When SourceFed's SourceFedNerd channel came out with a "SourceFed Plays Dungeons & Dragons" series of videos back in November of 2015, I originally stayed away from the videos because they clearly were not playing D&D (and it rubbed me the wrong way that they kept calling it D&D - even though it wasn't - and just giving a disclaimer that it was really improv storytelling). But I recently went back and watched them and I really appreciated the humor of the series; I just had to let go of the "D&D" labeling that was clearly just there to attract viewers because of D&D's recent return to popularity (thanks to 5E).
For a link to a YouTube playlist of the series, use this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnXX4j3toqc&index=1&list=PLHB2mSAiOCkHwDjcgO7B4NHGFH4yPmRYI
Maude, a former Nickelodeon child star, moderates the series as the supposed DM (but she seems to be arbitrarily making up rules for their game of pretend that involves occasionally rolling a d20). The 3 players look like: 1 son of Michael Scott from The Office, 1 son of Tim Curry from Clue, and perhaps the brother of PewDiePie of YouTube fame. After 4 episodes the cast switches out some, but they actually handle the transition really well.
The series is good for a laugh and I realized how refreshing it was to watch adults play pretend, not entirely bound by rules. Some of the unintentional humor that I noticed was that one of the players was supposed to be a dwarf ranger, but he kept playing his character as if he was a thief/rogue; either he misheard or misunderstood (or perhaps purposely played that way because that was what he really wanted to play).
With the recent closure of all things SourceFed, it looks like we will never get more of these videos. The first series was 10 episodes of about 35 minutes each (thus about 6 hours), the second series was a similar length, and then the 3rd one was a shorter series of videos. Like many other online RPG videos, they generated a lot of Reddit commentary via the SourceFed Reddit forum.
Overall
If you're looking for a rules-light entertaining series that is a much lighter commitment to watch through than most, I highly recommend these guys. If it's going to bother you when they don't follow any D&D rules, then don't watch this series at all. They clearly set out to just have fun playing an improv game of pretend and it is very entertaining to watch that unfold.
No comments:
Post a Comment