High Rollers: The Lightfall campaign
48 episodes each averaging 3 hours and 28 minutes. 277 hours, 10 minutes in total. The first episode came out Mar 7, 2016, and the final came out on May 31, 2018.
Did I make this whole blog, so I would have an excuse to talk about a criminally overlooked Actual Play Livestream? Could I not wait until past the 2nd post to talk about it? Well, I guess you will just have to wait and see.
High Rollers: The Lightfall campaign(from here on out I will just be calling High Rollers) stars Mark “Sherlock” Hulmes as the DM. Chris Trott playing Cam Buckland, the Lightborn (a homebrew race) Cleric. Katie Morrison as Elora Galanodel, the Moon Elf Druid. Kim Richards as Jiutou Zhiji, a Tiefling Monk. Matthew Toffolo playing Trellimar “Trell” Aleath, a Dark Elf warlock. Matthew has to leave the game after forty episodes due to scheduling conflicts. His spot in the party is then filled by Tom Hazell playing Reynard Ferehorn, a human Ranger.
The high rollers crew is playing D&D 5e, in a homebrew setting with a lot of homebrew content. Many people compare it to Critical Role, and I there are many reasons why. Much like Critical role, there is a lot of content to get through with High Rollers. The tone and storytelling feels a lot like Critical Role as well, but it is most definitely its own entity. The tone is lighter and while a lot of the villains are compelling, the stakes do not feel as high as they are in other Actual play shows (though they more or less are the same stakes as it is in a lot of other actual play shows)
A wonderful mix of homebrew and following the rules. Mark is excellent at streamlining some of the slower rules but keeping the game engaging for the listeners and players. Homebrew and updated monsters keep the game fresh. New mechanics for smaller fights and large-scale battles. though the game still follows the rules enough that it doesn’t get too frustrating for rules critics.
This is a live stream with a pretty small team, I believe just one or two people behind the camera. So, they get the technical difficulties that come with that. Sometimes players forget to turn on or off their microphones. The sound and/or video has given out on more than one occasion, and in the early episodes, the microphones were not as good as they could have been. While not great, don’t let it stop you from watching or listening to the VODs.
This is a hard one for me because there are excellent moments in this show, but there are also some arcs that drag on for way too long and very unsatisfactory conclusions. The final arc and the penultimate arch should have been switched. I understand why they had it the way they did, but the 2nd to last to last BBEG (big bad evil guy) is the one the story hyped up through the whole campaign and is not the last fight. There are quite a few episodes after what should have been the conclusion of the story. Sure, the last bad guy is interesting, and he does not come out of nowhere, but he is not as well fleshed out as the previous villain. Because of this the ending just falls a little flat for me
So good! A lot of conical LGBT characters, two of them being in the actual party. Though the players do not want to put labels on their characters one of them is cannon WLW, and the other is Cannon MLM, and while not explicitly stated the two other male player characters could be MLM as well. There are only a few cannon NPC ships, only three that I can think of off of the top of my head, and one of them is a healthy lesbian relationship.
There is a major NPC who is non-verbal. Then there is another one, while not explicitly stated, feels to be coded as autistic. While I am not sure If the DM has personal experience with disabled people, but all of his RP feels respectful.
The only thing bringing down this score is that there is some not-so-great fantasy racism. Some races are kept as slaves by other races, and while not too crucial to the main story, (until the last arc)it does feel slightly out of place and clunky at times.
While High Rollers: The Lightfall Campaign definitely has its problems, it is one of the strongest Actual play streams out there. I first listened to it in late 2016 stopping once I caught up. I re-listened to the whole show it over the summer of 2018 and found that I still liked it. While not my favorite Actual play show, I would say It is in my top five. The setting is classic but new, the characters are diverse and fun to watch. It is NSFW with lots of sex jokes and cursing, but nothing so out of character or lewd that I feel uncomfortable. If you are caught up with Critical Roll and want to watch something that feels similar but unique, try out High Rollers: The Lightfall Campaign.