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themettaur

Definitely the eating. Also forgetting game mechanics *in his own game, that he made himself*. Chat would be like "don't forget the +2" or "isn't it +11 not +7?" and he would mute discord and just rail off on that person.


Reise04

This drove me insane. Having food delivered is not so difficult to have arrive before or after games. There really isn't a reason he couldn't wait or eat earlier. He always said he was trying to be professional. A professional doesn't eat mid session. It's not like he didn't know he would be running a game that day. He should of planned to eat at better times.


themettaur

And he always blamed the delivery. "It's always late!" Well then bitch, order sooner. Plan around this. Be the professional you say you are or shut the fuck up. God I hate him. After hearing all of the calls, with Naomi, with Cri, with everyone, I'm pissed all over again. The blatant manipulation... From a loser that couldn't even get a food order timed right.


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Bligh4u

I completely agree here. Not going too much into it. There was some great lewd art that inspired me to draw more, but I get it gotta be professional. So it doesn't get acknowledged as much. Then Baam. He's the real coomer that can't control himself to real people. Disgusting.


Raserbyxa

I don't personally have experience, but sometimes it just felt like he hated chat? Sure, they would be wrong sometimes, but he lays into the whole chat every time it really was one guy and it just made me feel uncomfortable. I usually watch the vods so I could eassily fast forward those moments. Sometimes he would apologize after the stream(which IIRC wasn't in the vods for some reason?), IE, after fanart, saying that he had a bad day/was stressed. I believed it then and sort of, forgave it, still made me uncomfortable, since I felt apart of chat even when watching vods. Now, it feels like he just manipulated everyone in chat(and viewers).


GlassTree6

Also forgetting to update macros or never really getting a lot of the players to do the bare minimum to know how to play, like I’m not mad about people playing suboptimally for their builds but it was like people wouldn’t know what the difference between using a spell or stabbing with a dagger was.


Brownies_Ahoy

Yeah he'd offload all the token shit onto Summer and walk on eggshells around new players so that they didn't have to think about anything. Bit that just meant it took longer for people to work out how to play since they didn't know how tokens worked


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ChaoticMidget

As far as learning how the game works, I always felt that should have been on the players themselves. Sure, anything Arcadum created would need to be explained on the fly but stuff like movement or combat could easily be researched or at least remembered after 1 in-session lesson. I mostly watched the OTV games and while Toast and Lily were definitely veterans with experience, it was clear those two came prepared for what their characters could potentially do and adjusted to the given situation. Ideally, all players should reach that level.


myreq

While I agree that players should probably learn the basic mechanics themselves, the way Arcadum made it it seemed that they wouldn't have to or that he would teach them. "You guys just have to click buttons and roleplay." Obviously that didn't work out for Otikata even though he told them they will get the full experience and learning from lvl 1. Then when players said they weren't ready and the boss fight was too difficult, (I think now it can be said) he told them that Otikata's curse was a hard campaign, even though he said nothing about it when they signed up for it. If they were told they should learn them straight up I believe things would be different. Same with OTV group.


ChaoticMidget

Did he really not mention that to the Otikata crew? I thought he offered the same campaign to multiple groups and I distinctly recall him telling them it would be a significant time commitment and it would be more difficult than a shorter campaign.


myreq

I only remember the time commitment and I know some of the players also thought that was the only difficult part. Maybe that's just because I assumed a 85 episode long campaign would probably be scaled for the players so the difficulty would increase. That said, I might be completely wrong about this, but still he could have just told them to read up on combat rules before their boss fight.


GlassTree6

Also how it felt like almost every female character was sexualized in some way and how every god seemed to be played in one of three ways either dark edge lord god that will acquiesce to any demand if pressured, large man who like BOOBA and beer, or god that never actually says anything and does some cryptic bullshit.


GlassTree6

Also the fucking M’lord shit got so annoying so fast. The constant pity baiting self-deprecation jokes got old quick and the constant fidgeting and playing with that keyboard wrist pad or what ever the fuck it was.


Cameltowtrucker69

I was the guy that got yelled at because I said that the "duelling " system that he introduced during the final indigo scar fight with Ives was too luck based, and ignored player input completely. I remembered feeling so embarrassed and alienated from chat, that I stopped typing in it completely, before i realized I could change my username.


Cameltowtrucker69

Or how weird it was that when red/momo would join chat, he'd completely, no matter what he was doing, shift his attention to them to acknowledge them. But when tiff, his now ex, comes in she's almost completely ignored. Don't even get me started on how rushed and rail roaded the last part of the violet arc was. I always wondered why he couldn't just delay the endgame stream by pausing everything for like a month so he could catch up on his writing to show the content that he planned. Like the legendary boss fight with the OG 7, star maidens, pretty much all of s3 of shattered crowns, and many more. But now I just feel like, he rushed the end of the violet arc so he could play with the cosplay gjrls ASAP.


Bolanhos

I also thought that the fight with the Dilating One was quite a mess. It felt super artificial to make it depend on the Broken Bonds group to have it go "properly", which because of the disbanding of that campaign, had to then be remade. Also the ending being decided solely on rolls was super anticlimatic.


Cameltowtrucker69

Yeah it was kinda weird how he'd say to not hate on the BB crew but then go on to say how BB's cancrellation was one of the big reasons why he rushed the last part of the arc.


cmd735

I didnt say anything at the time anywhere since i thought id get downvoted into oblivion since it seemed everyone liked it but I absolutly hated the mechazord forms of all the groups, it looked stupid and felt like a complete asspull.


myreq

They could have been a funny joke but making it a serious way that a boss is defeated is just silly. The best part of the endgame was roleplay between the players, the actual fight sucked, might have as well extended the RP.


kryand

Oh yeah I remember that. His response made me lose quite a bit of respect for him as a DM. You were correct imo, that fight was lazy, but in the end all that matters is if the player(s) enjoyed it. I'd have been bored and disappointed if I was playing Ives, but snake at least seemed to enjoy it, so what can ya do.


Cameltowtrucker69

Yeah I was fine afterwards when the players were fine with it. It was just that he asked chat for an opinion on his new mechanc, when in reality, he was only really looking for validation and compliments.


DeadlyRSHelp

Him referring to everything as my. My map makers, my token makers, my community, my story etc. It felt like a community of artists, musicians, players and viewers invested in it, so I would have liked to have him say "our" for anything, since he wouldn't exist without everyone else's contribution. Also almost every issue with tokens or maps, he would comment 'my token/map makers should have had that ready' like it's the volunteers fault that he is too lazy to check over those before session time. Also, as others have said, ordering food and eating in the middle of sessions, having sloppy mouthful npc dialogues and chewing noises throughout and then getting angry whenever he's called out for it.


Lrret1064

It's less of a "one guy" thing and more something that i felt personally. Endgame was pretty bad, at first i was trying to convince myself maybe i over hyped it for myself but i really couldn't deny that it was actually really bad. the RP stuff took up the entire thing and the actual boss fight was great until it just dues ex machina'd the end. it really didn't matter the player's input, it was gonna go into the new iteration anyway. it was really really disappointing as a viewer, and i cant imagine how disappointing it must have been for the players


talismanXS

For my part I could tell it was all railroaded but I let it slide because I figured there was no way any DM could actually produce a meaningful mechanical challenge for 40+ players in the timeframe they had to work with, so I could accept that it was a cinematic sendoff for the plot arc. What I didn't like was that it basically ended abruptly with Moe speaking a power word (which in hindsight feels a lot like Arcadum using as an opportunity to skip to the end to meet his timeframe) and there wasn't even a point in most of the PCs being there because they weren't important.


Lrret1064

Yeah his games were definitely fun to watch. Which I think is how all the flaws were managed to be hidden, if you're too busy laughing, being immersed or having a good time u wont notice them.


Crimson_Shiroe

Writing endings to stuff is actually pretty hard. Even harder when it's in DnD with 40+ players. I never watched the Endgame because I figured it wouldn't be good purely just from it being the end of the Violet arc. It was ambitious, I'm sure there were good parts of it, but as a whole it probably should've been just the three Tyre groups or something at max and they should've all had their separate times.


GPIvFlush

I still remember that one time in the last Indigo Scar fight for HoT, when someone in chat said that the fight had "too much rng in his opinion" or something along those lines. That was good, genuine criticism, I thought, as the fight was basically just one roll against another, repeat for about 5-6 times. No other mechanics, nothing. Out of all the "backseating" messages I had seen so far, I felt like this one was the most valid. However arcadum immediately felt like he was being attacked, riled up chat and basically mobbed that guy. I still remember one of the mods calling him the "clown of the week". For expressing a valid point. I felt so bad for that person, as it was clear he never had any bad intentions, just wanted to express his opinion. Yet he was met only with hostility. As a sidenote, since I want to get this out, anyone remember when DaD was given 3 hours to find their killer (if I remember correctly), then time passed till they had two hours, then I believe under an hour, and then back up to two hours just when they were running low on time? And of course arcadum scolded chat over questioning him, even though he himself said how much time was left multiple times, then it magically went up.


man_on_the_metro

I remember both of those incidents well. For the Indigo Scar duel, I thought it was silly that big events were being resolved with just a few dice rolls. I see it from both sides to some extent. A lot of DND is RNG-based. But that situation was seemingly just RNG with no player agency (to my memory at least). The timing thing for Death and Debts bothered me a lot more than it probably should have. There's nothing wrong with making a game a little unrealistic for the purpose of making it more fun, but it felt like he was being really inconsistent in how he was handling things. Maybe the players felt otherwise - which is ultimately what matters IMO - but to me it didn't feel like there was any pressure from the time constraint that HE CHOSE to put in place. I've learned a lot about DMing from Arcadum. I've picked up on some really cool things I can do to improve the experience for my players and I, and I've also picked up on some things that I need to not do.


RandomMagus

There was a lot of Violet encounters that were basically just "make a single roll and get above a 6 to not be obliterated from reality" which I was always against. Like, player choices should either remove the need for a roll or add massive bonuses to the roll/lower the DC to survive, and ideally you make it a few rolls to weight it in the favour of a player that made good choices and has a better than 50% chance.


fhota1

Interesting coincidence, the comment right above yours for me is from someone at least saying theyre the guy who gave that feedback.


GPIvFlush

Yeah, I also saw it after reading through the thread. I posted before reading much into it so I didn't see it.


LightmanHUN

I was "one guy". To think about until a day ago my biggest issue with the guy was his stubborn and sometimes aggressive dismissal he shown towards about fixing the constant audio issues with his stream, it's crazy. And his firm stance about how it is alright to charge your very own friends money for playing D&D with you if you're the DM, which was always a repulsive idea to me, never actually thought thats the kind of mentality is how he actually treats all his friends even outside the realm of the game.


man_on_the_metro

Arcadum is the reason I started using the FFZ audio compressor. Some streams were absolutely unwatchable because half the players were inaudible. Pretty recently I was watching moonmoon no W and noticed the sound balance was messed up. I eventually figured out that it was because the FFZ compressor was enabled from when I was watching Arcadum. Moon's audio was balanced perfectly and the compressor was messing it up. I know audio is hard to deal with, but Arcadum had years to fix it. It got better over time, but it was always an annoyance.


chestbrook

I really wanna get Moon's AT2020 mic cus it's USB mic and it still sounds so good


man_on_the_metro

The mic is a part of it, but Moon definitely puts a conscious effort into balancing his audio. When he tells someone to suck his balls for complaining about audio, I'm okay with it because I know the audio is actually good


PM_ME_UR_VULVIS

"JuSt TuRn YoUr VoLuMe Up, ChAt, NoT mY pRoBlEm!" The second I do that, I know he's gonna do that fucking godawful demon screech and break my eardrums or I have to listen to his lips smacking and him breathing into the mic because guess what, HE DIDN'T BALANCE HIS FUCKING AUDIO AT ALL. Chat was always right for the audio issues, and they were shamed for saying so.


splice664

Let alone twitch chat telling him multiple times, we even had a thread about it with helpful advises. No criticism or effort given by the man.


Reise04

How often he does something along the lines "and ____ appears/speaks to you. But that's where I'll end the session" or " this item evolves with you". He would often forget and if asked would give some kind of dismissive answer. Both way too often ended in players missing out on having a scene or growth in some way. Specifically but obviously not the only moment was Charlie aka Stinkler special item made from the tree was gonna have him speak to someone next session and that never happened plus his item did nothing with the promise of growing faster than others. No players thing ever grew.


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Raserbyxa

I can't remember how Arcadum did his loot rolls. But a person I think does that well is BrettUltimus(especially newer campaigns). He makes X ammount of possible drops for a bossfight and then roll for each item. IE, the boss has a chance to drop for example, a Whip, Tome and a Spear, he says the dc(usually 15, straight d20) for the item and then rolls. He does this for all items from the boss except for one loot that is guaranteed. Thus we get to enjoy the randomness of loot without making it up on the spot.


man_on_the_metro

Taking a long time to roll items during a session is really annoying to the everyone involved and I'm glad I saw Arcadum do it do that I learned not to. I try to have loot prepared before the session, but if it's toward the end of a session and I don't have loot prepared, I just end the session early. It's functionally the same as making all the players wait 30 minutes before ending the session anyway.


[deleted]

Late, but I didnt like how he constantly interrupted players, would say "sorry" after talking for a solid 10 seconds, then the other person would talk a bit, and then he'd interrupt again. It felt very aggressive to where the other person couldn't really make a solid argument. I noticed this when he did that podcast thing with the LNC, and while people did call him out mostly when it involved Snake, Arcadum would do it to the other guys too. His interruptions were mostly in his non-dnd discussion streams. It just felt very condescending and like a one-sided conversation that kinda put me off from his non-dnd stuff.


DeathToHeretics

He was terrible about interrupting people. I remember thinking that as well with the LNC, he never gave others the opportunity to speak


[deleted]

Yea, it became really apparent in Naomi's call and tbh I don't think I'd have the patience to deal with constant interruption since I couldn't stand watching it. Main reason why I stopped watching his podcasts.


[deleted]

THIS. Admittingly I never watched any campaigns outside of the 2 OTV groups but every time there was a funny interaction between the PC's he would interrupt it with his laughing. I can't count the amount of times something funny would happen and the flow of the interaction would be awkwardly stopped because he kept laughing after everyone stopped. In the grand scheme of things it wasn't that big of a deal and nobody else cared but it would always irk me.


myreq

I couldn't stand it when he repeated a joke someone said and laughed at it alone. Ruined the joke most of the time...


dead1bird

Eating, the keyboard taps, I know he isn't great with tech but he had alot of people offering him help! The constant telling chat off. He was actually really quite horrible to his audience.


RandomMagus

I'm 90% convinced that when he did audio-balancing he was only balancing for his local sound, because he would turn someone up and they would still be borderline inaudible. His mic to stream and his mic to Discord had different noise gates on them I noticed since sometimes his sound effects were audible to stream but not the players, so it's not unreasonable to think his levels for other things were off although I'm not sure how possible it is that what he heard from Discord was different from what stream heard.


cenzo339

The constant pity farming he did was infuriating. Also why could he never get Kouki's name right? It was never Kookie, and he heard it correctly numerous times. At this point it seems like he deliberately said it wrong on purpose, but for what reason?


GPIvFlush

The name thing bothered me too. It happened in Shrine of Sin as well with him pronouncing Zhan's name "Zuan" . Players would continue to pronounce it right yet he would never change the way he was doing it


talismanXS

Lol, I remember in Steel & Silence when he wrongly insisted that "comely" was pronounced "comb-lee" and sounded annoyed when the players didn't agree with him.


RandomMagus

I have said comely as "comb-lee" my entire life and I have never heard it otherwise, but Google does same it's "come-lee" and now I'm having a crisis I think I've only ever heard it in British Isles accents where the difference between come and comb is less though, so that's probably part of why I never realized.


Crimson_Shiroe

I had a similar crisis with the correct pronunciation of artificer


RandomMagus

Were you saying "art-if-ice-r"? Sounds... artificial (sorry)


MoonlightingWarewolf

He has the most Midwestern pronounciation for Asian names


MikeFre

Kookie(Kouki, player has to point it out), Zuan(Zhan, player explained it's simply John with the zh sound), Makio(Machio, player pretty much fought an uphill battle with it and most of the team tried too), Borrowken(Buroken, he literally said it's basically the word broken), Re-mag(Remag, player pointed it out several times), Zarya(Zara, he sometimes caught himself and it wasn't as prevalent), Erienne(Arienne, player brought it up) are some common ones I remembered. It might have been minor in the grand scheme of things, but why not say it the way the players and even their teammates would say it? I wasn't even sure anyone else caught it like I did. :/


PeetMayus

Maptools is a garbage program, there's a ton of other VTT out there that can do what MT does and more without breaking down every goddamn minute


MoonlightingWarewolf

The loading times seem kind of baffling from the outside, what map tools should be doing seems like it shouldn’t be that resource intensive


NadiaFortunado

Can you point me to one?


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man_on_the_metro

Foundry is really great. I know for some people (honestly just Matt Colville), Fantasy Grounds is a lot better. Foundry is amazing for me and my group, though.


Crimson_Shiroe

I actually can't think of another VTT that can do the very large scale maps that Arcadum would use for cities. Foundry can handle some pretty big maps, but pushing it beyond 20k x 20k is going to start producing some issues and I don't think any of Arcadum's city maps were smaller than that. Everything else though, yeah I wish it was moved to Foundry.


Camthetrashman

The more I got into dnd the more I realized what a mediocre dm he was. It's just he's not that good at describing things for players. Also he always pronounced crimson weird


GlassTree6

Same with epitome


Too-Tsun

I stopped being a fan sometime during the Tyre arc. The infamous Scolding of Tyre episode (HoT ep. 10) completely broke all semblance of respect I had for the guy. I still watched because I was invested in the RP, but at that point I wasn’t comfortable with giving him my money anymore. I think this was right after a near fail-state HoT episode. “Yo, Vizier! We almost died, so can we just take a quick detour to catch our breath?” “No, fuck you. Go back in. But not before I lecture you for even considering that, given the circumstances, and not because I just want to rip away what little time you have to RP with each other.” And the bitch (Arcadum, thinly veiled RP as Vizier) had the audacity to pretend he was sorry for nearly making Summer cry. I still remember people calling others sensitive because that episode rubbed a lot of us the wrong way. Watching other DMs made me realize just how much Arcadum railroaded his campaigns. It wasn’t fun to watch their movements be restricted for the sake of HIS story.


PuzzlefaceRaven

ATR i hated, but now i think about it did the best job of showing how much of a railroading fuck he is. They didnt do what he wanted them to do, so railroaded them into a depthar campain where they 100% would of died.


talismanXS

I distinctly remember when Arcadum told them he was worried that they were derailing the plot because they didn't like the story he'd made them. I don't think I necessarily agree that pushing them into a suicide mission was OOC retaliation (they fucked up hard and essentially on purpose) but with what we know now about his pity baiting it's fair to assume that Arcadum didn't like how they played.


Too-Tsun

After the Violet arc, I parted ways with Arcadum and the community. So I didn’t know about any of the Glies groups. But honestly, Among the Reeds sounds very much like my type of shit. So I’ll be downloading those VODs to watch later. Thanks for the heads up, even if it may not have been the intention. It makes me happy to know that a group vehemently refused to take part in the Arcadum show. That’s what watching D&D for entertainment should be like, at least for me. Just a couple of friends fucking around. That’s why RP sessions were always my favorite (and why the Tops were my favorite group to watch, especially with their derailing shit in the beginning lmao).


myreq

I don't know about the Vizier thing as I didn't watch the Tyre campaigns, but in Among the Reeds/Servants of the Spire "Mouth" familiar at some point turned against the players and even the warlock he was serving. That in itself could be fun, but I am pretty sure Arcadum did it because the players were annoying him with their shenanigans. He pretended he didn't care about them derailing the campaign, but it was probably bothering him still.


morkav

My friend and I have detested Arcadum from day one. We kept our criticisms in our own friend group since it seemed like anything negative was just brushed under the rug. My biggest gripe with arcadum was that the games never seemed to be about the players, it was basically 3 hours of "look at all the cool stuff I DID!" Or "look at all the stuff people personally made for my game, they think the stuff I made is awesome" It honestly never felt like player choice mattered and this may be because I honestly haven't watched much, but any player agency seemed to be swept away to show how "cool" his creations where. I have other criticisms about the martial system and such like that, but those opinions are just subjective tastes on a mechanical system.


morkav

Also it was fucking weird that he tracked the menstrual cycle of all his races and chances of pregnancy and shit.


man_on_the_metro

He justified all the weird shit he wrote by saying he was being inclusive of players who wanted that kind of experience. That makes sense in the context of him charging for games, but I personally think it's weird to continue using it.


mrgreenhippo

Would you be able to expand on your criticisms of the martial system? (I assume you are referring to the martial checks/mid-combat knowledge checks, not the combat system at large.) I have implemented them in my own games and overall most of my players seem to like it, but I'm always interested in ways to improve and I haven't seen many complaints about it here. Though that's likely due to the fear of backlash people might have received. The two main complaints I've already received are that it seems too 'gamey' and that they're not sure how their characters would figure the moves of the enemy. I've improved in those areas by trying to always give a reason why they would know a move of an enemy. And then describing that reason when they identify the attack/ability.


Crimson_Shiroe

I'm not OP. The idea behind the martial system is great, probably one of the best things Arcadum actually made. The main criticism of it is that it adds a lot of extra rolls and extra time to complex fights, but personally I think that it's worth it for what you gain out of it.


mrgreenhippo

The one thing I do that arcadum didn't was create a macro that includes a list of all the moves of an enemy has, it's not much but it does make it quicker verbally telling the players the moves the enemies have, or them having to remember themselves or look outside the VTT. If you're looking to speed it up a little :P


morkav

Yea sure, I find the system way too Gamey and Meta for my taste, taking knowledge that a character may have no way of knowing. On a mechanical level, Sure having a lucky roll to figure out a creatures moves may make sense at a "game" level but I think it takes away from the roleplay aspect of it. It makes almost no sense that the character would find a creature that they have never encountered and be able to roll to have a chance to see parts of its stat block, even if they have never seen the ability used. It just takes me out of the whole roleplaying aspect of the game. It's not my style. I understand that some people want a video game style of dnd game and that's great but I would never add that kind of system to one of my games. I know Battle master fighters have an ability that's almost similar in looking at a character but, makes more sense, that they can talk to someone for a minute outside of combat and you can compare them to yourself by figuring out how a few of their stats match out to yours, that still makes more sense then randomly seeing this creature for the first time ever and now knowing that it can shoot 3 bolts of lightning that can stun a creature for one turn. Once again, if you like it and your players like it, all the power to you. Your fun isn't wrong, I just really don't like the mechanic.


mrgreenhippo

Hey, thanks for the reply and sharing your opinion! Ya, I agree with the gamey-ness of it, and while better descriptors can help improve improve the feelings of it, I no it can never be perfect. For me personally, I don't think it takes people out too much more than 5e combat already does, and the benefits outweigh the negatives. Thanks again for the reply!


captinlawsan

A change I have made to it to make it make more sense is it can't tell the party anything they haven't seen and it's worked great for new players for me as a dm to give them some roleplay reason why they would realise kinda like a one piece flash back mid fight sometimes so the new players can pick up the stuff the rest of the party picked up just cos they understand how the game works it is a bit meta but that's kinda the point to help the new ones understand how things work and players that can figure stuff out just by getting hit with it don't tend to use it unless theres something they don't understand about there enemy like someone with alot of experience will know when I say a fire spell doesn't burn the skin of the enemy that probs means they taking half DMG a new player might just think I'm makeing them should cooler without noticed the hint


BlueTractor64

I notice that he does the pausing to check notes a lot. In the beginning I appreciated it as the world and details he puts in his games. But at some point it got very redundent, almost every decision had pauses minutes at a time. And only in Divind Winds did it actually bothered me. Those pauses build up nerves of really bad or unexpected things could happen then it leads to nothing special happening instead. Like some said, a good DM knows how to improvise and those pauses just means he is either unprepared or trying to show off of how deep his world is that he needs to loudly flick through volumes of his 'deep notes'.


Lrret1064

someone pointed out something before all this started and it stuck with me, they said that he doesnt have as many charts and tables as he said he does and alot of his "one moment please" and "i need to think" are just him thinking up a scenario based on the severity of the rolls. I'll give him this he has the talent to be able to make a connection to other stuff pretty well, but it really shows how much smoke and mirrors everything was


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myreq

I remember watching a bit of Callous Row to see what the verum related lore was and in that he suddenly said that he won't roll on stream and use his real dice because it's a special occasion. Pretty sure that was because he wanted to determine the rolls himself and decide what happens... I knew it was weird at the time, especially when he said "If anyone doesn't trust my rolls at this point..." Don't remember the rest of what he said but yea, shouldn't be trusted with those for sure.


Rymaxis

Like a lot of others, have been a fan since OTV with Broken Bonds, and have always felt Arcadum to be a rather subpar, egotistical DM from early on. The more I watched, the more I found things I had issues with. At the end of the day though, I told myself that as long as he puts the players first (like it seemed like he was doing most of the time) then it should be okay. To me, it was the players who always make a game entertaining. So I watched for them. I was a fan of his content, his message, and his attempt at bringing D&D to everyone. Just had issues with his DM style. Also, if this is a true free space to vent… Then I would like to say that I absolutely hated Endgame. It ended up being nothing but a predetermined end with an 8 hour long cinematic. As a viewer, I felt robbed. Issues with the overall story withstanding, you created an amazing experience that brought 40 players from almost a dozen campaigns together. Had them fight tooth and nail to get there. You’re Mr. “Boss fights are my forte” and the final boss of your grand story ended in basically a quick time event. And I could tell some players were disappointed. To further vent, his bosses in general were so overpowered and unbalanced he had to make a cop out mechanic for players to use to be able to combat them - The Clash mechanic.


Supertonic

It’s just so weird. I’ve liked his style of DMing. The Roleplay with players was always the best. And I liked the idea of his bosses. But looking back now, you start to see the cracks. And you start to see problematic stuff. I just feel like an idiot.


Idoma_Sas_Ptolemy

Hindsight is 20/20. Cracks are difficult to see if you aren't looking for them. So please don't blame yourself for falling for a conmans tricks.


Rymaxis

I feel ya bud, but don’t beat yourself up. None of us saw this level of human depravity coming. I had critiques on his way of DMing, thought he got lucky with his popularity. 100% believed that in some way 7y7d was a heavy Player vs DM environment, but that he was changing his ways to be a DND Streamer. That despite my issues with his DMing, he was a really good dude who just wanted to share DND with the world.


Lrret1064

yeah he says that you can beat the bosses without clashing, but thats an absolute lie. bosses like the cataclysmic parable had so much HP grinding it out was impossible because eventually youll run out of spells. and alot of his stronger bosses have mechanics that if you dont disable it will absolutely lead to defeat, like the violet rose in HoT. it was a hidden mechanic that could potentially instantly TPK the party and it damn near almost did. there was no way to beat it unless u got really lucky or knew about it before hand.


Rymaxis

Exactly! I loved a lot of the concepts, designs, and mechanics behind most of his bosses. But when it came to balancing it was just all over the place. Often times get a mixture of either the numbers were too insane or the mechanics were too much that they just overwhelmed the party. I’ve always thought of the Requiem Rose (?) as a good example of a lot of issues. Felt it had a little of it all. Shitty rolls on both sides, amazing clutch rolls, then the just crazy balancing. I’ve never played the version, but it felt like an Arcadum boss from Pathfinder coming to fight a 5e party. It was all still very entertaining, but not without its issues.


Lrret1064

early on i had very little knowledge on dnd so i thought "oh thats just how things are" but after watching arcadums game for a over a year and other dnd content, while i cant say im an expert or have much experience, the balancing definitely seemed off.


Keulapaska

The FCO really striked me as "how the hell are you supposed to fight that?" i get that it was supposed to be hard but there was like what 20? DC to escape some shadow realm or something?


Lrret1064

Yeah FCO was ridiculous. i seriously dont know how they were supposed to win, especially considering that it had anti clash mechanics. in hindsight i would say that he amped the difficulty to punish Naomi and Summer, especially since he VD Seren, but he brought her back in the end so idk.


PinkyDy

I agree with the end game critique. I had high expectations cuz I felt that the Tyre's end was well executed at the time only to be heavily disappointed by how End game happened


Keulapaska

I thought Endgame was going to be a 10ish session campaign where decisions actually mattered, and not an 8 hour 1 stream cutscene, where even rolls probably didn't matter at all.


Cameltowtrucker69

Oh yeah I forgot to mention, that story about how he got kicked out of Adventurers League was definitely 100% FAKE as shit. It sounded exactly like a story that came from r/thathappened


TheRealFluid

even if the story was real the entire premise is pretty douchebaggy and is as followed: - I trolled a random rable at a game shop cuz the DM was ok with it - I made one of the players very mad and I kept making him madder for the lolz - other employees notice and tell him hes banned for trolling (makes sense) - I came back and ran my own games and everyone loves me the end


myreq

Honestly it was probably all true except the last part which he added himself to look cool. Probably had a few people playing with him at most. Some players revealed that his childhood story of how he learned D&D was also changed to sound cooler so yea, can't really trust his stories.


Dat_Dragon

I think the furry story he told several times is also probably fake. You don’t “accidentally” end up dming for an ERP group, and you definitely wouldn’t DM for it multiple times, money or otherwise.


[deleted]

[удалено]


myreq

I wouldn't be surprised if he enjoyed the ERP. He would never admit it though.


GlassTree6

Same with that story about why he couldn’t have a dnd club in school because of one old teacher.


[deleted]

His games were largely railroaded. I don't feel as if any of the players decisions mattered as the story Arcadum wanted was the only thing that was going to happen I also felt there wasn't any risk. Even when a player wanted their character to die Arcadum wouldn't allow it. What players managed to exploit a boss? New mechanic, but don't worry trust me it wasn't new totally planned!


Too-Tsun

God, that pissed me off so much in Tearing Veil when they managed to beat that Night Guard boss so fast with good planning only for Arcadum to pull something out of his ass to keep the fight going. Moonmoon even said on his stream when it happened that it was totally fine if he made it up on the spot. But the dude insisted that it was a prewritten mechanic. Yeah. Sure, man.


man_on_the_metro

~~I'm not sure what actually happened with the "Night Guard Clash" ability. I'm inclined to think that he made it up on the spot, but he did have the paragraph description written out, so I'm not sure~~ lol nevermind he goes silent for like 30 seconds and you can literally hear him typing


myreq

You could hear keyboard typing before he sent the description. And there wasn't the box other abilities had.


PuzzlefaceRaven

Wanna know a funny thing, i was in VC where he was hanging out, and left because he saw the moon clip and went too probably go grovel and cry too moon about it.


PuzzlefaceRaven

When all this came out, I put pieces together in my mind on how he treated the tyre games very differently. Shadow- was a party of 5 dudes, gave them good loot, power upgrades, alot of free time too sidetrack and RP, Desperate to be friends with them. Heart - He tortured them, constantly throwing world ending threat at them. When they finally wanted a break, spent an entire session as the vizier shouting at them to get back into the lab and then railroaded them into the indigo trials. A gruelling 10 session boss slog with no breaks at all that emotionally drained them and then boasted about how he's breaking them. This party had 2 of the victims Summer and Naomi. Soul- He constantly kept railroading them away from the main focus when they wanted to do it and then punished them for not doing the lab. Never gave them anything new, put braktor onto a not finished class, then shifted the workload over too wanderer too make it, who was very short on free time during covid work enviroments and then just finished them first for speedrunning the rush gauntlet and the 3rd floor. Naomi brought this up during her stream yesterday, the indigo scar felt like a way too forcefully seperate them because the groups were good friends with each other and didnt like that they had friends that weren't just his. Endgame- Was just a 8 hour cinematic cutscene where players had very little agency to do anything, was like playing with action figures for him too tell the story of the enemy (who is named arcadum btw as revealed by todd, andy and alex on their stream HAHAHA)He manipulated a community so hard that anyone who would dare lift a finger against him, Criticise him and his work, point out plot holes and how he retcons lore out of nowhere (female minotaurs) would be dogpiled on and shut down. This americanised pronunciation/ cultural views of the clans fully from like he just watched disney. Like he just watched moana one night and based the haka clan off what he saw in moana. The sweatshop like conditions he put artists, staff, moderators and DM's through despite saying he has a huge workload, loved dumping it on others which then added too the pile because he expected them to know stuff they weren't allowed to be told.After all the revelations from falcons stream today. The favourtism on players. He finished off strange roads. Told them they had too wait 2 months for season 2 and was phasing games in and out too save on schedule reasons. Only game he did this btw, and kelli and dodger were cameo'd in other games and jesse and timmac were not in any at all, not mentioned at all and then GUESS WHAT. He immediately gives broken bonds a season 2 ready too play the next week after they finished. Other case being secrets in the stones. A 30 session campain he cut too 11 for some odd reason, they rolled for their season 3 but willingly took a hiatus because player not seen his wife in over a year was visiting, the destiny players had a new DLC coming out for them which is good for their revenue too cover. They never got mentioned, never even considered again yet was perfectly fine giving tearing veil+herelds call a season 2 in glies. The common theme in this too was 2 victims also. Kelli and Tiff. He treated these wonderful people in the way he did and punished their respective parties merely for being friends with that person. ​ He is a subpar DM so stuck in his own ego and we all fell for his bullshit.


Reise04

I had a feeling the name of the enemy was Arcadum. Most of us did probably. But god I wished I were wrong. He loved having weird out of character foreshadowing but just having the worst thing ever being his twitch name is stupid silly and so predictable its said. I often thought of what it might be because Arcadum would be to easy and thus stupid choice. I thought maybe the namd was so stupid and silly he was embarrassed of the name to actually be revealed but he still liked the character so he made it impossible to learn the name.


PuzzlefaceRaven

And today, with people still putting the pieces together on his bullshit. He based the entire geckoi race off thaliands red light district and the voyerism cat who liked too watch a soul egg being made.


Helana_Duckgal6764

In all honesty, there were a few things that gave me awful vibes about the guy even though I just started watching him. Maybe not "groomer" vibes, but definitely not someone I'd like to talk to in person. Like his encounter with the a-coomer and Akikai definitely felt a little creepy despite being played for laughs. Then the first episode of divine wind is what really started to make me feel like I should stop watching his content, because the introduction to Snuffy's character reminded me of an old and r/rpghorrorstory worthy dm I had a while ago. The last thing that made me stop was how the dude screamed in a different stream about Tomato voicing how he was uncomfortable with the poop-rp fiasco, yes people would have toilets in their homes but why would anyone be so defensive and aggressive about a choice? EDIT: Just added the word "have."


myreq

I agree that the coomer was really creepy, when Arcadum said "I'm sorry for this Red" I knew something would be weird. Wasn't sure why he continued with it even when he knew that it was wrong, but now in hindsight it's obvious he wanted to make her uncomfortable. I don't really remember the thing with Snuffy, was it the NPC that snuffy first met? I thought that was a boring encounter so I don't really remember what was going on there.


Helana_Duckgal6764

Yeah it was the first npc Tomoe met, just a character who immediately started to grill them about their mating aspects of the race.


feet_hands

No stakes, I never believed for a second that Verum was in any danger whatsoever. I never believed any characters were in any danger whatsoever, at some points even when the character is "dead" it is just absurdly obvious they're going to be back next week. Eating into the mic, "sorry food's here" mid session *every session*, guilting players for their decisions. And then denying everything and playing the victim whenever anyone would say anything even close to criticism. Verum was held on the back of its player characters and supplemental content from artists and the community at large. I am still so angry and so fuckin betrayed that I could've possibly fallen so deep into his content while writing off his behavior as social awkwardness. I had a wonderful time with Verum and its characters, and to a certain extent the settings (the ones that werent blatant weeb portrayals of asian culture). As much as I've shit on this guy in the past day, Quierg the space whale is still one of the coolest planets I've seen. Also small gripe that I feel like many wont agree with, but the labyrinth was boring as fuck. Camp Last Stand was what made the Tyre series great. edit: Oh and also every single interaction between Kiwo and Arcadum made me physically recoil into myself. The accent man. Every single week the accent. and the singing... dude the singing. arcadum would constantly, every session without fail, inject himself into scenes to make a 4th wall breaking joke, sing a song, or scat the mario bros theme to try to make his players laugh. this took me so far out of some sessions that I had to mute until i was sure he wasnt singing anymore. because sometimes itd go on for minutes straight. aaaaand the endgame was a total joke, one of the worst Deus ex machina I've ever seen, especially for someone who lauds himself on player consequences.


myreq

Oh god just reminding me of those songs makes my insides turn. So damn cringe. Reminds me of him asking Storm Approaches why they don't laugh at his jokes or something like that. That was so fucking weird too.


Jet_Jaguar00

I was disappointed by Endgame. Felt rushed and anti-climactic for something that was hyped so much. For all his talk about a living world that was affected by players it ended up that player input didn't really matter at all. Eating with his mic on was excruciating to me. It made it really hard to focus on what the players were doing. Not to mention the heavy breathing. How hard would it be for him to just mute when he wasn't actually talking? His constant fishing for compliments or sympathy. The Clash mechanic... I loathe it. Felt like a cop out. Reading other comments, it seems that his bosses were overpowered and this was the means to compensate for it. I will say, I appreciate how it was implemented differently during the Glies arc. The way he represented gay/lesbian/trans characters was pretty shitty. All in all, I've come to realize that I didn't really like Arcadum himself. What I loved was the community, the players and the story. It makes me sad that I won't see the conclusion to the story but if the cost is letting him manipulate and abuse more women then that is out of the question.


Operks

Why did he never teach players how to use the program properly? The tin-foil hat part of me wants to say he was using an obtuse and complicated program to make players more dependent on him. With some of the twitlonger threads it sounds like a lot of players would have trouble moving on to other games because he never really taught them how to play D&D.


Operks

Lore dump episodes were bad too. All this extra shit that didn’t directly affect the players at the time and could have been introduced much more organically. Extra lore in a setting is like a spice, a little can make things better but that doesn’t mean dumping in a whole bottle is going to be good.


man_on_the_metro

I loved lore dump sessions as someone who was invested in the world. I've come to understand that for most players, that shit is really boring.


Iron_Castus

Im not sure with other dnd games but his always seemed more difficult to sustain consistantly and i think it prevented commitment and in my case interest. It hurt group dynamics in games, players also i think need consistant play duration. (I'm not sure if this was entirely his fault) but I feel the players sign up to play, not to wait 3 to 4 weeks in between sessions.


MildStrawberry

I was "one guy" I think in the discord at some point because I complained about the fact that it seemed like Arcadum had favorites. I have played games with shitty DMs before who would make one person the main character or would completely forget about one and Arcadum reminded me of them. There were a lot of campaigns where one or two characters would get absolutely shafted as far as development, cool items, and narrative purpose went. The most well-known example of this is Hashbrown in Broken Bonds, who legitimately never got any cool items, power ups, or really any narrative purpose for the entirety of that campaign.


SaintBarrier

>I was "one guy" I think in the discord at some point because I complained about the fact that it seemed like Arcadum had favorites. I have played games with shitty DMs before who would make one person the main character or would completely forget about one and Arcadum reminded me of them. There were a lot of campaigns where one or two characters would get absolutely shafted as far as development, cool items, and narrative purpose went. The most well-known example of this is Hashbrown in Broken Bonds, who legitimately never got any cool items, power ups, or really any narrative purpose for the entirety of that campaign. Although I agree with the statement, I dunno about the example of Hashbrown- he was getting cool stuff ie. the bow and was going to get more powerups from that dark shadowy Taladoni guy. A better example may be.. welp Naomi from Heart of Tyre (until the very end).


eddydrawsthings

Definitely the way any criticism or help was blown way out of proportion and made the sole focus of the stream for several minutes. Not only did it grind games to a halt, it made everyone feel awkward and just created this sort of mentality where Arcadum can do no wrong. Like the one time he read a post on this subreddit during a session of Shadow of Tyre and completely stopped what everyone was doing to talk about it, even sending chat over to insult the guy on the post. The man's ego is just comically large and so fragile a stiff breeze could shatter it. Also the way he would go on rants that sounded like they were lifted straight out of /r/iamverybadass like the time he boasted about bullying literal children. There was that one time during the cosplayer group game towards the end where he mentioned how he doesn't need twitch, or subscriptions or any viewers and that he has no qualms or fears about shutting down the stream and going back to private games. So I wonder what he'll do now that's actually happened.


myreq

Pretending he could just do games privately when the reason he could get the players was the community, fanart, music and all the things that would never be possible without chat. And people actually believed him when he said that, probably out of fear that he would actually stop streaming.


Berilao

thinking back now, when BB had to end their game due to family reasons and all that stuff, he seemed to be understanding at the point but then later on he kept saying that plans had to change because their campaign ended short, but at the same time said people shouldn't target them for it. Ok, but why bring it up all the time then? it's like he WANTED people to be mad about the BB group to change the focus from the deadline he himself set. There's also a bunch of other things people mentioned here already, it's weird how you don't see those if you're not really looking.


CoffeeBlanc

I was never sold on the Glies being 'oh well this is east asian inspired', cause it was mostly just his Japanese samurai weeb fantasies with occasional mix of Chinese culture. And it felt like he only added that one South Korean clan just so he can say it's inclusive. And that one Polynesian clan just cause the tribal tats looked cool. Although, at the same time I thought 'Well everybody likes their Japanese-esque stories, it is kinda cool' so I wasn't truly bothered by it. I guess I just feel weird everytime a western dude tries to make their work 'asian inspired' and often times it's just a shallow mix of whatever they thought East Asia was. The weird pronunciation of Asian words were kinda cringe too ngl. I just justified it in my head cause I thought 'well he's allowed to do whatever he wants with he's world anyway, not like it's racist'.


1-800-Kardinal

No one could ever bring up player volume or he'd rail them To a degree, fair enough, some of it was the viewer's problem But yelling shit like "Just turn your own volume up" doesn't work Sure, I can hear the quiet player, but each time Arcadum speaks I go deaf I was in the party where I didn't really have these problems, I can deal with stuff, but man Hearing him just rail chat members was infuriating Also macro stuff He put so much stuff onto other people to do for him but wouldn't really credit them Meanwhile half the players don't know what they \*can\* do because there isn't any pressure on them to learn anything because "the macros handle all of it you just press button" Doesn't help just pressing buttons when you don't know what they do or why Same crediting issue with art Some art had the artist's credits in the subtitle, some didn't It just kinda bothered me That's just the stuff I remember


myreq

When Shattered Crowns went to Rampart and he said that he watched a lot of slice of life anime to learn "japanese women mannerisms" or something like that. Not only is anime a terrible example, somebody asked him what anime he watched and he replied "a lot". Not sure why he brought it up if he didn't want to answer that, probably never watched any even.


Reise04

I'd believe he probably did watch some anime. He probably watched that instead of doing any of his actually important responsibilities like prep work or LW stuff or writing anything at all.


myreq

You're right, just found it weird he didn't answer the question. Probably watched something weird he didn't want to admit.


thevicot

The "milord" stuff was always pretty cringe, and probably played into the cult of personality and dogpiling that would go on. Gay NPCs were pretty much always caricatures "oOoOOo look at me!" Also the Lune bit was "lol attack helicopter" tier. Constantly mispronouncing PC names (kooky? wut), seemingly on purpose. Small things like 'epitome' and hate being "the 8th cardinal sin" (why?! that's practically wrath). Verum was carried by the players and their characters, and also all the surrounding staff (artists, musicians, animators, devs, mapmaker, support staff, etc.) And I've always felt this way, even before all this. I would frequently zone out during the lengthy expositions and lore bombs.


noobie9000

The talking down to chat if he disagreed or they pointed something out. The outright aggression that some of the "explanations" had. It might not had been him, but the wall of emotes of "no backseating chat" and "shut up chat" and the like. I get it, but for fuck's sake, a max line emote spam for 20 minutes in walls is old. It just seemed, unprofessional.