Castle Magus

Yeah... no... I am not a fan of the "filmed before a live studio audience" episodes of Critical Role. Definitely not a fan, at all. I'm only about 30 minutes or so into that second one there at the moment (watching at 1.5x speed), and so far it is way more annoying than even the first one was (at least annoying enough that I felt the need to stop and make this post about how annoying it is), which was annoying enough itself. And there are apparently several more such live episodes in the future (for me, anyway), too. *weary sigh*

(EDIT) "Fortunately," the entirety of this episode was three hours of them crossing a river and fighting some kind of plant/crocodile monster, and then almost losing a flying broom, so nothing really major happened at all. (/EDIT)

The Gamers

The Gamers: Dorkness Rising

The Gamers: Hands of Fate

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I recall watching the first movie many, many years ago, maybe even before the existence of this blog (as I wasn't able to find a post about it), and given that it was released a few years before I even started this thing, that's entirely likely. I watched it back then, but all I remembered from it up to a day or so ago was the ending, which I won't spoil, and the "You're gonna backstab him with a ballista? A fucking siege weapon?" bit.

Well, I got to thinking about this again the other day, possibly for reasons (and, as an aside, I'm currently up to the start of episode 44 on that as of now), and upon attempting to look up info on The Gamers, I learned that at some point after I first heard about this thing that was released almost two decades ago, there have been two sequels (which I have watched as of now) and quite a bit more stuff (which I have not yet watched). I think there's even a fourth movie floating around out there, too, at least in part, maybe? I don't know? The status of the whole thing is kind of confusing, but in any case, that isn't available for free on Youtube, so I haven't tried to watch it yet, either. All I've seen of this stuff myself as of the writing of this post are the ones I embedded above.

So yeah. The Gamers. It's a pretty cool franchise, at least what I've seen of it so far.

As of last night, I'm up to the start of episode 18 of Critical Role (campaign 1), so far. Yeah... I've actually watched two episodes per day on some of the days when I had time available to do so (sometimes staying up way later than I probably should have to do so), in lieu of, like, playing video games or whatever, but definitely at least one ep per day so far. It does go by a little faster than it seems like it would, watching on 1.25x speed (bumped up to 1.5x for the after-session stuff) and skipping the 10-20+ minutes worth of breaks at the start and in the middle.

I've said in the past that I don't give a fuck about sports and I don't give a fuck about (fak)e-sports either, but... this, this right here, watching these guys play D&D... I'm going to have to say this is my "sports," now.

Counter Monkey was kind of the gateway drug, I guess, though that only involved Spoony talking about playing, not actually playing (I haven't watched his Pathfinder stuff). That, along with reading things like Old Man Henderson, The Ballad of Edgardo, and That Guy Destroys Psionics (though those, funny as they are to read about after the fact, would be more like reasons not to play tabletop games, honestly). And there was stuff like Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Nights, and, of course, Planescape: Torment (also Pillars of Eternity, Tyranny, and Torment: Tides of Numenera, though I haven't completed a full playthrough of those as of yet). However, aside from when I watched Wil Wheaton DM Titansgrave: The Ashes of Valkana a few years ago, this is the first time I've seen actual Dungeons & Dragons (since, well, Titansgrave technically wasn't actually using D&D in the first place).

Still don't know if I'll ever get involved in actually playing this stuff myself... but then, I'll never play in the Super Bowl, either. *shrug* I'd watch a million hours of these guys playing D&D before I'd willingly watch another fucking football game, though (and would actively seek out a game of D&D or whatever to play before I'd ever willing play a game of football, either). ¬_¬

I keep thinking to myself that I really want to watch Critical Role... but then I remember that the first campaign alone is literally 19 days and 9 hours worth of video[1]. That's 465 hours and change. The second campaign is even longer, weighing in at 23 days and 1 hour (and counting). 553 hours. That's 1018 hours (and that number will increase) of video to watch if I want to watch these things. And even with just watching one episode a day, that's still 3-4+ hours per day for (as of right now) 254 days, and that's assuming I did watch an entire episode in a day and didn't split it up over multiple days or something.

By comparison, if one wanted to watch all of Star Trek[2], i.e. all of the shows, movies, animated series, shorts, etc., it would take "only" around 652 hours (as of now, at least according to this).

But then, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step and all that. Still... it's pretty daunting...

So... I think I'm going to just dive in, starting at the start, as soon as I can determine where, exactly, that should be... only... not tonight, as it's already after 1:00am EST. >_>;

(EDIT) Just got finished watching the first episode. I kind of feel like Gabe in that Minecraft PA comic. "Oh no. Oh no. I'm in some real fucking trouble here." (/EDIT)

[1] - According to a site I found via Google that calculates playlist lengths, since Youtube itself asininely no longer provides that information, as far as I can tell, even though it used to do that, iirc.

[2] - Which I had actually successfully done at one point, but then they just, you know, kept making more Star Trek. Sadly, I can no longer say that I've watched all of Star Trek at this point.