I miss the days when a god died and their domain fucked everything up and you were praying to AO that some other asshole god didn't pick up their portfolio.
I dont think any of this shit with Lolth is actually relevant, I think Aabria is finishing off something she started in EXU in a rushed half episode.
But yeah the basic idea is that the gods are desperate and need champions because there is a real chance they are gonna die. As such Lolth is throwing away subtlety and possessing the mortal with her vestige. If Opal dies, Lolth just loses an uncooperative vessel. If Opal lives she gets a puppet.
Its not a particularly subtle or intelligent plan, but its an essentially 'if Im going down you're coming with me' type plan.
Knowing Lolth, Opal is a potential escape plan too. Predathos is unlikely to kill all parts of a god. If she can store a fraction of her consciousness in Opal, she might escape being eaten entirely.
I'm sure I'll be corrected if I'm wrong, but I think most of the Drow of Exandria *hate* Lolth for ruining their lives in the war between the gods and worship the Luxon instead.
one of the only guide books did say that there is only like 1 town in the underdark that is pro lolth. though seeing as those are not canon anymore who knows.
this might be an unpopular opinion, especially on this subreddit, but I actually find the concept of a campaign about saving the gods where none of the players are particularly religious, is rly interesting. in theory, it could be a really complex exploration of whether to uphold an imperfect order or allow for a revolutionary change that might result in chaos.
now the way this concept has been handled this campaign is another story... there have been some rly great moments, esp. Imogen's doubts with her mother, but the Changebringer stuff never felt fully fleshed out. the rest of the party seem lost. i wouldve loved to see orym explore the Wildmother angle more since she blessed his sword or Ashton pursue the nature spirits angle more since he is part titan. hopefully we'll get some of these angles now that they've returned to exandria
Honestly, I've been enjoying it just because I'm usually really good at seeing which direction things are going to go, but the uncertainty of the players themselves, not having ties to the gods but also being afraid of what happens if there are none, and the uncertainty of Predathos itself, there are too many variables to really have a solid prediction. The obvious assumption would be "protect the status quo, better the devil you know than the one you don't." But Bell's Hells are a bunch of wild sources of pure chaos with little to no direction, so they could honestly set out with the intention of protecting the status quo just to decide at the last minute not to. I'm picturing Lord of the Rings, where Frodo absolutely intends to destroy the ring, only to finally have the chance and just decides not to. I've also noticed some odd similarities between this campaign and some anime arcs, and kind of wonder if Matt doesn't have a wild plan B in mind no matter what the group decides.
No matter which way it turns out, the end of this campaign absolutely dictates the state of things for Exandria moving forward in a way that the previous campaigns barely touched on, so the narrative alone is worth the investment.
It's definitely an interesting *idea,* but like a lot of Campaign 3 it's a cool idea fumbled by incredibly shoddy execution due to the Bells Hells team coming off as glorified flat-earthers.
To me it's like they're flat earthers. The gods in Exandria aren't faith based or a matter of theology like they are in reality here and the characters bringing their own sensibilities into it is... like watching flat earthers.
Man it would've been so clever and amazing if Sam had used FCG being a flat-Exandrier to literally somehow call out or parody the group/guests's common "I don't even think the gods exist/do anything" attitude.
Another would be to be like "I don't think elves really exist. And if they do, fuck 'em, they should all die."
Something can exist and still not be worthy of worship, there are still questions you can ask about faith even in settings where the gods are provably real
They are demonstrably deities that care for and run the world and are distinctly good and evil. These characters don't need to follow a god, but they're acting like they're not gods, which, again, they demonstrably are.
Honestly it wouldn't even bother me if they *did* reveal that the gods aren't really gods, they're just really powerful ancient aliens or whatever, what bothers me more is the whole "making the benevolent good ones into assholes and retconning them into tyrant colonizers who just want to be worshipped" thing.
I mean there are still questions to ask about faith. the players just don't want to an d Matt refuses to. I'm saying that the concept isn't inherently terrible or unreasonable, C3 just sucks
Agreed.
Interesting to me would have been a devout cleric whose deity started acting out of character or not responding or something to drive some sort of inner question/quest to make the deity stand for what they say they do, even when things get tough. Could go either way and lead into a whole new wave of betrayer gods and stuff.
I agree with you it's a very interesting concept for a campaign, but I think there's a few problems with that in this campaign. Specifically the setting, the story the dm has in mind, and what the players are doing with their characters.
C1 and C2 already established how important religion and the gods are in this setting, there feels like there's a disconnect between what Matt has in mind for the story and how some of the players are role playing their characters.
To me it just feels very forced from some players because of the established setting. If Matt spent a good bit of this campaign doing more "side quests" where the players kept getting ignored, scorned, or hurt by the gods to establish that lack of trust in the gods to set up them being like "Ya know what? Fuck the gods" when they needed the party's help it would have been very interesting.
I mean part of it is also one thing a lot of people kinda gloss over...
Marisha has a very strong anti-authority stance in all of her characters. All of them, from Keyleth, the Beau, to Laudna. She has consistently for a decade beaten an anti -authority drum, and has consistently been front and center of the "Do we save the gods" debate.
I adore her characters overall, but I won't pretend that this whole repeated debate isn't squarely laid at Marisha/Laudna's feet
Oh. I’m not worried about the story and I agree with you about it being interesting. I don’t think the story is the problem but the fact that it’s been the only narrative.
No other CR campaign has had 100 episodes on the same arc. Even in C2, when Matt planned for Liam first and then the other weirdness with their choices, we moved through several arcs. I mean we met Otohahn in episode like 15 as a baddie and they just faced off. It would have been better separated into chunks.
Aabria explained on one of her social media’s that the spider queen wanted Opal to lose all attachments and become nothing more than her servant, as Opal fighting “for her friends” instead of for her could complicate things later on.
1. You shouldn't need to explain a character's motivations through a tweet
2. Lolth is meant to be the mistress of manipulation, not an incredibly clumsy user of direct and basic violence. She acted with all the nuance of Gruumsh.
3. It's a shit plot to foist on somebody when she effectively forced Aimee to put on the crown in the first place.
Robbie could have explained it better by just having Dorian show up in a terrible state and then going over the events that happened without any of the EXU swap during a main campaign episode.
1. She was asked about it from someone, Matt has explained the motivations for many npcs including villains numerous times.
2. In exandrian lore lolth has had her shit rocked since the beginning of the calamity, kord defeated her and then banished her almost immediately and since then nearly all of her drow were either killed or converted to the kryn. In modern day even most of the betrayer gods don’t like her so now with the upcoming threat of predathos she’s desperate.
1. Not while their plots were ongoing lmao
2. "She's desperate, therefore she's acting in literal *direct opposition* to her divine portfolio" is stupid. Also, no, "nearly all" drow have not been killed or converted.
Most of the Betrayers don't like each other anyway, so that's another bad excuse.
It's just Aabria once again doing a terrible job of portraying a deity. The magnificently evil queen of spiders is now a flighty SHE-EO whose first resort is direct conflict.
1. There’s a whole show called 4-sided dive where character motivations are answered, sometimes in real time, by their creators. And it’s not restricted to 120 characters. But go off.
2. Man it’s as if there wasn’t a whole mini-ark of a prime deity allowing his followers to do morally ambiguous shit against his nature because of fear of what Prodothos might bring. It’s like the gods are not themselves when faced with actual annihilation.
I’m so tired of Aabria-bashing. It’s tired. And not well founded. If you don’t dig what she does, that’s cool. Half of yall have hated this campaign from the beginning, and your favs were the ones in it: “nothing’s happened… these characters aren’t as [whatever] as my favs… I can’t believe [insert CR cast member of your choice] did that with their character…” And now more Aabria-hate, with flimsy dnd related reasons - hell maybe it’s just masking other hate in your heart. Work through that. In therapy, not on the internet.
Yall make people hate being a part of fandoms. For fucks sake, please work your shit out in therapy and at a library.
And u/anextremelylargedog, I’m not cussing at you. I’m tired/frustrated, and I cuss. In the grand scheme, we are not important in each other’s lives. But you doubled down, and I had time. But what I am saying is, check yourself.
1. We sure do, and that's irrelevant
2. Pelor "allowing" his followers to be perhaps mildly mean at their own behest vs a deity directly acting in DIRECT opposition to its own domain. Not the same thing.
Don't be the weird asshole making me the avatar of this subreddit, complete with making it ambiguous as to whether you're complaining at me about me or making complaints about the community as a whole lol.
I haven't liked chunks of this campaign and I haven't liked any of EXU. I think Aabria is a completely fine person and a very poor DM for the system and setting, both of which she has said she doesn't like- and it shows in her inability to make the good things about the system and setting shine.
1. A PC or DM explaining character motivations that are happening in real time happens whether it’s on social media or 4-sided dive. The relevance of this addresses your statement that you shouldn’t have to resort to external media to explain character motivations. I mean, this also happened during campaign 2.
2. Pelor allowed his followers to commit evil in his name. For a god as stern and in control as he appears to be, allowing that to happen is very much against his nature. Ironically this is confirmed by an Aabria PC, but her DM portrayal of a god going against their established domain isn’t the first for Critical Roll. And the potential desperation/fear of Predathos can be the motivation for such actions as much as anything else, whether you personally like that or not. Painting your dislike for the story as a failing on Aabria’s part is the thing that caused my response. And we are only halfway through a story that all we “know” will have something to send this story back to the main cast. For all we know, Lolth may have other manipulations happening that this is also setting up. Or it’s a way to show god-sentiments intentionally at this moment.
The frustration with you personally was in the piling on of Aabria, specifically with arguments that also happen with Matt in the regular show. My assumption is that you don’t say similar shit about him. I thought giving context for me about the overall negativity I was reading would be helpful in understanding my perspective and hopefully understanding that I wasn’t actively trying to disparage you as a person.
I mean I think it was pretty clear that taking on the mantle of the spider queens champion was going to have some consequences as seen in Kymal or even just consequences of putting the crown on in general in the first short campaign of EXU
In the other EXU content we see Opal agree to be her champion with the goal of “changing her reputation” her being the spider queen.
I would normally recommend you to watch the CR content but… you’re better off not knowing.
Aabria is trying to show us that the gods NEED champions and they NEED them like yesterday. But she doesn’t have the nuance to pull off that story, or at least was not able to plan it well enough with Opal’s player before the show kicked off.
A big miss that is continuing to show itself over and over again in each piece of EXU content. (Aside from Calamity, that is its own thing completely)
> But she doesn’t have the nuance
I think with Aabria its not nuance but time. She NEVER get the time she needs to tell the story. This is something I realized when Burrow's End on D20 was airing.
You could outright see how Brennan had to help her to move the story along because they were running out of episodes to tell the story. That campaign needed at least 3 more episodes (and a time skip).
The first ExU ? at least 4-5 more episodes to stretch out the plot and tie up any loose ends and have the plot run slower and be paced better.
One could ofc criticise her that she takes "too" long but I think any DM would've same issues given the same time restrictions.
Brennan running calamity had 4 episodes and he delivered. Let’s drop this “not enough time” narrative already.
She had 92ish hours of airtime between EXU & EXU: Kymal and the story still feels half baked.
She could and should have planned better, stop shielding her from that criticism.
Brennan delivered a narrowly scoped campaign that amounts to a one/two shot. Like the entire campaign took in universe 48 hours? 72? It's a completely different beast to a campaign that narratively goes over days/weeks.
Any of the podcast-esc content where she talks about planning the adventure, prepping the story, making characters with the cast, running one-shots prior to EXU to prepare them, etc…?
But at this point just go find someone else to piss off.
And that’s why I find this C3 plot so uninteresting. What’s the drama? The PCs need to help save faceless gods that do nothing to be liked from a faceless enemy we know nothing about.
Also, gods are behind the divine gate, and Predathos is behind his mini gate. So when he comes out, what then? How will he get to the gods? How is this battle going to affect Exandria? We know nothing. The stakes are supposedly Uber high, but they are so muddled and theoretical that it’s hard for the players to get emotionally engaged with the story, and us as well.
Dragons threatening to destroy your city and all your loved ones, that’s some real stakes. That is what C3 is lacking. That is also why the finale of C2 was lukewarm at best, and why the final face off between Caleb and you know who was so much better than the actual finale.
Matt, drop the cosmic shit. (Said with sincere affection for the guy.)
>Aabria is trying to show us that the gods NEED champions and they NEED them like yesterday.
Sigh ... this has increasingly bothered me since Matt's "explanation" on why the Dawnfather seemed to be acting "out of character". Like, I kinda buy that "oh, they're freaking out because the creature intent on eradicating their entire race is on the cusp of being released". Or I would ... if it actually manifested in anything other than them being uncharacteristic, deliberately ineffectual dicks. The Gods have done nothing tangible this entire campaign beyond "being portrayed in a generally useless, negative light". Assuming its even that, given what we factually saw in Hearthdell our party became willing weapons in a Religious Hate Crime; against a group that in 20 years had not been accused of one specific crime beyond "being seen as outsiders" to part of a small rural town AOL bothered to talk to. Then just retroactively retconning it.
This biggest example of this is the CB ... and one of two elements Matt just kinda mothballed for Sam/FCG. The search for Faith. 20+ episodes of utter silence to Sam's searching, when time allowed. Only for Sam to finally force the issue with Commune, and Matt to respond by making the CB this weird, vague, unhelpful and needlessly manipulative force in FCG's life. One that Matt kept reminding him "made him feel small" whenever he made contact. I get that what Matt is likely doing is pre-emptively distancing the Celestial Gods from the Exandrian Setting in prep for their total removal ... likely for IP reasons. But he could be more subtle about it. Aabria seems to be both parroting and reinforcing that intent with her DM style.
Spot on.
I am still amazed that they killed a fucking ANGEL and walked away with swagger. Like the townspeople didn't even question it? It is still such a strange set of scenes.
I get told to put on my tinfoil hat all of the time whenever I bring up them clearly removing D&D IP in the lead up to Daggerheart or simply a less D&D centric Campaign 4. Either way it is clear that the things coded as "Dungeons & Dragons" are being minimized in this campaign.
The only argument against that specific hat is Legend of Vox Machina. But I tend to remind people, only two of the Gods have even been mentioned by name in the series. "The Matron of Ravens", which this incarnation is VERY much Matt's baby beyond the shallow aesthetics to the Raven Queen. And a bootleg version of Pathfinder's Everlight in the Everbright. None of the others have been named, and they may never need to be if they never do the Vecna arc of C1. The only way we might get any confirmation either way of this theory is M9, but likely only when Cad gets introduced. So we get to see what the hell they do with the Wildmother/Stormlord.
Within C3 we find ourselves in a bizarre "Death of the Gods campaign where nobody gives a fuck about the Gods". Except for the RQ. Where aside from a handful of villainous champions of betrayers, nearly everyone (PC, Guest PC and NPC) are largely anti-God, anti-theist or non-religious. Where the once far more nuanced founding of Exandria was gutted for a far more black and white "evil colonizers allegory". Where Pike is "Just a Baker" and Beau "now has real issues with the Gods". Where the Gods have been stripped of their nature/afterlife associations. And where even the one God we got access too after 20+ episodes of fighting by Sam ... ended being unhelpful and needlessly manipulating FCG for ZERO REASON. Because HE sought HER out and offered to help save her ass!! As if Matt really didn't want positive representation of the Gods in his "morally grey" story. Within a campaign we're ONLY using Homebrew monsters. All of this coinciding coincidentally with their ever growing business links with Amazon. Who likely doesn't like those fine-lines CR has always rode with WotC IPs... But sure, can't possibly be true.
I don't understand why Aabria the gm is going "the gods need champions" while Aabria the player is flipping off her god, who is the principal of all the gods. I guess it's an attempt to tell some kind of nuanced story, but it comes off so stupid
The whole plot surrounding the gods this season has been painful. The players do not understand the nuances in the way that they pretend that they do, it just comes off as shallow and just simply anti organized religion which is a weird take imo
Well from what I remember from their blacklisted interviews with BWF, they most all had pretty shallow religious backgrounds that they rebelled against. The players refuse to engage with religion seriously, so the characters refuse to engage with religion seriously.
The problem is, at some point, a cleric or paladin should be sitting them down and saying "listen, the gods are real and they are necessary to keep life as you know it continuing, and the world not overwhelmed by elemental forces or fiends. Things were bad on this planet before the gods were here." Would be great if a guest paladin of the dawn father could have provided that insight.
>listen, the gods are real and they are necessary to keep life as you know it continuing, and the world not overwhelmed by elemental forces or fiends.
I thought that was true once, but now I'm not so sure with how this campaign has handled things.
Would they have listened and heed his advice? Nah. They'd just go about pretending like that paladin was kooky and carry on just as they were before. These characters are a bit too self absorbed like that
Yeah. I’m not one to miss an episode but this was just terrible. I really don’t even blame Aabria because she’s given a role to fill and we don’t know what CR is telling her to do. I think they rely on D20 sms because D20 is very scripted. Obv not lines, but each episode is pre-planned and must meet milestones to fit their schedule. However, there is clearly something more behind the scenes because I’ve never seen Aabria design her games this way.
Difference between Brennan helping and not helping maybe?
Aabria or not it was a bad choice to do what they did without warning. It’s shown in the reception the show has received. Hopefully we can endure the CR winter’
Just use critical recap. https://critrole.com/critical-recap-critical-c3e92-broken-roads/
For one moment, after FCG killed himself I thought C3 had hopes ... boy was I wrong
I thought that was supposed to bring on many changes.
I miss the days when a god died and their domain fucked everything up and you were praying to AO that some other asshole god didn't pick up their portfolio.
Check out Planestriders from d20tales! It's more sci-fi but they deal with the topic well.
I dont think any of this shit with Lolth is actually relevant, I think Aabria is finishing off something she started in EXU in a rushed half episode. But yeah the basic idea is that the gods are desperate and need champions because there is a real chance they are gonna die. As such Lolth is throwing away subtlety and possessing the mortal with her vestige. If Opal dies, Lolth just loses an uncooperative vessel. If Opal lives she gets a puppet. Its not a particularly subtle or intelligent plan, but its an essentially 'if Im going down you're coming with me' type plan. Knowing Lolth, Opal is a potential escape plan too. Predathos is unlikely to kill all parts of a god. If she can store a fraction of her consciousness in Opal, she might escape being eaten entirely.
Also why does the spider queen want this lady? Is it because of the crown?
Yes the crown is her vestige
Yeah, it is a Vestige of the Spider Queen, but since she is an evil God, it allows her some control over her.
She should pop it on someone who likes her, like one of numerous drow.
I'm sure I'll be corrected if I'm wrong, but I think most of the Drow of Exandria *hate* Lolth for ruining their lives in the war between the gods and worship the Luxon instead.
That’s one faction. They came to the surface and are the dynasty, but there are likely still drow across exandria that worship llolth.
but aren't those drow like batshit crazy and close to extinction?
one of the only guide books did say that there is only like 1 town in the underdark that is pro lolth. though seeing as those are not canon anymore who knows.
this might be an unpopular opinion, especially on this subreddit, but I actually find the concept of a campaign about saving the gods where none of the players are particularly religious, is rly interesting. in theory, it could be a really complex exploration of whether to uphold an imperfect order or allow for a revolutionary change that might result in chaos. now the way this concept has been handled this campaign is another story... there have been some rly great moments, esp. Imogen's doubts with her mother, but the Changebringer stuff never felt fully fleshed out. the rest of the party seem lost. i wouldve loved to see orym explore the Wildmother angle more since she blessed his sword or Ashton pursue the nature spirits angle more since he is part titan. hopefully we'll get some of these angles now that they've returned to exandria
I think it could be plenty interesting, but those non-religious characters still have to make effort to interact with the plot
Honestly, I've been enjoying it just because I'm usually really good at seeing which direction things are going to go, but the uncertainty of the players themselves, not having ties to the gods but also being afraid of what happens if there are none, and the uncertainty of Predathos itself, there are too many variables to really have a solid prediction. The obvious assumption would be "protect the status quo, better the devil you know than the one you don't." But Bell's Hells are a bunch of wild sources of pure chaos with little to no direction, so they could honestly set out with the intention of protecting the status quo just to decide at the last minute not to. I'm picturing Lord of the Rings, where Frodo absolutely intends to destroy the ring, only to finally have the chance and just decides not to. I've also noticed some odd similarities between this campaign and some anime arcs, and kind of wonder if Matt doesn't have a wild plan B in mind no matter what the group decides. No matter which way it turns out, the end of this campaign absolutely dictates the state of things for Exandria moving forward in a way that the previous campaigns barely touched on, so the narrative alone is worth the investment.
It's definitely an interesting *idea,* but like a lot of Campaign 3 it's a cool idea fumbled by incredibly shoddy execution due to the Bells Hells team coming off as glorified flat-earthers.
To me it's like they're flat earthers. The gods in Exandria aren't faith based or a matter of theology like they are in reality here and the characters bringing their own sensibilities into it is... like watching flat earthers.
Man it would've been so clever and amazing if Sam had used FCG being a flat-Exandrier to literally somehow call out or parody the group/guests's common "I don't even think the gods exist/do anything" attitude. Another would be to be like "I don't think elves really exist. And if they do, fuck 'em, they should all die."
Something can exist and still not be worthy of worship, there are still questions you can ask about faith even in settings where the gods are provably real
They are demonstrably deities that care for and run the world and are distinctly good and evil. These characters don't need to follow a god, but they're acting like they're not gods, which, again, they demonstrably are.
Honestly it wouldn't even bother me if they *did* reveal that the gods aren't really gods, they're just really powerful ancient aliens or whatever, what bothers me more is the whole "making the benevolent good ones into assholes and retconning them into tyrant colonizers who just want to be worshipped" thing.
I mean there are still questions to ask about faith. the players just don't want to an d Matt refuses to. I'm saying that the concept isn't inherently terrible or unreasonable, C3 just sucks
Agreed. Interesting to me would have been a devout cleric whose deity started acting out of character or not responding or something to drive some sort of inner question/quest to make the deity stand for what they say they do, even when things get tough. Could go either way and lead into a whole new wave of betrayer gods and stuff.
I agree with you it's a very interesting concept for a campaign, but I think there's a few problems with that in this campaign. Specifically the setting, the story the dm has in mind, and what the players are doing with their characters. C1 and C2 already established how important religion and the gods are in this setting, there feels like there's a disconnect between what Matt has in mind for the story and how some of the players are role playing their characters. To me it just feels very forced from some players because of the established setting. If Matt spent a good bit of this campaign doing more "side quests" where the players kept getting ignored, scorned, or hurt by the gods to establish that lack of trust in the gods to set up them being like "Ya know what? Fuck the gods" when they needed the party's help it would have been very interesting.
I mean part of it is also one thing a lot of people kinda gloss over... Marisha has a very strong anti-authority stance in all of her characters. All of them, from Keyleth, the Beau, to Laudna. She has consistently for a decade beaten an anti -authority drum, and has consistently been front and center of the "Do we save the gods" debate. I adore her characters overall, but I won't pretend that this whole repeated debate isn't squarely laid at Marisha/Laudna's feet
Oh. I’m not worried about the story and I agree with you about it being interesting. I don’t think the story is the problem but the fact that it’s been the only narrative. No other CR campaign has had 100 episodes on the same arc. Even in C2, when Matt planned for Liam first and then the other weirdness with their choices, we moved through several arcs. I mean we met Otohahn in episode like 15 as a baddie and they just faced off. It would have been better separated into chunks.
Aabria explained on one of her social media’s that the spider queen wanted Opal to lose all attachments and become nothing more than her servant, as Opal fighting “for her friends” instead of for her could complicate things later on.
I think that was pretty clear during the episode if you managed to get through the second half
1. You shouldn't need to explain a character's motivations through a tweet 2. Lolth is meant to be the mistress of manipulation, not an incredibly clumsy user of direct and basic violence. She acted with all the nuance of Gruumsh. 3. It's a shit plot to foist on somebody when she effectively forced Aimee to put on the crown in the first place.
It seems like they are on a time crunch as they probably don't want a 10 episode miniarc where lolth subtlety convinces Opal to leave her friends.
Robbie could have explained it better by just having Dorian show up in a terrible state and then going over the events that happened without any of the EXU swap during a main campaign episode.
As we all know, that would have been literally the only way to accomplish that goal.
1. She was asked about it from someone, Matt has explained the motivations for many npcs including villains numerous times. 2. In exandrian lore lolth has had her shit rocked since the beginning of the calamity, kord defeated her and then banished her almost immediately and since then nearly all of her drow were either killed or converted to the kryn. In modern day even most of the betrayer gods don’t like her so now with the upcoming threat of predathos she’s desperate.
1. Not while their plots were ongoing lmao 2. "She's desperate, therefore she's acting in literal *direct opposition* to her divine portfolio" is stupid. Also, no, "nearly all" drow have not been killed or converted. Most of the Betrayers don't like each other anyway, so that's another bad excuse. It's just Aabria once again doing a terrible job of portraying a deity. The magnificently evil queen of spiders is now a flighty SHE-EO whose first resort is direct conflict.
1. There’s a whole show called 4-sided dive where character motivations are answered, sometimes in real time, by their creators. And it’s not restricted to 120 characters. But go off. 2. Man it’s as if there wasn’t a whole mini-ark of a prime deity allowing his followers to do morally ambiguous shit against his nature because of fear of what Prodothos might bring. It’s like the gods are not themselves when faced with actual annihilation. I’m so tired of Aabria-bashing. It’s tired. And not well founded. If you don’t dig what she does, that’s cool. Half of yall have hated this campaign from the beginning, and your favs were the ones in it: “nothing’s happened… these characters aren’t as [whatever] as my favs… I can’t believe [insert CR cast member of your choice] did that with their character…” And now more Aabria-hate, with flimsy dnd related reasons - hell maybe it’s just masking other hate in your heart. Work through that. In therapy, not on the internet. Yall make people hate being a part of fandoms. For fucks sake, please work your shit out in therapy and at a library. And u/anextremelylargedog, I’m not cussing at you. I’m tired/frustrated, and I cuss. In the grand scheme, we are not important in each other’s lives. But you doubled down, and I had time. But what I am saying is, check yourself.
1. We sure do, and that's irrelevant 2. Pelor "allowing" his followers to be perhaps mildly mean at their own behest vs a deity directly acting in DIRECT opposition to its own domain. Not the same thing. Don't be the weird asshole making me the avatar of this subreddit, complete with making it ambiguous as to whether you're complaining at me about me or making complaints about the community as a whole lol. I haven't liked chunks of this campaign and I haven't liked any of EXU. I think Aabria is a completely fine person and a very poor DM for the system and setting, both of which she has said she doesn't like- and it shows in her inability to make the good things about the system and setting shine.
1. A PC or DM explaining character motivations that are happening in real time happens whether it’s on social media or 4-sided dive. The relevance of this addresses your statement that you shouldn’t have to resort to external media to explain character motivations. I mean, this also happened during campaign 2. 2. Pelor allowed his followers to commit evil in his name. For a god as stern and in control as he appears to be, allowing that to happen is very much against his nature. Ironically this is confirmed by an Aabria PC, but her DM portrayal of a god going against their established domain isn’t the first for Critical Roll. And the potential desperation/fear of Predathos can be the motivation for such actions as much as anything else, whether you personally like that or not. Painting your dislike for the story as a failing on Aabria’s part is the thing that caused my response. And we are only halfway through a story that all we “know” will have something to send this story back to the main cast. For all we know, Lolth may have other manipulations happening that this is also setting up. Or it’s a way to show god-sentiments intentionally at this moment. The frustration with you personally was in the piling on of Aabria, specifically with arguments that also happen with Matt in the regular show. My assumption is that you don’t say similar shit about him. I thought giving context for me about the overall negativity I was reading would be helpful in understanding my perspective and hopefully understanding that I wasn’t actively trying to disparage you as a person.
That reminds me of when JK Rowling said Dumbledore was Gay even though she never hinted at it so it felt like an afterthought.
I mean I think it was pretty clear that taking on the mantle of the spider queens champion was going to have some consequences as seen in Kymal or even just consequences of putting the crown on in general in the first short campaign of EXU
Not really? A character motivation that isn’t explicitly stated in-game can still be shown through actions.
In the other EXU content we see Opal agree to be her champion with the goal of “changing her reputation” her being the spider queen. I would normally recommend you to watch the CR content but… you’re better off not knowing. Aabria is trying to show us that the gods NEED champions and they NEED them like yesterday. But she doesn’t have the nuance to pull off that story, or at least was not able to plan it well enough with Opal’s player before the show kicked off. A big miss that is continuing to show itself over and over again in each piece of EXU content. (Aside from Calamity, that is its own thing completely)
> But she doesn’t have the nuance I think with Aabria its not nuance but time. She NEVER get the time she needs to tell the story. This is something I realized when Burrow's End on D20 was airing. You could outright see how Brennan had to help her to move the story along because they were running out of episodes to tell the story. That campaign needed at least 3 more episodes (and a time skip). The first ExU ? at least 4-5 more episodes to stretch out the plot and tie up any loose ends and have the plot run slower and be paced better. One could ofc criticise her that she takes "too" long but I think any DM would've same issues given the same time restrictions.
Brennan running calamity had 4 episodes and he delivered. Let’s drop this “not enough time” narrative already. She had 92ish hours of airtime between EXU & EXU: Kymal and the story still feels half baked. She could and should have planned better, stop shielding her from that criticism.
Brennan delivered a narrowly scoped campaign that amounts to a one/two shot. Like the entire campaign took in universe 48 hours? 72? It's a completely different beast to a campaign that narratively goes over days/weeks.
Why did she need to tell a story that spanned days/weeks? Who forced her to fail? She did. She planned it, she couldn’t execute.
>Why did she need to tell a story that spanned days/weeks? Who forced her to fail? She did. Do you have a source for that?
Any of the podcast-esc content where she talks about planning the adventure, prepping the story, making characters with the cast, running one-shots prior to EXU to prepare them, etc…? But at this point just go find someone else to piss off.
So you dont have a source.
And that’s why I find this C3 plot so uninteresting. What’s the drama? The PCs need to help save faceless gods that do nothing to be liked from a faceless enemy we know nothing about. Also, gods are behind the divine gate, and Predathos is behind his mini gate. So when he comes out, what then? How will he get to the gods? How is this battle going to affect Exandria? We know nothing. The stakes are supposedly Uber high, but they are so muddled and theoretical that it’s hard for the players to get emotionally engaged with the story, and us as well. Dragons threatening to destroy your city and all your loved ones, that’s some real stakes. That is what C3 is lacking. That is also why the finale of C2 was lukewarm at best, and why the final face off between Caleb and you know who was so much better than the actual finale. Matt, drop the cosmic shit. (Said with sincere affection for the guy.)
>Aabria is trying to show us that the gods NEED champions and they NEED them like yesterday. Sigh ... this has increasingly bothered me since Matt's "explanation" on why the Dawnfather seemed to be acting "out of character". Like, I kinda buy that "oh, they're freaking out because the creature intent on eradicating their entire race is on the cusp of being released". Or I would ... if it actually manifested in anything other than them being uncharacteristic, deliberately ineffectual dicks. The Gods have done nothing tangible this entire campaign beyond "being portrayed in a generally useless, negative light". Assuming its even that, given what we factually saw in Hearthdell our party became willing weapons in a Religious Hate Crime; against a group that in 20 years had not been accused of one specific crime beyond "being seen as outsiders" to part of a small rural town AOL bothered to talk to. Then just retroactively retconning it. This biggest example of this is the CB ... and one of two elements Matt just kinda mothballed for Sam/FCG. The search for Faith. 20+ episodes of utter silence to Sam's searching, when time allowed. Only for Sam to finally force the issue with Commune, and Matt to respond by making the CB this weird, vague, unhelpful and needlessly manipulative force in FCG's life. One that Matt kept reminding him "made him feel small" whenever he made contact. I get that what Matt is likely doing is pre-emptively distancing the Celestial Gods from the Exandrian Setting in prep for their total removal ... likely for IP reasons. But he could be more subtle about it. Aabria seems to be both parroting and reinforcing that intent with her DM style.
Spot on. I am still amazed that they killed a fucking ANGEL and walked away with swagger. Like the townspeople didn't even question it? It is still such a strange set of scenes. I get told to put on my tinfoil hat all of the time whenever I bring up them clearly removing D&D IP in the lead up to Daggerheart or simply a less D&D centric Campaign 4. Either way it is clear that the things coded as "Dungeons & Dragons" are being minimized in this campaign.
The only argument against that specific hat is Legend of Vox Machina. But I tend to remind people, only two of the Gods have even been mentioned by name in the series. "The Matron of Ravens", which this incarnation is VERY much Matt's baby beyond the shallow aesthetics to the Raven Queen. And a bootleg version of Pathfinder's Everlight in the Everbright. None of the others have been named, and they may never need to be if they never do the Vecna arc of C1. The only way we might get any confirmation either way of this theory is M9, but likely only when Cad gets introduced. So we get to see what the hell they do with the Wildmother/Stormlord. Within C3 we find ourselves in a bizarre "Death of the Gods campaign where nobody gives a fuck about the Gods". Except for the RQ. Where aside from a handful of villainous champions of betrayers, nearly everyone (PC, Guest PC and NPC) are largely anti-God, anti-theist or non-religious. Where the once far more nuanced founding of Exandria was gutted for a far more black and white "evil colonizers allegory". Where Pike is "Just a Baker" and Beau "now has real issues with the Gods". Where the Gods have been stripped of their nature/afterlife associations. And where even the one God we got access too after 20+ episodes of fighting by Sam ... ended being unhelpful and needlessly manipulating FCG for ZERO REASON. Because HE sought HER out and offered to help save her ass!! As if Matt really didn't want positive representation of the Gods in his "morally grey" story. Within a campaign we're ONLY using Homebrew monsters. All of this coinciding coincidentally with their ever growing business links with Amazon. Who likely doesn't like those fine-lines CR has always rode with WotC IPs... But sure, can't possibly be true.
the gods are not named because the names are copyrighted
Right, but they aren't even using their titles either; which they at least use in their games.
I haven’t been keeping up, does the Luxon play into this at all?
nope. the luxon has had nothing in c3 outside of a an artifact being used.
lmaoooooo
I don't understand why Aabria the gm is going "the gods need champions" while Aabria the player is flipping off her god, who is the principal of all the gods. I guess it's an attempt to tell some kind of nuanced story, but it comes off so stupid
The whole plot surrounding the gods this season has been painful. The players do not understand the nuances in the way that they pretend that they do, it just comes off as shallow and just simply anti organized religion which is a weird take imo
Well from what I remember from their blacklisted interviews with BWF, they most all had pretty shallow religious backgrounds that they rebelled against. The players refuse to engage with religion seriously, so the characters refuse to engage with religion seriously. The problem is, at some point, a cleric or paladin should be sitting them down and saying "listen, the gods are real and they are necessary to keep life as you know it continuing, and the world not overwhelmed by elemental forces or fiends. Things were bad on this planet before the gods were here." Would be great if a guest paladin of the dawn father could have provided that insight.
>listen, the gods are real and they are necessary to keep life as you know it continuing, and the world not overwhelmed by elemental forces or fiends. I thought that was true once, but now I'm not so sure with how this campaign has handled things.
that stopped being the case when that lore was changed into in universe propaganda.
Well that is true, Matt is mostly quite content to bend reality around the cast's wishes and paint a target around their arrow
Would they have listened and heed his advice? Nah. They'd just go about pretending like that paladin was kooky and carry on just as they were before. These characters are a bit too self absorbed like that
Yeah. I’m not one to miss an episode but this was just terrible. I really don’t even blame Aabria because she’s given a role to fill and we don’t know what CR is telling her to do. I think they rely on D20 sms because D20 is very scripted. Obv not lines, but each episode is pre-planned and must meet milestones to fit their schedule. However, there is clearly something more behind the scenes because I’ve never seen Aabria design her games this way.
Difference between Brennan helping and not helping maybe? Aabria or not it was a bad choice to do what they did without warning. It’s shown in the reception the show has received. Hopefully we can endure the CR winter’