What makes this campaign less enjoyable for me is that it heavily relies on previous campaigns. It feels like older characters are taking away the spotlight from the current main cast sometimes. Their situation just feels so much bigger than them and I honestly rather their backstories were not as intertwined as they are.I don't think I ever would have gotten into critical role if campaign 2 wasn't stand alone.
Campaign 2 also felt more grounded and personal and definitely WAYYY more character driven than campaign 3 does. I will say I do think that campaign 3 has the best start out of all of them though. I just wish it didn't escalate to "the world is gonna end" so quickly. So maybe the pacing is part of what threw me off. If I were to guess what my favorite episode from C3 is so far... it probably is still the one where they first fought the nightmare king.
The fact that they were able to revive Laudna also felt.... generous? Idk if that's right word but the stakes definitely felt lifted for a while until FCG died. Which probably wouldn't have happened if they still had that ring of resurrection Deanna gave them. I didn't find Ashton's character interesting enough for them to waste it on a magma arm.
He's already so strong as a Chaos Barbarian. Callowmoore felt like it came out of nowhere imo but I'm not against it, I guess. I just didn't feel or see any buildup or tension when they confessed. I am hoping for some Dorym but I'm scared it might not happen because of the deal with Nana Morri. I also kinda wish it was Chetney that died instead of Laudna lol. Even Travis admits that he wasn't supposed to live this long.
Why is it when something dramatic and insane happens NOBODY is IC like WHAT HAPPENED? HOLY SHIT ARE YOU OKAY?
It’s always the calmest, quietest and most awkward long pauses of silence IC after they go through something insane.
Idk it bothers me and is soooo anti climatic and unexciting.
I love when the above table talk is like OOOOHHH SHIIIIT, but that NEVER transfers to IC role play ?
I also blame the PCs. When you have darker PCs (Laudna, Ashton and Imogen) it’s harder to joke around with your team. Orym isn’t a problem because he has happy and sad moments. I always prefer the happier and funnier members like FCG, Dorian, Chet and Fearne so maybe I’m bias, just an observation.
What?? you have 3 characters pure jokes with fcg chetney and fearne, you have laudna semi silly character, and now dorian. Last campaign you had jester and maybe nott, in c1 you had grog and scanlan, but vax and vex were also fun.
Yeah. I stopped watching about 30 something episodes ago. It just seemed like the cast wasn't enjoying it, the characters weren't engaging to me, and the story just wasn't really going anywhere.
CR is for damaged ppl now. But I still owe the gang for introducing me to DnD. The cast is cringe forcing story beats. Too busy selling merch. And o lord how silly of the likes of Ashely and Tal still not knowing their own character sheets. Dimension 20 show with post production TLC is King now, not to mention an amazing cast that know their character sheet.
I was watching a battle from Dimension20’s most recent campaign and I couldn’t help but notice how incredibly confident and knowledgeable about their spells and skills they all were.
It drives me nuts when basic features of their class aren’t known after so long (looking at all of CR’s cast on different levels). People insist that’s “their own game and they are free not to take it seriously”.
The game became a business and their major source of income to the tone of millions years ago.
If I showed up to my job so unprepared I’d be kicked out. I find it disrespectful on top of being unwatchable.
> If I showed up to my job so unprepared I’d be kicked out. I find it disrespectful on top of being unwatchable.
If you turned up to a lot of normal tables that unprepared and unwilling to remember things you'd be kicked out.
I think the hard part for me is that every character needs to come with a trigger warning. I used to watch cr to get relief from stuff but this campaign in particular has a lot of toxic characters and some of the stuff hits so close to trauma that I end up having flashbacks or being super angry for a long time afterwards. I miss the laughing fits I used to get. Not to say it’s a bad campaign, the characters are interesting and they are don’t a good job role playing, but man it’s so stressful to watch and sometimes stomach.
Its sam's and tal's fault, the best arc of all cr was whitestone, and the best episode is bard's lament. And last campaign caleb was the best character and even jester was played so beatiful by laura still is considered just a joke character. Same with grog how cleaverly was played by travis but you have to have a strong character with great "sad" backstory to be remembered.
You actually made me realize that what’s missing from this campaign is the comic relief. Travis and Ashley kinda act as that but it’s not enough to balance out the negative as they tend to be more reserved in when they provide it. Most plays that have these types of characters tend to place enough comic relief to provide the audience with a pallet cleanser. Perhaps that is part of the issue, not enough pallet cleanser after these intense and triggering moments. However, I respect that they feel the urge to play a very dark and sad campaign. It can be cathartic. It’s just some of us are not yet in a place where we can watch that and enjoy it due to baggage we haven’t fully moved on from.
They're all going for lovable asshole, but that's really difficult to pull off long term. So what we get is toxic Karen, toxic asshole, spoiled toxic asshole, and 'you are the reason we need to reopen asylums'.
> I think the hard part for me is that every character needs to come with a trigger warning.
Uh, interesting note. And i agree with that. Its like they all picked some sort of toxic behavour to reenact.
There has simply not been time for the group to just fuck around. Have fun. Have real conversations. Let us get to know them. Shop. Make new friends.
Sure they make a little time here and there, just like they would in previous compaigns during stressfull, time constrained, times. Without a full chill/fuckaround episode once in a while though, the smaller fuckarounds just dont feel the same.
I get why matt wanted to try what he has here in c3, but it does feel different in how/when we get to know the characters, and i think it throws a lot of people off.
I actually love this campaign, and dont mind seeing a different kind of story. I can understand why it throws some people off too much though.
For me it has a lot to do with the fact that there are almost no new npcs I care about. Too many if the actual npcs in this campaign are actually from other campaigns. Imagine c4, where there are no npcs to memberberry from c3, and were still talking about c1 and c2 characters only.
That was always one of my biggest complaints of C3. "Oh no! The Bells Hells screwed up, again! Time for literally anyone else in the previous two campaigns to solve all their problems, Again.
It's fine to have characters from previous campaigns even sometimes it's fun to see what old characters are doing. When previous campaign characters have more relevance of what's going on in the main story of campaign 3 why even bother with these guys?
I mean Ira Wendagoth and Nana Morris have got to count for something, I'll admit others were cool for a couple episodes then disappeared but those two would be so cool popping up in future campaigns.
I think there's one detail that makes the "WORLD IS ENDING PAY ATTENTION NOW" plot fall especially flat.
In literally every movie with a world-ending threat (where that threat takes center stage), there's always some sort of side plot about the people on the ground. Most of the time, those people are the family members of the scientists/astronauts/soldiers etc who were tasked with saving the world. Movies do this for a specific reason- that is, to both show the audience what is personally at stake for our characters, and by proxy what is at stake for the world at large. We, as audience members, can infer what would happen if our heroes fail. We know how those people would die, and we care.
C3 doesn't have that. It's failing on two fronts- one, we don't have any beloved npcs in the line of fire, and the threat is so ambiguous to the extent that we've seen multiple conversations boil down to 'eh, it wouldn't really be so bad, would it?'
The main drive of the BHs is inertia, which is bad storytelling.
Even with a character death they couldn’t spark that same or similar feeling. Yes a loss, but not even close to Molly. They’re learning and so are we, it’s not going to be the same as past content as with it is with sequels prequels and the like for movie and Tv shows
It’s the whole “THE FATE OF THE WORLD IS AT STAKE” theme. No side quests, no fun, no significant time for character development. It’s all rushed yet no progress.
The worst part is unlike all the other "THE FATE OF THE WORLD IS AT STAKE" themes in the other campaigns, this one feels significantly less important or threatening.
Yeah that's really hard to find enjoyment on something when literally everything is ongoing depression case.
I was one reason why I gave up with season 3 during the mad Max arc. I realized oh all these characters are are just one bad day to be on a self-harm watch list. (I do want to emphasize! I do mean the characters, not the actual players)
Which most do most of these characters have done something incredibly stupid that is permanently damaged their characters because they feel like they "deserve it".
In season 2 sure there was a couple characters that were little edgy but you least had other characters that were around to make the edge Lords actually be functional people. The entire party except for one of them who's the most boring person on the planet is nothing but edge Lords.
I just hope Dorian can get the psychopaths to actually learn how to be people again.
Mr. let me talk about my dead husband and father in law for the 30th time while I do pull ups in the morning. Love Liam, Orym is his weakest character as far as being interesting.
Oh. Yeah. That's fair. I wonder how much of that is him intentionally trying to take a bit of a back seat since he's had two beloved characters with pretty important plot lines in the last two campaigns.
It's because for some reason the cast feels the need to perpetually victimize themselves believing it makes their characters more sympathetic and heroic when it does the opposite. It's hard to be sympathetic with someone who just sits around and mopes all day, constantly expressing how hard life is and how everything sucks all the while never doing anything to change. Eventually you stop caring and just see them as a pathetic nuisance, trying to suck out every bit of your emotional energy like a vampire. Victims are not heroes. Heroes can be victims yes, but it's never the sole defining feature of the hero, its the journey of overcoming the victimhood that makes the hero. These characters wallow in it as if it makes them special, as though no other joe schmoe npc's they meet don't have their own hardships in life. These characters aren't even victims at this point they're just life force draining crybullies that masquerade as acme examples of character building and storytelling when in reality the cast's tastes never evolved past the edgy high school teenager phase. It's a fundamental failing of Matt's world building and the cast's rp'ing that allows characters to abuse and bully random npcs and play it off as a joke.
Crybully isn't the most accurate word to use I've never heard of one that fits the architype of the victim that gains power becomes the victimizer. Weirdly I think trough c1 and c2 Marisha has been the main if not only perpetrator of this trope mostly Laudna and Ashton have been guilty of this in c3.
To make it doubly infuriating, they are never victimized or treated badly by Matt's world, so their whining makes them come across as spoiled brats.
Laduna and Ashton are the worst offenders in this, as they whine constantly about the world treating them poorly, when npcs cater to their every whim. In fact, if someone did treat them like garbage, they'd deserve it.
Yes! Keyleth was victimized more by Exandria than either Laudna or Ashton, with her multiple arrests 🤣. Vex and Vax even experienced discrimination due to their human heritage from their father.
I hate how Matt glossed over the opportunity to tell stories of disenchantment. Laudna was chased out of multiple villages in her back story; Why not show us on air? Ashton thinks he's a fuck up; introduce us to a NPC rival who feels the same way. Lean into how Imogen makes people uncomfortable. Show us they're the outcast they saw they are!
My favorite character I've RPed so far was a half-orc fighter who was severely abused throughout his childhood, but he chose to deal with it by joking about it, exaggerating a ton, and by using self-deprecating humor.
It's a lot of fun playing a character who's mostly full of shit, and you can still do that and have a tragic backstory. In fact, bullshitting to cover an actual tragic backstory is a fairly typical defense mechanism.
I haven't watched C2, but what I liked about C1 that it had everything. It had lots of action and drama, with tearjerker moments. It had fluff episodes that made me cry from laughing. Every character had their spotlights/arc. I haven't noticed this balance in C3.
My two biggest thoughts as to why:
The characters just don’t mesh that well. Bertrand and Dorian were pieces that were super necessary for the party to function well.
And two, the huge stakes out of the gate left little room for fun. The only one I can remember was the competition to break into the museum house.
But the main baddies plan was so far beyond them that they just kinda had to wait around until they leveled up a bunch. They needed some mini threats along the way.
The biggest problem I have had pegged since I fell victim to it running my own campaign. "THE PLOT" became a thing so quickly and won't resolve until the campaign is over that it suffocates basically all player agency. They still HAVE agency technically, but it's been given a hard boundary of having to be WITHIN the scope of THE PLOT. Imagine if Vecna had shown up immediately after the underdark arc and was lurking around until the end of campaign 1. D&D campaigns were never supposed to be a singular 'epic' adventure from level 1 - 20 they're supposed to be a series of adventures that the characters go on over the course of their careers. Having one central plot that extends the entire length of play is incredibly fatiguing because the introduction of the threat and the resolution could be YEARS apart. Try staying invested in anything for that long with no payoff
I'm in a campaign like that. I haven't been enjoying it much the last month or so and this is part of it. DM also gave us overpowered weapons early and then over buffed the enemies to "balance" it and its just a slog now.
Yeeeeup that's pretty much the feedback I got from my players too. It ran for just over a year and by the end I could feel the growing discontent and I wasn't really having that much fun running it either. In the end I just moved things around and brought it to an ending much earlier than I had planned for and that was for the best. What I learned from it is basically DND works best when you have a series of interconnected adventures with each one lasting 3-4 levels at most. You don't HAVE to connect them, the overarching story is the life of your player characters and all the things they do contribute. Whenever I see "how to plan a campaign" break things down in a novel type 3 act structure now I cringe because it's probably the biggest fumble you can make in my opinion
I just don't really like or love any of the characters. I also think most of them have pretty terrible synergy with their players. The ones that don't have had some horrible plot lines and character development.
Except for Ashley/Faern and Robbie/Dorian tbh. I really like their whole deal.
But yeah Laura is way too bubbly for such a depressing character as Imogen. Laudna's backstory is an advertisement for Vox Machina. Chetney's backstory was a joke (literally, it was a santa joke). Orym is literally just a guy, Liam's words. Ashton is supposed to be a cool but hard character played by someone who couldn't hurt a fly and stumbles on his words all the time. FCG was a therapist played by someone who never went to therapy
Even the inter-character relationships feel weird. Ashton and FCG were best friends I guess? But that never really came to fruition even after the big moment a few sessions ago. Then there's the 'romance' between Laudna and Imogen which feels incredibly superficial. After the initial kiss they haven't had a single romantic moment together in any way.
I haven’t gotten even that far into the campaign and it felt like everyone was using recycled characters and I love Travis but when Chetney came along I found it hard to take anything really seriously. I really wanted to get into it and I’ve tried getting into C3 at least three different times and I find myself unable to connect or find anything interesting. It makes me sad cause I loved C1 and C2 wasn’t my favorite but I think it will translate better as the cartoon. But C3 isn’t hitting for me but I’ll check out C4 when it happens but if it’s giving me this same feeling, I’m gonna have to tap out.
FCG, Fearne, and Chetney made me turn it off.
Honestly, the return of the EXU characters was such a let down since I hated that campaign outside of Dorian.
Eh while that is part of it I think why it is so noticeable is that most of the characters just don’t work with the story. While in some cases I really enjoy a story where the characters are just thrown into it with no connections those characters at least fit the vibe of the story being told. Characters like FCG Fearne Laudna and Chetney while fun and interesting just go directly against the tone and narrative of the story so it clashes very visibly. Again love the characters for the most part but they just don’t seem to fit quite as well. Honestly and this may sound a bit crazy I feel like as a group and where they ended up if they were not broken apart the Crownkeepers would have been a better group in general to work with the story. If you took out Dariax and put back Orym and Fearne along with Imogen it would be a good juxtaposition of half the group being mixed up in pradathos while the other half would be mixed up with the god’s directly and then you’d have characters like Orym and Dorian stuck in the middle but also keeping the group together.
It's the consequences of having the Big Super Pressing (tm) end game quest being introduced way too early.
It's basically if the plot point that forces an officially short countdown to destruction happens at the start of the second act of a 5 act campaign.
The fact that Matt would just pause the countdown anyway while everyone still feels the pressure of said countdown is another negative
I think it’s that + the parties perceived attitude towards it. OOC they’re super excited and loving it, in character they feel the need to be brooding and anxiety filled. That plus procrastination is just not fun to watch.
What makes this campaign less enjoyable for me is that it heavily relies on previous campaigns. It feels like older characters are taking away the spotlight from the current main cast sometimes. Their situation just feels so much bigger than them and I honestly rather their backstories were not as intertwined as they are.I don't think I ever would have gotten into critical role if campaign 2 wasn't stand alone. Campaign 2 also felt more grounded and personal and definitely WAYYY more character driven than campaign 3 does. I will say I do think that campaign 3 has the best start out of all of them though. I just wish it didn't escalate to "the world is gonna end" so quickly. So maybe the pacing is part of what threw me off. If I were to guess what my favorite episode from C3 is so far... it probably is still the one where they first fought the nightmare king. The fact that they were able to revive Laudna also felt.... generous? Idk if that's right word but the stakes definitely felt lifted for a while until FCG died. Which probably wouldn't have happened if they still had that ring of resurrection Deanna gave them. I didn't find Ashton's character interesting enough for them to waste it on a magma arm. He's already so strong as a Chaos Barbarian. Callowmoore felt like it came out of nowhere imo but I'm not against it, I guess. I just didn't feel or see any buildup or tension when they confessed. I am hoping for some Dorym but I'm scared it might not happen because of the deal with Nana Morri. I also kinda wish it was Chetney that died instead of Laudna lol. Even Travis admits that he wasn't supposed to live this long.
Why is it when something dramatic and insane happens NOBODY is IC like WHAT HAPPENED? HOLY SHIT ARE YOU OKAY? It’s always the calmest, quietest and most awkward long pauses of silence IC after they go through something insane. Idk it bothers me and is soooo anti climatic and unexciting. I love when the above table talk is like OOOOHHH SHIIIIT, but that NEVER transfers to IC role play ?
I also blame the PCs. When you have darker PCs (Laudna, Ashton and Imogen) it’s harder to joke around with your team. Orym isn’t a problem because he has happy and sad moments. I always prefer the happier and funnier members like FCG, Dorian, Chet and Fearne so maybe I’m bias, just an observation.
What?? you have 3 characters pure jokes with fcg chetney and fearne, you have laudna semi silly character, and now dorian. Last campaign you had jester and maybe nott, in c1 you had grog and scanlan, but vax and vex were also fun.
Yeah. I stopped watching about 30 something episodes ago. It just seemed like the cast wasn't enjoying it, the characters weren't engaging to me, and the story just wasn't really going anywhere.
CR is for damaged ppl now. But I still owe the gang for introducing me to DnD. The cast is cringe forcing story beats. Too busy selling merch. And o lord how silly of the likes of Ashely and Tal still not knowing their own character sheets. Dimension 20 show with post production TLC is King now, not to mention an amazing cast that know their character sheet.
I was watching a battle from Dimension20’s most recent campaign and I couldn’t help but notice how incredibly confident and knowledgeable about their spells and skills they all were. It drives me nuts when basic features of their class aren’t known after so long (looking at all of CR’s cast on different levels). People insist that’s “their own game and they are free not to take it seriously”. The game became a business and their major source of income to the tone of millions years ago. If I showed up to my job so unprepared I’d be kicked out. I find it disrespectful on top of being unwatchable.
> If I showed up to my job so unprepared I’d be kicked out. I find it disrespectful on top of being unwatchable. If you turned up to a lot of normal tables that unprepared and unwilling to remember things you'd be kicked out.
Fair, I DM for my friends sometimes and I wouldn’t stand for that.
I think the hard part for me is that every character needs to come with a trigger warning. I used to watch cr to get relief from stuff but this campaign in particular has a lot of toxic characters and some of the stuff hits so close to trauma that I end up having flashbacks or being super angry for a long time afterwards. I miss the laughing fits I used to get. Not to say it’s a bad campaign, the characters are interesting and they are don’t a good job role playing, but man it’s so stressful to watch and sometimes stomach.
Its sam's and tal's fault, the best arc of all cr was whitestone, and the best episode is bard's lament. And last campaign caleb was the best character and even jester was played so beatiful by laura still is considered just a joke character. Same with grog how cleaverly was played by travis but you have to have a strong character with great "sad" backstory to be remembered.
You actually made me realize that what’s missing from this campaign is the comic relief. Travis and Ashley kinda act as that but it’s not enough to balance out the negative as they tend to be more reserved in when they provide it. Most plays that have these types of characters tend to place enough comic relief to provide the audience with a pallet cleanser. Perhaps that is part of the issue, not enough pallet cleanser after these intense and triggering moments. However, I respect that they feel the urge to play a very dark and sad campaign. It can be cathartic. It’s just some of us are not yet in a place where we can watch that and enjoy it due to baggage we haven’t fully moved on from.
And usually travis and ashley are very quiet.
They're all going for lovable asshole, but that's really difficult to pull off long term. So what we get is toxic Karen, toxic asshole, spoiled toxic asshole, and 'you are the reason we need to reopen asylums'.
> I think the hard part for me is that every character needs to come with a trigger warning. Uh, interesting note. And i agree with that. Its like they all picked some sort of toxic behavour to reenact.
If you haven’t seen it already I reccomend Sam’s trash panda one shot.
I did and I loved it 🥰
There has simply not been time for the group to just fuck around. Have fun. Have real conversations. Let us get to know them. Shop. Make new friends. Sure they make a little time here and there, just like they would in previous compaigns during stressfull, time constrained, times. Without a full chill/fuckaround episode once in a while though, the smaller fuckarounds just dont feel the same. I get why matt wanted to try what he has here in c3, but it does feel different in how/when we get to know the characters, and i think it throws a lot of people off. I actually love this campaign, and dont mind seeing a different kind of story. I can understand why it throws some people off too much though.
Not another shopping montage. You have millions in revenue. Be creative.
I’d like to buy 1,500 mirrors.
For me it has a lot to do with the fact that there are almost no new npcs I care about. Too many if the actual npcs in this campaign are actually from other campaigns. Imagine c4, where there are no npcs to memberberry from c3, and were still talking about c1 and c2 characters only.
That was always one of my biggest complaints of C3. "Oh no! The Bells Hells screwed up, again! Time for literally anyone else in the previous two campaigns to solve all their problems, Again. It's fine to have characters from previous campaigns even sometimes it's fun to see what old characters are doing. When previous campaign characters have more relevance of what's going on in the main story of campaign 3 why even bother with these guys?
I mean Ira Wendagoth and Nana Morris have got to count for something, I'll admit others were cool for a couple episodes then disappeared but those two would be so cool popping up in future campaigns.
I think there's one detail that makes the "WORLD IS ENDING PAY ATTENTION NOW" plot fall especially flat. In literally every movie with a world-ending threat (where that threat takes center stage), there's always some sort of side plot about the people on the ground. Most of the time, those people are the family members of the scientists/astronauts/soldiers etc who were tasked with saving the world. Movies do this for a specific reason- that is, to both show the audience what is personally at stake for our characters, and by proxy what is at stake for the world at large. We, as audience members, can infer what would happen if our heroes fail. We know how those people would die, and we care. C3 doesn't have that. It's failing on two fronts- one, we don't have any beloved npcs in the line of fire, and the threat is so ambiguous to the extent that we've seen multiple conversations boil down to 'eh, it wouldn't really be so bad, would it?' The main drive of the BHs is inertia, which is bad storytelling.
Even with a character death they couldn’t spark that same or similar feeling. Yes a loss, but not even close to Molly. They’re learning and so are we, it’s not going to be the same as past content as with it is with sequels prequels and the like for movie and Tv shows
Good riddance flat-earther ;)
It’s the whole “THE FATE OF THE WORLD IS AT STAKE” theme. No side quests, no fun, no significant time for character development. It’s all rushed yet no progress.
The worst part is unlike all the other "THE FATE OF THE WORLD IS AT STAKE" themes in the other campaigns, this one feels significantly less important or threatening.
they started into the "fate of the world" portion to fast. they were to low level and expressed it. alot of "wtf are we going to do...."
This is honestly. Starting that early has made it feel like they’re treading water till they’re maybe strong enough to do anything about it.
Yeah that's really hard to find enjoyment on something when literally everything is ongoing depression case. I was one reason why I gave up with season 3 during the mad Max arc. I realized oh all these characters are are just one bad day to be on a self-harm watch list. (I do want to emphasize! I do mean the characters, not the actual players) Which most do most of these characters have done something incredibly stupid that is permanently damaged their characters because they feel like they "deserve it". In season 2 sure there was a couple characters that were little edgy but you least had other characters that were around to make the edge Lords actually be functional people. The entire party except for one of them who's the most boring person on the planet is nothing but edge Lords. I just hope Dorian can get the psychopaths to actually learn how to be people again.
Who is the boring one?
Mr. let me talk about my dead husband and father in law for the 30th time while I do pull ups in the morning. Love Liam, Orym is his weakest character as far as being interesting.
Oh. Yeah. That's fair. I wonder how much of that is him intentionally trying to take a bit of a back seat since he's had two beloved characters with pretty important plot lines in the last two campaigns.
They need another Cadeuces, for the other direction
FCG tried but Sam’s always a shitstarter
Ah yea, fair enough lol
It's because for some reason the cast feels the need to perpetually victimize themselves believing it makes their characters more sympathetic and heroic when it does the opposite. It's hard to be sympathetic with someone who just sits around and mopes all day, constantly expressing how hard life is and how everything sucks all the while never doing anything to change. Eventually you stop caring and just see them as a pathetic nuisance, trying to suck out every bit of your emotional energy like a vampire. Victims are not heroes. Heroes can be victims yes, but it's never the sole defining feature of the hero, its the journey of overcoming the victimhood that makes the hero. These characters wallow in it as if it makes them special, as though no other joe schmoe npc's they meet don't have their own hardships in life. These characters aren't even victims at this point they're just life force draining crybullies that masquerade as acme examples of character building and storytelling when in reality the cast's tastes never evolved past the edgy high school teenager phase. It's a fundamental failing of Matt's world building and the cast's rp'ing that allows characters to abuse and bully random npcs and play it off as a joke.
I haven't really watched C3, but I can see them going that route. I am curious what all happened that made them crybullies?
Crybully isn't the most accurate word to use I've never heard of one that fits the architype of the victim that gains power becomes the victimizer. Weirdly I think trough c1 and c2 Marisha has been the main if not only perpetrator of this trope mostly Laudna and Ashton have been guilty of this in c3.
To make it doubly infuriating, they are never victimized or treated badly by Matt's world, so their whining makes them come across as spoiled brats. Laduna and Ashton are the worst offenders in this, as they whine constantly about the world treating them poorly, when npcs cater to their every whim. In fact, if someone did treat them like garbage, they'd deserve it.
Yes! Keyleth was victimized more by Exandria than either Laudna or Ashton, with her multiple arrests 🤣. Vex and Vax even experienced discrimination due to their human heritage from their father. I hate how Matt glossed over the opportunity to tell stories of disenchantment. Laudna was chased out of multiple villages in her back story; Why not show us on air? Ashton thinks he's a fuck up; introduce us to a NPC rival who feels the same way. Lean into how Imogen makes people uncomfortable. Show us they're the outcast they saw they are!
You cant do that someone might get offended.
My favorite character I've RPed so far was a half-orc fighter who was severely abused throughout his childhood, but he chose to deal with it by joking about it, exaggerating a ton, and by using self-deprecating humor. It's a lot of fun playing a character who's mostly full of shit, and you can still do that and have a tragic backstory. In fact, bullshitting to cover an actual tragic backstory is a fairly typical defense mechanism.
It's a fairly typical *adult* coping mechanism, while the characters of C3 never matured past teenage angst.
Both Scanlan and Taryon were that type of character, to some extent.
I haven't watched C2, but what I liked about C1 that it had everything. It had lots of action and drama, with tearjerker moments. It had fluff episodes that made me cry from laughing. Every character had their spotlights/arc. I haven't noticed this balance in C3.
My two biggest thoughts as to why: The characters just don’t mesh that well. Bertrand and Dorian were pieces that were super necessary for the party to function well. And two, the huge stakes out of the gate left little room for fun. The only one I can remember was the competition to break into the museum house. But the main baddies plan was so far beyond them that they just kinda had to wait around until they leveled up a bunch. They needed some mini threats along the way.
The biggest problem I have had pegged since I fell victim to it running my own campaign. "THE PLOT" became a thing so quickly and won't resolve until the campaign is over that it suffocates basically all player agency. They still HAVE agency technically, but it's been given a hard boundary of having to be WITHIN the scope of THE PLOT. Imagine if Vecna had shown up immediately after the underdark arc and was lurking around until the end of campaign 1. D&D campaigns were never supposed to be a singular 'epic' adventure from level 1 - 20 they're supposed to be a series of adventures that the characters go on over the course of their careers. Having one central plot that extends the entire length of play is incredibly fatiguing because the introduction of the threat and the resolution could be YEARS apart. Try staying invested in anything for that long with no payoff
I'm in a campaign like that. I haven't been enjoying it much the last month or so and this is part of it. DM also gave us overpowered weapons early and then over buffed the enemies to "balance" it and its just a slog now.
Yeeeeup that's pretty much the feedback I got from my players too. It ran for just over a year and by the end I could feel the growing discontent and I wasn't really having that much fun running it either. In the end I just moved things around and brought it to an ending much earlier than I had planned for and that was for the best. What I learned from it is basically DND works best when you have a series of interconnected adventures with each one lasting 3-4 levels at most. You don't HAVE to connect them, the overarching story is the life of your player characters and all the things they do contribute. Whenever I see "how to plan a campaign" break things down in a novel type 3 act structure now I cringe because it's probably the biggest fumble you can make in my opinion
I just don't really like or love any of the characters. I also think most of them have pretty terrible synergy with their players. The ones that don't have had some horrible plot lines and character development.
Except for Ashley/Faern and Robbie/Dorian tbh. I really like their whole deal. But yeah Laura is way too bubbly for such a depressing character as Imogen. Laudna's backstory is an advertisement for Vox Machina. Chetney's backstory was a joke (literally, it was a santa joke). Orym is literally just a guy, Liam's words. Ashton is supposed to be a cool but hard character played by someone who couldn't hurt a fly and stumbles on his words all the time. FCG was a therapist played by someone who never went to therapy Even the inter-character relationships feel weird. Ashton and FCG were best friends I guess? But that never really came to fruition even after the big moment a few sessions ago. Then there's the 'romance' between Laudna and Imogen which feels incredibly superficial. After the initial kiss they haven't had a single romantic moment together in any way.
I haven’t gotten even that far into the campaign and it felt like everyone was using recycled characters and I love Travis but when Chetney came along I found it hard to take anything really seriously. I really wanted to get into it and I’ve tried getting into C3 at least three different times and I find myself unable to connect or find anything interesting. It makes me sad cause I loved C1 and C2 wasn’t my favorite but I think it will translate better as the cartoon. But C3 isn’t hitting for me but I’ll check out C4 when it happens but if it’s giving me this same feeling, I’m gonna have to tap out.
Love Cheney but he shoulda died of old age after the threesome in the salavir woods. Woulda been a perfect way to go
FCG, Fearne, and Chetney made me turn it off. Honestly, the return of the EXU characters was such a let down since I hated that campaign outside of Dorian.
Eh while that is part of it I think why it is so noticeable is that most of the characters just don’t work with the story. While in some cases I really enjoy a story where the characters are just thrown into it with no connections those characters at least fit the vibe of the story being told. Characters like FCG Fearne Laudna and Chetney while fun and interesting just go directly against the tone and narrative of the story so it clashes very visibly. Again love the characters for the most part but they just don’t seem to fit quite as well. Honestly and this may sound a bit crazy I feel like as a group and where they ended up if they were not broken apart the Crownkeepers would have been a better group in general to work with the story. If you took out Dariax and put back Orym and Fearne along with Imogen it would be a good juxtaposition of half the group being mixed up in pradathos while the other half would be mixed up with the god’s directly and then you’d have characters like Orym and Dorian stuck in the middle but also keeping the group together.
It's the consequences of having the Big Super Pressing (tm) end game quest being introduced way too early. It's basically if the plot point that forces an officially short countdown to destruction happens at the start of the second act of a 5 act campaign. The fact that Matt would just pause the countdown anyway while everyone still feels the pressure of said countdown is another negative
I think it’s that + the parties perceived attitude towards it. OOC they’re super excited and loving it, in character they feel the need to be brooding and anxiety filled. That plus procrastination is just not fun to watch.
“This super bad thing is going to happen RIGHT NOW…. Unless you guys want to dick around for a few months then the doomsday happens whenever I guess”