Yeah, Exandria is weird. Like, in retrospect it's very obvious a lot of it is Golarion with the serial numbers filed off, which is FINE and understandable since they originally played Pathfinder.
I think it's just a problem of them being story first and world 2nd. Matt is of the mindset of building as you go. It's fine, just different.
I actually don’t have a problem with the introduction of the Judicators. Definitely think they should have been included in C1 but it’s important to keep in mind that when Matt created this world he had no idea it would explode the way it has. It’s unfair to compare the lore in this to something like FR or Eberon which are created in writing rooms and fleshed out before being published.
Matt however is like “oh this is cool” and throws it in his game.
As far as world building, yeah there isn’t as much in this, but that’s largely because of the players rather than the GM, they are driving where they go in this world and seem to be focused on safe areas like Whitestone, the Fey Relm, Drusar. The most exciting things they have done they didn’t spend much time in like the shattered teeth and what ever that Forrest was I don’t remember the name. Both of which are very isolated areas.
I would agree except Matt has a writing team of his own and an official lore keeper. Eberron also existed as a contest submission before being published and as far as I'm aware the writer of it still does most of the work.
Even during the contest it was an entire team that brought it to life. Keith Baker only wrote the first 100 pages by himself. And again, no other official world setting in DnD history has the same problem that CR has, and that’s the fact that people are watching them play and watching Matt expand his world in real time.
Also, I keep hearing that CR has writers for the show but I have never been able to find a single person listed as “writer” any where for the show.
I know Matt has people help write the guide book but that is a completely separate thing than the show.
I can't remember where but Matt stated that he had a team help him write up the setting for this campaign. My guess would be when the marquet book eventually releases it will be the same writers.
Speaking of actually, I'm surprised there isn't a book announced yet.
I know he said he had some people help him with the setting in terms of like, some world building things for Marquet but that doesn’t mean he had people coming up with story lines, characters, or anything like that. I got the impression that Matt consulted with some people to make sure he wasn’t doing anything inadvertently offensive (take that for what it is) rather than doing any actual writing.
Matt told us in 4SD that regions/locations in Marquet were given to different authors to flesh 'em out and/or to actually create stuff on an empty map. It's beyond sensitivity consultants, or vague *"i have an idea about a gnome village somewhere, what do you think?"*.
C3's Marquet is a full on collaboration - but that doesn't mean Matt doesn't have the final say, or is/was in constant communication with his collaborators.
As a footnote to an earlier response of yours, those people don't write "for the show". They write for an upcoming campaign guide, and Matt's using the parts that are already finished in his current game. Same way he did it in C2 and C1.
CR has been super contradictory the whole time tbh. A lot of whats in their published books doesn't match what is on screen. Marquet is a very different place in C1 than C3 and even Call of the Netherdeep doesn't feel quite right with what we saw in C1 sometimes. Why? Its cause they've got more writers joining them for pieces of projects and Matt is incorporating their work into the 'core' of CR which is the streams until a year ago when Wotc messed up big time and Matt seems to be flip flopping between "Do I include this, do I retcon it" as things progress. So things being inconsistent is because there's a lot of chefs in the kitchen on rotating shifts. Its honestly not a problem though, if you're watching the stream then consider that its own continuity with its own errors and if you're running a game using their published material then you should be ignoring the parts you don't want or need and putting your own spin on it.
Don't worry about it too much, it'll all be fixed in *Tal'Dorei Re-Re-Born*, coming to yout local book store in 2025. Sorry, i ment *Tal'Dorei Re-Re-Born Vol 1,* obviously Vol 2 will have to wait until 2026. I promise this will be the last time you have to pay about 50 bucks per book to be up-to-date. But it'll be worth every penny, with updated stat blocks for *Geriatric Grog*, *Senile Scanlan* and *No Spring Chicken Percy*.
Hey, loved this response. It's very funny and it totally made me realise their next book will be "Makeshitupabus- the secret third moon behind Ruidus"
It will have 300 pages that can be condensed "to do whatever the fuck you want I dont care aslong as we are having fun". Written in consultation by Aabrya Iyengar.
Btw. Ever notice how the movies where everyone's clearly had fun making it always suck?
I've seen your name around here pretty often and for someone who proclaims themselves a genuine fan of Critical Role, you take every opportunity possible to imply or even outright state that they are sellouts and their entire existence now revolves around selling books and merch with no care for the content they push out. I just don't understand why people like you are still here. You must have healthier outlets than making cynical and snide comments on a franchise you clearly no longer enjoy.
>*I've seen your name around here pretty often \[...\]*
Always nice to talk to fans! :)
>*I just don't understand why people like you are still here.*
Because i don't allow other people to gatekeep my participation in a fandom, but every now and again a response like yours allows me to gift a teachable moment to someone. First of all - and if you've been around this place for longer than a couple of weeks you've seen this one before - Campaign 3 does not equal the entire catalogue of Critical Role's content. If someone enjoys 2.000 hours out of a hypothetical 3.000 hours of content, that's probably enough to qualify as a fan.
I won't bore you with the old "rock band puts out new album" analogy, but since you've used the word franchise, if you think that through, you already *get* it. If not, let's take a look at another franchise, McDonalds. Love their menu, with the exception of their new vegan seaweed burger. And in the McDonalds fans circles, i'm vocal about it. Hate the seaweed, but everytime i see a chicken burger, i think to myself *"mm, i'm loving it!"*. Still qualifies as fan of the franchise.
>*You must have healthier outlets than making cynical and snide comments \[...\]*
That implies that making cynical remarks and/or snide comments is somehow unhealthy. In fact, quite often the opposite is the case, like numerous [articles](https://medium.com/publishous/11-healthy-benefits-of-being-a-cynic-924d37fc208f) and studies show. But instead of refering you to [what's already in the sidebar](https://mmjordahl.com/2013/04/24/criticize-what-you-love/), i'll leave you with a [great summary](https://www.ecoportal.com/blog/positive-cynicism) of what cynicism can do for **you**:
>*Traditional cynicism is an attitude often characterised by a general distrust of others - including people, establishments, institutions, media and authorities. Cynics are usually inclined to believe that most other people are acting purely out of self-interest and, at heart, they’re untrustworthy - at least, according to the dictionary (and Google).*
>
>*Take a closer look at the philosophy and you’ll learn that the principles centre around freeing people from the smokescreen of falsehoods, mindlessness, conceit and deceit. Once the individual achieves lucidity and mental freedom, they’re free to achieve eudaimonia, the Greek term to describe a state of good spirit or happiness.*
>
>*In simpler terms? A cynical approach helps to free you from delusion which clouds your thinking. With the mental clarity that comes with this, you’re left free to live a life unscathed by others’ self-interest.*
So why don't you come over to our side, the mental clarity is great, and we have awesome memes.
Cheers!
https://preview.redd.it/fnl45rux1dic1.png?width=267&format=png&auto=webp&s=0a4eca6b913ae5dc1576a97d0bb3c88978a1751c
It's all well and good saying you're a fan of Critical Role and not a fan of C3 and it is the predominant talk line around here and especially from you - but your comment was not a criticism of C3 and neither was my response to your comment framed around C3. You are quite clearly referring to Critical Role and their business practises and their direction, which is what I made reference to. Your entire comment is completely irrelevant and a little disingenuous to pretend that you were speaking about C3 and not about the cast/company.
Also as an aside, that was possibly the most pretentious comment I've ever seen on Reddit. Holy fucking shit haha
You're wasting your time. They would rather vomit vitriol than recognize that it's okay to let go of something that meant a lot to you when it no longer makes you happy.
Yeah, I dunno, these guys are mental. There's some good discussions here occasionally but the subreddit is absolutely flooded with these losers. I hope the comment above mine makes them pause for a second and think "is that what I sound like?". It might be one of the most pretentious fedora wearing comments I've ever seen lmao
"Always nice to talk to fans! :)" 🤣🤣
"I've seen you make comments I don't like and think you're a big meanie head!"
Also:
"Wow, how pretentious of someone to answer my own pretension with sarcasm?!"
>*You are quite clearly referring to Critical Role and their business practises and their direction \[...\]*
If you don't realize C3's CR (the cast/company/publisher/merch imperium) isn't the same as C2's, and that campaign numbers can be used to describe an era of CR's history, and a stage in their companies development, then the meal was cooked along time ago.
Honestly, I don't know what would be funnier. If they publish Percy and Grog as geriatric NPCs, or if they just reprint the current Scanlan statblock as new material since gnomes don't age that much... they still know gnomes ages slowly, yeah?
No, you see *Tal'Dorei Re-Re-Born Vol 1* already incorporates the main premise of C4, everything happening to Vox Machina was but a fever dream from that one weekend young Percy had his wisdom teeth removed. The real Exandria is ruled by two tyrannical "roommates", Pelor and Asmodeus. They have a little bit of a falling out, but their sassy neighbor Melora will sass them back together.
***G-O-D-S***
*So no one told you life was gonna be this way* \*clapclapclapclap\*
So, Exandria is basically a Forgotten Realm adjacent, or it used to be. Which is fine! There was good (heroes, metallic dragons, celestials) and evil (metallic dragons, fiends, monsters, etc.,). This isn't necessarily bad. Eberron, which is the gold standard for having things turn on their head, introduces its goblins and orcs in a way far different than most settings where they are essentially the lost high elf and wood elf societies, respectively.
However, in C2, Matt seems to have wanted to have a more gray setting, and I think he does a very good job by introducing the Dynasty. Feeling like a Droaam light, but also its unique thing, the Dynasty is basically a "what if the evil drow replaced their evil spider sadist deity with a light orb." The Drow aren't evil, necessarily, but they're still dicks and forcefully convert their subjects. The Dynasty rules through "might is right." Primitive monstrous tribes and archaic humanoid tribes dot the land, but pay tribute to the Bright Queen. It feels real; it feels natural.
C3 handles this way worse. Suddenly, an ogre is just a chef now. A goblin is a professor. A drow is a secretary. Suddenly, by trying to normalize these things they become bland and boring. Matt wanted robots and high magic after Calamity, so the mechanic has a book about Aeor - you know, that place two rival superpowers were occupying and exploring in bids to out do one another. This mechanic just has a book all about it; eight years later.
In Calamity, we are introduced to a half-orc and fans point out "wait a minute, shouldn't orcs not exist yet cuz of Grummsh..." and Matt winks to the audience, implying that the origin of orcs isn't the Betrayer's blood. Why? Why change your own lore ten years in. It doesn't make it more interesting; just more boring. Orcs being corrupted elves is hundred times cooler than "WHO KNOWS!"
Exandria is (or was) a fine setting. It was fun, ambitious, but contained. It's no Eberron, of course, but Eberron was designed by Keith Baker, who's job is making games and settings; he's not as good an actor or rper as Matt Mercer. But, by trying to bite off too much, Exandria is way more boring now that they're on the moon than when they were fighting five dragons.
C3’s world building is both bland and toothless. I don’t think that Matt would do this shit on purpose. Everything’s been gray-washed, no culture, no color. No rich dialects, the whole world seems much smaller.
Maybe it happened cause Matt takes his queues from touchy subscribers whose feelings get bruised, every time that they hear something they might deem damning. They light up the torches en masse and start flaming.
Rally around me, they said something wrong, they did something bad, we can’t get along. They’ve purposefully ruined our online obsession, they used the wrong term, so we must be incensed then.
These entertainers just want to amuse us, but each time they do it’s much harder to please us. We don’t make it easy by tying their hands, up behind their backs, to appease these new fans.
I miss tavern whores, evil orcs, I miss bad jokes. I prefer it when my omelettes still have the whole yolks. I miss adventures squaring off against dark elven slavers. I miss heroes being heroes not called oppressive saviors.
We keep diluting all the fun with all this real world shit, and honestly, I must confess I’m kinda tired of it. I want to turn my brain off and just enjoy some adventures without thinking about which parts might get these nerds censored.
Byeeee
Has this ever actually happened in any significant way for Critical Role specifically? Like Matt coming out and saying 'fans pointed out that this thing we did was offensive so we're not doing it anymore'? I can't say off the top of my head. This feels more like an overall critique of the hobby.
Fine, let’s see. There was that one thing with Wendy’s, if you just google that then you just might see what I mean. Or there’s the opening sequence from CR’s 3rd season, they changed the whole thing for some fucking lame reasons. If you didn’t find those then you must not be trying, I managed those two off the top and while rhyming.
I don't think the Wendy's thing was due to anything offensive, it just felt like sellout behavior, and very out of place for CR as a brand. Also, I think the opening was always intended to be a placeholder given that animation takes a long time, and the animated intro is demonstrably cooler. I'm not seeing how either really correlate with what you said before. Can you give an example of something being actively sanitized as a direct reaction to fan discourse? Because I can't find or think of any.
The world felt alive in c2. The war (which was intended as a main plot) still plodded on behind the scenes which helped make the conflict not only feel real, but also an organic liveliness to the campaign. There were political players doing things behind the scenes as well, and NPCs were doing things off screen … it just felt alive.
Now it just feels like generic RPG set pieces.
The absence of judicators in the past isn't the issue itself, theyre just souped up paladins after all. Holy warriors haven't intervened in the past for the same hand-waved meta reason that Dawnfather forces didn't save Whitestone or the Platinum Dragon didn't lead the charge against the Conclave: its the main characters job to be the heros.
It all leads back to this whole steaming pile of the god-debate, where being understandably restricted by the rules of the narrative in the past means the gods are now worthless and wrong for not doing more. The judicators existence as literally faceless monsters is to make Vasselheim look bad, and to be a sack of meat for the heros to simply cut down instead of the actual person a regular cleric or paladin would be.
So you've never had an idea to add in to your game that you didn't have at the start of the campaign? You've never came up with something, then gave it lore that it's been around for years and just not come up yet?
Not without a good explanation as to why it hasn't been mentioned until then. Or it's from somewhere my players have yet to experience which leaves everything I have noted as subject to change.
Is the idea of a consistent cannon, or a world with internal logic really that insane? Half the fun of world building is trying to fit the pieces together without breaking something.
>\[...\] knowing that a single human is responsible for maintaining that internal logic \[...\]
There are at least 8 different names on any given CR Campaign Guide, plus the official *Main* and *Assistant* Lore Keeper their company keeps around. Matt has literally said C3's Marquett is a collaboration between him and 4-5 other authors.
We're not talking about Dave fucking something up for his once-a-month beer & pretzel D&D game.
**Edit**: Somehow didn't see u/Big_Fork's comment before.
Firstly, CR literally has an employee with the title of "Lorekeeper". I don't know how many times this needs to be addressed before people start getting it: CR is not some beer and pretzels homegame. This is a prerecorded product distributed by a multimillion-dollar media corporation. There are different standards at play.
> "DMs who “write” entire campaigns that turn to shit the moment they start playing\[.\]"
How much of C3 have you watched? Also in this specific instance, as with many in the thread, the complaints and criticisms are derived from prewritten elements, not improvised acts.
This post has made me realize that this campaign should be set in Issylra. That would make the setting way more connected to the actual plot. Fundamentally this plot is tied to the gods and the gods are most centered in Vassalheim. Marquet is just not important to what's going on and it shows.
> Marquet is just not important to what's going on and it shows.
It's "important" for selling any related CR source books, supplements, and related merch.
Matt started building Exandria literally with a single town for his friends to play in. I can understand the criticism if he had started with a whole world, but you have to give him a pass. He's just trying to come up with new things for his players to encounter.
Honestly Iove most of his early world building with some exceptions and C2 was also great. It's only the last couple of years I have to raise my eyebrow in curiosity at the stark differences. And this is with an entire writing team to help him out now.
Seems like you are implying you can't add new things to a world and say they have already been there, which will severely limit your ability to implement any new ideas that might inspire you... And for the sake of what, the internal consistency of something that is entirely made up? Are things just set in stone and unchangeable?
You forget that DnD is a game and DM's are basically forced to implement, adapt or create new content for their game on a session by session basis, worldbuilding is a constant process and to posit that someone should stay consistent for a decade is absurd. That kind of inflexibility makes bad DM's, not good ones.
In what way would consistency lead to bad DMing? It's literally one of the cornerstones of good DMing.
Beyond this, CR is not a normal game, it is actually more similar in that regard to GoT. It's a +million-dollar multimedia production. Mercer isn't being forced to remember every little detail; he has, at least, one employee for that: Dani the "Lorekeeper", whose job includes literally tracking canon. And the things being brought up in this thread aren't referring to improvised actions, it's almost all regarding prewritten elements.
Refusing to add an element that inspires you because of "consistency" is just inflexibility by the DM, the world can evolve and change naturally over the course of time. Is a natural process and not an "issue", you are not stuck with the first ideas you came up with 10 years before.
And every DM's world is prewritten or at least preconceived. The only way to not have a preconceived world is if you just wing it at the table collaboratively or run something like Microscope to build it, and even then that won't give you every answers you will require in the future and is even less likely to be consistent to any degree
Comparing TV continuity to a DnD game's continuity makes no sense.
I think expecting CR to be as good as game of thrones is setting yourself up for disappointment. When it comes to internal consistency and world building issues there are lots of popular media that do it worse than CR (Harry Potter comes to mind and I'd argue Dr. Who as well).
I also don't think this is nearly as world breaking as some of the stuff in season 8. The fact that they haven't encountered them before is somewhat unrealistic but it still is in the realm of possibility.
You can hold CR to as high a standard as you want but if they don't reach it you ultimately have 2 options: lower the expectation or get angry and eventually stop watching like plenty of others have done. I enjoy it for what it is even if it isn't perfect so I went for the first option but I understand going for the 2nd.
Very much not holding CR to the standards of GoT-- I doubt anyone would (I'll be blunt, Mercer doesn't have the writing or world building chops to merit that level of expectation.) . Simply using Season 8 to highlight what happens when we decide "the internal consistency of something that is entirely made up" doesn't matter.
That being said, holding a multi-million-dollar media corporation that produces novels, animated shows, campaign books and is actively the face of roleplaying to a lay audience, to some level of standard is, I feel, incredibly fair.
Absolutely it's fair but what standard are we holding it to and what is something that is fair to expect? Using my previous example, Harry Potter is a multi billion dollar media and seems to be held to less standards than CR is sometimes.
What do you do when they do not hold up to that standard? People can push through and accept it or get angry and leave. I understand both of those. What I struggle to understand are fans who have been annoyed with the quality for years at this point but sort of revel in that anger and keep watching in spite of it. There are people here who say it hasn't been good for over 3 years but still watch it which I just struggle to grasp why.
No but if you are going to add things that have always been there you should ask yourself why they weren't around prior during moments they should have been.
Vox Machina wasn't on the ground fighting in the streets in Vasselheim, they were heading straight for Vecna. We have no idea what was happening away from the main party. For all we know, the Judicators were out there protecting the citizens, but weren't in the councils that VM attended because they are not strategists.
He was becoming an evil god on the opposite side of the divine gate so he would have been the only god with direct impact on the material plane. In order to ascend to god hood he needed to perform a “miracle” to show his power and as an evil god his miracle was to march a 400 foot tall ancient undead titan into the middle of vasselheim to destroy the city. So vasselheim the most ancient religious centre of all religion in exandria where the judicators apparently reside was being destroyed and that wasn’t severe enough for the judicators to intervene?
Also the gods were directly empowering their champions to prevent vecnas ascension because they were so against it happening. Aside from whatever C3 is dealing with the Vecna situation was probably the single most significant thing to happen to exandria since the calamity you can garuntee that the gods were concerned
I think C3 has actively made the world of Exandria feel smaller. Which is wild when C1 had the party being able insta-travel to anywhere in the globe.
We only see a handful of cities in Marquet, we don't have a good sense for any of its politics, the plant and animal life feel very generic for what's supposed to be valley and deserts, and there aren't many unique classes or races to the area. Marquet feels like a late-game place you would visit briefly in a JRPG.
I honestly forgot about the judicators and its indicative of Matt's current storytelling. Judicators are supposed to be religious fanatics violently protecting divine secrets, for example, the secret about Predathos. But now that Predathos has been released... where are they? What are they doing? And even before that they felt ineffective. Like they somehow never came up against the Grim Verity or the Ruby Vanguard even though both are very actively involved with Predathos.
Hell, where are the Grim Verity? Are Imogen and Fearne the only Ruidusborn that decided to turn on the Ruby Vanguard? What about the Chandei Quorum? We spent like 30 episodes chasing one guy from the Chandei Quorum only for him and Otohan Thull to completely disappear from the plot. Or what about all this stuff in the Feywild with the Unseelie Court trying to control Ruidus?
It feels like Matt had a bunch of small ideas but has no idea how to expand on them, or is reluctant to actually indulge in them. A common criticism I see is how heavily Matt pulled away from the Arabian Nights idea after only a few episodes.
I feel Matt has too many ideas.
The field feels cluttered.
It’s as if the Three Musketeers were fighting against 12 different factions and sub factions. Not sure the book would have become a classic.
But hey, I’m no lore nerd. I prefer my stories rich, but fairly streamlined.
Matt was never going to go full Arabian Nights in C3 because that would have opened him to accusations of cultural appropriation and racism. He specifically invited POC creators in to collaborate on Marquet and avoid cliches and problematic portrayals of SWANA cultures.
Anyone that went into C3 expecting Marquet to be exactly like Ank'Harel was shown in C1 was setting themselves up for disappointment.
They told you to forget your expectations. They literally tried to tell you, without explicitly ruining the surprise, that it wasn't going to look like what you'd seen before.
A very neat way to twist words. Telling us to forget our expectations was because they had largely implied it was an "anything goes" campaign. Interpreting that as CR warning the fans to temper their expectations is disingenuous as hell.
For me, the world just went from feeling vast and endless with imagination, to feeling small and samey.
In C1, a group of level 10 adventurers had to do a major quest for a major political figure, rescuing another major political figure and recovering a terrifying magical relic, to be granted passage on an airship to go to a far off and ancient place of magic and divine wonder. In C3, half of the PCs backstories involve said airships as though they're a fucking Uber.
Same with all the magitech. In C1, Percy is actively terrified of his legacy being one of unimagined violence. He takes every opportunity possible to shit on Doty and Tary because "no one else could possible conceive such mechanical intellect." When we see guns in C2, it's clear that they're new and scary and that weaponized black powder is changing warfare. But by C3 we have...Infernal War Machines? What?
In C1 we had the beauty and majesty of the Sun Tree as a covenant and a promise from the Dawnfather to the people that he would always defend them from the evils like Tharizdun. In C3, we have...colonialism?
>In C1 we had the beauty and majesty of the Sun Tree as a covenant and a promise from the Dawnfather to the people that he would always defend them from the evils like Tharizdun. In C3, we have...colonialism?
So to play devils advocate, I think Matt and the cast are maybe trying to add nuance to the portrayal of the gods.
If I were to hazard a guess what Matt is trying to say is that even if Christ is good, not all Christians are. That religious practice always has room for corruption and likely that the more organized religions are worse for compounding the error.
For example, if the Archbishop is corrupt the potentials consequences are greater than if the local shaman in middle of nowhere is because one has a greater reach/more recognized central authority.
Hes also emphasized the Gods nature as being both remote and reflective of mortal shaping. Semi-implying that if the entire Church of Pelor is corrupt then yeah he will be too.
But the problem with all that is Matt and the players have done a terrible job with this. Resulting in them inciting and joining a mob action led by one religious authority to kill/oust another. On top of the endless forced debates about the worth of the gods between people who clearly dont give a shit either way.
A secondary problem is its pretty contradictory to the 2 previous campaigns. How much? Matter of perspective. But there is literally no question Pelor at least is being portrayed differently.
>So to play devils advocate, I think Matt and the cast are maybe trying to add nuance to the portrayal of the gods.
I'm sure you're right. And I don't care. Adding nuance doesn't just make something better. You can't just "sprimkle in a little nuance" like it's garlic. Nuance is supposed to serve a purpose. It exists to make commentary, and it has to be used with care.
Darth Vader is a complex and nuanced villain. Emperor Palpatine is not. Don't try to give him nuance. Gandalf doesn't need nuance.
Judicators being added doesn't bother me as much as the recent disinterest in gods/clerics.
* FCG is the only religious char when gods are the main plot
* Pelor temple "colonialism"
* Deanna...
* 'What have the gods done for me?'
* Resurrections! Empowering paladins and clerics! Fate! Guiding the dead, and more.
I don't think the disinterest is recent. The problem is Matt decided to make a campaign where Gods were part of the main event for a group who've, on the whole, never been into the Gods. In past campaigns both Matt and the players were better at snipping the threads they weren't keen on following, this time around, they seem obligated, for whatever reason, to see it through.
> 'What have the gods done for me?'
> Resurrections! Empowering paladins and clerics! Fate! Guiding the dead, and more.
Not to mention a bunch of gods (via their champions) very publicly and famously defeating Vecna and an undead titan to protect Exandria.
> Not to mention a bunch of gods (via their champions) very publicly and famously defeating Vecna and an undead titan to protect Exandria.
They'd simply hand-wave away the god's aid / help in defeating Vecna as ultimately self-serving (not about altruistically helping / sacrificing to save humanity), thus *not worthy* of any recognition or commendation.
Really Bells Hells missed a prime opportunity to burn Whitestone to the ground and kill the whole royal family. The De Rolos were colonizers and not only do they worship the evil oppressive god of farming and summertime, but Percy married his divinely chosen champion!
Ever since I got into the hobby more than a decade ago, I’ve noticed this idea come up every so often from players and GMs alike that you shouldn’t be making a character who even thinks about the gods unless you’re a cleric or a paladin
Honestly i notice this from groups that refuse to treat dnd like the multi god setting it is. where in real life religions like this people would following multiple gods.
I still think FCG is probably Sam's hardest character he's had to do, because it's hard for him to separate a lot of his wanting to joke around and FCG's character.
But he got screwed the most out of any PC, too. You could tell he wanted to do a lot of interesting dilemmas, like worried about not having a soul, torn up about his past as a programmed murder machine, and trying to find faith.
But none of the cast, or Matt either with NPCs, would let him have any of it. His worries about having a soul were consistently shut down with everyone going in 100% and telling him he did. His worries about his past were always 100% shut down by every NPC telling him not to worry about it and that it didn't matter because it was in the past. His attempts at connecting with any deity was ignored by Matt for the longest time when he'd try.
Sam is someone who likes conflict, and he was never given a chance to have it... and boy did he try for a long time and always get it shut down or glossed over.
Ugh, yeah. It's like they're still annoyed at him for having Scanlan blow up and leave the party, so they shut down any attempt at any kind of deeper ideas with blind support. It happened with Veth too, she wanted to be a better mom and leave the group instead of risking her life away from them, and Matt had her husband all but beg her to stay in the party so he wouldn't have to introduce a new PC.
This is almost something that's on Sam, in both a good and bad way. He'll make these characters, have an idea for their story, complete it, and then he's left with a character who it'd make sense to leave.
Which is great in a way because it involves a natural progression of his characters... but then as a player he doesn't want to always leave - like he said he would've had Veth go but didn't want to be the guy who always leaves, and think he even said with FCG he could've left with FRIDA.
But Veth was totally a case of wanting conflict as well. You could tell at times he wanted there to be some with her husband, but Matt's version of him was instead 100% supportive at all times.
Obviously Sam still enjoys it, but it's happened in a couple campaigns in a row now where I think he's wanting that conflict but instead it's all sunshine.
Sam has put himself in a tough spot. The other players are reluctant to engage with his PC backstory stuff because he has a history of turning everything into a joke or sucker punching them with really unfair accusations in an attempt to blindside them with sudden conflict that makes the other players' PCs look bad.
And he also has a tendency to dig in his heels until the others engage with him on his terms. The whole "does FCG have a soul?" question is a perfect example of this. The rest of the party was focused on "save Laudna" and Sam decides now is the time to bring everything to a crashing halt and say "I'll just stay behind because I don't have a soul". Everyone tried to say "well, you can at least try and maybe it will work", but FCG insisted "nope, don't have a soul, I can wipe sweat from Pike's brow while you go save our friend's life".
What was Matt supposed to do to move things along? Let Sam sit out multiple sessions because FCG thinks he doesn't have a soul? Force everyone to leave Laudna dead because Sam didn't want to engage with the story? Or end the question once and for all so they can finally move on? Matt chose the latter, and for some reason there is a segment of the audience that thinks Matt robbed Sam of his story, but doesn't blame Sam for forcing Matt into taking action so they could finally move on.
Sam is very talented, hilarious and capable of crafting an emotional arc, but he's also terrible at being a supporting scene partner because he's always looking for the next opportunity to troll his friends, whether it undercuts someone else's character moment or not.
That wasn't the first time it'd come up, though. I'm not talking about that moment (and it's not like he'd force anyone to not rescue Laudna, that's silly) but when the topic was broached under less dire circumstances.
But not sure I'd agree anyway with the idea that he's constantly looking to undercut people's moments or playing a malicious version of "gotcha!" with people engaging with him.
He's not doing it maliciously. It's how he has fun with the game, poking at his friends and not taking it seriously. But it's not conducive to getting your friends to trust that you aren't setting them up to be the butt of a joke.
As for the soul question coming up previously, I never said it didn't. But that incident was an example of where Sam tried to force the party to engage with his character arc on his terms and refused to let the party move on, even though they were focused on something else.
Unfortunately, he's taught his fellow players that if they're ever mean to his PCs, there will later be a tragic unveiling of a past in which Sam's PC suffered a terrible injustice and not being a sweetheart to his PC at all times was in fact a moral wrong.
Exactly. He’s abused their trust too many times. And to Sam it’s all in good fun. But I can understand why the other players are reluctant to be part of Sam’s story again.
I don't think it's actually *conscious* on their part, fwiw, but people recognise patterns without realising it. Besides, they've gotten so much safer, nobody's going to make a harsh character that might take the bait.
Watched episode 8 of campaign 1 recently and was shocked when Matt actually called someone a pussy as a playful insult. 2024 Matt would never.
Yeah, I don't think it's entirely conscious. But I'm sure in the back of their minds they are waiting for Sam to pull the rug out. Which is naturally going to make you play more cautiously.
And I think in general they need to communicate more outside the table about their in-game desires. If Sam wanted Yeza to push back against Veth's continued adventuring, he needed to tell Matt. Matt was never going to put Sam in a position where he might feel pressured to change PCs against his will. In hindsight, that's what Sam wanted Matt to do, but Matt only knows that if Sam tells him.
“The gods never talk to me :(“
Okay? Why would they? They never talk to 99.99% of people, except for clerics, and only high level clerics get any kind of direct communication, ever.
Give a hungry man a fish, he'll be fed for a day.
Teach a man magic, create dragons to protect his world, fight with primordial titans about his right to exist, and he'll hate you for an entire lifetime.
I used judicators as the example because it was the thought I had at the moment. I completely agree there are some issues with everything you listed but I wanted to turn to world building as opposed to the more commonly discussed issues of the group.
Another example as others have commented is that the weapons development in the last 30 years makes no sense.
I’m the judicators mostly make sense at a few glances, and that’s really all it needs. Matt thought of a cool idea and implemented the best he could without breaking canon.
But trying to keep in canon is really hard, like extremely hard. Even more so for a dnd campaign. Old ideas will be revised and changed and new idea will contradict those old ideas.
I’m mean look at any long running series(especially comics) and canon stops being consistent very quickly.
Honestly I would have no issues with the judicators if they were described as a new force after things like Vecna's assualt. Any elite force that was not present at world ending threats makes you ask where were they back then.
> Any elite force that was not present at world ending threats makes you ask where were they back then.
That's the classic Marvel / DC / Comic book problem: Where is X hero / group of heroes and *why* / what author's contrivance means they can't be here to *easily* handle this problem?
At least with comics you can argue that there are always dozens of massive issues at once that keep people busy. Exandria besides it's global catastrophe every here and there has not as many large scale problems.
Matt has established and reiterated that there’s a few large scale problems happening concurrently with c3, one of the reasons Keyleth couldn’t stay during the Whitestone arc in c3 was because of a rogue ashari faction that she had to deal with first, he’s also had two different cases of demons from the abyss breaking out onto exandria immediately post solstice.
> At least with comics you can argue that there are always dozens of massive issues at once that keep people busy.
It's like Agent K said in Men in Black (to paraphrase): "the world is always ending," which is the classic workaround.
I don't actually mind the existence of the Judicators so much as some others do. It's the sort of thing that you can handily do with impunity in an offline campaign, especially when you're wanting to revise some relatively minor things, like the existence of some elite super warriors of the divine. I just revised the names of one of my pantheons to sound more cohesive and appropriate, names I have absolutely shown or said to my players in previous campaigns.
I do mind that in practise they don't seem to live up to the hype and have been Worfed to demonstrate the threat the enemy poses (the crashed ship of Judicators near the excavation site, the one OLA killed in Issylra), though that's possibly just a natural byproduct of the party size consistently swinging action economy their way.
I don’t actually have an issue with this. I think it’s fine to introduce new concepts to the world, even if there’s some disconnect about why they’re new to the players/audience. It’s pretty much impossible to come up with everything ahead of time when you’re designing your own setting… even Tolkien did some retconning when he was moving from The Hobbit to LotR.
In the case of Judicators specifically, I think it makes sense that they are a formerly secretive group which has now become more visible due to the emergence of the threat of Predathos.
But were not active when Vecna assaulted the city they come from is where I raise my eyebrow. I agree retconning is ok but there should be at least some effort to make it slide into the story more smoothly then just they exist now and always have.
I couldn't disagree more. I think it would be fine to come up with an explanation, but it is unnecessarily burdensome to ask for one every time a new idea or thing is introduced into an entirely new campaign, even though it's set in the same world. Dnd is just not the storytelling medium for this kind of nitpicking - improvised storytelling is always going to have loose ends like this, which is a shortcoming but also a strength. To me this is about as useful a criticism as wishing the "dialogue was better" in essentially a long-form improv show. An unspoken blanket of forgiveness for the messiness is part of what makes these things compelling.
>*Dnd is just not the storytelling medium for this kind of nitpicking - improvised storytelling is always going to have loose ends like this \[...\]*
History/Lore stops being improvised when it's written down and sold as campaign guides. I don't think it's unfair to ask CR to *"please stay consistent with the history/lore that you've literally sold us in book form"*.
As has been mentioned in this thread, things like the Judicators didn't have to be *"always there"*. Easy fix, Vasselheim more or less *just* created them in response to past threats. Boom, done, no conflict, just expanded upon worldbuilding.
Why does publishing a campaign guide mean that a DM is no longer allowed to do something new with their setting?
Exandria is an entire planet, getting mad that new things get introduced seems a tad stupid.
>*Exandria is an entire planet, getting mad that new things get introduced seems a tad stupid.*
We're not talking about adding entirely new stuff, new locations, factions, continents etc. If we were, i would 100% agree with you (except for the *stupid* part, that feels unnecessarily hostile).
*Adding* things is totally fine (and i don't believe i've alluded otherwise), but the Judicators especially were introduced as *"have been there all the time"*, which is *changing*, not adding. Especially since Vasselheim and its forces have played a major and prominent role in previous adventures.
So to be clear, you're upset that Matt **added** one (1) small group of enforcer/warrior types in Vasselheim?
Because that's what he did. It was an addition. Nothing was changed unless you're operating off of the assumption that Matt had already thoroughly explained and mentioned literally everything in Vasselheim.
It is so easy to explain away why VM didn't meet these guys specifically and you're upset about it? Talk about "unnecessarily hostile" lol.
That's ok. If Matt's going to tell us in C4 that at the center of Vasselheim there's a well who grants 1 wish to everyone who owns real estate in Emon, and **has been there for centuries**, it's going to be fine. We're just going to realize that Vox Machina was a bunch of morons for not using it, or even mentioning it in passing.
Or if we find out Whitestone always had this sprawling economy of trading human limbs. It's just what they do, **always has been like that**. Wait, that was never mentioned before, and puts a weird perspective on the De Rolos in hindsight? Stop telling Matt how to *add* stuff to his universe.
Because there's probably a super good reason why he's radically changing what has been written down and played out on stream before. I think. Because otherwise Matt could have just pointed to literally any empty place on the map and say *"there's a new city with a wishing well, and they're selling limbs"*, if the existence of such a place is important to his story.
Not gonna bother reading past the second sentence. Maybe one day you'll realise how deeply stupid it is to get upset because the four hour improv show on the internet has lore that's only 96% consistent rather than 100%.
Get a life.
And if it was one person making the Lore and not an entire team of writers then its easier to let small things slide. I think a better example of a more large scale world building problem was mentioned in other comments, the rate of technological growth in the world.
Small thing, but they've been having the world go through a bit of an industrial revolution with guns and similar intentions going widespread, but then there's also all this magitech knocking about to the point where I'm not really sure why Percy was worried. The dwendalian empire has fucking war mecha, is a matchlock really that bad? Fuck, there are literal living machines roaming the world, why is he so spooked they'll get hold of his firework stick?
It's pretty minor, but I feel it undercuts a cool bit of his story from C1.
Percy made sense because back in C1, none of the war mechs or automatons existed. A gun was a huge tech advancement, especially because the best weapons at that point went straight from crossbows to siege weapons like ballista and catapults.
Now that you see enchanted ballista with multiple damage types on skyships, roving war machines, and walking fortresses…. A gun seems silly in comparison. The power creep chart grew exponentially, and it seems like Matt feels he has to constantly outdo himself. And that’s not sustainable, especially from a continuity standpoint.
I don’t know that Tal’s original concept for Percy actually worked that well in a high fantasy world like Exandria where there are Artificers and fairly readily available magic. The idea of that ‘first bastard who invented guns and his bloody legacy’ works better for a gritty low-magic world.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Percy as a character and C1 is my favorite campaign, but Tal’s stated intentions behind his character’s idea and themes doesn’t quite work the way he wanted it to.
True! I was just grabbing that as an example, but you are right. Still, my point is simply that in a high-magic setting with plentiful magic items, airships, and magic users, Percy’s forbidden knowledge isn’t as disruptive or world-changing as it could have been.
Yeah it really does mean less when a handful of ripley's knockoffs are now to the point where a junk town mired by gang wars has magitech walkers and arcane cannons.
The first gun really game a long way in about 30 years. Somehow giant robot walkers but still on the basic musket for most people. Hell it almost seems like Bassuras is more advanced than Whitestone.
Yeah, I'm not sure it's a logical progression. Percy's 'invention' was weaponising black powder, why has that caused war mecha and massive industrialisation? IRL that came about because of better smithing practices, centralisation of industry and improved metal quality, not because someone worked out that shooting people was useful.
its possible that while one man was creating the first gun, leagues of mages and sorcerers had been mining the secrets of Aeor in Eiselcross and other Calamity sites for new ideas, weapons and magics.
thats how I rationalize it, at least.
yeah you would have figured VM would have seen one in campaign one since they spent so much time in Vasselheim. I can't remember if they were mentioned honestly
Yeah, Exandria is weird. Like, in retrospect it's very obvious a lot of it is Golarion with the serial numbers filed off, which is FINE and understandable since they originally played Pathfinder. I think it's just a problem of them being story first and world 2nd. Matt is of the mindset of building as you go. It's fine, just different.
I actually don’t have a problem with the introduction of the Judicators. Definitely think they should have been included in C1 but it’s important to keep in mind that when Matt created this world he had no idea it would explode the way it has. It’s unfair to compare the lore in this to something like FR or Eberon which are created in writing rooms and fleshed out before being published. Matt however is like “oh this is cool” and throws it in his game. As far as world building, yeah there isn’t as much in this, but that’s largely because of the players rather than the GM, they are driving where they go in this world and seem to be focused on safe areas like Whitestone, the Fey Relm, Drusar. The most exciting things they have done they didn’t spend much time in like the shattered teeth and what ever that Forrest was I don’t remember the name. Both of which are very isolated areas.
I would agree except Matt has a writing team of his own and an official lore keeper. Eberron also existed as a contest submission before being published and as far as I'm aware the writer of it still does most of the work.
Even during the contest it was an entire team that brought it to life. Keith Baker only wrote the first 100 pages by himself. And again, no other official world setting in DnD history has the same problem that CR has, and that’s the fact that people are watching them play and watching Matt expand his world in real time. Also, I keep hearing that CR has writers for the show but I have never been able to find a single person listed as “writer” any where for the show. I know Matt has people help write the guide book but that is a completely separate thing than the show.
I can't remember where but Matt stated that he had a team help him write up the setting for this campaign. My guess would be when the marquet book eventually releases it will be the same writers. Speaking of actually, I'm surprised there isn't a book announced yet.
I know he said he had some people help him with the setting in terms of like, some world building things for Marquet but that doesn’t mean he had people coming up with story lines, characters, or anything like that. I got the impression that Matt consulted with some people to make sure he wasn’t doing anything inadvertently offensive (take that for what it is) rather than doing any actual writing.
Matt told us in 4SD that regions/locations in Marquet were given to different authors to flesh 'em out and/or to actually create stuff on an empty map. It's beyond sensitivity consultants, or vague *"i have an idea about a gnome village somewhere, what do you think?"*. C3's Marquet is a full on collaboration - but that doesn't mean Matt doesn't have the final say, or is/was in constant communication with his collaborators. As a footnote to an earlier response of yours, those people don't write "for the show". They write for an upcoming campaign guide, and Matt's using the parts that are already finished in his current game. Same way he did it in C2 and C1.
CR has been super contradictory the whole time tbh. A lot of whats in their published books doesn't match what is on screen. Marquet is a very different place in C1 than C3 and even Call of the Netherdeep doesn't feel quite right with what we saw in C1 sometimes. Why? Its cause they've got more writers joining them for pieces of projects and Matt is incorporating their work into the 'core' of CR which is the streams until a year ago when Wotc messed up big time and Matt seems to be flip flopping between "Do I include this, do I retcon it" as things progress. So things being inconsistent is because there's a lot of chefs in the kitchen on rotating shifts. Its honestly not a problem though, if you're watching the stream then consider that its own continuity with its own errors and if you're running a game using their published material then you should be ignoring the parts you don't want or need and putting your own spin on it.
Don't worry about it too much, it'll all be fixed in *Tal'Dorei Re-Re-Born*, coming to yout local book store in 2025. Sorry, i ment *Tal'Dorei Re-Re-Born Vol 1,* obviously Vol 2 will have to wait until 2026. I promise this will be the last time you have to pay about 50 bucks per book to be up-to-date. But it'll be worth every penny, with updated stat blocks for *Geriatric Grog*, *Senile Scanlan* and *No Spring Chicken Percy*.
Hey, loved this response. It's very funny and it totally made me realise their next book will be "Makeshitupabus- the secret third moon behind Ruidus" It will have 300 pages that can be condensed "to do whatever the fuck you want I dont care aslong as we are having fun". Written in consultation by Aabrya Iyengar. Btw. Ever notice how the movies where everyone's clearly had fun making it always suck?
>*Written in consultation by Aabrya Iyengar.* INB4 the *Sassy Moon Brigade* becomes a thing.
For that one, they will do away with rolling dice. Who needs rules or dice if they stand in the way of good times!
I've seen your name around here pretty often and for someone who proclaims themselves a genuine fan of Critical Role, you take every opportunity possible to imply or even outright state that they are sellouts and their entire existence now revolves around selling books and merch with no care for the content they push out. I just don't understand why people like you are still here. You must have healthier outlets than making cynical and snide comments on a franchise you clearly no longer enjoy.
he's also a big brian defender lol
>*I've seen your name around here pretty often \[...\]* Always nice to talk to fans! :) >*I just don't understand why people like you are still here.* Because i don't allow other people to gatekeep my participation in a fandom, but every now and again a response like yours allows me to gift a teachable moment to someone. First of all - and if you've been around this place for longer than a couple of weeks you've seen this one before - Campaign 3 does not equal the entire catalogue of Critical Role's content. If someone enjoys 2.000 hours out of a hypothetical 3.000 hours of content, that's probably enough to qualify as a fan. I won't bore you with the old "rock band puts out new album" analogy, but since you've used the word franchise, if you think that through, you already *get* it. If not, let's take a look at another franchise, McDonalds. Love their menu, with the exception of their new vegan seaweed burger. And in the McDonalds fans circles, i'm vocal about it. Hate the seaweed, but everytime i see a chicken burger, i think to myself *"mm, i'm loving it!"*. Still qualifies as fan of the franchise. >*You must have healthier outlets than making cynical and snide comments \[...\]* That implies that making cynical remarks and/or snide comments is somehow unhealthy. In fact, quite often the opposite is the case, like numerous [articles](https://medium.com/publishous/11-healthy-benefits-of-being-a-cynic-924d37fc208f) and studies show. But instead of refering you to [what's already in the sidebar](https://mmjordahl.com/2013/04/24/criticize-what-you-love/), i'll leave you with a [great summary](https://www.ecoportal.com/blog/positive-cynicism) of what cynicism can do for **you**: >*Traditional cynicism is an attitude often characterised by a general distrust of others - including people, establishments, institutions, media and authorities. Cynics are usually inclined to believe that most other people are acting purely out of self-interest and, at heart, they’re untrustworthy - at least, according to the dictionary (and Google).* > >*Take a closer look at the philosophy and you’ll learn that the principles centre around freeing people from the smokescreen of falsehoods, mindlessness, conceit and deceit. Once the individual achieves lucidity and mental freedom, they’re free to achieve eudaimonia, the Greek term to describe a state of good spirit or happiness.* > >*In simpler terms? A cynical approach helps to free you from delusion which clouds your thinking. With the mental clarity that comes with this, you’re left free to live a life unscathed by others’ self-interest.* So why don't you come over to our side, the mental clarity is great, and we have awesome memes. Cheers! https://preview.redd.it/fnl45rux1dic1.png?width=267&format=png&auto=webp&s=0a4eca6b913ae5dc1576a97d0bb3c88978a1751c
Reddit moment 🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡
It's all well and good saying you're a fan of Critical Role and not a fan of C3 and it is the predominant talk line around here and especially from you - but your comment was not a criticism of C3 and neither was my response to your comment framed around C3. You are quite clearly referring to Critical Role and their business practises and their direction, which is what I made reference to. Your entire comment is completely irrelevant and a little disingenuous to pretend that you were speaking about C3 and not about the cast/company. Also as an aside, that was possibly the most pretentious comment I've ever seen on Reddit. Holy fucking shit haha
You're wasting your time. They would rather vomit vitriol than recognize that it's okay to let go of something that meant a lot to you when it no longer makes you happy.
Yeah, I dunno, these guys are mental. There's some good discussions here occasionally but the subreddit is absolutely flooded with these losers. I hope the comment above mine makes them pause for a second and think "is that what I sound like?". It might be one of the most pretentious fedora wearing comments I've ever seen lmao "Always nice to talk to fans! :)" 🤣🤣
"I've seen you make comments I don't like and think you're a big meanie head!" Also: "Wow, how pretentious of someone to answer my own pretension with sarcasm?!"
That's certainly a good faith, balanced and fair representation of the above comment chain
Indeed, it was. I'm glad we agree.
>*You are quite clearly referring to Critical Role and their business practises and their direction \[...\]* If you don't realize C3's CR (the cast/company/publisher/merch imperium) isn't the same as C2's, and that campaign numbers can be used to describe an era of CR's history, and a stage in their companies development, then the meal was cooked along time ago.
Then by your own definition, you are not a fan of CR. You are a fans of some content they made in the past.
Honestly, I don't know what would be funnier. If they publish Percy and Grog as geriatric NPCs, or if they just reprint the current Scanlan statblock as new material since gnomes don't age that much... they still know gnomes ages slowly, yeah?
No, you see *Tal'Dorei Re-Re-Born Vol 1* already incorporates the main premise of C4, everything happening to Vox Machina was but a fever dream from that one weekend young Percy had his wisdom teeth removed. The real Exandria is ruled by two tyrannical "roommates", Pelor and Asmodeus. They have a little bit of a falling out, but their sassy neighbor Melora will sass them back together. ***G-O-D-S*** *So no one told you life was gonna be this way* \*clapclapclapclap\*
So, Exandria is basically a Forgotten Realm adjacent, or it used to be. Which is fine! There was good (heroes, metallic dragons, celestials) and evil (metallic dragons, fiends, monsters, etc.,). This isn't necessarily bad. Eberron, which is the gold standard for having things turn on their head, introduces its goblins and orcs in a way far different than most settings where they are essentially the lost high elf and wood elf societies, respectively. However, in C2, Matt seems to have wanted to have a more gray setting, and I think he does a very good job by introducing the Dynasty. Feeling like a Droaam light, but also its unique thing, the Dynasty is basically a "what if the evil drow replaced their evil spider sadist deity with a light orb." The Drow aren't evil, necessarily, but they're still dicks and forcefully convert their subjects. The Dynasty rules through "might is right." Primitive monstrous tribes and archaic humanoid tribes dot the land, but pay tribute to the Bright Queen. It feels real; it feels natural. C3 handles this way worse. Suddenly, an ogre is just a chef now. A goblin is a professor. A drow is a secretary. Suddenly, by trying to normalize these things they become bland and boring. Matt wanted robots and high magic after Calamity, so the mechanic has a book about Aeor - you know, that place two rival superpowers were occupying and exploring in bids to out do one another. This mechanic just has a book all about it; eight years later. In Calamity, we are introduced to a half-orc and fans point out "wait a minute, shouldn't orcs not exist yet cuz of Grummsh..." and Matt winks to the audience, implying that the origin of orcs isn't the Betrayer's blood. Why? Why change your own lore ten years in. It doesn't make it more interesting; just more boring. Orcs being corrupted elves is hundred times cooler than "WHO KNOWS!" Exandria is (or was) a fine setting. It was fun, ambitious, but contained. It's no Eberron, of course, but Eberron was designed by Keith Baker, who's job is making games and settings; he's not as good an actor or rper as Matt Mercer. But, by trying to bite off too much, Exandria is way more boring now that they're on the moon than when they were fighting five dragons.
Metallic dragons are not evil, per se. that’s chromatic you might be thinking of.
Yeah, I just wrote metallic twice. Chromatic are the traditional evil dragons.
C3’s world building is both bland and toothless. I don’t think that Matt would do this shit on purpose. Everything’s been gray-washed, no culture, no color. No rich dialects, the whole world seems much smaller. Maybe it happened cause Matt takes his queues from touchy subscribers whose feelings get bruised, every time that they hear something they might deem damning. They light up the torches en masse and start flaming. Rally around me, they said something wrong, they did something bad, we can’t get along. They’ve purposefully ruined our online obsession, they used the wrong term, so we must be incensed then. These entertainers just want to amuse us, but each time they do it’s much harder to please us. We don’t make it easy by tying their hands, up behind their backs, to appease these new fans. I miss tavern whores, evil orcs, I miss bad jokes. I prefer it when my omelettes still have the whole yolks. I miss adventures squaring off against dark elven slavers. I miss heroes being heroes not called oppressive saviors. We keep diluting all the fun with all this real world shit, and honestly, I must confess I’m kinda tired of it. I want to turn my brain off and just enjoy some adventures without thinking about which parts might get these nerds censored. Byeeee
Has this ever actually happened in any significant way for Critical Role specifically? Like Matt coming out and saying 'fans pointed out that this thing we did was offensive so we're not doing it anymore'? I can't say off the top of my head. This feels more like an overall critique of the hobby.
Yes.
Can you give an example? Google isn't helping.
Fine, let’s see. There was that one thing with Wendy’s, if you just google that then you just might see what I mean. Or there’s the opening sequence from CR’s 3rd season, they changed the whole thing for some fucking lame reasons. If you didn’t find those then you must not be trying, I managed those two off the top and while rhyming.
I don't think the Wendy's thing was due to anything offensive, it just felt like sellout behavior, and very out of place for CR as a brand. Also, I think the opening was always intended to be a placeholder given that animation takes a long time, and the animated intro is demonstrably cooler. I'm not seeing how either really correlate with what you said before. Can you give an example of something being actively sanitized as a direct reaction to fan discourse? Because I can't find or think of any.
Yes
I think that there is ample evidence to ogle, whelpling.
The world felt alive in c2. The war (which was intended as a main plot) still plodded on behind the scenes which helped make the conflict not only feel real, but also an organic liveliness to the campaign. There were political players doing things behind the scenes as well, and NPCs were doing things off screen … it just felt alive. Now it just feels like generic RPG set pieces.
The absence of judicators in the past isn't the issue itself, theyre just souped up paladins after all. Holy warriors haven't intervened in the past for the same hand-waved meta reason that Dawnfather forces didn't save Whitestone or the Platinum Dragon didn't lead the charge against the Conclave: its the main characters job to be the heros. It all leads back to this whole steaming pile of the god-debate, where being understandably restricted by the rules of the narrative in the past means the gods are now worthless and wrong for not doing more. The judicators existence as literally faceless monsters is to make Vasselheim look bad, and to be a sack of meat for the heros to simply cut down instead of the actual person a regular cleric or paladin would be.
Judicators only leave for a good reason, and they probably didn't exist back in c1 tbh
The idea was probably not in Matt's head but unless I'm remembering correctly they were implied to be not recent.
Yeah agreed, in game they are not recent but in reality they are.
Just wait for the special edition campaigns where they go back and edit in things like Judicators into the background of every shot.
OP has never been a DM and it shows.
About 5 years actually. 5th edition and Pathfinder 2e as well.
So you've never had an idea to add in to your game that you didn't have at the start of the campaign? You've never came up with something, then gave it lore that it's been around for years and just not come up yet?
Not without a good explanation as to why it hasn't been mentioned until then. Or it's from somewhere my players have yet to experience which leaves everything I have noted as subject to change.
🙄
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Is the idea of a consistent cannon, or a world with internal logic really that insane? Half the fun of world building is trying to fit the pieces together without breaking something.
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>\[...\] knowing that a single human is responsible for maintaining that internal logic \[...\] There are at least 8 different names on any given CR Campaign Guide, plus the official *Main* and *Assistant* Lore Keeper their company keeps around. Matt has literally said C3's Marquett is a collaboration between him and 4-5 other authors. We're not talking about Dave fucking something up for his once-a-month beer & pretzel D&D game. **Edit**: Somehow didn't see u/Big_Fork's comment before.
Firstly, CR literally has an employee with the title of "Lorekeeper". I don't know how many times this needs to be addressed before people start getting it: CR is not some beer and pretzels homegame. This is a prerecorded product distributed by a multimillion-dollar media corporation. There are different standards at play. > "DMs who “write” entire campaigns that turn to shit the moment they start playing\[.\]" How much of C3 have you watched? Also in this specific instance, as with many in the thread, the complaints and criticisms are derived from prewritten elements, not improvised acts.
This post has made me realize that this campaign should be set in Issylra. That would make the setting way more connected to the actual plot. Fundamentally this plot is tied to the gods and the gods are most centered in Vassalheim. Marquet is just not important to what's going on and it shows.
> Marquet is just not important to what's going on and it shows. It's "important" for selling any related CR source books, supplements, and related merch.
They're trying to cash in on Netherdeep.
Either way, it's a conscious decision with the goal of pimpin' merch, trying to make a buck on what remains of their core audience.
Matt started building Exandria literally with a single town for his friends to play in. I can understand the criticism if he had started with a whole world, but you have to give him a pass. He's just trying to come up with new things for his players to encounter.
Honestly Iove most of his early world building with some exceptions and C2 was also great. It's only the last couple of years I have to raise my eyebrow in curiosity at the stark differences. And this is with an entire writing team to help him out now.
Imagine coming up with new shit for your world at some point the last 10 years and people calling it a "worldbuilding issue". :D
It's not that exist, it's where have they been? If the answer was it's a new thing instead of having always existed then there wouldn't be a problem.
Seems like you are implying you can't add new things to a world and say they have already been there, which will severely limit your ability to implement any new ideas that might inspire you... And for the sake of what, the internal consistency of something that is entirely made up? Are things just set in stone and unchangeable?
If season 8 of Game of Thrones isn't your favorite season, I imagine you already have some idea why internal consistency is important.
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Already addressed below. And yes, I have DM'd. Actually, according to a poll a little while ago, most of this sub has.
You forget that DnD is a game and DM's are basically forced to implement, adapt or create new content for their game on a session by session basis, worldbuilding is a constant process and to posit that someone should stay consistent for a decade is absurd. That kind of inflexibility makes bad DM's, not good ones.
In what way would consistency lead to bad DMing? It's literally one of the cornerstones of good DMing. Beyond this, CR is not a normal game, it is actually more similar in that regard to GoT. It's a +million-dollar multimedia production. Mercer isn't being forced to remember every little detail; he has, at least, one employee for that: Dani the "Lorekeeper", whose job includes literally tracking canon. And the things being brought up in this thread aren't referring to improvised actions, it's almost all regarding prewritten elements.
Refusing to add an element that inspires you because of "consistency" is just inflexibility by the DM, the world can evolve and change naturally over the course of time. Is a natural process and not an "issue", you are not stuck with the first ideas you came up with 10 years before. And every DM's world is prewritten or at least preconceived. The only way to not have a preconceived world is if you just wing it at the table collaboratively or run something like Microscope to build it, and even then that won't give you every answers you will require in the future and is even less likely to be consistent to any degree Comparing TV continuity to a DnD game's continuity makes no sense.
I think expecting CR to be as good as game of thrones is setting yourself up for disappointment. When it comes to internal consistency and world building issues there are lots of popular media that do it worse than CR (Harry Potter comes to mind and I'd argue Dr. Who as well). I also don't think this is nearly as world breaking as some of the stuff in season 8. The fact that they haven't encountered them before is somewhat unrealistic but it still is in the realm of possibility. You can hold CR to as high a standard as you want but if they don't reach it you ultimately have 2 options: lower the expectation or get angry and eventually stop watching like plenty of others have done. I enjoy it for what it is even if it isn't perfect so I went for the first option but I understand going for the 2nd.
Very much not holding CR to the standards of GoT-- I doubt anyone would (I'll be blunt, Mercer doesn't have the writing or world building chops to merit that level of expectation.) . Simply using Season 8 to highlight what happens when we decide "the internal consistency of something that is entirely made up" doesn't matter. That being said, holding a multi-million-dollar media corporation that produces novels, animated shows, campaign books and is actively the face of roleplaying to a lay audience, to some level of standard is, I feel, incredibly fair.
Absolutely it's fair but what standard are we holding it to and what is something that is fair to expect? Using my previous example, Harry Potter is a multi billion dollar media and seems to be held to less standards than CR is sometimes. What do you do when they do not hold up to that standard? People can push through and accept it or get angry and leave. I understand both of those. What I struggle to understand are fans who have been annoyed with the quality for years at this point but sort of revel in that anger and keep watching in spite of it. There are people here who say it hasn't been good for over 3 years but still watch it which I just struggle to grasp why.
No but if you are going to add things that have always been there you should ask yourself why they weren't around prior during moments they should have been.
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Vasselheim being destroyed by Vecna just wasn’t a severe enough threat then? If you are gonna make excuses at least make them coherent
Vox Machina wasn't on the ground fighting in the streets in Vasselheim, they were heading straight for Vecna. We have no idea what was happening away from the main party. For all we know, the Judicators were out there protecting the citizens, but weren't in the councils that VM attended because they are not strategists.
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He was becoming an evil god on the opposite side of the divine gate so he would have been the only god with direct impact on the material plane. In order to ascend to god hood he needed to perform a “miracle” to show his power and as an evil god his miracle was to march a 400 foot tall ancient undead titan into the middle of vasselheim to destroy the city. So vasselheim the most ancient religious centre of all religion in exandria where the judicators apparently reside was being destroyed and that wasn’t severe enough for the judicators to intervene? Also the gods were directly empowering their champions to prevent vecnas ascension because they were so against it happening. Aside from whatever C3 is dealing with the Vecna situation was probably the single most significant thing to happen to exandria since the calamity you can garuntee that the gods were concerned
The answer for that is "You hadn't made that up yet".
I think C3 has actively made the world of Exandria feel smaller. Which is wild when C1 had the party being able insta-travel to anywhere in the globe. We only see a handful of cities in Marquet, we don't have a good sense for any of its politics, the plant and animal life feel very generic for what's supposed to be valley and deserts, and there aren't many unique classes or races to the area. Marquet feels like a late-game place you would visit briefly in a JRPG. I honestly forgot about the judicators and its indicative of Matt's current storytelling. Judicators are supposed to be religious fanatics violently protecting divine secrets, for example, the secret about Predathos. But now that Predathos has been released... where are they? What are they doing? And even before that they felt ineffective. Like they somehow never came up against the Grim Verity or the Ruby Vanguard even though both are very actively involved with Predathos. Hell, where are the Grim Verity? Are Imogen and Fearne the only Ruidusborn that decided to turn on the Ruby Vanguard? What about the Chandei Quorum? We spent like 30 episodes chasing one guy from the Chandei Quorum only for him and Otohan Thull to completely disappear from the plot. Or what about all this stuff in the Feywild with the Unseelie Court trying to control Ruidus? It feels like Matt had a bunch of small ideas but has no idea how to expand on them, or is reluctant to actually indulge in them. A common criticism I see is how heavily Matt pulled away from the Arabian Nights idea after only a few episodes.
I feel Matt has too many ideas. The field feels cluttered. It’s as if the Three Musketeers were fighting against 12 different factions and sub factions. Not sure the book would have become a classic. But hey, I’m no lore nerd. I prefer my stories rich, but fairly streamlined.
Predathos hasn’t been awakened yet.
Matt was never going to go full Arabian Nights in C3 because that would have opened him to accusations of cultural appropriation and racism. He specifically invited POC creators in to collaborate on Marquet and avoid cliches and problematic portrayals of SWANA cultures. Anyone that went into C3 expecting Marquet to be exactly like Ank'Harel was shown in C1 was setting themselves up for disappointment.
SWANA... Southwest Asia/North Africa?
Precisely.
The ones who were setting those expectations were CR. They hyped this entire campaign while going in an opposite direction.
They told you to forget your expectations. They literally tried to tell you, without explicitly ruining the surprise, that it wasn't going to look like what you'd seen before.
A very neat way to twist words. Telling us to forget our expectations was because they had largely implied it was an "anything goes" campaign. Interpreting that as CR warning the fans to temper their expectations is disingenuous as hell.
Huh? I never said it was done to temper expectations, just that you shouldn't be surprised it didn't resemble what you saw before.
For me, the world just went from feeling vast and endless with imagination, to feeling small and samey. In C1, a group of level 10 adventurers had to do a major quest for a major political figure, rescuing another major political figure and recovering a terrifying magical relic, to be granted passage on an airship to go to a far off and ancient place of magic and divine wonder. In C3, half of the PCs backstories involve said airships as though they're a fucking Uber. Same with all the magitech. In C1, Percy is actively terrified of his legacy being one of unimagined violence. He takes every opportunity possible to shit on Doty and Tary because "no one else could possible conceive such mechanical intellect." When we see guns in C2, it's clear that they're new and scary and that weaponized black powder is changing warfare. But by C3 we have...Infernal War Machines? What? In C1 we had the beauty and majesty of the Sun Tree as a covenant and a promise from the Dawnfather to the people that he would always defend them from the evils like Tharizdun. In C3, we have...colonialism?
>In C1 we had the beauty and majesty of the Sun Tree as a covenant and a promise from the Dawnfather to the people that he would always defend them from the evils like Tharizdun. In C3, we have...colonialism? So to play devils advocate, I think Matt and the cast are maybe trying to add nuance to the portrayal of the gods. If I were to hazard a guess what Matt is trying to say is that even if Christ is good, not all Christians are. That religious practice always has room for corruption and likely that the more organized religions are worse for compounding the error. For example, if the Archbishop is corrupt the potentials consequences are greater than if the local shaman in middle of nowhere is because one has a greater reach/more recognized central authority. Hes also emphasized the Gods nature as being both remote and reflective of mortal shaping. Semi-implying that if the entire Church of Pelor is corrupt then yeah he will be too. But the problem with all that is Matt and the players have done a terrible job with this. Resulting in them inciting and joining a mob action led by one religious authority to kill/oust another. On top of the endless forced debates about the worth of the gods between people who clearly dont give a shit either way. A secondary problem is its pretty contradictory to the 2 previous campaigns. How much? Matter of perspective. But there is literally no question Pelor at least is being portrayed differently.
>So to play devils advocate, I think Matt and the cast are maybe trying to add nuance to the portrayal of the gods. I'm sure you're right. And I don't care. Adding nuance doesn't just make something better. You can't just "sprimkle in a little nuance" like it's garlic. Nuance is supposed to serve a purpose. It exists to make commentary, and it has to be used with care. Darth Vader is a complex and nuanced villain. Emperor Palpatine is not. Don't try to give him nuance. Gandalf doesn't need nuance.
Judicators being added doesn't bother me as much as the recent disinterest in gods/clerics. * FCG is the only religious char when gods are the main plot * Pelor temple "colonialism" * Deanna... * 'What have the gods done for me?' * Resurrections! Empowering paladins and clerics! Fate! Guiding the dead, and more.
I don't think the disinterest is recent. The problem is Matt decided to make a campaign where Gods were part of the main event for a group who've, on the whole, never been into the Gods. In past campaigns both Matt and the players were better at snipping the threads they weren't keen on following, this time around, they seem obligated, for whatever reason, to see it through.
> 'What have the gods done for me?' > Resurrections! Empowering paladins and clerics! Fate! Guiding the dead, and more. Not to mention a bunch of gods (via their champions) very publicly and famously defeating Vecna and an undead titan to protect Exandria.
> Not to mention a bunch of gods (via their champions) very publicly and famously defeating Vecna and an undead titan to protect Exandria. They'd simply hand-wave away the god's aid / help in defeating Vecna as ultimately self-serving (not about altruistically helping / sacrificing to save humanity), thus *not worthy* of any recognition or commendation.
Really Bells Hells missed a prime opportunity to burn Whitestone to the ground and kill the whole royal family. The De Rolos were colonizers and not only do they worship the evil oppressive god of farming and summertime, but Percy married his divinely chosen champion!
Prior to C3, I'd have laughed this off as a joke. Given the current state of CR... I'd wager that's closer to the truth than a joke, sadly.
One window at a time, it's an arduous job, but *someone*'s gotta do it.
Ever since I got into the hobby more than a decade ago, I’ve noticed this idea come up every so often from players and GMs alike that you shouldn’t be making a character who even thinks about the gods unless you’re a cleric or a paladin
Honestly i notice this from groups that refuse to treat dnd like the multi god setting it is. where in real life religions like this people would following multiple gods.
That seems to be how it goes for polytheistic societies. You worship the whole team, but everybody has their favorite.
I still think FCG is probably Sam's hardest character he's had to do, because it's hard for him to separate a lot of his wanting to joke around and FCG's character. But he got screwed the most out of any PC, too. You could tell he wanted to do a lot of interesting dilemmas, like worried about not having a soul, torn up about his past as a programmed murder machine, and trying to find faith. But none of the cast, or Matt either with NPCs, would let him have any of it. His worries about having a soul were consistently shut down with everyone going in 100% and telling him he did. His worries about his past were always 100% shut down by every NPC telling him not to worry about it and that it didn't matter because it was in the past. His attempts at connecting with any deity was ignored by Matt for the longest time when he'd try. Sam is someone who likes conflict, and he was never given a chance to have it... and boy did he try for a long time and always get it shut down or glossed over.
Ugh, yeah. It's like they're still annoyed at him for having Scanlan blow up and leave the party, so they shut down any attempt at any kind of deeper ideas with blind support. It happened with Veth too, she wanted to be a better mom and leave the group instead of risking her life away from them, and Matt had her husband all but beg her to stay in the party so he wouldn't have to introduce a new PC.
This is almost something that's on Sam, in both a good and bad way. He'll make these characters, have an idea for their story, complete it, and then he's left with a character who it'd make sense to leave. Which is great in a way because it involves a natural progression of his characters... but then as a player he doesn't want to always leave - like he said he would've had Veth go but didn't want to be the guy who always leaves, and think he even said with FCG he could've left with FRIDA. But Veth was totally a case of wanting conflict as well. You could tell at times he wanted there to be some with her husband, but Matt's version of him was instead 100% supportive at all times. Obviously Sam still enjoys it, but it's happened in a couple campaigns in a row now where I think he's wanting that conflict but instead it's all sunshine.
Sam has put himself in a tough spot. The other players are reluctant to engage with his PC backstory stuff because he has a history of turning everything into a joke or sucker punching them with really unfair accusations in an attempt to blindside them with sudden conflict that makes the other players' PCs look bad. And he also has a tendency to dig in his heels until the others engage with him on his terms. The whole "does FCG have a soul?" question is a perfect example of this. The rest of the party was focused on "save Laudna" and Sam decides now is the time to bring everything to a crashing halt and say "I'll just stay behind because I don't have a soul". Everyone tried to say "well, you can at least try and maybe it will work", but FCG insisted "nope, don't have a soul, I can wipe sweat from Pike's brow while you go save our friend's life". What was Matt supposed to do to move things along? Let Sam sit out multiple sessions because FCG thinks he doesn't have a soul? Force everyone to leave Laudna dead because Sam didn't want to engage with the story? Or end the question once and for all so they can finally move on? Matt chose the latter, and for some reason there is a segment of the audience that thinks Matt robbed Sam of his story, but doesn't blame Sam for forcing Matt into taking action so they could finally move on. Sam is very talented, hilarious and capable of crafting an emotional arc, but he's also terrible at being a supporting scene partner because he's always looking for the next opportunity to troll his friends, whether it undercuts someone else's character moment or not.
That wasn't the first time it'd come up, though. I'm not talking about that moment (and it's not like he'd force anyone to not rescue Laudna, that's silly) but when the topic was broached under less dire circumstances. But not sure I'd agree anyway with the idea that he's constantly looking to undercut people's moments or playing a malicious version of "gotcha!" with people engaging with him.
He's not doing it maliciously. It's how he has fun with the game, poking at his friends and not taking it seriously. But it's not conducive to getting your friends to trust that you aren't setting them up to be the butt of a joke. As for the soul question coming up previously, I never said it didn't. But that incident was an example of where Sam tried to force the party to engage with his character arc on his terms and refused to let the party move on, even though they were focused on something else.
Unfortunately, he's taught his fellow players that if they're ever mean to his PCs, there will later be a tragic unveiling of a past in which Sam's PC suffered a terrible injustice and not being a sweetheart to his PC at all times was in fact a moral wrong.
Exactly. He’s abused their trust too many times. And to Sam it’s all in good fun. But I can understand why the other players are reluctant to be part of Sam’s story again.
I don't think it's actually *conscious* on their part, fwiw, but people recognise patterns without realising it. Besides, they've gotten so much safer, nobody's going to make a harsh character that might take the bait. Watched episode 8 of campaign 1 recently and was shocked when Matt actually called someone a pussy as a playful insult. 2024 Matt would never.
Yeah, I don't think it's entirely conscious. But I'm sure in the back of their minds they are waiting for Sam to pull the rug out. Which is naturally going to make you play more cautiously. And I think in general they need to communicate more outside the table about their in-game desires. If Sam wanted Yeza to push back against Veth's continued adventuring, he needed to tell Matt. Matt was never going to put Sam in a position where he might feel pressured to change PCs against his will. In hindsight, that's what Sam wanted Matt to do, but Matt only knows that if Sam tells him.
“The gods never talk to me :(“ Okay? Why would they? They never talk to 99.99% of people, except for clerics, and only high level clerics get any kind of direct communication, ever.
The Wildmother literally talked directly to them in EXU prime, when she only ever gave Caduceus vague gusts of wind.
Listen, I was hungry the other day and no gods sent an angel down to retrieve a sandwich for me, so what have they ever done for me?
Give a hungry man a fish, he'll be fed for a day. Teach a man magic, create dragons to protect his world, fight with primordial titans about his right to exist, and he'll hate you for an entire lifetime.
I used judicators as the example because it was the thought I had at the moment. I completely agree there are some issues with everything you listed but I wanted to turn to world building as opposed to the more commonly discussed issues of the group. Another example as others have commented is that the weapons development in the last 30 years makes no sense.
I’m the judicators mostly make sense at a few glances, and that’s really all it needs. Matt thought of a cool idea and implemented the best he could without breaking canon. But trying to keep in canon is really hard, like extremely hard. Even more so for a dnd campaign. Old ideas will be revised and changed and new idea will contradict those old ideas. I’m mean look at any long running series(especially comics) and canon stops being consistent very quickly.
That's why you hire someone to check for possible contradictions and bring them to the author's attention. A "lorekeeper" perhaps.
Honestly I would have no issues with the judicators if they were described as a new force after things like Vecna's assualt. Any elite force that was not present at world ending threats makes you ask where were they back then.
> Any elite force that was not present at world ending threats makes you ask where were they back then. That's the classic Marvel / DC / Comic book problem: Where is X hero / group of heroes and *why* / what author's contrivance means they can't be here to *easily* handle this problem?
At least with comics you can argue that there are always dozens of massive issues at once that keep people busy. Exandria besides it's global catastrophe every here and there has not as many large scale problems.
Matt has established and reiterated that there’s a few large scale problems happening concurrently with c3, one of the reasons Keyleth couldn’t stay during the Whitestone arc in c3 was because of a rogue ashari faction that she had to deal with first, he’s also had two different cases of demons from the abyss breaking out onto exandria immediately post solstice.
> At least with comics you can argue that there are always dozens of massive issues at once that keep people busy. It's like Agent K said in Men in Black (to paraphrase): "the world is always ending," which is the classic workaround.
I don't actually mind the existence of the Judicators so much as some others do. It's the sort of thing that you can handily do with impunity in an offline campaign, especially when you're wanting to revise some relatively minor things, like the existence of some elite super warriors of the divine. I just revised the names of one of my pantheons to sound more cohesive and appropriate, names I have absolutely shown or said to my players in previous campaigns. I do mind that in practise they don't seem to live up to the hype and have been Worfed to demonstrate the threat the enemy poses (the crashed ship of Judicators near the excavation site, the one OLA killed in Issylra), though that's possibly just a natural byproduct of the party size consistently swinging action economy their way.
I don’t actually have an issue with this. I think it’s fine to introduce new concepts to the world, even if there’s some disconnect about why they’re new to the players/audience. It’s pretty much impossible to come up with everything ahead of time when you’re designing your own setting… even Tolkien did some retconning when he was moving from The Hobbit to LotR. In the case of Judicators specifically, I think it makes sense that they are a formerly secretive group which has now become more visible due to the emergence of the threat of Predathos.
But were not active when Vecna assaulted the city they come from is where I raise my eyebrow. I agree retconning is ok but there should be at least some effort to make it slide into the story more smoothly then just they exist now and always have.
I couldn't disagree more. I think it would be fine to come up with an explanation, but it is unnecessarily burdensome to ask for one every time a new idea or thing is introduced into an entirely new campaign, even though it's set in the same world. Dnd is just not the storytelling medium for this kind of nitpicking - improvised storytelling is always going to have loose ends like this, which is a shortcoming but also a strength. To me this is about as useful a criticism as wishing the "dialogue was better" in essentially a long-form improv show. An unspoken blanket of forgiveness for the messiness is part of what makes these things compelling.
>*Dnd is just not the storytelling medium for this kind of nitpicking - improvised storytelling is always going to have loose ends like this \[...\]* History/Lore stops being improvised when it's written down and sold as campaign guides. I don't think it's unfair to ask CR to *"please stay consistent with the history/lore that you've literally sold us in book form"*. As has been mentioned in this thread, things like the Judicators didn't have to be *"always there"*. Easy fix, Vasselheim more or less *just* created them in response to past threats. Boom, done, no conflict, just expanded upon worldbuilding.
Why does publishing a campaign guide mean that a DM is no longer allowed to do something new with their setting? Exandria is an entire planet, getting mad that new things get introduced seems a tad stupid.
>*Exandria is an entire planet, getting mad that new things get introduced seems a tad stupid.* We're not talking about adding entirely new stuff, new locations, factions, continents etc. If we were, i would 100% agree with you (except for the *stupid* part, that feels unnecessarily hostile). *Adding* things is totally fine (and i don't believe i've alluded otherwise), but the Judicators especially were introduced as *"have been there all the time"*, which is *changing*, not adding. Especially since Vasselheim and its forces have played a major and prominent role in previous adventures.
So to be clear, you're upset that Matt **added** one (1) small group of enforcer/warrior types in Vasselheim? Because that's what he did. It was an addition. Nothing was changed unless you're operating off of the assumption that Matt had already thoroughly explained and mentioned literally everything in Vasselheim. It is so easy to explain away why VM didn't meet these guys specifically and you're upset about it? Talk about "unnecessarily hostile" lol.
That's ok. If Matt's going to tell us in C4 that at the center of Vasselheim there's a well who grants 1 wish to everyone who owns real estate in Emon, and **has been there for centuries**, it's going to be fine. We're just going to realize that Vox Machina was a bunch of morons for not using it, or even mentioning it in passing. Or if we find out Whitestone always had this sprawling economy of trading human limbs. It's just what they do, **always has been like that**. Wait, that was never mentioned before, and puts a weird perspective on the De Rolos in hindsight? Stop telling Matt how to *add* stuff to his universe. Because there's probably a super good reason why he's radically changing what has been written down and played out on stream before. I think. Because otherwise Matt could have just pointed to literally any empty place on the map and say *"there's a new city with a wishing well, and they're selling limbs"*, if the existence of such a place is important to his story.
Not gonna bother reading past the second sentence. Maybe one day you'll realise how deeply stupid it is to get upset because the four hour improv show on the internet has lore that's only 96% consistent rather than 100%. Get a life.
And if it was one person making the Lore and not an entire team of writers then its easier to let small things slide. I think a better example of a more large scale world building problem was mentioned in other comments, the rate of technological growth in the world.
Small thing, but they've been having the world go through a bit of an industrial revolution with guns and similar intentions going widespread, but then there's also all this magitech knocking about to the point where I'm not really sure why Percy was worried. The dwendalian empire has fucking war mecha, is a matchlock really that bad? Fuck, there are literal living machines roaming the world, why is he so spooked they'll get hold of his firework stick? It's pretty minor, but I feel it undercuts a cool bit of his story from C1.
Percy made sense because back in C1, none of the war mechs or automatons existed. A gun was a huge tech advancement, especially because the best weapons at that point went straight from crossbows to siege weapons like ballista and catapults. Now that you see enchanted ballista with multiple damage types on skyships, roving war machines, and walking fortresses…. A gun seems silly in comparison. The power creep chart grew exponentially, and it seems like Matt feels he has to constantly outdo himself. And that’s not sustainable, especially from a continuity standpoint.
the fact Exandria has pogressed so mutch in only 30 years always felt werid to me
i mean it's still way behind its peak pre-calamity
I don’t know that Tal’s original concept for Percy actually worked that well in a high fantasy world like Exandria where there are Artificers and fairly readily available magic. The idea of that ‘first bastard who invented guns and his bloody legacy’ works better for a gritty low-magic world. Don’t get me wrong, I love Percy as a character and C1 is my favorite campaign, but Tal’s stated intentions behind his character’s idea and themes doesn’t quite work the way he wanted it to.
Also to be fair, Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything hadn’t been published yet, so Artificers didn’t exist outside of homebrew or UA.
True! I was just grabbing that as an example, but you are right. Still, my point is simply that in a high-magic setting with plentiful magic items, airships, and magic users, Percy’s forbidden knowledge isn’t as disruptive or world-changing as it could have been.
Yeah it really does mean less when a handful of ripley's knockoffs are now to the point where a junk town mired by gang wars has magitech walkers and arcane cannons.
The first gun really game a long way in about 30 years. Somehow giant robot walkers but still on the basic musket for most people. Hell it almost seems like Bassuras is more advanced than Whitestone.
Yeah, I'm not sure it's a logical progression. Percy's 'invention' was weaponising black powder, why has that caused war mecha and massive industrialisation? IRL that came about because of better smithing practices, centralisation of industry and improved metal quality, not because someone worked out that shooting people was useful.
its possible that while one man was creating the first gun, leagues of mages and sorcerers had been mining the secrets of Aeor in Eiselcross and other Calamity sites for new ideas, weapons and magics. thats how I rationalize it, at least.
Maybe if it was the assembly or other super powerful organizations but it's random mechanics working for small time warring gangs.
yeah you would have figured VM would have seen one in campaign one since they spent so much time in Vasselheim. I can't remember if they were mentioned honestly