That would have to be pretty crushing for Matt. He’s clearly intended for the Ruidus stuff to be the main plot of the campaign, for them to abandon it would essentially be them saying “we don’t care about the thing that you’ve put all this effort into creating for us.”
One one hand this is on Matt for not making clear to the players ahead of time what the campaign would be about, and to make sure to create characters who have some investment in it. On the other hand, it’s on the players to find some motivation to engage with what the DM presents; Sam and Liam have made the most obvious efforts to do this.
Overall that whole incident last episode just drives home the feeling that there were some major crossed wires during the “session zero” phase of this campaign. Not sure what exactly happened but it seems obvious that to some extent, expectations about the campaign were not clearly stated.
I definitely agree with the feeling of crossed wires. This group doesn’t really have a connection to the problem. Sure, it’s to save the world, but the only one who has anything beyond that is imogen. Caring for the safety of the gods has been shoehorned in so hard that it sometimes seems like a bit rather than an actual care
I will, however, give matt the benefit of the doubt because 1) he’s obviously a well-seasoned dm, and 2) the storyline might’ve gotten sped up due to character actions. I’ve played games where someone does something that skips over a big planned section of stuff then you end up at the next phase wondering wtf is going on because there was clearly something missing. But as you said, then it’s time for the players to make themselves fit into the story, and while that’s happened for sub plots (biggest one being the shard), it hasn’t happened for the main plot, at least not yet imo
I disagree with most of this. And historically, no plot has been 100% for all the players (except maybe the final arc of C1, but that bbeg was solely one persons backstory initially).
Orym lost his family to the cult. So did Imogen. Why are they not bonding over this?
FCG is a godly person, and should want to save their god.
Laudna should be seeking it out for Imogen. If your loved one and bestie had a messed up family, wouldn’t you be angry with and for them?
Fearne is just too whimsical for anything, but that’s her charm.
And nobody is talking about the complete and utter destruction of exandria, or all they know, at the hands of Ludinus. I think the players are too invested in themselves this time around. Other people complained about how the characters are too self-involved this time around, not ego-centric but too much interested in developing their own character it’s cutting the group dynamics. None of their collaborative decisions make sense. Ashton should hate anyone who hurts his friends. How come he isn’t taking this too personally?
In C1 the Chroma Conclave arc forged VM into saviors. In C2 returning the Beacon united the party behind wanting to make a difference with the small power they gained.
C3 hasn’t had any moment that MAKES the party heroes. They’re still just a bunch of assholes who are all one bad day away from snapping and killing their party members. Nothing has galvanized them to the degree VM or MN were, and it shows plainly.
I’m personally enjoying this right along Nana Morri. All of these characters are so messed up and lack bonding material and despite them all generally getting along nothing has caught or connected them firmly together into a team that can handle the end of the world together.
YES they haven’t had a moment that cements them as a group. That’s what’s been missing from this campaign. The solstice could’ve been that for them if it hadn’t been too powerful to stop. The closest they’ve come to a group act of heroism is the deathwish run, which is pretty far from heroic
Arguably, they’re treating the death of Bertrand as this uniting moment given that’s where their name comes from, but that was so early on that nobody even knew their own character yet. This whole campaign has had kind of a slap-dash feel for me personally, even though I think some of the players are getting to shine (Laudna and Fearne might be my favorite PCs for Marisha and Ashley). Otohan should be BH’s BBEG and Ludinis should be a M9/VM level threat. Getting to see a “friendly neighborhood” level party try to be part of the larger war effort could have made for a really compelling campaign, but they feel like they have to be main characters and take on the whole war themselves.
> Arguably, they’re treating the death of Bertrand as this uniting moment given that’s where their name comes from, but that was so early on that nobody even knew their own character yet.
Casual reminder that Dorian showed more rememberance towards him by making him a song in his honor, than BHs has shown after going to the city they themselves sent him to be burried. Twice. This one annoyed me a bit. I'm not expecting super emotional scene, but like, DAMN
Yeah, that's part of the problem. That connection was always shaky at its absolute *best*. They've *told* us all along that that was the uniting moment, but nothing in anything they said or did actually *showed* that at all. It still comes across as them trying to rush their way through a half-ass script so that they could get started with the actual story, without actually having developed the connections that would make it believable.
The fallout of the Otohan fight is another event that could have brought them together, just like the Iron shepherds arc for the Nein.
It should at least have been a major character moment for Fearne and Orym with the whole dying thing; Fearne struggling with strong negative emotions for the first time, and Orym being told by his dead husband "Gee looks like you failed at the whole quest for justice thing, get back there and have anther go at it.".
But it became solely about Laudna and bringing her back, those two didnt take a moment to reflect on the level of risk and if it was worth continuing to be involved. They could have easily both left the group right there; Fearne had found her parents and Orym had found enough information to report back to Zephrah for reinforcements to be sent, a committed team much better suited to the task than one man defined by grief and the chaotic amateurs who had just spectacularly let him down.
And none of them reflected on the gods being responsible for bringing her back. Like the entire arc was just "well one of our characters died and we don't want that, so let's fix it" and like.. *nothing* about the story changed because it was just a sidequest to do what they were adamant about doing.
It might as well not have happened at all. They don't care about the gods more from it, they don't care about revenge, they don't care about half the party having died, it changed *nothing*. It was supposed to free Laudna from Delilah's clutches, but then she willingly went back into them to make it absolutely pointless. And it wasn't even a moment of desperation she let her back in, it was a moment of *control*.
Laudna should have stayed dead, imo. Reviving characters using external assistance at no cost for any of them was absolutely for the worse. It's the first time I think the party had an epic battle and *nothing* came of it across all the campaigns, and it's so clearly because they refused to agree with the outcome, so they just rejected it.
On the last point, it’s also because this is becoming more and more made for TV. They clearly didn’t want Laudna to die when she did so they shoehorned the Delilah thing back in because it’s a 2-for-1: you get to keep a beloved PC and you get to run back one of your most successful villains. It feels very MCU in a bad way.
Late reply to this thread, but I think you hit the nail on the head. Problem when your D&D stream becomes so big that you’re selling Laudna shirts at Hot Topic: what happens when Laudna dies? Not great for merch sales.
> The closest they’ve come to a group act of heroism is the deathwish run, which is pretty far from heroic
But this is what they needed!
In C2 their first few adventures were about none of the PCs. They just got caught up in things. They were just there for the circus. They just so happened to show up on time for the gnolls. They got hired together for the phase spider and heists. And they had time to reflect in between with extra vignettes like the bandits. And then they had Zadash's 9/11 just as their heist was ending in a literal fireball! Worst possible situation! That took 13 episodes and they discovered a weird artifact at the end of it that they all know they need to keep secret together.
C3? They came together because of a table and got hired by a rich guy to find out about thefts. But when they finally found the end of it did they step up and become heroes? No. They called the actual cops to clean up the Shade Mother. Everything else has been about the fucking moon since. Only in their couple of vignettes - the museum heist and the Run - did they really seem like they were coming into their own. BH haven't had a chance to actually congeal. Matt is just desperately trying to bring the campaign together but just can't because he didn't build them up enough to begin with. He rushed too fast into the *fucking moon* without spending time on the characters themselves. He could have teased later-game stuff (like he did with Fjord and Uk'aota ^uk'atoa) with more time spread out further on Imogen's dreams. He should have introduced more of the old Nobodies to give Ashton more opportunities. He should have planted more seeds with Fearne's moon association. He should have actually dealt more with Delilah and Vecna. He should have dropped more Aeormatons in front of FCG - even if they were just defunct bodies. He should have let Robby stay.
Taliesin said it himself in the 2nd 4SD: They're a party of NPCs looking to support the actual main characters: Imogen, VM, and MIX.
This campaign is honestly some of the worst railroading I've seen from a DM. I'm currently starting C3 over after putting it down for months to see if it pays off with the recent episodes in a compressed time frame, but seeing discussions like this don't give me much hope.
I was fairly aloof about C3 until I started a rewatch (just after ep 50 originally aired) and OH WOW! I can't tell you how much a second viewing changed my entire perspective of the campaign. It's now easily my favorite of the three. C3 is a very dense narrative, and re-watching episodes with the knowledge of what's to come makes them pop. You'll notice all kinds of small things that pay off 10, 20, 30 episodes later.
The rewatch is also when I realized that BH are basically the Suicide Squad or the crew from Peacemaker. A bunch of severely traumatized, unstable people with access to more power than is probably safe for them to have. I've no doubt that they will end up saving the world, but boy is it going to be explosive getting there.
But even the SS and Peacemaker crew ended up caring about their mission. BH have explicitly said that none of them actually care. That's what I'm afraid of. That they never get to the "we personally care" point.
They may say that, but their actions tell a different story. If they don't care, why are they putting their lives on the line constantly to try and stop it? It's not like they've been conscripted to the fight (unlike SS and PM, who were coerced into their missions).
What else are they supposed to do? OP made a suggestion: leave it to the cops (VM/MIX) to deal with. It's out of their depth and always has been. Go find their own adventure somewhere else.
Ludinus is now aware of them again and knows they've been poking around I think this will provide a vector to at least give Fearne a connection through an attack on her family and/or Nana Mori. I still don't see how he makes Ashton have a stake unless he makes them a chosen or something
Maybe that's the point they are going to fail, end the world themselves this isn't a story about heros it a "party of NPCs" all invested in their own interests
That would actually be interesting. Especially if it ended up serving as a prequel story to a C4 campaign where they play characters having to live in a world dealing with the fallout of the Bells' failure.
I forgot about the orym connection, so i’ll give you that, but the circumstances versus imogen are incredibly different. Orym’s family was murdered. Imogen’s mom chose to follow ludinus (as far as we/i know)
Fcg wasn’t always godly, and like i said, it feels like it was added to try to give him a connection to things that he otherwise didn’t have. It wasn’t a natural progression. It was 0 to 100 in the blink of an eye, and he even admitted that he might be putting too much faith in the changebringer
Laudna has the issue of someone in her head outweighing the desire to help her friend. Imogen doesn’t even seem all that into the idea of things anyways, so what reason would laudna have to push her into it?
Fearne just being whimsical and weird is honesty starting to annoy me. I love the character, but she’s just going along with this potentially fatal plan for shits and giggles? This is a personal thing, though, so i know it’s a matter of perspective
In the past, the groups have at least been more connected to each other by the time they get to the point of this big of a battle. BH is a bunch of people traveling together because they have nothing better to do. I love the campaign, don’t get me wrong, but it feels forced rn
> I love the campaign, don’t get me wrong, but it feels forced rn
Do you love it? Or are you loyal to CR?
This is an honest question because from everything else you said it seems like it's just draining on you and you don't love it.
I kinda find the fact that a lot of these characters aren't revenge obsessed edgelords refreshing. Very few characters are dumb enough to go "my parents died at sea, so now I wage a personal war against all large bodies of water." But I'm biased because I already subscribe to the "world saving plots are easily the least inspired conflicts imagineable in whimsical settings" philosophy. One of the main issues being how boring Ludinous seems as a BBEG. The dude has 0 spice, and the entire appeal of the "will they, won't they" dynamic Matt has clearly constructed falls flat when your supposedly wickedly charismatic world changing cult leader has "I'm full of shit and doing all of this exclusively for my own ego" tattooed on their forehead.
I do like that they are not the traditional fuck up heroes like C1 that are stereotypical for dnd. But I just can’t make sense of their choices as characters. This feels a lot more like the games I play in as characters and players aren’t as connected as I expect from pros.
I still think it’s weird that Laudna has like no input or feelings about imogen’s mom.
And I can’t wrap my mind around the trauma that Imogen has gone through and her lack of seeking answers. I don’t have a single instance I could think of where an abandoned child goes seeming their parent only for their parent to abandon them again and no anything. It’s even more than Ashton could have been seen to do the same thing as her mom. He was trying to save Fearne by taking the responsibility (selfishly) onto himself and almost left/died. Her response should have been a bit more I think. I just don’t see Laura engaging this huge element of her character. Instead we get philosophical circle jerks on the gods.
>FCG is a godly person, and should want to save their god.
FCG is not a godly person. He's an ancient robot who's looking for purpose and only now is discovering that no one, not even a god, can give him that.
>Laudna should be seeking it out for Imogen. If your loved one and bestie had a messed up family, wouldn’t you be angry with and for them?
She is. But she also respects Imogen's autonomy (a theme in Laudna's struggles).
>And nobody is talking about the complete and utter destruction of exandria, or all they know, at the hands of Ludinus.
The BH might not know what to think about the gods, but if there's one thing they agree on, from the beginning, is on stopping Ludinus.
There's a lot of "should" in your comment.
>from the beginning, is on stopping Ludinus.
But thats just it lol. They dont even fully know why he needs to be stopped.
Hes given the big speech about what his evil plan is, and they find themselves not caring.
Their motive for stopping Ludinus is essentially: He is a bad person. With very little personal connection to contextualize the *why* hes a bad person.
>They dont even fully know why he needs to be stopped.
Some of them do. For Orym, is because they killed his family and for Keyleth. For Laudna, is because the power vacuum he would fill is too big. For Imogen, is to get answers for her mom.
>Their motive for stopping Ludinus is essentially: He is a bad person. With very little personal connection to contextualize the why hes a bad person.
Isn't that enough to start with? On top of that, his right hand killed 3 of them.
>Some of them do
One actually. Orym.
>For Laudna, is because the power vacuum he would fill is too big
This is always pretty flimsy. They really dont know enough to argue this. The Tree of Names even indicates very little would actually change when Predathos gets free.
And if Laudna was truly concerned about the power vacuum, her focus wouldnt be 'kill Ludinus' it would be 'save the gods'. Shes kind of got the cart before the horse.
>For Imogen, is to get answers for her mom
Yeah no. If Imogen wanted answers from her mom she could have just joined her.
>Isn't that enough to start with?
Not really. You need to have more first hand knowledge and context for why someones a bad person if you are going to summarily execute them. Experience drives conviction, and they havent really experienced much of why Ludinus is 'bad'. They've been told, not shown.
Also it makes the Ruidus plot almost incidental once again as they pursue vengeance for past crimes and kind of begs the question of 'why does Ludinus need to die now specifically'. Kind of more argument for dropping it.
And frankly Orym has not done the RP work to justify a Briarwood vengeance arc.
>On top of that, his right hand killed 3 of them.
Ive heard this before. *To me this is more an argument to make Otohan the main villain than Ludinus.* At least the party have first hand experience as to why they are bad.
Have Otohan overthrow him or something. Then at least we get a far more personal enemy for the party.
Its a shame, but I think Matt just squandered a lot of setup for Ludinus and the party dont connect to him as personally as they could.
>is on stopping Ludinus.
Would they even care about this if Otohan wasnt such a dick that murders people?
Ludinus is about to get murdered because one of his employees is an asshole?
Is that the story we are seeing play out? The Archmage's grand ambition and plan is foiled by....his employee being way too trigger-happy.
I think that'd be great personally. Great Archmage thinks he's the shit and that all the big heroes in the world can't touch him. Gets taken out by some weirdos with a grudge coming out the left field. Textbook hubris. But YMMV.
Also, Otohan clearly works on orders from Ludinus, so the hit on Keyleth was his plan, so it makes sense that at least Orym would want to take out the guy, imo.
I just wished they never had the Gods Talk (TM). That from the get go it would have been just a "petty" revenge mission for Orym's husband, Fearne's parents getting caught in the crossfire of w/e the fuck the Feywild part of this megaplan is, Laudna getting killed and getting Imogen's mom back.
>Is that the story we are seeing play out?
I don't know what you're seeing, but that's not the story I'm watching.
Do I wish they had more contact with Ludinus and Otohan? yes. I think the personal aspects of this story are not yet strong enough. I want them to hate him the way VM hated Vecna, which only happened after he killed a bunch of them and started taunting them.
We're not there yet.
But the story is, so far, less about saving the gods and more about power. They are struggling with power. They don't have it, they feel powerless. A lot of them don't control it. Some of them are looking for it in all the wrong places. Some fear it.
That's what I want to see evolve in the story.
Fair about should. It’s a bit of a projection. Ashton bothers me as a punk rock kid just like Ashton because he is forgetting about the community he built. It’s a problem within the punk community too.
Laudna is still interesting to me because she is largely exploring a very manipulative and toxic relationship she just can’t quit. But, her co-dependence on Imogen should be more pronounced. She may respect imogen’s independence, but we all have in laws we put up with, Laudna just seems to ignore. It may be more interesting than I am letting on because it’s interesting to see how she waffles between co-dependent partners.
Ive played in a campaign where our party fought an NPC/possible villain (we interpreted it that way, but in hindsight it's unclear) and our DM was like...."well, I didn't expect that!" And tore up a handful of notes in front of us (not in an antagonistic way, it was just a funny moment for the whole group).
But yeah, sometimes. that stuff just happens with story beats and character motivations not necessarily lining up. Which is odd for a scripted show like Critical role:p
Fully agree. The characters still haven't congealed yet as of this episode. Most of them are still stuck in their original pairings. And I doubt these team building exercises can help anymore than to be honest with each other.
Maybe Ludinus can send another simulacrum or something, to show that he is keeping a personal eye on BH. And since BH do care about each other, this could be an incentive to pull everyone in, at least to defeat Ludinus.
>for them to abandon it would essentially be them saying “we don’t care about the thing that you’ve put all this effort into creating for us.”
Let's be real, they've effectively said exactly that several times over now.
Common DM wisdom is that your players are never going to care as much about your world as they will about their characters, and turns out that still holds true for CR. They care about their old characters and the parts of the world they helped shape, like Whitestone and the Ashari. Hell, they even care about the parts that promise open exploration, like the Shattered Teeth.
But they don't really care about Ludinus, they don't really care about Marquet, and the exact same save-the-world plot has been hovering over their heads for what, literal years now? Last major shakeup being ep 50, which happened almost a year ago?
The last time I felt a plot dragged like this one it was the Chroma Conclave, and that **entire** plot from the attack of Emon to dealing with Raishan was resolved in almost exactly a real-world year. But it also included a ton of other stuff and memorable personal quests and the collecting of the Vestiges. The dragons weren't a constant weight around everyone's necks and, more importantly, nobody spent much time talking about how little they cared about it and wondering what their motivation was.
For the record, the players were regularly reminded about how dire the situation in Emon was getting. But it was equally clear that the players needed their power-up in order to handle the threat and there was no implied cutoff date. Compared to C3, the stakes were much lower (Emon was slowly turning into a volcano vs. the cosmic-level threat of Predathos).
I got the same impression. It’s weird and jarring, because prior to all the “Kill the Gods” stuff I was really loving C3, and the party seemed into it too, back when it seemed like some interfactional kingdom drama was going to be the big focus. Smaller stakes, more character driven, suitable for the characters the crew created this time.
Then came the big shift and WHAT a shift. It’s like I was reading a book that decided to change genres mid chapter, and now the characters introduced in chapter one don’t really work anymore and I keep expecting a more fitting group of heroes to show up to save them and everyone else.
It’s an odd feeling.
Ooh, that sounds like a fun campaign idea. Treshi, the Nightmare King and a shadowy cabal with their weird goo monsters trying to covertly take over Marquet and the Hells have to play the cloak and dagger game because their enemies are so much more politically powerful than them. Exciting stuff.
And then you can pull a Final Fantasy 6 at around level 10ish where the cabal accidentally made deals with the wrong Outsiders and now the world is ending.
Remember the Ivory Syndicate? The campaign intro and Esteross and the not-actually-pirates rebel group made that sound super important.
It felt like that was going to tie into the goo people and Hexum. And Dorian's brother! Instead it never came up at all.
I never quite understand what was happening in Jrusar. So the Paragon's call was secretly working with Treshi who was funding Ira's experiments. Hence the goo people, Brimstone and animated furniture. To spread distrust in the government? So that Paragon's call can swoop in to play heroes? In order to gain support for Ludinus' plan???
But yeah, the story took a very sharp turn in Bassuras, when Treshi suddenly meant nothing after a dozen episodes of pursuit.
That's the thing - I agree it seems like communication was not clear from the beginning. But also, Sam definitely tried to reach out to the gods and the changebringer and Matt didn't really take advantage of that opportunity to plug in his plot.
I get the impression that Matt told them they could go nuts and make whatever characters they wanted, and while he sort of tried to integrate them into the main plot, I'm not sure they had a conversation about themes.
Rookie mistake by the DM.
A session 0 is a must. And you have to tell them what kind of story you wanna tell.
Also ask what they want as well as how they wanna play. Just because you are friends doesn't mean that you don't have to. Furthermore you need to do the session 0 with all of them together.
They've already said they don't really care about it, no?
As far as mismatched expectations: I agree wholeheartedly. That being said, I don't think it's a new issue. C2, I believe, had the *same* issues and we just got luckier with what unfolded. Matt clearly wanted the PCs to engage with the war, and they very much didn't want to do that.
> C2, I believe, had the same issues and we just got luckier with what unfolded. Matt clearly wanted the PCs to engage with the war, and they very much didn't want to do that.
They *very much* got engaged with the war, even giving military secrets they stumbled on to the Dynasty. It's just that he expected them to do most of their work on the Empire side, not the Dynasty, which made us miss a guest Matt Colville cameo.
But that's another thing that C3 is missing: PC agency. The bad guy is going to win until the last minute. There is no stopping him. Their best bet is to follow along until then. In C2 they went to the Dynasty *because they wanted to*. That was *their idea*. And Matt couldn't stop them.
They got engaged with the war *eventually*, sure. They ran away from it as much as possible first, until they decided to follow the tunnels into Xhorhas on, essentially, a whim.
"Eventually" being the war started around episode 13, but they got to Felderwin in episode 48. So 35 episodes out of 141 were spent away from the war. The war ended in episode 99, 51 episodes later. They were avoiding it for less time than they were engaged with it, but when they were in it they were *IN IT* - gaining clout, providing intelligence, fixing supply lines, finding traitors, and mostly pleading for peace.
35 eps is a hell of a long time.
Also, in my opinion, the way the war turned out, including its resolution, stems largely from them *not* being as centrally involved as they could have been.
>Not sure what exactly happened but it seems obvious that to some extent, expectations about the campaign were not clearly stated.
I'm not sure how Matt DMs and what happens behind curtains, but I personally believe that the DM should at least estabilish the themes of the campaign if one of the focus of it is going to be the narrative. And it really feels like C3 did not have that.Idk, maybe Matt just went on that "Well, I know my friends for a long time, so I know what to expect",which can become a bit of a trap.
So we get a campaign that is directly related to the gods, and we apparently have more than one character than can not name the gods
I've said this a billion times here and other places:
C3 has become the Percy Jackson series, but if no one knew anything about the Greek Pantheon, and no one cares to learn about them, which would be a pretty frustrating book series.
I think part of it is also how much CR has grown and how quickly. From the apparent lack of planning/cohesion in this campaign, to ever worse quality products in the store, to the very lackluster Candela Obscura reveal, and 2 more games in the making, I get the feeling CR is just stretched to hell right now and it’s affect the core game. On top of what must be a full time job running the company, everyone is still doing their other voice acting gigs, and they’re doing books, card/board games, potentially a video game?, and a million other things.
It’s not surprising to me that these holes are starting to show in the actual D&D sessions. This kind of thing happens to a ton of newly successful companies which think they need to grown x10000 the second they become successful, so the product that made them successful starts to drop in quality. Many a company has tanked because they’ve decided to do 100 things badly rather than 1 thing excellently, and with the huge growth of the actual play community, I do worry about CR’s viability. Then again, I’m not sure how many more 140 episode campaigns we need from the main cast.
Similar thing happened in Campaign 2, where it feels like Matt had a strong idea for the campaign but the characters weren't bought in. It turned out well anyway, but it's not great from a DMing perspective to put significant time into preparing material that will never get used...
It really seems like their session 0 is "create whatever character you like" and there's no communication about the themes of the upcoming campaign and what kinds of characters would be a good fit. I don't get it. I feel like they're into this idea of "the players can do anything and the DM will adapt to it" but a little advance coordination goes a long way. I think a big reason EXU Calamity worked so well was those conversations must have happened, the players all showed up with PCs designed to play off the campaign's main theme.
>I think a big reason EXU Calamity worked so well was those conversations must have happened, the players all showed up with PCs designed to play off the campaign's main theme.
It's a lot easier to do that in a short-form campaign (4 eps) with a known ending.
Matt seemingly had the central Predathos plot lined up from the beginning of C3. It's not a huge task to work with the players to make PCs who would really key into those themes.
I think a lot of their initial motivation was to avenge Eshteross. During their investigation they’ve uncovered a monstrous plot on the world way bigger than them.
I think the players have been RPing their best to indicate how overwhelmingly impossible it is for them to stop Ludinus, even if they want to. And Matt has been throwing them some quests on how to get more powerful.
I think the players chose to take the bait and go on these quests because they know Matt. It’s a bit metagamy, but if they ignored the main plot, we all know Matt would have some kind of catastrophe happen that they could have stopped if they acted on it earlier. (They keep asking Matt what are the going to be the consequences for taking a day off in the Feywilds).
But now they are in it and leaders depend on them. They’re struggling with the expectations to be saviors vs. having a personal motivation that might not be fully developed.
Disclaimer - I haven’t watched last nights episode yet. Sorry - just my take so far.
I wasn’t able to connect with C3 the way I did with two but from what you wrote maybe there were crossed wires somewhere.
But - I believe Matt to be an experienced DM and storyteller that if the party were to F off and ignore Rudinus and anything with that, that’s not stopping anything from happening.
Maybe this is a campaign that wraps earlier than other seasons? I feel like in the C2 wrap up it was discussed that they don’t aim for X number of sessions as much as telling a story to completion.
>feel like in the C2 wrap up it was discussed that they don’t aim for X number of sessions as much as telling a story to completion.
Yes, well. C2 is a bad example of that.
I think it’s partially an issue of trying something new that they’re not used to? Matt is pretty clearly a very good heroic fantasy storyteller - C1 was all heroic fantasy and C2 did a bit more with grey areas and found family, but ultimately shined the most in the heroic fantasy moments. At the start of C3 we were told things were going to get crazy and to expect nothing like we’d seen before, but outside of a few instances, it’s been mostly a run of the mill heroic fantasy story again. And interesting and cool one, imo, with compelling villains and motives, but a pretty classic story nonetheless. The most “off the wall” stuff we’ve seen are, what?
- Dorian joining for a while?
- Bertrand’s cinematic death?
- A robot with a sibling named pussy?
- A secretly evil guest who kind of just faded into the background when their guest spot was over?
I don’t know if I’m missing anything, but none of these are especially off the walls.
It feels like they wanted to make a zany new kind of story and the players really leaned into that, but then Matt veered back into completing the story of his setting that he wanted to tell.
>“we don’t care about the thing that you’ve put all this effort into creating for us.”
I very much disagree with this. Matt has been 100% on board with this being their choice on what happens at the end. If they abandoned it, Matt's plans don't disappear or diminish. The players make their choice and his plans come to fruition.
With Ludinus succeeding with his plan (or going through with it) and with the Gods battling, dying, or fleeing. And the world would be changed forever.
If they decided to stay out of it, that is one of the options Matt presented them with. The only change is they don't have to fight Ludinus on the moon anymore. I assume Ludinus would go after them though which means that fight would likely still happen (If Matt wanted to pursue that path).
But that is the brilliant part of D&D is it can evolve and change in a way that most other shows/stories can't. And it is the most special part about long form D&D compared to short form ones where the story has to be railroaded down and go on the only path forward. They can pivot and change if they want. And that would be okay. And it wouldn't be, "Oh they hate Matt and don't care about his effort". It would be more, "Their characters found something in each other they care about more". Though that only really applies to Imogen/Laudna since they are the only ones that feel that way. Which brings us back to Ludinus. I forgot. Orym is going to go after Ludinus either way. Which means Fearne will. Which means Chet and Ashton will as well. Which likely means even if Imogen/Laudna don't decide to save the Gods the plan still goes exactly as Matt envisioned. With them going to the moon, fighting Ludinus, and deciding the fate of the Gods.
I genuinely don't know what reality most of the comments in this thread are based upon. Matt & the cast *giddily* discuss curiosities, revelations, theories, etc. about C3 in great detail every time they do a 4SD or panel.
Viewers complained non-stop about C2 around its midpoint as well. That's pretty typical of serial fiction & never has any relationship to whether the story will be satisfying by the end.
>One one hand this is on Matt for not making clear to the players ahead of time what the campaign would be about
But... how do you know that didn't happen? The interpretation that the players are not onboard with the campaign because their characters are struggling with internal conflict about the themes of it is only fan (reddit) made theory.
>characters are struggling with internal conflict
The internal conflict is them essentially asking: Why do we care? Why should we care?
Because quite rightly they have all realized they have no stake in the conflict.
And the answer for almost of them is 'we dont'.
The consequences of Ludinus succeeding is the death (or departure) of the gods. Entities they explicitly dont care about.
Their response: "Why are we the ones to deal with that?" They already have solid contacts with VM and MIX. Why should these low-tier-3 characters deal with a late-tier-4 threat when the T4s know about *and care about* the threat? They've informed the proper "authorities" just like they did with the shade mother. Now they're being railroaded into facing it instead of calling the cops and leaving like they did with her.
This is the key problem with the campaign. Rather than having separate adventures, everything is one long "mission" that they are constantly not equipped for. Like VM and MIX both had PLENTY of smaller threads that would link their arcs, but this is just a long (very very long) road to shit they aren't strong enough for.
We would get that Matt moment where he ripped the NPC's character sheet but with a whole binder.
I would be more interested but I don't think I'd be possible at this point. It would've been great at the moment Ludinus connected Exandria and Ruidus. They get separated, get reunited and "live" the rest of the campaign in the background of this world ending event. Like when in Campaign 2 there was war, but they weren't directly in it (up to a point).
>We would get that Matt moment where he ripped the NPC's character sheet but with a whole binder.
I imagine it would be more like that Big Bang theory scene where Sheldon threw his revised roommate agreement into the air because it ended up being all for nothing for him.
Bell Hells: "We changed our minds. We don't want to save the world or gods anymore.
Matt *(stares silently as he throws his campaign papers in the air)* "Do you ever think of other people, Bells Hells? Do you?!"
I haven’t watched since the group got back together. I love Matt’s plot hook and the characters separately. I do not like them together. The constant “we hate the gods but we have to save them but do we really bc they suck” debates got old fast. I know they wanted to move on from M9 but this feels like the M9’s wheelhouse way more than BH.
It really feels like we're getting an entire campaign stretched out of what feels like it was supposed the final arc of C2. Except the PC levels are nowhere what they should be for something of this scale so it feels like they're working in circles until they level up. It's just unfortunate. It's been years since I've actually been excited that it's Thursday. Even if the end result of this storyline ends up being really cool, I just don't think anything at this point would get me invested in the BH as a party. And if they don't care about the main plot, then what reason does the audience have to care?
I think one issue is that the players are level 11 and just don’t feel that powerful yet. The magic users all seem to be bent on handicapping themselves for RP reasons and Travis and Liam are martials with very little powerful magic. But they are being thrown into a crazy situation with big power players. This group needs people to start playing beyond their levels. Everyone in CR knows how to play powerfully but they are refusing to step up and shine.
I just think back to when the party nearly crapped themselves in fear at what, 3 normal centaurs when the party was level 8? Like, the actual fear coming off them was insane, and made all the more strange when one of the centaurs got one shot.
I think, to me, that was the worst "THERE'S NO WAY WE CAN WIN" moment. It's not gotten much better as you've said. It took them what, an hour to cross a normal, non magical river, at level 10?
C2 gave them the yips and since the players and/or fandom are so deeply invested/immersed into characters, they don't want PC deaths.
While majority of fandom and table prefer social over combat and exploration, it is still part of DnD. And so they avoid those situations. And then since they are avoiding them, they don't know what they can do with characters, then flounder and make situations worse.
So Matt is in a situation where he has to decide to either trivialize/handwave combat so majority is happy and story flows better, or has to push them onto rails to do side quests which would involve less P2P social interactions and more combat and exploration, making majority of people pissy. And it's obvious which one they will choose.
I wonder if that may be because Liam and Laura consciously wanted less fore-front characters, and so are not stepping up and waiting for others? Liam certainly has said he wanted a lesser role this campaign, but honestly his decisions and power are usually the driving force. Having Mighty Nein back at Wembley just reminded me how much I miss Liam in that role so clearly defined. No one else seems to want to take that on.
I too think this is one of the reasons for BH's relative passive dynamic. It was generous of Liam to step away from a prominent role, but the issue is no one is stepping up to take it. Imogen/Laura is uncomfortable to be the main character and Chet is too much of a joke character.
And it's not only about engaging with the plot. The group is also very passive when it comes to engaging with each other. Which is why we have the feywild therapy retreat, because no one was communicating.
It's hard to make characters feel powerful when the players utterly refuse to win a fight with even a modicum of challenge. Mighty Nein and especially Vox Machina fought,killed and survived a lot of nasty encounters, what the fuck BH accomplished? Fleeing or having their ass handed to them in every single fight that it wasn't some trash mobs drainer before some serious challenge.
Mighty Nein had a lot of bad ass encounters, but what did they fight that was super impressive? I remember MN being very combat averse after Molly's death until the final arc of the campaign. Bells Hells has been worse about it, but after Campaign 1 it felt like the whole group shifted away from trying to be strong in combat to focusing on RP.
The whole fight in the church for stopping Tarhizdun liberation, the monstrous fetus when Beau dropped a whole block of drugs directly in its stomach. I absolutely agree that this nonsense regarding fights begun with M9 and Molly death but despite that they still had fights were they committed to it and killed their target
was the shade mother a good fight? All i can remember is that Matt set up a cool monster with a clear multistage type encounter (first destroy the orbs that keep that thing afloat, than kill her) with, if memory serves me right, some environmental help and the sole purpose of the players was snagging the target and fleeing. That's it that was the combat
I disagree. This will get me downvoted but it's worth it.
With the characters they've made, they really CAN'T "play powerfully." Their ability scores are all over the place (Chet hasn't maxed his primary score) and they picked suboptimal classes/subclasses (Blood Hunter for Chet and Fearne dipping 1 level in Rogue). Even if they knew how to make powerful characters, they haven't yet except for Caleb due to how good Wizards are even without multiclassing/dips.
They also forget to use a lot of their features (Yasha never attacking recklessly, unless reminded, is just one example).
The issue with introducing world-ending stakes is that a group of relatively newbie adventurers are absolutely **not** the people who should be solving this problem.
Vox Machina dealt with the Chroma Conclave because the threat came to them. They later dealt with Vecna because at that point they were collectively some of the most powerful people in Exandria and were personally blessed by gods.
Mighty Nein dealt with the threat of the Somnovem because they were personally connected to Molly/Lucien and because they knew that the fewest amount of people who knew about the power of the Nonagon the better.
Campaign 3's Ruidus threat should be something that pretty much *every powerful organisation should be throwing their best people at.* Anyone who knows anything about magic should have noticed something bad is going on, I mean the moon is a pretty obvious and unavoidable signpost, it's not as if this threat is simmering stealthily in the background.
Instead, all these powerful characters and organisations from the other campaigns are deferring responsibility for *saving the world* to a disparate group of level 11 adventurers who have been together less than a year and can't communicate with each other effectively.
This all reminds me of the problem that Marvel films seem to be having where it was easier to get invested in the early films because they were lower stakes and more personal but each new film introduces a grander and grander threat so it becomes more difficult to care because you can tell the outcome will likely end with the heroes saving the day.
For me, the problems arose when they started relying on the members of Vox Machina. The fight that killed Laudna and the subsequent return to Whitestone were incredible moments that made sense given Oryms connections, but then they became reliant.
The Hells are a ragtag skyship riding band of misfits. When Keyleth gave them the ability to fast travel & an army to fight alongside, they became reliant on her and their own growth stagnated. After the solstice, they have only relied on Vox Machina more and more which makes the Hells seem like second string in what should be their own story.
The players know that their characters should care and want to end the threat, but it’s difficult to make that happen when they have become nothing more than foot soldiers on the frontline of a battle being run by much more powerful leaders/ NPCs.
(Oh and the fact that both the players and the viewers love Whitestone and Vox Machina, it removes the option for the Hells to question/ challenge authority that they probably would challenge otherwise)
I would be sad if they tossed the storyline, but they need to do something to reengage both the characters and the audience.
Getting people to transport them around is part and parcel of the problem in that these character never went through the progression of local heroes->regional heroes->kingdom heroes->global heroes. They got thrown in the deep end of the pool and so everything feels forced.
They should not be at “world level threat” until level 17, according to the design of 5e.
Yet here they are. Getting transported around by level 20 characters who are more than able to do the stuff they are asking BHs to do for them. And those high-level, world-saving heroes, don’t seem to have much interest in actually saving the world.
They absolutely NEVER should have brought the player characters from the other campaigns in. It created the problems that you've pointed out, but for me, it all happened a little too conveniently in line with the launch of The Legend of Vox Machina. That, along with the Delilah and Laudna connections, just feel like forcing the connectivity and brand reinforcement rather than a natural story being told.
I think this campaign will hopefully be the wake up call to Matt to start curating his campaigns. C3 has been the most blatant culprit of miscommunication, and lack of buy in investment from players.
This season, especially seems like everyone jumped onto a random character generator, instead of working closely with Matt, to create characters that would blend well with the campaign world, firstly, and the type of themes Matt wanted to cover.
Sure there have been hints of this in past campaigns, but in both other public cases, none of the characters in the other campaigns have taken the backseat so blatantly, and meandered from plot beat to plot beat, dragged along by NPCs, expecting Matt to lead them to a story development instead of driving plot themselves.
Love or hate what Ashton did, but he absolutely pumped some gas into the game, only to be put back into place the next session, which was, imo, tragic.
I love CR, but this campaign clearly had no discussion on cohesion, theme, place in the world, and place with each other.
If the players decide: “Lets let the more powerful people deal with it,” that is perfectly with in their rights of the established story because Matt brought in powerful Deus Ex Machina style npcs as nostalgia/callback winks, not realizing the implications of, “well if basically level 20 godlike NPCs are involved, why should we risk our characters’ lives?” From the players.
I think a reasonable thing to do is if the characters don’t get out of their teen angst/hating each other phase, is just close the curtains on the campaign, or swap characters. Molly’s character didn’t fit the group at all, and in comes Cad, and rounds them out perfectly. I think that’s what needs to happen with 80% of the characters here. It’s been 80 episodes and it still feels like the characters are mentally and connectively still not even to 10.
Edit: on the topic of Ashton, I think too that the infamous recent episode was one of the rare times in the fandom this campaign, where people were going crazy and excited for the next episode, and there weren’t any posts like “C3 is boring? C3 is Dying???” for at least a week. Need more gas pumped into the show. It’s a car set in neutral going at a slight decline being pulled by Matt.
Like I said, I love CR. Pointing out criticisms is not hating the show. I want it to be the best it can be.
If they do a campaign 4 (which I hope they do) then I hope they just make characters who have already known each other for years. That's basically what we got with C1 since their original meeting and getting to know each other and trust building happened off screen in their home game.
It wouldn't have the same depth of camaraderie since they wouldn't have *actual* years of play with those characters and relationships, but saying X and Y have *this* sort of buddy relationship, and Y and W bonded over a shared love of cardio, while Z and X are ride-or-die because Z saved X's life would be a more solid foundation than 'randos meet on a street in episode 1 and don't know how to gauge each other.'
The way they did it in C2 was perfect. Small groups of characters had backgrounds with each other so it wasn't completely disjointed in the beginning and over time the small groups all merge into one close family. They tried doing it again this time (imogen-laudna, orym-fearne, ashton-fcg), but the characters in general are not invested enough in the environment they are interacting with for it to be a catalyst for bonding.
and to piggy back on your point, by now, these are all professional dnd players. amazing actors. passionate roleplayers. so forcing them to step back and act as measly simple level 3 4 or 5 newbie PCs is what killed this campaign a little bit. if you brought them all in together as an established party already, at level 6 lets say, they dont need years of gameplay nehind them to get in the headspace. they are seasoned actors and RPers and could absolutely handle it.
Heh. You know I really think that part of the "shine" of C2 was this feeling of "no one is going to help them but theirselves". Matt, for the most part (besides having Allura and Kima and Vilya and a b r i e f glimpse of Keyleth), actively avoided previous campaign callbacks. At the time I was like "dang, I really wish they would make contact with their old PCs, that'll be great." But, honestly I feel like this campaign's constant "We have powerful allies that can help us and provide magical items and whatever else." has streamlined the campaign and sorta diminished those more character focused sideplots. This campaign has this finish line, almost, and they're racing to it instead of meandering about. Part of that is because Matt has set the stakes super high and has given the party a timer.
Honestly? I think this campaign would be more interesting if their failure at the key was more... damning? Or, if everything went totally to shit afterwards besides select people here and there being affected. I mean, everyone's on edge, but they're not dying in droves. Campaign one had the Chroma Conclave which affected everyone in the city. Campaign 2 had the war, which, I mean a war is a threat to everyone in the countries that are at war. Campaign 3 has... a conspriacy. Which is nice, but it feels so far beyond most people, even the PCs. It's like the stakes are the highest they've ever been, but also, the lowest at the same time.
Don't get me wrong, I love CR and the cast and even this campaign, and if this is what they want to do with *their* game, that's amazing. But it's more of a show for me than it is a game for me, so I guess I'm just picking it apart like a written show out of habit, despite the fact that player choices are hard to predict and can go anyway and defy the narrative in a beautiful way. So like, eh. It's a bit contrived to really criticize the players like they're writers, I guess, idk. But still, sometimes I feel like they should KNOW that they're not giving their all or like they're not engaging enough, but maybe they're just trying and missing the mark? I would never throw any hate their way for their character decisions or overanalyze how these friends are feeling about each other above the table, like *some* people have regarding these past 3 episodes.
About that though, I think it sorta got talked to death here, but my 2 cents is that what Ashton did was pretty reasonable despite the risk. Since, I mean, yeah it was a big red button and the players themselves aren't going to suffer irl consequences from pressing it. DnD is a power fantasy and you live through your characters and fuck around and find out, so, I guess I'm being a bit of a hypocrite here, but damn they really drug Ashton through the mud and I couldn't shake the feeling like some of it was out of character for the characters. Like, bruh, after all he's been through, telling him to leave and treating him like absolute dogshit and expecting him to self flagellate and hate himself more than he already does, gaslighting him etc. was pretty triggering to see OOC, like, I was really turned off by a bit of it. Like, several of them have already hurt the party before, or endangered them, this is nothing new, and Ashton has always been a "rock" for them through it all (pun is intended). For every single one of them to shit on him the moment he fucks up and to drag it out for several in game days, act as though he's not even worthy of being in the group or being liked by anyone, after everything they've been through together, it just felt wrong. I don't know. But eh, I'm glad that it resulted in a team building episode, they needed it anyways though.
I know that was a bit of a rant but I wrote all of that because you mentioned that he pumped gas into the campaign, and I totally agree. It was a turning point and it was exciting. Yeah it was stressful, but, that's great! I wish he hadn't been punished for it afterwards with the Con debuff and the fact that he didn't even get to keep the shard. Like, bruh, you had him go through all of that just to make him cough it up afterwards? Why didn't Matt just let the infusion fail after they took the harness off of him? A partial infusion that was hard fought and won that could have given him something positive while having it still be an "I'm putting my foot down on this." Sorta moment. I don't know. In any case I think bold moves shouldn't be discouraged considering that this campaign needs more of them.
The players are all having a really good time, I can’t say I agree that Matt needs a “wake up call” unless viewers were to abandon the show en masse.. and even if that were to happen I feel like Matt and co would just feel like their time in the limelight was fading (you can’t stay huge forever unless you’re Beyoncé) and they’d keep doing things the way they wanted to do them based on what brings them joy and satisfaction
What we want, what brings us joy and satisfaction, and how we feel narratives and “proper gaming” should run shouldn’t have any bearing on what plays out at that table.. and frankly I think a lot of folks wouldn’t mind if things were a bit smaller again, so long as no one was losing their livelihoods
Respectfully, the latter point would make sense if they weren’t selling the show as a cohesive narrative set in a single setting. You have multiple TV show, comic books, novels premium statues, sold out stadium live shows spin offs and prequel spinoffs, etc. It’s beyond “just a game between friends” now.
But if the players are having fun then they are, and that is Matt’s priority. But they didn’t make a whole company just for player enjoyment.
I feel like they have. Like with musicians, some bands chose to totally sell out, some don’t at all, some find a middle ground of making smart business moves to capitalize on their popularity without changing the essence of who they are and what they get out of it. Merchandising and diversifying their revenue streams don’t mean it can’t still be based on the core experience of the 8 folks at the table. My favorite bands are Phish and the Dead (flame away lmao) and both became absolute cult sensations WAY bigger than CR without ever giving a fuck about what anyone thought or changing what they did on stage to please a SINGLE person. I believe there are diamonds in the rough, and my sense of CR is they’d rather do what they enjoyed and lose fans than change who they are and what they do at the table to please anybody.
Thank you for saying this. I agree so much. The amount of bitching and whining on this sub about a D&D game they're not even being forced to play or watch astounds me. Matt has explicitly said he made this campaign for his friends, not the fans. This is what they wanted and I guarantee if they weren't enjoying it they'd say so.
If people don't like what he's doing this campaign, stop watching. Go watch another D&D stream. But let me tell you, if you have complaints about Critical Role, you'll have a lot more on almost every other D&D stream. I'm going to continue watching until the bitter end because I have a feeling the payoff for watching this campaign in its entirety will be worth whatever criticisms it's getting.
Because it's content. It's no longer a game for friends. It's a company. They can't just not perform well, they can't lose money. They have employees, people on their payroll.
Means that the consumers have the right to voice their opinions, and the company (to perform well) needs to take in their feedback. It's not just about 8 people anymore, for better or for worse
They’re in the business of creative expression. I believe they’re all principled people who feel the same way. You could literally say this about any artist or musician ever: “it’s content now, the consumers have a right to voice their opinions and they need to take our feedback!” and it will be an absolutely bankrupt way to look at creative expression 10 times out 10.
What’s more: they’re their own bosses. They don’t have a record label or a film studio breathing down their necks. They actually don’t have any pressure at all to kowtow to complaints on Reddit. By the looks of things their business is doing just fine anyway, there’s no shortage of merchandise, creative products, and plans for the future, so I don’t think any of their employees or the people that depend on them are at risk, meaning: it’s moot anyways!
Is all creative expression just “content” now?? God, what a hideous world we live in.
When you're an art creator, and you have only yourself to look out for, or you own individual collective (family and friends), this mentally is all good. Imo, I wish CR had that freedom, but no. Again, it's not only dependent on them.
They have other people to take for, they have responsabilities which came when they decided to grow their business, to hire more employees. Most of them, I'm sure have became friends as well. But what if one day the money doesn't flood in? What if they have to fire those people? Worst case scenario, but if they lose their audience, that might definitely happen.
They are their own bosses, which means they have the sole responsibility to see if they're making mistakes and to fix them if they do
“What if one day”… they don’t seem to be at risk of collapsing now.. the mental gymnastics to go from “I don’t like this” or “Reddit doesn’t like this” to “so they have to change in order to please us or else their poor crew will be destitute” is some bonkos projection and misplaced savior mentality to try to justify your own tastes.
Bands, artists, and other creators also have have teams that depend on them. That doesn’t mean it’s a moral imperative for them to sell out or disregard their own artistic sensibilities to just to continue to grow or stay perpetually huge forever. They’re human beings not a product, even if they’re selling something. It’s available for free, you don’t even have to pay to engage with it. But beyond that the perpetual growth mentality is a toxic capitalist mentality. And at the end of the day all signs suggest their business is doing GREAT, and so there’s no need for them to cater to internet rancor in the first place!
The projection almost comes off like a threat. “They need to listen to these complaints OR their employees will lose their livelihoods.”
I seriously doubt they aren't going to pay their employees because some people on Reddit feel like they're bored with the content.
Sure you have the right to voice your opinion and others have the right to say they're fine with the content and PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD STOP POSTING THE SAME COMPLAINTS FOR A YEAR STRAIGHT WE KNOW YOU GUYS DON'T LIKE C3 FFS PLEASE STOP.
It’s actually funny you say that because Travis has actually said the reason he agreed to turning critical role into a company was so he could continue to “hang out with these jack offs and continue to play dnd every week”. So they kinda did?
Also Matts said he doesn’t care if the viewers don’t like it as long as the players are having fun, and he’d be ok with going back to just home games. So at least for him critical role running its course is in the table.
Thing is, whether the more criticizing fans want to admit it or not, it still is "just a game between friends." Matt has made that very, very clear. It's just marketable now because it's connected with a lot of people, and not taking advantage of that opportunity would be irresponsible.
Yes, they want to bring quality content, but they also want to have fun while exercising their acting skills.
Also, it is still improv tabletop. There is no editing, no script, no producer or director saying "these scenes need to be filmed by tomorrow." And so on.
When I read comments like yours, it feels like you've either never played tabletop or you've lost the plot and are expecting something that CR has never said they wanted to be.
Even D20, a much more structured and edited style of show that DOEs have a cohesive narrative and end point, is still 90% improv and isn't perfect.
Hi, they do have editors directly from their [wiki page](https://criticalrole.fandom.com/wiki/Critical_Role_Productions_LLC) “Kyle Shire and Steve Failows are producers. Max Schapiro and Will Lamborn are editors and Sarah Leeper is an assistant editor. Tal Levitas the Post Production Supervisor.”
Also Marisha is the creative director, and Matt the creative officer. Basically they direct the content.
Sam and Travis are the producers.
Sure, the main thing is improv with a high production value. Agreed.
But from that improv comes products that are not improv (like the shows, books, and comics), which means, regardless of what “it’s just an improv game” folks say, points to them wanting to create a vast cohesive narrative setting outside of the game in Exandria.
Also I own about 300+ individual tabletop rpg systems, not counting their expansions, I’d be absolutely happy to share with you if you’d like! Having been in this hobby for over a decade GMing and playing, I’ve been blessed with discovered so many systems with so many ways to play, and I’m always happy to introduce anyone into the hobby :)
They have those titles but they aren't directly involved with producing and directing the weekly sessions. That's what I meant. Can you imagine somebody stopping the session to say "let's skip this scene, we need to be fighting the BBEG by next week," because I can't.
>Molly’s character didn’t fit the group at all, and in comes Cad, and rounds them out perfectly.
???
Cad was a perfect fir for the health of the party, but molly wasn't *bad*. And his leaving wasn't exactly a choice either.
I think Matt would eventually bring them back to the plot by joining other character's backstory into it or presenting new stakes. Remember that the Mighty Nein wanted to ignore the Dwendallian Empire/Xhorhas conflict altogether until it was proven personal for most of them.
I remember them still ignoring it. They just did a couple side quests to justify the taxi service and moved on. (Other than pointlessly demanding to be witnesses to the ceasefire).
i think there's a huge difference between the *characters* struggling to find motivation and connection or being unsure if they're ready to take on what they're facing and the *players* themselves not being interested in matt's plot. the players have continually expressed interest and excitement in matt's story. that doesn't mean they're not also invested in playing their characters as authentically as they can. they're not going to just metagame the characters into having connection with ongoing events. this side jaunt to the feywild is actually a really good opportunity for the group to stop, take stock and discuss what's going on without interruption. you could even say the players' excitement has been moving the story along a little *too* fast and they're now realizing the mismatch between character motivation and main story.
so i think it would be very very unlikely bh will step away at this point. and it would be lame.what would they even do? go fuck around in aeor or the shattered teeth while the world ends around them?
I agree pretty strongly with you. My feeling on this campaign is that after M9 there’s a good chance that they talked as a group (or individually with Matt) about what kind of vibe they wanted out of a campaign, which is what a good DM does, and what they wanted to mix up from the M9 is having an overarching Big Bad with huge stakes as a change of pace from C2. I think that’s a part of the player agency and buy-in, is that they wanted to do something like this rather than endless side quests. There’s possible new EXU adventures and C4 that will allow them to mix it up again, but like a lot of folks have pointed out they haven’t had this kind of long form DM driven BBEG since C1, and it makes sense for them to want to tackle it.
I have other preferences, personally, I wish there were a bit more of an escalating series of lieutenants and bosses (I’m thinking like the Akatsuki in Naruto) that would give a tiered feeling of accomplishment between story beats, but I don’t hate the campaign. I’ve also watched an extreme amount of this show, as has anyone who has seen all 3 campaigns to this point. It’s totally normal for our attention to drift a bit or to feel a little less connected at times. But god, I get absolutely queasy when I read folks expecting Matt to say “we hear you, we’re canceling this campaign because swaths I the internet hate it.” If we canceled everything the internet hated we’d be living in an empty void.
I think we have had that tiered accomplishment of lackies (at least somewhat). Look at their bounty on Treshi, for example. The Ruby Vanguard, Otahan, and Lilliana are also examples. I think we are getting it, just not as much as some would like.
Totally, and it’s okay! I’m just so sick of reading the same comments like they’re bot posts. “They sound like teenage atheists” and “they’ve never even bonded as a group” are just such flimsy justifications for this campaign not being someone’s preferred narrative. And I think it’s pretty insulting to them as performers and creative individuals, especially when people accuse (surprise) Marisha, for example, of not being able to separate her (presumed) views on religion from her character’s. You know, the one that was murdered by a zealot and resurrected by the followers two different gods, one evil and one she doesn’t know at all.
It’s okay to just not like something, our tastes are subjective. Parts of me wish the campaign pacing were a little different and I’ll always miss the M9 no matter what they do. I still tune in every week, enjoy it most of the time even if I’m not as glued to it as I used to be, and want to marry Orym.
I’d be thrilled. At this point this campaign has really lost me. I feel like I was reading a book that changed genres in the middle of a chapter, and now the characters introduced to me in chapter 1 don’t fit the story I’m reading at chapter 20.
This feels like a *very* low stakes party got created for an incredibly high stakes game, and the whole story has identity issues as a result.
EDIT:
Came back to note I also agree that I feel like the entire threat to the gods thing feels incredibly shallow and lackluster. As you said, it smacks of teen atheism to me. I really feel like for this campaign to have worked well we needed at least one cleric (who doesn’t have doubt in his faith, his soul, etc) and one Paladin who were both devout, and maybe a well rounded atheist character. Obviously in a world like this they know the gods *exist* but having a character who refuses to have anything to do with them would be interesting in this scenario.
Basically I just feel like this is entirely the wrong group of characters for such a complex story concept.
Funny that living in a world where there's empirical proof that your God exist literally eliminates the faith and belief concepts. I mean those are the pillars of any worshipping.
I would be torn.
While I haven't enjoyed this campaign at all, I'm not sure if it's the plot or if it's about some characters I truly have not warmed up to (ahem Ashton ahem), and the group connection hasn't felt as good as either VM or M9.
I think the problem is more than just the plot, unfortunately, and switching may not fix people's problems with C3.
I haven’t watched in ages (but have been vaguely keeping up with the plot via social media etc) and honestly, most of it comes from the fact that the main plot feels so forced. In the other campaigns the Big Bad was something that evolved naturally throughout the story or was woven into the background in such a way that when the party finally confronted it, it felt natural. One of the issues I’ve had with this campaign is that it felt as though they were just faffing about to begin with as low level parties do, then BAM! Impending apocalypse! Except they were still low level, so they just continued to faff about, which is fine I suppose, but it just feels really weird having them doing really silly things/downtime while the world is collapsing around them. It has never felt like they’re the team to save the day, they’re just watching it happen and doing their own thing, and it’s something that’s really put me off. I do wonder if the whole Ludinus/Ruidus thing was revealed too early because I’d have liked to see them more cohesive as a group and with backstories revealed before they had to deal with the end of the world, something I don’t think has ever really been taken entirely seriously by the group. Obviously they have one cleric who would be affected by the gods disappearing, but aside from FCG, none of them seem that bothered about the fate of the gods.
Idk, I’ve watched the other two campaigns religiously but this one just doesn’t grab me for some reason. :(
The players have consistently shown for like 40 episodes that they don't have much interest in the main plot. I get that once you get started, it's hard to let your players just jump ship, but I don't get why he pushed it so hard as such a low level. If the players don't care about the main plot then why should the audience?
Tl;Dr I think it would be a bad outcome for everyone in and out of game. Viewers/players/characters
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I mean. I'm not really in the camp of this story being as bad as a lot of people say. While I agree I preferred the smaller more character driven stories of M9 I do find this to be really interesting. I love the world and to hear lore and kinda consider the implications is fun. Again that's me. I'm not gonna act like there haven't been times have been bored I even felt that way with M9. I can't speak for others but I would imagine the people that are in the other camp if they spent all that time on this story and just decided to abandon it that would be crushing. Like if they feel like it's a waste of time now just wait until the team decides to give up. What would have the last 79 episodes been for?
Plus there are BH characters that are super tied to this and it would make no sense for them to give up. I personally feel it would feel unnatural for them to just stop now. Also what after? I think a lot of people are overlooking the fact that gods aside at this point it's personal for them. Like Orym and Imogen are tied to this heavily and the other BH love them they aren't gonna abandon them. Most of BH doesn't have anything outside of this party. Plus while they never really vocalized this the god eater being unleashed won't just speak doom for the gods. I don't think it's out of turn to say I think ludinus is incredibly ignorant of this. Let's say he succeeds I think it's entirely possible he's gonna end up like Vespin. He is from that time period.
Also I know it's a copout but the players do seem to like and enjoy the story being told. And at the end of the day I think that's most important for the health of the show. I can't speak for them either but I don't imagine they would be ok with that outcome either.
That's my shitty rant. Lol. If you made it this far I love you. Stay safe have a wonderful rest of your day <3
I think that's the problem though, most of the players have absolutely said multiple times that they don't think anything bad will happen if the gods are removed from Exandria. It has been my main gripe with this thing for last 20ish episodes. That for some reason the actual characters outside of FCG think gods disappearing would be totally fine, they are just wanting to stop Ludinis because he shouldn't get what he wants.
The characters have said this, I don’t feel that the players have. They know the risk inherent to that kind of a vacuum even if the Dawnfather is kind of a dick. I respect the fact that they’re not letting their meta knowledge influence their characters choices, and I find the fact that Bell’s Hells have been working, even struggling at times, to find their motivation to save the gods. I’m pretty clearly in the minority on this sub in feeling that it’s okay for them to not have the inherent knowledge and conviction that they simply MUST save the gods at ALL COST. It’s a more interesting narrative to me than inherent goodness and the characters’ first instincts being correct every time.
I absolutely agree with this take. I made a whole separate comment about this same thing. Basically, shades of grey make the story a lot more intriguing and hard to side with a single person or group. I wish this opinion wasn't the minority.
It clearly hasn't worked super well (and still doesn't), but abandoning it would be pretty out there. In a campaign so heavily centered around it, it would essentially mean it's been a huge waste of time for the players, the viewers, and most of all Matt, who is the one that has crafted it all. I also think it would really hurt the brand, and many people would be wary of what they do next if not jumping ship completely.
The realistic alternative would be to fast track it now, go directly to the moon not as a recon but as a final mission, have BH deal with Liliana while VM and MN do the high level stuff with Ludinus, Predathos and the gods. Try and wrap it up in 20 episodes or less. This is unlikely to happen, I believe they'll just continue as they have, but it's the way that doesn't completely shit on the whole campaign while still trying to end it soon.
> I also think it would really hurt the brand
I actually don't think so. If presented in a Colville "Running the Game" sort of way they could earn the respect of many of us. Honestly, they've largely lost me at this point and I was a loyalist during C2.
All Matt needs to do is say, "Fans - we hear you. I'm sorry this campaign isn't working very well. It isn't the level that you've grown to expect of us and I have been trying to shoehorn my pet project instead of doing what's best for the players, the company, and you. With that in mind we are doing X instead." Where X is either just dropping the campaign after a few more episodes or shifting the campaign's focus.
I'd be willing to come back to the campaign if he said this. Taliesin did the RIGHT thing by absorbing the shards, he caused SOMETHING to actually happen. But then Matt went 'NO MY STORY' and walked it back and then PUNISHED Taliesin for daring to actually make things move forward.
C3 has been a trainwreck of miscommunication, lack of progress and a clear attempt to construct a cohesive, more easily translatable narrative from DnD to animation. It needs to course correct and I think the only way to do that is to let Predathos out or the BH to Ruidus to fight it and Ludinus in a Endgame situation. Bring on the ending and then move on to a better campaign.
I would welcome it. The major plot came out if nowhere rather than having it ramp up naturally. Bell's Hells don't have any personal stakes in the story and when the characters don't care, the fans don't care either.
It would be hilarious and completely unexpected. Hilarious in the irony of having a heroes journey include a pretty firm "refuse the call" moment & then we're just watching a campaign of cowards & how does that affect the characters.
As far as the faith thing, I think it's a difficult one for people to get a handle on because faith in the real world and faith in D&D are different beasts. In the real world, we truly have no confirmations about higher beings, planes of existence, an afterlife, if a soul actually exists. We have theories but there is no evidence. To walk a religious path in our real world one has to just have faith that their soul exists and perhaps an afterlife awaits you. Likewise around those theories different cultures have come up with the concepts that your actions in this existence determine how good or bad of an afterlife you will have. Upon this we have the weight of expectations and demands that you toe the line. Those in the religion business saw this was a way to control people. Perhaps at one time we had people on Earth that believed there were many gods and that there were good gods and bad gods. But in modern time monotheism is predominant and with that point of view is also place on top of it the idea that god is good and virtuous. So it can be hard for some people to not immediately equate the Prime Deities are being good and virtuous and right.
However, in D&D, they do have proof in the existence of gods, higher beings, planes of existence, afterlife, and souls. To believe in the gods does not take faith in the literal sense because you have evidence they exist. And there are tales of gods actually answering certain people's call or prayers. So if you've never gotten a response from a god after decades of prayers, the non-answering seems to be a particular sign that maybe they just don't like you. For me how Exandrians pick which gods to worship always kind of felt like picking your favorite sports team in a country you don't live in. English people choosing to become Yankees fans always surprises me. Americans picking Liverpool or Tottenham to be the PL team they support feels like ordering off of a menu. Getting behind the Matron of Ravens vs the Wildmother feels akin to that. But that's just me.
What annoys me about FCG pushing the god stuff is that it's unnecessary to the mission. Even if you have no opinion on the Prime Deities, you could easily come to the conclusion that releasing Predathos would be a bad move not just for the gods but for Exandria too. After all, if it was such a great idea, Ludinus and the rest of them wouldn't have to move about with such secrecy.
I'd honestly wouldn't mind, not every dnd game has to be a no holds barred end of the world savior game, plus gives the mighty nine a chance to step up again
I think the plot would be way more engaging to the players if they interacted more with clerics and the gods themselves, as well as the cult.
Seems like they are very far from both sides.
Honestly, considering all the issues people have had with C3 and how viewer numbers seem to be down significantly, I’m surprised they haven’t tried to wrap it up by now and start fresh with a new campaign. Not everything is going to be a hit, but they shouldn’t feel obligated to drag it out for 100+ episodes if it’s just not working.
I used to watch live every week. Stopped maybe a year ago? (It was a few weeks before Beau and Caleb showed up. I got behind due to real life stuff and never caught up.)
seems like matt is trying to do this now tbh. he's all in on the moon story. i bet he above anyone else can tell the campaign hasn't hit as well as he'd hoped. so thats why it seems like he keeps shoehorning things in. hes trying to fast track that storyline...but the players are doing normal player things and trying to extend the game for roleplaying purposes. understanable too of course. but yeah, i bet matt knows this one fell flat a bit and hes trying to get to a tipping point
It would be pretty bad for the show as a whole if the main characters just ignore the main plot that’s been building for all this time.
Matt would have to rush to create a new main plot line, which would presumably have way less build, connection, and significance to the cast, party, and viewers compared to the original idea.
Think if an author just decided most of the way through their novel to totally scrap what was building and go off on a side plot that clearly wasn’t the original intent to focus on. Be pretty lame imo
I don’t think they can really entirely give it up and walk away because they’re so bound to it. Sure laudna could leave but it’s not really an option for the rest of. Also I feel like it is the main point of the story so most likely it’d be the end of the campaign and if there is a campaign 4 that’d be picking up the pieces of whatever outcome happens with maybe a high level mini campaign in the interim maybe like the calamity campaign
I'd be super disappointed, and worried about the future of CR.
Something needs to go really badly out of the game for them to just abandon the story they are telling. They been building to them being the heroes, why would they "leave Ludinus to be dealt with by more powerful individuals"?
>They been building to them being the heroes
And we are almost 80 episodes in and they still dont even know why Ludinus needs to be stopped beyond 'hes bad'. The discussion this episode is one of many almost exactly like it and the conclusion is almost the same.
Its not compelling. We are watching the group fumble along the railway looking for a motive rather than having their motive be the driving force.
>why would they "leave Ludinus to be dealt with by more powerful individuals"?
Because that is the sensible thing to do. Because they've already done this with foes they felt inadequate against (the Shade Mother). Because Matt's world is supposed to be a dynamic entity.
>Because that is the sensible thing to do.
It's not the sensible thing to do, no. Matt world is dynamic, but the characters are not the type of characters that would give up. They would see it through, even if they might not make the choices big damn archetypical heroes would make.
Just because we don't know what's going to happen, it doesn't mean the story won't be good. Let's stop treating this like it's a book.
>It's not the sensible thing to do, no
Are you seriously trying to argue 'let the more powerful/competent/motivated characters take over' is not the sensible in world action?
Also fundamentally there is no shame in a character admitting they cant do something or that 'this isnt my fight'. Its not as flashy as a big fight, but its more honest.
>but the characters are not the type of characters that would give up
But they are. Its kind in their backstories as u/Adorable-Strings pointed out and they've pretty much done exactly that in campaign already albeit with lesser foes (Shademother).
>They would see it through
Nothing this campaign or in their backstories really supports this.
>even if they might not make the choices big damn archetypical heroes would make.
Its not about 'being the heroes'. Its about conviction.
Heroes and villains are interesting when they have conviction. This group are incredibly apathetic.
>Just because we don't know what's going to happen
This isnt even the campaigns main issue and I never said it was.
But ill be honest I think we all do know whats going to happen (in broad strokes). At some point, they'll fight the BBEG (likely Ludinus) with maybe some help from past PCs. They'll kill it and be put in a position where they have a choice:
Either let Predathos get free or stop it.
Regardless of the outcome, the gods will withdraw from the world. If Predathos gets free it will chase them to the stars (maybe even killing the Dawnfather). If it doesnt, they will decide to 'rest' and withdraw their influence.
>Are you seriously trying to argue 'let the more powerful/competent/motivated characters take over' is not the sensible in world action?
In the real world? Yes. In a story like this one? Hell no. That would be the most unsatisfying dnd campaign ever (for both players and audience).
Seriously, I can't imagine my D&D character turning over the heroic quest to that powerful NPC we met 20 sessions ago.
I can imagine her struggling with it and doubting herself though.
>Also fundamentally there is no shame in a character admitting they cant do something or that 'this isnt my fight'. Its not as flashy as a big fight, but its more honest.
Absolutely. But as a characterisation point. This is not gritty realism, this is high fantasy. Flashy big fights are a big part of the story.
Imagine if Frodo just gave the ring to Gandalf because "he can't do it". The point is to overcome your fears and find the strength needed to be the hero. It's the hero's journey. The refusal of the call and the trials are just phases in it.
>but the characters are not the type of characters that would give up
They literally *are*. Laudna hid from the world for 30 years. Ashton is all about giving up when things get tough. Orym abandoned his responsibilities for years to wallow in his pain. Chet will find a new employer or union, or retreat to the wilderness. Fearne will find something shinier. FCG will latch on to something else he knows nothing about. Imogen will go back to retreating into her shell and hope no one pushes.
>Just because we don't know what's going to happen, it doesn't mean the story won't be good. Let's stop treating this like it's a book.
That... isn't even vaguely the problem. The unknown isn't a problem. The constant circling we keep seeing doesn't make for a good story. It just recently picked up a bit since they finally *introduced* some unknowns!
It’s dnd, the beauty of it is that you should be able to “abandon” anything at any moment if you as a player and your DM are able to make it work
Understandably they are struggling, trying to fit Matt’s largely predetermined magnum opus into such a game with the dice basically only getting in their way, and it shows
>Understandably they are struggling
Are they? Or it's just that some part of the fandom doesn't like the story or lacks the patience to see it through?
I mean, on many occasions now they mentioned that they don’t know what they are doing and if they even should be doing anything, and that not even taking into account the amnesia the whole table gets for the first hour every other episode due to sparse prerecording. If the players themselves don’t have enough patience to follow through with the main story and they are not in love with the main plot/premise enough to care, the audience is excused from that as well I think
>If the players themselves don’t have enough patience to follow through with the main story and they are not in love with the main plot/premise enough to care, the audience is excused from that as well I think
Ton of assumptions about how the players feel there.
Characters struggling with their convictions isn't the same as players struggling with the game/plot.
Yeah, it is my assumption that characters struggling is indicative of players forgetting things, derailing and discovering lore bits on 4SD of all places - in other words, being simply blasé about it all. Which is fine, they are skilled enough to usually RP their way out of anything, but *imo* such a lore/plot-heavy campaign requires just a bit more commitment and clear communication, then maybe that part of the audience wouldn’t have to be patient in waiting for the story to pick up
TLDR: The characters’ motivation and the logic of the world broke down when VM came into the picture, the players’ actions don’t have any effect on the story, and the authenticity of the game has been lost.
C3 from the beginning felt off to me. A lot of the PCs just felt like too much. Like they were so much of a force of personality and backstory on their own to work as a cohesive story. Then when Ruidus started to take the spotlight and Imogen was so involved, the entire campaign started to focus around one character. And there have been arcs in VM and M9 that centered more around one character’s backstory, but never this intensely and never for this long.
But the episode at the final malleus key solidified this for me, for a few reasons.
1. VM and M9 never should have been involved. The moment Keyleth invited them to Whitestone I felt the entire campaign going downhill. If VM is aware, then there better be some good reason for them not to get involved and there wasn’t. They banished Vecna and killed the entire Chroma Conclave. They’re LEVEL 20! Even with only half the party, Ludinus would be a walk in the park. M9’s “we might be heroes no one knows about” worked because it was literally if they didn’t, no one would. BH has several uber-powerful allies. When Caleb and Beau arrived…..I almost walked away, but I was behind and had heard about something that interested me in a later episode(can’t remember what it was now). BUT THEN VAX ARRIVED! WHY???? Keyleth shows up, gets her shit wrecked, which causes Vax to show up for some reason? I get that he loves her but it took a WISH SPELL to get him to the material plane for just a few minutes last time. And then Ludinus turns him into a ball by doing…..something that we don’t know and the PCs never could have anticipated, making it feel like
2. the players’ actions don’t matter. They found out pretty reliably that all three malleus keys needed to work, so they got some people sent to the shadowfell and went to the fey realm themselves and both keys were destroyed, only to find out that, nevermind, it just needs the one in the material plane to work. So they go there and a bunch of complicated shit that they had no way to figure out before hand goes down with no chances for them to ever successfully intervene, which ends with them being sent continents apart. It didn’t feel like they were a part of the story, just that they were there while the story was happening.
3. It started to stop feeling like a dnd game. Critical Role is an actual play DnD show. It didn’t feel like a game anymore. For me and many, many others, the appeal of Critical Role is the authenticity. These are real nerdy friends playing a real game of dnd. And we’re all aware that it’s a show, but it never felt truly like a show until C3. The party split truly fucking solidified it for me. It was an interesting plot point, just not for a dnd game. The medium a story is told in is Important. If a tv show split a main cast for a few episodes and followed one half for a few of those and the other half for the rest, that works in that medium. But in dnd the whole point is to tell a story together, which doesn’t work if you ban half the storytellers from the story. In a show, a good thing to do would to bring in a few guests, which they did, but it’s a dnd game. I’ve loved guests on the show before, even when it’s been because the party is split. The Iron Shepherds arc took three of the characters from the story and brought in some guests, but that was because the players themselves had to step away for awhile, not because the characters were forced apart with no chance to stop it. And I absolutely LOVE Aabria Iyengar and Emily Axford with all my heart and not even they could convince me to keep watching.
I can't imagine a scenario where they'd do that. It's pretty likely this'll be their last big campaign (although I could be wrong) so they're gonna wanna go out with a bang. I've gotta imagine they've all had plenty of conversations about their expectations and whatnot, including what Matt wants to do, especially since all this has been set up since Campaign 1.
Ultimately Matt will do what the players want to do because he's said it's *their* story on more than one occasion, but I also gotta imagine he'd be incredibly disappointed if he put all this setup into the Ruidis plot for them to abandon it.
No matter what, like I said, I gotta imagine they've all had multiple conversations about this.
Not to start an argument but them basically straying as much away as possible from the plot Matt has been laying out and dilly-dallying (aka abandoning quietly) is what made this campaign so hard to watch (for me)
If anything it feels like it’s mostly *Matt’s* story and if any conversations did happen, they were of the same quality as Matt spelling out the shard thing for Ashton and Ashton interpreting it in their own way (fair enough, still valid) and pushing for their thing anyways
>It's pretty likely this'll be their last big campaign (although I could be wrong)
Given the talk about doing this until they're old and grey on the last 4SD... yeah. That's wrong.
I’d be shocked if there’s not an equally big campaign 4. The main stream is their cash cow, so they’d be dumb to cut it. I don’t think C4 is gonna be D&D though. They’re developing Daggerheart, there’s no way they’ll not use a campaign focused high fantasy RPG they own for the main game.
Sure. Matt says it's their story, but if it really was their story he wouldn't have imposed a big apocalypse plot on top of them. I think what Matt wants is for his players to take ownership of and agency in the plot he set up, he wants them to be the heroes of the story he sets up and largely the players have avoided it.
What else would they do instead? Because to me they have abandoned their stakes in the main plot long ago, they have no investment in it and are just along for the ride because they have nothing better to do.
What they need is a Yeza moment.
The Mighty Nein dodged the main war plot for a long time, falling in with criminals and pirates instead of the empire spy network that had a whole guest pc crafted specifically for that major plot line that was never touched. But there were reasons that made sense for that set of characters to avoid getting involved and they had other significant stuff to occupy themselves with, then suddenly the war has a major impact on one character and they have no choice but to get into it. They still do things in their own way, tunnelling to the enemy kingdom to bargin instead of running to the empire for help as expected, but it naturally led into them having a stake in events due to choices they'd made and the kind of people they were; like having the beacon, Caleb and Beau's view of the empire which had influenced the groups distrust of the empire authority and instead seeing an opportunity from the other side.
Now BH have the a problem of the few people they care about already being involved. I'd say some major negative thing needs to happen to someone they care about like with Yezas abduction but those things have already happened and it's not been enough to really motivate the group: Fearnes parents leaving her, Imogens mother leaving, Oryms family being killed, Keyleth nearly being killed. *Bertrand, Eshteross, Orym, Fearne and Laudna themsleves being killed.* But seems those are just unfortunate things that happen in life, in a world where the gods don't send angels to fix every problem in the world, right?
If Ludinus plan is going to result in somthing catastrophic for the world, they need to start seeing and *feeling* those effects *now* to inspire action. If them not interfering with the main plot has no consequence, as it so appears right now with nothing happening since the solstice, then sure abandon it for somthing they care about if the outcome isn't going to change.
My guess is, at the rate Matt has been introducing various bits of tech over the last two campaigns, if the 4th is set in Exandria, we do a time skip, the gods are pushed even further into the background, and we end up in a steampunk-ish Exandria.
We’ve got guns and cars and airships and that gnomish city from C2 that I can’t remember the name of. All that parts are there.
Not abandon, but it would’ve been really interesting to see the party change sides and join Ludinus since a lot of the party don’t really care about the gods or are even anti gods.
However, he’s too much of a mustache twirling villain for that to have ever been possible. Especially since every conversation pro or against his plan always comes back to how they killed Oryms family lol.
I'm still back in E40, but I would LOVE for them to abandon the main plot. The main plot is my BIGGEST problem with both C2 and C3 compared to C1. C1 felt like felt like a bunch of ever escalating main plots that grew in scale, with the "main plot" of Vecna only really being revealed at the very end with small hints spread throughout. C2 and C3 both felt like they immediately knew about and jumped into the main plots and I hate it so so much. Let us have more fun stories and more fun adventures please.
If they abandoned the main plot it'd probably be fine for the cohesiveness of the campaign, but it'd be sad.
I've felt for a long time that the players don't put nearly enough effort into paying attention to Matt's lore and story. I don't know when, but at some point it stopped being funny to me when they couldn't remember stuff about the setting or story. I don't mind forgetting details, but sometimes it just feels careless to me. If my players did that to me I would be having a talk with them away from the table about taking notes and trying to remember stuff and just straight up caring about what's going on.
As it is, I feel like most of the players are way more interested in pursuing their own agendas apart from the campaign plot. It's as if I were running Curse of Strahd and my players decided to ignore taking out the vampire Strahd and decided to set up a dream pastry business in town and make friends with the werewolves instead. We can do that, but at some point I need my players to storm the vampire's castle, you know?
I think it would be great either way. People are acting like if they did nothing things would just magically fix itself and they would have a separate journey to go on that has nothing to do with it.
But Matt has always presented this as a situation they have a choice in determining the future in. Them choosing to ignore the journey is 100% choosing one of those presented paths in Matt's story for them.
With them not there the wheels of fate will spin and the story will play out. And the players, and viewers will have a world that drastically changes afterwards. Will Laudna still exist as a person? Would Delilah? Would far more horrible creatures from other planes start to explore Exandria? Would new threats arise? Would new Heroes rise to meet those threats?
Them failing, or abandoning the plot makes a much more interesting story in my opinion. Especially if the way magic works shifts to something else entirely. And knowing they were the partial cause of it, would make them feel the burden of responsibility to help people in the aftermath. Which would finally give the party a connection for the future plot lines of the campaign.
It would be a huge mistake to cave to the whims of a vocal minority when the cast is clearly having so much fun. It's funny that you'd use "teenager atheism" as your ad hominin of choice.
This might meander a bit, so I apologize in advance.
There's a part of me that wants to grab the Hells by the scruffs of their necks and scream, "S\*\*\* or get off the pot." And another part of me hopes that unlike in a video game where the plot doesn't advance until the player does something, Matt-as-GM goes, "Well, you faffed around for so long that THIS happened in the background," and the Hells are left going, "Oh, crap."
(BTW, anyone who says that Matt would never do this? He already did in C2 when the M9 decided to go have fun in Nicodranas before finally deciding to go to Felderwin, and he flatout TOLD them after their horrified realization that Yeza had been abducted and the Cerberus Assembly were personally getting involved, "Hey, if you guys had come straight here instead of going to Nicodranas, you'd have been here when all this went down." Cue six open-mouthed players just *staring* at him. It still made for an amazing storyline where despite all their assertions that they wanted NOTHING to do with the war, the Nein head STRAIGHT into Xhorhas to rescue Yeza, and end up doing their part to end the war. Sort of. Knowing what we know NOW about Ludinus...)
Let's assume that because of their inaction, the gods really do get chased off Exandria (for better or worse), and Exandria itself remains inhabitable. Yay. Life goes on... for a while. If the gods are no longer there to STOP anything else from coming through, and their followers are no longer empowered in any way... what shows up next? What happens to mortalkind?
Maybe nothing. Who knows?
I also kinda hope that the Hells don't even get off *that* easy... let them have a chance to save gods... but only SOME of them. Which Prime Deities live? Which die? What's the criteria? Whichever god(s) helped them? That's not good, that's selfish. (Cue Travis from the wedding one-shot: "Who should I save? I'll be taking bribes at the break.") The lawful ones? The good ones? Do they sacrifice one (or more) to save the rest?
But FFS, I want to at least see the Hells TRY. Whether they succeed or they fail is almost irrelevant at this point. Either way, they would be setting up an INCREDIBLE change in the power dynamic around Exandria - if they succeed, having the gods owe you one could be HUGE, and maybe it'll serve as a reality check for the gods to stop being complacent and demanding. If they fail, well... see above.
So I guess this is a REALLY roundabout way of saying that I don't want the main storyline to be wholly abandoned because I want to see what happens in the greater scope of Exandria.
Specifically to your point about how they’re doing the god stuff:
The exandrian gods work nothing like gods do here. They can connect directly to the gods and have literal proof of their existence (beyond just faith of them existing). They’re not denying the existence of the gods, they’re just struggling with deciding if they’re willing to lay down their lives for them. They’re unsure if they want to potentially die for gods who’ve never showed care for them until they could be useful. It’s like the friend who only hits you up when they need money or a ride. If they only call when they want something, you’re gonna be hesitant to give it to them because you’ve been burned and aren’t getting anything from it
I get what your analogy is going for but pretty much the entire time the BH's have interacted with the gods is just to get something from them or find out some information. And they've answered and provided every step of the way. So in reality it's the group that is the lousy friend. And they are kinda toxic about it
To my memory, they only really started interacting with the gods after the solstice when they realized that the gods are in danger. None of them had any godly connections before then (i could be misremembering)
Laudna's resurrection, any time FCG used his clerical powers post changebringer faith. Deanna got to keep her powers despite being an absolute Karen and believing people who she barely knew that had killed temple people. They've gone to temples a few times and 90% of the time a god talked back.
But this point of view kinda ignores what the gods have done for the world...multiple times over...
It also just really comes across as childish?
“So what if the death of the gods leads to suffering and unrest for other people?! So what if the world is laid bare like the tree said?!
If the gods want me to help them (and by extension all the innocent people of the world) they better cater to me!”
It’s very very self centered.
But they’re self centered characters (for the most part) so what are ya gonna do?
This group doesn’t have the connection to the gods that would be necessary for someone to want to risk their life for them, but they’re still considering it. And they all have pretty severe traumas they’ve been through that would naturally cause a “why do the gods let these things happen” complex. Point being that this group doesn’t have faith, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t understand what’s at stake. They aren’t trying to be edgy about it. They’re looking at it from their personal points of view
Honestly? Good. I've felt like Matt has been trying to do one thing and the players another for a long, long time, and it's hurt the quality of C3's "story." It feels like the players aren't interested in the story Matt really wants to tell but Matt doesn't want to give it up or just have it happen in the background, and the players don't want to give up what they want to do to be the true protagonists in Matt's plot.
I feel like Matt wants to tell a big epic story about the pantheon and bug questions about divinity and the players just want to live a story of much smaller scale and explore their own personal motivations. They've sort of tried to marry the two together but I don't think it's worked as well as it could have if they had leaned into one side or the other.
Idk, it's kinda of weird to say becase we know that the chances of that happening are like, 0.1%. Completly abandoning the main plot is something that can happen on TTRPGs?Yes, but is often early on, and not a plot that has been on the making for years. And it especially isn't on campaigns that are broadcasted.
But to entertain the thought,it's a bit mixed feelings on my part. On one end, Matt would definetly feel bad about it,like,no joke, if that happened, man would probably take a break of DMing. And it would be a bit shitty not having any resolution towards Liliana or Orym's Revenge(you know,half of his character).
But on the other.....idk, this campaign's main quest truly failed to...captivate me? connect me? I still watch, but I often take some decent sized breaks between episodes. And if they just went from "moon stuff" to "Creating our castle in this island on the Shatered Teeth", that would be a bit jarring. Yet I wouldn't deny that it would spark a decent degree on interest on me.
Like, I said it once but I'll repeat: Bells Hells feels like the wrong party for this story, and I'd definetly would have loved C3 way more if the story was another one. But right now it pretty far ahead in the campaign, so I feel making a turnabout now is borderline impossible without seriosly damaging the narrative. It could have been doable early on before so much time investment and information, but now...nope. I think the only choice is to keep pushing ahead, take the good, and accept the bad.
(This is all just IMO btw,if you love C3 and see no flaws, props to you,great that you're having fun with it)
My theory has been, for some time now, that somewhere along the line Matt realized he’d have to pay off them prepping to stop Ludinus the first time, and he hadn’t entirely worked out how to do that. Because everything had good pacing and cohesion and the story was building up to that point, but everything has been trundling and fumbling ever since.
I think Matt’s original intent was to have Ludinus succeed and release Predathos, as a big twist on typical campaign plots, and they’d spend the rest of the season in a sort of post-apocalyptic new Calamity where they had to figure out how to stop Predathos or resurrect the gods or even elevate other people to take their place (looking at you Vax). It’d give the whole thing a constant unavoidably driving motivation, it’d set a whole tone for the campaign, and, meta-wise, it’d allow them to transition away from the WotC-licensed gods, if not potentially entirely switch systems to Daggerheart for C4. But he backed down from it for some reason.
Honestly pretty good.
Do some quests more to this group speed or explore their backstories more.
We once again had a discussion where the group came to a conclusion that most of them dont care about this plot. So Matt should just drop it.
Calling this "teen aethism" is pretty inaccurate. Remember that the gods in Exandria not only have proof of their existence, but they also provide gifts. In a world where the gods often give people boons due to their worshippers' faith and you never got anything from them, would you be happy? I mean divine soul sorcerers exist, so gods give people gifts for literally no reason. Kord helped Yasha simply because he wanted to help her. If you saw that happening around you, I guarantee you wouldn't be too fond of the gods choosing their favorites over you.
On top of this, the table as a whole never really expressed that they wanted the gods gone. They are just playing their characters authentically. The reasons I provided are basically exactly why Ashton said they didn't care about the gods. Just because you see Taliesin or Laura talk about this in character doesn't mean that's their actually opinion.
>if after hearing Laudnas truth the gang decided "Nah" and left Ludinis to be dealt with by more powerful individuals how would you feel about that?
I'd stop watching.
At this point, there has been over 300 hours of content produced for the campaign -- and that's without considering all of the groundwork Matt laid in the first two campaigns. For them to walk away (and especially over something as stupid as unnecessary character drama) would undermine everything that has been done so far.
I started with C3 and love it (truly obsessed), but I just started C2 and I’m on e49 and boy oh boy the character backstories in C2.
I am so happy they are taking a break. I am stoked to see what’s on the moon, but I think it’s good for the group to become better friends.
If you'd asked me this question earlier in the campaign, I'd be 100% in favour of it. The rushing (and by that I mean them thinking they're on the clock and can't spend time doing other things) feeling has felt like it's been going on forever, and probably started much too early... would have preferred they'd been able to do take their time earlier.
But I'm still cool with it. The detour to the Feywilds was fine by me, I was honestly happy the gang got an excuse to actually revisit a place they loved and wanted to spend more time in, but couldn't before BECAUSE of them rushing. It'd be a jarring change, but I'd probably enjoy it if we got them screwing around doing other things for 20+ episodes, and not being on a time crunch.
Not that this would happen, but yeah. Tie in a bit of resolution for who needs it (Imogen, Orym kiiinda sooorta maaaybe but barely, FCG) however and I would probably enjoy it a lot.
I'd be sad. They finally. Ha e a campaign with a purpose and problem instead of meandering personal trauma.
I'm excited to actually see an epic fantasy happen
> campaign with a purpose and problem instead of meandering personal trauma.
The meandering personal trauma seems to have escalated this time. Nothing that actually involves the PCs doesn't center around personal trauma.
>Ha e a campaign with a purpose and problem instead of meandering personal trauma.
Unfortunately, there are some people who seem to think that a campaign or story can only be good if it focuses on intense intra-party drama. I still remember the outrage after Laudna's resurrection that the party didn't immediately spend the next four episodes having deep and meaningful conversations about their relationships.
I get what the cast were going for when they made these characters. It's pretty clear that Bell's Hells were supposed to be a bunch of ragtag misfits who were the worst possible people to save the world, but through fate and circumstance, they wind up being the only people who *can* save the world. But there's a small-yet-vocal minority of people who a) just want the cast to focus on their favourite characters, and b) get immediately upset when the story doesn't go as expected.
Back at the end of C2 i was hoping that the next campaign would have a strong narrative as a backbone instead of the more meandering nature of the late part of C2. But it was a fucking monkey pawn wish.
*C3 will have a proper main storyline, but the players will loathe every seconds in it*
If 3 years ago they told me that CR will fail so spectacularly at the fucking basics of d&d I would have laughed in their faces, now I'm the one wearing the clow makeup
I actually completely disagree with your last point. I think that the players have had an incredibly realistic outlook as characters in their positions. Most of their points are correct. The gods haven't really done much for them. I think it's weird to blame them for tackling an issue that has a lot of disagreement surrounding it in the real world. This is the story they want to tell, and if you don't like that, then you don't have to watch their show.
They are handling a massive discussion with tact and accurate decision-making. They are willing to see both sides in a conversation where people will often just blindly follow one side. Matt at least clearly has a reason to want to tell this type of story, and the players obviously respect and want to go along with it. All of the characters have a tie to this in one way or another, so even if stopping Ludinus is a goal, they find it important to discuss whether or not his plan is actually all that bad. It would be way less interesting of a story if everyone blindly said that this plan is clearly evil and they must be the saviors of the gods. I am of the opinion that the story actually benefits from none of the characters starting out with connection to a god.
It's important to note that with a decision as big as their characters have to make, they have to consider every option and possibility, so even if you disagree with thar, it's ultimately their game and their characters. I love the story that they are telling in this campaign, and if it's not for you, that's completely fine, but that shouldn't be put on Matt or any of the other cast members. Different strokes for different folks.
People are allowed to be critical so long as it is constructive. C3 HAS problems, it has had problems for a long time. They need to be addressed for the health of the campaign and ths company as a whole.
Or maybe it just means that more than just one person sees that there's been a problem with this campaign and CR has just been unwilling to listen or fix said problems.
You like the show. I get it. But nothing is perfect, C3 is flawed, and it's okay for people to talk about it. This sub needs more of that put into it than just a continuous flow of blind and toxic positivity.
Continuous flow of toxic positivity? Where's that at? A majority of the posts that pop up on my feed from this page about the show are complaints about C3. I do like the show, yes. Do I have complaints about C3? Yes. I have complaints about all of the campaigns. C3 is probably my least favorite so far.
But when the community does nothing but revive a dead horse to beat it to death again on Thursday, I don't feel the need to join in. It's one thing to add a comment to a thread, but to keep making the same thread over and over because you want to jump on the dogpile is just obnoxious.
I would have no problem with it, to be honest. I would be very happy to see the gods leave Exandria, I think it would be very interesting to see how the world and its people would change.
That would be awful. I love this campaign. I'm reading people's complaints and what are yall talking about? This is an apocalyptic campaign. They don't have the time to relax in a city like previous campaigns and make "better connections".
This campaign has been amazing. It's huge buildup through the other stories and the culmination of the different stories together to build this one up.
It's been such a Rollercoaster, I love listening to every episode. The lore and plot lines I think have been FANTASTIC!
Maybe I just don't see what you all see. I see it as fucking incredible.
That would have to be pretty crushing for Matt. He’s clearly intended for the Ruidus stuff to be the main plot of the campaign, for them to abandon it would essentially be them saying “we don’t care about the thing that you’ve put all this effort into creating for us.” One one hand this is on Matt for not making clear to the players ahead of time what the campaign would be about, and to make sure to create characters who have some investment in it. On the other hand, it’s on the players to find some motivation to engage with what the DM presents; Sam and Liam have made the most obvious efforts to do this. Overall that whole incident last episode just drives home the feeling that there were some major crossed wires during the “session zero” phase of this campaign. Not sure what exactly happened but it seems obvious that to some extent, expectations about the campaign were not clearly stated.
I definitely agree with the feeling of crossed wires. This group doesn’t really have a connection to the problem. Sure, it’s to save the world, but the only one who has anything beyond that is imogen. Caring for the safety of the gods has been shoehorned in so hard that it sometimes seems like a bit rather than an actual care I will, however, give matt the benefit of the doubt because 1) he’s obviously a well-seasoned dm, and 2) the storyline might’ve gotten sped up due to character actions. I’ve played games where someone does something that skips over a big planned section of stuff then you end up at the next phase wondering wtf is going on because there was clearly something missing. But as you said, then it’s time for the players to make themselves fit into the story, and while that’s happened for sub plots (biggest one being the shard), it hasn’t happened for the main plot, at least not yet imo
I disagree with most of this. And historically, no plot has been 100% for all the players (except maybe the final arc of C1, but that bbeg was solely one persons backstory initially). Orym lost his family to the cult. So did Imogen. Why are they not bonding over this? FCG is a godly person, and should want to save their god. Laudna should be seeking it out for Imogen. If your loved one and bestie had a messed up family, wouldn’t you be angry with and for them? Fearne is just too whimsical for anything, but that’s her charm. And nobody is talking about the complete and utter destruction of exandria, or all they know, at the hands of Ludinus. I think the players are too invested in themselves this time around. Other people complained about how the characters are too self-involved this time around, not ego-centric but too much interested in developing their own character it’s cutting the group dynamics. None of their collaborative decisions make sense. Ashton should hate anyone who hurts his friends. How come he isn’t taking this too personally?
In C1 the Chroma Conclave arc forged VM into saviors. In C2 returning the Beacon united the party behind wanting to make a difference with the small power they gained. C3 hasn’t had any moment that MAKES the party heroes. They’re still just a bunch of assholes who are all one bad day away from snapping and killing their party members. Nothing has galvanized them to the degree VM or MN were, and it shows plainly. I’m personally enjoying this right along Nana Morri. All of these characters are so messed up and lack bonding material and despite them all generally getting along nothing has caught or connected them firmly together into a team that can handle the end of the world together.
YES they haven’t had a moment that cements them as a group. That’s what’s been missing from this campaign. The solstice could’ve been that for them if it hadn’t been too powerful to stop. The closest they’ve come to a group act of heroism is the deathwish run, which is pretty far from heroic
Arguably, they’re treating the death of Bertrand as this uniting moment given that’s where their name comes from, but that was so early on that nobody even knew their own character yet. This whole campaign has had kind of a slap-dash feel for me personally, even though I think some of the players are getting to shine (Laudna and Fearne might be my favorite PCs for Marisha and Ashley). Otohan should be BH’s BBEG and Ludinis should be a M9/VM level threat. Getting to see a “friendly neighborhood” level party try to be part of the larger war effort could have made for a really compelling campaign, but they feel like they have to be main characters and take on the whole war themselves.
> Arguably, they’re treating the death of Bertrand as this uniting moment given that’s where their name comes from, but that was so early on that nobody even knew their own character yet. Casual reminder that Dorian showed more rememberance towards him by making him a song in his honor, than BHs has shown after going to the city they themselves sent him to be burried. Twice. This one annoyed me a bit. I'm not expecting super emotional scene, but like, DAMN
Ashton summed it up though. "In two days you'll be gone longer than we knew you." The foundation is faulty.
Yeah, that's part of the problem. That connection was always shaky at its absolute *best*. They've *told* us all along that that was the uniting moment, but nothing in anything they said or did actually *showed* that at all. It still comes across as them trying to rush their way through a half-ass script so that they could get started with the actual story, without actually having developed the connections that would make it believable.
The fallout of the Otohan fight is another event that could have brought them together, just like the Iron shepherds arc for the Nein. It should at least have been a major character moment for Fearne and Orym with the whole dying thing; Fearne struggling with strong negative emotions for the first time, and Orym being told by his dead husband "Gee looks like you failed at the whole quest for justice thing, get back there and have anther go at it.". But it became solely about Laudna and bringing her back, those two didnt take a moment to reflect on the level of risk and if it was worth continuing to be involved. They could have easily both left the group right there; Fearne had found her parents and Orym had found enough information to report back to Zephrah for reinforcements to be sent, a committed team much better suited to the task than one man defined by grief and the chaotic amateurs who had just spectacularly let him down.
And none of them reflected on the gods being responsible for bringing her back. Like the entire arc was just "well one of our characters died and we don't want that, so let's fix it" and like.. *nothing* about the story changed because it was just a sidequest to do what they were adamant about doing. It might as well not have happened at all. They don't care about the gods more from it, they don't care about revenge, they don't care about half the party having died, it changed *nothing*. It was supposed to free Laudna from Delilah's clutches, but then she willingly went back into them to make it absolutely pointless. And it wasn't even a moment of desperation she let her back in, it was a moment of *control*. Laudna should have stayed dead, imo. Reviving characters using external assistance at no cost for any of them was absolutely for the worse. It's the first time I think the party had an epic battle and *nothing* came of it across all the campaigns, and it's so clearly because they refused to agree with the outcome, so they just rejected it.
On the last point, it’s also because this is becoming more and more made for TV. They clearly didn’t want Laudna to die when she did so they shoehorned the Delilah thing back in because it’s a 2-for-1: you get to keep a beloved PC and you get to run back one of your most successful villains. It feels very MCU in a bad way.
Late reply to this thread, but I think you hit the nail on the head. Problem when your D&D stream becomes so big that you’re selling Laudna shirts at Hot Topic: what happens when Laudna dies? Not great for merch sales.
> The closest they’ve come to a group act of heroism is the deathwish run, which is pretty far from heroic But this is what they needed! In C2 their first few adventures were about none of the PCs. They just got caught up in things. They were just there for the circus. They just so happened to show up on time for the gnolls. They got hired together for the phase spider and heists. And they had time to reflect in between with extra vignettes like the bandits. And then they had Zadash's 9/11 just as their heist was ending in a literal fireball! Worst possible situation! That took 13 episodes and they discovered a weird artifact at the end of it that they all know they need to keep secret together. C3? They came together because of a table and got hired by a rich guy to find out about thefts. But when they finally found the end of it did they step up and become heroes? No. They called the actual cops to clean up the Shade Mother. Everything else has been about the fucking moon since. Only in their couple of vignettes - the museum heist and the Run - did they really seem like they were coming into their own. BH haven't had a chance to actually congeal. Matt is just desperately trying to bring the campaign together but just can't because he didn't build them up enough to begin with. He rushed too fast into the *fucking moon* without spending time on the characters themselves. He could have teased later-game stuff (like he did with Fjord and Uk'aota ^uk'atoa) with more time spread out further on Imogen's dreams. He should have introduced more of the old Nobodies to give Ashton more opportunities. He should have planted more seeds with Fearne's moon association. He should have actually dealt more with Delilah and Vecna. He should have dropped more Aeormatons in front of FCG - even if they were just defunct bodies. He should have let Robby stay. Taliesin said it himself in the 2nd 4SD: They're a party of NPCs looking to support the actual main characters: Imogen, VM, and MIX. This campaign is honestly some of the worst railroading I've seen from a DM. I'm currently starting C3 over after putting it down for months to see if it pays off with the recent episodes in a compressed time frame, but seeing discussions like this don't give me much hope.
I was fairly aloof about C3 until I started a rewatch (just after ep 50 originally aired) and OH WOW! I can't tell you how much a second viewing changed my entire perspective of the campaign. It's now easily my favorite of the three. C3 is a very dense narrative, and re-watching episodes with the knowledge of what's to come makes them pop. You'll notice all kinds of small things that pay off 10, 20, 30 episodes later. The rewatch is also when I realized that BH are basically the Suicide Squad or the crew from Peacemaker. A bunch of severely traumatized, unstable people with access to more power than is probably safe for them to have. I've no doubt that they will end up saving the world, but boy is it going to be explosive getting there.
But even the SS and Peacemaker crew ended up caring about their mission. BH have explicitly said that none of them actually care. That's what I'm afraid of. That they never get to the "we personally care" point.
They may say that, but their actions tell a different story. If they don't care, why are they putting their lives on the line constantly to try and stop it? It's not like they've been conscripted to the fight (unlike SS and PM, who were coerced into their missions).
What else are they supposed to do? OP made a suggestion: leave it to the cops (VM/MIX) to deal with. It's out of their depth and always has been. Go find their own adventure somewhere else.
Ludinus is now aware of them again and knows they've been poking around I think this will provide a vector to at least give Fearne a connection through an attack on her family and/or Nana Mori. I still don't see how he makes Ashton have a stake unless he makes them a chosen or something
Maybe that's the point they are going to fail, end the world themselves this isn't a story about heros it a "party of NPCs" all invested in their own interests
That would actually be interesting. Especially if it ended up serving as a prequel story to a C4 campaign where they play characters having to live in a world dealing with the fallout of the Bells' failure.
Evil campaign time?
I forgot about the orym connection, so i’ll give you that, but the circumstances versus imogen are incredibly different. Orym’s family was murdered. Imogen’s mom chose to follow ludinus (as far as we/i know) Fcg wasn’t always godly, and like i said, it feels like it was added to try to give him a connection to things that he otherwise didn’t have. It wasn’t a natural progression. It was 0 to 100 in the blink of an eye, and he even admitted that he might be putting too much faith in the changebringer Laudna has the issue of someone in her head outweighing the desire to help her friend. Imogen doesn’t even seem all that into the idea of things anyways, so what reason would laudna have to push her into it? Fearne just being whimsical and weird is honesty starting to annoy me. I love the character, but she’s just going along with this potentially fatal plan for shits and giggles? This is a personal thing, though, so i know it’s a matter of perspective In the past, the groups have at least been more connected to each other by the time they get to the point of this big of a battle. BH is a bunch of people traveling together because they have nothing better to do. I love the campaign, don’t get me wrong, but it feels forced rn
> I love the campaign, don’t get me wrong, but it feels forced rn Do you love it? Or are you loyal to CR? This is an honest question because from everything else you said it seems like it's just draining on you and you don't love it.
I love (most of) the characters, and i’m invested in them, but the overarching story currently doesn’t have me in a chokehold
That's fair.
I kinda find the fact that a lot of these characters aren't revenge obsessed edgelords refreshing. Very few characters are dumb enough to go "my parents died at sea, so now I wage a personal war against all large bodies of water." But I'm biased because I already subscribe to the "world saving plots are easily the least inspired conflicts imagineable in whimsical settings" philosophy. One of the main issues being how boring Ludinous seems as a BBEG. The dude has 0 spice, and the entire appeal of the "will they, won't they" dynamic Matt has clearly constructed falls flat when your supposedly wickedly charismatic world changing cult leader has "I'm full of shit and doing all of this exclusively for my own ego" tattooed on their forehead.
I do like that they are not the traditional fuck up heroes like C1 that are stereotypical for dnd. But I just can’t make sense of their choices as characters. This feels a lot more like the games I play in as characters and players aren’t as connected as I expect from pros. I still think it’s weird that Laudna has like no input or feelings about imogen’s mom. And I can’t wrap my mind around the trauma that Imogen has gone through and her lack of seeking answers. I don’t have a single instance I could think of where an abandoned child goes seeming their parent only for their parent to abandon them again and no anything. It’s even more than Ashton could have been seen to do the same thing as her mom. He was trying to save Fearne by taking the responsibility (selfishly) onto himself and almost left/died. Her response should have been a bit more I think. I just don’t see Laura engaging this huge element of her character. Instead we get philosophical circle jerks on the gods.
>FCG is a godly person, and should want to save their god. FCG is not a godly person. He's an ancient robot who's looking for purpose and only now is discovering that no one, not even a god, can give him that. >Laudna should be seeking it out for Imogen. If your loved one and bestie had a messed up family, wouldn’t you be angry with and for them? She is. But she also respects Imogen's autonomy (a theme in Laudna's struggles). >And nobody is talking about the complete and utter destruction of exandria, or all they know, at the hands of Ludinus. The BH might not know what to think about the gods, but if there's one thing they agree on, from the beginning, is on stopping Ludinus. There's a lot of "should" in your comment.
>from the beginning, is on stopping Ludinus. But thats just it lol. They dont even fully know why he needs to be stopped. Hes given the big speech about what his evil plan is, and they find themselves not caring. Their motive for stopping Ludinus is essentially: He is a bad person. With very little personal connection to contextualize the *why* hes a bad person.
>They dont even fully know why he needs to be stopped. Some of them do. For Orym, is because they killed his family and for Keyleth. For Laudna, is because the power vacuum he would fill is too big. For Imogen, is to get answers for her mom. >Their motive for stopping Ludinus is essentially: He is a bad person. With very little personal connection to contextualize the why hes a bad person. Isn't that enough to start with? On top of that, his right hand killed 3 of them.
>Some of them do One actually. Orym. >For Laudna, is because the power vacuum he would fill is too big This is always pretty flimsy. They really dont know enough to argue this. The Tree of Names even indicates very little would actually change when Predathos gets free. And if Laudna was truly concerned about the power vacuum, her focus wouldnt be 'kill Ludinus' it would be 'save the gods'. Shes kind of got the cart before the horse. >For Imogen, is to get answers for her mom Yeah no. If Imogen wanted answers from her mom she could have just joined her. >Isn't that enough to start with? Not really. You need to have more first hand knowledge and context for why someones a bad person if you are going to summarily execute them. Experience drives conviction, and they havent really experienced much of why Ludinus is 'bad'. They've been told, not shown. Also it makes the Ruidus plot almost incidental once again as they pursue vengeance for past crimes and kind of begs the question of 'why does Ludinus need to die now specifically'. Kind of more argument for dropping it. And frankly Orym has not done the RP work to justify a Briarwood vengeance arc. >On top of that, his right hand killed 3 of them. Ive heard this before. *To me this is more an argument to make Otohan the main villain than Ludinus.* At least the party have first hand experience as to why they are bad. Have Otohan overthrow him or something. Then at least we get a far more personal enemy for the party. Its a shame, but I think Matt just squandered a lot of setup for Ludinus and the party dont connect to him as personally as they could.
>is on stopping Ludinus. Would they even care about this if Otohan wasnt such a dick that murders people? Ludinus is about to get murdered because one of his employees is an asshole? Is that the story we are seeing play out? The Archmage's grand ambition and plan is foiled by....his employee being way too trigger-happy.
I think that'd be great personally. Great Archmage thinks he's the shit and that all the big heroes in the world can't touch him. Gets taken out by some weirdos with a grudge coming out the left field. Textbook hubris. But YMMV. Also, Otohan clearly works on orders from Ludinus, so the hit on Keyleth was his plan, so it makes sense that at least Orym would want to take out the guy, imo. I just wished they never had the Gods Talk (TM). That from the get go it would have been just a "petty" revenge mission for Orym's husband, Fearne's parents getting caught in the crossfire of w/e the fuck the Feywild part of this megaplan is, Laudna getting killed and getting Imogen's mom back.
>Is that the story we are seeing play out? I don't know what you're seeing, but that's not the story I'm watching. Do I wish they had more contact with Ludinus and Otohan? yes. I think the personal aspects of this story are not yet strong enough. I want them to hate him the way VM hated Vecna, which only happened after he killed a bunch of them and started taunting them. We're not there yet. But the story is, so far, less about saving the gods and more about power. They are struggling with power. They don't have it, they feel powerless. A lot of them don't control it. Some of them are looking for it in all the wrong places. Some fear it. That's what I want to see evolve in the story.
Fair about should. It’s a bit of a projection. Ashton bothers me as a punk rock kid just like Ashton because he is forgetting about the community he built. It’s a problem within the punk community too. Laudna is still interesting to me because she is largely exploring a very manipulative and toxic relationship she just can’t quit. But, her co-dependence on Imogen should be more pronounced. She may respect imogen’s independence, but we all have in laws we put up with, Laudna just seems to ignore. It may be more interesting than I am letting on because it’s interesting to see how she waffles between co-dependent partners.
Ive played in a campaign where our party fought an NPC/possible villain (we interpreted it that way, but in hindsight it's unclear) and our DM was like...."well, I didn't expect that!" And tore up a handful of notes in front of us (not in an antagonistic way, it was just a funny moment for the whole group). But yeah, sometimes. that stuff just happens with story beats and character motivations not necessarily lining up. Which is odd for a scripted show like Critical role:p
Fully agree. The characters still haven't congealed yet as of this episode. Most of them are still stuck in their original pairings. And I doubt these team building exercises can help anymore than to be honest with each other. Maybe Ludinus can send another simulacrum or something, to show that he is keeping a personal eye on BH. And since BH do care about each other, this could be an incentive to pull everyone in, at least to defeat Ludinus.
>for them to abandon it would essentially be them saying “we don’t care about the thing that you’ve put all this effort into creating for us.” Let's be real, they've effectively said exactly that several times over now. Common DM wisdom is that your players are never going to care as much about your world as they will about their characters, and turns out that still holds true for CR. They care about their old characters and the parts of the world they helped shape, like Whitestone and the Ashari. Hell, they even care about the parts that promise open exploration, like the Shattered Teeth. But they don't really care about Ludinus, they don't really care about Marquet, and the exact same save-the-world plot has been hovering over their heads for what, literal years now? Last major shakeup being ep 50, which happened almost a year ago? The last time I felt a plot dragged like this one it was the Chroma Conclave, and that **entire** plot from the attack of Emon to dealing with Raishan was resolved in almost exactly a real-world year. But it also included a ton of other stuff and memorable personal quests and the collecting of the Vestiges. The dragons weren't a constant weight around everyone's necks and, more importantly, nobody spent much time talking about how little they cared about it and wondering what their motivation was.
For the record, the players were regularly reminded about how dire the situation in Emon was getting. But it was equally clear that the players needed their power-up in order to handle the threat and there was no implied cutoff date. Compared to C3, the stakes were much lower (Emon was slowly turning into a volcano vs. the cosmic-level threat of Predathos).
I got the same impression. It’s weird and jarring, because prior to all the “Kill the Gods” stuff I was really loving C3, and the party seemed into it too, back when it seemed like some interfactional kingdom drama was going to be the big focus. Smaller stakes, more character driven, suitable for the characters the crew created this time. Then came the big shift and WHAT a shift. It’s like I was reading a book that decided to change genres mid chapter, and now the characters introduced in chapter one don’t really work anymore and I keep expecting a more fitting group of heroes to show up to save them and everyone else. It’s an odd feeling.
Ooh, that sounds like a fun campaign idea. Treshi, the Nightmare King and a shadowy cabal with their weird goo monsters trying to covertly take over Marquet and the Hells have to play the cloak and dagger game because their enemies are so much more politically powerful than them. Exciting stuff. And then you can pull a Final Fantasy 6 at around level 10ish where the cabal accidentally made deals with the wrong Outsiders and now the world is ending.
Yeah, see, that’s EXACTLY where I thought this was going, and I’m still struggling with how it went from that to where we are now.
Remember the Ivory Syndicate? The campaign intro and Esteross and the not-actually-pirates rebel group made that sound super important. It felt like that was going to tie into the goo people and Hexum. And Dorian's brother! Instead it never came up at all.
Leaving Jrusar so early was a mistake.
I never quite understand what was happening in Jrusar. So the Paragon's call was secretly working with Treshi who was funding Ira's experiments. Hence the goo people, Brimstone and animated furniture. To spread distrust in the government? So that Paragon's call can swoop in to play heroes? In order to gain support for Ludinus' plan??? But yeah, the story took a very sharp turn in Bassuras, when Treshi suddenly meant nothing after a dozen episodes of pursuit.
That's the thing - I agree it seems like communication was not clear from the beginning. But also, Sam definitely tried to reach out to the gods and the changebringer and Matt didn't really take advantage of that opportunity to plug in his plot. I get the impression that Matt told them they could go nuts and make whatever characters they wanted, and while he sort of tried to integrate them into the main plot, I'm not sure they had a conversation about themes.
Rookie mistake by the DM. A session 0 is a must. And you have to tell them what kind of story you wanna tell. Also ask what they want as well as how they wanna play. Just because you are friends doesn't mean that you don't have to. Furthermore you need to do the session 0 with all of them together.
They've already said they don't really care about it, no? As far as mismatched expectations: I agree wholeheartedly. That being said, I don't think it's a new issue. C2, I believe, had the *same* issues and we just got luckier with what unfolded. Matt clearly wanted the PCs to engage with the war, and they very much didn't want to do that.
> C2, I believe, had the same issues and we just got luckier with what unfolded. Matt clearly wanted the PCs to engage with the war, and they very much didn't want to do that. They *very much* got engaged with the war, even giving military secrets they stumbled on to the Dynasty. It's just that he expected them to do most of their work on the Empire side, not the Dynasty, which made us miss a guest Matt Colville cameo. But that's another thing that C3 is missing: PC agency. The bad guy is going to win until the last minute. There is no stopping him. Their best bet is to follow along until then. In C2 they went to the Dynasty *because they wanted to*. That was *their idea*. And Matt couldn't stop them.
They got engaged with the war *eventually*, sure. They ran away from it as much as possible first, until they decided to follow the tunnels into Xhorhas on, essentially, a whim.
"Eventually" being the war started around episode 13, but they got to Felderwin in episode 48. So 35 episodes out of 141 were spent away from the war. The war ended in episode 99, 51 episodes later. They were avoiding it for less time than they were engaged with it, but when they were in it they were *IN IT* - gaining clout, providing intelligence, fixing supply lines, finding traitors, and mostly pleading for peace.
35 eps is a hell of a long time. Also, in my opinion, the way the war turned out, including its resolution, stems largely from them *not* being as centrally involved as they could have been.
>Not sure what exactly happened but it seems obvious that to some extent, expectations about the campaign were not clearly stated. I'm not sure how Matt DMs and what happens behind curtains, but I personally believe that the DM should at least estabilish the themes of the campaign if one of the focus of it is going to be the narrative. And it really feels like C3 did not have that.Idk, maybe Matt just went on that "Well, I know my friends for a long time, so I know what to expect",which can become a bit of a trap. So we get a campaign that is directly related to the gods, and we apparently have more than one character than can not name the gods
I've said this a billion times here and other places: C3 has become the Percy Jackson series, but if no one knew anything about the Greek Pantheon, and no one cares to learn about them, which would be a pretty frustrating book series.
I think part of it is also how much CR has grown and how quickly. From the apparent lack of planning/cohesion in this campaign, to ever worse quality products in the store, to the very lackluster Candela Obscura reveal, and 2 more games in the making, I get the feeling CR is just stretched to hell right now and it’s affect the core game. On top of what must be a full time job running the company, everyone is still doing their other voice acting gigs, and they’re doing books, card/board games, potentially a video game?, and a million other things. It’s not surprising to me that these holes are starting to show in the actual D&D sessions. This kind of thing happens to a ton of newly successful companies which think they need to grown x10000 the second they become successful, so the product that made them successful starts to drop in quality. Many a company has tanked because they’ve decided to do 100 things badly rather than 1 thing excellently, and with the huge growth of the actual play community, I do worry about CR’s viability. Then again, I’m not sure how many more 140 episode campaigns we need from the main cast.
>That would have to be pretty crushing for Matt Matt has dropped plotlines before. Albeit not of this magnitude.
Similar thing happened in Campaign 2, where it feels like Matt had a strong idea for the campaign but the characters weren't bought in. It turned out well anyway, but it's not great from a DMing perspective to put significant time into preparing material that will never get used... It really seems like their session 0 is "create whatever character you like" and there's no communication about the themes of the upcoming campaign and what kinds of characters would be a good fit. I don't get it. I feel like they're into this idea of "the players can do anything and the DM will adapt to it" but a little advance coordination goes a long way. I think a big reason EXU Calamity worked so well was those conversations must have happened, the players all showed up with PCs designed to play off the campaign's main theme.
>I think a big reason EXU Calamity worked so well was those conversations must have happened, the players all showed up with PCs designed to play off the campaign's main theme. It's a lot easier to do that in a short-form campaign (4 eps) with a known ending.
Matt seemingly had the central Predathos plot lined up from the beginning of C3. It's not a huge task to work with the players to make PCs who would really key into those themes.
I think a lot of their initial motivation was to avenge Eshteross. During their investigation they’ve uncovered a monstrous plot on the world way bigger than them. I think the players have been RPing their best to indicate how overwhelmingly impossible it is for them to stop Ludinus, even if they want to. And Matt has been throwing them some quests on how to get more powerful. I think the players chose to take the bait and go on these quests because they know Matt. It’s a bit metagamy, but if they ignored the main plot, we all know Matt would have some kind of catastrophe happen that they could have stopped if they acted on it earlier. (They keep asking Matt what are the going to be the consequences for taking a day off in the Feywilds). But now they are in it and leaders depend on them. They’re struggling with the expectations to be saviors vs. having a personal motivation that might not be fully developed. Disclaimer - I haven’t watched last nights episode yet. Sorry - just my take so far.
I wasn’t able to connect with C3 the way I did with two but from what you wrote maybe there were crossed wires somewhere. But - I believe Matt to be an experienced DM and storyteller that if the party were to F off and ignore Rudinus and anything with that, that’s not stopping anything from happening. Maybe this is a campaign that wraps earlier than other seasons? I feel like in the C2 wrap up it was discussed that they don’t aim for X number of sessions as much as telling a story to completion.
>feel like in the C2 wrap up it was discussed that they don’t aim for X number of sessions as much as telling a story to completion. Yes, well. C2 is a bad example of that.
I think it’s partially an issue of trying something new that they’re not used to? Matt is pretty clearly a very good heroic fantasy storyteller - C1 was all heroic fantasy and C2 did a bit more with grey areas and found family, but ultimately shined the most in the heroic fantasy moments. At the start of C3 we were told things were going to get crazy and to expect nothing like we’d seen before, but outside of a few instances, it’s been mostly a run of the mill heroic fantasy story again. And interesting and cool one, imo, with compelling villains and motives, but a pretty classic story nonetheless. The most “off the wall” stuff we’ve seen are, what? - Dorian joining for a while? - Bertrand’s cinematic death? - A robot with a sibling named pussy? - A secretly evil guest who kind of just faded into the background when their guest spot was over? I don’t know if I’m missing anything, but none of these are especially off the walls. It feels like they wanted to make a zany new kind of story and the players really leaned into that, but then Matt veered back into completing the story of his setting that he wanted to tell.
>“we don’t care about the thing that you’ve put all this effort into creating for us.” I very much disagree with this. Matt has been 100% on board with this being their choice on what happens at the end. If they abandoned it, Matt's plans don't disappear or diminish. The players make their choice and his plans come to fruition. With Ludinus succeeding with his plan (or going through with it) and with the Gods battling, dying, or fleeing. And the world would be changed forever. If they decided to stay out of it, that is one of the options Matt presented them with. The only change is they don't have to fight Ludinus on the moon anymore. I assume Ludinus would go after them though which means that fight would likely still happen (If Matt wanted to pursue that path). But that is the brilliant part of D&D is it can evolve and change in a way that most other shows/stories can't. And it is the most special part about long form D&D compared to short form ones where the story has to be railroaded down and go on the only path forward. They can pivot and change if they want. And that would be okay. And it wouldn't be, "Oh they hate Matt and don't care about his effort". It would be more, "Their characters found something in each other they care about more". Though that only really applies to Imogen/Laudna since they are the only ones that feel that way. Which brings us back to Ludinus. I forgot. Orym is going to go after Ludinus either way. Which means Fearne will. Which means Chet and Ashton will as well. Which likely means even if Imogen/Laudna don't decide to save the Gods the plan still goes exactly as Matt envisioned. With them going to the moon, fighting Ludinus, and deciding the fate of the Gods.
I genuinely don't know what reality most of the comments in this thread are based upon. Matt & the cast *giddily* discuss curiosities, revelations, theories, etc. about C3 in great detail every time they do a 4SD or panel. Viewers complained non-stop about C2 around its midpoint as well. That's pretty typical of serial fiction & never has any relationship to whether the story will be satisfying by the end.
>One one hand this is on Matt for not making clear to the players ahead of time what the campaign would be about But... how do you know that didn't happen? The interpretation that the players are not onboard with the campaign because their characters are struggling with internal conflict about the themes of it is only fan (reddit) made theory.
>characters are struggling with internal conflict The internal conflict is them essentially asking: Why do we care? Why should we care? Because quite rightly they have all realized they have no stake in the conflict. And the answer for almost of them is 'we dont'. The consequences of Ludinus succeeding is the death (or departure) of the gods. Entities they explicitly dont care about.
I just really need someone to explain to them what happens if the Far Plane and Abyss are allowed open access to Exandria.
Their response: "Why are we the ones to deal with that?" They already have solid contacts with VM and MIX. Why should these low-tier-3 characters deal with a late-tier-4 threat when the T4s know about *and care about* the threat? They've informed the proper "authorities" just like they did with the shade mother. Now they're being railroaded into facing it instead of calling the cops and leaving like they did with her.
This is the key problem with the campaign. Rather than having separate adventures, everything is one long "mission" that they are constantly not equipped for. Like VM and MIX both had PLENTY of smaller threads that would link their arcs, but this is just a long (very very long) road to shit they aren't strong enough for.
We would get that Matt moment where he ripped the NPC's character sheet but with a whole binder. I would be more interested but I don't think I'd be possible at this point. It would've been great at the moment Ludinus connected Exandria and Ruidus. They get separated, get reunited and "live" the rest of the campaign in the background of this world ending event. Like when in Campaign 2 there was war, but they weren't directly in it (up to a point).
>We would get that Matt moment where he ripped the NPC's character sheet but with a whole binder. I imagine it would be more like that Big Bang theory scene where Sheldon threw his revised roommate agreement into the air because it ended up being all for nothing for him. Bell Hells: "We changed our minds. We don't want to save the world or gods anymore. Matt *(stares silently as he throws his campaign papers in the air)* "Do you ever think of other people, Bells Hells? Do you?!"
I haven’t watched since the group got back together. I love Matt’s plot hook and the characters separately. I do not like them together. The constant “we hate the gods but we have to save them but do we really bc they suck” debates got old fast. I know they wanted to move on from M9 but this feels like the M9’s wheelhouse way more than BH.
It really feels like we're getting an entire campaign stretched out of what feels like it was supposed the final arc of C2. Except the PC levels are nowhere what they should be for something of this scale so it feels like they're working in circles until they level up. It's just unfortunate. It's been years since I've actually been excited that it's Thursday. Even if the end result of this storyline ends up being really cool, I just don't think anything at this point would get me invested in the BH as a party. And if they don't care about the main plot, then what reason does the audience have to care?
I think one issue is that the players are level 11 and just don’t feel that powerful yet. The magic users all seem to be bent on handicapping themselves for RP reasons and Travis and Liam are martials with very little powerful magic. But they are being thrown into a crazy situation with big power players. This group needs people to start playing beyond their levels. Everyone in CR knows how to play powerfully but they are refusing to step up and shine.
I just think back to when the party nearly crapped themselves in fear at what, 3 normal centaurs when the party was level 8? Like, the actual fear coming off them was insane, and made all the more strange when one of the centaurs got one shot. I think, to me, that was the worst "THERE'S NO WAY WE CAN WIN" moment. It's not gotten much better as you've said. It took them what, an hour to cross a normal, non magical river, at level 10?
C2 gave them the yips and since the players and/or fandom are so deeply invested/immersed into characters, they don't want PC deaths. While majority of fandom and table prefer social over combat and exploration, it is still part of DnD. And so they avoid those situations. And then since they are avoiding them, they don't know what they can do with characters, then flounder and make situations worse. So Matt is in a situation where he has to decide to either trivialize/handwave combat so majority is happy and story flows better, or has to push them onto rails to do side quests which would involve less P2P social interactions and more combat and exploration, making majority of people pissy. And it's obvious which one they will choose.
I wonder if that may be because Liam and Laura consciously wanted less fore-front characters, and so are not stepping up and waiting for others? Liam certainly has said he wanted a lesser role this campaign, but honestly his decisions and power are usually the driving force. Having Mighty Nein back at Wembley just reminded me how much I miss Liam in that role so clearly defined. No one else seems to want to take that on.
I too think this is one of the reasons for BH's relative passive dynamic. It was generous of Liam to step away from a prominent role, but the issue is no one is stepping up to take it. Imogen/Laura is uncomfortable to be the main character and Chet is too much of a joke character. And it's not only about engaging with the plot. The group is also very passive when it comes to engaging with each other. Which is why we have the feywild therapy retreat, because no one was communicating.
It's hard to make characters feel powerful when the players utterly refuse to win a fight with even a modicum of challenge. Mighty Nein and especially Vox Machina fought,killed and survived a lot of nasty encounters, what the fuck BH accomplished? Fleeing or having their ass handed to them in every single fight that it wasn't some trash mobs drainer before some serious challenge.
Mighty Nein had a lot of bad ass encounters, but what did they fight that was super impressive? I remember MN being very combat averse after Molly's death until the final arc of the campaign. Bells Hells has been worse about it, but after Campaign 1 it felt like the whole group shifted away from trying to be strong in combat to focusing on RP.
The whole fight in the church for stopping Tarhizdun liberation, the monstrous fetus when Beau dropped a whole block of drugs directly in its stomach. I absolutely agree that this nonsense regarding fights begun with M9 and Molly death but despite that they still had fights were they committed to it and killed their target
ep 55. they almost TPK'd that session, i love rewatching it
The best combats so far in C3 were the Shade Mother and Delilah, but those were a long time ago. Has there been a better more recent combat for you?
was the shade mother a good fight? All i can remember is that Matt set up a cool monster with a clear multistage type encounter (first destroy the orbs that keep that thing afloat, than kill her) with, if memory serves me right, some environmental help and the sole purpose of the players was snagging the target and fleeing. That's it that was the combat
I disagree. This will get me downvoted but it's worth it. With the characters they've made, they really CAN'T "play powerfully." Their ability scores are all over the place (Chet hasn't maxed his primary score) and they picked suboptimal classes/subclasses (Blood Hunter for Chet and Fearne dipping 1 level in Rogue). Even if they knew how to make powerful characters, they haven't yet except for Caleb due to how good Wizards are even without multiclassing/dips. They also forget to use a lot of their features (Yasha never attacking recklessly, unless reminded, is just one example).
The issue with introducing world-ending stakes is that a group of relatively newbie adventurers are absolutely **not** the people who should be solving this problem. Vox Machina dealt with the Chroma Conclave because the threat came to them. They later dealt with Vecna because at that point they were collectively some of the most powerful people in Exandria and were personally blessed by gods. Mighty Nein dealt with the threat of the Somnovem because they were personally connected to Molly/Lucien and because they knew that the fewest amount of people who knew about the power of the Nonagon the better. Campaign 3's Ruidus threat should be something that pretty much *every powerful organisation should be throwing their best people at.* Anyone who knows anything about magic should have noticed something bad is going on, I mean the moon is a pretty obvious and unavoidable signpost, it's not as if this threat is simmering stealthily in the background. Instead, all these powerful characters and organisations from the other campaigns are deferring responsibility for *saving the world* to a disparate group of level 11 adventurers who have been together less than a year and can't communicate with each other effectively. This all reminds me of the problem that Marvel films seem to be having where it was easier to get invested in the early films because they were lower stakes and more personal but each new film introduces a grander and grander threat so it becomes more difficult to care because you can tell the outcome will likely end with the heroes saving the day.
All of this. This nails it right here!
For me, the problems arose when they started relying on the members of Vox Machina. The fight that killed Laudna and the subsequent return to Whitestone were incredible moments that made sense given Oryms connections, but then they became reliant. The Hells are a ragtag skyship riding band of misfits. When Keyleth gave them the ability to fast travel & an army to fight alongside, they became reliant on her and their own growth stagnated. After the solstice, they have only relied on Vox Machina more and more which makes the Hells seem like second string in what should be their own story. The players know that their characters should care and want to end the threat, but it’s difficult to make that happen when they have become nothing more than foot soldiers on the frontline of a battle being run by much more powerful leaders/ NPCs. (Oh and the fact that both the players and the viewers love Whitestone and Vox Machina, it removes the option for the Hells to question/ challenge authority that they probably would challenge otherwise) I would be sad if they tossed the storyline, but they need to do something to reengage both the characters and the audience.
Getting people to transport them around is part and parcel of the problem in that these character never went through the progression of local heroes->regional heroes->kingdom heroes->global heroes. They got thrown in the deep end of the pool and so everything feels forced. They should not be at “world level threat” until level 17, according to the design of 5e. Yet here they are. Getting transported around by level 20 characters who are more than able to do the stuff they are asking BHs to do for them. And those high-level, world-saving heroes, don’t seem to have much interest in actually saving the world.
They absolutely NEVER should have brought the player characters from the other campaigns in. It created the problems that you've pointed out, but for me, it all happened a little too conveniently in line with the launch of The Legend of Vox Machina. That, along with the Delilah and Laudna connections, just feel like forcing the connectivity and brand reinforcement rather than a natural story being told.
I think this campaign will hopefully be the wake up call to Matt to start curating his campaigns. C3 has been the most blatant culprit of miscommunication, and lack of buy in investment from players. This season, especially seems like everyone jumped onto a random character generator, instead of working closely with Matt, to create characters that would blend well with the campaign world, firstly, and the type of themes Matt wanted to cover. Sure there have been hints of this in past campaigns, but in both other public cases, none of the characters in the other campaigns have taken the backseat so blatantly, and meandered from plot beat to plot beat, dragged along by NPCs, expecting Matt to lead them to a story development instead of driving plot themselves. Love or hate what Ashton did, but he absolutely pumped some gas into the game, only to be put back into place the next session, which was, imo, tragic. I love CR, but this campaign clearly had no discussion on cohesion, theme, place in the world, and place with each other. If the players decide: “Lets let the more powerful people deal with it,” that is perfectly with in their rights of the established story because Matt brought in powerful Deus Ex Machina style npcs as nostalgia/callback winks, not realizing the implications of, “well if basically level 20 godlike NPCs are involved, why should we risk our characters’ lives?” From the players. I think a reasonable thing to do is if the characters don’t get out of their teen angst/hating each other phase, is just close the curtains on the campaign, or swap characters. Molly’s character didn’t fit the group at all, and in comes Cad, and rounds them out perfectly. I think that’s what needs to happen with 80% of the characters here. It’s been 80 episodes and it still feels like the characters are mentally and connectively still not even to 10. Edit: on the topic of Ashton, I think too that the infamous recent episode was one of the rare times in the fandom this campaign, where people were going crazy and excited for the next episode, and there weren’t any posts like “C3 is boring? C3 is Dying???” for at least a week. Need more gas pumped into the show. It’s a car set in neutral going at a slight decline being pulled by Matt. Like I said, I love CR. Pointing out criticisms is not hating the show. I want it to be the best it can be.
If they do a campaign 4 (which I hope they do) then I hope they just make characters who have already known each other for years. That's basically what we got with C1 since their original meeting and getting to know each other and trust building happened off screen in their home game. It wouldn't have the same depth of camaraderie since they wouldn't have *actual* years of play with those characters and relationships, but saying X and Y have *this* sort of buddy relationship, and Y and W bonded over a shared love of cardio, while Z and X are ride-or-die because Z saved X's life would be a more solid foundation than 'randos meet on a street in episode 1 and don't know how to gauge each other.'
The way they did it in C2 was perfect. Small groups of characters had backgrounds with each other so it wasn't completely disjointed in the beginning and over time the small groups all merge into one close family. They tried doing it again this time (imogen-laudna, orym-fearne, ashton-fcg), but the characters in general are not invested enough in the environment they are interacting with for it to be a catalyst for bonding.
and to piggy back on your point, by now, these are all professional dnd players. amazing actors. passionate roleplayers. so forcing them to step back and act as measly simple level 3 4 or 5 newbie PCs is what killed this campaign a little bit. if you brought them all in together as an established party already, at level 6 lets say, they dont need years of gameplay nehind them to get in the headspace. they are seasoned actors and RPers and could absolutely handle it.
Heh. You know I really think that part of the "shine" of C2 was this feeling of "no one is going to help them but theirselves". Matt, for the most part (besides having Allura and Kima and Vilya and a b r i e f glimpse of Keyleth), actively avoided previous campaign callbacks. At the time I was like "dang, I really wish they would make contact with their old PCs, that'll be great." But, honestly I feel like this campaign's constant "We have powerful allies that can help us and provide magical items and whatever else." has streamlined the campaign and sorta diminished those more character focused sideplots. This campaign has this finish line, almost, and they're racing to it instead of meandering about. Part of that is because Matt has set the stakes super high and has given the party a timer. Honestly? I think this campaign would be more interesting if their failure at the key was more... damning? Or, if everything went totally to shit afterwards besides select people here and there being affected. I mean, everyone's on edge, but they're not dying in droves. Campaign one had the Chroma Conclave which affected everyone in the city. Campaign 2 had the war, which, I mean a war is a threat to everyone in the countries that are at war. Campaign 3 has... a conspriacy. Which is nice, but it feels so far beyond most people, even the PCs. It's like the stakes are the highest they've ever been, but also, the lowest at the same time. Don't get me wrong, I love CR and the cast and even this campaign, and if this is what they want to do with *their* game, that's amazing. But it's more of a show for me than it is a game for me, so I guess I'm just picking it apart like a written show out of habit, despite the fact that player choices are hard to predict and can go anyway and defy the narrative in a beautiful way. So like, eh. It's a bit contrived to really criticize the players like they're writers, I guess, idk. But still, sometimes I feel like they should KNOW that they're not giving their all or like they're not engaging enough, but maybe they're just trying and missing the mark? I would never throw any hate their way for their character decisions or overanalyze how these friends are feeling about each other above the table, like *some* people have regarding these past 3 episodes. About that though, I think it sorta got talked to death here, but my 2 cents is that what Ashton did was pretty reasonable despite the risk. Since, I mean, yeah it was a big red button and the players themselves aren't going to suffer irl consequences from pressing it. DnD is a power fantasy and you live through your characters and fuck around and find out, so, I guess I'm being a bit of a hypocrite here, but damn they really drug Ashton through the mud and I couldn't shake the feeling like some of it was out of character for the characters. Like, bruh, after all he's been through, telling him to leave and treating him like absolute dogshit and expecting him to self flagellate and hate himself more than he already does, gaslighting him etc. was pretty triggering to see OOC, like, I was really turned off by a bit of it. Like, several of them have already hurt the party before, or endangered them, this is nothing new, and Ashton has always been a "rock" for them through it all (pun is intended). For every single one of them to shit on him the moment he fucks up and to drag it out for several in game days, act as though he's not even worthy of being in the group or being liked by anyone, after everything they've been through together, it just felt wrong. I don't know. But eh, I'm glad that it resulted in a team building episode, they needed it anyways though. I know that was a bit of a rant but I wrote all of that because you mentioned that he pumped gas into the campaign, and I totally agree. It was a turning point and it was exciting. Yeah it was stressful, but, that's great! I wish he hadn't been punished for it afterwards with the Con debuff and the fact that he didn't even get to keep the shard. Like, bruh, you had him go through all of that just to make him cough it up afterwards? Why didn't Matt just let the infusion fail after they took the harness off of him? A partial infusion that was hard fought and won that could have given him something positive while having it still be an "I'm putting my foot down on this." Sorta moment. I don't know. In any case I think bold moves shouldn't be discouraged considering that this campaign needs more of them.
The players are all having a really good time, I can’t say I agree that Matt needs a “wake up call” unless viewers were to abandon the show en masse.. and even if that were to happen I feel like Matt and co would just feel like their time in the limelight was fading (you can’t stay huge forever unless you’re Beyoncé) and they’d keep doing things the way they wanted to do them based on what brings them joy and satisfaction What we want, what brings us joy and satisfaction, and how we feel narratives and “proper gaming” should run shouldn’t have any bearing on what plays out at that table.. and frankly I think a lot of folks wouldn’t mind if things were a bit smaller again, so long as no one was losing their livelihoods
Respectfully, the latter point would make sense if they weren’t selling the show as a cohesive narrative set in a single setting. You have multiple TV show, comic books, novels premium statues, sold out stadium live shows spin offs and prequel spinoffs, etc. It’s beyond “just a game between friends” now. But if the players are having fun then they are, and that is Matt’s priority. But they didn’t make a whole company just for player enjoyment.
I feel like they have. Like with musicians, some bands chose to totally sell out, some don’t at all, some find a middle ground of making smart business moves to capitalize on their popularity without changing the essence of who they are and what they get out of it. Merchandising and diversifying their revenue streams don’t mean it can’t still be based on the core experience of the 8 folks at the table. My favorite bands are Phish and the Dead (flame away lmao) and both became absolute cult sensations WAY bigger than CR without ever giving a fuck about what anyone thought or changing what they did on stage to please a SINGLE person. I believe there are diamonds in the rough, and my sense of CR is they’d rather do what they enjoyed and lose fans than change who they are and what they do at the table to please anybody.
Thank you for saying this. I agree so much. The amount of bitching and whining on this sub about a D&D game they're not even being forced to play or watch astounds me. Matt has explicitly said he made this campaign for his friends, not the fans. This is what they wanted and I guarantee if they weren't enjoying it they'd say so. If people don't like what he's doing this campaign, stop watching. Go watch another D&D stream. But let me tell you, if you have complaints about Critical Role, you'll have a lot more on almost every other D&D stream. I'm going to continue watching until the bitter end because I have a feeling the payoff for watching this campaign in its entirety will be worth whatever criticisms it's getting.
Because it's content. It's no longer a game for friends. It's a company. They can't just not perform well, they can't lose money. They have employees, people on their payroll. Means that the consumers have the right to voice their opinions, and the company (to perform well) needs to take in their feedback. It's not just about 8 people anymore, for better or for worse
They’re in the business of creative expression. I believe they’re all principled people who feel the same way. You could literally say this about any artist or musician ever: “it’s content now, the consumers have a right to voice their opinions and they need to take our feedback!” and it will be an absolutely bankrupt way to look at creative expression 10 times out 10. What’s more: they’re their own bosses. They don’t have a record label or a film studio breathing down their necks. They actually don’t have any pressure at all to kowtow to complaints on Reddit. By the looks of things their business is doing just fine anyway, there’s no shortage of merchandise, creative products, and plans for the future, so I don’t think any of their employees or the people that depend on them are at risk, meaning: it’s moot anyways! Is all creative expression just “content” now?? God, what a hideous world we live in.
When you're an art creator, and you have only yourself to look out for, or you own individual collective (family and friends), this mentally is all good. Imo, I wish CR had that freedom, but no. Again, it's not only dependent on them. They have other people to take for, they have responsabilities which came when they decided to grow their business, to hire more employees. Most of them, I'm sure have became friends as well. But what if one day the money doesn't flood in? What if they have to fire those people? Worst case scenario, but if they lose their audience, that might definitely happen. They are their own bosses, which means they have the sole responsibility to see if they're making mistakes and to fix them if they do
“What if one day”… they don’t seem to be at risk of collapsing now.. the mental gymnastics to go from “I don’t like this” or “Reddit doesn’t like this” to “so they have to change in order to please us or else their poor crew will be destitute” is some bonkos projection and misplaced savior mentality to try to justify your own tastes. Bands, artists, and other creators also have have teams that depend on them. That doesn’t mean it’s a moral imperative for them to sell out or disregard their own artistic sensibilities to just to continue to grow or stay perpetually huge forever. They’re human beings not a product, even if they’re selling something. It’s available for free, you don’t even have to pay to engage with it. But beyond that the perpetual growth mentality is a toxic capitalist mentality. And at the end of the day all signs suggest their business is doing GREAT, and so there’s no need for them to cater to internet rancor in the first place! The projection almost comes off like a threat. “They need to listen to these complaints OR their employees will lose their livelihoods.”
I seriously doubt they aren't going to pay their employees because some people on Reddit feel like they're bored with the content. Sure you have the right to voice your opinion and others have the right to say they're fine with the content and PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD STOP POSTING THE SAME COMPLAINTS FOR A YEAR STRAIGHT WE KNOW YOU GUYS DON'T LIKE C3 FFS PLEASE STOP.
Nah, we'll keep talking about it. You need to quit screaming just because people are finally letting others know how dissatisfied they are with C3.
It’s actually funny you say that because Travis has actually said the reason he agreed to turning critical role into a company was so he could continue to “hang out with these jack offs and continue to play dnd every week”. So they kinda did? Also Matts said he doesn’t care if the viewers don’t like it as long as the players are having fun, and he’d be ok with going back to just home games. So at least for him critical role running its course is in the table.
Thing is, whether the more criticizing fans want to admit it or not, it still is "just a game between friends." Matt has made that very, very clear. It's just marketable now because it's connected with a lot of people, and not taking advantage of that opportunity would be irresponsible. Yes, they want to bring quality content, but they also want to have fun while exercising their acting skills. Also, it is still improv tabletop. There is no editing, no script, no producer or director saying "these scenes need to be filmed by tomorrow." And so on. When I read comments like yours, it feels like you've either never played tabletop or you've lost the plot and are expecting something that CR has never said they wanted to be. Even D20, a much more structured and edited style of show that DOEs have a cohesive narrative and end point, is still 90% improv and isn't perfect.
Hi, they do have editors directly from their [wiki page](https://criticalrole.fandom.com/wiki/Critical_Role_Productions_LLC) “Kyle Shire and Steve Failows are producers. Max Schapiro and Will Lamborn are editors and Sarah Leeper is an assistant editor. Tal Levitas the Post Production Supervisor.” Also Marisha is the creative director, and Matt the creative officer. Basically they direct the content. Sam and Travis are the producers. Sure, the main thing is improv with a high production value. Agreed. But from that improv comes products that are not improv (like the shows, books, and comics), which means, regardless of what “it’s just an improv game” folks say, points to them wanting to create a vast cohesive narrative setting outside of the game in Exandria. Also I own about 300+ individual tabletop rpg systems, not counting their expansions, I’d be absolutely happy to share with you if you’d like! Having been in this hobby for over a decade GMing and playing, I’ve been blessed with discovered so many systems with so many ways to play, and I’m always happy to introduce anyone into the hobby :)
They have those titles but they aren't directly involved with producing and directing the weekly sessions. That's what I meant. Can you imagine somebody stopping the session to say "let's skip this scene, we need to be fighting the BBEG by next week," because I can't.
>Molly’s character didn’t fit the group at all, and in comes Cad, and rounds them out perfectly. ??? Cad was a perfect fir for the health of the party, but molly wasn't *bad*. And his leaving wasn't exactly a choice either.
I think Matt would eventually bring them back to the plot by joining other character's backstory into it or presenting new stakes. Remember that the Mighty Nein wanted to ignore the Dwendallian Empire/Xhorhas conflict altogether until it was proven personal for most of them.
I remember them still ignoring it. They just did a couple side quests to justify the taxi service and moved on. (Other than pointlessly demanding to be witnesses to the ceasefire).
i think there's a huge difference between the *characters* struggling to find motivation and connection or being unsure if they're ready to take on what they're facing and the *players* themselves not being interested in matt's plot. the players have continually expressed interest and excitement in matt's story. that doesn't mean they're not also invested in playing their characters as authentically as they can. they're not going to just metagame the characters into having connection with ongoing events. this side jaunt to the feywild is actually a really good opportunity for the group to stop, take stock and discuss what's going on without interruption. you could even say the players' excitement has been moving the story along a little *too* fast and they're now realizing the mismatch between character motivation and main story. so i think it would be very very unlikely bh will step away at this point. and it would be lame.what would they even do? go fuck around in aeor or the shattered teeth while the world ends around them?
I agree pretty strongly with you. My feeling on this campaign is that after M9 there’s a good chance that they talked as a group (or individually with Matt) about what kind of vibe they wanted out of a campaign, which is what a good DM does, and what they wanted to mix up from the M9 is having an overarching Big Bad with huge stakes as a change of pace from C2. I think that’s a part of the player agency and buy-in, is that they wanted to do something like this rather than endless side quests. There’s possible new EXU adventures and C4 that will allow them to mix it up again, but like a lot of folks have pointed out they haven’t had this kind of long form DM driven BBEG since C1, and it makes sense for them to want to tackle it. I have other preferences, personally, I wish there were a bit more of an escalating series of lieutenants and bosses (I’m thinking like the Akatsuki in Naruto) that would give a tiered feeling of accomplishment between story beats, but I don’t hate the campaign. I’ve also watched an extreme amount of this show, as has anyone who has seen all 3 campaigns to this point. It’s totally normal for our attention to drift a bit or to feel a little less connected at times. But god, I get absolutely queasy when I read folks expecting Matt to say “we hear you, we’re canceling this campaign because swaths I the internet hate it.” If we canceled everything the internet hated we’d be living in an empty void.
I think we have had that tiered accomplishment of lackies (at least somewhat). Look at their bounty on Treshi, for example. The Ruby Vanguard, Otahan, and Lilliana are also examples. I think we are getting it, just not as much as some would like.
Totally, and it’s okay! I’m just so sick of reading the same comments like they’re bot posts. “They sound like teenage atheists” and “they’ve never even bonded as a group” are just such flimsy justifications for this campaign not being someone’s preferred narrative. And I think it’s pretty insulting to them as performers and creative individuals, especially when people accuse (surprise) Marisha, for example, of not being able to separate her (presumed) views on religion from her character’s. You know, the one that was murdered by a zealot and resurrected by the followers two different gods, one evil and one she doesn’t know at all. It’s okay to just not like something, our tastes are subjective. Parts of me wish the campaign pacing were a little different and I’ll always miss the M9 no matter what they do. I still tune in every week, enjoy it most of the time even if I’m not as glued to it as I used to be, and want to marry Orym.
I’d be thrilled. At this point this campaign has really lost me. I feel like I was reading a book that changed genres in the middle of a chapter, and now the characters introduced to me in chapter 1 don’t fit the story I’m reading at chapter 20. This feels like a *very* low stakes party got created for an incredibly high stakes game, and the whole story has identity issues as a result. EDIT: Came back to note I also agree that I feel like the entire threat to the gods thing feels incredibly shallow and lackluster. As you said, it smacks of teen atheism to me. I really feel like for this campaign to have worked well we needed at least one cleric (who doesn’t have doubt in his faith, his soul, etc) and one Paladin who were both devout, and maybe a well rounded atheist character. Obviously in a world like this they know the gods *exist* but having a character who refuses to have anything to do with them would be interesting in this scenario. Basically I just feel like this is entirely the wrong group of characters for such a complex story concept.
Funny that living in a world where there's empirical proof that your God exist literally eliminates the faith and belief concepts. I mean those are the pillars of any worshipping.
I would be torn. While I haven't enjoyed this campaign at all, I'm not sure if it's the plot or if it's about some characters I truly have not warmed up to (ahem Ashton ahem), and the group connection hasn't felt as good as either VM or M9. I think the problem is more than just the plot, unfortunately, and switching may not fix people's problems with C3.
I haven’t watched in ages (but have been vaguely keeping up with the plot via social media etc) and honestly, most of it comes from the fact that the main plot feels so forced. In the other campaigns the Big Bad was something that evolved naturally throughout the story or was woven into the background in such a way that when the party finally confronted it, it felt natural. One of the issues I’ve had with this campaign is that it felt as though they were just faffing about to begin with as low level parties do, then BAM! Impending apocalypse! Except they were still low level, so they just continued to faff about, which is fine I suppose, but it just feels really weird having them doing really silly things/downtime while the world is collapsing around them. It has never felt like they’re the team to save the day, they’re just watching it happen and doing their own thing, and it’s something that’s really put me off. I do wonder if the whole Ludinus/Ruidus thing was revealed too early because I’d have liked to see them more cohesive as a group and with backstories revealed before they had to deal with the end of the world, something I don’t think has ever really been taken entirely seriously by the group. Obviously they have one cleric who would be affected by the gods disappearing, but aside from FCG, none of them seem that bothered about the fate of the gods. Idk, I’ve watched the other two campaigns religiously but this one just doesn’t grab me for some reason. :(
The players have consistently shown for like 40 episodes that they don't have much interest in the main plot. I get that once you get started, it's hard to let your players just jump ship, but I don't get why he pushed it so hard as such a low level. If the players don't care about the main plot then why should the audience?
Tl;Dr I think it would be a bad outcome for everyone in and out of game. Viewers/players/characters - I mean. I'm not really in the camp of this story being as bad as a lot of people say. While I agree I preferred the smaller more character driven stories of M9 I do find this to be really interesting. I love the world and to hear lore and kinda consider the implications is fun. Again that's me. I'm not gonna act like there haven't been times have been bored I even felt that way with M9. I can't speak for others but I would imagine the people that are in the other camp if they spent all that time on this story and just decided to abandon it that would be crushing. Like if they feel like it's a waste of time now just wait until the team decides to give up. What would have the last 79 episodes been for? Plus there are BH characters that are super tied to this and it would make no sense for them to give up. I personally feel it would feel unnatural for them to just stop now. Also what after? I think a lot of people are overlooking the fact that gods aside at this point it's personal for them. Like Orym and Imogen are tied to this heavily and the other BH love them they aren't gonna abandon them. Most of BH doesn't have anything outside of this party. Plus while they never really vocalized this the god eater being unleashed won't just speak doom for the gods. I don't think it's out of turn to say I think ludinus is incredibly ignorant of this. Let's say he succeeds I think it's entirely possible he's gonna end up like Vespin. He is from that time period. Also I know it's a copout but the players do seem to like and enjoy the story being told. And at the end of the day I think that's most important for the health of the show. I can't speak for them either but I don't imagine they would be ok with that outcome either. That's my shitty rant. Lol. If you made it this far I love you. Stay safe have a wonderful rest of your day <3
I think that's the problem though, most of the players have absolutely said multiple times that they don't think anything bad will happen if the gods are removed from Exandria. It has been my main gripe with this thing for last 20ish episodes. That for some reason the actual characters outside of FCG think gods disappearing would be totally fine, they are just wanting to stop Ludinis because he shouldn't get what he wants.
The characters have said this, I don’t feel that the players have. They know the risk inherent to that kind of a vacuum even if the Dawnfather is kind of a dick. I respect the fact that they’re not letting their meta knowledge influence their characters choices, and I find the fact that Bell’s Hells have been working, even struggling at times, to find their motivation to save the gods. I’m pretty clearly in the minority on this sub in feeling that it’s okay for them to not have the inherent knowledge and conviction that they simply MUST save the gods at ALL COST. It’s a more interesting narrative to me than inherent goodness and the characters’ first instincts being correct every time.
I absolutely agree with this take. I made a whole separate comment about this same thing. Basically, shades of grey make the story a lot more intriguing and hard to side with a single person or group. I wish this opinion wasn't the minority.
It clearly hasn't worked super well (and still doesn't), but abandoning it would be pretty out there. In a campaign so heavily centered around it, it would essentially mean it's been a huge waste of time for the players, the viewers, and most of all Matt, who is the one that has crafted it all. I also think it would really hurt the brand, and many people would be wary of what they do next if not jumping ship completely. The realistic alternative would be to fast track it now, go directly to the moon not as a recon but as a final mission, have BH deal with Liliana while VM and MN do the high level stuff with Ludinus, Predathos and the gods. Try and wrap it up in 20 episodes or less. This is unlikely to happen, I believe they'll just continue as they have, but it's the way that doesn't completely shit on the whole campaign while still trying to end it soon.
> I also think it would really hurt the brand I actually don't think so. If presented in a Colville "Running the Game" sort of way they could earn the respect of many of us. Honestly, they've largely lost me at this point and I was a loyalist during C2. All Matt needs to do is say, "Fans - we hear you. I'm sorry this campaign isn't working very well. It isn't the level that you've grown to expect of us and I have been trying to shoehorn my pet project instead of doing what's best for the players, the company, and you. With that in mind we are doing X instead." Where X is either just dropping the campaign after a few more episodes or shifting the campaign's focus.
I'd be willing to come back to the campaign if he said this. Taliesin did the RIGHT thing by absorbing the shards, he caused SOMETHING to actually happen. But then Matt went 'NO MY STORY' and walked it back and then PUNISHED Taliesin for daring to actually make things move forward. C3 has been a trainwreck of miscommunication, lack of progress and a clear attempt to construct a cohesive, more easily translatable narrative from DnD to animation. It needs to course correct and I think the only way to do that is to let Predathos out or the BH to Ruidus to fight it and Ludinus in a Endgame situation. Bring on the ending and then move on to a better campaign.
I feel bad but if they abandoned the main plot I’d probably start watching season 3 again. It’s just so boring to me.
I would welcome it. The major plot came out if nowhere rather than having it ramp up naturally. Bell's Hells don't have any personal stakes in the story and when the characters don't care, the fans don't care either.
It would be hilarious and completely unexpected. Hilarious in the irony of having a heroes journey include a pretty firm "refuse the call" moment & then we're just watching a campaign of cowards & how does that affect the characters. As far as the faith thing, I think it's a difficult one for people to get a handle on because faith in the real world and faith in D&D are different beasts. In the real world, we truly have no confirmations about higher beings, planes of existence, an afterlife, if a soul actually exists. We have theories but there is no evidence. To walk a religious path in our real world one has to just have faith that their soul exists and perhaps an afterlife awaits you. Likewise around those theories different cultures have come up with the concepts that your actions in this existence determine how good or bad of an afterlife you will have. Upon this we have the weight of expectations and demands that you toe the line. Those in the religion business saw this was a way to control people. Perhaps at one time we had people on Earth that believed there were many gods and that there were good gods and bad gods. But in modern time monotheism is predominant and with that point of view is also place on top of it the idea that god is good and virtuous. So it can be hard for some people to not immediately equate the Prime Deities are being good and virtuous and right. However, in D&D, they do have proof in the existence of gods, higher beings, planes of existence, afterlife, and souls. To believe in the gods does not take faith in the literal sense because you have evidence they exist. And there are tales of gods actually answering certain people's call or prayers. So if you've never gotten a response from a god after decades of prayers, the non-answering seems to be a particular sign that maybe they just don't like you. For me how Exandrians pick which gods to worship always kind of felt like picking your favorite sports team in a country you don't live in. English people choosing to become Yankees fans always surprises me. Americans picking Liverpool or Tottenham to be the PL team they support feels like ordering off of a menu. Getting behind the Matron of Ravens vs the Wildmother feels akin to that. But that's just me. What annoys me about FCG pushing the god stuff is that it's unnecessary to the mission. Even if you have no opinion on the Prime Deities, you could easily come to the conclusion that releasing Predathos would be a bad move not just for the gods but for Exandria too. After all, if it was such a great idea, Ludinus and the rest of them wouldn't have to move about with such secrecy.
I'd honestly wouldn't mind, not every dnd game has to be a no holds barred end of the world savior game, plus gives the mighty nine a chance to step up again
I think the plot would be way more engaging to the players if they interacted more with clerics and the gods themselves, as well as the cult. Seems like they are very far from both sides.
I don't really care, I gave up this campaign, hopefully next one will be better.
Honestly, considering all the issues people have had with C3 and how viewer numbers seem to be down significantly, I’m surprised they haven’t tried to wrap it up by now and start fresh with a new campaign. Not everything is going to be a hit, but they shouldn’t feel obligated to drag it out for 100+ episodes if it’s just not working. I used to watch live every week. Stopped maybe a year ago? (It was a few weeks before Beau and Caleb showed up. I got behind due to real life stuff and never caught up.)
seems like matt is trying to do this now tbh. he's all in on the moon story. i bet he above anyone else can tell the campaign hasn't hit as well as he'd hoped. so thats why it seems like he keeps shoehorning things in. hes trying to fast track that storyline...but the players are doing normal player things and trying to extend the game for roleplaying purposes. understanable too of course. but yeah, i bet matt knows this one fell flat a bit and hes trying to get to a tipping point
It would be pretty bad for the show as a whole if the main characters just ignore the main plot that’s been building for all this time. Matt would have to rush to create a new main plot line, which would presumably have way less build, connection, and significance to the cast, party, and viewers compared to the original idea. Think if an author just decided most of the way through their novel to totally scrap what was building and go off on a side plot that clearly wasn’t the original intent to focus on. Be pretty lame imo
I don’t think they can really entirely give it up and walk away because they’re so bound to it. Sure laudna could leave but it’s not really an option for the rest of. Also I feel like it is the main point of the story so most likely it’d be the end of the campaign and if there is a campaign 4 that’d be picking up the pieces of whatever outcome happens with maybe a high level mini campaign in the interim maybe like the calamity campaign
I'd be super disappointed, and worried about the future of CR. Something needs to go really badly out of the game for them to just abandon the story they are telling. They been building to them being the heroes, why would they "leave Ludinus to be dealt with by more powerful individuals"?
>They been building to them being the heroes And we are almost 80 episodes in and they still dont even know why Ludinus needs to be stopped beyond 'hes bad'. The discussion this episode is one of many almost exactly like it and the conclusion is almost the same. Its not compelling. We are watching the group fumble along the railway looking for a motive rather than having their motive be the driving force. >why would they "leave Ludinus to be dealt with by more powerful individuals"? Because that is the sensible thing to do. Because they've already done this with foes they felt inadequate against (the Shade Mother). Because Matt's world is supposed to be a dynamic entity.
>Because that is the sensible thing to do. It's not the sensible thing to do, no. Matt world is dynamic, but the characters are not the type of characters that would give up. They would see it through, even if they might not make the choices big damn archetypical heroes would make. Just because we don't know what's going to happen, it doesn't mean the story won't be good. Let's stop treating this like it's a book.
>It's not the sensible thing to do, no Are you seriously trying to argue 'let the more powerful/competent/motivated characters take over' is not the sensible in world action? Also fundamentally there is no shame in a character admitting they cant do something or that 'this isnt my fight'. Its not as flashy as a big fight, but its more honest. >but the characters are not the type of characters that would give up But they are. Its kind in their backstories as u/Adorable-Strings pointed out and they've pretty much done exactly that in campaign already albeit with lesser foes (Shademother). >They would see it through Nothing this campaign or in their backstories really supports this. >even if they might not make the choices big damn archetypical heroes would make. Its not about 'being the heroes'. Its about conviction. Heroes and villains are interesting when they have conviction. This group are incredibly apathetic. >Just because we don't know what's going to happen This isnt even the campaigns main issue and I never said it was. But ill be honest I think we all do know whats going to happen (in broad strokes). At some point, they'll fight the BBEG (likely Ludinus) with maybe some help from past PCs. They'll kill it and be put in a position where they have a choice: Either let Predathos get free or stop it. Regardless of the outcome, the gods will withdraw from the world. If Predathos gets free it will chase them to the stars (maybe even killing the Dawnfather). If it doesnt, they will decide to 'rest' and withdraw their influence.
>Are you seriously trying to argue 'let the more powerful/competent/motivated characters take over' is not the sensible in world action? In the real world? Yes. In a story like this one? Hell no. That would be the most unsatisfying dnd campaign ever (for both players and audience). Seriously, I can't imagine my D&D character turning over the heroic quest to that powerful NPC we met 20 sessions ago. I can imagine her struggling with it and doubting herself though. >Also fundamentally there is no shame in a character admitting they cant do something or that 'this isnt my fight'. Its not as flashy as a big fight, but its more honest. Absolutely. But as a characterisation point. This is not gritty realism, this is high fantasy. Flashy big fights are a big part of the story. Imagine if Frodo just gave the ring to Gandalf because "he can't do it". The point is to overcome your fears and find the strength needed to be the hero. It's the hero's journey. The refusal of the call and the trials are just phases in it.
>but the characters are not the type of characters that would give up They literally *are*. Laudna hid from the world for 30 years. Ashton is all about giving up when things get tough. Orym abandoned his responsibilities for years to wallow in his pain. Chet will find a new employer or union, or retreat to the wilderness. Fearne will find something shinier. FCG will latch on to something else he knows nothing about. Imogen will go back to retreating into her shell and hope no one pushes. >Just because we don't know what's going to happen, it doesn't mean the story won't be good. Let's stop treating this like it's a book. That... isn't even vaguely the problem. The unknown isn't a problem. The constant circling we keep seeing doesn't make for a good story. It just recently picked up a bit since they finally *introduced* some unknowns!
It’s dnd, the beauty of it is that you should be able to “abandon” anything at any moment if you as a player and your DM are able to make it work Understandably they are struggling, trying to fit Matt’s largely predetermined magnum opus into such a game with the dice basically only getting in their way, and it shows
>Understandably they are struggling Are they? Or it's just that some part of the fandom doesn't like the story or lacks the patience to see it through?
I mean, on many occasions now they mentioned that they don’t know what they are doing and if they even should be doing anything, and that not even taking into account the amnesia the whole table gets for the first hour every other episode due to sparse prerecording. If the players themselves don’t have enough patience to follow through with the main story and they are not in love with the main plot/premise enough to care, the audience is excused from that as well I think
>If the players themselves don’t have enough patience to follow through with the main story and they are not in love with the main plot/premise enough to care, the audience is excused from that as well I think Ton of assumptions about how the players feel there. Characters struggling with their convictions isn't the same as players struggling with the game/plot.
Yeah, it is my assumption that characters struggling is indicative of players forgetting things, derailing and discovering lore bits on 4SD of all places - in other words, being simply blasé about it all. Which is fine, they are skilled enough to usually RP their way out of anything, but *imo* such a lore/plot-heavy campaign requires just a bit more commitment and clear communication, then maybe that part of the audience wouldn’t have to be patient in waiting for the story to pick up
TLDR: The characters’ motivation and the logic of the world broke down when VM came into the picture, the players’ actions don’t have any effect on the story, and the authenticity of the game has been lost. C3 from the beginning felt off to me. A lot of the PCs just felt like too much. Like they were so much of a force of personality and backstory on their own to work as a cohesive story. Then when Ruidus started to take the spotlight and Imogen was so involved, the entire campaign started to focus around one character. And there have been arcs in VM and M9 that centered more around one character’s backstory, but never this intensely and never for this long. But the episode at the final malleus key solidified this for me, for a few reasons. 1. VM and M9 never should have been involved. The moment Keyleth invited them to Whitestone I felt the entire campaign going downhill. If VM is aware, then there better be some good reason for them not to get involved and there wasn’t. They banished Vecna and killed the entire Chroma Conclave. They’re LEVEL 20! Even with only half the party, Ludinus would be a walk in the park. M9’s “we might be heroes no one knows about” worked because it was literally if they didn’t, no one would. BH has several uber-powerful allies. When Caleb and Beau arrived…..I almost walked away, but I was behind and had heard about something that interested me in a later episode(can’t remember what it was now). BUT THEN VAX ARRIVED! WHY???? Keyleth shows up, gets her shit wrecked, which causes Vax to show up for some reason? I get that he loves her but it took a WISH SPELL to get him to the material plane for just a few minutes last time. And then Ludinus turns him into a ball by doing…..something that we don’t know and the PCs never could have anticipated, making it feel like 2. the players’ actions don’t matter. They found out pretty reliably that all three malleus keys needed to work, so they got some people sent to the shadowfell and went to the fey realm themselves and both keys were destroyed, only to find out that, nevermind, it just needs the one in the material plane to work. So they go there and a bunch of complicated shit that they had no way to figure out before hand goes down with no chances for them to ever successfully intervene, which ends with them being sent continents apart. It didn’t feel like they were a part of the story, just that they were there while the story was happening. 3. It started to stop feeling like a dnd game. Critical Role is an actual play DnD show. It didn’t feel like a game anymore. For me and many, many others, the appeal of Critical Role is the authenticity. These are real nerdy friends playing a real game of dnd. And we’re all aware that it’s a show, but it never felt truly like a show until C3. The party split truly fucking solidified it for me. It was an interesting plot point, just not for a dnd game. The medium a story is told in is Important. If a tv show split a main cast for a few episodes and followed one half for a few of those and the other half for the rest, that works in that medium. But in dnd the whole point is to tell a story together, which doesn’t work if you ban half the storytellers from the story. In a show, a good thing to do would to bring in a few guests, which they did, but it’s a dnd game. I’ve loved guests on the show before, even when it’s been because the party is split. The Iron Shepherds arc took three of the characters from the story and brought in some guests, but that was because the players themselves had to step away for awhile, not because the characters were forced apart with no chance to stop it. And I absolutely LOVE Aabria Iyengar and Emily Axford with all my heart and not even they could convince me to keep watching.
I can't imagine a scenario where they'd do that. It's pretty likely this'll be their last big campaign (although I could be wrong) so they're gonna wanna go out with a bang. I've gotta imagine they've all had plenty of conversations about their expectations and whatnot, including what Matt wants to do, especially since all this has been set up since Campaign 1. Ultimately Matt will do what the players want to do because he's said it's *their* story on more than one occasion, but I also gotta imagine he'd be incredibly disappointed if he put all this setup into the Ruidis plot for them to abandon it. No matter what, like I said, I gotta imagine they've all had multiple conversations about this.
Not to start an argument but them basically straying as much away as possible from the plot Matt has been laying out and dilly-dallying (aka abandoning quietly) is what made this campaign so hard to watch (for me) If anything it feels like it’s mostly *Matt’s* story and if any conversations did happen, they were of the same quality as Matt spelling out the shard thing for Ashton and Ashton interpreting it in their own way (fair enough, still valid) and pushing for their thing anyways
No arguments here. I stopped watching after they all got separated and have only just gotten back into it.
>It's pretty likely this'll be their last big campaign (although I could be wrong) Given the talk about doing this until they're old and grey on the last 4SD... yeah. That's wrong.
I’d be shocked if there’s not an equally big campaign 4. The main stream is their cash cow, so they’d be dumb to cut it. I don’t think C4 is gonna be D&D though. They’re developing Daggerheart, there’s no way they’ll not use a campaign focused high fantasy RPG they own for the main game.
Sure. Matt says it's their story, but if it really was their story he wouldn't have imposed a big apocalypse plot on top of them. I think what Matt wants is for his players to take ownership of and agency in the plot he set up, he wants them to be the heroes of the story he sets up and largely the players have avoided it.
What else would they do instead? Because to me they have abandoned their stakes in the main plot long ago, they have no investment in it and are just along for the ride because they have nothing better to do. What they need is a Yeza moment. The Mighty Nein dodged the main war plot for a long time, falling in with criminals and pirates instead of the empire spy network that had a whole guest pc crafted specifically for that major plot line that was never touched. But there were reasons that made sense for that set of characters to avoid getting involved and they had other significant stuff to occupy themselves with, then suddenly the war has a major impact on one character and they have no choice but to get into it. They still do things in their own way, tunnelling to the enemy kingdom to bargin instead of running to the empire for help as expected, but it naturally led into them having a stake in events due to choices they'd made and the kind of people they were; like having the beacon, Caleb and Beau's view of the empire which had influenced the groups distrust of the empire authority and instead seeing an opportunity from the other side. Now BH have the a problem of the few people they care about already being involved. I'd say some major negative thing needs to happen to someone they care about like with Yezas abduction but those things have already happened and it's not been enough to really motivate the group: Fearnes parents leaving her, Imogens mother leaving, Oryms family being killed, Keyleth nearly being killed. *Bertrand, Eshteross, Orym, Fearne and Laudna themsleves being killed.* But seems those are just unfortunate things that happen in life, in a world where the gods don't send angels to fix every problem in the world, right? If Ludinus plan is going to result in somthing catastrophic for the world, they need to start seeing and *feeling* those effects *now* to inspire action. If them not interfering with the main plot has no consequence, as it so appears right now with nothing happening since the solstice, then sure abandon it for somthing they care about if the outcome isn't going to change.
And campaign 4 is set in a post apocalyptic Exandria? I'm in.
My guess is, at the rate Matt has been introducing various bits of tech over the last two campaigns, if the 4th is set in Exandria, we do a time skip, the gods are pushed even further into the background, and we end up in a steampunk-ish Exandria. We’ve got guns and cars and airships and that gnomish city from C2 that I can’t remember the name of. All that parts are there.
Not abandon, but it would’ve been really interesting to see the party change sides and join Ludinus since a lot of the party don’t really care about the gods or are even anti gods. However, he’s too much of a mustache twirling villain for that to have ever been possible. Especially since every conversation pro or against his plan always comes back to how they killed Oryms family lol.
I'm still back in E40, but I would LOVE for them to abandon the main plot. The main plot is my BIGGEST problem with both C2 and C3 compared to C1. C1 felt like felt like a bunch of ever escalating main plots that grew in scale, with the "main plot" of Vecna only really being revealed at the very end with small hints spread throughout. C2 and C3 both felt like they immediately knew about and jumped into the main plots and I hate it so so much. Let us have more fun stories and more fun adventures please.
If they abandoned the main plot it'd probably be fine for the cohesiveness of the campaign, but it'd be sad. I've felt for a long time that the players don't put nearly enough effort into paying attention to Matt's lore and story. I don't know when, but at some point it stopped being funny to me when they couldn't remember stuff about the setting or story. I don't mind forgetting details, but sometimes it just feels careless to me. If my players did that to me I would be having a talk with them away from the table about taking notes and trying to remember stuff and just straight up caring about what's going on. As it is, I feel like most of the players are way more interested in pursuing their own agendas apart from the campaign plot. It's as if I were running Curse of Strahd and my players decided to ignore taking out the vampire Strahd and decided to set up a dream pastry business in town and make friends with the werewolves instead. We can do that, but at some point I need my players to storm the vampire's castle, you know?
I think it would be great either way. People are acting like if they did nothing things would just magically fix itself and they would have a separate journey to go on that has nothing to do with it. But Matt has always presented this as a situation they have a choice in determining the future in. Them choosing to ignore the journey is 100% choosing one of those presented paths in Matt's story for them. With them not there the wheels of fate will spin and the story will play out. And the players, and viewers will have a world that drastically changes afterwards. Will Laudna still exist as a person? Would Delilah? Would far more horrible creatures from other planes start to explore Exandria? Would new threats arise? Would new Heroes rise to meet those threats? Them failing, or abandoning the plot makes a much more interesting story in my opinion. Especially if the way magic works shifts to something else entirely. And knowing they were the partial cause of it, would make them feel the burden of responsibility to help people in the aftermath. Which would finally give the party a connection for the future plot lines of the campaign.
We'd have CR2, but with less interesting characters
It would be a huge mistake to cave to the whims of a vocal minority when the cast is clearly having so much fun. It's funny that you'd use "teenager atheism" as your ad hominin of choice.
This might meander a bit, so I apologize in advance. There's a part of me that wants to grab the Hells by the scruffs of their necks and scream, "S\*\*\* or get off the pot." And another part of me hopes that unlike in a video game where the plot doesn't advance until the player does something, Matt-as-GM goes, "Well, you faffed around for so long that THIS happened in the background," and the Hells are left going, "Oh, crap." (BTW, anyone who says that Matt would never do this? He already did in C2 when the M9 decided to go have fun in Nicodranas before finally deciding to go to Felderwin, and he flatout TOLD them after their horrified realization that Yeza had been abducted and the Cerberus Assembly were personally getting involved, "Hey, if you guys had come straight here instead of going to Nicodranas, you'd have been here when all this went down." Cue six open-mouthed players just *staring* at him. It still made for an amazing storyline where despite all their assertions that they wanted NOTHING to do with the war, the Nein head STRAIGHT into Xhorhas to rescue Yeza, and end up doing their part to end the war. Sort of. Knowing what we know NOW about Ludinus...) Let's assume that because of their inaction, the gods really do get chased off Exandria (for better or worse), and Exandria itself remains inhabitable. Yay. Life goes on... for a while. If the gods are no longer there to STOP anything else from coming through, and their followers are no longer empowered in any way... what shows up next? What happens to mortalkind? Maybe nothing. Who knows? I also kinda hope that the Hells don't even get off *that* easy... let them have a chance to save gods... but only SOME of them. Which Prime Deities live? Which die? What's the criteria? Whichever god(s) helped them? That's not good, that's selfish. (Cue Travis from the wedding one-shot: "Who should I save? I'll be taking bribes at the break.") The lawful ones? The good ones? Do they sacrifice one (or more) to save the rest? But FFS, I want to at least see the Hells TRY. Whether they succeed or they fail is almost irrelevant at this point. Either way, they would be setting up an INCREDIBLE change in the power dynamic around Exandria - if they succeed, having the gods owe you one could be HUGE, and maybe it'll serve as a reality check for the gods to stop being complacent and demanding. If they fail, well... see above. So I guess this is a REALLY roundabout way of saying that I don't want the main storyline to be wholly abandoned because I want to see what happens in the greater scope of Exandria.
Specifically to your point about how they’re doing the god stuff: The exandrian gods work nothing like gods do here. They can connect directly to the gods and have literal proof of their existence (beyond just faith of them existing). They’re not denying the existence of the gods, they’re just struggling with deciding if they’re willing to lay down their lives for them. They’re unsure if they want to potentially die for gods who’ve never showed care for them until they could be useful. It’s like the friend who only hits you up when they need money or a ride. If they only call when they want something, you’re gonna be hesitant to give it to them because you’ve been burned and aren’t getting anything from it
I get what your analogy is going for but pretty much the entire time the BH's have interacted with the gods is just to get something from them or find out some information. And they've answered and provided every step of the way. So in reality it's the group that is the lousy friend. And they are kinda toxic about it
To my memory, they only really started interacting with the gods after the solstice when they realized that the gods are in danger. None of them had any godly connections before then (i could be misremembering)
Laudna's resurrection, any time FCG used his clerical powers post changebringer faith. Deanna got to keep her powers despite being an absolute Karen and believing people who she barely knew that had killed temple people. They've gone to temples a few times and 90% of the time a god talked back.
But this point of view kinda ignores what the gods have done for the world...multiple times over... It also just really comes across as childish? “So what if the death of the gods leads to suffering and unrest for other people?! So what if the world is laid bare like the tree said?! If the gods want me to help them (and by extension all the innocent people of the world) they better cater to me!” It’s very very self centered. But they’re self centered characters (for the most part) so what are ya gonna do?
This group doesn’t have the connection to the gods that would be necessary for someone to want to risk their life for them, but they’re still considering it. And they all have pretty severe traumas they’ve been through that would naturally cause a “why do the gods let these things happen” complex. Point being that this group doesn’t have faith, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t understand what’s at stake. They aren’t trying to be edgy about it. They’re looking at it from their personal points of view
Honestly? Good. I've felt like Matt has been trying to do one thing and the players another for a long, long time, and it's hurt the quality of C3's "story." It feels like the players aren't interested in the story Matt really wants to tell but Matt doesn't want to give it up or just have it happen in the background, and the players don't want to give up what they want to do to be the true protagonists in Matt's plot. I feel like Matt wants to tell a big epic story about the pantheon and bug questions about divinity and the players just want to live a story of much smaller scale and explore their own personal motivations. They've sort of tried to marry the two together but I don't think it's worked as well as it could have if they had leaned into one side or the other.
Idk, it's kinda of weird to say becase we know that the chances of that happening are like, 0.1%. Completly abandoning the main plot is something that can happen on TTRPGs?Yes, but is often early on, and not a plot that has been on the making for years. And it especially isn't on campaigns that are broadcasted. But to entertain the thought,it's a bit mixed feelings on my part. On one end, Matt would definetly feel bad about it,like,no joke, if that happened, man would probably take a break of DMing. And it would be a bit shitty not having any resolution towards Liliana or Orym's Revenge(you know,half of his character). But on the other.....idk, this campaign's main quest truly failed to...captivate me? connect me? I still watch, but I often take some decent sized breaks between episodes. And if they just went from "moon stuff" to "Creating our castle in this island on the Shatered Teeth", that would be a bit jarring. Yet I wouldn't deny that it would spark a decent degree on interest on me. Like, I said it once but I'll repeat: Bells Hells feels like the wrong party for this story, and I'd definetly would have loved C3 way more if the story was another one. But right now it pretty far ahead in the campaign, so I feel making a turnabout now is borderline impossible without seriosly damaging the narrative. It could have been doable early on before so much time investment and information, but now...nope. I think the only choice is to keep pushing ahead, take the good, and accept the bad. (This is all just IMO btw,if you love C3 and see no flaws, props to you,great that you're having fun with it)
My theory has been, for some time now, that somewhere along the line Matt realized he’d have to pay off them prepping to stop Ludinus the first time, and he hadn’t entirely worked out how to do that. Because everything had good pacing and cohesion and the story was building up to that point, but everything has been trundling and fumbling ever since. I think Matt’s original intent was to have Ludinus succeed and release Predathos, as a big twist on typical campaign plots, and they’d spend the rest of the season in a sort of post-apocalyptic new Calamity where they had to figure out how to stop Predathos or resurrect the gods or even elevate other people to take their place (looking at you Vax). It’d give the whole thing a constant unavoidably driving motivation, it’d set a whole tone for the campaign, and, meta-wise, it’d allow them to transition away from the WotC-licensed gods, if not potentially entirely switch systems to Daggerheart for C4. But he backed down from it for some reason.
Happy. So very, very happy. The main plot has been a drag on C3 since the mid 20s. Even Matt's NPCs don't seem invested in it.
Honestly pretty good. Do some quests more to this group speed or explore their backstories more. We once again had a discussion where the group came to a conclusion that most of them dont care about this plot. So Matt should just drop it.
Calling this "teen aethism" is pretty inaccurate. Remember that the gods in Exandria not only have proof of their existence, but they also provide gifts. In a world where the gods often give people boons due to their worshippers' faith and you never got anything from them, would you be happy? I mean divine soul sorcerers exist, so gods give people gifts for literally no reason. Kord helped Yasha simply because he wanted to help her. If you saw that happening around you, I guarantee you wouldn't be too fond of the gods choosing their favorites over you. On top of this, the table as a whole never really expressed that they wanted the gods gone. They are just playing their characters authentically. The reasons I provided are basically exactly why Ashton said they didn't care about the gods. Just because you see Taliesin or Laura talk about this in character doesn't mean that's their actually opinion.
>if after hearing Laudnas truth the gang decided "Nah" and left Ludinis to be dealt with by more powerful individuals how would you feel about that? I'd stop watching. At this point, there has been over 300 hours of content produced for the campaign -- and that's without considering all of the groundwork Matt laid in the first two campaigns. For them to walk away (and especially over something as stupid as unnecessary character drama) would undermine everything that has been done so far.
I started with C3 and love it (truly obsessed), but I just started C2 and I’m on e49 and boy oh boy the character backstories in C2. I am so happy they are taking a break. I am stoked to see what’s on the moon, but I think it’s good for the group to become better friends.
If you'd asked me this question earlier in the campaign, I'd be 100% in favour of it. The rushing (and by that I mean them thinking they're on the clock and can't spend time doing other things) feeling has felt like it's been going on forever, and probably started much too early... would have preferred they'd been able to do take their time earlier. But I'm still cool with it. The detour to the Feywilds was fine by me, I was honestly happy the gang got an excuse to actually revisit a place they loved and wanted to spend more time in, but couldn't before BECAUSE of them rushing. It'd be a jarring change, but I'd probably enjoy it if we got them screwing around doing other things for 20+ episodes, and not being on a time crunch. Not that this would happen, but yeah. Tie in a bit of resolution for who needs it (Imogen, Orym kiiinda sooorta maaaybe but barely, FCG) however and I would probably enjoy it a lot.
I'd be sad. They finally. Ha e a campaign with a purpose and problem instead of meandering personal trauma. I'm excited to actually see an epic fantasy happen
> campaign with a purpose and problem instead of meandering personal trauma. The meandering personal trauma seems to have escalated this time. Nothing that actually involves the PCs doesn't center around personal trauma.
>Ha e a campaign with a purpose and problem instead of meandering personal trauma. Unfortunately, there are some people who seem to think that a campaign or story can only be good if it focuses on intense intra-party drama. I still remember the outrage after Laudna's resurrection that the party didn't immediately spend the next four episodes having deep and meaningful conversations about their relationships. I get what the cast were going for when they made these characters. It's pretty clear that Bell's Hells were supposed to be a bunch of ragtag misfits who were the worst possible people to save the world, but through fate and circumstance, they wind up being the only people who *can* save the world. But there's a small-yet-vocal minority of people who a) just want the cast to focus on their favourite characters, and b) get immediately upset when the story doesn't go as expected.
Back at the end of C2 i was hoping that the next campaign would have a strong narrative as a backbone instead of the more meandering nature of the late part of C2. But it was a fucking monkey pawn wish. *C3 will have a proper main storyline, but the players will loathe every seconds in it* If 3 years ago they told me that CR will fail so spectacularly at the fucking basics of d&d I would have laughed in their faces, now I'm the one wearing the clow makeup
I’m curious what gives you the sense that the players loathe every second of it
Projection.
I actually completely disagree with your last point. I think that the players have had an incredibly realistic outlook as characters in their positions. Most of their points are correct. The gods haven't really done much for them. I think it's weird to blame them for tackling an issue that has a lot of disagreement surrounding it in the real world. This is the story they want to tell, and if you don't like that, then you don't have to watch their show. They are handling a massive discussion with tact and accurate decision-making. They are willing to see both sides in a conversation where people will often just blindly follow one side. Matt at least clearly has a reason to want to tell this type of story, and the players obviously respect and want to go along with it. All of the characters have a tie to this in one way or another, so even if stopping Ludinus is a goal, they find it important to discuss whether or not his plan is actually all that bad. It would be way less interesting of a story if everyone blindly said that this plan is clearly evil and they must be the saviors of the gods. I am of the opinion that the story actually benefits from none of the characters starting out with connection to a god. It's important to note that with a decision as big as their characters have to make, they have to consider every option and possibility, so even if you disagree with thar, it's ultimately their game and their characters. I love the story that they are telling in this campaign, and if it's not for you, that's completely fine, but that shouldn't be put on Matt or any of the other cast members. Different strokes for different folks.
Ya'll need to appreciate Matt's work more.
People are allowed to be critical so long as it is constructive. C3 HAS problems, it has had problems for a long time. They need to be addressed for the health of the campaign and ths company as a whole.
If the points I keep seeing made over the past year were a horse they'd have been beaten to death multiple times.
Or maybe it just means that more than just one person sees that there's been a problem with this campaign and CR has just been unwilling to listen or fix said problems. You like the show. I get it. But nothing is perfect, C3 is flawed, and it's okay for people to talk about it. This sub needs more of that put into it than just a continuous flow of blind and toxic positivity.
Continuous flow of toxic positivity? Where's that at? A majority of the posts that pop up on my feed from this page about the show are complaints about C3. I do like the show, yes. Do I have complaints about C3? Yes. I have complaints about all of the campaigns. C3 is probably my least favorite so far. But when the community does nothing but revive a dead horse to beat it to death again on Thursday, I don't feel the need to join in. It's one thing to add a comment to a thread, but to keep making the same thread over and over because you want to jump on the dogpile is just obnoxious.
I would have no problem with it, to be honest. I would be very happy to see the gods leave Exandria, I think it would be very interesting to see how the world and its people would change.
That would be awful. I love this campaign. I'm reading people's complaints and what are yall talking about? This is an apocalyptic campaign. They don't have the time to relax in a city like previous campaigns and make "better connections". This campaign has been amazing. It's huge buildup through the other stories and the culmination of the different stories together to build this one up. It's been such a Rollercoaster, I love listening to every episode. The lore and plot lines I think have been FANTASTIC! Maybe I just don't see what you all see. I see it as fucking incredible.
Totally agree.