How it began with Minecraft
My online journey began a long time ago. One of my cousins introduced me to a game called Minecraft. I liked it, and started building, mining and exploring in this cool sandbox off and on over the next few years. After a while, I discovered youtube and learned about redstone and the almost magical contraptions you could make in this game. The first youtuber I started actively watching was Mumbo Jumbo, a minecraft youtuber who specialized in making redstone tutorials. Once I actually subscribed to his channel I discovered he also had a survival let’s-play series, where he played online on the Hermitcraft SMP server with other youtubers. This was back when Hermitcraft was in season 2, so you can work out for yourself how long ago that was. Then, they decided together to start season 3, on an amplified world. This is still my favorite Hermitcraft season, where they all built close together in a town, and they had the first real gaming district. Maybe it is also because this was when I started watching and subscribing to other youtubers. My favorite minecrafters to this day are TangoTek and ImpulseSV (who was introduced in this season).
Overwatch
Also playing then was Sl1pg8tor, who was one of my absolute favorites back then. He eventually moved on from minecraft and started playing other games. I only watched some of these, but one I did watch was a few videos on a newly released game called Overwatch. I never got played the game (I’m not into first person shooters), but the game looked cool, was vibrant, and each character was very unique. (Healing potions and magic still always have that golden glowing color in my games.) I got really into Overwatch lore, because if there is one thing that I like it is a cool unique world with awesome worldbuilding. Overwatch had a lot of additional material, like comics and short cinematics that were really cool. Thus, I started watching some channels dedicated to the lore of the game. And one day one of them offhandedly mentioned something called Critical Role.
That famous D&D show
So yeah, turns out Matt Mercer, the voice actor for Overwatch’s cool cowboy McCree, was in a show on Geek & Sundry called Critical Role, where every week he would play Dungeons and Dragons together with other voice actors. I had heard about D&D before, and was a little interested because it was one of those things that was always talked about as ‘that activity that nerds do’. Now I definitely identified as a nerd back then (and still do), so I definitely wanted to get to know what it actually was and how it worked. I believe they were around episode 70 or 80 of their first campaign (Vox Machina) then, but me being the completionist I am wanted to start from the beginning. Maybe a little foolish, considering these episodes average around 3-4 hours in length. But I did it anyway. And immediately from the first episode I was hooked. These were awesome characters, amazingly performed by amazing actors. There was a chemistry there that I had never quite seen before.
Over the course of 2017 I watched all of that campaign. I watched the Underdark arc, with Kvarn and Clarota. I watched Vox Machina go to Vasselheim and got to meet guest PC’s for the first time. Then I watched the horrofyingly beautiful Briarwood arc, regarded by many as the point when the show took off and really started showing it’s potential (I agree). I watched as the Chroma Conclave attacked. I watched the hunt for the Vestiges of Divergence and the beautiful world of Exandria that Matt had built. I watched Grog kill Kevdak. I watched Vax make his pact with the Raven Queen. I watched Scanlan’s heartbreaking departure. I watched Keyleth become the Voice of the Tempest. I watched them traveling across the planes of existence to try and stop a god. I watched them be cows. It was awesome, and I’m glad to say I was there for all of it.
I caught up around the end of the year, just as they wrapped up their campaign. I watched a few of the one-shots that followed live (or at least as they were released to youtube). And then I was there again in 2018, at the start of their second campaign. Critical Role has impacted my life in a major way. By being this marvellously inclusive and supportive show they developed an amazing community of critters, one that I am glad to be a part of.
My own games
Now, putting my love for these nerdy-ass voice actors aside, of course I now wanted to play in a D&D game of my own. Luckily, 2017 was also the year I got out of high school, and the university I went to had a board- and roleplaying game club. Of course I joined, and here I got to experience the joys of playing TTRPGs for the first time. And yeah, it was awesome. Unfortunately, I switched schools a few times and had to give up the club. Fast-forward a year or so. I was with some friends of my chess club at a birthday party, and we had just returned home. At the end of the carpool, one of my friends mentioned they played D&D, but his current campaing might stop soon as the other players were becoming disinterested. And I was like: wow, omg, that’s awesome! why haven’t you mentioned this before?! Of course I said I also love D&D, but I currently had no one to play with. At which point my other friend chimes in that they had heard of the game and wanted to learn it. “That’s great!”, we both said. “Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if we just started playing together?”
The idea was formed right then and there, and we made a plan to start playing in a month or so, after each asking other people we knew if they might be interested. I was to be DM, as I had been working on my homebrew world Aenín off and on for some time. And that’s how my current game group started. It has been an awesome ride sofar, and I am not planning on stopping anytime soon!
Love
~Sanne