"A man who has to say 'I'm an alpha' is no true alpha." -Tywin Lannister

To quote an extremely toxic ex-friend of my husband..."I'm not toxic, why does everybody think I am?!"

I "love" how "alpha males" conveniently ignore the part where the guy who created this stupid theory said he was wrong and such roles did not exist at all, and not only that, they went forward and created the "sigma male" bs too. Let's be honest if these guys followed their own theories they would know that neither alphas or sigmas should be playing RPGs cause using imagination is for betas.

Honestly on the opening story props on the noobie for using an in character reason for not doing doing something that's clearly a stupid idea.

Audience participation just reminds me of that scene in hunger games where Katniss gets a healing salve from a sponsor. You have to remember that the viewers just want you to entertain them as chaos ensues... It just rubs me the wrong way.

We had a creepy and manipulative Mary Sue in our game not long ago, posted a reddit post about it. A White Knight in the comments tried to argue that " they wouldn't have kicked them, and helped them through their problems", when the problem player was sexually harassing and emotionally manipulations another player all while being a rules lawyer, watching over every single mod of the player she was harassing, and had serious main character "player vs DM" mentality. Later on after we kicked the problem player, she also discovered they had been cheating! After stating ALL of these facts, this White Knight of Reddit STILL insisted we were in the wrong for not "HELPING" the problem player. We are here to have fun and play a game, we tried to help the problem player over and over again but they didn't want our help and never changed. We are not psychologist or therapist!

I love that the guild master in that one story had a dad bod and told dad jokes

First Story: The best way I've seen the audience participation model done was in the live-play series "Warhams". Using the 40k system, Wrath and Glory, their viewers on Twitch could pay to fill the resources pools of Wrath (player re-rolls), Glory (extra dice to add to player rolls), or Ruin (extra dice for the GM to use for enemies). However, donations would only add to the resource pool if they weren't full, ensuring the donors couldn't bank the extra dice if the pool was topped off.

My DM streams our game and he does audience participation. He gives the viewers a pool of 3 Luck Points to reroll and roll to help the players not hinder. It works out really well. Our small pool of viewers get really invested when they want something cool to happen if we fail. For example, our tiefling barbarian was trying to tame a hellhound and had to go through a series of checks. Our viewers blew all three luck points because they really wanted him to have a heck doggo friend. Sadly, he failed even with the rerolls lol

It's so funny to me that the Guild Master in the story is in fact literally just super realistic in terms of how Actually Strong Dudes in real life tend to look. Like, you find the sort of guy who wins World's Strongest Man competitions and these guys are built like *boulders,* the literal shape of a brick shithouse. The chiseled and bulgy bodybuilder look is something you have to actively cultivate, often by dehydrating yourself, it's not just a natural consequence of building up strength. In fact it's often counterproductive to peak strength, since the muscles are more water than they should be, get in each other's way, and don't have fat to protect and support them.

They had audience interaction purchases for that game DM'd by Chris Perkins, and it worked quite well... but that was a one-shot that was intended to be more zaney and all proceeds went to charity

Imagine being upset when the world’s strongest man has a power gut

Those alpha types always seem to be the ones with the most fragile sense of masculinity.They often can't take criticism while dealing their own excessive, unwarranted criticism. Furthermore, they fear anything that even slightly questions their narrow view of what it means to be a masculine. It's so very sad and cringe.

Oh my God that alpha stick guy has never seen the difference between a power lifter bodybuilder and a showy bodybuilder. I am a Shelly bodybuilder I'm 170 something pounds 5 ft 7 and I have abs. power lifters on the other hand could be destroy the amount of weight I lift and they are usually chubby dudes

It’s been said before but irl strongmen have guts. I would love to see Sigma to call Hafthor “The Mountain “ Bjonsonn a beta.

For that intro story, I did have an idea for something inspired by games like that. A setting inside a beholder's dreams where it is streaming to the multiverse it's own dnd game. It's manic behavior and inconsistent challenges would reflect it's own insane and sadistic mind, tempered by the fact that it's still trying to appease an invisible audience of eldritch abominations. The whole thing would be a one-shot that's made to mock streamed games and critique it's flaws, while allowing the players to join in on the chaos.

I used to RP with a person who was a narcissist AH and would hide behind "That's how the character is." I finally got angry enough to nuke the group with a truth bomb. "ALL your characters are arrogant, condescending jerks who need to be the main character!" I got tired of my characters being belittled, thrown under the bus and their back stories ignored.

I immediately started singing “Dammit, Janet!” in my head. 😂 Now I want to watch Rocky Horror.

Killing a character of someone who isnt even present has got to be one of the most idiotic and meanest things imaginable

Man I love the DM’s character in the last story. He sounds like someone that I’d love to hang out with and fight monsters with for sure

"Abs are not a sign of power. It means you do not eat enough." - actual strongman

"You dont just keep that in your basement..." Eeeh.... *Awkwardly looks at the locked, chained down and bullet-proof trapdoor to the basement* Yea no... no of course we dont. Silly idea, keeping the monsters in the basement... Edit: A redeemable +1 weapon for you to find. Find?! Someone spends money for you to get a magical item (a bad idea on its own), and you still need to Find it? Yea thta sounds like moneys worth. Honestly, do not monetize your game, that is a good way to loose friends, kill games and ruin the fun. For Everyone, partymembers and audience alike. If they like it, they will gladly pay anyways. If you as an entertaining group are good enough entertainers. Edit 2: Janet needs to be kicked from the group, and potentially the group of friends. Here is why, she priorotizes herself over the rest, and that just wont fly. Thats the person who pushes you in front of the bus so it will stop and she can get on.

"It's like astrology, but with misogyny" may be my new favorite description ever.

OP in the Alpha story should of described his NPC as Maui from Moana. The jerk couldn’t argue with him being a jovial strongman.

Intro Story: Easy way to show the asshole the issue: DM "Newbie, I'm going to give you the opportunity to jump into the pit, and if you want to after you do it, you can rewind and continue asking for a way to climb down, okay?" Newbie: "Okay." *jumps into hole, takes damage* DM: "Okay, Newbie, you take 3d6 fall damage, so... 13 points of damage to you." Newbie: "I'm dead. Let's rewind and get a rope." It's not fair to give them a chance to rewind and not other more experienced players, but it will give the new player a chance to make mistakes, and additionally show the other guy what the problem would be. I guarantee that if the newbie had jumped and severely injured themselves or died, the other player would've called him an idiot for hurting themselves so badly.

The problem with chat is that if they can torture you they will, probably it's possible to make donations effect game but if you have negative effects prepare to have negative effects 90% of the time

The only thing I know about Sigma is that not matter what X and Zero did to him he kept coming back.

My first D&D group had a guy like "Richard". Whenever we planned to do something, his character would deliberately screw it up. Trying to stay on an NPC group's good side? He'd start a fight. We need that scroll for information? He sets it on fire. Don't alert the enemy to our presence? He finds some way to make a noise. We did three campaigns together with three different groups of characters, and all his characters behaved exactly the same. I wasn't there for the session when our fellow players finally called him out on his bullshit; I'm told his response was that he had the right to play his characters however he wanted to and everyone else could just deal with it. We switched to board games after that. He also had a short stint as DM, I recall, when our usual DM didn't have time to run a couple of sessions. I was only there for the first of them, which was more of a number puzzle than a D&D game. I'm told that the second one ended with him going "Screw it, I can't be bothered. You guys win."

More "alpha" nonsense. I have been exposed to a lot of egotistical B.S. in my time, but that is something else. What I don't know, but it is something alright.

Stream with mini transactions is a recipe for disaster.

tbh a gimmick game where the audience can break things in the game actually sounds fun! But it should've been marketed as that for the players, AND NOT THROWN AT BRAND NEW PLAYERS.

I found your channel about 2 months ago, I have binged every video while doing anything. Keep it up!

Sigma will never get a present from Santa, as Santa hates wanna be 'alphas'.

The Unexpectables had a really good audience participation thing for a charity one-shot. But in their game, the DM had a list things that would happen based on how much the audience donated. People donated so much that they passed all the list tiers within 15 minutes, the DM had to improvise new crazier encounters mid-session, and it was one of the most entertaining one-shots I've ever seen.

Imagine taking "alpha" seriously as a concept AND not having knowledge of circus strongman character tropes in the same person. Goodness me, that's a whole gift basket of cringe with a cringe bow tied lovingly around it to give to us at Cringemas.

OP, I see what you did there. Richard indeed. Such as other famous Richards like Richard Tracy and Richard Grayson and Richard Nixon. A top hat salute to you.

>Rolls for stats >Gets accused of minmaxing If this was on Twitter this would be the part where I'd fill the rest of the Tweet with red flag emojis 🚩🚩🚩🚩 Having functional stats isn't min-maxing, people!

Love the music choice

I wonder if that strongman in the last story had some association with a copper dragon.

Actually strong man with belly is historically accurate xd

...er, what type of research involves giant tentacled worm monsters in a persons basement? Crispy doujinshi when?

What kinda cringe should we post about?

Critical role also had viewer participation and I feel like they stopped because of how mean random people can be

I really appreciate that thing you said about group melding. I've been through so many groups this past year before putting together my now gang and it was miserable. One dm didn't want to talk to their players when there were interplayer issues (she was a that guy), one threw dmpc after dmpc at us even though we lasts tasked about how *we* wanted to solve our own problems. We later kicked him out because he was giving this weird romantic energy for our ace player and constantly misgendered him. Now we rotate dms and I'm in love with this crew.

getting audience participation in a dnd game can only work if A.) it's minimal, meaning redeem points to give the party health potions or something like that definitely not spawning ogres at level 1. Plus you can scale it to party level so maybe eventually add enemy spawns but limit them to once per stream or something. or B.) do it like a fan vote thing at the end of the session. They get to be part of the campaign but it doesn't slow the game down or derail it

1st main story; the guys at Narrative Declaration/ former Warhams makes it work but there are many restrictions that they have in place and they are a hoot tom listen too.

Acquisitions Inc the C team is still the only table ive seen the donations as audience participation thing work semi well. Basically functioned as inspiration for a character and in later seasons they could burn a bunch for what was basically an alt attack.

I saw the thumbnail and was like, "Don't tell me someone tried to make Raziel a DnD PC..."

i cant belive dnd twitchspawns turned into absolute unwinnable chaos who would have guessed

Yeah no, that's not mental health, that's narcissism

“If he was an alpha he should have abs!” My guy, take a look at what the actual World’s Strongest Men contenders look like. They’ve all got a bit of a spare tire going because it’s a bit of extra support and power. Rippling abs are for show-off bodybuilders

For the stream twitch, they should have stopped the donations, for bad things like you can only have two bad things happen and that's it and multiple good things to help the players. So it gets the audience to still donate but they can only donate more good things than bad. So like once you have say 3 max bad donations that's it, and no one can donate to bad things until there is said slot available with the bad things.

I feel sorry for Angrys Husband, there he was all relaxed in the Shadowfell, finally having some piece from Angy but she's not done yet. Poor Bugger. The 'Sigma' does know that Strongmen in real-life normally don't have six-packs, and the rotund image is more accurate.

12:56 “Damnit, Janet!”

17:55

On top of everything else, Abs are rarely a thing in practical strength. Just look at strongmen competitons. Practical core building gives you a big thick trunk, not a cut one, because all the stuff in the torso is developed as opposed to all the crunches you have to do to get isolated abs. Most body bulders who do isolate would quickly have spinal damage or hernias from trying to do feats of immense practical strength (like swinging a war hammer all day) A man who fights owlbears and walks away from it without being crippled for life spent his time developing the whole torso from training for actual combat.

'Alpha' guy seemed to have been making the extremely common mistake of conflating bodybuilders with strongmen. Muscles built for show have heavy definition and pronounced features, muscles built for *power* tend to be less defined with a bit more solidity. Dadbod.

"If a guy says 'I'm an alpha', he's definitely a beta. A lion doesn't have to tell you he's a lion." -Iliza Shlesinger

And then there was Richard

See Raziel in the thumbnail: 😯 See it's Crispy again: 😄

Kinda. If it's anything remotely cringe...you better hide that before a certain dragon will reign fire upon you and collect the cringe

janet truley was from another planet

I think something really cool for a one shot campaign for a streamer is a sort of "God's Arena" where the watchers are "gods" watching the pc's fight in an arenA and can influence the situation or give boons to whichever PC they favor. Obv their powers to influence would be limited, and the gm would have to think on their feet and it'd be hard. But done right, would be kinda cool

Acquisitions incorporated C team did stream participation well. Shadow Council Rules!

I found a way to blend in groups quite easily at session zero. I just give the player the reason they are together before they create their characters. For oneshots, I even got so far (with Warhammer 2th ed.) as to give them a job and tell them "You are a squad of road patrol, you can play all kind of militaries, people that accepetd a risky job to get a good pay or convicts in forced labour." Players rolled with it every time and got some good ideas for rollplay. With this specific one, I even had great schemes from the convicts to betray the pro and get away. Be reasured : it was all in good fun, PVP wasn't a big deal, and It was a survival oneshot with high chances of TPK. But yeah, I do advocate for giving a prompt to your players prior to creating their characters. The only times It backfired was because of a player, which I like as a person, nuked three scenarios I was working on in a row, by just stating "Nah I don't wanna play that" While, verry unsure about myself, I had enthousiastically pitched him my scenario. To be fair, I was talking about things like versus campaings with two groups of players ending in a PVP battle while I coudn't tell them they would have a choice to turn on the quest giver instead, which was the BBEG ... But still. DMing is a lot of work, so please take what your DM wants to play and give them some love.

If you're going to stream the game and want audience participation don't let them influence the flow of the game. Have a separate stream where the audience helps the GM create a couple of the NPCs that the party will probably encounter in the upcoming town or something. Give them input on the world, but not the power to dictate the story.

I love the Raziel image from the Legacy of Kain series.

Haven't watched the vid yet, just wanted say cool Soulreaver thumbnail.

I've actually seen a really cool example of audience participation in a TTRPG stream! A Sea of Spears is an actual play for the A Song of Ice and Fire roleplaying game (from Green Ronin), and while streaming the had it set up so that once a viewer hit the right level and "claimed the Iron Throne", that viewer would get to grant a boon to any noble house in Westeros. This system has already affected the story in a really cool way!

Thumbs up for the soul reaver thumbnail art

I find it funny that Mr. aLPHA is using a system that only works in prison or a system made by memes

Dammit, Janet!

This is not how wine works

Funny enough, for the 'AlPhA mAlE' story.. I'd be more terrified of a burly warrior with a rotund form, ala Viking style than some meathead with abs. Cause I know.. for a fact, the rotund guy's got insane core strength and stamina, and could probably yeet me like a javelin through a wall. The meat head couldn't even compare.

Story 1: I can see how viewer-controlled events could improve certain types of game, but not traditional D&D. Now, if you're playing roleplaying heavy game like Paranoia, SpyCraft, Vampire: the Masquerade, or Empire of the Petal Throne, this would be useful. Especially if an event was a viewer created or controlled one-shot NPC or event. In a social or politics heavy game, having wildcards like that would create all sorts of fun chaos. But those games are all about situation management, not black & white, beat the bad guy to get the loot. In any game that emphasizes story, viewer-controlled events mess with that story; in a game focused on character progression, their are too many people who want to watch the characters suffer. You need games that have different action-reward cycles.

the thing is, the guild master wasn't even unrealistic in having a belly, but muscular arms. having a six pack is more of a modern beauty thing rather than a strength thing, although it does take a lot of specific training to get a six pack - being strong doesn't mean your body is toned. it means you have body mass and strength. there's a reason why sumo wrestlers are usually fat. and has this guy even seen the highland games ?! those guys are BIG and incredibly strong.

That audience participation game sounds like it'd work well with Peasants of Mass Destruction.

Is that Raziel from Legacy of Kain in the thumbnail? :D

The only thing I could think of with that last story was king boomie from ATLA

Huh, I thought the sigma male mentality was " I'm fine being single, and I'm gonna live my best life like a BOSS😎.

In story 3, the guy’s obviously trolling.

Isn’t that Soul Reaver in the thumbnail? Is there a Legacy of Kain RPG?

I know of only one good audience participitation and that's Warham well now there called Narrative Declaration due to things. It works quite well.

Seething rage

"If he was the strongest he should have abs and whatnot". Feel free to look up "Strongest men competition" and you'll see what peak performance looks like, most of them having big bellies instead of chiseled abs. The guy was childishly thinking of bodybuilders, which many can point out, would not last a second in a real fight.

I wonder who is streaming that game with audience participation... from the sound of it, they seem moderately popular enough. Wonder how many groups of people they have cycled through too...

Hell yeah, Raziel!

The thumbnail for this video appears to be Raziel from Soul Reaver. =D

The story right ater the intro sounds oddly familiar, I've played with a guy so similar to that guy he could in fact be that guy

Story1 omfg..... Last story.... Hahahaha no strong man has show muscle abs. They all look a little rotund and soft definitions.

Lol@ the guy saying the strongest guy must have abs. I had a boss once who was an old guy, but also fat. But he was just like the character: rotund, fluffy beard, muscular arms and cracking jokes left and right. Dude could take a thick steel nail, hold it over the back of his middle finger with just one hand and bend it. Sounds weird, but I dare anyone try it. The pain on the back of the finger aside, this was just a single hand, even without the thumb. If you think fat people can´t punch a hole in a table you haven´t met a strong one yet.

My dm just has 'complications' for his twitch stream Chat can kinda just do whatever. More enemies, health pots But my dm is really good at saying 'that wont work as a complication' and keeping chat in check

... wait! Is "sigma" supposed to be, like, "higher" than alpha?? But Σ is near the end of the Greek Alphabet! How does that even work?? Can't wait to see how Omegaverse manages this one...

New music, I am immediately confused. Funky tho

Is it bad I actually pictured Eggman but, like, with totally yolked arms?

Wines not conbustable

That stream was a fucking D&D Red Room. Coldly murdering your players isn't the point of the game, I hate stories like this.

me, listening to stories about games I don't even play: :)

We stream ours and the audience participation is we either get loot boosts or DM inspiration from channel points. It’s helped us out tons.

On the last story, imagine if OP had made the guild leader a woman.