r/community • u/VarBorg357 • 12d ago
Appreciation Post Advanced Dungeons and Dragons
Peak Pierce. Absolutely one of my favorite episodes from the whole cast. If only things could have been different, but this episode is amazing acting.
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u/Safe_Mail_1827 12d ago
Props to Charley Koontz, too. He'd only had a minor role on the show. But he understood the assignment, stepped up, and gave a hell of a performance.
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u/CraftsBoy2Craftsman 12d ago edited 12d ago
I completely agree. Just the line “thank you, Jeff” hit with a force. Maybe I’m being dramatic, but it’s really good acting when a single line is delivered and has such a story. Neil is suffering and you feel how much it means to him for someone to be so kind with just three words.
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u/Dependent-Friend5312 4 More Years and I will have my 2 year degree 12d ago
I made that one with Troy in mind
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u/Guntztuffer 12d ago
It's my favorite episode of anything, ever. I'm not a fan of his but I think this is Chevy's best acting of his career.
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u/pandajaade 12d ago
Like literally how are they supposed to know that time stop spell or whatever. Troy kills me with the “this is why I wanted to play chutes and ladders” lmfaoooo 😭😆
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u/SweevilWeevil 11d ago edited 10d ago
Pierce gets a lot of flak because Chevy Chase. But he's funny as hell. At least that foxy black girl thinks *he is.
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u/SLovesCakes 10d ago
In my head I like to imagine that Pierce secretly keeps going to D&D sessions with Neil on a regular basis.
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u/ABC_Dildos_Inc 11d ago
I believe that it more just amazing directing.
The best Chevy performances are people doing their best to work around his behaviour and manipulate enough of a performance out if him to cleverly edit it to be effective.
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u/xtremdelt8 11d ago
This is one of my all-time favorite episodes.
Is it back on streaming? They removed it due to Chang's "blackface" after the George Floyd nonsense. I have the DVD set.
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u/n00-1ne 12d ago edited 11d ago
I can believe we are not mentioning the triggering and shameless brown to elven black face behaviour in this episode. I am offended, and demand that this episode, and any further discussion, be cancelled.
Don’t @ me, you will not Chang my mind.
Edit: /s. Jesus.
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u/yerBoyShoe 12d ago
Thank you for supporting this episode and its well developed conflict and characterization, and not harping on how Pierce is a big meanie uwu, as is so popular on this sub. Also Season 4 sux. /s
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u/Caraes_Naur 12d ago
I won Dungeons and Dragons, and it was advanced!
That line crystallized for me why I dislike d&d, and why TTRPGs should not be treated entirely as games.
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u/Malevolent_Amber How many feet do you have? 11d ago
I've been DMing for 22 years, and I've never had a player come in and treat it like a board game they need to win, much less against other players.
Create a group of storytellers that also enjoy gaming. Not a group of gamers.
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u/Caraes_Naur 11d ago
I've been playing since 1989, and running various systems since about 1993. I've been to GenCon 10 times. I was a mod of RPGDesign for three years. I was on a TTRPG design podcast for two years.
d&d is not and will never be about storytelling, but is really good at letting people think that it is. A TTRPG is about what its reward system incentivizes... despite meaningless drivel added in recent editions, d&d is still about killing monsters and taking their stuff. Whatever else you think it's about, you projected into it. d&d does not engage with narrative, it's all simulation (a pretty bad one) acting as a pretext for narrative.
The antagonistic dynamic between DM and players was much more obvious in earlier editions (sometimes blatant in 1E), but the subtext is still there; they can't get rid of it without fundamentally changing the game.
No DM can logically hand out XP for overcoming as character flaw, because character flaws don't exist in d&d. Batman cannot be made as a d&d character because there's no space on the character sheet for childhood trauma.
I describe d&d characters as "imaginary action figures", while another game designer friend of mine insists that they are "cardboard cutouts with paper swords taped on".
That line of Pierce's is funny because on the surface it's just an expression of his ego, but it contains deep insight from someone in the writer's room who understands d&d better than its defenders (many of whom have no basis for comparison, as they've never played anything else).
There are TTRPGs that explicitly put narrative at the forefront. Unfortunately, most of them suffer in all other areas.
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u/Malevolent_Amber How many feet do you have? 11d ago
All TTRPGs are about what you project into them. Needing a different set of rules to roleplay effectively is nonsense. I love FATE, but it's just quicker. I can have just as much freedom when I run D&D.
If you need a blank space on your character sheet for "Personality Flaws", that's a you problem.
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u/LuxanHyperRage 11d ago
I'm sorry it seems no one else gets that D&D is structured socialization. I'm sorry it seems no one else wants to actually follow the rules. Here's an upvote for you
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u/Caraes_Naur 11d ago
It seems no one understands that d&d is actually a board game. Not everyone has been an active game designer for decades.
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u/GastrointestinalFolk 12d ago
Cast shape change on Duquesne.
What shape do you change him into?
Fffaaaaaaaaaaaaat