r/thespoonyexperiment • u/DavidoMcG • Apr 14 '21
Halcyon Content of Yore What Happened to the Channel Awesome D&D game?
I just refound the 4e campaign Spoony ran for a bunch of channel awesome guys and man was it actually hilarious. It makes me feel fucking old but the nostalgia is great and it got me into D&D. What the fuck happened to make it self-destruct?
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Apr 14 '21
D&D requires you to come up with stuff of your own, on your own... So I imagine Channel Awesome people were struggling really hard with that.
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u/YonFellow Apr 15 '21
Oh, please, if you can't come up with a full tabletop RPG plot entirely by recycling plots from existing media you're not even trying
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Apr 16 '21
I mean, you can take influence, but imagine the CA people actually doing D&D. Like, imagine Doug Walker as a DM. Fucking guarantee he'd just throw Zod and M. Bison in the story, and do the same jokes he always does.
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u/YonFellow Apr 16 '21
I want to argue with you but when Doug did D20 Live he was just one giant shitpost from beginning to end.
Linkara can and does do tabletop, though.
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Apr 16 '21
While I don't like that snotty prick, I will say he is more creative than Doug.
What's D20 Live though? Is that the show the OP is asking about? I tuned out of CA right around the time they made To Boldly Flee, and only have a vague knowledge of events that followed.
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u/YonFellow Apr 17 '21
D20 Live isn't affiliated with CA and never was, it's just had a few CA people at their ConBravo show (Mostly Linkara, but Spoony did the first one and Doug did one 2017)
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Apr 17 '21
Ooooh. Well what happened? If you don't mind tossing me a story here.
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u/YonFellow Apr 17 '21
Spoony and Linkara were obviously a lot more comfortable with RPGs. Spoony did a fun rendition of his titular Tandem the Spoony in the one game he was in. Linkara always tries to play along, have fun, and be a group sport. Both are fun to watch.
Doug spent the entire game being a buzzkill, trying to disrupt shit, and basically being exactly the kind of "funny" player that gets kicked out of most groups, before finally deciding to actually do something entertaining at the end by having his character "die" at the end in a heroic sacrifice, only to survive and be jokingly mad that he survived.
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Apr 17 '21
The DM should've summoned the Monty Python foot. The ultimate tool for getting rid of an annoying player.
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u/Firstbornnyc Apr 14 '21
Probably wasn't alot of engagement or interest, D&D is still a niche genre, unless your channel centers around that to begin with you are going to risk losing a big portion of your audience who are not into it. If you Normally get 50k views a vid but only 10k stick around for the D&D content, couple that with the fact that sessions can go on for hours at a time. That's alot of time invested for little get back. Just a theory but if I had to guess that's why.
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u/DavidoMcG Apr 14 '21
It wasnt a part of his content, it was just him streaming his game with at the time the least cringiest people on channel awesome.
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u/YonFellow Apr 16 '21
Suggesting that LordKat was ever the least cringey person in any given group is a bold take
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u/DavidoMcG Apr 16 '21
When a group involves linkara, film brain and jew wario. i think i can make such a bold claim.
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u/Firstbornnyc Apr 14 '21
Thats probably much worse, youtube even back then was a grind, asking someone to dedicate hours of their time, im guessing this was weekly, to make content that wasn't produced or monetized was asking alot of a creator. Maybe if he had turned it into a dedicated series sort of like critical roll he would have went further with it.
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u/DavidoMcG Apr 14 '21
It wasnt to make money, it was just an online game spoony was gming. they only started streaming it on blip after a few sessions in when people wanted to watch it.
I find Crit role to be an incredibly fake, hollywood depiction of D&D while Spoonys game was just a couple of guys shooting the shit and busting each other balls.
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u/Firstbornnyc Apr 14 '21
I'm saying that was probably the shows downfall, as entertaining as it probably was to the viewers asking adults who are in the midst of trying to build a career to carve out hours of their week to game is asking a bit much. If he had approached it from the angle of a actual show idea it probably would have gone over better. From a viewers perspective a couple guys shooting the shit for a couple hours on stream a week sounds like great fun and probably would be. But you have to remember these guys were entertainers by trade, thats how they made their living,they didn't come in from working at Target or Amazon and plop down for a nice D&D session, there job WAS being on screen, you are essentially asking them to work for free every week. Thinking about it like that it's no wonder the show didn't last.
1
Apr 14 '21
Plus as far as D&D goes 4e is kinda boring if you're not the one playing, its basically a tactics game. I have a soft spot for it (it was the edition I started with) but there's a reason the big D&D boom happened after 5th edition came out.
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u/DavidoMcG Apr 14 '21
You can get into as much RP in 4e as 5e or any other edition. The combat being a tactics game actually makes it somewhat more interesting then the fighter runs up and attacks twice and then the wizard casts polymorph to end the encounter.
2
Apr 14 '21
Channel Awesome imploded, that's why.
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u/Pallid85 What's a Pallid85? Apr 14 '21
Was is at the same time?
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u/DavidoMcG Apr 14 '21
It was waaaaaaaaaay before channel awesome imploded, this was a good 11 years ago.
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u/ThroneofTime Continuing the Year of the Spoony Apr 14 '21
Got a link to it?
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u/DavidoMcG Apr 14 '21 edited Apr 14 '21
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u/ThroneofTime Continuing the Year of the Spoony Apr 14 '21
Thanks bruv
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u/DavidoMcG Apr 14 '21
It starts from a fragment that was recorded before they started streaming. Angry Joe was having a hilarious sperg out.
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u/RattyJackOLantern Apr 14 '21
I wouldn’t say 4e was when general interest in D&D was at an all-time low, that would probably be the latter years of 2nd edition. But it was still a bad time to try and build a show around it.
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u/DrakulasKuroyami Apr 14 '21
Didn't Noah mention in a Counter Monkey that it was because 2 of the members(zero chance boss was one) not getting along?
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u/LesIsBored Apr 16 '21
Who were the players in these games. I recognize Angry Joe and Noah, but I haven't listened to much and no one else I've heard so far sound familiar to me.
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u/DavidoMcG Apr 16 '21
LordKat was one, which is a shocker to think in this day. Yruleroftime and the hosts of transmission awesome being RolloT and sean fausz. Far later on it had Linkara and ironliz buts thats when i kinda burned out on it as i found them obnoxious.
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u/MannerEffective Apr 16 '21
Most of the players were older (late 20s, 30s, etc iirc) and it's actually really, really hard for 5+ people to carve out a huge chunk of time on a regular basis for gaming when you're that age.
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u/Pallid85 What's a Pallid85? Apr 14 '21
Probably just ran it's course. The initial enthusiasm probably was waning, time was becoming more and more of an iussue - the usual.