City Council of Darkness may have broken me
DISCLAIMER: I want to preface this by explicitly stating that I am not hating on our intrepid heroes as people or comedians. In that regard, in that space, they are some of the people I respect the most.
MY CREDENTIALS: I have been an immensely successful freelance tabletop writer for 6 years. I've had hundreds of clients and have never received anything less than a 5-star rating from any of them.
Personally, I'm a big tabletop guy; I've played various systems for years and was a big fan of CollegeHumor way back when, so when Dropout and then Dimension 20 started, I was legit stoked beyond belief.
With that said, they are the worst tabletop players I've ever seen, and I'm heavily considering cancelling my Dropout because of it.
I have tried to watch every single show they've put out, and in every case but Tiny Heist, I dropped the run.
I cannot be bothered to sit here and go into painful depth on this as there's just too much, so I'll keep it as brief as I can.
I watch them bumble about, make shit up with no plans, act like an insane idiot in every encounter just for Brennan to gift them the story regardless of what they do or say.
So, they do not care about spinning a good yarn for us.
They either misunderstand or leave out important aspects of the system or, in worst cases, ignore their character sheets entirely.
So, they do not care about playing a good game for us.
I liked the idea of the VTM gameplay and saw Brennan play in a more serious game of that, so I thought I'd check out City Council of Darkness. But I discovered, to my dismay, that it was nothing but an exercise in disrespect to the very spirit of the game. Brennan stated on more than one occasion that he didn't even know what he was really doing.
So, they do not care about demonstrating or providing a satisfying experience with a set system for us.
My questions are: Why are you even playing anything if you care about exactly 0 aspects of it?
And why am I still watching if all I see is them not caring?
(And yes, before anyone argues. Yes, it IS for us. If it wasn't, they wouldn't record, post it, and ask us for money to see it.)
For 80% of the party, Brennan included, I'm seeing them turn into exasperating caricatures of tabletop players. Stumbling from plot point to plot point in a story that undeservedly chugs along for no other reason than they know it has to, because we paid money to see it.
They're comedians. I didn't start this journey expecting to watch masters at work.
But I am now.
They've been at this FOR YEARS, and they've done nothing but get exponentially worse as time has gone on.
I'm watching Lou sit through the tables nonsense with literal gritted teeth. You can see clear as day how annoyed he's getting. I watch Soibhan stop and say "guys we need to buckle down and play properly or we'll lose" only for Brennan to hand them the story success with literally no effort. Then they both get quietly depressed and fall back in line.
It's engaging to watch stakes at play, to watch people figure stuff out and roleplay competently. It's a drag to watch 7 people I respect dick around while my attention span hemorrhages.
Maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm just not the demographic. Maybe I hate to watch people force themselves to play a game they don't care about, don't engage with, and don't enjoy, just to get my subscription money and pump out another one next year.
If you're sitting here, reading this, seething, waiting for your chance to tell me you hate me or falsely state I violated some sub rule by expressing grievances with something I pay for. Understand this:
YOU DESERVE BETTER!
I'm not saying any of this to hurt you or the Dropout team. But you deserve a table that gives a damn. That isn't just silly voices and half-cooked characters ignoring the story and not engaging with the world meaningfully.
You deserve players that care. Everyone lost their minds when Lou did the "Shut your f*ing mouth, Comfrey" bit because you KNEW its what you wanted. You knew you'd finally seen one of them BE there and FEEL the story unfolding around them. You deserve more than ethereal entities watching a story happen around them that they refuse to rise to meet.
For this instance, consider this. Nancy Danderhoof and Bigfoot were the only characters that actually mattered. The players might as well not have even been there. All they did was show up, ruin everything, break the masquerade a hundred times, and win without earning it.