38:50 this is maybe my favorite advice from DCC. It really emphasizes that every monster should be described rather than named. But if named, they can have proper names or ones assigned by whatever local villagers have created legends about them. Monsters deserve more blanks.
Legit question about this for anyone. So, like, this gives me massive anxiety thinking about having to describe lots of opponents; like in a Goblin dungeon, there's only so many times I can describe a Goblin before I just want to be, like, look it's a goblin. Replace goblin with any other reoccurring threat if you like, question still stands, do I have to do this for every room, every goblin?
@EugeneGM1 I don't think so. But the first time it would be good to do. And then even after that, they don't have to be called goblins. Maybe the locals here call them rascals, or thripps, or gumbos. Benefit being your world feels unique and the players get to experience monsters for the first time like their characters The main downside of this is loss of common language. Your players have to remember they are called rascals, rather than using their established memory of goblins. Depends on how valuable that is to your group.
Treating creatures like this is a lot of fun. Some RPGs like to ruin this by including “knowledge checks” that allow PCs to recall things about monsters, as if every world has Advanced Monstrous Nemeses courses at Magic College. I’m not a fan of those skills/checks.
I made a similar comment to Dungeon Coach for DC20. Make a Monster Manual/Lore as written perspective of urban legends. In mechanical terms, give them basic common stat's with a list of interchangeable abilities.
If anyone said a DM didn't perform like Matt Mercer, I'd offer in return that the players probably don't perform like Travis Willingham or any of MM's other players :) But yes, it will be useful to hash out what both players and GM want from a game, and whether everyone is a good fit to play a campaign together.
@@dwil0311 a cop out? What does a GM owe to their players to run a game like anyone but their own self? It's not a cop out to point out the stupidity that is expecting a GM to act like a particular celebrity gamer, while not providing some semblance of the ensemble cast that makes the whole show work.
@@ZeKiwiOfTheNorth You can run a game like yourself while meeting the expectations of running game. You don’t need good players to be a good DM. Matt Mercer doesn’t really do anything that is outside of what the bare minimum of expectations is.
@@dwil0311if the players are expecting the DM to be a paragon, why can’t the DM expect the same of the players? If you don’t need good players to be a good DM, the corollary is that you don’t need a good DM to be a good player. They want me to be Matt Mercer? Fine. I want them to commit as much as Sam Reigel.
Great show as always! I love how you always re-center the conversation on what's going at our own tables. I often hear about "Matt Mercer effect", but all the players I played with never watched any Live Play D&D. I feel like GMs are the ones who watch live play D&D the most, so sometimes "Matt Mercer effect" is about expectations GMs have for themselves, not about player expectations. It's definitely important for GMs to consume Live Play in a healthy manner. We have a lot to learn from Live Play, but we shouldn't try to re-create it at home.
This has definitely been my experience (speaking as a GM and the predominant consumer of these sorts of shows in my group). Every instance of real world “Matt mercer effect” has been me internalizing it and putting those expectations on myself, so it’s very much in my own head. I’ve never had it come up with a player even once, but of course my sample pool is limited and I play with very easy going people. You just gotta get out of your own way and play! I always end up having a blast.
I have learned to embrace being the forever GM. I have found that I can be stretched too thin so I have had to learn to say no more often than not. I have also learned that certain classes require more team effort between a player and GM. As a player I have been disappointed that my GM was not willing to embrace or even acknowledge that a Warlock has a patron. This is like having a built in liege lord in the class. As a fellow GM I was careful about how I built up the character, their patron and the tenuous relationship the two had. I didn’t go heavily in-depth nor did I push the issue. So my lesson is be the GM that you want as a player and vise versa. If you want a “Critical Role” vibe as a player then you better be able to bring that quality to the table. Don’t expect the GM to carry that weight.
I'm sorta gobsmacked that the discussion of the so-called "Matt Mercer Effect" is focused so much on whether PLAYERS are happy and whether PLAYERS are disappointed... when it's so obviously the case, as mentioned in this episide, that it's DUNGEON MASTERS who feel the burden of the expectation, who feel the burden of prep, etc. Are we going to ask whether or not the combination of Critical Role + 5th Edition is perhaps having an effect on why Baldman Games is always coming up short of GMs?
The sad thing about this cover is that, here in Brazil, the D&D cartoon was a kind of cultural phenomena. There no one with age 30+ that would not recognize Venger from “Caverna do Dragão” cartoon (as we call it here). Even so, the perfect target for this cover (we Brazilians) will no receive it officially in Portuguese.
@@TheTerrainWizardWhy it is sad? For millennia people had to learn multiple languages. Knowing just the mother tongue was not possible even for most farmers. If he deserves a book in his mother tongue, we all deserve it. You must start a donation fund to make it happen.
It's the 50th anniversary, so it would be stupid *not* to dive into the nostalgia factor. Everyone would complain about the missed opportunity if they didn't! And to those of us of a certain age, the cartoon is just as much a part of the history of D&D as those silly little books about a drow ranger...
On Fate and prophecy. We were playing a game of Ghosts of El Paso (investigative game in old west), old of the players was death forced into human form. They had an ability to know when and how an NPC will die. So when it was used we often got answers like "five years time in a gunfight" or "30 years time of old age". But for one NPC (who we suspected of being connected with a mystery), the answer was "In the next few days at the hand of one of the PC's". Needless to say, the next night when we were investigating we came upon said NPC, the preacher saw her aiming a pistol at one of the other PCs and leapt to grab the gun. In the struggle, the prophecy is confirmed. Very cool. We could all see it coming a mile off, by marking the NPC for death we all knew that she would be trouble. By keeping it vague, it was easy to make it occur.
Several times I have had players say things like; "that is not how Matt Mercer does it." I have also had players say; "that is not how it works in video games." I tell them, each GM does things differently, so it is best to be prepared for that. No two GMs do everything the same way. You are playing with me, so we are doing things my way; however I do adjust to the group I am running and may make changes if the group prefers things differently.
I'll try to give a different perspective on the issue (?) of false expectations. At my table, I am the DM and coincidentally also the only one watching Critical Role. I found that the "Matt Mercer effect" affected me much more than my players. Either because they did not play much D&D before or because they understand the effort a DM has to put into preparation, I found my players very satisfied and involved with our games, at least so far and at the best of my knowledge. On the other side, I spent tons of hours on Critical Role and, more recently, on Worlds Beyond Number and my expectations for my games and my performance as GM are very high. I have been "lured" to tabletop RPG by the urge of telling a story and I have been exposed to some of the most skilled storytellers. It is only natural to aim to be close to that. With that said, I understand I will never be able to put that kind of effort, in terms of time and resources, simply because I am not a DM full time, and so do my players. I envy a bit their backgrounds and talent, as actors and writers, but they are professionals and I am just a guy with a hobby. To be clear, there's no fault in that, but I guess expectations can be both high and realistic. In this sense, I would guess that if players are affected by false expectations, is much more probable that they do not fit well with the DM's style, rather than actually expecting Brennan Lee Mulligan. If a player says "Matt Mercer would not have done it that way", maybe they are referring to a more forgiving style, or a more challenging one, or a more intricate plot, but not to his ability to describe the scene, which is simply out of reach for most of us. I have been to a convention recently and played a couple of games (as a player, for the first time in ages). While the GMs were very good, their performances were much closer to my home games than to actual play series, which gave me some kind to relief. I would also add that expectations were different, because a 2-hour one-shot can offer only a limited number of things, especially with pre-generated characters. Long term home campaigns bring a different kind of effort also on the players side, so it's hard to compare directly the prior expectations. But, still, we had a lot of fun and it's all that matters at the end of the day.
I think you need to look at things on the GM side. As a fledgling GM, I don't really have a good feel for how a game will/should run. I started a year ago and had played maybe 2 pickup/organized play sessions. I knew the concepts and the rules and ideas behind being a GM... but I didn't know the feel. Some other comment mentioned calling it the Lebron effect for basketball, but to an extent that's accurate. If my ONLY exposure to basketball is through watching the NBA, I can know all about it and all the rules, but when it comes time to hit the court the game won't FEEL like what I'm used to. It'll be slower, lower scoring, less organized strategies, etc... and I may think I'm doing it wrong when in actuality I'm right at the level I should be. Personally, I just want more "real" actual plays to gain popularity. Less production, more friends goofing off and forgetting which die is which. (I bet Matt never rolled really poorly one night, only to discover that the 20 sided die he's using had 2 of each number from 1 to 10.... Yep, I did that)
I got back into running games just before I started watching Critical Role. I learned three things: 1. Matt Mercer gave me a much better understanding of the rules 2. I can be more creative in how I portray NPCs 3. By negative example, the pacing of the plot in Critical Role is way too slow for me
Tolkien talked about leaving blanks on purpose in a fantasy world. If I remember correctly, he says it's like an misty island you see from a boat. It's no longer mysterious if you go to that island and explore every inch of it. There always must be another misty island in the horizon.
I feel bad for Matt Mercer on this one lol. Having a negative “effect” named after you when all you ever did was be excellent at what you do😂. The only instance of the MME I’ve ever come up against is when I (the gm) internalize those imagined player expectations and sort of get in my own head with it, but ultimately I’ve always been able to set it all aside and have fun at the table when it comes down to it. It’s kind of like professional sports vs pick up games with friends: can I play as well as lebron? No of course not, but that doesn’t stop me from having a good time playing ball with my friends. I think your point about the people who don’t like actual plays problematizing this whole Mercer effect situation was probably right on the money.
Your subject of leaving blanks really reminded me of a video recently done by Overly Sarcastic Productions discussing the trope talk of Noodle Incidents. She talked a bit about Star Wars too, really interesting and the Trope Talks series as a whole is really good non-D&D content thatactually is great food of thoughts for DMs and even a bit for players
The problem of filling in too many blanks, specifically with respect to Star Wars, is something I've been calling the Wookieepedia-fication of Star Wars. You can tell Cory Doctorow that he can have that.
David Brin uses the 'blanks' when creating the psychology and physiologies of his aliens in the Uplift Universe. What makes his aliens come alive is what the alien *doesn't* say or do. You fill in the rest. One example from Star Wars - I thought that Darth Vader's decrepit lich-like state was from the slow corruption of the Dark Side of the Force - the price he paid for great power. When it was revealed that it was all done at once from falling into lava, I was non-lussed.
If you have mostly new players and 92% satisfaction with the gm, then you have a false posotive; they are saying it is good and then not coming back. This is also a demographic and type if play bias. Con and public event play is a bit easier to do because you only have to get through one time slot with your "a" matterial. This is easier to end on a high note if you only have to fill 2-4 hours so I would expect higher satisfaction with less rough patches. The "Mercer Effect" is always applied to home games, so I am not sure the data mentioned relates to it. As someone who runs a lot of con games, there are a lot of people that try a one shot of d&d without knowing who or what Mercer is because they saw d&d on Futurama, Community, Stranger Things, or Baulder's Gate 3. The people that know and compare home games to Mercer's tend to be a sub set of long term players as all the famous streaming games are long term campaigns, and not known for one shots.
Organized play is definitely different, so expectations are different. As an OG, G for grognard, I personally have always disliked the concept of organized play. By their very nature they are railroads with the option of failure and death. The main variability is in what magic items you collect along the way. The necessity of advancing a character to the next mission creates a lot of discontinuity which for me ruins any remaining immersion. Almost anyone coming into organized play will have a much more gamified attitude (i.e. wargame, stats, min-maxing, etc), and even if new will probably have been brought along by friends with that perspective. So expectations will be quite different, or at least somewhat adjusted, even if they've watched a lot of Critical Role. And if they want the Critical Role experience, they are probably not coming back for another round of organized play. So it is strongly self-selecting sample. The problem of high or false expectations is going to come in play when groups find each other online with the intent to start a campaign. Or when groups of friends try to start playing for the first time, or new players join an existing group.
Thanks so much for my every week flourish! Because I'm old, I like the Venger/Warduke/Skylla DM cover and my wife says she'd rather look like Keith Parkinson's Queen of the Spiders than this children's book version of Lolth. But we're well over 40 and what you think is sexist and you wish you looked like changes loads!! Brennan Lee Mulligan is far too chaotic for me nowadays - I was like that 30+ years ago. I invented stool diving at the pub. It's freakin' exhausting to me now. Mad, ginger git - and that's what my friends called me then, not me now on the crazy Mulligan stew. It's too much about his stardom for my liking. People like that… to watch, but living with it requires alcohol. I prefer making my player's characters the stars nowadays. One of the things I've been thinking about is - after finishing reading a book on community gentrification this month - has our community become subject to cultural gentrification? It seems to equate. It could be why all the cool, imaginative and diverse original shops and restaurants that used to be ultra creative in our D&D communities have shut down since the monocultural aspirational class have moved in. Now they're bored and wish the old cool cafés were back (without the problematic ingredients) because the real nerds have become monetised yes-men. It might just because I'm an old man, but it seems less inclusive nowadays, like a gentrified neighbourhood more than all the silly whatever-ist nonsense. Cory Doctorow's stuff is awesome!! Thanks yourself for being inclusive and awesome, Mike! It reminds me of the best of the old days and the best it can become! We're always in the best days. Great channel, great content. Cheers.
Professor DM did a video about 2 years ago: "The Matt Mercer Effect: What I Learned From Watching Critical Role (Ep. 195)". In it, he commented about how much of what Matt does is enabled by the players at his table. He gave some thing about Matt DM/GM style, but also the characteristics of the players that enabled that type of GM style and story building. I think one of his comments was that if you want your DM/GM to be like Matt Mercer, you have to be like his players.
Yes! We could also talk about the "[Insert Name of Any Critical Role Cast Member] Effect." They all bring so much to the table, and they support and enable each other so much. The players actually care about each other and care about what they are doing together. Not to mention, they bring years of acting, improv, and (at this point) playing experience.
Yup. It's really weird to me how it's still named after Matt Mercer and not his players, when Matt isn't exactly the role model people are looking for these days. Don't get me wrong, he's a spectacular GM, but he is _trad as fuck._ He runs games like it's 2002: emphasis on setting and lore, strongly GM-led plot, epic scope, lots of classic trappings and procedures for travel/dungeoneering... This is how games were run when Tad Williams was _the shit,_ and the LotR movies were coming out. It's _Matt's players_ who bring their own (more modern) tendencies to the table: a focus on backgrounds, character arcs, personal subplots, intra-party relationships, autonomous sandbox play, etc. I really like the way Matt GMs, but I also started playing during 3rd edition, so that's familiar. But his isn't really a template for how many people play 5e these days.
Yep! It's the players. Matt just matches their energy; he creates an atmosphere that invites players to engage, and they do. Meanwhile, I've lost players because I 'don't run a Matt Mercer game' . Like, no, I don't, I prefer player driven games, and not GM Driven, because this isn't my job. Ain't nobody got time for that, as the meme goes. Meanwhile, I'd love players to more actively roleplay, but...they don't.
Thanks for the video; great issue. First, I don't really know what Vecna looks like off-hand (I don't think I've seen a picture), but that is definitely Venger from the 1980s cartoon. They might be going for nostalgia points with that (and it's on the book for the Dungeon Master, which could be a related joke.) Second, I really identify with Dawson J. and appreciate your comments about his question. I have many of the same issues you mentioned in your response and find your statements encouraging. Again, great issue! See you next week.
Does the entire cast and crew of Critical Role (not just Mercer, but *all* of them in concert) set a high bar? Sure. Do I expect the games in which I play to hit that bar? Of course not. Do they inspire me? Hell yeah! Most people who play a sport also enjoy watching pros, even if we never dream of being that good.
When discussing the fates and "tricking" your players into their actions being pre-ordained, just remember Silgar in Dune Part 2 and how everything Paul Atreides does is proof that he is the chosen one!
- I've dabbled in Adventurers League (~5-6 games with ~3-4 GMs). I liked only one GM's style where I'd want to play with them again. - I've DM'd a few Adventurers League games. I didn't like it because the players were too inconsistent in their quality. - I've played around a dozen one-shots on VTT with different GMs and players each time. They're okay, but were filled with wacky character-builds and generally devoid of story and background (just like AL). ...Based on those experiences, I know I like deeper story and backgrounds. - I've been a player in a few campaigns, and all but one fizzled out. ...So, just as Mike said, I now GM because that's the only sure-fire way to get consistently good games...
43:43 I saw Joe O'Brian do this on the Glass Cannon Network for this Delta Green campaign, and it was brilliant. Really a fantastic way to end a campaign!
I doubt most players could name the characters on the covers of the current DMG and PHB. Maybe some of them would know Acererak...but how many would know King Snurre? Maybe the majority of DMs would (as built in lovers of lore and worldbuilding)...but I doubt most players would know either. Even if the new edition covers are a reimagining of nostalgic 80's era characters that most won't recognize, that's ok. Both covers do a great job of setting tone and tension, and just look fantastic (IMHO).
Generally, I think that is WotC trying to make their ip be relevant. This has little to do with nostalgia as they would be using the novel characters (Drizz't, Elminster, or dragon Lance characters that sold 100,000's of copies in their novels). They are not trying to remind you who Tasha, Mother of Demons, is with Tasha's Caldon of Everything. They are trying to introduce her to new players as they had plans to use her in Wild Beyond the Witch Light and Vecna Eve of Ruin. Heck, they rewrote the lore of a lot of characters, effectively making them new characters.
The Matt Mercer effect is a real thing, but in my experience it's more so that people that enjoy something passively (Shows like Critical Role) that requires no effort from their part and expect the same kind of entertainment from an active hobby (TTRPGs) I'll see about wording my thoughts better when I get to a keyboard
Id be interested to look at GMs and ask: 1) How many GM's feel like they need to be Matt Mercer or (insert fave livestream GM here) - not because of players but because of their own inner voices (Im definitely one of them!)? 2) How many new GMs got into (or back into) the games because of actual plays?
1. Personally, yes and no. I don’t feel the need to compete with any specific other GM, but whenever I see someone implement a cool technique or a new approach, I usually want to experiment with it. For that reason, I find skilled visible GMs to be very useful. 2. I did.
I feel they should have made updated versions of the original covers to celebrate the 50th anniversary, at least as alternate covers. I was 13 when the cartoon came out and it bored me as it was aimed it a much younger audience. And you're right, most players won't even recognize him.
List of expectations 1. Cheers every time someone hits a monster. 2. Everyone is a comedians and says something funny and other people dont cut you off while your talking. 3. You player group go through all stages of grief over your characters death and will drop everything they are doing to find a way to bring tou back to life. 4. The DM speaks like Tolkien and has hundreds of voices. Etc etc etc. It is a show D&D is slow and clunky CR is a show of people who get wasted and use their work talents to play a game. If you want that go see a improv show
For me, asking the players what they want up front is a big help as far as avoiding the "Mercer" effect. Do they want speed? Do they want adherence to the rules and what's in the books? As a GM, I can do one or the other to what I would consider my highest level. If I go faster, that affects how much I can look things up, so improv goes up.
100% this. And even after some inexperienced player says that they want one GM’s game to be more like another’s (like Critical Role for example), that criticism is almost always a stand in for something else because the player doesn’t have the language or framework to explain why they aren’t having fun.
I'm just glad you are out to spread words. I've seen way too many "2014 CORE RULES BAD USE THIS INSTEAD" on my YT recommendations like it's there is one "true" 5e. But Mike, you use all the alternatives out there and mix them up. You can admit you might be too old to express opinions on the art. After all these years I feel "my own opinion" is slaughtered and you are my safe haven.
re:prophecy; My longest running game's core concept is based upon a Prophecy. Start with the prophecy, session 0, that way it becomes the main focus for the campaign; can we forge the Sommerswerd to defeat Zoltar the Lemurain?
Any chance you could make a video about 13th age. I saw the interview one but still have no idea why it's a good game or why I should back the second ed. What did you learn from it that you always mention it?
My players have come from out of state to play at my table. We've been playing on and off for 30 years. But I still get comments about how they wish I was more like Matt Mercer. So...
@6:10 TL;DR I believe the Matt Mercer effect does affect the newer, usually younger, players to a small extent. I slap them with the Critical Role player effect back at them. Play like Matt's players and my DM game will step up. About the Matt Mercer effect. I have had a couple of younger players say Matt Mercer does this or that. I then say, well when I get three of you that start playing like Travis Willingham, Sam Riegel, or Taliesin Jaffe; my DM style will go up some notches. I match you, the players' energy, and the way you play. Hard to find a player like Travis who tells others to quiet down when it is another player's spotlight time. Or when he tells his wife or Marisha you said that is what you are doing just go with it, even if it is turning into a goldfish and jumping off a cliff to your death. Travis also gets into his character and rolls with the bad rolls when they happen, in character as well as OoC. Sam gets way into his character and will sacrifice for the others. He also makes it fun to at the table without going to far and disrupting it all the time, only sometimes. Taliesin is a mix of Sam and Travis. Too many players want you the DM to do the Matt Mercer side of it like it will do much for the player who never stops to take a prisoner and ask them questions. Refuses to give a backstory of more than a paragraph with no liabilities for the DM to use. They want role-play, but when hit in the face with role-play a lot of the time they shell up or they go off the deep end by wanting to spend way too much time on something just for their character. That is great, we can do that in emails, but table time is for the entire party to play as much as we can together to advance the story. I offer a lot of my free time to do downtime things in emails, and no one ever takes me up on it. It would save a lot of table time if they did, and I could role-play more of the interaction on a one-on-one or group email for whoever is in the scene.
My home games have looked a lot like Critical Role since the 90’s. It’s not a style Matt and Brennan etc. have invented. It’s been around for a long while. It’s just more visible now.
@@chrisg8989 what’s to explain? Narrative character driven play has been popular for decades. The two big differences with streamed shows are production value (because they have money for expensive battle maps) and descriptive elements for the audience (like Mercer’s lengthy scene descriptions). A massive portion of the DnD player base is made up of very creative people who want more than combat crawls. That’s not new. The big difference now is that most war game fans play video games so that slice of the hobby isn’t growing, but the narrative half is because it’s unique to the medium.
Amazing insight for someone who enjoys therapy sessions as a hobby. Yes, you are correct, the gamers play war/mini/strategy/video or live version improved by rpg knowledge. If your part will not implode on itself in this decade, probably it will be an official schism. We bet on implosion.
"Character driven play." Yes. I would agree that this style of DnD isn't exclusive or originates from Critical role nor Dimension 20. But, you're completely missing the point of the entire conversation and the video. "That's not how Matt Mercer would have done it." This statement is directly derived from an unrealistic expection a player had by consuming actual plays like Critical role or Dimension 20. Expectations such as voice acting, expensive set pieces, mintures, music, masterful storytelling, immersive improvisation, etc. Which, let's be real here. No one was performing at this level at home. Not even you. So aside from the "Character Driven Play" how exactly has DnD looked just like Crirical roll since the 90s? "This isn't critical role." Is the best advice you can give any new player or first time DM, who has consumed alot of actual play media. What I mean by this statement is; don't expect too much from your players and temper their expectations of you. DnD is a board game to play with your friends. Laugh, make jokes, eat snacks, your not on a TV show, this is real Life. You don't need to do voices, you don't have to have actor level performances or production quality mintures and battle maps. Do what's fun for you and your friends and the second it starts feeling like work or too much pressure, take a break. No DnD is better than bad DnD.
Cooking shows in the 80s: Here's how you make an omelet. Cooking shows now: You have 30 minutes to cook a gourmet 7 course meal featuring this obscure root vegetable no one has ever heard of. Both of those shows are entertaining, both of them make you hungry, but only one of them inspires people to physically go to the kitchen and cook. TL:DR: While actual plays are moving new players into the hobby, they're probably discouraging GMs (the chefs).
Interesting insight. This episode only asked and attempted to answer the question of whether actual plays are suppressing _players_ in some way. You're arguing that they're suppressing _GMs,_ and it seems like a pretty compelling argument.
Eh, I had a player who wants a show with lights and music and terrain and minis because it’s what they know and like. The table I’m running is theater of the mind so it didn’t mesh. They tried it out and didn’t like it, so they stepped away. No worries. They did mention that they want Critical Role. But that’s fine. It’s just not the game I run.
Venger in 50th anniversary DMG is not nostalgia, it's legacy. The game has 50 years of history. If so, Lolth'd be also nostalgia. And, as a brasilian, that's the cover art i want 😊❤
One of my session zero statements is "If you expect me to be Matt Mercer, I expect you to be Laura Bailey or Liam O'Brien." CR games, like every other good RPG, are a collective responsibility. Some of the worst parts of CR are when a player (I won't name names) doesn't know what his/her character can do 50 or 60 episodes into the game. I don't mean, "I got a new spell", I mean low level class features and racial traits.
If anything, actual plays give me expectation for the players, because let's be honest it's not that easy to find people that are actually roleplaying and not just playing their stats as if it was some kind of video game :)
I think one of the negative influences of actual play is that players think they have to be karaoke thespians - both in terms of the pressure to do it, and that it encourages, like karaoke, some people to be overly dramatic when they're really just very bad at it, which can distract from the rest of the game.
I wonder if there is an age correlation to players being influenced by $million streams because I notice a similar weirdness in my kids with other creative pursuits, especially Minecraft. My 10 year old struggles to just play and build and I think part of it is self comparison with UA-camrs who spend 40 hours a week doing this stuff. Granted, the audience demo is very different, but I wonder if this is more common with younger newcomers to the game vs older newcomers.
Important: APs are entertainment for an audience. Home games do not have an audience, they only have players. Those two are completely different setups. No one should compare themselves to AP GMs and players shouldn't expect those GMs.
@@armorclasshero2103 inexperienced players bring up actual plays as part of criticisms because they either don’t have the framework or the vocabulary to explain precisely why they aren’t having fun in a GM’s game. And the vast majority of the time, those underlying player frustrations are easy to solve if the GM is willing to have a brief conversation.
Saying the Matt Mercer effect is like saying that LeBron James is setting up unrealistic basketball expectations. He is a professional actor DMing professional actors. Emulate and strive, but we’re not Matt Mercer. You’re you. Be the best DM you can be.
Yes but when I join a pickup basketball game no one complains that I'm not as good as LeBron. I think the Mercer effect is a bit overblown but I have seen it more than once. It is a thing.
The Labron James analogy just isn’t accurate. Nobody thinks when they step on a court they’ll suddenly be 6’9” with a 40” vertical, that’s silly. It’s not silly to Watch Critical Role without any TTRPG experience and think that’s what D&D is like, it’s reasonable… And it shouldn’t be a condemnation of people who watch an actual play, with no context, to think that’s how TTRPGs feel and are orchestrated. Now, actual plays aren’t ruining anything, BUT… people shouldn’t be called stupid for thinking that’s how TTRPGs ‘are’… It’s a rational conclusion.Actual Plays are not the same thing as a home game, and there might be some confusion and misplaced expectations. And that’s all part of things evolving and new people joining the hobby in this day and age. Nobody’s wrong here.
Maybe this is pretentious to say but I always wanted the covers to reflect the aim of the contents; its why i always kind of hated the 2014 PHB cover that most heavily featured a giant villain, something players can't actually play, and I always thought the SCAG cover was what the PHB should have been; the 2024 PHB cover is MUCH better in that regard. The 2024 base DMG cover is pretty good, heavily featuring vollainous characters that arent standard monsters... honestly I think its a little better than the 2014 version. BUT the alt cover is AMAZING. Talk about capturing the concept of the role; a god-level figure weaving strands and capturing their prey? Zero notes, literally perfect for the DMG.
Why is the "Mercer Effect" always focused on the GM. Taking a look at the Actual Plays the players are usually much better prepared then the ones coming to the table. They are aware of what happened in the former episodes, do know the NPCs and have put effort in their characters. Also they show excitement and go with the story but do not try to dominate the game or argue about rules with the GM or other players. If Actual Play Shows are the benchmark it requires also the players to try to behave accordingly.
Yeah well i noticed that 5e demands minimum effort for players because it offloads most things on the dm that is why most 5e player will never even attempt to dm or even try a different system. At least that's my opinion on why the dms would feel the satisfaction problems earlier before the game breakdown or players leave they will still attend until it hits that wall then they jump onto another game.
"That's not how Matt Mercer would've done it" sounds more like a critique of rulings or procedure than of presentation or planning. SupergeekMike on UA-cam has been doing a series exploring how Mercer actually runs his games. There's more to it than just writing eloquent prose, doing impressive voices, and buying expensive sets. And a lot of it is pretty uncontroversial, agreeable stuff. Lol
Matt Mercer usually tries to cushion his "no" answers with "but..." Player: Can I grab the coins without him seeing? Mercer: Not unless something distracts him. He's looking right at them. This is extremely common! Matt Mercer didn't invent this! But imagine a player whose exposure to the game is 1) Critical Role and 2) their GM who doesn't do this. A GM who just says "no," full stop, or one who says, "no, AND, as you reach for them..." Of course they'd say that's not how Mercer would've done it!
Let's get that elephant out in full view, shall we? If, as a DM, your group is expecting you to be like and run games like Matt Mercer, then you as the DM are absolutely entitled to expect the players to be of the same level/quality as the players of Critical Role are. It works both ways people. When presented with that expectation most players would immediately realize their expectations may be misplaced or over-grandized.
In my experience, the vast majority of players that say that they want a game to be more like Critical Role or Dimension 20, don’t actually care about the bells and whistles like voice acting. They just want their characters to matter, and they have a GM who isn’t meaningfully taking their ideas into account. Running DnD like pure war game or strictly following a module are fine if that’s what a group wants, but most new players coming into the hobby don’t just want to purely serve some GM’s vision. And that’s a good thing. We GMs can and should be better than that.
I'd hazard a guess that the flipside of the Matt Mercer effect is also true. Players' expectations of the games they're playing have gone up, yes. But I think dungeon masters have been inspired to run better games because they watch actual plays. If not for all the Glass Cannon Podcast games I listen to, I'd be a much worse GM than I am now.
The people thinking dnd at home will be like CR are indeed kids, its the only demographic that can have such a skewed perception of reality that can produce such an unrealistic expectation.
@@dwil0311 I'm not sure if you're being serious 😅I'm going to go with my gut and say that you are not. Obviously there is more going on than the set and the mini's.
I think the premise that players wouldn't play as many games because the DM isn't "as good as Matt Mercer" is false. That whole data set I think is just flawed. Organized play is the opposite of a long form game, so that's also a terrible benchmark for a campaign which is what people who are coming from dnd would expect after the mercer effect.
Yes. The matt mercer effect is real. It 100% builds false expectations in new players who want what they do on yt. Had to sit down with a guy because he kept having his character be a huge burden to the party to fulfill his "dramatic interpretation" of his character. But the GAME had to be slowed down or stopped every time. Then when nobody else bought into the drama he was trying to set up, he pouted and had his character run off to do literally nothing. That was his last game at my (virtual) table, not that I didn't try to reason with him. But it stemmed 100% from the fact he only knew DnD via critical roll (which isn't DnD, but I digress). He wanted to do what they do, which is dramatic theater and far less actual DnD the game.
I actually find Critical Role way too distracting. There are too many fillers throughout the episodes and there is too much emphasis on the dramatization in lieu of the game itself.
Yes. Critical role has been great for attracting people to the game, but in my opinion, it has distorted what that game is and what people should expect from it.
@@armorclasshero2103 so just to be clear, are you saying that you don’t like Critical Role’s influence because you think that it’s unreasonable for players to expect some social encounters? (which have been one of the 3 core pillars of DnD for decades)
I disagree with the entire premise that Matt Mercer is an unreasonable expectation. Nothing he does is out of reach of what any DM could do. If you aren’t reaching those expectations, that says a lot more about you than it does about the expectations.
@@hodgepodgesyntaxia2112 Lol, 1. 1.They are paid voice actors playing for an audience. 2. They are all friends from outside Critical Role. 3. All their backstories and actions drive the story forward. 4. They all stay on script. 5. It's a railroad. The characters have to stay on script. It is a show. 6. Matt is fantastic Dungeon Master, that is an amazing storyteller. 7. All the actors are fantastic at improve, they all come from an acting background. I played Football in highschool. 8. Most dms and people are just people trying to play the game of d&d. 9. Critical Role is their job, schedules do not matter, they have to go to the session. Other than those few issues, yea it is the same experience.
so, you didn’t actually answer my question. None of those are expectations that average players bring to a table. You just listed a bunch of disconnected characteristics of Critical Role. Like reading into #2, are you saying it’s unfair for players to want to play with their existing friends, or befriend others at the table? Or going off #5, are you saying that your average players want to be railroaded. That they prefer not to have choice or freedom? Or going off #3, which seems to conflict with #5, are you saying that it’s unreasonable for players to expect a GM to build off of their character choices or integrate their backstories? (Because frankly, those are easy preferences to accommodate).
The data gathered from the paid games skews the data in a weird way. The GM's need players to be satisfied to keep getting paid, so they're going to be giving PC's items and powers they shouldn't get, just to win them over.
That's not even how a satisfying gaming experience works. That would be a lame game, and no one would want to play with you again. You don't just give away the candy, you dangle it in front of the kids and they have to jump or team up or trick you to get it.
I disagree with your premise. And you do too. You've often talked about "no dnd is better than bad dnd" and how players will continue to show up even when they hate it. So saying players won't show up to bad games is incorrect.
The good news is CR has left D&D. Hopefully their new system will collect all the players that want the CR experience. But we can help by pointing them to the right direction- Go play Daggerheart. I am the most ardent promoter of that Frankenstein card game knock off D&D Powered by the Apocalypse. .
It turns my stomach how the goblins at WotC need the grognard disposable income and constantly nostalgia-bait their audience while trying to ridicule old-school players at every opportunity they get.
38:50 this is maybe my favorite advice from DCC. It really emphasizes that every monster should be described rather than named. But if named, they can have proper names or ones assigned by whatever local villagers have created legends about them. Monsters deserve more blanks.
Yep! Thanks for dropping by bob!
Legit question about this for anyone. So, like, this gives me massive anxiety thinking about having to describe lots of opponents; like in a Goblin dungeon, there's only so many times I can describe a Goblin before I just want to be, like, look it's a goblin. Replace goblin with any other reoccurring threat if you like, question still stands, do I have to do this for every room, every goblin?
@EugeneGM1 I don't think so. But the first time it would be good to do. And then even after that, they don't have to be called goblins. Maybe the locals here call them rascals, or thripps, or gumbos. Benefit being your world feels unique and the players get to experience monsters for the first time like their characters
The main downside of this is loss of common language. Your players have to remember they are called rascals, rather than using their established memory of goblins. Depends on how valuable that is to your group.
Treating creatures like this is a lot of fun. Some RPGs like to ruin this by including “knowledge checks” that allow PCs to recall things about monsters, as if every world has Advanced Monstrous Nemeses courses at Magic College. I’m not a fan of those skills/checks.
I made a similar comment to Dungeon Coach for DC20. Make a Monster Manual/Lore as written perspective of urban legends. In mechanical terms, give them basic common stat's with a list of interchangeable abilities.
If anyone said a DM didn't perform like Matt Mercer, I'd offer in return that the players probably don't perform like Travis Willingham or any of MM's other players :)
But yes, it will be useful to hash out what both players and GM want from a game, and whether everyone is a good fit to play a campaign together.
That was my exact response.
A DM can perform like Matt Mercer without exceptional players. That’s a cop out.
@@dwil0311 a cop out? What does a GM owe to their players to run a game like anyone but their own self? It's not a cop out to point out the stupidity that is expecting a GM to act like a particular celebrity gamer, while not providing some semblance of the ensemble cast that makes the whole show work.
@@ZeKiwiOfTheNorth You can run a game like yourself while meeting the expectations of running game. You don’t need good players to be a good DM.
Matt Mercer doesn’t really do anything that is outside of what the bare minimum of expectations is.
@@dwil0311if the players are expecting the DM to be a paragon, why can’t the DM expect the same of the players? If you don’t need good players to be a good DM, the corollary is that you don’t need a good DM to be a good player.
They want me to be Matt Mercer? Fine. I want them to commit as much as Sam Reigel.
Great show as always! I love how you always re-center the conversation on what's going at our own tables. I often hear about "Matt Mercer effect", but all the players I played with never watched any Live Play D&D. I feel like GMs are the ones who watch live play D&D the most, so sometimes "Matt Mercer effect" is about expectations GMs have for themselves, not about player expectations. It's definitely important for GMs to consume Live Play in a healthy manner. We have a lot to learn from Live Play, but we shouldn't try to re-create it at home.
This has definitely been my experience (speaking as a GM and the predominant consumer of these sorts of shows in my group). Every instance of real world “Matt mercer effect” has been me internalizing it and putting those expectations on myself, so it’s very much in my own head. I’ve never had it come up with a player even once, but of course my sample pool is limited and I play with very easy going people. You just gotta get out of your own way and play! I always end up having a blast.
You the man Mike.
I have learned to embrace being the forever GM. I have found that I can be stretched too thin so I have had to learn to say no more often than not. I have also learned that certain classes require more team effort between a player and GM.
As a player I have been disappointed that my GM was not willing to embrace or even acknowledge that a Warlock has a patron. This is like having a built in liege lord in the class. As a fellow GM I was careful about how I built up the character, their patron and the tenuous relationship the two had. I didn’t go heavily in-depth nor did I push the issue.
So my lesson is be the GM that you want as a player and vise versa.
If you want a “Critical Role” vibe as a player then you better be able to bring that quality to the table. Don’t expect the GM to carry that weight.
I'm sorta gobsmacked that the discussion of the so-called "Matt Mercer Effect" is focused so much on whether PLAYERS are happy and whether PLAYERS are disappointed... when it's so obviously the case, as mentioned in this episide, that it's DUNGEON MASTERS who feel the burden of the expectation, who feel the burden of prep, etc. Are we going to ask whether or not the combination of Critical Role + 5th Edition is perhaps having an effect on why Baldman Games is always coming up short of GMs?
So much great advice, totally drowned out by learning that Mike drinks his coffee from a measuring cup.
The sad thing about this cover is that, here in Brazil, the D&D cartoon was a kind of cultural phenomena. There no one with age 30+ that would not recognize Venger from “Caverna do Dragão” cartoon (as we call it here).
Even so, the perfect target for this cover (we Brazilians) will no receive it officially in Portuguese.
So sad.
@@TheTerrainWizardWhy it is sad? For millennia people had to learn multiple languages. Knowing just the mother tongue was not possible even for most farmers. If he deserves a book in his mother tongue, we all deserve it. You must start a donation fund to make it happen.
@@TheTerrainWizardI just look it up for you there are 196 countries and 7164 living languages. For how many are you sad?
As a European under the age of 30, I have never had any context for the cartoon apart from older D&D fans talking about it whenever it's referenced
@LegioXDivum We do not count to be sad/happy about. We are back on using countries against each other, it seems.
It's the 50th anniversary, so it would be stupid *not* to dive into the nostalgia factor. Everyone would complain about the missed opportunity if they didn't! And to those of us of a certain age, the cartoon is just as much a part of the history of D&D as those silly little books about a drow ranger...
On Fate and prophecy. We were playing a game of Ghosts of El Paso (investigative game in old west), old of the players was death forced into human form. They had an ability to know when and how an NPC will die. So when it was used we often got answers like "five years time in a gunfight" or "30 years time of old age". But for one NPC (who we suspected of being connected with a mystery), the answer was "In the next few days at the hand of one of the PC's".
Needless to say, the next night when we were investigating we came upon said NPC, the preacher saw her aiming a pistol at one of the other PCs and leapt to grab the gun. In the struggle, the prophecy is confirmed. Very cool. We could all see it coming a mile off, by marking the NPC for death we all knew that she would be trouble. By keeping it vague, it was easy to make it occur.
Several times I have had players say things like; "that is not how Matt Mercer does it." I have also had players say; "that is not how it works in video games." I tell them, each GM does things differently, so it is best to be prepared for that. No two GMs do everything the same way. You are playing with me, so we are doing things my way; however I do adjust to the group I am running and may make changes if the group prefers things differently.
That’s Venger not Vecna
yeah, I meant Vecna
Someone really disliked Eve of Ruin ;)
The Vecnabus is coming...
Just lol!
I'll try to give a different perspective on the issue (?) of false expectations.
At my table, I am the DM and coincidentally also the only one watching Critical Role. I found that the "Matt Mercer effect" affected me much more than my players.
Either because they did not play much D&D before or because they understand the effort a DM has to put into preparation, I found my players very satisfied and involved with our games, at least so far and at the best of my knowledge.
On the other side, I spent tons of hours on Critical Role and, more recently, on Worlds Beyond Number and my expectations for my games and my performance as GM are very high. I have been "lured" to tabletop RPG by the urge of telling a story and I have been exposed to some of the most skilled storytellers. It is only natural to aim to be close to that.
With that said, I understand I will never be able to put that kind of effort, in terms of time and resources, simply because I am not a DM full time, and so do my players. I envy a bit their backgrounds and talent, as actors and writers, but they are professionals and I am just a guy with a hobby.
To be clear, there's no fault in that, but I guess expectations can be both high and realistic.
In this sense, I would guess that if players are affected by false expectations, is much more probable that they do not fit well with the DM's style, rather than actually expecting Brennan Lee Mulligan. If a player says "Matt Mercer would not have done it that way", maybe they are referring to a more forgiving style, or a more challenging one, or a more intricate plot, but not to his ability to describe the scene, which is simply out of reach for most of us.
I have been to a convention recently and played a couple of games (as a player, for the first time in ages). While the GMs were very good, their performances were much closer to my home games than to actual play series, which gave me some kind to relief. I would also add that expectations were different, because a 2-hour one-shot can offer only a limited number of things, especially with pre-generated characters. Long term home campaigns bring a different kind of effort also on the players side, so it's hard to compare directly the prior expectations.
But, still, we had a lot of fun and it's all that matters at the end of the day.
I think you need to look at things on the GM side. As a fledgling GM, I don't really have a good feel for how a game will/should run. I started a year ago and had played maybe 2 pickup/organized play sessions. I knew the concepts and the rules and ideas behind being a GM... but I didn't know the feel. Some other comment mentioned calling it the Lebron effect for basketball, but to an extent that's accurate. If my ONLY exposure to basketball is through watching the NBA, I can know all about it and all the rules, but when it comes time to hit the court the game won't FEEL like what I'm used to. It'll be slower, lower scoring, less organized strategies, etc... and I may think I'm doing it wrong when in actuality I'm right at the level I should be.
Personally, I just want more "real" actual plays to gain popularity. Less production, more friends goofing off and forgetting which die is which. (I bet Matt never rolled really poorly one night, only to discover that the 20 sided die he's using had 2 of each number from 1 to 10.... Yep, I did that)
I got back into running games just before I started watching Critical Role. I learned three things:
1. Matt Mercer gave me a much better understanding of the rules
2. I can be more creative in how I portray NPCs
3. By negative example, the pacing of the plot in Critical Role is way too slow for me
I love the alt covers for both he dmg and the phb
They're just so pretty
They are, and I kind of hate it. Purposely having just average main books so you can upsell the nicer ones annoys me.
Tolkien talked about leaving blanks on purpose in a fantasy world. If I remember correctly, he says it's like an misty island you see from a boat. It's no longer mysterious if you go to that island and explore every inch of it. There always must be another misty island in the horizon.
I feel bad for Matt Mercer on this one lol. Having a negative “effect” named after you when all you ever did was be excellent at what you do😂. The only instance of the MME I’ve ever come up against is when I (the gm) internalize those imagined player expectations and sort of get in my own head with it, but ultimately I’ve always been able to set it all aside and have fun at the table when it comes down to it. It’s kind of like professional sports vs pick up games with friends: can I play as well as lebron? No of course not, but that doesn’t stop me from having a good time playing ball with my friends. I think your point about the people who don’t like actual plays problematizing this whole Mercer effect situation was probably right on the money.
Your subject of leaving blanks really reminded me of a video recently done by Overly Sarcastic Productions discussing the trope talk of Noodle Incidents. She talked a bit about Star Wars too, really interesting and the Trope Talks series as a whole is really good non-D&D content thatactually is great food of thoughts for DMs and even a bit for players
The problem of filling in too many blanks, specifically with respect to Star Wars, is something I've been calling the Wookieepedia-fication of Star Wars. You can tell Cory Doctorow that he can have that.
David Brin uses the 'blanks' when creating the psychology and physiologies of his aliens in the Uplift Universe. What makes his aliens come alive is what the alien *doesn't* say or do. You fill in the rest. One example from Star Wars - I thought that Darth Vader's decrepit lich-like state was from the slow corruption of the Dark Side of the Force - the price he paid for great power. When it was revealed that it was all done at once from falling into lava, I was non-lussed.
If you have mostly new players and 92% satisfaction with the gm, then you have a false posotive; they are saying it is good and then not coming back.
This is also a demographic and type if play bias. Con and public event play is a bit easier to do because you only have to get through one time slot with your "a" matterial. This is easier to end on a high note if you only have to fill 2-4 hours so I would expect higher satisfaction with less rough patches. The "Mercer Effect" is always applied to home games, so I am not sure the data mentioned relates to it.
As someone who runs a lot of con games, there are a lot of people that try a one shot of d&d without knowing who or what Mercer is because they saw d&d on Futurama, Community, Stranger Things, or Baulder's Gate 3. The people that know and compare home games to Mercer's tend to be a sub set of long term players as all the famous streaming games are long term campaigns, and not known for one shots.
Organized play is definitely different, so expectations are different. As an OG, G for grognard, I personally have always disliked the concept of organized play. By their very nature they are railroads with the option of failure and death. The main variability is in what magic items you collect along the way. The necessity of advancing a character to the next mission creates a lot of discontinuity which for me ruins any remaining immersion.
Almost anyone coming into organized play will have a much more gamified attitude (i.e. wargame, stats, min-maxing, etc), and even if new will probably have been brought along by friends with that perspective. So expectations will be quite different, or at least somewhat adjusted, even if they've watched a lot of Critical Role. And if they want the Critical Role experience, they are probably not coming back for another round of organized play. So it is strongly self-selecting sample.
The problem of high or false expectations is going to come in play when groups find each other online with the intent to start a campaign. Or when groups of friends try to start playing for the first time, or new players join an existing group.
55:56 I have been expanding each location in Radiant Citadel, and it has been lots of fun!
Thanks so much for my every week flourish!
Because I'm old, I like the Venger/Warduke/Skylla DM cover and my wife says she'd rather look like Keith Parkinson's Queen of the Spiders than this children's book version of Lolth. But we're well over 40 and what you think is sexist and you wish you looked like changes loads!!
Brennan Lee Mulligan is far too chaotic for me nowadays - I was like that 30+ years ago. I invented stool diving at the pub. It's freakin' exhausting to me now. Mad, ginger git - and that's what my friends called me then, not me now on the crazy Mulligan stew. It's too much about his stardom for my liking. People like that… to watch, but living with it requires alcohol. I prefer making my player's characters the stars nowadays.
One of the things I've been thinking about is - after finishing reading a book on community gentrification this month - has our community become subject to cultural gentrification? It seems to equate. It could be why all the cool, imaginative and diverse original shops and restaurants that used to be ultra creative in our D&D communities have shut down since the monocultural aspirational class have moved in. Now they're bored and wish the old cool cafés were back (without the problematic ingredients) because the real nerds have become monetised yes-men.
It might just because I'm an old man, but it seems less inclusive nowadays, like a gentrified neighbourhood more than all the silly whatever-ist nonsense.
Cory Doctorow's stuff is awesome!!
Thanks yourself for being inclusive and awesome, Mike! It reminds me of the best of the old days and the best it can become! We're always in the best days.
Great channel, great content.
Cheers.
I really love both the new DMG covers. Warduke on one cover & Lolth on the other - dude, that’s all I ever wanted out of life. 🖤😄⚔️🤘🏻
Professor DM did a video about 2 years ago: "The Matt Mercer Effect: What I Learned From Watching Critical Role (Ep. 195)". In it, he commented about how much of what Matt does is enabled by the players at his table. He gave some thing about Matt DM/GM style, but also the characteristics of the players that enabled that type of GM style and story building. I think one of his comments was that if you want your DM/GM to be like Matt Mercer, you have to be like his players.
Yes! We could also talk about the "[Insert Name of Any Critical Role Cast Member] Effect." They all bring so much to the table, and they support and enable each other so much. The players actually care about each other and care about what they are doing together. Not to mention, they bring years of acting, improv, and (at this point) playing experience.
Yup. It's really weird to me how it's still named after Matt Mercer and not his players, when Matt isn't exactly the role model people are looking for these days. Don't get me wrong, he's a spectacular GM, but he is _trad as fuck._ He runs games like it's 2002: emphasis on setting and lore, strongly GM-led plot, epic scope, lots of classic trappings and procedures for travel/dungeoneering... This is how games were run when Tad Williams was _the shit,_ and the LotR movies were coming out. It's _Matt's players_ who bring their own (more modern) tendencies to the table: a focus on backgrounds, character arcs, personal subplots, intra-party relationships, autonomous sandbox play, etc.
I really like the way Matt GMs, but I also started playing during 3rd edition, so that's familiar. But his isn't really a template for how many people play 5e these days.
Yep! It's the players. Matt just matches their energy; he creates an atmosphere that invites players to engage, and they do. Meanwhile, I've lost players because I 'don't run a Matt Mercer game' . Like, no, I don't, I prefer player driven games, and not GM Driven, because this isn't my job. Ain't nobody got time for that, as the meme goes. Meanwhile, I'd love players to more actively roleplay, but...they don't.
Thanks for the video; great issue.
First, I don't really know what Vecna looks like off-hand (I don't think I've seen a picture), but that is definitely Venger from the 1980s cartoon. They might be going for nostalgia points with that (and it's on the book for the Dungeon Master, which could be a related joke.)
Second, I really identify with Dawson J. and appreciate your comments about his question. I have many of the same issues you mentioned in your response and find your statements encouraging.
Again, great issue! See you next week.
Does the entire cast and crew of Critical Role (not just Mercer, but *all* of them in concert) set a high bar? Sure. Do I expect the games in which I play to hit that bar? Of course not. Do they inspire me? Hell yeah! Most people who play a sport also enjoy watching pros, even if we never dream of being that good.
Yes 100%.
My biggest piece of advise for new players/DMs is temper your tables expectations. "This isn’t Critical Roll."
I question the value of leaving blanks in an old-school game like Shadowdark, where players need clear information to make informed decisions.
When discussing the fates and "tricking" your players into their actions being pre-ordained, just remember Silgar in Dune Part 2 and how everything Paul Atreides does is proof that he is the chosen one!
- I've dabbled in Adventurers League (~5-6 games with ~3-4 GMs). I liked only one GM's style where I'd want to play with them again.
- I've DM'd a few Adventurers League games. I didn't like it because the players were too inconsistent in their quality.
- I've played around a dozen one-shots on VTT with different GMs and players each time. They're okay, but were filled with wacky character-builds and generally devoid of story and background (just like AL).
...Based on those experiences, I know I like deeper story and backgrounds.
- I've been a player in a few campaigns, and all but one fizzled out.
...So, just as Mike said, I now GM because that's the only sure-fire way to get consistently good games...
43:43 I saw Joe O'Brian do this on the Glass Cannon Network for this Delta Green campaign, and it was brilliant. Really a fantastic way to end a campaign!
I doubt most players could name the characters on the covers of the current DMG and PHB. Maybe some of them would know Acererak...but how many would know King Snurre? Maybe the majority of DMs would (as built in lovers of lore and worldbuilding)...but I doubt most players would know either. Even if the new edition covers are a reimagining of nostalgic 80's era characters that most won't recognize, that's ok. Both covers do a great job of setting tone and tension, and just look fantastic (IMHO).
Generally, I think that is WotC trying to make their ip be relevant. This has little to do with nostalgia as they would be using the novel characters (Drizz't, Elminster, or dragon Lance characters that sold 100,000's of copies in their novels).
They are not trying to remind you who Tasha, Mother of Demons, is with Tasha's Caldon of Everything. They are trying to introduce her to new players as they had plans to use her in Wild Beyond the Witch Light and Vecna Eve of Ruin. Heck, they rewrote the lore of a lot of characters, effectively making them new characters.
The one play that lead to telling the player to find a new game was amazing! BRAVO!
The Matt Mercer effect is a real thing, but in my experience it's more so that people that enjoy something passively (Shows like Critical Role) that requires no effort from their part and expect the same kind of entertainment from an active hobby (TTRPGs)
I'll see about wording my thoughts better when I get to a keyboard
Id be interested to look at GMs and ask:
1) How many GM's feel like they need to be Matt Mercer or (insert fave livestream GM here) - not because of players but because of their own inner voices (Im definitely one of them!)?
2) How many new GMs got into (or back into) the games because of actual plays?
1. Personally, yes and no. I don’t feel the need to compete with any specific other GM, but whenever I see someone implement a cool technique or a new approach, I usually want to experiment with it. For that reason, I find skilled visible GMs to be very useful.
2. I did.
Matt Mercer inspires me but I’m still me, a different Matt entirely
This style of isometric maps would look really cool if we can find a decent "token generator" that mimics isometric pawns, with base and everything.
I feel they should have made updated versions of the original covers to celebrate the 50th anniversary, at least as alternate covers. I was 13 when the cartoon came out and it bored me as it was aimed it a much younger audience. And you're right, most players won't even recognize him.
List of expectations
1. Cheers every time someone hits a monster.
2. Everyone is a comedians and says something funny and other people dont cut you off while your talking.
3. You player group go through all stages of grief over your characters death and will drop everything they are doing to find a way to bring tou back to life.
4. The DM speaks like Tolkien and has hundreds of voices.
Etc etc etc.
It is a show D&D is slow and clunky CR is a show of people who get wasted and use their work talents to play a game. If you want that go see a improv show
11:07 People just want to see what D&D is about and how it compares to what they've watched is what my guess is.
Warduke on the cover is dope!
For me, asking the players what they want up front is a big help as far as avoiding the "Mercer" effect. Do they want speed? Do they want adherence to the rules and what's in the books? As a GM, I can do one or the other to what I would consider my highest level. If I go faster, that affects how much I can look things up, so improv goes up.
100% this.
And even after some inexperienced player says that they want one GM’s game to be more like another’s (like Critical Role for example), that criticism is almost always a stand in for something else because the player doesn’t have the language or framework to explain why they aren’t having fun.
I dunno about your players, but the moment you said, "You don't want to go there." I wanted to go there...
I’m really surprised you didn’t mention Dark Souls! I think basically the entire world of that series is a series of blanks, and people love that.
Very true
Great show as always. Thank you.
that doesn't look like vecna on the cover - looks like Venger from the D&D cartoon.
I misspoke
I'm just glad you are out to spread words. I've seen way too many "2014 CORE RULES BAD USE THIS INSTEAD" on my YT recommendations like it's there is one "true" 5e. But Mike, you use all the alternatives out there and mix them up. You can admit you might be too old to express opinions on the art. After all these years I feel "my own opinion" is slaughtered and you are my safe haven.
re:prophecy; My longest running game's core concept is based upon a Prophecy. Start with the prophecy, session 0, that way it becomes the main focus for the campaign; can we forge the Sommerswerd to defeat Zoltar the Lemurain?
Any chance you could make a video about 13th age. I saw the interview one but still have no idea why it's a good game or why I should back the second ed. What did you learn from it that you always mention it?
My players have come from out of state to play at my table. We've been playing on and off for 30 years. But I still get comments about how they wish I was more like Matt Mercer. So...
@6:10 TL;DR I believe the Matt Mercer effect does affect the newer, usually younger, players to a small extent. I slap them with the Critical Role player effect back at them. Play like Matt's players and my DM game will step up. About the Matt Mercer effect. I have had a couple of younger players say Matt Mercer does this or that. I then say, well when I get three of you that start playing like Travis Willingham, Sam Riegel, or Taliesin Jaffe; my DM style will go up some notches. I match you, the players' energy, and the way you play. Hard to find a player like Travis who tells others to quiet down when it is another player's spotlight time. Or when he tells his wife or Marisha you said that is what you are doing just go with it, even if it is turning into a goldfish and jumping off a cliff to your death. Travis also gets into his character and rolls with the bad rolls when they happen, in character as well as OoC. Sam gets way into his character and will sacrifice for the others. He also makes it fun to at the table without going to far and disrupting it all the time, only sometimes. Taliesin is a mix of Sam and Travis. Too many players want you the DM to do the Matt Mercer side of it like it will do much for the player who never stops to take a prisoner and ask them questions. Refuses to give a backstory of more than a paragraph with no liabilities for the DM to use. They want role-play, but when hit in the face with role-play a lot of the time they shell up or they go off the deep end by wanting to spend way too much time on something just for their character. That is great, we can do that in emails, but table time is for the entire party to play as much as we can together to advance the story. I offer a lot of my free time to do downtime things in emails, and no one ever takes me up on it. It would save a lot of table time if they did, and I could role-play more of the interaction on a one-on-one or group email for whoever is in the scene.
My home games have looked a lot like Critical Role since the 90’s. It’s not a style Matt and Brennan etc. have invented. It’s been around for a long while. It’s just more visible now.
Explain how so?
@@chrisg8989 what’s to explain? Narrative character driven play has been popular for decades.
The two big differences with streamed shows are production value (because they have money for expensive battle maps) and descriptive elements for the audience (like Mercer’s lengthy scene descriptions).
A massive portion of the DnD player base is made up of very creative people who want more than combat crawls. That’s not new.
The big difference now is that most war game fans play video games so that slice of the hobby isn’t growing, but the narrative half is because it’s unique to the medium.
My 3.5e games, which I've been playing since the early 2010s, look like a Critical Role or a Dimension 20, just way lower budget.
Amazing insight for someone who enjoys therapy sessions as a hobby. Yes, you are correct, the gamers play war/mini/strategy/video or live version improved by rpg knowledge. If your part will not implode on itself in this decade, probably it will be an official schism. We bet on implosion.
"Character driven play." Yes. I would agree that this style of DnD isn't exclusive or originates from Critical role nor Dimension 20.
But, you're completely missing the point of the entire conversation and the video.
"That's not how Matt Mercer would have done it."
This statement is directly derived from an unrealistic expection a player had by consuming actual plays like Critical role or Dimension 20.
Expectations such as voice acting, expensive set pieces, mintures, music, masterful storytelling, immersive improvisation, etc.
Which, let's be real here. No one was performing at this level at home. Not even you.
So aside from the "Character Driven Play" how exactly has DnD looked just like Crirical roll since the 90s?
"This isn't critical role." Is the best advice you can give any new player or first time DM, who has consumed alot of actual play media.
What I mean by this statement is; don't expect too much from your players and temper their expectations of you. DnD is a board game to play with your friends. Laugh, make jokes, eat snacks, your not on a TV show, this is real Life. You don't need to do voices, you don't have to have actor level performances or production quality mintures and battle maps. Do what's fun for you and your friends and the second it starts feeling like work or too much pressure, take a break. No DnD is better than bad DnD.
Cooking shows in the 80s: Here's how you make an omelet. Cooking shows now: You have 30 minutes to cook a gourmet 7 course meal featuring this obscure root vegetable no one has ever heard of. Both of those shows are entertaining, both of them make you hungry, but only one of them inspires people to physically go to the kitchen and cook. TL:DR: While actual plays are moving new players into the hobby, they're probably discouraging GMs (the chefs).
Interesting insight. This episode only asked and attempted to answer the question of whether actual plays are suppressing _players_ in some way. You're arguing that they're suppressing _GMs,_ and it seems like a pretty compelling argument.
Eh, I had a player who wants a show with lights and music and terrain and minis because it’s what they know and like. The table I’m running is theater of the mind so it didn’t mesh. They tried it out and didn’t like it, so they stepped away. No worries. They did mention that they want Critical Role. But that’s fine. It’s just not the game I run.
Same for me for the alternate cover for the dmg
Venger in 50th anniversary DMG is not nostalgia, it's legacy. The game has 50 years of history. If so, Lolth'd be also nostalgia. And, as a brasilian, that's the cover art i want 😊❤
One of my session zero statements is "If you expect me to be Matt Mercer, I expect you to be Laura Bailey or Liam O'Brien." CR games, like every other good RPG, are a collective responsibility. Some of the worst parts of CR are when a player (I won't name names) doesn't know what his/her character can do 50 or 60 episodes into the game. I don't mean, "I got a new spell", I mean low level class features and racial traits.
Trüberbrok did the same thing with the real background.
I DM at my table like Shaq shoots free-throws so 50% works, like a pro
Thanks
I used genestealer mini’s for Ettercaps and my players “noped” out the dungeon.
If anything, actual plays give me expectation for the players, because let's be honest it's not that easy to find people that are actually roleplaying and not just playing their stats as if it was some kind of video game :)
I think one of the negative influences of actual play is that players think they have to be karaoke thespians - both in terms of the pressure to do it, and that it encourages, like karaoke, some people to be overly dramatic when they're really just very bad at it, which can distract from the rest of the game.
I wonder if there is an age correlation to players being influenced by $million streams because I notice a similar weirdness in my kids with other creative pursuits, especially Minecraft. My 10 year old struggles to just play and build and I think part of it is self comparison with UA-camrs who spend 40 hours a week doing this stuff. Granted, the audience demo is very different, but I wonder if this is more common with younger newcomers to the game vs older newcomers.
Important: APs are entertainment for an audience. Home games do not have an audience, they only have players. Those two are completely different setups. No one should compare themselves to AP GMs and players shouldn't expect those GMs.
I argue they typically don't. I think its' 95% an imaginary problem.
Then why do players keep bringing it up? @@SlyFlourish
@@armorclasshero2103 inexperienced players bring up actual plays as part of criticisms because they either don’t have the framework or the vocabulary to explain precisely why they aren’t having fun in a GM’s game.
And the vast majority of the time, those underlying player frustrations are easy to solve if the GM is willing to have a brief conversation.
Critical Role fans know about Vecna as well thanks to Campaign 1.
Saying the Matt Mercer effect is like saying that LeBron James is setting up unrealistic basketball expectations. He is a professional actor DMing professional actors. Emulate and strive, but we’re not Matt Mercer. You’re you. Be the best DM you can be.
Bingo.
They actually do say this about Steph curry 😂
Yes but when I join a pickup basketball game no one complains that I'm not as good as LeBron. I think the Mercer effect is a bit overblown but I have seen it more than once. It is a thing.
The Labron James analogy just isn’t accurate. Nobody thinks when they step on a court they’ll suddenly be 6’9” with a 40” vertical, that’s silly. It’s not silly to Watch Critical Role without any TTRPG experience and think that’s what D&D is like, it’s reasonable… And it shouldn’t be a condemnation of people who watch an actual play, with no context, to think that’s how TTRPGs feel and are orchestrated. Now, actual plays aren’t ruining anything, BUT… people shouldn’t be called stupid for thinking that’s how TTRPGs ‘are’… It’s a rational conclusion.Actual Plays are not the same thing as a home game, and there might be some confusion and misplaced expectations. And that’s all part of things evolving and new people joining the hobby in this day and age. Nobody’s wrong here.
Hear hear
Maybe this is pretentious to say but I always wanted the covers to reflect the aim of the contents; its why i always kind of hated the 2014 PHB cover that most heavily featured a giant villain, something players can't actually play, and I always thought the SCAG cover was what the PHB should have been; the 2024 PHB cover is MUCH better in that regard. The 2024 base DMG cover is pretty good, heavily featuring vollainous characters that arent standard monsters... honestly I think its a little better than the 2014 version. BUT the alt cover is AMAZING. Talk about capturing the concept of the role; a god-level figure weaving strands and capturing their prey? Zero notes, literally perfect for the DMG.
Isn't this dude on the cover, Venger, from the 80's cartoon?
Yes!
I meant Venger...
@@SlyFlourish Dude, I'm sorry, I surely did not read the previous comments before, didn't want to be an annoying goblin, you rock :)
Why is the "Mercer Effect" always focused on the GM. Taking a look at the Actual Plays the players are usually much better prepared then the ones coming to the table. They are aware of what happened in the former episodes, do know the NPCs and have put effort in their characters. Also they show excitement and go with the story but do not try to dominate the game or argue about rules with the GM or other players. If Actual Play Shows are the benchmark it requires also the players to try to behave accordingly.
Does "You don't want to go there", really work? I feel like if I said that to my friends they would be there in an instant.
Venger and Warduke
Yeah well i noticed that 5e demands minimum effort for players because it offloads most things on the dm that is why most 5e player will never even attempt to dm or even try a different system. At least that's my opinion on why the dms would feel the satisfaction problems earlier before the game breakdown or players leave they will still attend until it hits that wall then they jump onto another game.
"That's not how Matt Mercer would've done it" sounds more like a critique of rulings or procedure than of presentation or planning.
SupergeekMike on UA-cam has been doing a series exploring how Mercer actually runs his games. There's more to it than just writing eloquent prose, doing impressive voices, and buying expensive sets.
And a lot of it is pretty uncontroversial, agreeable stuff. Lol
Matt Mercer usually tries to cushion his "no" answers with "but..."
Player: Can I grab the coins without him seeing?
Mercer: Not unless something distracts him. He's looking right at them.
This is extremely common! Matt Mercer didn't invent this! But imagine a player whose exposure to the game is 1) Critical Role and 2) their GM who doesn't do this. A GM who just says "no," full stop, or one who says, "no, AND, as you reach for them..."
Of course they'd say that's not how Mercer would've done it!
Yeah, Matt Mercer doesn't do anything that's particularly out of reach of what any DM could do.
It's funny you thought Vecna was for nostalgia. I thought it wqs for the young Stranger Things crowd.😅
That's not the way Matt Mercer would do it. Get in touch with Matt and see if he's got room. PEACE.
Let's get that elephant out in full view, shall we? If, as a DM, your group is expecting you to be like and run games like Matt Mercer, then you as the DM are absolutely entitled to expect the players to be of the same level/quality as the players of Critical Role are. It works both ways people. When presented with that expectation most players would immediately realize their expectations may be misplaced or over-grandized.
In my experience, the vast majority of players that say that they want a game to be more like Critical Role or Dimension 20, don’t actually care about the bells and whistles like voice acting.
They just want their characters to matter, and they have a GM who isn’t meaningfully taking their ideas into account.
Running DnD like pure war game or strictly following a module are fine if that’s what a group wants, but most new players coming into the hobby don’t just want to purely serve some GM’s vision.
And that’s a good thing. We GMs can and should be better than that.
I'd hazard a guess that the flipside of the Matt Mercer effect is also true. Players' expectations of the games they're playing have gone up, yes. But I think dungeon masters have been inspired to run better games because they watch actual plays. If not for all the Glass Cannon Podcast games I listen to, I'd be a much worse GM than I am now.
Very true, I’m constantly striving to make a more engaging game that works for my players.
That's not vecna its venger and the action figures
Shit, did I say vecna??
The people thinking dnd at home will be like CR are indeed kids, its the only demographic that can have such a skewed perception of reality that can produce such an unrealistic expectation.
Why wouldn't dnd at home be like CR. There's nothing they do outside of having a fancy set and expensive terrain/minis that you can't do at home.
@@dwil0311 I'm not sure if you're being serious 😅I'm going to go with my gut and say that you are not. Obviously there is more going on than the set and the mini's.
Forget the matt mercer effect, what about the dms.disappointment when they discover their players have zero interest in roleplaying whatsoever?
Also did you just call Venger Vecna?
7:15 people's expectations change
Not Vecna - Venger :-/
I think the premise that players wouldn't play as many games because the DM isn't "as good as Matt Mercer" is false. That whole data set I think is just flawed. Organized play is the opposite of a long form game, so that's also a terrible benchmark for a campaign which is what people who are coming from dnd would expect after the mercer effect.
Yes. The matt mercer effect is real. It 100% builds false expectations in new players who want what they do on yt. Had to sit down with a guy because he kept having his character be a huge burden to the party to fulfill his "dramatic interpretation" of his character. But the GAME had to be slowed down or stopped every time. Then when nobody else bought into the drama he was trying to set up, he pouted and had his character run off to do literally nothing. That was his last game at my (virtual) table, not that I didn't try to reason with him. But it stemmed 100% from the fact he only knew DnD via critical roll (which isn't DnD, but I digress). He wanted to do what they do, which is dramatic theater and far less actual DnD the game.
The Cindy Crawford effect of the 90s when men expected all women to be 5'10" 130lb supermodels
Biggest appeal to the 3d templates, I think, is the verticality...
... but... the measuring tool doesn't seem to do height.
I actually find Critical Role way too distracting. There are too many fillers throughout the episodes and there is too much emphasis on the dramatization in lieu of the game itself.
Yes. Critical role has been great for attracting people to the game, but in my opinion, it has distorted what that game is and what people should expect from it.
How so?
@@hodgepodgesyntaxia2112they expect it to be drama class or a local theater troup. Not normal people tired after work
@@armorclasshero2103 so just to be clear, are you saying that you don’t like Critical Role’s influence because you think that it’s unreasonable for players to expect some social encounters? (which have been one of the 3 core pillars of DnD for decades)
I disagree with the entire premise that Matt Mercer is an unreasonable expectation. Nothing he does is out of reach of what any DM could do. If you aren’t reaching those expectations, that says a lot more about you than it does about the expectations.
Yes! Critical Role is building unrealistic expectations.
Like what?
@@hodgepodgesyntaxia2112 Lol, 1. 1.They are paid voice actors playing for an audience.
2. They are all friends from outside Critical Role.
3. All their backstories and actions drive the story forward.
4. They all stay on script.
5. It's a railroad. The characters have to stay on script. It is a show.
6. Matt is fantastic Dungeon Master, that is an amazing storyteller.
7. All the actors are fantastic at improve, they all come from an acting background. I played Football in highschool.
8. Most dms and people are just people trying to play the game of d&d.
9. Critical Role is their job, schedules do not matter, they have to go to the session.
Other than those few issues, yea it is the same experience.
so, you didn’t actually answer my question.
None of those are expectations that average players bring to a table. You just listed a bunch of disconnected characteristics of Critical Role.
Like reading into #2, are you saying it’s unfair for players to want to play with their existing friends, or befriend others at the table?
Or going off #5, are you saying that your average players want to be railroaded. That they prefer not to have choice or freedom?
Or going off #3, which seems to conflict with #5, are you saying that it’s unreasonable for players to expect a GM to build off of their character choices or integrate their backstories? (Because frankly, those are easy preferences to accommodate).
@@hodgepodgesyntaxia2112 for me to dm it is an unrealistic expectation.
The data gathered from the paid games skews the data in a weird way. The GM's need players to be satisfied to keep getting paid, so they're going to be giving PC's items and powers they shouldn't get, just to win them over.
thats not how AL works.
That's not even how a satisfying gaming experience works. That would be a lame game, and no one would want to play with you again. You don't just give away the candy, you dangle it in front of the kids and they have to jump or team up or trick you to get it.
The fact that this is the first edition where it's really hard to find a DM is very indicative, to me.
I disagree with your premise. And you do too. You've often talked about "no dnd is better than bad dnd" and how players will continue to show up even when they hate it. So saying players won't show up to bad games is incorrect.
The good news is CR has left D&D. Hopefully their new system will collect all the players that want the CR experience. But we can help by pointing them to the right direction- Go play Daggerheart.
I am the most ardent promoter of that Frankenstein card game knock off D&D Powered by the Apocalypse.
.
It turns my stomach how the goblins at WotC need the grognard disposable income and constantly nostalgia-bait their audience while trying to ridicule old-school players at every opportunity they get.