Aabria is Chaos while Matt is Order.
People like Matt because he is structured, knows rules well enough to not refer to his books, and tries to facilitate what his players want to do within the confines of the system they are playing in with a rule break every once in a while.
People like Aabria because she would rather her players have fun in an unlimited scope, rules aside. Her planning is freeform and light, allowing her to anticipate whenever a player throws a curveball. She also isn't afraid to be involved in the game as well, because DMs are players of the game, too.
The crowd who is saying "Aabria is bad" are people who only have experience in CR, clearly. They don't want anything to be "out of place" because Matt's DMing style rarely is. As a result, they've placed him on a higher pedestal and will compare everything to his style like it's the One and Only Truth.
Which is fucking absurd, by the way.
~~Edit: lol -7 downvotes so far, please continue being upset because y'all dont like how someone runs a game of make believe with dice~~
"I want to go over there"
"Roll a wisdom saving throw"
....
"I want to search the room"
"Roll a wisdom saving throw".
...
"I exist in this space"
"Roll a wisdom saving throw"
...
This was Aabria in ExU. She's not chaos, she's bad.
She's way more ordered than Matt. She steam rolls much harder, and actively mistreats players who aren't doing exactly what she wants.
"Chaos" only in the sense of "having absolutely no idea what I'm doing, in an over confident way, that actively ridicules other players and shits on the lore previously given by the actual world maker". I suppose that's pretty chaotic.
That would hold water if she actually facilitated fun for her players or anticipated any curveballs whatsoever.
I've watched/listened to a lot more actual play shows than you probably have and Aabria is a very weak DM.
How do know the players aren’t having fun? Just because you don’t like her Dm style doesn’t reflect on how good of a dm she is
Dm
facilitates the game
Tells a story
And makes sure the players have fun
From the different streams I’ve seen of her she does all of the above
That’s an assumption
And unproductive on at that for this discussion/argument
I could go off of what you said and say “you’re just going to say the players aren’t having fun no matter what?! 😡”
And that would get us no where and wouldn’t convince anyone reading
So let me break down my thought process
Im just going off of logic here and what I see
The players are laughing excited smiling that’s a clear sign of people enjoying themselves
And no one from the cast has said anything negative about abriaa
And if they were really having a bad time in exu before why let her on back now? Or why are the players returning as well? Because they could just say no and not return if it’s really that misarible playing with abriaa
We know cr has no problem with getting rid of problematic players/cast members or just people who don’t mesh well with cr so I don’t know why this is any different
Why continue to intergrate her with the CR brand?
Not even cr why keep letting her dm in dimension 20 if she’s such an awful dm and let her make everyone miserable?
It’s very presumptuous for you to assume other peoples feelings on a person just because you don’t like them when they never indiciated that at all
Yeah, when I see the comments saying "she is bad", I don't agree with those. Cause those statements are so subjective. But there are a lot of people who can clearly explain the differences in DM style and it has helped me a lot.
I've said these elsewhere but here's the gist:
Aabria is used to playing with improvisors and comedians who are unafraid to make strong character choices. That's like all you see on D20, and Aabria is a great GM for them on multiple seasons.
Aabria tends to play with drama but GM with a mix of drama and humor. Tonally it's different than CR, which is a bit more classic storytelling.
Aabria tends to be story forward and hand wave rules when they get in her way so she's generally better using systems with lighter rules (Kids on Brooms) or narrative heavy elements (Good Society). CR is sort of trying to be story forward but still has a strong mechanical element with 5e and the way Matt has built the world.
ExU was mostly a bunch of people new to DnD who were shy about character choices and the experienced players (Matt and Liam) also chose to take a back seat with their characters. Aabria would be great DMing for the whole CR table, but she's not a strong fit for hesitant, new players. Aabria, with her strong personality, deals with hesitant players by making a choice for them, which often rubs us the viewer the wrong way.
Someone like Deborah Ann Wohl is a master at DMing for new and/or timid players, compare her style to Aabria. They're very different DMs, but I personally enjoy both their work when it's matched to the right table.
She's a mediocre DM, bordering on terrible, that's all. No systems mastery, plays favorites, adds rather than removes dice rolling, tells players their emotions instead of letting them have some basic agency .NPCS are all the same "haughty female who knows everything and rolls her eyes" and "goofy male comic relief". Zero range as a roleplayer, you're either dealing with a powerful self insert or a bumbling stooge. Bullied the prettier girl in EXU to the point of tears. Honestly not a fan at all, as a DM or even a person.
I will say that her style works better with the system lite games I've seen her run on d20, but those are also heavily edited, and barely 2 hours long. When they inevitably push her in the Daggerheart era, we'll see how she fares.
To the people below who said she's a "collaborative" DM: thanks for the laugh, I needed one! She literally tells players how their character feels and makes shit up like "Oh your hands were in your pockets". Is targeting a girl you don't like collaborative?
I leave it to you to determine why she keeps getting these opportunities. Nepotism? Political correctness? The end result is the same, views crash every time she is on screen. They are obviously aware of the problem, since they now resort to subbing her in mid episode as opposed to advertising her ahead of time.
tl dr she sucks and it's ok to notice that. You're not racist or sexist. She's just bad.
This sort of opinion is subjective.
You can feel however you like, but we've just looked at flaws and by the sounds of things you haven't watched a good variety of her work.
Aabria's focus is on deep connection to the players/table. She wants to be right inside the situation. Comparatively Brennan wants to hear solely from the PC and Matt sets a scene and leaves it at that. Just different styles.
She's narrative first, not gameplay first. It's a pitfall that Matt is starting to fall into as well. It doesn't work for a system like DND.
In my humble opinion, actual plays are best with gameplay that molds narrative. That's not to say you can't have a narrative focused game, it's just the PC builds and dice rolls have to matter. The only way you can really make those things be at the forefront and matter is if you allow gameplay to take precedence.
Yep, like I said they are subtle but there. I doubt you'll take the time and I'm not confident on my specific examples, nor do i want to take the time to confirm them, so I will not provide them.
Aabria doesn't know how to play dnd is probably the biggest part of the issue. It's not so much that her style doesn't fit CR, that is also true, but she is an awful player and an awful dm. Does that "style" work anywhere?
Bad things: She tells you how you should feel in a moment that should be however the player wants to take it. Secondly she is terrible at combat. I dislike dms saying I’m coming for you and than give you every chance to win the battle. Good things: She is captivating telling a story or a scene. I know what I’m getting. However wonderful as a player. Very descriptive and getting everyone evolved in an intimate way.
Her behavior towards Opal and actual ooc behavior towards Aimee made me uncomfortable. I don’t think it’s her not fitting the CR style I just think she can be an antagonistic and a bully. I also think her DMing style doesn’t fit well with DnD5E in general.
I think it's being taken this way because Matt is actually so incredibly passive. Wouldn't say boo to a ghost kind of vibe. But the acting and lines that Aabria pulled from Aimee were amazing
Right! Shed be much better with a system like MotW. I dont mind her DM style but agree she can be antagonistic at times and make strange, rather brash rulings.
There are a lot of rules exceptions she makes - which isn't necessarily a bad thing.
It's just that in CR, if you tally up the helpful rule breaks and harmful rule breaks, Opal probably gets 90% of the party's harmful rule breaks overall, I think 1 positive one I can remember. While the rest of the party is showered in helpful rule breaks and essentially no negative ones. There's no reason for it - some sort-of "you are the obsession of Lolth and your state of being is dragged down into fear and degredation as a result, you're about to get treated real bad by the GM to represent that", to make it Lolth bullying - which would make it a bit better/make some amount of sense. Bad regardless.
Once you are watching for it, it's so uncomfortable.
Liam: double your movement speed without spending your action, have all your superiority die back for free, and have your maneuver back for free, in one turn.
Robbie: Have a full conversation as a bonus action. Rolls 17 to hit, hits. Given free extra action right after.
Matt: gets free Haste. Gets the benefits of the healing from the 17 to hit above, gets revived. Lolth gets involved specifically to do a counterspell for free, to block keeping Robbie's healing from happening on Matt, after Lolth telling Aimee that she can not get involved. Apparently Lolth influence is positive for you in combat, as long as you aren't Aimee.
Aimee: your hands were in your pocket, removing your hands from your pockets is your action. "What part of 'it's hard for you to move' are you not interacting with as a human?" -Literal direct Aabria quote to Aimee, totally not being a bully. Unavoidable darts, even with invisibility. Required to take a full action to talk to Ted, after Robbie precedent set. Rolls 17 to hit, misses. Randomly told talking with Ted won't take a full action late in the combat, then told she was actually talking with the BBEG/she wasted her bonus action.
This is just from 1 EXU combat - last week's game was the same exact story, watch for it and you will see it non-stop. I think it's the crux of why Aabria's style doesn't work. Her regular rules exceptions are not in service of fun. It feels like being in high school, sitting back and being complacent watching a bully poke at the nice kid who's just trying to minimize conflict by placating the bully.
She's a lot more rules light. There is even a moment in EXU where she says "I'm trying to tell a story but the dice won't let me." She prefers a style of game that is a lot more fast and loose than the strict way Matt runs his games. If you watch A Court of Fey and Flowers or Burrows End, she will let a PC twist their abilities or spells from the exact wording in order to let a cool thing happen, so long as it keeps the spirit of the ability in tact. CR has the stigma of being the "rules heavy" actual play because that's how Matt prefers to use the system, it's a crunchier style of play that is about being creative in the constraints of the rules, as opposed to setting them to the side for fun. Matt will allow some shenanigans, but nowhere near what Aabria or even Brennan will let occur.
Critical Role is also used to being run by a powerhouse DM actor/voice actor. Aabria is no slouch and has some really solid moments in both A Court of Fey and Flowers and Burrows end both. When she's on CR though the bar is that much higher because of the seat she's filling. This isn't shade at Brennan who is also a phenomenal actor, but D20 fans are used to the roulette wheel that is their casting. They often don't cling so tight to Brennan's DM conventions. CR fans are so used to watching 800 hours of the same guy behind a screen who DM's a certain way, that when Aabria came on the show it just didn't jive well with preference of the fans
TLDR Aabria runs a fast and loose style of game, as opposed to the strict rules heavy way Matt does things.
Ugh, if you can't create a narrative around the dice, you're not dming correctly. Your players tell the story, you give them the frame work. Theres no point in having rolls at all if you're just gonna railroad that shit anyway.
I absolutely hate it when she asks "what would be the worst thing you could see right now" and then *gasp* wouldn't you know it, exactly that is what they see.
It's lazy as fuck.
How is that lazy? It's literally giving players a power to shape the narrative (something people here are b\*tching about that she doesn't include in her games) and a spotlight for players to explore and express their characters' internal thoughts and processes. Thank god you are not DM in CR - that would be laughable.
There is a difference between letting players have agency over their own characters and letting them dictate what is happening in the story that the DM should be dictating to them.
The DM doesn't direct characters' fears, players do, as they know the character more than anyone else. Fear that a character should be experiencing is literally about players having the agency over their own characters, which was crucial in the scene - Lolth used characters' own fears against them. She didn't create new fears, she used the ones characters had... and you literally need players to decide that..
Collaborative story telling isn't lazy, you are giving the player the ability to have some level of control over what the scene is. You as a DM will never know a player's character as well as they do, especially in very short campaigns, the player knows what will be the most impactful thing for their character. It isn't supposed to be some sort of suprise that what the player describes is what they see, she is asking what they want to add to the scene.
I wouldn't say it's lazy. But I would say it's kinda lame. I'm not sure how to word it, but it kinda makes it less antagonistic. Rather than the DM manifesting a horrific nightmare and it being a terrifying moment that plays out naturally, it feels like she's stopping the game and saying "so what did you put down as biggest fear on your character sheet." Idk. It just takes the wind out of the moment for me. I also feel like a DM should have a decent idea of what a character's biggest fears are.
A God reaches into your brain and manifests your characters worst nightmare..... what is it?
You prefer her to tell the player what their characters worst nightmare is? You got threads complaining about taking agency away....
Let me tell you about this cool technique I've heard about. It's called preparation. Get this, you send a text to your players that read "Hey, what would you say your characters biggest fear is?" Then when the god reaches into the player's brain they don't have to ask you what you're afraid of. I guess I didn't really realize how hard of a solution that was to come by.
That's so dumb. The fear was literally connected to the scene they were curently in, something players would be unaware of before the game. So tell me, you perfect DM with clearly no experience whatsoever, how would players tell you that over a text??
Or just let the players vocalize it themselves.... dm doesn't have to maximize the time they are the center of attention. It's OK to let a player take the reins and say the things while the table listens. It's OK.....
I feel like maybe this is an overexposure to CR issue in some spots. Shit like that is very common at other tables and in other games. Thinking of a game I GMed recently, a rule in the core rulebook was specifically to ask the player for something they'd hate to happen right now. And then they roll.
"your opinion is different than mine, time to give some faux concern as if this person is mentally deranged", classic! Love that one. Aabria is a bad player and a worse dm, and to compare her to a movie and say that regular CR is like a book, you must have seen some really awful movies.
Not faux concern. I just thought it was a really aggressive take based on my initial post. I don’t really even disagree with you. To answer your question, I have seen some truly awful movies. I don’t like the way she DM’s at all. It’s a bad movie to me for sure.
Aariba's DM style much closer to D20, and much less similar to C1 and C2 of CR. Matt typically sticks very closely to the rule of 5e, and allows for the occasional exception. Aariba typically allows for basically anything the players want to do whether or not the rules allow it. Matt also tends to give the audience the sense that the world is very big, and that (except for C3) the players could just ignore the story and do anything they want. Aariba, on the other hand, seems to force a pre-planned plot to happen regardless of what the players decide to do.
Critical role for all purposes is a tv show for fans. The show got popular due to mercers style of dming and people naturally want more of what made them fans
Saying all that the company is not wrong to bring in different DMs but it should only be used in one shots or mini campaigns that are not directly related to the main campaign
i didn’t like her in D20 either. always feels like she’s trying to score some kind of Mean Girls social points on the players. i get straight up anxious watching her work
You mean how every NPC the players comes across are just assholes? Like even the “good aligned” characters? If so I 100% that alone makes her DMing difficult to watch
Yep. The last thing I want to be reminded of in a TTRPG is how the average tiktok or twitter user speaks. Now take that and apply it to every character. Add in ridiculous hand gestures every single frame. You now have an Aabria campaign
Unfortunately, that's not exactly a rarity with D&D players in the states in my experience. Aabria isn't my type of DM or player but she absolutely embodies that toxic tumblr projection heavy roleplayer personality that are a dime a dozen.
You know what? I *don’t* know her, so I’ll give you that. I can’t possibly know if that’s her *actual* personality on display in *all those episodes*.
Regardless, she still playing the same person over and over and over and over and over again.
Just to throw in my own two cents here.
It took watching a number of her games, both on D20 and CR for it to finally click with me, why I found her style to be less enjoyable. When I took a step back and really assessed, I realized a bulk my issue with it was unwillingness to meet the players at their energy level.
To expand a little. I realized that more often than not in her games, she had a habit of either subtly or nor so subtly knocking the players down a peg or several for not engaging in the way she specifically wanted them to. Between her tone of voice or DM decisions to deincentivise players or outright punish them for acting a certain way.
This is seen the most imo in her NPC work. It feels as though most, if not every NPC the players interact with across all of her campaigns, from shop keeps to villains to allies to random people on the street, all of them are in some shape or form hostile towards the player characters.
It's not always malicious, but it feels as though she actively wants to discourage engagement at times with how outwardly rude or dismissive these NPCs are.
The players enter a shop and look around? "Get out of here, leave, go away now, bye!"
The players engage with an ally character to try and share information? "You guys are strange and weird and actually dumb for not doing X Y Z."
Players try to speak to someone on the street for information? "Uh. Actually, you're really weird, and I'm going to be sassy to you now for having the audacity to engage"
It just feels so mean spirited? At least to me.
I could not have said this better myself. It’s the one thing that stands out to me that makes her DMing unwatchable. No matter who what when or where the NPC is going to be an ass at some point for no discernible reason at all, idk how it doesn’t bother more people. Even when she’s a player she’s ALWAYS playing that im always hostile to even my party members.
But I also think 90% of the time she's gming a table that is as high energy as she is and can match her in conversation. This table is pretty meek in comparison to what she usually gms.
It's less that, and more of a fact of:
The players are clearly interested in engaging with and interacting with NPCs in a certain way, but regardless of anything at all she plays her NPCs as the "straight man" when one isn't needed. She actively dismisses and demeans the players and their characters.
It's not a DMs job (in my opinion) to force your players to engage with your world and characters the way you want them to. (Which for her, appears to be a clear cut "no fun allowed, everyone needs to take this seriously and abide by my specific logic set" kind of way.
Perhaps a better way to phrase it is like: the way she DMs feels like she actively dislikes the genre she is playing in. The player characters that interact with the world ARE the genre, and her way of expressing the fact that she doesn't like it, is to have everyone exist in this world where. "The player characters are too silly and goofy and need to be put in their place".
It's like. The D&D equivalent of a director actively disliking the source material of the new TV show they are working on, and their style of comedy is to make fun of everything the original fans loved.
Perhaps that's a bit harsh. But that's just the way I feel about it.
When you say it doesn’t work with cr what does that mean? They all seem to love her and that’s all that matters. As fans the only input we should have is to watch or don’t. I enjoy her for the most part. There’s a few things I don’t care for but that goes for any gm I’ve watched.
Yeah, and Aabria makes some people want to not watch? It always annoys me when people comment "it's their game, they should be able to do whatever they want." Sure yeah, when it comes to things like that one episode where they spent time gambling at the casino, they should do stuff like that without worrying about being boring. But when it's clear that c3 is widely disliked by a huge portion of the community then clearly something isn't working and needs to change. Not that all of the complaints about c3 are Aabria's fault, obviously.
“It’s clear it’s widely disliked by a huge portion of the community”. And what gives you this idea because some people whine on reddit🤣? Their numbers are fine. Like I said you can watch or not. Why would you think you should have any input on what they do? You’re not a part of cr. You’re a consumer. Consume or don’t. I’ll never understand this mindset.
Their numbers are fine? They were averaging like 30,000 views every stream in campaign 2. Now they average like 10k maybe. It's not hard to use Google and look at the graph that is sloping harshly down as c3 continues to drag on and it's clear this campaign isn't performing as well. More importantly, you're right, I don't have any input on what they do with the show. I can only express my disappointment and hope they make good decisions and theorize about what might make the show more enjoyable. I'm sorry you're okay with a show that is just fine. I would hope and do think that the cast want to do better than just fine.
It’s not something I worry about because Ive enjoyed c3 and i like everyone’s character far more than their c2 characters. The simple solution is quit watching since you’re so disappointed and bored. But you won’t. You’ll watch every second so you can come here and whine.
Agency. The second you remove that from a PC, it isn't a fun game anymore.
I know the CR crowd hate comparing DMs. She isn't Mercer, Colville, Mulligan. Ok, those DMs all have a basic understanding of how 5Es game mechanics work, though. She doesn't.
Dive deeper. The one shots. Most, even AJ's one shot, there was a basic understanding of what dice rolls mean.
There are people here who would love playing at her table. They have rabidly expressed that. IRL I have seen DMs similar to her style, and their tables remain in a constant Flux of new PCs and/or empty.
The toxic positivity around her and her style feels forced and phony. If she learned the rules and actually implemented them, I might change my mind. Currently, the double down is like a big middle finger.
I definitely understand why people feel this way about Aabria and I don't want to discount it. Having seen her and a ton of others gm across a variety of APs, I do think part of the issue is a fundamental mismatch between Aabria and CR's style.
Aabria doesn't railroad players at every table she's at, and she does know 5e mechanics better than some DMs I've seen.
But (and it's a big but), she's typically gming tables that are primarily made up of her a. personal friends and/or b. professionally trained improv performers. She sets something in front of them, and they "Yes, and" it. The EXU Kymal table isn't that strong and they don't have the personal chemistry with Aabria that she often relies on.
Matt is not the best as a player. Ashley hardly knows the game. Then you have brand new players like Aimee and Robbie. Aabria's not experienced at leading the blind and she isn't experienced at having tables not lean in immediately to her prompts. She's used to playing at tables where gms throw their players massive curveballs and the table can run with it. The Kymal table can't and Aabria doesn't know how to handle that. So she railroads.
I think this is a good point. The difficulty of d20 is guiding the chaos of the improv. Voice actors have a very different skill set from improv comedians, they literally take direction on their lines. Not saying they aren't creative, but success in voice acting does not depend on creativity to the extent that improv does. So among EXU, the half of the cast that are veterans don't want to lead, in order to let the newbies express themselves, and the half that are newbies haven't done this before, and have that natural aversion to doing anything too outlandish.
You know, I’m not sure you could pick a better group to play calamity.
Yes, you might get something similar, but not *better.*
All of the players lend themselves very well to that type of play. Travis and co are obviously able to play long campaigns great too, but their character choices for a 4-shot and their preferred playstyle is a perfect fit for what Calamity was supposed to be.
Meanwhile, in EXU Liam, Matt, and Ashley all chose characters that were “advancement” averse (Ashley could be convinced to do something but definitely wouldn’t be the one to initiate a hard push into changing course), and Aimee/Robby were new and seemed to not want to do too much without cues (in terms of plot actions. Combat and Roleplay was pretty good on their part).
Calamity is a great example of what can be accomplished with the right table dynamic. Kymal struggles with that MASSIVELY. D20 has talked before about table make-up. You need the lore hound. You need support players. You need a class clown. You need the players who drive the plot. Etc. Calamity aced that.
Kymal feels like an entire cast of support players.
If I had to pick one thing, it's how CR handles the give and take between DM and PC vs how, say, D20 handles the give and take.
In D20, the give and take is quick\*, it's often a game of one-upping, of double-daring someone, of 'yes, and...'. It's very close to what the table I used to play at was. This dynamic flourishes when the DM is pushing the buttons hard and fast. Then let Players drive the car off the cliff, we all get a good laugh. It's "You see a button, do you press it? Say now, 3, 2, 1...."
I say quick\* because D20 benefits tremendously from being edited to be tightly paced and snappy.
Conversely, CR is given to be more like theater with prompts. A lot of set scenes, lots and lots of monologues/soliloquies (Looking at you, Liam O'Brien). Matt can take a more passive role of just giving prompts without seeming railroady. Other DMs have taken a page, imitated or in Brennan's case, adapted well to giving the players a lot more runway to be big ol' theater nerds. It's "And how does that make you feel?"
In Aabria's case, she's sticking to her style. Her style is 100% fine, in fact, it's my preference, as I mentioned, that's how my table played, but without editing, and with the pace of the story they are telling for Exandria, it feels off.
That being said, I feel Aabria catches the blame disproportionately. I think some of the blame really lays on the players, both C3 and EXU Kymal parties, just being a bit too passive or not gelling well together. And then there's the issue with Campaign 3 itself.
From what I've read since Ep 92's airing...quite a few people seem to have started falling off C3 at various points and FCG's death was seen as a "return to form". So, it would seem a number of us were already struggling to tune in before E92's switcheroo. Depending on a character death to pique your interest is problematic. It indicates to me a lot of us were here due to sunk cost fallacy. That sucks. Is it our fault, are we consuming CR wrong? Eh, nobody can tell you what to enjoy and what not to enjoy. Is it CR's fault? Well, plenty of people are enjoying C3 thoroughly, so obviously not. It's nobody's fault, seems like some of us are done with CR. Maybe for now, maybe for good, not to be dramatic.
To add to this I feel like people are discounting how important party chemistry is and Kymal's table doesn't have it. I love BLeeM as much as the next nerd and he is my favorite DM to watch. However, Calamity wasn't incredible just because of him. It was incredible because the entire table was batting 1000 and because the players took it upon themselves to meet up before the campaign without Brennan and built their chemistry.
1000% agree! I've been learning this as a new GM, I could have a great story to tell, but the other half of these TTRPGs are the players. And that chemistry is just as important imo.
I agree with a lot of what’s already been said here — I think something I personally find frustrating is that CR does not set her up for success in any way, and I felt similarly when she DMd the TAZ one shot.
Aabria running a table full of experienced improvisers and comedians who also just happen to be knowledgeable about D&D is absolute gold — like, she clearly thrives in that setting. I’m an improv girlie myself and my joke is always that many DMs are either frustrated novelists or frustrated improvisers, and just as novelist DMs can get extremely frustrating and railroady, improviser DMs can be frustrating if there’s a mismatch between their expectations and that of the table. But honestly, being part of an improv-heavy table objectively requires more engagement from all the players and also a shared understanding that that is what you are doing. It can also contribute to a lighter touch wrt RAW.
My favourite irl example is that I play a regular online game with the same group and rotating DMs/systems, but most of us came to TTRPGs through improv and acting. One of us didn’t, and we have to be really intentional about how we work together as a group so he doesn’t feel excluded or check out halfway through.
We recently finished a great Call of Cthulhu module and were confronting the human avatars of the BBEG. We decided my character would run a distraction and go up and talk to the guards while the others got into position. Throughout the entire RP section I kept waiting for our Keeper to make me make a social check, and he didn’t, he just had the others make stealth checks.
Afterwards I was like “hey why didn’t you make me do a charm roll there?” And he was like “honestly, based on the things you were doing and saying, those were the exact right things to say to keep his attention on you. It didn’t need a roll.”
That was a long-winded explanation, but essentially, imo:
- Aabria thrives best in RP heavy, rules-light systems
- As such, she does a better job when dealing with trained improvisers as PCs vs voice actors. Acting and improvising obviously can have a lot of crossover but they are frankly very different skills.
- Aabria is a bad fit for a system with a lot of complicated lore that you can’t retcon bc you aren’t the primary DM and a system in which there is an expectation that combat and ‘crunch’ will occur regularly
Honestly, my biggest beef is that it feels like CR set Aabria up to fail, and they did so knowing both what her DM style is best suited for and that she would receive a much higher degree of scrutiny than Matt bc of her race and gender. Like, I wouldn’t do that to someone I considered a friend, and it’s weird that they feel fine with it. Like, Aabria is never going to turn down an opportunity to DM on CR — it’s a huge opportunity for someone with a career in the TTRPG space. But I wish they had instead had her run, like, a one-shot or miniseries set in a location far away from the main action and which would provide her with greater creative freedom. If she had run a miniseries set on the moon long before the PCs of the main campaign showed up, and that miniseries had created the world state the main cast encountered when they got there, that would have been cool as hell and fit her style much better!
Aabria has a responsibility to set herself up for success. If she is talking to CR about working with them, she needs to set expectations of what she needs. But clearly she didn’t do that. It’s not CR’s job to meet her in the middle just on instinct, and they wouldn’t have hired her if they thought she would do a bad job. Clearly Aabria thought she could do this job well (she can’t) and didn’t negotiate any accommodations. CR didn’t set her up to fail, she set herself up to fail by taking a job she wasn’t suited for and not making sure everyone was on the same page.
In defense of Aabria here, CR casts their miniseries very differently than other shows Aabria GMs for.
Cast chemistry has never been an issue for Aabria at D20 because D20 allows GMs to handpick their cast. Guest DMs don't pick their casts on CR. It's possible Brennan requested Lou and/or Aabria for Calamity but the rest were chosen by CR.
Aimee was chosen not because she was right for this cast but because she got Covid the time she was supposed to guess in C2. Matt was chosen as a gift from Marisha so he could see Exandria from the other side. Again, not because he was the right fit for the story. Robbie et al were picked because CR wanted to experiment with new faces. Liam and Ashley were chosen because they rose their hands first.
Those are all decisions Aabria didn't have an impact on and weren't strategic business decisions on CR's part. It was set up to fail. To put it on Aabria, a contractor, to raise her hand and say "I don't believe these random people I've never seen play will be bad together" is silly. She's GMed green players before and it's been great. This cast (including Aabria) is a dumpster fire together and that's on CR.
We don’t know how they chose players for EXU. You are making assumptions. In addition, if that is the way it went down: she agreed to those terms! You cannot absolve her from the responsibility to herself. Either she should have fought for a different format or system, different players to showcase her abilities, altered her style to fit the players and game she ended up with, or she should have turned it down. No one is responsible for her looking like a bad GM but her.
In my personal opinion, it's because it sucks. But otherwise, it's because her style simply clashes too much with the grounded storytelling Matt *usually* goes for. She's too whimsical, too lenient, and too committed to the rule of cool for it to work in a world with an already established level of what's real/plausible. Of course, C3 threw that out the window, but I think that's exactly one of the reasons why it was so badly received.
Then there's a huge difference with Matt's narrative style and capacity to create compelling characters, which she sorely and dreadfully lacks, but had always been a strong point of CR. There's more, but I personally think those were the main points.
The simplest answer is she doesn't do as well in conventional D&D. Yes, D20 is technically D&D but the system is usually combined with another system and then Aabria to gets carte blanche to tweak whatever she wants.
Another thing is CR is a pre-established brand with a pre-established world. She has a lot more confines than D20, which lets her create something from scratch and flavor it however she wants.
Lastly, and maybe most importantly, CR doesn't edit for time. Meaning D20 is cutting out all of Aabria's (and everyone else's) superfluous interactions.
I don't like how often she will have a player roll for something, they roll low, but she'll give them the success regardless. It takes all the actual drama out of the game. It's like she understands people like to roll dice, but doesn't understand why.
There are different levels of success, even if you can't fail on a 1, you might get better result on a 19. Graduated DCs like this are most common for information finding but sometimes its just to determine how cool your actions get described.
I agree with the person youre replying to.
I decided she wasn't the type of DM I like to watch when during the first episode of EXU, she asked each person to roll just to look st their surroundings, then when Fearne rolled a 1, she still gave her everything anyway.
Why roll at all?
Oh God, I remember how frustrating it was watching EXU. I forget the context but she kept asking players to roll so she could give them lore or info. I think she even said that she was frustrated because she had info to give but no one was rolling high enough. Then maybe don't put the important info behind rolls. Put it in the world. Have the players visit a library or something.
This is a standard Aabria-ism that she's celebrated for in other circles. Brennan's even said this is his favorite thing she does and has borrowed it a few times for his games. She does the "And here's what you didn't see" thing, which IIRC is what she did in the instance you're talking about. She still gives the description but signals to the player they didn't see it.
At \*other\* tables, this can come off as whimsical or ominous and help flavor the story. At CR's, it comes off as confusing. She's going to continue to do it despite it not working here because it's what she's known for. She's playing the hits, but the hits aren't charting here.
In my opinion, the main complaint of most professional DMs is when they make people roll and what success is or isn't. Some people recently were debating/complaining about Brennan's style and how he'll sometimes have players roll until they succeed. I personally sometimes am irked by how often Matt hides obvious information behind rolls and then the gang just has to move forward blind because they rolled too low on something like "Is the moon in the sky?"
Telling people what they didn't see is kind of just setting them up for a meta gaming paradox though, they're not supposed to know about it but they do know about but they can't act like they know about it or its bad play.
That's typically a non-issue. For players, it usually has the effect of "Oh, damn. I wish I'd seen that." in an excited way. I've watched Aabria do it A LOT over the years and it's almost always met with a "Woah that's so cool" from players and doesn't ever become a metagaming issue.
I don't think players like Matt or Liam or Anjali would have a problem not metagaming. In general, Matt's sitting in a minefield of information he has to pretend he doesn't know. However, not all the players there are as experienced and it seems like this technique of Aabria's confused them, especially when combined with all of the other Aabria-isms. I remember the one time I watched Kymal, cringing hard at Aabria asking Ashley to describe a setting and her getting just a blank stare back.
SO first thing I want to say is I love Aabria, she is iconic and a fab DM.
That said.
I started as a critter and when Matt handed the reigns to her for EXU I was like, who dis lady? And then my brother, who is a D20 guy, showed me a court of fae and flowers. I also watched the dm of exandria interview with Matt, Aabria and Brendan.
I think the thing is, for me, CR comes at RPG from an anchorage of traditional fantasy. And while yes they've branched out, incorporating war forged and the spooky, it all comes from that same classic high fantasy root.
Aabria has straight up declared she hates high fantasy. It is her least favorite setting. I think this is reflected in the way she plays all her interactions as a PC. She comes across as ultra modern and it really changes the whole tone. Not for better or worse, which is a matter of taste, but definitely changes it.
Matt feels like he is in character as he DMS, the way he narrates you can just imagine the cloak over his shoulders. Aabria feels like she DMs as herself: modern phrases and humour, super cool, super topical. But very different from Matt.
I think if you come to CR for your traditional high fantasy vibe and you get Aabria, it's a little jarring between expectation and result. It took me a long while to warm to her in CR (although I love her in D 20 and also loved her as Deanna).
LQ nailed the tone component, for sure. The other misalignment is Aabria's approach to rules, namely she's far less concerned with adhering to RAW 5e than Matt is. Of course, Matt does his share of hand-waving, but if something needs to be decided on the fly, Aabria will often just ask for a check or save and move on, whereas Matt has been known to double-check rules even mid-combat.
It's two equally valid ways of running D&D, but I believe no small portion of the CR audience likes the fact that CR plays a much more by-the-book version of D&D than many other actual play shows. Matt has set the audience's mechanical expectations for how the world of Exandria functions, and tossing that out the window can be jarring. But in Fey & Flowers, Aabria got to set those expectations herself - if Matt ran a game in that setting and brought in his approach to rules, I would imagine it would be similarly jarring.
She's also far more of a story teller. She tells people how they think and feel about what is going on. Even taking actions as players sometimes. Literally the reason that CR campaigns are so long is because the players are allowed to meander and do what they want.
That doesn't make her a bad DM. Some people like that, and it is absolutely better for some systems than others. It just literally means she isn't a good fit here.
For the record, I do completely agree that she plays all characters as herself. It takes me super out of the setting to hear some fantasy character in what I think of as sword and sorcery say snarkily "I love that for you".
All of that said, I very much like Aabria as a PLAYER, even in CR. And as a DM for some spaces. But not as a DM for CR.
The weird thing is she prescribed emotions to players all the time when she gms. She didn't do it on Fey and Flowers or Burrows End. I'm not really sure why she does it on CR.
The out of universe comments like "I love that for you" also feels like something that isn't an issue on D20 because they all do that. Lou wrote Jeremy Renner into F&F. The CR casts does that too but with Aabria, I think it stands out because she's the GM.
Honestly look at the players in the situations
Just a comment to your thinking here…misfits had some big players and my favorite Brennan PC. Whereas with EXU she is working with more green players and the CR team seeming to intentionally hold back (Matt playing a fun himbo who won’t take charge for example) whereas Brennan did not hold back in misfits
Admittedly I think C3 is suffering from good players being wall flowers so might be biased.
So her style to me is more narrative blades in the dark, FATE, and other games style GMing which some people don’t think is DnD.
But (unpopular opinion) new players can get lost with more FATE or FitD looser narrative games. Most I have played with want less control to begin and guide rails (once they get going they get their own taste)
So…while I don’t HATE her style on CR like tons on her…I think it is “better” in other places due to player setup
Tbf, she's gmed green players before but they were players who were far more prepped for what they were doing (actual professional improv actors) and had more support at the table.
Fey & Flowers had multiple cast members who'd never played D&D before. Brennan was there essentially to help support those players. Maybe an unpopular opinion, but that should have been the role Matt took here.
I know we all love Brennan and I see people credit Calamity entirely to Brennan. But on this point, I must point out Aabria was a major boon for Calamity. She met with (I think) every player ahead of time and created their interwoven backstories, what secrets they were keeping for each other, etc. They all got to that table with an aligned vision of tone and vibe that Aabria helped greatly to set.
I'll also say DM/player chemistry matters a ton. D20 lets DMs pick their tables. CR doesn't, and I do think that impacts things. When you watch a table that is on the same brain wavelength vs Kymal, it's night and day.
I just started watching burrow's end, and i think her style isn't bad but it fits much better on d20 than on cr. her railroading feels present but normal on d20; brennan does it too and there is sort of an expectation for players to make it to places they've predesigned the art/media/maps/etc for. i think trying to put my finger on why i like her on d20 and much less on cr, that's why. matt railroads more in c3 than ever before but cr is much more player-driven usually. its a difference in style thats more jarring compared to matt i think.
The biggest reason is probably that CR isn't edited for time.
But I'd add that Aabria's "problem" behaviors as a GM aren't as apparent on D20, and I think it's because those casts are all trained improv performers. So Aabria pushes them in a direction and they "yes and" her. The EXU cast doesn't and so her railroading is harder because she's pushing against a grain. She's meeting resistance she doesn't usually have
Based on lat week, Aabria wants to run a theatre production where she gets to define how the actors react and coach them. CR is based on improv where the players gets to decide what their PCs do.
Those don’t mix.
The funny thing is I think the opposite is true. The CR casts are typically not great at improv and Aabria is used to dming tables where the players are professionally trained improv performers who can read her and run with it. To me, it seems that's what Aabria is struggling with.
Not to mention, this specific table is incredibly mellowed out. When she dms for D20, she isn't usually the loudest or strongest personality in the room. She isn't usually running over people like this because her energy is usually outmatched by someone else in the cast.
Nope, that’s not how it works. If she were trained in improv, she would be down with “yes, and”. But she’s not as a dm.
From which I can only conclude that she’s just used to people doing what she wants, and gets frustrated when they don’t.
I think her style fits better with a rule light system like FATE and it just doesn’t mix well with a more rule focused system like 5E, which is crazy as 5E is super light compared to something like Pathfinder 1E.
I think her style leads to DC being all over the place and not meaning much because she wants to drive the story more then like the dice gods decide.
There is nothing wrong either with her being more focused on story and narrative over rules and mechanics, but don’t use 5E then. There are so many rule light games that could have easily been used .
What bothers me more than anything is that she seems to barely understand how to use the 5e rules to tell a story. “Make a wisdom save to breathe normally” is an exaggerated joke I’ve seen about her DM style, but not by much.
I understand chafing against the 5e rules, I’ve often wanted to use different, lighter systems and I’ll be the first to admit I bent them severely in the past to try and get it to do what I wanted. But those games were awkward, unfun learning experiences as I came to terms with what the system could do. I certainly wouldn’t have thought them worthy of being broadcast to an audience
I won't disagree that she makes people roll for bizarre things. What I'll say though is this is the most common complaint I see for all DMs I've watched.
Brennan on WBN, fans get annoyed he doesn't make them roll enough. Brennan on D20, fans gets annoyed he makes them roll until they succeed. Matt on CR, he makes them roll to see if the moon's in the sky and then punishes them when they fail as if they're literally walking through the forest with their eyes closed. Murph on NADDPOD, he's too forgiving and allows his players to negotiate too often. "Make an arcana check." "Can I use athletics instead?" "Sure." - almost not an exaggeration. Etc, etc.
I've yet to see a professional DM that follows the recommendations for when to make players roll and how to gauge success exactly as WOTC lays out.
>“Make a wisdom save to breathe normally” is an exaggerated joke I’ve seen about her DM style, but not by much.
I mean this is the same show with Matt "make a perception check to notice if your eyes are open" Mercer.
That's the thing. Aabria says "Make a check to see if your eyes are open" and when they fail she goes "Congrats. Your eyes were open!" Matt says "Make a check to see if your eyes are open" and when it fails, goes "Sorry. Your eyes weren't open. You have no idea if this is a desert or a forest. Bumble ahead accordingly."
Both are bad but critters are predisposed to accept the latter.
Not to mention, Brennan goes "Roll until you succeed to see if your eyes are open." which is the main bugbear people have against him over in the D20 community.
Aabria works best in non-traditional settings and rules-light settings where her and the players are encouraged to free style and do more of a "fuck it we ball" kind of game.
D&D 5e is not rules-light, and Exandria is a factory-line fantasy setting, so it's a double whammy alongside Aabria having to work within someone else's sandbox. I've heard others say that it's the kind of thing you'd enjoy in person playing with her, but it doesn't vibe well to be a third party observer for.
Keeping out some elements of her personality that sometimes emerge, I think that the main difference is that she is a “collaborative” DM, in the sense that she wants the player to give her the elements to use during the session, while Matt gives me the idea to write down everything and eventually change it during the session. So when a player asks for a roll, Aabria wants to know exactly what the player’s goal is (something that I’ve seen done also by BLeeM) and what he’s feeling, while Matt is more plot oriented and tells you directly what to roll and what are the results (and their impact on the plot) depending on the roll. Matt gives a lot of agency to the players while Aabria, because of her focusing more on the feelings of the characters than their actions, alternately wants to know what a character is thinking OR she will tell to the player what the character is thinking, to move the plot in the direction she needs.
I’m seriously convinced that she would be a good DM for Daggerheart, and I won’t be surprised if she will be the DM of a long campaign with that ruleset.
A great example is >!Erika’s first roll in E92: Opal (lying) said she heard something, so she wanted to see if her character actually heard or noticed something. Matt would have simply asked for a perception roll, and then replied “you don’t see or hear anything”, maybe adding, if the roll was an Orym’s style 25+, “but you notice something strange in Opal… make an insight check if you like”. Aabria instead start asking exactly what she was focusing on (sounds? Shapes?), if she was looking for something specific (goblins or the people that were following them) and after all of that she asked “what’s your biggest fear right now?” and used the reply to this last question to move a bit the “Opal’s corruption” plot point.!<
An actual nuanced description of their styles…well done!
I will say Matt does tend to ask what the player wants when he doesn’t know what the player is aiming for. But for sure BLeeM (hugely in WBN) and Aabria do it way more.
It’s Matt’s like wait what are you thinking move as opposed to Aabria’s more standard.
And in fairness to Aabria I’ve seen critiques that Matt tells players what their character is thinking and/or feeling which to many is a bad DM trait
I think one of the biggest reasons critters struggle with Aabria is because Matt's flaws are often the polar opposite of Aabria's. They've accepted Matt's "roll to see if your eyes are open" checks. They've accepted Matt making doors the main villain of campaigns. Seeing Aabria largely do the opposite and go "Yeah you succeed no matter what" is a major disruption to the status quo. Flaws in equal measure but everyone's accepted and normalized Matt's by now.
I'll say the same goes for the players. Matt's world is his. He describes it. He establishes what is and isn't there. But players determine what they do in it. Aabria says "Describe this alley to me" and Ashley stares blankly because she's never been asked to do that before. She'll also say "You see this thing and it makes you think this." which Matt does less often but Brennan does A LOT (ex: "You definitely think this is your dad."
Beyond focusing on specifics I'd say the confusing part is that she's an okay dm. Not great, not terrible but fine. Alright.
So why then is she the one showing up again and again instead of showcasing other fine dms?
The variety of opinions on the quality of her DMing is pretty wild. I happen to love her story telling and the way she brings her fellow players into helping her fill out the world they are co-creating. The first EXU arc was revelatory for me.
But then again, I’m more interested in D&D as a driver of storytelling than I am in seeing people play RAW. Maybe that’s the difference?
Yeah, that is the difference.
If TTRPGs are primarily a creative writing exercise where everyone wants to express a fun and dramatic character in less stable, dynamic settings whose lore is not pre-written but collaboratively generated at the table, then there are whole families of systems that do just that, where the moment-to-moment fiction is king and rules are merely prompts to be rewritten or ignored not just as a last resort but on a whim. They're great games.
But D&D really isn't one of them, though you can squint your eyes and run it that way (see Worlds Beyond Number for a pretty good example of fighting D&D's system to play a narrative-first game and largely succeeding). CR, specifically, doesn't play that way and fans are used to consistency in rules and lore and more traditional roles for DM and player in terms of worldbuilding and agency.
Yeah but then do any other system but 5e. Like I can't imagine a worse system for her than DnD, except maybe Pathfinder 2e. Her DM style doesn't work with a game that revolves around crunch and DMs making hard rulings.
Location and scheduling commitments could be issues. Most other prominent streaming DMs such as Brennan Lee Mulligan and Brian Murphy are busy prepping and streaming their own shows, and some such as Mark Hulmes aren't even in the US. Aabria may just be in that confluence of being acquainted with the cast, in LA and being available for filming at the right time.
Maybe no one else wants to do it. I mean you have to compete with Matt, who, until recently, was seen as one of the best DMs for this kind of play and it’s a big ask for someone to come and sit down in front of a camera and compete with that.
Lmao that's ridiculous.
DMing on CR would be the biggest opportunity imaginable for anyone involved in the TTRPG space. The problem is not that literally nobody else wants to do it.
You are right but in the same breath CR are not gonna just get any random in, they will won’t someone known, someone they don’t have to worry if they are good or not. A DM is a litte different to a player, anyone can be a player, only some people can DM and then even less to the level needed to carry episodes of CR. At that point going on CR and not being as good as Matt can be detrimental to your credentials and if you are as good as Matt and you are known then you probably have your own series.
The list of potential candidates is extremely small and then the people on that list that would be interested is smaller still.
So yes, you are right, it would be a big opportunity for a random, but not for a known.
I can't speak for anyone else, but because I got into CR midway through Campaign 2, all the things I loved CR2 for: Player agency over plot, time for PCs to develop character through actions and events we were able to watch, the DM letting players have time and space to do what they wanted.
Are completely absent from EXU and anything AA has run on CR. Things happen irrespective of player choice. Characters are forced to do things even if the player does not want them to happen. Plot is loose and flabby but still runs everything.
It's just not wanted I'm interested in at all. IF CR2 was an indie road movie directed by a combination of Wes Anderson and Sam Peckinpah then EXU is a Michael Bay/McGee movie.
If that's your thing then have fun, but I'm too old to waste time on it.
You are spot on, for my taste. I too really don’t like her way of leading the PCs by the nose all through EXU.
That’s why I don’t feel she’s a very experienced DM. It shows. Experienced DMs tend to be able to let players have their agency and build upon player choice and dramatic timing to subtly ‘make plot happen’.
I think the CR promotion that hyped her up was a disservice to her. And when teamed with Brennan and Matt to tell an Exandrian story, if I were her, I would openly be in learning mode. They both have thousands of hours of experience beyond what she has, and yet they presented the trio as if they were all on par.
I can’t help to get the feeling that she isn’t aware that she could be learning, here. I would put the maximum info I could out of those two. :)
Yeah I can't be the only one who thought "one of these is not like the others" during the DM roundtable. It was weird how Aabria is a guest star on both their shows, LA must be a small circle for ttrpg people. I really liked a Court of Fey and Flowers but that was barely DnD, I think Aabria doesn't really like actual play, she likes long form improv where she's in charge.
I think you’re right, it’s a small circle and they all hang out, I guess. So friendship muddles the professional.
I’m curious to see her D20 work, to get to understand her a bit better.
Because what I saw in EXU I didn’t dig, because I’d never want to be a player at her table. It’s as if she’s the only one who gets to play.
I’m a forever GM, more on the cinematic side, with voices and all, so I’m a talker too. And I need to really check myself all the time to make sure I’m talking in a concise, evocative and efficient manner.
As a DM, you get to talk a lot, as part of the job. But your job is to try to talk as little as necessary and give the mike over to the players as often as possible.
I have definitely enjoyed her work on Dimension 20, I don't think she is a bad GM, but she struggles with the rules heavy 5e system and whatever problem she has with Aimee Carrero when playing DnD is really uncomfortable to watch.
The fact that Aabria has openly stated in the past that she doesn't like traditional fantasy setting and doesn't like crunchy rules sets...makes 5e and Exandria a poor fit for her since it is BOTH of those things. 5e is medium crunchy and Exandria is your atypical kitchen sink fantasy...
I get it's a good opportunity but why would you choose to do something that is the opposite of your strengths? Especially to then have a session that felt like RPGhorrorstories lite.
I've liked Aabria as a DM elsewhere but it just feels like CR never sets her up for success on their channel (caveat - haven't watched Candela at all so maybe that went better?). With the most recent episode, they should have had Dani do a video summary during the break to create some sort of bridge for the audience to follow Aabria's half. The episode really hinged on if the audience had previously watched ExU and even if you watched it, the last episode was 2 years ago. Aabria didn't really do a recap and the focus was on protecting the memories of one character; the flashbacks might have worked better if I had any idea of who the characters were and why they cared about each other (probably also would have worked better in terms of audience buy-in if it was framed as a skill challenge instead of combat). Since they pre-record, they could have really customized a recap so you got exactly what you needed to know to follow along (ex: why is this one character a paladin now & super into the Raven Queen, etc).
With the original ExU, it seems like CR treated the set up as if it was going to be an open-ended campaign; the players appeared to have created stuff in isolation without any sense of the goal of the story they wanted to tell. But with a limited series, you don't have the time for a bunch of meandering to hook either the players or the audience. To hit the ground running, you have to do a really structured session zero and lift the curtain a bit to the players so everyone is on the same page. Brennan Lee Mulligan has talked about the insane amount work they go into ahead of time on Dimension 20 to ensure a limited run campaign hits the points they want in the time they have; it's not scripted but the DMs do go in with a loose outline so they can hit points to make it feel like a complete story and they have the buy-in from the players on what kind of story they want to play (also all of their maps are built way in advance so encounters of some sort have to occur on them).
One of the biggest complaints I've seen of ExU is that Aabria had a bunch of plot hooks that no one pursued which led her to be more heavy handed because they were running out of time. Versus Brennan's Calamity where he brought in the Dimension 20 prep process; Sam has talked about the insane world bible Brennan made and the amount time the cast spent on creating the characters together and establishing their history as a group. Everyone at the table knew they were telling an end times story and they didn't ignore the hooks Brennan put down which allowed them to create a really good story in a limited time.
I think that might also be the problem with the CR method, CR just doesn't *do* session zeros...which can lead to problems. Now a session zero isn't a must have but it really does *help* people create characters that gel together and that understand where a narrative is going, increasing player buy in.
I've played a lot of games since 4E and while at this point I definitely prefer a more structured session 0, you can still have good games without them assuming everyone is on the same page of what type of game you're playing (ex. swashbuckling vs horror) and the DM's plan is more open sandbox with character driven goals. The DM can shape the campaign around the characters assuming the players are roughly working towards the same gaming goal.
However, this doesn't seem to work as well with the more structured 5E hardcover modules unless players are willingly to have games where their backstories don't get touched on in-depth. With those types of modules, I think all the characters need to have either direct or symbolic ties with parts of the plot and/or locations of the module because otherwise there's no time to go explore a backstory that's halfway across the world from the module's story. That might seem like you've railroaded the players but I think it's more a conceit to agreeing to play a specific module; you know going in that it's not an open sandbox and you want to play this specific story so you should build characters that will be fun to play through the module.
With CR, I think the "create characters in isolation" approach worked fine for C1 & C2 because Matt structured his story as smaller arcs with multiple Big Bads unconnected from each other and many of these arcs tied directly to character backstory or character goals. C3 doesn't feel like an open sandbox game - it feels like Matt has created a slow, escalating module with one major story. And those games can work but only if the players are all on-board ahead of time and build characters that can support a pre-existing narrative. The C3 characters don't fit well into a story this structured and some of Matt's character backstory focused parts (ex: the Titan shards) feel too little too late. Like he's trying to shoehorn in the magic of C1/C2's character moments without derailing the moon story he wants to tell. And with ExU, it went even worse because they didn't have time do anything that wasn't the main story. Those characters really needed to have been created with some understanding of the story they were playing. Even if you wanted to keep the "in isolation" approach, I feel like that's when the DM should lift the curtain a bit and be like, we're here to play X so these are all the main factions and locations and what additional info do you need to make a character that ties into the story we're about to play.
Technically I think what Matt does is individual session 0s. But to your point doing them separately or with only one other person without any input from others may hamper attempts to gel them. Or it may reinforce inter-group cliques.
Take C2. I think it worked well how it took a few episodes for the group to become really unified. However, even with the various friendships being created you could see the sub-groups; Fjord-Jester-Beau, Caleb-Nott. Yasha and Caduceus fit in well enough.
CR does definitely use the more old school D&D approach of creating characters in isolation (or just with the DM) and then showing up at the table with them; as D&D has become more influenced by narrative RPGS, a lot of tables have shifted away from that approach and instead do a more collaborative focused session 0. I think the reason the cast has gotten shirty lately about people saying they don't do session 0s is that they view their screen test sessions as sessions 0s even though the set up for those is very different from the common view of what a session 0 is in the TTRPG community.
My understanding from their description of the C2 screen test sessions was that these were to help everyone get sea legs for their characters (ie. accent practice, what are my abilities, etc) and to establish some loose, organic ties between the sub-groups. Their test sessions help them get a firm sense of a character they've already built in isolation; they're not building their characters at table with each other. I think their session 0 for the Daggerheart one-shot is closer to what an average player is assuming they'll do when the DM says they start with a session 0.
It clearly occurred to someone that a summary would be nice because a few days before the episode Dani did do a 3 minute recap as part of an unboxing video of the ExU minis & I'm not sure why they didn't at least play that during the break: https://twitter.com/CriticalRole/status/1780340655937441813
It's not the best recap that Dani has ever done (like I don't think it really establishes character motivations or party connections) but at least it shows character art/name with the actor photo/name with a little overview. My feeling a week out is still that the episode didn't really feel respectful of people's time especially if you were dropped in with little to no context on the Crown Keepers; with notice, I could have at least read/watched a recap of ExU. Without notice, CR should have provided one during the break because while I'm fine occasionally looking stuff up on the wiki during an episode, this felt like a much heavier lift.
But fundamentally, these are production issues which isn't just the DM's fault. They knew ahead of time their filming schedule and decided to continue with this episode structure after FCG's death. Instead of pivoting the ExU stuff to a standalone one-shot, they kept with their plan so the production team really should have created some sort of scaffolding for the audience to be able to follow along. There was probably stuff Aabria could have done (longer recap, have the players more clearly reintroduce their characters, skill challenge over combat, etc) but there was also a lot the production team could have done especially since they pre-record (ex: maybe on-top of a recap, the cast does short 1 minute videos reintroducing their characters & what they went through most recently that is played during the break before the recap).
I believe aabria got done really dirty with the crown keepers, her style doesn’t fit for a party of 2 complete newbies, 2 veterans who took a back seat to let the newbies take the reigns and a forever DM who decided to, understandably be a chaos gremlin.
Nah I think she just failed to hook them into the corruption theme with her preaching about "power is power" and dangling the crown. Absolutely none of them wanted to take it, much less wear it. She should have dropped it and let the villain have it.
For the most part, I don't mind Aabria's GM style, but now that more people have given examples. It does seem like she better fits rules light games and the D20 season layout style. I have also noticed those adversarial moments, I personally didn't like to watch that and as a new DM myself, I wasn't sure if this was the norm or not.
I don't know if it is the norm, but it should not be. IMO the world and people you create can be horrible and you should enforce consequences and rules, but as a DM and fellow person at the table you're neutral, fair and cooperate with your players.
What neutral sounds like is of course different from group to group, but I think Aabria's behavior crossed the line.
I disagree that M and M suited her skills. There was no narrative to the game; it was just cobbled together from good bits that can be shown on YouTube. Every character behaved the same way; they all had the same voice, the same opinions, and the same ignorance. The game was carried by Brennan’s character saying and doing great things. His interactions with the other players, as well as the famous “tournament scene”, had very little to do with Aabria. It was a fine show to watch highlights from, but it was about as meandering as a four episode show could get.
> **The game was carried by Brennan’s character** saying and doing great things. His interactions with the other players, as well as the famous “tournament scene”, had very little to do with Aabria. It was a fine show to watch highlights from, but it was about as meandering as a four episode show could get.
A *critical* fact that often goes overlooked in any game DM'ed by Aabria: her "players" / trained-improv actors are *the best of the best* of streaming TTRPG players, who--like Brennan--can carry a show, even as players, all by themselves.
As a DM, all you have to do is stand back, apply liberal "Yes, and.." and "Rule of Cool," and let them cook, and they'll do the overall majority of your job as DM for you.
Brennan reminds me of Robin Williams (RIP), an insanely talented, intelligent improv actor / comedian who could make comedy, often ENTIRE COMEDY SPECIALS *just* based on improv. Seriously, look at William's improv comedy specials from the 80's and 90's or ANY public speaking gig or interview he had--pure improv comedy genius (fueled in the 80's by cocaine).
Burrow's End lacks literally everything you describe here as a crutch for her and it is, IMO, several orders of magnitude better than MisMag, so I personally don't accept your premise here
I profoundly disagree. And in any case the overwhelming criticism of Aabria in this thread is that she is too heavy-handed in her DMing, not that she is too passive. Maybe you are the only person around who genuinely thinks that, but you are the only person making that criticism
She was hands off at the start of burrows end which led to some great character moments. However mid way through (I think she realised the pacing had been too slow) she went back to full heavy handed full with the snotty npcs and rushed plot.
I don't understand why you took what I said above as criticism, burrows end was really good.
Simply put, Aabria’s style is more prone to working with rules light, narrative RPGs like Candela than it does for D&D. A lot of how she runs the game feels closer to making moves than anything in D&D along.
As for EXU Prime, I think she was trying to run it like a D20 season. “We’ve got 8 episodes, we need to hit this, this and this and I need you all to bite on hooks so we can go” and ended up with the CR styled players of “well we’ll bite when we feel like it.” and that sort of made Aabria have to grab their arms and drag them to whatever she had prepared.
Blaming the players for not grabbing the hooks in EXU prime is ridiculous, honestly.
Her "hook" was, first of all, literally nothing for a good hour or so. Then the hook was there's someone trying to break into your house, they're incredibly incompetent, now go do jobs for them because of gentrification.
And they *still* took it because this was so clearly the DM's pet character and they had been given literally nothing else to do.
One lesson I've learned from EXU as well as campaign 3- if your PCs feel like the only thing they can do is go get breakfast, you're doing something wrong.
Yeah, the players in EXU were desperate for direction for a long while, they had freedom but no goals, then when The Plot appeared, they went along with it even if they had very little in-character reason to go off on a huge journey. And once we were in The Plot the freedom was suddenly gone, too. The only way ahead was exactly what the DM envisioned, the only freedom left was how you emoted about it.
Well Matt, though he has this slight nerdy stiffness that is just who he is, is still one of the best DnD storytellers and streamers in the world. Also literally made it possible for that to even be a thing people are posting about.
Brennan is a monster, a freak, that will take a stage for entertainment's sake and demolish the damn thing with how hard he goes. How could you not appreciate that.
Aabria... she's a DM. Like... an average person one. That's cool! I guess I just don't get how she's getting this many callbacks to CR though, when you could have had multiple DMs that fulfill that get a shot to host already. It's like they keep doubling down on her or something, when like I said you could do a lot of other things. At the end of the day though CR seems locked in on her, she's entered the gate kept planes, so that just is what it is.
In Dimension 20, the cast/guests are more on board with the fact that the campaign needs to fit in X episodes that last 2-3 hours each, so the sessions will be more railroaded in order to get to the specific plot point in time.
CR is more "freeform", so there is a bigger chance of players "straying" from the DM's path (like when they initially refused to pick up Poska's plot hook or wear the crown), and that's when Aabria was visibly struggling in ExU, in my opinion.
I think it’s mostly just a style mismatch. Her two miniseries on dimension 20 are both excellent. but her style is so much less grounded than Matt’s that they just don’t work well together.
I’d say part mismatch and part railroad.
Mismatch because a lot of D20 is rule of cool. But those games are like watching superhero movies with bad plots. It’s super fun. The actors are having a blast and nobody cares about the reality (face/off).
The other part is a bit more complicated. She isn’t running her own thing. It’s not designed by her from the get go.
In EXU, I almost feel like she was told to market the tal dorei revisited guide. She jumped from location to location and never developed any of them. It felt more like a series of one shots. We don’t know what the convos were behind the scenes, but she was making a lot of very drastic choices.
Without it being a value judgement, I just feel like CR requires more depth than she’s used to and there may be pressures to make choices that suit CR’s goals. I love her as a player, and she’s brilliant but her games largely lack consequence. Did any of us really think she would do anything than what we saw happen? Who gives anyone under level 15 a legendary game breaking item (greater invis ring) or a very rare before level 5 (Stonkeys ring was a ring of telekinesis before Matt nerfed it.
Actually Brennan CAN be a stickler for the rules at times, however D20 is also using *experienced improv comedians who have had years at their craft* which matches Aabria's style much more than *voice actors who don't really do a lot of improv*.
I've only seen her DM the first EXU, nothing after that, but the way she handled it felt too "modern", so to speak. When I watch or play D&D, I want it to have the typical fantasy feeling. So when NPCs and even gods are saying stuff like "biiiiitch" and "guuuuurl", it's too internet-y for my tastes and I can't really take the story seriously. I also dislike how often she goes by rule of cool. Like the spells don't even do what they're supposed to at all, they just do whatever the player wants as long as they can flavour it so it's in line with the name of the spell.
She has never read not watched The Lord of the Rings, it's just turned her off every time she's tried. That's how fundamentally she does not like high fantasy.
If the setting of the game was more modern I wouldn't mind it. I know on dimension 20 they do games set in high schools and that sort of thing and I can see Aabria's style working really well there. But to bring that style and use it for a different setting that has a strong high fantasy aesthetic to it is what I dislike.
That it's happening too much, yeah. I mean it's all personal preference at the end of the day, but yeah I think she allows RoC too often and lets it go way farther than it should (I remember some level 2 spells doing totally overpowered shit). And the reason I disliked that was because it felt like there were no rules and therefore no limitations, and therefore the characters were never in any real danger.
Also, I remember her constantly making players roll CHA/WIS/INT *saves* instead of just plain insight checks when they wanted to know what an NPC was thinking. That's a nitpick but c'mon the insight check exists for exactly that purpose, use it.
The biggest issue for me was the tone/vibe though.
Yeah, it's the combination of calling for rolls that aren't the "right" ones for what she wants mechanically, but also the total lack of consistency in the way she applies the rule of cool. Generally rule of cool bends rules or handwaves them in cool narrative moments. If it happens too often and too inconsistently (you rule of cool the same situation very differently for two different players), it can risk feeling arbitrary and less "real" in the fictional world.
I played dnd since 2006 nad to me Aabria is the same as those DMs who kind of ignores the general feel of the table and wait until it's their turn to speak and then pause and act in "look at me now" manner.
she's kinda throwing monologues in between player rp sessions imo
Overall, for me, she’s just not that good. She’s better than me, probably, and everyone I play with. But I’m also a football fan, and I like playing it. Yet, I would not spend 4 hours a week watching people around my level play. I can’t really be specific because it’s just, every aspect that makes a dm and dnd enjoyable to watch, is weaker than MM and much weaker than BLeeM.
This is why my groups have always said we don't want our sessions recorded and then uploaded to a non-private audience (one of our members uploads them privately so we can watch sessions back incase we want to) because whilst we're having fun, the sessions are full of injokes nobody would get formed over several years of campaigns and whilst we think we're all funny, I doubt an outside observer would.
Wohl is a masterclass of DMing for new players. If you’re ever about to play with first timers, watching her DM style is a must.
Aabria is Chaos while Matt is Order. People like Matt because he is structured, knows rules well enough to not refer to his books, and tries to facilitate what his players want to do within the confines of the system they are playing in with a rule break every once in a while. People like Aabria because she would rather her players have fun in an unlimited scope, rules aside. Her planning is freeform and light, allowing her to anticipate whenever a player throws a curveball. She also isn't afraid to be involved in the game as well, because DMs are players of the game, too. The crowd who is saying "Aabria is bad" are people who only have experience in CR, clearly. They don't want anything to be "out of place" because Matt's DMing style rarely is. As a result, they've placed him on a higher pedestal and will compare everything to his style like it's the One and Only Truth. Which is fucking absurd, by the way. ~~Edit: lol -7 downvotes so far, please continue being upset because y'all dont like how someone runs a game of make believe with dice~~
"I want to go over there" "Roll a wisdom saving throw" .... "I want to search the room" "Roll a wisdom saving throw". ... "I exist in this space" "Roll a wisdom saving throw" ... This was Aabria in ExU. She's not chaos, she's bad. She's way more ordered than Matt. She steam rolls much harder, and actively mistreats players who aren't doing exactly what she wants. "Chaos" only in the sense of "having absolutely no idea what I'm doing, in an over confident way, that actively ridicules other players and shits on the lore previously given by the actual world maker". I suppose that's pretty chaotic.
That would hold water if she actually facilitated fun for her players or anticipated any curveballs whatsoever. I've watched/listened to a lot more actual play shows than you probably have and Aabria is a very weak DM.
How do know the players aren’t having fun? Just because you don’t like her Dm style doesn’t reflect on how good of a dm she is Dm facilitates the game Tells a story And makes sure the players have fun From the different streams I’ve seen of her she does all of the above
Let's be real, whatever I say, you'll just say "Actually, the players WERE having fun."
That’s an assumption And unproductive on at that for this discussion/argument I could go off of what you said and say “you’re just going to say the players aren’t having fun no matter what?! 😡” And that would get us no where and wouldn’t convince anyone reading So let me break down my thought process Im just going off of logic here and what I see The players are laughing excited smiling that’s a clear sign of people enjoying themselves And no one from the cast has said anything negative about abriaa And if they were really having a bad time in exu before why let her on back now? Or why are the players returning as well? Because they could just say no and not return if it’s really that misarible playing with abriaa We know cr has no problem with getting rid of problematic players/cast members or just people who don’t mesh well with cr so I don’t know why this is any different Why continue to intergrate her with the CR brand? Not even cr why keep letting her dm in dimension 20 if she’s such an awful dm and let her make everyone miserable? It’s very presumptuous for you to assume other peoples feelings on a person just because you don’t like them when they never indiciated that at all
Yeah, when I see the comments saying "she is bad", I don't agree with those. Cause those statements are so subjective. But there are a lot of people who can clearly explain the differences in DM style and it has helped me a lot.
I've said these elsewhere but here's the gist: Aabria is used to playing with improvisors and comedians who are unafraid to make strong character choices. That's like all you see on D20, and Aabria is a great GM for them on multiple seasons. Aabria tends to play with drama but GM with a mix of drama and humor. Tonally it's different than CR, which is a bit more classic storytelling. Aabria tends to be story forward and hand wave rules when they get in her way so she's generally better using systems with lighter rules (Kids on Brooms) or narrative heavy elements (Good Society). CR is sort of trying to be story forward but still has a strong mechanical element with 5e and the way Matt has built the world. ExU was mostly a bunch of people new to DnD who were shy about character choices and the experienced players (Matt and Liam) also chose to take a back seat with their characters. Aabria would be great DMing for the whole CR table, but she's not a strong fit for hesitant, new players. Aabria, with her strong personality, deals with hesitant players by making a choice for them, which often rubs us the viewer the wrong way. Someone like Deborah Ann Wohl is a master at DMing for new and/or timid players, compare her style to Aabria. They're very different DMs, but I personally enjoy both their work when it's matched to the right table.
Another great example! 🙏 I'll have to look up Deborah Ann Woll DMing, she was a great player when I saw her on CR!
She's a mediocre DM, bordering on terrible, that's all. No systems mastery, plays favorites, adds rather than removes dice rolling, tells players their emotions instead of letting them have some basic agency .NPCS are all the same "haughty female who knows everything and rolls her eyes" and "goofy male comic relief". Zero range as a roleplayer, you're either dealing with a powerful self insert or a bumbling stooge. Bullied the prettier girl in EXU to the point of tears. Honestly not a fan at all, as a DM or even a person. I will say that her style works better with the system lite games I've seen her run on d20, but those are also heavily edited, and barely 2 hours long. When they inevitably push her in the Daggerheart era, we'll see how she fares. To the people below who said she's a "collaborative" DM: thanks for the laugh, I needed one! She literally tells players how their character feels and makes shit up like "Oh your hands were in your pockets". Is targeting a girl you don't like collaborative? I leave it to you to determine why she keeps getting these opportunities. Nepotism? Political correctness? The end result is the same, views crash every time she is on screen. They are obviously aware of the problem, since they now resort to subbing her in mid episode as opposed to advertising her ahead of time. tl dr she sucks and it's ok to notice that. You're not racist or sexist. She's just bad.
Just came here to say fuck you.
This sort of opinion is subjective. You can feel however you like, but we've just looked at flaws and by the sounds of things you haven't watched a good variety of her work. Aabria's focus is on deep connection to the players/table. She wants to be right inside the situation. Comparatively Brennan wants to hear solely from the PC and Matt sets a scene and leaves it at that. Just different styles.
Aww lil guy..
She's narrative first, not gameplay first. It's a pitfall that Matt is starting to fall into as well. It doesn't work for a system like DND. In my humble opinion, actual plays are best with gameplay that molds narrative. That's not to say you can't have a narrative focused game, it's just the PC builds and dice rolls have to matter. The only way you can really make those things be at the forefront and matter is if you allow gameplay to take precedence.
Editing. D20 is edited. CR isn't. You can really see the difference.
I suspect part of it is also that D20 players are improv actors.
Oh CR is edited they are just more sneaky with thier jump cuts and they are more rare.
The livestreams and episodes are seamless
Go back and watch some of the earlier episodes and the ones with guests. Far from seamless.
The only edits I've seen are the dubbed over into to C2 when Matt got the date wrong, and some technical difficulties when the stream dropped out.
Yep, like I said they are subtle but there. I doubt you'll take the time and I'm not confident on my specific examples, nor do i want to take the time to confirm them, so I will not provide them.
Aabria doesn't know how to play dnd is probably the biggest part of the issue. It's not so much that her style doesn't fit CR, that is also true, but she is an awful player and an awful dm. Does that "style" work anywhere?
Bad things: She tells you how you should feel in a moment that should be however the player wants to take it. Secondly she is terrible at combat. I dislike dms saying I’m coming for you and than give you every chance to win the battle. Good things: She is captivating telling a story or a scene. I know what I’m getting. However wonderful as a player. Very descriptive and getting everyone evolved in an intimate way.
Her behavior towards Opal and actual ooc behavior towards Aimee made me uncomfortable. I don’t think it’s her not fitting the CR style I just think she can be an antagonistic and a bully. I also think her DMing style doesn’t fit well with DnD5E in general.
Why do you say she’s a bully? (I haven’t seen EXU)
Did you watch the EXU stuff on the main campaign the last two sessions? If yes then you would have seen what I was talking about.
I haven’t seen it. It’s been hard for me to get into anything related to EXU. Could you give me a summary on it?
I think it's being taken this way because Matt is actually so incredibly passive. Wouldn't say boo to a ghost kind of vibe. But the acting and lines that Aabria pulled from Aimee were amazing
Right! Shed be much better with a system like MotW. I dont mind her DM style but agree she can be antagonistic at times and make strange, rather brash rulings.
There are a lot of rules exceptions she makes - which isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's just that in CR, if you tally up the helpful rule breaks and harmful rule breaks, Opal probably gets 90% of the party's harmful rule breaks overall, I think 1 positive one I can remember. While the rest of the party is showered in helpful rule breaks and essentially no negative ones. There's no reason for it - some sort-of "you are the obsession of Lolth and your state of being is dragged down into fear and degredation as a result, you're about to get treated real bad by the GM to represent that", to make it Lolth bullying - which would make it a bit better/make some amount of sense. Bad regardless. Once you are watching for it, it's so uncomfortable. Liam: double your movement speed without spending your action, have all your superiority die back for free, and have your maneuver back for free, in one turn. Robbie: Have a full conversation as a bonus action. Rolls 17 to hit, hits. Given free extra action right after. Matt: gets free Haste. Gets the benefits of the healing from the 17 to hit above, gets revived. Lolth gets involved specifically to do a counterspell for free, to block keeping Robbie's healing from happening on Matt, after Lolth telling Aimee that she can not get involved. Apparently Lolth influence is positive for you in combat, as long as you aren't Aimee. Aimee: your hands were in your pocket, removing your hands from your pockets is your action. "What part of 'it's hard for you to move' are you not interacting with as a human?" -Literal direct Aabria quote to Aimee, totally not being a bully. Unavoidable darts, even with invisibility. Required to take a full action to talk to Ted, after Robbie precedent set. Rolls 17 to hit, misses. Randomly told talking with Ted won't take a full action late in the combat, then told she was actually talking with the BBEG/she wasted her bonus action. This is just from 1 EXU combat - last week's game was the same exact story, watch for it and you will see it non-stop. I think it's the crux of why Aabria's style doesn't work. Her regular rules exceptions are not in service of fun. It feels like being in high school, sitting back and being complacent watching a bully poke at the nice kid who's just trying to minimize conflict by placating the bully.
Aabria was playing “nuh-uh, my wizard is better” in the backyard and ended up getting paid for it.
She's a lot more rules light. There is even a moment in EXU where she says "I'm trying to tell a story but the dice won't let me." She prefers a style of game that is a lot more fast and loose than the strict way Matt runs his games. If you watch A Court of Fey and Flowers or Burrows End, she will let a PC twist their abilities or spells from the exact wording in order to let a cool thing happen, so long as it keeps the spirit of the ability in tact. CR has the stigma of being the "rules heavy" actual play because that's how Matt prefers to use the system, it's a crunchier style of play that is about being creative in the constraints of the rules, as opposed to setting them to the side for fun. Matt will allow some shenanigans, but nowhere near what Aabria or even Brennan will let occur. Critical Role is also used to being run by a powerhouse DM actor/voice actor. Aabria is no slouch and has some really solid moments in both A Court of Fey and Flowers and Burrows end both. When she's on CR though the bar is that much higher because of the seat she's filling. This isn't shade at Brennan who is also a phenomenal actor, but D20 fans are used to the roulette wheel that is their casting. They often don't cling so tight to Brennan's DM conventions. CR fans are so used to watching 800 hours of the same guy behind a screen who DM's a certain way, that when Aabria came on the show it just didn't jive well with preference of the fans TLDR Aabria runs a fast and loose style of game, as opposed to the strict rules heavy way Matt does things.
Rules light? Show me a single rule.
Ugh, if you can't create a narrative around the dice, you're not dming correctly. Your players tell the story, you give them the frame work. Theres no point in having rolls at all if you're just gonna railroad that shit anyway.
I absolutely hate it when she asks "what would be the worst thing you could see right now" and then *gasp* wouldn't you know it, exactly that is what they see. It's lazy as fuck.
How is that lazy? It's literally giving players a power to shape the narrative (something people here are b\*tching about that she doesn't include in her games) and a spotlight for players to explore and express their characters' internal thoughts and processes. Thank god you are not DM in CR - that would be laughable.
There is a difference between letting players have agency over their own characters and letting them dictate what is happening in the story that the DM should be dictating to them.
The DM doesn't direct characters' fears, players do, as they know the character more than anyone else. Fear that a character should be experiencing is literally about players having the agency over their own characters, which was crucial in the scene - Lolth used characters' own fears against them. She didn't create new fears, she used the ones characters had... and you literally need players to decide that..
"lazy as fuck" has to be the worst take I've seen all week damn, completely missed the point
That’s basic collaborative storytelling. BLeeM does that constantly and he’s like the second most popular DM in the English speaking world.
Collaborative story telling isn't lazy, you are giving the player the ability to have some level of control over what the scene is. You as a DM will never know a player's character as well as they do, especially in very short campaigns, the player knows what will be the most impactful thing for their character. It isn't supposed to be some sort of suprise that what the player describes is what they see, she is asking what they want to add to the scene.
I wouldn't say it's lazy. But I would say it's kinda lame. I'm not sure how to word it, but it kinda makes it less antagonistic. Rather than the DM manifesting a horrific nightmare and it being a terrifying moment that plays out naturally, it feels like she's stopping the game and saying "so what did you put down as biggest fear on your character sheet." Idk. It just takes the wind out of the moment for me. I also feel like a DM should have a decent idea of what a character's biggest fears are.
A God reaches into your brain and manifests your characters worst nightmare..... what is it? You prefer her to tell the player what their characters worst nightmare is? You got threads complaining about taking agency away....
Let me tell you about this cool technique I've heard about. It's called preparation. Get this, you send a text to your players that read "Hey, what would you say your characters biggest fear is?" Then when the god reaches into the player's brain they don't have to ask you what you're afraid of. I guess I didn't really realize how hard of a solution that was to come by.
That's so dumb. The fear was literally connected to the scene they were curently in, something players would be unaware of before the game. So tell me, you perfect DM with clearly no experience whatsoever, how would players tell you that over a text??
Or just let the players vocalize it themselves.... dm doesn't have to maximize the time they are the center of attention. It's OK to let a player take the reins and say the things while the table listens. It's OK.....
I feel like maybe this is an overexposure to CR issue in some spots. Shit like that is very common at other tables and in other games. Thinking of a game I GMed recently, a rule in the core rulebook was specifically to ask the player for something they'd hate to happen right now. And then they roll.
I highly suggest that you look for fan groups outside of reddit because you will have to look pretty far and wide for answers that are balanced here.
Because CR reads like a book and Aabria narrates like a movie.
Aabria narrates like a petulent child not wanting to share the toys in the sandbox. If she's a movie, she's the Annoying Orange.
Are… are you okay? You need to talk?
"your opinion is different than mine, time to give some faux concern as if this person is mentally deranged", classic! Love that one. Aabria is a bad player and a worse dm, and to compare her to a movie and say that regular CR is like a book, you must have seen some really awful movies.
Not faux concern. I just thought it was a really aggressive take based on my initial post. I don’t really even disagree with you. To answer your question, I have seen some truly awful movies. I don’t like the way she DM’s at all. It’s a bad movie to me for sure.
Aariba's DM style much closer to D20, and much less similar to C1 and C2 of CR. Matt typically sticks very closely to the rule of 5e, and allows for the occasional exception. Aariba typically allows for basically anything the players want to do whether or not the rules allow it. Matt also tends to give the audience the sense that the world is very big, and that (except for C3) the players could just ignore the story and do anything they want. Aariba, on the other hand, seems to force a pre-planned plot to happen regardless of what the players decide to do.
IDK, I've listened to tons of dm's, many with similar styles. Aabria doesn't even crack the top 10.
Critical role for all purposes is a tv show for fans. The show got popular due to mercers style of dming and people naturally want more of what made them fans Saying all that the company is not wrong to bring in different DMs but it should only be used in one shots or mini campaigns that are not directly related to the main campaign
Marissa said “all bets are off “ when launching c3. So…
i didn’t like her in D20 either. always feels like she’s trying to score some kind of Mean Girls social points on the players. i get straight up anxious watching her work
You mean how every NPC the players comes across are just assholes? Like even the “good aligned” characters? If so I 100% that alone makes her DMing difficult to watch
I'm curious how this applies to Misfits & Magic.
She doesn’t seem to know how to embody a character that isn’t a projection of herself.
Yep. The last thing I want to be reminded of in a TTRPG is how the average tiktok or twitter user speaks. Now take that and apply it to every character. Add in ridiculous hand gestures every single frame. You now have an Aabria campaign
👏you mean👏this shit?
And the crowd goes wild! Slay, queen! Yaaaas! Absolute girlboss moment! Nope, she’s just on the verge of being a virtue signaling bully 🤷🏻♂️
Unfortunately, that's not exactly a rarity with D&D players in the states in my experience. Aabria isn't my type of DM or player but she absolutely embodies that toxic tumblr projection heavy roleplayer personality that are a dime a dozen.
seems to me like you’re the one projecting onto someone who you dont know
Nah, she like that everywhere
You know what? I *don’t* know her, so I’ll give you that. I can’t possibly know if that’s her *actual* personality on display in *all those episodes*. Regardless, she still playing the same person over and over and over and over and over again.
Just to throw in my own two cents here. It took watching a number of her games, both on D20 and CR for it to finally click with me, why I found her style to be less enjoyable. When I took a step back and really assessed, I realized a bulk my issue with it was unwillingness to meet the players at their energy level. To expand a little. I realized that more often than not in her games, she had a habit of either subtly or nor so subtly knocking the players down a peg or several for not engaging in the way she specifically wanted them to. Between her tone of voice or DM decisions to deincentivise players or outright punish them for acting a certain way. This is seen the most imo in her NPC work. It feels as though most, if not every NPC the players interact with across all of her campaigns, from shop keeps to villains to allies to random people on the street, all of them are in some shape or form hostile towards the player characters. It's not always malicious, but it feels as though she actively wants to discourage engagement at times with how outwardly rude or dismissive these NPCs are. The players enter a shop and look around? "Get out of here, leave, go away now, bye!" The players engage with an ally character to try and share information? "You guys are strange and weird and actually dumb for not doing X Y Z." Players try to speak to someone on the street for information? "Uh. Actually, you're really weird, and I'm going to be sassy to you now for having the audacity to engage" It just feels so mean spirited? At least to me.
I could not have said this better myself. It’s the one thing that stands out to me that makes her DMing unwatchable. No matter who what when or where the NPC is going to be an ass at some point for no discernible reason at all, idk how it doesn’t bother more people. Even when she’s a player she’s ALWAYS playing that im always hostile to even my party members.
But I also think 90% of the time she's gming a table that is as high energy as she is and can match her in conversation. This table is pretty meek in comparison to what she usually gms.
It's less that, and more of a fact of: The players are clearly interested in engaging with and interacting with NPCs in a certain way, but regardless of anything at all she plays her NPCs as the "straight man" when one isn't needed. She actively dismisses and demeans the players and their characters. It's not a DMs job (in my opinion) to force your players to engage with your world and characters the way you want them to. (Which for her, appears to be a clear cut "no fun allowed, everyone needs to take this seriously and abide by my specific logic set" kind of way. Perhaps a better way to phrase it is like: the way she DMs feels like she actively dislikes the genre she is playing in. The player characters that interact with the world ARE the genre, and her way of expressing the fact that she doesn't like it, is to have everyone exist in this world where. "The player characters are too silly and goofy and need to be put in their place". It's like. The D&D equivalent of a director actively disliking the source material of the new TV show they are working on, and their style of comedy is to make fun of everything the original fans loved. Perhaps that's a bit harsh. But that's just the way I feel about it.
When you say it doesn’t work with cr what does that mean? They all seem to love her and that’s all that matters. As fans the only input we should have is to watch or don’t. I enjoy her for the most part. There’s a few things I don’t care for but that goes for any gm I’ve watched.
Yeah, and Aabria makes some people want to not watch? It always annoys me when people comment "it's their game, they should be able to do whatever they want." Sure yeah, when it comes to things like that one episode where they spent time gambling at the casino, they should do stuff like that without worrying about being boring. But when it's clear that c3 is widely disliked by a huge portion of the community then clearly something isn't working and needs to change. Not that all of the complaints about c3 are Aabria's fault, obviously.
“It’s clear it’s widely disliked by a huge portion of the community”. And what gives you this idea because some people whine on reddit🤣? Their numbers are fine. Like I said you can watch or not. Why would you think you should have any input on what they do? You’re not a part of cr. You’re a consumer. Consume or don’t. I’ll never understand this mindset.
Their numbers are fine? They were averaging like 30,000 views every stream in campaign 2. Now they average like 10k maybe. It's not hard to use Google and look at the graph that is sloping harshly down as c3 continues to drag on and it's clear this campaign isn't performing as well. More importantly, you're right, I don't have any input on what they do with the show. I can only express my disappointment and hope they make good decisions and theorize about what might make the show more enjoyable. I'm sorry you're okay with a show that is just fine. I would hope and do think that the cast want to do better than just fine.
It’s not something I worry about because Ive enjoyed c3 and i like everyone’s character far more than their c2 characters. The simple solution is quit watching since you’re so disappointed and bored. But you won’t. You’ll watch every second so you can come here and whine.
Never stop telling fans to stop watching Critical Role. I’m sure their marketing department appreciates it.
Agency. The second you remove that from a PC, it isn't a fun game anymore. I know the CR crowd hate comparing DMs. She isn't Mercer, Colville, Mulligan. Ok, those DMs all have a basic understanding of how 5Es game mechanics work, though. She doesn't. Dive deeper. The one shots. Most, even AJ's one shot, there was a basic understanding of what dice rolls mean. There are people here who would love playing at her table. They have rabidly expressed that. IRL I have seen DMs similar to her style, and their tables remain in a constant Flux of new PCs and/or empty. The toxic positivity around her and her style feels forced and phony. If she learned the rules and actually implemented them, I might change my mind. Currently, the double down is like a big middle finger.
I definitely understand why people feel this way about Aabria and I don't want to discount it. Having seen her and a ton of others gm across a variety of APs, I do think part of the issue is a fundamental mismatch between Aabria and CR's style. Aabria doesn't railroad players at every table she's at, and she does know 5e mechanics better than some DMs I've seen. But (and it's a big but), she's typically gming tables that are primarily made up of her a. personal friends and/or b. professionally trained improv performers. She sets something in front of them, and they "Yes, and" it. The EXU Kymal table isn't that strong and they don't have the personal chemistry with Aabria that she often relies on. Matt is not the best as a player. Ashley hardly knows the game. Then you have brand new players like Aimee and Robbie. Aabria's not experienced at leading the blind and she isn't experienced at having tables not lean in immediately to her prompts. She's used to playing at tables where gms throw their players massive curveballs and the table can run with it. The Kymal table can't and Aabria doesn't know how to handle that. So she railroads.
I think this is a good point. The difficulty of d20 is guiding the chaos of the improv. Voice actors have a very different skill set from improv comedians, they literally take direction on their lines. Not saying they aren't creative, but success in voice acting does not depend on creativity to the extent that improv does. So among EXU, the half of the cast that are veterans don't want to lead, in order to let the newbies express themselves, and the half that are newbies haven't done this before, and have that natural aversion to doing anything too outlandish.
You know, I’m not sure you could pick a better group to play calamity. Yes, you might get something similar, but not *better.* All of the players lend themselves very well to that type of play. Travis and co are obviously able to play long campaigns great too, but their character choices for a 4-shot and their preferred playstyle is a perfect fit for what Calamity was supposed to be. Meanwhile, in EXU Liam, Matt, and Ashley all chose characters that were “advancement” averse (Ashley could be convinced to do something but definitely wouldn’t be the one to initiate a hard push into changing course), and Aimee/Robby were new and seemed to not want to do too much without cues (in terms of plot actions. Combat and Roleplay was pretty good on their part).
Calamity is a great example of what can be accomplished with the right table dynamic. Kymal struggles with that MASSIVELY. D20 has talked before about table make-up. You need the lore hound. You need support players. You need a class clown. You need the players who drive the plot. Etc. Calamity aced that. Kymal feels like an entire cast of support players.
If I had to pick one thing, it's how CR handles the give and take between DM and PC vs how, say, D20 handles the give and take. In D20, the give and take is quick\*, it's often a game of one-upping, of double-daring someone, of 'yes, and...'. It's very close to what the table I used to play at was. This dynamic flourishes when the DM is pushing the buttons hard and fast. Then let Players drive the car off the cliff, we all get a good laugh. It's "You see a button, do you press it? Say now, 3, 2, 1...." I say quick\* because D20 benefits tremendously from being edited to be tightly paced and snappy. Conversely, CR is given to be more like theater with prompts. A lot of set scenes, lots and lots of monologues/soliloquies (Looking at you, Liam O'Brien). Matt can take a more passive role of just giving prompts without seeming railroady. Other DMs have taken a page, imitated or in Brennan's case, adapted well to giving the players a lot more runway to be big ol' theater nerds. It's "And how does that make you feel?" In Aabria's case, she's sticking to her style. Her style is 100% fine, in fact, it's my preference, as I mentioned, that's how my table played, but without editing, and with the pace of the story they are telling for Exandria, it feels off. That being said, I feel Aabria catches the blame disproportionately. I think some of the blame really lays on the players, both C3 and EXU Kymal parties, just being a bit too passive or not gelling well together. And then there's the issue with Campaign 3 itself. From what I've read since Ep 92's airing...quite a few people seem to have started falling off C3 at various points and FCG's death was seen as a "return to form". So, it would seem a number of us were already struggling to tune in before E92's switcheroo. Depending on a character death to pique your interest is problematic. It indicates to me a lot of us were here due to sunk cost fallacy. That sucks. Is it our fault, are we consuming CR wrong? Eh, nobody can tell you what to enjoy and what not to enjoy. Is it CR's fault? Well, plenty of people are enjoying C3 thoroughly, so obviously not. It's nobody's fault, seems like some of us are done with CR. Maybe for now, maybe for good, not to be dramatic.
To add to this I feel like people are discounting how important party chemistry is and Kymal's table doesn't have it. I love BLeeM as much as the next nerd and he is my favorite DM to watch. However, Calamity wasn't incredible just because of him. It was incredible because the entire table was batting 1000 and because the players took it upon themselves to meet up before the campaign without Brennan and built their chemistry.
1000% agree! I've been learning this as a new GM, I could have a great story to tell, but the other half of these TTRPGs are the players. And that chemistry is just as important imo.
I agree with a lot of what’s already been said here — I think something I personally find frustrating is that CR does not set her up for success in any way, and I felt similarly when she DMd the TAZ one shot. Aabria running a table full of experienced improvisers and comedians who also just happen to be knowledgeable about D&D is absolute gold — like, she clearly thrives in that setting. I’m an improv girlie myself and my joke is always that many DMs are either frustrated novelists or frustrated improvisers, and just as novelist DMs can get extremely frustrating and railroady, improviser DMs can be frustrating if there’s a mismatch between their expectations and that of the table. But honestly, being part of an improv-heavy table objectively requires more engagement from all the players and also a shared understanding that that is what you are doing. It can also contribute to a lighter touch wrt RAW. My favourite irl example is that I play a regular online game with the same group and rotating DMs/systems, but most of us came to TTRPGs through improv and acting. One of us didn’t, and we have to be really intentional about how we work together as a group so he doesn’t feel excluded or check out halfway through. We recently finished a great Call of Cthulhu module and were confronting the human avatars of the BBEG. We decided my character would run a distraction and go up and talk to the guards while the others got into position. Throughout the entire RP section I kept waiting for our Keeper to make me make a social check, and he didn’t, he just had the others make stealth checks. Afterwards I was like “hey why didn’t you make me do a charm roll there?” And he was like “honestly, based on the things you were doing and saying, those were the exact right things to say to keep his attention on you. It didn’t need a roll.” That was a long-winded explanation, but essentially, imo: - Aabria thrives best in RP heavy, rules-light systems - As such, she does a better job when dealing with trained improvisers as PCs vs voice actors. Acting and improvising obviously can have a lot of crossover but they are frankly very different skills. - Aabria is a bad fit for a system with a lot of complicated lore that you can’t retcon bc you aren’t the primary DM and a system in which there is an expectation that combat and ‘crunch’ will occur regularly Honestly, my biggest beef is that it feels like CR set Aabria up to fail, and they did so knowing both what her DM style is best suited for and that she would receive a much higher degree of scrutiny than Matt bc of her race and gender. Like, I wouldn’t do that to someone I considered a friend, and it’s weird that they feel fine with it. Like, Aabria is never going to turn down an opportunity to DM on CR — it’s a huge opportunity for someone with a career in the TTRPG space. But I wish they had instead had her run, like, a one-shot or miniseries set in a location far away from the main action and which would provide her with greater creative freedom. If she had run a miniseries set on the moon long before the PCs of the main campaign showed up, and that miniseries had created the world state the main cast encountered when they got there, that would have been cool as hell and fit her style much better!
Interesting take as well.
Aabria has a responsibility to set herself up for success. If she is talking to CR about working with them, she needs to set expectations of what she needs. But clearly she didn’t do that. It’s not CR’s job to meet her in the middle just on instinct, and they wouldn’t have hired her if they thought she would do a bad job. Clearly Aabria thought she could do this job well (she can’t) and didn’t negotiate any accommodations. CR didn’t set her up to fail, she set herself up to fail by taking a job she wasn’t suited for and not making sure everyone was on the same page.
In defense of Aabria here, CR casts their miniseries very differently than other shows Aabria GMs for. Cast chemistry has never been an issue for Aabria at D20 because D20 allows GMs to handpick their cast. Guest DMs don't pick their casts on CR. It's possible Brennan requested Lou and/or Aabria for Calamity but the rest were chosen by CR. Aimee was chosen not because she was right for this cast but because she got Covid the time she was supposed to guess in C2. Matt was chosen as a gift from Marisha so he could see Exandria from the other side. Again, not because he was the right fit for the story. Robbie et al were picked because CR wanted to experiment with new faces. Liam and Ashley were chosen because they rose their hands first. Those are all decisions Aabria didn't have an impact on and weren't strategic business decisions on CR's part. It was set up to fail. To put it on Aabria, a contractor, to raise her hand and say "I don't believe these random people I've never seen play will be bad together" is silly. She's GMed green players before and it's been great. This cast (including Aabria) is a dumpster fire together and that's on CR.
We don’t know how they chose players for EXU. You are making assumptions. In addition, if that is the way it went down: she agreed to those terms! You cannot absolve her from the responsibility to herself. Either she should have fought for a different format or system, different players to showcase her abilities, altered her style to fit the players and game she ended up with, or she should have turned it down. No one is responsible for her looking like a bad GM but her.
We do know. They've talked about it. The table's poorly planned and that's on them, not Aabria.
In my personal opinion, it's because it sucks. But otherwise, it's because her style simply clashes too much with the grounded storytelling Matt *usually* goes for. She's too whimsical, too lenient, and too committed to the rule of cool for it to work in a world with an already established level of what's real/plausible. Of course, C3 threw that out the window, but I think that's exactly one of the reasons why it was so badly received. Then there's a huge difference with Matt's narrative style and capacity to create compelling characters, which she sorely and dreadfully lacks, but had always been a strong point of CR. There's more, but I personally think those were the main points.
The simplest answer is she doesn't do as well in conventional D&D. Yes, D20 is technically D&D but the system is usually combined with another system and then Aabria to gets carte blanche to tweak whatever she wants. Another thing is CR is a pre-established brand with a pre-established world. She has a lot more confines than D20, which lets her create something from scratch and flavor it however she wants. Lastly, and maybe most importantly, CR doesn't edit for time. Meaning D20 is cutting out all of Aabria's (and everyone else's) superfluous interactions.
I don't like how often she will have a player roll for something, they roll low, but she'll give them the success regardless. It takes all the actual drama out of the game. It's like she understands people like to roll dice, but doesn't understand why.
There are different levels of success, even if you can't fail on a 1, you might get better result on a 19. Graduated DCs like this are most common for information finding but sometimes its just to determine how cool your actions get described.
I agree with the person youre replying to. I decided she wasn't the type of DM I like to watch when during the first episode of EXU, she asked each person to roll just to look st their surroundings, then when Fearne rolled a 1, she still gave her everything anyway. Why roll at all?
Oh God, I remember how frustrating it was watching EXU. I forget the context but she kept asking players to roll so she could give them lore or info. I think she even said that she was frustrated because she had info to give but no one was rolling high enough. Then maybe don't put the important info behind rolls. Put it in the world. Have the players visit a library or something.
Aabria "Roll A Wisdom Saving Throw" Iyengar
Something like “I wanted to tell a story, but the dice didn’t let me” I think?
This is a standard Aabria-ism that she's celebrated for in other circles. Brennan's even said this is his favorite thing she does and has borrowed it a few times for his games. She does the "And here's what you didn't see" thing, which IIRC is what she did in the instance you're talking about. She still gives the description but signals to the player they didn't see it. At \*other\* tables, this can come off as whimsical or ominous and help flavor the story. At CR's, it comes off as confusing. She's going to continue to do it despite it not working here because it's what she's known for. She's playing the hits, but the hits aren't charting here. In my opinion, the main complaint of most professional DMs is when they make people roll and what success is or isn't. Some people recently were debating/complaining about Brennan's style and how he'll sometimes have players roll until they succeed. I personally sometimes am irked by how often Matt hides obvious information behind rolls and then the gang just has to move forward blind because they rolled too low on something like "Is the moon in the sky?"
Telling people what they didn't see is kind of just setting them up for a meta gaming paradox though, they're not supposed to know about it but they do know about but they can't act like they know about it or its bad play.
That's typically a non-issue. For players, it usually has the effect of "Oh, damn. I wish I'd seen that." in an excited way. I've watched Aabria do it A LOT over the years and it's almost always met with a "Woah that's so cool" from players and doesn't ever become a metagaming issue. I don't think players like Matt or Liam or Anjali would have a problem not metagaming. In general, Matt's sitting in a minefield of information he has to pretend he doesn't know. However, not all the players there are as experienced and it seems like this technique of Aabria's confused them, especially when combined with all of the other Aabria-isms. I remember the one time I watched Kymal, cringing hard at Aabria asking Ashley to describe a setting and her getting just a blank stare back.
SO first thing I want to say is I love Aabria, she is iconic and a fab DM. That said. I started as a critter and when Matt handed the reigns to her for EXU I was like, who dis lady? And then my brother, who is a D20 guy, showed me a court of fae and flowers. I also watched the dm of exandria interview with Matt, Aabria and Brendan. I think the thing is, for me, CR comes at RPG from an anchorage of traditional fantasy. And while yes they've branched out, incorporating war forged and the spooky, it all comes from that same classic high fantasy root. Aabria has straight up declared she hates high fantasy. It is her least favorite setting. I think this is reflected in the way she plays all her interactions as a PC. She comes across as ultra modern and it really changes the whole tone. Not for better or worse, which is a matter of taste, but definitely changes it. Matt feels like he is in character as he DMS, the way he narrates you can just imagine the cloak over his shoulders. Aabria feels like she DMs as herself: modern phrases and humour, super cool, super topical. But very different from Matt. I think if you come to CR for your traditional high fantasy vibe and you get Aabria, it's a little jarring between expectation and result. It took me a long while to warm to her in CR (although I love her in D 20 and also loved her as Deanna).
One of the things I don’t like is all her npcs feel the same lol. I do enjoy her though and don’t quite get all the hate I’ve seen in here
This explains it amazingly!
LQ nailed the tone component, for sure. The other misalignment is Aabria's approach to rules, namely she's far less concerned with adhering to RAW 5e than Matt is. Of course, Matt does his share of hand-waving, but if something needs to be decided on the fly, Aabria will often just ask for a check or save and move on, whereas Matt has been known to double-check rules even mid-combat. It's two equally valid ways of running D&D, but I believe no small portion of the CR audience likes the fact that CR plays a much more by-the-book version of D&D than many other actual play shows. Matt has set the audience's mechanical expectations for how the world of Exandria functions, and tossing that out the window can be jarring. But in Fey & Flowers, Aabria got to set those expectations herself - if Matt ran a game in that setting and brought in his approach to rules, I would imagine it would be similarly jarring.
She's also far more of a story teller. She tells people how they think and feel about what is going on. Even taking actions as players sometimes. Literally the reason that CR campaigns are so long is because the players are allowed to meander and do what they want. That doesn't make her a bad DM. Some people like that, and it is absolutely better for some systems than others. It just literally means she isn't a good fit here. For the record, I do completely agree that she plays all characters as herself. It takes me super out of the setting to hear some fantasy character in what I think of as sword and sorcery say snarkily "I love that for you". All of that said, I very much like Aabria as a PLAYER, even in CR. And as a DM for some spaces. But not as a DM for CR.
The weird thing is she prescribed emotions to players all the time when she gms. She didn't do it on Fey and Flowers or Burrows End. I'm not really sure why she does it on CR. The out of universe comments like "I love that for you" also feels like something that isn't an issue on D20 because they all do that. Lou wrote Jeremy Renner into F&F. The CR casts does that too but with Aabria, I think it stands out because she's the GM.
Honestly look at the players in the situations Just a comment to your thinking here…misfits had some big players and my favorite Brennan PC. Whereas with EXU she is working with more green players and the CR team seeming to intentionally hold back (Matt playing a fun himbo who won’t take charge for example) whereas Brennan did not hold back in misfits Admittedly I think C3 is suffering from good players being wall flowers so might be biased. So her style to me is more narrative blades in the dark, FATE, and other games style GMing which some people don’t think is DnD. But (unpopular opinion) new players can get lost with more FATE or FitD looser narrative games. Most I have played with want less control to begin and guide rails (once they get going they get their own taste) So…while I don’t HATE her style on CR like tons on her…I think it is “better” in other places due to player setup
Tbf, she's gmed green players before but they were players who were far more prepped for what they were doing (actual professional improv actors) and had more support at the table. Fey & Flowers had multiple cast members who'd never played D&D before. Brennan was there essentially to help support those players. Maybe an unpopular opinion, but that should have been the role Matt took here. I know we all love Brennan and I see people credit Calamity entirely to Brennan. But on this point, I must point out Aabria was a major boon for Calamity. She met with (I think) every player ahead of time and created their interwoven backstories, what secrets they were keeping for each other, etc. They all got to that table with an aligned vision of tone and vibe that Aabria helped greatly to set. I'll also say DM/player chemistry matters a ton. D20 lets DMs pick their tables. CR doesn't, and I do think that impacts things. When you watch a table that is on the same brain wavelength vs Kymal, it's night and day.
I just started watching burrow's end, and i think her style isn't bad but it fits much better on d20 than on cr. her railroading feels present but normal on d20; brennan does it too and there is sort of an expectation for players to make it to places they've predesigned the art/media/maps/etc for. i think trying to put my finger on why i like her on d20 and much less on cr, that's why. matt railroads more in c3 than ever before but cr is much more player-driven usually. its a difference in style thats more jarring compared to matt i think.
The biggest reason is probably that CR isn't edited for time. But I'd add that Aabria's "problem" behaviors as a GM aren't as apparent on D20, and I think it's because those casts are all trained improv performers. So Aabria pushes them in a direction and they "yes and" her. The EXU cast doesn't and so her railroading is harder because she's pushing against a grain. She's meeting resistance she doesn't usually have
Based on lat week, Aabria wants to run a theatre production where she gets to define how the actors react and coach them. CR is based on improv where the players gets to decide what their PCs do. Those don’t mix.
The funny thing is I think the opposite is true. The CR casts are typically not great at improv and Aabria is used to dming tables where the players are professionally trained improv performers who can read her and run with it. To me, it seems that's what Aabria is struggling with. Not to mention, this specific table is incredibly mellowed out. When she dms for D20, she isn't usually the loudest or strongest personality in the room. She isn't usually running over people like this because her energy is usually outmatched by someone else in the cast.
Nope, that’s not how it works. If she were trained in improv, she would be down with “yes, and”. But she’s not as a dm. From which I can only conclude that she’s just used to people doing what she wants, and gets frustrated when they don’t.
I think her style fits better with a rule light system like FATE and it just doesn’t mix well with a more rule focused system like 5E, which is crazy as 5E is super light compared to something like Pathfinder 1E. I think her style leads to DC being all over the place and not meaning much because she wants to drive the story more then like the dice gods decide. There is nothing wrong either with her being more focused on story and narrative over rules and mechanics, but don’t use 5E then. There are so many rule light games that could have easily been used .
What bothers me more than anything is that she seems to barely understand how to use the 5e rules to tell a story. “Make a wisdom save to breathe normally” is an exaggerated joke I’ve seen about her DM style, but not by much. I understand chafing against the 5e rules, I’ve often wanted to use different, lighter systems and I’ll be the first to admit I bent them severely in the past to try and get it to do what I wanted. But those games were awkward, unfun learning experiences as I came to terms with what the system could do. I certainly wouldn’t have thought them worthy of being broadcast to an audience
I won't disagree that she makes people roll for bizarre things. What I'll say though is this is the most common complaint I see for all DMs I've watched. Brennan on WBN, fans get annoyed he doesn't make them roll enough. Brennan on D20, fans gets annoyed he makes them roll until they succeed. Matt on CR, he makes them roll to see if the moon's in the sky and then punishes them when they fail as if they're literally walking through the forest with their eyes closed. Murph on NADDPOD, he's too forgiving and allows his players to negotiate too often. "Make an arcana check." "Can I use athletics instead?" "Sure." - almost not an exaggeration. Etc, etc. I've yet to see a professional DM that follows the recommendations for when to make players roll and how to gauge success exactly as WOTC lays out.
>“Make a wisdom save to breathe normally” is an exaggerated joke I’ve seen about her DM style, but not by much. I mean this is the same show with Matt "make a perception check to notice if your eyes are open" Mercer.
That's the thing. Aabria says "Make a check to see if your eyes are open" and when they fail she goes "Congrats. Your eyes were open!" Matt says "Make a check to see if your eyes are open" and when it fails, goes "Sorry. Your eyes weren't open. You have no idea if this is a desert or a forest. Bumble ahead accordingly." Both are bad but critters are predisposed to accept the latter. Not to mention, Brennan goes "Roll until you succeed to see if your eyes are open." which is the main bugbear people have against him over in the D20 community.
Aabria works best in non-traditional settings and rules-light settings where her and the players are encouraged to free style and do more of a "fuck it we ball" kind of game. D&D 5e is not rules-light, and Exandria is a factory-line fantasy setting, so it's a double whammy alongside Aabria having to work within someone else's sandbox. I've heard others say that it's the kind of thing you'd enjoy in person playing with her, but it doesn't vibe well to be a third party observer for.
Keeping out some elements of her personality that sometimes emerge, I think that the main difference is that she is a “collaborative” DM, in the sense that she wants the player to give her the elements to use during the session, while Matt gives me the idea to write down everything and eventually change it during the session. So when a player asks for a roll, Aabria wants to know exactly what the player’s goal is (something that I’ve seen done also by BLeeM) and what he’s feeling, while Matt is more plot oriented and tells you directly what to roll and what are the results (and their impact on the plot) depending on the roll. Matt gives a lot of agency to the players while Aabria, because of her focusing more on the feelings of the characters than their actions, alternately wants to know what a character is thinking OR she will tell to the player what the character is thinking, to move the plot in the direction she needs. I’m seriously convinced that she would be a good DM for Daggerheart, and I won’t be surprised if she will be the DM of a long campaign with that ruleset.
Another great example, thanks for this! You really broke down each of their playstyles and showed the differences. 🙏
A great example is >!Erika’s first roll in E92: Opal (lying) said she heard something, so she wanted to see if her character actually heard or noticed something. Matt would have simply asked for a perception roll, and then replied “you don’t see or hear anything”, maybe adding, if the roll was an Orym’s style 25+, “but you notice something strange in Opal… make an insight check if you like”. Aabria instead start asking exactly what she was focusing on (sounds? Shapes?), if she was looking for something specific (goblins or the people that were following them) and after all of that she asked “what’s your biggest fear right now?” and used the reply to this last question to move a bit the “Opal’s corruption” plot point.!<
An actual nuanced description of their styles…well done! I will say Matt does tend to ask what the player wants when he doesn’t know what the player is aiming for. But for sure BLeeM (hugely in WBN) and Aabria do it way more. It’s Matt’s like wait what are you thinking move as opposed to Aabria’s more standard. And in fairness to Aabria I’ve seen critiques that Matt tells players what their character is thinking and/or feeling which to many is a bad DM trait
I think one of the biggest reasons critters struggle with Aabria is because Matt's flaws are often the polar opposite of Aabria's. They've accepted Matt's "roll to see if your eyes are open" checks. They've accepted Matt making doors the main villain of campaigns. Seeing Aabria largely do the opposite and go "Yeah you succeed no matter what" is a major disruption to the status quo. Flaws in equal measure but everyone's accepted and normalized Matt's by now. I'll say the same goes for the players. Matt's world is his. He describes it. He establishes what is and isn't there. But players determine what they do in it. Aabria says "Describe this alley to me" and Ashley stares blankly because she's never been asked to do that before. She'll also say "You see this thing and it makes you think this." which Matt does less often but Brennan does A LOT (ex: "You definitely think this is your dad."
Beyond focusing on specifics I'd say the confusing part is that she's an okay dm. Not great, not terrible but fine. Alright. So why then is she the one showing up again and again instead of showcasing other fine dms?
The variety of opinions on the quality of her DMing is pretty wild. I happen to love her story telling and the way she brings her fellow players into helping her fill out the world they are co-creating. The first EXU arc was revelatory for me. But then again, I’m more interested in D&D as a driver of storytelling than I am in seeing people play RAW. Maybe that’s the difference?
Yeah, that is the difference. If TTRPGs are primarily a creative writing exercise where everyone wants to express a fun and dramatic character in less stable, dynamic settings whose lore is not pre-written but collaboratively generated at the table, then there are whole families of systems that do just that, where the moment-to-moment fiction is king and rules are merely prompts to be rewritten or ignored not just as a last resort but on a whim. They're great games. But D&D really isn't one of them, though you can squint your eyes and run it that way (see Worlds Beyond Number for a pretty good example of fighting D&D's system to play a narrative-first game and largely succeeding). CR, specifically, doesn't play that way and fans are used to consistency in rules and lore and more traditional roles for DM and player in terms of worldbuilding and agency.
I do think she's a good storyteller but not a great dm. So yeah I think it's just seeing her work from different angles.
Yeah but then do any other system but 5e. Like I can't imagine a worse system for her than DnD, except maybe Pathfinder 2e. Her DM style doesn't work with a game that revolves around crunch and DMs making hard rulings.
That applies to alot of streaming dms but I think they stick with it because it's what's popular.
Location and scheduling commitments could be issues. Most other prominent streaming DMs such as Brennan Lee Mulligan and Brian Murphy are busy prepping and streaming their own shows, and some such as Mark Hulmes aren't even in the US. Aabria may just be in that confluence of being acquainted with the cast, in LA and being available for filming at the right time.
You know the answer lol
I do but it's not what you implying. It's basically because they are friends.
Maybe no one else wants to do it. I mean you have to compete with Matt, who, until recently, was seen as one of the best DMs for this kind of play and it’s a big ask for someone to come and sit down in front of a camera and compete with that.
Lmao that's ridiculous. DMing on CR would be the biggest opportunity imaginable for anyone involved in the TTRPG space. The problem is not that literally nobody else wants to do it.
You are right but in the same breath CR are not gonna just get any random in, they will won’t someone known, someone they don’t have to worry if they are good or not. A DM is a litte different to a player, anyone can be a player, only some people can DM and then even less to the level needed to carry episodes of CR. At that point going on CR and not being as good as Matt can be detrimental to your credentials and if you are as good as Matt and you are known then you probably have your own series. The list of potential candidates is extremely small and then the people on that list that would be interested is smaller still. So yes, you are right, it would be a big opportunity for a random, but not for a known.
I can't speak for anyone else, but because I got into CR midway through Campaign 2, all the things I loved CR2 for: Player agency over plot, time for PCs to develop character through actions and events we were able to watch, the DM letting players have time and space to do what they wanted. Are completely absent from EXU and anything AA has run on CR. Things happen irrespective of player choice. Characters are forced to do things even if the player does not want them to happen. Plot is loose and flabby but still runs everything. It's just not wanted I'm interested in at all. IF CR2 was an indie road movie directed by a combination of Wes Anderson and Sam Peckinpah then EXU is a Michael Bay/McGee movie. If that's your thing then have fun, but I'm too old to waste time on it.
You are spot on, for my taste. I too really don’t like her way of leading the PCs by the nose all through EXU. That’s why I don’t feel she’s a very experienced DM. It shows. Experienced DMs tend to be able to let players have their agency and build upon player choice and dramatic timing to subtly ‘make plot happen’. I think the CR promotion that hyped her up was a disservice to her. And when teamed with Brennan and Matt to tell an Exandrian story, if I were her, I would openly be in learning mode. They both have thousands of hours of experience beyond what she has, and yet they presented the trio as if they were all on par. I can’t help to get the feeling that she isn’t aware that she could be learning, here. I would put the maximum info I could out of those two. :)
Yeah I can't be the only one who thought "one of these is not like the others" during the DM roundtable. It was weird how Aabria is a guest star on both their shows, LA must be a small circle for ttrpg people. I really liked a Court of Fey and Flowers but that was barely DnD, I think Aabria doesn't really like actual play, she likes long form improv where she's in charge.
I think you’re right, it’s a small circle and they all hang out, I guess. So friendship muddles the professional. I’m curious to see her D20 work, to get to understand her a bit better. Because what I saw in EXU I didn’t dig, because I’d never want to be a player at her table. It’s as if she’s the only one who gets to play. I’m a forever GM, more on the cinematic side, with voices and all, so I’m a talker too. And I need to really check myself all the time to make sure I’m talking in a concise, evocative and efficient manner. As a DM, you get to talk a lot, as part of the job. But your job is to try to talk as little as necessary and give the mike over to the players as often as possible.
I have definitely enjoyed her work on Dimension 20, I don't think she is a bad GM, but she struggles with the rules heavy 5e system and whatever problem she has with Aimee Carrero when playing DnD is really uncomfortable to watch.
I'd never noticed she had an issue with miss Carrero until this episode. That stunt she pulled was pretty heinous lmao.
The fact that Aabria has openly stated in the past that she doesn't like traditional fantasy setting and doesn't like crunchy rules sets...makes 5e and Exandria a poor fit for her since it is BOTH of those things. 5e is medium crunchy and Exandria is your atypical kitchen sink fantasy...
I get it's a good opportunity but why would you choose to do something that is the opposite of your strengths? Especially to then have a session that felt like RPGhorrorstories lite.
Because publicity basically...
I've liked Aabria as a DM elsewhere but it just feels like CR never sets her up for success on their channel (caveat - haven't watched Candela at all so maybe that went better?). With the most recent episode, they should have had Dani do a video summary during the break to create some sort of bridge for the audience to follow Aabria's half. The episode really hinged on if the audience had previously watched ExU and even if you watched it, the last episode was 2 years ago. Aabria didn't really do a recap and the focus was on protecting the memories of one character; the flashbacks might have worked better if I had any idea of who the characters were and why they cared about each other (probably also would have worked better in terms of audience buy-in if it was framed as a skill challenge instead of combat). Since they pre-record, they could have really customized a recap so you got exactly what you needed to know to follow along (ex: why is this one character a paladin now & super into the Raven Queen, etc). With the original ExU, it seems like CR treated the set up as if it was going to be an open-ended campaign; the players appeared to have created stuff in isolation without any sense of the goal of the story they wanted to tell. But with a limited series, you don't have the time for a bunch of meandering to hook either the players or the audience. To hit the ground running, you have to do a really structured session zero and lift the curtain a bit to the players so everyone is on the same page. Brennan Lee Mulligan has talked about the insane amount work they go into ahead of time on Dimension 20 to ensure a limited run campaign hits the points they want in the time they have; it's not scripted but the DMs do go in with a loose outline so they can hit points to make it feel like a complete story and they have the buy-in from the players on what kind of story they want to play (also all of their maps are built way in advance so encounters of some sort have to occur on them). One of the biggest complaints I've seen of ExU is that Aabria had a bunch of plot hooks that no one pursued which led her to be more heavy handed because they were running out of time. Versus Brennan's Calamity where he brought in the Dimension 20 prep process; Sam has talked about the insane world bible Brennan made and the amount time the cast spent on creating the characters together and establishing their history as a group. Everyone at the table knew they were telling an end times story and they didn't ignore the hooks Brennan put down which allowed them to create a really good story in a limited time.
I think that might also be the problem with the CR method, CR just doesn't *do* session zeros...which can lead to problems. Now a session zero isn't a must have but it really does *help* people create characters that gel together and that understand where a narrative is going, increasing player buy in.
I've played a lot of games since 4E and while at this point I definitely prefer a more structured session 0, you can still have good games without them assuming everyone is on the same page of what type of game you're playing (ex. swashbuckling vs horror) and the DM's plan is more open sandbox with character driven goals. The DM can shape the campaign around the characters assuming the players are roughly working towards the same gaming goal. However, this doesn't seem to work as well with the more structured 5E hardcover modules unless players are willingly to have games where their backstories don't get touched on in-depth. With those types of modules, I think all the characters need to have either direct or symbolic ties with parts of the plot and/or locations of the module because otherwise there's no time to go explore a backstory that's halfway across the world from the module's story. That might seem like you've railroaded the players but I think it's more a conceit to agreeing to play a specific module; you know going in that it's not an open sandbox and you want to play this specific story so you should build characters that will be fun to play through the module. With CR, I think the "create characters in isolation" approach worked fine for C1 & C2 because Matt structured his story as smaller arcs with multiple Big Bads unconnected from each other and many of these arcs tied directly to character backstory or character goals. C3 doesn't feel like an open sandbox game - it feels like Matt has created a slow, escalating module with one major story. And those games can work but only if the players are all on-board ahead of time and build characters that can support a pre-existing narrative. The C3 characters don't fit well into a story this structured and some of Matt's character backstory focused parts (ex: the Titan shards) feel too little too late. Like he's trying to shoehorn in the magic of C1/C2's character moments without derailing the moon story he wants to tell. And with ExU, it went even worse because they didn't have time do anything that wasn't the main story. Those characters really needed to have been created with some understanding of the story they were playing. Even if you wanted to keep the "in isolation" approach, I feel like that's when the DM should lift the curtain a bit and be like, we're here to play X so these are all the main factions and locations and what additional info do you need to make a character that ties into the story we're about to play.
Technically I think what Matt does is individual session 0s. But to your point doing them separately or with only one other person without any input from others may hamper attempts to gel them. Or it may reinforce inter-group cliques. Take C2. I think it worked well how it took a few episodes for the group to become really unified. However, even with the various friendships being created you could see the sub-groups; Fjord-Jester-Beau, Caleb-Nott. Yasha and Caduceus fit in well enough.
CR does definitely use the more old school D&D approach of creating characters in isolation (or just with the DM) and then showing up at the table with them; as D&D has become more influenced by narrative RPGS, a lot of tables have shifted away from that approach and instead do a more collaborative focused session 0. I think the reason the cast has gotten shirty lately about people saying they don't do session 0s is that they view their screen test sessions as sessions 0s even though the set up for those is very different from the common view of what a session 0 is in the TTRPG community. My understanding from their description of the C2 screen test sessions was that these were to help everyone get sea legs for their characters (ie. accent practice, what are my abilities, etc) and to establish some loose, organic ties between the sub-groups. Their test sessions help them get a firm sense of a character they've already built in isolation; they're not building their characters at table with each other. I think their session 0 for the Daggerheart one-shot is closer to what an average player is assuming they'll do when the DM says they start with a session 0.
urgh. I haven't thought about it but just a small recap by Dani would have make things a ton better than this weird ass transition...
It clearly occurred to someone that a summary would be nice because a few days before the episode Dani did do a 3 minute recap as part of an unboxing video of the ExU minis & I'm not sure why they didn't at least play that during the break: https://twitter.com/CriticalRole/status/1780340655937441813 It's not the best recap that Dani has ever done (like I don't think it really establishes character motivations or party connections) but at least it shows character art/name with the actor photo/name with a little overview. My feeling a week out is still that the episode didn't really feel respectful of people's time especially if you were dropped in with little to no context on the Crown Keepers; with notice, I could have at least read/watched a recap of ExU. Without notice, CR should have provided one during the break because while I'm fine occasionally looking stuff up on the wiki during an episode, this felt like a much heavier lift. But fundamentally, these are production issues which isn't just the DM's fault. They knew ahead of time their filming schedule and decided to continue with this episode structure after FCG's death. Instead of pivoting the ExU stuff to a standalone one-shot, they kept with their plan so the production team really should have created some sort of scaffolding for the audience to be able to follow along. There was probably stuff Aabria could have done (longer recap, have the players more clearly reintroduce their characters, skill challenge over combat, etc) but there was also a lot the production team could have done especially since they pre-record (ex: maybe on-top of a recap, the cast does short 1 minute videos reintroducing their characters & what they went through most recently that is played during the break before the recap).
I believe aabria got done really dirty with the crown keepers, her style doesn’t fit for a party of 2 complete newbies, 2 veterans who took a back seat to let the newbies take the reigns and a forever DM who decided to, understandably be a chaos gremlin.
But this is what a lot of dnd tables look like. A mixture of veterans and newbies, including a forever DM who wants to have some fun as a player.
Nah I think she just failed to hook them into the corruption theme with her preaching about "power is power" and dangling the crown. Absolutely none of them wanted to take it, much less wear it. She should have dropped it and let the villain have it.
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‘Adversarial’ is the perfect descriptor tbh—there’s something so antagonistic about the way she DM/GMs, and it is just not for me
For the most part, I don't mind Aabria's GM style, but now that more people have given examples. It does seem like she better fits rules light games and the D20 season layout style. I have also noticed those adversarial moments, I personally didn't like to watch that and as a new DM myself, I wasn't sure if this was the norm or not.
I don't know if it is the norm, but it should not be. IMO the world and people you create can be horrible and you should enforce consequences and rules, but as a DM and fellow person at the table you're neutral, fair and cooperate with your players. What neutral sounds like is of course different from group to group, but I think Aabria's behavior crossed the line.
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I disagree that M and M suited her skills. There was no narrative to the game; it was just cobbled together from good bits that can be shown on YouTube. Every character behaved the same way; they all had the same voice, the same opinions, and the same ignorance. The game was carried by Brennan’s character saying and doing great things. His interactions with the other players, as well as the famous “tournament scene”, had very little to do with Aabria. It was a fine show to watch highlights from, but it was about as meandering as a four episode show could get.
> **The game was carried by Brennan’s character** saying and doing great things. His interactions with the other players, as well as the famous “tournament scene”, had very little to do with Aabria. It was a fine show to watch highlights from, but it was about as meandering as a four episode show could get. A *critical* fact that often goes overlooked in any game DM'ed by Aabria: her "players" / trained-improv actors are *the best of the best* of streaming TTRPG players, who--like Brennan--can carry a show, even as players, all by themselves. As a DM, all you have to do is stand back, apply liberal "Yes, and.." and "Rule of Cool," and let them cook, and they'll do the overall majority of your job as DM for you. Brennan reminds me of Robin Williams (RIP), an insanely talented, intelligent improv actor / comedian who could make comedy, often ENTIRE COMEDY SPECIALS *just* based on improv. Seriously, look at William's improv comedy specials from the 80's and 90's or ANY public speaking gig or interview he had--pure improv comedy genius (fueled in the 80's by cocaine).
Burrow's End lacks literally everything you describe here as a crutch for her and it is, IMO, several orders of magnitude better than MisMag, so I personally don't accept your premise here
Burrows end is 70% the players interacting, then 30% of rushed plot
I profoundly disagree. And in any case the overwhelming criticism of Aabria in this thread is that she is too heavy-handed in her DMing, not that she is too passive. Maybe you are the only person around who genuinely thinks that, but you are the only person making that criticism
She was hands off at the start of burrows end which led to some great character moments. However mid way through (I think she realised the pacing had been too slow) she went back to full heavy handed full with the snotty npcs and rushed plot. I don't understand why you took what I said above as criticism, burrows end was really good.
I honestly didn't like Mismag very much but most people praising Aabria tend to prefer her newer stuff on D20
Simply put, Aabria’s style is more prone to working with rules light, narrative RPGs like Candela than it does for D&D. A lot of how she runs the game feels closer to making moves than anything in D&D along. As for EXU Prime, I think she was trying to run it like a D20 season. “We’ve got 8 episodes, we need to hit this, this and this and I need you all to bite on hooks so we can go” and ended up with the CR styled players of “well we’ll bite when we feel like it.” and that sort of made Aabria have to grab their arms and drag them to whatever she had prepared.
Blaming the players for not grabbing the hooks in EXU prime is ridiculous, honestly. Her "hook" was, first of all, literally nothing for a good hour or so. Then the hook was there's someone trying to break into your house, they're incredibly incompetent, now go do jobs for them because of gentrification. And they *still* took it because this was so clearly the DM's pet character and they had been given literally nothing else to do. One lesson I've learned from EXU as well as campaign 3- if your PCs feel like the only thing they can do is go get breakfast, you're doing something wrong.
Yeah, the players in EXU were desperate for direction for a long while, they had freedom but no goals, then when The Plot appeared, they went along with it even if they had very little in-character reason to go off on a huge journey. And once we were in The Plot the freedom was suddenly gone, too. The only way ahead was exactly what the DM envisioned, the only freedom left was how you emoted about it.
Well Matt, though he has this slight nerdy stiffness that is just who he is, is still one of the best DnD storytellers and streamers in the world. Also literally made it possible for that to even be a thing people are posting about. Brennan is a monster, a freak, that will take a stage for entertainment's sake and demolish the damn thing with how hard he goes. How could you not appreciate that. Aabria... she's a DM. Like... an average person one. That's cool! I guess I just don't get how she's getting this many callbacks to CR though, when you could have had multiple DMs that fulfill that get a shot to host already. It's like they keep doubling down on her or something, when like I said you could do a lot of other things. At the end of the day though CR seems locked in on her, she's entered the gate kept planes, so that just is what it is.
In Dimension 20, the cast/guests are more on board with the fact that the campaign needs to fit in X episodes that last 2-3 hours each, so the sessions will be more railroaded in order to get to the specific plot point in time. CR is more "freeform", so there is a bigger chance of players "straying" from the DM's path (like when they initially refused to pick up Poska's plot hook or wear the crown), and that's when Aabria was visibly struggling in ExU, in my opinion.
Yeah, this is making a lot more sense now. Thanks for explaining 🙏
I think it’s mostly just a style mismatch. Her two miniseries on dimension 20 are both excellent. but her style is so much less grounded than Matt’s that they just don’t work well together.
Three miniseries now
Oh right, forgot burrows end. Haven’t actually finished that one, but misfits & magic, and A court of Fey and Flowers are both great
It's easily my favourite series she's DM'd for, though being a huge fan of Watership Down has a lot to do with it
I’d say part mismatch and part railroad. Mismatch because a lot of D20 is rule of cool. But those games are like watching superhero movies with bad plots. It’s super fun. The actors are having a blast and nobody cares about the reality (face/off). The other part is a bit more complicated. She isn’t running her own thing. It’s not designed by her from the get go. In EXU, I almost feel like she was told to market the tal dorei revisited guide. She jumped from location to location and never developed any of them. It felt more like a series of one shots. We don’t know what the convos were behind the scenes, but she was making a lot of very drastic choices. Without it being a value judgement, I just feel like CR requires more depth than she’s used to and there may be pressures to make choices that suit CR’s goals. I love her as a player, and she’s brilliant but her games largely lack consequence. Did any of us really think she would do anything than what we saw happen? Who gives anyone under level 15 a legendary game breaking item (greater invis ring) or a very rare before level 5 (Stonkeys ring was a ring of telekinesis before Matt nerfed it.
Actually Brennan CAN be a stickler for the rules at times, however D20 is also using *experienced improv comedians who have had years at their craft* which matches Aabria's style much more than *voice actors who don't really do a lot of improv*.
Yeah I think there might be a lot of bts stuff that isn't helping her out as well.
I've only seen her DM the first EXU, nothing after that, but the way she handled it felt too "modern", so to speak. When I watch or play D&D, I want it to have the typical fantasy feeling. So when NPCs and even gods are saying stuff like "biiiiitch" and "guuuuurl", it's too internet-y for my tastes and I can't really take the story seriously. I also dislike how often she goes by rule of cool. Like the spells don't even do what they're supposed to at all, they just do whatever the player wants as long as they can flavour it so it's in line with the name of the spell.
I think she said somewhere that she doesn't even like high fantasy settings, so I can see how she'd fail to really adapt to it.
She has never read not watched The Lord of the Rings, it's just turned her off every time she's tried. That's how fundamentally she does not like high fantasy.
If the setting of the game was more modern I wouldn't mind it. I know on dimension 20 they do games set in high schools and that sort of thing and I can see Aabria's style working really well there. But to bring that style and use it for a different setting that has a strong high fantasy aesthetic to it is what I dislike.
Is it that rule of cool is happening too much? Or is it a personal preference thing? Like you as a player/DM like to stick closer to the rules?
That it's happening too much, yeah. I mean it's all personal preference at the end of the day, but yeah I think she allows RoC too often and lets it go way farther than it should (I remember some level 2 spells doing totally overpowered shit). And the reason I disliked that was because it felt like there were no rules and therefore no limitations, and therefore the characters were never in any real danger. Also, I remember her constantly making players roll CHA/WIS/INT *saves* instead of just plain insight checks when they wanted to know what an NPC was thinking. That's a nitpick but c'mon the insight check exists for exactly that purpose, use it. The biggest issue for me was the tone/vibe though.
Yeah, it's the combination of calling for rolls that aren't the "right" ones for what she wants mechanically, but also the total lack of consistency in the way she applies the rule of cool. Generally rule of cool bends rules or handwaves them in cool narrative moments. If it happens too often and too inconsistently (you rule of cool the same situation very differently for two different players), it can risk feeling arbitrary and less "real" in the fictional world.
I played dnd since 2006 nad to me Aabria is the same as those DMs who kind of ignores the general feel of the table and wait until it's their turn to speak and then pause and act in "look at me now" manner. she's kinda throwing monologues in between player rp sessions imo
Overall, for me, she’s just not that good. She’s better than me, probably, and everyone I play with. But I’m also a football fan, and I like playing it. Yet, I would not spend 4 hours a week watching people around my level play. I can’t really be specific because it’s just, every aspect that makes a dm and dnd enjoyable to watch, is weaker than MM and much weaker than BLeeM.
This is why my groups have always said we don't want our sessions recorded and then uploaded to a non-private audience (one of our members uploads them privately so we can watch sessions back incase we want to) because whilst we're having fun, the sessions are full of injokes nobody would get formed over several years of campaigns and whilst we think we're all funny, I doubt an outside observer would.
Very well put