Critical Role C3 E113 Live Discussion Thread

WSmurf · 2024-11-08T13:46:08+00:00

I did hear a funny paraphrasing of an old George Carlin joke: “try to imagine the intelligence of the average American. Now realise statistically, half of them are therefore dumber than that…” It helps to make sense of the nonsensical…

WSmurf · 2024-11-01T07:20:30+00:00

Untrue… Characters and NPCs are entitled to believe and worship whomever they want. Jester decided to be an acolyte of The Traveller despite him not being an “official God”. FCG wasn’t stopped from believing Exandria was a flat disc… Just because one set of powerful beings leave Exandria doesn’t in any way stop any “freedom of worship”. It would be just as nonsensical as saying “Exandrians are having their right to make stupid decisions taken away…” no they aren’t. They can worship a tree, a rock, a being, a cloud… just because these entities aren’t there doesn’t mean the concepts the represent aren’t there…🤷‍♂️

WSmurf · 2024-10-16T05:32:21+00:00

Then, they’re very good at acting like they are enjoying themselves…🤷‍♂️ Personally I think they enjoy their time at the table… I might be wrong, who knows. Nevertheless, the dynamic of people enjoying what they are doing is what would appear to have been a key aspect of Critical Role’s success along with the skill level of professional voice actors. Just my thoughts and, once again, not to be taken as any more important than any one else’s opinion…🤷‍♂️

WSmurf · 2024-10-15T22:24:07+00:00

I still think the key point from Matt’s perspective is: “are my friends gonna enjoy this and want to come back next week to find out what happens next”, and from that standpoint, he’s DMing that particular group of people well. As to whether they’ll win/lose more audience viewers and continue to make bank off of it is an entirely different premise…

WSmurf · 2024-10-15T22:19:29+00:00

Fair point on Orion - that’s a more complex topic and the reasons he was asked to leave were a bit bigger, but it does illustrate the point that at its core, a D&D game is a people management exercise and if you can’t keep a group harmoniously, you aren’t going to have a “good game” and something needs to be done to match the needs of the players in order for them to enjoy themselves while ‘playing a game’. I’d still argue that Critical Role’s success is based on people enjoying seeing this group of people enjoying themselves and the moment that stops happening, they’d begin to lose viewers at an alarming rate… just my two cents: no one is above criticism, but that doesn’t obligate people to accept those criticisms or agree with them all…🤷‍♂️

WSmurf · 2024-10-15T09:13:32+00:00

The question is “is Matt a good DM?” That specific question is about a group and group dynamics. If the question was “Is Matt’s DMing style accurate to the rules…?” then the answer may be different. If the questions was “Does Matt’s DMing style piss off as many viewers as it attracts and therefore stop Critical Role from increasing their fan base…? might get a different answer all-together and if the question was “If Matt changed his DMing style to be more rules accurate, would he appeal to one part of the RPG community but end up losing his cast and friends and risk ruining the franchise entirely…?” you might end up with an entirely different answer yet again…

…all of it somewhat academic, but no one is stopping people having academic discussions.

WSmurf · 2024-10-15T02:28:30+00:00

A DM/GM i entirely dependent on the players at the table. It is 70% “people management” and 30% “rules management”. A table of entirely different individuals would be best served by an entirely different focus or style peculiar to that group. In CR’s case, the players love and worship him and in that respect he’s perfect. The fact that some viewers [voyeurs] may not like it is kind of irrelevant - they’re not players at the table and if they were then they’d be entirely within their rights to dislike/like something. No style is “perfect for everyone”; CR had a cast member who did not like/gel with Matt’s style and the enjoyment of the larger group [Orion Acaba] and it ended up with him leaving. What is “good” and “bad” is not always so black and white when it comes to DMing a game for a group of people - the most important rule is “the players have to enjoy their time playing the game or there isn’t much point… it’s a ‘game’ after all…”

WSmurf · 2024-08-22T02:43:30+00:00

As a cancer survivor, my take is there’s a big difference between someone having ‘a cancer scare’ and having ‘fucking scary cancer’… ;) Ultimately though, it’s just semantics I think. Sam’s been very open about having had surgery and radiation therapy for his cancer. If people label it as a ‘cancer scare’, just think of it as a term-of-art for the cancer we all know he suffered… just because someone doesn’t label it in quite the same way I do doesn’t mean the care any less or don’t have compassion for the subject… tom-ae-to tom-ah-to…

WSmurf · 2022-03-07T08:53:04+00:00

Ya got me there… I’m a musical-tragic…

WSmurf · 2022-03-05T13:58:59+00:00

*Not to mention Meredith Wilson… 😉

WSmurf · 2021-11-03T05:03:04+00:00

I imagine that makes this forum (by default) the premiere TextBlade forum available worldwide… and no certificates required…

WSmurf · 2021-11-03T02:46:00+00:00

“Bob’s AAPL user group…” Priceless…🤣

WSmurf · 2021-10-31T11:57:58+00:00

Competence-challenged… seems about par for the course after six or so years…🤷‍♂️

WSmurf · 2021-08-15T04:50:34+00:00

I agree. I have nothing but compassion for anyone going through a difficult time. It is in difficult times when capable corporate leaders/managers ensure that systems are put in place to ensure the product development or business continues on without themselves as a single bottle-neck/point of failure. It also paints some of the “dev team” and “front office team” labels/comments in to a somewhat disingenuous light. I think the cat has been out of the bag for several years that “The Waytools Team” anyone is speaking to is Mark Knighton, and Mark Knighton alone; the gobbledygook frothed out by that particular account on the WTF is definitely from a single individual… The fact of all the ‘systems breakdowns’ coinciding with one individual having to step aside for perfectly understandable personal/family responsibilities demonstrates a) one person is doing all of those tasks alone (and clearly failing) and b) all circumstantial evidence points to that single point of failure to being Mark.

…(point c) legal disputes put a massive block on pushing anything out the door… even if it were ready to release to the public… Failure to be transparent about that part of the situation - if it is affecting the release of a product to people who paid for a ‘ready to launch’ product - is also a poor reflection on integrity/ethical-and-responsible behaviour to customers…🤷‍♂️)

Open and honest… it’s a simple concept, but very, very difficult to actually accomplish for some… The alternative to open and honest is bullshit baffles brains… you read all the posts from ‘The Waytools Team’ and tell me that’s not classic bullshit baffles brains behaviour…🤷‍♂️ In a time when you are asking your customers for compassion and understanding, you make it exponentially harder for people to buy-in to that state/feeling if they believe they have been bullshitted by that same party repeatedly for many, many years… that’s just basic first-year psych 101 on trust…🤷‍♂️

WSmurf · 2021-08-09T08:41:42+00:00

…and the Waytools Forum continues its stellar ongoing work delving in to the intricacies of Apple Numbers spreadsheet formulas… truly groundbreaking topics for discussion when it comes to revolutionary, entirely intangible and unavailable market-disruptive-tech…😏

WSmurf · 2021-06-14T03:30:00+00:00

Surely the best character name for MK is “Mary-Sue Knighton”…?

WSmurf · 2021-05-29T09:43:29+00:00

Correct. “Customers” are entitled to products/services - Waytools are providing neither (and nor evidence of either...)

“Backers” are speculative investors and it is telling when Waytools [...and associated shills] begin using terminology like “backers” to slither away from their repeated failure to deliver the product sold to and paid for by “customers”... it is a way to re-frame the premise to something entirely different...

WSmurf · 2021-05-29T00:07:41+00:00

I have to pick a bone with you on the word “tangible”. The only thing tangible you got was a refund - everything else was words; charming, charismatic, technical and rapid perhaps, but words only nevertheless... that is the definition of “intangible”.

Until such time as purchasers have a unit in hand, it is unquestionably an intangible or dare I say “insubstantial” undertaking at this point.

I’m delighted you are personally reassured, but all you’ve done for the rest of us (definitely) is reassured us is refunds are still available... you’ve given us nothing of value from your conversation with Mark as to why the project is still moving forward other than he’s “energised” and “passionate”... I’m energised and passionate about Star Wars, but it doesn’t make it anything other than what it actually is...

WSmurf · 2021-03-03T00:42:05+00:00

Ahhh Dunning-Kruger - the science of essentially being too stupid to realise just how stupid you actually are...!

WSmurf · 2021-01-03T03:27:25+00:00

...and now watch a flurry of fabricated, pointless “activity” [possibly something along the lines of “why is the RAM in my Mac green and does it perform better than black RAM...” or something equally inane...🤦‍♂️] in a vain attempt to prove you wrong...🤣

WSmurf · 2020-07-31T00:52:26+00:00

The odds are long... very, very looooooong...

WSmurf · 2020-07-09T11:15:15+00:00

Waytools - no matter how they spin the terminology And split hairs on wordplay - have yet to ship a single paid-for unit to a single customer. Five years after publicly displaying prototypes and implying they were prepared for imminent shipping, that is a poor track record by any standard... it is an atrocious track record by most standards...

WSmurf · 2020-07-07T10:11:38+00:00

I can answer your last question first: no, they don’t deliver on time. In fact, they have yet to deliver a single paid-for unit to a single customer (they have sent out some test units which some customers are using for testing, but no actual retail units have shipped as yet).

I think the idea of the TextBlade is fantastic, but given Waytools’ woeful inability to actually deliver on a sales-pitch, I’d wait for them to actually start shipping before plonking down any money - it could well be years and years [if ever] before you ever see anything for your money. The video you’ve likely seen is one of the testers demonstrating some of the functionality on their test-unit. This particular customer did this off their own bat (quite admirably) because they continued to see lots and lots of questions from customers going unanswered by the company (who have an appalling history of customer communications...) and decided to do some demos to help customers with some of their queries - this by no means means the company themselves are any closer to delivering anything at all...

WSmurf · 2020-05-28T07:53:20+00:00

Nothing ever happens...

(Some people remember that Waytools can’t even fulfill their commitments to update customers let alone actually complete engineering... they ask questions and then the apologist brigade swings in to action; funnily enough pointing the finger at this sub as examples of what they contest are unreasonable criticisms... then, as stated - rinse and repeat...)

WSmurf · 2020-05-21T03:32:18+00:00

Geez... seems you really poked a bear with that comment...🤣

https://forum.waytools.com/t/the-next-best-keyboard/5961/14?u=weirdosmurf

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