Editing Critical Role (section)

==Why Does /tg/ Hate Critical Role?==
That's a tough question. And probably the most honest answer is that /tg/ doesn't hate Critical Role per se, instead what they really hate is all the amazing talent in the show that isn't getting used at all. Critical Role has three seasons; the first is widely considered by /tg/ to be really good, especially the earlier episodes which had a much lighter tone and seemed to truly be a home game brought on to the internet. However the second is much more condemned. Campaign 1 is 115 episodes, with multiple arcs, boss battles, and two truly great "Save the World" quests. Campaign 2 has, well, a lot of filler, and is even longer than the first at 141 whopping episodes. The cast decided to be more Chaotic Neutral than the last campaign and that has lead to a mostly aimless plot where the Mighty Nein try to avoid getting entangled in current affairs. So now we have high-CR encounters and problems, faced by a murderhobo-ing party. For better or worse, the second season is significantly more focused on character development instead. Campaign 3 in the meantime is even more meandering, not helped by the players frequently defaulting to just having Matt through NPCs tell them what to do next while he prepares another long lecture about the setting that would be better saved for the inevitable Marquet campaign guide. 

To put things in perspective, by episode 50 of Season 1 the Heroes had 
* ventured deep into the underdark, 
* slain a beholder that had dominated a clan of mind flayers, 
* freed a city from the undead tyranny of the Vampiric Briarwoods, 
* and slain multiple high level monsters. 
By episode 50 of Season 2? They had 
* met Spurt, 
* accidentally caused an act of terrorism in a Concord city, 
* and stolen a valuable relic from another nation that basically guaranteed war, and during a brief period in-between became pirates. 
Not quite as epic, is it? Though to be fair, Campaign 1 started streaming when the characters were Level 9, and Campaign 2 started at level 1; how many campaigns have you played where a team of Level 1 nobodies defeated a Beholder and his Duergar/Mindflayer army?

[[File:Criticalrole-dicerolls.png|300px|thumb|right|Critical Role is like wrestling: even when you know it's all fake, you can't help but watch.]]
Another frequently levelled criticism ([[skub|rightly or wrongly]]) is that what is shown on screen in the series is a poor representation of an average p&p RPG session. Yet the series being popular and often the first introduction to non-vidya RPG's for potential new players, the show creates a lot of expectations that arent held up by the reality of the hobby... to the immense frustration of both the newcomers who expected something else, and the oldtimers becoming fed up of being unjustly compared to Matt Mercer - something Mercer himself has spoken up about and against.

(And as for Campaign 3, it's too early to tell for now, but the amount of criticism the show has gotten indicates that it is receiving a far more mixed reception than Campaign 2 did)

The actual difficulty of the campaign has also been brought into question, with accusations that Mercer (or as he's often called "Merciful Mercer") fudges rolls when he can to avoid putting the party in any permanent situations where they could suffer losses or letting the players off the hook with more braindead decisions. The crew themselves are aware of how often they're accused of scripting out content and have made meta jokes about the "writing team" being just off camera. It's pretty clear no one actually fudges or has fudged rolls (except for [[Orion in Review|Orion]]) but that's how the internet rolls.

There is also something to be said for it being this generation's gateway drug for a new surge of interest in the hobby, the same way the [[Order of the Stick| tabletop gaming webcomic boom]] of a generation ago did for its own rush of newbies.  While not ''everyone'' on /tg/ is [[grognard| a bitter old fossil quietly furious that their once-exclusive clubhouse is throwing open the gates to let in the hoi polloi, thereby making them less special]], there are always going to be those who don't "get it" and don't like feeling alienated from the crowd chattering about the new hotness.  

Finally, there's the simple fact that Wizards is [https://youtu.be/fiOMbqPHFwo?t=23| desperately trying to piggyback on the success of the ongoing gaming podcast boom to claw for relevance], and they started slowing the [[Dungeons_%26_Dragons_5th_Edition_Books|official releases]] to make room for Critical Role supplements. Already this edition was [[Dungeons_%26_Dragons_5th_Edition#Glacial_Release_Pace|notorious for content drought]], with only [[Ed Greenwood]]'s [[Forgotten Realms|contractually-obligated]] [[Magical Realm]] (if you can even call ''Sword Coast Adventurers's Guide'' a proper campaign book) and [[Eberron]] to its name when the ''Explorer's Guide to Wildemount'' dropped. And consider ''content starvation'' - by floating sourcebooks based on popular podcasts before rereleasing the treasure-hoard of IPs they are sitting on, neither using nor allowing anyone else to use. Even for Critical Role fans, especially if they'd come in from those older IPs, it's a hard pill to swallow.  For those who aren't, it carries the pain of the newbies being not only welcomed in but ''actively catered to at their expense''. (Oh, and the actual PC-focused content Mercer produces is [[skub| of extremely contentious quality]] on top of everything else, so a lot of people had problems with it as a rules supplement, even setting aside the branding).