The Wild & Strange Decisions of Critical Role

[@WinglessValkyrie]

Correction, the moment with Fresh Cut Grass happened at the END of Episode 91. The first half of Episode 92 is with Bells Hells and then the Crown Takers take over for the rest of the episode & the first half of episode 93. My point on the pacing still stands as Episode 92 brought in a TON of live viewers to see the fallout of Fresh Cut Grasses actions, only for that to only be for half the episode.

[@nickh3205]

Lol I’m watching your video right now and your comment popped up at the same time as you started talking about this happening 😂

[@WinglessValkyrie]

@@nickh3205 Speak of the devil 😈

[@MannyBrum]

I haven't watched CR since mid-way through Campaign 2, since I started to feel the difference in the way it was run after they started branching out and doing their own company. I have kept up with some of the stuff a little, though and I've seen Matt address the scripted thing. He does say that he does work with the players on what they want their characters do do in their own story, so if Sam wanted FCG to die heroically, then it would have been setup in advance, maybe the week before that it would happen, and nobody but Sam and Matt would know. A lot of DMs do things like this. In a situation like that Matt would have known ahead of time, so it isn't unusual that they left it on a cliffhanger and had Xandria Unlimited take over, though it was probably a bad idea because nobody's going to be paying attention to anything else after that.

[@jazzakai2000]

@@MannyBrum Matt addressed FCG's death on 4 Side Dive when Sam came back. They were originally planning on FCG becoming deactivated by like an emp, but Sam chose that moment to just self destruct since he didn't know how long he would be gone. But it had been hinted earlier in the campaign not to mess with FCG's core, plus the group learned to over power the cores of machines with magic make them blow up when they attack the key in the Feywild.

[@alexsmith9617]

As to the “scripted “ issue, I ran sound at a theater in the Bay Area back in the 80’s. There were a ton of comedy acts and there was a focus on improv. Having watched improv groups for a decade, I can tell you that, yes, the show was unscripted. Now, what unscripted means is that there was a very loose idea of what bits were going into the show. On the other hand, these people had been acting and improving, many of them, for 2 or more decades. After a while, the cast knew where any bit was going and fell into bits that worked with the subject. So, yes, I think the show is not scripted. I think the cast is a group of close friends who have gotten to know each other better than most people know their own friends. They have also been at this for going on a decade. Even with wildly talented people, after enough time, they will naturally recognize a set up for another player and be pretty quick on the uptake. Just my viewpoint. 😎

[@erickdeoliveira4797]

Matt says that what really matters to him is to be sure they have fun, and for sure it's what really matters on an RPG. But for me the real problem on the 'fall' is the group as a whole. Bells Hells doesn't feel conected at all, they're all just going and going. M9 on 30/40 episodes you already feel they can go to hell with each other but Bells Hells they're just a group forcing they way into this mess, doesn't feel they are a group that would stick together to stop the ending of the world. It's hard to explain this on English but I hope was clear. Is that a Divinity Soundtrack on the ending?

[@WinglessValkyrie]

I agree, thank you for your comment. It's not Divinity, it's Baldur's gate 3 :P Same composer ^.^

[@erickdeoliveira4797]

@@WinglessValkyrie well I have 300h on both those games so, makes sense that I got confused. BTW, great video!

[@SnowRaves]

I think another difficult thing Critical Role faces with viewership is the length of episodes. It doesn't just have to keep people engaged in the story as a whole it has to keep people engaged 4 hours at a time. Personally this was the thing that really made me drop campaign 3. In campaign 1 and 2 it felt constantly like they were filling the Silence with character moments or interactions between characters, every character had a relationship with every other character. But in campaign 3 the party has felt quite disconnected because the story is so big and so much is happening they don't have time for these little moments which helped pad out time between big arcs. Also the fact that it is all one big story, people say they have had different arcs but fundementally it has been the same story, it feels if you miss any episodes you will have to watch every single episode up until that point to understand the context, whereas in C1 and C2 with the more separated arcs, it made it easier for people to pop in and out, and if they didnt enjoy the arc, something new would be coming soon. I still like Critical Role a lot, I want to watch it, I still watch clipped moments and other things because I love the cast but right now it feels kinda like I am just waiting for C3 to be over because we are never going to get to a story beat that isnt about the moon/ruby vanguard/the gods. I am very sad about it, but I am just not motivated to spend hours every week, when I dont have much free time, to watch a story that I am not invested in with a party who don't have as interesting dynamics as VM or M9. I don't bregrudge anyone who likes C3 and I am just happy they can enjoy something I can't but I just wanted to give my 2 cents about why I fell off.

[@WinglessValkyrie]

Thank you for watching & sharing your thoughts. I feel very similar to you about there not being an arcs in this campaign.

[@Mushroompancake]

I think, to some degree, people claiming critical role is scripted because story beats that would have required communication between player and dm are really silly. For example, Bertrand’s death. That kind of thing happens plenty of times in my games, where players want to plot out some major events with their character to have early on. Some people seem to think that D&D means nothing is ever organized and everyone operates on the whims of how they feel in a given moment. Other than that, I absolutely agree with the sentiment of your video. I stopped watching c3 as consistently shortly after Chetney was introduced. I felt like I had already seen 2 of these characters before, and adding another just made me feel like the party wasn’t anything new and refreshing (plus, I never really got invested in ExU) And, I’m gonna sound mean here, but I just couldn’t invest myself in the new characters in the party. Imogen just felt very Mary-sue-y? For lack of a better term? Maybe she just reminds me of the main character of a book I read in my teens and I just cringe at the thought lol. Ashton, similarly, felt very “teen oc”. Like he was something out of a vivziepop project. Fresh cut grass, to be perfectly honest, felt like a joke character. The only one I find consistently enjoyable is Laudna, though I didn’t like how heavily her backstory tied into campaign 1 (which is a criticism I could apply to the campaign as a whole) That being said, there’s plenty of things about the campaign that I absolutely adore, and I hope I can eventually renew my interest in the show, but as it stands, I mostly just read the wiki to learn what happens each session, lol.

[@MsLeVagabon]

Couple of my opinion on why C3 is less successful than C2/C1 The characters : Bells Hells just doesn’t have the chemistry that VM or M9 had. It comes down to a couple of things. First, the catalyst of each party. When we met VM they already were a tight group who went trough many things together, their unity was taken as face value. The Mighty Nein catalyst was 100% the death of Mollymauk, before that the party was three group following each other because of money, Molly dying turned those 3 group into one family. Its also why the Nein is so beloved by the fans, we watched them becoming the family that they are in real time. Now with Bells Hells, its obvious they tried to recreate C2 catalyst through Bertrand Bells, and that’s why it didn’t work, it was not natural. To this day I find the fact they named their party after a guy they knew for less than a week ridiculous. The party branding is also much weaker in C3 than C2 because of it. Talking about the characters themselves, its also obvious that the C3 characters are marginally less liked than C2 and C1. C1 is classic dnd stuff, no reason to explain why centuries old tropes work. C2 work because they were made by a cast of people strong of all their C1 experience and finally created characters that truly represented something they cared about. Its also an extremely well balanced party in terms of character tropes. C3 characters, and the cast have joked about it before, feels like a bunch of NPC. There is also the Jester issue, which to me is also a reason why C3 doesn’t work as well as C2. Jester, whether you like her or not, is a perfect character, and Through her Laura elevated how the entire cast and many people watching view and played dnd as a whole. Obviously that made the rest of the cast to want and try that style, no issue with that. Except that now we have a party of wannabe Jester and no one to play off of them. Fearne, Laudna, FCG and Chetney are all agent of chaos, and the only straight man to play off is Orym, which, because Liam wanted to take a step back this campaign, didn’t really made his case until like episode 70+. Ashton is just a bad character overall and highlight all the bad trait of Taliesin as a player both in terms of rp and mechanically, and he also doesn’t act as the straight man that Fjord, Caduceus, Caleb, Yasha or Beauregard were. In my opinion the one who succeed to most at « Jestering » is Travis with Chetney, and the one who does it the worst is very obviously Ashley with Fearne. On that point, lets talk about Ashley. Incredible rper, absolute dogshit mechanically. To the point where it actually lessen her experience as a player and our experience as viewers. She just do not understand how the game is played after playing it for a decade and it is infuriating to witness. People, myself included have been giving her excuses that she hasn’t been able to play as much as other cast members, which is true. However, it is litteraly her job now. The basic of 5e combat is not hard to grasp, Robbie got it figured out in less than ten sessions having never played before that. Druid is a hard class to master, and I believe that she should not have taken this class for her first true full time character, but for the love of Sarenrae all she needs is for her, Matthew and Liam to sit together at a table for one hour and explain to her the basics of the mechanics. Second, Ashton and Taliesin. Taliesin is, by far, the weakest link in the main cast. Ashley, despite being infuriating to witness every time any mechanic comes into play, is a god tier rp player. Ashton is the worst part of everything Taliesin. First he’s supposed to be some iteration of « punk » but punk doesn’t work in Exandria, because Exandria socially speaking, is near damn utopic. What is the punk movement supposed to rebel against in Exandria ? Nothing, which is why at his core Ashton appear as a poser, his entire attitude falls flat, his edgyness have no ground to stand on, which make it cringe. If you close your eyes and forget its Taliesin, Ashton is every edgy 14 yo OC. Taliesin also said he wanted a character who would force him to adapt in combat, which is why his class is very gatcha coded. There would be nothing wrong with that if it wasn’t Taliesin playing. Lets face it, Taliesin is not very good mechanically, and of all the cast is also the one most encline to meta and power game. Barbarian is a very simple class and honestly, a good choice for Taliesin because if you give him too much option he loses himself in the sauce, as witnessed multiple times when he played Caduceus and Mollymauk. Second main point : The Story and pacing. The story is simply not adapted to the character, Bells hells would have shined in a low stakes campaign, where there’s room for chaos and not a lot of thinking going on. This campaign is the opposite of that. Since the very beginning it has been political and religious heavy then Matthew stacked matters of philosophy and morality on top of it. And on that matter, the main plot point of the story just doesn’t vibe with the cast, and it shows. Critical Role is and always have been, a cast of very politically engaged people. It is no secret that they all are very liberal and « woke » for lack of better word (sorry english isn’t my first language). I would have no issue with that, especially as a non American who isn’t affected by IS politics, however their view bleed unto their character and lessen the story because they are unable to separate themselves from it. The most blatant example being of course the campaign long question of the place of the divine in Exandria. It is very obvious that the cast doesn’t carry a lot of love for real world religion. But the way they expressed their character is in complete dissonance with what we have been shown of the divine in Exandria. This comment is long enough as it is so I ain’t gonna elaborate more but basically we have Marisha and Taliesin clearly throwing shade at real world religion and their vision of God and the rest of the cast who refuse to take position. Mind you this isn’t a C3 problem, the cast have always been weak when it comes to rping faith. Even Caduceus, the most « gentle » representation of a faithful in CR history, is effectively a blind zealot. Every conversationa out the issue of the gods have been a bland, disingenuous slog and the last side show Downfall really hammered the issue with how incredible Brennan was on the matter. I really hope that once this arc is over they’ll just stay away from this trope, because its simply not interesting to see them yap nonsense and projecting real world issue that have no place on Exandria. You’ve talked about the pacing in the video, and of course the fact that this campaign have effectively been a giant main arc with smaller, less important arc slid into the big main arc is of course the main reason C3 have seen a lot of fatigue, especially since the main arc revolves around a trope where the cast either is weak at developing or simply bot interested in doing so. Another point I think is impoetant is that ExU crownkeeper was just bad, and kinda killed C3 initial hype. I personally do not like at all Aabria as a DM, I think she’s much better as a player, though I really liked Magic and Misfit (D20 show) but even that was heavily edited and railroady than what CR is at its core. I too straight up skipped the entire crownkeeper segment post FCG death, how a bunch of professional storytellers managed to fumble the ball this hard in terms of pacing is beyond me, but the truth is that they knew no one would have watched the crownkeeper segment had it not been part of the main campaign. And yes Sam had to go fight cancer (and kick its ugly ass W Sam) but this is prerecorded now, that’s not an excuse. We could have had a slow burn end of the episode where the party lick its wound and mourn properly, which would have given us viewer also time to mourn, because i don’t know about you, but FCG death just did not hit as hard as I thought it would have, simply because the pacing was so all over the place it broke my interest for the story. As of today I have not yet watched episode 102, Downfall was a great miniseries, as is everything with Brennan Lee Mulligan in it, but even then the cast was divisive in their representation in my opinion. When it comes to your question about content creation, I firmly stand by the fact that the consumer is what matters, however where you assume the consumer are us the viewer, to Matt, the one oerson who make or break CR, the consumer isn’t the viewers, its the players. Like a real dnd campaign, what matter is that the players have a great time, even if whoever is watching on the sideline disagrees with whats going on. Cool video, well made, got me yapping a freaking thesis. Can you tell I love CR ?

[@WinglessValkyrie]

Thank you very much for your thesis! It's given me a lot to think about & process. I really appreciate you checking the video out and sharing your thoughts ^.^

[@JesusGomez-pl5nw]

Leaving this here before you inevitably blow up. Very good video, sir. Well done.

[@WinglessValkyrie]

Haha Thanks! It's quite a controversial video but I appreciate the comment & thanks for watching!

[@IlChatNoir17]

A lot of complaining, but no proposals. So their new campaign isn’t going as well because they’re doing things differently. Would you have them do the exact same thing as last campaign? A lot of people would complain about that. They’re not making as much money from the show, and you complain about them doing Beacon. So what should they do instead? Nothing? Whatever they’d have done, people would complain. That’s easy. Tell me what they should be doing instead.

[@PiroMunkie]

Just a technical note, I'm not sure if it's just this video or others of yours as well, but I feel like you could stand to increase your volume.

[@WinglessValkyrie]

You are 100%, I was thinking the same thing before the final render but felt it was alright. For future videos, if I think my audio is alright, I will then turn it up a few decibels 👍🏻

[@jazzakai2000]

So you are trying to say CR not having the DnDBeyond sponsorship doesn't have anything to do with the big general use policy changes that Wizards tried to implement that would have drastically limited CR revenue? That is also when CR started to not use the full titles of gods and some spells do to the new policies. Personally I love all seasons of CR. I feel that the reason people may not be connecting as much in later campaigns as the cast are making characters they find interesting. Campaign 1 was almost a classic setup. 1 human, 3 half elves, two gnomes, and 1 goliath with pretty hetero normal relationships. Skip to Campaign 2 is where things start to shake up with 2 humans, 1 assimar, 1 goblin, 1 half orc, and two tieflings that later traded the goblin and a tiefling for a halfling and a furbolg, with mostly homosexual relationships. And finally Campaign 3 with a human, earth genasi, faun, halfling, hollowed human, aeormaton, air genasi, and gmone werewolf with this group being all over the place relationship wise. Some people have a hard time watching something that they can't see themselves in, but at the same time, alot of the people that attend Q&As with the cast comment on how a character like Ashton makes the feel seen as someone who is ace, or beau being gay. Small amounts of scripting does happen. Think back to campaign 2 with the kidnapping of Jester, Yasha, and Fjord. Travis and Laura were expecting, and Ashley had to go to film Blindspot. Heck any time Ashley had to leave it was scripted in a small way. Matt has notes upon notes about everything that could happen in the game, but at the same time the players completely get sidetracked and Matt has to make something up right on the scene like Henry Crabgrass or the Suntree. I canceled my twitch subscription, not because I don't like the show anymore, I just find myself using the podcast version more as i can pop it on at work, but also because money is tight these days. And I'm sure it's the same for them. Chances are at Geek and Sundry they had rules that they had to follow, but Vox Machina had moments that mirror ones in campaigns 2 and 3. Things like the love potion incident, bathtub incident, hot spring in the manor, and the portraits for Taryon to learn their names. Campaign 2 with the scrambled eggs, Tusked Love, and Jester's many hidden dicks. And finally campaign 3 with the "orgy shoot", actual orgy, and FCG's flesh tongue, wooden feet, and baking. These moments help the cast keep things light like any time IRL friends get together. The cast admits that they purposely do this stuff to make Matt crack. Home games are like this. Lastly I think most of the changes are for them. Being in charge of their own schedules is a big boost to them. how many time did Ashley have to no show or skype in to play in early seasons or even other member because they went out of town to see family. Four at the cast members are parents with kids of varying ages.They want to guarantee time with their families. Health is another reason with Sam being a good example of that. Their work schedules outside of CR. They are all voice actors first, but some voice direct or produce. Sometimes just go to do regular acting. BUT if this group of nerdy ass voice actors didn't think of caring for themselves first, they would be unable to make the content fans expect. So its a mix of both leaning in the diction of CR.

[@twlight9000]

Leaving my 0.02$ about beacon and how it compares to dropout - to me, college humor had long been off my radar and then new dropout shows really caught my attention, to the point of subscribing and enjoying lots of their originals. The fact that the critical role crew is very close to many members of beacon, I would say that along with it helping generate an additional revenue stream, it really does give them a spot to reinvigorate the brand and create more new IPs other than critical role. I would bet they see dropout as the blueprint.

[@i_am_erebus]

First off, because my comment doesn’t really reflect this notion, but this video is very well put together and written. And I know my comment will seem like I’m defending them, but they are a corporate entity and don’t need defending. All of the below text are my personal views on the situation. Now for the purpose of my comment. The first half of the video I was confused because you asked what crazy new and off the rails things they would do like it was some broken promise, and then spent the first half complaining about the new and off the rails stuff they did, I.e. having so many familiar faces to start the campaign, extended guest character appearances, a crazy dual narrative party split. You also complain about scripting and it not being live, which doesn’t really make sense to me either. Almost every other majorly successful AP is not live, and if you enjoy Dimension 20 those shows have huge story beats that MUST BE HIT due to how they create battle maps. So do you complain about scripting with those too? The conversation around scripting needs to be consistent across all AP shows. The conjecture around their sponsorship practices and financials is lowkey disgusting. We have absolutely NO IDEA how their sponsorships work. Viewership is not the only metric. Many of their sponsors give discount codes, which is probably the main metric used. And the fact the DnDbeyond was no longer a guaranteed sponsor is most likely due to the fact that they signed a contract to sponsor Campaign 2, and then a contract wasn’t signed for Campaign 3. The absolute concrete assumptions you make are in bad faith. And regarding Beacon, it’s roughly the same price as a Twitch subscription, and you get everything you get with a Twitch subscription plus a couple of extra tidbits. So why would they not go for a guaranteed $7 instead of the 50/50 split on Twitch, which they get, there is no way for them to get a better split. It’s a no brainer if they can afford the server infrastructure to host their own streaming service to do so and cut out the middle man. Again, I completely disagree with nearly your entire video BUT IT IS WELL WRITTEN AND PRODUCED. The only part I enjoyed were the quick 3 minutes you talk about the revelation you had after Sam’s announcement video, which were lovely.

[@Ren_Ca]

I understand where you're coming from. But I have an issue with "at your core, you are still a company". Are they, though? Honestly, not wvery content creator values their revenue, content, and views to measure the success of a certain creation. Maybe people just wanna make something cool, and that's it. Not to appeal a bit to millions of people, but to appeal a million to a bit of people. Because that's the thing about art: it doesn't matter if it's "profitable" or "successful", they want to do somethng that THEY enjoy. And we may have to be at peace that maybe, this show is not for us. I love campaign 3. I started watching them, and I binged the whole thing. i fell in love with the characters so much, that I decided to watch C1 and c2 in their entirety. If people conclude that they don't engoy critical role, that's okay. But I believe that it's a bit entitled tothink that if most people don't like it, it means it failed.

[@Ren_Ca]

Tldr: I think revenue isn't they're priority, because being a profitable company isn't their priority

[@WinglessValkyrie]

@@Ren_Ca It may not be a priority to the primary cast as they benefit the most plus have side gigs, but all the crew that are hired to work at Critical Role absolutely care about their revenue. They don’t have voice acting or producing shows or attending events to supplement their income. They need the flagship show they are hired to work on to thrive. It’s not their fault if the numbers decline, but it will be them who gets laid off when it drops too low. The main cast cares for their employees, I have no doubt about that. Which is why in order to keep them employed, sometimes the art of storytelling has to also be the art of paying your employees. The truth of the matter is that once you turn your art into your business, you can’t do whatever you want anymore. You now have to balance whatever you want with what pays the bills.

[@noided_jovan]

The problem I have with s3 is characters themselves, I feel like players didnt really connect to them, maybe its problem with script so they are forced to do something in a way they didnt want to, witch makes a problem for DM few times. Im currently at ep40ish and im disappointed in some decisions they made. Flipping a coin for Revivify choice, orgy as a distraction, Fearne being too airheaded - even in situations that matter. All feels just wrong..

[@Aloysius_OHare]

As an audience, The only characters I seemed to care most about is Fearne, Chetney, Dorian, Orym, FCG. Usually I feel an attachment to everyone's character but I just felt very CRINGED. In the end, for this story I am ROOTING for their failure. I want Bells Hells to fail. They aren't worthy enough to save a world. Or maybe Matt moved them too fast.

[@trystinpowell8981]

TLDR: We're not entitled to dictate what or how they create, we're only entitled to choose if we want to consume it. Also While I fundamentally disagree with you, this was a pretty great video! I mean, they're allowed to have story beats and moments. There are literally DnD Adventures in existence for this purpose. If I make a character I want to have a Susanoo like in Naruto, I trust my DM to make the scenario that let's me experience that. Or do you mean directly scripted? we do have professionals that literally spend their lives reading scripts, they more than anyone can make some good improv hit with the quality of a script. I mean If I have a player that wants a character for one session, then I'm gonna make that happen as a DM. Why wouldn't I want to do what would be fun for my players? I mean what would be the point of running the game at that point? I get they're big time now, but it's their game. We don't have to choose to watch this. If we feel like it's scripted and that upsets us, we can stop. It's our time to choose to invest or not, not an obligation, no matter what we tell ourselves. The creators create, we choose to consume. If we like it, great. If we don't, go consume something else. If we want to use our time and money to support their creation, we can. They're not obligated to do anything except play the game they want to play. They made changes, they're allowed to. They need to. We've got animated shows, multiple seasons. Multiple series. They've got Beacon. We choose when and how we support them. I love the show, I'm enjoying it, I'm happy to support. Anyone that doesn't, doesn't have to. I'm supporting because I like what they make. I had this exact convo with a friend just before the revival arc. They believed that we as consumers are entitled to a game played based on what we want to see. That was never what the motivation was. It's they're game, and the conditions of them doing all this in the first place, was that it remained their game. I get it's not everyone's favorite campaign, but I love it. Not that anyone else has to, but I'm watching because I want to see their story, not because I want them to make the story I want to see. There's a big difference, and when it comes to content like this, I think that to say creator or consumer is more important is unfair. But they're the creators. They choose what to create and that's how it should be. We're not entitled to dictate what or how they create, we're only entitled to choose if we want to consume it.

[@twlight9000]

"I want to see their story, not because I want them to make the story I want to see" pretty much exactly how I feel about campaign 3. I feel like CR has built up my trust after years of engaging storytelling. I want to see their vision through.

[@shnordo]

Beautifully said! I agree with you 100%

[@i_am_erebus]

All of this! Great comment.

[@KodakBlackedOut]

Damn, i didnt realize how right you were until i started thinking about it; i once consumed CR content as soon as it dropped, now im falling behind and have started looking for other things to watch, mostly papa meat and meat canyon content.

[@transientanus]

Yeah C3 just isnt hitting for me. Not only are there absolutely no stakes whatsoever(if anything bad happens, they just call in one of their previous characters to come in and fix everything), but the entire concept of people questioning deities who literally exert their will upom the world is just nonsensical. Thats not even mentioning the weird production choices. Its really hard to stay invested in a campaign that constantly takes month+ breaks to include crappy side stories that have no bearing on the main story. Then theres the CR after show. I get why they had to get rid of Brian Foster. But they didnt have to get rid of the Talks Machina format. The entire point of the CR aftershow was that it was a show for the fans in which the fans can engage with the show. Now those "evergreen tower questions" are the only thing fans get and it's the most token engagement imaginable. Now all the questions come from Dani Carr. Its basically just them sitting in a circle patting themselves on the back. Its like once they got the $11mil and then their amazon money, they didnt care about doing stuff for the fans anymore. For people like me who donated a non-negligble amount of their own money, it felt like a slap in the face. Then for them to use 4-sided dive to basically mock the fans who voiced their dissatisfaction, it just felt really gross. But back to the problems with C3 itself. Its all one big railroad. Nothing any of the characters actually DO matters or alters the course of the campaign. Remember when M9 when to the dynasty and Matt had to totally change his plans? That was awesome and made for some incredible moments. But literally none of that is happening in c3. Every time someone TRIES to color outside the lines(Ashton trying to absorb 2 shards, for example), Matt reins them in. Now lets talk about the weird guest choices. Previously, the guests all had respect for the game, for the lore, and for the world they were placed in. The guests this campaign have been awful. Constantly throwing in anachronisms or just plain trying to make themselves the main characters. Its just cringey to watch. Looking at you Aimee. Then, when theres FINALLY a little momentum, "Well, see you in six weeks while we tell a totally unrelated story that nobody cares about!" Then theres all this weird side stuff theyre trying to force on us(STOP TRYING TO MAKE MIDST HAPPEN). All in all, CR has just lost its touch. I sincerly wish i had never donated any money to them. They used to care about fans but now they've jacked up their store prices, never show off any fan art or do any giveaways, and constantly belittle the fans who do anything but heap praise on them.

[@nickh3205]

I do personally think CR3 is kinda “the beginning of the end” for CR, many of they’re recent products has been honestly not good. Candela Obscura as example is an awesome concept for a Call of Cthulhu setting, But not as it’s own system. There’s also that it’s being run on the 4th Thursday of every month and has a constant rotating cast; I haven’t read or played Daggerheart but I’m not exactly interested in that game as it’s another “fantasy game” and there are a lot of fantasy ttrpg’s. For CR3 there is definitely a handful of very(or seemingly) scripted moments: Bertrands death, the fcg death(for Sam to be able to go deal with his cancer, so this one was a needed one as it’s a medical condition that is incredibly more important than D&D), Imogins “dark Phoenix” moment, Robbie leaving, The forced party split, the crown takers being focused on the episode after FCG’s sacrifice happened, and now the Flashback to Eor). Sorry for the massive blocks of text

[@Rubycule]

@@nickh3205 ...those moments aren't scripted beyond what is normal in any home game. And I am not convinced FCGs sacrifice was scripted to play out the way that it did. Part of that is specifically because the Crown Keepers got squeezed into the program, it looked like they needed time to figure out what was going to happen next. I have interjected my campaigns with shorter adventures and "spin-offs". Doesn't mean anything was scripted. And if a player has to leave for any reason, I won't let their character just hang in the air. I think criticizing CR for doing similar things is disingenous.

[@MannyBrum]

Right now I think there's a lot of pressure for every D&D creator to come out with their own system since the whole D&D OGL fiasco. It was starting to happen before then but there was a lot of peer pressure on people to play different games in the TTRPG community after that. For years people have been trying to shame anyone that only plays D&D on Twitter and also on any TTRPG space that isn't exclusive to D&D.

[@ValorMS]

Super solid video my man. New subscriber coming in 👍

[@WinglessValkyrie]

Thank you very much for checking it out ^.^

[@EscapedApe3]

What's the name of that tune/music around the 7:30 mark?

[@WinglessValkyrie]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/lX7Gn2eFrrN0nZYsi=JFDPzd2BFoM8T08P

[@Darkwintre]

I remember those. Didn’t know they stopped that. Shame, seriously.

[@MNDCL]

To your point about the pacing, it's too bad you put this out before yesterday's episode.

[@hadesblackplays]

hey, first time viewer here i've always said "trust no company". mostly because late-stage capitalism and im also one of the opinion of dont put people in a pedestal whether is friends or famous people. So, I kinda share your sentiment of "the consumer matters more" however, as someone who has work in retail & customer service at large for most of my adult life i can totally say "The consumer isnt always right" So... yeah, its a difficult thing to find the balance neccessary to feed that need for creativity while revenue of your followers that are used to and want a very specific thing.

[@hibiscusflowers4436]

i quit watching halfway through the first episode of c3 and went to sleep because i was so upset about the reused characters. the worst for me was that caleb was my favorite c2 player character and i just can’t stand orym, which sucks so bad after falling so deeply in love with liam o’brien’s whole deal. i tuned back in when essek came back (my favorite overall critical role character) and have been watching weekly since, literally only for him. the bells hells are not interesting, they don’t feel like a family like the mighty nein did, and the ‘story’ feels like a bunch of callbacks and guest stars in a trench coat. that’s coming from, again, essek thelyss’s number one fan. i love that he’s back, but would love a cohesive and compelling campaign more.

[@mikerfs]

lol you ran out of gas? nat 1.

[@WinglessValkyrie]

Yep, Nat 1 indeed.

[@Darkwintre]

Would it have worked better if they ran an Arabian style campaign instead of one based on their adventure they released?