one subclass, feat, et all. They have mechanicists in midgard (KP artificers) but the class is not in the srd. KP played the same way WotC does, which is 😢

I think 5es generic-ness means it will still be top. It doesnt do everything the best but it fits so many styles that daggerheart and mcdm are too specific for

I discovered Dael back on G&S and have been following her content ever since. I really enjoyed G&S back in the day and it’s a shame what happened. As far as beacon is concerned, if they can eventually deliver the kind of content that Dropout is currently delivering then it will be successful. They probably need to bring in other creators from outside the core CR team.

They DID add vecna! I think it was just announced either today or yesterday

Beacon doesn't bother me much because of how they talked about it. They were pretty frank. They don't trust the platforms they're on to remain a suitable platform for them as they grow. Simple as that. They have plans for additional content and they already have plenty of the early access slates they mentioned available. I'll wait a bit to see how it pans out but I'm not thinking they'll go the geek and sundry route myself. My main question is will the Midst subscription be folded into this or packaged someway? That confuses me a tad

56:06 With the caveat I haven't played Vampire's 5th edition and only skimmed those rules (which do seem to include some kind of social combat, not really present in earlier editions): a large part of the reason Vampire (and to an extent other World of Darkness games) manages to encourage social interaction is less about the rules and more because complex political relationships are hard-coded into the setting. Your character is some kind of supernatural monster or entity, and part of a global secret society of these creatures, and also belong to at least one faction within that society. So your character is immediately thrust into a web of relationships. There are clear tiers of power built into these: your PC, presumed to be a relative neophyte in their supernatural society, are probably powerful enough to best or get the better of a small group of squishy normal mortal humans, and hold your own against one of your peers, but the elders and leaders of your society in turn are also capable of squishing you like a bug if you step out of line. So doing favours and making yourself useful to a patron elder is a clear path to advancement. Every society, especially Vampire's, has a structure with titles and roles and jockeying for position and clearly defined rules of conduct (e.g. Rule #1 - The Masquerade: You do not tell anyone about Vampire Club). It's also presumed there's a lot of rule-breaking going on behind-the-scenes. But because the expectations are so clearly laid out, the players know when they're stepping over the line.

I'm so sad, the aurora was on my birthday, and I had spent the day gardening so I was so sore and tired that I missed it. 😭 19:52 YES! 100% to all of this. She (and Eric Campbell and Matt Key) made such great shows. I hope they start doing more things. And bringing in more talent. I loved shows like Wednesday Club, Gather Your Party, and all their other actual play shows. While Beacon does have good content, they're going to need to provide more to make the price worth it. If you're already subbed to Twitch/RU-vid, it's easy to justify the switch. But it's not enough there right now to justify a new user to sub. There are a lot of differences between Watcher, Alpha, Dropout, and Beacon. I don't know much about Watcher, but when you have a successful channel that decides to go fully behind a paywall, there's going to be backlash, no matter what you offer. Dropout has the variety, and they pretty much had to do what they did because of the issues they had with their parent company. Beacon is a smart move to offer extra content for pay, while not disrupting the core audience, but I think they need to add more content to make it grow. Ironically, Alpha was the best of those services. They had the mixed free/pay content that Beacon is doing. They had a wide variety of shows like Dropout. They had some great features, like their live chat along-side the live show, that was so much better than the cesspool that was Twitch chat. Honestly, I think Alpha's failing was mostly timing. They were still in the early days of streaming, and was one of if not the first subscription service of its kind. And I think they just hadn't built an audience for that yet. Now that we have so many subscription services, there's more to compare them to, so you can look at Beacon compared to Hulu, Netflix, Disney+, and even smaller services like Dropout & Nebula, and see "this is how much it costs compared to what I'm paying for these other services, and this is what I get in return". Alpha didn't have anything to compare it to, so all you saw was that these shows that you were formerly getting for free now costs money. It also hurt that they were trying to build their audience while losing their bedrock show with Critical Role; and they screwed over the TableTop audience by making the last season early access on Alpha, making the people who crowdfunded the previous seasons very upset. And even with all that, Alpha was a symptom, not the cause of G&S's downfall. It was the loss of CR, and the sale to the Chinese conglomerate who didn't know what they were doing. G&S ballooned fast with CR's popularity and LDN's funding. When CR left, they took a lot of the audience with them. And when LDN sold to whatever they are now, you got a lot of very corporate decisions, like Alpha, like screwing over Wheaton.

3 weeks of rain? The UK had 6 months of rain this winter/spring!

39:23 Demogorgon is from Greek Mythology. WOTC only owns their specific lore and design but not the name.

Dagger Heart can't be counterculture... critical roll is the mainstream culture. Counter culture already exists with the people playing shadow dark and other OSD&D games.

why not make the warrior figure in multiple versions so everyone can have their interpreted favorite AND the completists can shell out even more cash to feed the beast. XD

I'm glad Shawn made the Arora joke as it was already swirling around in my head.

Personally I'm glad that I can now stop my Amazon prime subscription that gave me the free Twitch sub that I then used on CR's channel. Now I can occasionally sub to Beacon for a few months when I want to binge their shows. Their main campaign (and side campaigns like Candela Obscura) will still going to be free to watch on YT. This seems like a smart move. I've not seen any of the fan furor that happened when Watcher was announced mainly because they're not moving most of their content behind a paywall (like Dropout and Watcher) but offering additional bonus content to people who sub to them directly.

the fact that the DBD character actually *is* Vecna made this episode age terribly before it was even released 😬

Name suggestion for their potential Geek & Sundry Documentary…Bleak & Sundry.

Yeah, not paying for another streaming service. Here's hoping they don't put more shows behind the paywell like Alpha did.

Black Flag are the Rules, Tales of the Valiant is the Product/Brand from Kobold Press. You can (probably) Licence for ToV by paying Kobolds but you can use black flag for free (as I understand it)

49:03 definitely curious to hear more about this BioWare-style social interaction system!

Great show as always. I don't watch critical role but do subscribe to dropout a couple times a year to binge the newest intrepid heroes game and do the same with all my streaming services. Like i will be getting a month of HBO soon to watch DUNE 2.

I could see CR trying to replace Twitch or at least offer a serious competitor. Step one prove your tech works. Step two launch third party shows. Step three decide if it's profitable to open it up to all. My guess is they will make more money with a closed system like Apple has.

It seems less Geek and Sundry model and more like Dropout modified model.

No. Case Closed.

Mothership, that's a great system.

Asking helps, didn't know I wasn't following on twitch.. mostly cos I'm AU.

The simpler game that's easier to teach to new players and doesn't fight for the same high-fantasy market that Shawn is talking about already exists, it was released just last summer/autumn by Free League. It's Dragonbane. Less math, less stuff to keep track of, a universal resource pool instead of stuff like spellslots and "[ability modifier] times per long rest", more low-fantasy vibes without giving up the silly lightheartedness of 5e, etc. All in a 112 page rulebook that includes it's own small bestiary. If this system could get just a bit more of a marketing push from Free League i'm convinced it would be exactly that "counter-counter culture" pick Shawn was talking about with an audience to rival the second or third largest games in the space.

What killed Geek and Sundry was the leaving of Critical Role, it made enough money to support the channel without Legendary having to spend their money for the channel! Alpha was $5.00 per sub vs Twitch $3.50 a sub! The G&S Vlogs is how i first found Dael! Dael Kingsmill and Amy Dallen were my favorite 2 Vloggers! An artist i watch on Twitch thinks that the mini was a mistake by the sculptor and WotC decided to go with it instead of paying the sculptor to make another one!

I think the problem the internet has with the redbox warrior mini is that it is absolutely NOT a woman and WizKidz essentially declaring with no uncertainty that it's always been a woman is a complete fabrication that smacks of virtue signaling. No reasonable person would object to female warriors, and most would not object to re-imagining a male character as a female equivalent so long as you're truthful about it. Don't lie to a community that has been built up for over 50, just say "We thought it would be fun to represent the character as female."

Dael, I heard the song in your head at the end.

I have no plans on continuing to buy dnd products, as I'm quite content on what I've already got. MCDM products, however.. I feel like there are a sizeable amount of people who aren't following dnd into their "next edition", so dnd may be played around tables still, but their revenue may be staggering to a halt. Here's to hoping! (Hasbro should burn to the ground)

I think if D&D fails, MCDM and Daggerheart sre likely to fail as well for the same reaosns. ToV is going to be a tossup because they can likely pivot away and be fine and maybe market a product as traditional

@21:00 WHEN is my next season of Vox Machina going to show? Is it going to be on Prime or do I have to get this crazy new streaming service to see it? @42:00 "purposefully and clearly made HIM a WOMAN" And Dale's face turns on... So did you do that on purpose or was that a Freudian Slip?

To compete with D&D, you will need to appeal to the jaded and bitter veterans of the OGL wars.

The streaming service is why I don't watch dropout. I grew up on basic cable and buying one show or one channel feels frivolous.

Pretty sure the name "Demogorgon" predates D&D. I'm sure there were licensing agreements for the use of D&D as a brand, and maybe during the scenes where Mike & the rest were actually referring to D&D's Demogorgon as part of their campaign, but the Stranger Things monster named "Demogorgon" is not actually similar at all to the D&D Demogorgon, and I'm not convinced that D&D would have any legal claim to that monster's likeness just because it shares the same name (which neither of them actually invented.)

Wizards of the Coast doesn't have to do anything. They could just keep doing the exact same thing they've done for the last decade. Just like when Vampire the Masquerade (VtM), White Wolf Games, overtook D&D when VtM got super popular (Yes, VtM was and still is a modern gothic supernatural setting TTRPG), the dragon can be usurped (Even in its own setting genre just like when Pathfinder overtook D&D during D&D 4th Edition). It has happened in the past and therefore can happen again. One of these games, be it, MCDM RPG, Daggerheart RPG, DC20 RPG, Tales of the Valiant RPG or even Level Up Advanced 5e could actually usurp Dungeons & Dragons. Once again, it has happened in the past. It can happen again.

I think Matt Mercer just tweeted vecna x dead by daylight?

I remember the days of Alpha, and locking Talks Machina behind a paywall, and how that went over.... poorly. I don't really see how beacon is any different.

I mostly play 5e but I look at other systems and try other systems mainly to broaden my TTRPG protfolio/ understanding as a game designer. I very much do not want to play dagger heart it is so in your face with how non commitable / loosy goosy it is that an otherwise cool ish system and dice mechanics are completly lost on me. Like the degress of success of dagger heart are insane to me, even as a DM who improvises a lot, but for instance the GM of daggerheart has to come up with potentially 5 different results for a check and improvise everything on the spot. Meanwhile I am very much looking forward to DC20 RPG and MCDM RPG, as those systems better mesh with me as a person. I don't get the hype for dagger heart, I have looked at it and it feels off like it wants to be this narrative engine but it also has this combat thing tacked on with clue and tacks, oh and this running theme of hope and despair which I think misses what Critical Role started with which is the very decidely Heroic Fantasy which you know does contain Hope and despair, but there is nothing of the found family and antics and this might be my ignorance showing but how much does these two central themes impact the group, or is just I roll with hope and it only effects you? Anyways dagger heart is trying to be too much and not like DnD at the same time and I think it is failing because of it.

I feel like the people who are against Beacon or CR setting up their own platform are a combination people who don't want to pay for a subscription for what was previously free content (which to an extent is fair) and entitled people. If CR decided put future projects or campaigns exclusively on Beacon... that's honestly not problematic. If you are someone who cannot/refuses to pay for another subscription service then I get it, but CR's content belongs to them and what they wish to do with that is their right. The only thing that i personally ask of Beacon is that there is enough types of content that I enjoy to be worth grabbing the subscription.

You cannot killll that which doessssss not livvve

29:05 idk man time and time again people say D&D players want simpler games but at this point I don't think it's true. But maybe that's just my echo-chamber of videogame people

Beacon is a good value so far. Not a fan of Twitch in general.

i find it interesting that todays TTRPG player seems ot want a mechanicla answer for EVEyRHTINg in a game thats suppose dot be base don the imaginaiton, fomr th eruels, all the wya to the ART in the new PHB.. i mean cool new art?? GREAT!! but poeple seem in AWE of a new piec eof art for evey rsingle subclass and lots of spells.. again ART~!! cool, but poeple seme ot want the game to do all of the IMAGINATION. stuff for them. What maeks D&D awesome is why its NOt a board game.

"Will Ghostfire Gaming have an actual point? Or have they embraced the clickbait title so hard that they're no longer doing it ironically? Find out today on..."

the artist says it's a man. no need for wizkids to lie. plenty of great women in D&D. hijacking a man for no purpose is like netflix or bbc, rather than telling awesome stories from all the cultures in the world, changing the ethnicity of a historical figure from europe. it's insulting to push a fake hero when they could be showing real ones.

No.

ITs a figurine, obvioouly inspiured by the original RED BOX cover.... noone is rewrting or tyring to convince us of anything, BIG NOTHING BURGER.