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It's not Critical Role, it's Podcasting Itself (ttrpg.network)

submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by sirblastalot@ttrpg.network to c/rpg@ttrpg.network

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I recently started a new campaign. Two players (one who has played in my games before and their SO, who has been begging me for a spot for years) unexpectedly dropped out, moments before our first session. Their reason was somewhat baffling; they said they didn't want to spend "all day" on this, despite the game only going from noon to 3PM. They seemed to think this was a totally unreasonable expectation on my part, despite them previously having stated they were available during that time. This puzzled me.

I've been musing on this, and the strange paradox of people that say they want to play D&D but don't actually want to play D&D, and I've had an epiphany.

A lot of people blame Critical Role or other popular D&D shows for giving prospective players misplaced perceptions, often related to things like your DM's voice acting ability or prop budget, but I don't think that's what's going on here. My realization is that, encoded in the medium of podcasts and play videos, is another expectation: New players unconsciously expect to receive D&D the way they receive D&D shows: on-demand, at their house, able to be paused and restarted at their whim, and possibly on a second-screen while they focus on something else!

I don't know as this suggests anything we as DMs could do differently to set expectations, but it did go a long ways to helping me understand my friends, and I thought it might help someone here to share.

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[–] brenticus@lemmy.world 10 points 5 months ago (2 children)

This sounds much more like the reason. 12pm-3pm, plus some time before and after to prep and commute and stuff, plus these things often run long in my experience... It easily becomes most of the afternoon. If you have anything else you need to do that day it becomes a fairly big deal.

[–] timgrant@ttrpg.network 4 points 5 months ago

Yes, and Noon to 3:00 PM can blow a hole in your free time in a way that something running 7:00-10:00 PM doesn't.

I put about 6-10 hours a week into RPG's (DM'ing/playing/prepping) but would never want to play every Saturday afternoon. That would totally crimp my other interests.

[–] bradorsomething@ttrpg.network 2 points 5 months ago

I think the hardest part is by far dealing with no shows. I have a group that meets 1 in 3 sessions, with no idea which ones people will cancel on. It makes it hard to devote any energy to something unlikely to happen.