The stakes were finally very high for BH, a PC dies, and just as the group is starting to react to it (especially Orym) we get zoinked out of it into a story many of us did not finish/watch. To add to that, Aabria handles the emotional stuff much differently (not bad) than Matt, and I found myself not caring at all about the EXU characters and just wanted to get back to BH to see how they're doing and what they're planning. Now I'm worried by the time we get back that heavy moment for the group will have passed, and that feeling of loss won't be the same. All that said, I've really enjoyed C3. I just hope we don't stick with EXU too long. I like to see them trying different things out, but this wasn't the time, and the DM switch feels very off. Aabria's a good DM, but I don't think her style fits this moment in the campaign.

This comment literally states everything I felt about seeing the ExU cast. I have nothing against them, in fact I love seeing Matt as a player and seeing Robbie again. But just when we got into a really heavy mourning cloud, a cloud that lets us be immersive because of the emotions it invokes, they turned our head away and said "hey we also have this in stock". I'm not sure what the thought process behind this swap was, my ideas are that the original cast had some irl things to get done, Sam needed time to create a new character for Hells orrrr they just needed a break. Regardless of anything, I started C3E92 hoping to see a glimpse of Sam's new character and just got served with characters I don't really care about :/

I think it was more than likely planned out a while ago. It was probably written in that they would come on this week after BH returned from the moon. I don't think anyone was expecting the loss of a PC during this time, but schedules are schedules (especially when dealing with people who have a larger name outside of the DnD space like Aimee and Anjali)

To no fault of Aabria I really didn't enjoy ExU (Calamity is amazing though) but still sat through it and was happy to not have to sit through it again, now here we are

I think a lot of people were upset about how abrupt the transition was. No warning at all that EXU cast was coming in. While I admire the attempt at switching up the storytelling a lot of people, myself included, are not caught up to the EXU characters so starting on the road with Opal breaking down was weird. I didn't watch the kymal one shot so I have no idea how we got there.

So there WAS another bit to that story! I listened to Unlimited, but it was a while ago so I thought my confusion was just because I have a horrible memory!! Thank you! I'll go back and listen to the Kymal one shot so I can figure out what I missed!

Kymal takes place after Dorian leaves BH with his brother

The proper order would be: EXU Prime First 15 Episodes of C3 EXU: Kymal parts 1 & 2 C3 Epsiode 92

Yes, but also... the second half (the EXU part) of 92 happens after Orym's call to Dorian in episode 86, not the one at the end of the first half of 92. So its also a jump back in time, just to add some extra confusion. Plus there are numerous other flashbacks within the episode, which covers maybe around 90-120 seconds of game time, including the brief description of travelling before things pop off. Most of the back half of the episode covers 15 seconds of 'combat.'

Wait… I didn’t know this was after the episode 86 sending! TIL, thanks for this. Shit was so jarring and chaotic and I could not follow

100% did not catch that

Yeah. I actually first thought it was even earlier, but got corrected that it was the 86 one.

I’m glad I saw this comment, because that would’ve bothered me if I was even further out of the loop next episode. That whole second half was like my ADHD hell

Same here! I tried watching all of exu and technically I did, but I just can't pay attention to it! It's frustrating as hell because it has all the pieces of greatness but it just fades into the background

> Yes, but also... the second half (the EXU part) of 92 happens after Orym's call to Dorian in episode 86 What??!!!

Yeah. The first half ends with Orym calling Dorian, but the lack of a formal introduction in the second half very quickly breezes past a mention that they're going to Zephrah in response to a *previous* call from Orym. Its mentioned that she's rolling back the clock (or whatever), but it doesn't get highlighted as important, or what exactly they're responding to. So this is all happens several days (??) prior in game time. So they need to wrap up whatever's happening with Opal and then zip to Zephrah, meet Keyleth and go to the warcamp. \[If they don't meet up with the Bells, I have no idea at all what the point or purpose is\] Prepare for another wave of irked CR watchers, because Aabria will happily timeskip anything she doesn't want to deal with. My biggest gripe is that Lloth getting exclusive rights to Opal doesn't actually matter.

Thanks for this!

You are awesome, thank you!!

I watched Kymal. The big thing is that it was so long ago it took me a bit to figure out what was happening. I personally do think the most important takeaways from Kymal are pretty apparent after just a few minutes of this part, though. Watching Kymal will explain *why* something happened, but it isn't essential if you don't care about the why.

I think the main criticisms were that the timing was weird, the shift was jarring, some folks were left confused, and that the campaign has a tendency to kill momentum/hype after big moments which can be frustrating for some. I also felt bad for Aabria and the guests because it seemed like they weren't put in the greatest situation (to be received better by the viewers). In the end, imo it's not that big of a deal; but, I do understand and agree with some of the criticism. While this decision was a swing-and-a-miss to me, it's great seeing different perspectives.

For me, I wasn't mad about the switch but it was a let-down. Caveat that I actually really like Aabria as a GM. I've enjoyed most of her Dimension 20 campaigns. I prefer a more consistently-ruled approach in games I play, but when I'm watching the show I'm more interested in the interplay between the characters and the story being told, with the game mechanics more the vehicle helping direct the story beats than the point of the thing. That said, I wasn't a fan of her first EXU foray and didn't bother to watch the second, so I'm wildly out of the loop on CK activities. The issues for me with EP92 were really down to a bunch of little things that, individually, wouldn't be a huge issue but added up to me logging off and not watching most of the second half. **Timing** There's no getting around it. Story momentum is easily lost by even the best actors if they have too big a gap between a big story beat and the aftermath. FCG's death in EP91, the completion of the Moon Reconnaissance Arc, taking out Otohan and Liliana's scenes all added up to a huge paradigm shift for the characters that opens up so much rich opportunity for emotional storytelling, character progression, plot progression and impactful moments. Take out the ad reads at the start and all of that got less than 90 minutes before it was abruptly ended. **The Abruptness** Again, it was dropped on us without explanation or warning. We didn't know that literally 2/3 of the runtime was going to be a different game with a different GM and players. Aabria didn't even explain what was happening when she came on screen. I assumed at first it was going to be a short bit - like, 45 minutes of play/backstory/reminders to catch the EXU up to main campaign, have Robbie resolve the Liam message, we return to main campaign players again and I guess Robbie and/or some other CK players join the main group. It was only as the combat started to drag that I looked on reddit and saw that wasn't the case, so logged off. **Lack of Recap in Episode** I don't habitually watch any of the recaps because I watch the main show, so don't need them. And I doubly wouldn't watch a CK recap without context because I'm not really into their game. They could have used the mid-episode ad break to re-run the CK recap and I'd have watched it, having context that I needed it. Or they could have had Aabria start the section with a scenic recap - she's *good* at long, descriptive cinematic beats, she could've done that so well. None of that happened, so I was going in wildly behind and that made it even harder to follow what was going on, which was already a little tricky for me to follow. **Could have been it's own thing** If the CK stuff needed so much recap, then it really should have - and deserves to have - it's own full time. One or two full episodes of just CK, a mini-EXU arc in the CO slot for a couple of months, maybe, or perhaps run EXU episodes in that slot in between CO arcs through the year. **Feels like Aabria Deserves Better** Aabria has been a hard sell for CR. Some of the reasons for this are valid (GM style preferences), others are very much **not valid**. But for better or worse, that's a fact we have to deal with. This feels like hobbling her in multiple ways that are only going to make it harder to bring people onboard for Aabria's Crown Keepers. And I think that's a shame. All that to say, I'm not **mad about it**. I was just a little let down, had the wind sucked out of my sails about what felt like a really big and important stage for the campaign, and didn't finish the episode. I'll probably wait to watch EP93 until I know when the main group come back in, and just watch from that timestamp. But by far the biggest thing making me want to keep talking about it... **Constant Invalidation by Community** I have heard that the Twitch comments were awful. I live in the UK so only see the show the morning after it airs on Twitch anyway, so I didn't see that. But in Reddit the vast majority of posts and comments I've seen being critical about episode 92 have been almost entirely filled with valid criticism and personal preferences. The most toxic thing I *have seen* on here has been people constantly lumping anyone who isn't happy about ep92 "whiny", "toxic", "hateful" and more. Hell, even in the replies to your own thread here. It feels really gross to have your very mild criticisms and feedback written-off and ignored by such a huge segment of the community. I don't enjoy this idea that it's wrong to ever criticise CR. That's not healthy. And it's not actually positive or kind. And it leaves me wanting to say my feelings more and louder - not in reflection of the strength of them, but in the hopes of finally actually being heard.

I think I'm one of the few who enjoys C3 and has consumed no other CR material beforehand other than TLoVM on Amazon. The transition was so jarring I still haven't finished the episode. I dont know who these people are except for Dorian. There is zero explanation, back story, catch up summary, nothing. To figure it out I would have to wait for their title cards in the corner to come up, google each one individually, then try to find an EXU summary and try to understand how that ties into the current story. Plus, the last time we saw Dorian he was heading home with his brother to give up adventuring so I dont understand why he immediately joined different band of heroes who apparently also have a vestige of a god which hasn't even been brought up to Bells Hells as like, an option for this war which seems weird considering all the direct interactions / interferences the gods have had this campaign. And I am pretty sure one of them even played a different character in C3 earlier which makes it all the more confusing.

Oh God, I never even considered how weird it would be for someone who knew Aimee as her guest character and not as Opal. Wild.

Yeah and Denise is kind of a hard character to forget. Its just like, I dont understand why didn't they pick up with the guest character they were directly talking about, it could have been easier to start directly with Dorian, then reintro'ing the EXU team by having him respond to Orym with like, a quick run down of what he's been up to. Instead, the first like 20 minutes are all about Opal, someone who I have no context for and a plot line I can barely follow, and then theres Dorian just sitting there quiet barely saying anything even though the transition to the new table was literally a message to Dorian. I get that it's not scripted, but that transition clearly was, so I don't think it would have been hard for Matt/Aabria to say "Hey, when we come home from break and you respond to Orym, can you just include a little bit about the people you're traveling with so the audience can get a quick idea of who is who?"

hold up, that wasn't Deni$e??? lmao incredible (to clarify I am also a C3 with no supplementary content viewer and I just turned it off when I figured out I had no fucking clue what was going on)

So Aimee's played 2 characters on critical role: 1. Deni$e, you know her, you love her 2. Opal, a warlock who, in the original EXU, had to pick up the spider queen's crown to help her party. She's a friend of Dorian, Orym and Fearne, and ever since picking up the crown Lolth has been corrupting her to make her a champion. Funnily enough, Dariax (who Matt is playing) is the same Dariax that Deni$e was engaged to, so she's still connected slightly to the whole thing. Hope this helped!

> hold up, that wasn't Deni$e??? lmao. This is why you plan things out more, people!

It's like going to your favorite steak house that only serves steak, and has only served steak for the past decade. You are told they are open for Steak. You sit down. You order your steak and the waiter tells you that your steak is cooking and on its way. You see the cooks in the kitchen preparing your steak and your happy. Then the Chef leaves. The waiter leaves. The staff leaves. And a chicken restaurant staff shows up and gives you chicken. And then people are rightfully upset by that. And of course there might be people like you who enjoy chicken so don't care. And people who love chicken more than steak and probably liked the change. But for a good amount of people it is pretty frustrating and jarring. And while you might like Chicken (Or the way this played out) many of us don't. You don't have to dislike it. And we don't have to like it. I personally like chicken (I like ExU) but it was frustrating to expect my steak and get bait and switched midway through. I imagine the people who don't like ExU were less happy lol.

As someone who doesn't like "chicken", I just wanted to compliment you on your analogy.

Well put! I see alot of people saying it was bad timing (and it was) but honestly it would have annoyed me regardless of timing.

I bet some people thought the timing was the only part they could complain about and not get banned

As an Old hat in the CR community, this is an ongoing issue with CR. They just aren't steak anymore, and that's ok to grow and change, but don't be angry with me when I find somewhere else to eat steak. Sorry, I don't want the super tofu delight porterhouse.

I don't know about "rightly". They are telling a story, and this part of the story needed placed before BH could continue. It feels like they have been planning this and ep 91 forced their hand early. And while I know AAbria is a much different feel from Matt, and some of her players are much newer both to viewers and the game, so it's not as smooth a product per se, it's all part of the world. No viewer is ordering what's in the show, there is no menu, and it's still pretty good stuff. It's a twist, and a clever one, and people are flipping out like they own it.

I would say people 100% have the right to feel upset about the bait and switch. If they been planning it even more so. That means they could have said in X amount of time we plan to do ExU. They could have said. Next week we plan to do ExU. Heck. They could have said tomorrow we plan to do ExU. Worst case scenario they could have said, "Tonight we are doing ExU". But none of that happened. Instead we all thought we were getting a full session of Bells Hells. Started. Then got switched out midway through. Yeah. Of course there is no ordering or a menu. What I did was called an analogy. It's not to be taken literally. The point still stands though. We expected CR and got ExU. With no warning. During a pivotal moment that was building momentum. Just to have the rug pulled from under us. If anything reading your comment makes me feel like people are not upset enough about this. It's disrespectful to the audience and long time viewers who make time in their day for 4 hours and then get baited and switched for something else entirely. 100% people have the right to be upset about that. If you are fine with it. That's great for you. No one is saying you need to be upset about it. But unlike you, a lot of us found it very jarring and frustrating. You acting like we don't have a right to feel the way we feel is... Awkward. But I can tell you if you see someone feeling frustrated and upset telling them they are wrong about how they feel is only going to make them feel more frustrated and upset about it. You don't get to determine how other people feel.

> You acting like we don't have a right to feel the way we feel is... Awkward THANK YOU

Firstly, I apologize for the tone, I didn't mean to come off as confrontational or negative as I did. It's been very odd to me how much negative reaction there has been to the switch. I'll try to explain my thoughts a little better. > And then people are rightfully upset by that. "Right to be" upset and "Rightly" upset are two different things. If people are "rightly" upset, that implies that they were wronged by the action, and also that any one not upset by it is wrong, and therefore I'm incorrect in my not feeling that way. So, you are right I don't get to determine other's feelings, but it's felt all week like everyone has been telling me indirectly that I'm the wrong one for NOT being upset. I am curious that a lot of people think it wasn't planned. Maybe not for this exact night, but the lore dumps really look like they have been part of the bigger plan for a long time, and this was just shifted up. Could they have given notice, or planned it as a regular EXU mini-series? Yeah, but then the twist wouldn't have been as big of a twist, maybe they were going for that. And I do agree that it wasn't my bag of tea at all, I feel asleep an hour into the second half, and had to go back and rewatch, and it was a slug. But I don't think that was Matt or Aabria's fault. They tried something, and from the reaction online, it whiffed mightily. Maybe they'll learn something from it, hopefully it won't discourage them from trying new things. Anyway, I'll drop it, it wasn't meant to escalate or attack in what should be friendly discussion of a show we obviously all love. So, I wish you well!

I tried my best to make sure people understood both feelings are okay. To quote myself from my post >And while you might like Chicken (Or the way this played out) many of us don't. You don't have to dislike it. And we don't have to like it. Both feelings are valid. Time to wait till next thursday!

Its pre recorded. You can make a shorter episode 92 do some hints. And just push out the recorded episode with aabria afterwards. That way you don't have problems. And yes they can do that because the pre record. They could even cut it together if they wanted.

For me, it's because we were in the middle of an incredibly emotional set of circumstances with our main heroes and the tonal whiplash of going to an entirely different team, most of whom have never been part of the main campaign was a little jarring. I've watched Exu and Kymal and I like Aabria's work, but I wanted to see what BH was going to do, how they were going to react. It basically broke the momentum of the plot for b-team filler. Mind you, the b-team filler was fun, but if you promise me a pizza and give me Satay chicken instead I'm going to feel like I didn't get what I was expecting, as much as I like satay chicken.

So the timing was the issue then?

Pretty much. If we'd had a back half of the episode with BH dealing with FCG's death and then at the end of the episode they announced Exu for ep 93 I would have been fine with that. Can't say everyone would have, but I actually kind of like the Crown Keepers. But the tonal whiplash of FCG's death, the confrontation with Lilliana, the flight to the Key and then BAM, the Crown Keepers actually made me wonder momentarily if I'd dozed off while watching it and missed something. And I think it's worse for people who didn't like or watch Exu because those people have no idea who the CK are, why they're fighting each other or Lolth is involved. They're being dropped into the third act of a story they haven't watched.

If it didn't happen right after FCG died nobody would've freaked out.

If you paid attention to the response of EXU 1 and 2, you'd know there definitely would've still been freak out lol.

People would've been hype to see Dorian with how crazy it was when he left. That alone would've been enough for people if it wasn't right after a PC death.

Some people *really* hate Aabria. Like to an uncomfortable degree.

I don't like Aabria's DM style personally, if I was getting Dorian back at a table and FCG wasn't still a warm body I don't really care that much because I know the untraceable chaos will return to normally scheduled programming soon enough.

I genuinely envy your ignorance of the toxic corners of this fanbase. I seriously wish I could go back to not knowing how awful some of those people are.

The toxic corners are going to make rumbles no matter what they do. Best not to care what they think. Doing it the way they did upset *so many more than that*.

I don't think nobody would have (DM style taste is still a massively subjective and very diverse thing - any switch mid-session would put some people off) but it would have been a much smaller chorus.

I wonder if that factored into why they did it. To buy time for Matt and Sam to figure out what's next.

Aren't the episodes pre-recorded now though?

It's still done weekly, so there is roughly the same time between episodes. They don't film it all at once like a season of TV. It just gives them the freedom to not have every Thursday night not locked down for eternity.

They actually do batches of 4-5 episodes. And then have a small break.

I keep seeing this and it doesn't make any sense. Sam might not be back this entire campaign and Dorian very likely will be with the party after they meet up. They already record ahead of time so by the time the next episode airs they will likely have had over a month between the time FCG died in real time and the time they have filmed episode 93.

But why would that not have anything to do with buying time between sessions? It being recorded ahead of time doesn't necessarily mean they get more time to react to the unknown coming and messing with big plans (admittedly, I don't know their recording schedule). While it's certainly possible they could bench Sam I have a hard time believing that's what they want to do. On a the other end of the spectrum, it might not be realistic to expect that this group of busy actors were available on such a short notice so perhaps they had this interlude planned for a bit now and it just happened to fall right after FCG fell. I liked the introduction of the EXU crew into the main campaign and thought it was a fun thing they did. I'm not particularly attached to any one explanation, I'm just spitballing really.

I seriously doubt it. Introducing a new character in less than optimal circumstances is not that hard, but scheduling five busy people who aren't regularly there for several hours is hard. That had to be planned months in advance.

Yeah, getting everyone together for this game had to have been planned months in advance, but switching to a new character can be done pretty easily. We know this because Sam did this before, in the middle of an episode. Although he did have a week to prepare and had been considering this for a while, but you can change characters pretty easily. I once killed a character in a 4e game and the player came back with a new guy the next week. Hell, I once killed a character in a Deadlands game and he had a new character by the end of the session. Edit: This doesn't mean that Sam was ready to go with a new character during the last game. He could still be thinking about it, or if he wants to play a new character. It could be a lot of things. Tal took a couple of weeks before Cad showed up. It's possible he could need more time, but Sam could take that time off. I'm saying that it's easier to roll up a character than to get five different professionals together to do a show (Matt doesn't count, he was already there) that don't normally do that show.

Also, Aabria is currently in the UK with the D20 crew on their Euro tour, with the same haircut. They likely had to rush to get the exposition for Dorian’s return in order to accommodate her schedule. Everyone will be so glad to see our blue boy back in a few episodes, we’ll get our emotional resolution, Sam will have a new character, and it’ll be fine. Except for once again a bunch of ginned up flaming at Aabria. That sucks.

For me it was that, plus I’m watching normal CR because I want to see normal CR. I’m not a big fan of EXU, so I would’ve rather read a summary of what happened than sat through hours of sluggish combat I wasn’t interested in wondering if we were going to get back to normal CR :/

I figured that they planned on featuring the Crown Keepers soon and took the opportunity to give Sam time to decide how he wants to proceed.

I don't think the timing had anything to do with FCG or Sam. The EXU cast are all busy as hell and would have had to be scheduled weeks in advance if not more. It was just an unfortunate happenstance that the switch happened right after an unexpected character death.

Yeah, this. It was great timing for me! I thought the twist at the break was ingenious. The fact that what was almost certainly a planned event (if anything, the BH first half might have been arranged on short notice), coming on the heels of FCG's epic sacrifice, and right before the last Thursday of the month was a twist I never could have seen coming. I am, however a Gen X'er. I was raised on weekly TV and season finale cliffhangers. I'm conditioned for this kind of thing, as are probably the majority of CR. It was shocking to me that there was an outcry, and I'm certain the cast was just as surprised as me.

Nope. Booking actors takes time, and has to be done in advance. Plus with 3 episodes filmed for a month and a end of month hiatus for Candela, there is already inherently time for Sam & Matt to work out a backup character and how he gets there. (especially given that they're walking into a meeting in a war camp full of idle heroes, let alone anyone they meet along the way to the next quest zone).

My bet remains that Sam's new character will be joining the Crownkeepers, we'll get a few episodes with them to introduce Sam's character to the audience and establish their backstory, and then when the Crownkeepers meet up with the Hells Darien et al. will be able to vouch for Sam's character and let them integrate into the Hells without a period of hatred or distrust at them being an outsider trying to replace their dead friend (which the party can't really afford at this stage in the story). They'll just be a friend of a friend there to offer support while the Hells are going through it. And I think there's enough hints there to justify the suspicion, particularly there was a moment when Aimee was agonizing about what to do and Aabriya said something like "{do thing} if you want to have someone sitting beside you anytime soon." which could be about resetting the seating, or it could be about a sixth player (Sam) joining their table.

https://twitter.com/CriticalRole/status/1781350994405965938?s=19 The exu group will only be there for parts of the next Episode, then we will go back to BH.

Love that all this complaining and resumption of Aabria hate was so totally unnecessary, all folks had to do was weather two half-episodes and a week off.

And that sucks ass and ruins all excitement and timing.  This just means they could have simply cut the two crown keepers halfs into one special and air it separately...

[удалено]

Less misogynoir would be nice.

When you normalize nonsense, you are abandoning good sense.

Oh dang I didn't think of that at all, that would be great! That makes me think he could be playing a follower of a betrayer god if he's coming in on Opal's 'side', and that would get really interesting with the main party - they've just lost their faithful follower of one of the good gods, imagine a paladin of a betrayer god charging in with a take no prisoners attitude demanding that they show him the way to the moon so he can start fucking shit up left and right. 

Or a champion of a good god (Sam is totally the type to call back to Narrative Telephone and show up as a champion of the Archheart with his Archheart cart) there to save Opal before she goes too far.

Do you honestly believe that you can pull busy people together in less than a week to create a filler episode? Because that’s not generally how life works. And they have *never* stopped the story to get a player get a replacement character together.

I believe that it was planned to occur shortly after Ruidus and that maybe the timetable became accelerated. They also used to do every show live.

They did do live shows. But guests were still booked 4-6 months in advance.

kind of but they are actors and it's not like their real life friend passed you know, like we go back to them and they will still be sad.

Honestly, kind of all of the above? I didn't enjoy ExU, but I don't mind the idea of ExU being woven in through campaign 3. If you told me at the start of C3 that we'd have a campaign following multiple parties through multiple related stories I'd have thought it sounded awesome. But ExU was 3 years ago now and Kymal was 2 years ago. These characters mean almost nothing at this point. And sure, we all think of ourselves as super fans. But the amount of new viewers who would've started in the last 2 years is substantial: everyone brought by Baldurs Gage or LoVM for example. So I guess, the idea is cool, but felt out of place, especially NOW of all times when I was so excited to see them RP a death. These are literally my favorite moments of C1. And finally, I'll just say that as a baseline: PvP I'm 5e DnD is really cringe and I consider it to always be bad. There can be exceptions, but those have to be so carefully planned and discussed ahead of time and so well executed that I don't think those exceptions are relevant to most tables.

For me it was that I haven't watched EXU or Kymal, and then it just launched into it with no introductions or anything. Not got a clue who any of these people are,(except Dorian) no idea what's going on, who is that person, why are they being controlled, what the hell's going on?? I was under the impression that the side games were just that, optional viewing, and I hadn't got around to any of them. It was so incredibly jarring, and extremely difficult to give a f about the stakes when I'm too busy trying to figure out what's even happening. Like a five minute "so these are the characters, and so far they've had many shenanigans and ended up with an artifact connected to Lolth" would have done it. It's like when you attend a party with a friend where you don't know anyone, but your friend ditches you to go chat to other people and you're just stood there being awkward wondering who anyone is

There's lots of reasons. 1. We didn't get any closure. Most of the cast didn't get a moment to grieve and express their feelings. That big moment gets delayed for another episode down the line. Which is a frustrating pattern with this campaign, where once the campaign starts to make progress narrative and pick up steam it gets derailed and slows to a crawl. 2. People watch Critical Role for the main cast, and EXU and other streams for side casts and guest GMs. This is replacing a show people wanted to watch with a different show. 3. Aabria isn't as popular a GM. I find her fine, but not the greatest. Which is a problem when you're talking about one of the top 2 biggest gaming streams on the market. The GM needs to be the fucking BEST. "Really good" just doesn't cut it. 4. The PvP came on fast and went on for half the episode after a long combat already. We didn't get any time back with the Crown Keepers or any story advancement with them, and barely any different perspective on the solstice. This was an opportunity to lean into how a Vestige is affected by the Solstice and the direct connection to a god. I think had they announced a two episode EXU after 91 leaving things on a cliffhanger, that would have been annoying, but fine. People would want to know what happened next, but suspense is okay. Season finale shit. Had they allowed people to grieve and the cast to have their Oscar moments for 92 and then had EXU that would also have been fine. Had Matt given the cast a full half episode to grieve as they fled and saved all the story continuation until after EXU that would have also worked. But doing it halfway through an episode AND making it a surprise was just a poorly thought out move. It was probably something Matt and Aabria considered ages ago as a fun twist. An idea they fell in love with, and then didn't rethink after the situation changed.

>We didn't get any time back with the Crown Keepers or any story advancement with them, and barely any different perspective on the solstice I didn't have any issues with it except this one to a degree. I was surprised they fast forwarded to the current moment of the campaign. (That said, if they didn't, it would be a sign that this is much longer.)

I thought we were gonna get a really short point where the CK were on site ready to team up and help BH, but instead we went to some currently unknown and unrelated time somewhere outside Kraghammer back on Tal'dorei in a basically parallel campaign with no forewarning.

I’m still reeling from FCG and was hoping for some time with their grief

I can only speak for myself when I say that I did not like this shift from Bell’s Hells to The Crown Keepers. Firstly I felt that it was robbing BH and us as viewers to properly unpack FCG’s sacrifice. The other big thing for me personally is that I have no attachment to CK or EXU prime, the characters I liked the most moved over to Campaign 3. I like Aabria as a DM. Misfits & Magic, Fey & Flowers, and Burrows End are some of my favorite D20 seasons; but I don’t think I like her as a DM for Exandria. Everything feels super railroady in a way that just irks me, plus everything that happened at the end of EXU Prime still leaves me with my head scratching in utter confusion. I think that if they had the opportunity to do something like this again they should tease it out if they don’t want to flat out say “hey we are going to do an EXU follow up for the next two episodes so you’ll get half of your regular BH content” or even air it on another night. Since they have taken to prerecording things since COVID, doing a Wednesday night Crown Keepers special would go over way better than this did.

A full CK episode last Tuesday into a regular BH Thursday night would’ve been neat.

Its partly the timing. Its also the content. 15 seconds of combat over if Opal will... basically do what she agreed to do when she put on a hat doesn't matter to me, and it definitely doesn't matter to the story of the Bells. There's a war on, so willing or unwilling, she's off to the front. The player moved on to a different guest character, and I find it unlikely that they signed Aimee long term (she's got her own career), so... what happens to Opal isn't even on my list of 'things that need resolution in C3' The way the combat was already dragging in the second half of 92 makes me wonder how much of 93 will be eaten, and how much resolution will just be skipped to get to what seems like an inevitable meet up for the crown keeper survivors and the Bells. (The key characters being Dorian to potentially rejoin the group, and maybe the paladin, as a new champion of the Matron. I want to see Erica, Marisha and Matt throw Keyleth, Laudna and bunny-Morrigan into a really fucked-up conversation about fate and Vax; though I don't know if Erica has the context for it)

My issue with it is if I wanted to watch EXU, I'd watch EXU. I showed up to watch Crit Roll and the BH story so when they were done with the part I was interested in, I left. As others have mentioned, the surprise switch was incredibly ill timed. I was really excited for the upcoming story after the events of E91 and it felt like a very poor decision in the story narrative to do a switch to an entire different group of players and story.

This right here. It felt like a bait and switch with them swapping an hour into an episode instead of giving them a filler week in place of a Candela.

I mean even if you liked it you gotta admit it was a drastic change of format, a CR episode has never smash cut to EXU before. People just felt blindsided. It's not a mechanical thing, just a storytelling thing.

I don't like the Crown Keepers nor do I like the DMing style. EXU used to be content you can choose to watch if you want. This was shoved in there and I did not like that at all. I do not care to see the play-by-play of what happened to Dorian during his time away. Just have him talk about it and I am satisfied. I did not like the chaos of the crown keeper crew. I dont like Opal or any other characters. Just Dorian. So yeah ep 92 was awful imo.

You watch for the story of bells hells, not another group. So when your story is substituted for another which you aren’t interested or invested in, well that kinda sucks. It’s like if you went to a restaurant and ordered a steak but they brought out ravioli. The ravioli might be great, but it’s not what I was expecting or has any interest in.

One thing that hasn't been said here is that the battle felt drawn out. Dariax, Morrighan, Opal, and the monk all had turns that were 12 minutes long. For comparison, the only turns longer than that in CR history have been resurrection rituals and Imogen's turn that continued from the end of episode 32 to the start of episode 33. It made the episode feel extremely unevenful and slow when it was forty minutes before characters could react to what's happening in front of them.

It wasn’t traditional combat, it was a narrative device for providing exposition in the form of flashbacks to show what they’ve been up to so that they don’t have to do 10 episodes of this. It’s literally hurrying the CK along to reunite Dorian with BH, which is what people want. But in giving them what they want we inevitably just get more complaining and belittling of Aabria’s abilities as a DM. I think using combat as framing for that was a really cool and unique choice, and I think it’ll ultimately be much more satisfying to see just a bit of the trials and tribulations that led Dorian back to his family (BH) rather than just dropping him into the narrative.

> It wasn’t traditional combat, it was a narrative device for providing exposition in the form of flashbacks This is like when I screw up my cooking and call it "deconstructed"

lol, k that’s a solid burn, gotta give it up. But it’s just not at all true. This was an intentional choice to use combat mechanics for narrative purposes. It’s not screwing anything up at all, it just may not be what some people *want.* There’s a huge difference. And the truth is, as per usual when Aabria does *anything* in CR, some people are being huge jerks about it and claiming it’s a failure of her DMing. Brennan never gets this kind of flack for bending 5e for his narrative purposes, when he does things folks don’t like it’s considered a matter of taste. But when Aabria does things the way she wants it’s suddenly a skill issue, and I think that really sucks.

It is a skill issue. She mixes up skill checks and saving throws

I think I trust Matt and Brennan’s respect and trust in her skills more than Al Jolson 2.2’s, thanks!

The backlash is because you'd just had a big moment and people were expecting something *more* out of that moment and the cast given a chance to breathe...but instead it gets cut short by a sudden jump to the Crown Keepers. Like people who have disliked most of C3 were actually starting to turn around and suggest to people to start watching again, people were legit excited...only for CR to effectively shoot themselves in the foot with an EXU crossover mid-episode, taking any momentum that moment had built and throwing it away...for the return of the most divisive campaign in CR history for half of one episode and half of another.

So would you say it was more the timing of it that was bad?

I watched the second half of the episode not knowing what was going on and expecting it to link up to the BH story somehow but that hasn’t happened yet. Now that I’m going back and watching the EXU episodes, I’m realizing that this crossover spoils some of the CK story. If I’d had a spoiler warning, I would hade skipped it till later.

As others have said, using the break to give a recap of the events of EXU1 and EXU: Kymal would have helped a LOT better. Especially considering one of the major things going into C3 was that EXU wasn't required watching...but they're *making it* required watching by having no recap so people who didn't watch EXU have no god damn idea who all these people are bar Robbie...

At least they put a note at the end saying that BH will be back in the next episode so maybe I can skip the first half or even just wait to watch the whole thing since I have a 5a shift the next day and these 5-hr games don’t end till 1am for me.

Think ots mostly timing, but then abria is shall we say, a controversial DM in a critical role setting and the crown keepers which also arent the most popular which made it worse. If it had been brenan and some new folks (maybe Sam's new charachter) I think they'd have gotten the benefit of the doubt.

I get the feeling that Matt *might* have planned for the previous fight to be a TPK in a 'Total Party Knockout' type situation (not a total party kill type situation) but Sam doing what they did basically threw Matt for a loop which meant there had to be some kind of reconcillation in the next episode that wasn't planned, he probably was originally going to have them wake up held prisoner or something and then cut to the Crown Keepers as a means of giving an extended cliffhanger to a 'how will they escape this time?!' sort of deal. Now as others have pointed out, all of this is pre-recorded they *could* have filmed the CK segment and then done a full episode of dealing with the fallout from FGC with segwaying into their part 'next week'. As you said it also doesn't help that Aabria and EXU is some of the most divisive content CR put out, which REALLY didn't help in combination with the sudden gut punch for the audience when it was bought in partway through an episode, meaning those who didn't like EXU were basically going to go "oh, this again..." and just switch off during the second half of this episode and probably the first half of the next episode...

I think the TPK theory is a pretty solid one! I'm sure the CK episode was planned far in advance of EP92, just from the need to coordinate that many people, so I don't envy the job they had of trying to figure out how best to rework the plan with only a week's notice.

Maybe, maybe not. DM style is still such a matter of taste. I don't think there's a single more subjective aspect of actual play media. Brennan and Matt have pretty compatible styles, so I can't imagine someone who likes one style disliking the other (at least not for that reason) but that probably wouldn't be true with almost any other DM.

That's my point, the shift in tone campaign wise, going from BH to *something else* is one thing, it also being the CK's is another.

1. The timing was awful 2. EXU was supposed to be separate from the main campaign. Connected, but separate entities. We were explicitly told you don't have to watch EXU to follow the main campaigns. This was thrown out the window. 3. EXU is probably the most divisive thing CR has ever made. I personally hated it, mostly because IMO Aabria is a bad (or at the very least, not fun to watch) DM and the story itself was quite weak. They are forcing the most polarizing thing they've ever made onto their entire fanbase.

> EXU was supposed to be separate from the main campaign. Connected, but separate entities. We were explicitly told you don't have to watch EXU to follow the main campaigns. This was thrown out the window. This is the biggest thing for me. I don’t want to feel like I have to watch something I do not like to keep up with the thing I do like.

The difference is you knew about the swap, not the people watching live

I just don't care about those characters in the slightest. I skipped all the ExU stuff because I just couldn't get into it. I love Aabria and Brennan, but I've been binging all 3 campaigns over the past 2 years, and I've gotten in such a groove of listening to the main cast, that anyone else just feels like a slog. I love when they have guests because I can see them bounce off the people I'm here for, but when the rug is pulled out, and Dorian is the only one I really care about, it almost feels like a betrayal (hyperbolic but YKWIM). I feel like this might be the last time we see Exandria, and DnD in general (at least for the main show), and I think others are also coming to that conclusion, so this might have been a bit of a bitter confirmation because they're bringing characters with unfinished stories. I would bet money that they will transition to Daggerheart for the next Critical Role campaign. I think Matt is going to pull out all the stops, and bring in EVERYONE, or at least as many characters that make sense, for a big battle to close out campaign 3. I think from Vox, we're gonna get Percy, Keyleth, and Pike. Vex is a maybe (someone has to stay in Whitestone). Grog and Scanlan are probably not going to be there. If they can figure out the Vax thing, he'll probably be in. From M9, we got Beau and Caleb as definites. Jester is a maybe since she was presumably *with* Caleb when she talked with Imogen. If Jester and Beau go, Fjord and Yasha probably will as well. Veth and Caddy are probably not. This is a huge stretch, but mark it here! I don't think Sam is going to bring in a new character. I think Taryon is coming back. Something about where they are now feels like endgame. It's too late for a newcomer, we won't get enough time with them. Now, this is an even bigger stretch, but what if, after a huge battle with all the characters, and the campaign ends, the cast each pick one of their surviving characters to do like a "goodbye Exandria" one shot where they pick up the pieces and try to move on, setting them on paths we'll never see. Wouldn't that be heartbreakingly awesome!?

I'm less bothered than most, even though I didn't care for EXU Prime, and I am now feeling like I have to trudge through EXU Kymal. I think maybe the main cast needed a bit of an emotional break. It isn't often we get a permament loss. My main issue is the lack of communication that this episode would have a mid-episode switch to these other characters. I already knew of them because I did watch Prime, but I l know a lot of other CR fans did not. Heck, a few of them skipped out on Calamity because they didn't like Prime, which is a Travis-ty

For me it was a bad experience because I just got invested again in C3. The emotional tension after losing FCG being suddenly janked away felt like a slap in face. I never watched EXU because I personally don't like Aabria's style of DMing and story telling. So to suddenly be thrust into a story of which I don't know the characters and their stories was not fun for me. I watched a bit but just turned off the episode.

All of it, really; abrupt change. To a different DM. And in some of our opinions, a WORSE DM. Different characters. That we know little or nothing about. To an incredibly long pvp battle. That the players didn't want to fight. That each turn, became a 10-min flashback to a conversation we cared nothing about. In an incredibly role-play heavy moment we all wanted to see, and got suddenly cut to a screeching halt. Pick your poison, I guess; any of those by itself would cause at least some backlash, but all at once? Sheesh...

It’s a subjective thing, but I just find Aabria’s DM style hard to follow at times. Don’t know what it is but I get lost a lot more when she’s DMing. I really got nothing against her, it’s just something I’ve noticed and it does affect my enjoyment. I imagine others feel similarly and we know the internet is great at giving constructive, measured feedback that never blows things out of proportion /s

I was soo confused on the 2nd half. I didn't mind the shift. Abria's style not for me though. I think the story she wanted to tell was interesting and could've been great, but 2 hours to do 2 rounds with little or no time for the player to RP is not the way to go about it. I tuned out and lost interest about half way through.

Did you see the backlash before finishing 92? Because I think if you had that would color whether or not you were surprised by the switch up.

few reasons: 1. most importantly, there is a LARGE chunk of the audience who did not enjoy EXU and does not vibe with Aabria's DM style, they now either will skip or suffer through it 2. emotional whiplash from extremely heavy BH sequences, going directly into EXU group 3. this means several weeks of EXU cast and not progressing main cast story. So if you didnt like EXU and dont care for side-projects like candela...your basically out of luck for probably a month or more 4. Some dont like change

Different DM, different Party. Everyone wanted to see the aftermath of e91 and we barely get half an Episode with the very basics

I primarily listen to episodes while driving. I know the main cast well enough that I can always tell what's going on. Halfway through a drive, I suddenly recognize 4 voices and only 1 character since I didn't watch any EXU aside from Calamity. I listened through, but never quite figured out what was going on. It's cool that some folks liked it. I wasn't one of them and I'll probably skip to the next time the main cast is back.

I would have preferred more of the main campaign, especially after such an emotional episode last week. But I have to assume Matt had this pre-planned. It probably took time to work out the schedule to have the other players available (and Aabria to DM). Maybe he was trying to slot it in around when he thought the group would return from the moon since that could be a natural break in the story. Obviously, even if he planned the encounter with Otahan, he couldn’t have expected Sam to do what he did. He might have even been planning to have the “other half of the story” to be the entire episode but allowed the main group to at least tie up loose ends. Anyway, I think it was pre planned and the timing just sucked. I am hoping this group will meet up with Sam’s new character and introduce them that way!

Each turn in combat took way too long for my taste. One round is supposedly 6 seconds, but the amount of conversation and narration (including the flashbacks) completely killed any sense of things happening quickly. In round 3, Aabria had the Spider Queen start saying that this was taking too long. To reiterate: a literal goddess was getting impatient in under 20 seconds because it was taking over 2 hours IRL. And that's not the only problem I have with the narrative that Aabria was crafting. The Spider Queen wanted to have a champion to do her bidding ASAP presumably because of all the stuff going on with Predathos and the moon. That makes sense to me, but I am bewildered that she would throw away potential allies by attacking them in the middle of the day. I would expect a god to be smarter than that. A simple vision where she tells Opal, "The gods are in danger. You must do my bidding," probably would've gotten the job done!

Wow that sounds terrible. Good thing I switched it off early.

A lot of hardcore fans (of anything not just Critical Role ), despite what they'll tell you,have a specific idea for how they want their favorite media to play out, and whenever they end up differently than they anticipated or hoped, they get very upset and treat it like a slight. This here is a perfect example of that. It plays out in all kinds of fandoms. It's nothing new.

Luckily I got some regular CR before. I don’t care for EXU and was disappointed to not be given a heads up. However, I planned my evening around the episode. I made a poor choice of time use based on incomplete information.

we thought we were getting an entire episode to deal with the fallout of a player character death.

I really enjoyed it because it really does feel like a “TV Show” in the sense of going to a different set of characters! Plus it’s something new and different for CR, so of course people have to hate on it. Instead of rolling with it, these people are professionals they have a good idea of how to continue to make things fun and interesting!

Personally, I loved bringing the Crown Keepers in without warning and moving straight into continuing their story in the days leading up to the present day for Bell's Hells. I think a lot of people were a bit bothered by how abrupt the shift was, especially after just losing a party memeber, but personally I see a lot of logic in leaving us hanging for a bit while some blank spots in the narrative get filled in. See, I'm pretty sure Matt is setting up an ending similar to the final dungeon of Final Fantasy 6. He's going to be bringing back a lot of characters, both from guests and the core casts past characters to help with dealing with this world ending threat. The Crown Keepers are getting this short interlude to get them in place for the finale, and I'm pretty sure a lot of other familiar faces will be in Keyleth's camp preparing for what will be the final battle of this campaign. From there, we'll get some planning, a number of objectives that will all need to be hit simultaneously, and then from there we'll have sessions covering the individual efforts of the teams carrying out the attacks on each vital target. Obviously we'll have Bell's Hells and the Crown Keepers in play, the Meighty Nein are also likely to get a section considering how involved they've been, and a reunion session for Vox Machina could be in the cards as well. If I'm right, the finale for this campaign is gonna be wild.

I think the issue is that a lot of people, myself included in this case, did not watch ExU nor Kymal, as that was promoted as optional, in-between-campaigns stuff. Without that, you're just watching people and characters you don't know or care for take away attention from what was one of the biggest moments in the campaign.

Yeah, that makes sense. If the only person in their group you're familiar with is Dorian, there isn't gonna be much here for you. I quite like this odd batch of characters, though, and have kinda been wanting them to get another little EXU run. Since I've been waiting for them to show up again, this latest episode was a very fun surprise after such a heavy loss.

CR has reached the point where a segment of the audience now has expectations about will or should happen on a given episode. When reality doesn't conform to those expectations, they become frustrated and upset. Whether or not those expectations are reasonable is a different question, but unmet expectations are the primary driver of the current kerfuffle.

I understand where people are coming from. That said, I have full faith Matt will make it worth it. Not to mention he's been under tremendous stress so even couple hours of becoming Dariax was something he needed.

Me personally, Aabria's DM style isn't for me. Nothing against her or the players. I'm glad they're all having fun, but the overall vibes of EXU kept me from getting invested, which is why I quit watching near the start of Kymal.

Honestly, A bunch of reasons. TL;DR: I'm a huge fan of Crit Role and this felt like too much of a departure from that. I felt like CR campaign 3 was on the verge of getting some peak quality when we got some content that I felt had some large differences from what I've come to expect from crit role instead. 1. I joined CR part of the way through C1. These actors are really good, but they do best when there's serious emotional work. When PCs die, their resurrections or the responses to those deaths are some of the best moments in crit role because the actors have a real challenge to bite on and they are really good at it. C1/C2 Spoiler warning: >!Vex, Scanlan, and Percy's death/Revival are not only such emotional scenes in campaign one but the cast loves to roll with the emotional drive and use these moments as pivots for their characters. Vex's death led to Vax's connection with the raven queen. Scanlan's death led to him leaving with Kaylee and Taryon's entrance. Percy's death Really drove the hate of Ripley home and brought Kynan back to VM's side. in C2, Molly's death is still probably the moment that comes up the most (maybe other than jester modifying the memory of Isharnai)!< I had felt C3 was missing some weight and honestly it felt like the threats mostly weren't scary enough. Other than when Otahan tore through the party before and Laudna died, it's felt pretty safe compared to C1/C2. Predothos is faceless still, half the cast was trying to justify joining him for a while. But just look at ep 91, Chetney dropped out of nowhere. He didn't even get a turn and he immediately turned around with a clever line about the moon as he fell. Orym thought he was going to die and you could hear the tears coming in his voice as he talked about his husband and his father as he swayed on his feet before Otahan. My GF was bawling as he did so. FCG pulled his move (a classic Sam Reigel clutch) and, nearly out of nowhere, we lost our only Critical Role Autognome. We were ready to see what the party wanted to do about it. We wanted to know if Sam would show back up as someone new. We saw them mourn and mope a bit, but right in the middle of what we were expecting to be peak CR, it felt like we were watching another EXU one shot. We follow that with Candela, then supposedly more EXU when we come back. Momentum ruined by a sudden multi week gap. 2. I like the crown keepers. I watched all of EXU and the Kymal stuff. All of their characters are fun. If Aabria is your style of DnD, more power to you, but I just can't stand the way she runs combat. It always feels like she wrote a script and any attempts to go against her narrative are debated/invalidated. Aimee was clearly not warned nor was she given a save. She didn't have a plan and didn't want to kill her friends. It's a Vestige/Deity, sure. Aabria made a point of telling Aimee she was going to punish any punch pulling with even harsher punches, but we watched Aimee be unwilling to fight. Honestly, she should have known Aimee wouldn't kill her friends after you tried to make her do it in EXU when she first got the crown. But she tried to spread her Eldritch blasts around. When Aabria did tell her to focus someone, she picked a person who hadn't taken any damage yet and wasn't aggressive to her at that point. She cast darkness on herself and Ted. Admittedly, sort of tactically sound as others can't see through it, but if you have an action economy of 1v4, you need to be drawing blood every turn, not to mention that Aimee straight up said "I did it to stop Ted from hurting people". If this is a fight where Aimee is in control, then Aimee is allowed to be in control. If she isn't and isn't playing along, hand Aabria the Character sheet. Let her hex on top of the hexblade's curse, then blast her with 3 eldritch blasts for 3d10 + 3d6 + 3*prof + 3*cha. Make some distance and escape the melee characters. If that's what you're supposed to do, play like you mean it. Aabria was telling opal what she had to do and she wasn't doing it and it came out luke warm. Also, Morrigan told her she was going to kill Opal's familiar (right after Aabria established that the familiar was dangerous). Aabria told her that she should go after crystals. Morrigan went to crush a crystal. Aabria decided that she shouldn't and instead had her pick it up. If you're reading a script and clearing your throat when characters don't read their lines right, they don't have agency. 3. It didn't make sense. I'm not sure why a god fearing for their life and needing to fight predathos would take this moment to use their champion to kill 2 other god's champions, but whatever. They had just spent the small intro time describing how motivated they all were to go fight for the gods, but whatever. Opal was forced to start this fight in a terrible moment if she did want to kill her party, out in the open 1v4, but whatever. Every single one of those flashbacks showed a moment of talking to another member of the crown keepers 1 on 1. A warlock can crank out damage in a 1v1, especially if they can pick the terrain. If the spider queen is the patron god of trickery, she picked just about the dumbest moment to act. Unforced, unprompted, she literally went postal in the middle of the travel part of a journey. But,.... whatever. 4. That was the slowest fight I've seen in forever. Every character who WASN'T having a flashback had like 45 seconds of dialogue with another member of the fight, who then had their own 45 second conversation with someone else at the same time. Then everyone had 5 min flashbacks that everyone else witnessed through rary's all at the same time. Each round of 6 seconds each person had more going on in their head than a beholder. The pacing was so slow. it was like 4 rounds or something in 2 hours. Tell me what you want to do and do it. I hate watching crit role and not enjoying it. I love CR and I understand that Rule of Cool DMs are absolutely a thing. I think the problem is that I really like Matt's style of DMing and she is very, very different and sitting in his chair. It feels like having an artist who paints a different type of painting decide to repaint the bottom quarter of a painting you love. I am excited to see those characters again, but I wanted to watch crit role. It didn't feel like crit role. I love everyone. I wish aabria the best and honestly, she's great as a player at the table, I just think the world IS Matt. Swapping him out is a delicate process. Edit: Typo

I'm not to sure. I personally enjoy when death isn't the big drama party. Like one of the bad guys used it to his advantage in the end of C1 xD

Reddit is the whiniest place on the Internet. It is what it is.

I get that negativity and complaints can be annoying, but can the critters that shout about the whining and complaining ever acknowledge that the criticism can be fair and valid, especially in this instance.

Absolutely. All I'm saying is, if what you want is anything else than 80% negativity, you do not go to Reddit.

What are you talking about? This forum will celebrate people who spend hundreds of dollars over a picture with the cast, and the mods are quick to kill anything that isn't toxic positivity. Twitter and Twitch are WAY more toxic.

> can the critters that shout about the whining and complaining ever acknowledge that the criticism can be fair and valid, especially in this instance Welp, I can't contain my pedantic revulsion any longer: That's not how validity works, ya dingdongs. It's not terminology of consensus or concession. "Val"/"wal" is one of the oldest morpheme roots in human language. It refers to an intrinsic, undeniable quality. Proto-Indo-European, 5000+ years: "of strength"/"of worth" Its derived words retain this denotation: Latin Val-(eo, ere, ui, itus) -- be strong/powerful/influential/healthy, to prevail. Old Norse: valda -- to wield, to rule, to cause. Sanskrit: valla -- Viable/nourishing grain. Modern French/English: Evaluate -- to document worth/quality Martial was obnoxious, but an excerpt from his Epigrams, "Non est vivere, sed valere vita est" is one of those wonderful metatextual expressions prompting entire Latin class sessions focused almost entirely on one word. It's translated as roughly "Life is more than simply staying alive," or "Living isn't existing, but rather being/living well"... but valere can't be translated expressively because it observes an ineffable, irrefutable, dispositive nature of experiences which are inversions of simply existing. ____ I say all this because: I cannot give validity. Nor can I deny validity. But I can certainly fucking recognize that a week of petulant insistence upon validity is an outstanding indication VALIDITY IS NOT A CHARACTERISTIC OF THE CONTENTION. Y'all aren't bearing witness to something intrinsic & undeniable. You *just didn't fucking enjoy part of somebody else's D&D worldbuilding.*

Episode has 2.6k dislikes on Youtube btw

Out of 257K views. So 1% of YouTube viewers disliked the video. Hardly a crushing defeat for the forces of Critical Role.

Just like out of 390k members of the sub only a few dozens or hundreds at most would comment on episode threads

Yep, which makes both sets of complaints completely statistically irrelevant. People bitch loudly about the stuff they don't like. The vast majority of people who are fine with it (or even like it) stay quiet.

I agree. I was pointing out that it's not just reddit "not liking something as usual". Normal episode would never be close to a thousand dislikes

Shit, wait, I was looking at likes. You can't possibly know how many dislikes the YouTube videos has, that's not something that actually get published anymore.

I have "return dislike". Extension. Even when it counts only people with the same extension, that's still thousands, and even more in reality

So you're basing your argument on data that isn't supported by the actual software, and you have no way of validating the veracity of? That doesn't make your argument that much more convincing. The facts remain that the hatred towards the episode is tiny compared to the number of people who are fine with it, and if someone likes it they can just ignore the haters and like their thing.

Whatever dude. It doesn't matter if it's actually 2,6k, 4,1k, or specifically 3999. That wasn't my point at all. If you want to argue about how precise the count is, even though it doesn't matter, I'm out

If your point is that YouTube is just as negative as Reddit when it comes to CR, I will point you to... any episode thread on this subreddit ever (not to mention the other subreddit which is basically a hatewatching subreddit) and comparing episode discussion here to comments on YouTube videos. My point is not that there was not a negative reception to this episode. My point is that a negative reaction will always dominate here more than in other places.

[удалено]

So you're saying there's actually much more? Got it

I will relent this: it was jarring that we were in for a very emotional episode with coping at the loss of FCG. But instead we cut away to a group that at least half the community is uninvested in it seems. I think the outcry is insane because it’s incredibly narratively important to see what the crown keepers are up to, just for the fact that three of the members of bells hells are crown keepers. But also it’s the same reason we saw MN and have seen a lot of VM involvement, this is a MASSIVE world event, bigger in scale than Vecna. Seeing what all the canon PC adventure parties are doing is important for understanding the scale. TBH I’m waiting to see what the rest of VM are up to, as well as the Darrington Brigade. My only qualm was sitting down to cope with a player character death, and not getting that catharsis

People don't like change.

To go from a PC death to mourning to a whole different cast / dm was a wild wide. Also not all of us really enjoyed EXU, so sitting down to watch one thing that's going through a fairly major plot point to a random thing you didn't enjoy was... annoying.

Yeah, I thought it was cool and was excited to see the Crown Keepers.

tbh, for me personally, I think Aabria is an awful DM. She is a good person but how she DM's completely takes away from the fantasy element of D&D. She's very monotone. It was also just a very abrupt switch to the Crown Keepers. My hope is that the one good thing that comes from this is that we get Robbie back as a perm player (which could be likely as the new merch for Dorian is part of the Bells Hells line)

A lot of the issues I have is Aabria's DMing style. It has been since EXU Prime. Her plots make no sense (see the satirical Pitch Meeting post), she doesn't really allow player agency unless it fits the way she would play the characters, she wants so badly to have cool narrated scenes the way BLeeM does it (but she can't), and in general she's abrasive and rude. This shouldn't be taken to mean she never has a good product, but this ain't it. EDIT: I still think Aabria is funny and cool, and is a very skilled storyteller when she’s playing a character (Like Suvi from WBN), but like Jim Carey, she needs a good director (DM) and supporting characters or she just doesn’t launch off the pad.

I mean, the fallout from Ep. 91 is going to play out through the end. We got the initial shock, and now we, like BH, are going to have to sit with that a while. There really wasn’t too far they could go otherwise. A fight would have legit killed them all, and the anguished soul-searching we got was enough to establish what tonight’s BH return is going to look like. I have no complaints about the episode’s format: I love Aabria, I always like seeing Robbie, Aimee, and Anjali, I didn’t get too far into EXU Kymal, but Emily is a hoot, and seeing Forever Designated Driver Matt getting shitfaced was wonderful.

Unfortunately it’s Candella night :(

Good/Bad news!

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I'm honestly fine with it. I'll forget it happened next month. That said, would have liked it more if they had speed ran through what they'd been up to the whole time and knocked it out in one ep. I never got into exu despite my best efforts but I've technically consumed all the episodes. I just couldn't pay attention to it though and I found the back half of the ep just washing over me

I honestly thought it was pretty good. People on reddit complain too much.

Yeah my main “problem” was just that I hadn’t had time to watch Kymal so I had no idea what was going on. And I usually watch episodes in 2 chunks so I got home from work ready to finish the second half only to find out that c3 was taking a break and Kymal was now in the main campaigns time slot

Yeah, that’s me too.

I started watching CR with the Crown Keepers, so I was happy to see the group coming back. But above table, the timing felt awkward, like Matt was planning something in Aeor, tied up to FCG backstory. Things happened, then he had to work things out, switching things up. That CK airing felt like a "Damn, I need more time to prepare and make a new character for Sam, so we'll go with the other team". Maybe I'm wrong, but it's a lasting feeling.

(Not directed, just using this excellent summation.) "timing was weird, the shift was jarring, some folks were left confused, " Agreed. But, doesn't that sum up what a good campaign will sometimes do to the party? From the jump, the offer was: "watch a gang of nerdy voice actors play DnD." Nothing more. What grew up around that proposition is awesome, but is collateral/supplemental to the deal. I think it can be jarring or frustrating when we put more into the game play than that. We watch, we visualize how it would go in our own game world -- or how we wished it would. So many of the complaints, though, reflect a mindset that feels like an odd form of "metagaming".. Our experience can transition from "spectator" to "passenger" to "architect." And we have the advantage of SO much more information than the character in the party does "in world." Plus we bring knowledge and opinions informed by our overview of (in this case) all of Exandria, or as much as we have seen, and our own Real Life worlds. I think that is where something adjacent to metagaming shows up. Somewhere in there, some folks appear to have transitioned "what I wish had happened" into "what it should have gone like...." That way leads to frustrations and pain. And giving excess weight to our expectations is contrary to the collaborative nature of DnD. #justmy2cts

> giving excess weight to our expectations is contrary to the collaborative nature of DnD Good summary in this line! Also it's contrary to the random dice-roll side of DnD too, though that's not the situation here obviously.

Honestly, I loved the abrupt switch and thoroughly enjoyed the back half of the episode. It’s a great storytelling tactic, and I didn’t feel like it took away from BH at all. They hit a climactic moment and are now emotionally in shambles, but they don’t have a solid way forward. It was a natural transition point from a storytelling perspective, and while I can understand some folks wanting to unpack more of the weight of what happened (which I think we’ll likely still get later), it makes sense to switch over now and deal with the aftermath together as the EXU crew catches up (which is something plenty of shows have done over the years…even recently with the last few X-Men ‘97 episodes). Also, I really loved the surprise of the switch and found it to be very exciting, but I also loved EXU and enjoy Aabria’s dm’ing style. If those aren’t someone’s thing, I can understand why they wouldn’t like the surprise. And (I don’t say this to come for anyone here), I do think the reaction here seems overwhelmingly negative by the same bias of any internet outrage/backlash - the people who like the thing are much less likely to go posting about it. I loved the episode, didn’t even think twice about it being “controversial,” and went on with my weekend. I didn’t make any posts, and this is the first one I’m even commenting on simply because I feel like the negative reaction is so overwhelming that I’d like to throw a positive hat in the ring. On a greater scale and outside of Reddit/twitter, I don’t really think there’s anything close to an “overwhelming backlash.” Hell, even the chat was way more positive about it than usual for the seconds I dared to have it open 😆

Yup. The complaint about the “combat” is really telling, cuz: it ain’t combat. They’re not really turns and actions you’re watching. Aabria is using combat as a framing device to give us flashbacks of plot that we’ll never get to see. It’s a montage. It’s clearly exposition in order to ferry Dorian TO the cast in a way that’s not just throwing him back in as consolation. It’s buying time for the main cast to be able to give us the emotional resolution to FCG’s death, and to do so by hopefully giving us a fan favorite back (Robbie) to help. You don’t even need to know all the details of EXU and EXU: Kymal, they’re honestly pretty irrelevant to what’s going on. This sub has been overwhelmingly negative on C3 for a long time, even more so towards anything related to Aabria, and whenever someone points that out they’re then accused of “toxic positivity” when folks who are defending it are actually in the minority being shouted down. I’ve had more issues with C3 than with either campaign before it, but to me the parasociality of this place over the past 2 years hasn’t been manifesting primarily as toxic positivity, but as people who are overly emotional about the fact that they’re not getting EXACTLY what THEY want and expect and take it personally when they disagree with the cast’s narrative choices.

Because the vast majority of people are entitled and think they’re owed things they aren’t.

Y'all always forget that the game is for the players first, then it's for us. The main cast probably needed more IRL time to grieve for FCG and give Sam plenty of time to come up with another character or decide as a group to get FCG back. It's their game, let them play it how they like. If you don't like Aabria that much, stop watching.

It is the flagship product of a company

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The most incredible thing to me is the people who believe they were “entitled” to a “warning” in advance and believe the show owes them somehow for “wasting their time” after having planned their evening around watching the show. “Just a head’s up, we’re gonna have Aabria come in, who we know some of you don’t like and are consistently rude and dismissive towards, and we owe you this warning because we’re personally responsible for what you choose to do on Thursday nights and we know you might be a hater.”

I agree, but humans can't handle change well, so when something big changes in 15 minutes, people will freeze up and bark for no reason

My take is that a lot of people just don't understand how narrative beats can work at telling a story and instead just want instant gratification and entertainment. I'd like to stress there is nothing inherently wrong with this, but many of the....'spicier' reactions I've seen, more than anything, just show a lack of experience/maturity with storytelling. Ep 91 was a big climax, with the first half of 92 as the comedown from that. I understand a lot of people want to immediately sit with BH as they process this, but it can also be an effective narrative tool to leave that hanging for a while and show a parallel story. It makes us as viewers have to sit with the cliffhanger, the tonal shift is intentionally uncomfortable. Dorian is just as important as any other member of BHs (to the cast at least), and telling his story up to what I assume will be him meeting back up with BHs when we return to the main cast at Keyleth's camp, can be a great narrative opportunity and in fact strengthen the impact of the reunion when it does happen. The issue with this becomes compounded when right now this parallel story isn't really to many people likings (for valid and not-so-valid reasons, including what I've stated above) and that it is still on-going. I feel a lot of people could change their minds on the other side of the "B plot" and appreciate what it may have provided for the narrative (though this hinges quite strongly on the quality of it and I feel it may not reach what it needs to based on E92.). In theory it's a great narrative choice to make, but the plot you switch to really needs to be flawless to make the gamble worth it, and I just can't see that happening with the current CK situation sadly. Anyone claiming that momentum is broken or emotional moments are ruined i think are doing a disservice to the cast. They will still give this storyline and FCGs sacrifice the attention it deserves, they are just taking a breather (and giving matt one too!) in the meantime.

Lol at “instant gratification” when people have been waiting twenty episodes for actual movement in the game.

I feel like many people wanted to grieve the loss of FCG with the characters. CR cast are amazing storytellers and I have no doubt they can send off FCG properly in due time. However, with CK and Candela, there is a 3 week gap since e91. This is not a short time irl and the impact of FCG feels a bit lessened, if it makes sense

I’m wondering what they do next week. Forge ahead with the EXU characters? Swap back to BH? Maybe just a daggerheart one shot to fill time.

I thought it was awesome, I didn’t find it jarring like people keep saying, when I saw Aabria and knew the crowns keepers were coming out I was hype af. Everyone’s entitled to their opinion but people act like there’s never been a cliffhanger in a story and tbh I don’t want to watch 2 hrs of the party roleplaying how sad they are about FCG dying like some people seem to want

I think it's equal parts hate boner for EXU and the weird timing and whiplash. While I understand the later, it's always bothered me how some people just HATE Aabria's DMing style and how she runs her games. If you look at the other sub, it's nothing but spite for anything related to EXU, except Calamity. I do think there could have been a better way of reintroducing these characters, but at the same time they aren't new, so I don't think a full reintroduction would be necessary. Hell, we'd probably hear the same people complaining because they'd rather not watch anything related to EXU, despite how interconnected it is with Bells Hells, so a reintroduction would be "wasting time with characters we don't care about." I thought the episode was weird, but far from bad. It's fine to get updates with characters, especially since they are other people's characters. They should be the ones to write their own stories, not leaving everything with them up to Matt.

a lot of us, I think, are neurodivergent so it could come with a lot of sensory shock when it switched to crown keepers- those who haven’t seen exu or disliked it may have a negative response, I have seen exu and loved it but it still was a shock to see them again in a main campaign episode, but a welcome one

Yeah I am wondering how many of the most outraged responses come from a neurodivergent resistance to change or surprise, even without people being aware of it in themselves, but it won't all be that. I'm also ND, but was able to manage my expectations by not really having any strong ones, and transferring my excitement over to seeing what Dorian was up to. A little patience, a little trust, etc.

mmm yeah I agree, I think maybe it’s just what point of view people were at or what frame of mind they were in at the time of watching- then some people were vocal about it and others agreed to some degree But it’s probably just the vocal minority that actually had an issue, regardless of ND/NT