Wannabe Matt Mercer: "Why Aren't You Guys Critical Role?!" (+ More) - RPG Horror Stories

[@rebeccavalentine7229]

Everytime someone summons up Critical Role i point out that they are all professional actors. Like one is literally in a prime time series. So its never going to be the same.

[@davidlewis5312]

And you can't forget that at this point Matt's primary occupation is Critical Role. He had the time to craft cinematic level characters and stories, and the chops to do it in his credit.

[@WTFisTingispingis]

They're also all very tightly knit.

[@schwarzerritter5724]

Be careful about that. You might find yourself beaten to death with a Jester Lavorre bodypillow, filled with 4-sided dice.

[@brodieorr5393]

Yeah you can't compare someone who does something as their profession to someone who does it as a hobby. Expecting Matt mercer out of your DM is a disservice to your dm and yoursef. You're never gonna get that level of production from a table, unless you're trying to do what critical roll does

[@windyface9383]

how to salvage the lumberjack dwarf: You hated your job BUT there are people you worked with you are still very fond of

[@Lobsterwithinternet]

As many others have said before me, “I’ll DM like Matt Mercer as soon as you roleplay like Laura Bailey, Taliesin Jaffe, Ashley Johnson, Liam O'Brien, Marisha Ray, Sam Riegel, and Travis Willingham!”

[@darkcrow125]

yeah the matt mercer effect is rly bad for dnd

[@davidbeppler3032]

@@darkcrow125 It was much better when D&D was worshiping the devil and you would be attacked by teachers and religious zealots for playing it? No, Crit Role is awesome for D&D.

[@darkcrow125]

@@davidbeppler3032 i never said that cr is bad for dnd.i said the "MATT MERCER EFFECT" is bad for dnd if you dont know what it is watch the video about in from talking20 or other people i love matts world builind and dm skills and i love the crew but many beginner are toxicly fixated that everything is like cr and that every dm is as good as matt mercer

[@davidbeppler3032]

@@darkcrow125 Why be as good as Mercer when you can be better? I love his games, but if I spent 20 minutes describing the town, weather, sounds, smells, and clothing textures of waving banners, my players would quit. lol

[@darkcrow125]

@@davidbeppler3032 yeah thats the problem the dm style of matt works for matt not for everybody else but many new player think every dm should be like that and dnd is just like critical role

[@justinparry1621]

The "Stockholm syndrome" situation could have been avoided by the DM simply stating that the PC had good memories of his old workplace & then showing the group how things had become repressive in the meantime.

[@PGIFilms]

@twheels Was thinking the exact same thing and the DM kept coming across to me like the old-time-white-collar-black-tie-company-rep trying to gaslight an employee hoping to keep them from thinking about words like "union", "strike", and "higher wages" entering their mind.

[@Psyker_Unredactus]

I was just thinking about how OP's barbarian character already believes themselves powerful, but does not even realize he is missing out on even greater power due to his interpretation of his God's will. That a really well thought out hook for a character.

[@donniejefferson9554]

Definitely sounds like a cool character idea. Shame it got wasted with this dm

[@xionkuriyama5697]

Story 1: I'll RP like the Critical Role party when you DM like Matt Mercer. Story 2: This is what bosses think their employees think lol Story 3: Hell yeah, go DM. Always love it when the DM shows some backbone.

[@dodobarthel2249]

I think the problem in story 1 was that in some ways he did "DM like Mercer", as in using all his plots without any changes...

[@CrowePerch]

To all the dms in the back, you don't have to be Matt Mercer in order to be a good DM. A good DM needs a good party, and what works for one group doesn't work at all for another.

[@jusstyno]

i pull 90% of encounters out of my ass and my players love it! Just do what your players wanna do

[@MrCrunchytime]

The OP of the third story is a God. Finally, a DM with balls.

[@davidbeppler3032]

You deserve more likes.

[@elfhunter6]

Finally!

[@JB-uy1bw]

That last DM sounded like a cool dude. Disallowing new players to have their view of the game tainted and corrupted by creeps like the edgelord.

[@Lobsterwithinternet]

6:30 Not to mention these are all professional voice actors with years of experience in the industry. Your average Joe Schmoe can't compete with that.

[@D64nz]

It's like most people irl compared to porn. There is a vast skill gap between the too.

[@Lobsterwithinternet]

@@D64nz Not to mention that both create unrealistic expectations that ruin the experience for everyone.

[@notoriouswhitemoth]

I've recently started watching Critical Role, and I have to say, trying to force Yasha's character arc onto one of your players while ignoring the real-world context behind it is a disservice to Ashley Johnson, who can make enough of an impression with what amounts to a guest appearance to make her absence felt. For those who don't know, Yasha the Aasimar barbarian was played by a very talented actress named Ashley Johnson, who's been working in television and film since 1990. Yasha's tutelar took an active role in the campaign's story, separating Yasha from the rest of the party, as an in-game justification for the player's unpredictable schedule, as she was playing a main character on a prime-time network crime drama at the time.

[@dcgamer_14s.o.s.85]

Man, that beginning is so relatable right now, I'm so late with CR episodes but I really want to finish them for the finale xD I'll just want to add that the windmill from the second story sounds a lot like a MLM or worse a cult of sorts. I want to believe it's more like a MLM that's VERY crazy with rules, but man, the trapping of member and stealing of money, higher roles gain more freedom and/or better things... I'm glad it wasn't a 'worse' horror story, if you get what I mean.

[@oneInterestingguy]

I feel like the second story could have been really easily saved I mean aside from the racism. Just reveal after a few sessions that the fond memories were magically induced they put some magical drug in the food to keep people complacent in their company town. Then the dissonance between how they were treated and how they feel becomes a clue and not a plot hole.

[@ivorythebashful]

The second story reminded me of something that happened in the most recent session I’ve been apart of. There is a character who loves metals and weapons and would buy and collect as many as they could to make better since they were a smith. At one point, the player was a bit salty since our DM didn’t mention a special sword when the character was in a shop (and the only reason he learned of the sword was because of my character and another creature in our group were looking at the shop again) but thankfully, it was simply a misunderstanding so the DM assured the player that the cart of goods would still be in town so they could go back to look and find the special sword.

[@simonkennedy6116]

I, as a DM, am inspired by Matt Mercer and will do voices for every character and follow the path my players go down. In fact Critical Role is what got me back into D&D after a 15 year absence. But I would never outright copy something they did. I don't see the point, I could just as well transcribe what happened

[@davidbeppler3032]

In my games every guard has the exact same voice. The players recognized an undercover guard that way once. lmao

[@somed655]

I got back to D&D after a long break and got started to run 5e without knowing about CR. I ran into it later and thought "WTF is this". All of the sudden all the quirky anime nonsense my players where doing made sense to me.

[@matttale7918]

@David Beppler Please tell me they were all actually just clones of the same guy

[@Soriokeink]

"He became a little Toxic-" a LITTLE?! Yep. I mean you don't have much ground to mock people for their lack of knowledge or orgiginality when you're ripping off another persons campain.(not that there's anything wrong with things like premade modules though) Besides, sometimes its fun to play characters for the cool idea behind them rather then making high numbers.

[@thunderflare59]

In his attempt to be like Matt Mercer, he ignored all the tips Matt Mercer gives.

[@CooperAATE]

"You were a willing slave who loved one free beer a year, and you were allowed to not be a slave by spending every copper coin you ever made!" ...I will never speak to you again, that's so stupid.

[@genericmalename6087]

About that last story, from my group and games: Everyone in my group has done some messed up stuff, in-game. We're all cool with it, mostly. We've all got our boundaries, and we all decided what was too far (nuking new Mexico, for example) and what was fine (desecration of corpses, apparently). It's not that hard to set boundaries, which the DM did. If a bunch of teenagers like us can understand them, than those punks can figure it out too.

[@GrievousFrom]

I am not Matt Mercer. What I am is the person writing and performing Lord of the Rings modules mostly from scratch for my players. When Matt shows up and does that, and does it better than me, then I as a GM will agree that I need to be more like him. That goes double for the people who play with me.

[@thekenyonsquad5672]

I find it interesting that first story DM is the perfect fit for the problem players that always want their DM to be matt mercer. how can the second story DM not see the logic loop he is trying to use here? "I want to brutally torture this NPC for no reason other then my own entertainment." no. I'm not going to give you an in game reason, you don't deserve it. just no.

[@Redtail45044]

Reminds me of when people found my neutral evil beastmaster was cursed to eventually become an undead, and as such had to maintain his appearance with a disguise kit. Things got...somewhat like that, when he did something that made his condition degrade and he'd not realized it. Mind...his brand of 'evil' was that, since he did leatherworking on the side, was that he'd sometimes kill livestock or pets to get the hide he needed, if not to sell. Led to a lot of little side-missions that never led to anything about finding why someone's cattle or precious dog went missing. Fun times. Nothing like having everyone but the DM that liked the idea tell you to get out because 'that's not something that should happen to an archer'. Meh. Just because he had the right arm part of his armor come off and show skeletonized bone...oh well. At least we didn't have a mini-Mercer, but good god were they determined to say that archers could only be this or that. Yes, he was a beastmaster, and yet they never questioned why his pet hawk was unnerved around him half the time. Or why domestic animals tended to give him a slight berth. Nor why the paladin/cleric we had didn't try and detect undead or evil at any point, despite a mission looking for undead once.

[@Mrinsecure]

The sins of the DM in the first story go beyond wanting to be *like* Critical Role. It's understandable to want to strive for the talents of a professional team of actors, with a world crafted by someone whose *literal job is to make that world*. In his case, though, he was literally just... going through the plot points of Critical Role's second campaign, barely even taking the time to scratch the serial numbers off before repurposing them for himself. EDIT: Also, for those who are creatively challenged, there are pre-made settings and adventures for purchase, right now, *including* the setting book for Critical Role's campaign. Just get those instead of stealing someone else's campaign and ripping it off entirely.

[@WladcaPodziemia]

Wow, that DM from triad-dwarf-story must have bean really bullied as intern in big corporation of some cartoonishly evil boss.

[@xionkuriyama5697]

I mean, sounded more like racist Chinese stereotypes

[@AuskaDezjArdamaath]

I think he took his inspiration from a mining town in the US from way back. The owner laid people in tokens that could only be spent in his own stores. He controlled the town, everyone and everything in it.

[@WladcaPodziemia]

People who expect their games to be exactly like CR also probably are surprised whe nduring sex camera won't zoom in on their croach.

[@marquisealexander1371]

ROLE! CRITICAL! CRITICAL! CRITICAL! ROLE! CRITICAL! CRITICAL! CRITICAL! ROLE! THE ADVENTURE BEGINS!

[@cheesedemon88]

A dwarf that has grown up under the thumb and propaganda of a company town, who has recently left said community to experience the wider world, actually seems like a dope concept! There’s certainly something there, the DM just needed to make it into a cohesive concept, rather then whatever they were doing…

[@nicoolive7613]

8:50 Oh man, the twist and turns this DM does just to not say that the dwarf was a slave, verge the ridiculous.

[@GrahamRocks]

Look on the bright side, Crispy, at least you can catch up easier when C2 ends officially soon. Yeah, I'm a CR fan too (and recently got into The Unexpectables), but the moment I heard that the DM wanted their player characters to be similar to those on CR just now... yeah, no. I wouldn't like that, CR fans or no.

[@Here_is_Waldo]

TFS gaming has a good DnD game as well with some of the players from The Unexpectables, though I think its finished now.

[@davidbeppler3032]

Even worse is players wanting to play CR characters. "My character is Nasha, she is a barbarian thunder lord disciple. She can fly at level 10!"... um, no.

[@arielshligman2146]

@@davidbeppler3032 by level 10 if you can't fly it's a choice

[@JamesBuggemo]

By internet standards, Im old, so Boomer Alert, I guess. I have observed this growing trend, starting around 2005, of people wearing geek/nerd culture like a skinsuit. Mini-Mercers are the worst offenders.

[@GrahamRocks]

I guess it's a bit better than the polar opposite: Nerds aren't cool and should be made fun of and mocked for daring to indulge in their hobbies and interests, which is what it was for a long time.

[@LetholdusKaspyr]

@@GrahamRocks No, it's worse now. Before, we at least had nerd culture to ourselves, to enjoy how we pleased. Now, nerd culture is popular culture, so it has to be scrubbed and polished and reduced to the Least Common Denominator to get approval from dullards. We're not accepted. We're colonized.

[@1Ring42]

Second story could easily be solved with a simple spell: modify memory

[@TryssemTavern]

The fact that the DM @10:00 thinks company towns were 'pleasant' experiences, shows that DM's ignorance or, possibly, greed. Company towns exploited their employees and skirted paying them by giving them worthless 'company dollars' that could only be spent on shops in town. And yes those shops sucked back up any 'company dollars' you made. It was, for all intents and purpose, an attempt by companies to reintroduce a form of slavery.

[@alicianieto2822]

So the dwarf in the second story worked for future Amazon...

[@MagicalMedic]

So hyped for the finale! 🤩

[@somebody4952]

I'm really confused about what gm was going for with that lumber mill story

[@LargeAmoeba]

Right?! Would it have been so hard to say one good thing about the mill? The player gave them so many outs!

[@Arcticmaster1190]

There was a lot of cognitive dissonance going on in justifications there. Like holy shit... how many Hail Marys did that take?

[@Pfhreak]

That DM read about the horrors of company towns and pre-labor movement working conditions and said "hm, yes, this sounds great."

[@luispalazuelos2455]

I liked because I am in the exact state of watchingness as the opening statement.

[@garrettgarner438]

Critical Role fans not equating every dnd campaign to the show challenge (impossible).

[@dahelmang]

I owe my soul to the company store 🎶

[@Icalasari]

I misheard you saying, "Mysterious force creating undead" as, "Mysterious _horse_ creating undead" and now I have an idea for an arc

[@ozpin8329]

Being mad that your campaign isn't like Critical Role is like being mad at porn because you're bad at sex.

[@marybdrake1472]

Those two in that last story were stupid. They joined the table knowing the rules and wanted to break them anyway. That's beyond dense.

[@suziwolf4830]

"Critical Role is for D&D what porn is for sex: don't let professionals skew your expectations of what the real thing is like." - All Things D&D

[@HenriqueErzinger]

Yasha had a whole arc to become a champion of her god.

[@cvapolo]

Second history, maybe the OP didn't consider his character was under an ALTER MEMORY SPELL and his DM was giving him hints but the player never pick it up.

[@RioDrake]

Do not worry, Crispy, I am still on campaign 1 of CR

[@MinecraftLovesSteve]

Good lord the first dm just... hurt to hear about

[@BlazingKhioneus]

Easy way to fix the lumber company backstory: make them friendly and not slave drivers back in the day, but after dwarf guy left, it falls under new management, thus theyre now basically enslavjng their workers. BOOM! Fixed the plothole and gave the best of both worlds: dwarf has fond memories of the company because they paid him well and let him be a free man, meanwhile in the campaign they company would be run by terrible, awful people. Literally my first thought once the story finished.

[@superboy1200]

The 2nd story my try at making it more convincing your dwarf has fond memories of certain employers from the company as they weren't as Gung ho with the rules and regulations giving secret benefits but keeping up appearances as the higher ups would periodically check for activity after a good amount of years they found a loophole in your specific contract and allowed you to leave from good performance and behavior as a dwarf some debts you feel are owed so from pride you want to repay that even though you would be very unhappy of the company in general.

[@EmeralBookwise]

...that DM just described all the worst aspects of a company town as if they were "good" things. Worse still, every time the player tried to put a silver lining on it, the DM doubled down on making it even worse. That's just entire levels of tone death I was not prepared for and have trouble believing anyone who isn't already a soulless corporate executive could think that way.

[@erisk.1707]

I gotta say, this DM depicted this slave lumbermill like every company in the entire world works really really faithfully: "well we could give you a pay raise or...we throw you guys a party with one free beer, because here at any company incorperated we are a family, and your freetime actually is time in which you are available to come in after hours without being payed more because you certainly COULd leave company grounds, yes, but who knows, if you do stop working for a second and like...go home and spend time with your actual family instead of being a teamplayer your bonus might fall flat this year and you get the crappy work handed to you, just saying but we both know this won't happen right? because as I said, we are a family here, and families are there for each other, which means you will be extatic to cover shifts in your "freetime", you know, for the family." So if they meant to go for realism I seariously gotta hand it to them, they did an awesome job at depicting the reality of capitalism sucking the lifeforce out of everyone trapped in the lifelong slavery it enforces onto you so a hand full of billionairs can live the way every single person could live in a less toxic and sociopathic system.

[@RLHooper]

One reason I hate Critical Role, seriously it can just go away and I would not care. Too many superfans try to get that and push people to be that.

[@Orwennian]

How soy one has to be to call lumberjack work "killing trees"? And what does that person eat, if both meat and plant food is murder?

[@Calvin.of.Martin.Street]

The GM of the Lumber Camp setting must be in middle-management for some shitty no-name corporation. I've worked with people just like that NPC who tried to gaslight us into thinking that we all really didn't hate our jobs and would look back on them someday with fondness. He was wrong.

[@360entertainment2]

Was the DM in the second story a Walmart Manager?

[@whensomethingcriesagain]

This is really a case of people learning the exact wrong lesson from Critical Role. The budget, the voices, none of that is why it works so well. If you're going to take any lessons from Critical Role, take the way that they write characters. Characters like Percy, the twins, and especially Caleb worked so well and were so beloved specifically because they have solidly defined character arcs that build on their traits to take them in interesting directions. It's clear Matt works with his players outside of game to get a very clear idea of where they want to go with their characters, and works that into the plot hooks he gives them. If there were one lesson to take from Critical Role, I would absolutely say it should be that

[@Logan_Baron]

In the first story I don't think the DM stealing the ideas of the first adventures from CR2. It seems like they were more inspired by or learned from. It seems to be more the basic idea or theme. It didn't say they were at the carnival or whatever, and if like the NPCs were the exact same, then I'd call foul. Something like that however CAN lead to trying to railroad players to do things they way you expect things to play out. As a young DM I admit to having done that kind of railroading in an adventure I based off a show. I've learned most DMing don'ts from my own past mistakes. However everything after that was very bad DMing. To clarify on my point about the DM copying from another source. The DM ONLY creates the universe and situations. Not how everything plays out. Unless they are seriously railroading the characters, even if the DM copies something exactly from an episode of CR or any other source, it will not play out the same was as it did there, because they PCs are going to do things differently.

[@Calvin.of.Martin.Street]

I'm glad I play with adults over 50 who don't give a single fig about Critical Role. In fact, none of us have ever watched it.

[@trinstonmichaels7062]

Trinston was here .. .

[@wesss9353]

Yellow eyes? I thought a sith lord...

[@Darkwintre]

Not exactly the same, but I was playing in a game which was supposed to be a continuation of an old game. He used Star Trek characters as deities and involved Draconians back when he last ran it. He asked me to convert my ranger into a cleric so chose to create a variation of Sehanine Moonbow named after Deanna Troi's deceased sister. He then said he was using the Dawn War Pantheon, I asked him about whether he was using Exandra which he said no. So the first game my knowledge domain cleric was turned into a follower of Ioun until I returned her to a Follower of Kestra now a Fey Celestial Archon in service to Sehanine Moonbow and eventually a Vestigal Goddess of Moonlight. He used my character's back story in his introductory adventure basically killing off the character's son her only reason for being involved and then claimed none of the adventure was important wanting the PCs to return to the Port City and not allowing my character to complete her search for her still missing son. I ended up running the next adventure set a century before Vox Machina in Exandria in retrospect a mistake because I used the opportunity to alter my cleric's background to have her be banished from Exandria suffering temporary amnesia from the event so assumed she was still trying to answer a call for aid from her son who had already been killed and she had been banished in an effort to help thwart an evil cult's efforts to swap her home with its double in the shadowfell. So banished to another world and wanting to find a way back or means to contact her surviving family. So returned to his campaign and it seemed like he had a love of imposing repeated checks when it wasn't needed and then ultimately started joking about having his setting be on Exandria. After that session I asked him outright discovering that was his intention I promptly quit given he had clearly run out of tracks for his railroad, when he couldn't be bothered to remember the cleric was banished from Exandria meaning his setting couldn't be set on the same world. My mistake was simple, I shouldn't have bothered running a game in that setting just use the hamlet he used for his introductory adventure having my cleric stay there as she was searching for her still missing son and use the alternative character I designed in case I couldn't find a way to continue running that cleric. Its not the same as your opening example, but he was equally obsessed with critical role just didn't give a damn about my campaign so I walked. I miss roleplaying, but not giving that crap a pass.

[@kikiblair5132]

I've never Watched Critical Roll and I think I might avoid it forever so I can truthfully claim ignorance of it and inability to replicate it.

[@jacksparrowismydaddy]

is that normal for dms to decide what the PCs feels? its been a long time since I played so I don't recall whats normally in the bounds of DMing...

[@mikaneko]

I don't think so. As DM I never tell my players what they feel, and if I ever wasn't a forever DM (not gonna happen XD), if my DM told me, as a player, how I felt about a situation, I would likely leave the game if the DM refused to give me any agency on my own character.

[@jacksparrowismydaddy]

@@mikaneko ah thanks. I wonder if I just had controlling dms in my past

[@magonus195]

Yes and no. Yes to essentially all DMs when magic is involved. No to most situations, otherwise. But I have seen both competent and indelicate use of DMs declaring player character emotions. Done well, it works just fine-most people feel emotions in real life without deciding to, as it is. Unfortunately, even some minor character flaws in a DM (pride, indecision, dominance, perversion, insecurity, even in a small degree, can lead to some horrible calls.

[@jacksparrowismydaddy]

@@magonus195 thank you

[@michaelmccarty1327]

8:56 describing a fictional character’s appearance and name is casual racism now?

[@oldmanvox3897]

180 hours at x2 speed ;3

[@talkingwithadam812]

I steal everything from critical role then pretend i havent watched it I dont try to be like matt. Matt tries to be like me

[@oxylepy2]

Critical roll is great. Players and DMs who get all pissy because people aren't MM or the cast? Yeah about as toxic as it gets. People using CR to "legitimize" their Chaotic Random character? If you never grew out of "lol, I'm so random" you should seek psychological help before joining a ttrpg. We need a phone number for when people give in-depth descriptions of r, torture, ped, etc. Then the paddys can show up and 302 them

[@redacted606]

Okay so... i just wanna say that the person tormenting the poor thief is just awful and it says allot about you when you force that mindset on others. That mam needs to be monitored in case he some how gets a woman to sleep with him. That man might be harming any woman he finds attractive. If im going to jave this player in my game im going to use the game to beat the bricks out of his character, throw female npc's at him with nothing but sharp objects and the strongest magic around. If he wants to be a villain ill make every one treat him like the plague. In a game with no evil pc characters (the way op said), if i was op id allow him to do so *but* have the screams alert everything that lives to come and attack him. Id even make a god of wrath appear infront of him to battle him at some point just to punish him. I dont care if its immoral but i'd rather stomp out evil, rather than brush it away. Hell id even make the npc some sort of spirit that constantly comes back just to haunt him and become the party healer. (Kinda like a quardian angle)

[@jblask2]

Honestly critical role just never appealed to me so I roll my eyes whenever I hear people try to compare things to it lol

[@davidbeppler3032]

Hey guys, very experienced asshole here. The GM is never wrong. Unless he is. Thinking ahead is nice, but don't over do it. The big things are Economy and Ecology. Why is the town/castle/dungeon where it is, and why is it there. A list of names can be handy if you are not comfortable making them up on the fly. Also find a rules lawyer, they are your best friend. Ask them the rule on things, have them look them up (they like to do it) let them save you time and brain cells. What is the hardness on a reinforced wooden door and what is the pick DC for a fair lock? They will be busy for several minutes and you can describe the door, hall, bandits, and layout while they find the numbers. Let someone keep track of treasure. When they loot coins rattle off the PP,GP,SP,CP quickly. If they fail to get the total right and ask for you to repeat yourself always lower the amounts. 7,124,119,403. Repeat that? Ok, 3,92,73,365. Describe items. Even the nonmagical ones. Leader has a nice sword, it is a long curved blade with etching down the side. Describe it before the looting happens. Players will remember it. Any questions?

[@arielshligman2146]

I don't get why people wanna be critical roll it works cause it's a show dnd is about making memories with you're friend and shit we do at our table would never fly in a "professional game" remember the most important thing is creating fun (not necessarily at the moment) memories

[@aibytes4857]

🎲

[@scasimir1000]

this is why I don't watch the show.

[@whyccan9063]

Yeah, I'm not buying the last story

[@duckstep647]

First comment yay!