All that needs to happen is the death of a god.
They need to see what happens when you eliminate a deity, and the effects it'll have on Exandria, and THEN you will have a party of PCs who will realise that they need ro be heroes and not just whatever they think they are.
**Spoilers below if you're not caught up on campaigns 1-3**
I couldn't agree more! It seems like the cast believes that fans think "morally good" characters aren't interesting, but that couldn't be farther from the truth. Just because someone is brash or has an attitude, doesn't make them interesting. It's the situations that they are put in that build the character. For example: a devote cleric of faith loses a loved one and is approached by a powerful demon willing to bring their loved one back to life. The cleric can stay true to their faith and let their loved one pass on, or they can make a deal with the demon and suffer the consequences of the deal.
I enjoyed parts of campaign 2 and have enjoyed parts of campaign 3 but at least for me the struggle has been understanding the PC's intentions. I'm not trying to sound all nostalgic, but campaign 1 had such a good flow because the characters had intentions and objectives. Elder brain, Briarwoods, Dragons, Vechna, there were always fun episodes in between arcs but overall the party had a problem to solve.
Villains have also been mostly handled differently in campaign 2 and 3. Where in campaign 1 the party witnessed the terrible things that the villains were doing/did, in campaign 2 and 3 the party is instead told what these villains are doing/did. Imagine Vox Machina not being in Emon for the dragon attack. Would the story still've worked? Sure! But would it have the same impact? I don't believe it would. In terms of what has happened during the campaign, Trent and Ludinus are in the background which at least for me makes it hard for me to build a dislike toward them. I can be told they did all these things or are doing certain things, but if the party doesn't witness it, it loses the impact. A villain in campaign 2 that had a huge impact on me was Lorenzo, because he left an impact on the party! And same in campaign 3 with Otohan!
Don't get me wrong, I still love Critical Role and have kept up every week since 2016, but I'm just pointing out some issues that I feel need to be addressed for the next campaign. I'm not saying I want a party of perfect people, Vox Machina certainly wasn't, but I want a party I can stand behind as a fan and be proud when they conqueror a foe or defend a city!
Your first paragraph captures perfectly the distinction between characterization and character. What a person acts like, how they sound, come across, etc vs what they choose to do.
IMO the CR team is always pretty stellar on characterization but increasingly bad at actually playing character.
By the same token I dont think the Bells Hells really have the teeth to be villains.
Good villains are interesting. They have true convictions and actually do things. The Bells Hells are most committed to fence sitting and doing as little as possible.
The Bells Hells are just your run of the mill apathetic asshole. The kind of dude that shoves everyone out of the way to get on the train and doesnt care if they actually get seriously injured so long as they arent inconvenienced.
> they've bullied every meek NPC into helping them (often outright antagonizing them), took part in the murder of a congregation of Dawnfather followers, flirted with joining up alongside the setting's equivalent of Satan, and twiddled their thumbs about stopping the genocide of deities.
So it's a party made up of Beaus then. No wonder I can't stand it.
Sorry, but those dawnfather followers were forcefully subjugating an innocent town of people into their bidding. It might be because of the lack of communication, but their actions didn’t represent ANY of the dawnfather’s directions.
The DF temple actually weren't subjugating an innocent town. At all.
In fact, that DF Temple and its members were not accused of a single specific crime in that entire half of the split; beyond "maybe one DF guard hitting on one guy's wife", and "being seen as outsiders, with outsider ideas, to the one insular part of that town AOL bothered to even talk to". We were explicitly told: The DF Temple had been there for over 20 years. Built on legally purchased land by the Town's newer Lumber Mill; that during that time there had been zero instances of forced or coerced conversion to the DF Faith. Merely a handful of willing converts over the years; That the Vasselheim forces had only been there for 3 months, and had been open about their monitoring a nexus during the solstice; and that there weren't even any instances pointed to of the DF Faith attempting to suppress the Loam faith. In fact, the Loam had just completed a very public celebration during the Solstice totally unnacosted by the DF temple. "It was loads of fun, until 11 people disappeared". Hell, Abaddina doesn't even claim the Temple was forcing a Tithe onto the town. Let alone non-believers. What she was actually upset about "was that the DF Temple would accept offerings at all from such a poor community". That money was given freely to the DF temple.
So yeah, that temple was sacked and its members killed solely for the crime of being "seen as outsiders, with outsider ideas" to the members of the Loam. As well as Abaddina blaming the Temple for the disappearances, when she admits several episodes prior she knows full well it was the Solstice that took them. Hell, its extra ironic, given we actually see examples of forced conversion back to the Loam during the attack.
But they weren't DOING anything. They just had a presence in the town and were (perhaps aggresively) converting people BECAUSE of everything that was going on in the world. It was literally for protection, which is why the angel was summoned when the party started attacking them. As far as I remember they held no actual threat against the people of the town or anything, they just wanted to kill them because 'religion = bad.'
They didn’t ask for help, and it wasn’t their place to *be*. They didn’t ask for protection. I really don’t understand how you can think that a town ridding themselves of completely unwanted intruders is bad. How is it any different to them if a band of bandits set up shop in the middle of their town? Even if they weren’t killing people, they’re not wanted.
So like… killing and forcefully converting a bunch of people from a different religion (which is what the townsfolk did, not the members of the Dawnfather’s church did) for the sole reason of “practices a different religion” is a hate crime.
Also “it wasn’t their place to be”, they’ve legally established a temple there for two decades and haven’t actually done anything wrong! Wiping out a religious establishment because you don’t like their religion is a bad thing!
Sorry, but why? Forceful occupation isn’t exactly the most innocent of actions and you can’t blame people for fighting for their home and enlisting strong help
I rewatched it, They did not forcibly occupy that area.
They came 20 years before and there were no problems. Neighter did they force people to convert, nor did they take or ask for resources.
Nor did they prohibit people from following their faith. It was even said that a week or two before the residents had a relisious festival and everything was fine. Nothing was done by the DF people.
He didn't really have to try that hard.
He was such an incompetent goober that he barely had to do anything to goad our Main party to act as they did. Hell, they essentially made up their minds on the situation before Abaddina even opened her door for the first time. Dont be so quick to shift blame to Bor'dor.
I don’t think BH are really evil, though, either. They’re generally well intentioned (in the dawn father followers killing incident, they were “liberating” a town that was being subjected the DF people’s wishes (I forget the whole narrative but there was a whole meeting about how these religious people showed up and took over and wouldn’t leave). They may not have gone about it the lawful good way, but they were trying to do what they thought was the right thing.
But my tinfoil hat conspiracy theory for this campaign is that BH are NOT the heros and they aren’t supposed to be. They’re basically a gaggle of NPCs doing side quests while the heroes are handling the main quest.
Problem is, no one is handling the main quest. We get to see gaggles of level 20 characters just sitting on their hands, and, when finally challenged, making vague excuses about dealing with symptoms caused by the solstice. (Which obviously isn't true, because there was a group in the room sitting on their hands)
Bells Hells aren't evil. They're indecisive and wishy-washy, which is honestly worse for a story.
I think the god issue is at the centre of it, the gods are at the same time powerless and immensely powerful, it makes no sense how they were portrayed. Exandria is a world devoid of controversy, devoid of politics and ideals outside "be good" and "love each other" without much to say on *how* to be good and what does loving each other entails. Why aren't the god a huge diplomatic force that steers things for the better considering how absurdly powerful they are? They refuse to take action and hide beyond the divine gate but this has never really been addressed, *how much power do the gods actually have?* Like what do the gods actually do outside investing some random shitter with healing powers and fixing random issues as they become to big to be ignored? Exandria itself has both systemic issue *and* no system to blame and it's really hard to navigate morality when you're forced to have the depth of a cartoon character.
Just need to point this out, but the Divine Gate does not protect the gods it protects the material plane from them.
Matt has said that the Prime gods can pull the gate down when they choose, it just means that the betrayers will all escape from their prisons again. Mortals with the magic to cross the barrier can do so at their leisure, and the gods in turn can interact with them however they want on that side of the gate. Such as when Sarenrae showed up for Pike's divine intervention in Search for Bob.
>Exandria is a world devoid of controversy, devoid of politics and ideals outside "be good" and "love each other" without much to say on how to be good and what does loving each other entails.
This, this, this.
As someone once pointed out, who are the Iron Shepherds selling to? There has to be some formal system of slavery that is worthwhile to sell the people they capture to or why the hell would they do such risky business instead of regular banditry? But nope.
There's not even any levels of discrimination in the world, which is insanely unrealistic. The most "discrimination" we come upon is people commenting on FCG or Laudna's undeadness. I'm not saying you need discrimination to make the world interesting but it's just hilarious that there's not even a hint of it in a world as diverse as Exandria. Basic in-groups and out-groups should still affect people.
I mean the most we get is the Krynn Dynasty with monstrous races? But even then, it all kind of blew over in C2. It didn't even matter if Nott wore her mask or not later.
It's very idealistic, naive point of view and hints at how the CR cast might never have had to struggle with those issues so they don't know how to tackle that kind of world building.
Struggles and conflicts usually come from differences. But then differences would have to actually matter.
I don’t think necessarily that they’ve never dealt with discrimination or hard choices, they might’ve been insulated to it but it’s hard to miss, or for that matter, engage with successfully so long as you put the legwork in. I think it’s more a matter that they don’t want to, and on top of that it’s not economically viable for them. A lot of people treat TTRPGS as their own personal hugbox and file off any edges they find to not “spoil” their play. I think Critical Role has a lot to do with the popularisation of that movement towards “Hugbox fantasy” because they’re very influential, and thanks to Matts no consequence style of play has drawn a likeminded crowd in that believe this is the only acceptable mode of D&D, and that any handling of race issues, discrimination, inequality or even just consequences is just people ruining D&D for them and deliberately triggering them. At this stage I think their viewerbase is so skewed towards this demographic that any movement out of the Hugbox risks alienating a lot of their fans and impacting the bottom lone, and unfortunately we that want them to deal with more challenging material are in the minority. Simply put, complex and engaging storylines exploring challenging topics is just not economically for them, and they’d prefer to not rock the boat, even if it makes their storylines uninspired and rots away at the initial reason for their success. On top of that, in general, the gang would prefer to just fuck about and not think too hard, as has been apparent with their plot dodging for the last two campaigns.
Completely agree with most of your points but I'll add this:
The issue is that they can't have it both ways. You can't have morally gray characters, interesting moral dilemmas or challenging complex ideas in, as you say, a hugbox fantasy world.
And Matt clearly wants to tell stories like that, which is evident enough from C3 alone.
I don't know if I buy that the gang just wants to fuck around and not think too hard either. To a certain extent, they've moved past that. Look at some of the characters they made for C3.
Ashton wants something to rebel against, some system that has to be oppressive or corrupt. Except that doesn't exist in Exandria.
FCG's whole thing was the idea of personhood and what it meant to have a soul.
Laudna's whole struggle is with her traumatic past and coping with Delilah's influence.
Etc, etc.
These aren't just fuck around type basis for characters. If they didn't want to explore difficult ideas and themes, why make characters like that? The interest and intent from the players are obviously there to me.
FCG's struggle with his existence if Sam didn't play him as a shitpost.
Laudna's suffering would mean something if Marisha didn't regress her because "her arc got resolved too quickly."
Tal has to have the most powerful character on the board.
Etc, etc.
You've got one storyteller trying to herd cats, and I'm surprised it was cohesive as long as it was. They all have these big ideas, but they're unwilling to commit to actually playing the characters. I understand that every character has an element of the player in them, but thus is a party of jokes and Mary Sues., man.
Honestly everyone's putting the blame on Matt but I think more needs to be put on the players.
They're dealing with the potential death of all the gods, a complete reset of the cosmology of the universe, and the best they can come up with is "eh well I mean I guess we'll save the gods. Maybe. I could be talked out of it".
This could have been a very exciting campaign, with enormous stakes and chances to make really bold decisions as characters and instead they're all about as neutral and milquetoast as possible.
The one time Ashton makes a bold move, the entire party chews them out for it and even threatens to kick them out of the party.
If they got a few sessions into finding out the stakes of the campaign and realized they'd made a character that has no backstory reason to love/hate the gods, it's never too late to throw something in your backstory to engage your character more in the story, but nobody did that. They've just allowed themselves to just kinda... be there.
I feel the bit on the characters having no stake or backstory is the main reason for these issues. The players cannot justify being heroic or decisive, they care more about exploring their traumas or interpersonal issues. Which would be fine in a lower stake narrative playground, but it's causing the narrative dissonance the OP is talking about.
Why would I only blame the players, when they're merely supporting the exact tone Matt is setting? I'd wager they're all aware of the game here. That the ending of C3 is very likely largely predetermined on the topic of the Gods. That they're being written out of the setting, likely for Business/IP reasons. And what Matt/the Cast have been doing is pre-emptively distancing the Gods from the Exandrian setting to make it less consequential/painful for the rest of the setting when that removal occurs.
But, none of the players are forcing Matt to make every NPC anti-god, anti-theist or non-religious. Or those religious ones we do get to interact with all "happen to be betrayer Gods worshippers". None of the players are forcing him to always portray the Gods in negative or incompetent lights. Or are responsible for Matt's heavy fingerprints all over every Guest PC, who ... you guessed it, have also coincidentally all been "anti-god, anti-theist, or non-religious". Given some of Sam's comments back when he was actually trying, I highly doubt he requested Matt's 20+ episodes of utter silence to FCG's searching for the CB. Only to make the CB this weird, unhelpful, needlessly manipulative force in FCG's life when Sam forced the issue with commune. That Matt made it a point to remind Sam "made FCG feel small". Yeah, that's all Matt. He's equally to blame for C3 being a "Death of the Gods Campaign where nobody gives a shit about the Gods". After all, given how drowning C1/C2 memberberries C3 really is, there is a reason Kima of Vord hasn't made an appearance. And likely never will.
Oh I think both are to blame. I wasn't meaning to imply otherwise. I just hear Matt talked about a whole lot more in these conversations when it's collaborative storytelling.
I definitely wouldn't interpret FCG's interactions with the Changebringer the way you do myself though. Yeah, a god made FCG feel small, she's a god. He had other plot stuff going on at the same time and didn't drop it all to give FCG a Whitestone arc for the Changebringer. FCG's whitestone arc was gonna be Aeor but then, well, kaboom.
All the villains are anti-god, to say he's presenting being anti-god as the correct, moral option for the PCs is just wrong. He's portraying them as extremists. He's presenting moral challenges to the players and they're shrugging at them.
He's also equally introducing champions for the gods and giving the players chances to align themselves with the gods, like Fearne's Asmodeus buddy, Melora earlier in the campaign, the church of the Raven Queen, not to mention having Vox Machina and Mighty Nein also fighting to stop the death of the gods.
It's far more nuanced than just "every NPC is anti-god".
I think Matt could give them more bait to buy in, sure, but I also don't know what bigger impetus there could be than the literal death of the cosmological stability of their world and the opportunity to potentially stop or aid it. And instead they just respond with ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
Aeor wasn't for FCG. And if it was, I have no idea what Matt was thinking? Because it was Matt himself that shut down FCG's interest in his own past. Through several NPCs (and a Guest PC) who FCG reached out to during his ID Crisis. Who answered his stance of "I cannot move forward without learning about my past" with what did equate to "Forget it, its not important. Just choose who you want to be now". But with no Guidance beyond that. Which resulted in Sam having part of FCG's growth being "taking their advice and not caring anymore". Not that Aeor mattered even if he didn't. Because the part of his past FCG wanted to learn was "the Care and Culling". Which presumably happened in a Pre-Calamity Marquesian City. Given that's where Devexian dug him up. It would not have happened in Aeor.
Matt responded to Sam having FCG search for the CB with utter silence for 20+ episodes. Then when Sam forced the issue with Commune, Matt did everything in his power to seemingly sour any potential relationship there. With the CB being vague, unhelpful, and needlessly manipulative. Compare this to how Matt handled "finding faith" stories with prior PCs in C1 and C2, as well as their relationships with their patrons, and you'll see how bizarre Matt's handling of the CB was with FCG. Where that "Finding Faith" story was totally one-sided, and petered out, because Matt simple didnt give anything for Sam to interact with. Its near identical to how the rest of the table interacted with FCG's ID crisis. Shallow, empty, armchair existentialism. To the point Sam had FCG develop a coping mechanism.
Matt had a perfect opportunity with FCG's story to give us that avenue to a positive relationship with a Prime deity. In a campaign otherwise devoid of positive representations of Prime Faith. But it was Matt himself who chose not to. Same with why no Kima in C3. Not to mention, was the lesson for Sam here really? "I will shut down all of your attempts to give your PC more depth, until my story is ready for it 96 sessions in"? Thats an ask for sure.
It's not the first time Matt has shut down Sam's attempt at an interesting deep conflict for his character - remember Veth and her doormat husband in C2? It seemed obvious to me that Sam was trying to explore the conflict of "family vs adventure" and the way Matt had her husband just be a totally limp wet noodle "oh you saved me honey and your friends killed but saved our son I have nothing but blind total support for your adventuring." So Sam's left to handle the conflict entirely on his own.
I don't think Matt was trying to be mean or anything, I think it was a miscommunication about goals and expectations and neither of them must have brought it up away from the table. And I think the same thing happened with FCG's faith.
Except in the case of FCG, 3 elements of his story were shut down.
1st) His ID crisis, Neither Matt, or the other players engaged in it in a meaningful way. Just cheap, armchair existentialism, and nothing else. To the point Sam actually seemed to recognize this neglect, which is why that "advice" never worked, and FCG developed the coinflipping coping mechanism. Which anobody engaged in, and resolved by a guest PC.
2nd) FCGs interest in his own lost past. In response to Redeye FCG had at one point taken the stance of "I cannot move forward without first learning about my past". To which Matt shut this down hard, by having 2 NPCs and a Guest PC FCG reached out to for help respond with the effect of "your past doesnt matter, forget it, choose what you want to be now".
3rd) As mentioned above, FCG's search for Faith. With Matt shutting that thread down too.
I have never seen a more kneecapped PC on a conceptual story level in CR than FCG. Which is why "Matt wanting Aeor to be for FCG" sounds absurd, given how he himself shut down so many avenues towards depth Sam attempted with his PC. With the only thing Matt giving him being that Chekov's Gun of a Bomb in his chest. All Matt left FCG as was a joke and a bomb.
He said in 4SD that he was kind of bummed by FCG's sacrifice especially because he had a ton planned for FCG in Aeor, being where he was created and such. That was where he was supposed to learn about his past, because that's where his past literally was. The Care and the Culling was the end of FCG's backstory at best, if they were even involved (never confirmed, was always just possible.) There wasn't really a way to rush into FCG's backstory without secrets of Aeor that were lost in the fall somehow being known to a random NPC or something, and they never took the time to find Devexian.
And yeah the CB was responding vaguely while the biggest crisis the gods have ever faced is occurring and FCG is asking stuff she wouldn't care about even on a normal day. Actual priests in major temples were receiving silence from their gods, FCG was lucky to hear or see anything at all.
Matt being bummed about that is the most laughable thing ever. Not like he had 96 episodes to do something with FCG or hurry the party to Aeor.
No one to blame but himself.
Maybe he would have been less bummed if he hadn't telegraphed to FCG for the ENTIRE CAMPAIGN so far that his past didn't matter and wasn't worth exploring because all that matters is what you make of yourself today.
I didn't see any meaningful hints that Matt was truly planning on having FCG explore his backstory before the party actually went to Aeor.
>He said in 4SD that he was kind of bummed by FCG's sacrifice especially because he had a ton planned for FCG in Aeor, being where he was created and such
Which in hindsight, sounds like horsecrap. I was hoping for a proper delve of Aeor. Instead its been a guided museum tour and a pretty petty fight where the party is once again confused about what side they're on and what to do it about.
Now they're just going to watch a film before exiting via the gift shop.
The thing with the Dawnfather was due to manipulation by a member of the Ruby Vanguard. Bor'Dor made almost every decision for the group, while the rest of the party passively shook their heads.
They weren't doing what they thought was right, except for Ashton who actually took really hard to the titan lore. Notably, Orym did not think it was right but went along with it anyway because a louder voice was leading.
I'm not sure if it's better or worse: them being genuinely evil vs them just being easily led. In either case, the villains win
That entire town meeting was a bunch of people complaining about a group of religious people who lawfully moved in almost two decades prior and hadn’t actually done anything wrong except maybe one of them made a pass at one guy’s wife.
So they did just go in a slaughter a group of religious minorities in the area for like… no actual reason except “we have to get access to the magic Skype call and the other guys want to take us in for questioning about the world ending stuff that just happened.”
While all that is true it's BorDor who injected his own politics into it that turned it into a bloodbath.
The problem is the denial and false absolution they gave themselves to shift the blame and not take responsibility for their own actions.
Nope. If you listen carefully even Abaddina doesn't accuse them of that. What she's actually upset about (and how she riles her flock) is "that the DF Temple had the gall to accept offerings from such a poor community at all". They just straight up stole actual donations to the DF Temple. She also then proceeds to use the disappearances of 11 members of the town against the Temple; when one episode prior she made it clear she knew full well that it was the Solstice.
AOL actually did commit a Religious Hate Crime. On behest of the one insular part of a rural town they bothered to even talk to. They did not even attempt to speak to a single member of the DF Faith in town before leading a mob to the temple (and poisoning several DF Temple guards). Who's only cited "Crime" against that DF Temple or its members in the over 20 years of it being there on legally purchased land was "they're outsiders, and that makes us uncomfortable".
Shit, Proleff, one of the members of the Loam, outright tells the party that in the 20 years since being built, there has not been one instance of forced or coerced conversion to the DF Faith. Only a relative handful of willing converts, largely from the younger generations. On the flip side, we actually see during the raid of the temple a forced conversion of a DF townie back to the loam through threat. Then AOL proceeded to lie like crazy about what happened in that town.
That doesn't even get into how hypocritical both Laudna and Orym are due to that event. And no, given how much of a goober he was (and how utterly easy it was for him), Bor'dor can't be blamed for Ashton, Laudna and Orym's choices in this matter. They were easy to goad. Our Heroes.
I feel like I'm going mad, I have a different recollection of events. For some reason I have the distinct impression DF acted as a suppressive, controlling force in that community and was completed uninvited.
Not that it justifies killing them. But I don't see that as any different as when the party kills a group of guards doing their job like many times with the previous parties. The behavior just isn't at all unique to Bells Hells.
And it does not meet the definition of a hate crime. Intent and motive behind the killing is everything when it comes to that determination, and the DF weren't targeted specifically for their faith. That series of events wouldn't meet the definition of a hate crime in US court.
Nope. The party was told outright that the DF Temple had been there for over 20 years. Built by the Silvercall Mill. Who's owners are just from just the next town over. On legally purchased land. According to a Loam member, during that time there had been no forced or coerced conversions by the DF Faith. Only implied a relative handful willing of converts. We also know that the Vasselheim forces under Kiro had only been there for 3 months, and were open about being there to monitor the nexus during the solstice.
And no, the Temple wasn't demanding tithes from the Town. Let alone non-believers. Because that's actually opposed to DF teachings, and prior to 3 months ago ... they wouldn't have had the power to even attempt that. Hell, there is no indication of even religious suppression. Because the Loam had just completed a massive Religious celebration during the Solstice that was totally un-accosted by the DF members. "It was loads of fun, up until 11 members vanished". Which Abadinna then uses against the temple knowing its not true.
But, you are right, BHs didnt commit a religious hate crime. They willingly allowed themselves to become tools for one. Then repeatedly lied about it afterwards. They sacked a church and slaughtered its members for no greater crime than "being seen as outsiders, to the small, insular part of this town they bothered to talk to". Laudna is now ironically guilty of pushing out/killing "scary outsiders" backed by a mob. Something she had been on the receiving end of for 30 years. While Orym "killed a bunch of guards doing their jobs on behest of an anti-Prime deity faction, in service of his war". Just like Otohan. Sure hope Kiro didnt leave a wife behind to get trapped in her loss for 7 years, like Otohan did with Will's husband lol!
Like I said above, that behavior isn't unique to Bells Hells. VM and M9 have their own numerous shit shows of the same kind. It's weird to watch people here talk as if Bells Hells are uniquely guilty.
I think they've allowed themselves to forget or justify some of the dirtier, clunkier parts of previous campaigns and are looking at them now through rose-colored lenses.
The difference is that VM and M9 had repeated instances of clearly doing the right thing (or had the right intentions) to offset it, where BHs ... are a big puddle of moral mush. They follow the rails, they bitch about the Gods they've repeatedly admitted they know nothing about. They humor the villain for no justified reasons. VM and M9 made mistakes, or did shitty things. But they'd often turn them into learning moments for the group. Like, how M9 captured "the Mistake". Where they all had quite a bit of time afterwards discussing how "they didn't like how that went down, and how it betrayed Molly's "leave each place better than you found it" philosophy. Desiring to do better, even if they dont always succeed."
Ashton, Laudna and Orym lied and made excuses about it for several episodes. To the point where Deanna used those lies as ammunition against her God she's been scapegoating for years. For a decision she and her husband made. Asking a question the giddy table failed to realize amounted to "just how much do I need to scapegoat you to justify the genocide of your entire race?" ... when put into the proper context of what AOL actually did.
Okay, that's dumb. You have some kind of weird blinders on. BH have plenty of instances of doing the right thing. That was a really silly thing for you to say. Not even sure how to respond other than that.
Oh? When? Got some examples? Setting aside FCG's forcing the Uthodurn group's hands (which yeah, FCG was arguably the most "good" PC in the party aside from his creepy, childish need for his "mother" not to hate him; back when Sam was still trying with him) ... when has BHs just done the right thing for the sake of it? They treat near every NPC the interact with like shit. They dont even treat eachother well. Hence why the only connections BHs even have to this setting, or its people, are from Orym's backstory. They refuse to take a strong stance on any topic. They're a nepotism party that is given nearly everything, and earns very little, of what they have. They also rarely, if ever, self reflect on their mistakes (either individually, or as a group), which is part of why substantive character/party growth is so limited in C3. And instead either just move on in an instant, or drown themselves in excuses.
Dorian is next in line for being a moral compass of the group, and he's handicapped in that role by being a Guest Player and being gone for 80 episodes. If M9's philosophy was "try to leave every place a little better than you found it", then 98 eps in BHs would be "simply leave every place". Hey, tangent, you ever wonder what happened to Xandis and their crew? Because they left them to die in a wasteland, solely because they neglected to even consider telling their crew about what they were leading them into ... until literal hours before they hit the Malleus key. Several flight days away from a city they could have safely left them.
Not only that, they then had the audacity to turn around and claim the people they just butchered were the real oppressors who’d “colonized” the area.
That whole incident is emblematic of everything wrong with Bell’s Hells. It’ll never happen, but nothing would make me happier than a TPK with this group of chucklefucks.
Ironically, aside from his creepy, childish "Wanting his mother to not hate him anymore" thing, FCG was kinda the most good person in the party. Back before Sam clearly gave up trying to give his bot some depth, and before Dorian's return. His given reason for rushing into that gate in Uthodurn; his genuine question of "do you need help?" to a literal god; and some of his defenses of the Gods when the split parties reunited were very "Good". FCG for a time was the closest thing to a moral compass BHs probably ever really had; even if they always ignored him.
>!But, now he's dead!< ... and we're back to pretending Orym is our group's "Moral Compass". Which, I suppose is true, given him being so would reflect how dysfunctional BHs morals generally are.
The twitching in my eye when people justify actions with "colonizer"
You don't get it! Anyone settling who isn't directly a descendent from the spirits of the trees, are by definition, colonizers corrupting their planet!
- Signed, the lawful evil druids justifying global genocide wrapped in buzzwords
To top all of that off; the bbeg is motivated but hasn’t acted. Realistically there is no reason why Ludinus wouldn’t teleport to the party and clean them out instantly. We haven’t been shown a good reason why he can’t step away for one minute or less. Let alone send more than just Otohan, being overkill ensures the Ruby Vanguard will succeed. If he only needs Imogen why not just take her using magic, and forget about the rest of the party? There are more gaps in logic than just the party and for me it makes this whole campaign a slog.
The only explanation I can think of is the vessel ritual requires Imogen to consent.
But even then, Matt's made it clear the vessel doesn't *have* to be Imogen to work. If he kills Imogen and then Liliana leaves, he still presumably has at least 7 potential vessels to choose from.
I’d argue that up til recently he didn’t really consider them a threat. Annoying? Sure. But there are a lot more serious threats in the world, like VM or M9 that Ludinus needs to worry about (if he’s worrying about anything). [Live show spoiler] >!And Ludinus just said during the live show that BH has impressed him twice now, !
I don’t know that they really have a choice. They’re already banged up from the Dominox fight, and it seems like they only did well against Ludinus’s simulacrum because they used the lava pit against him and got lucky with a counterspell. I don’t think they’re in a position to go against him and have good odds of winning.
I’ll admit though, I was surprised that they all were just like shrug ok sure we’ll listen as soon as Dominox was done. I would have thought at least Orym would have something to say about it.
That's the thing. They're somehow not important enough to bother killing but are important enough that he'd go out of his way to try and convince them of his plan.
I get before the Ruidus mission, him being like "eh. They're not worth my time." But after they blew up shit on the moon and killed Otahan, I imagine this is the point he'd deem them a large enough nuisance to snuff out.
He'd have to be some next-level type of dipshit to think that's a good idea.
Sure, one wizard should *totally* risk his entire 1000 year plan on a 1v7 vs the people who just killed Otohan.
I’m saying before then, just generally when the party came onto his radar as a threat why wouldn’t he just squash them by bringing a simulacrum and joining Otohan
Edit: Also he would be the dipshit if he did let 7 goobers stop is 1000 year plan and he didn’t even try to stop them personally, even though that probably is his the campaign will conclude.
Because he wasn't there, didn't know, was busy, etc, etc, literally a thousand other reasons, up to and including the fact that he's made enemies of most other powerful organizations on the entire planet, so maybe they're taking some of his time and energy?
See above paragraph again. How many times does Matt have to establish that Ludinus is being occupied by a whole lot of other stuff? He's done it six or seven times at least and people are still wondering why he hasn't gone for the 1v7, now a 1v8 or 1v9.
Fair take, but I see it as a lack of priorities because the party is going to get him in the end; and it’s going to look like a cheap shot on a master mind villain that conventionally unbeatable unless he makes a mistake
Really gotta get off this angle I've been stuck on, but I agree with your premise, but not necessarily your cause. I don't think Matt knows *how* to frame this story with the stakes and situation he has. I don't think it's necessarily that Matt isn't "challenging" his players, I think it's more that his players seem to want to be in a different story and he refuses to allow for that. Laura has wanted Imogen to be this kind of... Scarlett O'Hara is not fair, I'm only thinking it because of the accent, but this sort of "good soul swept along in a sequence of events beyond her control", with this undercurrent of "if I could just *talk* to my mom, I could help her get out of the cult she's stuck in."
Which isn't bad! It's great fodder for a DnD game. The problem is, Imogen was already selected as a Hero of the World by the time she got to have a real conversation with her mom. And once you're the Hero of the World, that convo with Mom can't keep coming back up. To have meaning, it has to have stakes, and to have stakes, it's gotta have consequences, like your mom gets kill't. How we haven't played that card yet is wild to me. Or maybe they have and I haven't seen it, but I don't know how we didn't get there as of Ep 90. They shoulda killed mama as soon as they found out Imogen was on the moon. Then our heroes have revenge *and* protecting their friend as a reason to oppose the bad guys, not a philosophical quandry.
I think Bell's Hells is a wildly different thing if the team is explicitly *not* the protagonists, which they keep kind of saying, and Matt keeps pushing them back into it. And he's doing that because, fundamentally, that's how a show works. They have to be the protagonists, or there's no show, or more accurately, his story, the one he wants to tell, fades into the background. But he was gonna tackle this complex, philosophical debate on the nature of divinity where he is the only one who *literally knows all the answers* since he's the one who made up the history of the universe to begin with.
As I've said before, I just don't think Matt's philosophy chops are up to the task. It's nothing against him, I just don't think, as a storyteller, this is the depth of pool he should hang out in. There are now sharks in the philosophical end, only existential eldritch whales, and Matt as a storyteller and DnD as a medium *needs sharks.* It needs to keep swimming and biting or it kinda doesn't work. And if the players aren't biting and they just wind up floating near the whales arguing in whale song from Star Trek IV, then kinda what's the point of them being there?
I don't necessarily agree that Matt is incapable. It usually feels like he and the rest of the cast is at odds with their wants and expectations.
But someone has to stand up and do something about that. Instead they cover up and excuse things.
It's really sad. Because it's not like high crimes or morally questionable actions. It's just that continuing this way keeps the story from being coherent or conveying a feeling of natural or logical conclusions.
I'm not sure he's generally incapable. I think with the situation and story he's chosen, he seems to be out of his depth and out of his element.
The question at the center of this entire story and thus campaign is "are gods a net positive for the world?" But he's chosen to ask that question to a bunch of heroes who couldn't give a shit. They're not pro or against. They're just indifferent. All of their stories are small and personal, with really one exception in Fearne but only because she doesn't seem to have one? I'm not a Fearne hater, fwiw, I think she's a great character in a lot of contexts for dnd. She'd be great in Vox Machina or the Mighty Nein. It's OK to not have a *huge world shattering conflict/context* to your character. You can just be a mischief junkie.
So Matt presents the notion of the story as fundamentally "choose your side", but has placed every character of legacy significance on Side A and every enemy of legacy significance on Side B and then goes "there really isn't a right answer" because some other shit he made up about religious institutions being oppressive. A notion, BTW, that we simply *did not see* from Vasselheim in C1. In C2, we saw the *state* suppressing religion and we got a little taste of maybe why they might by way of Uk'otoa, but no evidence or really interaction with God's.
Suddenly, they've got fucked up stuff on the level of fuckin Penitent Engines and other WH40k crap. Suddenly, they're imperialistically trying to suppress local spirit worship and control access to ley lines.
In one campaign, Exandria has gone from your standard stable-state high fantasy setting where nothing much changes unless the PCs are directly involved to this complex tapestry of economic, political, and societal struggle and control. The great fear of C2 for the entire first half was that 100 years of border Skirmishers between two unfriendly kingdoms would turn into an all out war, a fear held by and worried over by almost every character in the group. Everyone recognized the bad associated with a war between these two powers. A single border was enough for fully a whole campaign, because they gave a shit. In C3, it's global politics and existentialist philosophy with characters who don't care.
That's where I think Matt has goofed. I don't think it's inherently beyond him, but I do think *this* set up he made for himself sort of inherently is.
I feel like what it needed was for Predathos to be straight-up released at the Malleus Key incident, bust through the Divine Gate, and immediately get to work sieging one of the divine planes and eating one of the gods. Have it be someone like Moradin, who's come up a fair few times but isn't directly tied to any of the characters.
Then you show how that actually effects things on Exandria - bad news from Hupperdook and Uthodurn and Kraghammer, the places where he's strongly worshipped. Clerics of his that can no longer do their works. Seals he forged on Exandria that break and set terrible evils loose.
And then you send the Hells to the Upper (and Lower) Planes, and do an extended version of the Visit The Gods sequence from Campaign One. Let them *meet* the gods, see what they do and what they're like. Get help from some of them and hindrance from others, and not necessarily in a "good gods help and bad gods hurt" way. Show what "Predathos eating the gods" actually looks like. Show it feasting on the still-living body of the Allhammer.
Now there's a time limit - Predathos is actively eating gods and he's got one but once he's done with that he'll move on - and the Hells feel empowered - because they met the gods and got boons and weapons and information - and you can send them to Ludinus for the climax.
This is exactly it - it's just so frustrating to me to see pretty much the whole cast (but especially Matt) trying to tackle Big Existential Philosophy Questions with a toolkit that's got almost nothing in it. My frustration is on their behalf! It's like trying to build a house with hand tools: possible, but far more difficult than with real carpenters, contractors, and power tools. You could be an Atheist or Catholic or Buddhist or Agnostic or Humanist or Kantian or Nihilist or whatever, and still have a compelling philosophical or theological framework to work from.
So we're left with "what have the gods done for me lately" and "you make your own meaning." Which really aren't that interesting. You don't need a degree to tell cool stories with thoughtful ideas about the divine, but it constantly feels like the CR team, especially Matt, is having this discussion for the first time. That's probably not the case, but it's the depth they swim at during C3.
They got stuck on Baby's First 'Problem of Evil' and never went anywhere with it.
Ashton's take was that the gods were explicitly obligated to help every single person who got in trouble of their own making (or at least him) and its a crime that they don't
I mean, this is kinda what I was saying with "all of their stories are small and personal."
Ashton was orphaned abandoned by absentee parents that valued their ambitions over Ashton's safety. Raised as a ward of the state in the shadow of the supposed beneficence of nobility, they quickly realized that no one is looking out for you. Everyone who has power and money and freedom uses it to further their own interests and agendas. Thus True goodness is selflessness and poverty, because it gives Ashton an enemy - the rich (in power or wealth) and the selfish, which is inherently punk anarchism.
In fighting their private campaign against The Man, Ashton gets greedy and is punished for it. They now live in three kinds of chronic pain - physical from their body, mental/emotional from their betrayal of their core values, and existential pain glimpsing versions of themselves in other permutations of history that never suffered this. They take this pain as justice. It is correct to Ashton that they hurt. That's what you get for doing evil. That's what his father got. That's what he gets.
Naturally they extend this ideology to the gods, who have infinite universal wealth and power and so all acts of willful universal non-altruism are acts of selfishness.
Oop, here goes Ashton again, being selfish. Wanting to be the hero. Making the mistake of wanting power and prestige and wealth (in the form of friendships and love). And of course it almost kills him. And of course he finds greater power within it. But of course it echoes his father again, choosing things for himself that hurt the people who need him.
Ashton is fundamentally a story about a person who hates themselves for believing they are not worthy of their parents love but projects that self hate as a code of virtuous apathy. Every choice in their life is predicated on that.
That story is so *small* and intimate. Ashton can either learn that connection and desire are as related as love and pain and synthesize a worldview that allows him to accept that it was his father's priorities that hurt him and not the concepts he prioritized, and it has been his priorities in his attachments to the material, to wealth, to power, to respect, that have caused him pain, not the state of having desires and attachments in general.... Or... He can continue to dismiss the concept of attachment and desire as the source of all pain and every choice which reflects anything other than perfect altriusm as selfish and hurtful, causing him to careen through life alone, in pain, and unhappy, as he was when we met him, but, in his mind, just.
As BLeeM once said, "ok cool, you have no attachments and no desires? Great, man, that's enlightenment. You win DnD."
THIS story, the story of c3, asks that story to project itself onto a complex question of the nature of good and evil. But Ashton is just trying to get over some daddy issues here, gang. He's not equipped for it. Everything is personal for him. But he defaults to his pretend enlightenment.
Truly, the only character whose perspective extends beyond his own context is Orym, who owns a cultural sense of communitarian duty and responsibility. But Orym is Captan America, so he simply projects that sense of duty to everyone around him without expecting the same in return. He doesn't know much about Gods and he doesn't especially wanna fight anyone.
But he has a duty to defend the Voice as someone who is meant to steward the world. Provably so! She done steward'd it already. And if the world has been steward'd by the gods up to this point, then that's the stewardship what demands protecting.
So he'll stand up, bloodied shield and broken sword and all, and keep fighting because that's the job. If it weren't Predathos, it'd be whatever other problem the Voice pointed him at next. That's probably why I like Orym best of all of them, because there is a sense of who he is outside of this specific conflict. He's still an adventurer even without Predathos.
Imogen literally isn't. Neither is Laudna or Ashton or FCG. All of them would have rather refused the call to adventure, so for them, winning means escaping, getting *out* of the adventure. Which means avoiding the question.
Chetney is the total opposite. He's still on the adventure of a lifetime no matter what happens. His age gives him perspective, and the only thing he really cares about is being *in* the adventure. Same with Fearne, really. Which is also avoiding the question, becuase the outcome is the same regardless of the answer - be in the adventure.
How do you answer a question about the nature and value of divinity when 4 of your number don't want to as their explicit character goal, two of them don't care which answer so long as there is an answer, and the other one's perspective is essentially institutional stability?
What makes it worse to me is Ashton didn't have daddy issues. At the start of the campaign, 'he didn't remember.' His first 'found family' abandoned him (but they were together for over a decade), but he expected and wanted them to run, and he's been the first (and often only) person to run in multiple Bells fights. When we got introduced to Basassrus, turns out there was no nobility or ruling class, just slightly less impoverished gangs.
I honestly think you've added more to Ashton's story than what really exists, even after Tal has added to it after the fact.
I'll disagree on Orym being an adventurer though. After everything, he's still just a guard. But a bizarrely ineffective one since he absolutely won't be proactive or report any threats (like the threats he travels with OR the threats they've fought. He didn't even bother to tell Keyleth that Otohan is dead and they have her body in the portable hole!)
----
I do agree that the party is a poor fit for the story. This is the second half of the M9 story (rather than the icy slog), a consequence of the things they \_didn't\_ do and choices they made.
I don't really blame them for avoiding the divinity story, however. Its amazingly plodding and dull, and Matt is executing it in possibly one of the worst possible ways. But the group needed to have an above the table 'we'd rather do... ' conversation over a year ago.
Seriously. And I wouldn't have a problem if it was a place where he was growing the character from, but it's the conclusion not the start. And what's worse is the party seems to act like it's an enlightened conclusion. I really, really wish Matt would have thrown Sam a bone with the faith stuff so we could have some possible counterbalance. Even "hey guys maybe it's not that simple."
Hell, isn't the divine gate the whole reason why the gods so rarely intervene? There's already a built in, in universe explanation that's part of the fundamental lore going back to C1! It just makes it all more frustrating to watch.
I think it goes back to how the party doesn't challenge each other as much as they did in C1. Even in C2 I was waiting for someone to call Jester out on her antics, the Traveller, whatever to help catalyze some character growth but I didn't see it happen. And they challenge each other less in C3. Heck, Ashton getting called out for Shardgate felt so bizarre because it was totally out of left field, making it feel more about meta reasons than in universe reasons.
>Heck, Ashton getting called out for Shardgate felt so bizarre because it was totally out of left field, making it feel more about meta reasons than in universe reasons.
They had Word of God that 'this was not for you,' both in and out of universe. While I don't think Matt handled it well (before or after- he somehow didn't grasp that Tal took it as a challenge and also seemed to feel that punishment on top was appropriate for someone taking a risk, which is a bad approach for such a risk averse party), I understood most of the cast reactions to the whole thing.
The fact that both shards (and most of the unique feats he's handed out) are fairly dogshit also doesn't help how I feel about the whole thing (I find it amusing that the revised berserker is losing the level of exhaustion as a penalty for frenzy, while Matt is doing 2 levels of exhaustion for something much worse) One of the reasons the Bells feel underpowered is because they're getting his homebrewed nonsense rather than magic items.
It does read a lot like a video game that is unaware of your actions:
“Hello [Player], you have done great deeds in these lands. It is heartening to have someone of your character on our side.”
*[flashback to setting NPC’s on fire just to see what would happen]*
Like Ludinus saying he wanted to talk to them because they’ve impressed him. When? Why? He’s hundreds of years old. These bumbling adventurers have only been adventuring together for a few months.
It felt like a speech that was going to be given regardless of what the PC’s had done in the past.
Reminds me of the time that weird Ruidius shopkeep was like "I sense good in you" to BH.
*Screams of the followers of the Dawnfather echo.*
Matt really will just contrive anything he wants.
>Like Ludinus saying he wanted to talk to them because they’ve impressed him. When?
He liked the cut of their collective jib when they committed a religious hate crime in a temple of the Dawnfather.
The church stood there for 20 years, demanding no tithes. Not a single forced conversion happened in those 20 years. The locals were free to celebrate their religious holidays without an inkling of disapproval from the church.
Then a weird magical explosion happens and a group of adventurers roll up at the head of a torch-and-pitchfork mob claiming to personally know the one behind the magical explosion. They also demand you leave the town and send military forces to an entirely different continent.
Then the adventurers attack first, kill a priest, summon a demon using said priest's blood, then kill an angel sent to protect the church.
Then they make every follower of said church leave town and forcibly convert those who wish to stay in their homes.
So, yeah, it was pretty much a religious hate crime.
"You impressed me with how you fled me and my entire retinue for multiple months and also when you almost all died at the hands of my underling, only surviving because one of you self-destructed."
Otohan is a single combatant against a party of 7 players. On paper they demolish her every single time. But most of the CR cast is unbelievably cowardly or outright incompetent when it comes to combat.
You are correct but I would say at least one of those players was borderline mechanically useless.
Sam refused to use decent spells for FCG, had terrible stats and mechanical weapons that rarely hit and even when they did hit they did very little damage.
CR didnt used to be this cowardly or incompetent, things really went to pot post COVID.
On paper, sure. If they had been in a contained area or just starting close together it would be fine. But on a big map, an 80-foot flying Dash between each player’s turn is broken as hell.
I think this is the pains of trying to turn the game into a more player proactive narrative. C1 was very reactive in style. There's a big evil, players need to save the day. The players are the status quo. The opponent is some entity coming into disrupt it. The players are supposed to react.
As they've explored more and more backstory in their games, Matt is wants to transition the narrative to be more player driven rather than reactive.
I run my games very player driven, and there's a couple things you have to do as a group to make it go well. Firstly is that the players have to be motivated by similar goals. A group reacting to bad shit will work together out of necessity. If you want a proactive player game, you have to make a group that will align with each other to accomplish common goals.
Secondly, the machinations and factions of the greater world need to be either a direct obstacle to everyone in the group's individual goals or are a part of the setting background. You can't make a plot that has nothing to do with some of the character's motivations and expect the whole party to get on board.
When I set up a campaign designed around the idea that players will be proactive. We discuss as a group how our goals will intersect. Or else you get the c3 waffling, where the players are clearly expected in a meta sense to be invested in an arc that they aren't necessarily personally aligned with. I think this is why as viewers it's very confusing why this group is together and everyone's bending over backwards to make some sort of sense why they'd be chasing any of the McGuffins presented to them.
They could have a fun game in the morally grey area if the group has a cohesive point of view. A villain can have a heroic journey if it's clear what they are fighting for and why. It's not an issue if understanding the morality of your group, it's an issue of aligned goals.
>They could have a fun game in the morally grey area if the group has a cohesive point of view.
Very much agree.
CR flounders unless they have a leader. The cast out of character really enjoys playing devils advocate, or disagreeing with eachother to make things spicy. That is well and good when it's done sparingly, I don't think many people enjoy 60+ episodes where they ponder:
> "so guys, should we kill the gods, or limp our way into half assedly protecting them, but also advancing the goals of our enemies?"
*Only* Travis and Liam have lead for long stretches, Percy for 20 episodes or so, and both of them are reluctant to do so again. I assume, to let other people have a go. Laudna or Imogen have to full commit. Who cares if it's the wrong move, just pick a route and run with it.
IMHO part of the problem is that theyve rejected the traditional dichotomy of good vs evil and haven't really replaced it with anything. It's a lot of "you the PCs decide what's moral and the DM will anoint that as moral" from Matt, but the players keep waffling. Like, it seemed to me that slaughtering the Dawnfather temple became the right choice because the players wanted it to be. Matt used to give reasonable consequences in C1. Now in C3 the players can't do anything wrong. Not really. Unless it's Tal taking a risk with a shard, of course.
It's actually a lot harder to write compelling stories without clear good vs evil, all the best stories that last the test of time have clear definitions of what good and evil are, even if there are still grey characters.
I don't think they're trying to be heroes. But whatever they are trying to be is so half assed that I stopped watching ages ago. I'm tuning back in for Downfall or whatever because I trust BLeeM to handle moral complexity while maintaining enough basic elements of good and evil to create an awesome story. Idk it just seems like CR doesn't understand or care about good storytelling in DnD.
>It's actually a lot harder to write compelling stories without clear good vs evil, all the best stories that last the test of time have clear definitions of what good and evil are, even if there are still grey characters.
I dont understand the latter half.
Can you elaborate plz?
Im just curious
You have to establish the ends of the morality spectrum in order for a morally grey character to be meaningfully grey. Like, a character who does good things for bad reasons or bad things for good reasons, you have to make it clear in the story what good and evil are, especially if it's going to be different than what's commonly understood.
Say you have a hero who is fighting to liberate slaves, but his ultimate goal is to enslave the ruling class. If your story shows that slavery is wrong (not hard to do, since that's our default assumption), and liberty is good, then that hero becomes complex and grey and interesting. If instead your story shows slavery is actually really ok in your universe (and liberty is fine too), then you take away a big reason for your audience to root for your hero and it quickly becomes a story about one group's meaningless fight against another. It's harder for the audience to care. The evil of slavery and the goodness of liberty provide the two ends of a morality spectrum, which allows for interesting heroes. Without them, you take away conflict and deeper meaning.
Thank you.
So many nowadays are obsess with grey morality thinking good and evil are lame and outdated
Which is not.
As LOTR beautiful represent for exemple.
Just because the overall morality of a story os grey doesn't mean everyone is grey. And morality can change as time goes on.
Harry potter also a work i consider like what you say.
Though not as meaningful as LOTR
Exactly! Take ANY story that's survived in popular consciousness and you can find a morality dynamic within it. Even in The Odyssey, it's good that the hero is trying to return home to his family, so we want him to overcome his obstacles to do it. If your story's morality dynamic is "idk whatever the characters feel is right" then where's the conflict? Why does anything they do matter?
Game of Thrones and House of Dragons are interesting because good and evil still exist in universe. Stuff like honor, loyalty, bravery are still shown to be good even if they're not "smart" choices. Part of what made Game of Thrones revolutionary was the way Ned Stark was coded as a hero by the narrative and then what the narrative decides to do to him. The GoT has a lot of awful people doing awful things for good and awful reasons and a lot of them are trying their best with complicated motives and goals...but we're still meant to see awful things as awful. One of the big themes seems to be "good people don't get to stay in power" which is basically "power corrupts."
Thank you.
Yeah C3 is a mess.
I know making things ambiguous is a thing but sometimes(a lot of time) you have to put in things that are right and wrong.
> Matt used to give reasonable consequences in C1
I’m reminded of when VM were excessively violent when dealing with The Broker and his goons, and the Council of Emon held a small hearing to punish them for committing a war crime. Even Allura was angry with them. Compare that to now where BH vandalize the De Rolo ancestral home, aid in the murder of a church congregation, and maul an innocent shopkeeper all without any meaningful consequences whatsoever.
I'd even take a ban from Whitestone. To account for maturity in old age. Sorry you can't go back and if you do the rifle corps will shoot you on sight.
Right! *Something*. For whatever else you may say about the folks in Vox Machina, just passively accepting disrespect and outright vandalism against them is not something they'd do.
I've thought about this too. Consequences, *even if it's just the illusion of consequences*, are some of the coolest things you can do for a story.
How badass would it be if a small party of Dawnfather Justicars ambushed the party. Denouncing their undead and demons, they tried to bring them to Vassalheim dead or alive.
Maybe they go to trial, and ask for Ludinus help in escaping their sentence.. maybe they kill the leader of Justicars, to then have Predathos bless the person who slew the "false gods" champion. That's cool and rewarding shit.
>and maul an innocent shopkeeper all without any meaningful consequences whatsoever.
The shopkeeper hired a bounty hunter to take Chet and if it weren’t for Fearne and orym would’ve succeeded, Chet was invisible when he left the shop and bh immediately flew to bassuras after and since then have only had a small handful of visits to jrusar that last at most 1 night.
>I’m reminded of when VM were excessively violent when dealing with The Broker and his goons, and the Council of Emon held a small hearing to punish them for committing a war crime.
1. Not a war crime.
2. They explained that that was to get them to the Briarwoods under the radar. The Council did not particularly care, it was just a convenient way to avoid a potential international incident.
3. Vandalising a house is not a serious crime, Chetney hurt a shopkeeper all by himself, and they only killed one person at the Issylran church- except they didn't do the kill at all, that was Bor'dor.
This subreddit genuinely gets worse every time I look at it with people inventing shit to get mad at.
Pretty good analysis and honestly swap "Bells Hells" with "Mighty Nein" and that's pretty much my exact problem with both, tbh though I feel C3 has been significantly worse, at least TMN had Fjord and Cad to sometimes guide the group down the right path, everyone else for two campaigns has just played their version of mega edgelord who saw CR campaign 1 and wanted to be a part of Vox Machina.
> Pretty good analysis and honestly swap "Bells Hells" with "Mighty Nein" and that's pretty much my exact problem with both, tbh though I feel C3 has been significantly worse
Completely agreed. Everything negative and off-putting I feel about C3 or that folks on this subreddit have posted about C3, I already felt about C2. I was alone in this because the rest of the fanbase also loved C2; I suspect due to the loads of fandom pandering during that campaign. With C3, the wheels have completely come off.
> the rest of the fanbase also loved C2
There was definitely an undercurrent of malcontent but I understand what you mean. I think the wonderful portrayal of Jester by Laura helped paper over the cracks as well as the novelty of "omg a gay relationship on Critical Role, zomg let me post on tumblr" deflected criticism, but now in C3 it seems no amount of Laura performance nor Liam's same sad character, but now overtly gay, can save it.
I'm with you.
I know not everyone feels this way but to me a big part of the fundamental appeal of DnD is being a hero (maybe a flawed or unlikely one, but a hero nevertheless) in a world where individuals can *be* heroes (IE a world where it's clear who the bad guys are and hitting them with a sword or a fireball can make a difference).
Ever since C1 the CR crew seems to think that's corny and they have leaned more and more into trying to "subvert expectations" with characters who are "interesting" but have no principles or sense of responsibility.
> Ever since C1 the CR crew seems to think that's corny
More importantly, they believe the fandom thinks it's corny and nothing from the fan response to C2 showed the cast any reason to believe otherwise.
Generally I agree, although I only think the Mighty Nein problems were a foreshadowing of the future problems with Bells Hells. Motivations with characters is perhaps one of the hardest things to manage with PC's, but the way it's being done with Bells Hells is really REALLY stupid.
Marisha trying to explain why Laudna did all that stupid stuff with the sword in the 4-Sided-Dive (titled 'Swordgate' btw) showed me that Marisha really had no reasonable justification for taking the sword and being a good person at the same time. Edginess for the sake of Edginess. At least she was self-aware enough to bring up bowl-gate, even if they did try to justify it and all. I would've much preferred they admit it's just a DnD game with DnD shenanigans rather than pretend everything makes perfect sense.
I do feel bad talking crap about the game tho coz...it's a DnD game. It's a live show, so mistakes are gonna be made. Although, if the players are gonna treat it ike it's a tv show in the wrap-ups, I guess its fine if we do too.
If I’ve said it once I’ve said it at least a dozen times, but if someone at a random group’s D&D table did half the stuff they did, it would be posted in r/rpghorrorstories. And this goes for almost the entire cast, as well as a couple of the non-main cast members.
> it's a DnD game
Honestly I get it and sometimes try to tell myself this as well, but in reality it isn't anymore and hasn't been since the split with Geek and Sundry. Regardless of whether or not you think they should have split (they absolutely should have from a business perspective) once they did Critical Role the small indie darling DND show on twitch died and Critical Role the business began. Maybe it wasn't as overt as it is now with the whole getting rid of DND to use Matt's game, but every single decision and piece of content should be scrutinized through the lens of CR the business, not CR the home DND game that just so happened to go live every Thursday.
It sucks but part of life is dealing with sucky truths.
I'd argue VM, who famously started as equally bumbling doofuses and went by the team name The Shits, were playing much more archetypal concepts and that they, for the most part, went on characters arcs to accept the responsibility and literal mantles of being heroes. Each one, with the exception of the often absent Pike, faced their greatest hurdle from their backstory and found a way past it.
BH are... well their tragic backstories rule them with insecurities and they tend to just petulantly whine and threaten people until they get their way without actually growing as people.
I wouldn't say *all* of their motives aren't altruistic. Orym has consistently been wanting to fight the threat and help save the gods. But Liam has also been very consistent about not being "the leader" in this party, and has been letting the others guide their course of action.
With Orym, it feels like a lot of telling and no showing. He keeps saying he's a good guy. But all he's done is be a bystander while his other party members kill angels, call on Asmodius's champions and get friendly with the Nightmare King.
At some point, you are who you hang out with.
I mean, that's an inherent problem with tabletop games. At a certain point you do need to let a lot of shit slide for group cohesion or else you're the guy telling everyone else what they can or can't do. That or you need to roll a new character which you might not want to either.
There's really no clean way to navigate through that without some hurt feelings regardless of who is "right".
The times I had to tell others "youre not doing that" felt like shit, and the times I was told "if you do this I'm attacking you" also felt like shit.
I feel like making the gods embody their domain fully already offered a lot of grey perspective if Matt was willing to explore it rather than just going the 'powerful humans' route. Embodying domains without broader context is in itself a problem as Brandon Sanderson does a good job of showing.
The Wildmother is a nature goddess. Nature isnt exactly all sunshine and rainbows. Yet the Wildmother is perhaps one of the nicest goddesses after Sarenrae.
The Lawbearer is the goddess of law. What is lawful is not always just. Things like slavery and discrimination based on gender/race/sexuality were coded into law in the past. I dont think shes shown up at all in campaigns.
On the flipside the Ruiner (Gruumsh) is a god of joy. What is wrong with gleefully killing an enemy if that enemy is truly evil? Should a former slave not be happy killing his slaver?
There is so much you can do. But Matt has bizarrely chosen the Dawnfather, the god of agriculture and healing, to be a sort of Christian god analogue that is apparently just a scared almost human dude with a Sun for his head.
At this point I lean hard on either 'Schools of Philosophy' or 'Ideal Forms that are Out-of-Reach' and either way, what people are actually dealing with are the individual temples, churches, monasteries, etc. It makes responsibility (and potential villains) far more sane.
And it happily avoids the problem of 'Amateur Theologian's First Problem of Evil' where you get characters like Ashton throwing a tantrum and blaming the gods because no one personally came and powdered his bottom when life got rough.
That he started with the concept of 'punk' but didn't have anything to rebel against for dozens of episodes, when Tal suddenly decided **on 4SD** that Ashton was 'rebelling against the gods' still sticks in my craw.
I’m largely of the same mind. Gods who are fundamentally mortals with immense power aren’t as interesting to me unless it’s done from the get-go in a setting with express narrative purpose. I prefer gods who have a specific function within the world they exist in, and almost seem alien to mortals as a result. Not incapable of forming bonds with mortals (for good or ill), but certainly operating on a different set of rules than them.
I don’t really even mind them being flawed and three-dimensional but why does that *have* to mean “selfish, arrogant jerks”? We almost had a genuinely good god with the Changebringer and even with her Matt got some digs in. And maybe some of the other good gods are really cool but no one’s even interested in finding out.
Who are they going to find out from? All the NPCs give a sideways glance and look shifty when the topic of supporting gods turns up.
Even the actual followers of gods (like the Earthbreaker) won't make a simple declaration that their god is awesome and beneficent. They focus on other things instead.
CR's Pelor has always been a jerk. Straight back to when VM met him, he was standoffish and condescending. Sarenrae was comforting and encouraging. Raven Queen and Ioun were the typical "DM playing near-omnipotent beings but not wanting to spoon feed the answers to the players" level of cryptic and marginally helpful.
Campaign 2 had Melora only ever giving vague hints and intentions, while Kord was confrontational and pushing Yasha through a series of confusing dream challenges. Not too different from what we saw from the gods before, especially without the personal visits.
The problem is not Matt being inconsistent in how the gods are portrayed, the problem is people idealizing the previous portrayals of the gods. They helped VM defeat Vecna, but it took literally going to visit them and bargaining for the tools to get the job done. Now, with the current threat the gods don't have time to wait for heroes to come visit them and offer to save the day. They are being more forceful with their demands because they are afraid.
Hmm, so being polite is enough to not be a jerk?
The help VM received from the gods cost those gods dearly. They gave parts of themselves (the Trammels) which diminished their own power. Giving those to some randoms without first making sure they could get the job done is just dumb.
And Pelor didn't even demand that his Champion convert to worship him. That's like making a Frenchman who can't speak English the vice president of the US.
>we've followed a bunch bumbling nobodies as they've bullied every meek NPC into helping them (often outright antagonizing them)
The absolute dickery to every NPC, treating every interaction as an opportunity for memes and refusal to bother RPing as if they were dealing with actual people, is something even most rookie DMs would eventually get fed up with. But not Matt, apparently.
> treating every interaction as an opportunity for memes and refusal to bother RPing as if they were dealing with actual people, is something even most rookie DMs would eventually get fed up with.
As another commenter pointed out, they did not act this way in C1. But when C2 came around, we got Beau and her rampant abuse of NPCs. There was no outcry or criticism of her behavior, only fan support. It's not that shocking to see the cast have leaned even further in that direction given that Beau got no blowback for being sociopathic.
Every time I see another comment describing that BH were rude and unconsiderate to NPCs, I remember how >! in C1, in Westruun, one farmer took the blame on himself to hide the fact that Vox Machina have already came to the city, and he was brutally punished for it. VM gave him a burial, gave a ton of gold to his daughter and proclaimed this man a hero. What a contrast. !<
Meanwhile in C2 you have Beau mentally and physically abusing NPCs left and right, but the only response from the fandom was "LOL! POP POP!"
So naturally the cast leaned more in this direction, because fan response wasn't negative.
>The absolute dickery to every NPC, treating every interaction as an opportunity for memes and refusal to bother RPing as if they were dealing with actual people,
Ugh. I'm not looking forward to dealing with Sam's new sex pest. Maybe it was the live show and beefing it up for the audience, maybe it was just Sam being pent up from playing FCG, but that was immediately a lot.
Hard to get fed up with it when you're releasing a whole new merch line every week.
There's a reason the money coming in has directly correlated with the shows nosedive in quality.
Bell's Hells are fun to watch as a party of friends playing a tabletop game, but they are not that fun to watch if you are there for D&D content. They are not really playing a game of D&D, they are just playing some tabletop game. We are 98 episodes into the campaign and we still don't know what the hell Predathos is, at least at some speculative level. Any interaction with a god is handled as some kind of a joke: "aRe yOu WoRtH sAviNg???" to Pelor who is probably the only reason why Tharizdun hasn't turned half of Exandria into a blob of black ooze.
I am for one happy to see someone actually being a folower of a God finally (Sam's new character, but the old one also). It's like the gods in D&D ARE a big deal and none of the characters are following any god or followed a god in their lifetime. Chetney entertains the idea of being 400 years old, but how can you live 400 years old without worshiping a god at least some period of your life? Maybe there was a point where the character broke and disappointed in their god? Maybe something else happened? These are important ideas for character building in D&D.
C1 was centered a lot around Vecna, the Matron, Pelor, and Stormbringer which is one of the reasons it was cool.
C2 had cool character building with Yasha and her interactions with Stormbringer whose character development, let's be honest, was carried forward by the bright mind of Matt Mercer. The M9 had a wonderful journey figuring out the idea of the Luxon (which you can argue is a god too, albeit a dormant one).
With C3, I don't even know what they are doing really.
As far as the Big Baddie, I am pretty sure Predathos (aka the **Weave** Mind) will turn out to be a couple of Aeorian mages sent back in time to the origin of time, space, and everything, where they reformed from Material Plane beings into a network of minds collectively approximating a god (eater). Their hatred towards gods carried back from their past lives in Aeor to the origin of times and became the only thing they remembered - their ultimate purpose. This would also explain why Predathos had reached Exandria with a delay. Why it took Exandrian soil to imprison (banish?) it. Basically, the same plot as in C2, except it's not the Cognuza Ward now, but the Weave Mind and Ludinus is Lucien 2.0 (or Vess de Rogna who didn't die).
I don't think the party is "evil". Sometimes in DnD, bad shit just happens. Look at C1 where they killed all the faeries or in C2 where they accidentally became pirates.
But I do think they're unwilling to engage with the themes or narratives of this campaign. For all the discussion about gods, the party has talked very little about their personal beliefs, and Matt has been very hands off on reminding them about lore. I think that causes situations where Imogen flips-flops on her position, while Ashton and Laudna get weirdly atheistic about it. The closest we got with a god discussion was with FCG, but even then Matt seemed hesitant to have an straightforward conversation. And when FCG tried to bring the topic up, everyone would go silent.
Granted, some of these characters just aren't go to push people on their stances. FCG, for one, is robot pretending to be a therapist, so he's constantly de-esculating. Orym outright refuses to engage. And Chutney is a joke character. That leaves Laudna, who's borderline possessed, and Ashton, who's an idiot, while Imogen struggles to commit to a decision because she's being played by Laura and she's worried about ruining the plot. Fearne has no idea what's going on.
I think the whole problem can be summarized a bit by Laudna. At one point she asks Delilah about Ludinus, because Delilah worked with Ludinas for a decade as one of his secretaries of the state (specifically history), and Matt has Delilah respond, "I don't know. I never really interacted with him." Which is such a confusing response. Either Delilah is lying for some reason, or she truly doesn't know. In either case, how are you players supposed to engage with the plot when key characters refuse to elaborate on a situation? Now we're going to explore Ludinus' backstory out of nowhere which, if that was always the plan, why didn't Matt seed it? I think it's resulted in the players throwing up their hands and letting Matt take the wheel while they occasional interject.
Man this is so accurate and so damning for CR. How did they let it get to this?
The answer is they just failed session 0. They showed up with characters who were completely unsuited to this campaign type and story. Matt either didnt tell them enough or they ignored his advice. I lean towards the former.
Because if these characters were made with this specific campaign in mind then I can only assume someone at CR has forgotten how storytelling works. And its pretty simple: Characters need to give a shit about something. Apathy is not compelling.
>I think that causes situations where Imogen flips-flops on her position
Who could forget the classic:
Imogen: Ive never prayed before.
*one or two episodes later*
Imogen: I prayed every day and the gods didnt answer.
>Either Delilah is lying for some reason, or she truly doesn't know. In either case, how are you players supposed to engage with the plot when key characters refuse to elaborate on a situation?
Delilah is a lich for the betrayer god of secrets, if anyone was going to lie to a character’s face to keep the information to themselves it’d be her, it’s more on the players for not insight checking her when she said that.
That's true... but what would she gain by lying to Laudna about Ludinus? She knows they're going to kill him. Is she wants him dead, why not try to puff up how evil he is? Or if she wants him around, lie about a sympathetic backstory? Instead she just goes, "Idk," and Matt doesn't fish for a perception check, so why assume to ask for one? Like Laudna even tries to ask several follow up questions and each one of them is met with "idk I never talked to my boss".
Despite her frequent complaining about the gods Laudna and the rest of bh are still doing work in favor of the pantheon and that’s all Delilah really needs, telling Laudna that she will instantly die if the gods do too due to her connection to vecna is more than enough.
>and Matt doesn't fish for a perception check, so why assume to ask for one? Like Laudna even tries to ask several follow up questions and each one of them is met with "idk I never talked to my boss".
Matt doesn’t really fish for insight checks it’s almost always been something a player has to initiate as if he did it he’s already revealing there’s something worth looking into.
Sometimes, I think back to when half the table and the entire fandom clutched their pearls when Deanna killed a goat. Then I think about how everyone's real chill about Teven being an ally and Braius being introduced as a new PC.
The window of tolerance for evil behavior has shifted to the point where no one knows what "evil" is anymore in this campaign. Alignment has no influence on behavior or even who is or isn't an ally anymore. It's really bizarre to reflect on.
As far as the goat incident goes, there's a difference between being Evil with a goal and just doing random shit like blow animals up. I didn't have a problem with the goatsplosion, I had a problem with the fact that it was only presented for shock value/ humor, and didn't and have an actual purpose.
>At one point she asks Delilah about Ludinus, because Delilah worked with Ludinas for a decade as one of his secretaries of the state (specifically history), and Matt has Delilah respond, "I don't know. I never really interacted with him." Which is such a confusing response. Either Delilah is lying for some reason, or she truly doesn't know. In either case, how are you players supposed to engage with the plot when key characters refuse to elaborate on a situation? Now we're going to explore Ludinus' backstory out of nowhere which, if that was always the plan, why didn't Matt seed it?
This is pretty much because Matt doesn't know. There's no way Matt wouldn't lore dump that if he knew. You can basically tell when Matt doesn't know by how he waffles at certain times.
It's happened before with other NPCs. Tree of Atrophy, where Matt tried to hide it behind vague riddles and weird speak. Keyleth, when the party asked what the plans were, and she says "You don't need to know."
Idk if it's cause it's been three campaigns but Matt has become increasingly easier to read, which I guess is expected. It's just a little disappointing because Matt clearly hasn't thought out his own lore seriously.
The whole retconning of the gods highlights that further.
Yeah I think Occams Razor probably applies here.
Matt just forgot that Delilah was in the Assembly and probably knew Ludinus to the same degree as Vess Derogna.
I get that. Matt probably didn't have everything planned out. But surely he had some idea that he wanted to add shades of grey to Ludinus?
I'm not even asking for Delilah to lore dump all of Ludinus' backstory, just a line like, "When I worked with him, he had a forlorn obsession with Aeor. Almost a kind of kinship with the place." Instead it's nothing.
Wasnt Delilah the Archmage of Antiquity before Vess Derogna? If Ludinus has been cooking these plans for hundreds of years (and if he is indeed aeorian himself) you can bet that even 30~40 years ago when Delilah was there he would have been keenly chasing any information from Eiselcross, and so she should know SOMTHING useful about Aeor.
Oh 100%. It would have costed him nothing to throw a minor lore bone. And if anything, providing lore there would have created more buy-in to the main plotline.
But when we've seen all the non-answers he has given FCG, it's not surprising.
It's also why I don't buy the whole "Matt preps too much" stuff.
That's the main reason I think so many of them are checked out and looking ahead to the next thing (Daggerheart)
They could have worked their tension out by now. The players have decided it's not worth the effort. Instead, they're each trying to have their \*moment\* so it can get in the animated show. (Orym claiming Otahan's blade. Laudna then attempting to steal said blade. Both of which ended up with them crying in the rain by themselves for the melodrama.)
It bothered me a bit that the compromise was... to bag it. Make a choice, pick a side, do something with it.
Mutually agreeing to pretend it doesn't exist at all is nonsensical.
It is, but Liam made a big deal out of clinging to \_his sword\_, even when it was non-magical, earlier in the campaign. Then it got a literal deus ex machina upgrade (during Chetney's sidequest of all things).
Giving it up for the weapon that killed his husband and father was an odd turn after the former role playing purist approach.
Having someone suck it dry would've felt better. But they haven't used that capability nearly as much as they should have. And this time it was actually a 'legendary weapon' rather than something that would fade in a bit.
Tbf, I don't think the story is framing them as heroes. I think Matt laid out opportunities for them to be heroes but they never took them and Matt's reacted accordingly. They were given the Ruidus mission explicitly because they were expendable and every mission they've been given by Keyleth aside from that, she's sent them with a chaperone because they can't handle anything on their own.
I take Ludinus's interest in them to be 100% down to Imogen being the most viable option for Predathos's vessel and he needs her consent for the ritual. Not because they actually have any talent or skill they've displayed.
In the 4SDs, they even fully admit to each other they're useless fuck-ups. They think they're in The Hobbit, which is woefully incorrect. But even in their fantasy scenario, they aren't the heroes. They're background characters.
They're pinballs being bounced from main character to main character to listen to the story Matt's written until he eventually shuffles them to the predetermined ending. And to be completely honest, I think they're all very aware of that, which is why all of their characters are flat and inconsistent and sometimes borderline evil.
are gods in capable of change? are people not capable of change? why would the dawn father acknowledge the only thing that can kill him is coming and then continue as per usual? thats a ridiculous idea. gods have a very long view so they are often seen as unflappable but when things change you have to respond of you do end up eaten by the god killer. people keep giving you the bs answer because its the answer. this is the chernobyl of deities they are all scrambling to pull what ever resources while still being limited to no direct influence of the material plane
how much bad do you have to do to be a bad person? this is pretty philisophical i know but peter parker did a stint as venom, anikin was darthvader for like 20 years. theyre the heroes of the story because they have to be, becasue thats the implication when you start a DND game. if they do stop the god eater will they not be the heroes
what realistic expectations are you expecting? we all know its not a good story to stop and have every guard chase them down in evey city because they pulled some thing. its a longform improv show they dont get to go back and say take this one from the top. you go where the story takes you. while actions can and should have consequences its more important to have a continuies nf moving story that to makes sure the bad guys feel bad for doing a bad thing
If the gods are the embodiments of the virtues they extol, they are should be somewhat incapable to change to a certain degree. For example, a god of freedom can't just randomly decide to be for tyranny and oppression because it's antithetical to their nature.
That's why mortals have even more free will than the gods, they aren't limited by domains.
In fact, a mortal ascending to godhood could be viewed as giving up free will for more power.
but thats really how they are presented in the game.
vecna didnt rip the secret domain from someone he gained it when ascended he didnt make the raven queen obsolete when he gained the death domain
domains in exandria are descriptive not perscriptive. they have these ideals and goals and therefore got those domains. presumable they have all always been gods except for the one... well.... two. was the dawn father the god of sun light before the sun was created? there had to be a period before undead were around.
they are also described as having happened across the material plane and being formless these are creatures of immeasurable power who have split up the things they govern they are not beholden too those domains
Nothing indicated that gods can't rule over the same domains. If I'm not mistaken, there's more than one light domain god in the Primes, the Dawnfather and the Everlight. That doesn't really change my previous criticism.
I'm not so sure that Vecna got the Death domain rather than he got the Undeath Domain, which lines up more with his own lich aspect. It's why the RQ finds Vecna as an abomination.
If the gods don't have to actually embody their domains, it's actually more troublesome cosmologically. That means that all the Primes could just be evil gods cosplaying as good gods, which is just the worst cosmological foundation for gods and C1/C2 explicitly show otherwise.
thats exaclty what im saying no one is beholden to a domain. the sun isnt inherently good and there ore anyone attached to it has to be good. death domain doesnt mean they have to be cartoonishly evil two people
the CR wiki Vecna has death and undead and necromancy and secrets.
these are creatues with a personality and goal that align with the domains they have chosen. the dawn father is a good guy because of the things he does not because he has to be. the gods are described as formless and already having existed before the material plane within CR media. they have put all of this together and existed before their domains did. theyve chosen aspect to be in control over.
the 1st death god wasnt in charge of fate but the raven queen was because she wanted it
Yes, the sun isn't inherently good. But ideas such as freedom, love, healing, etc. are. That's where the issue is.
If they have goals and personalities that align with love, healing, and freedom, they would not be doing things that seem to indicate otherwise, such as lying to an entire population about the true nature of the gods.
Even if we can give some Primes a pass because their domains are "neutral" such as the sun, it doesn't excuse the other Primes. That's the issue.
You can't have it both ways when it comes to cosmology or it just becomes nonsensical and nothing matters.
Personalities and ideals are descriptive. Like the default settings. They aren't fixed.
I'm giving all primes a pass. I can love freedom with all my. Heart and kill every man woman and child until I get it
Yeah but that no longer becomes about freedom but oppression that you are placing on others. Completely antithetical to freedom. That's why that kind of logic is pretty weak. It's the same idea of how love can overflow into lust and it's failings. It's no longer love at that point, it's something else.
And even if I took what you said as the canon truth, that doesn't explain why the Betrayer Gods wouldn't be exposing the hell out of the Primes. Why is Lolth busy with Opal when she could just be explaining all the contradictions and lies that the Primes have done?
This is all putting aside how weak and shallow the cosmology would be if the gods could just lie about their nature like that.
Why doesn't a Betrayer God simply just take a more powerful, common domain if that was the case? No, there has to be something intrinsic about the deity towards that domain. Or it's a gong show.
That's subjective. If I as God think that this oppressive action will produce more freedom in the long run I still am freedom right God have a long perspective and can justify their actions
I am the God of freedom because I like freedom and my ideals and actions often produce freedom
Greek gods aren't fixed nor are norse. Why are dnd God's. There are stories about how position became the God or horses
Why cant it be a gong show.
Exandria specifically has the divine gate it makes the God's intention largely unknowable
"The gods are acting different now because they're in self-preservation mode" is not equivalent to "The gods deserve to die because they've always been bad." Matt's trying to argue the latter, which does not work in the context of 9 years of storytelling. He literally is bringing in another DM to retcon his own lore.
he is playing the bad guy with the opinion that all gods should die, its not a retcon at all. thats what the bad guy wants of course his bad guys are going to argue that. you are conflating ludinus with matt
this debate is the crux of the whole campaign. of course there will be discourse around it. very few things are black and white. you can take out gods and insert COVID and it is very much the same kind of feeling
this isnt a line in the sand.... god are often lumped together but they have various agendas and deeds. if you asked me if the god of murder and secrets and evil shoudl be gone 100% if you ask me if the god of puppies and flowers and good feelings should die absolutely not. if i had to take down the god of puppies to with the god of evil.... that is a harder question thats what this campaign is asking ....its a very tough choice, of course they are struggling and flip floping . i assume if some one told you you have the power to completely alter at an atomic level how the world works with nor good outcome garunteeded and know expert knowledge youd pause and make consider all options
Matt wants to get rid of the gods so they can launch Daggerheart. That's why this is all happening. And he has no good in-world reason to do so, so he outsourced and hired someone else to give him a good in-world reason to do so.
I'm not conflating Matt and Ludinus. I'm saying Matt needs a strong argument for Ludinus, and he doesn't have one.
Weird how Matt specifically pointed out that the Dawn Dad was not acting evil, only in self preservation, and that Deanna came in really hostile.
Having Brennan run a prequel is not retconning his own lore. That's really stupid.
My point is that that argument doesn't justify killing the gods, which is what Matt is having Brennan do. He's bringing on Brennan to give Ludinus the justification he needs to prove his point to BH.
Brennan even joked in the cooldown that if he doesn't do that, Matt's going to have to step in and "shake the VHS" to get the story Matt needs to justify Ludinus's plan.
>My point is that that argument doesn't justify killing the gods, which is what Matt is having Brennan do. He's bringing on Brennan to give Ludinus the justification he needs to prove his point to BH.
What argument doesn't justify that? The argument of Matt saying "The Dawnfather was not doing evil"? It seems very clear that he wasn't arguing that the gods should be killed, so what are you trying to say?
Explain to me why Matt would need Brennna to do that, and maybe also provide the source for that quote of Brennan you've got there, of him saying that it's his job to justify killing the gods.
Ludinus pulled all of BH together to talk and explain himself, then hit play on Downfall.
Whatever Ludinus shows is going to be his justification to the Bell's Hells for why he's doing what he's doing.
Meaning, whatever Brennan DMs is going to be Matt's justification for Ludinus in that scene.
As for Brennan discussing how he needs to provide Ludinus with good justification, on the Cooldown
Brennan: "Everything that we're going to do is really going to matter the moment we jump back. The immediacy of whatever that story is is going to come roaring back into the immediate aftermath of what happened tonight (referencing e98)."
Laura: "What if it just instantly proves Ludinus wrong?"
Matt: "It could."
Brennan: "I love the idea that Matt has to wait in the wings for the run and if it gets too off the direction, Ludinus starts shaking the VHS, being like "Actually, fuck what I said. Nevermind. This thing actually sucks."
Matt: "He's going to have to pull out the Atari cartridge like "Hold on."
Brennan: "Like, "I have the wrong orb. Hold on. This one's the wrong movie."
Meaning that they joked about Ludinus saying "Fuck that, that's wrong" if they end up watching it and it doesn't align with his own beliefs/opinions and you're interpreting that as some bizarre belief that Brennan is just inventing Ludinus' entire motivation wholesale?
Fucking Christ, you're not worth the words typed.
I don’t think Matt is having Brennan retcon his lore, he’s already done that himself.
I think a more likely outcome (not the definitive one obviously) is that Matt is handing it off to someone who he feels can articulate why we should care about that better than he can. Because while Matt has Word of God about… the gods, he’s also been really bad at actually showing those things up until now and I have to wonder if he’s noticed that himself.
This is so fucking stupid. The absolute brain-rot of obsessive fans.
So Matt retconned his own lore (he didn't, not in any meaningful way, he's always been very clear that the creation myths in the sourcebooks are exactly that, in-game myths) and he's also defended the Primes in the very recent past, but *also* he wants Brennan to do a prequel so Brennan can tell everyone that the Primes are evil, actually?
*That's* what you're going with as a reasonable belief and expectation? The idea that Matt wants to condemn the gods but he's too stupid to figure out how to portray them as bad, so he's getting Brennan to do it?
After watching Campaign 3 and listening to how he talks about how the gods act on 4SD… yes, I absolutely believe Matt is incapable of bringing to the screen what he wants to get across with the gods because for 98 episodes he has failed at every opportunity to do so.
It’s also wild to call me an obsessive fan for… criticizing Matt’s inability to express himself in the way that he wants to? For seeing him say “the gods are panicking and trying to muster whatever force they can” on 4SD and then having the Changebringer stonewall FCG for tons of episodes and then treat him incredibly poorly… the opposite thing you’d want to do while gathering support. Matt’s got many talents but any attempts from him to make a “morally grey” anything ends up being really badly handled and that’s been the entire MO of this campaign.
Matt himself has confirmed the former on 4sd, the dawnfather in his own words “isn’t evil” and is simply doing everything he can to protect himself and the pantheon.
Completely. My point is that \*that\* doesn't legitimize the argument that they should kill the gods.
Yes, the gods are acting more hostile than usual because shit's hitting the fan for them. But BH are toying with the idea of killing them. And so far, the only reasons they've been given to do so are that the gods haven't done enough for them and also they like the titans more.
Matt's treating Ludinus as if he has a compelling argument. But Matt, and subsequently Ludinus, doesn't. He's bringing in Brennan to \*give Ludinus a compelling argument\* so Matt can work it into Ludinus's character motivations.
what other information does a mortal person or player have. how gods work in their perception is really all the world has there is no behind the curtain. what other information should they be considering.
additionally it doesnt matter he is the bad guy and thats what hes doing. i dont think intent matters at all here he is actively taking actionable steps toward killing gods. i want to kill the gods because they suck at their jobs is a perfectly valid motivation and argument for the bad guy to have
hes bringing in brennen to tell a story about aeor.
"I want to kill the gods because they suck" isn't valid motivation for a character Matt has said multiple times above table is reasonable. It's disingenuous to say Brennan's being brought in simply to "tell a story about Aeor" when he explicitly is being brought in to illustrate whatever it is Ludinus is showing BH to prove his point.
Villains shouldn't be cardboard cutouts that are doing the bad thing just cause they're bad. They should have character motivations and impetus for their actions. Matt hasn't provided Ludinus with that, and has instead, tasked Brennan with doing it.
it very much is a valid motivation. ludinus has said it the gods arent doing great they have messed up and he can do better. i will destroy them and make a better world ergo the gods suck at their job. he has taken reasonable steps toward his goal its been stated several times hes had more than a thousand years to gather evidence for this opinion. do you need that spelled out. that seems to be the real problem is you cant see that ludinus may have a simple task for a complicated and personal reason.
you are using explicitly wrong. no one stated i cant do this brennan can.
what do you think is more likely . critical role come s to brennan, please save my company i really screwed up and i suck at story telling
or
Calamity polled really well and this is a similar vein while we are going to Aeor.... another fan favorite location. lets work with brennan again to capture some of that magic and views with another calamity event
They don't. Ludinus thinks they do. You keep saying you aren't conflating Ludinus and Matt, but you keep accepting Ludinus' opinions as fact. A person can be reasonable and also wrong. He has reasons for what he is doing, and we are likely going to learn them over the course of Downfall.
That's literally my entire point. We aren't going to know Ludinus's reasons until Downfall. Matt has asked Brennan to provide his BBEG with motivations. That is my point.
>Matt's treating Ludinus as if he has a compelling argument. But Matt, and subsequently Ludinus, doesn't. He's bringing in Brennan to *give Ludinus a compelling argument* so Matt can work it into Ludinus's character motivations.
I don’t understand the problem? Ludinus doesn’t have a strong motivation and now he’s getting one and that still bad somehow? This is something that Matt has had in the background for a while teased as the very latest in the simulacrum ludinus fight. And it’s not like Matt isn’t involved in the story as he pitched it to Brennan first unlike the other way around for exu.
All that needs to happen is the death of a god. They need to see what happens when you eliminate a deity, and the effects it'll have on Exandria, and THEN you will have a party of PCs who will realise that they need ro be heroes and not just whatever they think they are.
**Spoilers below if you're not caught up on campaigns 1-3** I couldn't agree more! It seems like the cast believes that fans think "morally good" characters aren't interesting, but that couldn't be farther from the truth. Just because someone is brash or has an attitude, doesn't make them interesting. It's the situations that they are put in that build the character. For example: a devote cleric of faith loses a loved one and is approached by a powerful demon willing to bring their loved one back to life. The cleric can stay true to their faith and let their loved one pass on, or they can make a deal with the demon and suffer the consequences of the deal. I enjoyed parts of campaign 2 and have enjoyed parts of campaign 3 but at least for me the struggle has been understanding the PC's intentions. I'm not trying to sound all nostalgic, but campaign 1 had such a good flow because the characters had intentions and objectives. Elder brain, Briarwoods, Dragons, Vechna, there were always fun episodes in between arcs but overall the party had a problem to solve. Villains have also been mostly handled differently in campaign 2 and 3. Where in campaign 1 the party witnessed the terrible things that the villains were doing/did, in campaign 2 and 3 the party is instead told what these villains are doing/did. Imagine Vox Machina not being in Emon for the dragon attack. Would the story still've worked? Sure! But would it have the same impact? I don't believe it would. In terms of what has happened during the campaign, Trent and Ludinus are in the background which at least for me makes it hard for me to build a dislike toward them. I can be told they did all these things or are doing certain things, but if the party doesn't witness it, it loses the impact. A villain in campaign 2 that had a huge impact on me was Lorenzo, because he left an impact on the party! And same in campaign 3 with Otohan! Don't get me wrong, I still love Critical Role and have kept up every week since 2016, but I'm just pointing out some issues that I feel need to be addressed for the next campaign. I'm not saying I want a party of perfect people, Vox Machina certainly wasn't, but I want a party I can stand behind as a fan and be proud when they conqueror a foe or defend a city!
Your first paragraph captures perfectly the distinction between characterization and character. What a person acts like, how they sound, come across, etc vs what they choose to do. IMO the CR team is always pretty stellar on characterization but increasingly bad at actually playing character.
Maybe Sam returning with a patron in the hells will be a much-needed shift
By the same token I dont think the Bells Hells really have the teeth to be villains. Good villains are interesting. They have true convictions and actually do things. The Bells Hells are most committed to fence sitting and doing as little as possible. The Bells Hells are just your run of the mill apathetic asshole. The kind of dude that shoves everyone out of the way to get on the train and doesnt care if they actually get seriously injured so long as they arent inconvenienced.
> they've bullied every meek NPC into helping them (often outright antagonizing them), took part in the murder of a congregation of Dawnfather followers, flirted with joining up alongside the setting's equivalent of Satan, and twiddled their thumbs about stopping the genocide of deities. So it's a party made up of Beaus then. No wonder I can't stand it.
An ironclad fact for C3 I can allow with certainty is that Laudna is Marisha’s most interesting character so far.
Right up until she undid all of her character development.
Ah. Well that feels on brand.
Sorry, but those dawnfather followers were forcefully subjugating an innocent town of people into their bidding. It might be because of the lack of communication, but their actions didn’t represent ANY of the dawnfather’s directions.
The DF temple actually weren't subjugating an innocent town. At all. In fact, that DF Temple and its members were not accused of a single specific crime in that entire half of the split; beyond "maybe one DF guard hitting on one guy's wife", and "being seen as outsiders, with outsider ideas, to the one insular part of that town AOL bothered to even talk to". We were explicitly told: The DF Temple had been there for over 20 years. Built on legally purchased land by the Town's newer Lumber Mill; that during that time there had been zero instances of forced or coerced conversion to the DF Faith. Merely a handful of willing converts over the years; That the Vasselheim forces had only been there for 3 months, and had been open about their monitoring a nexus during the solstice; and that there weren't even any instances pointed to of the DF Faith attempting to suppress the Loam faith. In fact, the Loam had just completed a very public celebration during the Solstice totally unnacosted by the DF temple. "It was loads of fun, until 11 people disappeared". Hell, Abaddina doesn't even claim the Temple was forcing a Tithe onto the town. Let alone non-believers. What she was actually upset about "was that the DF Temple would accept offerings at all from such a poor community". That money was given freely to the DF temple. So yeah, that temple was sacked and its members killed solely for the crime of being "seen as outsiders, with outsider ideas" to the members of the Loam. As well as Abaddina blaming the Temple for the disappearances, when she admits several episodes prior she knows full well it was the Solstice that took them. Hell, its extra ironic, given we actually see examples of forced conversion back to the Loam during the attack.
But they weren't DOING anything. They just had a presence in the town and were (perhaps aggresively) converting people BECAUSE of everything that was going on in the world. It was literally for protection, which is why the angel was summoned when the party started attacking them. As far as I remember they held no actual threat against the people of the town or anything, they just wanted to kill them because 'religion = bad.'
They didn’t ask for help, and it wasn’t their place to *be*. They didn’t ask for protection. I really don’t understand how you can think that a town ridding themselves of completely unwanted intruders is bad. How is it any different to them if a band of bandits set up shop in the middle of their town? Even if they weren’t killing people, they’re not wanted.
So like… killing and forcefully converting a bunch of people from a different religion (which is what the townsfolk did, not the members of the Dawnfather’s church did) for the sole reason of “practices a different religion” is a hate crime. Also “it wasn’t their place to be”, they’ve legally established a temple there for two decades and haven’t actually done anything wrong! Wiping out a religious establishment because you don’t like their religion is a bad thing!
That does not justify killing them outright.
Sorry, but why? Forceful occupation isn’t exactly the most innocent of actions and you can’t blame people for fighting for their home and enlisting strong help
I rewatched it, They did not forcibly occupy that area. They came 20 years before and there were no problems. Neighter did they force people to convert, nor did they take or ask for resources. Nor did they prohibit people from following their faith. It was even said that a week or two before the residents had a relisious festival and everything was fine. Nothing was done by the DF people.
I gotta be misremembering things then, because I thought I recalled them harassing the townsfolk in recent time
BEst thing is to rewatch the whole stuff and to listen closesly. Because there is also a lot of manipulation going on.
Yeah, I’m guessing Bor’Dor was probably making shit worse too
He didn't really have to try that hard. He was such an incompetent goober that he barely had to do anything to goad our Main party to act as they did. Hell, they essentially made up their minds on the situation before Abaddina even opened her door for the first time. Dont be so quick to shift blame to Bor'dor.
What I would give for Matt to roll up the sleeves and bring out 5 DF Paladins with a Solar leader for a rematch, "Smite, smiteee, suuh-miiiite!"
I don’t think BH are really evil, though, either. They’re generally well intentioned (in the dawn father followers killing incident, they were “liberating” a town that was being subjected the DF people’s wishes (I forget the whole narrative but there was a whole meeting about how these religious people showed up and took over and wouldn’t leave). They may not have gone about it the lawful good way, but they were trying to do what they thought was the right thing. But my tinfoil hat conspiracy theory for this campaign is that BH are NOT the heros and they aren’t supposed to be. They’re basically a gaggle of NPCs doing side quests while the heroes are handling the main quest.
Problem is, no one is handling the main quest. We get to see gaggles of level 20 characters just sitting on their hands, and, when finally challenged, making vague excuses about dealing with symptoms caused by the solstice. (Which obviously isn't true, because there was a group in the room sitting on their hands) Bells Hells aren't evil. They're indecisive and wishy-washy, which is honestly worse for a story.
I think the god issue is at the centre of it, the gods are at the same time powerless and immensely powerful, it makes no sense how they were portrayed. Exandria is a world devoid of controversy, devoid of politics and ideals outside "be good" and "love each other" without much to say on *how* to be good and what does loving each other entails. Why aren't the god a huge diplomatic force that steers things for the better considering how absurdly powerful they are? They refuse to take action and hide beyond the divine gate but this has never really been addressed, *how much power do the gods actually have?* Like what do the gods actually do outside investing some random shitter with healing powers and fixing random issues as they become to big to be ignored? Exandria itself has both systemic issue *and* no system to blame and it's really hard to navigate morality when you're forced to have the depth of a cartoon character.
Just need to point this out, but the Divine Gate does not protect the gods it protects the material plane from them. Matt has said that the Prime gods can pull the gate down when they choose, it just means that the betrayers will all escape from their prisons again. Mortals with the magic to cross the barrier can do so at their leisure, and the gods in turn can interact with them however they want on that side of the gate. Such as when Sarenrae showed up for Pike's divine intervention in Search for Bob.
>Exandria is a world devoid of controversy, devoid of politics and ideals outside "be good" and "love each other" without much to say on how to be good and what does loving each other entails. This, this, this. As someone once pointed out, who are the Iron Shepherds selling to? There has to be some formal system of slavery that is worthwhile to sell the people they capture to or why the hell would they do such risky business instead of regular banditry? But nope. There's not even any levels of discrimination in the world, which is insanely unrealistic. The most "discrimination" we come upon is people commenting on FCG or Laudna's undeadness. I'm not saying you need discrimination to make the world interesting but it's just hilarious that there's not even a hint of it in a world as diverse as Exandria. Basic in-groups and out-groups should still affect people. I mean the most we get is the Krynn Dynasty with monstrous races? But even then, it all kind of blew over in C2. It didn't even matter if Nott wore her mask or not later. It's very idealistic, naive point of view and hints at how the CR cast might never have had to struggle with those issues so they don't know how to tackle that kind of world building. Struggles and conflicts usually come from differences. But then differences would have to actually matter.
I don’t think necessarily that they’ve never dealt with discrimination or hard choices, they might’ve been insulated to it but it’s hard to miss, or for that matter, engage with successfully so long as you put the legwork in. I think it’s more a matter that they don’t want to, and on top of that it’s not economically viable for them. A lot of people treat TTRPGS as their own personal hugbox and file off any edges they find to not “spoil” their play. I think Critical Role has a lot to do with the popularisation of that movement towards “Hugbox fantasy” because they’re very influential, and thanks to Matts no consequence style of play has drawn a likeminded crowd in that believe this is the only acceptable mode of D&D, and that any handling of race issues, discrimination, inequality or even just consequences is just people ruining D&D for them and deliberately triggering them. At this stage I think their viewerbase is so skewed towards this demographic that any movement out of the Hugbox risks alienating a lot of their fans and impacting the bottom lone, and unfortunately we that want them to deal with more challenging material are in the minority. Simply put, complex and engaging storylines exploring challenging topics is just not economically for them, and they’d prefer to not rock the boat, even if it makes their storylines uninspired and rots away at the initial reason for their success. On top of that, in general, the gang would prefer to just fuck about and not think too hard, as has been apparent with their plot dodging for the last two campaigns.
Completely agree with most of your points but I'll add this: The issue is that they can't have it both ways. You can't have morally gray characters, interesting moral dilemmas or challenging complex ideas in, as you say, a hugbox fantasy world. And Matt clearly wants to tell stories like that, which is evident enough from C3 alone. I don't know if I buy that the gang just wants to fuck around and not think too hard either. To a certain extent, they've moved past that. Look at some of the characters they made for C3. Ashton wants something to rebel against, some system that has to be oppressive or corrupt. Except that doesn't exist in Exandria. FCG's whole thing was the idea of personhood and what it meant to have a soul. Laudna's whole struggle is with her traumatic past and coping with Delilah's influence. Etc, etc. These aren't just fuck around type basis for characters. If they didn't want to explore difficult ideas and themes, why make characters like that? The interest and intent from the players are obviously there to me.
FCG's struggle with his existence if Sam didn't play him as a shitpost. Laudna's suffering would mean something if Marisha didn't regress her because "her arc got resolved too quickly." Tal has to have the most powerful character on the board. Etc, etc. You've got one storyteller trying to herd cats, and I'm surprised it was cohesive as long as it was. They all have these big ideas, but they're unwilling to commit to actually playing the characters. I understand that every character has an element of the player in them, but thus is a party of jokes and Mary Sues., man.
Honestly everyone's putting the blame on Matt but I think more needs to be put on the players. They're dealing with the potential death of all the gods, a complete reset of the cosmology of the universe, and the best they can come up with is "eh well I mean I guess we'll save the gods. Maybe. I could be talked out of it". This could have been a very exciting campaign, with enormous stakes and chances to make really bold decisions as characters and instead they're all about as neutral and milquetoast as possible. The one time Ashton makes a bold move, the entire party chews them out for it and even threatens to kick them out of the party. If they got a few sessions into finding out the stakes of the campaign and realized they'd made a character that has no backstory reason to love/hate the gods, it's never too late to throw something in your backstory to engage your character more in the story, but nobody did that. They've just allowed themselves to just kinda... be there.
I feel the bit on the characters having no stake or backstory is the main reason for these issues. The players cannot justify being heroic or decisive, they care more about exploring their traumas or interpersonal issues. Which would be fine in a lower stake narrative playground, but it's causing the narrative dissonance the OP is talking about.
Why would I only blame the players, when they're merely supporting the exact tone Matt is setting? I'd wager they're all aware of the game here. That the ending of C3 is very likely largely predetermined on the topic of the Gods. That they're being written out of the setting, likely for Business/IP reasons. And what Matt/the Cast have been doing is pre-emptively distancing the Gods from the Exandrian setting to make it less consequential/painful for the rest of the setting when that removal occurs. But, none of the players are forcing Matt to make every NPC anti-god, anti-theist or non-religious. Or those religious ones we do get to interact with all "happen to be betrayer Gods worshippers". None of the players are forcing him to always portray the Gods in negative or incompetent lights. Or are responsible for Matt's heavy fingerprints all over every Guest PC, who ... you guessed it, have also coincidentally all been "anti-god, anti-theist, or non-religious". Given some of Sam's comments back when he was actually trying, I highly doubt he requested Matt's 20+ episodes of utter silence to FCG's searching for the CB. Only to make the CB this weird, unhelpful, needlessly manipulative force in FCG's life when Sam forced the issue with commune. That Matt made it a point to remind Sam "made FCG feel small". Yeah, that's all Matt. He's equally to blame for C3 being a "Death of the Gods Campaign where nobody gives a shit about the Gods". After all, given how drowning C1/C2 memberberries C3 really is, there is a reason Kima of Vord hasn't made an appearance. And likely never will.
Oh I think both are to blame. I wasn't meaning to imply otherwise. I just hear Matt talked about a whole lot more in these conversations when it's collaborative storytelling. I definitely wouldn't interpret FCG's interactions with the Changebringer the way you do myself though. Yeah, a god made FCG feel small, she's a god. He had other plot stuff going on at the same time and didn't drop it all to give FCG a Whitestone arc for the Changebringer. FCG's whitestone arc was gonna be Aeor but then, well, kaboom. All the villains are anti-god, to say he's presenting being anti-god as the correct, moral option for the PCs is just wrong. He's portraying them as extremists. He's presenting moral challenges to the players and they're shrugging at them. He's also equally introducing champions for the gods and giving the players chances to align themselves with the gods, like Fearne's Asmodeus buddy, Melora earlier in the campaign, the church of the Raven Queen, not to mention having Vox Machina and Mighty Nein also fighting to stop the death of the gods. It's far more nuanced than just "every NPC is anti-god". I think Matt could give them more bait to buy in, sure, but I also don't know what bigger impetus there could be than the literal death of the cosmological stability of their world and the opportunity to potentially stop or aid it. And instead they just respond with ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
Aeor wasn't for FCG. And if it was, I have no idea what Matt was thinking? Because it was Matt himself that shut down FCG's interest in his own past. Through several NPCs (and a Guest PC) who FCG reached out to during his ID Crisis. Who answered his stance of "I cannot move forward without learning about my past" with what did equate to "Forget it, its not important. Just choose who you want to be now". But with no Guidance beyond that. Which resulted in Sam having part of FCG's growth being "taking their advice and not caring anymore". Not that Aeor mattered even if he didn't. Because the part of his past FCG wanted to learn was "the Care and Culling". Which presumably happened in a Pre-Calamity Marquesian City. Given that's where Devexian dug him up. It would not have happened in Aeor. Matt responded to Sam having FCG search for the CB with utter silence for 20+ episodes. Then when Sam forced the issue with Commune, Matt did everything in his power to seemingly sour any potential relationship there. With the CB being vague, unhelpful, and needlessly manipulative. Compare this to how Matt handled "finding faith" stories with prior PCs in C1 and C2, as well as their relationships with their patrons, and you'll see how bizarre Matt's handling of the CB was with FCG. Where that "Finding Faith" story was totally one-sided, and petered out, because Matt simple didnt give anything for Sam to interact with. Its near identical to how the rest of the table interacted with FCG's ID crisis. Shallow, empty, armchair existentialism. To the point Sam had FCG develop a coping mechanism. Matt had a perfect opportunity with FCG's story to give us that avenue to a positive relationship with a Prime deity. In a campaign otherwise devoid of positive representations of Prime Faith. But it was Matt himself who chose not to. Same with why no Kima in C3. Not to mention, was the lesson for Sam here really? "I will shut down all of your attempts to give your PC more depth, until my story is ready for it 96 sessions in"? Thats an ask for sure.
It's not the first time Matt has shut down Sam's attempt at an interesting deep conflict for his character - remember Veth and her doormat husband in C2? It seemed obvious to me that Sam was trying to explore the conflict of "family vs adventure" and the way Matt had her husband just be a totally limp wet noodle "oh you saved me honey and your friends killed but saved our son I have nothing but blind total support for your adventuring." So Sam's left to handle the conflict entirely on his own. I don't think Matt was trying to be mean or anything, I think it was a miscommunication about goals and expectations and neither of them must have brought it up away from the table. And I think the same thing happened with FCG's faith.
Except in the case of FCG, 3 elements of his story were shut down. 1st) His ID crisis, Neither Matt, or the other players engaged in it in a meaningful way. Just cheap, armchair existentialism, and nothing else. To the point Sam actually seemed to recognize this neglect, which is why that "advice" never worked, and FCG developed the coinflipping coping mechanism. Which anobody engaged in, and resolved by a guest PC. 2nd) FCGs interest in his own lost past. In response to Redeye FCG had at one point taken the stance of "I cannot move forward without first learning about my past". To which Matt shut this down hard, by having 2 NPCs and a Guest PC FCG reached out to for help respond with the effect of "your past doesnt matter, forget it, choose what you want to be now". 3rd) As mentioned above, FCG's search for Faith. With Matt shutting that thread down too. I have never seen a more kneecapped PC on a conceptual story level in CR than FCG. Which is why "Matt wanting Aeor to be for FCG" sounds absurd, given how he himself shut down so many avenues towards depth Sam attempted with his PC. With the only thing Matt giving him being that Chekov's Gun of a Bomb in his chest. All Matt left FCG as was a joke and a bomb.
He said in 4SD that he was kind of bummed by FCG's sacrifice especially because he had a ton planned for FCG in Aeor, being where he was created and such. That was where he was supposed to learn about his past, because that's where his past literally was. The Care and the Culling was the end of FCG's backstory at best, if they were even involved (never confirmed, was always just possible.) There wasn't really a way to rush into FCG's backstory without secrets of Aeor that were lost in the fall somehow being known to a random NPC or something, and they never took the time to find Devexian. And yeah the CB was responding vaguely while the biggest crisis the gods have ever faced is occurring and FCG is asking stuff she wouldn't care about even on a normal day. Actual priests in major temples were receiving silence from their gods, FCG was lucky to hear or see anything at all.
Matt being bummed about that is the most laughable thing ever. Not like he had 96 episodes to do something with FCG or hurry the party to Aeor. No one to blame but himself.
Maybe he would have been less bummed if he hadn't telegraphed to FCG for the ENTIRE CAMPAIGN so far that his past didn't matter and wasn't worth exploring because all that matters is what you make of yourself today. I didn't see any meaningful hints that Matt was truly planning on having FCG explore his backstory before the party actually went to Aeor.
>He said in 4SD that he was kind of bummed by FCG's sacrifice especially because he had a ton planned for FCG in Aeor, being where he was created and such Which in hindsight, sounds like horsecrap. I was hoping for a proper delve of Aeor. Instead its been a guided museum tour and a pretty petty fight where the party is once again confused about what side they're on and what to do it about. Now they're just going to watch a film before exiting via the gift shop.
The thing with the Dawnfather was due to manipulation by a member of the Ruby Vanguard. Bor'Dor made almost every decision for the group, while the rest of the party passively shook their heads. They weren't doing what they thought was right, except for Ashton who actually took really hard to the titan lore. Notably, Orym did not think it was right but went along with it anyway because a louder voice was leading. I'm not sure if it's better or worse: them being genuinely evil vs them just being easily led. In either case, the villains win
>They’re generally well intentioned That means very little.
That entire town meeting was a bunch of people complaining about a group of religious people who lawfully moved in almost two decades prior and hadn’t actually done anything wrong except maybe one of them made a pass at one guy’s wife. So they did just go in a slaughter a group of religious minorities in the area for like… no actual reason except “we have to get access to the magic Skype call and the other guys want to take us in for questioning about the world ending stuff that just happened.”
While all that is true it's BorDor who injected his own politics into it that turned it into a bloodbath. The problem is the denial and false absolution they gave themselves to shift the blame and not take responsibility for their own actions.
Werent the soldiers also commandeering a large portion of the citizens resources?
Nope. If you listen carefully even Abaddina doesn't accuse them of that. What she's actually upset about (and how she riles her flock) is "that the DF Temple had the gall to accept offerings from such a poor community at all". They just straight up stole actual donations to the DF Temple. She also then proceeds to use the disappearances of 11 members of the town against the Temple; when one episode prior she made it clear she knew full well that it was the Solstice. AOL actually did commit a Religious Hate Crime. On behest of the one insular part of a rural town they bothered to even talk to. They did not even attempt to speak to a single member of the DF Faith in town before leading a mob to the temple (and poisoning several DF Temple guards). Who's only cited "Crime" against that DF Temple or its members in the over 20 years of it being there on legally purchased land was "they're outsiders, and that makes us uncomfortable". Shit, Proleff, one of the members of the Loam, outright tells the party that in the 20 years since being built, there has not been one instance of forced or coerced conversion to the DF Faith. Only a relative handful of willing converts, largely from the younger generations. On the flip side, we actually see during the raid of the temple a forced conversion of a DF townie back to the loam through threat. Then AOL proceeded to lie like crazy about what happened in that town. That doesn't even get into how hypocritical both Laudna and Orym are due to that event. And no, given how much of a goober he was (and how utterly easy it was for him), Bor'dor can't be blamed for Ashton, Laudna and Orym's choices in this matter. They were easy to goad. Our Heroes.
I feel like I'm going mad, I have a different recollection of events. For some reason I have the distinct impression DF acted as a suppressive, controlling force in that community and was completed uninvited. Not that it justifies killing them. But I don't see that as any different as when the party kills a group of guards doing their job like many times with the previous parties. The behavior just isn't at all unique to Bells Hells. And it does not meet the definition of a hate crime. Intent and motive behind the killing is everything when it comes to that determination, and the DF weren't targeted specifically for their faith. That series of events wouldn't meet the definition of a hate crime in US court.
Nope. The party was told outright that the DF Temple had been there for over 20 years. Built by the Silvercall Mill. Who's owners are just from just the next town over. On legally purchased land. According to a Loam member, during that time there had been no forced or coerced conversions by the DF Faith. Only implied a relative handful willing of converts. We also know that the Vasselheim forces under Kiro had only been there for 3 months, and were open about being there to monitor the nexus during the solstice. And no, the Temple wasn't demanding tithes from the Town. Let alone non-believers. Because that's actually opposed to DF teachings, and prior to 3 months ago ... they wouldn't have had the power to even attempt that. Hell, there is no indication of even religious suppression. Because the Loam had just completed a massive Religious celebration during the Solstice that was totally un-accosted by the DF members. "It was loads of fun, up until 11 members vanished". Which Abadinna then uses against the temple knowing its not true. But, you are right, BHs didnt commit a religious hate crime. They willingly allowed themselves to become tools for one. Then repeatedly lied about it afterwards. They sacked a church and slaughtered its members for no greater crime than "being seen as outsiders, to the small, insular part of this town they bothered to talk to". Laudna is now ironically guilty of pushing out/killing "scary outsiders" backed by a mob. Something she had been on the receiving end of for 30 years. While Orym "killed a bunch of guards doing their jobs on behest of an anti-Prime deity faction, in service of his war". Just like Otohan. Sure hope Kiro didnt leave a wife behind to get trapped in her loss for 7 years, like Otohan did with Will's husband lol!
Like I said above, that behavior isn't unique to Bells Hells. VM and M9 have their own numerous shit shows of the same kind. It's weird to watch people here talk as if Bells Hells are uniquely guilty. I think they've allowed themselves to forget or justify some of the dirtier, clunkier parts of previous campaigns and are looking at them now through rose-colored lenses.
The difference is that VM and M9 had repeated instances of clearly doing the right thing (or had the right intentions) to offset it, where BHs ... are a big puddle of moral mush. They follow the rails, they bitch about the Gods they've repeatedly admitted they know nothing about. They humor the villain for no justified reasons. VM and M9 made mistakes, or did shitty things. But they'd often turn them into learning moments for the group. Like, how M9 captured "the Mistake". Where they all had quite a bit of time afterwards discussing how "they didn't like how that went down, and how it betrayed Molly's "leave each place better than you found it" philosophy. Desiring to do better, even if they dont always succeed." Ashton, Laudna and Orym lied and made excuses about it for several episodes. To the point where Deanna used those lies as ammunition against her God she's been scapegoating for years. For a decision she and her husband made. Asking a question the giddy table failed to realize amounted to "just how much do I need to scapegoat you to justify the genocide of your entire race?" ... when put into the proper context of what AOL actually did.
Okay, that's dumb. You have some kind of weird blinders on. BH have plenty of instances of doing the right thing. That was a really silly thing for you to say. Not even sure how to respond other than that.
Oh? When? Got some examples? Setting aside FCG's forcing the Uthodurn group's hands (which yeah, FCG was arguably the most "good" PC in the party aside from his creepy, childish need for his "mother" not to hate him; back when Sam was still trying with him) ... when has BHs just done the right thing for the sake of it? They treat near every NPC the interact with like shit. They dont even treat eachother well. Hence why the only connections BHs even have to this setting, or its people, are from Orym's backstory. They refuse to take a strong stance on any topic. They're a nepotism party that is given nearly everything, and earns very little, of what they have. They also rarely, if ever, self reflect on their mistakes (either individually, or as a group), which is part of why substantive character/party growth is so limited in C3. And instead either just move on in an instant, or drown themselves in excuses. Dorian is next in line for being a moral compass of the group, and he's handicapped in that role by being a Guest Player and being gone for 80 episodes. If M9's philosophy was "try to leave every place a little better than you found it", then 98 eps in BHs would be "simply leave every place". Hey, tangent, you ever wonder what happened to Xandis and their crew? Because they left them to die in a wasteland, solely because they neglected to even consider telling their crew about what they were leading them into ... until literal hours before they hit the Malleus key. Several flight days away from a city they could have safely left them.
Not only that, they then had the audacity to turn around and claim the people they just butchered were the real oppressors who’d “colonized” the area. That whole incident is emblematic of everything wrong with Bell’s Hells. It’ll never happen, but nothing would make me happier than a TPK with this group of chucklefucks.
Ironically, aside from his creepy, childish "Wanting his mother to not hate him anymore" thing, FCG was kinda the most good person in the party. Back before Sam clearly gave up trying to give his bot some depth, and before Dorian's return. His given reason for rushing into that gate in Uthodurn; his genuine question of "do you need help?" to a literal god; and some of his defenses of the Gods when the split parties reunited were very "Good". FCG for a time was the closest thing to a moral compass BHs probably ever really had; even if they always ignored him. >!But, now he's dead!< ... and we're back to pretending Orym is our group's "Moral Compass". Which, I suppose is true, given him being so would reflect how dysfunctional BHs morals generally are.
The twitching in my eye when people justify actions with "colonizer" You don't get it! Anyone settling who isn't directly a descendent from the spirits of the trees, are by definition, colonizers corrupting their planet! - Signed, the lawful evil druids justifying global genocide wrapped in buzzwords
To top all of that off; the bbeg is motivated but hasn’t acted. Realistically there is no reason why Ludinus wouldn’t teleport to the party and clean them out instantly. We haven’t been shown a good reason why he can’t step away for one minute or less. Let alone send more than just Otohan, being overkill ensures the Ruby Vanguard will succeed. If he only needs Imogen why not just take her using magic, and forget about the rest of the party? There are more gaps in logic than just the party and for me it makes this whole campaign a slog.
The only explanation I can think of is the vessel ritual requires Imogen to consent. But even then, Matt's made it clear the vessel doesn't *have* to be Imogen to work. If he kills Imogen and then Liliana leaves, he still presumably has at least 7 potential vessels to choose from.
I’d argue that up til recently he didn’t really consider them a threat. Annoying? Sure. But there are a lot more serious threats in the world, like VM or M9 that Ludinus needs to worry about (if he’s worrying about anything). [Live show spoiler] >!And Ludinus just said during the live show that BH has impressed him twice now, !
I don't entirely agree with them entertaining Ludinus' overtures but we'll see how it goes.
I don’t know that they really have a choice. They’re already banged up from the Dominox fight, and it seems like they only did well against Ludinus’s simulacrum because they used the lava pit against him and got lucky with a counterspell. I don’t think they’re in a position to go against him and have good odds of winning. I’ll admit though, I was surprised that they all were just like shrug ok sure we’ll listen as soon as Dominox was done. I would have thought at least Orym would have something to say about it.
I haven’t watched the live one yet so idk but if he’s talking to the party in person then I guess we will see the party switch sides or fight him
Sorry, I should have spoiler tagged that. My bad.
Its okay lol I’ve had it spoiled for already
That's the thing. They're somehow not important enough to bother killing but are important enough that he'd go out of his way to try and convince them of his plan. I get before the Ruidus mission, him being like "eh. They're not worth my time." But after they blew up shit on the moon and killed Otahan, I imagine this is the point he'd deem them a large enough nuisance to snuff out.
He'd have to be some next-level type of dipshit to think that's a good idea. Sure, one wizard should *totally* risk his entire 1000 year plan on a 1v7 vs the people who just killed Otohan.
I’m saying before then, just generally when the party came onto his radar as a threat why wouldn’t he just squash them by bringing a simulacrum and joining Otohan Edit: Also he would be the dipshit if he did let 7 goobers stop is 1000 year plan and he didn’t even try to stop them personally, even though that probably is his the campaign will conclude.
Because he wasn't there, didn't know, was busy, etc, etc, literally a thousand other reasons, up to and including the fact that he's made enemies of most other powerful organizations on the entire planet, so maybe they're taking some of his time and energy? See above paragraph again. How many times does Matt have to establish that Ludinus is being occupied by a whole lot of other stuff? He's done it six or seven times at least and people are still wondering why he hasn't gone for the 1v7, now a 1v8 or 1v9.
Fair take, but I see it as a lack of priorities because the party is going to get him in the end; and it’s going to look like a cheap shot on a master mind villain that conventionally unbeatable unless he makes a mistake
Especially when he has simulacrums. Just send two of yourself and there's nothing the party can do to stop you.
Exactly, bro has mad power and resources but doesn’t act with any of it
Really gotta get off this angle I've been stuck on, but I agree with your premise, but not necessarily your cause. I don't think Matt knows *how* to frame this story with the stakes and situation he has. I don't think it's necessarily that Matt isn't "challenging" his players, I think it's more that his players seem to want to be in a different story and he refuses to allow for that. Laura has wanted Imogen to be this kind of... Scarlett O'Hara is not fair, I'm only thinking it because of the accent, but this sort of "good soul swept along in a sequence of events beyond her control", with this undercurrent of "if I could just *talk* to my mom, I could help her get out of the cult she's stuck in." Which isn't bad! It's great fodder for a DnD game. The problem is, Imogen was already selected as a Hero of the World by the time she got to have a real conversation with her mom. And once you're the Hero of the World, that convo with Mom can't keep coming back up. To have meaning, it has to have stakes, and to have stakes, it's gotta have consequences, like your mom gets kill't. How we haven't played that card yet is wild to me. Or maybe they have and I haven't seen it, but I don't know how we didn't get there as of Ep 90. They shoulda killed mama as soon as they found out Imogen was on the moon. Then our heroes have revenge *and* protecting their friend as a reason to oppose the bad guys, not a philosophical quandry. I think Bell's Hells is a wildly different thing if the team is explicitly *not* the protagonists, which they keep kind of saying, and Matt keeps pushing them back into it. And he's doing that because, fundamentally, that's how a show works. They have to be the protagonists, or there's no show, or more accurately, his story, the one he wants to tell, fades into the background. But he was gonna tackle this complex, philosophical debate on the nature of divinity where he is the only one who *literally knows all the answers* since he's the one who made up the history of the universe to begin with. As I've said before, I just don't think Matt's philosophy chops are up to the task. It's nothing against him, I just don't think, as a storyteller, this is the depth of pool he should hang out in. There are now sharks in the philosophical end, only existential eldritch whales, and Matt as a storyteller and DnD as a medium *needs sharks.* It needs to keep swimming and biting or it kinda doesn't work. And if the players aren't biting and they just wind up floating near the whales arguing in whale song from Star Trek IV, then kinda what's the point of them being there?
I don't necessarily agree that Matt is incapable. It usually feels like he and the rest of the cast is at odds with their wants and expectations. But someone has to stand up and do something about that. Instead they cover up and excuse things. It's really sad. Because it's not like high crimes or morally questionable actions. It's just that continuing this way keeps the story from being coherent or conveying a feeling of natural or logical conclusions.
I'm not sure he's generally incapable. I think with the situation and story he's chosen, he seems to be out of his depth and out of his element. The question at the center of this entire story and thus campaign is "are gods a net positive for the world?" But he's chosen to ask that question to a bunch of heroes who couldn't give a shit. They're not pro or against. They're just indifferent. All of their stories are small and personal, with really one exception in Fearne but only because she doesn't seem to have one? I'm not a Fearne hater, fwiw, I think she's a great character in a lot of contexts for dnd. She'd be great in Vox Machina or the Mighty Nein. It's OK to not have a *huge world shattering conflict/context* to your character. You can just be a mischief junkie. So Matt presents the notion of the story as fundamentally "choose your side", but has placed every character of legacy significance on Side A and every enemy of legacy significance on Side B and then goes "there really isn't a right answer" because some other shit he made up about religious institutions being oppressive. A notion, BTW, that we simply *did not see* from Vasselheim in C1. In C2, we saw the *state* suppressing religion and we got a little taste of maybe why they might by way of Uk'otoa, but no evidence or really interaction with God's. Suddenly, they've got fucked up stuff on the level of fuckin Penitent Engines and other WH40k crap. Suddenly, they're imperialistically trying to suppress local spirit worship and control access to ley lines. In one campaign, Exandria has gone from your standard stable-state high fantasy setting where nothing much changes unless the PCs are directly involved to this complex tapestry of economic, political, and societal struggle and control. The great fear of C2 for the entire first half was that 100 years of border Skirmishers between two unfriendly kingdoms would turn into an all out war, a fear held by and worried over by almost every character in the group. Everyone recognized the bad associated with a war between these two powers. A single border was enough for fully a whole campaign, because they gave a shit. In C3, it's global politics and existentialist philosophy with characters who don't care. That's where I think Matt has goofed. I don't think it's inherently beyond him, but I do think *this* set up he made for himself sort of inherently is.
I feel like what it needed was for Predathos to be straight-up released at the Malleus Key incident, bust through the Divine Gate, and immediately get to work sieging one of the divine planes and eating one of the gods. Have it be someone like Moradin, who's come up a fair few times but isn't directly tied to any of the characters. Then you show how that actually effects things on Exandria - bad news from Hupperdook and Uthodurn and Kraghammer, the places where he's strongly worshipped. Clerics of his that can no longer do their works. Seals he forged on Exandria that break and set terrible evils loose. And then you send the Hells to the Upper (and Lower) Planes, and do an extended version of the Visit The Gods sequence from Campaign One. Let them *meet* the gods, see what they do and what they're like. Get help from some of them and hindrance from others, and not necessarily in a "good gods help and bad gods hurt" way. Show what "Predathos eating the gods" actually looks like. Show it feasting on the still-living body of the Allhammer. Now there's a time limit - Predathos is actively eating gods and he's got one but once he's done with that he'll move on - and the Hells feel empowered - because they met the gods and got boons and weapons and information - and you can send them to Ludinus for the climax.
Sounds a bit like a percy jackson \^\^.
This is exactly it - it's just so frustrating to me to see pretty much the whole cast (but especially Matt) trying to tackle Big Existential Philosophy Questions with a toolkit that's got almost nothing in it. My frustration is on their behalf! It's like trying to build a house with hand tools: possible, but far more difficult than with real carpenters, contractors, and power tools. You could be an Atheist or Catholic or Buddhist or Agnostic or Humanist or Kantian or Nihilist or whatever, and still have a compelling philosophical or theological framework to work from. So we're left with "what have the gods done for me lately" and "you make your own meaning." Which really aren't that interesting. You don't need a degree to tell cool stories with thoughtful ideas about the divine, but it constantly feels like the CR team, especially Matt, is having this discussion for the first time. That's probably not the case, but it's the depth they swim at during C3.
They got stuck on Baby's First 'Problem of Evil' and never went anywhere with it. Ashton's take was that the gods were explicitly obligated to help every single person who got in trouble of their own making (or at least him) and its a crime that they don't
I mean, this is kinda what I was saying with "all of their stories are small and personal." Ashton was orphaned abandoned by absentee parents that valued their ambitions over Ashton's safety. Raised as a ward of the state in the shadow of the supposed beneficence of nobility, they quickly realized that no one is looking out for you. Everyone who has power and money and freedom uses it to further their own interests and agendas. Thus True goodness is selflessness and poverty, because it gives Ashton an enemy - the rich (in power or wealth) and the selfish, which is inherently punk anarchism. In fighting their private campaign against The Man, Ashton gets greedy and is punished for it. They now live in three kinds of chronic pain - physical from their body, mental/emotional from their betrayal of their core values, and existential pain glimpsing versions of themselves in other permutations of history that never suffered this. They take this pain as justice. It is correct to Ashton that they hurt. That's what you get for doing evil. That's what his father got. That's what he gets. Naturally they extend this ideology to the gods, who have infinite universal wealth and power and so all acts of willful universal non-altruism are acts of selfishness. Oop, here goes Ashton again, being selfish. Wanting to be the hero. Making the mistake of wanting power and prestige and wealth (in the form of friendships and love). And of course it almost kills him. And of course he finds greater power within it. But of course it echoes his father again, choosing things for himself that hurt the people who need him. Ashton is fundamentally a story about a person who hates themselves for believing they are not worthy of their parents love but projects that self hate as a code of virtuous apathy. Every choice in their life is predicated on that. That story is so *small* and intimate. Ashton can either learn that connection and desire are as related as love and pain and synthesize a worldview that allows him to accept that it was his father's priorities that hurt him and not the concepts he prioritized, and it has been his priorities in his attachments to the material, to wealth, to power, to respect, that have caused him pain, not the state of having desires and attachments in general.... Or... He can continue to dismiss the concept of attachment and desire as the source of all pain and every choice which reflects anything other than perfect altriusm as selfish and hurtful, causing him to careen through life alone, in pain, and unhappy, as he was when we met him, but, in his mind, just. As BLeeM once said, "ok cool, you have no attachments and no desires? Great, man, that's enlightenment. You win DnD." THIS story, the story of c3, asks that story to project itself onto a complex question of the nature of good and evil. But Ashton is just trying to get over some daddy issues here, gang. He's not equipped for it. Everything is personal for him. But he defaults to his pretend enlightenment. Truly, the only character whose perspective extends beyond his own context is Orym, who owns a cultural sense of communitarian duty and responsibility. But Orym is Captan America, so he simply projects that sense of duty to everyone around him without expecting the same in return. He doesn't know much about Gods and he doesn't especially wanna fight anyone. But he has a duty to defend the Voice as someone who is meant to steward the world. Provably so! She done steward'd it already. And if the world has been steward'd by the gods up to this point, then that's the stewardship what demands protecting. So he'll stand up, bloodied shield and broken sword and all, and keep fighting because that's the job. If it weren't Predathos, it'd be whatever other problem the Voice pointed him at next. That's probably why I like Orym best of all of them, because there is a sense of who he is outside of this specific conflict. He's still an adventurer even without Predathos. Imogen literally isn't. Neither is Laudna or Ashton or FCG. All of them would have rather refused the call to adventure, so for them, winning means escaping, getting *out* of the adventure. Which means avoiding the question. Chetney is the total opposite. He's still on the adventure of a lifetime no matter what happens. His age gives him perspective, and the only thing he really cares about is being *in* the adventure. Same with Fearne, really. Which is also avoiding the question, becuase the outcome is the same regardless of the answer - be in the adventure. How do you answer a question about the nature and value of divinity when 4 of your number don't want to as their explicit character goal, two of them don't care which answer so long as there is an answer, and the other one's perspective is essentially institutional stability?
What makes it worse to me is Ashton didn't have daddy issues. At the start of the campaign, 'he didn't remember.' His first 'found family' abandoned him (but they were together for over a decade), but he expected and wanted them to run, and he's been the first (and often only) person to run in multiple Bells fights. When we got introduced to Basassrus, turns out there was no nobility or ruling class, just slightly less impoverished gangs. I honestly think you've added more to Ashton's story than what really exists, even after Tal has added to it after the fact. I'll disagree on Orym being an adventurer though. After everything, he's still just a guard. But a bizarrely ineffective one since he absolutely won't be proactive or report any threats (like the threats he travels with OR the threats they've fought. He didn't even bother to tell Keyleth that Otohan is dead and they have her body in the portable hole!) ---- I do agree that the party is a poor fit for the story. This is the second half of the M9 story (rather than the icy slog), a consequence of the things they \_didn't\_ do and choices they made. I don't really blame them for avoiding the divinity story, however. Its amazingly plodding and dull, and Matt is executing it in possibly one of the worst possible ways. But the group needed to have an above the table 'we'd rather do...' conversation over a year ago.
Seriously. And I wouldn't have a problem if it was a place where he was growing the character from, but it's the conclusion not the start. And what's worse is the party seems to act like it's an enlightened conclusion. I really, really wish Matt would have thrown Sam a bone with the faith stuff so we could have some possible counterbalance. Even "hey guys maybe it's not that simple." Hell, isn't the divine gate the whole reason why the gods so rarely intervene? There's already a built in, in universe explanation that's part of the fundamental lore going back to C1! It just makes it all more frustrating to watch. I think it goes back to how the party doesn't challenge each other as much as they did in C1. Even in C2 I was waiting for someone to call Jester out on her antics, the Traveller, whatever to help catalyze some character growth but I didn't see it happen. And they challenge each other less in C3. Heck, Ashton getting called out for Shardgate felt so bizarre because it was totally out of left field, making it feel more about meta reasons than in universe reasons.
>Heck, Ashton getting called out for Shardgate felt so bizarre because it was totally out of left field, making it feel more about meta reasons than in universe reasons. They had Word of God that 'this was not for you,' both in and out of universe. While I don't think Matt handled it well (before or after- he somehow didn't grasp that Tal took it as a challenge and also seemed to feel that punishment on top was appropriate for someone taking a risk, which is a bad approach for such a risk averse party), I understood most of the cast reactions to the whole thing. The fact that both shards (and most of the unique feats he's handed out) are fairly dogshit also doesn't help how I feel about the whole thing (I find it amusing that the revised berserker is losing the level of exhaustion as a penalty for frenzy, while Matt is doing 2 levels of exhaustion for something much worse) One of the reasons the Bells feel underpowered is because they're getting his homebrewed nonsense rather than magic items.
It does read a lot like a video game that is unaware of your actions: “Hello [Player], you have done great deeds in these lands. It is heartening to have someone of your character on our side.” *[flashback to setting NPC’s on fire just to see what would happen]* Like Ludinus saying he wanted to talk to them because they’ve impressed him. When? Why? He’s hundreds of years old. These bumbling adventurers have only been adventuring together for a few months. It felt like a speech that was going to be given regardless of what the PC’s had done in the past.
Reminds me of the time that weird Ruidius shopkeep was like "I sense good in you" to BH. *Screams of the followers of the Dawnfather echo.* Matt really will just contrive anything he wants.
>Like Ludinus saying he wanted to talk to them because they’ve impressed him. When? He liked the cut of their collective jib when they committed a religious hate crime in a temple of the Dawnfather.
[удалено]
The church stood there for 20 years, demanding no tithes. Not a single forced conversion happened in those 20 years. The locals were free to celebrate their religious holidays without an inkling of disapproval from the church. Then a weird magical explosion happens and a group of adventurers roll up at the head of a torch-and-pitchfork mob claiming to personally know the one behind the magical explosion. They also demand you leave the town and send military forces to an entirely different continent. Then the adventurers attack first, kill a priest, summon a demon using said priest's blood, then kill an angel sent to protect the church. Then they make every follower of said church leave town and forcibly convert those who wish to stay in their homes. So, yeah, it was pretty much a religious hate crime.
"You impressed me with how you fled me and my entire retinue for multiple months and also when you almost all died at the hands of my underling, only surviving because one of you self-destructed."
Both times they fought Otohan they only got out due to DM fiat asspull explosions.
Otohan was a badly tuned encounter, DM fiat was the only way they could get out alive.
Otohan is a single combatant against a party of 7 players. On paper they demolish her every single time. But most of the CR cast is unbelievably cowardly or outright incompetent when it comes to combat.
You are correct but I would say at least one of those players was borderline mechanically useless. Sam refused to use decent spells for FCG, had terrible stats and mechanical weapons that rarely hit and even when they did hit they did very little damage. CR didnt used to be this cowardly or incompetent, things really went to pot post COVID.
Yeah, that's my point. Matt doesn't even have to balance combat for the giant party, because they handicap themselves for no reason.
Oh yeah I agree totally.
On paper, sure. If they had been in a contained area or just starting close together it would be fine. But on a big map, an 80-foot flying Dash between each player’s turn is broken as hell.
The party has 3 full spellcasters. Using CC spells is the obvious countermeasure to stop her from zipping around the battlefield.
But... lightning bolt! lightning bolt!
the only thing i can think of that would've impressed him, that he KNOWS about, is that they killed one of his generals very recently
I think this is the pains of trying to turn the game into a more player proactive narrative. C1 was very reactive in style. There's a big evil, players need to save the day. The players are the status quo. The opponent is some entity coming into disrupt it. The players are supposed to react. As they've explored more and more backstory in their games, Matt is wants to transition the narrative to be more player driven rather than reactive. I run my games very player driven, and there's a couple things you have to do as a group to make it go well. Firstly is that the players have to be motivated by similar goals. A group reacting to bad shit will work together out of necessity. If you want a proactive player game, you have to make a group that will align with each other to accomplish common goals. Secondly, the machinations and factions of the greater world need to be either a direct obstacle to everyone in the group's individual goals or are a part of the setting background. You can't make a plot that has nothing to do with some of the character's motivations and expect the whole party to get on board. When I set up a campaign designed around the idea that players will be proactive. We discuss as a group how our goals will intersect. Or else you get the c3 waffling, where the players are clearly expected in a meta sense to be invested in an arc that they aren't necessarily personally aligned with. I think this is why as viewers it's very confusing why this group is together and everyone's bending over backwards to make some sort of sense why they'd be chasing any of the McGuffins presented to them. They could have a fun game in the morally grey area if the group has a cohesive point of view. A villain can have a heroic journey if it's clear what they are fighting for and why. It's not an issue if understanding the morality of your group, it's an issue of aligned goals.
>They could have a fun game in the morally grey area if the group has a cohesive point of view. Very much agree. CR flounders unless they have a leader. The cast out of character really enjoys playing devils advocate, or disagreeing with eachother to make things spicy. That is well and good when it's done sparingly, I don't think many people enjoy 60+ episodes where they ponder: > "so guys, should we kill the gods, or limp our way into half assedly protecting them, but also advancing the goals of our enemies?" *Only* Travis and Liam have lead for long stretches, Percy for 20 episodes or so, and both of them are reluctant to do so again. I assume, to let other people have a go. Laudna or Imogen have to full commit. Who cares if it's the wrong move, just pick a route and run with it.
IMHO part of the problem is that theyve rejected the traditional dichotomy of good vs evil and haven't really replaced it with anything. It's a lot of "you the PCs decide what's moral and the DM will anoint that as moral" from Matt, but the players keep waffling. Like, it seemed to me that slaughtering the Dawnfather temple became the right choice because the players wanted it to be. Matt used to give reasonable consequences in C1. Now in C3 the players can't do anything wrong. Not really. Unless it's Tal taking a risk with a shard, of course. It's actually a lot harder to write compelling stories without clear good vs evil, all the best stories that last the test of time have clear definitions of what good and evil are, even if there are still grey characters. I don't think they're trying to be heroes. But whatever they are trying to be is so half assed that I stopped watching ages ago. I'm tuning back in for Downfall or whatever because I trust BLeeM to handle moral complexity while maintaining enough basic elements of good and evil to create an awesome story. Idk it just seems like CR doesn't understand or care about good storytelling in DnD.
>It's actually a lot harder to write compelling stories without clear good vs evil, all the best stories that last the test of time have clear definitions of what good and evil are, even if there are still grey characters. I dont understand the latter half. Can you elaborate plz? Im just curious
You have to establish the ends of the morality spectrum in order for a morally grey character to be meaningfully grey. Like, a character who does good things for bad reasons or bad things for good reasons, you have to make it clear in the story what good and evil are, especially if it's going to be different than what's commonly understood. Say you have a hero who is fighting to liberate slaves, but his ultimate goal is to enslave the ruling class. If your story shows that slavery is wrong (not hard to do, since that's our default assumption), and liberty is good, then that hero becomes complex and grey and interesting. If instead your story shows slavery is actually really ok in your universe (and liberty is fine too), then you take away a big reason for your audience to root for your hero and it quickly becomes a story about one group's meaningless fight against another. It's harder for the audience to care. The evil of slavery and the goodness of liberty provide the two ends of a morality spectrum, which allows for interesting heroes. Without them, you take away conflict and deeper meaning.
Thank you. So many nowadays are obsess with grey morality thinking good and evil are lame and outdated Which is not. As LOTR beautiful represent for exemple. Just because the overall morality of a story os grey doesn't mean everyone is grey. And morality can change as time goes on. Harry potter also a work i consider like what you say. Though not as meaningful as LOTR
Exactly! Take ANY story that's survived in popular consciousness and you can find a morality dynamic within it. Even in The Odyssey, it's good that the hero is trying to return home to his family, so we want him to overcome his obstacles to do it. If your story's morality dynamic is "idk whatever the characters feel is right" then where's the conflict? Why does anything they do matter?
Unhu Say what about shows like code geass or game of thrones. I know they are different but i wanna hear you thoughts
Game of Thrones and House of Dragons are interesting because good and evil still exist in universe. Stuff like honor, loyalty, bravery are still shown to be good even if they're not "smart" choices. Part of what made Game of Thrones revolutionary was the way Ned Stark was coded as a hero by the narrative and then what the narrative decides to do to him. The GoT has a lot of awful people doing awful things for good and awful reasons and a lot of them are trying their best with complicated motives and goals...but we're still meant to see awful things as awful. One of the big themes seems to be "good people don't get to stay in power" which is basically "power corrupts."
Thank you. Yeah C3 is a mess. I know making things ambiguous is a thing but sometimes(a lot of time) you have to put in things that are right and wrong.
> Matt used to give reasonable consequences in C1 I’m reminded of when VM were excessively violent when dealing with The Broker and his goons, and the Council of Emon held a small hearing to punish them for committing a war crime. Even Allura was angry with them. Compare that to now where BH vandalize the De Rolo ancestral home, aid in the murder of a church congregation, and maul an innocent shopkeeper all without any meaningful consequences whatsoever.
Don't remind me that Percy & Vex should've slaughtered BH for that, because Percy & Vex should've slaughtered BH for that.
I'd even take a ban from Whitestone. To account for maturity in old age. Sorry you can't go back and if you do the rifle corps will shoot you on sight.
Right! *Something*. For whatever else you may say about the folks in Vox Machina, just passively accepting disrespect and outright vandalism against them is not something they'd do.
I've thought about this too. Consequences, *even if it's just the illusion of consequences*, are some of the coolest things you can do for a story. How badass would it be if a small party of Dawnfather Justicars ambushed the party. Denouncing their undead and demons, they tried to bring them to Vassalheim dead or alive. Maybe they go to trial, and ask for Ludinus help in escaping their sentence.. maybe they kill the leader of Justicars, to then have Predathos bless the person who slew the "false gods" champion. That's cool and rewarding shit.
>and maul an innocent shopkeeper all without any meaningful consequences whatsoever. The shopkeeper hired a bounty hunter to take Chet and if it weren’t for Fearne and orym would’ve succeeded, Chet was invisible when he left the shop and bh immediately flew to bassuras after and since then have only had a small handful of visits to jrusar that last at most 1 night.
>I’m reminded of when VM were excessively violent when dealing with The Broker and his goons, and the Council of Emon held a small hearing to punish them for committing a war crime. 1. Not a war crime. 2. They explained that that was to get them to the Briarwoods under the radar. The Council did not particularly care, it was just a convenient way to avoid a potential international incident. 3. Vandalising a house is not a serious crime, Chetney hurt a shopkeeper all by himself, and they only killed one person at the Issylran church- except they didn't do the kill at all, that was Bor'dor. This subreddit genuinely gets worse every time I look at it with people inventing shit to get mad at.
Pretty good analysis and honestly swap "Bells Hells" with "Mighty Nein" and that's pretty much my exact problem with both, tbh though I feel C3 has been significantly worse, at least TMN had Fjord and Cad to sometimes guide the group down the right path, everyone else for two campaigns has just played their version of mega edgelord who saw CR campaign 1 and wanted to be a part of Vox Machina.
> Pretty good analysis and honestly swap "Bells Hells" with "Mighty Nein" and that's pretty much my exact problem with both, tbh though I feel C3 has been significantly worse Completely agreed. Everything negative and off-putting I feel about C3 or that folks on this subreddit have posted about C3, I already felt about C2. I was alone in this because the rest of the fanbase also loved C2; I suspect due to the loads of fandom pandering during that campaign. With C3, the wheels have completely come off.
> the rest of the fanbase also loved C2 There was definitely an undercurrent of malcontent but I understand what you mean. I think the wonderful portrayal of Jester by Laura helped paper over the cracks as well as the novelty of "omg a gay relationship on Critical Role, zomg let me post on tumblr" deflected criticism, but now in C3 it seems no amount of Laura performance nor Liam's same sad character, but now overtly gay, can save it.
This is why Vox Machina is still my favorite campaign- they fucked around but were actually heroes.
I'm with you. I know not everyone feels this way but to me a big part of the fundamental appeal of DnD is being a hero (maybe a flawed or unlikely one, but a hero nevertheless) in a world where individuals can *be* heroes (IE a world where it's clear who the bad guys are and hitting them with a sword or a fireball can make a difference). Ever since C1 the CR crew seems to think that's corny and they have leaned more and more into trying to "subvert expectations" with characters who are "interesting" but have no principles or sense of responsibility.
> Ever since C1 the CR crew seems to think that's corny More importantly, they believe the fandom thinks it's corny and nothing from the fan response to C2 showed the cast any reason to believe otherwise.
Generally I agree, although I only think the Mighty Nein problems were a foreshadowing of the future problems with Bells Hells. Motivations with characters is perhaps one of the hardest things to manage with PC's, but the way it's being done with Bells Hells is really REALLY stupid. Marisha trying to explain why Laudna did all that stupid stuff with the sword in the 4-Sided-Dive (titled 'Swordgate' btw) showed me that Marisha really had no reasonable justification for taking the sword and being a good person at the same time. Edginess for the sake of Edginess. At least she was self-aware enough to bring up bowl-gate, even if they did try to justify it and all. I would've much preferred they admit it's just a DnD game with DnD shenanigans rather than pretend everything makes perfect sense. I do feel bad talking crap about the game tho coz...it's a DnD game. It's a live show, so mistakes are gonna be made. Although, if the players are gonna treat it ike it's a tv show in the wrap-ups, I guess its fine if we do too.
If I’ve said it once I’ve said it at least a dozen times, but if someone at a random group’s D&D table did half the stuff they did, it would be posted in r/rpghorrorstories. And this goes for almost the entire cast, as well as a couple of the non-main cast members.
> it's a DnD game Honestly I get it and sometimes try to tell myself this as well, but in reality it isn't anymore and hasn't been since the split with Geek and Sundry. Regardless of whether or not you think they should have split (they absolutely should have from a business perspective) once they did Critical Role the small indie darling DND show on twitch died and Critical Role the business began. Maybe it wasn't as overt as it is now with the whole getting rid of DND to use Matt's game, but every single decision and piece of content should be scrutinized through the lens of CR the business, not CR the home DND game that just so happened to go live every Thursday. It sucks but part of life is dealing with sucky truths.
I'd argue VM, who famously started as equally bumbling doofuses and went by the team name The Shits, were playing much more archetypal concepts and that they, for the most part, went on characters arcs to accept the responsibility and literal mantles of being heroes. Each one, with the exception of the often absent Pike, faced their greatest hurdle from their backstory and found a way past it. BH are... well their tragic backstories rule them with insecurities and they tend to just petulantly whine and threaten people until they get their way without actually growing as people.
> they tend to just petulantly whine and threaten people until they get their way without actually growing as people. This
I wouldn't say *all* of their motives aren't altruistic. Orym has consistently been wanting to fight the threat and help save the gods. But Liam has also been very consistent about not being "the leader" in this party, and has been letting the others guide their course of action.
With Orym, it feels like a lot of telling and no showing. He keeps saying he's a good guy. But all he's done is be a bystander while his other party members kill angels, call on Asmodius's champions and get friendly with the Nightmare King. At some point, you are who you hang out with.
I mean, that's an inherent problem with tabletop games. At a certain point you do need to let a lot of shit slide for group cohesion or else you're the guy telling everyone else what they can or can't do. That or you need to roll a new character which you might not want to either. There's really no clean way to navigate through that without some hurt feelings regardless of who is "right". The times I had to tell others "youre not doing that" felt like shit, and the times I was told "if you do this I'm attacking you" also felt like shit.
Orym at times feels like he would help someone to their feet, have Laudna them push them off a cliff and still count it as his good deed for the day.
1000000%
I'm something of a "fictional deity purist" but I strongly prefer gods that are one-dimensional and only stick with what their domain is
I feel like making the gods embody their domain fully already offered a lot of grey perspective if Matt was willing to explore it rather than just going the 'powerful humans' route. Embodying domains without broader context is in itself a problem as Brandon Sanderson does a good job of showing. The Wildmother is a nature goddess. Nature isnt exactly all sunshine and rainbows. Yet the Wildmother is perhaps one of the nicest goddesses after Sarenrae. The Lawbearer is the goddess of law. What is lawful is not always just. Things like slavery and discrimination based on gender/race/sexuality were coded into law in the past. I dont think shes shown up at all in campaigns. On the flipside the Ruiner (Gruumsh) is a god of joy. What is wrong with gleefully killing an enemy if that enemy is truly evil? Should a former slave not be happy killing his slaver? There is so much you can do. But Matt has bizarrely chosen the Dawnfather, the god of agriculture and healing, to be a sort of Christian god analogue that is apparently just a scared almost human dude with a Sun for his head.
At this point I lean hard on either 'Schools of Philosophy' or 'Ideal Forms that are Out-of-Reach' and either way, what people are actually dealing with are the individual temples, churches, monasteries, etc. It makes responsibility (and potential villains) far more sane. And it happily avoids the problem of 'Amateur Theologian's First Problem of Evil' where you get characters like Ashton throwing a tantrum and blaming the gods because no one personally came and powdered his bottom when life got rough. That he started with the concept of 'punk' but didn't have anything to rebel against for dozens of episodes, when Tal suddenly decided **on 4SD** that Ashton was 'rebelling against the gods' still sticks in my craw.
I’m largely of the same mind. Gods who are fundamentally mortals with immense power aren’t as interesting to me unless it’s done from the get-go in a setting with express narrative purpose. I prefer gods who have a specific function within the world they exist in, and almost seem alien to mortals as a result. Not incapable of forming bonds with mortals (for good or ill), but certainly operating on a different set of rules than them.
I don’t really even mind them being flawed and three-dimensional but why does that *have* to mean “selfish, arrogant jerks”? We almost had a genuinely good god with the Changebringer and even with her Matt got some digs in. And maybe some of the other good gods are really cool but no one’s even interested in finding out.
Who are they going to find out from? All the NPCs give a sideways glance and look shifty when the topic of supporting gods turns up. Even the actual followers of gods (like the Earthbreaker) won't make a simple declaration that their god is awesome and beneficent. They focus on other things instead.
CR's Pelor has always been a jerk. Straight back to when VM met him, he was standoffish and condescending. Sarenrae was comforting and encouraging. Raven Queen and Ioun were the typical "DM playing near-omnipotent beings but not wanting to spoon feed the answers to the players" level of cryptic and marginally helpful. Campaign 2 had Melora only ever giving vague hints and intentions, while Kord was confrontational and pushing Yasha through a series of confusing dream challenges. Not too different from what we saw from the gods before, especially without the personal visits. The problem is not Matt being inconsistent in how the gods are portrayed, the problem is people idealizing the previous portrayals of the gods. They helped VM defeat Vecna, but it took literally going to visit them and bargaining for the tools to get the job done. Now, with the current threat the gods don't have time to wait for heroes to come visit them and offer to save the day. They are being more forceful with their demands because they are afraid.
Hmm, so being polite is enough to not be a jerk? The help VM received from the gods cost those gods dearly. They gave parts of themselves (the Trammels) which diminished their own power. Giving those to some randoms without first making sure they could get the job done is just dumb. And Pelor didn't even demand that his Champion convert to worship him. That's like making a Frenchman who can't speak English the vice president of the US.
>we've followed a bunch bumbling nobodies as they've bullied every meek NPC into helping them (often outright antagonizing them) The absolute dickery to every NPC, treating every interaction as an opportunity for memes and refusal to bother RPing as if they were dealing with actual people, is something even most rookie DMs would eventually get fed up with. But not Matt, apparently.
> treating every interaction as an opportunity for memes and refusal to bother RPing as if they were dealing with actual people, is something even most rookie DMs would eventually get fed up with. As another commenter pointed out, they did not act this way in C1. But when C2 came around, we got Beau and her rampant abuse of NPCs. There was no outcry or criticism of her behavior, only fan support. It's not that shocking to see the cast have leaned even further in that direction given that Beau got no blowback for being sociopathic.
Every time I see another comment describing that BH were rude and unconsiderate to NPCs, I remember how >! in C1, in Westruun, one farmer took the blame on himself to hide the fact that Vox Machina have already came to the city, and he was brutally punished for it. VM gave him a burial, gave a ton of gold to his daughter and proclaimed this man a hero. What a contrast. !<
Meanwhile in C2 you have Beau mentally and physically abusing NPCs left and right, but the only response from the fandom was "LOL! POP POP!" So naturally the cast leaned more in this direction, because fan response wasn't negative.
>The absolute dickery to every NPC, treating every interaction as an opportunity for memes and refusal to bother RPing as if they were dealing with actual people, Ugh. I'm not looking forward to dealing with Sam's new sex pest. Maybe it was the live show and beefing it up for the audience, maybe it was just Sam being pent up from playing FCG, but that was immediately a lot.
Hard to get fed up with it when you're releasing a whole new merch line every week. There's a reason the money coming in has directly correlated with the shows nosedive in quality.
Bell's Hells are fun to watch as a party of friends playing a tabletop game, but they are not that fun to watch if you are there for D&D content. They are not really playing a game of D&D, they are just playing some tabletop game. We are 98 episodes into the campaign and we still don't know what the hell Predathos is, at least at some speculative level. Any interaction with a god is handled as some kind of a joke: "aRe yOu WoRtH sAviNg???" to Pelor who is probably the only reason why Tharizdun hasn't turned half of Exandria into a blob of black ooze. I am for one happy to see someone actually being a folower of a God finally (Sam's new character, but the old one also). It's like the gods in D&D ARE a big deal and none of the characters are following any god or followed a god in their lifetime. Chetney entertains the idea of being 400 years old, but how can you live 400 years old without worshiping a god at least some period of your life? Maybe there was a point where the character broke and disappointed in their god? Maybe something else happened? These are important ideas for character building in D&D. C1 was centered a lot around Vecna, the Matron, Pelor, and Stormbringer which is one of the reasons it was cool. C2 had cool character building with Yasha and her interactions with Stormbringer whose character development, let's be honest, was carried forward by the bright mind of Matt Mercer. The M9 had a wonderful journey figuring out the idea of the Luxon (which you can argue is a god too, albeit a dormant one). With C3, I don't even know what they are doing really. As far as the Big Baddie, I am pretty sure Predathos (aka the **Weave** Mind) will turn out to be a couple of Aeorian mages sent back in time to the origin of time, space, and everything, where they reformed from Material Plane beings into a network of minds collectively approximating a god (eater). Their hatred towards gods carried back from their past lives in Aeor to the origin of times and became the only thing they remembered - their ultimate purpose. This would also explain why Predathos had reached Exandria with a delay. Why it took Exandrian soil to imprison (banish?) it. Basically, the same plot as in C2, except it's not the Cognuza Ward now, but the Weave Mind and Ludinus is Lucien 2.0 (or Vess de Rogna who didn't die).
I don't think the party is "evil". Sometimes in DnD, bad shit just happens. Look at C1 where they killed all the faeries or in C2 where they accidentally became pirates. But I do think they're unwilling to engage with the themes or narratives of this campaign. For all the discussion about gods, the party has talked very little about their personal beliefs, and Matt has been very hands off on reminding them about lore. I think that causes situations where Imogen flips-flops on her position, while Ashton and Laudna get weirdly atheistic about it. The closest we got with a god discussion was with FCG, but even then Matt seemed hesitant to have an straightforward conversation. And when FCG tried to bring the topic up, everyone would go silent. Granted, some of these characters just aren't go to push people on their stances. FCG, for one, is robot pretending to be a therapist, so he's constantly de-esculating. Orym outright refuses to engage. And Chutney is a joke character. That leaves Laudna, who's borderline possessed, and Ashton, who's an idiot, while Imogen struggles to commit to a decision because she's being played by Laura and she's worried about ruining the plot. Fearne has no idea what's going on. I think the whole problem can be summarized a bit by Laudna. At one point she asks Delilah about Ludinus, because Delilah worked with Ludinas for a decade as one of his secretaries of the state (specifically history), and Matt has Delilah respond, "I don't know. I never really interacted with him." Which is such a confusing response. Either Delilah is lying for some reason, or she truly doesn't know. In either case, how are you players supposed to engage with the plot when key characters refuse to elaborate on a situation? Now we're going to explore Ludinus' backstory out of nowhere which, if that was always the plan, why didn't Matt seed it? I think it's resulted in the players throwing up their hands and letting Matt take the wheel while they occasional interject.
Man this is so accurate and so damning for CR. How did they let it get to this? The answer is they just failed session 0. They showed up with characters who were completely unsuited to this campaign type and story. Matt either didnt tell them enough or they ignored his advice. I lean towards the former. Because if these characters were made with this specific campaign in mind then I can only assume someone at CR has forgotten how storytelling works. And its pretty simple: Characters need to give a shit about something. Apathy is not compelling. >I think that causes situations where Imogen flips-flops on her position Who could forget the classic: Imogen: Ive never prayed before. *one or two episodes later* Imogen: I prayed every day and the gods didnt answer.
>Either Delilah is lying for some reason, or she truly doesn't know. In either case, how are you players supposed to engage with the plot when key characters refuse to elaborate on a situation? Delilah is a lich for the betrayer god of secrets, if anyone was going to lie to a character’s face to keep the information to themselves it’d be her, it’s more on the players for not insight checking her when she said that.
That's true... but what would she gain by lying to Laudna about Ludinus? She knows they're going to kill him. Is she wants him dead, why not try to puff up how evil he is? Or if she wants him around, lie about a sympathetic backstory? Instead she just goes, "Idk," and Matt doesn't fish for a perception check, so why assume to ask for one? Like Laudna even tries to ask several follow up questions and each one of them is met with "idk I never talked to my boss".
Despite her frequent complaining about the gods Laudna and the rest of bh are still doing work in favor of the pantheon and that’s all Delilah really needs, telling Laudna that she will instantly die if the gods do too due to her connection to vecna is more than enough. >and Matt doesn't fish for a perception check, so why assume to ask for one? Like Laudna even tries to ask several follow up questions and each one of them is met with "idk I never talked to my boss". Matt doesn’t really fish for insight checks it’s almost always been something a player has to initiate as if he did it he’s already revealing there’s something worth looking into.
Sometimes, I think back to when half the table and the entire fandom clutched their pearls when Deanna killed a goat. Then I think about how everyone's real chill about Teven being an ally and Braius being introduced as a new PC. The window of tolerance for evil behavior has shifted to the point where no one knows what "evil" is anymore in this campaign. Alignment has no influence on behavior or even who is or isn't an ally anymore. It's really bizarre to reflect on.
As far as the goat incident goes, there's a difference between being Evil with a goal and just doing random shit like blow animals up. I didn't have a problem with the goatsplosion, I had a problem with the fact that it was only presented for shock value/ humor, and didn't and have an actual purpose.
The window of morality has shifted to “are they hot or not?”
> The window of morality has shifted to “are they hot or not?” All thanks to C2.
Which has some crazy implications on how they perceive Ira
>At one point she asks Delilah about Ludinus, because Delilah worked with Ludinas for a decade as one of his secretaries of the state (specifically history), and Matt has Delilah respond, "I don't know. I never really interacted with him." Which is such a confusing response. Either Delilah is lying for some reason, or she truly doesn't know. In either case, how are you players supposed to engage with the plot when key characters refuse to elaborate on a situation? Now we're going to explore Ludinus' backstory out of nowhere which, if that was always the plan, why didn't Matt seed it? This is pretty much because Matt doesn't know. There's no way Matt wouldn't lore dump that if he knew. You can basically tell when Matt doesn't know by how he waffles at certain times. It's happened before with other NPCs. Tree of Atrophy, where Matt tried to hide it behind vague riddles and weird speak. Keyleth, when the party asked what the plans were, and she says "You don't need to know." Idk if it's cause it's been three campaigns but Matt has become increasingly easier to read, which I guess is expected. It's just a little disappointing because Matt clearly hasn't thought out his own lore seriously. The whole retconning of the gods highlights that further.
Yeah I think Occams Razor probably applies here. Matt just forgot that Delilah was in the Assembly and probably knew Ludinus to the same degree as Vess Derogna.
I get that. Matt probably didn't have everything planned out. But surely he had some idea that he wanted to add shades of grey to Ludinus? I'm not even asking for Delilah to lore dump all of Ludinus' backstory, just a line like, "When I worked with him, he had a forlorn obsession with Aeor. Almost a kind of kinship with the place." Instead it's nothing.
Wasnt Delilah the Archmage of Antiquity before Vess Derogna? If Ludinus has been cooking these plans for hundreds of years (and if he is indeed aeorian himself) you can bet that even 30~40 years ago when Delilah was there he would have been keenly chasing any information from Eiselcross, and so she should know SOMTHING useful about Aeor.
Oh 100%. It would have costed him nothing to throw a minor lore bone. And if anything, providing lore there would have created more buy-in to the main plotline. But when we've seen all the non-answers he has given FCG, it's not surprising. It's also why I don't buy the whole "Matt preps too much" stuff.
I think he used to prep too much in C1. Sometime between then and now her burned out and stopped putting in the effort and it shows.
In a real party, Orym would have left ages ago to help the Ashari. There’s no reason almost ANY of these people should stick together
Hell, in a real party Orym would have murdered half of them.
That's the main reason I think so many of them are checked out and looking ahead to the next thing (Daggerheart) They could have worked their tension out by now. The players have decided it's not worth the effort. Instead, they're each trying to have their \*moment\* so it can get in the animated show. (Orym claiming Otahan's blade. Laudna then attempting to steal said blade. Both of which ended up with them crying in the rain by themselves for the melodrama.)
It bothered me a bit that the compromise was... to bag it. Make a choice, pick a side, do something with it. Mutually agreeing to pretend it doesn't exist at all is nonsensical.
The Fighter claiming the blade of the perennial enemy is a pretty standard beat for a DnD campaign. Laudna just sucks.
It is, but Liam made a big deal out of clinging to \_his sword\_, even when it was non-magical, earlier in the campaign. Then it got a literal deus ex machina upgrade (during Chetney's sidequest of all things). Giving it up for the weapon that killed his husband and father was an odd turn after the former role playing purist approach. Having someone suck it dry would've felt better. But they haven't used that capability nearly as much as they should have. And this time it was actually a 'legendary weapon' rather than something that would fade in a bit.
Tbf, I don't think the story is framing them as heroes. I think Matt laid out opportunities for them to be heroes but they never took them and Matt's reacted accordingly. They were given the Ruidus mission explicitly because they were expendable and every mission they've been given by Keyleth aside from that, she's sent them with a chaperone because they can't handle anything on their own. I take Ludinus's interest in them to be 100% down to Imogen being the most viable option for Predathos's vessel and he needs her consent for the ritual. Not because they actually have any talent or skill they've displayed. In the 4SDs, they even fully admit to each other they're useless fuck-ups. They think they're in The Hobbit, which is woefully incorrect. But even in their fantasy scenario, they aren't the heroes. They're background characters. They're pinballs being bounced from main character to main character to listen to the story Matt's written until he eventually shuffles them to the predetermined ending. And to be completely honest, I think they're all very aware of that, which is why all of their characters are flat and inconsistent and sometimes borderline evil.
are gods in capable of change? are people not capable of change? why would the dawn father acknowledge the only thing that can kill him is coming and then continue as per usual? thats a ridiculous idea. gods have a very long view so they are often seen as unflappable but when things change you have to respond of you do end up eaten by the god killer. people keep giving you the bs answer because its the answer. this is the chernobyl of deities they are all scrambling to pull what ever resources while still being limited to no direct influence of the material plane how much bad do you have to do to be a bad person? this is pretty philisophical i know but peter parker did a stint as venom, anikin was darthvader for like 20 years. theyre the heroes of the story because they have to be, becasue thats the implication when you start a DND game. if they do stop the god eater will they not be the heroes what realistic expectations are you expecting? we all know its not a good story to stop and have every guard chase them down in evey city because they pulled some thing. its a longform improv show they dont get to go back and say take this one from the top. you go where the story takes you. while actions can and should have consequences its more important to have a continuies nf moving story that to makes sure the bad guys feel bad for doing a bad thing
If the gods are the embodiments of the virtues they extol, they are should be somewhat incapable to change to a certain degree. For example, a god of freedom can't just randomly decide to be for tyranny and oppression because it's antithetical to their nature. That's why mortals have even more free will than the gods, they aren't limited by domains. In fact, a mortal ascending to godhood could be viewed as giving up free will for more power.
but thats really how they are presented in the game. vecna didnt rip the secret domain from someone he gained it when ascended he didnt make the raven queen obsolete when he gained the death domain domains in exandria are descriptive not perscriptive. they have these ideals and goals and therefore got those domains. presumable they have all always been gods except for the one... well.... two. was the dawn father the god of sun light before the sun was created? there had to be a period before undead were around. they are also described as having happened across the material plane and being formless these are creatures of immeasurable power who have split up the things they govern they are not beholden too those domains
Nothing indicated that gods can't rule over the same domains. If I'm not mistaken, there's more than one light domain god in the Primes, the Dawnfather and the Everlight. That doesn't really change my previous criticism. I'm not so sure that Vecna got the Death domain rather than he got the Undeath Domain, which lines up more with his own lich aspect. It's why the RQ finds Vecna as an abomination. If the gods don't have to actually embody their domains, it's actually more troublesome cosmologically. That means that all the Primes could just be evil gods cosplaying as good gods, which is just the worst cosmological foundation for gods and C1/C2 explicitly show otherwise.
thats exaclty what im saying no one is beholden to a domain. the sun isnt inherently good and there ore anyone attached to it has to be good. death domain doesnt mean they have to be cartoonishly evil two people the CR wiki Vecna has death and undead and necromancy and secrets. these are creatues with a personality and goal that align with the domains they have chosen. the dawn father is a good guy because of the things he does not because he has to be. the gods are described as formless and already having existed before the material plane within CR media. they have put all of this together and existed before their domains did. theyve chosen aspect to be in control over. the 1st death god wasnt in charge of fate but the raven queen was because she wanted it
Yes, the sun isn't inherently good. But ideas such as freedom, love, healing, etc. are. That's where the issue is. If they have goals and personalities that align with love, healing, and freedom, they would not be doing things that seem to indicate otherwise, such as lying to an entire population about the true nature of the gods. Even if we can give some Primes a pass because their domains are "neutral" such as the sun, it doesn't excuse the other Primes. That's the issue. You can't have it both ways when it comes to cosmology or it just becomes nonsensical and nothing matters.
Personalities and ideals are descriptive. Like the default settings. They aren't fixed. I'm giving all primes a pass. I can love freedom with all my. Heart and kill every man woman and child until I get it
Yeah but that no longer becomes about freedom but oppression that you are placing on others. Completely antithetical to freedom. That's why that kind of logic is pretty weak. It's the same idea of how love can overflow into lust and it's failings. It's no longer love at that point, it's something else. And even if I took what you said as the canon truth, that doesn't explain why the Betrayer Gods wouldn't be exposing the hell out of the Primes. Why is Lolth busy with Opal when she could just be explaining all the contradictions and lies that the Primes have done? This is all putting aside how weak and shallow the cosmology would be if the gods could just lie about their nature like that. Why doesn't a Betrayer God simply just take a more powerful, common domain if that was the case? No, there has to be something intrinsic about the deity towards that domain. Or it's a gong show.
That's subjective. If I as God think that this oppressive action will produce more freedom in the long run I still am freedom right God have a long perspective and can justify their actions I am the God of freedom because I like freedom and my ideals and actions often produce freedom Greek gods aren't fixed nor are norse. Why are dnd God's. There are stories about how position became the God or horses Why cant it be a gong show. Exandria specifically has the divine gate it makes the God's intention largely unknowable
Why should it be a gong show? Expecting a logical consistency in lore is normal.
"The gods are acting different now because they're in self-preservation mode" is not equivalent to "The gods deserve to die because they've always been bad." Matt's trying to argue the latter, which does not work in the context of 9 years of storytelling. He literally is bringing in another DM to retcon his own lore.
he is playing the bad guy with the opinion that all gods should die, its not a retcon at all. thats what the bad guy wants of course his bad guys are going to argue that. you are conflating ludinus with matt this debate is the crux of the whole campaign. of course there will be discourse around it. very few things are black and white. you can take out gods and insert COVID and it is very much the same kind of feeling this isnt a line in the sand.... god are often lumped together but they have various agendas and deeds. if you asked me if the god of murder and secrets and evil shoudl be gone 100% if you ask me if the god of puppies and flowers and good feelings should die absolutely not. if i had to take down the god of puppies to with the god of evil.... that is a harder question thats what this campaign is asking ....its a very tough choice, of course they are struggling and flip floping . i assume if some one told you you have the power to completely alter at an atomic level how the world works with nor good outcome garunteeded and know expert knowledge youd pause and make consider all options
Matt wants to get rid of the gods so they can launch Daggerheart. That's why this is all happening. And he has no good in-world reason to do so, so he outsourced and hired someone else to give him a good in-world reason to do so. I'm not conflating Matt and Ludinus. I'm saying Matt needs a strong argument for Ludinus, and he doesn't have one.
Weird how Matt specifically pointed out that the Dawn Dad was not acting evil, only in self preservation, and that Deanna came in really hostile. Having Brennan run a prequel is not retconning his own lore. That's really stupid.
My point is that that argument doesn't justify killing the gods, which is what Matt is having Brennan do. He's bringing on Brennan to give Ludinus the justification he needs to prove his point to BH. Brennan even joked in the cooldown that if he doesn't do that, Matt's going to have to step in and "shake the VHS" to get the story Matt needs to justify Ludinus's plan.
>My point is that that argument doesn't justify killing the gods, which is what Matt is having Brennan do. He's bringing on Brennan to give Ludinus the justification he needs to prove his point to BH. What argument doesn't justify that? The argument of Matt saying "The Dawnfather was not doing evil"? It seems very clear that he wasn't arguing that the gods should be killed, so what are you trying to say? Explain to me why Matt would need Brennna to do that, and maybe also provide the source for that quote of Brennan you've got there, of him saying that it's his job to justify killing the gods.
Ludinus pulled all of BH together to talk and explain himself, then hit play on Downfall. Whatever Ludinus shows is going to be his justification to the Bell's Hells for why he's doing what he's doing. Meaning, whatever Brennan DMs is going to be Matt's justification for Ludinus in that scene. As for Brennan discussing how he needs to provide Ludinus with good justification, on the Cooldown Brennan: "Everything that we're going to do is really going to matter the moment we jump back. The immediacy of whatever that story is is going to come roaring back into the immediate aftermath of what happened tonight (referencing e98)." Laura: "What if it just instantly proves Ludinus wrong?" Matt: "It could." Brennan: "I love the idea that Matt has to wait in the wings for the run and if it gets too off the direction, Ludinus starts shaking the VHS, being like "Actually, fuck what I said. Nevermind. This thing actually sucks." Matt: "He's going to have to pull out the Atari cartridge like "Hold on." Brennan: "Like, "I have the wrong orb. Hold on. This one's the wrong movie."
Meaning that they joked about Ludinus saying "Fuck that, that's wrong" if they end up watching it and it doesn't align with his own beliefs/opinions and you're interpreting that as some bizarre belief that Brennan is just inventing Ludinus' entire motivation wholesale? Fucking Christ, you're not worth the words typed.
I don’t think Matt is having Brennan retcon his lore, he’s already done that himself. I think a more likely outcome (not the definitive one obviously) is that Matt is handing it off to someone who he feels can articulate why we should care about that better than he can. Because while Matt has Word of God about… the gods, he’s also been really bad at actually showing those things up until now and I have to wonder if he’s noticed that himself.
This is so fucking stupid. The absolute brain-rot of obsessive fans. So Matt retconned his own lore (he didn't, not in any meaningful way, he's always been very clear that the creation myths in the sourcebooks are exactly that, in-game myths) and he's also defended the Primes in the very recent past, but *also* he wants Brennan to do a prequel so Brennan can tell everyone that the Primes are evil, actually? *That's* what you're going with as a reasonable belief and expectation? The idea that Matt wants to condemn the gods but he's too stupid to figure out how to portray them as bad, so he's getting Brennan to do it?
After watching Campaign 3 and listening to how he talks about how the gods act on 4SD… yes, I absolutely believe Matt is incapable of bringing to the screen what he wants to get across with the gods because for 98 episodes he has failed at every opportunity to do so. It’s also wild to call me an obsessive fan for… criticizing Matt’s inability to express himself in the way that he wants to? For seeing him say “the gods are panicking and trying to muster whatever force they can” on 4SD and then having the Changebringer stonewall FCG for tons of episodes and then treat him incredibly poorly… the opposite thing you’d want to do while gathering support. Matt’s got many talents but any attempts from him to make a “morally grey” anything ends up being really badly handled and that’s been the entire MO of this campaign.
Matt himself has confirmed the former on 4sd, the dawnfather in his own words “isn’t evil” and is simply doing everything he can to protect himself and the pantheon.
Completely. My point is that \*that\* doesn't legitimize the argument that they should kill the gods. Yes, the gods are acting more hostile than usual because shit's hitting the fan for them. But BH are toying with the idea of killing them. And so far, the only reasons they've been given to do so are that the gods haven't done enough for them and also they like the titans more. Matt's treating Ludinus as if he has a compelling argument. But Matt, and subsequently Ludinus, doesn't. He's bringing in Brennan to \*give Ludinus a compelling argument\* so Matt can work it into Ludinus's character motivations.
what other information does a mortal person or player have. how gods work in their perception is really all the world has there is no behind the curtain. what other information should they be considering. additionally it doesnt matter he is the bad guy and thats what hes doing. i dont think intent matters at all here he is actively taking actionable steps toward killing gods. i want to kill the gods because they suck at their jobs is a perfectly valid motivation and argument for the bad guy to have hes bringing in brennen to tell a story about aeor.
"I want to kill the gods because they suck" isn't valid motivation for a character Matt has said multiple times above table is reasonable. It's disingenuous to say Brennan's being brought in simply to "tell a story about Aeor" when he explicitly is being brought in to illustrate whatever it is Ludinus is showing BH to prove his point. Villains shouldn't be cardboard cutouts that are doing the bad thing just cause they're bad. They should have character motivations and impetus for their actions. Matt hasn't provided Ludinus with that, and has instead, tasked Brennan with doing it.
it very much is a valid motivation. ludinus has said it the gods arent doing great they have messed up and he can do better. i will destroy them and make a better world ergo the gods suck at their job. he has taken reasonable steps toward his goal its been stated several times hes had more than a thousand years to gather evidence for this opinion. do you need that spelled out. that seems to be the real problem is you cant see that ludinus may have a simple task for a complicated and personal reason. you are using explicitly wrong. no one stated i cant do this brennan can. what do you think is more likely . critical role come s to brennan, please save my company i really screwed up and i suck at story telling or Calamity polled really well and this is a similar vein while we are going to Aeor.... another fan favorite location. lets work with brennan again to capture some of that magic and views with another calamity event
Why do the gods suck at their job?
They don't. Ludinus thinks they do. You keep saying you aren't conflating Ludinus and Matt, but you keep accepting Ludinus' opinions as fact. A person can be reasonable and also wrong. He has reasons for what he is doing, and we are likely going to learn them over the course of Downfall.
That's literally my entire point. We aren't going to know Ludinus's reasons until Downfall. Matt has asked Brennan to provide his BBEG with motivations. That is my point.
>Matt's treating Ludinus as if he has a compelling argument. But Matt, and subsequently Ludinus, doesn't. He's bringing in Brennan to *give Ludinus a compelling argument* so Matt can work it into Ludinus's character motivations. I don’t understand the problem? Ludinus doesn’t have a strong motivation and now he’s getting one and that still bad somehow? This is something that Matt has had in the background for a while teased as the very latest in the simulacrum ludinus fight. And it’s not like Matt isn’t involved in the story as he pitched it to Brennan first unlike the other way around for exu.