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(hopefully) constructive criticism

RollPlay: General & Archives
#1

i get the shows are just friends having a good time and that is a huge part of the appeal of rollplay butt they’re still shows made for an audience so i’ll try not to hurt any feelings by being broad and hopefully rollplay will get even beter

ttrpg’s are writhing games not fighting games
so much of most shows is just the cast bouncing from fight to fight while the DM is desperately trying to inject some narrative for the players to ignore
I know most rules are about combat and fighting scenes are awesome but an action movie with a shit plot is a shit action movie (i’m looking at you Michael bay)
Adam is a big boy who has done this for years don’t be afraid to tell your characters story i’m sure he can handle whatever you throw at him (same goes for harper and steven)

yes acting is hard. sure some players can RNG a character and improvise a great personality but you must know that most people in your business are a bunch of nerds that play video games all day and maybe don’t have the best range. I’m not a patreon (maybe I should be) so I miss the character creations but you know each other, you watch each others streams. help each other build someone that they can actually play well (and try to learn the basic rules and setting of the game first)
and if your character is starting at lvl 1 make a lvl 1 character, everyone wants to be a bad ass but the show is supposed to be that journey it’s called development

and just look at how good balance of power could be when it was just jesse and adam having fun while the rest of the party did their own things
or how dodger basically owns the nervla jazz show
learn from eachother

1 Like
[FEEDBACK] Blades
#2

The players have done a lot of learning throughout all the games. With Nebula Jazz, everyone is starting to fully embrace the mechanisms of the game, and they’re each invested into each others’ stories. Most of their chemistry is already great (old friends, etc.) They’re also only a few sessions in. And they’ve rarely made the most optimal characters.

With Court of Swords, we had players starting out as fairly novice “students” of the 5E system (Dan and Gassy specifically) going in on basically hard mode (hard and deadly encounters, only). The show basically embraces death, and out of everything is most explicitly tooled around combat (which you’ve acknowledged). And now they’re seasoned mechanical players that have learned a lot of the condensed meat of the hundreds-of-pages-of-rules. As far as role-playing is concerned - they each have their strengths and weaknesses, but they’ve had a ton of intimate moments on that show, which I find are heightened by those life-and-death battles.

As far as Blades is concerned, the players jumped into the roleplay whole-hog, and have been quick to adapt to the rules IMO.

I get what you’re saying about learning the rules of the system before diving into the show. However, they all have a lot on their plate, and some people are faster at picking stuff like that up than others, or better at retention. And with Rollplay, one of the subtly major experiences of the shows over the last 4 years has been the communal system learning. There’s always been some emphasis on sharing the learning experience with both players and audience members. To me, it’s a weirdly-endearing charm of the shows, though I suppose I may be in the minority on that feeling.

3 Likes
#3

I don’t think Fate: Accelerated can have optimal characters. From what I read of the ruleset, the premise is literally rule of cool: you create a character you think is cool and then you make him/her/it/zhe/etc work.

#4

D&D is a fighting game, you get rewards for killing stuff.
If you want a narrative focus game … :adamwheel:[quote=“MrMustacho, post:1, topic:1067”]
so much of most shows is just the cast bouncing from fight to fight while the DM is desperately trying to inject some narrative for the players to ignore
[/quote]

What do you mean by “most shows” ? Blades is not a show about fighting stuff, it has a great depth with its universe and gang mechanism. Nebula Jazz is a comic show, yeah you got some fights but that sounds like generalizing. Or did I misunderstood something ?

So are you talking about CoS only or everything else ?
Cuz Blades in the Dark and Fate sure as hell ain’t combat focus

If we are talking about D&D … Well when there is no mechanics to support character development, it means that the game don’t want you to do that right ? D&D is very limited with that, the only depth added to the characters are fighiting stats.

I do think you also want to say that, they should not be afraid to improvise and impose their vision of their characters instead of asking Adam ?

And if it goes to Harper too, did you watch Blades ? Character Dev., Backgrounds, Tensions between characters are just doing Rocket Jumps in every direction ![quote=“MrMustacho, post:1, topic:1067”]
everyone wants to be a bad ass but the show is supposed to be that journey it’s called development
[/quote]

So … You are talking about CoS. Won’t repeat myself about that, D&D is a bad game for development

I think I know who you are talking about, are you suggesting that they should invest more time in the understanding of the rules to min/max their actions ?

So I guess that what you are trying to say is that, it’s not good when characters are more in front of the scene …
That last passive/aggressive bit about dodger owning Nebula is kinda funny when you know that we had an entire story arc about Sam’s character :itmejplol: there sure is some bias in that

So to conclude, and to see if I understood your point.

  • You think that CoS should be more character focused, and have character’s background revealed faster and by the players ? And not be limited by what the fiction is currently talking about ? (Less World focused, More Character focused)
  • You think that some of the talents, should invest more time in understanding the rules ?
  • When a talent takes too much space, they should try to back down and interact whith the other characters ?
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#5

Go back to Rollplay day 1 and come back to anything inside the last 2 years… if thats not massiv change for the better I dont know what is. I get not everyone can be a fan of every person that is on the show, same goes for me… there are ppl I like to be on the shows more than others. But that said I personaly think every single person brings thier own little thing to the shows, and what makes it great. What JP has build over the last 4 years is beond groundbreaking if you ask me, I was lucky enuff just over ½ year ago to randomly see I think one of the first episodes of CoS, I had no idear wtf was going on… but damn it was D & D… my old love from way over 25 years ago. I was instantly hooked, I went back to youtube and got into Swan song, dark side starwars and ofc CoS. Sins then I tryed to follow every live Rollplay show and ofc support both JP on twitch with a sub and his Pateron project. I also got into the original show and the shows after that… and I can only say for me personaly I love the hole concept and simply cant get enuff. Sure there is allways ways to improve, and I truly belive JP uses alot of energy on such things every single day of the week. And in the end… I dont get you feel the shows just go from combat to combat… if you realy see every single episode there is plenty of non combat going on for my taste.

1 Like
#6

None of your “criticism” actually makes sense. In fact it would reduce the diversity in content from the one show you’re totally not talking about.

[ Edited the content of the post to coincide with the rules of the forum - Noor]

2 Likes
#7

all shows have these problems in higher or lesser degree and what i’m mostly saying is that the players shouldn’t be shy

and it’s a critique not a ‘i like the show keep it upue’

#8

First please keep this thread civil even if you don’t agree.

Not everyone is going to agree with you. I for example do not agree with your opening post and that does not automatically mean all I am looking for is posts that only praise RollPlay. I would hope that just as you would ask others to consider and respect your opinion you would do the same even if they do not agree with you.

Thank you.

2 Likes
#9

the guy called me a troll…

#10

You can see that that post has been dealt with.
That is all I have to say on the matter in this thread in order to not derail it. Thank you.

#11
  • i think the players should be more RP focused less number focused
  • i think players should rely less on the DM to play their characters
  • most players are great at giving each other the floor and/or interacting, the last points were positive examples of well thought out and interestingly played characters
#13

Personally I like both. I hope there is always a D&D campaign running, the numbers do interest me and I do enjoy watching them think strategically.

#14

Personally I am the other end of the scale and enjoy the gaming/combat/unpredictability that the numbers based shows produce. I very much enjoy the more narrative shows too, love the stories they create and the characters within, but they can often feel safer. You don’t worry about the main cast so much, because they are telling the story of those characters, which the cast member generally wants to hold on to, and if they do die/move on, it is often a planned decision.

I was a big fan of the West Marches because of the rotating cast, some with very little experience, and the destruction of a character that this very often lead to. It was so unpredictable and even when a cast member had big plans for their character, if they made a bad decision, it was in the hands of the dice. It never felt safe, which made it all the more exciting and captivating to me.

I don’t believe TTRPGs are “writing games not fighting games”, they are whatever you want them to be. They are a sandbox for stories; whether that story is controlled predominantly by the GM, players or dice is up to those playing it.

I feel the variety of shows at the moment is great as it caters for a lot of different audiences, and while I don’t have the RP experience to judge it from your perspective, seeing some of the suggestions in the “Who would you like to see on Rollplay” thread, maybe it’s a gap in the portfolio that JP could consider for upcoming one-shots to see how it was received.

2 Likes
#15

For me, and of course this might be only me, I like it. There are plenty of other shows that do it the way you describe and that’s fine… but it’s just not for me… and that’s fine as well.

RollPlay don’t have to be for everyone. RollPlay really only need to be for those that want RollPlay.

At the end of the day however there’s still room to grow and there’s always the possibility that a future show is all about having people with deep knowledge of the rules. I think there’s room for both options.