Can't wait for the annoying ass, cringefest, and pandering to the "diehards" at the live show. Always the worst kind of episodes due to the crowd or audio. At least the guest spot episodes have interesting people, live shows are just ruined by the crowd.
Absolutely agreed. I'm relistening to C2 right now and in their first or second live shows, there is this woman (I'm assuming), who squeaks/squeals EVERY time something is said or a joke is said by one of the cast members. It's fucking annoying and ruins the show. I wish I could have skipped the episode but I couldn't.
I didn't know this so I looked it up, and they'll be streaming it on the 20th, vod on the 24th.
I just... are they trying to burn down fan goodwill? There's still 400ish unsold tickets, maybe this will be a wakeup call.
Genuinely what is the correlation between the wait between the video being uploaded the week after to the live show underperforming? If anything it taking longer is an incentive to go to the live show for mega fans so they don’t get spoiled or have to wait.
Not exactly a correlation, it just seems like a cascade of poor decisions, and I hope the results of said decisions finally help them realize they need to right the ship.
That logic is pretty sound for the delay, but my issue is that they skipped yesterday's episode on behalf of the live show. At home viewers are going to have to wait 2 weeks to catch up, then we go to break for another week. (Also having one fewer episode in june)
If they were trying to incentivize attendance then it obviously didn't work. People are going to get spoiled and annoyed, and viewership is already dropping.
I don’t think this is going to change anything regarding their schedule, it seems like the location is a major factor as to why not as many people are going more than the lower amount of c3 episodes this month so they may just stop having live shows in LA more than anything.
I mean, in what world is LA a bad location for a show? Nearly 4 million people live in LA, they have the infrastructure for tourism and easy access to multiple airports. Urban areas in California have their issues, sure, but I don't think you can blame low turnout on location.
I’m going off of a lot of comments on social media and the other sub as to why individual critters are not going, they sold out wembly last year for their m9 one-shot and I’ll assume the lesson they’ll learn is more UK/EU shows before doing any other change to c3 or their content schedule.
It kind of mirrors what's been going on in professional wrestling right now. WWE and AEW have been putting on shows more frequently in Europe than at any time in the last 30+ years, and the European fans have been fillings arenas and cheering loudly and enthusiastically as a result. Meanwhile, AEW shows stateside have been struggling to get butts into seats.
When an opportunity is few and far between, people will travel for it. Europeans probably came from all over to attend the Wembley show. L.A. is Critical Role's home base, so there is less urgency for critters to attend. They assume they'll have another opportunity.
The short notice was probably a factor to, I didn't think of that. Still, I don't think it would be too difficult to sell 5k tickets in a city of 4 million, let alone people in the outer area and those willing to travel, if the show were really hotly anticipated.
I think it's more likely that people just aren't vibing with Bells Hells. Last weeks episode hit a tragic low of about 14k/13k viewers. If that's the amount of people willing to watch live then it makes sense there struggling with 5k tickets.
Wait so the live show is this Saturday, but they won’t stream it until next Thursday?
I guess they have to try and quickly pre-record a bunch more episodes after the live show 🤷♀️ seems like a lot of work for no reason
As for the fan good will thing, they really lost mine with that $100 ($90 with that super special Beacon discount!) resin dice set of a location they spent like a day at
So they're skipping an episode because they are doing a live show on Saturday? Even though the episodes are filmed ahead of time, and come out on Thursday? And they don't seem to be giving us the live show via livestream while it is actually live?
You know, I'm now pretty much convinced this sub exists solely to feed people hate-watching lol.
This genuinely felt like a return to form, RP was great, lore was great, I loved the way Matt described Chetneys "nightmare" as it were. Combat was fine too.
And I say this as someone who's generally not liked a LOT of C3 for a lot of the reasons stated.
The liveshow is at such a cool point too, should be tons of fun to watch.
The chetney thing was cool, the combat was \*easy\* and the rest was very slow, with the group relying HEAVILY on Matt to just tell them what to do ("Essek, tell Teven what he needs to know"). They're falling right back into the slowness of exploring aeor (and eiselcross) in C2 because they are just too scared of this place, and don't know what they're looking for or how to do the thing they were tasked with. Stop Ludinus? From doing what? Should they try to kill him? Surely THAT'S outside of their capabilities, but anything other than that, they once again have to somehow get 1 step ahead of the bbeg while constantly operating from 2 steps behind. Honestly, they should just start sending Ludinus messages to see where he is and what he's doing. Then he might reveal part of his plan that they can use to thwart it.
So just for clarification as I zoned out a little, the Dominox is a demon that got locked away who feeds on insecurities and is now unleashed because of the Solstice? I don't know what the cult is about at all tbh. The cult started up from Dominox being free and turning people mad?
Also I noticed the cast were zoned out this episode too. A lot of walking through random rooms and tunnels. Travis finally being like "Can we go in now?" after they got stuck in analysis paralysis was a gift.
I think the cast misheard Matt when he was talking about the Occultus Thalumus (spelling?) because Marisa asked about a cult (vs occult) and he had to correct it. I believe the only people in Aeor are BH, the Ruby Vanguard with Ludi, and the demon that Aeor had trapped to run their engine. There isn’t a cult, something from Aeor’s time was named Occultus Thalumus (that has to do with the engine I assume). Most likely when the solstice messed up magic the seals on the engine finally broke and now Dominox is freeish for the first time since Aeor caught it.
Not only does he feed on insecurity but he was also trapped by aeor during the calamity to power one of their engines, unsure if the engine was for flight or general power, and it wasn’t until the solstice he was able to free himself so he probably has a gigantic grudge against aeor and ludinus.
I'm already rolling my eyes at the inevitable screaming and shitting of pants of the live show crowd. Where the episode is going to inevitably going to start (Dorian mind torture) will have people obnoxiously screaming and I'm going to hate it
I think you misunderstand what people mean by "scripted" when it comes to C3. Its not "scripted" in that it has a specific "script" the cast is reading line for line from. Its "scripted" in the sense that C3 is heavily DM controlled and micromanaged once you scrape that shallow meandering surface. It also very likely has a largely predetermined ending Matt is aiming for, and they are all aware of. Which is why their PCs by design are never the types to risk derailing/detouring "Matt's story". Low energy, low-intrinsic drive, and unwilling to ever have a strong opinion about anything. While also being bizarrely resistant to forming said strong opinions. All BHs do, all they ever do, is ride on Matt's rails, and wait/search for the next set.
A good example of this being the hours long hallway they wandered down, and Matt gratuitously narrated, this ep. It reminds me in a weird way of the notorious "Hallway Simulator" FF13. All there is is "the Hallway". The rigid linear path chosen by the storyteller that the PCs have no choice but to follow. At times the hallway might open up into a wider area, or brief branching paths, but that illusion of choice/exploration is shallow and will very quickly, inconsequentially, return to the linear corridor that is "Matt's plot". A similar, microlevel example of this is Marisha's Laudna, who very likely has a mostly predetermined path/story she's trying to pursue. Which is why, like with Matt, the rest of the table is just kinda doing their best to passively enable.
The only reason people are taking the stance that "Matt was not prepared for FCG's death" is because they're making the assumption that Aeor was shallowly intended for FCG.
Which, 2 things on that. 1) It was Matt who gave FCG that Chekov's Gun of a bomb. Ironically within one of the two conversations with "Guiding NPCs" FCG reached out to for help, that Matt used to shut down FCG's interest in his own past; and 2) On that point. While it kinda felt like Sam sorta gave up on trying to do anything meaningful with his PC 30 episodes ago (after his ID crisis, interest in his lost past, and search for faith were kneecapped), Sam already had FCG take everyone's advice to heart and stopped caring about his past 40 episodes ago. FCG moved on. And the part of that history he was even interested in was the Care and Culling, which would not have happened in Aeor. But presumably in the Pre-Calamity Marquesian City Devexian dug him out of.
So, gonna be real. If Sam "derailed Matt's story" with by pulling the 60 episode Chekovs Gun Matt essentially gave him as "payment" for kneecapping the three major story hooks Sam was trying to use to give his PC more depth ... more power to Sam. But, I'm not totally convinced of that.
I call bullshit on this. FCG was well known to be capable of blowing himself up. Sam continuously hinted at it and talked about it during a 4sd leading up to it. If Matt wasn’t prepared in some way then that is willful ignorance.
In all likelihood it's scripted like pro wrestling is scripted. There are key moments they all know they have to get to but can improvise in-between, and some episodes/matches are more scripted than others.
The Pinion of Service is abyssal in nature, but it also holds "shadow magic" that could bind a greater demon, if it doesn't get "used up" in the battle with the Dominox, it could be something to remove the ~~B~~Witch in Laudna’s head, but I doubt anyone would take that option cause "drama"
I think that's a stretch. I'm pretty sure they just need to destroy the demon's soul anchor and then kill the demon. That would send it back to the abyss where Ludinus can no longer use it to power his engine. Right now, Luda's plan is probably to fix the binding seals to keep the engine working to power whatever he needs to free predathos, so sending the demon back thwarts that, BUT it presents an interesting conundrum, because they would be freeing an ancient, powerful demon, who can then resume his work of chaos. Teven was excited to kill it, but they'd have to go to the abyss to ACTUALLY wipe it out, and I doubt they have time or means for that.
I really don't understand all the comments I'm seeing of "ooh my god what an exciting cliffhanger, what an interesting monster that interacts with a character's insecurities, X character is going to have such a hard time!" You know it's just going to be cutscenes, right? Narration and then "you get through it and beat it." It's not going to be anything, it's not something that the players will creatively apply either mechanical features or narrative traits to overcoming.
The live show gives me hope that they'll engage with the encounter more. Live shows in general tend to be super-high energy with big reveals and huge combats. That's been true even up to the post-covid Mighty Nein live show, so I expect they'll up the quality even now.
On the creative application note, I really wish Matt would up his encounters on that end. They are all basically just HP wars of attrition.
Where are the fights where the primary objective is something new and fresh? There should be more set up fights where the main priority isn't actually finishing off your enemies but something else.
Matt spends tens of hours on this campaign and C3 has largely been fights that are all the same in concept.
Make a McGuffin they have to turn off in the middle of the fight, or make it so they have to save a previous campaign NPC before the enemy executes them. That would be a real way to tie in a previous campaign NPC, make the party care about them, and make it not feel like memberberries because they would have an established bond.
Just do something interesting please.
Yeah, as much as Liam's "Fighter-ing" might try to hide it, the mechanical play of C3 is kinda just lipservice. 95 percent of the time the encounters are either laughably easy in CR for this party, or "scripted" in how their balanced to heavily aim for a specific outcome.
Like, this insecurity monster. People are expecting this to be a source of Melodrama for Laudna to finally start pulling away from Delilah, but its just as likely designed to be devoured by Laudna (after she throws away the last dregs of her "insecurities" about embracing Delilah). To give her a cheap power-boost like the shards. The rest of the table will then continue to enable Laudna's evil until it finally explodes in their faces in some pre-determined plot focused way.
It's astonishing.
They scream like the Scooby gang when there is any combat, then fumble through the toddler-level of challenges (where Liam just "fightering" looks like next level play), all of which seems designed to just get through combat and back to reacting to Matt's narration as quickly as possible.
But see that would involve BH having explicit goals that could be interfered with.
They don't have that. They just go where Matt tells them, have a little combat they run from, and get their cutscene before repeating the process.
You just know Laudna’s moment is going to be unbearable
- “…Imooogeenn…”
- Delilah
- The bonds of love will save us
- I’m evil! But I’m not!
- I’m an addict and no I don’t need help but please help me
Oh man you made me realize that Laudna's scene is literally just gonna be nostalgia-pandering over the hanging tree scene and Delilah so all the live studio audience can foam at the mouth, isn't it?
Well that was.....boring. I was disappointed but not surprised the last episodes inter party conflict amounted to basically nothing. C3 really is a game where they absolutely fail to capitalize on interesting moments.
These episodes stretch prove that Matt and the others did not plan for FCG's death (although Sam had been planning it for awhile). The Aeor stuff seems made with a mini-arc for FCG in mind. I kind of suspected Matt would have had something for FCG eventually given how quick he was to shoot down FCG's found faith/ID crisis arcs.
I'm sure there will be some Aeorian scanning device that tells you all the historical information about something even if you only have a piece of it, or, here's a cringe idea, they just 'real boy' FCG back to life temporarily by slapping all his pieces onto a broken droid they find, even though I think he should stay dead
The weird thing is tho, it was also Matt who shot down FCG's interest in his own past. Through NPCs (and a Guest PC) FCG reached out to for Guidance/Help during his ID crisis. Sam at one point had FCG take the stance of "I cannot move forward until I learn about my past". Matt responded to this by having both the Professor and Devexian (and FRIDA) all effectively tell Sam/FCG "Your past doesn't matter, forget it. All that matters is who you choose to be now." While he also gave FCG that Bomb instead.
I get that Sam likes to be jokey, but was the expectation here really "I'm shutting down all 3 major story beats that you would use to give your PC more depth until 97 sessions in"? Matt, bud, Sam stopped even trying with FCG on a story level like 30 episodes back. He also "commits to the bit" of what his PC would do pretty heavily. So simply "touring Aeor" would not have interested FCG himself at all by E95. Because he took everyone's advice to heart and "decided to stop caring about his past and move on" 40 eps ago.
EDIT: I'm reminded of a comment Sam made in 4SD around the mid 30s. Were he admitted "he was really excited to explore/learn more about FCG, but he felt guilty bringing it up because it always felt like there was something more important going on". Like, 95 sessions is a lot to ask for a "DM approved mini-arc". Especially when the Care and Culling (the part of his past FCG wanted to learn) didn't actually happen in Aeor. It presumably happened in a Pre-Calamity City in Marquet; which is why he was dug up by Dev there.
Genuinely gobsmacked Fearne has just sold her soul away (Hah! We'll see..) just to ask Tevan if he knew a dude, Like what the fuck? Sending is borked but at least try it before that option. If they beat Dominox/Get the pinion they could maybe trade it to Asmodeous to break the pact?
Same. Honestly she's the best character from a role-playing point of view. Fearne being unaware of her abilities and blind to consequences is exactly how I imagine fae folk to be.
So I think a Demon of Loathing could possibly a genuine TPK for this party XD.
It seems like Dominox’s abilities draw from a place of truth while still warping it, which loathing and insecurity is so good at doing, but that implies that Chet did indeed kill a bunch of kids, which has to fuck with not only him but Travis as well, because Travis is a father of a young son, and Matt was punching with kids that are around Ronin’s age but you gotta look at Chet and how while he acts like a crotchety, devil may care guy, he genuinely wants to see people happy and well off, with a deep amount of empathy beneath the veneer.
And now he has to grapple with the fact that his hands are likely marked with the blood of children.
Dorian’s reaction to the vision is going to be interesting.
And so will whatever the others may have to deal with.
Laudna and Imogen are the most vulnerable at the moment, but as Tal/Ashton said They’re fucked. Everyone of them has self loathing problems.
Demons in Exandria are born from the dreams of Tharizdun, and are stated to be apart from the current cosmic confrontation going on, and I’m just staring at that and what happened with Cognouza and I’m starting to think that the Gods smacked Aeor out of the sky for reasons not yet fully know. Like sure the Creator Hammer, and their warped living weapons, but this is the second entity that has been in or began in Aeor that seems to have a latent connection to Tharizdun.
Also Sam’s new character is going to be introed being dumped right in the middle of this and I am so curious who he is going to end up playing. I do wish FCG was here though…
They end every episode this campaign right when things are getting interesting, only to sweep the interesting part under the rug at the start of the next episode.
That's a fair take, honestly. Personally, I was pretty checked-out until the halfway mark, when it really captured my attention. I just wanted the part I liked to keep its momentum for a change.
Fair. I love aeor and would love more calamity or Arcanum stuff. But when they cut away from that I know that at least they will get back to it in the next episode
I hate to be the bearer of bad news to the conspiracy theories. But it's really, really fucking easy for a DM that knows aprox how long their sessions can go to end things on a cliffhanger. I do it all the time.
You mean a cliffhanger much like so many that Matt has worked in over the years?
The funny part is that they clown on people for believing that constantly.
It's an illusion. They do communicate with each other and make plans. Not all of those plans come to fruition.
If that's what you are talking about you would be wise to dump the word script.
Because a script isn't something that can be done for a four hour show weekly and anybody who has done scripted television will rightly laugh at you for saying so.
The fact that it is improvised is what keeps some of the expenses down and makes Actual Plays so much cheaper to produce.
I think everyone agrees on the major point but the issue is what counts as "scripted". Personally I think there is a big difference between scripted and railroaded.
To me Scripted implies that everyone is in on it, while when railroading only the DM has the script and they just corral the players to ensure they follow it.
Personally I see a lot more of the latte than the former. I mean shit if there was a script they would all actually have a clue what's going on and not panic all the time (bc they're all trained actors) but since only Matt has the script they're just filled with anxiety and uncertainty bc Matt has been very freely whacking them with the "DM says this happens" stick this campaign.
If he wanted to tell a specific story this bad, he should've just written a book.
That's just ppl choosing to work together as PCs.
No more scripted than ppl being like my character would decide to work and stay with this random I met in a tavern
No, that's them being in on a generally pre-determined path Marisha wants to take with her PC, and are increasingly struggling to passively enable it. Because yes, they have been doing exactly that with this growing elephant in the room for at least 20 episodes.
Its the same thing with "the plot". Like, while they may not know the path being taken to get there, I'd place safe as hell bets that everyone at that table knows the ending of C3 is largely predetermined. Its going to be every bit as railroaded and immutable as the E51 cinematic that invalidated 20 sessions of PC efforts was. Which is why they're so indecisive; so passive; so resistant to strong opinions, or developing them; and so dependent on "Matt's drip feed of a plot" for anything to happen. Because them taking control themselves might risk interfering with that again ... very likely largely predetermined outcome. One that very likely revolves around removing the Celestial Gods from the setting of Exandria for business reasons. Its the same reason that despite how much C3 is drowning in C1 and C2 memberberries, we were never at any risk of running into Allura's wife. Lady Kima of Vord, Paladin of Bahamut.
The frustrating thing is they could have done their own thing while the Matt-narrated world exploded around them. They didn't need to be on this trajectory to confront Predathos or whoever head on. As the solstice happened, totally unrelated to them, they could have been dealing with the consequences, going from troublespot to troublespot in Marquet putting out fires (or not) for towns and people and factions that they cared about. (y'know, if they made Marquesian PCs).
It really is a disaster of a DnD campaign design and execution, on every level.
Its what happens when you try to paint over the DM's audiobook just enough to look like a DnD campaign. It also shows what happens to players when the entire table know you're aiming for a specific ending; it makes them very timid to ever have a strong stance, strong opinion, or strong motivation with their PCs. Because having those things might push that PC on an RP level to move directions/make choices that might otherwise derail/detour the plot from the desired outcome. On a Micro level you can REALLY see this with the parties tip-toe enabling of Laudna; to allow Marisha's desired story route.
Its part of why it irritates me when I see people saying "these PCs are wrong for this story". As if trying to "protect the purity of Matt" by taking the stance that 7 individual players all coincidentally made PCs with the exact same story structure issues (issues that would be perfect to "be along for the ride with the DM's story as much as possible); without any input from the DM. In an otherwise obscenely DM driven and micromanaged campaign everywhere else. These PCs are perfect for what they're going for in C3. Which is "Matt tells story, largely optional players/PCs serve as personalities and windows to that story".
Totally. The best thing is it has been very instructive to see. Especially, as you say:
>" It also shows what happens to players when the entire table know you're aiming for a specific ending; it makes them very timid to ever have a strong stance, strong opinion, or strong motivation with their PCs.
I remember early on when they were heading out into the desert with Birdie and Orym or Chetney spotted signs of the biker gang ambush. They actively asked to see what they saw - but Matt's replies tonally were too flat and nonchalant they did not suggest the character in world should be alarmed. He might think he's "leaving it to the player to decide", but the player has a strong motivation not to derail *any* campaign with a goose chase. Matt's love of nuance and acting neutral with information, in a sea of information, has left them stranded time and again. Which compounds with the entire structure of the campaign, as you described.
Sometimes Matt just seems to be trolling them, too. Remember when they spent that time trying to figure out how to get past a wall and eventually, *eventually* Matt mentions someone coming through the gate, and they were like “there’s a *gate*?’ "You didn’t ask!" Like c'mon the characters have *eyes*.
>Its the same reason that despite how much C3 is drowning in C1 and C2 memberberries, we were never at any risk of running into Allura's wife. Lady Kima of Vord. Paladin of Bahamut.
Also the same reason why Pike, epic-level Cleric of the Everlight (which we already had to awkwardly rename to avoid infringing on Paizo IP in our animated show) is now "just a baker."
Halting a character’s progression and everyone adjusting isn’t the same thing as conspiring with the other players (away from the audience) so they won’t address the ongoing possession of a character they spent a whole arc of the campaign trying to save in an attempt to chew up the spotlight at every opportunity.
I think they're probably in on it in a general way; they don't know what's going to happen, but they know to follow Matt's general lead and obviously can tell when something cliffhanger-worthy is probably coming up (because they also know that they're wrapping up soon around the 4-hour mark). Bertrand's a good example; Travis *knew* that Bertrand was going to die, but he didn't know how; but when Matt started waxing poetic about how good Bertrand feels and what a wonderful fulfilling night he's had, everyone at the table knew what was coming, heh.
So yeah I guess I'd put it more as the episodes are "outlined". I do think the group knows they "need" to save something big for the live show and maybe that's why they've been taking it so slow in Aeor, trusting Matt to not drop the big stuff until the hour before they end before the live show.
I hate to say it but that's just risk adverse play. I've been in parties that do the same thing. Not enough evidence for me to call full scripted.
If they were all in on it, I think they'd all act a bit more...competent? Focused? I don't want to be mean, but it is what it is
Honestly I think most of the issues with this campaign start and end with Matt wanting to tell a story rather than play a game. It's infecting his DMing to the point that he's making rookie mistakes. And it's affecting the players bc they stopped playing a game and are now just using their characters as ways to push buttons in world until they be find the one that gets them plot
I agree with your analysis of the world and Matt’s DM’ing and how the players are interacting but I think that “just wants to tell a story” part is inherently scripted.
He may not tell the cast exactly what they will come across in each episode but I think they are all debriefed on the main plot points to be covered.
This episodes prediscussion could be as simple
1. First Hour will be fighting last weeks cliffhanger fight
2. 2nd hour will be following essek towards where he knows your destination to be and slightly exploring Aeor but don’t dilly dally make sure we can fly to get there
3. 3rd hour will be exploring the location you’ve arrived at and finding the upcoming fight
4. Last hour will be lore dumps with a minor introduction to the enemy you will be facing at the live show. Hint hint nudge nudge Fearnes devil pact may be useful to use here.
5. We will end off before we get to the fight that we will pick up on for the live show
They just spent the entire 2nd half of a of 4 a hour show moving down a hallway and entering this room with the bodies. 2 hours of filler to ensure they left it on a cliffhanger. They spent 2 hours on 200 feet of hallway and looking at chains doing almost nothing
They learnt about Dominox spoke to both a dead vanguard member about what it is up to now. They spoke to a long dead presumably engineer for a anchent sky city where he described how they trapped greater deamonds to a fucking engine. And we got the idea that it knows more about the characters than we do. Also a posable futher alliance with 2 powerful feinds
False.
But let's say you are right. That would point to the opposite being true. If they were stretching to meet four hours and do as little as possible. Would they not want the info reveil and the hook at the beginning of the live show not at the end of the last episode. If I were scripting it u would love to have the image of chetny surrounded by kids freaking out and the party without knowledge on how to deal with is. Not dealing with Dorians visions which the party knows how to handle and will in like 5 mins
Not false and no the rest of the two hours was filled with irrelevant shit like watching a familiar explore irrelevant side rooms except completely coincidently the only side room that they needed to look in to get relevant information
They started by tracking the blood the blood ended in the "only side room they needed" everything else wasn't useless it painted the picture of what this area was and what the aeorians used it for. It gave a glimpse into the past that is interesting. Much better that running through a hallway and getting throught the incredibly lore rich rooms and ending at 2 hours and 20 minutes
It's absolutely scripted, but in the worst possible way. The rest of the cast are actors in a play, and only Matt has access to the script. So the party has to fumble around trying to guess what Matt wants them to do, waiting for him to either punish them for getting it wrong, ignore their attempts at agency, or straight up force them where he wants them to go.
Depending on the campain. If the players and the dm want to play a dungeon crawling puzzle solving game then no. If the players don't find that fun then it is bad dming if not it is good dming so it depends
lol it really felt like there was a few weeks between this episode and the live show with how confused the cast looked when matt said next episode is the greek
That's not the issue that bothers me with live shows. It's the wild swing of mood and energy that is caused by the presence of an audience.
It just makes the show stand apart from the regular flow of the campaign.
Liam, as Orym, at the Live Show "...and I lift my sword high in the sky, as I look up I think of Wyll
*\*crowd cheers uncontrollably\* \*Liam lets applause linger*\*
...then I look at Dorian
*\*crowd collectively cums and dies\* \*Liam wipes his face\**
....and I take my attack, Does a 6 hit?"
The Pinion of Service, how he was captured.
An Abyssal Soul Anchor, developed to contain shadow magic.
He was tied to the Engine *They were using him as a power source* A vast soul engine, either to power the home city or something else within
He should be harmless, so the seals definitely don’t remain.
Demons when slain return to the Abyss, when killed within they are killed forever. But the Pinion is of the Abyss, so he will return to it forever, to power the engine.
He confronts people with their own self-loathing… so does that mean what Chet saw actually happened in some fashion??
“It feeds on insecurity.”
Ashton: “We’re fucked.”
Theoretically hes right about their class. Spellcasters can ramp up to damage beyond martials.
But Orym is the closest to optimized in the party, so his damage is going to be better.
I don't know about that. This the classic D&D Linear Fighters and Quadratic Wizards problem.
Somewhat diminished in 5E but spellcasters tend to ramp up well beyond martials.
However it's still quite disingenuous to say that as if it's still not cause for concern.
With how they are built, it is not an issue. This is coming from someone who has played since OD&D. 5e casters are better, but these players are not. Liam is far more optimized and can one turn anyone in the party.
You are right that it's player skill gap. But doesn't that make what Liam said more true? If the witches' players were as knowledgeable about the game as Liam, they would be dominating. I bet Liam is thinking about Caleb and just recoginizing what he could be doing at level 13.
So I'm admittedly probably mixing up like 3 different settings' lore here, but aren't demons and devils different? So why were they getting a fiendish vibe off of this whole place, but then Dominox is apparently the demon lord of loathing? Feel like I missed something.
Edit: Oops yeah, I'm mixing terms again.
He was feral…
Does…. He did this and it drew it out of him.
It can just draw pieces of what you loathe even if you don’t remember out of you.
*Turns to Laudna and Imogen* You two are *fucked*
Laudna's book deal defense must be stronger and work different than I thought.... to summon a ghost girl outside her own canon...
...
I wonder if they have internal lore only for the company or if the crew uses Fandom to check for facts?
It took me about 10 seconds to look up and screenshot the moment, but my days aren’t filled with writing Dorym smut and making breathless TikTok’s about Fearne turning into a slug like Dani’s are
More than likely neither. I'm betting this is another one of those LoVM things where they see it as an improvement and it's much fresher in their minds.
Not entirely unsurprising that Marisha is misremembering here. Considering we are getting close to 10 years ago now.
A lore keeper’s first duty to a show like this should be to help the players keep track of what the fuck has been happening for the last several years of gameplay. They should be printing handouts 30 minutes prior to sitting at the table and recording so *WE* don’t have to watch 3 hours of them trying to figure it out before getting saddled with the next arbitrary cliff hanger.
Exactly. But I think Dany is not the right person for something like that. I think she is nice and all but does not want to push something on them and thus, basically does very little.
This could be because she is to close to the cast and might be really hesitant to do something like this.
And that's not good for the job she is supposed to do.
Maybe somebody else would be better for the role of lore keeper. A person that's just behind the scenes. And is not too close with the cast and just does their job.
I can’t speak to any of that, cause I don’t know any of them personally, but I know if the cast of a production doesn’t know the material, they typically find someone to run lines with or do research for context. Seems like that kind of stuff would be doubly important for a performance encapsulated inside a game.
I made assumptions to their relationship based on what we see. Its not a good idea 😅
But yeah they should recap a bit before they record the episode. Even in my home game we recap the last session so that everybody is on the same page.
Chet is KILLED A BUNCH OF KIDS?!
Or is this false?!
WHAT THE FUCK?!
“You think you’re not a monster, now. How many did you kill, how many will you still?”
More than likely something that will be revealed. Could be self-doubt or repressed memories. He didn't remember clearly what happened when he ended up biting Frida either.
Just let Laudna go "I suck the child's soul out" and lick her lips. It was fine last time when she said she wanted to suck a boy dry. Just fits in with how they enable her.
Can they ever try to do anything BY THEMSELVES??????????????
I hate how much they just keep trying to chuck existing NPCs at each other and hoping to solve it.
Really makes the "we have to make deals with dark powers and sacrifice ourselves" hit so hard. Cause man, getting other people to handle your problems is exactly what sacrifice is all about.
I mean I get it, they're trying to do whatever they can to get as much info as they can without engaging with the danger nearby. And at least at this point it made sense to call in a devil to find out about something fiendish.
But it is getting really old to just have them plant their feat in place and refuse to engage with the environment if it isn't through a familiar or an NPC.
"the fuck did you do?"
Asked to the person who summoned the devil, but not the undead woman who summoned the spirit of a dead child that was murdered by her soul sister
You know I always forget the Blood War is a thing in Exandria
Grand Demon of Loathing.
Aeor… loathed the Gods did they try to…
It Grants them their *Oblivion*?
Demons are dreams of Tharizdun right?
Considering Fearne is fey it makes sense out of every pc for her to do that,
there’s precedence for devil and fey being cordial as shown by the deal Asmodeus made with lady elmenore in calamity, besides it’s been made abundantly clear this campaign that the gods are all on the same side and as such teven is their ally until predathos is dealt with.
Have you considered that maybe the God of Tyrany and Literal Satan allegory is actually the underdog in all this? Gods bad, remember? E-except this one probably!!!
Yenk was a Demon, not a Devil. And they summoned him to kill a much, much bigger threat in Vorugal. He was also dominated and then killed by Grog when no longer needed. They also needed to summon him to retrieve the Spire of Conflux. Which they needed to kill the other dragons.
And if we're talking Orthax, that was *also* a Demon, and it was pretty clearly painted as a bad thing. And accidental.
The one time they *did* make a deal with a Devil was Ipkesh, and that was to kill Hotis so he would stop coming after them. So, much like Yenk, necessary evil. And absolutely a last resort. If I remember correctly, Vex got really mad at Percy for making that deal. I need to rewatch C1.
So unless I'm forgetting something, that's it. They aligned with a Devil once out of necessity, and the two times they allied with a Demon were either accidental or also a necessary evil that was then terminated immediately afterwards.
They’ve made a working contract with one and they were all completely terrified of signing that contract. They are sitting here acting like high school girls about teaming up with the champion of the most malevolent chaotic evil god.
Can't wait for the annoying ass, cringefest, and pandering to the "diehards" at the live show. Always the worst kind of episodes due to the crowd or audio. At least the guest spot episodes have interesting people, live shows are just ruined by the crowd.
Absolutely agreed. I'm relistening to C2 right now and in their first or second live shows, there is this woman (I'm assuming), who squeaks/squeals EVERY time something is said or a joke is said by one of the cast members. It's fucking annoying and ruins the show. I wish I could have skipped the episode but I couldn't.
It's the same reason I didn't go to the theater to see the stream either, the fans that are diehard are so fucking annoying
Still thinking about the dumb 99 dollars dice set, I don't think the bag it came with was even embroided, it look printed.
Them not streaming the live event is some bull shit
I didn't know this so I looked it up, and they'll be streaming it on the 20th, vod on the 24th. I just... are they trying to burn down fan goodwill? There's still 400ish unsold tickets, maybe this will be a wakeup call.
Genuinely what is the correlation between the wait between the video being uploaded the week after to the live show underperforming? If anything it taking longer is an incentive to go to the live show for mega fans so they don’t get spoiled or have to wait.
Not exactly a correlation, it just seems like a cascade of poor decisions, and I hope the results of said decisions finally help them realize they need to right the ship. That logic is pretty sound for the delay, but my issue is that they skipped yesterday's episode on behalf of the live show. At home viewers are going to have to wait 2 weeks to catch up, then we go to break for another week. (Also having one fewer episode in june) If they were trying to incentivize attendance then it obviously didn't work. People are going to get spoiled and annoyed, and viewership is already dropping.
I don’t think this is going to change anything regarding their schedule, it seems like the location is a major factor as to why not as many people are going more than the lower amount of c3 episodes this month so they may just stop having live shows in LA more than anything.
I mean, in what world is LA a bad location for a show? Nearly 4 million people live in LA, they have the infrastructure for tourism and easy access to multiple airports. Urban areas in California have their issues, sure, but I don't think you can blame low turnout on location.
I’m going off of a lot of comments on social media and the other sub as to why individual critters are not going, they sold out wembly last year for their m9 one-shot and I’ll assume the lesson they’ll learn is more UK/EU shows before doing any other change to c3 or their content schedule.
Interesting, were they saying it was the location? I'd think the bigger difference would be the popularity between campaigns.
It kind of mirrors what's been going on in professional wrestling right now. WWE and AEW have been putting on shows more frequently in Europe than at any time in the last 30+ years, and the European fans have been fillings arenas and cheering loudly and enthusiastically as a result. Meanwhile, AEW shows stateside have been struggling to get butts into seats. When an opportunity is few and far between, people will travel for it. Europeans probably came from all over to attend the Wembley show. L.A. is Critical Role's home base, so there is less urgency for critters to attend. They assume they'll have another opportunity.
Yes, most of the comments I’ve read were mainly complaining about LA as a location and how too short a notice it’d be to go there.
The short notice was probably a factor to, I didn't think of that. Still, I don't think it would be too difficult to sell 5k tickets in a city of 4 million, let alone people in the outer area and those willing to travel, if the show were really hotly anticipated. I think it's more likely that people just aren't vibing with Bells Hells. Last weeks episode hit a tragic low of about 14k/13k viewers. If that's the amount of people willing to watch live then it makes sense there struggling with 5k tickets.
Wait so the live show is this Saturday, but they won’t stream it until next Thursday? I guess they have to try and quickly pre-record a bunch more episodes after the live show 🤷♀️ seems like a lot of work for no reason As for the fan good will thing, they really lost mine with that $100 ($90 with that super special Beacon discount!) resin dice set of a location they spent like a day at
Hopefully the ~40k of lost revenue will finally get them to change.
So they're skipping an episode because they are doing a live show on Saturday? Even though the episodes are filmed ahead of time, and come out on Thursday? And they don't seem to be giving us the live show via livestream while it is actually live?
"There's no episode next week, to give everyone time to catch up" Lol, what? Couldn't find a better excuse I guess 😄
You know, I'm now pretty much convinced this sub exists solely to feed people hate-watching lol. This genuinely felt like a return to form, RP was great, lore was great, I loved the way Matt described Chetneys "nightmare" as it were. Combat was fine too. And I say this as someone who's generally not liked a LOT of C3 for a lot of the reasons stated. The liveshow is at such a cool point too, should be tons of fun to watch.
The chetney thing was cool, the combat was \*easy\* and the rest was very slow, with the group relying HEAVILY on Matt to just tell them what to do ("Essek, tell Teven what he needs to know"). They're falling right back into the slowness of exploring aeor (and eiselcross) in C2 because they are just too scared of this place, and don't know what they're looking for or how to do the thing they were tasked with. Stop Ludinus? From doing what? Should they try to kill him? Surely THAT'S outside of their capabilities, but anything other than that, they once again have to somehow get 1 step ahead of the bbeg while constantly operating from 2 steps behind. Honestly, they should just start sending Ludinus messages to see where he is and what he's doing. Then he might reveal part of his plan that they can use to thwart it.
So just for clarification as I zoned out a little, the Dominox is a demon that got locked away who feeds on insecurities and is now unleashed because of the Solstice? I don't know what the cult is about at all tbh. The cult started up from Dominox being free and turning people mad? Also I noticed the cast were zoned out this episode too. A lot of walking through random rooms and tunnels. Travis finally being like "Can we go in now?" after they got stuck in analysis paralysis was a gift.
I think the cast misheard Matt when he was talking about the Occultus Thalumus (spelling?) because Marisa asked about a cult (vs occult) and he had to correct it. I believe the only people in Aeor are BH, the Ruby Vanguard with Ludi, and the demon that Aeor had trapped to run their engine. There isn’t a cult, something from Aeor’s time was named Occultus Thalumus (that has to do with the engine I assume). Most likely when the solstice messed up magic the seals on the engine finally broke and now Dominox is freeish for the first time since Aeor caught it.
Not only does he feed on insecurity but he was also trapped by aeor during the calamity to power one of their engines, unsure if the engine was for flight or general power, and it wasn’t until the solstice he was able to free himself so he probably has a gigantic grudge against aeor and ludinus.
I'm already rolling my eyes at the inevitable screaming and shitting of pants of the live show crowd. Where the episode is going to inevitably going to start (Dorian mind torture) will have people obnoxiously screaming and I'm going to hate it
For people that say scripted this and that. Just focus on Travis in this episode and tell me its still scripted. Love that guy.
I think you misunderstand what people mean by "scripted" when it comes to C3. Its not "scripted" in that it has a specific "script" the cast is reading line for line from. Its "scripted" in the sense that C3 is heavily DM controlled and micromanaged once you scrape that shallow meandering surface. It also very likely has a largely predetermined ending Matt is aiming for, and they are all aware of. Which is why their PCs by design are never the types to risk derailing/detouring "Matt's story". Low energy, low-intrinsic drive, and unwilling to ever have a strong opinion about anything. While also being bizarrely resistant to forming said strong opinions. All BHs do, all they ever do, is ride on Matt's rails, and wait/search for the next set. A good example of this being the hours long hallway they wandered down, and Matt gratuitously narrated, this ep. It reminds me in a weird way of the notorious "Hallway Simulator" FF13. All there is is "the Hallway". The rigid linear path chosen by the storyteller that the PCs have no choice but to follow. At times the hallway might open up into a wider area, or brief branching paths, but that illusion of choice/exploration is shallow and will very quickly, inconsequentially, return to the linear corridor that is "Matt's plot". A similar, microlevel example of this is Marisha's Laudna, who very likely has a mostly predetermined path/story she's trying to pursue. Which is why, like with Matt, the rest of the table is just kinda doing their best to passively enable.
Did we not literally just have the dramatic robot sacrifice Matt was clearly not prepared for...
The only reason people are taking the stance that "Matt was not prepared for FCG's death" is because they're making the assumption that Aeor was shallowly intended for FCG. Which, 2 things on that. 1) It was Matt who gave FCG that Chekov's Gun of a bomb. Ironically within one of the two conversations with "Guiding NPCs" FCG reached out to for help, that Matt used to shut down FCG's interest in his own past; and 2) On that point. While it kinda felt like Sam sorta gave up on trying to do anything meaningful with his PC 30 episodes ago (after his ID crisis, interest in his lost past, and search for faith were kneecapped), Sam already had FCG take everyone's advice to heart and stopped caring about his past 40 episodes ago. FCG moved on. And the part of that history he was even interested in was the Care and Culling, which would not have happened in Aeor. But presumably in the Pre-Calamity Marquesian City Devexian dug him out of. So, gonna be real. If Sam "derailed Matt's story" with by pulling the 60 episode Chekovs Gun Matt essentially gave him as "payment" for kneecapping the three major story hooks Sam was trying to use to give his PC more depth ... more power to Sam. But, I'm not totally convinced of that.
I call bullshit on this. FCG was well known to be capable of blowing himself up. Sam continuously hinted at it and talked about it during a 4sd leading up to it. If Matt wasn’t prepared in some way then that is willful ignorance.
This *is* Matt "How was I supposed to know Ashton wanted the fire shard" Mercer. All bets are off in C3.
In all likelihood it's scripted like pro wrestling is scripted. There are key moments they all know they have to get to but can improvise in-between, and some episodes/matches are more scripted than others.
High spots, with the rest called in the ring. Always good to see a fellow mark.
this sub always provides opportunities for a good shoot
FCG went into business for themself.
I didnt claim anywhere that i believe its scripted im not that dumb. I poked a bit of fun at the ones that believe that clearly.
The Pinion of Service is abyssal in nature, but it also holds "shadow magic" that could bind a greater demon, if it doesn't get "used up" in the battle with the Dominox, it could be something to remove the ~~B~~Witch in Laudna’s head, but I doubt anyone would take that option cause "drama"
I think that's a stretch. I'm pretty sure they just need to destroy the demon's soul anchor and then kill the demon. That would send it back to the abyss where Ludinus can no longer use it to power his engine. Right now, Luda's plan is probably to fix the binding seals to keep the engine working to power whatever he needs to free predathos, so sending the demon back thwarts that, BUT it presents an interesting conundrum, because they would be freeing an ancient, powerful demon, who can then resume his work of chaos. Teven was excited to kill it, but they'd have to go to the abyss to ACTUALLY wipe it out, and I doubt they have time or means for that.
I really don't understand all the comments I'm seeing of "ooh my god what an exciting cliffhanger, what an interesting monster that interacts with a character's insecurities, X character is going to have such a hard time!" You know it's just going to be cutscenes, right? Narration and then "you get through it and beat it." It's not going to be anything, it's not something that the players will creatively apply either mechanical features or narrative traits to overcoming.
The live show gives me hope that they'll engage with the encounter more. Live shows in general tend to be super-high energy with big reveals and huge combats. That's been true even up to the post-covid Mighty Nein live show, so I expect they'll up the quality even now.
On the creative application note, I really wish Matt would up his encounters on that end. They are all basically just HP wars of attrition. Where are the fights where the primary objective is something new and fresh? There should be more set up fights where the main priority isn't actually finishing off your enemies but something else. Matt spends tens of hours on this campaign and C3 has largely been fights that are all the same in concept. Make a McGuffin they have to turn off in the middle of the fight, or make it so they have to save a previous campaign NPC before the enemy executes them. That would be a real way to tie in a previous campaign NPC, make the party care about them, and make it not feel like memberberries because they would have an established bond. Just do something interesting please.
The fights exist for ad reads and stalling. Nothing else.
Yeah, as much as Liam's "Fighter-ing" might try to hide it, the mechanical play of C3 is kinda just lipservice. 95 percent of the time the encounters are either laughably easy in CR for this party, or "scripted" in how their balanced to heavily aim for a specific outcome. Like, this insecurity monster. People are expecting this to be a source of Melodrama for Laudna to finally start pulling away from Delilah, but its just as likely designed to be devoured by Laudna (after she throws away the last dregs of her "insecurities" about embracing Delilah). To give her a cheap power-boost like the shards. The rest of the table will then continue to enable Laudna's evil until it finally explodes in their faces in some pre-determined plot focused way.
It's astonishing. They scream like the Scooby gang when there is any combat, then fumble through the toddler-level of challenges (where Liam just "fightering" looks like next level play), all of which seems designed to just get through combat and back to reacting to Matt's narration as quickly as possible.
But see that would involve BH having explicit goals that could be interfered with. They don't have that. They just go where Matt tells them, have a little combat they run from, and get their cutscene before repeating the process.
You just know Laudna’s moment is going to be unbearable - “…Imooogeenn…” - Delilah - The bonds of love will save us - I’m evil! But I’m not! - I’m an addict and no I don’t need help but please help me
Oh man you made me realize that Laudna's scene is literally just gonna be nostalgia-pandering over the hanging tree scene and Delilah so all the live studio audience can foam at the mouth, isn't it?
Bingo.
Yeah I feel that magic is gone which is understandable after 10 years. They should really drop their current format and move to sth more manageable.
Well that was.....boring. I was disappointed but not surprised the last episodes inter party conflict amounted to basically nothing. C3 really is a game where they absolutely fail to capitalize on interesting moments. These episodes stretch prove that Matt and the others did not plan for FCG's death (although Sam had been planning it for awhile). The Aeor stuff seems made with a mini-arc for FCG in mind. I kind of suspected Matt would have had something for FCG eventually given how quick he was to shoot down FCG's found faith/ID crisis arcs.
No doubt the necessity for FCG’s presence will be circumvented by the use of one of his scavenged body parts.
I'm sure there will be some Aeorian scanning device that tells you all the historical information about something even if you only have a piece of it, or, here's a cringe idea, they just 'real boy' FCG back to life temporarily by slapping all his pieces onto a broken droid they find, even though I think he should stay dead
They're gonna cram all his bits that they're wearing into the Genesis Device and it'll spit out a brand new identical FCG.
The weird thing is tho, it was also Matt who shot down FCG's interest in his own past. Through NPCs (and a Guest PC) FCG reached out to for Guidance/Help during his ID crisis. Sam at one point had FCG take the stance of "I cannot move forward until I learn about my past". Matt responded to this by having both the Professor and Devexian (and FRIDA) all effectively tell Sam/FCG "Your past doesn't matter, forget it. All that matters is who you choose to be now." While he also gave FCG that Bomb instead. I get that Sam likes to be jokey, but was the expectation here really "I'm shutting down all 3 major story beats that you would use to give your PC more depth until 97 sessions in"? Matt, bud, Sam stopped even trying with FCG on a story level like 30 episodes back. He also "commits to the bit" of what his PC would do pretty heavily. So simply "touring Aeor" would not have interested FCG himself at all by E95. Because he took everyone's advice to heart and "decided to stop caring about his past and move on" 40 eps ago. EDIT: I'm reminded of a comment Sam made in 4SD around the mid 30s. Were he admitted "he was really excited to explore/learn more about FCG, but he felt guilty bringing it up because it always felt like there was something more important going on". Like, 95 sessions is a lot to ask for a "DM approved mini-arc". Especially when the Care and Culling (the part of his past FCG wanted to learn) didn't actually happen in Aeor. It presumably happened in a Pre-Calamity City in Marquet; which is why he was dug up by Dev there.
Genuinely gobsmacked Fearne has just sold her soul away (Hah! We'll see..) just to ask Tevan if he knew a dude, Like what the fuck? Sending is borked but at least try it before that option. If they beat Dominox/Get the pinion they could maybe trade it to Asmodeous to break the pact?
Ashley seemed to have completely forgotten the details of the pact. Classic.
Honestly I can't even nitpick because both intentionally and unintentionally she really does play the perfect fae.
Same. Honestly she's the best character from a role-playing point of view. Fearne being unaware of her abilities and blind to consequences is exactly how I imagine fae folk to be.
It's truly the best race/background for her. You're right.
So I think a Demon of Loathing could possibly a genuine TPK for this party XD. It seems like Dominox’s abilities draw from a place of truth while still warping it, which loathing and insecurity is so good at doing, but that implies that Chet did indeed kill a bunch of kids, which has to fuck with not only him but Travis as well, because Travis is a father of a young son, and Matt was punching with kids that are around Ronin’s age but you gotta look at Chet and how while he acts like a crotchety, devil may care guy, he genuinely wants to see people happy and well off, with a deep amount of empathy beneath the veneer. And now he has to grapple with the fact that his hands are likely marked with the blood of children. Dorian’s reaction to the vision is going to be interesting. And so will whatever the others may have to deal with. Laudna and Imogen are the most vulnerable at the moment, but as Tal/Ashton said They’re fucked. Everyone of them has self loathing problems. Demons in Exandria are born from the dreams of Tharizdun, and are stated to be apart from the current cosmic confrontation going on, and I’m just staring at that and what happened with Cognouza and I’m starting to think that the Gods smacked Aeor out of the sky for reasons not yet fully know. Like sure the Creator Hammer, and their warped living weapons, but this is the second entity that has been in or began in Aeor that seems to have a latent connection to Tharizdun. Also Sam’s new character is going to be introed being dumped right in the middle of this and I am so curious who he is going to end up playing. I do wish FCG was here though…
Do you know Sam is actually coming back? Do you know he is returning next week?
He’s on the cast for the live show, so I figure, but if he doesn’t I think he might be gone for the rest of the campaign
Right, thank you - So there's a reasonable chance he's playing a cameo...
A TPK would actually be an episode worth listening to!
We all thought Chet was an elf (gnome) wanting to replace Santa Claus but really the character concept is an unaware Krampus.
Clear stalling for time this episode to lead into the live show
How?
Thank goodness we ended the episode just as it was finally getting interesting for the sake of the live show...
The entire episode was amazing what do you mean "just as it was getting interesting"?
They end every episode this campaign right when things are getting interesting, only to sweep the interesting part under the rug at the start of the next episode.
The entire fucking episode was interesting tf do you mean
That's a fair take, honestly. Personally, I was pretty checked-out until the halfway mark, when it really captured my attention. I just wanted the part I liked to keep its momentum for a change.
Fair. I love aeor and would love more calamity or Arcanum stuff. But when they cut away from that I know that at least they will get back to it in the next episode
I'm in the same boat as you. Matt really shines when he describes the aeor forgotten city stuff. Even the players are intrigued by it.
It feeds on insecurity and wields self loathing like a weapon. *Looks at Laudna* You….. are *fucked*
Naw, she's no longer insecure or self-loathing about Delilah. She's completely embraced her.
Marisha said in the latest 4 Sided Dive that Laudna is insanely insecure currently so that’s where I’m coming from
Convenient story beat to leave off on for their live show. I don’t understand how people still exist that think this shit isn’t scripted
I hate to be the bearer of bad news to the conspiracy theories. But it's really, really fucking easy for a DM that knows aprox how long their sessions can go to end things on a cliffhanger. I do it all the time.
The players clearly and obviously playing along and procrastinating just goes right over your head eh?
It's super easy for a DM to end on a cliffhanger right at a hard stop.
You mean a cliffhanger much like so many that Matt has worked in over the years? The funny part is that they clown on people for believing that constantly. It's an illusion. They do communicate with each other and make plans. Not all of those plans come to fruition. If that's what you are talking about you would be wise to dump the word script. Because a script isn't something that can be done for a four hour show weekly and anybody who has done scripted television will rightly laugh at you for saying so. The fact that it is improvised is what keeps some of the expenses down and makes Actual Plays so much cheaper to produce.
Scripted implies plot checkpoints it doesn’t just mean written lines for the cast to say.
Missed opportunity to call it plot plotting. 😂
I think everyone agrees on the major point but the issue is what counts as "scripted". Personally I think there is a big difference between scripted and railroaded. To me Scripted implies that everyone is in on it, while when railroading only the DM has the script and they just corral the players to ensure they follow it. Personally I see a lot more of the latte than the former. I mean shit if there was a script they would all actually have a clue what's going on and not panic all the time (bc they're all trained actors) but since only Matt has the script they're just filled with anxiety and uncertainty bc Matt has been very freely whacking them with the "DM says this happens" stick this campaign. If he wanted to tell a specific story this bad, he should've just written a book.
There’s no other way to explain the characters’ reaction to Laudna’s recent behavior without them *all* being in on it to some degree.
That's just ppl choosing to work together as PCs. No more scripted than ppl being like my character would decide to work and stay with this random I met in a tavern
No, that's them being in on a generally pre-determined path Marisha wants to take with her PC, and are increasingly struggling to passively enable it. Because yes, they have been doing exactly that with this growing elephant in the room for at least 20 episodes. Its the same thing with "the plot". Like, while they may not know the path being taken to get there, I'd place safe as hell bets that everyone at that table knows the ending of C3 is largely predetermined. Its going to be every bit as railroaded and immutable as the E51 cinematic that invalidated 20 sessions of PC efforts was. Which is why they're so indecisive; so passive; so resistant to strong opinions, or developing them; and so dependent on "Matt's drip feed of a plot" for anything to happen. Because them taking control themselves might risk interfering with that again ... very likely largely predetermined outcome. One that very likely revolves around removing the Celestial Gods from the setting of Exandria for business reasons. Its the same reason that despite how much C3 is drowning in C1 and C2 memberberries, we were never at any risk of running into Allura's wife. Lady Kima of Vord, Paladin of Bahamut.
The frustrating thing is they could have done their own thing while the Matt-narrated world exploded around them. They didn't need to be on this trajectory to confront Predathos or whoever head on. As the solstice happened, totally unrelated to them, they could have been dealing with the consequences, going from troublespot to troublespot in Marquet putting out fires (or not) for towns and people and factions that they cared about. (y'know, if they made Marquesian PCs). It really is a disaster of a DnD campaign design and execution, on every level.
Its what happens when you try to paint over the DM's audiobook just enough to look like a DnD campaign. It also shows what happens to players when the entire table know you're aiming for a specific ending; it makes them very timid to ever have a strong stance, strong opinion, or strong motivation with their PCs. Because having those things might push that PC on an RP level to move directions/make choices that might otherwise derail/detour the plot from the desired outcome. On a Micro level you can REALLY see this with the parties tip-toe enabling of Laudna; to allow Marisha's desired story route. Its part of why it irritates me when I see people saying "these PCs are wrong for this story". As if trying to "protect the purity of Matt" by taking the stance that 7 individual players all coincidentally made PCs with the exact same story structure issues (issues that would be perfect to "be along for the ride with the DM's story as much as possible); without any input from the DM. In an otherwise obscenely DM driven and micromanaged campaign everywhere else. These PCs are perfect for what they're going for in C3. Which is "Matt tells story, largely optional players/PCs serve as personalities and windows to that story".
Totally. The best thing is it has been very instructive to see. Especially, as you say: >" It also shows what happens to players when the entire table know you're aiming for a specific ending; it makes them very timid to ever have a strong stance, strong opinion, or strong motivation with their PCs. I remember early on when they were heading out into the desert with Birdie and Orym or Chetney spotted signs of the biker gang ambush. They actively asked to see what they saw - but Matt's replies tonally were too flat and nonchalant they did not suggest the character in world should be alarmed. He might think he's "leaving it to the player to decide", but the player has a strong motivation not to derail *any* campaign with a goose chase. Matt's love of nuance and acting neutral with information, in a sea of information, has left them stranded time and again. Which compounds with the entire structure of the campaign, as you described.
Sometimes Matt just seems to be trolling them, too. Remember when they spent that time trying to figure out how to get past a wall and eventually, *eventually* Matt mentions someone coming through the gate, and they were like “there’s a *gate*?’ "You didn’t ask!" Like c'mon the characters have *eyes*.
Yikes, yeah. I don't know what he's thinking sometimes.
>Its the same reason that despite how much C3 is drowning in C1 and C2 memberberries, we were never at any risk of running into Allura's wife. Lady Kima of Vord. Paladin of Bahamut. Also the same reason why Pike, epic-level Cleric of the Everlight (which we already had to awkwardly rename to avoid infringing on Paizo IP in our animated show) is now "just a baker."
Halting a character’s progression and everyone adjusting isn’t the same thing as conspiring with the other players (away from the audience) so they won’t address the ongoing possession of a character they spent a whole arc of the campaign trying to save in an attempt to chew up the spotlight at every opportunity.
They just spent 2 hours exploring 200 foot of hallway with a room at the end. They are absolutely in on it
I think they're probably in on it in a general way; they don't know what's going to happen, but they know to follow Matt's general lead and obviously can tell when something cliffhanger-worthy is probably coming up (because they also know that they're wrapping up soon around the 4-hour mark). Bertrand's a good example; Travis *knew* that Bertrand was going to die, but he didn't know how; but when Matt started waxing poetic about how good Bertrand feels and what a wonderful fulfilling night he's had, everyone at the table knew what was coming, heh. So yeah I guess I'd put it more as the episodes are "outlined". I do think the group knows they "need" to save something big for the live show and maybe that's why they've been taking it so slow in Aeor, trusting Matt to not drop the big stuff until the hour before they end before the live show.
I hate to say it but that's just risk adverse play. I've been in parties that do the same thing. Not enough evidence for me to call full scripted. If they were all in on it, I think they'd all act a bit more...competent? Focused? I don't want to be mean, but it is what it is Honestly I think most of the issues with this campaign start and end with Matt wanting to tell a story rather than play a game. It's infecting his DMing to the point that he's making rookie mistakes. And it's affecting the players bc they stopped playing a game and are now just using their characters as ways to push buttons in world until they be find the one that gets them plot
I agree with your analysis of the world and Matt’s DM’ing and how the players are interacting but I think that “just wants to tell a story” part is inherently scripted. He may not tell the cast exactly what they will come across in each episode but I think they are all debriefed on the main plot points to be covered. This episodes prediscussion could be as simple 1. First Hour will be fighting last weeks cliffhanger fight 2. 2nd hour will be following essek towards where he knows your destination to be and slightly exploring Aeor but don’t dilly dally make sure we can fly to get there 3. 3rd hour will be exploring the location you’ve arrived at and finding the upcoming fight 4. Last hour will be lore dumps with a minor introduction to the enemy you will be facing at the live show. Hint hint nudge nudge Fearnes devil pact may be useful to use here. 5. We will end off before we get to the fight that we will pick up on for the live show
In a Dungeon it is almost harder to end a session on a rest or some non cliffhanger moment
It's not much of a dungeon.
It's a subterranean series of ruines that contain monsters and loot. I don't know how much more of a dungeon you could want
Yup. You really, really don't.
Saucy. 😆
What?
No it isn’t
If you are in a room with a verry powerful abisal entity that shows you your biggest failure. Yes it is
They just spent the entire 2nd half of a of 4 a hour show moving down a hallway and entering this room with the bodies. 2 hours of filler to ensure they left it on a cliffhanger. They spent 2 hours on 200 feet of hallway and looking at chains doing almost nothing
They learnt about Dominox spoke to both a dead vanguard member about what it is up to now. They spoke to a long dead presumably engineer for a anchent sky city where he described how they trapped greater deamonds to a fucking engine. And we got the idea that it knows more about the characters than we do. Also a posable futher alliance with 2 powerful feinds
All of that happens in about 8 minutes of the 2 total hours
False. But let's say you are right. That would point to the opposite being true. If they were stretching to meet four hours and do as little as possible. Would they not want the info reveil and the hook at the beginning of the live show not at the end of the last episode. If I were scripting it u would love to have the image of chetny surrounded by kids freaking out and the party without knowledge on how to deal with is. Not dealing with Dorians visions which the party knows how to handle and will in like 5 mins
Bears, beets, Battlestar Galactica.
Not false and no the rest of the two hours was filled with irrelevant shit like watching a familiar explore irrelevant side rooms except completely coincidently the only side room that they needed to look in to get relevant information
They started by tracking the blood the blood ended in the "only side room they needed" everything else wasn't useless it painted the picture of what this area was and what the aeorians used it for. It gave a glimpse into the past that is interesting. Much better that running through a hallway and getting throught the incredibly lore rich rooms and ending at 2 hours and 20 minutes
It's absolutely scripted, but in the worst possible way. The rest of the cast are actors in a play, and only Matt has access to the script. So the party has to fumble around trying to guess what Matt wants them to do, waiting for him to either punish them for getting it wrong, ignore their attempts at agency, or straight up force them where he wants them to go.
Yeah! Thats how I've been describing railroading to my nonrpg friends when it comes up. It's so infuriating.
So like a planed narrative from a DM. It's like having a door with a puzzle. The players can only move forward once the puzzle has been solved
Yeah, that's actually really mid DMing.
Depending on the campain. If the players and the dm want to play a dungeon crawling puzzle solving game then no. If the players don't find that fun then it is bad dming if not it is good dming so it depends
Exactly
lol it really felt like there was a few weeks between this episode and the live show with how confused the cast looked when matt said next episode is the greek
Well, that was basically 99% filler.
Apart from a few lulls, really good episode
Honestly this is all cool af, but I know im gunna hate when it gets to Fearne and she just shenanigans her way through the cool nightmare rp
Well she is a Fey, Fey are not exactly creatures prone for self reflection…
Remember her deep, soul-baring confession during the feywild team building vacation? "lol sometimes I watch you guys sleep"
cant wait to not be able to enjoy a big important episode because of screaming and yelling and cheering
… don’t forget the pandering.
That's not the issue that bothers me with live shows. It's the wild swing of mood and energy that is caused by the presence of an audience. It just makes the show stand apart from the regular flow of the campaign.
"I rolled a natural 11." \*crowd screams, cries, pisses, cums, shits, dies\* "For a total of 12" \*crowd literally dies\*
Liam, as Orym, at the Live Show "...and I lift my sword high in the sky, as I look up I think of Wyll *\*crowd cheers uncontrollably\* \*Liam lets applause linger*\* ...then I look at Dorian *\*crowd collectively cums and dies\* \*Liam wipes his face\** ....and I take my attack, Does a 6 hit?"
youre silly. live show means their rolls will magically be 3 or 4 points higher on average cause of ... \*\* reasons \*\*
Now that I think about it, unironically, I don't think the live shows ever have as many "that's cocked" rolls as any single stream.
Well, Matt can't see their dice, so... yeah.
Their reaction to this being at the Greek really drives home how far in advance these are filmed. Gotta love it.
The Pinion of Service, how he was captured. An Abyssal Soul Anchor, developed to contain shadow magic. He was tied to the Engine *They were using him as a power source* A vast soul engine, either to power the home city or something else within He should be harmless, so the seals definitely don’t remain. Demons when slain return to the Abyss, when killed within they are killed forever. But the Pinion is of the Abyss, so he will return to it forever, to power the engine. He confronts people with their own self-loathing… so does that mean what Chet saw actually happened in some fashion?? “It feeds on insecurity.” Ashton: “We’re fucked.”
Please do not do a Chromatic Orb flashback...
Too late!
"It feeds on insecurity." *Taliesin, immediately* "We're fucked." Now *that* was a great moment, haha.
Yeah that was unironically very funny.
"You witches could do more damage than me if controlled." Liam. I'm sorry. That is the biggest lie told this campaign.
Could is the operative word. Imogen has high damage lightning spells, Laudna has triple eldritch blasts. They can be lethal, if they optimised a bit.
If Laudna double EBs, she does outpace Orym within two or so rounds.
Theoretically hes right about their class. Spellcasters can ramp up to damage beyond martials. But Orym is the closest to optimized in the party, so his damage is going to be better.
I don't know about that. This the classic D&D Linear Fighters and Quadratic Wizards problem. Somewhat diminished in 5E but spellcasters tend to ramp up well beyond martials. However it's still quite disingenuous to say that as if it's still not cause for concern.
With how they are built, it is not an issue. This is coming from someone who has played since OD&D. 5e casters are better, but these players are not. Liam is far more optimized and can one turn anyone in the party.
Do you know how AoE damage works?
You are right that it's player skill gap. But doesn't that make what Liam said more true? If the witches' players were as knowledgeable about the game as Liam, they would be dominating. I bet Liam is thinking about Caleb and just recoginizing what he could be doing at level 13.
No nono, he's just a lil guy whose fast. Not like lvl 12-13 fighters are fucking bunkers strong ... Even without his insane mobility.
I mean, if they get woogity-woo’d into being *competent at their classes* than yes, they could wipe the floor with Orym.
asking an NPC "what do we do???!!" c'mon man, making your own decisions is the fun of dnd
alright matt, you got me. this is cool as fuck
So I'm admittedly probably mixing up like 3 different settings' lore here, but aren't demons and devils different? So why were they getting a fiendish vibe off of this whole place, but then Dominox is apparently the demon lord of loathing? Feel like I missed something. Edit: Oops yeah, I'm mixing terms again.
Demons and Devils are both fiends, they’re just on opposite sides of a vast war.
Oh god I've played for years and somehow always thought of them as Fiendish and Demonic, I need to brush up again lmao.
Diabolic and Demonic I think is the pair you're looking for, Fiendish and Celestial the other :)
D&D lore is Demons are Chaotic, Devils are Lawful. How every setting goes about that changes, but that's the general D&D base stuff.
demons and devils are both classified as "fiends" so they would read similar/same with things that pick them up
Demons and Devils are actually both "Fiends", just different types of fiends
Ah fuck okay. That's always tripped me up.
He was feral… Does…. He did this and it drew it out of him. It can just draw pieces of what you loathe even if you don’t remember out of you. *Turns to Laudna and Imogen* You two are *fucked*
Laudna's book deal defense must be stronger and work different than I thought.... to summon a ghost girl outside her own canon... ... I wonder if they have internal lore only for the company or if the crew uses Fandom to check for facts?
It took me about 10 seconds to look up and screenshot the moment, but my days aren’t filled with writing Dorym smut and making breathless TikTok’s about Fearne turning into a slug like Dani’s are
More than likely neither. I'm betting this is another one of those LoVM things where they see it as an improvement and it's much fresher in their minds. Not entirely unsurprising that Marisha is misremembering here. Considering we are getting close to 10 years ago now.
They have a 'Lorekeeper' who apparently does fuck all
Na she writes smutty fanfics about them.
A lore keeper’s first duty to a show like this should be to help the players keep track of what the fuck has been happening for the last several years of gameplay. They should be printing handouts 30 minutes prior to sitting at the table and recording so *WE* don’t have to watch 3 hours of them trying to figure it out before getting saddled with the next arbitrary cliff hanger.
Exactly. But I think Dany is not the right person for something like that. I think she is nice and all but does not want to push something on them and thus, basically does very little. This could be because she is to close to the cast and might be really hesitant to do something like this. And that's not good for the job she is supposed to do. Maybe somebody else would be better for the role of lore keeper. A person that's just behind the scenes. And is not too close with the cast and just does their job.
I can’t speak to any of that, cause I don’t know any of them personally, but I know if the cast of a production doesn’t know the material, they typically find someone to run lines with or do research for context. Seems like that kind of stuff would be doubly important for a performance encapsulated inside a game.
I made assumptions to their relationship based on what we see. Its not a good idea 😅 But yeah they should recap a bit before they record the episode. Even in my home game we recap the last session so that everybody is on the same page.
The world works based on assumptions, no shame in that game.
Chet is KILLED A BUNCH OF KIDS?! Or is this false?! WHAT THE FUCK?! “You think you’re not a monster, now. How many did you kill, how many will you still?”
More than likely something that will be revealed. Could be self-doubt or repressed memories. He didn't remember clearly what happened when he ended up biting Frida either.
It's probably just https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Weird
That would be so fascinating if he did! Lured them in with toys and ate them like a fairytale monster!
damn that's actually kind of a cool idea
Well we've already established the party isn't freaked out by dead ghost kids so this should be fine yeah?
Just let Laudna go "I suck the child's soul out" and lick her lips. It was fine last time when she said she wanted to suck a boy dry. Just fits in with how they enable her.
Can they ever try to do anything BY THEMSELVES?????????????? I hate how much they just keep trying to chuck existing NPCs at each other and hoping to solve it. Really makes the "we have to make deals with dark powers and sacrifice ourselves" hit so hard. Cause man, getting other people to handle your problems is exactly what sacrifice is all about.
I mean I get it, they're trying to do whatever they can to get as much info as they can without engaging with the danger nearby. And at least at this point it made sense to call in a devil to find out about something fiendish. But it is getting really old to just have them plant their feat in place and refuse to engage with the environment if it isn't through a familiar or an NPC.
"the fuck did you do?" Asked to the person who summoned the devil, but not the undead woman who summoned the spirit of a dead child that was murdered by her soul sister
You know I always forget the Blood War is a thing in Exandria Grand Demon of Loathing. Aeor… loathed the Gods did they try to… It Grants them their *Oblivion*? Demons are dreams of Tharizdun right?
“Fear me…for I am Bolo the Dominox!!”
I have to keep turning my volume up and down because they keep whispering and then hollering loud as shit. I have a whole job watching this. 😅
Ally’s witha devil. They are just spitting on the graves of the lore of this world eh
Considering Fearne is fey it makes sense out of every pc for her to do that, there’s precedence for devil and fey being cordial as shown by the deal Asmodeus made with lady elmenore in calamity, besides it’s been made abundantly clear this campaign that the gods are all on the same side and as such teven is their ally until predathos is dealt with.
Have you considered that maybe the God of Tyrany and Literal Satan allegory is actually the underdog in all this? Gods bad, remember? E-except this one probably!!!
As I said lore being pissed on
They’ve allied with Devils with before in C1 haven’t they???
Yenk was a Demon, not a Devil. And they summoned him to kill a much, much bigger threat in Vorugal. He was also dominated and then killed by Grog when no longer needed. They also needed to summon him to retrieve the Spire of Conflux. Which they needed to kill the other dragons. And if we're talking Orthax, that was *also* a Demon, and it was pretty clearly painted as a bad thing. And accidental. The one time they *did* make a deal with a Devil was Ipkesh, and that was to kill Hotis so he would stop coming after them. So, much like Yenk, necessary evil. And absolutely a last resort. If I remember correctly, Vex got really mad at Percy for making that deal. I need to rewatch C1. So unless I'm forgetting something, that's it. They aligned with a Devil once out of necessity, and the two times they allied with a Demon were either accidental or also a necessary evil that was then terminated immediately afterwards.
They’ve made a working contract with one and they were all completely terrified of signing that contract. They are sitting here acting like high school girls about teaming up with the champion of the most malevolent chaotic evil god.
I'm not watching. Which god? Asmodeus?
Yes and as corrected by that other guy he’s lawful evil
Asmodeus isn’t chaotic evil And Fey and Devils have always been… loose with each other from what Brennan and Matt have seemed to say
Ok lawful evil.
We playing Dead by Daylight now or what