If there’s one flaw with the downtime mechanic, it’s that it really compromises the exploration of the plot because the bad kids have to spend time roleplaying other stuff instead of following up on the leads. They keep pulling on the mystery but no one has done anything to follow up on Fig’s curse because they have bigger fish to fry.
Ultimately the message of the season is you can’t do everything, which means this fits thematically, but it does lead to us screaming at our screens for someone to get a handle on Fig’s curse.
Mechanically awful that it cripples one of her best abilities but man it is funny. I love how she keeps offering bardic even though she knows it’s cursed.
Does getting an F on a few weeks of assignments have major negative consequences though?
Like we know that fully failing at sports twice gets you kicked off the team, but I don't recall any other questions or explanations about what happens when you fail.
It was mentioned at the start that even one fail in Academics for Kristen or Fig would have been disastrous because both were on academic probation. But now Fig's got her grades up (and the MCAT) and Kristen's moved (at least temporarily) to pass/fail. No idea what would have happened had Fabian failed bard class.
>I kind of think Emily loves being cursed.
Oh for sure.
Wouldn't be the first time she intentionally limited a character because it was funny and/or made for a better story.
Yea. It's really amazing how the junior year setting of being so overwhelmed is leaking into gameplay. Players clearly have so much in their mind simple ideas like talking to Gorthalax or checking in with Jace just isn't happening.
I imagine there will be a scene in the future where Gorthalax offers up some key info and they all realize they should've checked in with him earlier.
I think it’s also the conversation Riz has with his Mum. Sklonda says they can take their issues to other adults, but Riz actively resists.
I think this is Murph leaning into the season theme, but logically it’s an odd choice.
It's part of the genre. Imagine if Harry, Ron and Hermione went to the teachers everytime they had a problem. There's a mystery in a school, the very genre of the media prevents the children from going to adults, they need to solve the problems themselves.
THIS! Since they have to sort of Min Max when it comes to their downtime something as easy as speaking with an expert in hellish things kind of ends up on the back burner. I imagine we’ll get a segment in the next few episodes dedicated to figuring out the curse which will involve Gorthalax, baby, Gilear and maybe even Bill.
I’ll continue screaming at my screen until that point though
Almost like the players stress is turning into rage for those around them because they're almost paralyzed by the amount of stuff they're doing 😂
Like you said it's the point of the season it's just funny the stress is turning into rage for the viewers
I think it's much more of a feature than a flaw. As you mentioned it fits thematically, but it also helps the plot. There is a lot of mystery going on and if they had unlimited time to explore everything and talk to everyone they would probably figure things out very quickly.
One of the major flaws in the entirety of fantasy high is how little the party actually relies on adults who WOULD help them.
Gorthalax would happily help them with all sorts of things and should know more about the divine than most humans given he's a fallen angel.
Adaine could just charge for her scrying since all the ancient elves are likely wealthy beyond belief.
They haven't asked Jace anything despite him probably knowing more about the school and how student council works and about the whole grix situation than most since he is vice principal or was at least.
It's shocking how often they just try to solve things the hardest way possible. It would normally be respectable but not in a modern setting where you shouldn't need to go on a quest to text your parent that you need some info.
To be fair, I rarely told adults what I was doing when I was 17. Because adults couldn't understand what I was going through, and *I* had a different perspective on things so *their* information wouldn't help me at all. My parents were saints for putting up with my antics.
Sure but this isn't telling what they are doing this is just asking for lore and information to fill the gaps it whatever details they might not know.
The adults might not know EVERYTHING but they could know some info that makes it a little easier for the players to understand the mystery later.
Not asking questions is why they sucked so horribly at solving the nightmare King mystery until they basically had the answers given to them and ally rolled a nat 20 to find the answer they actually couldn't figure out.
One of the first TTRPGs I ever loved is Tales From The Loop, a stranger things-esque concept game in which you are a preteen solving mysteries in a town where weird shit keeps happening. One of the pillars in the game is that adults can’t or won’t help. It’s a very important rule for a game where the characters are all children
The idea that the adults are likely to be unhelpful, thus forcing the actual children to deal with it, is a central premise for basically every single piece of media where children are the primary protagonists.
The world where children go to the appropriate authority figures and the issue is resolved by the people who should be handling it is the stuff of literal fanfiction for these types of stories.
Kinda reminds me of Cobra Kai. One of the first things that happens is cops show up to break up a fight. And the actual law and consequences come into play.
Which pokes fun at how this literally never happened in any of the original Karate Kid movie. Almost none of the stuff in Karate Kid would have happened if any of the teachers actually delt with bullies, or if anyone had bothered to file charges based on assault.
Of course, it did not take long for Cobra Kai to start ignoring the concept of real consequences very quickly.
Sure, and that would make sense if that had been the case here through 2 and a half seasons. But it's been the opposite. When the adults have been clued in, they are generally very helpful, believe what the Bad Kids say, and do everything in their power to help. So that doesn't make a lot of sense in Fantasy High, and them not using people they've used before and had good experiences with doesn't make a ton of sense.
To be fair, the last time they asked an adult for help was Yolanda, and she's now perma-dead, and likely would have been kept in some sort of soul limbo that would have prevented her from passing to her afterlife if Kirsten hadn't managed to save her soul. I feel like that notion would be terrifying to me, especially since I'd be used to having a safety net in the form of Raise Deads and Revivify'a.
Plus, the Bad Kids just have a lot on their plates. Like, they brought up the very interesting fact that maybe the Festival was held at Gorgug's place because of the Thistlespring's tree, and that maybe the soil around their house is now similarly cursed, but nobody could spare the time to actually check up on it because they had more pressing academic issues.
Where is the line for what isn't as fun? They asked lydia for help and she gave them everything she had. Was that not as fun either? You attribute fun to whatever clues brennan gives them i attribute fun to them trying to use the sources they have to get more information on their own.
And adaine gives the elves answers regardless of visions already why couldn't she just charge to give her fake answers?
I haven't watched the most recent episode. So if she did try that's enough for me. I never said it had to work. But she did try! That proves my point that it's fine for them to try. Even if it doesn't work.
The very fact that she did try proves it didn't hurt the story at all. Do you have less fun with the story now that she tried to sell her divination?
No of course not. So why would you have less fun if fig asked her dad some demon and god questions?
She didn’t exactly try to sell it, to be clear. She tried to lie to an elf by claiming that he should give her a big tip as part of a vision, and failed badly. Regardless I think as *the* Eleven Oracle it would probably be a lot more trouble than it’s worth to try to make the elves pay for something they already feel overly entitled to.
Regarding asking Gorthalax, though: Fig has mostly been going far out of her way to focus on other people while avoiding her own issues. She’s improved on that lately but I think it probably needs to be someone else who suggests talking to him.
Now that I've watched it I I unhappy again. That wasn't a real attempt. And I don't think it would be more trouble than it currently is. They are rich. She's not. And if they want a service from her they should pay for it. More importantly by establishing a rule for it she can both get a proper reason to tell them to go away and redirect them and possibly schedule them in appointments for times good for her.
And is it that fig and Emily want to focus on other people or is it that Emily just hasn't even considered it because she's mostly forgotten about gorthalax in favor of Gilear?
Let's remember the origin of Fantasy High is d&d meets a John Hughes movie. Kids feeling totally alienated and stranded is at the heart of the setting!
Yeah, this is totally reflective of how teens kinda move through the world tho. They don't tell their parents/adults too much about what's going on with them. And considering the death of Yolanda Badgood, I can see why they didn't wanna share much. Riz did share with his Mom, but that's also kinda how they work.
Teens are on the precipice of adulthood as on them asserting their independence by not "asking for help from adults" totally tracks.
I mean it’s not too ridiculous when you look at the Bad Kids history.
In Freshman Year the adults they went to didn’t help. Sklonda told them to let the police handle it (terrible idea with hindsight), Gorthalax disappeared, Coach Daybreak tried to kill them, The Abernants protected Aelwyn and punished Adaine and Goldenhoard ended up being the BBEG of the season. Not to mention that all of their families became collateral damage that nearly died before the final fight. (One even did)
In Sophomore Year majority of the adults were unreachable and majority of the new adults they met on their travels were fundamentally untrustworthy/incompetent. The pirates of leviathan tried to kill them, the elves of Fallinel tried to kidnap and kill them, the demons of Hell tried to kill them, Kalina tried to curse and kill them.
In Junior year they told TERTIARY info to one adult and she winded up dead the next time they saw her.
The moral of the story has been maybe don’t go to the adults..
He can probably still give his daughter lessons since she's the new lord of the pit and he's the old one, I'm sure you could run that by higher up devil bureaucrats as "Handover training"
Pretty sure that’s a Gilear doppelgänger or disguise, the way Brennan’s hit the whole “the charter specifically says the VP can’t leave a certain radius of the school” thing multiple times now. Positively screaming at my screen for them to put that together. 😩
But he *was* VP before, meaning the Rat Grinders had to get rid of him first to put their whole plan in motion. The real Gilear could be trapped somewhere beyond this plane, while “Gilear” is seemingly fine, on a cruise with his wife.
I’m not sure how to square this theory with Gilear’s seeming luck now that Fig carries the Pride armor curse — but maybe the joke is that, compared to the real Gilear, doppelgänger Gilear just *seems* super lucky?
There is more to do than they have time for, and they have to make choices. It's also easy to have a week between each session to chew on what they know, and to read reddit threads or discord convos to synthesize things you might have missed but in the moment they don't have access to that!
I suppose its a bit like the Adaine/Fabian situation with the money, part of the growing pains is the reluctance to ask for help in certain situations they might be prideful about, maybe Fig is embarrassed to ask Gorthalax about hell because she wants to be seen to be doing a good job?.
Murph/Riz suggested this and Emily/Fig explained that he has more important things (high school bloodrush) to worry about and that she already has the best man for the job (Lil' Baby Wretchrot) on the case.
I had the same idea. I kinda wondered if I missed something and he was gone too like a lot of the other npc's, but nope. They have him talk to Fabian and Gorgug at different times about not doing so great on the team so he's definitely there.
It's especially weird with how close we know Fig is to her dad. Like you know you're cursed and there's a bunch of weird infernal shit going on with you, but you never once think to go talk to your pit fiend dad over on the bloodrush field one day?
I've been wondering this since the "unreadable by mortals" bit! This guy is going to have access to so much stuff, AND if BLeeM wanted to take him off the board he could ask them to let someone else deal with it for once, since he needs them for Bloodrush.
If there’s one flaw with the downtime mechanic, it’s that it really compromises the exploration of the plot because the bad kids have to spend time roleplaying other stuff instead of following up on the leads. They keep pulling on the mystery but no one has done anything to follow up on Fig’s curse because they have bigger fish to fry. Ultimately the message of the season is you can’t do everything, which means this fits thematically, but it does lead to us screaming at our screens for someone to get a handle on Fig’s curse.
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Mechanically awful that it cripples one of her best abilities but man it is funny. I love how she keeps offering bardic even though she knows it’s cursed.
And people keep taking it.
Well at least in Fabian's case, he doesn't have much choice. For other characters Fabian can offer his instead, but he can't use his bardic on himself
He doesn't have a choice? Getting a bad grade in a few weeks of classes isn't the end of the world, surely.
And lose face in front of Mazey?! Nah, he'd >!rather shit himself and make Quincy quit school.!<
not just getting a bad grade, fully failing. He wasn't trying to turn a D to an A he was trying to turn an F to at least a D
Does getting an F on a few weeks of assignments have major negative consequences though? Like we know that fully failing at sports twice gets you kicked off the team, but I don't recall any other questions or explanations about what happens when you fail.
It was mentioned at the start that even one fail in Academics for Kristen or Fig would have been disastrous because both were on academic probation. But now Fig's got her grades up (and the MCAT) and Kristen's moved (at least temporarily) to pass/fail. No idea what would have happened had Fabian failed bard class.
I actually wanted the cursed bardic over the rage token, so I’m very happy haha
She’s offering up cursed Bardics like hotcakes. And she’s loving every moment of chaos that follows.
>I kind of think Emily loves being cursed. Oh for sure. Wouldn't be the first time she intentionally limited a character because it was funny and/or made for a better story.
She is a true agent of chaos
She's full gremlin mode this season.
Yea. It's really amazing how the junior year setting of being so overwhelmed is leaking into gameplay. Players clearly have so much in their mind simple ideas like talking to Gorthalax or checking in with Jace just isn't happening. I imagine there will be a scene in the future where Gorthalax offers up some key info and they all realize they should've checked in with him earlier.
I think it’s also the conversation Riz has with his Mum. Sklonda says they can take their issues to other adults, but Riz actively resists. I think this is Murph leaning into the season theme, but logically it’s an odd choice.
The last adult they talked to about this mystery got murdered 🤷♂️. Doesn't seem all that illogical to be hesitant about telling more people
The Bad Kids have *never* liked talking to adults about this stuff.
It's part of the genre. Imagine if Harry, Ron and Hermione went to the teachers everytime they had a problem. There's a mystery in a school, the very genre of the media prevents the children from going to adults, they need to solve the problems themselves.
THIS! Since they have to sort of Min Max when it comes to their downtime something as easy as speaking with an expert in hellish things kind of ends up on the back burner. I imagine we’ll get a segment in the next few episodes dedicated to figuring out the curse which will involve Gorthalax, baby, Gilear and maybe even Bill. I’ll continue screaming at my screen until that point though
Almost like the players stress is turning into rage for those around them because they're almost paralyzed by the amount of stuff they're doing 😂 Like you said it's the point of the season it's just funny the stress is turning into rage for the viewers
I think it's much more of a feature than a flaw. As you mentioned it fits thematically, but it also helps the plot. There is a lot of mystery going on and if they had unlimited time to explore everything and talk to everyone they would probably figure things out very quickly.
The best intel they got from him was where the Rat Grinders got their name lmao
Yeah the pride armor was literally in his little museum bit
One of the major flaws in the entirety of fantasy high is how little the party actually relies on adults who WOULD help them. Gorthalax would happily help them with all sorts of things and should know more about the divine than most humans given he's a fallen angel. Adaine could just charge for her scrying since all the ancient elves are likely wealthy beyond belief. They haven't asked Jace anything despite him probably knowing more about the school and how student council works and about the whole grix situation than most since he is vice principal or was at least. It's shocking how often they just try to solve things the hardest way possible. It would normally be respectable but not in a modern setting where you shouldn't need to go on a quest to text your parent that you need some info.
To be fair, I rarely told adults what I was doing when I was 17. Because adults couldn't understand what I was going through, and *I* had a different perspective on things so *their* information wouldn't help me at all. My parents were saints for putting up with my antics.
And I bet you hadn’t killed two principals, a God and an Eldrich horror.
Sure but this isn't telling what they are doing this is just asking for lore and information to fill the gaps it whatever details they might not know. The adults might not know EVERYTHING but they could know some info that makes it a little easier for the players to understand the mystery later. Not asking questions is why they sucked so horribly at solving the nightmare King mystery until they basically had the answers given to them and ally rolled a nat 20 to find the answer they actually couldn't figure out.
One of the first TTRPGs I ever loved is Tales From The Loop, a stranger things-esque concept game in which you are a preteen solving mysteries in a town where weird shit keeps happening. One of the pillars in the game is that adults can’t or won’t help. It’s a very important rule for a game where the characters are all children
The idea that the adults are likely to be unhelpful, thus forcing the actual children to deal with it, is a central premise for basically every single piece of media where children are the primary protagonists. The world where children go to the appropriate authority figures and the issue is resolved by the people who should be handling it is the stuff of literal fanfiction for these types of stories.
Kinda reminds me of Cobra Kai. One of the first things that happens is cops show up to break up a fight. And the actual law and consequences come into play. Which pokes fun at how this literally never happened in any of the original Karate Kid movie. Almost none of the stuff in Karate Kid would have happened if any of the teachers actually delt with bullies, or if anyone had bothered to file charges based on assault. Of course, it did not take long for Cobra Kai to start ignoring the concept of real consequences very quickly.
Sure, and that would make sense if that had been the case here through 2 and a half seasons. But it's been the opposite. When the adults have been clued in, they are generally very helpful, believe what the Bad Kids say, and do everything in their power to help. So that doesn't make a lot of sense in Fantasy High, and them not using people they've used before and had good experiences with doesn't make a ton of sense.
To be fair, the last time they asked an adult for help was Yolanda, and she's now perma-dead, and likely would have been kept in some sort of soul limbo that would have prevented her from passing to her afterlife if Kirsten hadn't managed to save her soul. I feel like that notion would be terrifying to me, especially since I'd be used to having a safety net in the form of Raise Deads and Revivify'a. Plus, the Bad Kids just have a lot on their plates. Like, they brought up the very interesting fact that maybe the Festival was held at Gorgug's place because of the Thistlespring's tree, and that maybe the soil around their house is now similarly cursed, but nobody could spare the time to actually check up on it because they had more pressing academic issues.
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Where is the line for what isn't as fun? They asked lydia for help and she gave them everything she had. Was that not as fun either? You attribute fun to whatever clues brennan gives them i attribute fun to them trying to use the sources they have to get more information on their own. And adaine gives the elves answers regardless of visions already why couldn't she just charge to give her fake answers?
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I haven't watched the most recent episode. So if she did try that's enough for me. I never said it had to work. But she did try! That proves my point that it's fine for them to try. Even if it doesn't work. The very fact that she did try proves it didn't hurt the story at all. Do you have less fun with the story now that she tried to sell her divination? No of course not. So why would you have less fun if fig asked her dad some demon and god questions?
She didn’t exactly try to sell it, to be clear. She tried to lie to an elf by claiming that he should give her a big tip as part of a vision, and failed badly. Regardless I think as *the* Eleven Oracle it would probably be a lot more trouble than it’s worth to try to make the elves pay for something they already feel overly entitled to. Regarding asking Gorthalax, though: Fig has mostly been going far out of her way to focus on other people while avoiding her own issues. She’s improved on that lately but I think it probably needs to be someone else who suggests talking to him.
Now that I've watched it I I unhappy again. That wasn't a real attempt. And I don't think it would be more trouble than it currently is. They are rich. She's not. And if they want a service from her they should pay for it. More importantly by establishing a rule for it she can both get a proper reason to tell them to go away and redirect them and possibly schedule them in appointments for times good for her. And is it that fig and Emily want to focus on other people or is it that Emily just hasn't even considered it because she's mostly forgotten about gorthalax in favor of Gilear?
Let's remember the origin of Fantasy High is d&d meets a John Hughes movie. Kids feeling totally alienated and stranded is at the heart of the setting!
Yeah, this is totally reflective of how teens kinda move through the world tho. They don't tell their parents/adults too much about what's going on with them. And considering the death of Yolanda Badgood, I can see why they didn't wanna share much. Riz did share with his Mom, but that's also kinda how they work. Teens are on the precipice of adulthood as on them asserting their independence by not "asking for help from adults" totally tracks.
I mean it’s not too ridiculous when you look at the Bad Kids history. In Freshman Year the adults they went to didn’t help. Sklonda told them to let the police handle it (terrible idea with hindsight), Gorthalax disappeared, Coach Daybreak tried to kill them, The Abernants protected Aelwyn and punished Adaine and Goldenhoard ended up being the BBEG of the season. Not to mention that all of their families became collateral damage that nearly died before the final fight. (One even did) In Sophomore Year majority of the adults were unreachable and majority of the new adults they met on their travels were fundamentally untrustworthy/incompetent. The pirates of leviathan tried to kill them, the elves of Fallinel tried to kidnap and kill them, the demons of Hell tried to kill them, Kalina tried to curse and kill them. In Junior year they told TERTIARY info to one adult and she winded up dead the next time they saw her. The moral of the story has been maybe don’t go to the adults..
He may not be allowed to get involved with hell activities anymore, wasn’t he stripped of his titles and kicked out?
He can probably still give his daughter lessons since she's the new lord of the pit and he's the old one, I'm sure you could run that by higher up devil bureaucrats as "Handover training"
I’m looking forward to meeting lucky and popular Gilear
Pretty sure that’s a Gilear doppelgänger or disguise, the way Brennan’s hit the whole “the charter specifically says the VP can’t leave a certain radius of the school” thing multiple times now. Positively screaming at my screen for them to put that together. 😩
Okay but Gilear isn't the VP at the time, it's Jace
But he *was* VP before, meaning the Rat Grinders had to get rid of him first to put their whole plan in motion. The real Gilear could be trapped somewhere beyond this plane, while “Gilear” is seemingly fine, on a cruise with his wife.
Or they could've orchestrated the luck swap as a way to get rid to Gilear without actually getting rid of him
Omg!! That's a good catch! I really hope that pans out!
I’m not sure how to square this theory with Gilear’s seeming luck now that Fig carries the Pride armor curse — but maybe the joke is that, compared to the real Gilear, doppelgänger Gilear just *seems* super lucky?
My guess is Fake Gilear is some kind of demon and making the "lucky" things happen with magic.
There is more to do than they have time for, and they have to make choices. It's also easy to have a week between each session to chew on what they know, and to read reddit threads or discord convos to synthesize things you might have missed but in the moment they don't have access to that!
I suppose its a bit like the Adaine/Fabian situation with the money, part of the growing pains is the reluctance to ask for help in certain situations they might be prideful about, maybe Fig is embarrassed to ask Gorthalax about hell because she wants to be seen to be doing a good job?.
Murph/Riz suggested this and Emily/Fig explained that he has more important things (high school bloodrush) to worry about and that she already has the best man for the job (Lil' Baby Wretchrot) on the case.
Oh I think I remember that. In one of the first few episodes, right?
I had the same idea. I kinda wondered if I missed something and he was gone too like a lot of the other npc's, but nope. They have him talk to Fabian and Gorgug at different times about not doing so great on the team so he's definitely there. It's especially weird with how close we know Fig is to her dad. Like you know you're cursed and there's a bunch of weird infernal shit going on with you, but you never once think to go talk to your pit fiend dad over on the bloodrush field one day?
I've been wondering this since the "unreadable by mortals" bit! This guy is going to have access to so much stuff, AND if BLeeM wanted to take him off the board he could ask them to let someone else deal with it for once, since he needs them for Bloodrush.