#the cr cast enjoy making characters and sharing stories. i think that's pretty clear. i think they're all pretty good at it. :)

[sparring-spirals]

This might sound like it’s straying into RPF territory, but thoughts on each of the players’ (including Matt’s dm style) playing style (ie: how they play their characters.)

Hmmm. Tbh, I don't think I'm knowledgable enough about actual game mechanics/playstyles to provide super meaningful analysis on that front, but I do like characters and how they're created and played and grown. So. I'll cheat a little and talk a little about that?

(To avoid straying into weird territory I'll be trying to keep this as speculation-free as possible and focus on some particular character elements I've noticed and appreciate, but it'll include cast appreciation too.)

this got SO FUCKING LONG because I was having a good time. sorry. enjoy?

Ive spoken about this before, but Marisha's characters often have arcs that are deeply self contained and circle around personal growth and triumph and healing in ways I really enjoy. Her characters do tend to be very powerful, which- nice- but more often than not the biggest factor for growth- and her characters always have phenomenal growth arcs- is about overcoming internal stumbling blocks and demons, improving as a person and settling into it. Which. Spells exciting things for Laudna. 👀 I also love how much she physically embodies each of her characters. Delightful to see. Post-nap Beau, mildly delirious Beau, Laudna drunk-and-woozy-from-blood-loss, Laudna hiding behind her hair.... fantastic.

Liam's characters are so fucking full of love, and passion, in ways that wrap around and shape them, both good and bad. And like yes, fantastic and distinct explorations of grief, yes, thoughtful and nuanced portrayals of loss and trauma and upheaval. But- honestly, looking at Caleb, looking at Vax, looking at Orym. They're all just Lads With Feels, yknow? Good lads who love people so damn much, and feel things so strongly and fully, for better or for worse. He also embodies his characters so fully that you feel that fullness to your core. Method acting.

Taliesin's characters are firstly, aesthetic as hell. He also does something really neat with characters and pride and inflexible or presumptous worldviews. And alongside that, each of his characters can beautifully demonstrate points about people who speak well and charismatically and reassuringly and how that really correlates so little about how much they should be trusted. (Cad, this includes you.) There's pages and pages of analysis that can be done about each of his characters and themes about authority, and pride, and self assurance, and judgements and assumptions that feels very intentional, but his characters also feel very human with it all. There are layers there. And the characters manage to not feel overburdened with it! Masterful. And Taliesin is consistent as hell with it, even if he's not always In character like Liam might be.

Sam. Fucking Sam Riegel. Bard at heart. His characters always, always, have layers, without fail, and Sam is enough of a jokester that you can't take everything done in character as hard evidence of analysis- but you can definitely take more of it than you think. And if there's a specific detail that is slightly funny but seems almost too specific, you can rest assured it will probably rip your heart out later. (Veth hates water! haha! -ah shit-) There's a nice level of thoughtfulness there with just enough actual jokes thrown in to keep you off balance, which makes some of the analysis hell but damn if they aren't good characters.

Ashley is- first of all, extremely funny, okay, there's an element of Chaos™ that I think was present in both Yasha and Pike to an extent that is truly blossoming in Fearne, it is delightful. Her characters tend to be funny in the way of deeply absurd, unexpected statements said in completely genuine tones. And it's hilarious. It also lends itself very well to the other aspect of her characters I enjoy, which has to do with them feeling deeply genuine. It is not precisely about honesty- especially with Fearne- it is about characters who say things with a sort of earnestness, who present themselves with a levek of honesty they can't quite help, even when they're lying. Its good for a comedic streak- ("Your cat is? Vibrating?" "I lied :)") and then just as easily be completely heartwrenching. (Yasha, wrecked and angry and guilty. Fearne, quietly telling Dorian, "I'll never forget you."). She plays both sides of it so well.

I'll admit I'm less familiar with Grog, but Fjord was, admittedly, one of my favorite characters from C2 and has one of my favorite charscter arcs and growth of all time. Travis is so fucking good at blending humor and heart in his characters. Like, comedic timing and sense off the charts, instinctive slapstick, which I think can distract from how consistently thoughtful his characters can be? I dunno. But also, I'm aware some people thought Fjord was boring at the start of C2 and then I think about how fucking hilarious he was through the latter half of it- falling on his face, making a fool of himself, using healing spells for 1-2 hitpoints. And go absolutely feral thinking about how that was a reflection of his growth as a character, about how his confidence in himself and being comfortable being him and not an imitation of someone else meant he felt more confident in making a fool about himself, and how he balanced that humor so well with Fjord growing into leadership and comfort with his role as a voice of reason and- oops this became Fjord meta.

Travis has really good comedic timing but also can spin that on a dime for the most heartfelt, gentle, thoughtful conversations and it is unfair how good he is at it. We're even seeing it with Chetney already. Incredible.

and. Look. I'm sure anyone following me is unsurprised to know that I have. An extreme love for Laura Bailey characters and how they're constructed. And part of this is definitely verging on like, personal preference- I have a specific weakness for characters who are trying so fucking hard to keep it together and be Good and Kind and charming, and who might be doing it VERY convincingly but are also, in one form or another, white knuckling it and On The Edge. Characters that Smile With Teeth (but are also genuinely Trying Their Best). I DUNNO.

But I think it's a testament to Laura truly thinking things through with her characters and how they would feel and react and also fuck things up, and then 100% committing to them. Strong traits as both strengths and flaws. Vex's charm distilled to an arrow point. Jester's happiness being intentional and powerful and terrifying. Imogen being anxious and empathetic and also ruthless under pressure. Her characters are always impressive and flawed in ways that make so much sense, that line up with each other and fall into place and she commits to them fully. They'll say something or do something bad and you'll be like: OOF but also OF COURSE and like. LIKE. isn't that great.

And as a bonus, we don't get to see Matt as a player often and I think NPC building has a level of worldbuilding integrated that can't be ignired. But whenever I see him as a PC he is often-

1- having such a good time, love that for him.

2- Clearly someone so well associated with the rules and uses all of that knowledge and mastery for tomfoolery or specific purposes.

3- making such Lads™. Good bois.

im mostly thinking about Dariax, actually. Dariax was so good, and so complex while also having no more than 3 thoughts at a time. i miss u dariax. ilu.

Matt's characters are a delight, is what I'm saying.

.....

okay this got unreasonably long i think it can probably be boiled down to I Love Complex Characters Who Act Consistently With Some Level Of Characterization and everyone in the cast works so hard to ensure their characters feel fully realized and act consistently and in ways that make sense. And I love characters who act consistently. my bread and butter. and they're all good at different aspects of it but. 👌

[utilitycaster]

I know this is a broad question, but do you have any thoughts/metas youd like to share on the Honour Among Thieves movie that you havnt already? Any unpopular opinions? I personally thought they did brilliantly with adapting RAW to a more structured linear story that made it easy to follow and also make sense within the world and story, especially for those unfamiliar with the crunchy mechanics. If not, then feel free to ignore!

I'll probably say some more stuff eventually; the reason I can write so much CR meta so quickly is that at this point I'm pretty fluent with the characters and I spend a significant amount of time like, cross-checking the transcript each week, but for anything else chances are it needs to bounce around in my head for some amount of time.

I guess I said this before I saw it in response to an earlier question, but I'll double down now that I have: I did not think they should have had explicit actual play cameos/references nor required any mechanics knowledge (which they did not!) I fully agree with the intentions the movie had: to use a fantasy lexicon and story structure that's immediately recognizable to people who are familiar with D&D (and even more so to those familiar with Forgotten Realms), but is completely accessible to some random person who just wants to watch a fantasy movie. I had a great time as an adult who's been playing D&D for some time, but I think I would have had a great time if I'd seen this exact movie as a teen nerd with no experience with TTRPGs whatsoever. Like...wanting CR cast cameos or more obvious D&D mechanics references feels like wanting a gold star for "getting" it and like, man, can't you just have fun for a bit? Get some concession snacks and enjoy yourself.

It's sort of comparable to TLOVM. In D&D 5e as played, we understand that Keyleth, Pike, Vex, and Scanlan all have access to healing capabilities (and that it's good to have overlap within the party). In a show with far, far less time than the luxurious hundreds of hours of actual play and the visible gears and wires of mechanics, you simplify and have the characters specialize. What's important is that you tell a good story that feels like the stories that come about through playing D&D, not that you adhere to mechanics precisely.

My only other major opinion at this time is that if you are playing around with the idea this is a D&D game (and to be clear I'm totally for that as fanon, I just think it should never be established in the film), Xenk is 100% an NPC who briefly travels with the party, not a drop-in PC, although to be fair paladins are just kind of Like That.

[theliftawayismyjam]

Thoughts on CR Ep. 118

OKAY. I am LITERALLY a nobody here and just screaming into the void that is tumblr but here we go. Beware, there be spoilers!!

I LOVED last night’s episode!!!! It was so good! All that fucking history!?!?! Aeor was fucking wild and just major kudos to Matthew Mercer for A++++ world building! My god what I’d give to pick his brain and get all the facts!! Things are truly ramping up! I 10000% believe that the Somnovum sacrificed the entirety of the Cognoza ward and all its residents to save THEMSELVES. The Eyes of Nine are an evil the likes of which have probably not been seen in gods knows how long and  I am so here for all this eldritch horror that is being/about to be unleashed upon Exandria. Be careful Mighty Nein!!

Now, to what really made me dust off this old blog and get on my soap box. I saw Matt’s post on twitter and have been combing the CR tag and seeing all the “discourse” so here are my two cents. Please, please, please remember that this is first and foremost a game between friends. Obviously, this is also a masterclass in storytelling with galaxy brain Matthew Mercer at the helm, but it is LITERALLY a game. ANYTHING can change with the roll. of. a. fucking. dice. 

There are SO many ways to play and not everyone is into every element of the gameplay. Travis has been on record saying D&D romance wasn’t something he was really interested in but things change! It seems pretty clear that Travis has created Fjord to be a very different character from Grog. Having played for 5+ years, maybe some of elements of the game he didn’t explore with Grog are something he wants to try with Fjord. So I don’t understand why people are so fucking pressed that a person might feel the most comfortable exploring this facet of gameplay with their IRL partner??????? And yes, Laura has been joking since before the campaign started that she would make his character fall in love with her character, but do you think she would actually FORCE him into something that made him uncomfortable or wasn’t something he wanted to get out of game? 

These characters, THEIR characters, are so complex and have so many layers and are growing and changing and developing as they play the game. The stakes are just getting higher and there is clear and present danger in the form of the Tomb Takers and the Eyes of Nine. Why wouldn’t Fjord shoot his shot and take the chance to make his feelings for Jester clear to her? Who knows if they’re all going to make it out of this arc of the story alive???  I get ships are important to fandom which, at times, can be all consuming but you are not at that table (well tables, since, y’know, rona.). You are not in their heads. You don’t get to dictate how someone plays their game because it’s not what you want to see. Try to remember things can change at the drop of a hat?? Since when has a kiss been this all binding contract? It was a beautiful confession and kiss but who’s to say that it will stick??? this isn’t some video game where you have to lock in your romance choice now. this is a living game and the story is unfolding and evolving as it goes. Nobody is locked into their choices and that’s the fucking beauty of it. 

So if you are a Fjorester fan, enjoy your feast! That was some good fucking food! Remember to please be kind, don’t gloat and don’t antagonize. And for anybody that was upset with what happened last night I understand how devastating it can feel when you’re so invested but please don’t attack the cast. I believe they’re 100% more invested in these characters than you are because of the simple fact that the characters are their creations. Write all the fic, make all the posts about why you love your ship, create all the fan art, share your criticisms and disappointments but do it with respect?? Maybe throw in a shred of kindness?? Acknowledge that what you want has no bearing on the story they are creating together????? Please don’t make the fandom a place where the cast can’t share in the joy their campaign brings to the tens of thousands of lives that tune in to watch this incredible story unfold. 

Don’t forget to love each other, and is it Thursday yet????????

[utilitycaster]

Sure! Why is Taz Ethersea validating why a pre-calamity campaign would be a bad idea?

Okay first off I do want to thank you all! I think I probably would have eventually made a post, because opinions are stored in the Tumblr blog but I don't think I would have thought through it beyond the simplest answer of "actual play D&D is uniquely unsuited for a narrative with a foregone conclusion" but I think it goes beyond that and getting these questions led me to think about it much more.

Also: this post will be full of spoilers for prior TAZ and Critical Role campaigns.

That simple answer is still the right one. I'll admit I have many biases - I don't like stories where the ending is total failure, vs. something bittersweet and mixed; I am very picky about my cataclysm/apocalypse narratives; and I like to avoid spoilers and be surprised by endings. But in particular, one of the greatest elements of D&D actual play is that the long shot is possible. You can roll that 5% chance of becoming conscious instead of dying, or 15% chance of divine intervention, or what have you in a desperate situation. You still might fail, but there's a chance.

Which is one of the other great elements of D&D actual play is that the long shot failure is also possible; the 5% chance of dying sooner than expected or fumbling what should be an easy hit (or an enemy succeeding when they shouldn't).

A big part of why I'm struggling with TAZ Ethersea right now isn't actually the forgone conclusion. A big part is the mechanics, which just don't come off as terribly suited for an audio-only medium (even with the shared map, we don't get the images drawn in sync with the podcast which is what you'd need to really follow along properly). But it doesn't help that I know that when the Storm comes, they at least in some capacity make it. A lot of what appeals to me in the Quiet Year is the map-making and description of a small community and the idea of worldbuilding as the end-goal rather than a starting point, but a significant part of the premise is that the community has a year, but does not realize it. They know they have to prepare for winter, but they don't know that winter will be marked by the Frost Giants. And I don't begrudge the McElroys for using this for worldbuilding, for a number of in-game and out-of-game reasons, but the fact that they do know they have a year and that we as listeners know that obviously some kind of undersea society is able to be built after that year due to the premise of the main portion of the campaign has taken out most of the tension.*

We know how the Age of Arcanum ends. We don't know details, but we know what happens. We also know the Calamity is generations long (Halas being both a few generations after Aeor's destruction and also pre-divergence), and ends in the Divergence, and afterwards the world slowly rebuilds.

Any campaign therefore has a couple of options. Either it would have to be long before the Calamity to allow for some degree of freedom of choice in what the players are doing (which is generally not the vibe I'm getting from people interested in a pre-Calamity campaign), and also...I don't really get what that accomplishes that a new relatively unexplored location wouldn't. The other would be that it's either a campaign that never gets to any kind of significant catastrophe aversion goal (which...while I do not believe actual play casts are in any way obligated to cater to the fandom other than general sensitivity towards other people, stopping some kind of large-scale terrible event and/or big bad is a pretty central concept of the genre even when other elements of it are played with), or one that we know fails in that goal (or at least...only succeeds in saving about a third of all people) before it starts.

It's true that usually, we as viewers go into a D&D story expecting some measure of success (I could write a whole separate essay on why TPKs aren't great viewing for a long-running campaign) but CR in particular has made it clear that there is still a capacity for some amount of failure, or mixed success; there is still perma-death, or victory at great cost, or initial failure that has consequences that cannot be avoided even by later success. Something all actual play DM/GMs (and in many cases, regular old home game DM/GMs) have to do is walk that nearly invisible line where truly, success and failure are both options but total all-consuming failure is extremely difficult to achieve while still not making things seem too easy or unearned. A pre-calamity story puts that already monumental balancing act on Extremely Hard Mode because a large amount of failure as well as a small amount of success is inherently built in.

It also makes it much harder for stories like the one we had in C2 about Aeor, or for that matter, C1 about Vecna, to resonate in the same way, since both used the mystery of the pre-Calamity/Calamity eras to tell those stories. I love dramatic irony but there's a limit; there should be some mystery for the audience and players, not just the characters. If a creator puts a huge mysterious cataclysm in the past, there's a reason for that! Ethersea could have just been "it's an underwater society because it's fantasy" and that would have been perfectly fine, but it's not! That's a creative choice! The mystery of the Calamity is almost certainly by design!

In the end the thing that gets me about TAZ Ethersea is that I usually love the worldbuilding/character concept episodes of D&D shows that have them, and the Q&A/talkback episodes...but I'm learning that I want people to talk about those finished products in a big-picture way. I may be guessing here but I think people want pre-Calamity lore, but they would not actually enjoy a full, 100+ episode campaign of pre-Calamity happenings that is both hamstrung by forgone conclusions and may hamstring other stories that are to take place in the future. I think some comics, or a novel, or a small scope EXU mini-series, or like...a really long tweet thread from Matt about some pre-Calamity lore would actual satisfy that curiosity more effectively while also allowing them to preserve the important mysteries. Or, building from previous campaigns, having C3 exist a few decades after C2, where the consequences of the many archaeological expeditions and the return of the Aeormatons are becoming widespread, would similarly give us the ancient lore while still providing the open, unpredictable world actual play is uniquely suited for.

*just to make it clear: I'm complaining about the Ethersea setup epidosdes because I love complaining about things but if I actually found it wholly unenjoyable I would stop listening and skip ahead, completionism be damned. There are plenty of bright spots, mostly when they stop following the rules of the game and introduce specific character beats, and I am excited by the consequences, it's just...almost 5 hours long and still going.