So I’ve started, finally, watching and catching up with Critical Role. For those that don’t know it, it’s a show of a group of voice actors playing Dungeons and Dragons (5th Edition). If you hadn’t guessed by now I’m a gamer, well, you probably haven’t been reading me very long or very well.

I just got up to episode 69, “Passed Through Fire”, and I’m enjoying it tremendously. While I’m not really big on 5th Ed, this is one of those things where the game system isn’t the situation. I admit I’m not really sure about what ‘with advantage’ and ‘with disadvantage’ mean, so I get a little lost with the system, but it’s the play that has me coming back. It’s got me feeling excited and pleased to be, hopefully, getting things stable and getting back to tabletop gaming again.

Plus the ‘wait I know that voice’ part really is cool. Admittedly, it was easy for me to hear (for my World of Warcraft playing readers) the voice of Illidan Stormrage running around in there when Vax’ildan speaks, or going (another WoW reference) “Wait, wait, is that Darion Mograine?” when Percy gets off a particular intonation. But some I don’t immediately get, so it’s cool, and I want to go tracking down some of their other work.

But the play… I just finished, as mentioned, episode 69, and it was great. They had to do a resurrection, which, gamers know, tends to be more of a ‘oh well’ after you’ve played for a while. But… I don’t know if it’s the first time they really did it, or that it came off some really dramatic stuff, or that, again, not really big about the rules, but this was great. The fact they roleplayed a lot of stuff, that these are not just a bunch of people working together, but friends, a family, really made it come together. Add in a confession of love that the recipient didn’t hear (because he was dead). They really seemed to be emoting, and all cheering when Percy came back to life.

And then there was a letter that they weren’t supposed to read, because it was supposed to be read posthumously, giving that question of “so if you come back to life what counts as posthumous?”.

It was really very well done, and it felt real.

I’m going to enjoy coming back to roleplaying.

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