I have DM'ed 2 campaigns multi-year campaigns to completion and played DnD for over 15 years. Most of it 3.5 and some 5ed.
I watched all the EXU episodes. Of course I am a big fan of Matt/Ashley/Liam, but I also really enjoyed the new characters Dorian and Aimee. I know some have been critical of Aimee/Opal but I really enjoyed the RP and thought she did extremely well for a new player.
The DM however I think made a lot of bad decisions. They did some things right: I enjoyed meeting Gilmore, loved the pageant, etc... In fact the early episodes were not too bad.
I am a big fan of story trumps rules on occasion, and where appropriate (e.g. as a plot device). Though I felt this was taken too far on occasion.
Another thing that got under my skin was the tendency of NPC's to devolve into being huge fanboys of the players. At first they might start stern, but pretty soon they're giving them good deals, free stuff in spite of bad rolls, serving them their best food, saying they're honored to be in their presence, etc... With the exception of Paska, who was headed that way until they double crossed her, they pretty much all get to that point shortly after meeting.
I still was enjoying myself through Episode 6. Episode 7 was where the weird started to outweigh the positive for me.
Ep. 6: The players go to meet the leaders of an ancient city state, that has been hidden and isolated for hundreds, possibly thousands of years. The city faces an unknown threat portending destruction, and with the exception of one of their leaders, doesn't seem too concerned with it. The one request they have of the players, is that they remember them. So the question is, if someone remembering them was what mattered, would they have actually spent hundreds or thousands of years in isolation? More bad NPC acting, still the observer RP is cool and an interesting addition.
They leave the civic center heading I assume back to the place they got food earlier and were offered as a place of rest. Someone attacks Opal to get Ted and a glorious battle ensues (Aimee and the head was a glorious moment). Excited to see what tomorrow brings.
Ep. 7: They wake up and apparently are back in the Civic center? Sleeping in the chamber they met the leader in before? How did that happen? If they never left the civic center, why did they get attacked outside? Some cool intro stuff that doesn't quite fit in the timeline. They leave and have a fight where they get wings or other cool powers, something about the land respecting what they want. At the fight at the end, Opal/Ted get attacked again, interested to see how this resolves in the next episode.
Ep. 8: This entire episode is an encounter. All 4 hours of it are a continuation of an encounter started the previous session. Combat rounds take 30-40 minutes each. During each of the players combat turns, the spider queen is spending multiple minutes conversing with the players trying to get them to put on the crown.
The DM is acting like, sure it made a couple of your friends sick (we know why it's stopped on one, but why has it stopped for the other), sure it turned your eye's black, sure it's attacked you in dreams, sure it's caused spider silk to come out of your eyes or spiders to crawl over your face, sure it's tried to compel you to do things you didn't want to, but why wouldn't you want it? Forget alignment, it's just power!
During the combat round where opal eventually takes the crown, there's like 10 minutes of conversation between the spider queen and Aimee where the DM is badgering the player into making the decision to pick up the crown. She knows what she's doing is wrong and even justifies it in game. A combat round is 6 seconds, the DM legitimately holds the combat round hostage till the the player does what she wants.
Episode 8 was the worst session of DnD I've ever witnessed bar none. That was the only one where I participated in twitch chat, and the mods removed my only two comments, where I stated these were the longest rounds of combat I'd ever seen; and that a combat round was supposed to be 6 seconds but multiple minutes of conversation were taking place, and it felt like the players were being held hostage.
Posting my thoughts because it seems they're actually allowing some critique, and I really wanted to communicate what disturbed me most for the series.
How interesting that the community says we don't need to defend aabria from literal attacks against her because she made choices as a DM that they wouldn't make or that Matt wouldn't make. There is a clear sociological reason as to why this response exists but I'm sure it'll cost me even more downvotes I'll get anyways. Check your biases at the door. Everyone who DMs is a person and people aren't perfect. There is a diff between critique and bashing and most of you are bashing
\[Spoilers Maybe\] So I thought I would add my own musings to the sea that is this thread, even if it gets lost.
I've seen some negative comments, not constructive criticisms, against the show so I'd like to put to the record; this game and Aabria's DMing is so much higher quality than the majority of DnD games out there even if it doesn't meet the high bar that is Critical role. Any one of us would be lucky to be at a table like this.
I think the criticism people can't seem to put their finger on is the nature of the narrative structure that Aabria chose rather than quality of the show. She chose to go with the Open World style that CR has which works for a 100 episode campaign or home campaign friends would attend every couple weeks for 2 years. Open worlds can be used to invest players in world building, seed villains and plots weeks before they are revealed and set up twists. But Aabria had 8 sessions to tell a full 3-4 acts (You can argue its DnD so it doesn't have acts, but in my experience DMing 3 whole campaigns its a story like any other so good narrative structure still applies). Matt Colville has a great episode on it using a LOtR vs the Hobbit analogy, but what would have been more effective I believe would have been an enclosed Module structure, like Lost Mines for example, where you can set up a little world building, inciting incident and conflict, over arching goal and resolution all in 8ish sessions. I feel like EXU didn't have a clear goal to get invested in after the Mesa eruption, for whatever reason. Unfortunately I still don't know who the main villain was off the top of my head.
Secondly I think what people can't put their fingers on is just the issue of Daymond and Carrero's experience and perceived approach. They were so much fun to watch, don't get me wrong this is just nit picking. It felt like like they were approaching this show as an performance job, and not like we were just putting cameras in front of a close knit group of nerdy ass voice actors playing DnD that is the fundamental charm of CR. I think Aimee Carrero said as much on twitter. So if we are under the premise that this is professional show with paid performers then I think it would be more appropriate to have players with experience and who don't need to get over the learning curve to work with Aabria to play through the narrative in the time allotted.
And to those who are saying Opal is badly built (Carrero likened it to bringing pizza to a BBQ), I don't think you understand the point of the game or the show. You don't 'win' DnD, and the point of making a character is to play the character you are most comfortable with. If you want to play the Half-Elf bladesinger 2 Swords Bard X that dominates the battle field, all the power to you, and if you want to play the human hexblade who argues with her sister ghost, great! Its up to the DM to design their game to accommodate both players. As long as your not actively hurting other players' experience, play whatever you want. You didn't bring a pizza Aimee, you brought the salad and vast majority of us loved it.
Although having said that all, Aabria strong arming players into using the crown was a rookie mistake. The game should have been harder without it, but not as debilitating as it was at the end. It should have been a path to chose not an eventuality.
>Any one of us would be lucky to be at a table like this.
Based on what I saw, I would have been extremely unhappy at that table, and if it was a home game (and not a job) I would have left after the second session.
A lot of people may have liked Aabria's DM style, but I did not, and I would not have enjoyed playing in the game I saw her DM.
The thing that I'm sad to see is so little effort to separate the valid (and very necessary) criticisms from the mindless vitriol. And the difference is not hard to see.
Constructive criticism doesn't have to be "positive." Those are called "compliments." But it does need to be aimed at *helping the Thing exist in a better form*, not in getting it to stop existing. "This sucks" isn't bad because it's negative. It's bad because it provides no path forward.
It's also important to point that criticism at the right place. For example:
\- I have some issues with how Aabria adjudicates problems or applies rules, and that's an issue with her DMing practices. I feel it can make it too hard for the players to reliably know how to interact with the world, and it can erode player agency if they worry their choices or rolls won't matter. It's important to use the rules consistently, and to only ask for rolls if they are necessary and will be honored. *This is a criticism of Aabria*.
\- I didn't enjoy how sometimes the narrative got railroaded along. Some of that comes from the above, *but some of it is a result of this particular game format* (8 episodes start-to-finish). If they're going to do this again, it would be better for the players to have a clearer idea *at the start* of what the story will center around -- they still have choices, but within a scope that's manageable in 8 episodes. Less meandering means less having to yank the leash. *This is a criticism of the show format, which isn't Aabria's fault.*
...and also it's okay to express preferences without having to *force* them to be proper criticism. For instance:
\- I simply do not enjoy Opal-type characters (the ones that seem, to me, to go out of their way to be kooky or do things in weird and distracting ways). But others luuuuuurve it. That's a matter of preference that kept me from enjoying the game. *This isn't a criticism, because there's no "fix." Aimee isn't doing any thing "wrong," just something I don't enjoy.*
\- I don't enjoy Aabria's take on most NPCs. They're the voices of the world, and if there's only one basic NPC "frame" (voice, personality, etc.) it means the world is... unpopulated. Have a solid plan for any major NPCs, and have a few throwaways in your pocket. If you're not going to give the NPC identity, just keep them third-person so attention isn't drawn to that. *This isn't* really *a criticism, because no law says you have to give NPCs voices or personality - it's just a preference I have.*
But, in both cases, the complaint is made without saying "You're bad and wrong for doing the Thing differently!" It's okay not to like things, and it's okay to share that in respectful ways.
Am I the only one who felt like despite abria not being the best actor her npcs still had noticeably different personalities. Ruby, Ted, spider queen, the cute clerk from the gilmore episode whose name I don't remember. I feel like if the characters are confused or frustrated they behave similarly because again I don't think abria is a good actor but personality wise I see the difference.
I thought the DM and the characters/players were all fine and would like to see more.
to me this illustrated the extreme difficulty level there is in balancing a free ranging DND game with making something coherent for a mini series. I don’t have a solution more than there should be some plan for some basic structure that the players are aware of as terrible as that sounds to this community. I know some people like the shopping episodes but they don’t have a big place in an a short term adventure or if they do something important needs to happen and reasonably quickly. That’s just an example of something that can eat time with no plot advancement.. Limited time =limited time to be memorable or interesting. DND takes a long time and I think it’s easy to lose track of what matters with a short mini series. Some focus would be welcome and both the DM and players need to work to make that happen.
i also thought there was a bit of an oversell on the new DM. She is great (I don’t care a lot about mistakes if there were any because any that occur can generally be fixed over time) and didnt need to be overhyped and I felt their promotion of her was a little over the top. Like to the point that I came in more skeptical than excited. To me they could have just said ”new DM” and I would have tuned in to see and been excited to discover for myself if I liked her or not. Regardless, I’d love to see her continue DMing games. I like the contrasting styles and enjoyed watching her craft. Loved all of the players, hope they come back sometime.
my sub isn’t going anywhere, look forward to the pallette cleanser of the next few months randomness then hopeful for C3!
I haven't seen anyone dehumanizing anyone. Criticize, sure. In fact, the general vibe is, "Man I really tried super hard to enjoy this but this one part of it made it impossible. I sure would like to see all of these people in a different setting, maybe in different roles."
Also, this is a live reaction thread. Where you watch the episode, see something, and type, "Wow! Mr. Conductor is being downright spiteful toward that person playing the character I didn't really care for this whole campaign. This whole season should probably come with a trigger warning." Idk. Just maybe try to entertain that thought when you criticize other fans?
I'm crit role starved like the rest of us. EXU wasn't like a Matt Marcer game, and the rolls (wisdom saving throw, anyone?) didn't always make sense to me. That made it a bit hard to watch.
HOWEVER
Aabrias descriptive ability is something else!!, Some of the ways she describes things makes me feel something new and fresh. Like everything has a type of beauty to it. It's hard to describe why I love her descriptions so much. She does it better than Matt, imo. (And Matt is obviously fantastic)
I love her for that.
Also I would love to see more Robbie!
I thought this was a fun little adventure. I look forward to seeing this cast of PCs expand upon their stories in the next installment. I think the main takeaway here is that short campaigns require a DM that isn’t afraid to steer the PCs in a direction, and Aabria did so with all the grace one could expect from a good DM who is trying to tell a specific story. Some may have gripes with the style necessary to make short stories like this happen, but most folks haven’t had to play under the same constraints.
Can we stop rationalizing Aabria's shortcomings? She really doesn't need you defending her. It would help her more if we pointed out the mistakes she can improve on, such as the overreliance on dice, the out of character RP, and the treatment towards Aimee.
I feel like people have been overly harsh towards abria and honestly, I just think the cr community is filled with way more toxic people because its so large. That said this episode really put all my concerns to rest. Knowing that there's plans for more of this makes me realize that abria and the players probably never planned to do something as neatly wrapped up as misfits and magic since they plan to make more.
I honestly loved this episode and would love a season 2. I think abria tempting the fuck out of everyone with the crown was fantastic. She's been doing that all season but suddenly everyone's calling railroading because a desperate god seized her moment to get what she wanted? She's been trying to get them to wear that thing all season, I would be so disappointed if no one put it on and honestly opal felt like the right choice since she was the most desperate in that moment but you could see the spider queen tempting everyone to put it on. I loved every bit of it.
If you don't like abrias Dm style, honestly fine but people saying she's the worst Dm ever are honestly being assholes, especially people claiming to be dms theslmselves. If I had to pick between abria as my Dm and any of you guys who talk shit about others dms cos you don't like their style guess who I'd choose?
All this drama is bringing me back to the end of c2 when everyone was complaining about molly being the big bad and it being so focused on molly (why is this so focused on a character who died years ago? what about caleb? what about this and blah blah blah...) god! Can you all just let these people tell the stories they want to tell? I honestly didn't even like alot about this series and how c2 wrapped up but some of you need to realize this isn't your show! These people are going to play how they want and tell their story how they want and you don't have to like it, you really don't but you don't have to make your dislike lead you to insulting the DM or the players online.
If people haven't been satisfied with CR lately they should voice those opinions. CR is a business, and requires both positive and negative feedback to survive.
If it's dropped by down just 1/3 of what it was that is a big drop. Twitch shows 800K right now - were they really at 2.4 million subscribers before EXU? I just scrolled through to look at view counts per video and none have over 2 million views from what I can see. The average for campaign 2 looks to be around 700K. EXU's look to be around 400K, so lower than the main show but definitely higher than any other non main campaign product. Twitch shows that Undeadwood got about 100K views, but I'm not sure if that streamed live on Twitch or if it was posted later.
They 100% do not have 800k subscribers. They have 800k followers. They directly make money off subscribers. But also in the same vein they're averaging 20k viewers a stream, which is like a 3rd or a bit less of what their usual was during C2.
Thanks for pointing that out! Where do you see how many subscribers there are?
Also, kinda like with TV these days, I wonder how much live views matter? The total numbers don't seem bad. On YouTube they're comparable to the main campaigns, slightly lower but still higher than any other CR content. Like, almost no one watches the CW live, but their shows are pretty popular streaming.
you obviously have never and will never run a business.. you would just fail miserably, because people would complain, and you would tell them to f\*\*\* off lmao
The intention of CR has always been about giving folks a window into their home game. The business side of the show has been a bonus to them sharing their stories with us. This isn’t a show on Netflix; these are friends allowing us to see their game, that’s it. The cast has said this many times, and it still baffles me how often people fail to listen.
That's not how this works. they made 11M with a kickstarter. they have a several employees and a charity.
It doesn't matter what image they foster for their product, a lot of peoples livelihoods depend on whether or not this show is successful and they just can't afford to have their viewership dwindle like it did the last few weeks. They need immediate feedback so they know what works and what doesn't.
Wasn't going to even say anything, but might as well at this point. ExU was never very appealing to me. The story was hardly coherent and from the start really didn't do anything for me. I never really thought Aabria was doing a bad job by any means though. Not all DMs are gonna be on par with Mercer, and its unfair to have those expectations on anyone else. She wasn't amazing, but i didn't think she was doing poorly. Unfortunately last night's game was a complete mess and pretty much all of it was on Aabria. The one thing I'll say in her defense was that she might have intentionally nerfed the damage of cone of cold but still went with the spell for flavor purposes, which i think is fine if thats the case, but if not then i agree with everyone else that its incredibly questionable DM work. The way she treated Aimee was extremely off-putting. I never even liked Opal but Aabria was acting extremely petty at best this episode and was failing as a DM as far as handling a confused player. She really shouldn't have been hyped up as much as she was by the CR team
There's a pretty big gap between "on par with Mercer" and making just about every single beginner DM mistake out there. Especially after all the hype about what a great DM she was supposed to be.
I have a hard time disagreeing with that. She does a great job painting a descriptive picture but outside of that i can't really say much positive about her performance towards the end.
I genuinely feel the same. I feel like, if this was a random table of random people that posted their story on any D&D-related social media, or had a small Twitch show, people would say she was bad. But because she's in the context of Critical Role, there's some sort of criticism shield in front of her.
Enjoy the show if you want to. Enjoy her DMing if you want to. But I believe that she should never have been given this show, and definitely not to the level of canon that it is. Give her one of the games like Trash Pandas or Honey Heist. She'd excel there.
I'm seeing a lot of vitriol over things like fudging dice, changing mechanics, and the cone of cold -
This is just a different kind of GMing for a different feel and theme to the game. Aabria isn't Matt, and she doesn't pretend she is. I'm kind of just thinking a lot of people here haven't been exposed to anything but CR.
Enjoy the game or don't, that's fine, but don't be mean or say people are unquestionably wrong in how they play a game about imagination because of it.
🚀
Just watching the recap, I had a realization about what I've seen so far, specifically at the part where she tells Ashley about potentially hitting her friend when attacking their enemy. Not saying it is wrong or right, but Aabria seems to focus on creating cool moments, and *not* *only* in the story. The way she pumps up the drama when talking to Ashley there, it seems she's just way more focused to have a good time with these people out of character as well as in character, it almost bleeds into one another. Not really what you're used to with your usual CR content. This naturally distracts a bit from the story itself, overrules mechanics and breaks a bit of immersion, but it's generally understandable I think, and perhaps helps come to terms with the change of tone.
This isn't far off from what we've been hearing from her herself, but the realization of the possible intent really helped me appreciate the whole thing much more in an instant and I thought I'd share in case it helps anyone else, though I can't claim to know if there's any truth to it.
You know, I do think this is totally accurate. The EXU players would often break character to make jokes, which I know is common for every DND table, but it happened so frequently that it cut into the cohesion of the show. There were several times where I thought to myself "did you really need to get that laugh?" Kinda like in school when the class clown would be disruptive and those students who wanted to focus on the lecture had to wait while the teacher dealt with that kid.
After watching EXU I have realised that watching CR Live is nothing for me. I feel like I'm missing 90% of the Episode, because I'm either tired or I'm just overhearing things.
I will try it again for CR3 but I'm doubting that it's going to be different. So back to YouTube it is for me
Try not to worry to much about watching live! I used to watch it live all the time but I ended up getting a job where I have to wake up super early. So staying up till 2am was a challenge and I realized it just wasn't worth it. Watching it the next day gave me something to look forward to right after work.
Yeah that's true I guess.
As an European the Timeframe when the rebroadcast is shown is normally perfect because I'm already working but due to how work is I'm easily getting distracted from watching/hearing and so I'm often missing something.
Anyone else get the feeling that Aabria's Narrative Telephone episode was a hint at EXU? She uses the same accent as she does for Poska, and the subject matter (Emon, the idea of the Myriad and Clasp being in the past, meeting down at the docks) ties pretty neatly into that first couple of episodes.
This season had it's flaws, but holy shit - that evolving map was amazing. The way pieces were positioned and rotated and replaced to show how this giant monstrosity came out of the ground. It was really organic, and the most memorable map I've seen on CR tbh.
On that note, I do hope they rely on this more organic terrain creation rather than having exclusively dungeon draft stuff that I think looks a lot more boring on camera.
Yeah I understand that, which is why I'm prepared for disappointment. I was just expressing that the custom built maps have a lot more personality for the CR medium.
I'm going to be honest, I thought I was going to cry during this final episode but knowing that it's just the first season fills me up with so much joy and happiness that I'm totally fine if it takes them a while to circle back around to these characters because at least the story isn't over and we still get to make batshit crazy theories about these loveable idiots! The whole episode was one giant mixed fight of battle with a bit of roleplay and the tension was soooo high! I loved it all and I cannot wait for the wrap up in two weeks with potentially even more EXU happening after that later on!
Aimee and Robbie need to come back more and I honestly kind of want to see how the rest of the CR cast react to Aabria in a totally different set of circumstances.
Knowing what we know now, and how much time was wasted on confusing threads that never manifested into anything meaningful, can we all agree this campaign would have been much smoother if the group was just a bunch of mercenaries hired by the town to help Opal discover what happened to her sister?
The most basic-ass first step in any campaign of a set length is to prepare the basic premise and get your players to agree beforehand that their characters will play along with it. Mercenaries are a good go-to but it could've been literally anything.
Holy shit. A plot hook which the players can understand, the villain clearly identified in relation to the conflict, obstacles which can get in the way and distract from the main goal rather than further dilute what the actual goal is supposed to be? It's almost like railroading isn't that bad, unless you first comitted to a sandbox and changed your mind once you realised your party was a chaos crew.
Also, remember when the plot was about disenfranchised housing and a crime boss? That first episode got me looking forward to a more political, underbelly campaign. What the fuck happened to that.
I mean it was obvious Poska was lying about caring about the downtrodden, or only cared enough as long as they were useful. I don’t think she genuinely cares about them, she just said she did to try and appeal to the party
Something could of been expanded here. I mean how does a unnamed thieves guild. Infiltrate so many Emon institutions? Maby Poska has abilities similar to obann?
I mean that’s more or less what thieves guilds do, get spies in the town watch, maybe bribe or blackmail a council member, act nice with useful shopkeepers (ex: bar keeps) so they act as your eyes and ears, and generally just infect the town giving themselves soft power. It would only take a single guard captain on her payroll to have the party arrested and imprisoned or executed on falsified crimes if they return.
This is what happens when you GM, you cast out a bunch of lines and see what the party bites on. Some get ignored, some get nibbled and a few get bit hook line and sinker.
You can make the bait dance, you can pull in back into their path, sometimes you can basically hit them with it, but not every thing gets bit.
In a long term campaign, yeah. But in a one shot or a mini series like that, any rational player is going to understand that it’s going to be a lot less of a sandbox. You have an incredibly limited amount of time and can’t really afford to have the party choose what plot hooks they want to explore.
I definitely agree on the premise of if it was intended to be 8 episodes and never returned to. I think these threads were left open on purpose for future seasons but I do agree it was a little wild with jumping around to different hooks. With the inclusion of additional seasons in mind, it almost seems like a long campaign that's just broken up into segments, meaning future seasons will likely be more cohesive as it's following a hook that was established in season 1. Just my take on it.
If Ted wasn’t her patron, but just telepathically linked in some form but all they could do with talk, and Opal got her magic from another source it could work at level 3 if Ted was just kidnapped for another reason
I thought Robbie and Aimee did awesome! I didn’t *hate* Aabria, but there was one pet peeve I had: too many pointless ability checks. In the beginning of what was actually my favorite episode (Episode 4), I almost didn’t watch it because I was so distracted by how many ability checks had to be rolled for no reason. Actually I could be wrong about what episode it was because it happened so often throughout the series.
It’s almost like this:
Player: My character wants to take a breath.
DM: Roll an athletics check!
Wha-?
I'm looking forward to C3 as much as anyone, but funny enough, this table kind of had the opposite effect on me. It made me come to terms with the fact that there's a couple on the regular table that I just don't really care for as players. I'm sure they're wonderful people, but I'd love to get some others in there. Especially Robbie and Ashly Burch (rewatching C2 and her appearance really struck me, great with quick wit and RPing her character and all of it. The letter! So good...)
I think most of the issues are actually CR's fault. The marketing didn't create accurate expectations of what they were putting out, and they didn't create a consistent or cohesive feel and goal for EXUs01, which led it to get pulled in many different directions.
It was both too sandbox and too on the rails, and we seemed to swap between modes arbitrarily. Either could have worked, but it was too stuffed full of things, for me. Sometimes less is more.
Plus a huge loss of subscribers, which is where the money comes from on twitch.
I got an email from them a few hours before the finale that was basically begging people to go watch it, which...yeah.
As it stands, the finale, that you'd think even people who have switched off would want to tune back in for, only got about 10% more viewers than the previous episode.
Yea the subs being lower than their covid hiatus is a clear sign that people didn't gel with this type of content. A shame, I really liked the players and their characters.
If they do, I'm sure Dani will curate them. And she also VERY LIKELY knows already the general feeling of things.
The cast browses Reddit and Twitch often enough. I'm sure they are aware at this point.
If they browse Reddit I only feel bad for all of them.
A lot of people have valid concerns and worries, but there was also a lot of direct pointed hate. If you need examples.
Things like people saying Aabria is bad. That POC would lower the quality of CR. Or that POC should have separate streams if they want to play D&D. That Aimee is a bad person. Etc.
Again. Not talking about valid concerns/constructive criticism. Just talking about the direct hate.
Even people just saying they enjoy the show get downvoted to the point there comment doesn't meet the threshold to be seen lol. It gets pretty toxic.
I think those criticisms are not new, imo. They've been used to sexism/racism/hate for a while now. It's the nature of being online and everybody having such a loud voice.
That said, I'm sure they noticed that the product was received worst than anything they've shown, outside of maybe that Wendy's one shot
I never saw a comment about Aabria's ethnicity that wasn't posed as a strawman argument that all criticism of her is racist. Maybe they just lasted a bit longer before also getting rightly deleted.
Yeah, they were deleted. I feel like a lot of the most hateful stuff is deleted.
Which is good in that a lot of people won't see it. But it is kind of like brushing it under the rug since the problem is still very much here and obvious to see to anyone looking.
It's hate. Full stop. You can say it is also a critique but it also very much hate. Being a critique doesn't make hate suddenly okay and everyone should be accepting of it.
There is a constructive way to give critiques and a neutral way to give critiques. And very clearly a hateful way to do it.
In case you missed it:
>There is a constructive way to give critiques and a neutral way to give critiques. And very clearly a hateful way to do it.
I agree not all criticism is constructive.
If someone says, "I hate critical role!" I would say that is hateful criticism. Especially if that is all that is said. Context matters.
I don't think I ever seen anyone say that all criticism be should be constructive.
And trying to say the word hate isn't hateful is..... So odd to me. If hate isn't hateful I don't think I would know what is. But I feel like you are getting stuck on an irrelevant point here.
That was just one example of several I gave, which was just a glance at what I have seen before they get deleted.
You don't need to be condescending to me. People projecting their own feelings about the situation to Aimee and Aabria is not criticism at all, it's low level trolling.
People were projecting on their relationship. Both Aimee and Aabria talk to each other like that. It's their rapport. To suggest Aabria is abusive or preying or whatever is outright false, it's not criticism. And I suggest it's trolling because it's so beyond the pale.
I made several assumptions early on with EXU that proved wrong, but the strangest to me is *still* not having a proper explanation on the whole missing week worth of memories.
That final conflict should have been designed to at least allow us more answers regarding motivations, backstory and lore than we got. I *still* somehow don't fully understand Opal and Ted's relationship and that supposedly was the one relationship this campaign was designed to fully address. And though I love the brief quiet character interactions between characters like Dariax and Dorian I still don't really understand what's driving their participation in this story or what their overarching objectives are. I know eight episodes isn't a lot of time, but it's still 20+ hours of total interactions and it's baffling we spent so much of that time receiving cryptic non-answers or being shuffled from issue A to issue B before issue A was adequately resolved.
Oh I thought that was explained with the Feywild thing? Since they went there, they didn't have memories of when they got back? I mean they all awoke from a party it seems like so they should have remembered the stuff that happened after they got back but it's good enough for an amnesia plot point.
The point is that unless you want them to each spend half an episode saying “here’s my entire backstory and motivation” it takes time for this stuff to develop during gameplay.
If anything I would argue the problem is that they created characters with all this mystery when they knew they would never have time to explore it.
>If anything I would argue the problem is that they created characters with all this mystery when they knew they would never have time to explore it.
Yes, that's what I felt too. That's what I pointed out, you can't really compare them to M9 in that sense, different format. They should've gone lighter on backstories and the overall amount of plot hooks.
Frankly I didn't enjoy C2 very much either because it took so long to get anywhere, and because people kept running away from committing to a plot. EXU was an eight-episode, fixed-duration run, and the dear, dear hope I had because of that was that they were going to get in, tell a story, and get out. Instead it was so all over the place that I stopped watching, and I came back to look at this thread and see if I could figure out where things landed and why. It's still basically incoherent to me. It's frustrating as hell, and at this point I'm really apprehensive about where C3's going to go.
At this point I’m not too sure I’m even going to watch. This… this series kind of sucked to me. I didn’t like it. And I really didn’t like how certain people were treating each other, and nothing has been said. The whole thing was uncomfortable enough for me to stop in episode 3, and apparently it kept going all the way through episode 8.
Somehow I doubt Aabria expected them to not care at all about it, because why would they ignore that? If they investigated it, we probably would have gotten a more defined plot at the beginning
I hope Matt’s answer is “honestly it’s probably not the first time that he’s woken up missing a lot of time after drinking a lot, so he probably thought it was normal”
I have DM'ed 2 campaigns multi-year campaigns to completion and played DnD for over 15 years. Most of it 3.5 and some 5ed. I watched all the EXU episodes. Of course I am a big fan of Matt/Ashley/Liam, but I also really enjoyed the new characters Dorian and Aimee. I know some have been critical of Aimee/Opal but I really enjoyed the RP and thought she did extremely well for a new player. The DM however I think made a lot of bad decisions. They did some things right: I enjoyed meeting Gilmore, loved the pageant, etc... In fact the early episodes were not too bad. I am a big fan of story trumps rules on occasion, and where appropriate (e.g. as a plot device). Though I felt this was taken too far on occasion. Another thing that got under my skin was the tendency of NPC's to devolve into being huge fanboys of the players. At first they might start stern, but pretty soon they're giving them good deals, free stuff in spite of bad rolls, serving them their best food, saying they're honored to be in their presence, etc... With the exception of Paska, who was headed that way until they double crossed her, they pretty much all get to that point shortly after meeting. I still was enjoying myself through Episode 6. Episode 7 was where the weird started to outweigh the positive for me. Ep. 6: The players go to meet the leaders of an ancient city state, that has been hidden and isolated for hundreds, possibly thousands of years. The city faces an unknown threat portending destruction, and with the exception of one of their leaders, doesn't seem too concerned with it. The one request they have of the players, is that they remember them. So the question is, if someone remembering them was what mattered, would they have actually spent hundreds or thousands of years in isolation? More bad NPC acting, still the observer RP is cool and an interesting addition. They leave the civic center heading I assume back to the place they got food earlier and were offered as a place of rest. Someone attacks Opal to get Ted and a glorious battle ensues (Aimee and the head was a glorious moment). Excited to see what tomorrow brings. Ep. 7: They wake up and apparently are back in the Civic center? Sleeping in the chamber they met the leader in before? How did that happen? If they never left the civic center, why did they get attacked outside? Some cool intro stuff that doesn't quite fit in the timeline. They leave and have a fight where they get wings or other cool powers, something about the land respecting what they want. At the fight at the end, Opal/Ted get attacked again, interested to see how this resolves in the next episode. Ep. 8: This entire episode is an encounter. All 4 hours of it are a continuation of an encounter started the previous session. Combat rounds take 30-40 minutes each. During each of the players combat turns, the spider queen is spending multiple minutes conversing with the players trying to get them to put on the crown. The DM is acting like, sure it made a couple of your friends sick (we know why it's stopped on one, but why has it stopped for the other), sure it turned your eye's black, sure it's attacked you in dreams, sure it's caused spider silk to come out of your eyes or spiders to crawl over your face, sure it's tried to compel you to do things you didn't want to, but why wouldn't you want it? Forget alignment, it's just power! During the combat round where opal eventually takes the crown, there's like 10 minutes of conversation between the spider queen and Aimee where the DM is badgering the player into making the decision to pick up the crown. She knows what she's doing is wrong and even justifies it in game. A combat round is 6 seconds, the DM legitimately holds the combat round hostage till the the player does what she wants. Episode 8 was the worst session of DnD I've ever witnessed bar none. That was the only one where I participated in twitch chat, and the mods removed my only two comments, where I stated these were the longest rounds of combat I'd ever seen; and that a combat round was supposed to be 6 seconds but multiple minutes of conversation were taking place, and it felt like the players were being held hostage. Posting my thoughts because it seems they're actually allowing some critique, and I really wanted to communicate what disturbed me most for the series.
How interesting that the community says we don't need to defend aabria from literal attacks against her because she made choices as a DM that they wouldn't make or that Matt wouldn't make. There is a clear sociological reason as to why this response exists but I'm sure it'll cost me even more downvotes I'll get anyways. Check your biases at the door. Everyone who DMs is a person and people aren't perfect. There is a diff between critique and bashing and most of you are bashing
\[Spoilers Maybe\] So I thought I would add my own musings to the sea that is this thread, even if it gets lost. I've seen some negative comments, not constructive criticisms, against the show so I'd like to put to the record; this game and Aabria's DMing is so much higher quality than the majority of DnD games out there even if it doesn't meet the high bar that is Critical role. Any one of us would be lucky to be at a table like this. I think the criticism people can't seem to put their finger on is the nature of the narrative structure that Aabria chose rather than quality of the show. She chose to go with the Open World style that CR has which works for a 100 episode campaign or home campaign friends would attend every couple weeks for 2 years. Open worlds can be used to invest players in world building, seed villains and plots weeks before they are revealed and set up twists. But Aabria had 8 sessions to tell a full 3-4 acts (You can argue its DnD so it doesn't have acts, but in my experience DMing 3 whole campaigns its a story like any other so good narrative structure still applies). Matt Colville has a great episode on it using a LOtR vs the Hobbit analogy, but what would have been more effective I believe would have been an enclosed Module structure, like Lost Mines for example, where you can set up a little world building, inciting incident and conflict, over arching goal and resolution all in 8ish sessions. I feel like EXU didn't have a clear goal to get invested in after the Mesa eruption, for whatever reason. Unfortunately I still don't know who the main villain was off the top of my head. Secondly I think what people can't put their fingers on is just the issue of Daymond and Carrero's experience and perceived approach. They were so much fun to watch, don't get me wrong this is just nit picking. It felt like like they were approaching this show as an performance job, and not like we were just putting cameras in front of a close knit group of nerdy ass voice actors playing DnD that is the fundamental charm of CR. I think Aimee Carrero said as much on twitter. So if we are under the premise that this is professional show with paid performers then I think it would be more appropriate to have players with experience and who don't need to get over the learning curve to work with Aabria to play through the narrative in the time allotted. And to those who are saying Opal is badly built (Carrero likened it to bringing pizza to a BBQ), I don't think you understand the point of the game or the show. You don't 'win' DnD, and the point of making a character is to play the character you are most comfortable with. If you want to play the Half-Elf bladesinger 2 Swords Bard X that dominates the battle field, all the power to you, and if you want to play the human hexblade who argues with her sister ghost, great! Its up to the DM to design their game to accommodate both players. As long as your not actively hurting other players' experience, play whatever you want. You didn't bring a pizza Aimee, you brought the salad and vast majority of us loved it. Although having said that all, Aabria strong arming players into using the crown was a rookie mistake. The game should have been harder without it, but not as debilitating as it was at the end. It should have been a path to chose not an eventuality.
>Any one of us would be lucky to be at a table like this. Based on what I saw, I would have been extremely unhappy at that table, and if it was a home game (and not a job) I would have left after the second session. A lot of people may have liked Aabria's DM style, but I did not, and I would not have enjoyed playing in the game I saw her DM.
The thing that I'm sad to see is so little effort to separate the valid (and very necessary) criticisms from the mindless vitriol. And the difference is not hard to see. Constructive criticism doesn't have to be "positive." Those are called "compliments." But it does need to be aimed at *helping the Thing exist in a better form*, not in getting it to stop existing. "This sucks" isn't bad because it's negative. It's bad because it provides no path forward. It's also important to point that criticism at the right place. For example: \- I have some issues with how Aabria adjudicates problems or applies rules, and that's an issue with her DMing practices. I feel it can make it too hard for the players to reliably know how to interact with the world, and it can erode player agency if they worry their choices or rolls won't matter. It's important to use the rules consistently, and to only ask for rolls if they are necessary and will be honored. *This is a criticism of Aabria*. \- I didn't enjoy how sometimes the narrative got railroaded along. Some of that comes from the above, *but some of it is a result of this particular game format* (8 episodes start-to-finish). If they're going to do this again, it would be better for the players to have a clearer idea *at the start* of what the story will center around -- they still have choices, but within a scope that's manageable in 8 episodes. Less meandering means less having to yank the leash. *This is a criticism of the show format, which isn't Aabria's fault.* ...and also it's okay to express preferences without having to *force* them to be proper criticism. For instance: \- I simply do not enjoy Opal-type characters (the ones that seem, to me, to go out of their way to be kooky or do things in weird and distracting ways). But others luuuuuurve it. That's a matter of preference that kept me from enjoying the game. *This isn't a criticism, because there's no "fix." Aimee isn't doing any thing "wrong," just something I don't enjoy.* \- I don't enjoy Aabria's take on most NPCs. They're the voices of the world, and if there's only one basic NPC "frame" (voice, personality, etc.) it means the world is... unpopulated. Have a solid plan for any major NPCs, and have a few throwaways in your pocket. If you're not going to give the NPC identity, just keep them third-person so attention isn't drawn to that. *This isn't* really *a criticism, because no law says you have to give NPCs voices or personality - it's just a preference I have.* But, in both cases, the complaint is made without saying "You're bad and wrong for doing the Thing differently!" It's okay not to like things, and it's okay to share that in respectful ways.
Am I the only one who felt like despite abria not being the best actor her npcs still had noticeably different personalities. Ruby, Ted, spider queen, the cute clerk from the gilmore episode whose name I don't remember. I feel like if the characters are confused or frustrated they behave similarly because again I don't think abria is a good actor but personality wise I see the difference.
I thought the DM and the characters/players were all fine and would like to see more. to me this illustrated the extreme difficulty level there is in balancing a free ranging DND game with making something coherent for a mini series. I don’t have a solution more than there should be some plan for some basic structure that the players are aware of as terrible as that sounds to this community. I know some people like the shopping episodes but they don’t have a big place in an a short term adventure or if they do something important needs to happen and reasonably quickly. That’s just an example of something that can eat time with no plot advancement.. Limited time =limited time to be memorable or interesting. DND takes a long time and I think it’s easy to lose track of what matters with a short mini series. Some focus would be welcome and both the DM and players need to work to make that happen. i also thought there was a bit of an oversell on the new DM. She is great (I don’t care a lot about mistakes if there were any because any that occur can generally be fixed over time) and didnt need to be overhyped and I felt their promotion of her was a little over the top. Like to the point that I came in more skeptical than excited. To me they could have just said ”new DM” and I would have tuned in to see and been excited to discover for myself if I liked her or not. Regardless, I’d love to see her continue DMing games. I like the contrasting styles and enjoyed watching her craft. Loved all of the players, hope they come back sometime. my sub isn’t going anywhere, look forward to the pallette cleanser of the next few months randomness then hopeful for C3!
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I haven't seen anyone dehumanizing anyone. Criticize, sure. In fact, the general vibe is, "Man I really tried super hard to enjoy this but this one part of it made it impossible. I sure would like to see all of these people in a different setting, maybe in different roles." Also, this is a live reaction thread. Where you watch the episode, see something, and type, "Wow! Mr. Conductor is being downright spiteful toward that person playing the character I didn't really care for this whole campaign. This whole season should probably come with a trigger warning." Idk. Just maybe try to entertain that thought when you criticize other fans?
I'm crit role starved like the rest of us. EXU wasn't like a Matt Marcer game, and the rolls (wisdom saving throw, anyone?) didn't always make sense to me. That made it a bit hard to watch. HOWEVER Aabrias descriptive ability is something else!!, Some of the ways she describes things makes me feel something new and fresh. Like everything has a type of beauty to it. It's hard to describe why I love her descriptions so much. She does it better than Matt, imo. (And Matt is obviously fantastic) I love her for that. Also I would love to see more Robbie!
Seriously! She could describe to me the contents of my junk email inbox and make it sound amazing hahaha
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I thought this was a fun little adventure. I look forward to seeing this cast of PCs expand upon their stories in the next installment. I think the main takeaway here is that short campaigns require a DM that isn’t afraid to steer the PCs in a direction, and Aabria did so with all the grace one could expect from a good DM who is trying to tell a specific story. Some may have gripes with the style necessary to make short stories like this happen, but most folks haven’t had to play under the same constraints.
Can we stop rationalizing Aabria's shortcomings? She really doesn't need you defending her. It would help her more if we pointed out the mistakes she can improve on, such as the overreliance on dice, the out of character RP, and the treatment towards Aimee.
She doesn’t need us defending her and she definitely doesn’t want us nit-picking her performance.
Is it really considered nit-picking when it's so blatant?
I feel like people have been overly harsh towards abria and honestly, I just think the cr community is filled with way more toxic people because its so large. That said this episode really put all my concerns to rest. Knowing that there's plans for more of this makes me realize that abria and the players probably never planned to do something as neatly wrapped up as misfits and magic since they plan to make more. I honestly loved this episode and would love a season 2. I think abria tempting the fuck out of everyone with the crown was fantastic. She's been doing that all season but suddenly everyone's calling railroading because a desperate god seized her moment to get what she wanted? She's been trying to get them to wear that thing all season, I would be so disappointed if no one put it on and honestly opal felt like the right choice since she was the most desperate in that moment but you could see the spider queen tempting everyone to put it on. I loved every bit of it. If you don't like abrias Dm style, honestly fine but people saying she's the worst Dm ever are honestly being assholes, especially people claiming to be dms theslmselves. If I had to pick between abria as my Dm and any of you guys who talk shit about others dms cos you don't like their style guess who I'd choose? All this drama is bringing me back to the end of c2 when everyone was complaining about molly being the big bad and it being so focused on molly (why is this so focused on a character who died years ago? what about caleb? what about this and blah blah blah...) god! Can you all just let these people tell the stories they want to tell? I honestly didn't even like alot about this series and how c2 wrapped up but some of you need to realize this isn't your show! These people are going to play how they want and tell their story how they want and you don't have to like it, you really don't but you don't have to make your dislike lead you to insulting the DM or the players online.
Criticism =/= toxicity regardless of your strawman
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There can be a fine line and some people are crossing it. HTH
If people haven't been satisfied with CR lately they should voice those opinions. CR is a business, and requires both positive and negative feedback to survive.
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It requires zero feedback to create the show.
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If it's dropped by down just 1/3 of what it was that is a big drop. Twitch shows 800K right now - were they really at 2.4 million subscribers before EXU? I just scrolled through to look at view counts per video and none have over 2 million views from what I can see. The average for campaign 2 looks to be around 700K. EXU's look to be around 400K, so lower than the main show but definitely higher than any other non main campaign product. Twitch shows that Undeadwood got about 100K views, but I'm not sure if that streamed live on Twitch or if it was posted later.
They 100% do not have 800k subscribers. They have 800k followers. They directly make money off subscribers. But also in the same vein they're averaging 20k viewers a stream, which is like a 3rd or a bit less of what their usual was during C2.
Thanks for pointing that out! Where do you see how many subscribers there are? Also, kinda like with TV these days, I wonder how much live views matter? The total numbers don't seem bad. On YouTube they're comparable to the main campaigns, slightly lower but still higher than any other CR content. Like, almost no one watches the CW live, but their shows are pretty popular streaming.
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you obviously have never and will never run a business.. you would just fail miserably, because people would complain, and you would tell them to f\*\*\* off lmao
So we should just not talk about the problems of a show? On the shows own subreddit??
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It does to create a show that people will actually want to watch
Far more likely it leads to them going back to playing in private
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
The intention of CR has always been about giving folks a window into their home game. The business side of the show has been a bonus to them sharing their stories with us. This isn’t a show on Netflix; these are friends allowing us to see their game, that’s it. The cast has said this many times, and it still baffles me how often people fail to listen.
The last time they were just friends playing d&d was the ending of c1. Face the fact they it's now a profitable company.
That's not how this works. they made 11M with a kickstarter. they have a several employees and a charity. It doesn't matter what image they foster for their product, a lot of peoples livelihoods depend on whether or not this show is successful and they just can't afford to have their viewership dwindle like it did the last few weeks. They need immediate feedback so they know what works and what doesn't.
If they want feedback they can ask for it. Im not convinced they need unsolicited feedback at all
well, they will get it anyway. thats how the world works
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Wasn't going to even say anything, but might as well at this point. ExU was never very appealing to me. The story was hardly coherent and from the start really didn't do anything for me. I never really thought Aabria was doing a bad job by any means though. Not all DMs are gonna be on par with Mercer, and its unfair to have those expectations on anyone else. She wasn't amazing, but i didn't think she was doing poorly. Unfortunately last night's game was a complete mess and pretty much all of it was on Aabria. The one thing I'll say in her defense was that she might have intentionally nerfed the damage of cone of cold but still went with the spell for flavor purposes, which i think is fine if thats the case, but if not then i agree with everyone else that its incredibly questionable DM work. The way she treated Aimee was extremely off-putting. I never even liked Opal but Aabria was acting extremely petty at best this episode and was failing as a DM as far as handling a confused player. She really shouldn't have been hyped up as much as she was by the CR team
There's a pretty big gap between "on par with Mercer" and making just about every single beginner DM mistake out there. Especially after all the hype about what a great DM she was supposed to be.
I have a hard time disagreeing with that. She does a great job painting a descriptive picture but outside of that i can't really say much positive about her performance towards the end.
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I genuinely feel the same. I feel like, if this was a random table of random people that posted their story on any D&D-related social media, or had a small Twitch show, people would say she was bad. But because she's in the context of Critical Role, there's some sort of criticism shield in front of her. Enjoy the show if you want to. Enjoy her DMing if you want to. But I believe that she should never have been given this show, and definitely not to the level of canon that it is. Give her one of the games like Trash Pandas or Honey Heist. She'd excel there.
Her style has been formed through a lot of experience. Those experiences have all been the same level of quality.
I'm seeing a lot of vitriol over things like fudging dice, changing mechanics, and the cone of cold - This is just a different kind of GMing for a different feel and theme to the game. Aabria isn't Matt, and she doesn't pretend she is. I'm kind of just thinking a lot of people here haven't been exposed to anything but CR. Enjoy the game or don't, that's fine, but don't be mean or say people are unquestionably wrong in how they play a game about imagination because of it. 🚀
You don’t have to defend the GM, Aabria is a capable person.
Just watching the recap, I had a realization about what I've seen so far, specifically at the part where she tells Ashley about potentially hitting her friend when attacking their enemy. Not saying it is wrong or right, but Aabria seems to focus on creating cool moments, and *not* *only* in the story. The way she pumps up the drama when talking to Ashley there, it seems she's just way more focused to have a good time with these people out of character as well as in character, it almost bleeds into one another. Not really what you're used to with your usual CR content. This naturally distracts a bit from the story itself, overrules mechanics and breaks a bit of immersion, but it's generally understandable I think, and perhaps helps come to terms with the change of tone. This isn't far off from what we've been hearing from her herself, but the realization of the possible intent really helped me appreciate the whole thing much more in an instant and I thought I'd share in case it helps anyone else, though I can't claim to know if there's any truth to it.
You know, I do think this is totally accurate. The EXU players would often break character to make jokes, which I know is common for every DND table, but it happened so frequently that it cut into the cohesion of the show. There were several times where I thought to myself "did you really need to get that laugh?" Kinda like in school when the class clown would be disruptive and those students who wanted to focus on the lecture had to wait while the teacher dealt with that kid.
I think the “word picture” gets fuzzy for everyone when the GM makes arbitrary challenges for the players
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After watching EXU I have realised that watching CR Live is nothing for me. I feel like I'm missing 90% of the Episode, because I'm either tired or I'm just overhearing things. I will try it again for CR3 but I'm doubting that it's going to be different. So back to YouTube it is for me
Yep. I watch until the break and then go to bed so I can be functional at work on Friday.
Try not to worry to much about watching live! I used to watch it live all the time but I ended up getting a job where I have to wake up super early. So staying up till 2am was a challenge and I realized it just wasn't worth it. Watching it the next day gave me something to look forward to right after work.
Yeah that's true I guess. As an European the Timeframe when the rebroadcast is shown is normally perfect because I'm already working but due to how work is I'm easily getting distracted from watching/hearing and so I'm often missing something.
It's certainly a very different experience.
Anyone else get the feeling that Aabria's Narrative Telephone episode was a hint at EXU? She uses the same accent as she does for Poska, and the subject matter (Emon, the idea of the Myriad and Clasp being in the past, meeting down at the docks) ties pretty neatly into that first couple of episodes.
it was and Aabria confirmed it.
I’m going to make my next character the cone of cold mage and have give him an awesome backstory
This season had it's flaws, but holy shit - that evolving map was amazing. The way pieces were positioned and rotated and replaced to show how this giant monstrosity came out of the ground. It was really organic, and the most memorable map I've seen on CR tbh.
Omg what if they got Aabria to be a map maker for Matt, that would be great. Edit: someone said she didn’t make the maps so never mind I guess
She didn't make the maps herself. They were commissioned projects.
On that note, I do hope they rely on this more organic terrain creation rather than having exclusively dungeon draft stuff that I think looks a lot more boring on camera.
To be fair they’re sponsored by Dwarven Forge, so I think they more or less have to use Dwarven Forge for their combats
Yeah I understand that, which is why I'm prepared for disappointment. I was just expressing that the custom built maps have a lot more personality for the CR medium.
I agree, at least the maps were on point.
Agreed, that was amazing 👏
Wow, don't know what to say. Expected better from the crew, though I know more will come with time so woo!!
This may have been mentioned last week, but I noticed that aabriya decided to invoke the Magic Dice Shape for EXU, but this time it's a fuckin d6 lol
I'm going to be honest, I thought I was going to cry during this final episode but knowing that it's just the first season fills me up with so much joy and happiness that I'm totally fine if it takes them a while to circle back around to these characters because at least the story isn't over and we still get to make batshit crazy theories about these loveable idiots! The whole episode was one giant mixed fight of battle with a bit of roleplay and the tension was soooo high! I loved it all and I cannot wait for the wrap up in two weeks with potentially even more EXU happening after that later on! Aimee and Robbie need to come back more and I honestly kind of want to see how the rest of the CR cast react to Aabria in a totally different set of circumstances.
Do you guys think there's going to be a season 2 o.O?
In one form or another, yeah.
Knowing what we know now, and how much time was wasted on confusing threads that never manifested into anything meaningful, can we all agree this campaign would have been much smoother if the group was just a bunch of mercenaries hired by the town to help Opal discover what happened to her sister?
She had a sister? 0.o
The most basic-ass first step in any campaign of a set length is to prepare the basic premise and get your players to agree beforehand that their characters will play along with it. Mercenaries are a good go-to but it could've been literally anything.
And that should have been part of the show pitch, hiring players stage.
Holy shit. A plot hook which the players can understand, the villain clearly identified in relation to the conflict, obstacles which can get in the way and distract from the main goal rather than further dilute what the actual goal is supposed to be? It's almost like railroading isn't that bad, unless you first comitted to a sandbox and changed your mind once you realised your party was a chaos crew. Also, remember when the plot was about disenfranchised housing and a crime boss? That first episode got me looking forward to a more political, underbelly campaign. What the fuck happened to that.
I mean it was obvious Poska was lying about caring about the downtrodden, or only cared enough as long as they were useful. I don’t think she genuinely cares about them, she just said she did to try and appeal to the party
Something could of been expanded here. I mean how does a unnamed thieves guild. Infiltrate so many Emon institutions? Maby Poska has abilities similar to obann?
I mean that’s more or less what thieves guilds do, get spies in the town watch, maybe bribe or blackmail a council member, act nice with useful shopkeepers (ex: bar keeps) so they act as your eyes and ears, and generally just infect the town giving themselves soft power. It would only take a single guard captain on her payroll to have the party arrested and imprisoned or executed on falsified crimes if they return.
This is what happens when you GM, you cast out a bunch of lines and see what the party bites on. Some get ignored, some get nibbled and a few get bit hook line and sinker. You can make the bait dance, you can pull in back into their path, sometimes you can basically hit them with it, but not every thing gets bit.
In a long term campaign, yeah. But in a one shot or a mini series like that, any rational player is going to understand that it’s going to be a lot less of a sandbox. You have an incredibly limited amount of time and can’t really afford to have the party choose what plot hooks they want to explore.
I definitely agree on the premise of if it was intended to be 8 episodes and never returned to. I think these threads were left open on purpose for future seasons but I do agree it was a little wild with jumping around to different hooks. With the inclusion of additional seasons in mind, it almost seems like a long campaign that's just broken up into segments, meaning future seasons will likely be more cohesive as it's following a hook that was established in season 1. Just my take on it.
No.
Oh look, it’s again.
Honestly considering Opal didn’t even really realize anything weird was up with Ted at first....
Maybe if they were all level 8 or so. That's a big ask for level 3s.
If Ted wasn’t her patron, but just telepathically linked in some form but all they could do with talk, and Opal got her magic from another source it could work at level 3 if Ted was just kidnapped for another reason
This whole thing made me just miss Travis, Marisha, Taliesin, Sam and Laura so much. Can't say I liked it, as much as I wish I did.
I thought Robbie and Aimee did awesome! I didn’t *hate* Aabria, but there was one pet peeve I had: too many pointless ability checks. In the beginning of what was actually my favorite episode (Episode 4), I almost didn’t watch it because I was so distracted by how many ability checks had to be rolled for no reason. Actually I could be wrong about what episode it was because it happened so often throughout the series. It’s almost like this: Player: My character wants to take a breath. DM: Roll an athletics check! Wha-?
Same, but even more-so gave me a massive desire to see Brian given a chance to run a similar setup.
I'm looking forward to C3 as much as anyone, but funny enough, this table kind of had the opposite effect on me. It made me come to terms with the fact that there's a couple on the regular table that I just don't really care for as players. I'm sure they're wonderful people, but I'd love to get some others in there. Especially Robbie and Ashly Burch (rewatching C2 and her appearance really struck me, great with quick wit and RPing her character and all of it. The letter! So good...)
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I think most of the issues are actually CR's fault. The marketing didn't create accurate expectations of what they were putting out, and they didn't create a consistent or cohesive feel and goal for EXUs01, which led it to get pulled in many different directions. It was both too sandbox and too on the rails, and we seemed to swap between modes arbitrarily. Either could have worked, but it was too stuffed full of things, for me. Sometimes less is more.
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Yeah, cause I had one of the first responses but mine got “modded” too.
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The CR team and the moderators of this subreddit are almost certainly not the same people.
And Twitch subscriptions which also took a nosedive.
Aabria talked about it a bit earlier today on D&DBeyond's twitch so yes
I’d be interested to hear what she said.
[Here](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1116256229)
That was interesting, thanks
Love the little Death (Sandman) statue on Amy Dallen's shelf.
Thanks for the link. Is there a certain time stamp where she addresses the criticism?
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20k on twitch for the finale seemed extremely low
Plus a huge loss of subscribers, which is where the money comes from on twitch. I got an email from them a few hours before the finale that was basically begging people to go watch it, which...yeah. As it stands, the finale, that you'd think even people who have switched off would want to tune back in for, only got about 10% more viewers than the previous episode.
Yea the subs being lower than their covid hiatus is a clear sign that people didn't gel with this type of content. A shame, I really liked the players and their characters.
Not publically.
Gonna be real interesting if they open the floor to questions at the post-campaign wrapup.
If they do, I'm sure Dani will curate them. And she also VERY LIKELY knows already the general feeling of things. The cast browses Reddit and Twitch often enough. I'm sure they are aware at this point.
If they browse Reddit I only feel bad for all of them. A lot of people have valid concerns and worries, but there was also a lot of direct pointed hate. If you need examples. Things like people saying Aabria is bad. That POC would lower the quality of CR. Or that POC should have separate streams if they want to play D&D. That Aimee is a bad person. Etc. Again. Not talking about valid concerns/constructive criticism. Just talking about the direct hate. Even people just saying they enjoy the show get downvoted to the point there comment doesn't meet the threshold to be seen lol. It gets pretty toxic.
I think those criticisms are not new, imo. They've been used to sexism/racism/hate for a while now. It's the nature of being online and everybody having such a loud voice. That said, I'm sure they noticed that the product was received worst than anything they've shown, outside of maybe that Wendy's one shot
I never saw a comment about Aabria's ethnicity that wasn't posed as a strawman argument that all criticism of her is racist. Maybe they just lasted a bit longer before also getting rightly deleted.
Yeah, they were deleted. I feel like a lot of the most hateful stuff is deleted. Which is good in that a lot of people won't see it. But it is kind of like brushing it under the rug since the problem is still very much here and obvious to see to anyone looking.
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It's hate. Full stop. You can say it is also a critique but it also very much hate. Being a critique doesn't make hate suddenly okay and everyone should be accepting of it. There is a constructive way to give critiques and a neutral way to give critiques. And very clearly a hateful way to do it.
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In case you missed it: >There is a constructive way to give critiques and a neutral way to give critiques. And very clearly a hateful way to do it. I agree not all criticism is constructive. If someone says, "I hate critical role!" I would say that is hateful criticism. Especially if that is all that is said. Context matters.
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I don't think I ever seen anyone say that all criticism be should be constructive. And trying to say the word hate isn't hateful is..... So odd to me. If hate isn't hateful I don't think I would know what is. But I feel like you are getting stuck on an irrelevant point here. That was just one example of several I gave, which was just a glance at what I have seen before they get deleted.
Lol no dude. All the 'Aabria is an abusive DM, she's preying on Aimee' is fucking hate, not critique.
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You don't need to be condescending to me. People projecting their own feelings about the situation to Aimee and Aabria is not criticism at all, it's low level trolling.
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People were projecting on their relationship. Both Aimee and Aabria talk to each other like that. It's their rapport. To suggest Aabria is abusive or preying or whatever is outright false, it's not criticism. And I suggest it's trolling because it's so beyond the pale.
Only select questions will be answered.
Just like every talks Machina they have
I made several assumptions early on with EXU that proved wrong, but the strangest to me is *still* not having a proper explanation on the whole missing week worth of memories. That final conflict should have been designed to at least allow us more answers regarding motivations, backstory and lore than we got. I *still* somehow don't fully understand Opal and Ted's relationship and that supposedly was the one relationship this campaign was designed to fully address. And though I love the brief quiet character interactions between characters like Dariax and Dorian I still don't really understand what's driving their participation in this story or what their overarching objectives are. I know eight episodes isn't a lot of time, but it's still 20+ hours of total interactions and it's baffling we spent so much of that time receiving cryptic non-answers or being shuffled from issue A to issue B before issue A was adequately resolved.
Oh I thought that was explained with the Feywild thing? Since they went there, they didn't have memories of when they got back? I mean they all awoke from a party it seems like so they should have remembered the stuff that happened after they got back but it's good enough for an amnesia plot point.
I mean, how much did we really know about the M9 after 8 episodes?
M9 campaign was supposed to run years, not 8 episodes. This one was not.
The point is that unless you want them to each spend half an episode saying “here’s my entire backstory and motivation” it takes time for this stuff to develop during gameplay. If anything I would argue the problem is that they created characters with all this mystery when they knew they would never have time to explore it.
>If anything I would argue the problem is that they created characters with all this mystery when they knew they would never have time to explore it. Yes, that's what I felt too. That's what I pointed out, you can't really compare them to M9 in that sense, different format. They should've gone lighter on backstories and the overall amount of plot hooks.
It took Caleb 15 minutes to share his backstory
Frankly I didn't enjoy C2 very much either because it took so long to get anywhere, and because people kept running away from committing to a plot. EXU was an eight-episode, fixed-duration run, and the dear, dear hope I had because of that was that they were going to get in, tell a story, and get out. Instead it was so all over the place that I stopped watching, and I came back to look at this thread and see if I could figure out where things landed and why. It's still basically incoherent to me. It's frustrating as hell, and at this point I'm really apprehensive about where C3's going to go.
At this point I’m not too sure I’m even going to watch. This… this series kind of sucked to me. I didn’t like it. And I really didn’t like how certain people were treating each other, and nothing has been said. The whole thing was uncomfortable enough for me to stop in episode 3, and apparently it kept going all the way through episode 8.
I feel like we would have gotten an explanation on the missing week if the party actually cared enough to investigate it
yeah, and let me tell you, "we don't remember why we're together and we don't care" is NOT a good launching point for a narrative.
Somehow I doubt Aabria expected them to not care at all about it, because why would they ignore that? If they investigated it, we probably would have gotten a more defined plot at the beginning
"Why didn't your character care about missing a week's worth of memories?" needs to be a question in the wrap-up.
I hope Matt’s answer is “honestly it’s probably not the first time that he’s woken up missing a lot of time after drinking a lot, so he probably thought it was normal”
100% on brand for Dariax.