Acquisitions Incorporated got me into D&D - I'd always been curious about TTRPGs, but it was this that really got me interested in it. The "C" Team, who just had their first normal episode today (I missed the stream to help cook dinner and am eagerly awaiting it) actually started after I had begun DMing, but I think it really expanded my sense of how the game could be played. I've also gotten into Critical Role, which has got to be the most popular of the D&D streams/podcasts. I'll confess that I didn't warm up to this as quickly as the C team, though as I've gotten into the characters I'm definitely now a big fan. Jerry Holkins is a naturally subversive dungeon master, and even though the stakes seem enormous (at the moment, K'thriss' patron - though not his 'god,' or 'unknowably vast godlike entity' - seems like the series big bad) there seems like there's always time for silliness, something the players obviously get into.
Matthew Mercer seems like the platonic ideal of a Dungeon Master - he seems to know all the rules and has a million characters all with clear motivations and goals as well as the potential for serious arcs for all his characters. His story is a little more standard fantasy (for now at least) but that can be a good thing. Essentially, it doesn't force comedy but allows it to arise naturally (as he points out a lot, Grog having an Intelligence of 6 makes him a fantastic character, which Travis Willingham of course plays up brilliantly.) I'm also watching the new campaign, which seems to have some strong characters already (Nott the Goblin, Jester the Cleric, and Beauregard the Monk are all memorable already) and I expect we'll see the others develop as we get to know them better.
Thinking about my own campaign, I'm definitely trying to figure out how to work my players' characters into the plot I want. This is literally my first time to the rodeo (though I've been doing it for a couple years at this point) so I'm going to forgive myself for not being quite at the Holkins/Mercer/Perkins level, but just as I have tried to make an effort to allow for non-combat solutions to problems, I think the next resolution will be to make the story more about the player characters and less whatever villains and environments I think are cool at the moment (though the two are obviously not mutually exclusive.)
There is an arc coming after their current adventures through Red Scar Plains that is still more of the "come do this thing I think is cool," but I think the next several arcs are all going to be PC-based (we're only a 3rd of the way through Red Scar Plains, though I'm hoping that we'll have more regular play time this year and thus be able to get through the following one before 2019.)
But for now I'll listen to the masters and try to glean what wisdom I can from their games.
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