Yes, that was actually Matt Mercer. Jocat asked him to record just a few lines for the skit just to yell at him. It also ties into the joke in the rogue video that if you don't play your character according to the purest stereotype of the class Matt Mercer would sneak into your house and throw foam noodles at you from the corner of your room.
It's the Bard video, not the Rogue one. But yeah. Also you need to watch because in many of the videos there are little hidden messages that only show up for one frame.
@@SilverScribe85 It's a thing some monsters get (hasn't really been in use since 3.5E as far as I'm aware), it works by sensing vibrations in a certain area around you. Think Toph from Avatar the Last Airbender, but not as OP.
Apparently Matt Mercer loved to be asked to do things like this because he usually wasn't after critical role started to get big. Team four star talked about how excited he was got a cameo in their mustache video Edit: the fact he got so many d&d tubers into this video is amazing
Was hoping this would be the finale to you reacting to these but hey, no worries. This one is worth it. His guides to Races, Character Sheet, Alignment, and Goblins are excellent in their own right. Hope you check em out as well
Thanks, we will definitely check them all out! We weren't sure of the order and a bunch of people requested that we check out the DM guide next. Was great regardless!
Yes! Been waiting for people to react to this one. It's like... the big one. And I personally feel it's required watching for a DM. Or any GM. The conclusion it reaches is really important.
What JoCat pulled off with this video is nothing less than amazing. To put it into perspective, this video is basically the equivalent of Avengers:Endgame. Man is a legend.
I disagree with the “never say no” sentiment. You definitely want to be accommodating and respectful of your players’s wants and choices, but you should always keep the ability to say no in your back pocket, just in case someone tries to push things a little too far. Things like exceedingly broken homebrew, harassing other players, or trying to fight you on a ruling just because “this is how my first DM did it,” are a few examples.
Forgot to mention; there’s a full version of the little ditty that one girl was singing to the villain before she got cut off. It’s called The Life of a Bard. It even has a parody that tells the other side of the story called The Life of a Guard.
One of the best pieces of advice I've recieved for how to establish a proper DM mindset is that the DM writes locations, npcs, and potential encounters but they do not write events. As the dm you can't decide ahead of time what will or won't happen - thats what the players are for. You can only set up things for them to potentially run into and deal with how they respond to what you present.
The way I heard (and liked) DM'ing described is: You're preparing the templates the players use to tell their story. It's a sortof reversal of "DMs plan out the story the players act out", because while you set up the templates, your cast are the ones who dictate what happens with your pieces. The more you fight what they do, the worse the storymaking gets. Of course, correcting a misuse of the templates is good, but you aren't making the story, they are.
@@Jrocks26 Absolutely look up the other youtubers that cameo'd. I think the video has a list of them all. Dingo Doodles and Overly Sarcastic Productions are my two favorites.
like the Unexepectables. just a quick 200 episodes of a total of about 750 hours of online campaign with Jocat playing a guest character. Unless you count all there side projects and the sequel campaign ;)
@@Jrocks26Love Overly Sarcastic Productions and highly recommend checking them out! They were the two with red and blue eyes respectively (Red does mythology and storytelling while Blue does history and… architecture ig?) I especially love and think you would like Red’s “Trope Talk” series, where she discusses and summarizes storytelling tropes in media, such as “five man band”, “it was all a dream”, “Magnificent Bastards” and many more!
I really like all the attention to detail in the drawings, how he was the classes when teaching you but now that he's the DM the classes are against him.
I don't actually put much work into DMing but that's because I'm the occasional DM for when my friends want a change of pace where I run a simple, low stakes, narrative light, power fantasy to play around with some goofy or over powered builds.
Author Drew Hayes has a great series of novels set in his Spells, Swords, and Stealth universe. One of the best lines comes from a DM who says, "I am the voice of the world." Between that line and Matt Colville's excellent Running the game series. DM can be a very rewarding experience. Now, as three of the seven discovered heads of the false Hydra begin to hum. The council of the village cowers behind you as you notice that the rest of your party has seemingly vanished, looking frantically around for them, you see the mindflayer black guard pouring out of the shadow keep tower on their beholder mounts. What do you do next?
The one time I DMed I literally killed the entire party. Set up a whole story in game, party went to sleep ready to take on a cult the next day... didn't post a lookout. Killer puppets attacked, and because they all had stabby slashy weapons they weren't hitting anything. Every miss destroyed a bit more of the room. One of them got the idea to light a torch... which promptly caught the room on fire. 10/10 would murder everyone all over again with super weak creatures with amazing bonuses for being small and hard to hit.
20:13 “They’re not doing what I need them to do [for my epic conclusion].” DM of a homebrew game here. I made 4 factions for the players to ally themselves to. That is four potential good guys, neutrals, and antagonists; each of which have different BBEG plans and final fights. Here is an example four: • The Elven Nation are the only ones old enough to remember the ancient evil that was merely sealed away. They are preparing for the seal to be broken. If the party decides they’re the BBEG, then they are sapping the dark energies of the ancient evil for themselves. • The two Human Nations are split by resources. The one with metal resources and better blacksmiths have the stronger army. The one with harvest resources have more magic and numbers. The party starts in a town on the border, which feels no loyalty to either side. Start the story here, and if they want to have better base equipment or enchanted stuff. • Finally, in the Underdark, the banished forces of the Ancient Evil are struggling to survive. They steal from both sides of the Human conflict as quietly as they can, which explains why any armistice is short lived. If the party wants them to be sympathetic, they’re just trying to survive but have worse resources than both Human nations, do not want the BBEG to return, and want to reclaim their homeland that is away from both nation centers and is merely adequate land to live on.
The neat thing is, he used Evil Maximus's voice and background music in his Belkinus: Necrohunt campaign. That campaign had me take the dive into becoming a DM myself. Also, there is his other races and class videos and his character sheet video that you should take a look.
This should've been the last one, there's still the guides on goblins, character sheets, alignment chart and races that came before this, and with all the crossovers in this one it truly feels like the end of this series
The phrase you were looking for in regards to his art is "expressive." His art is simple in style but uses the effort saved in detail to increase how expressive and visually readable it is.
The day this released on RUclips, I woke up to a Reddit message from the guy who runs the All Things D&D channel letting me know my story I submitted got made into a video. It's the video "Why Polymorph Is A Perfectly Balanced Spell With No Exploits". That was a good day. lol. Also fun fact: when he says the group doing the ambush failed and their target ran away? That happens exactly six minutes and 44 seconds after he says "I'll give you six minutes and 44 seconds to come up with a plan" earlier in the video.
Unfortunately, the reality of this video is impeccable. Though it lacks the usual ending: the players simply leaving and GM finding a different group. Because much as some might deny it, JoCrap isn't right about one thing: the GM is more important to the game than players. GM is a *bigger* part of the game than players. Players are a dime a dozen. They can be found really easily, as the hobby is oversaturated with people that just want to play and react, not build. If one group won't cut it, they will be replaced in a week. If a GM isn't feeling the group, that group will now either be gameless, or one of them will become the GM, perpetuating the "games don't exist without GMs" fact. A game without players is a book. A game without a GM doesn't exist.
I feel like this was a touch of a jump, was being a DM being a conclusion to the DnD set when he also has CHreating a CHaracter, Choosing your Race, and Alignments
my mind responded to the 'all the people in the tavern are cultists' by giving me thought of one of the people just walking over and dispelling the polymorph somehow. and poof, the big dude's back, and now every npc in the room joins the fray. (not for low-level groups. :) )
The counterspell-specialist would, obviously, be in charge in that encounter of stopping the enemy dispeller from undoing the polymorph, while ideally the rogue party already in stealth in the rafters jump the dispelling cultist, while those on the ground level intercept and make a path for them through the other now-revealed cultists. Seems like a balanced encounter.
To chime in, yeah, that was Matt Mercer like everyone else has said. Most everyone in that collection at the end was the people actually doing it, with the characters/caricatures they were known for at the time, and didn't even cover all the people involved -- for example, at the start he brings up "The Unexpectables" (Group 1 for them at this point), but they don't get a nod in that ending scroll (Borky, done by Takahata101, and Panic, done by DistortionDevil, both of whom want to smash the barkeep; Greckles, the kenku ninja by GaijinGoombah, was the one with the novel of backstory, and Task, the kobold, by CZBacklash, who JoCrap accused of trying to get stuff past him)... there's a lot of D&D youtubers and other content creators in that huge scene.
This might be something of a "controversial" ask but maybe you can check out the "Intro to the World of Darkness" by Bruva Alfabusa. I just don't know how focused you are on DnD topic, I just found your channel (thank you, oh gracious RUclips algorithm)
I could never do that, Im crap at keeping track of numbers n rolls n names and all that. I can come up with a story and characters, that’s not really difficult for anyone to do. But more in depth stuff….nah Im terrible at that
Yes, that was actually Matt Mercer. Jocat asked him to record just a few lines for the skit just to yell at him. It also ties into the joke in the rogue video that if you don't play your character according to the purest stereotype of the class Matt Mercer would sneak into your house and throw foam noodles at you from the corner of your room.
From what I remember, Matt didn’t know he’d be interrupted like that either, so that “aw man” was genuine
@@Lorekeeper_GGuy Oh wow. Method acting at work.
That's awesome lol!
It's the Bard video, not the Rogue one. But yeah. Also you need to watch because in many of the videos there are little hidden messages that only show up for one frame.
Also, I could swear I heard Travis WIllingham in there too...?
"Who gave the blind dragonborn a gun?"
Has to be my favorite part.
How can a blind being even USE a gun
@@SilverScribe85 Blindsight/Tremorsense (or equivalents thereof, depending on system, edition and/or use of homebrew) would do the trick.
@@FuugaNatsu Tremotsense?
@@SilverScribe85 It's a thing some monsters get (hasn't really been in use since 3.5E as far as I'm aware), it works by sensing vibrations in a certain area around you. Think Toph from Avatar the Last Airbender, but not as OP.
@@FuugaNatsu But like Jo said, where the heck did he get a gun...and how can he aim it if he's blind
Apparently Matt Mercer loved to be asked to do things like this because he usually wasn't after critical role started to get big. Team four star talked about how excited he was got a cameo in their mustache video
Edit: the fact he got so many d&d tubers into this video is amazing
Who's that guy with the computer head talking about his Dwarvish drink
That's really interesting, I had no idea!
@SilverScribe85 unfortunately I'm not sure. I only know a few of three cameos
Well I guess Takahata101 must have told Jocat, while guest stared in the Unpectables
@@SilverScribe85 Well, according to the credits of the video, he is Yaro Shien.
Every single player of his game was a follow youtuber and almost all of them are exclusive DnD content creators all worth checking out
Cool! We will have to give them a look!
I can't articulate why, but the ending conversation of this crap guide moves me to actual tears. Such a great series from JoCat.
Was hoping this would be the finale to you reacting to these but hey, no worries. This one is worth it. His guides to Races, Character Sheet, Alignment, and Goblins are excellent in their own right. Hope you check em out as well
Thanks, we will definitely check them all out! We weren't sure of the order and a bunch of people requested that we check out the DM guide next. Was great regardless!
races is one of the best
We will check it out for sure!
I'm eagerly looking forward to their reaction to it. It's so good!
Jocat’s guide to alignments is good too
i had mentioned that to them before and to watch it in order, but i guess that was ignored lol
We will definitely give it a look, thanks!
Yes! Been waiting for people to react to this one. It's like... the big one. And I personally feel it's required watching for a DM. Or any GM. The conclusion it reaches is really important.
Yes! I wasn't sure he was going change up and drive that point home; it was fantastic!
"Nobody cares, Matt Mercer!"
If you two are looking for more to watch, I'd suggest the OSP channel.
That was hilarious! We will have to check out OSP.
Osp is so good, gotta check out journey to the west and miscellaneous myths(especially the vids on specific gods, like Dionysus)
What JoCat pulled off with this video is nothing less than amazing. To put it into perspective, this video is basically the equivalent of Avengers:Endgame. Man is a legend.
I disagree with the “never say no” sentiment. You definitely want to be accommodating and respectful of your players’s wants and choices, but you should always keep the ability to say no in your back pocket, just in case someone tries to push things a little too far. Things like exceedingly broken homebrew, harassing other players, or trying to fight you on a ruling just because “this is how my first DM did it,” are a few examples.
Forgot to mention; there’s a full version of the little ditty that one girl was singing to the villain before she got cut off. It’s called The Life of a Bard. It even has a parody that tells the other side of the story called The Life of a Guard.
The Crap Guide to Character Sheets is hilarious.
We will have to give it a look!
One of the best pieces of advice I've recieved for how to establish a proper DM mindset is that the DM writes locations, npcs, and potential encounters but they do not write events.
As the dm you can't decide ahead of time what will or won't happen - thats what the players are for. You can only set up things for them to potentially run into and deal with how they respond to what you present.
The way I heard (and liked) DM'ing described is: You're preparing the templates the players use to tell their story.
It's a sortof reversal of "DMs plan out the story the players act out", because while you set up the templates, your cast are the ones who dictate what happens with your pieces. The more you fight what they do, the worse the storymaking gets.
Of course, correcting a misuse of the templates is good, but you aren't making the story, they are.
Very true!
That's so cool. Many of the youtubers who appeared are also worth reacting to.
We will have to try to look them up, thanks!
@@Jrocks26 Dingo Doodles is my favorite. She makes these very cool animated videos with d&d stories.
@@Jrocks26 Absolutely look up the other youtubers that cameo'd. I think the video has a list of them all. Dingo Doodles and Overly Sarcastic Productions are my two favorites.
like the Unexepectables. just a quick 200 episodes of a total of about 750 hours of online campaign with Jocat playing a guest character. Unless you count all there side projects and the sequel campaign ;)
@@Jrocks26Love Overly Sarcastic Productions and highly recommend checking them out! They were the two with red and blue eyes respectively (Red does mythology and storytelling while Blue does history and… architecture ig?)
I especially love and think you would like Red’s “Trope Talk” series, where she discusses and summarizes storytelling tropes in media, such as “five man band”, “it was all a dream”, “Magnificent Bastards” and many more!
Holy crap!
Red & Blue from Overly Sarcastic Productions are in this!
I really like all the attention to detail in the drawings, how he was the classes when teaching you but now that he's the DM the classes are against him.
i have no idea how Jocat got so many D&D and other tabletop youtubers to be in this video and voice all those characters.
Yeah, that's insane!
My play group is totally like this. The first chance we get we will drive the story off the rails, but we have fun anyway.
I know how that goes!
I don't actually put much work into DMing but that's because I'm the occasional DM for when my friends want a change of pace where I run a simple, low stakes, narrative light, power fantasy to play around with some goofy or over powered builds.
3:20
Megamind reference! 😂
He's such a great and kind guy. I feel bad for him
Yeah, we heard...horrible
Author Drew Hayes has a great series of novels set in his Spells, Swords, and Stealth universe. One of the best lines comes from a DM who says, "I am the voice of the world." Between that line and Matt Colville's excellent Running the game series. DM can be a very rewarding experience. Now, as three of the seven discovered heads of the false Hydra begin to hum. The council of the village cowers behind you as you notice that the rest of your party has seemingly vanished, looking frantically around for them, you see the mindflayer black guard pouring out of the shadow keep tower on their beholder mounts.
What do you do next?
The one time I DMed I literally killed the entire party. Set up a whole story in game, party went to sleep ready to take on a cult the next day... didn't post a lookout. Killer puppets attacked, and because they all had stabby slashy weapons they weren't hitting anything. Every miss destroyed a bit more of the room. One of them got the idea to light a torch... which promptly caught the room on fire. 10/10 would murder everyone all over again with super weak creatures with amazing bonuses for being small and hard to hit.
20:13 “They’re not doing what I need them to do [for my epic conclusion].”
DM of a homebrew game here. I made 4 factions for the players to ally themselves to. That is four potential good guys, neutrals, and antagonists; each of which have different BBEG plans and final fights.
Here is an example four:
• The Elven Nation are the only ones old enough to remember the ancient evil that was merely sealed away. They are preparing for the seal to be broken. If the party decides they’re the BBEG, then they are sapping the dark energies of the ancient evil for themselves.
• The two Human Nations are split by resources. The one with metal resources and better blacksmiths have the stronger army. The one with harvest resources have more magic and numbers. The party starts in a town on the border, which feels no loyalty to either side. Start the story here, and if they want to have better base equipment or enchanted stuff.
• Finally, in the Underdark, the banished forces of the Ancient Evil are struggling to survive. They steal from both sides of the Human conflict as quietly as they can, which explains why any armistice is short lived. If the party wants them to be sympathetic, they’re just trying to survive but have worse resources than both Human nations, do not want the BBEG to return, and want to reclaim their homeland that is away from both nation centers and is merely adequate land to live on.
Sounds like a fun game!
Glad you both got a chance to watch this great collab.
Us also!
The neat thing is, he used Evil Maximus's voice and background music in his Belkinus: Necrohunt campaign. That campaign had me take the dive into becoming a DM myself.
Also, there is his other races and class videos and his character sheet video that you should take a look.
We will check it out!
This should've been the last one, there's still the guides on goblins, character sheets, alignment chart and races that came before this, and with all the crossovers in this one it truly feels like the end of this series
The phrase you were looking for in regards to his art is "expressive."
His art is simple in style but uses the effort saved in detail to increase how expressive and visually readable it is.
Theres is a full version of ht bard song and it is very fun
Cool! We will have to take a look!
The day this released on RUclips, I woke up to a Reddit message from the guy who runs the All Things D&D channel letting me know my story I submitted got made into a video. It's the video "Why Polymorph Is A Perfectly Balanced Spell With No Exploits".
That was a good day. lol.
Also fun fact: when he says the group doing the ambush failed and their target ran away? That happens exactly six minutes and 44 seconds after he says "I'll give you six minutes and 44 seconds to come up with a plan" earlier in the video.
I miss JoCat so much. The community has been lessened by his absence.
Unfortunately, the reality of this video is impeccable. Though it lacks the usual ending: the players simply leaving and GM finding a different group.
Because much as some might deny it, JoCrap isn't right about one thing: the GM is more important to the game than players. GM is a *bigger* part of the game than players.
Players are a dime a dozen. They can be found really easily, as the hobby is oversaturated with people that just want to play and react, not build. If one group won't cut it, they will be replaced in a week. If a GM isn't feeling the group, that group will now either be gameless, or one of them will become the GM, perpetuating the "games don't exist without GMs" fact. A game without players is a book. A game without a GM doesn't exist.
I feel like this was a touch of a jump, was being a DM being a conclusion to the DnD set when he also has CHreating a CHaracter, Choosing your Race, and Alignments
I did not see it, but did you cover JoCat’s guide to the D&D character sheet?
Not yet, we will try to check them all out, they have been fantastic so far!
So sad what the Internet did to this guy he was one of the best
5e is my newest favorite edition of D&D next to 3.5 and Avatar Legends!
my mind responded to the 'all the people in the tavern are cultists' by giving me thought of one of the people just walking over and dispelling the polymorph somehow. and poof, the big dude's back, and now every npc in the room joins the fray. (not for low-level groups. :) )
The counterspell-specialist would, obviously, be in charge in that encounter of stopping the enemy dispeller from undoing the polymorph, while ideally the rogue party already in stealth in the rafters jump the dispelling cultist, while those on the ground level intercept and make a path for them through the other now-revealed cultists. Seems like a balanced encounter.
To chime in, yeah, that was Matt Mercer like everyone else has said. Most everyone in that collection at the end was the people actually doing it, with the characters/caricatures they were known for at the time, and didn't even cover all the people involved -- for example, at the start he brings up "The Unexpectables" (Group 1 for them at this point), but they don't get a nod in that ending scroll (Borky, done by Takahata101, and Panic, done by DistortionDevil, both of whom want to smash the barkeep; Greckles, the kenku ninja by GaijinGoombah, was the one with the novel of backstory, and Task, the kobold, by CZBacklash, who JoCrap accused of trying to get stuff past him)... there's a lot of D&D youtubers and other content creators in that huge scene.
Watch his Guide to Races!
Will do, we just got back from vacation, but unfortunately now have covid, so it might be a week or 2 though =(
This might be something of a "controversial" ask but maybe you can check out the "Intro to the World of Darkness" by Bruva Alfabusa. I just don't know how focused you are on DnD topic, I just found your channel (thank you, oh gracious RUclips algorithm)
Devinity is actually a massive fan of all things vampire and DMs her own VtM games. We will take a look, thanks for the suggestion!
Jocat is a genius.
Sadly the creator of these got bullied off the platform because of a simple song that others have done the reverse of and are getting praised for it.
We heard...that's absolutely horrendous
He's back Baby!!!!!
I could never do that, Im crap at keeping track of numbers n rolls n names and all that. I can come up with a story and characters, that’s not really difficult for anyone to do. But more in depth stuff….nah Im terrible at that
@@BreadApologist it's a lot of work, no doubt about that!
this is the greatest crossover in history - yes better than Endgame.
The alignments will come?
@@Mikael_Ore Yes! We will get to all of them eventually, they are so good!
@@Jrocks26 they absolutely are! Have a good day!
Do the goblin video next pls.
We will try to hit them all up!
When did CritCrab join the game?
Watch the goblin crap guide
Will do!
you got a truly original story...write a book. maybe someone will play a session based on it someday. :)
react to fools gold
Y’all skipped races, go back.