This seems interesting.  I don’t believe I have watched anything they have produced. At least not knowingly.  What are people’s take on it?

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/30/critica ... aters.html

-SKA

Not really my cup of tea (like playing more than listening to other people playing tbh).

But no doubt that they have been a huge part of why D&D is so huge now (last 5 years)

Like the others have stated here, I'm not a huge fan of Critical Role (and I actually like watching D&D livestreams).

There are two things I will give them credit for:

1. Putting a greater focus on roleplaying versus combat, or at least making non-combat roleplay "cool". I really dig games that are two thirds narrative/roleplay and one third combat. Too much combat becomes a mechanical slog that doesn't do it for me.

2. Making the thing I got beat up for doing in grade school "cool" to the mainstream, and thereby inspiring lots of new players to pick up the game. Say what you will about 5e, it obviously has grown the game by leaps and bounds. We'll see how these new players and DMs deal with the upcoming edition switch, I suspect many of them will fly the coop but the hardcores will keep coming back for sure.

I like that show, even if I play since 1986, i still need to improve and as far as its nicely organized, I often learn a few tricks.
Through the years, I noticed that gameplay within same group of people tends to produce a unique style and lock somewhat that group onto it.

So its also good to check out how other people do the thing.

On another hand, I guess they also make good money from the show and use part of it into charity and projects, so not bad too.

It's the most popular stream out there. Literally the most popular show on the internet. It started as a private game streamed as a lark and now they own their own a production company, publishing company, and working on an animated D&D show with Amazon. The production value of their games is insane. They're all multi millionaires now. The show has a huge, passionate fanbase called Critters. They play d&d live shows to sellout halls of thousands. Everything they touch turns to gold. Their merchandise becomes immediate collectibles once they discontinue with their early dice sets going for $600+ already. Same is true with their tshirts, pins, and even the stuffed animals. I bought their campaign supplement book maybe a year ago for like $40 and it's already a collectible for like $200. With such popularity, they catch a lot of hate but it's jealousy more than anything. Type in Critical Role into the Amazon search to see how much stuff they're selling. They're so wholesome that there's so little to actually hate. They're RL friends playing D&D and stumbled ass backwards into tremendous success.