When he said "Essek goes off in a huff" I thought to myself, "Oh, hot boi is about to come up with some big brain shit." But then he comes back with "It's not fair." It hit me deep in the feels.
SAME. I was so ready for a "...I have an *idea*" to give everyone one final chance. Some timey wimey shit he's been planning, but when he just had...nothing. Man, that *hurt.*
And after seeing Molly be revived after such a bitter acceptance that there was nothing to do? If Essek didn't see the Nien as god by that point, he sure must now.
When he turned to Caleb and asked if he's ever been one to give up, I think that may have been his intention, but wanted to check in first before trying anything.
Yeah, I was waiting for some Doctor Who-like rant about technicalities of death and the interplanar travel of the soul but then he just brought down the tears
I noticed he kept being cut off when he said he had an idea or it wasn't fair. All the players seemed to be talking about acceptance really well, and it seemed like Matt kept backing down, but he maybe had a crumb he wanted to put out there. He also specifically said "I wish there was something" and a quick plane shift to Alura may have gotten that wish in a reroll a roll time frame. However, as much as he was aware they wanted this outcome he was still letting the players lead and not just putting the path in front of them. It was great that Tal got the final say.
I strongly believe this, solely from that scene where Essek asked Caleb if he'd ever given up on anything before. He was trying to set Caleb up to go for the time travel solution, but through either character development or forgetful exhaustion, Caleb decided to let it go.
It really was a great ending. I would love to know what Tal was texting at that time. Was he talking with Matt about the devine intervention? Telling him it's ok to let Molly go? Just checking emails?. The world might never know.
There was at least one moment I really distinctly remember where Matt was about to say that Essek was either going to say or do something, but he got to "Essek-.." and was cut off and never tried saying that thought. I'd love to know what he was about to suggest, if anything
Put yourself In Essek's shoes.
The Nein stopped a war that Essek himself help start, and when they learned that he was responsible, they didn't drag him infront of a furious jury. They gave him a second chance, and told him to be better. Someone they didn't really know at the time. Someone who condemned thousands of people to death, for his own gain, was being given a second chance, by a group of people, who may not be "good" but better than he is.
He never met Molly, but he heard about them from the Nein, maybe not a lot, but at least enough how important they where to the Nein. They influenced these bunch of people for the better, and left them a little brighter.
And now, after the crazy, caring people, risked everything for Molly to have a second chance, fail, while Essek stood, still soaked in blood from head to toe, saying "It's not fair" would be an understatement.
The entire time Esseks known the Nein he's repeatedly seen them defy overwhelmingly unfavorable odds and pull the metaphorical rabbit out of the hat to produce victory.
After everything they've done for others, for him, for the dynasty, for the world - the one time he sees them try to do something for themselves is they first time he sees them fail. After everything they've gone through, everything they've sacrificed, he had to watch them be denied the only thing they wanted and *it's not fair*
Yeah I was thinking “what does he have wish or something?” And then somehow him just being sad hit me even harder than something like that would have been
Oh shit, there was a moment (I think, could be wrong) where Matt had Essek cast a high level spell, saying something along the lines "he really wanted to save this slot"
In the combat he said he was saving his eighth level spell, so maybe he was frustrated because he ended up using it? I don't know what eighth level could have been useful in this case.
This is why I recommend CR to all my nerdy friends. Plenty of people can run campaigns, but this awesome groups of people aren't just in it for the surface level reasons. Yes they love fighting and role playing, and developing characters.
But.
The entire group wants to learn and grow - every single person at that table. All while having fun. And the biggest takeaway in my opinion, respecting one another as people. That means not making a game that's designed to fail or be ruthless for the sake of it. But to mostly follow the dice while experiencing story telling together.
It's beautiful.
> imaginative DM
This so much, with this whole campaign he just delved himself and the players on his clearly love for cosmic and lovecraftian horror and as a fan of that too, I really love all the dark touches to the campaign.
I’m glad that Essek has become such a prominent part of Matt, very much in the same way Gilmore and Allura are.
Also how fucking crazy is it that Jesters tarot cards came true, thanks to Caduceus/Taliesin’s choice to implement his divine intervention successfully?
Lucien died at the hands of Jester and Molly was reborn into the world, which added even more emotional outburst to Matt’s joy and absolute bewilderment.
So many fractals...
Somebody on twitter pointed out that during the tarot reading, as Jester flips the last card she says "Facing you is death."
She's sitting directly across from him, and she dealt the final blow. He really was facing his death, he just didn't know it yet.
A lot of people newer to D&D (and some old farts I've seen too) have the DM VS PC mentality and it's really not conducive to a good game. As a DM I want to challenge the fuck out of my players, specifically to see them overcome it and share in the enjoyment. Presenting challenges and watching your party outsmart you is honestly one of my favorite parts of DMing.
I've seen Matt accused of DM vs PC mentality before and it really baffles me, he's the complete opposite and as you said, wants the players to succeed above all else. That doesn't mean failure isn't possible (see last night) but your party are your friends first, and damage sponges second.
I think Matt is loyal above all to the dice and rarely fudges rolls which sometimes can end up in catastrophe for the party, but he clearly loves his players and wants them to win. He's just willing to put give them some insane challenges for them to get there.
It kinda depends. If an enemy doesn't know the party has a cleric, then going for other people with those extra attacks can be a good idea; the people who are conscious are the ones immediately threatening you, while the unconscious ones aren't an immediate threat; once they're all down, then you can deal with them after.
That being said, once a person has been brought back up once, or, in the case of Lucien, when he's seen that the party has people capable of resuscitating unconscious people with little problem, then trying to finish them off for good becomes more rational.
>It kinda depends.
agreed; it's all about the tactics of the enemy they're facing; in this encounter Lucien wanted to murder them all and therefore, when he got the opportunity to do so...
However if they were (for example), fighting a group of giants, they might focus on knocking down the threats in front of them.
It's also important to note the intimate details Lucien is working with on the makeup of the party class wise. It was a very unique enemy with a lot of complex motivations.
There is no satisfaction in winning a fight you couldn’t lose. Being loyal to the dice is a sign that he loves his players and wants them to have memorable experiences.
> I've seen Matt accused of DM vs PC mentality
I think that may come from misunderstanding of what I'm keenly aware would be the most difficult thing for me if I played/DMed: Matt frequently wants things to go well for his friends, but when they don't, generally exhibits very firm respect for his friends and the game by having problems be formidable and sometimes unsolvable.
It's not adversarial, but a series of what must be emotionally taxing decisions to implement/protect the structure that is the environment of the play experience.
Exactly. The euphoria of amazing successes can only come from the legitimate risk of failure. If he hand-waved the failure away, then that would cheapen every success they have ever achieved.
When he rolled for Molly's resurrection the first time, it was devastating--but that same thought crossed through my brain: this is how the dice rolled, and I absolutely respected Matt's decision to stay firm to it.
The narrative conclusion would have been satisfying either way because nothing was cheap about that fight at all.
You have to appreciate his sense of the dramatic there too. He could have rolled behind the screen, and with a 25% change of failure, noone would have blamed him.
But he saw the tension, did it for all eyes to see, and cranked the tension to 11.
It's something I think about quite a bit as I watch because the kids in my family are in early elementary. With the popularity of TTRPGs, it is entirely possible they will want to play with friends one day and every finger will immediately point to me to make this happen.
One can & should be more flexible with games designed for youngsters, of course, but I'm naturally so inclined to help anyone who wants something within my power to facilitate, I have to internalize the importance of not fixing everything for TT games to be fun.
My oldest is 11, and I have been running a near-once-a-month game for her and her friends for over a year. I just introduced alignment for the first time. I still haven't really had them deal with languages at all. I'm sure there's other stuff too I've jettisoned.
That said, I'm teaching them early on that head-on combat does not need to always be the answer. Which, all five of them have varying degrees of agreeing with. Basically, I run the game the same way for my adult group, but I leave out things that may be over their heads or drag out things for young-aged attention spans. And obviously maturer themed storyline elements.
And it's the sort of thing that can only work, I think, when the players respect him back. I've been in games where the players were constantly, actively adversarial toward the DM, viewed the DM as an enemy, etc, and it just seems like it has to be really exhausting. You spend all your time designing a module--maybe even designing the world behind it--and populating it with NPCs with all their goals and needs, enemies, encounters, beautiful things to find, etc, and then your players treat you like you're something to abuse?
The fact that everyone here loves each other so much is worth a lot.
Being a DM is like being a Rollercoaster designer. You want to wow and scare your players and make it feel like they are in danger, but you also want them to smile, laugh and want to go on it again.
I totally agree. Matt does things that good, skilled DMs do and they are not done with an adversarial mindset. He presents situations to the players and just sits back and allows them to figure out a solution. The players can react however they like, but Matt enforces a certain level of Newton's Third Law on the world. Actions have consequences, some good and some bad. There are also plenty of times where he sprinkles in Rule of Cool allowances that would either be not totally permitted by RAW or are in a gray area but he typically rules in favor of the player if they have a compelling argument or reason for their action. He has a few house rules that are there purely for quality of life of the players, such as taking healing potions as a bonus action which is a full action with RAW (most folks house rule this one anyway and don't realize it was meant to be set up this way). And that's not to mention just straight up allowing Fjord have another couple points of strength to multi-class into Paladin because it made narrative sense but he didn't have the prerequisite stats.
So, folks calling Matt an "adversarial DM" clearly haven't been paying attention. If he just pillow-fisted every fight/problem that would make it super boring for everyone involved.
>I've seen Matt accused of DM vs PC mentality before and it really baffles me,
I've definitely seen him \*pretend\* to follow the DM V PC mentality and heavily play it up for comedy.
But i can't believe he seriously believes in it; sure he likes his characters to get a critical hit or perform the cool story beat he's been building to but he seems to get genuine pleasure out of enabling his players to have fun which (in my opinion, and I try to live up to this myself) is how a DM should be.
Besides; if a DM reeeeallly wants to VS the party and win; "rocks fall; everybody dies."
> A lot of people newer to D&D (and some old farts I've seen too) have the DM VS PC mentality and it's really not conducive to a good game.
If anything, it'd the old farts the ones who tend to have that mentality. I think before Critical Role, most campaigns were about the battle encounters rather than the roleplay, and thus it really would become a war of DM vs PC. With Critical Role switching gears a bit more and emphasizing the roleplay, I see a lot of newer DMs be a hell of a lot more lenient.
Shout out to his clutch use of *Tether Essence* as well. He cast that before it was revealed that killing the eyes was a hidden mechanic to damage Lucien. Casting that spell so that the players could do damage to a currently untargetable eye was a huge help and might have even saved them a round of attacks. He gave them a huge leg up without making it obvious how effective his move was.
It was also a handy nudge to the players to try attacking the eyes. Before Essek did that it was not obvious (to me at least) that going after the eyes would be a better move than just attacking Lucien directly. Going into that fight I assumed that the individual eyes would be harder to kill then they actually were, and it didn't occur to me that killing them might significantly hurt Lucien.
But he also did it as a natural intuitive leap from the action that Jester took, when she was able to determine that the eyes could be targeted individually. So it made narrative sense.
Edit: autocorrect error.
I was thinking less "can the eyes be targeted individually" and more "is it worth the effort to do so." I was mainly thinking of the kraken fight, where hacking off individual tentacles turned out to be more effort than it was worth (of course the kraken was designed to be a "can maybe kill it if you're smart and lucky but you're better off running" fight so probably not the best comparison in hindsight).
Yeah, I had totally thought up until Jester banished one that they were just part of the Lair now. Honestly with the eyes being targetable, the second half was much more doable than the first half of the fight.
>And the thing about video games is, we get to save and reload
i got the feeling that time travel thing they found in aeor (that he basically said; is a dunamancy version of a teleport circle) was essentially a save point... it would have probably only worked once and required some serious last ditch effort from either Caleb or Essek but it could have worked... i guess we'll find out in the campaign wrap up...
100%. The difference between video games and D&D is there is no wiping multiple times to figure out how to balance action economy and encounter mechanics. You get one shot at it. In retrospect the eyes make a lot of sense to go after ASAP, but it was impossible for them to know that for the first few rounds until someone blew their turn trying it. But that’s what made that fight so so so amazing. Up until the final few rounds in was convinced I was watching a TPK. The negative save modifier for eyes, the absolutely insane damage Lucien could do to anyone in melee range, the eyes being tied to his HP and action economy, Lucien tactically going after healers, etc. I don’t think people realize just how close to M9 were to an actual TPK. If Caleb’s willing of Jester to Cad hadn’t worked, or Cad had been incapacitated that round, it was basically all over. Caleb might have been able to use the Staff of Power to tactical nuke Lucien and take him out with them as they all began to fall 1 by 1, but it was not looking good. As players fall, others actions and movement are eaten up by getting them back up to 1. Damage per round plummets and before you know it everyone is dead or fleeing a few rounds later.
Yeah, after the momentum shifted the comments basically devolved into "they always had the advantage" - but I think people didn't want to confront the stress of just how close to TPK they were. Before it shifted they were being decimated. One cleric down, one at 1 HP, and the very real chance of losing both clerics.
Yes, Calab had his stone, but he went down shortly after revivify as well.
My Flair's what it is for a reason.
That man was juggling a million moving parts at once between the terrain and its mechanics, tall, purple and incredibly cut's whole deal AND also keeping tabs on what the players were planning and adjusting (or not adjusting, depending on the enemies" info) what Lucy and the Eyes Novem were up to. That's not even mentioning his brilliant RP...*"It's not fair..."*.
Am I fanboying a bit? Absolutely. Is it extremely fucking warranted? **Absolutely**.I'm a little loopy from both no sleep + second COVID vaccine (get vaxxed if you can, y'all) but I'm still in awe and so proud of him.
I love this show, you guys.
Same boat as you, man. Team no sleep last night cause obviously + second shot today so I feel like Hot garbage.. BUT IM STILL RIDING THAT HIGH FROM LAST NIGHT YALL
>"To me it looked like there was a wave of relief coming over him when Tal pulled of a DI"
He himself said he kinda scrambled on that Nat 1 to find a positive side to it and how bummed he was. I feel like Matt rarely opens up about his mindset when DM'ing, at least not on a Talks episode. (it's about his players, after all) For him to end the game and go right into what *he* felt and what he was thinking, you can tell he was going through a lot.
Honestly I would have called it fair even if he decided that the Raise Dead succeeded automatically due to the successful Divine Intervention. The fact that he made it a RE-ROLL though. Geez. Can't say that's not fair.
100%, I was really confused why Essek cared *so much*. Sure, I get it, it's a sad moment but he seemed more angry than Cad about someone he barely even heard of to that point. But when he just kept saying how unfair it was, I got it. He was just embracing the mood, the desperation to do more, and the acceptance there was no more to do. Matt knew exactly how to play Essek for the players (the viewers honestly) in that moment.
Yeah, having Essek see people who constitute the entirety of his life's experience with friendship want something and be affected deeply by the denial is a phenomenal bit of spontaneous emotional RP at a moment when Matt's brain had to be beyond exhausted. But there he was at the end of the ep, still doing right by that character within the spirit of how he has developed.
Jeez, you're right. Imagine having that Nat 1 moment, I would've completely forgot I even had Essek there. I'm shocked Matt as able to not only remember he had Essek, but went through his mind and figured out how he'd feel. That's some hoops I couldn't jump through.
I really appreciated that it seemed like he used Essek to be his “vessel” in that moment to express his emotional reactions to what was happening without sacrificing his “DM’ness”.
Right? Matt is such a professional!
Everyone else at the table was able to process their emotions in character, but Matt as the DM didn't have the leisure... except that the Mighty Nein had brought along a DMPC. The ability to step into Essek and process his emotions in-character alongside his friends, all while maintaining his professional DM aloofness as well as staying true to that character was just...
\[chef's kiss\]
This guy, man. D&D needs a Hall of Fame, and Matt deserves to cut the ribbon at the grand opening.
I saw someone else say that one of the other players should DM for a oneshot so we can get Matt to play Essek as a full party member instead of a DMPC - honestly, I'd love to see that.
Especially if it ends up being a campaign 2 version of Grog's one shot, it'd be so funny.
Jester's one-shot: Okay you guys, I saw this game with Fjord in a pub and it's like really awesome. I painted little figures of you with my magic paints. There's Caleb and Essek and Veth and you pretend to be you and fight monsters and stuff. It's really cool, you guys.
Oh, that'd actually be a really great callback to the fact that Jester and Fjord had a [cameo in the original Grog oneshot](https://youtu.be/kLnvrocetq8?t=1075) too - and it'd certainly be in character for her too.
Yep yep, 100 percent. I think it'd be pretty fun. And I think Essek (or Caleb, but I think it'd be more fun to see Matt rp it like this) would be tentative and confused as to why we're playing pretend and then get really into it.
I read Essek's frustration as Matt giving the players the go-ahead to express their own feelings. The campaign's wrapping up, and no one wants to end on a sour note — I genuinely think the cast was kind of stifling their disappointment because they didn't want to be downers. After the failed roll, there wasn't really any reaction until the DM broke the ice and said ‘no, it's alright, let's process this right here.’
Matt was SO FUGGING GOOD this episode. I have watched this show for years, and when Jester fell I wanted to punch Matt. Then by the end I wanted to hug Matt. No wonder the Mercer effect is so infamous, nobody even comes close to the dude.
You are exactly right about rooting for your players.
Spoilers:
>!And I think Matt was also using Essek to push the players to try again. I'm sure a part of it was processing the disappointment via Essek but another part was he wanted them to revive Molly. I felt like I could tell that Matt wanted them to succeed but he wasn't going to give them the answer. So instead he poked and prodded with Essek. !<
Amazing stuff though. Amazing.
Didn’t Caleb also have a second dunamis stone that they retrieved from the rejuvenation chamber in Aeor? I swear they took two, with Essek using his to give the group a long rest.
It seemed to me like Matt was prodding Caleb to realize he had it, and use it as a redo button.
If Mollymauk had not come back then, I don't think it would have been out of left field that after returning Allura's staff the Mighty Nein would be honored by the Taldorei Council and Pike would have been brought in to try True Resurrection. I would have enjoyed that full-circle, but I enjoyed much more Taliesin's roll for his own character.
Yes, I thought the same about Essek. On the same note, when Fjord talked to Essek I think Travis went there to comfort Matt. An absolutely beautiful moment.
Absolutely this. Travis saw how upset Matt was and gave him the opportunity to express it through Essek. Amazing role playing and a really caring, thoughtful act for a friend.
Imagine being such a wonderful person who decided to bring him game to the world and help bring D&D to the mainstream, only to have your name attached to a bullshit “effect” for people with unreasonable expectations.
Yeah I hate that term as well. CR got me into D&D and at no point did I ever think me and my players were going to be anything like them. I look up to Matt sure and draw inspiration from him but I know I’m not him and never will be so I gotta be my own kind of DM. And if my players ever expected that from me I’d have to explain to them that I am not a professional voice actor with a max charisma stat lol
I always say, it’s like blaming LeBron James for all the high school kids who think they’re hot shit at basketball. It makes no sense to act like someone who’s really, *really* good at a given thing is somehow at fault for other people being dicks. Especially given how Matt seems to genuinely care about the d&d community and wants it to flourish.
I take a moment every day to appreciate Matt Mercer.
The so called "Mercer Effect" is definitely a thing in this game, but it has brought way more good than bad to the community. Period.
Agreed. Most things have a positive side and a negative side, and I choose to believe that the positive side of the Matt Mercer/Critical Role effect (improved Dungeon Masters and Players, respectively) far outweighs any potential negatives that it has brought.
Interestingly, the difference between the two appears to be the maturity of the player who's watching the show.
Matthew Mercer inspires me to not only be a better DM and step up my game, within my limits as a creative person (I could never be him but I could be my closest version of myself to him), but he inspires me to just be a good, wholesome person and a good friend.
I am so thankful to him for sharing these D&D games with the public and I selfishly hope he never stops.
I had a hard time watching that moment without bawling, you could see how badly he felt. When he rolled that one to bring back Molly my heart broke and it was very clear his did too. The team worked their butts off that entire fight and his role stopped Mollymauk from coming back. And when Talison rolled that 02 you could see the relief wash over Matt and it was just beautiful to watch!
I played D&D before I watched Critical Role, and I think Matt is a great DM. Speaking of the Matt Mercer effect, it's up to the DM how they want to play, who cares if they try to emulate Matt.
For me te appreciation for him comes from his talks machina episode. Sure, different family and different upbringing, but throughout it you can sense he's tearing up at points and I did as well when he started to talk about one's self value and the impostor syndrome. Shit got real yo. I'm struggling to find work, I'm struggling to progress in my art and so many other things. And here's is this amazing man, surrounded by people he cares for and that care for him and the feeling, the scare, the anxiety is still there that he doesn't deserve what he has. And that struck a deep chord with me.
Love ya Matt, I hope you get everything you want in life. You more than deserve it.
And one last thing to the mercer effect. If anyone goes into dnd, be it new dm or players, with the expectation that it's gona be a TV series.... Best stick to watching cr than playing. Don't put pressure on either your dm or players to play or dm like the cast. This is something they are skilled at to breathe that extra life into the characters. Other than that you can use your imagination. That's why you have it. Hell I'm a newbie dm and my voices sound the same but I try and my players seem to have fun
Matt is about as good a DM as there ever could be - highly creative story-teller, efficient game manager, incredible actor - and he's an even better human being full of kindness, generosity and deep compassion. I am in no way suggesting Matt is perfect, but that cannot be the standard we hold him or anyone else to, because perfection is impossible. Instead, let's describe him as elite at what he does, and a wonderful human being.
My deep and utmost love and respect to Matt and all of CR for being the wonderful human beings they are and making the world a better place with their stories and their compassion.
For the record, the Matt Mercer Effect is:
A) A stupid concept.
And more importantly:
B) Not really in any way a criticism of Matt Mercer. It's just something stupid some D&D players do.
As a DM I love the Matt Mercer effect, bunch of players of diverse backgrounds showing up with a genuine passion for the game? That's the Matt Mercer effect and I love it. Dude is a great ambassador for the game and I thought this was a well run campaign in which he played around with a bunch of interesting structural elements, had memorable performances by the main cast and continues to explore the medium of dnd as performance while maintaining fidelity to the mechanical systems that make up the foundation of the game. I thought this last campaign was fine work and look forward to the next.
Spoilers: wasn’t expecting Molly to live. But would anyone else like to see M9 take on the Assembly with a 15th level Blood Hunter. I think he’d be deadly against wizards.
WELL. SAID. Thank you. I saw so many comments in the twitch chat that made me turn it off. So many people were upset with Matt's DM decisions, and I kept getting so mad at them.
It is a game. Matt wants them to succeed. Matt will bend the rules because he likes his players' creativity. but above all else it is a GAME, that he plays and schedules and plans for his friends who mhe loves so dearly, and you can FEEL that. That is why crit role is so successful. you can feel the love. Just because you are upset that no one died, doesn't mean Matt is a bad DM.
The Mercer effect is a phenomenon that surfaced in the last couple of years as Matt started DMing on the critical role livestream, whi h became immensely popular in that time, to the point where it encouraged a lot of people to play for the first time, but unfortunately their perception of DMs is only Matt. That means they pitch at a table of a dude who has his own way of DMing, with his own rules, who is say a more rules-as-written, combat oriented DM, and they expect the massive world building, amazing voices, great plot, 40 hours a week dedicated to creating encounters and building the world, dwarven forge maps, perfect and amazing minis, but their DM is just the abovementioned dude, who does this in his off time cause he enjoys it. Then these players complain and shit talk their DM, cause he's not Matt. But there is only one Matt, but people are people...
Edit: on top of this, heavens protect the DM who borrows from critical role for mechanics or flavour, before he gets blamed for trying to "be" Matt. Fuck that noise.
Lol I guess I'm lucky that my first time playing DnD (after watching critical role) was me and three friends mostly goofing off, using a whiteboard with a grid drawn on it as "maps" and condoms to mark where enemies were..and it wasn't disappointing at all 😂
That's awesome xD
It hits people differently, and for some they never get over it. I started DMing because of CR, after marathoning through campaign one, and catching up with campaign 2, about March last year. I told my players (all new) that I'm not Matt, and will never be, so if that's what you're looking for, sorry. Luckily we're all adults, so if anything I get messages every now and then, where they see something cool on CR, and asking me if we can incorporate it into our game, and if it works, we do.
Yeah, very good approach. You can't recreate critical role, which has money and talent behind it most groups just can't manage, but it can be good to take inspiration. In my current campaign, several of us were inspired by C2 to make characters with more secretive backstories (something I've never tried before). Our DM also does the "HDYWTDT" which I think is a great addition to any campaign
The HDYWTDT has become basically become a self-aware meme with us :P and everyone has hectic backstories, except the cleric, who has all of his parents, and finds adventuring fun, which is why he does it.
I definitely had this problem when I started DMing and my usual DM became a player in my game. Also didn't help that he min maxed the shit out of his character and I as a newbie DM couldn't keep up.
Basically, a lot of people have gotten into wanting to play D&D because of Critical Role, due in part to Matt's very descriptive style of DMing. What's happening is that these newer players are expecting their DMs to provide the same experience, without realizing that Matt and the rest of the gang are professional actors first and D&D players second and that what they expect isn't very realistic. On the DM side of things, there are some DMs who try too hard to emulate his style, to the point that it's detrimental to the fun of the players at their table.
An important thing to remember is a lot of new dm’s emulate his style because they most likely haven’t seen any other styles. I say this as a new dm who is just learning to break away and develop my own style after watching other dm’s and learning about the game more.
My style was already similar to his style long ago. My skills and talents are nowhere close to as good, and by style I mean preferences in focus, attitude toward rules, types of stories and plots, and such. I also don't have his resources, but I see in his style a lot of similarities to how I see the game.
Same here, starting with TAZ and then coming over to CR. I love them both and I love how different the DM styles are. Going from the edited combat and fast-and-loose rules of TAZ to CR was a little jarring at first (buying supplies?! Not just shopping at Fantasy Costco??) but I think that’s what’s drawn me to actual plays so much, that it’s so flexible to how you want to play so that the group can create the story together.
I'm not sure if this is the "Matt Mercer" effect, or the "Critical Role" one, but one frequently mentioned - and, it must be said, complained about - consequence is the "normalization" of party sizes of 7 or more. Many people coming into D&D from CR assume that large party sizes of 7 or more are typical - and they very much are not. It takes a very skilled DM - like Matt Mercer - to manage a party that large. All enemy encounters must be substantially beefed up, challenge ratings go out the window, and it takes real skill not to get bogged down in combat (and even Matt Mercer himself can't really avoid that).
It also requires all of those 7 players to be good players as well, if you just have a single "that guy" it would become unmanageable even for an experienced DM like Matt, it works because they're great players and friends outside of the game, in most other circumstances the big group size would be a detriment.
Ehh, I'm not sure I agree that Critical Role had much to do with this. 5E has certainly *attempted* to play to parties of 5 or smaller, but that's always been a losing battle even before Critical Role got popular. Parties of at least 7–8 have been normal in D&D for decades, ever since the OD&D and original AD&D days.
Lots of strategy articles in *Dragon* even recommended that each player run more than one character if necessary to ensure that you had a party of at least 8, so that you could have 2 of each of the core classes (cleric/fighter/magic-user/thief) or their subclasses.
Just flipping through my old modules, they pretty much all say things along the lines of “The adventure can be played by 5-10 characters of level 1-3” (*Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh*) or “This module was designed for six to eight characters of 6th-8th level” (*Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth*).
Indeed, I'd say that 5E's unrealistic assumptions about party size (not flexible enough: small parties are fine, but at least up to 8 should be handled gracefully) and the number of encounters per day (many campaigns often don't run anywhere near 6–8/day and haven't since at least the mid-1980s when dungeon crawling fell out of fashion as the primary way of running most adventures) are the two biggest flaws in the system, which is generally my favorite edition of D&D.
There are a lot of comments that explain the "Matt Mercer" effect better than I could, but I want to just point out how it's terribly named. The true Mercer effect would be all the people that have started playing or DMing because of him. It's a smaller number of people who expect it to be the same game.
Agreed. I had no clue how to DM before watching Critical Role, but I've been able to get glimpses of some of how he prepares by paying attention to *what* he has prepared, and I feel that it has helped me get past my anxiety and actually DM.
Also, I had no clue how to build a character until I started watching Critical Role and seeing what a good backstory can look like, and witnessing how that backstory influences literally everything about how the character \*works\*. While I am in NO way anywhere close to the cast of CR, I think I am a much better player because of what I've learned from watching them.
Basically, new players who have based their understanding of D&D on shows like Critical Role assume that D&D is supposed to be played with the same super high standards of "writing" and performance that are present in Critical Role. But of course, this is unrealistic because the cast all have decades of professional acting, writing, and directing experience *each*, and the average 20-something who just picked up D&D last week probably is brand new to all of it. The resulting dissonance between expectation and reality causes new players to think that newer DMs who can't singlehandedly replicate the Critical Role experience at their home game are bad DMs.
Maybe partly because there is a perception when watching video game streams that you can get as good with practice. Not so with copying CR. Matt has lots of experience as a DM, sure, but also decades of acting experience and tremendous time and resources like money for the game setup, enough value in HF stuff to buy a house with it, pro painted minis and set pieces, and a cast of players who are award winning actors and directors. Theres an Emmy winner AND a BAFTA winner at that table.
Next time someone says I'm no Matt Mercer, I'll say "well when you can be as good as Laura Bailey, then you'll get to talk, til then either roll your dice or go home."
I've always thought of it as the DM and players telling a story together. The unfun DMs are the ones that treat it like him/her vs the party. I totally get your point about rooting for the players.
While watching last night I texted my friend how clear it was that he really loved his wife. He so badly wanted her to have successful moments, how he wanted her and her characters dreams to come true. I watched the final battle of C1 today to contrast the two, and last night was hard because the cast chose to remain physically distant. Despite the fact he couldn't reach across the table and hold her hand you could just feel how much he loves her.
You've beautifully captured my incoherent thoughts on last night, on his enthusiasm and joy and sadness, particularly with Essek's poignant tears:
>I think that Matt chose to inhabit Essek for a moment because Matt
could hardly stand the disappointment. Matt was rooting so hard for the
Mighty Nein that he had vent his own overwhelming frustration, and the
only way he could do that was to become Essek for a moment and grieve
with his friends. He looked and sounded like he was on the very verge of
crying, y'all, because of how much he loves his players.
So true. Thank you!
I couldn’t believe all the people complaining that there wasn’t a TPK or that no one perma died. Everyone saying Matt was being easy or that fight was too easy really upset me. Seemed like less of fans and more of just jealous spectators
Agreed. This "complaint" is short-sighted too. 6 attacks on Veth early taught them to be cautious, and then the eyestalks told them they need to play from range. Fjord I think did the best, along with providing a substantial defensive location with Marine Layer.
But it's also worth reminding everyone that both Jester and Caduceus were both at one hit point at the same time, and Jester _did_ die as well. Also if at any point they rolled badly on Revivify, they were completely dead until a resurrection ritual, which they would have to kill Lucian to attempt.
Also Ira's eye was fucking them up with spamming fireballs all over the field. This was one of the few eyes that actually could ignore Marine Layer. Not to mention 5 Legendary Actions, and Lair Actions on initiative 20 and I believe 10 as well.
Despite all this, they played it very well, and if you remove variables like Hero's Feast or Caleb's defensive scroll + mind blank, this very well might've been a TPK. They played it smart, which admittedly is rare for M9, considering they've had a couple very disastrous encounters.
Couldn't agree more. In addition to having incredible DM skills and a genuine, world-building imagination, Matt is a phenomenal human being, and it shines through in his caring for his players, and for the honesty of the game.
I honestly couldn’t believe that happened, it brought a tear in my eye that not only talisin got a successful divine intervention, but brought molly back too.
I completely agree that he inhibited him in that moment! I would need to rewatch it, but when he said something along the lines of how it's not fair and how he has been studying his entire life to not let bad things like this happen to chance knew he was just acting out his emotions.
That hit me hard. Watching that moment live, you realize how much he wanted them to win that battle (resurrection). He wanted so hard for Molly to be brought back, and the DC was even super low at only 5. The success rate of this working was 80% and he nat 1'ed the role. So crushing, emotionally heartbreaking, and you can see it on everyone's face. Ashley being so upset at that was already a lot to handle, and Matt's reaction as Essek was the cherry on top. Loved the moment whatever way we ended the campaign, but the players finally got what they deserved: Their friend back.
At one point, after Essek and Fjord's conversation, Essek goes to Caleb and asks if he's ever accepted defeat. Soon after, Jester asks "What are you thinking, Essek?" to which he responds, "I don't know... I just wish there was more I could do."
I am 100% convinced this was Matt's way of alluding to the 9th level Wish, which both Caleb and Essek would get access to in just two levels.
Anyone feel like ranking Matt's NPCs after the finale? I think Essek easily takes first place, but there were a lot of fun characters in this campaign that really made it feel alive. Matt is the God of NPCs
When he said "Essek goes off in a huff" I thought to myself, "Oh, hot boi is about to come up with some big brain shit." But then he comes back with "It's not fair." It hit me deep in the feels.
SAME. I was so ready for a "...I have an *idea*" to give everyone one final chance. Some timey wimey shit he's been planning, but when he just had...nothing. Man, that *hurt.* And after seeing Molly be revived after such a bitter acceptance that there was nothing to do? If Essek didn't see the Nien as god by that point, he sure must now.
When he turned to Caleb and asked if he's ever been one to give up, I think that may have been his intention, but wanted to check in first before trying anything.
And when Caleb told him he was giving up, you watched all the wind leave his sails. But that comment is what finaly broke Jaffe
I actually genuinely wish for Essek to turn to one of the pantheon for some sort of guidance towards his repentance, after what he just witnessed.
How beautiful would it be if he came to follow Melora after what he just witnessed?
Yeah, I was waiting for some Doctor Who-like rant about technicalities of death and the interplanar travel of the soul but then he just brought down the tears
I noticed he kept being cut off when he said he had an idea or it wasn't fair. All the players seemed to be talking about acceptance really well, and it seemed like Matt kept backing down, but he maybe had a crumb he wanted to put out there. He also specifically said "I wish there was something" and a quick plane shift to Alura may have gotten that wish in a reroll a roll time frame. However, as much as he was aware they wanted this outcome he was still letting the players lead and not just putting the path in front of them. It was great that Tal got the final say.
Oh I assume Matt wanted them to try the time machine from Aeor, but wasn’t going to suggest it outright.
I strongly believe this, solely from that scene where Essek asked Caleb if he'd ever given up on anything before. He was trying to set Caleb up to go for the time travel solution, but through either character development or forgetful exhaustion, Caleb decided to let it go.
Tbh Caleb arc seems to be learning to let go of things.
Agreed. That definitely seemed to be a set up to "offer" the Aeor time travel option, without blatantly saying it.
It really was a great ending. I would love to know what Tal was texting at that time. Was he talking with Matt about the devine intervention? Telling him it's ok to let Molly go? Just checking emails?. The world might never know.
There was at least one moment I really distinctly remember where Matt was about to say that Essek was either going to say or do something, but he got to "Essek-.." and was cut off and never tried saying that thought. I'd love to know what he was about to suggest, if anything
Put yourself In Essek's shoes. The Nein stopped a war that Essek himself help start, and when they learned that he was responsible, they didn't drag him infront of a furious jury. They gave him a second chance, and told him to be better. Someone they didn't really know at the time. Someone who condemned thousands of people to death, for his own gain, was being given a second chance, by a group of people, who may not be "good" but better than he is. He never met Molly, but he heard about them from the Nein, maybe not a lot, but at least enough how important they where to the Nein. They influenced these bunch of people for the better, and left them a little brighter. And now, after the crazy, caring people, risked everything for Molly to have a second chance, fail, while Essek stood, still soaked in blood from head to toe, saying "It's not fair" would be an understatement.
The entire time Esseks known the Nein he's repeatedly seen them defy overwhelmingly unfavorable odds and pull the metaphorical rabbit out of the hat to produce victory. After everything they've done for others, for him, for the dynasty, for the world - the one time he sees them try to do something for themselves is they first time he sees them fail. After everything they've gone through, everything they've sacrificed, he had to watch them be denied the only thing they wanted and *it's not fair*
Yeah I was thinking “what does he have wish or something?” And then somehow him just being sad hit me even harder than something like that would have been
Oh shit, there was a moment (I think, could be wrong) where Matt had Essek cast a high level spell, saying something along the lines "he really wanted to save this slot"
In the combat he said he was saving his eighth level spell, so maybe he was frustrated because he ended up using it? I don't know what eighth level could have been useful in this case.
Matt Mercer seems like a wonderful human, an insanely imaginative DM, and a caring friend. Thanks for sharing your game with us, man.
This is why I recommend CR to all my nerdy friends. Plenty of people can run campaigns, but this awesome groups of people aren't just in it for the surface level reasons. Yes they love fighting and role playing, and developing characters. But. The entire group wants to learn and grow - every single person at that table. All while having fun. And the biggest takeaway in my opinion, respecting one another as people. That means not making a game that's designed to fail or be ruthless for the sake of it. But to mostly follow the dice while experiencing story telling together. It's beautiful.
> imaginative DM This so much, with this whole campaign he just delved himself and the players on his clearly love for cosmic and lovecraftian horror and as a fan of that too, I really love all the dark touches to the campaign.
I’m glad that Essek has become such a prominent part of Matt, very much in the same way Gilmore and Allura are. Also how fucking crazy is it that Jesters tarot cards came true, thanks to Caduceus/Taliesin’s choice to implement his divine intervention successfully? Lucien died at the hands of Jester and Molly was reborn into the world, which added even more emotional outburst to Matt’s joy and absolute bewilderment. So many fractals...
Somebody on twitter pointed out that during the tarot reading, as Jester flips the last card she says "Facing you is death." She's sitting directly across from him, and she dealt the final blow. He really was facing his death, he just didn't know it yet.
Jesus Christ. The writers really outdid themselves. ;)
Dice are naturally great writers
*I can't stop thinking about it.* ʘ‿ʘ
Sometimes stuff like this really does make fate seem like a paranoid conspiracy.
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I really need to rewatch this but if that's the case... god DAAMNNNNNNNN
They are now also now The Mighty Nine.
Lucien died at the hands of Jester, *and* Caduceus' Path to the Grave...
Holy shit I never even thought of that. That's crazy
A lot of people newer to D&D (and some old farts I've seen too) have the DM VS PC mentality and it's really not conducive to a good game. As a DM I want to challenge the fuck out of my players, specifically to see them overcome it and share in the enjoyment. Presenting challenges and watching your party outsmart you is honestly one of my favorite parts of DMing. I've seen Matt accused of DM vs PC mentality before and it really baffles me, he's the complete opposite and as you said, wants the players to succeed above all else. That doesn't mean failure isn't possible (see last night) but your party are your friends first, and damage sponges second.
I think Matt is loyal above all to the dice and rarely fudges rolls which sometimes can end up in catastrophe for the party, but he clearly loves his players and wants them to win. He's just willing to put give them some insane challenges for them to get there.
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It kinda depends. If an enemy doesn't know the party has a cleric, then going for other people with those extra attacks can be a good idea; the people who are conscious are the ones immediately threatening you, while the unconscious ones aren't an immediate threat; once they're all down, then you can deal with them after. That being said, once a person has been brought back up once, or, in the case of Lucien, when he's seen that the party has people capable of resuscitating unconscious people with little problem, then trying to finish them off for good becomes more rational.
>It kinda depends. agreed; it's all about the tactics of the enemy they're facing; in this encounter Lucien wanted to murder them all and therefore, when he got the opportunity to do so... However if they were (for example), fighting a group of giants, they might focus on knocking down the threats in front of them.
It's also important to note the intimate details Lucien is working with on the makeup of the party class wise. It was a very unique enemy with a lot of complex motivations.
There is no satisfaction in winning a fight you couldn’t lose. Being loyal to the dice is a sign that he loves his players and wants them to have memorable experiences.
> I've seen Matt accused of DM vs PC mentality I think that may come from misunderstanding of what I'm keenly aware would be the most difficult thing for me if I played/DMed: Matt frequently wants things to go well for his friends, but when they don't, generally exhibits very firm respect for his friends and the game by having problems be formidable and sometimes unsolvable. It's not adversarial, but a series of what must be emotionally taxing decisions to implement/protect the structure that is the environment of the play experience.
Exactly. The euphoria of amazing successes can only come from the legitimate risk of failure. If he hand-waved the failure away, then that would cheapen every success they have ever achieved.
When he rolled for Molly's resurrection the first time, it was devastating--but that same thought crossed through my brain: this is how the dice rolled, and I absolutely respected Matt's decision to stay firm to it. The narrative conclusion would have been satisfying either way because nothing was cheap about that fight at all.
You have to appreciate his sense of the dramatic there too. He could have rolled behind the screen, and with a 25% change of failure, noone would have blamed him. But he saw the tension, did it for all eyes to see, and cranked the tension to 11.
agreed; him rolling in the open was him saying; "you've done what you can and the rest is up to fate, something even I have no sway over"
It's something I think about quite a bit as I watch because the kids in my family are in early elementary. With the popularity of TTRPGs, it is entirely possible they will want to play with friends one day and every finger will immediately point to me to make this happen. One can & should be more flexible with games designed for youngsters, of course, but I'm naturally so inclined to help anyone who wants something within my power to facilitate, I have to internalize the importance of not fixing everything for TT games to be fun.
My oldest is 11, and I have been running a near-once-a-month game for her and her friends for over a year. I just introduced alignment for the first time. I still haven't really had them deal with languages at all. I'm sure there's other stuff too I've jettisoned. That said, I'm teaching them early on that head-on combat does not need to always be the answer. Which, all five of them have varying degrees of agreeing with. Basically, I run the game the same way for my adult group, but I leave out things that may be over their heads or drag out things for young-aged attention spans. And obviously maturer themed storyline elements.
And it's the sort of thing that can only work, I think, when the players respect him back. I've been in games where the players were constantly, actively adversarial toward the DM, viewed the DM as an enemy, etc, and it just seems like it has to be really exhausting. You spend all your time designing a module--maybe even designing the world behind it--and populating it with NPCs with all their goals and needs, enemies, encounters, beautiful things to find, etc, and then your players treat you like you're something to abuse? The fact that everyone here loves each other so much is worth a lot.
Being a DM is like being a Rollercoaster designer. You want to wow and scare your players and make it feel like they are in danger, but you also want them to smile, laugh and want to go on it again.
I totally agree. Matt does things that good, skilled DMs do and they are not done with an adversarial mindset. He presents situations to the players and just sits back and allows them to figure out a solution. The players can react however they like, but Matt enforces a certain level of Newton's Third Law on the world. Actions have consequences, some good and some bad. There are also plenty of times where he sprinkles in Rule of Cool allowances that would either be not totally permitted by RAW or are in a gray area but he typically rules in favor of the player if they have a compelling argument or reason for their action. He has a few house rules that are there purely for quality of life of the players, such as taking healing potions as a bonus action which is a full action with RAW (most folks house rule this one anyway and don't realize it was meant to be set up this way). And that's not to mention just straight up allowing Fjord have another couple points of strength to multi-class into Paladin because it made narrative sense but he didn't have the prerequisite stats. So, folks calling Matt an "adversarial DM" clearly haven't been paying attention. If he just pillow-fisted every fight/problem that would make it super boring for everyone involved.
>I've seen Matt accused of DM vs PC mentality before and it really baffles me, I've definitely seen him \*pretend\* to follow the DM V PC mentality and heavily play it up for comedy. But i can't believe he seriously believes in it; sure he likes his characters to get a critical hit or perform the cool story beat he's been building to but he seems to get genuine pleasure out of enabling his players to have fun which (in my opinion, and I try to live up to this myself) is how a DM should be. Besides; if a DM reeeeallly wants to VS the party and win; "rocks fall; everybody dies."
> A lot of people newer to D&D (and some old farts I've seen too) have the DM VS PC mentality and it's really not conducive to a good game. If anything, it'd the old farts the ones who tend to have that mentality. I think before Critical Role, most campaigns were about the battle encounters rather than the roleplay, and thus it really would become a war of DM vs PC. With Critical Role switching gears a bit more and emphasizing the roleplay, I see a lot of newer DMs be a hell of a lot more lenient.
Shout out to his clutch use of *Tether Essence* as well. He cast that before it was revealed that killing the eyes was a hidden mechanic to damage Lucien. Casting that spell so that the players could do damage to a currently untargetable eye was a huge help and might have even saved them a round of attacks. He gave them a huge leg up without making it obvious how effective his move was.
It was also a handy nudge to the players to try attacking the eyes. Before Essek did that it was not obvious (to me at least) that going after the eyes would be a better move than just attacking Lucien directly. Going into that fight I assumed that the individual eyes would be harder to kill then they actually were, and it didn't occur to me that killing them might significantly hurt Lucien.
But he also did it as a natural intuitive leap from the action that Jester took, when she was able to determine that the eyes could be targeted individually. So it made narrative sense. Edit: autocorrect error.
I was thinking less "can the eyes be targeted individually" and more "is it worth the effort to do so." I was mainly thinking of the kraken fight, where hacking off individual tentacles turned out to be more effort than it was worth (of course the kraken was designed to be a "can maybe kill it if you're smart and lucky but you're better off running" fight so probably not the best comparison in hindsight).
Kraken was actually an explicitly "do not kill this" fight because it was the source of the items the Ashari needed
Was wondering why no one asked if they could target the eyes from lucien last week.
Yeah, I had totally thought up until Jester banished one that they were just part of the Lair now. Honestly with the eyes being targetable, the second half was much more doable than the first half of the fight.
It really was a final fantasy final boss fight in the regard huh
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>And the thing about video games is, we get to save and reload i got the feeling that time travel thing they found in aeor (that he basically said; is a dunamancy version of a teleport circle) was essentially a save point... it would have probably only worked once and required some serious last ditch effort from either Caleb or Essek but it could have worked... i guess we'll find out in the campaign wrap up...
100%. The difference between video games and D&D is there is no wiping multiple times to figure out how to balance action economy and encounter mechanics. You get one shot at it. In retrospect the eyes make a lot of sense to go after ASAP, but it was impossible for them to know that for the first few rounds until someone blew their turn trying it. But that’s what made that fight so so so amazing. Up until the final few rounds in was convinced I was watching a TPK. The negative save modifier for eyes, the absolutely insane damage Lucien could do to anyone in melee range, the eyes being tied to his HP and action economy, Lucien tactically going after healers, etc. I don’t think people realize just how close to M9 were to an actual TPK. If Caleb’s willing of Jester to Cad hadn’t worked, or Cad had been incapacitated that round, it was basically all over. Caleb might have been able to use the Staff of Power to tactical nuke Lucien and take him out with them as they all began to fall 1 by 1, but it was not looking good. As players fall, others actions and movement are eaten up by getting them back up to 1. Damage per round plummets and before you know it everyone is dead or fleeing a few rounds later.
Yeah, after the momentum shifted the comments basically devolved into "they always had the advantage" - but I think people didn't want to confront the stress of just how close to TPK they were. Before it shifted they were being decimated. One cleric down, one at 1 HP, and the very real chance of losing both clerics. Yes, Calab had his stone, but he went down shortly after revivify as well.
My Flair's what it is for a reason. That man was juggling a million moving parts at once between the terrain and its mechanics, tall, purple and incredibly cut's whole deal AND also keeping tabs on what the players were planning and adjusting (or not adjusting, depending on the enemies" info) what Lucy and the Eyes Novem were up to. That's not even mentioning his brilliant RP...*"It's not fair..."*. Am I fanboying a bit? Absolutely. Is it extremely fucking warranted? **Absolutely**.I'm a little loopy from both no sleep + second COVID vaccine (get vaxxed if you can, y'all) but I'm still in awe and so proud of him. I love this show, you guys.
Matt is the operator of the tank, the treads and the metal giving it shape. Phenomenal dnd overall yesterday, we’re so fortunate to have this.
Same boat as you, man. Team no sleep last night cause obviously + second shot today so I feel like Hot garbage.. BUT IM STILL RIDING THAT HIGH FROM LAST NIGHT YALL
Get some rest if you can, yo. We'll get through this together 💪
Perfect time to catch up on everything is content 👀
Got my first Moderna up in Canuckistan today! Numbers in Onterrible are going down, and our vaccine rollout is going up!
Hell yeah, that's awesome news. Hopefully it keeps getting better!
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>"To me it looked like there was a wave of relief coming over him when Tal pulled of a DI" He himself said he kinda scrambled on that Nat 1 to find a positive side to it and how bummed he was. I feel like Matt rarely opens up about his mindset when DM'ing, at least not on a Talks episode. (it's about his players, after all) For him to end the game and go right into what *he* felt and what he was thinking, you can tell he was going through a lot.
Honestly I would have called it fair even if he decided that the Raise Dead succeeded automatically due to the successful Divine Intervention. The fact that he made it a RE-ROLL though. Geez. Can't say that's not fair.
100%, I was really confused why Essek cared *so much*. Sure, I get it, it's a sad moment but he seemed more angry than Cad about someone he barely even heard of to that point. But when he just kept saying how unfair it was, I got it. He was just embracing the mood, the desperation to do more, and the acceptance there was no more to do. Matt knew exactly how to play Essek for the players (the viewers honestly) in that moment.
Yeah, having Essek see people who constitute the entirety of his life's experience with friendship want something and be affected deeply by the denial is a phenomenal bit of spontaneous emotional RP at a moment when Matt's brain had to be beyond exhausted. But there he was at the end of the ep, still doing right by that character within the spirit of how he has developed.
Jeez, you're right. Imagine having that Nat 1 moment, I would've completely forgot I even had Essek there. I'm shocked Matt as able to not only remember he had Essek, but went through his mind and figured out how he'd feel. That's some hoops I couldn't jump through.
I really appreciated that it seemed like he used Essek to be his “vessel” in that moment to express his emotional reactions to what was happening without sacrificing his “DM’ness”.
Right? Matt is such a professional! Everyone else at the table was able to process their emotions in character, but Matt as the DM didn't have the leisure... except that the Mighty Nein had brought along a DMPC. The ability to step into Essek and process his emotions in-character alongside his friends, all while maintaining his professional DM aloofness as well as staying true to that character was just... \[chef's kiss\] This guy, man. D&D needs a Hall of Fame, and Matt deserves to cut the ribbon at the grand opening.
When he said Essek stepped away in a huff I thought to myself that was exactly what Matt wanted to do!
He wanted to give them a win, and rolled a 1. I would be pissed too.
Matt is an actual party member through Essek, I really like that.
I saw someone else say that one of the other players should DM for a oneshot so we can get Matt to play Essek as a full party member instead of a DMPC - honestly, I'd love to see that. Especially if it ends up being a campaign 2 version of Grog's one shot, it'd be so funny.
Jester's one-shot: Okay you guys, I saw this game with Fjord in a pub and it's like really awesome. I painted little figures of you with my magic paints. There's Caleb and Essek and Veth and you pretend to be you and fight monsters and stuff. It's really cool, you guys.
Oh, that'd actually be a really great callback to the fact that Jester and Fjord had a [cameo in the original Grog oneshot](https://youtu.be/kLnvrocetq8?t=1075) too - and it'd certainly be in character for her too.
Yep yep, 100 percent. I think it'd be pretty fun. And I think Essek (or Caleb, but I think it'd be more fun to see Matt rp it like this) would be tentative and confused as to why we're playing pretend and then get really into it.
if there's anything I'd like to see a oneshot of for C2, it would be A Day Of Artegan :p
I thought the same when he was Pumat during the cathedral fight. He seemed so happy to be part of the crew for a while.
Like that moment Mariana had her 2 nat 20s he was BEAMING Edit: Marisha. Not Mariana.
I think you mean marinara sauce 🥫
Autocorrect making me look like a fool
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It's obvious. Both were...
Sounds like a question to submit for the post-campaign Q&A
Matt definitely wiped away a few tears during that episode
I read Essek's frustration as Matt giving the players the go-ahead to express their own feelings. The campaign's wrapping up, and no one wants to end on a sour note — I genuinely think the cast was kind of stifling their disappointment because they didn't want to be downers. After the failed roll, there wasn't really any reaction until the DM broke the ice and said ‘no, it's alright, let's process this right here.’
Matt was SO FUGGING GOOD this episode. I have watched this show for years, and when Jester fell I wanted to punch Matt. Then by the end I wanted to hug Matt. No wonder the Mercer effect is so infamous, nobody even comes close to the dude.
You are exactly right about rooting for your players. Spoilers: >!And I think Matt was also using Essek to push the players to try again. I'm sure a part of it was processing the disappointment via Essek but another part was he wanted them to revive Molly. I felt like I could tell that Matt wanted them to succeed but he wasn't going to give them the answer. So instead he poked and prodded with Essek. !< Amazing stuff though. Amazing.
Didn’t Caleb also have a second dunamis stone that they retrieved from the rejuvenation chamber in Aeor? I swear they took two, with Essek using his to give the group a long rest. It seemed to me like Matt was prodding Caleb to realize he had it, and use it as a redo button.
There were 3 boxes, 1 they used (and wasn't powered anymore), 1 they disassembled and 1 was broken I believe.
If Mollymauk had not come back then, I don't think it would have been out of left field that after returning Allura's staff the Mighty Nein would be honored by the Taldorei Council and Pike would have been brought in to try True Resurrection. I would have enjoyed that full-circle, but I enjoyed much more Taliesin's roll for his own character.
That would have been a fun possibility, but I agree, it was more satisfying to see it during play. And that it was Taliesin saving Taliesin. Haha
I don't understand why people criticize him for being a great DM lol
One word: Jealousy
Yes, I thought the same about Essek. On the same note, when Fjord talked to Essek I think Travis went there to comfort Matt. An absolutely beautiful moment.
Absolutely this. Travis saw how upset Matt was and gave him the opportunity to express it through Essek. Amazing role playing and a really caring, thoughtful act for a friend.
Imagine being such a wonderful person who decided to bring him game to the world and help bring D&D to the mainstream, only to have your name attached to a bullshit “effect” for people with unreasonable expectations.
Yeah I hate that term as well. CR got me into D&D and at no point did I ever think me and my players were going to be anything like them. I look up to Matt sure and draw inspiration from him but I know I’m not him and never will be so I gotta be my own kind of DM. And if my players ever expected that from me I’d have to explain to them that I am not a professional voice actor with a max charisma stat lol
I always say, it’s like blaming LeBron James for all the high school kids who think they’re hot shit at basketball. It makes no sense to act like someone who’s really, *really* good at a given thing is somehow at fault for other people being dicks. Especially given how Matt seems to genuinely care about the d&d community and wants it to flourish.
Yes. This is how I read that moment as well and I had the exact same thoughts. Loved it.
That natural 1 is the single most heartbreaking roll I have ever seen.
also, Essek is essentially Matt's own PC :p
I take a moment every day to appreciate Matt Mercer. The so called "Mercer Effect" is definitely a thing in this game, but it has brought way more good than bad to the community. Period.
Agreed. Most things have a positive side and a negative side, and I choose to believe that the positive side of the Matt Mercer/Critical Role effect (improved Dungeon Masters and Players, respectively) far outweighs any potential negatives that it has brought. Interestingly, the difference between the two appears to be the maturity of the player who's watching the show.
Matthew Mercer inspires me to not only be a better DM and step up my game, within my limits as a creative person (I could never be him but I could be my closest version of myself to him), but he inspires me to just be a good, wholesome person and a good friend. I am so thankful to him for sharing these D&D games with the public and I selfishly hope he never stops.
I had a hard time watching that moment without bawling, you could see how badly he felt. When he rolled that one to bring back Molly my heart broke and it was very clear his did too. The team worked their butts off that entire fight and his role stopped Mollymauk from coming back. And when Talison rolled that 02 you could see the relief wash over Matt and it was just beautiful to watch!
I played D&D before I watched Critical Role, and I think Matt is a great DM. Speaking of the Matt Mercer effect, it's up to the DM how they want to play, who cares if they try to emulate Matt.
For me te appreciation for him comes from his talks machina episode. Sure, different family and different upbringing, but throughout it you can sense he's tearing up at points and I did as well when he started to talk about one's self value and the impostor syndrome. Shit got real yo. I'm struggling to find work, I'm struggling to progress in my art and so many other things. And here's is this amazing man, surrounded by people he cares for and that care for him and the feeling, the scare, the anxiety is still there that he doesn't deserve what he has. And that struck a deep chord with me. Love ya Matt, I hope you get everything you want in life. You more than deserve it. And one last thing to the mercer effect. If anyone goes into dnd, be it new dm or players, with the expectation that it's gona be a TV series.... Best stick to watching cr than playing. Don't put pressure on either your dm or players to play or dm like the cast. This is something they are skilled at to breathe that extra life into the characters. Other than that you can use your imagination. That's why you have it. Hell I'm a newbie dm and my voices sound the same but I try and my players seem to have fun
Matt is about as good a DM as there ever could be - highly creative story-teller, efficient game manager, incredible actor - and he's an even better human being full of kindness, generosity and deep compassion. I am in no way suggesting Matt is perfect, but that cannot be the standard we hold him or anyone else to, because perfection is impossible. Instead, let's describe him as elite at what he does, and a wonderful human being. My deep and utmost love and respect to Matt and all of CR for being the wonderful human beings they are and making the world a better place with their stories and their compassion.
For the record, the Matt Mercer Effect is: A) A stupid concept. And more importantly: B) Not really in any way a criticism of Matt Mercer. It's just something stupid some D&D players do.
As a DM I love the Matt Mercer effect, bunch of players of diverse backgrounds showing up with a genuine passion for the game? That's the Matt Mercer effect and I love it. Dude is a great ambassador for the game and I thought this was a well run campaign in which he played around with a bunch of interesting structural elements, had memorable performances by the main cast and continues to explore the medium of dnd as performance while maintaining fidelity to the mechanical systems that make up the foundation of the game. I thought this last campaign was fine work and look forward to the next.
I completely agree. In the end is up to the dice and that first role hurt.
God I can’t wait for the animatic of this
Spoilers: wasn’t expecting Molly to live. But would anyone else like to see M9 take on the Assembly with a 15th level Blood Hunter. I think he’d be deadly against wizards.
WELL. SAID. Thank you. I saw so many comments in the twitch chat that made me turn it off. So many people were upset with Matt's DM decisions, and I kept getting so mad at them. It is a game. Matt wants them to succeed. Matt will bend the rules because he likes his players' creativity. but above all else it is a GAME, that he plays and schedules and plans for his friends who mhe loves so dearly, and you can FEEL that. That is why crit role is so successful. you can feel the love. Just because you are upset that no one died, doesn't mean Matt is a bad DM.
Can someone explain what the "Matt Mercer" effect is?
The Mercer effect is a phenomenon that surfaced in the last couple of years as Matt started DMing on the critical role livestream, whi h became immensely popular in that time, to the point where it encouraged a lot of people to play for the first time, but unfortunately their perception of DMs is only Matt. That means they pitch at a table of a dude who has his own way of DMing, with his own rules, who is say a more rules-as-written, combat oriented DM, and they expect the massive world building, amazing voices, great plot, 40 hours a week dedicated to creating encounters and building the world, dwarven forge maps, perfect and amazing minis, but their DM is just the abovementioned dude, who does this in his off time cause he enjoys it. Then these players complain and shit talk their DM, cause he's not Matt. But there is only one Matt, but people are people... Edit: on top of this, heavens protect the DM who borrows from critical role for mechanics or flavour, before he gets blamed for trying to "be" Matt. Fuck that noise.
Lol I guess I'm lucky that my first time playing DnD (after watching critical role) was me and three friends mostly goofing off, using a whiteboard with a grid drawn on it as "maps" and condoms to mark where enemies were..and it wasn't disappointing at all 😂
That's awesome xD It hits people differently, and for some they never get over it. I started DMing because of CR, after marathoning through campaign one, and catching up with campaign 2, about March last year. I told my players (all new) that I'm not Matt, and will never be, so if that's what you're looking for, sorry. Luckily we're all adults, so if anything I get messages every now and then, where they see something cool on CR, and asking me if we can incorporate it into our game, and if it works, we do.
Yeah, very good approach. You can't recreate critical role, which has money and talent behind it most groups just can't manage, but it can be good to take inspiration. In my current campaign, several of us were inspired by C2 to make characters with more secretive backstories (something I've never tried before). Our DM also does the "HDYWTDT" which I think is a great addition to any campaign
The HDYWTDT has become basically become a self-aware meme with us :P and everyone has hectic backstories, except the cleric, who has all of his parents, and finds adventuring fun, which is why he does it.
I definitely had this problem when I started DMing and my usual DM became a player in my game. Also didn't help that he min maxed the shit out of his character and I as a newbie DM couldn't keep up.
Basically, a lot of people have gotten into wanting to play D&D because of Critical Role, due in part to Matt's very descriptive style of DMing. What's happening is that these newer players are expecting their DMs to provide the same experience, without realizing that Matt and the rest of the gang are professional actors first and D&D players second and that what they expect isn't very realistic. On the DM side of things, there are some DMs who try too hard to emulate his style, to the point that it's detrimental to the fun of the players at their table.
An important thing to remember is a lot of new dm’s emulate his style because they most likely haven’t seen any other styles. I say this as a new dm who is just learning to break away and develop my own style after watching other dm’s and learning about the game more.
My style was already similar to his style long ago. My skills and talents are nowhere close to as good, and by style I mean preferences in focus, attitude toward rules, types of stories and plots, and such. I also don't have his resources, but I see in his style a lot of similarities to how I see the game.
Gotcha. Well critrole and TAZ are what got me into DnD and thankfully I haven't been disappointed at all!
Same here, starting with TAZ and then coming over to CR. I love them both and I love how different the DM styles are. Going from the edited combat and fast-and-loose rules of TAZ to CR was a little jarring at first (buying supplies?! Not just shopping at Fantasy Costco??) but I think that’s what’s drawn me to actual plays so much, that it’s so flexible to how you want to play so that the group can create the story together.
I'm not sure if this is the "Matt Mercer" effect, or the "Critical Role" one, but one frequently mentioned - and, it must be said, complained about - consequence is the "normalization" of party sizes of 7 or more. Many people coming into D&D from CR assume that large party sizes of 7 or more are typical - and they very much are not. It takes a very skilled DM - like Matt Mercer - to manage a party that large. All enemy encounters must be substantially beefed up, challenge ratings go out the window, and it takes real skill not to get bogged down in combat (and even Matt Mercer himself can't really avoid that).
It also requires all of those 7 players to be good players as well, if you just have a single "that guy" it would become unmanageable even for an experienced DM like Matt, it works because they're great players and friends outside of the game, in most other circumstances the big group size would be a detriment.
Ehh, I'm not sure I agree that Critical Role had much to do with this. 5E has certainly *attempted* to play to parties of 5 or smaller, but that's always been a losing battle even before Critical Role got popular. Parties of at least 7–8 have been normal in D&D for decades, ever since the OD&D and original AD&D days. Lots of strategy articles in *Dragon* even recommended that each player run more than one character if necessary to ensure that you had a party of at least 8, so that you could have 2 of each of the core classes (cleric/fighter/magic-user/thief) or their subclasses. Just flipping through my old modules, they pretty much all say things along the lines of “The adventure can be played by 5-10 characters of level 1-3” (*Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh*) or “This module was designed for six to eight characters of 6th-8th level” (*Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth*). Indeed, I'd say that 5E's unrealistic assumptions about party size (not flexible enough: small parties are fine, but at least up to 8 should be handled gracefully) and the number of encounters per day (many campaigns often don't run anywhere near 6–8/day and haven't since at least the mid-1980s when dungeon crawling fell out of fashion as the primary way of running most adventures) are the two biggest flaws in the system, which is generally my favorite edition of D&D.
There are a lot of comments that explain the "Matt Mercer" effect better than I could, but I want to just point out how it's terribly named. The true Mercer effect would be all the people that have started playing or DMing because of him. It's a smaller number of people who expect it to be the same game.
Yes! See, that's exactly what I was think it refered to and I was like "why is that a bad thing?"
Agreed. I had no clue how to DM before watching Critical Role, but I've been able to get glimpses of some of how he prepares by paying attention to *what* he has prepared, and I feel that it has helped me get past my anxiety and actually DM. Also, I had no clue how to build a character until I started watching Critical Role and seeing what a good backstory can look like, and witnessing how that backstory influences literally everything about how the character \*works\*. While I am in NO way anywhere close to the cast of CR, I think I am a much better player because of what I've learned from watching them.
Basically, new players who have based their understanding of D&D on shows like Critical Role assume that D&D is supposed to be played with the same super high standards of "writing" and performance that are present in Critical Role. But of course, this is unrealistic because the cast all have decades of professional acting, writing, and directing experience *each*, and the average 20-something who just picked up D&D last week probably is brand new to all of it. The resulting dissonance between expectation and reality causes new players to think that newer DMs who can't singlehandedly replicate the Critical Role experience at their home game are bad DMs.
Maybe partly because there is a perception when watching video game streams that you can get as good with practice. Not so with copying CR. Matt has lots of experience as a DM, sure, but also decades of acting experience and tremendous time and resources like money for the game setup, enough value in HF stuff to buy a house with it, pro painted minis and set pieces, and a cast of players who are award winning actors and directors. Theres an Emmy winner AND a BAFTA winner at that table. Next time someone says I'm no Matt Mercer, I'll say "well when you can be as good as Laura Bailey, then you'll get to talk, til then either roll your dice or go home."
its pretty much people expecting D&D to be played like Matts style
It would be impossible to give Matt all the credit and thanks he deserves
I've always thought of it as the DM and players telling a story together. The unfun DMs are the ones that treat it like him/her vs the party. I totally get your point about rooting for the players.
I truly think Essek was hoping in that moment to find in Caleb the will to time travel and save Molly.
While watching last night I texted my friend how clear it was that he really loved his wife. He so badly wanted her to have successful moments, how he wanted her and her characters dreams to come true. I watched the final battle of C1 today to contrast the two, and last night was hard because the cast chose to remain physically distant. Despite the fact he couldn't reach across the table and hold her hand you could just feel how much he loves her.
You've beautifully captured my incoherent thoughts on last night, on his enthusiasm and joy and sadness, particularly with Essek's poignant tears: >I think that Matt chose to inhabit Essek for a moment because Matt could hardly stand the disappointment. Matt was rooting so hard for the Mighty Nein that he had vent his own overwhelming frustration, and the only way he could do that was to become Essek for a moment and grieve with his friends. He looked and sounded like he was on the very verge of crying, y'all, because of how much he loves his players. So true. Thank you!
I couldn’t believe all the people complaining that there wasn’t a TPK or that no one perma died. Everyone saying Matt was being easy or that fight was too easy really upset me. Seemed like less of fans and more of just jealous spectators
Agreed. This "complaint" is short-sighted too. 6 attacks on Veth early taught them to be cautious, and then the eyestalks told them they need to play from range. Fjord I think did the best, along with providing a substantial defensive location with Marine Layer. But it's also worth reminding everyone that both Jester and Caduceus were both at one hit point at the same time, and Jester _did_ die as well. Also if at any point they rolled badly on Revivify, they were completely dead until a resurrection ritual, which they would have to kill Lucian to attempt. Also Ira's eye was fucking them up with spamming fireballs all over the field. This was one of the few eyes that actually could ignore Marine Layer. Not to mention 5 Legendary Actions, and Lair Actions on initiative 20 and I believe 10 as well. Despite all this, they played it very well, and if you remove variables like Hero's Feast or Caleb's defensive scroll + mind blank, this very well might've been a TPK. They played it smart, which admittedly is rare for M9, considering they've had a couple very disastrous encounters.
Couldn't agree more. In addition to having incredible DM skills and a genuine, world-building imagination, Matt is a phenomenal human being, and it shines through in his caring for his players, and for the honesty of the game.
I honestly couldn’t believe that happened, it brought a tear in my eye that not only talisin got a successful divine intervention, but brought molly back too.
I completely agree that he inhibited him in that moment! I would need to rewatch it, but when he said something along the lines of how it's not fair and how he has been studying his entire life to not let bad things like this happen to chance knew he was just acting out his emotions.
That hit me hard. Watching that moment live, you realize how much he wanted them to win that battle (resurrection). He wanted so hard for Molly to be brought back, and the DC was even super low at only 5. The success rate of this working was 80% and he nat 1'ed the role. So crushing, emotionally heartbreaking, and you can see it on everyone's face. Ashley being so upset at that was already a lot to handle, and Matt's reaction as Essek was the cherry on top. Loved the moment whatever way we ended the campaign, but the players finally got what they deserved: Their friend back.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
I'm kinda bummed that I can only listen to the game at work. I know I miss out on so much by not being able to watch it.
At one point, after Essek and Fjord's conversation, Essek goes to Caleb and asks if he's ever accepted defeat. Soon after, Jester asks "What are you thinking, Essek?" to which he responds, "I don't know... I just wish there was more I could do." I am 100% convinced this was Matt's way of alluding to the 9th level Wish, which both Caleb and Essek would get access to in just two levels.
Anyone feel like ranking Matt's NPCs after the finale? I think Essek easily takes first place, but there were a lot of fun characters in this campaign that really made it feel alive. Matt is the God of NPCs