The Chain, Episode One: Red Sky At Morning
Video Statistics and Information
Channel: Matthew Colville
Views: 642,250
Rating: 4.8999128 out of 5
Keywords: Dungeons and Dragons, D&D, 5e, Actual Play, Matt Colville, The Chain, The Chain of Acheron, MCDM Presents
Id: l6u_VDYpI3g
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 225min 11sec (13511 seconds)
Published: Sat Feb 02 2019
Please note that this website is currently a work in progress! Lots of interesting data and statistics to come.
Assuming the group was aware something like this could happen and REALLY trust the DM, I'm ok with these choices Matt made.
Constructive criticism for future streams is the inclusion of music and less cross-talk/table chatter while someone is talking.
With music, I know you can't use most music due to royalties and licenses, but there's plenty of royalty free music from Kevin Mcleod and composers similar to him that you could use. It helps establish the mood.
As for cross talk, I know it's common in most normal games of D&D, but it REALLY takes away from the viewer and I don't think it's much of a sacrifice for the players.
Other than that, my wishlist is to have both the main stream and the tactical stream (Matt has another stream dedicated to the battle map which I think is a great idea) to have the time visible, so that it's easier to sync the two if you're watching the VODs. Or some other way to make it easier to sync up. I spent a lot of time trying to sync the two up.
I gotta say I loved this. I was smiling the whole way through. A lot of people have made criticism of the cross talking and the tangents and stuff like that, but that's what brought the show alive for me. It felt like a GAME. I loved that they got distracted by their minis at the start, wouldn't you?
A lot of people seem to be wanting this to be more like Critical Role, but we already have a Critical Role. Hell we've got several. And don't get me wrong I love Critical Role, but it scratches a very different itch.
Edit: already addressed - https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/all1lh/matt_colvilles_new_dd_stream_is_starting_now/efhxiyc/?context=3
Am I missing something about how they rolled their stats? The first person they showed rolling has this:
5+4+3 = 12
6+5+2 = 13
4+4+1 = 9
so far so good...
5+4+4 = 14...?
6+5+3 = 15...?
5+4+2 = 12...?
And then later someone else has 6+5+1 = 11......
I hope this is just the person making the video messing up, not actually an error on their character sheets.
I really liked the stream. It was totally different from CR (which I also religiously watch) but it was fun watching 'regular' people play D&D. I find ever since I've been DMing I've been much more critical of Mercer's DM choices, but that was nothing compared to how much I disagreed with Colville's choices. But I am looking forward to the campaign diaries and future sessions.
edit: I would recommend watching them play Codenames if you had trouble connecting with the players. I find that I liked all of them, but I remember not liking many of them in the original Colville streams before his Kickstarter. So if you want to watch it but are having trouble connecting with the players, I recommend watching them play codenames.
I tried so hard to get into this, I’ve been a MCDM fan and I’m excited for them. But after 45 minutes of figuring out where to place their minis for the first fight, I just can’t do it. I’ll watch the campaign diaries and everything else, but livestream D&D is not for me.
I really liked it. Great production values and storytelling, and a really strong setup for what will be an interesting campaign. The characters are interesting and I'm excited to see them fleshed out.
I think a lot of the criticism I've seen tends to be negligent of some premises that were laid out in the first place: It's mostly meant to show an average group of friends just playing the game and having fun, and the first session was intended to be rail-roady and provide a lot of setup.
All things considered, I think they succeeded at what they set out to do. It's not for everyone but that can be said of most anything.
It was decent. I'd prefer one broadcast rather than a duel broadcast, with someone managing the camera switches so we can see the battles.
'Ignore' twitch chat, please - don't look at the numbers while you're streaming, it'll distract you big time. I'm not sure if this is what was knocking Colville out of rhythm, but there was something not right.
Characters and potential story seems good though. I like the rank system.
This is a great of example of why Critical Role is so popular. I love Matt Colville and think he is an amazing DM and great with the game. I like him better as a DM than Matt Mercer. It enforces what makes Critical Role so great is it's players.
Critical Role, since it's players are all actors, have incredible charisma and they make things very entertaining by their interactions with each other. This group has very low charisma and are just not particularly interesting people so the game gets entirely carried by Matt Colville.
So all you new DMs out there who look at Critical Role and think you'll never be a great DM. It's up to your players to make the game great, not just you.
I thought it was really good and I’m surprised at some of the criticisms, maybe people expected something more like CR.
Stuff I liked: - the players felt like normal people not professional actors/comedians/voice actors, I’m sure they’ll RP more as time goes on and we will get to know them and their characters better; - the story and the setting have loads of potential. I love the premise and the level of world building is awesome; - the set pieces were epic, the way Matt described them was extremely cinematic. - great product values, art, minis etc.
Stuff that I didn’t enjoy so much: - too much cross table chat, that was really distracting. Our DM often calls us on that and we aren’t even broadcasting; - too much looking at phones etc. Matt seemed super distracted at times and maybe that’s just how he is, but I’d prefer less of that. Again this is somewhat frowned on at our table; - a bit too much ‘metagaming’ to correct this they just need to strategise in character rather than out of it; - somewhat lite on RP but that’ll come i’m sure - (watching some of it a second time) Man the combat dragged at points with a mixture of ‘what can I do, will will I do, what are we doing’, what someone else thinks someone should do. That’s fine for a first session. But they need to know when they’re up next and have their actions primed and ready to go. That speeds up combat, makes it more interesting and actually creates more ‘space’ for RP.
Other thoughts; - Finding some means of integrating a view of the battle map / grid more. Maybe cutting between a view of the 6 of them and a view of the table. - Keeping the run time down, I don’t know how everyone gets time to watch these 4 hour episodes every week! - Campaign diary! (Narrated by Matt in a video - I bet these could be awesome and a great way of keeping up with the story). - Matts strength is story telling / talking, is there a future perhaps even non D&D project that involves him doing some very of old skool verbal story telling OR could there be supplementary lore videos told as stories.
All in all I enjoyed it.
Edit: added an additional comment.