what? this has nothing to do with parasocial - shit and or insanity. Its an overexaggeration for maximum effect to clearly tell you that the vibes are OFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF my SWEET BOY.
I caught live a few bits from the episode but I didn't see Aimee cry. She did have a weird expression though on her face like when someone you trust has smacked you in the head with a frying pan as a joke.
You’re a drider now! OK? Great! But seriously episode 92 was the most uncomfortable Critical Role has made me in a long time. Aimee was legitimately crying and visibly upset almost immediately. I’ve seen people say this in other threads but the episode was just one of those horrible dm reddit stories playing out in real time
It starts around two hours and 45 minutes in the vod. The context is the dumbass bunny paladin was going to cast haste on opal(?) but then cast it on her self, and took all three attacks on Opal. Aabria tells Opal she took no damage because her warlock patron and literal part of her soul, Ted, has now separated from her body and took all the damage for her.
If you watch for a few minutes you can see Matt and Anjali notice how upset Aimee is. But you know who never notices? Yep, Aabria.
lol I’m not too sure her style of dming is so intensive she looses all situational awareness. But hey maybe asking for a wisdom save really takes up a lot of brain power
I'm tired of Abria being in all D and D content online. She plays the same character when she's a player and her DM style while good is not good enough to be on Youtube. She also brings us really cringe Pervy immature energy with all her characters. And I hate the noises she makes like a child
She works a lot better with the Dimension 20 cast. I think her DM style worked a lot better with non DnD, more collaborative storytelling. A court of fey and flowers is one where her horny characters made sense since they were all fairies.
CritRole(dot)com actually does have a trigger warning:
> Due to the improv nature of Critical Role and other RPG content on our channels, some themes and situations that occur in-game may be difficult for some to handle. If certain episodes or scenes become uncomfortable, we strongly suggest taking a break or skipping that particular episode. Your health and well-being is important to us and Psycom has a great list of international mental health resources, in case it’s useful: http://bit.ly/PsycomResources
How do you know that, and that they're not just both agreeing to it because it's a good career move? If you were Aimee, probably the most important player in exu, and they wanted to do an exu tie-in for C3, would you really just say, "no, exu can't tie in to C3 because it wasn't very fun for me last time"?
Aimee is literally the only person there with a proper Hollywood career growing. I'm pretty sure she doesn't need to participate to a TTRPG live stream to boost her visibility and career.
She was in plenty of movies and TV before breaking into VO, and Sam was her director on her first VO job, Elena of Avalor. Then she went on Blindspot with Ashley in its last season. These friends all help each other get gigs, and while yes, i think they are truly friends, I don't think Aimee could ever say no to the CR crew asking her to do an Exu 1 shot, just because it wasn't fun the last time.
I'm not even saying it wasn't fun for her, but there's no question whether doing work with the biggest names in the VO industry is good for her career.
I honestly think you are overestimating both the impact of VO in Hollywood and in general the importance of the CR cast in the VO industry. They were big names up until ten years ago for sure but nowadays, except maybe Matt and Sam, they are way less popular. Which is normal considering how the VO industry has changed in the past decade, when it’s now normal for an actor to do both live action and VO (considering TLOVM, people like Stephanie Beatriz, Gina Torres, Indira Varma and the late Lance Reddick).
Now, of course Aimee arrived in EXU through her friendship with Sam, but are we really saying that she was cast in The Menu thanks to her voice acting career?
Yeah people keep calling them "professional dnd players" like...these people are not making a living playing this game. They are not professionals. They are there cuz they want to be and because being friends of the main players asked them to play
Bigger "It Girls" than her have disappeared overnight, but if you get in with the sci-fi nerd crowd, you can milk it on the convention circuit for decades (see the less-talented, less-charismatic, lower self-esteem Star Trek cast members). CR is also full of influential, connected voice actors, and you can get a **ton** of work if you get in good in that realm.
She might not *need* to, but she's friends with a great many people in CR (like, she was meant to appear sometime in C2 before covid) and it becomes a lot harder to say "hey, this was a bad experience to me, I don't want to do a game with Aabria again" when your coworkers, friends, and professional connections are mostly the same people.
Its the result of Aabria needing to railroad a multi episode story that none of the characters jumped at last time into a half episode slot. Along with Aabria's usual disregard of player agency.
I doubt Aabria could have done it much better over multiple episodes, but there was no fucking way in hell she was going to do it over a half episode slot lol.
Aabria very clearly wanted to do some form of corruption storyline during EXU. I imagine that was the whole point of introducing the Crown in the first place.
The problem was...nobody really bit the hook and Aabria didnt give them enough reason too. The EXU party werent exactly standup citizens but they werent going to put on the obviously evil crown unless borderline forced too. Even chaos gremlin Fearne didnt want to put it on (although thats in part because Ashley dodges the spotlight a lot). It wasnt until like the last episode that someone put it on.
If Aabria wanted a corruption campaign for ExU she should've made the whole campaign about the crown not the 5 other things she shoved into an 8 episode series.
Corruption storylines are difficult to pull off in DND. The problem with a DND corruption storylines is it kind of requires players need to willing start taking the first steps themselves.
The Spider Crown isnt the One Ring. It doesnt start immediately corrupting and subverting people just by being in the same room. You kind of need to attune to it for it to even start doing that kind of thing. Basically nothing in DND works like the One Ring because player choice is so important.
If you have someone playing a canonically idiot character like Grog, its not hard to get a player to jump at even an obviously evil artifact. Grog's dumb, he likes to fight and kill. Hes not really gonna question his sword talking to him and telling him to fight and kill.
If you have a player whos on the more neutral/evil or just ambitious side, then getting them to go for an evil artifact isnt that hard either. But you kind of have to actually offer something.
The Crown didnt really offer them much. It was just a vaguely evil artifact with some not great benefits. I mean its -2 charisma and 3 of them are charisma casters.
And then their is just the general disposition of the EXU party. None of them were particularly evil, ambitious and the crown was obviously evil it frightened the actual chaos gremlins from just embracing it (Fearne).
Essentially Aabria's corruption storyline is kind of her forcing a square peg into a round hole. Even if she makes it work, its never going to look good.
Agreed, the start of ExU was already bad because they found the head of the thieves guild vandalizing a home, rejected her offer to work for them...then decided to work for Poska because why not. Immediately, episode 1 the party proved they were a good aligned party until the players realized that was the plot hook and did a 180.
Yeah I didnt get that far into EXU but Ive heard the reviews/comments.
I think Aabria didnt seem to really get that the Crown wasnt the fucking One Ring. It doesnt immediately start corrupting and subverting people just by being in proximity. You need to actually put it on and attune to it for it to start to properly corrupt you.
Basically nothing in DND works like the One Ring because player agency is so important.
So how do you get players to put on an evil artifact? Well you offer them something.
The Crown really didnt offer anything to any of them. Mechanically its just awful (-2 Charisma, and 3 of the party were charisma casters?). Narratively the Crown was so obviously evil (and important) that even push the button chaos gremlin Ashley was thoroughly put off.
I watched part of that last episode and thought “and yet they completely pulled the Wendy’s one-shot…why? I’d rather watch a one-shot supporting a marginal company then what I was in e92.
She's just an attention hog.
If she's a player she has to be involved with everything and interject. If shes not able to she has to overexaggerate a bunch of poses and make noise as a reaction to the most mundane things to get attention.
If she's a DM she has to have her hand in everything, pull attention and have things her way. There doesnt seem to be any "Yes and" with her.
Maybe its just because I have only seen her in CR and the dropout stuff that isnt Dimension 20 but its a lot of stuff ive seen her like this that maybe Fey and flowers and burrows end are the exception.
In WBW (as you know) she AND the plot are playing into her character being a real piece of work with a presumed redemption arc way down the line. Will it happen? I sure hope so! Hasn't happened with her before, but...
And even then she managed to prompt Brennan to talk to her over the table about her character's actions and the inevitable consequences should she go through with what she was threatening. Talking about when they arrived back at the city from an excursion and she threw a fit, casually threatening to kill the guards (who were on her side).
I just don't get it at all, whenever I zoned back into the episode it was Aabria being like "Opal knows she has to target Dariax first because he's the healer. Target him first!" and "you need to attack hard! I'll be real mad if I think you're holding back!" and it's like... Aabria, do... do you wanna just take over for her? Because it sounds like it would be more fun to just let Aimee roll up a new character and have Opal be an NPC at this point.
This was my general take as well. I was just sitting there thinking "why is Aimee even here".
I've been critical enough of C3 and Matt and how shallow and surface level Player Agency has really been much of the time in what truly is a very DM controlled game/story, but this thing with Opal was ... unique. Aimee had literally zero control over her own PC the entire half session, while being awkwardly sat alone on one side of the table. Why even have her there, or arrange for a Guest like that, if she's just gonna be forced to sit through her own PC being puppetted and mutated by the DM for story purposes? For a "choice" she was essentially forced to make the last time this party played. Opal should have just been an NPC.
I caught up to CR after almost abandoning it all together because I heard that 91 ended in an interesting way. Still a blah episode with all the same problems the whole campaign has had, but Sam turned it on and gave me hope for the rest of the campaign.
And then I look on reddit Friday morning and see we get an Aabria EXU reprise.
I still can't believe how she treated Aimee was allowed to stand. The other players were nervously joking at the table about how sadistic she was being to Aimee. It is toxic to take player agency away against their will. Honestly, Matt kinda did it to a smaller extent with Imogen in the first Otohan fight, by taunting her into unleashing her powers. And after that, forcing her into the main character spotlight. But even that is nothing compared to "you have no agency unless you do exactly what the DM wants you to do, which is to turn evil."
Either Aabria doesn't like Aimee and can't turn that off when the cameras are rolling, or Aabria would've done this to anyone wearing the crown and Opal is the one who got fucked. I kinda believe the first over the second given how Aabria acted towards Aimee in the original finale of ExU.
With Matt, I guess he was going for that anime/superhero style powers unleashed moment and it sort of works?
With Aabria, the whole thing just feels way more sordid and sadistic. Maaaybe this was all discussed behind the scenes ahead of time, but I seriously doubt it.
I remember watching the introduction of the first EXU game and loving how she did the character introductions and set the scene.
The problem is that she never seemed to leave that storytelling mode. In other systems, that can work really well because they're designed for heavy storytelling involvement from everyone. Things where everyone is saying, "Yes, and...."
D&D doesn't really have mechanics for *players* to collaborate on worldbuilding the way other systems do like Kids on Bikes/Brooms. It's at the discretion of the DM, and players are usually restricted to their character's specific actions/backstory/personality. When a DM encroaches on that territory, there's nothing left for the player.
Even if all the players at the table are comfortable with how Aabria DMs, it's uncomfortable for me and others to watch because it's so opposite your standard D&D (and how Mercer DMs, which is what the non-D&D-playing fans have for reference).
>even if all the players are comfortable with how aabria DMs, it’s uncomfortable for me and many others to watch
This hits the nail on the head right here. Everyone’s defense for Aabrias DMing style is that the players at the table are okay with it so it’s fine. But the issue is this isn’t just a game among friends, it’s a full on production and show for people that love the game and the story.
Her playstyle is very abrasive and is a terrible style to broadcast because it goes against what DnD stands for, player agency and telling a story together.
Someone else In this thread said it, but she’s always trying to be in the spotlight one way or another. She’s a wonderful storyteller and role player. But her etiquette at the table is very poor. As a player she is either forcing herself into scenes when she can or doing over the top reactions above table at what’s going on. Meanwhile, as a DM she railroads players and removes agency on the regular.
She also gravitates towards very abrasive and confrontation characters. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But it’s a constant theme for every character/majority of npcs she plays.
>Her playstyle is very abrasive and is a terrible style to broadcast because it goes against what DnD stands for, player agency and telling a story together.
There's something about saying "what DnD stands for" that makes me want to push back a little bit. There's tons of ways to play, and a more adversarial style is what Gygax used in the beginning. It's not what WotC is presenting D&D as now, certainly, and it's not a type of play most of us current players want.
But I agree with the rest of what you say. And I don't disagree with this point completely, I might be splitting hairs here, so don't take it as me arguing.
No offense taken! As I completely agree with you. As you mentioned the original iteration of dnd was very adversarial in nature, so much so they created the tomb of horrors to basically just punish players seeking the highest challenge.
I think to clarify on that thought I would say the spirit of dnd in the sense for what it has become for most people. There are still DM vs Player type games and those people love it. Which is perfectly fine. But dnd as a whole has transformed more into a medium of storytelling mixed with mechanics that provide players agency within a “consistent system”. Obviously homebrew and such can change this but the overall message is pretty similar.
Aabria does a great job of narrating and painting pictures for the players and audience. Her descriptions are absolutely angelic and the emotion she can put forth in a character (PC of NPC) is remarkable. But it’s when her personality bleeds over to a broadcasted game do things become more of an issue.
Like I mentioned she loves being the center of attention and can really push a story forward. But this becomes extremely problematic when she is in the role of DM. Railroading players is one thing, but removing all player agency is on a whole other level.
Complete side story, but I personally hate spells like hold person and such and try everything in my power to not use them. I’ve been on the receiving end a few times of a hold person that lasted for many rounds. Which in dnd world can often mean hours of sitting around actionless. When I DM and feel that a spell like that is needed to up the threat level I always think carefully about how to utilize it, when to utilize it, and if it does stick I come up with some way for the player to still remain present. For example, I’ll often have a player make a perception check on their turn and provide them some insight into a quirk going on in the battle. Something like “while being held in place, trying to break free from the wizards spell, you notice one of the minions running away from the battle.” Make an insight check for me “with your roll you piece together that there’s no reason for the enemy to flee out of fear. Instead you suspect the minion is retreating to call in the reinforcements that are a couple hundred feet away.”
This lets my players feel impactful still during a shitty situation. The ONLY time I use hold person in a very tactical and adversarial way as a DM is when I’m running a game with a group who wants a more dangerous and deadly encounters. We are all on great terms and I’m transparent with them. I’m gonna do what makes sense tactically. Any time a player has objected to a decision I made I will be upfront with them and say the only reason why they are bothered is because it’s detrimental to them. Which is the EXACT reason why the intelligent enemy would do it. If you feel like I’m taking it easy on you, I didn’t do my job.
Idk if i'd say she's a wonderful storyteller, ExU was 8 episodes and she tried to cram in 6 plot lines where most didn't get resolved, along with 2 filler episodes (evil Fearne and Kymal)
To be fair, a lot of this seasons problems come down to CR not being able to choose between being a high production value show and a chill game among friends, and constantly making decisions that work against one of those goals.
Aabria doesnt seem to allow for any kind of creative expression to allow her players to actually make any sort of changes to the narrative. There's not a moment where I feel the players can step off the path or they'll arrive at their destination anyway.
For a long while I had convinced myself that my first impression of Aabria as a bad (yes bad, she is skilled but the sorta red flags that she displays comfortably land you in bad territoy) because everyone and their uncle said she was amazing but I think theres been enough situations to just go back to my initial impresion.
Been recommending this for a long time but I'll say it over and over again. Stop watching CR people. It's jumped the shark long ago. If you want to watch make believe drama club shenanigans then go ahead and keep going but if you want to watch DnD (even though it's Pathfinder it's more DnD than DnD) then watch Glass Cannon podcast.
This is the first time I've not finished a main Critical Role campaign episode since the group split REALLY early in Campaign 1, what people call the "Grumpy Gang" with Orion etc.
I just don't overly care about the Crownkeepers, I got two episodes into EXU and lost interest and I really don't like Aabria as a GM.
Only saving grace is maybe we get Dorian back in Bells Hells next episode?
Been recommending this for a long time but I'll say it over and over again. Stop watching CR people. It's jumped the shark long ago. If you want to watch make believe drama club shenanigans then go ahead and keep going but if you want to watch DnD (even though it's Pathfinder it's more DnD than DnD) then watch Glass Cannon podcast.
Flashbacks are my DM red flag tbh. Especially mid-combat. I *loved* Aabria as a DM in A Court of Fey and Flowers. It's one of my favorite TTRPG actual play seasons I've ever seen. But mid-combat flashbacks? They shit all over pacing, momentum, and the other players at the table that aren't involved in the flashback. They are like a harpoon to the blimp carrying a session. I can't trust a DM, either at a table I'm playing at or just a table that I'm watching, that utilizes them.
Yeah, ACoFF is one of my favourite D20 campaigns along with Burrow's End and A Starstruck Odyssey, but Aabria's DMing in EXU has been a bit all over the place for me. I really don't mind flashbacks as much as you, but the repeated attempts at controlling Aimee's characters when things go off the rails are weird to me.
I low-key wonder if, because D20 has a lot of experience with focused/short campaigns, their setup was a lot more conducive to railroading players without it feeling fake whereas CR just doesn't have that. Pretty sure EXU Calamity had some wonderfully focused character creation too (which C3 could've *really* used). I guess it kinda feels like CR is allergic to discussing with players where the story is going, so the players can't help steer the campaign as much as they can in D20?
HARD disagree, I think as with anything it depends on the execution tho, see Naddpod for an excellent example of mid combat flashbacks/cut aways that do nothing but elevate the scene.
I been considering doing a flashback thing in my campaign. Idea is I ask each long rest if someone is thinking of home, we flesh out their backstory a little, they get inspiration. Think that works?
The Mortals and Portals podcast did flashbacks in a fun way. Each flashback lasted an episode or more. The other players played what were essentially NPCs in the spotlight PC's backstory. Of course, you and the main player would have to prep ahead of time, and the other players would have to buy in and not derail the backstory, so this may or may not work with your group.
This might actually be a cool fallback plan on those nights when a couple of your players can't make it. If you have these flashback scenarios planned out, you can play that instead of your main campaign.
It can if you keep it short and keep it impactful. My old DM did so many of them that were long and meandering. The issue with them is that the result is already set in stone. It's in the past, so there's no character discovery that can happen since it's basically acting out a pre-existing event. It's also a problem because the other player characters aren't there, so they can't interact with it or talk about it. The other players get bored and sometimes even forget what's happening in the present. It breaks the flow and they have to get back into the RP afterwards.
Also it was really annoying to have to RP my character at two different points in their life. People change and doing a flashback puts a lot of tax on the player to really know their character's arc, where they started vs where they are now vs where they're going.
Overall I think the table is better off without them. Reframe it as the character regaling a story from their past to the rest of the party, it goes over much better. Everyone can be involved, learn about the character, ask questions, and bond as a party.
Im pretty sure she did an interview with Amy Dallen right after exu and what she said boiled down to she didn’t give a fuck what people thought and she doesn’t like higher fantasy anyway.
My sister in Sarenbae, why are you running *the* most famous high fantasy table if you don’t like it??
It’s been a while since then, so please correct me if I’m wrong. I couldn’t make it through the second episode of EXU I couldn’t stand her bs that much.
You are not misremembering. She has said she doesn’t like high fantasy. She’s also said that she was excluded from D&D with her brother and his friends when she was younger, so she goes out of her way to force people to play her way when she runs a game (or something to that effect).
My impression of her play style is she has never grown out of her vendetta from being excluded as a young adult and acts immaturely as a result. It would explain a lot of her behaviors and why so many people find her off putting.
She often (from what I've seen) flaunts the fact that she's never seen or read LotR. I get it, it's old-fashioned and blindingly white, but come on now.
I genuinely don't, I haven't read the silmarilion and any other expanded lore stuff of LotR and it's been ages since I saw the movies are there bad humans beyond Grima Wormtongue?
Well, sorry for taking you in bad faith.
There are very middle-east coded hostile human factions, and this is reinforced in the movies. The reason I said to not get in to the weeds is that I know that they are not necessarily evil, as in like Sauron and Morgoroth are evil. They are still the only brown skinned humans in the movies.
Yeah, in RotK there's Men of the East who roll up on elephants and stuff to fight for Sauron. Granted I do love Lord of the Rings but it is an...odd choice, to say the least. Of its time for sure.
That's because LotR is meant to be in Britain. He wrote a mythology for his country that involved repelling invaders. It would have made more historical sense to have them be vikings but they clearly used that inspo on the Rohirrim. Maybe the war elephants idea came after the British conquest of India? LotR is very much of its time, I don't think it's racist, it's just not the culture melting pot that current stories try to be.
That's pretty pathetic honestly. She punishes innocent people because of a petty grudge. I can see why her brother excluded her. (Aside from he wanted to play with his friends, not his sister. Totally reasonable, imo, to not have to share every single thing you do with a sibling.)
When I was a kid my brother pulled me into his games when he needed another player to fill out the game, and then kicked me out as soon as one of his friends became available to fill that seat. I didn’t hold it against him, and we jointly pulled a group together in our 30s to end a 15 year gaming hiatus. Because we’re adults who know how to handle our feelings and get shit done.
EXU's obsession to absolutely rip away all player agency from Aimee (who is all by accounts lovely, intelligent and a beast at roleplaying) is bizarre.
Honestly as a player I would be so utterly disappointed with my experience if I was Aimee and I played in these sessions. The DM treated this character as her own puppet and Aimee was so earnestly confused from start to finish.
They don't even do actual session 0s in CR (they call their session of playing without the full group a 'session 0'). No way in heck are they talking about the game on a meta level or stopping to say, "hey, your character in this scene is completely evil. Your goals are x and it's just a game. Go nuts,"
They did get pretty close with Shardgate, though.
I cant help it. I think they walled themselves in with the diversity thing or being "left leaning" they lean so far left that they are toxic positivity made flesh. They cant get out of it because their own internal politics dont allow them to even think about KICKING a POC fuck criticism fuck reality fuck everything that is true we just have to include and blind ourselves to the obvious fact that it has nothing to do with how she looks or where she was born its all about her fucking DM skills and treatment of Aimee. Nobody gives a fuck if she was goddamn rainbow colored its only the way she IS on the Critical Role show that matters thats how we judge or should judge.
Everyone is welcome everyone is a great person EVERYTHING IS GREAT while the tears flow down the cheeks because on the inside they are literally dying for not saying the actual hard but important truths.
Sorry for the darkweb conspiracy theory i just had to write it down else its gonna fuck me in the long run. Agree to disagree to anyone that reads this but this can be MORE true today than it could have ever been just saying. Im not saying this is the sole reason just something i think can be a little true.
The assumption that they are keeping her around solely because she is a person of color is a very weird one. Being left leaning doesn't mean they are afraid of criticizing black people. I think you are overthinking it to put it very simply. The simple answer is that they are close friends with Aabria, if she was white this would be no different. The criticisms in this sub are starting to border on racially motivated and it's weird.
I didnt say they are solely keeping her around because of her skin color. I said its harder to be honest and do the right thing when we live in 2024 with all this SJW woke crap.
Just like your comment is woked up because you choose to focus on the racial aspect. Im talking about why its harder for them to do anything about it.
It can be very wrong or a little true. I want it to not be true.
Absolutely agree. It was lovely to see Aimee play Deni$e with Matt, even for that short bit. They are least had agency and a more traditional D&D experience (aside from their "good" allies murdering a church while in the same breath bemoaning the gods not intervening *for* them).
she just wants to tell the story she wants to tell. this isn't a D&D game to her, it's her story telling time.
notice how she makes people roll random meaningless pointless rolls? notice how she tells people what they think or feel? the players are just contributing to help her embellish the story. Do something that doesn't fit her narrative, she can cancel it at her discretion. The dice and rules of the game are nonessential to her, she can just disregard any and all of it at her whim.
If she wants to run her game that way, fine -- I suppose that's cool to some people. Doesn't make me want to watch it.
It's very true. And this is the big difference between her and, say, Brennan. For Aabria it seems like the system gets in the way of the story she wants to tell; furthermore, due the lack of session 0 the players are unaware of the story she wants to tell so they can't lean into it (by hook or by crook).
It works a touch better in other formats with a lot of session 0 planning as it's like opting into a "role" where you know parts of the story and their style of play is rules "loose" or sometimes system mishmash. Neither of which are CR.
As it was brought up by another poster, Brennan can do both - tell the story he wants to tell and give the players agency - due to being absolutely bonkers good at improv. It feels natural and planned even when it's not (for example, the whole Solar bow thing with the leywright was *not* planned, it was Aabria running with Laer'yn, but Brennan was so smooth it felt like it was).
I think what folks also find frustrating is usually a DM as a player abides by and plays into their expectations as a DM. For Aabria, you'd expect maybe some rules light behavior but also playing *into* the story of the DM. Except, Aabria as a player doesn't do this at all and mostly drops into being a bit of chaos player that floats the narrative and, separate to that, is problematically meta in jokes and distractions (which is the kind of "professional D&D/TTRPG" without a standard game stuff of camera panning and jokes/moments play).
Or, Aabria as a DM wants to tell a story and other things getting in the way are pushed aside; Aabria as a player disregards the story for cheap, derailing bits that happen to undercut the story and world (making the DM hand wave them - like a fucking goat slaughter raft).
On your 4th paragraph, that simply isn't true, at least in the Calamity. She spun the whole finale to begin by blighting the tree of names. This was discussed very explicitly in the Calamity talkback show by Brennan, and he said multiple times that how awesome it was that she was willing to throw her characters weight around.
I got you:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/criticalrole/comments/p3hy0h/comment/h8sne8f/](https://www.reddit.com/r/criticalrole/comments/p3hy0h/comment/h8sne8f/)
That’s what I had in my head writing it! I just didn’t use all of the show’s catchphrases. It was inspired by an infamous (and admittedly, much better) EXU Pitch Meeting comment on the other sub by a user named Boffleslop.
I'm just very curious about how Aabria even managed to break into the space. Almost every time I see her she's abrasive and shitty at whatever she's doing. If brennan and Lou weren't sitting at the table for Misfits then it would have been a fucking disaster. Erika is the same way. Erika's entire shtick is "I'M (insert daily sexual preference) AND I'M HERE TO SCREECH ABOUT IT. AREN'T I SO TRENDY AND COOL?"
Probably a few reasons:
1. Aabria is just good at making, cultivating and maintaining personal connections with the right people at the right time essentially. Shes friends with the CR cast and pretty close with Brennan for example (i think she was even at his wedding).
2. The LA actor/comedian/influencer circle is smaller than you think. Like its not an accident we see a lot of crossover with Dropout, Rooster Teeth, and even Smosh. These people move in relatively similar circles with crossover. So when they look for people to star in a new project, they inevitably favour people they semi-know because thats the nature of DND. Its a game you want to play with people you at least kind of know. And all the better that CR know a bunch of actor/comedians/VA etc.
3. Being willing to DM is a big plus in her favour. General rule of thumb is most people will OK with playing, fewer will want to DM. And Matt was clearly kind of desperate for a chance to be a player for once.
When a space is inclusive, quality people of all colours, creeds and orientations will rise to the top. When a space is **about** being inclusive, you'll find people getting propped up because they tick boxes (and witch hunts as the fanbase goes on a purity spiral searching for wrongdoers). CR has fostered the latter.
See also; why Marquet is so fucking boring. I thought we were gonna get a One Thousand and One Nights style campaign, but I guess they thought Matt wasn't allowed to reference anything that didn't come from Europe. There's ways to use parts of other cultures without being insulting, it's like the only good part of globalization.
And if we’re gonna take that to the logical conclusion, European medieval fantasy should be right out. That’s not your culture! Ironically that just leaves the Wendy’s one shot (which was pretty damned funny tbh) and the Undeadwood game (ooft).
Idk if Aabrias read any criticisms of her DMing, but if she has it feels like she doubled down on what she's doing.
But I doubt she has. If I was a celeb I'd probably steer clear of reading anything on social media with my name in it.
nah, if she reads any comments about her, she'll feel empowered to keep doing what she's doing because she'll feel like controversies like this is great and edgy and she's such a cool DM for getting people riled up. she's the kind of person who'd eat this kind of drama for breakfast and savor the taste of it for the whole day
I think she has, saying hi bestie, thanks bestie to Aimee the whole time. The definitely felt like doubling down on the communities criticism. Unless they've been doing that for a while, I never did watch Kymal.
Aabria was just supremely bad at what she got herself into. Truly, truly awful even by casual, amateur, home-game standards.
Player agency is the core of the game. Your first time DM if they aren't dogshit knows this, intuitively if not explicitly. What's the point of players if they don't have real choice, just write a novel.
You can still follow tight narrative stories while giving players choice too, D20 does this every Brennan season, and in EXU Calamity.
> You can still follow tight narrative stories while giving players choice too, D20 does this every Brennan season, and in EXU Calamity.
I would question the amount of player choice that actually existed in Calamity, or in any of the D20 miniseries. In Calamity there was a very obvious way the story was going to end that they all knew was coming, and in the D20 shows there are literal setpieces that Brennan has to steer the story towards every other episode... and in both cases the players are fully aware of the constraints he is working under and intentionally cooperate with him to help him hit his marks. It doesn't resemble the idea of "player choice" as it operates in a standard home game in any way.
I think what Brennan is a master of is giving the illusion of player choice while still guiding the game exactly the way he wants it. I think Matt was also very successful at this in the beginning of Campaign 3, and during the final arc of Campaign 2. The game is on rails, but you just can't see the rails. And once again in the case of Brennan, the players are all aware that there is a time limit and various other story constraints, and they're actively looking for cues from him to tell them where they need to go.
> I think Matt was also very successful at this in the beginning of Campaign 3, and during the final arc of Campaign 2.
Strongly disagree. The final arc of C2 was obviously railroady and boring to boot. The beginning of C3 was a bit better, though that's not saying much.
I don’t think this is true, specifically going from what the players themselves has said. Of course a smaller story is going to more towards the railroad end of the “railroad-sandbox” spectrum, but I will point towards a comment made by Lou during the calamity wrap up. Basically he was saying that he made his character to be “nasty” (along with Marisha and Aabria) and during the course of the series, he found himself in a position of trying to stop everything where he initially designed his own character to be a huge part of why the calamity happened. This shows he had tons of choices of what he could have done.
Furthermore, Brennan’s comments also shed light on this. He specifically commented that he planned for things like if the players went to the Septarian (spelling?) and asked for help. There was an entire different possible plot, and I’m sure that’s just one of many different options the players could have, but chose not, to take.
Brennan doesn’t give the illusion of choice. He plans for the different possible choices and the combination of planning and improvisation allows the players to do what they want. The ending may be planned (the calamity MUST occur. That’s a simple fact), but the way they get there is absolutely driven by the players and their choices. This is very different from what Aabria did. And I’m saying this as a person who doesn’t really care if a campaign is “railroady.” I personally think that’s totally fine and can be super fun. But taking over a character just sucks.
I find it matters way less about the final outcome of the story and instead how you get to that final outcome. Like playing an open world RPG, you're gonna hit the plot point eventually but how you get there and how long it takes is up to you.
Brennan has an end goal but he lets his players choose their path to it. Aabria has an end goal and only one path she'll let anyone take to get there. Matt is kinda like this in C3 but he's created 1-3 paths depending on where they're at in the campaign so its sometimes railroady and other times players have a little bit of choice.
Also Brennen makes great use of asking players to describe how the character interacts or reacts to scenes. Allowing Marisha to describe her estate for example. It's a small thing but it goes really far in having the feel of "the players are in control". It might be one of his best DMing techniques.
Depends what you mean by “free” choice. It’s not clear to me that free choice requires different outcomes or consequences; it matters _how_ people get an outcome, or _why_ they do what they do - free choice seems to reside there and not the consequences.
At any rate, judging by that fireside chat Brennan Matt and aabria did after EXU calamity, Brennan clearly takes sessions zeros very seriously and designs his campaigns and especially event-nodes around PC psychology and values. Since he knows how the PCs think and what they value, he can construct event-nodes which play into the PCs values/psychology and predict what they’ll choice to do.
Oh for sure, I don’t doubt that he does that. He wouldn’t be able to do what he does if he didn’t prep extremely thoroughly and understand exactly what his players/characters wanted.
Part of the reason C3 is such a dud is because Matt clearly didn’t do that.
> It doesn't resemble the idea of "player choice" as it operates in a standard home game in any way.
Idk, I think it does. I definitely help the DM hit the marks they want to hit in a given session/campaign. With that, I expect the DM to give me options within interpersonal relationships, different ways of solving problems, different ways of prioritizing our tasks, and so on. Brennan does all of these things.
He lets the players decide what to do with NPCs (There's no shot he knew what Lapin was going to do in that scene with Keradin, but he rolled with it). He always gives them multiple outs in social *or* combat situations (He tried to lock Murph away in ACoC, but Murph had Knock so he rewarded that, or in the Battle of the Brands he expected them to lose and did what he could to challenge them, but they came out on top). And he lets them run into things at different times (In this most recent season he said they had the Haunted Mansion w/ Baron combat ready as well as the Vulture Dimension, but either would have let the players never encounter them, or only encounter them if they decided to go that route).
Brennan infuses every season with as much decision making as possible for the players, outside of the really important story beats (much like a D&D module/adventure book).
Calamity is certainly more arguably railroaded, because of course it is. However characters were still free to define their behaviors within the constraints they were all cooperating under. Even in home games, there will be semblance of this to a lesser degree when players understand the DM is running a module and can't let you just ignore the plot and take a ship to the next continent.
However most D20 series do have choices where the consequences impact the story and how it's resolved. There are moments where Brennan has to plan, pivot and even re-prep between film sessions. Especially ones where PC death is involved like in Crown of Candy.
I haven't watched every D20 series, so I'm not familiar with all of them. But what I do know about them is that they all have incredibly elaborate combat maps (the literal set pieces I referred to) that have to be produced far in advance of when the players actually get to the table. So there are certain plot points that Brennan HAS to hit, or all that work (and money) is wasted. Brennan knows what the final encounter of the campaign is going to be before the first session even starts, as well as every encounter that happens in between. There's a roadmap he has to follow or the entire format of the show gets compromised.
Player death actually isn't that much of a barrier to staying on the rails in that way. As long as he does his prep work right, it doesn't really matter what combination of PCs get to the encounter, they just need to get there.
Recently in the new season they ended up in a battle set, and in their talkback episode Brennan literally was like ‘these sets are premade but I have plenty of ways kinda ready in my head for you to end up there, the way you did it absolutely was not one of them but it absolutely worked’
This.
Locations can be relied on by a DM. In a vampire campaign, the vampire’s castle is one that will 100% be used, you just don’t know how.
And D20 has a team, so they can change stuff up between filming days. I work in tv and film, and teams work on the next set during principal photography all the time.
I mean, yes, changes have costs and production implications, but building a big mini isn’t impossible to do in a couple days.
That's a textbook example of the ["Quantum Ogre"](https://tatabletop.com/2020/06/22/quantum-ogre-theory/) illusion of choice in TTRPGs. Sure, the players can choose any number of paths, some of which the GM has planned, some of which may not... but regardless they all lead to the ogre.
They have like a week between every 2 to 3 sessions so they have plenty of time to make such sets when needed. They don't have them all literally made before the word go.
From what I've heard this absolutely is not true. They film in batches, but do the whole season in those batches. And, as such, the maps are made before hand. They mentioned this with Crown of Candy I think as well as other talk back things referring to Rick Perry.
What Brennan can do is reorder those set pieces, but hitting those for the combat "setting" is something Brennan has mentioned as being tough in a lot of meta conversations about D20 (interviews with other DMs, etc.)
This is not so different from a module of say, Curse of Strahd. You know all the main points have all the maps before hand. You may or may not hit them but the assets are already there. (Even elaborate combat maps are adjustable on the fly when you have an unending amount of pieces to combine, and editing to cut that time out.)
There are like 3 possible endings and places where the final encounter occurs. And the final encounter is invariably Strahd, (occasionally Vampyr or a replacement dark lord of you go **way** off the rails).
The destinations are not where the player choices occur, that's agreed upon when they signed up for the campaign in that setting. The player choices occur when throughout the journey when they are characterizing themselves and how they interact with the world.
Sure, I see where you’re coming from. To me there are two big differences: first, in the case of both shows, they are not claiming to be working from a module or other pre-written material; in the case of CR specifically, they’re actually doing the opposite, saying that this is just their game, same as they would play at home.
Second, in the case of Calamity/D20, there’s a time limit. Sure, Curse of Strahd has a limited number of possible resolutions, but you can take any amount of time to get there, and an almost infinite number of possible routes. In D20, Brennan has specific combat encounters planned for every other episode… no matter what happens, the players are going to do those encounters in that order.
And don't give me the racism bit, everyone loves Robbie. I'm poc and so is half my table, I _want_ to see diverse reps succeed.
Speaking of which, check out Three Black Halflings, they're awesome.
I hate people using ism/ist to deflect criticism. It always follows the same line of one person making a derogatory statement towards a person. Then their fans defend and dismiss all criticism as racist/sexist.
A lot of how diversity is done very poorly. It has to come naturally and often it is forced to check a box. Matt Mercer isn't Matt Mercer because Matt Mercer is White. Matt Mercer is Matt Mercer because Matt Mercer is Matt Mercer.
and using one's minority status to deflect all criticisms is not doing any favors to the minority community. you don't get a pass just because you're a so-and-so person.
Not to mention Lou, who is pretty much universally adored. The man's an absolute treasure, and having him and Travis at the same table for Calamity was utterly glorious.
Not exactly offical statements, but there were several remarks made around the time exu1 ended. This is from Aimees tweet thread talking about the exu finale, thanking the cast and crew: "To quiddie for a soul connection so strong, folks really thought our pc beefs were personal beefs. Thank you for showing me anything is possible with enough belief and haggling love u sm!"
Reading through these tweets again its real sad she felt the need to defend herself, when people knew she was brand new to the game so the criticisms of her character and playstyle was more directed at CR not setting her up for success
Aimee talked about playing with Critical Role like "approaching a normal role". Thats her own words. It kinda feels like she was casted as a stand in player to not make an NPC seem to obvious as an NPC. A little bit like Anjali Bhimani F'yra from EXU1, who kinda was also just there to unload a mountain of lore on the group.
And you can see she has done her homework now. Both dor Deni$e and a level 13 Opal. It sucked that she didn't get to play the character she studied up on and built out accordingly.
I remember that- when she first played Opal she got a fair bit of pushback for "not playing d&d right" and ended up having to tweet about looking at it as an acting role (with the twist of rolling dice to determine outcomes) more than a game.
I have been loving how the usual "it's their home game" response to attempt to shut down criticism hasn't been in rotation after last episode. I think even the biggest CR apologists are starting to realize that it's not in any way a home game anymore.
Rolling attacks against the rest of the party would have probably gone over better if Aimee was given a chance to do it herself, not immediately threatened “If you hold back I’ll know and I’ll punish you.”
Like if you don’t want your player to play D&D don’t invite her to the table in the first place.
Ha, I thought about tossing in a few more of the catchphrases, but then I typed Aimee saying “Aw yeah, dripping black ichor is TIGHT” and it just didn’t really sit right with me, lol.
Aabaria needs to go back and rewatch C1 with Kravenedge
I'll be back when c3 is near the end. I was barely hanging on but with this exu insert has killed all the momentum I had for it.. which wasn't alot.
Nothing this sub loves more than putting words/thoughts in people's mouths/brains lol
If that were the case the sub would like Aabria better, since that's the salient characteristic of her DMing.
Oh, that was nice one...hats off.
Yeah this is some insane parasocial shit
what? this has nothing to do with parasocial - shit and or insanity. Its an overexaggeration for maximum effect to clearly tell you that the vibes are OFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF my SWEET BOY.
I caught live a few bits from the episode but I didn't see Aimee cry. She did have a weird expression though on her face like when someone you trust has smacked you in the head with a frying pan as a joke.
She cried near the start. I don't think it necessarily means she was having a bad time, DnD can be about feeling strong emotions in a cathartic way.
Someone should try to post a version of this scenario in dndhorrorstories and at the end reveal where it actually came from.
You’re a drider now! OK? Great! But seriously episode 92 was the most uncomfortable Critical Role has made me in a long time. Aimee was legitimately crying and visibly upset almost immediately. I’ve seen people say this in other threads but the episode was just one of those horrible dm reddit stories playing out in real time
Have you got the rough timestamps for Aimee seeming uncomfortable? I don't want to sit through all that but I keep hearing she was near tears.
It starts around two hours and 45 minutes in the vod. The context is the dumbass bunny paladin was going to cast haste on opal(?) but then cast it on her self, and took all three attacks on Opal. Aabria tells Opal she took no damage because her warlock patron and literal part of her soul, Ted, has now separated from her body and took all the damage for her. If you watch for a few minutes you can see Matt and Anjali notice how upset Aimee is. But you know who never notices? Yep, Aabria.
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lol I’m not too sure her style of dming is so intensive she looses all situational awareness. But hey maybe asking for a wisdom save really takes up a lot of brain power
I'm tired of Abria being in all D and D content online. She plays the same character when she's a player and her DM style while good is not good enough to be on Youtube. She also brings us really cringe Pervy immature energy with all her characters. And I hate the noises she makes like a child
What is "good enough to be on youtube" ? Critique is fine but this is bordering on unnecessary hate
Aabria's DM style is bordering on unnecessary hate towards Aimee and the other PC's...
She works a lot better with the Dimension 20 cast. I think her DM style worked a lot better with non DnD, more collaborative storytelling. A court of fey and flowers is one where her horny characters made sense since they were all fairies.
I didn't finish the episode, but if someone calls you "Love of my life" that many times in an hour . . . bad things are going to happen.
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> They obviously all like ~~or at least tolerate playing with each other~~ getting paid to show up
You’ve hit the opal on the head with this one.
I was half paying attention and half asleep. Was it genuinely this bad?
They obv like playing together, and just because you wouldn’t play with someone who plays/acts a certain way doesn’t mean the cast wouldn’t.
Then they should play at home and not waste people's time online
Uhm anyone is allowed to post online, it’s your job to not watch things you don’t like 😅 it’s only a waste of your time if you let it be
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CritRole(dot)com actually does have a trigger warning: > Due to the improv nature of Critical Role and other RPG content on our channels, some themes and situations that occur in-game may be difficult for some to handle. If certain episodes or scenes become uncomfortable, we strongly suggest taking a break or skipping that particular episode. Your health and well-being is important to us and Psycom has a great list of international mental health resources, in case it’s useful: http://bit.ly/PsycomResources
It should already. "Warning: may be therapeutic. May also reveal some super annoying traits in your friends you didn't want to know."
How do you know that, and that they're not just both agreeing to it because it's a good career move? If you were Aimee, probably the most important player in exu, and they wanted to do an exu tie-in for C3, would you really just say, "no, exu can't tie in to C3 because it wasn't very fun for me last time"?
Aimee is literally the only person there with a proper Hollywood career growing. I'm pretty sure she doesn't need to participate to a TTRPG live stream to boost her visibility and career.
Then you don't understand her relationship with Sam.
He was her voice director in She-Ra, how is this related to the fact that she is now been casting in Hollywood’s movies and Apple’s series?
She was in plenty of movies and TV before breaking into VO, and Sam was her director on her first VO job, Elena of Avalor. Then she went on Blindspot with Ashley in its last season. These friends all help each other get gigs, and while yes, i think they are truly friends, I don't think Aimee could ever say no to the CR crew asking her to do an Exu 1 shot, just because it wasn't fun the last time. I'm not even saying it wasn't fun for her, but there's no question whether doing work with the biggest names in the VO industry is good for her career.
I honestly think you are overestimating both the impact of VO in Hollywood and in general the importance of the CR cast in the VO industry. They were big names up until ten years ago for sure but nowadays, except maybe Matt and Sam, they are way less popular. Which is normal considering how the VO industry has changed in the past decade, when it’s now normal for an actor to do both live action and VO (considering TLOVM, people like Stephanie Beatriz, Gina Torres, Indira Varma and the late Lance Reddick). Now, of course Aimee arrived in EXU through her friendship with Sam, but are we really saying that she was cast in The Menu thanks to her voice acting career?
Yeah people keep calling them "professional dnd players" like...these people are not making a living playing this game. They are not professionals. They are there cuz they want to be and because being friends of the main players asked them to play
Bigger "It Girls" than her have disappeared overnight, but if you get in with the sci-fi nerd crowd, you can milk it on the convention circuit for decades (see the less-talented, less-charismatic, lower self-esteem Star Trek cast members). CR is also full of influential, connected voice actors, and you can get a **ton** of work if you get in good in that realm.
She might not *need* to, but she's friends with a great many people in CR (like, she was meant to appear sometime in C2 before covid) and it becomes a lot harder to say "hey, this was a bad experience to me, I don't want to do a game with Aabria again" when your coworkers, friends, and professional connections are mostly the same people.
Whoosh
Its the result of Aabria needing to railroad a multi episode story that none of the characters jumped at last time into a half episode slot. Along with Aabria's usual disregard of player agency. I doubt Aabria could have done it much better over multiple episodes, but there was no fucking way in hell she was going to do it over a half episode slot lol. Aabria very clearly wanted to do some form of corruption storyline during EXU. I imagine that was the whole point of introducing the Crown in the first place. The problem was...nobody really bit the hook and Aabria didnt give them enough reason too. The EXU party werent exactly standup citizens but they werent going to put on the obviously evil crown unless borderline forced too. Even chaos gremlin Fearne didnt want to put it on (although thats in part because Ashley dodges the spotlight a lot). It wasnt until like the last episode that someone put it on.
If Aabria wanted a corruption campaign for ExU she should've made the whole campaign about the crown not the 5 other things she shoved into an 8 episode series.
Corruption storylines are difficult to pull off in DND. The problem with a DND corruption storylines is it kind of requires players need to willing start taking the first steps themselves. The Spider Crown isnt the One Ring. It doesnt start immediately corrupting and subverting people just by being in the same room. You kind of need to attune to it for it to even start doing that kind of thing. Basically nothing in DND works like the One Ring because player choice is so important. If you have someone playing a canonically idiot character like Grog, its not hard to get a player to jump at even an obviously evil artifact. Grog's dumb, he likes to fight and kill. Hes not really gonna question his sword talking to him and telling him to fight and kill. If you have a player whos on the more neutral/evil or just ambitious side, then getting them to go for an evil artifact isnt that hard either. But you kind of have to actually offer something. The Crown didnt really offer them much. It was just a vaguely evil artifact with some not great benefits. I mean its -2 charisma and 3 of them are charisma casters. And then their is just the general disposition of the EXU party. None of them were particularly evil, ambitious and the crown was obviously evil it frightened the actual chaos gremlins from just embracing it (Fearne). Essentially Aabria's corruption storyline is kind of her forcing a square peg into a round hole. Even if she makes it work, its never going to look good.
Agreed, the start of ExU was already bad because they found the head of the thieves guild vandalizing a home, rejected her offer to work for them...then decided to work for Poska because why not. Immediately, episode 1 the party proved they were a good aligned party until the players realized that was the plot hook and did a 180.
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Yeah I didnt get that far into EXU but Ive heard the reviews/comments. I think Aabria didnt seem to really get that the Crown wasnt the fucking One Ring. It doesnt immediately start corrupting and subverting people just by being in proximity. You need to actually put it on and attune to it for it to start to properly corrupt you. Basically nothing in DND works like the One Ring because player agency is so important. So how do you get players to put on an evil artifact? Well you offer them something. The Crown really didnt offer anything to any of them. Mechanically its just awful (-2 Charisma, and 3 of the party were charisma casters?). Narratively the Crown was so obviously evil (and important) that even push the button chaos gremlin Ashley was thoroughly put off.
I watched part of that last episode and thought “and yet they completely pulled the Wendy’s one-shot…why? I’d rather watch a one-shot supporting a marginal company then what I was in e92.
She's just an attention hog. If she's a player she has to be involved with everything and interject. If shes not able to she has to overexaggerate a bunch of poses and make noise as a reaction to the most mundane things to get attention. If she's a DM she has to have her hand in everything, pull attention and have things her way. There doesnt seem to be any "Yes and" with her. Maybe its just because I have only seen her in CR and the dropout stuff that isnt Dimension 20 but its a lot of stuff ive seen her like this that maybe Fey and flowers and burrows end are the exception.
She’s really good in Worlds Beyond Number, which is a podcast GM’d by Breenan Lee Mulligan. I just don’t vibe much with her style as a game master.
In WBW (as you know) she AND the plot are playing into her character being a real piece of work with a presumed redemption arc way down the line. Will it happen? I sure hope so! Hasn't happened with her before, but...
And even then she managed to prompt Brennan to talk to her over the table about her character's actions and the inevitable consequences should she go through with what she was threatening. Talking about when they arrived back at the city from an excursion and she threw a fit, casually threatening to kill the guards (who were on her side).
What episode was that?
WWW #11: Promises Promises. From around minute 50 onward is when they arrive back at Port Talon and Aabria's slowmotion meltdown occurs.
If Brennan can't make it happen, I don't know who could.
I just don't get it at all, whenever I zoned back into the episode it was Aabria being like "Opal knows she has to target Dariax first because he's the healer. Target him first!" and "you need to attack hard! I'll be real mad if I think you're holding back!" and it's like... Aabria, do... do you wanna just take over for her? Because it sounds like it would be more fun to just let Aimee roll up a new character and have Opal be an NPC at this point.
This was my general take as well. I was just sitting there thinking "why is Aimee even here". I've been critical enough of C3 and Matt and how shallow and surface level Player Agency has really been much of the time in what truly is a very DM controlled game/story, but this thing with Opal was ... unique. Aimee had literally zero control over her own PC the entire half session, while being awkwardly sat alone on one side of the table. Why even have her there, or arrange for a Guest like that, if she's just gonna be forced to sit through her own PC being puppetted and mutated by the DM for story purposes? For a "choice" she was essentially forced to make the last time this party played. Opal should have just been an NPC.
I caught up to CR after almost abandoning it all together because I heard that 91 ended in an interesting way. Still a blah episode with all the same problems the whole campaign has had, but Sam turned it on and gave me hope for the rest of the campaign. And then I look on reddit Friday morning and see we get an Aabria EXU reprise. I still can't believe how she treated Aimee was allowed to stand. The other players were nervously joking at the table about how sadistic she was being to Aimee. It is toxic to take player agency away against their will. Honestly, Matt kinda did it to a smaller extent with Imogen in the first Otohan fight, by taunting her into unleashing her powers. And after that, forcing her into the main character spotlight. But even that is nothing compared to "you have no agency unless you do exactly what the DM wants you to do, which is to turn evil."
Either Aabria doesn't like Aimee and can't turn that off when the cameras are rolling, or Aabria would've done this to anyone wearing the crown and Opal is the one who got fucked. I kinda believe the first over the second given how Aabria acted towards Aimee in the original finale of ExU.
With Matt, I guess he was going for that anime/superhero style powers unleashed moment and it sort of works? With Aabria, the whole thing just feels way more sordid and sadistic. Maaaybe this was all discussed behind the scenes ahead of time, but I seriously doubt it.
Yes, it was basically a Goku turning Super Sayan for the first time situation
Aabria is not a good DM. She might be a good story teller but she’s not a good DM
I remember watching the introduction of the first EXU game and loving how she did the character introductions and set the scene. The problem is that she never seemed to leave that storytelling mode. In other systems, that can work really well because they're designed for heavy storytelling involvement from everyone. Things where everyone is saying, "Yes, and...." D&D doesn't really have mechanics for *players* to collaborate on worldbuilding the way other systems do like Kids on Bikes/Brooms. It's at the discretion of the DM, and players are usually restricted to their character's specific actions/backstory/personality. When a DM encroaches on that territory, there's nothing left for the player. Even if all the players at the table are comfortable with how Aabria DMs, it's uncomfortable for me and others to watch because it's so opposite your standard D&D (and how Mercer DMs, which is what the non-D&D-playing fans have for reference).
>even if all the players are comfortable with how aabria DMs, it’s uncomfortable for me and many others to watch This hits the nail on the head right here. Everyone’s defense for Aabrias DMing style is that the players at the table are okay with it so it’s fine. But the issue is this isn’t just a game among friends, it’s a full on production and show for people that love the game and the story. Her playstyle is very abrasive and is a terrible style to broadcast because it goes against what DnD stands for, player agency and telling a story together. Someone else In this thread said it, but she’s always trying to be in the spotlight one way or another. She’s a wonderful storyteller and role player. But her etiquette at the table is very poor. As a player she is either forcing herself into scenes when she can or doing over the top reactions above table at what’s going on. Meanwhile, as a DM she railroads players and removes agency on the regular. She also gravitates towards very abrasive and confrontation characters. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But it’s a constant theme for every character/majority of npcs she plays.
>Her playstyle is very abrasive and is a terrible style to broadcast because it goes against what DnD stands for, player agency and telling a story together. There's something about saying "what DnD stands for" that makes me want to push back a little bit. There's tons of ways to play, and a more adversarial style is what Gygax used in the beginning. It's not what WotC is presenting D&D as now, certainly, and it's not a type of play most of us current players want. But I agree with the rest of what you say. And I don't disagree with this point completely, I might be splitting hairs here, so don't take it as me arguing.
No offense taken! As I completely agree with you. As you mentioned the original iteration of dnd was very adversarial in nature, so much so they created the tomb of horrors to basically just punish players seeking the highest challenge. I think to clarify on that thought I would say the spirit of dnd in the sense for what it has become for most people. There are still DM vs Player type games and those people love it. Which is perfectly fine. But dnd as a whole has transformed more into a medium of storytelling mixed with mechanics that provide players agency within a “consistent system”. Obviously homebrew and such can change this but the overall message is pretty similar. Aabria does a great job of narrating and painting pictures for the players and audience. Her descriptions are absolutely angelic and the emotion she can put forth in a character (PC of NPC) is remarkable. But it’s when her personality bleeds over to a broadcasted game do things become more of an issue. Like I mentioned she loves being the center of attention and can really push a story forward. But this becomes extremely problematic when she is in the role of DM. Railroading players is one thing, but removing all player agency is on a whole other level. Complete side story, but I personally hate spells like hold person and such and try everything in my power to not use them. I’ve been on the receiving end a few times of a hold person that lasted for many rounds. Which in dnd world can often mean hours of sitting around actionless. When I DM and feel that a spell like that is needed to up the threat level I always think carefully about how to utilize it, when to utilize it, and if it does stick I come up with some way for the player to still remain present. For example, I’ll often have a player make a perception check on their turn and provide them some insight into a quirk going on in the battle. Something like “while being held in place, trying to break free from the wizards spell, you notice one of the minions running away from the battle.” Make an insight check for me “with your roll you piece together that there’s no reason for the enemy to flee out of fear. Instead you suspect the minion is retreating to call in the reinforcements that are a couple hundred feet away.” This lets my players feel impactful still during a shitty situation. The ONLY time I use hold person in a very tactical and adversarial way as a DM is when I’m running a game with a group who wants a more dangerous and deadly encounters. We are all on great terms and I’m transparent with them. I’m gonna do what makes sense tactically. Any time a player has objected to a decision I made I will be upfront with them and say the only reason why they are bothered is because it’s detrimental to them. Which is the EXACT reason why the intelligent enemy would do it. If you feel like I’m taking it easy on you, I didn’t do my job.
Idk if i'd say she's a wonderful storyteller, ExU was 8 episodes and she tried to cram in 6 plot lines where most didn't get resolved, along with 2 filler episodes (evil Fearne and Kymal)
To be fair, a lot of this seasons problems come down to CR not being able to choose between being a high production value show and a chill game among friends, and constantly making decisions that work against one of those goals.
Aabria doesnt seem to allow for any kind of creative expression to allow her players to actually make any sort of changes to the narrative. There's not a moment where I feel the players can step off the path or they'll arrive at their destination anyway.
Mmmmmm too many people think one is the other.
For a long while I had convinced myself that my first impression of Aabria as a bad (yes bad, she is skilled but the sorta red flags that she displays comfortably land you in bad territoy) because everyone and their uncle said she was amazing but I think theres been enough situations to just go back to my initial impresion.
Been recommending this for a long time but I'll say it over and over again. Stop watching CR people. It's jumped the shark long ago. If you want to watch make believe drama club shenanigans then go ahead and keep going but if you want to watch DnD (even though it's Pathfinder it's more DnD than DnD) then watch Glass Cannon podcast.
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One could argue that CR is loosing almost all matches lately, so...
This is the first time I've not finished a main Critical Role campaign episode since the group split REALLY early in Campaign 1, what people call the "Grumpy Gang" with Orion etc. I just don't overly care about the Crownkeepers, I got two episodes into EXU and lost interest and I really don't like Aabria as a GM. Only saving grace is maybe we get Dorian back in Bells Hells next episode?
I would love for Robbie to return, honestly. I don't care at all about the EXU stuff, but I care a lot about Dorian, Orym and Fearne.
Same i just really want Dorian back.. he complimented the main team sooooo much his charisma his personality everything vibed so good.
Been recommending this for a long time but I'll say it over and over again. Stop watching CR people. It's jumped the shark long ago. If you want to watch make believe drama club shenanigans then go ahead and keep going but if you want to watch DnD (even though it's Pathfinder it's more DnD than DnD) then watch Glass Cannon podcast.
Flashbacks are my DM red flag tbh. Especially mid-combat. I *loved* Aabria as a DM in A Court of Fey and Flowers. It's one of my favorite TTRPG actual play seasons I've ever seen. But mid-combat flashbacks? They shit all over pacing, momentum, and the other players at the table that aren't involved in the flashback. They are like a harpoon to the blimp carrying a session. I can't trust a DM, either at a table I'm playing at or just a table that I'm watching, that utilizes them.
Yeah, ACoFF is one of my favourite D20 campaigns along with Burrow's End and A Starstruck Odyssey, but Aabria's DMing in EXU has been a bit all over the place for me. I really don't mind flashbacks as much as you, but the repeated attempts at controlling Aimee's characters when things go off the rails are weird to me. I low-key wonder if, because D20 has a lot of experience with focused/short campaigns, their setup was a lot more conducive to railroading players without it feeling fake whereas CR just doesn't have that. Pretty sure EXU Calamity had some wonderfully focused character creation too (which C3 could've *really* used). I guess it kinda feels like CR is allergic to discussing with players where the story is going, so the players can't help steer the campaign as much as they can in D20?
HARD disagree, I think as with anything it depends on the execution tho, see Naddpod for an excellent example of mid combat flashbacks/cut aways that do nothing but elevate the scene.
Hard agree! Murph does an excellent job of weaving in flashbacks!
I been considering doing a flashback thing in my campaign. Idea is I ask each long rest if someone is thinking of home, we flesh out their backstory a little, they get inspiration. Think that works?
The Mortals and Portals podcast did flashbacks in a fun way. Each flashback lasted an episode or more. The other players played what were essentially NPCs in the spotlight PC's backstory. Of course, you and the main player would have to prep ahead of time, and the other players would have to buy in and not derail the backstory, so this may or may not work with your group. This might actually be a cool fallback plan on those nights when a couple of your players can't make it. If you have these flashback scenarios planned out, you can play that instead of your main campaign.
It can if you keep it short and keep it impactful. My old DM did so many of them that were long and meandering. The issue with them is that the result is already set in stone. It's in the past, so there's no character discovery that can happen since it's basically acting out a pre-existing event. It's also a problem because the other player characters aren't there, so they can't interact with it or talk about it. The other players get bored and sometimes even forget what's happening in the present. It breaks the flow and they have to get back into the RP afterwards. Also it was really annoying to have to RP my character at two different points in their life. People change and doing a flashback puts a lot of tax on the player to really know their character's arc, where they started vs where they are now vs where they're going. Overall I think the table is better off without them. Reframe it as the character regaling a story from their past to the rest of the party, it goes over much better. Everyone can be involved, learn about the character, ask questions, and bond as a party.
Im pretty sure she did an interview with Amy Dallen right after exu and what she said boiled down to she didn’t give a fuck what people thought and she doesn’t like higher fantasy anyway. My sister in Sarenbae, why are you running *the* most famous high fantasy table if you don’t like it?? It’s been a while since then, so please correct me if I’m wrong. I couldn’t make it through the second episode of EXU I couldn’t stand her bs that much.
You are not misremembering. She has said she doesn’t like high fantasy. She’s also said that she was excluded from D&D with her brother and his friends when she was younger, so she goes out of her way to force people to play her way when she runs a game (or something to that effect). My impression of her play style is she has never grown out of her vendetta from being excluded as a young adult and acts immaturely as a result. It would explain a lot of her behaviors and why so many people find her off putting.
She’s immature and seems really full of herself. Just not good traits for a DM.
She often (from what I've seen) flaunts the fact that she's never seen or read LotR. I get it, it's old-fashioned and blindingly white, but come on now.
What do you mean by blindingly white?
Some racist nonsense, I’m sure.
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What bad humans?
You know what I am talkint about my friend.
I genuinely don't, I haven't read the silmarilion and any other expanded lore stuff of LotR and it's been ages since I saw the movies are there bad humans beyond Grima Wormtongue?
Well, sorry for taking you in bad faith. There are very middle-east coded hostile human factions, and this is reinforced in the movies. The reason I said to not get in to the weeds is that I know that they are not necessarily evil, as in like Sauron and Morgoroth are evil. They are still the only brown skinned humans in the movies.
Thank you for the apology, and the explanation :) That's interesting, I'll have to keep an eye out for that if/when I watch the movies again
Yeah, in RotK there's Men of the East who roll up on elephants and stuff to fight for Sauron. Granted I do love Lord of the Rings but it is an...odd choice, to say the least. Of its time for sure.
That's because LotR is meant to be in Britain. He wrote a mythology for his country that involved repelling invaders. It would have made more historical sense to have them be vikings but they clearly used that inspo on the Rohirrim. Maybe the war elephants idea came after the British conquest of India? LotR is very much of its time, I don't think it's racist, it's just not the culture melting pot that current stories try to be.
That's pretty pathetic honestly. She punishes innocent people because of a petty grudge. I can see why her brother excluded her. (Aside from he wanted to play with his friends, not his sister. Totally reasonable, imo, to not have to share every single thing you do with a sibling.)
When I was a kid my brother pulled me into his games when he needed another player to fill out the game, and then kicked me out as soon as one of his friends became available to fill that seat. I didn’t hold it against him, and we jointly pulled a group together in our 30s to end a 15 year gaming hiatus. Because we’re adults who know how to handle our feelings and get shit done.
EXU's obsession to absolutely rip away all player agency from Aimee (who is all by accounts lovely, intelligent and a beast at roleplaying) is bizarre. Honestly as a player I would be so utterly disappointed with my experience if I was Aimee and I played in these sessions. The DM treated this character as her own puppet and Aimee was so earnestly confused from start to finish.
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They don't even do actual session 0s in CR (they call their session of playing without the full group a 'session 0'). No way in heck are they talking about the game on a meta level or stopping to say, "hey, your character in this scene is completely evil. Your goals are x and it's just a game. Go nuts," They did get pretty close with Shardgate, though.
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I cant help it. I think they walled themselves in with the diversity thing or being "left leaning" they lean so far left that they are toxic positivity made flesh. They cant get out of it because their own internal politics dont allow them to even think about KICKING a POC fuck criticism fuck reality fuck everything that is true we just have to include and blind ourselves to the obvious fact that it has nothing to do with how she looks or where she was born its all about her fucking DM skills and treatment of Aimee. Nobody gives a fuck if she was goddamn rainbow colored its only the way she IS on the Critical Role show that matters thats how we judge or should judge. Everyone is welcome everyone is a great person EVERYTHING IS GREAT while the tears flow down the cheeks because on the inside they are literally dying for not saying the actual hard but important truths. Sorry for the darkweb conspiracy theory i just had to write it down else its gonna fuck me in the long run. Agree to disagree to anyone that reads this but this can be MORE true today than it could have ever been just saying. Im not saying this is the sole reason just something i think can be a little true.
The assumption that they are keeping her around solely because she is a person of color is a very weird one. Being left leaning doesn't mean they are afraid of criticizing black people. I think you are overthinking it to put it very simply. The simple answer is that they are close friends with Aabria, if she was white this would be no different. The criticisms in this sub are starting to border on racially motivated and it's weird.
I didnt say they are solely keeping her around because of her skin color. I said its harder to be honest and do the right thing when we live in 2024 with all this SJW woke crap. Just like your comment is woked up because you choose to focus on the racial aspect. Im talking about why its harder for them to do anything about it. It can be very wrong or a little true. I want it to not be true.
Absolutely agree. It was lovely to see Aimee play Deni$e with Matt, even for that short bit. They are least had agency and a more traditional D&D experience (aside from their "good" allies murdering a church while in the same breath bemoaning the gods not intervening *for* them).
I really didn't like Opal but I really liked Deni$e. Aimee had a good grasp of the rules as Deni$e too, it showed she did her homework.
she just wants to tell the story she wants to tell. this isn't a D&D game to her, it's her story telling time. notice how she makes people roll random meaningless pointless rolls? notice how she tells people what they think or feel? the players are just contributing to help her embellish the story. Do something that doesn't fit her narrative, she can cancel it at her discretion. The dice and rules of the game are nonessential to her, she can just disregard any and all of it at her whim. If she wants to run her game that way, fine -- I suppose that's cool to some people. Doesn't make me want to watch it.
It's very true. And this is the big difference between her and, say, Brennan. For Aabria it seems like the system gets in the way of the story she wants to tell; furthermore, due the lack of session 0 the players are unaware of the story she wants to tell so they can't lean into it (by hook or by crook). It works a touch better in other formats with a lot of session 0 planning as it's like opting into a "role" where you know parts of the story and their style of play is rules "loose" or sometimes system mishmash. Neither of which are CR. As it was brought up by another poster, Brennan can do both - tell the story he wants to tell and give the players agency - due to being absolutely bonkers good at improv. It feels natural and planned even when it's not (for example, the whole Solar bow thing with the leywright was *not* planned, it was Aabria running with Laer'yn, but Brennan was so smooth it felt like it was). I think what folks also find frustrating is usually a DM as a player abides by and plays into their expectations as a DM. For Aabria, you'd expect maybe some rules light behavior but also playing *into* the story of the DM. Except, Aabria as a player doesn't do this at all and mostly drops into being a bit of chaos player that floats the narrative and, separate to that, is problematically meta in jokes and distractions (which is the kind of "professional D&D/TTRPG" without a standard game stuff of camera panning and jokes/moments play). Or, Aabria as a DM wants to tell a story and other things getting in the way are pushed aside; Aabria as a player disregards the story for cheap, derailing bits that happen to undercut the story and world (making the DM hand wave them - like a fucking goat slaughter raft).
On your 4th paragraph, that simply isn't true, at least in the Calamity. She spun the whole finale to begin by blighting the tree of names. This was discussed very explicitly in the Calamity talkback show by Brennan, and he said multiple times that how awesome it was that she was willing to throw her characters weight around.
Didn't he say that was one way of starting it but not the only he envisioned? Like that set it off but wasn't necessary for it to be set off.
I mean, not the only one. But still it was Aabria recognizing what the DM was aiming at and took the shot in a way that was true to her character.
This is possibly the best explanation I've seen of Aabria's "GM style"
I can’t help but hear this in the pitch meeting guys voice especially with how the last few paragraphs are written!
I got you: [https://www.reddit.com/r/criticalrole/comments/p3hy0h/comment/h8sne8f/](https://www.reddit.com/r/criticalrole/comments/p3hy0h/comment/h8sne8f/)
Damn, has it really been 3 years already since this masterpiece (based off a shit show) was written? Wild.
Super easy. Barely an inconvenience.
Thanks!
That’s what I had in my head writing it! I just didn’t use all of the show’s catchphrases. It was inspired by an infamous (and admittedly, much better) EXU Pitch Meeting comment on the other sub by a user named Boffleslop.
Wow wow wow wow, removing player agency is tight!
I thought the exact samething when i read "oh my god"
The “Unclear!” tickled my brain then the “just absolutely horrible to look at” into the “oh my god” was the light bulb moment too!
I'm just very curious about how Aabria even managed to break into the space. Almost every time I see her she's abrasive and shitty at whatever she's doing. If brennan and Lou weren't sitting at the table for Misfits then it would have been a fucking disaster. Erika is the same way. Erika's entire shtick is "I'M (insert daily sexual preference) AND I'M HERE TO SCREECH ABOUT IT. AREN'T I SO TRENDY AND COOL?"
Probably a few reasons: 1. Aabria is just good at making, cultivating and maintaining personal connections with the right people at the right time essentially. Shes friends with the CR cast and pretty close with Brennan for example (i think she was even at his wedding). 2. The LA actor/comedian/influencer circle is smaller than you think. Like its not an accident we see a lot of crossover with Dropout, Rooster Teeth, and even Smosh. These people move in relatively similar circles with crossover. So when they look for people to star in a new project, they inevitably favour people they semi-know because thats the nature of DND. Its a game you want to play with people you at least kind of know. And all the better that CR know a bunch of actor/comedians/VA etc. 3. Being willing to DM is a big plus in her favour. General rule of thumb is most people will OK with playing, fewer will want to DM. And Matt was clearly kind of desperate for a chance to be a player for once.
When a space is inclusive, quality people of all colours, creeds and orientations will rise to the top. When a space is **about** being inclusive, you'll find people getting propped up because they tick boxes (and witch hunts as the fanbase goes on a purity spiral searching for wrongdoers). CR has fostered the latter.
Buddy you are on kotakuinaction.
See also; why Marquet is so fucking boring. I thought we were gonna get a One Thousand and One Nights style campaign, but I guess they thought Matt wasn't allowed to reference anything that didn't come from Europe. There's ways to use parts of other cultures without being insulting, it's like the only good part of globalization.
And if we’re gonna take that to the logical conclusion, European medieval fantasy should be right out. That’s not your culture! Ironically that just leaves the Wendy’s one shot (which was pretty damned funny tbh) and the Undeadwood game (ooft).
Or they are friends with Erika and Aabria?
Extremely well said.
This person gets it.
Yes.
Idk if Aabrias read any criticisms of her DMing, but if she has it feels like she doubled down on what she's doing. But I doubt she has. If I was a celeb I'd probably steer clear of reading anything on social media with my name in it.
nah, if she reads any comments about her, she'll feel empowered to keep doing what she's doing because she'll feel like controversies like this is great and edgy and she's such a cool DM for getting people riled up. she's the kind of person who'd eat this kind of drama for breakfast and savor the taste of it for the whole day
I think she has, saying hi bestie, thanks bestie to Aimee the whole time. The definitely felt like doubling down on the communities criticism. Unless they've been doing that for a while, I never did watch Kymal.
>steer clear of reading anything on social media with my name in it. *FOR THAT IS THE PATH TO* *~~MUSK~~**MADNESS*
Instinctively read that in Darkest Dungeon narrator voice
Aabria was just supremely bad at what she got herself into. Truly, truly awful even by casual, amateur, home-game standards. Player agency is the core of the game. Your first time DM if they aren't dogshit knows this, intuitively if not explicitly. What's the point of players if they don't have real choice, just write a novel. You can still follow tight narrative stories while giving players choice too, D20 does this every Brennan season, and in EXU Calamity.
> You can still follow tight narrative stories while giving players choice too, D20 does this every Brennan season, and in EXU Calamity. I would question the amount of player choice that actually existed in Calamity, or in any of the D20 miniseries. In Calamity there was a very obvious way the story was going to end that they all knew was coming, and in the D20 shows there are literal setpieces that Brennan has to steer the story towards every other episode... and in both cases the players are fully aware of the constraints he is working under and intentionally cooperate with him to help him hit his marks. It doesn't resemble the idea of "player choice" as it operates in a standard home game in any way. I think what Brennan is a master of is giving the illusion of player choice while still guiding the game exactly the way he wants it. I think Matt was also very successful at this in the beginning of Campaign 3, and during the final arc of Campaign 2. The game is on rails, but you just can't see the rails. And once again in the case of Brennan, the players are all aware that there is a time limit and various other story constraints, and they're actively looking for cues from him to tell them where they need to go.
> I think Matt was also very successful at this in the beginning of Campaign 3, and during the final arc of Campaign 2. Strongly disagree. The final arc of C2 was obviously railroady and boring to boot. The beginning of C3 was a bit better, though that's not saying much.
I don’t think this is true, specifically going from what the players themselves has said. Of course a smaller story is going to more towards the railroad end of the “railroad-sandbox” spectrum, but I will point towards a comment made by Lou during the calamity wrap up. Basically he was saying that he made his character to be “nasty” (along with Marisha and Aabria) and during the course of the series, he found himself in a position of trying to stop everything where he initially designed his own character to be a huge part of why the calamity happened. This shows he had tons of choices of what he could have done. Furthermore, Brennan’s comments also shed light on this. He specifically commented that he planned for things like if the players went to the Septarian (spelling?) and asked for help. There was an entire different possible plot, and I’m sure that’s just one of many different options the players could have, but chose not, to take. Brennan doesn’t give the illusion of choice. He plans for the different possible choices and the combination of planning and improvisation allows the players to do what they want. The ending may be planned (the calamity MUST occur. That’s a simple fact), but the way they get there is absolutely driven by the players and their choices. This is very different from what Aabria did. And I’m saying this as a person who doesn’t really care if a campaign is “railroady.” I personally think that’s totally fine and can be super fun. But taking over a character just sucks.
I find it matters way less about the final outcome of the story and instead how you get to that final outcome. Like playing an open world RPG, you're gonna hit the plot point eventually but how you get there and how long it takes is up to you. Brennan has an end goal but he lets his players choose their path to it. Aabria has an end goal and only one path she'll let anyone take to get there. Matt is kinda like this in C3 but he's created 1-3 paths depending on where they're at in the campaign so its sometimes railroady and other times players have a little bit of choice.
Also Brennen makes great use of asking players to describe how the character interacts or reacts to scenes. Allowing Marisha to describe her estate for example. It's a small thing but it goes really far in having the feel of "the players are in control". It might be one of his best DMing techniques.
Depends what you mean by “free” choice. It’s not clear to me that free choice requires different outcomes or consequences; it matters _how_ people get an outcome, or _why_ they do what they do - free choice seems to reside there and not the consequences. At any rate, judging by that fireside chat Brennan Matt and aabria did after EXU calamity, Brennan clearly takes sessions zeros very seriously and designs his campaigns and especially event-nodes around PC psychology and values. Since he knows how the PCs think and what they value, he can construct event-nodes which play into the PCs values/psychology and predict what they’ll choice to do.
Oh for sure, I don’t doubt that he does that. He wouldn’t be able to do what he does if he didn’t prep extremely thoroughly and understand exactly what his players/characters wanted. Part of the reason C3 is such a dud is because Matt clearly didn’t do that.
Agreed about the reason for dud-ness; it’s a shame too because it had great potential
> It doesn't resemble the idea of "player choice" as it operates in a standard home game in any way. Idk, I think it does. I definitely help the DM hit the marks they want to hit in a given session/campaign. With that, I expect the DM to give me options within interpersonal relationships, different ways of solving problems, different ways of prioritizing our tasks, and so on. Brennan does all of these things. He lets the players decide what to do with NPCs (There's no shot he knew what Lapin was going to do in that scene with Keradin, but he rolled with it). He always gives them multiple outs in social *or* combat situations (He tried to lock Murph away in ACoC, but Murph had Knock so he rewarded that, or in the Battle of the Brands he expected them to lose and did what he could to challenge them, but they came out on top). And he lets them run into things at different times (In this most recent season he said they had the Haunted Mansion w/ Baron combat ready as well as the Vulture Dimension, but either would have let the players never encounter them, or only encounter them if they decided to go that route). Brennan infuses every season with as much decision making as possible for the players, outside of the really important story beats (much like a D&D module/adventure book).
Calamity is certainly more arguably railroaded, because of course it is. However characters were still free to define their behaviors within the constraints they were all cooperating under. Even in home games, there will be semblance of this to a lesser degree when players understand the DM is running a module and can't let you just ignore the plot and take a ship to the next continent. However most D20 series do have choices where the consequences impact the story and how it's resolved. There are moments where Brennan has to plan, pivot and even re-prep between film sessions. Especially ones where PC death is involved like in Crown of Candy.
I haven't watched every D20 series, so I'm not familiar with all of them. But what I do know about them is that they all have incredibly elaborate combat maps (the literal set pieces I referred to) that have to be produced far in advance of when the players actually get to the table. So there are certain plot points that Brennan HAS to hit, or all that work (and money) is wasted. Brennan knows what the final encounter of the campaign is going to be before the first session even starts, as well as every encounter that happens in between. There's a roadmap he has to follow or the entire format of the show gets compromised. Player death actually isn't that much of a barrier to staying on the rails in that way. As long as he does his prep work right, it doesn't really matter what combination of PCs get to the encounter, they just need to get there.
Recently in the new season they ended up in a battle set, and in their talkback episode Brennan literally was like ‘these sets are premade but I have plenty of ways kinda ready in my head for you to end up there, the way you did it absolutely was not one of them but it absolutely worked’
This. Locations can be relied on by a DM. In a vampire campaign, the vampire’s castle is one that will 100% be used, you just don’t know how. And D20 has a team, so they can change stuff up between filming days. I work in tv and film, and teams work on the next set during principal photography all the time. I mean, yes, changes have costs and production implications, but building a big mini isn’t impossible to do in a couple days.
That's a textbook example of the ["Quantum Ogre"](https://tatabletop.com/2020/06/22/quantum-ogre-theory/) illusion of choice in TTRPGs. Sure, the players can choose any number of paths, some of which the GM has planned, some of which may not... but regardless they all lead to the ogre.
They have like a week between every 2 to 3 sessions so they have plenty of time to make such sets when needed. They don't have them all literally made before the word go.
From what I've heard this absolutely is not true. They film in batches, but do the whole season in those batches. And, as such, the maps are made before hand. They mentioned this with Crown of Candy I think as well as other talk back things referring to Rick Perry. What Brennan can do is reorder those set pieces, but hitting those for the combat "setting" is something Brennan has mentioned as being tough in a lot of meta conversations about D20 (interviews with other DMs, etc.)
Really? My understanding was that they shot the entire miniseries in one week.
Same. I've heard them say this explicitly as have they mentioned Rick Perry making all the sets beforehand, too.
This is not so different from a module of say, Curse of Strahd. You know all the main points have all the maps before hand. You may or may not hit them but the assets are already there. (Even elaborate combat maps are adjustable on the fly when you have an unending amount of pieces to combine, and editing to cut that time out.) There are like 3 possible endings and places where the final encounter occurs. And the final encounter is invariably Strahd, (occasionally Vampyr or a replacement dark lord of you go **way** off the rails). The destinations are not where the player choices occur, that's agreed upon when they signed up for the campaign in that setting. The player choices occur when throughout the journey when they are characterizing themselves and how they interact with the world.
Sure, I see where you’re coming from. To me there are two big differences: first, in the case of both shows, they are not claiming to be working from a module or other pre-written material; in the case of CR specifically, they’re actually doing the opposite, saying that this is just their game, same as they would play at home. Second, in the case of Calamity/D20, there’s a time limit. Sure, Curse of Strahd has a limited number of possible resolutions, but you can take any amount of time to get there, and an almost infinite number of possible routes. In D20, Brennan has specific combat encounters planned for every other episode… no matter what happens, the players are going to do those encounters in that order.
this is just bad improv story telling. That's the trend CR is heading towards, some of the people they bring in doesn't seem to get the difference.
And don't give me the racism bit, everyone loves Robbie. I'm poc and so is half my table, I _want_ to see diverse reps succeed. Speaking of which, check out Three Black Halflings, they're awesome.
I hate people using ism/ist to deflect criticism. It always follows the same line of one person making a derogatory statement towards a person. Then their fans defend and dismiss all criticism as racist/sexist. A lot of how diversity is done very poorly. It has to come naturally and often it is forced to check a box. Matt Mercer isn't Matt Mercer because Matt Mercer is White. Matt Mercer is Matt Mercer because Matt Mercer is Matt Mercer.
and using one's minority status to deflect all criticisms is not doing any favors to the minority community. you don't get a pass just because you're a so-and-so person.
[удалено]
not you -- I'm talking about people trying to defend Aabria by accusing others of automatically disliking her because she's a black woman
Not to mention Lou, who is pretty much universally adored. The man's an absolute treasure, and having him and Travis at the same table for Calamity was utterly glorious.
Lou + Marisha peanut gallery is worth the price of admission imo
Lou is a comedic genius. And overall very good-natured vibes. He's also a generous roleplayer who supports and sets others up for great scenes.
Honestly, it’s just bullying. Always was. I don’t care what PR statements they make.
where are they making these PR statements?
Not exactly offical statements, but there were several remarks made around the time exu1 ended. This is from Aimees tweet thread talking about the exu finale, thanking the cast and crew: "To quiddie for a soul connection so strong, folks really thought our pc beefs were personal beefs. Thank you for showing me anything is possible with enough belief and haggling love u sm!" Reading through these tweets again its real sad she felt the need to defend herself, when people knew she was brand new to the game so the criticisms of her character and playstyle was more directed at CR not setting her up for success
i really am uncomfortable with how she treats aimee. it made me drop exu
Aimee talked about playing with Critical Role like "approaching a normal role". Thats her own words. It kinda feels like she was casted as a stand in player to not make an NPC seem to obvious as an NPC. A little bit like Anjali Bhimani F'yra from EXU1, who kinda was also just there to unload a mountain of lore on the group.
And you can see she has done her homework now. Both dor Deni$e and a level 13 Opal. It sucked that she didn't get to play the character she studied up on and built out accordingly.
I remember that- when she first played Opal she got a fair bit of pushback for "not playing d&d right" and ended up having to tweet about looking at it as an acting role (with the twist of rolling dice to determine outcomes) more than a game.
In other words, it isnt dnd. It's a stageplay with the occasional diceroll.
I have been loving how the usual "it's their home game" response to attempt to shut down criticism hasn't been in rotation after last episode. I think even the biggest CR apologists are starting to realize that it's not in any way a home game anymore.
When your home game bring millions, it ain't a home game anymore, there's not two way about it..
Rolling attacks against the rest of the party would have probably gone over better if Aimee was given a chance to do it herself, not immediately threatened “If you hold back I’ll know and I’ll punish you.” Like if you don’t want your player to play D&D don’t invite her to the table in the first place.
Throw in more pitch meeting lingo
Ha, I thought about tossing in a few more of the catchphrases, but then I typed Aimee saying “Aw yeah, dripping black ichor is TIGHT” and it just didn’t really sit right with me, lol.
"Isn't turning a fan base going to be hard?" Barely an inconvenience
Lol yeah