I Hit It With My Axe: Episode Three: Down In The Hole

[Calatar]

It's meant to be a real look at adult performers/hairdressers/comic book illustrators/naked dancers (I think that covers everyone, oh and artists in the case of Zak the DM) who are juxtaposed with the playing of perhaps most nerdy/geeky hobby on the planet, most of whom are what this website would term 'N00bs' I believe.

Nope. Warhammer (40k) is an order of magnitude more nerdy/geeky. It requires much larger time, thought, and monetary investments.
DnD you can make a character, and only pay attention to the hobby only during a game. It requires no real planning for non-powergamer/roleplayers (n00bs), apart from original character creation, and the occasional level-ups.

I managed to get my girlfriend and all her friends into a game of DnD, my sisters too. It's really not a big deal. We're mostly nerds and geeks here at the Escapist, we're not impressed that somebody can get (possibly) otherwise non-geeky people to play with them in a game which requires a relatively small investment of thought each week.

It comes across as an attempted "shock" premise with very minor humor backing it up, and I am not shocked or particularly amused. It would certainly be more entertaining if we could actually see the whole situation, and not just a few seconds of it here and there. I don't find any of the clips thrown in there particularly meaningful or funny. DnD ends up being a long game of inside jokes, which you DON'T get if you see a few 10 second clips spliced together.

For it to have any chance of being entertaining, it should be longer and uncut. (OMG double-entendre!) Yet that would contribute to the amount of sheer boring-ness going on at the same time.

Inherently I think the entire premise is just plain flawed. Fitting a several-hour DnD session into a 5ish minute clip is doomed to fail, regardless of who's playing it.

 

[eels05]

DAmn whoever edits these things dosen't like pregnant pauses.
Now were being indulged with porn star arse as well.

 

[NicolasMarinus]

What's the point of this? Really.

 

[Bloodysoldier]

I'm confused, are they slowly trying to turn it into porn? I saw some butt action going on.
I'll go back to watching the writers of robot chicken play DnD 4e ( http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Videos.aspx )

Thanks for the link, the first episode was quite good. I will definatly watch more of it.

Its worth the watch, I would suggest "Zak" and his group of "Adult entertainers/Hair blah blah blah" to go watch it, and other videos like it. He might learn something, but I bet not. He took the suggestions that some people made, and turned it into shackycambuttandneckstare-A-thon with a side of crap-gasim.

 

[cardman2467]

Once again, too short, too much editing and shot switching. If this is to be the continuing production style then a little separate thread posting what is happening in the 'campaign' might alleviate some of the negative comments. Just watching the vid provides nothing of genuine interest to keen D&D players. Sure hope the content picks up in quality. Doesn't all this negative coverage get to Reaper's ears as well? Maybe they should help! You can't even clearly see the minis anyway. Zak as the DM is a softy. Never seen such a week-willed DM.

COME ON GUYS! PICK IT UP A BIT. Yawn...

 

[Bakaferret]

Any tiny shred of hope that I had for this show was dashed with all of the ass and tits shots. Thanks for confirming what we all suspected all along: that this show is little more than a source of mild visual entertainment for desperate male nerds.

As a female nerd, I wanted to keep watching to see if anything interesting happened in the campaign, but come on. I seriously don't understand how some of you guys are defending this show, saying it's amusing. Putting aside the porn star aspect, I had a rough time following what was going along. The flow was VERY jagged and rough, and in the end we only get short segments where I guess you guys sat around and said "Omg remember that funny part that happened after that battle??" and put that scene in, only to have it confuse the audience because we don't know what happened BEFORE that. Things need to be much better edited.

 

[Sir Isaac]

I love this show. I play D&D often (when I am not on official travel) and this show definitely captures a lot of the fun inter-player dynamics that I experience in my own gaming. Seeing the geeky side of the stars is also very cool and captivating, all at once.

 

[dmase]

I've watched a 6 part series on youtube that was close to 10 minutes each part and it was about a journalist documenting the most hated family in the world. It was way more interesting showing that then this and wasn't funny at all. The idea can be funny but things aren't always implemented well.

If you start comparing any web series on here to a Louis Theroux BBC documentary they're going to fall apart.

Egh I'm gonna say that it was to prove that people don't just care about funny online, but honestly it was a stretch. I don't really watch anything that isn't funny... so it may prove his point but i would be willing to listen to some intelligent show with some one liners thrown in there.(once again i think brainiac but that is more to get a laugh)

The person I quoted seemed like he was looking to deep for humor. Twilight could be considered Shakespeare if you put enough between the lines thought into it. Of course your not because with a book like that your looking at a literal translation with the deeper meaning being the same as any subplot in a good book.

 

[OwenEdwards]

The most interesting thing is the psychology of those participating - it's really fascinating to see a love among the ruins, But the plot needs to be clearer, and maybe some more indepth interviews/segments of RP.

 

[MissLisa]

Zak as the DM is a softy. Never seen such a week-willed DM.

?

NO YOU CANNOT SING A SONG TO YOUR HORSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Seriously, where did you go to DM school, Cardman2647?

 

[magicringgirl]

Umm... I don't know... not as boring as the first two... but... well it's still a bunch of people sitting in a very cluttered room, which distracts from the players and the game, and them playing a game. They don't really seem that into it, I'd like to see more enthusiasm maybe or something... come on guys, is it really that hard to get into the game and act silly once in awhile. Getting into the roll playing is definitely my favourite part about D&D!

Also the camera work is terrible... seriously... the constant cut scene, cut scene, cut scene was driving me NUTS!!!

Oh yeah and I agree about the other guys in the background who look bored out of their minds. Just looking at them made me even more bored then the lack of entertainment in the show made me feel. I agree about removing them... or at least make them interesting!

I guess I'll stick around until episode 5...

 

[EchetusXe]

I don't know what they are talking about, but I will continue to watch the series in case one of the girls accidentally reveals the secret to eternal life or something.

 

[wwjdftw]

Tried to watch this and the last 2 videos, but its not possible. Too boring and pointless.
And who the hell is sasha grey anyway? Why is she a 'guest star'?

Isnt she a porn star? thats what i thought >.>


...What?

 

[Silver_Shade]

What happened? The first episode was 'eh', I actually liked the last one, and this one was flat out bad.

I can't believe it. They made it even worse and disjointed than it was before.

Fast cut
sentence fragment
fast cut
sentence fragment
fast cut
unrelated exposition about miniatures
picture of someone's ass

insulting

Someone in this thread said it gets good at episode 5. I may give it until then. I haven't decided yet.

This pretty much sums up my complaints. 'Insulting' is bolded for extreme truth.

The only other two I have are: 1. At least I could figure out what was happening in the first two, this one I had no idea. 2. what's with the random bursts of loud music in there for no reason?


And who's saying it gets good at episode five? How do they know? Is it posted somewhere else? As far as I know, only three episodes even exist.

 

[The Random One]

And who's saying it gets good at episode five? How do they know? Is it posted somewhere else? As far as I know, only three episodes even exist.

Zak says it on the DnD with Pornstars blog this is more or less based on, and which is not linked to in the little blurb under the video because all of the Escapist web designers have been hit in the head with bowling balls in a series of bizarre yet hilarious accidents. The blog is pretty awesome.

I think this episode actually got worse, but I'll still wait for five.

That said, someone should copyright 'You can do anything you could in real life... plus cast spells!' as a slogan for RPGs. I'd say it sums up the whole experience in a nutshell.

 

[Silver_Shade]

And who's saying it gets good at episode five? How do they know? Is it posted somewhere else? As far as I know, only three episodes even exist.

Zak says it on the DnD with Pornstars blog this is more or less based on, and which is not linked to in the little blurb under the video because all of the Escapist web designers have been hit in the head with bowling balls in a series of bizarre yet hilarious accidents. The blog is pretty awesome.

I think this episode actually got worse, but I'll still wait for five.

That said, someone should copyright 'You can do anything you could in real life... plus cast spells!' as a slogan for RPGs. I'd say it sums up the whole experience in a nutshell.

Oh, I see. Thank you.

 

[inkBot]

Not really much of an improvement from last week. I still don't know what's really going on and this time the cuts were even faster. Sometimes even intercutting between sentences it seemed.

Are all of the current episodes part of the same game session or is every episode a montage of footage from the most recent game session? I'd assume the latter, but it's difficult to tell.

I don't think I can add anything else to what I wrote last week, but I agree with the ones suggesting to take a peek at the Robot Chicken D&D videos.

 

[Tom Roberts]

The Guys in the background reading comics (and listed as such in the credits) are 'Ian' and 'Sasha's Boyfriend'.

This I at least found humourous based on the numbers of Gamer GIRLfriends who've attended a session (either to see what this Sunday afternoon of non-football is all about, who ranged from tolerable to actually fun, or to make sure their man wasn't out on a booze and drug fueled sex binge with his buddies, who ranged from the mostly ignorable to the complete ruination of the session for everyone).

To see the ERA making strides in Gamer-Widow-Significant-Other-Land is truly impressive. Particularly given that if you changed the magazine from a comic to 'Elle' or Cosmo it becomes a dead ringer for nearly every Girlfriend who attended a session, looking bored and wondering when the hell this would be over and they could go. Except for the cool ones who later took up the dice themselves, of course

@inkBot All the episodes so far are from a single session, the session in which Sasha Grey plays for her first time. The next session has Justine Joli, who is apparently (Based on a few pics on Zak's blog) far more enthusiastic/knowledgeable than Sasha appears to be, at least at the moment.

 

[MortisLegio]

I kinda like this show

it isnt all comedy and is a good balance to Yahtzee's reviews

 

[jasoncyrus]

zZzZz reeeaalllyyy hoping this gets better soon because right now it is quite frankly even more boring than watching paint dry. It's choppy and all over the place and you're left with a kind of "wtf thats it?" kind of feeling and it seems like very little actually happened. Yeah thats 5 minutes of my life a'll never get back -.-

Once again if the escapist paid money for this they ssooooo got ripped off. As did that miniatures company.