the actual difference between hermitcraft and dream smp: a 4am essay
Hermitcraft and Dream SMP are two popular and successful Minecraft Youtube SMPs, on which Youtubers and Twitch streamers alike create content. Since Dream SMP, the younger of the two, has gotten popular, it’s been a running theme in many circles to compare the two servers, as both servers have elements of roleplay, around 25-30 active members, and had player conflicts that resulted in civil wars.
We like to joke that the difference between them is that Hermitcraft’s End dimension hasn’t been turned off (giving players access to elytra, cheap diamond gear, and shulker boxes), or that Hermitcraft is on hard mode (meaning raid farms can make Totems of Undying nearly dirt cheap), or even that simply Dream SMP players don’t fill in the holes left behind when a creeper explodes, and the Hermits would because they care more about their environments looking pretty. While all of these are true differences, I don’t think any of them are the key difference, exactly.
To find the difference, we consider their similarity: storytelling. Both servers tell sprawling stories across hours of content, but the difference between Hermitcraft and Dream SMP is what they emphasize in order to tell that story.
First let’s discuss briefly a middle ground: Shadow of Israphel. (N.B. take much of this with a grain of salt, it has been since whenever they last uploaded Shadow of Israphel that I have actually watched this series.) Shadow of Israphel was the Yogscast’s flagship series, the “season 3” of their Minecraft Let’s Play. Season 1 started out seemingly normal, except for some of the inexplicable appearances of a player our heroes didn’t know and buildings they didn’t construct; Season 2 leads to our heroes stranded on an island. Both Season 1 and Season 2 have elements of storytelling in them, but for the most part, they are just normal Let’s Play’s with lore involved. Season 3 shatters that illusion by throwing the heroes into an adventure not unlike an adventure map (which were popular at the time), complete with NPCs acted by real humans and sprawling builds. Notably, the environments also changed with the story - for example, frantically building a wall to contain an incursion of cursed sand, or a city made of wood burning to the ground, the heroes fleeing from the ashes behind them.
Despite all of this, the main allure of Shadow of Israphel was never the lore - it was the chemistry between the characters. You came to watch Honeydew and Xephos banter and be dumb while trying to save the world, hear them give the NPCs silly voices and see how the NPCs react to the stupid things Honeydew and Xephos say.
TL;DR Shadow of Israphel was a series that emphasized character chemistry while incorporating elements of environmental storytelling.
Now let’s touch upon Dream SMP. Dream SMP, by and far, emphasizes character acting and chemistry. Some of its most impactful scenes (for example: Wilbur’s slow conclusion that he could and wants to be the bad guy and his plea to Dream; Tommy atop a pillar above the clouds and slowly slowly realizing that he was abused; the entirety of the L’manberg War of Independence; Fundy’s search for a new parental figure after his father’s death) are performed almost entirely just by players talking to each other. They’re just ACTING. They could be having the same conversations in Roblox, or Raft, or GTA V, and except for the occasional detail that would need to be adapted for the new medium, nothing would change about it. The environment is secondary to the plot, and generally, builds are constructed in order to suit that plot which comes up out of players interacting with each other. For example, the SMP had a castle built because Eret was crowned king, and Wilbur built a drug van in the woods because he wanted to sell drugs. They build stage sets for their performances.
It’s also important to note that on Dream SMP, nothing is permanent. The iconic walls of L’manberg, so integral to L’manberg’s original identity that they were represented on the flag, were torn down and later built back up out of obsidian, now not as an assertion of autonomy but as a prison and an oppressive force. But less seriously than that, shit gets blown up all the time, houses are pranked and ruined, random blocks scattered because they place blocks while running and sprinting like they’re competitive players, redstone broken, old creations simply removed for the crime of being too ugly and irrelevant. Much like in a stage show, it’s all a set. It doesn’t matter if Eret’s walls of L’manberg come down, because the yellow concrete will be recycled into the set piece that traps Tubbo before he’s executed. It doesn’t matter if the skywriting is vandalized, because it was ugly anyway, and we want to see what it’ll change into next. There almost isn’t a purpose for some players in getting good armor and tools because they know it’ll get lost eventually, somehow.
Now we come to Hermitcraft. While the Hermits often interact with each other (some more than others), the ultimate format of their SMP on Youtube is as a collection of individual solo Let’s Plays that often intersect with each other. They’re known for going above and beyond, dedicating themselves to the grind, to building bigger and better and more outrageously with every season that comes. If you listen to the hermit Grian talking about season 7 in his end of 2020 Hermitcraft tour, he discusses how the Hermits’ creations are their art. The act of creation alone is what they are there to do. Getting to spend time with each other is secondary, building a cool cartoon city or a winery or a post-apocalyptic civilization is their main focus.
Hermitcraft love their environmental storytelling. When half of a house disappears at the end of an arc (don’t ask), a foundation is left behind, the pool drained and overgrown with leaves and moss. A literal war is fought over the type of turf in their main shopping district - mycelium or grass? - and this is represented by patches of mycelium re-invading the grass it was replaced with and armor stand containment units sent out to contain the invasive species that appeared to be returning. A mayoral election leads to campaign headquarters popping up all around the main island and handmade pixel art campaign posters on maps being scattered around the shops.
However, what is important to note about Hermitcraft’s environmental storytelling is that generally, what little roleplay they do is used as a drive in order to make the environmental changes occur. (This is especially prevalent in late season 6, during the Area 77 arc and Demise arc.) For evidence I bring you none other than Hermit Grian himself. During his 2020 season 7 tour, Grian mentioned how Rendog, who had previously been living in the very small “Loser Island” base far away from his friends, had felt lonely, and that Grian had encouraged him to move his base closer to his friends, the jungle hermits. This is vitally important because it sneakily revealed how and why a plot point occurred. See, earlier in the season, three hermits called themselves the Boomers, and took on the job of blowing shit up for people. Ren hired the Boomers to do some detonation on Loser Island, but due to a mishap, Ren’s entire base was destroyed. In his distress, Ren ends up having strange dreams, and starts to communicate with a mysterious alien being known as the Renperor, who tells Ren what to build. Ren ends up moving closer to the jungle hermits and establishing a new base, the Valley of Tattooren, complete with a custom biome and giant build.
Essentially, Ren hired the Boomers for a scripted TNT malfunction to give himself a reason to move out, and then created, acted, directed, shot, and edited an entire Star Wars-inspired Minecraft roleplay all by himself just so that he could build a Star Wars-inspired base in Hermitcraft season 7. All of the story he has told has been set dressing to the build, the art that he is going to construct and leave behind, to be preserved on the server’s file for as long as Minecraft runs.
And indeed, Hermitcraft prides itself on preservation. The flames of season 6’s Civil War never truly went out, eternally burning on an empty desolate field; the hole in the side of a cliff that Biffa set himself up in was not destroyed nor tampered with despite the massive futuristic tier cake that Grian built right by it; Area 77 was invaded and over with but instead of destroying or tampering with the incredible effort that Scar put into all of the builds there, Area 77 was “opened up” as a theme park - as had apparently been intended the entire time.
tl;dr Hermitcraft roleplays as a tool in order to move the environment (and by extension the plot) forward. Dream SMP’s plot and roleplay move forward regardless of the environment and often drag it along behind them. Of course there are exceptions - notably, Philza dabbles in environmental storytelling on Dream SMP, with his ideas for a basement of armor stands and a crater that slowly transformed into a lake complete with coral and seagrass - but for the most part, they have their differing ways of wanting to play Minecraft, and that comes across in the way they tell their stories.
It is very late. I have spent over half an hour on this.
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