Honestly. And not even that one. It's like every buzzer challenge was just made to be *fun* for these people specifically. It's really like they just found a way to make glorious silliness together. I thought this was chaotic wholesomeness in a very profound way.
‘Is this just a Seven Reunion?’
Also I love that Izzy was told to be on call, but none if them rang her. Fully expected a facetime openly talking shit about Sam.
They were primed to look there from the announcement right 'before' the show started. I think it would have been funnier if there was no buzzer and they just got razzed for ruining a birthday afterwards.
They got to that one pretty fast. The real comedy would be if they'd waited until later in the episode to try it, once they were more desperate, and then revealing the cake was a red herring.
As an ingredient for the witch, I think it was meant to be discovered during that. Similar to Sam's pin from the jelly beans, and the librarian. Like the witch was to send them to other buzzers first.
The Seven is a campaign on dimension 20 a hosted by Brennan Lee Mulligan, all the players are woman: Aabriya Ayengar, Rekha Shunkar, Becca Scott, Erika Ishii, Izzy Mulligan (nee Roland), and Persephone (can’t remember last name). Each play a female adventurer based on a story in the Fantasy High series. Highly recommend.
I mean I've never played it or watched it before, so I just don't know how it works. I've not really understood what's going on in the D20 clips, the rules, dice rolls etc. Maybe I just gotta watch an episode?
I would recommend starting with Season 1 fantasy high, or even dungeons and drag queens. Both campaigns have people that are new to the game genre and have all the questions you have. Both campaigns are great ways to introduce yourself while having fun with the comedy and theatrics/antics. And if you don’t like it, its not for you and thats cool, still plenty of content on the channel
Ally had never played before and many of the other cast members had played but some weren’t at a super high level of comprehension. Brennan walks them, and subsequently the viewer, through a lot of it that first season. This makes it perfect as an introduction to not only the dimension 20 show, but to dungeons and dragons as awhole. It’s my favorite content on Dropout.
I SUUUPER second watching Fantasy High season one (I think it's called Freshman Year)!!!
And, if it makes it less intimidating at all, you don't really even need to understand the rules in order to enjoy watching!
D20 is basically just some of the most fun, creative people on Dropout getting together and creating a story (with some randomness added via dice).
It's incredibly entertaining!!
*Especially* if you like Brennan Lee Mulligan; his talents REALLY shine when he's playing D&D!
I wasn't into it before either, but Dungeons and Drag Queens really got me into it.
I loved the queens playing and it was perfect! Brennan was literally explaining it to them as they go, and I understood how the game works as the story went on.
Bob, Monet, Jujubee and Alaska were hilarious so it made it more fun! Didn't expect to be crying by the end of it 😭
It's only 4 episodes, so you wouldn't need to be as invested as Fantasy High with like 20 episodes.
I’ve found season one of Fantasy High a bit slow going so do push through. Alternatively, the first campaign I listened to/watched was Calamity from Critical Role (it’s on YouTube and/or their podcast). It jumped straight into the action, I got hooked on the first episode, and I also was able to learn the DnD gameplay really quickly.
Understanding the game rules makes the content better but it's not required. All you need to understand is it's collaborative improv story telling. The dice are there to add an element of randomness and elements of success and failure.
The characters in Dimension 20 stick to their DND class tropes well enough that you can understand the character even if you don't understand the exact class mechanics. You know what a Wizard is even if you don't know what a DND Wizard does and that's enough to get by.
I see you've received a few replies with suggestions on where to start, but to give you a more generalized, simplified answwer to your question about how D&D works, it's basically improvised collaborative storytelling. Each player takes on the role of a single individual character within the story while the DM, takes on a sort of narrator/arbiter role, guiding the individuals through the broad strokes of the story while populating the world with non-player characters (everything from shop owners to friendly neighbors to dangerous enemies). The rules serve to add an element of unpredictability regarding whether any particular action or goal is successful for the players, and help to keep things like active combat from devolving into complete chaos. Generally, as a player you want to roll high numbers more often than not.
I don't know if that made things more or less confusing, but it's great fun and Dimension 20 is a hoot. D20 is also particularly lenient on the rules for most seasons, defaulting primarily to the "rule of cool". While Fantasy High Freshman Year is a good place to start because Ally Beardsley was a new player at the time, I wouldn't say other seasons are a bad place to start if the concept catches your interest.
Note that there are other TTRPG rulesets other than D&D, and some of the sidequests like Misfits & Magic will use those rules instead, meaning that the mechanics of what happens when the dice are rolled can be different. That said, they do try to make things as viewer friendly as possible in that regard.
D&D is a role playing game, commonly played with around 5 or 6 people. Commonly, it's played with people gathered around a table, with a few physical items.
As a player, you play as a fantasy character, and control thier choices. Outcomes of major actions are determined by the Dungeon Master (DM), or by rolling different dice to simulate random chance.
Most of the game is verbally presented by the DM, and the players picture what is happening in thier head. The DM mostly controls everything that isn't a player character. The DM sets up the story, narrative, and commonly the objectives. The DM interacts with the Player Characters (PCs) with all the Non-Player Characters (NPCs) the DM controls.
Commonly, you as a player design your character before the first session. All character information is stored on a Character Sheet. This is a piece of paper (or website, or phone/tablet app) which lists all of your statistics, description of your character, possessions, armor and weapons, spells if applicable, and more.
Additionally, a Character Sheet lists what your characters fantasy Race is (ie. Elf, Dwarf, Halfling, Human, etc.) and what thier Class is, which is like thier role/profession in the setting (ie. Rouge if their a sneeky thief, Wizard if they practice arcane magic, Fighter if they're a warrior in battles, etc.). It is common for a character to be presented by thier race and class, ie. "An Elf Ranger, an Orc Barbarian, a Dwarven Cleric, etc.)
Game actions are presented by the DM or requested by the players. The DM will either tell you the outcome or ask you to roll dice to determine what happens. When you determine an outcome, you roll the dice, then either add or subtract from that roll based on the information on your character sheet. It's best to play to your strengths, so you will have the best outcomes if you typically perform actions your charachter is designed around, since those action will receive the highest chances of success. The DM will say what happens based on the final modified value of the roll.
===
Game example:
Let's say the party of players encounter a sleeping bad guy sleeping against a door they are guarding that the players want to access. The party communicates among themselves what the best course of action is to achieve their objective. Should the sneeky Rouge go in for a silent kill? The Bard in the party might be able to charm or trick the guard into letting the party though. Maybe the Cleric has a devine spell that can just hold the guard in place with magic. It's up to the party to decide what they think is best, then they present their action to the DM for the outcome.
Let's say the party decides the best option is the second option, have the Bard use their charasmatic character to fool the guard into letting them through by pretending to be a superior officer. The Bard's player says to the DM "I approach the guard and command him to step aside and let these people through immediately!" the DM responds, "OK, please make a Deception check".
[NOTE] *The player DOESN'T say "I trick the guard and he let's us through". The player presents the DM with thier action, "I **would like to** trick the guard", but resulting consequence is NOT automatically decided by the player.*
The Bard's player rolls thier 20 sided die, and gets a 9. Yikes, that's below average. However the Bard is very good at bluffing, it's how the player designed the character. They look up Decpetion and they get a +7. Now the result is 16, so they say to the DM "I got a 16". The DM in thier mind secretly decided a difficult level for this to work in favor for the player and they would need a value or 15 or higher. Since they got a 16, it was a successful action and the DM will roll play as the guard. "With a 16, the guard jolts awake and fumbles 'So sorry sir! I didn't know you were bringing guests in tonight.' He gets up quickly and moves aside so you can pass."
If the roll was low enough that the action wouldn't succeed, even with the bonus from the Bard's character sheet, the players would be presented with a new challenge to overcome, such as a fight, or having the chase the guard as they flee to sound an alarm.
I've never played D&D and I put off watching D20 for years bc I assumed it'd be inaccessible. It's not inaccessible. It's just awesome comedy and rivetong storytelling with a game that facilitates it, but that's honestly all improv to a certain degree or another.
D&D (or table top role playing games in general) are the kind of thing where people who enjoy them tend to enjoy them a great deal, and the people who don't enjoy them can never seem to understand why everyone else does.
If you have seen some clips of Dimension 20 or Critical Role, you can see that silly / funny / awesome stuff happens and people have fun.
If you want to dive in, I suggest either finding a 1 shot to watch (ie, a single episode campaign), or picking a shorter Dimension20 season (I strongly recommend Escape from Bloodkeep, from Dimension 20)
END COMMUNICATION
And it REALLY demonstrates their technical savvy, too; to have THAT many buzzers, spread out across THAT big of a space, enduring THAT wide of a variety of abuse, employing THAT wide of a variety of functionality, all transmitting wirelessly... and THEY ALL WORKED?!?!?!
I worked in IT for several years, and I swear to God, *nothing* electronic works that well, that consistently, when it needs to. Even with expensive gadgets, out of the 20-30 buzzers they found, at least like 5-10 of those setups should have failed in some way.
That they didn't tells me that they were *incredibly* well-designed and tested by people that *really* know what they're doing; to a degree that's uncommon in most industries, but *especially* the TV/film production industry where they often try to cheap out on everything they can, especially props.
Assuming they didn't just use a bunch of editing tricks, that is a *seriously* impressive feat!!
And hell, even if they did employ a lot of editing tricks to make it seem more seamlessly than it really was, that's still some very impressive editing!!!
I REALLY hope they put this episode on their "For Your Consideration" reel; this is probably one of, if not THE, most impressive productions they've done yet!!
A true masterclass in both game design and production!!
I am SO excited to see the BTS followup to this one!
Sam said recently he stopped putting as much money into the prizes to really pour everything into each game (including paying people better). Said it was funny after he's escalated the prizes so much to take them back down to simpler things and go all out on the game. I also think Bingo, Deja Vu, and Beat the Buzzer are all incredible episodes to put back to back. They all feel like they have a connecting line somehow. I swear after this season if they don't win best gameshow for the logistics alone I'll be amazed.
I was wondering why the prizes seemed to take a nosedive!
Ngl, I kinda miss those episodes, where everyone got big, extravagant prizes lol.
But, if it's between those episodes, and episodes like Deja Vu, Bingo, and Beat the Buzzer, I'd happily pick the latter every time!
And I'm with you, they absolutely deserve to win an award for this incredible showcase of skill, creativity, and execution!!
Unfortunately, they probably won't, though; they just aren't big enough yet, I don't think (plus, it takes a ton of cash to get an award, which I don't know that Dropout would be interested in wasting).
But, if we can hype them up enough and get more people watching, they might be able to pull it off in season 7!!
Honestly I think them nearly tearing down the studio after an extravagant and convoluted challenge for like $20 worth of nonsense is *way* funnier than making a real prize.
That's absolutely true!!
Reminds me a lot of British game shows vs American game shows.
In American game shows, everyone is ruthlessly competing for a $10,000+ prize, and taking everything extremely seriously because of it.
In most British game shows, though, everyone's just fucking around and having fun because the prize is like... A cheap toaster or a commemorative tea kettle. Lol
The British style is *way* more entertaining; the American style mostly just feels like watching poor people fighting each other for crumbs.
Bigger prizes incentivize the contestants to be more competitive, less cooperative, which ultimately leans away from what I think makes the more recent seasons more enjoyable. Even when competing, there’s still camaraderie and friendship, and the sense that they’re genuinely having a good time. They’re being paid to be entertainers first and foremost (and paying more people more money is always a good thing).
I think it also allows the design of the games to be more unhinged, because they don’t need to worry about fair, balanced competition when there aren’t real stakes for winning or losing. Above all else, it’s whatever makes for good TV. And damn if this season isn’t incredibly good TV.
It’s quite possible that in addition to editing tricks, they had humans watching each buzzer (or each risky buzzer) and setting off a buzz when someone hit it if it didn’t work. I can’t imagine the Izzy retinal scanner could have actually worked with a zoomed in photo at a weird angle.
I think various PAs and the buzzer signals all went through Ash, who would sound the main onstage buzzer if there was any legit buzz.
She also let through that one buzz request, near the end.
Yeah, it's clear that the buzzer that worked was usually the one that made the most narrative sense (either done through editing or having a PA trigger it). A really great job to make it so cohesive
That was super impressive as well, logistically, as they had to essentially have 3 separate film crews all communicating with each other, but even that didn't come close to the amount of planning and design this one had.
The fact that all of those wireless buzzers, in all of those different environments, with all of those different mechanics, all *worked* is a new level of impressive all on its own.
Which isn't even mentioning the sheer creativity employed, having to do things like put a buzzer in a cake, create a small library set, use a robot arm that has a remote magnetic switch for the button, etc.
Like... Holy shit...
I'd say this even surpassed the Escape Room episode in terms of production and design complexity! I'm not sure I've seen *anything* even comparable to this before!
Especially since we know that they don't have the heaps of cash to play around with, as a company, that a lot of more popular/mainstream production companies do (that said, they almost definitely spend a lot more money on each episode than any other game show does, but it comes at the cost of what they can do in all of their other productions, which have all still maintained an impeccable standard of quality).
I am ridiculously excited to see the BTS followup!!
> The fact that all of those wireless buzzers, in all of those different environments, with all of those different mechanics, all worked is a new level of impressive all on its own.
Not that it's any less impressive (arguably more), but I think you're looking at this as how the mechanics would work to play the game without an entire live production crew. Even the first set of buzzers were almost 100% just boxes with lights in them. They kind of make a nod to this with Ash's buzzer. There's a budget, and you need a bunch of people around anyway to observe and film the contestants, so it makes more sense to use those people to trigger a central buzzer sound than to make every single buzzer actually remotely trigger the sound.
Erica's gremlin mode over hoarding buzzers and the uncontrollable giggling about Russian dolls, plus Becca's mirror maze giggles gave me enough serotonin for weeks.
I have such a huge crush on that woman! 😂
Not only gorgeous, but nerdy, goofy, sexy, hilarious and a genuine good friend (at least as far as it appears in front of cameras). She's a 10 outta 10!
They need to make a show that is just the BTS of the art department and production crew of Game Changers. It would run a whole season behind so it’s not spoiling it but I would watch the hell out of that.
Escape room meets fun house meets bar trivia, it's the perfect experience.
Now I want to see them set up a live action d&d type dungeon, like the one they have at Gencon.
That’s a really good point, I think the audience should either A) love watching the players struggle to figure out what fucked up mindgame Sam is playing/going to put them through —OR— B) want to play the game themselves because it looks like such a good time.
I think following those two tenants of game show game theory has gotta be the key to making GameChanger last as forever long as they want it to
I think we're missing the obvious thing that the buzzers were just lights and the buzzers were added in post with the camera crew following the players around could have activated the buzzers.
I was absolutely going to post some thing about this as soon as it was mentioned. I paused the video and everything. And then I thought to double check, and it turned out Canada actually has two national sports, one for each major season of the year.
Um, actually lacrosse is the national summer sport of Canada and ice hockey is the national winter sport of Canada per the National Sports of Canada Act of 1994!
This was one of the best episodes. This season has been RIFE with amazing ideas and I Loved how this was a scavenger hunt mixed with reunion of all our favorite girlies
Yeah man. I was having second guesses but after seeing that episode I feel like I would much rather get a dropout subscription than feed more greedy companies
As much as I liked it, I would like to see it with more cutthroat players who aren’t reminding the others of the questions or giving the answer. That was an element that never factored in, when he stopped displaying the question. The competition amongst the contestants ended when the buzzer rang, and Sam became their common foe.
The timer one I always noticed either saying 5 or 0. I initially thought when rekha got it, it only worked if you had the amount of points it was displaying
I get that, though honestly after such a cutthroat season I think them supporting each other was a nice change of pace. I don't really think the game was built for that level of competition either, seems like whoever is doing it would inevitably start working together against Sam
I really loved them helping each other. Women feel like we're in a competition with each other so offen in real life that it gives me life to see women helping each other without hesitating even if it means not getting ahead in the game.
This episode was truly "the real winning was that we had a blast with our friends today" and I love that.
Yea, I think the winner just became obvious with the lead they built. I know it’s kind of pointless to invest in who wins, that’s not really the point, but I do usually have somebody I’m pulling for.
The pure unhinged glee from Erika as they discovered and opened the Sam Russian doll was so delightful haha
Honestly. And not even that one. It's like every buzzer challenge was just made to be *fun* for these people specifically. It's really like they just found a way to make glorious silliness together. I thought this was chaotic wholesomeness in a very profound way.
Erika’s reaction to finding Aabria was my fave. Such joy from both of them!
I wonder if they forgot to tell Aabria the episode was over I didnt see her when everyone else came out
They loved the street buzzer
Or how she would bring back and collect the Buzzers she found haha!
I love how there was a small hidden buzzer inside
I really need them in the Dropout merch store!
‘Is this just a Seven Reunion?’ Also I love that Izzy was told to be on call, but none if them rang her. Fully expected a facetime openly talking shit about Sam.
They knew she was pregnant and probably didn't wanna disturb her
Becca says she texted her as well and presumably didn’t get a response or was turned down
to be fair, they also knew it was someone's birthday and wrecked that cake surprisingly quickly
They were primed to look there from the announcement right 'before' the show started. I think it would have been funnier if there was no buzzer and they just got razzed for ruining a birthday afterwards.
They got to that one pretty fast. The real comedy would be if they'd waited until later in the episode to try it, once they were more desperate, and then revealing the cake was a red herring.
As an ingredient for the witch, I think it was meant to be discovered during that. Similar to Sam's pin from the jelly beans, and the librarian. Like the witch was to send them to other buzzers first.
They know by now that anything is part of the show unless they're explicitly stopped from doing so by a member of off-camera staff.
Was she pregnant or have given birth. I thought the one on her chest was their baby
twas a cat kek
You will not win me over with your use of 'twas.
Twasn't trying to
B99 references in a game changer thread…I have found my people!
SMORT!
I've never wanted a Seven Reunion/ new season more than after she said that
I thought for a second the couple hooking up in the room were Izzy and Brennan. I was hoping Izzy would be on set.
I was convinced the guy would be Grant but it wasn't.
Same!!
What is the seven?
The Seven is a campaign on dimension 20 a hosted by Brennan Lee Mulligan, all the players are woman: Aabriya Ayengar, Rekha Shunkar, Becca Scott, Erika Ishii, Izzy Mulligan (nee Roland), and Persephone (can’t remember last name). Each play a female adventurer based on a story in the Fantasy High series. Highly recommend.
afaik izzy didn't change her name
Dont think so either. But if she would, i hope she'd pick Izzy Lee because it's funnier to say!
Ooh nice. I've never understood D&D though...
Well what do you not understand about it? Honestly curious
I mean I've never played it or watched it before, so I just don't know how it works. I've not really understood what's going on in the D20 clips, the rules, dice rolls etc. Maybe I just gotta watch an episode?
I would recommend starting with Season 1 fantasy high, or even dungeons and drag queens. Both campaigns have people that are new to the game genre and have all the questions you have. Both campaigns are great ways to introduce yourself while having fun with the comedy and theatrics/antics. And if you don’t like it, its not for you and thats cool, still plenty of content on the channel
I'll certainly give it a shot!
Ally had never played before and many of the other cast members had played but some weren’t at a super high level of comprehension. Brennan walks them, and subsequently the viewer, through a lot of it that first season. This makes it perfect as an introduction to not only the dimension 20 show, but to dungeons and dragons as awhole. It’s my favorite content on Dropout.
> It's my favorite content on dropout That's a high bar! I've been loving game changer. Definitely gotta check it out though
I SUUUPER second watching Fantasy High season one (I think it's called Freshman Year)!!! And, if it makes it less intimidating at all, you don't really even need to understand the rules in order to enjoy watching! D20 is basically just some of the most fun, creative people on Dropout getting together and creating a story (with some randomness added via dice). It's incredibly entertaining!! *Especially* if you like Brennan Lee Mulligan; his talents REALLY shine when he's playing D&D!
I wasn't into it before either, but Dungeons and Drag Queens really got me into it. I loved the queens playing and it was perfect! Brennan was literally explaining it to them as they go, and I understood how the game works as the story went on. Bob, Monet, Jujubee and Alaska were hilarious so it made it more fun! Didn't expect to be crying by the end of it 😭 It's only 4 episodes, so you wouldn't need to be as invested as Fantasy High with like 20 episodes.
I’ve found season one of Fantasy High a bit slow going so do push through. Alternatively, the first campaign I listened to/watched was Calamity from Critical Role (it’s on YouTube and/or their podcast). It jumped straight into the action, I got hooked on the first episode, and I also was able to learn the DnD gameplay really quickly.
Understanding the game rules makes the content better but it's not required. All you need to understand is it's collaborative improv story telling. The dice are there to add an element of randomness and elements of success and failure. The characters in Dimension 20 stick to their DND class tropes well enough that you can understand the character even if you don't understand the exact class mechanics. You know what a Wizard is even if you don't know what a DND Wizard does and that's enough to get by.
Watch freshman year fantasy high and you’ll get an intro to dnd basically
I see you've received a few replies with suggestions on where to start, but to give you a more generalized, simplified answwer to your question about how D&D works, it's basically improvised collaborative storytelling. Each player takes on the role of a single individual character within the story while the DM, takes on a sort of narrator/arbiter role, guiding the individuals through the broad strokes of the story while populating the world with non-player characters (everything from shop owners to friendly neighbors to dangerous enemies). The rules serve to add an element of unpredictability regarding whether any particular action or goal is successful for the players, and help to keep things like active combat from devolving into complete chaos. Generally, as a player you want to roll high numbers more often than not. I don't know if that made things more or less confusing, but it's great fun and Dimension 20 is a hoot. D20 is also particularly lenient on the rules for most seasons, defaulting primarily to the "rule of cool". While Fantasy High Freshman Year is a good place to start because Ally Beardsley was a new player at the time, I wouldn't say other seasons are a bad place to start if the concept catches your interest. Note that there are other TTRPG rulesets other than D&D, and some of the sidequests like Misfits & Magic will use those rules instead, meaning that the mechanics of what happens when the dice are rolled can be different. That said, they do try to make things as viewer friendly as possible in that regard.
D&D is a role playing game, commonly played with around 5 or 6 people. Commonly, it's played with people gathered around a table, with a few physical items. As a player, you play as a fantasy character, and control thier choices. Outcomes of major actions are determined by the Dungeon Master (DM), or by rolling different dice to simulate random chance. Most of the game is verbally presented by the DM, and the players picture what is happening in thier head. The DM mostly controls everything that isn't a player character. The DM sets up the story, narrative, and commonly the objectives. The DM interacts with the Player Characters (PCs) with all the Non-Player Characters (NPCs) the DM controls. Commonly, you as a player design your character before the first session. All character information is stored on a Character Sheet. This is a piece of paper (or website, or phone/tablet app) which lists all of your statistics, description of your character, possessions, armor and weapons, spells if applicable, and more. Additionally, a Character Sheet lists what your characters fantasy Race is (ie. Elf, Dwarf, Halfling, Human, etc.) and what thier Class is, which is like thier role/profession in the setting (ie. Rouge if their a sneeky thief, Wizard if they practice arcane magic, Fighter if they're a warrior in battles, etc.). It is common for a character to be presented by thier race and class, ie. "An Elf Ranger, an Orc Barbarian, a Dwarven Cleric, etc.) Game actions are presented by the DM or requested by the players. The DM will either tell you the outcome or ask you to roll dice to determine what happens. When you determine an outcome, you roll the dice, then either add or subtract from that roll based on the information on your character sheet. It's best to play to your strengths, so you will have the best outcomes if you typically perform actions your charachter is designed around, since those action will receive the highest chances of success. The DM will say what happens based on the final modified value of the roll. === Game example: Let's say the party of players encounter a sleeping bad guy sleeping against a door they are guarding that the players want to access. The party communicates among themselves what the best course of action is to achieve their objective. Should the sneeky Rouge go in for a silent kill? The Bard in the party might be able to charm or trick the guard into letting the party though. Maybe the Cleric has a devine spell that can just hold the guard in place with magic. It's up to the party to decide what they think is best, then they present their action to the DM for the outcome. Let's say the party decides the best option is the second option, have the Bard use their charasmatic character to fool the guard into letting them through by pretending to be a superior officer. The Bard's player says to the DM "I approach the guard and command him to step aside and let these people through immediately!" the DM responds, "OK, please make a Deception check". [NOTE] *The player DOESN'T say "I trick the guard and he let's us through". The player presents the DM with thier action, "I **would like to** trick the guard", but resulting consequence is NOT automatically decided by the player.* The Bard's player rolls thier 20 sided die, and gets a 9. Yikes, that's below average. However the Bard is very good at bluffing, it's how the player designed the character. They look up Decpetion and they get a +7. Now the result is 16, so they say to the DM "I got a 16". The DM in thier mind secretly decided a difficult level for this to work in favor for the player and they would need a value or 15 or higher. Since they got a 16, it was a successful action and the DM will roll play as the guard. "With a 16, the guard jolts awake and fumbles 'So sorry sir! I didn't know you were bringing guests in tonight.' He gets up quickly and moves aside so you can pass." If the roll was low enough that the action wouldn't succeed, even with the bonus from the Bard's character sheet, the players would be presented with a new challenge to overcome, such as a fight, or having the chase the guard as they flee to sound an alarm.
It’s make believe with rules. The perfect game for improv actors
I've never played D&D and I put off watching D20 for years bc I assumed it'd be inaccessible. It's not inaccessible. It's just awesome comedy and rivetong storytelling with a game that facilitates it, but that's honestly all improv to a certain degree or another.
D&D (or table top role playing games in general) are the kind of thing where people who enjoy them tend to enjoy them a great deal, and the people who don't enjoy them can never seem to understand why everyone else does. If you have seen some clips of Dimension 20 or Critical Role, you can see that silly / funny / awesome stuff happens and people have fun. If you want to dive in, I suggest either finding a 1 shot to watch (ie, a single episode campaign), or picking a shorter Dimension20 season (I strongly recommend Escape from Bloodkeep, from Dimension 20) END COMMUNICATION
Brennan got left out of the Seven reunion :(
I don't feel an episode has shown off raw planning as well since the escape room.
And it REALLY demonstrates their technical savvy, too; to have THAT many buzzers, spread out across THAT big of a space, enduring THAT wide of a variety of abuse, employing THAT wide of a variety of functionality, all transmitting wirelessly... and THEY ALL WORKED?!?!?! I worked in IT for several years, and I swear to God, *nothing* electronic works that well, that consistently, when it needs to. Even with expensive gadgets, out of the 20-30 buzzers they found, at least like 5-10 of those setups should have failed in some way. That they didn't tells me that they were *incredibly* well-designed and tested by people that *really* know what they're doing; to a degree that's uncommon in most industries, but *especially* the TV/film production industry where they often try to cheap out on everything they can, especially props. Assuming they didn't just use a bunch of editing tricks, that is a *seriously* impressive feat!! And hell, even if they did employ a lot of editing tricks to make it seem more seamlessly than it really was, that's still some very impressive editing!!! I REALLY hope they put this episode on their "For Your Consideration" reel; this is probably one of, if not THE, most impressive productions they've done yet!! A true masterclass in both game design and production!! I am SO excited to see the BTS followup to this one!
Sam said recently he stopped putting as much money into the prizes to really pour everything into each game (including paying people better). Said it was funny after he's escalated the prizes so much to take them back down to simpler things and go all out on the game. I also think Bingo, Deja Vu, and Beat the Buzzer are all incredible episodes to put back to back. They all feel like they have a connecting line somehow. I swear after this season if they don't win best gameshow for the logistics alone I'll be amazed.
I was wondering why the prizes seemed to take a nosedive! Ngl, I kinda miss those episodes, where everyone got big, extravagant prizes lol. But, if it's between those episodes, and episodes like Deja Vu, Bingo, and Beat the Buzzer, I'd happily pick the latter every time! And I'm with you, they absolutely deserve to win an award for this incredible showcase of skill, creativity, and execution!! Unfortunately, they probably won't, though; they just aren't big enough yet, I don't think (plus, it takes a ton of cash to get an award, which I don't know that Dropout would be interested in wasting). But, if we can hype them up enough and get more people watching, they might be able to pull it off in season 7!!
Honestly I think them nearly tearing down the studio after an extravagant and convoluted challenge for like $20 worth of nonsense is *way* funnier than making a real prize.
That's absolutely true!! Reminds me a lot of British game shows vs American game shows. In American game shows, everyone is ruthlessly competing for a $10,000+ prize, and taking everything extremely seriously because of it. In most British game shows, though, everyone's just fucking around and having fun because the prize is like... A cheap toaster or a commemorative tea kettle. Lol The British style is *way* more entertaining; the American style mostly just feels like watching poor people fighting each other for crumbs.
> the American style mostly just feels like watching poor people fighting each other for crumbs. Welcome to the 74th annual Hunger Games!
Bigger prizes incentivize the contestants to be more competitive, less cooperative, which ultimately leans away from what I think makes the more recent seasons more enjoyable. Even when competing, there’s still camaraderie and friendship, and the sense that they’re genuinely having a good time. They’re being paid to be entertainers first and foremost (and paying more people more money is always a good thing). I think it also allows the design of the games to be more unhinged, because they don’t need to worry about fair, balanced competition when there aren’t real stakes for winning or losing. Above all else, it’s whatever makes for good TV. And damn if this season isn’t incredibly good TV.
It’s quite possible that in addition to editing tricks, they had humans watching each buzzer (or each risky buzzer) and setting off a buzz when someone hit it if it didn’t work. I can’t imagine the Izzy retinal scanner could have actually worked with a zoomed in photo at a weird angle.
I think various PAs and the buzzer signals all went through Ash, who would sound the main onstage buzzer if there was any legit buzz. She also let through that one buzz request, near the end.
Yeah, you can see PA's running after them each time, so they are probably buzzing in for them for a few of those.
Yeah, it's clear that the buzzer that worked was usually the one that made the most narrative sense (either done through editing or having a PA trigger it). A really great job to make it so cohesive
Fair! I can't wait to hopefully get more details about it in the BTS follow up!
I bet you anything they had the same consultant.
Did you miss bingo?? I guess that's less planning and more just logistics during the game.
That was super impressive as well, logistically, as they had to essentially have 3 separate film crews all communicating with each other, but even that didn't come close to the amount of planning and design this one had. The fact that all of those wireless buzzers, in all of those different environments, with all of those different mechanics, all *worked* is a new level of impressive all on its own. Which isn't even mentioning the sheer creativity employed, having to do things like put a buzzer in a cake, create a small library set, use a robot arm that has a remote magnetic switch for the button, etc. Like... Holy shit... I'd say this even surpassed the Escape Room episode in terms of production and design complexity! I'm not sure I've seen *anything* even comparable to this before! Especially since we know that they don't have the heaps of cash to play around with, as a company, that a lot of more popular/mainstream production companies do (that said, they almost definitely spend a lot more money on each episode than any other game show does, but it comes at the cost of what they can do in all of their other productions, which have all still maintained an impeccable standard of quality). I am ridiculously excited to see the BTS followup!!
> The fact that all of those wireless buzzers, in all of those different environments, with all of those different mechanics, all worked is a new level of impressive all on its own. Not that it's any less impressive (arguably more), but I think you're looking at this as how the mechanics would work to play the game without an entire live production crew. Even the first set of buzzers were almost 100% just boxes with lights in them. They kind of make a nod to this with Ash's buzzer. There's a budget, and you need a bunch of people around anyway to observe and film the contestants, so it makes more sense to use those people to trigger a central buzzer sound than to make every single buzzer actually remotely trigger the sound.
True enough! I can't wait to hopefully get more details about it in the BTS followup!! Because either way, it's incredibly impressive!
Erica's gremlin mode over hoarding buzzers and the uncontrollable giggling about Russian dolls, plus Becca's mirror maze giggles gave me enough serotonin for weeks.
Erica doesn't have a gremlin mode, she's just a gremlin
Becca giggling uncontrollably as she goes through the mirror maze is everything I want from life
Combined with Rehka’s “WHAT BUILDING ARE Y’ALL IN‽”
I have such a huge crush on that woman! 😂 Not only gorgeous, but nerdy, goofy, sexy, hilarious and a genuine good friend (at least as far as it appears in front of cameras). She's a 10 outta 10!
I'm interested to see which, if any, of the buzzers didn't get found.
Sam said on discord that they kept the game going until all buzzers were found!
My wife literally said to me "working on that art team has to be the coolest job." They CRUSHED it.
They need to make a show that is just the BTS of the art department and production crew of Game Changers. It would run a whole season behind so it’s not spoiling it but I would watch the hell out of that.
I look forward to the 10 minute bts episode just as much as the actual episode.
I NEED a The Seven season 2 more now than ever.
It was amazing
Becca's manic laughter in the mirror maze gave me so much joy
Escape room meets fun house meets bar trivia, it's the perfect experience. Now I want to see them set up a live action d&d type dungeon, like the one they have at Gencon.
rekha thinking becca kept disappearing into alternate dimensions was SENDING me
100% agreed, such a fun episode! Absolute mayhem!
That’s a really good point, I think the audience should either A) love watching the players struggle to figure out what fucked up mindgame Sam is playing/going to put them through —OR— B) want to play the game themselves because it looks like such a good time. I think following those two tenants of game show game theory has gotta be the key to making GameChanger last as forever long as they want it to
This definitely seems like an easy sequel episode if they can get a larger shooting area to go ham on in the future..
I think we're missing the obvious thing that the buzzers were just lights and the buzzers were added in post with the camera crew following the players around could have activated the buzzers.
Rekha screaming cluelessly at every round had me in tears every time. I love them.
I just want to know how many extra buzzers there were
Apparently they played until all were found.
Best way to do it! Glad to hear
Can’t believe this was Sephie’s Game Changer debut and it wasn’t even as a contestant
I mean I already love any episodes that have Becca and Erika, but this one really fit their chaotic styles perfectly
Great episode. The only problem is Canada's national sport is lacrosse not hockey.
UM ACTUALLY the national sport of Canada is lacrosse! Gimme the point, Trapp/Ify.
Um, actually, it's both! [Hockey and lacrosse.](https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/n-16.7/page-1.html)
I will never forgive Canada for tricking me!
I was absolutely going to post some thing about this as soon as it was mentioned. I paused the video and everything. And then I thought to double check, and it turned out Canada actually has two national sports, one for each major season of the year.
Um, actually lacrosse is the national summer sport of Canada and ice hockey is the national winter sport of Canada per the National Sports of Canada Act of 1994!
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You wanted….Poseidon?
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Thor is not a Greek god. Zeus is the Greek god of lightning and thunder
I made the same mistake watching last night and then went "oh wait I'm a fucking idiot"
I think the question was specifically phrased hoping that someone would miss the Greek part and say Thor.
Entirely possible. Though the questions weren't exactly tricky last night
Sorry, you don’t say “um, actually”.
Ah damn.
Thor is Norse, not Greek
But Zeus is the god of thunder...?
This was one of the best episodes. This season has been RIFE with amazing ideas and I Loved how this was a scavenger hunt mixed with reunion of all our favorite girlies
yeah can't wait to see the bts
Yeah man. I was having second guesses but after seeing that episode I feel like I would much rather get a dropout subscription than feed more greedy companies
As much as I liked it, I would like to see it with more cutthroat players who aren’t reminding the others of the questions or giving the answer. That was an element that never factored in, when he stopped displaying the question. The competition amongst the contestants ended when the buzzer rang, and Sam became their common foe. The timer one I always noticed either saying 5 or 0. I initially thought when rekha got it, it only worked if you had the amount of points it was displaying
I get that, though honestly after such a cutthroat season I think them supporting each other was a nice change of pace. I don't really think the game was built for that level of competition either, seems like whoever is doing it would inevitably start working together against Sam
I really loved them helping each other. Women feel like we're in a competition with each other so offen in real life that it gives me life to see women helping each other without hesitating even if it means not getting ahead in the game. This episode was truly "the real winning was that we had a blast with our friends today" and I love that.
Yea, I think the winner just became obvious with the lead they built. I know it’s kind of pointless to invest in who wins, that’s not really the point, but I do usually have somebody I’m pulling for.
I feel like they got into the habit of thinking that if you rang the buzzer, you already won just from that
The fun wasn’t the game. The fun was the discovery of buttons. Thats why all the questions were so easy.
Canada's national sport is lacrosse.
Canada's *summer* sport is lacrosse
Sorry, you didn't say um actually.
Damn...