r/dropoutcirclejerk

Hello besties and undiscovered improv stars, it’s time to once again say something beautiful and true!

Remember the sub rules still apply

• no bigotry
• no bullying
• keep it cute
• be yourself and have fun

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.

Brennan has been the dungeon master for Critical Role Campaign 4 since 2025, so it is surprising to me that guest cast members on Dropout shows seem to no longer be from Critical Role. I rarely see them nowadays when they used to have at least Matt Mercer pretty consistently. They might still be inviting them, but I haven't seen them on a show since Matt/Aimee/Robbie/Taliesin on Dirty Laundry (I don't watch the nerd shit) and Brennan is now working with them every day so I'm not sure what's going on. Either way, Critical Role is a really important part of LA web series and seeing them silently discarded is weird.

I was excited to see Brennan take over for Matt as the DM for Critical Role and am now severely disappointed because it's much longer than D20, but the rest of the world seems happy to pretend that Brennan has a "new j*b." It's sad to see one last responsible production company give in.

Brennan wrote in his post about his Dropout contract extension that he was excited to join the campaign. I understand this completely, as Critical Role cast members are some of the best roleplayers and improvisers even if they can be hard to handle. Dropout is also at its core an entertainment company with no obligation to listen to fans about this, but I wish they would bring them back given the hell that Sam Riegel unleashes on so many people any time he's in an unscripted setting.

Also if you're reading this and have seen Critical Role recently, please look into the Breaking News episode "Grant O'Brien Explains Dungeons & Dragons" and abstain from longform TTRPG content as much as possible for a couple of months. The campaigns can cause psychic damage, even to seasoned TTRPG/actual play watchers, and you really don't want to end up like me.

I think I might’ve been the only one to catch this detail on first watch!

(You may want to google “little Alex Horne” to catch up on the lore before watching this week’s behind the scenes episode if you want to be totally in the know)

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm3293702/

Can you believe guys??? This is fucking huge!!!

Africa, a few hundred thousand years ago. So I think I know what hundreds and thousands means.

I’m so grateful to have BLEEM as my grandmother, who knits me sweaters every month and bakes me cookies and pats my little head and tells me that I’m a good little boy or a girl.

It’s so wonderful that I can just put on the Tide and Oreo CEO videos and that listening to BLEEM scream obscenities puts me right to sleep.

I would appreciate as few spoilers as possible.

I recently got a dropout subscription and wanted to make my way through the D20 seasons. The premise of Fantasy High really appeals to me because it reminds me a bit of the Magicians books, with the way magic has a more modern world to play in.
I've seen the first two episodes so far, and while the high school intro was very alienating to me, l figured that it was just going to be a neat/funny intro and Brennan has absolutely riffed about not having then high school experience before so it didn't really bother me that much. I assumed the campaign would carry on with other things.

But then at the end of episode two when they resolve the fight it's basically hard-confirmed that the party will all be going to class, including classes they’re not even taking and even seems like that will play a somewhat prominent role in the campaign, as the initial plot hook for the party involves it.

Are these kind of aspects and themes present throughout the campaign or do they fade into the background as time goes on and the focus is elsewhere?

I really want to get into this one but stuff like this really turns me off of media generally.

​

It felt like she was just phoning it in the whole time. I get she’s pregnant, but maybe pick a different contestant?

There were only 8 contestants on this episode, the game was easy to follow, and only one location. We all know the only way Game Changer can get better and evolve is to keep adding more contestants and more games and more locations until everything is Game Changer and my ADHD brain never has a second to think. How can I meet new close, personal friends on the screen if there's less than double digit contestants and cameos? Most importantly, my dear friend Brennan Lee Mulligan wasn't even on the episode. I really thought Game Changer was improving this season, but this was not it!

You know what's even better? Willfully misunderstanding that the joke was in bad taste by commenting on the Luigi Mangione situation instead of the actual "Yeah, I killed him" joke. Everybody pile on with "private insurance is murder" because we definitely aren't aware that universal healthcare is a human right.

It felt like she was just phoning it in the whole time. I get she's pregnant, but maybe pick a different contestant?

1. It's more syllables than just saying "Brennan".

2. It requires more keystrokes than just typing Brennan.

3. It doesn't read like "B Lee M", it reads like "Bleem"

4. Why is it necessary? What other Brennan could you possibly be trying to distinguish from

It's disrespectful because every time I read it I am reminded that I am not Brennan's wife, so please stop doing it out of respect for me, u/Ashpolt