A community-ran lemmy community to talk about all things Dropout!
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i fell in love with dropout with game changer. There are episodes I force my friends to watch in order to get them hooked too, like Sam Says, Beat the Buzzer, the Drinking Game (now free on yt).
I tried to watch some D20 but I can't focus on other people playing dnd, while I love to play it myself.
I also love Parlor Room, Very Important People, when I have little time Breaking News. Now I'm watching everything animated that is on the platform, the shorts and Don't Hug Me I'm Scared.
"The Parlor Room" is everything I wished Tom Vassal's "Dice Tower" and Wil Wheaton's show had grown into.
I think the big difference is DropOut has such a deep bench of comedians.
Even so, The Parlor Room is my favorite effective and entertaining way to shop for board games and learn the rules.
I wish my second favorite, "Beer and Boardgames" would join DropOut so I could watch them ad free more easily.
Thanks for all the recommendations!!
Be sure to check ouy Hyper Team Mechatron Go.
It's a delightful spoof of Power Rangers that has more heart than it has any right to.
I get a kick out of Um Actually.
What's it like?
A bunch of really smart moronic geeks having a lot of fun.
Game Changer, Make Some Noise, and Very Important People are the popular ones I keep up with. I loved Thousandaires, but that's not coming back. Parlor Room is great if you like board games. Gastronauts for cooking. There are a ton of good shows...
The one that I would recommend that doesn't get discussed much is Total Forgiveness. Starts off as a funny challenge, but gets really interesting.
The title "Total Forgiveness" keeps making more sense the further into the series you get
Grant at the flea market was brutal.
I was subscribed for a year and canceled it a while ago. I liked the gamechanger shorts and VIP shorts enough to subscribe. Watching gamechanger was good but seemed like it kinda trailed off for me. VIP ended up being more enjoyable watching the shorts 90% of the time. I never got into the d20 stuff but tried. Just not for me. There were a few other things i tried but in the end nothing that had me coming back to it like gamechanger and i just didn't want to keep a sub for that alone. Will probably wait for the full season to release and then sub a month.
The d20 on the bus originated from one of the gamechanger episodes. Wont say more than that to avoid game changer spoilers but the gm/elf there was Katie Marovitch who is a regular dropout member
Omg thanks for the breadcrumbs :D
Check out Game Changer Season 7 ep.8 Fool's Gold and the On a Bus Variant will make way more sense.
Game Changer is incredible, especially the episodes where Sam tortures Brennan (essentially all of them that feature Brennan).
I've also seen a fair bit of Make Some Noise. I find it to be more hit or miss than Game Changer. It's never bad but it's not usually quite as much unbridled chaos as Game Changer.
I've been slowly making my way through the D20 content, I watched all the seasons of Fantasy High, and I'm almost done with Unsleeping City. I definitely liked Fantasy High more, but Unsleeping City is great. I'm undecided which campaign I'm going to watch next, but I'm open to suggestions!
D20 on a Bus is amazing. Katie messing with a bunch of experienced DMs is hilarious, and watching Brennan get increasingly exasperated is always entertaining!
who is the elf lady and how do they know her?
That's Katie Marovich, who has been a writer for Dropout since it was CollegeHumor. She's easily one of the funniest people they employ.
Edit to add: one of Droput's MOs is to piss Brennan off. Sam Reich does everything in his little mischievous power to get a rise out of that poor, poor man.
Personally I don't like watching liveplay ttrpg shows, so my favorites to watch are Gamechanger and Make Some Noise. I also love Smartpants and Gastronauts, and occasionally we'll catch Um, Actually.
I was drawn in by Make Some Noise. I have fond memories of watching Who’s Line Is It Anyway with my family as a kid. I tried watching the reboot, but it fell pretty flat. No offense to the old cast, but it was clear they needed some fresh talent. Turns out Make Some Noise was exactly what I was looking for.
I also love Game Changer and Smartypants. I haven’t gotten around to any of the other shows yet.
If you like musical improv too, you should give Play It By Ear a go
Dude when I was in high school, we had an improv lunch club where we had a few folks who would get up and do improv games, a lot of which came straight from whose line, and the rest of us could just hang out in the audience and enjoy it. That's so awesome that this show brings back a similar format, I'll definitely check it out.
I think, like a lot of people, my first exposure to Dropout's stuff was on youtube. There's a lot of stuff you can watch for free before paying for it, and Sam makes a point of keeping everything affordable and customer-friendly.
For Game Changer, watch the first Sam Says episode to get a sense for the tone.
For Make Some Noise, you can just check out their clip channel and look at... Any of them. There's no continuity to worry about.
For Um Actually, there's an episode about D&D that, as a D20 fan, you should be able to play along with.
I'm not interested in the DND content, which I know is big for a lot of people. I'm also not crazy I to the other shows I've seen. Smartypants is some easy entertainment. VIP depends a lot on the guest for me. But Gamechanger is like the reason I maintain my subscription.
What's the deal with smarty pants?
It's comedians doing presentations on topics of their choosing. Some highlights from season 1 for me would be Paul talking about the human body, Demi discussing what it means to be an ally and Ryan vying for an honorary degree. There's three presentations per episode, each being about 10 minutes long.
Wow that sounds amazing!
About critical role season 4, it's a completely new world, new lore, new characters, new everything. They have plenty introductory videos if you want to get the gist of the world, but honestly going blind into the first chapter might be great too.
It's a westmarches campaign, meaning it's 12 players, sometimes intermingling, sometimes separated in 3 different tables.
The way they seem to have structured it is having 4 chapters with everyone (kinda crazy), then a separate arc with 3 4 people tables where stuff some characters see is relevant for others, and we as audience know about it but they as performers don't metagame. It's great. It feels like having several short D20 campaigns in the same world one after another or in parallel. For me it has all the good things of D20, but with more continuity.
The separate tables thing feels like having separate characters that are followed in game of thrones, where some character might learn about something happening somewhere that is going to heavily affect another character, but has no way of acting upon it.
Now apparently they are doing another joined table chapter where characters will probably swap tables. I really really recommend watching it, iirc it's free on youtube.
... About your title question, I watch not all but most D20 and their adventure tables, dirty laundry, Um Actually, smartypants, Game Changer and Make Some Noise. Not every chapter but most.
