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I think they either have to go back to basics on the next season of Game Changer or take a long break before they do another season. This bonus episode was really fun! But like...this episode felt like what you'd do for a series finale. You spend most of it referencing other bits, and bringing back cast members who have appeared a bit less, recently. You cross off the "what if they surprise Sam with a secret Game Changer episode," request. It ends in a big party with all of your favorite Dropout friends.

I should reiterate that I don't think this season was bad! But I think the increasing scope has gotten away from some of the fun of earlier seasons of the show, and I miss that a bit.

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More Critical Role thoughts now that we know the system and cast details for C3:

I've got...mixed feelings about it! I really do appreciate the ambition of going in and expanding the table and going into a new campaign setting and setting out to do a Westmarches style campaign. All of that sounds really cool and good! I'm excited to see what that all ultimately looks like.

Where I've got mixed feelings is...well, I feel like they're definitely trying to play it safe by still using D&D, and they're really playing it safe by who they've expanded the table to fill. I do feel like the two major criticisms Critical Role as an organization has had to address over the past few years are a) still using WotC stuff, given how...bad that company has proven to be, and b) that their cast is overwhelmingly white, and...well, they kinda addressed that?

Now: I can definitely look at the situation and understand that casting something like this requires a pretty large time commitment and very much limits your pool of potential players, and for their big, main campaign, they're going to narrow it down even further to people who have proven they can handle their shit. The new format also makes guest players much easier to bring in.

Still, feels like a couple of missed opportunities here, and honestly you can pretty instantly see some of the Discourse that's gonna arise out of this Overall, I'm glad to see them take a couple of big bold steps here.

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Actually I think that Game Changer needs more people like Ally who will see everyone being extremely nice and kind to one another and then say something completely insane and immediately throw off the vibes. Going into a popularity contest in a room full of Dropout fans and going "I would make all cats go extinct" is the energy the show needs to avoid being a little too cloying

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I'm trying not to rain on anybody's parade here but I didn't really like this season of Game Changer much outside of You-Lympics. There are still a lot of really good jokes throughout because they're still bringing in really funny people, but...it sort of feels like they've gotten lost in how big a budget they can bring to the table, and...a lot of stuff that feels a bit too cynical to post.

I hope the next season of Game Changer can go back to basics a little bit

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Thoughts on the Critical Role announcement!

I think you could tell throughout Campaign 3 that they really, really starting to chafe a bit at doing another 100+ episode campaign. I don't mean that they weren't doing good work, or that anyone was half-assing it, but they were talking even before the campaign about how they were starting to think about how to pass the torch.

The issue with it, which is the same issue any TTRPG show like this faces, is that...a huge part of the appeal is that people like the idea that they're watching a group of friends play D&D or whatever together, but...that's not really sustainable over a long period of time.

So how do you fix it? The table's already so big, and removing any one person would cause people to flip out, but adding someone to the mix makes things even more dicey to manage than usual. Also, adding people to the permanent cast sounds great, but the core cast are all like...founding members of the company, and probably don't draw an appearance fee. How much do you pay for a four hour guest spot? How much do you pay for a six episode guest spot? How much do you pay for a new permanent cast member?

The core cast of the show, when they entered into whatever agreement they entered into to buy the show from Geek & Sundry, knew what kind of deal they were making, and the time commitment involved in filming the show, and were able to build around it as their main job. I love Robbie on the show, and would love to see him all the time. Is it realistic to ask someone else, ten years in, to record a four hour episode three times a month when he's got other work he's already agreed to?

One of the articles has an interview where he says he's excited to take over the beginning of the new series. They mention in the announcement that more new players are going to be announced. If I had to guess, the way they're going to build around some of these concerns is that they're going to do some combo of how they did the guest spots mid campaign where they split the group, and the Candela Obscura model of rotating through casts and GMs. I don't think it's going to be one core campaign group, and one main GM, I think they're going to cycle through a bunch of distinct arcs with different teams, and also I've never been more confident that they're just going to use Daggerheart. They keep talking about GMs and not DMs, and they hired two of D&D's main guys away to work on Daggerheart, and had them on stage when they made the announcement.

I dunno, I think this whole situation is fascinating. I don't think this whole post hangs together as an essay or whatever, which is why I'm not a journalist.

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This post is for a VANISHINGLY small amount of people on this website

The Ryan Davis Memorial pitch from Izzy and Lily

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The Ryan Davis Memorial pitch from Izzy and Lily

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I hate almost all of these pitches!

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So far theyre two for two on videos I would instantly scroll past

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I'm glad Murph is there to visibly hate all the recurring bits, it makes how everyone else loves them much funnier

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I've seen a lot of arena fights in ttrpgs and this might be the most insane one I've ever seen

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Not only has Murph been dissing Lou's books pretty consistently, he also successfully did two good jumps in a row in the second episode of the season. Might as well have run Fabian over a third time.

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Hearing the "how do you reboot a book???" bit at the end of this episode is really funny because they did republish the first few Animorph books with new covers and updated cultural references

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Fun to call the ultimate villain of this "Big Z" when Kofi and Xavier have recently betrayed their long-time friend and tag team partner, "Big E"

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Bayley dropping a Lost reference in a D&D pro wretling show is a dangerous intersection of my interests

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I don't mean this as a bulwark against criticism of Critical Role, but this is a show that's largely improvised and often litigated by random dice rolls, and presented without any real editing. "Well, why aren't there more consequences?" or "well, I think it kind of sucks that they forgot something that happened," are valid criticisms, but also this isn't something where someone writes a script, goes back and revises it, and puts it in front of people who make other revisions.

"Why did the gods all agree to this plan?" well, they're playing Dungeons and Dragons, and they decided that a dice roll would determine what happened. You can for sure criticize that! However, it's a fundamental part of what they're doing, so like...there's not a whole lot they're gonna be able to do to address that.

Would it maybe have been more narratively satisfying if Ashton's sacrifice did actually permanently kill them? Probably. And then Taliesin would have been sitting around for five hours while everyone else did their little epilogues and he occasionally would chime in as one of his other characters.

Just, like...you've gotta align your expectations with what the show is, and what it has been. We know from S3 of Vox Machina especially that they know that what works in the campaigns doesn't also work on television. They're different types of media. I just think that...I dunno, sometimes people lose sight of what the show actually is (probably not helped by the insane production values they bring to the table. It was easier to remember that this was D&D when they were playing on folding tables and the audio kept cutting out).

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It's going to get lost in the character epilogues, and I get it, but I think the state of the world in Exandria is really interesting, and I think it was smart not to dig in too deep as to what the world is actually like. "What are the larger repercussions of this?" is a question too large to really answer when mostly you just want to know what's happening next for Imogen, or whoever.

There's a big status quo shift in just...how do people and organizations react to the gods disappearing? How does it affect divine magic? How is Exandria reacting to aliens just wandering around the planet? When the gods reincarnate, how are they going to show up? What powers will they have? What memories will they have? What complications are there going to be?

That's a lot! I know people wanted more "consequences," and I know that mostly means that they thought some characters should die, but compared to the ends of C1 and C2, this one had huge ramifications for the entire campaign world. In C1 they mostly just...maintained the status quo. In C2, they maintained the status quo so hard that nobody knew they did anything. Those are oversimplifications, for sure, but the next campaign wouldn't have to really deal with the fallout. A potential C4 absolutely would have to deal with the fallout of this campaign. So will the upcoming one-shots.

I'm really interested in seeing what they put together for all of this, or if they just bounce over to a new setting.